Outside the ICU, Blindingly white; flavors: antiseptic and phenyl
Indraneel Chakraborti has spent the last two hours pacing here
Delicately balancing the vending machine coffee in the Styrofoam cup
Inside, Binodini lies
The lines on the monitor keep fluttering like musical notes
Please don't die
Only yesterday, he had screamed at her for buying a seven hundred dollar wine
He would never scream at her again
He would never wear the yellow jacket again
He would never watch football at nights
He would never say Srikanto was stupid
He would never complain about her prawns
He would never make fun of her feet....
A tear trickles down his cheek, spills his instant coffee
Though he's never admitted to before
He actually remembers the way her skin felt above her eyebrows.
Cold and smooth and stiff like thermocol
How dry her palms usually were
How small her feet looked, like a child's feet at night
The faint traces of talcum powder on her neck in the mornings
The corrugated texture of her starched dupattas
The multicolored moles on her back
For hours, Neel has been thinking about the small things like these
That only he knew
That made her his wife
As ordinary as they all appeared individually,
Together, these things made up his life
And theirs
Just then he hears a girl's voice,
That tells him to go inside
He looks up at her and says, with great difficulty
“I can't see anything;
Have I gone blind?”
To which she replies,
Sympathetically,
“Wipe your tears, Mr. Chakraborti”
Saturday, December 26, 2009
BECAUSE
One day, while ironing your skirt, I tell you,
"Today I don't love you
But you'll always have my poems"
One day, while serving dessert, you confide in me,
“I know what you suffer
My heart too
Was broken Maqbool
And his name was also Amar”
One day, while changing channels, you say, indifferently
You say she didn't look good in jeans
You say she never really loved me
You say her eyes were actually chocolate brown
One day, while sleeping with you,
I wish they were blue though
And I wish that if I call her now,
I would hear her newscaster voice
With its call center English and broken Bengali....
But that
I know
Will never happen again
And I'll have to
THE NAJDORF VARIATION
She walks in on the twenty third
In braided hair and pleated short skirt
That finishes just above her knees
All hormones and scented jasmine
During the entire thirty seconds (we know because she keeps looking at her watch)
He steals nine glances at her
He thinks she looks like....like that girl from that....that English movie where...
He knows how to spell her name on the ceramic walls
He imagines making love to her.... twice
He realizes he has forty two rupees in his pocket
Then they lurch to a stop
And she says, "Thank you"
Then for the first time in two years
Xenia smiles
Though she walks away
The jasmine dust and the memories of her smile
Get left behind
At that moment, poor Bahadur is the happiest one in all of Calcutta
Since the nineteenth of this month
She has started putting on lipstick (sshhh..) to school
She has started sleeping with a curled smile on her lips
She has started appreciating Tennyson now
She has started thanking her elevator boy
She has started enjoying the winters
Nowadays, she suddenly starts laughing in the Biology class
She startles Rumki by hugging her at every opportunity she gets
When she sees an urchin, she doesn't hesitate to give it a hundred bucks
She doesn't mind her parents any longer (she thinks they're 'awesome')
And Ma is worried why she doesn't complain about her lentils anymore
Aar eyi maasher unish taarik thekei
Proshanto has started humming in the shower
He has started driving his motorcycle that bit faster
He has stopped playing football with Subrato on Sundays
He has started stopping on his way and admiring the cacti
He has started writing passable poetry in foolscap notebooks
Nowadays, he's the first to stand up when an old man gets on the local train
He has suddenly discovered that yeah man, he loves Rabindra sangeet
He's even praising Lal kakima's greasy 'kobiraajis'
He's speaking less and smiling more
He's waiting for Xenia outside her home
And Lennon is saying,
"It's only love"
In braided hair and pleated short skirt
That finishes just above her knees
All hormones and scented jasmine
During the entire thirty seconds (we know because she keeps looking at her watch)
He steals nine glances at her
He thinks she looks like....like that girl from that....that English movie where...
He knows how to spell her name on the ceramic walls
He imagines making love to her.... twice
He realizes he has forty two rupees in his pocket
Then they lurch to a stop
And she says, "Thank you"
Then for the first time in two years
Xenia smiles
Though she walks away
The jasmine dust and the memories of her smile
Get left behind
At that moment, poor Bahadur is the happiest one in all of Calcutta
Since the nineteenth of this month
She has started putting on lipstick (sshhh..) to school
She has started sleeping with a curled smile on her lips
She has started appreciating Tennyson now
She has started thanking her elevator boy
She has started enjoying the winters
Nowadays, she suddenly starts laughing in the Biology class
She startles Rumki by hugging her at every opportunity she gets
When she sees an urchin, she doesn't hesitate to give it a hundred bucks
She doesn't mind her parents any longer (she thinks they're 'awesome')
And Ma is worried why she doesn't complain about her lentils anymore
Aar eyi maasher unish taarik thekei
Proshanto has started humming in the shower
He has started driving his motorcycle that bit faster
He has stopped playing football with Subrato on Sundays
He has started stopping on his way and admiring the cacti
He has started writing passable poetry in foolscap notebooks
Nowadays, he's the first to stand up when an old man gets on the local train
He has suddenly discovered that yeah man, he loves Rabindra sangeet
He's even praising Lal kakima's greasy 'kobiraajis'
He's speaking less and smiling more
He's waiting for Xenia outside her home
And Lennon is saying,
"It's only love"
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
INCOGNITA
She landed up at his door one Sunday morning
Just as he was trying to begin the second chapter (after pages of false starts)
At first her knock had seemed like poetry to him
Midway between an irregular heartbeat, a throbbing wound and a morse code
Full red lips and eyes of blue
At first glance, she was another beautiful woman
But then, she wasn't;
For here was a mirror image of Vineeta
Those oversized eyes and slightly tilted lips
Stuck on the same landscape of a Californian sunset
He would have felt akin to falling into a dream
Had he not known who she really was
In the subdued sunlight in the room, he observed her more carefully
Her immense, copyrighted forehead accentuated even more by the hair swept back
An overdone mouth
She had deliberately created dark circles under her eyes
Even today, she sometimes made him smile
Then she spoke
Like all his women with their thick, distant, un-virginal, radio jockey voices
That swooped effortlessly through a man's legs
“We have the same toes
The same handwriting
The same earlobes.....
Tell me Shona, am I her?”
He couldn't bear to tell her the truth
“That you don't have to do the dark circles
Because you two have the same upturned nose
You too have the same housecounting eyes
And the same way in which you blink them when something interests or perplexes you
The only eyes I've ever seen which one might truly describe as, violet
I look in those tremendous purple eyes
But I see nothing there
And yet I used to know a girl who used to live there
And she is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.
That I see pieces of her all the time
Every time, a girl with Cappuccino skin and low rise jeans walks by, fast and straight
I see images of her flashing me by
So, you too could be her
For all I know”
But to her he says, more reassuringly (and eventually in glib South Calcutta Bengali)-
“There's more than a passing resemblance
Khanik ta bichanaar paashe
Khanik ta tomar daan chokher kaache
Khanik ta aamaader dujoner majhe
Khanik ta thake shei meghla akashey....”
Translated, it (more or less) stands:
One part of it, near our bed
Another on the corner of your right eye
A bit of it between the two of us
Some falling down the grey skies.....
So, arching her eyebrows and blinking her eyes, she asked him again
Her words with the effect of a familiar song floating by
“Am I her?”
And he looked straight at her and said, with the clarity of her blue eyes
“No
You're not her”
(But all things considered da'ling
You did come
Pretty damn close)
Just as he was trying to begin the second chapter (after pages of false starts)
At first her knock had seemed like poetry to him
Midway between an irregular heartbeat, a throbbing wound and a morse code
Full red lips and eyes of blue
At first glance, she was another beautiful woman
But then, she wasn't;
For here was a mirror image of Vineeta
Those oversized eyes and slightly tilted lips
Stuck on the same landscape of a Californian sunset
He would have felt akin to falling into a dream
Had he not known who she really was
In the subdued sunlight in the room, he observed her more carefully
Her immense, copyrighted forehead accentuated even more by the hair swept back
An overdone mouth
She had deliberately created dark circles under her eyes
Even today, she sometimes made him smile
Then she spoke
Like all his women with their thick, distant, un-virginal, radio jockey voices
That swooped effortlessly through a man's legs
“We have the same toes
The same handwriting
The same earlobes.....
Tell me Shona, am I her?”
He couldn't bear to tell her the truth
“That you don't have to do the dark circles
Because you two have the same upturned nose
You too have the same housecounting eyes
And the same way in which you blink them when something interests or perplexes you
The only eyes I've ever seen which one might truly describe as, violet
I look in those tremendous purple eyes
But I see nothing there
And yet I used to know a girl who used to live there
And she is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.
That I see pieces of her all the time
Every time, a girl with Cappuccino skin and low rise jeans walks by, fast and straight
I see images of her flashing me by
So, you too could be her
For all I know”
But to her he says, more reassuringly (and eventually in glib South Calcutta Bengali)-
“There's more than a passing resemblance
Khanik ta bichanaar paashe
Khanik ta tomar daan chokher kaache
Khanik ta aamaader dujoner majhe
Khanik ta thake shei meghla akashey....”
Translated, it (more or less) stands:
One part of it, near our bed
Another on the corner of your right eye
A bit of it between the two of us
Some falling down the grey skies.....
So, arching her eyebrows and blinking her eyes, she asked him again
Her words with the effect of a familiar song floating by
“Am I her?”
And he looked straight at her and said, with the clarity of her blue eyes
“No
You're not her”
(But all things considered da'ling
You did come
Pretty damn close)
2BHK
Slowly, carefully and slightly out of breath
He entered her
Her 2BHK, somewhere in the downtown
He had come in through the bathroom window;
Using a jack-knife
For breaking and entering, unlawfully inside
And wearing a mask
To protect his face
After all, he had come
Not only to rob her
But also, to kill her....
Inside it is
Pitch dark
He uses a flashlight
To look for her
And opens the door on the right....
He remembers having been here before
This is the kitchen, isn't it?
“Yes, once we used to sit a talking for hours at the table
Talking about Bombay, Salsa and Dominique Francon
Till the gravies on our fingers dried
Later, we didn't
We just ate as a chore
You became allergic to mangoes and I to lobsters
But even today
You make me hungry”
He closes the door, silently and tiptoes into the next room....
His eyes are slowly getting used to the darkness
He can recognize the Bedroom at once
“Our life
As though hastily stitched from curtain leftovers
And pillow fights
I can feel you still,
Faintly, distinctly,
And alive
In the ripples of these bed-sheets of
Sandalwood, cardamom and naphthalene”
He tries turning the knob of the guest bedroom on the other end
But the door is locked
So, he goes back to the hall to lurk in the darkness
And wait for her to walk in
“I can still see you, in those black and white photographs on the walls
I can still feel your eyes upon me
But it's only now that I can see the hope in those eyes
Oozing through the slips in the cracked glass....”
It slowly dawns upon him, in the sweaty, August darkness
That in all its gloom, all its imperfectness
It was still a place that had once been, his own
That home was nothing but a couple of people
Who loved ciphers and sukiyaki and missed the same arbitrary place
But this home-
This home didn't belong to them
And that's when he decides to leave....
Once out in the street, he permits himself to turn around just one more time
And look back at the balcony where she had once stood
Amidst the distant sounds of traffic and her tall delphiniums that morning
She hadn't been doing a thing except standing there leaning on the railing;
Holding the universe together....
Well, like they say
Perhaps for every man
There is at least one city
That sooner or later
Turns into a girl
She was there
And she was the whole city
And that's all there is to it
…......
Moments later, she opens the door
In one second, she can make out
That someone had come in
And he had stolen something
But she doesn't know this-
That he is outside now, watching his steps, walking in the cold,
Hunting for another address
He can call his own
Yes, he will let her live
But in his life, he will never come back here again
And eventually he'll realize with a wry smile and a shake of his head
That anyway today
There's no city called Bombay anymore.
He entered her
Her 2BHK, somewhere in the downtown
He had come in through the bathroom window;
Using a jack-knife
For breaking and entering, unlawfully inside
And wearing a mask
To protect his face
After all, he had come
Not only to rob her
But also, to kill her....
Inside it is
Pitch dark
He uses a flashlight
To look for her
And opens the door on the right....
He remembers having been here before
This is the kitchen, isn't it?
“Yes, once we used to sit a talking for hours at the table
Talking about Bombay, Salsa and Dominique Francon
Till the gravies on our fingers dried
Later, we didn't
We just ate as a chore
You became allergic to mangoes and I to lobsters
But even today
You make me hungry”
He closes the door, silently and tiptoes into the next room....
His eyes are slowly getting used to the darkness
He can recognize the Bedroom at once
“Our life
As though hastily stitched from curtain leftovers
And pillow fights
I can feel you still,
Faintly, distinctly,
And alive
In the ripples of these bed-sheets of
Sandalwood, cardamom and naphthalene”
He tries turning the knob of the guest bedroom on the other end
But the door is locked
So, he goes back to the hall to lurk in the darkness
And wait for her to walk in
“I can still see you, in those black and white photographs on the walls
I can still feel your eyes upon me
But it's only now that I can see the hope in those eyes
Oozing through the slips in the cracked glass....”
It slowly dawns upon him, in the sweaty, August darkness
That in all its gloom, all its imperfectness
It was still a place that had once been, his own
That home was nothing but a couple of people
Who loved ciphers and sukiyaki and missed the same arbitrary place
But this home-
This home didn't belong to them
And that's when he decides to leave....
Once out in the street, he permits himself to turn around just one more time
And look back at the balcony where she had once stood
Amidst the distant sounds of traffic and her tall delphiniums that morning
She hadn't been doing a thing except standing there leaning on the railing;
Holding the universe together....
Well, like they say
Perhaps for every man
There is at least one city
That sooner or later
Turns into a girl
She was there
And she was the whole city
And that's all there is to it
…......
Moments later, she opens the door
In one second, she can make out
That someone had come in
And he had stolen something
But she doesn't know this-
That he is outside now, watching his steps, walking in the cold,
Hunting for another address
He can call his own
Yes, he will let her live
But in his life, he will never come back here again
And eventually he'll realize with a wry smile and a shake of his head
That anyway today
There's no city called Bombay anymore.
POLYTHENE PROSE
Once I had written a poem
About the time I had got lost in the jungle
Every pebble was the same, every tree, every leaf
And I couldn't find a way out
So, I tore the poem into pieces and made a trail
I followed it back to you
I saved myself
But I lost the poem
I’ve never been able to write poetry anymore
Now the jungle’s got all the polythene
And all I’ve got left is prose
(An ode to "Bangla Kobita" and civilization, I guess)
Friday, December 4, 2009
NUCLEAR NIGHTS
Some evenings, her fingers would hesitantly find mine on the couch
Some nights, less bashful, she would snuggle closer
Touching my hip with hers
Lean forward when speaking
Her voice would get a trifle more, shrill
She would scratch my neck with her cat like nails
She would snatch my magazine and throw it away
Or doodle on my forearms
Or softly hit me on the head with the pillow from the couch
There were days when he would get me white tulips on the way home
When he would sulk after every game Chelsea won (and they won quite a few)
When he would have an argument with AD in the afternoon
When he would take a half hour hot shower in the middle of an April evening
When he would wake up crying at three having just remembered his mother
When he would sit around and do nothing but re-watch Notting Hill on HBO
When he would have that third screwdriver
And without fail on every New Year's Eve
Some days were like this
Some days were not
Today, after nine years
Whenever Shrilekha sees white tulips in a garden,
She thinks of the sex on the balcony
And whenever Dhritimaan sees a doodle on a newspaper,
He can't help but be reminded of Shri
She carries the memories of that night with him
All her life after that
She's never had the kind of bliss
That one night seemed to promise
Someplace else, when he switches off the TV after every Chelsea win
He half expects to see Shrilekha
Seductively beckoning him to bed
With her mischievous smile, no bra, husky voice and broken Bengali
"Kaachey Esho
Come
C....l....o.....s....e.....r"
Some nights, less bashful, she would snuggle closer
Touching my hip with hers
Lean forward when speaking
Her voice would get a trifle more, shrill
She would scratch my neck with her cat like nails
She would snatch my magazine and throw it away
Or doodle on my forearms
Or softly hit me on the head with the pillow from the couch
There were days when he would get me white tulips on the way home
When he would sulk after every game Chelsea won (and they won quite a few)
When he would have an argument with AD in the afternoon
When he would take a half hour hot shower in the middle of an April evening
When he would wake up crying at three having just remembered his mother
When he would sit around and do nothing but re-watch Notting Hill on HBO
When he would have that third screwdriver
And without fail on every New Year's Eve
Some days were like this
Some days were not
Today, after nine years
Whenever Shrilekha sees white tulips in a garden,
She thinks of the sex on the balcony
And whenever Dhritimaan sees a doodle on a newspaper,
He can't help but be reminded of Shri
She carries the memories of that night with him
All her life after that
She's never had the kind of bliss
That one night seemed to promise
Someplace else, when he switches off the TV after every Chelsea win
He half expects to see Shrilekha
Seductively beckoning him to bed
With her mischievous smile, no bra, husky voice and broken Bengali
"Kaachey Esho
Come
C....l....o.....s....e.....r"
WHEN SHALINI DANCED
Manasvi knows she's not beautiful
Bradley strums his guitar to a tune from a memory, seven years old
Maneka rests her head slowly on his shoulder
Shalini gets up and dances with abandon on top of the borrowed Chevy
Tejpal is scared that she will fall down but doesn't mind her swaying, impromptu hips
Rhea gets down on one knee in front of twenty people and Digby rolls his eyes
Mandira scrapes her knees while getting down in front of Manbir
Niharika fights with Vishal, again
Piyali reads Pynchon in the darkness
Farinoush stops traffic
Jahanzeb hopes for a yes
Anuj contemplates murder
Hans looks longingly at Manasvi from behind the wall with unmentionable graffiti
Siddharth stares at the same wall with vacant eyes and white nostrils
Vishal applies the finishing touches to his make up kiss
Fari cries over Manbir when no one's looking
Vatan smiles at Jahanzeb for the first time in two years
Piyali pretends reading Pynchon while glancing surreptitiously at TP in between the lines
Digby misses home and the cardamom tea to go with it
Dhrubo dreams of a revolution with his unfathomable plays
Vatan sleeps besides Manasvi for the first time
Patil watches Oberoi burn
And no one loves you Varsha
No one but me
Bradley strums his guitar to a tune from a memory, seven years old
Maneka rests her head slowly on his shoulder
Shalini gets up and dances with abandon on top of the borrowed Chevy
Tejpal is scared that she will fall down but doesn't mind her swaying, impromptu hips
Rhea gets down on one knee in front of twenty people and Digby rolls his eyes
Mandira scrapes her knees while getting down in front of Manbir
Niharika fights with Vishal, again
Piyali reads Pynchon in the darkness
Farinoush stops traffic
Jahanzeb hopes for a yes
Anuj contemplates murder
Hans looks longingly at Manasvi from behind the wall with unmentionable graffiti
Siddharth stares at the same wall with vacant eyes and white nostrils
Vishal applies the finishing touches to his make up kiss
Fari cries over Manbir when no one's looking
Vatan smiles at Jahanzeb for the first time in two years
Piyali pretends reading Pynchon while glancing surreptitiously at TP in between the lines
Digby misses home and the cardamom tea to go with it
Dhrubo dreams of a revolution with his unfathomable plays
Vatan sleeps besides Manasvi for the first time
Patil watches Oberoi burn
And no one loves you Varsha
No one but me
TROIS COULEURS
1
They sleep close to each other of the four poster bed
Deepti, aware of Mr. Walia's scent and his tousled dark hair
Nestling against her right shoulder that she holds very still
So as not to awaken him
She keeps glancing at him-
A slim turn on, barefoot in his drawstring trackpants, heavy stubble and slightly dribbling mouth
She carefully moves his right arm
That is wrapped around her (the other close to her right breast);
And gets up on tiptoes
She isn't wearing anything yet
In the kitchen, she tries not to dwell upon the tattoo on her right forearm
Only visible between her bangles, now that her loose nightgown has been rolled up at the sleeves
While straining the morning tea into the Pearlpet flask
The steam rises lazily from the kettle
Splaying cardamom on the kitchen walls
And Carmel college...
She had first met him during those days
Those days of tomfoolery, boredom, lethargy and high summer, blue rains
Which carried them all blissfully throughout the three years
Or, she admits ruefully, it might have been
Just him
The tattoo too, a product of a foolish summer on Candolim beach
Although a lot of it had to do with what went on between them
“This is art baby”,
She had told her mother, in low slung jeans
Today, she has trouble explaining it to Gubloo
She has received the invitation, only yesterday
She had recognized at once
The unmistakable handwriting on the envelope
She had guessed at once
The contents inside....
Today, Deepti's awake at dawn, earlier than usual
She hates these days, when she wakes up having dreamt of him
She decides she will make Mr. Walia some french toast to go with the tea
And then she must pick what to wear in the evening....
2
Neeta can't seem to feel her body, though she knows it's probably there
She hasn't been able to move her car an inch in the last seventeen minutes
She's running late now for the marketing seminar
Around her, an ocean of people and around them, another ocean
The city like a brain's neural network
The people blinking like corpuscles
Eyes closed and moving lips,
She memorizes the slides for the eleventh time
Her hair, colored auburn, parted on the right,
That she holds away from her face to look at the printouts on the front seat, from time to time;
This is so not what she wanted to be
She tries to see the beauty in haggard people and blaring horns
Because she knows she's different
A thin line sets her apart from her colleagues
She keeps Nabokov in her desk drawer
After all
Often during board meetings,
She's either in the middle of a sentence in Howard's End
Or in one of Leonard's midwestern landscapes
Some afternoons, she wants to just lie down on a pavement
And go to sleep
But she can almost see her own self, fifteen minutes from now,
Bent over mineral water bottles and laptop screens in conference rooms
It's at moments like this that she feels that she should've had a peg leg
Then it would've been enough to just live
Without it, she's supposed to make something
Of her thirty one year old life
She watches the time on her left wrist
She can't help noticing the faint scar besides it
It's been too long
Still, it's a reminder
That although she's a sexy, successful woman today
She's the same woman who once tried to die and failed at it
But she's a survivor
Time had stopped there
Not here
The second hand of the watch is still parading on its dreamy dial.
It's an Omega afterall
3
Susan D'Souza feels the lump on her stomach
Her electric blue gown hides it rather well
Just one hour remains before the dinner
Her lips curve into a smile in the mirror
Her laugh lines only faintly visible
She looks like a woman of sorrows
And her breaths are becoming shorter
He isn't here yet
She wants to say, “Give me some space
So that I can reach you”
Hot chocolate at Keventer's,
Old Tintins rediscovered,
Lamb Curry at Dada Boudi,
Duran Duran on the walkman,
Sunrise from the Bodega Bay,
Dostoevsky around her neck,
And his endings
She doesn't want anything else today....
….
It is Susan who recognizes Deepti first
The girl who didn't look beautiful
Until she smiled
The dimple like a tear running down her cheek
Her face, coarsely handsome than really pretty
He has still not come
Is he still looking for his navy blue suit?
The waiters serve them more food for thought in the meanwhile
Deepti nudges Susan with her right elbow, almost spilling her Pinacolada
In another corner of the room, they watch the girl with the prose-like poise
The girl with the dark circles
The girl with the flat top hair
The girl with the chipped front tooth
The girl with another man
It was always only her eyes
It is the time of the night when a new day is about to begin
It is the 26th of November
It is time
They sleep close to each other of the four poster bed
Deepti, aware of Mr. Walia's scent and his tousled dark hair
Nestling against her right shoulder that she holds very still
So as not to awaken him
She keeps glancing at him-
A slim turn on, barefoot in his drawstring trackpants, heavy stubble and slightly dribbling mouth
She carefully moves his right arm
That is wrapped around her (the other close to her right breast);
And gets up on tiptoes
She isn't wearing anything yet
In the kitchen, she tries not to dwell upon the tattoo on her right forearm
Only visible between her bangles, now that her loose nightgown has been rolled up at the sleeves
While straining the morning tea into the Pearlpet flask
The steam rises lazily from the kettle
Splaying cardamom on the kitchen walls
And Carmel college...
She had first met him during those days
Those days of tomfoolery, boredom, lethargy and high summer, blue rains
Which carried them all blissfully throughout the three years
Or, she admits ruefully, it might have been
Just him
The tattoo too, a product of a foolish summer on Candolim beach
Although a lot of it had to do with what went on between them
“This is art baby”,
She had told her mother, in low slung jeans
Today, she has trouble explaining it to Gubloo
She has received the invitation, only yesterday
She had recognized at once
The unmistakable handwriting on the envelope
She had guessed at once
The contents inside....
Today, Deepti's awake at dawn, earlier than usual
She hates these days, when she wakes up having dreamt of him
She decides she will make Mr. Walia some french toast to go with the tea
And then she must pick what to wear in the evening....
2
Neeta can't seem to feel her body, though she knows it's probably there
She hasn't been able to move her car an inch in the last seventeen minutes
She's running late now for the marketing seminar
Around her, an ocean of people and around them, another ocean
The city like a brain's neural network
The people blinking like corpuscles
Eyes closed and moving lips,
She memorizes the slides for the eleventh time
Her hair, colored auburn, parted on the right,
That she holds away from her face to look at the printouts on the front seat, from time to time;
This is so not what she wanted to be
She tries to see the beauty in haggard people and blaring horns
Because she knows she's different
A thin line sets her apart from her colleagues
She keeps Nabokov in her desk drawer
After all
Often during board meetings,
She's either in the middle of a sentence in Howard's End
Or in one of Leonard's midwestern landscapes
Some afternoons, she wants to just lie down on a pavement
And go to sleep
But she can almost see her own self, fifteen minutes from now,
Bent over mineral water bottles and laptop screens in conference rooms
It's at moments like this that she feels that she should've had a peg leg
Then it would've been enough to just live
Without it, she's supposed to make something
Of her thirty one year old life
She watches the time on her left wrist
She can't help noticing the faint scar besides it
It's been too long
Still, it's a reminder
That although she's a sexy, successful woman today
She's the same woman who once tried to die and failed at it
But she's a survivor
Time had stopped there
Not here
The second hand of the watch is still parading on its dreamy dial.
It's an Omega afterall
3
Susan D'Souza feels the lump on her stomach
Her electric blue gown hides it rather well
Just one hour remains before the dinner
Her lips curve into a smile in the mirror
Her laugh lines only faintly visible
She looks like a woman of sorrows
And her breaths are becoming shorter
He isn't here yet
She wants to say, “Give me some space
So that I can reach you”
Hot chocolate at Keventer's,
Old Tintins rediscovered,
Lamb Curry at Dada Boudi,
Duran Duran on the walkman,
Sunrise from the Bodega Bay,
Dostoevsky around her neck,
And his endings
She doesn't want anything else today....
….
It is Susan who recognizes Deepti first
The girl who didn't look beautiful
Until she smiled
The dimple like a tear running down her cheek
Her face, coarsely handsome than really pretty
He has still not come
Is he still looking for his navy blue suit?
The waiters serve them more food for thought in the meanwhile
Deepti nudges Susan with her right elbow, almost spilling her Pinacolada
In another corner of the room, they watch the girl with the prose-like poise
The girl with the dark circles
The girl with the flat top hair
The girl with the chipped front tooth
The girl with another man
It was always only her eyes
It is the time of the night when a new day is about to begin
It is the 26th of November
It is time
WOODSTOCK FOREVER
Looking back, I feel you were rather ordinary looking
Your nose was too long, for example
Your shoulders too narrow
Some of your anecdotes were not as funny
Ok, so you had those raccoon eyes
And the accent (and a PHD....) from Oxford
You could get away with silk scarves in the middle of July
You seemed taller than 5'10”
You seemed like the tallest man in the world
You've heard this before, I know
Then one day
You left
You left us for that Gwalior job
Today, my memories of Woodstock
Have been reduced to that fifty minute discussion in your office
During which I decided that I wanted to attend Oxford too
And where I had gone to stop you for going
“I’m petrified of my future without you....”
I had thought that would be enough
That, and my tears
Your long, black locks (with an abundance of brown in them)
Now visualized as you sat opposite me in that twilight room somewhere in 1988
Your warm, bony hands, caressing my hair
“Don't look back, kiddo..
Look ahead”
There's so much I haven't told you
That I had stolen two of your embroidered handkerchiefs that year (one blue and one light brown)
That I still have them, underneath my old lingerie, in the bedroom almirah
That so what if I was fourteen?
That I would've runaway from home with you
That we could've lived in a wood cabin in the middle of nowhere
That I would've given up basketball for you
That I would've given you my white K-mart panties anyday
That I know that you loved me too
Because you liked to occasionally pat my head when you crossed my desk
Because you said that my mid term essay was better than Paromita's
Because you only looked at me when you explained Hamlet....
For three days after you left
I didn't go to school
And it wasn't because of the periods
For two weeks after you left
I cried every night
For six months after you left
I waited for your letter
Even twenty two years later
I still open unmarked envelopes, expectantly
But most of all, I never read Hamlet
Ever again in my life
What would Shakespeare have said anyway?
That today, I'm standing here
But I can't even cry
And yet
Is there a sight sadder than me?
You knew me from before I crossed eighty kilograms
Before I became a mother of two
Before I became the most vindictive senior manager in the North West
Before I stopped feeling happy during unexpected rains
Before I stopped reading good literature in my spare time
Before I lost faith
My life
As it is
Even today
Derives itself from your lucid expositions
And yet I know if you were here
You would've said,
“It was just an
Infatuation”
Your nose was too long, for example
Your shoulders too narrow
Some of your anecdotes were not as funny
Ok, so you had those raccoon eyes
And the accent (and a PHD....) from Oxford
You could get away with silk scarves in the middle of July
You seemed taller than 5'10”
You seemed like the tallest man in the world
You've heard this before, I know
Then one day
You left
You left us for that Gwalior job
Today, my memories of Woodstock
Have been reduced to that fifty minute discussion in your office
During which I decided that I wanted to attend Oxford too
And where I had gone to stop you for going
“I’m petrified of my future without you....”
I had thought that would be enough
That, and my tears
Your long, black locks (with an abundance of brown in them)
Now visualized as you sat opposite me in that twilight room somewhere in 1988
Your warm, bony hands, caressing my hair
“Don't look back, kiddo..
Look ahead”
There's so much I haven't told you
That I had stolen two of your embroidered handkerchiefs that year (one blue and one light brown)
That I still have them, underneath my old lingerie, in the bedroom almirah
That so what if I was fourteen?
That I would've runaway from home with you
That we could've lived in a wood cabin in the middle of nowhere
That I would've given up basketball for you
That I would've given you my white K-mart panties anyday
That I know that you loved me too
Because you liked to occasionally pat my head when you crossed my desk
Because you said that my mid term essay was better than Paromita's
Because you only looked at me when you explained Hamlet....
For three days after you left
I didn't go to school
And it wasn't because of the periods
For two weeks after you left
I cried every night
For six months after you left
I waited for your letter
Even twenty two years later
I still open unmarked envelopes, expectantly
But most of all, I never read Hamlet
Ever again in my life
What would Shakespeare have said anyway?
That today, I'm standing here
But I can't even cry
And yet
Is there a sight sadder than me?
You knew me from before I crossed eighty kilograms
Before I became a mother of two
Before I became the most vindictive senior manager in the North West
Before I stopped feeling happy during unexpected rains
Before I stopped reading good literature in my spare time
Before I lost faith
My life
As it is
Even today
Derives itself from your lucid expositions
And yet I know if you were here
You would've said,
“It was just an
Infatuation”
THE MORNING AFTER
She hopscotches the distance between them;
A bundle of flying clothes
And out-flung arms.
She closes her eyes
And clasps her fingers
Around his neck
Draws his head down;
Her savage lips
Seeking his Finding them
Holding them
In a clinging embrace
And then she releases him
Shaking the rice out of her gown
That threatens to trip her every now and then
She decides that
They don't have the same taste....
The morning after
She takes in
From their rented rooms-
The tear reddened tableau
The tranquil silhouettes
Of the southern sun
Slanting into the Indian Ocean
She contemplates
Ponders over
The meaning of his actions
He's left her today to attend to his affairs
Now they've got their lives ahead
She begins to miss him again
She looks out of the window
Imagines his face
Just like yesterday
In the meantime
Someone else, 27, chemical engineer, wildlife enthusiast, lanky, from Marseille;
Has come along and taken her away
Even with the rooftop view and the warm bathtub
She admits feeling a little touche
She tries to shout out aloud
And nothing comes out
But boy, what a beautiful day!
A bundle of flying clothes
And out-flung arms.
She closes her eyes
And clasps her fingers
Around his neck
Draws his head down;
Her savage lips
Seeking his Finding them
Holding them
In a clinging embrace
And then she releases him
Shaking the rice out of her gown
That threatens to trip her every now and then
She decides that
They don't have the same taste....
The morning after
She takes in
From their rented rooms-
The tear reddened tableau
The tranquil silhouettes
Of the southern sun
Slanting into the Indian Ocean
She contemplates
Ponders over
The meaning of his actions
He's left her today to attend to his affairs
Now they've got their lives ahead
She begins to miss him again
She looks out of the window
Imagines his face
Just like yesterday
In the meantime
Someone else, 27, chemical engineer, wildlife enthusiast, lanky, from Marseille;
Has come along and taken her away
Even with the rooftop view and the warm bathtub
She admits feeling a little touche
She tries to shout out aloud
And nothing comes out
But boy, what a beautiful day!
PRIVATE LIMITED
Bombay, Yesterday, 4:15 pm
She touches her lips, where his kiss had briefly resided
She doesn't know his name
And neither do we
They had agreed, four weeks ago
That the sex would always be
Anonymous
Although she has, by now, begun to recognize
The two moles in a straight line on his chest
The vaccination mark on his left upper arm
That he hums, rather tunelessly, Coldplay when he dresses
That he's not like a 1-800 number
“Because last Wednesday, he'd brought me a box of Sandesh
Because every time he touches me, he makes me feel sexy
Because he reads Stanislavski while waiting to pick me up”
She watches him dress
Fuchsia Pink suits him, oddly
The doctor's apron, is however, grossly out of place
Only four hours ago, he'd performed a striptease in them
Just for her
She's mad at him
Not because she knows that he's going to Mrs Krishnan's house from there
But because he told her so
She knows she can't accuse him
They had agreed on the rules
But it is hard not to resent his freedom
As always, she would leave ten minutes after him
Maybe that's why
Even after eleven 'dates'
They've never slept together
That was her idea
Because somehow she felt
That would be
Too intimate
That if she woke up with someone else's eyes
She'd never be able to face anyone again
“I hate you
For it's you I'm falling in love with
But I won't tell you
And you'll never know”
But her silence says-
Don't you know me?
Don't you know me by now?
Don't look away
Don't stand aside
Don't let me fall in love with you....
…...
To him, she's just another customer
'Do I know you?',
He had said when they had first met
He had known at once that she had never done anything like this before
He knows now her erogenous zones
He knows she likes to be spanked like a nine year old
He knows how she looks, naked
He knows how she kisses
The Sandesh thing he had found out from facebook
Yes, he is beginning to get fond of her
But he will not get involved
Maybe in the next meeting
He would throw in a lap dance for a discount
Because when he was just nineteen and a half,
He had learned that
Love hurts
But
Sex sells
She touches her lips, where his kiss had briefly resided
She doesn't know his name
And neither do we
They had agreed, four weeks ago
That the sex would always be
Anonymous
Although she has, by now, begun to recognize
The two moles in a straight line on his chest
The vaccination mark on his left upper arm
That he hums, rather tunelessly, Coldplay when he dresses
That he's not like a 1-800 number
“Because last Wednesday, he'd brought me a box of Sandesh
Because every time he touches me, he makes me feel sexy
Because he reads Stanislavski while waiting to pick me up”
She watches him dress
Fuchsia Pink suits him, oddly
The doctor's apron, is however, grossly out of place
Only four hours ago, he'd performed a striptease in them
Just for her
She's mad at him
Not because she knows that he's going to Mrs Krishnan's house from there
But because he told her so
She knows she can't accuse him
They had agreed on the rules
But it is hard not to resent his freedom
As always, she would leave ten minutes after him
Maybe that's why
Even after eleven 'dates'
They've never slept together
That was her idea
Because somehow she felt
That would be
Too intimate
That if she woke up with someone else's eyes
She'd never be able to face anyone again
“I hate you
For it's you I'm falling in love with
But I won't tell you
And you'll never know”
But her silence says-
Don't you know me?
Don't you know me by now?
Don't look away
Don't stand aside
Don't let me fall in love with you....
…...
To him, she's just another customer
'Do I know you?',
He had said when they had first met
He had known at once that she had never done anything like this before
He knows now her erogenous zones
He knows she likes to be spanked like a nine year old
He knows how she looks, naked
He knows how she kisses
The Sandesh thing he had found out from facebook
Yes, he is beginning to get fond of her
But he will not get involved
Maybe in the next meeting
He would throw in a lap dance for a discount
Because when he was just nineteen and a half,
He had learned that
Love hurts
But
Sex sells
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
METAL
But of course
She's heard the song before
In garages,
On unmade dorm beds,
Over pepperoni pizzas at
Over reheated pepperoni pizzas at
Outside shower curtains,
(Sometimes inside),
In snatches,
In coherent hums,
In his eyes,
Instrumental,
In memories,
Sped up, slowed down, played backwards, remixed
She doesn't quite remember the song after that one
But “Maggie Noodles” wasn't only a song
Looking back, it was a moment in her life
When one possible future ended and another started
And she let it pass her by
Only once again in her life,
Years later,
Would she witness something as amazing
But even more painful
Years later, she would hear this song again
On the grainy VHS Reva is taping this in;
Strangely then, she would also smell the misty, dusty, library books
Rumki and her glass bangle laugh....
Watching the tape now
The florescent lights still make her eyes squint from their memory
She can still taste the vodka (it had too much ice) camouflaged in the Nescafe cup
She remembers being tickled slightly
By Maqbool's warm, sweet breath around her neck
Earlier that semester
The unmistakable Imperial Leather in his palms
That cupped her ears to keep them warm
She remembers having had a pimple on her upper lip
Having been afraid that he would never kiss her again
She had been wrong
…............
Life,
Vineeta turns the corner near the Admin block
She carries the burden of Joyce under her arm
And the love leftovers in her eyes
Into the freezing cold of the night
It's the time of the night when its at its darkest, most mysterious
She's late
But she's there
She stands on tiptoes, to catch a glimpse of 'Youthinasia'
(Such a corny name, in retrospect)
Her shirt is faded; her jeans too tight
Baby, you're old fashioned
But the boys haven't really changed-
Aniruddha, the cute one,
Akshay, the smart one,
Nakul, the funny one,
Maqbool, the one.
Anir starts it as a slow ballad
With his Frank Sinatra impersonation voice-
“People often ask me about Maggie
It's true that there is no one
There would never be anyone
Quite like her
I miss her unformed nose
Her upturned earlobes
Her chipped front tooth
I miss the way we were....”
And this is the portion where Max and Anir trade licks
On their Rickenbackers
She wonders why Max hasn't started singing yet
Wasn't the first stanza supposed to be his?
Why did they change the name?
The bashful, the mysterious;
In his long hair and raspy voice....
Maqbool has seen her
The lights dance on her face like ocean waves
Now, he just can't sing
His thoughts that moment flicker in her eyes
Like the crackling voice from a distant FM station
They jam beautifully for a whole minute
And then, when Nakul joins them on the percussions
Winnie thinks of the word, “Exhilarating”
Nakul, the skinhead, in his military prints
Molests the drums until Anir takes over again....
“I want to be unhappy
And think I'm something profound
I have spent a lifetime playing it cool
But that doesn't really count
It has changed me and I don't know how
Tears don't come more easily now
And on some morning in the near future
I will wake up from my dream
And remember that I haven't really grieved”
He gets the last high note just right
He didn't sound this great in the rehearsals!
Half the song is over
Max still hasn't made a move
Still standing in the shadows
Fingers bleeding his heart shaped guitar
Akshay, in his black tee and rockabilly hair
Now on the keyboard
It's more Michael Nyman than Beethoven's Fifth
And then finally,
Finally,
Maqbool's voice drones the open air theater-
“You were my mother, planet, ink, tear,
word, thought, rush, savior,
habit, fire, forest, sin,
soldier, silence, shot, skin,
toy, pain, pulse, passion,
lithium, rain, dimple, fashion,
memory, painting, ache, spasm,
chocolate, soul, fake, orgasm”
The crowd has stopped swaying
They suddenly feel this interlude;
This brink of a revolution-
Greedy lips
Renaissance eyes
Love making
Under skies
Maqbool knows
They will not remember this song
They will not remember a line
Their name too will be forgotten
In the course of time
All of them
Except one
They start what would become the last stanza
Aniruddha speaking the first line
Nakul speaking the next
Akshay taking on the third line
Maqbool singing the rest-
“You had the forget me not eyes
She had the Mercedes Benz
You had all the pretty, pretty boys
She had common sense
You had Hotel California
She had the loudest grunt
But every now and then, Maggie
Monday, November 2, 2009
THE MAN WITH THE HEART SHAPED GUITAR....
His entry in her life wasn't at all dramatic
It was the July after she'd gone back to Calcutta
And Amar had remained in London..
She'd first seen him strumming a guitar in 'Peter Cat'
(Where she'd gone with her three girlfriends on a Saturday evening)
In a pinstriped shirt, shoulder length hair and loafers
At first glance, he had looked fleetingly like Maqbool
In fact, if not for the diffused lights and the margaritas on her pulse,
Winnie would be certain
For now, she looks on
Those night music eyes; that close in that familiar way when he smiles
That familiar raspy, droning, tragic, broken, early morning voice
That make you want to cuddle him like a child
The same way his hair ripples on his forehead
And the way he subtly, occasionally, tosses his head to the right,
To move the long black hair out of his deep brown eyes
His fingers too busy, too important, to move from the heart shaped guitar
He's maybe a shade darker than Max; definitely slimmer
But then she gets this strange feeling
Like whatever that's happening
Isn't really happening
But is only, symbolic
And that Max isn't really Max
But is a metaphor for something else
As though he has jumped out of the pages of his own book
She's scared that
Even now
She can see him
Standing like a man, in flesh and blood, in a pinstriped shirt,
But any moment now,
Dressed as he is, as one of the twenty first century new romantics,
He will jump up and introduce himself to her,
“Hi, my name is Maqbool's pain;
Love me,
Eat me out
Hide me now
In the lump in your throat
Beneath your glimmering sunglasses
Despite the twitch in your voice
Sometimes during his embrace
On the traces on your pillow
By writing about old times
With a little help from your friends
Under your bed
Around your dreams
Where no one else can reach
Because I'm yours
And you love me”
Moments after capping off 'I want you (She's so heavy)' with that rousing guitar solo,
And segueing comfortably into the strains of 'Lake of Fire'
For the first time, in just over seven minutes
He looks at her
There can be no mistaking him now
FOREPLAY
Yes, she's the woman in the prose-
“Appearing nine years ago, in her brother's snake-skin jacket
And then on, in dreams”
Winnie's first impulse is to tear apart the page
That seems to have ripped apart her soul
But she is restrained only with bewilderment
Or something like that
How, she wonders, could anyone so gifted,
Anyone who could write a sentence like that,
Be so enormously sad
Maqbool, the wistful, who made the two incomprehensible films
And then nothing else
The boy of such genius
But also such strangeness, such raving madness and unfathomable sorrow
And to tell the truth, Winnie is also, terribly flattered
“He insists on a version of me that seems so tempting to believe really”
He makes her ingenuous, funny, enigmatic, profound, beautiful
Something she is
And she isn't
So much so that one can't help but admire that he is the only one who appreciates the intrinsic her
That only he can
“See through the very folds of my soul”
But then she realizes it's not about her
At all
He sees everyone like this
Like a fictional character he imbibes certain attributes with-
1. ingenuous, 2. funny, 3. enigmatic, 4. profound, 5. beautiful, etc.
But even then, for the few moments that linger after reading,
She starts believing in them
She reads on then
Not to lose herself
But to keep herself
She knows that like those before, this moment of weakness too, shall pass
She knows that the half hour trek has lasted eight years, a chapter and fifty pages
She knows that in ninety seconds from now, she will close the book and join Amar in bed
She knows that the possibility of another future had got over, nine years ago
She knows that he too, in his own way, is slowly but undeniably, getting over her
She knows that at this moment, he is most likely, fucking some impressionable intellectual in LA
She knows that he will win at least the Pen/ Faulkner for this one
She knows him too well
She knows that they will never again make love to each other
She knows that the relationship they have left now
Is only
Metaphysical
MONDAY- "PARIS"
No body
Greasy hair
Nasal voice
Long face
Bedroom eyes
She concludes he's not all that handsome
“I know I'm looking for imperfections”
There is a moment there
When she feels his gaze burning her
It is for some reason, humiliating
Vaguely embarrassing
She, of course, could have looked away
But for the sky blue of his eyes
It's then that she betrays herself
By looking at him
“She is looking at me
Each of her movements, is precise and languid
But her eyes are directionless
Dark circles
Acne prone skin
Unformed nose
Ferrero Rocher lips
Gummo smile
Bloated hips
Asymmetrical hairstyle
And by the way, black doesn't make her look slimmer;
But even then
I've never met anyone
Quite like her“
Greasy hair
Nasal voice
Long face
Bedroom eyes
She concludes he's not all that handsome
“I know I'm looking for imperfections”
There is a moment there
When she feels his gaze burning her
It is for some reason, humiliating
Vaguely embarrassing
She, of course, could have looked away
But for the sky blue of his eyes
It's then that she betrays herself
By looking at him
“She is looking at me
Each of her movements, is precise and languid
But her eyes are directionless
Dark circles
Acne prone skin
Unformed nose
Ferrero Rocher lips
Gummo smile
Bloated hips
Asymmetrical hairstyle
And by the way, black doesn't make her look slimmer;
But even then
I've never met anyone
Quite like her“
TUESDAY- "THE OTHER SAINT-GOBAIN GIRL"
She stops and looks at her reflection in the rather ornate (his taste, not hers) bedroom mirror
Her reflection never refuses to startle her, even now
Thirty Four
Almost six feet and seven kilograms lighter than pregnant June
Still capable of lending fantasies when smiling lopsidedly at jokes (she practices her dimple as I write)
Or touching thighs or shoulders or ribs;
Accidentally, casually and perhaps flirtatiously
Or wearing sleeveless blouses that always, inexplicably,
Seem to be a size smaller
No zits
Good
Laugh lines and crow's feet
But nothing a few hours of sleep and make up can't handle
And men don't really care about stretch marks
Black makes me look slimmer
Blue also looks good on her, she decides slowly, nodding her head with finality
A sexy body and great clothes on a Sunday afternoon
A husband and a child, madly in love with her, waiting downstairs
And present here, in the framed photograph in either Maldives or Bahamas (she forgets where exactly)
The new house and its four, still smelling of enamel, walls and its thousand unopened cardboard boxes
A hot cup of Darjeeling Tea, with thin arrowroot biscuits
Gulzar’s Sunset Point on the radio, somewhere in the background
A stray canary by the window, a good omen
It is almost enough to be herself
It is almost perfect
AlmostWEDNESDAY- "LOVE ON THE SIDE"
Shooncho invited him over for dinner
My wife's an expert in Italian
She feels as nervous as before her matriculation exams
And why does the fact that he's brought a date, not upset her but torment her?
So, no matter how rude I came across as
I refused to kiss him on the cheek or shake hands
Because I felt I had to be careful with him
He's one of those
With all that mysterious confidence
With a face that is sometimes handsome, sometimes just strange
Who you feel can read your mind and doesn't let on
And occasionally smiles to scare you
He can look deep into my eyes, my lips, the very folds of my soul
He strips me
He's infuriating
Cerebral palsy has mildly distorted her lower lip
Making the left side of her mouth curve sexily while speaking emphatically or smiling
A face like a rainbow
So beautiful that it almost hurt to look at it
Knowing that such perfectness would be hard to experience again
The two slightly protruding canines that lent her a babyish innocence at thirty four
I want to keep looking at your face
With the edible, pouting lower lip and the hazel eyes and that chandelier smile
I'll eat you for breakfast
His love, at that moment, resembled his appetite; voracious, insatiable
He could actually, really, devour her
I'm with her
He's with you
But you get it
And I get it
Let's want to fall in love
For the things we now know
Let's misbehave
I still remember
Our first touch
Playing footsie under the table for fourTHURSDAY- "THE YEAR OF KISSING"
Your mouth
on Mine
Your lips
dripping with poetry
Wet
Your spearmint tongue
Breathless
Some of your
Fiery Amber (or is it Moulin rouge?)
Swallowed whole today
With a tear or two
And saliva strawberries
At two hours, nineteen minutes and forty six seconds exactly
And broken only because of the long distance from France
It's not quite the Guinness book kiss
But it gives us
one hard on,
two parched mouths
an adrenaline rush,
something to write about,
scandalized neighbors,
sweet weariness,
Lipstick on my collars
And Hickeys on your lip
Now you'll not be able to show your face for a week
She parts her lips another centimeter, so that her mouth twitches slightly
She closes her eyes
The moment is suddenly, unexpectedly perfect
He aims his lips for hers,
But she instinctively (As a reflex action) turns her face so as to evade them and offers him her cheek instead
Then guiltily, she catches herself and tries turning back
But it's too late and she ends up grazing the side of his lips with her own
It's an awkward moment
She's relieved, giggling; he's surprised, then perturbed and then slowly, furious
He thinks
She's either too conventional
Or a little reluctant
Or too scared to reveal herself
She thinks
If you look closely
You'll see that my lips are not saying what I want to
She liked the way he always smelled of a familiar morning
Brut aftershave, Keo Karpin coconut oil and strong filter coffee
And of old editions of Ananda Bazaar, Mogras, morning breeze at Kalighat, and Hemanta on the radio
He smelled like their childhood, lived in a two room affair somewhere in Rippon Lane
He smelled like Calcutta
Like '93
Like home
Like love
Like her
That moment now appears definitive
When one possible future ended and another started
Here, fifteen years ago, they'd stood and argued
Whether he had kissed her or she had kissed him?
That doesn't really matter now
For they had kissed
Or hadn'tFRIDAY- "BREATHLESS"
Andrew, the indefatigable
Going down on her
In the elevator
Mouthing poetry in between inventive sex
And my chunky black Scorcese spectacles dangling on my (then scrawny) nose
Words flowing with as much irritating reluctance
As my second orgasm that night
I don't know where to start
I love every millimeter of her
Her body like a map that shows too much and is therefore useless
But do you want to fuck her Sir?
Eventually, yes
I'd love to turn you on
They're just a little bit stuck in the middle for now
Elevator Music
Their darkened reflections in voyeuristic opaque mirrors looking back at them
And always a vestige of Mr. Aniruddha Kanti Sen
His horn rimmed spectacles
His Holmesian pipe
His barrister books
As though silent, testimonial witnesses
She's afraid that
Just like Devdas, he would barge into the room anytime and say,
“Daurja Kholo Paaro”
But he doesn't
It's like they've managed to stop time somehow
Somewhere between the eighth and ninth floorThere's just enough time
For a sixty nine
SATURDAY- "THE METAMORPHOSIS OF REVA"
It disturbs me that I, am writing this hurriedly, secretly, guiltily
Glancing intermittently at the bathroom door
Inside; he's brushing his teeth
He's coming back
More later
False Alarm
It disturbs me that after a couple of months,
I'm suddenly looking forward to sleeping with him
Sleeping with him while thinking about
Him
It disturbs me that today, amidst the night music and the Italian food,
For a split second I felt that I could have given up everything for Andrew
Anir, Buchkun, the house, the jewelry, the bank accounts; everything
Everything that my life has amounted to so far
For someone I've seen for the first time today
Of course, that feeling lasted only an instant
But the fact that I could be capable of such thoughts
Horrifies me
It disturbs me that I, a mother of two, was not annoyed
When being touched by someone other than my husband
Slutty as this sounds
It is all trueSUNDAY- "ENDLESS, NAMELESS"
Yesterday
Only you asked me about my earliest memory
Only you wanted to know what dreams I remembered
Only you were more fascinating than I was beautiful
Only you could tear apart my writings and still make sense
Only you could wipe my tears without being intimidated
You were clearly besotted with me
You were at the same time, comic and tragic in your love
You were saved, moved, cured, defined, with mine
You looked at me expectantly, like a child, anticipating my next move
You were the last one who truly, unconditionally, loved me
Today
Alone with him, I might lose my direction
He courts me, pleads with me, ignores me, hurts me
He cries mysteriously, makes undecipherable demands
And is so entirely, persuasively, selfishly, unapologetically, inexhaustibly, himself
I love the way he looks at me with his slow breath
I love the way he says my name with the slightly accented clipped consonants
I love the way he makes me feel beautiful when he smiles
I love the way he weirdly reminds me of my first schoolboy crush
I love him
And I loved you too
But frankly
I was bored
Monday, October 26, 2009
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
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
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
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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
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
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
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
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
"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
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.
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.
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