Off-shoulder

One day... not so far away in the future, when this life will seem to have passed in the bat of an eyelash. When all this time spent waiting will seem so small in comparison to what lay ahead. When the wisdom of bygone years will seem but a frivolous gift. When the small wedge on my fractured nose will cease to stand out. When my fingers will become tender and soft, not out of care but out of habit. When the winds will stop and the music still sail through the sky. When the colour of the balance at the end of the ledger will not matter any more. When quiet nights and empty days will not taunt me with sounds and sights of togetherness. When the weight of tender flesh will fail to outweigh the weight of silent laughter. When impatience will have run its course. When I will not have any complaints left to voice. When I won't even have the voice left to complain. When all that is alive will be a painting, my painting. When all the fervour to posses would have ebbed away. When letting go will not figure in the list of options. When it will not be required. When understanding will not demand any effort. When time will become timeless. When I will find you in my dream forever.

Infallible follies

Isn't it cool? It is cool. So cool. Since yesterday the mind has been ricocheting around wildly like a crazy-ball.

It happens on such days filled with quiet solitude, when the brain conjures up haloed thoughts from every flimsy whim the world cares to fling my way.

Making presentations is very boring. In a way, it's like my singing. Flat. In another way too, it's like my singing. It has to be done. Obviously when one is doing things that have-to-be-done one thinks about completely unrelated stuff.

The potpourri of thoughts can be very comforting. Like this photograph of these singularly beautiful flowers among the random, overpoweringly common blades of grass. Taken while lying on a top of a mountain around 1100m in height. The blur in the distance so comforting, the focus of interest so crisp. None of the clouds in the sky seemed interesting. So I ended up clicking this majestic bird instead. Like pictures from a book, no? A book? Which book?

The one I cannot write. My concentration .. no wait ... my train of thoughts is too fickle to last for a book. Much like Zorba's mood. I take ages to finish reading a book sometimes. For the record, I am still reading Lolita. To make matters more interesting, friends push more delectable fare onto my platter. And pretty above average stuff at that.

Of course, before I have finished reading all books, the world as we know it is going to end because 2^1039 - 1 has been factorized. But that's no excuse for not having seen Ray and Miyazaki! And for losing Friday night football 8-7. I am as bad at film or book appreciation as I am at playing center forward for 90 minutes.

But I know what I like. Which is more than I can say for you if you are still reading this! Did you know that I have a moustache? How can you still be here! What gall! Go take a ride on Economikrisis' galley to Gaul. It will serve you better.

Better than the bar of Snickers I am going to buy after lunch. Do you know french? Porque if you don't, you can't ask pourquoi. You can only get swept away.

Jab mori chaadar ban ghar aayi, rangrej ko dinhi
Aisa rang ranga rangre ne, ke lalo-lal kar dinhi¹

Completely. Totally. In all earnest. After all, "every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all ... is not to have one."

Make a wish

Bananas from Ecuador. Ginger from Thailand. Gits Sambhar Mix from India. Half way across the world. Classy sounds of whining.

It's rarely that one finds one's writing critiqued. Mostly people are satisfied by saying something politely pleasant. So it pleases me to no end when someone can find the time to say something about the way I write. Let's just state the two recent ones I got.

The lighting is ummm... perfect. The staging needs a bit of work. The silhouettes are not clean enough. See through the camera. Through it. As the camera sees through you.

One was that this and this are pathetic attempts at sensuousness. They are shoddy attempts without much finesse and sound crass .. and and border on pornographic (distastefully). The other was that this and this are just my classy way of whining. It was said that when I am sad, I just .... whine. It's kinda well dressed but it is still whining.

I would love to hear more such critiques. Both of you have my heart felt thanks. Having said that... that's it (story arch commencing). One's life is neatly compartmentalized between a crappy (fictional, but crappy) sex life and suave whining. Men, it seems are not supposed to whine. Especially men who are not built like Adonis and who don't have a suave dress sense. So much for my image!

The character is built quite nicely. A bit shaky, but that is part of the effect I suppose. The secondary storyline is getting a bit overshadowed. He is the author surrogate after all. And the framing device at the beginning is not well structured.

Grey skied, black Manhattan covered in white snow. Simple stories about passion for all that is unworthy for others. Pink coloured guava juice, made in Holland. Chicken biryani. Incessant talking. Beautifully empty waiting rooms of the SBB. Asterix and Obelix.

Duniya kare sawal to hum, kya jawab den. Spirited Away. A bumpy introduction into a new world. Shei tumio aamake bhool bujhle! What is this story about? Does everything have to have some existential justification? Isn't recursion its own cause? Show me the money, honey. But how much (story arch ends)?

An epistolary, eh? Won't work in this day and age. Why, you are ancient! Why don't you put in a few dragons and lost swords? You are a master of syntax, but your rhetoric is misplaced.

That I can't write, can't sing, can't dance, can't draw, can't read, can't dress ... I can dream, can't I? Nightmares? Look at me! See? I am alive.

See? My novel. Mine. Maybe it will never be published. Ta jonne dukhkho neyi. What will I achieve? A life on my own terms.

Look up there! A shooting star. Make a wish quick...

Seduced by silence

On an ordinary, weary day
Coloured a dull tungsten ochre
Waiting patiently to give away
Delicate secrets

'Twas then she sailed in
Unnoticed, and impregnated the air
Spread everywhere buttery thin
Seductive silence

Mesmerising, cajoling, cooing
Sprinkling tingling touches so light
Innocent charms hell-bent on wooing
Temerarious life

Seeping through porous skin
Inside, she let loose the dark
Blood ran black, oozing fluid yin
Echoing surrender

Sinewy fingers choking reason
While the neck nods a rabid assent
Invited, debauched, infatuating treason
Plundered sleep

Vacuum brimming with murderous thought
Helpless again as ever, me
Future bleached as past distraught
Ebbing dreams

Sleepless too

Tonight, when it is already tomorrow
All I can do is write
Mere words of no consequence
Colouring the fringes of this sleepless stupor

Needless to say it makes sense
To stay awake now that you are
Gone from where you were
Here, beside me, in my wish

I believe in fairies, but unfortunately
Every saved fairy is asleep now
So I turned to the cold, which creeps
On me now, in glee.

She has already claimed my toes.

The onion in my breath would have
Made the perfect kiss, with its acrid taste
Smeared over my lips which do not
part now for fear of smiling out of habit

Low pillows and clocks ticking in emptiness
Inside the Mad Hatter's tea kettle
Half eaten, mottled cup-cakes
Never promise for more tomorrow

The knife looked so threatening to
The five day old soup in the cup, and
the empty wastebasket. Oh!
Are you twins?.

Tweedledee, Tweedledum.

Sleepless

Wrapped in my personal
quilt of satin, velvet dark
I listen to the growl of wheels
on the road outside

Time doesn't want to pass
One minute and then ten, eleven
Stretching like chewing gum
Over my booted life

The hard floor serves to calm
Twisted muscles, but the nerves raw
Refuse to temper down the listless
Nightmares swirl around

The bell tolls a dozen clangs
Only twelve. Half divided
And scattered by the trade winds
Over miles and miles of barren land

Once the breeze hath blown past
The many halves rot and root
Warm neon glows in the dark
Wait! Why is despair so fluid?

Walked past and left behind
Shrivelled, like used tissues
Useless except for landfills
To be rolled over and founded on

Two eyes, a while ago refused
To close now. We can see in the dark.
Ha! Such illusions. Lie awake
and wait and wait and wait.

Watercolours

I wrote a poem yesterday and then shut the computer down without saving it. Justice by sleepy hands shall we call it? It was about loss and it was lost. This world is a weird place. Very weird. People come and go like the connection on my bluetooth headset.

But isn't that people are for - to come and to go? Stupid question. I have grown old. I have ... weary of this haunting quiet around me. A quiet in which I paint. Pictures have always attracted me ... drawn me in. I see colours in lives of other people - of those around me. Each one has a special menagerie, a distinct palette. I yearn for the paintings to be completed, to get their last finishing brush strokes, to be displayed for every eye to devour. But then it rains...

Everybody doesn't know the rains like I do. She is supposed to wash the dirt away and leave the colours fresh with life ... instead she washes away the colours themselves if one is not careful with her. Intimate, the rain is, without asking anything from me, other than letting her wet me. Not only on the outside, but through and through.

I saw a painting washed away recently. What a waste of perfectly good colours! And I hear the rain, in my quiet, dissolving me slowly. Me, because she cannot dissolve my colours. They are too fast. Will she wash me away then, before my painting is complete...

Laugh on me

Heated days, heated words
Relentless authority beating down
Hapless nerds
Laugh on my position in the food chain
I do
Though nothing quite beats my hairdo
Receding hairlines in quirky rhyme
Styled with gooey paste, impassioned
Dirty slime
Laugh again at my exquisite tact
And the very fact
That you called out his name
When literally, I was game
Waiting to shoot and got shot instead
Thank goodness, I was in my bed
Laugh on dreamy, idealistic, incessant
Leeching wants
Surviving like diligent bacteria
In the heat of well aimed taunts
Symbiotic with the blessed rain
Laugh, ensemble, at my false penchant for
Wanting pain
Thriving in crevices and cracks
Arcane, engineered hacks
In c'est folie, encouraging the 'it'
In memories writ
Laugh in the calm inside-out
Labelling me profoundly sane
Beyond doubt
Allowing me to live and beyond
With an unlikely prospect
That someone be overtly fond
Of seeing me smile
At the mere possibility of me
Without guile
I laugh, on myself.