God had better plans for you!

Yesterday was the reunion of our Standard 10 batch of our school St Sebastian's. There were some with whom we had spent fourteen years of our life. That is from nursery to standard ten. From the time we were toddler's to the time we were hormone-raring teens!

From all walks we gathered. Balding, pot bellied,C-section paunch, colored hair,reading glasses but the gleam in the eye was still present. There was a connect.

I often used to wonder about all of them......where did they vanish? Can people fall off earth? No they are all there. the axis shifts.

Unrequited romances, awkward holding hands flash in front of your eyes.....What if...? the question remains.....

I remembered so many events that I thought I had forgotten. But no they were in the depths of the recesses of my brains.

A friend I met after nearly three decades told me,' God had better plans for you'. I looked around and saw all us .......
Yes, I would like to believe that God had better plans for all of us.....

A deserted house

Moss on the walls,
Windows that are holes,
The red tiles on the roof,
Have lived days with the sun and the rain,
The walls are fiercely silent
May have been a sanatorium or a lunatic asylum
Does the green tree know about the house?
I looked for doors
Strangely, there were none,
It stood mute,
Cold unaware,
The bricks may have sound entrapped in them,
But the house refused to let anyone hear the rhythm,
It may have stood there for ages,
And may stand like this for ages,
Ensnared in time,
Wrapped in silence,
Sadly,
I stay in this house.

A hymn

A hymn
Song of prayer
Not to God
To you
Don’t play God
Leave the game to him.

The Urchin

As I waited at the bus stand,
Shielding my eyes from the wind blown sand,
and felt the earth rotate by,
echoes of human being’s anguished wails and cries,

The sun in a scathing rage,
Disallowing the entry of the rain,
Destiny turning life’s every page,
And man carrying his cross of pain,

Then I saw this little girl
with a toothy grin,
I realized she was a price of some adult’s sin,
Her hair brown,tied up to a pig tail,
Walked up to me,confident of making a sale.

She stood wih aplomb,clanked her bowl in front of me,
and suddenly life’s irony laughed for me to see,
Her bowl was a Budweisser beer can,
Here she was standing naked feet and hungry,
and asking for alms in a premium product can.

I stuffed my hands deep down in my pocket,
and saw her eyes gleam in their dark socket,
Took out a five rupee coin
and heard it clink in her beer tin.

Oh god!why did you give me a rupee more and her a less,
I thought equal was our share in this cosmic mess,
Your wisdom I can’t understand,
or is it that the lines were simply strong in my hand.

Other passerbys rebuked me,
maybe right in their view,
and prophesised she would my rupee squander,
but I never let my thought wander.

Proving their prophecy true,
buying ribbons of differant hue,
saw her at the peddler,
she was nothing but a mere toddler.

Well,I shrugged my hands,
who am I to challenge life’s command,
maybe that is why I am here,
to bring back a smile and cheer.

But now bereft of my rupee,
It was very simple for me to see,
I had to walk back home,
The sky a reminder of a ribbon flying somewhere alone.

11th July 2006

She sat on her haunches and wailed,
A wail that was heard above the din of Mumbai,
Black clouds like mourners gathered and looked down,
A dismembered hand lay near her feet,
She could identify his hand from the many others that lay there,
Not by the Titan, that he had purchased with his Diwali bonus,
Nor by the sleeve of the shirt that refused to leave his hand,
And not even by the nails that were still pearly white,
And not by the fingers that had curled up like a baby’s,
Strangely, by the familiarity of the sensations that the hand had given her,
The hand that fed and loved her,
A few hours ago, this hand was clutching the handle in the train,
And returning home,
Midst the Mumbai rush hour.
She cried out even louder impotently,
Her screams nearly tearing the black sky apart,
Red blood still oozed from the hand,
Redder than the vermillion on her head,
Fresher than the tears from her eyes,
She knew not who and why,
Nor did she understand the politics,
All she saw was mangled remains in a twisted train.
The school fees, milkman’s bills, house rent,
Little Munni’s dreams,
All exploded
With the bomb that detonated in the 6.11 local,
that snaked its way through Mumbai, the land of dreams.


Post note

She knitted two purls and one knit,
One knit and two purls
For Munni’s daughter.
When dusk fell,
She often thought,
Did they get what they want by killing him?
The dismembered hand,
Was the only identification that it was him.