The poems below are extracted from the book, "Conscious Notebook" which you can read full text offline here: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/7929525 and a few that didn't make it to that book but may exist in other books such as here:Haiku Harvest 2001 – 2006
Dream
You stepped into my dream
Like a whiff of rain swept Earth
A cool breeze blew through the windows
Rain…created music outside
The room bore your silent eyes
And myself lying on the mat
From an unearthly distance you bent down
And breathed softly into me
While I …kept on struggling
To reach you
Through dense jungles, steep slopes
Gradually you receded
into that never ending corridor.
Grass
To the scorching summer sun
Burnt into an orange evening
You held out a blade of grass.
Back
It was quite sudden
When I noticed her
From the back
Was it somebody I didn’t know?
The next instant I knew it wasn’t true
When she turned momentarily
I continued to stare at her back
Two completely different persons
I never knew the back could have a personality
of its own.
Faces
You
wouldn’t have known
How
smoothly I pocketed your face
The
other day when we met
For
a second time on the lift
Now…
I can savor it
In
the privacy of my room
Or
the silence of the library
In
the bustle of a crowd
Or
whenever I’ve reason
To
be distressed
I’d
simply take a look at you
All
golden rays of the sun
Shimmering
on the waters
Of
an unusual calm
As
it sets over the horizon
The
dark silhouette of a returning sail
Light
Today again…there was this light
After a storm
There were clouds too…but
In
their midst there was this bright
Shining through a huge cumulo nimbus
An orange glow…which
Shone through the cornfields and
Children’s faces that watched
Their paper-boats go in fast rivulets
The light seemed from another time
My yesterday and your tomorrow
Merged in a swirl of river rapids
River
A lot of mosquitoes
In the water
They don’t let her sleep…
River tosses and turns
Through the night
In her bed
Unable to sleep also
Are the fish
Until they decide
To go to the market
Buy a huge mosquito net
At night…inside,
The snake-like long net
River bathes…
In moonlight streaming
Through the net
Fireflies light up the riverbank
In these early hours
Fishermen start… to row out into the sea
The moon seeps into the dense jungle
Of mangrove filled by the river
There is a gentle breeze
The mosquito net swings lightly
And along with it… the moon
Mountain
1
The day one comes face to face
With a huge mountain
Automatically windows open
Deep down somewhere
Inside the brain
Dark brown clouds atop a black massif
Penetrate your innermost corners
One fine day they suddenly emerge
Barging into a busy office room full of
overworked colleagues
2
There are some people who never get to see
a mountain
All they can do is simply wait
Any of these days it might just happen
Flapping its wings out of the blue
Would appear a shining desolate golden
mountain
And lift them off their park side benches
3
In this extremely plain city
You sometimes wish
The road behind your house
Led to a nearby mountain
Every day on your return
From office
You’d take a walk on its steep slopes
Everyday…in this extremely plain city
One longs for a very own dear mountain
4
The rain stopped for you
To open that window in the bus
For your eyes to feast on those rice fields
Beside the road and at a distance
A shining ivory tearing through the clouds
5
I strongly believe amidst us somewhere
Resides a gigantic mountain
Full of perennial snow
Shining brightly in the afternoon sun
Changing colors with time
Morning…a pinkish white
Evening…a orange hue
We go about all our lives
Trying to scale our individual mountains
Somewhere deep within them
We exist…ourselves
6
Let down your hair in the wind mountain
Let it flow like a torrent through poetry
Swept off false moorings
Your volcanic lips let it burn each
syllable
And let it cool with your icy stare
7
This mountain is an institution
One staying here too long tends to gather
roots and branches
And finally …one day…becomes a tree which
nests
Innumerable eggs of countless dreams
Each day we struggle to hold on to our
mountains
Our roots, our dreams, losing our smiles in
the process
In the end the institute crumbles and
leaves us
To fly on the wings of freedom
8
You resemble the mountain of my dreams
Is that a running stream or your hair
blowing in the wind?
The day our eyes met and clouds burst into
rain
I had to carry a wet heart all the way to
the top
What are those pock marked scars
Did some one use pitons on your body?
One day I too had longed for a climb atop
your majestic tresses
Every day I had been saving a jumar or a
carabiner
All is lost today in your flowing hair
A mountain stream that floods my dreams in
the plains
9
One day, they show a mountain on the TV
screen
Walking towards a lonely traveler
It grew bigger and bigger and the traveler
Smaller and smaller until…
The whole screen was full of the mountain
Snow covered soft powdery white and the
traveler…
One of the black dots on the tube…yet
Nobody really ever moved from their
individual places
10
Oh no! Mountain she’s not for you
She’s just a bolt from the blue
A thundercloud, which will drench you from
head to toe
After a time you’ll notice the smiling sun
Point out to your cloud over another
distant mountaintop.
11
For me, I am sure await
A few playful mountains
One has to cross them on the way
To the biggest of them all
Its peak…lies invisible amidst clouds
Its surroundings…serene, silent
And yet…there’s this welling of love
Shining mountain…do stay put I pray
For you, I shall come definitely, one day
12
Imperceptible and yet a gradual
accumulation
Of hatred, anger and distrust…human
relationships
They form a thundercloud of emotions from a
wisp of smoke
Far down from the valley…all within seconds
A gigantic mountain of misunderstandings
From mole hills of misconstrued notions
13
In terrible tensions sleep is only possible
On listening…to a far off melody that
emanates
From deep within a desolate, distant
mountain
There’s a hint of the smiling sun
At the distant mountaintop there exists
None of our dreams and wants
Only sleep…deep and restful
14
On returning from the mountains
One roams in the city…full of visions
Giant skyscrapers resemble Makalu…Lhotse
Vehicles ply on disgruntled streets…remind
you
Of hurrying sherpas on the Khumbu ice fall
15
One day…maybe on a trip to the mountains
One might just encounter crumbled rocks and
dust
On both sides of a road which extends into
a never ending desert
A gradual wear and tear through the
ages…play of air wind and water
Cities buried deep within them…houses that
twinkled once at night
Atop dense dark mountain shapes.
16
One day just before elections you chance
upon
Political workers painting graffiti on the
mountain
Slowly and steadily it gets covered in
slogans and speeches
As you go near it becomes
illegible…childish scribbles
You leave and from a distance… see only a
sparkling sun
17
Everyday I return to you
Like you are home waiting
With a sweet smile and a cup of tea
The sea gulls fluttering in your eye lashes
Throw up incredible patterns of white
I am sucked into them in a vortex of river
rapids
18
If one can’t go to a mountain
It comes to him
I’ve been waiting for a long time now
Molehills cover my body
The Earth on it sprouts Trees
With the passage of time it seems I have
Become the mountain
Respiratory Care Nights
Breathing machine pumping love
Eyes of dying hens
Pierce to depths of turbulence
Needles, blood gas and movement
Brisk sharp and painful
A cascade of alarms, ventilator settings
Causes and remedies
Eventually dropping off to an unusual
silence
Mountain valleys, placid waters
Light of dawn and a distant bird song
Waking up to a humidifier alarm.
Acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy
One night a black raven swooped down
And carried off all the power in his legs
Next day there were hordes of them
Screeching and perching at his hands and
arms
One rude jab and he lost his voice
Another made him choke to swallow
He was brought to the ICU
Breathing slowly turning blue
A large ostrich perched near his head
Delivering mouth to mouth till he turned
red
Gradually his power returned
One by one in all his limbs
All birds one by one returned to their
nests.
Pulmonary medicine
Take a look at this chest x-ray
Hmm dense forests bordering on green rice
fields
A cow munching grass, lazily waving away
the flies
The setting sun, one or two clouds
interspersed
Hmm looks normal-show the other one
What’s this! a giant jungle mower
Concrete new buildings-all cooped up look
alikes.
Hey can you hear the trees crashing!
Can’t make out – over here the mower’s
creating a din
Hmm see anything more?
A lot of alveolar opacities
That’s the smoke from our upcoming power
plant
Hmm the diagnosis is clear—Lung cancer
Get a bronchoscopy but the prognosis is
bleak
At the most 3-6 months.
The battered bronchial tree
Last night I discovered the fruits of
bronchogenic carcinoma
Growing on my bronchial tree
Ugly and slimy it tasted of blood and
phlegm.
This tree…had long been a source of shade
For travel weary souls amidst sun burnt
fields.
Not any more…falling leaves,
Shriveled bark, ugly nodular fruits with a
slimy sauce
With each and every cough it shook from its
very roots
Caught in a raging storm
