tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52933562024-03-05T10:37:49.925+05:30A Case Of MePriyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-14662530421046358002021-01-15T16:04:00.005+05:302021-01-15T16:04:41.415+05:30Morning Walk<p>Dead kitten at the turn</p><p>between street no. 6 and 8</p><p>who will pick it up</p><p>not me, not me,</p><p>thank fuck it doesn't have to be,</p><p>i'm glad it's someone else's job</p><p>even if they are probably not paid enough for it</p><p>will they tell their kid</p><p>picked a dead kitten off the road today</p><p>matted red fur around its neck like</p><p>a sign of belonging</p><p>man not wearing mask</p><p>another man not wearing mask</p><p>who are these idiots</p><p>cross the road</p><p>assume everyone is an idiot</p><p>weird smell from that tank</p><p>better stay on this side of the road</p><p>jump over the gadda just so</p><p>lady with pretty jasmine in hair</p><p>but no mask do you know you're going to die</p><p>you won't see the pachagotla next year</p><p>and serves you right</p><p>iron gate open ok good how many men today</p><p>oh look another woman but no she's done </p><p>maybe if I come earlier</p><p>Maali-man,thanks for the stink eye</p><p>same to you, i don't feel sorry for your</p><p>dark roasted coffee hands and round (glaring) eyes</p><p>behind your soda-buddi glasses</p><p>what would it take to die</p><p>you'd think it'd be easier in a pandemic</p><p>no, you're not going to figure out my boobsize</p><p>under this extra loose sweatshirt uncle</p><p>ek paav grave mein, but i guess it's just habit or something</p><p>uncle, i hope you trip and break your ankle</p><p>i wonder if the kitten will still be there</p><p>was it a dog a car</p><p>i should take off the earphones and listen to nature</p><p>or something but i can't be bothered</p><p>why not silly love songs</p><p>ummeed par to duniya kaayam hai</p><p>will the kitten still be there</p><p>the nausea is because you haven't exercised in two years</p><p>get over it you wuss</p><p>uncle i swear i will break your head with that rock</p><p>pregnant lady without mask i wish for your insouciance</p><p>to be passed to your progeny </p><p>may they live in a better world</p><p>whom am i kidding </p><p>how dare you bring a child into this shitstain</p><p>time to go back</p><p>will the kitten be there</p><p>it is not</p><p>oh good</p><p>thank fuck it's not my job </p><p>couldn't the person whose job it was</p><p>have done it earlier</p><p>what if I got a fern</p><p>tomorrow might be better</p><p>i mean what are the odds of </p><p>two dead kittens</p>Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-19735467517034781662020-04-09T13:47:00.000+05:302020-04-09T13:47:23.233+05:30Today I saw a Sparrow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today I saw a sparrow-</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a sparrow!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and then another!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and said to myself, <i>huh</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>would you look at that?<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
'cause it has been an aeon<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
since I saw one close enough<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that I could tell it had that <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
unimpressed look that all birds give you<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
right before they swerve straight in the <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
direction of your eyeballs<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
beady-eyed, sharp-beaked-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
have I mentioned I hate birds?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do, <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I'm not going to let an apocalypse change that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How to Deal with Everything<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by Those Who Know<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(and make sure to tell you so )<o:p></o:p></div>
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in neatly ordered lists : <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Learn something new<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Appreciate nature<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Spend time with the ones you love<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even if they're bits of binary<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
packed into-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
fuck if I know. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another thing that the apocalypse won't change-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the profound blissfulness of my ignorance<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of things great and small-invisible-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-like that damn virus-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
its poky bits-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
no, I refuse to say<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>protein spikes made of amino acids<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-poky bits is good enough for me-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the parts that we're so busy <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
trying to break down<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
disintegrate,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
obliterate<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
sanitize<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the poky bits are a <i><a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-275864738/viral-counterpoint-of-the-coronavirus-spike-protein-2019-ncov" target="_blank">song</a></i>, you guys,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and it takes <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
one hundred and five minutes and forty-eight seconds<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of your (very) mortal time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
its music-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
lilting, uneven, kind of boring<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to be honest-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
anyway- <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
having been translated, <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
it’s not any more <i>knowable</i>-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
not to <i>me</i>, at least,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
still secure in my un-knowing-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I wonder-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
if those forty-eight seconds<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
are what leave you gasping on a hospital bed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
your breath nothing like music<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I wonder –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
what the music sounds like<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
when we break it down <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with our weapons of purity-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is it-<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a sudden silence<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
or a dissonance stretched out <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and out and out and out,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
un-listenable, un-bearable<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and then, at last, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the quiet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br /></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-21598672874530207732019-06-27T11:01:00.002+05:302019-06-27T11:01:33.461+05:30City Life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
“We
tell ourselves stories in order to live”/Joan Didion<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
grew up in a 100-plus acre campus placed in the middle of a city that had been
a city for four hundred years when I first knew it. Not that I ever knew the
city — not really. I literally lived in a house on a hill, surrounded by trees
and rocks; visitations of all manners of birds and beasts were daily
occurrences. I watched trees wither and bloom again; I burnt the soles of my
feet clambering over rocks mid-summer- the city of my childhood was a ten
minute walk, and an entire lifestyle away. Every week, I’d encounter it — briefly.
The visit to the vegetable <i>mandi</i> and local <i>kirana</i> store, the one
to church. “Shopping in Secunderabad” was, in the early years, a life event,
coinciding as it did with birthdays and Christmas. But most of what I knew
about the city was hearsay: classmates who took trips on buses, who played
cricket in narrow lanes, who did things like eat <i>pani poori</i> from street
vendors, and who had, after 1991, access to the magical world of cable TV. I
only walked five minutes from “home” to “school”, so I didn’t learn the trick
other girls did of carrying safety-pins to ward off lecherous men in buses.
Other girls had a route — school and home, and a curfew; I stayed out reading
under my favorite tree until the light grew too dim and wandered home with my
armful of books that I’d managed to beg or borrow; somehow my mother’s
disapproval never seemed <i>serious</i>. I’d hear of neighborhood intrigues and
gossip, of the dictum of never talking to strangers, of waiting at bus stops
for buses that were perennially late, and it all felt like another world; like
the store glass window I had my nose pressed up against — someday, I thought — I’ll
walk in and buy it, be a part of it, belong. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
If
people asked me where I lived, I would say “Hyderabad” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>— and yet: my city existed, as it were, only
in my imagination. As I grew older, this idea of my city was hopelessly
entangled with other imaginations of other cities — cities that I read about in
books, or saw on TV and in movies. Cities that were, quite literally,
continents away. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
By
the time I was twenty and ready — well, pushed, really — to step out of this
idyll, I was as much in love with New York and Bombay as with Hyderabad. These
cities, as transmitted to me by a half dozen films, were the places where <i>things
happened</i>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was a romantic young
woman, and Bombay or New York were clearly made for romantic young women to
Live Their Wonderful Romantic Lives: their own quirkily furnished, spacious
apartments in lovely neighbourhoods, meeting interesting people, overcoming
impossible odds, being rewarded for being superstars at their work and (most
importantly) meeting The One. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
couldn’t have described to you how this city was built; what it streets looked
like, what the weather was like there, or how many people lived in it. I could,
without hesitation, tell you what it felt like: freedom. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
spent the first half year of my working life sharing an apartment with five
other women. The next half year was spent sharing an apartment — a hole in the
wall — with three other women. The ceiling had mirrors. But our curtains
matched our cheap cutlery, and the only furniture we had was a TV and two
mattresses. And so it started: my single life in a City. For the first time I
understood, deeply, viscerally, what it means to be a city dweller. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
vagueness of the city of my imagination was up against the reality of it: the
jostling, the noise, the dirt, the smell. It was the freedom to wake up late on
weekends, to wander streets picking up second-hand books, to discover fancy
restaurants and cheap ones; it was cheap Chinese takeout everyday because we
couldn’t be bothered to have a functional kitchen; it was texting my crush all
night and early into the morning without anyone reminding me that I needed to
be at work by nine am, it was being in control of my everyday existence to a
level I’d never had before and it was exhilarating and terrifying. Just knowing
that I could buy a book and not have to account for that expense to anyone was
the equivalent to flying out of a window fifty feet off the ground. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
But
it was also this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>do not walk alone
after 6pm, always take public transport after 8pm, never just go for a walk in
a park, never loiter, is your bra strap showing, are your legs waxed, do not go
alone to watch a film, avoid certain areas, even in the colony where you stay;
in short, an eternal, unceasing vigilance of my body- where it was, what it was
doing, did it <i>have</i> to be there, were other people ok with it being
there, did I, in fact, have the right to the space I occupied? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
shapes the contours of the cities of our imagination? The stories we tell, not
just through fiction, but also through memory — a different kind of fiction,
perhaps.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
My
mother moved, in the 1960s, from a small village in Kerala to the same city
that I now live in, to pursue a college education. She tells me that for most
of the first year of college, she barely understood a word spoken in class, and
had to copy her cousin’s notes to make sense of “all that English”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The college education was a stepping stone to
a job. I don’t believe she ever thought of the acquiring of a job as
self-actualization: it was necessary; like marriage, children — all inevitable
in the scheme of her life as she had learnt to imagine it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
My
father tells me a dozen stories of the time he first moved to Bangalore, to
Hyderabad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother, only a few. Every
time we pass the exit toward Brunton Road, my mother tells me: my hostel used
to be there. The sisters were very strict, she says, if you weren’t inside by
6pm, there was no dinner for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or she
tells me: I watched Aradhana in Opera Theatre three times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or she says, I took your father for his first
Chinese meal ever there. That last one always make me laugh: in our family, my
mother is the least keen to explore new places; so the idea of her proudly
“showing off” her knowledge of the city to my father is both endearing and
strange. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
try to imagine the city as it was through her eyes, but it’s difficult. Some
things seem the same: in particular the struggle with patriarchal authority,
manifest in all the small and big ways. Other things are patently
different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I try to imagine what I would
tell my children, if I ever have any: what would I point out, what would be
left to say: I was here. Just like the way my mother’s city has vanished, my
city, the city of my individual experience will vanish too, dying with me,
before me. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
kind of stories do we tell about our cities? About women in our cities? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Our collective schizophrenia about women
shows up ever so clearly in our stories: Madonna or whore, sometimes both,
always other. Where I saw transgression, I was also quickly running into
the limits of it- singleness as a transient state because of the inevitability of
coupledom; growing up, I don't recall ever reading a story that featured a
non-heterosexual or transgender character. Women may have had authority over
their own lives- to an extent- but rarely were they shown in positions of
authority over other people- unless those other people were children or
women. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">So looking for models- consciously or
unconsciously- in fiction also became a choice. Whom to believe, to what
degree? I can't, of course, claim to have known that these choices existed at
the time- but over time, the fact that I had made that choice became
clearer. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">I suppose it was inevitable, in the larger
scheme of things, that my earliest encounters with the stories of
single-in-the-city-women are also tied up with the shame of an illicit
pleasure- vestiges of which I feel these decades later, as I write this. I was
sneak reading Mills & Boons and Harlequin romances at the impressionable
age of nine. These were the much maligned “chick lit” books within which a
whole different kind of woman lived alone, worked, fell in love, and
had the most magnificently purple-prosed orgasms ever. It would take me decades
after I had abandoned them entirely for me to articulate what these stories
gave me: a template for women who got what they wanted. Wish fulfillment as an
entitlement, not a favour.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
intangible qualities of the cities of our imagination: the freedom, primarily,
to be ourselves and in control of our lives tend to be opposite to our lived
reality. The reality of streets without street lights; the lack of public
restrooms designed keeping in mind women’s needs; the harassment verbal or
physical; the gendered division of the city that is not just spatial, but
temporal — our freedom sets with the sun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
City gives me this as its peculiar gift: invisibility. The gift that is also
the double-edged sword- liberation and burial, depending on the moment. I’m
often happy to be invisible in the city: it keeps me safe, it allows me to slip
through the hostile, to pursue my happiness and pleasure without interference.
At other times, this invisibility is the thing I fight: where I have to loudly,
repeatedly, relentlessly say with words and body: I am here, I am a person, I
am entitled to this space. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
look around city spaces and see, for most part, women erased from memory: parks
named after men, streets named after men, hospitals named after men, statues
erected of men, traffic circles and stations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everything durable remains largely male-identified. Women, if they exist
in our memory of cities, exist on the periphery, quite literally. One study
found that even in cities which had a higher proportion of streets named after
women, those streets tend to be away from the centre, the pulsing hearts of the
cities. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
And
so, the imagined community of Women of The City in my head is largely that:
imagined. When I think of women-only spaces in the city: women’s schools and
colleges, hostels, “PGs”, restrooms, “ladies only” compartments on trains or
seats on buses, beauty salons — the sense is not one of community — though that
does build in these spaces, of course; but overwhelmingly the sense is of
segregation. Space being gendered under the guise of protection or privilege,
which is also - not so coincidentally- control. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
One
of the first stories I remember hearing was the one about the woman who was
turned into a pillar of salt. This was, of course, a punishment, an eternal
testament, a warning, a body made metaphor — many things. Lot’s Wife has been
many things over the centuries in which this story has been passed down across
time and cultures- she has been many things to many people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
think about her these days: a woman looking back at a burning city — a city
destroyed because it gave itself over to Pleasure above every other thing — even
goodness — and I think of her body, compelled to turn back, once more, one last
time, and paying the price of disobedience. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
think about how we don’t know her name. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I
used to see her every Sunday as a child, on that weekly trip to church. She’d
be standing at the same junction, begging bowl in one hand, cradling a child on
her hip with the other. Tattered sari, burnt face — evoking in me pity and
terror and guilt. As payment, every week I’d slip her a coin or two from the
safety of the auto rickshaw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Twenty
years after I’d left that city behind, I see her by happenstance. I’m in an
auto rickshaw very near the same place. I crane my head to watch her pass me
by: older, hair streaked with grey, no child tags along — instead, a purse
slung on one shoulder, sari neatly pinned, she strides toward a junction named
Paradise. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-60828027506968706282018-08-30T23:46:00.001+05:302018-08-30T23:46:35.381+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">It might have all been said before, and better.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Now, the moon waits, patiently,</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">for darkness to steal over the tree tops,</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">hushing the new leaves,</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">and a lone star sparkles to the north.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;">A breath on the window pane,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;">like a crack in glass</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">fading away in seconds-</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Even the cold denies me.</span></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-62682740694508665642018-04-28T21:43:00.000+05:302018-04-28T21:43:16.489+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
For Asifa. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
I wish I had never heard her name. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
Maybe, in a better world</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
I would have, anyway. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
Maybe, then, it would have been breathed</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
in awe, in wonder, in pride-</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<i>maybe</i>. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<div style="font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
The odds are against it, though. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
I rather think-</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
she would've grown up ordinary-</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
an indifferent education,if any,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
jobs that paid for the gas</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
and energy saving electric bulbs,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
and because this better world</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
is still the same world</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
maybe a husband to cook meals for</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
and children's noses to wipe snot from</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
and the occasional quiet moment</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
of looking up at the stars</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
and thinking</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<i>what if</i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
an ordinary life</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
the best odds offered</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
to any of us-</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<div style="font-size: small;">
- I wish I hadn't seen her eyes</div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
brighter than anything in that photograph,</div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
even her purple kurta with the yellow flowers-</div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="yj6qo" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
I wish I had never heard her name.</div>
</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-42405075141454744862017-06-17T09:53:00.000+05:302017-06-17T20:28:48.443+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today, everything in the world feels like<br />
a reproof<br />
Two mynahs sit motionless on a wall<br />
Two pigeons hop on the grass<br />
Two squirrels chase each other across a roof<br />
A pair of moths wander into my kitchen.<br />
<br />
I dreamt of you last night.<br />
<br />
There's a universe in which<br />
we are allowed a different ending,<br />
where our hands meet for a brief, sweet minute<br />
<i>palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss</i><br />
where I watch you watching me<br />
where my tongue comes unstuck<br />
to say,<br />
<i>give me my sin again</i>.<br />
<br /></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-9094501277283835442017-04-28T22:17:00.000+05:302017-04-28T22:36:51.098+05:30How My Mother Showed Her Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
How my mother showed her love<br />
<br />
Well, mostly, she didn't.<br />
I mean, she didn't bake me a cake<br />
for my birthday with pretty pink and white<br />
frosting, and candles stuck on top<br />
like all the other girls got<br />
(she didn't know how to, and<br />
in any case, we didn't have an oven)<br />
She didn't polish my school shoes<br />
Or make sure my homework was done.<br />
If my uniform wasn't ironed,<br />
she said, well, you should have kept it<br />
with the clothes for the dhobi<br />
why didn't you,<br />
and let me go to school with a crumpled shirt.<br />
<br />
She didn't kiss me goodnight.<br />
I don't recall a hug until that day<br />
when I put my arms around her<br />
one day in the kitchen,<br />
just like that, I said,<br />
when she asked me what<br />
I thought I was doing<br />
that was when I was<br />
fifteen, and spent most of my days<br />
hiding from her<br />
and the world<br />
so I guess the surprise was warranted<br />
My mother never hugged me she said<br />
in later years, when I would force-hug her<br />
and complain about how she never<br />
initiated contact<br />
<br />
tell me the truth I said once<br />
I'm adopted aren't I?<br />
she got this-expression- on her face,<br />
snorted, and said, don't you have<br />
anything else to do<br />
Later I found a diary<br />
where she'd scrawled-<br />
in the manner of one crossing off<br />
an item on a to-do list-<br />
Delivered baby girl 4.20 pm<br />
or maybe it was to make it real to her<br />
that the red puny crying thing<br />
with a bush of hair<br />
was, in fact, hers.<br />
<br />
When I was six<br />
competitive motherhood caused her enough anxiety<br />
that she told my father<br />
I don't think she reads enough<br />
though by that time I was reading<br />
the entire Gospel of Matthew King James Version aloud<br />
without messing the thees and thines,<br />
curling my tongue around the words<br />
<i>Verily I say unto thee</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So my father trusted the Indian Postal Service<br />
to deliver to me a package of books- ten books!-TEN-<br />
a glorious number-an unimaginably large number-<br />
it took three months to arrive-<br />
I remember the green paper packaging tearing under the scissors<br />
I took to it- no, my mother, wasn't the kind<br />
who stopped her child from wielding sharp instruments-<br />
<br />
And when I was nine, she would<br />
borrow books for me from the library<br />
books that I had no real right yet to read<br />
because I was only a child<br />
but my mother didn't particularly care<br />
because it kept me quiet and occupied<br />
on the evenings when she wanted<br />
to do nothing more than curl up<br />
with a book herself<br />
in our tiny flat that had two rooms<br />
and no tv then, just an old radio,<br />
a peace would reign till it was time<br />
for me to eat whatever it was she had made-<br />
bhindi, usually, because that was the only thing<br />
I would eat<br />
and I think back now on how tired she must have got<br />
eating the same thing every day-<br />
<br />
<br />
Once when I was so ill that I needed to be admitted<br />
in a hospital with a needle shoved in my arm<br />
she left me with a family friend<br />
because she had to go to work that day<br />
and nobody would give her a day off<br />
to be with her sick child<br />
when she came back that day<br />
she put her hand on my brow and said<br />
are you okay<br />
and I said yes<br />
and she said okay<br />
and then sat in the chair next to me<br />
and pulled out a book to read<br />
while I pretended to talk to the faces in the white ceiling<br />
<br />
another time I woke up in the morning<br />
with my throat hurting and my face puffed up<br />
and she laughed and said, you look like a frog<br />
and then, as an afterthought, we better go to the doctor<br />
<br />
I knew what sex was before she told me-<br />
her voice dry and business like,<br />
a bit impatient, as though she had something else to do,<br />
and she probably did,<br />
but she taught me new words<br />
vagina and penis<br />
I had no idea until then, even though I'd already had<br />
an (admittedly) theoretical understanding of what an orgasm was<br />
it involved lots of kissing and perhaps shoving into walls<br />
her hair spread over the pillow, his hands grabbing her hips-his mouth on her breasts-<br />
but- penis and vagina- that felt- simpler<br />
and also- boring?- surely, she was-wrong-<br />
<br />
When I was almost sixteen I told her<br />
I wanted to wax my legs and hands<br />
I was already, then, beginning to feel<br />
unfeminine (unfuckable)<br />
the rules were changing so fast around me<br />
like one day my hips suddenly had curves<br />
but my breasts remained flat<br />
and I didn't know much,<br />
but I knew that hair on legs<br />
was considered<br />
not acceptable<br />
-so- waxing-<br />
my mother laughed incredulously-<br />
she'd never waxed any part of herself-<br />
where, she said, did you get this idea<br />
and then, more sharply,<br />
You look <i>fine</i>-<br />
but of course, I knew the truth already-<br />
I <i>didn't </i>look fine (fuckable)-<br />
but that was that-<br />
I had to try and convince myself<br />
that smartness was a (fuckable) quality-<br />
that worked as well as you'd imagine<br />
in the years just after Aishwarya Rai<br />
had won Miss World<br />
and Pamela Anderson was still<br />
Somebody Hot<br />
<br />
<br />
On the day I started my tenth class board exams<br />
she asked, as we walked to school,<br />
did you study<br />
as though it had suddenly occurred to her<br />
that this might have some relevance<br />
yes, I lied<br />
and she nodded<br />
<br />
I don't think she ever knew when I was<br />
lying to her<br />
I don't think she ever expected it-<br />
she never<br />
laid a trap<br />
to find me out-<br />
She'd never, in all the time I'd known her-lied<br />
even when it would have been better for her to-<br />
<br />
but she had one of those faces<br />
that showed every emotion,<br />
requiring no translation-<br />
like the time she'd gotten a fancy hair style-<br />
her lovely,long hair, shortened to just over her shoulders-<br />
and my aunt walked into a roomful of people<br />
gathered for a wedding and said-loudly-<br />
What have you done with your hair-<br />
my mother went crimson from embarassment-<br />
the colour of her rich magenta sari-<br />
<br />
<br />
My mother let me choose my own clothes<br />
from when I was eight:<br />
when a cousin asked about it, she said, vaguely,<br />
It's easier that way.<br />
<br />
When I was seventeen, she let me buy<br />
the most expensive pair of shoes<br />
anybody in my family had ever owned.<br />
<br />
<br />
When I was fifteen I told her I was going for a movie<br />
with my friends.<br />
Okay, she said, but be back by eight.<br />
When I came back at 8.15, she said,<br />
what did we buy you that watch for.<br />
<br />
Is that what you're wearing she'd ask<br />
Just as I had one foot out the door,<br />
and then go back to whatever she was doing.<br />
<br />
When I was nine, an older friend picked up a book<br />
I was reading and quoted<br />
Bess goes on a blind date- she stopped-<br />
looked at me, and then at my mother-<br />
and asked- do you know what a blind date is-<br />
Sure, I said, Bess doesn't know whom she's going to meet-<br />
My mother said, oh, that's all, ok.<br />
And then perhaps remembering<br />
that she was supposed to set the rules-<br />
Are you sure you should be reading this?<br />
I shrugged, it isn't one of the good ones anyway,<br />
the mystery isn't that good-<br />
<br />
These days -some days- she tells me<br />
I never looked after you properly<br />
Like all the others did<br />
I should have-<br />
<br />
And I ask, half joking, half scared<br />
I turned out ok, didn't I?<br />
Yes, mostly, she says,<br />
with half a smile.<br />
So I put my arms around her,<br />
because it doesn't occur to her<br />
that we're having a Moment,<br />
and after a half minute she says, hopefully,<br />
is this enough?<br />
<br /></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-5054448081498346022016-08-25T18:43:00.001+05:302016-08-25T18:43:45.379+05:30August, ending. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">Maybe August is the time
for endings. Some of the worst things in my life have happened in August. No,
that’s untrue- they just feel like they happened in August. Endings tend to have a similar quality: a slowness that’s not the same as a bleak,
cold, February. <i>Then</i> your blood seems
like it will never be warm again, sluggish through your veins, <i>now</i>, it just feels like it’s gone
underground. It’s not the lethargy of a hot, humid, summer, with the sun
merciless on your face, turning your skin from brown to burnt, when you can’t
make the effort to even reach out to that cool glass of lemonade that your Mom
has placed on your table. No, this is the hushed, sticky quality of the air before
the rain suddenly falls in a sheet, and you’re drenched head to toe; your
umbrella dripping uselessly onto your shoes, as the “road” underneath turns to
a muddy river in two minutes flat. What just happened, you ask, even as you
sigh and think “August”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">Afterward, you try to
pick it apart: loop the past on scratchy rewind, like those tapes you played
over and over until they became skippy, static bursts between the snatches of
familiar love song. Where is it, you think, that moment, the turning point when
it all started coming undone. You’re looking for the sign, the dark cloud in
the distance, the flash of lightning- but sometimes all you’re left with is the
clear sky and the thickening air. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">One morning I wake up to
find a baby lizard has crawled into the folds of my fading blue bean bag
plonked on the balcony. It had been unexpectedly cold the previous night and the
little tyke had probably sought out the warmth of the faux blue leather. I flap
my hands at the mottled dark green intruder: unsurprisingly, it moves not an
inch. I’m giving you ten minutes while I brew the tea, I tell it solemnly:
after that, you’re out. When I step out
again, my hands slowly warmed by my steaming mug of tea, it’s gone. I feel both
smug and guilty; like I’ve won a battle and lost a more important war; like
I’ve missed the forest for the trees, like I have once again, failed to read
the signs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">How are you feeling, N
asks me. “Okay”, I say - she accepts it for what it is: a barefaced lie. We
are, neither of us, strangers to this; when all the stuff inside is so tangled
that the only possible answer is- “Okay”.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">There’s a dissonance
that leaves me tongue tied; the inexplicable chasm between what I know I <i>should</i> feel, and what I <i>do</i> feel; akin to letting yourself in
with the key and finding yourself in a stranger’s house. This is familiar
territory, I remind myself. You’ve been here before, you know how this goes.
Endings are not an undiscovered land. And yet. I look up The 5 Steps again; try
to see what I’ve missed. <i>Everything</i>,
it looks like; no progression, no gradual climb down- I’m just <i>here</i>. But there <i>must</i> be, I think, increasingly desperate for something, anything
that feels familiar. But no, this is the
funhouse mirror version of myself, everything in its place and just that bit
distorted, rendered unrecognizable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">I imagine what a therapist
would ask me: how are you sleeping, are you eating regularly, do you shower, do
you make the bed, do you change your clothes, do you exercise? Answer: Well,
yes, yes, yes, yes, no, but I never did, it’s not unusual. I still hate work the usual amount, not more
or less. <i>You should date</i>, D tells me,
<i>I’m not saying marriage</i>, <i>babe</i>, <i>just, dating</i>. I tell her a long and involved story about how I have
the cow next door to keep me company. This is not a euphemism: my neighbours
keep a cow, a huge white-and-brown speckled beast. It moos at odd times and
reminds me that life goes on; that August, in fact, can be great for some
species: plentiful green grass, the air ripe with smells; pleasant, if slightly
unpredictable weather, cool nights. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">I lie in bed and listen
to the night sounds- the creak of the fan, the occasional drunken song from two
streets away, a faint honking from a truck, some kind of chirping insect. A
moth wanders in, flirts with the dazzling white light and then wanders out.
It’s not hard to fall asleep on these days, when my thoughts seem to have no
particular direction. When I wake up, I don’t remember my dreams. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">Fact: time moves
forward. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">Fact: August seems to
last forever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">It’s sticky-cool,
lumbering, everything muted, life travelling to you from a faraway planet,
immediate but also a couple of million light years behind, already over before
it even began. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">How
are you feeling</span></i><span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">, I used to ask, <i>inside-inside</i>; and now I ask myself- how are you feeling, <i>inside-inside</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif; line-height: 107%;">Like August, I answer,
like an ending. <span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-39747673353088311182016-06-29T12:20:00.001+05:302016-06-29T12:20:48.792+05:30Hungry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There's this bit<br />
between when you've<br />
swallowed<br />
your meal, the tastes<br />
still fresh in your mouth<br />
your synapses still fried<br />
from sensation<br />
hot, sweet, salt,sour, cold<br />
that bit where you know<br />
you're done<br />
but you aren't<br />
because something in you<br />
is still hungry:<br />
that bit when you want<br />
to gorge on everything<br />
that looks like anything<br />
that will fill you up. </div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-66003782072243492122016-06-02T11:29:00.000+05:302016-06-02T11:29:46.304+05:30In which Alanis continues to be my spirit animal. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6cJO7oVSGT0/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6cJO7oVSGT0?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-24891180422896867952016-05-08T13:25:00.001+05:302016-05-08T13:25:36.440+05:30The Dreaming Season<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
He's beautiful,<br />
his dark skin gleaming,<br />
his green eyes, and forked tongue.<br />
My dress sticks to my back, and the<br />
scorched earth grass prickles<br />
beneath my feet, the sky an endless blue.<br />
He twines around me, a cold band<br />
where our skins touch.<br />
Out on the ridge, a bush burns.<br />
<br />
~<br />
<br />
I clutch him to my chest,<br />
my own, body of my body,<br />
flesh of my flesh:<br />
wrinkled skin smoothing out<br />
grey hair turning brown<br />
there's a word for this<br />
I think, but it dances on the<br />
periphery<br />
I never wanted this I think<br />
but it's here<br />
now what now what<br />
is the word<br />
I know it<br />
<br />
~<br />
<br />
In the not quite light<br />
I pick my way across the litter<br />
to the shop<br />
with a tattered yellow paper menu<br />
tacked to the wall<br />
come with me she says<br />
and grabs my hand<br />
I don't know who you are<br />
I stammer<br />
don't you she asks<br />
her teeth gleaming<br />
in the grey light<br />
as she leads me on<br />
Her friends stare<br />
from across the table<br />
It's not what you think<br />
I say<br />
I'm sorry I'm not<br />
She holds my hand<br />
I'll be back I say<br />
I need some tea<br />
I'll leave my bag here<br />
is that ok<br />
sure she says<br />
and turns away<br />
her lips are red<br />
like the flowers on her dress<br />
the boy selling the tea<br />
says five rupees<br />
but I have no coins<br />
that's okay he says<br />
there's time to pay<br />
later<br />
when I walk back<br />
she's gone,<br />
they're gone,<br />
so is my bag<br />
with everything I am<br />
in it. </div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-78844389193189236672016-02-23T15:49:00.001+05:302016-02-23T15:49:32.828+05:30Badlands<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Don't enter the badlands<br />
<br />
in the badlands, (they tell you)<br />
tenderness will crawl under your skin<br />
and stay there<br />
pricking from the inside<br />
until you're just one<br />
mass of aching flesh<br />
and then, when it gets<br />
so much, too much<br />
that anything would be better<br />
than this pain,<br />
then (they tell you)<br />
<br />
you'll take a knife<br />
and attempt to pare<br />
to the bone<br />
and the blood,<br />
there will be so much,<br />
like a river<br />
like an ocean<br />
like the sky<br />
<br />
and is that (they whisper)<br />
what you want<br />
<br />
is that<br />
what you want<br />
<br />
to let your lifeblood<br />
soak a land<br />
that will never bloom<br />
<br />
is that<br />
what you'll do<br />
<br />
when you enter<br />
the badlands.</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-66522655955853242432016-02-10T20:02:00.000+05:302016-02-10T20:02:07.535+05:30Rare Entertainment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: White Male Character One is learning to
control his superpowers- the ability to turn everything around him into cinders
in seconds-so, White Male Character Two has set up target practice. The targets
are unclothed female bodied mannequins- big breasted, narrow waisted- with big
X signs on their torsos. Barbies without the annoying hair. Or clothes. Boom,
boom, boom. High fives all around. Congratulations, you’re officially a man.
Er, mutant. But manly mutant. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: Jon Hamm playing a
umpteenth variant of Don Draper, a role he’ll probably play over and over in
the next few years- a White Male Character helping a (younger) White Male
Character <i>score</i>. “See <i>anything</i> you like?” he asks over a Fancy
Hidden Communication Device because we are in a Very Cool Progressive SciFi
Show. Younger White Male Character directs his attention to a Very Lovely
Brunette eliciting surprise from Jon Draper Hamm because clearly the Very
Lovely White Blonde standing right there in her cleavage-showing dress is The
Most Obvious Choice. Interesting, he murmurs, and then the next ten minutes are
devoted to Young White Male attempting a seduction- while a half dozen men
listen and watch via Fancy Hidden Communication Device because we are in a Very
Cool Progressive SciFi Show. Did I mention Award Winning? We are also Award
Winning. Unfortunately-ahem- for our voyeuristic leading men, the night ends
badly- no sex, just murder. And because
we’re the Award Winning Very Cool Progressive SciFi Show, the woman turns out
to be a mentally unhinged murderess. I
feel blessed. There’s still forty minutes before the episode ends. It can only
get More Progressive. (It does: more dead women, one still a girl). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: A half-naked woman being
beaten bloody by a man straddling her. In the imaginatively named town of Vice,
you can have every forbidden pleasure you choose to pay for- your partners?
Synthetics or Not Real People. Coincidentally, these Not Real People are shaped
like Extremely Hot Women programmed with Real Memories and capable of feeling
Real Pain (we are never shown them feeling Real Pleasure: presumably the White
Male Characters who seem to form the general clientele in this Pleasure Town
are only interested in Real Pain). Anyways, this is almost two hours of an
AI-becomes-sentient-and-is-hunted-down-but-survives story aka The Not Real But
Real Woman is stalked, hunted, beaten up, violated and Emerges Triumphant….to
be a sidekick to the Real Male Cop. Ah! The twist in the tale: our heroine
turns out to be Not The Real Heroine much like she is not a Real Woman.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>X Men: First Class</i> grossed over USD $353 million worldwide when
released in 2011, <i>Black Mirror </i>has
been nominated or has won major awards every year since its first episode in
2011, and <i>Vice</i>- well, <i>Vice</i> had a limited theatre release in
2015, and then was released to DVD- and made around #1 million USD. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In the span of two weeks, I’ve
managed a random sampling of available <i>entertainment</i>
in terms of critically acclaimed and/or popular (or neither!) in a genre and am
served up the same thing every time: images of women being brutalized
emotionally and physically. Sometimes this brutality is An Important Plot
Device- what would Our Leading Male Characters Do Without Motivation- but other
times, it’s just there. The stuff you only notice subconsciously most of the
time, the peripheral, the <i>scene</i>, part
of the stuff that’s there because it helps you suspend your disbelief, because
yes, a woman is being violated and <i>you
don’t have to pay attention to that if you don’t want to</i>, so the story
feels just like real life. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: In the thirty seconds it
takes me to get a token for the subway ride, the young couple nearby move from
a silent-tears-and-recrimination kind of fight to the hands-around-your-throat
kind of fight; he has his hands around her throat, shoves her into the wall and
walks away. She follows, still crying. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: Two young girls strung up
on a tree in a UP village.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: A smiling, smartly dressed
young woman stands next to a car at an automobile expo. You can’t sell the
dream without the woman, can you?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: A news story about a woman
who committed suicide after her rape was filmed and circulated on Whatsapp.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Image: Two people in a public
argument on the road- you whore, I hear him say, see what I will do to you. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
You see the problem I have:
separating fact from fiction and wondering where the line exists. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Sometimes I think: this isn’t
real, this is a stupid movie that you’ll turn off in a minute or forty, when
you are really, really sick of it, and then you never have to think about it
again. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But it is, and it is and it is
and it feels like somebody should be sick to death of this story already,
should say, this is overdone, let’s start anew, but no, it’s so foundational
that even when we tell stories about the future- the marvelous, miraculous
future with star ships and mutant genes and time travel and artificial intelligence-
it’s the same as the stories of our past, the ones with dragons <i>and</i> historical accuracy- the same <i>old</i> story: the visceral hatred of women,
invisible in its ubiquity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And I think about it every day. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-52487113919138790432016-01-24T12:53:00.001+05:302016-01-24T12:55:26.924+05:30Approaching Equinox<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There wasn't a winter this year-<br />
<div>
seasons out of whack-<br />
surely a portent-</div>
<div>
but the birds come to the lake yet-</div>
<div>
long necks bent, or wings spread,</div>
<div>
one or two look contemplative,</div>
<div>
perched in the distance:</div>
<div>
what do birds think about, anyway?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mold on my walls-</div>
<div>
and other things-</div>
<div>
other wonderful, weird things</div>
<div>
that deserve investigation-</div>
<div>
or fixing (says my father's voice</div>
<div>
careful, pragmatic)-</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have no time to fix</div>
<div>
anything</div>
<div>
these fissures will remain</div>
<div>
while I learn to take</div>
<div>
the easiest routes</div>
<div>
leap over, walk around,</div>
<div>
walk along-</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
there's a darkness in you</div>
<div>
she says, one evening-</div>
<div>
not a presence, </div>
<div>
but an absence,</div>
<div>
I think, but do not say-</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
and so it goes-</div>
<div>
the sickle moon grows full once more</div>
<div>
and winter shows up then-</div>
<div>
briefly, a last hopeless stand</div>
<div>
against a destiny</div>
<div>
made for tilting toward the sun. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-63829488468360890762016-01-17T19:34:00.000+05:302016-01-17T19:34:45.369+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I loved her entirely:<br />
her too tiny toe-nails,<br />
the freckles on her collar bone<br />
the shifting sorrows of her face-<br />
<br />
It made me stupid- this want-<br />
to burrow into her bloodstream<br />
and travel through her veins-<br />
fever bright I stood<br />
on the tallest spires<br />
of my mind<br />
and shook my fist at the sky<br />
jealous of the sun and the wind<br />
and the stars,<br />
all trespassers-<br />
<i>mine</i>, <i>mine</i>,<br />
I shout and then whisper-<br />
<br />
So of course it ends:<br />
nobody can bear it<br />
when I get like this,<br />
least of all me,<br />
and I've had twenty years<br />
of practice- so of course<br />
it ends like it began<br />
in a thunderclap<br />
in a burning building<br />
everything in flames<br />
and then, the rain. </div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-44223321759034311872015-12-27T19:33:00.002+05:302015-12-27T19:33:58.976+05:30Fig Tree<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
And everything has a season,<br />
they tell me,<br />
and everything has its time<br />
the leaves, and the fruit, and the flowers,<br />
the soil, the sky, the wine.<br />
<br />
And death has no dominion,<br />
they tell me,<br />
not on earth nor in heaven above:<br />
I watch the year in its turning<br />
the worm and the rose, in their place;<br />
I see the fig tree, withered - still standing-<br />
I see it renewed,in hope, in love.</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-62054305653175495102015-12-26T23:15:00.000+05:302015-12-26T23:15:21.372+05:30Funeral<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I watch you<br />
laid in the ground<br />
your skin mottled<br />
and your cheeks<br />
hollowed<br />
and I remember your<br />
intelligence<br />
(and your anger)<br />
fierce, sharp,<br />
your obscure humour-<br />
<i>a difficult man</i><br />
says your eldest,<br />
while the younger<br />
hides her eyes;<br />
you are no longer<br />
suffering<br />
or perhaps you are<br />
but we no longer<br />
have to bear it<br />
with you<br />
and that is a<br />
kind of freedom<br />
too. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-11069818682199982442015-10-31T12:37:00.000+05:302015-10-31T12:37:02.449+05:30The Jar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Note: For those unfamiliar with the Old Testament, this is a retelling- well, re-imagining-of </span><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Kings+17" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">the story of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath, as recounted here</a><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Give me</i>, he said, <i>some bread</i>, and then added<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>please</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>This is the last thing</i>, I said, <i>that I have to give</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Give me</i>, he repeats, and this time adds, <i>the jar will never
run out</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He
presses his lips together then, something startled in his eyes, as though
unused to opening his mouth to speak a blessing, and unsure of its consequence.</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps that is why I decide to give him the last meal,
that, and the bone deep weariness that is also anger that is also sorrow that is also the jar that
never runs out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To have come this far, to have begged and stolen, and worked my
knuckles raw, while they threw the acid of their piety on my body, another
layer of scars, to have endured all this, and come at last, in the end, to die in a
strange land.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps, I wish to believe, that the jar also contains one last act of kindness, or indifference masked as kindness, whatever it is, it is close enough to what he needs, which is bread. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The jar doesn’t run out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sometimes, it seems, even blasphemy is a form of prayer-
heard.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I have known what it is to be fugitive, and so I let him
stay, though I think, what he runs from, is bigger than mortal queens and
kingdoms, and stone walls and silence can only do so much.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">My boy makes him smile, and one day, laugh, the sound loud,
and hoarse. He stops abruptly, and leaves the child mid game to retreat into
his room.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He stays there for two days.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I know who he is of course, though he gives me no name, and
does not ask for mine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The jar does not run out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The ground cracks beneath the azure sky.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Thank you</i>, he says one night, as we break bread under the
stars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">For some reason, shame rises like bile in my throat, and it
must show on my face- he looks surprised- <i>thank you</i>, he says, softer, <i>Miriam</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It
only makes me angrier.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I promised myself once that I would never again be beholden
to anything above or beneath this earth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I have not been able to keep that promise, and I know that
everything has its price, especially promises.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I find out this price when my boy dies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He twists my hand so hard, I’m forced to drop the knife. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Then he uses it to tear off a bit of his robe and bind my
wrist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Is this why you came</i>, I whisper, because I cannot bear my
voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Is this why you came, to make me pay for my sins? Because
know this, if I had to do it all again, I would. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">His eyes fill with tears.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He brings me back my son. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I look in his eyes, and see, for the first time, no fear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-66852159444298506272015-10-31T07:42:00.000+05:302015-10-31T07:42:06.407+05:30Ghost<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I never dreamt of you<br />
those days when I loved you<br />
so helplessly, so hopelessly<br />
my waking hours<br />
imprisoned in ache<br />
but my dreams, oh,<br />
my dreams were free.<br />
<br />
But now, you come to me,<br />
your crooked smile,<br />
your awkward limbs,<br />
whispering,<br />
<i>soon</i>, love, <i>soon</i>. </div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-90594603990487525652015-10-31T07:37:00.003+05:302015-10-31T07:37:27.502+05:30The Opposite Of<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I watch you forget me<br />
give me away in tiny pieces<br />
how I like my tea,<br />
whether I've read this book-<br />
the opposite of<br />
how we started<br />
collecting each other,<br />
careful hands and greedy eyes.<br />
<br />
Now, the opened fist,<br />
the perfunctory nod<br />
the distracted eyes-<br />
<br />
so forgive me then,<br />
my own cruelties-<br />
the withheld word,<br />
the hand not taken,<br />
the silent ending. </div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-45073771878295596632015-10-20T12:46:00.000+05:302015-10-20T13:29:54.637+05:30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The dark deepens quicker these days-<br />
fall is finally here- tendrils of wind<br />
through the whoosh of leaves-<br />
the trees seem reluctant<br />
to shed summer yet-<br />
<br />
Yesterday, I walked a million miles<br />
just to stay still-<br />
tonight: the world rushes by<br />
in this, the amber moment-<br />
through the window of leaves<br />
the moon, cradled gold,<br />
betwixt the satellite dish<br />
and wide open sky.</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-10193152067761722252015-08-31T17:38:00.004+05:302015-08-31T17:55:34.035+05:30Afterward<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
There was what came after:<br />
the unraveling of each thread,<br />
the anger, the guilt, the sorrow-<br />
kite strings let go<br />
into the sky and wind and water-<br />
my hands felt-<br />
lighter.<br />
<br />
And then the hardest:<br />
the remaking,<br />
choosing new threads,<br />
finding the eye of the needle,<br />
with shaking hands<br />
and blinded eyes:<br />
you don't get to choose a pattern<br />
you have to go where<br />
the threads take you-<br />
the ones left still,<br />
<i>because</i>, <i>despite</i>,<br />
love and memory and<br />
the hardest words:<br />
not <i>sorry</i>, or <i>it's ok</i>,<br />
but <i>look at me</i>,<br />
and looking, <i>stay</i>,<br />
and this isn't what you thought<br />
you'd get, this wasn't how<br />
it was supposed to be,<br />
but something emerges,<br />
through warp and weft,<br />
woven now, renewed,free.<br />
<br />
<br />
-> For N, who loves quilts, and who keeps my heart. </div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-10310036791108466982015-08-29T00:53:00.001+05:302015-08-29T00:53:46.975+05:30और बता <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sometimes I think<br />
that all I've learnt<br />
in these thirty years<br />
is different ways of saying<br />
goodbye.<br />
<br />
Great catching up,<br />
or good to see you<br />
how's the wife<br />
or the boss<br />
are you still in-<br />
ah, yes, of course,<br />
you mentioned that, I think,<br />
but I forgot-<br />
<br />
or the ones that require<br />
a heart pressed by stone,<br />
the clean break, the reset bone-<br />
what didn't kill you<br />
made you stronger<br />
and you survived,<br />
just a little older-<br />
<br />
<br />
and then that other-<br />
in silence left,<br />
but there's the space<br />
that speaks instead<br />
the outstretched hand,<br />
the empty bed.<br />
<br />
-> For S, who gave me a title (and a poem).<br />
<br /></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-27521731063641108722015-08-25T21:36:00.000+05:302015-08-25T21:36:32.542+05:30Jerusalem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>"..and it's brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel.....the city of pure gold, as pure as glass." (The Book of Revelations/ Chapter 21)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Yes, but-</i><br />
<i>Consider this-</i><br />
<i>a pavement of patchwork hearts</i><br />
<i>trod by feet that leave bloodied prints</i><br />
<i>because the walk's been all uphill,</i><br />
<i>all the time, and </i><br />
<i>as they walk past pillars of tears</i><br />
<i>holding up roofs of desperate prayers</i><br />
<i>that rise higher, and higher</i><br />
<i>farther than their eyes can see,</i><br />
<i>they bow their heads, hands trembling,</i><br />
<i>their parched lips stung by words </i><br />
<i>of an ever reckless song,</i><br />
<i>and still they walk to the cathedral</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>singing. </i></div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5293356.post-70124116905935583192015-08-13T16:49:00.000+05:302015-08-13T16:49:43.246+05:30Substitute<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river</i><br />
<i> but then he’s still left</i><br />
<i>with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away</i><br />
<i> but then he’s still left with his hands.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>(Richard Siken/ Boot Theory)</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I don't get a river-<br />
instead, there's the ceramic white<br />
of the bathtub, two sachets of bath salts<br />
that don't bubble, and a bottle of shower gel<br />
that does, rising up as I sink into<br />
the water that's just the perfect temperature<br />
because I'm good at this kind of thing:<br />
the precisely calculated minute,<br />
knowing the difference between enough<br />
and too much, and how pleasure tips<br />
so easily into its opposite<br />
and I'm in the habit of watching<br />
for the line.<br />
<br />
So, no river,<br />
nothing deep enough for drowning,<br />
no swift current to carry away<br />
the things I do not wish to keep<br />
but this will do,<br />
enough, but not too much,<br />
or perhaps too much<br />
on another day, but not today;<br />
I buy myself an indulgence-<br />
everything else will keep-<br />
for now, I attempt weightlessness,<br />
in the face of gravity<br />
and the fact of my hands.</div>
Priyankahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08102955673240137457noreply@blogger.com0