(Dashehra)
Crackers popped out of the guts of faux evil today. Ravana, the power-soaked worshipper of Shiva, was burnt down to a politically incorrect heap of ashes and unburnt scrap. My eyes, dimmed by whisky and fumes, saw the dismal flames of our lives, flickering on this late summer evening – bursting ever so often, into a concealed passion of firecrackers. I saw mother-in-law’s, driven by a bounden duty to withhold the culture of older years, watching the flames with purses tightly held against stiff sarees. I saw younger mothers, holding heavily the burden of their flesh and looking to lose the deadening routine of raising children, in the flames of good and evil. What is really evil? Is it the boredom etched on a child’s face? Is it the more complex allure of a woman? Is it the swerve of the teenager, balanced powerfully on a motorcycle - papa’s gift, counting the quick step of the evening with an insouciance that time did nothing to deserve?

There come times in my life, when the relentless logic of doubt lays seige to my thought, when action seems pointless, when life itself seems like a story turned stale by the telling. I have been through such times, though the clouds now seem to be lifting. I hope. I have spent enough time rushing "too much with hurried hands and worried minds". Looking for the next opportunity to set up some reason to dread the world, waiting for the next mail in my inbox to declare a collapse of all that we assumed was reasonable to believe in.

In the loneliness of my pain, I have roamed the streets of this city, seeking the succour of crowds. I glimpsed stories on fleeting faces, whispered into cell phones, or cast, despairingly, at the grey streets. I saw trivial passages of accidental destiny in eateries and shops. Oh how I longed to trap this pitiful urban meaninglessness into words - once and for all, and to rid myself of this burden of gloom.

I suppose someone must always bear the cross. Jesus was not the first and neither the last.

...

Each day, as I wake early to beat the heat, I open up doors and windows of my house, to let the dew-scented early morning coolness in. As the sun sweats on its way to its searing pinnacle in a sky paled by the heat, I, once again, close those doors and windows and lie trapped inside, until, the sun gives way to the eternal trier - the dusk of a summer day. And then wait for the concrete and stone and glass to
give up the anger of the day, to lie blissfully in the cool clasp of another summer night.

Today, more than any other day,
I look to set up my own life,
Disentangled from the lives of others,
On its own roots.

These little things that I bought with my money
Make me proud and sensate
And rooted.
Rather than the rhythms
Taken from a love
Whom I don't trust, whom I don't love.

I have no dreams, I have no ambitions.
I am some little piece of algae that grows and abates
Let me add up all the change
And leave none for you to count.

Let me play the tones that float out from songs of young.
These little things we did and we didn't,
These little things that are so fragile, they can't bear the sun of the day.
Let me make my peace
Let me make my peace,
Though it may cost me more.