Kanaka Ha Ma

She catwalks, noiseless,
Stealthily laps up some milk
Slumps on the threshold
Baring her body
To the white rod of a sunray
Archly licks her face
Sleep still clinging to the corner of her eye,
Languidly stretches.
When you try to catch her, you only
Graze the tip of her bushy tail
Or sometimes, maybe an ear lobe.
How she slips away, the coquette.

Must catch her today
Enfold her whole being
Ensconce her on my lap
Caress her sleek fur
Lull her to sleep.
...

Scrubbed hands, feet, face
And went to bed —
A small feather on the bed
Picked it up gently
Hands still damp

Small downy feather
Poised on fingertip
Feather of a baby sparrow

Tucked it inside the pages of a book,
Tenderly closed it.
Now the page is wet too.

Tomorrow morning
It will not multiply
As it once did
...

Tell me, how can a brocade sari
without an embellished border
be beautiful?
Isn't it the border that carries,
with the susurus of pleats,
the imperious swathe of body and pallu?

Flowers, creepers, mangoes, grape-clusters, temples, peacocks …
the body, a sea of dreams
the pallu, a night sky.
But it is the quivering earth-edged border
that takes the breath away.
A simple-bordered sari without body or pallu
like the artless mirth of a woman unadorned.

Were she to turn around,
she'd be a serpent-streak across the fence,
here one moment and gone the next.

Hint of foot, radiant flicker of toe beneath border,
her gait, a shimmer of mehendi.

Try as you might to unravel this sari -
game of dice darting between its folds -
it will not yield the secret of its infinitude.

Of course, brocades are necessary to enhance the allure
of lovely women.
And to pin down the vagrant stars and moon
a beguiling sari is all you need.
Yes, we must learn to resist its seductions
but here anyway is a tip:
in today's world, civilized folk are advised to attach
a matching ‘fall' to safeguard their borders.
...

The body is a walking home with a mind
Within it live my parents-grandparents-great-grandparents …
Eve and Adam …
Their parents
Germ of the divine
Into every chromosome
Are transferred
Ancestral memories of mind and body

Suffused with the past
I walk ahead
I have all inside me
I am inside all
...

Don't disbelieve omens
Omens are clues
Warnings from the soil

Shrivelling up again and again,
Dying even as they sprout —
A broken clay lamp,
A discarded puppet, suffocated in its own swaddling,
A neglected devi in the corner of a village, unworshipped, wrathful
A series of nightmares.

The residue of past karma
Or this life's folly —
Torment churning ceaselessly in a whirlpool —
Finally ends.
Next morning,
Sunshine

The clues connect —
A line of a poem read somewhere
Two birds flying in the sky
Sparrows nesting in a loft
The odour of neelanjana, always burning
The creeper in the backyard, flowering …
...

I am like a pond in the forest at this very moment
Full, embracing the earth
Dense loneliness, like murmuring trees, conceal me
From sky, sun, moon, elements.
Thoughts are birds and animals
That come to drink me.
I seize this loneliness, adamantine and white like snow, and say,
Talk to me ... talk to me

Before
the rays of the immeasurable one
touch me
Before
dawn enters the silent valley
...

Just another night, that's me
Lying on my left side
Pregnant with day
Dreams are stars, constellations, galaxies …
My entire body, the banal biography of earth
I turn over on my right and rise —
An eastern dawn
Unfurls,
Luminous as the flower
Of Padmanabha's navel
...

I cannot laugh any more
My face is distorted when I do
I cannot bear the image glimpsed in the heart's mirror
So I must not laugh any more
In this time and place, seemingly different,
One must wear
A moronic mask
A serious face, as if deep in thought

I have forgotten those days of unprovoked giggles
At sound and silence, day and night
The whispers, hysterical laughter,
streaming tears of glee -
Whose laughter was that?
I have known the enchantment of that mirth

On the pavement, beach, at functions, seminars,
When chastised, when challenged,
In private, in public
Exploding with merriment, and content

Lassoing the whole world with laughter -
It wasn't a lie

Don't grieve for this
This laughter,
Foam on beer.
It has dissolved
So I cannot laugh any more.

But if laughter is mandatory,
Instantly peel off
This moronic mask
A serious face, as if deep in thought
And slyly don
Just as moronic an equivalent -
The polite grimace.
...