माँ ❤

अपनी नींद उड़ा कर, मुझे गहरी नींद सुलाती है वो
इतने गम होने के बावजूद, क्यों अपना दर्द छुपाती है वो

पापा ❤

अपनी ज़रूरत भुला कर,मेरी सारी ज़रूरत पूरी करते है वो
बहुत खुशनसीब है वो लोग, जिनके घर प्यारी मूरत है वो

-

Since ages, every single day
I've been ripped apart
Chopped into pieces
Burnt into ashes
Amidst the silence of the darkness

Yet I'm born again
To slaughter your ego
To thrash every rule you've made
To keep my head high
To look straight into your eyes
So that you could realise
That I won't bend.

-

The Vanished Legends of the past
Shall rise back to glory
just to show the present
why they were always on
"Top Of The World"

-

अगर तू तलवार होता
काट डालता शीश तू शत्रु का
पर तुझको ना किंचित भी दुख होता।

जख्म देता कितने भी गहरे
और शत्रु जब दुख से रोता,
तनिक भी ना तुझे बुरा लगता नाही तू कभी लज्जित होता।

पर याद रख तू कोई तलवार नही
जख्म देकर खुश ही रहना,इतना भी आसान नही।

माना तेरा जीवन है रणभूमि
पर समय कि है अब पुकार यही
पुनःविचार कर तू फिर से
क्षमादान कर दे तू फिर से
है मानवता कि एक मांग यही।
है मानवता का एक सार यही।।

-

Amir Khusro knocks to remind me
of the A-Z of our lost poetry

mun tu shudam tu mun shudi
[I have become you, and you have become me],

as I find myself lost in an unknown language of love.

The letters are familiar
but each sounds like alif
always coming first.
Tired, I try to write them down
but each draws like alif,
always a straight line.
Loops, curves, after you
are now Farsi to me.

I hear you laughing
from a lost page of us,
the day we both mastered
the language of us.
I had asked you,
"When will you become me?"
And you had chuckled, "Imroz".

-

A poem lives
because it stays home.
A memory comes unmasked.
Some beginnings,
some ends,
stay on
like they were never guests.
But distancing comes
closer than 1 meter.

A poem lives.

NOW READ IT BACKWARDS

A poem lives
closer than 1 meter.
But distancing comes
like they were never guests.
Stay on some ends, some beginnings.
A memory comes unmasked
because it stays home.

A poem lives.

-

The year was 1999.
The day was a Sunday,
the only day we were allowed
to step out of our hostel.
Calcutta was still Calcutta.
The 1.something km from
Shakespeare Sarani to Park Street,
was the only walk that I didn't talk.
By appointment to Lord Mountbatten
I walked inside Oxford Bookstore.
To talk.
To talk to Sidney Sheldons
and Danielle Steeles.
Murakami had still not become Murakami.
I found someone else talking like me.
You. I guessed you were from Xaviers.
You didn't find me crazy.
You just winked,
perhaps knowing all along that
on a Sunday in 1999,
when Calcutta was still Calcutta,
you would hear someone else
talking like you.
That was the sweetest gift.
Your wink.

-

"Taste your own words to
see whether it make any sense!"

-

The night's silence,
The flickering city lights,
The barking dogs
And the sleeping world...
In between all these
I am craving to
Express a little more...
Cause everything around me,
Are like little boats that carries me
To your heart's shore...

-

You smiled.
And it broke into a thousand stars.
I too, stood under your sky,
hoping one of those stars might be for me.

-