Wanton

At the pub, his behavior was not sordid, his actions unquestionable. She was in the mood for some distinct mischief, so she led him on. Hoping that down the line, he would misbehave. Fudge the lines just about enough for both of them to cross it, into each other's territory. But it was to be a timed activity, strictly. She should seduce him till say 1 o'clock and if that works, she could spend most morning in bed considering it would be Saturday. She was sure in for some hard partying, life abandoned in the week had to be lived all at once on a Friday night out. A surfeit of fun was to be had. 

She stared into his eyes in one quick glance, to try and read something, anything. Were her tricks working. Her mild brushes against his elbows. Fingertips touching across the table. Downcast glances and stolen glares. Stories locked in eyeballs, told in seconds, intentions half-revealed. She couldn't take an educated guess. Even from past experiences, he was mysterious. He probably wasn't up for it anyway. Soon she would have to move on.

She was pretty tipsy. Her eyes must have let go of her secret. His face appeared unusually sharp in the colored streaks of lights on the dance floor. His eyes were softly piercing. She was so attracted, she was fumbling. There was this overall niceness about him though. It felt rare in a way, though she understood she hadn't known him more than a few days, it felt as if he wouldn't hurt no one. But the question of hurt never arose in her flings, they were detachable at the snap of her fingers. She danced some and then back at the table, made sure she didn't tumble her glass of red wine or his of whisky, on-the-rocks. 

Light seemed to diminish rapidly, the girl friend she had come with had left long ago after leaving her a text that she was on her own. But she had been on her own for a long long time now. The battery of her phone was at 3%. Soon, she would be all marooned amidst the crowd. She should judiciously use the remnant charge to book herself a fucking Uber. And just go home and forget she even tried. The maroon top she was wearing felt loose. Her skirt felt short. She felt unbearably naked. Clearly, she had misplaced her jacket somewhere. She walked from table to table to look for it, it was already half past 2. From the tables she visited, she looked back and caught him looking at her, intently. Ah, red handed. 

Was it too late? Too many chances taken and lost. Would they make it till the morning? Or a little beyond that, breakfast of poached eggs or an awkward brunch, perhaps. She swayed back to their table to find him intoxicated and in-waiting. They could let a little bit of wanton into their night, perhaps.  

Dreams of Bougainvillea

It was a decent apartment. Slightly damp. Slightly dark. Breezy, but old. There were two bathrooms. One of them was permanently latched, from the outside. The other one had blue tiles. A wide window in the hall looked into the outside. There was a road, which was sparsely taken. Except by the kids when the school nearby closed for the day.

Beyond the road was a huge tree of white bougainvillea. The tree looked so gorgeous, it looked like Cinderella. Its leaves laden with winter dust, couldn't decimate one bit the sheer numbing charm of its white flowers. Margot couldn't fathom why, she hadn't known before that white was such a beautiful beautiful color. She always presumed it was the lack of it. 

As a kid, her father, the one she no longer spoke to, took her to the house of a friend of his. Who had a gigantic pond in his backyard. He reared fish in it. That pond had a dozen trees of bougainvillea planted around it, or more. Of all the colors, her child's mind could imagine. Red, orange, pink, all intertwined. It was as if a mother tree, grew branches and each branch flowered a different color. And they all reflected in the green pool water and created an illusion of twice the color. The melange appeared to be out of a painting, only it was real. But this is white bougainvillea. Something she had barely stopped to notice. And now that she opened the window, she couldn't move a step away.

This was a date. A mutual friend had suggested they meet. This was the second time they were meeting. Or the third. Probably, Margot didn't keep count. She recently had broken up. If you can call it that. That man, she had met online. And fallen in true love with. But after years of loitering around the point, she had decided, she was not getting anywhere. Now she was on the market again. If you can call it that. And following the mutual friend's suggestion, she met this new man. Whose apartment this was. Overlooking the white bougainvillea. 

Margot was twenty eight. 

The guy, with thick eyebrows, was rolling weed in the bedroom as she looked at the white flowers in the hall. She imagined what it would be like to stand under that tree and look up. What will bits of blue sky look like from between the gaps of white petals. That blue matched the tiles in his bathroom. The one he used. And now they were gonna get high. Really high. 

Toothbrush

For one, it wasn't even my regular toothbrush
I had it at home, when I lived two hops away
And lest it get mixed up with the rest of their toothbrushes
I hid it in the cabinet in the living room
On the last shelf but one,
Alongside the teddy bears that my girlfriends
Had gifted me in high school
With our names scribbled on their bellies, you know

Every weekend, or so, I went home
I didn't have to carry my toothbrush with me
Tremendous, gasping liberty that
I could go home anytime I wanted
Didn't feel like working, go home
Didn't feel like eating what I cooked, go home
Felt  like sliding into weird combinations of pajamas
Which  I had abandoned long back, but mama kept
Go home

That toothbrush was my thing, really
Like my time capsule
You know, how movie characters hide things
Quietly in their childhood homes
And go back decades later to retrieve the toys
They had stashed above the fireplace, behind a brick
Or something, like that
That toothbrush, held time still for me
Whenever I wanted to unwind time, freeze space
It was there for me,

But then they moved
Pushed everything in cartons, clothes piled in suitcases
And crockery wrapped in old newspaper,
They hired a shitty mover, and moved
And I wasn't even there then
Nobody remembered my toothbrush, I guess
It must have been heaped with the mounds of other junk
That we had collected over decades,
But didn't have any use for, no more
College books, ties we wore in school,
Our Saturday white sneakers, purple bowls we slurped noodles out of
None of it was to be hoarded anymore
So much for low inventory

A lot of things broke while moving
Lives were shattered even
It was like utter metamorphosis
The next time I went home,
Toothbrush  aside, I no recognize nobody
Their faces had changed
Times had eroded them, hoarse
Their voices had gotten coarser
Stories had become more fumbled
I looked in the trash and fidgeted for our old life

Found nothing, nothing at all.

Low Light

Sometimes I wonder if I can see in darkness. I don't trust the dark enough. But once the lights are off, I see almost everything. How eyes adapt. Even the streaks of mellow street lights filtering thought tight maroon curtains are enough. The notification light of the cell phone is enough. Multiple cell phones, iPads and such. 

I had a knack for total darkness back in the day. I celebrated my tweety-fifth, sitting alone on the bathroom floor and smoking, in the dark. My roommate knocked on the door when she had to pee, badly. I don't remember her name. All I remember is that she had straight hair, like ironed hair. She would iron her hair every morning before we left for work and I would steal glances at her, in between my several morning pretend chores. 

Morning chores. Evening chores. Now, night chores. I don't need the strength to go on from day to day, week to week, hour to hour because I busy myself with such chores. Water the plants, assemble breakfast, pack a lunch, dry out the clothes, don't forget this, don't forget that and such. One after the other, jam packed schedule. My routine is my one bloody saviour. Never having a moment to sit in the blank, pitch black darkness to merely think is probably my secret. Otherwise I wouldn't get a reason to get out of bed. In a way, this is the best thing ever. In other ways, it's the worst possible damage I could cause to my soul. 

When I am in a routine, I don't let the little sorrows of life catch me. And when life crumbles like a pack of cards, instantaneously catching me unawares, it's probably the numerous alarms I set to wake up, to go back to sleep, to take pills, to pay bills, to get to work because I need money to pay said bills, that eventually get me back on track in my no thinking life. 

Earlier I loved the darkness so much, it brought me ecstasy. Somewhere in the middle I weaned myself off it, you know, how we do that. But now, again, I am using darkness to catch a break from this mindfucking to do list that I have turned my life into. Because I want to probably grow that courage to go on from today to tomorrow, inside me, for real, and not just fake it around.

Hallelujah 

Kaput Again

Living days in perfunctory anxiety
Missing the bus, most of the times
Building worlds within worlds
Pointing all furniture toward the TV

Waiting for that day of the week
When you can say, that
My day has been bad enough
To deserve a smoke

Cooking, chopping vegetables
Peeling vegetables
The same condiments, in every meal
Yellow mildly disgusting food

Walking, looking at your toes
Stealing eye contact
Being mum, containing poetry
Caging prose

Coating hours with abandoned love
Soaking minutes in sunlight
Chasing cabs, chasing autos
Wading through knee deep flood waters

Fiddling for change
Running out of money
Thinking you're poor
What have you done, nothing

Except watch TV and shirk
Watch TV and shirk
And live in this perfunctory anxiety
Waiting to go kaput

Prequel here

Bein Invisible

In my tiny room, in blue light, I sit
Gathered and at peace
Awaiting the hours of my future
Tomorrow and the day after
November & December
June & July,

Holding a shaky pen
Between my index finger and my thumb
Wanting to write,
But not sure about what
Because, there is so much
And simultaneously there is, nothing at all

Observing my life
Meander from one mundane punctuation
To the next,
How much more common can I get
Now that I am already invisible
What else is still left to be

Edge of the Night

Bikers ride by, bikers zoom past. Their tires crush the midnight roads with such friction, it's not music, not even to my semi-deaf ears. It's an awakening sound, though, on a dawn like Saturday night, smokey as hell. That crass noise of bike tires, does awaken you in ways few other things can. We are sitting inside, by the man sized window, grilled, but only hardly. Through gaps in the grille, arms can easily pass in and out. May be even an entire baby. This night feels, strangely on the edge.

The coffee table is now strewn with our paraphernalia.Cigarette butts, the ash tray over turned. Ash mixed with vodka has created a clay which darkens the color of tonight. There's like a dozen other bottles on this table. Bottles of all shapes and sizes. Tall bottles, slender bottles, stout bottles, curvaceous bottles. Just like women, who come in all shapes and sizes, so do bottles, apparently. There is a measuring cup though, that works for all alcohol alike. Hour-glass shaped, on one side it measures 30 ml, turned upside down, it measures 60.

Large drinks are for the big guys. We take small measured sips. Moisten our lips mostly. And lick the edge of the glasses. And sit and sit for minutes that melt into hours. The night is forming outside, like an amorphous being. The buds of flowers are shyly blooming outside, in the courtyard, on the roofs of our neighbours and in the rest of the world. The earth is slowly rotating on its titled axis. That axis must have also been as drunk as us, to be titled all the time.

The air feels warm for after midnight. May be, we are just locked in a closet, a closet with the mirage of a window. In a closet, mind numbed in asphyxia, high enough to believe that we are making sense, when we are not, and we are whiling away our entire lives watching American television. And then from being the size of a closet, the room expands gradually and becomes an open field, an open gallery. And there is no need to hide behind walls anymore.

There is a back room though. A bed room. With a fluffy mattress and a bobby print curtains. Should we leave the night alone and go back in there. What are the chances that we make love tonight now. What are the odds?

Many Mirages

I've seen you for years.
Been seeing you:
Watching over you
And now look
I am stuck with a tonne of memories
Not knowing what to do-

Remember that time
That August evening
When we stopped by a tree
For a quick smoke
And in the dark, lit the cigarette from the other side
Burnt our lips and laughed so much.

Remember the homes,
We have lived in
Middle aged clingy apartments
Our clothes drying on railings
Piled on chairs..
Heaped on the bed

And the getaways
Particularly that one-
When we passed out in the bar;
In mid afternoon
Boy, were we high!
Don't recall puking, but I know we did and a lot

Do you remember,
Conversations and walks
Comparing our tastes
Among authors and makers of cinema
Couldn't have been more divergent
But, we were both alike in being different, for sure

All these years
We have both grown older love..
Ain't nobody gonna deny that
You've grown larger in my eyes
From a boy to a man
And then you've shrunk back

You're many men. Many mirages
Probably, it's just me hallucinating.
And drugging myself unnecessarily
With your bygone memories
To squeeze out sleazy poetry
Yeah, that's how it works

But I clearly recall.
Your grey eyeballs
The li'l bald patch, you were so nightmarishly afraid of
The neat buttons on your shirt and rolled up sleeves
And how you altered conveniently
Between being many men and the One for me.

Keepsake

Do you remember the dim lit alleys. And cafes with bowls of water and petals floating amongst floating candle flames. Have the slightest memory, do you. Of the long nauseous drives, uphill and downhill and then uphill again. Do you remember, how our friends hooked up and went for long walks leaving us behind, alone, alone-together and writhing in unbearable adolescent solitude. Seated on wooden benches under tall, very tall pine trees, picking up pine cones from the ground and counting them. And those long sun less mornings of fog mixed with steamy breakfast. Memory is a tricky thing. You forget the obvious. But store these tiny irrelevant details. Like the big flat-screen TV. Or the aimless strolls uptown and getting lost. And then not finding a cab on the way back and getting caught amidst a hail storm. Do you still think of late night, almost running into dawn, parties. Do you remember the first time you held a drink in your hands while another girl mixed up vodka with rum with whiskey and danced and puked. Do you remember watching, and being watched. And how the feeling of undiluted lust was. When you lusted for a man, so blindly without considering parameters of beauty or money, just lust. Pure lust, on plastic chairs, holding drinks in plastic cups, until dawn, under pines. And then witnessing a gorgeous orange sun crack the sky and washing off that illegitimate lust with all the pragmatism you could gather. And walking back to your room and taking a really hot shower. You could never claim what was not rightfully yours. Nevertheless, you smoked in disquiet corners in insomniac parties and imagined poems. You wondered what it would feel like to doze off on each other's shoulders and wake up in the touch of undiminished love. Even if things didn't work out much, you thought of dinners in cafes of floating candles on rooftops. Same rooftops that were too tempting not jump off from. Yeah.

On a slightly different note, do you remember home. Unbearable summer days and sucking off seeds from melons. And forest fires. And rickshaw rides of total absolute liberation. Do you remember long chats and unacknowledged affections. Do you remember splitting the cheque on a date to make it look platonic, how fearful were we. Do you remember wearing capris and skirts and hiding your bosom full of love in loose immortal t shirts. Do you remember the earphones and endless playlists on loop. And windows media player. Do you remember boat rides and swooping bats. Propositions and heartbreaks. That could never be healed. And walking back in the rain, plucking wildflowers. Strange train journeys and waking up bare feet because your slippers were stolen. Staining your fingernails in flower juice. Do you remember grainy pictures and unsophisticated phone cameras. First touches, shoulder brushes and kisses in the dark. How naive were you, how unloved were you darling. Do you remember. Chomping off platefuls of noodles and gravies in garlic sauce, and espresso, all that. Yes. Do you remember being ugly, particularly. 

Picture courtesy: Ukiyo-e 

Crushed Paper

People think writing defines me. More or less. That I shall get away with life by writing. Prose poetry. About lost loves. And about the general vagaries of life. It's true, to an extent. Sort of a half truth.

Half only because I have repeatedly proved to myself that I lack the stamina for it. 

Nevertheless, when I open old closets I find neatly wrapped still unopened gifts. With notepads of hand made paper. With ornate bookmarks. The ones that have gifted them expect me to fill in their pages with an equally classy ink pen or so. Poems, may be. Some notepads have ruled pages, some are completely blank. Some have plain white rugged paper, some have fine lines and an egg shelly hue to them. Some look like straightened out crushed paper. 

People have been to places and collected such notepads as memorabilia from said places for me. I sometimes want to understand what must have been going on in their minds when they picked up these gifts for me. It's not that I have wanted earrings. But still. People come into my life and leave similarly. But they leave these notepads behind. Good old friends, college mates, admirers, paramours, if I may. 

If I went out now, looking for them all, I am pretty sure the world would have gobbled them up and in their chosen obscurity, I wouldn't find them. But a pinch of them, stays locked in those neatly wrapped gifts. Their odor intact between the sheets.

For Nina Simone. Happy Birthday. High Priestess of the Soul. 

Remember & Write

On early mornings in December
I witness,
Sisters in tow from upstairs
Rushing down with school bags & lunch boxes
Their hair split into twin braids
And tied in white ribbons
So neatly, so neatly
I can never be a nihilist again.

Life must have some reason
Some hidden order in this chaos.
It must. Because of those braids
And the bed of flowers

Here, you know.
They haven't got marigold or gerbera, I believe
All they've got is chrysanthemums & roses
In that paucity of variety, there is infinite beauty
Heaps of roses, blood red, orange, pink, magenta
And chrysanthemums yellow and white
Those hawkers, stuck in your peripheral view are omnipresent
And they make life feel akin to
A bed of roses & chrysanthemums

And even if you don't buy yourself a bunch for Valentine's,  that's okay

It's alright. It's not the end of the world
Until it is.

That your poems don't rhyme, horribly
You couldn't care less

What matters is that you remember and write
Like a mild insomniac beyond caffeinated midnights.

Remember & write.

Perhaps

Again the question

How do birds sleep

Do their bulbous voluptuous bodies 

Balance on their thin tiny legs

Because a huge peepul tree

Faces my portico 

And even at 23:50

Two birds, I don't know which kind

Are fooling around on it, 

It's their time of the night, perhaps

As it is mine.

My time.

Once a friend of mine

A very dear one at that

Told me, exasperated 

With hands in the air

That I have everything

I smirked at the fulfillment 

Of possessing everything.

Now, I feel, that

My friend has it all.

Again the question

Why are we so incurably unhappy then. Why

This poem, is an ode to the truth that I have been writing something almost each night now. Writing every night is either a sign of distress. Or contentment, perhaps

The Lightness of Being

Your feet tingle. Toes feel so light, they might just detach and take flight. In a deep drag, you think, sobriety is overrated. Why else would God have planted the opium. Words trickle into your head, you feel the whim to write on numerous subjects. You fling your arms out and let be. Another deep drag after, memories come back to you. Those that happened for real, and some that never did. The future that couldn't be. Alternate universes. Even remorse is mellowed down by nicotine. Everything feels easy. Stress melts. You wonder why you don't do this more often. It's winter. It's so hard to resist. And be sober. You remember how much you cajoled yourself not to. But you caved in. Almost imploded into yourself. In the end, it all comes down to pushing that window open, late after midnight and experimenting with your conscious. A tweak there, a twist here. The eternal lightness of being. What could go wrong. How much could be lost. And what, in the end cannot be risked. Everything has its own cost factored in. Isn't it. One moment you are the pawn. The next moment you are the empowered seductress of life. Erudite, fluent in intellect. Then again, you are a silly girl. You are everything locked up in your cocoon. The next drag tells you that. And then the next. Your chest puffs up, eyes begin to burn a little. Water a little. Your heart fills with ash. You un-clutch your hair and toss it all to one side. To rest peacefully on your shoulder.You think of the dreaming people asleep downstairs, upstairs. You feel stacked. In a building. In a chair. In a bed. One singular soul in billions. By yourself. Inconsequential. Then you look at the sky, the darkness is unfuckwithable. You think about your next poem and resign. You call it a day. You call it a night.  

Much Love

The cyclone that was to be,
Has now been averted.
A changed course,
Perhaps, on the way back from Myanmar.
Somewhere else, on this indented coastline
It shall make landfall

Now the coconut trees
In my backyard, shall live.
But alas, I have no backyard.
No coconut, just a sterile shrub of potted hibiscus
That refuses to even, flower.
And ants ate away the basil.

Now, there are long nights
And deep sleep.
Dreamless sleep against the backdrop of
Instrumental guitar
And the masochistic pleasure
Of losing oneself.

And never finding oneself again.
For there is a certain bliss in being lost.
You my judgmental friend,
Will never know, what glee this is.
You stay where you are,
Go to parties.

I will stay back and smoke in my portico
Releasing circles of smoke into still air
My toes resting on the grille
Beside my sterile hibiscus
With my head, between my deaf ears
Pregnant with memories, shallow regrets and the
Immeasurable joy of solitude.

Much Love

For: Donald Hall

A Decade

Now my life comes to surmise this building. Yes, the time has come. There is a drink on the rocks. There is a kitchen in the corner and cups and saucers don't clean themselves. How stunning. There is a sink, that fills itself up. There's a bunch of dried curry leaves in the bottom drawer of the fridge, if anybody cares. Life is dry. Life is good. How can anyone describe life with adjectives. Wouldn't that be judgemental? It is what is is. By itself, in its own absolute singular capacity. I do not choose to describe it with adjectives and demean it. You wouldn't believe, this is the only place wherein I speak up. Because it's a one way road. I am not the one that confronts. I am the one that quietly places an opinion on the table and vanishes. It's my audacity that you don't want to see and I don't want to unleash. 

My neighbors, got a row of potted plants today. What looked like a shrub of green chillies and mustard seedlings in those pots, I hope I am wrong. The building needs more flowers. Women on floors other than mine have acquired entire corridors to plant cacti, crotons and money plant. Money plant is actually Devil's ivy. Now I didn't know that. The woman who planted them so generously told me. They also have bougainvillea by the bunches. Red, pink and white. Some women have entire trees on relatively tiny pots, one of tamarind for instance. A tree literally standing on a tiny little pot.Some women have their own hanging gardens of potted plants. Table roses and the kind. But still, the building needs more flowers. 

So I got three potted plants. Not three, four actually. One, the holy basil. Two, moonbeam. Three, hibiscus. And the fourth one is clitoria. Yes, the one that looks like the female-holiest-of-the-holies. They are pretty low maintenance, they don't flower much, but I check on them twice everyday. Sit with them and think. When I have time. I wish I had more time.

I started blogging exactly a decade ago. Not a day has gone by when I didn't wish I had more time. More time. More time. More time. 

Gibberish

I remember, not so long ago, we had been to this wedding reception and they had scotch eggs. The buffet counter had a long line, kids, women, shoving their emptied plates in the face of the serving guy. Scotch eggs make me go weak. I mean it. Being the person I am, I relate to food at a very emotional level. I don't like cooking, per se. I like whipping up quick stuff I can settle down with to engage in something else while. Eating. It's a comfort thing. You know. I have certain categories of comfort food. Things that make me feel safe, relieved. Comforted. Right now, all I want is scotch eggs. 

A certain cousin of mine, considered wayward, ran away from everything. He was depressed or something. Heartbroken, or close. Some girl must have been involved. I don't have any dearth of deranged cousins. Alcoholics, borderline sociopaths, girls who eloped to marry, and those who almost eloped to marry, cousins who died early, some who have a mind of their own, some who don't at all and are borderline maniacs. My genepool isn't decent as I am. Or I pretend to be. I force myself to pretend to be, And yet I feel like an outsider because I didn't break free like they did. And forced myself to conform. It's asphyxiating, as it is. Being two people. One on the outside and another for real. 

This gibberish, goes on in my mind all the time. I have this involuntary compulsion to end everything. Abandon everything. Start afresh. Or rather not at all. I find soothing in comforting words of those like me that have lived, written and died before me. Long ago. I find soothing in any distraction, if it lasts a decent amount of time. Mostly it doesn't. I just while away days and months. Losing year after year, In cold inaction. In desperate brooding. 

In this country, there are no disorders. We are all like this, and this is normal. So I seek no refuge. Is this cowardice? I wonder. Feels like it at times. The shame and the lethargy of an underachieving existence catches on and grounds whatever leap I could take. Ultimatley, I feel it is me that doesn't want to get out. That I live in this cave out of choice. I don't want out. So I don't get to get out. 

Yeah, that's it.