Five Poems for Raangta

Raangta (1)

My daughter’s name

Literally means tinsel paper.

The kind with which

We wrap the more

Expensive sweetmeats.

But at times, I utter her name

And glue together

The parts of the night

That keep coming off,

Like paint in a neglected house

Or maybe, apply the two syllables

On the dimpled

And dented parts on

A ceramic globe.

When she grows up

I hope she knows

That her father

On a night

When there was not a single

Star left in the sky

Wrote her name

On every city

That fit neatly in his palms.

Raangta (II)

Raangta leaves all her toys

Scattered on the floor.

When the lights go out

I go on picking them

Tiptoeing across that minefield

Careful not to wake her up.

I see her fingers trace

Lost alphabets in air

As she sleeps,

Hoping she dreams

Of her father

At an empty station

With an old schedule of trains

Marking the ones he’s missed

To be with her.

Raangta (III)

My city goes

To the printing press,

When she taps on the window pane

With palms smaller than a sea-shell.

On waking up,

She measures the coordinates

Of my drawing room

Her feet, the size

Of  cardamom.

Between the night and day

Rests her eyelash

That I found on the floor.

Raangta (IV)

When the clouds

Break down every door

That stands in their way

And the winds

Run like children late for class

Raangta shakes sitting by the window

Her toys scattered like leaves

After a storm.

I keep the windows half open

And I let the rain tell her

That once this madness is over

She’ll find paper boats

Sailing like men

Who wish never to arrive.

Her fingers,

Softer than an absence

Motion me to open

The other half.

Raangta (V)

I put the stylus

On a Cohen record.

The pin gets stuck in his heart

The disc moving

Ever so slowly

Makes it’s first trip

Around the moon.

Raangta sits on the floor

Slowly being lulled to sleep

By the clouds gathering

In his voice.

She grunts when the song ends

And I have to put it on again.

This goes on late into the night

Neither Cohen nor my daughter

Willing to admit defeat.

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