Disguised in the
hollow curves of
your eloquent words,
do I hear a vicious
hissing ; whispers of
a conniving heart?
Why do I visualize
a serpentine on the rock?
I’m not beguiled by
your deceptive talks.
By the tinkering of your
silver coins.
For I’ve on my hump back
burden of enough winters
to mark a
Devil in a sea of Men.
The sacred sounds of thousand conch shells
piercing through the eerie silences of deafening
decades, a mammoth Himalayan cloud bursted
in the Northern horizons over the legendary
kingdom of Ayodhya on the banks of
fabled Sarayu River.
The thundering clouds wrestled, the wombs
of giant Earth quivered, the regal blue-eyed
peahens ruffled their gilded
ruby feathers;
The sunken plants sprouted, oozing out their
heads to catch a glimpse of the exquisite face
of Sita with a silken complexion of molten-lava
daughter of king Janka of Mithila whose
whose beauty launched thousand
battle-ships…
Adorned in the victory lap of the majestic
embellished golden elephants, swimming
across the seas far-far away from the
ghostly dark dungeons of decadent
Ravana’s sinful Lanka.
After slaying Ravana’s ten monstrous
heads for the atrocious sins of holding,
his young queen captive.
Crowned prince Rama step a foot on the lush
lands of Ayodhya, where gilded golden domes
erected bowed to salute his triumphant
arrivals, after the exiles of the fourteen
extensive summers and winters.
Ancient gulmohar trees lowered their laden
branches and fluttered leaves like bells of
mythical sun temples;
A tear swelled up in the eyes of Rama
looking at the solar dynasty of his fore-fathers
banished by his own kin, reduced to
dwell in sinister dense woods chosen
for menial chores.
Rama knew the challenges that lie ahead,
sufferings he must withstand, answers he
must offer, the paths he must trod while
keeping his ideals supreme.
( congrats to all the devotees of Sri Ram, on the laying of foundation stone in Ayodhya, what a great day)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
( My favorite poet, W.B Yeats )
Standing in the land of the great Apaches
Midst blooming wild poppies
and the mammoth elephant grasses,
thinking of the dream that once Martin Luther had.
May be the days of chivalric Camelot are over,
as I heaved reclining on the grand arm chair;
vicious winds from the North gushed
echoing footsteps of a massive feet
opening a narrow pass for the
grim shadow of Lincoln to flicker by,
leaving behind trails of the Fallen Soldiers
on the path once trodden by the
fierce Indian Tribes.
A glance is enough for the heart to beat
to transform naivety into shrewdness
of some kind, many long for it in the ancient past
to moisten their dry parched youth, as the case
it never befalls where it ought to, yearnings
fossilized froze in the corner of heart, birds
never chirp on the skeletal trees, insects don’t
dwell in the deceased fallen barks, dimpled
cheek cupids doesn’t appear for those who
always wait and sigh, no ballads are sung
on the onset of youth, nor a tear on its passing,
some do age without the grace of a glance
and leave the grim world still longing for
one glance.
Having feasted past-midnight, PersianLaila got up lazily at the stroke of twelve. Wearing her sparkling tiara, she rose with a numbing headache resultant of a hangover,
Caused by the left-over French champagne that she drank greedily from the China glass of her Benevolent master.
Her master’s darling she occupied a special place in his cozy lap and abhorred the site of her pot-bellied mistress,
For Laila considered her as a staunch-competitor and purred when ever she dared come near especially at long intervals of midnight drinks .
She would adorn herself on the left thigh of master and lick heavenly nectar only from the corner his pinkish wrinkled hands.
A site to behold midst bubblingchampagne and the smoke of expensive Cuban cigars. Her blue eyes drunk with envy and rage, she fought hard and with everyone for her master’s attention.
On rare occasions of evening strolls, she would walk with snobbish air and displeased countenance on the cobbled streets of rustic New York
Looking down with disdain on all other pussies in the town as she deemed them to be too causal and boring in the appearance,
For Laila came from the Persian peninsula from the house of the grand pasha of Azerbaijan, her great-grandmother the dark-eyed Hoorie was a favorite of the sultan-Suleiman
And what a cherished presence on all matters important of every concern but was slain on one moonless night by the jealous ladies of Sultan’s Harem,
All were fine, till troubles started to brew, for master was a man of excess and one Persian damsel was not enough and yearned for another beauty to occupy the vacant right thigh!
So brought a petite French this time, Annabella who had a legacy of her own, for she came-from the family of Master pastry chef, Monsuier Jean Paul employed in the house of King Louis XII
Both pussycats couldn’t look each other in the eye for both was endowed with looks and style to charm any.
One fine day while the master was away, in a brawl with each other both got their tails entangled, the mistress had enough and decided to sail one of them away…
And who better than the Persian Laila, for she was never in her good books. Hence a plan was hatched and poor Laila was swiftly hurried off to live with an old woman in quite a corner
Of the town and master was told a tale of how she eloped with neighbor’s Valentino who had-no history to boast of.
Annabella now the reigning queen while Laila spent her time remembering the days of glory gone by.
I grew up beyond the grey walls….
Walls that changed hues under varied spells,
mama would strictly keep me inside.
The thick silver parapets adorned tiny holes,
black ashen specks from where I marveled
at the cruel oddity of the world.
A faded sepia of Papa hung at a crooked
angle-tilted towards outside,shadowing
other picture-frames.
The grim monsoons brought spree of life
stamping on foundations of boundless
hedge, spreading its tentacles…
Vile serpentine vines of bougainvillea invaded
sacred space, by keeping me in restraints
stealthily crawling into me.
I see scaly lizards licking the swollen damp
crusts of the walls, that now turned
purplish hue, squeaking hushly;
“papa zedes, papa zedes
papa zedes, papa zedes”
Terrified of clicking sounds,every monsoon
I meticulously filled up fissures with
Papa’s old black and whites.
Once smacked across the sugar face smiling,
I always beamed when I sobbed inside,
tongue at loss of words….
I covered the last fissure with the only picture
I had of Papa.
Forever barricading myself with-in walls, I
metamorphosed into silver, a mass of
cemented blood in concrete limbs.
Fortifying myself of the lingering echoes…
“papa zedes, papa zedes
papa zedes, papa zedes”
If there is one writer who inspired me to write, it is William Sydney Porter known by his pen name O.Henry. A great twister of words and language. No other writer played with language as much as he. His made extensive use of used wit and sarcasm in his tales. His clever plot-twists, use of cliff hangers made him the master of short-story genre. Born in 1862 North Carolina, he begin his career as a pharmacist. But his serious literary career took off while serving a sentence on charges of embezzlement. Some of his most admired works are The Gift Of Maggie, The last leaf, The Pendulum & The Ransom of Red Chief.
It was a chance encounter that I stumbled on Le hora short story at cousins’s house. What a brilliant horror story, it literally spooked me for nights. Henri Rene’ Albert Guy de Maupassant was born in 1850 in France. His own experience in the Franco-Persian war became the setting of most of his stories. He brilliantly portrayed the suffering and tragedy of country folks. His stories also reflect his own despise of rich and bourgeois. His notable works are The Necklace, Le Horla & Boule de Suif. In his later life he suffered from a mental illness and died in a mental asylum in 1892.
Leo Tolstoy without any doubt is the father of the short-story genre. His works often reflect the Russian social milieu and the spiritual dilemma that he himself faced in his life. Born as Count Lyov Nikolayevich Tolstoy in 1828, Russia, he drew heavily from his experiences. Despite born in privilege as a aristocrat he very realistically portrayed the plight of peasants and the vast gulf between the rich and the poor. Although he is renowned as great novelist and credited with literally masterpieces such as , War and Peace, Anna Karenina & The Death of Ivan Ilyich, however I most enjoy his short-stories. His short-stories remain a great comfort to me in my hours of darkness and moral crisis. If you are literature lover than the works of Tolstoy is must on your shelves.
The noble laureate Rabbinate Tagore remains as one of the most influential Indian writer. His works are notable for ordinary characters placed in extraordinary situation. His stories reflects his own surroundings and people. Most of his work is penned against the backdrop of British imperialism in India. His protagonists very often voice his take on the nationalist movement and woman empowerment. I am drawn to his stories partly because of the strong female characters. I personally feel no other writer in literature has given so much space to women as Rabindranath Tagore. The bard of Bengali Literature as he is fondly called, he redefined the Indian Literature. He truly remains a rare literary gems, his most famous tales are, Kabuliwala, The Postmaster & Hungry Stones.
No list of short-story writers is complete without mention of the great Edgar Allen Poe. The great American writer known for his tales of macabre and dark remains as one of the most prolific writer of all times. His life and death like many of his most famous works remains a mystery. One of the first short-story writers, he compressed the art of novel into stories. Many attribute the birth of detective and science fiction to him. Poe was born in 1809 in Boston and led a life marred by financial woes and instability. The master of Gothic fiction, he abhorred the transcendentalism of eighteen century. To name a few , The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, The oval portrait are some of his most notable works.
I know not…
Was it a dream or a drowsy opiate slumber?
As I stood on a tortured sea-shore
and cast my eye on the swollen waves
passionately kissing my naked feet
making love to me with a brutish force
taking me in its azure vinyl embrace
slowly grasping my flaming flesh with
a fiery I’ve never known before,
an uproar a stir in my fragile body
exhausted since centuries of decay
the foamy saline waters entering in me
through all nook and corners, fissures and holes
mixing in all the violent blues with the
crimson reds, crawling stealthily like million
serpents, wriggling gushing upwards
Oh! a sensation a loud roar within
a rapture somewhere, an euphoric elation
an electric jolt worth thousands bolts!
My enslaved body in an act of consummation
so strong, my heart-ached, soul-shuddered
at the violation so brutal, like a hapless bird
caught in a nib of a savage Falcon from the
far-east, I let it happen without any contest
Why? Because I possessed it too and let loose
the cinders of ancient fire burning in me
for I didn’t surrender, and let it go on without
a single doubt or shame nor did I curse
the gods above, knowing that no desire is
mightier than the other, for yearnings
have the same frenzy everywhere.
But I know not…
Was it a dream or a drowsy opiate slumber?
