MY GRANDFATHER (Rajendra Garg) The castlecapped hill Brooding alone, nonchalant Lost in reverie Looks like my grandfather When

for hours in his bed Motionless he sat Eyes half closed ears unhearing He gazed into a dim hazy world Where voices were only sounds. Now I am sure he saw With hoary eyes he saw Glimpses remote The ball hurtling in the air Which he or his cronies kicked The rivers he swam across The faces of his grandparents The proud Peepul tree At the door of his ancestral hut Andand a face that refused to grow old When the world around him Decayed and died everyday. His deaf ears heard the distant rumbleHis grandpa chanting morning hymns The rhythmic rattle that rose When his mother Washed and milled and swept and milked And sang lullaby to his ears Andand he heard an endearing call.

Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

HE (Rajendra Garg) Last evening Strolling along the river bank He quoted Bhartrihari And likened life to a bubble Then in a caf we sipped tea. This morning on our shoulders We have brought him here. He often felt dyspeptic Arthritis plagued his joints Persistent cough spoiled The rhythm of his morning recitations Amid vague fears he taught in the class Stand up O Arjuna, shed fears Fight and conquer the world. Sons stupidities Daughters contempt of good repute Wifes obstinacies Leaking roof and bleeding haemorrhoids Gave him no moment of respite But who could sit unmoved When he dwelt upon The rise and fall of empires The rebellions and massacres In Delhi and Chittor And the Freudian world of dreams. In recent years he often grumbled For none agreed to marry A poor mans daughter Living in a house Where ceilings leaked. Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

MY NEW DINING TABLE (Rajendra Garg)

My gorge rises Nauseous is the dinner When I sit at my new dining table. The tree still peers through its synthetic veneer And all its shiny gloss Oh, such a disconcerting gaze of the tree It upsets everything in me. Since my grandpa brought a sapling home Proudly it had stood at our mansion gate Last month I felled it And the joiner framed the table Whenever it finds me alone The table mumbles, Et tu child , Yes the tree murmurs the prayerForgive him my Lord for he does not know From the table rises the rumble of three generations Their hopes and illusions and gossips Their heartbreaks and fears and pains All whispered to this tree Deep into the table I see my mother Bowing in solemn worship to this patriarch And hear my fathers holy recitations. What itched me to wield the axe? What egged me on to cut your throat? My gorge rises When I sit at my new dining table.

Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

CLOD OF CLAY (Rajendra Garg)

Spins the potters wheel Clod of clay I reel Im clapped and slapped And thumbed and thumped What blows his fingers deal

Its a game of hide and seek I laugh I cry I creak Im yoked and knocked And rocked and poked As carrion in vultures beak

They say I steer my way I plan and determine my day Its right I fight With might and insight Things happen come what may

Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

MY METAPHYSICS (Rajendra Garg)

Long summer days Scorching sizzling sun Every leaf singed Sweating and gasping I muse:Chaos will overtake harmony What has been tuned will be untuned Being will be devoured by non-being For death rules supreme And life covers in fear The pageant will fall apart Things will unweave themselves Strife pollution epidemics. In a tiny crack of an ancient wall In the fissure of a brick There it was Sticking its neck out Smiling at me mischievously A fresh green infant shoot A microscopic sprout And my metaphysics ran out.

Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

A CHANGE IS DUE (Rajendra Garg)

Though with every passing day My house grows friendlier to me I am going to demolish This old familiar structure And have a new one built On a different plinth With walls of different hue Doors and windows new Letting the sun and the moon From new angles peep So that in every room New shadows leap Oh how I long to see The hills and trees and riverbanks Behind and beyond these walls The old house gives me a view But I feel a change is due

Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

MY GRANNY (Rajendra Garg)

Even a draught of air tickled her For laughter and joy Brimmed over her being and oozed Dance of a bear or a monkeys antics Or the street magicians game Into wild ecstasies threw her Her plump sanguine shape So often convulsed with guffaws Never in low spirits no phlegm Always in gusto always aflame In grief untamed as in joy For weeks for months She wept and fainted and beat her breast When her sons boy was brought home Never lukewarm never sedate Passion throbbed her heart Its the month of ashwin A shraddha for her we observe Nine Brahamins dine in my house In my gloomy attic I sit Drowned in morbid thoughts Dull dampened depressed Breathing away a sapless life Nursing old anxieties Filled with a hundred apprehensions Muttering prayers in fear Ignored alone stranded An unworthy heir

Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

COLLEGE CORRIDORS (Rajendra Garg) Dark dreary and damp Exuding a melancholy academic smell These grim corridor walls of my college Dumb witnesses to a long era Sucking and absorbing the humming and buzzing Of the vivacious young boys Their guffaws, their gossips, Their scandals, their hilarity, Their violent quarrels, and heartburns, Their rivalries, their pangs of jealousy, Their thrills of winning Their pains of losing a prize Day after day these corridors echo The giggles and whispers of comely girls Coy or vociferous but always coquettish With bewitching smiles (or frowns as the case may be) As they pass through these college corridors Effusing the primeval female smell And disturbing the elemental equilibrium. How often these corridor walls are filled with nausea Hearing the tremulous husky tone Of old phlegmatic professors With senility and paranoid schizophrenia Perched on their stooping shoulders With sighs of regrets and old frustrations Their choleric tongues pour out vitriol. All these voices lay frozen and asleep Between the bricks of these corridor walls.

Rajendra Garg 54/8, Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 PH.-0141-2785170

PURGED AND CALM (Rajendra Garg)

People-

Cloud-

You havent brought rain O king of clouds To this thirsty land you rise from distant oceans Amble over hills and dales Groves bowers and towers Palaces and castles perched on hills You look pale shrunken small But no drops fall I am purged and calm The brute in me subdued What beatitude what bliss! All my water I have poured In gusts of tears On a woman of seventy-eighth Who daily washes the swaddling clothes Of her infant son And keeps his toys well arranged For though six decades have passed When he died and was taken away He may return home today All the long summer days All the long winter nights She waits for him And stares at the distant path Every whimper of a baby in the neighbourhood Sends a quiver from her breast Deep down her womb And beyond the infants tomb

Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar,Jaipur 302020 Phone9414646696

ANCIENT FEARS (Rajendra Garg) Swarm after swarm of bats Rising from the dark caverns Of this ancient castle Nine thousand bats in a minute Like rings of smoke Winging their way in dusky gloom In the drowsy melancholy air In days of yore they fought battles Or they were killed in palace intrigues Now metamorphosed into bats

Often with a smothered cry Spine chilled with fear Limbs quivering Sweating and gasping I see swarm after swarm of bats

My ancient fears five fathom deep Entombed in dark dungeons of my mind Break loose and flap their wings In a drowsy melancholy mood

Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 Phone-0141-2785170

DARKNESS (Rajendra Garg)

Take me to darkness Light baffles me It evokes a nightmare of shapes A labyrinth of forms

Light trembles on the surface It illumines the shapes the contours And thus floats the finite world Darkness is infinity Where hills and eggs and trees And men and rocks and oceans And north and south and near and far Delude me not In darkness the me and the not-me Meet and melt and fuse and lose their boundaries Here nothing begins and nothing ends Nor is here past or future or red or white

In that silence of brooding eternity I hear the cosmos breathing In my breaths

Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 Phone-0141-2785170

COMMUNION (Rajendra Garg) I gazed at a star And the star gazed at me A midnight communion A holy trance

With a smiling face and blinking eyes The star came down to my bed Pinched my cheeks Whispered my childhood name Oh my dear dear friend I gushed After sixty years I see you again We used to play and laugh and weep Seized with one impulse One afternoon on their shoulders Towards the riverbank Among the boulders They took you away

In vain have I searched for you From pole to pole You still a girl of nine And I a man of three score and ten

Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020

AFTER THE NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST (Rajendra Garg)

They groan spit blood and tumble Dark purple clouds black-barred Rise like mushrooms They too groan and spit blood What silence! The oceans boil Surging waves devour the sky Fish molluscs whales dolphins Shriek vomit blood and down they go Birds drop from the trees As fruits roasted on the boughs Trees are in flames They shriek vomit blood and tumble Death rained from the heavens From the stars from the space from the seas From the distant continents How accurate are the computer hands My lungs burn my skin erupts The air is all acid O that I could groan vomit blood and die The earth is a clod baked in fire A charred clod hurtling in the space Life was only an accident indeed

Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020

MY FRIEND (Rajendra Garg)

So much of me in you And you in me Deluding words You and me We frisked along the streets Played hide-and-seek among trees Jumped into pools in summer And every so often With grinding teeth and quivering lips Breathing like bellows Showered our small fists on each other But the very next minute We ran along the streets Hand in hand One impulse propelled us Now at seventy-eight Here on the banks of Yamuna In our native village Where the ash of our ancestors Is mingled in the air Here under the mango tree I sit on a rock and meditate I feel a twitch of your thoughts my friend And all that you may be Grieving or longing for Though for half a century You have been in Vancouver Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 Phone-0141-2785170

Healing power (Rajendra Garg) They shrugged Pressed their upper lip Their cheeks twitched They turned away their heads Contempt in their eyes They walked on While wounded I lay Groaning on the road side Life ebbing away

Through the city streets their caravan passed Nor do I complain For everybody is lonely here But a balmy glance Of their pitying eyes Could soothe the wounds That I received defending them Glances I feel have healing powers

Godspeed my friends To your places you go At my place I lie

Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar, Jaipur 302020 Phone-9414646696

AN IDIOTS TALE (Rajendra Garg) Old and ripe I died last month To the bereaved condolences came Death rituals were duly performed Brahmins supped To mark the end of grief I pulsate in a new womb they thought But straight from the pyre I fly And perch over these glossy volumes Proudly arrayed in the shelf Annals of my life My diary full of sound and fury A heap of monumental nonsense From cover to cover I read I read this nightmare I read this fidgets and flurries This chase of a mirage This hews and cries This blaming game Everywhere in the script There are needless superlatives Cold-blooded exclamations Vain capital letters Like megalomaniac beggars Weaving a logic to cover-up my shame And pleading my case I shall delete the whole stuff To make the story meaningful Rajendra Garg 54/8,Mansarovar,Jaipur 302020