Lies

I was so confident that my lies

will withstand any onslaught of life.

But now I understand that I have crafted
them so poorly, with such flamboyance,
with such gaudiness,
that they won't withstand even the first wave of reality

not even the slimy worms of my own mind.

I should be more guileful and my lies less blazing
so that my otherwise unintelligent mind wouldn't notice it so easily.
Perhaps I should use more whispers to create them

than the trumpets of loud colors.
Perhaps I should tell them oftener to myself

so that my ears will mistake them for what they are supposed to be.

Otherwise I may succumb even before I get time to surrender.

Delhi

Delhi of Strife did not touch me
Perhaps I wasn't man enough for it
Perhaps because I am a man.

Now, my friend,
Let you find what I could not search there,
Let the city make love to you without its blankets,
Let it crush you with the iron weight of its ancient Emperors.

The Star Falling

It was aloud – the star falling.

When it reached almost above the tree top it burst like a balloon

And the deflated rubber swayed in the night wind like a feather

Before coming down to rest on the April earth.

The earth shook itself like a dog rising from a pond,

Splashing water all around it, beneath the tree.

It stood thinking for a few moments
And then walked away into the darkness.

Two wicker chairs

--

On my visits I never gifted him anything.
I knew that he needed nothing.

But last time father talked about books.

Shifting in the wicker chair, looking away, he told -

‘Those which used to please me earlier do not do so now’

He was half sad.

And I think half annoyed because they do not grow old with him.

I wish I gift him a book that will grow with him, forever and ever.

--

Time passes by
without bringing with it the change
that it had promised, or that I had misread from its cryptic scriptures.

As I wait here,
an old man in this wicker chair
staring at afternoons through the mangrove,
for Time to act as a clown and make me laugh
or as a tragic hero and make me weep sentimentally,

I hear it laugh at me
mocking me, without ever touching me.

And here I am, forever in front of it; like Tantalus.

The fox

My path curls back to myself

and I trot,

diffident, confused, silent,

around it, alongside it,

but always on its hazy edges

trying to figure out where it heads -

getting lost, losing track and regaining -

all with the wiliness foxes are born with.

Trying to trace it, and retrace it

from all hilltops

from all rock mounds

with my glassy animal eyes.

With them I seek to understand my footprints -

the silly, malicious footprints that only foxes leave behind.

The times I am not that fox are the wrong times,

escapades which I do not deserve;

my window frames are not that beautiful and not that sad

for they are etched in the foxiness of ill grown habits.

It is to this fox that I return to

and find myself again and again.

To write

To write

And then to strike it

Again and again
Until what is written is more than what is written

Until what cannot be written is safely buried - once again -

In the humid air of a lethargic Keralite mind.