Sunday, January 11, 2009

I can’t seem to write…nowadays
Perhaps I’m not strange enough to write well
But I am strange, in fact stranger – a stranger unto myself?
I play with words
I stand musing, shutting myself on the inside of a glass window
Leaving the curtains open
I’m fearful of shutting the light out
I play with my hot breath on the cool wintry glass
Blowing up the blob of vapour
Making hazy flowers of those blobs
Spreading and disappearing
A blinking orgy of vaporous lights
I have a race against time
I have to make more flowers and bigger ones
Before the others vanish
“Come on” says a voice somewhere, “faster, bigger, faster!”
He asked me a couple of days back
“Why do you write?”
“Hmm” I said
And doled out
Some seemingly sensible reasons
Release? I like the craft involved in writing…
“Stuff like that” I said dismissively
I’m still blowing on the panes
Carelessly watching the grey beams of construction
In the next building
So many workers, all brown and grey,
Scattered.
Their whites and blacks all evenly browned
Like well baked clay
Sure footed they appear,
Knowing what to do
I don’t even seem to know what to write…
Hey! What! Why is one of them looking at me?
I hate being spied on when I’m spying
I leave the window and some vapour of hot musings on the cold glass
And walk away
Ready to write
About being unable to write

Saturday, January 03, 2009

For J

Here's an attempted translation...

Aate hai.n ghai'b se ye mazaamee.n khayaal mein,
Ghalib sareer-e-khwama, nava-e-sarosh hai

They occur from the obscure
These conceptions in the mind
The scraping of Ghalib’s pen
Is expression of the divine