An ode to the philosophy of a fever (or why a samosa is most delicious when you can't eat it)

I look at her as she lies in disquiet, 
her body no longer her own friend,
spewing restless dreams 
in fevered paroxysms -
who is this, she'd asked,
why me?
Knotted into her own inevitabilties,
weakened into her own susceptibilities, 
were these merely her own tests
for herself? 

We lay awake the nights, 
a small light burnishing the dark, 
as she lashed out at every touch - 
let me be,
its been given to me.

I touch her searing forehead & wonder 
if all the philosophers of the world 
spoke in permanent fever -
it was the time it seemed
when questions were asked
without seeking answers, 
& answers burst forth as clarities
to no question. 

We will both survive, I know, 
and again find the shallow end of life -
happiness is often
just normalcies we forget,
and mere remembrance of
the most commonplace pleasures.

The loneliness of a man who's lost all to fire

What do we know of the loneliness of a man who's lost?

I always thought fire cleanses,
but here he was, lighting a pyre,
his half-naked body, auburn as the setting sun, 
casked in a rain of sweat, 
converting brittle wood into a carriage - 

seeing cradling arms turn to ash, 
caressing hands turn to nothing, 
a smile crumble into memory, 
a soul on the way to seek another address. 

There's a whole festival, a bouquet, one loses, when a loved one dies, he'd said. 
And as I stood close to him, to hold his hand, 
maybe him, 
he broke down into a million pieces,
brittle as the wood on fire,
and I wondered again - 

what, indeed, do we know of the loneliness of a man who's lost?

A Dawn in October

A Dawn in October ~

You were proud of me, you said,
and you nodded your head to re-emphasize,
just in case I didn't believe.

It's a long road to love,
and even after its destination
the road doesn't seem to end.

Of course you have always meant well.
Maybe I have too.
There are too many dawns we have shared
to not know the meaning of what binds.
Your flowers 💐 have always found a place in your smile
and my excitement was subdued but enough for you to know
I cared.
You have cried for me, with me;
too often because of me.
But you are life-giving, and
I have taken after you:

why do we then seek to open
those wounds whose addresses
only we know.
Love knows such terrible secrets.

But your blessing has been to have let me be.
Your curiosity has been a bane,
but your knowing too little is inconceivable. Strange, this -
I will always give you
what I most hate in you.
Travesties are everything in love's tapestry.

I can see your smile from this distance.
I also see it when I see myself in the mirror.
We do light up rooms, don't we?
We will wake up once more
this October dawn,
which only you and I would understand,
scripted as it is in our shared memories,
as a time for wind-song, river and tears.

It's late now, but maybe not too late,
to wish us many such dawns together,
even as we travel this long night
in ways which are our own.

(for Mum)

Note:
So - I was winging back from New York. And in the long long flight I missed my Mum, the way you do when you are away from home for long.

And I remembered those days in Tribeni,  where we used to wake up at 4 am on Mahalaya.  We had the river flowing beside our home, and we used to put the radio on the ledge and heard those timeless intonations as the skies burst into flames across the waters. Mum and I just sat silently and let it all wash over us - the breeze, the welcome to Ma into our homes,  the birds waking up, the skies.

We have our differences  - which child doesn't with their mums? - but those were days of special symbolism - how much we are alike. This poem is thus full of the darkness of the horizon, the blue of a full sky and the vermillion which edges it all.)

Winter's in (and there's no time to sulk)

Winter's in 
when my throat finds a catch.
The fallen find their glory
and there is dignity in death. 
The dark finds reasons to linger,
never leaves, stays behind the light:
seasons are persistent,
like a tune incessant in a head.

It doesn't have to freeze to be cold,
it doesn't have to be cold to be warm;
life's compressed in short stories, albeit
with endings too existential for hurt.
I will stay with the nip in the air,
the fragrance, emanating only from the crushed -
the scars on the earth are now in stark relief, 
I find redemption in a warm sun which refuses to sulk.