In Limbo 2

Wherever we went, we carried Auroville in our hearts. We travelled the world with  memories of our life in the keet house stowed away like some precious treasure within a secret corner of our being, sometimes sharing them with friends we made along the way. We never presented it as the most perfect place, for that it wasn't. But, it was always a place of possibilities...the hurdles were there, and so was their acknowledgement, and the search for solutions. We all knew that Auroville is an ongoing experiment with its ups and downs and its own organic evolution. All that changed a  few years ago when the Centre government decided to hijack the journey called Auroville, and turn it into a `project', where Aurovillians were expected to be 'team members' on a leash, coerced  to walk a straight line, obey...and submit. This implied scrutinizing every movement of its 3000 some residents who have congregated here from around the world pursuing a dream. Stricter budgeting and...

  1. Venus in her shiny cestus leans over reaching out for the cherry  blossoms afloat  on the backyard pond... a stir of breeze, a gentle splash and lo, it has fallen too: the star and the blossoms co-travellers now 2. excited, they unleash their burden of bliss upon us mortals: lo a murmur rising from the congregation of leaves, a roar mounting from the haunches of waves, slumberous seeds riding on the lianas of desires thirsty for ambrosia and light; impatient pinions bead verses as they plunge deeper into the Unknown

'rain' in watercolors   humid weight of stillness accompanies me  as i sit on the porch; trumpeting of faraway peacocks makes its way across the scattered shadows of floating clouds. A sudden gust of wind rushes through the iron gate, toppling over a few cashew branches, and jangling the house into discomposition. It carries with it a whiff of petrichor and the promise of rains...however, one cannot rely on its over-zealousness anymore. For lately, many an impassioned storms have passed us by...teasingly Determined, I sit through the destructive squall, my eyes closed tight to shut out the dust.  Prepared to be hit by a loosed branch or a an airborne pebble, today, the being is resolved to abandon itself to the auguries of Nature... may be to invoke the blessings of the downpour that red earth in all its auric entity seeks and seeks some more. 'Rain', a poem by Jack Gilbert swerves onto the memory lane and sets an indolent mind on 'cruise' mode. While rain for G...

We all just sit, watch and wait it out. 'What's gonna happen?' I ask no one in particular. 'Who knows?' Some voices carry apprehension in their tone. "You tell me," some sound irritated as their minds, hijacked by social media, are suddenly coerced into thinking. Shrugging off the question, they return to watching reels.  the koils are at their best singing innocently their two-note song, over and over again, making the humid morning sticky with its cloying sweetness. They came in late this year, the koils. Without their encircling lyricism the mangoes couldn't ripen, and if they did, the magic of their luscious taste was amiss. The inkling of their first arrival reached our ears in the last week of May...and now finally, we are relishing the best mangoes of the season, thereof convinced that without the koil's song, this king of fruits we so rejoice will remain deprived of its royal delectability. TV screens explode with relentless fireworks-like ...

                        watercolors on cartridge paper gyrating flight of a gilded kite unlocks the skies. so much freedom flowing, glowing, rowing gently by,  yet with children dying, homes shelled to dust, tomorrow lies orphaned  outstretched wings of the raptor sweep through the matted hair of Shiva  its silence fills the screams of hunger in war-torn cities, haunts and claws at the night through which it steers holding no anchor,  no shore...tiny outstretched hands cling  to empty bowls, hope lingers with  nowhere to alight; the cardinals in Vatican await the smoke signal,  praying the invisible rosaries  the wings carry the sky; the sky reflects the glittering shards of broken dreams: shatter'd television screen, bob marley poster, walking cane, splinters of soda bottles...bubbles and froth of monsoon rains lashing furiously against hearts  that have forgotten how to love

                    Do you spot the flock in this photo? Tap and zoom in In a world whose new tapestry is a shrewdly-woven contexture of factual and virtual, concrete and digital, the feeling of constant bewilderment has become part of being human. Hitting one's head against a thousand mirrors at once and wondering which one is the real me, befits the reigning confusion centered around identity crisis. The mind reeling out of control with its volley of questions lands up hurtling against a wall of dissatisfied lame answers. "The world is too much with us," the famous poet William Wordsworth had once opined. Two centuries later, we pause to pose ourselves the million dollar question, "which world?" It is amidst such writhing turmoil that the being cries out, " Be with me, O Almighty! Help me through this chaotic stretch. Grant me a vision ... " Like a fervent prayer, the  beseechment rises under a grey-bellied sky, solemn in its aust...