For my cheriamma —

You were not born her mother,

yet you held her like one.

Two sisters, sharing breath and days,

turning girlhood into shelter.

You stood beside her from the first step,

steady as shade in afternoon light.

In loving her, you loved us all—

a quiet, lifelong vow between sisters.

January 1, 2025

The year has begun interestingly

A few mirrors broke this morning. 

They did not shatter

Just announced 

Their breaking, with a chip

Telling me, you can still see

But it's broken

While decluttering the home

A book

Fell off the shelf

Called itself 

"Love for imperfect things"

The finger bled

From trying to pick glass, that is

Till I no longer gave it permission to.

Handiplast:

I discovered

Kitaro

As the mid morning

January 1 breeze

Entered 

Unopened windows 

January 1, 2025

rooms

I have sat inside this dark room, facing the window that opens to a sunlit world.

I could see;

The outside

Couldn't, me.

The thing about dark rooms

Is that vision clarifies

From the outside

It is  a dark lifeless room

From the inside

I see the world's untold

And unspoken

Authenticity

When I walk out of this room

I will have the wisdom 

Of my darkness

See you all in my part of the sun lit world

2025.

Twenty three years ago, i ploughed through everything single waking hour thinking, that after that days struggle, i will have set everything right, that the next morning will let me fly. Yet that next morning and everyone after that was like the one before.

benaras 2024

At benaras 

My agent gave away plates of breakfast to the sadhus and beggars. One entitled Brahman in my group questioned it. And then that sadhu gave his one plate to several other beghars as they share it.

A photo would demean their dignity.

A photo of my Brahman co traveller would demean mine.

A moment of deep sadness.

I spent a few moments watching bodies burn at the manikarnika ghat. Alone on the boat with the boatman, who seemed to have normalised lying lifeless on a dirty ghat.The women on my trip largely Brahman women and some lingayat women asked me why I was not travelling with my "yajman" their term for husband, and from interpretations of the language "yajman" means that, "owner". And while I responded saying " I don't have one" , I laughed within saying " now, that will be a new one, a yajman for me"!

Kashi, I am told will not let a woman do pind Daan. I shall go to gaya, where I will do it rightfully for my foremothers on their behalf. Well, I don't blame them, my more world wise mother still accuses other women of being divorced, if she could me, she would also. I can empathize that women are taught that they are helpless without the yajman 

I walked past the discrepit missionary home, 

Benaras feels like all those unwanted people recreating another life tucked away in broken mansions.

I enjoyed my boat ride 

I enjoyed the group of Muslim boys playing cricket and the sadhus keeping score.

The Siberian gulls will fly away next week.

my father's suitcase

Acha (father)

Writing to you as our day ends

March 22, 2024

And yours has begun

Onwards

To a distance

As I lay down

After your internally grieving wife

Finally purged her sorrow

Before falling asleep

I'm thinking of what to pack for you 

Like you always wished,

We put your wedding suit on for you

The ivory shirt and the soil brown suit 

Forgot your floral tie though

But form your journey onward. My father.

Let there be 

An abundance of love

No dearth of worldly travels 

A life that is light, may be flippant too

A box full of magic

A breath full of the ridiculous 

A page with bad grammar

May you travel light

In whatever universe you choose

Do carry your courage

And the will to live

But light.. light 

looks like...

There was once a woman who kept hearth...

The blue windows opened outwards

And she unfurled....

wish for my son, written in bits

I'd like you to have a million million friends. 

And for you to make them 

by giving unconditional love when you encounter them, 

but 

without losing yourself

That, there are only friends and friends

Where you give some in some 

and some more in some 

and a little some in some

And that these friends fill your heart with a lightness that your heart needs

Like the feathers of a bird in flight

To kiss her in her cheeks 

as if she, 

life that is, and you are falling in love

A second time.

The first time is always awkward

Kissing that which we love, the first time is awkward

The second time, we can tease a bit more

The riotous clamour

Between our silences

nothing

When water bodies breach 

Debris float

And then meander towards the  

already choked manhole;

My debris

needs to be picked:

After my son leaves home..

to the man-my son

Your father found for us

A Pakistani Doctor

in plush London

Who told us plainly

that you were coming..

I knew, it is you

I cannot recall

our first response

Together, we did not know

he knew his and I did mine.

It was overwhelming

Till your ammamma

Told me she hit a lottery

with the gold locket at the Krishna temple

That same morning..

I knew it is you

It is eighteen.

you chose me to

carry you

that he chose to be the partner soul

Our job together done forever and yet

not

Son,

As you become a man:

own every bit of you

the light, the shadows

run from none

Cry for what the heart calls

Laugh when your soul sings

Create when your eyes see

Love all that touches you

and does not - reach out

Your world

is a gift

from two souls

who promised the universe

you

The little pigtailed ones

would shout aunty! aunty!

till I showed up at my verandah

How old are you aunty?

sixteen!

But you have greying hair

no, but my mother also made her hair silver!

Aunty, will this flower become bigger?

Aunty, how many skips can you do without stopping?

Thousand!

How can you do thousand?

With just a click of my fingers

.....

My dear little ones,

I am not sixteen, but my heart is

My flowers don't bloom like a bud once did

But my soul blooms like the crone flowers

My hair - silver for the million moons I prayed to

I can skip through my thousand hurts and fears

my little ones...

One step at a time

sadness

Thought it was you

         The cause for my sadness

Your walking away that is.

         

This evening

With a little poetry

         In the undertones 

It is not you. 

        It is the loss of a time before you.

Of my collection of withered flowers

       Between leaves of sepia pages

The tenderness of my evening dreaminess

      And the radio playing to the stars

In my solitude, and languorous walks

With the mongrels following me

My music and my hidden diaries

My sadness is my loss of myself.

The old hair pin worked on that rusted lock.

The crack

Soaked with my colourless blood

It Refuses

To flow out.

Cannot dry

The marinade soaks the mutton in languorous pleasure
Hiding her from  the heat that will be

As the onion exults in her brown fragrance
Entwined in a polygamous union of
Cinnamon, cloves, fennel and ginger

the thought of how it will be
Or what it will become
Overwhelms.

The slow heat may just tell

Patchwork

Seamstress Wanted. 
  Expertise in Frankensteins
    Rag dolls 
      Quilts
Maybe carpets
  Silk shawls
Signed...
            Esteem

Possessed,
She toggles between
real and real
Memories of a fire continue to ravage melting old veins

Benevolent deep eyes
baring my tattered inside
Through the sheer.

Journeys inside the deepest mountains
Arduous lone sojourns
That a starry eyed
Child absorbs in awe, of this king

The stories leave a tightly shut casket
In a mist of deep blue
engulfs
Shocking her innocence
Seductively
What is to be lost
But the torn insides
Of a soul falling between  desert sand

Written somewhere in 2013

Talk, say, belong
its like walking forward
and retracing aimlessly
if i looked up, the vastness could engulf me
and i will lose what looking down
at my footprints will give me.
i play games with my mind
if this, then that, and then there
if there why not, why so...

Nine minutes
At twenty three fifty one

The sea wasn't ending:
Something for pereniality

At midnight, the toll charges
Would magically turn the day outward

a shutting tea shop,
spoon scooped castor sugar
Leftovers of a pastry
That meant nothing

Banal moments
Over a tea
And the lost nine minutes
At the bridge that was crossed too fast

Between lost sleep
Unspoken answers to unasked questions

Ah
Half written...