WEDNESDAY- "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 four

THURSDAY- "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't

FRIDAY- "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 floor

There'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 true

SUNDAY- "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

SOLITUDE KARAOKE

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

SHERLOCK HOLMES IN LOVE

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


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

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



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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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