MY BEST FRIEND, HIS GIRLFRIEND AND HER LOVER

Dots and designs of sandalwood mark her forehead

Crimson is the color of her silk Saree and that of her eyes, too

The mascara is slightly running down her eyelashes and caking her makeup

Twenty Two carat gold bangles adorn her wrists and her head is covered

In minutes from now, she is also expected to cover her face, with a betel leaf

While being carried in a small charpoy on the shoulders of her brothers

And encircled around her unsuspecting, 'to be' husband

Then the women will throw rice on the couple and blow on seashells

And in these few, incongruous moments

Which later, she knows she will never be able to recall properly

She will become Mrs Amarnath Chatterjee....

Presently, the sound of Shehnai commingling with Rabindra Sangeet, falls on her ears

She is looking like the idol of the Goddess Durga; beautiful, but inanimate

Choti is outside, knocking on the bedroom door, “Would you please hurry up?”

Ma and Baba are anxiously awaiting in the terrycloth wedding palace

That is by now, smelling heavily, of incense, marigold and butter

Amar, mildly amused by the inscrutable ceremonies, is adjusting his 'topor',

Somnath Da, adjusting his pink turban, is receiving the gift carrying guests at the gate

Her brothers' wives are seated around the burning fire,

Their chiffons sticking to their bodies in the heat

The guests have just begun their third round of Black & White and Reshmi Kebabs

Her in-laws, unaccustomed to wearing 'Dhutis', are sitting on the floor besides the priest

The priest is mumbling that the auspicious hour is fast passing them by

Maqbool is inside the bedroom, holding her hand, refusing to let go....

Thirty seconds ago, they had broken their forty second kiss

He still kissed like an adolescent, and she, still tasted like laingda mangoes

She adjusts her Saree; carefully

It's parting is still rumpled by his touch

She applies more lipstick; guiltily

Her mouth, still wet with his saliva

PART 2

He looks at her with his sky blue eyes and says,

There are going to be days

When I'm going to be needing just your body

When I'll hate you for asking Baba for money

When I'm not going to talk to you for days afterwards because of that

When I'll think of inventing new ways to hurt you

When I'll scream at you for forgetting to wake me up for the Champions League final

When I'll masturbate to Nicole Kidman in our bathroom

When I'll forget your thirty seventh birthday

When I'll suspect you of having an affair with Mr. Sukumar Bose on the second floor

When I'll smash the crystal flower vase against the bedroom wall

Come away with me

She wants to tell him,

There are going to be days

When you'll see me for whole weeks without make up

When I'll fantasize about Ankur Malhotra while in your caress

When I'll refuse to sleep with you for twenty four days after you flirt with Sonali Di

When I'll be repulsed by your touch after you decide not to have a baby in our third year

When I'll slap you for disrespecting my father

When I'll not allow you to watch the Seinfeld reruns on Sunday afternoons

When I'll say after reading the Winnie series that your poetry is pretentious

When I'll think that our ultimate, Bollywood style, runaway, wedding was a mistake

Take me away with you

Leave the necklace in the closet

Leave the winter in the ground

Leave the past all behind you

Leave the relatives, open mouthed

He pulls her closer to him and starts removing her Saree

One end of it is knotted on the back door and the other draped over the balcony

No one notices the two surreptitiously leaving the two storey house

The Royal Enfield is parked around the corner

Several Friends, a registrar, two marigold garlands and a three room penthouse

Are waiting in Jamshedpur for the two of them

Within seven hours, they will be reaching there

Then for the years to come, they're going to regale their children with stories,

About the night Baba ran off with their Ma

But for now, they drive silently, onto the Highway, into their future

PART 2

Vineeta is suddenly forty three

She has been married to Amar for seventeen years now

Maqbool, you should know that during this time, there are days

When he hesitantly holds her right hand while she cries during Pather Panchali

When he tries to make Colombian omelets she craves for during their year in Paris

When he takes a weekend off from work to take Baba out for golf after Ma dies

When he cleans her vomit from the hall floor after she's had one Bloody Mary too many

When he insists on buying her Japanese food from Yokohama after every fight,

So much so that she starts looking forward to them

It is in brief moments such as these-

That Vineeta is overwhelmed that she has chosen him

“You are

Something else”

She says once in a while

They can now resume conversations they left mid sentence, months ago

Those occasional long, long distance PCO conversations with you, notwithstanding

Her love for you is fading

Drying up, just like her now

Yes, she does think about you during some sunsets and occasional monsoon afternoons

But largely, she thinks that

You are so like a poem; intelligent but incomprehensible, beautiful but inanimate

But her tears are real

The sex is real

Rhea is real

So, now in their bed room

Amar and Winnie soak in the sunset

As if they are one person, sharing one soul, one fear, one future, one silence and one bed

In a few moments from now,

She will look out of the window and imagine seeing your face

But just then Amar would awaken and pull her back into his embrace

And for a few blissful moments after that

She will forget you

"THE ACTRESS" aka "THE MARILYN MONROE SYNDROME" aka "STANISLASKY, WHO?"

My name is Vineeta Chatterjee
I’m twenty seven, female, sexy and lost
I work in the movies by day and write poetry at night
Six hundred and twenty seconds ago, I consumed hundred milligrams of prussic acid
It kills usually in an hour
But if taken on an empty stomach; a lot sooner


My stomach is empty
I've not had anything for two days
But sadness
Anir wanted his malnourished prostitute to look real
He doesn't know anything
I think I've become anorexic
I look in the mirror
This no make up look scares me
I need the blush and the mascara now
Not just to enhance me but somehow to define me
Once, I was sexy as hell
Now my soul feels naked
Without the concealer cheekbones
The glycerin eyes
And the waterproof makeup


I almost smile as I think of what you would’ve said to that
But the Botox has made it difficult for my lips to make the journey
Moreover, there are these new faint laugh lines under my eyes
And therefore, I convince myself, that I should not smile anymore
For ironically, my happiness makes me sad
There's a tiny pimple between my eyes
But I'm sure it'll be gone tomorrow
By then I want you to stand over my casket
And say that I look beautiful
Even with my sky blue lips


In this claustrophobic vanity van
It is as quiet as a tomb.
I'm waiting for the shot to be called
Wouldn't they hurry up, please?
I say to myself
“Open your eyes”
I have so many unfinished scenes left
But he has left nothing behind
Except for the residue of him
Dead good looking
In beauty's spring
Dried up on the satin seat covers


I sip my last cup of tea
Full bodied, freshly brewed Darjeeling
The steam rises lazily from the cup and arouses memories of my childhood
Maqbool’s memories
And that spent- together winter in Manali, our one getaway
And the tea on the porch there


Why did you love me?
Because you actually liked me
And my allegedly irresistible dimples
Maqbool-
To you,
I bequeath my writings
And your fantastic verse which inspired me to write
And to which I listened to bravely,
Not because I looked for the truth in them
But because I looked on them as racy, juicy paperbacks
And occasionally because they were about me
Of course, also because I loved you


I think I don’t miss
Your face,
That was sometimes handsome, sometimes just strange
Your hands
That were so big that my wrists used to get locked in them
Or even your scandalous lips
That liked to kiss me like an adolescent
But I quite miss your eyes
I search for them everywhere-

Alone,
in a crowd,
in every stranger,
in every sudden smile,
in every vigorous handshake,
in every helpful look,
in every flirtatious gaze,

But I haven’t seen anything like them again,
Warm, playful and sweet
Like the wild blackberries I remember from my thirteen year old hikes to Rudraprayag


And so I've tried reliving you through my verse,
You used to love words
No one but you, could cause such bloodshed through a single sentence
No one but you, could hurt me so much
No one but you, could quote Keats while giving me oral pleasure
No one but you, could sing just like John Lennon
No one but you, could kiss me when I screamed
No one but you, could understand my pain. And my prose


Max, I still bear scars from that skating accident....
Now, Anir is calling me for scene 42
But I want you and everyone to know
That when I cry tonight
These tears will be real

POLLY SAID HER BACK HURTS

….
Polly said,
“Your poems are too long and repetitive
Your films are pretentious
Your trousers are woefully out of fashion
Your hairstyle is outrageous
Your parents were in love with different people
You're the one who killed your grandfather that July
For years, your mother longed to see you. But you were never there
You sing like a girl and you kiss like an adolescent
Winnie was fucking Mandy the whole year you were in Florence
Her love had faded long ago”
….

ONE

The ceiling fan billows the white sheet
Giving an illusion of breathing inside
It is such a tempting illusion....


Looking a bit like one of Sarat Chandra's heroes
He's sitting quietly in a corner
Like the malignant tumor with folded hands
Camouflaging his tears with his dimpled smile
But the rouge of his eyes, like welts from a belt
Betray him from under his brown- black eyeglasses
You don't fool me, brother....


The doctor says, “Well of course, he has to cry”
He hasn't spoken a word since the morning of the ninth
It intrigues me
His cold blooded silence


I miss the sound of his voice
That's like a cross between his father and John Lennon
Raspy, but not shrill; boyish but not naive; accented but not heavily
I also miss his precious smile
I remember, when we were children, he laughed,
When I kept asking questions during the bedtime stories he so skillfully narrated at nights
Or when I tickled his feet to wake him up in the mornings
Or when I showed him the salsa that I thought then that I had mastered


Maybe I'll bake him his favorite, slightly salty, flour biscuits with tea in the afternoon
Maybe I'll flash him a smile, a quick glance of my cleavage, hold his hands tight
Maybe I'll let him give me a back massage and then....
Anything to draw him out
Of the bedroom of denial he has locked himself in


TWO

To tell you the truth, my eyes this morning were red;
More from the lack of sleep on my flight
Than grief
That, I guess, had not sunk in then
I wonder if I scream tonight
Will anyone be able to hear me?
Or it'll be like in that dream
Baby, I can't express
My mixed emotions and my helplessness


There are small things I remember from the haze of today
The slicing sound of a devotional song somewhere in the background
The second rate Assam tea being prepared in abundance for the glycerin giving guests
All of whom come up to you and ask, “What's your pain, stranger?”
Your black colored Salwaar Kameez that made you look a pucca Muslim


Our life too will pass like the traces of a tear
And someday after tomorrow
You would no longer catch me unawares
By tickling at my feet


THREE

We drive back home, with you waving us goodbye from the porch
I keep watching you till you melt away in the distance
I have failed you
You still haven't spoken
Or Laughed
Or Cried
I feel the sudden urge to weep
And I wish we could have wept together


FOUR

And still
The silly, sentimental heart craves for
Another world cup,
Another cup of tea,
Another monsoon,
Another moment free
Another Sandesh,
Another happiness,
Another hug,
Another caress


You wrapped me in your arms
With the familiarity of old, warm, winter clothes
Your eyes seemed to say to me
“It is going to be all right”


Polly, you told me so many things
But I have all this pain that I never tell you
Because I think it would shatter you
Even more
It was only after you drove away crying in your Toyota;
Then it was my turn to be staggered.

“MEET ME IN MONTAUK....”

MY BEDROOM- 7 am------>“MEET ME IN MONTAUK... WINNIE”

Very concise, very whimsical, very self centered, very you

When I heard you on my bedroom phone's answering machine

In that instant I came to dread your voice

But I admit I was intrigued

Why did you want to meet me? Suddenly and Immediately?

Did you want more money?

Did you want back the mahogany roll top Baba had given us?

Were you having trouble with the Chevy again?

Had you still taken that part in Motley Theater's Traveling Troupe?

Were you missing me, despite your best intentions?

Did you change your mind, wanting to contest for custody?

Were you dying of cancer?

MONTAUK- 10 am---------> “I'VE MET SOMEONE”

Winnie's Wimbledon words served with coffee and coldbloodedness

I'm devastated, angry but also mildly amused

That all this while that I've been wallowing in your thoughts

You've been systematically getting over me

Auditioning for cameos on daytime television

Signing the withdrawal forms of all our joint accounts

Interviewing nannies to take care of Ronnie

Actively seeking out companionship at twenty seven

Glancing playfully at handsome men who smile at you

Going to Italian restaurants in the turquoise blue Cavalli gown I gave you last winter

Meeting Upamanyu in one of them

Sleeping with him on our bed

Calling an attorney on the morning after

Exhausted from the gratifying sex

The aftermath still running between your thighs

And then sending me a voice message

Imagining to yourself with a smile as to how this would totally crush me....

“I THINK HE LOVES ME.... WHAT SHOULD I DO?”

That you were with another man was not as shattering

But the fact that you chose someone who

Doesn't leave the last chocolate chip cookie in the tin for you to discover later

Doesn't strum 'Tell me what you see” when you're too ill or too sad or too tired

Doesn't know that you prefer motorcycling to Ladakh than flying to Florence

Doesn't share your passion for Reader's Digests and Theater of the Absurd

Doesn't hear you whisper in your sleep when you have the 'mute-dying-desert' dream

Doesn't notice that you always first turn to the left side before sleeping

Doesn't realize that that is due to a childhood superstition

Doesn't adore the tricycle accident at three faintly manifesting by your eyebrow

Doesn't draw you over fourteen days and nights in acrylic colors

Doesn't bother with opening doors, pulling chairs, cooking lasagna and writing poetry

But I don't discuss any of these things

Not only because they mean nothing to you

But also because I know that Manu is madly in love with you

“LET'S DO A THREESOME.... BITCH.”

For that's the least I could do for you guys

After all

I taught him how to wear a tie

I taught you how to drive a car

I taught him how to hold chopsticks

I taught you how to ice skate

I taught him how to speak convincingly with a Scottish accent

I taught you how to cry

BARELY LEGAL

Because I was eighteen when I saw it for the first time

Earlier than the average Indian male

And later than my cousin, Digbee

Before that I had only heard it in raucous abuses

Or in scandalous whispers camouflaged in spiraled palms

I think I had also encountered it before

In the bizarre graffiti on lavatory walls

Where, if one has the time and inclination,

One can observe at least fifteen different depictions

Put by pathetic (but surprisingly imaginative) men driven to their perverse extremes

Then of course, there was Jenna Jameson

By the way, we still love you, Jen

Our whole generation does (More so, the 1^st year engineers of Lake Place, Calcutta)

Who watched your films at daytime

And changed the world at nights

Therefore, by the 'first time' in the first stanza,

I must actually mean-

Real,

Alive,

In flesh

In fact, even in the moments before then

You were like a locked room mystery

Under your petticoat

Until

You did the unthinkable

The next morning

The sun rose as usual

And the world awoke too

But I was never quite

The same again

I guess, the remarkableness of the first time is that

It only happens once

After that, it's all just the same

And then you take to poetry

etc.

THAT MAGENTA SOMETHING

That afternoon when it started raining,

It caught them unawares

Washed away whatever egos he'd once embraced

And that magenta something in her hair

His borrowed umbrella flew like a polythene bag

Her sexy stiletto heels fell apart

The years had run like rabbits

And now they were back at the start

“With your smudged mascara and dripping hair

You look like the woman you had once claimed

You would never resemble

You look surreal, as though in a dream

Or one of those out of focus photographs I took of you in Mauritius

Or maybe a memory

….

“When I tried lending Salinger's 'Nine Stories'

From our Calcutta university library

I realized that someone had been there just before me

I remember turning my head slightly to the left

And that's when I saw a woman carrying it away

I was startled to discover that she was beautiful

It was the first time that I saw you

Slowly, I also discovered that you lived on 114 Lawrence Road

That during your free sixth periods, you read with earphones on but no music

That you wore tinted sunglasses on afternoons when you felt like crying

That you scribbled graffiti on wooden desks and poetry on paper napkins

That you'd started wearing your watch on the right hand to conceal the pain of a tattoo

And somewhere in between all that

I had fallen in love

A week later, when I did borrow the book

I saw a poem written on the margins of the thirty ninth page

I still remember it

I still don't understand what you wrote

Or why

Or when it was that you fell in love with me?

Or why””

…...

“Remember the time we had gone to Mussourie with Akshay and the gang?

I had gone skating despite you advising me not to

And I had slipped and hurt my right ankle badly

Blood was oozing and a bit of the skin was hanging out

But it was worth a wound, it was worth a thousand wounds

For you had been besides me the next instant

You had let me pierce your forearms with my pink polished nails

You had let me ruin your brand new cream corduroys by staining them crimson

While you dressed my wound silently, delicately

Slowly blowing over it; inadvertently, taking my name,

Again and again

You had somehow reminded me of Baba in my earliest memory

Wiping my little crying face with a hot water towel

When ants were crawling over chocolate left overs

On my sleeping lips

You too had been such a rock star about the whole thing

But after that you started crying

And I began to laugh

Looking back, I feel that

That was when I fell in love with you

I'm sorry for spoiling our trip

I'm sorry for shouting at you when you had applied the antiseptic

I'm sorry for never having told you

That I hadn't read 'Nine Stories' until last week

That day I had borrowed it for my cousin, Polly

That it was she who'd written that poem inside it

That it was the poem you fell in love with

Not me”

…..

“For the whole week afterwards

While you were yet to walk due to your plastered leg

I wrote poetry

Without the third row of letters that our laptop had

I just wished to share your despair

Just like this last paragraph”

KILLING REVA RAMANI

A half empty, uncolored, isosceles bottle of Chanel

Five long black hair strands on a monogrammed towel

Two cranberry lipstick stains on a bone-china teacup

Three gem-sized bindis across the bathroom mirror

A few black bras and a couple of shoes in the closet

An out of focus photo under the refrigerator magnet

One unfinished poem on the shelf but no leaving notes

Some saved letters, four staring walls and an empty pillow

Aniruddha dragged these things, one by one, into the hall

Going through each room, systematically

Then he looked at the pile he'd made with disdain and nostalgia

These were some of the things he still had left of Reva

Eventually, he set fire to everything

Even the silence and the memories

They all burnt away for good

With the Norwegian wood

Strangely the fire reminded him of both marriages and cremations

Miles and miles of bedroom fights but also some intimate jubilations

But after thirty five minutes and sixteen seconds,

As 1883, Landsdowne Road was falling apart;

That was when he had first started screaming

But she had left nothing behind

1984

No, not because of George Orwell's classic

Which I've not yet read, by the way;

But the year is significant to me

As this was the year when

I was born (or so I am told)

On the seventh of June

At exactly twelve twenty seven p.m.

Yes, on the most sweltering of occasions

In an Army Hospital in violence stricken north India (of which more later)

I had weighed four kilograms (average is two plus three quarters)

And was fair,

Had hair

That was more brown than black (straight from Dr. Ganguly's official report)

Twenty five years since,

I've often wondered

When my mother (presumably) and I (naturally) were crying;

What was the rest of the world up to?

And I've actually found some answers....

For example, I know now, that somewhere in the hills in Mussourie

A girl had written to Ruskin Bond

After reading one of his short stories

And inquired if he really was the same little boy of Dehradun's Aubrey Bond

She had been Rusty's first crush....

Back in Cleveland, Ohio

A then unknown Jim Jarmusch was finishing up his first film

About two self-styled hipsters, one immigrant girl and no plot

It was made with donated film stock, borrowed money and amateur actors

Of course, the film would go on to win at Cannes that year....

Just seven days ago, Indira Gandhi had been shot dead

By her own bodyguards

And this had led to a twentieth century witch-hunt,

Nation wide curfews, four thousand unnecessary deaths

Up to a couple of miles from my cradle....

In another part of the country,

While I was still to open my eyes;

Winnie was on the verge of walking.

She was exactly ten months and six days old

Even today, after a quarter of a century

She's learned to move on

Much before me

S & M

Scorching nights

Diffused lights

Slender fingers

Forensic fingerprints

Morbid inquisitiveness

Careless carnality

Breathless knees

Buckled ecstasy

You're so sexy, S

M says

Sex is overrated

Even though

She's just as bored as me

She writes as well

Scintillating, limpid prose with unsettling undercurrents

I love

The economy of expression

The mental masturbation

Abound in her words

And face

Losing self

Embracing breath

Ardent tongues

Avid caress

Aching thighs

Waterfall nuisance

Eerie silhouettes

Wall substance

Slow blue love of delphinium days

S in my head and my head in S

I like reading M

And her

Sorrow- scribbled eyes

Curling up with her on cold, winter afternoons

Laughing at the unexpected humor past midnight

Crying copious tears, when no one's looking; into her

Blood-shedding revelations

Reverentially staring at her

Typically devastating endings

Wishing they'd go on

Just a bit longer

And re-reading the abrupt, last paragraph

Again

And again

Distant thuds

Reflecting skin

Awful stabs

Parted lips

Soul curries

Open mouth

Brimmed senses

Last sobs

I met S in Vienna nine months ago

….

With her chic hair and upturned nose

She was too much

Even today, I'm bewildered by how much she looks

Has always looked

Like a Botticelli angel

The same smudged surreality

As though

Created by the artist in recollection.

I say so what if she's also a bimbo

M, I've known since the time I used to think

That sharpened pencil residues

Turned into erasers if kept overnight in a bowlful of milk under the bed

After an eleven hour bed-in that novel morning

S and I had woken up

Imbibing and assimilating
Every molecule of each other

Apart from that we had

Nothing in common

But she was so sexy that morning too,

All fu**ing, functioning parts of her

You know M,

Onceuponatime

There was something dangerous in writing alone

Not having anyone to share the absurdity with

Not anymore

Now, I want to tattoo my prose on

Your torso

Your clothes

Your face

Your prose

That I read

In graffiti- written subway walls

In my forgotten diary entries

In the new slang of born again Christians

In my mother's scrawled recipes

In rediscovered Shesher Kobita

In Japanese calligraphy and me

In the thin, tin, florescent bookmark

Inside the warm, satin covers

Looking a bit like the small, flaring birthmark

On your upper lip

Pages folded like your arms

Unputdownable like you in mine

It astonishes me that you're so much like

Your writing

Even now I wonder if

Beneath your staccato words,

Lay a mistress of kink

Yes, the evening before, S had called me inside and...

I still remember the scandalous, thin cushioned bed

And the mismatching bedsheets in lime- green checks

As though silent, testimonial witnesses

To our clumsy, clandestine, intercourses

While in Vienna, I looked forward to them

M, you revealed to me that day that you didn't like my writing

You said you found it too sentimental

I said, angrily then, that you too could've been beautiful

But for the faint, ugly, creases under your eyes

That seemed to have marked their journey

From one page to another

And that was when you had started crying

And I had left you right there

But when today I see you, M

In black and white, jacket- cover photos

I want to tell you

That I was lying that day

That you are beautiful

That you always

Were

REVOLVER

Bobby pantomimed, “What're you listening to?”.

Not for the first time in all those years,

Roop seemed to be far away.

Roop paused the CD player with a smile

And replied,

As though revealing a secret, “The Beatles”.

“Never heard of 'em”, Bobby said;

Half out of contempt

“Oh, then you've got to hear this song. It'll change your life”.

Bobby put the earphones on,

As though it were a beauty crown.

And then everything happened.

Within the space of a pop song....

Toggle on

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I want to tell you___________Singer___________________I never say but I so want to

My head is filled with____George Harrison___________touch your hair, kiss your neck,

Things to say________Album- Revolver(1966)_______undo your two top collar buttons

When you're near_______THE BEATLES_____It's one pm and I'm imagining you naked

All those words___________Roop asked_______Something in the way you infuriate me

They seem to slip away____”Isn't it cool?”_____________________________I love that

When I get near you_______Bobby said___________________________And your gaze

My head begins to_____”What're you saying?________That burns my face occasionally

Drag me down_________I don't understand”____I've never met anybody as basic as you

It's all right_____________”It's all right”____________But do you also have a secret life

I'll tell you maybe______Roop used to think_________That you go back to every night?

Next time around________that 'Revolver'_________________________I'm embarrassed

Sometimes I wish_____was the Beatles' best_____Bobby, you probably didn't even know

I knew you well__________And I agree_______That I followed you home last Thursday

Then I could____________Track Length:______________________________I shot you

Speak my mind____________02m:27s__________With my concealed camera for a year

And tell you________________Bass:_________________I saved your white paper cups

Maybe you'd understand___Paul McCartney______________With smeared crimson rims

I want to tell you___________Guitar:______________I love it that you let me touch you

I feel hung up____________John Lennon______________Somehow that also scares me

And I don't know why_______Drums:____________________Wet dreams I don't reveal

I don't mind______________Ringo Starr_____In my deliberate brushes against your arm

I could wait forever_____Track succeeded by:_____________________I want to tell you

I've got time___________'She said, she said'______________________Maybe tomorrow

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then just like that,

Roop walked out of the room

And Bobby's right index finger

Approached the 'play' button

THOSE WHO FADED IN THE RAIN

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 wore her rose tinted, heart shaped sunglasses

Lest someone should recognize her

And the strains of “Sound of Silence”, still echoing in my ears

Room no. 1883

We almost eloped

Why didn't we?

We were seventeen.

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 grew up and became a writer

That I'm now six feet one inch tall

That my hair is no longer brown

That I have finally found a place I can call home

I hope, she has too

I'm here

But

Even today, there is a wind that blows from the north

From Mussourie of seven 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

There's a pool here

As if the sea wasn't enough

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

TO GET OVER YOU

1 I ride in trains for whole nights trying to find myself

2. I call you from incognito pay-phones

Because I love to hear your silences

3. I look out at the ocean

But forget to notice how beautiful it is

Only that it is as inscrutably blue and silent and cold and tempestuous as your eyes

4. I drink myself insensible every night

I wake up in sweats every morning

But you keep on going by in my dreams

And I can't ever sleep

5. I behave stoically in the face of grief,

Knowing that the clouds above me,

The ground beneath my feet

And the air in my lungs

Are totally disinterested in how I feel

6. I destroy as much evidence of your existence as I could find

Until in the end,

All I am left with,

Are the red and white carnations of 2003.

I’ll always have those

Dried up in old, yellowing, dusty diaries

7. I suddenly remember your face and it flashes before me:

Your tiny, microscopic cut, just above your right eyebrow.

Then, I remember that I never asked you about it

I looked into your eyes so many times and yet I never asked you

Is it possible, that I just didn’t see you?

For I took your gaze for granted

But now, I miss it like hell

8. I feel the past clinging on to my fingers like gum

Yesterday stretches, yawns and is awake.
Here I am, again in the waiting room.

It’s going to rain

Things fall down

People look up

And when it rains,

It pours

9. I make plans to go to the Himalayas and become a recluse.

I wonder in Romanov nights,‘Whatever happened to you?’

I become constitutionally incapable of making eye contact

I fall in love with every woman I meet

I try to commit suicide by holding my breath

I cry occasionally

I lose eight and a half kilograms

I stop making movies

I keep believing everything will be all right

10. I write mechanically, without feeling

Page after page in silence

My poems; very scholarly, very droll

I wet my finger to turn the page

Giving myself enough time between pages,

To reach down to hold and stroke myself

While thinking of you,

Out of boredom, not titillation;

And also, to delude myself into believing

That it was just lust

THE 6 FEET 1 INCH GIRL

KANYAKUMARI, Monday, 7:44 am

Oyster shells, pen caps; memories, edible crabs,
Salt, silt and sand....
The sea brings these to the shore from time to time
But I look
At the sails of the vanishing ship
And I think of the time that has long since passed
Each ripple in the ocean now,
A moment gone by...

I think
There must be so many unfinished love stories in the world
Like mine
Lying at the bottom of the sea
As a pirate's treasure chest, long lost
Wanting to be found....

I see
Sea as a metaphor
Surrounding us with undrinkable pain
Bringing disasters occasionally
Leaving everyone an Island
And then storming through our eyes....


Will the breath that blew her paper boat across the sea-
One day send her sailing back to me?
Because there's something I should have said
But I didn't
And in the time we had,
My love for you
Somehow got
Lost in translation....

KOCHI, Sunday, 5:53 am

The ocean stretches out, yawns and is awake
Going ashore
Seven guys
One of them writes
On Foolscap
Six girls aboard
One of them beautiful
More than the Landscape....

I lie here
You remain there
I look forward to
Sleeping with you
In dreams
And in here
Somewhere
In God’s own country

CHERTHALA, Sunday, 1:27 pm

The September sky paints a thousand colors
It looks like the sea
And the sea looks like the sky
It is trippy and beautiful
Like Sgt Pepper’s

I remember how she'd looked at me with her eyes
That I could hear them speak,
Along with the raindrops,
Like they had a life of their own

They were the strangest eyes,
A little blue, a little green-
Shining beneath the sunset in her hair
She is too much

PERIYAR, Monday 1:30 am

Outside my window, a little while back I could see the elephants
The mothers teaching the young ones how to swim
I got some great pictures today
We are staying in a tree-house
Together

Salt lips touching
Each other
Your gown hung from the ceiling fan
Like a song strung on fugitive rhymes
It's wonderful
That lust gnaws have no language, race or religion
And I can skip the foreplay conversation

Because anyway my words, to her,
Like the color of my eyes
And the midsummer night's skies
Are black, warm and unfathomable

But what the hell
She's great in bed
You know how some girls have all the stuff
The Portmanteau complexion
And the 'come hither' looks


Her look says
“Ok, figure me out...
What am I going to say?”
And I say, “Girl-
Keep your hands off my groin”

KUMARAKOM, Sunday, 4:35 pm
Words, words, everywhere,
Not a drop to drink
She doesn't speak English
And she doesn't understand a word I say
So much for my poetry

And hers:

“R szgv blf

Uli rg'h blf R'n uzoormt rm olev drgs

Yfg R xzm'g gvoo blf

Zmw blf droo mvevi pmld”

Like a secret code

So we pretend to be deaf and mute all the time
We talk like mime artists
Silence can be so therapeutic
We can comfortably share
Our silences
That's usually when one feels that they've met someone special

But the hard and fast of it
Is that I'm
In love
And I can't handle it....

ERNAKULAM, Saturday, 6:44 pm

It was a beautiful sight at twilight
Vikram and Polly and I,
We were sitting in the porch of the boathouse
Sipping red wine from the light of little oil lamps
Unless of course it was a full moon
I don't remember exactly
For this is where she came in the poem....

Rose her color is
And white
Brown hair
Aquamarine eyes
Six feet one inch tall
Looks Lebanese
But maybe not