Before love

There is a period of love before each love

when you eagerly expect calls from long lost
acquaintances with whom you have nothing to share

To come across anyone from your address list –
The administrative assistant of a previous company,
The girl you met in the bus couple of months back,
The cousin of your friend’s friend,
The daughter of your mother’s colleague…
in the melancholic bagatelle of a hotel just
to remind them you are still around

Days when you travel aimlessly in metro trains
from one station to another,
watching couples hand-in-hand, eye-in-eye,
sitting next to you in their own beautiful worlds

when you sadly find out that
something as insignificant as
checking mails, recharging mobiles and washing
clothes tops your priority list

Passing through certain city streets
that remain strangely vacant on working days,
you would walk along with a friend
who turns silent near the sea

On the cold floor of an empty church,
you would close the eyes and think of
the darkness inside a beehive
on top of the church tower

There is a period of love before love

When you alone know that you arein love with something that you don’t know

Thinking of my grandmother, Alzheimer’s at the institute of Astrophysics, kodaikkanal

Certain months are like birds;

In troubled throats,
Voices burning like defeated people,
They sing from the altar of the devil:

every note is a wound then,
every song is a new sin,
every egg hatches a cruel emptiness, frustrating you
like wet clothes on a monsoon day.


We scratched on the paper tree for new words and meanings,
Working on diffraction, lenses and solenoids, we
tried to separate from your world.

But,
While closing the eyes on top of the wind mill tower,
I am filled with only your memory,
Inseparable like the remains of height on the wings.
Your skin, old like that of the earth,Your love, eternal like your forgetfulness

The big clock tower at the railway station

The big clock tower at the railway
Station no more works;
Their dials remind of dried up wells,
hands mere decorations like that of an invalid old man.


Don’t approach any stranger with a smile
And bother to ask the time;

In small personal watches,
Adjusted to be a bit slow or too fast,
Today everyone inhabits their own comfortable
Zones of history and time —
Public time has died.


Keep inhabiting your own space in the platform.
Smile only to familiar faces.
Let the fact that your watch has stopped, and you
are totally out of place and time,
Remain a secret.

The big clock tower at the railway station has
Been shut down;

In the platform below the tower,
To take us to very different places of existence,We wait for the same train

Nose Ring

My friend has a fetish for nose rings

Strangely,
The pierced nose of his girl friend reminds him of mother:
Her silk wedding saree with circular prints,
its cockroach licks and holes concealed between its folds
in an old trunk that opens itself only to her
in their solitudes

It reminds him of the old, lovable grandmas in the Brahmin street:
the prayers that escape from their circular lips
in front of flickering lamps, the loops in their silvery hair
smiling like the burning wick out of its own hope.

On the benches of small, dark gardens
he holds her close and touches the ring gently
to feel soused by the shadows in that deep school well
which never dries up from fantasies

On nights when the angels and demons
sing from the branches of distant trees,
he sits in his verandah
and watches the half face of moon,for long.

In a small Indian Town

I am in a small Indian town
where red bell bottom pants
are back in fashion.

Long, curly hairs and tight shirts –
People straight out of my dad’s old college snap
are walking all around
with a half burnt slanting cigarette on their lips,
a half told swear in their eyes,
imagining a half dreamy 60’s in their aura

I am in a small Indian town
where some of the kids sell cannabis to friends
to save enough money to fuck the hottest tart

The kids consider it cool to bunk college
and hangout with the goons –
to hang a bottle of beer in your hand
sitting in a dark godown,
and inspect your collection of shining swords and blades,
to go killing at night for pocket money

I am in a small Indian town
where you sleep happily in between your parents
after selling your girl friend for a thousand bucks