Thoughts to Words

Absorbing a thousand and one Arabian nights in fear, my feathery filaments supply oxygen  and sonnets of hope in the bloodstream. The marsh arteries  in my courtyard, compile political convulsions and maritime disputes, contusions sprouting  from partition and bleeding internally. The flamingos legally keep shifting homes, summarizing the winters to their baby cousins  at the summer palace, but I am a refugee and an earning, with ordinary fins  in this extraordinary estuary. Fishermen of Kutch and Sindh ritually have their dignity ripped and boats seized because of me. Borders have sledgehammered  the heritage of my solitude, any considerate Jinni in the sea who can bring me a glimpse of it? ©songbriti

"Fighting like cats and dogs."  What baseless rumour are they distributing like a virus? I always share my crunchy biscuits with you that are daily kept at 7am by a good Samaritan near 'Paradise Apartments'. We even play catch and fetch on weekends. Our progressive development on peaceful coexistence has not reached their idiot boxes and smartphones. People know that your paws are retractable and mine are not, I bark and you meow, I love hanging out with my pack near the meat shop and you love your 'Me time' in the park. We are very different but there is no divide between us.  How many five-year terms will it take for these species with apparently working brains to figure out the Shakuni tactics going on in the executive forests? Funnily, there are too many clones of Shakuni and here is when casting votes becomes a dicey business but nobody told them that the world's largest democracy would come without risks. In the reigning age of tik tok, some of them ...

Scalding tea, proceeding apace, mint absorbed evenly. Sparrows chirping in unison, porcelain skies saluting commandos. Black roses bracing candour; veneration an earning negating outworn customs. Cleopatra's handpicked gems, marching on in one direction, sharpened arrowheads reciting the Iliad of anti-war. ©songbriti