What a relief

lungs of my soul feel

to leave Hyderabad behind

and float away into the air!

Thoughts begin to breathe again

after many months....

"How could this being live so long in the

poisonous air of that dreadful city?"

so saying, the trees of Nilgiris gently drew

me into their lap.

I wake up like a flower in the mornings of

hyderabad and walking in its roads I turn into a

rumbling volcano, ready to erupt .

I walk

holding up my pants, treading the post-

independence civilization and poetry that the day

of hyderabad vomits on the roads, like a chronic patient!

one should write poetry only in these roads.

Looking at government-marked faces, every next minute, all cannons in me burst.

Exhausted I look at the trees pitiably and say

" I do not want poetry"-

I want a bomb crammed with a thousand earthquakes!

How many such volcanoes, like me, are not walking in these very roads?

Seeing and breathing the carbon dioxide of this obnoxious civilization,

why these trees blossom flowers, why don't they bear bullets,

I shout at them;

This city, is my cup of poison, thrust into my hands by fate,

commanding me to drink!

All my passions and intoxications are in it;

It is here, that I lost my worlds and gained them; it was here

that my life alternated between gain and loss endlessly

in the cold-blooded race of life.

It is in these roads, that I ran like a howling storm,

and fell like a boat, that lost its sails-

I am going

carrying my memories

In search of a balm for these wounds.

life here spares nobody, ignites fire from man to man,

O bird! do not sing your song here,

fly away, in search of your own green hills.

* * *

In the city of man, in spite of hundreds of

people buzzing about, time, has the upper hand.

It is only the voice of time, that is heard, as

the single domineering voice, superceding all the

millions of voices of man.

It displays the portentous fingers of its

impeccable hands in all the clocks of the city. It

throttles the voice of man, ruthlessly with those

inexorable hands.

It descends on the chest of man, like an

iron eagle of gigantic shape.

But here in the hills, there are not days or dates;

there is not another single soul either;

time, which chased me to this place

collapsed, unable to follow me through the leafy,

and melodious labyrinths of these hills;

strange trees, stranger birds, smiling and defiant hills,

and the immense solitude that sleeps in the hearts of hills....

all collude and weave a spider's web of silence here, in which

the Time is caught like a tiny fly and meets its death.

The feelings of this place are like flowers

unsmelt by anybody before. The tree-tops here can

be reached with eyes only and not with hands;

Over the heads of those trees which are brushing

on the canvas of sky, a large white cloud rolls

by with big strides.

Breeze, lazily knits a delicate net out of

the breath of flowers, all around, in the blue space.

In the powers of unknown happiness, man

changes into melody, and flows in the bodies of

birds and hills; Man leaks away from the

gripping fingers of time's hand.

Even the little insect which flits around on

its wings in pure innocence and freedom, enjoys

the happiness gifted to it wholeheartedly by

creation, to the same degree as man can.

The insect is no less than Man, in the

borders of this land, where the hills rule.

Here the power of Man's ego, vanity and will

are abolished without a trace-

The unpolluted condition of pure life, alone

has the right. That is why I dragged Time into the hills and killed it.

* * *

When I was in the seed, I heard a note.

Desire stirred in me to sprout and see the sun and sky.

To drink the nectar of wonder in silence I became the tree.

I became the dream of the tree in its branches which is to say,

I blended within me, the melody, the essence and the scent;

and became the flower.

Because it is only as a dream, that I can

comprehend the secrets hiding in me.

In the dream was revealed to me, that

earth, water and air are different forms of the same matter,

and that I, combine within me the ultimate content,

the quintessence of the three. Soon after

this realization, I became three-

Wore colourful wings. Became a butterfly

and ran after myself.

Dipped myself in the leaves and came out

as parrot and ate myself, the fruit,,

I became a fish, forgetting my shorelessness,

swam across waters for unknown shores...

I am a tree, all this is the journey of my life.

Autumn anoints yellow on my leaves,

wind removes my garments, mist sprinkles holy dew

over my nakedness; and I the tree like a king

after coronation confers imperial gifts of

cool shades to the scorched earth.

Day is flying its thoughts in the blue sky

turning them into pieces of white clouds.

Hazy breeze is breathing life into my limbs. And the fruit

hanging in the branches looks in wonder at the tree,

which is for ever flowing, dropping leaves and bearing new ones,

and again shedding them like a stream of life endlessly.

The fruit wonders about the secret of this tree!

It bathes in showers of leaves that come down

at the slightest touch of the wind, feeling the bliss and beauty

of the falling leaves....

May be , fruit is the seer, who went into depths of meditation,

to learn the inscrutable secret of life.

It sees life in death, otherwise how could

death be so beautiful, is its enigmatic question!

Even a thousand seasons of spring, cannot achieve the grandeur and

beauty of a single nude tree, which has renounced

all its leaves and flowers...

Oh, I am bathing in beauty,

I swoon in the storms of subtle and deep pains

which beauty inflicts on me.

O what a tree this this standing grandeur

where is its secret?-so thinks the fruit hanging to the tree.

It realises before it drops from the branch that

the seed of the tree is inside itself and that

the I of the fruit is no other than the I of the tree...