On Diwali night,

strings of lights try to lift
the darkness, but they don’t mitigate it
quite as much as the smoke from the crackers
that makes the sky purple
and silvers the air
prematurely,
something about the way
the lights are hung up over houses
that doesn’t reveal
their sadness or happiness
reminds me of people,
bright stars of smiles
like facades decorated with rangoli powder,
that could scatter in a second
in a breath of wind
or lit with diyas burned out by tomorrow
and as we pass
on a road
filled with celebratory trash
winter air combined
with the ash we can’t cough out
for a year
there’s a house in the corner
that’s under construction,
uninhabited yet,
and on its side
is a jhuggi
like a forgotten child
that will never not be
under construction
that can’t keep out
the bitter ash in the air
but it’s lit as much as the house on the corner
and for one night
on a festival
both houses will light
a candle to their gods
pretending to smile
for
as long as the wick will burn. 

Newspaper Rain

the newspaper and rain arrived together today, 
one regular as always, the other unpredictable as ever  

“14 yr old dies after scuffle with two brothers” 

“man bludgeons wife, strangles child, kills self” 

–headlines that draw my eyes in first

though the articles, I choose not to read:  

what will one more act of violence be
but another prick to our collective conscience, 
another snag in the proud-flying flag, 
one more fester in the city’s flesh 
that for all their exploding frequency 
it will get sicker before it dies? 

instead, 

I read about the arguments 
between the central and state governments;
the PM skipped the president’s Iftar 
but will be going for talks to Mozambique. 
Maybe I will only realise the importance 
of these events in the future. 
so I plough through an editorial on the Brexit 
understanding about half 
and one on the latest cure for cancer 

in the obituaries,
a young soldier is remembered 

alongside a ninety year old man: 

the former for his service in the Kargil war, 
the latter by grandchildren 

newspapers 

like readers, 
are selective 
unlike rain, till it falls 
on roofs of plastic or of brick or 
under open sky. 

Monsoon in Goa / Delhi

From this vast half-mirror of sky
the world opens out.
ocean charges unleashed on to sand
to the tips of your toes
and takes you back 

into 

the eternal oxymoron:
its ever changing shifting state
a constant.
its unpredictability
predictable by the red flags.
It is beautiful and scary
and dirty and it washes
to, washes away, washes constantly,
(try to wash off sand
with sandy water of sea)
it is chaotic and vengeful and churns with rage,
it is calm and soothing and one with the still sky
and with you,
within you,
your eyes
when you watch.
sometimes the horizon seems to dissolve. 

The first day 

the flashing lights intrigued
combing over the submerged rocks
who we thought were beachcombers,
some strangely perseverant species who searched
day after day what the tide washed in:
wondrous treasures like the skeletons of rare fish
amid the black sand and debris
that we saw on the beach
and a syringe and a
dead rat.
but the second night it was explained that
they were catching crabs,
the big ones that come out only at night
when the tide is high
(which is the only time the humans go in–
crabs must be wise) 

high tide is rough 

but it will bring you home. 

but this, 

constant clashes of paradox –
on such a vast scale as the sea
is what makes for chaos of such a living kind:
paroxysms of waves break over waves
shatter upon rocks,
roar with such an intensity of rage, the shards lingering in the ebb,
liquid energy goes up in the spray of each turn that will
crash to release, like fissures of lightning, returned to the sky
after filling the ocean air
electric.
Flying back
I already missed the waves
but found a similar beauty in the expressiveness of clouds,
though much more still.
they made coastlines and waves washing on shores
then islands and ships floating at the tips of
the plane’s wing.
they were talking heads and screaming faces
that lapsed into silence as we passed them by. 

Landing, we were surrounded still 

by the magnificent grey elephants of sky
that had been there two days, we were told by the city,
had rampaged for two hours that morning
but were sleeping now.
water collected on the roads.
I thought of them as seeming
like Marquez’s angel:
cataclysms in repose
that will soon wake.