Sunday, November 25, 2018

Books to read

​Sometimes
I wither in panic
Remembering​​ the books I'm yet to read
The many titles I wish to re-read
And fear that
Life will take me away
Before I can savour them
To my heart's content.

Sometimes
I bloom in ecstasy
Remembering the books I'm yet to read
The many titles I wish to re-read
Because no matter how many years pass by
Or I live till eternity
I'll always have something new
To read.

There is no cage that can hold me
No prison that can contain me
No four walls can restrain me
Or take away my freedom
As long as I have a book
Within reach.
Take them away, and you've as good as
Taken my life away.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Shadows of the Past - now in Justbooks library

That exciting moment when your book is listed by your favourite library:



Yes, "Shadows of the Past and other stories" is now available at a Justbooks CLC branch near you.

(Photo credit: Justbooks, Banshankari)


Saturday, November 3, 2018

When you left

​You​​ left without saying Goodbye.
I waited, hoping you'd return, remembering.
Because the last time we met,
Years ago, 
I was the first to leave, 
And I had remembered. I had waved. 
A special farewell, just for you. 

And all through the night
It kept me awake: 
Why did you not say Goodbye?
Why was it so difficult?
You knew you were leaving.
I didn't. 

The acknowledgement was casual.
The kind people exchange when 
They pass each other by.

I waited. 
The evening retreated,
The guests flowed in and out,
Until they flowed in no more.

Then it came home to me.
You had never seen me the way I saw you.
The frequency, the wavelength,
All those clichés I'd used 
T o describe us, albeit to myself,
None of it was real.

Looking back, our conversations
So interesting and engrossing, to me,
Seem so fragile, so thin 
Like smoke, 
Rising, spreading, dissipating,
Thin ice, cracking, breaking,
Non existent now. 
I'd read too much between the lines.
Which had been nothing but vacuum.

So ridiculous, such a mockery.
I must have made a fine spectacle.
The support I offered
The sympathetic ear, the shoulder...
A fine spectacle indeed
If all that had meant nothing.

Perhaps I should just laugh
At my own foolishness-
Jumping to conclusions that never existed.
Perhaps I should forget,
Because it had been clearly 
All in my own mind, and 
Perhaps it is time to
Return to my land of silence.