To A Teacher

You killed my faith with your clumsy words.
You tortured my beauty with your vulgar knowledge.
You try to define truth for me. When I try to transcend all the norms.
You shape history for me when I could have understood it the way I want.
Why do you exert on singing in rhythm, let me find my own voice, my own rhythm.

Do not trample my temple with hammers of iron clauses.
Lets my ravishing idols remain untouched by the tinge of your stagnant horizons.
Let me live with a streak of hope.
I too, like everyone posses my gods, my love, my beauty.
To a teacher who killed my faith with his clumsy words on a dreary afternoon.

The Invisible

Gaze upon me, you may find nothing other than a stern look,
A negotiable smile, a smirk or even calmness of a silent desert.
Never has, what you gaze upon, given up or made up a look.
The mirror hates me for what I am, you hate me for what I am.
So I am invisible.

I cant sing, but that is no crime. My sound is neither faint nor harsh,
But does that make me a eunuch to be avoided ? Understand dear ones,
It is not the wood that creates the music, but the air that passes.
But without the wood, air is just air. Now tell me, what I am.
The wood, the air or the music.

I am always there, you know that. I gape at you as a fool.
You pass right through my salty flesh which is just like yours.
I am not painted in white, black or red nor do I have masks of vanity.
I am not asking you to be with me. I ask you to remind me what I am.
Soul, body or a name.

You don’t know the answer. You don’t because you don’t know me.
I am every thing that is invisible. I am death , the new hope.
I am what lies beyond the horizon, I am the zenith. I am the stench.
I am what you are not. You may have questions about what I am,
Not even god can answer them.

Talking About Small Things

They never talked about the world.
Poverty and famine, death or destruction,
It never crossed their mind.
They never talked about fallen monarchs,
Slums or empires, queens and kings. They never wanted it.
They stuck to small things.

To their world of a river. Ants and ant bites.
About a little dying spider and of night.
They talked about smell and taste.
The last of the river in the hollow of a navel.
They stuck to small things.
To a small world.

I came to their realm once, while wandering in search of boundaries.
I saw the mangosteen tree, where the boundaries dissolved for them.
I rested under that tree, looking at the river. It was placid.
The world of small things.
As I travelled back to my world of monarchs, death, queens and slums,
I wished I too could be one of them, to talk of small things.

( The side effects of a journey.
A journey to the setting of the novel God of Small Things, Aymanam Village)

Naked

I Stand.
I stand naked in front of you.
Losing everything I had.
My Shame. My Knowledge. My Pretences.
My Skin. My flesh. My Bones.
See through me now.
Pity Me.
Yes I will die in the gush of your breath.
Having shown you I have nothing special,
I want you to love me, love me for what I am.
Yes, Love me for what I am.
Never more, never less.

Hope :- The Window

I found a window in my room.
It changes its shape every time I look for it.
Now, it is veiled by white curtains.
But now, it has dirty strong iron bars.
And yet sometimes, it is nothing but a hole in the wall.

The window,
Bare. It wants nothing. It is just there.
Wondering whether someone would come.
To look through it. To find wonders.
To dream of reaching out and touch a spirit never known before.
It sparkles a flame in the soul of the traveller who craves for the road.
Bare, it is. It wants nothing. It is just there.

The window,
It snows through that window,
Night rain squeezes its hand through.
A beam of yellow light.
A thick forest or a single tree.
Mountains and rivers, straits and oceans.

I, a fool, mesmerized by the revelations through that window,
Dreamt of pursuing of snow caped mountains and oceans.
Fell in love with rain and rare flowers of a garden.
It was late I understood that, the window was the hope in me.
It showed me what I wanted to see.
Torn by defeat, devastated by doom
I shut that window and never looked for it again.
And it never appeared.

For the Book-Keeper's Soul

I found my self lost in a book.
In its yellow pages. In the black stern printed letters.
In the stains of tears and ear wax.
In the scribbled names of star-crossed lovers,
The smell the book carries as its weight.
The dog eared corners. The smear of ink that looks like it is pasted.
The veins of a leaf the leaf someone left in the book.
The torn pages which look like a lightning scar.

More than the wonders the book reveals,
I like to get lost in the book.
For the book keeper’s soul is in the book.
A soul that was kindled in pride and pain.
In possessiveness and passion.

In this whole world, dear friend,
If u have to treasure something,
Treasure a book.

The Poem Of Innocence

Today I came to understand, Innocence is what I need.
Rage has doomed me.
Love destroyed me.
Hope confused me and,
Faith bored me.
For me truth is just another word. Meaningless to its core.
Justice has never been defined, and thus not been done.
Logic is rarely upheld.
Dreams remain dreams.
Today when I saw a child sleeping in my warmth,
With clenched fists, and his occasional smiles,
I came to understand, Innocence is what I need.

The Zahir

Some nights you fill in me. Just like the black eating up the evening sky.
On those nights, I lament for my incapability to be, what you want me to be.
Those nights, memories hurt like age old wounds. The words you spoke thrust like arrows.
Your silences, your sobs, you nothing but you.
On those nights, I feel like possessed.
You turn out to be the sleepless night. The silence. The dew. The smell of night flower.
Maddened by my state I cry out as if I woke from a nightmare.
On those nights, I wish nothing. As you want me to wish nothing.
I wish every night to be like those nights.
For you are the madness, the triumph, the defeat.
On those nights, what am I going to call you.
Other than Zahir

For Esther

The SEA

Hey, fellow traveller.
Collapse. As I have. For there is no sea. It is only the mirage of a sea.
Do not get fooled by the sea in the conch. The conch of desert is not lying.
Yes there was a sea once in these yellow dunes. Blue as the sky is.
But today there is no sea. There is only the mirage of a sea.

Once I too believed there was a sea. I too travelled hard like you.
But I was betrayed by hope. As there is only the mirage of a sea.
Fall down brother, your legs are pleading to you, your skin is tearing you.
The heat of your will cannot conquer the deserts rage.
There is nothing you can do except to fall. As there is only the mirage of a sea.

There is no depths in that sea, no hidden treasure, no pearls,
There is nothing that would come to solace you in her lair. It is only a mirage of your sea.
Break hard. O, hope in those eyes, learn it from me; it is better to die in despair than in hope.
Even this wind is chanting of the barren lands which lay in front of you. But you are stirring.
You are going to walk again. O what a fool! It is only a mirage of your sea.

Dear brother,
You called me by my name. Traveller. A passion which equals beauty is everyone’s prayer.
And mine is this journey. Journey to this sea. And all I need is the mirage of the sea.
I can not collapse. The conch has been my compass, its sound my peace.
It is this journey that quenches my thirst. And all I need is the mirage of the sea.
Hope can’t betray you. Only you can betray hope. My will is not afraid of failure,
Know it from me; I live in a world where failure is feasible.
But, Doubt of failure can’t poison my veins. My skin will bear, my legs will pardon.
For they know what this travel is. What this traveller is.
To fall is for people like you who want the sea; all I need is the mirage of the sea.

Treasure you say, depths and pearls. I wish I could understand their meaning as you do.
You never reached the sea, how do you know about the solace her lair gives?
No, I will not break. I would rather die in hope than in despair.
Every pulse of my being would trumpet back to the chanting wind,
That all I need is the mirage of a sea.

Behold,
THE SEA.

Monsoon's Offspring

I do have memories.
I sure do, I have destroyed them, rebuilt them,
And destroyed them again.
Yet the phoenix rises from my heart to sing it’s beautiful
Song, on a rainy day of monsoon.


The rhythm of the rain had sung its lullaby for me,
As I was born in monsoon.
I never heard my mother’s voice.
Her body was cold, but her blood was
warm on me when

It were the new born touch me not of monsoon,
That taught me the fragility of nature,
Futility of life.
Innocence , which left me ,
Was so tender as of those touch me not.

It was the smell. The arrival of monsoon.
That conspired to whisper, the word I conjured for her
“Forever yours”
The evening that was drawn in grey made us cry.
We walked in the rain.

The sky turned creamy black
And the birds were heading back.
It was at that moment I remembered ,
I too need to head back. Monsoon was coming.
My attic will leak, fungi green will eat up my wall.

Wasps were flying from the damp ground,
Circling the yellow bulb under which,
My father was laid still and erect.
I understand that, monsoon took his life to
Give some others a new one.


I have memories.
I sure do, I destroyed them, rebuilt them,
And destroyed them again.
For the phoenix to rise from my heart to sing its beautiful
Song on a rainy day of monsoon.

From the window of my death bed I can see
Rain pouring into the brown river.
And down the memory lane, everything,
I had felt and every thing I was, It was because of monsoon.

Now, I would like to name me as Monsoon’s Offspring.

About Che

I will not wear Che,

I will not make revolution a brand,

rebel a tag.

If Ihave to wear Che,

I would have in my thoughts.

For he is no God to be framed,

To be kept in every street corner.

Not an idol to be worshipped.

He is a glaring thought, which should

Peirce into deeds, words wont suffice.

The thought being :- " When Injustice Becomes Law, Resistance Becomes Duty"

The Proclamation

With no further doubts in my slimy, exhausted throbbing body,
I,the prostitute of shameless senses, of flamboyant pleasures of world,
Hereby proclaim.

To the stranded traveller in the realm of pitiless present,
To those who know it, how to crave, how to wonder and how to die.
Here I proclaim.

What comes out from the depth of absurdity, stench of logic,
Thread of `conditioning.
I proclaim thus,

O! Death is born out of beauty and beauty alone.

Victim Of A Dream

And here falls the victim of a dream.
From the undiluted silences of nature,
To the solace of madness.

This memory would be the sperm that would penetrate your conscience,
to give birth to ten thousand days and nights of sorrow anger and anguish.
It would be from your breast that you would feed remorse.
You would caress the spike of smite that rests on your lap.
When no power yours can triumph over the growing tangled roots of emotion,
Remember this victim

The victim of a dream you nurtured by night, between your thighs.
Squeezed with all your might to the height of completeness.
And then you left. Leaving the carcass for,
Loneliness and time to feed.

And there fell, the victim of a dream,
From the undiluted silences of nature,
To the solace of madness.