The Sandy Toe

Slowdown.

2012-01-16T09:03:00.000-08:00

Willie Dixon saunters raspily in the background in his coffee-roasted voice. Slowly, but slowly my twitching feet are lulled into a steady tap. But how long will this little fix of musical tranquilizer last?
Happiness is like that I suppose. A steady, sweet rhythm. How do people do it though? Settle into the unwavering, unchanging and frankly terrifying pace of happiness. How does more and more and more of sweet and okay not scare them out of their wits?
Safe is lovely. Safe is warm. Safe is same as same as yesterday. Safe is here to stay. And then what? How do they keep their pulses steady through the unchanging world of safe. How do they stick with it long enough to see if it works. How do they not toss away their blankets and run out screaming with unspent life and longing into the cold and dark.
Growing up is hard not because the world is tough. It's hard because after a while, what if it's too easy?

Mr. Bukowski

2011-10-05T02:49:00.000-07:00

I get why you don't cry. But I'm going to let my bluebird out now.

Nicotine Patch.

2011-09-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

Hush now, there's time yet.

Hold, hold, hold.

You'll spoil it all for everyone,

With your sudden urge to bolt.

Hold back on the reveries,

The sickly, sweet memories.

The unwieldy, loose-limbed laughter,

that you regret the morning after.

Hold on to your drama darling,
Give us all a break.
Your hysterics are very charming,
(But they seem a little fake.)

Hold down your restless feet,

Once in the morning. And then, repeat.

Hold down your grasping fingers,

Yes. Even if the craving lingers.

Hold back on the hunger for,

more and more and more and more.

Hold back on what you did before,

the time you really knew for sure.

Where is this time that you've been spending?

hold, hold, hold.

What is the point of pretending

like you're never getting old?

Ammi

2011-08-15T14:46:00.000-07:00

Talking to mothers is the greatest, smartest thing you can do for yourself. They listen, they have no agenda and not only have they lived decades more life than you, they've lived every minute of yours more intensely than you have. They've seen you become the semi-human cocksure ape that you are from the inhuman ape that you were. And you've probably done enough embarrassing things in front of them, for nothing to shock or surprise them.
In short... they know, they get it, they understand, they forgive you and you're going to be fine. After all in a world, where you're always probably headed for your next big fuck up, it should almost be mandatory to steel yourself with some good old fashioned mom time. After a long long time I got me some.
And just when my world-weary wobbling had begun to subside, the real world shoved it's way in. It rather rudely interrupted my ginger attempts at reentering utopia for a a brief and long overdue hiatus. It jostled me and tried to tell me, there was no escaping the job list.
But guess what, as we enter adulthood, sure life can sometimes get to being a drag, what with constantly dealing with the consequences of your actions and all that jazz. Sure there'll be days, months, years even, when you feel every minute like giving up. But the grand thing is no matter how many times you give up, your mother never gives up on you. And if you think your failures hurt you, trust me, they'll never hurt half as much as they hurt your mother. And yet well past her time to baby sit you, she'll be there cheering you on. And you think, that has to be the most terrifyingly, heart-breakingly tough job in the world. And then you think, look how fragile she is, how delicate and becoming more and more delicate every day. And then you think, if that woman has the strength to be happy in the face of the pain-in-the-butt terror you are for her, then who the hell gave you permission to give up. And then you think, get over yourself.

Can of worms

2011-07-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Oh come on. Spring for a bottle. Or a shot if you will. Don't tell me it's too late and you want to be sleeping. All long, lazy, loose and heavy, tangled into the sheets and full off righteous adult exhaustion. It's all just beginning isn't it?
I would buy a round for the road, but I got bills to pay. The lessons those bills teach me. They talk to me I tell you, with the deep, groaning ponderous wiseass baritone of a guru reborn. They tell me stories, they hold my collar, they hold my head under the water. They tell me bullshit stories of the good old days, and look at me with the patronizing disgust of someone whose waiting for you to catch up. In a decade or two.
I got them sitting with the patience of a predator, for the night to be over and for me to walk in, foolishly happy with my evening's worth of escape. They're sitting right now, at the living room table, waiting to make me feel like detention again. When I walk in, they look down at the watch and shrug their shoulders at me.

We'll be walking the roads all yellow from street lights, and laughing at things which aren't really funny. To anybody. We'll be pretending that this means something. And saying things which definitely have the potential to possibly, almost, kind of mean something-ish. We'll be patting backs and toasting toasts to anything worth hanging a coat on. We'll be forgetting we're dying and trying not to. We'll sometimes even let something real slip out. And because the only one's we're fooling is ourselves it won't cost a thing.
So cut me some slack. Give a beggar a break and buy us a drink won't you love. You won't have me do this sober, now will you.

A bit much

2011-06-20T03:00:00.000-07:00

No more.
The waiting for distant tomorrows.
The imagining of things bigger than me.
No more.
The unshaken belief in better things.
The proclamations of what is and what will be.
No more.
The careless nudging aside of inner demons.
The sculpting of reality to fit frames on a mantlepiece.
Not now.
The parody of picture perfect.
I could do with a touch of ugly.
No more.
Not now.
Not even if.

Mug Shot 2

2011-06-06T05:14:00.000-07:00

Left, center, right.
Lean, endless, calm as winter sleep.
Innocent of sin and hunger.
Hands like hammers, fingers lean, bony hard.
Forearms browned and pulsing with corded muscles.
And yet he lets them listlessly lie.
Leans back with the lazy ease of someone in no hurry.
Not because there's plenty of time.
But because he has nowhere to go.

Mug shot 1

2011-06-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Bare. Stripped naked down to the balls of my feet.
Clean on the outside and dirty within.
Sated. Only by constant hunger.
Hungry. Only to be consumed.
Simple. Only in knowing too little of what's right.
Complex. Only in knowing too much of what's wrong.
Tired. Drawn of knotted muscles and aching bones.
Happy. But only when I'm in pain.
Ridiculously small where it matters.
Hideously big where it doesn't.
Waiting. Only for the arrival of departures.
Reaching. Only to want to leave.

Look ma, no hands

2011-05-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

Women. Terrifyingly fragile, fueled by guilt and identity, threaded through with the strength of corded ropes, strung together by shared insecurities, the bartering of flaws and soothing away each other's imperfections.
Men are cruel outwards she said. We turn brutal inwards. Even our vengeance is an act of pulling in. Withdrawal, silence, the caving in of lofty expectations and not the dynamic catharsis of demolition.
How slender their wrists, how translucent the napes of their necks.Bodies that refuse to be drawn in straight lines.Frames that meander as if moulded to accommodate the brutal linearity of men. Bodies that betray them. Already burdened with meaning. Each body part invested with its own mythology, its own ability to profane.
Women, I thought. Look how they smile with the fondness of mothers. Look with what heartbreaking courage they hold out their arms to be held down and twisted.

Something's got to give

2011-05-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

The business of living can really take the life out of you. A million threads trail from your palm behind you. Keep one untangled and a hundred others tie themselves up in knots. Get to untangling those knots and the first one proceeds to become an insurmountable mess. It seems to me, the people whose lives seem one fluid string of silk, are either not moving forward at all, or they must be carrying out this balancing act at the cost of sanity, precariously held together. Or maybe it's just that I am incapable of knowing which strings to let go of.

Love Shmove

2011-04-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

Causation is a beautiful thing. The chain of logic is perhaps, the most liberating idea you can bind yourself to. Almost everything eventually succumbs and unravels before the persistent gaze of reasoning. Ideas, ambitions, the day-to-day business of running our lives. There may be days when something hovers over us, a seemingly unsolvable conundrum, a mangled insurmountable mess of whys and whats.
But pull back and pluck piece by piece and eventually a pattern will emerge. In fact if you're in the mood to play, several alternative patterns will emerge. Then it becomes merely a matter of choosing which of those arguments (and sometimes miraculously there is no second argument) is more true to your life and moral code.
Wonderful, you think. Well this is simple. I can argue my way out of everything in life. And once the argument is right, it's always simply been a matter of setting your teeth and getting to it. Somehow as long as the logic of an action has seemed fine, the actual act no matter how painful or exhausting has never daunted me.

Perhaps that is why the idea of love often leaves me bewildered. If you argue long enough even God will disappear in a cloud of logic. Sometimes I think love, like god is a symptom. In fact while god is a symptom of human insecurity, love is a collection of symptoms, a syndrome if you will.
But unlike god it refuses to play by the rules. It refuses to be defined, controlled and argued with. Unlike god it does not feed off your faith. Nonbelievers have been known to succumb suddenly to their utter surprise and annoyance. It refuses to conform to the ethics of good and evil, the rules of aesthetics or pragmatism. It follows no life-cycle, enters and exits arbitrarily with a dramatic flourish often leaving behind in its wake, utter and complete chaos. And even the most war-hardened love atheist is almost always, merely a love agnostic, hoping ardently to be proven wrong. Perhaps if we could define it, it would be easier on the logic afflicted human mind. Definitions invited.

Excuse me sir,

2011-04-13T04:04:00.000-07:00

would you mind shifting a bit, you're getting on my nerves.

Goa Take 2

2011-04-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

I missed my flight this morning. After a sudden and very unexpected encounter with food from back home, I think my mind gave up on intelligent thought and settled into a mushy mess of nostalgia. But to be fair, what food! (Yes, I know, I know, an exclamation mark, how vulgar. But this meal demanded, not one but several exclamation marks. Specially because it turned up oasis-like in an underbelly lane of Bandra). Galawati kawabs that melt depravedly on your tongue, the rich malleability of warqi paratha and give-the-pmsing-girl-a-break...Lucknawi dum biryani.
Now if I could speak the language of Mirza Ghalib, perhaps then and only then, with the lace-like filigree of Urdu, could I capture what this food means to me. You see, it is a way of life. Strike that, it is life itself. It has highs, lows, drama, smoldering sensuality, even parables of every-day philosophy. It talks of a world where the elegance of experience overrides convenience and speed. Awadhi food traces a leisurely, layered path from the kitchen to your tongue. It urges you to slow down. When you take a mouthful it unravels tantalizingly, revealing harmony upon harmony of fiery flavour, subtle against harsh.
Take the making of biryani for instance. Mutton, massaged into submission with spices that run true to the bone. Whole spices - altos of cardamom and saffron played off against tenors of bay leaf, ginger, garlic and peppercorn. Buttery basmati. And then we start to dance. A king-sized degchi with ghee spluttering. A layer of rice and spice, meat and rice again, and meat and rice again, and again and again and ... you guessed it...again. Seal this wicked little orgy with flour on the rims of a plate and cook..but gently. Eventually the meat surrenders, seeping its succulence into the swelling rice, loosening its grip on its bones, flaking and melting into a truly orgasmic whole. And that is what we call Biryani.
So if i though 5.20 in the morning was too much morning for me and 7 sounds more like a plan, after this, perhaps I can be forgiven.

Why dingy bars work

2011-04-05T04:21:00.000-07:00

And there it is again. The sudden need for a conversation. Any conversation. Dark, delusional, desolate, hungry, funny, tragic, ridiculous even. Anything but mundane. And restless enough to ferret itself within the claustrophobic folds of my mind.

Whimsy

2011-03-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Opportunities are dreams waking up with a start. They lie slumbering within, just below our skins, infesting our blood with hunger and a relentless urge to shift from foot to foot. Lie still, curtains drawn in the dark and they are soothed and lulled into oblivion. If you want to see them you must take them by surprise. Shock them with a sudden brutal wakefulness and they become flesh and blood beings, birthed by your unwillingness to lie still, wailing in protest. See if one lies at that pulse on the softest part of your wrist. Or maybe at the hollow of your neck.Perhaps even as we speak one has curled up soft against the inside of your temple.

The glitch

2011-03-22T06:27:00.000-07:00

Remember. High ceilings, white uneven cool plastered walls. Cold, hard floors. The smell of nostalgia and loss and innocence - freshly washed cotton and summer. And the sudden urge to scream and scream and scream. Only you don't. Your jaw gapes to the point of cracking, you feel your throat stretch taut, your spine arch, your mind fill up with a surge of angry blood, thick and clotting even as it flows. And you feel your breath lock at the nape of your neck. Your skin prickles in protest. But no sound escapes. Because you know if it does you won't be able to stop. You've been here before. On all fours like an animal. Hands fisted to the point of breaking. Screaming and no longer remembering why. And you're afraid to let yourself go there again. Because you don't know when things splinter, when they crash. You don't know when your mind will crack eggshell-like and spill its messy yellowness onto unyielding surfaces. You don't know where the line lies. Where the mind suddenly untethers and proceeds to spiral. So you scream inside. You feel it building like the cooling of steel into a hard serrated knife. And you know its that easy and tempting. The effortlessness of insanity. Why did I pull back then? How do you know oblivion isn't better than it's cut out to be?

Don't call me babe.

2011-02-23T23:54:00.000-08:00

Today one 'foreign return' type decided to sweep me off my feet. First he told me about how he has a fabulous home, lots of friends, fuck buddies even but how for years he'd been waiting for looooove. Fancy that! Foreign return, loaded AND looking for LOOOOVE. And then he tells me about how, he finally has a girlfriend. Oh me! Be still my beating heart!. This pretentious, moronic little bundle of money, cliches and intellectual black-holes is actually taken. How will I survive this!
He then proceeds to tell me about how I should take care of my body, since I am eventually going to have a baby. Right then. Off course my sole purpose in life, since the very moment I was born was to become a giant, all encompassing, all-giving womb. Waiting to be 'completed' by child-birth.
Wait for it. That's not enough. When I ask him this, he tells me 'What, you're just going to leave the marriage open?'. Riiight. Why did it not occur to me before, my life-long goal of finding a man accomplished, I must now neatly tie it all up with a little bundle of joy. Preferably male I presume. After all, if I don't have a baby my marriage will fall apart. Nothing to tie it all in, you see.
During this completely mindless and unbelievably uneducated rant this gentleman then proceeds to call me 'Babe'. He enlightens me about how all women have an aura, how love is the secret of the universe and not 42 (talk about missing the entire bloody point of the book, Douglas Adams just woke up from eternal sleep and shot himself in the face) and how he can read my aura. When I finally tell him to stop calling me babe, he proceeds to justify it by telling me all of the following arguments. See if you can follow them and tell me what I should do

The reason he's calling me babe is because:

Men watch porn.
Women watch too many serials and are basically insecure
Indian women are uptight
People pretend to be 'from abroad' but he has actually been abroad
I have not been abroad and it shows
Of the hundred women he's called babe, 50 have objected and they've all been Indian
No matter how forward-thinking I pretend to be I am an Indian woman ( Note to educated women everywhere: To establish that you're forward thinking and not really an uptight 'conventional' feminist bitch, you must be willing to be called babe, take advice on your fertility and must break into uncontrollable high-pitched giggles, every time a foreign return type passes by, while noticing your aura. Most importantly, do not, I repeat do not be all Indian-like. This is the path to being 'cool' and 'with it'.)
and best of all I should relax because our minds are being manipulated.

Suggestions, hopefully of the violent, abusive and brutal kind, regarding the fate of this gentleman are welcome. And when the vein on my forehead has stopped threatening to explode perhaps I shall muster the energy to explain why, unlike Pamela Anderson, I actually mean it when I say, don't call me babe.

And they're back.

2010-11-15T01:27:00.000-08:00

Gossip is a strange phenomenon. For years I have watched it swirling around me, in eddies and currents of hot, angry air. The currency of the insecure. The language of the empty. 

I understand the basic premise of it. You know or think you know something terrible about someone else and you must pass on this little nugget of dirt. Pass on the ugliness so that maybe in this act of belittling another's life, you will feel a little better about the nothingness of your own. See that's the theory of it.
But somehow I cannot really grasp it. It's like trying to empathize with fanatics, cultural chauvinists and moral jingoists. In rare instances you can trace the arguments that allow a person to believe that killing a large number of innocent people is the only path to personal salvation. But the second you see the hideousness of the argument laid out before you, you shudder with revulsion. You wonder, how is the human mind capable of justifying this to itself.

The same holds true of gossip. While I can have a conversation for twelve hours on the meaning of the word nonsense (and  I have had that conversation), it takes me all of twelve seconds to get bored by the ugly details of someone's life. Why, in a world so full of fascinating phenomenon, delicious literature and unexplored journeys would I want to know what someone fabricated about someone else' life?

Are your lives that devoid of meaning in themselves?

In the past ten years of my life, every living minute has literally been overtaken with dreams that must be pursued, the ever-changing landscape of my own mind, the finding and enjoyment of love. Even as I greedily reach out with both grasping hands I am always left pleasantly overwhelmed with all the things that need to be reached out for. The possibility of taking time out from my life, long enough to be interested in even the truth about someone's life, let alone the fabricated truth, is beyond me. 

At some point you assume everyone will move on to overwhelmed , individual, adult existences. Yet inexplicably every few months I witness the return of doomsday stories about my life which have absolutely no basis in truth. I am bewildered not only by  a picture of my life which is the complete opposite of truth but also by the fact that people can still muster enough interest in the life of a couple who are completely lost in their own world. Does it not belittle you to talk of someone who couldn't give a fuck about whether you're dead or alive? Or is it that, you must needle them because they dare to not give a fuck? 

And if you must explore the lives of others why must it be untruths that belittle them, why not fantasies that elevate them. Why does the human mind thrive on the imagined breakdown of lives?

If someone has an answer I'd love to know and understand. And not a theoretical answer, I would like an honest gossip-insider's answer. Any takers? 

Till death do us apart

2010-03-10T08:43:00.000-08:00

Marriage is a lot of things to a lot of things to a lot of people. From the day you are born you are primed to expect certain things of it. Movies of the pink and fluffy variety, project it as an endless loop of Ella Fitzgerals, wine and autumn colours. When you're young and beginning to discover the zone of 'with-it' your peers paint a dismal picture. It's supposed to be an inevitable downward spiral, the Captain Hook to the Peter Pan in us all. In 6 months, a year, 7 years or 10 (predictions vary) it is supposed to become an insipid mush of obligation, familiarity and compromises. The single-mingle crowd turns up its nose at the obvious corniness of a happy marriage. It is as if to be completely and openly in a happy marraige is to become a cliche from a Mills and Boons.
Both versions do no justice to the experience. It is not the finding of the one and only love of your life. It is discovering that love is in the act of commiting to the idea of one and only. It is not a compromise of your individuality but the finding of a quiet space to call your own, to always come back to after an adventure. It has not been for me the limiting of relationships to explore but freedom from having to walk a tight-rope of defining every relationship. It is not the end of possibilities but the certainty of always having a companion for your adventures. It is not roses and wine but a hug whenever you need it. It is not a candlelight dinner but an indulgent smile and a hot towel when you're green and puking. It is the deliciousness of always knowing that no matter what you become, what you achieve or don't there is something that will outlive, outlast and outshine the change in your waistline or paycheck.
Marriage, is to me the magical discovery that where everything is uncertain, a lazy Sunday afternoon awaits me within the quiet circle of a pair of sturdy hands.

And then there were two!

2009-11-10T01:41:00.000-08:00

Another little girl came to the world today. My sister gave birth to my neice today. But somehow I am unable to rejoice. Where do I go and who do I share this with? What has happened to our prorities, I was at school when my first niece was born and working through a mundane work Tuesday during the birth of the second. Who understands the intensity of what I feel right now. Everyone who does or could or would is far away. For others its just something that happened.
Imagine an entire new human being. Complete, 10 toes, two beautiful eyes to see the world with, softly curling hair, a smiling toothless mouth, delicate delicate skin, a miracle of a mind, a tiny heart beating at an incredible speed. She is breathing right now thousands of miles from me. And just like Kuhu I cannot see her, touch her, smell her. I cannot hold my sister's hand.
This is homesickness. The suffocating impotence of the inability to share, to reconnect, to see. I see them only through pixels. The enormity of the birth a beautiful baby reduced to a 19 inch screen. However I find a measure of comfort. Even though I am far away I can see them. My three girls. My beautiful sister and two tiny shining bundles of giggles and pink ribbon and fluff tilting their heads at the screen.

Ashless and Decaffienated

2009-10-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

You're triptriptrippering much it's like insanity on amphetamines. Why, the sudden high that takes you by surprise and wrenches you out like a dish-rag leaving you sopping useless with exhaustion and hard like boot-in-groin darkness. Why here. Why now. Leave me alone to deal with this continuous grinding need to be better, bigger, cleaner, a shiny cellophane-wrapped extra extra extra version of me. I don't know perhaps that's all there is to me. Perhaps bigger's not going to be any better.

Say it isnt So

2009-10-23T01:35:00.001-07:00

I will not give up or be beaten down by the petty mundaneness of everyday realities. I will not allow grocery lists, scripts, unfinished moments, onions that I had to draw, trips I must take alone and the curdled milk to overwhelm me. I have the right to believe, to move forward without guilt, to give myself a break for trying to do the best I can. In times, where slow, like the moment of immersion, I watch fragile things break, splinter and scatter I will not unhinge and splinter like them. I will know that just like every other ordinary moment which seemed like a catastrophe yesterday, this too will disappear and be forgotten. I will take responsibility for the path my life is on and I will stop struggling against what I do not have the courage, will or right to change. I will revel. I will stay hungry. I will not lose my curiosity, my naivete or my ability to become absorbed my minutiae. I will remember O' Henry, Wordsworth and Douglas Adams and then just for kicks I will think of Ogden Nash. I will enjoy the ambiguity of glances, the thirst for sophistication and multi-hued mirage of a New York studio life. I will be uncool. I will be unabashed in my enjoyment of fairy-tales, hip-hop and polka-dot. I will not pose and spew Jazz, Umberto Eco, autumn colors and graphic novels to prop my puny self-esteem. I will give my self chance upon chance and trust that one day I will not be a slob any more. By red-brick and sunlight and moist cake and polo necks and black tights and berets and cobbled streets and Venice and kitsch and vermillion and chicory and all the words that roll of your tongue like thick black coffee I will just get over it.

Choregraphed Serendipity

2009-08-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in an unwary moment a phrase is born from your mind and suddenly you realize it means so much more than you gave it credit for. 'Choreographed Serendipity' I said breaking the 9 alphabet limit imposed on me by the anti-verbosity wing of my circle. But seriously isn't that how we wish our lives were? Isn't that why we feel the need to conjure god, kismet, fate and a cliched cosmos conspiring to bring that touch of tinsel to our lives.

I wonder when it became so hard. When I was a thick-sculled child they said that I walked enveloped in a thick mist of dreams, bullheadedly optimistic. My delicate, princess of a sister would look at me with a mixture of weariness and love and talk of how I could not ever be jaded. The power of auto-suggestion I suppose was at play as Mr. Marshmallow said the other day. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy that I felt obliged to play out to its very bitter end.

Knock me down and I would tell you that it helped sharpen my reflexes, break my heart and I would say it helped me understand how strong and self-sufficient I was, mock me and I would tell you that it opened up knew territories for me to overcome.

Nothing could stand in the way of Miss I Shall Overcome Go Getter.

Earlier my life was a marathon. I'd find myself running even in my dreams. Forward, forward, thrusting ahead like some insane calamity, desperate to find new grounds to run amok in.

Now I find myself trapped in a waltz. 1-2-3, 1-2-3 forward side side back forward. Neat little squares, perfect frames, no contact, just aseptic inorganic movement. Parry-thrust forward, behind.

On the Highway

2009-06-22T00:35:00.000-07:00

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

and I say it's all right

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter

Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here.

And a very Good Morning to you too my love. Today holds intense possibilities. It’s a day for changing destinies, for brushing aside everything that is fear and pragmatism. It’s a day to rush ahead in a blood-flushed, impulse-driven high. We know what fools we are. And more power to the indiscretion of valour and youth. We know we will struggle and hunger for the comfort of what-was but what joy in believing in what-will-be. Today we will suddenly drop off the face of the earth and be anti-gravity air-borne into another universe. Today we will fold back our sleeves, tuck back our forelocks and fly. Today, I swear by the red wine that is my blood, my lovely, today we will win.

Say it isn't so

2009-06-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

A sudden swelling of senses, a burgeoning of blood within. Thickening tongue, eyes adrift in saltwater, every hair prickling in an eerie synchronicity of primal response. The heavy round mass of emotion struggling within the confines of your throat. This moment, of music.

Sudden. Hungry. Intense.

Serendipitous.

Each riff scratching at some beast within, cutting you loose and adrift, leaving you wondering why. I know it asks of me. This song and I, we met before.

When my tongue knew no language, when I was naked, unaware, unconscious of the boundaries between me and the universe. Then. It knew me.

And today it has shown up. Popped its head around the corner and broken my heart with its perfection. It has whispered in my ear and told me to remember. It has tugged at my sleeve and awoken me. So that I can reclaim the smell of rain.

Didn't it begin as.....Once upon a time

2009-03-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

There seem to be a lot of people falling in love around me. Only no one calls it that anymore. We have to rationally justify why we are together. Falling can’t possibly have anything to do with the lives of the upwardly mobile. I am unfashionably emotional these days. Everything seems like such a waste for lack of force and honest passion. Everyone seems to correctly cool. No one is hungry enough anymore. Maybe it’s because the source of my poetry is deadline bound. Maybe he will unfetter himself one day. It could be simply because my hungry twin is sated for now. Maybe she will be hungry again.

Why tomorrow at dawn I will awaken to a sudden feast of impracticality. We will explore a realm of leprechauns together. Or maybe I will break away from everything and find myself a gilded mushroom to dream by. There beneath its ribbed and laced belly I will pluck feather quills again and ink will gleam darkly, bedewing lily leaves beside me. The hedge by the brick wall will transform into a tunnel into a fairy world again. And chapels will turn to princesses’ castles. In tree knots children will find again treasure from an unloved son. Painted leafs will rival the Mona Lisa on rain slicked brick walls. And by the shore of Innisfree we will find and embrace our souls again.

An Epitaph to O' Henry

2009-03-28T01:46:00.000-07:00

We are living irrational lives. We burn too many bridges every moment of our lives and slowly we are burning ourselves into islands. We are unable to let go of our anger and unwilling to see. That moment of letting go, the sudden weightlessness and clarity when the anger melts away. The gorgeous, toasty warmth of embracing the fact that we all are made richer by reaching out. It has become unfashionable to be honest and lucid about your feelings. It is now unacceptable to say I am hurt, in love, I care, I don’t don’t give a damn, this is not easy for me, I feel too much.

It is weak to be polite, to apologize or to forgive. How will you survive here? If you looked for a moment of magic, grace and acceptance you would be relic from a rain filled O’ Henry, now wouldn’t you? Where else does such unabashed abandoning to instinct and feeling belong? Wordsworth is really not with it.

We don't really talk anymore. We skirt uncomfortable ideas. We hedge our bets. We are polite, correct, calm and pragmatic. We don't stand up, fight openly, talk it out, ask. With so much instant gratification available how the hell are you supposed to continue to think, explain, argue anything out. Imagine the 20 fun things you could have done meanwhile.

Our lives, now more than ever before, bristle with possibilities and connections which branch out in an enticing window display of better, richer, more popular, better looking and cooler. Committing to something now seems foolish. We are young, and in front of us, stretch out more exciting friends, more delicious flirtation, other jobs, new colleagues. Why bother fixing a knotted relationship when you can have a new and improved version of the friends you just discarded. Why admit to the imaginings of a future together. Why that’s preposterously uncool. What if the next hot thing walked through the door, what if we ran out of conversation? Why struggle through an hour of an awkward but honest conversation merely to unknot what we did, isn’t it easier to erase from my life the lifetime of encounters we could have. Why stand up against ugly rumors for a friend, why not just say its her life and let them think otherwise. What’s the point of saying I know better, I know differently. Too much effort really. And it’s so much cooler to say ‘whatever’ and shrug.

I looked out of the window that day, and an infant pointed her chubby finger at me, I smiled and waved. Her mother and I had a conversation about her beauty at a traffic light. I like that.

By the Crucifix

2009-02-20T02:35:00.000-08:00

Suddenly so far,
Namesake, alter-ego, poetess,
Friend of budding consciousness,
Playmate of mine.

Your sudden pyrotechnic laughter,
The serendipity of knowing,
The surity of an answer,
Now lost to me.

No longer the continuous conversation,
Strung across days, months, lifetimes,
Or so I thought and took for granted.
And now cannot find.

Whither now dream twin,
I tarried too long,
Has the sin of my gipsyness,
Stained your feet?

Whither now changeling,
I did not imagine,
Our incessant back and forth,
Our silver-tongued whispering,
Would dissolve amid the clutter,
Of 'modern living'.

Our shared shelter amidst the printed page,
Our divergent view-points,
Mellow against harsh,
Like scales in ebony and ivory,
Different but resonant,
Now silenced.

Black and white and Garfunkled

2008-12-19T01:52:00.000-08:00

I been norman mailered, maxwell taylored.
I been john oharad, mcnamarad.
I been rolling stoned and beatled till Im blind.
I been ayn randed, nearly branded
Communist, cause Im left-handed.
Thats the hand I use, well, never mind!
I been phil spectored, resurrected.
I been lou adlered, barry sadlered.
Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay.
And I learned the truth from lenny bruce,
And all my wealth wont buy me health,
So I smoke a pint of tea a day.

I knew a man, his brain was so small,
He couldnt think of nothing at all.
Hes not the same as you and me.
He doesnt dig poetry. hes so unhip that
When you say dylan, he thinks youre talking about dylan thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man aint got no culture,
But its alright, ma,
Everybody must get stoned.

I been mick jaggered, silver daggered.
Andy warhol, wont you please come home?
I been mothered, fathered, aunt and uncled,
Been roy haleed and art garfunkeled.
I just discovered somebodys tapped my phone.

A 'Simple Desultory Phillipic' Imagine that!
and then there is off course....
The Dangling Conversation

Its a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

And you read your emily dickinson,
And I my robert frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what weve lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
Youre a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.

My life

2008-12-17T04:38:00.000-08:00

Its like my headphones see. 6 meters of wire all tangled into a disgusting knot, frayed at the edges, but oh the music!

And we'er back

2008-12-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

All it takes is to replace your inner god with some music. Works like a charm. False alarm, not back to the fold.

Confessions of an Athiest

2008-12-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.

Beautiful isn't it? It comes to you when the god within doesn't answer her call. It tempts you with the simplicity of its surrender, the serenity of its promise. After all what is faith. A blanket to keep the wolves at bay. A hand to hold when everything is dark and worrisome. And who cannot be tempted by such poetry.
What of it? Unfortunately I can not give in. Because in my reality god has already vanished. And all I can do is marvel at the warm, honeyed richness and beauty of faith from afar. And all I can see is that at the end of the day that warm richness is a point of view. And though its poetry is delicious and enduring, it is beyond me to find comfort in it.

Wish I were Woody Allen

2008-11-11T11:46:00.000-08:00

How frightening to realize, that everything is a memory, already lived, being created or waiting to be born. We are real, merely in our minds. That is why we frantically seek to create, to build homes, to give corporeality to the wisps of thought that we really are. We create homes, alliances, poetry, babies, pain and art only as a desperate cry against non-existence. Terrible, this dependance of our lives. The moment you are living today, my petty arguments and worries about the extra pound on my paycheck or on my butt, your hunger to be Ms. Thang, your need to be eloquent impressive and smooth like licking against a painted mouth, his latest brainwave, your travels and aspirations, ambitions, desires, the gorgeous pose of cool nonchalent edge-of-pout wittiness it took so many years of complexes and fake arrogance to cultivate. It all depends see. Will anyone know. Will anyone remember. And what proof that it happened, what evidence that you are, were, will be if they forget?

Two Way Mirror.

2008-09-09T02:42:00.000-07:00

Twin poems for us.

Ammended attached...

2008-09-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

Lover, poet, child-hood sweetheart,

Husband, playmate, friend.

How did we find this?

My pigeon-toed imperfection,

My childish prattle and inconsequential victories,

Beguile you with music,

Notes in a song,

That only you can hear,

That only you can strum at will,

The sweet sweet melody of our domesticity.

Suddenly we are each other,

Sharing the thrill of common neuroses,

Our sweet nothings coded secrets of children,

The startling familiarity of a common bedspread,

Our hunger sated by shared bread,

Learning the language of each other’s taste buds.

III

From nowhere the completeness,

Of silent conversations,

Of symbiotic smiles,

The taste of being woven,

Meshed into your life,

Warp to your weft,

Threaded through and through.

I fit into your palm,

Your lean long presence, making me feel,

Small but protected, miraculously tiny,

Inhaling the scent of us,

Covered completely within the folds of your shirt.

I fit into your palm,

I grow roots into your hands,

A seedless being no longer,

Contoured to your laughter,

No longer all angles and edges,

But half of our circle.

The spices that scent our moments,

Roast cinnamon, cardamom and peppers,

Red curves of glistening chillies,

All meld to spike our appetite,

Your sentences flowing into mine,

I belong,

VII

And in belonging you belong to me.

Your love like a silver thread,

Delicate and unstated,

Trailing from fingertips,

We love ungrammatically,

But it don’t matter.

I belong.

Scratch this..

2008-09-09T00:38:00.000-07:00

Lover, poet, child-hood sweetheart,

Playmate, friend, unrequited love,

Why has it come to this?

My arms and fidgeting feet,

My childish prattle and inconsequential victories,

Once charming now have become,

Itches you are afraid to scratch,

For fear that they shall break,

Oozing from their ruptured surfaces

The sweet sweet poison of our domestic discontent.

Suddenly we are acquaintances

Searching frantically for common neuroses,

Our sweet nothings now doctored

Our passion most diplomatic

Our hunger, civil with forks and spoons between us

Shall I pass you the salt, would you like some more of this?

III

From nowhere the fear

Of the strained conversations

Of effort where none was needed before

The taste of things knitted together

All loose ends and knots

Contrived to seem whole and single.

I no longer fit

Even in my small round frame

I ooze unseemly like bolls of obesity

Shamefully unfit, to be tucked in

At the cost of breathing,

To be covered hurriedly by the edge of a traitorous shirt

I no longer fit

I am the one who doesn’t belong

Not natural, real or correct

Not streamlined

A cacophonous entity,

A sticky morsel.

The spices that ooze from the pores of my skin

Roast cinnamon, cardamom and peppers

White pods of juicy garlic

All giving away my identity with their unquenchable music

My sentences all awry and foreign to my own ears

I don’t belong

VII

And in not belonging don’t let you be

My love always voiced too loudly

Now like some cheap burlesque

All painted and borrowed

I love but incorrectly

The grammar of it don’t stick

I don’t belong

Cab-ride at Cinderella Hour

2008-01-07T05:21:00.000-08:00

Hungry, suspended, taut from tip to tip, poised for take-off.
Heavy, bursting at the seams, every minute you live is ripe with anticipation, the startling insistence of a hundred dreams jostling to take shape.
Staccato, the blinking unwitnessed talk of traffic lights on deserted Bombay roads, you slide through the porous perimeter of sleep and non-sleep, passing between a a dreamy thought-stream and the vague impression of yellow trails of light whizzing past your yellow and black cocoon.
Edged with crystalline music, a plastic chandelier wind-chimes into your consciousness, as you contort your limbs for a soft-spot against the leaopard print seats.
Rain-slicked, the road, spreads out, unwavering, knowing, sinuous before me, waiting for me to reach out and caress it.
Yellow and slate grey, so deliciously fluid that I want to dip my hand into its surface, lick its unending promise of anywhere.
Interrupted fluidity, suddenly with the jolt of a brake, the world solidifies again, the wisp of a dream is squeezed and it spurts out through the constricting spasm of a light-shocked iris.
Arched, my wingtips graze past the smell of betelnut, the thick sweetness of rotting seaweed, the delicate, heartbreaking, fragile ingenuity of a jigsawed Dharavi, the sharpness of angry sleep,
Adrift and away the wingtip, floats by my taxi, on the way to tomorrow.

No Heading

2007-09-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

The thing about weddings is that they're all about these massive hellos and massive goodbyes. Both, the hellos and the goodbyes are overwhelming and frightening. Its worse when what you have to say goodbye to, doesn't even exist anymore. There is a line in this great movie I once saw, something about home being an idea, a place which doesn't exist but which everyone longs for.
When I do say goodbye, I want to say goodbye to a certain idea of a home that lies suspended, crystalline, immaculate, luminescent bursting at the seams with hysterical teenage laughter in this place within me. This part of me that I sometimes want to burn off.....cauterize, so that it is safely sealed away, incapable of resurrecting ghosts which I cannot reach within me. Somewhere, I know, it never really existed.
It is a fragile creation, a maneuvering between the cracks of a million memories across lines so thin that they nick you if you touch them . A prettified mosaic, a patchwork quilt of thoroughbred, high-class, grade-A sorted 'Happy' memories. Frozen droplets, shards if you will of perfect sunshine. Just .. you know those moments when your toes curl and there is a sweet-sweet heaviness just behind your eyelids and the walls are white and the moment loaded with laziness.
I want to outgrow this juvenile hankering for the loss of these moments of crystallized ecstasy, these dewdrops of home. I want to accept that I will never reclaim them, that they have been lived and now they are gone, but how can it be. How can it be?

Blues and Bombay

2007-05-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

I sit listening to some unendingly soul-scratching blues at 2:15 lost in the labyrinth of my endearingly hodge-podge office. Slowly, Bombay enfolds my mind, wrapping its colors around my skin, enrobing my senses in its salty air. The streets, gleaming yellow at night, abandoned, flowing, linear, traffic signals blinking unheeded and unwitenessed at crossroads. Tea, exhaustion, the endless perspiration, the pleasure of an evening breeze. Tomorrow... ungrasped, frenetic, slo-mo plays ahead in my mind. A red bus careens James Bond style, I sense in the mistaken belief that if not in body, then atleast in spirit it represents a high grade Suzuki Bike.
My mind nudges and elbows, slowly searching for the sweet spot on the pillow of Mumbai life and suddenly amidst the bewildering mix of absolute slavery to the job and absolute abandonment to the good life, it lets out a hot-bath moan and unclenches its shoulders. And voila, thank you for the menu sir but I believe this IS the steak I ordered.

Letter to a Father

2007-03-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

Soothe your fevered brow now, father,
Come, it's time for May,
Calm your restive heart now, father
We shall find our way.

Rest your hungry tired eyes,
Let your pain unclasp,
Taste our wind, our bedspread , father
Hear our soil, our grass.

Can you smell the water, father,
Seeping through our patch?
Can you see the drop of childhood,
By the looking glass?

Can you hear the echo, father,
Of our evening tea?
Can you curl your toes into,
The sands of our own beach?

Let us walk the red brick, father,
Smell the queen-of-night!
Thread the bougainvillea, father,
Sew the morning light.

Books we read shall be our shelter,
Poemed, we shall hide,
Courtyard suns we hid away,
Will light our Wordsworth night.

Rest now, rest and smile now, father,
We have come to be,
Rest now, laugh and read a little,
I'll be by your knee.

Blue feather miasma this.....

2007-03-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

The Byrds play in the background. As the time comes to go I hear ‘turn turn’ in my mind. And for once I must borrow words to express the turmoil of newness.

To everything (turn, turn, turn),There is a season (turn, turn, turn), And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die, A time to plant, a time to reap, A time to kill, a time to heal, A time to laugh, a time to weep

A time to build up, a time to break down, A time to dance, a time to mourn, A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

A time of love, a time of hate, A time of war, a time of peace, A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

A time to gain, a time to lose, A time to rend, a time to sew, A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear its not too late

Every hackneyed nostalgic response besieges me. So sue me, I’m an emotional cliché. All the pop-cultural portrayals of high-school reunions, convocations, proms, and college farewells that I grew up with, well up within me and threaten to turn me into a reflected one-dimensional reality. The last two years went by too fast but too slow and we are primed to leave, ripe for repentance but already jaded, a little soppy about it all but rather sick of the here and now and ready to move on. We care and we will miss you, but get out of my face will you? We love this lazy, eternal Sunday afternoon and the trees it’s gift-wrapped in but our sinews burst with pent up energy and unknown expectations. The future looks promising but uncertain; some of the people we know will begin to look a little prettier burnished with the veneer of nostalgia and the buffer of distance; some will fade away into nothing; some will become malicious caricatures. Threatened with the newness of adult isolation away from the ‘community’, the virus of shared gossip, the fall of the giants, the rise of mice and the cracking up of bohemian bonds will delight and comfort us.

In a feverish rush we now try to capture, to solidify and somehow retain these days of learning and disillusionment, of growing up and letting go. We stencil them on tee-shirts trying to encapsulate college, the shared corridors of hostel-life, the batch and the concentration; we stamp our days on key-chains and mugs hoping to taste our lives in the brewed coffee within; in a last ditch effort at leaving nothing unsaid we reach out with a siege of testimonials, veritable odes to the good we saw in the worst of us, while still others retain their posture of ‘cool’, un-willing to betray emotion or worse still an unrevealed need in words written to someone who doesn’t give a fuck.

As I float around in a miasma of blue feathers, heavy but light, weighted but in flight, I am grateful to have been here, amongst the damned and the distressed, surrounded by others still struggling with the inevitability of the loss of adolescence, the unfortunate necessity of being tethered by reality, serendipitous, unique, kind when not expected, lovable, repulsive, depraved and delicious. I will miss the winding walks, the annoying cacophony of discordant musical tastes and opinions and the sudden blossoming of ideas. But it’s time to turn.

The Terrifying Pull of Wanderlust

2007-01-20T11:30:00.000-08:00

Another two years gone, another city, a different life. Ahmedabad refused to enfold me. It let me be... enveloped in the bubble of MICA, far away from adult reality. It opened its cafes and malls to my curious gaze, but hid its soul from my alien eyes. And now when the time comes near to leave it I still cannot claim to have known it.
Sometimes you are so wrapped within the fabric of an experience that you are unable to describe its intricacies. So it is with MICA and Ahmedabad. Maybe someday some time from now, it will come back to haunt me in patches of sleepy winter sunlight, tufted canopies and belonging. But for now it plays peekaboo when I try to capture its pulse in the rhythm of the tapping keyboard.
Besides there is no space in my mind, crowded as it is with the familiar ghosts of wanderlust that haunt me when its time to move on. Like the tantalizing, sweet pain of a loosened tooth, the wanderlust within me ebbs and flows, eroding with each wave the moorings of my attachments and leaving behind a grim, blue residue of rootlessness.
I'm headed for Mumbai. My two month fling with this city, earlier, left me bone weary and madly infatuated. Its impersonal, unidirectional tide of humanity, trudging puposefully to and fro, both frightened and comforted me. For the first time I felt invisible. Mumbai lets you be. What it lacks in living space it makes up for, with its unending stretches of silver waters. No one can be claustrophobic sitting at Nariman point. However Mumbai also offers no companionship. Unlike the overtly gregarious and voyeuristic Dilliwaalas, Mumbaikars though civil and professional, otherwise couldn't give a rats ass. They very literally, seem to let you be. Or so I gathered during my short stint. The city can overwhelm you, with your complete insignificance, as you watch it churn like some monstrous machine. And at moments like these you rush in search of color and tactility, seeking a sense of proportion in warm plastic mugs, filled with bitter beer, surrounded by Mario Miranda and old rock.
What frightens me however is the predictability of the complete unpredictability of what happens next. For every time, I pack and hitch up my old, faithful backpack and leave a void behind, I know that I will be seized with restlessness beyond my control. All that is old and familiar will terrify me with its ability to hold me to ransom and I will run from it in search of something which doesn't smell of home. Some one once called me a gypsy. The notion honestly terrifies me. Am I to remain, all my life,incapable of finding comfort in the routine and the familiar? Must I always run when I am most comfortable? The dozen odd pit stops along my 25 year old journey are all plugged into my skin, feeding off bits of me into a fourth dimension of constructed memory. However, even though some of the dust of each of these cities is smeared forever into my very skin I no longer belong to any of them. It is as if at the first journey away from home at 18 I was cursed to permanent travel, plagued at the same time with a thirst for belonging and the inability to belong. And now surrounded by a hundred eager faces setting off to their futures, I remember that every time I will sink my toes into the earth,I will feel within me the terrifying seduction of wanderlust.

In Bed With Doniger and Ramanujam

2006-09-13T11:09:00.003-07:00

Suddenly there is this surreal detached calm. The kind you feel after you are in an accident. Everything around you slows down, and even though life is moving at its own frenetic pace, in your mind's eye everything is underwater-soft. Voices are muffled and distant, bodies strangely fluid and agravitationally agile.
Sometimes a new idea grasps your mind with such urgency, that it pervades even your sleeping hours. It follows you relentlessly like a lost and hungry mongrel, or an achingly beautiful beggar child, asking to be fed by your efforts. It robs you of the ability to small-talk, hang-out, take-a-chill-pill, roll-with-it, let-it-slide or get-a-life.
You walk around in dazed zombielike idiocy, your mind running in yarn-ball circles of oh-imagine-what -that-would-be-like?
You circle the rims of brilliant abstract thought, like a looser-wooer, hopelessly fingering the hemlines of his perfumed-for-pleasure, up-town, way-out-of-my-league, butter-wont-melt-in-your-mouth mistress.
Academics play havoc with my mind. They stretch and swivel, performing word-gymnastic tricks on me. They strip-tease visciously, shredding garment after garment of obliviousness, revealing the tantalising sexuality of a chocolate-intense, oomph-enriched, seriously-sexy and depravedly-orgasmic idea.
At the end of every reading you are left lusting in, tongue-drenching, toe-curling, aroused-but-unfufilled misery.
But then you play the part of the scholar-lover, reading each line with delicate languorous foreplay, caressing each idea apart, until it yields its luscious secrets to the insistent desires of your mind. Slowly and unhurriedly it unfolds before you, laying its body bare to exploration. And you lose yourself in the mindless ecstasy of ideas-unbound.
When the affair is over and the whimsical mistress of thought deserts you, you sit in listless apathy unable to grasp the shocking weightlessness of an unoccupied mind.
Suddenly there is this surreal, detached calm.....

the few who read

2006-08-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

What if..

2006-08-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

What if you lost? What if the shape of your dreams and beliefs was suddenly changed? What if your notions of love, loyalty, fidelity, innocence and friendship were warped,never to be the same. What if one act usurped your ability to believe?
How then, do you forgive yourself. You forget the bitterness and the anger goes away, but somehow you never forgive yourself. Years pass and you think the wound has healed but it never does. Strange demons lurk at every corner, demons within you.
You wonder where the party went and why noone said goodbye? Its not that I havent forgiven, its that I wasnt asked for forgiveness. Its not that I haven't fought myself to rationalise and make peace its that no one understood the nature of the peace I made. Its not that I dont understand the fading of an old love and the blossoming of a new love, its that as a faded memory I am doomed to disappear from the circle and home to which I once belonged. What was my crime, I wonder, why this exile? Why take away my right to the poetry of Zubin Garg, to Bihu, to aloo koni piteeka and sah? May I have a moment on the rooftop?

When love passes, somehow , so does the right to memory. I feel guilt in remembrance, as if it was illegitimate of me to remember. To exile sent , in exile I must remain.

Pillow, White

2006-08-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

Its raining in Kerala, Cochin is garbed in green. My very skin feels saturated with a sense of moist, rich, exuberant verdure. The city spreads out lazily. Swollen, drenched, spilling over the brim, like a man drunk on red wine at noon. As I count the endless list of destinations, on the long road of the past six years, I see a million myriad scenes. Milk soaked red carpets, black garbed devotees, winding lanes and the phallus of Shiva, a strange celebration of creation, in Banares. Gurkha barracks and a meal of bitter gourd and rock hard 'Kachoris'. The cool marble of the steps at the temple at Pillani. The stark calming bleached wood and glass openness of the Lotus temple at Delhi, where for the first time I was forced to contrast the loud rusticity, the earthen simplicity and maybe the basic nature of Hindu worship as I knew it, with other forms of worship. Perhaps the conception of God, as I knew Him changed that day.From blue skinned little Krishna to colorful, raunchy Indra to the austerity of Lord Jesus on the Crucifix in the little Chapel in my school, from the flight of pigeons at the Jama masjid to Mother Mary in a grotto nestled in fronds of fern. Faith bewildered me. Somehow in the millions of kilometers of India that I covered even as I journeyed from Hindu to Atheist I learnt something about the nature of faith. As I sit here in Cochin, somehow all the images of my travels flood my mind. A peacock, turquoise, green and gold, framed against the orange and white of a sand and salt desert in Gujarat, a moonlit night in a swimming pool on the ninth storey of a the fort at Neemrana. Watering holes in Pune, Udipi restaurants and Not just Jazz by the Bay in Mumbai. Dhanaulti covered in white flowers and the leeches in Wyneberg stream. Doughnuts on Mall road, Missouri. White lace curtains in a red brick French window in Kasauli. Lassi in Chandigarh. Biryani and a few lost dreams in Hyderabad, groves of coconut and betelnut, kohl eyed little children, gold bells in their ears, the music of silver anklets on their little feet in silk and gold in Karnataka. Today, I am heading for the villages of Kerala. As I sat in the morning in my hotel room looking out at the street below I thought of friends and family, of a home where now I will never really return, of Kuhana my golden child, and I thought of the millions, who in moments like these- alone, turn to their own version of comfort. An oil lamp, frankincense, an idol, a promise of eternal life. I think all we long for, is to return to our homes. Once we set out on the wondrous journeys of life even as we move farther and farther from the womb that sheltered us completely, we hunger when alone, for once to be safe again, protected and loved. Some call it religion, some call it love, some search through poetry, some through pain. In my mind, I can smell the sweet, washed warmth of the cotton bedspread in a little room, filled with Enid Blytons, teenage, late night cups of tea, cheese and spaghetti with Didi, and the remembrance of rain against the window pain. The room is gone and as I travel farther and farther I remember my pillow, white.

Cutting chai at Chhota

2006-07-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a 'raindrops and daffodils, butterflies and bees' kind of post.
You see Don Maclean and Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly have decided to play havoc on my mind. I've got them under my skin and they won't let me be, so forgive me for the rambling.
I live in the magic land of 'youth recaptured'. In my mind, a young graduate glides surrealistically on a gleaming bridge and Simon asks of me ...'Are you going to Scarborough fair?'
Tu-tu-turu, he calls to Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know... but then who doesnt long to reach out for, and grasp youth jealously in their palms?
'Moonriver' says Frankie blue eyes, and Audrey Hepburn smiles with silver on her neck.
Have you read Mark Twain? Did you lie on the raft on a moonlit night with Huckleberry Finn and Jim?. 'Two Drifters...' says Sinatra... 'Off to see the world, there's such a lot of world to see! We're after the same rainbows and, waiting round the bend, My Huckleberry friend... and we roll up our sleeves and happy vagabonds, jump into the liquid moonlight of our childhood.
The moon soothes with silver, the sleeping hamlets and broken roads I pass. Where is the time to take it all in! There is so much around me and in my mind, that it swirls just to remember.
'Do you believe in rock and roll, can music save your mortal soul and can you teach me how to dance real slow..?' Don McLean whispers. 'Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling cloud in violet haze, reflecting Vincent's eyes of China blue', he tells me.

Ella Fitzgerald weaves a quilt of autumn leaves around me, as I sit with Van Gogh, roasted-coffee-wrapped on starlit cafe terraces in night time Paris.

'And in the naked lights I saw, ten thousand people maybe more, people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, people writing songs, that voices never shared, None dared...disturb the sounds of silence'. They're all up for a nightcap I believe.

Here Gene Kelly dances for us in the rain and chimney sweeps fly, magically twisting words with pretty alliterations, O'Henry paints chicory salad and bishop sleeves and the last leaf flutters on a brick wall...the rain, honey-glazes my playground and we sit sleep-deprived and restless, fueled by nicotine and poetry.

I live in the atelier of a restless mind.

On Naivete.

2006-06-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

When was the last time life kicked your teeth in? You thought you were beginning to get it all together and WHAM! it went for your solar plexus, knocking all the air out of you till you thought you would never breath again.
What is the first thing that occurs to you at such a moment?
Every time life has tried a knockout punch on me, while I gasp to recover from the shock of it, the first thing that occurs to me, is that I am not going to fall. This will not destroy me. During every betrayal I thought 'Wow! this reeeally sucks, this is unbearable, I will never go back to being clean again'.
In a sense that is true, every disillusioning experience alters us. It chisels at our dreams and destinations, cutting them down to size. But the key lies in not giving in. To fight the insecurities, the anguish and the negativism, to believe in yourself even when no one else believes in you. To not let betrayal become the shaping force of your ideology. My blog has, what most people would call a very gullible and rather melodramatic name. It reeks of self-importance, naivete and a lack of touch with reality. Today's experience, compounded by numerous others should teach me to talk a little cooler , a little more real, a little more grown-up maybe?
I believe today more than ever, that I will keep the name just the way it is.

The BIRD (to you)

2006-06-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

What do you define as moral? Who are you to judge?
Slut or Goddess, Gipsy or Vagabond?
Free-spirit or Temptress,Defiled or Divine,
Adventurous or Insane, Your way or Mine?
Sociopath-Survivor, Champion or Imbecile?
Vandal or Sculptor, Delusion...Ideal?
Avant-garde or immature,Rebel or rogue?
Leader, revolutionary, Or Viral Demagogue?

Tell me what makes your sacred - Sacred?
And my sacred- Profane?
Answer me when I ask you.

You, who pierce me, with your self-righteous, mob-mildewed fingers,
You, who arrogate upon yourselves,the functions of judge, jury and executioner.
You, who walk on the edges of beauty and freedom,fascious peddlars of utopia and youth,
Illusions of idealism and liberty, fashion-conscious idols of an up-market God.

The dregs of yesterday, are still melting in the stale coffee-pots of your mind.
Staining your eyes with obscenities for me, my choices, my....Crimes?
You, who spout the elixir of belief and wisdom, like a torch held aloft,
But, your light is not a beacon, it seeks to strip and gorge.
Your torches are grown of Salem, are you looking for a pitchfork. ?

Smell

2006-03-16T08:33:00.000-08:00

Right now the entire world is a spectrum of smells, tantalizing, titillating and torturous smells.Taunting me with memories, filling my mind with ideas and dreams, strange fantasies, echoing voices, the wisp of a laugh, specters of lost elation, haunting, gaunt skeletons of innocence and dew, chained to moments past.
The smell of jacaranda and queen of the night and approaching summer, wet with the silver of moonlight and promise. The smell of shimmering summer heat on water-soaked earthen-sweet lawns. The smell of a fast bike ride, defiant and hungry, on an empty road high with the foolish opium of youth and flight.
The smell of holi , the dry saturated glittering smell of mounds of warm abeer, the smell of inky plumes of crystal colors, exploding into pyrotechnic swirls of indigo in the water.
The milk-white smell of the rose blossom curled soft. The smell of spun sugar, lovliness and fragility , the smell of my just-born neice, too far away for me to touch
The acrid tangy smell of yellow mustard, carrot and moong-pakaudis in "kanji" and the sweet,warm buttery smell of my mothers all encompassing fingers.

OKAAAAY!

2006-03-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

Hm , to me my blog is a conversation see? If I wanted to do a "my dear diary" I would do it ... well... in my dear diary wont I? Now considering the concept of freedom of speech-and-expression and all that obscure, over-rated jazz I have the right to write whatever I please on my blog, to react to whatever I please and to moderate whatever I deem fit.
Having established that, the moderating of comments happened because a truly dear, happy freind of mine (hey ya nutmeg!:) posted the same comment about 63 times. So I though, we will have to see what can be done about that. Tech retard that I am, it took me some 58 hours how to delete the extra posts , which apparently involved turning on the heinous and tyrannical post moderation thingy!
Now, being completely boring, largely unpopular and thoroughly unhappening (thas isnt how u spell tha, right?) I rather like to have people react to my pathetic writing, so trust me, no comment shall be deleted, except if it is my dear enthu nutmeg singh reposting the same ole same ole 55 times to emphasize his well taken point.
With the coming of avian flu and the wasteful killing of all those mounds and mounds of raoastable birds I seemed to have been seized with this unfathomable urge, that called from the inner recesses of my very soul "eat chicken or life shall cease, eat chicken or be damned, a drumstick, a breast something, eat now or forever hold your peace" or something to that effect.
Any which ways that day, the other day you know, I stuffed my face with turkey , chicken and pepperoni and prompltly fell ill. My dearest most considerate loving freinds have been nursing me through this illness, while GG (our wacky, hilarious neughbourhood jester cum model (pronounced mowdell) ) has declared that tomorrow I shall wake up, flapping my arms in the center of the Chinar courtyard while cackling.
We shall see whether that happens and I shall know for sure if when I wake up it is to my own crowing.
till next time.
swati

Down with the living!

2006-02-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

'Pink Floyd' in the background and feel gooseflesh skim over my skin. Someone wiser tells me react less, to react is foolish, when you let it matter so much you prove that you are weak.
Laugh less now or you will cry later, give in to the fatalism and banality of life. Lose your innocense, your sense of wonder, your ability to be hurt, to be angered......your ability to .......laugh?
For a life with no greater metaphysical goal, no other world beyond the grave, no delusion of an omniscient, omnipresent benevolent Santa Claus of a God, emotional and physical adventurism is your best bet. I say react, get busy courting the emotional roller coaster. Let everything mean too much.
When you laugh, laugh till it hurts, when you fight against the crassnes of majoritarian, mob mentality - believe.
Create a rush where there is none, as I said earlier- BURN.
Until the stupidity and narrow mindedness of people doesent hurt you enough to anger you, nothing in society will change. The ' norms ' of an illebral, chauvinistic, repressive society will continue to rule. Casteism, communalism, orthodoxy will rule if each and every one of us is afraid to go against the stream. The earth will continue to be the centre of a myopic anthropocentric society, women will continue to deal with the fear of visibility. The Hetrosexual, Upper -Middle Class Male need not react to a silly outbursts against gays, minorities or women.
Need we? Its not necessary for us to bother. Let those, not of the mainstream be flung aside, right? Let cultural jingoists and savages overtake society and impregnate the minds of the young and innocent with hatred and discrimination. It is not for me a mere foolish, sentimental woman to say anything. It is not for me to explain the idea of shedding hypocrisy in metaphors.
What right do the likes of us have to upset those who rule todays society.
You have put me in my place gentlemen.
Hopefully in time everyone will listen to your obviously brilliant thought process, women will retract into the veil, we shall exterminate any one who can not conform and the world will be one large conglomeration of uneducated clones.

© Swati Kumar, 2006

A protest

2006-01-26T20:50:00.000-08:00

Greetings to the few, kind (and presumably jobless souls) who not only read but also took the time to actually comment on my blog. Largely, lacking scintillating wit, a brilliant life or any other attribute which makes for good reading I will continue to write what little I know of my limited world. Hopefully, in time the texture of my prose will improve, the experiences will become richer and so will the writing. Hopefully the ink will not run dry before I learn how to write a piece or two which is readable. Having earned my first hate comment in which I was labelled FEMALE AND GAY I look forward to more comments. However I would like to clarify to the enlightened gentlemen whose morning coffee I spoilt with the inanity of my blog. Sir, you are entitled to your opinion, I apologise for the repeated trips to the dictionary which you complained about. I also never concealed the fact that I am a woman, Sir Sherlock Einstein- its publically stated on my blog, also GAY OR FEMALE are not terms of abuse. Any human being who strings Gay, Female and disgusting together in attempt to abuse a writer lacks education, civility and above all, an imagination. Had you called me a dung-headed, emotionally -challenged- insecure - clot-head incapable of distinguishing between a pen and a banana, I would have given you credit for passion, commitment to the extermination of bad writing by dairy-writing unentertaining bloggers like my embarassing self. But I take umbrage to someone suggesting that being a woman or being gay is a condition so shameful that you may use the terms as abuse.
I will state loudly for anyone to read (not that many do, but still doesn't hurt to pretend they do) I strongly support sexual parity both in terms of sexual identity and sexual choice. I support the gay community, I support feedom of choice and expression.

© Swati Kumar, 2006

Refuge

2006-01-04T05:47:00.000-08:00

The language of fingertips, ridged skin, callused gentleness
against the faint shimmer of a pulse,
Quickening amid the blue veined mesh, beneath transluscent skin.
Receptive to the faintest touch, white against dark.

You, are white inside-out, the copper-honey of your skin
Refuge -- buried in the crisp white folds of a cotton shirt,
cloaking the soothing, lulling rhythm, soft against my jaw.
Encircled by the warmth of linked arms.

Shade, like adobe and marble, khus-scented corridors.
The lingering wisp of summer jasmine.
From tongue-lolling skull-cracking breathless sticky heat
to bougainvillea and moss on a red brick facade.

Skin against the cool floor,
summer calf knots melting, shoulder ropes untangled
sweet exhaustion ebbing, soaked up by the earth
draining into the cool floor- pain, anger, discontent, all sensation.

Fingertips, belly, toes, palms pressed outspread
Seeping molten gold and mellowness into my skin
The glimmer of reflected sunlight,
pale pink through bamboo and muslin curtains,
onto the polished floor.

Eyes sugar-syrupy heavy, too weighted to close,
Sate, drenched filled brimful.
Numb with too much shelter
suspended in a moment of the clearest blue.

©, Swati Kumar

burn?

2005-10-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

Sometimes just burn, lick the flames, let them crawl and dance, obscenely beautiful, gorgious, hungry, leaping up to bite and consume. let them eat at you. just burn nd watch evrything turn from gold, vermillion, molten red to ash grey powdered nothingness. flame the lust, feed off it, let it spew and vent the endless rage of something visciously animal, something pure, savage, caged just waiting to leap out and claw at you.

unhinged

2005-09-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

You live disillusionment beyond the age of innocense every day....after the death of the perfect world you sustain your idealism by sheer grit...you fist your way through the everyday slush of cynicism simply out of bull-headed contrariness.....you develop callusses to the apathy, and become apathetic to the indifference yourself. And then when you've just begun to learn to take it all in your stride, your life is vortex-screwed, twirled around and pirrouetted like a drunken monkey by an answering pulse of dreams bigger than yours. You run and hide behind the soft white veil of common thought and ideaology, a hiding space, a cubby hole of suspended utopia... you revel in the connection and succumb to the illusion of the perfect world...and then its snatched from around you and you stand again blinking, uncertain, uninsulated, shaken and un-hinged looking again at the hideous mediocrity of reality. It's wake up time.

BLueS and bourbon

2005-07-27T12:31:00.001-07:00

Have you ever sunk into the sweet molasses of blues, roasted coffee voices, honey-like smooth, gliding or raspy, throaty, deep, hungry crooning out endlessly, swirling around you, bass and saxonfone........ shimmering barstools and lonliness, lights on the river, armchair on a porch, straw and evening sun, rain on a dark pavement, gleaming slick against street lamp, sometimes higher than high, sometimes lower than a hangover. Like nostalgia and goosebumps, more than i thought it would be.....

©, Swati Kumar

Paying guest in Kingsway camp

2005-06-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

I spent four years in Delhi. For an outsider, Delhi is a prostitute city. You throw money at it to satisfy your lust for opportunity and it gives you your moneys' worth, but you never belong, no bonds are made and you leave it slightly cheapened, a little harder and with a little less faith in humanity.
This time when I went back to visit , I realized that somehow the city had gotten under my skin. Over the years it crept stealthily into my blood, in memories and moments until it became embedded in my skin, like a scar.
The cacophony and heat of Ajmeri gate brings up spectral images....
A snowflake whirlwind of pigeons from the Jama Masjid, the gallis of Chandni Chowk, eerily remniscent of Aminabad back home in Lucknow..........Khadi kurtas and kohl lines eyes, nosepins glittering with teenage angst, idealism, street theatre and joie de vivre......the chaiwallas and chat.......the overwhelming fear of never knowing enough......North campus. Endles cups of sickly sweet steaming cappuchinos and smokes at the local student hangout joint, the very Punjabi Kingsway camp and Outram lines, Patna chicken role and butterscotch lassi to tempt the discerning pallet. Umbrellas and Cokes in hand, endless lines for twenty buck tickets at PVR a one and quarter hour bus ride away. Twenty five bucks for three hours of air conditioning at Shakuntalam in Pragati Maidan. Endless bike rides into the night for anda paratha at AIIMS.
As it jostled the Lucknowi tehzeeb, the convent prudery and the homespun morality out of me in its brutally sweltering summer heat between weary sips of banta , momos with thukpa and pork chowmein, between the sweet smell of trees an Katwaria Sarai and the cardboard rooms of the paying guest houses, Dehi, the city of lust, dissolution, growth and opportunity, etched itself into me.

Old wine

2005-06-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

So its time to move again, leave permanence and serene passivity for rootlessness, gipsy feet and nomadic hunger pangs. But as I unchain, unstick, discard and repack, brutally unclasping clinging love hungry fingers for "the better life" the guava tree in my courtyard tugs at my hem. Everywhere in the summer heat Lucknow is sparkling with gulmohar and amaltas. Droplets of yellow sunshine, drip from the trees, bringing back memories of the call of the muezzin, the mystic azaan at four on foggy, exam-ridden winter mornings.
Every corner every smell, from nimish to biryani, from secret hiding places, to the taste of the kiss of jeuvenile love, from the cream and brick facade of the chapel and school, to the loss of innocense, bittersweet, they harden into a lump of emptiness in my throat, filling me with a sense of inexorable loss, of burnt bridges and the taste of old wine.

Ever read a wodehouse?

2005-06-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had this sensation while reading a book, that you've escaped into another world? That the author, has grabbed you by the lapels and, like something out of a J K Rowling, dragged you into her world?
Some of our most endearing fiction( mind you, I said endearing and not necessarily great) is that in which we are compelled to be part of the characters experience and to recognize our reality in theirs.

Think Enid Blyton and Winnie-the-pooh, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter and the melancholic fairy world of Hans Christian Andersen. Think Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Three Men in a boat, How to Kill a Mockingbird,Malgudi days, any piece of O' Henry or Somerset Maugham, or even think of The Hardy boys or the Five Find-outers.

Each of these books colored my childhood. On hot summer afternoons as I conversed with Frederick Algranon Trotteville, I would long for lemonade and ice cream and would fill my pockets with broken pen-knives and pencils in anticipation of adventure. When I read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I would be seized with this uncontrollable wanderlust. If I read about the English I longed for tea and if I read about the Americans I wanted thanksgiving turkey. I felt lost in a familiar aching nostalgia on the streets of Malgudi and I wanted to live in dutch attic studio apartments wearing bishop sleeves and drinking port wine when I met O' Henry.

But most of all, each of these fantastic worlds, with their smorgasboard of orgasmically delicious details, to be savored like gourmet food, each flavor at a time, seeped into my consciousness their wise messages and dreams.
Mark Twains' genius lies in making you want to be freinds with his character, in the mischievious and subtle undercurrent of social satire, dressed in the garb of childish exploits and the delightful revelation of these two seperate layers in the narrative. He mocks social pretense and English law with impunity. R K Narayan reaches out through the browned arms of a goat-herd filling you with the musky smell of swollen earth. They tell you about Aurther Dent and the absurdity of human arrogance, of foolish young men blundering down the Thames and the majesty of nature. Each microcosm of human imagination bringing back old friends and familiar faces, life as we see it and the people that we are.......

But at the start of the day I long for Bacon and Eggs... Anyone know where Jeeves is?

So you think you've arrived?

2005-06-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm, so you're a twenty something with oodles of attitude. You're hip and happening and you know where its at. You ooze semi-rabid radical individualism, your ears are frothing with angry rocking, so you've grown beyond your first crush...that sudden high, you've had your first heart-break and screamed at the absurdity of lust, then with the fickleness and the resilience of youth, you've forgiven and forgotten. Now armed with conviction in the face of disillusionment, a little less cocksure maybe, but still full of it, you're embarking on a new "adventure". Tomorrow...... you think, tomorrow will be gorgeous, punctuated with interesting conversations, people who excite, startling ideological revelations and a bike ride or two. Tomorrow.... you think, you'll be so wise that you'll never be caught in the act of goldfish mouth again, you tell yourself you'll be harder, more cynical, less trusting, more confident, more practical, less inclined to give a damn and more able to fake that you do. And all the while you're crossing your fingers and thinking what if I screw up?.......................................................So you think you've arrived?

From a window of the Lucknow Mail

2005-06-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever lost yourself to a journey? Let the journey really take you where it can go, have you ever really felt the path, as it beckons, revealing its secret destinations beneath the tread of your feet?
I stare out into the night, through the sleeper window, as the plains rush past . In the hypnotising staccato rythem of the train, I see the silver streaks of the adjacent tracks, flow past me, slithering, honeylike, smooth in a constant undulating motion.
I look past the steaming kullhad of chai at the dark, mysterious, distant silhouettes of trees. Eucalypti with their bare, slender limbs outstretched, pointing accusing, hungry fingers at the sky, almost as if they did not belong here and longed to forever reach upwards, mango trees with their arms spread out, as if waiting for an embrace, grounded, earthy, beautiful.
The sky enfolds me suddenly, surrounding my senses, taking me by surprise with its inky ebony expanse. There is no moon, no wisps of cloud to stain its uninterrupted eloquence.
Like millions of shards of crystallised ecstasy, like splintering teardrops, flung in manic exuberance, too exquisite to bear, obscenely beautiful, the stars overwhelm my senses.
Pitstop life, what next?