Volume 1 : Issue 2
ISSN: 2454-9495
Bhopal Now
My baby sleeps
Dreaming of Wonderland.
My boy and girl weep
Cramped by burning pain
My mother-in-law keeps vigil,
Waving a weary fan
To soothe their dewy dampness,
Pushing back a wispy strand
From her bleary eyes,
Flinching from their fiery itch.
Her husband’s ashes have
Been mixed with my
Husband’s, in water that
Races like death’s own chariot,
Galloping through the City
Having surfaced from earth’s
Bowels where it has churned
Through our well waters
And now invites the clouds
To join in this invidious war
Against a defenceless city
A reminder of that cloud which
Seeped into our unwary waking dreams
One December night
Contaminating my baby’s
Dreams of Wonderland
Forever.
Crepuscular:
The Urbanized Prowler
Hush…this is the magic moment
When the Merchant City sleeps
As my father’s raiment
Of wondrous wings sweep
Over stone tenements -
Scouring diurnal nests
Inspecting vacant lots
For a delectable feast
His spring clutch awaits.
My mother awoke to life
In the scooped cove
Of a hoary oak
From where she learnt to roam
Till my father swooped
Down one night,
Won by the bonnie
Beauty of her flight
His queen of tawny owldom.
And I was born one spring
In the intersctices of stone
The last sibling
Who has never felt alone.
And though I was the last
And the smallest
Of the nest
Five years ago
I knew I was best.
My parents were agitated
When one night they heard
That New Wynd would be lighted -
Against nocturnal birds
In a festival of radiance
That would keep the folk awake
Festooned with brilliance
Right upto daybreak.
How would the tawny race
Survive to soar and see -
With this torment they now faced
With nervous clarity.
But once the green florousent lights
Were zigzagged on our wall
I realized I was crepuscular as well
As being nocturnal
A special bird in flight
At dawn and twilight
And ready for the night.
So when the city is still and sleeps
I’m ready for my thrill and leaps!
The Meeting Point
- MOHONA[1] -
Here by a reflective river
Reminiscing on a boat building past
The turquoise hull of Buena Vista[2]
Stands still, its journeys over.
Here I am a heron taking flight
On a wing of fancy
Able to dream of a riverine terrain[3]
And conjure a mohona
Of meetings the boats once intended.
Here where discarded columns
And supportive concrete arms
Hold back bridges and roads
Letting echoes swirl around
Of traffic above and footsteps below,
I am a swan in a quartet
Waddling with my tribe
Across the empty road
To the weaving river
To wade as dawn breaks,
Offering silent prayers
In ablutions I have seen
Performed by millions
In another mohona.[4]
Here where cars sneak in
To stay parked away from
The magpie eye of traffic wardens,
I emerge - the urbanised seagull
Uncertainly approaching the motorised
Milieu, hoping to find a break
In the flow, to rush across the road
My wings forgotten,
The ‘WAIT’ button – an unlearnt language,
A flown-in customer
From a mohona,
Waiting to embrace this generous Space
As the Pride of the Clyde[5]glides by
Watched by the city and the migrant me.
________________[1] A confluence of rivers, or a river with the sea. Here it signifies Glasgow’s link with the world in her boat building days, during the Empire, and the migrations that have happened as result of its globalised status then, and the effects of it today.
Urban Gothic of the Second World War
The lights go out on Southwark Street
The blackout is now complete
Cars with muffled beams crawl past
Phantom shapes that grope and gasp.
In this stone forest of silhouettes
The wan moon swoons in pirouettes
Round rotting trees and wasted Heath
Its symphony, a dance of death.
There will be dancing on the streets
Once bombs create primordial piles
And girls from factories’ smart retreats
Will click red shoes in rhythmic style
A ghost army marching in, to a soundless Doric tune
Will partner each dancing dream, unfolding beneath the moon.
Wall in > Wall out
Do good walls make good neighbours?
And what is good about walls unless
They belong to my home
And cocoon me in against the elements,
Keeping me storm-free or unscorched,
Blanketed and private –
A space for me with my family,
Walls that stand between dignity
And life on the pavement.
But stand them up to embody
The shadow line of a political border
Something that signifies the Other
As the intruder -
Walls that form the rampart
Of empire, of cold war, of occupation –
And create the enemy
Who is shut out, and cannot,
And definitely, should not impregnate it,
Shell it, crack it or cross it
Even if his brother lives
Or his farmland lies, or his mother’s grave,
And his fishing river and playmate tree
Exist beyond what he must see
As the territory of his enemy.
So while walls shut out
Suicide bombers, harvesters, employees
Of the starving free, they shut in
The waller who cements fear
In brick and stone, in suspicion born
Of segregation that grows
Without association with the Other -
The unknown face of the foe
Which, if he had known
Could remove walls from minds
Discovering bonds in human kind
Instead of building terror zones.
[2] An old container ship, waiting to be scrapped.
[3] The Bay of Bengal with its ever changing waterways at the mercy of the tide which brings the salt water in and submerges landscapes in moments.
[4] Through the centuries, thousands of devotees have stood waist deep in water and ushered in the dawn every morning at Prayag, the holy confluence of the Ganga, Jamuna and the mythical river, Saraswati in the north Himalayan plains.
[5] A tourist boat that plies regularly on the river.