A firefly danced through the ash/leaving trails of a glorious cyan/streaking in the bloody crimson streets/residential havelis laid along serpentine alleys/jostling with helpless crowds in myriad markets and endless lanes.
there it is/a Nehru poster/a Gandhi pamphlet/a Jinnah scribbling/satisfied with their
position on the dragon back/clawing and etching borders freehand.
kid on a bullock cart wonders/sandstone brick, demolished homes, aroma of jalebis/roasted shawarmas and dried chilies on the terrace/holy mantras and wavering azans are fractured.
‘Azad’ Hind Fauj and Glory
I see the afternoon gathering of blood-ridden coconut trees; peripheral scope of the sky seems dull and full;
Locked in my toes that avoid getting wet in the war rash; tepid rain over my loneliness.
I long to be part of the sweat and the sunshine
The vinegar and blood of my men together some day
Across the bunkers I hear my enemies
The pompous drone of machine rifles.
I wonder if you knew my bombs would explode; inside the bones of my children
Wrapped up detonation, handed down through generations,
Each fuse would burn through the lifetimes, set ablaze to our lifelines.
I am still walking on your shrapnel; in the bones of my structure, itching with your gunpowder
When you feel more made of wounds than of person; the craters can swallow you I am learning to reshape these chasms.
My body is a landscape with rolling chains for a mind; formed from mud and molded with time
Mountains of stature, valleys that run deep; a core of folding fire, ever burning and heating
Oscillating, pupating, eroding and healing, I am learning, I am learning; to share my home with demons.
If in my burning dreams, you too could place; across the crevice through which we shot them;
And witness the blue eyes slam shut in my face, his goblin frame, like Satan’s sin
If you could feel, at every crux, the red; come flowing out of my air corrupted lungs, bitter as disease, bitter as bullet.
Small sandcastle on a muddy street in Karachi
a little glass bead/blazing within/into summer’s tumbler; paradise crumbled as
midnight rose/to the pandemonium of freedom;
mellowed meadows/trumpets of warm mustard fields/shiny polaroid and a rescue spree/families shattered like a porcelain plate/why did they left the seeds/when watered with tears.
A Refined Nation and Brotherhood
to the old trouper’s eye/saffron and green are the same colours/a ragtag of rules for
love and blood alike/a thin-boned, cat-lithe woman who tip-toed the fine edge/ between elegance and vulgarity
she twirled across to notes of her ravishing flute and her man/ivory and grace unmatched/same blood, varied red.
backdrop of communal clouds/dust of death rained down on their face/arising with the clatter/rising smoke settled to the bumps of a raging mob/nothing has changed/seventy-five years in vain.
14/15 August
some days are prime/humid, thick and swollen/fire sets in like diabolical hypoxia and
countrymen gasp/air to fill their lungs/pride to fill their heart/claret flood of blood/I yearn for dead limbs
how it feels when they ask- “how far is home?”, “amidst the sky, amidst the sky”.