Sea

[Entry for this week's 3WW]

To the banker, the river was an untamed God,
the sea, a shifty trapper of time,
the sand, night like, a mistress,
kissed, sifted and to be deserted again.

The shore yonder is a notion,
the lands beyond, empty and to be claimed one's own,
reached after a trial and usually by error-
the west taken to be the east sometimes,
the east named west.

To the girl walking alone, the sea is the nature's outlaw,
voluminous brine shed once ago and ever since;
untameable, unmanageable and defiant;
crumpling the shore, a wave at a time.

To the kid busy with the sand turrets -
raised on weekly visits to the shore,
delighting in the chromatic aberrations -
the sea is a saviour, his hero,
soon to rescue the crashing sun
from the dark clouds unspooling across the sky.

To the sailor, the sea is as unpredictable as its blue,
a capricious turnstile, blissfully unaware of its own hue,
his ships handled with scorn, like a father cradling his newborn,
but with lot less love and hands unsure.

Time, the most benign of all Gods, propitiation with it arrived at,
once we abide by the only rule put in place:
to keep to its pace.
Devotion is to be by action,
the rhythm achieved carrying us forward,
wheres and whys not to be asked but duly shown.

To the sea, time is the entity
it twists around its skewed axis;
tides can knock minutes of an hour with ease,
travails can stretch them to infinity.

To those absorbed with the view in the rear mirror,
looking backwards, omitting the future near,
Look here-
at the waves the sea weaves over submarine lands,
at the unsheathed wings climbing over ridges and dunes;
at the life that is held in its womb,
at the living cradled in its deep plains,
and at the unsalvaged in its bottom lain-
Life awaits.

Shimmer

You know all, don't you? Now, tell me why.

---

After a day spent at work, when I leave for home, as the lights from the streetlamps along the path coruscate dimly off the sand swept glass facade, I always notice a couple wait, outside the front gate, hand in hand, barely audible words said and replied, one pair of eyes holding the other, the world around as diffused as a white blur, as vague as the mirage rising off a heated tarmac . A strange couple is what I remark to myself as I wait ten feet away from them for our bus to arrive. Although her sunken eyes and pale complexion suggest a far eastern forefather, I feel she is from somewhere far closer home. I remember how she looked when she had just arrived in the city, when they were yet to meet: her face was as devoid of colour and life as the sideA of a rift riven band. Things have improved now, and a year of sprucing up and addition of right colour and cream have succeeded in suppressing whatever little beauty her face had to provide and stimulate a look that would help her gain greater acceptance among those she wishes to spend time with. He, meanwhile, is far taller than her, blacker eyes, sinews popping out of limbs, clothes that rarely crumple - a build and carry suggestive of far too much time spent in the gym and in front of the mirror. Neither are they the first couple to wait outside an office nor will they be the last. Despite their differing characteristics and nature, they seem comfortable in each other's presence. Sometimes I wonder if it is all a pretence they want to maintain until it gets to them and they admit to each other that it is all a pretence. I do not know why.

Beside us, cars and buses stream in and pause till the seats in them are occupied. Their drivers, with their tobacco spittle stained shirts, well oiled hair that turn rust coloured as they drive around the city with the window open, often get down from their vehicles and cluster together beside any of their rundown vehicles and speak in hushed tones amidst a lot of limb stretching, yawning and the occasional passing of a cigarette. Those whom their vehicles carry, their names are rarely known to them - conversations are rarely struck and at best avoided.

The couple usually board the same bus that I do. Although we wait alongside each other, it has never struck me nor them to speak a few words to each other. We recognize each other by sight alone. I wonder what their names are. Our ID tags are wound and dropped into our bags as soon as we exit our office and they are too caught up in themselves once they board the bus and contrive somehow to avoid venturing a word or two with those around them.

The bus drops us two streets away from my home. The driver always struggles to navigate his vehicle around our neighbourhood and has to move, nudge and literally curse it with an unceasing stream of nastiness, us lined up one behind the other on the footboard of the bus, fully cognizant of the fact that had we not been travelling in it, the driver would have been left to steer his vehicle in bus-friendly environs. We get down and walk away in directions opposite and ways unknown to the other.

Our names are not known to us. We live nearby yet neither our houses nor the way to reach them are known to the other. What do we opine of each other? Nothing? Does it matter?

Seam

Dirges do not accompany these dead,

heads immersed in madness lay down the laws

- draws open wide their eyes and holds them apart,

depart not, drift not apart - where the wails have gone?

- Don black instead, indulge in sullen stares at the sky above.

Doves come by and grip the dead's floating tress,

bless-ed winged ones prefer to fly off decaying spawls,

caul shadows over October's shallow seam,

gleam like stars across a sky hooded in grey,

stay, stay - a few lingering clouds call by,

try, ignore and fly back over the white lane,

lanes with no trails to guide,

glide in silence over these lands too painful to rest,

rest not, lest the thread come apart.

The Three Tableaux

The three Tableaux, right beside the ferric brown arch of the city gates, the philosopher mentioned to us disciples once, will allow those with an affinity to walk through it to pause and ponder, if only for an infinitesimally small period of time, what their life might be if they were to take heed of its contents. It is very much like the tacky Government ad - intended to educate every citizen but failing to hold the attention of even one. This one fared better; it held mine.

The three sentences below were scribbled across the bottom of the tableaux, providing a semblance of context to pictures that otherwise might have been taken to be the scrawls of a fidgety mind.

Today is one of those days when you will end up doing what you have always accused your fellowmen and women of being guilty of.

Learn to starve. It will come in handy when you don't want to eat what you are served.

Thoughts might like to travel faster than light but words prefer to walk.

Ficciones

Frames of fiction fall oft an inch or two short,

an empty pane having to cede and pander to reality.

Authorial fingerprints smudge the written word,

sentences are collapsing bridges requiring columns of real meaning to hold them up.

Paws of memories advance through the fictional realm,

shuffling over the blind spots, the present fudged

by what is not.

A Trap

There is a trap, a rattrap,

wielding a passive lure -

like all traps,

a thick slice of kernel between its lips,

set like the one in the bedroom,

beneath the bed where mom and dad sleep,

and the other in the kitchen,

next to the aluminium canister filled with sugar,

and another beside the fridge,

the Amul butter in it, melting faster

than the candle lit in the living room,

where the family is assembled,

blinkered, in silence, abrupt, around the table

the table with a remote control on it, awaiting

the resuscitation, of pixelated images

of life peeled, bleached which is now ,

like the visor of the Splendour

parked outside, bright red which was

once, when there were no rats.

Still the guitar gently weeps

Carlos Santana has covered rock classics in his latest album Guitar Heaven. Here, along with India.Arie and Yo-Yo Ma, he covers, what in my opinion is the greatest song of them all.