BABA, YEH ACHE DIN KAB AINGE
Often, perched on impossible thoughts amidst unflinching nights
I (try) and weigh these advertised crimes of Islam
Against my name
(you see) There is always this shame
(of the blood running through his veins
As he delivered his boyhood soul
To take up arms instead, to rip and behead- they say
Look, his oil soaked land, he must've been born a
terror.
So when you ask me who I'm;
I cannot lose myself in the paradoxes of identity and wonder how one ever knows such things
Instead
I offer you that half of me yet untainted
By my woeful Allah
Dissolve into the poster child for a Western- Hindu integrity
(only) Ira Anjali
As Baba hangs like a phantom limb, his legacy
Buried in the graveyard of shamed memories.
Abba jaan, my gently aging old man
you held my hopeless palm
When I could hardly stand
Now I only stumble-
Surrendering your name.
In this country of borders (arbitrarily set in that invisible stone
That held the forgotten blood of our history) - all of your men
Hung, baba- they said for killing too much.
And so I shed your name
- I cannot tell them look
My grandfather spent his nostalgia in jail
Fighting For this freedom to live without blame;
It must've been a lie baba-
It must've been our mistake
for all those voices ripped
from hungry throats, all 277 killed in Bombay
bodies burnt like cigarettes in our fanatical game
so I hide you in the folds of my mind; your
tired eyes reciting Iqbal and Faiz-
I cannot listen anymore baba
(this urdu is my poison I must lay you to rest)
And the women and men;
Gujarat baba, butchered and torn from their Muslim children's embrace
Righteously deserving-that too must've been our mistake-
we cannot blame that man,
our national God with his 56 inch chest;
with their blood he coloured justice baba
developing dams like our borders,
he asked for their name.
From me, (today) he just takes yours.
WHEN LOVE DOESN'T ARRIVE
Sometimes love doesn't arrive.
Sometimes you wait till
The middle of the night
The creaking of your back door
It's just the thief or your cat
Coming home.
The flames flicker, and burn out sometimes.
Sometimes you fall asleep.
The thing is- all
The romantic comedies
Valentine's day and love poems
Sometimes they forget to tell you
That even if you try, n do everything right
The scented candles, the lingerie
Flip- your- hair back, eye- contact linger n smile
Love may STILL not be the soundtrack of your life
Remember they're just trying to make
Movies n greeting cards
N love is the easiest hope to sell.
Sometimes you've been waiting all along for him
Your own life sized ken doll
While she's always been by your side
And now is gone (?)
And, even when they do arrive
You may not fall headlong
Into love
Your heart may not skip those beats
Maybe you'll just becomes friends
And a little bit more
Soulmates of a different kind?
Sometimes happiness isn't in pairs
—your multiple orgasms are shared
With a multitude of faces and names
You begin to forget.
Sometimes you can't help
But regret the sparks
That could've been
But you let go,
All those years ago.
'in a far away land
There once lived a man/ prince who loved me..'
You begin to tell yourself- stop.
It is a myth that we women cannot survive on our own,
Created by this industry of men.
You don't have to settle down-
You can discover the world on your own
And it will b beautiful, maybe even more
Than you had imagined with him.
Cause sometimes you find yourself
Sometimes you don't need someone else telling you
Nothing
sometimes alone is not lonely
You find this love, even if it doesn't arrive
It's in your nerves and sinews,
It's in the inside.
