Dear Life, I am not cross with you as much as I am startled by you, and as much as I am harried, unable to answer The childlike questions you are asking me.

Dear Life you constantly surprise me. for I didn't imagine that to for me to live, I would have to bear such happiness as much as I have borne pain. And that tonight I if smile or if I cry I have to do that as if I am taking out a loan that has to be repaid in full!

Dear Life if today these eyes are full With tears, I know that tomorrow, tomorrow if it ever comes, would be left pining for these tears that today that I have now suddenly shed in surprise because you, Dear Life, you surprised me

Something returns to me now, In my eyes, your fading smile; Points and mocks my unloved state. And from deep within, coarse and Serrated feelings of unclassified love, Hack my sleep, hack my peace, hack me.

I sit with my fists clenched threatening My magnified shadow on the opposite wall. That alone is left, alone just like me, To speak to, to cry with, sieved in Stray beams of this night's diminishing light.

Image after image, word after word raise, From the currents of this night; the wind Stops and comes back; wave after wave Of unceasing movement of tree, leaf and cloth In substance, in the transparent tears that Fill my eyes, in hope, in despair, in recall!

Even these sparse words refuse to hide, the stark naked turmoil each unforgiving living day seems to bring in again and again. Death is what would be better state; yet Why is this anguish still insisting to live? In what slight hope? Awaiting what certainty?

Even, even a sudden death is not for me. And On a night like this I must console myself With the fact that to sleep is to forget a little and thus die for a little while. This I must tell myself Knowing the futility of remembering you and your words and the way you laugh.

But right now I am most helpless. My ragged breathing is helpless. And so is this flow of line after line. What can I do? You return.

Sometime in 1999, IIT Kgp.

I wrote this poem one winter night at Kgp, almost two years ago.On rereading it,I find it's forced in some places.But I remember writing it then, in a sudden rush of words that would have brooked no mental editing.

Sitting in the sun,

I am a daytime firefly, hovering over the blue sky, watching my shadow in the fountain below.

I seep, the glare bouncing off the naked whiteness of the sheet with blue ink.

I recall a lunch I once ate, reclining on a bench under a maple tree and the gaze of one whom I had just kissed.

I think now: that perhaps it was just a figment of imagination, a dream tinged with sudden forceful reality.

I note Time has passed and in it's passing had abraded the pain, into a smooth rounded reality, sans any jagged edges.

I don't question anymore the scheme of things, fate, right or wrong, as these things play themselves out like a toy slowly unwinding.

I hope I would find meaning in how I live, with an increasing awareness of the vastness and mists within, in which I move dancing slowly.

I span thus: the days from one winter to another cold winter.