Phoenix

A forbidden story of stolen glances,
An unforgivable rebellion of stealthily-read books,
A chastened regret of lost chances,
An acquiesced voice to silencing looks.

Shrewdly smothered, the wondering murmurs of curiosity,
To eradicate any latent buds of tabooed propensity.
Then a flood of demarcating constraints of acceptability,
Like Seeta's limiting line of fire, stepping out - an impossibility.

Her veiled face, an attempt to portray lack of inquisitiveness,
The burning need within those sheaths of blurring vision.
Lessons learnt with submissiveness,
To add salt and spices with astute precision.

Pilfered hours of mutinous indulgence,
Of ventures into untrodden paths,
The intoxication of self-discovery,
Ushering in divine depths of intelligence.

Centuries of such similar chronicles later,
She rises up from her ashes like a phoenix.
Yet even after countless strides of triumphant conquests,
The world still seeks to be her violator.

Hand in Hand

rising sun,
chirping feathers,
a vernal home in unconscious beatitude.

two young hands
clasped in one another,
their footprints side by side,
carefree, vibrant and spirited,
their imprints resolute,
their love unbending.

zenith of noon time light,
a rustle of flapping wings,
sanguine house wrapped in domesticity.

of busied hands in toil,
of a tiny hand in loving care.
of scampering toddler feet observed with glee,
of a growing up of three.

setting sun,
shadowed silhouettes in twilight,
a greying home reclining into its enveloping foliage.

of graduation caps and gowns,
of tempers, tantrums and turmoils,
of certificates endorsing achievements.
of fiery proud moments,
of august, gratified faces.

surfacing moon,
twinkling darkness escorts in silence,
the little old home smiles in toothless charm.

two ancient hands
clasped in one another,
their veteran footprints side by side,
each supporting the other,
their imprints, perchance not so firm,
But their love unbending as ever.

Veil of grey

Whispering shades of grey,
Clouding reason in blinding layers.
Misleading whispers wafting in and around,
Right and wrong, truth and lies,
Gnawing into each other, self-extinguishing.

The melody of honesty disperses into the night sky,
Fragmenting itself into a cacophony of deceit.
Budding blooms of pristine innocence,
Trodden upon, wiped out purposefully and wholly,
To be clothed in murky curtains of grey henceforth.

The universal cloak of pretense,
That which is woven with the fabric of deception,
Spouting falsity with the ease of breath,
The narcissistic cloth has ingrained itself into skin.
Pretentious face and I, now blindingly one and the same.

Transience

Withered petals of yesterday's bloom,
I'm no longer a nascent bud now,
Nor a floret in its full splendour,
I lie on the ground in spent glory...

While young and resplendent,
My loveliness admired,
My fragrance smelt in content,
My ephemeral hour of exaltation.

But time purloined my season,
Brought with it tempestuous breeze,
I could no longer stand to reason,
My life's cycle brought to a dismal cease.

Random thoughts at the airport boarding lounge...

A milieu of disquiet and edginess,
Footsteps echoing of purpose some,
Others of serendipitous expedition.
Destinations myriad, but for now, all together.

Few faces betraying anxiety,
Few others casual boredom out of monotony,
Some others revealing blatant curiosity,
Their curiosity bordering on the insolent...

Occasionally resonant voices make disclosures,
Some then get up and leave to the gates,
And though strangers they are to me,
I knew them for some time, while we waited...

Transient strangers, all so differing from each other,
Yet all so alike in their reason for being there...
Some alike in going, some in coming,
The rest alike in earning their living.

Young and old,
The businessman and the teacher,
The oppressor and the oppressed,
The tyrant and the benevolent...

Yes, they were all there.
All of us bound together temporarily,
Whether we wanted to or not.
And though strangers they were to me,
I knew them for some time, while we waited...

Survival

An enclosed alcove, a vaulted tomb,
Our imprisoned asylum under the earth.
While over our heads bullets rang,
Our Sun was but a square patch atop the wall.

Inside our confining sepulcher,
Reeking of every foul and putrid odour,
We waited, hoping and praying,
Praying for a release from this implacable torture.

Some even took to ingratiating themselves
With those heinous soldiers in uniform,
Those brutal monsters who came once in a day,
To keep a count of the dead and the alive.

Many a time silence was all I could hear,
I try to remember vainly what the colour of my eyes was,
Now the smell of wet mud after the first showers,
Is but a distant recollection, an obscure dream.
And sometimes, not even that.

People I know and people I did not know,
Gave up hope and died, while I kept breathing.
Days, weeks, months, years??? I do not know.
The rest of us kept waiting,
While the war overhead raged on and on relentlessly.

One day, someday, many full-moons later, I assume,
We were pulled out, along with the rotting carcasses,
The light blinded me, and I staggered, disoriented.
Then I stood up on my legs, and remember hearing a shot,
And then there was nothing. Black. Void. Non-being. Extinct.

Fear

It blankets me in a shroud of doubt,

Like a dense, impenetrable fog it blinds me,

It takes away all reason and coherence,

Fear is something I fear...

It makes me feel as though

All that I knew to be so infallibly right,

To be so erroneous, all so fallacious,

As if they were nothing but

Misconstrued fabrications of my mind.

It clogs my faculty of lucid thought,

And leaves me in obscuring qualm.

When caught in the perilous snare of fear,

I know nothing, and am sure about nothing.

Leap of Faith

Falling curtains, closing doors,
Dispersed molecules of affable pandemonium,
Pushed back, further away into my impalpable past,
And I stare into that dark nothingness.

Time stood still within me,
Every second loitering with deliberate slackness,
While around and outside of me,
The world and its beings moved in fast-forward.

And then I tore me eyes away...
Away from that ineffectual, elapsed ago,
I looked around me now, at this moment,
And the world smiled at me.

I stepped forward into real time,
And open doors of smiling faces invited me,
Curtains of countless opportunities lift ahead of me,
All it took was just another leap of faith...

An echo from yesterday

A blink of a second,

An ocean of memories,

An echo of laughter,

Happy faces, frozen in time.

Inane chatter, idle merriment,

Shadows in mischief,

Pillars in grief,

Moments consumed in time.

In a blink of a second,

Everything shrinks into the bygone

Now mere vestiges remain,

Of what once used to be...