King

  

Chessmen work arduously
to protect the master

Though he is slow,
does the bare minimum
he is respected--
his authority is final

I wondered about this slack CEO

till it hit me:

if the king is checkmated,

everyone fails to fulfill their karma

Perhaps on a human chessboard,
heart is the king

Jivan na divso (Days of life)

Gujarati:

Pella mada par rethi madrasan dar saware
banave tamtamto sambhar ane navi rangodi.
Kyare laal galabi gusso to kyare laal bane prem
Kyare peedo bane asha to kyare bane urja
Safed marble par shobhe nirmal safed rang
Akash ni akanksha layne aaveche needo rang
Kyare mann udas thay to dekhayche kado rang!
Dhobi pagla pade, kachrawadane hoye ghai--
Chokraonu dhyan bhatke, kyare hawa hoi tej
saanjna to rangodi na rang bhusayaj jaye
Navi sawar thay gayi che,sambhar ni khushboo aavi?

English:
Every morning the south Indian lady living on first floor
makes simmering sambar and a new rangoli
Sometimes rosy red is anger and sometimes red becomes love
Sometimes yellow becomes hope and sometimes the energy
On white marble, soft white color suits
The wishes of the sky are bought by the blue
When heart is sad you can see black color!
Washer man makes footsteps and garbage collector is in a hurry
Kids do not pay attention and sometimes winds are fast
In the evening the colors of the rangoli get erased
The morning has come...did the aroma of sambar get to you?

Last Wish

A dove lies immobile
as a monk in meditation,
near the intersection
of a circle and 2-lane
road as a Honda Civic
zips away with speed
to match a cheetah's.

Catching her breath,
she struggles hard
to move a fraction
of a meter to reach
her moaning chicks
nested in a nearby pine.

Their frantic shrieks,
pleading with traffic
to clear a path
for their mother,
are intolerable.

Such is the agony that
I pray to the Almighty--
when nirvana summons me
all my kids are in town
and I pass away in my sleep.

Where is the Kid?

Where is the kid?

In my closet tucked deep inside me,

behind the jealousy due to neighbor's duplex,

beneath the anger of forever delayed Titwala local,

under the constant stress of the weight gain  and

besides the hatred towards the melancholic office-

There resided a kid.

In the race to earn the larger Bhakri,

I took the shortcuts, fed voracious egos,

sped past the ethics, overtook the family-

Somewhere the kid was lost.

After chasing the horizon for 3/4th of my life

I failed to buy a chawl, cribbed the hike of onion prices,

abused all the babus , fought with all my friends-

A quest began to find that kid.

The irony of the lost sleep in a pursuit of peace,

was that when I realized, to be a kid again, and

jumped in the puddle during the rain, my grandson asked-

“Aajoba, Are you a kid?”?