Shrikhand just tastes like shrikhand

Ever tasted words?

Found ‘pink’ tasting sweet like Digene tablets and ‘red’ like boiled chopped carrots?

‘Black’ like sputtered sesame seeds in gingelly oil?

‘Brown’ like crusty chocolaty Bournvita powder melting in the mouth?

‘Blue’ like sour sweet jelly and ‘green’ like fresh astringent Tulsi leaves

‘Yellow’ like rich boiled egg yolk with a smattering of kala namak

‘Orange’ like the rinds in marmalade left on the tongue after biting into a hot toast

‘Grey’, very much like ‘pray’ and ‘prey’, like the core of Gems after the sugarcoat dissolves

‘Maroon’ like Tomato ketchup and ‘mauve’ like a crumbly apple

‘Beige’ like chalk, ‘white’ like milk and ‘fuchsia’ like Roohafza in water

Somehow ‘mail’ tastes like fried salted Moong dal, but ‘dal’ tastes like salted lentil soup

‘Soup’ tastes like the extra liquid from Maggi noodles licked off an empty plate

But ‘noodles’ taste like ‘needles’

‘Needles’ are prickly to the tongue, but ‘tongue’ just resonates through your mouth

‘Mouth’ tastes like a kiss, but ‘kiss’ doesn't taste; it smells sandalwood powder

All this while butter tastes like freshly churned butter and cheese like the first smooth slice from a just-opened tin of cheddar

And shrikhand just tastes like shrikhand.

It is - If heard

Sweetest symphony on plain parchment scrawled

Is mere fly’s buzz before living piano chord

A quiet pin drop whilst a toddler prattles

A whimper inexistent on sea-sand battles

Prettiest portrait – though – just bright vivid vision

Is but linseed drop on a Van Gogh rendition

Pipe dream palettes don’t make Lisa smile

Nor fancied figures do Louvre walls style

What good – a melody – a poet’s stationed word

No flight, no wave – a silent songless bird

Brave voice – mere breath – not wielded as a sword

For great is, great does – it is, if heard

The Housewife

An unearthly five a.m. buzzes

Exhausted, but eager, she rises

Toys and the TV remote adorn the floor

She picks and preens till the sun begins to soar

A quick brush here, a small shower there

She chops teary onions with potatoes to pare

A half hour later when the kitchen’s chores are done

With kisses and caresses, she wakes her little son

She bathes, scrubs and dresses her baby with adulation

Feeds him, packs his lunch and sees him to the bus station

Her once gentle and silky hands, launder the pile of dirty clothes

In all this rush, her kindness intact, she feeds some grains to the crows

At 8:30, with the rising heat, she watches her lordly husband rise

No greetings or hugs, he gulps his coffee and eats his curry and rice

He bickers and complains about her laxity and nitpicks her culinary skills

She knows he loved the meal nevertheless, when he burps as his belly fills

While he rushes to the office, she hovers near him, for his small or big commands

She finds his sock, polishes his shoes, irons his shirt even without his demands

Scolding and cursing, he leaves for office, driving away in his car

She heaves a sigh of relief at last, and waves to him till he’s far

It is but for a brief moment, that she recalls her own, once flourishing career

She had quit without complaint, on her husband’s order, as her family she held very dear

With the chores all done, she eats the leftovers and allows herself a small nap

It seems like just a few minutes have passed, when she hears her front door rap

Newspaper man, vegetable vendor and the neighbour start pouring in

Worn and tired, she handles it all; she slogs till her head takes a spin

It’s late afternoon when she picks up her child and carries him all the way home

Then she heads to the market, buys the groceries and her husband’s shaving foam

Back home at last, without a moment’s rest, she goes off to help her little one

His homework aplenty, they finish together, his bags are all packed and done

It’s 8:30 p.m. and she’s back at the kitchen, cooking the family’s supper

Her husband walks in, flops on the sofa, with his work pressure he goes hyper

She takes it in all, like an obedient wife, while her family eats their dinner plentiful

She eats at last, what is left, clears the dining table, scrubs the dishes in the sink full

She reads to her baby till his soft snores resound like a melody in her tired ears

She bathes and changes, and her husband beckons, at night she to him endears

Weak but yielding, she submits herself to his throes of passion

He moves back and dozes off, after he spends all his carnal possession

Her body is worn, her mind all sleepy but only tears come to her eyes

She’s unaware when she slept off, it’s 5 a.m. now, yet again she has to rise

One may think how and why, one chooses to inspire, one’s poetry with a mere housewife

Seldom we know, never we acknowledge, her numerous battles throughout her strife

How one gentle person can put up with so much, and stay strong, living at the tip of a knife

Because she’s a woman, a mother, a wife, a daughter and more, this is how stirring is her life

Chipped Nailpaint

A golden moment of glee

When the cuticle covered the fingertip

Thus ready to adorn with

A multitude of glossy tints

Make my humble hands

To resemble at least in part

Those of Aphrodite’s favourite children

I trimmed and filed, then

Painted the hard convex canvas

With placid strokes of paint

Fantasizing such imminent moments

When my hand would be marveled at

By amorous men and their envious women

For a cause barring its purpose

I twisted, turned, waved

Or gently rested atop a slab

Simply admired the radiance

Flinched to exert my hands

But for delicate deeds

Little of consequence

More for allure

Hardly did I fathom

That this fortune for my fingers

Was but a fleeting fate

Just days after I painted

This live masterpiece

Tiny flakes chipped off my nails

Minor blemishes, but beckoning

The canvas to be razed to the ground

Only then to be painted again

A week down the line

Vanity vied labour

Work won by a full measure

Neither pressure nor time

Just the impossible incongruity

Of chipped nail polish

      

Atlas's burden

Atlas’s burden

It tickles, oh lord

He can’t bear it, no more

If it were but for a moment

That he could dispatch his restless digits

To settle this urgent score

For once, soft impulse

Defeats sinew hard

Who will bear

Atlas’s Gaia, for a jiffy

Till he scratches off his back

Banishes the culprit

One tickly piece of hair

Lost love

I bolted from the blue

When my eyes met

The lost love of my teens

Reappeared, in my weathered years

Troubled scarlet eyes

Over white, watery entrails

Their rims angry, red

Emphasized against a pale face

They stared back at me

In their perfect symmetry

Speaking a silent testimony

To my arrogance and apathy

My fingertips felt

The silky smooth skin

It bred more anguish

I had cared, yes

But apparently meagre

My callousness had caused

Those crimson contours

Two ugly red pimples

On either of my cheek

Reflected in the bathroom mirror

      

From my window

Viewing the world from a small window

In the chamber of my existence

Through the mesh of prudence and prejudice

I admire the sunshine radiant upon this majestic tree

Quite erroneous, yet held high

Its random branches and an all enveloping canopy

Conceal its rotting undergrowth in its pleasant green

Cloaking the eyes of the likes of me

From seeing beyond its resilient reality

Restrictive, yet, I’m grateful, for it is protective

Its sap’s hues nurture the majority of life

This unbreakable inexorable machinery

Is too opaque for me to dare consider any likelihood

It crushed several lower lives underneath it

To grow colossal consuming the gifts of nature

In its own free right, thus it shelters greater lives

Than those it trampled to exist

Through some loopholes in its awning

My small window of vision

With its preconceived mesh of notions

Glimpses a struggling shrub

Beautiful like all nature’s brood

But horrid to my predisposed train of thought

It grapples for water, sunlight and soil

As rightfully its as the tree

All fairly being Gaia’s children

The behemoth seizes even its meagre necessity

Claiming its superior survival against the lowly shrub

Its divine ancestry against the unholy weed

Its existence natural and the shrub a global pollution

Though their mysterious antecedents are only common

Even in the chronicles of the tree’s own civilization

Higher lives of the tree’s shade hack away at this ugly shrub

Unknowing, unwilling to understand, accept or embrace

Diversity as a part of nature, choosing to be ignorant instead

Of the life and lives in the shrub’s microcosm

Sheltering a minority, but souls

Different but daring a niche in their unique way

As rightful attitudes as yours or mine

Some may flee to live with the tree instead

Surviving, yet torn between two states of realization

One oppressed, buried but they can identify with

The other established and accepted but coldly foreign to their individuality

What could you choose between condemnation and damnation?

Despite pacification amidst bigoted citizens of the tree

That they are unshakeable, relentless, and proper

The shrub will rise, and rise like a tempest

Claim and retrieve its inheritance from the dominant siblings

Even as I look down upon it with conformist disgust

Pray that some day this mesh of bias is torn away

Crave that we see the world not from a narrow casement

But after stepping out open and smelling the fair fragrant air

Yearn that some day the tree’s canopy shelters the shrub

Allows it space to nourish in its unique way

Open the doors to cherish that day

When all nature’s brood is

Legitimized, none bastardized

A Lizard in My Pocket

Despicable abhorred inferior
Struggling in the dark auspices
Of my pocket
I sensed the lizard
I couldn’t comprehend how
It dared get there
Maybe by an accident
It fell off the wall
Clambered its way in
Through my trousers leg as ladder leading
I could bear no more
Its wiggling

I fished into my pocket
And with all contempt and disgrace
Threw it in the litter
Thus put it in its place
Cleansed my hands of its filth
With pace
And with reasons of water

Constant as Change

Festivity, gaiety and beauty
In the soft, cordial breezes of spring
Invite into a warm amity
With surreal magnanimities beckoning
Hearts blossom, smiles captivate
And affection is a bottomless abyss
But nothing is as constant as change
As when warmth turns into heat
Drying up the elixir of life
Scorching to tan the hardening hides
And no moisture to hold it apiece
It cracks out and fissures
And bursts out in all turbulence
The once amiable sun
Sets in a fiery red
In a contrasting coldness of the night

But nothing is as constant as change
As when heaven’s tears soak the skin
Sprout from nowhere, envious greens
And sneaks croak out their kin
Those who run, get the shelter they seek
While still being wary, of where feet may slip
And some diplomatically safe
As an ant in the confines of a sweet home

But nothing is as constant as change
As when live green drops to the feet
Dead, trodden underneath
Once they promised a refreshing fervour
Now to drown into an autumn’s gloom
Seeking respite, solace
Revenge, society
For it poured too hard and left
All alone in a startling stillness
To choose between peace or dreariness

But nothing is as constant as change
As when the chills of surface reach the bones
The chaste mantle of the winter queen
Dreads in its own serene whiteness
Fearing a blot in snow’s purity
Cold feet, shoulders, hearts and words
Aye, so grateful to bless this curse
For amidst a world of chill and despise
One finds
Where true warmth lies

The first leaf of autumn

When the seedling struggled naked
Against torrential weather, changing seasons, pests
The soil to which it was indebted
Air to breathe, water to quench thirst, sunshine to guide
Weren’t enough to fight its battles

Then the first leaf, sprang from it in spring
Wary and careful at first, but eventually trusting
Intertwined its life with the seedling, so did the latter
Inseparable as a pair and formidable when to stand by each other
They bore ripping hurricanes with their intimate bond
Seasons changed, came the scorching summer
The leaf toiled for them, the seedling gave it shelter
Leaving the world in the greenest of envy
Could there be something as implicit
For their life blood became one, betrothed by being
Together, as branches came, and as more leaves did too

But the soil’s debt beckoned the seedling
Which was a plant by now, less reliant on the leaf
Lesser on everything else too, but the soil was where its roots lay
The choice was made, with a dilemma for appearances
It grew, but more callous of the leaf
Which feared that the bond, was weakening at the node

Canker dotted the leaf, and the sun bleached it dry
Even flying specks of earth made its filthy lamina cry
All it appealed to, was the plant
Not to fight those, but to summon its ramparts
To rejuvenate and heal the leaf, which still held resilient
But in vain, the plant spread its branches rather
Deepened its roots in a claim to be a better shelter
Indifferent to the leaf, for which it was to live

The lifeblood in them clotted at the node
Once their elixir, now it became a wall
The crestfallen leaf clung, unsure of its fall
Resisted the wintry cold, as the plant melted its frost now and then
It even resisted when a breeze bellowed along
Willing to make it fresh, carry in its arms strong
The leaf gave in, swayed and danced, in the caresses of the breeze
But wanting instead, the plant to dance with its passion
It dawned soon on the leaf that the wind wasn’t its to own
So it swayed and danced no more, rather let it pass

Soon it withered, dry, yellow red
Hoping the plant to care, but in vain again to dread
It thought best to let go, so fell
Away from the plant, away from its roots
Far away, in its own lonely bed

The plant wondered, its leaves did whisper
Of the infidel first leaf, what it revealed to that bower
The plant was shaken, but did retain its vigour
The first leaf was special no more, the plant thought better
The leaf knew it couldn’t retreat
Still it wanted to be at the plant’s feet
To even rot and nourish it, when it fell in autumn
Which, was unacceptable anymore

Either lived, to become strong, aloof
Never daring or caring to look back and think
All the plant saw, so did the world
Was the leaf fly with the breeze in wild abandon
Not why it fell, why it weakened at the node
In autumn

It wasn’t about right or wrong, it was what was meant to be
The plant grew thicker and retained its purpose
To fruit, to flourish, to branch and to strengthen its roots
The first leaf isn’t the last, there are more leaves to come
The leaf did live too for greater purposes to see
To shine as a model in a pantheist’s herbarium
Cause it isn’t the last leaf too for the first leaf of autumn

The waiting nymph

Two pools with depth of warmth and hope
Lashes like butterflies seeking sweet nectar
Quivering trembling petals of red rose
Waiting to speak but for her solitude

A restless creeper slender swayed by the breeze
Waiting for the tree trunk instead to caress her

Two wisps of nimbus raised in doting anxiety
Amidst the snowy peaked forehead
Permitting only a chaste vermillion sun
Waiting from the spray of morn
Till the embers of the day die away

A duo of dew drops drips from her dainty cheeks
She rises like a gale, flies away like a swallow in eve
Her silken robes ripple the air like the river
Clouds of faith shed raindrops pattering to stop never
Her anklets jingle as if in orchestration
Crickets mourn her consternation

She gets shrouded in a deathly dark knight’s brocade
To return, yet again with the morning spray
For an endless fruitless wait

A deceiver’s truth

I rest, centred in the web
My intricately woven mesh of a home
Of delicately strong silken threads
Deceitful deathtraps for my naïve victims
Who eventually satiate my gastronomity
But stop awhile to marvel at how
My greased limbs prance over
The same sticky deadly net
Swiftly daintily and dexterously

Some other possessive beings
May derive pleasure tearing down
A complex architectural masterpiece
Exposed to useless shredded tentacles
Which blotched their simple décor

Unyielding, my arachnid glands
Churn out yet another sticky web
Once more, to save my face

The Prayer of a Daughter

I pray not for myself
Contented am I with the gifts of infancy
My mother blessed me with
Bickering with her better half to bring me forth
For their bundle of joy lacked mirth
Set to enter the world of frills
Yet she endured me, for nine months
Through searing pain, birthed a fruitless labour of love

I pray not for myself
Contented am I with the home I was bestowed with
A few breaths of air once outside her
Then she wrapped my shriveled self in a generous warm rag
Gave me care in the cradle of her arms, though momentary
Helpless, put me to bed on a mushy rotting sack
Weeping, she left me under the stars
Nudged by a breeze loaded with
The smells of the sweat of my first shelter
Where everything decomposed to give me a warm organic bed
To lie down and rest, to live
For so many others too, my siblings
Under the roof of the skies
Tiny flies buzzed in my unformed ears, singing sweet lullabies
Grunting pigs to reassure me of company
Amidst my wails, the barking of street dogs
Baying for my precious life, to devour the tender flesh off me
But when my tear laden eyes saw her face
In the moon’s glow, I understood the challenge to me
There were devils yes, but despite them I was meant to be
Her maternity shrouded me as the moonlight
I slept; I did survive that unforgiving night

I pray not for myself
Contented am I, with human care at last
A human to eventually pick me up from the squalor
Not my mother but a mother nevertheless
No maternity in her breast but motherhood in her heart nevertheless
Sweet kisses that erased the memories of our own teary farewell
A family with real people, real siblings, real human love
Welcomed me heartily into my warm pink world

I’m happy
I pray not for me but for you
You, who returned that night, empty arms, empty womb
Lonely days you spent emptying yourself of blood, milk and tears
In an empty home to live with an empty heart
With an empty someone, who loved the fruits
But not the labour that your sex took
In this barrenness, you missed the bundle
That could’ve filled your waiting arms
Of the fairer sex like you, but not devoid of her unique charms
No chubby finger to jab at you and suckle at your love
No ribbons for curly plaits no pink frocks and all above
You missed your live doll to play with dolls
A sweet and innocent heart to love you through your falls
You missed the pretty maiden to whom you’d have been
A friend, philosopher and guide to be with in embarrassing teens
A growing woman, to bring up strong
To fight the uncompromising chauvinist world
To fight with you as well, why her skirts were too long
To question you in everything that you said was ladylike
Later a woman like you, your own confidante
A head to nod, ears to listen and a heart to sympathize
With your own complaints, against the world or household
Or even how burdensome this stubborn girl was to you
Till you bade her a teary farewell, this time happily
The light of your home to light up another
Just the way you did

I pray not for myself, mother, but for you
My father who took a narrow minded turn, for you too
You may have saved some cost by preferring an earning boy
Than a trusting, loving, caring girl
But it’s a daughter you missed