Holidays

Holidays are approaching
People have started decorating homes
Soon there will be
Lights all along the street
And the trees will continue to stand
In the same old silence
Albeit a little bright.

—
Anant Dhavale

A sunya for you and I

What drives us to the verges?

history

egregious notions of a glorious past

our own delusions

the sullied air we breathe in

What blinds us

from our own frailties

naiveté

the tumults of war and destruction 

the violence we fondly term bravery

If this world were to end

I am certain our infirmities would emerge

like ancient tombstones

And all our glories would dry out to fossils 

Our histories, reduced to undecipherable scribblings

Buried deep 

in the earth under our feet

perils of the peasant  

cries of the soldier  

deceit,  injustice, malice

maddening howls of kings

and the collective hysteria of our times

of all times

Fragile is this gloss

a greed drives the wheel of days

a stupor tends to the nights

hands shake and quake

through the frost of voices in-vain

How we’ve walked

as a jungle burned

on every step; laced with an incertitude

beneath the grass, a void

unfathomable

And inheritances were always meant to be squandered

how we’ve lost the little bits

we’d received

A jungles burns

alongside an age-old melancholy

a nothingness; a Sunya,

a Sunya for you and I

 

These glares I cannot see

these sounds I cannot hear

How we walk

unsure through this

din

swept under the tides

fin del Mundo

a bird sings

And see how we walk

a subterfuge

scatters all along;

pastures, untouched

for our unkempt  beings

lay ahead

and beyond

-

Anant Dhavale

© Anant Dhavale

Our unkempt beings

Largely edited now in the later post.

Evenings by the elm - 2

This is a long story - maybe a novella I been thinking about for a year now. 

Amanda

Amanda works two jobs.  The first half the week, she works at a gym. Second at the players. Sometimes, she doubles her weekend shifts at the players. The place is on fire on Fridays and Saturday nights. The pool tables are flooded with people carrying shiny queues in plush leather bags. Guys and girls oozing with the confidence that comes with sports gear. Amanda and her colleagues make sure they drink a little every now and then. She doesn’t bother how they play. She knows it too well; they are all amateurs. No matter how badass-ish they show up. A new group has showed up today. Two white guys and an Asian girl. She is kind of a pro at the game. Amanda eyes them from the bar. She misses her friends back from Doritsville.  

There are a few loners, too. Like Naum here. Sitting at number three. He sits there and drinks, minds his own business. Tips the barkeeps well at times.

 Can I ask you a question, if you don’t mind? He is always this polite. Sure, what’s up she says as she moves toward his end of the polished mahogany bar. What’s that drink you served someone earlier - think it was a copper mug?

Nau is not talkative but tries to make some conversation when drunk or about to be. He has had a couple of Vodka tonics tonight. He is fade up with the drafts. They give him heartburn. Oh, you mean mule, Amanda chirps in her sweet little voice. Naum notices the sweetness in her voice for the first time. He steals a glance at her. She runs her fingers through her hair every now and then. 
Wanna try it? She asks, with her eyebrows slightly raised in a sort of a questioning manner. Sure, if you don’t mind. She laughs. No, I don’t mind, it’s my job. 

The copper mug is in front of Naum after a few minutes. Vodka with a bunch of ginger. Naum tries to feel the taste of alcohol. Thanks, miss, appreciate it. He says in a playful manner. Not a problem. Amanda smiles at him and gets back to sorting something behind the bar. Barkeeps are busy, brisk people. Naum likes to observe them. They know how to work right while being consistently watched at. Naum admires this trait. I’d be irritated if someone stared at me while I worked.

Evenings like these are particularly strange. There is a solace attached to them. The click-clacks of noise surrounding your being sinks into the stupor and fade away. This evening has brought a calm to him that moves and shifts like a wave atop the muted lights at the place. 

Amanda observes him in between her talking stints with other patrons. She tries to figure him out. What’s the deal with this guy? She has seen him a couple of times, mostly on his own. Working a bar is like working with individual biographies. People babble and confide. Share the things never meant to be shared. Talking to people from across this bar is like peeping into their lives. Bars are easier places for conversations that would otherwise be considered prying. The more days that you spend behind the bar, the better you start to think you are good at figuring people out. 

She is distracted by Bob, who is on and on about an energy drink he has found online. Man! He says with a lit-up face, this sheet’s bonkers! Keeps me eyes open on these long shifts. He tries to recommend it to Amanda. She doesn’t like it. Too much caffeine is not good for your heart. Google has enriched her understanding of health and nourishment. She is a fitness enthusiast. Always attempting to cross the daily target of ten thousand steps. She and some other girls at the bar have a group going. They compete with each other on the step count through their smartwatches. Some of her colleagues are smokers, periodically dipping into their vapes. The smoke irritates her. So does Bob; at least, that’s what Naum feels from the distance.

Naum wants to speak with her but does not want to appear too eager. He hesitates a lot. It’s an old habit of his. Amanda senses it and strolls towards him. You doing okay there? she asks. You want another? Naum nods. So, where do you work? Amanda asks him. I do a desk job, the nine-to-five kind. Do you like it? Well, I guess so. I get paid on time. He shrugs. That's an odd thing for him to do. He gets embarrassed by this high-schoolish gesture of his. Clears the throat and manages to blurt out a couple of sentences.  She is good, though, and manages to get Naum talking for the next half an hour. Strangely, he realizes it’s easy to talk to her.

By the end of their little chit-chat, Naum has suddenly become aware of Amanda's hometown her likes and dislikes. A couple of names, too. Sweet water, the name sticks in his mind. A dusty little town in Texas with a single streetlight. No one would notice if you sped or broke the light.  Burgers with real meat and not soya patties. Friendly people struggling to get by in a closing town. Virginia is so far away from little Sweet Water. He checks the distance in miles on Google Maps. It’s a little mind-pauser he uses at times. Distance between here and Antarctica. Satellite views of the Arctic. Some of the loneliest places on earth. His mind swings back and forth. Focus, he scolds self. It's 11 PM already, and he has to leave. It’s going to be a long day at work tomorrow. He asks her for the check. Let’s see the damage; he tries being witty about it. Fifty dollars and some cents. I gotta tip her well. He gropes for a good number. Don't have to briber her. He puts a respectable digit in the tip section and gets up to leave. I guess I’ll see you around then? Sure, I am usually here on Thursdays through weekends.  Good talking to you, take care have a good night. She throws a bunch at him. He manages to say goodnight.

I got to ask her out. I should have. Maybe the next time. Should have at least asked for her number. But why would she say yes to going out with me. she was just being cordial out of common courtesy. Naum's mind throws a few boulders at him as he slows into the night. 

--

Anant Dhavale

©Anant Dhavale

Evenings by the Elm

Nanowrimo # 1

HE avoids getting on to the 28 straightaway. It’s too short a distance. Freeways seem a little too un-alive to him. Mundane. He likes to take the longer route, the one that goes through the older part of town. Red brick homes and old-world shops. Many of them seem to be on the verge of going out of business.  A Russian steak place. An Italian joint. A watch store. Sort of a dilapidated gas station. A storage warehouse, a bunch of u-hauls parked. A furniture store with eternal discounts. He has been there once, rather he’s been wanting to visit all these places for some time now. It might prove to be a good chore – replacing the inner views with his usual, external grey ones. Who knows, the restaurants might be doing good business. He’d be relieved if that were true. Dying businesses lead to dying towns. Smaller towns in the vicinity of sprawling metros; so near the gloss, yet so dark. Cold adds to the oldness of this area. It becomes a shroud, a wrap of sorts. Being awake can be stingy – the shroud helps. Knowing is a pain, part of the walk nonetheless. The less you know, the better. How does one remain sane in this deluge of information flooding all around? By not knowing a few things. Knowing less, lesser.  He buys coffee on his way. Three sugars, one cream. Sometimes whipped cream on top. Another stop added to the route. Never in a hurry; and yes, age has got to do nothing with it. Not being in a hurry is a trait, a state of mind that might filter you away from the deluge of knowing.

       There is a thicket along the way. He often tries to gauge the age of the trees and the bushes in between. Clumps of non-ornamentals, as real as they come.  An exercise that proves futile more often than not. A Sa’yee- e -Raayegaa.n, as they say it in Urdu. He likes the tone of the pronunciation in his mind. His mind is a hodge-podge of phrases that peep out now and then. Thoughts need some sort of upkeep and pruning. They tend to jump around and wreak havoc – childhood, news , global warming, lust, internet, money, cold, day jobs.

--

Anant Dhavale

Selfie in a dimly lit bar

 Predicaments become doodles

after a certain point in life

and you would never know

what funny things could come

charging at you

like the weather’s wrath

 

How would you know though

in such a dimly lit bar

a selfie won’t help much

 

--

Anant Dhavale

Our Unkempt beings

Largely edited in a later post.

sagely

sagely birches
watch over
days, lives

--

Anant Dhavale

Haiku

sadness has
become a sonata
rising through the air

++

Anant Dhavale

Ode to Virginia

You lay the bricks
one by one

Bend before the waves
bit by bit

Die from within the chromosomes
thread by thread

all of this while
Virginia smiles at you
through her nightly rains
and
the scattered woods
peeping from
beyond the
well built roads.

--

Anant Dhavale

1

not a story
but a few dots

all the charities
and the endeavours
a little feeble
faded

one long road of trees all along
each with a lifetime

so much lingers on
a lone leaf

hope, a big red sun
arising
every morning


Anant Dhavale

Albatross

Take a flight,
Albatross
spread your wings

A world full of mediocrity awaits

The ocean is a little mellow
this summer evening
and we have lost the footing
of our own;
toils' been rendered futile

Meager.

And I am not in the mood to judge
But you,
My albatross, never mind
You must fly
Across the vast and serene
That's seldom felt by men
and women

And I have never been more immune to the frailties of my time.

--

Anant Dhavale

Civilizations

“You breathe, thanks to the phytoplanktons”

expounds a wise man

“April is the warmest month”

sighs another

 

But it doesn’t matter -

shadows

linger along the silent white wall

in an eternal stupor

a slow humming wind

drags along like a tired caravan

on this dry , drawn-out afternoon

parched by a lonely sun

 

A wind-chyme

makes a feeble effort -

twinkles the dust-laden remnants of leaves

a stillness is stirred

fading to the gray;

 

Civilizations

lie

cold and buried under.

**

Anant Dhavale

seriatim

You, me, this eternal chaos

Horses galloping, seriatim till they bleed 

Humanity, but a narrative of

Hollow tales burning through

The alleys of civilization

Of longing, losing, love

War

I breathe one more time; trying to fill as much air as I can 

Till my lungs explode 

In a perfect harmony 

A weird unison 

With the chaos around me 

Dust to dust 

Ashes to ashes

--

Anant Dhavale

Copyright © Anant Dhavale

the bookmark

someone has put a bookmark in a book
and forgotten all about it

the book has gone ahead and changed multiple hands

old parched faces've caressed it
with affection

young ones've made love by it
noisily

others've  carried it with an air of intelligence
made it their brooding glass

a few regimes have changed in the meanwhile
and the world has become a little less tolerant

I hope the book doesn't lose the bookmark though
that'd be a sheer catastrophe

**

Anant Dhavale

Albatross

Take a flight,
Albatross
spread your wings

A world full of mediocrity awaits

The ocean is a little mellow
this summer evening
and we have lost the footing
of our own;
toils' been rendered futile

Meagre.

And, I am not in a mood to judge
But you,
My albatross, never mind
You must fly
Across the vast and serene
That's seldom felt by men
and women

And I have never been more immune to the frailties of my time.

--

Anant Dhavale

A million Years

( Edited )

A million Years

On whose shoulders perches the Eagle?

Who mourns through gusts of the eastern rushing winds?

A boy who grew up in dullness couldn't get out of it for the rest of his life

He felt gloomy on all evenings and smiled at the faintest of the raindrops

He saw the decades descend on the great delta and thought he would have a rising too;

The one that would pull him out of the clutches of nights and days

Grief is borne out of grief, he would think, and nothing else happens

So it was, the rising never came

And grief only paved way for further grief

The valley surged with new delights

Newer brigades took over the streets and the palaces

He scribbled and he kept scribbling

To the rise of the valley and the tedium of his own

Everything will pass, he wrote, nothing will remain,

The tree that gave you the shelter

The you that took the shelter

The shelter that gave 

And the act of taking

There isn't a conundrum bigger than a symbol staring at you meaninglessly

There isn't a misery greater than you

You are the life

In you lies the end

He walked along the shores with a peasant's feet

With a smell of the earth in his soul harvested by generations

Toiling and dying in the fields

His hands carried the language of harvests

Through his eyes flew the monsoons

The dreary summers

And the long hopeless waits

Scattered along the earthen roofs

Along the jaded shadows of Neem

We were no warriors

Our king taught us to fight

And so we fight

With our enemies

With our lives and our times

We plow through the fields and raise harvests of gold

He walked by the city that rose to the skies

With a demeanor that mocked him

Ridiculed him

And even threatened him

A glittering settlement of hollow people; with billows of wealth rising from its trenches

Her dazzling, sky high edifices

Shone deep in to the pupils of his eyes

Blinding him

Pushing him back

Mauling him, crushing him to death

This isn't the place for me, he thought  I belong to the wild

to the forests and fields and the hills

and the river that flows through my heart

the path traversing the planes of faraway lands

where truth lays scattered in feathers

of slain birds; of drained seas

in to the cold of dark grey blossoms;

the sounds sublime

 Who am I, my beloved, he sighed

 to the skies, to the waters, to the winds

 Where am I headed for ?

 Decades have gone by and he hasn't reached anywhere

 and the Godavari, she has flown past another million years..

--

Anant Dhavale