A journal of the rogue year

2010-03-16T00:34:00.002+05:30

Nessun Dorma

Monster moon, O monster moon
Let her be in my sight:
Her face maketh the fairies swoon
Who would not sleep a-night.
Bright as a meteor, soft as love,
Ruddy as the rose-cheeked Mars.
Proud as the lightning, praise be Jove,
Her name is a thousand stars.

2010-03-02T16:18:00.002+05:30

Distance

Between us the ocean lies
Far furlongs for two pairs of eyes
To probe and peer.
Now the book is at its end
The tale is past its telling
Now the swallows southward wend
Where summer seeks her dwelling.
Now the season’s past her prime
Now the reason’s lost its rhyme
Now the gaping gulf of time
Shall grow each year.

2010-02-23T12:05:00.002+05:30

The Black Lake

(...but does it make sense?)

I have heard, I have heard
The parable of the good shepherd
From tongues red and white.
And I have heard, I have heard
Tales more wondrous and true
Than sea and sky are blue
Or a lake blacker by night.
Tell me, is it not true
Your brother, friend all-weather
Eyes cerulean blue
Hands clung cold together
Porcelain white, to you
He reached, and crying said
‘Brother, bird of a feather
Am I among the dead?’
Did you not that once –
Though time like a river runs
Washing all before, behind –
Wish your eyes were blind
Wish your hands were guns
Did you not that once?
I have heard, I have heard
Tales in the sling of a song
Thawed in the melt of a throng
Naught to be learnt or said
All who are wise are dead
Cawed by an old blind bird
Naught remains but a word

2009-10-26T13:26:00.001+05:30

Sitting with a distributor

Why should you fret, and why should I rage?
I’m trying to sell you something.
In the back of my mind are images you cannot see:
A skeletal ship upon the moonlit sea
A Saxon raiding skiff that time forgot.
I cannot see their faces, yet their eyes
Glitter like green diamonds in the mist.
A pair of lips half-opened, then the time
She slept with me for what I thought was love
And yet you rant, and half your words I hear
The other half, a Stuka engine roar
Above doomed London; now my cell phone rings
A porridgey voice tells me your cheques have bounced
So you can basically roll that order into a cigarette
And light it in your butt.

2009-10-04T16:46:00.004+05:30

I
Diseased mind, why do you stray
The length of a mental holiday?
Be warm in your little box
Blanketed by travel plans
Warmed by remembrance of children’s hands
Fur lined boot and socks.
O do not think of breast or butt
Nor stare and strut
At bygone tarts and their appurtenances
But wallow in full room and board
Not thinking, when the lid is shut
Which Babylonian slut
Opened the gates to Persian horde.

II
How shall I look
Upon her face, O monster moon?
How shall I brook
Her seeming unaware?
Her glance would arrest
The sun in his flight
To steer in her sight
And swoon.

2009-09-27T11:28:00.000+05:30

Better

I shared a flight with YSR once: he looked like an honest man; I am sad he died.
But a sage said, it is better to be a python’s prey than a rat’s:
To be devoured by death than nibbled alive, like those that have cancer, say –
But then who am I to judge
If he was right? Maybe it is better to die everyday by just little bits
And plan the afterlife, to have time for solace
In the smell of sticks, or the shadows inside
A church at dusk, with a nun in silence
Bent over the pages of her vast book.

2009-05-20T14:04:00.005+05:30

Star to Mantua
...the vaulty heaven so high above our heads...

Not the trill of the lark
In her high hung heaven,
The darkling is ridden
With wasteful alarm:
But lie in the blackness
Of dream-dark tresses
And savour the sadness
Of farewelling arms.
O see not the awning
Aglow in the dawning
As the dappling of daylight
Unmakes the moon.
Unheeding its warning
Fickle fortune scorning
O dally, till the daybreak
Comes soon, too soon.

2008-09-29T22:17:00.005+05:30

So tonight, like the night before,
When a full moon flushes on the white-sand shore,
And the Arquith of Noth come hunting – aye,
In their tens and their milliards, to quarrel over billiards,
And stamp the frightened woozy-possums scampering by –
So tonight, like the night that is gone,
When silver teaspoons tinkled on your moon-swept lawn –
We shall sing, we shall play,
Though flattened-possum mothers sing a mournful lay,
We shall dance with the Arquith and all be gay.
We shall sing with the Arquith, the young lads croon
O kings of the Noth-men, the ladies swoon,
Fly us away to the monster moon.
Deep in the lairs of the Big Red Sea
The hoary-haired ogre-mogre waits in glee
To feast on the Noth-men is a life-long wish
His ears are cocked – did a possum go ‘squish’?
Deep in the bowels of the Big Red Sea
The maids of Neptune lay out their tea
Crumpets and chocolates, a treacle-box treat
With rolly-polly pudding of Noth-men’s feet.
The vile tempered Noth-men are yummy to eat
When stewed with a carrot, and a kilo of beet
We shall stomp on the Arquith, the Jijama drone
O chomp on Arquith, the possums mourn,
Far, far better than Neptune’s seat
Is a treacle-box luncheon, with Noth-men meat

2008-09-29T22:15:00.000+05:30

Don't ask me why
I love you – don’t ask me why.
Ask why the wind blows
Why ice is cold, why snow is white
Why milk never sours in the breast
And whoever knows physics, he will answer, but –
Don’t ask me why I love you.
But if you will not ask
If you will not pry
I shall tell you, let me tell you now:
Because this world has nothing in it
Not the smell of half-remembered days
Nor dreams of times to come
That matters more than the soft
Supple skin of your immediate hand:
If this isn’t love, then call it what you will
Call it what you make of why it matters so:
The wheel of time, the siren of our visions
The vagabond of our loneliness’ longing:
An ocean
Of diffused metaphors.
You do not understand: that’s the reason
I told you not to ask.

2008-09-20T22:03:00.000+05:30

Suddenly

Suddenly, when spirit
Coils like a serpent of the ancient seas
And life like a lyric
Leaps in the blood blue age cannot freeze;
Suddenly, when summer
Burns in my veins like a spoonful of sun
O voice, grown dumber
Than the silent woods, is your shouting done?
Defying the sorrow
Black putrefaction of the soul’s decay
Blue birds of the morrow
Jabber, gibber, intonate you lifelong lay.
Suddenly, when giving
Thought to the dead, where the dead have a name
The limbs of the living
Draw to the grave as moths to a flame
Cold as a glimmer
Born of the fires that forever burn:
O eyes grown dimmer
Than the sinking sun, is your sighting done?

2007-11-28T13:44:00.002+05:30

Untitled

I dreamt of you tonight, no face
Was ever so long to linger
While swiftly on the tread of time
Sped morning’s red harbinger:-
Though time and tide at odds with men
Now break the day too soon
I dreamt of you tonight, by light
Of cold November moon.

Unitled II
The heart is a friend
Of its own moody seasons
In its vacillations
Neither reason nor rhyme:
So why need I wonder
Years having blown asunder
Memories and mooring to a forgotten time -
My heart’s mad beatings run
When I see your face again
Like a season that has lain
In search of the sun?

Unititled III
Night after night, when darkness covers me
You visit me dreaming, like you were not gone
And there you are loving, as you once were loving
Where the curtains of slumber are deepestly drawn.
Night after night, when starlight is twinkling
And a red moon rises over foglands forlorn
And the forests are flooded, their rough trees rudded
You visit me dreaming, like you were not gone.
But daylight brings parting, bitter as our parting
I wake in an unrest, you vanish anon.

2007-08-27T09:13:00.000+05:30

To those who have left their comments over the months - thanks for your words of appreciation. It gives one the desire to post more often!
Here is a poem that I had posted before, but expanded by one more stanza. I think it more or less complete now.

How could I care
How could I care, that has not tongue to sing
Nor flight to dare the soaring eagle’s wing
Nor shape to fit in a thousand niches
Nor knife to cut a cord-net of cliches-
How could I care, what man has spent or earned
What youth has treasured, what old age has spurned?
When life is past the lure of everything
Blue-ribbed hands will rue and write and wring
Wrinkled dugs made taut in the grasp of time.
How could I care, that has not song nor rhyme –
How in the moon’s four million phases
Some beacon of beauty blazes
Black-brick towers smoke like sprigs of thyme? –
Let them sing, with madder song than mine.

2007-07-16T13:21:00.000+05:30

Say unto the weeping willow

Say unto the weeping willow:
Weep O, weep ye by the brook
Though the maple ripens yellow
From the linden leaves are shook
Never shall her heart discover
What it meant for me to love her.
When the sun shines meek and mellow
On the farmlands full and fallow
Unhunted by heaving hook
By the reed and sagebrush sallow
Singing songs in voices hollow
Fairies, elves and ghostly lasses
Gather in the tall, tall grasses
Sliding shadows by the brook.
For their maids and gallants callow
Joy and light and day forsook –
Nor can I more, mortal, shallow
Forget her departing look.
Never shall her heart discover
What it meant for me to love her.

2007-02-20T17:15:00.000+05:30

Miracle

If my hand in holy
Water dipped, if my sight
By night and darkness dimmed, an angel saw
Straight like a sliver of the silver moon in flight
Haloed by a hail of light;
If my heart could speed upon his wing,
Till time and tide dissolve, and day or night
No sun and moon nor light nor darkness bring
Then could I your matchless marvel sing.

2007-01-05T17:00:00.000+05:30

A scotch ditty

does 'lass' make a song scottish? don't really know, but here goes...

Dance with me, dalliance –
Comely lass, come haste on your pittering toe.
Like summer on the slippery slip-stream lass,
Does love ever scurry by so.
Sing to me, providence
Sing softly, where heather red and purple grow.
Dance with me, dalliance, loving is fleet
Like summer-blossom he shall go.

2006-12-28T11:55:00.000+05:30

My favourite poets (in order of preference....nothing revolutionary here)

9. T S Eliot
8. Shelley
7. Housman
6. Byron
5. Dylan Thomas
4. Spenser
3. Keats
2. Hopkins
1. Yeats

2006-12-14T09:42:00.000+05:30

Ophelia's song

Sing nightingale and starling
‘Tis time we lovers part.
I loved him, dearie darling
Wherefore he broke my heart.
Wherefore do fiery glances
And kindling of romances
Lie hid within our selves?
To burn without a reason
A blazing month or season -
Die rid within ourselves.
Love’s a fleeting hourling
Sing, nightingale and starling
Consumed before the start
Fleeting, flighty summer
Dewdrop on gossamer
O! loving broke my heart –
‘Tis time we lovers part.

2006-11-23T19:45:00.000+05:30

Untitled

Sometimes, a star is born
Clasping the cold blue firmament
Cyprian Cytheria’s ornament
Resplendently worn.
Sometimes, the sea wind flies
Splat in the face of a logical man
Bespectacled orangoutan
Sometimes, his heartbeat hies.

2006-11-13T11:27:00.000+05:30

Shakespeare and shitter

Boy squatting by crumbly kerb
Shitting away to glory
Whistling a song to the mute chagrin
Of Girl on eleventh storey.
‘Every morning when I drink my tea
And greet the dewy sun
Some bastard has to crap or pee
Screw this Hindostan.’
But boy so nonchalantly sprays
The pavement with his bladder
– O the mirth of salad days –
And girl grows madder and madder.
‘My spot! My spot! That’s where I park
That’s where I sprawl to change my tyre!
O for a leaking gas-stove spark
To raze the slums with god’s own fire!’
But boy ever innocently
Piles up turd on turd
That look like clay torpedoes
And smell like putrid curd.
And by his side, his sister squats
(Before them was their mother)
Tranquilly in parking lots
Grown children crap together.
Girl spouts silent imprecation:
Boy ravish female relation;
Wondering, did Shakespeare see this too?
Somewhere, by green-skinned Avon
Where linnet and love-bird sang,
And draft animals carried themselves
With the grace of an Englishman.
Where cockerels crowed and gallants bowed
And girls gloried in naiveté
And none gingerly trod the road
For people shat in private.

I feel no empathy with the shitter:
But Shakespeare did, and he knew better.

2006-11-09T09:52:00.000+05:30

The Flunk and the Captain

I

The Flunk:
O captain, my captain, our tearful whipping’s done
The shit has hit the ceiling fan, the prize we sought is Australia’s.
And yet the sponsors fete our team with marigolds and dahlias.
For nothing I fretted about my pension, passing the buck and blame
For dropping catches by sleeping in snatches, losing is part of the game.
And all because some pressman in public
Had labelled our Board a mango republic.
Now despite our spanking, laughing go we banking
Always ever thanking the Cola companies –
Captain, O my captain, see the kid gloves we’re wrapped in!
Ponting’s men rule cricket, but we rule the TVs!

The Captain:
Don't wake up coachie, please.

The Flunk:
O captain, my captain, our batting’s hit a trough
We kick the stumps on bouncers, play on the ones gone low.
We nudge outswing to third slip and off-break to our stumps
I wonder not our batsmen were smacked on their pasty rumps.
We lob it long to long on, I think they should ban gully
Did someone say the only twit was Sourav Ganguly?
We grown men fear Brett Lee, as children fear roaches,
But most of all we apprehend that Genghis Khan of coaches.
Let us have a tournament to restore shattered pride
Let us trounce Botswana, sir, and hunt Luxembourg’s hide.
Let us show the Cook Islands what stuff our nation’s made of
Then the SAfs, just ensure please that Durban bookie’s paid off.

The Captain:
Quiet…did coachie cough?

The Flunk:
O captain, my captain, why is our coachie dreaded?
Like a brake-less truck steered by Daffy Duck, like a mantis freshly wedded?

The Captain:
He’s glaring like Newcastle coal, you loudmouth, O you egghead!

Coachie:
Who’s astir? I warn you yet, I sup with the Board almighty
That temple of mediocrity, ill-dressed and hoity-toity –
Most half ready for the reaper
Headed by some goofy keeper
I dine with them all, O mitey!
Do you want your playing days to end in a Pepsi ad?
Do you want the substitute to eat your breakfast, lad?
Fall asleep, not doing else will drive your coachie mad.

2006-11-01T21:17:00.000+05:30

Wind, or weather-vane

From youth we pass to the twilight age
On the Shakespearean stage
Wondering if our part played right
Before candles out and all is night –
Did lurking joy and muted smiles belie
Mad Othello’s rage or Desdemona’s cry?
Who wrote our script? Who authored act three
Where Caesar falls in pomp and pageantry?
Did we choose to heed the writ decree
Or choose to be who part and play defy?
Wind, or weather-vane; arrow, or eye?

2006-10-27T21:10:00.000+05:30

Untitled

Now I think of you chiefly
On lazy afternoons, when the mind
Is free to dwell on irrelevant things;
And then again, I think of you
Maybe for a moment or two
On cold October evenings
When the woods are sere
And naked boughs run riot like a mind
Caught in its own imaginings -
But ever so briefly.

The Sleeping Beauty

Heart, O heart, when you are taken
With the fancy of her eyes
And O breath, your strength forsaken
To the mistress of your sighs;
Lips O lips, when you are fallen
Silent, like an autumn lake
Wordless, like a stillness stolen
Over the hedge-brush and the brake:
Sleeping who can thus encumber
What would she be raised from slumber?

2006-09-25T15:47:00.000+05:30

Fragments

I
How could I care, that has not tongue to sing
Nor flight to dare the soaring eagle’s wing
Nor shape to fit in a thousand niches
Nor knife to cut a cord-net of cliches-
How could I care, what man has spent or earned
What youth has treasured, what old age has spurned?

II
Secretly, silently
Rant and rage despite
Age has crept upon me
Like frost on a moonlit night
Stalks the stems and sheaves
And icing eaves.

I know my heart’s disquiet:
The rage of little done.
In a distant time and place
Who sang a phantom face
Did they wonder why
Their flames outreached the sky
When she was won?

III
Suddenly, when spirit
Coils like a serpent of the ancient seas
And life like a lyric
Leaps in the blood blue age cannot freeze;
Suddenly, when summer
Burns in my veins like a spoonful of sun
O voice, grown dumber
Than the silent woods, is your shouting done?

IV
I sing a phantom face
Hid from human sight
Like dreams that come at night
Too fleeting to trace
Too real for dispelling
I sing a phantom face
Too fantastic for telling.

2006-09-16T10:24:00.000+05:30

After the battle

Virtue, piety and the love of man
For goodness, for the gods
Reverence and the sacrificial fire,
Fruit, flower, and beast of the forest;
An ascetic mind to contemplate
The sacred, right, or holy
In laws that are, or yet to be;
Are overturned this day like a cistern dry -
Sky, earth, heaven, and all the sea:
For a broken thigh.

2006-09-10T11:26:00.002+05:30

Laloo at IIMA

Let us, my friends, learn (and be humble)
From atheist, godman, Lutheran or papist
Fraudster, scam king, or habitual rapist.
The petty bourgeois may growl and grumble
Middle class is middle caste, let’s open our eyes
Laloo is a teacher, he must therefore be wise –
As must be too, our dacoits of Chambal
Khalistani brethren, SULFA kin
Or APHC henchmen of Osama Bin.
There is much we can learn from this great ensemble
Like how the sheep shearing sector in Shimla
Has found its business vector under Vimla.
Never mind that law and order took a tumble
That her coercive amendments surely prostituted
A democracy so fluidly constituted
That Vimla’s wisdom can be measured in a thimble –
IIMA has feted an unlikely hero
O had the Romans thus reverenced their Nero!

2006-08-05T12:10:00.002+05:30

Osama and moonlight - the complete version

‘Let’s blow up the Indi parliament’ muttered the greybeard loon
‘Osama made this photocell that works by light of moon.
We’ll rig the place by eventide and wait for Luna to pop out
By seven o’clock the fawning congress coterie should clop out
And at their heels a frothing, cackling camaraderie of communists
Champion rapists, serial killers, sulking Hindoo chauvinists
Slurping, burping on the monsoon winds many a “Good night” –
Hindostan will meet her end through Osama and moonlight.’

‘My lord, my liege’, a ragtag cried, ‘Your best laid plans gang awry now
If only you had read their papers, watched their films – who’s sorry now?
In the cause of social justice, Parliament this third of June
Changing twice the constitution unanimously banned the moon.
(“…We deplore all lazy rocks that sunlight would inherit
To shine because the bright sun shines is mockery of merit.
Without the moon, our oppressed brethren can at last outshine the stars
Gentlemen, we vote tomorrow on the fate of planet Mars…”)’
Now our satellite dare not in Hindoo firmament disport
Lest the jurists decree such impertinence contempt of court.’

‘Alack Osama!’ mourned the loon, ‘Whose petrodollars came to naught!
Woe betide this parliament whose thought-thrift morons foiled our plot!
Alack Osama!’ wailed he more, ‘To fund research for peanuts!’
But who could ever understand these bag-haggling Hindee nuts?
Canst thou draw out Leviathan? Wager with the Aga Khan?’
‘Like the Palm d’Or at Cannes?’ a bobtail bandit ventured.

‘O tell me more, and do not tarry’, howled the loon in woeful tone.
Then the ragtag, name of Larry, buttered a humus-sodden scone
Munching on the squelching biscuit grey from infestation
Knitting his brow a curious cow he sank in contemplation:

‘Yester-eve, some folks believe, the waxing moon had shown her crown
And congress-workers swarmed the silver Ghats of Benares to drown.
While at their side, of tougher hide, stood policemen unnumbered
From North to South, the papers say, sole party honchos slumbered.
What a sight it was, my liege! The Indi nation stared aghast
The dastard moon had proved herself an enemy-of-backward-caste,
The court dyspeptic, apoplectic, many a jurist clutched his testis,
Go away! – they sang in rage – Have some respect for social justice!'

‘O why do we dither, my erudite brother?’ Mumbled the bumbling, beaming loon
Breaking the jaw of Hindoo law we’d soon behold our saviour moon!
Scamper you thither, and scurry you hither, climb yonder tree and grab that monkey
Strap him – hurry – wrap him in a durrie – now roll out the carpet, my fidayeen flunkey!’

‘Oh no! My leader! Haste not so! Too late! Too late! We are exploded!
Drop arms, run! As I recall our Kalashnikovs were never loaded!
My lord, my liege! I must descry those tabloids in the wrong, O!
Never did I stand so misinformed while mining much of Congo!
Cumulo-nimbus / ruling party – the first of these has hid the moon
The sky, my liege, is darker than the beard of our Rashid the goon.
For thirteen nights the sky is hid in conspiratorial cloud
Democracy, the papers boom, has made a billion voters proud.
Through Monsoon rains, not absent brains, a plot that seemed exotic
Doubtlessly seems fallen prey to legislation idiotic!
Sad and broken, grief unspoken, let us trudge back homewards
Hannibal, we share your sorrow, once who gambolled Rome-wards.
Scuppered our plan and scuttled our scheme this Mujahid-hating June night
Woe Osama’s photocell! And woe the truant moonlight!

2006-07-23T15:25:00.000+05:30

The Omberry Saga

My most ambitious project to date, a task I may well be lacking the necessary skills for. An epic poem of the Omberry dynasty of ancient Theos (might publish more on that sometime later - suffice it to say that I'm talking about a fantasy land here). As things stand, i seem to have stopped after the first quarter - canto. Feedback would be welcome.

The Omberry Saga

Written in the four hundred ninety fifth year of Halorian rule by DejneKoskes Varakavasalnis Don Dimidiva Gren,great-grandson of Garafil, master poet at the court of Pothnick, the last free ruler of Sofia.

Invocation

Weep for the fallen, and weep for the land
Of mighty Benevar, braveheart Gladius,
Or first and second of that peerless line
And weep for the sons of Fornacius[1]
Fallen beneath the yoke of alien law.
The lands that Theos gave liberty, the minds
Shaped by the tracts of Conjumma[2], must they decide
The scale and balance, teach the useful trade
And place upon the Radium throne a minion of the slaves[3]?
O mighty Dostbritz, child of the Doster snows,
Washest thou the sins of which strange land?
Is it the same, this country of the beasts
Tamed by the sons of Dongher[4]? Is that your roar
Once chilled the blood of a foreign prince, as night
Hastened close, and twenty thousand heads of vengeant flame
Burned fear into the naked hordes of Thromme[5]?
No more, no more, though spring return and melt the Doster snows
Though flowers deck her hair in a hundred hues
Though grasses grow, and woodlands sing again;
The winter of my brotherland is come and shall not leave.
But if in times as these a pen could move
Could fire the hearts and stoke the manly pride
Of a people born of kings and bound to chains
I call upon the hermit king of Pazooka[6]
And the souls that dwell on Gazooka[7]
To aid my song and bring once more the glory of a golden age.

Footnotes:

[1] Longher, Jejne, Benjiar, Benevar – the unbroken line of the first four Omberrys, the mightiest emperors in the history of Theos, under whose fabulous rule of 350 years Theos attained the acme of its civilisation. Gladius, a direct descendant of Benjiar, started out as a commander in the Sofian army of Marmuk and rose to become Emperor of all Theos, re-founding the Omberry empire after a lapse of 500 years. After his death the empire disintegrated into chaos for more than 700 years, until it was reshaped by a descendant of the house of Benevar, the 19-year old Fornacious. Fornacious ruled for over 130 years, and is regarded as the last and greatest of the rulers of Theos. Even today, the Watcher is bound to take the ‘Fornacious oath’ when he enters office.
[2] Conjumma Negereventis, royal magistrate under the reign of the Sofian king Varavada Zloom, whose treatises on jurisprudence became the bedrock of the hitherto savage Halorian law.
[3] Throne of Omberry IV. The Halorians were tributaries under the reign of Fornacious.
[4] Dongher, leader of the Canynidae tribes, cleared the areas between the Dostbritz and the Canyne rivers and settled the first ‘civilisation’ in Theosian history – the Canyne Culture.
[5] According to legend, the barbarian Jude-Honan (an especially savage race of people from the island nation of Jude-Na, south of Straviniska) king Thromme invaded Tralek in the reign of Paterforcis, great-grandfather of the first Omberry, but turned back in sheer fright on seeing Pendecalian nebula rise above the mighty river Dostbritz.
[6] Fornacious, according to one version, recounced his throne at the age of one hundred and fifty eight, retreating to the caves of mount Pazooka.
[7] Highest mountain peak in Theos, where the souls of kings are supposed to dwell.

Book the first: The sons of Fijendore sail to Jude-Na

The sons of Fijendore set sail
To lands beyond the sea.
The Jude-Honan natives fail
The test of amity.

I

Now sing, O mistress of the Moon, and sing
O spirits in the caves of Delph, the day
Like dewdrops falling from the Larcis’ wing
That seven sons of Fijendore away
To lands beyond the wind-lashed Pagian bay
Steered their keel, and looked for Eastern light.
Seven sturdy youths, grown sick with dole
And weary of their ease, plunge through the night
For futurity know their names aright:

The first, and bravest loved by sovran breast:
Dulcio, crown prince of Tralek land
The second, skilled in speech and song the best
Morbidor; and possessed of sailor hand
The third, called Aranis, led all the band
Of brothers through the wreck-strewn seas that round
The gloomy shores of Tralek; then the fourth
Named Rimbateg, by royal maidens found
While but a babe, in swaddling-ragskins bound.

Him the sire of the blessed realm
Raised in regal care, to manhood grown
Being vested with the pomp of princely name.
The roll now moves to Calchefar, alone
Of all the seven, loved he less a throne
Than hunting match, and to the eldest gave
The dare for sailing far beyond the shore
Of farthest Tralek, through the storm-kissed wave
To sight fresh land or find a fluid grave.

And now we see the sixth, a handsome lad
Young Flavio, the sword and shield of all,
Blazing like a god in armor clad;
And lastly, like a mountain in the squall
Strong as twenty horses, twice as tall
The name of Zendrith sat upon him well
Born of Northern witch and woodland stag
In frightful hour, when some augurs tell
The keys of night open the doors of hell.

And yet his heart was given to his sire
Who shielded him from fury of the foe
When glade and forest fell to sword and fire
And raised him in the aftermath of woe.
Him having neared to manhood, nor did show
A sinful heart, but one that only beat
In loyal chest, and after eldest prince
Foremost did the great king’s favor meet
And dining, took the second-nearest seat.

This then the gallant list of Fijendore
By him begat or raised, that glory wooed
But finding peace within the Tralek shore
For leave of journey strong upon him sued:
To bring the light of knowledge to the rude
The savage tribes beyond the South-east sea
And lift once more the arms forgotten else
To conquer and to rout hostility
And thus put forth the eldest prince his plea:

‘Great father, through whose mighty arms have won
The forty provinces of your domain
From where the fresh young streams of Doster run
To where our Dostbritz joins the storm-tossed main;
Bohenian wood to verdant Sofian plain
A hundred tribes, whose oaths are in your name
Who felt the lashing, now they feel the balm
A peace unbroken extinguished their flame
A savage people by your rod made tame.

But in the hoary past, our priests opine,
There was one such, a king of Armiddo,
(A fishing village on the broad Canyne
Today which sits) – a wide gauntlet did throw
And all the regions which this day we know
In Tralek’s sway, were once the monarch’s hold.
And therefore, though the Tralek line shall blaze
After my great-grandson’s limbs are cold
Should our fame of silver be or gold?

No king, no monarch of this mortal world
Has pitched his standard on those dreadful isles
Nor forces of a mighty navy hurled
Ship-dashed, wind-lashed unmetricated miles.
Where fealty to a savage chieftain riles
Our sentiment, when high-born mighty lords
Of Sofia that behold their thrones to you
Can harvest with their half-unspoken words
These savage armies in a hail of swords.

And therefore seek we leave, o mighty King
To sail the seas beyond the Pagian bight
Where wave on wave their restless ransom fling
From shore to shore, the rain-clouds dark as night
And blinding mist conceal what beasts of flight
Or serpents of the water who can tell –
The sailors when this land was young, they knew
And glimpsed through frightened eyes before they fell
As hungry howling sea-winds rang their knell.

To cross these waters is glory indeed
And worthy of a youth to Tralek born
Else grown weak his pleasure-senses feed
Shall someday see this soft tapestry torn
When summons from the savage huntsman’s horn
Melts the knees of a slavish weakling race
Grown alien to the arts and arms of war
Trembling in the shade of foreign mace
Has foe his daughters ruin and gods deface.

This ocean shall but yield to Fijendore
The rest is easy; doubtless they have heard
In pillaging some less barbaric shore
The natives of these lightless isles, a word
Or two, of Tralek’s might, inferred
How vain it is to challenge our decree
And therefore when we pitch our nation’s flag
I half expect the naked hordes to be
Pressing our palms with suits of amity.’

O foolish pride, O ignorance of men!
For thirty thousand miles the water rolls
Before the vagrant breakers beat the fen
Of marshy Jude-Na, black with wooded knolls
Amid a hundred perilous atolls.
For who survive the broiling ocean’s breath
The final hurdle, here their hapless boat
Flounders on the massive reefs beneath
And dashes on the waiting rocks of death.

2006-06-30T16:41:00.000+05:30

In a different vein, here's something I had written over two years ago, one of my personal favourites:

Babylon

In Tikrit, the soldier's boot
Has raised Khamsin, in its wake
Come quaking noises, thunder without rain.
A thousand years upon the fertile plain
And still the tents are pitched, only now
The Dreaded Lord is come across the ocean.

In high-ceilinged rooms, numbed by the feline purr
Of rotary compressors, tickled by the clink
Of Genoese crystal burgundy-filled
On black enamelled tables
Red pudgy fingers stab needles on the paper land.

O my son
In running between life and death
Forsaking faith -
Hail and hellfire, night and dawn
Where shall I weep for Babylon?

Note: The 'Dreaded Lord' in L6 is a throwback to the Mongol hordes under Genghis

photo ack: www.virtualstatistics.net

2006-06-21T12:25:00.000+05:30

Writer's Block

A friend reminded me yesterday that I had not updated my blog in a month. Apart from the fact that I have been busier than usual in the interim, I also seem to be getting fewer ideas than usual. The only one I have, in fact, is a longish narrative poem about a group of mad mujahideens plotting to blow up the Parliament (okay, so it's not all that original...). I haven't been able to get beyond the second stanza so far, but here's how it's shaping up as of now...

--------------------------------------------------------

‘Let’s blow up the Indi parliament’ muttered the greybeard loon
‘Osama made this photocell that works by light of moon.
We’ll rig the place by eventide and wait for Luna to pop out
By seven o’clock the fawning congress coterie should clop out
And at their heels a frothing, cackling camaraderie of communists
Champion rapists, serial killers, sulking Hindoo chauvinists
Slurping, burping on the monsoon winds many a “Good night” –
Hindostan will meet her end through Osama and moonlight.’

‘My lord, my liege’, a ragtag cried, ‘Your best laid plans gang awry now
If only you had read their papers, watched their films – who’s sorry now?
In the cause of social justice, Parliament this third of June
Changing twice the constitution unanimously banned the moon.
(“…We deplore all lazy rocks that sunlight would inherit
To shine because the bright sun shines is mockery of merit.
Without the moon, our oppressed brethren can at last outshine the stars
Gentlemen, we vote tomorrow on the fate of planet Mars…”)’
Now our satellite dare not in Hindoo firmament disport
Lest the jurists decree such impertinence contempt of court.’

--------------------------------------------------------------
Nice, na?
And here's a poem I wrote a year ago, largely a salary crib:

This is a ballad of the ethical man, a species we love to the ends of the earth
We give him a peso when he needs fifty dollars, for money's no measure of a true man's worth
We give him a peso, and his sons and daughters are sold to the Sheikhs for camel jockeys
But our VP blesses his patronym, holidaying in the heart of the Rockies.
His buddy from college, the vile Bobby Khanna, swindled his clients and bought an island
But Bhaskar Gopalan, the paragon of vitue, is content if his dealers are sent to Thailand
His parents are hollowed by starvation, but the ethical man shall never be a thief
When our hero is dead, all VPs agree, the corporate flag will be lowered in grief.

-----------------------------------------------------

Well, I hope that friend is happy now!

2006-05-24T14:06:00.000+05:30

The Cow and the Calf

‘Ma, what’s my caste?’
Said the calf to the cow
‘Are we in the last
Quadrant anyhow?’

‘Child, chew your cud!’
Said the cow to the calf
‘What matters if your blood
Be Jersey or Giraffe?’

‘O mother’, laughed the yearling
In Hindostan they rumour
A cent-percentile stripling
Feeds political humour.

‘Most say the caste they’re born in
Is fast become a cross
While Roguery that’s sworn in
Go hunting albatross.

‘Tell me then, what my past is’
Said the calf to the cow
‘Who knows how sad my caste is!
I think I ought to know
As Everyman
Where I too long to go
That Hindostan!’

‘Child, chew your cud!’
Said the cow to her son
‘What matters if a stud
Be chestnut, bay or dun?
All stallions are brothers
All cows are mothers.’

'Ma, tell me my varna
My gotra and my jati
In Ind, the low-born’s Narnia
I could challenge the Haathi!
O mother, did they oppress
My grandpa’s grandpa? Stop, press!'

But only ‘Chew your cud!
Don’t be clever by half!’
Slouching in the mud
Said the cow to the calf.

2006-05-24T11:49:00.000+05:30

The Orison

Oxford citation conferring the honorary doctorate of Civil Law on Manmohan Singh in 2004/05..."A brilliant economist, a sagacious statesman, and an indefatigable champion and defender of his people"...

I thank thee, Lord, that here I sit presiding
Over my brethren congressmen
Who do all my deciding.
Our best planners, more mice than men
Jairam Ramesh, Chidambaram
And all their ilk kow-towing
Even these but nod their heads
In a conspiracy of the Knowing.

I thank thee, Lord, for Balliol college,
And summer boat-rides on the Cam,
Where the breezes whisper knowledge
(Friend of Learning as I am).
Where one day, it flashed on the telly
Nehru had sunk his pectoral;
So I looked to the throne in vacant Delhi
Armed with a first-rate doctoral.

Now I thank thee, Lord, my destitution,
My poverty of wisdom, with
That triple-hallowed Institution
Run by children of the Sith –
Our democracy (convenient myth)
Might oversee the prostitution
Of this fabled land of Ind.

And so his heartfelt orison
Was on the lips of each whoreson
And when the angels blow their trumpet
Hindostan shall rise a strumpet.

Note: This poem lays no claim to historical fidelity

2006-05-17T13:38:00.000+05:30

A ballad of our times

Replying to a question Singh said that he is not authorised to speak what decison the Cabinet would take on the issue.
He also said that the National Knowledge Commission is not above the Constitution and added that he was not willing to talk to them.
When asked if the protests by the doctors and students across the country signalled the start of Mandal II, Singh replied that there is a propaganda to blow up the whole issue.
"We are not a banana republic," he said.

....... Sunday May 14, 04:26 PM

If the economy is healthy, then you can basically screw up every other thing in the nation
Like fairness and justice, those trite little things now thankfully outside the ambit of higher education
Even otherwise, if you have a small problem like missing revenue receipts that won’t balance the budget
You can still muck things up if you really want to, and fix the numbers later, or get an expert to fudge it.

But approach the task with diligence: it is not easy to disembowel a loved and revered institution
Like an IIT, you must prepare the necessary groundwork by amending our undeniably sacred Constitution
The Americans have tinkered with theirs on 27 occassions in 230 years, we luckily suffer no such stupidity
With 103 changes in a fourth of the time out of vote bank politics and plain old cupidity.

Would Dr Ambedkar have imagined, though he understood politics and its compulsions damned well himself
That in 25 years of his inaugurating it some ruling party would chop and change the preamble itself?

If the economy is healthy, you can cuddle up with communists and still look pretty when the Sensex surges
With their piggy-banks clinking the bourgeois folk are in no mood to mope over Stalinist purges.

But approach the matter with caution: it is no easier trashing ideology than to rule a nation by dividing it
Only the wise can fool their voters, garnering loot and capably hiding it.
Nigeria, Sudan, and their glittering brothers have shown us the path to complete national destruction, we will hopefully follow their lead
As our experience of fifty years does not hint at any time-frame over which parliamentarians will swallow their greed.

Would Nehru have imagined, that a day would dawn when the highest office would be filled by an unimpeachably honest boffin
Who would lecture foreign dignitaries on an emerging India while his congressmen drove each last nail into her coffin?

photo ack: www.tribuneindia.com

2006-05-11T14:15:00.000+05:30

Marat's Judgement

To those who create discord for their own pelf, little realising how the wind sown brings a whirlwind to harvest...

Did you, O Jacquerie, kill Laurent Lavoisier?
For sure, he was one to the manor born
Did you, O Marat, or one of your boys here?
We are one and the same – viva revolućion!
Tell me, O Jean-Paul, was his murder warranted?
A child of the nobles, such is Marianne’s wrath
What if you fall by the blood you parented?
My servants surround me even in my bath!

photo ack: www.mystudios.com/ masters/david.html

2006-05-09T10:27:00.000+05:30

A Number Ballad

Down in TN, decades of anti-Brahminism has led to the practice of folks dropping their castenomen. So Krishmanachari becomes Krishnam etc. And there are more Iyengars as Iyengars in RK Puram than in Alwarpet.
Extending this progressive custom, one may desire to scrap names altogether and replace them with......

And we had dropped our suffixes, that notified our caste
And we had dropped our prefixes, though no one really asked –
But love of country, love of fairness, zeal that never slumbers,
Prompted us to label you and me with random numbers.
Now when I hear 2 42 I wonder if it’s me,
For I was once 2 59, but that is now history.
By not knowing their name and number, each is just like other
Why, yesterday I thought your lovely wife was my grandmother.

Random numbers, random reads from every distribution
Shall bring the bud of social justice to its fated fruition.
And when we heroes breathe our last, no mortuary statistic
Shall tell who died, from certainty then death is probabilistic

2006-05-08T11:57:00.000+05:30

The Ballad of Hindoostan

The Paki army was marching on, marching on
The Paki army was marching on to somnolent Delhi.
They had guns, they had knives, and by and large, no wives
They were thirsty for our lives, and for our women too.
The Indi Parliament was convening, convening
The Indi parliament was convening, to a twilight of snacks and tea.
They were loud, they were furious, they labelled the bulletin spurious
That Brahmin naval captains had mutinied at sea:
Our worthy Prime Minister declaimed: ‘TV’s sinister!
Doubt truth to be a liar, and look at our GDP!’
And sure enough, the congressmen, the well-dressed men and the paid press men
And sure enough, the technocrats fell fast into a swoon.

And while South Block was dabbling in macro-economic theory
And while the Well fell squabbling for fresh tomato puree
O’er the plains of Punjab rose a red November moon.

From a thousand leagues on Bengal’s Bay that looks toward of south, hasty news despatches were reached by word of mouth:
Angry that no low-caste cleaner would mop up their pee
Drunken Brahmin officers had mutinied at sea.
Black shadows of cyclone-clouds lay looming o’er the Bay
While they downed more Vodka pegs and mourned Mangal Pandey.
Many a woeful dirge they sang, of pride and glory tattered
And descant of the joyous days when being a Brahmin mattered.

And all the while, the Paki army marching on
Marching on, marching on
With tanks and troopers marching on
Joked of bangs galore.

Though many a mile from Wagah border, by the Indi government’s order
Every gleeful Johnnie knew a lone and lame Great Dane
Reared by a backward billionaire, trained by a Rajput scullion fair
A watchdog steeped in social justice, stood to halt their train.

And for company by rota, soldiers from the common quota
Would once in a while come visiting by, and feed the dog a bone.
Once where was an Indian army, bureaucrat and patron smarmy
Many a seed of casteist strife had diligently sown:

‘Wrongs of history cannot be thus righted’, someone said
‘But we shall persist nonetheless, and heart shall triumph head
If we keep at it right through, we may reverse the past
And maybe then our countrymen will each forget his caste.’
And so they picked their officers by birth and not by deed
And so they cleansed the echelons of Brahminical seed.

Ah, woe alack! The high-caste folk seeing Armageddon coming
Fled to the arms of Liberty her Spangled Banner humming
Some to the ice of Reykjavik, and some to the drought of Chad
‘To die on foreign soil,’ they said, ‘now makes my mother glad.’
And as the evil star of twice-born folk began to wane
Twenty were the regiments replaced by one Great Dane.

While deep on Bengal’s windy bight the rebel frigates flounder
And drunken Iyers wonder why their surname wasn’t Goundar
And while the Prime Minister parleys with his cabinet
The sun of Ind, Shillong to Sind, has well and truly set.