December 2011
5 posts
Mothers of dead sons
In the evening a soft sun was still hanging above the apartments on the other side of the lake as it shimmered from a clearing on the bank. We talked of a mother of a dead son, speculating whether a bond continued to exist between the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law. Did she matter to son’s wife, after the son had gone? After the link between them has become conspicuously absent, I...
Stones in the sun
The chemistry of a winter sun goes well with history’s rocks and the gnarled trees of yesterday’s leaves. Stumps of fallen trees sprawl in the rocks of history as men make their way up on polished stones of time’s footfalls. Up there is a red temple to an ancient mother alongside brown boulders warm with tender sun. The trees shake with birds chirping like the voices of children...
Are our bodies more than stuff?
A celebration takes place for a child of one year’s birth. We gather our cakes and candles A certain old man waxes eloquent, proud of his new grandchild . Some loud music, a little child magic, a piano shown off with a learner’s music.
Snacks are varied and eclectic. The child will now enter the preschool in the land of the sheikhs. The old man, proud of his three houses,...
Star dust
The news came in the morning. A young man who had on the previous night pointed the stars to his daughter found himself turned into one .Forty four was no time for turning a star. Look at the Mars, burning brightly, he had said to a wide-eyed daughter. In the morning he was found absolutely blue. The heart stopped at approximately 3 A.M. trying to gauge the depths of an astral sky.
Did he...
Vertigo
These four days I have been trying to grapple with vertigo, a frightening thing with the head when the world spins without your asking for it. It spins like a top, like the globe-earth in the ocean of emptiness that the boar-God carried on his tusks to save it from the apocalypse. Of course the spinning was in a movie we saw when were still in knickerbockers. It spun like the model earth-globe...
November 2011
13 posts
Evening in the park
One could go there for random images, vignettes from life, stories in the making. Faces tell stories, the way they wince, pucker up, smooth their hair. Some times the way they walk,crouch,and bend backwards.
Some times faces gather up the setting sun, when their wrinkles become deep trenches around their red mouths, full of expectation and reality.
You enter the park ,making...
Sitting in the balcony
When you are behind a balcony parapet wall, the day sounds as if of the sky with all its colors and smells.The sounds come filtered in the opacity of a middling wall ,on which stand majestic plants, embedded in the earth of pots, but equally proud of their lineage under the sky.
Tiny saffron roses, four of them, sit huddled together in the breeze.They draw their inspiration from the distant...
The carpenter
The proud carpenter quickly vanishes like the turpentine he uses on the wood surfaces .His words sound hollow like the half-made skeletons of cupboards he has left incomplete on the stair-case ,gaping at the morning sun day after day. The sun enters their domes as though they are cavities waiting to be filled with matter.
His body sloshes with drink, breathing like hospital. His body...
Head cold
A niggling headache cannnot be cured by thinking away from it. A swig from an old monk may help. All I have is a tall bottle of french brandy, supposed to work against head-colds. A plain anti-histamine seems to work better. So be it. The tablet p.c. is exciting. Stories abound. But one only gathers them like one does parijat flowers that fell to the ground in the night. When will one make a...
Between uncle and nephew
At the end of the room was my uncle who seemed as if in a trance. He had made it to this place for a land sale, after doing a train journey of 500 kms. on eighty year old knees.
He who always spoke now listens.His unspoken words echo in the hall ,side by side with inane small talk between us. The words are stuck in his puffed up cheeks. And the eyes are unable to say them, bogged down in the...
Buying a Samsung Tablet p.c.
In between we buy a Samson Tablet. At the plaza where glitz spills in the hall and the corridors of efficient silence.
The tablets abound in stories. Stories of a prude Helmer and his wife Nora ,trying to echo feminist cries in the nineteenth century. Stories of giant insects one finds oneself transformed into. A metamorphosis.
The cold weighs you down. In the head, a brandy might help...
Warm at the new house
It was a warm night, warmed by words addressed to gods. The gods would bless the new house, in the eleventh floor apartment, when the priests called them down one by one by sacred words. The words would ward off evil spirits . The party was warm and convivial. From the balcony we saw rows of luminous blocks . They had balconies where long drapes of colorful sarees shivered in the wind. Some...
News at the barber's shop
At the barber’s shop there was this talk between my barber and a watchman customer. A man murdered his wife after seeing a few missed calls on her mobile. Missed calls meant affairs of the heart outside the marital framework. Fidelity to partner suspected.
Missed calls are made to check if the coast is clear.
But not all the missed calls are made by paramours, I thought in my head.
Here...
When communications reached their lowest point
In the train it was still night and sleep. At four, the train softly flowed in the night holding out a promise of home by eight. That was when communications reached their lowest point.
The mobile phone suddenly jumped from my pocket into the sink-hole and slid into the dark depths of a running night. Apparently it was time to part company with my phone. Looks like I have to build a new...
The Shiva temple
At the temple we saw tiny star-shaped tortoises in a steel basin, scaling their way up its sides. When we were kids we were treated with the sight of fully grown tortoises gently crawling the temple premises to our delight. Now there are stars of kid tortoises wiggling in a steel basin.
Doesn’t God ,in his phallic form, love them? That is what we thought then. Shiva loved tortoises,...
Poor man's chariot
We returned here by the poor man’s chariot. The poor man’s chariot that spurns real poor men, who do not deserve the air-conditioned comfort of a long distance train .In one sense it is a poor man’s chariot . Considering the low tariff of around Rs.500, for a distance of around 500 kms., the poor man actually bears the burden of our comfortable travel. There seems a heavy...
Justice for the deceased
In the yellow light and some green trees we tried to recall a life once lived ,here in the court of justice arguing for others.
Arguing for one self, for one’s own living. A lawyer’s life well lived and loved. Can one remember a soul that is lost to us by a few law books kept in the library for future lawyers? Large trees overhang. Shadows loom large. A library is waiting to be...
Rows of lights
This day , four years ago, in Bhopal, we had stood in rows after rows of lamps around God’s pillar, looking for mirrors of lights in people’s eyes. We saw the pipal tree, up above, lighting with new found love for white birds that fluttered in half-sleep. High above the pipal shone a soft full moon overseeing a thousand lights. The moon stood on the brass pillar like a bright lamp...
Experience
I prefer watching the animals on television
A mind says, to watching them live in the zoo
Because animals in the zoo smell really bad.
You are analogizing a whole experience
With a copy of its part, says other mind.
Television animals do not smell bad
But are animals that please the eye
Mind explains, minus the real mind.
But are they cuddly, surrogate children?
Asks the scintillating...
October 2011
29 posts
Captcha
Captchas dehumanise you as they are trying to find if you are human. One can always find crooked writing ,if it has the faintest resemblance to letters but they are like the Muni Ashtavakra who has eight crooks in his body. It takes quite many efforts to unravel their identity. The trouble is that the page does not refresh at each change, if the earlier effort is not successful. The captcha is...
Feeding milk to snakes
The fourth day after the festival of lights the snakes appear deep in their pits waiting for our milk and worship. The women pour turmeric and milk on the pits.The snakes inside the holes receive them on extended tongues and bless them with more children. The pits were built by industrious ants but their holes are now houses for snakes.
Just in case the snakes are still sleeping inside the...
Our morning with God
As I turned the corner I saw this man exchanging confidences with a flower tree. He had three lines on the forehead , aspiring for God. His confidences were about God, plucking white flowers from the tree’s darkness. He embraced it for God. He floated on it like a flower.
He eye-contacted me for God. My own flowers were parijats that fell to the earth ,their white faces down and their red...
Three Gandhi monkeys
In the evening the whole of this relatively new residential area collects at the “center”, a local name for a busy intersection. Many people do not have any business to transact at the center but merely collect there for “time pass’. Some sit on the road divider, on the grass near the water tap ,which says “ warning : do not drink this water” . Some sit...
The chicken situation
As we passed the chicken shop in the morning walk, we heard the wails of the chicken coming from inside. The morning mood went poof. We imagined wails but they were not wails, just cries from inside the coop, for the sky. To the top of the fences where they would be found shouting what a glorious morning!
But what about the medium term future of the birds when their necks would be wrung for...
The carpenter and our guilt
The carpenter who had changed our bathroom door had played hooky for a month or so when we tried to bring him back to fixing the other bathroom door. Finally we had to get another to do it.
A state of anger towards him had remained in us for a month till it faded away. This morning we got the news that his younger brother had died of electrocution while handling the electric drill when they...
Kitsch for kids
A new building for a play-school named bachpan (childhood) is ready, wearing the color plumes of a strange bird. The colors are mixed and re-mixed like noisy music, generally breaking drums.
The school stands alone among other buildings, like an artificial parrot telling your fortune from a stack of printed cards. The options presented are fixed but covering all possibilities. The color...
Protests
We were trying to probe the mystery of the dark ringed spots on my wife’s skin. A certain hormone under-performing ? A case of hypo-thyroidism? Let the blood tell.
The girls ,in the doctor’s reception ,were giggling. We wondered how silly their joke could be.
The young doctor found the pulse under-performing.
In the meantime the pretty red spots are lying low, under a...
Cotton clouds
In the evening we walked to the mattress maker , who made mattresses on the other side of the lake. The mattresses were of soft cotton like the autumn clouds that had already collected above the lake, beyond the trees.
Two 6’ * 3’ mattresses were what we had asked for. Guests who might land up unexpectedly would sleep on them dreaming of the white fluffy clouds that accumulated...
Pearls
At the four minars we have pearly eyes. Pearls are brought here from distant shores, their oysters going up and down in the far seas,under tall ships.
Our eyes shine in pearly wonder, our necks stretched out like a tribal woman’s neck stretched to the higher regions by a series of neck laces.Our loops take us to the skies.,till our necks ache.
We are at the pearly gates.
Sunset on a Sunday evening
After a long hiatus of rainlessness the lake should dazzle under the setting sun. Camera in hand,I tried a distant view of the sun filtered through the shore trees, the sun a ripe red fruit ,turning to ashes. The sun slowly sank under rows of buildings and a thin red streak glistened on the ripples ,where a water bird swam ,making only the gentlest of the ripples.
The fish sat in the...
The teacher's diploma
From the bottom of the steel trunk came a sheet of paper we have instantly recognized as a diploma given to my mother in 1985 or thereabouts to practice teaching her branch of spiritual knowledge to others. The diploma had been awarded to my mom by her own guru and witnessed and sealed in the presence of another disciple. The diploma is of no use now that my mom is no more nor the teacher nor...
All that crap
My country has been acclaimed as a scatological super-power accounting for 58% of the open air shitters of the world.
I was in an outer China city and in between cities actually . I did not find bums lowering on the horizon. Not even on the rail-tracks.
On the beautiful beach of Chirala , I could take a picture ,in my camera, of a breath-taking sea at dawn ,but not without the men sitting on...
Colors
What happens if you mix deep red with a deeper blue,bluer than the sky with a dash of yellow in between? This is not marigolds set in an autumn sky ,with a butterfly of deep red hues hovering over them.
That is the way apartments are colored as they appear in my morning walk. I am not color-blind and can see the colors deeply,fluently as if they run in the street.
Is there a thing called a...
Symmetry
A little girl smiles at you as if she has known you all along. A child who came from nowhere a year ago ,into my cousin’s house. She does not speak at you. But she knows you in your eyes.
She sees a magazine on the table, with the cover page showing a figure head down. A glamour figure of a woman ,head down and torso up on the page. Amazing how she adjusts the position of the mag with...
Moon girls poems
When our night is still not morning
We let mind words play on one another.
Like we let girls in moonlight play on one another
So we have moon girls poems.
Maiden flight
Yesterday morning I saw the bird chick supposed to be in the nest of twigs built by its mother on the air-conditioning unit in the balcony.It had apparently fallen down ,may be, trying to fly.
Later when I came out briefly to the balcony I did not find it on the floor. Could it reach back the nest by its maiden flight? I doubt it. There was no way the parents could help it fly back to the...
The merry-go-round
In the merry-go-around , you touch the sky for a brief while,trying to reach the stars but your flying feet have touched the hem of the sky and returned empty-handed.
Luminous tube-lights criss-cross with the geometrical figures of the wheel drowning the silhouettes of men in a hurry.
Everywhere there are people in the wheel of life, now going up,now coming down with a bit of the sky in...
Barber talk
This morning was barber time, my head in his hands and my ears full of him.
Barber jokes went over shrouded customers, their heads watching the ceiling fan As if they were looking at the sun in the lake.The ceiling fan had no motivation to whir.
The Singareni coal-miners refused to load coal because they wanted a separate state. Their own state of bliss. So there is a power hiatus. Fans do not...
Death for dishonor
A crusty old boss causes death to a girl’s dad
And his dishonor weaving a swindling story.
The father’s death is beginning of daughter,
The glory of womanhood, a sweet revenge
When sold body is defiled for a sweet cause.
A body has no purity when dead, in father.
The gun is boss’ own phallus, waiting to die
And wipe the dishonor on daughter’s father.
(Reading a short story titled Emma Zunj By...
The river of life
A girl in neighborhood has come of age. At thirteen one suddenly feels the need to cover a girls’ body with an extra upper cloth. A blossoming womanhood.
In the veranda the girl sits cross-legged alone in a corner on a mat of cross-stitched coconut leaves. For three days and three nights she sits and sleeps in seclusion. She then bathes and is ready to go to school with an extra upper...
A petromax lamp
For want of an immediate provocation for an intersecting diary note , my thoughts randomly hit an obscure memory of a petromax lamp that used to fascinate me when I was a kid, a romantic light that extended long shadows on silent streets.
I do not see any petromax lamps in these days of electric lights but there has got to be somewhere a petromax light still waving in the breeze, on the...
A ball of a woman
In the morning walk I saw this young woman wrapped roundly in a polyester saree and blouse,her limbs stuck to the filament-like saree to give her body a round shape. Like a ball coming fast at you in space.
A red polyester saree enhances the roundness of a woman’s body, its edges softened by the texture of the cloth. There was no fire in her eyes,only a hurry to reach somewhere.
But...
Granite
These days I am surrounding myself with granite.The beauty of the granite keeps you awake, like the dark night behind the trees. Soft and silky. The more you work on it ,the softer it becomes.
There is now granite against my sky.Abutting my trees.Granite is now my piece of the mountains. It sings my dreams of the mountains and plays my mountain tunes.
Granite
Granite is our stone, blue -...
We are moved into a different night
We are in a different night today ,a night made up by trains blaring, tall coconuts swaying to rain music and short walks on a patch of moss-black on a terrace roof dried with rain marks. The coconuts hang heavily on the parapet,their older ones waiting to drop on unsuspecting heads below. The guavas ,ripe and yellow, have disappeared in the parrots’ stomachs but their hollowed telltale...
Electricity
When everything was going the Borges way and my head seemed a vast egg full of astral matter that could spill anytime like yellow yolk, a little recall of the details relating to my own coming into this earth is in order:
Electricity struck a mother’s middle finger Causing its radically twisted views about life. The electric wires came from a father’s love Who embraced them to get the wind...
Egg-heads
We heard about the boy staring in the hospital, trying hard not to cry ,as the hospital staff set about shaving his head in preparation for the brain operation. It was the uncertainty of what lay in the skull there that made him cry and only a joke by another who had a similar egg- head could make the situation less grim.
We are together in this, said my son, who has had his head shaved...
Afternoon nap
The best thing is a nap, minus its real horror dreams on some afternoons. Some times, you are aware of being in a dream.Like for instance you are wading through waters, endlessly,reaching nowhere,not even a tree in the middle of nowhere.You are aware of being in the dream, your head softly floating on your pillow, your saliva drooling on it.
In the Ted Talk the lady talked about being aware...
September 2011
2 posts
The whistle
At midnight , 2’ 0clock, the search for the day’s poem began . Words were what I was looking for, like every day in the morning. Others’ writings like a scrap of poetry or an interesting quote present possibilities, a vast canvas for the wanderings of the mind.
Sometimes the nudges are a scattered sound or a creature of the night. Like for example , the gurkha watchman who...
Bathroom doors
What can one make of a bathroom door? Of course one can make poetry out of it. Nothing is exempt from poetry. So this day begins with a bathroom door.
Plastic doors are much like ear membranes They last while you last, water not touching. The shower is effervescent in the bathroom But the door remains calm and wet to gills.
A handle that does not go down to fingers? Use it to upside, when...
April 2011
2 posts
We do not always click for pictures
Some times I reach the rocky wilderness that lay beyond the streets, To see sun-smelling rocks, and shrubs that make the other world That seemed to exist beyond the banality of our daily existence I click for strange frames in which rocks, shrubs and men co-exist. My eye-frame brings strange bed-fellows into a plane of existence.
I click to understand colors, to understand shapes, not for...