Saturn Child

Bittersweet Orange

2009-07-09T00:29:00.001-07:00

When I am with you
The life I know and am used to
Turns sublime
Faces turn radiant
And places release the smells of new soils
From deep inside their bellies
As if someone re-ploughed them
Overnight
People started talking marmalade
- and who doesn't succumb to the flavour of bittersweet orange!

I wake up eager and excited
Not to face what the day holds,
But to see its face,
Dreary, racing, peaceful, sinister,
In every shade and pattern
And I'm taken to realize:
There is nothing that resembles a straight line
Which also breathes life

Sometimes when I let my mind open
Things flutter in, bright and violent
With the speed of a reckless racer
Who has you gripping the edge of your seat
While his car waltzes with the asphalt
Drawing careening circles and tyres screeching
Because that's really how knowledge is:
Violent, it shatters your world

Sometimes when I let my mouth open
Things flow out, sweet and musical
With the disposition of a good dancer
Whose hands and feet find patterns in rhythm
Flowing in and out of it with purpose
So unfalteringly thread my thoughts and words
Not because I am more eloquent or wiser
But for the new meaning I have found
In my existence
Since I threw myself in with you

The lonely times of before were a sham -
I see that now -
The illusions of a mind bent on self-destruction
Fighting against an intrinsic nature
That demands love, company and respect
In ceding the victory of that innateness
And in losing my mind
I found you
And then I found everything
Exactly the way it should be

Transformation

2009-04-06T22:26:00.001-07:00

Fallen Rock in a hidden cave,
Who will see you
now that the tide is high?
Who will graze their skins on your edges
now that you no longer hold your head up high?

Betrayed a mountain, didn't you?
Carved a niche for yourself,
but a scar to your kind
and lost all claim to worthiness.

Fallen Rock all that's left
is for you to die:
The sea will shatter you,
The wind will scatter you
while those that once protected you
will watch on guiltless.

All is lost, you might say.
What good it is
To buy freedom and lose yourself?
But some say there is joy
in not belonging
and yet belonging everywhere.

Fallen Rock, look at your fate,
Search for the Joys in your existence:
They are at the end of your paths.
Everytime, you move forward
they stay behind
content in themselves (can Joy ever not be?)

Only Isolation followed you,
only Pain knew the way,
only Rejection served you
when you died and became
Something new.

Raindrops or Teardrops

2009-04-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

Have you ever kissed a raindrop?
A little one, a bulging one,
Just any one that fell from up there
And showered you
Celebrating life?

Have you ever kissed a teardrop?
A salty one, a bitter one,
Just any one that rolled down your cheek
And quenched you
Comforting hurt?

For today when
I beheld the morning,
My lips brushed both
Raindrop and teardrop,
And my heart betrayed itself
With the quandary
Of whose bride I would become.

Bare-footed

2009-04-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

If hearts were fairer
You wouldn’t tell me
To walk bare-footed upon the sand
Where buried rocks
Sever soles of my
Beating nub’s footsteps
For once when I
Was brimming dare
To nest my hand in yours
You showed me stars
Then in a flick
I blinked and you were gone

Lessons taught
Remain unlearnt
As still I yearn to cross
The wobbly bridge
That buttons up
An ever-widening chasm of trust
My feet are sore

The Hunting

2009-04-06T16:20:00.001-07:00

Atop a hill of sunburnt clandestine ruins bore
A brown, stony temple to creatures of gore
The chisel had much strived to keep them alive
One of them green, scaled and sublime

Hither, thither as one would gaze I did
A stalker just two-step behind detected
I scanned the floor but perceived no one near
Nor the walls, nor the ceilings nearby

One cautious tread and another, eyes shut
Fear clutching the echelons of my gut
A swish and a swipe, a long shadowy stripe
But no mortal to partake the crime

Colossal figurine adorning centre-square
Crown of vultures circling the upper air
Then the wind stopped still as a cry so shrill
Pierced the body of calmness

One must run when chased by nothing
A wrestle with emptiness is sheer losing
Down derelict stairway, sprint of frenzied sashay
Symmetrical beads of sweat of a deer, hunted

White sparkle from the dying setting sun
Offered my exhaustion visual diversion
My eyes traced the light only to meet fright
Dark silhouette cutting the ambers

Twilight mystifies the nascent weary mind
Wheedling idiocy into its realms and rind
Training the energies to the max of their faculties
If only to satisfy vulgar curiosity

My seeker had wings, the leap of a frog
Odourless, cold-blooded in every cog
Her penetrating stare stood the ends of my hair
Her message caked in challenge

My heart charged like an overheated kiln
Limbs bolstered with fresh shots of adrenalin
Wild instinct surged into each cell, torchbearer from Hell
My corpse purged off every limitation

The walls I scaled, and beams, pivoted
Each stone I picked, crushed or compacted
Thus night flowed by, moon’s tragic lullaby
And the hunter became the hunted

Daybreak came scouring the dwindling lights
Stealing of darkness, her invisible delights
My guise hardly kosher, footprints stepped over and over
Then my target held out a smiling paw

Bewilderment, like poison crept on steadily
The corners of my mouth contorted uneasily
She took my hand as if she had all this planned
And vanished in the wake of my reverie

A Poem on Tissue

2009-04-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

I wrote you a poem on tissue
Isn't that the way our love
is too? Like tissue?

White and pure, soft
and delicate?
Soaking our experiences into
its porous fibre
and holding them there to
be cherished?

But let us be wary, darling,
not to overdo it
Lest our tissue soak
up much - too much -
and fall apart
into shreds:
the litter of memories

Day by day, let us
breathe too
and dry our love
that our experiences may hold
more than
just feelings

Let come from it learning:
It's the little spaces that
keep the universe in
One Piece

And our love, transparent
and light, will take us places
on wheels
that turn with
each breath of God -

He knows
how to handle
Tissue

Heartbreak

2009-04-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

Oh I wish I had two hearts instead of one
So I could still live with one of them broken
Heartbreak makes me feel like this inevitably
God knows how many I've been through already

I'm one of those people who wear their heart on their sleeve
Shining and pulsating with jubilance and ease
Waiting to fall into the hands of the first handsome lad
But jumping out too early and hurting itself real bad

My friends call me "merciless mouth" and "Peter practical"
Vehemently believing me to be not an ounce sentimental
Truly in most matters I am incorrigibly pragmatic
But get down to the heart and I'm a hopeless romantic

Rejection is always followed by tears and depression
Suicidal tendencies tend to gain momentum
But this worn-out-yet-brave heart still dares to live
Coaxing Lady Luck to bestow another chance itself to give

Tomorrow's Girl

2009-04-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

Why do you stare aimlessly
into my eyes?
Why do you not tire easily
of my charms?
The rest of the world is surely
more inviting than my arms

Why do you talk unceasingly
of our future?
Why do you not think warily
of our plans?
Scaling the Everest is definitely
more exciting than building clans

Why do you swap devotedly
'I' for 'we'?
Why do you chant endlessly
'I love you'?
Tomorrow I will have changed already
From the girl you love to someone new

Home is Where the Hearth is

2009-04-06T15:52:00.000-07:00

Three degrees
minus wind chill factor
and no boyfriend to keep me warm
My ears quiver
at each whisper of the frost
My feet leave the sleet
with soft, wet kisses
My nose leads the way
home,
where the hearth is ...

Distance

2009-04-06T15:42:00.001-07:00

Catch the dying ray of sun
And swing out over the ocean
like Tarzan
While the water sprays your feet
And flying fish snap at your toes.
Swing out to the sliver of moon
Meet its wide smile with a bear hug,
outstretched arms
Then cast into the vast space around
A moon rock as easy as they come.
And if you follow its path
You'll see it leads to me:
tiny speck
Standing down below on earth
Just a stone's throw away

Joy and Pain

2009-04-06T15:23:00.000-07:00

I pine for you everyday
as I fold memories
into the creases of my brain

Each time I think of you
my heart surges
with both joy and pain

Joy, for those happy days
that I thought would never end
Joy, for those castles
that I built in the air
Joy, for each image of you
that I can recall

And all the pain in the world
for knowing that never again
will I ever have it all

Chanting 'Om'

2009-04-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Chanting ‘Om’, chanting ‘Om’
Twelve planets orbiting the sun
A thousand sun, a many moon
Multipart in unified croon

Chanting ‘Om’, chanting ‘Om’
Two seedlings apart were sown
I know not you, you know not me
Yet sisters be eternally

Chanting ‘Om’, chanting ‘Om’
The heirs to one Kingdom
Rainbows of string, threads issuing
The one Weaver nods all-knowing

Here Comes the Night

2009-04-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Here comes the Night!
Dispassionately black
Creeping up the trellis
Of the restless buzzing city
Dispensing her shadows
To every nook and crack
Here comes the Night!
To claim her monopoly

Here comes the Night!
With mischief in her face
Her satin-smooth lingerie
Tantalizing cruelly
She shrouds the future
Revealing just a trace
Here comes the Night!
Luring all with chicanery

Here comes the Night!
Her heart dipped in malice
...

As she whispers treachery
Into every which ear
The rogue, she favors
With assassins, she sallies
Here comes the Night!
With terror to sear

Here comes the Night!
Her eyes misty gray
Counting the beggar’s losses
Reviving dismal memories
The looking-glass cracks
When it catches her sashay
Here comes the Night!
To sing doleful harmonies

Here comes the Night!
Sangfroid she does whet
She'll sing you into slumber
In the cradle of your hearth
While she lathers you hungrily
To suck out your last breath
Here comes the Night! Beware!
She rules half the earth.

I Can Drown in You

2009-04-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

Some nonsense poetry for fun!

Two solar eclipses concurrently
Embellishing the heavenly skies
Dark, deep, still pools surrounded
By the snows of Antartica
My mind’s beacon in your eyes
Which speak of a million stories
Your eyes as warm as buried sea-turtle eggs
Your eyes, your eyes
I can drown in them

Mount Fiji and Mount Kilimanjaro
Together and side by side
Sharp contours from their foothills
Like the bottom of the Nile
Depict with accuracy so precise
The shape your lips define
Your lips as juicy as garden-fresh red tomatoes
Your lips, your lips
I can drown in them

Like India protruding from Asia
A bud of land divine
But softer yet as a waterbed
On which making love is sublime
That bulge of your earlobe
That you can’t perceive
Your earlobes as tender as sour pickled olives
Your ears, your ears
I can drown in them

The Grand Canyon, twisting, fidgeting
With each gusty, windy caress
Lathered with milk and honey
Sloping down from the crest
Your neck bewitching my mind
And flowing to shoulders perfect
Your neck as smooth as a long white pumpkin
Your neck, your nape
I can drown in them

The numerous craters of the moon
Only turned inside out
And few large ones of earth
That wiped out the dinosaurs
Like your curves do to me
Making me alive to my senses
Your curves as sizzling as grilled jumbo prawns
Your curves, your curves
I can drown in them

This world a myriad of collusions
Your universe conspiring mine
Exploding with multiple nebulae
Lurking the cess of black holes
Our auras beating synchronously
Yours engulfing me full up
Your body as inebriating as sweet clear Chardonnay
Your spirit, your soul
I can drown in them

Pretty Flower

2009-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Pretty flower, I watch you
Rose, in petticoats of passionate pink
Holding your head up, indifferent
To my admiring gaze
Perhaps if you were still
Adorning your branch,
Not rotting away
In this swan-shaped white vase
You might have reciprocated
With shy acknowledgement

The Wind

2009-04-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

Slightly
sweeps the
noon silver
of wind

Waltzing the
leaves in
one rhythm

wind, blow
firm, shoo my
cares away

weave me into
your floral
ballet

Soft Love

2009-04-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

Love, touch me sweetly softly shy
Love, feel me what my thoughts belie
Love, show me all unimagined
Love, fly me on the wings of wind
Love, hold me till they scream: my veins
Love, hurt me till they bleed: my pains
Love, seed the flower over where I lie
Love, hover nigh as a butterfly

Letting Go

2009-01-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

I tried loving and letting go and not just once. But it doesn’t make any sense to me anymore. Part of loving is ownership; the other part is responsibility. Ownership of the loved by the one that loves and responsibility of the loved for the one that loves.

There is no such thing as letting go, because the act of loving itself causes an exchange in the metaphysical universe. And there is no such thing as unreciprocated love because although love may not be reciprocated with love, there is always something exchanged: pity, tolerance, forbearance, contempt, disrespect.

When I choose not to reciprocate love with love, I must take responsibility for what I offer to the exchange, how I choose to treat another human being. In any case, making this choice will condemn a part of my soul to eternal loss. And in every life I live, with so many unreciprocated loves, I keep losing a bigger chunk of my soul. Until one day, I have no soul at all. And I cease to exist.

I hope that you will consider forgiving me for not reciprocating your love with love. Thanks to my actions, all I have in store for me is the suffering of eternal loss and the shame of knowing how I treated you. It will not bring me any happiness; it will only take away from any chance that I have at happiness. Knowing your capacity for love, you probably will not gloat about my situation. But I hope that it will move you enough to consider forgiving me.

I know it’s ironic how you gave before what I didn`t want and I`m asking you now to give again. But if you don`t, you have chosen how to treat me, another human being, and I`m sorry it had to be this way. Maybe things would have worked out better if you hadn`t tried to let me go in the first place. Because see, I`m still here and you`re still trying to let me go.

You say you`ve moved on, but you still own my memory. You say that life went on for you, but you still wince at my rejection. You say that you accepted my decision, but that was a part of me too. Please stop trying to let me go, because you know you can`t. Life doesn`t just go on; it takes everything along with it and doesn`t slow down to be more careful. It rushes headlong into the path of death and only then is everything really let go.

If you are bent on letting me go, you would have to die. And I would not be able to accept responsibility for that. I guess, given the circumstances, my only viable option is to love you right back. Thank you for allowing me to make this journey in understanding. And thank you for loving and not letting me go.

Two Fat Tomatoes

2009-01-06T10:35:00.000-08:00

“Two fat tomatoes,
juicy ones, ripe red -
get me them. Will you please?”
he said.

“Oh God!
What a horror!
I want you out of my kitchen
By tomorrow.”

“But darling,”
he protests, “I
promised to cook.”

“So what?”
said she,
giving him the LOOK.

“Don’t you want me to?”
said he,
teasing with his voice
of burnt honey.

“Of course I do
but not like this.
Help yourself
pliss”

“But babe
don’t you see
how easy it would be
if two could work together as one”

“That’s just like you”,
she said turning on heel,
“Trying to get a bargain
On every little deal”

“I’m sorry that’s
The way you feel
But I’m only trying to connect with a part of me
That wants to peel

And chop and cut
And pare.
Now do you mind putting on the boiler there?”
“Oh I do” and she held up
her fresh manicure.
“I could ruin it if only you
would pay for one more”

“Alright, alright!”
He held up his hands
“I’m not going to start this fight”

“Smart move, wise boy.
Now back to cooking
Until then,
let me finish my Facebooking”

He came out
With a plate.
“Here’s your lunch”
“Well about time. It’s late.”

She tasted. He waited.
“Mmm, that’s good.
But it would have been better with tomatoes.”

“Why darling,
you may be right,
But incompetent little me,
With no culinary history
could only manage to season it with drippings from my nose.”

Ode to an Old Black Phone

2008-12-29T09:37:00.001-08:00

Tring! Tring!
In muted ebony,
Why don't you sing?
Do your ring thing?
Or are you just a phoney
shot in a pixel-rich Sony?

Do you have ringtones?
Dialertones?
Pushbutton record-ability
for moans and groans?
Mp3 playability
for Norah Jones?
Sms-ing for my doctor
or Baskin Robin cones?

Well I hate to come clean
But from this side of the screen
You're nothing better than a "has-been".

Being Lost

2008-05-12T20:36:00.001-07:00

What happened to the Child
Glued to its own shadow?
What happened to the Wind
That blew itself away?
What happened to the Time
Speeding on towards expiration?
What happened?

This man stands reading a map
Drawn in a strange pen:
His fingertip underscores 'Home',
But everywhere else is
The ‘X’ that marks his spot

This darkness is deeper still,
And the players are blind.
Victory chooses one side,
But who cares -
We are lost!

Too Late

2007-02-22T18:38:00.000-08:00

I watched you watch me
In a silent eye-lock
With your fidgeting hands
Tentatively reaching for
the idea I couldn’t see

I watched the colours
That flashed on your face:
Disbelief
Disgust
Disapproval
Dislike

Like a thin disease,
Like blinds shutting out the lights,
Like a haunted chasm sprung out of nowhere,
Like a freeway stretch growing longer and longer

Leaving me
With unspoken words
And my faulty instant
Damage-control plan

I watched and I stood,
An inert spectator
To the growing void
Between you and me

I watched even when
I knew it was over
Could something so precious
Be lost in an instant?
Your firm chin answers

What did I say?
What did you hear me say?
I'll take it back.
I'll withdraw it.
But I can't, can I,
Take back words
That have already
Changed our universe?

I watched “our universe”
Unbecome itself

I watched myself
Go back in time
To change a moment,
Swallow my anger,
Stomp my ego,
Not say anything,
Still have everything

I watched hope die
And knew then
That I’m all alone,
That it’s just
Too Late

Drowsy Noon

2006-10-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

I feel so light in the pit of my stomach;
perhaps my lunch has gone to my head.

The Coffee Shop at Blomdale

2006-04-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

The coffee shop at Blomdale was drab: white linen dressed the tables and tumblers made of thick glass stood upturned at corners. There was no one around. Even the waiter seemed reluctant to fill up the glasses with water. However, when he finally got to it, he placed the F&B menu on the table and vanished.

Janaki was only impressed by this last vanishing act. She hated how most waiters would stand over her shoulder making imperceptible impatient noises. Maybe this was the best thing about agreeing to the coffee shop rather than a Barista which was a five-minute walk away. She sipped the water and messaged Vikas. The reply said he would be there in ten minutes.

Janaki took a deep breath and sunk further into her chair feeling millions of tiny muscles stretch luxuriously and go limp. She set her bag in the next chair and carelessly smiled at the room around her thinking about how anonymous the room was. You could relax here, she thought. This was much better than the noisy Barista. Her apprehension about Vikas settled. She stopped doubting that he had any dubious motive in suggesting the coffee shop over a Barista. It was clear that he wouldn't have been able to find his way to the Barista on the main road from Blomdale where he had put up. After all, this was on her way and she would also not have parking hassles. She lazily glanced at the menu and smsed her boyfriend.

When Vikas walked into the coffee shop, she had fallen into an almost hypnotic state coming to only when he stood smiling at her for a few seconds. Janaki smiled and greeted him awkwardly. She almost gasped when he suddenly lunged towards her and pulled her into a firm hug. She did her best to keep the smile intact; they had hugged before after all.

"Would you like to come up to my room?" asked Vikas. "I can make us some chai, or coffee - whatever you like."

The question was worded innocently enough. There wasn't any suspicious body language or sign. He didn't deepen his tone or wet his lips. It was a polite invitation to his room at the hotel which she politely declined.

"No thanks. I'm quite comfortable here."

I'm very happy to see you, Janaki", said Vikas as he got into the chair opposite her.

He looked at her directly in the eye and she struggled to stop blushing. She told herself to grow up and mumbled, "Yeah, me too." critically considering whether that was the right thing to say. A 50 cent track started playing itself in her head: just a little bit.

The waiter appeared miraculously and took their order. Vikas asked if she would like to eat something; she declined. They began talking a little about him and what he was doing in Hyderabad. Vikas had a matter-of-fact way of talking about himself, about how rich and successful he was and how passionate he was about everything he did. Janaki knew about it already, of course. She had heard stories and whispers and gossip but that was nothing compared to hearing it from the man himself, how he started from scratch and went on to build an empire. Anyone would be easily impressed.

What was probably more flattering was the fact that he had wanted to meet her. He had messaged her before coming to Hyderabad and asked very modestly if she would be free to see him. Janaki had been curious about his interest in her and had agreed almost at once although she was a little perturbed that he was willing to alter his trip to her convenience. But Janaki was not new to the culture of 'air kissing'. She had taught herself to feign nonchalance towards acts of chivalry.

Vikas asked pertinent questions about her life and her work. Janaki was impassioned. This was what she could talk about for hours: her plans; her career; what she thought and speculated; the logical map of reasoning that she followed in making choices. Her eyes lit up, she leaned forward gesticulating. And then for no particular reason at all, Vikas stood up, crossed the table to her side and drew her into another awkward hug.

Through her formative years Janaki had painfully accepted that hugging had become a necessary social nicety. As a rule she never hugged for any reason at all, except maybe as a genuine gesture of friendship or comfort. But these days, just about everyone was huggable anytime whether you knew them since forever, or just met them a minute ago. Social hugging was easier for her when she was either drunk or just preoccupied. Now she was neither and she debated resisting the hug. But her memory took her back to the first time she had met Vikas. He had hugged her then many times, at every 'hi' and 'bye'. He had hugged a lot of other people too. He was simply one of those huggable rich and successful people. Janaki let herself be hugged.

But just as her mind adjusted to the idea of being hugged, Vikas planted a quick peck on her cheek. She liked to think it was her cheek but it was almost at the corner of her mouth. Her body stiffened involuntarily. Vikas drew back unperturbed and confident. He took his place and resumed their conversation.

Conversations, especially intelligent conversations were not something you came across on a daily basis. Janaki yearned for them everyday and she was in one. Vikas encouraged her overtures about her career plans. He dished out advice and tips. He was like a supportive elder brother, or a cousin, or an uncle, who understood what you needed and how you wanted to get it.

Frequently he asked her to apply for a job at his company; Janaki even suspected that perhaps the agenda of this meeting was more in the nature of a radical interview. But Vikas also reached across the table often to hold and squeeze Janaki's hand. Her feelings about hand holding and squeezing were not unlike those of hugging, a social pill swallowed with some difficulty.

Refills of their respective beverages were ordered and as the conversation progressed, Vikas had slipped in between chunks of career talk and advice a little jewel. "Janaki, I want to see you again. Do you want to?"

The question was innocent enough once again, but this time he had seemed to deepen his voice and he was wetting his lips - or just finishing his chai? Again she wasn't sure how to respond to this question. Perhaps her level of social sophistication wasn't high enough. So she mumbled again, "Yeah, OK."

A snake-like smile spread over Vikas's face. Janaki looked out the window next to their table. She hadn't looked at it since he had arrived. But now she saw it was dark. The slow discomfort that had been creeping into her mind since Vikas stepped into the coffee shop began to stay. She couldn't tell herself to grow up anymore. She was confused and only sensed a need to get away as quickly as possible.

Janaki knew she had a strong sixth sense, but she had never learned to trust it intensely. She had, however, learnt to give people the benefit of doubt. She had learnt to be optimistic. That was how she looked at it when finally Vikas offered to walk her to her scooter that was parked in the hotel's premises. They were located behind the building in a dark isolated area. In fact, a part of her mind was glad to have an escort.

The site of the scooter reassured her. It was her getaway from Blomdale, from Vikas. She put on her jacket and scarf. Vikas offered to button up her jacket, but she declined again. She was about to don her helmet when he stepped forward, held her shoulders and kissed her on her mouth through her scarf. She stood rooted with shock, still disbelieving that she was in the middle of what was going on. Emboldened, Vikas cupped her face and drew closer to repeat his feat, but without the hindrance of the scarf. Janaki turned her face away and quickly put on her helmet. There was a 'no' and a 'stop' muttered somewhere during that scuffle but she wasn't sure if they had just been thoughts or real words. The thought that she should slap him came as an afterthought, but of what use was an afterthought. There were also the significant afterthoughts of the parking being isolated and the traffic outside making a din that would stifle any scream.

The scooter turned into a primary target. She had to direct all her efforts at getting on it and being off. Vikas stood near smiling as if he had accomplished something or was close to it. His manner was crazily assuring in itself but consistently and increasingly discomforting to Janaki. It was only after she had passed the gate of Blomdale and was well on her way that she allowed herself to breath.

Bitterness swelled in her mind and anger at herself for allowing the episode with Vikas to happen. She called her boyfriend and told him about it. She told him how badly she wanted to revenge the shame, guilt and stupidity. But he annoyed her even further by laughing it off. "I told you so." His lack of concern was frustrating, but his sense of humour over the incident was appalling. A week later, their relationship ended.

Vikas and his antics settled on the back burner while Janaki dealt with the romance of a broken heart. She almost forgot about the intense shame and rage she had felt, until his wife smsed one early morning. "Why didn't you tell me that Vikas kissed you against your will?"

The memory resurfaced, but only partially. It was only later that she understood what had really happened to her. It was when Vikas smsed. "My distraught wife only just informed me that I had molested you. It seems your boyfriend told her. Did he have your blessings?"

She finally understood. She had been molested. It still didn't seem real.

Procrastination

2006-03-15T23:57:00.000-08:00

Waiting for outcomes, relief
quietly, painfully watching
days, hours, minutes float away;
Waiting for healing

Waiting for resolution, clarity:
goodness stripped off
its bad disguise, evil
scattered in the wind;
Waiting for sunshine

Waiting for conversations, understanding
moments that share everything
naked, revealed unabashedly;
Waiting for the perfect body

Waiting for peace, serenity,
a mind reorganized:
thoughts on shelves,
feeling in drawers,
doubts packed in suitcases;
Waiting for success

Waiting for the right moment
to do and say the right thing
to the right person;
Waiting to grow up

For the Blank Noise Project

2006-03-07T05:32:00.000-08:00

I hate your city
paved with hot adrenalin
lurking in nooks and crannies
with dirty fingers and scarred elbows
of untamed desires and hardened passions
slinking into the unwarranted spaces of buses
or trains where little mothers tell their big daughters
not to avail of the breast and buttock groping free service

Being Alice

2006-02-16T02:21:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up as Alice
Dreaming things - fantastic things -
And walked out into the world
with my dreams, both power and shield

I sauntered into the world,
My head brimming with pollen:
Ideas waiting to fertilize
Fresh flowers of imagination

Yellow-bricked streets, dancing trees,
Street urchins playing with elves, and
Sewer drains burping invitingly:
“Come explore the rabbit-hole!”

Concrete stumps sprout fronds
From which perfumed dewdrops dangle,
Windows and doors hide portals
To a matrix of holiday vistas,

Street vendor singing ditties
Of a jolly chimney sweep,
Dishing out penciled trail maps
Of riches waiting to seek,

Promises coloring the sunrise
With sweet lasting love,
Moon tide drawing the curtains –
Celebrations sparkle above –

Casper hiding in every closet
To befriend the lonely souls,
Everyday is Christmas
Charity sweetly tolls,

Nine lives for the cat,
Bu at least two for all else,
Strangers linking arms
Stepping out of ego shells,

Tanks and missiles delegated
On a one-way mission to Neptune,
Three wishes for all to find
Under an Egyptian sand dune

“Open Sesame” is the chant
That unbolts a heart’s treasures,
Humbleness and honesty enough
To seal an open wound’s sutures,

Hope - the highest mountain –
Omnipresent on every horizon,
Every aspirant in the race
Running for the win;

Then I opened my eyes,
With wonderland in my vision –
Book shut, on the rug –
Two past midnight: digital precision.

Famous

2006-02-16T02:14:00.000-08:00

This is my first attempt at a 55-er, i.e. title + story = 55 words!

I hate those sidewise glances. I'm not gauche, or clumsy. In fact, I'm debonair, suave and good-looking - my mom says so all the time. So why did she nudge her friend and shoot me an eyeball from the corner of her eye? And they were still contentiously smiling.

Women!

“Jeevan! Dude, you’re on T.V.!”

I Try to be A Poet

2006-02-16T01:14:00.000-08:00

I try to be a poet,
To connive with phrases
and words;

I try to observe the world,
To encase it in consonants
and vowels;

I try to capture emotions,
To reign them in for that
sublime effect;

I try to collect tears,
To draw deep from the wells
of inspiration;

I try to obsess with the inane,
To confound it into a thing
of beauty;

I try to defy all realms of
reason, understanding
and wit;

I try to be a poet;
I end up writing
shit.

~Subdued~

2005-12-09T02:18:00.000-08:00

Subdued am I
like a sleepy river
receeding from the summer scorch

Subdued like a bride
doomed by fate,
freefalling into the mire

Subdued am I,
lost my steam have I;
no pressure to blow my whistle

Subdued deep within
these them layers of skin,
a fount devoid of desire

Custard Apples

2005-12-09T02:03:00.000-08:00

Custard apples
With secrets buried
In sweet pillows
And a hundred eyes
That tell the truth:
Till it lasts

In an orchard
Of custard apples
We play hide n' seek
Blowing sweet nothings
That only the branches
Will hear

One step forward,
Three back;
Like ants on the hides
Of custard apples
We'll skip the pits
And savour the scent

When the time's ripe
Nectar will seep
Through the cracks
And turn our senses
Alive

Excitedly our little hands
Will aim for the big ones
And scramble
Down the barks
With grazed knees -
How it hurts!

But those custard apples
With buried secrets
Playing hide n' seek
Will stay only
Till the season lasts

Then will we start
A new game of love?

Pink Dancing Shoes

2005-11-07T01:29:00.000-08:00

those pink dancing shoes
kicked up so much dust - those feet
bathe with teary eyes

The Interview

2005-10-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

Stop staring at me,
Open-mouthedly gaping at me,
Wind swishing sentimentally
Through your orifices,
Tears sputtering
Along the wedges of your eyes,
Your left foot stomping
The invisible bass drum -

Stop watching me,
Shrewdly calculating me,
Throbbing pulses transversing
Your temple veins,
Adam's apple bobbing
In a stilted G minor,
Beads of fatigue ready to plunge
Off your stuffy chin -

Stop ogling at me,
Tongue-lickingly lusting for me,
Mind stricken aimless
By a freakish wanderlust,
Eyes feverishly groping
For hidden cobwebbed vistas,
Fingers playing a sweaty jig
On knees beaten to pulp -

Stop whatever you're doing to me,
Inside-outedly eating off me,
Your bunch of nerves
Wrangling in my face,
Twisting my laugh lines
Into a pitiful grimace,
Did I already tell you? Young man,
You’re fired.

God of Gods

2005-10-21T01:42:00.000-07:00

I must start writing, they tell me. Why? Because I’m a writer: in just the same way as a lover must go on loving, or a liar must go on lying, and a murderer must go on murdering. But then I am a lover and a liar and a murderer too.

See, I just write that and you believe me. If you’re intelligent, you’ll wonder if I mean those things in a physical or in a metaphorical sense.

Words! These are only words. Turn them one way, they mean one thing; twist them another, and their sense convolutes beyond the notions of a blind man. I’m not blind. But there, I’m digressing. Let me come back to my point and I can do that very simply by choosing to write these words. THAT is the power given to the writer. It is the power to come back, and to undo, and to modify.

If you ask ‘why’ I will tell you very simply that it is because the writer uses words. You now think that we are going around in circles and you are right. I have craftily brought to back to my pet peeve, to my words - with my words. Words are such simple, efficient tools. With enough practice anyone can learn to wield them to his purpose. But there’s another interesting point for digression: Purpose.

Purpose drives the machinery of existence.

No, don’t bother arguing with me because this is my page, my space and I choose the words that go down on it. But to indulge you or irk you - as you would allow for - let me explain that Purpose not only drives you into love, into sex, or into procreation, but purpose also drives the slop that drips from your anus just before you reach for the toilet paper. Sometimes Purpose is disguised in tricky alphabets that spell DNA, gravity, divine revelation, etc. But the undeniable fact is that Purpose is omnipresent.

But wait, Purpose is not God. I can see where that logical analogy is coming from: you must have been a good student at school. But here’s where the simple logic of ‘A-equals-B and-B-equals-C-so-A-equals-C’ fails. However you may assume that since God is omnipresent and since He allows Purpose to define all His actions, Purpose is also omnipresent.

Now let me show you a simple word trick. Do not try this on your own because it is a dangerous trick. However, since I am a writer and I have the power of the words, I can do it easily. Watch!

Purpose is omnipresent and Purpose defines all the actions of God. So God is actually a slave to Purpose. But then as I already explained earlier, we are all slaves to Purpose. So if we apply your A-B-C logic in this case, what we have is: we are God.

See? You are God. And so am I.

This is really crucial so never let it slip out of your mind. This is one of those things they don’t teach you at that logical analogy school you went to. Of course, I wouldn’t expect them to teach you this because it would upset the equation.

I don’t expect you to know the equation either. I mean, if you didn’t know that you were God until now, how would you know the equation? But now that you are enlightened, it will be really easy for you to guess that there are a number of people who aren’t just as you weren’t before I could tell you. Get it?

The equation is between the people who know and the people who don’t know that they are God.

You are not going to ask me how it makes any difference because you already know. Just imagine what a person who was blindfolded permanently from as far back as he could remember would do: mostly nothing, unless he had a serious death wish.

Let me explain: this blindfolded person is akin to a blind man who has never seen the light. He doesn’t know that everyone around him doesn’t wear a blindfold, so he believes that it is a part of his attire, or that he might die if he gets rid of it. But then I come along and tell him that he’s only blindfolded, not blind. That knowledge gives him power, power to reach behind his head and throw off his blindfold. And voila, life is a different place altogether.

So you see there IS a difference between the people who know and the people who don’t. It IS a key difference because it brings about the balance of power or the equation.

People who know about the equation are able to use the power. They are able to make things happen in the manner they wish them to happen. You are not so naïve as to expect this to take place directly. It doesn’t. This power is channelled through chains of other people before it achieves its goal.

Who are these other people? Some of them are people who know, and concede the use of their selves. But most of them are people who don’t know and hence, who get used unwittingly. So you see it is completely beneficial for the people who know to have lots of people who don’t know around them. That is how they are able to make things happen in the manner they wish them to happen.

You will now think that I am crazy. But stop and think. Haven’t you been used by so many people? Haven’t you felt cheated and almost forced into something you really didn’t care for? But that was the story of before. Now that you know that you are God and you have understood that this means being a slave to purpose, you can turn things around.

Once, there was a woman. Don’t expect me to tell you what kind of woman because that is not my purpose. I will not reveal her name, her hair colour, or bone structure. I will not tell you if she was fat or thin. I have already told you all that I wanted to tell you about her. Instead, I will tell you something about myself: I am a man. But if you are smart, you already know that. This is also something that they didn’t teach you at that logical analogy school you went to. This is something you know by your power of being God. I will repeat this many times because I want you to believe it. But also because I have the privilege of being a writer and right now as you read my words you are a slave to my purpose. And you know much about me, that I am a writer and that I am a man and that I am not blind.

You also know that a man needs a woman. And therefore, you will not be surprised when I confess that I once considered having a woman. Your mind has been considerably opened in the last few minutes. So I’m certain that you are not conjuring up images of physical union. Physical fulfilment rests in my palm, on the shoulder of the girl I’m standing next to in the bus, in the rump of my guard’s teenage son. Physical fulfilment is not difficult to attain.

When I say I needed a woman, my words must convey the desire to fulfil a spiritual need because a woman holds the other half of a man’s soul. The union of these two souls is the ultimate union of two Gods. This is where power is multiplied manifold. If you are trying to realize this level of authority over your life, you must find a woman or a man (as the case may be).

I found a woman, the one I just spoke of. She didn’t know that she was God and I didn’t tell her. What I did tell her was that she was beautiful and that she had the prettiest eyes in the whole wide world. Don’t even begin to envy me; envy is not the game of Gods. Also I don’t know if I told her the truth. I can hardly tell what beauty is or what pretty eyes look like, much less compare them to all the rest in the world. But women like to hear such things and if you want to have a woman, you must tell her such things. And I told her many more because I have my way with the words. But you know that already.

We were both Gods, one with the knowledge of it, the other without. Although she didn’t know about the power balance that was involved in this union, her soul knew instinctively. She fell in love with me. I would not like to use the same words to describe my own composition, so I will merely say that I allowed our souls to unite. You will not believe me until you experience this yourself, so I will not bother to describe it.

I will only say that it was like being lucky all of a sudden. Only you know that it wasn’t luck; it was the power of purpose that I had claimed for my own. I could make a lot bigger things go my way much sooner than before. There is an inherent advantage in binding your soul to a person who doesn’t know: you can be the sole master of an infinite reserve of power. This is how it was for me.

However, I must confess, I made a slight error in judgement that lead to a huge disruption in my plans. I assumed that having had my woman and having harnessed the power brought about by the union of our souls, my job with the woman was done. There I was wrong.

You may call it sheer coincidence or deliberate mischievousness, but through my powers of being God, I became aware of a growing interest in my woman of other men. I also came to know that these were men who didn’t know that they were God and who weren’t aware of the equation. If they did they wouldn’t have even tried to think of a woman whose soul was united with that of another God. A previously unheeded fear took seat in my mind that my woman was also susceptible to such thoughts of other men because she also didn’t have the knowledge that gave power. I was in a tricky situation and I had only my words to help me out of it.

I decided to tell the woman that she was God.

I laboured lovingly over my words, sharpening them, blunting them and occasionally twisting them to make her understand. You already know of the painstaking efforts I have taken to make you understand. So you will believe me when I tell you that she believed me when I told her that she was God.

Being God, you expect not to make mistakes. Being God, you expect not to falter. But that expectation is in itself a huge miscalculation. Once you are aware that you are God, you need to keep reminding yourself about it. You cannot allow the lethargy of expectation and assumption to creep in. That is why I keep repeating to you again and again that you are God. I made a mistake when I assumed that everything would be fine now that we both knew we were Gods. I lost my purpose.

But my woman had found hers. Just as I had used her dormant power to my benefit, she began using mine. She soon discovered all that I have revealed to you about the equation and she understood that it would benefit her most if she were united with a soul that did not know. The only obstacle in her path was I and I was a mighty obstacle because I not only still wielded the great power that she shared with me but I also had the power of the words because I was a writer.

My woman began looking for a means to get some power that could equate with the power of my words. It had to be a power that only she could tap and I could not access. She used a considerable extent of our combined Godly powers to find another such power but she was unsuccessful, that is, until I helped her unwittingly.

I told the woman that she was beautiful and that she had the prettiest eyes in the whole wide world. For a long time she had not thought of questioning her belief in my professed admiration. But one day she heard the words of another writer, not as proficient as me, but nevertheless endowed with the power of the words. And then she knew that I was lying. She knew that she had none of what you could call beauty. And just like that she now had a power that could not only equate with but was also greater than my power of the words.

She had the truth.

You must know that the truth is a gigantic power. It hasn’t been documented, but it is probably the greatest power of them all. In fact, when the Gods who wrote a holy book said it, they forget to highlight it: the truth shall set you free. It worked for my woman too. She had wanted it for long and so our souls began to disunite. The truth had begun to set her free.

The moment it began, I knew. And I didn’t want it to happen, but the power of my words, however twisted, was no match for her power of truth. I considered the equation and power balance. I saw that I was set to lose much because of this wanton development. But, being God, I was able to immediately sort the relevant information and work a solution.

Looking back, it was really simple. All I needed to keep my stock of power was my woman’s soul. Therefore, all I needed was her soul. Since you are also God, you will know that the only way a soul will leave a person is via that person’s death. And you will be right if you begin to wonder whether the thought crossed my mind.

There is no need for me to tell you how I planned and how I executed it. There were many ways of doing such a thing and these are on record in case you wish to refer to them. But that was to become the most memorable day in my life. That day I became a God among Gods for I had more power than any other God. And I was the woman. And I was blind.

You must be astonished at this point. I can tell because that is the extent of my power now. I can feel what you feel even as you listen to my words. You will soon feel my exhilaration too. But this lesson ends for today. Now go and think.

I will, of course, keep writing. But you know that already. Yes, because you are God, and because I’m a writer with a purpose. I’m a lover and a liar and a murderer too. I know you believe me now.

Crazy in Love [Part II]

2005-09-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

Clicking here will take you to part I

Two floors below, the entire family had gathered to welcome Swati home. She had spent two days in a hospital while she had laser surgery performed on her right eye. The left eye had been operated a week before. Although she felt a little conscious about losing her nickname “double soda”, she was really happy, but most of all because of the appreciative looks she imagined she would see on Rohit’s face when he saw her without her glasses.

Ambiguously fielding off everyone’s questions about why she had finally taken this decision, it was only a day before the surgery that she had accepted the truth: she was doing it for Rohit, because she loved him and because she believed that he deserved a girl better-looking than the plain Jane she was. She was dying to meet him. However, on second thoughts, she decided that now that she had begun the journey towards grooming herself, she might as well go all the way. It would be a reward for Rohit for waiting for her, she mused.

Rohit, of course, had heard the pompoms at Swati’s place. He knew what they were about, his parents knew too. They thought it strange that Rohit hadn’t checked Swati out yet. They even thought it odd that the two of them were not on talking terms, but they passed it off as just another childish whim. So they didn’t say anything when Rohit rushed into the house and got busy without saying a word. He had made a hasty departure from Mrs. Malik’s flat but only after promising to go back in two days.

Two days later Rohit went back to Mrs. Malik’s place to help her with her Christmas party arrangements. Two days later Swati stepped into a beauty parlor for the first of many times in her life.

As the countdown to Christmas continued, Rohit carried on helping Mrs. Malik out over increasingly lingering periods of time; he had even started lying about it to his parents who were getting just a little concerned about his prolonged periods of absence.

In the meantime, Swati had a Cinderella makeover. Sometimes, she herself could not believe that she was looking at her own reflection in the mirror. And her face flushed about fifty shades of red when she considered the effect this would have on Rohit. Now, she was really eager to show herself off to Rohit, forgetting all about the lecture she had given him only a few months before.

Mrs. Malik’s Christmas party was only two days away and as a goodwill gesture, everyone in the building had been invited. That would be the day, vowed Swati.

The grand day finally arrived and announced itself by the blare of Christmas carols from the terrace of the building, where the party was actually arranged. Everyone was delighted by the antics of the tiny tots as they performed their carefully rehearsed cultural events. Mrs. Malik and Rohit were praised for their excellent teamwork.

The two of them, however, had their hands full and were probably the only two people who didn’t inquire who the mysterious damsel was, or who goggled with surprise on being told that she was “our Swati only”.

More than once, Swati and Rohit passed each other that evening without him recognizing her or even noticing her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to. His eyes were thirsting for a glimpse of Swati but it seemed that she hadn’t turned up, maybe to avoid him.

He looked anxiously at Mrs. Malik instead, knowing well the sequence of events that would kick into action after the party was over.

Swati was a little hurt that Rohit still hadn’t recognized her. But she consoled herself with the thought that at first even she couldn’t recognize herself in the mirror. She would catch up with him after the party was over and he was less busy, she told herself.

And so, after the children and their parents had left and most of the neighbors too, Rohit couldn’t help noticing the beautiful girl sitting all alone and watching him attentively. When he walked passed her again, she even smiled at him and it was only then that like the first sunrays cautiously entering through a window, it dawned on him, that the girl was Swati. He stopped dead in his tracks and like a flashback sequence in a movie, all the times that he had passed her that evening rolled through his mind. He made another addition to his mental album!

A flood of emotions swelled up to his head but his feet stayed rooted to the ground. Swati moved towards him first and giggled as she drew near. His heart stopped beating for a moment but slowly his lopsided grin parted his jaws. “Hi. How’s life?” was all he could muster. “Good. And you?” was all she could reply. Then he added, “You look nice.” But she said nothing, only blushed.

The world around them melted into a haze as they locked eyes and started walking down the steps. To all appearances, they were not talking, but the silence between them was full of emotion, once suppressed and now running like a wild stallion. Their hands were slowly inching towards each other’s.

Then a voice interrupted, “Are you going to leave me all alone with this mess, Rohit?” It was Mrs. Malik who had followed him from the terrace.

“Err…” said Rohit turning his head from Mrs. Malik to Swati and back again. “You promised!” Mrs. Malik said reproachfully but with the hint of a tease in her voice. Swati’s brow broke out into a puzzled frown as she caught Mrs. Malik unabashedly displaying her cleavage and subtly noted how Rohit had suddenly turned cold. Swati looked at him pleadingly.

Rohit briefly shuffled on his feet and shortly told Swati that he had to go. “I’ll catch you later. Bye.”

He followed the older woman to the terrace while Swati walked down the stairs disappointed.

She walked all the way down to the compound and looked up at the sky and sighed. What was a beautiful girl like her doing all by herself on this chilly night, she asked herself. Her eyes traveled to the lighted fourth floor window of Mrs. Malik’s flat where she could dimly pick out the silhouettes of two people seemingly entwined around each other. Then the light went out.

Swati closed her eyes and felt a pain sear through every thought that she was experiencing. She had forgotten how long she had been sitting there. She hadn’t realized that streams of tears were rolling down her closed eyes. But when she felt warmth around her hands her opened her eyes and looked into the eyes of Rohit.

She was unable to speak.

Rohit started. “You haven’t changed since you were a kid, you know.”

Swati’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “What do you mean?”

“You’re too impatient. I told you I’ll catch you later.”

Swati’s eyes widened and the frown on her brow deepened. “But I thought –”

“What? That I wouldn’t come?”

Swati shifted. “No, I thought that you and Mrs. Malik …”

But Rohit placed a finger on her lips. “Mrs. Malik is a nice woman with a large heart. Sometimes she’s annoyingly demanding. But I like her a lot and especially because she made me realize that I could love no one the way I love you. And she made me understand that even if there’s a little love, it’s worth holding onto because you never know when destiny will take your sweetheart away.”

As soon as he had finished Rohit wondered if he had said something wrong again because once again the tears started flowing freely from Swati’s eyes. He held her hands higher and closer to his chest and began to explain earnestly.

“Listen, I don’t think you got it right. There’s nothing and there never was anything –”

This time is was Swati who stopped him talking. “I love you Rohit. I’ve always loved you. And I’m really sorry I made both of us go through all those months without talking. They were horrible.”

“Yes, they were.”

“And foolish.”

“No. Not foolish.” Swati looked at him questioningly. “They helped me realize how much I love you.”

And once again, the tears welled up in her eyes.

“Just one thing,” interrupted Rohit beginning to grin. “Do I still get to call you ‘double soda’?”

But she didn’t answer him. She threw her arms around him and kissed him.

At that moment the edge of a curtain dropped at the window of the ground-floor flat. The eleven-year old girl who was eavesdropping sank into her bed and cried bitterly until she fell asleep.

That eleven-year old girl was me.

It didn’t matter that he was eighteen and I was eleven; but my heart was broken and I was still crazy in love.

Crazy in Love [Part I]

2005-09-27T11:41:00.001-07:00

It was hilarious that something that could be compared to silly superstition or even popular legend was receiving serious patronage. Nothing less could be expected when your regular old wives adage, ‘crazy in love’, gets actually backed by scientific evidence!

The article says that certain hormones are released in your body when you’re in love that somehow blocks the centers of logical thought in your brain, thus making you susceptible to all kinds of irrational behavior. It’s all down there in your DNA, in that deceptively simplistic genetic code that runs into a million lines, that makes people even somersault off sheer cliffs blithely christened ‘Lovers’ Point’.

On one of those lazy afternoons at work, this article kept floating in and out of my daydreams like a visual mantra. So I mused over it again and again, and I wondered if there really was something to it. That was when I thought of Rohit.

Rohit was my neighbour. I lived on the ground floor, while he lived on the second and I used to see a lot of him as he went in and out. We enjoyed long empty conversations, silly singsong sessions and even exchanged WWW cards. Although he was eighteen and I was eleven, we had a wonderful friendship. However, sometimes it pinched that Swati, not I, was his best friend.

Swati and he were next-door neighbors and it was well known that they had grown up together. Swati was born only a month after Rohit and their parents often joked that only after she entered the world did he imbibe some of her sense and stop crying. They did their entire childhood routine together: playschool, school and college. They had the same friends, worshipped the same childhood heroes, read the same books, and they even knew the same jokes. But that’s where the similarity ended.

It was not so evident when they were kids, but as they grew older, people’s perceptions of them as individuals changed drastically.

Rohit had grown up to be a strapping man, with smooth muscles bulging at his arms and thick veins running down to his fingers. He looked much older than his years and had lots of women, right from eleven (that would be me) to thirty-two, swooning over him. His swank was complete with a crooked mischievous grin, which amply portrayed his amicable nature. He was easy-going, made friends effortlessly and always had enough time for everyone. Whenever you needed help, you only had to call Rohit.

Sometimes, because of the intensity of his involvement with people his academics would threaten to suffer. That’s when Swati would bail him out.

Yes, Swati was a nerd and her looks could only confirm that. She had not bothered with changing her thick glasses; she was still teased “double soda” for them. It would take a great deal of scrubbing the surface to notice that she had pretty features. Her think oiled plait and her overall sense of dressing had left her a plain Jane, even an ugly Jane to some. But she had attitude. She was fiercely independent, didn’t care about people’s opinion of her, and held close to her heart her view that people should not judge her by her appearance. So, despite the encouragement from her family, she refused to get rid of her glasses and despite the gentle boosts from her female cousins, she refused to step into a beauty parlor.

Regardless of these differences that others could point out, for Swati and Rohit themselves, nothing had changed. So they remained best friends. It’s true that every now and then, Swati would pull Rohit’s leg about some girl who had the “hots” for him, and sometimes, Rohit would tease her “double soda”. They also had their own individual crushes, which they discussed and dissected with each other. Nothing could distort the canvas of their relationship. And it seemed inevitable that a friendship, nurtured and watered for so long, would someday blossom into love.

Someday came in the month of July, when it was pouring in Mumbai and Swati had forgotten to carry an umbrella. She was taking the stairs home, fully drenched. Rohit was just stepping out of his house and the two met on the stairs as they often did. But this time Rohit stopped.

He gave Swati a good look, longer than any other time before, and noticed, for the first time, her curvy body that was outlined by her wet clothes. The realization that his childhood friend, next-door pal, bosom buddy, was a girl, the complement to his sex, hit him like a bolt of lightening, and he wondered why it had never occurred to him before.

Swati distractedly shook the water from her hair and took off her glasses at the same time, keeping up her constant lively chatter. It was just like in the movies and this picture of Swati would remain with Rohit forever as the image of his first love. Yes, that’s right; Rohit fell in love with Swati that day.

However, when it came to confessing his feelings to Swati, it was a bit tougher than he had imagined. Suddenly, the sincere smiles, the casual body contact, had a much deeper connotation for Rohit. They only served to build up his thoughts, and consequently make him completely numb whenever he wanted to bring up the subject. For days together, the only thought on his mind was that he had to tell Swati.

Swati could anticipate a little of what Rohit was feeling because she was not entirely innocent. In her heart she had loved Rohit for as long as she knew him but her feelings had not yet matured despite the rage of her adolescent years. It was one thing to love Rohit as a “friend” and quite another to love him as a “boyfriend”. So when Rohit finally spilled his jar of sentiments on the table, Swati was stunned.

Yet, the chill running down her spine was memorable and never quite the same in the years after. However, after neatly filing that chill in one compartment of her brain, she pulled out her big book of logic and reasoning.

“Listen, Rohit”, she said, “I have feelings for you too. But I’m not sure what kind they are exactly. And I believe you don’t really know what your feelings are either. It’s probably just those adolescent hormones raging. Infatuation!”

Rohit’s heart was palpating so fast he could only hear a blur of what Swati was saying. His mind was confused about the shade of disappointment that was invading it quickly, but his smile remained plastered as he watched, admired even the tiniest flickers of Swati’s eyes. The rainbow of expressions that Swati could pull off with her eyebrows and the twitching of her nose fascinated him.

She was saying, “You and I have been best friends for so long that it just seems to follow that we should fall in love.”

Rohit thought to himself, “So at least I didn’t make any mistakes here.”

Then she added, “But what seems to follow may not necessarily be right. Maybe we just love each other because we’re eighteen and we’re friends.”

“Isn’t that good?” asked Rohit.

“Well, it depends”, she answered, “I think it’s important to love someone for who they are and not just because he or she is your friend.”

Rohit was clearly puzzled. “But you are my best friend,” he protested, “That’s who you are.”

Swati took his hand, “I am your best friend but I feel you need to have some other meaningful experiences before you’re sure that I’m the one for you. Lets just see less of each other for a while and more of other people and then afterwards if we still feel the same way about each other, then we’ll know that it’s real, not infatuation.”

Rohit blinked a few times as Swati slowly left their coffee table and headed for the door. He thought she looked gorgeous as she elegantly left him and then sensuously tilted her head back just before she could step out. Another picture was added to his mental album!

The days that followed were bleak and painful for both Swati and Rohit. What Rohit lacked in terms of willpower to keep away from her, she had three times in excess, and so every advance of his was met with a firm withdrawal and a reminder of her last lecture. But Swati suffered even more because even as she saw less of him, her feelings for Rohit only deepened and she could not deny anymore that she was also very much in love with him.

However as his advances were repeatedly brushed off, Rohit gave up and decided that if the only way to be with Swati were to stay away from her, he would do it. This was a test of his love, he told himself. So they stopped meeting and even when they incidentally passed each other owing to the fact that they were next-door neighbors, they painfully tore apart their gazes. In a couple of weeks, they even started avoiding each other.

By and by, it was December. Mrs. Malik, the gorgeous thirty-something woman who lived on the fourth floor was organizing a Christmas party for the little playschool that she ran in her flat. She was a gregarious woman, loved by most people, especially children. After her husband died, leaving her no children, she ran the playschool to support herself. Often, her neighbors who had plenty of time to spare would lend her a hand in her school activities. She had grown so accustomed to having help that nowadays she would simply ask for it. One day that she bumped into Rohit, she asked him too for some help with her Christmas party and Rohit, being the benevolent soul that he was, agreed.

A few days later, as decided, he dropped into Mrs. Malik’s place. She offered him coffee and some delicious chocolate brownies, which they both shared over her coffee table as they discussed her program. As the hour passed Rohit felt a heavenly sense of satisfaction in his stomach and couldn’t help gazing hypnotically at Mrs. Malik. She was gesturing vividly as she discussed this and that.

The woman was fat and round, but she had a huge reserve of energy. She also had cute dimples that deepened when she smiled even slightly. Her eyes were kind and years of dealing with children had taught her the fine art of using her hands to transmit comfort and sympathy.

Rohit didn’t know when exactly it happened, but the palloo of her sari, which had been sliding down her arm slowly and subtly, now rested in her lap, revealing her deep cleavage held up by a low-cut blouse. The most incredible thing was that she didn’t do anything about it except to carry on in the same train. When he began to notice, Rohit was struck by a profusion of thoughts, but the feeling that surpassed all was the tightening in his jeans. And then, from some black hole in his head, floated Swati’s voice: “… other meaningful experiences …”

The Laughing Ground

2005-08-29T05:13:00.000-07:00

Every morning, on my way to work, I used to whiz past the laughter club, or the comical fraternity of septuagenarians and over. Not far from my home is the huge open ground where they met and laughed. The land has been bordered by a jogging track: the surreptitious overture of the local gold-toothed MLA. The jogging track in itself is not extraordinary; people of all body frames use it indiscriminately. But the land enclosure - that's a different story.

Season after season, the laughing ground – as I like to call it – takes cues from the altering ambience and exaggerates it unabashedly in its fabric. Summer calls open jagged cracks in the hard, dry ground and makes homes for thousands of bugs and mites where they take refuge from the bitter heat. In the monsoons, life bursts out of these cracks with unrestrained pleasure. The aroma of wet mud lingers in the surrounding atmosphere and brings about looks of wonder for the miniature Amazon that has sprung up. Winter lures the marsh over the edges of the jogging track and leaves a faint fog stalled in the air like a crowd of floating ghosts. Huddles of Bedouin-like tribes and gypsies settle down unnoticeably on the hard ground below it with their cattle and passing motorists will often hear the quaint tinkling of bells at night.

Notwithstanding these seasonal transformations, the laughter club reclaimed the land every morning. It was a difficult proposition, since almost sixty-five other parties already had claims to it. Moreover, the laughter club had not even the stipulated stamp paper to prove ownership. But their hiccoughing movements and bizarre attempts at laughter seemed to, at least temporarily, assert their ownership. Occasionally I was driven to philosophize that the laughter club used to repeat their cheery ritual daily only because stamp paper lasts much longer than laughter.

I am so accustomed to watching this ageless group of fun that I can simply close my eyes and see them come alive in my head. I see this stocky woman in a bright pink salwar kameez who seems to be the brightest kid in this class, executing every manoeuvre faultlessly. Then there is this man of medium-height, whose shock of white begins only three-quarters down his skull. Unlike the other members who are usually padded with shawls and pullovers, he wears simply a T-shirt and shorts. He’s easily the most energetic in the group and is often seen encouraging other members. And then there’s the leader. It would be hard to single out the leader of a group that stands in a circle because it is the prerogative of the circle to lead and to be lead infinitely. However, the tall thin man who bears this responsibility is distinctive by his voice, which shouts directions loud enough to sever the din of early traffic and even outdo the bird calls of nature, while she stretches and yawns lazily between the beams of an eastern sun.

“HO HO HO HA HAAH”: thus begins the first routine, accompanied by a parallel movement of the arms, initially stretched forward and joined and jerked open partly with each syllable until they are completed outstretched. These gestures read to my mind as an action of opening the doors and welcoming life with open arms. For some reason beyond the hilarity of their performance, I would be tempted to smile. A brief glance into the rear-view mirror would show me that I was, in fact, smiling.

One of the other days that I was running late, I came across them engaged in another interesting exercise. They were breathing heavily with sounds of “HEE HEE”, one syllable uttered during the inhalation and the other during the exhalation. They were also hopping like a bunch of Bugs Bunnies in rotation, the hop being implemented on the inhaled “HEE”. Looking around furtively at my fellow motorists, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t help laughing at this curious drill. And I wondered about the purpose of the laughter club: was it to laugh, or to make others laugh.

I must confess that I secretly fancied being a part of the laughter club. For me, their appeal lay in their ability to let go of their apprehensions, of what passing motorists like me thought of them. I envied their oblivion, their profound adherence to their comical rigour, their earnest absorption in a mediocre act like breathing. I began, out of sheer habit, to let myself be with them if only for a few moments as I drove past. And my envy forged a mysterious bond with them: seeing, silent and smiling.

One morning in October, a morning that had followed a late night of revelling at a friend’s birthday party, I drove by the laughing ground as usual on my way to work. I was late and was a little woozy from the hangover. But the acute stillness in the air cleared my head almost at once. I peered through the mist across the ground and heard a faint tinkling of bells. I noticed the regular throngs of joggers sweating it out with occasional nods of acknowledgment as they passed each other. I felt the whoosh of cars and scooters speeding past me. And I stopped.

The laughter club was gone.

Beside myself with curiosity and a certain amount of dread, I deviated from my normal route and came to park besides the makeshift tea stall along the jogging track. Almost mechanically, the proprietor of the stall poured out a dribble of hot, creamy tea into a glass tumbler the size of my little finger and held it out to me. I was going to refuse it, but the vapours rising from the tumbler caught my nostrils unawares and I knew I just had to try it. I soon realized why this man who owned the makeshift tea stall was in business. As I cautiously tried to sip the hot brew without scalding my tongue, the man was inundated with customers, some of them passing like me, and others who came out of tradition.

I waited impatiently for the opportune moment to ask my question, but the tea man had his hands full all the time. Finally realizing that I might be in for trouble at work owing to this delay, I just blurted out, “Hey bhaiyya, do you know the laughter club?”

The question brought about something like a freeze frame. The tumblers going to and fro chattering mouths stopped moving. The mouths went silent. The tea man’s hand immobilized midair from where it was pouring out fresh tumblers. And a dozen pairs of eyes turned towards me simultaneously.

I flushed darkly at this unexpected reaction and was about to begin scheming my escape from the uneasy silence when it broke down. All at once, everyone started speaking.

“Who doesn’t know the laughter club?” said one.

“My father is member”, said another.

“Oh yes, you can see them here every morning”, said the only other woman in this gathering.

“But it’s really sad now”, said a voice that I recognized as belonging to the painter who was employed at my place once.

“Sad indeed! But these things are all in His hands”, said a pundit gesturing towards the heavens. His body bare save for the thin garment worn below his waist and a cord tied diagonally across his chest reeked of sandalwood. He was perched precariously upon his scooter that he was balancing with one foot.

As my eyes were already fixed on him taking in his manner and his attire, I addressed him. “What happened? What sad news are you talking about?”

But it was the tea man who answered. “Col. Varma passed away last evening - heart attack. He was eighty-four.”

“Oh my God!” said the other woman. “I know his wife very well. I must pay her a visit.”

Other members of our gathering now asked for and exchanged a variety of notes on the details of the deceased man’s medical condition prior to his death and the arrangements for rituals that would now follow. That he was a healthy individual was agreed upon unanimously, and with a little encouragement from the pundit, they even came to accept that such matters are unavoidably beyond the scope of human intervention. However, perceiving the blank look on my face, the tea man asked in a low voice, “You do not know Col. Varma, do you?”

I replied with silence, but he went on. “He was the leader of the laughter club.”

And then, the congregation began to talk of the deceased man’s disposition and his benevolent characteristics with admiration for the man and some pride for knowing about it. Now that I had my information, I hastily paid for the tea and started off. As I pulled away from the tea stall, I last heard, “ ... he would have wanted them to carry on with their laughing exercises but they can’t be that strong.”

That day was not among the better days of my life. I didn’t know Col. Varma personally, but my bond with the laughter club had compelled me into mourning his death. My hangover, which had disappeared before my conversation with the tea man and his customers, returned with new vigour and I passed the day restlessly. The days that followed were no less solemn. I had looked out for the laughter club half-heartedly and was not surprised when I didn’t see them. But I longed for them to return and continue with their old routine although the laughter club without Col. Varma and his booming voice did seem weird.

About a month later, when I did see them back on the laughing ground, where to my mind they belonged, I could jump for joy. But my ecstasy was not really new because only the day before I received a promotion at work. The newspaper that employed me had finally after two frustrating years realized my potential as a journalist and had decided that I was worth more than the bunch of reporters that scurried after every burning bush. The sops that came with the promotion included the designation “Senior Reporter”, an overdue increment, flexible hours and a profile that incorporated a lot of travelling within the country and abroad.

For the following couple of weeks, I kept my usual hours at work despite the promotion and consequently did not miss the laughter club. But as my initiation period with the new job profile drew to a close, I began receiving assignments that required me to leave base for increasingly longer periods. Eventually when I returned home only during the monsoons of the next year, I had been away for roughly seven months.

Returning home after my first ever spell away was an experience that could even surmount my experiences abroad with alien cultures and perceptions. The changes I had brought back with me in every facet of my personality, not including the drastic loss of weight due to my hurricane lifestyle, made me feel the pressures of adolescence all over again. Everything around me seemed new and distant and yet I knew the fountainhead of change was I, not my surroundings. The encumbrance of readjusting notwithstanding, I was extremely gratified at my accomplishments during the time I had been away and I knew that the glow on my face could only be explained by the supreme satisfaction I felt inside.

In an attempt to progress with my new life by introducing at least some flatness, I began my old routine of getting to work every morning on time. It helped me to slow down a little and get used to the difference. I also had pleasant nothings to fill my mind with during this monotony. My short stint in Turkey where I assisted the coverage of an insurgence by an underground army of rebels found me taking shelter during a raid in the company of man whom I fell in love with immediately. Luckily for me the feeling was mutual. He was a cameraman then working for a TV news channel. One of the changes affecting my present conduct was our recent engagement and the imminent marriage that we had planned for a year later.

I was thus in high spirits as I drove to work on that first morning after my return despite the fact that the skies were dull and there was an insistent fine rain battering every surface on the land. Inadvertently I turned my gaze to the right as I approached the laughing ground, expecting to see the laughter club with which I had got myself inexorably bound. I quickly checked myself, though, because the rain was not agreeable and the cheerful group of septuagenarians had been known to bunk a schedule now and then in the face of bad weather. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see them as arduously as ever laughing their aches and pains away with the rhythmic “HO HO HE HA”.

Something came over me then, perhaps due to the effect of my homecoming, or due to this newfound love in my heart, which made me want to express openly everything that was warm and emotional inside me. I was elated to see this circle of bliss impenetrable to the gloom of the heavy shower outside it. In a way they were just like me at that time and I was urged to consolidate the mysterious bond I had felt with them since the past two years by telling them how much I appreciated them.

I stopped by the side of the jogging track that was vacant except for a couple of hardy joggers determined to beat the weather. I took my first step on the laughing ground and felt it sink into the soft muck that was now colouring the edges of my foot that were exposed through my sandal. My second step was a similar experience. Each footstep forward made loud funny plopping sounds and I giggled quietly to myself. Walking through this miniature Amazon was complicated: sometimes it seemed that the ground didn’t want you to move ahead easily and so held back each step. I pondered about how the laughter club managed negotiating through this terrain and instinctively looked up for them. They seemed to be a little farther from where I was.

I advanced very slowly trudging each foot along with a giggle at the loud plop and looked up to measure how far away I was from the laughing circle. I was amazed to find that they were still further than I had initially imagined. I had somehow taken it for granted that they were located closer to the jogging track that bordered the laughing ground and now it seemed inconsistent with my former conclusion. My feet were now completely soiled and the hem of my trousers had stained. Still, as I had covered a lot of area and they had no doubt seen me approaching, it seemed silly to turn back without speaking to them. So I carried on.

Within a minute I was standing in the centre of the ground and was thoroughly annoyed to see that the laughter club was still farther. By now, I had begun to doubt the reality of what I was seeing and was suspecting a trick by my mind in terms of a hallucination. I blinked a few times but the image of the laughter club stayed rooted where I could see it before. There was a sense of desperation overcoming me but I deliberately followed this vision of the laughter club because of a gut feeling that I could solve this mystery if I only got to the other side of the ground. What added to this feeling was that the image of the laughter club was not still; they were moving in their regular routines and changing exercises and I could even hear the hiccoughing sounds they made with their breathing. That was also when I noted the loud booming voice that was shouting out instructions and felt a chill run down my spine.

As if in conspiracy with this mirage, the rain turned severe just as I looked up to clarify if the loud voice belonged to whom I feared it belonged to. However I did decipher the tall figure of the man who appeared to be the leader. Although, I can’t claim a thorough visual, it seemed to my mind that he had all the appearance of Col. Varma.

By and by, driven on by the powerful illusion of the laughter club, I hadn’t even realized that I had reached the other end of the laughing ground. When I looked up I saw that the laughter club had vanished. It did not astonish me. I wearily looked around the deserted jogger’s track and the isolated roads with the hope of finding at least one person. I did not have enough heart to go back alone to where I had parked. As my eyes spotted the makeshift tea stall, I let out a sigh of relief.

I made for the tea man’s as fast as I could and reached there breathless. The tea man had made an insignificant roof to provide his customers with some respite from the rain. It was no wonder that his stall, like the jogger’s track and the road, was empty. Therefore, I would have expected him to be more delighted to see me than he appeared to be. In fact, he gave me a wary look, but quietly set about making me some tea. It seemed that my long absence had not only been beneficial for me, but it had also allowed the tea man opportunity to ameliorate his circumstances. He was now pouring tea into cheap porcelain cups.

He threw me a curious look as he handed me a cup of tea and did not divert his stare even after that. On any other day, the tea man’s behaviour would have made me most uncomfortable, but in this moment of peril, he was my saviour and I would gratefully accept anything he threw me. The silence between us was casually filled by the beating of rain on his makeshift roof until I was warmed by a few sips of tea. Then I asked my question.

“Hey bhaiyya, do you know the laughter club?”

He did not answer my question, but retorted with one of his own. “Are you new here? I have never seen you before.”

“Oh yes, you have”, I corrected him. “I was at your stall some months ago, when Col. Varma passed away. Do you remember?”

“No, I don’t. There were so many people here then. But if you know about Col. Varma’s death why are you asking about the laughter club?”

I searched my head for a suitable reply to this question. “Well, I’m a journalist. I want to write an article about the laughter club. They are an inspiration to this neighbourhood, wouldn’t you say?”

The tea man’s manner softened a little bit at my sensitive explanation. “They were an inspiration. I get a lot of business now”, he said indicating his improved tea stall, “but do you know in the beginning it was only them?”

I quickly tried to use his reminiscing to my advantage. “So then can you tell me where I might find their members, the other members, I mean, besides Col. Varma?”

The tea man shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. No one knows. You see so many faces in your lifetime – how does one remember? They were people from around here, somewhere in this neighbourhood. But there are thousands of people here – how does one find a few?”

I persisted, a little irritated. “But you see them everyday, don’t you? Why don’t you ask them when they drop in next time? Here keep this extra buck and let me know when I come next.”

The tea man pushed the money away. “They don’t come anymore. Don’t you understand? The laughter club dissolved after Col. Varma’s death. They couldn’t find a new leader.”

“What are you saying, man? I know they took a break after he died. But they were here a month or so later. I know because I used to see them everyday on my way to work.”

But the tea man stubbornly shook his head. “Impossible! No one knows more about what goes on here than me. I tell you honestly there was not a day after the old Colonel died that they came back. Not even once.”

The tea man’s words gave me a sinking feeling, but I gambled with my luck. I said in a hoarse whisper, “I saw and heard them even today.”

That was when I caught him flush and saw his eyes flutter. But he quickly composed himself and coolly replied, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

I looked down the stretch of the jogging track that lay before me and sighed. One of the lone joggers I had spotted before ran towards me and nodded with a curt smile. I dragged myself on my way with mixed emotions. As I did so, I looked across the laughing ground and replayed my excursion across it only a short while ago in my head. It did not bear a trace of my struggle. It only wore its thick coat of green and pretended to be lost in its sphere of existence, oblivious to my presence.

Land, typically in the realm of the inanimate, would be merely an asset to be bartered on paper, the matter that composes the earth, and the foundation that bears Colosseums. But sometimes, when human emotions of gigantic proportions bombard it, it grows out of its mediocrity: like the cricket ground in a stadium, like the sacred ground beneath a temple, like the graveyard of a forgotten war and like the laughing ground.

Sometimes, I still go back there, early in the morning. They are still there: the joggers, the traffic, even the tea stall and its regulars, although the old tea man has moved now that he owns a small restaurant. And right out there in the middle of the ground, laughing vigorously, I see the laughter club and I exchange a knowing smile with a passing jogger.

Morning Bells

2005-06-28T06:17:00.001-07:00

Morning dawns,
Birds are chirping,
Dewdrops fall-
Fog is lifting

Sunlight glows,
Hearths are warming,
Curtains drawn,
Pots are boiling

Alarms buzz,
Eyes are yawning,
Heaters hum,
Baths are trickling

Doorbells chime,
Milkman's calling,
Garam Chai,
News unfolding

Morning rush:
Buses honking,
Lunch is packed;
Streetdogs barking

Schoolbell rings,
Children chanting,
Hush! Not a sound -
John's still sleeping

Reality Shop

2005-06-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

Shopped till I dropped
Knowing not always whether
It answers a need or simply my ego;
The feeling is one of emptiness,
Of trying to fill that ... emptiness
With cheap substitutes:
Things I really have no desire for,
Things not to die for.

Does feigning these desires
Make me more human?
And yet they do naught
To fill that void
Deep inside: a dried spirit

Lost in my own head am I,
Swimming around with my thoughts,
And imagination
Is the order of the day:
Some live out their dreams -
I live in them.

Filled up am I, most certainly
But is this life the real living -
Hiding inside my own head?
Hiding from life?

Or perhaps it's the fear
Of contaminating that past,
Pure and true,
With the twisted perception
Of the evident.

Indifferent

2005-06-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

Little ones, cherished,
Close to the heart,
Tiny hands held
Taught to walk,
For you emotions flood
And break the dam of reason:
To water your seed,
To watch you flower.

Is it time now to applaud -
Now that you're potty-trained and able
To recite the alphabet backwards?

Hands clasped, we rise -
Your dawn is upon us.
Approving grins widen twitching smiles,
Twinkles stud our eyes;
But have you seen our ears?

Plugged!

... and the mice
trampled under our feet
still squeak, "MURDER!"

Raindrops or Teardrops

2005-06-21T00:33:00.000-07:00

I Exist

2005-06-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

I exist like the air
that floods my lungs
that lifts my face
to the smile of my Father

I exist like the water
that pumps my heart
that warms my flesh
with the love of my Father

I exist like the earth
that colours my skin
that takes my life
to the arms of my Father

I exist like the world
that spins around
that wonders inside
how He made it, my Father

Saturday the 14th

2005-06-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

Gabz sat down with a heavy heart. He had tried so hard to do them in but he had failed. Why hadn't his plan worked even after calling the Ghostbusters? The Ghostbusters had willingly volunteered their latest device: the vacuum spectre. But since it was Friday the 13th, everything that could go wrong did. The vacuum spectre multiplied the dead children instead of eliminating them. And now Goreville was redder and bloodier than it had been ever before. Back to work, thought Gabz.

The clock struck twelve: Saturday the 14th.

Gabz jumped to his feet and grabbed his black-light torch. There were left just six hours before the whole town would be up. Cautiously peering outside to make sure there were no drunken poltergeists returning from the party, he opened his door and stepped into the stark moonlit night. But there was really no need to be afraid as most of the bogeymen were having a gay hangover. Gabz sped all the way to the other end of town, his nostrils reeking with a smell that was deeply rooted in his memories and full of allusions that made him scowl with disgust.

When he touched Witching Point, he put down his equipment which was mostly contained in a huge haversack. After rummaging through its contents for a minute, he pulled out a pack of the latest haemowipers: Patent no. 394846A999. Tearing it open, he drew a sheet and wiped the ground nearest his feet. Then he shone his black light over the spot to see if the job had been done.

It was! Gabz let out a silent yell of glee. These new haemowipers were as good as their name; maybe this year it wouldn’t be that much of a burden.

Next he wiped the neighbouring tree trunk, then the fence of the first house - that used up an entire haemowiper – then the huge rocks that marked Founder’s cleavage. It was customary for him to work from outside to the core. Within the next two hours, Gabz had finished most of the town’s periphery and he was already feeling the strain although the haemowipers had made it a bit easier for him. However, on entering the inner vistas of Blood Valley, he couldn’t help wincing as he saw the gory mess smeared all over the place: houses, trees, vehicles, shops. It was awful.

His sharp eyes strained to the roof of one house where he could just make out the lower half of some voluptuous woman in a pink nightgown. He bent down to work without a thought, except for one that always stirred in his mind on every Saturday the 14th:

Why do they somehow always miss me?

Why do they always let me go without a scratch?

He extracted large black plastic garbage bags from his haversack and stuffed them with whatever he found: entrails, a piece of tongue, someone’s testicle, a prosthetic limb - no, he threw that back out then picked it up again - , a baby’s nose. The bags were filled, tied and left at the corner of each street from where the garbage men would usually collect them later during the day. The stains, as expected, were wiped off with haemowipers.

Exhaustion dripping from his brow, Gabz stood up straight to give his back a much-needed stretch. But then the five o’clock cocks crowed and made him realize that there was only one hour left. And he rushed like a madman into Centre Square.

This part of town was the worst-affected. But, there was a conveniently placed incinerator here. So after collecting the mangled bodies in a wheel barrow, Gabz could directly toss them into the incinerator. He also managed to climb up the roof and get that half woman body down. One particularly nasty aerial job was to throw down a few sizzled teenagers who were lying on top of the power lines. Thank goodness, they didn’t bring the line down with them, thought Gabz. A much distorted part of the local policeman’s body was found - still clutching his gun. Oh boy, we’ll need another one of those, said Gabz to himself. And he discovered a couple happily making out in their car, only for their skins which were neatly peeled off. These two turned out to be quite cumbersome to pile into the wheel barrow as they slipped out of his hands more than once. Yet, eventually, Centre Square was ticked off on Gabz’s list.

He sighed as he looked at the clock tower and saw that he had only ten minutes to go. Only the cemetery remained to be attended to. Contrary to popular perception, the cemetery was usually the safest place to be on any Friday the 13th, but definitely not on Saturday the 14th.

Gabz shuddered as he entered. An old zombie they called Murphy, who was missing an eye, came and threw his arm around Gabz. “Where ya bin, mah buddy?”

Gabz really didn’t like talking to them so he kept silent. Moreover, he was racing against time to complete his job. But Murphy followed him everywhere he went. He teased Gabz. “Lissun pal, we gut shum rheally bobbin’ bluddy ‘eads be’ind ore stones.”

But when Gabz went looking for those bloody bobbing heads, he only found the skulls they’d dug up last year. Why don’t y’ll finish me too, shouted Gabz, frustrated.

Murphy guffawed. “Pal, yer useful, don ya know?” A few other zombies roared in response, but most were busy settling into their tombstones. Then it happened.

The sun rose and Murphy who was preoccupied with tormenting Gabz was zapped with a streak of sunray. He should have been in his tomb, thought Gabz regretfully although he had wanted to strangle Murphy just minute ago.

The cemetery was now clear. Gabz could finally get some rest. Once again he ran all the way. He must not be seen by the townspeople, he knew. His home was just as he left it - quiet and peaceful – and the bed screamed invitingly. But before tucking himself in, Gabz looked into the dull, oak-framed mirror beside his bed. He squinted hard until he saw the smoky wisp that was his reflection. Good job Gabz, he told himself, and went off to sleep until the next Friday the 13th.

Almost at the same time, the inhabitants of Goreville were stirring in their beds. They woke up and came out of their houses to greet each other with bright morning smiles, to admire the beautiful weather and to go to their temples and churches. It was such a wonderful day. Every memory gory day before had vanished. No evidence of bloodshed. The garbage men collected the bulky black plastic garbage bags that lined every corner in Centre Square which was already buzzing with shuffling feet and chirpy conversation. It was as if a thick sheet lay all over town covering the bitterness of yesterday. So people pretended that everything was OK. In a day or two they actually began to believe that their little pretence was for real. And after a while no one even remembered that there ever was a Friday the 13th. That’s why it always got them.

Only Gabz won’t be too pleased.

In Limbo

2005-04-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

What is it that I really hate about being a woman? Is it the boobs? No, I love them. I also love the buns and the cellulite excesses. At least I do today. No! The fury behind my bête noire is (the terribly clichéd) sexual inequality. And I'm not talking just about equal opportunities to education and exposure

Lurking in some culpable pit of my subconscience is the luxury of being brought up with all the 'privileges' of a boy. Yes, I had an ample education and am still free to go on having it. My mind has been expanding over space and time, over gender and age, over status and stature. I speak out. I assert myself. And I don't feel guilty about tripping over my third foot. We’re the faltering bipeds moulded in the flawless image of Yahweh. But no! This feminine portrayal is totally unconceivable. She’s had too much to drink, they say.

You’re not wrong, you know. I have had too much. I’ve been drinking off life since I came into being. Drinking off life can give you a high. And it’s safer and lasts longer than any other variety. If I was a man, however, I wouldn’t cause a stir. Well sure, I’d cause a stir among the women with good taste, but that’s where it would end. They wouldn’t be throwing me curious looks as if to say: is she always that way?

When a man is drunk on life, he tells a joke, he thumps his comrades on their backs; he brings home a live bison for dinner. And the rest of the world celebrates and tinkle their flutes in approval. A woman with a similar disposition laughs volubly; she looks into the eyes of everyone she speaks to, and throws her head back with a tilt and does not care if she looks like Charlize Theron in Monster. And the rest of the world aggregates into little clusters and discusses her menstrual cycles and any viagraisms she might be onto.

I fail to understand the disparity. Yes, there’s Mars and Venus, and there’s Vulvae and Penis, but where the f***ing justification for sexual prejudice?

The Solar Regression

2005-04-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Andrea checked her communicator: 0400 hours UCT. She adjusted the syncman behind her ears and consciously thought that she would like a view of the outside. Immediately the tinted glass covering the upper panel of the nukxi slid away to reveal the virtual viewing pane that allowed her a photographic view of the swiftly passing gulfs and the circulation maze. Normally, Andrea would have taken the atomic transporters home, but today she was restless. She needed to have a view of the outside, especially now that the solar regression had become a reality. It was all over the news and different cults and groups had extremely varying opinions about it.

Andrea, of course, had known about it since a decade during which her R&D investments had been steadily increasing. Her corporation, Sundance, named for some lost movie of the last century, was responsible for lighting up one-eights of the globe by picotechnology-driven solar lighting systems. They were now the second largest player in the field. At that time, they had undertaken a feasibility study for the jinxed satellite colony on Mars. But it was never enough; her scientists and robotechnicians worked continually at devising smaller and more energy-efficient solar cells. But even the thirty-five odd patents they had accumulated over a span of eight years weren’t any good.

Then one day, her junior-most staff, Pink Scarborough, a bright young lass of 13, had walked into her office with a possible explanation. She came armed with a memory stick loaded with scientific proof. The synopsis was simply this that the sun was moving away from the earth, and that was leading to a drop in routine solar energy levels. At first Andrea scoffed at the idea, but then she studied the statistical data of temperatures measured in the hinterlands and 47 GB of planetary positioning satellite data. Pink’s theory was that the Star-guard systems that functioned as a huge energy shield for the Earth while trapping only specific heat and light wavelengths, were responsible for this. The Star-guard systems were the first United Global Front [UGF] venture embarked upon to tackle the growing menace of Global Warming. Since it was successful there was also a lurid aura of patriotism attached to it. Andrea knew that talk against the Star-guard systems was taboo, so she quietly locked up the memory stick and its copies after nicking them from Pink. She had demanded a long smooch in addition to the monetary compensation and Andrea had complied sulkily. Now that she knew without a doubt that the solar regression was happening, her only concern was that she would be out of business. That Mars deal with BSphere V would never materialize.

Outside the nukxis, the dull light seemed to confirm Andrea’s fears. She turned away and thought about getting some news. Almost instantly her communicator lit up and a palm-sized holographic image of a nude black woman presented itself reading the news interspersed with an active jiggling of her tits. "A new cult has been born in Celtia today. Their efforts endure to placate the Sun God and keep her from leaving our solar system. Pastor Subraman Jyoti will lead … blah blah blah" Naked News was the best thing from the 21^st century, reflected Andrea. She wistfully wished that her communicator could feature a larger image.

Abruptly, the nude woman disappeared in a spurt of static and the nukxi’s voice box boomed, "Kindly confirm adult status." What, out of the blue! Don’t I look it, thought Andrea. "Confirmation accepted." Andrea had forgotten that her syncman was still on. The syncman was a tremendous protraction of 20^th century blue-chip technology that allowed wireless communication between digitally synchronized appliances. A mi-fi upgrade, the syncman allowed neural impulses to be converted to digital commands that could be transmitted to appliances such as a communicator. However with its growing popularity the feature had been extended to all kinds of devices, even automobiles like the nukxi. So even before Andrea could collect her thoughts, the nukxi received her neural impulses, and a full-sized nude Armenian male appeared in the centre of the nukxi. "And traffic comes to a halt in Celtia where Father Jyoti is rounding up his Children of the Sun … blah blah" went on the Armenian with the news. Andrea frowned at the sight of the image nude jocularly thrusting its fuzzy crotch towards her while recounting the news.

The nukxi sensed Andrea’s disapproval and immediately boomed out the company policy, "Extremely sorry for the inconvenience. Andrea Trivedi, please accept this journey as a compliment." Then again, "Swapping news reader." A flash of static hit the Armenian, who disappeared for an instant but, was back again. "Technical fault. Extremely sorry for the inconvenience, Andrea Trivedi. Please accept your next journey as a compliment." But the Armenian went on with the news. Andrea sighed. She had not had sex since as far as she could remember but she was not particularly fond of Caucasian males.

In the 22^nd century, sex was truly passé. Most people lived alone and used mi-fi sex-toys, which directly sent electric pulses into the erogenous zones of their brains. This was undoubtedly better than sex. Of course, a miniscule underground network of taboo dating clubs still persisted for the more rustic, and Andrea, as a teenager, had used their services a couple of times but only to satisfy her curiosity about the real thing. The genetics revolution had moved from designer babies to baby malls. Finally, about half a century before, in order to curb malpractices, the ruling UGF had taken over the production of babies. It made more sense too, as they were concurrently able to check population levels. Andrea, himself, was a product of the new wave ‘baby machines’.

She looked through the virtual window once again as the nukxi was now passing over the Atlantic Ocean. She took in the dark waters dancing below and sourly noted the unfamiliar twilight glow in the sky. The telltale lights of steamers and subs passing through the Suez Canal momentarily took her breath away but she knew that her problems still loomed large. The holographic nude Armenian news-announcer did nothing to make her feel better. She turned off her syncman as the nukxi has started rumbling unsteadily in response to the strange impulses from her brain. She could still use voice commands.

The virtual window was lit up once more as they passed the northern tip of Africa and entered the Gulf of Arabia. This was the doing of the Sundance Solar Mirror: millions of solar-cell-powered lights that were fixed to strategic points on building surfaces. They created for the inhabitants an illusion of daylight and came with a simple on-off switch. Andrea was particularly proud of these toys as no other lighting company had as yet cracked the technology behind her Sundance Solar Mirror.

The Armenian had begun a re-run of older topics like the new cult in Celtia. He announced, "The Children of the Sun are undoubtedly the most enthusiastic cult working towards holding the Sun back. Earlier the progenitor of this cult, Father Jyoti, had alleged that the Sun’s withdrawal from the solar system could only be blamed on people’s lack of respect for it. He said, "People are quite happy not to wear sunglasses anymore thanks to all this artificial lighting. But there was a time when our ancestors shed their clothes and bathed in the fresh, beautiful rays of the Sun on beaches, in backyards, in holy rivers."" Then the announcer changed her tone, "Our autocams will shortly bring you live coverage of Father Jyoti’s cult performing an ancient ritual to appease the sun" In a flash of static the Armenian was replaced by a live video showing a multitude of people in what appeared to be some kind of ancient city. Celtia, thought Andrea. Father Jyoti’s petit frame gestured magnificently as his amplified voice boomed over a large gathering of people. Andrea felt strangely drawn to this peculiar man. He was saying something about performing some ritual undressed.

The nukxi was nearing the subcontinent crossroads where it would take the right gulf into India. This chip of the Asian continent had been artificially revived from a state of near rot and was now the only piece of land which bore a reminiscence to its natural state. It had been turned into the diamond of real estate and only the superrich could afford to live here. It was no surprise that Andrea did. She was looking forward to a long oxygen bath on getting home but Father Jyoti’s appearance made her change her mind. She ordered, "Destination Celtia, please." The nukxi’s voice box boomed its confirmations in reply and at the subcontinent junction over the Fields of Pakistan, they took the left for Europe.

Andrea couldn’t explain her interest in the Children of the Sun if you asked her. But the answer was evident: she was desperate enough to try out anything. At Celtia’s nukxi port, she was forced to disembark because nukxis were not permitted to travel inside Celtia. She could hire a taxi, but she started walking instead. She felt like an alien walking on the sidewalks in Celtia. The streets were lit by old-fashioned solar lamps that could only make her shudder some more at the veracity of the solar regression. She marveled at the automobiles driving along the tar-paved roads of Celtia. She had considered getting himself a vintage model to boost up her image, but eventually scrapped the idea as practically useless. She had procured a map of Celtia at the nukxi port but she didn’t bother to read it. She trusted her instincts to follow the hoards of people that seemed to be moving in one particular direction. She had walked for about ten minutes when she began to hear the distant boom of a loudspeaker. Thinking that it could be Father Jyoti’s cult, she started running towards it along with the scores of other people who were either just as interested or plain curious.

When she finally got there, she saw that it was indeed Fathers Jyoti’s cult surrounded by a humongous human gathering. As she elbowed her way through the crowd to get a better look at what was going on, she heard talk about the Children of the Sun performing a ritual known as the ‘Surya Namaskar’. Andrea was intrigued. When she finally broke into the front lines, she saw them. A sea of nude people, mostly women, doing some kind of drill. Father Subraman Jyoti was counting in Spanish, uno dos tres cuatro, as the nude assembly raised their hands to the sky, then to their feet, then lay on the road, then got up once again with their hands joined in deference to the Sun. "It has to be repeated nine times. That’s the third" said the red-haired man on Andrea’s right.

By now, the crowd had been infected with the momentum of the drill group and they were all shouting together. Andrea joined them. Siete ocho nueve diez. In between repetitions, Andrea looked towards the sky hopefully. The sky stubbornly held on to its darkness. The shouting became a chant now and the gathering of onlookers began to sway as they counted. The red-haired man had really taken to Andrea after she had displayed unwavering enthusiasm for the proceedings in the clearing and smiled at her warmly. It looks like they still use sex around here, thought Andrea to herself. But she threw caution to the wind and linked her arm with that of the man as they swayed together and chanted together.

As the drill group began their ninth and final repetition, a wave of ecstasy shot thrown the crowd. When they prostrated on the tar for the ninth time, a brilliant light dazzled in the sky and reflected off the surfaces of the dozen tinted buildings on both sides of the street. Whoops went up into the air. The red-haired man hugged Andrea happily. Father Jyoti burst into song and held his audience in a trance until a communicator buzzed. It was Pink. "I guess I was wrong after all. It’s only a retrograde. We’re back in business." Andrea smiled at the red-haired man, "Time to split, tooty-fruity! I need to go make some sunshine."

Threads

2005-03-04T01:35:00.000-08:00

Amma's hands trembled inconveniently as she placed her stitches one after the other. Her head shook with the tell-tale symptom of Parkinson's as she sat on the rickety chair in the veranda and peacefully rocked to the rhythm of her sewing. The needle danced with its loyal tail sporting different colours that matched her mood: yellow, blue and white for the flowers, three shades of green for the leaves, and a sprinkling of sequins here and there for show. She must finish the embroidery on that new kurta, or Anju would be disappointed, she worried. Sewing wasn't easy in her condition: the needle often pricked the wrong spot, even pricked her fingers, but she was determined.

Sometimes, other days, she would think that she was hearing Anju's voice, sweetly dancing between the trees that bounded the courtyard or rambling up the avenue that led up to the house. But she knew she must have been imagining it, because Anju would be teaching at school at that time of the day, and because she couldn't be sure of anything at her age. Even when she walked through the market, she thought she heard people whispering about her, calling her 'mad', but she didn't believe her ears. Now, she began working on a yellow buttercup.

Suddenly amma started. Three young men stood by the opening of the courtyard, near the well, gesturing hatefully. They were moving now as if to catch something that amma couldn't see. She was more agitated about them trespassing on her property. She bellowed, "Go away! Don't create a ruckus here; this is not your courtyard." And they left, almost vanished, so much so that amma couldn't really tell if they had been there in the first place! She paused and wondered if her mind was playing tricks on her. It was irritating. After a while she went back to her threads. She completed the yellow flower and then picked a peacock-blue thread.

As she concentrated intently on passing the thread through the needle, she wished that Anju was there to help her. But she immediately reproached herself for being so dependent on the girl. She especially detested the fact that she had made Anju go to Chandramohan to claim the dues he owed her. Chandramohan wasn't a nice man, thought amma. Quickly she even placed the three men who had just appeared in her courtyard: his sons. Well, if they were trying to frighten her, they hadn't succeeded, thought amma satisfactorily. With this swing in her mood, she decided to mix some white into the blue flowers to get a shaded effect.

Amma worked without a break all through the afternoon. When she looked up, her eyes were tired. Twilight was just an hour away. However, there remained only a couple of flowers and leaves and she thought she had better finish it that day itself. Her hands shook feverishly to meet the deadline she had set for herself and her shaky fingers moved jerkily along the stitches.

She had almost done with the last sequin, when she heard Anju's laughter rambling up the avenue that led to the house. All awash with excitement at showing off her latest handiwork, amma put in the last stitches quite hastily. In no time she heard Anju's voice sweetly dancing between the trees that bounded the courtyard: bubbly, girlish and yet with a streak of distinctiveness. Her voice filled the courtyard and even the veranda. Amma's skin abruptly sprouted goose bumps as the pitch ascended. Now it was a laugh. Now it was a shriek. Shrill cries echoed all around amma. Tears welled up in her eyes as she uselessly tried to explain what was going on. Then she saw the three men, Chandramohan's sons, in the same place again. One of them leaned forward and pulled a dupatta from the air. Amma's heart ran wildly as she recognized it. The dupatta dashed out of their hands and they chased it, shouting abuses, and hurling indecencies. Anju's shrieks turned into shrill wails and amma was shocked as she saw one of the men readjusting his pyjamas. She dropped her embroidery and weakly flailed her arms that were groping for any kind of weapon but she was too slow. The men were laughing now and the leaves around them rustled turbulently as if disturbed by the footsteps of someone running. A splash echoed in the pit of the well following a final blood-curdling scream. After that all was silent. The entire courtyard was as calm as before, the men had disappeared, and Anju's voice had died down.

Amma's head shook with Parkinson's, with shock, with pain and grief, and even disbelief. She was not sure that what she had seen and heard was real. She thought her mind was playing games again. It was unwise to think of such horrible misfortune, she rebuked herself. How could she let herself have such thoughts! She picked the newly-embroidered kurta, folded it and slowly hobbled to the teak almirah. Opening it, she pressed down this kurta on the top of the others that she had embroidered too. "Tomorrow I will do this green one with a black design. Anju will like that", she told herself.

i am nirvana

2005-03-04T00:53:00.000-08:00

who am I
I am nirvana
budding in the folds of your legs
waiting to bloom
as you wake up
from your banyan enclave
and step out
into the expanse
of another routine day

Feeling Fine

2005-02-28T04:33:00.000-08:00

Feeling fine
Life's travelling in a straight line
Traffic's a blur
But you're in the rear
So I can put my heart on a string
All that loving
You and me, baby, we rock
Just pull out the stops
Swap the drive-in motel
For the highway to hell
And when we get there
We'll turn around
Just to watch that horny Dick
Squirming in slapstick ... ha ha
I see: heaven's in sight
We'll take the shortcut alright
Through this firepit, on the other side
So baby, just enjoy the ride

Ends and Beginnings

2005-02-27T02:05:00.000-08:00

He came, I came
the end
Begin the Zygote

Fireworks were lit. People everywhere sipped their gaiety and shouted “Auld Lang Syne”. He took my hand for the first time that night and led me away from the crowds. He stood close, facing me and began lifting my layers of societal conditioning, slowly and gently. He brought his lips to my mouth and his tongue entered carrying new lessons learnt from mistakes repeated over and over again. He worked me up steadily till I was unduly stressed. Then he pushed me down, laid himself heavily over me and I knew that there was no where else to go and nothing else to do except what we were doing. I heaved and panted as he kneaded and moulded me relentlessly. He rode me, to and fro, through untimely deaths, violent illnesses, dyslectic relationships, faithless friendships, lethargic unemployment and general disorientation. I felt him penetrate deep inside me, jerking my life vigorously and I yearned for the pain to end, shamelessly crying out, “Mama”. Yet there I lay naked, helpless while he raped me over and over. I envyingly watched my cohorts take the elevator to the top floor. But he struck me hard and brought me back to his moment. And I was stung, even though my body was now numb to all other feeling. Then out of nowhere, a dull sensation pulsed inside me and increased progressively in magnitude. Glowing hope that began where he entered me slowly crept towards the tips of my limbs. I followed his lead, I joined his rocking movements and only then could I see my silver lining. We rode together now, and faster, as if we knew our destination, as if we had but one destination, and all the while he timed that perfect moment of exhilaration. I screamed soundlessly as the moment arrived and I felt our orgasmic juices mingle and overflow. Still overcome by the moment I was shaken up as a thousand voices blasted my mind, singing “Auld Lang Syne” once again. Only then, I realized that he had pulled himself off me. I sat up and looked around for him but I only caught his shadow leaving in the darkness and my longing for him escalated to higher levels. However, I knew that our one-year stand had ended, that he was gone forever. So I silently prayed my goodbyes to him and I picked up the gift which lay between my legs, the child of our bonding: 2005.

Lets Eat

2005-02-26T03:50:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish I were born a piranha
So I could eat anything I'd wanna
And would never feel those dying urges
To binge on chicken and ice-cream in splurges
I also wouldn't have to spend too much
On cuisines of the French or Dutch
For I'd eat alive the first person I'd see
And nibble a bimble of humanity

And while a piranha, I'd wish for dual ability
At times to walk out on land with alacrity
I wouldn't also mind air travel altogether
Only airport security would be such a bother
And cable TV suspended in water would be fine
With 105 channels to watch, all mine
And how about the occasional pizza n' coke
And the Sunday Times with the internet joke

But then there's that nagging thought
That these pleasures to me would be naught
Cause a piranha hath no pleasure in life
Besides feeding on someone or his wife
Guess I'll put aside ideas of being what I'm not
And finish my dinner while its still hot!

The Spider and Me

2005-02-24T06:54:00.001-08:00

Written one bored afternoon, like a lot of my poems have been. Something that may not be absolutely striking is that the rhyme scheme is monotonous throughout.

I love the animals
The animals love me
I don't harm anyone
I treat all equally
But there is one spider
As difficult as can be
He just won't come around
He's the absurdity!

Last month that I moved in
He came to me
We were introduced n' all
Over cups of tea
I saw the web he'd spun -
Brilliant architecturally
But on my peach n' yellow wall
It was plain ugly!

So I asked this spider to
Move to a tree
To which his amazing web
Would match perfectly
But this stubborn spider
Refused point-blankly
Though I employed my charms
Upon His Majesty
Though I begged n' pleaded
And lost my dignity
And all for a spider
With no capacity
To understand the nuances
Of colour harmony!

At last exasperation
Overcame me
I pulled out my rifle
And aimed precariously
A shot, I fired:
It whooshed noisily
And down came the web
Almost half-heartedly!

Yet that cheeky spider
Escaped, though barely
Never to return
To my family
But wherever he went
He bad-mouthed me
So 'Spider-shooting Mama'
Is what they all call me!

Upset the Pace

2005-02-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

She drove fast.
Speed thrills, speed kills. Who wants to live under the rock anyway!
I needed to get home. So I drew a map of the route in my mind and let out a simper of breath at every landmark we passed on my mental map. With the other half of my brain I watched the speedometer-needle notch higher and higher as gears shifted and gas burned.
Eleven PM. The roads are bare. The traffic acquires a function of peristalsis.
She swerves around every turn, the looks into the rear-view mirrors ceasing steadily. She won’t slow down for the speed-breakers, the bumps, the ditches, the lights (there aren’t any), nothing, not even the shadows that creep in the gutters that line the tar.
I sat upright, uptight, my back pressing into the seat as I watched the next bend arrive. 90 degrees, envisioned measurement. O! If we could only clear it safely, plus 20 metres, we’d be across another mental-map landmark!
You can light up every dimension and we will still create a shadow.
She got him just as we made the corner. He was fumbling on his moped at the drear gully where the tar meets the dust. He went down without a sound.
I screamed, “YOU HIT A MAN! STOP! YOU HIT A MAN!”
She took forever to stop while she starred at me uncomprehendingly, while she peered at the rear-view mirror and saw only a picture of the night. Even when she stopped, she hesitated.
I was out of the car in an instant. He was already up with his moped-handle in his hands and a hurtful look on his face. He was ok. I shouted, “WE’RE LUCKY - HE’S ALIVE!”
Luck is a philandering whore.
I gave him an address, a phone number. He took our names and the registration number.
She said, “Tomorrow”
He said, “Today”
She said, “We need to go home now.”
He said, “How can I go home like this!”
As he spoke, invisible bubbles of alcohol left his mouth and burst in the air. His slur exaggerated itself. His stagger revealed itself.
Psycho! Run.
She fired the ignition.
I barely got in before she hit thirty.
Thirty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. No more.
The bumps slowed us down. The speed-breakers slowed us down. The ditches slowed us down. There were so many of them everywhere. And in the rear-view I saw a single bright headlight chasing us down every lane, around every bend.
It was miles and minutes and I lost count. Finally at the bleakest point of the night, we stopped.
She slammed on the brakes in a wham of a skid. She slammed the door as she got out.
The lone headlight that had hunted us came to a halt besides our red racer.
You can run but you can’t hide.
He still wore his hurtful look and his eyes carried a doleful expression. But we knew better; we had seen the glint of steel behind the still black pools.
She began her barrage of words, abuses, insults, accusations.
He defended with slurs and stutters.
I watched listlessly. A siren sounded in the distance.
One AM. Hope dawns.
He startled. Life seeped back into his veins. He jumped onto his moped and vroomed off and was a speck in the distance much before the deep blue van, with the red light on its roof, halted next to us.
They escorted us home, sweet home, where she couldn’t drive, where I could just lie and be.

Yellow

2005-02-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

I submitted this poem for a writing exercise on "Colour". It got me no comments, but I still like the way it turned out. I don't really know if I can classify it as a poem; it seems to be a load of gibberish. Yet, it captures my mood well and my expressions in one single colour and being the defiant creature I am, I let it be my first entry on my blog.

when i happy i yellow bubbly yellow
fresh ripe lemon slice tantalize from
the rim of cocktail glass zing thing i
also yellow when i bored like a sun
lazy run over clear blue sky at work
i yellow when i lied to gaudy yellow
of silk saris six months ago i be anaemic
yellow my blood go yellow no iron
no strength yet i never yellow with
jaundice and bland love life not yet
yellow no nor like Cantonese nor
even Yellow River but my favourite
song be ‘Yellow Submarine’ and my
body be smooth like yellow butter
melt in your mouth utterly delicious
sometimes yellow teeth when i eat
much meat yellow spaces in my mind
i be much fine no yellow in my heart