Posts

monsoons

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'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...

Tehran, Tel Aviv and The Enfant Terrible

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 ...

...and once again!!

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                        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, tomorrows lie 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

A Moment's Pause

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                    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...

Meditations on dust and fireflies

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Psyche in watercolors and collage 1. Flight erratic of moths compelled to  choose between  the distant gleam of stars and the          flicker  of wayward candle 2. the wind that bends the grass  a hundred leagues  away, and steals their golden dreams to be scattered amongst the ruins of sleep dozes sweetly now in the undulating silences of the sea 3. like a burnished urn she moves filling up with  ashes of love... free like a feather cast from the departing evening

Tower of Babylon

And, here is a tree and its gnarled surface. The cat seeks out its dappled spots, quickly lapping up the fat globules of light. The scent of burgeoning cashew blossoms lingers around the feline creature, the sheared bits of deep blue sky wells up in its eyes.  The avian life, nervous by the paw-still presence of the new arrival, is suddenly on tenterhooks, issuing forth many a cacophonous conversations, aimed at strategic action or change of plans, who can tell? But the noise is unbearable. Moreover, I am completely excluded from the decision-making process. Conversations give way to heated arguments. Rufus treepie and cuckoo are the most vociferous, their size give them the leverage. But the tiny sunbirds with hooked beaks tutting away in loud metallic chirps would not be left behind...their little nest swinging from one of the upper branches is at stake and so is the future of their brood.  Trying to read Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, I find myself going over the same senten...

Of Holi and Holica

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Why wake up? What for? Unwillingly, the comatose body rolls off the bed and hauls itself down the stairs, just because... The first stirrings of slow dissolution. The waning fragrance of  cestrum nocturnum, raat ki raani,  has sensuously wrapped itself around the morning.  "Happy Holi", my ever-zealous 82-year-old mom greets with a shower of flaming red hibiscus petals. A shower of flowers is the new, preferred, civilized way of playing Holi in our family, a far cry from the customary hurling of water balloons or bucketful of colored chemical solution the way I remember it from my childhood. I can't help but smile. The babblers start their cacophonous chant. I too get some bougainvillea blossoms and color her bright smile with them. My whatsApp is overflowing with Happy Holi messages. I have never been crazy about this particular festival, even though it represents the best of spring, the victory of truth over evil and the Lila of Divine Love. My recollection of Holi...