आख़िरी

शब्दों के परे के शब्द
कैसे मिलेंगे
कहाँ पर

समय के परे भी
कोई समय तो होगा
भले सिर्फ़ एक हाथ वाला
अपनी हीं कुहनी ढकेलता हुआ

शब्द ढल रहे हैं

शब्द ढल रहे हैं

काँटों के पार
शब्दों का घूमना ज़रुरी है
और उससे भी ज़्यादा
एक ठहरना

काले के बाद का रंग ज़ंग होता है।

क्या ये शब्द बचायेंगे, खु़द के ज़लज़ले से?

मेरे समय के पहले से
यह बुदबुदाता आ रहा है
नयी हड्डीयों में पुरानी हड्डीयों के बाण

और मुझे यक़ीन है
यह चलता हीं जायेगा
माँ की सिलाई मशीन की तरह
जो पिछले साठ बरसों में रुकी नहीं है

विराम

प्रारम्भ तो है यह
और इसके पहले की बिन्दु
दिन के अंधेरे की तरह
विद्रोही
असमर्थ
अनउद्भावित
निराकार निरर्थक
नि:सन्देह नाकाम

और रात में कफ़न पर
पथरायी-सी छाया।

...

The night has been
soaked
of its darkness.

Now only light remains
and perhaps
fancy.

Storm

What about a storm?
It was perhaps the shiver
of your voice
Like the tremor of the taut string
which broke
The day I died.

...

opening my morning
six o' clock
the light invents
things

raining this night
i see the night
inventing
mornings

metamorphosis

The lamb a hare
sheepishly a bull
assumes sheds
a horse skin

Is a fox.

for T.E. Hulme

The stars;

remaining stitches

of the unstitched fabric.

A Variation on the Theme of the Moon

Unlike Caligula
This one-eyed bodyless monster
Is beautiful

marked with accusing freckles
of time
& sun-burnt stars.

वर्ण

कुछ शब्द
तपने डाले थे
अन्तर में।

समय में
भूले हुए
अब निकले हैं।

बल खोये
राख़ से पहले...

Alive.

I have seen myself dead.
Last night.
A relief to escape all forms of meaning.
Another escape last night.

I chose the summer evening to go out.
Or perhaps it chose me.
Anyway, I went out.
No end, no meaning.

The moon wasn't there.
Perhaps a leisure leave.
I finally get rid of those scattered distortions in the air.
The sky, the sun, but the moon wasn't there.

My body lay suspended between gravity & flies doing balancing acts.
My body couldn't see its shadow.
A relief.
Moreover, gravity had lost weight.

The people who will have my pictures are around me.
They are sweating a thing called heat.
I am now the outsider on permanent leave.
Others hold my cold flesh for a reprieve.

Silence has followed me here.
Anyway, she is the only feeling I recognise.
The others are cryptic graffiti.
And like myself, done without paint.

The sense of the falling light beckons me.
Me and my companion are to part.
She was not able to be mine anyway.
Or maybe she simply didn't trust me.

I am to reenter the world of dictionaries.
And perhaps an encyclopaedia.
I am to be again.
I dispose Death till the next time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Am in the form of words.
Can't do a thing.
I had no hand in the whole affair.
Rebuilt unsatisfactorily.

क्या करें

क्या करें।
शायद इसी में सारी गुत्थीयाँ,
सारे सवाल,
थे।

इसी एक मंत्र का जाप
अंतिम समय तक
पकड़े रहे।

सुजित।

तुम्हारी देन है ये नाम
जिससे मैं कुछ दिनों से
काफ़ी नाख़ुश रहने लगा था।

क्या करें सुजित?
यह शायद अंतिम मंज़िल थी।
मुझे अब समझ भी आने लगा है
इस नाम का राज़,
इसी दिन के लिये जो तुमने रखा होगा।

अंतिम पड़ाव के पहले
उसी का नाम बुदबुदाते

इससे कम संकोच था
मुझमें, मेरे इस नाम में।
मृत्यु रख नहीं सकते थे,
यम एक हीं अकेला,
राख़ तुम्हें समझ नहीं आया
कि स्त्री है कि पुरुष

और फिर वहीं तो जाना था
इस पूरे निरर्थक निराकार
जीवन के उपलक्ष्य पर।
यहीं पर नाम रखा तुमने
वही एक जवाब का।

उसी की जीत है इस खेल में।
वहीं राख में हम कभी फिर मिलेंगे।

क्या करें?

एक टूटी हुई कविता

शाम कुछ शब्द
एक लापता कविता के
पगडँडी से निकलकर
दबे पाँव

कवि के पास

रात के किनारे बैठा
पुराने विस्मित चमड़े में
घिरा अर्द्ध-विरामी व्यक्ति
अचरज के कटघरे से

क्षीण हँसी

समय

समय

शीशे में बँधा
एक पुत्ला

रात बेरात
जगाया

दिन बदिन
सुलाया

The NBT Sessions

Contemplating of getting on to the blog wagon for some while now, but my fingers refuse to, ahem, move. So be it. I am using a telepathy technique just invented by the self wherein I force-feed the brain into relenting its hold on the lazy bone - and thereby this write-up.

July, and most of it, six days a week, spent at the National Book Trust's Hauz Khas office - and going through sessions after sessions of Publishing professionals - as drab as the same might sound, there was plenty of fun within the same. And the boring moments. Mostly good fun, though. Alongwith this a chance to meet people from all over, literally!

Trying to post some of the pictures taken within that same...

See, I moved!

Birth-DUH!!

Twenty-Seventh anniversary, this. That time of the year, and I have been hearing about that-time-of-the-month throughout the year. Somebody has a sense of irony.

What do you do when you are heaped with all kinds of the same greeting throughout a single day which suggests you must not have done anything to deserve this! Personally, I stayed and stuck obstinately with my behind, and didn't budge. My tashrif was too precious to be seen loitering around - in fact, come to think of it, I have not seen my own since my 15th birthday or thereabouts.

What I did, though, and am doing this very moment, was decide giving my wrist and the appendages at the end a thorough going-over - maybe a typing stint which would last all of five minutes. And from those ends will spew Shakespeare and Nostradamus combined, a literature entirely in the future.

And as that same would be in the future, why waste so much of precious time - I am off to the beer-guy for some filtered stuff, and anybody who is remotely interested in bathing in the beautiful sun of (not-so-new-anyways)-Delhi, can be my guest.

Here is to not moving for another half of my living.