Sometimes,
while doing perfectly ordinary things,
like walking down a road,
Do you wonder what there was
on that very spot long ago
or what the future will see?
Are you stepping on someone’s long lost treasure
or on the bones of an extinct creature,
swimming in a long dried up lake;
or standing in a nuclear reactor to come,
walking through a still un-conceived
botanical garden or airplane runway of the future,
over someone’s ashes to be dispersed
or last earthly resting place to be?
Early 2008
Evolution
I note the evolution
of the highway
as it speeds along to places,
from scruffy potholed disgrace
with swarming masses of local people infesting it,
to sleek grey snake
yellow barriers on either side
keeping bipeds out
It winds scenically through mountained countrysides
with flowering trees thoughtlessly waving in line on its spine,
a strange unpeopled spectacle, like out of an unidentifiable foreign postcard
beautiful but characterless and sterile
I watch with a delight
only inspired by things that never change
as a man muddies the vision
threadbare towel draped over a bare shoulder
thin checkered lungi slung around a dignified waist,
happily, unblushingly, and incongruously, picking the flowers
[that the highway and everybody on it, leaves behind in the mad rush to go somewhere],
perhaps for the morning puja on the other side of
the not so intrusive,
nor so immune after all to Indian-ness,
highway.
July 26 2008
(Note to self: Inspired by a road trip to Chennai]
of the highway
as it speeds along to places,
from scruffy potholed disgrace
with swarming masses of local people infesting it,
to sleek grey snake
yellow barriers on either side
keeping bipeds out
It winds scenically through mountained countrysides
with flowering trees thoughtlessly waving in line on its spine,
a strange unpeopled spectacle, like out of an unidentifiable foreign postcard
beautiful but characterless and sterile
I watch with a delight
only inspired by things that never change
as a man muddies the vision
threadbare towel draped over a bare shoulder
thin checkered lungi slung around a dignified waist,
happily, unblushingly, and incongruously, picking the flowers
[that the highway and everybody on it, leaves behind in the mad rush to go somewhere],
perhaps for the morning puja on the other side of
the not so intrusive,
nor so immune after all to Indian-ness,
highway.
July 26 2008
(Note to self: Inspired by a road trip to Chennai]
Things of Old
Things of old
are survivors of a bygone age
remnants, left behind
to see slow crumble to oblivion
What foot trod there
what hand touched with practiced indifference
what eye unseeingly saw everyday
what tongue talked of it as nothing out of the ordinary?
What built it and what felled it?
And unchained it
from a being, now long dead
from the embrace of bygone lives
Doomed to be
a victim of fickle Time
an aimless phantom
Until retaken and remade
to grow old again.
June 29 2008
are survivors of a bygone age
remnants, left behind
to see slow crumble to oblivion
What foot trod there
what hand touched with practiced indifference
what eye unseeingly saw everyday
what tongue talked of it as nothing out of the ordinary?
What built it and what felled it?
And unchained it
from a being, now long dead
from the embrace of bygone lives
Doomed to be
a victim of fickle Time
an aimless phantom
Until retaken and remade
to grow old again.
June 29 2008
Tribute
Upside down anemone
flightless seabird,
Everlasting night breeze
or furious raging storm,
Bane of fiery weather
singer of lullabies
Alive or lifeless,
bladed wind-mover
at my command,
Sweet fan
gentle electric ceiling fan
June 29 2008
flightless seabird,
Everlasting night breeze
or furious raging storm,
Bane of fiery weather
singer of lullabies
Alive or lifeless,
bladed wind-mover
at my command,
Sweet fan
gentle electric ceiling fan
June 29 2008
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