Rain washes over the pomegranate battlefield by Aadrit Banerjee
The coagulated
blood thaws,
deliquesces, as the
rain washes over
the pomegranate
battlefield. The rain
glissades across
the blue horizon,
sensuously, like
your lips moving
down my scarred
chest tracing the
horrors of police
brutality. It descends
with an aphrodisiac
vigor over the couples,
in coitus, buried
beneath the fresh ruins
of Mariupol. Emaciated
bodies, infected,
deceived by an apathetic
government, turn cold
over smouldering
funeral pyres, and
sleep peacefully in the
rain-fed lassitude;
a mute Ganga flows
by, pregnant with floating
corpses and deities
sculpted in clay. The
raindrops shimmer on the
divisive temple walls,
purblind judicial scales
and on our broken
spectacle frames. Blood-
crimson, kingshuk-hued
rain endlessly
cascades down the skies,
your eyes and mine, red
silent tears of eternity –
falling helplessly
across barbed wire
fences, besmirching
ink-marks on paper maps.
Rain goes puddle hunting by Shriti Chowdhary
"We're out of groceries",
Thunder calls out,
"No oceans this time,
My blood pressure
is galloping at 210 miles per hour and
I hate inhaling whale snout."
"Take Zelda too", my wife flashes
a wicked smile
"Enjoy your father-son retreat,
While I bake some cookies
Soaked in country wine"
We embark on estates unknown
Watching sunsets from water slides
Dipping toes in freshwater lakes
The smell of fish a welcome sight
We swim in balcony jacuzzis
Mediate on ice glaciers
Moments before the crack.
Play tic-tac-toe on wet rocks
Near babbling brooks,
I buy a coconut (not really)
And sip on it with bamboo straws
Zelda insists we jump on
tiny puddles, too small for our paws,
1 2 3.....
Splish, splash, splish.
At last, we chose our
Dinner, skydiving headfirst
On the leeward side
Of the mountain,
As we gobbled with all our might,
Rainbows breaking out
At the prism of light
I realize I'm no color
To the human eye,
I'm transparent, pale, emotionless,
Un-biased,
A clean slate, like the gods they worship,
Eager to be pleased,
But to the one poet
Scribbling away her thoughts
On the terrace,
I'm deaf, yet mischievously
Noisy, like blue,
A splash of yellow,
Like tiny flowers growing on algae paths
Too slippery for their own good.
Even red, when the wavelength
Of my arrival notifies many a
Peacocks before I dine
In real-time,
So I bend over her shoulder,
To read more, and
The paper disintegrates,
Under my fluid scrutiny,
I hear her laugh, a defeated
Yet full-throttled, feel it in your belly giggle,
Maybe I'm no primary colour,
I'm the menace that kisses itself
When two worlds collide,
Orange, violet, green,
As I piggyback my tired son
To her mother,
I steal a tangerine raincoat from the
Humans to keep his cloud mouth dry.
It rains in colours by Arya P D
Birthed in the realm of blue
Caressed in the viridescent beds
Partially inheriting shades
all along its life
The colour of rain is relative
to every eye that beholds
and to every heart that effortlessly weeps
It bleeds in red
In solidarity to an unapologetic woman
To silence the silence weighed upon her
Soaking herself completely in gibberish
Like a strong wave that hit the shore
slowly letting it all sweep away
From bindhi to alta on her toes
Redefining her worth
Where words are no more a spare tyre
and anger being the only rescue
She now wears it like a scent on her clothes
In spring, it has the colour of love
Vivid as a fifty year old tale
exchanging glances and giggles
Vintage shayaris carved in rust
Adding more colours to life
What is a rain that doesn't evoke music within you
like a spirit of rhythm that pours into your heart
A souvenir of first love, for some
The rest of us are graveyards of lost dreams
A familiar clack of boots screaming "I am home"
Or maybe a letter from the beloved
that blankets you in comfort during the heaviest of falls
At those doors that await homecoming
where hopes still remain a luxury
Each drizzle comes with a tint of greyish white
testifying that every cloud has a silver lining
The entity of rain is hence a mirrored canvas
reflecting the depth of one's life
Through the eyes of a five year old
where broken crayons still paint their sky
Self-Portrait of a Sinking Orphan by Srishti Saharia
it is summer,
my mother is wearing a quarter
of her watermelon ice pop like
cherry chapstick over her lips,
and the sun is throbing inside
her throat as she narrates to me
tales about the sea beneath us,
playing kabaddi with our native feet;
her eyes morph into christmas lights,
as brilliant as the sun crawling,
and crumbling— almost birthing,
from inside the belly of her mouth
when she is spinning yarn with
the memories of her maiden days
which she had spent devoted to
the sea like the water was
a prophetic cult in vogue
and she was the most swift,
fanatic of followers,
and the blindest of believers.
she is threading gauze-like
syllables with her teeth to dress
the wound of shame my naked
body is— a mass of evidence,
and the witness that confronts
and confirms the life she could
have lived had i(t) never been
excavated from the ruins of her body.
winter— lazy and unoriginal—
brags about the snowfalls
santa's reindeer drag in
in nordic countries and we
load up our bags for a fortnight
like every other year we can afford
the freedom to fly and hibernate to
where the foreign birds flee from.
my mother plants her heart in ice
and waters it until it grows
we spend our gloomy monsoon
afternoons sleeping in,
my mother's hand on my heart
is a prayer i memories like a promise
and all of the two-hundred and
six bones i inherited from her are
safely tucked inside the fortified cave
carved out from her abdomen and arms.
when the first lozenges of rain
sweeten the earth outside our house,
she sneakily and softly drops
the love child of pink cotton candy
and satin silk on my cheek and
baptizes it a kiss before running
barefoot to snort four ounces
of petrichor like a junkie for a fix
i wake up with a sun-tinted stain
of my urine on my bed the size
of my grief that i cannot gulp
like i have been taught to
swallow my thirst;
my hunger for her tenderness
is only as valid as my will to
mortgage my mouth to
the crown of cutlery.
sometimes i feel like i can go
to war for just a glass of water
that does not taste like war
because, you see,
the flood of last summer did not recognize
her scent of history and misread
the hymns of my mother's devotion as
her consent to be consumed
and the last breath that fuelled
her lungs was a cry for help
that drowned unheard with
the limbs of her body i am made of
and i look like i have been dissolving
ever since
she used to count the pennies
of rain like we count our gods,
her mouth was only as big as
the prayers that feasted from
her palms. my mother pickled
her tongue with salt and water
so that whenever she breathed
on me, i felt the roots of my
hometown written on my skin.
but there grew a mole on my body
wherever she kissed me,
and now my body is saran-wrapped
with the map of the maze i am
trapped inside with the teething
monsters of her memories
and my mourning.
what i mean when i say
i am blind to the colour
of rain is that when i hear
the rain banging on my doors
i find my mother's sun-dried
face plastered against the windows—
she looks as foreign as the language
of my grief and the absence of
her skin and my faith;
i look for her, to find whatever
is left of her but i avoid the water
to avert my gaze from meeting
and feeding on the eyes of
my reflection and inevitably
digesting that all that is truly left
behind of and by her is my body,
and that one day
with me,
she,
an addict who used and
abused till she overdosed,
will finally cease to exist.
Journal Notes to the Rain I See by Prashanti Chunduri
I learn that colours have feelings,
at my grandmother's lap,
when she points at the mango
my tiny fingers are scrambling to hold,
and asks, "Does yellow feel happy?"
And then I learn that colours are feelings.
The fog-laden air
one dewy summer's day,
giving way to a five-minute cloudburst
as I made my first friend
was silver.
Silver for the delicate, gossamer fairy wings of first loves,
for the flinty shale rocks we went hunting for by winter seas,
for the worry-tinged teenage dreams we whispered about,
for our thunderclouds, stitched together by human linings.
Silver was the colour of the rain,
when I learnt about the impermanence of milk teeth,
and the permanence of friendships.
The bright spring day when I first spoke to you,
was the day I learnt the meaning of sun showers,
as we raced under shop awnings,
past fish mongers,
across damp zebra crossings,
and the fat, memory-tinged raindrops
that splashed under our Converse
were blue.
Blue for the steadying coolness of your palm in mine
(both of us ignoring my sweat as we listen to too-loud adults),
for the hue of the expensive china
I insisted we bring out
when your family came to visit,
for the edges of my heart when we decided
we couldn't stop growing up (and out),
for the exact shade of paint we chose
for my new bedroom when I moved 2100 miles from you.
Blue was the colour of the rain
when I learnt about the exhaustion of time,
and the rewards of patience.
The air - heavy with dust motes
and light with the sound of music and laughter -
when I move into my new house,
the cracks in its ceiling, mossy and damp,
the wallpaper pretending to be royal,
the fake plants in the doorway featuring worn plastic,
are all green.
Green for the succulents and cacti
that now thrive under my care,
for the hue of the raindrops in fall
as they splash across my stained glass window,
for the colour of the walls of the library
where we meet again after too many days (months? years?),
for the flecks in your eyes
when I finally learn which colour they are,
for the mint chocolate chip ice-cream we share
(amazingly, the flavour is called Serendipity).
The colour of the rain is green
when I learn that hope can be tangible,
and as warm as our hugs.
Now, we still have a million colours to discover,
most of them weaved through
the strands of our unwashed hair (memories?),
the stains on our carpet (footprints?),
the blots on our ink-stained fingers (dreams?).
But I still wonder:
what colour is the rain you see,
and can you write to me about it?
Then perhaps I'll look
for the exact hue of feeling in my palette,
and try to write back,
by pigeon post,
so that it will be drenched in the rain -
kaleidoscopic with the colours we both see.
Hindi Poems
सावन के रंग / अभिजीत सिंह
भूख के बदन पर गरमाहट का सौंधा हाथ
परछाई के नाम पर प्यास छोड़ता है
प्यास में गला फैलता है
नगर हो जाता है
अपने ख़्वाबगाह में
काजल फैल रहा होता है
काले दृश्य सभी रंगों से अलग दिखते हैं
कविताओं में उनका अहम हिस्सा होना
चाहिये या नहीं इस पर बहस जारी है
बहस पर अधिकतर मौन भारी है
पर्दे लू से सहम कर के छोर पर धीमे हिलते हैं
पूरा कुछ नहीं हिलता नहीं चलता
न पाँव हिलने में सक्षम
न कान चल पाने में दूर चल रहे गीतों तक
न पंखा घूमने में
न नल बहने में
न दोपहर का बादल
पूरा कुछ नहीं चल पाने ने
चीज़ों की अवस्था में पीलिया फैला दिया है
वही बीमारी कि जिसमें जोड़ों में
दर्द उठता है
नब्ज़ टूटने पर चिंगारी छूटती है
मानो भट्टी में किसी उत्सुक बच्चे ने
नया कोयला फेंक दिया हो
बिना छौंके की दाल जैसा कमरा
केवल हल्दी जैसा पीला होता है
बाल्टियों से पानी कमरे का छत घूरता है
छत गुस्से में गरमाया करती है
पानी में पड़े आम
अब खुलने के लिए रुक नहीं सकते
जीभ पर सूक्ष्म इच्छाओं का जोड़ा
करवट ले-लेकर दिन बसर करता है
करवट का सफ़ेद रंग
जीभ पर नुमायाँ है
कि तभी
गरम हवा का रंग
भूमध्य रेखा पर फूल उगाता है
यकायक
कोकम का गहरा लाल
दुबले होते जा रहे सूरज में बसन्त जैसा फैलता है
करवटें
नाचघर होने लगती हैं
इमाम-बारगह के कोठों पर से घटा अज़ान देती है
जीभ पर जैसे नींबू निचोड़ जाता है
वही भागता हुआ
अचानक झूल रहे पेड़ों का रंग
प्यास की लहरों का रंग
गरम पानी में तर किये गए आम का रंग
हताश होते गुस्से का रंग
जाम में खड़ी हुई गाड़ियों से लग कर भिखारी के बच्चे
और उनके चेहरे से लगा हुआ जाम का रंग
यकायक यकायक यकायक
चिल्लाते हुए आकाश की ओर लपक पड़ते हैं!
और बाल्टियों का रंग
खिड़कियों से निकल-निकलकर
सड़कों पर जा खड़ा होता है
कुछ मुँह लटकाकर
तो कुछ मुँह खोले उठाए ताक रहे होते हैं
अंतरिक्ष में फैला प्रशांत
जब आता है
सावन
किसी माँग का सिंदूर अपने अस्तित्व से
अस्वीकृति छीन लेता है
उसका रंग ये रहा
देखो-देखो इस कविता पर
जैसे अनीमा पर सरिता के अधरों की छाप
जैसे पानी से पानी का मिलाप
लिपटते हुए आलाप और आलाप
उधर
दालचीनी बाल खोलती है
इत्र बन जाती है
उसका रंग
मनोविज्ञान की भाषा में याददाश्त कहलाता है
इन्हीं यादों के बक्से से
सर्दियाँ गहने पहन कर निकल पड़ती है
भारी मोटी साड़ी
ढीला-ढाला जूड़ा
पैरों में चाँदी की काफ़ी पुरानी पायल
बालकनी में सज-सँवर कर
बाहें खोल
आ खड़ी होती है
सिर्फ़ तुम्हारे लिए
सावन
कमरे के पीलेपन पर
कवि बची-कुची स्याही उड़ेल देता है
तो उधर दोपहर की दाल में
सूर्यास्त आ गिरता है
मोहल्ले भर में इस छौंके की सुगंध
अपने रंगों से इंद्रधनुष खींच देती है
कोई टी०वी० का वॉल्यूम बढ़ा लेता है
तो कोई पंखा बंद कर देता है
कहीं चाय बनाने के लिए
आदत क़दम बढ़ाती है
तो कहीं से इन सारे गीतों को छूते हुए
दरवाज़े पर एक दुलार भरी चिट्टी आती है