So clement we have started salon. The stage where a perilous and an uncertain journey of conversations, biographical fragments, incidents, dreams, reviews, and other creations starts. I said perilous because of the nature of this project. A journal, which is supposed to be private, is active in the open to anybody who is interested. Expecting all the danger that will fall on a journal in the public, lets go ahead.

Posting a few poems(?). You have seen them once. Do give a small review, if possible.

A place to rest

It is time to open our ears
To the untiring heaves of the water
To the gods howling in the mountains
There should be a place for our screams
Now deflecting painfully off the tin of the city
To be comforted by
the gentle rounds of the rocks.
To be kissed and caressed
by the slow curves of the streams.
Winds, rocks and trees of the mountain
Waves, pebbles, fish and otters of the water
Are still watching us
Live our life
Among this rubble
We created called home.

7.8.97


Across the night sky

On seeing the light falter, signaling
The everyday fall
I ran inside my hide still warm from
The days toil
Outside the window, night has started.
Stars falling. One now
Then another like cashew apples, onto the bush
On to the hard rock
To splatter without sound
I wish, like a child to run
Open the bush
And seek the treasured nuts first
Then the unharmed apple if any
Savor the sweet sour fruit
With its gastric smell
Only a child could bear.

Soon the dreaded nights work must begin
With the woman who cook fish and
Wash dish until she drops
Next to me but never sleeps,
Her eyes dry and sighs heavy.
I must lie straight on the worn cot
Till the flies had their fill for the night
And to begin their next life
As worms wriggling under me till
The blessed dawn come down, to my
Window with its yellow skin
Which lost all its stars last night.

21.11.2000


Dreaming inside a cubicle

When will be that day when I could
Laugh at something, which is invisible
To others. To worry none about public consensus
To look at a stone and see a friend’s face
Talk to him about life. To see a flower
As the lips of my love and kiss it.
All these thoughts flashed in my mind when I
Closed my eyes within this cubicle called work.

21.11.2000 (29th b’day)


Now Chintu is dead

Now Chintu is dead
After a quarter of a century of studies
In nurseries, primary schools,
High schools, medical colleges
Clinics and hospitals.
He must have been quite tired
When life’s end crashed into him
And tore his limbs
And then choked his father’s good heart into silence

Now Chintu is dead,
Resting long in his family tomb
With his father, grandfather
And grandmother
Inside the largeness of his house
his mother
Is one among the shadows
Moving across the rooms
Away from the sun
Dissolving into the uncertain darkness
Of the early evening.

19.6.97


Kochi

The moment she left her
Fishermen for cheap perfumed con men
This little heap of rubble and tar
Over the waiting swamp
Was called a city.

7.8.97slcw