In Limbo 2

  Short poems 1. which strange  shores  would it ply  this diapason  of a restless  heart? which Ulysses  would it tempt into its  coiled silence? 2. a lantern spills its burden of light across furrows of darkness  quivering hush of a late twilight unfurling fumes of incense and dusky footfalls  blinded by stars 3. silence it is drowning in that peg, in the unsteadiness  of your gait, in the way you look through everything to gaze at the emptiness  of her eyes...and, look how it fills you up!

    in the doldrum  of so many wars on ground in air on seas and then AI... Pope Leo's warning to the world; Encyclical is the new word learnt.      the kittens have all morphed into little furballs bounding rebounding, chasing shadows and randomness. Adrift, a maina's glass eye stares holding nothing but the  grey ceiling. The brood shrieks, suddenly hungry and impatient... Josie, the mother parades her prey clutching it with her deadly incisers, loosened plumage gently brush the floor: never again shall I covet them. Never again would  the pages of old books be turned to admire the feathers found on many a walk. The notes left unsung cling to the humid summer air, cloying and heavy, smeared in the yellowing smell of blood and gleeful cries...a sense of victory, violence, art...repose. Midst this incessant buzz of  unfounded joy, the solitary being  lingers within its rampart: prayer rises like a smoke signal, an SOS to whoever mig...

  Josie with her litter Maya   J osie is impatient  her litter of four  squeals, like stars in collision with the first filaments  of morning light. Maya drops by, indifference  in gait but it's in the eyes  that curiosity lounges impenetrable her gaze inscrutable her intentions  little Josie ferocious in her demeanor  assailed by throbbing pangs of motherhood roars like a tigress; the cashew tree trembles Maya jostles past cool and contained: she is an old-timer having seen the wall she used to sun on crumble reduced to rubble; she has swung on the pendulum of timelessness  and seen many a Josie   come            and                   go: but our Josie is different. She roars like a tigress; and plop, plop, plop,  drop the cashew fruits

Watching explosions in Iran , ran the NYTimes caption under the photo of a guy on the rooftop of his house. And lo, my own skies posterised by blithesome fronds of palmyrahs seem to turn  tumultuous with the threatening clouds of billowing smoke. I had come to the terrace hoping to glimpse  the flocks of migratory birds making their way back to their summer roost. A good percentage of them would also  fly over Asia Minor, now embroiled in a madman's war.  The photo was taken on 28th of February,  the first day of Israel/U.S. attacks on Iran  which took the country completely by surprise. On that very day, a U.S. missile hit a girls' elementary school in Minab killing 170 young students and teachers. Since then a few thousands have succumbed to the insentient insanity of this war, baseless, and uncalled for. An old write-up on the draft folder catches my attention. It is dated Feb 20th, 2026, exactly eight days before the global front took on an apocalyptic ...

  Shivoham in watercolors  am i burning or is it the world  churning? breaths lost at the crossway of here and then cry out for love... taste of the uncreated lingers within plastered reality words slice the  air, silence slashes it. am I burning on a pyre of scrawny fantasies or is it the world churning? women in yellow  and gold make kolams  with rice  powder, flowers garland their hair: stains of fragrance bury the soughing  of a broken heart. am i burning in the coolness of the koël's two-note song or is it the world churning? the night reeling, summer stillness, the eighth moon held in the month of Chaitra...  swirls of van gogh suffocate vision blindfold dreams am I burning  in the oppressive  rhythm of the clocking hour or is it the world churning? is it the world churning  or is it me, burning?

' The gas cylinder'- that is how I commonly refer to the  natural gas/LPG container stored in a locked cabinet outside the house. A pipe connects it to the two-burner stove in the kitchen. It is the lifeline of the culinary excursions I launch myself on, on a daily basis for both sustenance and gastronomical purposes; myself and millions of middle-class populace in this part of the world. While 54 percent of India still uses firewood/charcoal/ c owdung for cooking, the urban middle class India relies mainly on LPG, with 60 percent of it being hauled in from Qatar and 40 percent generated locally. In fact,  80,000 tons of LPG, loaded on two freight ships, escorted by 6 navy ships, risked the perils of a raging war to reach India on 17th of March. It was just enough to meet the country's one-day demand! The import of such a basic commodity as that of cooking fuel vis-à-vis the numbers, statistics and geographical constraints it entails is mind-boggling. And, this was brought ...

It seems unjustified to be writing about anything but the state of the world at a juncture when it lies embroiled in unprecedented conflict and turmoil.  Wars being waged with the sole objective to paralyze economies and gain control are devoid of ideologies,  principles and therefore duplicity. Thankfully, 'Diplomacy for the sake of diplomacy' has  been extradited from the international arena. Instead, unscrupulous attitudes epitomizing the age-old euphemism 'my way or the highway' have taken the centre stage, which is regrettable, but at least not beguiling.  Ali Khameni, the Supreme leader of Iran is killed along with 42 others of his entourage. There is jubilation on the streets, and there is also a sea of people advancing like a pillar of strength even as they mourn the death of their leader by foreign powers with vested interests.  Claims are being made vis-à-vis the number of war casualties from all fronts. Videos of  U.S. soldiers solemnly carrying ...

When nothing makes sense, when all that reaches the ear is the buzz of political jabberwocky or the static of AI voices sounding unnaturally confident, a walk through the village of Chinna Mudaliyar Chawadi in our neighborhood always feels calmingly surreal. Children laughing down the road,  women huddled up over a conversation, a stew of rice and lentils cooking in charred pots placed over wood-fire outside homes.  ...aroma of sputtering spices, a hint of tamarind escaping into the dusky air. Effortlessly do flashes of scenes slip in alongside a collage of memories buried under a dusty layer of time: Here's to cranes furrowing aerial trails and to irises gorging on blue  to shadows skipping on pebbles and to violets shaking off the fall'n snow and here's to the naked pigtailed boy  with anklets and kohled eyes, tittering  twiddling a twig, womenfolk gossip and gurgle; here's to the crow  diving into the setting sun, catching the gold, the silence and the s...

write me a poem write it without rhyme or reason   create a galaxy within it swirls of phantom hues amorphing like a giant amoeba the raven is at its centre   there is a snowflake suspended  somewhere; it is what you will dream of brushing past your eyelashes: its fire burns a hole    now, add silence, the slow march  of winter shadows. Add darkness  filled with light which shatters the illusion, slices it like  ulu  through  king salmon   imagine something vital has been left out: perhaps the memory of a late evening snowshoeing past cabins with curtainless windows: eyes adrift, skipping pebbles   think of desire: kettle whistling through a frigid morning a scatter of blueberries over whipped seal fat; girl in red parka sledding  down the hill, leaping flames  of green a nd purple engulf her   The Iñupiaq call them  kiubiyaq:  spirits of ancestors playing kickball in the sky  

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...

Psyche in watercolors and collage 1. Flight erratic of  a wayward  moth  as it hovers  between the distant gleam of stars and the  flicker  of a wavering 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

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...

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...

  swirling silence  of a moonless night: a heart wrenched out of its orbit and  hurled to feed the immortals: like vultures they feast upon it  delighting in the  ambrosial juices of its passion and pain.  then it shuts; the seas slide back 2. from the bottom of a pool, stillness of the  reeling stars stare back: grasses lean closer  grazing past infinite  spaces: swishing sibilance in silence  stoops 3. that long long path who has trodden it? may be an animal following the scent nosing out a trail... a path that runs through  no man's land: rough-hewn scarred, in a fight with itself  with shadows that trespass it endanger its solitude... A path that runs over  moors and into the woods,  towards disentangling spaces  it meanders all day, at night,  over a creek it dips, listens... reposing at last on the woof and  warp of unraveling silence

Trying to glean scraps of reality from hunks of false news which hits one's WhatsApp account is a task for those with ample curiosity and a huge chunk of time  at their disposal. Even though over the  years I have become quite apt at separating the one from the other, the need to be corroborated by those whose full-time job is precisely that remains acute. By and by, I have succeeded in narrowing down a couple of trustworthy fact-check engines which claim to have their professional research teams dedicated to such matters of no importance. Lately however, it is AI who has been jostling to be the first responder to most of my Google quests. One such reel doing the WhatsApp rounds revolved around an artist called Madhav hailing from a poor village in Odisha. By the stroke of his brush and latent passion Madhav achieved the impossible: he turned his sleepy depressed village into a vibrant stretch of unique artworks, attracting thousands of tourists. In no time, tourism brought pr...