anil gupta's blog

To discover the grace with in you

You can do what you wish

And pray at any temple or mosque

Only way you will enter this city

Of admonition

Is when you will

“Combine

Love and duty

To discover the grace with in you[1]”

I have seen icons of power falling down

I have seen idols of love melting away

In the heat of scorn and stymied

Sulking anger

But then what good is it to love

If we can not swallow

The pride of being indifferent

Towards the sensitive notes of music

Sung by the  wayside bards

Devoted as they are

To please any body who will care

Without favour and without any snare

Aroma of a slowly extinguishing incense stick

I never claimed

I was extraordinary mind

And yet my instincts were of a kind

That could sense the advancing storms

And the monsoon winds

From miles before their time,

You thought I could protect you

But then I could not

Why do you feel lost

When I am gone away like the

Aroma of a slowly extinguishing incense stick

Why do you keep peeling bamboo

Sticks

To make more such incense sticks

Knowing that their aroma will not

Let you leave the shores

Of a river, eternal as it is

Never will it dry

No matter however so much you cry

Do we love each other

For our respective virtues

Or the inadequacies

Which we pretend we

Could compliment

Why did we love so much

When you fell down

I was worried

And you did not like my advice

More I was concerned

More you despised

Do we only love when we are distanced

From the railings which

You hold to walk

And I keep quiet

When you wish, I would talk

Rhymes and reasons, For being there where there is pain, Kaali !!

You had made the spring come early

You had made the rains stop

Just for a while

When the sun wanted to have a glimpse of

Fleeting shadows of you

Walking away from light

Into abyss of darkness

Like  the moon on amavasya night

But then I recalled that

Asking sun to change its course

Or moon to lie low

Was not right

Let us be ready Ma Kaali

To accept the changing seasons

And times

Rhymes and reasons

For being there where there is pain

And where there are prayers therefore

Why did I succumb to my vanity, Ma kaali!!

I could have gone on and on

With my devotion

Mother kaali!!

And then forced you to forgive me

But then I had to think of all those

Who thought

you were powerful

and thus could bless them

I did not want to rob you of your power

I decided to succumb to my vanity

when crossing border was not an issue

the tears had dissolved all the barbed wires

fenced around my wishes

and  i could not take the step across the lines

that  still existed

may be we should now stop, sit and pause

ask ourselves

why did we stand at border for so long

let us hope that we do not get answers

lest we lose the energy to strive

to cross these

borders again

and stop still

when the pain is disciphered at long last

the tears refuse to pay toll tax

at the gate of vanity

through which one has to go

even for a few moments

but why

wish me sleep, wish me some flowers to keep
wish me some moments  of laughter
wish me some tactile skies full of thorns
more i embrace that, more pricks i get
yearning to come closer
and having the pain to be away
in this centrifugal dialectics
wish me sedimentation\in the cup
that touches your lips
time and again
again and again

why do we always pray

that our ambitions remain burried in deeper layers of our

thoughts, never to rise their head

lest breeze may spread the pollens of their flowers

and sap the spirit of

true search

bahut saari kavitayen hai,

meri mujhse sachhi baat chit ki,

bas apney liyey likhta hun,

sheesho ke ghar mein reh kar sochta hun

meri sachhai ka praman

baar baar suli par chadh ke nahin dena padega

par kya bataun

har baar jab kahin kisee dard ko ghar nahin milta
mujhse uska hisaab manga jaata hai

aur nahin milney par kuchh jyada hisaab
mujhey soooli par chadhaya jaata hai