अन्ना

सत्य राजनैतिक नहीं होता
सिर्फ नैतिक होता है.
वह गाँधी टोपी पहने
लोगों में गाँधी बोता है .

सत्य अजर होता है.
उसकी धमनियों में
रक्त
युवा दौड़ता है .

सत्य का धर्म केवल सत्य है
उसकी जाती केवल सत्य है .
बामन या शुद्र नहीं सत्य .
धनवान या धनहीन नहीं सत्य .

राजाओं से ऊंचा सिंहासन
है इसका,
जड़ों से गहरी इसकी जड़े हैं.
यह सत्य , कभी अर्ध नहीं होता.
यह सत्य , कभी दर्द नहीं होता .
जटिल नहीं होता
मलिन नहीं होता
सत्य ये .

बहुत दिनों बाद
सत्य ने कुछ माँगा है .
हम उसे न नहीं कहेंगे .

बहुत दिनों बाद
सत्य हिंदुस्तान आया है ,
बहुत दिनों बाद
सत्य दिल्ली की और चला है .

मैने सुना है कोई नया नाम
खोजा है उसने .
और वही नाम
अब चाहते हैं शहर भर में
सारे .

मैं भी - अन्ना हजारे .

before the rains, 16

no one wants to break a man’s heart, especially when he’s heartbroken. and i was young - i liked the idea of seeing her. a woman who can do this to a man has got to be something.
so i say, sure thing, whatever you say.

he lights up his cigarette and i light up mine and we lie down on the wet grass. i never did lie down like that ever again.

now i look back and realise, you don’t need to be in love to feel that. you just need someone else to be in love; you need a lazy evening and you need a sense of humour. and, if the time is right, rain.

i looked for it many times after,

but i never did lie down like that ever again.

before the rains, 15

yeah,
i am sharp, right? that’s why i work out; i do ten kilometres everyday. except sunday. sunday i sleep.

praise from men makes me nervous, though. that actually scares me, just in case.

but the man in the park wasn’t gay. he said she liked men like me. she liked hard men, apparently.

he said i should wear a black jacket and black pants when i ride to her place because - and i quote him, verbatim -

in the traffic light you will look like man from sin city,

that’s what a real raincloud is, man from sin city in the sky, and the lights catching his chest and thigh
from all the streets, roads, houses, cars, all the people

below.

i think he might have wanted to be that man in the sky, but i didn’t tell him
that i thought so

before the rains, 14

there was drizzling and the grass got wet, but it wasn’t the rains really, just some. my neighbour’s wife sends more water down washing her balcony.

so we sit there like that and get wet.

now the man, he’s got a clean look about him, everything in place, hair, shirt, shoelace, buttons, cufflinks – i mean for someone lives alone and talks to me only – cufflinks,

weird.

and with his neat fingers, he draws his map in the mud complete with landmarks. it’s got leaves, sticks, stones, pebbles and what-not he’s picked up from the park. nuts

we huddle over it and he looks deadly serious and points at two odd shaped pebbles in the map, these,

cloud, these
are our apartment blocks, you start here
and ride north down
the park the f block market left
from the main gate, and down here
the bus-stop. here call-centre girls are growing frisky because it's evening
and it's time.

they think you're a movie star with the wind behind you. but you're just my cloud,
on my map,
no?

before the rains, 13

then, he pulled out two cigarettes from his trouser pocket, right one, and a matchbox from his left pocket, lit up, and smoked for a while. i made a few calls, one to my brother who heads sales in a mobile company, and one to my mother who lives in gurgaon.

it’s amazing how you remember some things and forget so much. i don’t remember the man’s face. but i remember him drawing out a detailed map to her house with his finger, on a wet patch near the bench. i remember him advising me to avoid the office hour, the traffic, cp in the evening. I remember him saying go early and have a drink at volga.

and i remember him smile as if he could see me sitting at volga with a beer. and i remember him say, it’s a good place to relax, it’s got large windows, and when it rains outside, you can drink yourself dead watching the waters run down the panes slowly all evening.

i even remember me asking him where tunisia was, and him chuckle.

that's when the sky cracked up bright like a carnival and the kids in the park and the girls all ran for cover to the trees

before the rains, 12

a woman is a city. really,

give her december, she gives you dark. give her the sun, she gives you laburnums. send her a large cloud, twenty one something, crouched young over his motorbike, dark brows

fast fast faster
ha, and will she give you rain

laughter

before the rains, 11

it was a pleasant evening.

the sun is gone, the sky is dark, half, and stray dogs are chasing squirrels in the lawns.

when we were young, he says, when we were young, she and i would wake all night during the rains. i’d tell her ghost stories and we’d push buckets into corners where water leaked down from the roof.

she loved the sound of thunder. loves, i mean.

when you see her, tell her
a white bird followed you. tell her it’s still on her terrace. that it won’t go. that
it means she’ll travel far: tunisia, istanbul...

she loves to travel far.

she won’t believe all of it, but she might just believe one half.

besides, it might make her laugh
again