four poems

sticky rice

with an assured finger tip

and a guileless smile

she steadied the dish

and i served myself rice

living off smiles

i’ve lived with love

i’ve lived with just sex

i’m now living with the vague promise of a smile

the deniable promise of an ambiguous smile

something sex or love can never be

or can they?

though she's not mine

i'd do anything to see her smile

it’s such a relief on her serious brow

and in her distant eyes

like over the raging sun a passing cloud

my light across the river

no matter where i wander

and where i happen to go for a meal

i carry your smile in my heart and like a prayer

evoke it before i begin to eat

that moment before you stop pouring the water

and look up at me with your head still bowed

the jug steady across the tables between

all those heads and backs unknown

with you a stranger i prefer to remain

for strangers are well dressed

and well they smell nice, most of the time

i mean at least the ones you like

you don’t have to see them before they get dressed for the day

see their plucked eyebrows growing out, slowly, day-by-day

their insecurities their quirks are their own

so is their morning breath

and you don’t have to mourn their death

or their going away

their walls are not yours to adorn

you don’t have to be the best artist they’ve ever known

and they’re always more interesting, their musings

you imagine, are always about things less mundane

their jokes more witty, their actions more sane

their hair more smooth

their skin more tempting to the touch

and you don’t have to see their

daily use underwears

faded at the crotch

translating shiv kumar batalvi: dharmi baabla

a humble attempt at translating a poem by shiv kumar batalvi

virtuous father dear

o virtuous father dear

when the cotton does flower bear

o virtuous father dear

buy me that season of the year

i lost a song in this season of yore

that of longing a garland wore

its face pockmarked with sorrow such

its eyes full of water from a ruined well

a song that when by the lips touched

sends the heart fluttering along

o virtuous father dear

buy me that song

o virtuous father dear

one day me and my song

in this season bewitched beguiling

the heart’s soil we ploughed

and dreams pure we sowed

with a million tears we irrigated it

no flower it bore however

o virtuous father dear

buy me just one flower

o virtuous father dear

what use all your land

if daughters are to wither so

what use your mansarovar

if thirsty the swans go

to what end your scattered crumbs

against pearls weighed

o virtuous father dear

if you can’t buy me that season of the year

o virtuous father dear

when cotton does flower bear

o virtuous father dear

translating shiv kumar batalvi: udhara geet

a humble attempt at translating a poem by shiv kumar batalvi

borrowed song

oh sweet lord

lend me another song or a half

my fire’s going out please

give me another spark

in my early years of infancy

i’ve laid all my hurt to waste

for the season of my youth now

please lend me more pain chaste

give me a song like my youth

dusky, mystically beguiling

like the red of the day at dawn

sets aglitter the whole tank

or like in a treeless land

at twilight the first star

in my land too it’s getting dark

give me another star or a half

or like the redness fiery

in the lake dissolve me

without a lover i can spend days long

but not, o lord, without a song

a lifetime anyone can squander

a fortunate few are fated pain

and lord, is every shore graced

by a doe sipping at the lake

drain away the untouched waters then

of my lake too unclaimed

or the songs that you got me to write

take those too back again

let me not extol beauty

that as an equal to fire doesn’t stand

and not praise the eye, o lord

whose tears are but bland

let me not sing songs that aren’t in pain steeped

or say words that aren’t fragrant scented sweet

if not fragrant my words happen to be

break them off the branch

or like my youth lend me

another song or a half

in my early years of infancy

i’ve laid all my hurt to waste

for the season of my youth now

please lend me more pain chaste

talking of napes

/why i get lonely enough to want to sleep with strangers

you, though not unaware of the dangers

of lonely melancholy evenings, had asked

how one could sleep with strangers

so, i was just thinking of this the other day

staring at a beautiful nape

i was thinking of how in field i'd starve

for just such a thing

for months at a time to see a beautiful hand

or even a shapely wrist

the most intimate i'd ever get was with co-passengers in shared taxis

like this one time sitting in the back of a jeep on benches facing each other

i look at my thin middle-aged neighbour

a compact man in a knitted sleeveless woolen sweater

over a check shirt and glasses that make him look like a teacher

and think, nice jeans, before i realize that it is my own knee

i’m looking at. he has his arm around my leg, his elbow in my crotch

his hand pinned in place at the notch below his watch

by the back of the guy crouching in the space between my legs

i can’t move a muscle

my hand grazing against his stubble

everytime we go over bumps or sharply turn. the jeeps jumps and dips

shoving my shoulder in someone's armpit and someone's elbow in my ribs

and of course there are kids

one at each window. the girl with messed up hair

the small boy almost in tears

from puking. and there’s a beautiful woman too

sitting in front on my side, more composed. she clears

her throat, spits a couple of time to get the taste of bile

out of her mouth and is back inside

nonchalantly wiping her mouth everytime she’s done

but like love and longing barf too comes in bouts

and so she’d be out again with a lurch and a list

sending a fine spray onto my nape

that hasn’t in ages been touched

that’s been craving to be kissed

how to turn victory into loss

   all this time i thought of you

 a fish hook tugging my heart back

now you go and say you still love me

                  and the line goes slack

pretty accessories

no i don’t think you’re particularly

pretty but at least you’re new

your novelty tides over your beauty

so for now you’ll do

and how do i tell you that i’m not in love

with you i’m just lonely

that love and desire must be expressed the same

is already such a tragedy

and i certainly hope you don’t love me

or some such thing that’s deep

treat me like an accessory maybe that

you’ll get bored of so i can leave

government institutes

that’s quite rich, he thought

full length mirrors and stands to dry clothes on, one for each room

quite rich for the guest house of a government institute

with a dilapidated hostel

but understandable

as a kid learning grade seven civics

i’d had to list the duties of the president of the country

and the first one i’d always say was

receiving foreign dignitaries

broken dawn

if after a sleepless night

of struggling to write a single beautiful line

of restless pacing cigarettes and mosquito bites

when the air is cool and the last stars are gone

i see the glow of the imminent dawn

spreading at the horizon

and think

the hem of night’s cloak is frayed

the thought is quickly chased away by a vulgar painting

of night as a beauty that the artist attempted

to paint but failed miserably

the lines are crude the colours all garish

the choice of paper wrong the execution amateurish

and night is misshapen, ugly

how then can i put the line on paper anymore?

the frayed though unravels and drifts out the door

and as the sky turns a ripening peach

i finally collapse on the bed and give in to a restive sleep

to chase in my dreams words and thoughts that seem

like you, forever beyond my reach

an afternoon in june

it is late afternoon 

a steady rain falls. thin

drops ordered italicized prim

the nasturtium leaves collect droplets of mercury

that slide off leaving the ones below nodding

like drunken men or old academicians bleary

the three interwoven trunks of the apricot

stand leaning in on each other

like, outside the closed shop

the women gossiping together

keeping out of the rain, under the awning

the big black shaggy four-eyed bhutia is on his

round undaunted. shaking the rain off his

fur coat impenetrable that’s knotted with matted

tufts of the winter coat that he’s shedding

the sparrows sit huddled under panes and eaves

a fierce wind picks up, caressing the fields

into waves, seducing the sighing trees

till they are left trembling helplessly

the drops shimmer and dance on the shining tar

there are rapids in the drains and gutters

waterfalls on the cliffs afar

and here am i, with no woman to write about, to sketch

no beautiful napes to admire, no ankles thin or stout, to touch

it’s been a lonely june