words, madness and a pinch of despair

sleep sea

2010-12-26T07:05:00.000-08:00

This is another end. The million-tongued, deathly-white demons are doing their crazed, apocalyptic calypso. Adrenalin rushes through their demonic veins, their pomegranate-pink fangs bared. Saliva bubbling with poison. Nails crack. Hair spreads, like jet black serpents, all over their body. Eyes cloud over, open, cloud over again. Reddened and ripe from years of bridled hate. A hundred thousand violins erupt in a philharmonic frenzy. Lightning flashes within, like a punishing lash from a heartless god. But i am content, like a moth, coccooned in thick early-morning sleep.

2010-10-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

I remember you. Emerging out of the blackest of nights.

With nothing but a blacker eye

The night swirling about you in curly wisps

Helpless and distraught

All I wanted was to protect you

As if you were a little furry creature,

Curling up in my palms

And I could feel your heart

beat madly within your tiny ribcage

I frantically hummed a familiar refrain

To soothe you

But all that came out was a feverish sigh

Carried over from a previous birth, perhaps

And my caresses died one by one on your cold skin

We walked, not talking though

not joining the happy chorus of the cicadas.

We trod upon the cold, secretive empires of the roaches

and ran our palms over the godless universe of the lizards

We walked into the dawn

until daylight simmered like a distasteful broth

above our heads

2010-07-10T08:04:00.001-07:00

Exorcise all the grief into words

that you can preserve.

Maybe some day, they will be read and

appreciated, if you are lucky!

Some fool might even worship

your miserable brain.

Only be prepared

Your words will be consumed

along with onion salad

Sometimes, sat upon.

They may wrap dog poop.

But they will be read!

You will be gone by then

to some place where

words don't exist; grief neither.

Just maggots.

i'm there for you

2010-06-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

Accusations are like the second skin

with scars, black spots

warts and vitiligo patches.

Be comfortable in it

Because everyone is going to

accuse you

of everything

love, heartbreak, denial

madness, of starvation

brilliance, beauty

forgetfulness, lust

of being yourself

Do not feel unimportant

Because everyone needs you

You are their favourite martyr

the famous loser

the world cannot exist without

So hang in there

and hey, a smile would be just perfect

another day

2010-04-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

The morning wraps itself around the trees

like tears in a man’s eyes

Present, but not quite.

A siren from a distant ship festers

like the wail of a heartbreak

rarefied, oneiric.

Moist earth, the sun’s ass wipe

Sunlight smeared artistically

Angular, aromatic.

Shadows take birth, one by one

like wounded dogs, diffident

self-conscious and pathetic.

The day stretches its lazy morning stretch

like an incomplete death sentence

uncertain, yet unavoidable.

Messy, messy March

2010-04-02T07:51:00.001-07:00

March was organically disappointing. I try my best to think up of good things to write about as I am perfectly aware of the fact that life is about good things, too, though it may seem, to (regular) readers of my blog, that I am a pathological cynic and an avid life-hater. But the minute I think of writing something pleasant and positive, something goes horribly wrong and I go back to the sniffly, angry, helpless, “fuck life” mode. Then it all falls into a smooth groove. Things and people compete to make my life miserable and among them this month were John Grogan, (I HATE TO SAY THIS but, I have to…) John Updike and Protima Bedi. So, it really isn’t my fault, you see. That I crib so much!

The Witches of Eastwick

When I read a book, I actually read it. I mean, right from the prologue to the blurbs on the back. This might be one of the first times that I skipped paras, pages, whole chapters together to get through to the last goddamn page and I’m furious it had to happen with Updike, one of the writers I idolize. The Witches of Eastwick was picked up with great anticipation from a second hand book store but, no amount of train journeys, calm afternoons and bone-chilling boredom at office could get me interested in the witchy ministrations of the three women with supernatural powers (you must be a classified moron if you haven’t guessed that much from the title yet). They have incredible orgies with a rich, though not overtly classy, man in town. The language is unbeatably typically Updike, I admit. But the whole point of the book escapes me. The only things that remain are the foursomes, the occasionally delightful witchcraft and Darryl Van Horne’s (the above mentioned rich man) spittle-lined lips and a surprisingly smooth arse.

Marley and Me

John Grogan thinks he has achieved something spectacular writing about his dog. I hate to crush his happy little life, trample upon his near-perfect book but, Marley and Me made me want to throw up. I love dogs. I mean, I really do. I believe they are far more worthy of life than most humans. But, man, this book is so fucking silly that you wish the “ill-mannered darling dog” Marley is shot dead if he doesn’t choke on the living room rug and kills himself. Grogan cannot write and I think he shouldn’t too lest he wants genuine canine lovers to start hating dogs. Skipped more than half the book.

Timepass: The Memoirs of Protima Bedi

Do not read this book unless you are confused, self-destructive, a sex manic, or a hypochondriac or all these put together. It makes you want to apply for gun license and shoot every one in your vicinity. Sometimes, people should stick to doing what they are best at and leave the job of writing books to the real writers.

PS: I pay my respects to Updike. He was a real writer. The Witches of Eastwick was just one of his nightmares.

diary

2010-03-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

I want to float in space. Defy all sense of gravity. Cling to imaginary porcelain bubbles and feel as weightless as witches’ knickers. I am so pathetic, I am so full of myself and excessive animistic desires.

I’m the fool! Oh the fool! Weeping each time someone crushes my make-believe worlds and forgetting all the shit at the sight of the morning sun.

Sixty per cent of my time is spent looking up inane things on the internet. This is what I found last week. Eco friendly vibrators are a rage. Oh yeah! They would be a boon for all those horny freaks who want to impress Al Gore, I guess.

People keep sending me pictures of their babies, their private family holidays, their new haircuts, their new offices, new mobile phones, new girlfriends, new parents in law. My mom has no wrinkles on her milky white skin. All she has are worry lines and a large red fiery spot on her forehead. Sometimes, a memory of a smile.

My dreams are of random naked women. In waterbaths, one giving birth to bottles, and another sitting atop a tree, her hair getting caught in the branches. I couldn't care to interpret them. A kindred spirit bought me a packet of crayons. Nicest gift of the year! When a woman says she is discovering herself, she damn well means she is getting laid.

Heat, damp hair, oily face, unfinished work and unadulterated hatred for everything mildly resembling life somewhat sums up my current existence.

through the looking glass

2010-03-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

As I look down to the street from the dusty white windows of my office building, every thing seems drawn into a meaningless oblong. People scurrying about like rats. Men astride two-wheelers, some feeling proud, some miserable, some mentally stripping the hot woman at the driver’s seat of a car two inches away from them. Even the traffic signal seems pathetic. This city is sadder than most sad cities. It has managed to delude itself into believing that it is a metropolis. Watching a tiny portion of it from the window here, I feel sorry seeing it dragging its hind legs like a paralysed dog.

A family makes its way through the motorised maze. The father holding his daughter’s hand so tight, it almost seemed as if he were lifting her by her arm. The little girl seemed to dangle from his clutch, like a cheap stuffed toy dressed in gaudy yellow. The mother trails behind with a baby in her arms. Face, expressionless.

The coffee houses are peopled with aspirations, pretenses, and chairs. Every one puts on a face, several faces. If you look close enough, you can see them all inside out. Like transparent balloons, filled with vapidity. Yet they spend hours on themselves. Painstakingly prettied faces, smoothened and glossy hair, milky white teeth in pretty rows nibbling on fancy sandwiches.

The road again. A dull greyish blue. The night is circling the street lamps. Vehicles are fewer. the moon is barely visible in the smoky sky.

A surge of vomit rips through my guts.

fuck titles

2010-03-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

One tear drop touched another. Mingled for a brief while. Trickled together, towards certain death. Crashing headlong into the dry, brown dust. Sinking into it, leaving an imperceptibly pretty wet patch. Breaks my heart to see it disappear. Careless humans would trample upon it, crushing my grief under filthy soles.

A bit of my heart would stick to them. They would take it to their miserable homes. Under cobwebby beds, stifling living rooms, next to refrigerators … and my heart sticking to their faithful shoes, would watch their over-fed children, half-dreamt dreams, deathly fears, and mindless fornicating.

A fragment's fragment, that's all... of my heart. Don't let the cats lick it or the mice chew on it. Let me live, at least in those stains.

seeing

2010-02-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

When the moonlight paints a crazy rothko

on the pallid walls,

the ceiling fan becomes a one-eyed, three-legged monster

in a trance. Sputtering and then steadying,

whirring away, endlessly.

Little creatures, tiptoe on the marble-topped sink

An especially dejected one

attempts a pirouette

It maybe a swirling dervish in its

even littler hallucinatory universe.

The evening softens into ribbons

of orange

The tea froths at the extremities of

the steel container.

Like spittle, repulsing.

A thousand aches are crushed, inaudible as

the synchronised crackle of imploding sighs

Bright red flowers, at the tips of

a beautiful, backwater plant

what's the point?

deceit and death

2010-01-22T09:21:00.000-08:00

orchids are cruel plants. they don't flower. they wilt, shed their leaves, and turn into the colour of bile, just to make you sad. to see you double up with grief.

im in a morgue now. a morgue for words. where they are autopsied over and over again, without respect. i feel sorry for their creators sometimes, for they ought not to have given birth to soulless bastards like them in the first place.

teach me hope

2010-01-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Some memories like menstrual cramps

kill everytime they come.

Playing in a loop

Eddying, swirling, twisting, knotting

themselves into ganglions

of sticky words

some smells, some sky

but mostly words

the demons of dusk

clinging to every breath of ours

the air, suffused with tobacco

the countless mindgames we played

music from cotton fields,

jazz, during pleasanter spells

tear-stained sheets

but mostly, just distilled pain

crystal and perfume

and crumpled inky notes

like dumb goldfish in the

charged waters of my remembrance

if only i could be lobotomised

my brain. my curse.

thoughts

2009-12-29T09:48:00.001-08:00

The sun was an obscene red yesterday. anyone who looked at it unabashedly flaunting its naked colours would have blushed. i did. and it followed me, through the treetops, shimmering in the joy of its existence. it was trying to prove something, i felt. the shameless bitch.

I felt sorry for the trees. especially, one tree, which continued to shed leaves in its foetal memory of an autumn. there is no autumn here, honey, i wanted to tell it. I wanted to uproot it, take it to where its family waits amid snowstorms and weeping willows. i wanted to share the inexplicable sadness of that tree.

The evening looked haunted. An apology for mist---like doppelgangers of fairies. I wanted to drift along with them too, like a whisper, without a past, without a future.

The pigeons are back. the same clamour, the same smell, the same confusion of feathers. sometimes hurtling themselves on the glass window panes like demented poltergeists.

love and darkness

2009-12-17T08:43:00.000-08:00

It is the love only poets are capable of. Oscillating between the most intense, the darkest, the most passionate and the trivial all in a sliver of words. One moment you are gasping for breath for the air around you seems to have been sucked out by a large invisible air-sucking machine; and in the next moment, you are transported to a world full of sun and smiles.

Ted Hughes is one of my favourite poets though I wonder if I’d ever have cared to read him if he weren’t married to Plath. Hughes, unlike Plath, is precise and his words sometimes make you sit up straight, as if someone knocked you on your head while you were drifting off to sleep.

At one point, I preferred Plath’s layered verses, the words burning embers lacquered in literary finesse, to Hughes’ on-the-face approach. His animals and his nature-worship seemed, I dare say, commonplace, compared to Plath’s powerful internal dialogue-dark, cloudy and bubble-wrapped.

But, of late, I have been reading a lot of Hughes and I am happy to find that I have been completely wrong about him. He is direct in a way few poets are. His words are so measured that the aesthetic quality of the verse delights rather than confuses. He is so sure of what he wants to say that I can almost picture his face after he has written each word, a smile appearing like crow feet around his eyes.

I had read his Hawk Roosting several years ago in a high-ceilinged poetry classroom where I was struggling to fit in among a sea of painted lips and polished accents. I knew nothing about Hughes then or Plath for that matter. It was in the same classroom that I first read The Mirror and found it incredibly inspiring. Plath was this mysterious, suicidal, genius of a woman, whom I was drawn to. The hawk retreated into the dusty crevices of my memory, uncomplaining and not at all the megalomaniac as he was portrayed. He did resurface though, in such a flourish that it is nearly impossible to look at any bird now without wondering how Hughes would have described it.

However, I have to admit that it is more Hughes in relation to Plath that interests me. In fact, I have never been able to read him without picturing her, lurking somewhere in half a syllable, a broken phrase or in the eyes of a doe he so beautifully describes. I know it’s not fair to treat a poet this way. And I am trying. But, with Birthday Letters in my hand right now, I need not.

I have been pining for this book, scrounged around every book fair, online portal, and bookshop for it and not found it, until a kindred spirit sent it to me across the hills and the oceans and I am indebted to him.

I swear its not some voyeuristic interest I have in this final version of Hughes' memories of Plath. It’s only an innocent desire to peek into the fabled lives of two people I admire the most. And, it does indeed satiate my long standing thirst for exquisite verse.

It is as if he is weighed down by her intensity, the troubled bundle of her nerves. But it is also evident how much he loved her. Her eccentricities, her face, her temper, her poetry, her inspiration, her madness, and how he sees himself through the idea of her, years after her death.

“Ten years after your death

I meet on a page of your journal, as never before,

The shock of your joy…

…Suddenly I read all this-

Your actual words, as they floated

Out through your throat and tongue and on to your page…”

Mulling over these lines, I can almost hear the suppressed sigh behind those words. The love is dreamlike. Imagine being laid down on a page, respectfully, tenderly and lovingly forever. I’d love to have a grave like that. A yellowing white grave where words trail like an unending hearse.

“…And your temples

Into which your hair-roots crowded, upstaged

By that glamorous, fashionable bang.

And your little chin, your Pisces chin.

It was never a face in itself. Never the same.

It was like the sea’s face-a stage

For weathers and currents, the sun’s play and the moon’s.

Never a face until that final morning

When it became the face of a child-its scar

Like a Maker’s flaw. But now you declaimed

A long poem about a black panther

While I held you and kissed you and tried to keep you

From flying about the room. For all that,

You would not stay…”

call it whatever u like

2009-11-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

Bright afternoon

sweetened black coffee

brief contentment

---

No work

adding to

Monday blues

---

Haiku is modern day twitter

Only that it’s infinitely better

---

Inspiration, like lizards,

is hiding in the cool undersides

of the rock.

---

Five minutes to four

One hour to freedom

---

Ennui up to my bones

the fan’s dysfunctional

---

Ate a fried snack

that seemed to grow

inside my mouth

As it is evident, I have taken to writing mindless haiku. Traditionally, it is supposed to convey a profound idea in just 17 syllables. Mine, obviously, don’t. but I’m gonna go ahead and call them haiku anyway J

soul strip

2009-11-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

I hate pauses

temporary suspension

syncopated silences

a fucked up stomach

I love old houses

the wails and laughters

of generations pickled in their

mournful corners.

The African Tulip

The ocean, Sheer blue skies

expectant clouds, the staggering

brilliance of its serpentine veins

I hate the warmth of my body

hate the auroral sorrow of each day

sunsets, time

Hate the look on the stunted, pointy

face of the crow

after it has shat on the railing

I love the wet, green moss

clean white sheets, untouched yoghurt

my puffy eyes after a bout of tears

I hate future

mottled cows

and unborn memories

midweek musings

2009-11-16T20:03:00.000-08:00

i've been secretly desiring a tree. i've been spending nights on the Internet looking for a bonsai version of The African Tulip or the Flame of the Forest. I'm a retard at technology and hence completely inept even at carrying out a decent search on Google. For the time being, i'll fondle the leaves and the batty-orange flowers in my mind.

I've been feeling increasingly like a shrimp in an icebox inside a large shrimp factory, where there's nothing but blocks of impenetrable white ice. Every thing is in monotones of grey. And, curled up in a foetal position, i lie in wait even as my heart forgets that it's supposed to be in mute mode.

Writing shit like this gives me some kind of sick self gratification. I have delusions of importance and revel in it till it dies down into a whimper of mortification.

The people around me are humanoid zombies. I sometimes feel they are fattening me now for the one grand, final slaughter.

mea culpa

2009-11-08T06:17:00.000-08:00

Disconnected images, anticipation, a tear, uninflected voices, dispirited environments, crushed dragonflies, smell of fried fish, fleeting pangs of passion, naked insides of a watermelon, monotony of journeying in elevators, pain, the daily contractions of abdominal muscles, prospects, cold fear, mucous, repeated words, dust, longing, regurgitated smiles, coffins and urns, caffeine, SMS es, pubic hair, braces, cheese omlets.

It’s fascinating how it just goes on. Without any predetermined destination, in purposeless circles. Anyone who does not tire of this relentlessness is blessed.

My premature disenchantment with life has got nothing to do with bad childhood, abuse or mental illness. It’s laziness coupled with a strong lack of will to survive. Blaming, lying, dreaming, crying, and waking up at dawn with distilled ideas of suicide.

My mom’s losing sleep over the spiraling gold price. Dad’s imagining his self indulgent, hypochondriac self in a few years from now, my sibling is innocently lapping up what the tv is spewing at her.

Wonder where things went wrong with me.

Here's what my epitaph should read, "shite"

october

2009-11-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

October’s days are seductresses

refusing to strip

even as the sun

runs its spidery thin fingers

along their honey-coloured hips

Cloaked in translucent layers of mist

they lie about in their

still warm beds

mulling over recent caresses

A tangle of hair and skin

Winter apples, their mouths

smoke scented

in sensuous twirls.

Droplets of water like melting icicles

Sliding down their smooth bellies

The cicadas trapped in

their infernal homes screech

Their early dusk song

mingling with the

inexplicable melodies of the night

The sun smothered

by straggly clouds, a witch’s frizz

Muffled moon, the trees loom

Demons from a prehistoric

graphic novel

Octobers wake

from their soulless slumber

Clasping their gossamer

to their chins

Quietly haunting the hours

casual, unimportant observations

2009-10-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

i'm pricking the conscience of a frangipani flower. its petals are leathery and outrageously pink. the flowers suck up all the blood out of the tree leaving its barks a deathly white.

it's intriguing to watch a ball of silk thread lying on the floor. theres turquoise blue, blood red, peachy yellow and candy pink. it was pulled out of several of mom's sarees for no apparent reason and is now lolloping about in my room. it reminds me of a mangled tarantula.

I consciously apply, injest and inhale an obscene amount of chemicals each day. i wear Rhodium around my neck, toluene and formaldehyde on the nails, and methyl salicylate on my forehead. Xylometazoline is pumped into my nostrils at regular intervals. all this and a myriad other nameless little atoms or ions or whatever fuckin subatomic particles are meeting each other every micro second on my skin and inside me. All these chemicals, if combined in some freak chemical experimental accident, could form a hard external shell that can be worn about the body like a cocoon. Not necessarily the insect story again. But like a crab, a turtle. Just makes the business of showing displeasure/ discontent/ indifference a hell a lot easier.

There is a little red stuffed toy wedged between my pillows. I can’t remember how it got here. It doesn’t evoke any particular emotion in me.

as i was telling mikim yesterday, i am transcending new levels of boredom.

prayer to ogden nash

2009-10-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

my ass is numb

sitting up trying not to sound

like you

if you set your hounds upon me

i understand why, mr.nash

sorry for being rash

and writing such trash

more nonsense poems

2009-10-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

down here in the corner

you silly fuckin goner

u aint got no honour

all yelpin and leapin

now stop that screamin

and see where ya bleedin

---------

i hate things that fly

round and round in joyless circles

all they do is fly

nervously emitting guttural gurgles

confusion of feathers

claws and shit together

nonsense poem

2009-10-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

i once had a dog

that bit its own paws

its whiskers were smooth

i swear it's the truth

like silky strands of candy

only 'twas brown as brandy

more vicious than termites

my pocket size dynamite

thought she could outwit a tomcat

but came back meek and scratched-at

victorious meows outside

head cocked to one side,

'oh the tomcat, its nothin but scat

this is makin no sense

and is makin me tense

now get off my back please

and give me some more cheese'

blue

2009-10-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

Someone has stretched a blue

bubble gum across its

ugly wide mouth

A trillion white satin ribbons

curled upon it like tapeworms

writhing in gooey blue gum

Drifting in comfortless

anticipation

gathering moondust and baby stars

Sometimes reflecting the faces of ghouls

posing as angels

children that were never born.

Their faces, saddening with each little

twinkle

is the blueness.

It’s so happy that it is pissing me off

It’s the blueness of everything

that could have been

The blueness

of all the warmth in the world

Of freedom and of the little

wings i crushed

with my stubby fingers

White as guilt, and lies

shocking me into dejection

every single dawn. the blueness

reducto absurdum

2009-09-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

with each passing day, i am moving closer to my destination. people are petty as ever. prejudiced, selfish and downright mean. when was i ever involved with them? im either too naive or not equipped to handle shit. totally.

the acid is burning down the walls of my stomach. the phlegmatic sinuses are wheezing. as a result, i look moon-faced. my head hurts most of the time. my nose is blocked forever and my mouth tastes like air, which is rather sick.

some one from the apartment below is using soap. the cloying smell is sticking to the back of my throat.

stale is probably the best word in english.

i'm supposed to print stuff. i hate print outs. i hate everything.

i read somewhere that clocks kill time. they mess with it. segment it, chop it, contain it. if there were no clocks, time would seem endless, beautiful. i really should stop now coz i think i have sufficiently distorted that beautiful original thought.

it feels like im being sucked into a vortex of nothingness. its so powerful that i cannot free myself from it. im falling deeper into it. ive lost my feet, my toes, my nails. and i'm not looking for help. if help needs me, let it find me.

hope this is not irrevocable

2009-09-15T02:03:00.000-07:00

I guess it’s about time some one pronounced me clinically brain dead. My grey matter has either all shriveled up and died or I’ve turned an idiot unceremoniously.

I have been talking to stupid people a lot these days and it doesn’t even bother me. I even caught myself giving one atrociously young housewife tips on how to make really strong masala chai. Her bewildered, childlike eyes widened. All her life she would be thankful to me. Not a minor achievement at all.

And yes, attending weddings of course. I’ve mastered the art of floating about like a cheerful social butterfly, smiling and telling pseudo, hypocritical women (my relatives) how wonderful they look and oohing and aahing at their shopping exploits including newly acquired nail/lip colours.

I found out that a former friend had been dumped by his fiancée. I listened to every painful detail, offered heartfelt condolences, even gave a cliché ridden, delightful little inspirational speech.

An aunt brought cheap imitation jewelry home. Her sole purpose in life is selling cheap jewelry and cotton saris to jobless, middle-aged women, who could get a few words of house-keeping advice and gossip free with each item they purchased. Hey, but I played the perfect host. I tried those dainty imitation anklets on my pathetically masculine feet, and promised to buy them.

I’ve strictly been watching only soaps and shamelessly mushy movies and feeling great about it. And, I’ve been spending on fancy clothes and stilettos. I watched internet demos on how to apply eye shadow effectively.

Here I am now at an odd training programme feeling like a piece of furniture, or the ceiling fan maybe, in the plush conference hall. All the other graying enthusiastic participants are calling out answers, expressing their ideas, comments, analysing human behaviour and dissecting the English language as if it were a formalin soaked corpse. I am entertaining myself listening to their polished accents and staring at their painted lips.

I feel every bit of knowledge I had acquired over the years is slowly seeping out of my mind. Probably when I'm asleep, it crawls out of my ears like insects or something. How else would I feel so utterly empty each morning? Nothing inspires me anymore.

Could this be stress? Or a phase that all unemployed people go through? Maybe I was delusional all along. Maybe I was always dumb. All I can do now is just wait till I grow new brain cells, i guess.

Sing this for me

2009-08-13T00:40:00.001-07:00

i'd love to hear this sung. i think it will do better at the strings of a guitar than remain as words on cyber space. i know nothing about the travails of song writing. Oh but it's only a wish of an unborn song writer inside my head.

there is no sun

it does not enter my room

smelling of sleep and silvery cobwebs

i so painfully spin in

the warmth of fuzzy memories.

drifting like the remnant of a nigtmare

on the cobblestones of dawn

inside an ancient church

clasping sweaty hands

we whispered

our feverish oaths, of life on the

verge of bliss

picking imaginary dandelions

their powdery middles vanishing

at our fingertips

smiles sombody threw at me

like nickels to a starving urchin

i dont want the sun

a bleached white halo now

my cherubs with honeyed kisses,

don't listen to those hideous howls

stay

with me in this room

where we can exist in a bubble

suspended.

A letter to myself

2009-07-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

The road is filled with the first leaves of autumn. The sky is pale and the bird song is not unfamiliar. It had always been there like a muted melody all through my life.

The earth had softened in the recent rains and it sank a little bit underneath my feet as I took each unhurried step. I was walking towards the bench at the end of the road, clutching the letter I had unearthed from my old steel trunk, where I treasured scraps of yellowing newspaper, which had articles I had written a long long time ago, bits of muslin from another era, and some fading photographs.

My head was throbbing from the late afternoon sun and beads of sweat broke into a thousand minute streams on my willfully wrinkling skin.

“So, you did manage it after all, you little wimp,” the letter began. I laughed, a quiet, childish laugh. “I really didn’t think you’d keep this letter. For all that rebellion, I thought you’d have discarded it along with your past. Wriggled out of it, smoothly, calmly and tearlessly. Remember, that was what you always wanted. To be free from yourself.”

Ginger had followed me to the bench. He is old like me with cataract clouding his vision and the early symptoms of arthritis making itself visible on his feet. He had been a good dog, I thought. Way too good. Never demanding, never expecting, never complaining.

“You couldn’t stand up for yourself. You knew that. You blamed the entire world. You blamed life. You pretended it wasn’t your fault. You lived in denial.”
The light had begun to fade and I was beginning to feel thirsty.

“But, you know what, I always felt for you. The way you could never distance yourself from things. All those unshed tears, crystallizing in your mind. All those nights when you lay, curled up, thinking that it was the end. Your heart spilling onto your pillow. Your stomach, hollow and concave.”

I saw people walking their casual evening walks. Some glanced at me, some didn’t. Nobody looked unhappy, nobody looked happy either.

“By now, you would have made your peace with the world. You will have learned to treat everything with a glorious indifference. You can exist, finally, without feeling the pain of it. You can smile, without actually meaning it and cry as though you were sneezing.”

A butterfly had found its way to the bench and I looked up from the letter to watch its curious little sun-dance. The sun created an imperceptible halo around its tiny body and for a moment I thought I had seen God.

“You are like the windmill that said it will never die unloved.”

I looked up at the naked sun. It had shed its final layer of golden gossamer. It was time to leave.

i cant be bothered

2009-07-17T00:54:00.000-07:00

I would love to go on a long road trip. Where there is nothing but the endless blue sky stretching out in front of me. I want to go past the windmills and the mountains and the silent brown fields.

I remember an afternoon I spent in bed with a swollen throat and burning eyelids, straining to catch a glimpse of the sky through my grilled window. The rain was falling like little slivers of glass. I was very young then. My house overlooked a ground which looked the best when it rained. Once, a circus claimed the ground for a few months and I remember the smells of the animals and the velvetty black panther with marble eyes. I guess I hardly slept those days.

I remember the shimmering late afternoon sea that we could see from the terrace of my school auditorium. I used to steal unnoticed to the terrace just to gaze at it.

I remember the wetness of my dog’s nose on my face and the feel of its shiny black skin.

I remember the fly on Jerry Master’s face as he lay in his coffin. He taught us music in school. We had trooped to the chapel to see his body and I remember how terribly the choir played that day. My teachers were scurrying about the chapel, their short skirts, swirling around their shapely legs. The fly stayed on Master’s powdered, lifeless face, only to torment me for several years together.

I remember the house where I lived in as a child with its green walls and its pink rose bushes.

I remember Vani’s pigtails. She was a maid’s daughter at my grandmother’s house who died during a surgery. She was autistic. Several years later, I learnt that she died during an abortion and that she was raped.

Unconnected scenes from my childhood assail my memory. Im not entirely sure whether they make me happy or sad. And, i am also not sure why I wrote this piece.

thought bubble

2009-07-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

I witnessed the death of a dragon fly and did nothing to save it. It would be lovely to be a dragon fly. With gossamer wings and a Prussian blue body.

I’m having nightmares of hideous arthropods.

I received a clock as a gift.

The north east is like this extremely desirable whore I cannot resist. Thanks to Niv who is constantly telling me how much I’d love sikkim and cal. She is relentless in her pursuit to take me there. Niv, love you.

Before going to bed every night, I try hard to pick out something nice from my cobwebby memory. But, now they have all become one sticky mass of grey matter.

I watched motorcycle diaries.

A friend had a baby today. A little pink thing that resembled a pixie. I ran a finger along its deliriously smooth cheek.

I turned 27 today.

ghosts that i obsess over

2009-06-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

My infirmity is most apparent when I find myself crawling up to the corner of my bed with some of my books when I’m nervous or feeling utterly hopeless (which is a majority of my living time.) It’s a disease. It’s almost like the words written, probably callously, by random people eons ago could cure my mind of its gnawing sickness.

I thrive on those words as some of them have seen me through the darkest of hours. And I feel secretly comforted. Mortified too sometimes, thinking I could be fooled so easily.

I have lost count of the number of times I have wished I could meet Esther Greenwood, Catherine Earnshaw, Gregor Samsa or Florentino Ariza just to tell them that I consider them real people and that I feel their pain probably more than their creators did.

I have tried getting over this childish obsession of mine. Tried replacing it with haircuts, innumerable pedicures, chocolate icecreams, dark chocolates, booze, expletives, prayers and what not. But, none has given me that feeling. That inexplicable feeling of being comforted, though in a rather distorted manner.

Some people, as I always believe, are just not equipped to deal with life, in this world, amid all this rot. J
“There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice--patched, retreaded and approved for the road.” - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

untitled

2009-06-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

Give me my dreamcatcher,
my little music box.
And I’ll forsake my insanity.
Wrap me in the incantations you utter
for I’m drowning in my own melody
oh just once, my dear,
hold my hand
like you always did
with the sunshine in your hair.
walk me to the end of that endless road
Where icicles freeze over one more time
to watch us in our best day suits.
I’ll show you that lemon tree
Under which we recalled the names of the dead
and the angels
Come, let’s play a requiem
while the leaves fall
and reels unspool
let's dream each other's dream
of morphing into pixies and butterflies
let's play a requiem
for the prettiest of our dreams.

Voodoo dolls and the magic wand

2009-05-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

There is something soul satisfying about staring at the rain. Watching the convulsions of the monsoon skies between coffee and bitter-sweet verse, i feel its okay to be born after all. I have had my share of pain, I have been sittin on a time bomb all this while, I've been cheated and condemned and I still have my demons to slay. But, what the hell? I can afford to spend an entire day in that chair with my coffee mug and book.

Not even my perpetually painful bowel concerns or my rapidly falling hair are going to distract me from this meditative calm. I look for butterflies among the shiny wet leaves of the large bread fruit tree. I know they are probably all dead or enjoying a brighter day at their migratorial havens. But, i look for them all the same. That is what happens when you have a mind like a moth-eaten fruit. You tend to look for things even when you know they are not going to be there.

The fireflies too have disappeared. I miss those fire trails they leave - them cheerful insects.

I can see myslef by this window, 50 years later, nursing my gnarled knuckles, and silver hair, watching the same bloody rains.

Unspoiled monsters

2009-05-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

I picture myself as a corpse often. My face slightly swollen, my libms splayed and my hair stuck to my scalp, i'd lie dead to the world.

I would have been alone at the time of death. And when it finally swooped down to gather me in its strong arms, I would have cried out for help, begged for life, spat on God, or waited in silence for finality to claim me.

In a prettier way, I would have watched the scenes of my life unspooling before my very eyes.

I would have felt my love's tobacco scented breath upon my brow, felt his silken touch upon my pale skin and listened to his poetic whispers.

I would have cursed my family and realised in those feverish moments that i loved them - in a pathetic, hopeless sort of way. That i could not have flushed them down the drain pipe like i always wanted to.

I would have heard my favourite melodies, the ones that always wet my cheeks. I would have my mind filled up with the most exquisite verse i could ever write.

I would have died at night. When the skies wailed like a bunch of banshees and lightning cracked them open like hysteric veins.

I would die.

Purposely pointless

2009-05-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

The only useful thing i've done in the last three months is read. Some good, some boring, and some really fascinating books.

So for want of better things to do, i decided to write a gist of the books and what i think of some of them. Nobody asked me to review them. It's sadly only a self indulgent exercise :)

Memories of my Melancholy Whores

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On the surface, it is the story of an old man who discovers love at an impossible age of 90. But, beneath it is a seething cauldron of insecurities, pain and hopelessness of life. The love the protagonist feels for a prostitute young enough to be his grand daughter, had he married, is as unexpected and strangely pleasurable as a head rush. Vaguely unsettling, it seems like the words tumbled into the pages in little spurts of delight. In short, another masterpiece from the ‘Man from Macondo.’

Atonement

Ian McEwan

Starts off as a bittersweet tale of a family teetering on the verge of estrangement. The plot then traipses through the juvenile sensibilities of Briony Tallis and her imaginary world of righteousness. Briony can fill you with a sense of hatred so intense, you almost wish you could strangle her to death. Her sin makes your toes curl. And, oh dear, dear, what else can you do but nurture a painfully pleasant ache in your hearts for Robbie Turner and Cecelia Tallis. My verdict: Worth your time.

Toward the End of Time

John Updike

The plot is nothing but the musings of an eighty year old man diagnosed with cancer of the prostrate. On second thoughts, there is no plot at all. It takes you on an unhurried stroll through an America sans its power. In a universe racing towards a modern Apocalypse, Ben Turnbull flirts with time. He observes nature as it takes birth, wilts, dies and is reborn. Brilliant piece of work. If this book were a song, I could sing it till the end of time.

Answered Prayers

Truman Capote

Abrupt, cynical, irreverent and explicit. Also, very forgettable.

Room on the Roof

Ruskin Bond

Fresh as the first summer shower. Effortless prose. Innocent. A nice way to spend a rainy evening by the window.

Lonely city

2009-04-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I bid farewell to a city. Unceremoniously. I slipped out of it, unnoticed and quiet, like a salamander.

For more than three-and-a-half years, I lived in that city – that city of rooftops, that city where the setting sun lingers on like a bright traffic signal in the low evening sky, that city where I tasted the intensity of love, pain and language.

From the window of my single-roomed apartment on the second floor of an old bungalow, I watched the incessant bustle of life on the street below. Small families scurrying about their daily routine as though those chores gave them every reason to live. I watched them as if it were a play unfurling in front of me solely for my amusement.

I watched the two lizards on my window too. Watched them in their fortified silence. They never even made love, the two. For two whole years they just stayed on my window as I laid my life bare before their cold, benign and condescending stare.

The walls of my room – I had always felt they breathed. May be not. At least, they watched over me, as I lay on my bed, ravaged, spent and completely exhausted from life. It seemed they knew that I would not die. That I just could not die.

I will not forget my companion in sorrow. My bird that visits me every midnight. The several nights that I lay down waiting to hear the flap of its wings and its cries. We had this silent communication happening between us. This nocturnal bird and me.

I loved the dreams the city gave me. Twisted, yet pretty abstract dreams of the elements and strange people. I no longer have such dreams. All I have now is lifeless, barren sleep.

I will miss the city’s November, the prettiest of its months. Smoked white November. Its trump card. Its beauty.

That city has hurt me deeply. It has fucked me over. It has toppled my life like a breeze would a pretty paper boat. But, I miss the sadness of that city. I miss its loneliness.

the killing

2009-03-31T20:33:00.000-07:00

I committed a murder

cold blooded, in my viewless room.

I have blood on my hands

and in my soul, on my pillow

drenched in memories of several tearful nights

I can smell him in those stains. Like a tattoo,

the smell clings to my skin.

Invades my cells. Spreads

like a thousand cancerous needles

Within my rotting body.

It will take me with it

to the bottomless depths of guilt

Guileless non-existence

the first dirge

2009-03-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

The nights are murderous

They creep into my flesh

Sink into my bones

The stench fills my nostrils

my eyes well up

the walls of my stomach contract

shrieks explode in my head

Its incense

the scent of death

I lie on my bed, wet with perspiration

unable to move

It descends upon me

pressing its cold lips on my forehead

I try to fold my hands in prayer

i hear the ocean, the rain and the wind

i weep

i wake

i live

my word

2009-03-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

I go to bed every night with words inside my head. Unspoken, unwritten, unthought, they float about like an errant cloud in an empty sky. Whenever I try to put a finger on one it slips from underneath my touch.

Soon, they multiply like the bubbles in a bubble bath. They form little sweet limericks among themselves, then disengage from one another and form unbelievably intense verse too...something like a haiku.

I wish I could remember to keep a pencil and a piece of paper next to my pillow to catch them red handed next time they come. Those slant-eyed elusive beauties. I will then banish them into my fat, hard-bound book. On the smooth surface of yellowing paper, they can stay. Like pretty little lies.

Random

2009-03-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

Nothing is more annoying than watching pseudo women discuss fat-free food on national television.

Sometimes every thing seems so perfect that I feel like a fuckin jigsaw puzzle put together.

Cancer is bluish green. It’s liquid.

Non-dead man to dead man: How does it feel like being dead?

Dead man to Non-dead man: I guess I feel absent.

I guess i will die of dullness.

Spitting venom

2009-03-06T09:54:00.001-08:00

Statutory Warning: Strictly not meant for the consumption of people who love children

Train journeys are not always wholly unpleasant. If you have managed to get a comfortable window seat and a tolerable magazine or newspaper, heck, it can even be fun. But, O Dear Life, when hath thou ever shown kindness towards me?

The last train journey I undertook was the most traumatic I had ever experienced in a few years.

The compartment I was traveling in was infested with wailing children, all between ½ and 5 years old and annoying enough to make you want to strangle their little necks till their eyes popped out. I hate kids. And I don’t even feel guilty about it. Whenever I have tried telling my friends this, all I got were looks that pitied my utter depravity, shrieks of disbelief or poker-faced advice on why I might want to “think about it.”

Coming back to the train, a little girl dressed in pink, hardly 1/4^th feet tall, was surveying the train and her loving dad willingly obliged. He held her little arm and walked up and down the narrow passage way in the compartment, while the baby stretched her arm out and made ridiculous gestures with her mouth at all the passengers who cared to look.

But, the pain of it all is the fact that every passenger, except me of course, found these antics extremely engaging to watch. Some of them held out their hands, made smiley faces at her and praised the child’s unnaturally advanced cranial activity.

The baby, on the other hand, kept walking as if she had every right to inspect the train. I could even detect a look of total adult-like arrogance on her little babbling face.

While this charade was on, another baby, hardly a year old, was on his own trip – crying his lungs out. His mother put him on her lap and tried singing a hopeless ditty. But, the baby persisted with his sniffling and crying. His slightly older brother kept asking his dad, a balding young man dressed in red, the silliest questions that only children are capable of asking.

By that time, I had gone off to sleep, nulled by the excessive diaper talk and crying happening around me. By the time I woke up, there were more kids in my compartment.

One of them walked right up to my seat and pointed to the bottle of water I had bought for my self. I pretended that I didn’t notice. But, my co-passengers were kind enough to draw my attention to this little monster who chose to drink water from my bottle and not from any other child-loving Samaritans in the coach. Before I could react, he grabbed my bottle and ran to his mother, who gave me a wide smile, “he loves Aquafina, you see!”

Okay lady, go feed him branded drinking water. But, at least return my bottle.

For my bird

2009-02-25T21:06:00.000-08:00

I hear a bird every night outside my window. It is in distress, I can tell from its cry - persistent, and painful. At first, I thought it was the sound of my own raspy, pre-asthmatic breathing that bounced off the walls and landed in my ears as the wail of some exotic bird. But, I kept hearing it, through the hours of the still, oppressively warm nights.

I switched off the noisy fan, stopped breathing for a while and listened intently. There it was again. The same insistent low-throated cries. It may be a baby bat that has lost its mother and is unable to find its way back to her. It may even be a wounded crow bemoaning the loss of its ability to fly. A magpie maybe, or a robin? A thrush or a nightingale, a lark, a hummingbird. AH! an Albatross?

I skimmed through the names of all the birds I have read about in poems, novels or watched on television while I lay listening. Imagine having a robin outside your window - wounded or not ! I was ecstatic. I forgot my worries. I didn’t mind insomnia. I hoped and prayed my robin would build a cozy little nest outside my window from where it could cry all it wanted, get over the sadness, discover the spring and lay eggs. The eggs would soon hatch into four or five baby robins, all singing and screaming their little birdie lungs out. And, I could wake up to several spring mornings of pretty bird song and innocent twittering.

Spring’s a long long long time away. Summer is wringing the life blood out of earthly mortals. The breeze has migrated and everything looks so bleak. But, my little companion in sorrow, I hope you find peace. I hope you find spring. I hope you never leave my window.

##&&%%#&^

2009-02-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

I'm fucking bored. I need a remote control to fast forward my life. fucking freaks every one around me is.

Diary of a (read pathetic here) loser

2009-02-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

It is impossible to define how much my life sucks. Here's what my day was like.

Saturday

9 a.m.

No electricity. Woke up with a clogged nose and a lousy mood. Tried remembering the dream I had had.

10 a.m.

Read the Hindu and risked a boredom-induced partial facial paralysis. Attempted to solve the cross word on the paper's supplement. Yawned excessively. Took a very uncomfortable bath in cold water. Checked the refrigerator for anything edible. Found vegetables frozen beyond recognition, chicken curry, at least six months old, an age-old bottle of lime pickle and a lone egg which was about to hatch (I think). Gave up hope of breakfast.

12 noon

Still no power. Tried sleeping but, realized the futility of the exercise in exactly two seconds and gave up. The one-eyed paper man banged on the door, forcing me to jump out of my skin and curse even his grandmother, who in all probability, is rotting inside her grave. For 20 kilos of newspaper and a dozen plastic bottles, he wagged 150 bucks at me with a “take it or get go fuck yourself” expression on his face. Meekly grabbed the crumpled notes from his dirty hands and locked self up in the house again.

2.30 p.m.

Maid knocked on the door. She looked unhappy seeing me at home and demanded a new mop. Read a book, doodled in my favourite brown notebook, looked at the mirror at least 2,000 times.

4.30 p.m.

Devised torture methods for the Electricity Board members. Such as, forcing them to have anal sex with rabid dogs, tying them to a pole and letting loose a raging bull, parade them naked in a gay club, and make them wear pink pants.

5.00 p.m.

Contemplated tonsuring my head, because realised that the hair I shed a single day can be used to make at least three wigs. Cursed all the women in this world who have thick, lustrous curls cascading down their feminine backs.

6.30 p.m.

Went out to buy chips and water. Ended up buying a whole lot of other things, which included a Loreal shampoo and toothpaste, both wholly unnecessary. Found out that I had lost my key. Walked all the way back scratching the patchy gravel path with my shoes. Didn’t find it. Wondered if I could tear my hair apart, howl and jump in front of a State bus, but quickly decided against it.

7.15 p.m

Managed to spot key, entered house. Yippieeee…power back. Felt foolish at devising torture methods for EB people. Switched on television. Lost interest as soon as half-witted ministers started yakking away about recession.

8.12 p.m.

Power goes again. Devised some more torture methods for EB people such as making them eat their own shit, injecting HIV into their veins, and killing their families in front of them.

9.26 p.m.

Decided to meet a counselor.

Farewell, Good Sir

2009-01-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

As America mourned the loss of its finest writer of the century on Tuesday (January 27, 2009), I mourned the loss of an author who made reading so unbelievably pleasurable for me. I fell in love with John Updike the instant I opened one of his books, carelessly picked off my dad’s dusty bookshelf one sultry afternoon, a couple of years ago.

I hadn’t heard of a writer called Updike until then. And I picked the book at random. It may have been the cover. A solemn moss green with a single “S” printed on it in pink. It was certainly not one of his popular novels. In fact, it may just have been a rather forgettable piece of fiction in the immense body of his work. But, the book had a strange impact on me. I must admit, I didn’t get a complete grasp of it. But, the way he willed words to weave a magical yarn through the narrative amazed me in a way no other author ever had. It seemed to me, the words were completely under his spell. They obeyed his command and created for people like me, entire worlds of sheer beauty.

I unconsciously repeated each phrase he used, saw his characters in life like images in my mind, saw the ocean in its “4’o clock metallic shimmer” and slipped into a trance.

No one else has made language look so utterly seductive as he did. And, no one has painted prettier pictures of nature as he did. The sky, the sea, the trees and the snow all appear hundred folds more beautiful in his books.

Even the most mundane detail is fascinatingly crafted into sentences.

“I was tense, waiting for the first signs of dawn, a change of tune, a distant car – some event to trigger a relaxing realization that there existed a world other than my howling brain.”

“God was a vibrating patch indistinguishable from the featureless others in the fuzzy Rothko that insomnia painted on the ceiling”. (excerpt from Toward the end of time)

He can make love look so funnily frivolous and sex, so entertainingly biological.

“Our mothers wipe our bottoms and praise our first babbled words, our nurses at the final tidy up maternally murmur amid the mess of our dying, but the women who out of whatever motive swallow our seed through one of their holes deliver the acceptance that matters. Through the bodies of women men conduct what tortured dealings they can with the universe, producing serial murder, morganatic marriages and a Morgan’s library’s worth of love letters, novels and death threats.” (from Toward the end of time)

I haven’t read his most popular Rabbit quartet or any of those works that actually won him the Pulitzer or brought him international acclaim. And, I don’t regret it. I don’t even feel I should be reading them. For recognising a genius such as Updike’s all you need is a paragraph from any of his books.

If muses are not always unearthly female beings with delicate wings, my dear Sir, you are my muse.

i ramble, therefore i will be

2009-01-26T06:25:00.000-08:00

Beasts

It’s the species of dinosaur that can fly. Lizards enlarged to such impossible sizes that they almost resembled alligators, all the colour of wet cement with patches of mildew. They are on my terrace - these pre-historic reptiles and birds.

I strain my neck and eyes to catch a glimpse of the sky. But, all I can see are the wings of these monstrous creatures and their squeaks that tear the trees apart.

The floor of the terrace is covered in bird droppings, mud and bones.

----

Life is like a multi-layered cake. Springing surprises at each layer. Sometimes it’s heady, overwhelming to the point of renunciation. Sometimes it’s bitter, bitterer than rancid almonds. By the end of it, the cream is gone, the raisins are all licked clean and all that remains is the aftertaste.

----

Some are just not ready for this world. Ready are those who take shit day in, day out. They do not protest. Not a whimper of resentment. They do not crib. They hope instead. They pray, they cheer, they love and they die. Does anybody know if they got a medal for endurance?

something to choke on

2009-01-18T23:18:00.000-08:00

My breakfast cost me 150 bucks today. I can't belive i'm squandering my money so artfully. The auto driver charged me 50 bucks for a five-minute ride and i spent nearly 1,000 bucks on books i've already read. And to top it all, i almost died choking on my saliva, causing myself much embarrassment.
I also realised the importance of anonymity this morning. Its impossible to be anywhere in this place without meeting some one i know or have met earlier. You dont want to be meeting people you know all the time. Especially, when you are coughing your lungs out in public as a result of choking on your saliva. Then you have them all running towards you with glasses of water and generous pats on the back.
Wish i could be invisible or something. Not very original i know. At least its very comforting.

Ants

2009-01-12T19:37:00.000-08:00

Ants, an entire army of them, are crawling all over my body. They don't bite. But, they get into my clothes and down my bare midriff. Spreading through my body like cancer.

Just a thought

2009-01-11T19:54:00.000-08:00

I feel like disappearing into the clouds and looking down upon the earth from among those soft white cottony wisps. The clouds are always like an unexpected inflorescence of the skies. When dusk falls, I will sink into the layers of fluff and watch the night sky light up with stars. I will slide on rainbows and drift above oceans, hills and trees. Even the birds would be just specs beneath me.

I’ll pluck lotuses from dreamy green ponds and eat them bit by bit. First, their waxy leaves, their soft, fragrant petals and then their slender yet fleshy stalks.

I’ll light up my room with a jar full of fireflies.

I will blow kisses into the air and watch them fall all around me like confetti.

I will scoop some sky and trap it inside a treasure box only to open it centuries later and find a pretty post card with streaks of pink, purple, orange, blue and white on it.

2009-01-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

Top ten things i hate about life

1. loud people
2. fat people
3. babies/kids
4. photographs of myself
5. a wet toilet seat
6. buses
7. banks
8. powercuts
9. milk chocolates
10.boiled vegetables

Top ten things i love

1. peeling off skin
2. watching the sky, preferably from a window
3. the smell of varnish
4. hot baths
5. biscuit pudding
6. the beach
7. cherries
8. letters
9. rainclouds
10. butterflies

bubble blue

2008-12-29T02:03:00.000-08:00

Give me death Give me disease Give me forgetfulness Smother me with hate Drown me in seas of pain Abandon me to the shadows of my home The malignant darkness of it Punish me till I bleed from the orifices of existence Revel in my muted suffering

random shit

2008-12-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

My mind is a festering wound inside my wasting body. It is reletless in its pursuits, weaving endless tales of possibilities. Always taking my pathetic life along fantastic tangents into the several parallel universes where things are brighter, happier, or more twisted.
Just yesterday, I had a dream of a brother i never had. a brother of my own blood whom i carried in a little container of brine in my left hand. Swimming about the salty confines of the container, my brother in protozoic form, was trying to tell me something.
Then i wake up, realising that it was just another of those twisted psychedelic excursions that im so goddamn used to by now. Then I feel tired all over again. Without an ounce of energy left to begin the day with all its inane activities.
The only time my mind sleeps is during the day, when i spray antiseptic on it and wrap reams of peach-coloured bandage on it. So that it doesnt manifest its symptoms of decay in the public sphere where it is tuned to behave and respond in a particular fashion - participate in cheap conversation, converse with the world's choicest morons and take in loads and loads of crap. Sometimes i can feel it pulsating wildly against the bandage unable to bear the banality of the activities it has been condemned to perform. When it reaches the point of a collapse, i switch it off. Give it time to recuperate and search for some fresher, cleaner bandage.
When i am alone, i free it from its bondage and it roams. A dirty, noctural creature that lurks in the street corners of my dreams, waiting to pounce on its first prey.

macabre? not really

2008-12-09T19:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/10/assisted-suicide-television
Cut out the campaign crap. I think the organisation is doing great service.

Where pain begins, wisdom ends

2008-12-02T02:59:00.000-08:00

I guess i have been officially de-wisdomised. The last of my surviving wisdom tooth was plucked away, quite nonchalantly, by a dentist who did the job with such matter-of-factness that it irked me a bit. To think that he dug it out of my gum without caring to ponder over the ifinite hours i had spent nurturing it was not comforting at all.
The tooth, which taught me a zillion things no finishing school could ever have, now lies in the waste bin of the dentist's cilinc, or is already on its way to the Corporation's bio-medical waste plant (if the corporation ever has one).
See, I am in no way agonising over the loss of a wayward molar. But it is somewhat like the phantom limb phenomenon. I can still feel the extracted tooth in my mouth, firm and steady in its socket, and the feeling is far from reassuring. It's just a matter of a few more hours before I forget completely about the annoying little bastard that ate into my physical and mental well-being. But, those hours are going to be long and painful.
I had worked my entire life around the tooth and its vagaries for over a year. It was as much part of my routine as bathing and eating. I chewed my food carefully on the left side of my mouth so as to not awaken it from its insolent slumber. So what if i took an entire week to chew through my burger, I was always the one for peace.
I washed and rinsed my mouth so religiously that i was approximately two seconds away from attaining samadhi had i not got it plucked out. That was the level of my dedication. I stocked up toothpick boxes by the hundreds and couldn't care if there was no rice in my kitchen. A sufficient supply of painkillers served me well. No sticky chicken curries, least of all the south Indian beef specialities. Puffs and oily frankees were rarities. I thrived on pastries, noodles and curd rice before the inevitable extraction happened.
As I lay down on the dentist's chair, several images flashed across my mind. My soon-to-be bloody tooth, several strange men pounding their fists into my mouth, a deafening drilling noise that seemed to come from within my head and the stinging taste of strong mouth wash and blood overpowering my senses.
Before i left the clinic, the doctor said with infinite compassion in his eyes, "the one in the upper jaw doesn't look too good. It is going to give you problems. Don't worry. We can get that done."

time's up

2008-11-15T22:20:00.000-08:00

ive been stripped of my survival kit. somebody please put a gun to my head.

autopsy

2008-11-05T09:03:00.000-08:00

I often seek refuge in my childhood. Scenes from it come back like the remnants of some fetal memory.

I had this pair of cream-coloured slippers with a dainty felt lining which my mother bought me one really hot summer afternoon. I might have been around eight then.

My grandmother's room was a cocktail of smells. She couldn't sleep without those smells - a mix of pain balm, naphthalene and very mild insence. They still remain - a warm and tingling sensation in my nostrils.

I remember waking from a spell of unconsciousness in my aunt's bathroom. I could feel the cold marble floor beneath me, the wetness seeping into my clothes. A group of people surrounds me. Some carrying children in their arms. I lay on some strange bed in a very strange place. I remember thinking then that death must feel that way.
My mother cried that night. Her tears had the wetness of an afterthought.

2008-11-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

Wearing sunglasses for no apparent reason could be the symptom of schizophrenia.

:)

2008-11-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

Pigeons are the most adorable birds on the planet. Mainly because of their shimmering pink feet and the incessant guttural gurgles.

closure

2008-11-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

It's slow and painful like the wait for an impending catastrophe. Like the way the women in my grandmother's house stuffed thick white towels between their thighs. It's inevitable. It's gradual.

From Komodo land

2008-11-02T20:27:00.000-08:00

I feel like i'm under some surveillance camera. Two absolutely detestable lizards have occupied my window sill for the last few months and they have been stealthily surveying my room from the other side of the mosquito-netted window pane.

It may be the random, stale bits of food on the floor or the innumerable little insects congregating under their very noses on my side of the room. Tantalisingly close yet inaccessible.

For all i know, these miniature Komodos would have already plotted my murder.

Spare me

2008-11-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

Talking to some people is like reading a fucking self help book. Once more I hear the starfish story, I swear I will kill myself.

Winter sun

2008-10-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

I realised the futiliy of existence at 17. It was sudden and began with a complete disinterest in my daily routine. I couldn't fathom why I had to have baths daily, eat and carry on mindless conversations with people around me. I coulnd't sleep at night. It felt as though I was sinking each time I adjusted my frail body on my bed. I was engulfed by a sort of an emptiness that I could think of nothing but nothingness.
I was certain I was going mad. But I dared not tell anyone for fear of being sent to an asylum. I put up an act that I enjoyed talking even though each word had to be spat out after an internal struggle so strong that I felt limp, cold and wasted at the end of the conversation.
I kept making small talk and eating as little as I could so that nobody suspected that I was barking mad within. I felt completely distanced from everything around me. I panicked. Each time I tried to go about my mundane routine, I was catapulted back into a void. I longed to wake up one morning and feel normal again. I remember pulling through the bubble for weeks on end. But, somewhere down the line, I guess I felt normal again.
But the damned thing wasn't to leave me. It came back when I was 19. The same despair, the same darkness. That time, I considered death. Flirted with the idea of killing myself with a knife, poisoned tea, sleeping pills and blades. Only, I couln't gather my wits together. Thinking back, I realise it wouldn't have been easy had I tried it then. The furthest I'd have gone would have been my aunt's hospital.

The Avian Freak Show

2008-10-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

I saw owls. Huge ones. With yellow hooked beaks and coffee-brown feathers. They seemed to be floating like the balloons in that stupid computer game (where the archer has to shoot them down).

There was this very large tree on which were perched birds of the most exotic variety i'd ever seen. There was a peacock, i remember. Very large birds with a pattern of black spots and shimmering green stripes too.

I was in a gothic building watching this avian freak show. The building had walls painted blue and a very high ceiling. On its walls were scribbled in blue, pink and yellow crayon, the names of all those who had lived in it, ages ago. I looked for my name among them. There it was, scribbled in tight pigeon-shit like letters.

end of matter

2008-10-17T01:19:00.001-07:00

At 26, I have my whole life in front of me, spread out like a dull grey carpet. But, I already feel burned out. I'm so weary I can barely talk. I need a sip of water. I need sleep.

thanks for the show

2008-10-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

Imagine a place which constantly reassures you that your life sucks. A kind of place that makes you feel like a fool and utterly worthless at the end of each day. Yet, you know you can't afford to quit coz you need the money. You so badly need it.

Now, this just about sums up my life in this office. Days and days of unadulterated boredom.
The only silver lining in this degenerating heap of rot, is the prettiness of its location. The building is located in a part of the city, which is inhabited by entire colonies of bats. They hang upside down during the day motionless. Not even a whimper of dissatisfaction can be heard. But, as darkness gathers, they stir from their soulful slumber. To a casual observer, they might seem a bit demented. Flitting about in the evening sky with no purpose of duty. But, to me, they seem to be celebrating the beauty of dusk. Millions of them filling up the sky like a humonguous black cloud descending upon the earth.

As the hours die out, the numbers become fewer. Many in the colony finding safer homes to nestle for the night. The remaining few continue bobbing up and down like rexin puppets suspended by invisible elastic strings.

Tears for a lifetime

2008-09-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

Sixteen years ago in Mogadishu, a little girl cherished dreams of a life in Europe. They brought a twinkle to her sunken eyes.
“My mother wanted me to dream of a future I wasn’t even sure I would live to see,” she says. Farhia Samanter, now a 28-year-old general nurse practicing in Holland, was a refugee of the 1991 Somali civil war. She was one among the hundreds of African children whose families, devastated by war, pinned all their hopes on migrating to Europe, a haven for African refugees.
Luckily for Samanter, her family finally managed to reach the safety of Europe. But, Africa still leaves a small swell of tears in her eyes. Years of satiated appetite, quality education and a bulging wallet have not blurred her memory of Somalia. "The thought still leaves a lump in my throat," she says.
A few years into the profession of a nurse, Samanter was disillusioned by the commercialisation rampant in her job and was gripped by an intense desire to travel to third world countries. “Going back to Africa is not easy. It requires a lot of preparation and a lot of resources,” she says. Somali children expect food and clothes from their friends and relatives who care to return from the land of promises, Europe. "Very few return, because it makes us feel strangely guilty. To know that we have escaped the squalor and dirt of Somalia when children in our homeland are still living with hunger and homelessness. And, we can barely do anything for them apart from a day's food or a piece of clothing."
The next automatic choice was India. “I wanted to do something more than my job. “I wanted to utilise my degree in nursing for helping the ailing in India,” she says. She searched the Internet for avenues of service in India and stumbled upon an unassuming link that took her to Udavum Karangal, a non-Governmental organisation working for the aid of the destitutes in Chennai. “They were doing exactly the kind of work I was looking for. I packed my bags and left for India.” In six months, she hoped to do whatever she could to help the inmates at Udavum Karangal.
On a brief visit to the Coimbatore branch of the organisation, she agreed to meet me to talk about her activities in India. What seemed a perfunctory meeting soon turned out to be a poignant account of the years of turbulence in Samanter’s life.
As she spoke, I could detect a faint glimmer of nostalgia in her large eyes, which moistened every so often during the course of the conversation.
“We were living a normal life until the war broke out,” she says. My dad was working with an Italian organisation and my mum was a professor in Arabic,” she said. But when the war did break out, life took a course they never imagined. “The sound of bombs exploding still resonates in my ear.” Once it became unbearable, they decided to cross the Kenyan border. “We travelled in a huge truck. The men folk taking care to guard the women against the soldiers. Rape was common. The soldiers did not care if it were a little girl or an old woman.”
By the time they reached the border, news spread that the Kenyan Government had closed the border to Somali refugees. But, her father bribed the soldiers in return for entry into the Kismayo Port city, lying in between Somalia and Kenya. “Sixty of us were living in one house with barely nothing to eat. We survived on dry rice and water.” After eight weeks at Kismayo, her father came with a piece of good news. They could go to the Mombassa. But, not all of them could go. “Dad did not have enough money to pay the soldiers. So more than half of my relatives had to stay back.”
The journey to Mombassa is etched in Samanter’s memory. “It was the most scary journey I’ve ever undertaken.” More than 400 people were crammed into a boat, which could accommodate only 200. “Over 100 people died on board. As if things weren’t bad enough, I caught Malaria,” she recounts. The captain in his unsurprisingly ruthless manner warned her mother that he would throw her into the sea if she didn’t get better. Fortunately for her, the malarial fever subsided. After four days on the sea, they were taken to a refugee camp in Mombassa.
Thousands of Somali refugees were crammed into the camps, which were amusement parks converted into shelters for the refuees. The camps reeked of death, disease and trauma, she remembers.
From Mombassa they were smuggled into Nairobi. “At least there, we got white rice to eat. Our toilets were the sea,” she laughs. “We had to switch off the lights by evening so that the patrol wouldn’t suspect we were Somali refugees living there. If they found out, they would kill us.”
They continued their efforts to go to Europe and several unsuccessful attempts later, they finally reached Holland. "We managed to get in to Holland as Somali refugees."
"The Dutch Government did more than what any of us blacks could dream of. Clean clothes, money, and accommodation. It seemed to me like heaven." Samanter says she owes her gratitude to her parents especially, her mother, who used her intelligence and unrelenting love for her children to get a permit to stay in the country.
She has been living in Holland since. "Life is comfortable now," Samanter says. Her smile though not entirely convincing.

F***

2008-09-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

Is it humanly possible to work with losers? Ask me.

Memories ago

2008-09-09T02:34:00.000-07:00

Vacations always smelt of ripe mangoes. Half the days were spent squeezing mangoes and licking the thick yellow juice oozing out from them. Our ancestral house was a favourite holiday spot with squirrels on the trees and a shy spider busy spinning cobwebs underneath the spooky staircase as our best friends.
The house, which was in a forest, had everything we kids could wish for. The tamarind seeds, still sour, which we used to pop into our mouths pretending they were magical pills that would turn us into fairies and tiny bits of glass bangles which we picked up to show Grandma. Afternoons were competition time. Collecting bits of pink or green soap pieces, marbles, beads and even dead dragonflies. Whoever collected the maximum number of thingies would be proclaimed the winner. During one such competition, I unearthed a pair of discarded dentures from among the dry leaves much to the amusement of the others and was instantly proclaimed the winner.
Evenings were the best when we used to go to the river for a bath. With towels smelling of naphthalene and new cakes of soap, we trooped down along the narrow forest road, playing with pebbles and teasing solemn-looking goats in the neigbourhood. And whilst splashing about in the water, all sorts of games were invented. Filling our mouths with water and spitting it, making water jets with a gurgling sound was one such fascinating game. Sitting in the water to see our skirts swell up was another. By the time we got out of water, our eyes were as red as shoe flowers and our palms and feet stiff and crinkled.
Grandma awaited us with steaming hot food and then came the usual story time. One such evening, she promised to tell us the story of Urothmundalan.
"Who is Urothmundalan, Grandma?" one of us asked. Urothmundalan is the king of the forest, she replied her eyes widening as she recollected the story. "'Poor Urothumundalan has such a long name, so lets call him 'Uro'," she said and started telling us Uro's story.
"He is a big, big tiger with elegant black stripes on rich golden-yellow fur and marble like eyes. He must be about the size of a baby elephant with strong paws and sharp claws. His velvetty tail is long and perfectly shaped and he has the most amazing whiskers any tiger could wish for." l pursed my lips in awe listening to Grandma's story. "Is he cruel Grandma? Will he eat us all up?" I asked. "No dear, Uro is the best among all kings and he is the guardian of all the animals and human beings in this forest. He helps everyone during times of trouble," she said.
Outside, the moon peeped out from behind a cloud and lit up the tree-tops with the glow worms.
"Uro came to the forest as a cub with his mother. Long long ago, there was a forest flood. The river welled up and engulfed even the trees. Animals panicked. Houses and people were washed away. The floods raged for two whole days. A hunter who dared to venture out saw a rather strange sight," Grandma paused to shove pieces of betel nuts into her mouth.
"Floating on the swollen river was a huge tree trunk and perched on top of it was a tigress with her cub. Wet and shivering, the tigress and her cub held on to the log until they reached this side of the river. From then on, they have been living in this forest." Grandma continued, "Little Uro soon became a darling of the animals in the forest with his naughty pranks and his good looks. But when he gets angry, the entire forest trembles. His roars can be heard even across seven oceans."
The night was perfectly still except for the sound of the insects and Grandma went on with her story. "Every night, Uro takes a walk in the forest to see if everything is fine." Does he come home too grandma? I asked. "Of course he does. Every night, while we are all sound asleep, he comes here, walks around the courtyard, rests for a while on the stone step and leaves. At times, he even lets out a throaty growl..like 'grrrr'.." We shuddered at the thought of a tiger prowling in our very own courtyard.
"Then what happens grandma?" My little cousin asked who was by then, huddled up on Grandma's lap. Grandma let out a small yawn and said. "Then he walks to his den in the forest and does not return until the next night." Saying this, she stopped her story promising to complete it the next day. She tucked us all in bed and went to her own creaky old bed in the next room. I closed my eyes, thinking only of Uro and his beautiful marble eyes.
The next morning dawned bright and early. We got out of bed eager to invent new games and forgot all about Uro. Beads, pebbles and feathers were picked up, and guess what I found.. a trail of pugmarks leading to the forest.
Many such vaccations passed by when I snuggled in bed with my ears all for Uro's growl. The ancestral house no longer exists, the squirrels have been driven away and the cobwebs disappeared along with the house. Grandma smiles from her photograph on the wall in my apartment. But, Uro often visits my imagination, elegant and beautiful as he always was.

grunt

2008-09-01T01:16:00.000-07:00

Life is so fucked, it has stopped being funny.

:(

2008-08-29T01:05:00.001-07:00

Im feeling hugely inadequate today

Goody riddance

2008-08-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

Big Brother bitch Jade Goody has been dignosed with cervical cancer. In India to participate in the Indian version of the television drama, she got news of her illness from her secretary who made a panic call to her explaining the nature of the disease and treatment options. Ms.Goody, (only 27, but looking nearly 47) bawled her heart out, wildly blowing her nose and pulling her hair out unmindful of the camera and millions of viewers tuning in to watch such histrionics live on prime time telly. Her somewhat curious housemates, all of them half-assed Indian celebrities, with the graceful exception of Ms.Shilpa Shetty herself, made failed attempts to console Ms.Goody. In one of the news clippings, a contestant, who claims to be a model, was heard saying, "You are not supposed to cry." Guess she thought being disgnosed with cancer was somethinglike forgetting to get lunch to school. The others put on grim faces, rubbed Ms.Goody's back and pretended to be part of the the calamity. Ms.Goody however has quit the show. Wishing her all good health.

IPL be damned

2008-08-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

I can't stand the IPL. It pisses me off to see people losing their minds to it. Why on earth would an Australian, a Pakistani, an Indian and a European want to play in the same team. I can never quite get the dynamics of it.

The dance of the tigers

2008-08-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

The tigers come in December. When mornings smell of mist and nights are chilly. The rhythm of the drums signal their arrival, heightening anticipation in our little hearts. Finally when they come, we watch with amazement at the way they dance their way through the night.

They were the last among the surviving generation of tigers in my mother's town. Vasu's sons and nephews. Vasu was almost a legend in his times. No one could match his ferocity and his feline grace, we were told by the old women in the neighbourhood who had grown up watching Vasu dance.

But, age and alcohol had finally caught up with him. When he felt that his feet could no longer hold the rhythm, Vasu gracefully passed on the mantle to his brood of cubs, who by then, had matured into young, powerful tigers.

On the day of the dance, they begin painting themselves early in the day. Sweat glistening on their painted bodies. The yellow and black stripes intertwining like copulating snakes on their broad backs.

By afternoon, most of them are high on toddy. They wear coloured glasses, their eyes hardly visible through the pink or green glass paper. Their shorts, also in bright shades, cling to their shins.

By four in the evening, the dance begins.

Intoxicated by the toddy and the rhythm, they dance, the night melting away beneath their masculine feet.

We watch as they stomp about the courtyard with their naked feet, bare their fangs, and dance in tune with the drum beats.

Even long after they leave, the scent of their perfumed sweat and toddy lingers on. As the drum beats fade, I press my ears to the pillow to lock the sounds up inside my head forever.

rant

2008-08-08T22:47:00.001-07:00

I stopped working ages ago. Now, all I do is file mindless press releases of fraudulent social welfare organisations. I cannot take this routine anymore. All this talking with people who don't make a goddamn difference to the world. Not that I am the 'save the starving kids in Africa' type, but I cannot stand these people who have no business to be alive let alone brag about the wellness of humankind.
The trauma is exacerbated by sickening colleagues who have the intelligence of a retarded pig. Not a single news meeting has passed by without invoking criminal instincts in me. All I notice during those meetings are the moronic faces of my colleagues and their talk, a dull groaning noise the kind made my buffaloes while chewing cud.
The stories are even better. Government organisations donating obsolete three wheelers to spastics, kindergarten kids monkeying around at painting competitions and pathetic losers selling failed products like the brain gym for kids and 'how to achieve success in 5 days.'

my aunt she is

2008-08-04T06:24:00.000-07:00

My aunt loves cherries. She is the only adult i'd seen who loved cherries so much. As a child, I used to envy her for, being an adult, she could buy as many cherries she wanted and stock them up in her refrigerator.
I had believed till then that only kids had such a fascination for cherries. Those days, a visit to her home meant cherries in abundance - before lunch, after lunch, without lunch at all, in whatever way I fancied them.
My aunt had long, black, silky hair, which she always left partially untied so that it flowed behind her like the remnants of midnight. Her bindi , big but always smaller than my mother’s, was a black and sometimes vermilion spot on her forehead.
My aunt had a perpetual headache. Whenever she came to my grandmother’s house in her characteristic hurry, she would be clutching her temples and shouting, ordering, almost demanding a cup of steaming coffee, which she would never really drink. All she would do was place the warm cup on her forehead and her throbbing temples.
My aunt has always liked her coffee sweet. The kind of sweet that can make your mouth go sick.
My aunt has a temper wilder than a North American hurricane. Her veins twisted beneath her biscuit-coloured skin, her large eyes dilated and her voice trembled like the nervous leaves of the banyan tree whenever she lost her temper.
My aunt never sleeps on her bed. She sleeps on the dining table instead, that too after a fist full of tranquilizers.
My aunt is adorably mad.

All but fine

2008-07-29T05:09:00.000-07:00

I'm sick of this job. More than sick of writing about the crippled and the retarded and the self-proclaimed feats of pompous, fat brahmins. The only things I have been doing all these years are sitting through yawn-inducing lectures about the eating habits of the founder of some sick educational institution or watch ladies association women strut about in expensive silks, discussing women's empowerment.
The organisation for which i've lost my sleep, health and sanity belives in the combined powers of sycophancy and bribe.
Most of my colleagues lack a vertebral column. They take pride in writing the stories of cheap publicity mongers. The worst ordeal is enduring the incessant stupid babbling of my co-workers. Their utter lack of exposure and awareness can make an African hippo blush in embarrasment. Shithole this is comrades!

Misery index

2008-07-29T02:41:00.000-07:00

If I dont get coffee now, I will die