On Death

I don't quite remember when I first learned about the existence of death. But for a long, long time, I refused to acknowledge its inevitability. Since I grew up among a lot of medical people, the knowledge of death must have seeped into my consciousness quite early in life. But, paradoxically, I was also quietly confident that those who died did so because they had the misfortune to have lived their lives before immortality was invented. Just as a child growing up early in the 1940s must have known quite certainly that it was only a matter of time before the British left India for good, so did I grow up with the calm assurance that immortality would be discovered long before my time was up. I had queer notions of immortality. Sometimes, I imagined it to be a kind of eternal existence, tranquil, peaceful and embracing the whole world. Sometimes, I would imagine immortality to be a smooth and endless transition from one life to another. But to me it never was nothing, it was always something or the other, very real, inevitable and waiting just round the corner. For the time being, however, there was death. To me the cruellest part of death was symbolized by an unfinished story or book. One day, you were there, ravenously devouring it or idly flipping the pages, dog-earing a page to carry on the next day, and the next day you weren't there anymore. You had ceased to be. The story or the book would never be completed by you. The story would be there forever, just as inexorably as the irrevocable fact of your not having finished it despite wanting to. As cruelly true as Genera;l Dyer's Jallianwalabagh massacre. As cruelly true as the Holocaust. A dark, evil shadow hovering over the survivors. Haunting them in wakefulness and sleep. As determined to seek revenge as Caesar's ghost.

Parting

The sun broke into a dimpled smile,
The trees whispered in open delight,
The river burst into throaty laughter
'Coz you said you'd sit with me awhile.

The clouds frollicked across the sky,
The flowers waltzed in the lazy breeze,
The stars tumbled riotously from above
'Coz you just wouldn't say goodbye.

The birds sang ceaselessly into the night
And ten million stars lit up our fairy world,
As moonlight played its magic melody,
We lay wordlessly, holding each other tight.

Now the stars have dimmed, the music is gone,
The river is silent, the flowers wilted,
The magic wand has snapped, the melody dead
As light years apart, we wait for a bleak new dawn.

On Laziness

The magic spell of sheer laziness is hard to conjure away. It does not spring upon you full blast, but creeps on you ever so slowly that the laidback pace in itself is irresistibly enchanting. Its tender warmth first caresses your feet and you feel a rush of pleasure. Then its gentle waves rise slowly, patting your legs with the infinite tenderness of a child masseur. Up our knees, past your waist, the balmy waves of a delectable sloth rise higher and higher, drenching you in the sweetness of ambrosia. Till you are soaked to the bones and so weighed down by the nectar of inertia that you find it impossible to move.

It’s a cast iron spell, deceptive in its apparently soothing redolence. Everytime you attempt to shake it off and rise, you are thrown back into inertia by a powerful gust of chloroform. Till you are only too glad to give up trying and resolve to simply enjoy the fruits of sloth: a tumbling basketful of what ifs, when ifs and only ifs; memories, both real and made up; futures, woven in fantasy; passion, human, superhuman and subhuman; the cheerful burial of values; the wanton indulgence of sin.

Yet another nameless post

Old, familiar books
Spruce in dust jackets,
Verdant dreams
Trimmed to size,
Motley mementoes
Cluttering up the brackets,
The skyline behind the highrise.

One fine day
I threw them all away
Knowing there would
Be Heaven to pay.

I rushed pell-mell
On to the dusty, sun-baked streets,
Running away from hell
And cupboards full of wild beasts.

I left behind
The childhood tales
Of wonder and horror
And the adult waiting room
Of perpetual torpor.

Well, here am I,
Fairy of the Elysian lawns
Here the nightingale
And there the bluebell,
The murmur of divine songs.

Goodbye monsters, goodbye ogres,
I cannot wish you good day.
You’re the stuff that life is made of
While I’m in heaven to stay.

It’s only sometimes
When I’m shaping mortals
Out of the clay
The Master has given me,
Do I strain to hear
The tolling of the Inchcape Bells
Deep in the hell of the sea.

Another Nameless Post

Dancing on the graves
Of infant dreams
Killed and buried long ago,

Exulting on the ashes
Of distant visions
Gone up in cigarette smoke.

Cannibalistic exhilaration
Of a hungry soul
Feasting on fresh minds,

Ecstatic jubilee
Over rotting remains
Of dead desires.

Wild, wild addiction
To noxious fumes
And the hangman’s noose.

Nameless Post

The morning dawns
Hesitant, the pale sun lingers
Awhile, full of pity,
Reluctant to turn its harsh glare
On the little men and women,
Arrogantly unaware of their big dreams;

Slowly bringing out into sharp relief
The smoke rising from the asphalt,
The luminous waves of heat
Dancing in the sun; the putrid
Stench of uncollected garbage
Spilling from a broken vat;

The rancid whiff of genteel poverty
Wafting from shabby tenements
Brazenly bedecked with tinsel,
Buckets of washing
Jostling for a beating and a shower
On the paved quadrangle under communal taps.

A steaming cauldron of everyday smells:
Detergent, toothpaste and spices in oil
Cowdung, urine and tea on the boil
Stale sweat and the sudden
Rebellious fragrance of a stray gulmohur,
Nauseating, fascinating, infinitely reassuring.

A rich canvas, vibrant, beautiful,
Oozing the filth of life from every pore
My heart’s delight, my soul’s repose
My daily breath, my life’s grace,
The love I feel for it all stabs me deep
And enfolds me in remorseless embrace.