Tuesday 22 March 2016

this melancholic city

 


This city weeps ambers, spewing fire and fatigue all around its girth on children dancing, swallowing, slowly fire, burning mosques, raping government building, wearing their wary eyes thin with tears for their lost mothers.


Old saintly street lamps pondering over busy streets going straight not looking right or left where you just crash into a wall and set up a tent, crying and claiming prophecies, at night bright with ideas, but all alone.


Absconding, in beds bunkers boxes hiding and running emotions on roads scared screaming for azadi and revolutions in the name of holy Marx and mother of gods, forgetting to shave pubes and to pee before a crammed fuck, all the while remembering a lover no longer there.


Weather violating rational logic coming down in buckets otherwise empty in anticipation or from a heat stroke, but not like blue Stuti's face, freckled from men who forgot umbrellas or condoms or jackets or raincoats or promises or passions or wore tuxedos instead when she rained.



From Parliament street to Akshardham, burning gasoline. From the tombs of Mughals to libraries of Ambedkar and Gandhi, burning gasoline. Through Connaught place via Africa Avenue, burning gasoline. From the erection of Aibak to the cunt of Lutyen, burning gasoline. From the menacing malls of NCR to the dull shops smelling of kerosene in Khirki village, burning gasoline. From central dilli to trans Yamuna, burning gasoline. On flyovers, in DDA colonies, around parks, through take-aways and 24*7s burning gasoline. Burning gasoline through the night, through dusk, dawn and after noon, when no one, no one can tell you where is it that you have to go.


Believers in Burger King and Baba Ramdev's brand of spiritual maggi noodles and enlightened Fast Moving Consumer Goods, hogging women and children and men and transsexuals in the name of rape and god, feeding flocks to fractal factories of moksha and cosmos. 


Mandir of Ram and mosques of Mohammed distributing ideological weapons to legitimize wars and Churches of Christ crooning compassion for a token fee of faith and land like advance booking realtors of heavenly studio apartments, pimping angelic nymphs by dozens, conquering minds but, defeating humans.


Pill popping virgins and motherly rapists of baby girls, depraved decayed daddies of doing democracy and development from behind all the while, talking of the Divine Grace and the art of breathing in and out during intercourse, to prevent ejaculation before everything is done.


Smoking marijuana and popping LSD, lost in the labyrinth of mystic knowledge and psychedelic trance, rambling of post-modern, post-fathom, post-rock and post prior to present or past, munching munches, moving to moves and elating to grey bearded saintly stoners till the last pass, and then having trouble coping with reality.


People moving around central, markets munching momos mortified mothers mumbling, magical threats to their kids, waging war for Pokémon or attention, in gas stations, for renewing vigor past the weekend.


Rushing from home to office, and rushing to rush back again after having rushed back home, on a Monday, on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday, on a Thursday, on a Friday, on a Saturday, even though it was supposed to be an off, be a date, be a dinner, be a drinker or whatever the fuck.


In Hauz Khas village, smoking cigarettes. In Palam Vihar, smoking cigarettes. On Anand parbat, smoking cigarettes. From metro stations to meeting places, smoking cigarettes. From orgasm to foreplay, smoking cigarettes. From protests to police stations, smoking cigarettes. Getting bored, smoking cigarettes. Waiting to smoke, smoking cigarettes. Behind my mother's back, smoking cigarettes. In the morning, trying to take a dump, smoking cigarettes. From his lips to mine, smoking cigarettes. From her lips to mine, smoking cigarettes.  Smoking cigarettes and just smoking cigarettes.



Dear followers of Heraclitus, your city, doused in melancholy, is a dead museum of memories, surviving between living and dying, remembering the lonesome Pandavas, the experimenting Tughlaqs, the raids of Taimur, the songs of sufis, the taste of freedom and the pillage for Gandhi.

Dear followers of Prince Siddhartha, your city, this Sisyphus of your history, insomniac and stoic, forever placed under an eternal Bodhi tree, runs on a convenient and quasi slacker doctrine of Madhyam marg.

Dear disciples of mystic spirituality mixed with a pinch of rationality, your city is dying, your city is pleading, your city, this colossal monument in the history of your frail memory, is begging you, is asking for just two words,

peace and harmony, 
peace and harmony, 
peace and harmony...

This poem was published in Cafe Dissensus


Tuesday 1 December 2015

गाड़ियाँ


कुछ गाड़ियाँ  ऊपर गई,
कुछ गाड़ियाँ नीचे आई,
कुछ और गाड़ियाँ ऊपर गई,
कुछ और गाडियाँ नीचे आई.
कुछ गाड़ियाँ किनारे की गली में घुस गई,
कुछ गाड़ियाँ साँय-साँय करती हुई सीधे निकल गयी. 


मैं उन सब गाड़ियों को दूर खड़ा देख रहा था, 
सोच रहा था, काश, इस मनहूसियत में कोईबदलाव आये,


एक के पीछे एक, दो गाड़ियाँ ठुक जाएँ,
कोई कमअक्ल, जल्दबाज़ी में एक गाडी के निचे आ जाए,
कोई बिदका हुआ कुत्ता, मुल्ला या पण्डा अचानक से यहाँ खड़े कमक्कालों के खून का प्यासा हो जाए,
दो गाड़ीवाले, लड़ते लड़ते, एक दूसरे के सीनों को, अपनी बाप की बंदूकों से काली छन्नी बना दें,
दूर खड़ा वह ठुल्ला बिना वजह, पास खड़े भिकारी का सर खोल दे,
कहीं दूर से आता Indian Oil का वह टैंकर, एक धमाके के साथ सबकी तेल बनने की प्रक्रिया शुरू कर दे. 


हाँ, वो नहीं आई,
और अब शायद आएगी भी नहीं.    

Friday 13 November 2015

The expanding Universe


Butterfly Nebula
Source: Hubblesite.org


Amoeba: a single celled organism.
Cerebral Cortex: Outer layer of the brain, plays vital role in memory storing.
The Creation of Adam: is a fresco painting by Michelangelo, which forms part of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.
Centrifugal inertial reaction: a force that appears to act on all revolving objects , drawing them away from the axis. It is the reason for the formation of waves in the ocean.
Zeno's paradox: In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.


The Universe is expanding since Big Bang.




The Universe is expanding and,
galaxies filled with stars, planets, matter and us,
have been hurtling outwards at an incomprehensible speed.

Like scent, diffusing in all directions,

like the contours of an Amoeba,
with no rational logic,
without us noticing, 
the Universe has been expanding.


NASA's estimate places the figure at 46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles per second,

but I, somehow felt that it was quite an underestimation
as I walked your street again after those four awkwardly silent years.

The houses lining your street and the cars outlining them seemed to have moved further back since I last visited.


That badminton court at the corner and the park opposite it seemed to have acquired new dimensions. 


The trees, the electricity poles, the garden hedges and even those rugged white stripes on that only and annoying speed-breaker seemed to be further apart than ever,


just like us. 



I won't heap the newly discovered vastness of Noida Sector 48, Pocket 4,



         on the immensely heavy ocean of longing in my heart,
or,

on the inevitable errors and upsets of the memory storing neurons in my Cerebral Cortex,
or,

on the fact that every time I visited you, things somehow got crammed in my pants,
or that my heart was always in my mouth trying to jump out and enter yours.


No, I will reason logically and make the widely acceptable scientific phenomenon accountable for the increase in square meters of your block,

the Universe is expanding.

Could it be, 


that our  words, promises and our confessions,diluted as they traversed this space oddity to reach our feeble ears and got incoherent? 


That your goodbye, to reach me took four years and now my don't go will take another eight and your reply 16? 


That when every time I left your place it took me more and more time to come back, till I was so far away that I could not locate you anymore? 


That as you waited for me to come back, you went further and further away to a place from where you couldn't see me, feel me? 


That all the time we were together, we barely managed to keep our hands clasped in a wildly swirling universe and now have become the gap in The Creation of Adam that can never be filled?



Just like,


every time the body grows and separates the heart and the head further,

every time the centrifugal inertial reaction due to Earth's rotation sends a part of the ocean crashing into the shore; never to be its own again,
every time Achilles runs faster Zeno moves the tortoise further away,
every time the craving is so much that the craved becomes irrelevant,
every time this sum total of archaic carbon atoms executes free will to harm itself,


we never knew that while we played spoons leaving no space between us, we were being flung apart at 46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles per second because, 

the Universe was expanding...