Phantom of yester

Long I for the past
Cry I for the night last
Phantom of yester, torments till today
In reality, shadows of the dreams often sway.

A sunny winter promenade

A busy day, full of din
Bright with glaring winter sun
From it we escaped
For a sweet romantic escapade.

Arm in arm, eye to eye
We gave ourselves to the other
Walking far and further
Matching steps with another.

Lost in a dream
Covered with golden calico
From sunshine between the tufts of leaves
On a lane lined with sleepy trees.

Immersed in the otherness of me
We look at each other and see
A calm boat in a turbulent sea.

A tug, a look, a dreamy smile
Wakes us up to reality
Only because, we are hungry
Munching guavas from a vendor on the roadside
The only break of our promenade.


(Delhi winters…Bright sunlit day …Pusa tree lined walks…a million years ago)

A Suicide Note

Drunk he said it’s ethereal
He didn’t know it was ephemeral
The Maya of a chimera
The icon, the dream, the idol.
Next morning we found him in a dark dingy asylum

Bombay to London on Virgin Atlantic

Azure endless skies
With borders of grenadine pink
Stare blank at miles ahead
Without a single blink.

Restless silence in frozen me
Hums within with a buzz, a whirr
Even the clouds look alien and lost
Akin to a stoic philosopher in thoughts.

A wing of virgin and a union jack
Peep at me through an oval window
Pretty hostesses walk like shadows
Trying to enact – ‘service with a smile’.


Home, a fond book …
Friends and other pockets of warmth
Are all left behind.
Swimming away in the void.
Like a dream frozen in time.***

Everything is contained and cold
Saying loud and clear - ‘On business!’

Until…
Mehndi Hassan’s rich voice
A melting resonance, sings

*‘Ab ke hum bichde,
To shayad kabhi khwaabon main milein’

-Pushkar Gunjan

(5:30 P.M.-IST, Oct 1, 2005…midair flying over CIS countries on a Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow, London)*‘Ab ke hum bichde, to shayad kabhi khwaabon main milein’ – ‘If we part this time…
…we might meet again in dreams sometime’

You and I

We agreed, and then disagreed
Argued, and counter argued
Acted, and reacted
Proposed, and disposed
Opined, and held back
When we were…

Voices have drowned
Opinions languor
Expectations minimal, rather none
Weapons are laid, feelings numb
It is all quiet again
When we aren’t…

In all of this we forgot
The day we started as one
Sunlight and sun
Hearts drunken
Dream in eyes…
Perhaps, it’s all gone.

In the remote corner of our hearts
Barely alive yet expectant,
is that one tender thought
Huddled in a corner
Scared, bullied and broken.

(11:36 A.M. Feb 10, 2006 …in the middle of a day at Tesco UK,Welwyn Office )

It was never one

With a fluent stroke of pen
We wrote our name
Joined to form an entity,
A word, one till eternity
Or so we thought…

And we etched that beautiful name
Not playfully but as a serious game.
A bond to last a lifetime,
A mantra to be our lifeline.

An entity to cherish
A bond to love and nourish
In life- from moment, first to last

And with a divine stroke
It shattered and broke
Slashed in two distinct halves
As if it was never one.

My Sleepless Dream

No soul to walk a step
In this wakeful night
Lost in my thoughts and you
Bathed in the lonesome moon.

Sleep looks a mile away
And farther, the hint of rest
Restlessness the only candle
Promising to burn this long night.

In the night raven
The raven sings,
the craving notes
Of songs forgotten.

I amble solitary
With your thoughts and you.
Pensive with a hint of smile
And remembrances that still beguile.

Covered in a deathlike pall
Sunk in this morose stillness.
Your thoughts alive like you were near
Seeking my tribute, a drop of tear.

The stillness has gone
And restlessness is sans rest
Carried on the willful wings of wind
Your whisper like a godsend.

In some corner of some other world
You have stirred from your sleep
Like a ripple in a lake deep.
Dreaming of me perhaps…

Let’s make a home

Long into the night we spoke
Till the early hours of dawn
Building homes, airing dreams
Sharing a lifetime’s hope.


A spark of warmth,
A twinkling firefly,
Blinked and paused.
Whispering into the ear of dreams –
‘Let’s make a home’

A new born dream.
Born with the whisper - ‘Let’s make a home’
Akin to a warm nest
For warmth of love,
Repose and rest.

Let’s make a home.
With a ray of bright sunlight
In the glint of our love struck eyes.
With a palette of rainbow
Dipped in your winsome smile.

It is all blank now,
in hues black and grey.
Like the shadows of a sunny day.
Remnant of a sweet nothing.
Like nostalgia of a giggling chimera.

To a stranger at Heathrow

A smile that lingers
A little longer than it should

A gaze that rests
A lot longer than it should

For strangers that we were.
Just a blink’s acquaintance.
Born with the moment
Should have died with the next.

It did.

You shook your head
We shared a smile
And went our ways.

You to your reality
And I to mine.
Without the necessity of a goodbye even.

(An amused long look from the stranger at Heathrow on my way to Bombay March ,2006)

Antiquity of an unshed tear

One remembrance fond
Of a dream gone
Walks back in time
Riding a familiar smile

We meet and greet
A little warm, a little hesitant
Look into each other’s eyes
A lot familiar, yet quite distant

Images flash past
Of a world that’s lost
For a tribute we shed
The antiquity of an unshed tear
That has lost its identity even.

Solitude of Moon

Cuckoo coo-hoos the evening away
Clouds shift like vagabond tepees
Eucalyptus sways to the song of winds
Befalls the night in raven tress.

The horizon is still a riot of colours
And a lone moon hangs on
To a thought miles away
Smiling to bear its solitude.

(On seeing the moon at Hangzhou dusk, 2007)

Sunshine, Oranges and You.

If I could paint your name,
On that lonely piece of cloud
Then walk on the smoky trail,
Left by the jet plane.

I would paint it with blue.
Dipping my brush of memory,
In the palette of myriad hues.
To my humour,It would turn out as golden sunlight
The tint of a young spring sun.
Hidden in the peels of an orange.

And when you visit me like melancholy,
Painting my canvas blue.
From near to far,
To the endlessness and beyond

I’ll miss sunshine, oranges and you
And empty my paint bucket
To sprinkle in the blue emptiness,
Millions of gaily butterflies.

It Took Us Aeons

It took us aeons
To meet again.
And when we part
With a promise..

To meet again
Aeons later in some other life
In some other form

Then also I‘ll be me
And you you,
In all our familiarity
and oneness
We‘ll embrace
Like we never parted

How do I tell you now
That I was mistaken
Believing in deathlessness
And in promises of permanence.

You might never be you
And me I
After we embrace
and say goodbye.

The song we loved the most

A February evening, a musical soiree
Springtime, past valentine’s.
Sweet chill ,misty air
Flowers and dew all there.

Smiling moon in night sky
Beats rise and touch a high
Carrying on its crest, songs soulful.

Glitter below of radiant faces.
Shimmer above of twinkling stars.
Looking for you in the ocean of face
Wistfully searching for your eyes and grace.
I rise...

With slow paces and still pondering
The song that will exhume ‘our’ spirit
A mournful ballad of lost magic
A love song, or something tragic.
I tread, still indecisive.

Confused musicians and audience in quietude
I clear my throat, and take a note
Oblivious of the beats, the rhythm
And the song itself.

There it was...
Just you, me and the song we loved the most.

An Incomplete Poem

Lying half done in the mid
Lay my incomplete poem
Calling out for feelings unsaid
And perhaps for some tears unshed.

Filled with affection,
My mines of gold.
A tale unfinished,
While ages unfold

Hearts broke and lovers pined
The moon wept and poets whined
Couldn’t avert what was destined.
Misfortune of an incomplete poem.

The ink from pen divine
Wrote in elegance and style
And somewhere in the mid
The pen stopped and ink dried.

Valediction

Goodbye good friend!
Let it be no teary valediction.
For I want to see you smile
Like we always did everything,
With spirit and amazing style.

Goodbye good friend
Do call or drop a line.
About things special and generally fine
In moments of repose
When you ponder and wistfully smile
On thoughts of an old ally.

Goodbye good friend
Bid adieu.
Before I become blind.
Before mist in my eyes,
rolls on your cheek to say goodbye.

Goodbye good friend.
Divine blessing godsend.
So long! Till we meet again.
Years later…
In the longing lanes of nostalgia.

The Frozen Cherries

Maya stepped out of the Four seasons hotel and realized that she had an evening and almost the next day to herself. This was the second time in two weeks her client, an automobile major had postponed the presentation.
‘Once yours, yours for a lifetime’ – she mumbled her punch line for the millionth time. And there flashed a winsome smile that she practiced every time she had looked in the mirror for the past one month.
She brushed her wind ruffled hair smooth and waved for a cab. Suddenly, her eyes fell on a humongous billboard that had the ruddiness of frozen cherries sprawled on the white expanse.
“We preserve spring for you. And almost anything”. – The neat scawl read. Her own words but from some other season some other time.
‘Amartya, somebody who never dies…’ Maya let out a whisper of despair and fell into that retro chute again.
Their worlds were quite different. Amartya was unbridled, unconventional, tempestuous and she was conservative, traditional, methodical. A life measured on proprieties.

Where did they meet? Well…generally musing and unawares, she walked into his exhibition where she saw his paintings. The paintings had the expression and meaning of her freedom.
The second time was, when Amartya came in to give her diary back that she had forgotten at the exhibition. He had read her thoughts scrawled in the diary:

If I could paint your name,
On that lonely piece of cloud
Then walk on the smoky trail,
Left by the jet plane.
And gave her a painting which had a pink blush cloudlet passing over a parched dune. Perhaps an expression of his own incompleteness.

And then she wrote:

A pink blush cloudlet
Empties its paint bucket
Sprinkling in the blue emptiness
Millions of gaily butterflies.

Inevitably, she got drawn into his world. A couple of bikers formed his gang and all of them looked doped all the time. Perhaps, the haze of smoke and the will to live the moment kept them together. Probably, they thought her to be an intrusion but Amartya was surely getting used to her.
‘Maya – an illusion that you can never catch.’ – He would whisper lying in her lap, locks of hair obscuring his face.
‘Why do you say that? I am yours- mind, body and soul’ – she would whisper reassuringly.
‘Maya’….
‘Hmmm. Bolo…’
‘Maya…when you are with me, it is as if my home and its warmth is nestled safely with me’ – he would muse aloud.
‘And you are my flying carpet straight from world of Arabian nights.’…she would say it with a huge hug meant to squeeze out all the emptiness from within him.

One day She asked him – ‘What is home to you Amartya?’
And there was a long silence and then he spoke in an uncertain timbre…

‘A house with wooden floors,… a large sunlit kitchen cum dining,… Sunday morning, smell of fresh newsprint and tea,… overridden by the aroma of freshly baked cookies….’ – he spoke looking dreamily at the sky.
‘And….?’ – She implored further.
‘Sound of spoon clatter on the china bowl,… a bunch of bamboo shoots in a crystal bowl….’
‘Hmmm….’
‘Me patting a golden retriever with my foot…a pair of goldfish….and………….’ – there was a long pause and Maya knew she had gone into the forbidden territory.

Hurt, fear of flight and a feeling of invasion was writ clearly on his face.
He suddenly sat up and said – ‘You will never get drunk.’
‘I won’t’ – she said quietly to preserve the moment.
At times as these he would mumble something which she remembered verbatim, and it would always be profound coming from a lost child she thought he was.
The mumble only had a wistful forlorn ‘Ma’audible…

Those days were crazy. A sort of spell was cast around them which scared her often. They would laze and idle on the terrace counting flying eagles when suddenly she would feel his grasp around her waist tighten as if to hold the time still. And when Maya looked right into his eyes he would smile after a failed attempt to hide his fears.

‘I am very unstable Maya. Eventually, you will get hurt.’ – He would plead and tell her stories of his past flames and fires which were dowsed unceremoniously suddenly by one high tide of the vagabond spirit. The stories about a Thai girl, who had come to get a Masters from Bombay University, but went back with an irreparable heart. It gave him a queer feeling for a long time that he was responsible for bringing floods in Thailand.

Even his hurricane romance with the daughter of his English professor which broke his heart and made her pregnant remained with him for a long time. Later he found out that the brave poor girl cried so much that her beautiful eyes got eclipses of dark circles which remained forever. He still had dreams that the foetus had the head of a full grown child with his mother’s dark eclipses and tributaries of tear stains. Julie, Sanskriti, Cherrie, Rita, Vaidehi …the list went on and so did their stories.

A few paintings he made for each season that he had spent with each one of them and people if they knew them, would know the distinctness that was exhibited in each.
Maya deplored him for his heartless philandering but always could justify it with his honest confessions. She saw an inevitable pattern and was amused to think about the fallibility of those women, in trying to hold a cloud in hearts that were empty. It was her greatest fear and her greatest challenge. She perhaps imagined even their voices of caution sometimes but somehow she knew that she would be the last feminine subject of his paintings. That was her hope and that was her resolution.

In the months that unfolded it was a subterranean strife between the creator and his subject; the form and the matter; the imagery and imagination; the intellect and instinct; the wantonness and satiation; the primordial and civilization and it bred twelve paintings of her alone. There were more. He was delighted at how prolific he had been and acknowledged that Maya was a Godsend.
‘Maya it is not your body, it is your intellect and your spirit that drives me crazy.’ – He would remark, steeped in juvenile wonderment as if concentrating hard to sustain that spell.
‘When I close my eyes there is no place that feels unexplored and yet you amaze me with a new perspective a new experience. I feel each and every hue of your palette and each and every stroke of your brush colour my imagination and caress my body.’ – She would whisper and the ebb of her voice in a blend with spirals of giggling air surely drove him crazy. Bodily this time.
After several bouts of endless lovemaking when Amartya lay stroking her, he mused out loud – ‘Maya. I would rather let the memory of us like this be, than face the humdrum of reality claiming it gradually.’
She rolled over on top of him and held his face and looking into his eyes whispered – ‘My Honeypot…We will be forever young.’
His face would light up with the inanity of her reassurance and would chuckle…’So in the name of our youth can I have those cherries again’.- and they would roll together in the mirth and laughter of the moment.

A couple of months and several paintings later, after one such intoxicated night Maya woke up to find a note saying –

To The girl I paint for…

Dearest Maya,
You are an illusion that one can never chase and if caught you won’t remain you.
I would rather let the memory of us like this be than face the reality of having something so sublime sink in the quagmire of ordinariness.
I’ll never forget a single hue and every single stroke that you made possible.
Forgive me if you can…A cloud has no home.

With love
Amartya

Maya clutched at the sheet and wrapping it around her and ran towards the window. Peeping through the windowpane saw that his bike wasn’t there.
She read once, twice, times over and just couldn’t believe it.

Was something really amiss that I couldn’t figure out? Was he going to commit suicide? He did speak about the meaninglessness of life off late…Will he come back after a few months? Did he lose interest in her? – Several thoughts good and bad crept up but none had an answer.
Suddenly, it struck her in the fuzzy realm of possibility that she might have talked in sleep. More she thought more she got convinced. She had let out the secret of stealthy creep of civilization which a woman brings in.
‘Amartya. Will you let me make your home?’ – That is what she had said. God knows what fears where unleashed by the pent up flawed child. It precipitated in the dark alleys of his psychic impressions.
She saw hell for eighteen months, her eclipsed eyes resembled the Australian Panda and at night almost always slept by muffling her cries in the pillow .
She could see him on the sidewalks, in the café’ they frequented, on the park benches where they lazed in the sun reading a book, in the card shop corners where they had kissed, in the book shops where they sat pretending to read but sat only to smell the newness of books and seep in the hushed quietude and unison of spirits. The orange Gerberas, the purple of orchids, the sweetness of moon white rajnigandha all lost there meaning. Suddenly, the mélange of colours that had filled her senses brought revulsion.

She wore more of whites and lighter shades as if enforcing widowhood on herself, less for convention but perhaps more to soothe her maimed spirit. Her faintly religious self was attracted more towards God and religion these days. So many times she had seen the sun set and the moon rise sitting quietly on the premises of a nearby temple hearing the bells toll and tinkle. Maya was getting into the habit of keeping her hand over the flames of evening Arti several moments longer than usual, perhaps a shade of masochism; perhaps an attempt to purge her spirit. The flight of heady drunkenness was surely a thing of the past.

Several months passed by…and still no sign of Amartya…no letter no phone call. Maya had already called his gang of bikers, his gang of dopeys, and the art gallery which bought his paintings, a distant cousin who not even recognized his name in the first go and also the spiritual cult he had talked about very obliquely sometime ago. Nothing bore results.
After a lot of bickering by her parents and relatives and also the fears of loneliness she complied to get married. Very few don’t get scared with the solo march of youth into the sunset. So did she.
Maya expected to find her soul burnished in the pure flames of the wedding havan kunda.
Nothing of that sort happened. Her soul remained frozen with the cherries of those bygone springs which no flame could thaw. Mechanically,she went through all the rituals.
She was so frigid that she stoked and admiration among the old ladies of the community… that the girl was so woebegone at the prospect of leaving her home forever that she was under extreme shock. Otherwise the girls these days have no shame left in them…they giggle and look straight at their husbands unabashedly these days.

Months passed by and two years expired. Maya had learned to love her benign caring husband who brought coziness of a hearth and routine stability of a mill to their marriage. She practiced and tamed her self, the self that had resonated with wild frenzy and romantic high while with Amartya. Maya’s greatest moulding effort was to turn her mother’s recipes as a pillar of her domesticity. She could make spinach soup and force it on Govind for better eyesight and preserve ginger-garlic paste ground on Sunday mornings to last the full next week. Maya also attempted pappads and mango pickle scribbled on the back of a colleagues wedding card while on phone with her maasi.

Amartya only figured out in the creativity of her words for ad campaigns or the imagery that she projected during discussions which impressed most of her colleagues and seniors. Several times she could relate his exact words with so many products that if Amartya saw it , would recognize her thought of him behind it. It was a very satisfying feeling to know that in some esoteric and telepathic sense she could be in cognizance with Amartya. That too through his own words, his own thoughts… rather their thoughts. It was all suspended in the mist of waning past and a new hope of life which they were planning for…soon. Until …

Flipping through the Sunday magazine the restless fate made her glance fall on a feature about an exhibition by some impressionist painter. The name was enough to leave her numb.
Amartya.
The rationale and the denial of her failed search refused to believe her eyes. September 19 – September 20. The dates coincided with her business trip to Bombay. After a lot of conflict, she arranged to send a message through the organizers to Amartya. The reply was almost immediate which was brief in his characteristic style – ‘Sure. Would be delighted to see you again’.
Even the hint of first love that is lost, breathes magic in the air. The frozen cherries had come to life in full brilliance of their ruddiness. The sad face of moon seemed to be smiling and the twinkling stars assumed meaning again. The evening Bangalore mist and the cool breeze at night seemed to embalm and heal her wounded maimed spirit. Maya often found her fingers caress Amartya’s name printed on the paper cutting.The finger tips tracing A M AR T Y A…followed by a smile that made her look like a lovestruck teenager. She carried it in her diary as a clue to the eternal goldmine of colours and love.

On nights she snuggled in her blanket , feigning sleep to Govind and wondering where all had Amartya been to.Frozen river in Leh…or the monasteries of Tibet…or to some obscure abode where even her love couldn’t find him.
She often rehearsed the first anticipated instance of their meeting.
‘What did he look like now?’ – she often thought.
Maya took her old photographs and kept comparing her face in the mirror to them and decided to wane the accent of vermillion and gave the mangalsutra she had, for a long pending repair.
Her body longed for the magic Amartya used to weave which still touched her spirits.
‘Perhaps, he might want to paint her again when they met. May be, in sculpture form like once when he sculpted her with mud before painting her.’ – She often wondered and blushed at the idea. Even today she could let her imagination loose and feel his careful confident fingers literally sculpting each and every form of her body with the smooth wetness of mud. It wasn’t the base animal but the love of the creator for his yet unborn creation. Although it had some carnal shades for Maya it was by far their best creation – the most sensuous and the most spiritual.
Govind let her be alone as he had understood her inconsistent phases of mood. Perhaps, it was one of those.
It was 4:43 P.M precisely as she waived at the passing taxi. It stopped and shoving her bag inside she slipped in the rear seat.
‘West Parel.’
The propriety tugged at the conscience and conscience brewed the guilt. The freedom of spirit in tussle with the warmth of the hearth. The flame of the body was being tested by the flames of the Yajna. In all of this perhaps the former held a sway over the latter.

The taxi went in through the maze of people, cars, rushing across lamp posts, shops, roadside pheriwallahs, hungry cows, red BEST buses and myriad forms of cacophony.

The billboards rushed past her. One series of billboards specifically disturbed her. It popped out at almost every turn. A young man with an intriguing expression on his face, vocal eyes but lips muted with a wide scotch tape. At the next turn there was a young woman. Then an old man, an old woman, a very young girl, a young woman. All of them spoke volumes with eyes and were muted by a wide strip of scotch tape. Maya had never seen such vocal eyes and intriguing expressions. Nothing was written on the billboards just the silence that heightened her guilt. At the roundabout suddenly she said take a left.
‘That road would go towards santa cruz memsahib ‘ – the taxi driver asked perplexed by her sudden change of plans.
‘That is where I should be going. Santa Cruz airport.’ – she mumbled.

Sitting by the window seat she watched the planes take off and land. There was this faint voice of a young crazy girl which still urged her to get back and reclaim the past but was too feeble to act upon. The child eyes of Amartya, moist with tears and void with confusion prodded her to get back.
Maya lipped Amartya’s idea of home in silence and as usual word by word. The plane took off leaving the central yellow line of the tarmac behind like the moulding tail of a flying snake.
Maya hid her face in the towel and wept uncontrollably much to the embarrassment of the person sitting in the seat next to hers.
Clouds flew past like islands of candy floss in a sea of mist and the terra firma below looked like a gigantic mass of algae green plankton .The golden shimmer of Arabian sea met seamlessly with the calm azure.
She disembarked and messaged Govind…
Heat dinner for me too. I’ll be home in 20 mins.
At home, Govind opened the door , kissed her and said…
‘There is a huge parcel delivered for you. Did you order for something?’
Intrigued she went towards the parcel, turned it around but there was no clue.
Maya opened it carefully, and after seeing it sat on the floor agape and numb.
‘A house with wooden floors, a large sunlit kitchen, Sunday morning, smell of fresh newsprint and tea, overridden by the aroma of freshly baked cookies….
Sound of spoon clatter on the china bowl, a bunch of bamboo shoots in a crystal bowl….Me patting a golden retriever with my foot…a pair of goldfish….’ – the words rang out loud and clear still hanging in the air as if it was said minutes ago.
There was a woman in the painting who resembled Maya.

There was a note saying….


Dearest Maya,
I had to leave…Didn’t want to spoil it for you…
Homes are not made on clouds but on trees.
It is not in the fate of clouds to find home. They are born vagabond and that’s their destiny.
One moment of warmth with you was enough to fill a thousand solitary years.

With affection
Amartya

That was the last she heard from Amartya. Spring came again and the frozen cherries thawed in all their ruddiness to welcome a new life.

Contentment

Warmth of sun on back,
azure view of cool skies,
a lone eagle cry.

Full breeze in face.
ruffling hair wild.
and a jolly wind tickled lake.

a suspended abstract thought.
at the brink of bliss
spells out the futility…
of seeking contentment elsewhere.

Sprinkling violets, Blooming Lilies

Sprinkling violets and lilies pink
Bloomed all across
Between you and me.

Horizons kissed the crimson dawn
Then stars sprinkled the sky lawn
We didn’t forget our colours of love
Blooming violets and lilies pink.

It all turned white
Our heart’s love
Our souls dove
Flew across a million miles…

We swirled, we sang
We ran , we danced
All across the firmament.
Sprinkling violets, blooming lilies.

Drunken Rabbits

Sprawled in the lawns
Under the sky starry.
Flying on the wings of wind
A vagabond piece of cloud flies past.

Exchanging looks of unity.
Once in a while
A smile playing
In that secret pact of affinity.

Talking to one another
Primarily to ourselves
Of days past and favorite yearnings
In moments wistful and pensive.

We talk silly long into the night
Till early hours of morning
In slurs, drones and hmmms
We talk like drunken rabbits.

Dried Magnolias

No soul left
No drunkenness of spirit
No wonder-eyed wonderment
Just a throbbing primitive demon.

A monster of the flesh
Alongside a nostalgic sensitivity,
Lives on like the ghost
In the shadows of the yore.

Remnant of thoughts
On a fading canvas
In luminescent moon
On forgotten notes of Claire de lune.

Dried magnolias
in my favorite book.
Like a whiff of spring mint
For a newborn hope.