The sun on my face,
Trees sliding against a blue sky,
Calm winds and a sweaty brow,
A willingness to try.

An understanding of whims, and nonsense,
Teaching and getting to learn,
A pencil and a tablet together,
Hope that is yet to burn.

Accepting and moving on, fighting
and being able to fight,
Food, a kitchen alchemy fix,
A sense of wonder, what might.

Help in heart and hand,
Test and turn out wrong,
Chips, eaten and built upon,
Voices lent to cries and song.

Beauty to hold and feel,
in flesh, breath and mind found,
Support and sanity, temple trysts,
Myriad forms of love around.

Humble and proud, shall I be,
Grateful and happy today,
That I was born as me this time,
With my life, I can live my way.

Draw

In between lines of blue and green,
Lines I let go long ago,
There is still lingering, to be seen,
Dreams of peace within.

Curves that I learnt to draw,
Of form and figure, earthen pots,
Proud to emerge, as a final straw,
Hopes of life afoot.

Trembling hands on ivory sheets,
Conquering white with shades of lead,
A kiss of senses, where an eye meets,
Loves of divine trysts.

Lessons learnt in nestled coves,
Taught freedom from structured melds,
Flow and melt inside treasured troves,
Meanings of chaos anew.

Imagination of fiery minds spark,
Teasing forgotten thoughts to murmur,
Beckon to explore my inner dark,
Selves of me alive.

Cat Smoking – my entry to the GetPublished contest

The Idea

Pushmeet is a spoilt, rich, lady's man. Almost incongruous to that fact, Pushmeet is a writer. Completely orthogonal to these two facts is Pushmeet's dilemma about who is a better life partner for him - Veronica, his neurotic, bohemian, tortured intellectual personality incarnate journalist bed-fellow and cigarette stockist, or Trina, his lissome, sleek, precise, pin-prick sharp architect muse and imperceptibly sarcastic bouncing board.

So he does what a writer does best, he plays the quintessential narcissist. He writes Veronica and Trina into a story, and has them meet each other and discuss their love-lives with each other. Through his words spoken through their mouths, he hopes to find clarity among his muddled up feelings for the two of them. The story is a weave of Pushmeet's own life and his story, told through the conversation between Trina and Veronica.

His attempts to establish his preference among the two women leads to questions about his own identity that he has never thought of. As words tease his subconscious onto pages, his eyes find truths he never knew existed. About love, about loving and about lovers.

What Makes This Story ‘Real’

In bits and pieces, I have thought about these things at some point of my life or another. The setting in the story is fictional, the characters are fictional, but what they speak and what they seek is tainted with my interpretation of my reality.

Extract

Trina stared at her nose-ring. "Silver," she thought, "I haven't seen silver jewellery in a long time." Sunlight skids on silver, like a ninja on water. "Ninjas? What have I been drinking! Why am I thinking of ninjas?"

"Do you want a cigarette?" Veronica's dusky voice seemed to wrench her out of her silvery fog.

"I am trying to give up. I want my lover to give it up actually. But he says I am hypocrite if I don't give it up myself first."

"Mine smokes like a chimney. And hides his stash in my apartment - his is searched it seems, by what he calls 'the cigarette police!' Have you ever kissed a mouth full of smoke? Exchanged smoke like saliva? I found the thought disgusting till he made me do it."

"No... I don't quite like the saliva bit either, much to his chagrin. I am more of a touch person, than a kiss person."

The microwave beep woke Pushmeet out of his trance. He could still see Ron blowing smoke-rings into Tri's face. He felt a longing to feel Tri's fingers on his stubble. They made it seem more like an Monet brush stroke than an ugly outgrowth of his lethargy. He hungrily dug into the cup of instant noodles - they almost tasted edible to his smoked taste buds. A subdued mewl behind him made him remember the stray cat he had picked up yesterday on his way back home from the pub. "You need to eat too? Or would you like a cigarette instead? Let's ask the girls..."

Endnote

This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.

Voting

The contest is influenced by how many votes a story idea gets. If you liked the story idea above vote for it - all you have to do is click on "Like" at the following link.

In Protest, Shame and Prayer

I have forgotten how to write.
I have lost words amidst crooked thought.
That bleed in tatters,
shred by my thorny times
Everything human brought to nought.

It is good that I have forgotten.
Words as protest are a mockery of the mute.
Ridiculed and powerless,
aborted before being born free
Everything lush burnt to the root.

Why should I try to remember.
Cries that echo in hapless lament.
Blistered souls dissolve,
in the powdered shame of man.
Everybody joins in on the torment.

They still haunt me in dreams, my words.
Vicious vicissitudes of hope and fear.
Of the future I lease,
as nature's consort in life.
Shirking the right of rapine my species holds dear.

I choose to not write, but scream in horror.
I sear my choices on my fragile man.
Cast in her muffled freedom,
birthed in her blackened womb.
I will not stop decaying, until she can.

Kung-Fu with the Dogs

The boisterous heat in this city is everywhere. Trapped within layers of the aaloo-patty that one had as a tea-time snack, rising from the folds of the wrinkled, half-dry hand towel that stinks of old sweat, it bakes the red streaks of pan spit on the white walls of the community center to burnt sienna. Little whorls of indignant misery permeate the lives of the common dwellers of its lanes. Dwellers, who for want of suitable dwellings, try in vain to cool the sun bleached footpaths that have been mercifully left undug by the municipality. Not much changes here. The hoardings may have grown brighter and bigger, the girl on the hoarding is wearing hot-pants now, instead of her earlier skinny jeans, but the man peeing on the rusted back scaffolding of the hoarding is still there, oblivious to the din of traffic that crawls behind him.

This is why it is useless to feel remorse here, thought Yom, between blowing out rings of cigarette smoke. He knew he had to do what he had to do because he, of all the miserable wretches in this city, had been paid to do it. He usually dealt with pipes. Blocked pipes, or loose dripping ones and sometimes pipes filled with weed. He could roll a pipe on the back of his palm and do all that Kung-Fu hooha. It usually scared the shit out of dogs who dared to stalk him at night, on his way back home. Other than that his only other claim to fame was a moth eaten bowler hat he had inherited from his father, who had insisted it was at one time worn by a Mr. Spencer. Yom used it to store the special pipes, the ones for which he got paid.

Behind the hoarding, stood the pink walls of the city magistrate's office. Walls have no business in a city where no one can breathe without prostituting their stench for a few ounces of fresh smoke and ancient dust. Yom walked through the walls, into the courtyard, crawled in through the broken window in south corridor, located the stairwell near the smelliest urinal and there behind the loose brick on the east wall, he left his pipes. And darts.

Come morning, he would walk in with the motley crowd of spectators and news leaching journalists, retrieve his instruments and put an end to another bastard's misery. It was hardly worth the effort. It would not make any difference to this city. He could feel a crooked smile form on his parched black lips as he heard a whine and growl behind him. Tomorrow would come when it will. But now was the time for kung-fu with the dogs. Yee-haw!