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