Winter Sun, The

Casuarinas sweep through the dry December air. There is a sea, waiting half a mile away. Winter Sun is so shy, glinting down between sleepy moments. Mid mornings are the longest now-a-days. Now that I am in purgatory. Sluggishly suspended in between. I rest, in a hut, with skeletal furniture. A tiny stove to boil water or make some rice. A bed, and a table to sit by. Windows open to endless sand and casuarinas, which I assume end at waves, but I've never been. Because I never step out. There's a someone, perhaps a woman, who comes to drop some food, sometimes a few clothes, before I am up. She stops showing for days, I suspect I am gonna starve. But I never feel hunger, in the pit of my stomach, just as I do not strongly feel anything anymore. My skin's thick. Like I am in a coma. And it's been November for years, at a stretch. There's a verandah. And like an alien stands a gargantuan eucalyptus, right next to it. It's the most dream like - this eucalyptus. It touches the sky, it's unabashedly vertical for a tree with no boughs. And its bark is white, layers outside keep falling off, day by day, revealing whiter insides, I am curious how. My afternoons are spend completely in observing this tree - who is now almost a companion. And then night comes quickly. The air gets cold and the trees make noises of shallow nightmares. But I do not know fear. Because I do not know for sure, if I exist at all. Or all this is merely a stretched hallucination. Pondering, I tire into sleep. When my eyes open, I see fog for distances. But I know, the winter Sun is half bobbing at the horizon. And it's the same day, happening all over again. 

Pomelo

'Been always a fan of summer-fruit

If there's any antidote for the sweltering,

It's fruit

Be it - raw ripe mangoes, not yet fully done

Falling before their time

To a sudden swollen pre-summer thunderstorm

Scattered across the backyard

Were cut into long slices and relished with crushed red chillies in salt

Or small ripe ones

Suckled upon, like a mother's bossom, then peeled 

Tasting nectar-like

Big enough to fit smugly in my child's first

Oh the raw sin, gnawing into piles of mangoes, for infinite afternoons

Be it jackfruit 

What is this - god's gift to mankind

Huge gargantuan fruit

Protected underneath thorny skin

Like all good things soft and fleshy 

And plenty to take us days to finish 

Those who had sought help from the family and couldn't repay

Always thanked us with jackfruit

Also a jackfruit is true at heart, unlike the mango 

Treacherous mango - which could turn out sour.

But a jackfruit is always sweet

Always predictable, can be taken for granted to play out exactly as expected, like me.

Be it watermelon.

Frozen watermelon after sultry summer lunches

Have you had those?

Impossible to describe the feeling

When a chunk of watermelon hits your palate

Utterly confusing, like is it water - is it melon?

And I could chomp chomp chomp, without a care in the world

And then there was

Pomelo

Shameless fruit of December though 

A magician's fruit - almost

Scary large oranges 

Not orange in the flesh, but pink nearly or scarlet 

The peel was so thick, you'd have to knife through 

And the wedges - too large for my child's first

They weren't sweet or sour 

And sometimes too watery to tell the difference 

But they grew at the end of our garden

The furthest point from home

On the absolute edge of our kingdom

After the marigold patches, and chilly rows

Pumpkin field, coconut orchard, 

Two ponds brimming with sweet fish 

And then - ah at the end of the world

The Pomelo tree

I was told stories about how the seed was procured and planted

All made-up am sure

But to my child's mind, it was a magician's tree

Because how else could oranges be that big?

ilk

those of my ilk

do not make it to the top

we are sediments 

settling on the ocean floor

layer by layer

fossilized and forgotten

there is nothing special 

or noteworthy about me or my kind

painfully average and below

our talent erased by struggles

identities dwindled by exhaustion

crushed by choices we ourselves made

we say we're understated

that's not true now, is it

we lost and bowed out long ago

just after the race began

and decided to meander through 

to test, how much longer we'd make it

thus, we are here, now

sugarcoating our under achievements 

with amorphous adjectives

trying to say we tried

ah, it wasn't enough

and we never did

I and my ilk

my ilk and i 

Maggi

Nostalgia hovers around my memories like a gentle giant. Causing effect only when I am otherwise unbothered. That way nostalgia has been kind. Not causing undue duress. It's also, at times, the only thing, that keeps me in touch with my old original person - aware of what is of any real value, and what is worth any sort of chase. 

In fleeting glimpses, nostalgia takes me to my past and I see again, everything in sepia hue. Honest about the hue. In an huge expanse of a campus, there was one near dilapidated girl's hostel. In the middle of the hostel, ther was a lawn. Where women and girls walked after their meals and pulled allnighters before semester exams. To one corner of that lawn, was a tiny cafe. Run by two tribal girls. They spoke chaste Hindi and made the driest maggi. 

It's strange, how the human mind works and saves faces. I have met hundreds of people and really I mix up faces to an embarrassing extent. But i remember the face of one of those girls. She had a dark thin face and small eyes. And spoke like she's carrying a grudge. But she made the driest of instant noodles. It was my first time away from home and I didn't know instant noodles could be cooked that way. I would eat parts of the paper plate that would be scraped off with the noodles. It costed some 10 bucks and was highly looked forward to because the food at the mess tasted so alien.

And then there were months I ate only dal. I was a chubby one. Have always been. But those intervening years between high school and graduation, the pressure to be thin was so intense that I mashed garlic and green chillies in my dal and drank it down. 

I did lose weight, yes. And made holes in my mind so deep, that only a few have been filled back up in decades that followed. 

Today, I move with gratitude. For all that, that transpired in those years have made me the person I am. While I may not be superior, I still am someone. Weak but real. Exhausted, but with gumption. Restless, but believing in time. Tattered, but still soft. 

Brink

I am counting on small things

On very simple things 

To bring myself back

From the brink

Am looking at flowers, fragrances

Leaves, sticks and straws

Clay, soft and mouldable 

Even paper

And autumn sunshine 

Because origami saves my soul

When nothing else can 

A walk amongst flowers

Makes me remember that - everything is nothing 

And vice versa

A song, a dusk,

Faded rainbows

Old scrapbooks

And forgotten poems 

Tell me that - I can just be

Quiet and still.

If there's anything that is of any value

At all

Is a head that sleeps alright

And a heart that knows true calm

Not that I've money and houses

But those are zilch too.

Release

I need some room

For a bit of debauchery

Some bit of debauchery 

Once in a while

Or a fortnight 

Would bade no harm

Not as much harm at the very least

As my everyday does

You see,

I am a person

Going about her day

Rushing, mumbling, crawling, 

In the pauses between my quiet wails

My breath is so shallow

You'd guess I am dead already

I strive every hour

To keep things neat

No outbursts

Hailing cabs, paying bills

Erasing my former authentic self

Or atleast stifling, deep inside

I feel don't stand to lose much

Because there wasn't much to begin with

I stand on routine, wake up, push it, sleep

Wake up, push it, sleep

Wake up push it sleep

And then awaken to nightmares

Not of ghouls and devils

But the frothy little nightmares of everyday

That make you reluctant to emerge

Thus, I allow myself no release 

Due to which, I perish when alive 

Despite all good intention

Despite counsel

Despite the resources for a decent lil life

I need some debauchery, some release

To observe and witness 

The reasons outside of this cocoon 

To just be, and

Be, unbothered 

Woman in 801

Woman in the next flat

The one in 801

I've never seen your face

Wonder how you're never out in the corridor 

Going about your business 

Neither am I, but yet.

You've got curly bushy big hair

And you almost always dress in man pants

You got your backpack and your helmet 

And your motorcycle. Yes 

You live-in with a man, sure do.

Both you get your dinners delivered.

Accidentally if we both open doors at the same time

You're almost like a body without a face, hah

And you have your animals

A brown cat that waits in the window 

And white little dog that barks a lot

Am sure you have interests and such

But your succulents die on the windowpane

And your pots are empty, unwatered

You forget, we all do, to water, of course

Which is fine. As long as you have a life. As you do.

Unlike me, the woman in 802, the checklist maker, doer of tasks, taker of calls (back to back), the juggler of balls, the hustle maniac, buried under bags, jumping from errand to errand, having eroded into a person with no semblance to her original self.