Kanha

Us anjaane dhun ki aahat,

Pairon ke thirakne ki chaahat,

Man ke jasbaaton ki sharaarat,

Nazron ki jhuki si vo nazakat.

Pal bhar main taal se taal mile,

Nainon main bas teri chavi khile,

Koyle sa tan aur vastre peele

Teri murali par saara sansaar hile.

Aaj har gopi teri radha hai,

Rooh ke samarpan ka waada hai,

Bas tujhse dil ko baandha hai,

Main adhoori aur tu mera aadha hai.

Mor-mukut ka pankh hoon main,

Chori ke maakhan ka swaad hoon main,

Gopiyon ka niswarth prem hoon main,

Tere raasleela ka nritya hoon main.

Aaj duniya ka mujhe hosh nahi,

Sab jhoom rahe, koi khamosh nahi

Par mujhe sirf tu dikhe yeh mera dosh nahi

Teri raasleela sirf mere liye hai,

Fir chaahe yeh kehna mera moh sahi.  

P.s: This poem is symbolic of what dance means to me. My choreography always involves elements from Krshna's life and while performing I feel in one with him- As Radha was to Krishna!

Pehli Yaadein

Kya yaad hai tumhe vo pehli mulakaat?

Hamare beech kuch 20 seediyon ka faasla tha,

Aur July ki thi vo pehli barsaat

Na jaane peeche mudkar kyun dekha maine,

Tum bhi muskuraakar mujhe hi dekh rahe the

Shayad mere chaate par nazar daal rahe the.

Us do pal ke khamosh alfaaz

Zindagi ban jayege, yeh na socha tha.

Fir kabhi yehi yaad mere dil ko tatolte

Kuch pal ke aansoon de jayenge, yeh na socha tha.

Aaj firse mudkar dekhne ka man hai,

Usi barish main bheegne ka man hai

Tum wahi khade rehna muskuraate hue.

Kyunki aaj ek baar fir vo pal jeene ka man hai. 

Kya yaad hai tumhe vo pehli baar haath pakadna?

Gaalon ka sharmaana, hoton ka umadte jasbaat dabaana

kuch pal tanha guzarne ki chaah main dil ka tadapna.

Tumne chimti kaati thi mujhe zor ki,

Gusse main haath hataya tha maine.

Pyaar se mere haathon ko choomkar

Apne haathon ke beech chupa liya tha tumne.

Tumhara pyaar se satana,

Zindagi ban jayegi, yeh na socha tha

Fir yehi pyaar dil ko satate hue dard ban kar

kuch pal ke ansoon de jayegi, yeh na socha tha.

Aaj fir dil ko tadpaane ka man hai,

Bematlab ki baton par naraaz hone ka man hai,

Tum mera haath apne hathon ke beech chupa lena

Kyunki aaj ek baar fir vo pal jeene ka man hai.

Kya yaad hai tumhe humari vo pehli takraar?

Ek hafte tak roz tumhara number milakar kaat deti thi

Aur Raat ko takiye se apna saara gum baant leti thi.

Aakhir jab 7 din baad darwaaze par tumhe dekha

Toh yeh bhi bhool gayi ki kis baat par naraaz hui thi,

Pal bhar main sulah bhi ho gayi aur pyaar bhari baatein bhi ki,

Ek doosre ke ankahi baton ko samajhne ki

anginat kasmain vaadein bhi ki.

Tumse yun kasmon se jud jaana

Zindagi ban jayegi, yeh na socha tha

Fir yehi toote kasmain mere dil ko chubakar,

Kuch pal ke aansun de jayenge, yeh na socha tha.

Aaj fir tumse roothne ka man hai,

Door rehkar tumhe meri yaad dilaane ka man hai

Par is baar tumhe mananne ka mauka nahi denge

Ab bas khudko jeena sikhaane ka man hai.

Kyunki aaj aakhri baar in palon ko yaad karne ka man hai!

A Street Story

She sat on the floor, wailing incessantly with tears coursing their way through her mud caked cheeks. Her mother lay on the floor a feet away from her, oblivious and insensitive to her cries. After wailing for nearly half an hour, her lungs were gasping for breath. Hungry, wet, dirty and desperate for comfort, she ambled off to sit near her mother waiting for the latter to wake up.

Choti, was a street’s child. Born on the street, slept on the street, ate on the street and played on the street. The street was her home and her whole world, a place who owned her with more right than her own mother. Her mother begged near the entrance of a metro station. When hungry, Choti would wail out aloud to catch her mother’s attention, who would then either let Choti suckle at her lifelessly sagging breast or fill her stomach with water from the nearby tap. On better days, her mother would push into her toothless mouth tidbits of the leftovers that the passersby gave her. At night they would sleep in a small house of used tarpaulin behind the metro station. Curled up against the warm comfort of her mother’s body, Choti slept unmindful to the hunger gnawing at her belly. 

As usual when the morning dawned on the darkness of their night, Choti’s mother picked her up and made her way to station dragging her feet behind her. She did not coddle Choti as usual before the melee of travelers thronged the gates and begging for money and food would start. Today her mother set her down near the gate and lay down on the floor besides her. She lay with her eyes wide open but a strange emptiness dominated her vision. The brightness of the morning light stung her eyes, the silent morning broken by the humdrum of life thumped against her ears and the breeze pricked her skin cruelly. 

Choti, unaware of her mother’s unnamed predicament, sat surrounded by the upswept garbage on the floor and played happily in her street’s dirt and dust. Yet after awhile, she craved for her mother’s touch. She crawled over to her mother, grabbing the loose ends of her filthy sari, pulling it free.

Her mother did not react.

She jabbed at her mother fingers, jerking them with urgency.

Her mother did not react.

She poked her mother in the eye, which was staring away earnestly, unblinking, at a sight far beyond.

Her mother did not react.

Choti’s desperation finally gave way to a heart throttled cry for attention. She walked about the gate crying her unsung tale of helplessness and deprivation.

The passersby sidestepped Choti, staying out of her reach as they made their way to mundane destinations. She sat there flailing about her arms trying to catch hold of the flurry of colors that was hurrying past her. Having lost interest in her unreceptive mother, she went back to her precious toys and games. Soon a crowd gathered around the wide eyed woman, lying on the floor bereft of life. The thronging crowd obstructed Choti’s view of her mother, throwing her into another fit of grief which fell on deaf ears. A while later, her mother was picked up from the floor and bundled off to a van which disappeared into oblivion. Choti sat unnoticed in her tears and wails.

The man at the bus stop had been engrossed in the morning news paper when his reverie was broken by the hungama at the station. A woman’s dead body had been found and over endless discussions on the cause of her death, she was whisked away to the mortuary. The ordinary people, whose lives had been disrupted by this extraordinary morning, soon settled back into their routines. The man was also about to go back to his wait at the bus stop when he noticed the sobbing child. Seeing the lone child at the station gates, he enquired with a street hawker,

 “Whose child is this?”

“The dead woman’s sahib” replied the hawker.

“Where is the child’s father?”

“I don’t know sahib. The woman lived here only with this child”

The man walked towards Choti and crouched near her. He offered her his fingers, onto which she grabbed happily. He picked her up and rested her on his shoulder and thumped her back gently; Choti was finally getting the coddling she was crying for since morning. The man retraced his steps back home. It was indeed an extraordinary morning!

PANNE

Ek kitab thi bahut hi pyaari,

Nayi si vo safed panno waali

Uspar ik daastan likne, maine

Kaali siyaahi ki sheeshi thi nikali.           

Kis pal ki galti thi vo kya pata,

Aaj bhi poochti hoon khudse hi

Laaparwaahi thi ya fir janboochkar

Maine panno par syaahi gira di.

Pehle panne par jo giri syaahi

Har panne ko seenchti chal gayi

Ab kone kone main kala dhabba hai

Aur kahaani toh shuru bhi nahi ki thi.

Syaahi ke saaye se kuch pal bachakar

Kaise sajaaoon unhe in panno par yoon

Yaadein bhi kaali pad gayi aur pal bhi

Shayad ab safed rang se kalam bhar loon.

Fir dhabbo se na jasbaat dabenge

Bun bhi loongi main kuch pal naye

Un rang- berang panno par aaj

Kya pata ek naya afsaana mil jaaye. 

A Girl-Friend!

Our first picture together. Too special! 

Though she was nothing more than another face in the sea of faces at the coaching center  something about her caught my attention. What exactly was it, you would wonder? I don’t know. Maybe it was her attractive face, or maybe it the riot of colors she wrapped herself in, or maybe it was just because she was the only unknown face in the line to use the washroom that day. Whatever it was, I noticed her. And then I noticed her everyday. Some days I wondered which classes she was taking, and on others I silently complimented her bright choice of colors, yet she never lingered on for more than five minutes in my mind. After all, as I said, for me she was just a bored observer’s object of casual fancy, a face in the crowd.

Then one day I saw her at the metro station. I had been catching the same metro at the same time every day for the past one month, yet this was the first time I had seen her outside the coaching center. Preoccupied as I was due to an upcoming test, I chose to ignore her. The metro rumbled into the metro station, and the doors slid open, she tapped my shoulder and said, “Hey, we are at the same coaching right? “ I smiled pathetically and mumbled a yes. (You can’t blame me, tests make me grumpy!)  We took adjacent seats in the metro and exchanged courtesies. After 5 minutes of conversing, she suddenly (and very painfully) reminded of an old friend (foe actually) and the rest of the conversation was not exactly a pleasant affair for me, as I kept sensing a healed wound stinging again. We exchanged numbers and I offered to pick her up in the morning, as we found that we lived quite nearby. Later into the day, once I was out of my ‘test- mood’ I realized I was unconsciously being hard on someone who unknowingly reminded me of a forgotten pain. Yet it was not the same person. So, I decided to be my best self the next day. As assumed, we clicked off pretty well, and I saw it blossoming into something deeper that just a casual friendship.

We slowly unraveled a big list of similarities, common ones, weird ones and eerie ones. As we started spending more time together, I started observing more closely. Her intent brown eyes seemed to say a lot at the same time seemed to hide a lot. There are times she would smile mischievously at something I said, leaving me in a lurch to figure out what she was thinking. With every peck on the cheek and tight hugs we shared in the corridors assured me it was friendship to stay. Her straightforwardness, intellect and determination to make something out of her life, impressed me.

And then, the unnoticed got noticed. Not once, not twice, but every single moment we spent together- the fact that we resemble each other. No we don’t ‘just’ resemble each other, they told us, in fact you are twins. You sound the same, you dress the same, you look the same, and you smile the same way.  Now we have resigned ourselves to the undeniable fate of a ‘past_life_blood_tie’. A friendship that started a year back and feeds on promises of a lifelong bond, it's is not a mere part of my life, it’s a part of my self.  

And there are 39 more years to spend together. Sigh! :P  

Meri Saheli

Aakhir tum aa hi gayi mujhse milne 
Is saal badi der laga di aane main,

Kya meri yaad nahi dilayi tumhare dilne?

Badlon par sawaar bahut door se aayi ho

Kahi kahaniyaan bhi suni hongi?!

Ab kuch chatpate kisse mujhpar barsa bhi do.

Arre kya hua, roothi kyun ho mujhse?
Yun badlon ki godh main kab tak chipogi?

Shikayatein garaj do aur nikaldo apne dilse.

Tumne apni mohabbat ka zikre nahi kiya

Naraaz toh khair hum bhi hai tumse,

Itni purani dosti ka tumne aisa sila diya?

Ab gaalon ko sehlakar mana bhi rahi ho

Tumse kab tak mooh phere baithoongi,

Is baras ki aakhri aas bhi toh tum hi ho. 

Bas bhiga do mujhe apne ehsaas main

Ki yoon kho jaaun khudse anjaan hokar

Ab is pal hi toh tum ho, yeh pal hi toh mera hai. 

A Ray of Change

“Ma’am, may I come in?” A voice from outside the door called out. Manushree looked up from her work and replied, “Yes please”. Her assistant entered carrying an assortment of colorful files in her arms.

“Ma’am, the first file contains the records of all the child laborers our organization has rescued from households and industries last year. The second file contains details regarding their rehabilitation and reintroduction into the mainstream society as skilled workers.” said Manushree’s assistant , placing two files on her desk.

Manushree opened the first file and ran her eyes through the details typed out neatly on a plain white paper. A photo of a girl with a gap toothed smile stared back at her. Her bright lively eyes pulled Manushree back down the memory lane to that day where a girl with similar dancing eyes was given a second chance at life. That day, which was etched in Manushree’s memory like it happened just yesterday.

***

Her grubby fingers clung on to the balcony railing. She could stand there the whole day looking down at the park. The summer holidays had begun and the children spent their every waking hour playing in the park, while their mothers cried hoarse, willing them to stay away from the sun, and come home. Manu too was oblivious to the sun scorching her tender skin.

“Manu, andhar aao! Wash these plates,” her mother called out.

Reluctantly she turned back into the house to help her mother with her chores. Manu’s mother was a maid at Mrs. Nita’s house. Some days Manu accompanied her mother and helped her with her work and on other days she stayed back at home, cooked food, looked after her siblings or played with the street urchins in her free time. Today she had insisted on accompanying her mother to Mrs. Nita’s house. It was on Manu’s first visit to the house that she discovered the magical view of the world below, where children played with net bats and feathered balls, big bright orange bouncy ball and a colorful long rope on which little girls skipped gleefully. It had amazed Manu that there were so many things to play with when all she played with were stones and pebbles. If you hit your opponent by pelting stones at their legs while running, you would win, Manu had a bad aim and hence she always got pelted at. She had a lot of cuts and bruises below her knees, but then, she didn’t mind, it was all a part of the game. 

Manu helped her mother wash the dishes, and then soaked dirty clothes for washing as her mother mopped the floor. Nita swallowed a lump of guilt and discomfort, as she watched Manu go about her chores. Often at dinner parties, she had vociferously voiced child rights issues and quoted articles from the Constitution designed to abolish child labour. Yet here she was, mutedly watching a six year old doing mundane household chores, Nita herself avoided doing. Her own six year old, sat surrounded by her color pencils and crayons, oblivious to life’s harsh realities meted out to her lesser privileged peers.

Bored of coloring, Nita’s daughter got up to watch cartoons on TV.

“Wind up your things beta, how many times do I have to tell you to keep your things back at their proper places? Look at the mess you have created!” lamented Nita.

“Koi nahi mem Saheb, Manu will keep everything back in the right place.”

Manu looked fascinated, by the array of colors, spread on the floor, a bright contrast to the boring white marble tiles; she greedily grabbed, a handful of crayons, and ran her fingers, around their stubby worn out tips. She examined each color pencil carefully before keeping it back in the box.

Nita was observing Manu, she smiled seeing Manu’s evident excitement on holding color pencils and crayons. She remembered how her own daughter had carelessly lost several boxes of colors, and how her interest in them lasted a mere half an hour. Nita went to her daughters room and pulled out a few old color books and drawing sheets from the bookshelf. There were still a few unused sheets in them; she took an old yet unused box of colors from the cupboard.

“Manu come here.”

Holding the child’s hand, armed with the colors and sheets, Nita led her to the very balcony where some time ago, Manu stood enraptured by the sights below. Seating Manu on a chair, Nita pulled one for herself, and handed Manu a drawing sheet and a bright red crayon. Manu’s eyes lit up on seeing the colors on the books. Guiding her hand, Nita wrote a big red “A” on the drawing sheet. Manu squealed in delight and her happiness stood out in the medley of sounds coming from the park below.

When the day’s work got over, Mrs. Nita decided to have a chat with Manu’s mother.

“Why don’t you send Manu to school?” Mrs. Nita said. “It’s a pain to see the little thing work. By sending her to school she can get a better job when she grows up.”

“I can’t afford the school fees, Memsahib.”

When Mrs. Nita suggested paying for Manu’s education, Manu’s mother was not too enthusiastic.

“Memsahib, I’ve found a house for Manu to work. School vagerah is not for us poor people. I cannot afford to lose an additional source of income. My husband abandoned me last year and I’ve two more mouths back home to feed. School will not feed my children and me, memsahib.”

“Okay, tell me how much extra will you earn by employing Manu somewhere?”

“At least a thousand rupees more” replied Manu’s mother.

“Fine then! From next month onwards I will pay you thousand rupees extra. Just let Manu go to school.”

Overjoyed with an unexpected rise in her pay, Manu’s mother agreed to send Manu to school, though she occasionally grumbled about how nothing good came out of studying so much.

School opened windows of several opportunities for Manu. Intelligent and bright, she topped school and received scholarships to good universities. Mrs. Nita on the other hand tried talking to her neighbors against child labor and tried dissuading them from employing children below 14 years at their houses. However due to lack of resources and means to fight this social crisis, she was unable to help other children like Manu.

***

Years later one day a petite girl rang the bell of Mrs. Nita’s house.

The moment the door was opened, Manu rushed forward to hug Mrs. Nita.

“Nita aunty, remember, the little girl who stood in your balcony enchanted by the sights below and to whom you gave a new lease of life? Yes, today your Manu is going to the top university of the country. How can I pay back all that you have done for me?”

“Pass it on, Manu,” smiled Mrs. Nita. “Often poverty driven families are reluctant to send their children to schools as they fear losing an additional source of income. This is a serious problem that needs to be tackled. There are so many children who need to be rescued, who need to be given their right to education and right to lead a respectable life. Fight for their cause, Manu.”

“I promise, Nita aunty.”

Manu went on to become a legal expert on child’s right’s issues. She opened an NGO ‘Nitanjali’ in her gratitude to Mrs. Nita. She fought aggressively for children’s right to education. Her NGO also ran a part time recreational centre where the parents of these rescued children where equipped with skills to earn enough to sustain their family, without sending their children to work.

***

The creaking of the doors jolted back Manushree from her reverie. In walked her assistant, accompanied by a little girl of around 4 years. Her big round eyes looked scared and suspicious of her new surrounding.

“Ma’am, this is Meenakshi. Our team rescued her from the cracker factory on the outskirts of the city.” Manu’s assistant informed her.

Manu beckoned the girl forward. Shy and awkward, the girl approached Manu’s table slowly and reluctantly. Manu took out something from inside her cupboard and placed it on the girl’s hand. It was a bright red crayon. The girl’s stance softened and her face broke into a smile. “After all these years, the charm of the bright red crayon still worked,” Manushree smiled to herself.

Many a times, we see right before our eyes, children being employed at various households, factories, restaurants, shops etc. We quietly ignore. But when it comes to a debate, we raise our voices against child labour. It is time we act on these arguments and douse the flames of child labour before it annihilates the future of our nation. Let us do our little bit, to make these little lives, a little better.