October

 And suddenly it's October again.

The dank dark damp will soon be gone

with the slush and wet. Shadows

will lengthen in the angled sunlight

we shall warm our backs to

on chilly mornings when winter sets in.

Morning pools of cotton wool

white-wreathed across valleys and mountains,

blue skies piled with immense white clouds,

evenings that explode with colour,

brown confetti from the gulmohar tree

long past its May days of glory.

The dry and dust bring back childhood memories,

riding homeward from sun baked plains

up cool, winding highland roads

the nuns at boarding school left far behind,

Father wrapping a warm arm around one of us,

home to Mother and the dear little house

at the top of the dusty hill.

Season changes worm out memories

buried in time. And the more things change,

the more things remain the same.

(October 2, 2020)

Lockdown Covid 2.0

 I am slowly beginning to forget the pleasure
of waking up in the morning,
anticipating what the day might bring.
One locked-in day after the other,
pacing within these four walls,
classes over zoom, attempting to reach
confused students behind computer screens.

In these hills too, the second wave is harsher,
statistics surge every day, nudging at five figures,
ambulances scream under cover of the night
ferrying the infected to safe places,
and patients wheeled into the ICU
do not all leave upright anymore.

But life here is kinder than in the plains,
there it’s a nightmare come alive,
swollen bodies floating in rivers
washed up on embankments
for stray dogs to feed on,
a desperate sister’s calls
of Balaji, wake up, Balaji echo in the ear,
as the summer sun mingles
with smoke and fire from funeral pyres,
people gasping for breath and finding
no hospital beds, dying on roadsides.


I feel a sense of survivor’s guilt
but these lockdown mornings are so unendingly empty.

(May 12, 2021)