Sunrise on the beach

I lived in Chennai for around 2 months in late 2005 .One night I decided to reach the Marina beach before dawn in order to capture on my camera the most exquisite sunrise over the sea that one could think of. Which I could, thanks to my driver who hauled me there.
Sunrise and flowers

In my nights of waiting
For sunrise and flowers
I look pain in the face.
I wake up bleary-eyed
Trying to catch beach suns
Before they turn white.

A thousand lamps

This year ,on the full moon day of the Kartik month ,a thousand oil lamps were lighted in the temple ,around God’s flagpole (dhwajasthamba) scattering birds in the pipal tree’s darkness . On the top of the pole the moon fluttered in the breeze

On the full moon day
The moon fluttered atop God’s flagpole
A thousand oil lamps smelt of God
Scattering birds in the tree’s darkness.

Acceptance

 Two years ago , while camping at Bhopal ,I drove down to Sirpur , a historical site known for its Buddhist Viharas and temple complexes of the 8 th century A.D..While returning I suffered a stomach upset leading to a nasty vomit right inside the car. It was not the physical discomfort that caused the unhappiness but my inability to take in the beauty of the place and carry back images .

Acceptance

The body had struggled for a whole night
Calling for a tranquil, unquestioning acceptance
A typhoon in the intestines caused the mind to swirl
In a smelly rejection across the car seat
In the acceptance lay the complementarity of rejection
Then the rain went musical on the misty windshield
Beauty appeared, in wistful rain, across time
As though it were life briefly rejecting death
Buddha sat there smiling in Time’s burnt earth
There was no acceptance or rejection, only beauty.

Rains in Tirupati

That was when we lived in Tirupati,the holy town of Andhra Pradesh. The rains lashed our town for two days at a stretch and as we sat huddled up in our homes not a crow stirred from the trees in our street including the one-legged crow which was a favourite visitor to my house.

Rains in Tirupati

It rained all night and all day
Frogs croaked
From muddy cesspools
Wet crows shivered
On wind-buffeted branches
Stray dogs shook themselves
Of chilly wetness
Moths took wings
Of one-day glory
Coconut trees swayed
In rain-drenched delight
Droplets from the sky
Were manna to the farmers
Rivulets flowed on the hills
In shimmering cascades
The hills wore a mantle of green
Bright yellow flowers
Filled the air with fragrance
All the creatures of the earth
Joined in the chorus of life.

The Ganga at Kolkata

At Babughat Kolkata ,we hired a boat and ventured into the inky waters of the Ganga which reflected the lights that lined the Howrah bridge.The reflections appeared like inverted candlelights and the boat slowly moved towards the bridge in the moonless night as a  gentle breeze blew on us agitating the flame of the boat’s lantern. At some distance there was a large ship anchored near the jetty having entered the river from the high seas perhaps with cargo to be unloaded :

On the strand at Babughat,Kolkata

On the Babughat the Ganges wore
A splendid necklace studded with images
Of inverted candle lights under the bridge
The flickering flame of the lantern in the boat
Refused to dance to the wind’s death-tune
Near the jetty stood a dark monstrosity
Brooding over unillumined loneliness
Its cavernous stomach ached with
The darkest secrets of the high seas .

A painting entitled “Books”

There was this petite artist-girl Asha ,at once ambitious and creative wanting to create a niche for herself in art .She came to work under me as my secretary for a brief while .She was no good as secretary but she had that fatal charm of an ambitious girl carving out a place for hereself in famous art galleries. I encouraged her to the point of fault and she gratefully acknowledged this.

She presented me with a painting titled “books”

Asha’s painting with the theme Books

First there was chaos
Beauty eluded us
Lacking symmetry
Leaving us speechless.
Our sense of place
Being truly atrocious.
A pristine female form
Appeared from somewhere
Then another, close.
A shadowy dark form
An unmistakable scramble
For crystalline knowledge
Neatly bound volumes
To be crossed over.
A puzzling transcending
A necessary crossing over
Into the world of the dead
A demolition of order
Then emerged Beauty
Leaving us breathless.

Broken images

Several images became a part of my consciousness in a tour of the Jagannath temple at Puri , the exquisite sculptures of Konarak and the magnificent Chilka lake that I undertook two years ago. While returning to Bhubaneswar my car had a minor brush with a motor cyclist and some traumatizing injury on my head as a result of the sudden brake applied by my driver . The temple in an island of the Chilka lake refers to a legend in which a young bride drowns and becomes a Goddess installed in a temple in the island. The images of the orange sun refer to my efforts to photograph the setting sun from a stone crushing unit beside a mountain on the highway

Broken Images

At eleven, beauty captured, I return
Consciousness streams in, with broken images
A motorcyclist touches the fringe of my existence
The Lord of the Universe secured my sanity
Images of wooden Gods, of a jungle neem tree
Interspersed with celebrations of celestial love
The theme remained of beauty in sandstone
Of its golden brown hues against the blue sky
Of a yellowed middleman between me and God
He sees us unblinking ,in our absurdness
And in our countless follies and pointless fears
Another day’ s images come crowding in
Of the vast expanse of a salty lake
And a multi-hued shrine rising from its depths
Celebrating a young bride’s watery death
How we tried catching orange suns
Lurking behind shattered mountains
While aliveness eats sea-aliveness since dead
Then blissful somnolence takes over
My hotel walls crumble and then the world .

The death of an insecure Security Officer

 Stephen ,the Bank’s security officer,had a grisly end when he died ,literally,of an overdose of alcohol.He was an Othello who suspected his wife of cheating him behind his back, the same woman he had fallen in love with years ago in College and married against the wishes of his family and hers too. She believed he was impotent and was incapable of giving her conjugal love.Between them was a little girl ,not born of them but picked up from an orphanage. Their marriage was a wreck and he lived a life of utter misery.In the end when he died of a cardiac arrest she seemed to heave a sigh of relief and there was nobody to mourn him .

The Body

The body lay there in the room
With flies and people buzzing
The pale face looked indifferent
Tomorrow it will go down
Into the bowels of the earth .

Yesterday night he was busy
Searching for a quick-fix solution
To his life’s problems in the
Froth of the golden yellow brew
The body had a fatal hunger
Just like the woman in his life .
Scoops of dust settled on his coffin
He had no more complaints about life.

The Rain

On the Western side of the Bhopal city,overlooking the vast expanse of a lake, lies a tiny hillock,which is  home to a prophet who sat there smiling through the rain .That was two years ago when I had visited the hill to pay my respects to the Jain Tirthankara ,in gleaming marble,and saw a little rain-girl whose eyes sported a separate colour in each as though she she had a bi-chromatic vision.

The Rain

On the hills everyone’s courage failed
That meant a clean break from the past
A clear-cut informed decision in the rain
A prophet sat right there, cross-legged,
Smiling in the polished marble vault
The decadent city dropped away gradually
In the semantic vagueness of the general rain
The lovers promptly lost their pristine bodies
In the fecund continuity of the falling rain
A little rain-girl smiled beatifically
In the blue and green of her eyes
There was no tentativeness in their slant.