Melancholy

Let my day dreams be.

Let it fall neatly on the folds of my bed;
With a thud on the cold floor,
On your couch, bright red.

Let my Walter Mitty seep
And sleep, from
Couch to bed
With one leap. With nothing
But a poker on his face.

I want my dreams.
Not yours. One without sunbeams,
Work teams and intoxicated screams.
I want my green morose-ity
To muzzle its nose against the joy-splattered
Window-panes.
And seduce the long-awaited dark
To walk with me in the halls barefeet, and then
I can finally eat.

Were you there when the soldiers went to war
That night,
I think I slept in the car.
Dreamt open-eyed about,
That baby in the sand, perhaps
You’d understand why I didn’t-
Hold your hand.

You see, this morose-ity,
There’s no complexity
I just prefer my tea,
Over your party.

Let my day dreams be
Those you cannot see.
Let me soak in many an Ode,
I know you forbode.
As my erratic laughter hangs like a sweeping cloud
Above my head.
Let me revel in my boredom
And revel in the million things in my head,
That is a fortezza.
You can enjoy your pizza.

Let me wallow in wist,
Please in my dreams, don’t sift.
Let them crawl under the door
And out the window, soar.

Let my day dreams be.

Remembering Maqsood Pardesi

KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006

On 23rd September 2014 Maqsood Pardesi lost his life. He had gone to the National Zoological Gardens in Delhi to meet a tiger. The tiger killed him. He was 20 years old. Maqsood worked as a daily wage laborer and lived with his family under the Zakhira flyover in central Delhi. He is survived by his father Mehfuz Pardesi, his mother Ishrat, his brother Mehmood and his wife Fatima.

There are conflicting reports as to how Maqsood found himself en face a tiger. Several reports state that, despite being discouraged by a guard on two occasions, he managed to climb into the tiger’s enclosure when the guard’s attention wavered. Some reports suggest that he accidentally fell into it. The authorities have vigorously denied the possibility of accidental entry and contested the assignation of blame on the zoo, or the tiger, for Maqsood’s death. Other reports have dwelt on Maqsood having…

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Notes from Jadavpur: Ahona Panda

KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006

Guest Post by Ahona Panda

About eight years ago, while lounging about doing nothing much in the campus of Jadavpur University where I was a student of the English department, I came across some callously etched graffiti:

Jodi prem na dile praane
Tobe Jadavpure pathanor ki mane?
(If you haven’t given this life some love–
What is the point of sending one to Jadavpur?)

Eight years on I cannot imagine the luxury of lounging about doing nothing much. One moves on in life after graduating from Jadavpur University. Meanwhile, in home and the world, the complete freedom (some will persist in calling this anarchy) of the JU campus has made it a legend somewhat like Dirty Harry: either worship and put it in on a pedestal, or condemn it thoroughly. The reputation of JU since the infamous 1970s has been as a hub of constantly bubbling anarchism, where Naxalites are…

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Let those nights melt

Into days, like sunlight

Creeping into the corners of the room.

Let the laughter burst from the wick

With the effervescence of fireworks.

Till human voices drown,

Or be consumed by the magic.

She flies.

My Back Pages

May your heart be always joyful. May your song always be sung.

http://8tracks.com/maystephen/one-way-wind-a-blowin

Come India, Let’s All Hate Arvind Kejriwal

Come India, Let's All Hate Arvind Kejriwal.

Summer Symphony

Paint but still, while you have the will

For we are never orphaned from meaning

T’may be lost, but never without.

Be not so blue,

Write ‘cause you can and not so you must.

 

Can’t you hear the trumpets sing?
As the harps arrive, coyly
Much like the rain that awakens your slumber.
Summer is here. Can you hear?
The winds crescendo,
Tugging at your heartstrings
Coaxing you before the storm.

You can wait till it’s over,
But hers is a wandering soul.
Belonging to a time long ago
Lost in the canon of a lover.
She carries her basket of songs
And lends her voice a time or two
In the sunburst of a cadence.
‘Tis not a game she plays,
But the very nature of her being.
She will still hold your hand,
Under the tree by the fields.
And cause you shining eyes.

Fear it not, resent it not.
And you will still hear the keys,
Every time she comes to sing.

For it is a symphony.
Summer Symphony            

.

The Rocks with a View.

“We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.”

You

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without complexity or pride: I love you in this way because I know no other way, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

Except I do know why I love you,
For that peace you bring
That takes me to the place I always long to be
That is otherwise forever elusive.
I love you, enough for the valleys
To cease to be, and the mountains
To come together.
Since times unknown.
I have loved you.