Poems & Me....

The earliest memory I have of ever having written a poem was maybe when I was 10 or 11 years old and had written a poem called “A Clown”. It was a 4 line poem, which talked about how a clown makes us laugh. And then came the next one, in a couple of days. This one was called “Seasons”. A longer poem this time, it talked about the 4 seasons and what I liked about each one of them.

The next memory I have of any connection to poems is when I had to learn a Hindi poem written by Atal Behari Vajpayee in class 7. It was called “Pehchaan”. It was a long poem but I fell in love with it. Today, even after 13 years, I can recite the 1st 4 paras of the poem from my heart and a copy of it hangs on my pin board now. I got it the last time I went home.

But in these 13 years, I have had no connection to poems other than a few ones I might have read. Until last year. When I started writing poems. The 1st one I wrote after this long hiatus was a hindi one, my 1st hindi kavita. :) I was quite proud of it. will probably post it some day. Then came a few more, some of them I have posted earlier. They might not be a true poet’s poems but they reflect what I feel or the way I imagine certain things. They might not be very polished, but then I’m not a poet. So I guess it works. :)

The question is: “Why such a long gap?” Or rather “ Why poems now?”. I think it could have been a result of the fact that I had been hanging out a lot with people who wrote shayaris and poems in my 1st year. Maybe some of it rubbed onto me. Or maybe I got the right inspiration and felt deeply enough to write. Or it could have been simply the right moment. Whatever it is that inspired me to write, I’m happy about it. It helps me put down thoughts, thoughts which I couldn’t have written otherwise, thoughts which were just a part of an imagination and could only have been communicated through a poem. With that, I think the right way of ending this post would be to post my latest poem. I still haven’t named it. Maybe you can help me find a title for it. Its not among the better ones of the lot, but what the hell. :D


You sit in front of me,
Sometimes oblivious of the way I look at you,
The way I trace your face with my eyes,
The way my hands reach out to you but fail,

Sometimes you look back,
With an expression of surprise, to find me looking at you
You think you can ignore it, and look away
But you look back, and find the same stare

I know it unnerves you,
More so now that you know, what these stares mean,
More so now, when you can read my eyes,
Eyes that want a lot, but don’t expect anything

It affects you, I know
You wish things weren’t like this, that they were like before,
And I apologise for the changes, for the mess,
And can only hope to make things easier for you.