The Manifesto of Our Home and Living Together

Before I am a male , a husband and a low caste variety

I am a dalit

Before you are a woman and a wife and an upper caste type

You are a dalit

Before we separate and depart and

After we have separated and departed

We are dalits.

Then what is our modernism

If we cannot compose our  separation

Under a nation’s Hindu laws

Then where are our aeroplane tickets

Flying in non-territorial air

With fear in our hearts

That we will separate at landing

Catching the first taxi to the supreme court

Then where is our Eklavya’s thumb

After separating it from his palm

That he still uses in his bow& arrow dreams

Then where is our Sita

After she has given birth to Lav-Kus

We  cannot come closer

After we have spent twenty years together

In all of our photographs

We are touching each other

Before & after photographs we still separate

After we view our faces in them

To be continued

Our Potatoes Smell and Hunger

our  potatoes in this third generation plastic basket

sit patiently and calmly for longer times than their life

gazing at our skin and its neurodermititis of hunger

with their sand-soaked- steady eyes and happy look

these hard-milk contained and pale skinned proud potatoes

in our mother’s lap, long-vision , lingered-life and little reach

 very fondly marry our fat& fathomable purple  brinjals to wait for

 our belated and monotonous  arrival from work

 unpeeled in their honeymoon of stove and kerosene

 put on fire they boil in their cooking bedroom

half-eaten and left over they lie in gutters of pigs’ surfing

we think when we sleep after eating  rotis with potato curry

in our dreams we more often weep than laugh

the burden of  public relations and day’s toil.

Windows of Light

Sun rays emanate from memories

 Like morning simmered in a forest,

Like fish in a pond that

Lived together

Entangled twigs after branches and

Absorbed as water in a sand dune

After delayed rains.

Dew houses in my eyes’ city

Of drops on blades of grass,

 A city without citadel and walls

Invisible to residents

Reflect hope, calmness and tomorrow.

The Earth, a ray of sun

Stretched against tall trees

Of time and space

Falsely measured, mapped and owned

Only feet touch the wet clay of creativity

To live and fill

Eyes with light reflected from

 The city of dews.

Vinod Verma

Pillars in the Body

Midnight had passed

over the sand where my people lived

and waited for morning.

The mornings had previously peeped

in the holes of my people's poor

worn out shoes that were tired

of old leather's weight.

The night's air had touched

the heart of my sand
before it disappeared mystriously

in the eyes of morning.

After my people had been divided

in low and high caste
the morning arrived

stunningly.

Vinod Verma

The Green Rituals

The dogs in our street

were green

and feverish.

The street was a bowl

of fungus.

Below the water of our lives

in the street
lived our green rituals.

We cooked
and grew plants

for our rituals.

The dogs

that lived in our lives
waited for

the bread we cooked

for our green rituals.

From below the water of our lives
we would sing and dance
eat and sleep
and the dogs waited for

one night old bread
and believed

we had not eaten all.

Our plants waited for water.

After every prayer
we offered divine water to our plants,
and our use of it was ethical.

The water of our lives dried up
before we awoke to life.

Our dogs looked at us thirstily.
and stared at sky

barking hootingly

making us believe

tragic days were not far.

We lived both below and above the water.

Noons were for dogs.
Sunheat drove them seek shelter
below our green rituals.

Our pious plants were restless
when our dogs slept below their shade
leaning against their trunks.

Vinod Verma

They are far

Dark,dim,depressed faces

look at the distance

of horizon once held in their wrists.

Eyes in their eyes

gaze thorough wrinkles

at walls of cold plaster

painted ten years ago.

Vertically climbing sons

and daughters

one day had a break

and were lifted to unknown floors

leaving behind home,walls and old furniture

and history.

On these faces the wrinkles

deepened into a puzzle

in geometry of three dimensional shape

of a sculpture

of an abandoned old mother

who begs ancestoral gods early death.

They are very far from

our kind of glance

from height of our apartment

and love under a flatted roof.

Vinod Verma

I's Order

Now toss your inflated me
on the tightly knitted net of my I.

Does it bounce back to
your own face
of playground?

Do you remember the mask
on your face was very heavy once?
And not you
but I bore the weight of it
when you reflected it in
the mirror of my I.

I have recently thrown away the mirror
you gave me
at my birth.

I don't know how old I am
and when born
but I now think of celebrating
my birthday.

There are new flowers
touching my lips.
I am surrounded by sounds of
falling waters after a long frozen sleep.

I am ready with my reins
holding them tightly.

Don't throw any extra weight
on my spiral I
lest it bounces back
and can hit at the nose of your me.

The rotating earth has spun
the threads of my I
this time.

The last word: I know the universe
and I's order in it.