Death

Always a negative imagery,
a murky sorcery

An artist’s turning point,
A lover’s last joint

A doctor’s civil code,
a morgue’s evening dope...

I know....

I know how to decipher codes...

Codes that tell of heart,

Codes that sniff of art,

Codes that speak of blues,

Codes that create mystery cues,

Codes in all its hues…….

unCERTAINty

Unleashed untamed,

Life's never to be blamed.

Uncertainties galore,

when will certainties come to the fore.

Loved and longed,

Time and again wronged.

Musing....

A balmy winter afternoon and Hauz Khas village can be a lethal combination. Especially when the sun and the clouds are in a strange tussle to out-do each other. One such day I chanced upon this nook of the famous Feroz Shah Tomb, where lovers mostly etch their “dastaan-e-mohabbat.”

I must admit, that unlike any other visitor there I was more interested in the balconies or the jharokha’s that the madarsa beside the tomb offered. The scenic beauty, the feel of the place, the world in itself that it was- if am allowed to exaggerate, is indescribable.

To my awe-struck self that day, the tomb was breathing with life. I don’t know what and how, but it spoke to me.

It was the shadows that the tomb door drew on the grave that gave it life in light. More than six hundred years of existence in death, the coldness of the damped walls but yet there was a feeling of awakening even if it was that of my senses.

It was the foreplay of life and death, that of sun and shadow. Of a tomb- the monument of death and the sun- a source of life. It was an inspiration of co-existence, the harmony between complexities, of the good with the proverbial evil. It inspired me to stop cribbing of the normal day to day life, of the hostel life, of extended class hours, of rising inflation and oncoming economic slowdown- for tomorrow even if I am somewhere even close to being an emperor, I would still be mortal. The weather will still play itself on me, I would still lay dead beneath.

Veil Unveiled

The will to be in veil,

The veil to be unveiled.

The myth about my stance,

The veil that you glance.

The fact that I do stare,

The farce that I scare.

The life that I do fare,

Things that I do care.

A title that I so possess,

A name that people assess.

I am for that, a name,

Forlorn and disdained.

I do laugh and cry,

For a veil isn’t always dry.

Never meek or weak,

But with a veil to peek,

I do seek, An identity- unique.

In a world where modesty worn

Is an anti-social form.

Why doesn’t one question,

About it being wrong?

The veil for me,

Is an expression of dignity,

The pride of being ME.

For I am veiled in ears, tongue and the heart,

But its thee who’s veiled,

In thought process,

and shrouded in hypocrisy.