Flying Lessons

The other day, I walked around in the flea market, a lot. Several kilometers. My feet began to ache above the soles of my flat shoes. The road got to them. I was trying to shed some loneliness that day, wanted to get home late at night and then sleep.

On a long stretch of such walking, I entered a by-lane and crossed several soothsayers. None of them oozed clairvoyance. In fact, they looked like business women, down to business. Sitting on their haunches, with a photo of a beautiful goddess adorned in roses and a cloth spread out and some loose change sprung on it. A couple of young girls were having their palms read. I had some curiosities too, thought I should ask. Unforsaken wishes. A plump and pink baby, a spunky little breezy apartment, flight to a distant land, a bit of success, and so on. So I paused, but the soothsayer spoke an alien language and there would be the dearth of a translator, among the dearth of other things. So I didn't pause any longer.

Came back home to find that a pigeon won't budge from the pot that housed my hibiscus house plant. Turns out that was a hot breeding spot for pigeons. She had built quite a nest with twigs and leaves. If you've noticed, I've written quite a bit about these pigeons, how much I have tried to help them nest. And just when I thought they were an infertile clan, she laid a pair of eggs under my favorite plant.

I thought I would keep the eggs outside the pot, on the floor, the moment the bird left, and she would come back and carry them away, to wherever. But she didn't budge. For days, never left sight of the eggs. Warmed them endlessly. I waited for her to give up. I knew she would. Those eggs never hatched, I've seen before.

Whenever I watered my plant, the mamma pigeon would scowl at me, flutter her wings and scare me away. Suddenly on a Saturday, I sensed movement under the mamma. The eggs had hatched and the baby birds with their eyes shut were there, like dollops of flesh with tiny hair and eyes shut. I was overawed and quite happy to their family. The father visited diligently.

Over the next week, I saw the parents, alter and sit on the baby birds to keep them warm and feed them mouth to mouth. I sprinkled left over rice and water. The baby birds grew quickly, swelled up. Their hair slowly grew thicker, their tough black beaks became prominent. I was afraid they would poke me in the eye.

I kept giving them rice and they kept growing. Their parents visited less often. The two babies took up most of the pot, there was not much space for the mamma anymore. Given, it is the monsoon, it rained on several nights, throughout. One night I woke up at 4 am to the sound of thunder and went to the balcony to see if the birds were doing okay. I pulled the pot further inside, where the rain couldn't reach and covered it with an umbrella. The mamma who was there, thought I had caged them all and fluttered like a mad woman. And escaped, leaving her children in my peril.

But they returned in a few. To reach the baby birds how to fly. The babies thought I was hostile, probably. Because I would sit by the pot and talk incessantly and softly to them. Clap my hands and make them stand up and sit down to my claps. Whenever I watered my plant, they would flutter their new wings and try to scare me away. Nevertheless I sat with them, waiting for their parents to return, with food of their kind, and more stories of the world, dreams, perhaps, a few.

The babies had grown very big and they had covered my pot with shit. I googled the lifespan of pigeons to find out when they were flying and vacating my space. I am to leave for a break in a week or two and if they birds didn't fly away by then, it would be a problem, because I am planning to give the plants to a neighbor who would water them when I am gone and I clearly can't give it to them with the birds in it.

The papa bird gave them flying lessons, sitting on the ledge of my balcony. Soon enough, one of the baby birds, flew away, to the glee of her parents and of me, and of her brother. I waited for her to return at night, I was worried she was so new, she might fall off the branch of a tree or something. I have seen pigeons sleep on telephone wires, and let me tell you, precarious! But she didn't return. I am hoping she's alive and well. But her brother, the other baby bird, who is the bigger one, fatter one, hasn't been able to fly.

And I cannot fathom why. Perhaps, he had heard a scary story or two. Because I've checked, his legs and feathers look normal to me. He's just afraid I am hoping. The parents come sometimes now, counsel the bird, who is almost a fully grown pigeon now. But to no avail. All he does is stand up and sit down. And flutter his wings when I water the plant or throw some food on him to make him try to fly away. But nothing works.

I think this one is a homing pigeon and has found its way home. 

Thirty-one

The other day, I was reading through the Wikipedia page on Winston Churchill. Not quite reading as much as looking for quirks. Tiny  little things worth remembering. I went on to the pages of his children and grandchildren. Several spouses of theirs. And children again. All perished. Some of disease. Some of misery. Some of boredom. But all dead and by gone. Erased in history, except their black and white pictures.

A man who was powerful enough to stop a war or cause a famine, he is gone, obliterated. And his progeny much the same.

It gave me some perspective. I am going through a limbo. When was I not? But this is also one of the several limbos I have been through. I think when I die, my life would have been a series of such limbos conjugated back to back, with a very washable glue of memories.

I am thirty one. I was quite depressed (not because of that, personally I think, ageing is fun) because of the goings-on. I am beginning to imagine I am prone to certain things. Like biochemically. Like some of those women whose Wikipedia pages I've visited, someone's (third) wife, someone's (illegitimate) daughter, mentioned in passing, who were prone to depression.

I know for a fact, that I am slightly bi-polar, if I may. And prone to a few things that make me less capable of controlling how I feel. That transpires into a lot of aspects of how I live and generally, be. But my mood swings are violent and totally out of control. Since, I am a very inward person, with very few outlets, these things are beginning to crush me in a very novel way, like none of my past limbos have done. There is quite a bit of curdling and swirling and crying and screaming going on, inside my head.

Nevertheless, Winston Churchill died, vanished from the face of the earth, without a trace. So will I. One day. Sooner rather than later.

Happy thirty-one!

Grandmother

Grandmother rushes in at midnight to the river front to stand and watch a bridegroom’s passing procession. The lights and the crackers and the trumpeters and four bearers carrying his palanquin. A stream of lights passing by the river front could be sighted from our rooftop as well. But their reflections on the black water, and the grim blue-grey sky would be experienced firsthand only if woken by the firecrackers, you grab your slippers and walk briskly and reach the river front about time. And grandmother would clearly be the one woke and running. Along with a bevy of grandchildren. 

At half past two on school day afternoons, grandmother would sit in the courtyard in the shade of the gigantic red hibiscus and from a plate of jaded silver, feed lunch to the same bevy of grandchildren. Grandchildren of all shapes and sizes, even the ones who are barely weaned from their mother’s milk would sit, cross-legged, quietly, even though in their hearts fluttered a dozen alibis for skipping siesta. Grandmother would make spherical morsels and keep them on the rather bigly plate. Each morsel would have mashed rice and dals and curries and veggies and with a touch of pickle on top for easing the swallowing. Each morsel would have a name on it,  one for the father, one for the mother, one for each brother or sister, one for a fairy, one for the moon and so on, till the plate was wiped clean. Each belly fed to full after grandmother’s hand went about clockwise in circles, several times.

Then in siesta time, came the stories. Of moon-faced monsters and old demonesses that lived on champak trees, having kidnapped the souls of young and pretty princesses. Grandmother’s eyes snapped asleep sometime in the middle of those fairy tales, her voice whirred and the grandchildren knew, this was their cue to get up, one by one though, and quietly tiptoe to the playground outside. 

Grandmother was also the takecarer of the oft recurring midnight hunger pangs of the grandchildren. She was the one who rolled in somewhat-semi-sweet-semi-creamy milk-powder out of the can, in left over rotis. Rolls that fed hungry children who shared their grandmother’s ancient antique empress size bed, rolling from its edge to edge, several feet, drenched in Disney world dreams, and slept behind clay walls, under thatched roofs.

Grandmother, when septuagenarian or octogenarian, when semi paralyzed with senility, slow fried egg plants, walked to the living room and sat on the sofa, half-watching TV, half daydreaming, waiting for one side to cook, fry, char, until she walked into the kitchen and flipped them over. 

Grandmother, this, grandmother that. 

Coffee

Here,
Drink some more coffee
You over-caffeinated zombie
To sit up and keep eyes wide shut

Because,
Life is full of problems
and then,
Life ends

Abruptly,
Perhaps, as most ones say
You wake up one day
And find nothing

Not the quintessential nothing of daily depression
But actual nothing, 
A forever-void for real
That's the end, no tunnels, no lights, no nothing

Until then,
Hang on to coffee
Short on sleep, short on peace
And overflowing, almost bursting with regrets; wait;

Hang on 

Saturn

Did you know
That Saturn
Has an aurora borealis too
Just like ours, I mean
Who woulda thought

Also, did you know
The coconut tree in my backyard
Stunned me bad, last night
It cast this huge shadow, on my neighbour's wall
And I thought was that a ghost

When I spotted it,
Inching closer to my kitchen window
I stood staring at the shadow's leaves, sway
Below a half moon
And rushed to the bedroom to check the real tree

In the years I've lived here
Never seen this shadow
Not once, and suddenly tonite
Am rushing back and forth, kitchen, bedroom
To and fro

And alternately glancing at Saturn's aurora borealis
Looking so damn photoshopped this
But it's real, shot by a passing Cassini or
A Voyager, or something
It's like a million square miles

Can u imagine living in it
Under it, and gazing up
Tonite, suspended between shadow and light
I imagine I do.
Somewhere under Saturn's North Pole and submerged in its orange aura.

Phase

An effective way to get past a phase, any phase, is to let it run its course. Just bear it for a certain amount of time, instead of constantly fighting it. And the phase, will begin to feel that you are soft, mouldable, yet somewhat indestructible and it will leave you alone. So it's up to you to now decide what is a respectable amount of time you must spend bearing the said phase. Is it a week, or a month? Sometimes a phase goes on for years, to be honest. It becomes so inbuilt in your life that you cannot separate, like, draw a distinct line, which characteristics are yours, which are the phase's. In that case, perhaps, you have lost. Or the phase has. Or it's just a tie. Like in any kind of competition.

But the most wicked kind of phase is the one that keeps coming back. It never completely leaves you. First few times it catches you, you fight it. Then you bear it, then ignore it. But it keeps coming back. You simply lose out on all methods and don't know what to do anymore. It leaves you in peace for a month or two and then down a week or so you realise you got it again. It's merciless. It wrings you of all your potency. It's basically a slow but persistent process of self decay.

For instance, you remember how I baked silly cakes on every Sunday afternoon for over a year and a half. No matter how far from decent the cakes were, or how many containers I broke, or how I had no eggs left for Monday ever. Nothing could get me rid of it.

Then, do you remember smoking. Nicotine has been my closest accomplice. In many many of the acts I have participated in, it has stood by me. When everything else stood me up, I had it. So that's a phase, that keeps coming back. It keeps away the blues with its greys. It does a good job of giving me the short lived illusion that I am as calm as I could humanly be.

Then there were times when I would embroider, till my eyes hurt. I would learn new stitches and make them. And screw up old dresses with new thread. Other times, I would do origami and play around with glitter. Paper flowers with gold borders. Also I invested in real plants, like real alive plants. They were like my pets, my friends, and when they flowered, I felt like I had children. And when they died, my world came crashing down.

Then, again, do you remember lulls. I mean, I keep having these lull phases. They are like a limbo. Nothing is practically still, for the sake of all that is holy. Everything is moving and fast. I am chasing cabs, and climbing stairs and ordering groceries, doing my daily walks, talking on the phone, behaving all normal, drinking two cups of coffee at work, daily. There is this facade of normalcy. But inside, I am extremely quiet. As in there is a vacuum inside my entire body. And a mellow realisation that almost everything of value has been lost. And no amount of love, or time, or rest could even begin to help me fill myself back up. And in phases of these lulls. I would lose my mind for brief instances and scream and cry. Like really loudly, biting into pillows and stuff. So when I'm doing this, am I running the phase out, or am I fighting it with all I have got? I couldn't tell you. 

Leaving

“You have gone insane, haven’t you?” She asked me from the between the curls of hair that fell on her face. 

Her irises appeared darker than before, literally like bottomless twin pools. That I could drown in and not surface from. I had doubts if I would even try to hold on to the hands of a rescuer whilst I drowned in her eyes or any other pool in general. I had begun feeling like an ascetic from the past few days.

She reiterated the question, had I gone crazy. Her words felt like wisps of air escaping her brown lips, which were otherwise tightly pursed, awaiting an affirmative answer from me. I had begun wearing sunglasses in the house to keep out the excessive day light. She pulled them out from my face and I shut my eyes into darkness.

When I opened them again, in the clear afternoon light she appeared feral. Exasperated with my muteness she stood up and began pacing up and down the room. She hadn't evolved much in the last six or seven months that I hadn't seen her. I had imagined she would be unrecognizable. But why would she even alter at all?

I told her. “You haven’t changed much. You haven’t changed at all.”

She approached my chair and placed her left palm on my right knee and sighed deeply.

“You have to move on”

“I have. I mean clearly I have”

“You have gone insane, is what you have done”

“You make it seem like I had a choice”

“Oh don’t be silly. We had talked about this. So many times, over and over again”

“Well clearly, now that you've seen the aftermath, you must conclude, I am not the one for the talking”, I said hoping she would calm down with my ridiculous retorts.

“Honestly, I don’t have time for this. I have to get back, I can’t be gone for such long. You take care and, and just get your shit together”

“Yeah sure, get my shit together I will” This was more disgusting than expected. 

“You should go.” I paused. “Because if you stayed any longer, you never know, what I might do.”

That didn't slow her gait but she turned and looked at me. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m kidding. I’m joking. You of all people should know that”

“Can we just talk for five minutes, before I leave?”

She came closer and sat on the floor, with her legs crossed, instantly persuading me to climb down from my chair.

On the floor, she held my hand in hers and began speaking in slow wisps again.

“This is the last time you’re seeing me. I am not coming back. Never again. I want you to know this.”

I stayed mum, feeling rough in my throat, having nothing to say.

She spoke again. “I want you to tell me that you know you are not going to see me again”

“You sound like you are the one that needs some convincing”

“Shut up. Do you want my husband to explain it to you, how all this works?”

The mention of him crashed me back into reality. For a stretch of the hour I had imagined she was here for my sake and my sake only.

“Say it!”

“I know, I know you’re not coming back”

“I strongly urge you get a life. Listen to me, see someone else”

“Why don’t you fix me up with one of your single friends?”

“I can’t stay involved. But there are lots of women. I am told there are some dating apps and some real nice young things. You've always been lecherous, you would know everything”

“Serious accusation alert!”

“C’mon we know each other. We don’t have to wear facades.”

I broke her off in the middle. “If we know each other, why the fuck did you even leave me? Why did you abandon me? Why did you break my heart so irreversibly?”

Before I realized, I was screaming at her. She put her hand on my mouth to quieten me I guess but nothing worked.

And the next minute she was gone.

She had vanished so neatly, it was almost as if she had never been here. That’s exactly how people go. People who have made up their minds to go, they just leave so immaculately, the one left behind often is seen trying to grab on to the air that rushed in to fill the vacuum of sudden absence.

Flight

We hadn't ever flown together. But this flight, we were taking together. So together. But we hadn't planned it much. He was an adhoc kind of man. He texted to check if I had reached the airport. I hadn't. I wasn't running late at all, in fact I was ahead of time. And he was further ahead of me. When I was in the washroom peeing, he called, where had I been? Clearly he was bored and wanted some company, even if it was mine. I calmly went about things and found him in the exact place he'd told me he'd be at. So far we were doing ok.

He looked different. Not very different. But not exactly the same either. There were strips of difference. His face had a rugged 9 am charm. He looked like a man who was about to tell me a story. Usually, he would appear extremely taciturn, always carefully choosing his words. But not this morning. He asked me if I wanted to eat. Nope, I was gonna have a brunch in the air.

Quietly, we began the endless walk in the airport, through longish isles, taking escalators down and up and then vice versa. Looking into stores, clothes and toys and other travel memorabilia that people liked to pick up at twice the price. But we just looked at and passed them non chalantly, while making mildly awkward yet conscious small talk. I kept smiling hoping that would break some of the  ice, and he responded too, not smiling as much, but a little bit here and there.

When we reached the departure gate, we had over an hour to kill, oh an hour. Why did I even have to wake up that early, I was going to have to simply strangle this extra hour to death and drink its blood. There were hardly any empty chairs. We found an empty half row in the distance. He sat down and I didn't sit on the adjacent chair, thinking that would be too close. I placed my bag in the chair in the middle and he followed suit. This proximity was bearable.

I was afraid the silence was gonna get haunting. I kept looking away as if waiting for my entourage to join me, but no one was coming. We both knew. This time, he invented chit chat topics. We got up at adequate intervals to drink water and pee. We guarded each other's stuff like obliging copassengers. Talked quite much before we boarded.

In the flight, the stewardess wore zing nail paint and her fingers looked delicious. I was gonna have to spend the two odd hours staring at them, I composed myself. He was seated next to me, but on the other side of the aisle. I noticed his shirt had tiny flowers, flowers really. I was wearing black, I cannot recall why. After we took off, we talked in signs across the aisle and sometimes bent over to hear the other person. It felt close and comforting. In an aircraft of a hundred people, a stranger who was less strange than the other ninety nine, yes it did feel sweet.

He has always been sweet, his sweetness can be utterly disarming so I had to tread on thin ice around him. I did not want to fall for him. I knew I wasn't capable of falling anymore, but I was not ready to tempt fate yet. I bought noodles. He ate a pack of nuts, but barely. He had a coffee, I had a Diet Coke.  Later, when we were above the sea, and flew over ships that appeared and disappeared between thick nimbus clouds I expected some turbulence.

Even when everything is going normal or sub normal, I have this slightly irresistible temptation to jump off. But the flight was smooth. When we landed, he waited for me by the conveyor belt since my bag, as usual, came out the last, the very ultimate fucking last, I kid you not.

Singularity

Sitting alone in the balcony

Turning thirty five in four years

Fifty, in exactly nineteen

A few years forth, dying, unheard of

Days go by

Nothing changes

Incessant callous waiting fill hours

Erode weeks and fortnights

Suddenly it's two thousand and eighteen

Past July

Seems like only yesterday 

Was new year's, when I sat in the balcony too

No sight of babies

Or the money

Or the glory

Or the awry badass writer of fiction 

I've nothing but this 

Singularity

It's not that I don't talk to folks

But slowly I've burnt the bridges

Bridges that connect me to the outside

Nobody comes in

And I never get out

In spools of dreamy thread, entangled I lay, singular 

Too spoilt to move

Too rigid to break out

Waiting to merely age like your average human

And die out, unseen of 

Deranged

My home is in major disarray. It smells. Of weird smells and squished bananas and leftover chocolate and sweat, perhaps. I can't say what more precisely. It almost has some captured odours of regret that it has mixed with real smells. Regrets that I didn't probe enough, that I didn't try enough, that I got carried away. What it doesn't recall is that there was no space to maneuver. Since the beginning, since the time I was mere stardust, I have never truely felt empowered. It's nobody's fault. Just that I haven't felt real power, over anything or anyone else. I have felt also too ashamed to seek out support. Right since the beginning I have been too weak and hapless. And since I am shy, I have never liked company per se, and people, I have been shrouded in the darkness with myself. I have shrunk and shrunk and shrunk, therefore into non existence. It's a quagmire I am trapped in. I have trapped myself. Now it has gone out of my hands. I truly cannot control how I feel, how I think, how I process thoughts and store memories. I am powerless even over myself, so weak I have become, I feel deranged. There is no love. There is not much hope. Just a bottomless hole. And I am shooting into it, into it deeper and hoping to see something, someone to hold on to, but I don't, I cannot. I sit in my smelly house in afternoons through long nights, waiting for sleep that doesn't even show up. And I don't know how to get out of here. 

Caring for Plants

Wherever I go, a tree accompanies. Imagine me, walking with a tree. It's not like that per se. But wherever I have been, a tree has been beside me. In my childhood bedroom, near the window rose a coastal coconut. I saw entire monsoons through it. Near my current bedroom, my neighbors who I have never encountered, have a coconut grow right through their house. It's not a courtyard, but almost. Tonite I see the moon through it. When I was a toddler, at my grandmother's, they had a hibiscus in the courtyard. It shot up to the roof where it mixed with the tendrils of the rangoon creeper. Red velvet hibiscus flowered amongst vines that weren't its own, but almost. Now I keep a potted jade plant at my desk, and water it not more than twice a week. I keep the plant for company, for I am a lonely lonely person. I am a very lonely person. Ironically so because alone is the way I want to be.

I have potted plants too, but they are permanently in convalescence. Never has it been that all of them are happy and fertile and flowering at the same time. Sometimes, one is broken by the wind, one is overwatered, one is yellowing in its leaves, one has forgotten to flower, one is recovering from autumn, so on and forth. They wilt and come back to life, but never at the same time. Clearly, I am not a carer. I have my own moods to handle. Sometimes I get away for weeks without a house sitter. Sometimes I just don't love them enough. But mostly, I keep losing hope. Mostly I am hopeless. That's the reason I have plants accompanying me everywhere, to keep the hope flowing. But I abandon them, they abandon me, it never goes well. It's not the mutually beneficial relationship I would want it to be. Nobody ask the plants, because they can't speak.

A sickle shaped jamun tree stood on the other shore. Of the river. Boughs of it bent on the water, like a lover. With the complicated emotions of a paramour. The boughs remained the same, except for a few leaves that fell off and the new ones that sprouted, but the river constantly changed, the water of it, changed every godamn instant. The boughs tried to remember the lover of last night in today's water and found nothing to connect then and now. Yet, they somehow ended up loving the river everyday, because they had fallen in love with her once. Back in the day. When its water had been an omniscient monsoon green and frothy, and also in spring when the water had been crystal clean and the boughs had seen their own impeccable reflection in it.

Thus, now they gotta havta love the river in summer too, when it doesn't even exist. 

Dirty Dancing

Won't you come outside with me?
I know, inside is more fun,
Clearly.
The lights are dimmed and disco
And we're dancing

Like there's no tomorrow
Sans any bodily coordination
Clearly
We're too high to dance
Too high to stand, or sit

So, I whisper
Into your eyes,
'Wanna go out in the dark, with me?'
You push back the hair behind my ears
And whisper back, 'in a minute'

Outside, it's 2 AM
No earthly hour this
And the sea's running wild
Tides are high and water's splashing
With delirious intentions

We are squeezed in between,
Land and sea
And standing still,
But no matter how hard we try
We're shaking, shivering and dancing

You keep your distance and ask
'Now we're outside'
'Whaddya wanna do'
I say, 'Nothing'
'Let's go back in, shall we'

Suddenly, I remember
For the briefest moment
When you'd bent down to whisper
Your lip had touched my ears
And then a current passes through me

Nausea

When she was a little girl of nine, her mother gave her a sliced lemon with salt every morning. She was a nauseous girl and the school bus, with its sweaty kids and shut windows and the gas fumes on the road made her want to puke. Her head rolled and her stomach turned. The lemon helped, somewhat in the forty five minute onward bus journey in the morning.

But there was nothing when she returned in the afternoon. No lemon, no salt. Nauseous and with too much saliva under her tongue, she would keep looking at the watch on her wrist and count minutes for the bus to drop her at her stop. There was no respite, but one.

There was a senior girl whose hair stood like a dense tree on her head, and she also wore thick spectacles with black frames. The school bus took somewhat of a detour to drop this senior girl home. And every day before she got down at her stop, the bus moved through a few narrow streets full of snack shops. Any street food her nine year old mind could imagine, was being sold there, undoubtedly. And more. 

Those streets saved her, those smells warded off her nausea and wafted through her nostrils into her stomach. Her mouth salivated and she waited patiently to eat whatever mother would have cooked the moment she stepped into home. She nick named it the street of spices, through which the bus traveled hardly for seven minutes or eight, but she waited and counted minutes to get there. 

Also, there was this friend who saved her some egg rolls from lunch. His mother worked with her mother and hence they were friends. They sat side by side in the library period and hence they were friends. She loved his slimy egg rolls, hence they were friends. She got him a band aid that time he scraped his knee playing kho-kho and hence they were friends. They lived nearby and their bus stops were consecutive, hence they were friends. 

Their friendship bloomed like a concomitant to the chaos of their nine year old lives. Yet she was so nauseous and she imagined, why he was not? 

Girlfriend

I've spent quite a lot of my life in classrooms. A lot of long, very long years in classrooms, let me spare you the details. But I don't remember a single word of what I was taught. Like nothing. Only some deeply embedded basics have stayed with me. But beyond that, nothing could pervade my razor thin attention span. 

And, years after, all I can recall is the Zoology lab. It's funny because I hated Zoology. It was one of the papers of Biology, which itself I had chosen as an optional because, I  like to keep options open, I like to reduce regrets to the minimum. But I had zilch  interest in Biology. Okay, Botany, yes, I have loved plants. But Zoology was the creepiest subject, in like ever. Why would I remember the Zoology laboratory class?

Probably because the lab assistant had a real toothy grin. And her smile stretched  from one end of the mouth to the other. Like Julia Roberts. She looked nothing like Julia Roberts, but just the smile. And she smiled sarcastically, most of the time. Like when she was sure when we didn't know what the correct answer to her question was. I for one, didn't know what the correct question was, most of the time. I have no idea how I passed. 

Or it could be because, in the other laboratories, they made you stand and do the experiments. Chemistry and Physics, I stood in the labs for hours and hours and my feet ached. I literally wouldn't be able to feel my ankles. But in Zoology lab, we would get to sit and dissect a frog. Or look at an octopus or a snake in formaldehyde. But I am not sure, if merely comfort would sustain a memory so long. 

I ran into the lab assistant teacher lady a few months ago. Somewhere. At a wedding, at an exhibition, at the mall, at a sports tournament, at the theatre. Doesn't matter. I might have just dreamed her up. But it brought back memories of my Girlfriend. My girlfriend when I was seventeen and she was seventeen, we sat side by side in the Zoology lab. She was the one, oh she was so beautiful.

And I don't mean your conventional beautiful when I say she was beautiful. She had a bony face, and was rather thin (some men like to hold on to some flesh), and she always talked as if she had a mouth full of saliva. The mind remembers the most pathetic of things, but the mind is right. One day I saw her wearing a long sleeved dress and the entire sleeve, right from her shoulder to her wrist was embroidered to reveal her skin through the holes. 

Not that I hadn't seen skin before. I had seen skin before. I had seen her bare arms, probably. But I cannot say what that dress did to me, I fell in love. Even today, I can see her thin wrist with a coppery bracelet with her initials dangling from it. And  her bony hands, with the veins showing, and the mild blue nail paint on evenly filed nails. What a view it was for parched eyes, from having seen mummified reptiles for too long. And since that day, till the end of college, I was deeply in love with her and held on to every meagre idea that gave me the hope of loving her a little longer. I decided to take a deep interest in Zoology because that was her favourite subject. There wasn't much success there. 

But I helped her with her Physics experiments which I was relatively better at. Helped her solve a Math problem here and there. But in no other class, did I have the access to her, the way I did in that Zoology class. Man, those hands. 

Omelette

They weren't lovers. Definitely not lovers. They worked together. In an old building that looked out through yellowed old translucent glass windows. Their seats were a couple of aisles apart. They weren't introduced. They met when a bunch of their colleagues were having lunch in the cafeteria one afternoon. And they got talking. Not so much to begin with. But one day later when both of them accidentally showed up for lunch late. They shared a meal. It was an intimate experience, sort of, sharing home cooked food always is. His mother packed his lunch. She packed her own. She stuffed rotis and curries and pickles and salads into her box. Biscuits for the afternoon, oranges in winter, mangoes in summer. Sometimes a spare banana. He got rice and at least three kinds of dals, she teased him. He teased her right back, about her small portions and if she was on a diet. She teased him back about something. And then right back again. And that's how they became acquaintances. After that they got talking slightly more, but not that much that people would talk, you know. Not that many cared that much, nevertheless.

Sometimes they would ping each other on the office chat messenger and synchronize their lunch times. It was good to see a familiar face. The cafeteria felt like an untamed place, with many many strange faces. They would often choose a table at the distance, in the corner and eat staring out the muffled glass windows, staring out at birds and trees and traffic and sharing tit-bits of their day so far. 

Then one day he asked her to make him an omelette. 

His family was vegetarian. He sometimes had eggs back in college. But now that he stayed at home, he hadn't had a good greasy omelette in a long time. He mentioned something about an omelette seller on his college campus who sold  good stuff in their hostel corridors and was the only thing to  look forward to while they crammed notebook after notebook on the night before exams. He sounded nostalgic. 

So she said she would make him a nice omelette and he could have it for breakfast the next day. She gave it her best though, but back then she didn't know how exactly they flipped those things over without breaking them into pieces. She googled the tactics and after a few failures, finally succeeded in bringing him an omelette. She actually learned this skill only for him. Because she never liked omelettes. Fried eggs were more her kind.

They met for breakfast and she eyed him tear into her omelette with such excitement. Though he commented she could have managed with lesser green chillies. Yet she could say what a good time he was having.

Many such mornings came by and went past. Slowly, they kind of fell apart though. He wanted someone hotter. Hot girls lived in big cities, so he transferred and moved out. She stayed back and met someone there. Right at home.

But every time she flipped an omelette, he quietly tip-toed back into her memories. 

Obituary

From time to time,
I've wanted
Beautiful things for myself
As a treat, for going on

Tonite, I want one of those
Big transparent umbrellas
For when it rains on foggy days
And a cold sun doesn't show

I would hide under
My big transparent umbrella
To be only seen,
What paradox

But paradoxes can't stop me
Not tonite
Honey, because
Today, Donald Hall died

A gentle soul
With massive pools of eyes
Senile, yet lovable
Brimming with sorrow, overflowing, almost

Donald Hall has passed
What a day, oh
June 23, from old age
From a life, so satiatingly lived, perhaps

I kept googling him,
From time time
Just to check that he was okay
Breathing, alive, writing

It's like one of those things
Which I indulge in
As a treat for going on
But I forgot for a while

And he died
Quietly, oh
What will happen to words now
Who shall write them, like he did

As my worthless little tribute
To my hero,
Tonite I shall indulge
Want more things and umbrellas

Go easy, treat myself
Just for going on
Despite, in spite
All the sorrow he caged in his eyes

Your Wife

Your wife, she, looks a little bit like me. Not exactly like me. That would mean you married her out of your spite for me. But I know, she has some of my traits. The way her hair falls, or how her eyes are cute, lips are thin. Or how she ties a sari. Or how's she's just so plain. No unreal sheen comes along with her. The kind of sheen that often attracts men, she desperately lacks it. Although, there is this thing that she is so completely ladled in her innocence, that it makes up for all dearth of sheen and undoes other lacunae, if any. She's much like me. I am not like her. She's like me, however. Corollaries aren't gonna hold, you know. 

When we were, you know, together, I always thought if I was your original kind of female. I mean if released in a jungle of women of all kinds, would you pursue me? Probably not. I must be bonkers to assume that. But with time, I began believing either one of the the following facts could be true.

Either, you actually like nerdy lost women. Who had an air of awkwardness about them. Who weren't entirely fluent in their thoughts, fluid in their motion. You kind of felt drawn to that, imperfection. Staggering aberration of perfection. That you liked women as they came, for real, flawed, loving, with a mist of sorrow, with a heart full of love. Or, that I had changed you. Metamorphosed you from the skirt chaser that many men come as, to someone more genuine. Who could see through clothes, and even a little bit of skin. That I had made you the man you are. And then left you. 

Quietly, on your own, you didn't pause to give a fuck. And went ahead to find someone like me. 

Goin Home to Hide

Goin home after several months
Since November,
Yeah, it's been December,
And the rest of this year

Has been this long,
Precisely cuz
I wouldn't know
What I would do there

Breaking this routine could be
Harsh on my peace
But I can't be here nomore
So I've booked my tickets

I am going home to hide
Ain't gonna meet nobody
Just stay in my room
Draw the curtains shut

Nobody shall enter
Nobody shall leave
And I will stay as shielded,
As could be, and camouflaged

So much so that
My mother won't know
That I am home and hiding
Seven days

Living in mild brown daylight
Sipping teas and swiveling in my head
Goin home to hide
And regather myself, but mostly to hide

Girl.

A strange thing happened. Years ago, I met a girl on the train. I was travelling cross country, it was a longish journey. Over forty hours. I don't remember where I was headed or where she was headed. Usually I won't talk to people on a train. On general principle, I wouldn't talk to you. I wouldn't talk to anyone. I do not like talking. Or listening. Only listening sometimes a tiny bit, but never talking. That must be why I don't know any people. Like you know, the world. I think I know about twelve people, in the world. I never wonder why that is.

So my train journeys used to be extremely lonesome, and hence delicious. I would read, watch, observe. It was a natural caccoon. If trains didn't smell as much as they did, I would live on a train. But I met someone I knew on the station, not directly though, I knew someone who knew him. And he happened to be seeing her off. The girl. This girl. Our berths were adjacent and it was understood we were going to take this journey together, given we had our destinations in common.

The girl, she turned out to be quite vivacious. She was so lean and so young and so garrulous, she grew on me. Throughout the forty hours she talked, except when we slept. She guarded my luggage when I went to pee and vice versa. Somebody had told us that thieves would inject sedatives into water bottles of naive folks on train and later when they passed out, they would loot them inside out. Life is so precarious, so on the edge of the razor, like literally anything could happen. She said she had an eye on both our bottles and that that precariousness made everything so special, any sip, any morsel, any breath could be our last. Yet she didn't stop talking.

We got down at obscure stations and ate choiciest of snacks, filled our bottles from filters on the platform, chatted with random people, almost missed the train a couple of times. We stood at the door, felt the wind. Stared down bridges. Back on our berth, we imagined what the world looked like through the almost opaque glass window in the AC compartment. She told me about the doctorate thesis she was working on. Something in marine biology, I recall. How she wanted to study molluscs and snails and the like.

In the last four hours, I opened up too. Started talking. Like really talking. When I don't assess the impact of my words on my audience, I really talk. I talked for a few minutes perhaps. Then silence took over. Her station was two stops before mine. We bid an awkward goodbye. I would never know where that awkwardness stemmed from, we liked each other of course as co passengers, there was nothing else there. We exchanged numbers. But we were not going to stay in touch; perhaps we both were aware of the impending loss of touch; gradual falling away of an infatuation that wasn't even here, in whole. 

Impact Winter

The asteroid hit a couple dozen miles east of Japan. The stupid thing could have hit anywhere; in Siberia; in the Sahara; Himalayas; I don't know - Antarctica, for all I care. But it hit the sea, off the coast of Japan; in the shallow North Pacific. Where many wars had been fought, by brave men; mere decades ago. Where ships had been sunk, where many still stood guard. I am not saying had it hit Antarctica, we would have been saved. We were doomed anyway. If it hit anywhere on land, anything combustible would catch fire and vanish into ash in seconds or start a fire burning for half a year. If it hit the water, deep water bodies, covering three fourths of the surface, a tsunami would be inevitable. Either way, the atmosphere would be filled with dust, or particles larger than that; particles of all shapes and sizes, particles that aren't particles at all. We, the living, would breathe that dust and asphyxiate. It would take minutes to travel to all parts of the planet, this apocalyptic dust. But more than that, they would freeze out the sun, you know, the sun light would would be refracted back into space because the atmosphere would become so much thicker and opaque. So we would all freeze to death. Probably before, we could even begin the asphyxiate. Mass extinction in seconds. Everyone freezing, holding hands, breathing in ice air and jamming our lungs, blood vessels bursting, eyes popping out, strands of hair standing up in universal goosebumps and not thawing. Nothing would thaw; ever again. Within a few more minutes, most of all this, most of this all, would be under tides and tides of deep blue-green, deep turquoise water. The North Pacific, the Atlantic, very own Bay of Bengal and Arabian, who have been shyly touching beaches for decades, would rise together in a giant upheaval and take back the earth. Some would say, the water would recede. Some would say, let it stay. Either way, we, the dead and gone us, would be shrouded in Impact Winter for longer than an afternoon.