Works of RK

Autumn brings in memories of muted grey and flying ash. Memories of fallen leaves gradually letting go of their greens. Autumn paints itself on a desolate canvas. It is that season wherein your eyes draw back your tears into itself. It is that season when your hope falters and your faith waivers like the last of the twigs holding on to some imaginary leaf. Such is wretched misery of this waiting, it transforms your soul into a refugee. You grab on to made up memories from some imaginary springtime and trudge through your life believing that your world is this bleak canvas, and you that grey tramp ploughing your soul through limbo. No. It is not a nightmare, for it is not night yet, just the dreary day draped in grey. There are no dreams, for to dream, you need to get to sleep, and you rarely get to sleep on days that stretches for years and is blatantly grey. But when the first set of silly shoots find their way through sunken craggy gnarly wood, we drench in its first shameless shower

Do not ask me why I miss you.  That answer would come to me, eventully. Some day sometime in the future I will find myself not thinking about you.  And in not thinking about you, I will end up thinking about you just like that. All stories are my stories, but I am not my stories. I am yours. When we are older and our world is quieter than it is now; I will be in those intriguing tales that your heart spins to give you company. Do not ask me why I miss you. That answer would come to me when it comes to me. Why hurry?

The necklace road was just as well lit as any other day. Its park benches occupied by lovers of all hues. The lake was full of sail boats and the Buddha as usual, held on to his smile. I remember that the rain surprised all of us. It came in waves, slightly slanting, beating down relentlessly. I would have run into the car, had you not stopped me that day. That evening, I walked in the rain with you. Hand in hand, you holding on tight so that I don't take a shelter to save my buckaroo leather, and I taking delight in watching you dancing in the rain. That was the first time I got wet in the rain...and did not mind it all that much.

I open my door and almost see you sitting there, angry that you could not get the air-conditioning on. Is that small speck of red on my yellow tea cup a stain from your lipstick? I ride my car and I can see you sitting next to me, glaring at those jealous guys staring at you. There are six strands from your hair that I saved from the last time you were home. A green elastic band sits lonely in my bathroom shelf. A bindi stares at me from my dressing room mirror. So much of my memory is stained forever. I am no longer what I remember. All I remember is you.

As the rains drum down my windows I open them a little to allow a sprinkle Of the showers you so loved Wet me once more. There is nothing that i write That can bring you back once more.

I can hear your voice on the other side of the phone. Its like some lonesome wave spent from a long voyage crashing unto my shores. I love it when you crash into my world. I love the overwhelming sense of being drenched by you. I love the mysterious stories you tell me of magical lands. I love how you try to make it up for all the time we lost by speaking too fast, running out of breath. I love the way you explore yourself around my loneliness from you. I love the faint sense of unease in your tone, as you try to find out if I am the same edges you rounded off from all these years of random onslaught. I love the saltiness of my soul that you leave behind.

Don't judge me by my silences. They don't divulge the whole story. There is a story that runs in my mind. I carry it's lines in my thoughts and live its scenes in my life. I am the Macbeth and the Othello. I am also the Romeo in my story. You are omnipresent. It is as if the script revolves around you. You are in each scene, ever chapter every line. And as the curtain comes down on me, you dissolve into my mind, like a dark cloud of my own making. Taking weird forms of my own perception. Don't judge me by my silences. There was never a moment in my life, when I stopped talking to you.

आज़ादी हम भी चाहते हैं तुमसे आज़ादी। तुम्हारे मांगों से आज़ादी ये दंगों से आज़ादी जिन शोलों में तुम हो लिपटते मेरे आशाओं से भरे तिरंगे को मेरी आन, मेरी शान, मेरे ज़मीर के निशानी को उन शोलों से आज़ादी। जिस आक्रोश से मार गिराते हो मेरे चमन के लाडलों को मेरे वतन के सिपाहियों को उस आक्रोश से आज़ादी। आज़ादी हम भी चाहते हैं तुमसे आज़ादी जिस मिटटी कि खुश्बु है हिंदुस्तानी जिस मिटटी में है सिमटी यादें हमारी तुमसे कई पुरानि, चाहते है हम भी आज़ादी तुमसे उस मिटटी की आज़ादी। केहना तो बहुत कुछ है दोस्त पर है हम पर भी कुछ पाबन्दी, ये तुम्हे है अब सोचना तुम्हारी मांग जो है आज़ादी है किस्से ये आज़ादी हमारे मिटटी से तुम्हारी या तुम्हारी सोच से है हमारी आज़ादी? आज़ादी हम भी चाहते हैं, तुमसे आज़ादी। .... This is my attempt to voice the intense unhappiness that the state of affairs in our state of Kashmir is causing to every Indian. I wish our politicians and media would stand up for the country rather than help us burn down our own attic. The land from where flows down this ancient civili

It rained this morning, The sky that was dark and broody All these days Broke into tears With a loud clap of thunder. The earth let out it's pent up lust With vapor floating Over black tar roads And tin tops. I had washed my car a while ago. Raindrops, Bouncing bubbles bursting And dancing Would have drenched it All over again. Everything I know Follows some weird rules of its own. It rains when it rains And takes no notice of me. Everything that happens around me Everything that surrounds me Reminds me So much of you.

Long flights dredges up lost memories from an otherwise sunshiny life. They come from all the corners, steadily, like coyotes, biting away small bits, from my otherwise well preserved sanity. From my childhood, comes echoes of laughter, and playing in the sand, and jumping off trees and beautiful looking Didi's and school teachers and sir Raj, smoking charms , endlessly. The laughter bounces off my brusque facade of professional chicanery, and chips away some paint on the go. Right from under the starched white shirt front, I bleed blue, as I remember myself and my sis, playing, alone, under the guava tree. We were young once, and our life was full of each other, forever. From my youth, my grand uncle calls out, in a voice unheard for a decade. I see myself grinding arecanut for him to chew, in return of cardamom treated raw tobacco. I see us painting the front lawn red, together, three generations apart, chewing home grown betel. Some bit of that red betel haunts me again, sparkli