अंदाज़ अपना अपना

I thought this line from the film was really funny until today: I'm having real trouble with my moong dal

Saving daylight and other things:

Autumn Arrived

सोते सोते मैंने सोचा

City In The Sea -II

(*) click on the image to see a larger version

Waking and Sleeping

I wake up to the sound
of children laughing,
joking,
playing,
hula-hooping,
chasing,
counting,
and sing-song chanting.

When I sleep however,
ambulances and police sirens
are always screaming
far into the dark night,
panicking,
stopping,
saving,
frightening,
warding,
always shouting,
always lurking.

The sun robs the soundscape
of its innocence
and in its place,
all kinds of emergencies emerge.

दिवाली

अमृता प्रीतम ने पूछा

Four Seasons at St-Martins-in-the-fields

I lived through a year in an hour
in a church in a square
where there used to be fields
and there used to be a figure
of a son of a god on a cross,
but where,
now,
there is a circle of light
that welcomes the sun at the altar,
and candles in the windows
that tremor
at the mention of Vivaldi.

Barbican inspired brutalism

Faces on the Underground

On the Underground no one speaks.

No one talks to their neighbour
or looks over the shoulder of the nice lawyer lady
in an attempt to read her paper.
There are no women sitting by windows,
chatting, cutting vegetables
or discussing Salman's moves
in the latest Bollywood blockbuster.
There are no men playing cards perched on briefcases,
as they furiously debate the fate of the stock market.

There are no ladoos distributed
for the birth of a daughter's son
or the 90 percent score of a cousin's exam result;
nor any marzipan strawberries to celebrate Christmas.

Instead,
there are people on the Underground
trying hard to read the London Lite
while plugged in to their selfish melodies,
white earphone wires disappearing into black coats
or black bags or black pockets in black pants.

There are faces that you meet-
brown faces on the Underground:
eyes looking for recognition,
wondering if you're a tourist
or a commuter,
trying to figure out which part of the subcontinent you come from
and if you might
just
happen
to speak the same language.
There are glances on the Underground:
looks that say they've seen you,
and they know how you feel,
as you try your hardest to navigate a new city
from the inside out,
within this bubble you need for yourself
and with nothing
and no one without.

Looking for a Poem

Today was National Poetry Day -
not that I knew this of course,
when a couple of hours ago
I was searching for a poem:

a poem, a verse,
something to look at
to remind us that we've met
under a street lamp
over cola,
or coffee,
maybe in May;

looking for a prophecy
that would emerge
from flipping the pages
of a book by a man
from far away
and long ago,
who once sat
upon a dark island
and said to himself,
"I've travelled the ocean;
now where do I go,"

looking for a note
that you may have left me
in my travelling fray:
something to say that you missed me
in your awkward day,

but there isn't
and wasn't
a rambling rhyme,
just a moment and silence,
a bittersweet sourness

and the difference in time.

Mi Diccionario

Mi diccionario tiene todo el mundo
en sus hojas:
un universo del amor,
del odio,
del desgracia,
que se disolvió en siglos de impaciencia
cuando perdimos el camino de ser
en un desierto de estar.

Entretanto los vientos de acentos
forman montañas
de differentes significados,
el contiene un mar de actos
rodeado por vallas de palabras
que suscriben nombres
pero no describen cosas.

Colinas y valles
suben y bajan alrededor lagos de comas,
paretheses doblando como arcos iris.
Entre el cielo y la tierra
se encuentra suspendido el aire
de todo lo que se suena
y todo que se llama
La Lengua