ENTROPIA

Dear Rebecca Black,

2011-04-04T15:30:00.002+05:30

When I was in third grade, Shalini Menon sat to my right. A sweet midget for a girl with buck teeth, she would walk into class every day with her hair doused in enough oil to tempt Iran into digging a pipeline through her head. To my left sat Tarannum Jalil. I don’t remember much about her, except thinking that if I smelled like that, my mother would put me in the pile that ‘does not go in the machine’.

We were healthy children, the three of us, which made our seat the sturdiest, non-wobbliest bench in all of III C. Which made things harder for me.

You see, I sat in the middle.

Fiercely pungent jasmine hanging onto bobbypins greased with enough coconut oil to make Kerala proud, alongside the visual treat of it all slurp and drip down onto Shalini’s ear, to my right.

To my left, decomposing humus dripping out of sweat glands as large as holes in a Chetan Bhagat plot, aiming at my general direction. That and a perpetual dry cough after which I’d see Jalil wiping her hands on her skirt from the corner of my eye.

Whom do I sit closer to?
On what side do I keep my bag?

Then, Black, I had to make a decision.
And decision making, I did.
I decided. I became a decider.
I had to make a choice. And I made a choice.
I chose… to make a decision.

(Gimme a hand here, Rebecca - you’re the one good at repetition.)

Thing is, Rebecca, I was once a kid, too. And kids let parents take whimsical decisions for them. Mine put me in a school where hygiene standards were excused every third bench or so. Yours paid a dumbfuck with a broadband connection and a YouTube account $2000 to make you whine about eating your cereal and bunking school so you could sit in a parked car in front of a green screen.

It’s not your fault. My mom told me that I looked beautiful in a tulip costume for a fancy dress parade. Your mom told you that you could sing. Moms. Liars. Sadistic pre-menopausal dingbats with too much time and TiVo. Though its ages since, I’m still called Worm in a Tomato in some circles. Take my word for it, they’ll be calling you a talentless hack for years to come.

So now you know. Don’t trust your parents. If they knew better, they’d ground you for driving around with other licence-less juvenile delinquents looking to score on a school day. Or for being 13 and capable of only listing the days of the week in the right order.

Heard of algebra? What’s (a + b)²?

No, Black. The answer’s not Pomegranate.

Take my advice. Don’t leave it to your parents this time with all the thinking you’re doing about your next number. Take a decision and don’t do that second song. I mean, you spent, what 5 minutes figuring if you should take the front or the back seat, right? Take some time to think about this, too. Take a break. Take away. Take 500 ml oestrogen. You’re making us all seem like the pathetic race we are, hating a 13 year old.

Bad decisions can fuck you up. I still have the acne scars on my right cheek to prove it.

Waiting till you're 18 so I can abuse the fucking crap out of you,

Rae.

(I haven't put in the link to Rebecca Black's 'Friday' because this is a letter to her, and I presume she's already seen it. Look for it on YouTube. But because I love you, here's a video of a monkey screwing a goat and its pretty much the same thing.)

2010-09-27T17:21:00.000+05:30

They're Back!

2010-09-15T00:47:00.003+05:30

Just what i needed to get back to writing. A visit from Mom and Dad.

DAY 1:

“Rae, why is there an armchair in the balcony?”

“Hi, Dad.”

“Ya.

But why is there an armchair in the balcony?”

“Because I like to sit there.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because means?”

Yeah.

It took about fifteen minutes to explain that I didn’t like to explain. Ten minutes later I succumbed. I told him that when I found the time, I sat down in my balcony in the evenings with my coffee, surrounded by my little pots of jasmine, tulsi, germanium and mint, staring into September rains, thinking thoughts I shouldn’t, dreaming smaller than I should, romanticising the mundane that my life has decayed into. Quite pleasurable.

He listened to me, an imagination of sorts growing in the space between him and me. Then he frowned, winced and continued.

“But WHYIYEE?”

DAY 2:

“I made dosa!”

These were the first words I heard on Sunday. My only weekend off after 3 months of gruelling deadlines, meetings, bad campaigns, dying ideas and senseless headlines on baseless ads, I intended to live my weekend to the fullest – in my sleep. But she made dosa. At 7 a.m.

“Awesome! I’ll wake up and eat, Amma.” I manage.

“IT WILL BECOME COLD!!!!!! EAT AND SLEEP!!!!”

I didn’t fight it. I knew she was only going to get shriller. Plus, she was on holiday, technically. (Yes, vichchoobhai, I’ve gotten more patient with age.)

So I kicked off my sheets and sleepily dragged a foot off the bed. Halfway vertical, my dad walks in.

“AGAIN SLEEPING?? WHY YOU ARE GOING TO BED?????”

Grrrrr.

DAY 3:

“I repaired the fan in our room!”

“There was nothing wrong with it, Dad.”

“No. I changed the capacitor! Now it goes faster!”

Sigh.

“Ok, Daddy. Thanks.”

*move to my room*

*lie down*

*notice my fan*

*it doesn’t work*

“Dad, what’s wrong with my fan?”

*blink*blink*

“It doesn’t have capacitor.”

DAY 4:

Dad loves my cooking, he says. Which the sweetest thing he’s said in 26 years and 4 days.

So I decide to cook him something.

“What do you want for dinner?” I ask.

“Burger!” he chirps.

So I get down to making a list of things I need for our sophisticated family dinner. My mother accompanies me to a supermarket nearby, while I leave my dad, quite hesitantly, at home. I’m sure he was hiding a screwdriver behind his back when he waved us goodbye.

“Do we need this?” she asks, pointing at frozen burger patties.

“No, we don’t, Amma. I’m making them myself”, I proudly reply.

“Chicken?”

“Yes, chicken.”

“When you’ll get married?”

“In.. huh???”

The next hour around the aisles is a bit hazy. Between ‘Detergent’ and ‘Dairy Products’, I remember a rhetoric discussion about my darkening lips and unkempt hair which were doing absolutely nothing for my 26 years of age. I was going to end up unmarried and unhappy – an old woman with 17 cats and arthritis and a monthly subscription to Fine Garden and Kids These Days.

But the burgers came out nice.

They’re here another two days. I’m at work and will be, till at least 3 a.m., hoping against hope that she hasn’t rearranged my cupboard, he hasn’t rearranged my furniture, fixed my laptop or attempting to fix my life.

Another two days.

Gonna miss them.

The Indian Octopus

2010-07-12T12:39:00.006+05:30

It is true. It exists. And likes samosas. And fries. And frankies.
Except on Thursdays.

9:38 F - C.S.T

2009-11-20T12:10:00.003+05:30

For those of you who’ve never been in war, suffered from gastroenteritis, been trapped in an old phone booth with four others and for some godforsaken reason decide you want to know what it feels like, get into the Women’s Compartment of a Mumbai local. Feeling reckless? I’d recommend a Fast to CST.

I don’t know about you, but before I venture into unchartered masochistic-candy store territories, I like to go on the net and look for advice. Like say, if I were holidaying in Kabul. Or Rawalpindi. Or just visiting parents. There’s tons of stuff you’ll find on the kinds of people you’ll meet, the experiences you can expect on great travel sites, but there’s nothing there for someone experimenting with getting into a Mumbai Local.

Just for you, in the name of humanity, science and adventure tourism, here’s a comprehensive list of what and who you’ll find in a Fast local to CST. Provided you manage to get in.

THE WHAT-YOU’LL FINDS:

1) The Train:
See the monstrous trail of red and white steel approaching your platform nonchalantly? That’s your train. Hopefully you’re standing at the right spot and you’ll catch the right compartment. If you’re a man, you can’t get into the women’s. If you’re poor, you can’t get into the rich’s. If you’re a woman and you’re rich, you can get in anywhere. But you won’t like it.

2) The Compartment:
Your typical compartment will be green in colour. Lime, enamel painted with and divided into two parts. The first part is for unfortunate commuters who couldn’t grab a seat and have to stand through the journey, and the other, the part with the seats.

This first part is designed to house an average of fifty healthy women standing shoulder to shoulder like a marching army. But that’s under standard test conditions. On an everyday basis, it houses about 125 women standing together, shoulder to armpit, nose to cleavage, eye to hair like the army broke into war. There’s seating for an average of 14 women, but don’t be fooled. At least 20 will squeeze in together and will occasionally butt jiggle to generate more space.

3) The Luxuries:
Four fans. Three won’t work. One will be redundant because you’ll have hot air blowing at your face from the doors.
Light sockets. The lights have been stolen.
A bag rack. Redundant again, because unless they’re carrying an inconveniently heavy bag, the women won’t want to part with them.

NOTE: Sometimes, the space the bag occupies can accommodate another person altogether. But don’t try explaining that to her unless you’ve taken your tetanus shot.

THE WHO-YOU’LL FINDS:

1) The Wannabe Pole Dancer (A.K.A Chhat pe Baal Sukhhane Waali):
This kind of commuter stands by the door of the train, holding onto the supporting rod in the middle of the doorway. The WPD will hold onto the rod for dear life, for two reasons. Either she is sticking her head out to catch fresh air as the train zooms past stations or she’s drying her hair. The WPD is ferociously aggressive about her position in the train and if you take her place when she moves aside to let someone alight or board (which she rarely does), she just might topple you down. DANGER *****

NOTE: If your platform’s crowded and you see a WPD at the door as your train approaches, you will not be able to get in unless you find a way to squirm in through her blocking the doorway, or blindly push and climb in yourself. WPDs don’t like large women and won’t fight back if you growl and yell back when they turn to abuse you.

2) The Gibraltars / Water Buffaloes in a Sari:
Of all the commuters on a Fast Local, the Gibraltars are pretty safe. These are women who will get into a train in a burst of energy, and once in, will freeze to the spot. If you’re behind one, and are close to the door, a Gibraltar can be a pain in the backside because you can’t move ahead, nor can you take a step back. But if the Gibraltor is behind you, you’re pretty sorted for the rest of the journey because no one’s going to be able to push and shove at you. Mostly sari clad, early 40s with a minimum of three bags that will inevitably land on your foot. DANGER: *****

3) The Ultrasonic Princess from ‘The Princess and the Pea’:

The UPFPP is the most irritating, yet the safest commuter on board the Fast Train to CST. Just like in the story, she is as delicate and fragile as a quitting smoker’s willpower. Just looking at her can hurt her, making it easy to spot one. But be warned, through all the UPFPP’s weaknesses, she possesses a glass-shattering scream that she is not afraid to use. Trip on her toes? Almost trip on her toes? Think you’d trip on her toes if it weren’t for the sea of people between you? Duck and cover your ears before your brain cells shut shop and call a strike. She going to scream and whine and yell and cry and call an ambulance and keep at it till you desert her line of vision. DANGER: *****

4) The Seat Scavenger:
Ever seen a hungry cougar chasing a leg of lamb in its own thought bubble? Neither have I. I have seen the Seat Scavenger though, and that’s about all I can take. She’ll enter the train in a hurry and before she can stop walking, piling on, pushing and shoving her way in, she’ll point at random seated people and demand to know where they’re getting off. Assuming they’re getting off not a while from now, she’ll ‘book’ the seat. But she won’t stop there. She’ll book at least 5 other seats and finally catch one. When she’s finally got a seat, she call on other seated people and ask where they’re getting off. She’ll keep jumping, like Mario in the game, till she eventually gets off. Occasionally, you could confuse her for being a Gibraltar because she’ll refuse to move from in front of her reserved seats, restricting movement for the others. Owing to this trait, she can sometimes be solely responsible for your not being able to get off. DANGER: *****

5) The Premature Line-Uppers: (A.K.A Station Autophobics)

Say you get into the train at Point A and your destination is Point Z (which isn’t an exaggeration). I would get up, or start moving towards the door after Station Y passed me, so I’d be at the door when Z came. But that’s just me. I’ve seen some people stand at the door before Point Y, some when Point X brushed past us. That’s not the case with the premature Line-Uppers. They crowd the doorway by Station K. Like crowd it up so whoever is getting off at K is forced to climb atop them and get off with a ripped blouse. I call it paranoia. They call it being in time.

NOTE: Never call a PLU home for dinner. They’ll probably land up by breakfast and watch you eat in preparation for the evening. DANGER: *****

Then there are the non-dangerous types like the Sleepy Droolers , the Possessive Handle Holders, the Over Shoulder Readers – all self explanatory. There are also the iPod and Phone Radio variety besides the Open Mouth-Stare into Space commuters.

There’s my list for now. Now that you’re all equipped with information, hop on. If you find yourself with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, give me a buzz and I’ll drop you a couple of numbers.

NOTE: Stay away from the Moody Xena Elbow Puncher. And don’t call me Aunty.

Chronicle of the Mysterious Son's Mother's Death

2009-11-10T22:58:00.004+05:30

Yes, I have been reading Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes lately. No, I haven’t yet bought a pipe.

I always have something to say after I’m back from visiting home. No different this time. If my parents realized how eventful their lives were compared to mine, they’d probably call me ten times lesser than they normally do – in a day, that is. Which would still make it 90 calls, but I’d be grateful.

That Saturday morning, the phone woke us up at about 6:30 a.m. For some reason that makes sense on Mars, my mother won’t let me close my bedroom door at night. So when that irritatingly long, shrill ring began outside in the hall, I had no option but wake up.

My mother walked into my room looking like a million dollars, sleepwalking, fumbling steps, hair in her mouth. She lay down beside me grumbling to herself. From the familiarly long and loud “Hellooooooooooooooo?’ outside, I figured my father had received the phone.

“Salaaaaam Alaikoooooom!”

My mother sighed. I pulled a pillow over my head. But nothing could drown my dad’s excited voice.
When he goes “Salaam Alaikum”, we know there’s a louder, longer, high-pitched conversation following.

“I’ll bet you someone’s dead.” My mom muttered.

“What?”

“Someone’s dead. Probably conked off last night in his sleep.” She explained.

“Eeks! Really?!”

“Why else would anyone call this early?” she reasoned.

We both went quiet, trying to make sense of the conversation outside. Not that it took much effort, considering my father was by now unconsciously challenging Pavarotti for a duel.

“Ho? Ho? Phir? Haan…

haan… haan….

Hmm…. Hmm…

haan..

ho..

ho…

ALLALLAH!!!!!”

My mom turned around and pulled her pillow over head too.

“Told you.” She said.
When my dad dropped the phone, it was close to 7 a.m. Mom got down to making us breakfast and I sat reading the paper in the kitchen.

Outside, we could hear my dad’s fast approaching footsteps. I pulled my paper closer trying hard to look like nothing was important to me right now than the state of affairs in Waziristan.

“Rae! Come on! Come on! Get ready!” he yelled.

“Where to?” my mother volunteered.

“Qasi’s mother died!”

“Who?” she asked again.

“Qasi’s mother!!!!!!!!!”

Some quiet followed as everyone paused to contemplate the situation.

“But who is Qasi?”

My dad shifted balance, patted his own head for a moment and squinted like he normally does in deep thought. I looked over the edge of my paper to see what was happening. My mother was looking at him confusedly, my father, just looking confused.

“You don’t know him.” He said, after some deliberation.

Needless to say, I was dragged into the affair of the mysterious man’s mother’s funeral.

Once there, we ran into a bunch of relatives hovering around the place making small talk. My father’s younger brother was running around with a tray of refreshments for the guests/attendees/audience. On the ride to the venue, I was told that he was the one who had called my dad in the morning. And everyone else who landed up there. Seemed like something he enjoyed doing. The Official Announcer of Funerals.

“Chacha, who is Qasi?”, I gingerly asked, picking a paper cup from his tray.

He looked around like he was about to cross a road. Then, he gestured in the direction of an old gentleman sitting at the head of the large dining table, surrounded by friends and family.

“Him.”

“No, no… I mean.. how are we related to him?”

“How means what?”
That’s one question that doesn’t make sense, forget having an answer to it.

I wandered back to my father. He was talking to another random person I couldn’t recognize. They were discussing the deceased woman’s painful life, her young days and how she loved Qasi a lot. Someone suggested Qasi didn’t do much for her aging mother and hence she died of grief and ill health. Of course, her being ninety three years of age had nothing to do with it.

“Dad!”

“Yes?”

"Is she your aunt?”

“Who?”

“The woman who… expired.”

“Oh.. Qasi’s mother?”

“Yes.”

“No..”

“So we’re not related to them?”

“No, no, we are.. they stay here.. I used to stay there… 5 minutes away.”

“So you were neighbours?”

“No, no, more than neighbours.”

“Friends?”

“No re! Relatives!”

“How?!”

“Arrey! How means what?”
If I ever find myself making the same statement, I’m going to sue my genes.

The funeral ended, but I wasn’t allowed to see Qasi’s mother and Qasi was too busy for me to go upto him and give him my condolences. So I gave them to his wife instead who took them with a quizzical smile which told me she was wondering who the hell I was.

Event done, tired mother, bewildered me and excited father drove back home. As we got home, I asked my dad a question I could rid myself off.
“Dad? What was Qasi’s mother’s name?”

“Ameena.”

“That’s his wife’s name.”

“Oh.” He said, and embarrassed, whipped out his phone.
“SALAAAAAAM ALAIKUUUUM!!!!!!”

RIP, Qasi’s mother.

I have no clue who you are, but God keep your soul well.

I’m sure she’s up there going, “Thanks. But who the hell are you?”

Friday Night

2009-11-04T23:30:00.001+05:30

Outside my window, it is a Friday night. It’s a deep blue night, with little lit squares in the skyline. From up here, the road is an electric snake, a carnival of cars moving along the stretch in unison. I can see little people walking on the pavement, some hand in hand, some distanced, some in a great rush to get somewhere. It is a Friday night, and Friday nights are never dull.

For the strangest of reasons, I find myself suddenly feeling very small. Not just in person, but in dimensions of space as well. Kind of like I’m collapsing into myself. The familiar feeling of nonsensical sadness sweeps over me and I walk over to the balcony aimlessly. I know I’m searching for something, but I can’t tell what it is. I take a deep breath, take the city into my lungs. It smells of exhaust fumes and fine cement, dust and fatigue.

Two years ago, this is how I built my familiarity with Mumbai. In her smell. She smells like a fake bride, I remember thinking, though I still don’t know what that really means. I got off the plane, collected my baggage and walked out into the city, excited, nervous, upset.

A friend had arranged a home for me in Mumbai. I was told it was impossible for a single woman to land a good place, unless it was in one of the flashier suburbs. Nonetheless, he found me a nice place that fit my budget. It overlooked a hill and was in a pleasant neighbourhood. There was an ATM five minutes away, and a share-rickshaw stand just outside the building. You could only share a rickshaw with others if you were riding to the Central Station. It cost only Rs.4 per passenger. That’s a mere Rs.120 a month. From there, I’d take the train to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, an hour away. That would cost Rs.520 a month. So together, that’s Rs.640 to get to office. Plus Rs.900 a month to get back to the station and take the train home.

I have no idea why I’m thinking of this right now.

I look down my balcony again. The vegetable vendor I buy my groceries from is still there, outside the gates. The cigarette guy I frequent is also around, looking down at the street. I wonder if he and I are seeing the same thing. Of course we are, I think. Nothing has changed from the last time I looked around consciously. Cars are still flowing like a lit waterfall down the road, the skyline is still ablaze with yellow white lights. People are still rushing to get someplace in a hurry.

I jump.

Build me a Vlilage and Call me a Geek.

2009-01-30T10:46:00.004+05:30

It took me ages to come out with it. I am finally ready to confess.

I am a geek.

But before you judge me, I have to make my stand clear. Out here, in the world of flesh, blood, bank balance, terrace homes and 8’o clock news, I’m an everybody. I’m someone who believed I had an identity owing to my unique DNA and hair do. I have dreams, and I believe I will one day achieve them, and the world will watch as I levitate up the ladder of personal success. Just like every other unique idiot around me.

But in the virtual world, I am secretly a warrior. A brave warrior of three founding villages and an average population of 650 in each settlement. I wisely chose to hone defense over crop/lumber/clay production and then blindly raided and plundered every other villager in sight to feed my army. I am a Hittite. A Genghis Khan of cyber space strategy gaming portals. The Angulimaal of the virtual wars. My name brings shudders to people’s servers and they beg for my non-existent mercy over mails and portal chats.

Warrior Rae.
Founder of the villages Warrior Monks, Saints of Gaiah and Armorica.

Warrior Rae.

“Name yourself!”
“Warrior Rae!”

“Name your Alliance!”
“N16 and the Guardians back Warrior Rae! Withdraw your troops immediately!”

“Submit!”

“Never! The Saints of Gaiah and her 3500 Phalanxes will never submit! Remember, Warrior Monks and Armorica have a large army, too!”

“No, you idiot! The final ad! Submit it!”

*Blink* *Blink*

“Oh. The ad?”

“Yes?”

“Can I send you crop instead?”

I have just deleted my travian.com account. Clicking on ‘delete account’ took me back in time to the time I had to say goodbye to my best friend at the airport thirteen years ago. I knew I would never see her again, but I told myself reality was never as important as hope.

This hurt more.

So I sat down to mail everyone I attacked, traded with and befriended - my fellow warriors, soldiers and generals of multiple villages, like myself. It hurt to say goodbye, but it is the code of a true warrior. It is honourable and courageous to quit when you know you have given the battle all you have, to step down and gracefully exit when your time has finally come to……

“…. In deep gratitude, I remain…?”

My collegue was reading over my shoulder. I grinned before he could call everyone around to check my screen. Yeah. That’s your laugh for the day. Suckers.

“Warrior Rae of Saints of Gaiah…?”

He looked me in the eye, like he found this scarier than funny.

“Are you serious? Like Gaiah.. the Earth….? Like in God of War II? The Titan God chick who helps Kratos get back at Zeus?”

I smiled. What a geek.

Things I Don't Get - II

2008-10-21T11:06:00.004+05:30

So I still don’t get too many things. A friend under the influence of much too much cheap wine and The Simpsons’ reruns once told me, “You can either be happy or you can be intelligent.” Apparently, I’m happier now. Either that, or I’m sleepwalking my way to work everyday.

This city isn’t making any sense to me. Not the culture, not the intolerance, not the fact that everyone knows the directions to everywhere. And worse still, some more things I don’t get.

I don’t get the meaning of “Ya?”

So… what part of speech really is this? Who the hell ever thought this was a cool way to figure out if people were really listening?

“So, I was trying to crap, ya?”

Why it this a question? How the fuck do I know?!

I’ve had full blown conversations with this woman who says it like it’s a comma. And a full stop. And a capital. And the three dot thingy, the “…”. Not to forget the long 'yaaaaaaa…' when she’s trying to figure out what to say next. Honest to God, every time she asks/tells/demands a response, I have no clue what to say. So I finally gave in till we sounded like two ducks in a pond you threw popcorn at.

“Dad wasn’t gonna hear me out, ya?”
“Ya.”
“So I told him to just let me live my life, ya?”
“Ya.”
“So.. yaaaaaaaaah!”
“Ya.”
“Ya?”
“Ya.”
“What are you yaaahing about?”
“I dunno, do ya?”
“Yeah.”
"Ya?"

She doesn’t get me either, these days.

I don’t get music in lifts.

Really, I appreciate your concern. But I am NOT GOING TO KILL MYSELF OUT OF BOREDOM in those 15 seconds in the lift. What is with that?! And why, WHY Kenny G? Why polyphonic phone ring tones? And why, of all, the tune of BHAJANS????

I can imagine hoteliers supervising their restaurants being designed. They turn to their architects and interior designers and in that one moment of utmost malice and vengeance for all the soon to be broken glasses, the returned too salty-too old-this is not what I ordered dishes, the unflushed floaters on antibacterial crap-pots (another thing I don’t get, but will not bother talking about) smiling villainously and going, “Make the lift out of glass. Thin glass. Make it move sloooooow. And get my Anup Jalota tape from the car.”

Liftmen offsprings will evolve with smaller ear lobes. And have inflexible lips cos they don’t smile anyway.

I don’t get idioms in conversations.

I remember this ad that showed up in Bangalore a couple of years ago. It was like the copywriter found his inspiration in a Preeti Sagar’s Jargon Soup for a Chicken’s Soul.
It went thus.

“Imagine!

The apple of your eye…Your home…. Being eaten like a MOTH.. Called GEYSER!”
No! NEVER!”

And this was an ad for a solar heater. More shocking, this was an AD.

So maybe he didn’t put those idioms to good use. But why do people use idioms to talk to one another? I get it if you’re writing it, that’s a disease I too, have. But why when you’re TALKING??? Language evolved to communicate simple things.
Burp means “Thank you, that was delicious.”
A fart means “I’m comfortable around you.”

Simple sentences are ‘I want.’
I want food.
I want more food.
Gimme pizza.
Fuck off.

See? Simple. I understand these. Then my boss comes around and says this.

“Its like sex on toast, guys! Just do the biggie bag and turn over, ad the chicken’s done. No need to arm wrestle deadlines, just put an enema in the soup and we'll touch base later.”

Whatever, ya?

Things I don't get

2008-10-06T10:18:00.005+05:30

I'm in a George Costanza meets Stewie Griffin kind of mood. Not 'meet' per say... more like a tip of the hat as you pass by kind of meet. Or like a half smile like your botox is doing nothing for you as you see each other on the road but don't bother to talk kind of meet.

Yeah.. So you get the idea.

I'm in the mood to rave and rant and complain and crib and roll in the mud and whine, so really, this weekend, let's not meet. I am kind of pissed off/frustrated/ don’t really care but makes for good time pass on the long journey to work on board smelly train/ about some things that I’ve recently begun to pay attention to, and the list is growing as enormously long and intolerable as is this sentence. Just to prove I am not neurotic, (shut up Mother, what do you know) I’ve compiled a brief list of things I don't get. So seriously, for the sake of whatever's left of my sanity, tell me if it’s just me.

I don't get Vodafone Customer Care
So this woman calls me up the other day from Vodafone. Her name is Ujwala. I hope you're reading this, UJWALA.
"Your outgoing has been barred because you've exceeded your credit limit, ma'am." Ujwala says.
"But my bill's due only next week! I've never paid late, why have you barred my calls?" I argue.
"Ma'am, please call customer care and clarify it with them." Ujawala smartly replies.
"Aren't you customer care?"

Ujwala blinks so hard it causes a hurricane in Australia.
"Ma'am, please call 111."

"I can't. You've barred my outgoing." I say politely.
Ujwala hangs up on me.
Ujwala Ujwala Ujwala Ujwala. Bitch.

I don't get actors crying at the movies.
Even better, actors crying at their own movies. Why, exactly?

I don't get buzzers at the Moment of Truth
This is a game where the toughest answers is a "Yes" or a "No". And there's no 'I dont remember" or "Because she told me to." You say the truth, you sell your privacy, self esteem and life for a million dollars. Sounds like a deal.
"Do you purge to lose weight?"
The audience awwws and gasps and chokes on a pretzel as the competitior looks confused into the camera.
The obviously like duhuhuh! bulimic competitor refuses to answer cos her anorexic sister hits a buzzer yelling, "Don't answer that!"

Now really! Does she? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! I guess we'll never know.

I don't get scam.
It feeds me. But I still don't get it.

More coming right up. Honestly, IU]'m gonna keep ranting cos there's no one more perplexed and irritated like I am, right now. But I gotta go cos I've to get into a meeting that I don't get. But thats for the next post.

The BIg Black Lie

2008-08-01T13:19:00.005+05:30

So a neon sign rendition of Priyanka Chopra sauntered around a neon sign rendered city, crooning seductively about her new found beauty. Apparently, she found it in Unilever’s Pandora Box, hiding in a bathing soap called Lux Provocateur.

One boring Sunday noon, intoxicated with very, very flat beer and leftover macaroni from last night, my eyes lit, neon-signly. Whoever thought they’d play a soap ad on Cartoon Network, that too in the middle of ‘Courage, the Cowardly Dog’? I stood no chance against large media agencies.

To be fair to my cause, I wasn’t under the impression that I was made of rice lights, nor that I would magically turn into Priyanka Chopra if I bathed in Lux Provocateur. What fuelled my imagination was that the soap was black in colour.

Kaala Saabun, I thought. That’s dynamite’s nickname. Under the influence of Vijay Mallya’s only contribution to the world and the traumatic standstill of Sunday, my left brain gave way.

As fate had it, by evening, an empty fridge told me that the impending visit to the grocery store was now unprocastinatable, if there’s a word like that. So I went, heading straight for the booze.
POP and retail strategies are crafty, cunning and ruthless. They got me again. For, bang opposite my favorite wine section, stood a new brightly coloured standee.
The Lux Provocateur grinned at my hypnotized being, inviting, scheming. Unwittingly, I picked a dark chocolate coated pack and scanned the gold motifs on it.

Though I didn’t need a bath, I turned on the geezer. Ripped the package open, and the naked bar of black soap lay on my palm.

It didn’t look as exciting as I imagined.

Ssomething inside me began to break. I think it was the rumbling of my logic waking up.
Quickly, I began to look for a defense. What color could the lather be?!

White. Bubbles… small, tiny ones.
Like in detergent soap.
Like in hand wash.
Like in every friggin’ cleaning agent based discovery since soapnuts!

I am distressed, shattered and curse EVERYONE involved in the conception, inception, production marketing and stocking of the black wonderless bar of broken neon-signed dreams, false promises and white bland bubbles and… I HATE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate you Provocateur, you stupid spelled bar of Indian Ink! And Lux! You too! You betrayed me! You and your.. you.. black, black soaps and your celebrity caricature endorsed stupid… stupid slogans and baslines and.. and… what the hell does, ‘Ab Khoobsurati se darr kaisa?” even mean?!

Fuck you, Unilever! And all you motherfucking Js, Ws, and Ts of the world!!!! FUCK YOU ALL!!!

I’m back, Harmony! Love you dear, dear Harmony. Non-endorsed by deceiving celebrity, dirty font, cheaply designed pack of Harmony. Fruity, normal colored Harmony. And your lather has bigger bubbles too, and they’re a little red and orangey and.. and blue!

Eh… That’s a good thing, right?

Waiting Room

2008-06-24T19:59:00.001+05:30

Some years ago, I made a friend, with some effort, who told me how he hated the waiting room at the dentist’s worse than the experience of having his vulnerability shift from below his stomach to above his neck.

I’ve been to a dentist once or twice. I’m not sure when, but I remember it was the age just before a milk tooth hanging by a vein stops being cool. So I can’t remember if it grossed me out, but I know I pretended I wasn’t scared.

Coming back to my old friend. He was twenty two when he saw the dentist then, and since he didn’t have the advantage of age, the decision to set his jaw straight was his own. I still think that’s what scared him the most. That he couldn’t go home and tell his mother to compensate for the trauma with a hug and hot chocolate served in his brother’s mug. If being an adult sucks, pretending to be one is a black hole.

Apparently, the dentist excavated his mouth to find cavities you could look down into and see his spleen. His whitest tooth was ochre and the yellowiest was black. Like farmers in Haiti, his teeth fought with their neighbours for land and displaced the weaker ones, pushing them into the darkest recesses of his mouth, left to rot, thin and flaky.

For reasons I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, this relieved him. With a deep sigh that nauseated the flies on our table, he explained.

“You should’ve seen the room, Golly. It wasn’t even a room… It was a long corridor... kind of like a morgue. You can’t see the person next to you because you’re scared his teeth are worse, and if they’re not, you know you’re in deep s*it.

When the person next to you is called in… its like you shared a bunk in Hitler’s Extermination Camp. Your heart burns to see him go in. He gulps silently, looking at you, like to say, “I was a b*tch, brother. But I know you’ll miss me.”

The worst part is all that waiting time kind of gets your imagination running… dentists always look like nice people. Nice people who shine and polish sharp steel things that go in your mouth.”

He sipped some water and lit a smoke. His cigarette burning on both ends, he closed his eyes tight shut, like to see inside him.

That image is kind of frozen in my head, him lying back, eyes tight shut and exhausted, and it kind of thawed here and now. I’m in my own corridor of sorts, waiting. Now, I get what he meant when he said the dentist was scary, but waiting for him was just lethal. You can’t not wait, there’s no option. You can’t walk out because you know its bad enough for you to have finally come. You can’t barge in next either, because you’re still too scared.

Only, I don’t quite know what I’m waiting for. I guess its okay as long as nothing inside is rotting. Nothing’s displacing anything else.

My friend’s mouth now elsewhere, the city is less polluted. He never went back to the dentist, though he had scheduled an appointment for the next week. He felt guilty for a while and then stopped pretending to be a grown up.

“You’re allowed mistakes when you let your instincts make them.” He explained.
And he turned out alright.

I guess my nice people with polished steel thingummies will call me in soon or later. I just hope whenever they do, I have fewer battles inside me to show them. Until then, I’ll just have to close my eyes tight shut, look inside me, and wait.

Rotten Coffee Beans

2008-03-04T23:10:00.002+05:30

There's a beach close to my dad's village in South Canara. Strangely, its unnamed and not too many people know of it. You could keep driving down the coast and can see the wild Arabian Sea smashing against the rocks on one side. The road begins to narrow down and you realise the other side belongs to the River Suvarna, calm and childlike, streaming against your road. You keep driving down as the path narrows down and stops to meet the point where the river and the sea meet. Its a spectacular sight, really. Like from another planet.

When I got there, I knew I had to sit at the shore and just blankly stare at the water around me, but I was far too confused. To my left was the sea, the sea and the sea. It was vast and angry and powerful. It had tamed its shore to flow down softly into it and disappear under its blue. Somehow today, it was scary, like God is sometimes. Too big to love. Too powerful to be tender.

To my right, though, was the river. The femininity of Suvarna hit me immediately. An aimless drifter, she was ambition-less, childlike and careless and she loved every moment of the freedom her purposelessness gave her. She joined the sea with almost no struggle and made way for the massive white foam to hit her blue green tranquility defenselessly. It didn't matter anymore, as long as no one told her to stop flowing. She was scared, but she was just as curious.

Not thinking too much more, I sat down by the bank of my new found girlfriend and listened to the noises around. The moon was rising above the Suvarna and the refection of the setting sun on the Arabian Sea caught my eye. I needed to write, instantly, and it didn't matter if I wrote gibberish. It didn't matter if I tore it up later and hid my hopeless romanticism and less than none expressive skills. I'm still kind of spaced out though I'm back home now, and I hope to remain so for some time.

Make me a wave if you must make me an ocean.
Make me the wave nearest to the shore.
Make me white and make me break
So you can take me again and make me once more.

Make me a river if you must make me a sea.
Make me sleepwalk in the arms of the paths I choose.
Make me weaker than I know really I am
And let me cry for every dream I lose.

Make me a drop and let me forget.

Make me one with a thousand insignificances.

Let me lie here till I can't move anymore

Till all the ocean in me erupts into a thousand dances.

Family Learnings for 2008 - II

2008-01-19T02:01:00.000+05:30

And a brand new year is now almost a month old.

The first month of the year is almost done, and I'm exactly where I was five years back. Bored and dissatisfied. Somehow, I'd told myself this year would be my turning point. And I can't hear the truth in my own voice.

Even the advice that kept me entertained by the end of last year began to diffuse into prejudice. "Where will she listen to us?", as one said.
They finally figured I was probably not getting married in my one month here, since nothing seemed to be happening. I was still wandering about town without earrings and they got the clue. Yet, the visiting must go on.

My irritance seemed to surprise my father.
He didn't understand what the fuss was about my being angered at the way his family saw me.
He dressed in his best clothes all month and even bought new shoes since new relatives were being discovered. People we knew. People we hardly knew. People with new alliances with people we hardly knew.
Some, he explained, were people with our surname. Some had surnames with the same number of syllables.

Salivating, he looked up the directory to find numbers to new people he was going to inflict with his family's visit. More muruku-chai. More acquaintances. More return gifts of quarter a kilo of meat from the week faded Bakr-Id.
This was his true calling. Visiting people. Like Roshan Abbas who went cleaning strangers' toilets on TV at dinner time.

Angry, disheartened and feeling the irritance you can only feel for your parents, I rushed out of the house. Without my earrings.
That's when I met her.

Lesson #3
Courtesy: Animated Girl and her Frog Prince.

Telling myself to cool down, I walked down to a park near my house, which seemed reserved for only the young. I sat down as far as I could from the teething teenagers around and took a deeper breath than I could manage.
"F***, man! I swear.. like.. what the... S**t! What the f***!", I heard in part of a conversation in the background.

I heard her voice, and some some reason, it stuck in my head. My mind played games with me, trying to talk to me in her voice. I heard my mind say, "F**k, man. What happened to all the resolutions we made? And all the plans we had? Why aren't you going back? You'll never make it like this. The year's beginning is at the end of its month! I mean, like.. S**t, man!"

I sighed and waited a moment of blankness. I didn't know how to answer myself.
I kept to hearing her voice, outside. She was still exclaiming wildly. At the end of her minute long expletive song, she laughed.

Thats when I realised what about her voice hit me. I turned around to look at her and smiled to myself.

The Animated girl was no more than sixteen, with eyes so full of herself, it didn't matter who was watching her. She talked aloud and she talked on and on and on, descriptively and wildly with her hands, always listening to her own voice, watching herself speak, and loving every single moment of being her.

Her captivated audience was a young boy of her age or more, who escaped every word she threw at him and paid attention only to her. He smiled at appropriate moments and she carried on, and he followed her gaze whenever she broke. He adored her, that much he couldn't hide. She saw it and it pleased her, and she didn't hide it either. The Frog knew he was a Prince as long as She was with him. And she was determined to keep it that way.

For some reason, I was overwhelmed by just the sound of his forced laughs and her constant chatter. There was so much life in them. The world revolved only around them and no one else existed there. They were a different color from everyone else around. I wondered what it was that made them so different, what could I take, and my one month refused to let me 'youth'.

"I know. But I decided I would get over him by this year... and.. like.. I hate myself for..."
"Its still January."

She smiled at him and they were quiet for a bit. Before they resumed their rhetorical conversation, I wanted to leave.

I walked back home and found that Dad had changed into his chequered blue lungi.

"Aren't we going?"
He snorted angrily.

Mom told me later that the people my father planned to visit thought I was coming over to see their son. Like.. to marry him. Dad apparently explained to the embarrased hosts that that was not the case.
I laughed and laughed until I realised I sounded almost like the Animated Girl even outside my head. Dad snorted in anger again.

"What do they think! You're too young!"

Hope, I thought. That's what I can take. Minus a quarter kilo of mutton.

Family Learnings for 2008 - I

2008-01-04T23:28:00.000+05:30

2007 has left, clumsily, with the death of the last hope to a troubled neighbour. Bhutto was what sweaters around the waist are to inexperienced mooning sixteen year olds.

Nearer home, actually, at home, things were similarly distasteful, if not as fatal. I was turning twenty four on the eve of the new year, and since, unfortunately, it is not a very easily forgettable date, many concerned relatives decided it was time I was given advice. Since advice must be laughed at collectively and then secretly taken, I thought it best to share.

For the first time in four years, I spent my birthday and the succeeding New Year's with my parents. The fact that I came down and stayed with them for close to twenty days meant only one thing for the rest of my relatives. I was getting married.
Since my father is an ardent relative's-house-hopper, I happened to meet many kins of blood I either never knew or had forgotten had existed. But every time I did meet someone, valuable knowledge was passed down to me to carry along with many quarter kilo packs of mutton from Bakr- Id.

Lesson #1
Courtesy: Pale Lady of Market Circle

There's a reason I call her that. She is pale, and she lives in a market circle. Her house was the first my father dragged my mother and me in ball and chain to. She sat, very palely, of course, and smiled at us. When the tea and coffee discussion shifted drearily to the rising price of LPG and sugar and to Modi, she decided to focus her attention on me.
"So, your birthday is coming soon!"
I smiled like a kitten in a blanket.
"How old will you be?"
"24."
Her smiled melted into her white skin, leaving no trace it was ever there.
"Are you getting married?"
I looked at my mom and tried hard to not look at Dad. Then I smiled foolishly again. "Someday!" I said.
"Its already late, no?"
I saw myself in her eyes. My skin was in folded wrinkles, grey hair falling over my cataract blue eyes. My knees had been replaced twice and gold teeth shone when I sipped my sugarless, decoctionless, caffeine free tea.

The discussion shifted from me to parental responsibilities to an old unmarried relative in another part of town which my father secretly took note of. My mother squirmed uncomfortably as I held onto my walker and spat out my dentures.

As we were leaving, she handed me a quarter kilo pack of meat and spoke into my ear.
"Youth doesn't remain. Don't rely on it."

Lesson #2
Courtesy: The Noisy Hypochondriac

This too, is a reasonable nickname.

After an hour of watching her scurry about the house in diffrent directions still talking to herself, the walls, sometimes us and occasionally me, the Noisy Hypochondriac sat down. She confided in us about how she was certain she suffered from some fatal disease because she sneezed last year in the summer. And her doctor-he has wasted a valuable MBBS seat in his time. He was always certain everytime she had cancer that it was bronchitis.
Then, she turned to me.
"You'll be twenty two, day after, no?"
"No. Twenty four."
"You're worrying me." She suddenly looked many hours older.
She continued, holding her heart, controlling an attack. "Did you meet anyone?"
"I mean, did you meet any boys?"
"Huh?"
"Isn't that why you're here?"
"No."

Before she fainted, we decided to leave.

My mother shot murderous glances at my dad who was busy planning the next house visit. As she handed me my next quarter kilo of meat, she said to my mother and me.
"The older the girl is, even older the husband she will fetch."

There were many lessons more, but I will share them next time. For now, my old eyes water from the brightness of an old screen. Oh, woe! To be twenty four! But yet, I will wisen. I will learn, as I did this New Year and as I did from the Family. I learnt patience and tolerance and how to scratch your feet without seeming to do so.
And prominently, that it'll take you till twenty four to make half a kilo of mutton out of house visits.

Happy New Year!

Hair, The

2007-12-09T00:29:00.000+05:30

An idea struck me today, when a friend suggested we visit a hairdresser.
"Why don't you condition your hair.. and maybe style in with some Lorenza?", she said.

She also suggested, with utmost tact, some other very highly scientific procedures and path breaking technological breakthroughs that could make me look beautiful.

I had another idea. What if I shaved my head?

Generally, it is accepted that you live in the depths of you... a dimensionless centre between your face and the back of your head. The rest of the body is inconsequential to the person you are. The individuality you claim to own.
I'd think, then, that the 'who you are' is divided into you and your body.

I would love to believe that the centre of power, the nucleus of my self is that point between my eyes and the back of my skull. I live up there, I am the master of that gory space within. The dreams are mine, the nightmares are mine. Even reality is in my custody.

From this focal point, is supposed to stem a skull that grows dead cells for hair, something I've no control over, and shoots down below my throne, a neck that branches to limbs and an inconsiderate torso that collects fat in noticeable areas.

My body fails to recognize this monarchy. What's worse, the world seems to accept that my 'who you are' is not headed by me.

It's headed by my hair.

Providence has, from its basket of talent, skill and ecentricities, endowed me with a skull lushly planted with undisciplined hair with the character of vagabonds. That seems to be my quota. For ever since I can remember, my identity has been my hair. The rest of me, the core that is me, has been proved borderline non- existant. So much so, that my name registered synonymous with hair. I was synonymous with hair.

My ambition, as a child, was simple. My parents, like most South Indian parents, wanted me to be an engineer. My best friend wanted to be a fashion designer. My dog wanted to be fed. I wanted to be invisible.
That's all. Invisible. To be never talked of, heard of and cried upon. But that's what I wanted. What my hair wanted was different.

As children, we are subject to many sadistic decisions of those who control the world.
Like the rule in school that said girls with hair that touches their shoulders must have it braided. On either sides. With a blue ribbon. Like a disfigured piglet with long ears, only uglier.

My mother would begin to plait my hair every morning with a vengeance for maternal exploitation. She'd seperate each lock of the rebellion on my head like they were fighting back. Occasionally, a grunt escaped her nose as she wiped the bead of sweat on her temple while she was at it.

Such were my days, when I walked to my bus stop with TIGHT braids on either side of my ears, blood vessels popping up either side of my forehead.

"Here's Bushy!", I'd occasionally pretend to not hear, and stand alone in a corner waiting for the big yellow monster # 12 to turn up and carry thirteen other of us younglings to the school.

One day, my mother took me to a saloon. Unaccustomed to such sudden outings, I gleefully danced around her as we swam into the bright parlor.

"Hair cut for her." I heard my mother say as she pointed at my hair. Not me, mind you, at my hair.
The lady smiled. I can't remember her face now, but I remember the smile. It was thick and false from end to end. I decided we didn't like each other.

As I stared into the mirror, I realised, for the first time, that there was nothing about me that one could register for a face. Sure, I had eyes, and a nose and big ears, but so did my dog. The only thing about me that threw a party was my hair! It was now open and restless, standing in the air like it cared two hoots about the science of gravity. As I looked in the mirror, I saw my jet black character posing wildly over my head.

Snip snip.

In shock, I looked to the floor. The witch had cut my hair! It lay on the ground, some strands still at ninety degrees, even in death they wouldn't budge. I looked in the mirror again and flung a look at my mother, who sighed in relief of the thought that the next morning was free from the torture of combing.

I looked into the mirror again, and saw myself, my self, deviod of its leader. And then, I burst into tears. Crying and shouting, I sunk into the vastness of my chair and covered my face because there was no hair to hide it.

"What are you crying for? You look nice!"

I yelled in some barbaric dialect and ran out of the parlor, into the streets, into the world, leaderless, with no identity. No name synonymous with anything anymore. I was a speck. A matchstick with no phosporous. And then, I realised.
I was finally invisible.

Years have passed since that evening on the road where I cried in shame of the coup on my life. Years later, I've gathered more knowledge and useless information about life and the soul, and I'd like to believe I have a well defined 'who you are' now. But with me, so has grown my hair, something I still have no control over, niether in growth nor in behavior.

"So let's go tomorrow, then. I know a great place! And they specialize... in hair... like... yours..." My friend added, beaming helpfully.

I touched my head and pricked a finger. A couple of strands stood in victory of their retaliation, still painfully displaced from their rightful places on my scalp. The leader was still my hair. The nucleus of power beneath it squirmed in denial.

"I think I'll pass."

The Doll House

2007-10-26T19:00:00.000+05:30

We once lived in a big blue doll-house
With big wooden windows and thin flowery walls.
The outsides were open to children with free will
And the insides opened to pretty blue dolls.
On holidays, the children messed our hair and kissed us and dressed us with new blue suits.
And on days their mothers fed them milk, cookies and guilt, they drowned us with laughter in the nude.

We once lived in a big blue doll-house
Which was passed from Granny to Mama to the little girl in white
And each lived with us in the day
And left us alone in the dark by night.
We loved them all, Granny, Mama and little girl and we let them love us in their own way.
But one day, Mama decided that the little girl didn't do much but play.

We didn't understand their language much
Words are harder to understand than love.
But easier than all, is to feel hurt
As we felt, when our home came crashing down.

In a big brown box, they threw the home they broke.
The big blue windows, flowery walls and all.
And with our home they threw us in,
The ones they loved, their pretty blue dolls.

When they closed the lid, we cried in fright
We cried in fear of a never ending night.
They put our box on the roof to burn
Did we melt of anger or was it the sun?
We died for them, but they never thought us alive
Did they remember the love when they left us to die?
Did they ever remember how they dressed us and kissed us?
Did they ever hear our tears and cries?
Did they ever buy a new blue doll-house -
With blue pretty dolls in ribbons on chairs?
Did they dress their new toys in new blue suits
And drown them, laughing, naked and bare?

Do little girls in white always forget to love
When they grow into Grannies and Mamas too soon?
Do they always serve milk and cookies and guilt
So old pretty dolls can burn on the roof?

The Terrorist

2007-10-20T18:28:00.000+05:30

I detest the bearded man in white and his allies.
His heart is darker than the coal in his eyes.
I've decided he can never be my friend
He has far too many ghastly stories to tell.

When I pass his streets I am filled with vengeance
For the future murders he must contemplate
I can see slit throats and bloody bodies all over
his dirty and brightly colored neighborhood.

A cold shadow, my canopy, and his eyes meet mine.
Fragments of anger and chunks of fear, a shiver runs up my spine.
"What have I done that you hate me so?" his innocent eyes lie.
In silence I answer, my eyes search for his guns or his knife.

"You rape, you kill! You're a maniac, a fanatic!"
I scream in an after thought of impulse.
"You're a murderer, a lunatic, a disgrace to mankind! -
A mad man, if you will!"

He watches me in silence as my eyes begin to boil.
Till they boil and boil and boil and boil and
the froth of my hatred spills.
"You shouldn't be alive," I say, "each of you must die."

He nods and turns around and I can read his mind.
"You're a terrorist!" I shout, words he left behind.
But as he walks a defeated trail, I hear a wordless cry.
"You're as much a terrorist as me, maybe better than I."

Drama Queen

2007-09-29T20:44:00.000+05:30

Anna Karenina could not have been mere imagination, I decided. I was talking to her reference.

"Why didn't you call?"
" Was out."
"Where have you been???"
"Out."
"Why aren't you talking to me these days?"

Silence. It seems the safest option when you've nothing more to add. Silence is also a little like guerilla warfare. Unbeatable, unless the enemy can camaflouge himself like you do.

"You've no time for me." *Sob*

I 'Tch-ed' for a bit as I got back to reading an article on the net with the phone heating my ear lobe. The voice on the other end rattled, whined and ached.

I seemed to myself at this moment like the burly, insensitive cheat in a striped t-shirt and old jeans that most beautiful and bruised women curse, hate and condole each other about in support groups before going home to make love to the beast.

Only, the beautiful bruised woman wasn't my girlfriend.

"Talk to me, Rae!"

"I just spoke to you half an hour back, Ma!"

We have the equations of a romantic relationship, my mother and I.
If my mother was my boyfriend, I'd probably ask her for a break.

I can imagine it.

"Why! Why are you doing this?! Why don't you talk to me?! There's.. someone else, isn't it?
That Karishma's mother! I knew it the day you told me she makes biryani like me!"

I don't get it, honestly. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love my mom, its a biological liability. But I wonder, since everyone tells me that motherhood is as much pleasure as it is pain, why love is, in the most basic, instinctive of forms so painful.

I try to look at her as another person, a third dimension to herself besides her being mother and wife.
She is a woman. A woman who loves so much, it hurts. It amazes me how I'm so much like her, but fail to understand her need to love, her need to pain.

Thanks for nothing, Tolstoy.

Wander

2007-09-04T21:23:00.001+05:30

Someone tells me of a little blue window that holds the sky and the sun.
Another owns a little tiled shelter that holds the rain when it comes.
Someone else descibes how beautiful it is to bask in her day and her night
But I haven't quite understood how, because none have ever been mine.

A friend showed me his eyes and in them, how he kept the snow.
He complained that now, because that's where he kept it, his eyes had grown cold.
Another was irritated that he couldn't keep watch over his sea.
But I haven't quite understood how, because none ever belonged to me.

I met a stranger then, one night, whose God listened when he prayed.
And then another on another night who kissed his memories away.
I smiled at them and bade them luck, but my pretense showed
Because I haven't quite understood how because I've never really known.

Someone loves his own voice and loves someone else's song.
Someone cried with all her hatred all her life long.
Someone else's rebellion spilt on someone else's throne,
But I don't quite understand, you see, I've never really owned.

I would like to know, I would, but I don't know how it could be
To own the sun and the stars, the snow, the memories and the sea.
I wonder how it is to feel to have a home with a little blue window
But I don't quite know that feeling yet, I've never really been home.

Diet Moksha

2007-07-20T12:43:00.000+05:30

I’ve made many a discovery over the past few weeks. They’re either the result of my superior intelligence or of excruciating boredom.
The product of whatever, my recent learnings will stay with me awhile till I gain more from my pointless ponderings.

They (^*‘They’ here being me and whoever else will say it next) say that intellect and idleness guard either sides of enlightenment. When you thieve through both barriers, you achieve bouddha. You bathe in the torrents of the waters these banks give shape to.

You attain Salvation Light, a mild attack of moksha.

Everyone has different enlightenments and different ways of getting to it. Meditation, tantrik yoga.. Thus, everyone is a guru in hers/his own rights.

My guruism came to me when I least expected it, in the dark of the night, while I bolted the main door before I retired to bed. That was my meditation, my single focus – the lock on the front door.

That’s when it struck me. The whole world, the segregations, the living, the dead, second life, every way we’ve tried to tame and learn, contain her.. they’ve all been pointless!

I’d cracked it! The world.. the universe, the multiverses, time, space, time-space!

Nothing could define it the way my new theory could. It was simple and profound. Just like enlightenment usually is.

The world is divided into two parts.
The one you’re inside, and whatever is outside it.

You’re not excited. Let me explain.

It was 10 p.m. when I came home. I saw my neighbour, the kind man who brought me food when I was sick and whose wife offered to let me watch T.V in her house. There was kindness and trust outside, there was temporary company and temporary love outside. Then, I walked to my door.

When I opened it, I walked in to a dark, musty room smelling dimly of fungi. I thought awhile before the lights came on to crush any larger than life for his own good cockroach that tried to run past me. There was the dark inside, heavy sighs inside, silent, angry prayers inside. There was a chunk of old loneliness and self-talking inside.

When I shut the door and bolted that lock, I was in a new zone, a z + 1 axis. There was no night any more, no light anymore, no friendly neighbour, no terror attack fright, no civil war over water, no global warming, no consumer research, no independence day anymore.

It didn’t matter what time it was, except if it had to do with proceedings with the outside world.
I didn’t shut a door, I had closed a portal.

When I realized this, I dropped my jaw. There was a mad urge to sleep with the door open, be connected with the rest of the planet.

I was overwhelmed with my new found knowledge, yet scared that my front door is a vacuum, when I figured everyone has that bolted front door that they’ve shut themselves into without realizing they’ve actually shut themselves out.

But being inside gives you protection, the sense of a safe place, possession and freedom. How ironic! That’s what we do with emotions too, I suddenly realized.
My enlightenment done, I paced around my house divinely with my bright retro halo tagging along behind me.

I was free. I had attained mild internal salvation, diet moksha.

Then came my second intense discovery.
I need a television. Either that or inferior intelligence.

I'm sorry

2007-06-15T22:59:00.000+05:30

When I’m 122 years old, I will not be apologetic anymore.

I will stop being apologetic for caring more for the happiness I find in sunshine than in the pain of a hurricane than will one day destroy the world.
I am heartless, I am told.
With such poetry, I am to choose between my fears and my hope. I bleed with all the anger and hatred my exiles have nurtured me with and pour, gracefully, of course, to my feet for your dreams to come alive.

I will stop being apologetic about crying for the miniscule lives that live within me, so I can resurrect your lost castles and empty dungeons. They have no promises for you, or for me, but I will love their cellars like they are my only home.

I will stop being apologetic about your incapability to hear my screaming, the rape of every one of my nightmares you bring to life with your magic wand, and my not being able to tell you to stop because I choke with fear that you will think me a child.

I will stop being apologetic, when I am 122 years of age, because I will be back in my exiles, which have nurtured me with hate, distrust and crimson anger. I will bask in the familiarity of the burning sun on my pale dead skin and I will cry out loud because you can finally not hear me.

I will stop being apologetic for wanting to give, provided I don’t grow shapeless from giving,
Wanting to live, provided I am not waiting for death,
Wanting to love, provided I can retain my pride,
Wanting to dream, provided I can choose to remember or forget them,
Wanting to cry, provided I don’t have to stop
Wanting to laugh, provided I have no reason
Wanting to make a choice, provided you need no explanation.

When I am 122 years old, I will stop being apologetic for being ordinary and for loving my invisibility.

99 years will pass soon.

Life and Filth

2007-06-05T15:56:00.000+05:30

Its a scene of crime, really, I haven't moved anything.
The windows are still shut tight to keep in all the din.
The waste basket is still full and the lizards are now rotting;
Everything's just the way we left it, the way its always been.

The sheets are still crumpled, and dirt tracks run around
From the kitchen to the bathroom and spill into the lounge.
Abandoned webs are threatening to fall onto my head,
onto the picture frames and the stereo and on the unmade bed.

Our clothes now have little patches that appeared from nowhere.
And the drinking water we left, remember? Its still lying there.
The water tank is empty and the pantry shelves are bare.
The plague just ran out the hallway, even epidemics are scared!

I missing you like mad, honey, come back before I die.
Its as unclean and unhygienic as hell in all its might.
I won't yell again when you don't put the clothes to dry.
if you're reading this, please... PLEASE........
COME BACK SAKKU BAI!!!

KING DOUBLE METER ALTAF

2007-05-09T12:25:00.000+05:30

6 p.m., Sunday,
M. G. Road, Bangalore.

“Double meter.”

Twenty-two auto rickshaws faithfully stand in a line. Their twenty-two Altafs, Ravis, Asifs and Suryas of unpronounceable Pallyas rest inside their three-wheeler cars, uninterested in their jobs, in life, in the border wars… everything, awaiting the bane of their lives, commuters of public transport, to come, beg. The Arjunas of very many vast middle class categories humbled, plead, making sad faces holding onto the yellow-black chariots, looking earnestly into the eyes of the indifferent, cold Krishnas in khaki, timidly pronouncing their destinations.

“Tch.” A very definitely IT Arjuna hears, from the seventh rickshaw he has handed his ego to. Imitating several others like myself, he approaches the eighth with a sincere, almost intense desperation on his face and when turned down, immediately looks up, walking down the pavement, ignoring rickshaws nine and ten through twenty two. Like all of us Arjunas, I observe, who beaten and angry, quietly assume glorious statures of valiant losers thinking, “Fuck them. I’ll walk.”

I instantly remember Ramanand Sagar’s “Ramayan”, the episodes of adolescent Rama and Lakshmana with their never aging guru, Vishwamitra training them to be kingly and yet humble. Shaved little heads, clad in saffron and yellow, they bowed before each house in the neighborhood, juvenile beggarly princes crying, “Bhikshaamdehi, daata bhikshaamdehi!”

As I stand there, rejected by all twenty two khaki charioteers, hoping a twenty third will pass by me and discover a human heart pounding beneath his license badge, I wonder how this business thrives, what the ethics of this work culture are, the ethics of this reverse feudalist culture. How does King Altaf of public transport live off a career driving around a small section of town aimlessly, filling gas at his expense, and refusing every ten in twelve people who ask him for a drop?

Thus goes his working day:
King Altaf religiously gets out of his house at 4 a.m. and rides to a bus stop awaiting tourists, wanderers and travelers from afar. He does this with dedication till 8 a.m. demanding a 1 ½, double or even triple on the meter. From 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., he rides around in circles, stopping at every chai-cigarette shop he sees and when he’s acidic enough with tea to burn a hole through his intestine, he looks for a well-endowed tree and climbing slowly into the back seat like his bride awaited him here, he sticks his feet and Paragon slippers out to the world and goes to sleep.

When he’s woken up to need more chai and a cigarette, he rides around again, and then again, stopping for lunch. No one daresay waste his time asking for a drop now, a man’s gotta eat when a man’s gotta eat. Later, if it’s a hot day, another evil, knowingly full, seductive tree will possibly entice him to take another nap. A man’s gotta sleep when a man wants to sleep.

By evening, King Altaf is so bored by his day, all he wants to do is go home, or meet a friend, visit the local bar, do a couple of joints and relax. And so begins the riding around, looking for that one blessed individual on the face of this city who wants to go to Murphy Town, which is on the way to his home in Babueswar Palya. That too, he will only trade his privacy if the stranger begging for a ride in his blessed little caravan is willing to pay double the fee the meter says he should.

As I grind my teeth, inspired by these thoughts, rickshaw No. 23 passes me by. I wave frantically and exasperated, he stops.

“Ulsoor?”

He thinks a bit.
“Ulsoor mei kidhar?”

Putting on my best poor kitten in a wet blanket face, I reply. “Lake ke paas.”

He begins to think. I begin to pray.

6:40 p.m., Sunday,
M. G. Road, Bangalore.

“Double meter.”

I sigh. Making appropriate noises, I begin to carry my bags into the benevolent rickshaw, deciding King Altaf is not my most favorite man in the world. As I see his arm acrobatically turn back to turn his meter on, I begin to calculate the fare when my mind is suddenly confused by the familiar dreading sound we Arjunas hear so very often by our free-spirited Krishnas.

“Tch.”

My one foot in the air and outstretched arms with bags before me, I am left behind as King Altaf yanks the start lever and zooms off, his auto roaring at me and road it has left behind.

Angry, tired and feeling betrayed, I scorn, cursing in my mind the most truly malicious curses I’ve flung at anyone besides my seventh grade math teacher. Groceries in both hands and shoulders humiliated by a heavy bag, I begin to walk.

“I will never take an auto again!” I foolishly declare within my head, and a couple of voices in there smirk.

The calm, smiling face of actor Arun Govil who played a magnificient Rama in “Ramayan” appears in my head and I want to ask him what he would have done if his daatas behaved this cocky. Not one, not two, but all twenty three he’d begged that Sunday evening.

“Liftaam dehi, daata rickshawm dehi!”

Goodbye Max

2007-04-08T17:33:00.000+05:30

Two years back, somewhere in the dusty alleys that run around Johnson Market, an egg hatched.

A little blue parakeet-ling stuck his head out and smiled at the world he was to share with the rest of God's funny imagination. I'm sure as hell that as soon as he broke out of his shell, he tipped it over and poked it with his nose, finally liking it enough to put his foot on it, holding it tight, like to say, 'Mine!'

My aunt picked him from a pet store in this bustling loud marketplace that brimmed with activity. She was looking for a little one. In a crowd of over ten little parakeets, she heard a tiny blue scantily feathered little chick yelp, pushing through the rest to chase a ball of hair.

She named him Max, and brought him home. Max was love at first sight for anyone who he met. He was playful, he was insane, and Max believed he was human.

A year back, Max was given to me to look after. I remember being extremely worried about my new responsibility and feeling very guilty everytime I stayed out leaving the blue wide eyed bird to stare alone into darkness the night through.

I decided to not love him. He was a bird. I mean.. not a dog.. not a cat.. a bird. And a micro tiny one at that. Max proved me wrong very soon.

One day, he sat on my head as I fed him. The next, he slept on my chest as I read.

Max did many things to show me it didn't matter if I didn't love him, because he did, regardless of whether I forgot to feed him, or change his water.

Max died today. I don't know how or why, but he was dead in his cage on his way to meet me after a long vacation I came back from.

I wish I could have him drink coffee from my mouth just another time. But I figure Max needed to go. He won't sleep on my chest again. And I'll miss that and him.

Goodbye Max.

Locked In the Attic

2007-03-02T22:50:00.000+05:30

There's a little girl up there. She's very little, and she's very scared.

The Attic isn't too big. Its dark and dusty, and she doesn't like it in there, though she's never been beyond it. There are many trunks of different sizes and she's stored many memories there, locked them up. But now, she can't remember where she put the keys. They're probably in other trunks, but she's lost their keys too.

She had a friend who lived on the other side of the cobwebs. She was bigger, stronger and she was very angry. Atleast, most of the time, she was. She had no trunks, no keys, no boxes and no memories to store, either.

Once, a five year long discussion took place in the Attic. The older girl and littler girl sat down on either sides of the cobwebs and decided to bartar their belongings.

"I have many memories." The little girl said.
"I've none." The older one said.

"I can share one with you, but you'll have to look after the keys then", the little one added.

The older girl smiled for the first time in eons. She was thrown a bunch of glittering keys in iron and malted gold. The little girl pointed towards an old large trunk and the older girl watched as it dragged itself to her side of the Attic.

She ran her fingers around the trunk, and pushed the keys in. She heard a click when the keys turned and wide eyed, she opened the trunk. She peeked in and excitement poured a drop of bravery in her chest, and when she brimmed with the courage only curiosity brings, she climbed in.

For a long time, the little girl looked for her friend, but never found her. She called out in pain, she cried and she wept. She couldn't find her friend and she didn't have the keys to her memories either.

She's too little to crawl across the other side of the cobwebs, the curtain between her growing older and her infancy. She knows her memories are in there, and her future's drowned in them. She wishes she could save her friend, but she is, only, the litle one. There's not much her mind allows her to do.

So there's a lonely little girl in the Attic upstairs, sitting amidst many locked memories. She knows the keys are right behind her, and she can remember whatever she wants to. But its too dark in the other side of the Attic, where her friend disappeared some lifetimes ago.

I hope one day she'll have the courage to remember. And I hope when she does, she's still a little girl.

KKare for Dinner Time Stories?

2007-02-17T15:08:00.000+05:30

I've been watching TV and I've been very konfused.

7:30 p.m.

Neeraj loves his wife Archana. (The names have been changed because I don't remember what they really were.) She loves him back, but loves herself more.
Archana is, what I presumed from one episode that I dared to watch, a doctor. She is characterised with long rebonded hair and oodles of makeup. She wears only striped sarees and heels. At home.
Neeraj, is ugly. No, really. UGLY.
And, if he's at home all day following his wife from bedroom to living room to fight with her in a blue tie-dye kurta that does NOT suit him on how she is NOT the ideal wife, I also presume he is unemployed, but rich.

Now, cut to a kid in school, an oily kid with oily plaited hair who is supposedly cute. Her father, who looks like he needs babysitting himself has a crush on her teacher.
YEESH!

Cut to the teacher. She dresses to school like its the Principal's Bar Mitzvah. She's barely twenty two, and is very mature and loving and has failed in love. So obviously, oily kid's diaper bearing father doesn't interest her. She loves only the one she lost - NEERAJ!!!!!

Back to Neeraj in his blue hideous kurta. He tells his wife their kid is the head of the football team in school. She thinks that's ok, but what really rocks is she's going to London for a conference where only 1 in 1000 are selected to attend. Neeraj is upset, and tells her she is not the ideal wife/mother and even her hair's fake.

8:00 p.m.

Uncle's got some 200 sons. They all live together under the same darned roof. All his sons are married but only one of the sons is the reincarnation of Lord Ram. His wife, as you've guess by now, is the clone of Sita.
Uncle comes back one day with a new wife, who's not really his wife but a prank on the family because the women in the household are too liberated.
Aunty is scary looking, but is apparently the world's best mom/wife. Why so? Because she accepts her husband bringing in the new wife who really reminded me of my headteacher in 6th grade. She even.. sob.. GIVES HER THE KIJORI KI CHAAVI!!!!!!
Obviously, Aunty #2's a bitch.

8:30 p.m.

Raj (name changed for lack of memory) looks like seventh grade drop out. He's RICH so hell cares. He's apparently a spoilt kid (duhh!) and has recently been resurrected from the dark side of anti-tradition and all because he's in love. With a hooker. With a hooker who last seen, dressed like Akka Maha Devi.
He wants to marry her. Samskruti/Samskaar/Maa TV fan club head, his mom, will castrate him if he does so. So he thinks of the most brilliant plan in the world.
He tells his mom his Vivian Ward is a princess.. No kidding.
His mom falls for it. She wants her son to marry her.

9:00 p.m.

A good man has impregnated his wife's sister's neice's mother-in-law's uncle's step grandmother and has lost his memory.

9:30 p.m.

An evil man has impregnated his wife's sister's neice's mother-in-law's uncle's step grandmother and is dead.

10:00 p.m.

The rebirth of a fire fighting woman has come back into the same household and will take revenge on the family because she died 20 years back and remembers even what color underwear her daughter, now aunt wore then. According to logistics, the woman who was her great grandmother in her last birth who is still live, kicking and making parathas should be atleast 178 years old.

10:30 p.m.

Grand daughter who once insulted her father not knowing he was her father realises her father was really her father and wants to take revenge on her grand mother because the director said she should.

11:00 p.m.
I yanked out my cable connection.

I wish my life was half as interesting.
Actually, maybe not.

It'll take me a while before I pay attention to my life again. I'm still gloating over poor Hot teacher's lost love with color blind unemployed man and bad grand daughter who has no clue how the rash on her back has anything to do with going to bed in sequin saris with the lights on full blast.

Sigh.

KKuch KKeeda hai.

Photographs from A Vacation

2007-02-09T10:29:00.000+05:30

I’m back from a brilliant vacation and I can’t believe it’s over!

The beauty of this trip back home was it came after 8 months of not seeing my parents and finally being there, I was thrown off balance with the amount our relationship had changed, or evolved.. as I like to believe it did.

I coincidentally got in touch with a friend I haven’t seen or heard from in seven years. We studied together from the time we were six till the time we were seventeen. Somehow, though we shared nothing of our lives or feelings with each other, had nothing in common, not even basic value systems, we called each other best friends.
Childish incidents and years later, we finally fell apart, probably for our own good.

Seven years later, I met her, this vacation and we talked just the way we did when we were in second standard, or in fourth.. or pre university.. and we still contained the same childlike comfort levels.
She still asked me uncomfortable questions and I still gave her with non committal answers.
Her voice was still the same, she still looked the same and trust me, I couldn’t believe anyone could still be the same person seven years later. She hadn’t changed in thought or soul.

Which set me thinking.. maybe I hadn’t changed either.

My mom took me to an ancient temple her family had just discovered in the outskirts of the outskirts of the outskirts of a wannabe city-but-really-a-cool-looking-village.

I walked in and realized what they mean when they say you can’t breathe when you see something this beautiful.
The temple was rock carved, ancient and virgin, and was the birthplace of two warriors who were now worshipped as demi-gods in the village.
A forest grew around the temple and you couldn’t possibly imagine something this beautiful could stand in a jungle of thorns and everyday weeds.
I heard overwhelming stories about how these two very great men attained god-ship and the Brahman in the temple showed me the dried lake they bathed in, the old wood cradles they slept in as infants and the weapons they carried.

A few days later I left my parents and the home I grew up in for an extension of my holiday. It felt strange because the house too seemed like my mother now – beautiful, affectionate, once mine, and solely mine. Today, they were both other entities besides being just my Amma or my home.

Anyway, mush apart, Hampi was terrific!

A vivid description of the history and archeology and shopping, you’ll get on Lonely Planet, so let me get down to what REALLY got me kicked.

The morning my friend and I left Hampi, we sat down to savor the last of our free identities and freedom here.
Over a Tibetian breakfast in a little shack there, we listened to the birds, the river and a bunch of stoned firangs singing off tune.

Just then two people entered the shack.
The woman, atleast sixty, was Israeli and her British companion, an excited little man of atleast seventy led her in.

We couldn’t help but notice how excited the two seemed and they sat down discussing how the hash brown potatoes were nothing like hash brown potatoes here for the next fifteen minutes. The chemistry between them was so charged, I felt much older for a while.

Then, we eavesdropped. (Sorry, Mrs. Beautiful Israeli Woman and Mr. Handome Brit Man)

We learnt the two were once seeing each other, thirty years back. For some reason, they went their ways then. He got married, she was too, and somehow, six months back they got in touch, probably on the internet.

They decided to meet, here in Hampi on a decided date. The two came alone, leaving behind their families, but once here, didn’t know how to contact each other. Mr. Handsome Brit Man went all over the place to every inn asking them if Mrs. Beautiful Israeli Woman had checked in and a week later, he found her, and instantly recognized her.

We sat there listening to the two so lost in their past and so oblivious to the world around, suddenly snapping back into the present, feeling awkward, and then gliding back in, lost in memories.

I wish I’d stayed longer and been evil longer enough to know what happened to the two after that Tibetian breakfast. But we had a flight to catch. So a silent prayer said to the couple, we picked our bags and departed.

I’m back now, and my ex-best friend, the warriors and their history, home and the inter-nation lost love story all are part of memory, a past vacation and old photographs.

Hopefully, life will seem interesting enough now on!

Cheers!

Stillskin... Rumpelstillskin

2007-01-18T21:58:00.000+05:30

Come now. Everyone needs a surname.

Or do we?

I've a strange one, to most ears that don't belong to the village our clan's named after. "Tonse".
Rae Tonse.

I've been called Thomas, Tonsils, Tonez, Tonnes and what not by waterhogs and teacher waterhogs in school. How difficult is it to say Tone-say?
Atleast it means nothing.. as in, the godly portal of all knowledge by and for man, and any animal that would remotely be interested in synonyms, phonetics and definitions and the capability to handle the internet says it means nothing.
Atleast I'm not Timothy Allen Dick.

But again, must we carry our names over and over generations, pass them onto our children? Is it an absolute necessity? A friend told me its so his father's name is not lost.
I don't think his child would ever refer to his grandfather by name.
And how much can I glorify the past of my predecessors, endorse their existance, keep alive the memoirs of their lives by carrying around the name of the village they decided to inhabit?

Heck I didn't know what my father's name was till I was four.
I thought his name was Daddy.
I also wondered how my grandparents could be that uncreative.
All my friends' fathers' name were also Daddy, or variations of the same!

Tonse.

Rae Tonse.

Ah well. It's better than Rae Daddy.

Waking up to Dream

2007-01-09T19:54:00.000+05:30

Every once in a while, you meet a guide.
I had met mine two years ago, in a gathering of many like minded people. We were all hooded men, women, and children who attended a convention meant to burn down fear. We had different fears, we were different people, but we were all like minded men, women and children because we decided our fears needed to burn.

Of the many people, a man stood hooded, too. By the end of the ceremony, when everyone shed their fears and ripped down their hoods, I remember standing at the gates when I turned around to say goodbye. I wore a mask, as I always did, and was pleased no one had noticed. I wore a mask of stark nakedness, and many believed I had shed my hood, flung my fears into the fires among the many first.
But as I turned around to leave and say goodbye, I noticed a man far behind me, holding onto his hood, shielding his face and holding onto his bag of fears. He had saved them, and the pain of seeing his fear turn to ashes gleamed in his eyes. I was touched.

As our brothers and sisters left, I said goodbye to the hooded man, but I knew I didn't mean it.

Within half the year that followed, we met many times and in those meetings, I wore different masks of different colours, shapes and sizes, and I felt silly because he still wore his hood. A wry smile, though, always peeped through that fibre, and we both knew the truth in our lies.

We never fought about our hiding from each other, and for some reason, found comfort in our anonymity. He or I, never questioned our lies, and when the truth produced itself, we swallowed it without trying to taste it.
Together, we built a dream.

To realise our dream, came some clouds, some rains, some love, some pain. Some friendship, some heartbreak, some hardship, some mistakes. And together, we began to construct. Sometimes losing authority, sometimes having too much.

Two years later, after falling apart, misunderstanding things that never were understood, forgiving, forgetting, building and rebuilding, failing and falling, we let ourselves go.

Our dream has realised. Its probably not the best vision in the world. Its probably not the best story ever told. But to me, I have my guide and our clouds, rains, hurt and friendship, love and our dream before us.

Today, I watched as our dream, my dream unfolded. I cried in my heart because I couldn't believe I had finally woken up. And when I did, I found my masks gone. It felt light, and I am happier without them. As I turned around, ready to burn my masks and the fear of my face, I smiled at my guide. I realised then, that the pyre stood high, and his hood was long gone.

Thank you for letting me dream, dada.

Thank you, my friends, for giving me my dream.

Christmassy Overpourings

2006-12-24T18:44:00.000+05:30

Ho! Ho! Hahahahee.

It's Christmas Eve. Its also a friend's wedding, another's third exam day and one far-off inconsequential pretend-relative's death anniversary.

But Ho! Ho! HO!

Its also a friend's bithday eve. He's going to be 2039 years old, I'm presuming.

Jesus is a good friend. he's not like Kris (Krishna) is to me, the high-five, butt-smacking, fart contest kind of friend, but Jesus is a special friend, nevertheless.

His last birthday, I had put presents under a tree, made cards for others, recieved cards, drank myself silly and said a brief 'Hi' to the stars, hoping my poetic gesture would convey my regards to the resident of the heavens.

At dot twelve, I ran to the tree with my Christmas spirited friends and we all hugged and sang, "Merry Christmas!" like indisciplined children and opened our gifts in a frenzy.
"This is the best Christmas, ever!" we chimed in synchrony.

Then, I realised.

There was a gift was Renee, there was a gift for Max, Tory, for Kari, for Dada, for Stiffy, for Daisy, for Dolly and it made the tree very full and its decorators very happy.

There was no gift for the birthday boy.

Jesus was right there. I couldn't see him, but I'm sure he was, next to every Christmas tree or every well deserved corner for one in the world. I'm not sure if he smiled an 'Its ok!' or showed me the finger, but it stayed with me.

This Christmas, I'm excited. VERY EXCITED!
I've got my decorated tree, and I've presents under it, too. Amongst the lot of little boxes of gift that will be lost by the 25th December, 2007, there's a little chit I know my reciever will never lose.

It says,

"Dear Jesus,

I'm sorry I get carried away with the reds, greens and carols of celebrating your day every year. I know you wanted nothing from us in return for the love you've given us, too. But this year, I want to give you something. Not much, but a trinket of my appreciation for being who you are. I'm going to give you my trust and my love. I promise you that everytime something goes wrong, I'm going to do the best I can to better the situation, and then I'm going to believe in my love for you and trust you will tell me what to do next. And if I go wrong, I will not be angry with you or God.

Happy Birthday, Jesus.

I love you!"

I'm sure he'll love my present. And the poor guy really should get more.

Merry Christmas, everybody!!!!

Anoxia

2006-12-14T23:27:00.000+05:30

I've got irrational fears, too, you know.

For instance, I've always felt the next moment, I'll plop. I'll be dead. For no reason.
Just.. Game over.

I've tried to visualize what people behind me would do then. A gazillion tests, autopsies.. but no one will know how I died.

That's the fear. But there's more.. Probably a death wish.

I've always been fascinated with the sound the air makes, especially when you're racing down a highway at kill or die speed, and you can hear nothing but the wind spiraling into your ear.

I wonder what the air would've been like if it was human.
If she was human.
Air's definitely a she.

Why else would it come rushing down on you when you raced into it and play dead when you don't make a move towards it? Why else would it be ready to be inhaled knowing well it'd be exhaled, would fill a room and leave too, entering every time the doors opened, keep streaming in through spaces, in and out, out and in, and after all that ruckus, still be there all the time?

I've always believed I will be the air, someday. Not in its frantic indecisiveness, but in form. The former I've quite successfully achieved, without trying too hard.

The concept of death, is somewhere, too in your face. It just happens. BANG! POW! SWOOSH.... rigor mortis. How unvaliant!

For all the havoc I've created in others lives and in my own, the end of me can't be just froth and stiff veins.

So, I've decided I will not die.
I will just cease to exist.

Sometime, any time now, actually, I will just dissipate, evanesce into thin air. Like Maya memsaab, I will not die. I will just evaporate and I will float around for ever with no form or shape.

But then, I'll miss being an individual. And if I'm around floating about and no one really tries more than one autopsy, I'll be shattered. I'll feel extremely insignificant and unimportant, forgotten in the chaos of everyday life and worries. I guess that's what its like for the air, though.
But I'll still be around. I'll come rushing down on you when you race into me and play dead when you don't make a move towards me. I'll be inhaled knowing well I'll be exhaled, and will fill a room and leave too, enter every time the doors open, keep streaming in through spaces, in and out, out and in, and after all that ruckus, I'll still be there all the time.

You know what?
The air and I'll do just fine.

Ok, death! I'm ready!

Nothing means Nothing

2006-12-06T13:44:00.000+05:30

Have you ever wondered why women say 'nothing'?

You're at dinner, you've had a nice day, you give bits of your experience to her. She seems down, uninterested and is torturing her dead chicken with her fork.

"You ok?"
"Yeah."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."

Uh oh.

The moment a woman says 'nothing', you know the red naked man downstairs is polishing his pitchfork, kicking at his cauldron in ecstacy.

Nothing, is not even a real word. But how true is any other word to its derivation!'Nothing' means nothing!

But then again, do women mean it that way, really? I'm trying to find out myself, actually. I know women don't find it necessary to tell a partner or a potential anything about how they're feeling, unless it is the object in question that has donated in any way to the change in natural state.

And women can hide, if you think they cannot. A woman can show you, you are of no consequence to her moods, day, evening or life and go home and unconsciously run head on to the mirror to see what you last saw of her. A woman can show you she is troubled and know that frankly, its nothing she can't handle, though more often that not, its the other way round. (Sorry sisters, i didn't mean to spill our beans.. i'm just curious myself)

So theoretically, the object is disturbed and she has decided to show the object she is disturbed. A woman is always sure of herself. Once she has decided she cannot hold back, she will not. But to ensure the object is genuinely listening and genuinely cares, she has decided she will eventually, after a compulsary push that the object must deliver, speak.

"Nothing".

Nothing?

I also seem to have found a theory to that.

Situation 1:

Man and Woman in a restaurant.

Man: And then I... Are you ok?
Woman: Yes.
Man: Not again.
Man: No, you're not. What happened?
Woman: Nothing.
Man: Be calm, take a deep breath, ask again.. she'll tell you.. its inconsequential.. but she'll tell you..
Man: I know something's wrong, tell me.
Woman: Nothing, I told you.
Man: Ok. if you don't want to tell me, I'm fine with it.
Woman: What?!
Man: Well, you don't want to tell me..
Woman: No.. I do.. but..
Some mushy sounds
Man: Well, tell me.
Woman: I.. didn't like what you did last summer...

Result: Woman's got it off her chest. Man's glad she's gotten it over with. Goes back thinking - Woman! How unpredicatable!

Situation 2:

Man and Woman in a restaurant.

Man: And then I... Are you ok?
Woman: No.
Man: Wha...?!
Man: Oh. Eh.. What happened...?
Woman: I.. didn't like what you did last summer.

Result: Woman's got it off her chest. She's also mad. Man's glad she's gotten it over with. He's also mad.

I have no clue if I'm right, but I've tried both ways. And its not the women, I figured. Woman adapt, and say what they will knowing exactly the effect it will generate. I mean, seriously, women don't do that with other women! They get right to it!

Its the subject!

Or probably just nothing.

I hated everyone at 14

2006-11-26T22:39:00.000+05:30

The world will tell all,
Yet will never be told.

Deeds will be forgotten,
Your sins carved in gold.

Don't tell a broken heart to heal when it can.
None know a broken heart but a broken man.

They shall pour till they cannot,
And their tears, they will dry.

They will build a tower of rage
And keep their fire alive.

Don't name their murder for the poetry of angst.
None but them know the words they had sang.

Anti, Matters.

2006-11-17T13:18:00.000+05:30

I am very anti-drunk.
I hate their guts and the fact that they let themselves lose their mind over an inanimate glass of foul smelling rotten staple food of some third world country.

I hate the way they talk. How they develop an extreme urgency to let the world know who they are. How every sentence after Peg #3 and Excuse #57 must begin with "But, I.." And how every "I" will and must be stressed, italicized and underlined every single time because the listener must and should know who he/she is listening to.

I hate lone drunks, too.
I hate how they ridicule their existence by getting drunk staring at their ceiling/television/feet/computer screen/pets feeling miserable for needing to get drunk to kill time and find hope or scope for thought in being drunk staring at their ceiling/television/feet/computer screen/pets.

I'm probably also racist.
I am very anti-fairness cream advertising.
I hate how the dark girl is always rejected by the geeky looking, formal clothing clad bastard because she thinks he believes she's too plain. And he always looks like he'd rather marry her father. Or being fair to him, he probably hated the copious amounts of oil the director smeared on her face. Who'd want to marry an exhausted Arab oil ring?

No, that doesn't make sense. I'm very anti face wash.

I've just realised, I'm very anti, right now.

*Hic* to that.

My Lord in the attic.

2006-11-11T20:38:00.000+05:30

"We'll manage." they apparently said, six years before my birth, when my grandparents asked my parents what they'd do about their unborn, unplanned (and yet unconcieved) child's to-be religion.

Ms. Mom and Mr. Dad belonged to different belief systems, and each was more in love with their respective religions than the other. Also, their measurement of love for religion was directly proportional to how much they hated the other religion they were marrying into.

When I was eight, every Friday, Dad dropped me at a large creepy gate which led to a narrow staircase to an old blue room where children moved rythmically to noice and reading what they didn't understand. "What does this mean?" I asked once, the result of which was one week of aching knuckles and bamboo ring marks. I blindly followed and believed.
On Saturday, mom dropped me to an organization dedicated to drowning children in undecipherable, sing-song chanting. "What does this mean?" I asked again, and recieved a horde of coded expletives and a letter to my mother, which resulted in losing out on my favorite side dish at dinner for a month. I blindly followed and believed.

Every Sunday, I was confused.

One day, at school, I was introduced to moral science class, where my teacher, a woman with angelic wings on her shoulders and a forked tail in her backside asked me to tell her what God was to me.

Oh, man.

I told her I knew there were two Gods who switched roles on Fridays and Saturdays. And on Sundays he was off duty.

The girl sitting next to me, who once a while treated me to her lunch, then invited me to attend a spiritual gathering on Sunday at her place.
I went.

They gave me sweets when they were done moaning.

MAN!

I blindly followed and believed.

So now, there was a different God for every weekend and weekly holiday of the Gulf. Also, everyone reiterated there was only one God.

One day, when I was sixteen and confused, I decided, "I will have a religion".
I discovered marijuana.

You know what? Ms. Mom and Mr. Dad were right.

They managed.

'Mama' Calling

2006-11-02T21:35:00.000+05:30

I wish the Caller ID technology had never touched my life.

(Some polyphonic tone, would be lying if I said Tring Tring)

'Mama calling', my phone read, blinking at me brightly like a psycho killer would, I'm guessing.

'What did you eat?'

I knew that was coming. It came five times a day, everyday, for the six years I've been living away from my parents.

Probably, I wouldn't be this irritant if I didn't know who was calling. I'd just give into the call like you give into fate.

Look, don't get me wrong. I love her, I mean, its a biological liability. You can't help but love your mom. She'll nag, she'll bug, she'll even rearrange your furniture, but well, she's Mummy.

“What did you eat?'

I will not answer that phone. I will NOT answer that phone.

'Mama calling'
My phone was still blinking at me brightly like a psycho killer would.

I've tried to talk to her, you know.

I've said, “Mama, I'm not a kid anymore.. I mean.. I know you think I am.. But trust me, I can look after myself.. You needn't keep calling to find out where I am, or what I'm doing. Or what I ate! You've gotta trust me!”
“Okay, okay. I know. You had food?”

Once, my mom said, “You know, Rae, our phone bill's gone too high this month.”
MUHAAAHHAAAA!!!!!

“I know, Ma. You know what? Don't call me five times a day. Call me once. Or twice. Maybe in the morning and then once at night to begin with.. then we can cut down after that?”
“Why?”
“Your bill's high 'cos you keep calling me..”
“So?”

“No, mama, I mean we can cut on costs.. I mean, Even I can't pick your calls all the time.. I'm in a meeting.. or at work.. so, we'll speak twice a day..”

“Hmm.. What did you have for lunch?”

There comes a time when you realize you've moved on. You still love home, but its now your parents'. Mom and Dad are now individuals, they have names besides 'Mom' and 'Dad'. And you begin to consciously see how you are pretty much like them in many small, significant ways, whether you like it or not.

In case you're wondering, my phone was still blinking brightly at me, like a psycho killer would, probably.

Its sad. Sad for her because she loves me so much she can't let go. Sad for me because she loved me so much I realized I can love myself more. Sad because she's holding onto me so tight, I can't breathe anymore.

But, dammit, I love her. I can't stand giving her details of what my digestive system has been through since morning, but, maybe I should tell her she means a lot to me, and if she wants me to be the grown-up she keeps idolizing, she needs to let me grow up, by myself.

“Hi, ma.”
“What took you so long?”
“I didn't see my phone ring.”
“What nonsense! You didn't pick my call even in the afternoon!”
“I didn't see it.”
“Rae, you're being very careless with your excuses. What were you doing?”
“Nothing, mama.”
“Talk to me, Rae! You don't talk to me anymore!”

Damn.

“Mama, how many different things can I tell you in a span of two hours everyday? You call me five times!”

Shouldn't have used that tone.

“Sorry, mama. Just worked up.”

I was glad she'd probably ask me something else now. But NO!

“Hmm. You handle your issues. You're too big for me to tell you what to do. What did you eat?”

I hate the Caller ID.

I miss me

2006-10-26T23:37:00.000+05:30

Today, I sat alone at my regular old coffee bar. By my table, was the one more often than not occupied by haunted children who never grew to be men, for over a year now.
I am usually accompanied by three friends and four coffees in my regular sessions that last for over three hours.
Today, I sat alone at my regular old coffee bar.

ordered my coffee before discovering it was already smiling at me with all its pleasant filtered aroma. I watched the froth of the morning's milk brew into my hot cup of caffeine and puzzled, I stared into the little hot bubbles that brimmed to the sides of the chipped ceramic cup. I counted one hundered and twenty two bubbles before I was bored. Again.

This place was familiar; my table, my cup, my broken chair, almost like how you carefully stepped to your right, groping in the dark or you knew you would bang into the red couch you insisted on having in the centre of the room, even when the lights were off.

I was comfortable, but uneasy.
I decided I had to stay to find out why. I am used to being alone in coffee shops, in bus stops, at home, in my head.. this was least different.

I realised I was missing something. I was missing someone. It wasn't my friends, those who accompany me and my four coffees everyday over arbid conversation. It wasn't the air, the sleeplessness, it was me. I missed myself.

The other side of me had gone off on a vacation with my ambition, my passions, obsessions for over a year now. I realised I missed my reason to be, who was off praying by a lake enveloped by mist by the stone of old temples.

What remained, was longing, life, and a chipped cup of now lukewarm coffee.

Kabab Magic

2006-10-21T14:08:00.000+05:30

Five years ago, I washed into this city, lost in new freedom. I had no idea what it was going to be like from here on, and I was aware of the fact that I was never going back to what I thought was home. I remember walking down this dark street in Mohamaddin Block, canoped by trees and wires of light poles infested with bats, trying to find the main road, thinking to myself that the light at the end of this tunnel must belong to civilization.

It was seven, or so, and as I reached my destination, the light (which was far from blinding), the air around me suddenly smelt different. It was full of this divine aroma.. of my mother's pampering, somehow. What was it?! Oh, how my mind hath turned with no will! What was this smell.. the scent of love.. or life.. of GRILLED CHICKEN!

Like in a Disney movie, I turned around, I remember, flabbergasted something this heavenly could land right before my being on this dark and lonely evening. I can't remember what I was thinking.. but I walked to the establishment on my right. It was like a doll house. An open restaurant, with plastic chairs and tables set on the road, with nothing around it. Not a house, not shops, not another hotel in that space of 100 metres around. "My very own presonal oasis!" I thought, as I looked up to catch the neon sign that flashed in my eye.

Kabab Magic.

Like in a trance, I let my nose lead me the way in. I followed everyone around me to precision. I hypnotically checked the menu and registered the first thing I read. Then I hypnotically went to the counter and paid my Rs.25 for a Shavarma. Then I hypnotically went to my table, holding onto my little white coupon like it was my pardon from life imprisonment.

I watched in awe as the guy with a weird chef's hat flung the dough in the air, twirling it aroung, as it grew massive in size to plop onto a round cooking pan. It flew in the air, swirling like a space ship as everyone around watched him perform his dough-defying stunts.

When his naan/khuboos (still no idea what that was) cooked, he flung it to the guy next to him, and it landed exactly, I have to add, at the spot he most wanted it. This next man began to slice like a conductor in a concert, at his tandoor with two sharp, long knives in a frenzy, and chunks of meat, supple and fresh with green lime and hummus dropped onto a silver disc.

My shavarma brought to me, I hypnotically bit in. And then, i broke out of my trance only to land in a higher state of unconsciousness. It was an orgasm!

My memories of what happened after that, are very vague. I think i just went back home, content with not doing whatever I was supposed to and just surrendering to my nose and rumbling stomach.

Today, years later I passed by my haven for one night five years ago. I felt funny and I didn't know why, so I stopped by to figure. (Wallah! A poet is born!) Nothing much had changed, except that, the guy at the tandoor grew a white stubble now.. or was it always there? The trapeze artist didn't play with his dough like he did that night, either.

I followed the same ritual of buying my coupon (it was now for Rs.30) , and thenI took my prized roll and walked down the dark lane I once lived on. Trying hard to recollect what my thoughts must have been like that night, I realised with a smile in the dark that I was now free.

Walking down the lane to nowhere from nowhere, I had grown up, in some ways, perhaps, from that seventeen year old confused glutton to a twenty-two year old sure glutton. Home was where I wanted it to be, and right now, the canope of old trees and poles infested with bats suited me just fine.

Dark Chocolate

2006-09-24T17:50:00.000+05:30

The most romantic of presents was always dark chocolate. I don't know why, it just was.
I decided when I was fifteen that I would fall in love with someone who gave me a box of assorted dark chocolate. I wonder why it would be assorted if everything in the box was dark chocolate.
I will turn twenty two in ten minutes. A ritual I've followed for years, I go twenty one years, twenty three hours and fifty minutes back in time.
I went past the first day of school when mom stood by the window and waved, wondering if I would cry in the school bus while I looked at her through the greasy window of the bus, excited about my new yellow lunch box.
The time dad bought me a new pink bicycle.
The time I sold its wheels so I didn't have to ride it.
My first crush.
My first kiss.
First job.
First love.
Second love.
Thi..
And so on.
I went past the time I stared into space last year, on my twenty first birthday. When twenty one years seemed a life lived long enough – I had nothing more to unlearn, nothing more to lose. I sat alone, stared blankly at my TV screen in the dark. I liked its play of light on the wall.
It was my birthday. I was alone, and it mattered. I didn't want people(come to think of it, there were no people) barging into my living room with streamers and pineapple cake, and I switched off my phone in all my senses because I wanted to be the first one to wish myself. Maybe I feared no one would call.
But suddenly, I didn't feel that way any more. I wanted another voice outside my physical self to say “Happy Birthday, Rae.” And it would be a generous topping if he also added, “I love you.”
But I loved no one, and that hurt more than no one loving me.
I switched on my phone. This year, someone was going to wish me. His voice would ring from outside my mind, outside my body. I sneered at time and jeered at the year. I had won! I'd conquered! I am a victorious twenty-two year...
Tring-tring!
“Hello?”
“Rae?”
“HI!!!” He remembers!
“What you doin'?”
“Nothing....!”
“Oh.”
Then he said he was in love.
I listened, as I imagined him with a ribbon and a bow around his neck.
Time and the past year came closer, fell on their backs, rolled on my floor and laughed, snorted and farted in ugly mockery.
The clock struck twelve. I was twenty two.
“Kay is so amazing!”
“Yes. I know.”
“She's.. Rae, God bless you for bringing her to me!”
“Hmm..”
“You seem sleepy.”
“Ah.. Yes.”
“OK. Good night then. And Rae, thanks. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! LOVE YA!”
Click.
I put the phone down, very slowly, almost carefully and reached for the remote control. I switched on my TV. I'd stored Cartoon Network on 11. The Brain told Pinky he had to concoct a potion to put humans to sleep so he could rule the world. He said he would mix the potion with ice cream so it would be lavishly consumed all over the planet.
I am still thinking, dark chocolate.

Mama was lying

2006-07-07T01:30:00.000+05:30

Once upon a time,
summer was a fair.
Mud didn't kill you, and no one really cared.
Now we're all grown up.
All controlling, controlled and softer.
Is this what they meant when they said
Happily ever after?

Exiled

2006-07-07T01:26:00.000+05:30

Silence is golden
Yet silence is still.
Time seems to linger with practised skill.
Not that I complain,
I'm not too agile.
It just gets lonely in my exile.

The Beginning

2006-01-02T18:24:00.000+05:30

On another planet far, far away,
Where life prevailed like here
Green blue water rested on a white bay
And on it, stood a lonely seer.

He looked up high into the red of the sky
His arms were gold and dead.
“Forgive me, forgive us, make us undie!
Tis you who made us sin!” he said.

Crashing to the sand, he then realized
The end was near, it was time.
Then crashed his pain, sin and lies
His tears, soul and many minds.

The sky began to boil and simmer
Ready to drip into the seas
The dark of the red made him quiver, shiver,
Shudder the coming of release.

The human kind came at a lonely hour
When He felt all alone, marooned!
He had no one but Him, He was His lover
He was His friend, His foe, His doom.

He thought a while, which should've taken longer.
He thought a while and smiled.
He'd create a being which would want to conquer
All he saw and then beguile.

He will amuse and he will annoy
He will effect, without his cause
He will create, then he will destroy.
“Man! I create you!” And so he was.

“The pass-times of the Alpha! The Supreme Loner!”
Said the seer, as the sun went down.
“We will come again, we will hope and surrender.”
As the sky dropped onto the ground.

Time, Creation and Destructions later,
The seer, again, hoped. He, again, longed.
Sprang a new spring, a new season and nature.
But again, He was right. The seer was wrong.

I saw the seer again, screaming into air.
“Forgive me, forgive us, make us undie!
Tis you who made us sin!” he declared.
Crashing to the sand he cried.

The skies aren't wishing they had stayed.
The seas will eat more men.
Man kind will go, His longing will fade.
The seer will never cry again.

The Night He Flew Away

2005-12-15T11:29:00.000+05:30

“This is love.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“I love you, too.”
“It is our destiny.”
“Of course, I do.”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”

And so on.

“Can’t we picture an ‘us’ together?”

I was sure I’d finally answered that question, and I knew my answers were well given. I answered with music in my voice draping grey lies. And I sang my answers with bittersweet stories of life and living. They sounded good on my tongue, on their ears, and I poured generously, my cup of superfluous love, down their throats, into their chests and let it mix with their fluid- of mind and body, not really caring in which order.

Then I cried. I realized I’d given, and I believed I gave all and got none. My cup grew shapeless with lesser to give, so I extracted from myself to pour more. My rush was in giving, or so I thought.

One day, I sat by my window and looked at the sea hanging loosely from a teasing sky. It held on very tight, like a chick from a hawk’s nest on the summit of the Alps, looking down, realizing a careless step of untrained feet could bring him to meet the world below that eludes him; only, his eyes would close and his desire would be trapped inside within that thumping heart he knew not existed.

Suddenly, a bird flew down to my window. It was no bird I’ve seen before, yet I knew it like my own soul. He was violet and royal blue, and stood as tall as my dreams of attainable love. How tall, you decide.

He spoke with a tongue that caught my own, and I knew, again, I loved.

Now, this was an emotion I decided better to not deal with, because my bird asked me no questions. The vein behind my skin that bejeweled my temple stood hard and green like the henna on a bride, so I hid them in infamy and timidity, with my thick long curls.

My bird carried me away to his world. I spoke not his language, and I regretted I had no feathers like he did. A nest I instantly called my own, without his consent, I adorned with my smell and laid grass and straw to rest by night.

Then came the predicament. My disease relapsed. My cup was full again. I had to pour my love down his throat, and I needed it to mix with his fluids, and I knew the order was already wrong, because his mind, I couldn’t read. Also, I was worried that the content of my love would be lethal to the unusual bird. He was, after all, not human like the rest of them. I must add, now, that then it never occurred to me that I was not a bird either.

At dawn, I awoke and sat by the mighty bird’s side. I knew once the wretched sky goddess roused from her sleep, she would lift her majestic head and tie her long black hair which would unmask the wretched sun, a victim of her beauty who wasted his brilliance in awaiting her rest, just so he could smell her hair.

When the sun cried because his mistress did not grace him, he would reach out to her boundaries with his rays, and his wretched rays would awaken my bird, who, would then, flap his magnanimous violet wings and fly away to live, while I waited for death.

In the evening, my bird returned just before I decided I would carefully take careless steps and fall back into the world that I eluded, and it wouldn’t matter I my eyes didn’t open to it again. There was no desire crushed in my thumping heart that I would save my days for.
When he returned, he smiled. I saw a face in his silk feathers and I went close and caressed it. He looked into my eyes and I saw something. I knew if I looked longer, I would find the human my cup was throbbing for. He looked away for a second so beautiful, that time stopped behind clouds and cried at the moment. I moved close, trying not to cry, and willing to cry if it would show me my human.

Then, I saw an invisible tear drop. It was shaped like the pain in my heart, and the ache in my eyes when I begged them to not cry. It fell on my fingers that he brushed off his face, and its touch felt like the smile my heart gave to stop from weeping. He cried an invisible tear, and I felt it, I touched it. He cried, and with him, I cried too.

He said nothing, but I knew what he meant. I was to leave.

I still know not why, and maybe it doesn’t matter. I said nothing, and aimlessly wandered for a while in the nest I’d come to love. Then I sat on his back, though he pretended he wasn’t waiting, and then he lingered a while and began to fly away.

I speak from at my window, and the sea has sunk in his depth. The sky is sorry she let go, the sun is waiting for her to rest.

“We will meet.”

He asked no questions, so I could never answer, and his back was turned to me before I could ask. My heart is light, very light, and it is hollow from a missing burden. I do not weep to my sky or her lost seas for the bird that is not mine and will never be. I weep for my insane need to pour again, for the last time.

I’ve left my cup of superfluous love in the nest that was never mine.

Though I realize now that I cannot pour if he has no thirst, I hope my bird will taste it, and want more.

I cannot extract from myself any more, but I now know, that it doesn’t really matter.

Life Is An Axiom

2005-12-15T11:25:00.000+05:30

There’s a hole in the sky somewhere up there
That’s eating my share of the stars.
Someone spun a top way, way long ago
And it’s still spinning ‘coz no one told it to stop.

Its really not there, it’s all in your head.
There’s a soul deep within, one day it’ll fly away.
Change is the only constant, love is the last resort.
World peace, dark rum, machine guns and the rest.

I don’t really get theories.
I don’t understand philosophy.
I love, I lose.
I lose, heck, I love again.

Life’s the only axiom, theories are just theories.
If everything gets unraveled, where will we hide?
Black hole or supernova, you and I will perish.
Hell cares there’s water on Mars, I’m not leaving home!

How’ll I smile longer if neutrons are confused?
I’m a wave, you’re a particle.
You’ll ride me anyways.
Why’d I be excited ‘coz Einstein’s wrong?
I’m faster, I reverse yesterday.
My therapist will get paid anyways.

Life’s the only axiom, theories are just theories.
If everyone knew everything, how’d I prove I’m smarter?
So your religion’s cooler than mine, but I’m having more fun.
And when you leave to Mars, take your machine guns.
And while you’re there, pass me the rum.