Mountains of My Silence

These poems have been born from the quiet times that I have spent in the northern mountains. Some of them have their beginnings in times as far back as the 1970s when I trekked in search of myself and new beginnings, roaming the foothills and higher reaches of the Great Himalayas. They initially remained in their seed forms as powerful experiences and lay there only to be awakened decades later during my silences in Naggar and Upper Manali, McLeod Ganj and its extended mountainous environs and the extreme regions of icebound Ladakh.

- From the introduction to Mountains Of My Silence


Mountains of My Silence

Book cover

I Left My Offering

I left my offering for you my Lord -
Where the mountain climbed from the old forest
Drenched in green,
Where a family of boulders were in attendance,
Where the fragrance of devotion breathed from flowers,
Where the grass was so sweet that bees were drunk on them,
Where silence stilled the voice of the morning,
Where a spring emerged crystal as truth,
Where you were – present in heartbeats;

I am here again my Lord at your sacred place -
Where the mountain once climbed from the old forest,
To place my offering in your presence,
To remind you that I have returned from my wandering,
To feel once more the strength of your wisdom,
To be touched once more by your compassion,
To be alive with your heartbeats,
To be myself again;

I cannot find your space my Lord -
Lost in the alleyways of this village,
Lost in the voices of strangers,
Lost in smoke and fumes and bartered beings,
Lost in droves of pilgrims,

Lost among streets full of packaged offerings,
Lost in the sanctum of an alien god,
Walled in by mantras.


This Is Not

This is not my life,
I said,
Looking at the velvet pads of my palms
Burnt with lines,
Each with the certainty
Of a river running seawards;

Inside me are drifting continents,
Nameless countries, people, languages -
Mutating every moment,
Merging, separating, becoming,
Streets full of people,
Rain, snowfall,
The greenness of wild fields,
Mountains in mist,
I change with the seasons;

This is not my life,
I said,
Looking at the cold paths of my everydayness,
I am not me,
I am we.


I Want

I want to empty the bowl of the sky
Drink the blue deep,
Quench my thirst for constellations,
The great void.

Every particle of me belongs to another
Every breath, every word, every thought,
Every feeling, every dream,
Every victory, every defeat, everything.

I want to empty the bowl of the sky,
Lose my ‘I’ ness
Become.


In The Presence Of The Master

Here
Where the world collects
And dissolves
In the effulgence of light-
Names, faces, lives,
Pasts, presents, futures
Do not exist;
Just the voice
Rising and falling,
Circling, gliding,
Settling;
In the presence of the Master
The devout bend like rainbows.

It’s not the meaning
Of the words
That move me
But the sound,
Not their manner of saying
But their reverberation,
Not the speaker
But the presence,
Not the moment
But the flow of time,
Not the tangible
But the breath –
Like wind never still,
Flowing
In great cycles of rebirth –
Forever;
At the feet of the Master
Echoes gather in pools
Crystal with truth.

I am the seed,
The root, the leaf;
I am the stem,
The trunk, the fruit;
I am the cycle
In the dark,
I am the silence,
I, the spark.
I am your pulse,
Your breath,
Your yearning,
I, your dream,
Your reason, song,
I am the way
You choose to walk on,
I am your act,
Your right, your wrong.


A Tibetan Marriage In McLeodGunj

They marry tonight in this warm room fragrant with belonging,
hand holding hand,
thigh against thigh,
halos of soup steam moving across from space to space,
dissolving one into the other –
and the voices of children like dust-bathing morning sparrows cheerful with light fill every corner of the room,
in cracks in the walls and floor boards,
in pockets and pouches,
handbags and open palms of hands.

Smiles flow from face to face, voices rise in song.

In the cold unfriendly night of our times,
this room floats like a glowing bubble on a dark river,
like a lamp of prayer on a sleeping pool of gold fish,
like a lighthouse beside a waterless ocean,
like the light in the eyes of an old woman in prayer
beside a mani stone carver in a grove of pines,
like the bead of compassion dissolving in the arteries of oppression.

The town sleeps,
gently rocked to dreams by songs of a faraway land.

They marry tonight.