Remembering their first perch…
‘A tree is a black and white film…
A play of light and shadows
Upon twines of felt time
Breathing on your skin,
Long and strong like sheesham
Or Indian rosewood…
Offering perches for minds avian –
Big, small, feathered, human.
One watches its sway
Of dappled speech, in slow motion..’,
he said.
At which...
‘A tree I see,
Rather as a man of art
Whose paper foliage sings…
But water it one must,
For years in secret…
Talk to it from ground to terrace,
For it to stretch its charcoal wings…
And then swaying it says,
We’ve made the right film!’
she quipped.
– Bolbul
Pumping Out Ocean
Hands too hurt to even pack,
He assessed two boxes and a bag –
Late at night and stared out…
Darkness rolling to the coast,
Overflowed through the windows,
Trickling down the walls.
No music played to the gathering
Of his thoughts, light as fog,
Yet sinking over the horizon
Of knickknacks in two boxes and a bag.
An airline’s promissory to carry
Him across the Pacific
Spread uncertain wings across
The twenty kilo heap his life suddenly was.
He would have to re-transplant
Roots to India… said a rising
Puff of thought, hinting
At the emergent morning…
But zipping the ballistic fabric
Collecting salty condensate,
He understood that evermore
There shall be an ocean desolate
In his heart.
– Bolbul
Jousting Scorpions
Numbly over a psychic canyon
Carrying a gush of neurotoxins,
He had soared then…
As only can children.
In a jungly town prefixed
With the dim name of Englishman
Dalton, he had learnt
From critters hell bent,
Life’s transformative lessons
At places seemingly random…
Such as a sunlit spread of bed
By a double window facing west,
With woodwork sporting termite nests.
That afternoon as he pried the mud
To fling squishy, self-invited guests
From their amorphous mansion of crud…
When out four warriors charged
Armored, pincered and
Carrying lances aloft,
Aimed for a lethal joust.
Three, he dodged,
But the fourth who scurried
Like a jalebi on hot oil,
Managed to… his comfort despoil.
He must have screamed,
For his family to gather around
And hold his ankle to the ground…
But he remembers a silent canyon
Mostly, and its drifting bottom.
The air dissolved his
Mind, swirling in it the debris
Of windows, faces and termites.
For two days straight, he
Would only answer to the
Name of Jalebi!
– Bolbul
Bolbul's Patch 