Poems in Museindia

Three poems were published in the Mar-Apr 2009 Issue of Museindia, the literary ejournal:


View from Jama Masjid’s Minar

Like ants
they seem as I look down from the top
mostly white, some grey, some black, red e’en
creeping from one end to the other
of that large flat courtyard
itself Red
crawling to their ablutions - their wuzu
and then heading on to the side of the setting sun.

For whom this sijdah?
To a hawk-eyed viewer
who sees them
as ants, himself perched
forever at the top?

The Sole Slipper

I am the riot
that took place here
on the twentieth day of this summer

I am its victim
as I lie here,
stranded on the now desolate road alone
divided from
my better half

I was worn first
once
then entered repeatedly
and then left here, in a hurry
smeared with colour
in the middle

I am its witness
A soled slap on society’s face.

(5th September 2008)


Gujarat and Kashmir

I

If only it was
that the sky was not Saffron
and the ground not Red
and the house, the workshop, the bakery
were not ablaze
in flames that threatened
with more hate than heat

and had they allowed us
the little green haven,
Land,
that we too had nourished,
having wrested it,
from common foes,
with equal gusto

If only the eye was Red
merely of smoke
and my sister dead
of stabs in her back
only.

Or if, atleast
they had heeded
my folded hands, Brown
my head,
bowed in supplication, round,
in entreating
what humanity
a mob may have,
and not chopped it off…
to be soaked
in the fountainhead
of Red
that sprung
from my
diminished
corpse,
that did not
immediately fall
as had my head
(not yet knowing
manhood, nor
the sense in it all,
the candles of my
seventh wishes
not yet been thrown away),

Then,
when Abbu would come
in three days’ time
we all would welcome him
and
I would run up to him
And jump into his arms
as he’d come,
just as I had asked,
with a plane
exactly like the one
that made,
on Republic Day,
Tricolours
in the sky.

II

This
is what they called
“paradise on earth,”
and it was ours
we used to believe,
until,
the day
we first heard
the noise
and went to the square
to behold
that the world
had gone mad
that it was
Black,
and Red
made of shapes alien,
and smells.

Smells.
The smells
that smelt
like melting fat
in a pan,
greasy meat frying,
but
if only these too
could be smelt
similarly
with an appetite
that was not to be killed
for ages to come,
smells, that were not
so gross
so revolting
to make us reek of them
bath after
bath, week after
week.

They claimed
Kashmir.
They said it was theirs.
It was
their
right divine.
And so
they were making,
and said,
in future
would make,
more
such noises
and would create
more
such smells
everywhere.
Soon it was all over,
over the radio,
the Aakashvani
and the DD.

Now,

we have live telecasts
of
Kargil and
Kokarnag.
But
that smell has not worn out,
even though today
I live in Delhi.

But so has not,
the one that comes
from the
soil,
sandal,
snow,
saffron, and the
sun that
shines on the
stones of
Shankaracharya temple, and on
Srinagar and river
Sindhu.
Some things that
spell the
summary
of my Kashmir.

(24th September 2007