He’s at war with himself.

What the deuce have I been doing here in this wilderness past few days trying to summit the eight-thousander? I can’t hang tough and brave the elements anymore, he thought.

In a low mood he was sipping tea at a roadside stall in their thriving small town, when he noticed a bridal party coming in his direction, accompanied by the brass band musicians, the sound of their drums rising to a fever pitch. There were people, both male and female, dancing by a slow moving car housing the couple just wedded.

In the hall, I heard someone trying to stifle a sob. It’s a young lady a few seats across. The film ended. People dispersed. We went out together.
My lodge and her apartment turned out to be two neighbouring houses. I accompanied her.

On the ordained day
In Doon Valley
I converse with the artist
In whose mind
Exactly the right word
Appears like the “leaf to a tree”.

He, our Good Samaritan, had forty eight hours left to live. Therapy reduced him to a mere skeleton.

You’re sitting like stone wearing a mournful expression. Anything the matter? Wondered my Muse.

A poet-pianist I interviewed not-so-long-ago passed on.

Years ago, reading a literary anthology compiled and edited by an English professor from Gaya College, I had an urge to meet him. Since I did not have his address or phone number, I could not make an appointment. So I decided to first visit Rajgir, a pilgrimage center near Gaya, keeping in mind poet Eunice De Souza’s line, “The hills heal as no hand does’, and then attempt to interview the professor.
I boarded Danapur Express from Howrah and after an overnight journey, got down at Bakhtiarpur. A couple of hours in a taxi took me to the heart of Rajgir, where I put up at a Standard Chartered Bank holiday home, its caretaker being a young Bihari priest. The priest and I got on very well mainly because he could recite from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata at will, which was quite amazing.

In this part of the world, we’ve a river to walk by. Ganges is to me what Seine was to Maupassant.
At dawn, when crowd is not, I stand facing it. Steps leading up from the shore disappear under water swelling by the minute. The water-level rises right up to where I wait.

Do you sometimes read your own published work?

No!

An automobile labouring up hilly terrain

The engine going into overdrive

Lying on a hotel bed, the night deepening