Gurgaon, India

Woman

Translated from a Hindi poem by Chandresh    

Woman

Your names are many 

Your forms endless 

At the centre of debates 

Since eternity timeless 

Unfathomable you 

Beyond human reach 

Mother, sister, daughter,  beloved 

Seductress, goddess 

Tender, compassionate 

Galloping past

Multi-labelled barricades

Heard or unheard 

The journey of incessant toiling 

From labour-room to kitchen 

Farmland to office

The Quintessential housewife 

Or the model businesswoman 

Cruising across the globe 

Since the dawn of time 

Suffering and battering 

Witnessed by the planet 

Kalidas or Shakespeare 

Ibsen or Voltaire 

Tulsidas or Jaishankar

Writers, poets, dramatists

Attempting to carve you 

Partial or full

Gallons of ink dried 

Still a lot to be etched

Plenty or unlimited 

Picasso to Jamini Roy  

Ravi Verma to M. F. Hussain

Striving to sculpt you 

Engrave your image 

Colours countless  

Splashed on canvas

Yet the image is unfinished 

Growing out of canvas

Every time one attempted 

Casting you in a circle 

Not even with the magic wand

Monalisa 

Still a mysterious puzzle 

Baffling the whole world 

Sparking an unending debate

Monalisa 

Smiling or contemplating 

Observing or prophesying

Wondering connoisseurs 

To each his own 

Her smile 

Interpreted as pain

Layer upon layer  

Never to be uncovered 

To its ultimate core 

History de-layered 

Resulted in nought 

Monalisa 

Conscious, unconscious 

Of everything around 

With a smile divine 

An unending parley

Boundless you are  

Till the earth survives 

Till the universe is alive 

Axial to discussion

Construction and reconstruction/

Democracy and Its Cortege

Translated from a Hindi poem by Chandresh   

Crematoriums, otherwise deserted,

Piled up corpses high and low 

The fortunate getting last rites now

Away from this mayhem, a game of files

Federal files and data forged 

An open game of shameless lies

Turning fact to fiction

Going up in flames

Deceit having the last smile

Truth crying its heart out/

Abbots at the top continue

With their sermons on democracy

Amidst the pandemonium

Crushed by the pandemic

Mortals counting numberless biers

Cortege of ‘demos’ and ‘democracy’

In time unimaginable

Creatures, democracy in hands 

Like brats tolling handbells/

The most dreadful nightmare of the century

Coming to life and engulfing

Cities after cities

Villages after villages

Stealthily, invisibly

The monster named Corona/

Gasping for every breath

Scouring for the life force

Pyres for the lucky

Rivers for the unlucky

Floating like logs

Screaming the tragic tales

Asking the spectators

Still have the life force?

Still alive?

Otherwise uproarious

Roaring and raucous

The responsible mute

Amidst the clamour

Frightening lull absolute

Pierced only by wailing corpses

To put the responsible in spot

For slaying innocent lives

By history at long last/