A gift of life

You are like the answer to my life questions

                                                                            Sunset near Puri- Year 2016.
The scar was gone
I happened to notice by the way
Time has passed, certainly
Beyond, comfort and thought
As it must
The soul would say,
Many have survived
Still happy in every way-
I hope I too can stay
Protected
With purpose
To see us through, like you are
The answer to life questions that I may.

RIP and peace

                                           December 8th, Kolkata coffee house.
I like the word
These days
It is beautiful to hear
With a sense of completion
Relief from pain
Associated questions
Moments of uncertainty
The end is now
And nothing matters any more,
Why someone had the cancer cured
With fifty lakhs of rupees, in cash
While other stayed in pain
With what life had on offer
One a spirited fighter, a brave survivor
Other a departed soul
RIP nevertheless
Death equals all
A certainty as never before,
Rest in peace
From what could not be
And thoughts
That torment shall no longer.

The last chapter

                      At the home of migratory birds, near Bhubaneswar, January 2016.
I like being on the road
It seems to answer all my questions
The routine and the beauty of it
How the necessity powers
Above all great and mighty;
In the verandah with hanging cobwebs
Paintings were put far above
From where we would sit
Some of the evenings
When the family got together seldom though;
It must have felt different
To otherwise inhabitants of quite sometime
The tea served with jelabis and samosas
Brought by my father old then
On an even older bicycle;
Past is not for living in
But when it holds more than the unseen
The choice is difficult and in the story of life
I cannot complete
The last chapter, however much I would try.

There is such solace

                                       At Mukteshwar temple in Bhubaneswar, January 2016.
There is such solace in tears
Especially when they come for no valid reason
They lift today from tomorrow
And end the unseen before it lasts too long
Amid this meaningless now;

Often I have nothing to fall back
Upon, what I have done
This could be the final moment
And it wouldn't care enough
For what never did come after all;

The tree outside has no place to hide
A brilliant weapon to survive
Why, we hold them in pride
And decades long happiness
Even if it be for a while?

A promise must stay

                                                               At Konark Temple, January 2016.
Faces moving in clouds
And faces in breeze
Faces lost in smile
With blowing cool each
I often wish
For no options
The days are beautiful as is;
An ordinary life
People who just live
I want all
And then I want nothing
When I am tired of a racing mind
When there is so much
Happiness and grief;
When I just cry
When an excitement ends
And I would rather not retry
The wonderful past
A hindrance today
To breathe, to walk
A promise must stay.

It is time to start putting the dates

                                                                               At Stanford, May 2016
I slip time and again
Just when I have everything
Neatly laid out understood
Ready to practice
I am back in the dark
And unknown,
It is time to start putting the dates-
The past will not return
The past does not return and
It does not excite
To visit the place once lived in
To meet those built into life
As one’s own,
It is time to start forgetting-
A game of association
As a child we played
A game of Places, Names and Things
All for an alphabet
I am reminded with a word 335E
Atish-Anish and their love of chess,
It is time not to think-
Getting into the bus and going far
Not for the trophies
Already won, ready to be thrown
But for the game
The years and the days
Of three childhood,
It is a number I see every morning-
As I turn into my office building
And where many a times
My children walked
For a ride back home
Split into many now
That we have all grown,
And some old.