The scrap

 

A taterred book

Unbound brittle pages

When one is turned over

The edge comes off in hand

While the residual piece remains

Unmoved from the scrap

A few wrappers of candy

So well devoured that these

Were preserved as souvenir 

A brown twig of dried flower

Kept with prayers and an unsaid vow

An embarrassing result of exam

Forsaken to a forgettable nook

A few cassettes that lightened the soul

Brightened the eye and thumped the heart

Some photographs colored in black and white

When we could pose only once for a click

A half full bottle of treasured perfume

And the vibrant wrapper with tag

The indelible name read a million times

Confessions and diaries of innocence 

Flushed with regrets of a lesser sin

The timeless mystery of cached days

Unearthed by the seasoned self

That finds ways to prove virtue

Even amidst deliberate measures of vice

What treasures we have garnered till now

Having discarded that last specks of scrap?

Delhi 

2320

16.47 hrs

10.10.25

The pinch of spice

 

Aah, it pains when pricked

To bear the pinch of a sharp edge

The abrasion into deeper tissue

The moistened eye and shriek of pain

When being adorned for a savory moment

While the saliva overflows at the sight 

Of a pinch of spice over my corpse

Decked up in a shroud of a wrap

That conceals the blood and life

Cleaned before it touches your platter.

Kolkata enroute Delhi

2319

14.47 hrs

10.10.25

The burden of an ocean

 

A capsized sails

Dipped in brine

And the pranks 

That waves  carry 

Swells to tatters

Even as the breeze 

Peeks from atop

And hisses to jeers

Emboldened by his escape

The wonted captive

Pilloried amidst the sails

That reigned over shores

And new lands till now

In a happy procession 

Even as slip is a pretence 

Of a novel move 

And in a drought 

The most thoughtful step

Heads towards futility .

Seeds – to be devoured or sown?

Enroute Kolkata 

21.34 hrs

8.10.25

2318

The gluttony for survival

 

The surfeit that rots on platter

The debris of rancid nibbles 

Bought in excess by the doubting glutton

Tempted to stuff beyond his gut can store

Maybe a spice more or a pinch less 

Strewn and flung across like garbage 

Beware: 

One lick has triggered an oozing flow

Flow of an overflowing motherhood

Just within a moment the calf is shoved

Far enough to foil his longest stretch

Compelled by the starvation for his share

Share in what flows entirely for his sake

And close enough to tantalize the udder 

Delhi

2317

21.07 hrs

8.10.25

The tethered shore

 

The adrift soul arrives with timid pensiveness

On vexed realms of the tethered shore

Fettered with a little leash and tormented

Tormented to acute agony without any respite

The waves writhe amidst a confounding choice

Whether the pain aggravates with strife to break free

Or to surrender to the intolerable affliction

The noose that binds the vessel to the shore is truncated

While the tides it smothers are rather massive

The calf that gives up in infancy grows strapped

Immersed in such thoughts my vessel nears the sand

Fathoming the burden of a buoyant voyage

The damp embers bask in the rubicund dawn

While the crackling pyre springs up to complete the tale

Like the ttwilight of an unending gory dusk

Everytime the sky turns red the mind tries to define

What distinguishes the first sight or the last sigh

Of a scorching vagabond day on a tethered shore

Rishikesh

2316

01.27 hrs

5.10.25