1. A Sonnet for the Stone

In Thar's hot breath, where shifting sands now hold
A whispered age of Solanki might,
Five temples rise in sandstone, tinged with gold,
Where day gives way to Rajasthan's deep night.
The Someshvara, for Lord of the Moon, still stands,
A lattice-work of gods and beast and man,
Where loving couples, locked by stone-wrought hands,
Echo the Khajuraho's ancient plan.
But when the sun retreats, a curse takes flight,
A spectral dread the local voices tell—
That any soul who stays to greet the night
Will join the stone, bewitched by its own spell.
So beauty sleeps beneath a haunted sky,
A frozen song that time cannot deny.

2. The Desert's Haunted Gallery

The desert wind, a sculptor, still refines
The curves of dancers on a sun-baked wall.
In Kiradu's court, where silence now befalls,
A petrified world in red-yellow lines.

The Vishnu pillars, where fine stories twine,
Of elephant and horse, in sacred thrall,
Now stand as sentinels, awaiting night's call
To guard the curse of this forgotten shrine.

Oh, do not linger when the dusk descends,
Where passion carved in stone now sleeps, alone.
The legend of a doom the locale sends
Turns living flesh to features like the stone.
A haunted gallery where time suspends,
And ghosts of artistry claim the dark as their own.