APRIL SHOWERS

April Showers

Dark clouds loom, threatening (doom?)

The bright summer sun (at once),

Blacked out like the wink of an eye.

A gust of cooling wind kicks up the dust.

The scent of moisture invades the air,

Like a distant promise coming near.

A flash and a boom (as if in sudden anger);

And then the downpour!

Cleansing everything in its path.

The morn after, new life sprouts forth

In the glisten of a tender leaf,

The chirp of an early bird.

Oh, summer rain!

The Wikly Updet

C H I N T A - M O N E Y
(Thoughts For The Day)

All that glitters has a silver lining
– Chevaux Coumarz, thinker

The hand that cradles the rock can’t count the money
– old jungle saying

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the ground
– old jingle

HOWZZATT? If you don’t draw blood first time, call for the third vampire
– Dracu’s law

The Mythical Bird

An attempt at Mithila sketching.

The Wikly Updet

HIGH DRAMA AS BULLS RUN RAMPAGE ON THE LAL STREET

Bumboo Bajaar, 27^th Distemper

Red Street (commonly called The Lal Street), a famous lane in the bustling Bumboo Bajaar, where the continent’s leading stick brokers meet to exchange blows, was in a tizzy this morning as thirteen well-built bulls, armed with sharp horns, ran amok in the stick market, causing even the stocky brokers to run for cover. Passersby were treated to an unexpected filmy style chase as the brokers, sticks held high above their heads and chanting “danda ooncha rahe hamara” ran like men possessed, followed by the incensed bulls keen on dispossessing them. The bull run continued till late in the evening and ended only when the market’s top hoarder put up a hoarding on top of the street reading “SILENT ZONE – SHARP HORNS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN” and then followed it up by announcing the same over a loudspeaker.

The sher index, which is an indicator of the level of bravery, measured on the Rictus scale, plummeted badly and, when last seen, appeared to be headed Down Under.

Agitated members, many of them nursing bruised limbs and broken egos, called a press conference and announced the formation of a thirteen member committee headed by a retired matador (thirteen seater diesel version) to conduct a thorough investigation into the whole episode.

Defiance

This photograph is one of my personal favourites.

It was taken sometime during the late seventies with my father's Sunflex twin lens reflex camera loaded with 100 ASA black-and-white film. This print was made many years later, on sepia toned paper.

This tree was growing outside my father's bungalow in Deogiri and was a familiar sight when we went there for our summer holidays. One summer, I saw the tree all dried up and seemingly dead. But it refused to go and instead stood there all through my month long sojourn, defiantly braving the elements.

Standing in the garden and looking at it thru the lens of the camera, the barbed wire fence in the foreground somehow seemed to fit quite well into the composition.

I would like to believe that the tree is still standing there, defiant as ever!

A MATTER OF TRUST

In our city was a great assembly
Mess and chaos as we can see
There was a leader and his flock
All he did was pray and talk
Came a time his flock dispersed
In disarray, his bubble burst
He sent his point man, the prospector
To go and herd them back together
Then the elder wise man set a test
To face the rest and come out best
The test was held but the doubts weren’t quelled
The citizens’ misgivings weren’t dispelled
They were angry and they were sad
They realized that they’d been had
But there was more; it came to be known
That the leader had favoured his own
He was told to step down and leave the field
But he stood his ground and refused to yield
The naatak’s not over, not by a long way
There’s many an act and a scene still to play

pen sketch