You wake me up in the middle of the night and give me a dream to follow.
I once used to chase dreams like a little boy chases butterflies – with joy in his eyes, jumping over the rocks in his path with ease – until my innocence was stolen and the world became ugly.
The dream you show me stirs me up. I don’t know if now’s any different, but I will take it. Chase it against the setting sun and the puffy clouds and alpine forests. As long as it will keep me alive. This dream.
The door is locked –
an ancient padlock hangs.
But only yesterday
a grand carnival passed through it.
The door is new –
you can smell the paint;
but there it is
with its rococo design,
the padlock old:
tyrannical, unmoving, old –
keeping the restless crowds waiting.
KISHORE KUMAR
Writing this poem has been to me the end of a delusion and the beginning of a search. It is long, but do read it all: you might understand what I mean when I say that this has been a deeply personal pilgrimage for me.
(Blogger doesn’t allow me to use the tab key. Hence I’ve used bold fonts for alternating lines to improve readability. Using bold fonts has no other significance.)
* * *
Nightly train journeys
lead me to the inevitable:
The chilly winds stir up memories of a winter
we refused to pull down the shutters,
And the incessant sway of the coach makes me thank
the long, long train journey that brought you to me.
I promised myself to get over this nostalgia;
But that was a promise that couldn’t stand against
an unyielding love, or the night train home.
My mind wandered on into abandoned territory,
and I let it:
Perhaps a little pain can cure the numbness
of my heart.
I bypass the lunches under the margosa
and the cycling on flat tyres,
And walk to the day of the missing mistletoe
and the quick hug on the doorstep:
That was the day you opened the windows
and showed me the stars.
Then there was the story of a seer who predicted
an inseparable friendship;
There were days when we discussed
part-time gods and misshapen universes.
There were nights with Gibran
and storms in inkpots,
And there was the magic of an addictive smile
that did what a thousand battles couldn’t.
When you met me on those corridors that summer, you and your fragrance
defined home to me like nothing else.
You gave me colour and meaning,
and the memory of a sleepless, frigid summer.
You gave me Gandalf in return for my Dumbledore,
and a love story that kills and resurrects.
We built an eternal soap bubble and sucked time out of it,
and filled it with our souls and quizbooks.
And then the days when under a fan with four blades
you fed me a spoonful of life,
Followed by the night I spent under the moon
looking at your face and guessing your dreams;
And there’s the bittersweet pain in the memory of the day
I feared I didn’t deserve you:
You took me so close in your arms and whispered,
“Would you talk about you deserving yourself?”
You gave me a challenge, a box of chocolates and questions to answer.
You gave me dreams to chase, that will overflow a lifetime.
That was a long ago summer in a far away country,
and a far away happiness –
Because for reasons that I do not know exist,
I lost the soap bubble and my soul along with it:
My deciduous delights were exactly that.
–
By another train journey I reach our semi-arid tropics;
it is summer again.
I’ve made this journey many times before
but it never was this painful;
Down pour memories of a violet ink and yellow envelopes
I no longer use,
And of the very next summer I came to say goodbye
and you gave me a mock embrace.
I’ve been many things and places since, but one thing I haven’t felt
in five years, is home.
That mocking, jeering, disheartening hug of yours,
made the first crack in my heart.
Then one day you crossed the road
forgetting me, and leaving me behind you.
Then came the day you told me your dreams were your own
and your plans are but your business.
You told me you wouldn’t correct me any longer, nor should I,
for there are limits!
Because however close two universes come, you said,
there is always a fine line separating them.
That was when we stopped debating and started arguing –
we were on that one way road.
What followed wasn’t a blur, it was one long moment
of unacknowledged oblivion
My silence and your insouciance,
broken promises and fatal changes –
Were you tired of me, or was it somebody else?
Was it the different places that we had to go?
Or was I just a compromise and a stand-in until
somebody else walked in?
There was a day I said I was going to miss you,
that I will wait, come back for you.
(Such a cliché. You answered with a line that could be
a writer’s delight).
You said you wouldn’t miss me, that you will stay
with yourself, wherever you go.
That was the last time I expected someone to wait for me;
the last time I ever counted myself in.
I befriended the moon and conducted a lunar love affair,
and added my tale to his long repertoire.
There were long nights on the stairs when
tears wiped all thought away.
I shredded your letters and burnt my diaries, but still you haunt my dreams –
this is the one promise you’ve kept.
Disappointment. Humiliation. These were your choicest words for me when I needed you.
Was acceptance impossible? Had understanding gone out of fashion?
That was the final blow, the final crack in my crumbling heart.
That was when I forgot what emotion meant.
The chirping of birds and glorious sunsets no longer meant anything:
I went to bed with the Reaper’s daughter called despair.
The passage of time didn’t make sense anymore.
Years passed and my wounds didn’t heal, didn’t bleed.
Worldly fortune was fair to me and humoured
the glutton I became trying to fill an invisible void;
But all the cities I’ve been to had nothing to offer
to fill this obstinately dead void.
I tried to run away from it, tried to
wash myself of everything life refused to give me;
I absconded the man in white and the smiling woman who taught us life;
in a happy, happening rich world, I became numb.
I only did not realize that in this great escapade,
I was running away from myself.
But today, here I stand in this grand little town
we once called home.
The green patch where once we sat entwined, and the bench where I waited for you,
are still there and enquire about you;
Someone mentions Physics and my heart skips a beat, and I visit
shady Attar shops in search of a lost Arabian perfume;
The noisy summer wind however, is not accompanied
by your voice, nor do I feel your breath on my face.
And I realize, the melody in your arms
might never again claim me.
Our library asks me questions I dared not acknowledge,
and our corridors rebuke my numbness;
People ask me where you are and I say
somewhere up north, having fun;
And my eyes lose their dryness
and regain a depth I deemed impossible.
In our dusty little town that gave us raw mangoes
and exalted purposes,
I realised it was time I looked for the pieces
and started picking them up.
Plaques and pictures brought me home
from the emptiness I madly sought:
I can’t live in an uninviting yesterday
in a lost world;
Because I am human and my search for permanence
is capable of looking beyond one eternity that decided to be ephemeral.
Nor can I annihilate those memories
which lie at the heart of all I am;
Nor can I desert our dreams which still fuel my days
and court the stars.
–
Epilogue
I don’t want to be a dead phoenix.
I want to rise again, just like I did every time I fell
before you happened.
There is a world you gave me.
There is a world you stole from me.
And there is an insane moment when the two come frighteningly close,
and a moment of horror when they converge.
I live in that impossible moment.
Anything else would be just a mediocre imitation of life.
A decision is imminent:
The lights are dimmed, and I need to take
a blind turn.
Yes, I am ready.
For if the Giver of Things asks me now,
what’s the one thing I want to clutch to my bosom forever,
I am no longer sure what the answer would be.
And I want to find out.
KISHORE KUMAR
Once upon a happy monsoon,
A gentleman called Time
And a capricious lady called Fate,
Decided to send the youth Love to live with me.
Sweet Love and I carved a niche for ourselves,
And called it Our Eternity;
We forgot the people who sent Love to me
And decided that they didn’t exist.
But then those ephemeral deities got jealous
And kidnapped my sweetheart Love,
And made him forget me and my mistakes;
And they destroyed Our Eternity.
I’m a vagabond now, Love-less and homeless,
But never will submit to those kidnappers.
I will find my sweetheart again,
And make him remember who I am.
KISHORE KUMAR
One of those things for which you leap out of bed at two in the morning and reach out for paper and pencil. Orthodox readers might find it slightly blasphemous (Please don’t take offence. This is between God and me). Please tell me if you find this juvenile.
* * *
I am here sitting
On top of the greatest pyramid that’s ever been built.
You know what I’m going to do?
Build another step and then climb it.
And again.
And again.
Then maybe let somebody else climb.
–
Last night I was chatting with God in a chatroom.
He promised to talk to me on phone soon.
Then one day I’ll meet Him.
And maybe shake hands with Him.
And definitely kiss Him on the lips.
Then one day I will be Him.
Home.
There’s a long way to go!
But every moment is going to be more exciting
Than sky diving!
KISHORE KUMAR
I remember the days
Of the green vales
And the blue lakes
And the long drives along them
I have later moved
From small town to city
From Faber-Castell to Staedtler
From basic science to medicine
Now I miss the vales
And the lakes and the drives
But what I miss most
Is the face in the passenger seat
KISHORE KUMAR
The only depressing poem I wrote until now. No meter. Just flow.
* * *
They asked me why,
I said I was tired of being a liability.
I asked them to leave me alone with my poetry;
They asked me why, again.
‘Cause I wanted to search my face, I said,
And asked the mirror whose guilt it was
That I wore so comfortably on my face.
Whose, they asked, again.
I did answer them.
I cut the radial artery.
Now they put these tubes into me
And make me a liability. Again.
KISHORE KUMAR
Sea breezes – shadows of mighty winds
Propelling ships, vanguards of history –
Ruffled my hair as I sat
Dissolving myself into Creation’s mystery.
Romanticism and meanings
Of things and atom bombs,
Merged in the peace that vastness brings.
Nightfall killed the shadows that sunshine brought
And it lit a thousand stars in me bright.
Foam, Fate and Firmament engulfed me, and I blissfully gave in.
Just in case you don’t notice, and to humour my own vanity: There’s a certain play with the consonant sounds in the words in the first three lines. I don’t know what it’s called.
* * *
Bike seats and sweat beads,
Jingles and gadgets,
Coffees and freakouts,
They know but you don’t:
Baby I’m in love.
KISHORE KUMAR
Can this be called Poetry?
* * *
Thank you God, for friends.
And for the troubles and the coffee.
Thank you God, for the seasons.
And for airconditioning.
Thank you God, for sex.
And for latex.
Thank you God, for Love.
And for roses and for tears.
Thank you God, for books and philosophy.
And for brutal war, where they don’t work.
Thank you God, for being God.
And for making me.
KISHORE KUMAR
kilroykishore 