Waning...

Uninspired
The dog buried in ancient sand
Across the road.
Waiting for an audience to perish.
Each moment yawns,
Each hunger lives,
Drawn out
With broken claws.

Amidst noises in the head
Some on the streets.
Turning slowly into a wrinkled speck
And then a Lump, Love, History.
Today bows out
The Uninspired dog,
And Tomorrow they shall,
Play Cat and Mouse.

Over Tea & Coffee

With flushed cheeks and stirred minds, we moved to our next cup. Warm lemon water in heavy mugs. Tea-bags and sugar bags lying beside silently...all awaiting nemesis. The big cup of Aztec already gulped,  our talk had now grown more direct, her company more life-like. I could see those hands move like a juggler's.

I answered her the way I mostly do while "opening up". Those very lines, with all the nonchalance, all the sanity. Again and again. Like a writer remembering his oft-quoted quotes, long after he has overcome the conviction that had gone into their making. Smart and sharp. Even intelligent. And generously aloof. Self-critical, sans self-pity.

Almost as a habit, I tried reading the effect my wise words were having on her, wishing she would feel the strength of my carefully-framed convictions. She smiled with twinkled eyes. Like older women usually do, having discovered the hollow in the souls of their younger companions. In a single moment I felt, she had metamorphosed into another. With a passionate adjustment of her veil she set herself up. And before I could decide whether she was agitated, offended or effervescent, words came tumbling out in that strangely powerful english...the way they had never before:

"You do not know my dear! All this talk, all this writing, this experience, your and all you see of others, become zero. You will think, "oh my god, what was I doing all my life? Before this? Where did I waste my breath and did not come to him sooner?" All this years without affection will look a waste. You will be transformed. Love has strange powers. And then you say to yourself- "I was such a fool!""

She took out a picture and sighed, remembering the one month and one week of marriage she had lived, before coming to India for seven years. His Kurdish poems by her side, the desire to translate them for the world, and the resolve of being together someday again. She had called it Love.

I sat there quietly, seeking the darkness of the streets outside...the brew had begun to melt the heart, freeze the mind.

In Pursuit...

The motto is to fake motivation. The idea is to sound profound. Even when bitterness seeps into the air all around. Even when you inhale nitrogen dioxide all the time and stand in queues to use washrooms. 
Autowallahs are the new bosses, temple-priests the untiring, unbeatable, good old, very old, villains.


And then to seek poetry, to pursue sheer words all life. 
"Arre oye saala beep beep beep and beep beep beep..." sayeth one bus-conductor to another, hanging from the rattled wooden vehicle in a clogged streets. Clogged streets, worse than clogged drains. But, you MUST MUST MUST seek poetry I say! Pure poetry.


To write without cynicism, to write without spite, to write with deep commitment, to write with honesty and warmth. Lets write and mock the breed of the Romantics, or lets etch realistically and defeat Zola. All that the soul needs is to pretend. Pretend Art.


Love too. And shove perhaps. And hug and smug. And then a simple mug.
What else? People. More and more, tumbling in and out of Life like a can of worms badly shut. Talk, stop, listen but do not touch them.


The Sun is shouting from somewhere in the Sky, slapping more rays on our heads. Get up and run the race. The merry-go-round awaits the beggar-kids, the woman sitting near the rail tracks and the young girl repairing her shoes again and again and again with her two-penny.


Happy New Year we shall sing in a few days!
Happy happy it must be.
And I shall write Poetry.

Hollow

Let mists settle.
Settle old scores.

A zillion particles screech all around me
Tonight.
Their happiness bursts into contagious brown flames
Eating up my night sky.

Neon lights,
Fake lights,
Vaporous and dumb
My abode of knotted
desires.
Where are you?

This alien land of
Rude joy
Plucks out my peace.
Always.
This distance of a thousand miles
Scourges my mind
Incessantly.

And while the mists settle
Old Scores.
I fade away
Across the burning universe
Wistful
Eating White
Coldly.

On a morning...

Behind the temple spire
Birds flew.
Chased by the early Sun
The Birds flew.
The City was still yawning,
Misty naked lanes,
The moon pale blue.

The immense drunk river
Faded boats and old crows,
Grim gods and
Bathing pujaris
He knew them
She knew.

February Sun on
Their heads
In their fists
The icy breeze
The earthen cups
The molten tea,
The nervous vapours
They knew.

Lame rickshaws
Her playful dupatta
His lanes and his smile
Their nascent dawn
Bleary-eyed
The Ganges gulped
before they knew.

Atoms

I stare at You

Mute

For words pleasant

Unpleasant

Believing they would

Live in my skin

Forever.

Like the air full of your 

Smell

The atoms of your presence

After you've left.

City You...

Yes I know. Novelty puts me at unease. And you do not need to tell me that. I am  not those ready to ride, chirpy souls. I am not madly nomadic. I am me.

Give me time. And I shall open up to the scent of the new atmosphere. I will love the aromas of your city and I shall miss its sky and its distinct sound.

I have begun to feel love for this place. Pure love that comes with pure faith and intimacy. Without the romance of false hopes and  the noise of loud interlocutors. I have moved away from days that saw me searching for familiarity. Days when I compared lanes and markets to those back home in Calcutta. I am awake now. To the grey charms and lazy nothings of these wide frank roads. To the bitter pangs of the May sun, to the chills of November showers, to the fogs of September. 

There are rocks awaiting all over. Boulders waiting acknowledgment and glory. The fading silhouettes of royal arches, the curves of wise domes. The smell of grandeur travelling with food, the trails of memory stuck to reckless, dreamy, auto-rides.

I shall miss you. I shall find reasons to be with you all over again.

Nostalgia already at my doorstep. And its not even time yet to bid Adieu!

Ceremonies

Walk ahead,

Always walk ahead?

And look forward?

How about sitting down here?

How about seeking no more?

Why are Sun-sets an obligation to remember?

Why should last rays command all the attention

Accumulate mossy pain?

Why should Silence make you haloed?

Why shouldn't noise

Usher the belligerent dance

Of Breath, Of refusal?

Of Madness?

Why should Desire lead to blind alleys?

Why not to Sun-rise and more Orange?

Why should I not have my Todays?

Why should Yesterdays be deceiving always?

When you arrive someday

With those worshiped Tomorrows,

I shall greet your unknown face

With my unknown.

Dried in the Healthy Sun,

My soul in dead

Pickle-jars

Now seeks nemesis.

Assuming...

Why are you a rubble?

Why a dissatisfied human?

Why do you follow noises inside your head?

Why do you build questions around yourself?

Pause. Stop grimacing.

Hear me out.

Sift me from the voices in your head.

Listen and Obey.

Wait for my words.

Sit clasping those hands.

Do not yawn.

Do not talk.

I am in you.

And your soul has strings to my soul.

Are you in pain?

Are you fine?

I suppose I know.

I suppose I could help.

I suppose you've found out.

I am God.

Reminiscing...

The smell of rain. The smell of earth. This heavy breeze growing old is what lingers still.

I travel back to other days, other years. To other city, to other streets, similarly drenched. To evenings spent sipping the humid air that still allowed the building of feeble castles. To moments spent watching orange-yellow rain, dripping incessantly from sneezy lamp-posts. I travel to the hushed humming of monsoon songs, hoping they were tunes familiar to you. Away, far away.

I think of rain-beaten buses and their helpless windows. Of the daily rides across the monsoony Calcutta bypass. Each stop arriving with a naive sms, each landmark with a memory, each radio-melody with a smile.

I think of rickshaw rides, of ice-tea, of bitterness and that constant acidic joy that had gift-wrapped all sorrows then. Of life that had come with promises, failure, friends, special friends, best friends and all that compartmentalizing.

I think of those million plans and hazy dreams that had made the raindrops sparkle. On the trees, on coffee mugs, in canteens, on my palms.

I see the Rain has paused outside. Hesitating here and there in puddles. Awaiting clouds that had promised to join soon.

THAT day! :)

Impromptu is Life. Impromptu this happiness lying in old books. In straddling through breezy streets on a rainy evening. Burying the predictability of darkness in warm coffee mugs, sipped with careful madness.

Somebody plans. Plans with his "You know..." and takes life on a new road of gibberish. To play along is to be part of the contagion. The contagion of jokes and ache-inducing giggles. We start our boat. Its a motor-boat mind you, leading to the inevitable, crazy ride.

I found myself walking in the Rain.'Cause I liked the rains, my companion ever-so-wisely added. Coffee shop was the island we kept hunting for. And Lo! on reaching we made the grandest entry imaginable- book-laden, rain-drenched, enlightened souls!

We lived the spell. We weaved the spell. We ate, drank (coffee mind you) and made merry!

The charm of random living, of being with people who had matched you step-by-step in bonkerishness!

The books are precious. Even more so now. Old books with old pages, carrying the smell of a moist evening. Of bitter brew, turned sweet...and how! :P

Divine Matters!

"How will she take her aunt to the Kalighat Temple? She is a naastik."- Maa was speaking of me. Tired and exasperated.

It didn't shook the ground under me, it didn't break my heart. But, it immediately struck me as lightoprofoundophilosopho topic that might call for some mild pondering, a cynical blog-post.

I am not a Naastik! How can I be?! I am not well-read enough to denounce the might of all the gods and goddesses floating in the heavens to protect us. Me too!I am just a lazy female who never had the time to attend to gods after flipping through Old-English, Middle-English translations, Albert Camus, essays of Simone de Beauvoir and all that luggage. Not to forget the household chores that kept tumbling into my daily life, the multiplying population of guests and siblings, and finally, urgent matters of my delicate heart. Where was the time left for deities huh?

Parents are to be blamed too. Of course. Shocking as it might be for the reader, our family has never had a Puja-room, so to speak. Like us, the billion struggling, sweating Indians in this cramped country of ours, our household gods have also had to jostle for space within a fragile, wooden cupboard, which I guess belongs to some year in the B.C. era. Framed in big and small, seated and standing in brass, silver or a stingy coating of gold, I see them all as a community equally plagued by issues of space, attention, care, infrastructure and so on.

For my part, I have never discriminated. I have prayed to them with the same brisk swing of the incense stick, each time I had an exam in college. However, persistent unsatisfactory scores, ensured the end of that prompt practice too...

As matters stand now, there is complete harmony between me and the godly community. We are each others' well-wishers and even room-mates whenever I am here at home in Calcutta. I hope with their divine generosity they might still have some pleasant things stored for me. Your's truly, you will be happy to know, has plans of building a Puja-room for the plagued divinities...some day.

Naastik. Who?

And...

Ands and Sos keep company often. Like tears, breeze, sunrays and raindrops, your words touch me. Prick, Baffle, Move, Please. They keep piling in my brain like sand, in a corner, one among the many I have built out of Love.
Love. A word, a prick, a sound, a vaccum. Poetry, promises, foolery and so on.
Paint your life, smudge its corners, blur the curves, remove the lines, dampen the brush and keep throwing in the colours. Who has known, who has understood the purity behind most mistakes. They are what your Halo is made of, your very own delicate crown of thorns.
Arrive Monsoon at my doorstep to mark the end of struggle, to mark the beginning of enigmas that carry much Hope, and little of anything else. Leaves rustle in that very green most poets sing of and birds pretend to be in tune too.
Life is here. To be lived in words. To be built out of words. With silent prayers to carve out better days in Yellow and Peach.
Someday we shall be inspired.

Recollections...

For You, who brought Tomorrows with the Waves,
The possibility of Time and Life
Away from the sad hour glass.

There was Sand and there was Love,
Melting with the Sea and the Salt,
The Witnesses.
And then the Mighty Sun came.

I do not know the Sun,
But for you.
I do not know the Sea,
But for you.

For you, who brought shells to my shore,
Crystal, Keen,
Generous, forgiving.


There was Time,
And there will never be that Time,
When Memories were born hand in hand with Memoirs,
When the Mind read those lines on Sands
The Heart rested on the promises of fleeting rays.

For you, who would walk in Sunshine,
For you who brought back the Sunrise.
The Waves shall smile,
Again and again.

Vacant

Have you been named?

I have been.

Clap your hands and say

Whats in a name?

Name it

Or, you will not find it.

May be it hung to your breath all along,

May be he was sitting outside your door

That sparkling night

With arms crossed...

His name, I forget his name...

Have you been named?

I have,

A name for them,

They have one

For me

Vague, purple, pasted

I say

Name him to find him,

Or he shall go,

Call out,

Whats in a name you say!

Name him Adam,

Whimsy and vacant,

And He shall be humbly yours.

Love-Song

They want a love poem.

He wants a tender-song,

Wrapped in heavy words

Of warm promises mushroomed,

Over-grown with iciness,

Those fickle symptoms of desire,

Always throbbing with hunger for

Love. Love more...

Behold this love tipsy,

This, your love-song,

Dipped in love and lack,

Ah, love, more love?

The heaviness of the entire universe had seeped into her. Or so she felt.
Something was throbbing in the quiet night. She could not decide whether it was the heart or the head. But, it was buried within her. Cars kept screeching outside the window and tick-tock went the clock.
Blurred memories and washed words. Her life had been stringed out of sheer half-moments. Yes. Half, precisely. So she had never known whether her cup was half-full or half...well, we know what.
Nights were carved out for her contemplation of Pain, mornings for etching plans to defeat it. In the interim, she smiled and read. They were things that came rather easily.
Today, she noted down, had been a lesson. Like the many small lessons scribbled in feeble notebooks. Today she felt her big eyes open wider. Today she wanted to sigh aloud. Today she ought to have grown up.
Cars kept screeching outside the window. The Clock remained perplexed all night. But, she gave her attention solely to the black sky turning purple and then blue.
Morning. And she would make plans. Rushing through the half-moments. Half-full...

Lines and Curves

Meeting of lines, Twisted nerves,
Haloed curves, meandering love,
Grass, splinters, roads, horizons,
Broken arrows, metled words.
Bewilderment, exasperation,
Sundays, Moondays, Mydays and Yours.
Come Life, violet-like,
Warm you and bloody...