SOLITUDE KARAOKE

“Promise me that you'll remember me always
Remember that I existed
Remember me like this
Remember that you and I made this journey
That we came to paradise on earth
And I was standing here besides you on this day and saying this”


These words still haunt me with the melancholy of a Mendelssohn solo
They still seem to echo and linger, nine years later
Still reluctant to let go of me


The bridge is still there
And the shikaras and the frozen lake
And the sky mountain people who glow pink in the mellowed afternoon sun
The sunset is there on Sundays
I've been there on a few
Everything is not the same there but it's still there
At the same place


When I was here with her, I didn't pay that much attention to her words or the scene
For I took them for granted
I thought they would last forever
I never imagined, that one day, nine years later,
I would try desperately to recall it in detail
I have no trouble with the kahva sellers, the shikaras, the snow and the meadowlark
These I can draw with my fingers on a misty windowpane if need be
But I can't bring back her face that easily


I'll not lie
What used to be inscribed permanently on the laboratory of my mind
And what I could recall anytime, by just closing my eyes for a second;
Has now started taking longer
Acetylene neurons fire high voltage impulses into my fore-brain
And then it trickles instead of oozes,
Her memories: bit by bit
And I struggle to join the images like a jigsaw....


Flaring nostril: pierced.
And ears too, each, twice over
Pink punk rock volume 2 hair
Two 'R's tattooed just a little above her bikini line
The oversize snake-skin jacket she wore everywhere with ripped jeans
And her
Gothic,
Kohl- lined,
Gum- chewing eyes


But beneath her Pirate girl veneer
She was a seventeen year old girl, denying herself that she was in love with me
Or so, I've always liked to think
And as we walked along that day, Winnie spoke to me about Tibet.
Was that it?
Winnie Chatterjee
She said-
“I prefer 'She said she said'”
That was so like her
'Existential motifs in Tibetan book of the dead'
And then, 'The relative merits of two John Lennon songs from Revolver'
Segueing from one topic to another
With a wave of her hand or a toss of her head
Arguing passionately, nudging me playfully with her elbows


How strange then that it's only her words that one really recalls
Amidst a million things that have vanished,
All that remains
Are a non sequitur, a repartee or two;
And that odd sentence on pop songs about death


I am, at times, still capable of being astonished by her
Vineeta Chatterjee may be the most famous woman on the East
Her films may be seen for centuries
But for me
She is still Winnie
Appearing nine years ago, in her brother's snake-skin jacket
And then on, in dreams
And she is Winnie, the superstar, standing before me right now
Signing autographs and contracts with the same distaste


As if to punish me
She has aged dramatically over the last decade
Yes, she is still graceful and regal and even sexy
But one is reluctant to note that she is suddenly, no longer beautiful
The beautiful one is lost forever to the world
And I'm sure in a few days
Even to me


I dread but I know that her face will vanish one day
Like a dream upon awakening
That one day all my memories of her will get lost in the woods somewhere
And I'll not be able to find her again
But for now, I do
And surprisingly, I feel; the more rapidly she fades inside me,
The more deeply I'm able to understand her
And therefore, I realize, I continue to write
For if nothing better,
It makes me think of her

SHERLOCK HOLMES IN LOVE

Across 221 B, Baker Street is a twenty four hour Starbucks
That, in the London fog, appears metaphorical-
The mannequin air hostesses; CHATTING,
the varsity students; READING,
the leg- flashing escort girls; SERENADING,
the call center yuppies; EATING
the stressed waitress; forcing smiles as stale as their coffee, into their cups,
and others who're obviously Moriarty's men in disguise


As different as these people are,
Everything about them is illusory and incidental
I look closely
Some of them don't even have faces
Perhaps they're merely part of another story, a bigger story
Someone else's story..

…...
She isn't conventionally beautiful
She wears thick rimmed, black glasses over her eyes
I think, not only to read the book
But also to conceal the dark circles underneath them
Fleetingly visible when she looks up into the diffused light



The book is wrapped in a makeshift newspaper cover
Shrouding it in as much mystery as its reader
She could be anything from seventeen to thirty
But by the thickness of the book
And the way her eyebrows lovingly frown when concentrating,
Thus making faint lines on her copyright forehead,
I infer that she is exactly twenty six years, two months and three days


The translucent windowpane makes her face appear distorted;
Like italics
Or a lopsided smile
She could be Mediterranean, Latin American, even from the Middle East
Her nose is small, hardly formed, very Oriental
However, with her eyes, which exude a very intellectual sensuality
And the newspaper: 'The Statesman',
I gather that she is from India; more specifically, Calcutta


The air hostesses stare at her.
Others surreptitiously glance.
Like she has tattoos on her face or something
But she hardly ever looks up

She is not skimming through the book; rather she seems engrossed in it
And uninterested in her lukewarm coffee and the virtually untouched croissant
From this and the depth to which the parsley has sunk into the butter
I perceive she's ordered these just to buy privacy
Than for their functionality as food groups
Plus, she's had better


Also from all this hullabaloo
And her blue jeans, faded; not from the store, but from repeated washing,
Below her white, oversize man's shirt,
Peeping from under her black cardigan,
That tries to desperately to be anonymous
But for the unmistakable Versace monogram upon it;
I deduce that she is an actress


From her bottle of Perrier,
I extrapolate the existence of the Pacific ocean
Really now....
But then again-
Why are we interested in her?
Why not someone else?
I don't know.
For some reason, she commands our unwavering attention,
As though is is presumed.
Hers is the story we have to follow


Maybe because
Something tells us
She would know that Mont Blanc is pronounced 'Maw Bleau'
She wouldn't laugh during Tati's comedies, recognizing them instead as tragedies
She would rather write a rock song than have one written for
She wouldn't think that all men who write prose are pretentious
She would rather read JG Ballard than Mills & Boons
She would rather have incognito coffee at Starbucks than lose herself in Hilton crowds
Something tells us
Her name starts with a W


And though occasionally, the book makes her smile
She is broken.
I deduce this
From a slow tear that has spilled her coffee
And left its imprint
On the fringes of her eyes
On her finger, the second one from the left, on her left hand;
There is a bandage
That either
(a) conceals a wedding ring, or
(b) dresses a wound.
But either way,
It doesn't stop her bleeding