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John Chiramel
“NUNU”
It was a hot and humid day,
When I went to throw open the windows
That I spotted her on a nearby bough,
A full-bodied minstrel with doleful eyes,
Singing a sad and melancholy dirge.
And as I watched her and heard her soulful song,
I noticed that she limped on a twisted leg,
As if while escaping from a frightening and hopeless cage,
She had wrenched her foot through the twisted bars of her captivity.
Even as she sang she seemed to be
Gripped by an inexplicable fear and diffidence,
of one mocked and battered by her very own,
filling her heart with a deep void,
a sad survivor of an unhappy past,
searching, yet not finding, that elusive happiness!
Her anguished tune seemed to ring of a life, sans love, sans tenderness;
Kept alive by memories of stolen joys, in a routine of daily suspicion,
Saved from the brink by rare peals of liberating laughter,
In a house of withering emptiness;
A sad survivor of an empty past,
searching, yet not finding, that elusive happiness.
Every day I would watch my feathered obsession,
And every day my Nunu would reveal,
The different hues of her inner being;
A fragile naughtiness; a self-preserving guile;
a forgiving anger; a thirst for requited love;
an early adult; a remnant child;
loyal and loving, yet haunted by a bleak and sterile present!
She drank thirstily of the love I offered her;
This doe-eyed mynah of mine;
Chirping lustily her wake-up calls;
dancing and prancing on my outstretched hands;
softly pecking and kissing my fingers;
with a look of childlike dependence in her mascaraed eyes;
offering generously from her huge store of unspent love
and luxuriating in the reassurance of my fatherly love.
At dusk, my Nunu would hobble to her solitary bough,
Her doleful eyes droopy with sleep
And chirp me a goodnight kiss through the window sill!
Years passed in this bonded bliss,
of the giver and the receiver
until the twain was undefinable; inseparable..
Then one day I heard a rustle among the leaves;
I looked to see my Nunu necking,
A knight in shining feathers.
For a minute my heart stopped;
A sudden anguish; a fleeting envy; an unwillingness to share..
Then the slow acceptance of the inevitable,
a spurning, turning into a torrent of fatherly joy
for this victorious survivor of an unhappy past,
searching and finding that elusive happiness!
Nunu would fly away by day and return by night
And chirp her daily love life to me from her cheery bough;
But as time went by the chirpings diminished
And her trusting demeanour changed to a look that one gives to a dirty
old man!
Her love for me slowly dried and finally she pierced my ‘anam cara”
fingers and drew blood!
Still I waited every night for the chirping kiss;
Only silence filled the eerie darkness.
I waited every morning for my wake-up calls;
Only silence filled the eerie light.
Gone without a trace, Nunu, my feathered obsession;
Like a skylark’s shriek across the dark ocean…
THE RICKSHAW
After plying through the dark alleys of San Thome,
I was ready to retire for the night;
When a silhouette emerged from the shadows.
of a dusky damsel, with large doleful eyes
and a delightful dimple, who then calmly proceeded to climb into my
rickshaw.
“Quo vadis?”, I asked, with the quizzical wry smile of rickshaw-pullers;
“Ou que tu ailles”, she replied, with the brazen nonchalance of a lost
fugitive.
The rickshaw being of Vietnamese make, she sat in front,
While I peddled from the rear; she caught the breeze and the view,
and I her silence and mystery.
I strained wearily through the by-lanes of this Portuguese quarter,
And then broke into the Marina via beach road;
And all the while she sat there silent,
Ma dame sans merci, with her arms outstretched,
The sea breeze caressing her brown cheeks!
As I reached halfway across the beach,
I caught the glistening moonlight on her wet face,
From her silent tears, ma princesse tragique.
Something in her sorrow spoke to mine,
And I began to hum a dark and sad tune;
Of humdrum days; of a listless life;
An aimless living in a rickety rickshaw.
Something in my sorrow caught hers
And she turned to give me a kindred smile;
“Quo vadis?“ she asked and it was my turn to answer “ou que tu ailles”.
A mysterious spark flashed through the stillness of that Marina night,
And pierced our souls to the quick; meshing body and spirit in its
ironclad grip;
And took us into a forever, forever land of love and truth.
And as we bid our goodnights, to go back into our emptiness’
We knew we would meet again; the same time, the same place
To resume our ride in this rickshaw of shared destiny!
As if on cue, she emerged from the shadows the next night
And stepped into my rickshaw, this creation of imagination;
This contraption for soulmates seeking solace.
As I started to peddle, she sat arms spread-eagled and looking straight,
But this time the moonlight caught her dimple,
As a secure smile of anticipation spread across her face
and a dancing tune escaped her lips.
And as I peddled close to the silver sands,
On that lonely beach road, an unspoken message stopped my rickshaw
And without a word we walked barefoot,
On that sandy beach, in the silence of the night.
As we approached an inviting undulation,
We sat on that mound of communion
And enjoyed the sea breeze on our cheeks.
Until I heard her soft sobs and put a paternal arm over her shoulders
And she crumpled on to my chest, like a puppet without a string;
Deep cries of encaged anguish woke the sleeping seagulls,
broke the stillness of the night and frothed up an agitated sea!
I held her tight, till the trembles subsided
and then wiped her grateful tears off her upturned face.
That mysterious spark flashed again,
Across that Marina sky
And pierced our souls to the quick, meshing body and spirit in her
ironclad grip,
And took us into a forever, forever land of love and truth!
We spoke like soulmates and drew the contours of our unhappy past;
With the healing joy of unburdening to each other, divinely ordained;
And as we walked back, hand in hand, to our rickshaw of shared destiny
we knew that this was going to be a long journey!
Our rides had become a longing, much awaited and carefully executed;
we often took turns at gleefully peddling
And felt the growing rush of churning, the bond of filial love turning,
Into a raging dance at the edges!
We spent hours just communing; sitting silently on that sandy mound
And watching the waves frothing, echoing our pulsating senses.
A hug turned into a lingering hug;
And a touch of cheeks slid into a brush of lips;
and a close embrace ended squarely into a burning kiss!
That mysterious spark flashed again through the stillness of that Marina
night
And pierced our souls to the quick,
Meshing body and spirit in its ironclad grip
Taking us into a forever, forever land of love and truth.
We saw it coming, this falling into a delirious abyss of pleasure;
Powerless to stop, we embraced this treasure
Of an unquenchable fire, sealing our destinies
In one inseparable measure.
Every passing day brought us closer
to a realisation of a worthy divinity,
in loving the love in one another,
while enjoying the delicious promiscuity,
until every passing night transformed
the selfish physicality into a covenanted tenderness,
sans time, sans space, sans limit;
“Quo vadis?” becoming forever “ Ou que tu ailles”!
The Hill
As he walked back over the hill,
in the shadows of the night, shoulders drooped,
tears rolling down his forlorn face, he looked back at the dainty
house,
freshly painted and with a pretty rose garden,
in the green valley below, inside a gated grill.
He looked back at the shaded light,
coming from the bedroom window
of a love that did not need him anymore,
a nubile love that was his for many years,
but now had found her life-mate
and built a nest that had no place for him.
Such darkness covered his heart,
as he walked back over the hill,
shoulders drooped, tears streaming down his battered face,
a lonesome figure.
A terrible trembling shook his broken body,
when he thought of what he had lost,
in taking love from one who was his,
and giving love to one who was not!
And as he edged to the top of the hill,
he looked down at the dark valley below,
and simply rolled down–dead!
The Puppy
It was a cold autumn evening,
when I heard the whimpering,
as I wandered my weary way home,
of a puppy with doleful eyes,
shivering all alone behind a garbage bin.
I felt the tug in my heart for a kindred soul,
as I stretched out my hands;
at first gingerly, then on the bound,
sweetness and love was on my chest,
nustling, father and child, in eternal embrace!
The Tug
It may have been something I said,
Or a look of concern or even something unsaid;
But there was a distinct tug
In my heart to share love
With one so bereft of love, yet so lovable.
It was slow at first, the giving and the receiving
Until the wall of our hearts split open;
One overflowing, the other thirsting
And in the bursting, two hearts became one;
Not just giving and receiving, but just being!
Delirious
In the beginning the flutter,
The missing of a beat,
Then the rising heat,
of a pleasure deep within;
of two minds, two hearts
that are becoming one!
Ballet dancing in rhythmic grace,
Pirouetting, then lifting,
And then sliding in hot embrace;
Delirious in breathless togetherness,
The endless kissing of two minds, two hearts
That are becoming one!
The short absences, the constant longing,
The looking, the smiling, the touching,
Delirious in breathless togetherness.
The messaging, the knowing, the committing, the loving,
The breathless pulsating of two minds, two hearts
That have become one!
The road, straight and narrow!
I went searching for pleasures,
On a wide, wide road of earthly treasures;
I went looking for wild flowers,
On a crooked road of poppy bowers.
What I found were half measures,
A life full of pressures,
My body riven with guilty quivers,
And my soul tasting hellish fires.
Until I came upon a road, straight and narrow,
difficult to enter, but easy thereafter,
with streams of living waters,
daffodils and roses and purple flowers
and a divine cleansing laughter
of angels nourishing life in full measure!
*******
John Chiramel has a corporate experience of 36 years, 20 of those years as a CEO and Board Member of Arvind Mills Ltd and MAS Holdings of Sri Lanka, In the intervening years between Arvind and MAS, he obtained his third Masters in Economic Policy from Columbia University in 1999 (his first Masters being in Economics from Pune Univ 1976 and a PGDBM from XLRI, Jamshedpur, 1978)and did a year's stint as an Econometrics Consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC. After retiring in 2014 and receiving a PhD in Ethics from Madras University in 2018, he started his second career as a Prof of Corporate Ethics in the University of Calicut, the Xavier University, Bubaneshwar and XLRI, his alma mater. He continues to be a Visiting Professor in the latter two institutions. He is a keen operatic and "pop and rock" singer, with a Trinity College, London 8th Grade Certificate under his belt.And writes poetry. !
A Quiver of Verses is a good title to give to John’s poems.
And the lead-in visual is evocative, inviting the reader to experience the fare ahead.
John consummately wields a poetic pen that moves the reader to become the protagonist in each of his craftings. That is an art.
Whether it is so or just a perception he explores hidden dimensions of the incestuous embedded subtly in NUNU and THE RICKSHAW.
And he Hill? It becomes me!
Poignant par excellence!
I read each poem of John with care. My eyes welled.
The poignancy of each word brought out the emotion within. Each telling me the numerous figures that have passed through in life.
At the end of it – the figures have passed into fantasy of richness leaving me a pauper within.
The period of the poems in the quiver is significant too.
Hope he writes like Kalidasa’s “Shakuntala” of modern times. That will represent a generation.
John Chiramel’s defining college time attributes have been to do different things and doing them differently with an unanny knack to perceive even mundane day to day occurrences as part of a larger overarching and spiritual canvas. A quick rummage through ‘Quiver’ of Verses is good enough to show there’s no change in him in half a century.
Merely rummaging through his ‘Quiver’ would be unfair – as much to John as to oneself. These verses are old wine stuff to be absorbed unhurriedly – verse by verse, allowing the layers of feel and poignancy to slowly soak in.
A ‘bonding’ denied by Nunu is more than made up by ‘sweetness and love’ evoked by Puppy. A mere tug can cause enough of a ripple that can lead to meeting of hearts; short absences and constant longing cause a delirium that brings about togetherness. A simple point made – even an inconsequential beginning could lead to a glorious conclusion.
In communication and expression, John is long past the ‘difficult to enter’ and is well into the ‘easy thereafter’ leg of his poetic journey well enjoying blissful peels of the ‘divine cleansing laughter’ as he proceeds along the home stretch of the ‘Road Straight and Narrow’.
Why ‘Quiver’? Don’t these poems all have the silky feel of petals soaked in the morning dew? No arrowheads here. Just soothing softness that touch mind and soul….an exquisite Bouquet indeed!
Reading John Chiramel’s poems is a sheer joy. His words weave the cerebral and the emotional into a seamless flow.