Tag: Poems

Morning Walk

~ binusivan ~ 1 Comment

I know we have not met. But I know you.

Head held high, airpods in,

Gap tracks on, arms swinging.

Walking.

Walking resolutely every day.

Every day, before you reach the metro station

we walk by each other.

I am the one huffing by.

Hidden silvery scars stretching across my skin

Like a galaxy’s arms shimmering in a starry sea

Storing stress in the fat lining of my stomach

Life, joy and pain in the lines on my face.

I like you.

I look forward to seeing you

Walking.

Walking every single day.

I envied you your focus, and your speed.

And then one day I saw you stop. Mid-stride.

Your chin almost on your chest. Wilting…

Breathing.

Breathing. Chest heaving.

Holding it all together. Breathing.

As though the act of raising your head

And holding it high

Looking the world in the eye

Just became too much to ask of you today.

It was painful to witness.

I wanted to take you in my arms.

Tell you, ‘It will be okay.’

Possibly a lie,

but maybe it will come true.

But other thoughts came chasing in its wake.

‘I should leave her alone,’

‘Don’t interfere.’

I am desperate too.

I need to speak to someone

whose share of suffering

maybe greater than mine.

Silly as it seems,

I want to feel better in comparison.

To think, ‘Thank God!

Her migraine is worse than my sinus!’

Yet, there is a part of me

That wants my suffering to be unique.

Maybe all we want

As we each lug a burden too heavy

Is to be seen

And perhaps, heard.

You were still standing there

When I neared.

Just then a young woman

Ran by; heels pounding

carrying a whiff of my past with her

She reminded me of me.

You straightened up and strode on

She, obviously, reminded you of you too.

Photo by Justin Clark on Unspla

I just realised that I did not even wish you guys a Happy New Year, in my last post! Such bad manners. Forgive me. But better late than never. :). Happy 2022 dear readers. Hopefully, it won’t be a bugger all mess like the last couple of years. This decade needs to get its act together.

Motherhood – And You Are Angry

~ binusivan ~ 2 Comments

And you are angry at her for being careless and silly

You are angry because you wanted to write

and now… and now,

after a whole day spent being mum,

when you desperately wanted to write,

you have to be mum for another half an hour.

You are angry because you feel this way.

You are angry because you had shut the door

that hurt her finger.

All the logical explanations about

she should not have kept her finger there don’t cut ice.

She’s old enough to know better doesn’t cut ice.

You are angry because you were so tired

that you scolded her for placing her finger near the door.

You are angry as you watch those tears stream down

because of all the things you can handle on earth

her tears are not one of them.

You are angry because you are tired.

You are angry because she doesn’t blame you.

You are angry because she agrees with you

– she was being careless.

Damn it! You are angry.

Motherhood is one bloody ride

You are angry because you can’t forgive yourself.

Picture by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash

This is a poem I had written a few years ago. I love being a mom. It is a full time job. I love writing. It too is a full time job. There are only 24 hours in a day. Final result – I was often left feeling frayed and irritable trying to just hang on to some sense of identity.

Now as my daughter battles a rare sarcoma and recovers from a surgery, I am left amazed at how much we take for granted and how ridiculously small and unimportant everything else looks when we are brought up hard against mortality. I can’t relive those years again, but I have promised myself that going forward I will slow down enough to enjoy the moments – with my family and by my own self. To hell with what the world thinks a successful life should look like.

Poem Excerpt

~ binusivan ~ 5 Comments

Am slowly limping back into social media. My novel’s final draft is almost done, and I now realise that it is not the final draft. I want to make a few more changes… Aaargh. To paraphrase Deepak from Masaan, “yeh drafts kahe katam nahi hote bey?” (Why doesn’t re-writing come to an end man?)

So, to not hate myself or my book (yes that’s possible when you live with it 24/7) I am blogging and posting again…

Thank you for reading.

Much love

BS

The River’s Love Song

~ binusivan ~ 13 Comments

This is a poem I wrote recently when I wanted to take a break from struggling with my first novel. It will be published soon in the 16th edition of Dubai Poetics out by April end. Do let me know your thoughts. 🙂

From Jalori to Manali (37)

‘My poems are born of you,’

the river whispered to the mountains.

As the wind carried the river’s gentle sighs,

high up to the land of clouds and veils

nestled in the skies,

the mountains trembled.

It had felt the young love of his beloved

as she skipped, laughed and tripped along with him.

Majestic he had stood, watching her antics,

she had murmured her delight and thundered in pleasure.

But… his silence engorged her senses.

Nothing else could she bear.

Yet, she wanted, just for once, to be held

and loved with words she could hear.

Flowing away, with time, she left her mountain behind.

Meandering amidst valleys, she heard

voices other than her lover’s silence.

Thrilled, she gurgled with delight and rushed on.

She was loved, adored, worshipped, and more.
Dhyey Ahalpara

Yet, greater as her name grew,

farther as her fame spread.

she missed the silent communion

that had created her.

She wished she could turn her waves around

force the currents back to the source.

Sometimes she raged.

Sometimes she sluggishly moved on.

Did he hear her cries and sighs?

Did her love know that she was done with life?

She moved on… tired and dirty,

loved and worshipped.

Stillness replacing energy.

And then with her baggage of offerings,

bodies, debris, and silt,

she gave up the last of her freshness –

her very essence –

to the vast blue

that matched her beloved

in hue.

As the clouds burst above him,

drenching him with her love,

he realized that she had given up her life

to once again fall in his arms and lie.

Save

Save

Acceptance

~ binusivan ~ 4 Comments

My first post for the year – :). An update into the last 21 days if you will.

2016 has been a ho-hum sort of year so far. Professionally I am doing well – enough writing and editing assignments to keep me busy. A bit too busy to be honest. But the world continues to nose-dive into oblivion, as though hell bent on destroying itself before some meteor hits it. Global markets crash, students commit suicide, terrorists kill innocents, more soldiers die. I could have been talking about last year or the year before that. The news update is the same. We are going to the dogs from the looks of it.

However, on the personal front, I like where I am going. This is the first time that I have not bothered to go through the sham of making resolutions. I have anyway never kept one beyond five to six weeks at the most. But I have started out on things that have been on my to-do list for way too long.

I am going to be a year older tomorrow. There are slivers of wisdom that have pierced my decaying armour of youth. Not that it makes much of a difference. I am still repeating old mistakes and making new ones on top of it. But there has been some growth too.

After nearly 13 years in Dubai, I am finally learning Arabic. I know… shame on me! I should have done this much earlier… but my motto in my 40s is – better late than never.

I have read The Land of Seven Rivers by Sanjeev Sanyal (will be reading that one again), Wild by Cheryl Strayed (highly recommended for lovers of treks and hikes), The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall (I liked it a lot… the way she writes especially) and have started on The Public Intellectual in India by Romila Thapar. While the Sanyal book was a carry forward from last year (I just had one chapter to read in 2016), everything else was done in the last 20 odd days!! I am amazed.

The Dubai Poetics group have accepted two of my poems for their anthology. You can read my submissions Stay a While (https://binusivan.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/stay-a-while/) and Don’t Send Me a Memo (https://binusivan.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/random-musings/) on my blog if interested. Will keep you updated on that.

On the novel front – it did take a back seat to my bread and butter writing these last three weeks. I feel like a procrastinating heel. But am back at it with a vengeance now. Sada – thank you for those links and encouragement.

Sometime last year, I began to enjoy cooking… for about a month. That feeling soon passed. Nothing has changed in 2016. I still don’t enjoy cooking. I think my cook is the most important man on earth. Apologies to the husband, father, brother, Modi and Obama. And off late, I am beginning to hate even regular housework with a vengeance. My new cleanliness motto is… actually, I have two – ‘Chaos and mess beget creativity’; and, ‘It is not dust; it is star dust’.

Incidentally, I have stopped colouring my hair. I am letting it go grey. I want to know how I will look.

So, hopefully, 2016 will be a year choc-a-bloc full of great books, poems, writing, freelance jobs, and maybe, just maybe, a deeper acceptance of who I am.