Our abode on the landfills

 My grandfather lost his mother when he was three. His younger brother was one. I am curious to know what happened to his mother. Acute anaemia? Nobody would know. My great grandfather, a young man of old times, felt it was too much to tackle. So he left his two 'not yet four' children at their maternal grandmother's house and went back to his village, forty miles away. Unencumbered by appendages of an earlier marriage, he decided to get married again. I will try not to judge him unfavourably as the eyes with which we see the world is shaped by the worlds and times we have inhabited. I am not aware how long did his mourning last though. The old world had ways of carrying on with the vagaries of life. After all, back in the year 1927, with no vaccines, no doctors, bad nutrition living past forty was a statistical fortune.

Cataclysm 2020

End of March, cataclysm 2020.

Autumn in hemisphere southern
Spring in-home hemisphere northern.
I wake up to a bleak day...
southeast of Melbourne.

It says 858,355 and 42,309...
On the hurried clock that's crimson
No leniency, no letting up.
No flattering of plateau of our prayers.
Raging up and above, far away from point inflection.

The world is on a lockdown
Forlorn, ghastly, godforsaken.
48 hours away from a million infections
The pandemic rattles on...
Like a train from everywhere to oblivion.

The G8 have borne the brunt
Ravaging the mighty Americas and Europe.
Now its turn for developing nations,
Bracing up for this viral Armageddon.

The marvel cities of our imaginations
The charming solitaires of world civilization...
Rome, Milan, Tehran, Paris, Madrid, and Washington.
Stare like stills of a dream sequence
Infested by the deadly contagion.

It perhaps is a divine decree,
A justice doled out to man
For wiping out innumerable species
For claiming their spaces, jungles, water, and land.
For faithless...a flat abrupt mutation.

We will find a cure,
an antidote for sure.
And then back to pillage and plunder
with our race and games secured.
This time will become a lore.
As dead are easy to forget with time
Life is too busy to ignore.

We can let it go for now, in the name of proprieties.
But let me hang in a question
Is virus indeed an anti-virus?
Fighting its own nefarious contagion?

Image Courtesy: Getty Images

ALZHEIMER'S - Life is no more than our memory of ourselves.

One by one, the light dots dowse

The neural pathways dim,

Creating floating islands of memory,

Dimming flames of cognition.

Waning smudging highways sensory.

Language becomes alien,

Word constructs are forgotten...

sentences are ill begotten

leaving an open cage,

of escaping sparrows and pigeons.

Stepping into a fuzzy mist,

That with time deepens.

Identity, peculiarities, definitions,

all recede in haze, as illusion.

When all frontiers are breached,

Except the apriori will to breathe.

With Ellipsis in head and sand in hand ...

You open the door and stand,

In the vast expanse of a barren land.

Sans sense, void, blank, vacant...

राह और दिशा

राहों का क्या है
दिशाओं को जोड़ना
परिवेशों को लांघना
एक दूसरे से फूटना
किसी और से मिल के
कुछ और हो जाना

राहों का क्या है
क्षण भर में बनना बिगड़ना
मंज़िलों के स्वप्न बुनना
रहियों को पुकारना
पुचकारना दुत्कारना
फिर किसी और से मिल के कुछ और हो जाना

पथिक चुने एक मंज़िल कोई
और राह नहीं दिशा चुने
फिर हो दुर्गुम् दुष्कर रास्ते
पर उफ़ न कहे
बढ़ता चले
धुंधली उस मंज़िल की ओर
जहाँ रास्ता मुसाफ़िर और मंज़िल एक हो जाएं

                                 - पुष्कर गुँजन, २०१५

For Julia, the girl who wept, when I read out Neruda

Yet again in my dreams you tiptoed

As light on feet as angel on wings

Wearing your joy, your polkas, your stilettos

You tread, genteel as key presses of a piano.

Time annexes all we hold dear

Music ebbs as moment go

Our dance of joy slows down

But escape we can't its sticky shadow.

In my dreams you still tip toe

Wearing your joy, your polkas, your stilettos.

What saints can't hold, tyrants forgo

I foolishly preserve like a treasure trove.

As wistful wisteria moments wither

I wish there is still time to live more,

And some time, to let go.

In my dreams you still tip toe

Wearing your joy, your polkas but not your stilettos.

As if you have come to stay.

- For Julia, the girl who wept, when I read out Neruda.

(25^th Sept, 2016 for Julia who rides bicycle in the streets of Cambridge.)

कुछ ख़्वाब, देर से पकते हैं...

कुछ ख़्वाब देर से पकते हैं,

बरसों सांचे में ढलते हैं |

सदियों की नींद उड़ाते हैं

कभी कभी तो वालिदों के ख्व़ाब,

बच्चों के पर बन कर निकलते हैं

या फिर कभी उनके नाम बन कर

समय पर एक हर्फ़ बन कर रह जाते हैं |

कुछ ख़्वाब देर से पकते हैं,

बरसों सांचे में ढलते हैं |

ग़ुमनाम ख़्वाबो का होता नहीं है अच्छा मंज़र

जैसे बिखरे हुए, नर कंकाल अस्थि पंजर

जैसे मरू में सूखे सराबों-दरिये,

देखते हैं ख़्वाब हर पल...

कि मिल जाएँ बादलों, बूंदों, बारिशों में,

पर ज़रूरी नहीं  कि हर चाह हो मुक़म्ममल |

कुछ ख़्वाब देर से पकते हैं,

बरसों साँचे में ढलते हैं |

तो साध लो साँसें अपनी,

त्यज दो बेचैन आसें अपनी,

शर्त न रखो कि वो पूरी हों

बस नाजों से रखो, पलकों पर उन्हें

दो उन्हें, जो वो चाहें तुमसे,

खून, पसीना, धैर्य और असीमित वक़्त |

क्योंकि कुछ ख्व़ाब देर से पकते हैं,

तभी सांचों में ढलते हैं |

-  गुंजन

Unki आंखों ka नूर

बरसों नूर रहे उन आंखों में.

हमारी गुमनाम गलियों को रोशन करे

दिल जलने का खौफ नहीं हमें अब

बरसों चिराग ए दिल बन कर, आंखों में उनके

हम ही तो जल बुझ कर रौशन रहे.

Let there be a glow in her eyes

May it light up the alley of lost names, I inhabit

No more I fear the turning of my heart ashen.

As it was I who lived for years, as the flame of her heart.

In her eyes, sometimes lit up and dowsed,

it was I who glowed always.

                                   - On Afreen Afreen by Rahat Fateh & Momina Mustehsan,Coke Studio