Thursday 28 August 2008

The Rainbow





A flock of steel-grey and white doves flapped up from the neighbouring roof in sudden excitement and fluttered up into the sky as though at the sound of an inaudible gunshot.

They were working their wings with great joy and they circled high, one following the other, metallic and feather-light.

They circled on and on, weaving ever-evolving patterns in the sky, circling now closer overhead so you could see each one of them tilting the beak sideways listening to the wing-beats of the others, moderating the speed and direction of the flight with subtle paddling variations of the wings to merge seamlessly with the whole.

They circled on and on and away, taking their ecstasy to levels beyond concepts, theories and logic.

They turned into specks of pure delight in the grey evening sky and, with the light of the heady regions playing on their feathers, became invisible flickers of sublime nothingness, dissolving from memory. They wheeled back into view yet again, drawing strands of some invisible filament from a drifting cloud.

The sun was behind a big bank of rain-clouds in the west. The whole line of the horizon west seemed to have caught fire and the clouds were billowing up like black smoke from a massive conflagration. They trundled east like a herd of wild elephants conquering a valley.

A sudden squall disturbed the trees, exciting cuckoos, sparrows and crows out of their perches. They flew from branch to unsure branch, but only the crows cawed. The doves were still circling high in the sky, wheeling in and out of the east-bound rain-clouds.

They wheeled with the high-altitude winds, sometimes the wind blowing them off their course, but each time the faltering happened, they dipped or climbed together to navigate the choppy ether, effortlessly weaving newer formations in which the wind too joined to make the whole.

The clouds galloping east would invade the whole sky: they rolled forward, the breakers curling in with the onward thrust of the massive clouds from behind. The wind among the trees had fallen silent. The whole earth seemed to freeze with the expectation of the first drops of the downpour as the clouds passed overhead.

It did not rain. The clouds seemed to be holding back, not allowing the myriad particles of vapour packing them with immeasurable power to condense and fall. They held back and rolled on and on as though they had to reach somewhere; they were so fixed on something...

They rolled on and on and the light began to fall, growing dimmer by the second, until it seemed night and heavy shadows would embrace the sky and the earth...

And then there was light and revelation.

It had neither shape nor dimension; it was the flowering of a flower of thousand petals slowly blooming, petal after petal unfolding brilliance and fragrance, overflowing. The clouds were lifting their blanket in the west and the sun was coming out and now shining in the full glory of joyous surprises.

It was immeasurable and fathomless as the void of the heavens; and the doves were now circling closer and were not of this world.

They descended gliding radiant on still wings, the deep violet of the rain-clouds behind them, their beaks soft and shining. They came swinging down, bobbing up in smooth arcs at touchdown and flapping their wings twice or thrice to gain sure-footed perch on the old rooftop.

They perched in a row at the very top of the roof where the tiles folded pyramid-shape and they were all facing east and crooning. They perched transmuted on the rooftop and they were all gazing happily at a glorious rainbow straddling the eastern sky, all seven colours sparkling.

They crooned as though saying it was their work; the entire sweep of the rainbow was their work.

A cuckoo began to sing and it was raining rainbows somewhere in the east.

************

Monday 25 August 2008

Sun expires at noon

Shouts went down the beach
As when the canoe returns heavy with fish.
They came with baskets running,
Crowding around the jeep,
Laughing, jostling, pushing,
Hurling foul names and blows at one another
In a conflagration of paranoiac anxiety.

An authoritative voice boomed out:
What shame! What shame!
Suddenly there was silence,
Suddenly they stopped squabbling,
Hurriedly they formed a queue...

And now they spoke in undertones,
Holding their baskets like floral wreaths,
As though some unknown dignitary had died,
And they in queue to pay their tributes.

No undignified display of emotion,
No expression at all on the face,
When the sun expired at noon.

Redemption?

I had learned so little in life:
When the calling came to unlearn everything,
I found so little to disentangle.

I had accumulated so little in life:
When the calling came to give up everything,
I found hardly anything to unload.

Oh, how I used to cling like a leech to the dead
And jump next to that never born.

Not knowing now is the beginning and the end...
Bliss with no beginning and end.

Saturday 23 August 2008

Spellbound *


Street-abustle morn...
In my lodging room above,
Your smile fills my soul.

On my windowsill,
Flapping, a dove perches still...
Oh too close I freeze...

Feathers glistening
Metallic, yet soft-crooning...
Our eyes meet spellbound.

*****

Friday 22 August 2008

Footprints *


In the twilight corridors of my dreams
I search for your footprints.

Wherefrom this fragrance, faint and alluring?
A gust of wind from the wilderness of another birth,
Bringing forgotten memories on its wings...

I remember, on my frozen floor, the soft tread of your steps.

In blinking moments of revelation,
When the distant lighthouse swings its beam past my windless sail,
I quiver,
On the edge of ecstacy,
Feeling your presence in my cabin.

You elude me, like a forgotten touch,
A word,
Drifting out of reach...

*****

Thursday 7 August 2008

GOAL!

there were eight or ten of them little boys, it was difficult to count them, for they kept swinging madly on their roller skates on the court hardly the size of a basketball court, sweeping along in a bunch after the ball with their sticks poised and stretching out tense for the strike, dispersing and twisting in wild patterns and then going after the ball yet again, straining forward for speed, navigating smoothly, dangerously, sticks clacking, shoulders pushing, shooting off the course and with manoeuvres of the feet and the knees and the hips and the flailing hands recovering balance, laughing, and now from all corners converging on the far goal post to attack and defend, the goalkeeper strung bristling as a cat confronting an attacking pack, and as the whole court touched a beat to the imploding moment, there was this lady shouting from the sidelines, shoot, sonny, shoot, shoot.

Monday 4 August 2008

Twin Crows


Two crows perched huddled close on a bough up the big tree swaying with the winds blowing from the west.
The whole canopy rose and fell and you heard the heaving of the tree like the deep-breasted breath of a bodybuilder pumping weights.
Everything was strong and robust this morning, the sky a translucence of dissipating white clouds vast and spreading, only in the east in patches showing blue brilliance, the sun hiding and peeping out, softening and setting alight the street and the buildings, breathing light and shadow.
And the twin crows perched huddled close, their beaks sunk against the fluff of their breasts, eyes closed in the sharing of warmth, dancing with the bough bobbing in the wind, oblivious of everything else but the sharing of each other’s warmth and the listening to of each other’s heartbeats, never losing the perch, as though this moment was the beginning and the end and this dance the only thing.
A car honked and a truck hurtled past along the street raising a cloud of dust in quick twisting spirals blown dissipating away by another gust of wind.
The wind and the sun and the honk of the car and the hurtling sound of the truck and the two crows with their swinging dance on the bough under the heaving canopy of the tree seemed the totality of something inexplicable this morning.
*****