What is this propensity to prove me wrong?

Cut all my words into a dice of your own?

Why sharp the edges and use the syllables like knives on our hearts?

Why these pointed stares?

All that you throw,

fall like water on a frying pan,

And all that remains are smokes and stains.

Life is neither diabetic tea cups nor salt-less curries.

It could be though,

Try adding a dollop of smile,

one that shows your dimples that I always found difficult to dodge.

we could have dipped our fingers in those curries
and all ego would have sunk in the bottomless cup of life.

Words can heal wounds and it wasn't even a bruise
but those silicate thunders that brought storms
even on a breeze less desert nights,
just gets amplified through the veins of a decade long tunnel of togetherness.

Weren't we happy in the pitch darkness of tunnel,
where all that we had was our voices to throw anchors and roam around

or just float in the galaxies of imaginations,

of a sightless horizon.

Why this propensity to fathom the depths then,

why now when we don't even remember

the last address of our lives?

Many seeds sprout out 

of a virgin land of dreams,

bloom into trees,

clouds hang from their branches.

They could have danced in the wind,

stood tall, listening to the night angles.

kissed the dawn, still hung over 

from a drone of the flowing river.

Instead they died under a desert sun.

rain snuffed out the fire

but drowned its roots,

leaves left to float into the drain.

1. A MEMORY slips through the crevice,
a ray finding its feet 
through the closed doors,
no traces left behind,
no finger prints, no weapon,
yet sleep bleeds,
sprawled on the cold floor,
every time, every night.


2. How could the memories,

escape the horrors of partition

to find a home near a river

that only cleaved his childhood?

Memories of a nation he was born,

against one he found his home.

Wrapped in a saree,

against his mother's chest,

under sacks full of red chillies,

he had escaped one frightening night.

Resonating screams from the shores,
piercing the night sky, his early lullabies.

All stories of blood,
rests at the bottom of the river bed now,
Like shadows lost in a moonless night,
into the hazy rainy forest land.

Yet a kaleidoscope brings reflections of past,
time hallucinates, weaves yellow images,
of a drunk afternoon of death,
and a boat that escaped its shore in 1947.

Segue

Life and death
stand across a mirror
divided by a river,
of sparkling stars.
You can walk to the other side,
float seamlessly with open eyes.
Have no fear, don't cry
A shadow always melts in the sun,
Only to appear again at night,
under a azure sky.