Lifelong Search for Home Collected English Poems of Ved Prakash Vatuk Edited by Kira Hall Lifelong Search for Home Collected English Poems of Ved Prakash Vatuk Silence is Not Golden (1969) Waiting for the Curtain To Fall (1978) Between Exile and Jail (1978) Poems of Unkinship (1981) Meeting Like Waves (1978) Thinking of You (1979) ikkatīs prem kavitāẽ / 31 Love Poems (2005) Original Volumes Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1969). Silence Is Not Golden. Kanpur: All India Federation of Educational Associations. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1978). Waiting for the Curtain To Fall. Berkeley: Thorp Springs Press. Vatuk, Ved (1978). Between Exile and Jail (Poems July ’75–June ’76). New Jersey: Literary Guild of India. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1981). Poems of Unkinship. New Delhi: Usha Publications. Vatuk, Ved (1978). Meeting Like Waves. New Delhi: Manohar Publications. Vatuk, Ved (1979). Thinking of You (Poems). New Delhi: Usha Publications. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2005). ikkatīs prem kavitāẽ / 31 Love Poems. New Delhi: Alankar Prakashan. Contents Editor’s Introduction Author’s Note Silence Is Not Golden Waiting for the Curtain To Fall ix xxiii 1 69 Between Exile and Jail 109 Poems of Unkinship (excerpted) 143 Meeting Like Waves 253 Thinking of You 281 ikkatīs prem kavitāẽ / 31 Love Poems (excerpted) 337 About the Editor 365 Editor’s Introduction Between Unjust Worlds: The English Poems of Ved Prakash Vatuk Kira Hall Not all poets view poetry as a medium for political critique, but for Ved Prakash Vatuk — folklorist, linguist, essayist, and author of over thirty internationally recognized volumes of poetry in both Hindi and English — poetry is the ideal vehicle for speaking out against social injustice. The power of Vatuk’s artistry lies in his ability to harness poetic form to convey the complexities of social inequality, whether arising from war, racial discrimination, labor relations, or even relational intimacy. As a citizen of the world who never felt fully at home in any one place, Vatuk found in poetry a foothold to express his increasing disillusionment with the political worlds of India and the United States as he moved between them. Lifelong Search for Home is the first anthology focused exclusively on the poems Vatuk has written in English, bringing together seven now out-of-print volumes of poetry published by Indian and US publishers between 1969 and 2005. The title of this anthology is meant to highlight the ambiguity of belonging that frames Vatuk’s broader oeuvre and lurks behind each poem appearing in this collection. Few Hindi poets share the recognition that Vatuk has received over the course of his life. These achievements are even more extraordinary given the depth of political critique found in his aesthetics. Described by Hindi literary critic and prolific author Indu Prakash Pandey (2020) as sātvik ākroś kā jan-kavi ‘a people’s poet of pure anger’, Vatuk has never been afraid to take on controversial topics when social justice is at issue. This point is made abundantly clear by the writers, academics, and critics who have contributed ix Lifelong Search for Home essays to the two major festschrifts so far devoted to his work (Dixit 2020; Hall 2009a). In 1997, the Uttar Pradesh government’s Hindi Sansthan honored Vatuk as the first recipient of the highest award granted to overseas Hindi writers, the ‘Pravasi Bharatiya Hindi Sahitya Bhushan Samman’. In 2004, the Hindi Sansthan again honored Vatuk with the ‘Jaishankar Prasad Award’ for his epic bāhubalī, a poetic rewriting of a Jain scriptural narrative that portrays the crucial role played by ordinary citizens in preventing war. Both awards reflect Vatuk’s aura as a true people’s poet, one unafraid to challenge forms of injustice that persevere across time and space. Readers aware of the longstanding precarity surrounding Hindu-Islamic relations in India may see the novelty in a Hindi poet receiving recognition from the American Federation of Muslims from India (AFMI) for promoting communal harmony, an honor granted to Vatuk in 1996 at the organization’s all-America conference in Los Angeles. But Vatuk is a poet whose advocacy for social justice knows no borders, just like the human rights violations he writes about. His support of Hindi education in India has always been positioned against English imperialism, never succumbing to the nationalist, anti-Muslim ideology that motivates so much of the contemporary Hindutva movement. In fact, as a scholar of literature, Vatuk has been instrumental in bringing attention to India’s linguistic and literary diversity. A founding member of the Panjabi Sahitya Sabha as well as the Bazm-e-Adab Literary Association of Urdu Literature, Vatuk’s contributions in this regard include his writing of the first ever Panjabi textbook, his publication of two poetry books in the style of Urdu ghazals, his translations of the revolutionary Panjabi poet Pash (1950-1988), and his participation in dozens of Urdu poetry readings involving prominent poets from India and Pakistan. As Vatuk himself made clear when receiving AMFI’s honor, he deplores bigotry of all kinds, whether coming from Hindus, Muslims, or Sikhs. Vatuk’s poetic activism has humble origins, emerging in his childhood in a village far removed from the whirl of life found in the closest neighboring city of Meerut. Born in 1932 into a volatile political climate fifteen years before India won its independence, Vatuk spent much of his childhood attending the functions of the early Arya Samaj with his father Krishna Lal (1886-1941) and older brother Sunder Lal (1906-1988), a freedom fighter who had been jailed three times in the fight for Indian independence before Vatuk x Editor’s Introduction was even born. The youngest of 13 children, Vatuk found inspiration in the calls for social change that were embedded in the reform movement’s bhajans (devotional songs), especially those supporting the inclusion of lower castes in worship and education. Vatuk’s first poems were composed in the style of these bhajans. In the fifth grade, he renounced his caste name and adopted the penname ‘Vatuk’ — a name whose very derivation reflects his belief in the potential of ‘small’ voices to challenge structures of power. The name is taken from a passage he had come across in his school textbook, a couplet from the Tulsidas Ramayana describing the auspicious aftermath of a rainstorm: दादरु धिु न चह*ँ िदसा सहु ाई । बेद पढ़िहं जनु बटु समदु ाई । dādur dhuni cahũ disā suhāī । VED paḍhahĩ janu VAṬU samudāī । From all sides the pleasant chirping of frogs, Like a community of children reciting the Vedas. Foreshadowing the attention to textual detail that motivated his later work in academia as a linguist and folklorist (see Hall 2007a, 2007b), Vatuk extracted from this passage a penname representing the person he would become: not the elite student of VedicBrahmanical tradition, but the ‘small student’ (‘vaṭu’ plus the diminutive suffix ‘-k’) of the everyday social and political world that surrounded him. In 1951 Vatuk earned his Prabakhar qualification in Hindi through Punjab University, and in 1952, after earning the Dhandevi Kapoor Medal for attaining highest marks in an examination taken by over 10,000 students, he received his BA degree from Agra University in the subjects of English, Hindi, Sanskrit, and Political Science. The same year, he independently acquired the Sahitya Ratna qualification from the Hindi Sahitya Samelan, earning the fourth position in the entire country, and in 1954 he received his MA degree from Agra University in Sanskrit. By the time he graduated, he had published so many essays in respected venues that he was exempted from the PhD — only the second such case in the history of Agra University. He has now published some 500 essays in over 100 different newspapers and xi Lifelong Search for Home magazines, many of them focused on the social injustices he witnessed around him and the bravery of those who had the courage to disagree. Vatuk’s study of literature affirmed his belief in the power of the pen to confront social inequality. But it also ignited his fascination with the resistant language practices of ordinary folk, whether located in the work songs of sugarcane workers in Western Uttar Pradesh (Vatuk 1979a), the folk songs of East Indians in British Guiana (Vatuk 1963, 1964), or the protest songs of the diasporic Gadar Movement in early twentieth century California (Vatuk 1998, 2002a, 2006, 2022a, 2022b, 2023). His life as an intellectual nomad moving between the worlds of India, England, and the United States can be traced to research interests such as these, which led to associations with London University, Harvard University, University of Chicago, San Jose State University, University of Colorado Boulder, and University of California Berkeley. But the racism and xenophobia he witnessed in these locations erased any optimism he may have felt when he first boarded a ship to London in the mid-1950s. His vantage point as a scholar moving between worlds enabled him to see parallels across systems of social inequality — in the divisive rhetoric used by governments to secure their rule, in the use of violence as a political weapon, in the actions that normalize racism and casteism as features of everyday life. But his neither-nor positionality also gave him the courage to write about these inequities. Over the next decades, Vatuk became a protest poet in his own right (see Hall 2009b, 2009c, 2020 for further discussion), publishing over thirty volumes of poetry in both English and Hindi as he searched for a better, more just, home. Vatuk’s first book of Hindi poems was published in 1965 by a renowned publisher in Varanasi. Composed during his years in London and titled trividha (Three Streams), the collection is comprised of Hindi poetry in three different styles, with the last section featuring lyrics designed to be sung. The book includes his first attempt toward what would become many epics dealing with themes of social injustice: a poem of 256 lines titled vaidehī kī agni parīkśā (Vaidehi’s test by fire). The composition was inspired by a poem written by his older brother Ram Nivas Vidyarthi (1927-2013), a Vedic scholar known for his translation of the Samaveda, the Bhagavad Gita, and 11 Upanishads into Hindi poetry. It is this xii Editor’s Introduction brother who taught Vatuk how to write Hindi meters. His brother’s poem, titled vaidehī kā mahā prayāṇ (Vaidehi’s great departure), revisits the last moments of Sita’s life as she underwent the test by fire ordered by Ram to prove her faithfulness. Vatuk’s extension of this work, which he continued in his 2003 epic uttar rāmkathā (The Later Life of Ram), offers a sympathetic reconsideration of the life of Ram as a prisoner of society. Why, his sons ask, would he rule over a people who remained silent when their mother, free of fault, was exiled to the forest? As with all of Vatuk’s epics, the narrative raises questions about the brutality of war, its effects on the masses, and the codependency of imperialism and silence. These same themes are found in Vatuk’s first book of poems written in English, Silence is Not Golden, published in 1969. Vatuk never intended to write poems in English, but he felt compelled to do so after arriving in the United States in 1958 at the beginning of the civil rights era. He has always said that he writes poems when suffering, and what he saw around him during this period of US history gave him plenty of reasons to do so. In the 1960s, he published dozens of articles on American politics in Hindi venues such as Hindustan, Navbharat Times, and Aaj Daily, conveying to Indian readers the complexities of the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the agricultural labor movement, the women’s movement, and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Silence is Not Golden brought these perspectives into English poetry. Dedicated to his freedom fighting brother Sunder Lal ‘who has always had the courage to speak out’, the poems explore the reception of figures whose rebellious actions led to their own sorts of tests by fire, among them the Oakland Seven, whose small-scale protests against the Vietnam War led to imprisonment on conspiracy charges, and Leroy Eldridge Cleaver, an American writer and political activist whose conduct as an early leader in the Black Panther movement met with extreme controversy. In these poems, Vatuk often takes the voice of the American media that circulated around him — newspaper articles, legal judgments, words spoken by an acquaintance — as a means of exposing hypocrisy in the way of race relations. Many of the poems appearing in Silence is Not Golden had been previously published in the flagship magazine of the Peace and Freedom Party, a US political organization that grew out of the civil rights and antiwar movements. Vatuk was one of the cofounders of this organization in 1967, joining some 800 other delegates as the Party’s only Indian member. xiii Lifelong Search for Home Vatuk published numerous books of poetry between 1975 and 1981, five of which were written in English and appear in this anthology. After the death of his mother Kripa Devi (1886-1971) in the early 1970s, he found in poetry an expressive medium for conveying the deeply emotional nature of his social critique. Beginning in 1972, Vatuk began to write poems ‘like a mad man’, as he describes it, completing at least one poem a day for the next several decades of his life, and often many more. Waiting for the Curtain To Fall, the second of Vatuk’s English poetry books, was written during this period, its title conveying his growing sense of alienation from the theatre of social and political activity unfolding before him. A similar sense of alienation is seen in Vatuk’s second collection of Hindi poetry bandhan apne deś parāyā (Self-Chained in an Alien Land), also published in 1978, which again expresses the inner conflicts that come with living in an alien — and unjust — land. Vatuk wrote the English poems appearing in Between Exile and Jail and Poems of Unkinship during the darkest chapter of his life. In 1975, India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency across the country, suspending civil and political rights for the next 21 months. On the first day of the Emergency, his beloved 70-year-old brother Sunder Lal was arrested along with 376 other activists and sent to solitary confinement in a Varanasi jail. While traveling between the United States and India to provide comfort to his brother and suffering family, Vatuk was forced to come to terms with the nature of his ‘self-exiled life’, as he came to call it. Published in 1978, Between Exile and Jail conveys the feelings of displacement that consumed him as he moved back and forth between two unjust worlds, a theme also central to the 1981 Hindi collection lautnā ghar ke banvās mẽ (Returning to Home Exile). Meanwhile, in the United States, his relationship with his wife was deteriorating without his knowledge, and after several months in India, he returned to find his home without her. Poems of Unkinship, reprinted here in excerpted form, was motivated by the bitter conclusion of this relationship. With a raw intensity that is often difficult to read, the poems appearing in this 1981 volume are like intimate diary entries, documenting the everyday emotional states arising from his wife’s perceived betrayal. His Hindi collection nīlkanth ban na sakā (Unable to Become Neelkanth), published the same year, also explores the agony brought about by failed intimacy, comparing relationships to the pain of drinking poison without the benefit of becoming Lord Shiva. Like much of Vatuk’s work in xiv Editor’s Introduction Hindi, the poems take their power from transposing historical religious texts to a modern context. This 1978 volume builds its aesthetics from the story in which Shiva consumed poison to save humanity from destruction, earning his name Neelkanth (Bluethroat). Vatuk’s international recognition as a poet gained its footing through the boldness of his political writings against the Emergency. At a time when Indian intellectuals both at home and abroad were afraid to speak out against the government, Vatuk did so openly, publishing essays in venues such as India Abroad and San Francisco Examiner. Literary critic Kamal Kishor Goenka, an expert on the Indian social fiction writer Premchand (1880-1936) as well as Hindi writers living and born outside of India, called Vatuk ‘the sole Indian writer living abroad who dares to write and speak freely’. This boldness also surfaces in the literally thousands of Hindi poems Vatuk wrote during this period, some of which were published shortly after the Emergency’s conclusion in two volumes dedicated to the topic: kaidī bhai, bandī deś (Jailed Brother, Imprisoned Nation) and āpāt śatak (One Hundred Poems of the Emergency). The latter volume was hailed by scholar and journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik (2020) as ‘a lion’s roar of virility’ — a comment underscoring not just the power of Vatuk’s political poetry but also his bravery in bringing it to the public. In 1980 Vatuk published ek būnd aur (One More Drop) as his crowning accomplishment in this troubled, yet productive, period of his life. In the book’s foreword, renowned Indian writer and revolutionary S. H. Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ (19111987) wrote that Vatuk ‘had reached the height of full achievement as a poet, with his poems covering the joy and pain of a villager and a city sophisticated person everywhere’. It is rare for a poet to find this kind of universal appeal, but Vatuk’s work succeeds by drawing deeply on his own experiences as a villager gone global. Writers and critics like Shri Narayan Chaturvedi (1985-1990), Ramkumar Verma (1905-1990), Harivansh Rai Bachchan (1907-2003), and Kanhiyalal Mishra Prabhakar (1906-1995) all praised the book publicly, with Prabakhar even comparing one of Vatuk’s poems to the work of the celebrated Bengali poet and social reformer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The final three collections of poems reprinted in this anthology were motivated by love rather than strife. Vatuk’s turn to love marks a new stage in his writing of English poetry, one that contrasts with his continued focus on social justice issues in his Hindi work. When xv Lifelong Search for Home the Emergency was lifted and his brother was released from prison, Vatuk left his broken American home and moved to India to join his brother in working on the upcoming election. Eight months later he returned to California and began teaching Hindi at San Jose University, where a student helped him found the Berkeley-based Folklore Institute. The collections Meeting Like Waves (1978) and Thinking of You (1979) are inspired by that collaboration. Vatuk immersed himself in this editorial venture as he struggled to move forward from heartbreak, finding solace in a new form of intimacy. As a folklorist himself, Vatuk had two complementary aims in founding the Folklore Institute: first, to bring theories of folkore to Indian scholars, and second, to publish writings about India by scholars in the United States. Once again global in outlook, the venture was successful, leading to the publication of 16 books authored by leading anthropologists and folklorists in North America. The love poetry that he wrote during the Institute’s early years, framed in sweetness and gratitude, can be read as a counter to the fierce anger expressed in Poems of Unkinship. It would be 24 more years before Vatuk would publish a collection involving poems in English, this time in the bilingual volume ikattīs prem kavitāẽ / 31 Love Poems. Still living between India and the United States, Vatuk released this collection in 2005 to celebrate the arrival in India of his son Jai with his friend Tiffany, who is named in the book’s dedication. The expressions of love that fill its pages, many demonstrating a heightened awareness of death’s approach, again suggest a very different Vatuk from the one whose reputation was forged in social and political critique. Yet what remains consistent in this work, as seen in the first poem that opens the collection, is Vatuk’s belief in the importance of each small moment to the way human action is received by future generations. Eternity always Filters down Through moments We become immortal We die eternally By not living Even one instance Let me live it With each and all Loves. xvi Editor’s Introduction Ikattīs prem kavitāẽ / 31 Love Poems remains Vatuk’s only published collection involving English poetry since 1981, and even these poems appear to be translations of the original Hindi. But given the intimate interrelationship between Vatuk’s work in English and his work in Hindi, as demonstrated throughout this introduction, this discussion would be incomplete without mention of the many prominent Hindi collections he published from the 1980s forward. In 1989, Vatuk released the collection sahasrabāhu (Person with a Hundred Arms) featuring 101 poems dedicated to his brother’s memory on the first anniversary of his death. His two ghazal collections bāhõ mẽ liptī dūriyān (Distances Wrapped in Arms) and ādmī āj bhī samasyā hai (Man Is a Problem Even Today), published in 1994 and 2009 respectively, explore social and political injustice through the theme of a broken, selfish relationship. The collection anugūnj (Echo), published in 1996, features devotional songs written as music compositions. Set to music and recited by classical singers such as the Berkeley-based Hindustani vocalist Rita Sahai, these songs are notable for their dedication to love and humanity rather than a specific god. His 2000 collection itihās kī cīkh (The Cry of History) also experiments with form, this time utilizing blank verse, lyrics, gazals, four-line muktaks, and alternating meters to express the full range of political, social, cultural, and political feeling. Within its pages is found one of Vatuk’s most famous works, a seven-stanza poem whose refrain maĩ nahī̃ mantā (I do not accept) is widely known and recited by Indians at home and abroad for its condemnation of communal violence. The theme of interethnic conflict likewise informs his 2007 collection mānvatā kā aranya rodan (Humanity’s Cry in the Wilderness), which includes poems on the tragedies of 9/11 and Kashmir as examples of the tragedy of the human condition more broadly. Of all Vatuk’s poetry contributions, however, his epics in Hindi have consistently received the most acclaim. His first epic bāhubalī (Bahubali), mentioned at the outset of this introduction, features his most beloved character, the Jain hero Bahubali, son of the religion’s founder, who renounced the throne after defeating his brother. Paralleling the themes that Vatuk embraces in his poetry, Bahubali fought against imperialism, power mongering, and expansionism while declaring that no one — neither human nor god — can provide salvation. In his second epic, uttar rāmkathā (The Later Life of Ram), Vatuk turns to the Ramayana to describe the agony brought xvii Lifelong Search for Home about by Ram’s attempts to satisfy his subjects but never succeeding, as with his decision to exile Sita to the forest. His third and longest epic, abhiśapta dvāpar (Dvapar: The Cursed Age), written while still in the United States and published in 2007, revisits the characters in the Mahabharat to find them all cursed and wrapped in selfishness. Reviewers have described its 300-page narrative as gripping and enthralling to read. The accomplished poet and devout reader Basant Singh Bhrang (1919-2008), a freedom fighter who was jailed with Vatuk’s brother, wrote that he read it through the entire night without once putting it down: ‘I have not read such an epic in the last fifty years’. In 2011, Vatuk gave up his home in the United States and went to live with his extended family in the city of Meerut. On his way out of the country, he donated to the archives at the University of California, Berkeley more than 30 volumes of his diaries and over 100 blank books filled with poems. While living in India for the next two years, Vatuk wrote his fourth and final epic, aur ēsā maratī rahā (And Jesus Kept Dying), published in 2013. With this publication, Vatuk’s talent as a bilingual poet writing between two unjust worlds came full circle, turning the selfishness of Christian history into the subject of an epic written in Hindi. Composed of 27 well-researched chapters and described by Vatuk as the most difficult of the four to write, this capstone epic offers a powerful critique of the violent history of crimes conducted by empire in the name of Jesus — a figure whose teachings on social justice, in Vatuk’s view, have been distorted and debased by political leaders across the centuries. Now 91 years of age and still living in Meerut, Vatuk has written some 45,000 poems in Hindi and 4700 poems in English over the course of his lifetime. Any poet who has attempted to write in a language other than that of their youth knows how challenging it is to develop facility in the aesthetics of a second language. In the author’s note that follows this introduction, Vatuk, in characteristic humility, suggests that ‘even if one line or one poem is liked by one reader, I am satisfied’. Certainly, this anthology provides many lines and poems that will be liked by its readers. Vatuk offers a way of seeing the world that is often unexpected. His early English work turns the poetic lens onto the everyday injustices that persist precisely because they go unnoticed; his later work draws attention to the everyday intimacies that counter political and personal despair. But the anthology also contributes a perspective that goes far beyond xviii Editor’s Introduction the likings of any one individual. Vatuk is a bilingual protest poet whose lifework depends on his contextualized experiences in both India and the United States. For English readers, the poetry republished in this anthology gives a glimpse into the mind and work of one of the most respected Hindi poets in contemporary India. For readers interested in Vatuk’s Hindi poetry, the anthology is essential reading for understanding the sociopolitical critique that lies behind his broader oeuvre. Poetry and politics are not normally encountered together, but for Vatuk, a people’s poet in search of belonging, they are inseparable. Kira Hall Boulder September 25, 2023 Works Cited Dixit, Shribhagwan, ed. (2020). sātvik ākroś kā jan-kavi ved prakāś vatuk (A People’s Poet of Pure Anger: Ved Prakash Vatuk). Meerut: Nirupama Prakashan. Hall, Kira, ed. (2007a). Essays in Indian Folk Traditions: Collected Writings of Ved Prakash Vatuk. Meerut: Archana Publications. Hall, Kira (2007b). On life, language, and lore: The writings of Ved Prakash Vatuk. In Kira Hall (ed.), Essays in Indian Folk Traditions: Collected Writings of Ved Prakash Vatuk. Meerut: Archana. vii-xxvii. Hall, Kira, ed. (2009a). Studies in Inequality and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of Ved Prakash Vatuk. Meerut: Archana Publications. Hall, Kira (2009b). A Poet and a Rebel: A Tribute to Ved Prakash Vatuk. Siliconeer: A General Interest Magazine for South Asians. 10(7): 18-24. Hall, Kira (2009c). A Poet’s Justice. In Kira Hall (ed.), Studies in Inequality and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of Ved Prakash Vatuk. Meerut: Archana Publications. xxvii-xlvi. Hall, Kira (2020). kavi kā nyāy (A Poet’s Justice). Trans. Ved Prakash Vatuk. In Shribhagwan Dixit (ed.), sātvik ākroś kā jan-kavi ved prakāś vatuk (A People’s Poet of Pure Anger: Ved Prakash Vatuk). Meerut: Nirupama Prakashan. 118-132. xix Lifelong Search for Home Pandy, Indu Prakash (2020). ved prakāś vatuk aur unkā abhiśapt dvāpar (Ved Prakash Vatuk and His Dvapur: The Cursed Age). In Shribhagwan Dixit (ed.), sātvik ākroś kā jan-kavi ved prakāś vatuk (A People’s Poet of Pure Anger: Ved Prakash Vatuk). Meerut: Nirupama Prakashan. 254-260. Vaidik, Ved Pratap (2000). punsatva kā siṅhanād — vatuk kī āpātkālīn kavitāẽ (Roar of virility: Vatuk’s Emergency poems). In Shribhagwan Dixit (ed.), sātvik ākroś kā jan-kavi ved prakāś vatuk (A People’s Poet of Pure Anger: Ved Prakash Vatuk). Meerut: Nirupama Prakashan. 133-138. Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’, S. H. (1980). Foreword. In Ved Prakash Vatuk ek būnd aur (One More Drop). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. 1-3. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1963). British Guiana. New York: Monthly Review Press. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1964). Protest songs of East Indians in British Guiana. Journal of American Folklore 77(305): 220-235. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1965). trividhā (Three Streams). Varanasi: Vishvavidyalay Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1969). Silence Is Not Golden. Kanpur: All India Federation of Educational Associations. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1976). bandhan apne deś parāyā (Self-Chained in an Alien Land). New Delhi: Alankarbritish Guiana Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1977a). āpāt śatak (One Hundred Poems of the Emergency). Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1977b). kaidī bhai, bandī deś (Jailed Brother, Imprisoned Nation). Delhi: Alankar Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1978a). Between Exile and Jail (Poems July ’75– June ’76). New Jersey: Literary Guild of India. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1978b). Meeting Like Waves. New Delhi: Manohar Publications. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1978c). nīlkanṭh ban na sakā (Unable to Become Neelkanth). New Delhi: Alankar Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1978d). Waiting for the Curtain To Fall. Berkeley: Thorp Springs Press. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1979a). Malhor: Type of work song in Western Uttar Pradesh, India. Studies in Indian Folk Traditions. New Delhi: Manohar. 111-136. xx Editor’s Introduction Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1979b). Thinking of You. New Delhi: Usha Publications. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1980). ek būnd aur (One More Drop). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1981a). lauṭnā ghar ke banvās mẽ (Returning to Home Exile). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prkashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1981b). Poems of Unkinship. New Delhi: Usha Publications. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (1994). bāhõ mẽ liptī dūriyān (Distances Wrapped in Arms). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash. (1996). anugūñj (Echo). Berkeley: Folklore Institute. Vatuk, Ved Prakash, ed. (1998). The Gadarite — Inaugural Issue, November. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2000). itihās kī cīkh (The Cry of History). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2002a). bābā harī siṅh usmān kī ḍāyarī (The Diary of Baba Hari Singh Usman). New World Publications. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2002b). bāhubalī. Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2003). uttar rāmkathā (The Later Life of Ram). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2005). ikattīs prem kavitāẽ / 31 Love Poems. New Delhi: Alankar Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2006). The Gadar heroes: A stirring tale of selfless patriotism. Siliconeer 7(8), August. Accessed at www.siliconeer.com/past_issues/2006/august2006.html. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2007a). abhiśapt dvāpar (Dvapar: The Cursed Age). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2007b). mānavtā kā aranya rodan (Humanity’s Cry in the Wilderness). Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2009). ādmī āj bhī samasyā hai (Man is a Problem Even Today). Meerut: Bhartiya Sahitya Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2013). aur īsā martā rahā (And Jesus Kept Dying). Meerut: Megha Sahakar Prakashan. xxi Lifelong Search for Home Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2022a). rām se bhī kaṭhin unkā vanvās thā — amerikā mẽ pahlā bhārtīy parivār (An Exile Even More Difficult Than Ram’s: The First Indian Family in America). Delhi: Gargi Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2022b). gadarī ākharī sāns tak — gadar pārṭī ke adhyakṣh sohan sinh bhaknā (Revolutionary Until the Last Breath: President of the Gadar Party Sohan Singh Bhakna). Delhi: Gargi Prakashan. Vatuk, Ved Prakash (2023). āzādī yā maut: gadar pārṭī sankṣipt itihās (Freedom or Death: A Brief History of the Gadar Party), 3rd edition. Delhi: Gargi Prakashan. xxii Author’s Note bāt bolegī, ham nahī̃ Let words speak, not me When a dear admirer friend Arifa Avis, a young energetic novelist, editor, and publisher, decided to reprint my dozens of Hindi poetry books in a few volumes, a thought came to mind that my seven volumes of English poems could also be brought out in one single volume, as all these books are out of print. My dearest friend Professor Kira Hall, who edited and published my academic work in a single volume, agreed to do the job. She also asked me to write a few words about this collection. I never plan to write a poem or poems at a given time or place. It is when I cannot control my emotions that a poem or poems burst out of my heart — any time, any place, even in a dream. The pain of these uncontrollable emotions can be related to my personal agony, to a national or international cry, or to bleeding humanity. It can be a cry of my beloved nation or any other country reeling under oppression, of humanity crying in the wilderness, that brings out a poem. Heart takes over mind. Most of my English poems were written in the United States, which is natural, as the subject matter relates to the situation there. Whether they are good or bad, they represent my feelings honestly. And even if one line or one poem is liked by one reader, I am satisfied. When great poets remain silent on the agony of humanity, a little poet has to speak, like a candle in the darkness, where there is no sun or moon. I am grateful to Arifa and Kira for their love and faith in me. Ved Prakash Vatuk Meerut February 12, 2023 xxiii Lifelong Search for Home Silence Is Not Golden 1969 1 Lifelong Search for Home MAY we be fearless of our friends, And even of those who are unfriendly to us, May we never fall in dread of whom we know And even of those whom we do not know; May we remain free from any apprehension by night and in the daytime, And may all the beings residing in various quarters be friendly to us. — Atharva Veda 19-18-6 Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. — Motto on Thomas Jefferson’s Seal 2 Silence Is Not Golden With unbound respect and great devotion Dedicated to My brother Sunder Lal Ji Who has always had the courage to speak out. 3 Lifelong Search for Home Author’s Preface Something happened to me in mid-September this year. I got sick. While I lay in bed, I felt lonely and restless. I griped. These gripings were shed on paper for the next two and a half weeks. That is how I “wrote” these “poems.” Since these poems are concerned with a lot of things you and I share and suffer from, here they are before you now — to like, to dislike, and to gripe along with. Sometimes the state of the world seems to be so hopeless. However, I bother you with these lines in the hope that there is still time to make this world better. After all, despite all the space exploration, this is the only planet we all have got. Alan Charnow was the first regular victim of these gripings. He fulfilled the role of a captive audience so beautifully, while driving me to work, that he encouraged me to bring these poems out in printed form. If there is some doubt about the usefulness of my action in doing so, he has to share part of the blame. Part of the blame also goes to Lillian Lehman who was enthusiastic enough to type all of them with sharp eyes to catch unclear points. The rest of the fault lies with Phil Cranston, who was kind enough to go over some of them, and despite his not so good health, suggest many improvements. Needless to say, I am grateful to all of them. — Ved Prakash Vatuk Berkeley October 20, 1968 4 Silence Is Not Golden 1 Unlike the calm before the storm I write an epilogue Of a stormy love Fierce, burning, and unbound. Now that the storm is gone, All that remains are hot ashes. The love is burnt But desire burns. 2 Yes, friend, we do have a form of nationalism That we love and try to live — Eulogize the foreigners For whom we sweat our blood So they can tell us What is wrong with our nation And continue bitter condemnation Of our own kind Who toil in heat and cold To build our hopes and complete our dreams. So we can have a mind To despise and hate them. — For an Indian writer 5 Lifelong Search for Home 3 Like the mountain snow My heart scattered itself in love Fresh, virgin and naked. The world of skiers came Covered with clumsy clothes And heavy boots Sharp skis, tied in iron chains Barbed poles Trampling all over. When they went away There remained but a muddy slope Of life Slippery and hard. 4 Come! Lie next to me Naked. Let the silence talk About what remains unsaid. Let the heart-beats imprint The story not yet told. 5 My life — a half burnt cigarette Present — clouds of smoke Past — ashes of a dream dirtying the floor The remaining butt to be thrown out. 6 Silence Is Not Golden 6 Love — Fulfilling one-self But emptying inside out Surrendering completely Only to win. Stripping naked with nothing to hide Only to remain covered in mystery When ‘I’ becomes ‘thou’ And ‘thou’ is lost Leaving nothing but nothingness And from nothingness Springs a creation Unique and perfect. Losing oneself Only to be found Like a lost dream — sweetest and perfect — Everywhere and ever new. 7 “Truth is neither black nor white” What a consolation to know that And they keep reminding me Like a child who should be reminded Every morning what he has to do. Yes, truth is neither black nor white It is grey. Like early morning fog Over San Francisco Bay Covering both the sun and the ground. Truth is neither the sun nor the ground It is the fog. The truth is the water pollution Air pollution, and the smoke Which flies 7 Lifelong Search for Home From the chimneys of oil companies The real free enterprise…… If you have nothing but sun and fresh air, We will export you some truth We believe in free trade, you know, And we have a surplus of all things Chemicals, mace, tear gas And if that is not enough We have big crafts to carry the bigger things. We will defoliate your thick jungles and fields alike And cover your grounds and skies with truth. It is our generosity, our humanitarian instinct That makes us send our finest blood Abroad To teach these pinkos, coolies Pale, red, yellow and brown Who can’t realize the white man’s burden — and thus can’t understand reality — We have a monopoly on Gospel too, We will penetrate somehow into your skull Even if we have to break it, The larger the smoke The larger the confusion The closer the truth. And someday like the face Behind the halloween mask Maybe even we will realize the truth When we, like others, Will also become part of the largest greyish world And achieve Nirvana The truest of all. Along with all those whom we teach. 8 Silence Is Not Golden 8 Halloween is coming I don’t have to wear my face as a mask now I will have a mask to hide it And will become the real me behind it. Since the mask gives me the liberation Of being me I don’t have to debate any more Should the world treat me with all that They have Or should I trick them Into annihilation! 9 When no one means us harm for us to hate And love our system cannot afford; When courage to fight is no more a virtue And manliness to cease fire we can’t muster; Our plans to win get drowned in the ocean And our bloodied face is too precious to lose; We can’t cross the barriers of cultures to communicate And to keep our mouths shut — we never learned; Then we are the natural diplomats To solve the problems of the world Which we create but cannot grasp. 9 Lifelong Search for Home 10 My heart bleeds I shake and tremble To see the gradual martyrdom Of Peasants and poor From those torn lands Which wish us no harm But whom we give glory And sainthood — Like those upon whom we bestowed it before, After they were burnt alive Or nailed to the cross, That is the only Christian way we know. I have a plan Which would stop The cross from burning But if I revealed it to the world The world would die of boredom And wouldn’t even have the benefit Of eternal sainthood. 10 Silence Is Not Golden 11 It is only a child Who says, “I am sorry” And tries not to repeat a mistake. It is only a man Who cheats But if caught He can be brought to justice And stand corrected. It is only a leader Who when caught red-handed Denies his presence altogether And a million times his words resound, Are heard, printed and read all over Until the world begins to believe And nod in agreement That he is after all A real swell guy Truly fit to be the leader of the Free World. 11 Lifelong Search for Home 12 I am burning here with fever Like a lone half-dead shrub On a deserted Mediterranean sand-isle Burning in a mid-day heat, For whom time seems to have stopped, Or like the hands of the watch On the wrist of a traveller flying westward For whom time’s hands have been pushed back. There is no one to soothe No tender touch For when in misery One ought to be left alone Except if you can’t bear it Put the wretched to rest Methods are not important Loneliness — is the sickness Of civilization When one can only talk Into a small box set in big boxes Where one lives. One does not seem to bear the human voice And yet, one can’t stand the dead quiet of the boxes Even the closest — Especially the closest — Can never pour out His real self, his true emotions Emotions are the last thing The computers Or the Society (they tick Under the crushing wheels Of law and order) Can understand. You have to be practical, boy, The head shrinker has to live too, You know. 12 Silence Is Not Golden If you want to talk — Especially of emotions and misery — Someone has to listen And if someone has to listen He ought to be paid For time is money Last thing to be wasted. Company does come — They will keep coming They will click their glasses Filled with their favorite drinks Standing cozily next to the dim fireplace — How romantic! And they will talk Of lofty things From here to eternity Intellectually and intelligently But don’t bring real life Don’t bring emotions into it. Emotions are a drag — Plain bore. If one has to He should simply despise the poor And his suffering Especially if he is seven oceans away Thinking every minute of Creating new markets For future commodities. So burn, baby, burn And let the scorpion of civilization bite you But be calm, don’t say a word Otherwise there are snakes To put you to rest Quietly forever. 13 Lifelong Search for Home 13 I am an armchair historian And like the temperature Of this air-conditioned room I want history to be an exact science So don’t ask me to get all upset About what is happening today In this world From the jungles of Asia To the stockyards of Chicago. I have to wait To research objectively And pass judgment Fifty years hence If humanity still exists And cares to listen. 14 My grandfather was a Republican So was my father And so am I. Don’t ask me why Because questioning is unpatriotic And asking for a change Is nothing less than subversion. 14 Silence Is Not Golden 15 A savage man, a primitive man A true believer of the faith, He killed a boy To satisfy his Goddess (Who loved the tender blood of unspoiled species) And shocked the whole civilized world Which hanged him for his heinous crime. A noble man A civilized man A modern man Sent millions of boys “Our finest young boys” To honor his imaginary goddess — Some — ism or — acy — And built a memorial monument to their death So pleased humanity Elected him Its leader. 16 The South killed his parents They were for the union. The North killed him He was from the South. Isn’t that justice? 15 Lifelong Search for Home 17 No one knows why The ocean was restless And angry Determined to destroy The wealth of nature And the creation of man. No one knows why The mighty ocean was angry... Storm, cyclone and hurricane Boats sank, ships sank Villages with their streets And man-made beauty All sunk in the flood Washed away to the sea To fill the sea Which always remained unsatiated. Trees, plants and flowers Human existence in sight All faded and crushed All swept away. And the ocean became calm The darkness of death ruled all over As if the ocean wanted to go to sleep — Pacified by the victory Or dead with repentance — No one knows. And then He saw A tiny, helpless “straw” Floating on his chest With joy of life As if to laugh at The might, the depth, the splendor, Making the blueness of the ocean Still bluer with shame. 16 Silence Is Not Golden 18 Lying in a lowly ditch A little wretched straw hut Smiled one day And the palace nearby On the high ground Kissing the sky Was outraged. In an uncontrolled anger It roared, “How dare you! Right in front of me This uncouth behavior You of low breed!” And that roar Stunned the hut And silence fell on him Like death. But the quiet of helplessness Produced suffering And from that suffering Was born Collision of frustration. Two bamboo sticks Collided Sparks burst out Straws grabbed them like madness And turned into flames. The palace roared with laughter When a tiny spark Flew And defiantly sat on the roof of the palace, And lo and behold! There were ashes of the palace And there were ashes of the straw hut And they both mingled on the ground. 17 Lifelong Search for Home 19 The child said, “Mommy, Isn’t that the bloody tyrant Against whom our President Sent my father to die To destroy his crummy little people?” “Hush” said the mother, “The President is speaking.” The child gazed at the TV screen Saw the smiling President And couldn’t believe his ears. “I welcome you, sir, The honorable leader of your fine people With whom we have no quarrel About land or money And with whom we want nothing But peaceful relations. I extend my friendly hand to you And wish you a happy stay. 18 Silence Is Not Golden 20 If a tender motherly heart were transplanted Into the body of the occupant of the buildings That project and carry out war schemes Would the world shed some tears of joy Or the donor turn in her grave? 21 I make the laws And you obey them. I issue the orders You carry them out. Knowing your place Never once question That’s all Law and order’s about. 19 Lifelong Search for Home 22 CHICAGO CONVENTION ’68 AND AN AMERICAN POET WORRYING ABOUT THE HUNGRY EAST The sign on the stockyard Cried “pigs.” Inside it They raised them Caring for them every minute Only to sacrifice to some delicate taste — As they were raising their children With great care and worry Only to feed them Like fodder to the mouths of guns So they could save the people Far away By bombing the houses In which they never lived And hated the thought of living. Inside the courtyard There were youths, Youths were unleashed and free, And like pigs when they are free They should be herded, controlled and slaughtered. While nearby surrounded by barbed wires Sunk in champagne bottles of victory They worried about the poor, The wretched, the miserable Who will see no clothes, no food, no shelter, Who will not go to school to rebel, They wanted to free them, to save them From someone, who might — just might — try to give them Food, clothing, shelter, and rebellion. Inside they sat Saving the world Inside they danced, they clapped with joy Because the war — their war — was declared legal, legitimate. 20 Silence Is Not Golden Killing was branded humanitarian Graveyards were adored as fields of peace The hero of peace jumped above While below the mace blinded the eyes of the young Who were raised with tender care With his drugstore around the corner Saving them from all danger Of new ideas. The streets flooded with blood Because they — the youths — made trouble Because they allowed their heads to be cracked Just like the pigs in the yard. They remained unarmed — the troublemakers — Just cried ‘oink, oink’ After their heads were split And their minds went blank. And the poets wrote About those far away Naked, bare, ugly, stupid Worms of the gutters. Loaded with fancy clothes They wrote about nakedness, Stuffed with food they did not need They wrote of hunger. In their refrigerated minds They kept the memories alive Filled with smoke and ‘dirt’ And they wrote Closing their eyes To what went on and on before them. Worried about a dream That someday those worms would swamp Their streets And would snatch away everything from them And would still remain hungry, filthy, and empty, The social scientists flew To those far away lands To find out Why progress was not made, Why farmers did not grow any food 21 Lifelong Search for Home While they were bombed, Why people did not smile While their cities were destroyed In order to be saved. People were killed In order to be freed From some ghostly enemy. And the stockyard sign Which cried ‘pigs’ Now had arrows Pointing in every direction — Some child’s stupid game, no doubt — Yes, pigs, here, there, everywhere Naked and clothed, Cared and not so cared for Fed and hungry Clean and dirty But all pigs in the end Meant for slaughter only. Kill, kill, and overkill To fill the skeleton pot of Kali. And the poet kept on writing Never lifting his eyes Even once Only the misery of his dreams And reality Which can only live Ten thousand miles away If not more. 22 Silence Is Not Golden 23 We ignored him, We chided him, We hated him, We killed him. But his spirit — could we kill? Could we stop the wind which blew his words Far and near? Could we burn the cross where he is nailed? It sticks in our hearts And his blood shines on our hands Radiant But a reminder of an eternal shame. Guilt ridden, murderers as we are We are going to build him a temple, Two temples, millions of temples Where crosses will hang And we will worship his ghost. His voice will resound Arrested by the same mechanism which killed him And we will listen For our sins — we will worship While jailing his brothers, Violence will have its fill Blood will be shed Souls and bodies will be bound And like scores of messiahs Who fill our galleries We will worship him Whom we could not kill otherwise. — To the memory of the late Dr. Martin Luther King 23 Lifelong Search for Home 24 We hang our heads in shame When TV cameras glitter And humanity is too deeply shaken To notice much. So we can send more planes To bomb and kill. What more appropriate tribute can there be To honor a man of peace and love Than to wage war And create hatred Whose scars can never be erased! — On King’s death 25 Listen! O white brother of the highest peak of the mountain, A black, mean soul of the deep valley In the guise of a skeleton has come to speak to you. O you are advancing still On the snowy silvery surface decked with the golden rays of the Sun. I understand You are proud That your feet are untouched by dust That the dirt of blackness does not exist in your heart! But what kind of purity have you? If even the shadow of a corrupted one frightens you, And even the dream of dirt seems fearsome. And you have forgotten That you are high, that the mountain is high Only because I am low; the valley is low. 24 Silence Is Not Golden Well, wait! I am coming too. Maybe I will change By the touch of your virtue. What? No? Lest you may fall with me? Your virtue is unfortunate, Well, fear not. I will arrive there Even without your help, For I have to make the dust of my feet reach there. And when you will begin to fall because of your purity It will be my sin that will come forward to save you. And I will return to my awesome, deep, dark valley So that you may not see me And your virtue may proceed on, untouched and unafraid. Yet, still I must say one thing — If I failed to attain your heights If the valley fell short of the height of the mountain Then you, too, will be unable to touch my depths, The mountain, too, will fail to attain the depths of the valley. Then your soul and mine, The shadow of the mountain and the valley, Shall remain, for each other, an equal mystery Unsolved, Because evaluation of each direction And evaluation of each motion Is nothing But relativity! 25 Lifelong Search for Home 26 I wonder how it feels To kill disarmed people Who never heard of us to hurt And then to complain about the smell of corpses And blood stained ground? I wonder how it feels to unskin the skinny And to strip the last cloth away from his back To be left on an island of riches Only to curse the ocean of poverty Where the ship of humanity is wrecked? I wonder how it feels to be fat And yet continue sucking the last drop of blood When the bones of a skeleton gaze on Only to be despised and hated? How does it feel to level mud huts to the dusty ground And build the palace on their ruins Only to cry about the dirt around? To be so clean That a speckle of dirt frightens us to death And yet reduce man to live in mud? How does it feel? Or does it? Or are we really not glad That our riches Our monopoly game Our glory, our fame Our culture, our theatres, poetry, our operas Our civilization Are built on that Which we abhor But don’t want to end So that our riches, our fame May go on increasing And our merry-go-round life May continue to dance On the axis of deaths And we may keep on whining! 26 Silence Is Not Golden 27 You have lost your way, boy, It is not your alley. Yes, you are free — (Freedom is never denied here) To stay in your ghetto And to love it As we are free to live, in beautiful sunny and green hills And love them. We don’t want to visit your place Except for a little exploitation Now and then. And when you step out of your realm You forget to worship the white goddesses We created for you. The courts, the police, the White House. You became a terrorist. Who else Wants such subversive things As self-determination and self-control Freedom to make one’s life And power for oppressed. We will do the same That we thought was fit for others Of your kind In far away lands. We will place some bombs in your homes And ship you to our jails To be well protected Until you regain your senses. We raped your women But that is an old tradition And you should be proud of our graciousness If your sister or mother was chosen. But if you ever look at our women, Even with admiring eyes, You are a rapist To be locked up forever, 27 Lifelong Search for Home Your eyes taken inside out. We lynched your brothers That was merciful To save them from the life They never wanted to live. Ruling, and raping Lynching, and murder Are the few rights That we have. Obedience, and servitude Dutifully, and without questions Are the few duties That we gave you. If you don’t even like that We have to declare You are a racist, Barred from society Never to corrupt others. Our police may kill At their will, It is just a little offering To the white goddess — For our protection and prosperity — And you should be grateful That you are chosen Resisting a goddess Is not only a crime But a sin as well For which you will be punished here And condemned after life. So remember the golden rule: We teach you again and again But you are dumb — and always forget, Resist not, Speak not, See not Hear not Any evil. — For Eldridge Cleaver 28 Silence Is Not Golden 28 You are just the victim Who has suffered all his life You have been there And have seen all the cruelties Your vision is blurred, and not to be trusted, You have never sat In a cozy room Air-conditioned to suit a cool head, On an armchair to study objectively How you And your brothers felt. That was my job. And I am now qualified After going over tons of papers To tell you How you really feel Don’t question me I am a qualified expert On your problems And you are not. So you should be barred From speaking to young minds Who must be saved From your dangerous ideas And biased racism. — For Eldridge Cleaver 29 Lifelong Search for Home 29 Answer my questions, You are my informant I have loads of money to prove it, Which my government gave generously. When you have told me All about yourself I will dissect it, Put it in proper slots And analyze it And from then on I will be an expert And you will be my subject. I will tell the world And you too Who and what you are But never again Let you speak about it. You are not And cannot be objective. I am not And cannot be biased. If I don’t find anything Good about you — After all you are just a subject — And treat you as a means of living That is just natural. And objectivity demands That I should never get involved With your problems If I do I will no longer be a social scientist. And then, who will study you? — For my Social Scientist friends 30 Silence Is Not Golden 30 I am a scientist. Science is my goddess The laboratory is my temple Computers are my icons The plans I drew are my alpnas Objectivity is my creed. Human voices are not my concern They distract me, like the devil, From finding my god, Abstraction. With human beings I would rather deal By numbers Punched on a card Using these punched holes. I care not How my abstraction is used. It is highly irrational And thus not scientific If I worry about such trivial matters. Morality is too subjective For me to even give a damn. So if they end humanity With my work That’s incidental And not my fault. I live objectively. 31 Here — You want to be equal and live like brothers. Over there — They want to be just alive. These problems are grave, We know. That is why 31 Lifelong Search for Home We have set up so many so many times So many committees and commissions. Look at these rooms They are all filled With their findings. You say it’s an emergency — humanity stands on the mouth of a volcano Wait! We are setting up another commission Right away Which will go through All these studies, Will recommend to us In a few years After careful, thoughtful pondering What ought to be done to save these lives — over there Or how to live like neighbors — here. We will submit that report To another sub-committee Of the department Who will recommend to us, And we will meet To decide Whether to accept the report Or reject it Or send it to a review board Or set up a new committee To find the findings of this committee. It is a hard job, You can see. So please be patient. Give us time. And in the meantime If you don’t live You will not be alone, we are sure — There may be millions to give you company. We will pass some resolution To commend your sincerity and sacrifice For the cause of humanity. 32 Silence Is Not Golden 32 One mid-night I was awakened by some noise I got up It was a cat Chased by a dog And frightened to death. I took her in Petted, comforted and gave her some milk And then I called for the dog To tell him: “You are a naughty child, Come and make up.” The kitty meowed The dog licked her face They were friendly and happy. One Saturday night Playing some game And drinking I heard a voice — A frail human voice — “I am being chased!” I got mad At being interrupted (Trespassing and violating Property rights Is the unholiest act — I can’t tolerate it and getting involved is more than I can take). I brought my gun And, in self-defence, shot through the window. I put the light on And on the porch I saw a little lady Wrapped in blood, Sleeping in peace. “Poor old soul,” I sighed And went to bed. 33 Lifelong Search for Home 33 We are the flower children Who don’t want to fade Or to extinguish those lamps of the earth Whom we can never light again Simply to please some sterile minds Who never understand What love is about And the language of cravings Of newly budding hearts Is foreign to their ears. We said, love, and don’t make war. They said, Is that so? We have to put you In a correction institution Where you will learn To calm the dangerous overflow Of your stream of thoughts And learn some simple soothing emotion, Like every patriot on this earth, How to get killed without questioning once Or how to kill and have no feeling. — For the Oakland Seven 34 Silence Is Not Golden 34 I saw a widow at an early tender age, I saw a smiling orphan who was too small To know his life ended even before it began, I saw a budding flower in a new flowerbed Faded before it had a chance to blossom. All that one more — Just because a whimsical indecisive mind Said that it would be so To save his power, If not power — then his face. Graveyards wrote the eulogies, Headstones were offered, Before the stepping-stone to life was erected for those Who were too young to decide their fate And to die — or to know why. I said along with human waves And millions of mothers with tears in their eyes “Let’s stop this and sing of love, Of creation, of beauty, of life itself.” They cried conspiracy And put me behind bars. — For Dr. Benjamin Spock 35 Lifelong Search for Home 35 Arrested by the police Who had a monopoly on the law. They had the guns, they had the clubs, And the small minds which always select Their clients with care. Chained by the laws He had no say in making, His tradition had not created, He knew not how to escape their noose. Rarely he knew that Laws were not enacted for him — A poor, living creature at the bottom of the pail of society — He was made for those laws, Tried by a jury, To whom he was not a human But a cold statistic, without a life In flesh, who until yesterday Was cheaper than an animal — Millions like him were obtained Even free So waiting for the final judgement day He sits in a dark cell of the jail Which his people sweated slavishly to build But had no power Over who would be put there And for how long! — For Huey Newton 36 Silence Is Not Golden 36 You hate me when I merely say “kill” But the killing itself you never mind And relish enough to make it your job. You hate it when you hear someone say ‘f—k’ But raping innocent, tender ‘chicks’ Of all other races Of all foreign lands You have made your cherished tradition And never repented it. When you are calm You want to be rational. The gentleman in you takes over. You look at me or someone else As a mirror of hidden self And what you see there you don’t like. You hate me not, I dare say, You hate no one but yourself You can’t deceive when you look into my eyes You cannot hide your real self. There is no place you can return to hide The hate returns to you and burns you up. 37 Population explosion is a real threat And we worry about the whole human race, You know. To feed them, to clothe them, to educate them well To have a proper consumer stock Our luxuries to sell. If one has to learn a four letter word Let it not be love, then, Let it be kill. 37 Lifelong Search for Home 38 One early dawn Standing in my kitchen I looked over the sink Through the stained, glass window A golden ray Kissed the height Of the Golden Gate Bridge Over the Bay. A little bird flew From her nest To a red rose And said “Love” A leaf of a tall tree Whispered to the next “How sweet you are!” I came to the bed Saw your angel face So relaxed, Your closed eyes And a sweet calm smile On your red little lips. My lips said, “Kiss.” My heart said, “Love.” And a voice within Whispered gently “How sweet you are!” — For Sylvia 38 Silence Is Not Golden 39 Walk slowly, dear friend, Humanity rests under your footsteps Here in endless peace To save the purity of the Christian race With the blessings of the Pope and other messiahs Six million Christs died here For the sins of past, Present, and future tyrants. Under these crosses covering the sky Kneel down and pray That you are given The strength to whisper To historians, politicians, Poets, philosophers, writers, Scientists and humanists, Religious leaders And just-so people That silence is not golden. Speak now, my friend, Before it is too late. Wait not for tomorrow For there may never be Another day. Before the sun sets this evening in the West Let’s speak clearly and in a firm voice For the sun may never rise again. — For the Auschwitz Camp Victims 39 Lifelong Search for Home 40 They are the forgotten people The silent ones. It does not matter If their silence Gives the world a Hitler It is their silence Which bombs the churches And burns the crosses Kills Christs, Gandhis, Kennedys and Kings While their taxes — Even if they cheat by some millions here and there — Are at work Abroad Pruning the unfit And creating more jobs, They are the law-abiding It’s their laws, after all Even if they buy them only once in a while Created with the consent Of their own lobby. It matters little If they don’t bring justice To some. Justice is not their concern They got it their way long ago All they need now To protect it from those Who don’t have it. They will need new laws for that With new orders for those Who, being crushed, oppressed, and tread upon, Still want to raise their heads. Send them back to the prison To the walls of the ghettos. 40 Silence Is Not Golden They are the forgotten people For we do forget They never lack funds For such amusement fire works As clubs, guns, chemicals, and mace Aircraft and missiles The boys have to have fun once in a while A few heads roll So what? Don’t ask them To feed a spoonful of milk To a school child They are silent and meditating And don’t disturb them then — When heads crack Widows multiply Orphans are buried by thousands Under the mushroom clouds They made in fun. So let us remind the forgotten people The clean, the silent, the tax-paying, the law-abiding And all — Your silence Watches the drama of Jerusalem But more Christs are nailed and burnt now Hour by hour Day by day. Come out, you silent ones And cry out Stop other Hitlers from reviewing your parades In the same century. There may be a time soon When no parades will be reviewed And you, along with all your victims, May really be forgotten For there will be no one to remember For you never spoke When there was still time. — For Richard N. Nixon’s ‘forgotten people’ 41 Lifelong Search for Home 41 Who are the Nazi troopers of a tyrant? Those who say ‘Stop the war’ And risk their lives? Or those who spend people’s wealth Living in luxurious palaces Flying in special air-craft Drinking in the air Dining on hundred dollar plates Yet send the young boys To end their lives and those of others In the muddy fields far, far away And still have the nerve to say, ‘We will never back out’ Admitting that we have made mistakes In going there Even if this means The end of all that The human race has ever created? Does power make one that much blind That one forgets To see the dripping blood On his own hands And calls the victims Troopers of the tyrant? Or does it make one that much drunk That he really begins to think The words in the dictionary Can be purged of their meanings Like the officials Who lose the favour Of their masters? — For Hubert H. Humphrey 42 Silence Is Not Golden 42 We have the finest system That is why We always choose The lesser of two evils. After all, we cannot afford To choose both of them At the same time And having a nice guy On the run May injure our system By giving us a choice We hate to make For we always want To be in the middle of the road. 43 In the Republican convention Some black kids were dead But we don’t mention that. We would rather bask In the Florida sun And get tanned. In the Democratic convention Scores of white skulls were cracked But why care! There are millions more Who are in the mainstream That is where our real system belongs Our both parties meet there And merge! 43 Lifelong Search for Home 44 “I hate her Because she is so damned good and sweet And teaches us black oppressed To love those honkies And be non-violent!” “I can kill her She and her beat, long-haired friends Teach these niggers To be uppity Forgetting their place In our grand old system!” — For Joan Baez 45 After ages We met in the paddy fields Of Asian land “Friend” I cried “No, enemy” he echoed, Bang! He missed, Bang! He fell. It could be you next It could be here! 44 Silence Is Not Golden 46 Wait a minute Let’s look at both sides. He tried to show I tried to look. In the meantime The radio blasted Five hundred killed. On which side should they look? How will I make them see? How will he try? 47 Some say six thousand Some say eight It is just a number game that we play There is no danger to any principle Neither Communism Nor Democracy Neither Islam Nor Judaism Is in danger. And we won’t intervene. It’s only human beings — It’s only children Only a few thousand a day Who are involved. We will sit and watch And let them kill each other Or die of hunger. We can help them By selling some arms Which we always do No matter which side you are on We are just and treat everyone as equal, 45 Lifelong Search for Home When you survive — we hope you are the fittest few — Our markets and commodities We will extend to you Even on loan And easy terms. But don’t ask us To intervene When nothing precious But only babies are involved Our powers are too big To be wasted like that On insignificant creatures Who are meant to die Long before they can grow. — For the Biafra children 48 One more day Wasted hope Evaporated expectations Faded life, which was to be lived Not just to be tolerated, Like a nuisance Because it’s there. Another foggy day No letter from anyone No reminder of affection No good news Personal or worldly. Moments just drag on As if humanity has reached an old age But death has not come yet. It drags on, it lingers on With no destination And no real purpose. 46 Silence Is Not Golden Every now and then There is a summit And like the doctors, surgeons, Neurologists, psychiatrists, Leaders — who have held the world by force And its fate in their own hands Tired and stale hands — Meet to diagnose What has gone wrong. Long hours of debate, Private consultations, Conventions and dramas And they come out. The world watches eagerly To hear its fate. “We should live in peace Like good neighbors But there are millions of Obstacles To be solved By the ministers And conferences On lower levels. We will direct them They will work hard And give their reports to us In a few years, And we may meet again.” So the days go by. I am getting old Humanity is getting old The hands holding my fate are getting old And nothing is in sight. Another day will come And pass And I will keep on complaining That is the least I can do. 47 Lifelong Search for Home 49 Why do you want to be born O child? There was a day When life span was short But joy of birth knew no bound As if each time a new divine figure Incarnated. But now all I hear Is population explosion Unwelcome births Counted in statistics With utmost horror. Uncertainty of life, death, and being in limbo Pollution of every thing Unwinnable, undetermined, aimless wars Computerized education Mechanical divinity Leave no place for glory in life. You will be just another punched card number To get lost in the jungles of files Or to end in the jungles Of some alien land. Why do you want to be born And what can we promise you? Abstraction is more important Than men of bones and blood Wrapped in flesh. Why do you have to choose this time To blow your mind Or to be blown up bodily? No hope to live No hope to die In peace You can, of course, Be an eternal matter Of someone’s research work 48 Silence Is Not Golden Is that any consolation To come to this planet? 50 “Another foggy rainy day.” I sat alone In a corner of my house Hiding my face with the morning paper Like a horror movie It brought all the scare stuff. TV blurred, gazed at me Like a genie Bringing pictures From hell. As the moments passed Loneliness became lonelier Gloom became gloomier And there seemed to be no end to this all. All dressed by now to go and teach The kids what life was all about — What a joke As if they did not know, Terrified by the draft They just stayed there and pretended to learn Knock knock, “Who is there?” Silence. Knock knock, I opened the door. It is a child — A little child — All dressed in mud Perfumed in greyish water Powdered by sweet smelling clay Ornated by a running nose and Big smile. 49 Lifelong Search for Home He jumped in my lap And with some loud words Gave me a tight hug And a big kiss. ‘The world was not so bad after all,’ I thought, as I hurried to catch the bus Shouting like the Greek scientist, ‘I found it, I found it!’ 51 I am a patriot. I attend all the rallies Sing the glory of my nation I am all for it. I am for motherhood, For flag, For police And young boys Whom we send To defend something My leaders tell me is important But I don’t know — I am not an expert on that That is why I buy my son’s release from duty And send him to a private school To make him a hundred percent patriot To save him all the flu Brought by the schools Where the masses go. When wars come I build factories And serve my nation By creating the best Modern equipment That science can provide. I make my children Managers And get exemptions 50 Silence Is Not Golden A small award for my services and love of my country I provide the police With all that they need To curb the traitors Who don’t want to even go To fight. I don’t even ask them to die for their country I only ask them to make someone else die for his country. But these cowards! They don’t even a damn for their nation So as a member of their draft board I ship them all away Clear the streets And hooray for my nation! 52 “Good morning, sir, Isn’t it a beautiful day?” “Lovely.” I picked up my paper Another earthquake in Iran I shrugged Another six thousand children Died of starvation in Biafra I ate my breakfast and burped Highest number of casualties for this month In the Viet War. I got dressed Another scandal in Washington Oh, those people! Another shooting at students Protesting police brutalities Don’t they have anything better to do. I am ready to go to work Can’t find my brush to comb my hair I blow my top. 51 Lifelong Search for Home 53 “The trouble with you is” He began As he plunged Into the cushions Of his sofa set Looking out the window, “That you are extravagant. You want to drink, dance Take girls out, In one word, you want To enjoy.” How unchristian! And how sweet of him Telling me that At a reduced price of A dollar a minute! “I’ll tell you what” He came out of some dream — Meditating Buddha broke his silence, Salvation was coming, And speaking in a tone Which combined Both that of a mother And a sunday school teacher, “We will solve this, You will just have to come Three times a week For one hour each time For only a dollar a minute.” “Of course, I will And then I will have no money Left to spend. Taxes, rent, and sickness Food, clothes, and other little tit bits Don’t count. 52 Silence Is Not Golden Bankamericard will take care of them Until I am cured. Give the money to him — It’s only made of paper — To put safely In his deposit box To enjoy his life If not mine.” — For A. C. 54 Nurtured by his own ivy league college Like the inherited grand old nanny On the kamadhenu milk of New Education Sixteen dollars per diem, and a fast jet flight Free like his fat salaries Brought him one day to a dusty Indian village On a great U.N. mission to pacify the goddess of hunger Worshipped by millions — old and young. The sun shone blazing, unlike the Harvard square Even his umbrella carried by a servant Could not stop his face from becoming red Like the monkies’ bottoms, who ran around. The hard hot wind blew killing him alive Like the arrow of cupid Which are fatal and yet don’t let one die. How he envied all the young Kims around Riding naked on bare backs of black buffaloes With transistor radios which hung from their necks (But unlike his camera did not seem like a burden) Blaring some love songs in a squeaking voice. Throwing his camera and other civilized burdens, too, On the back of an already loaded servant He could barely make the outskirts of the village Where a tall wide tree spread its branches like wings Saving the mud house under it from the excess heat. 53 Lifelong Search for Home He signed with relief, as the tree gave him shade And a cool breeze. Regaining his consciousness, he remembered that he came To teach the ‘natives’ to grow some food. He looked around and noticed some ‘grass’ Small, tiny, with some exotic smell And exclaimed in anger: “This tree hinders the growth of these ‘vegetables’ And must be cut down.” The villagers thought the heat, like the education, Had gone to his head For this was a mango tree — the king of kings Of fruit trees — It gave the sweetest and nicest food that they enjoyed And pickles and chutneys Which even he relished Without knowing where they came from. They nodded quietly. The grand old tree smiled Like a detached seer — meditating for a thousand years Like the old Indian tradition which knew more ups and downs Than the scholar can count. “Thanks,” his leaves murmured To this strange young saviour And gave another cooling breeze In gratitude. 54 Silence Is Not Golden 55 “Change” That’s what he came for — ten thousand miles — After being involved in several projects At home and abroad All of which failed Giving him lots of experience In compounding his mistakes And trying again, as he was branded as an ‘expert’ now. Change, he came for But could not see That nothing was the same any more That people were no longer afraid of a ‘red’ face That the jeep that brought him Could not have brought him a few years ago Even on the dusty roads of which he invariably complained Because none of them existed. Not listening or looking, like a Japanese monkey, He spoke and spoke, nonetheless, As everyone listened — what else could they do? — And admired his sincere simple heart. They tried to do what he told them mainly to please him And thus though nothing was achieved in his two years’ stay He thought it was a great success — his report said so, Like other mistakes he compounded before His camera compounded many exotic films For home consumption, for a captive guest audience Or for meetings of old ladies’ clubs Who exclaimed at every scene merely ‘how cute’ And kept knitting, But then the urge for change at the home front arose Like a contagious disease which is never cured. He began to try, but no one listened. He began to say that the people he wanted to change must be saved first From the futile war which no one won. But instead of receiving money like other brilliant projects He was awakened, bloodied by a prison guard. 55 Lifelong Search for Home 56 You were the walking scripture on this earth You were the living soul of the nation When nothing but doom was in sight Nothing but the fetters of slavery chained us all Desperation and gloom, fear and helplessness, The darkness of destruction fell on unarmed millions Surrounding by air craft, guns and all the fire That the might of the mightiest empire could muster, You did not sit like members of your class In air conditioned rooms to build your life On the corpses of skeletons of your brethren Burning in hell You feared not and spoke out When speaking was treason and reward was death. You dared to speak when silence was golden For those who never wanted to rock the boat But enjoyed the ride while millions drowned. You did not curse the darkness but lit a candle Of dim hope in those hearts Who never knew what hope meant. ‘The only thing to fear was the fear itself’ You uttered not empty words, but you lived by them. A free soul cannot be jailed in four walls A slave soul cannot be free outside In the dungeon of slavery That the nation was. You gave lives to the dead long ago And they filled the jails Lord Krishna’s temple The birth place of the Killer of all tyrannies. You lived by scripture among the wretchedest and poorest And shook the empire. Owning nothing but a half-naked body You lived by what others said was divine but not pragmatic By love, by truth, by non-violence And walked alone in the fields of Noakhali When not even the army dared to march there. 56 Silence Is Not Golden You crossed the flooded rivers of death on a rotten raft With bare feet When Delhi was dancing and glittering in the joy Of blood-stained freedom, and the happiness Of a nation carved into two With an edge of the sharpest knife of hatred. In your frail and lonely voice was heard What scriptures really had to say And you alone stood by all that to the last. Scriptures did not fail you Because you did not make them the means of living But life itself. Those who made it their life job to shout of scriptures From pulpits and temples, mosques and churches Could not tolerate to love and live by the same. They killed you. We killed you, yes, the violence Took your life when it could not Stand the warmth of your unbound love But only to bring non-violence and sanity. For a moment it seemed you died not in vain But for us to live in peace and prosperity You died simply to show us all What life was all about. For a moment it looked like the light that was gone Was filling the universe With divine brilliance. And we made it our profession to make a scripture Out of you. Quoting every utterance you ever made We keep them reciting day in and out But, alas, we have forgotten you. Thus in death, we made you as immortal as a messiah But we forgot the human being named Gandhi Except when we need your name To secure our shaking seat in the chambers of power We would rather forget you ever existed And led us with a hope Which was never ours, and which we never deserved. — To the sacred memory of Bapu 57 Lifelong Search for Home 57 You are from India Boy, you really have problems there. I was there on a world-wide tour I saw it all with my own eyes Hunger, misery, sickness and dirt; Cows roaming in the streets. We stayed there a full three days In Ashoka, in the Jaipur lake palace And in the Taj. I talked at length with our cultural attache And another embassy guy Who had just talked to a Washington reporter Who flew on a Government mission for a day And interviewed an A.I.D. man In a far away place — I think it was the capitol of some state, Poon-jab. Of course we could never take chances So we ate only in the westernized restaurants And never travelled on dusty roads. We never drank water except in the American Embassy But we got sick anyway Even with all those pills and hundreds of Precautionary immunizations (Which made me ill for two months before we left) And all the instructions that the Pan-Am guide book gave. Everyone gets sick over there. You seem to have a terrible cough A real high fever, a killing back ache. It is just a flu A new Hong Kong bug. Take some aspirin, drink lots of coke And take a good rest. What are you looking at — the Life Magazine issue? It shows the pictures of hungry, sick Old, wretched, ragged torn down slums 58 Silence Is Not Golden Black people rioting Students protesting Dogs roaming in the streets freely. You would think we have the same problems here! It is a biased news media, don’t you ever believe it. That’s what you get when you have a free press. You have been here for only eight years. It’s a complex society, a highly civilized nation And it takes a long time to understand Our ways of life. That will be ten dollars But don’t worry My nurse will send you a bill. 59 Lifelong Search for Home 58 “… a nuclear weapon is just another weapon in the arsenal.” — General Curtis LeMay Life is so very simple Until you psuedo-intellectuals, Scientists, anthros, pinko psychos, And all those new eggheadologists Turn it into a kind of goblin And bureaucrats take a clue from the bunch of you Make it for us just plain unlivable. Why, you create a phobia of such little toys As nuclear weapons What difference does it make If we make a man rest in peace By a little gun, or a little bigger fun-thing They just gave it a scary name like ‘big bomb’. It just makes our life more simple Our job more enjoyable. We have trouble parking here They have trouble herding people. Now, what is wrong if we take care of the people Who are too many anyway to live happily And pave those lands as an extension Of our parking lots. If you do the job with little toy guns It may take centuries But a little more help from our mini-nuclear stuff Can solve all the problems in a very short time. And theirs too — no people, no problem. This is such a simple proposition I don’t know Why you who wasted so many years And hard earned money of your parents — Men of my generation — Can’t understand that. 60 Silence Is Not Golden 59 We are for peace without any reservations If they would only accept it on our terms. We are for freedom — we always have been — If they let us determine when they are fit for it. We are for dissent all the way But they have to obey the rules we have made for them. No one is more for free speech than we are If they speak nothing more harmful than a child And don’t advocate to change the status quo. We are for peace, freedom, dissent, and free speech But, but, but, but, but, but ……………… If, if, if, if, if, if ……………… 61 Lifelong Search for Home 60 I am just a living ghost My soul died long ago With unfulfilled desires Unsatiated cravings And broken dreams. I roam around On this ground To see if ever I can hit Satiation And peace To retire in the bosom of Brahman. But with every trial When the goal seems to be near My very self evaporates again Like the steam from the boiling water Of a tea kettle While my desire keeps on Burning like the remaining bondaged water Not even fit for anyone to drink Since I can’t even provide As little love as the essence of tea leaves Or a little pinch of sugar To any one. 62 Silence Is Not Golden 61 Sitting on a green sofa Whose cushions cover the specks of dirt underneath — Like our massaged skin covers our sins to keep them shiny Through the dim stained window I saw the moon slipping by into an eclipse Like a heart of evaporated ambitions While the kitchen sink faucet Leaked like the leaks of top secret news from Washington, Drop by drop, And made a big impression On the marble sink bottom Just as the leakage during the news management When humanity’s hope slips by And newsmen have to moonlight in the dark Leaving the world in an uncertain shadow to know what is going on. It seemed for a minute that the earth was stuck And the moon would never come out again. My child screamed, “Why do they want to throw The moon out?” Darkness covered now the window, the sofa, There was no sin, no stain, no dirt to hide No news to reveal. Even the small cloud which looked bright in the dim moon light Shone now as a big dark monster to prove its power Like a dog in his den after being chased by a lion. The earth came in between and covered itself with darkness Just as I keep coming in my own way And seem to get stuck deeper and deeper While the silky moonlight of my dreams slips by Until it is one with the dark dark age, like managed news. Only some dripping — some leakage which is beyond our control Keeps coming as an unwelcome noise As if to tell our sleeping senses that we are still alive. The moon comes out again — carved like a sickle soothing and nectar-rays Shower the sweet calm beauty of life again 63 Lifelong Search for Home As well as show the stain, the dirt, the impression in the sink All as gently as the advice of a young beautiful bride Softly spoken. But before the whole moon can come out Like small problems of life engulfed by big crises It is swollen by the red red dawn — covering the whole universe Proclaiming the little difference between the colors of hell and heaven. — For Sanjaya, Jai, and Clifford 62 It takes two to make peace But it takes one to make war. Since I can make war better Why don’t you make peace? That’s the fair division of labour In which our economy trusts, Like we do in God. 64 Silence Is Not Golden 63 Dressed in a business suit Armed with batteries of cameras and tape-recorders Drowned with dazzling TV lights He said in a voice so sure of itself That only a reporter can muster it, “Why did Gandhi fail?” Yes, why did Gandhi fail, I asked. Why did Jesus fail? Why did Buddha fail? Why did love fail, humanity fail, and in one word Why did God fail? I asked and asked and searched myself My heart, my soul, and my brain. I got the answer that I did not want to face. It kept coming to me like a bothersome beggar To whom you have been nice once by mistake And then who never lets you go. It chased me until I was tired and frightened Dropped in my bed Where mother sleep soothed me Until I was lost in her bosom. The answer came to me in the shape of a dream When I could be caught without many layers of masks Uncovered, naked, unashamed of myself Pure as a new born baby in his mother’s lap, Safe and rested. It whispered to me as gently as possible, He failed because you failed him. You failed Gandhi, Jesus and Buddha, You failed God. Love does not fail, nor does humanity It is we who fail to love And are too cowardly to even admit that. We want to put a red mark in someone else’s ledger To save ourselves from going bankrupt To purge us from all sins that would have been ours. 65 Lifelong Search for Home Deluding ourselves in the logic of books Whose weight would easily make the load of a donkey We forget that even if all donkeys Carried books and books and nothing else Their logic cannot teach us how to love It comes from the heart that we seem to have lost. You failed each time when you remained silent When tyranny and injustice engulfed us all When Biafras were burning — Skies smelled of corpses of children, Vietnams perished, Congos were obliterated, And those who said ‘no’ Were maced and tried and thrown into jails. You remained satisfied By giving the world your shots of immunizations With a photographic description of the horror movies Waiting only to see If there were any further horror acts That cameras could catch for a late late movie show On your TV screen to refine its art. Ending always with the pride of your achievement Filled with a sly smile and a happy ending: “Dow Jones Averages went up seven points today, The Tigers were clobbered by Saint Louis And the weather will be lovely tomorrow for fishing.” 66 Silence Is Not Golden 64 He kissed the head which lay before him dead, But only blood kissed his lips in return — As if to paint vermillion the celebration of his victory. “Tell me friend that you are not really dead As you told me in that childhood game When we both played freely on my street The was game — You loved the visit to my nation I loved to hear your gory tales. ‘Bang’ said I, ‘you are dead’. ‘Bang’ you shouted back, ‘no, you are dead’ And hours we argued who was really dead Until we met here today And played the real game In the deep deep swamp Lying in mud. ‘Bang’ and you died, Why can’t you retort and argue with me That you are not really dead, it is I? But alas, you won’t, and the game will never end For you would lie in peace and I Will be dying every day of life Torturing myself in search of an answer — All alone — and all in vain — Who is really dead — You or I? — For Phillip Cranston who should have written this poem 67 Lifelong Search for Home 68 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall 1978 69 Lifelong Search for Home MAY IT BE: That the tomb of every ruler And prince and such Will be surrounded By parks, orchards and the like For poor to come Picnic and love Only in the death of the greats May little ones live. Economics makes poor poetry (Poetry makes no economics) Geography is not a landscape And statistics is sure no love Yet, let me repeat What you always said We absorb five Yes five Guianas a month An Israel in two We inherit One Australia every year And every other decade We produce one America We live without panic While you produce As many millions forecasts of doom That we will fail We will not survive Even as long as It takes to raise Our lean finger above And yet With 200 million hungry-looking faces in your paper 400 million empty hands We did not falter We failed, you said 70 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall As many times as Your mouth could muster While we kept singing Tunes you never heard Of love, of life Of adventure (Even if gone wrong) We the ancient, the orthodox Sang like juveniles And teenagers In your decayed century Economics failed Like your politics Not our poetry. And from this war Not even a song. I carry a century old Starvation on my face A ghetto walks with me Betrayed by its dream No matter where I am I carry a tortured India Like a shadow To be ignored Pitied Despised And forgotten. 71 Lifelong Search for Home Where are those Blue eyes, you said, Were nectar to you Where are those principles He could not live without And for whom He gave his life Like a last flickering glow Of a lamp The headlines of the day Are no more Than deadlines of tomorrow Not to be found Even in the historical index Of foot notes. History is like a whore Living from prince to prince Moment to moment She has no lover And no faith Only a life. 72 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall She is sure no beauty But like an april grass Cut anew Her presence Is the sweetest Fragrance of life She kisses like a morning dew Always fresh And never enough. Oh, how much Can be said By a single stroke On a string Of the sitar How much history Was absorbed By the heart Before it broke. No, you can not Dip in the same River twice But then Nor can the river Bathe the same You Once more. Every love is new Freshly born Like a moment. 73 Lifelong Search for Home Like socks When you are away I sort out My thoughts And put away And then, I wait For you to come And find out If they match. Like summer flies They came Foreigners Of various odors Places and creeds Boorish and civilized To persecute and plunder To subjugate and kill And then like a spring rain They went away To forget A song burst again Through the skies Life returned Like spring Blossomed We stayed. 74 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall Love is like a rug To be woven Thread by thread Moment by moment Afresh Changing design With time If fallen Even a rock Breaks into pieces. Your love of the unborn Matches only My hatred Of the born. Division of labor — Some seek and search And research The truth Such as the Sexual habits of wasps Ants and snails Others pay For that By hunger And sometimes By death. 75 Lifelong Search for Home Love A little bird Of unknown breed Sings To the tall Redwood tree Each leaf swings Joy Spring returns with the morning breeze Nothing — not even love — Dies for ever. In a civilized state of mind Dear Sir Violation of woman’s body Is less important Than the violation Of her purse. Like a chain smoker I puffed out my words For as many days and nights As we could afford To bear Together Now, that waves of time Have taken away In different directions I find myself With emptiness Nothing is really said But words. 76 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall I am Like a collect call Which is Always tapped But Never accepted. ‘All wars are useless to the dead’ And forgotten by the living Wars, like art Are fought For the sake Of making more wars And more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When I look at the Plank wall of my heart I think of all The pictures We could have painted together To hang there. Separation Is the only creative thing They ever did Even in love. 77 Lifelong Search for Home We are The ghosts of our dreams Haunting the deserted ruins we call life. Poetry Like a whore Inspires everyone But belongs To no one Exclusively. With all her liberated spirit She never kissed Like a blossomed rose Her love Hanging like wet clothes Her lips Acting like tight pins closing in by the side. Like a carpet Youth absorbs Every sin Like a spy Old age betrays. 78 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall They deal with, Hate, maim, kill Niggers, Honkies Jews, Goyim Reds, Browns How long has it been When man looked at Another man As man. In five minutes commercials Two laxatives Three detergents Four dog foods And five anti-perspirants Only love is not advertised For sale Body is. Every hour is the hour of crisis And the only solution We have been given Is the old belief ‘This, too, will pass’ For whom Does that blind girl Dress So beautifully. 79 Lifelong Search for Home What is not for Parents, brothers, sisters And friends Is for computers And government To store, to restore And to reveal Indeed how private Our lives are Only from these Who ought to know. Instead of attaining a cease fire He ceased being fiery War fell like night On the helpless Innocent Anew. The last step Even the giant one Of the giant-most among men Always falls short Of the goal By one inch. 80 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall Historian More words Than action. A clown from the earth Came to please The Moon And tumbled. Just as in the beginning So in the end As in coming So in departing I await Something to happen Nothing did Nothing will Life remained An imagined vanishing line Between two points In the sky filled void. 81 Lifelong Search for Home Father: In whose death We inherit Our future And begin to pay The bills of the past Your death Insures Our life Our present. Father Poor you You died For Our sins Live for you Now that you are dead And can not live Yourself. Love First a dream Then a task The end comes Like a crumbling wall Not even sweet memories Fill the cracks. 82 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall Eighty four years of her life: A small bundle of rags A small bundle of memories Like her life No body wanted Yet, it haunts. For a long time Poverty remained Faithfully ours Hidden in Purdah Like a lady Then she became A conversation piece Of those Who were not faithful To any one And now like a rapist Their cameras go To screw her And give a minute By minute report For those Who conspire with them. Every one hears the cry No one comes forward To save. 83 Lifelong Search for Home There are two kinds of people One never likes Masters and slaves And we are always playing One or the other. Those who have nothing Are busy Laughing Giving and taking And struggling To survive Those who have every thing Are getting Paranoid And worried sick. Give your beauty Your body To me Give your soul To the devil If you must. 84 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall And like the last line of poetry One more life went Unfinished A few dots And a question mark Rats of research Will soon begin To nibble At the torn corner of the page To find out Rights or wrongs One more slot will be filled With a meaningless number For no one To remember. Life A one way door Enter at birth No exit Known. Love A dew drop Renounced by the petal of a bud Fell And kissed My rejected tired hand Life has so many ways To return. 85 Lifelong Search for Home Fifteen minutes Seemed like an eternal sleep Life played hooky once more I dreamed that I lived And loved. The perfect Speaker In the House Sits gracefully Silent And listens His words count. One man’s terrorism Is crime One nation’s terrorism Is peace with honor Words too have preferences Like a call girl Money and power. 86 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall No one has inspired me For a long time To write Like the drops of rainy water Coming from a cracked roof Poems drip Like blood From a broken scab of a long inflicted wound No one is moved by them The world has always seen a better show Love like myths Is buried in the ruins of the past Sex has become No more than a pacifier Given to a beggar as alms To buy momentary peace And blessing Her fulfillment Is in listening and delivering Lectures on change While change under her nose Like the down hill river Remains unseen Old age recovers youth By dancing in the nude I am sitting in the dark On the last bench And view My death is coming Through them On the stage Slowly Only waiting For the curtain to fall. 87 Lifelong Search for Home Every morning In four different forecasts I see my future Every evening I find A bleak Dark past. Day A ray of hope Turned gloom Between two Dark nights. Uneasily they cursed Their parents And waited For the day It came And they lived Unhappily ever after In their home Cracked with guilt & shame. 88 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall Blindfolded You are led to a hole Life You spend your time To find An exit Blindfolded you are Taken away By death Other prisoners mourn. Words Masks worn by men To Hide the truth Nature was kind to animals Words never betray them. All their phantom jets Loaded with A-bombs Could not save A child Killed by a bare hand. 89 Lifelong Search for Home You can not climb Mount Everest You can not reach the moon You can not even conquer The first ladder Of the Society page But you can still clean The little corner of the room You housed yourself. Killings themselves bring Not a single tear Or shudder In man It’s only the side One takes In killing That brings Joy or grief. Defeat painted its impression Even on the face Of the most tyrant When a baby’s death Struck on his cheek In shape of a tear. 90 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall To Hitler One Aryan Was equal To thousands of Jews To Golda Meir One Jew Is equal To all the Palestinians History plays the same game Only the players change. Even in the dark As if not wanting My looks to be caught Angry & frustrated — I gazed at a corner Of the roof On the other side. And one day Even to express Love without words Was not left for us They called it (In their peculiar custom) Establishing A relationship. 91 Lifelong Search for Home And after What seemed to be An age of agony I looked at my watch It was only Ten past the hell. So we too Have become A big powers If we can’t feed Our people At least we can Now Kill them Quickly and peacefully. Our non-violence Could not lick them So we join them — The merchants of death — Most violently. So we got a bomb And lost Humanity Or Humanity lost The last (self proclaimed) Apostle of peace Us. 92 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall And finally We too Were unmarked By our explosion Ghosts of our past Words Will always Haunt us now. Twenty six years ago It seems to be such a Different world — I too marched In the dusty streets Of my ancient city Protesting loudly And clearly Against the new Western toy of death And now I am covered By the fall out Of our own Radiation dust. Have you ever seen A lion’s teeth Chewing one Peacefully. (India will use atomic power peacefully) 93 Lifelong Search for Home Of course It’s a device To bring peace Final. Now it is their turn To protest Just as we did But of course We will smile Like a wise man Because what really counts Is the noise Not made by words But by An explosion. From the peak point Of Mount Everest Will hang down now The Balance of terror Weep, humanity, weep There is no end now, But the end. Science has given So much power To ignorant men Of unscientific brains. 94 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall Indeed their marriage Was a hit Their cat became A better party Conversation piece Than either one of them. Death: And now A message From our gods. Silence betrayed me again My secrets Which ran away From the boom of the day Came back in my dream Finding me so defenseless And alone. Those who have no future Look for it In the astrological Forecasts. 95 Lifelong Search for Home And so it came The moment you waited for After the saw of the day Kept piercing through you Cutting by the teeth Of seconds, minutes and hour It came They came The crowd of darkness Fell Covering you With the thicker sheet Of loneliness What for the wait What for the un-wait Two sides of the same coin Of gradual death What a long Boring, repetition play To prove That they too Can unsuccessfully Show their muscles To remove a crook From the seat of power And change him For another. 96 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall My life is Like a love letter From a jail bird Never to come out From his prison walls Even at best It can give nothing More than A pale smile. Atom bomb: America’s original sin India’s nuclear blunder Humanity awaits For its Stillborn baby To come. On the fall Of humanity We cheered Digging the grave Deep deep In the womb Of Mother earth And now the dust Of the fall out In the form of world’s protest We cannot take. 97 Lifelong Search for Home Now the diplomacy has spoken Peace There is a rush To win the dubious reward Who is going to be The last to die On the battle field. Congress has declared That poison gas To kill and maim Human beings Is harmful To dogs Even in the experimental stage. (Even if Dying of 50,250 or 1000 In a fire, quake Or a war Is news) Why is it then Any less newsworthy That almost Three billion people Continue to live Despite Disease Quake Hunger Hate And wars? 98 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall If Nixon is the Best politician That money could buy What would be worse. My ancestors from the East Wanted to live their lives In me and through me My children from the West Wanted to lead Their own lives At my expense Between the two ends Of the seesaw I stand Like a nailed cross In the mud. Now I have become Civilized My warm heart Is stored In a freezer For future use I am cold Closed And saved. 99 Lifelong Search for Home History: Slogans of peace Painted on The uneven ground With human blood. What can you say To them Who tell you That her most Alive vibrations Are her “Death Notebooks”. Like orphans My poems Fell on the earth Unwanted And departed Unnoticed Like the life Of an orphan No body missed them No body but me Who lost himself Even before them Like an orphan’s Lonely mother. 100 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall Much of the world (Desires, emotions, love & such) That we admire Is filled with nothingness Like the beautiful blue sky Devoid of clouds. Another morning Night has filled The earth-plate With the breakfast of dew drops The rising sun Eats With billions of hands Soon will they be gone Like sweet dreams I yawn. Man A proof reader Gone blind Correcting the mistakes In God’s ‘Book of Folly’. Show me an army of people Who says ‘Ours is not a just struggle’ And I will show you A rainbow of peace On the horizon of history. 101 Lifelong Search for Home Peace is a maiden Jealously loved By two lovers In a duel to win her They kill each other History collects their ashes Peace wanders away In search of a new hero. Duty may end At the end of the day But love? It torments for ever. He had a successful poetic career His ‘Selected poems’ Got two reviews And sold one copy. Behind every broad smile There is a hidden tear. (Behind every victory gala there is a tiny fear Every beautiful life lives Because some one died For it, dear.) 102 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall Of all the blessings Language is the biggest cheat After love is long gone Dead and buried They kept making love (As if love can be remade) For decades It was called Faithfulness And when they both Went to those Whom they truly loved And who loved them deep They called them ‘Cheat’. 103 Lifelong Search for Home Geometrically they increase To oppose, to squeeze Me Two parents Four grand parents Eight great Sixteen great great And so on Into millions unknown Those who came And two children Four grand children Eight great Sixteen great great And so on Into millions unknown Who like to come I am a nail hanging A crossroad of history together I want to fall out And see Where it would fall For ever and ever Without me An uncounted, Forgotten Number. In an arithmetic Of those uncouth civilized Who shuffle numbers Just for fun. If I can be a self destroying saw I would cut at the point That I am. 104 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall And let the future Fall unborn Let the past Remain Unremembered For ever For never. Their leaks, too, Like the nude spots Of a beauty Are not so much To tell the truth As to deepen The mysteries Of their lies. Once they called me, too, The future Now I say to them I have seen the future And it’s not there. Like unwanted dandelions Dreams bloomed filling Life’s field A single summer breeze They all blew away Petal by petal Into the lake of sorrow A bitter winter wind A knife-edged memory. 105 Lifelong Search for Home In their childhood I visualized A budding future A spring of joy In their youth I saw A faded flower A winter of sorrow And vanishing hopes A past future Before the present Had even a chance To pack up and leave. They could never make it Life was too hard for them We could never accept it It was so easy within our grasp Dreams have their own ways To fool every one And disappear. And today They killed The very womb That produced Love and Piety The merchants of hate Never stop Like fire And like a forest Love never stops Growing. 106 Waiting for the Curtain To Fall In the very center Of God’s home They came And killed The mother of godly love God saw And wept silently Devil laughed momentarily And walked away. Every morning TV news throws Human blood In my breakfast bowl I vomit my frustrations Like a TB patient For the rest of the day Night brings death anew. I shudder To be born again. Men playing God Create principles And die for them Ending everything They said they lived for. 107 Lifelong Search for Home The depth of our relationship Can be judged today By the bigness of the sigh Of relief After the parting. First came those Who fathered them And left without a name Then came those Who filmed them For fame As unknown to them As their fathers. Even the cat Though unaware Of its meaning And power Wants the chair. 108 Between Exile and Jail Poems July ’75 – June ’76 1978 109 Lifelong Search for Home Author’s Preface And there were those who, like my brother, were rotting in lonely cells for a dream of freedom and happiness for their fellow men. And then there were those who were having the time of their life by giving lectures on kinship, dining and drinking, while preparing to stab their already injured kin. This book is about both of them. Who drew me back to India and who dragged me away from it to betray. They showed me the best and the worst of the human race at the same time. I hope these days never return. 110 Between Exile and Jail I, too, Am beginning to feel Like a man Without a nation A tree Without a root A house Without a foundation My dreams, too, Are like the sky Wide and empty Without the earth. (From the Ordeal) First a shock Then a murmur Then fear And after that A long long silence Slavery, too, Has Its own Vocabulary. June 1975 And then she declared Truth shall not enter (Nor leave) This land And as for His non-violence Our jawans have it Under firm control. July 22, 1975 111 Lifelong Search for Home Roll back Dear madam Roll back the Time I want to see If these are The kind of things Your father Fought for. She conceived herself As Joan of Arc But instead of being burned HERSELF On the cross She buried Mother India Alive While her gangsters Beat the drums In her praise. July 25, 1975 July 25, 1975 Dictators They are killing My brothers With bullets They will kill My children With lies. July 31, 1975 112 Between Exile and Jail To each Christ One destiny From all directions Or none at all To each dictator One goal To all crimes Or none To each coward One silence From all lives Or none. August 2, 1975 Freedom is a bloody dream Between Two long periods Of slavery. August 2, 1975 113 Lifelong Search for Home Everything passed away like a dream A childhood A father whom death conceived Never to bear A love always to be proven By separations And torments Everything passed away Hunger, sickness and death Bangla Desh, Biafra and Vietnam A G.I., a wound A war Everything passed away Even the dream A forbidden fruit Nothing is to be seen All gone A life A freedom A land Everything passed away. August 3, 1975 Now Nothing ever comes to mind Nothing Love, betrayal, nor hate Only a tortured face haunts me Everywhere I go India — my love, my enemy, my grave. August 3, 1975 114 Between Exile and Jail Every image merges into one With no difference left A flowerpot in your window Shaping as your face Above your hand On the sill Turmoil in my heart Beauty Truth Anguish All in me Nothing there Everything merges Into one And the same. August 4, 1975 All the laws that are fit to govern We are all equal Under the law Untouchable No law can touch me For my crime No law can release you From injustice We are all equally free To remain where we fit I on the throne And you in the thorns Of a walled prison. August 8, 1975 115 Lifelong Search for Home The ultimate liberty Is to be oneself Private Miserable Silent. Rushing always Not to choose Between exile and jail Running and changing Faster and faster To catch up With the Joneses Dashing into exhaustion From nothing To nothingness Life A mould of dirt From dust to dust. August 13, 1975 August 16, 1975 And for a life long love Nothing But sad sad memories Of things not done. August 17, 1975 Like layers of onions We peeled off Our emotions Like onion eaters They left a smell. 116 August 18, 1975 Between Exile and Jail Yes, they don’t mean much It is all hollow Superficial Shallow and worthless Yet A letter from you A smile from the neighbor And a hello from a stranger Come like rays of sunshine During a storm Of hard hard rain I am lit up All over again. August 22, 1975 Yes, I know All things stop At NOTHING Every thing ends In NOTHING But it is the road Which leads us From nothing To nothing That I want To cover With flowers and fragrance With shrubs and shade With beauty and bliss With freedom and truth And peaceful lack of fear Help me dear friend So the road will be safe For those Who follow us. August 22, 1975 117 Lifelong Search for Home Once again They killed the dreamer And lit up the dream. August 23, 1975 And every day A long wait News-filled pages Declaring again NOTHING happened. August 25, 1975 And now All that The Eastern wind Ever brings Is slavery Riding on The silent waves Of frozen blood. August 31, 1975 Words are so powerful To inflict deep wound To kill you back I never thought By uttering FREEDOM we would be SLAVES. August 31, 1975 118 Between Exile and Jail So many words to say nothing So many paths to reach nowhere So many lives to live not one So many events to conclude but nothing Man — a creature of his web Made to be enslaved And to fight to be free. September 7, 1975 Stranger, when you come to Delhi Don’t think our hearts Are liars like those posters Painted on the walls By their orders. September 12, 1975 You — My jailed dream I— Your broken truth In separation we meet In meeting We separate We — Two sides of a coin Completing What never was completed Before A caged life A living death. September 12, 1975 119 Lifelong Search for Home I talk the truth The truth is silent. September 12, 1975 Give me your nothingness So I can fill you With life. September 12, 1975 How near you are When you are not. September 12, 1975 Memory — Our dreams met At a cross road again No one spoke. September 13, 1975 Like the promises I made My eyes failed me When you left Tears fell Like the promises I made. 120 September 13, 1975 Between Exile and Jail I didn’t know Our laughter would last Only till The nightmare Of the dawn. September 13, 1975 We bury our hopes Green So we can have A bumper crop Of night dreams Of dead realities. A plant in the backyard No taller than a sitting man Living no longer Than half a year Gives flowers Beauty and fragrance Donates fruits And proves its utility Hundred times better Than six five year plans Producing lies And a tenure For a dictator. September 13, 1975 September 13, 1975 121 Lifelong Search for Home History is an unnatural event No natural event is ever a news Even death When it comes naturally Passes by Without any notice. January 30, 1976 A black cat Sits in a window Watches the snow Fall I mourn for home. Poetry is nothing But urinating In a closet With fear When one should be fighting Out there In the field. 122 February 4, 1976 February 7, 1976 Between Exile and Jail We wanted a traditional slave to revolt We wanted those who are always oppressed To fight We wanted those to lead us to freedom Who got some comforts by licking others’ feet We wanted every one to do What we wanted to be done But for ourselves We chose to wait For history to unfold So we can imprint it When and if it happened But like an exposed film It never did come out Only spoiled. February 8, 1976 Words As if the record fell in love with the needle Broken and dull Went on listening to the hoarse voice The preacher and the preachings Became one Forgetting the preached. February 9, 1976 123 Lifelong Search for Home So many times Death has come So many times I have been Resurrected I died the day My father was Snatched away By the separation From his child — In jail (To be free To be jailed Again and again) I died the day Mother broke away In silence And I was killed By an unfaithful Foreign love Buried by an alien civilization I tried to brush The sand of memories Oppression and neglect I tried to breathe But the final death came When my children killed me To take the revenge Of their birth And I could not lift Even a finger In protest. February 21, 1976 124 Between Exile and Jail O the men from the West When you go over there Tell them That here People kill them Whom they claim To love. February 28, 1976 What I wished I never got What I had I never wished (after a Bengali poem) March 6, 1976 Love is like a peeled onion Smell And rot Rubbing against a scar Like salt Each relationship is a new trial To heal the old Each time we perfect Carving off old memories Imperfection deepens Like a hole in the ground We want to bury the past To relive. March 8, 1976 125 Lifelong Search for Home To talk of free speech In a bound structured language To speak of free living With chains of laws And constitutions And express unbound love Through inadequate sexuality How ignorant is The race of man! March 11, 1976 And the only speech Which was free Was their propaganda. March 11, 1976 And even that Was left for a widow From the old backward Culture of India To prove That women are Truly equal to men Because they too Can rape a nation They claim to love. 126 March 17, 1976 Between Exile and Jail When death was more normal than life When corpses grew faster than the grass When bodies hanging on barbed wires Outnumbered leaves on trees When vomit, dung, cows’ urine Was more plentiful than water When awakening brought worms of death And sleep was a never-ending nightmare To open one’s eyes Was to see destruction How did humanity sing The song of survival And how did the tyrants die? March 20, 1976 It’s hard to believe That this country Is only twice as old As my grandfather And yet For it To reach the moon How many millions Of grandfathers’ dreams Died All in silence. March 21, 1976 127 Lifelong Search for Home Words They can always express The depth of anger, evil, and hate Love is a silent touch Of a finger’s path Smooth And almost unknown. March 21, 1976 And it is from the meaningless syllables We make words And it is only to the meaningful silence They all disintegrate Love, too, Is lived Through the meaningless breaths And moments Of eternal wait For the one That never seems to come Like the horizon It touches our earth Everywhere And nowhere. March 21, 1976 Silence: A peace treaty Broken by The war of words. March 21, 1976 128 Between Exile and Jail Freedom is a broken bell Which no one rang Since the declaration Of Independence At mid-night Long ago. March 22, 1976 In the dark cell night A million broken dreams In the dark dark forest Outside A thousand worms For every dream All hiding All silent. March 22, 1976 Every night A dream Arms around you Every morning A nightmare Broken in a tear. March 22, 1976 129 Lifelong Search for Home Outside There are slogans On every wall Inside A cell is carved With the dust Of shattered dreams A prisoner reads The blank fate Eyes go dim Night falls. March 22, 1976 Each day we survive Each other’s love Each day our love Survives our killing Each day. March 22, 1976 And yet There is another cell Within the cell In the jail Our own self An empty shell Filled with fear. March 22, 1976 And every day He sees the black dawn Swallowing the night Full of dreams. March 22, 1976 130 Between Exile and Jail They are accusing us again As if not those Who cut our hands But our dripping blood Was responsible For the bloody road. March 22, 1976 You in your cell I in an alien Spider web Made with love How will we ever meet My brother How? And yet Though separated by oceans And jungles of laws In our dreams We meet We meet. At midnight A day dies A day is born But the dream goes on From one to the next From death to life Never dying Never born. March 22, 1976 March 22, 1976 March 22, 1976 131 Lifelong Search for Home Like a shriek Of a lonely bird Lost in a dark desert A poem comes Sometimes with a pang Of birth Sometimes like semen Wasted in a barren woman And sometimes Like puss From a wound Gone bad. Dreams are there When dreamers are not Like the stars They shine Even from nothingness Forming A milky way Across the hearts Worlds apart. 132 March 22, 1976 March 22, 1976 Between Exile and Jail Billions of stars There are In the sky And here I lie Alone I wonder if they too Are affected by My presence and mood The same way As I am By theirs. March 24, 1976 Silence They have cursed The speech To be banished again Into exile. March 24, 1976 History is a path From will be To has been History is a puzzle Is, was To if And could be. March 24, 1976 133 Lifelong Search for Home Marriage is like politics After a few Nice opening remarks You jab your arrows To deepen the wound In the name of love. March 24, 1976 Only a simpleton like Christ Could have said ‘Love thy neighbor’ And be nailed for that To the cross If he had any brain He would displace his neighbor Exile him And then would agree To be graceful Enough to debate His rights in the U.N. And be big hearted To allow him To listen. March 26, 1976 And as if we Did not have Enough to suffer He gave us speech. March 26, 1976 134 Between Exile and Jail Guilty is a six letter word Quietly hanging US For life. March 28, 1976 Like the oppressors of the past You have closed the iron gates Behind my brother You have stilled the shout Freedom and justice You have maimed and killed The dreamers and the dreams But the voice will not be suppressed Like the fragrance of flowers Pressed between stones It will spread to every heart And from the grave It will rise In the darkest Of the dark nights. March 29, 1976 My life A wall has been built In the middle Of the tunnel Leading from the past To the future. April 3, 1976 135 Lifelong Search for Home And every front For liberation Begins with Taking prisoners. April 8, 1976 Mind is the city dump Collecting memories From the past Heart recycles the pain. April 9, 1976 I am a pall bearer Carrying a coffin Of my own Shrouded in the Forty five year old Tatters of life Is the corpse of ‘I’ What I was And would be I walk on the street In the darkness of the sun And no one Recognizes me anymore. April 12, 1976 I wonder why They call the passing away Of another year A birthday! April 12, 1976 136 Between Exile and Jail America While giving me no life Seeks My death With DIGNITY. April 19, 1976 And they fooled everybody Didn’t they — The April fool children They were truly born. April 20, 1976 But how can I Write The last death poem Without dying!! April 20, 1976 And like the trees In the woods We kept on falling Without a protest They kept on emptying Glasses of joy No one heard No one noticed When a bright day turned Into a dark dark night No one spoke But silence. April 21, 1976 137 Lifelong Search for Home And this too Like that And that And many things before Was a mask On our face. April 21, 1976 We empty our hearts Bit by bit With the needle of hatred And then, like Easter eggs We decorate our relations With nice words. April 23, 1976 Sometimes I too wish I could have woven myself A beautiful curtain of words To hide and relieve But no My poetry is like The silk of Murshidabad Seven layers I wrap around It still is Transparent I remain All exposed. 138 April 23, 1976 Between Exile and Jail It is a horrible thought That each innocent looking Buddha in the crib Is a potential killer Two decades hence. April 23, 1976 And through you I loved me. April 23, 1976 And then after listening To the evening news For a decade and a half I realized the enemy They were talking about: ME! April 23, 1976 Even to go To a play Has become An act For the Civilized ones! April 25, 1976 139 Lifelong Search for Home If all those Who commit sins Go to hell Who goes to heaven? April 25, 1976 A nose can smell But cannot eat Or drink Ears can hear The hordes of death coming But cannot run Eyes can see But cannot speak And a poem Can be sweet Or a song can be bitter To arouse the passion But in order to win We have to raise our hands And give our life. April 26, 1976 Like this new Pair of glasses Which enables me To see clearly Knowledge, too, Hurts. May 3, 1976 140 Between Exile and Jail The flowers That I bought To bring back A smile on your lips Lie Like a bouquet On the coffin Of our love. May 8, 1976 Somehow They shall always survive Weeds in fields Insects in gutters And the people Who never knew What it is like To walk With their heads high! June 17, 1976 141 Lifelong Search for Home 142 Poems of Unkinship 1981 143 Lifelong Search for Home To all those who have been hurt and betrayed in the name of love 144 Author’s Preface America is a nation always at war. It began with a war, it expanded itself by conquering others’ territories. It always found new frontiers. It conquers space, nature, and everything else. When its own frontiers were not enough, America went abroad and waged wars. It destroyed the cultures it never wanted to understand or respect in the name of saving them. In the name of democracy it established dictatorships. America is a nation which proclaimed all men are created equal while keeping slaves. America is there to win, to expand, to be successful. Success means power, and money. The fast buck. America is a land of experts. But experts never get involved in their subjects, especially if they happen to be human. An entomologist may love ants, but I have yet to find an Anthropologist who truly loved the society he studied. And yet who overnight does not declare to be the all-knowing person about his people. America is the land of salesmen. America is the nation of propaganda. Everything is for sale here, and every lie is to be proved right. But there are no frontiers to conquer. After Vietnam, America turned introvert. And began to fight against itself. It destroyed the society and now the family — which was already limited to its minimum by cutting off the ties with the elder generation right after one’s marriage — became its last frontier. And it is bent upon destroying it. It is bent upon destroying the human. All in the name of saving and freedom of course. And finally, America is the land of ‘love’. No one single word is used — misused — here as much as the word ‘love’ along with ‘I’. The self centered egotistic ‘love’? Yes they love everything including screwing the thing they ‘love most’. And every liberation movement began here for taking, grabbing, and holding tight. No one wants to really give away what they have and everyone wants to take from others. 145 Lifelong Search for Home And that is the story of these poems. They are very personal, but they really are not. The more I discovered America after being thrown on the streets by those who claimed to ‘love’ me, the more I found the story to be universal. There are no innocent people to be saved. They are as guilty as butchers. So after long thought I decided to publish them. I hope they save some innocent lives in the future. 146 Poems of Unkinship And what she called love Was just another word For killing. July 28, 1976 And as for the sons: They collected Empty beer cans And left over girls. August 25, 1976 The end, my dear Is always the same Those who claim to love Kill And those who are friends Gossip! August, 25, 1976 How many deceitful roads Did the woman take Before she brought him From the nudity of the beach To the nudity of the bed To ruin! November 2, 1976 147 Lifelong Search for Home Her children glued to the TV Looking into the hollow horizons Beyond the broken home Her parents living The lingering death of loneliness Her in-law rots in prison In search of freedom Her husband long buried His hopes and dreams Under her ambition And forgotten To a crowd of unknown An expert speaks Again About the thing she never had: Kinship! November 13, 1976 Foundations of our cracked dreams Long forgotten She stands on the peak Of the pyramid Looks into the sky Shrieking I am great I am great! November 14, 1976 Like a patched up Spare wheel Of another vehicle I drag along In case they need me Between two changes! November 17, 1976 148 Poems of Unkinship Yes, it will be me The killed And not you The murderer Who will take Death To those Who are My very own! November 17, 1976 In this world Full of friends And family To whom Should I give thanks For loneliness And being alone! A pyre burns Fuelled by the Wood of agonies The rain of memories Pour Everything wet I cremate myself Little by little Ashes too far A pyre burns! November 23, 1976 November 23, 1976 149 Lifelong Search for Home And like death Her cold lips kissed me The final good bye Everything between us Came to an end Like the toilet paper A tear Dried up my pain Before being flushed Down the drain Of memories! November 23, 1976 As my father wove A cot With thick bunches Of finest thin ropes I weave my life Filling holes With clouds of memories Everything leaks In pain! 150 November 23, 1976 Poems of Unkinship Every day comes Like a funeral day Of yesterday Every tomorrow awaits Like a shroud Of today Dreams scattered Like broken words How stale they look Like dead flies Those promises Of being Eternally mine! November 23, 1976 Like these Falling rain drops On the other side Of my stained window I see my past But cannot touch Life stands Between you and me Transparent And apart We are there And we never are! November 23, 1976 151 Lifelong Search for Home I wait for the tomorrow That never comes Only the net of ‘today’ Tightens and tightens Life squeezes itself Out of me Like water through the sieve To be free I remain A skeleton Of what I would be But never was! Soon you, too, Will become A tale of the past ‘Once upon a time In a fairy land There lived a witch...’ But alas There is no young prince Who can save us We are roasted In the frying pan Of Time Again and again! 152 November 23, 1976 November 23, 1976 Poems of Unkinship Like a pale leaf In the autumn Like a ripened fruit In the season I fall I fall In search of my roots And mingle In the dust Of my ruins In a foreign land! November 24, 1976 And death Kills Even Time! November 24, 1976 And that finger Which always points at me To accuse and to abuse Will some day turn Toward her own heart When I am gone What will it find Whom will it blame Me Her heart Or itself? November 24, 1976 153 Lifelong Search for Home Like this empty bedroom Where ghosts of my love Still remain In the dark empty air My heart is filled With the vacuum Of your presence Emptiness fills The horizons of my dreams! November 24, 1976 And perhaps It is in the end Empty space And meaningless sounds Like my heart That will create Some music again Life will sing Some blues of betrayal And songs of love! November 24, 1976 154 Poems of Unkinship Lying here Alone I think Of those women Who said They were mine But never were (And never shall be) For mine are Only the wounds Created by them To fill my loneliness And drained out heart! November 24, 1976 The gift is What you receive You gave twenty years To a woman She gave you a finger You gave your hand To an old lady For five minutes She gave you all That she could muster Blessings collected In exchange for her life A day was reborn A day was relived The gift is What you receive. November 24, 1976 155 Lifelong Search for Home I build the mountain of sorrows In the sky of loneliness My future is a flood Of wait My past — a graveyard Of broken dreams Life — a pyramid of buried promises A cracked up soul I need some glue of trust But find it nowhere I am a prisoner of myself Building new walls Of consciousness That I never was What I said I would be Someone imprinted A forged signature On my portrait When I was sold To Time I die in wait And wait to die! November 24, 1976 As if to celebrate The wake of my dream They give parties To their friends I lie far away In solitary confinement And they call it a land of choices! November 25, 1976 156 Poems of Unkinship I saw Your flowers (Cut off from the root Decorating a vase Like myself Replanted in your culture) Fading with me As the day passed All alone I knew what they meant By the harmony Between man and nature! I have all the worries That a parent has But I have no children I have all the sufferings Of a separated lover But no love I have bought so many houses But I have no home I adopted nations, humanities and all But I belong to no one Now I know How an outcaste A refugee A homeless Feels! November 25, 1976 November, 26, 1976 Blessed are the fools At least they make Others laugh! November 28, 1976 157 Lifelong Search for Home You and I: Ghosts of our memories Camping in the wilderness Sleeping in their own Separate bags Always wondering What the other is doing Inside there! December 2, 1976 History: A caravan of flies Tired Sleeps on a king’s grave Dark night falls Like a curtain In a play! December 2, 1976 First she cheated me With her love Now she cheats me With her laws! December 7, 1976 Our words Are like enemy broadcasts They never talk They jam! 158 December 7, 1976 Poems of Unkinship Your law too Is like a profession Of prostitution Whoever pays Wins the truth! Love: For a long time She wove in secret A shroud To present me As a Christmas gift Along with the death Her betrayal brought! December 7, 1976 December 7, 1976 Scholar: For a long time A she wolf Wore the hide Of his relationship And grazed His field Now she is shitting out Words And betrayal! December 7, 1976 159 Lifelong Search for Home And after Everything is said and done Every storm come and gone Every relationship tested And wasted The fact is That it is your agony alone Expressed in a million ways That is yours Truly yours To live To suffer To enjoy and To die With You! December 8, 1976 160 Poems of Unkinship Here I lie With my private love affair With an ulcer Agonies filtering like the embraces Of a new lover Without pause My ‘wife’ — The last one of the enemy rank — Prepares for her last Intoxicated mad elephant attack The womb where I sowed the seed To produce four dreamland fruits Is throwing out The lava of hatred Every house Destroyed by its new builder Every dream shattered by its own dreamer Every child eaten by its own creator There is no peace on earth There is no good will in man For man The only Christmas spirit (That is to be bought and sold And absorbed with liquor) Is for Christ to grow And be crucified My cross is ready A solitary confinement And a private death In an unknown land For no cause at all Except that I must have been born To die And it could have been Anywhere Any time! December 15, 1976 161 Lifelong Search for Home Fathers and husbands They can never make good pets Knowing that They discarded me And my place Is filled By mice and cats And dogs How affectionate now The house looks! And what we thought Was the core Of our life, our love Turned out to be a worm Which ate the apple Of our dream tree Before it ever Ripened! December 16, 1976 December 16, 1976 And it is Through others’ deaths Our life returns Little by little We are freed more Breathing is lighter And we sense Something gone Something gained! December 17, 1976 162 Poems of Unkinship And now Not even a wait Death has finally dawned Radiant In the ocean Of a deep Deep silence! December 17, 1976 She knows all About kinship She dissected all Those she called kin Like experimental frogs! December 17, 1976 And like the final Onion peel She took off The last mask She was naked All gone Pretense Shame And ‘reality’ That we lived! December 17, 1976 163 Lifelong Search for Home And like a thunderbolt Reality shone She was a cloud Of destruction Dark and thick All along! December 17, 1976 While still pretending To make love She dismantled The walls Of our home We are all caught Naked Naked Without any shame! December 17, 1976 Like the straw warrior All their laws Can’t take a faint Fire Created by A tiny spark Of simple truth! December 18, 1976 164 Poems of Unkinship Love is like a tree We cut down To make a fire To keep warm Now its branches Are being used To build a pyre And to cremate Us — the living dead! December 18, 1976 Such a grand show They judged They sentenced They crucified A man in absentia No one applauded! December 18, 1976 And after they carved All over my body Permanent scars They wondered What others thought Of their image! December 18, 1976 165 Lifelong Search for Home And like A midnight cry My poems break Out in the wilderness In far away lands Like the tall trees They fall In a dark forest No one listens No one knows If they make Any sound! December 18, 1976 I remember you Like the country I left Long ago I never left! December 18, 1976 Like a heavy boot Of an Insensitive tyrant Your law Smashed My ant-like love No cry No murmur And no appeal! 166 December 18, 1976 Poems of Unkinship Never wear The knots of love So tight Sometimes They kill! December 18, 1976 And like an angry skunk She ran Away from me And like its smell I am soaked With stinking Memories! December 18, 1976 And why Only in her death I sing her song! December 18, 1976 And then the judge declared: Pay your unfaithful wife now And die later! December 18, 1976 And now I write of my love Shedding my agonies’ ink On a dark night’s cover Of nothingness! December 18, 1976 167 Lifelong Search for Home Like the last frozen flower I kiss The death Of my love! December 18, 1976 Like a counterfeit coin I am thrown away I roll and roll And buy nothing! December 18, 1976 And like an old Ragged woman I count my memories Like soiled coins Rubbing against My tired heart! December 18, 1976 Love Like an unused chimney All soot And no warmth! December 18, 1976 Divorce A frustrated woman Wrote a dirty graffiti With her shitty finger On the ruins Of her love! December 18, 1976 168 Poems of Unkinship If all I ever do Is wait For time to pass Why was it necessary For me To be A part In the plan Of this universe Surely Time would have passed Without my wait! Like a man Suddenly caught in a storm I am soaked By memories I shiver And wait! December 18, 1976 December 18, 1976 Memories wrapped around me Like tattered clothes They never save me From heat or cold Or rains of life They only give away secrets I am weak I am weak! December 18, 1976 169 Lifelong Search for Home Don’t, dear friend, don’t Don’t wake me up Nightmares are heaven When compared to The reality of My empty hell! December 18, 1976 Like the red marks In your business books I count my loss In the hurts My heart has recorded Since we met Since we parted! 170 December 18, 1976 Poems of Unkinship No one wanted to Listen to my tale My forefathers died Before I had the courage To open my mouth My brother was silenced Behind iron gates Relatives choked with depression My wife was intoxicated With limited power And canned knowledge My children busy In gathering Left over loves To recycle No one wanted to Listen to my tale And yet I told it As if to pave a path In the dark forest So some future traveler Does not say No one warned him About the dangers Of this jungle — Civilization December 21, 1976 It is indeed A progress Of rational minds When dismantling a home Is called by The society An institution! December 23, 1976 171 Lifelong Search for Home Yes, it is true That it is much easier To be a call girl Than to be a faithful woman (And maybe it is More fun too) But, then, I could have walked The streets of your cities Instead of building a home (With sweat and blood) For you to dismantle And destroy Yes it was a mistake To expect a dark night To burn And produce a sun To shine and to warm And that I expected you To show us a path Was too a mistake For you were only Fit To spread Darkness all over! December 23, 1976 Like rubble Buried in foundations My dreams are Always there Beneath your palace Of fame Always broken And never To be seen! December 23, 1976 172 Poems of Unkinship How do you tell Your dear ones That woman they took to be A goddess of unity Between East and West A symbol of virtue Purity and love Turned out to be A mirage, a betrayal A common girl Walking the street How do you tell your kith and kin That the trust they placed In ‘a heart of gold’ Was merely a prelude To be stabbed again and again How do you tell any one at all That your sons are pimps Throwing their seeds In gutters of debased And fallen vaginas How do you tell That your final payment For this life Turned out to be A declaration Of bankruptcy And failure How do you announce Your own death At the hands of betraying ones Whom you accepted Against everyone’s Advice And goodwill How? December 24, 1976 173 Lifelong Search for Home Why do we try To win others so hard That in the end We simply fail Each other! December 24, 1976 When your ‘own love’ dumps you Like a cowdung lump When your children avoid you Like a plague When your shadow runs away from you Like a skunk Tell me, what death Do you await? December 24, 1976 Noon Christmas secrets All unwrapped Like ourselves Emptiness Another wait Another year! 174 December 25, 1976 Poems of Unkinship With every bone aching With every nerve dissected Where will the peace on earth come from With mind so full of poisoned memories Where will the goodwill Toward man (or woman) originate With no fruits from the past With no hopes for the future And all christs crucified in advance How can I sing of life Stabbed again and again And again! December 25, 1976 As if to negate The act of her grinding my heart She is distributing To everyone else The recipe using a portion of that Tender juicy meat And cooked in a smile How delicious the meal indeed is For everyone else But me: the dead! December 25, 1976 175 Lifelong Search for Home You tried to wreck the brain That fed your theories You ate the hand That caressed you with tender love You broke the legs That walked your paths To give you solace And needed company You maimed, you killed Every dream we created I thought all, yes all Is gone forever Suddenly a seed of love You sowed in your unknown desire Sprouted today On the grave of our love And I know now All is not gone In spite of you! 176 December 25, 1976 Poems of Unkinship With all the glitter So much remains dark Inside With all the world Full of modern gadgets So much emptiness Vast horizons always to be lost Memorable dreams Ending in agonizing wake All love gone drop by drop Through the holes Of a sieve of empty desires So much ploughing, sowing and watering Reaping dry thorns Enmity sings songs Of love, peace and goodwill How hollow can A woman’s heart be! December 25, 1976 Every poem Is a poor translation Of inner sufferings And joys Experienced by Silence Language is a wrapper Mysteriously covering The truth Of nothingness Creation is A sweet myth An illusion A child lost In search of a path Returning home To nowhere! December 25, 1976 177 Lifelong Search for Home Today Two of you United And gave me a present To glue a broken spirit Tomorrow sees You and me United in agony That none of you May even have A hand to shake Emptiness cries Inside me! To everyone I give Material gifts From here and there To you I give The emptiness You created By draining my heart With the sharpest hate machine All in silence! Divorce: And like everything else This too is a lie Like a leach You still suck my blood Memory lingers Like a ghost Never to leave! 178 December 25, 1976 December 25, 1976 December 25, 1976 Poems of Unkinship And those Who claim to my be friends Still exchange Smiles Handshakes Music And presents With those Who are Bleeding me To death Suffering is indeed The most private Property! December 26, 1976 No one to call me home No one to stop me here Like a bird Caught between electric wires I neither live Nor die Just flutter in pain! December 26, 1976 179 Lifelong Search for Home Thunder in the sky Rains Radio, television, records In the room All meaningful sounds Senseless noises Drowned into silence When our hearts beat together Now the silence breaks That we are No longer one All is noise Sound and thunder Do you hear? December 26, 1976 Now that The kin are dead Let’s write A brilliant piece On ‘the ritual Of massacre And burying kin’! December 26, 1976 And those Who cut off our tongue Are now Afraid to talk! December 27, 1976 180 Poems of Unkinship While they talked of their hamsters, cats and dogs I kept thinking of my nephews and nieces Who died of starvation While they sang praises of Bach, Beethoven and such I wondered what it was that The last breaths of my mother mumbled While they counted the joys in celebration over my living death An old man’s face haunted me From behind the closed iron gates While they counted successes In terms of how many chicks fell for them Or how many pimps laid their mother I counted our failures By the numbers jailed, maimed and killed By gentle looking dictators Indeed time has built us a different bridge Each step carrying me into darkness And them into a lofty unholy land We shall never never meet again Me and my wild oats! December 29, 1976 Going to the bathroom I see Your politician Has shifted his position again He no longer looks Straight into my eyes But would try to stab me From the side (Like you?)! December 29, 1976 181 Lifelong Search for Home Our mothers They talked worriedly About three point some survival Of kids out of ten born Before their husbands died An early death Our wives They talk gleefully Of three point eight Lovers they would have After a deadly love And divorce! December 29, 1976 And those To whom we gave the strength Tried to swallow us Like vitamins To gain more power! December 31, 1976 And like the unused language I learnt Soon I shall forget The complicated grammar Of your love! December 31, 1976 182 Poems of Unkinship And again The divine water fall Has washed The sins of the mountains How beautiful How spotless Do they look Like a child’s heart All reborn. December 31, 1976 Neatly you divided it all You were white, I was black You were true, angelic, faithful and all I was the incarnation of the devil himself You were light, intellect, heart and mind I was the darkness in your life History never seems to stop repeating Like the wars to save people For people, from people You, your justice, your country Produces again A lie Your hands bleed And you call it Lipstick of (a dead) love! January 2, 1977 183 Lifelong Search for Home The rains still tap On my window Reminding me of our past I sob No shower of love To strike against my heart Clouds bring only darkness Filled with lone sorrows And no rains! January 2, 1977 I look at my past Like a horror movie Shown on the late late show I shudder, I tremble I wipe my tears And then feel sorry To be so upset Over what Was simply a movie On the screen And not The real me! January 2, 1977 Like the tall redwood trees We stood Next to each other In pride Never touching Each other’s heart! January 2, 1977 184 Poems of Unkinship And now Like the blood Of an unwanted Aborted child She wipes off The old old memories Of our love! January 2, 1977 Like an address book Of someone else I am no use to anyone Just scattered names Sprinkled in wounds! January 4, 1977 I always lived Looking at my horizons They never touched me They were just there Surrounding like failures Colours of rainbow! January 4, 1977 Like the names Scribbled on the wall You are always there You never are! January 4, 1977 185 Lifelong Search for Home Children: Unidentified seeds Sown in a mistaken land How they hurt now Like dry thorns In my throat! January 4, 1977 Each visit is like A witness To the launching of ourselves Into inner space Returning to a distant land Alone Each going away Is like a journey To the cremation ground Burning a little more Of myself And leaving the ashes behind Uncollected And like the American way Of death All is to be paid In advance And yet so many installments Remaining Yes, we all love our dear ones After they are dead And gone And specially If they leave Something behind A small fortune To celebrate And forget Them! January 5, 1977 186 Poems of Unkinship And finally They wrote The declaration Of Their independence With blood — Mine. January 5, 1977 Tonight I am alone again And lonely I feel guilty Why can I never be With myself! January 5, 1977 I never knew That your fingers Were only exploring The geography of my body In order to hurt The tenderest spot And wave good bye! January 5, 1977 Even for love One has to dream One has to cheat Steal and lie Even for love?! January 5, 1977 187 Lifelong Search for Home My language was crude Like a hardened penis My thoughts were tender Like a vagina Together we loved We loved, we did! January 5, 1977 We are still united By our guilt By our shame By our wounds And by our failures To unite! January 5, 1977 It’s only a moth That can give life For a burning light Man already knows Love does not pay! January 5, 1977 For whom does the blind girl dress so well For whom does the deaf one laugh so beautifully And for whom do I write these silly lines??? January 5, 1977 188 Poems of Unkinship Like the autumn tree dropping its leaves I shake off my memories In order to be bare And grow some more Hurt is evergreen! Love for them Is another exotic food They try In different ethnic restaurants They chew The praise They digest And have heartburn They groan And shit it out In the courts! Do not spread The word That we are tied By any cord Before we are For even An untied thread Hurts Makes a mess When it breaks! January 6, 1977 January 6, 1977 January 6, 1977 189 Lifelong Search for Home I made love to you Not as a substitute For words Nor as a bribe Nor to keep peace But because I wanted to transform My words to feelings And feelings to bliss And bliss to God Through you I merge With myself Into you And the universe! January 6, 1977 Whenever I remember now My fingers treading The path of your body I have a queer feeling That someone else has Already been there And someone is Following the deep scars Made by the betrayal Of your lies! January 6, 1977 190 Poems of Unkinship Each night The sky Drops some stars And asks me about The number of holes A woman has made In my heart! January 6, 1977 Now that you have emptied My heart Of its past I wonder What future Will walk through it! I am afraid Someone will steal My memories My dreams The ruins of my heart I keep awake Sleepless In the dark! January 6, 1977 January 6, 1977 Like bread I am eaten by you To fatten your ambition! January 6, 1977 191 Lifelong Search for Home The lamp went out again It was Jealous Of our love! January 6, 1977 It is only after The flowers are cut That they can decorate The living rooms Of civilized people! January 6, 1977 Leaf by leaf The tree is bare Memory by memory My heart dries! January 6, 1977 Reality: Like your ugly tooth You pulled me out And threw in the gutter How shiny you are now Like your plastic tooth And courtly lies January 6, 1977 They ask me how Is she going to live With her conscience What conscience? January 6, 1977 192 Poems of Unkinship How can I translate My agonies on paper With black ink Instead of Red blood? January 6, 1977 I look at my children One by one Again and again And ask myself How can a seed grow To uproot the tree How can the walls Dig up the foundation And be gleeful That they are the night Produced by the dawn In the hope of getting A ray of hope When all is gone! January 6, 1977 Poetry: Another star fell Leaving an empty Blue space In the sky! January 6, 1977 193 Lifelong Search for Home Even for those Who live A rainbow life There is a faint line Of blues Quietly singing A sad sad tune! January 7, 1977 There are lots Of thick black clouds And many hard rains Before a rainbow Is born In a grey sky January 7, 1977 Over there Yes, I know They are fasting So their husband’s deaths Never come Over here They are thinking How to make their husbands Fast unto death So a new flower can bloom In their lives Which they can offer On the graves of the dead In order to claim To have them loved! January 7, 1977 194 Poems of Unkinship ‘Love thy enemy’ What else was I doing For two decades And look what happened Jesus Christ Just look! January 7, 1977 Like onions Time machine Sliced our love And made us cry! January 7, 1977 I went to the doctor Pregnant You are trapped I went to the lawyer To get unhooked You are doomed Doctors to shrinks To counsellors to lawyers And lovers in between Did she ever have time To really Care for me! January 8, 1977 Hatred No less binding Than love Separations No less intimate Than unions Only they hurt more! January 8, 1977 195 Lifelong Search for Home It seems as if I Have suffered alone For millions of years It seems as if I Have not known you for centuries Snatched away from me In the name of love For you And you discarding me Like the shit done by Indian kids In the gutter Forgotten Nothing seems to have been left Between us And yet, it is your birthday And tradition says I should say something I — who was cut off like cancer As a Christmas gift to you — I — who for all practical purposes Has been declared dead Invalid and bounced — Except for the final rituals Of collecting money From my grave (Money still talks and lives Even for unfaithful wives) So I should say something And I do: If my silence is happiness to you May my tongue be cut off If my not seeing you is your pleasure May I go blind If my non-being is bliss to you May God give me death As a birthday gift to you For in all the agonies of mine I still pray Day and night 196 Poems of Unkinship For the good of you Who were born To shame To hurt And to kill! (For Sanjaya and Sunita) January 8, 1977 This too is the American way That they congratulate At the death Of a family As if death Is the only way For them to live! January 8, 1977 Over there Wives commit ‘satee’ In the memory of their husbands Over here Wives kill And are paid for it By the system! They say We are not Related Any more As if you can really Unplant the seed Of folly (Now producing evergreen hurt) January 9, 1977 January 9, 1977 197 Lifelong Search for Home Like new years’ resolutions Made in a drunken state At midnight How quickly it’s forgotten That we were supposed To live with and love Each other Until the death Does us part! January 9, 1977 Not knowing the field Not familiar with the method I sowed my seeds And look, what I grew And see, what I reap All my life! January 9, 1977 Cut off from the root Look how I faded In your hands You — who promised to make Me bloom forever And ever with love! January 9, 1977 History is a lie Filled with briefs (Like those of lawyers) Of ‘known facts’ No one knows! 198 January 9, 1977 Poems of Unkinship My life is a joke Punchline missing! January 9, 1977 When someone talks About you My heart still jumps Like a dog Responding to a call With a given name! January 9, 1977 I wonder How much Do they know Themselves Those who Claim to know Others? January 10, 1977 ‘Thirty-one flavours’ Which one are you on Now? January 10, 1977 199 Lifelong Search for Home The drudgery of life I sought retreat in sleep In a morning dream you appear Like an angel covered with sweetness I call you with my silent open arms You come Gentle and blushing As in our last days Embrace and kiss The nightmare ends And one more day of mine Is killed Without even trying! January 10, 1977 So you still remember How to spell My name! Like the continental divide There we were There we are Only a peak of agony In between! Look ma No husband! 200 January 10, 1977 January 10, 1977 January 11, 1977 Poems of Unkinship Now that your face Is permanently eclipsed I watch the moon go by In the darkness Of a sunny day! January 11, 1977 Your memories I wear Like the bath robe You gave me As a Christmas gift Long ago Habitually! January 11, 1977 We are wearing words Again Like masks To hide Our inaction! January 11, 1977 201 Lifelong Search for Home Are your words Also confined To a solitary cell In this huge prison As I am That they too Cannot communicate Or are you a greedy Owner of them Want to leave them behind Like a hidden Buried treasure After we both are gone They sure are not Like a rain drop In a vast desert That you cannot waste Then why are you silent Why, dear daughter, why? (For Aruna) January 11, 1977 In every poem Her betrayal My agony And your tears! January 11, 1977 My poems are like a pinch My hand gives to my foot To see If it still is awake! 202 January 11, 1977 Poems of Unkinship Like a frog We simply lived We never dissected Ourselves (We are not The scientists — Social or otherwise) What do we know About Being us? Relations They are beautiful Like the long hair Of a pretty girl But they are impractical Always in the way Let’s chop them Off! January 11, 1977 January 11, 1977 How many calories of pain Will there be For the last supper How many nails of betrayal Before the cross is covered How many more deaths Before the final one? January 11, 1977 203 Lifelong Search for Home Not being well versed In your laws I still dream About you And commit Adultery! January 11, 1977 One more day One more step Toward death One more step Away from life Unlived! January 11, 1977 Son: At noon a shadow is born Helpless Under your feet By evening It grows so tall You are eclipsed Night falls You both go Your own way Little you And your big shadow! 204 January 12, 1977 Poems of Unkinship ‘Oh you You are just like My parents’ I felt so Complimented To be among Such Closest enemies! January 12, 1977 Sleep Again Tonight I will rehearse Unsuccessfully An Incomplete death! January 12, 1977 Long lasting are the things Without vibrations, life’s feel Like stones, pillars And plastic plants Those which bloom Are bound to decay Fade And die Early Such as flowers And loving hearts! January 14, 1977 205 Lifelong Search for Home And like an unknown Current of water Flowing under the bridge Time flows Moment by moment Unnoticed I wait And wait God knows For what! January 14, 1977 So what if God made this earth In a week We can destroy it Instantly! January 14, 1977 As if to my coffin I return To this cold bed Every night Alone! January 14, 1977 Silence is thunder Breaking My heart! 206 January 15, 1977 Poems of Unkinship Waiting again How many times Do I have to repeat Myself Like a windmill Going nowhere! January 15, 1977 Now that the ‘real Thing’ is gone Between you and me Bad memories will grow Like thistles In a dry field Abandoned! January 15, 1977 There are Only two kinds of people Around Those we love And those we don’t And boy Are they both Hard to live with! January 15, 1977 207 Lifelong Search for Home Philosophy, religion Psychology and social Sciences Do not do much good To this life (Maybe they complicate More and solve nothing) Knowledge is a poor tool And technology a poor substitute The ocean of life Can only be filled With tears shed together Shared and mingled Like rivers of compassion Flowing to be one! January 15, 1977 They did not know If they will be around When I die My children Have lit the flame In my pyre Of loving death NOW! January 16, 1977 No dear Anne The first and the last Songs of man Will always be sung In silence! 208 (For Anne Kilmer) January 16, 1977 Poems of Unkinship No child brings newspapers for me In the morning (I have none to bring) No one of them cooks Washes Changes my bed Walls and floors and windows All remain unnoticed Uncleaned by them No one edits my ideas And they thought I would be dead Here I am Still breathing Still knowing That I can wash my face (And miss you all Without missing) The only thing dead Is an idea That she was to me But never really was! January 16, 1977 I wonder if They are sorry Knowing that I can breathe again Without the help Of a machine They called home! January 16, 1977 209 Lifelong Search for Home Lovers For decades They lived together Only to indict each other With worse crimes Than any F.B.I. agent Ever could! January 16, 1977 Yesterday my child You were with me I felt so fearful You would get hurt Even walking straight Today you are all alone Walking dark alleys And somehow I feel So secure! (For Sunita) January 16, 1977 So you still know How to count And be counted Having subtracted Us from each other What does life Add up to! January 16, 1977 210 Poems of Unkinship Those Who have not lived through The eternity of hell Called night Remembering in agony Their ‘enemies’ What do they know About Love! January 17, 1977 No one here Ever thinks To live life For anyone But self And they still claim They marry For Love! January 17, 1977 I owe you an apology My dear uncle — Companion soul Of my late mother Your sister — My dear Om The brother who loved me More than any one else My dear sister Prem — Worthy of your name Proven again and again with ‘love’ And my dear friends Who told me in advance From village to London Who told me in advance That it wouldn’t work 211 Lifelong Search for Home You were right A she-donkey Can never become a cow And cross breeding between A horse and a donkey Produces Only a mule However, it was my sin Let me pay for it All alone I truly will be Grateful to you If you could restrain The temptation of Reminding me again and again Though in sorrow ‘We told you so’ For may be like A fallen sinner Not worthy of you And last to the tribe Purity and all I may commit The same sin again! January 17, 1977 212 Poems of Unkinship Knowledge makes it all unreal Their eternal love Like the sky Like Time Like feelings Like soul All pervading Everlasting Seen through the eyes Of illusion Attachment And ignorance Blind But then A cat A hamster A lock of hair A habit Might come Thinly disguised Like a sharp sword And cut it all Reality itself Spreads bare Like the sun So clear And so unreal All liberated! January 18, 1977 213 Lifelong Search for Home Even the euphoria Of making a good poem Lasts only as long As a cup of coffee For a second filling You need a nickel Not provided by The poem! January 18, 1977 Marriage: Like the trains Coming to a station From opposite directions We called it ‘union’ They called it ‘crossing’! January 18, 1977 214 Poems of Unkinship Life seems to be a Lengthy preface To an unwritten book Prelude to an Uncoming future We are all so busy From morning to night Preparing for what We would like to do (And is never done) When added all We are only the carriers Of useless burdens We are only the washers And cleaners (And many such things) For a guest Who never came A big subtraction Division Multiplied By zero! January 18, 1977 215 Lifelong Search for Home Oh you the betraying women of America Great descendants of a whoring line Oh you the sadist lawyers Building your castles on other people’s ruins Oh you the judges Aborting justice like illegitimate babies You the white racist ‘scholars’ Always fearful of your little knowledge And dark ignorance You the casket-makers Grave-diggers Merchandisers of death Mortuaries of humanity Why squeeze out of me Penny by penny Nickel by nickel Or dime by dime Why not put me In your juice machine And squeeze me for your breakfast Divide my blood My flesh My bones And drink it, lick it Suck on it Like hungry wild dogs May be each of you Will get a drop An atom A crumb Will that satiate you all You motherfucker hounds From the West! 216 January 19, 1977 Poems of Unkinship America is still very young So it behaves like a brat Wants every toy (Institutions and all) Instantly Tries it If it does not work Breaks it ‘What’s next’ It asks Santa Claus Impatiently America is still very young A spoiled baby It wants to destroy Without any wait! January 19, 1977 ‘I don’t want To be responsible To you or for YOU’ Just for your death And for your money! January 19, 1977 What picture Should I paint Now That all My tools Are stolen By the subject! January 19, 1977 217 Lifelong Search for Home How gracefully How correctly How formal Do they dress For the dead How lovingly Do they drink For the wake It makes me feel So grateful For my murder I am watching! Painted with the Uneven spill Blood makes The sun-set Of our Murdered love So beautiful Are your hands itching To paint Another picture You must be perfect After this practice Of nineteen years! 218 January 19, 1977 January 19, 1977 Poems of Unkinship There comes a time to break all ties Powerful though they may be There comes a time to operate on emotions Rotting like a growing cancer In your brain There comes a time to say good bye To all whom you had loved And for whom you were ruined There comes a time to shake off all The wasted years Like a bad debt There comes a time when a cuckoo bird Gives a call to come home And you can’t resist There comes a time you have to face Jails and beatings and deaths If need be And hold your head high There comes a time when the soul cries To be totally free And that time, dear heart, is now NOW It shall never return again If you do not go For narrow is the path And gates are to be closed again Even the voice of your soul Will be disappointed If you do not hear Its call now And it will give up on you Like that unfaithful wife Sorrow and mourn Is that all That shall remain Of your songs Of your blues. January 19, 1977 219 Lifelong Search for Home Voices are many all around Praising, condemning, Pleading, ignoring Comforting, advising Expressing pity, sorrow and regrets Rubbing hands and biting lips Voices are many all around Shrieking, screaming, thundering And being numbed Frightened, shivering, agonizing But there is only one voice You have to listen to Your silent most inner voice Too many dreams died in embryo Too many truths have been aborted Too many visions are blurred Too many times you have killed yourself And for those who had limited time for you Who plotted behind your back For years and years Whom you dreamed as your dreams But who turned out to be nightmares Who remained silent when you were exiled Whose vision never left the neck of the girl next to them They saw your house burning And warmed their hands They saw a book of life being torn Page by page And lit their fire with them Friends like Brutus all set to stab And lie for the killer Everyone’s feet tied to his limited world For them you can live no more And let them who want to walk with you Come forward And walk Into the fire And be burnt 220 Poems of Unkinship Voices are many holding you to a ransom For relationships that are dead Don’t listen to those Around your neck There have been too many nooses No more Voices are many increasing Noise filling the town with deafness Polluting Before yours is suffocated Listen to the one That never spoke And go! January 20, 1977 One sun-set Millions of reflections One dream broken Millions of images Sprinkled in a blue Sky-heart And earth kept on moving Living As before For billions of years. January 20, 1977 221 Lifelong Search for Home A dissected heart Can never give A complete love A blood stained hand Can never paint a heaven A fragmented mind Can never promise To be clear Of those thorns Picking its pain Memories like fences Always may build Barriers Know that The Death Valley Has no secure path Only heat Know And come I am waiting! January 20, 1977 Yes, it is foolish To leave this heaven For an uncertain hell But history Is made Often by fools! January 20, 1977 222 Poems of Unkinship So many soaps on TV Never knew There was So much dirt In America! January 20, 1977 Just as for me In my cave In this valley So on the peak There must be A loneliness For you! January 20, 1977 And they all return Like spiders To their webs Of private agony Glittering lights Grow dim One by one The earth takes in all Good or bad Like sons And wipes the tears In hiding! January 20, 1977 223 Lifelong Search for Home How short is the voyage Between cheers And tears! Ambition — It may walk with you Today Holding your hand Tomorrow It may ride Like a shroud On your hearse! January 20, 1977 January 20, 1977 Can a half man And a half woman Ever become One person Can broken dreams Add up to One life Can the laws of math Ever succeed In erasing All That hell wrote! January 20, 1977 224 Poems of Unkinship Memories: Petals of dried flowers Squeezed in between The pages of busy life Filled with nothingness! January 21, 1977 Promises: Flowers on the grave Of our love All dried up No one comes To offer new ones All forgotten! January 21, 1977 Sky is falling Nobody heard Sky is falling Nobody heard Sky fell There was no one there To hear! January 21, 1977 225 Lifelong Search for Home How many more pimps Of different varieties Is she going to experience Before she writes For her children ‘A guide to sex And money In your hand’! January 21, 1977 Poetry is a thick cloud Made of burnt ocean Life Floating in a sky Heart full of blues Any more fire And it will pour In a hard rain Never stopping! January 21, 1977 Now that You have killed me Gradually, patiently And with all the rituals How does the Kosher meat taste? January 21, 1977 226 Poems of Unkinship Our dreams were crushed Like flowers Under the heavy feet Of your drunken elephant ambitions Our life was scattered Like dandelions By the storms of betrayal Bit by bit Every year with you Was just another nail You nailed on the cross To crucify us And now you read our stories In your kinship seminars As if we were nothing But numbers Compiled and forgotten Long ago! January 22, 1977 Emotions are green leaves They would yellow And would always fall Save the root For that is Where the LIFE is! January 22, 1977 227 Lifelong Search for Home Like the advertisement on TV American irregularity Has taken over my life No laxatives Sickness Loneliness Futile waits Racism Multiple betrayals And no peg to hang on to Nails are many But none to unite And each joint jerked Hurting Death at a slow speed In a no speed limit zone Awaiting the final outcome Every day a perfect Machine copy of the day before And yet irregular Poets are beggars Peddlers of their own merchandise So are the women and men Of all sizes and shapes Buyers are skeptical Money tight Everything in smoke Everything dying Stomach rebels. January 23, 1977 228 Poems of Unkinship It is not out of habit That blood pours On paper It is not out of habit That heart aches Wound wails It is because you keep giving Fuel to the fire That I burn Bleed And write these poems I have paid a heavy price For each word They may not mix properly To make a good show Or a good sale Like your body Or stolen ideas But they are real Every ruin does not make A nice palace to live in But once in a while A crazy person comes And digs Treasure is in his brain! January 23, 1977 229 Lifelong Search for Home ‘What is wrong’ Asks my son In a real compassion ‘What’s right’ Asks my soul Bleeding! January 23, 1977 How does it feel When your own son says That the painting made by the blood Of your chopped fingers On the dead canvas of your life Makes no sense But murder by his mother does! January 23, 1977 Each time you are feasting On my flesh and blood Ghosts of my old men and women Roam over the table With questioning eyes! 230 January 23, 1977 Poems of Unkinship It’s a race between dogs Each after the blood of the other It’s a race between hungry men Each ready to tear the other apart We are living in a butcher house Whatever the cloak they wear Whatever the mask Doctors, lawyers, judges Diplomats, scholars Governments or what not All are after us I wish you nothing And what does it matter If a person Mutilated by all over there singing (Including you) Wishes you to be all that Or not (You may be one) But all my agonies All my shattered dreams All my tears shed alone All my wounds Wish you one thing And only one Be human For that’s one trade Missing in America! (For Sanjaya on his birthday) January 23, 1977 Here in the land of rockets Breaking records in speed I crawl to my death Like a turtle! January 23, 1977 231 Lifelong Search for Home Prices are great The reward is none Sufferings are millions Pleasures are nil Gradually I come to an end Of a dark dark tunnel Smelly, poisonous and full Of swamps and garbage And all left over From spent out culture I pause, I think, I ponder I rejoice for a moment If there is one step Someone took with me (Because tired feet soothed For a minute) The journey was not in vain If a tear was shed After a skyful of blues Lives are shared A line sung in unison Even if silent Is more meaningful Than a life of sermons If a finger trembled Touching my wounds Sacrifices succeeded When thunders of wars are over There will be more people Taking flowers to my grave of love Then there will be minstrels Singing for you And that, too, is no mean Achievement In an enemy land! 232 January 23, 1977 Poems of Unkinship Life Quietly Patiently Weaves Moment by moment The most beautiful shroud For death Grows old and tired Gives up Without ever Completing! January 23, 1977 Let he, who Never learnt a thing From us Speak For he alone Knows The truth! Like the soul Stained by sin (But used to it) Repenting to be cleansed My heart swings Back and forth Between these two Unattainable shores! January 23, 1977 January 23, 1977 233 Lifelong Search for Home How many times Can one read Autobiography As a novel Blood stains As poetry And dying people As numbers? Heart still aches Like a split head From the hangover Of a loving past! January 23, 1977 January 23, 1977 Father Why did you die Speechless Without telling me That living death Is harder to bear Than a dead one It kills one Again and again You were survived By us But how does one survive One’s own Recurring death Without dying Finally? January 23, 1977 234 Poems of Unkinship Today You are the prisoners Of laws and systems Which only knows How to separate Being brainwashed In the name of your own Good And their love for you But soon enough You will have wings Of your own And you shall fly Even to me But will I Recognize you THEN? (For Sunita and Jai) January 24, 1977 We were Like two streams Floating from Different sources United into one Flowing for a long time Long miles Splitting into Two streams again Who can say We don’t flow with Each other’s water In the streams One claims To be our own! January 24, 1977 235 Lifelong Search for Home Storm Straw by straw Flew away my nest My children Poking their beaks Into the eyes of My dead dreams Wife unskinning me To cover the hollow drum Of her ambition On my wake they are all Dancing, drinking And singing I die alone And with shame An exhibition will open To show their art Objectively painted Unemotionally hung On the walls of law Each lie is a frame Each curse a song Bird flies away Empty song In a blue sky I lived Died in vain! January 24, 1977 Song is a moment The tune is the mood Once missed It can’t be caught Like a bird Freed from the net And flown! 236 January 24, 1977 Poems of Unkinship Darkness brought us together In moonlight we walked At dawn we separated We came to know each other Only too well! January 24, 1977 Love is like a carving Made on a bench With sharp knives Remaining behind Long after We are gone The hurt is deeper Than a visible scar On the surface! January 24, 1977 My English is as good As your pretence Of the adoption Of our culture! January 24, 1977 237 Lifelong Search for Home How agonizing it is Always to be and not to be To be always hated and loved To be cut off like a scab Because you are wanted You are like an operation To be performed on someone to live How agonizing it is to be always derailed In order to travel When life is a detour And death is not the goal How painful it is to be Always torn Between two shores of the same ocean And yet love floating How agonizing is the meeting With a constant wish To separate Being one’s own friend And one’s own enemy How difficult it is To be AND Not to be! They call me backward Because I drink my sorrow Unmixed with liquor! 238 January 26, 1977 January 26, 1977 Poems of Unkinship For twenty years A shadow of estrangement Grew between us Reaching the height Of a mountain At the peak We met And fell apart! How quickly that All pervading Eternal Sky of our unity Fell Once the fragile Invisible thinnest thread Broke at the seam! January 26, 1977 January 26, 1977 Even the best one Among those Has betrayed him once Whom she proclaimed To have loved Eternally! January 27, 1977 239 Lifelong Search for Home It was just another Repetition of words She rehearsed on others Whom she said ‘I love you’ And sure enough Other rehearsals are Scheduled to follow For certainly You were not the end (Or the beginning) Of the act But the middle! January 27, 1977 Loneliness is a crowd Silence a thunder Ideas exploding like population Words torn apart Like withering clouds Fields of desires all dried Nothing rains A heat wave of the past Still burning Living is only a prelude To death I die! All said Nothing And nothing Said it all! 240 January 27, 1977 January 27, 1977 Poems of Unkinship Like their houses They will open their hearts When they are all set For sale! January 28, 1977 So many times They have all lied Your fingers to my body My face, my lips My eyes, my heart Your tongue to my ears Your pen to my eyes And your eyes to my dreams All my senses are numbed All your words a renunciation You come to tell me now Something or the other But tell me With what Should I listen! January 28, 1977 241 Lifelong Search for Home In all their eight Or seven decades My mother never learnt A word of English My sister-in-law never knew How to sign her name And not a single theory Of life-cycles That you write about Or live They never saw their names Printed in papers (Or called out in courts) And yet I thank for all Those non-recognitions Because they gave Faith to the living And prayers to the dead And not once temptations Made them bow And they could say In their simple vocabulary ‘No’ to the power And live Together! January 28, 1977 Again The sky is being filled With these vultures of law Another house is to be burnt Another corpse of love They are waiting For the feast! 242 January 29, 1977 Poems of Unkinship So many things we desire A palace Things to fill the palace Vans to move things So many things we desire For our face, our nose Our hair, our body From hairpins to diamonds So many things we desire That we have no place For human beings In our heart! Looking at a book of poems I feel Already Too many tears In my hands And no money! January 29, 1977 January 29, 1977 Another mother dies Another brother in jail Another home in ruins Nothing glues us together more Than a red paint of sorrow Mixed with blood And tears! January 29, 1977 243 Lifelong Search for Home So many broken images Don’t paint one picture Only confusion! Love: We are trying to sew A torn river Again! A long journey ends At a table Alone In a crowd! January 29, 1977 January 29, 1977 January 29, 1977 A fly always eats Breakfast before me I am not alone! January 29, 1977 244 Poems of Unkinship Since you have left me Everyone has been Friendly to me Waitresses in restaurants Clerks in stores Tellers in banks People in streets Friends have become friendlier Full of more concern and more love Everyone has been friendly Ever since you left Except my stomach And my heart! January 29, 1977 One more anger Produces no love One more shout Will produce no sense And one more law Will not quiet the heart One more force Will not create faith Life like ocean waves Will conquer all That suppresses! January 30, 1977 245 Lifelong Search for Home Once I would rush At the sight of the news Of your anticipated arrival Now you have come And I sit here Not even waiting! January 30, 1977 The nail we were to use To hang a picture We were to paint Together Is being used On the cross To nail our love! January 30, 1977 Behind every successful woman There is a ruined man A broken marriage And neglected kids! January 30, 1977 Among the multitudes of roses Of decorations, praises and worships A nail can always be found For the cross! 246 (Remembering Gandhi Ji) January 30, 1977 Poems of Unkinship After all the answers Only the issues! January 30, 1977 Be not so proud That in my surrender And defeat You have won All There are still Enemies Living with you In the shape of my children Reminding you of My seed My memory My blood! January 30, 1977 Of all her white Spotless body There remains A blood mark Of my murder Victory is never Without a stain! She killed our love And demanded all As taxes For burial! January 30, 1977 January 30, 1977 247 Lifelong Search for Home Desire by the day Wait by the night Life went by Gradually! January 30, 1977 And like gypsies They all go away Leaving my future Unread! January 30, 1977 Life brings a new dawn For her As her eyes bring New radiance With each nail Driven into my heart! January 30, 1977 Every time Our eyes meet I see Writing on the wall Changing! January 30, 1977 And for this death Not even a condolence card From the so-called friends! January 30, 1977 248 Poems of Unkinship Shouting All to communicate nothing Tears of helplessness And a sorrowful kiss History told us again Nothing has changed! January 31, 1977 We all have versions Not the tale! January 31, 1977 In those careless Wild oats Of the day Are sown the seeds Of loneliness For tomorrow! February 5, 1977 So many times They have said Good bye to me But on this final one Tears came From the eyes of one I felt so filled With the parting gift! February 6, 1977 Yes, she is free now FREE For everyone But me! February 6, 1977 249 Lifelong Search for Home Certainly We have made Lots of progress In one generation The wreckage of the dream Which broke my heart Is taken for granted By the youngest son Of mine Before his youth! February 6, 1977 Inside my heart A mountain grows Every day Out of ruins I walk upon it Turning my loneliness Into a blissful solitude Inside my heart Flows a river (Of many streams) Of sorrow I bathe in it To forget All the betrayals Agonies Broken loves Like my sins I wash them off I dip once more My heart, my healer Ocean of love This too I name After you Oh faithless broth! February 6, 1977 250 Poems of Unkinship When we were poor And had nothing but love We made love In our ruins Now we had much more Than what you desired So you can make more of the same In the ruins of Our love At what point love Turns into a barter Into a commodity At what point does it Begin to sell And turns a woman like you Into a common street girl Covered in titles Prestige and words At what stage Does the drama end And reality begin? Strange I wanted to be the youngest child Of my father Who would kill A monster And marry a princess I never knew The princess kills Before one ever meets A monster killer Of fairy tales! February 6, 1977 February 6, 1977 251 Lifelong Search for Home It is not so long ago Do you remember the night We parted for a while You insisted on making love In a room filled with people And now we part alone And you want other people To make love to you While I turn blind With the shame of it all! Divorce A new Creative deodorant She washes Herself Inside out Virginity returns (Who is next?) Finally After a detour Love Marriage Divorce I return To my goal The beginning Filled with emptiness And experienced In agonies Circle begins! 252 February 6, 1977 February 6, 1977 February 11, 1977 Meeting Like Waves 1978 253 Lifelong Search for Home For ‘Pavitra’ — the Purest love 254 Meeting Like Waves 1 Let us not meet Because we have to take Something from each other Because we have to fill The emptiness within us — Let one not die a gradual death Because the other knows No better way to live other than that Let us not become the balm for each other That our separation will renew our wounds Let us meet for this and only this reason That without knowing Two streams came From unknown directions And met Suddenly and without any effort And after the separation There is to be no analysis Of how much they gave Or took away from one another Whatever natural path there is In the stream We have to just flow Only IN THAT. May 12, 1978 255 Lifelong Search for Home 2 The love that was performed Like the Brahmin’s pooja In the squares of palaces With rules and regulations The love that was contained like water Of a tank walled with stones The love that was fermented like bottled wine in time Is no love at all It may be an act, a play There is no love hidden In silken clothes In floral decorations Or in perfumes That love we have done Among the rocks Among the deserts Among the forests Among the thorns On the bridges being broken and built And, of course, having broken all the rules Among the lusty waves Of the ocean We mixed it again and again With the soul in our blood And drank and drank We have lived it, yes, we have. May 10, 1978 256 Meeting Like Waves 3 Everything that is ours Will one day vanish Civilization Culture Palaces Creations And even we ourselves But love If not through ours Then through someone else’s Happiness, sadness Will kindle, will burn d Will flourish, will come to life Again and again And even without wishing Will always be loved — ! May 6, 1978 4 This velvet grass My head placed in your lap As if a baby deer Having been lost Has returned home Fully reassured. May 4, 1978 257 Lifelong Search for Home 5 It very well may be That I am just another milestone To measure the road Of her never ending sex-journey Even the dim number that I am May not be recognized in the future It may be That our love too Is just one more meal of the path simply bought Which will be digested tomorrow and will go out Or, in her victory, I am just another unknown wound Which will heal itself without leaving any trace in history It may be that I am just another unseen point In her expanding horizon filled with vacuum But as for now It is on me that her eyes are fixed It is by me that she is creating A new epic of the Brahman And for the eternity of this moment It is no little satisfaction That I — even if it was for only a minute Stopped a sea in storm Like a drop And that I was able to own an earthquake Calming it down As for now Let me, too, Live this moment Of my eternity. May 2, 1978 258 Meeting Like Waves 6 It is as if this is what I waited for Having received the offerings The indication of your Incomplete Dissected Impermanent Love The alter place of my fiery heart has become peaceful Having been touched by you like the river A whole stormy sea of desire has become calm As if this boiling life only needed A sprinkle of warm water-drops from you That suddenly, having come to the surface All its burning has stopped. May 2, 1978 7 Sometimes There comes such a moment That the whole life is lived IN THAT And sometimes The whole life is spent Searching for THAT MOMENT. May 8, 1978 259 Lifelong Search for Home 8 If we meet Let us meet like waves When we separate Let us separate like waves That we will remain many in one And one in many And never there shall be With ourselves Or with others (And how will one differentiate that?) Any complaints. May 1, 1978 9 No, it is not that That whole fireland of hatred is behind me Nor that there will never be a new hunger of desire in you Or that you will not be tempted to have new experiments Or that the stream of your heart will not long for any new flow It is not that having found a clear, simple path The chariot of future motions has been stopped Nor has the path of the forest ended No, nothing in this city of illusions seems to have changed And yet, I don’t know why My heart, having seen in your flickering eyes A pure fluid stopped Suddenly has become calm And each fleeting thought deep within me Has become reassured. May 2, 1978 260 Meeting Like Waves 10 When we were lost on the path of that thick forest How close the destination seemed How transparent was each face In that free, open fall How deeply we belonged to each other Standing next to those unknown trees How vast was the lap of mother earth And how liberal we were with love Now again, we are stuck in the tunnel of the city Now again, we are divided from each other Afraid, like snakes we have entered our own holes Again, our lives are like slipping ropes And again, we are covered By the suffocating mass Of our own poisonous breaths. May 15, 1978 11 Kiss: Do you remember when I sprinkled on your cheeks The redness of the dawn And you awakened in my eyes A whole dream-world? June 3, 1978 261 Lifelong Search for Home 12 Memory: A whole garden Full of rosy life Is left behind But the caravan of the heart Is still so filled With its fragrance. June 3, 1978 13 Where does this search end Collecting love Piece by piece Like dry broken leaves To warm the hearth of life So quickly everything turns to ashes And nothing much is warmed But surely we were not born To love each other like aliens To burn our huts And remain cold Surely there must have been Something more to life Than memories Of the things that Could have been done But where does this search end? 262 April 26, 1978 Meeting Like Waves 14 You drew closer And pressed me With a cold hand’s warmth I am beginning to read A distance again (Coming between You and me). April, 21, 1978 15 Like these weeds in the lawn My thoughts grow I need you To mow them And turn my life Into an orchard Of heavenly bliss And earthly beauty. April 27, 1978 263 Lifelong Search for Home 16 Use me not Like a bridge To go across To other frontiers Of experiments Use me as a stream To flow with To merge into To be one — An unbound ocean Of love That we all are In the end. April 27, 1978 17 With some we walk parallel Like railroad tracks All life And always remain Far and Separate With some we meet One moment Like a river And a stream And are at once One And the same. April 27, 1978 264 Meeting Like Waves 18 Freeze my love And keep it in your heart So we can have a feast When I return. April 27, 1978 19 To merge in time Is to renounce TIME To be with you Is to deny — ‘I’ We only are When we are not. April 29, 1978 20 No east, no west At a point on this earth Somewhere, where Directions meet and disappear Under the horizon Full of stars Close to all and equally far We meet to undo ourselves And become the universe. April 29, 1978 265 Lifelong Search for Home 21 Tall is the palm tree Standing high in a desert But it gives shade to no one Vast is the roof of the sky But it gives no shelter to anyone And all your saintly vanity May be truly so great Beyond the reach of the palm Tree and the horizon But what solace is this To a person Who wants love Even if momentarily Poured out as lust. April 29, 1978 266 Meeting Like Waves 22 All the debates of who we were All the questions of what I was Or am or will be All the arguments of our rights Owning, possessing, or telling Our worth Forgotten The sky was our only witness The earth, our only bed The ocean, our best friend Do you still remember The sandy beach Or weedy fields Where we lost ourselves Like nameless children In an unknown land And found The universe? Love is like Being dead And reborn. April 30, 1978 23 We don’t meet Until the darkness of night What am I doing Awake Hours before The dawn! April 29, 1978 267 Lifelong Search for Home 24 How small love looked In the beginning Like the source of a river And now, stream after stream Flows And the agony of the ocean Is never full. April 22, 1978 25 A nice day Let someone else write a love poem Can I love? April 30, 1978 26 Love Sparks Burns Cools Evaporates And lives! 268 May 1, 1978 Meeting Like Waves 27 So many sunsets have made my face wrinkled So many moon-rises have burnt my heart So many rainy seasons have sung my songs of separations So many springs have laughed at my ruins And yet, I waited Like an unknown buried treasure Was it for you that I went Through the teeth of Time’s saw Moment by moment chopped with rituals Maybe it was Because surely even all my agonies Trials and regrets Have left enough love for You and me But Will you come??? May 2, 1978 28 Frosty ground of my heart is melting As the bitter winter of hatred ends Life tree blossoms again With fresh leaves and buds Of hopes Soon the love-bird shall return And sing a song Long forgotten. May 4, 1978 269 Lifelong Search for Home 29 Can you really sleep When I am awake Can you truly weave A garment of dreams While I hear A roar of time Tearing the curtain Of the future apart How shall we ever unite In separation And yet, the earth is held Always By two opposite poles. May 4, 1978 30 I am an ocean Blue with agonies Deep with sorrows Unrestrained streams And rivers of love Still floating Toward me Never changing the Level. May 7, 1978 270 Meeting Like Waves 31 Like honey and milk Mixed to the last drop Let our lives be That with each sip We do not differentiate But taste the sweetness Of us TOGETHER. May 2, 1978 32 Yes, this, too May be a flickering, passing phase This, too, may die prematurely I will celebrate its death, too (Drinking the liquor of sorrow With a feast of memories) All this, too, may come But let me for the moment Celebrate The birth With the freest joy And unrestrained folly. May 2, 1978 271 Lifelong Search for Home 33 Having had you My heart is So calm Like the ocean After the storm. May 7, 1978 34 Even more than meeting I like the way You say ‘good bye’. May 8, 1978 35 Practicing self-nihilation since my childhood I give away myself Reducing again and again To a zero But there is always someone Who stands like a digit Before that And multiplies life Infinitely. May 13, 1978 272 Meeting Like Waves 36 Let them get all the books And screw themselves on every page In a new posture And let them collect all the junk devices And overkill in their mechanic self-love Let me reach you In a simple Primitive Natural way Give you all And be filled For there is only one way for a river To meet the ocean Even in love. May 11, 1978 37 The language I write in A poem for you You don’t understand The speech that thinks My thoughts My language does not know And then there is something Beyond my language Wordless speech And beyond thoughts Let us be there And submerge So no one will ever need To proclaim Our love! May 11, 1978 273 Lifelong Search for Home 38 How sweet How beautiful Each falling In love Must be Like this Mountain fall. May 14, 1978 39 When does the viewer become a view A doer an act A subject an object When does the eater become the eaten A lover a beloved It is only at that stage We will talk about our love When you and I Cannot talk anymore About me and you Until then, let the streams wander around And search their paths For there can be no ‘self’ After the union THAT you seek. May 13, 1978 274 Meeting Like Waves 40 Like other things We routinely do In the morning Love, too, is A daily ritual. May 16, 1978 41 Love is not poetry Read Love is poetry Lived. May 17, 1978 42 Like the innocent childish ducks My heart plays In the ocean of your love Waiting always For the new waves to come I run, I dive I sink, I survive Like ducks Like hearts I am there One with you And many. May 18, 1978 275 Lifelong Search for Home 43 Let us not be the seekers Let us not be the sought after Let us be the found. May 18, 1978 44 My heart A vast unknown Dark sky Your love A moon Together they make Each other shine And meaningful. May 18, 1978 45 When the fields are dry And the ocean sad When the sky is grey with storms And the hearts heavy When the leaves are pale And the trees naked I hope we still can sing together Even in sorrow Love is a song, a music Sung in harmony Even if the strings are loose And melodies broken. May 19, 1978 276 Meeting Like Waves 46 So much will always remain unsaid Our speech so choked up with emotions Our silence so much interrupted by words — Full of so many meaningless syllables — Our meetings so shortened by worldly deeds — All so futile in the end — Our love so little expressed For the lack of courage Why have we trapped ourselves With so many artificial universes — All in the end leaving us blank — That we can never adequately say — ‘I love you’. May 27, 1978 47 Rains of sorrow Clouds of doubts The sky of my heart Is grey again With feelings so uncertain A rainbow of your love Shines in So many colors I live again I live again And again. June 2, 1978 277 Lifelong Search for Home 48 The ocean, the heart Remains unchanged And yet, yesterday It was giving me poison (Bitter and burning) And today I drink Drop by drop The nectar of sweetness (Cool and soothing) Filtered through memories Because the person Who churns Is suddenly changed Awakening a goddess Inside me. 278 June 3, 1978 Meeting Like Waves 49 There are loves like heavy stones on one’s head It sinks him There are loves like a noose around the neck It chokes one to death And then some loves turn into betrayal Always to be thorns in the throat And demands to absorb you Like deserts absorb the clouds So many shades of love I have seen In the rainbow of life But yours was a soothing breeze Sailing my ship In the ocean of calmness Always clearing the path ahead Always backing from behind And always like a ship-bird Flying over me June 8, 1978 50 Clouds shall always be there But so shall be our wings And our power to fly through them And to float on the plane Where all visions are clear And the horizon of our dreams Knows no limits Only the will To be beyond What we know. June 9, 1978 279 Lifelong Search for Home 51 Do you remember When a whole universe Incarnated itself On my lips Through the touch of a finger tip of yours? Do you remember When Time stopped forever In your eyes? Do you remember When a whole epic Spoke through an interrupted syllable? THAT is what surrounds me now THAT is what calls me now And THAT is what is making the pen pour ink on the paper In order to make an incomplete copy Of that total painting. Do you remember that moment When we lived the life Of the three worlds and the three times And in one drop We drank the whole nectar sea of pleasure Of eternal bliss MY salvation now searches for That hidden ‘I’ ‘YOU’ AND ‘WE’ When we gathered the whole scattered desert (of emotions) And sewed it into one atom!!! June 3, 1978 280 Thinking of You 1979 281 Lifelong Search for Home For Kathleen, whose selfless devotion sustained me during the darkest days of my life, with gratitude and love, April 13–14, 1979 282 Thinking Of You Among the millions of roses of kisses So many thorns of memories I am drowned in fragrance And yet I bleed. Apri1 26, 1978 How desperate the race becomes In love To catch the one Who is not even running. April 29, 1978 I wish you were Like the river Ganges So we all could have Dived in you To purify ourselves And attain Eternal bliss. April 29, 1978 Loving is like dying Each time anew For surely love without dying Cannot be Love kills To resurrect. May 1, 1978 283 Lifelong Search for Home Separation always Binds us With the Thread of agony. May 2, 1978 Knowing fully well That we shall not meet again Why do I keep awake All night Day dreaming. May 4, 1978 Poetry is having A morning conversation With you In earnest and love! May 14, 1978 Storm is over Love is again Ocean blue deep. 284 May 16, 1978 Thinking Of You Silence dries up the ocean of words Separation spreads love across the seas The unsaid covers the vacuum left behind We always shall live for And by the things that are not there You, your love and all that We were supposed to have done Memories of the past and sweet dreams of the future In the end we are near By being far And one By being the other. June 8, 1978 Once more A thin blade of grass Shot out from a stone I feel My love for you Is being born All anew! August 11, 1978 I have put my heart out again To defrost Emotions like spices all being mixed Preparing a feast For your arrival. August 16, 1978 285 Lifelong Search for Home Absorb me like The ocean absorbs the waves And storm And becomes calm Absorb me like The forest absorbs the wind And turns it into a soothing breeze Absorb me like The earth absorbs angry Clouds and floods For it is in you That my dreams and agonies Vibrations and storms Get fulfilment And it is in you That I find Myself As one and many! August 25, 1978 Like the image of The Reclining Buddha in a Thai Temple You sleep Tranquil Like a devotee (waiting in line) I worship Silent! 286 August 25, 1978 Thinking Of You The golden ray falls on your face And becomes more radiant It needs you to reflect what it is The rose having been placed in your arms Becomes a reality And stars through your eyes Are seen like dreams Nature was and will be always there But it is you and me Who make it what it is Beautiful. August 25, 1978 Early morning I caress your sleeping face Gently So as not to disturb Your sweet dreams A smile shines across your lips Like a desired lightening In a dark sky I see a whole universe Created all anew! August 25, 1978 I compete With the morning ray To kiss your cheeks And make a dawn rise On your face. August 25, 1978 287 Lifelong Search for Home Absorb me Like I have absorbed These billions of ocean waves In my eyes Bear me Like I have Tolerated the various moods Of the sea Remain with me Like sweet memories Of the thick forest And unlimited sky For with you I have become The universe — Expanded yet one — August 24, 1978 Even a hundred songs of sorrow Cannot replace The loss of the face Whose cheeks you kissed So tenderly! August 30, 1978 Like a frustrated wasp Hitting against a glass window I am seeing a dream Beyond my reach! August30, 1978 288 Thinking Of You Like a sweet dream It dies Like a full moon It fades Our love At the dawn Of the real world! August 30, 1978 Like the sunset The end of love too Is as beautiful as The beginning Only the darkness Replaces the light After the radiance Not the dawn and sunlight! August 30, 1978 So real seemed the dream So close looked the heaven And in this dark night A curtain of doubts Will the dawn ever come Will we really ever meet? August 30, 1978 289 Lifelong Search for Home Like the ground After the hard rain My heart fumes Steams of sorrow After a shower Of your love. August 30, 1978 I am still touching my fingers That caressed your face To feel the love And its song! August 30, 1978 And again I sing a song of “love” In this foreign land Where no one understands The words or the tune And where it is considered insane To sing anything But a polite lie. September 4, 1978 It was like a rose garden No matter how much I cursed Those thorns When I entered it Life again gave such a fragrance I was intoxicated Meeting you is like Falling in love All over again Forgetting the tortures of the past. September 5, 1978 290 Thinking Of You Meet me Like a new dew drop Kissing a new leaf For there shall be No other moment To repeat This love! September 5 1978 Like the bhil woman In the Ramayana I taste my feelings Before I give you The sweet ones I hope you don’t mind Offerings of The left over half! September 5, 1978 Love is a self creating cycle After the first pebble drop Each circle Bigger than the last! September 5, 1978 291 Lifelong Search for Home There is a blue clear sky But where are the eyes I compare its beauty and depth with There are roses all blossomed in the garden But where are the smiles That made them meaningful Nature is at its best In harmony with all that lives But where are you To make me immerse into it For an eternal bliss! September 8, 1978 Each moment Is an eternal wait When I come to meet you Each moment Is an exciting life’s experience An anticipation of divine pleasure Truly in loving you I die and live At the same time! 292 September 8, 1978 Thinking Of You The heart absorbed as many emotions As the drops in the ocean Silence roared like waves And our eyes looked at the horizon But our dreams reached beyond that Love is a very strange thing It makes our limited body an infinite soul And when we forget ourselves By absorbing each other We create a universe Containing many worlds Here and beyond. September 11, 1978 Sometimes in your sad eyes I read the obituary Of our love And I say to myself “Well, nothing becomes immortal Without dying (At least) once!” September 12, 1978 293 Lifelong Search for Home I hope we know the geography of our bodies well The heights, the depths The flows, the falls The greeneries and the valleys The mountains and the curves And all the unmarked points I hope we discover each day An island of love — Hidden and unknown — But never to hurt Only to make that what’s lovely lovelier The truth to make truer And blissful to be more divine I hope each moment of ours Floats like a small stream Into a big stream And finally We create A large ocean Of love All complete by itself. Hurry not Let each moment fall gently Like a dew drop at night Let it shine with the others Until the sun of realities comes into our horizon (And reaches the peak) Let our love create a silent beauty (Without ever worrying about its eternity) Because in the end for sure All will be absorbed By nothingness. 294 September 12, 1978 September 12, 1978 Thinking Of You Let’s part like the sun So our love is as beautiful At the end Like dusk As it was In the beginning Like dawn! September 12, 1978 The ocean roared with joy through the waves World around The sky was so endlessly vast and clear The sun shone as brightly as it ever could Then why did we cover ourselves up To express our love So meekly All in silence! September 12, 1978 This much is all I ever want That in the end We can be next to each other On a deserted long wild beach On a grandfather’s blanket (Still protecting like his soul) And your fingertip Touches my lips Lightly and gently To say good bye But everything changes constantly here So maybe even this much May seem Beyond our reach I shall understand. September 12, 1978 295 Lifelong Search for Home I use your love (Like you use your grandfather’s blanket) For security That even When life is tattered And long periods of time And space separate us I can still breathe A sigh of relief Remembering How close we were once Shielding each other From the whole world! Some day There just may not be Time Event to wait. September 12, 1978 September 13, 1978 Do we always have to prove Our love By being separate? September 13, 1978 296 Thinking Of You When promises break like a lump of soft clay under an elephant’s foot When words fail us like the rain that never came When the last step between us becomes an unconquerable space wide as the horizon When everything is absorbed and seems like all-consuming darkness Our tears — though oceans apart like the beginnings of two rivulets — We’ll still meet And proclaim Our unity and love! The sea was there I could not drink it The mountain was there I could not climb it I was always so near And remained so far But always being drowned Always being pressed Agony of silence Always writing The epic of love. September 15, 1978 September 15, 1978 297 Lifelong Search for Home It’s true When bitter winter will come And time and space will be counted In terms of our separation And frozen memories Eclipse covering both the sun and our love Only the thorns will be brave enough To penetrate little by little in our hearts When the future looks cloudy like the sky It’s true That all that may come to pass Will your name still give warmth To my blue lips And remind me of a lonely pond Where we paddled our short journey together And fed the ducks who greeted us with joy When we both are living in our dark little shells Will we still shed tears to write a poem of love And say yes There is, as there was, In spite of all Enough love in this world For me and you To survive! 298 September 16, 1978 Thinking Of You We shall meet again In the day To shed our tears Alone At night! Oh, how far gone They already seem My morning poems Of gloom and realities How strange I have Already become to them Having swum across Another love of yours I feel so resurrected That I have covered myself With the sweetest dreams Even before I go to bed And my lips whisper Goodnight to you — My dear — Who is not here But of course is! September 18, 1978 September 18, 1978 299 Lifelong Search for Home Yes, I have built An army of arguments against you Yes, I have prepared The lengthiest brief In my favor Accusations, doubts Historical facts Social norms All crept crawling Like worms all over my heart And yet When I faced you All it took Was a smile And a touch Gentle as a feather Tender as a lotus Armies vanished. Castles destroyed I accept defeat With pleasure And a whisper from your lips Declaring your victory “I love you My love”. September 19, 1978 300 Thinking Of You Like a friendly maiden The moon kept shining Through the stained window Filtering its countless eyes Through the leaves of the porch tree Like a spy it looked at us Through the leaks But we churned its beauty Into nectar Its maze into a new painting Its soothingness into a bath In a pleasure pond And we mixed our hearts Our minds, our bodies And made A new kind of love! September 19, 1978 The moon is hidden Behind the clouds I remember your face Covered with shyness! September 19, 1978 I know it will bring me No more soberness to walk Or the clear direction of the goal Yet, like a habitual drunkard I go again On the path Leading to your door! September 21, 1978 301 Lifelong Search for Home The food is still good But eating without you — Alone — Is like a feast of wake In a cremation ground! September 23, 1978 I wanted to meet one of those Who has renounced the fear of flying I found a mountain of hidden fears in their hearts Their zipless love became zipped at the crucial moment All the daring words of giving up hang-ups Just remained words Challenging to dare I met them with open arms And open mind But found them narrowing me To squeeze my freedom between two fingers And choking my speech My sky is being zeroed in And I am looking for an escape To be primitive again! September 23, 1978 What future Can that love have When you kiss Only to say ‘Good-bye’, September 27, 1978 302 Thinking Of You I am like a standby passenger Waiting to be accommodated When and if a seat is available Love is like collecting memories To warm your cold blue agonies in the future Journey is suffering alone in search of a path And momentary co-travelers No moon, no sunshine Only your own dark shadow Working as a light I still walk God knows why And to where! September 27, 1978 Telegrams, letters Little reminders To make you remember Will that be enough mortar To build a Taj of your love Thank God, at least you will be Spared the tourists To admire And to scribble their black names In hope of being remembered! September 27, 1978 Let our love not be Perfume in a bottle To imprison and to truncate Let it be an opening Of the cork So its fragrance Can fill the world! September 27, 1978 303 Lifelong Search for Home Even in a shell A pearl can be born Even in a cell Freedom is conceived The question is: Do we dare? September 27, 1978 And sometimes There is no one Even to say ‘Good-bye’ September 30, 1978 Wait is all there is My work waiting for my life to shape up I wait for you And you for some mysterious moment That moment waits For someone else’s mood And when the time comes We all depart Alone Wait ends! October 1, 1978 Loving you is like Lying under a plum tree With my mouth open Hoping the fruit will fall Before it is too ripe To be tasted! October 1, 1978 304 Thinking Of You Like a cup from the potter’s wheel You cut me off When obligations knead you Like that lump of clay And yet the thread becomes More binding with each cut And our non-relation Glues us together with one more hurt How many times we broke up a branch Which was not there Only to grow an orchard of emotions A flower fades away Before it reaches From your hand to mine Only to shine like a rose Our darkest hours are only a prelude to a new dawn Mornings never meet evenings And yet they seem to be the best mirror of each other As love is We are cutting ourselves little by little Like the pieces of a picture puzzle And then picking up patiently We try to fit each piece Will we ever complete it In our lifetime Hope waits on the crossroad of life Dreams awaken Asking questions Once more! October 1, 1978 305 Lifelong Search for Home We regressed once more to our childhood And played our primitive games In the most mechanized world Lake reflected our purest mood Sky showed its brightest face Our hearts danced like little ducks And the forest played hide and seek It was so divine To be so unrelated And so united We created the universe of one brotherhood We never tried But heaven descended on earth in the purest form Suddenly a breeze came Bringing your memory I pass my dreams on to you! October 1, 1978 A fly is an uninvited guest But does she know it? A traveler without a permit But does she care? On any occasion — Death or life — She serves herself Without a ritual She flies free In or out of a plane And makes love to whomever she chooses While we debate about life A fly lives. 306 October 3, 1978 Thinking Of You Like the evening shadows Our love grew Sadness covers it all Like the dark night. October 3, 1978 So many times I have flown the friendly skies of United Crossing thick forests Deep valleys Winding rivers Shining cities The American way So many times I have treaded the paths Uneven and unknown And so many times I felt Left out and non-absorbed So much of me is made by the land of others So much of the land is created with my unwanted blood Mysteries always multiplying Unfolding tangled paths within me Frightened, I withdraw In my own shelter Lost and unknown Even to myself And then you come Like a broken dream repasted And I try to fly again In an untapped ground I live As I dive in your private world. October 9, 1978 307 Lifelong Search for Home Like this Texas land Your heart So vast Like this Texas land Your heart So empty So void! October 9, 1978 How beautiful are the falling golden leaves How sensual is the moon of autumn months As if they all are there to greet something new Something fresh Why am I so afraid of the end Why does sadness return to my face Seeing a tree going yellow? October 10, 1978 Did the river know Where it was going to fall When it started Or did it also go like I On winding roads Just hoping! October 10, 1978 308 Thinking Of You Like a river I am always leaving home To meet you Like a river I am always on the way Like a river I am always falling into you Like a river I am always there Where I am not! October 10, 1978 It’s with a pen you gave me I write a poem It’s with a reminder you sent me I keep track of pages in the book It’s your thought that keeps me awake But you are always so far away Do you really want Only to live through memories? Soon Full autumn moon Will be shining in the sky Devotees will gather on the banks of holy rivers Lovers at the Taj And we will be alone Mourning our love That was to be! October 11, 1978 October 11, 1978 309 Lifelong Search for Home Yes, we all lead our own lives You are always fast asleep In your home I am always awake In a nomad’s camp Carrying your memory From tent to tent And road to road! October 11, 1978 I knew from the beginning That short meetings will end In a long separation Yet, like a habitual drunkard I walked once more In the trap of love! October 11, 1978 At dawn I saw a lonely star In the sky Ready to sink In the light (Like my dream) I felt a queer Sense of brotherhood! October 11, 1978 The morning ray And fallen leaf Both golden But what a difference Like you in your home And I in a nowhere land. October 11, 1978 310 Thinking Of You My joy of meeting you Is like the fragrance of fresh flowers Placed on the grave Of a sad, silent soul Because I fear That soon We will be separated Forever! Taking advantage of your absence This autumn moon Came to my bed Through the window Like a thief And put around me Her million hands I cried for you O my sweet moon When will this eclipse be over! October 11, 1978 October 12, 1978 The stamp you used to send me a letter Said “love” And now that you took it away (Without my knowledge) I feel As if I’m missing A major part of myself A vacuum returned! October 13, 1978 311 Lifelong Search for Home The envelope without your stamp called “love” Lay there Like a dead body Without a heart You again own more than you gave Your “love” & me! October 13, 1978 Separated by cowardice United by loneliness You lie there Sick I mourn here Alone And we call it love! October 15, 1978 A feather — Found floating in a lake — Of an unknown bird Can it brush away My wounds Can it ever speak to me The language I want to hear Of an absent love! October 15, 1978 I never knew It takes an eternity For a moment of waiting To pass. October 16, 1978 312 Thinking Of You We have signed our names On a card Together I hope our hearts are always At least as close As our names On this card! October 19, 1978 It is not true That dreams don’t come true any more The truth is That we don’t remember how to dream! October 21, 1978 Having crossed the seven seas Now I know How long the last step is That it will drown many times the seven seas And we shall remain Still the farthest! October 22, 1978 Tired of waiting and reading About all those heroes Who were tired of waiting And reading Love is still the last priority in this world After ruined homes Broken dreams And kin left behind Shadows still count more than substance I am a fool If I still dream! October 22, 1978 313 Lifelong Search for Home Like a poem I watch my love happen One step leading to the next The end Without an end Like a poem! October 22, 1978 Yes, she had A million things to do But to tell me That she loves me Was not One of them! A surprise phone call An unexpected kiss A sudden tender touch A silent look An unscheduled letter A tear full of warmth and sorrow Oh, there are so many ways to say “I love you”. 314 October 22, 1978 October 23, 1978 Thinking Of You Like the fragrance of those flowers Just plucked Like the breeze just passed by Like the memory of a rainbow in the sky Just vanished Like the smell of new rains just ended Your kisses left my lips Full of divinity Full of beauty And full of new life For an age to come! October 23, 1978 Even though my fingers Tread the same path On your body They always discover New trails for love To follow! October 23, 1978 Like the beautiful sun I look at you departing The sky of my heart Remains beautiful With evening radiance Parting too can be as living As meeting Nights of dreams in between Bringing some hope! October 23, 1978 315 Lifelong Search for Home Rains of love Producing The rainbow of life! I want to be one with you Let me have My portion of sufferings That separation brings And my share of joy That memories are I want to be one with you Even when love Kills us together And brings new tales I want to be one with you Like the colors Of the evening sky Touch me like The horizon of my earth. October 23, 1978 October 23, 1978 Let us make love Today As if There shall be No tomorrow! October 23, 1978 I wish there could be An arm Instead of a pillow To sleep on At night. October 23, 1978 316 Thinking Of You Like the evening shadow You withdraw After you have shown me The tallest dream. October 23, 1978 I am waiting for you Like one waits for a new babe to come For when you come A new love shall be born Again Like a big mango tree From an old seed Dead Some time ago! October 23, 1978 Our seats reclined like the Buddha in a Thai temple We lay cozily like innocent children in mother’s lap We looked at the stars and read our future — A shining present We said nothing The night said nothing The city — so dark like a loving woman — said nothing The silence said it all Love is a moment Absorbing eternity of togetherness. October 24, 1978 317 Lifelong Search for Home No hope That we shall ever be united No fear That we shall ever be separated Our love touches our lives Like the horizon touching this earth Always in sight And never reached! We shall always be one with each other Sharing the sorrow The guilt The regret About the life That could have been ours We shall always die in unison Moment by moment Drinking the poison Drop by drop From the same ocean Of agony Love never rewards the cowards Anything but The bitter harvest of memories Of the fruit That was to be! We meet at crossroads And public places And yet our love Remains so private Like the unknown star Waiting to be named! 318 October 24, 1978 October 24, 1978 October 24, 1978 Thinking Of You I am always writing An obituary of love But it is always dated Before the last word I start again! October 24, 1978 Everyone sleeps Like a deserted road’s lamp-post Like a lonely candle On some forgotten grave I burn All night In solitude! October 24, 1978 I don’t mind That you are In the state Of dreamless Sound sleep Like a goddess I don’t mind That I am awake Like a devotee My agony is That the gates of the temple are closed And I no longer see The deity To love and worship! October 24, 1978 319 Lifelong Search for Home Your eyes are deep like a lake But they are deeper when they meet mine Your hands are soft like lotus But they are softer when held by me So beautiful is the body, the gait, the voice But it is divine when I love you Together we create a heaven on earth Together we incarnate the universe The beauty The song And the power! October 24, 1978 Being in you is like Conquering a new frontier Being in you is like Becoming a baby again Safely wrapped around By protective arms Being part of you Makes me so proud And so humble! October 24, 1978 320 Thinking Of You So many green dreams have been buried To fertilize this one I am like an empty space Desired to be filled Like Time I fight against All that hangs in space I want a small point Where I can be rooted again Meeting you makes me hopelessly happy Seeing you go away fills me with sadness of expectations Who said life can be either this or that It is both Heaven and hell And love is intoxication I walk But no directions! October 25, 1978 Sometimes To survive our love (& for our love to survive us) We will let Each other go! October 25, 1978 Each day is an anniversary Of our love Each day we live an age An epoch Or even a life! October 29, 1978 321 Lifelong Search for Home Your phone call wakes me up Early in the dawn Who said there were no roosters In the civilized world To remind us Of the golden day To come I shall live it fully For you. October 29, 1978 Like a frightened bird We drop our present Fearful of a future not to be We wipe out our past With doubts and all Each moment weaves a garment of love We want to put it away In a memory box For a cold lonely day If life is so short Why don’t we live And not freeze it before The death of our love! 322 October 29, 1978 Thinking Of You Morning stars are my witness That I have excited myself so many times In your memory Morning birds are my companions That I have sung so many songs To proclaim our love Together with roosters I have awoken people Because I was one with you So many ways I communicated My thoughts to nature And yet all knew But you Why did not in the end Hear my call And did not come!! October 30, 1978 To love is to let go I freed you from the prison of my narrowness I freed myself from the fear of loss We both meet now In the extended horizon Like the sky and earth Like the air and water Like waves and breeze I let you go We let us go We are bound More than ever We love Not in bondage But in freedom! October 30, 1978 323 Lifelong Search for Home I have gone beyond liking your clothes I have gone beyond loving your face I have gone beyond liking to touch your smooth body I have gone beyond loving you When you call me darling I have gone beyond a relationship narrowed by words I have gone beyond “my-ness” in you I have gone beyond you and I Today I am with you and beyond you It seems I am learning the first step in love But whom do I thank? October 30, 1978 Suddenly I looked at the empty edge of the pillow Suddenly I realize the bigness of this bed Suddenly I feel the room is too vast for one Suddenly I miss you Is that, too, love? Today I lost my moon Darkness all around Let me light the lamps Of memories And make my love land shine! 324 October 30, 1978 October 30, 1978 Thinking Of You I have no well planned speech to tell you of my love I have no ritual to announce my belonging to you I have no set ways to show my feelings Like the mountain fall I simply fall in you Like the river I simply unite Words like waves simply spring When you are with me I no longer am If you want to call it “love” That’s fine For I sure no longer know What I am doing! October 30, 1978 Truly I must have loved you Because in your loss I gained you And the world! October 30, 1978 I am waiting For the moment When I no longer Will have to wait! November 1, 1978 There are times When you light a lamp And the whole universe Is cursed With darkness! November 4, 1978 325 Lifelong Search for Home Today you are Too tired to see me Tomorrow You will be Tired And will wish If only you could have! November 6, 1978 I am thinking of you As a dream You created I am thinking of you As a dream You broke! November 7, 1978 Like a prince In a fairytale I came When you called me (To rescue?) Only to find You secure in your fort And I in danger! 326 November 7, 1978 Thinking Of You A train goes by To your home I am not on it. November 7, 1978 The bed is Always a lonelier place After you have Come and gone! November 7, 1978 Searching for the abnormal psyche of man You held my hand publicly Under your garment Our fingers wrought The most beautiful Underground love-world. November 7, 1978 They told me Love will kill you Taking you to hell I never believed them They told me Love will bring you An eternal bliss I said, how untrue But knowing you I am swinging now Between eternal bliss of the day And the hell of the night I live an eternity And I die forever! November 8, 1978 327 Lifelong Search for Home Parting shall always come If death does us part Will you love me any less now If you knew that Why then are we not loving more When we know Soon we shall not be together Even if by choice! November 8, 1978 Filled with life, reassurance and hope Your coming is like a resurrection Your departure brings crucifixion to love A gloomy night descends On our faith And I feel I have already taken My last supper And we may never meet again! November 11, 1978 With each hour That we remained away We swore “It cannot be We just cannot bear this pain” And then, suddenly it was The moment we were face to face We were intoxicated with joy As if we never parted And never would! November 11, 1978 328 Thinking Of You It’s only A few moments ago That we parted Yet it seems As if I was exiled Ages ago I already miss you so! November 11, 1978 My room stayed so neat today The bed is so well made I feel so sad that There is no mess To remind me Of your presence! November 11, 1978 329 Lifelong Search for Home I have waited for you in so many places Railway stations, bus stops, parking lots Fast food stores, shops and street corners I have loved you in so many spots On the top of tallest buildings In forests, under waterfalls Bridges, parks, tunnels, playgrounds In the sky while we flew Across the land Or at home Motels and inns Together we shared life in so many ways Learning Eating Playing Swimming And what not It seems we have filled With so much of our love This land of yours And yet I feel empty so many times Why do you continuously choose To withdraw And to come! November, 14 1978 330 Thinking Of You Like a shadow You are always there On a sunny day Like a shadow You have always withdrawn Into the darkness Of our lives Like a shadow You belonged to me And you didn’t! Parting always Brings me close to death With its peace missing! She said, this has to be We have to live together And together we lived Seven oceans apart Agonies uniting us Forever! November 14, 1978 November 17, 1978 November 18, 1978 331 Lifelong Search for Home There was only the present Without any past or future We slept in each other’s arms Momentarily We saw the heaven Painting our past Living our future We are grateful. Today I saw A glimpse of a bud-like smile Even in the saddest eyes I suppose I am drunk With love all over! Even though those promises Fell like autumn leaves Our love still stands Like a winter tree Waiting for the spring to come And blossom again! November 18, 1978 November 18, 1978 November 18, 1978 Even in the thickest galaxy Filled with billions of stars Each planet has to travel Alone In an empty space Lucky That we at least met! November 18, 1978 332 Thinking Of You So many ways we traveled together On oceans, on ground and in the sky In boats, in trains, in planes And on foot So many highways, byways And skyways We covered hand in hand So many times we have mapped The geography of our bodies Lying in each other’s arms We sang the song of love With one voice again and again We thought this will never end And yet we knew all along That the last step We shall walk alone And the last note Will be our incomplete blues Sung in different worlds And by lonely voices! November 18, 1978 Our meetings are like The pills we take To calm our fever down Everyday But you can never be Overdosed! November 21, 1978 333 Lifelong Search for Home Walking on a beautiful beach Decked with golden rays Of the setting sun Did you miss a hand A caress Or an arm Around you? November 21, 1978 Why wish me a long life Full of wasted years Like a stack of hay Why not give me A momentary breeze Of your presence So I can swing with joy Like a short-lived flower In the orchard of this world! A smile of love Let it shake my heart Like lightening in the sky Filling with brightness And joy Even if Momentarily Let me be taken over! 334 November 21, 1978 November 21, 1978 Thinking Of You Like an untimely Western winter storm Your love came And left my heartland Devastated! November 21, 1978 The night was lonely without you (It always is) But the morning after the rain Left the mountains, the city So beautifully clear Freshly washed And the sun began ornamenting them With golden jewels And I felt so one with nature Life sang songs along with birds Full of love and faith Trees nodded! November 24, 1978 Silently we sit In our places You writing your reports And I our poems Our presence fills the room Our hearts Our dreams We feel each other Without a touch Of a hand or a sound Or even a view If this is not the life Of our dream What is We are fulfilled! November 27, 1978 335 Lifelong Search for Home When the train passes by your home But I am not on it When the ocean sings a song with the joy of waves And we are not together to dance When birds chirp and trees nod But we are far away to hear When spring gives a call And lovers swamp in orchards Flowers bloom and leaves are tender When a lonely path is treaded by a pair in love And your eyes get dim Do not ever shed a tear We may need them for the unfortunate ones Who never even knew love As we experienced it And I will count my blessings Along with the stars Sending with each one of them My love and kisses for you And prayers for those Who need them I will spend my life With eternal joy If you promise a smile On your golden lips When a memory of mine Runs through your mind Like lightening on a cloudy day! 336 December 1, 1978 ikkatīs prem kavitāẽ 31 Love Poems 2005 337 Lifelong Search for Home For Tiffany Who is entering The 31st year Of her life With deepest love 338 31 Love Poems 1 Eternity always Filters down Through moments We become immortal By living each moment We die eternally By not living Even one instant Let me live it With each and all Loves. 2 In that little three arched door Of the falling house in the village (where I was born) You had pictures taken I felt as if Through you The history of my Forgotten love Came alive! 339 Lifelong Search for Home 3 I see you all around me In the living room, courtyard and bed room On the roof and on the ground In poojas, celebrations and festivals In places of pilgrimages, in silken Delhi In five star hotels And in the little village mud house I feel you every where Singing, swinging and dancing Attracting with seductive eyes Bathing in holy waters and smoking bidis Worshipping in your philosophical posture Touching feet of the elders Washing mine with complete devotion I observe you wrapping India around you In the form of a Sari And depicting the west With your mini-skirt I dream of you pouring absolute love In the shadow of the Taj Mahal Totally giving your eternal undemanding love In so many shades Touching, caressing, hugging, kissing O you, the unique, selfless love of mine You filled me like filling The whole ocean in a little vase Drowned me in the vast sea of love Churning my life like a lake You gave the sea of nectar In a time-capsule Why? 340 31 Love Poems So I can bear now The whole desert Of a lonely life Living by the memories Of that cloud Which came like a hurricane And rained itself (In the monsoon of love) 341 Lifelong Search for Home 4 One day when My pen will take rest And words will fall silent Disappearing into the vacuum One day when My feet will take their last step And will become immobile With or without reaching their goal One day when There will remain No sorrows, no regrets No joy, no depression No enmity, no adversity Not even love or union One day when All questions and answers All disputes and arguments Will become mute All beyond words and meanings One day when The ocean of my life Will be reduced to a drop When the totality of life Will be contained in one moment Absorbing all my love I will give you happily That drop of nectar So that when I am gone You can live my Eternal memory O my love, who is beyond me. 342 31 Love Poems 5 All things are uncertain Who knows what will happen tomorrow And where When, today, all homes have become Wild fires of hatred and jealousy When leaders of the world Have become incarnations Of the demon Bhasmasur Ready to destroy all Having received the favor From the Lord Shiva of science Who knows, when and where The stage will change Along with scenes and situations It may be that tomorrow I may not be able to say What I want to say today With my heart all cleansed Containing in it all my golden dreams All the best wishes of the universe All my imaginations and prayers That to you I give My love Of all times and places contained in this One moment One atom Accept this As the eternity of Our relations. 343 Lifelong Search for Home 6 In your deep Penetrating, pensive Seductive eyes I found a more Beautiful monument of love Than the splendid Taj Mahal Built by an emperor For his dead wife Killing so many dreams Of poor destitute millions You brought the divine Beauty and love Alive For all who are Fortunate to see. 7 Dark dense night All fast asleep I dream Like Lord Krishna of the Gita You appear before me In thousands of divine forms I do not want This night to end. 344 31 Love Poems 8 Your love was Like a divine feast Served on the holiest celebration Now, I have to fast For a long time To attain that Purest moment Again. 9 In order to turn A poisonous sea Of sorrow and depression Into an ocean of nectar All that is needed Is a loving word from you And a smile Sweet and pure Filled with affection I have come again To life. 345 Lifelong Search for Home 10 My heart has become A camera It captured hundreds of Images of yours In so many poses Whenever I feel I go through them Like a movie To be united To rejoice To cry you are in the end What my heart is. 11 In real life We may never meet In our dreams We will never separate. 346 31 Love Poems 12 My blood relatives; Their thirst cannot be quenched Even after they drink all my blood With each sip it may increase But you, who are in no way Related to me, come For that very reason Like a cloud of svati To satisfy the thirst Of my chatak-heart And I give myself to you Totally without Any hesitation or reservation Oh my love, who does not belong to me, Pray that All our life We remain like that Totally absorbed (into each other) And totally free. 13 Like the Vedic seers I offer again and again Oblations of love for you In the sacrificial fire of relations And declare each time Idanna mama (This, too, is Not for me.) 347 Lifelong Search for Home 14 People would say It’s all madness Derangement of mind Let it be so People would say Your love for me, if any Is momentary (They say that Even about my life) It would wither away tomorrow Let that be so People would say There is no future Of this relationship (It does not even have a name!) That like a shadow You have come into my life And will go away Let that be the truth But as of now At least for this one moment We are completely drowned In the holiest memories Of each other Let this, indeed at least this, Be lived to the fullest Let this moment be My whole life Life-sustaining nectar Let me drink it To my satisfaction. 348 31 Love Poems 15 ‘Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’ They say Saint poet, Tulsi, too, has declared ‘God’s image is What one feels.’ It may be that all The qualities, that I see in you Have been imposed on you By myself It may be, that it is I Who has crafted the idol Of beauty and love in you And it is my thoughts and vision That fill me with vibrations From head to toe Even the words that I use to worship you Are all mine May be, you are only my imagination My dream All things are possible But nothing is changed by that Neither the devotion, nor the devotee Nor the heart so immersed in bliss Nor the soul unified with Brahman The truth is only this That you are none of the labelled relations You are just love Formless Where in the end there is neither I nor you And even if that is an illusion of mine Then let it be Let the enjoyer, the enjoyed, the enjoyment All be united and one — inseparable Let me enjoy myself Through you — my divine love. 349 Lifelong Search for Home 16 On the steps of The holiest Ganges of Haridwar Gushing so fast You washed my feet I felt as if It were not my feet You were cleansing But my heart (and soul) From all sins Completely So you could fill it With purest ocean Of nectar of love. 350 31 Love Poems 17 From a tiny invisible point It spread like the vast emptiness The sky of your memories Has become endless My heart is a lonely plane Flying in it After you are gone Your existence has taken A form of boundless ocean Where the ship of my mind Floats without seeing the land My existence is my soul All united with the Brahman Of your relationship Oh my love, who is beyond me I will not limit that relationship By giving it a name Let it remain Unnamed. 18 All around me A dense forest of memories Is grown Sitting in its midst Far from the world I am offering my prayers To the lord of love. 351 Lifelong Search for Home 19 The renowned Hindi poet Bachchan said to his beloved That days somehow Please every one’s heart He is frightened of nights That bring loneliness But I say I am terrified by The crowds of days They make me so lonely But nights are filled With dreams In them my heart Finds you near itself In whatever form It wants. 352 31 Love Poems 20 From all directions From unknown origins Rivers flow continuously All different paths All falling in one ocean Submerging and Becoming one In the same way I feel All the streams Of my love of the past Have been absorbed Reaching you You are The boundless ocean Of our love. 353 Lifelong Search for Home 21 You are not related to me in any way You are neither a wife, nor a beloved Nor a blood relative by birth There is no give and take between us No exchange of any kind Even then, there is something Which makes us Mutually acceptable It seems that At the last crossroad of this life You came Like a fresh morning freeze Bringing a new air Of freedom Giving me a new Definition of love For the first time That even when completely unbound We have gone Deepest in our hearts Set so deeply That we need not think By what name to call Our relationship Oh my love, who is beyond being mine. 354 31 Love Poems 22 No, I don’t demand A whole dense forest of love Totally for myself To me, it is sufficient If you give me just A seed of stainless moment So I can sow it In the field of my heart And fertilize it With my lofty feelings Watering with holy streams of memories I will let it grow Into a flourishing green orchard And then Present it to you. 355 Lifelong Search for Home 23 I have removed all weeds And thorny shrubs Of complaints and grudges My heart’s land is now All clean and smooth In the soft clay of emotions I have sowed The unique seed Of your momentary love Tomorrow in it There will flourish A sandalwood forest So full of sweet fragrance My world Will become Orchard of gods Filled with Sweet smell. 356 31 Love Poems 24 So little we need To live in happiness Two simple meals a day A jug of water Two yards of land to sleep A piece of cloth Two yards long To cover our body And a simple smile From you So little we need To live in happiness But even then So many roadblocks So many obstacles. 25 What is heaven? To be in your company Even for a moment What is hell? To carry on the burden Of that relationship Which makes me realize That you are not around And thus Deepening My loneliness. 357 Lifelong Search for Home 26 In this suffocating atmosphere Buried in a crowd Whenever I feel That I am All alone, absolutely so lonely There comes a thunder From some corner Of my heart Like lightning Out of a blue sky A memory of yours Makes me realize That you are Walking with me At every step I am not alone Not at all. 358 31 Love Poems 27 Indeed I had said Love is like a lean stream of river Which in the end becomes a sea But you gave me In the very first instant The whole sea of love (Now I fear it may dry) Indeed I had said Love is like a subtle point In which the universe is submerged In the end But you settled in my eyes With the very first glance The whole galaxy (Beyond that is only the final end) My liberation resides In that (gift of yours.) 359 Lifelong Search for Home 28 On this day of Deepavali the festival of lights The whole city is illuminated I, too, have lit The lamp of my memories Deep inside me Your holy image Has been shrined In the temple of my heart Immersed fully in itself My heart sings Songs of prayers The universe of my soul Has become worthy of being Worshiped in all its molecules Has the light of my love Reached you, also? 360 31 Love Poems 29 All my life I desired All my life I tried All my life I lived a dream That my heart become A temple of unbound love Unique, unblemished That I sweep its every corner With pure feelings All my life I searched for Have crafted Have ornated A divine idol Which can give Eternal Selfless Sinless love But as yet The temple is not complete Each idol of the dream is shattered But my search Cannot stop Will my temple ever be built fully Will the idol be shrined ever Do you have an answer To my question? 361 Lifelong Search for Home 30 There is no relationship between us But, then again, what relationship Is there that Does not bind us Our hearts are like two drops In which unnamed ocean Of inseparable love Is fully dissolved We are drowned Our existence is nothing But then We are everything. 31 One day this storm will stop This tide, this hurricane of heart Will become calm And freeze But even then, love Will set In its deepened bottom Uniting with it dissolving completely Becoming inseparable. 362 31 Love Poems AND IN THE END Whatever one desires However much It shall give And it shall lose nothing My heart is An ocean of love. Sometimes There comes a moment In which The whole life is lived And sometimes The whole life is spent In search Of that moment. 363 Lifelong Search for Home 364 About the Editor Kira Hall is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her interdisciplinary approach to the study of language in social life is reflected by the academic positions she has held since receiving her PhD in Linguistics in 1995 from the University of California, Berkeley, which include appointments at Rutgers University (English), Yale University (Anthropology), and Stanford University (Linguistics). Hall’s work as a linguistic anthropologist and sociolinguist exposes the complex ways in which language is formative to sociocultural understandings of gender and sexuality, whether located in institutions such as media and government or in the interactional practices of everyday life. Much of her work focuses on uses of Hindi and English by groups in northern India associated with gender and sexual difference. Her previous books on the works of Indian poet, essayist, linguist, and folklorist Ved Prakash Vatuk include Studies in Inequality and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of Ved Prakash Vatuk (Archana, 2009) and Essays in Indian Folk Traditions: Collected Writings of Ved Prakash Vatuk (Archana, 2007). About the Editorial Assistant Emma Bornheimer is a PhD student in the Culture, Language, and Social Practice program at University of Colorado Boulder. Her research centers on the discursive community construction of identity in digital spaces. After earning an MA in Linguistics in 2022 from the University of Toronto, she joined the Department of Linguistics at CU Boulder to study how neurodiversity and queer activism play into the ways that self-diagnosed autists use the affordances of digital communication to construct their identity for audiences online. With an interdisciplinary background in the areas of psychology, communication disorders, Deaf studies, ASL, autism studies, and queer theory, Bornheimer seeks to engage in research that has positive social impacts for the communities implicated within these areas of study. 365