within each other

Eight of the thirteen texts in verse of this third volume of poems on love are from 2019, while only three were penned in 2020 and just two in ’21. Three poems are in Hindustani (with Devnagri script) and the rest in English.

‘Within Each Other,’ which lends the title to this compilation, is, in my view, an assimilation of Rumi’s meditations on love and the beloved transcending social, temporal, spatial and bodily boundaries.

This collection of poems can perhaps be seen as an attempt at reconciliation with the joy & grief, pleasure & pain and hurt and healing that are part of being in love and of being alive.

Embrace

if you were to hug me

prepare for a deep embrace

and what if I don’t let go

06.02.21, 31.05.21 & 18.10.21

Waters of Grief

We mingled like brooks
But our waters could never mix
Evident from the confrontation
With a huge immovable boulder
Which split us again into streams
And we continued to flow apart

Wonder what turbulence
You carried quietly within
While I roared and frothed
In fear, anger and agony
And flowed and frolicked into
Other gentle and wild streams

We meet and split and meet again
Carving canyons of pleasure and pain
Moved by gravity, perchance or fate
I think I now know why or so I believe
We meet the others we do for our
waters are of abandonment and grief

07.07.21

within each other

you are not just a drop of ocean
the entire ocean is in you

like a mountain keeps an echo deep inside
that which you seek, seeks you

lovers don’t finally meet somewhere
they’re in each other all through

Dec”16 & 02.11.19

ख़ामोशी

आपकी ख़ामोशी
काट खु़रेद रही
हमारी बेचैनी

कुछ फ़रमाइये
बेशक़ ठुकराइये
सहमी धड़कनों पर
ज़रा तरस खाइये

06.06.19 & 31.05.21

cold space

I moved in our bed

to occupy the cold

space between us

I was surprised at

the simultaneity of

shame and gratitude

10.12.2020