Anime.

Midnight scribbles,.
Captured on phone from paper to here.



.

Got a lot of balls, yes?

The 11th floor

This city in its vast fuckin darkness can swallow you whole.
It can make you feel you're the last one standing.

And from here on the 11th floor, things look so far away...


.

Office Office

You can take Gajodhar and Sangathaa out of the gaon. But you cant take the gaon out of Gajodhar and Sangathaa!

Bambai raaga

First time I saw how the city looks like sharp at 05:55 a.m.
Home. 11th floor.

Bombay.

...and thus begins another journey.



and the road continues to be lit.

I commoned him thus.

I commoned him

Like a common smell-less fart

Or my uncle’s ugly pink house

Like an orkut scrap and a facebook wallpost

Or a pop song last in the charts

Like a five buck coffee at the airport

Or a joint that didn’t get me wasted

Canteen food at college

Like spam,

Or a beverage I will never remember

I commoned him,

And brought him down

To the ordinary platform of my head

And moved on.

The Queen and the King.

She used to be the king in her bedroom, smokin’ up bone barrels below the bridge. He used to be the farm boy of untaken flowers from the ridge. 

Her hair would turn in the wind, and she would scream out a song. He would play out his tune from his mouth organ. She would write herself a forest, a kingdom and a planet. He would make a universe with his music. 

She would drive like fire in the highway her hair crushed straight by the dry wind. He would roar his bullet in symphony by the great yellow canyon. She would dance the harvest dance her hips moving like ripples. He would be staggered by the beauty of the moon its cathode phony light. She would pray by the cave, her hum echoing through the jungle. He would kneel by the river tracing through sleeping life below the rocks. 

She would wake under the iron sun, red and lopsided with admiration. He would remove his bag with expert hands of one who has left home long ago. She would say goodbye to the charcoal and what remained of the night’s fire. He would cut through the ropes and start the engine desiring it speed and power.

And through out this, not once did she look him or he her. They weren’t in love. They lived thousand worlds apart in their own islands of dreams. They were both beautiful and living alone, perhaps never to meet.

An Evening on the Streets.

.

Purely homemade :P

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Psycho love.

It’s purple blood

Comin’ out of my come

The blue in me skin is

Where the rope’s undone.

The skin’s all

Ripped off at the edges

I got pins

Stickin’ ‘em all in pages

On the outside

All’s well and severed

My head’s a madhouse

Null and chequered

My monkey’s been

All over the place

And I’m lyin’ on the

Floor with a

Bedsheet ‘round my face

 

There’s a reason for this

There’s a season for this

You’re a killer on the loose

You’re the one I choose

You make me

Clutter in a drain

Your fuck is

Damage for my brain

Hardly.

I drew a

Flower and a pen

From the loft

Above the oven

An album

With your picture

From where I

Forged your signature

Then I

Sent myself a card

Asking if my

Days are still hard

Was I lonely

Without the music

Still insane

And tragic

Was my gun

Still in place

In the drawer

Beneath the lace

Was I mad

And still ugly

Or in love?

And I said, hardly.

 

Bhalo Theko, Shubho Jonmodin.

(Happy Birthday, keep well)

A gift, an apology, and a goodbye. How I said it in one.

Tools: sketch book, water colour, camera phone, and Windows Movie Maker.

\m/

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The uncomfortable lover.

I wish I had a better word of choice

Or a livelier song to the fill this void.

I know I’m a little late

And a tad old fashioned

What with my red rose

And my red tie

But I have love running inside of me

Like electric.

Oh, darling,

Would you now measure my pocket size?

And not this

Giant blood pumping machine in my chest?

No matter.

For I have left it pumping blue veins

In a little corner

By the old room in the attic

Behind the books

And cushions

Where cobwebs run.

So you won’t hear

While it beats.

Hear?

That's how emptiness speaks.

Chakravarty.

Sometimes with his worried mind

Chakravarty pictures soldiers in a line.

White horses raging through the white sand

As he, holds the princess’ hand.

Then Chakravarty, with a frigid erection

Leads his princess in a misdirection

And when he reaches the temple door

The clock has just struck four

He throws his princess down on the floor

 

He takes out a brown leather case

Where his dagger rests, with a jeweled base

Chakravarty with his expert hands

Unties the princess’ hands

Beholding the princess in a solid stare

His throbbing heart about to bare

The secrets of an ancient tale

Of vagabonds drunk over ale

 

But Chakravarty being an easy guy

Leaves his princess. Bids her g’bye.

And all his dreams and magazines

Go rot in dust. They serve nothing.

For Chakravarty with his careful rub

Is a regular guy, just lookin’ for love

 

There’s no way, on a sunny day

Chakravarty’d be all happy and gay

For him and his tribe of vice

Is empty without the burning lies

And Chakravarty with his lonely heart

Ends his tale before it starts.

For Chakravarty with his frigid erection

Led his princess ina misdirection.

The wordman said.

The wordman said, ‘Come, come. I’d take your breath away.’

 The preacher was mad in the day, with 1000 different pieces of her broken heart lying in front of her eyes on her lap. They were in all shapes and sizes. She picked one after another, the pieces of her broken heart, and said, ‘Oh, wordman, but I had already loved.’

‘I know,’ said the mighty wordman. He looked this way and that as he drove his grey chariot. A thousand words spilt out of his eyes and hair. They fell on his lap, like satin white feathers of a dove. The preacher held one of the thousand words in her fingers and placed it on one of the pieces of her heart. It disappeared.

 

‘Oh but wordman! Look what your words are doing to the broken pieces of my heart! They are disappearing!’

The wordman stopped his chariot. He looked at the mad preacher for a long time in wonderment, and said, as surprised himself:

‘No, my love. My words are just… mending your heart.’

And the preacher stared down at her lap.

It was true.

All of the thousand words that had slid down the wordman had each fallen on the broken pieces of the preacher’s heart, and was disappearing one by one.

And somewhere deep inside, the preacher felt something healing. Something soft and fluttering, something new being born.

She, afraid, spread her wings and flew away..

Fucking you.

Fucking you is

Plastic on the floor.

Armies in a lost battle

Death at my door.

 

A dog in my backyard

Pills for my pain

Beer in broken bottle

Wet paint and rain.

 

Aren’t I

Obsessive

Aren’t I

Submissive

Am I

Inobtrusive

In love

 

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

 

Fucking you is

Piss in pot

Mellow come

A hooker’s snot

 

Fucking you is

High on hash

Gold teeth hustler

Faking Slash

 

Aren’t I

obsessive

Aren’t I

Reclusive

Am I

Figurative

In love.

------------------------ 

Fucking you is

Acne creams

When I scream

Baby dreams

 

Breaking my jaw

Dirt beneath nails

Slitting my nerves

Ugly as hell

 

I’m too

Obsessive

And also

Submissive

Not to mention

Pshychotic

In love.

 

Laura.

What did Laura say

Did she lie down on the yellow hay

Hair astray

Where stories lay

Like blue ghosts on a Friday

What did Laura hide

Her thumbs bent for a taxi ride

Door ajar

And opened wide

Disappearing by the roadside

What did Laura hope

Does her love wake in pristine dope

The naked rope

Cuts her flesh

Acid spilling down the slope

And how did Laura die

Did she try

To spill her lie

Or fucked herself

And said goodbye

Strokes. A film.

.



Strokes. An audio Visual. My final project.
About film banner painters who handpainted. Where have they gone? What are they doing now?





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Wanderer, Wanderer where are you

Where are you wanderer and where is your pack?

Where is your home by the river where the woodcutter’s daughter had shed her clothes without shame, for you. Her open heart lay thumping below her sweat laden blouse, and you oh you like a knight of the dark forest had taken her away like a story.

Where is the tree on which you curved your name beside hers. Standing below which you had felt her palm sized heart beat with your workman’s hands.

Wanderer wanderer, where is your tale?

Where is the song you had sung for her, when the moon had invoked the witches and a spell was cast on all who lived.

Where is the public park on which you had fucked. Held her like skin and blew your heat on her sweet maiden face. Where is the bench on which your clothes lay like innocencce shed, dying in the blood virgin tale of the ones gone away.

Where is the sunflower field you had run through, the yellow beneath your feet, the yellow on your mind. Your hand in hers warm and forgiving and lovesweet wet in the August fall…

Wanderer, where are you and where are your dreams?

Where lies the window, by which she had written you a song. Where death had happened in a glance. The curtains had blown, and parted to usher the new year in. And you, lying in her arms had counted fireflies by the mantlepiece. Her fingers entwined in yours had emptied an ocean of promise.

Wanderer wanderer, where is your love? Had you, oh you tragic son of a fool, walked away from it. You know the gold in the sun had died for her, the rain just falls on the rooftop, and she lies by your window, with a tissue in her hands and tear dripping down the wine glass. She sits with an empty page, with an unwritten song.

Wanderer wanderer do you see the woodcutter’s daughter sitting by the stereo in a black dress. Her wine’s finished. I don’t see any tears but,…

Green Witch chronicles.

.


u b e r green u b e r green.

the green witch has lost her sheen.

none around for a deadly dream

for the Dream Man was not so mean !




.

End of January.

Look. There stands she with wide eyed wonder.
In a blue blue winter.
Were you there, to hold her?
Kiss her, tend her.
Did you draw your seat, closer.
Nearer?
Did you read her eyes, and could tell her blunder?

Was she nice.
Did she smell of your sister?
Or mother, daughter, whatever, whatever.
Was it familiar,
The way she looked away, and further.

Did she tell you her story
Of how she committed a murder?
Killing self, killing self. Dagger down:
Irony.
Didn't you make a movie of it?
Wasn't she weeping, oh weeping for her dead cat?
Or, was it a love lost?

Look. There she stands with her dead cat.
To bury the thing of her past,
below a yellow tree. And forget.
Child like her don't move alone.
But warriors like her do.

December, december.

.

Holler sick my love ass child
Your end breathes, hurries near.
Holler out from edge of streets
Where cunts and hookers sit shedding tears.

Love is but a severed cord
Like piss amidst a madding crowd
And you are just a passerby
Passing kings and kingdoms proud.

Moments run in a digi watch
Dots to hour, hate to love.
Took a while for you to know
Your man was not a man enough.

So why still wait, my love ass child
This world ain’t the place for you.
Love is rotten piss in the pot..
Left wise for a timely throw.

All is dead. All is dark.
The mighty tale ends not here.
Holler, holler love ass child,
The end slowly hurries near.



.

Dry love-dung on the bed and a lovelorn heart beside the highway.

He came back and ripped the old bruise. Slow. Slow.
God be witness, there wasn’t a time I was not afraid.
But this?
Is this how death feels like.
Like a knowledge known and pushed away. Like a pretence of amnesia and faking it.
Faking it.
Faking it.
Do you see the damage?

Lover,
Do
You
See
The
Damage
?
Do you see the end of the road, the end that only I would draw, the end only I should draw, the end that I would have to draw. You, oblivious, stupid dumbfuck child of miscalculation; you, ignoramus; you who know not what pain is and what pain can be and what pain can do to your walls, reservations, defence and a wet cunt.

Love?

Oh, spare me. Love is for warriors who know how to die. Love is for kama dharis who know pain and know hate and know the true orient is not east but self, the body and sex.

Sex.
Your sex.
Your fuck.
Your fucking me.
Like some taken commodity. Taken, granted. And sealed.
You, who sees nothing but himself, loves no one else but himself, cares for none other than self… fuck you.

FUCK YOU.

Liar.

Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. Shit feeling damn bad abt it. Will talk to you later. ……..

Traffic.

"Picture mat leo, memsab!"

They said, "Picture mat leo, memsab!(Dont take pictures, ma'am!)"
Workmen, playful and shy in their early weekday work hours. Shops had just opened. Beside old New Market. Footpath.

New Market.

Notice fog. Notice the warmth of picture. Notice how men and women are out on an ordinary weekday morning, work, or just to be there. Participate.

Esplanade Crossing. Through time.

Lament, from a Cock.

Falcon, Falcon. You saoring sexed bird of the sky. You preyer of flesh.
You worshipper of blood.
You believer of freedom.
Falcon, Falcon. Hold me still like a baby, and then flesh me alive.
Falcon, Falcon. I have travelled across an endless sea of hunger and dry love.
Flesh me.

P.S.: Happy belated birthday, boss.
Sorry for the reproduction.

...

Truth is;
I know I’d be cruel to that beggarchild.
That I’d be harsh to that mother of glam
Who sits beneath her bedstand, sad, sombre, and sixty five,
Still wanting to be sexed.
That I am without sense or sensitivity or insight
To know there is hope and tenderness
In every street, every bookstore and every deserted park.
That I have lost love the very day I found it.
Truth is,
That here my lover comes,
Across a silent sea,
Only, only to lay.

Home.

There are these images, that slide down my half closed eyes every winter afternoon; these faces I knew. The gullies I frequented. The men I’ve done. Friends I’ve lost. And found. My loves. Hates…

Vaguely, I see Camac Street. Coffee Pai. The British Council. The whole walk down from Camac to Crossword, on dim lit winter afternoons when the traffic was bad but I didn’t mind, and turned right through Minto Park. Elgin Road and momos. Rabindra Sadan. Academy and a play on weekdays after 6. Nandan, and lovers beneath trees. Laseez, and keema nuns...

The Some Place Else. Happy drunk and swaying to some great music.

Rashbihari, Deshopriyo, and Priya.
Maddox Square,….and Pujo.

And suddenly, suddenly the Elite Corporation busstop. Not left but right, not New Market but a little away, across Chandni Chowk and street letchers I reach a beautiful left, a left that had changed my life.
The Statesman House. Till then painted an orthodox white (sadly, now its painted just too fuckin' red), proud and prim little fucker, standing as the Brit Raj had left it.
Oh, on a Sunday, never the turning front door where you signed, and told the men in uniform who you were, and where you're from, showed them your ID. On a Sunday, it was the backdoor. The backdoor where you lowered your head down a little before entering the smallish door, in both system and reverence. And then one breathless, blind rush to the 2nd floor, to the room with the blue carpet.

The Statesman VOICES.
Oh, Thursdays. Oh the free feel of adolecence. Oh the look of my name that is now a stuccato, black, serious collection of alphabets. They too have read what I have written. They too have felt what I have felt. History, was now witness.

Which suddenly brought memories of VIBES, and then Nazrul Manch, Golpark. The mecca of all the jazz fests and the band performances. Last time I heard, they’ve brought the shutters down on it. Apparently, the court was involved.

City love, you’re my edge of the jungle. You’re my lonesome boat tied to a ghat, to be set free. You’re my mystic baul gaan, my sex on the beach, my lover of the harrowed street corner. My hub of pseudo intellectuals and aantels at the Academy, my prem on Maidan. My gun begotten suicide, my kiss in public, my Romeo beneath the cinema hall. My secret holding of hands by the Lake. My hope in a rainy evening, my crush on the bustand, my familiar face in maddening city crowd.
Love, love, love.
For you, my love like diamond shines.

City love, I’d be back this December. I am now wandering the streets of this choot of a city. Not quite lost , yet groping still, for something to hold, for something to grip and catch my breath; you know, they run too fast here. My abominating sense and patience are like ancient hands of a sun dial.
Outdated. Defective.
But you, city love, you, forever will be mine to come back to. To love, and hate. And be loved.
This is where I began.
This is where I end.

Silhouette

From the inside of my canteen. Underexposed and overexposed, respectively. 2 f-stops.

My first contact sheet.

The whole process of doing this, takin the pictures, and then developing this, this very thing that you see, .... its like giving birth to some life form. In the darkroom, with nothing but chemicals and darkness, I would forever remember this. Might sound truly stupid, but here, here, is my baby.

Who's she.

Something, something, tells me that this is a girl. She was not amongst the boys of her age, playing pittu by the bricks. Yet her hair's cut like that of a boy, and her name too was ... nevermind.
Most of all, look at her eyes. Do you see it? the way she looks away?
Wise child on a roll, like ancient monks - dead on a forgotten mountain top.

First frame.

This man's whole life can be summed up here, in this picture. A charpoy, a bottle of water, his clothes hanging beside you can't see, and look, his worn out pair of workman shoes. Me, stealthy and wide eyed with wonder as to how beautifully, peacefully, he slept under the shades of nothing but the trees. Can we sleep like this? He couldn't hear me shuffling about as I adjusted the light-metre of a very sensitive Nikon F3.

Behind college. Where I hunt for stories...

Delhi.

"I return to Delhi as I return to my mistress..."

Hallo, you. Hallo city sad waning shadows fading by the twilight. Hallo. Hallo new city on the sidelines of my vision.
Hallo, Dilli.
Not Delhi. Dilli.
City, city, fuck fuck. City wake. City sleep.
City streets. Manicured, glitzy. And I hate it.
Oh hallo.

Then suddenly, it all fell into place.

It's happening.
Sometimes, at the dead of night, while I sat on (and not before) my desk, smoking and smoking, and thinking and smoking, with probably some newspaper on my lap, me staring out of the window, with no music playing behind me, I kept feeling that I might just be going mad. All for this.

All for this.
All.
For.
This.

So suddenly, it’s all falling into place.
And I know that this is just a start. I still have a long way to go. Yet, feels great. I feel spent. And happy tired, you know what I mean? Like I've walked 750 miles on foot, but discovered I have already arrived before I actually have.

You know what I mean?

Happy.

About time too.

And look, she has a mouthful of sky.

Baby stands sad on a warm december goa

Baby's got a smile
Sad, sad wane.
Sad Baby love
Awaits her rain.

Baby loves like
Songs of Spring
Mocha brown eyes
Of sadness they sing.

Baby won't you smile
And light up my sun
Smile Baby smile
The music's begun.

Note: Scar on left mid-arm. Pic taken on December 1999.
Note to self: Fuck. Look how time flies.

Woman like HER

Woman I smoked my first cigarette with in the pouring December rain, in an abondoned BE park,

woman I first got drunk with beside the Upper Crust stairs, and walked all the way home drunk, each pretending that just a bottle doesn’t make us drunk, daring the other to walk straight, and proving we’re undrunk, but of course each was proven wrong anyway…

woman I watched my first porno with, that walking to the vdo parlour from where till then we’d only hired … well, non-pornos of course

woman who shared my words of wisdom every evening we walked together, and talked about men, alcohol, pot, men, heartbreak, crappy boyfriends, men, porno, pot, future, and all that shit…cracked insane jokes and laughed even more insanely.

woman who shares my birth month, born 14 days after me, woman who shares my last name, was always the next roll number in class,

woman who is most unlike me, but knows me best, been with me through all me shit, and me been with her through all her shit, waged similar wars, screwed up, and yet got back up, got our shit together and learned all lessons life taught us. Like warriors, man, just like warriors.

We've fuckin grown up together.

She’s also now the woman I’m not talking to.

Does she know I don’t care what she’s done, and that she still is and will be the woman I did all that and loved every bit?

Note: Pic taken at her place, with my phone, with one 5rupee coin on one eye and a 20p on the other, and the pic file name is called BHOOT (meaning ghost) for obvious reasons.

Note to self: Will call.

An Ode to HAIROIL.

O mighty one! O God even to the Sun!
In your arms the dorkiest have been mothered.
Like bankruptcy, it dawns in late to your children,
That their reputation have been eternally smothered.

Calm, gentle, math exams happen
Like ritual, under your otherworldly spell.
Logic has ridden the geeks to destiny
They rule America. I’m sure, you can tell.

Your tactics are unquestionable.
Your oily secret unreadable, unreachable!
Civilization wonders what’s it that you got,
In your blue, odourous, curvy, round bottle?

Forgive the ignorant who know not your magic.
Ones who’ve forever cursed new ideas and logic.
It is not for them to know, how your eternal glow
Brings a trophy to every Indian home. And heals the meek.

Hairoil, Hairoil, sweetness chants in me mouth!
Hairoil, Hairoil, my eternal high!
You’re my recipe to ‘good marks’ and glory.
In me hair you shall live. And never die!

Thoughts across the coffee table

Would you be gentle, if we fuck? And carry me tender, slow, to a white room with blue, satin sheets?

Or would you throw me down the backseat of your car, and take me, and all I offer below the yellow streetlights and the gray moon in this black night?

Would you remember my name come daylight?

Or would I leave, and fade in silence, nameless, faceless, and ashamed, only to wither along the street wet with rain from the night gone by?

Bookstreet.

(contd)...

‘Morris bhai, Morris bhai!’

Busy digging his nose with his right hand, and his left holding on to a one day old Tribune, Morris frowned his best frown. It was 3 in the afternoon, time for his afternoon nap, and now this bugger has come again for the fifth time in the week. Come what may, Morris will not sell his shop.

So he frowned, and put down The Tribune down on his fat, portruding belly and looked up, without interest.

‘Morris bhai!’

‘Yah, bol.’

‘Morris bhai I have some news for you ji.’

‘What bloody news! I will not sell the shop!’

The canary cawed, irritated.

‘Look, even mia doesn’t like you. Just leave, haan?’

The man, named Heera, smiled shyly like he knew a secret. This irritated Morris even more.

‘Now what you smiling at, saley! Do I look like I’m fooling with you!!’, he started to get

up, and slammed The Tribune. The canary cawed again, and shifted, nervousely. For Morris never slams The Tribune down.

‘Uff foh, Morris bhai, who cares about your stupid shop? I am here because Mallika is here, ji.’ Heera, slowly, like a sly little fox, settled down on the extra chair that Morris used to rest his feet while he was taking his afternoon nap. Standing here, towering over Heera, Morris knew that this bugger wasn’t leaving this easily. He stared at the large, ugly clock on the yellowed wall of Bookstreet, cursing unspeakably at Heera, and like a pigeon, settled down on his easychair with The Tribune.

The cannarry cawed comfortably.

‘Who Mallika? The fillim wali?’ He was actually quite comfortable now, Heera. He knew he’d made the old man angry. But he knew he has his full attention now. So he took his time, the sly little fox he was.

‘No no, not the fillim wali, Morris bhai. Its this woman who wants to work for you!’ Heera was almost salivating now. So this is what it is. Morris never took Heera to be into that sort of things. Bugger, he muttered.

‘Work for what?’ This actually might be a trap. Not for old Morris, he was too old, too well known in these ways.

‘Uff Morris bhai, Mallika wants to work for you, and change the way Bookstreet looks like!’ Excited, like he has found his toy, Heera’s baby face lit up.

‘Change the way Bookstreet looks like, haanji? Over my dead body.’

The canary cawed. And right at that moment, the door opened, and in flowed an image from Morris’s past.

Pani. In a red kameez and jeans, and flowing black hair, in walked an image of Morrris the grumpy middle aged bookwallah’s past, his love, his Pani. For a moment, Morris thought he was dreaming, till the image actually spoke.

‘Hallo papaji.’ And then, like a sudden ray of sun after a storm, she smiled.

Ahem. Well.

This is what happens when 3 people with not directions but camera phones, and an overworking imagination are out in the mall, doing nothin. Repressed sexuality, I tell you.
One of the many crazy things I've done wid ma' homies.
Ah. Memories...

My dramatic deathbed.

I want to die on orange bedsheets. With my hair shaved. Skull showing, and ugly. Orange is a hopeful colour, like an overfriendly neighbour’s comfort ridden easychair. I would die wearing lipstick, orange, if possible. I want to die with nails neatly trimmed, and a zipper tattooed on my head.
I want to die wearing giant T-shirts, and bermudas. And no underwear.
How do I tell them that?
No suicide notes, they’re so….. ordinary.
I’d rather spray paint my room in fluorescent yellow with all my wishes. Hair shaved, lipstick, zipper tattoo, giant T’s and bermudas, and NO UNDERWEAR. All of it.
And of course, orange bedsheets beneath me. Like a virgin. Like, the karma falling into place. Full circle.

Festival.

The drums have started playing. Eardrums upon eardrums start erupting like volcanoes. Flesh on flesh, the shivering magpies lay strangled by the fire lighted on the golden beach. This is how it begins. A buffet of flesh and gore. The men, stoned and vibrant in hippie clothes, draw the dancing women closer to themselves. They, the women, in little skirts and bare feet, with garland on their necks and beer in their stare, move in slow rhythm till the whole festival is moving in one rhythm, one beat, like one big orgy.
And beside the bonfire, where a little child stood watching this debauchery, a rusted hand kept moving the logs to enliven the fire. And the child, with an orange doll and on a path to discovery, stood, wordless, like a wise tree in an ancient jungle.

Sundown is.

After sundown,
Familiarity hit me like a scream.
As unusually as having paraffin for breakfast.
Sex,
Like an overgrown babe with a
Giant phallus and a pair of horns.
Charged me with a holistic singularity.
There was magic in his room.
There was rain in the sky.
There were stains on the bedsheet.
No one knew no one cared,
That amidst that brown sundown
And rain and stained bedsheets,
A spirit, set free, came back on earth.

שָׁלוֹם

(Shalom)

Wanderer.
In your arms, an ancient hungry spirit was set free. Now she is more tender, more subtle.
More woman.
Freedom to me is running on the beach without shoes on, stepping on dog crap and not caring about it. So I'd be more honest when I let my hair loose, and laugh the next time. and even as i'm smoking pot the next time, my raptured mind would conjure a face in the smoke.
Forgive me if I am doing wrong in conjuring it. Forgive me I take this to be pain - beautiful pain. I am like that. You don't know yet.
Wanderer, you have nothing of me except images of my hair on your bedsheets, my touch on your face. You have them in flashes. In your head. So all this, and a bit of Shaw, I give you, with both hands.
Travel well.
To the land of the rising sun.

The giant high.

In about 5 days, my man Friday is leaving for the land of the rising sun.

Bookstreet.

Morris the bookwallah sighed his bad breath all over his pet canary. The poor thing cried out loud, but there was no one to rescue him, especially since this is the hangover day for Morris the middle aged still single (bad breath?) kala bookwallah of the street. The room that he called his bookshop was really a dump. A very large, and gray dump. No one really walked in. Wasn’t like this all along though, this place once, in the 70’s, had a soul. It buzzed left and right with book enthusiasts – this city is never short of them fellows. Morris had help too, he hired boys who’d come in looking for a job and made them stack the collections in subject wise order if not alphabetical. Never paid them enough but they were happy. Because for some very odd reason, Morris’s bookshop, was actually pretty famous. Odd because Morris was never your average book person. In fact, he’d never read anything other than The Tribune in his entire life, except of course whatever he had to be grilled through in elementary school. Shit happens. Yet Morris the kala bookwallah became famous for his odd collections of usually unavailable books in the city, so much so that the street, the most dull, brown and populated street of this end of the town, became known as the Bookstreet. Bookstreet, was the name of Morris's bookstore.
Stranger things have happened.
So as Morris sat trying to clean his yellow teeth, with what he claimed to be a toothbrush, the canary called out. And the canary never calls out.
‘What, mia. What’s wrong?’
Of course in 5 years the bloody cannary hadn’t yet begun to understand the language Morris spoke, or anyone else spoke, for that matter. So the only comfort the poor thing could give Morris was to blink twice. Morris knew, something was up.


(to be contd...)

Wanderer.

The wanderer looked between the graves,
Overcome with familiarity.
His long, dirt laden hair
Fell like a brown blanket on his shoulders.
He looked this way and that, lips pursed
And searching.
Till his eyes fell on a grave a little distance away.
Nearing, slow and faltering
He made out the words on the epitaph:
'Wanderer. Lived. Loved.'

The secrets of the Back Garden

Its been seven seas and nine dead men in a dump. The piss still rots in pots and the carcass is old now. The vegetables are healthy, ripe and red. There will be more human heads soon on the trees in the back garden, when the corpses have decomposed civilly. The teachers will have been all skinned and armless by the afternoon and we will be more educated. The hairless heads would lie by the pool side – the pool tad red for the blood that would have spilled in. This is all healthy, healthy, healthy by the usual standards but for the stench, but I believe that the human mind is so powerful that we are all going to get used ot this party.
Eventually.
But till then, the seven seas and the nine dead men and the you and the I …

Sssssssss..

Salient spent spluttered scents of sad sanity sits similarly. Same scenes salivate soda. Soda satiates by Sam the sexed. Sam salivates over Sally. Sultry Sally sexes Sam smoothly, seethingly sad. Sam’s Sunshine sits sighted. Seated soberly, Sally smoothens her silk. Sally shoos sparrows. Sparrow sing SUNSHINE. Sparrows smile at Sam. Sam, slow and sorrowful, shuns Sally. Sally suffers.

First crush.

It was an ordinary Friday evening of an even more ordinary september. It was raining like bitch. My right hand was holding on to this enourmous enclyclopedia from the school library, and the left hand was more like trying to hold on to this fifteen hundred year old black umbrella from flying off than actually keep me dry.
I remember the “mwach mwach” sound my shoes made while I walked because of the water that had got inside. My boring grey-white, mud-stained school uniform clung to me; I could feel every single drop of water, rolling down my back. I was cold, unprotected: from the rain. Miserable, too, and very, very hungry.

And then I saw him. Standing beneath tank no.13 bus stop shade, hands on his waist, frowning at the incredibly blurring rain. He was far taller than I was, dark, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that read WANT A GOOD RUB? with the picture of an Alladin's lamp below it.

I forgot how I’d made it to the busstop. I forgot how the cold gust of wind had struck me all the way from my school to this busstop. I forgot that I was a mess to look at. I forgot that I was holding a giant encyclopedia, and that my ancient black umbrella was still unshut. I forgot that I was cold, minutes ago, and HUNGRY. I stood there, gapig at him, like I was watching a movie….

Introducing….ROCKSTAR.

My rockstar is a mess haired college drop out junkie with coke issues. With one eye closed and another lookin at the infinite, he counts stars that we can’t see and sings to me in his blue oceany voice like a god and I am all over the bed with the ashes of his cigarette…
My rockstar, aimless and lost, has longer hair than I do. My sexy rockstar is, basically, the Wrong Guy Incarnate.
When he lies down beside me, on my low, unkempt bed, smokin’ a half finshed joint made last night, he talks the Norwegian. A lil’ drunk and he understands Lacan.

After we’ve made love in the brown stink called My Room, and we got Joplin playin just like that (“darlin darlin I would die for a song like this”), he’d look at me lying on his left elbow, kissing my neck, and tell me how beautiful I am. And I, like a stupid praise-hungry schoolgirl, will forgive him for flirting with my girlfriends at the last grass party. Or not callin me last week. Or that he always takes my heart in his nicotine-laden and bare palm, and breaks it.

My beautiful rockstar. I hate him. With every beer smelling kiss he’s ever planted behind my ears. With every Every Breath You Take…he’s played to me with his guitar, sitting naked, on my expensive beige bean bag. With every high I’ve reached with every joint we’ve smoked together.
I hate him. Even right now, with him asleep on my lap, and I feel I could watch him die…

The journey afar

There is no music left among these walls. There is no music left to dance to. The vagaries of education has ended on a bed. The garage door has been opened, and the neighbours are leaving their house for a journey to another country in their little red convertible to discover themselves. I am now a lone empty vessel that is raging in the bedroom overlooking the backyard. Spitting, stuttering.

There is no music left. No symphony to glory in. No soul left to haunt. If indeed all of us would die alone, in our drawing rooms with the tv on and the days takeaway resting uneaten before us, why is it that the tv plays the sound on mute?

But I know that one day our salvation will be found in dead cats with nothing to hold us back from taking our own little journeys in our little read convertibles to discover ourselves.

So long then.

Love.

Nirvana comes.
Nirvana comes in a mid sized brown, odd bottle. It comes down with a rhapsodiac melody in a dim lit bar on a prehistoric wooden table for two where one of seats never fills up. Nirvana comes and blinks twice, before its familiarity stands out, amongst the cool oceany smoothness of the evening that Sinatra offers in New York New York. And before you know, before you’re quite done for the night, you’re far away with that odd, lost bottle, in your own world where nothing stirs and nothing moves and nothing is the very music that fills the void your heart, and you know, that even if the world is blown away by an H-bomb at this very instant, it is okay, for in that dim lit bar, you have just discovered your way to your very own 8th galaxy.
Nirvana does come…

the song in the movie.

I

Merry, Merry
Pour my sherry
Our eyes seem alive tonight.

The fated night
The cigarettes slide
In hands of fools from left to right.

(The) faces blur
As we play.
Play, through the dying day.

Secrets rot.
In our hearts
And the song ends without a start.

---------------------------------------------
Look at us
Nine faces caught in lust and hate.
Heard the story goes
The King, Queen are all slaves to fate.
----------------------------------------------

II

(Our) sepiated pasts
In tainted masks
Never (quite) reach the perfect paradise.

I’m stuck with you
Till the game is through
(Wont you) lend me a hand, help me rise.

Our stories die
In toilet seats
Tonight I know that your eyes pretend.

Who’s to win
Oh who can tell
So drink up now, and play the game.

---------------------------------------------
Look at us
Nine faces caught in lust and hate.
Heard the story goes
The King, Queen are all slaves to fate.
----------------------------------------------

*ALL RIGHTS FOR THE LYRICS OF THIS SONG BELONG TO me.

Happy New Year

Come play me a CD, and then come lets dance together.
In a bath tub. Filled with crushed ice. Lets blow some horn out of scented condoms. I need to forget my mascara’s smudged. You need to forget that you’re ugly as a goblin. And if I can’t dance, forgive me, for my feet would bleed anyway with all that ice. And before we turn blue.
Before we say goodbye.
Let’s call this misunderstanding – love.
So you and me. In a bathtub. With crushed ice and a couple of blown scented condoms…
Dancing. With blue, bleeding feet.
My drink is finished.
Isn’t yours?

Death in the attic

The swish-swish noise in the attic was driving me mad. And I told myself, I have to be original! I have to remember all those men who’ve killed beautifully, serially. Those psychotics with shiny black tailored suits who had ripped kidneys, heart and eyes out of women after poisoning them with their own neurosis and semen; those maniacs who had raped prostitues on squalid London roads…… There was always a patterened originality visible to some clue-fed policeman or some detective with a weird accent. There was some art to be discovered in blood - albeit cruel but yes, original nonetheless. They were perfectionists, yes, my psycho brethen in black suits.

So I picked up a fork, and headed for the attic. My mind was vaguely on Hitchcock movie i hadn't watched. I was thinkin Jack the Ripper. I was thinkin Lector. I was thinking blood, blood, blood!
And as I reached the end of the ladder, my head just above the attic floor, i saw her feet – pretty, petite, and pink, with fingers ready to be ripped off. And there she stood like an uncaring devil - standing on a stool with her back to me, humming Hotel California, cleaning father’s books on the shelf.
And I thought, my heart could break into two, right here behind her, noiselessly and I could die of the beauty of this very moment that surrounded around her and she wouldn’t - for the life of me, ever - know, that there lived a tiny disposable speck of nothing below this attic room who had breathed his last standing behind her with his face starin at her pretty pink feet.

Who's the Bug-ger?

In one brown autumn morning, a man in checked boxers stepped out of a building wearing nothing else other than a pair of worn brown shoes. Hair dishevelled, as usually uncombed in its lifetime, he walked slowly away from the building. He waved at a fly that had only begun to rest on the sprinkle of white hair on his otherwise bald head. The fly died with a SPLAT! and the man, amused, rubbed the squashed dead fly on his shiny bald head two times in circular motion using four of his fingers, and then brought the same fingers before his nose, smelled it, and smiled.
And after about 10 seconds of contemplation like the general of an army, about to embarke on a mission, he uttererd:
“Bugger.”

The Prisonatra: The ANTI-WAR SONG

My fellow blogger L>tart and I collaborated our efforts to raise our voices together against the TORTURE BILL. Together(this was her idea) over long e-mails, we decided that I do the poetry and she do the post "A CHRISTMAS CARD FOR HUMANITY
MERRY CHRISTMAS". The Poetry Man let us use this tragic video "WAR IS OVER". Do go chek it out.



The Prisonatra by (By the Manic Street Preacher)

Black, Blue behind prison bars
My body is this century's new belligerent song.
And this body-
In this song,
Is a beaten Babylon.

Your crime is:
That you hate me with one eye blind.
Mine is:
That I'm on the other side.
Your legal whip on my bare behind-
Glory me,
With an unburied shrine.

So your blind eyed whip,
Writes the Prisonatra all over me.
For your children, and mine, to see.
Let them know, that I suffered well.
In your unjust, purple hell.

But know this:
Tomorrow, if the Sun doth rise,
God forbid
You, or your infants
be on the other side

7 WAYS TO de-SCUM

Lets do grass in a Business Conference.
Roll a joint, stuff it with I-DON-CARE
Lets strangle the law keepers,
With our hands bare
They’re wastin my money anyway.

Let’s shove the ministers down in one giant hole.
And make them stand stark naked in the pit.
Make them lick the scum off each other.
And have their genitals slit.

Lets move the government
Into my drawing room.
Its better off decorating my toilet seat, I know.
Then open fire and let them lie.
Neatly stacked and bloody ugly, in a row.

Let’s force the men’s mothers out.
And hold their son’s mouths down
To suck the Given from God of Heaven
From their Unholy mother’s breasts brown.

Let’s liscence the whores to run this Nation.
Make their slang the words of law.
Then let’s burn ourselves,
We’re dying anyway.
Our wounds are numb and raw.

Death of Word

Word, is dying.
It is dying in our conversations.
It is dying in our minds. In the short and multimedia message system, and contracted contractions.
Word, not The Word. Just Word. Its dying slow, and cunning.
Its dying in pictures, albums.
In muted televisions.
In bad poetry. Good poetry.
It is dying on the road. Street smart yet helpless.
Word is dying tagic.
In ghettos, wars.
In bombs, deaths and Bereaucratic Double Talk of Governments.
Most important of all, Word is dying in Music.
Death of Word is death of communication. Because I am out to not kiss any ass.
I just wanna talk. Let it out. Not in incomprehensible dialects, no. My dialect is the Dialect of All. Dialect that doesn’t want to die.
But all the same, Word is dying. It is dying in my bossom. In my room. In my mobile phone.
Also, Word is dying in the space between him and me while we both sit on the sofa watching telelvision. I feel the 14 inch of space between us burns with the need for talk. For word. Good Word, Bad Word. Dead Word and alive. Just Word.

So let’s not kill Word. Lets pass it unharmed to the future. To your children and mine too that I do not yet have. Intact. Free. In our blogs. Lets make Word come alive in our blogs. In our conversations. In Music.
Even in the 14 inch of space between him and me on the sofa.

180 words and an Erect Cock: The Song Of the Pervert

Come come sweet, brown Lily.
I'm no stranger to sensuality!
Brown Lily on my brown, ugly body
Sparkling, smelly, sweat dangling from my periphery.

Come now you Lily. Fear me you not.
These calls of love are the calls of my heart.
I'm not one to beckon the callous coohie poochie.
I'm a half-man after all. No intellectual fart.

Lily, Lily, know this: I am no pervert!
(I say this artfully like all other perverts)
Forgive me, forgive me, for I have no taste.
Can’t stand Righteousness. No time to waste.

My recluse lies in dark movie halls,
Amongst unaccompanied women, and girls.
I frequent dark alleys, by-lanes and shadowed street corners
Molest and haunt little girls with curls.

Must you look me like I’m a madman?
Or “pervert” as you abominably say?
Is the fault mine, when the lawkeepers sleep
While I am out for my prey?

My hands have grown long over the years.
I have an Apetite to abuse somehow.
The monster that has risen in me
Un-cut, will only die with death now.

Back from the Sea...

When you’re away to the sea, the thing is, you have to come back.
You have to come back at the busy cosmo that you’ve been born into. It’s home. It’s city life. It’s your root.

And I still got sand in my shoes.

There’s something about the waves. The giant, massive waves. With you and YOU alone before it. You and the wide wide ocean. Giant blue.
And NOISY. The sound of the waves crashing against the land.
Giant and meaningless.
And BEAUTIFUL.
Well, almost to the point where you stop thinking about who pees standing right there in the ocean and that it actually is, dirty.

But I still got sand in my shoes.

I know my poetry would be nothing new. My vacation would be nothing novel. My raging sea-storms in my head - I can still hear them….- would be no stranger to anyone.
And my shadows on the ceiling of the hotel room right in front of the sea must be a road travelled for centuries. A book written long ago.
But its okay.
For I still got sand in my shoes…

BOOK TAG-ed !!!

I was tagged by Lil Mizfit.
Anyways, if its a book thingie, so be it.

1.One book that changed your life?
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. Liberated me from this HUUUGE complicated jinx in life.
Also English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee. About an English grad stuck in an IAS job he hates. Which he finally quits. Like an Englishman who quit school to discover himself.

2.One book you have read more than once?
“To Kill a Mocking Bird”. Any day, any time, anywhere. I’d come back to it again and again.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
Since the rescue would be late, I know, so I’d take anything by Rushdie. So I can fall asleep easily. I HATE HIS BOOKS.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Bridget Jones’ Diary. I could name LOTS MORE but…

5. One book that made you cry?
Lotsa times. Books are each an experience wid me. But first time? Eric Segal’s LOVE STORY. Awww don laugh!! I was 14!!!! Wid RAGIN HORMONES…
;-)

6. One book you wish had been written?
Devine Mockery, a sequel to Devine Comedy. Written by me!
;-)
I'm serious.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
All of Chetan Bhagat's books. even his 1st one.

8. One book you are currently reading?
Peter Carey’s BLISS. Love that guy.

9.One book you have been meaning to read?
Joyce’s FINNEGAN’S WAKE. I truly, truly shall overcome someday. Once I figure out what language its written in.

Now I tag 5 people:
Deadlystrings, Pramod Bafna, Deepali, Starry Nights, Karmic Jay.
happy booking!!!
:)
\m/

A Recipe for the LIT ORIENTED.

CHAPTER 2
(Originally uploaded here)

My thoughts on paper.
Ancient.
Older than the Oceans,
And the Garden of Sin.

New Age.
And DRIVENNNNN...
Like a painter's messy canvas.
J U D G E M E N T A L.

My thoughts on paper -
AGNOSTIC.
Insensitive.
Bad-ass.
Unethical.
GOD-less.
Or GOD-like.

My thoughts on paper -
NEVER DEAD.
S C R E A M S.
Shouts.
Makes a POINT.

FREEEE...
Unlike YOU,
Who reads this?

(Preacher knows that its not due till the 15th of August, still, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to all Indians. and all those who seek freedom. Any FREEDOM. Anywhere in the World.)
PEACE..!!
\m/

A Recipe for the LIT ORIENTED

(orginally uploaded here)

CHAPTER 1.

My thoughts on paper:
Anguished.
Decadent- yet not.
Stuccatto.
Like crisp noodles in break-FAST...
UN-straight and
Mellow, mellow, mellow, mellow....


Stale:
Like a mouthfull of...
BAD breath in the morning.
Like a standing syringe on my veins....
Stuck,
Verile.

Found?
Yeah found.
Not in pages.
But B-E-T-W-E-E-N sheets.
Sexual?
Not quite.
Or maybe.

Hi.

(This is how I said Hi.)

A new beginning can be a lotta things.
Like a new haircut.
A new red circle on the time-table.
Or like a new CD ..
A new mark on the bark of a tree by a passing wanderer lest he gets lost.
New chapter of the yellowed classic you didn’t finish...
Like a great new dress for a regular, boring party.
A new room for your first child. A nursery. Small. Careful. And baby pink.
Sometimes like a new paint on your wall. Hesitating. Indecisive.

Or a smudge.

Thin rimmed new glsses that makes u look...errr..hip

Maybe like a new toy gun?
Or perhaps the real thing. For the ones from the other sides of the darkened cul de sac.
Or maybe, just a new shoe.
A new beginning.
Like a new blog, with a new post?
Ah. Now we’re talkin’.

Hallo, Vanity

Vanity, my secret lover. I sleep with her on every vain Saturday. I don’t mean to be rude but she does take away most of my share of the bed. She dresses in the Magenta of Conspicuity. She eyes me up and down like a whore as she moves slowly across the room.
Vanity comes to me when abondoned by Others, the more Virtuous. She knows in my bossom lies her final home. I have Greed singing in the next room, that’s why. She comes quitely and stands beside my bed when I'm alone, bitter, and drunk. She whispers sweet kink in my years. Then she pours down some herself from the half empty bottle that lies by my side. She purrs like a cat and then she settles down…slow, soft.
Did you know she and I played “never-never” when I was younger? I always won and she’d slip out of her devilish red dress and wrap it around the lampshade. We’d make love till dawn in the fiery red of the lampshade and then she’d disappear before I'm awake,…leaving me wondering if it was all just a dream. Perhaps she hid behind the curtain till its shamelessly dark enough.
But it was a dream. we just made love on paper, you know. And also on a bloody blog, with people watching.
Oh she wasn’t there. Never the red dress. Never the slow seductress, they’re not ordinary enough to exist.
Or perhaps she is always there. In my head. When I'm going out with someone else. Or when I'm on the stage. Or when I'm talking to someone that I say loudly is intellectually challenged. Of course, I'm just bein a smartass.
Vanity knows me. She knows I want her. And she wants me. Vanity, my devil in a red dress, soft and cunning. Naked on the pages that I write. Dignified she-dandy on the evening I make the speeches. Sensible schoolgirl when I don’t want her around…even when I'm writing on this blog: she’s perhaps all over my head.
Vanity. Sweet disease.
I'm going to kill you, you bitch.

Rise, Mumbai Rise!

(An Ode to the City of Life, Death and Awe)

Rise, Mumbai rise!
Your Fatherland calls!
In the story that I’d never write for you,
You were not my hero.
Among college days and vodka swigs
Juhu with her new born charisma of everyday
You and I before this wide, wide ocean.

Someone bombed your bleeding arse my love.
Why weep under the streetlight?
You breed rascals who call themselves
Legitimate children of you.
Bomb you,
Strike you,
But come back to your streets,
Your dingy motels. Your slums.
Again…

Huh!
I know better.
I’ve been to your squalid streets
And your whore bazaars.
I’ve seen your rude child,
Skin mediocrity from the backseat of his car.
Bleed on used kerchief.
Don’t get it wrong
If a new movie’s made on you again.
It’s just commercial gimmick, really.

Mumbai, Mumbai, my lost child.
GODDAMN YOU,
RISE!!!


PS: this post has not been to evoke, hurt, prove any feelings or emotions. this is solely personal a thought. any offence caused is not the author's problem. pix available here

3rd July: the day MY GOD breathed HIS LAST

Mr MOJO RISING….my God, my Guru cried out one evening from some obscure music system …
“Lets reinvent the gods and all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forest …” (The American Prayer. 1970)

The LIZARD MAN.
Born : 8th December
Education: student of the ENGLISH LIT. IQ of 149.
Love life: oh don’t even ask.
Dies : 3rd july. He was 28. its my FRIGGIN BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!
Reason : drank his own blood. Died in his own bath-tub.
Loss : of music, poetry, life. And me, as I couldn’t propose to him. He died before I was even born.

A master. An artiste. A poet. A singer. Band name DOORS.(name inspired from : “iF THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION ARE CLEANSED, VISION WILL APPEAR INIFNITE” – WILLIAM BLAKE)

He packaged his insanity well. Leather pants or no leather pants.
The Preacher bows to her GOD...may his soul not rest in peace and make music and poetry wherever he is. He's inspired The Preacher in more ways than she can write.
Amen.
"O great creator of being, grant us one more hour / to perform our art and perfect our lives."

Goodbye, Old Man

Old Soumen died 5 days ago.
Old Soumen – hairy, fat, ugly and middle-aged (he was 55) – died, 5 days ago.
Old Soumen died, because he had a BIG HEART. Big heart as in size I'm talkin about –
stuff OBESITY, HIGH BP… are made of.

Fact: Soumen was obese, ya. His entire family – 2 ugly sons and wife Kajol – is obese. They are a buncha fat, overeating maniacs.

Irony: Soumen REALLY DID have a BIG HEART. And here, I'm not talking anatomically.

I remember the first time I saw him was when my dad got tranferred back to Calcutta(so it was called even then). Soumen had helped Baba carry all his stuff back. Baba had asked him not to – Soumen had insisted. That was how he was.
I was what – 7/8 yrs old. I remember him enter our home – instantly out of place for his vast size. Big, hairy, ugly Soumen was a SIGHT. Esp to the puny me. He had scooped me up into his gigantic lap like I was some dollop of ice-cream.

Soumen was the kind of man you meet in long train journeys, and who makes it better. The kind of people who take your address down, promise to write to you and do write to you. If you don’t reply back, he’d come to your city and to your home – hurt, that you did not bother to reply.
His younger son went to my school till class 8.
We never talked.
He was shy.
I was usually apalled by his ugliness.


I didn’t know Soumen well – my parents did. He used to be into sports. Used to be.
“A government employee doesn’t exercise”, he used to say.
Never drank. Never smoked.
Kajol, his wife was the sweetest thing. She cooked well.

Soumen and Kajol’d often wake us up early on Sunday mornings… they’d “morning-walk” all the way from Banguihati to Salt Lake, have breakfast at our place – Soumen’d get jilipi on the way. Oh what lovely Sundays I’ve spent because of you, man. You rocked my Sundays.

Addas with Soumen - uff. There are only a few things that he’d not talk about – exercise, Bharataiya Janata Party, and Patna. Soumen had the capacity to turn a mundane, ordinary, boring evening into a party of sorts. You did not even have to talk. He’d not notice, of course. Old Soumen was a loud man. His voice was like thunder in depressed afternoons. A perfect evening : with tea, beguni, moori and something you can never buy – SPIRIT. The man was work of art.


Avuncular Soumen. Boom-voiced Soumen.
Soumen with a King Sized heart
Oh I think I’ll miss you, man. I saw Baba was quiet all morning today, you know..

Oh you …silly, silly, silly man. Didn’t you know having a BIG HEART is a crime these days. I know you loved the food you had. I know you didn’t care. I know you loved the ghee in your rice. I know you brightened everyone else’s Sundays. I know you awesome talker, you loved your sweets and your Durga Puja.
I know you were diagnosed with a Heart a tad bigger than the rest of us lesser mortals, and I know you said you didn’t care.
I hope they still make men like you. I hope I see you again in some birth if the good karma doesn’t fall in its place, you know. And I hope they have a good cook up there, old man. And I would shed not a tear for you, old man. I know you wouldn’t want me to. I just pray that it was quick for you, that you didn’t have to feel a thing.
You’ll be missed. In more ways than you’d know, by more than you would count, I'm sure.
P.S.: You know I think I'm a snobby bitch? I think I’ll go and talk to your son. If I have the courage to look at him, that is.

Ex - BOYFRIEND

Like leech,

The brown rust clung to the giant iron bowl

In the deserted palace kitchen.

Notwithstanding…

Time.

War.

Wisdom.

There were cracks in the old fort….

And the roof was blown away in some storm.

And then there was the broken bottle.

Somewhere.

Forgotten.

In some dry, wooden closet

Where the Princess hid

Her letters from the cleaning lad.

Remember,

When the dying King had called for the Sooth,

It was only the abondoned Queen who had wept.

Not from loss but grief.

But it was the bottle that was broken still.

Not me.

It was the princess who’d torn

Her pretty pink dress.

Not me.

And it was the King,

Who died on satin sheets

Rich,

And useless.

Not me.

I'm a traveller of another land.

Where they dig their own graves,

And like heroes,

Lie down in there themselves.

THEIR LOVE, for 7 DAYS...(THE END)

On the 7th day, he took her. They had walked, in the evening, to the lonesome tree that stood there beside the river. The sun was about to set. The sky was a mixture of gray with bits of yellow scattered around from the dying evening sun. He took her, there, under the lonely tree, in body and soul. He took her, in glory and desire, a hungry man…and she gave herself without resistance. She wanted this, she told herself. She knew she wanted this.
He heaved above her, and she screamed, from joy and pain. And he tore through her. Like a hungry animal, and growled at having at last found something, somewhere…some poetry that had run through his mind, or some song that had haunted him through centuries. Or some picture he had not wanted to see. Some words he had not wanted to utter.
There was a voice that cried out…from far off…maybe his own? He stifled it with deliberation. Did it cry out to stop him? Was it…no, no…this is good. He is a man! He said to himself. I'm a man, I'm a man. I HUNGER!

Afterwards when it was dark, the moonlight trickled down on them gently and dully through the leaves of the tree that stood over them. They lay together side by side, spent and breathless, and suddenly strangers again. She’d given herself to him, oh how she’d given herself! He took it, too, didn’t he? Then why doesn’t he speak?
Looking away, as he sat there beside her, searching for his clothes in the dark, in inarticulate words he uttered something about going away to some city.
“I'm sorry.” He managed.
She couldn’t hear him, as though the words did not register.

No one told her that this was not love. That there was no love in lust. No
tenderness in animal hunger. No speech in silence.
She never saw him again after that evening. She received a few half said apologies thrown in for decoration in her answering machine, and lastly a message about the day of his departure.
After 7 days, they perished. One: from a heart ripped open, a physical innocence given away, pride trampled upon and dignity taken away. Another: from guilt, experience, lust, wisdom and a knowledge that he had wronged someone. Two strangers seeking comfort that burnt in unanimous hopes and expectations of alien desires. She called herself naïve, got drunk alone in her squalid little apartment.
And went on walking the streets alone.

(this, friends, is the end.)

THEIR LOVE, for 7 DAYS...(PART 2)

And it began.
Two strangers, in their journey towards an unlikely lonesome desperation, met, and fell. Together. Two people so different, so vastly separated…two broken bits of planets of two different universe.


They would take walks together, never really saying anything. She had so much to say, he had so much to hide. She wanted him to kiss her. He would barely look at her. She wanted him to hold her hands. He was afraid…was it love? “Oh no, I'm too old.” He’d tell himself . Besides, he’d been in love too many times already…

That day after the movie, they had walked together, without speaking. The wind was chilly, and it was late. The silver moonlight glittered on the windowpanes of the deserted shops.
He could smell her, she was so close. It was the same sweet, obscure smell he recognized from the day they’d first met. The same silly little girl he’d asked out for coffee…without thinking.
It was under a streetlight that he caught hold of her hands. They stopped. She looked up at his face.
She touched him gently on the face. His stubble pricked her fingers…and she liked it. She smiled. He lifted his rough hands to touch her smooth face…they felt like sandpaper on her skin. He brushed aside a strand of hair. The light danced in her eyes, he could see it.
And she could see the lust in his eyes.
In his arms, she tasted of coffee. And looked so fresh. As if she had just been painted.
Yes. A painting, that’s what she looked like. Fresh, not yet dry. Soft, but almost real…As if she’d be smudged if someone touched her. He pulled her closer,…and kissed her.
And suddenly, he knew that something has been stirred in him. Some ancient animal that had been raging inside him. Something that just wanted to get out.He pulled himself off. The old animal in him had laughed. He’d heard it before.


To be continued.....

PS: picture bears no connection to the piece. Picture from:http://www.fotosearch.com/IMP167/ingweyav0081/ , and NOT author’s own. Any resemblance between the piece and the picture is just artictically definitive and inspirational.

THEIR LOVE, for 7 DAYS...(PART 1)

They had loved for 7 days.
It blossomed out of a thirst to be understood, to be felt, out of loneliness…They had walked the city alone before that at nights and in the common, cold darkness.
He, by the local pub, passing by the watchman on his beat before the ATM.
She, beside the river that ran through the forest nearby.
He, with a cheap cigarette between his fingers. Eyes, that looked this way and that and back.
She, in the cold nights, passed by parks where oblivious lovers kissed without shame. And she would pull her coat closer around herself.

They had met in the darkness of a deserted street.
“Do ye’ smoke?”
She had taken a minute to understand if he was harmful.
“No.” she answered in an unimaginably gentle submission.
He was silent for a minute or two.
“Coffee, ma’am?”


to be continued....



PS: picture bears no connection to the piece. Picture from:www.branchesquarterly.com/ 3.2/WeeksPatterson.htm , and NOT author’s own. Any resemblance between the piece and the picture is just artictically definitive and inspirational.

SEX AFTER 70

Our age, withering
Feels like smoke from a burnt toast.
Your hands, and mine on them
Like crumpled sheets lie.
Your yellowed eyes, their far and short sightedness.
Look at me like ghosts,
Without lust or sensuality,
But stale love.
Stale.
And odourous.
My broken tooth …
My lifeless erections
And lisp.
And your sagged breasts and buttocks.
All join now and decide,
That we cant fuck anymore.

My God, the Beggar Man

My darkness
Empties itself in a tin bowl
So I look for a gold coin.
My heathen temples
Have been calling me for a while
Because my God is a beggar man.
Ring!Ring! go the temple bells
Ring! Ring! Echoes onto the empty temple halls
I put my God on a pedestal.
Yet He wanders off, singing, outside the closed walls.
He sings of love and hate
Like a common harlot.
He dances like a man possessed
On the broken pieces of old earthen pots.
He folds his knees and rolls on the dirty mud
Brown, red mud like skin on him sticks.
And then he raises his flaming eyes into mine
And hits his head on the squalid temple bricks
And asks, “So much pain, so much suffering.
Have I created life to see this?”
And off he goes,
My mad, mad God
To the world that was Devinedly his.
My God of the heathen temple
Has a bowl in his right hand.
My God is a dirt laden pile of despair.
My God is a beggar man.

Resident Mockery

Dream, dream, dream o my pretty child
The world is yours.
The silent way that you bid goodbye
To your last love…
U have no pain to feel now.
My cruel, Victorean lovemaking
Will be your anodyne.
Walk with me, honey. I’ll show u the world.
I’m an old Gothic priest.
Fear me not, u have only fear to fear itself.
Don’t hold hands with another stranger.
Hoping he might fall in love with you.
And your sorry little life.
A tale of a heart ripped apart with bare, fleshy hands…
Retold and retold and retold..
Till they ask you to leave the bar...
Don’t listen to those who don’t understand you.
Listen to me.
Listen to your soul.
Dream dream dream o my pretty child,
The world is yours.

ancient sacraments of a man...

Sand, dust and beer on another cruel afternoon…its just you and me and our dark forgotten pasts. In our brown unkempt rooms with darkness in our minds, and ashes of cigarettes lying on the carpet like lost sons of Fate.
I am a thousand years old in my bruises of the old you, and it doesn’t even matter. It doesn’t matter that I had loved you, that I had run beside the ocean screaming out your name…your sweet name on my dry, windbeaten lips. It doesn’t matter how I twisted and turned every night when I couldn’t see your face in the crowd of busy, nonchalant people: they weren’t in love, I was. And mad.
Your beauty came to me with severed hands. Like the brown skin of a hard working tribesman: slowly growing on my senses like a silly seed germinating into a flower that I’ll learn to love.
Do you remember the times we laid naked, on the june summer night with beer in our hands and cool warmth in our minds. How I loved you then. And how you looked like a Godess.
Time beats on my face like wasted water from another country, and I, lick my pains like a pathetic epilogue of a sour tale. Time throws your faces at me, their glimpses. The way you smiled under the orange streetlight, how your skin felt like cream in the nights when I made love to you. How your hair fell on your shouders clumsily in the morning when you woke up beside me. How you breathed slowly while watching a movie.. Time plays games with me, and I watch, like a hungry child of destiny.
Oh cruel love. Does this ever end. Does this ever conclude into a well told story. Words dissolving walkin sticks, and words binding me to you like skin on a leper: unwanted and diseased.
And I feel my private pains, as tomorrow is another morning. I go to sleep on my pillow that stinks of you. But for now, its just sand, dust and beer on a cruel afternoon…its just you and me and our dark forgotten pasts……