These Are My Excuses

 

Like the kurinji flower of the Nilgiri hills

I blossom once every twelve years

 

Like Kumbhkaran, the brother of Ravan

I must sleep months before a call to action

 

Like trains to London are thrown by leaves on the line

I too am derailed by minute distractions

 

My lists are long yet I have mastered

The lost art of not-ticking-off

 

When slow living comes back in fashion

I will claim as I have always done

 

That I was here first.

 

 

Where Home Was

 

These flaking walls are of the house where

                              My broken strings lie

In the whirring blades of this fan

My future was glimpsed; sliced

 

Revolving on the damp ceiling

Were suitcases packed with dreams

It’s where I saw clearly that I would leave

The past would be segmented; diced

 

I dreamt for years of earth so sweet

Not knowing the earth had gone under

I ached for the smell of mud rising in the heat

Not knowing the earth had gone under

 

There are traffic swarms and roundabouts

Rose-shrubbed, tended, smogged

Marble mansions and balconies

Where the forest has been logged

 

We are rooted to the busy road where

                              My broken strings lie

Here is where they meet at last

The past and the present; spliced

 

Still the cows riskily meander

In the ear crushing din

And in the corner the old palmist

Has stories to spin

 

Does he remember he spoke to me

When I voiced unreasonable hopes

He said nomads have freedom, if no home

He is the one who foresaw that the ropes

 

Pegged on the voyage up

Pulley you home

Pulley you back, when

It’s not time to return

 

Because the voyage is endless

Because the earth has gone under

Because in this blemished land

In a hollow of a rain-soaked sigh

                              My broken strings lie.