Ideas Multiply

Ideas fly around
Like birds, instinctual,
migrating from lands beyond.
They breed, nest and fly back,
on papers and computer monitors.

He was from another land,
A young engineer finding his feet
In the hotel industry.
He wrote poetry, the publisher friend said.
A cup of coffee, a skim-through-the-newspaper later,
We spoke about hospitals, media,
and the weather in Bangalore.
We ran out of topics. I smiled.

The young engineer hung around us,
A few writers and publishers,
The cushions in the lobby softening
our long held beliefs in writing.
He guided us to the restaurant,
Oversaw our order.
Our group ate, had dwelt on politics,
Gone to places in Bangalore,
bought shawls and scarves,
Weary, as migratory birds,
Flying between trees of consumables,
We reached our small islands of ideas.

Later,
I smiled at him sipping tea.
Still seated in those sofas, still in the lobby.
He saw the bundle of manuscripts,
The transmutation of ideas.
My friends, by then, moved to their rooms
To pack bags.

“Do you read poetry?” he asked.
“I do”
“Just thought so,” he mellowed,
“But these are fiction and non-fiction writings?” he enquired.
“You have something specific to talk about?” I asked.
He offered to read a couple of couplets,
I listened.

If you stood on the concrete jetty
of the lake,
You wouldn’t see the water flowing below you,
It flows with you.
Your eyes dance on the close laps of water,
Almost, as if, at eye level.
The birds spread their large wings at a distance,
don’t flap to reach the little isle right across.
The water takes a selfie of them
With a passing sunray.

His poem rings in my ears:
What can pashmina tell you what kind of a paradise Kashmir is,
How god has woven it to a fervour, pashmina-styled,
Is a different story!

I pull the shawl around me.
Not many people today.
Walk along the lake?
Thinking through my acquaintance’s lines,
Feeling the mid-August chills?

Ideas, like clouds, float above
lakes and vales,
above nocturnal corridors of snow and sand,
And across the alphabet.
Many toss and turn in my head,
the unfurling of a flag of colours and languages.
The path ahead
Returns the same gift
Of scepticism,
As there can be
of heaven and earth.

****