Dream Letter

In Death

2012-02-08T16:52:00.000+05:30

you will always remember me as a smiling carcass
baring my teeth with sincerity
skull polished with silver balm
ears in perfect shape
stench coiling into your nose
fibrous tarnished cold feet
illuminating eye-holes.

you bend forward and
kiss my lips of bone
and puke into my inner reserves
and dream about my bursting body
tissue carved from heaven.

Fantasy

2012-01-16T16:44:00.000+05:30

I pick out very early in the day what kind of day it’s going to be. As the morning takes shape, people wake up in their night chambers, and I get up myself, I can’t completely forget my dreams. Initially I am very dim-eyed, very pessimistic about the day and the world and all the proceedings in it and my life in general, my brain is just a damp cloud in the morning before I’ve had my tea or coffee, and it’s not before I have taken a shower that I feel like I have feet, brushing my teeth is never a regular thing with me, so that’s my daily forgiveness for myself, I let myself go on that one. You know, it’s really cold in the shower sometimes, and I feel so cornered and fearful during the first few seconds when I get under the harsh stream of water that I just utter God’s name whispering and whimpering and making sure I don’t slip on the wet tiled floor, and in a few more moments it’s become warmer under the shower and I like the freshness of the soap so much I thank myself for being a little brave and entering this contract. I have my shoes all soiled with dirt mostly and I don’t take more than a minute putting them on, never really caring for what they look like, and getting up and away into the street after locking the door, I keep the keys in my pocket and try to smile at the passers-by in the street immediately. You know, you have to take yourself up by the shoulders immediately and make yourself understand that you’re going to be a positive mancho today instead of a wuss. You are walking suddenly down the road, in the scenery and touching the strange people in the road doing their odd jobs, and looking at you with a wonder of sentiment in their eyes, they just catch you for a second, and then they are forced to forget about you. You take a position behind your face, fists in tandem flowing from the depth of the chest, and feet shifting below, covering your sorrows for the morning to shine, and you walk and walk past the world. I usually decide sooner or later during the first part of the day what kind of fantasy I am gonna live today. It’s sometimes the urban hermit fantasy, with the busy bus-rides and staying aloof and lonely in the general milieu of the city crowd. Or the pessimistic holder who holds onto things and broods in the shadows for a day or two while the sun is up and waving about for him but he doesn’t listen because he’s not feeling well. Or there is the science kid fantasy, where I am a player, tinkering and pushing stuff a little, very different from my true self sometimes, and telling people off and being rude with them, but then it wears off after a while.

Your Song

2012-01-02T12:11:00.000+05:30

I am compelled to write
for your beauty and dance
in praise of withered cheeks
and the tears that run
and hide but only find me
fighting for a chance to see them
and write about them.

Touch

2011-12-15T15:05:00.000+05:30

How we are unbelievable
Lunging for more before we finish our portion
Hunting and swirling playing with mouth
By and large all set
Upset in the corner
Seated on the stone parapet
In the afternoon sunshine
Telling tales of night
yet more on our plate
Intimate glances
Hungry dance for long
Young and sober please
Now the afternoon ends
Pass the tea-cup
Rays blemish me
Barefoot charm of a second
Mosquitoes bite
Get up off the parapet
Brush your hair aside
Chilled air between
The past and the present.

Make choice of music
and enter kitchen
marmalade
Tinkering fingers
strong smells are there
Cook before sleeping
Cook!
Hunger in the large bedroom
painting of old times
as happy as you are now
Dried walls
a modern look into
the drawing room
where dust gathers
sit in the fine evening
playing by room
raucous in a minute
wet dread
someone will smile
dinner
a new coat
cherry cakes
nibbling on two
terrified
can’t tolerate cold
come back na
before you leave
guest in my house
just stay and see.

The Path

2011-11-21T15:05:00.000+05:30

Sometimes while strolling along little paths,
I lose my way into sideways.
There they tell me I am in a wrong kind of situation
Behind schedule on a rainy day
Wasting everybody’s time and mine
And gnawing at all the sights and sounds
Slowly giving them a bad name
Placing huge castles in little bottles of glass
Perhaps I should leave or lie down
And wait until I am punished enough.

Some of those strangers call me
They call me “Oh boy”
Maybe you forgot your name
Where did you come from, and where do you
Go?

Little Thing

2011-11-20T03:13:00.000+05:30

Every little thing is looping anyway
Going round and coming around
And resting for some time while
It watches your movements
With jealous eyes, noting
Your breath, playing against you
But then it returns
And melds into the unknown,
Building what it forgot
Because of you.

Reality

2011-11-03T14:58:00.000+05:30

you are an artist
afraid of life

and bust goes your rhythm
shards bouncing on the pavement

the sun very bright and hot

Pair of eyes

2011-10-26T01:47:00.001+05:30

Are you doing this,
Or are you really doing this?

You know what you have taken up,
You silently watch and understand
What is happening, and what is hidden
You choose between your inner eyes
And your outer eyesight.
For a better vision, it’s good to have
A clear pair of eyes.

Can We?

2011-10-24T16:07:00.001+05:30

Is it not possible that you stand in front of me
And I stand and dance in front of you
We stand each other for a long time
We move from room to room, into the light
And we glide back into the dark
Is it possible to talk and laugh and buckle
Pickle, tickle and to lift our sides in awe
Can we rest this moment and wait for the next
Preparing our early smiles and toothy grins
Building up a huge barricade of magic
And move from room to room, run down the stairs
And run and catch our breaths away, and cast
Cast our bodies away, our useless bodies away,
Touching where we never went alone,
Hunting where we never played, played like
Two lost children with nobody
And waiting for nobody.

The Genealogy of Truth

2011-10-09T00:59:00.001+05:30

Maybe I am an actor, a sycophant, somebody who conjures a fake reality in front of his eyes because there is not already a satisfying reality in my holding. I cannot perceive a reality which I can be sure of, and therefore I create these illusions. Language is another illusion, because words don’t really mean anything, they are just placeholders, empty on the inside with beautiful faces, and maybe there is really no within, no deep, there is just an artifice. At least that is how I feel right now, there is only fashion, and all work consists in fashioning, rearranging, gathering, distributing, demarcating. When language enters the human person, there is a beginning of interpretative ability. For without language, things are what they are. They are incomprehensible, without meaning, without reason, but they are really what they are. Their identity is indivisible from them, and they hold a unique place in reality, and this uniqueness is not abstracted from them, and innately resides in them. When we start using language, words begin to proliferate. Suddenly, words are taking places in our minds as objects or experiences do. Language is the basis of organized knowledge. Only through language can I understand in some sense what you feel and or have felt. Language mediates our experiences and our minds in a unique event, where we exchange what we only have for our own selves. We share that which innately defies sharing through language. The signs put down in a system of language are fragile and always mutable, no doubt. But they are there, they are firm in the present, available for discourse. These signs are then, objects or images in themselves. Language facilitates the creation of alternate identities for things which already had an identity, but these identities had no relation to language. These identities were innate in the true sense, free from derivation or interpretation. Language entered and disturbed this perfection of existence. Language supplied several alternate meanings for the objects and weaved several stories around the things we experienced only in a unique fashion before. Language thus becomes a truly human creation. And it is not a mere tool in the hand of man, it is a lens through which reality will forever be seen henceforth. As time goes on and language facilitates more interaction and gives birth to more meaning, there begins a seduction. The newly-found meaning of things and experiences seduces man into creating a world of illusion relating entirely to this meaning, and existing solely for the reasonable and moral completion of this meaning, which is a child of language. Man believes in the exchange and storage of experiences with a moral sense. Thus is born morality itself. Because morality is not possible without a social scene or without a common pool of human experience. The dawn of language creates a new passion in man, the passion of moral definition of all experience. The will to morality takes birth in the human mind, and makes him a thinking animal. This moral drive will give birth to religion and civilization. Since there is language, experience can be divided into meaningful sub-parts and be identified as such, as appearing in a logical order, and being subordinated to some larger experience. And there is now possible a contemplation of experience separate from that experience. This contemplation is what we call thinking. Thought now becomes the new master of human will, replacing a tactile will to experience which is now forever lost. Thought mediates all experience and becomes more and more important. The will towards a more rational and organized thought begins now. Since language is now wholly obvious and indistinguishably permeating all experience now, it can be used to build a separate image-world on the plane of thought, separate from the real world. Man now works and builds his world of thought. The will towards this huge change is supplied by the moral seduction of language – the previously unknown beauty of things and experiences. Beauty is the experience of seduction, where man is captured in a moral womb, surrounded by meanings and signs supplied by a language of his own construction. Thus beauty is truly a human creation – a shelter he created as he created mud-huts and houses. The experience of beauty is a moral event, disturbing and playing with man’s moral identity, not with his pre-existing identity. This is why the beauty of things grows on you, and becomes more and more evident as time passes. Subjective experience is possible only after the creation of language. Experience was unique and pre-provided before language. It is only in the shelter of language that a multitude of meanings take birth. Thus began a subjugation of human will to subjectivity. Experience could no longer be firm and taut, but was standing only in the service of human morality and thought. Now, experiences were not lived, but created with a fabric of life. Life mutated from itself and became a grand experiment in morality, a continuously subjective work of art. At this stage, life was art, and art was life. Life was experienced through faithful signs and images. This was the perfection of civilization. Civilization was a human creation, the complete human sanctuary with free-play of moral signs and life lived with a meaningful plan.

What is truth?

Truth is the true experience lost in the creation of language. Truth is what disappeared when symbols were born, and the shadow of truth was subjectivity, blurred at the edges and enlarged for dramatic effect. Truth is sleeping inside human minds, and we get reminded of it in frantic dreams during sleep, where we revisit the lost time with again, a moral and nostalgic longing.

Biography

2011-10-06T09:12:00.001+05:30

Written for a certain smuk.sm
--
The answer comes at the very end
But it’s available in your sign language
And sung on the garden swing
And all the questions are remaining
Are swimming on the true colours
Every mist is coming back in time
And all clouds are floating further away
Doubt is hung in the middle
Closing in on a very easy secret.

Time is gaining on us
and time is waiting for us
And time is playing into us
And time leaves us behind

Events learnt to memorize
In history class two nights ago
The wait is longer today

As you and me sit
And prepare our case
We are delivered from reality
We jiggle a little
Settle on a couch and laugh
Reality is posing for a photograph.

There is music

2011-10-03T19:16:00.001+05:30

Oh there is music
There is still music
Gorgeous music
And now
It goes on
Caressing
I am crying
Music is watching
There is music
Sweet thing
Sugar
Water
Cool
I go with music
I leave
music leads
pleasing
shutting eyes
listening
I am dying.

Free Verse

2011-09-27T13:31:00.001+05:30

In anticipation you stand, your breath in your pocket, your eyes strained and clouded from sleep and your mountain of faith shaking beneath. You are in a dreamland of spectacles where you don’t need your own body, your soul is spinning in the wind, taking dizzy circles and spouting colour, puncturing the heavy smoke of existence. Can you picture what will be, so limitless and free? You are in stranger’s hand, in a desperate land far from your home, just hanging hanging hanging soaking and wetting then drying pulsating gathering dust and mud and wondering and singing endlessly. Lost in the wild within your brain and stomping a landscape outside your imagination, playing the images back and again forwards into the future, where your dreams inhabit a charmed train of thoughts, where the sea rises and falls, where the beach house is full of light, where the wind is welcome and where the sun is highest in the sky, where the sand is sparkling every moment and never stopping and where the water is very quiet and very strong, where the fibre is included in the colour, where the clouds are moving in ink, where your skin is cold, where you are shivering, where you can’t feel your bones, where you are looking towards the west, and where you are thinking of the lost bells of the east, where the road calls you and you are stranded, where the bus stops once and takes away your freedom, where you are the only loner, where there are crowds of people in tantrums and carnivals and where they can’t see you, where you are not going back home, never to see your mother’s inner face and smell her hand, where you give and take and play and spill, where you running now and stopping too soon, where you know little and do much without much, where the world is new again and again and again, where you forget, where they tie their ribbons straight and where the feet are swollen, where pride is coming back, where there is a chance, there is a golden chance, there is yet more to go, there is person and devil and god, where there is spirit and swoon, there is music on the green leaf, where there is sweat, and sneeze and skin and sex and severity.

Vanish below and come back, the sun is waiting forever, the sounds are hanging still.

Ooncha

2011-09-14T20:57:00.001+05:30

Oonchi haryali pahadi pe rehta hai woh parwana
Bandish se ooncha

Thandi gufa aur aisa mausam ka ruk jana
Uski oonchi manzil

Jahan basera nahi insaan ka
Parindo ka bolbala

Kaisa begana who lawaris woh deewana
Layak nahi pyar ke

Girti ho baarish maidan mein agar
To peeyega, jeeyega

Khali aasmaan ka nazrana
Aur chamkeeli raatein lambi.

Aur pathreeli haryali karvaan ooncha chauda
Nigah mein naa aaya

Phir usne kiya rukh neeche aur seedhe
Utra dheere dheere

Bhoola oonchi saari tasveerein
Mitti mein shamil hua

Woh gir gaya masti mein susti mein
Khaakh kha ke das pal khoya

Aashiq sab ne use bataya
Khuda se aaya bataya

Love Poem

2011-09-07T23:38:00.001+05:30

She sits and glows
Shines and kills me
Booming on my nerve
She is plasticine.
Nimble

Mindless mad mad twice.
Juice class and vice.
Tartar and she is just so simple
And we were set around in motion
We land on the ground
Playing with our knees down

Oh she coughed and bent herself over
She lowered her single back and flew
Outdoor she went to see
For her dusty thin fingernails
And she grew you out

Pee her in grip her skull
Now she is feeling full
Bills from her very early past
Mouthing my mother.

Never sex.
Flow and float and blink
Kill

Bob

2011-08-17T09:10:00.003+05:30

There he was, my sweet warrior, my savior, residing inside the electronic speaker. He sat there with a weird smile on his face, awaiting some calamity, showing the way to millions of lost children like me, he was the philosopher of the moment, the painter of minds, the painter. He just sat there, and his voice reached me flying on the wind, with evergreen shades of love, with hope, with sanity. He sat there in some distant, dusty American town, with his guitar and his harmonica, and he sang to me little crystal lullabies of eternal belief. He was a true magician, an authentic trickster of destiny, of my destiny.

Bodily

2011-08-11T20:54:00.002+05:30

Bawdry of the little dog
Over kissing on the moonlight ramp
Jam ma’am on a secret sign of two
Wilderness passing plies to the west
Sucking into the owner’s lips
Kilter on me, mill beside we.
Tinker finger onto caustic bee
Number two is greater free.
Free all past and passé see
Seizure listening to me.

Anna

2011-08-08T13:33:00.002+05:30

Anna was already 29 years old when her boyfriend told her he wanted to marry her. She could not say she had expected it, but she wasn’t surprised. She liked him, he was earning well, they would be happy.

He was a little stupid. He did not take any pains to arrange an occasion or anything. He just told her one dry evening, when they were sitting in the corner of their park.

“Look… look, Anna.”

He leaned on her. She looked straight as he bent and put his head on her lap, between her knees. She couldn’t say what he wanted her to look at, but she was looking all the same.

“Anna,” he hesitated. “You know I love you? Huh?”

She was disgusted now, why he kept asking these things. And he hesitated with these things, this made her furious. Where was his confidence, and where was his decision? He was lying so comfortably, the bastard. She did not smile.

“What?” she said.

He looked up at her, mustering his courage and his sheepishness he hid behind his mask, but could not hide it, and it showed. He grinned now.

“I want to marry you.”

He laughed lightly, giving his joke away. Did he want to marry her? Did he want to have kids, these were important questions, at least for her. He should answer. He could make up his mind, if he wanted to. But he didn’t.

“I want to marry you.”

What did he know?

Anna moved his head out of her knees, got up from the bench, and started walking without considering. She would get away a few feet, and she would think alone. He needed his moment, and he should learn. Now, she could not bear.

She kept walking away. But now, she had to look back. Once, is he still there?
She looked back towards him, and he was lying on the bench with his eyes closed, his feet stretched out to a full. Oh, he’s dreaming. Behind him, there was an old woman going away. She was walking with a limp on her left foot. Anna looked up towards the sky, maybe I want to marry somebody.

I can do with a pair of wings, blowing air towards air, and taking my madman up towards heaven, tying his hands to my feet. We could sail towards our land.

He wasn’t moving at all. He had only said it with half seriousness, he did not mean it at all. I will not walk to him and wake him, we want to go home. There is a home, there is a comfort.

He stood up and Anna gave him a hand.

Meeting

2011-07-28T23:19:00.001+05:30

Fight alongside the numb seed,
Outside all the lives are changing,
Inside move up and sit down and down,
And now be slowly mad and clearly changed.

You are breaking slightly and wholly alone
You spear time just a little and peer for courage
You are meeting your own self
Just in a day or two weeks later
Somewhere around the bend also is your
Last shred, but unseen before the sunshine.

Every being was bad and cowering
Nobody good outside and inside.

Into You

2011-07-02T14:54:00.000+05:30

Could I get any closer.
I wanted to touch you, we will rest.
I want that we grope into and out of each other,
We will form insides and outsides.

And sway down to your left, I will sway right.
Can you see me?
I am inside my own body, where are you?
Do you feel my presence? I am close.

Just stay for a moment, be simple.
Don’t move, just wait… silently.
Hush… hoo… wave of pain.
Grave my grave.

Surprise

2011-05-28T02:17:00.000+05:30

And then something else turned his attention back to the stack of books. He looked over his shoulder at the timepiece on the ancient wall with a glance of uncertainty, and plastered on his face was a silly smile. He had been silent all night, the glumness was sticking around his mouth, and abstract feelings got in the way of clear thought. What he thought and what he did on this night had no relation – he glanced again into the air – sniffed it even, and the air was laden with a coming. A sense of chilled abandon, which carried inside a warm and glowing world filled with unending interest. Joy had a price – you hated your life when the glumness stuck in your throat, and you dragged your feet over small cobbled stones, and the sun changed direction and the wind blew east and it was all reported on the evening radio, mother wiped her hair free of sweat and then mother hollered for you and you broke your fingers, and finally then, the grass bloomed. You were happy with irony, it was a gift after everything that you bore. And then the winds blew east and nights were passed and nights were passed and words were simple and convoluted and words bickered in the moonlight over their meanings, whispering what they would do once you set them free, and words and music tumbled laughing in a lonely lane. How does it all fit in? Newly arrived packages and old dust are together for eternal time, and forward motion is guided by bounded tension, and birth to life is permanent – wishing for a future is little free and free from joy and aftermath of bubbled enthusiasm. Joking on a dry afternoon is a gift too, and your cheese is taken from you and you go retrieve it. Just so you can ask for more money and go out riding on a hopeful charmed night of one ended dreams, and after-dreams and further-dreams and guided-dreams and pulsating feather of the infinite soul of the morning afternoon and evening sky with violet strained cloth through the hot burning sunlight is awash with general indignity, discomfort and pain and realization. Mother cleans her clothes and then sets to work on your dirty clothes that you made dirty with perspiration. Whatever claims your position is yourself and gathering stone and firebread, killing joy giving birth to freedom and washing mind – looking for humility in very dark dry corners of a flat afternoon in cruel master land. In whatever pocket your coin lies, it is your own gathering that gives joy peace sleep.

2011-05-19T11:50:00.001+05:30

Erase a word - play on.

Where is the revolution
I let the dirt accumulate on my skin
How do the sounds emerge
I'd rather die.
I lost the naivete
Watch on - it is misty.
Watch on.

Adagio molto e cantabile

2011-05-03T03:27:00.001+05:30

It never fit together, ever.
Pieces were strewn in a garden, the sun graced them equally.
There was no meaning before, nor there was passion.
My heat and my guile were hollow, my pride was bland.
Flowers were ordinary beings, with small faces.
The procession was empty enough.
There was no magic anywhere, the world was plain.
I was not grateful for my humility, I was not sure.

You walked inside, you touched my eyes.
You tread lightly, once and forever.
You were set in stone, you justified the promises.
You humbled the atonal universe.
You made everything and every being cry with longing.
You have the secrets decorating your hair.
You flushed the jumbles out, you became order.
You mesmerized the pieces, garbled the banal.
You straightened the creases, and poured the ether, from a plastic jug, on my surface.
You likened the hands to the branches of a tree, the feet to the waves of a sea.
You erased the small doubts, prepared the fight, you inspired justice.

If I don’t become anything, I will be yours truly.
If I become something and if I become somebody, I will be a tiny fold in your large shawl.
I will be your little.
I and you are together in peace. In salvation, we are bundled in joy. In nature we are blue jay calls.
We are in waters together, we are us.

Just for a moment, you bring forth the fantasy, and it is stable on the mantelpiece.
For a moment, you are invisible, and forever I am you.

Like Certainly

2011-04-27T09:00:00.001+05:30

There are sounds of whose existence
I am certain.
Like I am sure that a rose is red,
and its light goes cleanly and meets
the waiting consciousness,
bathing it in ignorant bliss.

There are other sounds
which are only too present
which are hard and heavy as steel.
These press me and move me,
and cause me to limit my day.

And some aspirations are imaginary.
They never leave their home,
And stay and play,
And limit their day.

And some are sounds.
We hear these, from bees
These
Are
Cacophonous
Noise.
These are music,
And
Reverberations.

2011-04-25T07:12:00.001+05:30

At the end of the day, I check what people have taken from me. How they saw my giving, how they must have felt. I hope with a keen conscience that they did not laugh. They could have laughed at how I am silly, at how I am absurd, clumsy. I hope they understand, sometimes I wish I could explain. But that’s how sadly the day ends, I do not want to sleep. I am afraid of sleeping before I can go back and correct it. But I give up easily, I accept loss forever. I hope again, I age and I change. Maybe I am not doing it right? Nobody even comes and tells me straight. I feel these heavy burdens on myself. But I want to carry on, because I am curious. I might be right, it could be that I get back what I have lost.

2011-04-03T17:05:00.002+05:30

On the deathbed I sleep.
I am happy sometimes, and I sit upright.
I face the light.
But then I flinch, I bow, I scream in pain.
I forget what was before, and I scramble.
I fall down on my bed, and I sleep.
I enter dreams, and in dreams I hear music.
Dreams are made of music.
And then I wake up in the dark.
I scramble for light.

Here in Goa

2011-03-27T02:38:00.004+05:30

Here in Goa,
I am seeing euphoria flying.
People carefree.
Sand particles are small, they fly
Everywhere they come in, gather, they appear, exist.
Particles – every molecule for itself, gigantic things misplaced.
Among talks and flashing bodies, and shiny shins and
Boots – soft plastic slippers, water from the sea
(La mer) on the coast, in the boats. All places, nooks – these split, gather, regather, coagulate and return everywhere they have been before on certain trips from the beach to the country house to blue fishing net, among high palm trees.

So, people find particles of sand in their ears in bed at night.

Makes them forgo the daily little ponder I guess.
Free-flowing – they take up life as a growth – as spontaneous – when linear paths intersect, the roads remain straight – and white metal unstopped.

And on the beaches, the smell of the water blends into your persona – back home inland it retains the bad taste – comes to the fore. Even stale beer smells of fish, at the mouth, at the eye, also winking.

So, shiny bodies intersect in market-place, descending slopes, downwards the midsections loosening, and the feet bouncing – yellow flowing shirt on stomach sweat – and blonde hair let abundant, jeans not there.

And then at night, white metal meets the road, the sand particles are intervening again. Friends lose contact, tired of wandering from one exposition to another spectacle.

We are tourists. Even me – I am a tourist. I have eyes for this place – also graciously I feel its pulse – its life. I dig holes in sand on the beach – hoping to carry collected water – also I smell the special things in the crevices – also I give more money and more than money – Alas! No, I remain a visitor. I somehow miss the soul. The dirt gets in the eyes – I rue the ocean salt – I am wounded – still I miss the soul. Does this air have a soul?

Does it breathe?

Passion drives many things. And earthly passion more. But poetry misses passion – why is there no soul?

Does soul lack grace? Does soul speak through the sand particles? These particles…

The high points are odd. Chapora Fort is no good – just as it functions as memory – sunny highness – no more.

But it remains a touristy flash. No soul. What Goan carries his kids to school? Why is there fish curry?

The people recede. To the service of their tourists. They keep the soul inside – and let the market glow with the transcendent promise. Go Goa! And more trainfuls arrive, and are going to leave – replaced by replacements – properly fit with attentive eyes. Shift gear, let loose – party hardest, cool ocean, hot brown skin – night of spirits and fun. But life is dead – only food remains. And reproduction – of a promise of life.

After that Portrait

2011-03-03T06:01:00.000+05:30

Lying awake on his back, with the violet strained cloth draped across the side window. The moon has set now. Old cobwebs and little movement, no transformation. Old music filtering through the air, also emanating beneath his ears. Remembrances of a stage play, with actors bowing after their performance, and smiling. His eyes, they were resting after a hard day at work. In the dark cold air, it was a warm feeling. Dropping, dropping, sliding…

And turn the corner, fast! Maybe he is following. No! And the fat biology teacher is sleeping in her chair, her hair in a bum, with her hands resting on her lap, catching sweet music from the air. Walk past, ask for excuse. Also, welcoming me beyond the gallery is her majesty the principal, and passing her I pass into the room. The empty room, full of old promise and love…

I need not look back now to check if somebody is following. Nobody is and nobody can be, this is paradise. I look upon the windows in this room, they are golden. A lot of them are open, and the floor is empty and shining with the sunlight, swinging. Carry my gaze across, and I find that familiar short dark Indian woman. And she has grace, and smiles a lot. She was musically learned and haughty and told me to behave. I stop running.

“Say please. Say.”

Huh? Me? I am ignorant, sorry. But thank you, I will try.

“I have two beautiful children – look at them. Look, they dance, and I have made silk frocks for them. And see how they smile. Say, are they not beautiful?”

“Yes.”

The children come up to me, and I bend down, and there is grace. I touch their lips, and finger their hair. They touch my skin, they like me! Just two minutes ago they saw me, and they like me! Happily, I look up at her.

And then the music is dimmed. The light changes colour. The fair children are still dancing.

Bagatelle

2011-02-25T14:52:00.000+05:30

The music is here only to make me feel
What I want to feel.
I do not let it go, and it needs me.
What are the sounds gonna do, and
Where are the songs gonna go?
They will come back to me.

2011-02-24T03:04:00.003+05:30

On Popularity

2011-02-08T05:48:00.001+05:30

Whatever is popular and is generally accepted by the public at large is considered good. For example, a piece of music getting airplay on the radio is considered an appropriate representation of good taste. The usual argument given in support of this way of thinking is that popular acceptance ensures a “balancing out” of individual tastes and brings out the inherent “objective” quality to the fore. This is an illusion. What constitutes good music for you is a subject of private contemplation on a personal level, not something to be made out from popular opinion. The fact that many people like the same things at the same time is only a result of all those people being the same, and being directed by the same invisible pressures applied by years of orchestrated “bringing to par”. Everybody loves song X because everybody has been unknowingly taught to like song X, and then when the time was right, administered a metered dose of song X. It is completely the opposite of an active discerning of personal satisfaction derived from listening and upon it forming a personal taste.

Another factor contributing to the deification of popular culture is the increasing trust in external methods as sufficient replacements of internal contemplation. People have come to believe that the mechanics of popular choice can serve the purpose of keeping them satisfied. This is a sort of “outsourcing” of a part of the listening process to the public at large.

Take me to an old place

2011-02-02T00:30:00.000+05:30

Take me to an old place
Where old buildings tower over me
Where old singers sing.

Show me a wrinkled face
With lines of brown
With spots, smiling.

Also, don’t make it too old.
Something between here
And the beginning of time, just OK.

The Beginning

2011-01-30T08:00:00.003+05:30

A lion is standing there. It has paws, moving them up and down. Next to the lion is a steel pole, clean and shining in the light. Suddenly, a signal zaps into the pole, and there is some smoke.

We just received some information. I am reading a paper, with lines of text and symbols. Alpha for rays, beta for electronic parameters.

I perceive him coming up to me, walking in the dirt. He has two legs. He comes close and I see him grin. Now we are facing each other. The lion is digging up the ground.

I receive an ultimatum. I obey orders. Right now, there are 17 taxis parked in an underground tunnel in Stockholm. They will all back out and driven into the sunshine. Where there is no rain.

The end.

Numerousness

2011-01-23T01:26:00.001+05:30

The truth is always in the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because as a rule the minority is made up of those who actually have an opinion, while the strength of the majority is illusory, formed of that crowd which has no opinion — and which therefore the next moment (when it becomes clear that the minority is the stronger) adopts the latter's opinion, which now is in the majority, i. e. becomes rubbish by having the whole retinue and numerousness on its side, while the truth is again in a new minority.

- Søren Kierkegaard

2011-01-16T10:58:00.001+05:30

Since there is nothing to be said, I have shut up. But now that a few minutes have passed, I have begun to talk again. Haven’t you noticed?

The Shame

2011-01-14T09:59:00.000+05:30

My mind sprouts a thought
It shimmers
I only dream of leaping forth
Over a table or two
and catching the thought, safe-kept henceforth
In a notebook
I, to my surprise, keep walking straight
and no words anymore.

Yeah

2011-01-08T05:00:00.000+05:30

In it lies much more
Some part Frank Zappa, some part bullcrap
Of prime form.

But need I care? No, brother hell.
Youth is to be wasted, licking undersides, kicking sides.

In My Room

2010-12-29T19:25:00.000+05:30

In my room, it’s always sunshine
With the lights off; I don’t need them

The back door is always open
To squirrels, and strangers
Who walk by, saunter in, use it as a second entrance

I wheel about in my chair often
To meet a few raised eyebrows
I look up and turn back, and sing a song
With my voice touching, and soothing

Someday even they will be gone.

Seeing

2010-12-28T16:44:00.002+05:30

You are sitting at the crossroads of the world - one block to the left, you can see a maze of cars. A shiny revelation, display of steel - cars forming a sea - unbound. Out on the street, there is a crowd - apparently, all of us are together. All around the cars, there are rising buildings, housing mothers and young writers. All of us thrown into equality - we share a common something.

But in every house looms a dense, and lean smell of post-modernist loneliness and confusion - a hunger for contact - a dearth of interest in life.

"I Don't Know"

2010-11-29T21:55:00.003+05:30

When I think of an English phrase for showing off, or mimicking some accent, there is a phrase that comes to my mind before all others. It's as if the words are just below my forehead, in the folds of my skin. The words "I don't know" ring clear in a few different intonations, with various stressed syllables and intake of breath pauses. And a few times, I end up saying them out loud. And it is then that I realize that I am so stereotypical, so predictable. I am reminded with a sour pinch that I am a sham after all, and probably always have been. How could you know a language and still be stuck on one silly phrase for all your life? How can it be, that you cannot move on to something more mature?

Happy Mondays

2010-11-21T00:37:00.001+05:30

We were sitting in the midst of about three hundred million people, most of them smiling or laughing. All around us, we could see colourful posters advertising products offering happiness in different forms. The air was conditioned and super-cool, the ground beneath us shiny and clean. We were clad in comfortable, completely sweat free, in-fashion clothes, and were holding an ice-cream cone each. My flavor was chocolate, his vanilla.

Tough scenario to get frustrated with. Some would say impossible. But no, I was downright irate. Man, I was all ready to yank my ice cream cone into the face of the toddler walking past us, and have his mommy yell at me. Somebody, please, call an ambulance. They’d have a nice stretcher, which would take my weight and I’d swim past these happy shoppers into oblivious sleep amidst beautiful nurses.

“Why don’t we go to the bookstore again and lie on the ground with our faces down?”

“I don’t wanna. Anyway, they’d throw us out.”

“They wouldn’t. They know we love the place.”

“We do? I don’t even know why we go there.”

A’s face contorted into “What the fuck is up with my brain?” and I landed my head on the table with a thud.

--

We were now walking in the sunshine, beside a highway carrying about 30 million cars per second. God, I came so close to some of them I could see their seatbelt hooks. Of course. I missed the faces all together.

You know, there are just too many people in this world who are crazy about cars.

--

Coffee was sending steam into the chilled air between us, adding further haze to an already unclear premise. We were sitting in a café chock full of men in ties and black shoes (and of course, more clothes besides). They were talking (all of them together) in loud voices. They were clicking their laptop mice and tapping on their laptop keyboards. They were chatting with the pretty girl sitting across them in the short white satin skirt. They were munching cookies. They were ordering more lemonade with extra honey. They were calling their drivers up to tell them to bring their cars up the driveway.

They were doing stuff. We were not.

I stirred my coffee with a plastic spoon. “A,” I mumbled, “How about…”

“How about?”

“How about we become writers?”

In the Tall Grasses

2010-11-19T13:19:00.001+05:30

I could take Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony
To the grasslands beyond the airstrip
And lie among the grasses
And feel the madness there.

2010-11-12T23:46:00.001+05:30

minimalist, utopian hippie, street punk, romantic poet, urban hermit, medieval mystic. What am I? A flit? A bum?

The Convict

2010-11-01T23:42:00.002+05:30

Whispering paranoid secrets to the wall
Paranoid utterances under the breath
To the wall
The convict sat up in sleep
He scratched his groin
Inspiring confidence in his balls
He was still man.

Knowledge is prickly

2010-10-11T20:09:00.002+05:30

Knowledge is prickly, and gets under your underside.
And wisdom is an unwelcome fruit you’d rather be watching from a distance.
And nothing is short of commendable and hate-worthy.
And everything contains juice, which you can drink.
And knowledge is prickly, and goes right inside, flying.
It flies like an arrow.
Knowledge pierces, pierces. Getting in the way of knowledge, is
Inadvisable.
And oozes of notions, of super-shiny things, are unwelcome.
Please, do not bother me.

Just give me a place to sit in the corner, a place.
Wandering all over the surface, squirming
With people, I’m done with it.
Just give me peace.

They cannot do without me, they even need me for some things.
But I don’t see how it is possible to satiate the need I have.

Just give me a cool breeze, and all those strange little things,
That appear in paintings, and that appear in music.
Just give me a cool breeze.

Please. I beg. I plead.

2010-10-01T01:41:00.003+05:30

Some days, I’m living a hard life.
And the lights are off, and in the dark,
It’s slimy, cold.
And the rain spattering,
Spattering! Crashing down!
on the steps.
And Queen Jane!

Some days, it’s just as simple as that.
As silly as that.

adjectives

2010-09-05T03:49:00.001+05:30

Sensuous – producing sensation
and
touching and alluding
non-crazy – half crazy in
a sane shell.
And maybe prodding at rebellious
pleasing to eyes of all sort
and perhaps too distant
for a close peek.
Hopefully not worthy of praise
nor equal to hanging
on the wall.
And frequently funny – and lots
of sugar.
Complacent, perhaps naïve
because of innocence.
With a fighting chance, maybe
with a half-smile, descending
an airy flight of stairs.
Perhaps cornered into a room
full of baggy choices
and tearful and perhaps
definitely conservative
conversational.

School Time and Time

2010-08-31T04:22:00.000+05:30

I hoped school will be nice. It was way outside town, and some fields ran nearby and you could see the hills from the school.

During the assembly on my first day, under a nice, chilled out cloudy sky, I stood in a perfect mood. And a girl came on stage. She began singing a song; it was something that sounded very Welsh. I stared out into the fields, and in my head were some good, Welsh people with drinks they were raising to each other. And the girl finished her song and bowed to the school.

Sometime during my second week, my desk partner passed a chocolate to me. I did not smile, I held my smile tightly, and I took the chocolate gingerly. And I put it on the table in front of me. He quickly snatched it back, and I moaned something and he laughed like a demented madman.

The last period before the bell rang; it was a very long hour. I was idle, and I looked out of the window. Sometimes, I yawned, and other times I stayed shut. Humility and humanity made me crease up my forehead, and my shoes lost all signs and all importance. Please, I uttered. Then, I turned a side, patted my friend on the shoulder (lightly), and I coughed, and I told him about my mom. He did not listen half the time, but I kept talking.

How would it be if I kept roaming the streets of London throughout my life? It would be a long walk, wouldn’t it? And I would see half-deserted streets, and busy shoppers, and I would stand with my hands laid out open and inviting and some old motherly lady would smile from across the street. The sun would also light up her oiled hair, and she would be a complete lady.

Nothing

2010-08-25T07:06:00.000+05:30

But what can I do? Can doing do anything for me?
I cannot be anything but my own writing style, my own voice.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony’s third movement is not a foray into romanticism, and it is not a flowery, peaceful praise for love. It is just the apple of my eye, and it is the thing for me, and I just cannot exist without feeling that existing without it is futile.
And the dark is not crystal clear, but it makes some things very clear.
How can I become anything worth becoming? Because it is very worthy – being yourself. You cannot and must not escape. For real, at least.
And music makes sense of the world, and it follows written commands of destined grace.
And music.

2010-08-07T21:40:00.001+05:30

We were children once, yes we were children. And now we have outgrown the children we were, and now we are not children. And now, we are different people from the people we were as children. It has all changed. We were children once, and now we are people. Yes, we are not children, we are people.

Sushi

2010-07-30T00:54:00.000+05:30

In the last few moments before the bell rang, Sushi stopped being desperate. She just let go, and she let the world go fuck itself. It was all over, and she refused to pay attention.

But the more important part of our story is the minutes and hours she spent worrying.

She sat in the last row of the classroom, and she sat with a sweaty neck, and a sweaty hand. She never knew what she should do with her hands. They were always asking to help out, to make something move, to push something out of the way, to make some room for her to think, for her to relax.

But, now, in this moment, they hardly had anything to do. They just lay in her lap, staring up into her face with a forlorn look. They were saying they won’t always be around and they had no problems if she thought she was better off without them. They said they were more than comfortable with leaving. Right now, if possible.

But they held on nevertheless, they just lay in her lap.

Sushi worried and knit her brow and dangled her feet in the air. She was overcome with something. It was like a big round-snouted pig was sitting next to her. Not that it was a dirty pig, but that it was a pig. It let air out, it moved with strange solemnity, and it basically made her go crazy.

And then the teacher herself descended on the scene. And she made Sushi stand up. And she made Sushi go away. And then it was all going to get over. It was all suddenly getting over.

***

After the lunch break, she preferred to make a move with things and meet Jyotsna immediately. She was not going to let any delays torment her, and drill holes in her back, and she was going to be cool-headed, and it was obviously going to be alright, and she was right on track to recovery, and then she went up to Jyotsna’s class.

Jyotsna wasn’t there; she had been sent to the library by a teacher just before lunch and she hadn’t come back yet. So Sushi went to the library.

The library was another affair. It was full of these little kids from first standard or second standard, and they were fighting over books. They wanted to kill their friends because their friends would not let them take the books they wanted to read. They would strip one of their friends, and would unbutton another friend, and would kick yet another friend in the butt because their books were being taken away, and they just couldn’t sit there and watch, could they? They had to take action.

And Jyotsna wasn’t there. She wasn’t even sitting in some dark little corner behind a tall shelf of books. Sushi knew; she looked. Everywhere.

So Sushi went to the grounds. Jyotsna wasn’t there of course, but she might be. Everybody can be in the ground if they are nowhere to be found. When you don’t have anywhere to go, you go the grounds.

Jyotsna wasn’t there either.

***

Sushi went to the corridor behind the principal’s office, and had a drink of water from the little ceramic basin under the small photograph of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. And she grabbed her feet quickly, and she ran up the stairs. She went straight to the class, holding her skirt by the sides, and thinking to herself. And she took her seat.

She could feel her heart doing strange dance movements, and this scared her. She looked up and into the outside air. The mountains beyond the grasslands were visible, and they were very far away; too far away. The school ended right below her window, and then the wilderness took over, and for miles there was nothing but grass, deer and sunlight. She tucked her head in her arms.

She would kill Jyotsna when she found her. She might pull her hair down and beat her ass with a hard granite slate. But no.

She could not kill anybody.

If she ran really fast, she could jump over the school boundary wall. It was probably 4 feet tall. But she would need Jyotsna, and a couple of hours to gather the courage.

“You are taking way too much time to make up your mind. If we are gonna do it, we might as well do it right away, and be done with it.” Jyotsna would say such things to her, coaxing her, and reminding her that they were friends.

But Jyotsna wasn’t there.

Telephone

2010-07-20T01:00:00.000+05:30

I

During one of those nights, when I sat in the windy verandah of my home, gazing at the bare electric bulb. When I sat all curled up in my chair, with my back to the front door, sheepishly obscure thoughts speeding through the grass like squirrels. When either mom or dad refused to call me inside and have a fresh cup of warm tea, and I imagined them snoring to death. During one of those nights, I received the phone call. It was an affectionate call from a long distance. I trembled slightly as I heard the first few words buzzing in my ear. I was to feign a big deal of indifference about the call, but I was glued to the receiver just then.

The voice belonged to a girl. She must have been running, because she had quite a pant. Words flowed with the breath, wobbling atop the very tasteful windy sound of the girl panting. I held the receiver close and I listened to her talk. I have forgotten the words, but I have nothing to say about the panting sound. She moved on and on and on, blabbering about things I had no interest in. After a while, I sat down on the carpet to talk, curling into myself like a small baby, freshened up and frenzied into life by this sudden phone call.

She revealed quite a lot of herself to me. She kept telling me. She just knew me so well, she knew so well that I was interested in her, and that she should tell me everything. So she did, she methodically displayed everything before me, and it unfolded beautifully. About ten minutes into the call, I wanted to fly with a long, winded swoosh and land on the earth again, and give this lady a hug. I had such warmth inside me for her, and she did not know. She had no idea.

II

Gimme a number now. C’mon do it now. Umm, umm. This evil world hasn’t got one person who I can call right now. Let not to such extent this world’s affairs fall. Oh, you could give me a single number right now, and I’ll be more than done. I’ll be giving somebody a call tonight, and I’ll be telling them somebody.

The phone was such black hues and shit. It was all the blacker in the yellow, flickering light. Shadows on the telephone made it look like some giant insect preserved in a museum. I picked up the receiver, and my hands felt such quivering energy. I lunged for the numbers, I punched them in, and already somebody’s phone was ringing.

“Hello there, stranger boy. Will you please listen to me for a while?”

“Hello? Are you there? Yes? Yes? You’re there alright, aren’t you? Oh, please be louder. Oh please. OK, OK, nevermind, there’s nothing I want from you. Could you please listen to me talk for a while. Yes, right now. Oh good, I should begin? Yes? There’s nothing you have against telephone pranksters or random callers, do you? Anyway, I’m not one of them. Anyway, let’s start. OK?”

“There’s this story I was told once by my grand-dad. He had such amazing moustache hair, brown coloured. He sat me down in my little plastic chair, and I was lost in his story for that whole day. He had a gravelly throaty voice, you know, and he told me this story, and I’ll tell you the same story right now. You just stay where you are and listen…”

Sitting Here

2010-07-12T21:43:00.001+05:30

I am sitting here
I am not waiting
Just hoping
For that hour of bright
Sunday morning time
When I shall hold my pen
And write some.
And every word come out
With an unbearable
Unstoppable, orgasmic twitch.

I Sat in the Window of My Room

2010-06-25T15:10:00.001+05:30

I sat in the window of my room. I just sat there, because I did not have anything better to do. The street was a huge distance below, and everything looked strange and weird. The cars looked like dead metallic animals, the ladies looked ugly in the yellow street-light. The aspect of the whole scene seemed interesting, somehow.

Inside the room, I had coffee placed on the table. I sipped it every time I stood up to stretch my legs. It was cold as stone, but I didn’t care. The carpeted floor had blotches of coffee, looking like closed owl-eyes. I was a coffee freak; my mother rued this. There had been no phones for me today. I was thankfully left alone by everybody.

I had fallen into a kind of open-eyed, breathless stupor – the kind you go into when observing the country-side sometimes – when a human came into view. He was a he, and was carrying a briefcase, and had a brusque, manly, formidableness about him. It was amazing I could tell so much about him despite the height, but that’s how it was. I was a trained spy now. I had gotten used to this windowed view of all kinds of people, doing all kinds of things.

I mentioned the man with the briefcase because I was to become very interested in him in the fortnight following my first sighting of him. But, otherwise too, he had caught my eye then itself. As I was saying, he was manly, and I could tell he was tall from his seven shadows. He had gotten off a car still parked on the curb and had disappeared from view; presumably entered my building. I had an alien internal shiver. I felt like he had just entered my life.

I got up and lunged at my cup for another sip of the coffee. It was cold. It was cold. It was cold. It was cold. Cold coffee. Cold stranger man.

I had yellow socks on. My mother had given me the pair seven years ago, and strangely enough, I had worn them for the first time only a few days ago. I had finally realized how lovely they were. My mother had always insisted on making socks thick and woolly; she knew many things about clothes. I didn’t care. I liked the warmth they held. It’s strange, right, the way socks hold some kind of permanent warmth. They never blow a fuse or run out of fuel. Wow. The things an idle mind wonders about sometimes.

I planted my backside on the bed lightly and fished inside my drawer for a book with a black cover. I got it out, and looked at its dog-eared pages. Nah, I wasn’t in the mood for reading. I left the book on the bed, and walked into the bathroom.

Shit, the toothpaste tube was thin as hell, and it had probably run out. I didn’t care. I didn’t have to brush my teeth right now. I’d see about the toothpaste tomorrow. I went across from the basin, and towards the lavatory. It had a window with translucent glass right over it. I had a sudden impulse, and ran and stood on the lavatory. I turned a handle and opened the window. A rush of icy cold window greeted me. I shivered again.

I looked out, and saw the road below had no cars on it, except the one I had seen before. The one the man had come in. It was a very plain car, and looked like it was not very well kept. I could not see much from where I was, but there was a general ill-kept feeling about it. I am kind of well versed in these general feelings of mine, and have had ample opportunity to sharpen my skills at recognizing them. I did not miss this chance. The car was ill-kept, and it just stood there, as if forgotten or left by accident or knocked there by some big vehicle. Oh, the car.

The book I had taken out of my drawer had belonged to my mother in college. She had bought it on her 14th birthday, by stealing money from her father’s purse. She had been excited about reading it, and had hardly been able to wait before she could sit down and open the first page and start devouring it until she was finished. She had been vague in telling me about why she was so enthusiastic, but it had something to do with her favourite actor talking about the book in a radio ad. Well, she started a frantic search for the book around town, and finally found it in an expensive book store near her school. She stole the money, and went and bought it.

She recalls fondly how she had opened the first page in almost a feverish, ghoulish excitement and had started reading from the top. She could not understand a word. It was as if the book was in a language she did not know. She tried several times, but could not get past the first page, and hell, even the first page was unbelievably meaningless to her. She finally lost hope, and wrapped the book in black paper, and put it away. The book was Ulysses by James Joyce.

I resumed my seat at the window, and peeked out. I could see four street-lamps. They were all in a line. They illuminated a perfect circle of the stone street. They shone bright and defiant in the cold, I wished I could swoop down from my window in one movement, and hug one of them. Oh, they were the most beautiful things in the world, the lamps.

I suddenly remembered the car and realized it was gone. Vanished from view. Left my world for some point in the darkness beyond. I knew not where it was now. The car was gone, and had taken the stranger with the briefcase with it.

I picked up the paper from my bedside stool, and looked at the bald man on the front page. He had huge eyes, and had his hand raised in the air. He has eyebrows raised; it was not surprise, but natural habit. He was a huge fat man, and those eyes floated in pools of darkened flesh, and more flesh drooped from his chin. The lady standing behind him was not intended to be in the photograph. She was apparently just walking by, and the camera had caught her in the middle of a swift motion towards something important. She was definitely hurrying to get somewhere; maybe out of the photograph. Yes, she was not part of The Photograph of the Huge Fat Man.

I threw the paper on the floor. I stood up and trampled it under my bare feet. I absolutely danced on it then and there. I think I wanted to tear it into pieces. To hell with the paper! Go get your asses kicked, you sons of bitches, you losers. Of course I was losing my mind. Then and there. Then and there.

I made a quick circle around the bed, and stared into the distant haziness through the window. I could look at the night all night, I could stare into nothingness, and I wouldn’t stand a chance of falling asleep. At this point, some random saxophone riff hit my head from the side, it kinda exploded inside my head. I saw it coming, and then it was there. Oh, I wanted Coltrane. Right now.

I lay on my back on my bed, and sifted through pages of thought. I could feel my heart thumping, going on for augmented moments. It really sounded like everything was undecided, left to the event of the moment. Aflutter outside was a blackbird. Going to California would be nice, the sun is nice… there. As I was seeing the face of Robert Plant, I fell down towards a bowl of rice…

The Girl

2010-06-23T23:41:00.000+05:30

I met the girl at the Starlight Café
She owned a bookstore behind the railway line
She was finely dressed and spat in the gutter
I got up at midnight, and followed her around
She found me reasonable and we got along

The Painter

2010-06-21T23:00:00.000+05:30

A man with so many colours is a man with options
He does not worry about rotten bottles of paint
Red shines in the day time, and green fails, but blue triumphs!
What flexibility.

And brushes are so cool to carry under your arm.
Stacked up, smallish, and largish and midllish
And ebony wood, and oak wood, and mahogany wood
And horse tail, and ox tail, and human head hair!

Oh the painter must be so colourful, and so… vibrant! Vibrant!
Oh the painter is desirable. He’s charismatic, and joyous drinker.
His eyes see the world from ever-changing perspective, from different sides
He sees the underside of sad women, and children! Oh, the children in his paintings.

His paintings! His art-works! What majesty in his trees. Lines, curves!
He conjures up images from a third, twisted, sublime, abstract, glistening world.
He presents them on his canvas, he offers us a part of that elevated thought!
What charity in his voice! His musical presence, his benign eyes.
He’s wise. You see. He’s Wise.

And such is the unspeakable nature of the player
The sweaty, rigid, kicker of footballs.
Oh, he’s so unfit for these pages.

The Dictionary

2010-06-11T22:40:00.001+05:30

But this time with disgust
I fling the dictionary far and long
Out of my sight!

Meanings of words do not concern me
I have but a short association to make with them
As soon as they have lit the flame inside me
And have refilled my throat with gushing nectar
They can be gone and done for,
And sleep a long night of decay
Among meanings and interpretations
In the dictionary.

Strip

2010-06-11T22:24:00.001+05:30

Scrape your outside flesh, scrape with your nails and see what comes off, look at the remains in your nails – that is not you. Dig deeper, and you shall have courage for the journey into the abyss of self-knowledge. You dive deeper, and the deep is deep, the deep is confusing, the deep is unmerciful, and the deep is just there, all around you, overwhelmingly present in everything, in the very little piece of chicken you ingest with the vaguest hope of succulent taste. Everything is blasted forth – in a deluge of iron – and makes everything else worse than it was before. That is what happens in the abyss.

But you have to head on. Straight on, and you peel your skin off. You are naked now – at least to some extent. You see inside, you see inside, you see inside – you are panting now. Whimsical creature you are. The underground network that gave you so much pain is finally in your grasp – or is it? You have eyes – but your eyes only see so much. They go beyond very much – but not beyond your very bones. Humble eyes.

Strip – strip some more. Illusion heaped upon illusion. Catapulting into the future of great moonlight dreams and sparkling headlights, you are flying above the very banks of the river soaking in your blood. You head on – through the jungle of carelessness, you have the bamboo stick of forgiveness in your hand – you head on.

And when all the lingering and stumbling and hopelessness is over, there is no product. There is none output. Gathering dust is your discarded skin – your old faulty organs – once part of your fully spiritual body. Meaning nothing. Moral nothing. Heaped beside your soul is the body you held once. The scraps of your body serve as colours and binders and and brush. Paint on the great canvas of the soul of the night. The picture you make might be bleary and unclear and uncertain and unrevolutionary and unimportant and indifferent and other things – but paint it. Grotesque masks were made in this manner. Never stop.

2010-06-11T22:13:00.001+05:30

The truest part of you is the vagueness inside you as you shop for vegetables and gawk open-mouthed at the seller, paying him money you don’t feel in your hands, and the splinters of words joining in your head, gaining momentum as they are plummeted into the wastebin of history by your vanity and your fear, and the little ruminations you have on reading the manifesto of this doctrine or that, and the small words stuck in your throat, unable to escape to the page in veiled ink. Ink is false, bad bad ink, it is inside, the pulp of your existence. You are what you never wrote; writing is acting.

She

2010-06-09T18:36:00.002+05:30

In the night of the stars she drove around town
Fringing the roads, getting in way of traffic
Putting her foot down
Stopping for no man

At the red light she saw a seller of a bouquet of flowers
He was clad in rags and had a half-toothed smile
She let him come near, and wait for her
And just as he was ready to gloat and congratulate himself
She left him behind; she flew like wind

She selected every turn and chose and picked
And faced every pair of headlights with a confident air
She dangled her hand carelessly by the side
And let the gale take the papers she held
Good riddance! No reading now, we’ll take the road this time

Gaudily dressed sluts walked the other way
She made her disgust clear, and pulled up her nose
She was manly with the gear
She used the electric cigarette lighter
And littered the passenger seat with Marlboro ash
Phew! Smoking in a car!

And then when she was weary with it all
And when the night was ending
She drove to the edge of town
She drove with all her care
And she drove down into the sea, she.

Unused

2010-05-25T23:42:00.000+05:30

I have an unused
Quarter in my brain
That either my teachers
Or my father couldn’t train

I’ll take him out
Show him some light of day
Sit on a stone,
Lis’n to what he has to say

“Let’s go eat a rat.”
“Witches are fun.”
“Garbled gobbledygook Mackie-roo”
“Geez! I wanna be a nun.”

“Hush!” I said.
“They’ll think you mad”
He made a face, and said,
“I wanna be sad.”

I was all serious.
“Join my school of thought.”
And thus began his story
Of use, disuse, misuse, rot.

I Like It

2010-04-20T13:29:00.001+05:30

We sat in a humid room
Our lungs enlarged with the heat
She panged from her sweat
Armpits all soaked

I had a guitar strapped on
Heavy under its weight
Trying to make “music”
Giving it a shot, finally

I began singing
Hoping she’d get what I meant
She waved her head from side to side
Said “The lyrics aren’t so fine,
and what’s that chord you’re playing?”

I gave up on the “song”
Sat down, started this New Thing
“Yappa-doodle. Dample-gampie-gum.
Volo-bolo-vinder-woo”

She, conquering the heat,
And the incomprehension
Uttered something with a smile,
“Yeah, I like it.”

Joyful Delivery of Painful Thought

2010-04-01T09:52:00.003+05:30

A paralyzing feeling of despondency is something all mortals must be acquainted with. It is cruel in its acuteness and is a very impolite visitor, which never warns of its coming. It ambles into your life, whistling a favourite tune, grinning with its yellowed teeth. You were going all fine, and thought that nothing could harm you now, that you finally had met and come to know all possible states of being in human life. But yet again, you are surprised. And both, the subtlety of how your mind cannot believe now what it once held as “the truth”, and the inevitability of the passing of this depressing “phase” of your life with due time, are lost on you. You are not tolerant, happy, relaxed, complacent, or smiley anymore. None of that fake bullshit now. You are in pain. You are depressed.

Pain has a habit of draining every bit of energy from your person. Pain, like all pure emotions, extends across the galaxy. Maybe even further out. Small, harmless things like ice-cream, pinball, sweetly smiling girls, and other niceties simply fail to lift your spirits. You are in generic despair. Ever-present gloom.

Small, never-ending alcoves of time are nasty things. They are always present on the cleanest of your days. Bang in the center of pure “busy-ness” and oblivion lands a tiny moment of listlessness. Examples include the time before the start of an interview, the small walk to the toilet (refrigerator, hostel mess), the “waiting period” before your next gol-gappa arrives. They are things that convince the human mind of the infinite nature of everything extant. They are vast worlds in themselves, gifted with their own time scales, and gilded with shiny, new physical laws. Man might have explained a great deal about planets, meteorites and semen to his fellow beings, but his consistent failure to enjoy a moment of nothingness is undeniable. Let’s paint this on our walls. Men cannot endure nothingness, emptiness. They subsist on “jobs”, on some directionality in life, a semblance of a path, a course divined by some outside force, a plan of action magneted to the refrigerator door.

Motive. It is important. In murder mysteries and life alike. All men, if they are men at all, must have inside their bosoms a specter of their ideal kind of dude, the perfection amongst men in their eyes. They observe him day and night. It is perhaps why men have been given eyes. To observe, to imitate, to keep them fixed at their ideals all the time, mesmerized by the whole possibility of somehow, some day matching them.

Creation is what both made us and makes us again everyday. We till our own gardens every morning, water the tiny saplings brimming with promise, and continue to sweat it out till dusk, cribbing every shade of weed creeping from the shadows, fearing every dry spell. Perhaps the joy of creation is unsurmountable. It indeed supplies us with an illusion of ever-spreading peace, calm and strength, of boundless hope. Creation gives us the first chance to have a peek at a part of ourselves with our own eyes. We hold this relic of our own creation in our hands, shivering under its weight, bathed in its glint. We marvel at this new-born baby, this item of mortality that unbelievingly soaks our consciousness with a glimpse of the immortal. We create, and thus we are born.

Man’s greatest folly is perhaps his blindness to his own loneliness in this abundance of the universe. It is a feeling he grapples with on every day he lives. Every hour of his existence, man gasps for assurance of the falseness of this truth – that he is essentially alone. He experiences his own emotions. His is a solitary odyssey. While it is true that social association helps man find his ways, and guides him through the world, it is idiotic to accept this usefulness as something that justifies society as an end in itself. Gallant refusal of submission before such helplessness is advocated. You can have friends. You can also eat with them, drink with them. But knowing how to bake your own cake, and to enjoy it in tasteful solitude are indispensible qualities.

So. What now? I am still falling down a dark well. Anticipation of what might lie at the other end is a pastime I got fed up with about two centuries ago. About 47 years ago, I finally decided to drop my weapons and sit back, enjoy the show. Joyous songs are joyous, but sad songs are sweet. And I do have something of a sweet tooth. I rejoice in the concurrence between me and the maker of these sad sounds. I hold my humble cup out, and he fills it with nectar.

Musical Night

2010-03-29T05:20:00.001+05:30

When the guitarist bends the thinnest string of his instrument, he goes higher than his listeners think. He goes into realms unknown to the unsuspecting watcher (who, by the way, is more engaged with the colour of the guitar). He goes ka-boom. Whooshi-whooshi-whoosh. And when he bends the thinnest string from the highest fret, it’s total rocka-jaggory. I can’t tell you about it and I won’t. You wouldn’t wanna know.

On the drums, Michael Monk. APPLAUSE please!

If you wanted to give the piano (OK. OK. Keyboard, for the newly-initiated) player another name, you could call him a Weaver. He weaves what? Melodies? I don’t know exactly, but he weaves for sure. Threads running haywire.

“I can’t get no Sattis-faction.”

And at final last, the great virtuoso saxophone player, ladies and gentlemen, Charles Boyd. He plays the alto saxophone and boy, does he BLOW.

What? Aren’t we gonna talk about Bach? The Bach? We are, for sure, but only after we have managed to understand why his hair looks like he washed it with mayonnaise.

Thank you, guys. We totally, totally loved performing here. We’d be back sooner than you can imagine.

Togetherness

2010-03-15T21:44:00.000+05:30

In days of need, of hunger
That’s when people come together

They may roam about all aloof
Very lost in their own
Until the night of need arrives
And they flock to different specimens
Of their own
Species

Helping each other out
In planned cooperation
And strained collaboration

But still in these processes of togetherness
Their own survives
Still in such joint projects
They refuse to be humbled
By the need of the hour
Or by the hour of need

They hold their space together
And shine in the light of their minds
And this more than anything else
Binds these people in a bundle

No Fiction Tolerated Here

2010-02-24T22:09:00.002+05:30

Fiction is a big farce, fact is great.
In fact begins the truth of life,
The realization, the path of glory.

Fiction is a feeble support
To the weak escapist, to the dying loser.
It is but an artifice
Built as an attempt to hide the real
Harsh truth.

Fact beats the hell out of fiction.
Fact is what exists, and must exist.
Fiction is what the weak should utter
As their dying words, and take with them.
We have space only for fact,
And have no pity for fictions
Of this mind or that.

Sheets of Sound

2010-02-12T06:52:00.003+05:30

Sound travels in sheets
Getting under my bed
And taking my nightly visions
By storm.

Out of the metal pores of the giant
Great saxophone colossus
It comes pouring into my nerve-ends
Glowing in the darkness inside.

Piano strokes make fine incisions
In the fabric of my skin
And my blood flows out bright
And red
Mixing with the music.

Sound travels in sheets.
Bebop. Bobob-pop.
Beeeeee-bop. Bob-bob-pop.

Dreamer

2010-02-06T12:34:00.001+05:30

What I once dreamed about, I now write about. I do not talk to loud-mouthed boasting people when I don't want to be sad and depressed. I avoid being in the midst of all political discussions. I just relax, look around at people and things, and select some of them to put into stories. Some of them fit, and some of them don't. But I never force them into fitting. It's not what I want to do. I've always felt like a fool talking to close friends about music. So I stopped. They stopped too.

I've hated the rain for about 4 years, and have loved the sunshine. It looks so beautiful in the sky, and twice as beautiful when it's in the trees. Come to think of it, it isn't too bad on yellow walls, and a white colored salwar-kameez worn by a certain girl. Days are long trips from my comfort zone. I travel far and close, always stopping at every corner where I find flowers and smelling them. They are usually sweet-smelling, but some of them smell sour. I don't know why that is.

I don't carry a notebook with me. I don't know why, but I don't. Probably because I feel too intimated outside to write. The beedi-smoking policemen, the baton-carrying policemen, the white-uniform-wearing policemen, and of course, auto drivers. Whenever I imagine myself writing in an auto, with the auto-driver busy with driving the auto, he suddenly turns back and gives me such a hard stare, I almost leap off the auto in desperation. Sometimes, I do leap, and find myself in the middle of three thin, measly women carrying me to hospital. It gives me the chills.

I borrowed a friend's harmonica the last time it rained, and carried it to my room. I took it out of my pocket, and played it as high as I could. Then, I could not hear the rain. I could only see the rain falling on the yellow lamp outside my window. And feel the soft, warm bed under my back. And the harmonica plays itself, putting into sound what I give to it in caresses of my lips. Slowly, and slowly I move my lips across the body of the harmonica, and feel it quiver under my breath. Like a lover would, the harmonica thanked me. And I thanked it, for taking the rain out. Out of my mind. The night wore on, and the harmonica wailed.

I begin days with mornings of slow speed. Mornings where I just lie on my bed, where I just lie on my bed, where I just lie on my bed. On some mornings, I run into large, sporty guys who talk a lot. I pretend to talk a lot at first, but then rush back to my room. Some mornings, I watch men in blue shirts sweep the floor I walk on. I always stand out of their sight. Some of them smoke beedis as they sweep the floor, some of them hang their heads as they sweep the floor. Some of the sing a tune. While they sweep the floor. I walk on.

Nights are quite another matter. They usually end with scribbles in my notebook. Like I once fell asleep dreaming, now I feel asleep writing. And then, during my sleep, I write some more. When I'm awake, I might write about men with muscles or girls with dimples. But when I sleep, I write only about short, skinny girls wearing white coloured salwar-kameez, and walking on a metallic surface. With the sun in their faces. Yes, old men feature in my sleep-time stories, obviously. They are sweeping floors with their chests, singing 'A Change is Gonna Come'.

And then I wake up in the mornings, with stories in my head. I switch on the light. I stand up, look at myself in the mirror. I sit, and visit Melbourne. Sometimes, it's London, and sometimes, the diner in Pulp Fiction. And then, I meet Honey Bunny, and she talks to me for three hours. We talk for three hours. We hold hands. We both start writing, and in the middle of it all, we exchange pens. I look at the cars outside the window, and she holds my hand. She feels warmer than the sun, and the engines of the cars on the hot tarmac road.

We bend our heads over the pink colored table and write. Me in blue ink, she in red. And halfway through, me in red, she in blue.

Do You See?

2010-01-31T10:05:00.003+05:30

Is there a flower on the back of the head
Of the favourite girl (serene)
In the universe you see?
Does she come to your side
And stroke your neck with her hand
When you’re gloomy as can be?

Apple carts, do they appear out of nowhere?
Are maidens in white gowns
And inkstands in your dreams?
Do you watch strangers leave your side
When you need them dearly
And a deathly life it seems?

Do words lack meaning
And your actions seem as if
Controlled by some but not thee?
Yes! Then you’re in my universe.
You just stay mum, and wait
And hope that, some day, I might see.

Adventure of the Chewing Gum

2010-01-26T07:28:00.001+05:30

Don’t ever get into bed with chewing gum in your mouth. You might swallow it sometime into the night, and die from the suffocation. Chances are, you’ll be driven to a hospital nearby. It’ll have nice green coloured clothes draped all over the place, with coughing patients behind them, invisible to your eyes. But the truth is, they won’t be able to revive you from death. They’ll extract the (chewing?) gum from down your throat in seconds. The nurse will be very adept at such things. She’ll lift your tongue towards your mouth plate for a second, and insert a slender metallic stick into your lifeless throat. Pop! The gum will be out in a flash.

Don't know what it's called

2010-01-14T03:39:00.002+05:30

Just sit on your toes in your secret room
(or wherever you are alone)
Keep quiet for longer time than you can bear to
Think about things you left behind
Bat an eyelid
Scratch your hair, if you’re so inclined

Is it discomfort? Or fear? FEAR.
Not everything in order. Not alright.
Perplexed mind, confused actions.
A standstill in life.
Life? That ever-moving, violent force.

Gotta go now. Gotta hide.
Take a crap, read some magazines, maybe smoke.
I dunno. Anything.
Natural – Pseudonatural – Copycat – Despondent.
Human – So what? I’m human too!

Wish I was born in the 60s.
Wish I was born on a steam-boat.
Wish for a wish.
Hush. Hello. Bbye. See you later.

Guffaw, Non-Sensical Guffaw

2009-12-31T03:11:00.000+05:30

Sense seldom makes sense
What people like
Has a right to stay on
Losers be gone.
Fighting solves fights
Peace makes you smile?

Humble beginning is.
Glorious end may be.
Classical examples vary with time.
Classic now becomes modern tomorrow.
Non-sensical? Guffaw of pleasure.

White stone on brown ground
A new freedom - newly found.

A Joke

2009-12-16T11:41:00.002+05:30

What, is a joke?
Is it laughter?
A friendly poke?
Unintended or intended?
A gag?
Or tears concealed?
A line of teeth revealed?
Sadness repealed?
Deadly gashes healed?
A mask resembling you?
Beginning of joy?
An expression coy?
A sad, useless toy?
What, is a joke?

Stress Buster

2009-11-21T21:10:00.001+05:30

Modern life is tough. If you want to make your dog happy with white bones, kiss your wife goodnight with a smile on your face, and shake your business partner's hand whenever you greet him, all in one day, you'll need a special someone. And that's special someone is what I will call a Stress Buster.

You might meet him anywhere. In the city. Or in the town. You will recognize him as the guy who does not have a job. I mean, a real job, like yours. His job is only to Stress-Bust. You go to him, wave a 5 rupee in his face, and he sits down beside you. He starts massaging your knees because he can tell you have hurt them. He knows that by looking at your face, by looking at the creases on your forehead. He will not smile, will only look down and keep massaging your knees until you tell him off with a curse. You might want to hit him across the face with your briefcase (brown leather, body fabricated in pure aluminium), but he runs away. He keeps running for a while, and then turns and checks if you are still there. If you are, he comes back running again and kisses you on the cheek (if you let him). Then he leaves.

Sometimes, you see him in your office, sweeping the cigarette ash off the floor. The floor is brown mosaic set in pure white granite (which cost the company 700000 rupees more than it was allowed to use during the year the office was built in). The sweeper (who cost the company 7000 rupees less than he should have the month his mother died) never gazes at you when you gaze at him. He sometimes notices how your mustache looks when he sees you, but he laughs only when you have turned away. But why am I telling you this? I'm telling you that the guy (the sweeper guy, the guy who laughs sometimes behind your back) can Stress-Bust you. But only when you want him to. If you tell him that your floor is clean enough, and wink, he will come to you. But he will come only after he has cleaned his hands. The hands that cleaned your granite floor.

So, he comes and sits beside you. Then he takes out his mother's old handkerchief and wipes your sweat off your forehead until your eyes have relaxed. Then, he switches off your computer (he hasn't met the shut down command yet, so he just holds the power plug with his handkerchief and pulls it out). As you meet his eyes for the first time, he smiles. He looks right into your eyes, and smiles. Then, he closes your eyes, and takes you into the dark space behind your eyelids. Then, a second later, he takes you into the sound of the chainsaw whirring in his hand. You jump out of your seat, and your eyes say a frightened hello to the chainsaw. The chainsaw grins, with the sun on its teeth. You can't grin back. Now you can only wipe your forehead with your own handkerchief and switch your computer on. It won't open. It got its power cord whirred off. Or cut off. Whatever.

Stress can be very over-powering and you don't want to drown in stress, do you? You need a peaceful life, with your wife grinning at you. No, your wife smiling at you. I know you hate the word 'grinning'.

Let's get to what I know about you. I know that you have a friend who has chronic pain in his back. From sleeping on bunk-beds. In the army. You did not go to the army as a young man, because you did not like your country. You came to the city instead. You love your city. It has automatic toilet-paper dispensers, small, accessible restaurants where you can get fat glasses of chilly Coke, and of course. Your city now has the most number of Stress Busters in the world. Yes, I read it in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Mountain climbers are fun people to talk to. They are happy, well-built, muscular, stupid, muscular and well-built. And yes, they have a good sense of humour. You might have met one in the little coffee shop across the road from your house. Of course, you would not have recognised him. Ever since he had legs amputated, he only gets out of his condo on weekends. He takes a crutch-walk on the same road you take a leg-walk on. The shiny, new road which was built by road-rollers imported from the UK. So as he is taking his crutch walk, he stops at this flower shop. He picks up a rose, smells it, and keeps it in his pocket. Just as the shopkeeper is about to shout at him, he turns and pays him. Then he smiles, smells his rose once again, and steps out with his crutch-legs. He notices you on the pavement. you are gawking at him. Your mouth is open.

You get talking, and eventually you offer him coffee at your favourite coffee shop, right in front of your house. He accepts the offer, and you get to prove to him how well you know your city. He reads your mind and tells you immediately that he was born here. You are shocked. You never thought amputated people were born here. But he tells you he wasn't amputated by birth, but lost his legs due frost bite. He tells you how cold it is atop the Everest, and you shiver. Not from the cold in his talking, but from the clink-clank of his crutch-legs.

You sit at the coffee shop for an hour and chat. You go up to the counter and pay the bill, happily. You are satisfied with your day now. When you get back to him, he is grinning. Yes, grinning. He lifts one of his crutch-legs and keeps it on your forehead. He is grinning. You say you are sorry and will not be late for work again. He grins wider. You feel tears coming into your eyes. You tell him that you are sorry you played online basketball with your online friends. He grins wider. He now starts shaking his head from side to side. From the left side to the right side. He is grinning.

You are lying on the floor, and the crutch-leg man is walking away. He is the best Stress Buster you have known. Because, for the first time, a person has been able to Stress-Bust you. You feel your eyes drooping, and your legs loosening, and your hands opening, and your heart slowing down. Down. You are Stress-Busted.

You reach heaven, and meet the person who wrote the Guinness Book of World Records. He never grins. He says grinning is the most hated expression both in heaven and on the earth.

You make trips to hell on weekends. There, you meet your wife, who has learnt how to play online basketball. Sometimes you see your kids around, carrying pocket-sized chainsaws. You are disgusted and you rush back to heaven.

The Guinness Book of World Records man introduces you to your fortune teller. Your fortune teller introduces you to a crystal ball. The crystal ball says you are going to be a Stress Buster the next time you go to the earth.

You are given a chainsaw, two crutches, a wide grin, and a pair of painful knees.

Untitled

2009-11-18T11:50:00.003+05:30

The mysteries of the mind
Are as baffling
As the hardest quest without.
The thinker, then, must find
Like doer does
Failure, struggle - and doubt!

Heart

2009-11-17T21:44:00.001+05:30

The heart, when in glee
When in passion, flows
Hears solely what it wants
Sees only what it seeks

And purposeless, it flies
For the love of flight
Defiant, stares at the sun
Until blinded by light

Humming, it sings
Madly it sways on the wind
Breathes in gallant vigour
That sweet love brings!

Beauty?

2009-11-08T05:56:00.001+05:30

All alone and hungry
This life, a dreadful fight
Shambles are ugly supports
In crumbs, I find delight

On Yearning

2009-11-03T08:52:00.004+05:30

Your sight did my eye regard
In all its humble wonder
And my heart gaily supplied
All that rest, hid under

You did, you moved, oblivious
You came, you saw, you went
My eye shone with a smile
That your dear sight me lent

My mind of thought gave way
To a heart of soaring flight
Such, was your pure splendour
Such your beauty's might

And heart, ran here to farther
Completing your being's perfection
Whatever fit you best
It held in close selection

And thus, by sweet deception
It was by you won over
You became its sole purpose
Its one and only lover

But your beauty was fiction
Imagined your stainless sight
Your in-lying love, illusion
Your face, folly of light

Just my vein carried a passion
My heart was love's breeding ground
My yearning was only reason
For all sweet love around

Murder Mystery

2009-10-30T01:13:00.004+05:30

I read my first novel in class 6. I read this Hardy Boys mystery story. You know, a mystery story about two brothers, where they solve a case and all. I remember where I was sitting when I finished it. I was sitting in a sofa in my house, with afternoon sunshine pouring in through the window. I sat biting my finger-nails, turning the last few pages. And when I finished it, I sat there with the last page open for about 10 minutes. I don't know why, but I guess there wasn't much else to do after you finished a novel - a mystery novel at that.

And then, in the months following that one, I read quite a few novels. It was mostly Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew at that time. I read in the bus to school every morning, with every other guy in the bus gaping at me. They thought I was a mad person to be reading books in a goddamn school bus. For them, school buses were where you tittered at how your friend's tie was all crooked, or where you laughed on SMS jokes, or where you even puked. But you never read on school-buses. And sometimes I would go to sleep while reading. And when I woke up, I'd have a crowd of people standing near me, observing, no, analyzing my face. And then, as soon as I woke up, they'd run away, giggling. I'd feel this strange, sharp thing in my heart - I don't know what exactly. Shame? Regret? Anger? I don't know. I'd keep sitting there looking out of the window for a couple of minutes, avoiding their eyes. And then, I'd pick up my book and start reading again.

When I read at home, I usually read in bed. I'd lie on my side and read. All afternoon, all evening, and sometimes all night. When my father saw me reading, he always asked me the same question. "What is this? Is this an age to be reading novels at?" And I'd go quiet as hell, or just utter something like "Oh, Papa." and keep on reading.

I have this great friend called Raghav, and he was the one I got into reading with. We'd exchange books. I've probably read every single book he ever owned. We were desk-partners at school. Best friends. Best book friends. Best tiffin friends. Best fight friends.

I've never had a fight with anybody except Raghav. He usually won, but I wore on for some while before I gave in. He'd punch me in the abdomen, while I'd push him against the wall and try to kick him in his legs. Once we got fighting in class during lunchtime, and it was quite a show. Everybody watched. Some girls saw us with wide eyes, talking with each other and frantically waving their hands. There were geeks watching us, with their pencils stopped in mid-sentence. And heck, there were even some people eating while they watched us fight. It was insane, man. I never got hurt in any of those fights. But I hated those people's guts. Those people who watched the two of us fighting while they ate. I wish I could throw their tiffins in their face sometime.

And we started writing a book once. Me and Raghav. It was all crap you know. Just some strange old story about 5 kids solving a mystery. We got too loaded on Enid Blyton just then, and thought we could write something like that. All bullshit. You could never write like Enid Blyton. She made everybody go crazy with her stories. She wrote over 700 stories. I read only about 50 of them, but I can tell you. She was good.

So, point is, it was before I was even 13 that I tried writing my first book. Isn't that crazy. Crazy as hell, if you ask me. How many kids in school try writing a novel. They are more into writing numbers, and those "difference-betweens" you get in geography all the time. "Differentiate between Alluvial Soil and Red Soil". Yeah, all those things. Nobody even reads. Some people might wanna write something sometime if they only read. But the point was, nobody read in my school. They just preferred watching people read in school buses. And making them nervous all over, almost making them piss in their pants. No, nobody read.

So I was crazy as hell in school. I couldn't do without reading a book everyday. It was insane. I read like a maniac. My mom would have to lock my books up to make me go out and get some exercise. Sometimes, when I read too much, she'd talk about burning my books. And then I'd say something stupid like "Oh you wanna burn my books? Why don't you burn me instead?" And then, she'd go cold for a second. Then she'd come running to me and slap me on my face. And then, I'd go sulky for a few hours, until she came to me with smiles, toffees and big warm hugs. It was beautiful then.

Once I went up to my school librarian with an Agatha Christie book in my hand, and asked her what they were about. She called me aside for a minute, and then she wrote down on a sheet of paper she had. I still remember what she wrote. It was just two words - "Murder mystery". I instantly got why she hadn't said those two words aloud and written them down instead. She probably did not want the other kids to hear her. Especially, those wimpy, giggly girls who only came to the library to giggle and roam around barefoot. That day, I took "And Then There Were None" home. I distinctly remember going back in the school bus that day. It was raining, and my shoes were really muddy and all. I got out my Christie book out of my bag as soon as I sat down. And I read it, all the way home. It had very weird English. And it had very weird characters and all. I don't remember that much about the book anymore, but I remember the day I started reading it. It was raining, and my shoes were dirty, and there were thick droplets of muddy water on the windows of my school bus.

Books have always had me. They have comforted me, been friends with me, and all that grown-up kinda crap. All that serious, made-up bull. No. No. Books have not comforted me. They have not been friends with me. Oh, no.

I just liked reading, you know. Just like I liked those fights with Raghav, and those big wet kisses from my mom. Yes, there was once a time when I read to live. I took all the crap from my school bus mates to read. Yes, I read a story about 10 deadly, bloody murders on an island when other kids were giggling and roaming around barefoot. And Then There None. By Agatha Christie. Murder Mystery.

Innocence

2009-10-24T02:26:00.003+05:30

I wake up, and as soon as I get out of bed I know something is wrong. I look around, dazed, for a couple of minutes. The mirror shows me the two big scars I have on my face. I hide them with the back of my hand. The window shows me the light of the day has left for good. A black mosquito flies restlessly between the glass pane and the steel net. The fan makes reluctant rounds, murdering the silence.

I step outside. The ground is chilly, and my feet are scared of going further. I choose to stop and look beyond. The sun is setting. Tall trees are heavy with motionless birds. The redness of the sun speaks of fiery sadness inside him. He cries. Of battles lost, and wounds freshly won.

I turn away from the mortal sight, afraid of damaging my vision. I rush inside, and leap into the warmth of the bed. My back feels at home again. I let my hair fall on the pillow, awry and wild. I close my eyes.

And I see springy, green grass laid out. In welcome of skipping, joyous rays of the rising sun. I see water abound, fresh with the smell of the mountains, with the stories of little squirrels. And I see mosquitoes wandering hither and thither, insatiable in their search for elusive moments of glory.

And then I start. For I see myself. Crumpled on the green grass, with my hands at my heart. And I see the oblivion in my face. I see innocence. I see white, pristine toes with ants crawling on them, communing with their sweet nature and one of its parts, me.

If You Will

2009-10-07T22:53:00.003+05:30

Get me if you will
Hang me on your wall
Keep me till I fall
Bury me
Deep in your mind

Hurt me if you will
Rip my throat
With a sword so sharp
just like the guitar
Murdered the harp

For if I stay on tonight
I'll make the night
Darker than you want it
I'll grab the dark and feed it
And fill your eyes
With poison so harsh
That you will wander naked
On a cold, dark marsh
Unaided by hope of any kind
Bruised in your body
In your mind

So get me if you will
Resent me not
'Cause I will not relent
Like the fairy who went
And killed herself in the fire
Burning in the hearts of hearts
Of men who liked her not

So get me if you will
Play your own cards
Grab your fate tonight
For it is an endless fight

Song of Solitude

2009-09-27T12:39:00.002+05:30

Wonder all night for all that we
Could be or could never be
Wipe rogue sleep from drooping eyes
Turn sight inside, observant, towards me.

Cast a shadow on plains sunlit
Play games of charm, of art, of wit
Of vicious character, of pomp you could be
Or exude sweet love from every pore, from every bit

Plain as light it might not be
But should you try, you will see
For providence pray, in your cocoon stay
Hold your self, smile, just be.

Floating Farther

2009-09-19T11:37:00.005+05:30

In a field of rice a reaper stands alone
Goaded into silence, a singer stands alone
Looking with glassy eyes, actor stands alone
Birth on her lips, a mother stands alone

Jiving with darkness, a friend stands alone
Making silken marks, a painter stands alone
Wind in her bones, dreamer stands alone
Joking with kindness, a joker stands alone

Praising a violent valley, painter stands alone
Humble as hunger, child stands alone
Buying a gram of peace, fighter stands alone
Blood seething from lips, poet stands alone

Nascent, burning, hollow youth
Stands alone

Bittersweet Rhapsody

2009-09-16T04:28:00.001+05:30

Very much on the verge of death
At the end of an ugly life
I turned in my bed, coughed
And said this to my wife

Oh you know, I was once a child
I was moody, sleepy, slow
Indignant, mindless, brash
With a bag of dreams in tow

People said I’d bloom
All I needed was rules
Large, sweet success would visit
All I needed was to keep at it

Mom ladled soup on my plate
Dad smoked his pipe
I was on a wrecked ship, dreaming
I was just a different type

Accusations of inaction
Stares of disgust
I took it all with a smile
I tested my patience, I tested my guile

Lying here in your arms
A wretched dead old man
A mess of bones
A carcass of a dreaming man

Weird, shapeless, useless bard
A sentry standing guard
A mind of endless fear
From life long and hard

I wouldn’t say it feels so bad
Well after all, it was to be
I found what was good for me
Was that it was always you and me

When I look at you
I find my peaceful river
Hunger ends and joy begins
Fear loses, happy hope wins

Hold me still when I die
Hold me dear, hold me high
Take this stinking carcass within
And let a rapturous peace begin

Untitled

2009-08-29T04:15:00.000+05:30

I was walking into the desert sun. The horizon was dunes of sand, shining in all their yellowy brilliance. There was no water in sight.

She was walking beside me, with her head on my shoulder. It kept bobbing up and down.

"Hmmm... ", she moaned. "Water. Do you see it?"

"Ahh... no. Not yet, anyway" I said.

"Oh my God. This reminds me of that really long poem." she said.

"Oh which one? The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?" I said, looking at her hair. It shone in the sunshine.

"Yeah. By William Wordsworth."

"No, sorry, my dear. It is by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who happened to be friends with this Wordsworth guy."

"Oh. You know so much, man. Don't you rock?" she said, and gave me a wink.

"There's one thing I still don't know, though."

"What why?"

"Why does the absence of water in the desert remind of you of the poem."

"Ohh, that. I don't know. Maybe there was this thing about water in that poem."

"Yeah, there was this line - 'Water water everywhere, not a drop to drink'. But that was said in the open ocean, not the desert."

"Yeah. But it gives you the same vibe. A parched throat is a parched throat, in the middle of an ocean and in the middle of a desert."

"Yeah. Anyway, I've always thought a desert is similar to a sea."

"Really? Why is that? No, why in hell is that?"

"Because a camel is called the ship of the desert."

"What? Did I hear you right?"

"Yes, you did."

"Oh, man. How awesome!"

"What? You liked this?"

"Liked what?"

"The thing about the camel."

"No. I mean, yes, I loved it."

"It was a joke, for God's sake. A sad joke, a really sad joke."

"No, it wasn't. It was beautiful."

"How in hell can that be beautiful? You're putting down all beautiful things, for God's sake." I said incredulously.

"No. I am not. I found this beautiful. And you can't tell me what to find beautiful. It's my choice. I choose what is beautiful for me, and you choose for yourself."

"Yes, maybe. So you find the desert beautiful?"

"I don't know."

"And do you find the palm trees beautiful?"

"I don't know."

"OK."

We kept walking in silence for about 10 minutes. It was really hot. The sun almost touched the horizon.

"Do you see water?" she asked me.

"I don't. Why, are you thirsty?"

"Yes."

List of Gyan

2009-07-30T02:32:00.002+05:30

Life is one hell of a roller-coaster ride, ain't it? All sorts of twists and turns. All sorts of pit-falls and exhilarating surprises. We always have a set of beliefs, an internal reference-book we keep looking into for approval. We call everybody who doesn't conform to our internal standards a fag, a loser, or whatever.

But as we experience more and come across people who influence us, we tend to shape and change our reference book. It is written, edited and reprinted a million times before we die.

So here goes. Some gyan I picked up this week. :)

1. No matter how hard you try, you will not enjoy being with a person unless you really connect with him/her. It's all pre-programmed. Some people are made for you, and some aren't.
2. It's very tough to do defy the rules of the world and still make a living.
3. You always try to do things people you want to emulate do.
4. The only thing you want when you talk to a new person is entertainment.
5. Sanity is a myth. Everybody is insane.
6. Sharing laughter is the best way to connect with people. If you can share a laugh, you can share your lives.

Return to Roots

2009-06-23T06:19:00.007+05:30

I call myself a big music lover. I think listening to music matters more to me than it does to most people. I find delight in sitting down for hours and treating myself to music. But it wasn't always so.

In the winter of 2005, I was in the midst of a very exciting time of my life. The foremost thing in my mind was my studies. I was studying to crack the JEE and I was enjoying it. Just then, I was visited by a new and exotic passion - Junoon. The first time I heard the song 'Pyar Bina', I fell in love with the band. From then on, it was a beautiful journey. I would download one Junoon song every week and listen to it over and over again. I think I love to live in the world of my dreams, and Junoon always took me to a dreamy, transcendental place.

By the summer of 2006, I was listening to 4 hours of Junoon every day and listened to little other music. I dreamed about them in the night, plugged my earphones in the morning for a song or two before school, spent hours in the afternoon dancing freakishly to Junoon and still insatiable, went to bed with my iPod.

For a brief period in my life, I identified myself only as a Junooni. Nothing else. I took pride in being in love with the music of a Pakistani band who broke barriers of country and religion and made me fall in love with music. I rarely get mad or annoyed at anybody, but I just couldn't take any jokes about Junoon. I loved them with the depth of my heart.

Once in school, while idling on the last bench during a boring class, I wrote down the names of my ten favorite Junoon songs and their lengths in less than a minute. The friend who was sitting next to me nearly jumped out of his seat. Once in a moment of emotion, I told one of my friends that one of my deepest desires was to sit all my friends down in one place and make them listen to every single Junoon song. Freaky!

But every storm has an end, and obsessions have an expiry date. Gradually, with the change of setting (I came to IITK in the summer of 2007) and exploration of new music, my Junoon fever died down. I now love The Beatles and Bob Dylan just like I loved Junoon once. Honestly, I have often pondered in the last few months why my blog is still named after the band.

But some things just stick. Today, I associate Junoon with my musical awakening. I found the same thing in Junoon as a tender maiden of 17 might find in Mills & Boon. Junoon was there for me when nobody was. I could always go and play 'Mitti' when I was sad. Or 'Pyar Bina' when I was happy.

Junoon will forever remind me of the time I spent with friends, of the times I wept in pain, of the times I leapt into the arms of my mother, of the times I sat alone, working out differential equations at midnight, of the time when I lived a life more purely happy and satisfying than I ever will. And that is when Junoon ceases to be a music band and becomes more. Even if just for a certain 19 year old boy from across the border.

Humour Me

2009-06-15T04:04:00.001+05:30

Humour me when I’m high
Hold me still when I die
Keep me moving on my feet
When I’m down or when I’m beat

Carry me around in your arms
Buy me a dream for life
Make me sing hoarse with joy
Don’t you see I am coy?

Take me happy, take me sad
Love me good, love me bad

A Love Supreme

2009-06-12T05:52:00.003+05:30

I feel hunger no more
No pangs of desire anymore
No thirst can make itself felt
Don't want to do nothing no more

Dancing to the rhythms
Just knowing one thing
Nobody can do me no harm
'Cause the spell I'm under
Is a spell of ages
It's all in the pages
It's treatin' me the usual way

I adhere to this nightly regime
'Cause I have inside a love supreme

Secret Solitude

2009-05-22T02:35:00.003+05:30

It's been a week since I got my first computer in IIT Kanpur. Now that I think about it, it's not the only addition to my table.

1. I have finally got over my disease. For good or bad, I can now bear to be alone. Well, no that alone. I have my music.
2. I've finally realized I'm a big ass. I realized I went to other people's rooms just to use their computers, and not the people themselves. Oh, I'm such an ass.
3. I feel like I used to when I was in class 11, spending hours upon hours with nothing but music by my side.
4. Music is the life of my soul.
5. I basically don't do anything. I just think and dream and listen. To music.
6. I realized all the things people said about owning a computer were right after all.
7. I'm not good at chatting with people online.
8. All I care about is how much music I listen to before dying.
9. The Beatles rock. But the Rolling Stones rock too. And Dylan is the only guy who can make you feel happy about being a loser.
10. I'm an ass.

Somebody to Love

2009-04-19T07:21:00.003+05:30

A friend tells me not to do it. Another friend tells me to write about it. Yet another friend finds me writing about it interesting. So here goes.

I pull it in. I pull more of it in. 'Behind Blue Eyes' playing in the background. A white, bright summer morning. Hot, unwashed, bearded men on the steps pulling it in.

The world is going round, or maybe I'm going round the world.

'Somebody to Love'. A girl singing 'Don't you want somebody to love?'. That makes it wildly more interesting and pulling than a man singing it. Don't you think? Oh man, the 60s. When music made sense, when people did what they wanted to do. Beautiful, utopian, wild, dirty times. When girls sang to you about wanting somebody to love.

Funny thing. People asking me whether I want somebody to love, when it's the only thing I want. I want all the love the world can give me. Well, I don't mind it coming from one person. No, I won't mind it at all.

I feel happy in a strange way. It's all about freedom. It's all about writing. It's all about friends. It's about so many things.

The Beats rocked. They just rocked. They knew what they wanted to do. And they did it. They just made so much sense. They wrote things as they came to them. They never 'thought'. They only felt.

And I feel.

Man, I'm such a wannabe.

The A-Z Question

2009-03-29T04:59:00.002+05:30

A 26 word story, with the first word starting with A, the second with B, and so on.

--

Anamika, bruised, celebrated dark evenings, feigning gleeful happiness, insincerely joking, knowing love means nothing. Orko, peaceful, quiet, reassured, spent tiring, utopian, vivacious weekends, Xena yelping zealously.

The Man, the Voice

2009-03-24T03:55:00.001+05:30

Bob Dylan.

The Nice Guys

2009-03-03T01:45:00.003+05:30

This is to the guy who wrote this brilliant article. This really should be a benchmark for articles in college publications from now on. Absolutely perfect writing. Hats off!

http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~jenf/writing/rant04.html

Memento

2009-02-18T10:47:00.002+05:30

The morning was cool and the moon had not left its place in the sky. No. It was positively chilly. I was shivering.

I was walking down a ragged country road. I walked with a rhythm, enjoying the silence. I looked not ahead but into the book open in my hands.

Presently, I looked up and noticed I was approaching a fork in the road. On the other road, I saw a girl coming. It was some moments before I realized we were headed for the same place – the hill ahead.

As the road started getting steeper, I closed my book. As it happened, she was walking right beside me. I stole glances at her. It was fine since she wasn’t looking back at me.

As he top got nearer, I started puffing. My only consolation was he view once we got to the top. Lilies. Yellow lilies all around. Beautiful yellow lilies shining in the sun. I took in the view and the sunshine for a minute, and walked on.

It wasn’t until I got back to level land that I realized I didn’t have my book. I looked back to see her coming towards me. She handed me my book, smiled and walked on.

I opened the book to find a lily inside. I held up the lily against the sun-bathed hill-top and realized it had not paled even though the sun had left it.

Book in my pocket, lily in my hand, sunshine in my eyes, spring in my step, dreams in my heart. I walked along the ragged country road.

The Feeling of Knowing That You Know

2009-02-10T02:53:00.002+05:30

"... ahh the feeling. Oh fuck. Oh fuck, it's here. Where are my feet going? Am I going where they are going? And why the trees swaying like mad?..."

"... Imagine there's no heaven... you may say I am a dreamer but I'm not the only one... "

"... I am gonna write about this when I go back. As soon as I get back. This is gonna be fun. People are gonna read this twenty years from now, and say it's the best thing that happened to the world after John Lennon... "

"... I simply know Revolver was about this. You've got to do it to know it. Now I know what the sitar meant in Tomorrow Never Knows... and yeah, the backward tape in it too... "

"... Is this bad for me? Fuck it, it wasn't bad for Lennon..."

One cool night under the stars. One cool moment under the yellow lamp above me. With one hot stick between my lips.

Antaragni

2008-11-30T16:35:00.003+05:30

I know this is about a month too late. But I just had to write this, and better late than never. This year's Antaragni was just plain awesome. And I mean it was awesome for me. I don't know about anybody else.

I was very excited from the start as I had a very good friend coming over for four days. I knew it was gonna be great fun. And on top of that, I had 36 hours of live music on my hands - courtesy Synchronicity.

Synchro started in the evening with 5 bands performing in the first round. It was great fun, having so many good bands to perform right on front of you. I've been a rock lover for a few years now. But the summer of 2008 will always be my 'Summer of Love', the time I will always look back at and remember as the time when rock music really became a part of my life.

So Synchronicity was going to be the highlight of Antaragni for me. We just had the time of our lives, headbanging to the music, watching the bands' antics, and enjoying every moment of it.

After the first evening, it just kept getting better. My friend from arrived from Delhi late at night. It was 4 in the morning. I was one of the very few people still awake in my hostel, when he and a couple of his friends joined me. We had a chat for a couple of hours. It was beautiful. Pure beautiful.

When I first came to IIT Kanpur, the thing I missed the most was not my parents, my home, or my school. It was my old friends and my city that I yearned for the most in those painful first few weeks here. That night in my room, at 4 o'clock in the morning was the first time IIT Kanpur truly became my home. It was the presence of 3 Delhiites, who talked like me, joked like me, laughed like me, had the same issues with life, and had the same dreams, on the landscape of IITK which transformed it. When they left to sleep, and I was alone again, I noticed that I looked at the place in a different light now. The fact that a couple of hours' worth conversation could have such an impact was remarkable, if not astonishing.

I spent a lot of time with them during the next couple of days. We talked like we were old friends. I guess only people who come from the same place can do this. They liked IITK and this made me even happier as I now I have a piece of my heart bonded to this place. I have come to love it just like my old home.

The guys from Delhi left a day before the end of Antaragni. On the last day, I took part in a very exciting quiz, and soon after it was time for the grand finale - Glyder (an Irish rock band) opened by the winners of Synchronicity. I loved all the bands that performed, in particular 'Rosemary'.

Antaragni ended with some seniors ragging us (imagine that; I am a second-year now). It was pure fun. We were a bunch of ten guys being ragged by ten seniors. They made us do all kinds of weird things, which ranged from proposing to the girls sitting around to asking muscular guys for a puff of their cigarettes.

All in all, I will remember it as one of the best four days of my lifetime. During my first few days here, a senior told me that the four Antaragnis are the best 16 days of an IIT Kanpur student's life. I never believed it. Then, Antaragni '08 happened.

Hoping to better it next year.

Talking Post-Sem Blues

2008-11-26T04:49:00.003+05:30

The end-sems ended today. I feel like I've lost something big. I haven't felt lower than this in a lifetime. Somebody please say something to brighten me up.

Watched Khuda Kay Liye. Awesome movie.

Blowin' In The Wind

2008-11-24T12:39:00.003+05:30

I've been wanting to do this for some while. Start a music blog. No, I'm not giving online guitar lessons. I'm still taking them.

It's going to be about the music I listen to. No, the music I live on.

www.simplytuneful.wordpress.com

This is gonna be exciting.

I Can't Stand Sudoku

2008-10-20T02:57:00.000+05:30

I can't believe how Sudoku has become one of the best-loved pastimes today, but it has. This game of numbers has nothing to do with mathematics, and it's so boring, I can't stand it for even 5 minutes, let alone solve several puzzles for days on end, like most Sudoku freaks do. To start with, it was just a craze with a few people in Japan, apparently. Then it spread around the world, and numerous newspaper started printing daily puzzles.

My problem with Sudoku is that it doesn't take any imagination. You have mastered the puzzle as soon as you have worked out its two or three mundane basic principles. After that, it's just mindless and boring repetition.

Around a century ago, people went crazy about another newspaper puzzle - cryptic crosswords, often called the king of all word games. It spread around Britain very quickly but for some reason couldn't quite do the trick in America. It's sad that this very enjoyable pastime is losing the war to Sudoku, of all the mindless creations of man.