Friday, July 17, 2009
12 TEAS AND A BRIEF CASE OF MURDER
Noor and Parveen were contract killers
Theirs had been a most unlikely romance
The target's photograph was under Noor's coffee cup
And Sam Bhai's Colt .32s tucked into their denims
But they had some time to kill first....
Moon-moon stole a glance past Nakul's right shoulder
He was here, in a blue pullover
Above the pullover, she was absurdly determined not to look
She might catch his eye
And that would be so not done....
Nakul turned his head slightly
He remembered seeing that man somewhere
With a little effort, he was sure
He would recollect his name
Sometimes he was certain that she was having an affair....
Saumitra looked out from the corner of his right eye
Pretending to concentrate on the Daily Mirror
He wanted to tell her
Look at these memories
You were so beautiful back then....
Amrita looked at him in awe
Not many knew that he looked better in real life
Sometimes she thought that she loved him more than he loved her
She didn't realize that the pain she had,
Didn't just magically disappear....
Jackie looked around the room anxiously
From his own side of the restaurant,
His view was partially blocked
By an egg shaped head
For some reason, that man made Jackie uneasy....
Jenny caught her breath
She clasped tightly onto the cold steel briefcase
Under their table, by her shins
She felt grateful that at twenty five
She was still capable of being thrilled....
The egg shaped head ordered a hot chocolate
He surveyed everyone else with quiet amusement
The newspaper masquerade, the white knuckled briefcase,
The flushed cheeks, the stolen glances, the veiled revolvers
Nothing escaped his attention....
Strangely, looking at Amrita, of all people
The Captain felt a sudden stab of recognition-
A composite picture of hundreds of naïve, sad, respectable wives
All looking alike with their mild patient faces and obstinate upper lips
And eyes filled with foolish hope
Veronica and me were also there that day
Our lips colliding as we sipped our cappuccinos
Our millionaire great grandfather was dead at hundred
At the funeral, there had been suspicions
That it was murder....
The Airport cafe, mellowed by the winter afternoon sun
Told many stories that day, commingling and diverging
Do you sometimes feel that we are inside a poem?
I'm so horny that it's funny
My characters are traveling with me
Is it embarrassing to feel like lovers?
Back when I solved that mysterious affair at Styles
Later, they would have to think of doing justice to its contents
She smiled at the irony in that sentence
And at the military-looking chap at the adjacent table
He could easily be an undercover cop
Those peculiar mustaches could only be a disguise
Besides he had a deep mistrust of foreigners
You are still beautiful
In a chubby, jaded, matronly way
Was it possible that the four years of her marriage
Had reduced down to one incident
My libido
Your mascara
Getting all messed up in these rains
Incredible bewitching woman
The rouge and the compact
Working overtime to keep you from fading
Who apart from me knows about his insurance policy?
Moon-moon is slowly getting inebriated
Dostoevsky wannabe
There are one or two curious glances at my face
She's a ruin but a spectacular ruin
His men would be covering the exits
This sandwich has no mayonnaise
Suddenly, right in the middle of the restaurant,
A head fell forward onto the tablecloth,
Scattering silverware and silence
She neither spoke nor thought
Amrita Shergill, plump, painter, housewife, thirty two, was dead
And Hercule Poirot knew
Everything
Theirs had been a most unlikely romance
The target's photograph was under Noor's coffee cup
And Sam Bhai's Colt .32s tucked into their denims
But they had some time to kill first....
Moon-moon stole a glance past Nakul's right shoulder
He was here, in a blue pullover
Above the pullover, she was absurdly determined not to look
She might catch his eye
And that would be so not done....
Nakul turned his head slightly
He remembered seeing that man somewhere
With a little effort, he was sure
He would recollect his name
Sometimes he was certain that she was having an affair....
Saumitra looked out from the corner of his right eye
Pretending to concentrate on the Daily Mirror
He wanted to tell her
Look at these memories
You were so beautiful back then....
Amrita looked at him in awe
Not many knew that he looked better in real life
Sometimes she thought that she loved him more than he loved her
She didn't realize that the pain she had,
Didn't just magically disappear....
Jackie looked around the room anxiously
From his own side of the restaurant,
His view was partially blocked
By an egg shaped head
For some reason, that man made Jackie uneasy....
Jenny caught her breath
She clasped tightly onto the cold steel briefcase
Under their table, by her shins
She felt grateful that at twenty five
She was still capable of being thrilled....
The egg shaped head ordered a hot chocolate
He surveyed everyone else with quiet amusement
The newspaper masquerade, the white knuckled briefcase,
The flushed cheeks, the stolen glances, the veiled revolvers
Nothing escaped his attention....
Strangely, looking at Amrita, of all people
The Captain felt a sudden stab of recognition-
A composite picture of hundreds of naïve, sad, respectable wives
All looking alike with their mild patient faces and obstinate upper lips
And eyes filled with foolish hope
Veronica and me were also there that day
Our lips colliding as we sipped our cappuccinos
Our millionaire great grandfather was dead at hundred
At the funeral, there had been suspicions
That it was murder....
The Airport cafe, mellowed by the winter afternoon sun
Told many stories that day, commingling and diverging
Do you sometimes feel that we are inside a poem?
I'm so horny that it's funny
My characters are traveling with me
Is it embarrassing to feel like lovers?
Back when I solved that mysterious affair at Styles
Later, they would have to think of doing justice to its contents
She smiled at the irony in that sentence
And at the military-looking chap at the adjacent table
He could easily be an undercover cop
Those peculiar mustaches could only be a disguise
Besides he had a deep mistrust of foreigners
You are still beautiful
In a chubby, jaded, matronly way
Was it possible that the four years of her marriage
Had reduced down to one incident
My libido
Your mascara
Getting all messed up in these rains
Incredible bewitching woman
The rouge and the compact
Working overtime to keep you from fading
Who apart from me knows about his insurance policy?
Moon-moon is slowly getting inebriated
Dostoevsky wannabe
There are one or two curious glances at my face
She's a ruin but a spectacular ruin
His men would be covering the exits
This sandwich has no mayonnaise
Suddenly, right in the middle of the restaurant,
A head fell forward onto the tablecloth,
Scattering silverware and silence
She neither spoke nor thought
Amrita Shergill, plump, painter, housewife, thirty two, was dead
And Hercule Poirot knew
Everything
NAKED DINNER
The four of us sit- a- talking in our Cosmopolitan tones
Like an illustrated Enid Blyton novel
Melancholic Bernard Hermann
Spouts from an invisible jukebox
In between bouts of some proverbial popular remix,
Totally random, loud and unclear
I'm petrified of running into Winnie
What's happening to my characters?
Susan looks at me when I look at Reva looking at Aniruddha looking at-
Over-bored, self assured, annoying, women
Parsi Pearls, their make ups a veil
The abundance of nakedness
I can smell the infidelity in their hair
And the dead cows in their Guccis
Appalled by their bourgeoisie vivacity
Someone looks like someone famous
Someone else looks like someone I knew
I think eventually everyone is like that
Bloody actors
Reunion of the Class of 2003
Nonsense
It's as though a chasm separates me now from others
I’m here
But I'm not really here
I'd rather be writing poetry around people who think I'm clever
The party's almost over
People get sleepy
The balloons lie deflated
Susan asks me for another Bloody Mary
It is then that I hear
That familiar voice engaging others in stories around the fireplace
A voice I knew from
Before color television
Before math tuitions
Before competition
He was the first friend to whom I introduced Winnie
He was the second person I wrote to during my year in Paris
He was the only nine year old I knew who knew about Ibsen and Pinter
He was the star of our English Literature class
He was the one who would go far
He was the surrogate for all our childhood dreams
Even today
I cannot help but think of him
Whenever I see a Pinter play
Or a snow capped mountain
For Nakul Chowdhury had been my best friend in whatever I can recall of my childhood
But now, I realize that I make him uncomfortable
We pretend we don't know each other
In that split second, I could see many things:-
Monogrammed rejection letters in publisher envelopes
A talent more precocious than any I'd ever seen
A pair of haunted eyes that once brimmed with hope
The man who still told stories when he had nothing else to give
And that he'd never quite become the next Joyce
(I found later from the hostess that Nakul had joined his father's footwear business)
They had won
They had succeeded
In touching him, corrupting him
With their disease
Him, too
Weathered by their bitterness and apathy
Of the world, he had grown up to be
A compromising sell out
A materialist hypocrite
A disillusioned, inconsequential, ordinary middle aged man
A failure.
And now, to see him like that
Devastates me
I guess on most days, he could pretend to be happy
Around people who didn't know any better
But on nights like this, with voices from the past
He was compelled to dwell on what might have been
He was forced to think of all the unpublished pages in the aluminum trunk in the attic
He was made to ponder over every rejection and all those near misses
That he could no longer hide his pain in his cynicism
That he could no longer evade eye contact
That he could no longer avoid disappointing someone
That's why I pretended I didn't know him
I wanted to spare him the humiliation
But when he left the party tonight
I felt again the sort of numbness I had felt
The night my father told me that there was no Santa Claus
The night Magician Nandi revealed the vanishing thumb trick, only to me
Tonight too, I felt,
A part of me was lost
Forever
Like an illustrated Enid Blyton novel
Melancholic Bernard Hermann
Spouts from an invisible jukebox
In between bouts of some proverbial popular remix,
Totally random, loud and unclear
I'm petrified of running into Winnie
What's happening to my characters?
Susan looks at me when I look at Reva looking at Aniruddha looking at-
Over-bored, self assured, annoying, women
Parsi Pearls, their make ups a veil
The abundance of nakedness
I can smell the infidelity in their hair
And the dead cows in their Guccis
Appalled by their bourgeoisie vivacity
Someone looks like someone famous
Someone else looks like someone I knew
I think eventually everyone is like that
Bloody actors
Reunion of the Class of 2003
Nonsense
It's as though a chasm separates me now from others
I’m here
But I'm not really here
I'd rather be writing poetry around people who think I'm clever
The party's almost over
People get sleepy
The balloons lie deflated
Susan asks me for another Bloody Mary
It is then that I hear
That familiar voice engaging others in stories around the fireplace
A voice I knew from
Before color television
Before math tuitions
Before competition
He was the first friend to whom I introduced Winnie
He was the second person I wrote to during my year in Paris
He was the only nine year old I knew who knew about Ibsen and Pinter
He was the star of our English Literature class
He was the one who would go far
He was the surrogate for all our childhood dreams
Even today
I cannot help but think of him
Whenever I see a Pinter play
Or a snow capped mountain
For Nakul Chowdhury had been my best friend in whatever I can recall of my childhood
But now, I realize that I make him uncomfortable
We pretend we don't know each other
In that split second, I could see many things:-
Monogrammed rejection letters in publisher envelopes
A talent more precocious than any I'd ever seen
A pair of haunted eyes that once brimmed with hope
The man who still told stories when he had nothing else to give
And that he'd never quite become the next Joyce
(I found later from the hostess that Nakul had joined his father's footwear business)
They had won
They had succeeded
In touching him, corrupting him
With their disease
Him, too
Weathered by their bitterness and apathy
Of the world, he had grown up to be
A compromising sell out
A materialist hypocrite
A disillusioned, inconsequential, ordinary middle aged man
A failure.
And now, to see him like that
Devastates me
I guess on most days, he could pretend to be happy
Around people who didn't know any better
But on nights like this, with voices from the past
He was compelled to dwell on what might have been
He was forced to think of all the unpublished pages in the aluminum trunk in the attic
He was made to ponder over every rejection and all those near misses
That he could no longer hide his pain in his cynicism
That he could no longer evade eye contact
That he could no longer avoid disappointing someone
That's why I pretended I didn't know him
I wanted to spare him the humiliation
But when he left the party tonight
I felt again the sort of numbness I had felt
The night my father told me that there was no Santa Claus
The night Magician Nandi revealed the vanishing thumb trick, only to me
Tonight too, I felt,
A part of me was lost
Forever
BOTTLE-GREEN BUTTERFLIES
They're still there
The ones for whom you wake up every morning
The ones for whom you look in the mirror every day
The ones who write closeted poetry and read Confucius
The ones with whom you wouldn't mind getting lost in the winter wilderness
The ones who get dimples when they smile bashfully at you
The ones whose throbbing, dewy lips seem to always crave yours
The ones that cry every time they see Pather Panchali
The ones who’re as lifelike as a Vermeer painting, drawn with a fine camel hair brush
The ones who look like children when their hair is unruly
The ones who gift you unexpected compliments
The ones who’re playfully combative while sharing passions
The ones whom you catch looking up from their Capotes to look at you
The ones you miss most on every vacation
The ones you want to touch so bad on the most difficult of occasions
The ones who never cease to wonder you
The ones who make you smile in your sleep
The ones who make you look out of the window in the rain with a sad, longing face
The ones who make every new pain somehow worthwhile
The ones who open your soul up like bandages
The ones who're somehow always beyond your reach
They're still there
The ones for whom you wake up every morning
The ones for whom you look in the mirror every day
The ones who write closeted poetry and read Confucius
The ones with whom you wouldn't mind getting lost in the winter wilderness
The ones who get dimples when they smile bashfully at you
The ones whose throbbing, dewy lips seem to always crave yours
The ones that cry every time they see Pather Panchali
The ones who’re as lifelike as a Vermeer painting, drawn with a fine camel hair brush
The ones who look like children when their hair is unruly
The ones who gift you unexpected compliments
The ones who’re playfully combative while sharing passions
The ones whom you catch looking up from their Capotes to look at you
The ones you miss most on every vacation
The ones you want to touch so bad on the most difficult of occasions
The ones who never cease to wonder you
The ones who make you smile in your sleep
The ones who make you look out of the window in the rain with a sad, longing face
The ones who make every new pain somehow worthwhile
The ones who open your soul up like bandages
The ones who're somehow always beyond your reach
They're still there
AFTER THE OSCARS
I want to thank my father for his sperm
And not much else
I want to thank my mother who taught me how to walk when I was one
And even later, when the journeys got too long
Or too dark
Before shutting me out of her life one fine day
Without any explanation
Or remorse
I want to thank God
For all this beautiful confusion
I want to thank Winnie from whence the pain came
She's the sensuous breath in everything I shoot
Providing me with a motive to the crimes
I want to thank Susan who came like an ephemeral spring
Just when the winters seemed interminable
I want to thank Gautam uncle
For believing that I could do anything I wanted
And for the amphetamines I OD’d on
I want to thank my characters
For agreeing to work with me
I want to thank David Lynch and JD Salinger
For touching my life with their genius
I want to thank my financiers
For coping with my tantrums
Even on that tempestuous 24th February morning
When I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown
I want to thank my audience
Without you, all this would've been inconsequential
All
This
I want to thank myself
For not dying at twenty one
For waking up on most mornings
For lying successfully on others
This being one of those
And not much else
I want to thank my mother who taught me how to walk when I was one
And even later, when the journeys got too long
Or too dark
Before shutting me out of her life one fine day
Without any explanation
Or remorse
I want to thank God
For all this beautiful confusion
I want to thank Winnie from whence the pain came
She's the sensuous breath in everything I shoot
Providing me with a motive to the crimes
I want to thank Susan who came like an ephemeral spring
Just when the winters seemed interminable
I want to thank Gautam uncle
For believing that I could do anything I wanted
And for the amphetamines I OD’d on
I want to thank my characters
For agreeing to work with me
I want to thank David Lynch and JD Salinger
For touching my life with their genius
I want to thank my financiers
For coping with my tantrums
Even on that tempestuous 24th February morning
When I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown
I want to thank my audience
Without you, all this would've been inconsequential
All
This
I want to thank myself
For not dying at twenty one
For waking up on most mornings
For lying successfully on others
This being one of those
MONSOON
So, as time braces the body and cleanses the soul,
One sits and reflects, over cups of tea,
(Clove tea with Threptin biscuits on Susan's porch)
That all is not lost
And yet, the heart still yearns
For those days, when rains brought unexpected holidays
When recklessness of the mind was the important thing
And you tell me,
“Why do you always get so philosophical during sunsets and rains?”
And then it comes
In beautiful fragments of frightful dreams
Her face comes back
In swollen wounds and cries
And Reveries and yawns and sighs
“Whose face?”, you ask, “Winnie?”
No
But the one that I never told you about
The girl who didn't look beautiful until she smiled
Gold teeth and a tune for this town
Were all in her mouth
What whispers passed
Beneath spiraled fingers
And stockinged feet
Of all my disintegrating memories,
Hers is the most vivid
She comes to me with the clarity of a painter
In Elysian Fields
Like an invisible madness
Even in my room
She had worn her rose tinted, heart shaped sunglasses
Lest someone should recognize her
And the strains of “Sound of Silence”, still echoes in my ears
Room no. 1883
We almost eloped
Why didn't we?
(We were sixteen.
Are you kidding me?)
There are nights Susan, when I want to talk to her
I want to wake her up and tell her
That I'm now six feet one inch tall
That my hair is no longer brown
That I grew up and became a filmmaker
That I have finally found a place I can call home
Film sets or otherwise,
I hope,
She has too
Even today, there is a wind that blows from the north
From the Mussourie of nine years ago
Her face in the pouring window
I remember that afternoon better than I remember whole years
I never saw her again in my life
That had been my first encounter with loss and pain
And yet Susan,
One sits and reflects, over cups of tea, that
The world is very big
Our sorrows too small
And we have to think of this life
That this-
This is,
An adventure.
One sits and reflects, over cups of tea,
(Clove tea with Threptin biscuits on Susan's porch)
That all is not lost
And yet, the heart still yearns
For those days, when rains brought unexpected holidays
When recklessness of the mind was the important thing
And you tell me,
“Why do you always get so philosophical during sunsets and rains?”
And then it comes
In beautiful fragments of frightful dreams
Her face comes back
In swollen wounds and cries
And Reveries and yawns and sighs
“Whose face?”, you ask, “Winnie?”
No
But the one that I never told you about
The girl who didn't look beautiful until she smiled
Gold teeth and a tune for this town
Were all in her mouth
What whispers passed
Beneath spiraled fingers
And stockinged feet
Of all my disintegrating memories,
Hers is the most vivid
She comes to me with the clarity of a painter
In Elysian Fields
Like an invisible madness
Even in my room
She had worn her rose tinted, heart shaped sunglasses
Lest someone should recognize her
And the strains of “Sound of Silence”, still echoes in my ears
Room no. 1883
We almost eloped
Why didn't we?
(We were sixteen.
Are you kidding me?)
There are nights Susan, when I want to talk to her
I want to wake her up and tell her
That I'm now six feet one inch tall
That my hair is no longer brown
That I grew up and became a filmmaker
That I have finally found a place I can call home
Film sets or otherwise,
I hope,
She has too
Even today, there is a wind that blows from the north
From the Mussourie of nine years ago
Her face in the pouring window
I remember that afternoon better than I remember whole years
I never saw her again in my life
That had been my first encounter with loss and pain
And yet Susan,
One sits and reflects, over cups of tea, that
The world is very big
Our sorrows too small
And we have to think of this life
That this-
This is,
An adventure.
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