A poem on grief

This poem is in response to Day 10 of the NaPoWriMo challenge asking us to write a meditation on grief inspired by Geofrrey Brock's poem Goodbye using it as a format to structure our very own. Here's an attempt.

It's the thick of winter, early morning,
Dreamy white tufts of fog, nip in the air,
as you call your kindergarten child outside
sitting upright on the scooter, its engine roaring

When are you leaving?
You ask me, a new matrimonial ad in hand, looking worried,
When are you leaving?
You ask me, a week after I am home visiting, shelling peas,

I grapple with an ennui, unexperienced, unexplainable
As a fire rages, within outside, ferocious, intense,
Are you untethered or is it us, like the earth from the sky?
Or is it that we are coming back to each other like we always have?

@Shalini Gupta

IT

 

It startles me in a millisecond

making a sudden landing

as I throw away the book

I am reading

far away in the room

like a carefree frisbee

Disgruntled at it

my heart starts racing

I take baby steps

with the stealth of a cat

surreptitious 

and grab a ruler

Carefully, I turn the book

which is upside down

Then revealing

a wide-eyed, taupe thing

that flits its tail

intently looking at me

I grunt and groan and almost cuss it

for disturbing my Sunday

As it quickly 

heads for cover 

Under my bed

perhaps scared

I pick up my book

gingerly 

and go about my days business

because I also do not want 

to be completely 

free today

This post is written in response to the writing prompt for today on occasion of the National Poetry Writing Month in the U.K. 

It says "write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous" Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.

Can you spot the It here? Let me know in the comments. 

Dhobi Ghat

A film that was convincing enough for Aamir Khan to work in it, would be worth a watch. I was hoping to find my own reason for why I liked or disliked it. The film is the director’s romance with the camera, zooming in and out of nooks and crannies in suburban Mumbai. Whether it’s the rain tip-tapping on the window panes, the dhobi ghat or Mumbai’s skyline, the director has painted an abstract picture on the canvas. The interpretation, is to each his/her own.

The storyline is not robust, but intriguing. It revolves around four central characters, each trying to find meaning and identity in life, whether they know it or not. Arun- the painter through his art, which comes to him in creative bursts and Shai- the banker, through her tryst with the camera exploring parts of Mumbai. Munna played by Prateik Babbar is a simpleton who is not actually looking for it, but I guess he finds it in the end. The married Muslim girl, who it is implied, commits suicide, is full of life, but she gives it up in the end.

The film very subtly talks of perspective and how it can be different for each one of us. The painter who has lived in Mumbai, is inspired by the video tapes from the Muslim girl, because she breathes fresh life into what he sees as mundane. The banker on a sabbatical, documents through her camera little known, not so photogenic places, like slums, markets, dhobi ghat and even the people who kill rats which Munna finds ridiculous, but he helps her because he is infatuated with her.

There is no happy ending, no euphoria, no adrenaline pumping songs, no heart throbbing romance, no glycerine tears and yet the film touches a chord somewhere very silently. Life is in shades of grey, it is somewhere beneath all the hub-hub of life itself for those of us who seek it, waiting for us to find it. Everything that is something comes out of nothing and then merges into it, only to take another shape...