The Flight

Eighty hours of painful

Recovery of the self

Leaves behind a scar

Deep embedded

In the bosom

Where sometime back

Lay a beloved friend.

I recollected all my

Cherished collections

And transformed them

Into ice, preserving

Every minuscule of remembrance.

Anuradha Bhattacharyya: The Flight

Hope I have not hurt you

In saving my own feelings.

To this end we were hurtling down

Pell-mell anyway; you

Cannot blame a foretold

Conclusion. I was

Ready for a sacrifice

Before the gods:

Wind, water, earth, the Sun

 Name any one who was not

Satisfied when we were together.

Each one left behind

A blessing in return

That I have collected from you …

And perhaps that is what

You have reason to think

As treason, saying,

After eighty hours of loving

How can a body separate

The heart from its bosom?

SOMETIMES*

Sometimes

I sneaked up to you

From behind to see

If you were waiting for me.

Sometimes

I delayed the encounter

By dallying in the corridor

Watching secretly,

Your impatience.

At such times

I cheered my anxious heart

That the fire within

Is not put out.

Any day

You can chide me

For not being a dutiful son

Or a fond brother

And I shall see in your eyes

The same complaint

For yourself.

*First published in the anthology Rainbow Hues, Aadi Publishers: Jaipur, 2014

Rain

It rained.

It rained that day

Before the proud sun.

It rained heavily.

Very often

When the sun snaps

Life from the tree-tops

It rains profusely.

Blame it.

I do blame the sun

For doing it to me.

For making it rain.

Who knows

When one would

Be so drenched again?

When it may rain?

Caresses (2)

‘In the mountains, there you feel free.’

– The Waste Land

The light air and

A cool cloud envelops

The social being

With another distinction,

Granting an aura of free

And frank acceptance

Of lingering melancholy

Of the cocooned self.

Although, in the mountains,

Birds shy away,

Offering no inspiration,

Preparing you for yet another flight

Of the imagination,

It is the mountains that

Clothe you with special

Recognition.

A fragment of life,

As it were gifted for a spell,

Charms the little complexes

Of the infinite mind,

Liberating the thumping heart

From finitude;

Buoyant and frisking in the clear air,

It rejuvenates, recovers,

Telling the plains below

What fortune it had missed.

Higher and higher

Awake and bright

Fresh and light

One finds the spring

Of an infinite devotion

Nestled in one’s heart

Unnoticed, spring out

Leap and rush

Wild and merry

In the mountains,

There, there love,

There you feel free.