The Seven Colours

N.B.: A few concepts have been reused.

Dancing shadows—

Flickering flames of rebellion

Made an impression on the blurred pane,

While outside, raindrops

Wetted lives, or

Flooded dreams.

A child gave a thought:

“Can rainbows come up at night?”

Morning—

Amidst drenched walls and shattered pathways

Of life,

Seven colours appeared on the smoky sky—

Incongruous it seemed.

A child from the terrace of a multi-storey building

Asked his father, “Isn’t that beautiful!”

But straight below—

Where the stark miseries of life seemed comfort,

Where raindrops seemed as innumerable as miseries,

Gaunt lips—

No water, no shape—

Failed to savour the colours.

Smoke-filled eyes—

No gleam, no sorrow—

Being blinded, withdrew.

While these went unnoticed,

I was still watching the rainbow.

Red—

The blood of desire;

Steaming thoughts and

The desire of red rebellion

On a new day—

A new day.

Orange—

“Fruit?” asked the dying child;

“Delicious!” said the parvenu.

Yellow—

Sodium lights still dared to shine

Under the sun—

“Paddy fields?” asked the beggar.

Green—

The life of humanity—

Pervaded the city;

While crooked brown leaves

Near green grass,

Lay in shame.

Blue—

By the side of a blue river,

A heartbroken soul sat weeping,

Desiring to die.

While by the sides of a ‘blue’ drain,

Hundred souls were counting their last hours,

Desiring to live.

The sun hid its face

And the rain came down—

“Rainbows don’t come up at night”

Said I to myself.

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My Lonely Swing

My lonely swing at the end

Of the green grass

Still creaks in this heat:

Some leaves resting there

And hundred raindrops wetting it,

It sings it lonely song.

Maddened by the wind

And comforted by the tree,

The rusted swing still creaks

In the dusty afternoon.

On and on.

Rusted, dirty and unkempt—

Back in the corner,

Lies what once had been my ride.

Webs of delusion

Spun by the spiders

Have shrouded the pathways

And the singer can’t be heard anymore.

Lights of the long lane

Still guide the stranger;

But to a lonely land.

A lonely land—

Where no one speaks,

Where no one plays,

Where everyone has deserted

Everyone else;

At a stroll that evening,

My eyes pictured fan blades

Moving at the speed of life

And the light becoming dim.

Gaudily dressed women

Made it look like Autumn

While it was summer still.

A broken soul thinks and speaks

To himself and me,

His doubts and his sorrows

Are all about the bad world;

A thinker now, he is beginning to learn.

The last time I noticed ‘Land sold’

Was nine years back,

And since then I haven’t treaded that field.

Some have gone away,

Some have passed away;

But their memories still linger in my old lane:

My old lane.

Lifeless, desolate and silent—

The dust-covered lane

Still cries out to its lost people to return:

To return.

Here, away from the breezy memories

Of the erstwhile days,

I watch thousand raindrops

Sliding down the roofs

And take frequent walks

In a drenched evening—

Thinking, Dreaming, Living.

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Wet Reflections

Wet Reflections—

Flooded by the midnight shower,

And gazed upon by gleaming eyes;

Ahead, broken trees lay unheeded,

And thunderous sounds went quiet.

Otherwise by the scent of morning tea,

And the music of the wheels,

Plants became stones,

And stones turned into sand.

Flashes from a keen camera

Dissected hundred eyes,

And a flying bird was shot.

Where’s the light?

Where’s the torch?

We still see the fire burning;

We still see palaces in flames.

Wrecked hand-drawn carts lay

Shattered by the footpaths,

And alleys smacked of smoke.

The parks looked bright,

But the borders were dark.

Strangeness enough—I say.

Amidst gaudy dresses and restless binges,

Life was lacking.

Empty streets, empty buses, empty houses—

Smiling faces and glowing eyes

That never saw the need to cry;

While lay by the side

Crying faces which Time couldn’t heal.

I keep smiling still.

They keep smiling still.

Giants had lost their power—

Who was to be blamed?

The blame game continued,

Crimes went unnoticed,

And corpses ‘decked’ the façade.

Heavily distressed, heavily pained

Rests this reckless soul;

Let’s wipe the tears

And bury the corpses,

Purify the alleys and

Save the bird.

And still—

The lonely moon sings its song

On a full moon night,

And the sun keeps smiling from behind.

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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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Time: A Waste.

Time detains me now,

Holds back the staggering trammels of ability,

And crushes the untimely ambition to nothingness.

Hands tied, face red—

Hot at how time was wasted.

I laugh in embarrassment;

Ten fingers conceal the face—

Concealing reality.

Regrets and regrets

That can never be reformed—

Wrongs that cannot be undone.

All the way I sailed in a pond;

When I saw the big sea,

I sailed to the tidal waves—

But I don’t have an identity here,

The ships don’t recognize me.

Time shall flow by smoothly,

And shall whet the wounds of regret.

It’s better late than never.

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