Stroke of the brightest white!

I have five bright shining geese. White and shining. Wait. Is it five? Let me count again. Sometimes they look like four. Sometimes like six. I have no heart to count them, they are that beautiful. But I believe they are five.

 I had five curiously round pebbles which lived in my pocket through a long journey. But then when i came upon a river, the river gave me in exchange of the pebbles, one by one, nice and full 'plops'. Hearing an original and authentic plop can satisfy a thirst much deeper than what gallons of water can't. Plops enter through the ears and roll down all the way into the heart, where they float like soap bubbles reflecting all joys and sorrows into a weirdly merged and stretched images.

Bubbles don't live forever. One day i realized that they were not there anymore. Bubbles leave without a trace! They leave behind only a blank wonder. It is difficult to snap out of that blankness.

 So I wandered aimlessly reeling under its spell. That was the day these bright creatures walked in. They didn't fly in. They crossed the street, marching in a straight line, quacking loudly. They didn't stop even to look at me and walked right into my farm. We all roared with the most unstoppable laughter  which made the beautifully funny creatures quack with even more indignation.  They live here now as if they own this place and spend the long afternoon swimming and then cleaning and drying their wings.

I never asked them where they came from. But one day i picked up one of the feathers that drop in an occasional brawl. I moved it gently on the surface of the lake water till it rippled into an image revealing a lost memory.

The moon of a dark cloudy sky and the lotus of a silent lake swept the night. They stared at each other, drowning in each other's spell. Their intoxicated love trembled on the edge of an undiscovered orgasm for hours. And then as the growing tremble grew into a wave, it swept through the night, making the wind rise and roar. The wind swung around the tall trees tripping and falling and singing loudly like a drunkard on an empty street. When it came tumbling down into the silent lake he created not just ripples but a whirpool casting a blur over the entire night. Everyone closed their eyes. When silence returned it carried something alive and of the most heart aching beauty. When eyes opened once again ignoring a wordless excitement that terrorized the heart, there shining brighter than the moon  and more pristine than the lotus, the magic geese floated on the once again still water surface . The moon looked deeply content at the lotus with an exhausted smile and sank back lost in the clouds.

Buried

And so I sleep
The ground creeping on me
Like a thousand ants
A forsaken carcass
Being swallowed
In a hurry.

Grains of sand filling up
Erasing to find
Nothing more
Than a random mound
In the unmeasurably constant
Stretch of a desert land!

And sitting on that..

A dense cloud of emptiness
Where a thousand faced
particles of dust
Sparkle like stars
Neither moving nor still
But drowning
In sweet suspension!

Stop For Breakfast

The bus is slowing down. A stop for breakfast. Precious few moments to forget all about the destination!

Through the fumes that rise from a cup of the morning hot, the road swims at the distance, looking beautifully unreal. I sit opposite a man who has fallen silent and is yet to realize it. With an urgency of a one driven by an unstoppable lust, but with the stealth of a burglar, I enter and curl up in his pristine silence. Like a dog who sneaks into somebody’s blanket on a cold night. What I saw from a distance was just a mess of hair, rough unshaven face and tired eyes still sulking of a disturbed sleep. But all that was just the covering. Once inside, what I saw, was a slow, silent and a glorious sunrise. I had seen sun come up many times. But for the first time that I ever saw the phenomenon of a sunrise was in a stranger’s eyes.

Just a few moments before my heart broke once again as he reminded me of our estrangement by meeting me in the eyes with a warm smile saying ‘Hello!’.

The Roadside Tree

While the afternoon goes
and naps in your arms
We sit swatting
Random words and thoughts
Like flies!

In between
two wordless moments
A gentle breeze
Says ah!

A delicate quilt
of light and shade
Over the lone bicycle
that passes by..
My gaze follows like a dog,
Its rhythmic clinks!

Looking into your eyes
Waiting with infinite leisure to drop
And come swaying down
To rest in  your heart
Like a flower or a leaf!

On the edge of a cliff
Held up by the clouds
That hide the gaping mouth
Of oblivion

In the middle of a street
Run over
And buried
into a silence that looms over
all the noises
That run around like confused ants

Swaying on one leg
Hanging from a precarious branch
Risking life and truth..
I speak...

These words
that my breath carries
Sometimes from the depths of heart
Sometimes more immediate
Than a moment's sparkle in the eye

Though vapoury,
Like the tricks of a dream,
They are not like a mist
That never was

My lips only move
It is my heart that hopes
To relieve its ancient wound
 Through the ceaseless bleeding of words

Raining or trickling
A storm or a breeze
I uttered
only so that you hear

I uttered
only to breach
The unsurpassable walls
Of my body

The Old Man's Laughter

'Why do we have mountains grandpa?'

For the little creature who looked at the world around as if it was arranged just for her wholly by her grandfather, it wasn't an odd question at all. It was as natural as asking why they always had rice for dinner in the night.

The old man who never bothered to run behind her had surprisingly sharp ears for his age to catch the squeaky voice that traveled from a few feet ahead of him. 'Well, to push the rivers down all the way to the oceans I suppose. '

' But we don't have any rivers. ' she said tugging at his arm playfully after having ran back to where he was walking. She loved his huge arm and her eyes used to become a magnifying lens of their own and examine the complex web of wrinkles. She was always full of awe at how every hair on his body was pure shining white. She never asked him his age. Somehow she knew deep within that he was one thousand years old. That's what she had told her friend. Her friend didn't believe it ofcourse. But then there was no way to make him believe because he would never come when grandpa was around. Or anybody else for that matter. But when she had told them about her friend, it was only her grandpa who believed that he really existed and that he also had wings with which he could fly.

The old man didn't answer. Not because he ignored what she said. He had learned that not all questions are there to be answered. Some questions can live on their own. They don't need an answer to resolve themselves. They are independent. Appearing and disappearing and floating around by their own free will.

They were about to reach the stream where he liked to sit. A helpless smile appeared on his face as he saw what an effect the stream always has on his granddaughter. Even before it came into sight, she would run around, spin around him making him sing all the silly songs that she made up herself. Through her tiny hands pulling him, he used to feel the rush of the cool refreshing touch of water. It was as if the stream used to call him in her sweet impatience. Nobody could make out whether what appeared on his face was a smile or a tear drop. It was in her, years ago that he had found a lasting relief as he let go the few remains of his broken heart. In her cool, refreshing touch that kissed his feet, there was a world to remember and a world to forget.

He sat on the rock, leaving his feet to the water. As he closed his eyes, he could feel his feet flow with the stream, while his head floated up to the chirping birds and the whispering leaves.

After some time he could feel her sitting next to him. She had been back since a while. But she couldn't call him or tug at his arm as she would do otherwise. She waited watching swarms of tiny fish swim around his feet. The moment he opened his eyes, she poured the treasure that she had gathered into his hands. This was something they did everytime they came to the stream and he knew how much she looked forward to it. He would pick up the most interesting of the pebbles and tell her a story around it. She loved the stories. She also waited for the day, when she would find a magic pebble. A truly magical one. She knew he was only person in the world who could identify it if it was found.

Not all the stories that he started had an end. Sometimes it would go into a different story altogether. A story within a story. It was hard to keep track. Sometimes it used to become too complex. 'I think it's getting late!', is what he would say in such cases. She knew he was making it up and didn't really know what to say next. But she would never say it to him. She loved him and didn't want to see him not knowing what to say. 'he knows everything!' is what she had told her friend. 

Today the story was of the mountains. But he was tired and it wouldn't go too far. But her mind was still in the mountain top.

'Why is our mountain bald grandpa? '

' Because it is old. And wise like me ? ', he said burying the last word under a huge bout of laughter.

Her twinkling eyes looked at him,wanting him to stop.' Why do you laugh like that. I get scared! ', she screamed wrapping her arms around him in a desperate effort to feel that he's still there. She had a huge fear that he might just go with his tumultuous laughters one day and never come back.

He looked at her worrying eyes and couldn't help another bout of laughter till tears rolled down. She touched his cheek in a playfully curious way, as his body stopped quaking and settled after the laugh. He beamed at her, his eyes shining. It was these moments which came many times after his bouts of laughter that she felt they spoke without words. Their eyes flowed into each other like rivers.

'Will I laugh like you one day? ', she asked, her voice not of a child anymore, strangely steady and full of meaning.

' Who knows? '. The remaining smile on his face faded like the fading of a rainbow. He looked up at the sky as if his eyes could see stars even in the day.

' Your eyes shine of the most purest wonder. And you can dance and giggle. When they take that away from you, you will learn to hope and dream. And it will put a smile on your face that people around you will envy. When they take that away, you can dig deeper and you will find your tears. Make sure you don't drop them just anywhere. Come around to this stream even if I am not around and offer your tears to this stream for all that it has given us, will you? '

He waited for her to nod before he continued.

' When you are about to become old, walk up these bald mountains. They know how to laugh. You know why he's bald? He laughed so much one day that it shook off all the trees at the top. ', and he laughed loudly once again.

' see, that's how even I lost my hair! '
And he tickled her. She squealed in laughter and shouted,' and your teeth too! '.

He pointed to the only one tooth in the front that was left,' but this one is refusing to fall. It makes me look ugly. Will you make me laugh hard enough so that it goes away? ',he said as he got up.

It was time to go. She ran up ahead. That one tooth did make him look terrible she thought. But she loved him and it didn't matter.

The sky tired of holding up the day for so long was dripping with colours of unfathomable beauty and far off in the village the smoke from the chimneys had begun tracing a way right upto where the stars would be popping out. In those moments which are always cruelly brief where the earth meets the sky and the day meets the night, the old man and his little granddaughter walked hand in hand back towards their home.

Hiding Place

Come down here following the trail. A trail that cannot be spotted by eyes. Hang your eager breath onto it and then watch the beating of your heart to know where to turn. I have left the silk veil open. Walk in before it is lost, into the untrodden path where footprints disappear.

Come down here where the stream slows down. Lingers playfully as if no one is watching. This is the hiding place where all things of magic are yet to learn how to be shy.

Remember the time you couldn't say that which couldn't be contained? We wondered where it went the next day. This is where it came and has been ever since. Listen to this silence that trembles on trembling lips just before that which cannot be said is lost in words. Here it floats like a mist  growing thicker dissolving even the mountains.

No one knows we are here. And yet, here we are.