Ropeway from Gandhi to Godhra

Grains of life, I earn from Gulf…

Where once a half-clad saint knew about
Watermarks of wind, in landforms
As beige and broken as conquests.

In faith on time and pressure, saplings he sowed
As empathic as mother’s womb,
And desperate as farmer’s hope for rains,
Cracked a wall that canon balls could not bomb.

***

Grains of life, I earn from Gulf…

Where surf of sea now lashes
Like sword, through fault lines
Larger and deeper than communities.

Vessels sent long back, loom over the horizon again
With barrels of oil, as inflammable as
Hunger for money, and addiction to identity,
To displace those saplings faster and secretive
…than nuclear weapon can.

Peace

Peace that embraces like lover’s arms

The fatigue of battles over pride and reasoning,

Shall scatter like sunshine through turquoise marbles

To lit up the face of a child in the Devil.

Armour that comes your way from Love to lava

Shall wither like clothes between lovers in arms…

When naked and naïve those gypsy wings flutter,

Shunned by norms, in a sky, where rests your palm.

Wood Fossil

I will gift you a history

That the winner hasn’t written for a change

And others will not tell other stories in days to come.

Only time will know how gaps collapse

As we grow upon each other like wood and grass;

Although we won’t touch each other in the sense wood does

But more like pages of a novel.

And even if the heavy storms dust

Fossil that becomes, will have a thousand stories saved.

Nuclear

What can be more nuclear

Than houses, light-years apart within?

Than a hypnotic light behind our eyes

How real have shadows been!

Than dying words on scattered isles

Fusing them in a sleepy sea…

What can be more nuclear

Than knowing you, and knowing me?