Regretting Smiles

A genuine (or not?) smile 
Caught from the corner of her eye,
Returned with a beaming smile
Now awoken to her own presence
With innocent glee
She smiled,
For she was smiled to.

She read his tears 
Frozen into words,
Cried with empathy,
Glad at last,
For pity would 
Haunt her no more.

She wonders now if she
Had imagined the smile?
(She prizes her tears for now.)

With Love, from Death

You've sketched & sought eternity,
Throughout the map of history 
In effulgent hues.
And what prompted it, pray?
Futile attempts at
Squirming out of 
The shell of mortality.

Of course you don't seek death.
You haven't been living life either.
What then, is it that you
Lived all these years?
Had you been living
The fear of death instead,
Lurking near?

I've been subjected to
A tirade of judgments from you  
But then you've judged life too
All along anyway.
(You've judged it more, 
And lived it less.)

P.S. (Achilles was wiser, 
Must I say.)

Word is Out

An encounter with words in life hitherto
(Brought me asking yet again a helpless -
"Now, where to?")
For company was all I had back then       
An ebbing ebb of 
Self-assuring words at times, 
To a frenzied slew 
Of words, twisted & few 
Which sapped & gnawed away 
My spirits into mute stillness.
Like no adversary had ever managed.
Then another capricious turn
To a voice of rhetoric that mocked,
At every occurring thought 
In my breathing existence
Angry at what, I knew not.
Every mono-syllable I pondered over, or dropped.
Words plundering away words 
I had uttered, memories earlier,  
Words I saw, heard, smelled, lived -
Were they ever in my favour?
Or was it a path, I ought to have taken not?

Those words had more life in them
Than I then did, let me tell you.
Now and then, a war of words with 
The consciousness of words 
They and I had created
A dialogue, now supporting, now doubting,
I had become a dilemma.

Words are all I had at all those times,
And they failed me when  
I needed them most.
They sought a different muse.
Conscious of their mistress's dormant existence
Stammering her way through life,
Were they teaching me a lesson?
To take ownership of my articulations
With courage, wisdom & tact,
That which I probably lacked

Here comes news
Within dreams, with strides taken, 
With gestures, glances, I awaken
As I cross paths again with words,
Uttered - un-uttered, 
Now knowing their worth
Breaking the slumber 
of 
Clenched fists, 
Asphyxiating knot of syllables,
Scripting now, 
Drops of ink 
That shall make a million think.

Blast from the Fart

Us shaam woh Valentine's Day manaane chala tha
                                                        ghudsavaar ho kar,
Man mein laddoo phoot rahe the soch kar 
Ki uski premika khud ko sawaar rahi hogi.
Ki use hawaaon ki sasaraahat sunaayi di,
Pata chala woh payt dard ka shikaar ho baitha tha,
Uske shareer se gas ka aandolan faraar ho chuka tha.
Ye dekh kar kaanp utha uska tan-daban,
Usne perfume chidak daala in shareer's ang-ang,

Uski premika ke pahuncha jab woh nikat,
Dar gaya woh yeh soch kar,
"If I fart again, there'll be no ifs and buts,
But only many a kick on the butt."

Smitten by her smothering kisses he was lost,
Till she heard odorous hisses and then 
A blast from the arse.
She struggled with uttering a few syllables
Swooned to faint & fall into his arms.

Thinking she'd accepted him in all his airs,
He exulted with one final resounding fart,
Exclaiming, "Farting ain't nothing less than a glorious art!"

To Tweet or not to Tweet, is the Question.

No, this isn't a 'fresh' perspective on how Sunanda Pushkar may have died. This is more of a fresh outburst of thoughts on news gone stale, sorry, the ethos of media gone stale, lately. Thus apparently, what was deemed more worthy of being a front page headline in the newspapers, or prime news on various channels, was the Twitter quarrel between Sunanda Pushkar and Tharoor's alleged love interest. Indicting the paparazzi (yes, that's the word I'd like to use here) for trying to create a ruckus in the already muddled relations with her husband, she asked them to back off. However, the newspapers and channels could only stay loyal to their profession and go on to scrape off finer details about who Mehr Tarar is, for instance, and more. 

Now that all coverage has died down, I wonder what prompted the lull. Is it like it took Sunanda Pushkar's death for the media to realize that things can take a turn more tipsy-turvy than a wife vs. vamp TV Soap, much like what they were trying to portray the whole 'Tweetathon' as? And hence, after paying due respects by mentioning that she may have died an 'unnatural' death, they finally decided to let her rest in peace? The question is, what did the media ever have to do with the turmoil in her life anyway? 

Suddenly, the speculations have ended, Sunanda Pushkar's death is now stale news. Or let's say, the approach towards journalism on the part of media has turned stale. A flurry of articles, file pictures, and more didn't quite suffice to keep up with the national news that her 'tiff' with the 'other woman' in her husband's life had turned to. But a woman, who divorced her first husband, who faced the death of her second husband with courage to bring up her son, moving across countries to secure his future by switching jobs, someone who's been called a 'spa-owner', a 'beautician' by the press, did make things alright, each time. Being haunted and having her life and her very image manipulated by the media, was nothing short of a "medieval witch hunt", in her words.  And to have committed suicide after only having vehemently expressed her dislike for the state of affairs in her life, seems like a mammoth printing error in the public story her life was turned into. 

So is the media trying to boast of finally letting Sunanda Pushkar rest in peace, after her death? In that case, clearly, they've got their priorities wrong. The stark reality of her mysterious death, surely has less relevance for the press, or didn't quite manage to go 'trending', unlike the virtual reality of the Twitter tiff. I'm guessing, my new-found interest in reading the newspapers again, wasn't such a great idea after all.