Wait!

These thousand hearts are all me.

To forsake even one is 

Some kind of sunrise turning to dust,

Some kind of silence on a glassy sea.

This ineffable murmur.

Feast

That constellation you have hidden in your heart. That latticework in which you hold a child's love.

May the light always be.

A Memory

That brief silence when the incessant rain pants and sprawls itself on leaves and roofs for just one instant, revealing the sounds of the city - a bike's horn, a lorry's rumble - that moment - does it have a name?

I remember such a rain from years ago. I was then living in an apartment with red floor tiles and a red-accented wall in every room. It had 3 small patios - one opened to the city's rising face - a flyover under construction (still is), another to a small, grassy playground (the boys and the football in the mornings; the buffaloes and the shepherd in the afternoons) and the third, to the courtyard of a small house surrounded by trees (yellow flowers in the Spring; later, they cut down the trees, sold the land and moved away).

And when it began raining, it rained for days in a slow dance to an even slower song. Turning in for the night, I would wonder if, by morning, I would be cut off from the rest of the world, as the waters rose all around. I would dread the sound of each droplet - yet they together would form a lullaby as I drifted off to sleep.

If I close my eyes now, I can still feel the way the rain crept into that apartment - hanging just above the floor tiles, swirling around the front door's steel handle, simmering in the pots and pans in the kitchen.

Jasmine Dreams

Through a crowded bus, through limbs and tufts of hair, a slanted rain tried to get to the other side. In the cloudy interior, two women welcomed it in their faces and sarees for a few minutes, before pulling down the window shades. One of them was stringing garlands with jasmine flowers. She will get down at the end of her journey, into the rain, clutching her plastic bag of garlands, the muddy water gushing at her naked feet. It isn't hard to find a good rain to drench in.

They all go somewhere. To their secrets, neighbors, jars of salt, chilly and turmeric, to lunches of rice and yogurt. Sometimes, the street dog follows them till their doorsteps.

Railway tracks border their villages. The trains stopping at their tiny railway stations carry them on a pilgrimage to temples far away. They meet working women traveling alone, with their own share of stories, and try to tell them with unabashed awe that it had all been unimaginable in their times. They huddle together to talk about sons and daughters and wedding feasts into the night as the train whizzes by villages similar to their own.

They all go somewhere. And then, they go home.

Who is dancing into the night?

A Darling Monsoon, There.

Step out into that right time of the evening and a rain-soaked breeze embraces you. Life slows down on such nights. An occasional vehicle headlight lits up the trail of water droplets on the window - someone must dance on such nights, swaying to the slowest fingers on the piano.

It is with a conflicted heart, you travel the night rain. You, who finds numerous ways to be annoyed by the pulse of the city during the day, fall for its charms now. "Where have you been, where have you been?"

You glide on neon roads. The carpets of light hold the rain in their hearts. 

(I have written about rain before, here.)

In My Neck of the Woods

What is in
Being a wolf, deep in the woods,
Howling away the deepest sorrow -
Of miles and separation,
The echoes of its despair
Reaching the valleys and tiny villages
Scattered in them,
Moonless nights,
And mothers hugging their little ones
Closer, whispering 'Hush...'
While their tiny hearts pound through
Sleepless nights?
What vent is in
A howl?

Or then would you swing the axe
Wide, in a big circle
And shatter this silence
Into a million fireflies?

I wait.