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I observe her today
pretty different she appears

A worn-out face
with a speck of spring
stuck in one corner
of her left eye

Her smile dull
like dusted leaves of a Gulmohar
by the road

And her voice cold and metallic
as if she has imbibed the hardiness
from rusted scraps in junkyard

As she stares into my bewilderment
I envision a verdant morning
taking its birth in the hollow
around her eyelids

My pen-friend

His letters paint pictures
of his autumn. Though he never tells
how big or how small his house is,

he lovingly mentions a narrow corridor,
the interplay of light and shades over guava
trees in his garden.

He sends me photographs of rare florets
with odd looking beetles exploring their skin,

And he says in his native land such flowers
often get self pollinated.

He rues a lot for his old walking stick,
his most dependable companion
of more than a decade, which he lost
in a cab earlier this month.

The newer one is yet to get acquainted
to his whims. It screeches and grumbles

whenever he etches out a name
on the ground with its edge,
sitting alone on a garden chair

in a fading twilight.

Inequation

This is the time of the year
when you begin to add up
how much you've earned
and how much you've lost.

How much pain you've been able to
imbibe, how much blood you had to shed.

This is the time of the year
to recall that summer evening
when the sky bled from its raw wound,

And you were also bleeding profusely,
nails being pierced into your sentience -

Do you remember the crossing
where you forgot your destination,
where you had asked a crippled man
about the way to the nearest inn

And the way his wise eyes had glittered
as he told you to retrace your steps?

And do you remember how you felt
in that roadside coffee shop
when you discovered there wasn't enough money
left in your pocket?

Did you, at that very moment, think of Gregory
and his million pound note, and his mumbled words,
being unable to produce ‘anything smaller’!

The credits and debentures hang
in either side of a weighing machine,

Do you not realize
you have yet again
stubbornly tried to balance

a simple inequation.

An old road (Tanka)

I stroll past
the plumeria tree
after a decade--
pauper stirs up
from his midday dream


clouds
hanging low
make me strain my eyes --
the pauper collects
withered petals

Festival-end Gogyokha

smell of crackers
hang loosely
as daylight seeps in
between one chapter
and the next