In love

When I was in love I knew no limit

There was joy in the air

Things were cute back then

Her shouting were like a song

No one bothered to listen except me

Her open lips demand to be seal-kissed

I struggled to resist myself

Her laughter lit up the evening

Wherever she went I followed

Together we jumped in rain

It was called dancing

Once upon a time, my friend

I was in love

The Carnage of Relationships

He sat there with

A bucket full of heart shape balloons

Puncturing one heart after another 

And letting the air leak

But it was not as fun and shocking

As the bursting sound

With stained hands and bloodied shirt

He left with empty bucket, fulfilled

On his way back

He met with an accident

A heart with spikes rolled in his direction 

How could this happen to him?  

He thought in ICU

As he hoped for a heart transplant

Nightmare of Today and Tomorrow

Green grass slowly turning into yellow thorns

Huts have been taken over by a concrete jungle

People drink whatever color of water they get

Tigers in white dress roam the city in search of lambs

Who survive the water and food scarcity

Vultures with microphones hover over the city

In search for fresh flesh to broadcast

I try hard

To dream of a different tomorrow

Yet I am haunted by the same nightmare

A Mistake of Newage Gopi

Alone in the crowd of the café, she

Smiles at his picture over and over again

Looks in the mirror of her phone and

Applies another coat of pomegranate red lipstick

As if the color will direct him to her

Silence around her is killing her patience

Her birdlike eyes dart toward the café doors

Nervously, she hopes for him to come early

Girls in café are guarding their lovers

From her probing eyes 

Looking at boy in the corner and

Comparing him with the picture

She got from the online chat

She gets up from her seat, pulls the door and

Sighs to commemorate her mistake

Of not sending her picture to him

When I will meet you again...

Life as they is a full circle and

I believe in this saying 100%

I don’t know when but I will meet you again

It may happen when you don’t want to meet me

Or maybe when I have lost interest in pursuing you

That day I will see you in arms of someone else and

On that day you will wonder about amicable separation 

And you cringe of not meeting me for the last time

I will not say anything but for fractions of seconds

We’ll exchange our gazes and pass each other like strangers

But the awkwardness of the surreptitious meeting

Will raise the questions and memories in your mind

And you will draw a bank

That person with you ask about your sudden silence

And all you will ask“What did you just say?”

And I will laugh to make your forget something once again

Tuition Fees of Ancient Times

Teachers in ancient times have

Knack of asking strange things as a tuition fee

It was not must but if not given by student

The fee remained a sort of burden or guilt

As a tuition fee, 

Young Rama and Lakshmana had to ward off demons

When their teacher, Sage Vishwamitra, was busy in his yagna

Utanka had to bring earrings from a female above ground and

Then from a male underground

It was the riddle Utanka solved when he lost a queen's earrings

and had to recover it from snake lord of netherland

Vishwamitra asked his pupil Galava to bring

800 horses: each with one black and one white ear

Dronacharaya had a plan before he arrived Hastinapur

When Kauravas and Pandavas were ready

He asked them to get his revenge from Draupada

And

We all know

What he demanded from the tribal lad, Ekalavya

Who claimed he learned archery from Drona:

Thumb of right hand

Shambuka's Caste Based Salvation

A brahmin’s son dies before 100 years

He complains to Rama about it and tells

That Shambuka, a Shudra, is doing penance

How could he do penance?

What else could be the reason?

Brahmin adds that if Sudra isn’t controlled

Something horrible can happen to the world

Do something!

Rama asks Shambuka to stop the penance

Shambuka denies saying that he is doing

To absolve his sins and to attain salvation

Rama kills him and solves his salvation problem

God is so merciful!

Writer of Unhappy Endings

If you are frightened of life

Please don’t come to my work

In search of constant joy and happiness

Let me break it to you

Such happiness is an unattainable reality

How can I lie to you about life?

Ajamila 's Predicament

Who are you? On the deathbed, Ajamila asked

Angels! Those silver creatures answered

Why are you carrying me?

Heaven!

I haven’t done anything to deserve heaven

You chanted the name of Lord

No, I didn’t

Didn’t you called ‘Lord’ just before dying?

Oh! But ‘Lord’ is the name of my good-for-nothing son, Ajamila explained

You’re making some mistake

When Ajamila challenged Angels

Angels stopped midway between earth and heaven

And made a call to Yama

Yama as usual was busy so he put them on hold

In the meantime, Ajamila spoke

If you drop me from right here, I will happilly land in hell

Why don’t you want to go heaven? Angels asked him

All my life I haven’t done a single thing scriptures told me to do

Never did anything for anybody

Remained selfish throughout my life

Even at the deathbed, I was asking my son for some water

You will have riches of life in heaven. Angels tried to pursued him

Riches never satisfied my hunger on earth

Why do i need them again?

This would be your chance to live with people close to Lord. Angels tried again

How can I live without the company of people like me?

People who never put in guilt of doing something and

Never told me to do anything for the future benefits

Told me to concentrate on living in present

People who never bothered to change me and

Loved me for who I was

How will find them in heaven?

He Who Comments

You shouldn’t wear these itsy-bitsy clothes

If someone really likes you, 

He will not care for your skin show

Go away, you are way too fat

Who will pay for extra burden on my engine?

Is he (?) your boyfriend?

Didn’t you find someone more tribal?

What’s wrong with people?

Look now they will kiss! 

He tells to manager of a suspicious lodge

True love is not left anymore

Curious case of Bhisma's suffering

Bhisma should have known that life

Is just like a medicine with expiry date

Wise though he was 

He never learned to live for himself

His father saved him from getting killed

By his mother

Only to indirectly asked for his youth

He vowed 

He’ll remain celibate for his life

For the sake of his father

This vow turned him from Devavrata to Bhisma

After that he just became

A guardian to protect progeny

Of his step brothers, their sons, and their grandsons

His favorite grandson pierced his body with arrows

As he lay dying, he smiled  

The pain he had endured in his life found a way

Sealed wounds opened up at last 

It’s not only Bhisma

The characters of the epic never escapes their karma

We are told that Bhisma, as Prabhasa, had committed

A sin of stealing Kamdhenu, a wish-fulfilling cow, from

Vashisth, a Brahmin, and to liberate from the curse and

To achieve salvation, he suffered

What a strange thing to knowingly suffer?

Havoc of Easter Eggs in Public Park

Either he didn’t like the festival or

People celebrating the festival

Or 

He might be the guy who wasn’t

Allowed to play in this Christian park

His parents might have spanked him

For asking eggs to play

The kind of eggs which don’t break into watery mess

He craved those eggs all his childhood

So 

When he got older, he demanded those eggs from

His ‘company’ for celebration

Celebration took multiple lives

His ‘company’ later claimed 

The full responsibility of celebration

Meaning of Love

Her love was like sweat

Of summer months

Oozing one moment and

Evaporating at the very next

Since I started loving you

You have become Mimosa

Folding inwardly at my touch

Why can’t you be another

type of Mimosa: a cocktail

Equal part Champagne and citrus juice

She told me that

She never thought about me

After I broke up with her

And I laughed

She said, “Seriously!”

To save myself from insecurities

I hopped from one relationship to another

Such relationships are like

Psychological make-up for my survival

Reading these sentences in my journal

I realized how vulnerable I have become

Somehow I needed to accept

This uncertainty that’s very human

Rusted Revenge

His sister has come home after eight long years

Since she eloped with this Muslim guy

It was the cause of obvious celebration

Where tears, sweat and blood would flow

But one would wonder, how he would start:

Tears:  How can she loved someone more than her family?

Blood: How long a rusted knife had to wait?

Sweat: How tough it was to dig a hole in a fallow land to bury her?

Such was his brotherly affection that she deserve to buried a like Muslim

Aborted Fights

Did Drona think that if he stops their fight now

That they will never fight in future or

Was he scared that there might be warrior

Greater than his favorite pupil Arjuna 

Drona thought if he didn’t teach Karna

Karna can never be equal to Arjuna 

When he found someone more accomplished

Than Dhananjaya, he asked the thumb of 

Ekalavaya, in exchange of tuition fee

Without teaching Ekalavya anything

He stopped the fight of Bhima and Suyodhana

By giving reason that the sun has been set

Throughout his life, he suppressed the urge

Of his son, Ashwatthama to fight Phalguna

When actual time came

Neither Drona wasn’t able to stop fights 

Nor he remain alive to see his most

Accomplished pupil couldn’t even

Save yadava women from a group

Of bandits which left him alive

After defeating him

He begged to be killed at the spot!

LOVE-trap of Kasargod and K-towns

Naivety and crime gel well together

Someone chalks out a plan

To lure the target by candies of affection

Parents had warned their kids

Against such candies

The kids thought they knew better

With time the candies start to taste bitter and

By the time the target wants to puke

Candies stick in their throat 

Slowly the target morphed into candies

Sold to others by their someone special

Words Commit Suicide

 Words were her power

Words are taken away from her

Replaced by a mathematical score

Of the competitive exam

Her parents are elated to know

Machines are waiting for their daughter

They book tickets to meet her

It’s time for little celebration

Two years she has lived a life of nun

In the age of making mistakes

They had warned her about making mistakes

Except this one,

The one she made,

The one they will read

In the newspaper

Next day on the train

“I wished to be a poet-

She writes in her suicide note.”

Origin of A Strong Woman

She has an undeniable stench

You must have smell it

This is what makes her obnoxious

If you work under one 

You know what i am talking about

She hates to smile too

Maybe to not give away her secrets

No hint of fragility on surface

In her resides a fountain of pain

Constant source of stench

Cost of Open Heart

An open heart is a terrible thing

World doesn’t give you chance to breathe

A broken girl sobs, cries, and

Drowns in her own sweat

Digressions turn into adultery

Mistakes become sin 

Love is best defined as poison

Societal suffocation indirectly tells

Her to lose what she own and

Die like an unknown thing 

Blood Goddess

Temple statues haunt you in dreams

Someone dancing on her husband’s body

Blood of a demon stains her tongue

A garland of severed heads hangs from her neck

To fill the themes of celebration over darkness,

Change, renewal, and freedom from patriarchal values

Books re-write several of her origin stories

The blood that made her a goddess 

Cycles out of us every month
The blood that stops us to visit her temple