Ewes of Kulal
(The women of Kulal in West India have taken up arms against militants to save their own community, even though the bureaucrats remain apathetic to the community. This is to respect their never-say-die attitude)
Outside desolate kitchens,
Ewes of carping badlands sheep
Trample underbrush on dunes:
Pricks on the smooth sands.
As water from white-collars
Dry up
Just as my pen on tear-sodden pages
Thorn ridden entrails
Of the weaklings
Strew the brambles.
Among the gory thorns
Arises life: a small flower
Winking
At the rolling sands
And the striving hooves.
The Scimitars
(This poem is based on the image of the statue of Ma-Durga that re-surfaced at the IISER-K/BCKV Campus-Lake, after having been immersed, probably during Durga Puja. The statue had a couple of arched dhingies, used for fishing, in the vicinity)
Listless arches on meshed waters
Skirted by writhing fish,
Upright and inverted crescents,
Softly kissing the waters,
Like scimitars,
Lying in a pool of blood
Lay ‘neath the bleeding sun,
Up above, over the murky stillness,
Over an imperfect world,
Vestiges of a battle lost.
Bobbing, as to a lullaby
From the heavens she forsook,
Ma Durga, glaring into the skies,
Rising, rising, dipping, rising
On muddy eddies
And lost causes.
Bereft of her jewels,
With jutting bamboo, showing
The helpless bobble
Of human constructs.
Mottled leaves on ripples
Near the make-shift Ghat,
Nod to the tidings
Carried by a lazy breeze,
Balmy, stench-ridden
Sifting through the morning mist
Egging on the scimitars,
Ruthless, acute,
Away from hope
Away from supine divinity
Away from Ma.
