Farewell

From a glacier glorious you were born.

From the magnificent mountains began your journey.

You gurgled with laughter, dear River,

When you first sensed Earth’s contours beneath you.

You felt life and energy ripple through you,

And soon learnt to gather it into a current.

The sun’s rays warmed you everyday,

The rain faithfully fed you.

You raced bounding down the mountain, eager,

“Ah! Impetuous youth!” I have heard many remark.

You made your own path as you moved,

Often guided by invincible Nature.

Rocks, trees, obstacles many you met,

But you learnt fast to change your path,

Or conquer by force, hurdles on your way.

As you moved, you gathered marks of the journey,

Contamination many called it, some age.

The crystal clarity of your waters, with time,

Gained new hues, new depths.

Many lands you passed on your way,

Some you hurriedly left behind,

Some you wished never to part,

And some you pined to return to.

But you moved ahead, for you had learnt early,

That your journey was supreme.

It is greater then you, your existence.

It is destiny you had to seek.

So you flowed across time and space.

Sometimes joyous you gurgled past,

Or in rage lashed out at land,

In waterfalls entwined beauty and power,

Or tranquil, gently rippled by.

Each day, a new life you lived,

And to many, gave life.

I, dear River, had gurgled with you,

In the misty days of the mountains.

With you I have flowed since,

I, a little stream by you side.

Often we have parted but never were far,

Together, we flowed in our separate paths.

But now dear one, our paths diverge.

Yours lead to wider deeper plains,

Mine, to linger awhile on these gentle shores.

Yes, we must part for our paths rule us,

But where is parting in our world?

Where all is one and one all.

When the wind carries a million messages,

The rain, our thoughts and dreams,

Streams, a part of ourselves would deliver.

And yet, it pains to see you move away.

I fare you well dear friend.

May your path guide you well.

Know that no obstacle will prove too strong

While your heart guides your current

Remember that your path is yours to create,

in the wide plains of Mother Earth.

Good luck sister, until we meet again,

For meet we shall, once doubtless,

In the vast depths of the ocean.

(I wrote this for my sister when she left for Austarlia. Kochu, I miss you more than I feel anything in life. There's always disharmony in currents when you are not around. )

The Cracked Mirror

This is a poem I wrote sometime back, at a creative writing exercise. Unlike the other stuff I wrote during that course, this poem somehow is poignant to me, besides being one of the shortest poems I've ever written.

To the house’s attic I would climb

Creep in through cobwebs and dust

To the corner where it stood-

A cracked mirror, old and neglected.

Long hours of playtime I have spent

Gazing at myself in the mirror

Reflected in bits and multiples

Counting the dark spots on my face

That age had awarded the mirror

In each of its cracked bits I saw-

Myself, in a different eye

I lived in stories with heroes

from each bit of the cracked mirror-

One sad, one happy, one angry

Yet all was one, all me.

There first I learnt of humans;

how many hid in one.

There I grew up each day,

discovering a new face within me.

Ages have passed since then.

And time, clouded my memories,

like the blurred images in the mirror.

Yet many a night lying awake,

I can see vividly-the cracked mirror

and the many faces it once drew of me.

Were they all me? Or mere flaws of the mirror?

The frog croak

The sky appears ominous, dark with clouds... heaven peeps in through cracks in the heavy grey wall... the trees sway in the wind... the air pregnant with expectation... the world is waiting... In the distance, a frog's far off croak, a clumsy, lone, unpleasant croak... And then the tumbling cascade of rain... heaven descends to earth in that moment... The eternal music of the rain drops, the purging of the Earth's soul, the moist kiss of the breeze. These are the perceptions that a frog croak stir in me. For me a frog croak is always accompanied by memories of the monsoon and the laughter of childhood, the long hours of wait for the rain and the inexplicable joy when it finally begins. Its green and grey and an indescribable rainbow shaded memory.

My writing too is like a frog croak- a clumsy, lone, ugly attempt at creating something beautiful. I look at it the same way I perceive the frog croak. It too is delved deep in memories, in sense perceptions and transient emotions. It is about rain and clouds of a different kind. This blog is an attempt to give voice to that croak, a step to overcome the awareness of its coarseness, to stand on a hill on a moonlit night, croak away into the silence and hope and wait for rain...