Thirty-nine

Not once in the past years, forty odd

Did I stray 

Been singly tethered

Going around the sun

On a floating speck of dust

But I am tethered 

My vision is aimed on the righteous path

Toward light, or whatever that is

Determined to be good

Never failing my values

Not once betraying kindness, niceness

My voice is sweet, unheard in loud rooms, but sweet

The red heart- in my chest 

Perhaps is very capricious 

But I have sponged her up in fears enough 

We both stay moored 

Moderate, in our lane

Moored to rules

Broken, oh shattered, in smithereens

Struggling everyday and hour 

But never inching toward the devil that could be

So why, oh why now

That i feel that it’s not been worth the bargain 

Because I have only lost. And lost. Don’t know how.

And lost some more

Phantom

You promised me you would meet me at the station but you wouldn’t. I undertook a journey of hundreds of miles for you. But you wouldn’t show. You were a secret i shared only with myself. So who would i cry to? I sulked for hours after  boarding the train. I didn’t have a reserved ticket. Making room in the general compartment, i sat and imagined if you had asked me to come or i had imagined it all. Then my mind further slipped and wondered whether you yourself were a phantom, altogether. Unreal, but too huge to ignore. There right beside but untouchable. My thoughts meandered up and about too much, i positively asked myself to shut up. Probably people were staring at me. Their glares grew hotter. My stomach burned but i wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t thirsty but someone offered me water. I ignored and looked away. I felt everyone was converging into me, like a centrifuge. The train was hurtling through jungles. Dacoit infested. Gun wielding.  No dearth of petty thieves either. Everyone clutch on to your bags. Everyone clutch on to your dear lives. Someone said there were seats in the sleeper compartment. Those who were suffocating should get down at the next station and move to the sleeper. I couldn’t breathe. My chest forgot how to swell up and squeeze out. My throat felt slightly tight. The yellow light made everything difficult. It was hot and cold at the same time. Sweating and shivering, i stood up straight, on my heels and got down to the platform. The train came to a halt with a whimper. Someone pointed in a direction towards the sleeper. Where there is room, less odour and lighter light. I held my fist on my chest and ran towards it. But I couldn’t find anything. Bougie after bougie, jam packed. I had been betrayed. I saw the train jerk into motion and I froze. If abandoned here, amidst dacoits and jungles, how would i meet you at the station. I knew you weren’t gonna show but i knew i would meet you. I floated between contradictory truths while the wheels caught speed. I was falling behind. I could feel my temples sweat, my heart pound. I caught hold of a handle and stepped back up. My eyes were closed the entire time. When i opened them, i swear i saw you. Standing on the platform. Or slowly walking towards me and falling behind. Soft smile captured in your cheeks. Hair neatly parted, mustard yellow shirt buttoned less the top two. Tattered jeans. You expanded in the wind and it seemed like you would catch up soon. I couldn’t look any longer and rushed inside.

. 

Circling back

Inside our thin apartment walls, shared

Potted plants, outside, yellowed browned

Containing our many sicknesses

Of bodies and minds

Love made,

Meals cooked,

Soups poured,

Breaths taken.

Delicate lives

Soft shallow sighs

Our quiet failures

And deep deep regrets

Our stories, and secrets 

Journeys taken everyday 

And our voyage back home

Drawing complete circles

But somedays, some do not return

Someone dies

And the circle is cut off.

Time compression

You know what time compression is, dontcha?

When you live hundreds of similar days, buried in routine, the brain stops forming distinct memories. Because everyday is same as the next. 

I was, basically, time compressing, for many many years. For my love for sameness. For my fear of changes. I have been running up and down corridors, in and out of elevators, catching rickety autorickshaws, waiting, resenting traffic, gobbling down food, typing away, working away, hiding, mindlessly chomping sit-coms to sleep, and such. 

And then you happen.

In some random corner, where two streets meet, we run into each other at the most unexpected of moments. I know, we are too old for this shit, I know. Too old, too tired, too fat, too bereft, too rugged. But we did.

And there is that expression on your face. Shy mischievous smile, embedded in your eyes. Like you would tell me things, if you could. Like you would stand beside me and say things, if it was allowed, if I listened. We would hang around, steady, for a minute or three, at that specific corner and submerge in soft laughs. Those laughs would wash away age, heartbreak, exhaustion and retrieve nice things. Many many nice things. Only you wouldn’t and I wouldn’t. Would we?

For a moment there, my hippocampus would jerk into motion because I shocked her out of time compressing and hurriedly make a memory or two.

Only you wouldn’t and I wouldn’t. Would we?

Jujube

This year, it will not rain. Everybody had been telling so. In the gloom of impending drought, many were simply letting go. As early as March - summer had just begun. The air was thick with flavour of mango flowers. Humid afternoons made homes impossible to stay in. Languid and sweaty, we, the children, wandered from home to home, garden to garden, played kit-kit on sleepy streets and wondered- what drought would be like. 

Cousins of all kind, city cousins, village cousins, cousins once removed, nephews and nieces in relation, neighbours, school-mates - nobody left behind. We wandered in herds. And found a jujube tree, leaning over a dried pond, bustling with fruit, maroon, plump, the sour odour hanging heavy in the air for yards around. Only when one ate, one knew it could be sweet too. This was in the front-yard of one of very own - Little. Little was one of two sisters, and a reliable member of our gang, always eager to participate in our little plans. She brought along her baby sister who she guarded like a hawk. 

The pond was so dry, that the bottom had cracked open in near craters. The wild weeds that grew and the water lilies, had withered and pasted against the walls long ago. Only the jujube tree, remained, verdant, oblivious of the indignant monsoon, and full of thorns, that made it impossible to climb. Else, any lithe child would climb up and shake a bough or three while the rest of us caught the falling fruit in our skirts held spread out. Alas, that wasn’t the case.

So Little went inside and got their flower plucker. An ergonomic contraption of sorts, a long bamboo stick with a V shaped claw at the very end, used as a tool against neighbours who wake up earlier than you and boost their flower harvest by stealing from other’s gardens.With that stick- the tallest amongst us, an older city cousin who had the finest pink slippers, closed his eyes and began stringing down random boughs, and shaking them. 

Within minutes, our palms filled and our skirts filled and heaps were made on the barren belly of the pond. We the children, giggled endlessly because nobody had imagined a harvest of this magnitude. Whether to chew the plums and throw out seeds, they tasted the most judicious mix of sweet and sour, or to run home and get sacks to gather those berries into - we were joyfully confused. 

Just then, we heard a thud. A very loud and a distinct thud. Like something heavy hit the floor. It came from the house. Little ran home while her sister rushed behind her. Turned out, their grandmother had fallen. Fainted while sitting in the verandah, out of nowhere like the life had been sucked out of her. This grandmother was fair and thin and wrapped in a tattered white sari, her hair silvery, tied into untidy braids. 

There were screams and shouts and the people at home were running about, not knowing what to do. Thanks to a pacemaker, she lived many more years. But that afternoon, i had to leave my jujube heap to the jackals - that I couldn’t forget.

Inspired by : Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day)

Home-sick Stranger

In those days

When everything felt, foreign

The paint never peeled off walls,

And the roads weren’t filled with familiar snacks

In a city that moved much faster than me

Struggling with quiet discomforts 

That come with pace of these kinds

Tall blue facades of endless office buildings 

And one too many, manicured gardens

Lawns much greener than my home’s rusty grass

I was shy to confess, how much I missed

The peeled paint and the slow streets

But you knew.

You came, nevertheless, to see me.

And walk me through those unfamiliar lanes

To reassure, to comfort 

That I had the company of at least one other - homesick stranger

And that it was okay.

And that it was going to be okay.

Back Home

When I moved away from home for freedom and such

I hadn’t fully fathomed all that it will beget

While I didn’t get freedom, any

I have built worlds inside worlds

And I survive in the inner-most, of those

Never venturing out into even the penultimate

Shrinking smaller, every month, every day

Is that not the opposite of freedom

It is, I believe, time to think about home again

Familiar towns, that haven’t ceased to be 

Although changes have overwhelmed home as well

Its soul would be incorruptible, so I assume

Back home, I can yearn for freedom too

Unfettered by fears of never being free

Can wallow in honesty, in defeat, in poverty and in failure

Because why fail in a foreign land

When I can fail within the intimate boundaries of home

Thinking of summer sand dunes

Endless rain, slush streets

Scents of early November blossoms

Sparkling toe rings in salty rivers

Dancing shadows of needy children, feeble traffic 

Floating poems, sinking earthen idols

Smitten in nostalgia, drenched in memories 

In a home devoid of ladders, I could just be. 

Lounge

When I travel alone, and I normally don't, I think of you. 

It has something to do with my mind experiencing a void between errands. Not in cabs, of course. Cabs make me nauseous. But when I take the train alone I think of you. 

It's startling, how, after so many moons, you still effortlessly waft back into my thoughts. You perhaps are waiting on the fringes. Forever. I haven't been able to sequester you. Train of thought is surprisingly continuous as well. 

The same happens when I fly alone. Airports that run endless and I end up walking kilometres within. Escalator after escalator. Wide corridors, advertising too bright for my eyes, strangers everywhere. It seems, upon throwing one glance at me, that I am walking with great purpose and urgency. But that's furthest from the truth.

I am all undone from within. My fabric of existence has become threadbare and your memories have penetrated and dishevelled any pretense of order, there was. After walking and walking, I glimpse at screens to course correct, if at all. But I am completely robotic and lost and operating at your disposal.

And then finally when I reach the lounge, the airport lounge that is shelter to lonesome travellers like me, I imagine, I would have you waiting there. My long lost lover. 

Misc: Visiting Cards

The compulsive introvert that I have come to be, for the umpteen reasons that have coaxed me to be so, I cannot make conversation anymore. Not atleast, the kind of conversation I deem to be a conversation. Thus, I have no friends. 

But I work a job. In which I am expected to have certain charisma. A chutzpah would certainly augur my situation here, but beggars can't be choosers. Anyhow, I am to deal with people all the time. I think that's a very basic ask from any job. But for me, it is enormous and taxing. I do not form bonds, my dealings are superficial mostly and I would like to say - transactional. No deeper aspect at all. I do not form any deeper connection with anyone because I am wholly incapable of it. I cannot speak one word extra than what is needed. And when I am not succinct, I go the extreme extent of mental torture that I inflict on myself. Since I am this way, nobody perceives me as friend material. Thus, I have no friends. 

But of those I meet for work, I keep their cards. Visiting cards. Name, where they work, email, contact number, other coordinates and blah. And I have a book of mine within whose polythene flaps I slide in these cards, not in any particular order and for no other purpose, but to look at months and years later. As my only record of human interaction. 

My Beige Sweater

My beige sweater

Is as old as me, or older

It used to originally be - off-white, egg-shell-white

As decades passed, it's full-blown beige now

It's got tiny, embroidered peach roses

And a couple buttons missing

It's not a fashion item

My beige sweater 

Is a shelter

In shivering sunless winter mornings

A refuge, from cold hopeless nights

It's something I clutch on to 

I don't remember how I got it though 

Though I distinctly remember never buying it

It perhaps just showed up

In my dress rack 

A hand-me-down, from an older cousin

Or aunt

And every winter, without fail

It's stood by me, fit me smugly 

Warmed my blood

Calmed my skin

Weathered me, in my perennial morass 

Through my joyless existence, marred with fears and doubts

Wearing this, 

I have rushed through countless December mornings

Packing lunches, folding clothes, doing dishes, watering my plants, chomping my omelets, watching TV, reading the paper, waiting, thinking, not-thinking, giving up, letting go, crying, weeping, wailing, bursting out, napping, running errands, hoping, praying, hoping some more. 

So many many mornings

So many damn years

Of achieving nothing in particular 

Nothing of note

Feeling that life's slipping though my fingers like sand

But my beige sweater has remained 

With me

And I cherish it so. 

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 fist

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 fist

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. 

Weight of the Day

Weight of the day, won't lift. My shoulders droop in exhaustion and embarassment. What am I doing that I am so weighed down? Nothing of substance. Only the mundane. So what's pushing me down so?

It's only 9 in the morning. My day is already the worst. Everything is falling apart and I am sobbing loudly in public transport. Yeah. So much for being pedestrian.

What cost am I being made to bear? Victim mentality much? 

Well atleast I am getting by. There are some who've given up already, long back. Well atleast I am shooting pointless email after email, crumbling to my fears, people pleasing incessantly, sorting my laundry, running errands, buying essentials, screaming at my mother, screaming at my child. But I am still here. 

However, I exist only superficially. I exist because people call me. And there is no deeper reason for my existence. I have eroded over the years into nothing. Depreciated into zilch. 

But that doesn't matter. Because all that, I take cognizance of. I am one hundred percent aware of these futilities having engulfed me and shat me out. 

So why am I stooping so low for the half dozen bags I carry? Why can't I be erect, why can't my chest fluf up. How dare I cry in public transport. I ought to be stronger because I am aware of these defaults and my perseverance to be this person, despite. 

But my day weighs me down. Relentlessly, every day, every night. Making me a comatose jaywalker in the day and an owl like insomniac all night. 

Everything for Nothing

Watch me, as I crumble, everyday

See me simmer and spiral

And spiral into my many abysses 

Everyday

Without pity

For I chose this 

Cherry picked this, very much

The spectator that you are 

My precious erstwhile lover 

Watch me, alone, as I seethe and tear up

As I exhaust and self destruct 

And realize that everything is for nothing

Shape

How deeply I felt my love for you, shaped me. You wouldn't imagine, how something as quaint and inconsequential as unrequited love, can leave an impact so deep that it runs life long. But it does. How I yearned for you, endlessly, it carved out the being I was then, am today. How I see the world and the people it contains. And how I imagine the world sees me. 

Decades have gone by, but it stands true. Whenever I forget who I innately am, and I desperately want to remember, and feel akin to my original self, I remember how much I have loved you. And then it all comes trickling back to me. Because those times when I was so pathetically infatuated with you and the idea of you, I spent a lot of time figuring myself out. And thinking why I felt that magnitude of an honest and naive yearning for you. I realised how near perfectly complete and at peace I felt, with you.  I never had that kind of patience with people after you. Thus, you're the key fossil in my past. I envy you for having left such an indelible impact on me. Almost in the same breath, I pity you for being unaware of the magnitude of your hold on me. 

Or may be not. Perhaps, you're aware very much. And you've been waiting for me to confess - all this time. Never too late, huh.