Haze and Mist

I heard that you have gone To join our ancestors. We will see you from now on In memories or in pictures. All these odd years You were  to me but loss... Yes, loss!  Now as my own living wears,  from vacant fields across  I hear your cheerless call. Sometimes I longed to refashion a happier you; Freeze time up  but all I remember is tension — An irredeemable pall rises up,  A cold pity, without a good reason. 

Parting  i s a gift. If part   You must  Like ashes   and dust Then part  u nbroken. It is a n Art. ** Funerals are Those long   rituals.  The needless drama Only to drop a   body  to  a pit's  h ungry  stones,  some skin, some bones.  ** And let's now   come to you   and I.  We  drifted  a part like  p aper boats i n puddles   dried in sudden sun   after  a very good monsoon .

This Quarter town And half a village Cannot be my own  But its fusty Insular air helps me  Dream better.  Pity and dignity The twin crow Mascots  On every door Hung below A humdrum stretch Of lackluster sky. Only so  this Quarter town and half a village Cannot be my own

A picture Elephant Even smaller Than a hopper Then was huge- When I was Small And I saw A real beast In my youth As it whipped Dreamily- Its eyes Two pools Of jungle-pain- Its leafy food Against Its pillar-legs. My thoughts Were then About the taming Of big beasts. I saw the other Day In mirror My eyes A forest anguish Brimming Just besides The skin Around'em Sun cracked With fifty years Of wrestling With life And it Resembled The pachyderm.

Phayllus   The picture above is me in character: "IN EGYPT THEY HAVE OTHER NEEDS THAN OURS.  THERE LUST'S ALMOST AS OPEN AS FEASTING IS;  SCIENCE AND POETRY AND LEARNED TASTES  ARE NOT CONFINED TO BOOKS, BUT LIFE'S AN ART.  THERE ARE FAINT MYSTERIES, THERE ARE LURID POMPS;  STRONG PHILTRES PASS AND COVERT DRUGS. DESIRE  IS MARRIED TO FULFILMENT, PAIN'S ENJOYED  AND LOVE SOMETIMES PROCURES HIS PREY FOR DEATH..."                                                                                         ...

Bala-Krishna. Depicting Krishna beautifully is to start on the wrong footing. Krishna is experience.  One must key him manifest, not labour with mind to make a "beautiful" picture.  However he decides to come, he is bound to be delightful. Isn't that why he is Vasudeva? 

1 A German acquaintance died yesterday and as death always does,  she flung at me the same old surprise - a vacant recurring thought that he whom I so often saw on roads, a one purposed anti-pesticides man is no more! The  campaigner will no longer ride on his '0 emission' tricycle along the dusty roads. The cashew patch which he tended since a little over a decade near my house will feel empty. While he was alive, till the day before yesterday in fact, those were trees which yielded organic nuts. Now, with this hero fallen, they may yield the yearly, if not worthless, unworthy fruit. Death of an activist, whatever the scale of his activism, leaves behind a lacuna until something more exciting comes along to divert us. Yesterday when I read of his demise in a brief circular I made a mental note to meet his partner, a Mangalorean,  lover of stray dogs and a staunch  but subdued activist herself. I saw her standing in the shade of the organic cashew stall by the...