One year

Most of it out of tune, I suspect.

What did you think?

This one was easy

Think of it as a warming up session. It wasn’t so much our victory as their loss. It is the next one that will be real battle, comrades: Modi vs Rahul. If the Congress becomes overconfident (such a big victory cannot be without side-effects) and botches up the next few years, we’ll have a much, much harder fight next time. I feel all melodramatic now: it is not yet time to sit back, let alone sleep in peace. Jaagte Raho!

ps. Chidambaram riding ahead at the very end of the count seemed rather suspicious. Ditto with Shibu Soren and Laloo at Pataliputra. No?

sym phony

i smash a glass
for each time you laugh;
percussion for your
flute.

only, some of them
don’t quite shatter;
i blame the cheap
acoustics.

cold comfort

i pluck words
from your vapour sentences,
they condense on my cold hands

and slowly freeze.
i apply their icy compress
to a bruised memory,
blue, swollen, silent.

September

September cools,
the laundry flies

Like paintings
brushed against
the skies.

The skies are seas
of azure blue,

And clouds scud
by like sailboats
do!

~

That picture and poem are part of a hand-painted calendar a friend’s friend made a few years ago. She is an artist who makes her living doing exactly this sort of whimsical and utterly delightful thing.

I have this sheet put up above my desk. Just looking at it transports me to the world of that painting. What could possibly be lovelier than lying on the grass on a breezy, sunny September evening, empty of all thought, watching the washing flying above you? Mind, it is not a complete escape. It acknowledges that the washing has to be done, but also that it will indeed get done just in time to let you lie, pleasantly exhausted from the exertion, on the cool earth and feel the wind blow your cares away.

Voting

So the booth was this government school. Most people were queued up outside the main building but we were directed to a little room at the back where there were no observers, no agents, not even the mandatory policeman. Only some very bored looking teachers on duty who cheered up somewhat when we turned up. They looked at the card, located my number on the list, marked it off, marked my finger with ink (which is manufactured in Mysore, by the way) and made me sign against my name on yet another list and gave me some receipt-like thing which I handed to yet another officer who then pointed me to the Electronic Voting Machine.

It was on a small, rickety table with the voter’s privacy protected by a corrugated cardboard box whose bottom and one side had been removed and the rest placed around the EVM. To make sure it didn’t get blown away, some brown packing tape had been used.

That was it. The nation’s fate hung on one long beep. And the secret ballot amounted to a recycled cardboard box. But the potential symbolism, that went right through the roof.