Hindukush Ojha

Hindukush Ojha Poems

The Best Poem Of Hindukush Ojha

Ah! Nainital

Why Nainital,
And not any other place?
How can one differentiate…
What landmark, signature,
Ambience or a grace
Would you need to recognize her face?

Like old friends, who after many years
If perchance, they walk up to me
Ought be recognized, in their newer wrinkles
With graying hair and doubling chins.
Their movements imperceptibly slower perhaps…
For now their age is catching up.

But a flair and a style yet remain
And that makes them exactly,
Just what they are.
And, of course in their unchanging smiles
Where the soul's happiness is shown awhile...
And one such smile, within my mind:
An extravaganza called Nainital!

From a wooded ridge a raven alights-
Wildly flapping its wings to stabilize,
Like a floppy black dot of a damaged kite…
Catching currents of hot air above the Cheena peak,
It soon reaches very high
And what does it spy?

So fresh and green,
A giant, shimmering, translucent
Magical bean!
But magnify, this shimmer, to a larger scale,
What hides behind
This fluidic sheen:
The watery expanse of the Naini lake.

Nainital: serene- unobtrusive,
Which, the towns denizens-munificent, barely notice,
Trapped...eternally as holidaymakers,
A happy carefree life they lead,
Of a grand perpetual vacation...
A daily life of the God's indeed!
Overhead dances, our lonely raven
In gales of breeze,
Above this heaven!

Constantly loaded with many visitors...
Climbed who have, with ruddy cheeks-
As pilgrims, up to the far hill tops
Or driven inside- old diesel jeeps.
Their host's bungalows- oh! so old
Where an aging -fading, décor shows,
With cats and mats and cacti pots,
And climbing plants, upon the walls…

In their sitting rooms, loose curtains fly,
At the bay windows, owing to a day time breeze
From the lake below, up the wooded hills
In this hovercraft... high up they float!
Here, a chit chat of an easy domesticity,
Go hand in hand with cuppas tea,
Before it can be sipped-
Blown into, with pursed lips-
Spurts of breath, to lower the heat…

And plates with home made
Potato chips
Are shown round, to the many guests...
And, cut up and dried, on the corrugated tin
Over porches, in surplus, are these processed!
Under, clear blue skies sun kissed
And blessed by Gods own will...
(So much, for old Uncle Chips! !)

In this tin roof porch abuts... an odd chestnut tree
With white flowers and tough green leaves
Where a sad blackened face and a ropelike tail,
May be captured, in moments of a thudding frenzy...
And lo and behold: a leaping langur!

In the evenings the window panes
Shimmer like flames,
Upon the hills gone black
Reflecting back,
Countless setting suns
While back to its nest, the raven returns
And another day, eventually ends,
While a soothing breeze from the quiet hills-
Pervades this idyllic existence.

It can energize some sleepy people
And disturb the lake's calm surface...
Where a quiet gentle rolling,
With frothy ripples can be heard and seen.
Or, a whiff of something like a flower scent
A woman's perfume, or the town's essence,
Or of dinner pots steaming inside kitchens.

And then the night lights... in a final glory,
Like a city's lights approaching from a landing plane...
Suddenly lurch up from the depths of the lake
And the town resembles a bejeweled dame!

She mulls seductively over what she should wear
With a bored look into her jewel box:
Satin lined in blue and black
Where scintillate her diamonds and pearls...
And peak her a boo, sapphires and rubies
Oh! Such a tease,
And there on her face: a supercilious crease!

The poor boatmen in rowing their loads
Upon the lake's satin look grey and old,
With a sweaty smell they moor their boats
Like wooden hyacinths, under the willows...
With colourful cushions of blues and yellows
With each pulse of the lake, they gently bob
In silence, above its treasures -ephemeral.

Small woods of oak -chestnut -deodar,
And lamp posts lined up in a proper measure
By the side of the streets, with a mist are covered
As the mute witnesses to a nightly ghost
Or to the illicit sujourns of a teenage boy,
Who has forded his hostel walls!

Or, to the foul mouthed ramblings, of an innocent drunkard,
Who looks comical, on a futile march:
Trying hard to walk in ruler straight lines
Upon a sloping, curvy path!
He falls and get up, and brushes his pants
To teeter up yet again, against the wall!

Now, the silhouette of a lonely woman,
Comes and goes, by a lit up window.
Many a time like a moth she is seen,
Flitting behind this flimsy screen.
Perhaps sleepless, she floats around
With saddening thoughts, that flow with the night.

These come and go in a rhythmic cadence
Of the cricket sounds, or of the lake's...
At this hour, she connects in thoughts
With her observer, at their respective chores:
He trudging uphill below lampposts,
She in the midst of growing snores.

A quaint water colour, with subtle shades
With a girliness that is yet to fade-
Like, most from Naini, of the fesher stocks
She looks pretty by the light of the day:
Intent knitting from colourful yarns,
For loved ones throughout the year,
Like hallmarks of her creative warmth,
Oversized sweaters, too large to wear!

The forest roads, the hair-pin bends,
With a signature smell of pony dung
Car- horns and fumes and a langur screech,
The inviting shade, of a chestnut tree...
And, water- tanks painted green-
Fed by pipes, affixed to the hills,
Where curious kids stick an ear,
To hear the water gush within!

The happy maples line up the mall,
Where once the British alone walked so tall,
With shops selling bric a brac
And an ebonite flute, raven -black
Emits a sound so beautifully harsh,
In harmony with the musician's breath!

Like the young lass on a Yardley tin
In a chestnut bloom, so soft and pink
Up to May time from the early spring
Just a sprinkle up of this magical talc
And, it is a heaven here in Nainital!

Whereas, the plains below
Like Dante's Inferno,
Like hell - make writhe mortal souls…
There is a better place
Where, ravens fly, in currents that guide
While cawing into musical scales.

Why Nainital, not any other place?
How can one differentiate…
What landmark, signature
Ambience, or a grace
Would you need to
Recognize her face?

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