I will carry it in clawed out fingers 

In the knots of my shoulders

On the arch of my neck

And the lines of my brow

I will carry it in the tightness of the calves 

In the depth of my sighs 

I will dig under my eyes 

And sink them there

These cares of yours 

These worries

If I can lighten a feather even

I’ll find another vein to thread them through 

I

I was a banana tree when I was a boy 

It was the only time I got onto a stage

I had nothing to say

You will tell me too 

After these many years

That I have nothing to say

How can one love then

If one cannot say

Anything

Don’t look at me!

I told you I don’t know how to say. Anything.

I know how to be a banana tree though

To be there. In my lasting silence. But there

I can sway a little

From side to side

If that helps?

hoard

there is a secret hoard in men
in the manner of secret spaces
intimate spaces
all their lives it makes them sad
they don't know why
then one day you come
and the hoard realises it was awaiting you
to be the nucleus,
the eye of its storm
and it binds you
and the men come to know why they are sad
and it is a thing of wonder
for the storm abates from their eyes
as their souls are becalmed

an excerpt

you ask what of the sea?
what of the sea indeed
he just has an eternity
to turn the grains (of sand) over
to look for her
and to break up on her shore

love in the industrial age

come butterfly
you winged magnificence
come away
for i have set fire to the fields,
sunk poison into the furrows
i am your lover, and your oblivion 

5 years hence

like looking up suddenly and seeing phantoms of distant past
like running into an alley and subconsciously smiling at a familiar blue door
conscious thought slamming in its wake, reminding, surprising
this sepia page greets me in quite the same way
a fair bit of the decade has passed meanwhile
and one would think words should come more easily
more ideas, more memories to add colour
but a creeping realisation is telling me this needs some else
it needs angst, some unsettledness, a touch of fickleness
a dash of insecurity too perhaps
for i can't find raw all at once
mind you, it wasn't pretty, maudlin too often enough
but raw it was
else one is just industrialising words

Umrao jaan ada

Why do certain things stick in your head? why do i remember a movie i saw 20 years ago in all its sights, sounds, smells and emotions but i can't remember the big 3D movie from last(?) year? and i liked that one too
I had an epiphany as i was trying to explain to the wife why i like Muzzafar Ali's Umrao Jan. it started with the songs which by the way always blow me away, and which i think fit the movie like no else. if one put the songs in order and played all of them without having seen the movie, I am of the opinion that even if one did not get the whole story, one would still be able to lose one's self to Umrao's pathos and the movie's ethos.
Let me get back to my epiphany though. as i was trying to blunder through my verbalisation of why i like that movie, it struck me all at once that it was a story within a story. and both were shadows of one another...the one on the surface metaphorical of the one that was vaster, intrinsic to the story as well but sub surface. there for you to not see but spot. feel. the story of the courtesan is but an allegory of her land and her people. Umrao Jan Ada is stolen from her home, sold into the trade, loved, liberated, her hopes cruelly shafted on fate's whims, and left alone and desolate and destitute. if you must ask, her story is set in the plains and palaces of avadh, on both sides of 1857.
There is sparse little on what happened to the common man, to the warp and weave of the peoples and lands in 1857, outside of military histories. and as i think back to the epiphany, i realise that this movie from 20 years ago is my emotional window to that time long ago. it may appear far fetched, even blasphemous to noble nationalism, to offer such a connection but really - could they have felt so differently, consideing it took us nine more decades to complete the job?
And you reader, let me throw a little something at you, something else altogether - do you know mirza muhammad hadi ruswa? some stories are bigger than their teller...

dreams and fantasies are like spring flowers, the richest sights and smells as you bring them home, the scent fades in some time, the sights wilt after some more

casting furrows through wee hours of the night, into a balmy noon, a mire of duties before the next island looms, should i sigh? or should i rest awhile...tomorrow's very far away right now

the times of our lives, the ages that our breaths fog,
the arriving here is not of our choosing, and if we did (have a choice that is)...would we have any other?