The last half hour



(My sleep, assuming the next morning is ‘working’, is divided, on most days, into two unequal halves- the first usually sound six-and-a-half hour and the last eventful full of sounds half hour before waking up; this piece is a tribute to the second half)

Bathed in the rays of the virgin sun
Oh, wait- Poetic lies!
There must be sun somewhere
But doesn’t it care to sneak in,
On a tranquil winter dawn.

A thin blanket pacifies the raw breeze
That takes shelter in my room;
Ah, I always forget to shut the window
Before I go to sleep.
But I have been woken up
By distant horns on roads,
Blarings of senile engines
And occassional screeching tires
Brushing past the wind
With a whooshing sound.

Then I pick up the cellphone
Lying leisurely beside my pillow;
And as I try to look at the time
It asks for the pattern password
Such a turn-off
In those blessed moments of ‘half-sleep’.
As trembling fingers vie
To get the pattern right,
Digital figures glow-
Oh, there’s still twenty minutes of sleep.

Turning from one side to the other
Restlessly crawling-
Won’t I get up for pranayama,
As I promised Baba?
Five more minutes of sleep- without bother.
There’s something more disturbing-
Ah, the dripping sound
Incessantly invading my thoughts
From the bathroom-
Again I forgot the plumber
Wish I’d saved his number!

With every passing minute
All these sounds turn scary as hell
Louder than ever;
The horns, the tires, the crows, the water
And finally the ‘music’.
I promise to myself-
I’ll never let me hate that beautiful song
Because it’s the morning alarm!

Erring orchestra



The orchestra before the city czars
So elegantly arranged with guitars
Keyboards, percussion and brass
By the master who conducts the class.

Melody flows into the audience like a boon
When suddenly the piano goes out of tune
The music is no longer a serene lagoon.

Listeners wake up from a sweet dream
As if to a loud scream
The master has to decide before it’s late
How to bring all instruments in unison
To help complete their slumber-
Sensational, sound and with passion.

The Price Tag






There is a price tag attached to every item of clothing so elegantly hanging in this outlet. This tag is to be borne by the cloth until the time someone decides to buy it. This dress badly wants to grace the body of some beautiful girl. But, no one is buying it. The price is too high for some and despite desperately being in love with the dress, cannot afford it. There are other shoppers in the same outlet to whom the dress is too “cheap”- they would rather prefer some international brand and thus decide against spending on it.

Now, this dress and this tag are tethered for a long time and they are so integral to each other. Without the dress, the tag is useless. The dress can of course do without the tag but- consider a case where the tag is replaced by some other tag; the dress might in fact end up being sold to someone else for whom it wasn’t meant.

Despite the tag being so important to the dress, it always wants to get rid of the tag…..

Reality and dreams


Aching body wastes away on bed
From last night’s sleep
As it merges into the day ahead.

Dreams never let me get up,
My body clinging to them
Wishing for a magic final lap gallop.

They always said-“Dream, dream”
They didn’t tell me to wake up
And get behind the wheel.