Salt
Everything exists in plentyPlenty of wallsPlenty of wheelsPlenty of love songsPlenty of newsPlenty of porn sitesPlethoraWe don’t realize we are suffocating.Now I feel like listening to ChopinI feel like flying a kite.At the left corner of a water-sprinkled vestal plantain leaf, a pinch of salt.The essence of earth, pearl of great price, this is enough.
The Old Tree
The torture video I saw this morningmakes this day even darker.Dogs and horses I come across on the roadstare intently. I walk past ignoring them.As I had to battle something invisible,I spent those times just protecting myself.I looked after my health, washed my hands again and again,and realized how dangerous I am.A compound wall stretches along the path,broken glass shards standing upright atop it:Amidst the splinters, in the mild sun, a garden lizard doing push-ups.It lifts its neck and looks at me: I know it, it knows me well.This is not violence; nor is it hate;It is something else.Darkness oozing from a wound,A seed germinating in a numbed spot.I am not philosophizing. I just want to see -The pothole on the road, the spreading mountain slopes,The accident spot, the mist slowly dispersing and gathering.A man is tied to a tree and beaten.A man is bound to a vehicle and dragged along(It’s a small truck built with high-end automated technology).Scenes I haven't seen, recordings I stopped midway,the ones I avoided watching, the ones being filmed now, new uploads about to be shared,somewhere or other they are running on someone’s screenOn low volume, in secret, incessantly:The infinite loop of human distortion.I enter the woods.How long has it been since I walked among the towering trees?Beneath the feet,The great network of roots.In the depths of the emerald sea,I see for the first timeThorns glistening with dewdrops,A python curled asleep on a branch,The twitch of the right ear of a rabbit feeding,On the crests, hornbills and langurs,Vapor draws the light;Silence in the air;It is evening and the birth of man is still twenty thousand years away.I stoop to pick up a stone to take home.It has no scribbling on it, no fingerprints, no clotted black blood.On the way back on a bald rock, stands an old tree, rooted deep.I go to it, touch it, smell its leaves.In the shadow of its broken branchI join the shadow of my hand:liberation, harmony, meaning, silence.
Theology
In the shadow of the eternal sun, even the dry vela pods fell silentOrphaned paths of parched saline earth where nothing but dust driftsAll along, charred broken grass and the fractured bones of the earth.
From somewhere, a parakeet perches on a headless palm.Fresh memories and simple longings well up.All for a moment: the bird vanishes into a hollow,
And there stands the wretched land, hunched like a dark old woman prayingwith folded hands before the closed doors of an Amman shrine.Umbilical cord under the ground, milk teeth on the roof
We, in between.
The Electrician
In his pocket,always a tester.Before grasping anything,he tests it with the testeragain and again,observing.And so he has no fear.He understands it all. Only thendoes he fix it.Now it glows—the lamp,resplendent.
Four Notebooks, 1920
Age: 30, Job: Research Scholar, Sex: Male,Hair parted yet dishevelled, eyes attuned to the light of dreams,You can see it in his passport photograph:A hundred percent classical tale of genius.The onset of winter in Cambridge with snow slivers.Unfamiliar with western quilts,The young man,Wrapped himself in a heavy shawl, sat huddled near the hearth,Too close to the flames. Name: Srinivasa Ramanujan, F.R.S.Lightning had already struck him hundreds of times;Face full of scars, one organ or another was always in pain.He had come to know many physicians, many places too:Erode, Kumbakonam, Rajamundri, Madras, London,Matlock, Kodumudi, Namakkal.Something was using him, as much as he could be—like a tube of toothpasteone hasn't the heart to throw awayFar away, the prisons in the Andamans were fast filling.At times, the snarl of warplanes above the roof.The Emden approached the Bay of Bengal.Seas away, on Sannadhi Street, his wife and mom quarrelled.Robert Ashe, District Magistrate of Tirunelveli was shot dead.Disguised as a labourer, Lenin was crossing into Finland.The Camp was under siege on all four fronts.But he, amidst the whistling strokes of an ink-well pen,Moved slowly through a brand-new blank sheet of paper:Mathematics was easy.We knew that he was operated upon for hydrocele,We knew about his pleadings“I came to know that there is a vacancy in your...”,about his working with Hardyabout his single attempt at suicide and of course the famous 1729 taxi.But what really happened? Who was he in touch with?Where did his telegrams arrive from?He lived somewhere else;In the certain world of numbers,In the dens where biographies couldn’t get in.He believed that at nights the Goddess Namagiri came andwrote on his tongue; sometimes he even spoke of it.The Trinity professors whispered: “Poor innocent, Madrasi, a frog in a well.”But in no gentleman’s dream were equations ever written in blood.He was given fewer days. Unlike the rest,He couldn’t afford to walk step by step toward a solution.So, he ran— like the Greek who had to deliver the message before collapsing.In between, he faltered like a poet forced to prove a metaphor.It is just so: every formula is an astronomical event.It is just so.Today in this small-town, Cauvery runs along pausing at every ghat.Inside the house cringing under the sloped tile roof,A slender black figure waits, craning its neck, for the lightning:An exhausted Nadaswaram.He won’t cross the seas again.The priests will refuse to attend his funeral.Postage stamps will be issued in his memory.Half the theorems he discovered had been found centuries ago.Fifty years after his demise they would find why he died.Then came his fourth notebook: black holes, string theory, space-time travel
The Cauvery will still be flowing.
Awakened Knife
The knife carried wrapped in newspaperRegained its consciousness when dropped by accident.Now it is a hungry tiger, no one can touch it.
Henceforth it needs nothingIt will slice the fruits it needs. During winters,will go bowing into the sheath and slumber.
The sudden awakening, abrupt fizzling out of mercy.It has to carry its shimmer like a hurricane lampAnd keep vigil over its unwalled, dark well all night.
To stay healthy,It whets itself in fire and stone.On those coal grey evenings after the rains we could see it walkinglike a saffron-clad sage looking for a black tea.
