She loved the rains

She loved the rains. The touch
of rain-drops on her bare skin.
My lips drinking them dry. I remember
how she sighed then. The only other
time she sighed like that was when
I whispered some Faiz to her.

She loved the rains. The paper boats
gingerly floating in water. She used
to pluck an eyelash, the longest
she could find. Place it on a boat
and watch it float away. She used
to hold my hand tight then.
She loved to dream. I remember
she once cried when the boat
drowned. That was towards the end
when her eyes so often brimmed
over with tears. I remember.

She loved the rains. She loved singing
over the thundering clouds. Always
a note offkey in that high-pitched
voice of hers. I loved listening
to her songs. They spoke of desires,
dreams and longing. Of destiny and
heartbreak towards the end. I remember
I cried once. She made me promise
I won't cry ever again. She used to say
my smile reminded her of the morning sun.
She hated the shadows thrown by dusk.

Does someone recite Faiz to her still?
Does it rain where she lives?
Do her children make paper boats?
Do her eyelashes still grow long?
Do her songs still sing of splintered dreams?

I will never know. There are so many things
that elude me now. I wonder why the lump
in my throat never dissolves into tears.
Why I hate the slush of rainy days. Why
I never wish to wake up in the morning.
Why nothing makes sense anymore.
Not even writing poetry.

The country of your body

A thousand times I have travelled
Across the country of your body,
Its rounded hills and verdant valleys,
Shadowed corners concealed from the casual tourist,
Its highways curving around peaks
And losing their way in the stormy sea,
Its villages and towns
Each with a million stories to recount.

A thousand times I have traced
The strange contours of its borders,
Brittle as a glasspane and still
Supple like the gently swaying palms,
Languidly moving from place to place
In a journey of exploration,
A solitary cartographer striving to imprison
Its map in the quicksand of memory.

A thousnd times I have stood
Poised at its gates, returning again
--And yet again--
A migrant soul seeking the solace
Of a home on unfamiliar shores,
And making a country--alien once--
Forever his own.

In search of a poem

Little do I know,
Why I dont dream
Fragrant dreams anymore,
Why hands disembodied
clench at my throat,
Why sweating I wake up,
Fighting for breath,
In the middle of nights.

Little do I know,
Why smells stale
the morning coffee,
Why dewdrops burn my skin,
Why a ghazal humming softly,
screeches like a nail
dragged across a wall,
Why in the full moon I see,
A perfectly rolled roti, tempting,
but away from outstreched hands.

Little do I know,
Why memories trick my heart,
Why life passes by like a cinema,
That looks real, but is an illusion
Nevertheless,
While I look on-
The only audience in an empty theater.

Little do I know,
Why my words stray,
Lost sheep in search for a verse,
Tentative, their nerves alight,
Scared to find their destiny,
While the verse mocks them,
With fleeting glimpses
that haunt my dreams,
But elude my wakeful eyes.

Some day my words
Will find fulfilment,
And rest at peace, curled up
Like a foetus in the mother's womb,
Inside this ever-elusive poem,
And I, the answers finally found,
Shall also rest content,
At peace within my words,
Forever.

And so be it

This long road of tangled memories,
That I have trudged for endless miles,
In a blank forgetfulness shall end soon,
Neither you, nor I, nor the long trek uphill,
Shall matter anymore in an ocean dark,
It will all end soon with a few steps more,
These dulled hurts from long ago aches,
This undissolved lead dying in the heart.

All roads they say lead to this ocean,
Some through pink lily-swamped ponds,
Bright and green forests, golden sunsets,
And others through thorn-pierced deserts,
In scorching sun unrelieved by trace of rain.
It must have been destiny that made me take,
A road forsaken, the road less travelled.

But the end is near, I know in my heart,
I can hear swelling waves singing a lullaby,
The call of the ocean to hide in its bosom,
I can feel the moisture wetting my eyes,
I can taste the salt in my parched throat,
I can smell around me the jasmine-scented night.

Yes, it is all to end with just a few steps more,
Soon I shall forget that alone I walked this road,
That I shivered with the nights and burnt with the sun,
Nothing will matter then- sorrow, joys, vacuities, nor wit,
If you could not be mine, you could not be, and so be it.

Of destiny, excuses and a broken heart

If only,
I had been born an year earlier,
Or had liked maths just a little bit more,
Or had got cinema tickets for the noon show,
And had not interjected in the debate at Stephen's instead,
Or had it not rained that day in July,
If only.

If only,
You had been born a year later,
Or had not loved History quite so much,
Or had not been such a good debater,
Or had carried an umbrella that fateful day in July,
If only.

If only,
The Babri masjid had not been demolished,
The gulf war had occured some years later,
Soviet Russia had not crumbled apart,
The Berlin wall had stood intact still,
Safdar Hashmi had still been alive,
We both had hated old songs and mushy movies,
If only.

We would then have not been at DU together,
You would not have responded to my interjection,
We would not have taken shelter at the bus stop outside Hindu,
We would have had nothing to say to each other,
We would have remained strangers always,
The webs of fate leading us along separate paths,
Never intersecting, unaware and oblivious,
Of each other.

And yet you said,
One dusky evening some years after that day in July,
That we were not destined to be together.
Poor destiny,
To be made a scapegoat,
After all it had done.

A cup half-full

Twenty-six alphabets,
Just twenty-six,
Strewn together contain
An ocean of meanings and nuances,
Beauty, love, lust, anger,
Envy, passion and prayer,
All stand like clothes
In the cupboard of the mind,
On hangers just twenty-six.

Probability predicts
That given enough time,
And patience,
Randomly uniting
In all infinite ways possible,
These letters will combine
Into everything conceivable,
Everything that has been,
Everything that shall ever be.

I have time till eternity,
And patience that stretches,
From one end of the horizon
To the other,
And so I wait, counting heartbeats,
For these letters to be resolved
Magically into your name,
Probability is now my creed
The possibilities my devotion.

I wait and wait,
Like the earth waits for the sky,
Or the empty nest for wandering birds,
For love is not like scarlet fever,
To cure itself with a change of season,
But a disease, chronic and cruel,
That would neither kill nor go away.

Futile Thoughts After A Chance Encounter

Long years have passed since we shut
The door that to a shared future led,
Such grown-ups we acted as we cut
Our bond. 'We must think of others', we said.

Years went by, you went your way
And I mine, college far away in Delhi
For me. Ahead for you studies lay
Followed by happy matrimony.

I too married for love, soon enough
Got a job, made my peace with life
That flowed like a river, no edges rough,
For company, poetry and a lovely wife.

My daughter was born, pretty as pearl,
And my happiness seemed complete,
Like a slow melody would nights unfurl,
My days were with rainbow colours lit.

When suddenly, across time's misty way,
The door we had so firmly shut long ago,
On rusty hinges opened a creek one day,
As I chanced upon you, and even though-

Our love was dead, it had nothing to ask,
And nothing to give, yet a thought arose
Unbidden, as if the years had worn a mask,
And with it for an instant fickle time froze-

How our lives would perhaps have been,
Had we acted our age when eighteen.