Night Ride Home

The first guy, he said, I need to fill up some gas.
So I said ok, but then the line looked like it stretched from Jayanagar to Jabalpur, so I said,I'll take another, and he shrugged and said ok.Then he took ten rupees.
The second guy, man, he was crazy. Bulldozing his way through traffic, maintaining almost a straight line through it; we're flying over the speed-breakers and swinging around Jaguars, and it's like he's a bat out of hell, or a very determined man, and I think, maybe this is his life, full tilt, without pause, without fear of consequence,perhaps too tired to care.
Yeah, I'm sentimental like that, but that seems to be my response to fear- I could die, I think, right now, this little steel bucket could overturn, I'd be thrown on the kerb, my skull cracking open and all my stupid poetry and anger and loss oozing onto the pavement until someone cleans it up tomorrow and throws it in the trash.
I told V a story about being lost in Jayanagar, and she gave me a look and told me it was a pointless story. I love her because she listens to my pointless stories and then tells me they're pointless and forgets about them.
So anyways, that could be the highlight of the last conversation I have on this earth.
A pointless story.
Or I'll live to tell another.
Because Batman has just decided to stop outside the petrol bunk near Forum, and mumbles something about a wire and gears and basically tells me that the ride is over. 

I'm looking for another, but I'm distracted by pale pink carnations.

I'm always being thrown off course by things like that, it's stupid.

Now, this guy, this guy is young, and he twitches, but there's a hazy look in his eyes, like he might actually be someplace else. No, I don't think he was high,just young.
He drives sedately.

K wants to live in a house with a mango tree outside the kitchen.
He thinks freedom will make him happy.
I think happiness will set him free.**

There's a list of things undone in my life, but there's also this- the softness of the pink under my fingertips, and the hardness of the green. 

Across town, N is waging war, but then she always is, and sometimes she wins, and sometimes she loses, but she always fights.

I want to sit an empty movie hall and sing "mere khwabon mein jo aaye" like I believe it.

I want to be sixteen again.

But I was infinitely bored at sixteen, so it's just as well we don't get what we wish for.

He's nice, this young man with the faraway eyes, and he's very precise about the change he gives me, down to the 50 paisa, and I tell him "It's ok" but he shakes his head and insists I take it.


often a sweetness  
   has come  
and changed nothing in the world  

except the way I stumbled through it, 

- Stephen Dunn:  "Sweetness"



**Update: It's not freedom, just food at regular intervals. Clearly, I don't know everything.

Specificity

Sometimes I ask myself why I don't just chuck it all and go back to school.
Study the Romantics, or Homer. Read. Draw lines. Deconstruct.
And then, today as I walk back from lunch I know.
Because all that's on my mind is the precise warmth of the sun on my left temple, while my right remains cooler as I walk under fledgling trees, and the difference between those two feelings. The slap of my slippers against my soles, and the feel of the road that seeps through to my feet.The soft whoosh-whoosh in my ears that's the breeze. The pale pale pink of the hibiscus across the road.Voices. The weight of my spectacles on the bridge of my nose, the dent of it.

Some days ago, my friend said: you don't see the big picture. Everything is personal.
It's true.

All that interests me in that five minute walk are the things that I can sense. The ping of my id at the card reader. The force of my hands as they pull the cold door handle.I'd be an utter failure at philosophy because I'd be distracted by the sensation of cooling sweat against the nape of my neck as the artificially cooled air comes up against my sun warmed self.

I suppose this is why I like poetry.
Because I suspect that when she said hope is the thing with feathers, she meant that literally.
I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
Perhaps doubt is the way my brow crinkles right now.
She held the little bird and felt its heart thudding, thrumming,felt it slide beneath her skin and through her veins like nothing else in existence, beyond words really, but those are her only refuge and she said hope is the thing with feathers.

Defiance

Write something else.
I'm told.
All the time.
How to explain
this:
that every song
comes back to you.
every poem.
every sunset.
all the rain in the sky.
the green in the trees.
all the words in the world
are the rumble of your voice
against my collarbone.
the tangled knots in my hair
are your fingers
the rough roads of stone
that I stumble on
are the callouses of your palms.
That my cuff links cover
the patch of skin that belongs to you,
and only to you.

Throw away the baggage
is another.
How to explain
that it isn't
baggage
just gravity.
You're the moon
and I'm the sea.
Or the other way:
I feel pale and cold
and you were always
roiling.

Letters

(Part 1)

This will reach before you, I write.

I miss you already-but this I will not write.

Instead, I say-

Today a butterfly sat on my shoulder

When I was out buying groceries,

Isn’t that strange? 

And then I say

I’d forgotten what afternoons are like

But this Saturday, the city reminds me

of a village afternoon.

This keyboard is awful, I say, and the place stinks.

I hope there will be bhindi for dinner.

I write like this because I cannot believe that you are gone.  

I cannot comprehend distance.

Now I write- because I’m incurably honest, after all –

I write- I miss you already,

Isn’t that strange?

I like dragonflies, you replied.

They are magnificent lords of the sky.

I travelled in a crowded chariot of dirty silver

With a girl who had beautiful eyes

And let me look into her soul for a minute.

I am writing this from an old city

Where the people are stern, and unaccepting of Fate.

You are a child of destiny-

But I, I’m just broke.

Where were you, you said,

Why couldn’t you have come by earlier?

(Part 2)

I’ll confess: a decade later,

I googled your name.

Oh Google, God of Possibility.

At thy altar, I whisper

A name.

And get about 238,000 possibilities.

Your fault:

You have a common name.

I made it special,

To me.

The worn out keypad

on my nokia said so.

When I hit delete

on a folder

the absence

of your presence

a permanent mark.

Sometimes I dream

We’ll meet

In an airport

Or a train station

Or a bus station.

We are always in transit.

That cannot change.

I read a poem

It said:

The one who loved your pilgrim soul.

You have a common name.

God of Possibility:

Pray me home.

Pied Piper

Ragged jeans and a fading shirt that may have been black once. He's got a whole bag of flutes slung over his shoulder. Like the snake charming ones, you know?
He's playing a familiar tune.
The one that practically resurrected a sunk ship.
Yes, that one.
I wonder where he picked that one up.
Did he sit in a theatre and watch wide eyed, with the rest of us?
Did he just hear it one too many times on Channel V?
Or radio?
Is there a Bollywood copy I don't know about?
Will someone buy that flute because the song reminds them of their first kiss?
Would a snake sink into his spell?
Will his heart go on?

Occupy the Grey

It feels so good
that sense of right
throbbing in your veins
burning in your chest.
The River of Truth
Wears everything down:
eventually.

When it's over
when the job is
done
when the drumbeat
of power
fades into something
normal
like the beat of a heart
you look around
and notice the ashes.
Grey wisps
flutter in a faint
breeze
away, away.

Kin

His country
is not mine,
His hands
are not mine
Our skin is
not the same
colour
His child
is not mine
His wife
needs no comforting
when her daughter
(not mine)
is brought broken
bruised
for having spoken
up
out.
His eyes
are not mine
His hunger
not mine.
His anger,
not mine.
His need,
not mine.
He knows
the trees
the rivers
he names birds-
beasts
roam his land
not mine.
I do not
claim
him
kin.