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on soft spreads of summer evenings
Chintamani splits chilled beer with
the Sea on the Drive;
detail anonymous biographies,
roasted and salted with cut onions
and groundnut;
in zest of beery breath, takes the Sea,
shunning a long ago land,
a long ago people, a long ago........


pond herons waltz on circular, green,
Indian lotus leaves in a pond;
leaves dip and rise at every step unrolling
water drops;
the birds stamd still collecting water at
their feet;
fly off; no featherprints..........


on stone seats in the garden young and old
in meditative squats, eyes shut.    

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she takes the slums to her apartment
put up by a trespassing builder.
husband avoids the short cut.
their children --- packed, priced, vaccinated --
prefer the hovels.
they were born in the chawl.
hugs and quarrels were common for the similarly poor;
sharing onions, salt, oil, loose cash were a given;
their lingo, ankleted with abuse, couched in sharp spit,
were never thought so;
girls and boys played lagori together;
danced the first rains;
brought home Ganesha together;
dropped the Lord in the creek together;
stifled privacies together.  

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a sturdy, bare pipal is in prayer;
an yellow cluster on the laburnum
obliges a desire;
a thorny silk cotton tree,
stubbed bright red,
sticks the air;
shaking all over, a coppersmith,
clanks the air;
chintamani opens the morning
headlined with cuckoo calls;
jumps a heart, finding a roped macque with
his owner on a beedi;
tricked into a noose for the owner's living;
a guilt, destroying the morning , bursts on Rama;
the downing of Vali to save Sita pricks the Lord.
Says He:
thought and action are not Shiva's bow and arrow --
straight and simple;
maybe, the bow should have been forever in Janaka's
safe custody;
coconuts are not eaten whole;
bananas are skinned.
combing her hair, Sita remarked :
Did I not plead to shun power?

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two grand-daughters update an age-dried
couple on school tales.
like a bus speeding on a bumpy road
ajoba shakes when they hopscotch from
earth to moon and back;
roller skate on gulab jamuns hand-crafted by aji.
aji is no more.
ajoba seeks moksha on the market road;
40 years ago, missed it among the family-owned
chikku and mango orchards --
now the market road.
his feet stammer, pause; nods standing.
niranjan, the vegetable seller from benares,
helps ajoba to a plastic chair;
after business hours walks ajoba home, marred by
an upturned god and a self-willed tv on the wall.
grand-daughters are searching stars in american labs.
niranjan is all.
,

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no gandhi cap.
atmaram patil, the dabbawalla,
came and went with the dabba.
grandma died at some old age in
a village.
for 10 days, no cap;
no Rama, Krishna, Hari, at the
Hanuman temple;
on day 11, a washed Gandhi cap was back,
the beard shaved, the loss consumed.
atma is an accepted intruder at CCTV-housing
societies;
unafraid of Dominos, never fakes a rush;
is prompt with food garnished with homecare;
sprinkles tambakku-stained smiles; shuns talk;
no trespasser at air-conditioned offices on the Hill
where computers and plainspeople make faces;
its a five-minute drive by boeing or airbus
to Hyde park or Central park for Hill residents.
atma, squeezed in a harassed local,
camps at a chawl beyond the municipal park.
they have Tom Cruise; atma has Tukka;
walks to Pandharpur every aashad;
pratibha, his wife, is a housemaid;
white pyjama,
white kurta,
a red or black tilak,
a tired sigh of Deva, Panduranga,
a half-inch hard pair of chappals beaten
soft by the village cobbler;
no drinks;
no sex (with two grown up daughters, sleeps alone);
a ball of tobacco tucked into the gums, the lone indulgence,
says atma, holding his ear-lobes.
daughters at a school help mother;
women cannot be dabbawallas;
spectacled, are at a discount.
the case rests with Panduranga abandoned on
the Way by Meera and Tukka,
seeking compassion. 

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long walks on cemented expressways;
traffic lights for vegetation;
mosquitoes as wildlife;
fresh zebra crossings suggest spring;
chats misplacing old time addas,
my friend rests, folding thoughts;
sipping coffee spots a coloured map on
the morning newspaper;
memories, miracles, myths, grandma tales
dot a flight path;
grandfather trudged two miles to a temple
from Verur village for a few kaasu to keep
grandma, 12 children -- 11 boys, one girl --
on kanji, curd rice.
grandma, a bone, told Karna tales feeding
palmfuls of curd and rice;
skills eluded them at school;
mortgaged home, lost it.
a son boarded a coal train to an east-bound city;
worked the typewriter non-stop till he stopped.
His son fled to a west-bound city filling registers
in a shipping company,
hibernating in an apartment without a nameplate.
outsourced to Vermont, a new generation earns dollars
thanking an old man's prayers.        

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copper leaves drift readying
the badam for spring;
below, chintamani siestas savouring
the pile up.