Presto

Nishachar II

The maelstrom of thoughts is dying down,
as dawn caresses the city with her soft glow.
Sweet sleep beckons the weary eyes,
that gaze at the sky turned blue.

Smoke from the last cigarette end,
sways in the sun out of the window.
Light and dark dance in courtship,
their conflict an eternal ruse.

The Silent Hours

Oceanic blues

Welcomed by the roaring waves and the plaintive cries of gulls, the wanderer stepped into the wet sand. Broken shells twinkled from lascivious heaps, catching his eye. Searching for the perfect one, he walked past them with a sigh.

Crabs fled into crevices as he trudged along a rocky outcrop. And there he chanced upon a conch, nestled in the shadows, like a virgin in slumber. He held it close to his chest and thanked the ocean.

On his way back he saw a silhouette against the drowning sun, headed for him. It was the maiden he had imagined in his lonesome moments. He offered her the conch and she smiled.They held hands and danced under the rising moon on the sand, their feet drawing lines, and writing out the way they felt for each other. They walked into the water. The tide rose fast, and so did the amorous tempest within them, with every returning wave. And the night made way for another day.

The eyes of a crab glint in the first rays of the sun. The signs in the sand have been filled up. The wanderer has moved on.

The Wish Withheld

The carp and the lotus

The Wish

Nocturnal leaf-fall - an angel's footfalls;
descending the steps from heaven
awoke the eye to scavenge the sky
for a meteor - an omen.

No meteor is there and the wish is withheld
for the sky as ever is leaden.
A wistful beast weeps inside a wise man
while another sleeps in a maiden.

A Thousand Mirrors

Prologue:

Anger- a nightmare with an empty manger,
Hungered by tears & shouts in solitude,
Gallops out as ego’s avenger,
Leaving behind a hateful legacy-
Reason & sanity, blind & mute,
Wallowing dazed in the mud.
A remorseful soul rapt by her beauty,
And recollections stained in blood.

Of a man faced by a thousand mirrors:

Demons rise from deep down underneath,
Hiding me from a world I hate.
I don’t have a heart of lies to unsheathe,
Just a masquerade to forget,
The causes I stand for,
For the world are make-believe.
So I come back to this world,
For a stroll alone in the streets,
And a smoke in the cold evening.
I find myself in the faces I meet,
Hate bred behind every wrinkle and brow,
Honed emotions, destined footsteps,
Anxious all the same, except of a few,
Living in a memory, or under self-stricken madness.
Youth wasted in getting grocery in time.
To stand apart from the crowd,
Beauty lost and the ugly mimed,
Swinging to drab tunes under a shroud,
Of trends set by a hierarchy of puppeteers.
Well-bred men eager to join a futile rat race,
Ill fed mothers forget to wipe the child’s tears.
From boyhood to manhood curses showered,
Towards walls, that ricochet off to nowhere.
Before these very walls, shadows douse sanity by joints,
Turning their backs on the world I hate.
Into a lake of hope lovers toss coins,
Moths flutter into their flickering fate,
Mannequins stand self-absorbed unaware,
Of a man faced by a thousand mirrors.

Epilogue:

My sky weeps in hateful remorse,
moths seek shelter in death alight.
Seduced by mannequins along the course
of my journey through another night.
A shrill wind through my veins,
and eyes red not from tears,
holding onto time's reins,
I ride to resurrect yesteryears.

The Lugubrious Highway

Hunger

On the Highway

Its not that I have a grudge against society. The problem lies in where it finds solace. A city holds myriad thoughts and aspirations cooped up in a plethora of pigeon-holes. The spectacle is ugly. But this realization seldom dawns and that too in a few. Everybody out there is too within themselves to see what actually life was meant to be.

Yes, urbanization does bring along with it its seeming comforts that steadily benumb the gay abandon of childhood. A mountain, a valley, a stream with banks lined with pine, these metaphors of innocence are slowly replaced by a park amidst mankind’s maze, dotted with a few self-pitying wraiths supposed to be called trees, with its benches bearing disgruntled youth, men and women admiring another bud trying to reconnect to its inherent freedom, lovers with their escalating cell-phone bills, and the old lost in contemplation. This is a place where pleasure is derived from sitting in a fancy restaurant with a loved one and walking through empty streets kicking at cans.

Somewhere along the Gurgaon-Jaipur highway