Shivam Diaries

Category: A03 — POEMS

  • Ice cream share

    Kids get ice cream without asking, but not me
    So, I cried like a kid, argued like an young son
    Pestered like an old man
    And earned my ice cream!

    Unique is the happiness of sharing
    Ice cream with kids,
    Secret with a trusted friend
    House with own family
    Life with own woman!

    Sorrows ?
    Grief and pains, I share with God
    I pour them as Ahoothi
    In the Agnikundam
    Of my heart.

    Saw a picture one day
    While pouring the ghee of my pains
    May be dream, may be my imagination.

    A boy with a pencil in hand
    An eraser attached pencil
    Dancing on the tongues of fire.

    He draws sketches
    And He erases.
    He makes the wounds
    And He heals.
    He makes me to swim
    And when I was washed away by floods
    He was at the end not as a boy with a pencil
    But as the ocean to receive me!

    All the pencil sketches will be erased
    All waters will join sea
    Till then,
    Let me share with kids my ice cream
    Let me enjoy the life’s cream!
    This is not a dream, this is not a dream
    Why scream?

  • I emptied all my boxes

    Emptied all my boxes, bags and baggages
    Emptied totally.

    Will I be able to empty my mind
    Of my desires, longings,
    Sorrows, regrets?
    Things, my own
    Things not my own?
    And empty totally?

    And where do I keep the unloaded stuff
    They are not clothes or books
    They are thoughts.
    How to transfer, whom to transfer
    My desires, sorrows, regrets, longings?

    I emptied many boxes
    Don’t know how to empty a small pouch
    Inside me, but beyond my reach!

    Leave it, let it remain as such
    When I can’t do much!

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  • Let me be relaxed

    Thanks my Lord, my inner guard!

    For your blessings in abundance
    For giving me children with fondness,
    For giving a body that obeys
    A mind that shows correct ways!
    Enough money for day’s charm,
    Enough peace to stay calm.

    What do I lack in life?
    Nothing.
    Let me be relaxed
    Like the kids.

    Problems will come,
    Problems will go
    Time gone is gone
    Way back not known.

    No head, no headache
    I have a head, so headache!
    Glad that I have a head.

    Gods have no problem.
    You’re joking!

    Let me be relaxed
    Like the kids.

  • An ode to head-loads

    My head- load is increasing
    Ammalu, please stop teasing.

    You weren’t a pumpkin as now
    When I first carried you on my head,
    You were a ripe plantain peel
    Shot at me by your mom,
    Expecting you to pull my legs
    Wisely placing you on my head
    I handled you like a kid;
    Now you handle me like a kite!

    Then I carried your mom on my shoulder
    The heavy -weight boulder
    She pressed and changed my head shape
    I too pressed back,
    Poor thing had no escape!

    Then I carried my children and grand children!
    Happily as my dad used to.
    The music from the anklets
    When their tiny legs kicked my chest
    Flows in my soul still
    Continue ever it will.

    My dad too would have had that thrill
    While crossing the river,
    Me on his shoulder,
    To watch the chariots rolling.
    Knee -deep and hip- deep was the water
    My water -chariot waded out to the shore.
    No push, no pull
    When love is full.

    Comes to mind alive
    Not the shining gods ,
    Not their dazzling chariots
    But the street vendors
    With half opened bags of puffed rice
    Pushcart loads of halva and dates.

    Comes to mind alive
    Not the big drums or long pipes
    But the tickling sound of little toys
    Some rolled on the ground
    Some creaked when moved.
    And the little paper fans
    In the hand of the street vendor
    Turned and turned, I laughed.

    I’m now crossing a river
    Like my dad, with a head load.
    My affection carries the weight
    Not my head, so it is light.

    Help me to wade and reach the shore
    God, who lifted the earth, as a wild bore!

  • Our house is living

    Back home, my own sweet home,
    But what a mess, all things amiss.
    The mess will go in no time
    Thank god, not the memories.

    Many a time, I painted the walls,
    Everyday, I wash the floor
    Glad not gone my kids’ palm prints
    And their mom’s food prints.

    Is therein’t a little one, look, behind a doll
    Showing her face and smiling
    Like the dew on a morning flower?

    If my kids are no more kids
    How do I see them playing here,
    Like spinning tops, all around
    Or spreading moonlight on my lap?

    If not at home their mother
    How did she open the door?
    And move behind the curtain
    She did, I’m certain
    Like a tiny star, behind clouds

    Festivals we had, failures too
    Rising we did, sliding too
    This house witnessed all the drama
    But we were never in a comma
    We lived in this house
    And our house is living.

  • A silly twist

    Oh, man! A silly twist in my knee muscle
    Twisted and turned my life into a tussle
    Till now, at the sight of a beauty I used to whistle
    Sorry, no more, let me face the body’s wrestle!

    The moment my right leg touches the ground
    A flash of lightning, in the brain goes around
    And I need Megh’s help even to board the car
    Is this the bugle sound of beginning of a war?

    Beware of the twists and turns of life
    A sudden flash, may spark the mood of your wife
    ‘While going to bed she was the sound of a piano’
    Says a guy, ‘and early morning a volcano!’

    ‘Aru, manamae, aru’, means Wait, my mind, wait
    Let me first straighten my knee twist
    Before probing how my friend’s moonlight
    Turned into wildfire , overnight.

  • My reason is simple

    Banana peels, orange peels
    Discard, after eating fruits
    Even books and clothes, if torn
    Even utensils and shoes if dented
    But, man, how can you discard
    Your sick wife or old parents!

    My reason is simple:
    They didn’t cut your tube
    When you wet their robe!

  • While driving back home from Stamford

    Megh, with a mini computer in her brain, mentioned when she was driving us back home from Stamford:

    “Appa, exactly 14 years before, on 11-08-2004, you landed in the USA, for the first time. Atchu was with you”

    She further added that I’m now on my tenth visit and so far, in total, spent more than ten years in this country.

    That made me to look back. But for the two tragedies in my extended families, one recent and another two years ago, I have only pleasant memories during the past ten years’ stay here. Baby births, birthdays, Grahapraveshams, weddings, seemanthams, family gatherings, foreign trips,frequent assembly of relatives, many, many happy events. But the passing away of my two nephews, at their prime time, submerged all my happiness and then I thought about the meaningless ambitions, setting and achieving goals, blooming in life and vanishing in no time, such thoughts, went deep and deep, reached no where .
    At last, I rolled up all those philosophical thoughts, dumped deep into my heart well, and sitting in the front seat of the car, wrote these verses.

    Please don’t look for any literary values in these lines, the only purpose of which was to forget my worries and establish the truth that world is mithya as our great Guru Adi Sankara said and truth, sathyam, is only koorkai upperi and other eatables as I’m saying below. That is the only mahat tatwam I have learned in my life. And my life is not a small pool, it is an ocean, which has witnessed many sunrises, sunsets, tsunamis also.
    And after all those experiences when I say, ‘You’re what you eat!’, there should be some meaning in it.

    Now to my poetry

    While driving back home from Stamford.

    Oh, come on my children
    Anja, Atchu,Kunju
    Anusha, Aarav, Suresh
    All kids for me, only age varies

    Anusha’s food was awesome
    Poori, cholai, payasam

    Chenai and koorkai
    Chenai a fat guy
    Koorkai a cute shy
    Anusha picked that jodi
    And made upperi
    Good she did that
    Or else, the fatty fool, yam
    Would have made her jam.

    “Size counts in war
    In lovemaking too?”

    I don’t know that tathwam
    Ammalu, please tell them.

    Mango pickle, pulikAtchal
    Bahooth acha, Matchi.
    Pickles trickles insides
    Inchipuli kichu, kichu.

    “Trickles, I know, Machi.
    What is kichu, kichu?”

    I don’t know that tatwam
    Ammalu, please tell them!

  • Continue Krishna, continue

    Whiter than the snows of the Himalayas,
    Lighter than a peacock feather
    Was my heart once, soft and subtle.

    It became hard, rough, unsensitive
    Like the rocks bordering the Kalpathy river
    Where people from both banks
    Beat and beat their soiled clothes
    Before bathing and after bathing.

    Surface looks smooth now, really?
    Hasn’t the beatings and beatings
    Made the soul and body stiff?
    More beatings, more stiff;
    The outward look a bluff.

    Wanted to sink into the sand bed
    Or flow away with the river
    Into an unfathomable ocean
    To return never.

    The winds from the Western ghats
    Came then with a good news
    My Lord is around the hills!
    And his cows glaze on the slopes!
    The sound of the bells, I hear
    Are from their movements and
    Not from the shrines on the bank!

    No, what a wonder, my Lord is here,
    Right on my head!
    Thumbing and beating
    With His lotus feet
    And I’m Kalia, the blessed serpent!

    Continue Krishna, continue .
    Your leg beatings on my head.
    They’re musical beats
    For the flow from your flute.
    Why should I get sunk into the sand bed
    Or get washed off into an ocean bed?

  • On a stroll in a winter evening

     

    On a stroll, with kids in a winter evening

    The sky got crowded with dark clouds

    Drizzling started, the wind whistled loud,

    Shreya enjoyed its sound and speed.

    Seeing her hairs and frock frills rocking

    ‘How, this?,  she asked.

    ‘The wind God’s hands,’ I replied.

    ‘God’s hands, where?,’ she asked

    I smiled and she smiled!

    Fearing the biting cold, a small plant

    Hiding in a corner of our shrine

    Was shifted this morning to outside shine

    And its instant smile was bewitching.

    ‘You, away from God, but smile?’

    I asked the little plant.

    ‘I may be away from God 

    But not God , from me’

    ‘God, where?’, I asked, ‘look up there’,

    She said,’in the sky!’

    ‘Then, who’s inside?’, my next question.

    ‘God has sides?’, an innocent query.

    I smiled and she smiled.