He licked the batter
With his fingers
Quite messily:
The memory lingers

Now when it’s time
For birthday cake
Who on earth
Is going to bake

A scrumptious treat
For sweet Randall?
Who is going to
Light the candle?

Our hero is in
Rayagada jail:
Is the court going to
Grant him bail?

Or will they host
The birthday party?
The jailer, the warden
Some criminal smarty?

Will he get a knife
To cut the cake this time
When Attempted Murder
Is his crime?

The jailer, the warden
The criminal smarty
Will all pretend to
A faux hearty

When Randall wields
The knife to cut
Behind the bars
His cake; but

I am running ahead
Of the story
And making it
A little too gory

It’s up to all of us
To get together
And demand his release
No when and whether

Release Randall now. today
At once, without fail
The crime is you
Keeping him in jail

And when he’s with us, grinning widely
That’s the time for us to shout
In chorus, all of us, come on, now
Hip hip hurray, Randall’s out

A Postcard for Randall was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Later, we read from his poems
Still later
Channa Masala for lunch
(He would have loved it)
With rotis
(He would have preferred pooris:
“Just give me a swollen chappati, I say
I can pretend it is a batura”)
And roshogollas for dessert
(“For those who have the taste”
He would have said)

On a day of remembrance
We invoke his presence in myriad ways
Not to grieve that he is no longer with us
But to celebrate that he once was

Remembrance was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The capital city is in
Total lockdown
Not due to protests but
Because of Big Brother’s frown

The police, the military
The which-what-who
At his command
Are seeing him through

The country, the world
Has seen outrageous sights,
Charging cops, Bleeding heads
Snappy memes and sound bites

Big Brother and Little
Didn’t bargain for this one
They thought they’d scared people
With all that they’’d done

They didn’t reckon with Gen Z
Who kept coming back
And peacefully, non-violently
Even when under attack

Gyanu must go is
The cry in the street
To hear the cry anywhere
Is really a treat

Big Brother and Little
Are caught in a bind
If Gyanu is sacrificed
Will he respond in kind?

And tell the whole world
Who was the brain
Who orchestrated the process
Which caused all of us pain

If Gyanu stays on
The protestors will, too
And Big Brother’s dilemma is
What can he do?

More of the violence
For the whole world to see?
More of the protestors?
What will it be?

Take your pick
Place your bets
Does Gyanu go or stay?
Watch this space and
Get ready to say
Modi hai to mumkin hai

Big Brother’s dilemma was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many neighbours have not planted rice yet
The seedling beds are lush
The seedlings are past their plant-by date
For want of rain
For want of water in the wells

Walking around, I see a drongo
Dip its beak into the bird bath
And look at me and screech
(Accusingly, it seems to me):
Only then do I notice that
The bird bath is bone dry

Only when I come close
To fill the bird bath
Does the drongo fly off
To a nearby branch
To watch me

As I retreat, it flies back
Drinks thirstily from the bird bath
And then proceeds to dance in it
Enjoying the cool water.
It looks at me
(Gratefully, it seems to me)
And flies off
Trilling
“What we need is here”

El Nino was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In Palestine’s ulat-baazi
A child attacks a tank with stones

And the leaders in charge of
“The most moral army in the world”
Are frightened of kites and balloons

Ulat baazi was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Three cuts
Slice a tomato into four.
Three cuts this way
And three that way
On each slice
And voilà:
The tomato is in 64 bits

Old habits die hard:
To this day
All my rasams are 64 bit

64 bit was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Decades on
Today
We converse using Prav
An open source end-to-end encrypted
XMPP messaging app
Secure in the knowledge
That we can not be overheard

Plus ça change was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some ten of us would be seated
In a circle around her
Aged six or seven
To ten or eleven:
From a large plate
She would make balls of
Puliodharai and thayir saadham
And feed everyone by turn
When the tenth had had his puliodharai ball
The first would get his thayir saadham
“Thayir saadham saata thaan
Adutha puliodharai kadaikum”
She would admonish:
You had to eat them alternately

Many decades later when
She praised my eating to her grandson
Who was picking at his food
(He wouldn’t touch thayir sadham)
He responded with
“Thanks for the information”
To which she looked helplessly
At me and said
“Ennakku English puriyum
Aana ivan pesarudhu puriyave illai, da”

Not surprising since
Her grandson was speaking
Not English,
But American!

She was present in the absence
So to speak
At a recent family wedding
When over dinner
I remarked to a cousin
From “her circle”
“Suseela manni kalandha madhiri
Puliodharai varaadhu”

Suseela manni was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am introduced
Or introduce myself
As my father’s son
Or my grandfather’s grandson

The cousins of my age
Gather together and discuss
Long-ago cricket matches
(And mishaps where
I had to be rushed
Bleeding, to hospital)

Nieces and nephews have an energy
All their own
Bright sparky youngsters
Doing their own thing

Uncles and Aunts
Reminisce about
Amma and Appa
From their wedding onward

I meet brothers-in-law
And sisters-in-law
Some for the first time
And catch up with a lifetime’s doings
In half an hour

I am even Thatha to the assorted
Great-niece and great-nephew

I was ten or twelve years old at times
Twenty or twenty-five sometimes
But sixty only when I arrived
And when I left:
Time travel with a vengeance

Wedding Feast was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

He wrote to me about it:
“Coffee and weeping
At the airport”
He said

The weeping dissolved into weepy
In his handwriting
And since then, among us
In the family
Coffee and Weepy are inseparable
But
Mean something else altogether:

Whatever one has with coffee
Uppusheedai or Butter murruku
Thattai or Thenguzhal
Is generically “weepy”

So we start our mornings
On Hippo Rock with
Coffee and Weepy
(Inseparable)
Whenever we can

Private Phrases was originally published in Anhad ka Baaja on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.