Thursday, November 30, 2006

Going Bananas!


Standing in the middle of the street, Mr. Chaubeji had a banana ho,
Threw the banana peel right there, and set out in pomp and show!
But alas! He stepped on the peel and took a great fall,
His hat was undone, glasses shattered, “Oh my God!”, he gave a shrill call!

The banana peel mocked Chaubeji, saying, “Didn’t I say a banana could be fun?
For all the fools who throw peels on the street, may this lesson be a good one!”



[NOTE: The “ho” in the first line above was a desperate effort on my part to keep up the AA-BB rhyme-scheme!]

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Reborn



Words don’t suffice how thankful I am to have you as a Teacher. All good wishes to you on your birthday. Happy birthday Babuji!

~~~~~~~~~

From up there to here,
A journey predefined.
On your special day,
I have a special poem on my mind.


People come and people go,
Like scenes of a play or a matinee show.
Very few fit and get imprinted within,
My teacher, on your special day, let me replay that imprinted scene…

Birthdays come and birthdays go,
On one such birthday, I had a friend ho!
It was God’s way to send by my side,
A Teacher, a Philosopher and a Guide.

I could wish for you fame, money and fortune,
I could wish for you the sun, the stars and the moon.
But I know the best things I could ask for. The other things just don’t matter.
These do - May you change more lives for the better.
May you continue to be His instrument of love.
May you bring peace like a white dove.
They need you, our sisters and brothers.
May you keep finding more of yourself in helping others.

We are reborn everyday,
And find a new way.
My new way started in a classroom somewhere with you,
Settled on my mind like flowery dew.
I am thankful - The fact that you were born, that you are, makes me what I am, what I will be,
Dear Babuji…happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to thee.

Nov 29th…here you are…all happiness, no pain,
Reborn…never to die again.

~~~~~~~~~

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Words Stifled...


I don't know why we become busy,
Why all engagements make us dizzy,
All that was there gazes from far,
Looks to me like a dim, distant star,
On selfishness the mind delves,
Why do we keep running away from ourselves?

Silence serves a purpose they say,
But have we forgotten a shared way?
As we drift apart and look back at the start,
And try to fool the gullible heart,
Let us also remind ourselves of the long walks,
The simple sharing, laughter and the talks,
Oh, the things I want to still share with you,
And you might want to too...

Words stifled...silence is golden, that's what they say,
But words of friendship, of trust and love weren't fake anyway.
I've become poor, I don't know about you,
Well, in any case, words are very few...very few...very few...

Monday, November 20, 2006

To the Wet Woods


The frog croaks,
The cloud heaves.
The rain trickles down
The wet coconut leaves.

The jungle plays a tune,
The cricket sings along.
The firefly flies by with
A disturbed luminescence - barely strong.

Falling water, rustling trees,
An occasional thunderous lightning,
A scared toad and concerned insects -
Quite a natural thing.

The bubbly soil exudes a mesmerizing aroma,
The plantain leaves beam with sheen.
Rain in the woods - a harbinger of life
And all things - clean and green.

Flavors of Different Kinds


“You have got to take that boat ride – the flavor of Kerala…”, persisted my mind, even as I munched on golden tapioca chips with black seeds on their hubs, just a little soggy in the sultry afternoon humidity of Kottayam (the tropical backwater town in Kerala). A spatter of humid tapioca chips on the tongue and occasionally in uneasy crevices of teeth cavities. A flavor of Kerala in its own right. A different kind of flavor.

A seeker of flavors that I am, there I was, on the Kottayam boat jetty. My mind brimming with anticipation. Promises. Great Expectations. Expectations that made boats ships. Isolation company. Hell cooler. Expectation. A flavor of Kerala in its own right. A different kind of flavor.

Everyone on that boat was looking forward to something. The boat of life… or the absence of it? An obscure, wheatish man in a cream-white mundu (a piece of cloth wrapped around the abdomen by men in Kerala) right up at the edge of the first row of torn, uncomfortable seats, staring at the boat wood right above the ridged ship window, gauging the perimeter of the area at hand. Or trying to gauge it, for, he seemed more interested in the last puff of his cigarette butt that was dangling between his sooty lips. The last puff would automatically entitle him to the next cigarette – new, long and puffy – the one that was precariously dangling right above his right ear, ready to fall any minute. Like the restless kid on the lap of the lady sitting beside me – the lady who smelled of fresh jasmine and coconut oil – dangling precariously on her thighs, partly on her right and partly on her left, neither side completely his. Ready to fall any minute. Looking forward to a breezy journey that would relieve him of the Kottayam heat and lull him to blissful slumber.

The wheatish man, who had stains of black on his lips and on his mundu, was carrying the extra cigarette and his brush, his pencils and his ruler. Anybody could tell that he was a painter. A painter who looked forward to his next job. And his next puff. His next job that would buy him his next puff. He was twitchy. Desperately twitchy.

Our pencils worked simultaneously. The thick pencil of his, venturing above and around his unsteady ruler, designed outlines. Boundaries for the black paint to stay on. Strict boundaries. Defined by strict, uneven pencil marks on the boat wall. The pencil of my mind, working backwards on the drawing surface from where the attached eraser on it was, erased all outlines. All boundaries. My palette worked on an infinite canvas. An even world of boundless backwater beauty. The beauty painted by inspirational strokes of Nature’s connoisseur hand. The beauty of aroma. The beauty of jasmine and coconut oil. The beauty of a breezy journey. The beauty of a blissfully asleep child. The beauty of tired, numb thighs of a tired mother. The beauty of houseboats, of sarus cranes, of blue waters, of lagoons, of rich-green paddy fields, of a prosperous harvest, of excited urchins jumping off the moving boat into plunging depths, of slender coconut trees, of mystifying music – felt but unseen. Like a fictitious legend. The beauty of flavor. Enticing flavor.

The wheatish painter, in the meanwhile, was into his second stub and into his black paintwork on the wall. Or out of it? In and out, actually. Coughing out ghastly phlegm, and filling color into boundaries. Like the choking smoke around his mouth. In and out. Out and in. It didn’t matter to him that his smoke had jerked a blissful kid out of his blissfully breezy slumber in a helpless cough. “Second-hand smoke is disastrous”, they’d say. “First-hand is safer. Well, relatively”, they’d say. The wheatish man, smoking the wheatish stubs, consoled himself by saying this to his mind: “At least I made the right choice!” A lesser mind. Bounded by strict outlines in pencil. A trail of gray ash, like a phantom, ready to disintegrate into thin air. A trail of temporary outlines. Of washable color. Of washable black color. Color that matched his lifeless lips. “Hey, it’s the flavor I look forward to too”, justified he. The nastiness of flavor. Ghastly flavor.

I couldn’t look from where I was sitting, but I could say that his work was taking shape; partly from the movement of round, yellow eyeballs in his eyes and partly from the sudden enthusiastic puffs he enjoyed – the puffs that led to more puffs that led to ghastly, noisy, whooping cough. Oh, how he “enjoyed” that!

The cool wind was a soothing grace on me. On the painter, it was a burden. A burden of fast-burning cigarette stubs. Of lesser “enjoyment”. What he did not realize (or chose not to) was that this was the same wind that assisted him in drying up his bounded work of black paint. Stroke by stroke. Fast. Faster than his stubs dried up his system. Organ by organ.

Fast enough, he was done with what he started at. He was done with the ‘looking forward to’ part, at least for now. He packed up his paraphernalia of dark pencils, a ruler, black paint and his smoky self into a careless bundle and leaped out of the boat as soon as I read “Alleppey” on a milestone that was more of a kilometerstone. Or a kilometerboard. “Unboard your ship”, instructed my mind. “Stay on”, pleaded my senses, still ecstatic from what they had inhaled over the last 28 kilometers. Patting themselves on their backs for what they took in and for what they chose not to take in. The flavor inhaled. The smoke ignored.

I reluctantly grabbed at one of the flavors – my half-full packet of very humid tapioca chips - and trudged down the aisle and down the mighty stairs of my mighty ship. I thought of Great Expectations. Of promises kept.

Suddenly, I thought, “What was it that the wheatish man (with the wheatish stubs) had created? Or destroyed??” Curiosity chose to take the better of me. Besides, I just needed an excuse to board back the boat. My ship. The boat of life. Or the absence of it? Up the mighty stairs, into the mast and through the aisle. Back to the obscure window-corner of the obscure sign painter. Back to his strict boundaries and his dry, black paint. I stared at the painted area.

“NO SMOKING”, it said!

The Little One


This poem came as a sudden outburst of emotion and concern for a poor grass parakeet at the St. Mary’s Forane Church in Moozhikulam. One amongst the umpteen birds in the small cage at the church front yard, she was subject to a careless master, a filthy ménage and inadequate survival facilities. To top it all, she was caged and forbidden to fly high in the velvet sky, just like free birds of love ought to. Seeing the beautiful bluish-white bird die a slow and painful death whilst the Sunday Mass was progressing was as painful for me as it was for the ‘Little One’. May her soul rest in peace.


~~~

You can hardly move or breathe here,
Your sweet voice is barely clear.
This isn’t where you belong,
This isn’t your song.
What good is your wing,
If it cannot carry you to your calling?

I know you are not to blame,
It’s the parish priest…I don’t remember his name.
He took a fancy for your beauty,
Taking care of you should’ve been his duty,
But he was engaged with other things to do –
A little nap, a mug of beer, a game of chess or two!

Of course, he’s not at fault every time,
Having kidney stones, for instance, isn’t a crime.
Four days ago, he was taken to the city in grave pain,
They’d operate him there and he’d be on his feet again.
He probably could’ve instructed somebody to look after you for some days,
Well, his instructions would’ve gone unheeded anyways…!

How can you blame him? He’s given you a new habitation,
Complete with filth, claustrophobia and slow destruction!
How can you complain about your twenty-four companion kin?
“The more the merrier” – that’s what the priest believes in.
You spoil yourself by hating the rotten seeds you get for breakfast, lunch and dinner,
Hunting for red berries and fresh streams in the wild would’ve made you thinner.

Church birds that you are, you need to practice penance.
So, stop complaining and stop being such a menace!
It’s not like a few days of fasting would kill you,
The patients at the Chikitsalayam do a lot of fasting too!
What works for men should work for birds better,
Fasting says you’d be hearty. You’d be healthy. You’d be a trendsetter.

Honestly, I am kidding myself…more or less.
Since I am in a church, let me confess -
I say all this just to console you, Little One.
Though I lie, it’s for a good cause. No harm done.
But you’re not ready to listen to anything!
It’s like to myself I am talking!

“Where’s my master? I’m quite famished!”, you demand…
I try my best to assure you that things aren’t out of hand.
You ignore me. “At least a little water?”, you plead,
I say, “I’ll help you. Don’t worry. A friend in need…”
My words are incomplete. I see your stony eyes…
You say, “I’m running out of time. Let’s call our goodbyes…”

“It was nice to have known you. A kind heart you were trying to be…
By giving false consolation to the simple me.
The truth is that my wings, my colors and my voice,
That could’ve brought the world many dewy-eyed joys,
Were all wasted! Oh! It’s such a shame!
But ere I die, I’ll inspire you so that they’d remember my name.”

“O son of man, make my death useful. Let my departed soul fly
With my fellow friends. Release them, before any of them doth cry!
Our wings are meant to make us soar into the blue skies,
Wings of you and wings of me! Come on! Be free. Free of evil and lies!
Only then would I live on in free flight. I would never die.
Your generosity will live on…and so will I!”

“O little one! Here’s your water…here…”…Alas! It’s too late…
In a world of antipathy, the bird of love succumbs to a fatal fate -
Fate meted out by man. It wasn’t meant to be this way,
Birds of love aren’t to die…they’re to fly away…
“It’s too late…or is it?”, I contemplate. Whilst from the steeple peals the bell,
I release the other birds to where they belong. Flying to Heaven from hell!

The Little One is carried tenderly towards the river,
A humble grave dug in the ground. That’s the least I can give her.
Though she did deserve a lot more on this Earth,
Inconsiderate man robbed her of freedom and mirth.
Multitudes pray in the church, not me…oh Little One,
Please know that you inspire me. You are my prayer, you are my sermon.
~~~