Spread-eagled

In 2005 I was returning ,after a fairly longish stay in Mumbai, to Hyderabad and had to travel by an overnight Volvo bus which was all I could manage at the last moment. The video fiilm shown in the bus deeply disturbed me in its treatment of a child’s rape and death in the suburban train in full view of three helpless members of public.

Spread-eagled

You lie spread-eagled,
In the Volvo night bus
Re-living in celluloid
Suburban train horrors
Of three living-dead humans
Watching a twelve-year-old ,
Spread-eagled ,dying of love.

Wounds

The Return of Beauty

Things remained unsaid

Over a long gap, a wide chasm

Beauty cried in torrents

Of words bereft of thought

Till the blazing March sun

Beat the history stones

A midsummer celebration

Ensued with images galore

Beauty returned from the hills.

In 2005 I was in Hospet for two months .The prospect of being so near to Hampi filled me with exquisite anticipation. It was indeed a memorable stay in Hospet which had enriched my life and enabled me to pursue my twin passions of photography and poetry. The mountains of Hospet were full of iron ore and deep pits dug into them yielded rich deposits of iron for export .The whole country was in Hospet and trying to make filthy money out of the wounds of the beautiful mountains. China needed iron for building the Olympics infrastructure and our trader –investors greedily dug deep and abiding holes in the mountains and their blood trailed on the hot roads of Hospet .It was a heart wrenching experience to see ugly greed digging deep gashes into some of the most beautiful hills that I have ever seen. Monsters of trucks rumbled in the silences of the hills and filled ancient trees with ugly films of dust making their barks gnarled and choking their branches.

The wounds

In the recent monsoon
Our rivers felt as if
The mountains had bled
From fresh wounds
Their flesh has gone,
Across the green seas,
To the distant Chinaman
To fill out his bones.

(Iron ore exports to China in the wake of the pre-Olympics construction boom have left deep wounds on our mountainscape in the Hospet region)

Death in the bus shelter

I was traveling from Sivakasi to Rajapalayam every day in my car and when I used to pass this bus shelter near Srivilliputtur I noticed a bearded man who was always sleeping in the stone shelter .He was traveling nowhere and may be, he was a homeless vagrant .It looked like he was not a beggar but just an aimless wanderer who had no fixed place of his own .Every day I used to look for him when I passed the place and always found him sleeping in the shelter and rarely ,sitting down on the stone bench entirely unconcerned about the buses and the people waiting for them. I found him there on all days and it became a part of my routine to lift the car windows at the precise spot to look at him .Deep within I was afraid that he would not be seen there one of these days and may be , would one day be found dead and no longer found in the shelter.

Sleep

The birdsong came back
This time with a bearded man
The sky was deep blue
In the mountains and beyond
And gently touching them
The man’s eyes slept for long
The blue in them disappeared,
Above the yellowed stone shelter,
Into the translucent April sky.
It had rained from the white sky
And he had slept and slept
As if he had not woken up
From yesterday’s deep sleep
And the sleep of the day before
When my car had passed.
His breathing was rhythmic
There was no warm life
Yesterday he had existed
And today his breath stirred
Under the unkempt beard
Tomorrow under the blue sky
When my car will pass this way
There will be a gray space
Then my eyes will turn away
I shall roll down the panes.