coronation day

I have no name
but you forgo me not,
for I also lug matter within me.
Serenading the dazzling stars,
dodging the vagabond debris out here,
I crept past the boisterous Jupiter.
A dull and monotonous stroll, it was,
the elite octet of the milky way, total desolate
till I was flanked by your prismatic earth
and I halted, not to flirt
but to gape at
the intense crimson, the nation of India
was sheeted under.

It was the day of coronation,
RELIGION was coronated as the sovereign.
A tyrant it was, it had its cadres,
whose rule had spawned unrest.
The kingdom was its sword,
and the kingdom, its shield.
Using people for defense,
and commanding people to attack.
Its rule was a plot of destruction.

knights, rooks and pawns, you are,
the sovereign, poised your king,
a game; a plot, so agonizing,
that you all will win in your graveyard.

Infinities

There was a boy who was confused about this art of writing. He believed that he would just need some dictionary storage and a little flair in appeasing the tenses to reap write ups on the paper. And there was this abysmal depth in him to devour novels, run over the famous quotes, to see a movie just because it had dialogues from the actual novel, to mull over the extended meanings. There were lines which had affected him deeply, “some infinities are greater than other infinities” and that a person who is suffering should justly be blessed with the bigger infinity. These were the lines that would harrow him that how will he ever be able to embellish such lines in his life time. He dreamed to write and just write. He would be happy when his write ups would be published, although on a small scale and would grab some applauds but then that one insecure corner of his heart would thud again whenever he would read a beautifully crafted write-up elegantly juggling with the words to spill out the feelings of the writer.
Yes, he was sinking into this abyss. But he didn’t cease to write, he didn’t keep him away from reading, he didn’t stop to discern the simple feelings of the authors from their astutely crafted lines. Time passed, he kept writing. In actual, he kept mingling with every word, understanding them, listening to them while he would write. He came to know that how we are not bound to always crave for better when we have a beautiful life to peruse at. Its good to make the best of what we have, to listen to the tiniest entities of life because those are the infinities in which our lives are preserved.

He lived while his life wrote the better of him.

* the friend *

Amid the constant chattering of the rain, alone in the impeccable black of the night, he was walking hastily down the road. The mild breeze of the evening had succumbed to the violent air currents in the night. Nevertheless, he kept wading through the restraining tumult.
It was 2 years ago that he had embarked on his journey to pursue his dream of becoming a writer, to personify those lifeless words in his heart to peer at this subtle world.
He would spend hours carving stories out of the world. Sometimes, a gazillion of thoughts would assail his mind and he would lose his story in the delirium and sometimes mere endings to a story would flag off a quarrel. Yes, there were stories on his papers depigmented of their endings.
But this did not deter him; it did not portend of any despondence in him. He would ceaselessly fumble with the blending of words to embellish every sentence, to stuff every sentence with the marrow of life, the feelings. For two years, he reaped stories and etched parts of his incomplete tales together.

-- The road had come to an end. His watch was poised at 11.30 pm. Drenched completely; his jacket was dripping the rain water it had gulped. The street light above him needed urgent repair. Ironically, it colored the night even more raven. He was standing in front of his old friend’s house, a friend who was more than a brother for him, a friend who was both a benign critic and an ardent applauder and a friend who was the ubiquitous observer of every story scribbled onto those pages.

He again looked at his watch. It was late.

Nevertheless, he rang the bell.

* avenge *

I have grown up. But I need to tell you that my life dwindles as much as I live each day. I live each day to mend that one dreadful day, to fuse some moments of stillness in that day. Had that day not dawned, had the clock died before those moments of carnage, I would have helmed my life more diligently. I crave for that stillness in this ruckus of my life. Had my life been serene, I could have framed my dreams, I could have extolled the bliss of my life, I could have exhumed myself of my orphancy. But now, plots to avenge my loss guard my sleep of any fantasy and dream, echoing wails proliferate in the silence of the night.

I hope you remember whose wails barge into the avenues of my sleep. I hope you remember how stoically you sprayed the biased bullets on my parents.  I will never be able to comprehend the extreme callousness sheathed in your soul.

That was the day of revelry. My father had received accolades for something in his workplace. He didn’t tell me much about it. He just said that today he will sit and play with me, that he will listen to my stories from school, that he will be my accomplice in splashing colors on the walls of my room. The air inside the house was more ethereal than ever. My mother cooked dishes that invoked the insanity in me and my father to eat like a horse and the next moment the bell ranted. Yes, you were the one behind the closed door. My father received you. I actually didn’t like your interruption and then further despised you from the rudeness you divulged in your talks with my father. My mother took me to the cellar as my puerile self quivered with fear from the heated altercation you commenced with my father. My mother ran upstairs again.

Few minutes later, doleful wails permeated into the cellar, did you recall the wails that barged into my sleep?  My father tried to dampen your anger but you had been obliterated of your senses of right and wrong. That’s when I came to know that my father had been adulated for uncovering some corrupt deeds going on in his vicinity from which you were being benefitted. The sprouting anger inside you culminated when you started triggering bullets towards my parents. My parents ran all around to dodge your bullets when finally the taps on the floor above were silenced in the room just above the cellar. You still didn’t stop. You searched frantically for me, deranging every decorations of my mother but you couldn’t.

Here I am waiting for you to search me because the plan that guards my sleep is to retaliate against you, to search you from your deepest havens and snatch your breath.

Tragedy - an elegy @ bhopal gas tragedy

That yonder land cries in dirge,
factions of people, all departed into the sky.
Every sight was rued,
their fate had turned capricious.
Progenies, who cherished their eclectic dreams
now slept in the cemetery, innocence all preserved.
The newborns, trailed diligently by death
died by their mothers’ side
and the world remained a mystery for them.
May they meet the angels of the sky,
may their lives bloom, although in oblivion,
may their loss awake the keepers of justice.