Poetry

Think of me as a lover
Who makes you weep.

Who takes your hand
And gives you breath.

Think of me as the tormentor
You long for on cold nights
Turning colder.

As the figure who says adieu
And wants letters and warms kisses too

I am your dream
Your disappointment
Your anguish

Your confession
Your noise
Your bereavement

The stranger you couldn't meet
The Narcissus you always seek

The Narcissist you always were
The lover you couldn't be.

The Writer's Block
Must be like a constipated soul
Or is it more serious?
The analogy of a blocked valve?
The desire to stop your heart
And fix it
Or perhaps just have its services
'Temporarily Suspended'?
The desire to vent a stir in the
Soul's deepest chambers
And not having enough
Tears?
No music No memories
No sighs No motions
No dance No rays
No moon
Anywhere

No voice
At all
But simply a dry howl
That ends too soon
While wailing
On empty nights

What do you
Where do you go
How do you burst again
Upon the world?

No doctor
No lover
No mother
Knows

Only you
Who knew yourself too well,
Loved yourself too often,
Wrote yourself too much.

Forgetting

The fear of many things
Of having forgotten alphabets
And names of dear ones

Treading back
Home
Towards its
Unnameable smell
And then, forgetting home

Forgetting to love
And kiss
To cry and pacify

Forgetting your
Smile and good deeds

Turning you into
Memory

And then,

Remembering.

The perfect poem seeps into your skin
Leaving that right mixture of salt love sun criticism
Like mother who strokes your hair
Just that way.
You know its strange touch
It's descent
It's nonsense and sense
Both poignant
Like a lover you cannot change

Profound.
Impressive
Well made.
Carelessly
Carefully
Unknowingly.

That kind of  teasing rhetoric
That kind of after taste
Like renewed friendships
Like love after multiple deaths.

Great poetry,
True poetry?
Some poetry?

You know it?
Like afterlife? Like soul?
Like victory?

That perfect poem of losing yourself
And finding it on a yellow page
Another day.
Ending awkwardly.

Like life. Like death.

Monsoons

Its the season of moody rainshowers that are here

To lash out at your long-dried jaundiced conscience

Season of peeling off of love

Of births of insects, grass, and babies

Of new madness, new skin,

New frailties, new lust, new deeds

Till your new lover, or is he old

Peels off your dreams from

Eyes now too moist 

Drunk on the moody rains.

In Passing....

When you stood at the door
Ceremoniously
Countering winds,
The Train had begun its race.

You stood
And it took you away
From it all.
You stood there
For long.

It wasn't raining on you
But elsewhere, a place
Far away, A place
You could only smell.

And Mangoes too
On giant trees
Belonged to anonymous
Backyards
Of an anonymous clan.

Children giggled at you,
At your sun-glasses
Habitually
Paying reverence
To the passing Train.

You wondered what
They had eaten
At home,
Those awkward bellies
And a gleaming face.

And the driver at the engine too

Where was his home?

Blessed.

At the signals
The crow-eyed woman
Visits me:
Beti, God will do you good.

Clink. The transaction is made.

Fading

In small, newspaper boats
My life travels to you

My hands and yours
Dragged on dirty tables
The unsure edges seeking
Shelter of your imaginary shores

Meanwhile

The newspaper
Screams reality of the
Day before.

I do not need you.
I do not.
I drink the smell of your
Skin often in my mind
I seek out your dark soul
And push Time.

Your breath, your words,
Those spurts of abrupt
Laughter
Nights and days and nights and days
And this life and the next
And all the gestures of love
Bursting out of nowhere
Stirring this faded Universe

Mock love, mock pain

The drama of little souls
Travelling in little paper boats.

Noises in the Head.

Silence is not
My cup of tea.

Inner Silence
That must have
Descended like
Cumulonimbus
Paratroopers
On blessed folks.
Promising nothing,
Yielding nothing,
Saying nothing.
Blank,
Deep,
Blue.

Silence,

I do not go to you
You never come to me.

Smug

The intoxicated Fragment
Giggling and
Babbling
With many
Nascent brothers

Irresponsible,
Ruthless
Unanswerable
Drunk on the
Belated,
Never here,
Never there
Never for
Tomorrows.

Fragmented
And smug.
Beating with
Anger, Pride,
Broken, Unspoken
A Fragment.

He breathes still.

Like this.

If I dive inside
My fish-bowl
Where Pablo swims
Towards the Atlantic
How will Pablo feel?

Pablo,
If you ever dive out
And write
All my papers
Especially, the one to the Journal
of Commonwealth Studies
I would feel happy.

Oh, this is Absurd,
This is clap-worthy.


This is Life,
This is Death
This is Poetry.

Finitude

To those paasages that do not listen to me anymore
And have become part of Your slave-empire
That bends and breaks hearts
Kills histories
And silences folklore
To those mysteries of land
That humble Being
Cut out posters of crammed ideologies
Ideologies Idols Idolescence?
To that daily Life
That you tell me is a gift
Wrapped in culture and anarchy
Trashed with jargon and
Stashed somewhere that is
Actually never really out there
To those many voices yelling from
Heavy books laden with
Promises that we can talk, we should talk
We should write, we should fight
Who is listening?
Who is out there waiting for you tonight?
To that comma that has been bidden adieu
In hopes of finality of period.

Periods of indefinite
Quest, knowledge, discovery, discourse
Intellect, Happiness, Unrest
Oh happy happy hours
That see all things happy die
No longer at ease
No longer my own
No longer yours
And now
To die
To die.

Curtained

Sometimes, while am talking to you,
Silence begins to hum
In my ears like a bee lost,
Like a radio-station gone cranky,
Zero, it screeches
For a long long while.

I think I do not hear you.
I see your lips in motion,
I judge you
Right there,
The intensity of your liquid
Thoughts
Beating against difficult shores.

I say it to you then,
Like many befores
And the numerous
Afterwards,
That come and go,
Shuttling across promises
Of autumnal today
And monsoony tomorrows.

The Eucalyptus is on fire.
I smell its ruins
Somewhere.
At traffic signals
They still carry bare news.

Life is just that Silence
Melting against the walls of the mind,
Where unsaid words
Breed raw menace.

Winter II

She has been teaching
Herself to ignore
Her numb finger
And the number
Tip of the
Predominant Nose
That decides what
Stays in life

More importantly,
What Goes.

Sans these,
Baby knew
She could love Winter.
Or, Winter too
She would

Shoo.

Yes, baby shooo-es.

Migraines. Real bad ones.
Made of her
Choicest nightmares
Throbbed her temples.
Puke.
Baby wanted to puke.
Or perhaps,
Baby wanted babies

I suppose.

It was there
In her
Throat.
What babies come out
Of Baby's throat?


Baby has seen babies
Born on TV, lovers met,
Cold fingertips, warm nose
A round baby appeared
Baby saw
Baby choked.

What throbs her temples
Makes poor baby bloat?

Ah, this lovely lovely Sun
Perfect for killing lovers
Real old ones
That could be buried
Under dry leaves
Of lovelier Gulmohar trees.

This Winter,
She will kill those
On her
Fingertips,
Kiss the Sun,
Forgive the snow
Kick the wind
Piercing her nose.
She shrieks! She chokes!
A baby cries

A baby woke!

To A Friend Who Reads.

No colour in your
Soul
Hides from me.

The length of
A night
Blanched in
Altercations
Is longer
Than all the days
We have lived
And known
Together.

And when words travel
From your home
After unsure rains,
They form a
Dawn brighter.

Infinitely so.

Pick up the pen,
That hides behind
Those heavy curtains,
Rummage your pockets
And
Build your own
Cob-webs.
To breathe, cry,
Pray like
A poet,
The coincidence
Of living like
A Maugham,
A Rimbaud, A Baudelaire.

To place Life on
Your nerves
And drink its
Pulse
Like a soul melting
Into yours.
To feel love
In infinity of words
In tomorrows.

There is horizon
Still,
Stretched on your bed
Where your heart
Beats,
In memory of all
That went past
Of all
That wants to be.

Whimper

You were obsessed with mirrors.
Clearly.
And that yearning for finales
And dainty combs.
Laughter must arrive with cadence,
Moments with inverted commas.
Never letting your hair down
To brush his
Shriveled shoulders.

Clearly, he had no soul.

You never met a face
That had a heart
Attached somewhere,
Not even in the heels
That clicked around you.
Now smell the dust.
Clearly, they say,
Literally, they clap.

You sang, you proclaimed
History was your making
The Future too
Packed on your table
In quaint boxes
Dumb, deceiving,

Altogether wooden
Not ours.

And then
On the last day
That lay italicized and
Bold on your plate,
That writing,
Your writing
Peeled from ancient walls,
Passed you by,

Sigh,who shall tell you,
Who will ever tell you?

The bathos of the swan-song
Had fallen on deaf ears,
Mirrors, neat mirrors,
No soul in them,

That was the end
Plain, pure,

Not a whimper in the closet,
Bold decay,
Absolute un-fear.

Our Universe.

I woke up today
To set the universe in motion
With my pen.
The chain of my nascent
Thoughts promised
To light up
Your world, my world
My fish-bowl, your kitchen
Their homes, galleries,
Portraits and
Some flower-pots.
So I write.
Just so
That. This.
And other thats
And other this.
Many this and many thats
That might reach you,
And touch
Your cracked
Halo.
Wake up
My word tells you
And pass venom
From hand to hand
We shall drink
The last of the last
Suppers.
And raise a toast
To our fragile
Nerves.
I shall bake breads,
You shall prick flesh
And together
At sun-rise
The universe will
Move, then die.
My pen is
Fire,
Your heart
Will melt
Your heart at
Our Last Supper.

Of Jokes

A sad lumpy frog
Of the lazy well
That drinks not
Dies not.
Not today
Not yesterday
Not tomorrow.
Tomorrow leaves
Will travel to me
With news of
Another world
Hazy.
My eyes
With muddy sorrows
Tell me
Stories of
Protests, Bombs,
Economies, Armies.
Come leaves to
The well,
may be
I will shed
Warm tears
In cold waters
Blow bubbles in
Memory of you
You ignorant
Who glanced and went away.
Away, away you went
To the other world
Of bombs,
Armies, Million creatures
Devouring,
I sigh in the well,
With your shadows
Still mocking
My grief,
In muddy puddles heavier
Than your
Loudest Guns.

Blah.

The Monsoon-night pricks
With its false winds
That whistle more loudly
At nightfall.

Yes I asked it to come
With brittle rains.
And I asked you.

Steeped in a darker sigh.

When all my "Selves"
Sit together
They make unbearable noises
Before the mirror.

So I blow out the candle
I quit the night

Come to me tomorrow.
Tonight, I have waves to ride.

Shredded poems,
A stain upon the wall,
A stubborn failure
Sit together in my old closet.

Then the old book
Pickled,
Opens like a familiar road.
The Isle of Misery
Is borne.
The sovereign queen dressed in mockery,
Reigns over
The hungry Selves.


I blow out the candle.
I quit the night.

Come to me tomorrow,
Tonight, I have shadows to fight.

Smog

Before Promises was Solitude

After Promises came Death

Minus Salvation.

I felt the smog

Descend my

Being

And remembered

Old poems.

Dickinson,

Eliot.

Ordered for a Memory.

And a shot of Cappuccino

In that purple predictable

Coffee Shop.

Without You

I add this.

Yes, I add.

Melancholy now do visit me.

I ramble, I sing.

Come memory.

Do.

And this death of 

All recollections.

This silence of old voices.

Bleak.

Like Death I tell you.

After the Death.

I waited.

Brown, damp, unsure

In an Old Book.

With a new Silence.

I was born

Decision-making

Biting the dust all day,
Weaving his breath
Each way,
The Spider wonders
If it wishes to
Crawl
On feeble limbs
Enmeshed..

To unweave,
Fold up those threads

Come, let us have death.

Pose-Repose

The simplicity of all sorrows
Belittles expression.

I hang you in my closet
Like a dress too grand
For life's many afternoons
For those boring, repeated
Confessions.

Listen to the flesh
Thirsty for more
And more
Flesh,
Till absurd music
Kills you with love
Robs you of death.

Listen to these multiple swan songs,
That break at the break of dawn.

Life laughs aloud
At the dreams
Tucked in my head,
And Philosophy sweats profusely,
Hidden
Under your bed.

April

There is a chance of mangoes ripening this April.
A chance his heart might break into patterns
Of gray cold bricks spread on a tram-track.
Do not call them fissures.
He does not like the word.

He is allergic to pungent emotions
Bad odours,
Bad English.
Bad girls he might like though
This night, this April.

There is a chance of the blood burning
Like never before.
Sick at the drabness of leaves
Not whistling, not obeying
This April.
How must he live?
With little flesh and no admiration?
Like a melody turned sour in
A cracked throat on a sad evening.

All his chance
All my hope,
Boiling in dirty vessels
All this fiery April.

So take him to misty lanes
Of dark affections, darker roles.
Take me to damp museums
Of shredded robes
And feeble swords.

Dissections...

Finally all my days have become the same.

There are no more coincidences. Nothing is a surprise. This might be a sign of belated wisdom. I am hopeful. Or, overall boredom. I am cynical.

I do not remember a time when I did not seek pros with cons. Even before I heard of their combined powers from elders, parents, friends, teachers, random soothsayers, aunts, cab-drivers, men, more men, pimple-struck teenagers. Everybody. Almost.

Remember, I did not need sermons. I was born with enough noises in my head. And over years they have only multiplied and how! My 'how' is not an empty 'how'. The voices have multiplied overwhelmingly, so that now, I smile too much. Often dumbly. I smile at the parliament-like hullabaloo within my small head. I smile when people talk to me, and I do not follow much of their words.

Crack a joke and I will judge your humor. Judge it against mine. I will bestow my laughter judiciously. In the interim, I shall smile.

Pie-chart was my favorite idea of a graph. I often make it inside my head and come up with three sections- writing, movies, jabber. Often while hungry, my mental pie-chart takes on the form of a healthy pizza. An aloo-paratha, an enormous chocolate cake, and blah and blah depending on my appetite and craving.

Do not throw words at me till they have enough weight. Especially when my ears are on fire. I might throw pretty heavy ones back leading to much injury and bandage.

Finally, all my poems are identical. Till I sleep at the idea of reading them. Mundane and somber, like memoirs of things cliched and insignificant. Full of oranges, evenings, browns, embers, past, lost, you name it! You could!

Dead-ends are lessons. They tell you that you cannot run anymore.

Nothing Comes of Nothing.

I remember I wrote to you
Everyday in the Autumn.
I remember writing in Spring too
In Summer, Sadness,
Laughter, Languidness
Through the brown, sadder Rains.
I remember I wrote
Every Season
Everyday.

Nothing can come of nothing
King Lear roared in my ears
In old voices
In humid classrooms.
I wrote to you
Every way
Lest I be Hamlet.
Hamlet with the sweat on his brow,
Sigh, the monsoony Calcutta evenings.

I remember you had spoken,
Lighting up the fleeting
October purple
The dazed city sky
Hopeful of another dawn.
I remember Plath
And I remember Camus.
The scent of arguments on those walks
I remember your clear eyes.

I wrote, I wrote madly.
I spoke till our voices were tired
And lives choked.
I remember I wrote the end
The year-ends and silver evenings
Laden with failures,
Burnt like never before.

Nothing came of nothing.
Parmenides had proved,
Old Lear had told.
I remember the emptiness of all diaries,
The shrill cry of winter wind
Moaning.
I remember Ophelia drowning in those pages,
I remember I kept writing,
The sole writer of it all.

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...

Orange Skies and Orange Sun...

So you have come?
Beneath orange Skies and orange Sun?
Though centuries rolled
Like a mad stream
Of disenchantment, discontent.
Terrible was the Father's voice
Questioning love, life, melancholy, patience,
Contorted the dreams gasping,
Half-dreamt, half-done.
They said it was a game,
They said it was a hunt,
They said it was madness,
They said you were numb.
So you have come?
With promises of new promise,
With dreams of old dreams,
With reasons to kill reasons,
With lessons to learn, unlearn.
So you have come,
To paint this Winter dying,
With gray wisdom, brown ferns,
Building our kingdom in that snow
Melting in obedience to reverened Sun.

Pauses

The Sun was out, distributing perplexity. He took out a complacent, unconvincing smile from his bag.
She looked left-wards and then right, quickly checking whether a new thought was on its way to her. It wasn't so. In the rolling up and down of her sleeves, she sought consolation next. The question remained. It had made the air heavy, the moment unbearable. Time must be travelling somewhere...she kept tracing it on her wrist.


The grass died last week. Another day goes to bed. Another year burns itself out. Bewilderment has multiplied. So has discomfort. Questions choke conversation and anxiety robs the present of all joy. The effort of breathing under the same roof seems to be drowning their lives. The Sun stands by today too. The Fuel and the Fire.


They now breathe more wisely. But, the first trees of Promise are dead. The Sun is harsher and supreme. Several years have gone mute. Cynicism now ascends to the throne. They sit unperturbed under mock-trees, servants of the cynical empire. Dreams do not come. They never order for them.
Live on, they tell. Sing song, they say. We are rational beings- forever learning, forever calm, forever hopeful, forever in dismay.

At Dusk

Familiarity is a reprieve if not a comfort. And sometimes, it startles by being both.

There is generosity in the bewildered breeze dancing at Sunset. And love in the babbling of the coconut trees. A tea-cup is happily emptied in their company...in a series dedicated to similar emptying of tea-cups on many hope-filled dusks. I think the Sun has been grimacing in the same manner over here all these years. It doesn't change. It doesn't let the Sky change. Not even the people and pets.

I have learnt to walk here with eyes closed. I know where the old flowers are. I know where the birds sit. I know this trickling of the water from the droopy tap. I know the number of steps to the broken seat. I know it all!

So do the birds. They have watched my fumblings all these years. I am sure they saw while they ate and drank calmly....From the corners of their small eyes, while pretending to nod in affirmation of my decisions. Wise folks!

I see they have plastered the peeling walls. Covered the cracks. Tended to the rusty windows and coloured all things gone bleak and inglorious. Home stands. Wrapped in peace. In recovery and salvation?

Life though is reluctant still..

Bitter, Hither

Frigid, Rigid,
Us.
Annointed?
Disappointed?
Fooled,
You were over-ruled!
Sigh, i say
Double sigh!
Fooling, Drooling,
Waves break,
Waves surge,
Passion's promises,
Gone to dust!
Sigh, sigh!
I say fie! fie!
Haloed, mellowed,
Thunderstruck,
Lessons-gulped,
Well schooled,
You were over-ruled!
Sigh i say,
Double sigh!
Frigid, Rigid,
Us.

Reverie

All the answers do not lie within. Do not believe them. One can at best frame the dull questions. And may be that is why disappointment sits so close by.

I say this. And I do not believe this.

We are all idiosyncratic. Strange. Waiting to be appreciated, or even loved. To spread wings we imagine we possess.

Inhibition helps. It keeps you at bay, at a removed point of safety. Allowing only slight tipsiness and not the sweeping comfort of delirium.

May be words make life difficult. Without them one would babble and know. Or, not know. Stare or smile. Sit tight or simply go. What respite! The discomfort aroused by a compliment, the predicitibility of abuse.

They often ask you about the wings...Have you found your wings yet? Did you try? Do you really want them to grow?

Pause and think I say. And then pause again. The Wind is picking up. The noise recedes. The crimson face does not even wish to look at the Sun.

Nothing awaits you I know.

Buh Bye!

Tomorrow

I am amused
At the beheaded profoundity
Swimming around.
I see you deep,
In the sea of falsity.

Are you happy
With the word Happy?
Did it tell your story?
Then it must have come with
The shadows of a creature
Unknown.
I know, it wasn't me.

Blue is the night,
Red the dirty reasons in the embers
That refuse to die.
To sift today from yesterday
Is tiresome;
Weary with the burden
Of waves carrying
Dead memories.

Tomorrow will bring the wind
To do justice for
Moments unborn,
Heavy-breathing ones,
That ought not
Be born.
Hold that thought lest,
Life slip out in gaps of Time.
You were meek yesterday,
You will be dumb tomorrow.

Home

I feel happy with the rains. But, there is something about the sight of old, lonely trees, swinging uncertainly in the wind. Washed and beaten all day. Makes me home-sick. I wish I were snuggled in my familiar bed at home. Safe and warm.The happy voices calling out my name, the aroma of Maa's cooking circling the house...

Winter

She rubbed her palms heavily,
Stamped with her yellow shoes.
Like the wailing mist around,
She could see sorrow grow.
To turn pages all day,
To hear the roar outside,
The million welled up things within,
Songs scrapped, tunes to hide.
To bury a sigh in the blanket
To dig for memories in the overcoat,
Like the wailing mist around,
She could see sorrow grow.
Today passed on the streets,
Tomorrow travelled too,
Trepidity danced in vacant rooms,
Hope lay on dirty floors,
Like the wailing mist around,
She could see sorrow grow.
They came, and they came,
He went on,
He went away,
She folded away happiness,
Left hope on the shabby roof,
The memories gasped a little
Tried hanging on windows.
Like the wailing mist around,
She could see sorrow grow.
The aloofness of shrivelled jasmine,
The surrender of coffee-mugs,
The sound of tired flutes,
She gathers them and throws.
Like the wailing mist around
She now lets sorrow grow.

Let there be Light!

In an act much inspired by spirited, happy-morningy rom-coms, Hollywood flicks, television, Maa's habit, or may be by some hit Hindi film song...can't exactly pin down THE inspiration...I pull back my window-curtains first thing in the morning. Much like a faithful one remembering his deity...
There is this strange connection between my choice of the MOOD OF THE DAY and the way the light is outside the window. Too much of the Sun and I know there is a huge workload ahead. If there isn't a workload, I imagine one. Remember...I am choosing the mood. If its sombre and gray, its a nostalgia-day. And if the light is just about pleasant and mild, I declare it a picnic-day...a day you ought to spend away...away from work...as the weather wants you to. Mind you, you do not need to have an actual PICNIC. The idea is...even with work around, you needn't give one hundred percent to it. To work whole-heartedly on a picnic-day is sheer cowardice...
Nostalgia-days are great for writing. If you are an eternal cribber and lamenter like yours truly, you wouldnt dread them. The intolerable ones are the bright-light, 100 watts-days, where the glare is too much on life, work, life and more work. Too bad I tell you...I am not even describing them!
Picnic days are my favourites you see...Prayers work. They do! I have often gone out with hopes of seeing clouds on an unbearably bright morn...the morn that carries the face of a teasing Sun..have often got ready praying to some invisible force to send some lazy, rolling clouds overhead...that would defeat the glare. And lo! It has worked! Gape as you might...shrug as you may...in disbelief. But, it works! By lunch the Clouds arrive...By tea-time, it even drizzles! :P
Like always, am itching to come up with my MORAL OF THE STORY. It goes something like this..."You may wake up under any Sky, but you can always choose the light that colours your Life!" :P

Attempts

How long will you wait?
I imagine the wrinkled eyes.
The withering effort of sooty years.

Night falls again here.
Today is eternal.
No one remembered you.
No one sighed,
No one mumbled those words today.
But the Moon I know is no longer white.

The Tree looks scarred to me.
My mind.
It is inside it.

From all the words and glances,
I choose a smile,
Sad and pale,
But yours.

That broken star,
I see it does not gaze.
Tie it to the chariot.
Let us now Sunwards go...

The barriers the Sky puts up,
The gaps the Earth digs forth,
I will one day,
Find you out.

That crumpled promise renewed,
The Moonlight burnt,
To shed hopes,
I yesterday borrowed...

With the Night

After they had clipped those wings,
It sat on the old, old tree.

The Night had no dwelling for it.
The Moon looked mercurial,
The Sky too detached
To be with it.

Where could it hide?
Tie its throat down.
Bury that small neck,
Put its husky voice out?

The scene broke its heart,
But, it remembered this
Had happened before...

Then the surrender to
Those soft, round eyes,
Yes, they'd
Weep for it today
As in the days of Yore...

Musings

I am now confident that I could beat Hamlet anyday in a Soliloquy competition. I could even beat him in the "To be or not to be" Challenge.
I am not confused though. My category is often that of the sheer dumb. Often, the most obvious things are not obvious to me. People expect more. Especially, when you tell them you delve in Literature.
But, life doesn't dance in books. It catches you in strange alleys, dark lanes, unprecedented turns. You are just not prepared. Not for change. Not for realizations. One merely hopes the world is getting enlightened. People are becoming wiser. A new path is being envisioned and followed somewhere, by somebody. But, we do not allow these notions to pin us, mark us, as individuals. As a lone human being we go on living same lives. Exact, difficult, unbending, unlearnt.
How then will change arrive? Who will let it touch his/her life? Not me...I am the sheer dumb. I know not. I want not. I cannot. Misery has its ways of becoming a comfort zone. In it these Hamlets shall dwell...

For Narcissus...

There is a song to sing for happiness, they say,
A song for despair too.
For pure lament, nostalgia, love,
Affection, attachment,
Pain, Discontent.

All he sought was himself.
Like Narcissus, he sang the song of self-love,
His own pain, joys, regrets, lessons,
Life's agonies revisited and performed,
Again and again.

Oh, the hours one wastes
Near the pale whiteness of Narcissus's face,
To know the Narcissus in him,
It takes an immense life time, you see,
A string of numb, deceiving days.

To turn now and see the mocking Sun
To witness the irksome garden and rain,
She shall teach her heart, by and by,
That song of sweet Revenge.

The Skies shall see that
Moon-lit hour,
When Narcissus sits and broods.
The hour of a new agony,
Her gift,
When another's pain in his heart intrudes.

Nemesis, she needs you not.
I see that venom, that power
That Song of Revenge
Shall fill the blue air,
When Narcissus walks in that her-willed hour.

All the world's a stage...

We know not what we are made of. I don't...I know. Our claims are our whims. Or, at best, our wishes. There is a satisfaction in thinking of oneself in particular ways. May be, we aren't that. Who knows?
We are not that which we talk. Talk is talk. Its simply a version. May be actions help. But, they carry their own intent- of being seen in certain ways, of making certain impressions, of protraying oneself in a certain genre? Where do we actually belong? When are we out of the play? Off the stage? Un-acting?
Thoughts might actually constitute some kind of inner voice. Things we say to ourselves perhaps are a better reflection of that within us? May be we tell ourselves "act nice", "wear that one...", "he'll like it..", "she''ll approve...", "oh...all this lecture", "they arnt worth it...", "i need to get away...", "one more glance and she'll be in.."?? ;)
May be we act out our entire lives. Say things people want to hear. Do things they would appreciate. Make impressions round-the-clock.
And so we change. For good. For bad. In somebody's good books. Out of somebody's wish-list.
Who do we think we finally are? That which we were trying to be all our life? Or a bad version of our "original" selves. Will happiness be closer then, or Illusion be our new reality? Is that called metamorphosis or self-deceit?
Why do we need to think before talking? Dress-up with an eye on others' taste? Order food and bother about plates and tongues? Why do we need to bring any one around? Live up to any one's image? Or, may be create and live our own? Why do we need to be bohemian, chic, elegant, intellectual, sophisticated, cute, sharp, humoruous, witty,brainy, melancholic, dreamy? Anything?
Being is not enough. Life has its own traps. Living is perhaps that...an entrapment. A desperate attempt to get into Life and then get out of it.
In the interim...All the world's a stage...

Morals of Multiple Stories:

-Ideally, you should help drive the last nail in the Coffin.

-Mistakes can be avoided if you stop ackowledging them.

-Courtesy should be practised. Even to the dying.

-Silence is Golden. Beacuse words are fake.

-Move On. Or be pushed aside.

-You are happy. You dream too much.

-Options help. Even when Option is just a word.

-Life goes on. No time to see where.

-Happiness!? The word sounds cool!

-And...In the end...there's actually THE END.

Old-Fashioned

If you skipped today's daily, news is that I was recently called old-fashioned by somebody. Details are not to be revealed as the case is currently under investigation. But, this comes to you directly from the horse's mouth, so you better SIT-UP-AND-TAKE-NOTICE. (Hope you have by now!).
I did not react. Not much. One cannot, sometimes. Yes, even if 'one' is me.
My patent strategy of part-mockery, part-overconfidence, part-stubbornness didn't rescue me. Something penetrated my skin. Just deep enough to be a bluish, bad prick.
My wise, old heart has begun doing the damage-repair. It tells me there are a zillion ways I could justify I am a NEW WOMAN (but..but...but..can women be new? or, only girls are that??). I talk, think, write, live in ways that are incomparable to the bleak tag of being old-fashioned!!May be, if I tell you all my ideas (even the ghastly, guarded ones) you would think I am well ahead of my times, like all great thinkers are.
On the other side, whats so bad about being old-fashioned haan? It just makes you a rarer species around..the nostalgic-wostalgic, "value"-loaded, guarded, obscure, crazy, antique types...adjectives, I don't really mind!
So, either way its a win-win situation for me you see. The case is in my bag. (no, I wont say kitty!!).
Question is...how are the guilty to be punished?

:)

Certainities

The last time that a dream knocked,
I was busy counting leaves
Falling from the brown Eucalyptus.
I never could make way for Hope
To drop by on a Sunday afternoon,
When nostalgia and loneliness
Would descend to fill my home with
Their heavy murmur.

There is nothing to know,
Let all of them be.
Like our usual
Forevers
There is a 'you' left.
And there is half a 'me'.
Between us is the melting bridge,
Built of sunshine and dews,
On that evanescent rainbow
We woke up too
Late to see.

Will

Even if nothing lasts,
You will.
It isn't about believing,
I Will.

And now some (urgent) almost-quarterly resolutions...

I will not sulk. Not, not, not.
I will not regret. Not at all!
I will check pages before collecting photocopies.
I will make sure my cell is sometimes switched off!
I will not have un-occasional ice-creams.
I will say no, no matter what who feels.
I will not miss breafkfast.
I will be a patient listener, let others talk!
I will stick to two teas a day.
I will reach my targets each day.
I will go on impromptu walks, like before.
I will love myself even more! :)

Two Ideas...from childhood days ;)

With nothing to do one evening, one blessed evening, I was plain thinking. So I thought of why I do certain things and do not do others. Two odd memories crossed my mind...both peculiarly ME...

As a five-six year old, I would often wonder why Maa never dressed in a tip-top way at home, or never tried looking her ravishing best outside. She had the permission na! I didn't!...I would think to myself why, just why on earth would she not try matching her bindi with the saree, the nail color with the make-up, wear pink-white bangles, for pink-white sarees, apply lip-stick each day...when all this was ALLOWED to her, contrary to my state of frocks and hairbands only!!! Didn't she see Madhuri and Sridevi in movies or what!!...;)

Thought no.2...Often on a bright day, the sight of white, clean clouds stretched across the Sky would look very tempting to me...Tempting in a way only I could imagine!...I always thought with better infrastructure, resources, tools at my side, I would climb up on a ladder and scoop out a chunk of a bright cloud, as it might make for good Vanilla ice-creams! ;)

Moral of the Story- I now know why earrings are imperative to my scheme of things...and from where my love of ice-creams comes!=)

This thing and that...

Seven minutes to three...p.m...and there is a very pleasant breeze coming in with the curtain. Seven minutes before peace abandons me and I begin my marathonic paper-writing session. There is a calm at least in this little moment. A small dot of serenity before madness sweeps across. Enrique keeps coming in now and then..."Do you know?" the Ping Pong Song pouring in from another part of the hostel.

On pausing one might sometimes notice how extraordinarily moments are stringed into an oridnary life- moments good and bad, of various colours. With time they all become rainbow-coloured, with time one knows they had meant more, even been precious.

Each thing, each person possesses his "being-ness", uniqueness, essence, may be something like Hopkins's idea of Inscape. How do you replace the icy, orange, excessively sweet taste of the orange-bar clinging to a bare, thin stick? Bad example, I guess, but its fresh in my memory so... :)! Two ways: You think of the next thing on your l-like-list, or, you simply take any other flavour, it doesn't matter that much...

A third one?...Either the glistening, orange-wrapped, tangy sweetness of your dear orange bar...or nothing!:)

Vague, sense-less deliberations!

Well...Seven minutes are over!!!!! ;)

Dull-Hour

Something is missing. Sounds cliched, hackneyed, deja-vuish. Almost. Something is lying unattended in a corner of a small, silent room. Something that does not call out for help, but sits still. Eyes closed. Something is ticking away like a time-bomb gone defunct. Something has gone wrong. Hopelessly. Predictably. Something is sinking deep, in a brown, dirty rut. Something says life will not be the same again. Something says its angry. Red and arms-crossed. Take it or leave it. Its walking away now. I see it crawling on the road of life again. Wise, sad and dirty.

Turning Away.......

How good are dreams? How useful? They sometimes stand as stark contrast to the Real...or they define all that one would hope to obtain on one's journey. I wish all that I love was part of a dream. Because dreams have possibilities. Reality is bare.

To dream is to turn to the unreal. To dream is to run away. To dream is to obtain relief from the pain of all that is so obviously impossible. To dream is to let Fancy berserk. To change people, places, circumstances. I wish you were a dream, far away from the jotted realms of my Life. I wish this grass under me was of a brighter shade, the Sky a little bluer, the Sun a bit more orange. I wish I could erase mistakes, unhurt myself, bend my choices the other way.

To live is to dream of dreams that elude perpetually. Like a deep sigh that forgets why it was born, mingling into smaller sighs released in memory of Life's multiple sorrows. To dream then I turn for discovering a faint whiff of all that has been smudged and stained forever.

!!!

Life's Unfair-
One has to Love and Hate the same things!

Him...

"I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is." — Albert Camus

Parallel Lines...

"Walking away is not my tag-line...a style statement...its an acceptance of the absurd life we live..."

"Which is precisely my idea of your escapist handling of things...you walk away from it all...or you live for today...indulge and splurge...or you choose to sit on a pile of melancholy and grudges...claiming to have moved one...an enlightened soul..."

"That's your perception...the one you're trying to force on my life...One need not act all the time...one cannot know it all...who knows what is right, what is wrong?...the important thing is not to be judgemental..."

"By which you imply that I am being hasty, judgemental and critical?...Demanding, Rigid...and the lot...?But I don't see how your liberal living and free thinking is bringing any happiness to anyone you know...apart from your great self of course..."

"Lets not turn ourselves into Gods...sitting on high thrones...allocating happiness.What's a standard happiness anyway?...In the end, we will all live and die...How can one talk for all? We will have to live alone...gathering our own experiences..."

"And so you sit back on your bed...?Abandon all the stupid lot...them all?...except of course those faithful bottles in your room...the crumpled clothes denoting all thats absurd...? Walking away is indeed not a fancy tag-line...its a wise way of life."