My babe, you daughter of another
Your love has been fountain
At my heart’s door, whose business
Is to flow liketh majestic Saraswati
Aeons ago, melting the glaciers of
My frozen heart of dawn liketh
Rising orb to drop of dew;
Aye, across waters I am come
Six hundred yojanas to land of
Occident, but I am the same who at
Your side, your presence the same
To me, your eyes on me — well of
Love, your lips beaming — never dry
With the dampness of my love;
Come to me, my babe, to my poor
heart, rest in the pillow of my breast
Come to me, my babe, take the umbrage
Cast by the bough of my heart
Come to me, my babe, so my heart
Finds its place again, in your Hrudaya

This poem is about the first bride of the city Hyderabad —Hayat Bakshi. I am dedicating this poem to the brides of Hyderabad.  ss
Disclaimer: Although the characters in this poem are real, the storyline is a work of fiction.

Reposed under the bough of her heart
Bakshi gazed inly to her soul
Looked upward looked downward
Realized the cherubim she was

Days, months, years, gone
Extending her boundaries
Like doth water without confines
Lost in her pluck to agglomerate

By the tramp of her sire, withdrawn
To senses, flashing her whims
To the seraphim she is now;
What is roving your mind? asked Quli

The time is nigh for the joy
Brides hope to have, she said
Wearily, like a bolt of lightning
Quli passed fiat for her big day, anon

Oyster formed pearls in fain,
So her tender ears dangle in
Gleam, like a twinkle of morning
Dew pierced by sunbeams

Walls of Charminar flowed lac,
So her nimble arms chime with
Clink of lac bangles, like raindrops
Drumming the calm wintery waters

Gladder Bakshi blessed the duo,
Together they became the yin and yang
Of every coffer damsels hope to have
Ensconced in the crown of laad bazaar…Project K

This poem describes my first casually serious, an oxymoronic attempt to photography using my phone Nexus 5 that returned to earth last week.

Lost in a reverie
Sauntered the passageway
Bedecked the purlieu with
Reeds and weeds
And briers of names
I know not

Past the alley opened
Annon, the portal
To the orchard of flowers:
Roses and Lilies
Jasmines and Daisies
Full of bliss and bloom

The sun hanging low
Illuminating the horizon
Stirred my passionate heart
Slipped hands into the pockets
Fished out the Nexus 5 scarlet
Shimmering like a setting orb

Clicked willy-nilly
The maiden shot
Of a rose on a brier
The photography dilettante
Of mine foolish heart
Heralded

Nexus returned to earth
Sleeping at last
Ruefully
Pictures of birds:
Perching and wheeling
Chirping and warbling

Pictures of insects:
Buzzing and hovering
Winging and hopping
Linger on
Looking back the album
Of Nexus 5

This poem describes the exchange of messages between two souls, who are cursed by distance and years of time, using clouds as their messenger. The ‘She’ second stanza of this poem is indeed written by “She”, Aayushi, my pen pal.

She:

Curled her crimson lips
Blared the conchs of the earth, to
Summon the clouds of swans-down
Disembogued deluge of words
From sluice gates of her heart, thereinto
Sealed the message with her velvety kiss,
Smile fuelled the clouds
Scudding the cerulean skies
Gathered the rooftop, whistling
They opened they opened
Flung upon him her rain of words

Wrote she:

Sworn in the feat
of unscathed Ivory towers
Unacquainted, yet
A plush of ally
Scented in glee
Eons felt by
Beaming to sky
Slashing the purlieu
The spirits fly

Wrote he, eft:

In the words that
Thy lips spilled
Light years melts away
And cast mellow upon me
What yonder on earth
Ruth can befall upon me
Nay, distance and void
Can harry me — for
Lies my spirit in
Thy soul

This poem is for people located far away from their paramour. Nay, it does not reflect anything about my life.

In the words that
Thy lips spilled
Light years melts away 
And cast mellow upon me
What yonder on earth
Ruth can befall upon me?
Nay, distance and void
Can harry me — for
Lies my spirit in 
Thy soul

Meaning: With your words that emerged from your lips, even astronomical distances between us fade out and softness dwells upon me. What affliction or grief can teeny-weeny distances of earth inflict? No distance can harass me as my soul resides in you.

Another poem that flowed through my pen as my lips brimming in the elation of the city, Hyderabad. This poem, “Hyderabad’s Camelot” is the continuation of my previous poem ‘The City was Born’

Overture: This poem describes how Hyderabad has been nurtured in Bakshi’s lap; how she extended her boundaries by accepting everyone, how she’s viewed around the world; how her gustatory pleasures gave the world her ambrosia, the Hyderabadi Biryani; and finally, the envy it mustered in the far away land, Britain. [To those who do not know, Bakshi is the daughter of Quli Qutb Shah and Bhagmati. And also the Hyderabad I allude to in the poem is the *Hyderabad State* ].

Hyderabad started forming words
Liketh a child in a crib
Morning and evening
Greeted by multitudes that
Swelled like a sea fed by rivers
Besotted by her unearthly charm
Beholden eyes cou’d not containeth her
Cossett’d and coddl’d in Bakshi’s lap
Her skin glistening liketh a silver moon
Her dainty limbs sprawling soon
From Charminar to Aurangabad
From Raichur to Adilabad

Her speech strident
Voice like a Lion’s roar
As her clepe in Arabic suggests so
Liketh waxing gibbous to full moon
Her greatness cross’d
Boundaries, countries, continents
Accepting in her womb
Liketh earth men both good and bad
Her love shimmering
Liketh an ocean under the moonlings
She became the prose, she became the poem
She became the intrigue, she became the life

Eclectic was her gustatory delights
Her palates lick’d in surfeit with
Qubani ka Meetha, Double ka Meetha
Pathar ka Gosht, Hyderabadi ‘ka’ Marag
Her tongue blessed the grains so
Earth manufacture ambrosia
Celebrated as Hyderabadi Biryani
Zephyrs flared her nostrils
Wafting the aroma of Irani Chai
Her gullet lump’d salty, sugary
And velvety Osmania biscuit
While shine in her postprandial face unmatched
To all the fire mustered in the world.

Luculent she was in the raiments
Of jewelry glittering like thousand suns
With the Kohinoor, the Darya-i-Noor.
The Jacob, The Hope,
The Great Mughal, The Orloff
The skies they open, they open
Her blinding sight reached
Miles and miles away
Pangs of envy unleashed
In a far-off land
Miles and miles away

Sun rose to his zenith
Clouds scudding home
Uncapping the piercing sun
Sunbeams cleaving the ocean surface
And diving into plumbless depths
Turquoise waters cradling skerries
Tides drawing in and out


People chattering and children groaning
As I step on the hem of a cliff
To captive in my camera the captivating beauty
Of waves carrying spume
Tripod is set aloft — zephyr tailgating
I stand in abeyance with Olympus
Until the gnawing wind ebb
For you to behold the bewitching photograph

Is this a prose or poetry? I have written it as a poem in mind with a cavalier treatment to a mysterious object (transpired as POT) that was given to me. It turned out this way.

A fragile object
liken to human has
handles as ears, its
paunch rotund head
capped with a silver strip

its limbs dismembered
surface as cool and
calm as the moon
and skin brick red

I ask who 
owned you? Whence
you came? Who
your father, you
smell like clay
Is he potter 
who mould you? 
to make his
ends meet

your scent that of
rose-water, are you
a servitor of roses
whose sweat you quaffed?
tell me your
source, O rosemary

you look so despair, you
lost shine who
owned you? Do
you belong to some
wretched soul forgot
to live?
Tell me your whereabouts
O fragile one

I know no antecedents
says the object uncannily, I
belong to you whoever 
you are, take me
O magnificent one

burnish me with your
love and cradle me
in your arms,
O munificent one
so I shine in your
life as
lustrous as sun