The Lights Were Blinking

Some giant behemoths of green

Stood tall and dark—

Some eyes peeked out from

Blurred windshields,

And stones seemed like plants.

I imagined myself standing

Before the vast sea in the

Dead of the night

When the lights were blinking;

Then the lights were dim,

Then the lights were no more.

Hot trodden melted grass

Was masked by the smell of rats—

Trampled by oblivious feet,

Hypocrisy was on the high.

Green reflected green light.

I was trapped by some fear of the unknown,

When the lights were blinking,

When the lights were dim,

And when the lights were no more.

Some lonely hearts cried out

The name of their long-lost love,

And some were reading Drayton

With saline eyes.

At midnight amid pitch darkness,

The ghostly lights blinked again,

They were dim,

And were no more.

The lights have been a part of this

‘Happily-lived’ life;

The lights have shown me the track

When the world was sleeping,

Thinking of its own troubles.

I recall strolling in a lonely evening years back:

Colored beams and shops and people,

All turned into haze,

Only did I see the flickering street lights.

It cast a shadow,

And I believed.

The lights seem like a dream sometimes;

When watching me with queer eyes

From a very close distance,

I feel uneasy.

When thoughts and thoughts came again,

The lights blinked again;

Were becoming dim and were no more.

A few years from that night,

I haven’t seen those lights another time,

And I don’t know when I shall see them again.

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The Prison Of Force

With giant footsteps and a strident voice

Throughout the night,

A giant marched through the hallway.

Whispers could be predicted

From behind smoky window panes—

Soft, rebellious whispers

Which hardly could be heard.

Every night a tall, dark figure

Roamed the streets:

Curious, gleaming eyes peeked

From windows flanking the street

But no mouth dared ask:

“Who are you?”

The force of the invaluable was trapped

In a cellar underground:

Dungeons dominated by ‘phantoms of the dark’—

“Huge, husky figures” as they imagined,

Guarded the prison grilles by the night.

Outside the fortress of trammels,

Letters shrieked out in bold gray:

“THE PRISON OF FORCE”

Some passer-by remarked,

“What does that mean?”

The giant was standing at the prison gates

And murmured in a hot tone:

“I will guard your palace,

You guard mine.”

On the street in broad daylight,

Wrecked buses with shattered glasses

And worn-out engines lay by;

Lost children died helplessly,

And the giant slept.

Night drew in again:

It was the time for his stroll.

The citizens were on their nerves:

Taut and shaken with fear.

Again those giant footsteps and the strident voice

And the marching of the giant through the hallway—

And the oppressed silence of the onlookers.

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Nameless Existence

Complex tangles of various thoughts

Paralyzed the mind:

From somewhere came the shuddering cry of

A demented mother,

And somewhere tears had evaporated.

Dry, parched throats

That cannot cry out for water,

Seemed a trifling.

Tawdry salons that advocated

The talents of a coiffeur,

Stood out amidst the crowd—

Where many things have been lost.

From the corner of my eye

I saw a red gleam of destitution,

Where squalor was the need of the day.

I walked out alone

On the desolate street at night—

Only the yellow sodium

Shone on the street vis-a-vis.

The green wore a veil of a colour unknown,

And the white were stained black:

A dubious colour of a dubious nature

Transfused the garments within—

Contagious; infectious.

A hard-faced termagant shrieked out from her verandah

To the cacophonous children beneath,

With a purpose unknown,

With a behaviour strange.

Amidst the shattered pathways

Where people treaded day and night,

Goons were bred.

I watched embarrassed faces

Red with shame,

Hiding from the crowd,

And august heads

Conspicuous from anywhere.

I witnessed dust-filled eyes

Staring up at the skies,

And intermittent changes of fortune

Flooding the settlements.

Muddy feet, strange faces, dour eyebrows—

A phantasmagoria of luscious scenes

Pervading the scenario,

And life going on still.

I saw that red gleam once more:

From the traffic lights,

Blinding and awfully bright;

While the yellow never blinked.

Mortified figures stood like

Phantoms of the dark—

Shattered and emaciated bodies,

Gaunt faces, cadaverous looks.

People have died before death.

Death stood gazing at the procession,

Smiling at its power;

But last night people gained life by death,

And the lonely street stood witness to a thousand changes.

By the side of a lake,

I watched a heartbroken soul,

Desiring to die;

By the side of a deep gutter not far,

I watched hundred souls,

Desiring to live.

The sun descends on the far horizon

Away from the shore,

And sailors harking at the windy night:

“I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

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