Enlightenment

‘Hope lies in despair’,

Pronounced the blowball,

Abandoned by the last

Wind, before falling into

A state of eternal bliss.

Life

“You learn

The ropes

As you

Go on.”

By the logic,

I should’ve

Learned it

By now.

But, each

Passing day

I realise

How Ill equipped

I have become.

How completely

Defeated I’m.

If not god…

“If not god what equips you for life?”

The pious one asked me.

“It’s my conviction…”

Interrupting me, he

Probed, “what conviction?”

“The conviction that everything will

Eventually go wrong.”

What followed was an uneasy silence.

A Close Shave

Crossing the road at noon.

The yellow lines on the road.

Wish they were yellower,

Dotted with crows, jet black

And shining.

The vast sky, grey clouds,

Men and women wandering.

Men and women.

Tries hard to empathise,

What a daunting task!

The thread that connects,

The thread of sanity

Seems dangerously fragile.

Blaring horns, noisy chatter,

Vehicles coming to screeching

Halts, expletives and

Contemptuous glares.

Things are at their places,

At their respective places.

Perhaps the way

It was meant to be.

Relieved, no, for

The perennially doomed

Each escape means

To confront the horror,

Again and again and again…

The Irony

Perturbed, not by the

Unknown tomorrows,

But by the known yesterdays.

Your Smile

This must be how

A flower blooms,

The way you smile.

The Story

After much cajoling

I agreed to give her

My copy of ‘Love in

The time of Cholera.’

Couple of days

Later while returning

The book she fumed,

‘Details, details

Never ending details,

Where’s the story?’

‘It’s in the details’,

I mumbled.

The Fate

Maybe it might’ve been decided that day,
The day the second standard students were
Gathered up to be taken to the temple grounds.

The rules were simple; from the banyan tree to
The stands were people sit during the festival and back.

All of us were lined up and the teacher hollered, ‘one, two, three.’
All ran, and me too followed suit, panicking.
When I reached halfway I saw them coming back;
Friends, classmates, neighbours, but not as friends, classmates
Or neighbours, but as a single unit, frighteningly aggressive.

I overcame the momentary confusion, halted myself, turned back
And ran towards the banyan tree holding on for dear life.

Maybe it might’ve been decided that day.
Maybe everything grandma told about fate might’ve been true.

Brimming with
Love, tears rolling
Down the cheeks.

Cleopatra

I sat upright trying
to concentrate,
my eyes fixed
on the monitor.
On my back, the
beautiful executive
went on crooning
about her puppy.
Suddenly, she turned to me;
‘Arun, have you seen
my puppy?’ and thrust
her phone into my face.
Shifting my gaze from
the monitor I looked
into the device and
saw a monstrous canine.
‘Cleopatra, that’s her name’,
She said with a giggle!

Death needs no reasons

His reasons to live disappeared fast,
Like coins from the clinched fist of a
Kid on the loose at the carnival.

Looking at the supine, shrouded-in-white
Body, the onlookers wondered;
‘But why? Why did he do this?’
Refusing to see the obvious that
It’s to live one needs reasons, not to die.