Wayside Melancholy

A return trip to your home is like
Taking a public transport down the memory lane.

You see everything travels back.

City belles pass you with their frivolous cheers.

In the wet corners of suburbs,
You see the local ruffians fight over nothing.

The green shades of countrysides 
Caress the brainy part of your head 
With their soothing pats.

Through the window, 
You also see the memories travel back 
Flashing a lost agony or pain in the heart.

Goodbye Examination

Once again I have prepared
For an examination
By picking up some dust-ridden olden
Carriers of the knowledge
Those have been adorning my chaotic table
For many a long academic eras!
My preparations lasted for several years
With several not-so-long months,
Sleepless nights and
Chilly early mornings
Those provoked me some time
To curse the unending warfareWith the black-inked
Tiny pack of letters
Stamped on cheap white papers, and
Many a times it made some of
My fellow beings envious
And made some of them to appreciate
With heart felt admiration!


Shakespeare, the bard came
In my visions many times
In the late night,
Sometimes, Eliot and Dickens came
In the early morning with
Their portrait-like amusing smiles
That even made them alive in between
The quests for a theme from the
Random paths of life that they trod.
Certain Women writers of the West
Amazed me with their mastery over
The flowery fiction
Covered in their long term sufferings of
Diseases and isolation -
Like Austen and Bronte sisters.

Indians too were there
Who made me stun at the word power.
Tagore came first with
His Song offerings,
Later Toru, with her short-term life
And her homesick writings
Too had made even the owners of the language
Stuck at the thorns of amusement.
Arundhati and many more
Supplied me with wonder at
Their imagination power.

Many a days in the morning
I rode my bike through an endless way
Covering several kilometers
Touching city struggles as well as village virtues
To a center where I let drop
The burden of language
Wasted by those masters ofLiterature. And I returned, throughSome familiar paths after
A three hours struggle with the
University paper and clutched pen
With aching sinews of palm.

Now it is all over,
The struggle with the forced yawns,
The read through the lines without a blink, and
The speedy revision just before
The last bell,
The tension on the hall ticket, and
The agony on the finishing moments, all!
And occupied now with an effort to
Gain the longing sleeps and lost dreams.

Familiar Paths

When we were children,
We trod the hidden paths of
The countryside, together.

It is a long time back now,
But those still flourish in my memories
Uninterrupted..

It was the time
When the echo of Koel’s shriek
Had made us to Jump,
When thinking of the amusing people
Of imagination,
We shuddered being enthused.

I forgot the hidden paths now,
Not listening the favorite Koel,
No more care for the imagined people,
I left my beloved nostalgia,
Back somewhere.
Don’t want to peep over the loneliness,
That occupies a solitary path
But, when walking through the paths,
Or riding the motorcycle
I feel everything as familiar to me
Familiar to my mind
Familiar to the extreme depths of my heart
I too become a part of them
The bush, the stone, everything
The plants, birds and flowers
The butterflies, everything
Familiar to me
I know them.

When reaches a spot,
I searched for something there,
I know it would be there,
And it was there,
A shrub, a stumpy one
Over the years, it survived the time
Survived the changes, Survival,
All are familiar to me

Ah! Poetry

The heavy dark clouds droop above
Stand for the sadness,
Cumbersome...
And hefty...

Beneath...
The ocean of ideas
In its violent tumult!!

And on the shore...
Stands the darkened tall tower
Erected by the thoughts.

A blend of colours,
The shade of black and white,
A total diffusion of darkness,
And the tumultuous uproar of violent waves.

I came this shore before a long time.
Might be immemorial,
Could have picked up some
Pearls and oysters,
From the depths unlit.
That time my collection had
Some black pebbles too...
Naturally...

For the second time,
What if I cross the ocean once again?
To try my luck,
To see the curiosities ahead,
In the midst of waves.
What if my new wealth this time
Constitute some stones precious...

No! The ocean,
The mighty home of dreams...
I won’t let myself ever go
From your grasp on my wishes,
And on my thoughts!!!