I was in the bus
Alone
At peace with myself
My mother, am sure must have been waiting like every evening
At the place the bus drops me
This morning, like most
my father and I were chatting
regular things
my eyes moving back and forth at the speeding traffic
Last evening, dinner must have been set for me
the smells of agarbathi and food, mixed in essence
My parents must be waiting to start that conversation
we left unfinished... again
I am on this rubber mat now
Immobile
I can see my mother
crying.. dried up tears
Father is stoic
I cannot talk much
Nothing in fact
I was in the bus
beside the driver
when pain hit me sharply
blinding
Unspoken words to mother and father
Echoing through the shattering glass
As I lay on this rubber mat
Rice on my lips
I can only hope
I will meet them
If not here
Elsewhere
I feel their pain
since i cannot, mine.
.............................for Revathy, a colleague who left us last evening while going back home from work...

Alone

The tears have stopped.
Conversations end abruptly
Like two strangers
Who meet and walk away.
The long wait for tomorrow
And the waiting from yesterday
It's a mob!
A drive
That half written verse
A useless song
The mob won't dissipate,Like
those road signs, ignored
And a crowd that has run amok.
My eyes stare inwards
At me
As the crowded mind
Runs like an old film reel

For that child who leaves home everyday..

As she sends me off
Like it is another day
I hope she is hoping I will be back
Amma...
I hope you are:
Who knows...
As my eyes look into your waving distance
I am no longer certain I will....

where i live by the vast sea

First I prepare
tentatively tapping my feet
on the sand that the sea left
dripping wet
my little toes dig a little
squat:
my little fingers dig deep
dragging lumps of sand out
there is treasure beneath
i'll build my house over them...
broken shells, my little dreams.
shape it with my palm
imprints of desire
that first home I built
with my palm
is where I live
by the vast sea

mine

Incredible!

a blank moment
not vacant.

by the window

while the horizon paints

by my side

sound asleep
unmindful of its own presence.

this moment flows out 

Then

back inside me
secretly - so i will not stall

this moment,

mine,

tells me

again and again

that I am.

summit

shravanabelagola
a few years back;
the hill surrounded by a town, a lake, a few more:

am on this step
just a step
some step
tired, unstable with vertigo
the laborious climb,
thirsty ...
no count of the numbers I left behind
nor the ones to the top
the monolith beckons

the palki seems the easy way
someone else carrying my pain and his

the knees give up.
for now this step is-
acceptance, acknowledgement, joy, achievement
and beauty.
the pain a score of
the hills i can count,
the wind i can breathe
the happiness of my weak knees when they rest

the summit and the monolith
shall wait
till this moment has decided to give way to its next view

dance of the goddess

She's sitting there
Waiting for her men to assemble
Muscles tightly woven under their skin
Holding their drums, cymbals,
Sweating.
She's waiting- watching them
Waiting to relinquish her burdensome posture
The anger waiting to erupt
And satiate itself in the violence from within
As she began to grind her toes to the...
Impatiently slow rhythm of the first notes
I watch her, looking fervently at the eyes of her men
To raise her out of the stoic.
A note here, another there,
A little to tease her and then a little more
The men have made her angry or was it her asking for more?
With one beat, she's undone her hair that falls like dark rain to her hips
One leg lifts to thump so hard on the rhinestone
That her anklets break into a million pieces
She is swirling in abandon
Anger or is it the sudden freedom from burden
She sways mindless of her goddessesness
Mindless of how the world stood shaken...