Keeper of the Stars

Food Glorious Food.

2012-01-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

SO. I have started growing up, and getting fatter. I sit at my desk for anything between 7-14 hours and keep putting on weight. Hopefully, the fourteen hour days are at an end. Next, I have discovered the joys of cooking. As a beginner I have religiously followed recipes borrowed from here and there, but mostly dictated by Ma over the phone. It began with bhaat, dal, khichuri. I graduated to vegetables soon after. I learnt to cook dhyarosh first, followed by cauliflower, brinjals, lau, cabbage. Very basic stuff. Then came chilli-chicken (pucca Bangali, see?). Yesterday, thanks to a Nigella Lawson recipe(via a colleague because dear people, I don't even remember what a television set looks like), I made an impromptu chicken casserole with sweet potatoes, broccoli, carrots, onions, cream, oranges, salt-pepper-butter-oregano and some more salt-pepper-butter-oregano. It turned out perfectl, with a little help from my friends. I know for a fact that I would have never ventured into the kitchen in Calcutta to cook an entire meal for myself or others. For now I shall work hard, cook much, and get fatter.
So, yeah. I am happy. :)

2012-01-02T02:56:00.001-08:00

31st December spent with friends, food, laughter. Exactly the way I like it.:)

2011-12-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

One day I'll melt away. I'll be the girl with tired eyes; I will be the girl with sad eyes. I'll be the one who wasted her life holed up in this glass and steel mansion of nothingness and meaninglessness. I'll be like a million others who have swallowed their real selves and pursued shadows. Sometimes, I think. Sometimes I can't remember how to think. Sometimes, sometimes, I wish I was young once more...

2011-11-28T23:11:00.000-08:00

46 days have dwindled to three. Yet, these are the three longest days of my life. My life? Do I honestly have a life anymore? Is having a life all about hammering away on the keyboard for fourteen hours a day till your fingers ache and back aches and your head feels fit to split like a watermelon? Gah. Must. Not. Crib.
Must. Be. Strong.
Must. Overcome.

On Calvin and Hobbes.

2011-11-28T00:53:00.001-08:00

I have not grown up with Calvin and Hobbes. As a child I always made it a point to read Blondie, Garfield and skip Calvin. It did not appeal to my sense of colour, and I couldn't understand much of it anyway. Years later, in college, I got started. I was hooked. I am glad that I discovered Calvin and Hobbes a little late. It is better this way. Even now I never read too many at a go. Why spoil surprises? It's a magical world after all.

I recently came across Watterson's speech, 'SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED'. Go, read?

'Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?'

Our little blue car

2011-11-08T03:24:00.000-08:00

Ma told me yesterday that Baba has finally decided to sell the car. A man from the garage arrived to take it away. I could not say goodbye to our old, blue, second-hand Maruti 800. I don't have a single photo of it either. It arrived one fine day, ten years ago. Baba had bought it without telling us, from a colleague. The car was in fantastic condition. Dada installed a fine stereo system. We went to Millennium Park to celebrate. Bought jaljeera ice-cream, something Walls had introduced that summer. Some days later, we went to Aquatica, Dada had by then learnt to drive a car. It was a thrilling/scary ride. We rode to Krishnanagar in that car, to Kalyani. I remember reading Harry Potter and listening to Kishore on those long trips. I remember heading towards my tuition classes, scribbling down answers for homework submissions, racing against time. The soft velvety seats. The towel thrown over the driver's seat, the cute soft doll that hung from the rear-view mirror, the eagle whose wings wobbled. Stepping out of the car at Howrah, and stepping into Rajdhani on 25th June, 2011.

Aar konodin reverse'e gelei 'Jingle Bells' shona hobe na. :(

Dillibilli

2011-10-28T02:48:00.001-07:00

Delhi, leaving aside its architectural marvels, the sweeping roads and countless markets, is a place that is deliberately hurtful. MSWord helpfully extends a list of synonyms: upsetting, unkind, cruel, spiteful, cutting, wounding, insensitive… The only saving grace is that I have my friends around. I have a fantastic room-mate in D who’ll prod me into eating when I sulk, who’ll light up the house with diyas, who’ll return to Delhi every time with a bagful of cookies and cakes. Yet, sometimes I see worry creasing her brows, and I think about how we named her Giggleburi, and how slowly, but surely, she smiles lesser and lesser these days. There is A with his all encompassing love, his non-stop stream of witty gibberish and poems that go both forward and backward. Yet there are spurts of sulky silences. When both of us know that nothing we say can make us feel any better. We just have to grin and bear it.

There’s S and there is G with their unselfish, take it as it comes way of life. They have restored a bit of sanity to both me and D, sheltering us, quite literally when we landed here. Otherwise, I am pretty sure, my sissy sensitive self would have cried buckets every night before going off to sleep mulling over upon how the maid and the guard and the mother dairy man and the jhaaroo-wala and the countless rickshaw-walas and the plumber and the electrician and even the man selling EGGS misbehave. Rudeness is their religion. Screaming, their normal conversational tone. Cheating, and lying? Why, these are honest ways to earn their living. I know that Calcutta is not the perfect place on earth, and I know that in Calcutta one would still meet scumbags, but this place is oozing with them. Growing up is not pleasant if all it teaches you to do is to grow fangs and sink them deep into one and all before they get a chance to strike at you. That’s how you live here: you kick and scream murder before the other person does that to you. You also learn the art of glib, oily smiles. At least my workplace is wonderful. Deadlines can drive you crazy, but there are so many known faces all around. And the book you have worked so hard for, now printed and bound and nestling in your palms, feels like heaven. Forgive the wonky grammar and the countless punctuation marks. It is a deliberate departure from what I do for a living. (livelihood, income, wage, source of revenue, alive, breathing, existing, live)

2011-10-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

Write, stupid keyboard, write. Type, aching fingers, type. Think, lolling head, think.

NOT.

2011-10-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

46 days. 4 and 6.

Dammit, where is the fast-forward button?

I was lost when I met you

2011-10-15T04:14:00.000-07:00

I was lost

when I met you on the road

to Larissa

the straight road between the cedars

You thought

I was a man of the roads

and you loved me for being such a man

I was not such a man

I was lost

when I met you on the road

to Larissa

-L.C.

2011-09-30T03:20:00.000-07:00

It's mostly alright except when the bus takes a sudden turn and I think, this is like Salt Lake, and maybe, just maybe, it will take me to my own doorstep in about fifteen more minutes.

I miss home.

This is growing wild.

2011-05-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

This is growing wild:

lightning swallows whole

the sky

is a waterfall

on streets

that can’t drink

and I think

this is growing wild.

On a painting.

2011-03-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

A sketchbook

cradles you-

a creature,

in corporeal blue

of mystery, misery.

Colour has its own

idiom of loss, pain-

(brown, bleak grey)

of love, imagined

(pink, red)

of love, real

(bruised purple)

of silence, white

of absence, black.

Look in confidence

and find

grainy comfort

(moss, agate, ochre).

My voice

(invisible)

my heart, a rainbow.

A disturbing poem.

2010-12-11T05:09:00.000-08:00

When I write
it’s vaguely amusing
to know
that you still
live inside me
like a sick, fat
parasite.

Eating what I eat
digesting what I digest
breathing, growing
on mucus
and darkness.

You have grown
like a poisonous
bonsai
inside my chest.
Stunted branches
pushing their
annoying fruits
into my flesh.

And honestly,

it fails to amuse me

after a while.

"The Second Kingdom" (Richard Brautigan)

2010-11-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

In the first kingdom
of the stars,
everything is always
half-beautiful.

Your fingernails
are angels
sleeping after
a long night
of making love.

The sound of
your eyes: snow
coming down
the stairs
of the wind.

Your hair
is the color
of God picking
flowers.

In the second
kingdom of the stars
there is only

you.

2010-11-13T00:53:00.000-08:00

My name in print. Happiness. :)

2010-11-09T09:35:00.000-08:00

this dull ache. fake.

The Magician

2010-11-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

Enrico waited in the shadows. There she was, smiling at some stranger, and that diamond ring sparkling bright on her finger. Her face was emaciated; she was old, withered, no longer his young lover, yet her hair still shone like coal under that brilliant night sky. I found you, he told her, stepping into the street light, I found you, my Medusa. Quite a trickster, aren’t you?

She did not quail under his gaze, as he thought she should have. She heard him inside her head, his voice cold as steel, throbbing in her mind after twenty long years.

I taught you to read minds, and you learnt well. Exceptionally well. He smiled. What made you betray me then?

“I did not want a life carved out of secrets, Rico. We both were far too young for something this dangerous.”

Aren’t we both magicians? Our breed thrives on secrets! We are both master and slave to concealment. That bitter and exact voice kept piercing her mind.

“I am a performer, an entertainer- not what you’d call a magician.”

Whom would I call a magician?

“None but you, I guess. How long has it been since you have felt something? How do you survive, Rico, mirroring what only others have felt? Or accomplished? Who reads your mind? What did you last experience?”

You still wear my ring, I see.

After a moment’s hesitation, she gave him the ring and he put it inside his pocket. He had to perform tonight, the past would not bind him down, and it must not. He had half turned to leave, when he barely whispered: And a lock of your hair Medusa. That too, is rightfully mine.

***

I was working with a newspaper house in Singapore when I first met Enrico. He sat brooding in his dressing room post the show, waiting edgily for this interview to get over. He had kept all the lights off, but one, near his mirror. His face bore traces of make up, his eyes too dark and his lips, too red. “You try my patience boy”, were the first words he said. I had been through this many times, the instant dislike that people took to reporters, the cold, almost frosty, sneer. I dug my palms further into my pocket, managed an easy smile and said, “It won’t take more than five minutes, I promise.” The room was bare except for a battered old sofa, a wooden armchair and an antique desk with a mirror propped up against it.

I did not know why I, a greenhorn at the desk in the firm, was asked to interview him. Kim, my colleague, had warned that Enrico was, politely put, temperamental. He was known to have turned down every single request for an interview before this. It was nothing short of a miracle that for once, in his career, spanning over a decade, he had agreed.

Enrico Varella, it was rumoured, had a heart in pieces, but the mind of a genius. Varella performed on stage as a magician. His profession was unusual, his passion almost demonic. He had supposedly started out as man who could have guessed with just a slight trepidation, the card you held in your hands without your having revealed it to him, and a few years later he ended as an obsessed, manipulative reader of minds- ruthless, cold and precise. He’d lovingly draw out one’s shameful, menacing secrets, his lips caressing each syllable, stretching them taut. That was all I had gathered about him before being asked to conduct this interview.

The producers of his shows labeled him a ‘psychic entertainer’, a performer who excelled in clairvoyance, memory feats and mind control. Enrico vehemently disagreed. He claimed, in the first five minutes of the discussion, that he was a ‘magician’ par excellence. He disregarded other stage illusionists. Escaping from chains, ropes, handcuffs and straitjackets was not proper magic, he felt, it was far too gimmicky- not subtle enough. He had advanced further into the territory of the mind, no longer dealing with the spectacle. This was magic, he felt, foraying into the indefinable, the unknown and the limitless: the human mind. There was nothing like commanding the mind, controlling it, and abusing it.

I saw him on stage that day. He moved like a gliding star, and his face with its unibrow and long crooked nose, shone like one. The packed hall was eerily silent; the audience felt both awed and threatened in his presence. Enrico knew that intimidation was power. His skills alarmed me. During the show he offered to read the minds of five spectators, he probed deep into their heads, and further into their souls, and further still, gleaning thoughts, words, images that should have never seen the light of day. That was one thing about Enrico, Kim said, he never knew where to stop. Neither did the volunteers. There was always that secret thrill of being challenged and exposed on stage. Humiliation for some was nectar for others.

“I don’t let people pry into my life, that’s my job.” He kept staring into my eyes. It took me a moment to realize that he was trying to read me, deciphering my body language. I was aware of the intense scrutiny and I let it pass. Varella kept sitting like a snake waiting to strike, alert and tense. His stance partly amused me. “You are the expert at reading minds here,” I told him, “what makes you so uneasy?”

Taken aback, he answered with ill-veiled contempt. “Uneasy? Next thing I know boy, you’d be writing in that newspaper of yours that Varella is a maestro on the stage and a nervous wreck off it. I know your breed, I know them too well. I don’t need this interview, you do. I get my audience, with or without your column. You see my point?”

I settled down and took out my recorder. I wanted to ask him why he insisted upon calling me ‘boy’ but resisted the urge. Here was a man who thought too much of himself, believing he could change the world. He was a marvel, no doubt, but his was a limited world; his skill priceless, but only on the stage.

“How old are you?” I asked him

“Forty-one.”

“So am I”, I smiled.

I was lying, of course. I had just turned thirty one a week ago. And he caught that little lie. Enrico was an intelligent man and knew the purpose behind this little exchange. His eyes glittered, amused. Instead of becoming completely opaque, as I was afraid, he warmed up to me.

“Tell me, how did you discover magic?” I asked.

“When, you mean? Magic was always inside me, I grew up with it, I just never knew.”

“Alright, when?”

“When I realized that all those things I kept hearing weren’t always spoken out aloud. I was ten. The day before my birthday my mother bought a new bicycle for me. She would not give me the keys, she said, “Not until tomorrow Rico.” She had hidden the keys. I looked into her eyes, and what did I see? I saw a seashell keychain, with a key dangling from it, kept beneath her favourite vase. I was puzzled, you know? Puzzled because I was hearing and seeing two different things.”

“So, you say it is a natural gift, reading minds? There’s no illusion involved, it is all real?”

“I would say that it occupies this bizarre fringe, straddling both magic and psychology.”

“And the supernatural?”

The corner of his lips twitched. “I don’t talk to ghosts, if that is what you mean.”

“And this knowledge, being natural and intrinsic to you, cannot be imparted?”

His brow darkened. “One can learn.”

“Despite… limitations?”

“As always, there are exceptions. And I have met one myself.”

I looked at him, expecting him to continue. He stared at the desk, silently, kicking it lightly with his foot, time and again. After a few minutes he said, “I had a partner once. I had taught her, trained her. She left saying, this was not a field for honest folk, heh. I have run the show alone, ever since.”

“So, how did you start?”

“Like they all do, as a street magician.” He lit a cigarette and rubbed his eyes. “I am tired, you know? I’d rather do this interview tomorrow, or never at all.”

I ignored this comment, and said, “Where? Chinatown?”

He nodded. “Yes, the famous little ethnic belly of Singapore.” His voice grew metallic, almost flinty. “I grew up there. I started performing when I was sixteen. Entertaining tourists is easier than entertaining the locals, I must say. The tourists are ever so eager to applaud, to laugh, to appreciate. When you think of it, maybe they are simply trying to justify the reason they spent so much money to get to Singapore. There they are, buying gimmicky things like a mahjong set in jade, or tasting some bland, peculiar fare, doused with authentic Chinese herbs, clicking photos, dozens of them, hundreds of them, collecting souvenirs from sham curio shops. Sickening. Yet, I wore striped suits and held out cards for them.”

He stopped. “I should not be telling you this, eh? But how does it matter? I am a dark one, you know. And that is exactly why they come streaming into the hall when my shows are announced. If possible, they’d wear masks and come. Guilt, secrets, shame, horror- I trade in them, and the audience loves me.” When he grinned, his teeth shone like pearls. I knew he was trying to bully me, but intimidation was a skill he had practiced on stage- it did not work in this sad shabby dressing room. I smiled.

“Tell me about you first proper stage show”, I ventured.

He lit another cigarette, and turned his eyes away from me. “It was in December, there was a parade near the Boat Quay. I was paid fifty dollars to dress up like a gypsy, and read from a crystal ball.”

“A gypsy woman, you mean?” I asked incredulously.

He smiled indulgently. “I had dark hair and dark eyes, and I was just a young boy, without a trace of any beard. They dressed me up in skirts and veils, painted my lips, stuck a peacock feather behind my ear. By the time they were done, you couldn’t guess. Yes, comic and unusual, yes.”

The room felt less stifling, less shadowy- his sourness was slowly vanishing. Enrico’s eyes crinkled when he smiled and he leant forward to touch my knee. “You’d think I’d be embarrassed, eh? I am not, not at all. It was a magical night, it was. When I walked back home that night, my pockets were heavy and my head was buzzing. I did not lie to, or disappoint any of those people who came into my tent seeking help, or looking for amusement. I couldn’t tell them the future, but I knew their past, I knew their present- and for them, that was miraculous enough. I had found my destiny.”

He drew open a drawer and took out a seashell keychain, an old peacock feather along with a grimy, yellow envelope containing, I suspected, fifty dollars. “Fond of my keepsakes”, he murmured, “my only weakness.” That film of aloofness, of being superhuman somehow, had disappeared entirely.

He grinned and said, “Do you recognize how it feels to like to finally be on the right trail? I was going to be a magician, and I knew it.”

“You say you started twenty years ago or perhaps even more. But people have seen you on the stage only in the past ten years…”

“I was in jail.”

The transition was abrupt. The voice, clipped, again. I looked at him, but Enrico was lost in his own bitter world. This was no longer just an interview for him, I realized. He reached out for his coat and took out a diamond ring from its pocket. He kept turning it over his palm, this way and that. For a moment it seemed that the room was nothing but darkness, while the diamond shone like a coagulated mass of sheer white light. “I gave in to temptation, once. I stole from a client. I was a skilled magician, but not so adept at burglary.” His gaunt cheeks broke into a mirthless smile. “I returned everything, but not this little precious ring. This I gave to her.”

He looked at me, his eyes wild. “I paid for it too, you know? I paid for it with ten years of my life.” The grin grew ghastlier, the eyes, wilder. Enrico was at long last delving into his own tortuous mind, reading his own memories, no longer catering to strangers or fortifying himself against them. I was scared, terrified at the prospect of witnessing his moment of self discovery.

I rose to leave, having perceived many a crack in that supposedly impenetrable veneer of his. He did not stop me. Did he even notice me? As I closed the door behind me, I saw him bending over that desk, replacing that odd assortment of items he had laid out before me.

The next morning, while I walked towards my office, my views had slightly changed. For one, I thought, off the stage, Enrico was like a fish out of water. I was no longer scared stiff, but disgruntled. Magic, I felt, did not have any relevance in this mundane world of ours, and when you plucked mysterious creatures, like these magicians, out of that little shell of stars, and placed them in the real world, they began to lose their sheen. Up close, Enrico was sentimental, anxious and wary. I was prepared to type out a suitably modified version of the interview and be done with it.

***

Enrico sat alone; running the lock of hair between his fingers, long after the journalist had left. His thoughts ran unhindered; slipping back time and again to the woman he had met that evening.

Whom would I call a magician? He had thundered inside her head.

She had not winced, not the slightest bit. “None but you, I guess. How long has it been since you have felt something? How do you survive, Rico, mirroring what only others have felt? Or accomplished? Who reads your mind? What did you last experience?”

He thought about the journalist. He could not remember either his face or his name. For once he had not meddled with a stranger’s head, or sifted through his thoughts, knowing all, experiencing nothing. The magic, he felt, was leaving him. He was tired; it had been a steep hike to the peak of success, of authority and influence. It was time to leave, and time to let go. He carefully placed the lock of hair beside the diamond ring, and shut the drawer.

The show was over, once and for all.

***

2010-11-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

A fresh new look!

http://wafer-thin-paperback.blogspot.com/

It's Raining in Love

2010-08-11T22:14:00.000-07:00

-- Richard Brautigan

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT

if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.

Letter from a Pirate

2010-07-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

Not a pirate’s life for you, my boy, never.

Today, I close my eyes and see you near a fireside; your feet firmly planted on ground, and your red hair glaring like an angry sun. That’s my boy, that’s my boy. You don’t belong here, not on a ship carrying the weight of countless dead men, carrying the stench of rotting flesh and food, sweat and blood. You bear in your heart the touch of Earth. I have dreamt of you on nights when the mates have reeled under the influence of sea-sickness or some strange disease that threatened to push them closer to that sharp divide between life and death. But wait, life upon this plagued ship is nothing but death-in-life. I have dreamt of you as an escape. There are battles waged on board; warring is a way of life. You lose an eye, a limb, and yet you carry on. There’s no rest until your cold, cold body is bound up in some old sail-cloth and tossed into the sea.

We fight against strangers, looting, plundering and slitting throats- it is not in a pirate’s nature to show mercy, they say. I can almost feel your heart breaking my boy, because there aren’t any swashbuckling heroes here- we are ruthless, deviant, deceitful creatures. Yet, there used to be an honest sailor’s blood in me…

Could a letter to a child be more inappropriate? What should I write then, my boy? Should I string stories of adventure, of lost treasure and golden doubloons as big as your fist, of a wooden legged captain and his talking parrot? A pirate’s life is such a cliché, is it not?

Yet, not a pirate’s life for you, my lad, never. But here, we are sailors, no matter how unnatural our breed may be. There’s a bit of the sea in all of us, I believe. On calm nights, we breathe in as deep as our festering lungs would allow us to and we start to believe in our way of life. On stormy nights, we drink enough to quell the rising sea within us, enough to fight with our own shipmates till we are spent and contented. It’s time to hoist the anchor and set the sails. You be good my boy, while I live and die by the skull and crossbones.

Let them call me a pirate, and you? A gypsy.

2010-07-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

Even at your lowest, be strong- and you will find greatness.

Facebook comes up with really quotable quotes at times! Haa!

Music

2010-06-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

Before we met I believed I was music. Improvising, forever rising and falling harmony.

I scan the skies and find you soaring; your wings stretched thin like cellophane, and an oblivious prey in your eyes. Cynical skies, alert and keenly blue, lap you up. They have known summers of rebirth and how time collapsed into verses gathering dust in a drawer.

Listen hard, for I can play upon circumstances. I am my own music.

also, after much aatlami: la di dah!

2010-05-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Leap of Faith.

*crash*

Ouch. Ouch.

*up and about again*

2010-05-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Maa, your daughter has often been accused of excess sentimentality, but who else could I thank for walking with me in the rain when I really, really needed to? You are my best friend.

2010-04-23T18:51:00.000-07:00

Honestly speaking, this is far too personal for a blog. However, I needed to write this down to remind me of this occasion’s permanence; I needed this as a marker.

So this is how “breaking up” feels like, finally. No more pendulum-like swings, no more happiness and despondency gaining up on each other rapidly. When he called up to say that his feelings for me have disappeared completely, I heard my own calm voice telling him, it is okay, such things happen, even though my insides cleaved. This past week has been horrible; not knowing what will happen always stresses me out. So last night, all that came crashing down into one swift conclusion. (Thank you D. for seeing me through it.) Did I see it coming? Yes. Was I prepared? Not even a bit. He said: I will always be there when you need my help. Will I ever ask for help again?

There’s no bitterness, none whatsoever. Just a few haunting memories and a bit of incomprehension. I still don’t know why or how this happened, and perhaps for my own good, never will. And in time, I will know what it feels like to fall out of love myself.

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

2010-04-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.

-Pablo Neruda

2010-04-19T04:44:00.000-07:00

The Keeper of the Stars needed a bit of security in her life, like most other people. Instead, all that is left today is a deep instability. SNAP OUT OF IT, SNAP SNAP SNAP OUT OF IT I must.

2010-04-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

2010-04-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Um, my photoshop license expires within a week. And a term paper is due. That obviously explains the paintingoverdrive.

:)

2010-04-14T01:19:00.000-07:00

A few words of comfort.

2010-04-08T00:38:00.000-07:00

While still in Loreto, during a Teacher's Day assembly, a gentleman, in all probability a 'Father', came to our school to talk about certain things. He stepped onto the stage and asked us, "Could anyone try and expand this abbreviation I.A.L.A.C.?" One of my most favourite teachers, DB, answered: 'I am loving and caring.' He smiled and said, "Of course. But what I had in mind was different: I am lovable and capable. You must always remember this."

It has been five years or more, yet, even today, I fall back on IALAC time and again. There are people who think no end of themselves, and there are some who are forever underrated and underestimated, not by others, but by themselves. Then, these are magic words that could soothe you. Believe in yourself and believe in your self-worth. No matter what anyone else thinks, you too are lovable and capable.

A five-year-old sailor

2010-03-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, someone had pried open a floor tile and slipped in a Will. And what an impressive Will it was! It curled perfectly, was brilliantly yellowed, and bequeathed to those near and dear, a yellow feather duster, bits of emerald wrapping paper, a magician’s hat and of course, what else but tin soldiers? Ah. Here was another child who thought death was near. But near because of what? Just a green ball of chewing gum.

Turns out, a few days ago his father- much averse to the constant chomp-chomp-chomp- had remarked, Boy! What is it that you are chewing so eagerly? If it is, what I think it is, beware. I knew a child who had swallowed chewing gum, and do you know what happened to him? Ah, may God bless his soul, the little chap died. It binds together the insides of your stomach. Keep that in mind. His eyes twinkled with mischief, but his voice was grim. The boy spat out a wad of chewing gum and ran inside to wash his mouth.

It was a dire enough warning for a five year old, enough to supply him with nightmares for a week. This child however, a brave one for sure, dared to resist his father, and decided to give it another go. This time however, before he could spit it out, he swallowed the innocuous ball of green gum. He sat and thought for a few minutes about what he had done, and in another hour or so, had completed his Will, made provisions in it for his young sister and his best friend, and then set out on his bicycle to fulfill within a day, his life’s earnest desire.

---

He was seen cycling towards the local church. His tiny feet pedaled fast, his heart beat like a drum against his chest, and the miniature flute that hung around his neck swayed to and fro. He had run away from home, without saying goodbye to anyone, and he was in a rush. He had no time for trifles, he knew. Time was of highest importance, the only bit he could spare would be for God himself.

God, he knew, was listening. So down he went on his knees, and touched the wooden floor with his fingers. What could he say today? I wanted to be a sailor dear Lord, a smart one all dressed in blue. Can I, just for a day, because that’s all I have, be a sailor in blue? He closed his eyes tightly and repeated one or two prayers he had learnt by heart, jumbling up a few lines here and there, while his tiny heart pounded- out of breath. He shivered a little, looked at the benign face on the Cross, so kind and in such torture. Was there something he had forgotten? Oh, yes.

I am ready, you know. I have heard things about death- it is like this endless tunnel and Mum says, those who have faith, like those who keep talking to you each day, find light. Now I talk, don’t I? Make me a sailor, and I will be all yours.

Off he went again, towards the port. Sweat dripped from his face, his eyes burnt but they remained focused on the narrow stretch of road. Just to make his short life meaningful, he must get aboard a ship, a real ship- not those tiny fishing boats, but a proper, majestic, black and white ship. He had seen it in the harbour just a few days ago. His sailor’s cap was tucked carefully into his waistband.

---

The harbour was empty. Fishermen spread soiled pieces of cloth on the ground and left little mounds of salted fishes on them. They’d keep them like that for a day or two, until they were completely dry. Our boy sat and wept for hours. The port master had told him in a gentle voice: The ship’s gone my lad. And what a beauty it was! Now it’s sailing like a queen I believe. You wanted to see it one last time?

The stench was unbearable, but where else could he go? If only he had cycled faster. He sat until evening hung around his shoulders. By this time, his tears had dried up; his heart sank along with the orb of glowing orange, right across the sea. Well, time to go home, he supposed. He had missed the ship, and perhaps, death had missed him. He wiped his face, carefully checked his navy blue cap, and returned home.

---

When he crept into his bed late that night, still alive, he knew he had learnt a few important things. It was not his father’s lie that troubled him. Like only a child can, he had erased the fear of impending death and had forgotten his father’s cautionary tale. What niggled at the back of his mind was perhaps a larger question. Did his prayer go completely unheard? So, was this God, just another practical man wearing an ironed suit? Are prayers supposed to stem from the mind and not from the heart? Ask for what’s possible, and it might be granted. Think, but not with your heart. Whoever heard of a five year old sailor, I say?

---

Rant alert.

2010-03-17T01:43:00.000-07:00

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I miss so many bloody things. Like good texts. I don't want to read Dunciad. I want to read Hughes' short stories, but I don't have the time. I don't want to read Tom Jones either. Or Wordsworth or The Heart of Midlothian etc. I miss my speakers, I need some music but I don't have the money to buy new speakers. I miss my iPod but I don't have the money to repair it. I particularly missed Debopama, Sion and Banerjee while solving crossword today. They can solve this stuff within minutes and I can bask in their shared glory. Special mention, Doel: who can not only solves puzzles, but can bake cakes with mousse stuffing. I miss Subhayu, but idiot does not return calls. I miss Subhayu having a room of his own too. Hrmpf. I miss Anwesha, while she goes out of her way to vegetate in her lab. I miss Srabashi, but she is swamped with 'submissions'. I miss Doel's giggles, they can cheer up one and all. I miss Clue-do, Scrabble and biriyani. I miss I miss I miss.

After Ed-pub, as Banerjee says, we must do some Oly-pub.

Rant posts, how I hate them.

[added later]

P.s: I miss Shifu and her puns, but now she won't have pun with me anymore, she says. I miss her chicken curry, she only gets fish these days. Prayag, oh yes, how could I not mention Gay-arp? After the betrayal and "contact" building? Hrmpf. I will expose you, right here.

He has one golden (foot)ball.

He has anterogade amnesia, and as Sion says, has enough guts to read Locke despite a 15-minute memory retention span.

But, he treated me to cold-coffee.

So there, grudging loyalty: He is so-so at Jumbled words. :P

However, I don't miss Prayag. I just miss poking fun at his self-styled-Ghajini-cut.

Let winter not touch you

2010-02-10T09:07:00.000-08:00

If you open this letter

on a late afternoon

warm, wet and ochre-

let this remind you

of a long winter left midway.

Where the earth curls up

ever-ceasing, ever-withdrawing.

Wait awhile,

for my love, unused to summer

recoils for a moment-

and in the next,

spills out, shivering and restless.

Let such inexperienced love

melt with that bit of visible sea.

This afternoon

let it melt-

into untamed accents, unknown roads.

A naked letter prays

and outside your window

summer breathes.

Let winter not touch you.

(Letters are a recurrent theme with me, a device I use quite frequently in my infrequent bursts of poetry. However, this was written because I needed to write a proper letter.)

2009-12-19T06:03:00.000-08:00

at five past twelve last night the phone rung. i have always been wary of late night calls, always. last time it rang to tell us that my pishemoshai had expired, leaving behind a very young daughter. that was 6 years ago and i can still remember my cousin holding my hand, her bright eyes swimming with tears and asking me to tell her a story. and I told her how God always metes out justice, even if justice comes a bit too late. i meandered and told her about troikas and all things Russian. it was a stupid little story but she drank in every word i spoke.

yesterday, my mama called up to say that dida has been admitted to a nursing home. she is in her seventies, but she is as sturdy as sturdy could be. for a moment, even before hearing the rest of what he had to say, the ground beneath my feet swayed. just hours ago, i had stood in front of tollygunge metro station, contemplating whether I should go to didarbari or back to ultadanga where I live. I chose to return. A few days ago, on my way to college, an elderly lady boarded the auto with me. she too had a golden white mane, just like my dida. she wore her shankha and pola on her wrists, just like my dida. she smelt like her too, she smelt of jasmine hair oil. i decided to visit dida and dadu that day, after classes got over. needless to say, as soon as she got off from the auto, I forgot that little promise made to myself.

mama said that dida had complained of chest pains and that she couldn't see anything in front of her. there was a darkness enveloping her, bit by bit. however, the doctors acted fast and admitted her into the emergency ward. i spent half of the night with my mother on the sofa, tethering on the edge, waiting for the phone to ring. i uttered prayers, prayers that had cobwebs all over them, lying unremembered since school.

today, i went over to see my dear old lady. she was lying in a little white room, a saline bottle hung beside her. she looked alien in such a surrounding. the trademark lal paar shada saree was missing, instead she was wearing a checked uniform. her face was bloated, and she squinted to see me. however, a little red bindi rested on her forehead. maa placed a comb and a powder case beside her. she called me close, and let me hold her hand. "dida, eta ki korle?" i joked. she smiled and said "kheyechish toh? shudhu khichuri? ish, ekta omlette kore dilo naa toke?"the relief that washed through me was indescribable.

dadu too is unwell, he is suffering from dementia. his memory is like a slate, wiped clean every few minutes. he has not slept since last night, he keeps asking people about dida. today, when he saw me his face lit up for a while. as always, he said " thank you dadu, tumi ele." he recognised me, but it might not happen that easily again.

days like this change the person you are. they probe into those half lit hidden areas of the soul, turning you inside out, showing you the person you are. i have always been insecure, always needed a bit of assurance and love from people, even unworthy people. today i learnt that in this fruitless quest of making myself popular and lovable, i have ignored those who love like no other. i am very, very sorry.

and I love you.

December and the cold cold touch.

2009-12-13T05:58:00.000-08:00

I will tell you exactly how I feel about December.

10 o'clock and I am still snuggling under a canopy of blankets. Maa presses her palm on my eyes, and it is sooooo cold because she has been washing vegetables in the kitchen. I shiver-brrrr- it is so unexpected! But you know how it is, right? There is a mine of hidden warmth in that cold cold touch. December, too, is just like that.

I Dream of Jeannie, I do

2009-11-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

How many of you loved watching I Dream of Jeannie as a kid?

I did.

I adored Jeannie because, ah well, as she says herself, she only needed to "think and blink". The show was a must watch for me when I was around six years old. After all these years, when the only detail that I could remember was that of Jeannie's pink harem dress and the cute genie bottle- Zee Cafe decides to air it again. Most people tend to avoid it, because the show has a dated appeal they say. Heck, how? We have a handsome and reserved astronaut called Anthony, finding a sexy 2500year old genie, conveniently named Jeannie, in a bottle on a deserted island after his shuttle crashes there. This is timeless folks! She falls for him, breaks his engagement, lives in with him and eventually after five seasons he falls for her too- despite being driven mad by her magic antics. Nevermind that. What actually appeals to me, even today, is that they managed to make the magic tricks look pretty awesome without the help of any hi fi special effects. We have miniature sized Jeannie sitting atop a telephone or inside her bottle looking completely at home. Moreover, the casting is brilliant. I love Tony's friend, Major Healy, the guy is fantastic! Anyway, it is a pity that they decide to start showing this oldie just when my end semester is about to start. I plan to catch as many reruns as possible. I like this kind of humour- such a far cry from the crass sex comedies that we have on tv these days, yet utterly delightful. Besides, I think Tony Nelson is hot. You may not agree, but hey, do I care? ;)

2009-10-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

tying up all those loose ends. no space for even a trickle. :)

So you want to be a writer?

2009-09-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

So you want to be a writer

- Charles Bukowski

If it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Rictusempra!

2009-07-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

I loved the new Harry Potter movie. However, for all those who care to know, I am telling you- Draco Malfoy (played by Tom Felton) looks like a teenaged pointy nosed Hrithik Roshan...

Something in those lips and the nose. Look hard.

And well, tell me if it is just in my head... but don't these two look similar too?

*gulp*

[Note: Rictusempra- a charm that tickles the opponent.]

Sea Love

2009-07-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

- Charlotte Mew

Tide be runnin' the great world over:

'Twas only last June month I mind that we

Was thinkin' the toss and the call in the breast of the lover

So everlastin' as the sea.

Heer's the same little fishes that sputter an swim,

Wi' the moon's old glim on the grey, wet sand;

An' him no more to me mor me to him

Than the wind goin' over my hand.

2009-05-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

It has been so long, so very long. We have seen it blossom, seen it mellow down, and it has been fascinating... fascinating almost to the point of being nauseating. A distanced memory tells me that we had fashionable never ending discourses on love, life and all else. How we pretend to know, how we pretend to feel even though we are too young to understand! We changed with experience. We became such different people. It was beautiful while it lasted. Beautiful and fatally flawed. All things have a natural death, and here was a swan song made just for us.

What do I call friendship? Friends are people who do things for you, not because you expect it, but because they love you. And love can only stretch so far before it breaks. I owe my friends nothing, they owe me nothing. Just that the world sometimes, sometimes, runs a bit low on love.

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

Long and long ago,

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

In a long forgotten snow.

(Sara Teasdale)

Some Poems

2009-04-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

A Love Song

-William Carlos Williams

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

***

I Am Not Yours

-Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

***

2009-04-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, people who are sick of my Cohen obsession can skip this entry. I will keep on proclaiming my undying love for this legend. His songs are pure, fragile poems. I don't care about his vocal quality or the chord charts or the blahblahyadayadas. Seriously.

Here is something that I wanted to share. This one is called ' Chelsea Hotel No.2'.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.

Ah but you got away, didn't you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don't need you,
I need you, I don't need you
and all of that jiving around.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

And then you got away, didn't you babe...

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
I can't keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
that's all, I don't even think of you that often.

...

and yes, I must get over this fixation with hotel-pub-poems. they are just so darned attractive!!!!

In Paris with You

2009-03-23T10:37:00.000-07:00

Been flipping through a borrowed anthology of poetry recently.

Since I have not written anything recently, I hope this will suffice.

;-)

Here's something rather romantic and ironic I came across today:

In Paris with You

Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful

And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.

I'm one of your talking wounded.

I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.

But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled

And resentful at the mess I've been through.

I admit I'm on the rebound

And I don't care where are we bound.

I'm in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre

If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,

If we skip the Champs Elysées

And remain here in this sleazy

Old hotel room

Doing this and that

To what and whom

Learning who you are,

Learning what I am.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,

The little bit of Paris in our view.

There's that crack across the ceiling

And the hotel walls are peeling

And I'm in Paris with you.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.

I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.

I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,

I'm in Paris with... all points south.

Am I embarrassing you?

I'm in Paris with you.

- James Fenton

Every morning

2009-02-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

With a new promise

every morning

I leave

fresh daisies

at your feet.

Thank you

says that little

note

tucked inside.

I appreciate.

Thank you,

my life is better.

Much love.

Fervently,

Thank you.

Once outside

I wait for

such pleasure words

to stop churning

in my head.

And I wait

for my patience

to fizzle out

while printing

the next note

painstakingly.

You bring home sunshine.

Thank you, truly.

If only

I could forget

your address

someday

and let

the daisies

rot.

saraswati pujo :)

2009-02-01T06:22:00.000-08:00

2009-01-22T05:06:00.000-08:00

Longings

Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before growing old,
sadly shut away in sumptuous mausoleum,
roses by the head, jasmine at the feet --
so appear the longings that have passed
without being satisfied, not one of them granted
a single night of pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.

Constantine P. Cavafy

- - -

Lines remembered on one such day, a day filled with unsatiated longings. Longings that have passed.

Half an Hour

2009-01-15T10:01:00.000-08:00

Half an Hour

-C.P. Cavafy

I never had you, nor I suppose

will I ever have you. A few words, an approach,

as in the bar the other day—nothing more.

It’s sad, I admit. But we who serve Art,

sometimes with the mind’s intensity,

can create—but of course only for a short time—

pleasure that seems almost physical.

That’s how in the bar the other day—

mercifully helped by alcohol—

I had half an hour that was totally erotic.

And I think you understood this

and stayed slightly longer on purpose.

That was very necessary. Because

with all the imagination, with all the magic alcohol,

I needed to see your lips as well,

needed your body near me.

---

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

---

I started reading a few of Cavafy's poems today- they were originally written in Greek (I read the translated versions circulating online). Amlan da had mentioned one of Cavafy's poems during his lectures on Criticism- a poem called King Claudius, which is a unique take on the merits of Claudius and the much debated 'madness' that afflicted Hamlet. I shall reserve my opinions on Cavafy for the time being and concentrate on reading him up properly :)

Of bad manners!

2008-12-21T10:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, you. Do you recognize that verrry thin line that differentiates between a cold-shoulder-treatment and formality? And yes, you have all the freedom in the world to look down upon us mere earthlings. We might not be able to impress people with random philosophical babblings and commendable percentages. But, guess what? We have been taught the very basic lesson of beinghuman. One day this sphere of yours will increase, inch by inch and then bigger and I hope it won't be too late for people like you to embrace humility and respect.

Return to school, learn some manners?

The 'You' mentioned here are unaware of the mere existence of this blog and (I may safely assume) its owner.

:-]

2008-12-10T03:12:00.001-08:00

six point someone. forever so.

edit: five point five someone, actually.

2008-12-07T01:24:00.001-08:00

La Gioconda!

click this ^

and you will know.

something you do when you can't be bothered by 56other paintings that you need to study for tomorrow's exam.

leftovers

2008-11-27T07:26:00.001-08:00

This is a has-been.

Some inordinate

Computer written leftovers.

Pathetic, really

When you recall how

on the very same day

I ran my fingers

across the screen

pretending that this was Braille

and if I couldn’t stand up

the poem could.

(What else? Where else can I write now that I know for sure how much a Waterman costs? Unless you’ve been to Paris, of course.)

The very same day

You were lying down

to look at the ceiling

imagining your

stoic circles and ellipses

raining down heavily.

So I thought I’d ask

whether you needed

help

with distending

your grungy little story-plots?

Smile.

(While your over-pumped muscles fail to straighten out the lines in your head, lines you have read, someday, somewhere)

yes, I trail my fingers

on the monitor

the other hand

uncurling its fingers
and balloons

escape.

(Pathetic, really, even though we knew the rules of the game. Now, you cry cheater.)

2008-11-26T11:28:00.000-08:00

Where do I get nice templates from?

*wonders*

tag

2008-11-23T12:58:00.000-08:00

Tagged by Mandy.

first name: Anurima

single or taken: sin...ken.

sex: female

birthday: feb, 21st

siblings: one.

hair colour: black.

shoe size: 5

height: 5'4".

innie or outie: ?

what are you wearing right now: teeshirt, checked pajamas. :-|

righty or lefty: right(y)

can you make a dollar in change right now: no, not really.

------------------------------------------------------------
relationships
------------------------------------------------------------

who are your closest friends? different people at different points of time. :D

do you have a BF or GF? bee-F

best place to go for a date: walk on a nice evening. near parkstreet, camac-street, free schoolstreet, newmarket.

---------------------------------------------------------------
favourites...
---------------------------------------------------------------

favourite place to shop: erm... citycentre?

favourite kind of pants: plain bloo jeans.

favourite colour: everything barring the fluorescent neon types.

number(s): 21, 12, 8747738391912877282828...

animal: do fishes qualify?

drink: coffee, rum, appy.

sport(s): suck at it. used to play basketball.

fast food place(s): grub-club, hangout, tibetan delight.

month: pujo'r maash, whenever.

current movie: as in, currently seen? then, Fashion. Didn't like.

juice: pineapple.

finger: ?5 on each hand. each foot too.

breakfast: I don't eat breakfast. I get brunch, which is usually rice and dal.

favourite cartoon character(s): CAPTAIN PLANET!!!! Peter (of Ghostbusters)
**moony-eyed crush-look**

----------------------------------------------------------
have you ever:
----------------------------------------------------------

given anyone a bath? no.

smoked? yes.

bungee-jumped? no.

made yourself throw up? yes.

gone skinny dipping? no.

eaten a hot dog? YES! monginis.

put your tongue on a frozen pole? NO.

loved someone so much it made you cry? yes.

broken a bone? nah.

played truth-or-dare? yes yes, got beaten up too. :]

been in a police car? no.

been on a plane? yes.

been in a sauna? no.

been in a hot tub? no.

gone swimming in the ocean? snorkelled. does that count? (Arabian Sea)

fallen asleep in school? eeeeeyes. Chemistry classes during +2.

ran away? never.

broken someone's heart? I don't know.

cried when someone died? yes.

cried in school? yes (as a direct consequence of an ill-timed dare-execution).

fallen off your chair? I sprang up on my feet when the chair crumbled into pieces. That was during a mathematics tuition. Sir was in awe. 'Bah tumi toh besh agile', he said.

sat by the phone all night waiting for someone to call? kept the phone beside me, yes.

saved e-mails? starred them i guess :P

fallen for one of your best friends? nah

made out with JUST a friend? nope

used someone? maybe

been cheated on? nope

----------------------------------------------------------------
what is...
----------------------------------------------------------------

your good luck charm? nervousness. no, really.

the best song you ever heard? Not the best song ever, but one of my best, Take this Waltz by Cohen.

the stupidest thing you have ever done? fallen for my brother's best friend and fed him food i bought etc. very stupid.

what's your room like? shared with dada. red and blue. ordinary.

the last thing you said? 'I am studying, you sleep' to dada. :P

what is beside you? Mrs. Dalloway

the last thing you ate? BadBad biyebari food.

what kind of shampoo do you use? dove.

the best thing that has happened to you this year? Lao :P

the worst thing that has happened to you this year?

----------------------------------------
have you had..
----------------------------------------

chicken pox? yes.

sore throat? everyone has sore throats. hah.

stitches? no.

broken nose? no.

-------------------------------------
do you
-------------------------------------

believe in love at first sight? nope.

like picnics? building-picnics. :D

like school? YESSSS. not all the teachers though.

--------------------------------------
would you/what is
---------------------------------------

eat a live hamster for $1,000,000 : what?!

if you were stuck on an island, what people would you want with you? Friday

who was the last person that called you? Subhayu. See, we don't have a life. We call each other and amuse ourselves. 24x7.

who was the last person you slow-danced with? I cannot dance. CANNOT. childhood trauma :|

what makes you laugh the most? Welltimed jokes? pranks? the usual khilli.

what makes you smile? poetry. music. friends.

--------------------------------------
who is the last person
--------------------------------------

you yelled at? I can't yell.

who broke your heart? Erm.

who told you they loved you? :D

who is your loudest friend? PRIAAAAA.

------------------------------------------------------------
do you/are you:
------------------------------------------------------------

do you like filling these out? Nope

do you wear glasses or contacts? none.

do you like yourself? Yes, I am in awe.

do you get along with your family? Immediate family? YES. branches? only if i keep my mouth shut.

stolen anything over $50? i stole stickers once. returned them too. :P

obsessive? sometimes.

compulsive? sometimes.

anorexic? no.

suicidal? no.

schizophrenic? no.

--------------------------------
love life
-------------------------------

do you have a crush? used to.

if so, does he or she know? maybe.

have you truly told him or her how you feel, face to face? no.

how did he or she respond? -

what is so great about him or her? he was different. but yes, different is not always nice. ;)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
this or that
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

coffee or tea: tea.

phone or in person: both. add gtalk and smses too.

are you oldest, middle, youngest or only child: youngest.

indoor or outdoor: depends.

--------------------------------------------------
final questions
-----------------------------------------------------------

how many people are you sending this to: Pria, will you?

what are you listening to right now? Tori Amos, Caught a Light Sneeze

what did you do yesterday? SLEPT.

where do you want to get married? somewhere peaceful, without too many lights and people and cackle and hassle.

if you could change anything about yourself, what would it be? lethargylazinesssleepinessfatness

are you a good driver? can't drive.

are you a good singer? no.

what do you dream about? people i know, but i don't really think about much during the day. :S

Yes, I reviewed my answers. I did.
Please spare me the trauma of asking me to get a life.
Thank you.

2008-11-19T07:03:00.000-08:00

For a change, turn away from the world of books and see reality for all it is worth.

Please read This and This.

Untitled

2008-11-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

Untitled.

Most of her poems remained so. There was no phrase that she found apt, nothing that could crystallize everything that had coursed through her entire frame while penning that bit of poetry. Her poetry, not most would understand. Poetry that was boring and interminable. Poetry, she remembered, that would not sell. The last book she had written for remained unpublished, in a dear old manuscript that she kept hidden in the drawers of her desk. Fondly, she took them out at times, shedding a tear or two at lines that reminded her of pain or pleasure, smudging those very lines with those moist droplets. As a result, during the next course of reading she knew- every phrase, every turn of word that really mattered would have been washed away. Such is life.

One morning, she picked up fresh flowers from the store nearby, wrapping those carnations carefully with a bit of some old newspaper. Back home, she proceeded to put them in a crystal vase, placing them in sunlight and snipping off a leaf or two. Something caught her eye. The yellow parched newspaper bore a photograph of a grimy looking young man dressed in military attire, resting his sweaty palms on his knees; his look was that of despair. Or hope, thought she. Or wonder? Or love? The article that had followed the photograph had been torn off. Now I wouldn’t ever know, she grumbled. He seemed to be sitting on some kind of a stone bench, one of those numerous benches that line the streets of a city. Beside him lay a piece of white cloth, and behind him- a smoke-ridden, broken-winged city. She would never know which city lay behind him, nor would she ever know the identity of the man with the white cloth. The picture, like her poems, would remain untitled. He could be bombing the city, and repenting. He could be protecting the rubble and surrendering. So much is left unaccounted for in the way we live, but does it matter?

...

Before Mr. B left for work very early one morning, he knocked on his wife’s door. She must be sleeping, he assumed. He left without disturbing her anymore. While driving to his office, his thoughts kept returning to the closed door and his mind replayed the soft knock again and again. ‘Are you sleeping?’ he had said to the mute brown door. ‘I’m going out now,’ he had added.

So, he shifted gears, changed lanes and tuned in the radio. It played something that sounded like Are you sleeping? I’m going out now. Knock. Are you sleeping? I am going out now. Sleeping? Knock. Going now. Are you going out? I am sleeping. Out? Sleeping? You? I am out. Now. Knock. Mr. B could not clear his mind. The morning incident became indistinguishable and vague, almost as if it had not happened. She usually called out a muffled ‘goodbye’ before he left. She generally opened her door and stood on the top of the stairs, while he closed the front door behind him. She sometimes, only sometimes, kissed his forehead. Mr. B wiped his forehead now, and stepped up the gas. She might have left the house at night yesterday taking our boy with her. She might have left for me her poems. She might have rolled out her hair like Rapunzel in a bid to escape me. She did not answer the door this morning, and there must be a reason for that. She might be dead, or she might be living at last in some secret hideaway he had never seen and never heard of. The car swerved, and it would have been a beautifully formless death for the sake of a story, only that he did not die. His wife meanwhile woke up in her room at that instant. Her five-year old son clung to her body, cold and shivering. His face seemed pale and distant and twisted in horror. A nightmare again, thought Mrs. B. She laid his head on her chest and crooned a few lines to him with her mouth near his cold ear. She was soon enough wondering whether it would not be kinder to simply wake him up, than to hope that her soft lullaby would quell the horror of his nightmare. He stopped shivering. Her eyes traveled along the window frame and rested on the week-old carnations.

...

The winter chill seeped in through his shirt. He rolled up the car windows. It was dark and foggy, the way winter nights generally are. The streetlamps seemed to have merged with the pitch black air, rendering the gray upright columns almost formless… almost borderless. It was reminiscent of the edges of reality getting frayed and lovingly bruised, just like in daydreams. Quite like daydreams, he said aloud.

Mrs. B turned towards her husband. “What?”

He shook his head and said, “Nothing.”

Conversation, as always, ceased. On the other side of the glass, the night road glistened as the fog clung to it desperately. He picked up the broken train of thoughts, and after awhile said, “Do you daydream?”

She remained impassive. He looked at the rear-view mirror, checking whether his son was still sleeping or awake. The boy had woken up and sat awkwardly, encompassing the entire seat, pressing his nose to the glass window. At last, Mrs. B told him about the unnamed soldier with his white flag.

…

2008-10-17T00:54:00.000-07:00

Guess what I found?

Khaled Hosseini's blog! The last time I was this happy was when I chanced upon Joy Harjo's blog (whose link, I am afraid, I have lost). Here's where the spinner of tales such as, A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kiterunner, blogs- (click)

2008-10-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

And This.

2008-09-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

blog makeover.

*gleam*

c'mon people, clap clap clap?

2008-09-16T14:59:00.001-07:00

This takes root from a kind of pain I’m ashamed of. You have your armour of words, shielding yourself against my silence. Silence. I can offer no more. All this while, a dense monologue courses through my veins, and I am only dimly aware of what I should be saying. I have a knack of leaving many things unsaid. Once upon a time that was just alright. Who else was there to judge and to theorize and put me neatly into a bracket of good or bad behaviour? I could deal with being upset with myself, sleep over it, and start afresh. The previous night would fade. Silence then meant speculation and listening to others. It was nice and comforting too. Right now, thanks to you, I am deeply ashamed of it. Conscious of the fact, that I cannot speak my mind. Conscious that this state of being quiet jars with your voice streaming in through the phone. That I cannot fight tooth and nail. That you in your verbose manner could go on, from being cheerful to being down, reflecting it all through your words. I keep mum. I don’t tell you. I tell no one, for that matter. Spoilt brat me. Can’t speak her mind me. Dumb me. Stupid me. Pathetic me. Why do I not disconnect the phone today? What difference does it make tonight? Would it really make sense to you if I say something like-my anger is intensely private, and so is my grief? Would you appreciate the fact that I do not bawl my lungs out because I cannot be like countless others? But that is not really the point. The point is that suddenly I can no longer relate to terms that I have always acquainted myself with. Responsible, understanding and logical to a certain extent. To you perhaps I revealed the wrong side of the dreamer. And tonight I realize that I have nothing in common with who I was just a few months back. I am lost. I can’t seem to make sense of my own logical constructs. I can’t seem to tell you that I am not angry that you attended a friend’s birthday, but I am ashamed that I can’t do a few tasks on my own without your promised presence by my side. I am crippled and I won't do anything about it. I am a crybaby, a monstrous clingy old nag, and silent. Wish I could learn to swear with élan. I’d be Caliban! What more can you expect from a once self assured being who is now reduced to an immature selfish idiot? I don’t know how many have felt the sharp sting so deep inside that it hurts to even moan. So I survive, listening to the omnipresent old brag of my heart, I am I am I am, and like a fickle child given to tantrums, I pick up the phone every few minutes and keep hoping against hope, that perhaps this once I shall be calm. Perhaps this once, my nerves won’t give up. And see, what a cripple I am, begging for pity on a bloody blog! This is the worst bout of identity crisis ever. Muttering hello and goodbye a thousand times over within five minutes. But just for once, for once, I’d like that old confidence back. The self assurance I never thought I had until I lost it. This is like seeing your insides cleave into perfect halves. Aren’t people supposed to get what you mean just like that? Isn’t understanding all about that gut feeling? Then why does it make me so miserable?

Deliver this to Caliban

2008-08-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Recalcitrant Caliban,

Thought I’d let you know

Miranda utters curses

with your flair these days.

Strange.

I always thought

she’d make a perfect princess.

She often tells me,

Father, your brave new world

has let me down.

Ferdinand has his court,

and I’m just a souvenir

from the island he holds his own,

the island, once your kingdom,

is his by right, or so he says,

the island, once my home,

is but a thinning plot-device

for him.

The tempest is not mentioned

in those pithy measured sentences

he metes out.

I smile at his people,

they aren’t mine. Here, everyday

is a tempest

for I’m Ferdinand’s creature

deformed and defiled,

yet, he whispers softly at night-

his fingers gripping my neck

firmly, cautiously,

I gave you a brave new world

Miranda, look and be awed

I saved you from yourself

Miranda,

so smile, Miranda, smile.

Monstrous Caliban,

with regret,

I shall send

some ancient magic

her way to starve her

bursting insides,

stitch her gaping heart

now raw,

soon deadened,

and pitch her into darkness

again.

If she rises from the sea,

she’ll take shelter

within your rock.

2008-08-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

yes, i am getting lousier when it comes to digital artwork. did this ages ago and i don't know why on earth i am posting this at all. be kind with comments. thanks XD

both hands

2008-08-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

- ani difranco

i am walking
out in the rain
and i am listening to the low moan
of the dial tone again
and i am getting
nowhere with you
and i can't let it go
and i can't get through...

the old woman behind the pink curtains
and the closed door
on the first floor
she's listening through the air shaft
to see how long our swan song can last
and both hands
now use both hands
oh, no don't close your eyes

i am writing
graffiti on your body
i am drawing the story of
how hard we tried
i am watching your chest rise and fall
like the tides of my life,

and the rest of it all
and your bones have been my bedframe
and your flesh has been my pillow
i am waiting for sleep
to offer up the deed
with both hands

in each other's shadows we grew less and less tall
and eventually our theories couldn't explain it all
and i'm recording our history now on the bedroom wall
and when we leave the landlord will come
and paint over it all

and i am walking
out in the rain
and i am listening to the low moan of the dial tone again
and i am getting nowhere with you
and i can't let it go
and i can't get through

so now use both hands
please use both hands
oh, no don't close your eyes
i am writing graffiti on your body
i am drawing the story of how hard we tried

hard we tried
how hard we tried

***

I couldn't help but post this. thank you weevil girl for asking me
to browse through her lyrics whenever
i had time to spare.

:)

2008-07-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

hiatus. again. i'm sorry.

2008-06-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Fragile. Handle with care.

Instructions boldly set in red letters over the many boxes that I have lugged across all the cities I chose to breathe in.

Put your hand inside a box and close your eyes. The first thing you fish out of it happens to be my first book of nursery rhymes illustrated with animals against a blue backdrop, dog-eared and much loved, usually held upside down and read with animated pleasure. Next, you find a beautiful red polka dotted dress, with white flowers (now yellow) drooping from a tiny belt. There are bits and pieces of broken glass from vases too delicate to survive the journey. There are many magazines, mostly Sanandas. Oh yes, Maa loved them. Some issues are missing, she tells you. Some paper cuttings and books the packers did not bother themselves with. Baba’s oldest briefcase, stashed with files. What are these things? You ask incredulously to a man who loves paperwork more than his morning cup of tea. Oh those, he sighs. Remember the share of land I was forced to sell a decade ago? I didn’t want to let go of it, I wanted to build a house for us. But I sold it, and all I have are these papers proving that I made a bad deal.

You might find a thin orange notebook I used once-upon-a-time. I have not chanced upon it yet. Go ahead and search. Hand it over to me once you find it. It has the first poem I ever wrote. Class three. A fight with Dada, and I end up spilling tears into my first poem. I don’t remember it properly, but I do recall the silliest lines of them all-

But, why why why/ When I cry?

Perhaps it was right then, that sadness became an essential part of everything I created. I shoved the copy into some corner of the cabinet, along with many other firsts. My first doodle, first fountain pen, and the first broken part of my first doll. My first set of colours, or rather, the ones I clearly remember, were grand. Camel 24 Oil Pastel Colours. I took them to school the next day, a place I hated as intensely as was humanly possible.

And somebody stole them.

No, I wasn’t given a 24 colour set again.

(12 colours will do just fine, said Maa.

You keep on losing things, she said. What happened to your identity card?

I lost it. I am sorry.

How can you lose something that is hung around your neck?

They wanted to see it. It was snatched away from me. Then they tore it.

Who they?

The students. They don’t like me. I am new here.

Then complain about it to your class teacher for God’s sake!

She doesn’t like me.

Why?

Naamer maney boltey parini ager din. (I couldn’t explain the meaning of my name.)

Did she ask you to explain it?

Yes.

What did you say?

I told her that it doesn’t mean anything. Why did you give me a name that doesn’t mean anything?

Of course it means something! I don’t know for sure. Oh I just read the name somewhere and I liked it. Schools these days, they interfere e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e…)

Are you done yet?

Oh those. Yes, Jack Dawson and Titanic. Old posters those, I’ll throw them away later. We have had enough of peeking into boxes for the time being. Sometimes these cardboard pieces can’t really bear the weight of your dreams. They sag and droop, and leave marks on the marble floor you have just polished. So we move out of the freshly painted rooms and walk.

Mild autumn sun.

Rain dusted roads. I look at my footsteps, and the washed lane sparkles like never before. A regular boy across the road leans towards a glass window. I ask you to notice the lopsided grin and school boy eyes. He is flushed with pleasure with every sound he picks up on the bends, and so are you. I’d understand once I’m done with the boxes back home.

I don’t like strangers as a rule. So I politely scrape their last words off my plate. I’ll get used to this, I tell you, once I unpack.

Now you know who’s fragile.

Handle with care.

another poem for alleyways

2008-06-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

That walk ended in familiarity

(A cigarette for you madam?)

We entered the entrails

of the city, here

the narrow alleyways

clasp close the vinyl records

of yesteryears.

Traipsing

over cobblestones

in this summer heat,

all I wanted

was vocabulary.

Soon, I’d hunger

for apt verses

to lock in such an afternoon.

(And I needed a bit of rhyme

for lines one could sing.)

I have stopped penning

poetry, you know.

Everytime I write

I peel you apart.

Naked outlandish eyes

skim through you

with every ink scrawl.

Yet, one must make

some space

to hold in the last hours

of daylight.

random clicks

2008-05-15T11:03:00.000-07:00

something I drew on adobephotoshop. and i named it Obhimaan, just like that.

Rebecca

2008-05-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

(On remembering Daphne du Maurier quite suddenly)

Maxim de Winter,

I need to ask you today

did Rebecca win again?

I cannot find the book,

but I must remember

and like a stranger’s

whetted curiosity,

I need to know

more about those

neatly filed letters

she signed with her

imposing slanting R.

So I crawl into every frame

I can recall from the

once-read book,

like a persistent shadow

you cannot sever.

Manderley

with its fumes

of unkempt gardens

had promised a new beginning.

And here, you said,

words seldom matter,

shapes do.

And I named the

shape I met on

a sudden afternoon

Rebecca.

Like a glove

the name fit.

Maxim, you ask me

To hold on,

like a child

tied to a kite

spread against the sky.

A human butterfly.

But soon, Manderley

was licked by flames,

burning down

all the assurances

ever made.

Maxim de Winter,

I need to ask you today,

didn’t Rebecca win again?

The Mirror

2008-04-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Her breath misted the glass, and her lips left a heart shaped blur. Nothing that cannot be wiped away. We talk through mirrors every day, recreating the magic of the Lady of Shalott.

‘She shouldn’t have died’, she says. ‘It was a beautiful death however, was it not? Ophelia-like.’

‘Yes, that was the curse placed on the Lady. Ophelia’s death was mysterious and surreal, like a dream.’

‘What do you call it… poetic justice?’

‘Maybe. Yes. Yes, I think so.’

‘A man’s death won’t be that… touching. I mean I cannot imagine Hamlet floating down the river, borne up by his garments’, she smiles slyly.

‘Why are we talking about death?’

‘Oh I don’t know. To me death is but a concept. When you die, I vanish. That’s all.’

I smile too. A thunderstorm is raging outside, shattering some distant window. She moves her chair and tries to see the razor-sharp lightning streaking the sky.

‘Doesn’t rain too often these days, isn’t it? Once in a while Nature storms down and shows that she exists, strong and virginal. It scares me at times. The wind howls you say (I cannot hear it from my side of the mirror), almost like a vehement denial to all that has been wrought by man. Shows you your limits, sternly, awe inspiringly.’ She pulls back the curtains like I do and lets the rain inside.

‘What a pity you can’t hear the wind or feel the chilly air… and it smells great too. There are no pines in this part of the country but I can smell young green pine leaves’, I tell her.

‘Well there are limits to being an image, you know. I understand everything you say but I feel nothing. It is like delving into your mind, flipping through files of information you have stored there and knowing what you are talking about, without of course having experienced it. Just as there is no pleasure, there is no pain. To me they are thoughts. If you could live like I do, you’d survive out there. Would you mind getting a cup of tea and a cigarette? I am getting a headache.’

I am back within a couple of minutes and she has been waiting patiently, though her eyes are a tad swollen. ‘It is the headache’, she mutters, ‘Go on, light the cigarette.’

She exhales the smoke, watching the white patterns diffusing into thin air, in spirals and curls. We are silent for a moment.

‘Remember the day we first talked? You jumped out of your skin with fear.’ She laughs loudly and shrilly.

‘You scared me; I was just talking to myself in the mirror. Lots of people do that, though they seldom acknowledge it’, I say.

‘Yes, if you say so. Well, what were we talking about just now…death, right? Are you afraid of death?’ Her eyes twinkle with humour.

‘I don’t know. I hope I die suddenly though. I won’t be able to stand prolonged illness.’

‘We’ll die together then. In my case, I simply vanish, cease to exist any longer. However, I’ll disappear only in your absence. Your death is mandatory to my not being here. Poof!’ she squealed in delight. I do not find it a charming thought so I turn away from her and towards the red sky. ‘This reminds me of the twilights in Shimla’, I tell her. ‘The sun would drop like an orange ball behind the iron railings every evening, while I sat silently on one of the many wooden benches lining the street.’

‘Why did you return?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That is your problem. You hardly know anything. You live in a bubble, taking pleasure in dissociating yourself from reality and being sensitive about all that manages to slip through that bubble. Ahh!’ the last sip of tea was sipped and she looked disgruntled. ‘Well, can’t you be more like me? Decisive and indifferent?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘I knew it. You can’t control anything. Not even me, and I am your image. I live off you; I replenish myself through you everyday, and yet I am my own person.’ She rattles on.

I do not answer her. I am thinking about Shimla and its long winding roads. I think of the shy woman who would get me my breakfast every morning and of her child who slipped her fingers into mine and watched the sun drop behind the railings every evening, I never knew her name. I remember the charming professor who took classes in the open field teaching us Shakespeare, and I remember snowflakes hardening slowly overnight. Sometimes we walked over to the picturesque temple, treading softly on the steep staircase, imbibing some calm and warmth from the air scented with incense sticks and we rang the bells…

‘Can you hear me? I was saying that you should stay put here. You have your job and a respectable salary. All you need to do is harden a bit. You are almost there… just some more effort, a few more late nights. You can do it.’

‘I know my limits, that’s one thing as you rightly said, Nature has taught me.’ I retort.

‘Ah. Yes, I had forgotten my words. But what I meant was-’

‘And you say you will disappear only when I die?’ I ask. She looks baffled with the diversion.

‘Yes, of course’

‘That is not mandatory. You can vanish even while I breathe. Like right now.’ An unsettling calm had overwhelmed me. The air though chilly (she couldn’t feel it) was taut.

‘Don’t be silly, that is not possible. You die, I die. Not vice versa, and definitely not-I die-you survive.’

‘I survive,’ I say drawing out the syllables as if I were etching them in the space between us, tasting each word, and I touched the mirror (she touched it too), ‘but you can die. Vanish if you like it better that way.’

She smiles uncertainly, sprouting her theories in a slightly trembling voice. I have stopped listening, and I hurl the empty cup. It shatters the screen and she vanishes.

...

One postcard lovesong

2008-03-29T08:32:00.001-07:00

Your name slides off my tongue

smoothly, sleekly

like velvet curtains

draping the dark stage

we stepped down from,

but I don’t recall the

sound of your name, I say.

It doesn’t stir up

any mornings of thickened

spring you speak of.

A mystery colours you

orange,

like a sphinx,

and you claim with tired smiles

that I have once

held onto you with

eagle claws,

breathing down

the scent of pressed roses

on new purple bruises,

you say, that I have often

attempted to fill up the

clear spaces of your eyes

with bubbled streams

of fantasies.

With my mind

like a slate wiped clean,

let us speculate

upon the past

once more,

and I imagine

your lips wet with fresh

summer rain, I imagine

clasped fingers

draining the little

remaining warmth of

our numb bodies,

our shadows lit with

fires from rumbling thunders

across blind lanes,

I imagine your whispers

shivering against my sleeve

with all its spilled tea stains,

careless kisses

lining the fringe of the

lack within.

Let us then slip into

our fifteen year old selves

stealing into balmy rooms

with my prison songs

and your guitar

making music and love

in the same rushed fervent breath,

you say.

You allow me to touch

this face I cannot place

until you ask about my long absence

and my make-believe

adolescent love

bleeds.

I blindfold your ready eyes

and escape through the window-

the city with its

dust trailing jaws

comes alive to take me in.

Kingdoms

2008-03-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

The king has no memory
that we were robbed
of metaphors.

Dense amnesia envelops
the slave-child.
The present

would soon be lived through
(but he’d forget).
And the kingdom

has guided channels
serving anaesthetic
to a select few

who feel.

Today, unguarded,
at sundown fled
prisoners

of war
into forests
bearing familiar names

on raw, peevish barks.
Perhaps the Druids
still pray for us.

inklines

2008-03-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Winter Jazz

[...inside the giant clock

sits his mother,

cigarette in hand

and unicorns in the eye;

she died sitting-

the mother of all winter stories...]

I did the artwork for this poem by Inam Hussain Mullick. Click on the picture if you wish to read the poem.

Float!

2008-02-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

Here's introducing a sparkling new blog :D

This one shall have personal, i.e. mostly random meandering meaningless posts. I felt the need for a separate blog a long time back... especially because I avoid (ah well, usually at least) putting up anything that is not erm... art(?) on this blog. I have my doubts regarding the regularity of the afore mentioned random meandering meaningless posts, but hey, I promise to give it a shot. And be peppy and charming and light and frothy and notcynical. Wellllll... that might be promising a bit-too-much.

So, scoop up your icecream and some fizz... go Float!

Skin

2008-01-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

The bell-boy stepped into my rented room

of elbow-brushed windows and I asked him,

Why does this hotel

smell of sunlight

so soon?

He pointed to a painting.

He said he knew.

So the rumours

of our sweat still remain,

clinging to the silvered frame

hung on this wall,

and the canvas feels like

a second skin,

Skin, I said, that was caught

on the corner of your bed,

old lover.

Skin, I repeated, that was

no longer fresh,

and I surely left it behind.

Yes,

I have seen your nakedness before,

and today once more

I feel it in these disturbed colours,

but who stands hidden

in the corner of the painting

possibly reciting songs from memory

to the red sparse tree, and making

the world believe that he

loves and exists

like the poor light

filtering in and drawing his shadow.

(He cannot be you,

because you believed in night

and miracles, only,

and your tinted glasses changed

the way you looked

at the world and me.)

And while I lean through

the frame, trying to

paralyse the night sky,

letting down my hair

like a shadow

of some fairytale,

for you,

my grey lover,

asking you to climb out over the edge

your smell stalks away into

the chalk-laden streets

far, far away from this painting

while your old whisper rings,

Girl, you said, make me violet,

like the sky in your pocket

and I will be your poem in death.

Then the bell-boy murmured

that he knew all about poetry

and he granted me

deliverance, suddenly.

I’ll take you, he said, to Bluebeard’s Room

if only you could pledge

to set free the demon of scents.

But I could only promise him

my name.

He must have agreed for soon

I let his steps roam,

as freely as his voice

till I entered the room

of blueprints and bones.

Silently,

the sea seeped in through the floor,

you crept in too, dusting chalk dust

from your clothes.

And I knew you wanted a reward

for your presence.

As the music ceased in your boundary

of blue walls, I lie down again

for I have transgressed,

and my slashed wrist must feed

the dried blood on your sheets.

Lover, I said, you must know

my skin is scarred now

and I cannot leave it behind.

Phew!

2007-12-01T04:16:00.000-08:00

I waged a two hour long war against Blogger and its templates. Needless to say I lost.

I hate technology.

Letters

2007-11-16T04:56:00.000-08:00

- I’ll write.

- Will you bring back prayers for me?

- I’ll write everyday.

- Yes, but will you bring back some bells too?

- Keep an eye on the mail. You tend to forget.

- You won’t bring back prayers it seems. Will you bring back letters then?

- I will send letters!

- Oh. Do send some prayers too. And silver bells.

- I will bring your bells, I promise I will.

- Small bells, but pure silver. They must tinkle sweetly, for they must compensate for everything I miss.

- Anything else?

- Can I send letters too?

***

On nights when the chorus puts an end to silence,
and their song unfolds on her wooden desk
she writes a thousand letters.

…I have heard that letters lose their way,
trickling into the hands of strangers…

And in those letters she said-
‘Bring back for keepsake
the muted prayers of the monastery
and the mist-like swirling colours
of the snow drenched hills.
Colours that would fill my palette…
for in splattered strokes your portrait stands-
unfinished.’

On certain nights of counting blessings
and remembering prayers,
nights of playing out desires-
the desire of clear voices and ink,
she writes a thousand letters.

...letters that do lose their way
losing themselves in the yawning strangeness
of strange men in distant cities…

***

Splishy Splashy Colours

2007-11-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

'The Gypsy's Wife'... This one is for Leonard Cohen.

'...whose darkness deepens in her arms, just a little more...'
This too is for Cohen.

'Purple'/'A Different Sky'

'Reflections'
....

A little surprise for my readers :-)

Happy imagining!

(note: All of the above have been done with the help of Adobe PhotoShop, and of course- Cohen!
Click on them to see a larger-and better-version.)

Strange Cities

2007-10-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

When your mouth starts tasting like the city, you know it is time to leave.

Time to leave, you muse, as you trace the thick coat of grime, dust and parched gaping streets that have made their way into your mouth, with the tip of your dry tongue. You look at your callused feet and wonder, to whom do they belong…and as you run streaming water through those cropped tresses you wonder why it smells like tar…

Yet, you step out to brave another day of strange faces and myths. Evening descends and on the bus-ride back home you trace the thick coat of grime and dust with the tip of your tongue and again you decide to leave the city. A slice of emerald green enters the square frame of your spectacles leaving you startled. Oh yes, the sky still exists.

Instead of going back to the four-walled home you inhabit these days, you enter a little café on Park Street and after deliberately prolonged sips at a simmering cup of coffee, you take out one of those black notebooks you carry to write little stories in. That was when you heard them, I believe. Two young women sat opposite your table and carried on a hushed conversation, the words found their way to your table of polished wood and yellow mugs.

-She is me. She is me in another city. Not here, not in Calcutta. In Calcutta I am myself. But look at her, all alone and wretched and sad!

-She does not look wretched, perhaps she is one of those people who enjoy being alone.

-No! This loneliness is forced down your throat. This loneliness is that of strange cities and strange nights. I can be found in Mumbai, sitting with a diary, smoking innumerable cigarettes and drinking steaming cups of coffee, counting calories, reading some odd, bright book that I had picked up from a nearby bookstore- in a café where people are busy sharing memories with someone or the other, in a city that revels in company…and me… I’m all alone. And loneliness feels like being drugged after a certain point of time…
That girl sitting in the corner of this busy café in Calcutta marked out by her short hair and notebook, with her coffee is my image. It almost feels like I have stepped outside my body to look at myself… I could amuse myself for hours on end. I could look at her and pretend that I am gazing at myself. Look at her efforts to appear comfortable, look at her finishing her work on time, trying to make the first and last sip of her coffee last- last for hours on end. Clutching the corners of the table when it is time to close the shutters and then she might step out in the rain with her umbrella of muted colours. And pretend that she likes being lonely, pretend that the sad lost gaze of her eyes only adds to her charm. Yet she knows, she knows that if she disappears one night, disappears under the glare of a thousand headlights, disappears in the long drawn peals of the church bell… no one will miss her. Even if she screams till her voice decides to break.
None will notice the translucent figure of a solitary woman on these streets… not even if you walk the same streets a thousand times over, not if you buy your newspaper from the same man on the corner every evening, not if you throw some money into the crooked bowl of the dozing beggar every night. I do not blame them in Mumbai… and I’m sure she too doesn’t , here, in Calcutta; such are the customs of strange cities. In such outlandishness we fade away… and through our skin they see the coloured panels of the shop, they see the rain through our hair and the stars through our eyes, we cease to be substantial to them.

And when you walked back to your tiny apartment that night, the stranger’s voice crept into your ears repeating itself like some unending echo, persuading you to believe that you were indeed translucent, that your skin was stretched tautly encompassing the entire city, stretched like a canvas, and that you ceased to be solid while succumbing to that intense pull…

You repeated your well-rehearsed prayer while kneeling beside your bed at night. The ground felt cold and hard, and your ankles seemed bound to some ancient stone, and a line slipped on its own into your prayer (a prayer usually preserved for forgiveness, kindness, pity and love). You heard yourself say, above the din of the stranger’s voice you had carried home in that black notebook, “Make me opaque.”

Next morning I did not see you step out to brave the gray morning.

You left the city on that very night of voices and answered prayers I heard, and that they call you a green gypsy these days.

Tagged! (Yes, again.)

2007-09-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

Tagged by lost poet.

Here goes my best-test effort : P
heh.

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.
Near my right elbow. Fell down while playing badminton.
Erm, actually was pushed by someone who was playing badminton. (I was loitering around).

2. What does your phone look like?
It is black and golden. Looks very nice. Though some say it looks awful, I say it is sexy and wunnerful.
*applauds and cheers the 6080*

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?
Blue and red paint. There used to be a few framed paintings- brilliantly done, by Dada.

4. What is your current desktop picture?
Dancers waltzing, in black and white. Finished doing it a few nights ago on 'Paint'. It is kinda nice.
: )

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Yes, I do. There is no reason not to.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
Peace of mind, coherence and colours.
Sigh.

7. What time were you born?
Maybe at 2.10 am. I'm not sure. Had a fight with Maa right now, so cannot ask.
: |

8. Are your parents still together?
O yes. Definitely!

9. Last person who made you cry?
Myself, I think. Actually some old letters, not a person.

10. What is your favourite perfume / cologne?
Hugo Red.

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?
Groomed hair, doesn't matter whether long or short. Oh yes, and floppy too :-D
And eyes? Dreamy! Maddeningly dreamy...eyes that speak of blue lagoons and charming twilights...

12. What are you listening to?
Leonard Cohen. 'Famous Blue Raincoat'

13. Do you get scared of the dark?
I rather like it these days. It ain't that scary when one is used to it. Even when it is within.

14. Do you like painkillers?
I do not 'like' them, but I DO take them if necessary.

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
Um. Yes.

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
Chocolate fudge and ginger ale. : D
And I do have the ginger ale now. Yeay!

17. Who was the last person who made you mad?
Maa.
: x

18. Who was the last person who made you smile?
Maa again. ; )

This tag goes out to anyone who wants to do this.

Pigeons

2007-09-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

At times I wish the pen would run away with my soul.

Sit in the shade of green apple trees and conspire to write stories. Hundreds of them, thousands of them! And bring them back to me to read in this very little room that now encases absolute emptiness… carrying them in the guise of shadows during thunderstorms, bringing along lemon tea and rain. It would not have mattered to me if those stories had been only about the sea and the moon or gilt edged paintings and waltzes. It still would have been a part of me, a slice of my spirit.
Sometimes I wish the pen would run away with my soul and visit the life of paintings, it should seep into a Picasso or a Dali and proceed to tell silk-spun tales of melting clocks and sleeping girls, or picnics under greenish skies. I would not want honest answers. Never! There must be speculation and fabrication and spinning of the silk and clocks till the pen should tire awhile. And the soul shall write of hissing bonfires too and tales that were strung around them, of the charm of a chance reflection in a mirror, of murmurs and of puddles in summer and coloured umbrellas…

But now I travel back to this room, dislodged from the mental escapes that open eyes dream about. There is nothing that should inspire art here, it is small and shabby and distastefully furnished in yellows and oranges by the lady who lived here and then rent it out. I wonder whether it is this very room that stifles the art I so often dream of, whether the very smell of desolation shrinks my soul to nothing more than a pulsating beat that does not skip.

On mornings after a hard night’s toil at this wooden desk, I silently creep up to the huge window on the opposite wall that opens out to reveal a view of the grey sleeping city. The sight remains the same almost always. The street lamps yet to be turned off and the roads glistening from last night’s fog. The huge chimneys lining the sky, not yet pouring out the dismal fumes of grey to add to the dismal city that slept... Slept when it lay at night, slept when it woke- slept through a thousand stillbirths at one go.

From my window on the second floor one could look down to see the neighbourhood of some poor dears- living in the kind of poverty that is defined by wealth, or the lack of it. They seemed rather satisfied with their hard wrought fate. Happy in their smog brushed faces, in their dirty rags, in their empty bowls which if clean reflected their smog brushed faces in turn. Crumbling roofs and crumbling walls mattered not to them, they were happy in their belief that their own roof shall never fall.
It was while inspecting the gathering pigeons on one such roof that I first saw them both.

She gathered her skirt around her knee like a princess and broke her loaf of bread in two. To the boy she gave her larger piece and urged, “Eat”. The boy’s face must have lit up I believed (for I could not see very clearly from my window- just the back of his head when he accepted the piece). He broke the larger piece in two, and fed one half to the pigeons that had gathered with the morn around them.

She looked accusingly, first at him- then at the pigeons that gobbled up greedily all that was tenderly given by that small soft palm, before breaking her already halved piece in two. And again she handed the larger share to the boy, saying, “You eat!” with a look of extreme indignation. The little boy gurgled with innocent laughter and ate his bread happily, with occasioned sips at some tea from a clay pot which he shared with the girl. She seemed happy too.

The pigeons rested on their roof, pecking at minuscule crumbs that had slipped from their fingers, while their laughter shooed away the assembled gloom. The morning felt blue for the first time in ages, even brighter when the streetlamps eventually went off. The white breasted pigeons too perhaps smiled before flying away to a clear summer morning.

'Song'

2007-09-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

While music merges with wilderness and hills
and cries in caves of scattered light…

where distant seas churn songs and winter
in the moist cradle of blue recesses…

there we might search for you in specks of
stealthily disappearing spirits…

And your fingers now gleam
with untamed imaginings-
of buried souls and restless colours.

We sleep while you dream…

For you shall rise like the moonlit mist
on the wings of perfumed nights,
and embrace miracles…

(This was originally written for Inam. Poet and Friend.)

Tagged!

2007-08-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

I have been tagged by Arse Poetica, and hence this pretty nice (albeit narcissistic) effort:

If I were a beginning, I would be: ‘The night is fractured/ and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance…’
If I were a month, I would be: February
If I were a day of the week, I would be: Friday
If I were a time of day, I would be: Twilight
If I were a planet, I would be: Saturn
If I were a season, I would be: Monsoon
If I were a sea animal, I would be: Sea horse
If I were a direction, I would be: Neither here, nor there
If I were a piece of furniture, I would be: A small desk. Solid oak. Beside an open window.
If I were a sin, I would be: Lust
If I were a liquid, I would be: Darjeeling tea
If I were a fraud/scare, I would be: Nightmares… probably of locked rooms and snakes.
If I were a gem, I would be: Emerald.
If I were a tree, I would be: A striking silhouette at twilight and dawn…
If I were a tool, I would be: Paintbrush. Or a fountain pen.
If I were a flower/plant, I would be: Jasmine.
If I were a kind of weather, I would be: Stormy.
If I were a musical instrument, I would be: Piano.
If I were an animal, I would be: I’d rather be a goldfish.
If I were an emotion, I would be: Rage.
If I were a vegetable, I would be: Spinach.
If I were a sound, I would be: The roaring sea or the crashing waves.
If I were an element, I would be: Water
If I were a car, I would be: Cherry red. White seats.
If I were a song, I would be: Take This Waltz
If I were a food, I would be: Chocolates. Warm and melting.
If I were a place, I would be: Lakshadweep.
If I were a material, I would be: Cotton
If I were a taste, I would be: Bitter-sweet.
If I were a scent, I would be: The musty smell of yellowed pages.
If I were a religion, I would be: Creating Utopia.
If I were a sentence, I would be: ‘Time, time, time/ See what's become of me’
If I were a body part, I would be: Eyes
If I were a facial expression, I would be: Brooding
If I were a subject in college, I would be: Literature
If I were a shape, I would be: A triangle, with a circle around it.
If I were a quantity, I would be: Sold in pretty glass bottles.
If I were a colour, I would be: Blue
If I were a thing, I would be: Pretty old and worn. Antique!
If I were a landmass, I would be: Snow drenched Kanchenjunga.
If I were a book, I would be: The Bell Jar.
If I were a monument, I would be: A temple in ruins.
If I were an artist, I would be: M.C. Escher
If I were a collection of poems, I would be: Anything by Lorca, Neruda, Hernandez or Plath.
If I were a landscape, I would be: A vista painting.
If I were a watch, I would be: Running behind time.
If I were God, I would be: Flooding the Earth again.
If I were a vowel, I would be: I
If I were a consonant, I would be: S
If I were a formula, I would be: Easy and ingenious.
If I were a Science, I would be: Mathematics
If I were a theory, I would be: Revised in a few years’ time.
If I were a famous person, I would be: Dead. Happily so…
If I were an electronic equipment, I would be: Run by a remote control, I guess.
If I were a sport, I would be: Um. No idea.
If I were a movie, I would be: The Sea Within
If I were a cartoon, I would be: One of the Ghostbusters
If I were an explorer, I would be: Sitting in my cabin drawing maps.
If I were a scientist, I would be: Einstein (That hair!)
If I were a relation, I would be: One who came once in a blue moon with loads of gifts from ‘Bilet’.
If I were a river, I would be: Moody.(The Pat Boone way... ooh yes!)
If I were intoxication, I would be: Praised by the likes of Coleridge.
If I were alone, I would be: Elated for a while, and then elation wears off to leave a nice, comforting void.
If I were a question, then I would be: Oh, tai bujhi?
If I were a hobby, I would be: Stocking a personal library with good books.
If I were a habit, I would be: Day-dreaming. Bitching (occasionally)
If I were an end, I would be: A swan-song.
If I were you, I would be: Still working a few things out. Then realize that I am (that is, you are) not worth it.

Most of my friends have been tagged already. So anyone who might want to do this- go ahead!

In Wine and Sin

2007-07-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

In wine and sin then shall we mix…
And revel in bottled sympathies.

While hope returns,
Among omens and neurosis-
And darkness curls in spirals
With nightmarish fantasies of love-

I bleed into another’s skin,
Shivering in a voyeur’s delight,
Scratching obscurity on surfaces
Of paper and minds-
I might tell you of my dreams.

…And here we pressed hands
Soaking in the warmth of blurred moons…
Mixed in crimson desires…

…So shall we rise again
From the ruins of your memory
Forging love from lost twilights…

And in those dreams you said-

I shall seep into the spirit
Of the troubadour who sang me to sleep.
I shall seep into the spirit
Of the prophet who kept me awake.

So Soft, This Goodbye...

2007-05-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

She slipped a piece of the dark night sky into her pocket, and lifted herself to the rain… she glided like a forest breeze, her arms outstretched, and her eyes wide shut, this was the first downpour of the season, and an end to all that had been…

10…9…8… “Are you enjoying this?” his eyes were earnest and questioning, perhaps the question was a ruse to hold her gaze, “Yes… I am…” a soft smile, a hidden sigh, 7…6…5…4… “Get ready now, it is almost here…” he pressed her hands and smiled…3…2…1… loud cheers and a hundred voices shouting ‘Happy new year…’ The lights blinded both of them and then began the fireworks, the sky blazed like a magician’s cloak and the purple folds of the night melted away…

The smell of wet earth inched its way into her skin, into her hair… it spread magic on her heaving chest, and she swayed herself to the beat of the raindrops as she sashayed down the street in a trance…

The cigarette smoke dimmed his face, dimmed her sight, dimmed the voices that surrounded the two, the drink sparkled like a diamond sky, the smell of love and lust, the whiff of momentary lapse of reason in the realm of thoughts, and there were smiles and ‘thank yous’ when the sky seeped in through the dusty floor and enveloped their corner table to hide them behind a cloud of smoke rings, behind verses, behind the laughter of the invisible God who shielded them thus…

Not for once did she open her eyes; her naked feet were caked with mud… the street lamps gaped at her dancing form, sketching patterns of surreal imaginings, while the throbbing rain merged easily into darkness and light and the lake was lit with the golden daggers of reflecting stars… and she relived her past.

And she talked of broken rainbows and poisoned dreams, of that circus to which she had recently been, where the fire rings had singed the tigers and made the clowns weep, of the paper roses she had made for him…
His eyes seemed earnest as he drank it in, a smile hovering on the corners of his lips, he sighed and patted her clenched hands and he too began to speak, he spoke of dreams that had clung to her lashes when morning peeped in through her curtains last day, of clowns who rode the cycling elephant, of the paper roses that could not be pressed…

She winced for a moment as her fingers traced a purple wound along her neck, and she tilted her head, letting the rain wash the dried blood as she shivered in paroxysmal bliss. A lightening streaked the sky’s womb and she looked on with her elusive eyes, a shadow lurking beneath her iris of madness…

“But it was not love” she protested, without adding a reason to her argument
“I surrendered in the haze of the moonlight to the painter’s whims… shallow and unreal… ah, caring for you reduced me to being this beast of burden…”
He looked on with confusion firmly in place, no disgruntled sighs, and no sound of his broken heart echoed in her mind, perhaps because it did not break, even as he percieved a part of his life breaking into uncertain fragments… “But when did I burden you…”
She cut him off with that familiar wave of hand and spoke in an uninterrupted flow of words, she cried, “What do want to know? How loving you drenched me cold sweat all night, when I might have died for the want of a little warmth? How loving you left me empty, vacant…and I kept praying for a gesture of reciprocation, an assurance of what I thought had been love…"
His tousled hair drifted into oblivion as his words rang in the disturbed air, “How could I know… these words never crossed your lips before…”
“And they do not matter anymore…” Her lips parted in a relieved smile. “What designs did you have for me? Or does my imagination lend fire to the starry nights… What does it matter anymore indeed?” The words died a soft death on her lips and she left as she had come to him, carried in a poisoned dream… reducing him to a vague level of familiarity…

“But I am happy tonight…” she whispered to the drenched circle of lights, she caressed the self inflicted wound, a sign of memories that could have been, and she slipped a piece of the dark night sky into her pocket and lifted herself to the rain…

Not Yet Dead...

2007-03-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

I could not save her.

At night when the sky is lined with broad strokes of the darkest charcoal, and sketchy shadows form under the street lamp… I hear her cry like a haunted soul; she calls out to me in a cold-blooded shriek, her repeated screams splitting my core into pieces of hideous self-pity…

“Mother! Don’t you love me anymore? Won’t you save me? Come fast!”

I did not betray you, sweet child… I had no place to hide your little body… forgive me, won’t you? If only I could hide you in my empty womb… warm and safe…if only I could place you in my vacant eye… if only…

Yet I hear her sob, “Will you let me die then mother? They are burying people into knee deep graves… and trampling on those not yet dead…”

I have searched for you in vain for days and nights, and at last the rain dissolved all hopes. Why didn’t you return to me little one? I have lined your pillows with down feather… the hearth is yet to cool down… we will play your game of hide and seek later…

And she wouldn’t come. Out of the darkness I heard her reply, “But I can’t stop the pain mother… my eyes, they hurt…they burn and no one gives me water here, not a soul left to help. You told me once that God doesn’t harm the faithful lot… then I shall be safe. They won’t be able to push me into the pond- several of us have drowned there already… I have seen their bodies, pierced with bullets and charged with sticks…”

Muffled sobs rack my frame.
I asked you to hide somewhere, I asked you to run. Why didn’t you listen to your mother? And now I survive, while you are gone forever…

“I dragged my limp body to the fields mother, but you were not there to guide… they had forced you into that house, tearing your sari into pieces, reducing it to rags… hitting your swollen face till blood oozed from the corners of your mouth… you asked me to run, you asked me to hide… but where could I go?

The muddy lanes now wore a garb of sickly red, and I saw men digging graves, their faces twisted with wild glee. I escaped that gruesome end too… but how far could I run mother? I must have fallen in that field, while the world seemed to hiss and glow… spinning in circles… round and round…
They set me on fire… remember this dress? The flower-pattern you made for me… I could not salvage this while I burnt…”

I did find you sweetheart, in someone’s field. Your face charred and black… a bullet that had pierced your weak chest and a mangled body which no one could recognize… it had been days… they could not bury you alive, nor could they drown you like countless others… they set fire to your little frame and watched your life ebb away… my phantom child…

I have summoned the ghosts of the past to keep me company sweet one… while I covered you with a cloth caked with my blood, and once again your blood mixed with mine… without the umbilical cord this time. Should I hold you against my withered chest? Does that lend you comfort anymore? I pressed my ears to your distorted mouth, to your dead tongue, and waited for your response…