A crowd on the footpath, on a busy road
It began to swell like a beehive on a honeycomb
Whispers were flying like honeybees in fused tremble
Disengaged individuals flung around the circle
Dangling bags vacillated from many shoulders indifferently
Horns of the passing vehicles dissolved into time's whirl
Sun shone monotonously as the lazy afternoon crawled
Lethargic events, too mundane to return.
Sirens zoomed in as white images of jeeps grew
Droning murmur broke into cluttering slivers, voices apart
Khakis emerged from the white images and batons swayed
The crowd limped sideways like a rag torn apart
Pairs of legs moved away and puddles of syrupy red fluid appeared
Whispers weakened as khaki uniforms closed in, and batons waved.
Necks strained and heads stretched as a constable began to scribble
Questions were asked and many turned ignorant
There was this man who knew everything, to answer every query
He was dead sure, indeed he was the dead!
Twilight's gaudy rays sprinkled through the trees
They cast long ugly shadows on the courtyard
The descrepit building bore its ghostly image impassively
The hospital's wraithlike fa�ade colluded with the ethereal world
The rays fearfully waded through the trash and a few tins gleamed
The light faded from the open and withdrew indoors
Ribbons of glow stretched out of windows grudgingly
It was time for the monotony of the day to depart.
A mangled body lay numbly on the morgue's table
Thick black ants crept over bloodstained clothes
Eerie cold trickled down with a pall of dim light and gloom.
The emptiness of the room was disrupted by the body
Like a sheet of paper ripped away at the corner
It could not wear the outlines of completeness
An incursion into the space of emptiness by an outsider
An object that lost its essence made an audacious intrusion
Its existence was not real, it was only the shadow
An ephemeral shadow contrasted against eternal emptiness.
Death is the divider, it is the gate
A partition where the cycle of repetition ends
Beyond death's hazy corridor opens the world of newness
The new world cannot afford any of life's repetitious events
It cannot let the life's mundane spoil its mysteriousness
Death is only the accidental breakdown of monotonous cycle of life.
Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre are on the top among my most favourite writers. Sartre's writings have influenced me in writing this poem as you would see the existentialist trappings present in the poem. For those not familiar with India a few tips: Khaki uniforms stands for police, and people turning ignorant when questioned refers to an endemic social phenomenon found mostly in urban areas--that people shy away from giving testimony of any accidents they witnessed as onlookers to avoid legal hassles.
Of all my memories, I shall cherish
On the platter of my heart
Odorous whiffs of that sandal paste
Kept open for all to savour
On the streets of royal Mysore.
They fade not from my smoked memories
Though waned in shine and sheen,
Shorn of pomp and plumage,
They still gleam unfailingly as ever
Their lustre never lost nor their fragrance ever faded.
Time is never passed so sumptuously
In so regal granduer as in mystic thoughts
Past when relived in embalmed thoughts
More majestic than the cort�ge of a Maharajah
Money or might, little do they matter.
If there were joys in the past
Simple and luscious, fit for all times
Pickle them in the vats of mind
Spiced and salted, stirred and sealed;
Serve them seasoned in times of sorrow.
(This poem is a reminiscence of my days in Mysore.
PS. Mysore is a royal town in South India. I had a few years of education in this city.)