A Case Of Me

Lie

2011-10-31T21:38:00.001+05:30

At this point, I say,
Even-voiced, heart a-tremble,
I'm entirely replaceable.

Truth, we're told, hurts
less than lies.
I beg to differ:
Lie, lie, lie.

"Falling in love is glamorous hell"

2011-10-31T21:36:00.000+05:30

Ridiculous, that's the word;
this eagerness- the height of absurd.

All my careful years, life's lessons taught,
In the curve of your lips, all forgot.

I feel myself struggle,stumble,
something new-
reach out a hand,
searching for you.

Note: Title from the wonderful "You" by Carol Ann Duffy.

Beautiful People

2011-10-31T21:30:00.001+05:30

The plain have their stories
As well as the beautiful.
Traversing life
regular-featured, acne-marked,
wide-hipped, sharp-nosed,
big-eared, short-legged,
greasy-haired, big-breasted,
chip-toothed, flat-chested;
disproportionate and asymmetrical
their loves and hates collide
taking out, with the finesse
of a nuclear bomb,
the structures of their lives.
Yet are there no headlines,
nobody tells their tale,
doubly mortal,
they lie in unmarked graves.

Landscape

2011-09-14T18:35:00.000+05:30

This is so hard to say:
There is no way back to you.
I thought there would always be.
In the world of bestest, forever :
but now these mountains that won't move
all the lies we told others
and then ourselves
all those compromises for others
and then ourselves
oh, these mountains, that love can't
tunnel through, these craggy edges
that I cut my skin on
oh these wastelands of the heart
and these rocks of knowledge
they cut, I bleed, they cut.

Ornament

2011-09-13T17:13:00.000+05:30

Of all the gifts
you gave me then-
I treasure this one
the knowledge of grief
and how to wear it
wrapped like a band around
my arm, a signal to the
knowing, the fellow wounded,
the ones that walk around
with stones in places
where once things beat
wild and free, the ones
who stay awake at night
tracing faces in the
bare ceilings, seeing demons
in the wall, and screaming children
and wait, hopeless, helpless,
who,at first light will rise
to put on
Life
and pretend that they go on.

Limbo

2011-09-01T18:37:00.001+05:30

What's the word for it?
The cracks into which
bits of data fall
pushed over the edge
by karma, or a bad connection?
I imagine that it's a cold
dark place, buzzing with static:
listen long enough
you begin to understand-
howz you, bye-bye, hello,
busy right now, lots of
lols, silent funny faces
rolling yellow
robert pattinson <3,<3,<3
how to get rid of toothache,
how to kiss, what is the meaning
of life, hugs, xoxo
talk to you later, mom's calling,
aren't the beatles great-
you get the picture.
And what about the words that
never find themselves thrown
out there, into the great cosmic void-
I'm lonely, stop treating me like a child,
I hate you, so you think you're all that,
this conversation got boring three seconds in,
are you beautiful, are you bored with me,
do you want to meet for coffee or a movie,
I've fallen out of love with you,
you make me happy.
I wonder if they die out there
or circle, in an eternal, useless orbit
that burning star of memory?

-For K, <3 x g-t-b

Eid ka chaand

2011-09-01T16:49:00.001+05:30

Random fact for posterity: The moon is beautiful over Nanjing tonight, demure and pale gold.

Somebody should record these things, no?

The Room

2011-08-26T17:00:00.000+05:30

This is how you do it:

Take a moment to study the door-

Unremarkable in its brown-ness

With its handle of steel gleaming

A little in the fading light.

Now grasp the handle, it is cold,

And will steady your fingers,

Which will tremble, of course;

A turn downward and a light

Push will see you through, but

If you aren’t ready-

Breathe in, breathe out

And again, and again.

But now is the moment,

And if you don’t, think

Of all the doors that

You will have to leave closed,

So push,

Your body leaning slightly

Forward, and it will

Give, squeaky hinges and all

And now the light creeps out

On tiny, feathered feet,

Swirling in the hallway.

Perhaps, it will not be so

Different

After all.

Open it wider, now,

And you can see

The room

Its walls white, like a woman’s arms,

The parquet floor clean and polished

You might slip, if you aren’t careful.

This is when you know that

The Room has been

Waiting.

So all that is left is that

Soft step over the threshold,

Standing, slightly breathless and foolish,

Your arms hanging limp by your side, feet glued

To the floor that is ice beneath your toes

As, with a final click,

The door swings softly shut.

Roses (red)

2011-07-23T17:09:00.003+05:30

A small wave
(goodbye, goodbye)
You're gone
Already halfway across
(the street, my world)
weaving through cars
(white, blue,white, grey)
the light turns green
and I still see your t-shirt
(black, you always wear)
strap of your satchel cutting
your back
(so smooth, your skin)
You're sailing away
(from me, from me)
over this sea of shirts
(all black, now black)
A warm hand tugs mine
(so fragile, this hope)
And she's selling roses today
(so red, furled, secret)
So I fish out the coins
(clinking of ice, across the room
your eyes seize mine)
They'll be perfect for the walls
(so clean, so bare)
But now I've lost sight of you
(so blind, my eyes)
My hands full of roses
(so soft, like loss)
There's nothing to do
(walk away, walk away)
into a stranger embrace
(this city the river)
roar of traffic in my ears
(a different melody, she sings)
the sunlight on my face
(warm, like your fingertips)
my hands full of roses
(so bloody,so sweet)
and if the phone rings
and I hear your voice
(say my name)
It will all be the same
(forever different)

Oranges

2011-03-09T12:43:00.000+05:30

Bump. Bump.Bump.

Screeeeeeeee...bump, bump, bump.

I wonder if my bones will ever be free of this shudder.

If this is a road, then I am a beautiful blonde, the Helen of Troy variety.

Although, Helen was probably a brunette.

Except in that stupid movie.

Bump, bump, bump.

Poor Christine.

Yes, I do call her Christine.

No, she’s not homicidal.

Neither am I.

Although, that might change, if this goes on for long.

Yes, I am lost. And no, my car doesn’t have GPS.

And yes, it’s the classic horror movie setting: a dark, moonless night, a luckless 20 year old in a battered blue sedan, a dirt road leading nowhere at the moment.

Oh great.

The dirt road ends and now my headlights pick out the roads ahead.

Yes, roads, in plural. And real, honest to goodness, tar and cement roads.

Only: no signboards.

There’s only the comforting purr of Christine’s insides.

Sigh.

I turn off the engine, leaving the lights on.

The silence, to use a cliché, is deafening.

Which way?

Does it matter?

The luminous dial of my watch shows: 10.30pm.

The most I can hope for is to find a place for the night.

If there was a cat, I would follow it.

There is a cat.

It stares at me with golden eyes, unblinking, still, in that cat way.

Cat stares at me, and then takes the road to the left.

I’m crazy enough to think this is a sign.

Of what, I would prefer not to speculate.

The road is smooth, silk, even, and Christine glides along.

It’s just trees on both sides, tall, really tall. And really wide.

Wow, how big is that tree?

I should be scared. A little, at least.

But I’m not.

Fear requires imagination.

I’m damnably prosaic, most of the time.

There’s the earth, the sky, the water, the trees.

People, who are shitheads, most of the time.

These are facts.

I look at the moon and think of the cold hard rock.

Millenia passing in a lonely orbit around life, trying to have a conversation with water.

I feel tired, all of a sudden.

There’s no sign of life anywhere.

I curse the cat.

And here, the road ends.

A wrought iron gate, slightly ajar.

Further up, I can see the silhouette of a building.

No, it’s not a castle with spires.

The gate opens without a noise.

See?

Somebody lives here.

Hallelujah.

As I drive in, my nose is assaulted by a most unexpected smell.

It’s distinct, and completely unmistakable.

Oranges.

Maybe there’s an orchard somewhere here.

Although, it is June, and don’t oranges come later? Or earlier?

In the headlights, I can barely make out a hedgerow. As I pull up in front of the house, I can feel the gravel crunch beneath Christine.

I stare at my find.

It’s a two storey house; probably dating back to the early twentieth. There’s something very colonial about it- the latticed windows, the stone façade, the tiled roof.

There’s no light from within.

For all I know, this is a deserted property.

Great.

If I was lucky the door would open and-

The door opened.

I won’t deny that I’m..startled.

Oh, alright, I nearly jump out my skin.

A figure with a lamp, the old fashioned kerosene type.

I’m in the middle of a Ruskin Bond story.

She-for now I can make out it’s a woman-raises the lamp a little higher.

An old woman.

‘Who’s there?’ she calls out in a quavering voice.

It talks! In a quavering voice!

Ghosts do not quaver; that’s left to mortals.

Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch under my feet.

I put on my best lost boy look.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m lost and was looking for a place to spend the night. Your gate was open, so..”

In the lamplight, I can see her face, a brown wrinkled raisin. She looks me over, and then over my shoulder,

‘Oh’, she nods.

Good old Christine.

The woman stepped back and indicates that I should follow her, which I do, down a short passage. I see that there are two arches that probably open out into a drawing room and a dining room, but she’s heading toward a flight of stairs.

“There’s no electricity’ she says, ‘Been gone for days. Unreliable.”

‘Yes, that happens where I live too.”

‘Where?”

“Uh..Bangalore?”

‘Oh, the city.”

‘Yes”

“Are you hungry?”

I am, but it seems rude to take advantage of an old woman’s hospitality.

“No.”

“Alright, I will show you to your room then.”

Up, up, up creaky wooden stairs.

She shuffles, I step with care.

There are three doors on the landing, two to the right and one to the left.

She opens the door to the left. It’s a big room, bare except for a single bed and a chest of drawers pushed against the wall on the left. The room smells musty. There’s a window in the wall facing the door, so I walk across to open it. The hinges squeak, and I can feel the dust on my fingers. I breathe in the night air and turn back to her.

‘Do you have an orchard here somewhere? The oranges smell so sweet.”

Something flickers in her face, or it may be a trick of the lamplight.

“There’s an orange tree in the garden.”

She turns around and shuffles away, leaving me in-well, almost darkness.

The moon is up, I realize, probably the trees were obscuring it on my drive; but now the moonlight gathers in a puddle on the floor. The aroma of the oranges wafts in and swirls.

I’m tired.

The bed looks hard and uninviting, but you know what they say about beggars not being choosers. As long as there aren’t any bed bugs, I’m going to be fine.

I fall asleep as soon as my head touches the mattress.

I don’t know what it is that wakes me up, but suddenly, I’m wide awake. The ceiling is high and a patchy cream. Where on earth am I? There’s a half light in the room- dawn. I squint at my watch, 6.30 a.m.

Swinging my feet off the bed, I survey the room- wallpaper- peeling and faded, but faintly recognizable pattern of fading bunches of primroses; my feet are on a dusty, but fairly lovely wooden floor. Outside the window, there’s a light mist, fading even as I stick my head out. A straggly lawn; the grass grown wild, and few broken pots to the side; a brick wall borders the far end; and at one end, a really magnificent orange tree. Even at this distance, I can see the bright oranges; the smell of them had never entirely gone.

My stomach rumbles.

I should get going. But first, I’m going to pluck me some of those oranges.

I pause for a minute at the landing. Silence. Perhaps she hasn’t woken up.

Old women are allowed to sleep in.

But it wouldn’t be nice to just disappear without saying thank you, at least.

I knock on first one door, and then the next.

I don’t know her name- she never asked me mine either, I realize now- so I try calling ‘Ma’am?’, softly first and then louder. Maybe she was deaf. Although, it hadn’t seemed like it last night. Maybe she is a heavy sleeper. All this knocking on hard wood doors is making my knuckles sore.

5 minutes more and I give up.

Downstairs, the drawing room- floral wallpaper again, this time daisies, more dusty wooden furniture- looks like it hasn’t been used in decades. Maybe the old lady doesn’t get many visitors, and god knows, domestic help must be hard to come by in this place.

Through the dining room- huge solid oak table, six chairs- and into the kitchen, which turns out to be really large, with an honest to goodness fireplace and all that. There are shelves, but I don’t open them. There’s a tap over the cracked porcelain sink. I open it. Muddy water spurts and then trickles. If I didn’t know better I’d say nobody had lived in this place for years.

I’m not sure what to do, but I’m going to settle for leaving some money on the table. Impersonal, I know, but I don’t have a paper or a pen or a pencil, and I’m sure as hell not going to find any writing implement in this place! So I leave 300 bucks on the dining table- what? It’s quite enough for a mattress and a dusty room- and let myself out of the front door.

Christine is there, dew drenched, the first rays of the sun dappling her roof.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

I make my way around the side of the house. Across the lawn, the orange tree stands, its branches extending on one side over the brick wall. The grass is still wet, although the sun grows bolder by the minute. The smell of the oranges is strong enough to almost knock me out, this close.

I reach out a hand to pluck the nearest one.

‘Did you ask permission?’ asked an accusing voice from mid air.

I freeze.

A rustle of leaves and something lands in front of me.

A girl, about eleven, I would guess. Dressed in a nightgown, turn of century-that would be 19^th-all ruffles and lace around the collars. She’s staring at me reproachfully with hazel eyes set underneath straight black brows. Her black hair is tied back neatly in a plait, the blackness in startling contrast to her pale skin. She looks like Orphan Annie.

“Er..I didn’t know whom to ask. There wasn’t anyone…” I gesture toward the house.

“Grandma’s a heavy sleeper”, she agrees.

Aha. Grandmother.

Thank God, I was beginning to wonder if I’d imagined her.

“You live here?”

She gives me a look as though to say ‘duh’.

Ok, peachy.

‘So, may I?”

She gives me a considering look.

“Only if you help me.”

She was kind of sweet, the way she was acting like a twenty one year old, instead of ten.

“What kind of help?”

“I can’t reach my cat”, she pointed upward. “I climbed after him but he kept going higher and higher.”

I tilted my head up following her pointing finger. From this angle, the tree seemed taller than it seemed. And up in a branch, around midway up the trees, sat the cat.

Damn me, but it’s the cat from last night.

The same baleful golden glare.

Alright, it might not be the same cat from last night; it was way too high up for me to know whether it had golden eyes; but-it was black, and hey, I thought it was the same cat, and that my friends, sent a shiver down my spine.

A cold hand tugged at mine.

‘Well?”

And damn me again, if she didn’t give me the sweetest smile, the kind that Bella gave when she’s pleading with me to join in some childish game that involves dolls and rabbits.

Bella, bellisima, Dad would croon to her.

Bella, bellisima, cold and white.

And so I haul myself up to the lowest branch. It creaks under my weight as I nudge toward the trunk. It isn’t a hard tree to climb, thank the Lord. Nevertheless, the bark scrapes my hands raw, as I haul myself up two more branches.

Meanwhile, Bella-well, not Bella-the girl says “Just a little higher” and “ Don’t scare him!”

The cat hasn’t moved.

He lets me get two branches higher.

Hey kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty.

It isn’t the same cat. This one has green eyes. Quite a beautiful creature, really.

I have to admit, I’m relieved.

I reach out a hand, tentatively.

He leaps, a lithe ballet dancer, onto the branch above.

I sigh, look down below.

I’ve come up much higher than I’d thought. Really, are oranges trees this tall? It hadn’t looked this tall.

She stood, a face upturned, a tiny figure, anxiety in her stance though I couldn’t see her expression.

Lifting my eyes, I look around. Here, in the heart of the tree, all I can see are little strips of sunshine through the green of leaves. I can’t see the house. It’s so quiet here. The stillness of a mountain, of a desert afternoon, an empty heart.

Meanwhile: the cat.

It was looking at me, slightly supercilious.

Cats.

I go for authoritative this time.

‘Cat! Get down here at once!”

No movement.

So that’s the way it’s going to be, huh?

I scramble onto the branch where the infernal cat has decided to perch. Surprisingly, this time, he doesn’t climb higher, but moves to the edge.

I go back to cajoling.

Hey kitty, nice kitty, give you a dead mouse, kitty.

Kitty isn’t having any of it.

Smart kitty.

You don’t have to be a cat to know humans are an untrustworthy species.

I try to slide along the branch a little.

Kitty doesn’t move, a good sign.

“You’re almost there, mister”, Bella’s-the girl’s voice- comes floating up.

A final lunge.

I think I grab a bit of fur as I fall.

My life, as they say, flashes before my eyes.

I blink a couple of times as the light strikes my eyes.

Close them again.

“Are you awake?” says a voice, slightly unearthly.

I move my head a little.

Bella is sitting there, eating an orange.

I’m not dead.

Dead couldn’t possibly hurt this much.

Gingerly, I flex first my fingers and then my toes.

Then I raise my hand to my head, which feels like an elephant was sitting on it.

No bumps on the forehead. But maybe a cut or two. There’s a little wetness somewhere.

Alright.

We can get up now.

I raise myself on my elbows and the world swims a bit.

Close eyes and try again.

This time, I think I’m sitting up.

I open my eyes and move my head toward Bella.

She’s looking at me interestedly.

‘That was quite a fall.’

‘It was.’

‘Does it hurt?’

One would expect even a child to know that if you fell, like, twenty feet and were not dead, yes, it would hurt.

What do they teach the kids these days?

‘Yes’.

A thought occurred.

‘Where’s the cat?’

‘Oh, he wandered off.’

Oh.

What?

She offered me another orange, fully peeled.

‘I peeled it for you.’

‘Thank you, I guess.’

‘Are you going now?’

‘Should I?’

‘Yes, I think it would be better.’

‘Why?’

She hesitated.

‘You’re nice.’

Heck, yeah, but that didn’t make sense.

‘So?’

‘Well, um. Things happen.’

Yes. Like I wander into a loony bin, complete with mysteriously disappearing grandmother and a troublesome cat.

Also:

‘It’s not the season for oranges.’

There’s something slightly sad in her eyes now.

‘But I like them.’

‘They grow now because you like them?’

‘Something like that.’

Oh.

She looks a little forlorn now.

I eat one.

They’re incredibly sweet.

I’m either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid.

Perhaps neither, perhaps both.

‘You should go.’

There’s an urgency to her voice now, and she suddenly gets up and yanks at my arm.

It’s surprisingly strong, that pull, and I’m up on my feet.

‘Go!’

So, I go.

I turn back to look at her as I reach the end of the lawn, but she’s gone.

Bella, bellisima.

The air is still, and the sunlight warm, but now I’m running to Christine, my feet thump, thump on the gravel. Slamming the door, I rev up the engine and reverse out of the drive. Don’t even bother to turn. The gate is open, but I’m convinced it’s going to close any minute. I know it’s going to close.

I’m barely out of it, when it clangs shut.

I’m so stupid that for about two minutes, I just sit there staring.

Nothing happens.

And then: it’s all gone.

All of it.

The gate, the house.

No sound, no whirl, not even a slow fading.

It was there, and then not.

There’s just me, sitting in the car, gaping, my heart feeling like it’s going to burst out of my chest.

After ten minutes, I get out.

Where the house stood is just weeds, wild flowers.

I look toward the side, where the garden was.

Just more weeds, no wall, no tree, nothing.

So I get back in my car, turn it around and drive down the road, and in ten minutes I’m back at the crossroads.

In the light of day, I see a small signboard, practically in a ditch that points down the road to the right. In faded, half eaten black letters on yellow: Kodagu, 35kms.

I draw down the window, and turn on the radio. Static, but a couple of twists to the dial lands me at a farmer’s education programme.

The dial on my watch says 8.45 am.

The funeral’s at four.

There’s time.

A light breeze follows me down the road, bringing with it a faint whiff of oranges.

The Gift

2011-02-26T20:54:00.003+05:30

They both clung to him, dangling off a cliff, their faces upturned.
He felt the muscles in his hands stretch.
He could save only one.
The blood pounding in his ears, his breath ragged.
Their hands slipping.
He could save only one.
Time slowed down.

She smiled at him.
And let go.

Sluts Only

2011-02-24T17:09:00.006+05:30

It's a very nice place
even if I tell you myself, dear.
See, how nice this kitchen is.
Full shelves on two sides,
and see here, proper Cauvery water connection
full time running water. Luckily
no water problems here yet. But this summer,
who knows?
And nice view from front room no?
Yes, it may be a little noisy in the day
but of course you won't be here most
of the time, you are working no?
Aha, yes, in a MNC, so nice,
my son also, but he is in the U.S,
his wife also, they have one daughter,
just yesterday we were talking on the phone;
my son he says I should learn to use the computer
but no dear, I am too old fashioned for all this,
but my husband, he is all the time in the internet.
So you will be alone here?
Yes, yes, I understand, sometimes one
needs privacy
but it would be better no, if there was another girl,
someone to talk to.
Rent? Well, the last tenants were paying 15000, but you are alone,
for you, 14000 plus water and electricity. But must be paid
by 5th of every month, ok?
And please, I am very particular about cleanliness,
you can talk to my maid, she can do for you also,
just give her some 500, that is enough, don't agree for more.
These people, always trying to cheat you.
Oh, and you are vegetarian yes?
No? Oh well, I thought, from your name,
oh? Christian? There is a church nearby, very close,
walking distance, sometimes I go light a candle
God is one, after all.
Oh last thing,I don't need to tell you,
I am sure, but we are a family neighbourhood,
gate will be locked at eleven, and hope there
won't be much noise.Not partying kind, yes,
I thought so, you look such a quiet girl,
but you will have friends staying over,
oh no problem, girls only no?
No?

I'm sorry, but you understand,
this is a family neighbourhood,
we don't rent out to
those kind of people.

(Dedicated to N, D, K and all *those * people, with much love and in complete solidarity)

You are

2011-02-19T09:15:00.003+05:30

You are
the fragment of song unremembered
the confused dream lost to the night
the faraway country, green with hills,
the slam of the door, the unlatched window;
the story never told, the portrait never painted,
the sadness in a sonata,
the laughter from the secret room,
the somewhere beyond the bend,
the end of the rainbow,
the waiting at the traffic light
in the dark of a deserted street
the slow turning of the earth
the burn of a distant star
you are.

Valentine's Day Special

2011-02-14T13:22:00.007+05:30

Letter to a Prospective Groom

Dear _______
You may have been expecting this
in view of the fact that our parents
talked this morning and exchanged,
among other pleasantries,
details about our age, height, weight,
complexion,education,jobs,
and my father tells me you are a
good boy, a teetotaller, non-smoker;
employed (always a good thing), from a good family,
and in view of these things, perhaps,
it would be a good idea, he suggests,
tentative, reasonable,
that you write to him. Tell him a little
about yourself. So I will.
Tell you a little, I mean.
The thing is, it's difficult to choose
what could be considered relevant information.
Age, height, weight, education, employment.
Interests, aspirations.
Or maybe I should explain my Self
in not more than 40 characters.
You can't remotely be interested in
facts like how I'm mortified by my big feet,
or that I chew my nails when I read or think-
which is practically all the time,
so, yes, it's like I'm a nervous five year old
instead of a grown, confident thirty two.
That I'm an optimist masquerading as a cynic
because it's so much easier to be the latter
at least that way, you don't have to spend your evenings
in endless arguments with the ones who are just content
to go with the way things are, imagining that it's the same
as the way things ought to be, because, let's face the truth here
i'm a lazy optimist;
and that the perfect usage of the words 'lose' versus 'loose'
(it's shameful how many people get that wrong)
would win you more points than the fact that you are
(I'm told) the owner of an apartment, 3 bedrooms, no less,
and I wonder whether you spend a night in each, because
that's the kind of thing I wonder, and I imagine your kitchen,
which you hardly step into, fully modern, just waiting
for the right woman, who'll fill the lovely white shelving
with tiny bottles from Ikea or Home Centre, and maybe a vase of
fresh flowers on the tabletop.
And isn't this a coincidence, today is Valentine's,
and if you believe in signs, you might think
that this is an auspicious day to begin
an acquaintance, that may turn into a lifelong-
what's the word for it- contract?
Ah, she's a romantic, you must be thinking
right about now, and yes, I am,
but please don't send me roses, or teddy bears,
or even an ecard- and really, you must be thinking-
she's so nineties, who sends ecards these days,
and it's true, sometimes I feel I belong in another
time and place, and truthfully, dimension,
but usually it takes a while for people to
figure that out, but I'm telling you straight
because I think that truth is necessary,
that kindness is an aphrodisiac, and coming back to
that whole time and space thing, don't you think
those lines are lovely: the one about the gods annihilating
time and space to make two lovers happy. Pope, I believe,
and not the one that sits in Rome.
Ok, look, here's the deal:
I'll excuse the fact that you don't know your Poet from your Pontiff,
if you accept that I'm just not, and never will be, your mother.

Postcards X: A place called Home

2011-02-11T16:44:00.002+05:30

When someone asked him where he was from, Appa said 'Delhi'.
I was a little stunned. At least, you should have said Hyderabad, I grumble.
It occurred to me later that I'm not the only nomad in the family.

Postcards - IX

2011-02-11T16:39:00.004+05:30

That plant, she says, is not a 'touch me not'.
But you told me it was.
No, I told you that it wasn't.
It is, I protest. Look, if you touch it, the leaves fold.
This is great fun for me: making the leaves close and open.
I've spent hours of my childhood doing precisely this.
It's not a touch me not, she repeats.
She has trouble remembering the Latin names of plants now, and reverts to the names of her childhood. That's a 'vatta' she says. 'And that's a jaadika'.
And that's a touch me not, I add.
She frowns at me.
No, it's not.
This could take a while.

Postcards-VIII

2011-02-06T20:50:00.003+05:30

In Kerala, more than any other state I've seen, political graffitti, posters and sometimes exhortations outnumber any other kind of promotion. It's fitting, I suppose;I think Malayalees are amongst the most politically aware people in India; politics is the stuff of everyday conversation, and funnily enough, politicians not completely divorced from the life of the citizens- when we travelled to Kerala, the man in the coupe next to ours was the ex-transport Minister, and on our way back, we stopped for breakfast at 'The Brothers Hotel' in Alapuzha, apparently, a popular watering hole for MLAs/MPs who passed through the town. And as our car waited at a junction, looking at the license plate of the Ambassador with a flag behind us, our driver muttered '7707...that's not him..must be someone else..' ..apparently, in this town, people even know the license plates of their representatives, and even politicians have to wait for the traffic light to turn green.

Doubt

2011-02-03T22:06:00.001+05:30

She knew the exact moment when she had first had that thought-and shivered, buried it a thousand fathoms deep, from which place she dug it out, three months later, still raw and red, and turned it over in her mind, as she went through his credit card statements, every pocket, every book, every paper, even ATM receipts that he would throw around;she smelt all his shirts,was that hers?,no, smelt like soap, she was an idiot, why should she think this, but somewhere, somewhere, she knew, knew it, and this was driving her crazy, this doubt, and she should just confront him, she should, and now it's six months later, and he never comes home late, and he always calls, but she knew it, knew it, and what's to be done, the children love him, and so does she, and now she has clippings of ads by detective agencies, a whole scrapbook of them, numbers circled neatly in red, but she hasn't called even one, and oh, this is crazy, and the magnets on the fridge seem to form a strange haiku, a meaning only she can decipher, and then one day, he says, we need to talk, and oh, the relief, when he says this may come as a shock, and I know you'll hate me, but I don't love you anymore, and she asks, her voice steady, why, is there someone else, and he can't meet her eyes, and she knew it, knew it, and it's over, and she's delirious from the relief so she smiles at him, the happiest she's been in months, and he looks at her like she's crazy, and maybe she is, but god, it's over, and now the world is solid again, and red is red, green is green, and she can only smile at the man who's broken her heart.

Postcards-VII

2011-02-03T19:56:00.005+05:30

I have a writer's disease: everything is a metaphor; everything is more-and less-than it seems. I cannot look at a thing without framing it in a portrait of words. Sometimes, I wonder if I'd be able to experience life without language.* So, I stare at the empty shells that litter the lake shore in thousands, and think of abandoned homes, and mortality, and life, and beginnings. Shake my head, and look again. That is the sky, those are trees, that wheeee-ing in the background is a school bus taking a curve with an insouciance that is astonishing, this is the water, that tickles my toes, and if I'm not careful, one of those shell things is actually alive and will ooze over my feet, leaving a trail of slime. Ugh.

*(Yes, K, I know we've had this discussion before, shut up already. :p)

Postcards-VI

2011-02-02T12:32:00.001+05:30

Postcards-V

2011-01-31T12:26:00.001+05:30

Postcards-IV

2011-01-30T12:24:00.001+05:30

Postcards-III

2011-01-29T12:13:00.002+05:30

Square One

2011-01-18T17:01:00.002+05:30

Amie

Oh Amie,my Amie,can't you see
You and I are meant to be
It's written in the stars
that burn slowly
so cold,so bright
this winter night.

You tell me
that it's bad timing,
That we can't be right
Oh Amie, my Amie,
The universe conspires
How long must you fight?
Read the signs
Here in my eyes.

Oh Amie,my Amie,say that you
believe
in ephemera: true love, destiny.
We're more than ships that pass
Tonight, when the stars
call out to you and me.

Postcards II

2011-01-18T16:58:00.002+05:30

Postcards from the edge of my world

2011-01-18T16:53:00.003+05:30

May 2010

Her face, wrinkled like a parchment, the same colour.
She leans against the grey stone and calmly surveys the world.
It's early still, the world is just stirring around her.
Soon, this quiet street will be a river of cars, of noise, of colour.
People walking in that hurried step, so common to city dwellers, as though hard pressed to keep pace with their own lives.
But for now, it's quiet. A sparrow hops on the pavement.
She sits with her hands on her knees, and watches until it flys away,a joyous fluttering brown.

*************************************************************************************

August 2010

They are here almost every day,the two young men. They wear matching tees, and blue jeans.
One has spiky hair. Sometimes, it's flattened under a cap.
One has a guitar and a prosthetic leg that he detaches and keeps for display.
The guitar case is laid out, and a few coins and notes tossed in, for encouragement.
The mike squeaks.
And then they sing, their voices filling the cavernous underpass.
A small floating crowd, but most people rush by. There are things to do, places to be.
Their music follows me, sunshine and laughter, as I emerge into the summer afternoon.

*************************************************************************************

May 2010

It's been a struggle to wake up this morning. The sun is so bright, already, that it hurts my reluctant eyes.
Shining morning face, indeed, I sulk inwardly.
There's a chance of rain, later in the day, I know. I think complacently about the umbrella I've packed in my bag.
Always prepared. That's me.
Or my father, living through me.
It's been The Weepies, this last week, that ferry me to office in the morning.
That an American folk-rock band provides the perfect soundtrack to nomadic life in a Chinese city is a fact that I'm both amused and awed by.
At the signals, dumpy women with harsh voices sell bright red cherries, deep purple plums, and blossoms, an ethereal, damning pink.

***********************************************************************************

December 2010

I always order the same thing-1 chai latte, tall.
Sometimes, a blueberry muffin.
It's a small place, but often busy, and it's not easy to get a place.
I perch on one of the high stools near the window that faces the street.
Evening is falling, and the bright neon advertisements casts odd glows on the people and cars that stream by.
The world is reduced to this: a sentence- Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world that people possess?-and the warmth of the styrofoam cup against my fingers. *

*************************************************************************************

January 2011

The winter sun in the afternoon, glints off the glass windows.
For a minute, the building shimmers like water, through the shorn branches of the trees that line the street, and my heart beats so hard, I hardly know why.
Then I recognize it as joy.
I will leave this city soon, and may never return.
I'm not sorry to go, but I have been happy here.
Joy, not life, measured in coffee spoons.

*************************************************************************************
* The sentence is from the Nabokov novel, "Pnin". In my mind, Nabokov and Nanjing are going to remain inextricably twined- reading "The Secret Life of Sebastian Knight" during summer here, woke me up, after what felt like a slumber of aeons. Funnily enough, it's not one of his most celebrated or even polished novels. Quirks of fate. :)

The Restaurant Owner's Wife

2011-01-18T16:50:00.000+05:30

It's easy to imagine:
That straight back, on a horse,the shoulders tense,her sword held aloft, gleaming silver in a winter sun.
The world is a carpet of snow.
The jet black hair lifts slightly in the wind, softening the implacable line of her jaw.
One cannot imagine those marble lips smiling.
The horse stamps impatiently. The black eyes glitter.
Men have laid kingdoms waste for the ruinous beauty of her face.

I wonder if he knows this, the jolly little man who offers us free cigarettes, and occasionally, free food- a bad idea, maybe, since this is his livelihood.
She places a bowl of steaming noodle soup on the dirty plastic cover; her fingers long and delicate, the tips slightly calloused.
The cutlery is cheap, the food is delicious. A minion is shirking, and she snaps.
Her voice is the winter wind, and her eyes the bottomless depth of a well.
I wonder if he knows.

Something useful

2011-01-04T13:33:00.000+05:30

Tell me then, promise me
That we'll meet.
Some other time, and place.
In another dimension, where we're all purple,
I don't really care,
but promise me.
After all is said and done
and our choices laid out
like so many stones
that we stumble over,
blindfolded.
But all you do is sigh
and my knuckles are so white
gripping this really old fashioned phone
that my father still keeps, you know the kind I mean,
the ones you waited months or years for, before the damn telephone department
let you have it, like it was a pot of gold, or something-
I love it, because it goes tring-tring
and doesn't interrupt your day with
a synthesized voice breathing something tarty, and when you hang up,
it has a very satisfying 'click', it's unambiguous and done.
And yes, to let go is something
nobody taught me. They never
teach you anything useful.
It's all angles and topography
and statistics, not one thing
that can teach you how to say
goodbye or make sense of sorrow,
and really, how do they send you out into the world
like this, so fucking unprepared.
If I had your child, I would teach her.
So I breathe in your sigh, taste it with my tears,
these little things I do,
that make no sense to anyone, and if I let go,
what do I do, if I let go,
and I want to be twelve again,
dreams behind my eyelids, and scuffed black school shoes,
scrunching the leaves of the neem trees
that line the road home.

Festival of Lights

2010-11-12T22:52:00.001+05:30

It was the Festival of Lights. Father had said he would be home that day. Siva played in the patch of yard outside the tiny house, his eyes darting every now and then toward the road. For a while he swung on the small wooden gate that Father had put up last summer. From the gate you could see all the way up to the banyan tree that stood along side the main road. The main road was the only pucca road in the little village where Siva lived. It had been laid two years ago.
Siva had stood, with his two best friends, Raju and Vishnu as the workers had poured the hot, black liquid onto what had once been a path of smoothened gravel. The Road, it had been heard, would bring prosperity to their village. Managalapatnam would now appear as a small dot, a bus stop on the road between Salem and Madras.
Not everybody had wanted Mangalapatnam to be put on the national road map. Ramasami Gounder, through whose land this wonderful road had cut through had tried his best to stop its construction. He had made several trips to Madras and, it was rumoured, spent considerable sums of money in these efforts. At one point, it seemed as though he would succeed, that the road would be diverted several kilometers, so that his land would be untouched-and Mangalapatnam. But some of the villagers, led by Siva’s father, had made a representation at the Engineer’s Office, situated in the next town. When Siva asked his father why the Engineer had listened to them-after all, the Gounder had money to back his whim-his father had said that the Engineer was a Good Man. It was the highest praise that Father knew.
So, a year later, amidst some fanfare, The Road had been finished. The Head of the Panchayat had made a speech, the Engineer was a special guest (a short, bald, dark man-Siva couldn’t imagine anybody who looked less like a Good Man), sweets-little sticky orange toffee- were given to all the children. Gounder had not made an appearance.
And so the road stretched out, right in front of the Big House, a daily reminder to Gounder that the power he and his family had enjoyed over the generations was slipping out of his grasp.
The sun was dying, a last burst of orange filling the sky. The birds made a racket as they flew back to their nests. Siva liked to watch them everyday. He thought that someday, he would be like a bird, and fly away. Only, his feathers would be steel. He would be flying those one of those giant birds, an aeroplane. He said the word aloud, sometimes, just to feel it. Vishnu had taught him the word. He cast a last look up the road, and set off toward the Big House.

Vishnu was Gounder’s son, but he liked to play with Raju, Siva and the other boys in the village. He was an only child, and his mother had died when he was two years old. He didn’t remember her at all. Gounder sent him to an expensive private boarding school in Ooty for 8 months of the year. It was only during the holidays that he came back to the village. Vishnu hated boarding school. His classmates were from rich families all over India, several were sons of landowners like his own father; nevertheless he felt out of place in the school. As he tucked into breakfasts of porridge and toast-and-marmalade served on worn china, he would dream of eating dosai with sambar and chutney; and it seemed to him that this was the forced vacation, the four months he spent in Mangalapatnam-that, that was his real life. Vishnu envied Siva his freedom from the strict routines of boarding school life. If he wished, he could play outside all day, climb the mango trees or try to catch fish in the river. Siva had no bells to listen for, no strict house master who checked whether his shoes were shined- actually, Siva had no shoes at all, only some threadbare chappals, and ran barefoot all over the place most of the time.
Vishnu poked his head around the kitchen door. Nobody was around, thank god. His father’s voice boomed. Hastily grabbing a few of the sweets made for the feast, he slipped out. He had an assignation to keep.

‘Vishnu! Vishnu!’
Drat the boy, where was he? It didn’t take much imagination to guess. Vishnu’s association with the village boys annoyed Gounder, but despite his strictures and the occasional thrashing, Vishnu still sneaked out to play with them. Well, thought Gounder, at least he was away most of the time. The boy had nothing to do here, that was the problem. From next summer, he would send him away to his sister’s house in Madras. Let him spend some time with his city bred cousins, and eventually he would not care much for his village playmates.
The sun was setting across the fields, as Gounder sat on his porch, smoking his cigarettes, (foreign made, especially brought from Madras for him). In the distance he could hear the temple bells. The diyas had been lit around the house. He himself had no interest in the celebrations, but it had been the custom of his father, and his father’s father before him and his great grandfather before that, to hold a feast on the festival day. Some traditions were meant to be kept. The villagers would all be there, and there had been some ‘entertainment’ arranged. A drama troupe would perform the traditional Ramakatha. He wondered if Seetha would be presentable woman. Last year, she had been a buxom woman with hard eyes, wide mouth, shrill voice and surprisingly soft hands. She had been worth the five hundred rupees. Ah well, there were other things to take care of tonight. The tip of the cigarette glowed in the falling dark.

Siva and Raju were already at the appointed meeting place, the old cowshed that was some distance behind the main house. He could see their silhouettes against the rising moon.
‘You’re late,’ said Raju.
“I overslept, said Vishnu, sheepishly, ‘but look what I’ve got!’
The sweets were a bit squashed, but welcomed, nevertheless.
‘Did you get it?’ Siva asked, licking his fingers.
‘Yes,’ he replied, and pulled out a set of huge keys from his other pocket.
‘Well, we’d better be going then..’
‘Not yet’, said Vishnu, ‘they are still getting into costume. We can’t risk being seen.’ ‘Rubbish, you’re just scared.’
‘ Am not.’
‘Are too.’
‘Oh stop it you both’, said Siva, ‘Vishnu’s right, we should wait a bit.’
‘Did your father come?’ Vishnu asked.
‘Not yet, but the last bus comes in only at 8.’
The fireflies had come out. Raju tried to catch one-it was easy enough to do. Raju liked to catch everything-butterflies, dragonflies, moths. He liked to put them in a jar and watch them. Even though he made small holes in the jar to let the air in, they inevitably died after a while.
Vishnu said, ‘Oh, let them be!’
‘Why?!’
‘They look prettier out there.’
‘Listen to him, talks like a girl. Pretty, can you beat that?’

Siva had other things on this mind.
‘Let’s go through it again’, he said.
‘Oh come on’, said Raju, ‘we’ve been through it like a hundred times already. You think too much.’
Siva ignored him.
‘You’re sure there won’t be anybody there?’
‘I told you, during the third act, they’ll all be on the stage,’ said Vishnu, in his patient voice. ‘They don’t have enough people. I watched them rehearse yesterday.’
The plan was simple.
When the actors were on the stage during the third act, they would steal into the shed where the costumes where kept and make off with a tail. If that seemed like an odd choice of pastime, it was easily explained. Yesterday, one of the lead performers had told Siva off. Siva had merely been exploring the ‘set’, but the man, annoyed by the boy, had held him by one ear and thrown him out, with a cuffing, no less. Such a man, the friends decided, surely deserved to have his face rubbed in the mud. It transpired that the man was to play the role of Hanuman, as well as a minor role in Ravana’s court. This involved a fairly simple costume switch- the donning of a mask and a tail. Well, he was going to have to play Hanuman without a tail.
Meanwhile, there was nothing to be done, but wait.

There was some light in the patched up shed, but the boys still stumbled a little bit. Vishnu wished he had had the foresight to bring a torch. ‘We should have got a torch’ whispered Siva, just ahead of him. Vishnu grinned to himself.
‘Got it!’ exclaimed Raju, his voice a little too loud.
Shhh! The others shushed him. Too late.
‘Who’s there?’ boomed a male voice just outside.
Oh no! There was only one exit from the shed, and that probably meant running full tilt into the voice.
‘The door’s open..’ said a second voice in a surprised tone. There was nothing to do but to run for it and hope the element of surprise would work in their favour. They dashed out, bumping into the men just as they were entering.
‘Whaa..’ said one, flailing, but the other tried to grab at one of the tiny figures as it rushed by. Vishnu felt his shirt rip at the back. Helter-skelter they ran, followed by the men giving the chase.
Vishnu felt his heart pounding in his ears, as he headed toward the cowshed. It was on his father’s property, which was fenced, so he hoped that the men would not dare cross that. Panting, he sank finally on the ground behind the cow shed and held on to his side with one hand, while feeling his back with the other. How was he going to explain the torn shirt? He stiffened when he heard the muffled sound of voices that were coming from inside the shed. Oh no! The men had actually crossed the fence. Slowly, he crawled toward the side where he knew there was a small gap in the wall. Putting his eye to it, he tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness inside. He could make out the silhouttes of three men. Three? There had been only two.

There was the sound of a lighter being flicked, and in the sharp flare, he saw his father. Vishnu’s eyes widened and he tried to stop breathing.
‘The bus is late’, said his father.
The other men were shorter, stockier in build, but their faces were indistinct blurs. One of them mumbled something.
‘Yes’, replied his father.
The second man seemed to have a question.
His father shrugged.
‘Leave it there, by the side, let everybody see.’
What were they talking about? Vishnu could not fathom the meaning of that conversation, but he knew he had better keep very quiet.
‘Come to me later, then,’ said his father, and strode out. The men followed.
Vishnu scrambled back to his original position, and watched as his father headed back to the house. Peeking from the side, he saw that the other men headed off toward the fence. Probably they were going to meet someone at the bus stop, he thought. He had better find the others.
‘Hey! Are they gone?’ A voice whispered from just above him. Startled, he found Siva and Raju staring down at him from the branch of the mango tree.
‘Yes, it wasn’t them anyway. ‘
‘Who was it?’, asked Siva as he landed with a leap.
‘My father and some other men, I don’t know who they are.’
Raju was clambering down the trunk.
‘Where’s the mask?’ asked Vishnu.
‘Left it behind in the shed.’
‘So you mean we risked our lives for nothing?!’
‘And I’ve gotten my shirt torn too,’ he added mournfully.
Siva burst out laughing.
‘It’s not funny!’, snapped Vishnu.
‘It is, you should see your face!’
‘Let’s go back and watch the rest of the show,’ he said.
‘No, let’s head toward the bus stop, my father will be coming’, said Siva.

‘I hope he gets me an aeroplane toy’, he said, as they trudged toward the fence.
‘Those are quite expensive you know’, Vishnu said, and immediately wished he hadn’t, seeing Siva’s downcast face. When they reached the bus stop, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Maybe the bus hadn’t come.
But where were the other men, then? Maybe the bus had left, thought Vishnu.
They hung around for a while. Siva kept looking up the road. Vishnu tried to cheer him up with tales from his boarding school, but Siva didn’t pay much attention, although Raju kept asking the most annoying questions, in his childish way.
Finally, Siva said, ‘I’m going home. Father might be already there….and maybe he got me something’, he added under his breath.
Bidding goodbye to his friends, Vishnu crept back via the window into his room. He needed to change his shirt and hide the torn one somewhere. With any luck, Father would not notice the difference. As he changed, his mind went back to the conversation he had overheard earlier that evening. He couldn’t understand it, but there had been something…disturbing…about it.
His father didn’t notice the changed shirt.
In dreams, he was chased by dogs, which turned into giant lizards, one of whom had a silver lighter dangling from its neck. Waking up with a start, he looked at the dial of the little alarm clock near his bed. It showed 9 am. It was late.
Rushing around to brush his teeth (they had the only indoor bathroom in the entire village, what’s more it had fancy fittings and ceramic tiles in a flowery pattern), Vishnu hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble for being late for breakfast.

His father was in his usual chair on the verandah.
‘Oh, you’re awake,’ he said, as Vishnu stepped on to the verandah.
Vishnu stared. His father seemed to be in a good mood.
‘Go have your breakfast’, he said, ‘I have a surprise for you.’
When he went into the kitchen, he found breakfast laid out for him. Idly and sambar, his favourite. Tucking in straight away, it was a while before he noticed that the usually talkative maid Janaki was silent as she served him a second helping. Looking at her, he noticed that her eyes were red, as though she had been crying.
‘What happened Janaki, have you been crying?’
Janaki shook her head .
‘It’s so terrible’, she whispered.
‘What?’
‘They found his body this morning. ‘
‘Body?!’
Janaki lowered her voice even more.
‘Your friend Sivamani..his father’s body…it was a little distance from the bus stop.’
Vishnu felt his insides turn cold and simultaneously an urge to throw up his breakfast.
‘His poor wife, and that boy..what will they do now?’ Janaki mumbled.
Vishnu pushed his plate away and stumbled out of the kitchen.

The verandah was bathed in sunlight.
His father looked up from the newspaper he had been reading.
‘Look what I have for you’, he said nodding to the wooden table at the side.
Vishnu looked.
Gleaming in the sunlight, there stood a small toy aeroplane, red-tailed, silver-winged.

Sea of Dreams

2010-11-03T11:12:00.001+05:30

Pale faced,you float through
the oceans of the world
and they wind their stories
and their sorrow
in your hair.
Wrapped in the seaweed of longing
soft and impenetrable
you drift, dreamless,
dream-filled,in search of
that distant, white shore.

The State of the Individual

2010-10-10T01:02:00.002+05:30

It occurred to me that I'm actually glad to be done with my twenties.

On the other hand, 'dazed and confused', charming at 22, seems just over indulgent a decade later.

Ghosts

2010-08-18T18:36:00.005+05:30

The first occupants of a house
are not its owners.
The single mismatched tile in the kitchen,
that blob of paint that won't be removed
from the kitchen rack,
the bulb that flickers continually in the bathroom-
the only clues that there was once,
in your bedroom,with its matched dark wood fittings,
a family that squatted on the untiled floor for their meals
by the light of an oil lamp,
the 70s transistor radio playing
an old song, dedicated to his family,
by a soldier who huddles in his barracks
somewhere in the those cold, forbidding mountains,
stubbing out a cigarette,
and dreaming of his home by the sea.

2010-08-13T21:29:00.002+05:30

The fear is overwhelming, if I let it be: that the silence will take over.

Debt

2010-08-10T21:00:00.001+05:30

Did you think, then
that it would be over
three words and it's done?
Not yet, not yet.
A debt still remains-
Forgiveness comes cheap,
Forgetting, not.

Urban Romance

2010-07-06T23:30:00.002+05:30

Of all that we wrote:
I have one email.
One conversation.
But I got lucky.
It was the one where you said
That you had liked me, once,
kinda,sort of.
That was only seven years ago.
(the letter, not the liking)
the liking was so long back
before the twin towers came down
somewhere in between the 4th & 5th
Harry Potter books.
The world has changed so much, and so little.
There have been earthquakes, floods,wars,
America has a black President.
North Korea is still, as a friend said, another planet.
We speak of civil war in India now.
I grew my hair, cut it, grew it again.
I got contact lenses, ditched them.
I've climbed the Eiffel,twice!
My parents have become old.
Bombay, your beloved Bombay- well
I don't know how it is, it may be the same;
they keep saying that about that city,
how it runs all the time just to stay still;
I don't know. Seems the kind of romantic thing
that sounds deep, but what does it mean, really?
And-I don't really remember your face:
but i do remember paying Orange,
a now defunct brand,
an enormous amount of money
just to hear your voice.

Mothers & Daughters

2010-07-04T20:45:00.001+05:30

Hmm.

Palak? Mushroom? She had run out of tomatoes, anyway, and onions as well. As she surveyed the aisle of vegetables and frozen foods, filled with all the things one might need for a decent meal, Jaya felt a wave of indecision, all too familiar, sweep over her.

The faint vibration alerted her. Mom is right, I need a bag with enough pockets, she thought, as she scrambled in her bag for the elusive source of the buzzing. It was annoying how often Mom was right. When she finally found it, the blinking light indicated that she had missed the call.

Mom.

Malathi called everyday, a daily check to hear the voice of her only daughter in a faraway land. Cradling the phone between her ear and neck (must invest in a headset!), Jaya dialed her parents’ number. Her mother picked up on the first ring.

‘Where are you?’, she said, by way of greeting, ‘Why didn’t you pick up the phone?’.

No matter what time of day it was, if Jaya didn’t answer the call, her mother was apt to imagine the mangled remains of her child under the subway, or a car, or, perhaps, in a supermarket aisle.

‘I’m grocery shopping, ma’, she said, ‘by the time I reached the phone, you had hung up’.

‘I told you to buy a bag with enough compartments’, said her mother. ‘Aren’t there any vegetables at home? It’s quite late isn’t it? It’s already 7.30 there, no?’

‘Relax ma, don’t panic. 7.30 isn’t all that late. And yes, I didn’t shop over the weekend, so I have to do this now.’ As ever, her mother reminded Jaya that she needed to plan her life better. Plan. Plan to buy a headset, a house, a bag with pockets. Plan dinner. Right, that was the focus now. Would the mushroom & tomato take too long? She was hungry, and by the time she got home, it would be a quarter past eight.

Meanwhile, her mother was talking about her niece. Apparently, Jaya’s cousin Ayesha was getting engaged. Ayesha was 24, a good 5 years younger than Jaya.

‘That’s lovely,’ said Jaya, still debating the merits of mushroom & tomato over daal-palak and potato subji. ‘The mushroom will be faster, but I think I feel more like daal…or do I feel like mushroom? Is there any baby corn at home? That should be easy enough…

‘Is that all you have to say?!’ demanded her mother.

‘What should I say, ma? It’s nice that she’s engaged. Nice for her, that is, if she likes the guy. Who is he?’

‘He’s working in California. I don’t know what he does…Shanthi said something..I can’t remember, but very good family, and they are well-to-do, and he has two sisters..’

As her mother went on, Jaya quickly stuffed some tomatoes, picked up a packet of mushroom. Screwing her nose up at them, she almost changed her mind, but then decided to go for it. She didn’t want daal-paalak tonight.

‘Of course, she asked about you…’ Here, her mother’s voice took on that vaguely injured, self-pitying tone that Jaya had come to know so well, whenever the subject was her shockingly single status.

‘I hope you told her that I’m doing very well, ma..did you tell her about the promotion?’ Jaya often used humour to keep the annoyance that she felt out of her voice. She knew it wasn’t her mother’s fault.

In Malathi’s world, girls grew up well behaved, learning essential life skills such as cooking, house keeping, in addition to keeping up with times and being ‘modern’ in dress and education. Even if they worked for a living, they eventually ‘settled’ (by the time they were 25) with a nice boy and had at least one child. Single at 29, Jaya had broken a cardinal rule, of the long list of rules of Familial Duty. By this one act of defiance, she had distanced herself from her mother, sometimes (she felt), permanently. Malathi wondered, sometimes aloud, much to Jaya’s exasperation, where she had gone wrong.

Malathi went through life troubled by a gnawing sense of inadequacy. If she had taken time to think about it, she might have traced its roots back to the slightly disappointed expression that her husband of a day had worn when she served him their first meal as husband and wife. Malathi had never cooked much- her elder sisters had managed the kitchen, and Malathi had been content to let them. She preferred spending her time hiding in the loft, reading the latest stories in the periodicals that were begged and borrowed from friends and neighbours.

As he looked at the slightly burnt bhindi, the rice a trifle overcooked, and the moru curry with a bit more onion than he liked, Srinivas had realized that he might have to adjust his idea of what life would be like. Although he didn’t realize it, there crept in, at that moment, a sense of ill-usage on his part, and a thorn of anxiety on hers, that would set the tone for their life together.

Malathi tried. She told herself that she must learn to like the kitchen, must learn to cook all the dishes that he liked; and then, later, when two children joined them at the table, all the dishes that they liked.

She cooked, and cleaned, kept the house neat, in addition to her daily work as an accountant at the Railways office, but it was never quite good enough. Especially, in the kitchen.

Planning the next meal became her obsession. She worried over it constantly. When her colleagues were talking about jewelry and their children’s homework, she found herself wondering if she had remembered to put the chhole out to soak, and whether the beans would be too spicy. She would leap at recipes from colleagues, buy recipe books by the dozen and sweat for hours in the kitchen, especially on weekends. The results were never satisfactory, at least to her. She envied other women the easy assurance with which they talked of hosting family dinners, of the very tasty paneer that their husbands had loved, of the new home-made sweets that Chintu’s friends had gobbled up. The children’s ‘tiffin’ was a particular source of anxiety. She would wake up every day at 5 to get it ready, and it was true, that they came back with their boxes empty, but one day, Krishna, 8, artless, had asked ‘Why don’t you make daal like the other moms do? Yours tastes different’ and Malathi had felt the red hot flush of embarrassment cover her face. She had let down the children.

As the children grew into high school and later college, they no longer wanted to carry home food, preferring to eat at the local canteen. It was much cooler. Also, said Jaya, you don’t have to bother so much anymore. “Nonsense,’, Malathi had replied, ‘ It’s not a trouble to make food for my children’. ‘Oh Mom!’ Jaya had exclaimed (by then it was ‘mom’, not ‘Amma’), ‘You know you’d be glad not to struggle every morning to figure out what to make for our lunch. Think about it, an extra half hour of sleep!’ And she gave her mother a hug. Strangely, her daughter’s perceptiveness, did not comfort Malathi. But she did not press the argument, having learnt by then that there was little point in arguing with Jaya, once she had made up her mind. Jaya always won an argument. Far too clever with words, Malathi thought. People will say she is headstrong. Malathi worried already about Jaya acquiring a ‘reputation’. She told herself that Jaya was only 18, and would grow out of it.

She had tried her best with Jaya. She had tried to get her, especially, to cook. But no amount of lecturing, cajoling or threatening would induce Jaya to step into the kitchen.

Srinivas, of course, blamed Malathi. ‘Daughters learn from their mothers’, he said one day, after a dinner table argument about Malathi’s refusal to help her mother in the kitchen. ‘Actually, dad, considering you can’t even make a cup of tea, wouldn’t you say I’d learnt from you?’ said Jaya, flashing him a smile. Krishna chortled. Srinivas had never yet managed to discipline his daughter, leaving such necessary business to his wife. When he found that Jaya was (to his mind), inexplicably ‘modern’, he blamed Malathi for it. ‘Forget it, mom’, Krishna interjected, ‘You’re never going to get her into the kitchen. Just as well. Imagine if she cooks like she does Physics.’ Jaya hit him on the shoulder.

Strangely enough, Jaya had, eventually, entered the kitchen. Almost a year after taking up her first job in Mumbai and a flat where she stayed alone (‘All alone! Why not a PG? Is it safe?’ Her mother had worried), Jaya had found she could no longer abide restaurant food or the food cooked by a succession of domestics. She realized that she would have to do that job, like so many others, by herself, if she wanted it done well.

Surprising everybody, not the least her mother, having embarked on a culinary career, Jaya found that not only did she like cooking; she had quite a flair for it.

Thinking back, Jaya realized that the sole reason she had stayed away from the kitchen all these years, was that she had equated it with the prison of traditional roles. Seeing her mother do, every day, for 25 years, a job that she disliked, just because, as a woman, she was expected to do it, had made Jaya determined never to put herself in that position. But cooking itself was a good art, and there was a freedom in knowing that she had chosen to do it.

Srinivas, of course, thought that his daughter had seen the Light.

‘So what else did you do today?’ Jaya asked.

‘Oh, we had to attend a dinner for the new manager and his wife’. Srinivas was retiring and brought in a successor from another city.

‘How was it?’, asked Jaya, knowing that Malathi, shy even after all these years, found social occasions quite nerve-wracking.

‘It was ok…Mrs. Hegde..she’s very fashionable..short hair..’ Jaya smiled to herself. For her mother short hair was still the symbol of emancipation and modernity. ‘She was wearing a simple salwar kameez…I felt overdressed in my silk…’ Malathi hesitated a second.

‘You know, she said she never cooks. They have always had maids to do the cooking because she doesn’t like doing it..’Malathi’s voice was still slightly tinged with the disbelief she had felt on hearing Vasundhara Hegde say something so unexpected. ‘It’s the first time I’m hearing a woman say that…I mean, a woman from my age group..say that..and in public…’ her voice trailed off.

Jaya felt an intense love for her mother at that moment.

But what she said was, ‘Ma, gotta go, just reached the billing counter’.

She had not. Instead, she went back, picked up some paalak and headed home. The daal-palak tasted fabulous, just like ma’s.

Reviving the Blog

2010-07-04T20:42:00.001+05:30

I'm reviving this blog, primarily in the hope that the pressure of an anonymous and largely silent (non existent, possibly?) readership will force me into actually writing something.
Discipline, what?

A Minor God

2009-09-25T21:29:00.001+05:30

A minor shrine, for a minor god. A god who might never have been if it weren’t for an old woman, brown and wrinkled, like the bark of a tree. This is how it works- a few yellow flowers, plucked surreptitiously from the rich man’s garden, a bit of vermillion, three stones, and a desperate hope. This is how gods are born in this country.

The woman comes everyday. She wears a fraying blue sari, a much patched up blouse that might have once been blue, or black, but now is a dirty grey. The prayer is the same everyday.

She doesn’t know how much more she can take. The drunken shouting, the demands for money, the occasional pushing around. One night, she had thought he would kill her, he was so drunk. Drunk, and with the brute strength of some wild animal. Yes, he might have killed her that night, if Balayya, the neighbour hadn’t come to her rescue. There was little that could be secret in their slum. It had taken Balayya and three grown men to subdue him that night, and divest him of the grinding stone he was wielding. She almost wished he had crushed her head that night. At least, then, it would have been over. She was tired, so tired.

She wishes she was dead.

She wishes he was dead.

That was a terrible thing for any woman to wish for her son, but whatever love had been there, had long been eaten away by the bitterness and fear.

So, that was her prayer everyday, as she stood with her palms closed together, head bowed, in front of the god. Him or me. Kill one of us. Please let it be today. And she put fresh flowers on the stone.

One morning she found that someone else had been visiting the shrine. A freshly broken coconut lay before the stones. And some marigolds. She wondered who it could be.

Now you have two prayers to answer, she thought. But don’t forget, I asked first.

Everyday after that she found a coconut and flowers. It piqued her curiosity, for coconuts were expensive, and she wondered why someone who could afford one each day would come here, rather than propitiate the deity in the bigger temple, further down the road.

One morning, she was so hungry, she used a stone to cut up a slice of the juicy kernel inside and eat it. After all, they were just lying there. The god didn’t seem to be interested. All the same, she felt a little guilty, and not a little afraid. Gods were notoriously capricious. You never knew when they would take offence.

So, the next day, she made her way a little earlier to the shrine. The sky was just beginning to lighten when she reached. Nobody was there. She settled herself on a small rock, sheltered from view by the trunk of the banyan tree. At least, the stranger wouldn’t see her if he came from up the road.

Not many minutes later she heard some footsteps. Cautiously, she peered around the tree. She recognized him immediately. It was that boy that worked in Vedappa’s canteen. What was his name? Rama? Raja? Something with R. He was the newest citizen of their little world. Like so many others, he had come to the city from his village, looking for work. It was the story of so many, nobody asked him the specifics. What was there to say? They had all travelled the same road, they all knew the poverty and helplessness that drove feet onto paths unknown. He was quite young, maybe around fifteen or sixteen, she hazarded. Vedappa had taken him on. Vedappa was a kind man, he always gave a helping hand to those who came to the shanty, especially the young ones. Perhaps it was his way of thanking the gods. Although, there was a limit to his altruism. She didn’t think he paid very well; he couldn’t- seeing as he barely made enough for himself. And the slum lord who owned their land, their homes- well he took enough from all of them to make it impossible to save any money. Yet, here was this boy-Ramana- that was it- here he was, with a coconut and flowers. Suspicion raised its head. Was he stealing the coconuts? Well, if that was the case, then she needn’t feel guilty at all. No God would care much about stolen offerings. Hmmph.

She must have made some sound, because Ramana suddenly looked around, straight at her before she could hide. They stared at each other for a minute. Then he turned and started walking away.

She resumed her usual routine after that, and didn’t see him for a few weeks. But then one day, his voice startled her.

“What do you pray for?”

There he was, with a bunch of yellow flowers and a coconut.

“Where do you get the flowers from?” she asked, in reply.

“Barathamma gives me them for free” he replied. Barathamma was the local flower seller. She sold jasmine, and marigold, two rupees for a strand or five, depending on the customer.

“Why does she give it you for free?”

“Because I told her that I pray for my mother who is sick, in the village.”

“And do you?”

He shrugged.

“My mother is dead.”

“Then what do you pray for?”

“Money. Lots of it.”

“What do you pray for?” he asked again.

How much should you tell a stranger?

“Death”, she said.

He nodded, as though he understood, and perhaps he did.

There were no secrets in their little slum.

After that, they met fairly regularly at the shrine. On some days she would be early, on other days he would wait for her. They exchanged some news- he told her the gossip from the canteen, she told him about the lifestyles of the rich people she washed dishes for. He was interested in the details. How big was the TV? Did they have curtains? Were they silk? Was the furniture wood? Were the pillows soft? He was borrowing their lives to build his dream house.

One day she brought him some paayasam. She had to buy the milk (ten rupees!) but there was no money for raisins and cashews. It was simple milk, sugar, rice preparation. He slurped up every last drop.

When she didn’t turn up an entire week, he made his way to her hut. She had been ill, she told him. Fever and cough; she had forced herself to go to work, because she wouldn’t get paid otherwise, and anyways she had no money for a doctor. But the cough had gotten worse, and the fever hadn’t gone away, and for the last two days she had had to stay home.

He took her to a doctor, and paid the fees, bought her the medicines. It meant no coconuts for the God they both prayed to, but he thought it might be forgiven.

When he brought her home, her son –Krishna- was there, drunk as ever, although it was only late afternoon.

“Found yourself a replacement son, old woman?”He sneered.

She didn’t say anything, but turned to Ramana.

“Thank you child,” she said, “Now-go away.”

“First you go lie down, Amma.”

It was the first time he had called her anything.

Amma.

“Yes, “Amma”, her son called- “go lie down- but first give this son the money”

“She has no money,” said Ramana, “leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s ill?”

In two strides Krishna had Ramana held up by the collar of his shirt.

“Shut up or I’ll knock your brains out. Who are you to tell me what to do? She’s my mother. I’ll hit her, or take her money, or kill her- it’s not your business, do you understand? Now get out before I rub your face in the dung outside!”

“Please, please go away, Ramana,” she begged, terrified.

Ramana left, and didn’t come to see her again.

Ten days later she was well enough to go to the shrine.

He was there.

“Why didn’t you come and see me?” she asked, hiding her delight and relief in seeing him behind a faux petulance.

“I didn’t want to get beaten up” he said. “Your son is too strong for me.”

She was immediately contrite.

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“I pray that he will die soon.” she said. “That’s the death I pray for.”

“Yes, I know, Amma” said he, and put his arm around her shoulder.

That day, they did not pray.

The next day, she had a bruise on her arm.

“He did this, didn’t he?”

“What does it matter?”she said, “It is my fate.”

“I am tired,” said he, “of fate and of waiting for prayers to be answered.”

She was a little frightened.

“Don’t do anything dangerous.”

“It’s ok,” he said, “the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift.”

Two weeks later, Krishna’s body was fished out of the nala nearby. It was presumed he had fallen in one night, drunk as he usually was. She performed the rituals for him. She did not weep though, as she watched the flesh of her flesh burn.

The next morning, she took some flowers and a coconut to the shrine.

Ramana was there.

He waited while she offered the flowers and bowed her head.

They sat in silence for a while.

“In all my life,” said she, “I found only this one god who did anything for me.”

“Yes, Amma,” he agreed. “This is a good god.”

They walked home together.

Judas

2009-08-27T21:18:00.000+05:30

Last night your faded memory came to me

As in the wilderness spring comes quietly,

As, slowly, in the desert, moves the breeze,

As, to a sick man, without cause, comes peace.

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated by Vikram Seth

Today

The road is a black snake in a sea of sand. It winds its way through the dunes, seeming to melt into water every few meters ahead. The air is heavy and wet. Seventy percent humidity expected today, the weather caster had cheerfully announced earlier that day.

The battered pick up cruises along the road. The man at the wheel has one hand placed lightly on the wheel, while the other rests on the window frame. The windows are down, despite the heat. He can feel his robe clinging, wet with sweat, to his back. Occasionally he turns his head to look out of the window, but mostly he just looks straight ahead. The radio belts out the latest Nancy Ajram hit, and he sings along softly.

There is nobody else on the road. It is not the main highway; that had been left behind several miles ago. The sky is azure, few clouds floating lazily above. The road becomes narrower, a strip of concrete and tar among the dunes.

The pick-up suddenly veers off the road, struggling a bit in the heavy sand, until it finally comes to a stop at the edge of a dune. Slamming the door behind him, the man gets off and walks to back of the pick up. He seems to be dragging something along the floor of the pickup. A pair of hands comes into sight. The pick up driver quickly divests one hand of the heavy gold watch on its wrist, putting it in one of his pockets. Pulling the body out, he lets it roll down the side of the dune. He looks up at the sky. A lone bird is a tiny speck in the distance. The birds and the sand will do the rest.

The pick up is back on the road; it is late afternoon now, and he wants to be back in the city before dusk.

One year earlier

The coffee shop wasn’t crowded, but I would have noticed him immediately even if it had been. It would have been hard not to- he was well over six feet, long legs encased in tattered jeans worn almost off the hip, and a bright blue t-shirt, that bore the rather incongruous legend : Elvis Lives. His hair was longer than was usual; the stubble indicated that his hand had not stretched toward a razor for some days. Perhaps he caught me staring, because off came the Guccis, and on came an insolent smile, a challenge in his dark coffee eyes. I quickly turned my attention to the sudoku game I’d been playing, but the numbers made no sense, and I could hear the hammering of my heart over the rock song blaring right overhead and the ruckus being made by his companions as they threw themselves into the sofas and chairs. They seemed to be animated about something, probably the soccer match. Who had won? I didn’t care at all for soccer, which was why I was sitting here in this coffee shop, while the rest of the world drove itself into frenzy over a bunch of men pushing a ball around. The match must have just gotten over. An argument seemed to have developed about which side should have won. The referee’s integrity was called into question, as was the ancestry of several players. Damn it, couldn’t they have found another place?

I threw them a dirty look. And caught him watching me. I could feel myself beginning to blush. This was awkward and embarrassing. At almost-twenty, I should be able to handle myself better. He was still looking at me.

I pretended to drink my coffee, picking up my cup…an empty cup, as it turned out. Shit. I could not bring myself to look back at him. I should just pay and leave. I scrambled in my wallet for enough cash to cover three cups of coffee.

Leaving so soon?

There he was, as cool as a cucumber in a salad.

Uh..yes, I’ve had enough caffeine to keep me awake for the night.

Then you should hang out with us. We don’t sleep.

I smiled.

Thanks, but..

Reza, he said, holding out his hand. He was a strange one. I could see a bit of a tattoo peeking from under one of his t-shirt sleeves, and was suddenly desperate to see the rest of it, slide my fingers over that arm and feel the pattern.

Rafiq, I replied.

And that was that.

We were as unlike each other as could be. He was reckless, a gambler, born to lead. I was shy, reserved. I was drawn to him like a moth to flame. He could make a story, a production out of everything. With him around, things happened. He was just one of those people. Reza would do anything. The riskier, the better. Most nights we would cruise the town at 2 am, all of us with enough alcohol in us to fill a vat. Sometimes we would pick up women. I never went with one though, always finding an excuse.

Three months after that first day, we found ourselves sitting out on the rocks, the water lapping at our feet, as the tide began to come in. The tips of our cigarettes glowed in the dark.

Ever been in love?

I looked sideways at him, and looked away.

Shrug.

Ever had a girl?

Sure.

Liar.

Why should I lie?

You’re scared.

Of what?

This.

And suddenly his lips were pressed against mine. For a moment, I did nothing. Then I closed my eyes.

When he pulled away, I was shaking.

You’re crazy. We’ll get arrested.

He laughed.

He placed my hand over my heart, beating madly.

Feel that pump? That’s the only way to live.

We made love there, on that beach.

Did our other friends know about us? I didn’t know. Nobody ever gave a sign of it. And Reza never touched me in public. And neither did I touch him, not even a slap on the back. I was afraid how much I would give away.

My sister almost found me out once. I’d doodled R heart R in the silliest way in a notebook, and she saw it. What’s this? she crowed, oooh, Rafiq has a girlfriend!! Ooh, who is it..look, Farahh, look, Rafiq has a girl…R..who could it be…oh I know..it’s Rehana, isn’t it?

I had no idea who Rehana was, but I was grateful for her name.

Give it back to me before I beat you up, I said, snatching back the book, and tearing the paper up.

I thought I wouldn’t be seeing Reza that night. There was a soccer match on, and the guys were planning to go to one of the sports bars and make a night of it. I’d excused myself saying I had an exam coming up. It was true, only the exam was ten days away. It was close on ten when the phone rang. Come on down, he said. I looked out of the window from my bedroom, and could see him waving up at me. There were making quite a row down there, I could see.

I have an exam to study for.

Stop being an asshole, and get down here.

So I went.

They were all drunk, as usual, and I was greeted with loud cheers.

Ah, we are blessed.

The Great Student himself.

I laughed as I got in the car.

Where are we headed, I asked?

Home. I was surprised, it was a bit early to be going home.

Got some good stuff.

Oh, yes, that explained it.

Later, when I could think about it, I couldn’t recall exactly how it all happened. Who was it that had started it? How did I find myself on the floor, with my pants down, blood flowing from my nose? Which one of my friends held me down while the others raped me? It’s all red and white, and noise in my head. But one thing I remember. Reza and the camera. Reza laughing, one hand on the sony camera that we’d bought together just the last week. That, that, I remember very clearly.

Everything else is a haze, and then I find myself watching the sun rise on that beach, a few metres away from where Reza and I had first kissed. At some point, it came to me that I should go home. It was early summer. Soon, the traffic would start to build up on this road. All those people, going about their daily lives as though nothing had changed.

When did it come to me?

When did the helpless rage I felt crystallize, white, into this packet that I’m playing with in my pocket?

When did the red heat in my blood settle into the coldness of this metal against my hip?

When did the steps I took on those endless, aimless nights of walking around the city direct my feet back up this staircase?

I don’t know.

The door opens. It’s been four months.

Rafiq, he says, my friend.

Today

The sun disappears in a conflagration of colours, and the waves lap gently along the shore. The night falls quickly. Someday, my sins will find me out. But tonight, there is the cooling sand beneath my feet, the soft splash of the sea, and, if I turn my head, there by the rocks, the silhouette of two lovers sharing their first, sweet kiss.

Thank you

2009-04-24T00:12:00.001+05:30

..for reading this blog all these years.
Perhaps, we'll meet somewhere. :)