My family secret is a hidden octopus

My memory has fickle tentacles

Thumping             
                                     on a 
Persian                                       rug woven

generations ago for my grandmother's wedding. 

On it are hammered 

grooves from age. Canyons once cane furniture removed

On it are domes, cursive bends,
stories 
animals fighting gods,
                                      Gods falling for women

Women praying with animals. 

Circles, Intergenerational Circles - opening to be questions marks.

My ceramic hands caress fossilized thigh prints reeking 

of memory. 

A mother sitting beside her daughter. 

If 
   you 
         can
               trace 
                      memory 

you have chance to exhume it
It smells of dates, walnuts, sunshine,
of gossip rubbed out of hands

 staining the carpet sitting on which I am possessed by 
Ghosts of keys having lost their locks

of cuts 
              which could be mouths.
I think of them as 
keyholes 
eager
to be
 unlocked. 

A distant song of banna-banni

teasingly crooned for a bride admiring 
dusk on her palms and stars 
 
on her forehead waiting for the night sky to be written in her name
so that on the first day of her marriage she learns to soar. 

My memories is the
shape of my mother's mouth,
                                 my mother's mother's 
                                                         and her mother's

Generations of women with same eyes 

passing passion wrapped as warning
prayers for someone to hold keys and unlock doors.

Unbutton windows. Flutter wings
Till

Every story is a legend. 

Every mother, a woman. 

Finding her sky above all.

***

Ghalib singing lullabies in Old Dilli

December. 2019
At midnight I dream of a nippy November morning
the alter ego of onion


its layers peeling slowly in Connaught place 
rackety streets, running haywire on them 
flamboyant cars - screeching Honks, thumping engines
man popping like corn - Firecracker in the day -
A circling veil of rickety wooden facades
behind them, I find dissent purring
 
Join us, they whisper hopefully
It would be largely peaceful, they assure
 
I amble listlessly flouting promises ending up 
In a heart. Protests here too - 
I sit next to an apparition, on her start to appear alphabet-shaped hives 
she seems allergic to bitterness I squint to discern letters
 
Come home soon, it reads your father has started to wrinkle
Worries to find you a suitor, It reads
 
I assuage myself with clenched eyes 
precisely 21.3 km convolutedly away on Google maps
is Ballimaran. It might have been expecting me 
 
My Uber is a withered white ambassador 1950-built; 
navigating with feline accuracy at the poetic bends
stopping symmetrically in front of a perfumery
 
Fixed Price | Since 1904
 
Cluttered, basement-located, shop studded with prismatic, itarr bottles 
Legend has it in them were slyly trapped Ghalib's poetry 
during recitals when in-between ghazals, he even sighed in Urdu
 
-energy is neither created nor destroyed-
 
By the law of thermodynamics, they converted poetry 
a successful attempt to not let generations 
run short of words describing shades of melancholy
I pour drops of the itarr on the back of my wrist rub on my neck
and sing in an alien baritone
 
Koi chaarsaaz hota, koi gumgusaar hota
Agar aur jite rehte, yahi intezaar Hota
 
stretching my leg beyond the quilt of guilt,
I drive towards Hazrat Nizammudin station
The dandelion of azaan from Jama floats in the air and touches my palm 
I offer it to the deity in an Anjaneya temple 
humming Chalisa at dawn sitting on the berth 
sans the quilt, but the guilt
 
This time around, I ask for an hour more to sleep.

***

In the name of Begum

The Night came draped
in a Tilfi Banaras saree -
 The face of Begum Akhtar

Wrinkles on her forehead
are doodled musical notes
the gap between teeth,

Harmonium keys. Plunging
in the sea, notes rising
Rippling 

The grayscale night filter
Accenting her eye's contours
Every blink, a refrain. Every smile, a Matla

Her brittle voice vows
to crack at dawn. The first dewdrop
grazing the weary sunray 

मेरे हमनफ़स, मेरे हमनवा, मुझे दोस्त बन के दग़ा न दे

Meanwhile, the raag kathaks
on her trembling lip -
I thaw in the despair

Cracks have started appearing
on my already tender heart
Before this night passes

I wish to stitch her on our memory.
A ghazal in progress,
I wish to not let her go.

***

Listen to Betwa

The gates of this town are the origin acknowledged by history
They survive ages-after-ages uninterrupted by history

The senile Krishna temple imparts wisdom at sunset 
My prayers are continuing urges, uncomplicated by history

The camaraderie is triangled street food served hot
Offered here to all and sundry, unsolicited by history

The terraces -- our appointed gossip mongers
When vacant share secrets endowed by history

Bundelkhandi was shaped on the banks of Betwa
Glazing it with Hindi was concluded by history

Fashioning weird names is a motion some drunkards passed
No one knows who -- eccentricity here is respected by history

Change is inevitable, said someone here long ago
He was shunted to the periphery is rumor acclaimed by history