Unnamed

I am here.
Between night and day
Between the domain of slumber and wakefulness
The day slowly and subtly dilutes, casting on my face
an innocent beam of sunlight
A beam that started a million years ago..
to fall on me the way it does now
from the opposite window of the bus
and to turn my eyes and hair
a reddish hue of brown
Me, an unknown face, wandering 
through nameless roads and fields
Why do some of these people
look straight into my eyes while the others
just pass through me
Perhaps life, being an undefined, unquantified force
is capable of causing flickers
and ripples by mere presence 
or absence, for that matter
The rays weigh my eyes down
and my ears are clouded with the whispers
of the trees
They speak of weather and color
and words that sound to me like
Patience

No Questions

I listened then
to the sound of life
resonating with my own breath
under the green waters
I floated
for an eternity
amazed
touched
silenced
A golden fish
slid between my toes perhaps
And I wept
a little salt water
into the sea
I had
no questions anymore

Banaras

People here name their kids 'Banarasi' and 'Varanasi'. That is how pervasive the spirit of this city is. It seeps into your identity before you know it, like the water of the Ganges filling all those earthen lamps of hopes, prayers and dreams that float on its surface every evening. The city bustles with its very own Banarasi energy that years of bewildered foreign gaze could not refine and change. They wear saffron and chew paan. They wear green and chew paan. They laugh a paan-ful of laughter as they roam the streets of Daalmandi and Chowk like the characters in Premchand's Sevasadan. But that was decades back. Since then, the bicycles and horse carts have been replaced by cars and buses. But the streets are just as narrow, the buildings just as colonial and ancient. But that is Banaras, ever bubbling with noise and energy, never changing.

Toy Story

What is true art but something that evokes emotions - genuine, sharp emotions. While I passed by Channapatna, the land of toys, I stopped by to admire this native and old form of wooden toy making, and I spotted this one (the picture above). While all the other toys will also adorn the house and bring a smile to a child's heart, this one- single piece, lying in a corner, seemed to have a tale of its own. There is sadness, ignorance, experience, and a haunting silence about this toy that makes it a masterpiece in my eyes. The couple shake their spring necks under their loaded heads, and in the attempt to amuse, they screech a muted story of toil, poverty, negligence, burdened love, and of an anonymous artist who sat down in a corner to pour out his stories in his work.