The Encyclopedia

I read the “The Bangle Sellers”.
Then in the encyclopedia
I read about Sarojini Naidu,
and then I read about her brother
who was part of the Berlin Committee
and who was executed on Stalin’s orders.

And then I read about
Hindu German Conspiracy,
Ghadar Party,
Christmas Day Plot.

And then I read about
Rashbehari Bose and Bagha Jatin -
men who battled in ways known only to men.

Those delicate, bright,
rainbow-tinted circles of light are all shattered
and strewn in the vacant grounds of temple fairs.

What anomaly it is to begin with a poem
and end up poring over revolutions and assassinations
and trials and executions and at last forgetting !

The Slave

I wait for sleep
to subdue my eyes
and overpower my mind
so that someone within me -
someone in me who is nicer than me,
less guileful than I am -
may fly about like a butterfly
and be petrified by nightmares
and be lost in their morbid alleys
letting out breathless screams
and later on be eaten up by terrifying lizards
and thus redeem all my lustful sins.

Like a feeble slave redeeming the crimes of his master
with each of the whips falling on his bare back.

A Sparrow

A sparrow came and ate the illegible words
I scribbled on the borders of a newspaper.
As if they were grains of wheat.

Only when it flew away
and I became alone again
did I know that it was the corpse of my childhood
that flew back to me to gather its unrequited dreams.

History

Who are poets
but chroniclers of birds
and the way they fly.

Standing atop a peak,
a poet watches a bird, an eagle,
and see how it flies,
how it preys,
what colored sun rays lifts it to air.
Like a historian standing atop time
and watching a man, a nationalist,
and see how he revolts,
how he becomes a prey,
what colored bullets lifts him to air.

A poet watches a bird, an eagle,
swirling down
as if it is a piece of brown silk
and wonders about it.
That bird and its charming movement
in the cloudless sky are forgotten,
but the poet’s wonderment remains
like the memory of a soap bubble.

A chronicler watches a man, a nationalist,
swirling down
as if he is a falling flag
and fantasy about him.
That man and his dreams
about a greater reality are forgotten,
but the chronicler’s fantasy remains
like the memory of a childhood dream.

Defeat

Yesterday
my mother asked me –
Why do you act so strangely
as if you are different from others?

And for the first time I understood
why she hates me so much -
what she dreamed of was someone who is not different,
someone who do not have her own handicap.

Being incapable to overpower her genetic trait for being different
I have become the failed attempt of a woman
to overcome her own miserable fate.