We need several photos, sir,
Of people like you
In various poses, bending, tilting,
Standing, walking,
Smiling, lost in thought,
With a palette and brush in hand,
Staring, smoking, reading, writing,

Embracing your mate and children
And the now inseparable bosom foes,
Close-ups and long distance shots,
Photos in various poses, sir.

With a new-born child,
On the Mount Everest ,

At Burj Khalifa,
Or beside a funeral pyre;

Leading a march
Shaking hands at a marriage
Folding hands before success
Thrilled  at one’s favourite tasks
Crushed under  futile  burdens,
Photos in various poses, sir.

Let them see
Those who have never seen us
Those who see us all the time
And even we ourselves:
All that we sing and dance
Through the changing seasons,
What we create and destroy
In our various incarnations,
Sir, it is under the gazes  of men
That seas became gigantic narratives,

And rivers became sagas.

Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer
Complains that snapshots have worn out
His face.
But one should not forget, sir,
Through the same trick
The stars of our public men have ascended

From the darkness of anonymity
To the kindly light of celebrity.
More exposure, more radiance, sir,
That is what people say, sir,
The truth of a life
Can’t be summed up in a snapshot, sir.
Those who have never been splashed
By a flashbulb,
Those who do not even figure
In a group photo,
Multitudes
It is as if they were never born.
Their life
A formless blind void.

The V.V.I.P.’s reply to the cameraman:
When I face the camera
I panic.
Its single eye
Which is also its tongue, ear, and nose,
The solar abyss of cosmic flux,
A tunnel of night at its core,
The possessed demonic dance
Of the Grand Inquisitor
When I face the camera
My eyes swerve
Away from my eyes,
My lips wither and fall,
Ears  itch as if they are grafted,
A fly settling on my nose
Treads it down to the underworld.
As I stare at one
I splinter into many.
Instead of the river’s harmony
I become the rain’s scatter.

Thank you, sir.
A few more, sir.
As a solitary tree of life in the scorching sands,
As a light-house  on the dark shore,
With a bunch of spring flowers in the  Kashmir gardens,
As Lenin in the Moscow square
As  Poonthaanam, the great devotional poet in the prayer room.

As an idol in the pageant
As a blowing horn
Or as an elephant’s trunk.
To keep the world fettered
In polemics for ever,

We need several
Photos in various poses, sir.