They eat a crunchy zinger
Splattered with slovenly cheese
The talk is small, thoughts are big
Looming in the horizon of silence
An aircraft dances audaciously
A woman talks in Lebanese
A man complains of too much cheese
Somebody checks in bags in priority 
He talks of governments and his sobriety 
The cop does his job discreetly 
The stewardess paints her painted lips 
A toddler discovers his restless feet
His squeaky shoes have a distinct beat
A man looks at me and smiles, I wonder why
His face resembles the sound of cacophony
The world is all gleaming glass and mirrors 
A strange reflection of strained species-
That know nothing and everything
Everybody seems to be going somewhere
In search of that something elusive
Time is a ticking bomb, dreams are threadbare
The conveyor belts sit aimlessly and stare.
​-Jaspreet Mann

The cabin crew will be here to collect all the items you wish to discard
Sure,
I have:
A bag full of memories wrapped in aluminium
A diary embedded inside my head
A red suitcase that has listened to everything left unsaid
And now has a bristled broken leg
A heart that bleeds inside a Cinderella dead
A long list of invisible ailments medicines couldn't repair
A motherhood of despair
A haiku of nightmares
An anthology of loneliness 
A dictionary of death
One summer's carcass clad in winter's distress.
© Jaspreet Mann

It is the worst phone call to get when you are walking somewhere close to 828 Broadway in New York City at 4:30 pm, when you know it will be around 2:00 am in India. You dread the 'ting' of the message on your phone. But you hear it anyway and deep down in your heart you know the inevitable. The muffled sob chokes inside the depths of your heart as you try to be brave in a foreign country and your mind starts working with a clinical detachment, otherwise quite unknown to you. The twenty-hour something journey looming ahead feels like twenty something days. And you have to reach the other side of the globe. And you have to keep your wits about you. And you have to stop mid track as a long colony of red ants seems to crawl inside your head, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing restlessly, making your interiors bleed. Only you feel it. The world around you goes on. The feeling is even more deathly than death, to say the least. They speak softly on the phone, holding back things untold. "She is serious. She is battling for life." Your heart knows that they are following the protocol of 'breaking the news gently.'  Soon, there will be an exit. It will be your mother and you know it. As cabs zip past in the concrete jungle where nobody has time for nobody, the thought that you won't be able to reach in time for that last goodbye, strikes you like a bolt of lightning. When you go home, you will open the door to yourself and be a silent witness to unbearable grief. She won't be there seated next to her window to welcome you and will not smile ever. The clock will continue to tick. The Sun will continue to shine. Everything will remain the same except the apocalypse descending on your life. 

Today, a 'motherless' year later, I have still not been able to come to terms with her going away. Death has a manual of its own. It loves to strike where it pinches the most and derives immense pleasure in tearing unexpected chapters from its book titled 'Next.' However, in my mother's case, death maintained a civility, a respect that my mother always desired. It was quick. It was short. A minute here, a minute there, and she was gone. It respected her wish that when she died it should be quick, not a long endless suffering where she had to be dependent on others for moral and physical support. Death seemed to have overheard her wishes for a speedy departure and acquiesced, knowing she was a brave, content woman who seldom wished for anything.

I never cared if my fancy moneyed relatives attended all the grand parties hosted at our home, but I do care how many showed up to say a kind word or talk about her with fond remembrance. It goes without saying that in today's world most relationships are need based. A person is in demand as long as the needs are being served. So, I had zero expectations of compassion from a grand entourage. Needless to say, not many came. In any case they were not worth their salt and I am glad they did not come. As for the others, their text messages of condolences are just digital dust. I thank them profusely for taking out precious time from their busy deathly schedules. But remember death is a great leveler. Who knows when somebody will be as dead as a doorknob! The dalit girl who had been rescued from the shackles of poverty and empowered by my mother, came and all that she kept repeating was, 'this woman was a saint. She taught me to live my life with dignity.'  I thank her for showing up and for the heartfelt generosity of her gratitude. It meant a lot to my mother, I am sure. Maybe she watches from a faraway place and sends her blessings.

I have not processed her loss. I never will. There are moments when I feel a constriction in my heart as if somebody is choking me to death. I had not cried at her funeral. I had to be brave because she had always been stoic and courageous, no matter what life hurled at her. So I had to be brave. Ever since that day, I have tried desperately to wear her shoes, but it has been impossible.  I cannot define myself in any way, in her absence.

Leonardo DiCaprio once said, 'my mother is a walking miracle'. I recall that on the day my mother passed. The Indian summer was at its peak. The Sun was at its brightest. The dazzling light of the deep blue sky embraced me with her strength. I will be eternally grateful to have been touched by a ‘walking miracle' in this lifetime.

An artificial world
People staring into screens
Zombies going nowhere
Coming home to nothing
The face of a lover on screen
A snapshot of longing
Forgotten soon after landing
Humanity is a shallow sea
It sees nothing, it feels empty
There is not a strain of nostalgia
Of perfumed love letters 
Of words painstakingly conjured
Of feelings felt and unforgotten
Written on scented paper forever
There is not a tinge of regret
Over instant gratification
Over messages unwritten unsent
Over love seen but never met
In the travesties of the internet
Once people faked orgasms 
Now they fake entire relationships
The screen has answers for everything
Mansions, restaurants, yachts, journeys
Captured in the driveways of nothing
A sea of people drowning in an abyss
An ocean of depth sinking with the ship
The sky is a morass of dark, cold uncertainty
People become things, things become eternity.
​©​ Jaspreet Mann

The long ledge of silence
bricks, mortar, decadence
one body begins, another ends
stitched seamlessly with skin
perfect intimacy of Achilles heel
kissing footsteps of heartbeats
moments bursting into flames
flames leaping into moments
that word sees, that feeling hears
eyes that speak have known tears
hearts that bleed have known fears
thick of life is a freight train
love is a throbbing refrain
someone rises, someone dies
the edge of nights is a lonely terrain
deserts scour the landscape for rain
oceans hallucinate in infrared
time is a sky of Venetian red
the sky is a blot of ink in their bed
they speak
and not a word has been said.
​© Jaspreet  Mann