Singed desire

The worm licked the page

and slithered away.

The dusty aroma of ancient ink

of stale pages

assaulted my nostrils-

almost choked my memories.

But desirous i grew

with each draught

of words i gulped in.

The pages were up in flames

the world inflamed.

A curious stench of burnt flesh

and singed sleeves

began to ensconce the world........

yet it was not burnt-

the world i mean.

The worm appeared again

This time it licked it clean-

the word "desire".

Rotten wood

The streets squelched

with each soft step.

Leaves - dry and dead,

yield to the mushy earth.

Each foot impression

sinking into the soil.

Somewhere lay a broken wood.

Its edges rough and uneven

layered with moss it was -

green and blackened.

Ravages of time

pronounced in each drop of water

that encased in each curve

of the broken dead tree

that it was once

suffer to fester.

Time seems to clutch the wood

with rabid fierceness

and gentle commitment.

And yet the wood is no longer a tree

it was.

It is a dead plank

effusing softened smells,

aromatic whiffs -

that lay trapped

within cloud clusters,

that burst and seeped liquid mobile life.

Once when it was a tree.

Lushness of leaves - green and lively

that coloured the branches.

The wood lay there

smelling rotten -

the same, sweet smell of new life

that eagerly awaits death.

The wood like an yielding smile

lay propped on the

Ravages of time.

It awaits a fern

a mushroom

a seed

a lichen

to extract the left remnants

of life, nutrition.

To get released.

To be free.

To explore.

To discover.

To transform.

To transcend time

into timelessness.

A rare luxury

I love deserted roads. It kind of excites the sentimental me to walk down the calm ambience of sleepy roads, licked my meagre traffic on and off just to make you realise that quietude does not entail loneliness. Yesterday evening after the Ayodhya verdict was declared, i alighted down the auto rickshaw pleasantly greeted by the broad grin and calmness of my loved campus. I was seduced to take one of my (recently grown rare) evening walks all to myself. The soft sheen of streetlights kissed the walls of colleges, faculty buildings, chai shops, recently built pavements - sometimes casting sinister shadows and at others blending deliciously with the (ahem!) romantic hues of the moonlight. I loved it, except that i had to console the frantic voice of my parents with the routinised candy-sweet voice of "i am and will be okay" and that i am definitely not on the hit-list of any fanatic(well, i didn't say this, of course!)

It was a Thursday evening. One of the days of the weeks when "knags"(Kamla Nagar market in the campus..........the shopping hub and fashion statement zone) brims with seething mass of students - bunking classes, hanging out, shopping madly,browsing bookshops, checking out "eye candies" etc. Interestingly, yesterday the coffee shops were pallid yellow, roadside vendors were busy wrapping up impossibly early. It was amusing, sad yet smug.

The few lines that haunted me yesterday were these:

The sky vomited pitch black tar.

The past few nights had been sooty -
rusty and baked with dry charcoal.
The nights were sinisterly dark -
murmuring threats and violent silences
into the infantile ears of dawn.

Even the mornings dared not kiss the sun
for quite some time now.

But tonight was different.
The moon peeped shyly
behind the clouds.
The monster regurgitated venomous stygian darkness
with intense hatred.
The crescent moon smiled
and rolled back.

A few moments later
the etherised table of the sky
yawned.

The moon emerged,
wrapping the night in its embrace.

Slowly,

The darkness began to melt.
Layer by layer the soot flaked.
Molten tar trickled down
With the ascent of the moon
the sky climbed down -
white as the lilies
limitless as truth....


I am happy that the moon
dared to smile.
Perhaps the mornings can
happen to be bright now.

Perhaps they can prise open their buds now.