Grandpa’s Winter Garden, 2022
Time has been harsh yet so very kind
Its memories well vintaged in my mind
There is a grace to every age
Lessons turning page after page
The stage set to throw wide the net
That seldom catches errant regret
Then a sweep of mindless mindfulness
Puts all off-beat crises to rest
Till wrinkles crease only the mind
At thirty, I barely pull off twenty five
There is nothing soft about me inside
It’s all sharp angles and hard lines
– Akanksha Gupta
Could I wait forever
Watching them drown
Holding in tight
Our smiles, our frowns
Pain sets in deep
Rises with the sun
Beams on the lips
Slides off the tongue
Days slip by nights
Edges blur with cries
Shadows dim and dig
The corners of my eyes
Mirror stands still
To the ravages of fear
That I untiringly wipe
With hope and with succor
Should I wait forever
Time will play my hand
Slipping past my fingers
Clouds, rivers, sands
– Akanksha Gupta
I can breathe,
But with each breath
Unease
Sweeps through
Guts twist and churn,
Conscious thrums the chest
Off beat
At every turn
When empty,
Hunger gnaws
With claws
That painfully feed
When bloated,
Even the rot of despair
Clots
To never weep
And when breathless,
Though gusts of air
Flail piteously
I can still breathe
I can always breathe
But the still in the air
Waylays the mind
Distills the spirits
Consumes the soul
Dreary dispassion
Threatens
To possess
The body whole
Eventually, it weaves
A frighteningly hypnotic trance
That grips the unwitting senses
In its maddeningly deathless dance
– Akanksha Gupta
Dip into History
Etched onto every crenulation
On either side of Ganga’s might,
A relic of truth - a piece of history
Mired in faith and legend and mystery
Resides; quietly, contently, reverently
Burning day and night fervently
Cremation
Waters brim with the black of night
Still with the cold of death
Weep endless ashes and dust, and yet
Echo the warmth of undying embers
All reflective, quiet, solemn faced
Sailing past Harishchandra, Manikarnika Ghats
Reverent and disquieted in equal parts
Sandhya Aarti
Melted drops of a long-gone sun
Burn the wick of every prayer
On the ghats
On the boats swarming the ghats
Mesmerising chants of song and dance
Fill the air
Breath mingles with oil and incense
Headiness of lights and sounds and scents
Harmony of Dasashwamedh and Ganga
Symphony of souls swept into an orchestra
Of carefree precision, of piety
Intoxicated with sobriety
As time crescendoes;
Halts to a moment,
Ensnares,
Dusk darkening, night lightening,
Heart tightening,
I wonder how aarti at dawn compares
– Akanksha Gupta
Restlessness clings to the air
It blows far and wide,
Soul searching through the depth of stars
That glint past their eventide
The wind picks, strays, soars
Gently ebbs, gently flows
And the heart thumps a minute a mile,
Yet it is time that stops
Slows and steadies, to stand and stare awhile
The promises of a fickle mind
Five-minute fame that would not rewind
A corruption that unwittingly creeps
Excuses that ooze and gape and weep
They clothe whispers borne of prejudice
With sunsets that judgment did not miss
And with a kiss of nightmare on sleep’s brow
From the hangman stood bloodied but unbowed
A garden, unfettered, sows and grows
The guilt that gnarls a crow’s crow,
There the callouses of weary souls
Have long since culled care’s hold
But when the illusion shatters solitude
And pieces of sanity unhinge and elude
Then care takes roots anew, again
Upon each ponderous now and then
– Akanksha Gupta
It’s never gleamed tears of sweet delight
Mess of scars beneath my dreams
Twilight draws curtains close
Darkness sweeps in at the seams
Mere memory of your canny smile
Chokes and charms the cheeks of time
Pink blush splutters graciously
Gold flecks more and more my eyes
My sanity spirals in and out
Churning oceans deep and wide
Yet tethered to my many blues
I feel no dread pull at the tide
- Akanksha Gupta
I will follow you into the dark
I will sup with an open mind
I will eat out my heart
The moments do not rewind
The kindness of time warms
The stills within my soul
And paints the dark and the heavy
With a light and lurid stroke
The night fire stokes my dreams
Casting reflections of the day
Spicy, salty, sour, sweet
Never could I want to stay
Sweet nothings fill the morning air
Cool blues smudge the red half-sun
I breathe in dewy undertones
Before time leaps into a run
– Akanksha Gupta
Between the shadows
and the soul
The mysteries lurk
uncontrolled
From bold the lies to
colder truth
Nothing is ever
understood
O in the shade
of hung despair
The silence shrouds
and stands and stares
A whiff of careless
times gone by
Invites the whims
to multiply
Till at the close
eyes weary rest
Ashes to ashes
jest to jest
– Akanksha Gupta
I haven’t rested in a while
Frozen in the expression of lassitude
Daunted by thoughts of endless toil
That occupy my solitude
A joyless haze of laissez-faire
Has settled so deep within my sinews
That a fledgling thought of raison d’être
Sends me hurtling down the icy blues
I now muse in silent interludes
The what-ifs have all but passed me by
And yet, for idle thoughts are idle not,
A weary passenger can still try
– Akanksha Gupta (poem)
I watch
A miasma of brush strokes
Trailing over
The canvas of life –
Dull, bright, warm, sharp
Their watermarks
Evade the sight
But those that loiter
I notice
The crinkly lines
That embellish their every stroke –
Bold, rugged, shy, sleek
Impressions that time erodes
But those that linger
I remember
The dots and crosses
That stagger each line
Big, small, subtle, sublime,
An expression that holds
The redolence of time –
A taste of vintage memories
That swarm
With an ageless, decadent grace
Yet ultimately
When everything fades
Period and pause
Everything fades
They say
Life is funny that way
– Akanksha Gupta
Humming a half-chewed
Part eschewed
Hastily rewritten
Version of ‘Zehnaseeb’,
I am waiting at the bus stop –
Now 20 minutes and counting;
My patience is floundering,
It’s like time has stopped for me.
Why, it’s with recurring, insipid and
Unguarded jealousy,
That I watch the little people hop
Into their little taxis
That come, that go,
That go, that come,
While, all the while,
My unsteady fingers
Steadily drum,
And a deft foot taps
Left, then right,
While idle thumbs twiddle
Verbosity alight,
And oh!
There I see
The bus – my bus
Merrily making its way,
With the torturous velocity
Of an ignoramus, unambitious snail…
Ah finally! It has stopped –
To let the passengers go;
Tedious and slow,
As they clench within them,
An unhidden, unbidden desire
To push against
The damn viscous flow,
And, oh no –
Aboard, there still are,
Two lost foreign souls
Talking with an equally lost driver
(Who’s desperate to return
To looking bored)
And I?
With an inward sigh, I shake my head
And brave my left foot before right,
To become the First Person on the Bus –
First – since some 30 minutes ago,
The First Woman, actually
(Because, somehow, it matters more)
And so,
The rest of the people,
Now undaunted and properly sheepled,
Step in too;
Unceremoniously hinting a good-bye
To the poor lost foreign souls
– Akanksha Gupta
When I was younger
And couldn’t even reach up to that doorless shelf
Where your cruel crafty self hid my jar of mango pickle,
I wished to be just a little bit taller
And a tad more carefree
I didn’t know then
I was unknowingly
Tossing my wishes into the well
Of deliciously ageless irony
For you see,
When I was younger,
I wished to be
Exactly as old as you,
For I felt that you had no homework
And that Papa just read news,
I couldn’t wait to be there too –
Me as old as you and you as old as me;
I couldn’t wait for time to liquefy
And slip past my fingers.
But as years went by, and university called to me
And as the easygoing school syllabus of ten months
Got compressed into tiny nuggets of three
Every time that the exams arrived
I sighed and held my breath
I longed for that liquefied time
To season those nuggets with.
Too late twas when I realised
I wanted to savour those moments,
Hoping that somehow they’d stretch themselves and
Tuck me in, like blankets in my sleep.
But somewhere along the way
Those flimsy blankets too slipped away
And now as I yearn for their warmth,
Every time that I apply for jobs
Or talk to the next gen folk,
The sign of a grown-up life
Flashes much more lucidly before my eyes.
It’s that melee of excitement
With a fear of uncertainty
And an utter dependency on self,
Whence Sophie’s choice and Murphy’s law
Seem to be playing the devil’s advocate,
And me?
I am standing in limbo
Between the devil and the deep blue sea,
Balancing my hopes on a nylon rope;
Those plans of wanting to work hard up the ladder
Seem to be laced with mettle no more
Because the ladder is frail
And its steps paced erratically
Now
Listening to them grown-up problems
Makes me think so differently
For living the erstwhile third person analysis
Is a completely different story
– Akanksha Gupta
A million voices bleed in my head
Pleading for a solid coalition
But I know the quota is limited
So I stand perplexed
Resisting temptation
You see, somewhere ages and ages ago
There was another set of voices
And though, long, I stood at the crossroads
As no storm did I hear them forebode
I discriminated between neither of the choices
Thence, teetering at the end of sanity
I waited for the next interlude
Whence I shrunk my limit to unity
Choosing the voice with the greatest amity
In anticipation of a sanguine quietude
But, as I languished in the passivity of the refuge
My voice lost all its vivacity
So for the following season of vocal deluge
I chose to rebel against the complacent attitude
Which has cost me more than my sanity
Now, as I stand at dawn of the next chapter
With the voices having returned with a vengeance
I stare at my ever-growing puzzle in wonder
Uncertain of the solitary piece I must discover
That which shall make all the difference
– Akanksha Gupta
ACT I : The Belligerent Sycophant
I wish
I could carve out
A path
From my head to my heart
And rationalize every thought
And every chemical reaction
With a melting pot
Of facts, figures and emotions
I wish
I could dissolve
All my scruples and sorrows
With nary a care
About the tuples of tomorrow
Oh I wish many a wish
And dream many a dream
But right now all I can focus on
Is, my senses tingling
From the cool of the ice cream
ACT II : The Silent Activist
I’m trying to improve my handwriting
Making it clearer
So that when I put down my thoughts
And ideas
And opinions
I can go back and recollect them
So that they leave in my memory
An indelibly clearer impression
They are an expression in time
Of Circumstances and the society
Of myself and those around me
And I wish to put them down
Elegantly and tidily
To preserve them for eternity
To remember, to recall, the actions
To study the reactions
And learn from the inactions
Most of all
– Akanksha Gupta
You know they like to strengthen the base
Without building the basis
That even schools forget // To-Do
Which you only regret later in the year
So as time races past without a second glance,
The concepts crawl at a snail’s pace
And settle intact within the brain
But the overload makes them fall
And makes you wonder “when”
The textbooks developed gravity
Strong enough to call to your head
Repeatedly
The “why”, after all, is a foregone clause
And so, the murky black waters,
Flowing from your head, nod,
And with them
So do those auburn, brown and blonde
That may or may not be naturally-occurring
You ponder over this predictable sensation
Which initiates a fashion
Of incongruous oscillations
Until you nod off
And the world slips before your eyes
Into the cacophony that presides
Over a Grades-Giving day
Which bursts into a confetti of alphabet
Splattered with youthful abandon
Flicking at the heart piece lodged in your throat
But you swallow it back
And open your eyes, not to the sunrise,
But to a platter of incomprehensible formulae
And since this not a surprise,
You promptly roll your head off
The textbooks on the desk,
And shake off the remnants
Of a lousy nightmare
Throwing the desk-ware
Into the bag
You swing it around your shoulders
And walk to the next class
For time races past without a second glance
– Akanksha Gupta
The Pluming PoeTree 