Call me cynical.

It won't bother me.

Google has already proclaimed me one.

I know I am not the first and won't be the last.

Everyday millions of people are trying to cure their skin with fairness creams, splurging in brands to cure their social status, governments finding ways to cure the economy by taxing us in new ways, while we run after CA professionals to cure our poverty.

Sixty nine years has passed since India's independence,

but still no cure for hunger,

that plagued our food, water and now air.

Who will cure this cancer?

Neither morphines nor Bullets will do.

Mirtaz at best will put you in a stupor.

Sometimes, I find this euphoria inexplicable.

This urge to puke, to smile and whine.

exhausting it must be,

flipping through hundreds of websites and apps,

buying clothes and jewelries that you will never wear,

debating over fictional heroes and anti-heroes,

fictional villains and vamps, 

living a fictional life, we call our own.

When will this fiction end?

Way out

I feel pity at my growing ignorance,
Each day I forget a bit more,
Past and future never enticed me ever,
But now even present fail me.

Life is a misnomer for slavery for most,
Those who can't feel it, don't know it yet.

I remember my Mother emphasizing on rote learning. 

So mornings dawned with repeating the lines time and again.
"Moral science lessons are best learnt in mornings," I remember once my Class VII teacher said.
While I found solace in nights. 

Breaking the numbers, 

keeping away sleep by tying my ponytail to the wall hook. 

Now when I find those lessons drowning in the ignored cesspool of human frailty, 

I remember those nights. 

For years now I had bartered words with numbers, 

hoping they can help through my insomniac slavery nights.

But when words too resembles a circle, 

you know it can no more heal the scars. 

So what do you live with? 

Could you walk back to the past cradle?

Does it even exist? 

Or you start running naked through the concrete highways on the wee hours of a Sunday, 

hoping to break the shackles of slavery?

Or you accept the mummification,

waiting to rot your way out of this life?

Oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

It has been raining here for months now,

all crops have been destroyed,

I can't stay here for long.

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

Another year has passed by,

the river has almost devoured my land,

That guava tree under which we had aamsotto once,

lies in the river's belly now,

your footprints too lost in the mud,

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

Often in wintry nights, 

I sit near the river's mouth,

I see your boat tearing through the mist,

like a painting against the drunken moon,

melting into the milling clouds.

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

It all now seems from another time,

the land, the river and the moon

Ten years ago, I had seen you on a stormy night,

draped in a sari with one end around your waist,

when I had taken a ride in rain.

I wonder why I didn't ask your name?

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

The charging river is drowning my hopes,

The lonesome night is slipping time into a stupor,

I too am sinking slowly in a night of my own,

only a Bhatiyali song from you can set me free.

oh boat woman! When can I see you again?

Society

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Not a drop of forgiveness will escape your heart,
you epitome of perfection,
your self-righteousness bemuses me.

You who speak of backbone
but have those termites eating your blood,
look at yourself,
peer inside your closet.
you will find corpses,
who died many years ago,
smothered by your burden of silicate dreams.

You who preach of evangelistic sermons,
look at your pride that fuels your Utopia.
You who want to dance
in the misty waves of an ever-eroding development dream,
blinded by the hollow ego of illusionary time.
Take a while and taste the rain,
its tears born out of penury and pain,
don't let it drain down,
in vain.

You who still dream of an Elysium,
and fight over Jesus, Allah and Ram.
Wake up from the seductive slumber,
No miracle will happen,
To our rescue, no Angel will come.

Its time to lit a pyre in our hearts
and burn all vanity and pride,
Lets learn to love and forgive,
and walk hand-in-hand,
side by side.

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We are all islands.
Floating in in an endless ocean,
tracing the contours of our flaws,
like graphs of an endless table,
breaking numerous times by the gust of wind, 
haywire, as far as eyes can gauge,
melting every moment a bit more
when the sun blazes its eyes,
freezing in an endless embrace
when the icy breeze sing lullabies,
hand in hand across the sea.

In winter,
lies our salvation to an endless sleep
that will sow that seed of hope someday in our dreams.

Someday the dead will return from the shadows,
like the Bryophytes in Canada, sprouting after 400 years of death,
darkness will flood the artillery of every breathing soul,
melting like night from the roof tops,
dripping like paint from the walls of our existence.
The white walkers will rise from the bottom of the fathomless sea,
drenching sea ice, crystallizing the globe.
A division bell will echo in the distance,
against the shrills of a wailing snow
rising like waves
lashing the face of earth.
All that will be left is to run,
soaking in the last remnants of light
that escapes from the weight of clouds
and run.
Run till there is blood in our veins,
strength in our limbs
and hope in our eyes.
Run for the mountains,
the guardian of our survival.
soaring against the laden sky,
we will run,
climbing till the last tree
the last branch,
the last leaf,
the last inch of earth
fall.

No sigh ever escaped her breath,
no distress
no disappointment
Just acceptance.
Humming 'Hare Krishna, Hare rama' under her breath,
she weaved them like verses of Bhagawat Gita,
repeating, again and again.
Like the tick-tock of a clock that galloped away.
As time trickled through her fingers,
She knead that woolen wall hanging -
yellow, green and white.
She had questions but she never asked,
Even then, she never forget to look inside.

1. I don't know how to break ice,
too many years have gone by cutting them into shapes.
It has been a winter too long and I am tired tracing my way back.
For now the road is my home, 
the falling snow my voice
the breeze my compass of life.
If you need to find me ever,
look beneath the snow.
There will lie my tomb.

2. Last breath of memories, 
whistles past the pines,
like some old bogies,
snaking through a forest of time, 
mist like death spreads across our eyes, 
erasing everything we ever owned,
trees like skeletons sway at a distance,
only when the clouds find their home,
we too shall return to the womb.

3. Mornings move like feathers,
floating languidly in the infant rays
that escapes the cages of time.
Leaves blink, flowers smiles,
breeze sings ragas.
The sky oozes warmth,
caressing out of the slumber,
nights that took refuge in the forest.

4. I don't want to die
may be just walk into a night and disappear
or mingle in the mist in a wintry morning.
melt into a mirror
or just sink like a shadow in a flowing river.
The process of dying is scarier than dying itself.
yet like the night and day,
all of a sudden or with a little delay,
may be aging like the fading light
I too shall die some day.

Lovers left to leave

A stoic silence hangs between words,

like droplets of grievances, smudging the 

uttered syllables,

A muggy stare and a half-baked smile,

hinges half-halfheartedly to hide the wintry 

heart.

We stand still,

undeciphered

unvanquished

under the weight of time.

In the end,

only a slow deep breath

rescues us,

As another moment loses its meaning.