Taken in October of 2013 at Nandi Hills
Brahmashram is an ascetic’s cave located on the hillside at Nandi Hills. It’s most famous occupant was the sage Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836 – 1886), who was a teacher of Swami Vivekananda.
Little kittens can’t get their legs.
Feet slide as legs sprawl wide.
Writhing amid a pile of siblings.
Wrangled and nudged by mama.
Tiny screams for leeway ungranted.
Bellies bulge with mama’s milk.
They don’t yet look like miniature cats.
They have neither the proportions nor the ears.
They could as well be puppies or opossums.
From any distance mama sanctions.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #19]
Taken in Jaipur in November of 2015
Taken in September of 2013 in Bangalore
It’s a post-apocalyptic scene.
Until you see the flower floor.
Concrete walls, bare but for paan stains.
Looking like a fresh massacre.
A murderous rampage
written in shotgun spatters.
A pack sits, rhythmically rocking,
hands mindlessly at work.
But with their backs to you,
you can’t see they’re stringing garlands.
Looks like the junky fidgets
of a Zombie horde at rest.
The impulse to tip-toe past, rationally quieted.
Then you peer over the rail to the flower floor.
The flower floor is brightness.
The visual gravity of oranges and yellows
exerts such an aesthetic pull on the eyes
that one can’t see any sign
of dystopian dreariness.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #12]
Taken in October of 2013 at KR Market, Bengaluru
Taken in September of 2013 in Bangalore
Taken in the summer of 2014 at Wat Pho in Bangkok
