Partition

One eye, one ear and half a nose,
That’s all that was left of her,
Half a smile and a single tear,
Her possessions after the grand loot,
She had teased them, incited them,
Raised spite between her two sides,
Told an arm to hit the other arm,
Jokingly at first and then, they saw,
Glaring differences in their similarities,
And so they thought to cut it off,
The other side, the other arm, the OTHER,
Bewildered she tried to take charge again,
But in vain, for they had pulled out spears,
Wanting to rein the body holding the two,
She screamed but they had gone deaf,
Crying, she saw her arms turning blind,
They rose higher; louder grew her screams,
They ripped her in to two and continued,
Assaulting her body with her own hands,
She was divided and distraught, and numb,
The arms were in pain but celebrating too,
As they watched the tortured face;
The divided face of the mother Earth.

My camel and I

This is the desert, where my poorly camel stands confused,
All alone, with me besides, stands my camel next to the dune.
“I follow the wind or shall I reach the Sun?” he asks me,
“The blazing sun, I fear, will burn me and scorch thy skin”,
I say, “The wind is as lost as us, and will take us nowhere thus!”
Saddened by my answer, the hump rises with the lump in the throat,
My camel now looks back and so do I, at the long deserted road.
Fearless we were to venture here despite the words of the wise,
Jolly in our folly, we had walked into her embrace with swollen prides,
O the queen of sand, the enchantress, the seductress with glittering eyes,
Bejewelled in gold, shimmering with dunes, dancing with wind in delight,
“That’s the queen, my queen!” I screamed as we stepped in the sea of sand,
We were overwhelmed, just like thirsty travellers spotting an oasis in the sand.
Mirage, alas, was all it was! A bluff of the land, hidden in heat and sand,
Sand and sun, thirst and heat, fatigue and dismay, no queen of sand,
I saw no queen; my camel saw no queen, there were just two slaves,
One, a man on a camel’s back, and a camel, both in despair and in shame,
Miserable and mute we were, with words failing to guide us further,
Slaved by the desert, deserted by senses, our fates sealed to suffer,
Home was miles away, but hope was somewhere just below our feet,
It gushed on us like a sudden burst of warm desires poking deep,
Sweaty and sluggish bodies sprang to face the queen’s army,
Rising dust, biting heat and bewildered winds ever so stormy,
The battle continued for over a week or two, and we two fought,
Determined to reach, the home we had left, the heaven we sought,
We greeted the stars many a times and requested them to lead,
The polestar was kind and answered with a twinkle all our pleas,
The old tree told me I was home and then my camel fell to the ground,
Fell with me but I lived and my camel died at home, with me around
The desert stared back at me from far laughing and snarling
I won and I lost and she lost and she won a battle baffling.
That was my last ride and this is my last breath alone on a death bed,
Years have passed and yet I see the sand we took, the tears we shed.