Tagged!

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

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...

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...

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…

Silver streams…

The water danced around her feet, in streams that meandered effortlessly… and it reminded me of wind chimes, hundreds of them, all dancing to the errant wind that threatened to rage on till its thirst subsided somewhere out in the sea, oblivious to elements, and hidden from human eyes.

Her soft laugh hung around us, perhaps separating us from the rest of human habitation. To me it seemed like a spell that would ensure something infinite… it would hold time back in crystal vials and pause this moment…

She drew figures on the sand with her toe, and the water would come time and again, erasing her initials, her footprints, throwing up shells that she would gather in the fold of her skirt to string them into chains… chains that would lie unused, gathering dust in some corner of her room… but she collected them merrily, singing a tune that I had never heard before…

At night I found her at the small desk in our room. She seemed to write something with passion, her pen seldom stopped for an occasional pause. The words appeared to flow and countless thoughts filled those crisp white pages of her diary.

She would never let me read what she wrote in that red diary of hers… yet at the darkest hour of night she seated herself at the desk, a little flickering candle by her side. She would pen down something and then look outside and sigh. The trees seemed to reply with a hushed whisper, and that soothed her. She would blow out the candle and tread her way back to her bed, dreaming perhaps of the silver streaked ripples that danced when she stepped into the sea…

She assured me that she never craved for wings. That her world was wine-coloured and she felt music all around… and at times she caught herself in those rhythms and let herself be swayed…

That was all I knew when she took her life, leaving behind a red diary for me. Allowing me to glimpse the world encased in that book, a world she had guarded jealously…
I leafed through those neatly filled pages she had never let me see.

Perhaps she wrote of summer dreams or sparkling wine that passed those lips… perhaps she wrote of the salty sprays of the sea… she might have mentioned the troubadour’s song we heard last year… of halogen lights seen on city trips and the fisherman’s boat she loved…

With all these lingering thoughts I opened her diary. And she wrote:

‘The salt here hangs like a shroud over me… I wash myself again and again, yet the white salt bonds with my skin, blocking my pores, my soul… if only I could peel off my skin… I need a breath of spring, a breath of green… I need the hills!’

‘I smell death here. The prophet said it too last year and in words of crimson fire he sang of the rain of blood to follow. All is decaying. He whispered the truth… he told me:

‘‘And you will suffer for what never belonged to you. They’ll hang you on twigs of dead trees in the market… and they’ll wrench your soul and see it smolder like molten lead… they will cut out your tongue too, making sure there are no more dissenters… yet cries emitted from hollow hearts and echoed in the dead air… they chop off dead tongues…”

I must set you free…’

I turned over the pages in a trance; almost afraid to believe what I witnessed…
Was this brilliance or insanity?
It seemed impossible that she had harboured such thoughts in that little frame of hers, that she had carried words streaked with fire… I thought she was contented.
And I kept reading:

‘They are burning the flower shop, their crimson swords slash at your throat and a blood-laden whisper drops to the ground from your lips like those dewy petals do… the swords slash still…mercilessly, and blood pours in torrential streams… the shop at the corner now destroyed… my flowers too…’

‘Stabbed. Twenty-one times. And they blistered my soul with their fevered hands… he spelled out dreams for me to lend comfort… and gave me fresh roses. White, fresh, pretty roses. He tied them with a golden ribbon.
I tore the petals, one by one, and pressed them in my diary.’

‘But take me to the dark side of the moon, my house drenched in twilight caught unawares… and I’ll bring back silver showers… freezing brandishing swords and hanged men shall come back to life…’

She was my wife. A woman I thought I knew. I looked into the silver framed picture beside me and she smiled back. Yet I noticed the wedding band, too tight for her fingers, cutting into her delicate skin, I noticed the smile that seemed watery to my eyes now. Her locket was shaped like a maple leaf… ‘The hills’…I heard her cry now. And her eyes heavy with inherent sadness, a melancholy I had never seen… never tried to see…

Hesitantly I looked at the last entry on that page.

‘You remain blissfully ignorant another while,
And I crave for a little respite,
A little bliss myself...
You might never know-
Of the muffled sobs at night
As you lie asleep in a drunken torpor.
Tears stain letters written in ink…
So shall mine be rendered indecipherable?
Perhaps. Perhaps eyes unknown shall
Shall read over these and conjure up
Visions…

Silver streams of water… silver nooses around my neck… strung together with shells, and he too collects them for me… the choirs mourn… a last swan song for me.’

Ready to go...

She’d leave soon. Perhaps this is the last time we would be sitting here, in the feverish buzz of the almost decrepit canteen, sipping on a cup of soup… till the thin paper cup threatens to spoil it all by sagging under the pressure of your palm. Gloom hangs heavy here. And I could catch emotions from thin air… for the first time perhaps we forget to laugh. Or discuss something unimportant, irrelevant. Like the reason why you are leaving us behind. Or what would eventually happen to the boy you had a crush on, or why we always spoilt it all by laughing at him. The last time for the five of us.

I do not see you emote. Is it because you have always been the most sensible of the lot? Or is it because your new future beckons alluringly, and you would rather not be moved? I know not. None of us do… there are emotions too deep playing inside us.

The final words remain unspoken, even though we talk about the bag we promised you for your birthday, and the biriyani treat we were supposed to give. Then what did we not say?

We will miss you girl…

half drawn faces...

I gritted my teeth, and shielded myself against the cold, my fingers too numb to work anymore. Tears poured from my eyes as perhaps blood would from an open wound…yet blood flows for a reason. I shut my eyes tight, drew my legs against my chest, my chin resting on my knees and I rocked myself… softly to and fro, almost dreading the moment when long forgotten, dreaded memories would return to haunt me again. It was time they would arrive… the painting is finished… ready to be framed…and I kept softly rocking to and fro… that’s what ma did when I was young…

The wind shall whisper for you my child… and soothe you when distressed…your tears will cool their warmth when the breeze blows softly against your cheek…

Softly rocking to and fro…to and fro… I did not want to plunge into the depths of despair again… I did not want to feel its icy-cold grip on my neck… rocking to and fro still…
Ma… she’d hold me warm against her and pat so softly on my back…

The wind shall whisper for you my child…she whispered.

And then the silence was shattered by another voice…

Worthless creature he hissed…my child…he spat…to be a painter?! Never…never…

And I rocked on…my pale red shawl now turned crimson…a steady drip drip changed its hue…

Let her be what she wants to... she pleaded for me.

I wanted to paint…perhaps to escape the reality of this drab existence…to paint my canvas the way I could never colour life… I would paint skies of azure… golden eyes… winding lanes going nowhere… a lady’s face half sketched…

Never! She’d be a doctor… she’d be my dream… I have so many dreams yet to fulfill…he had shouted.

My faces are still obscure… despondent eyes…half drawn… masked faces… lurid lips…

Throw that cursed easel into the fire… and he destroyed my brushes that day.

Softly rocking to and fro…

The room seemed to have shrunk around me…stifling me… the single window still wide open…there I keep my colours, beside the window… my easel and a painting yet not dry.


I remained sitting there for a long time…and then I heard my labored breathing ease… and a sliver of light crossed the room… I stopped rocking then… and reached out towards my painting… a part of my soul encased in its layered colours… black…grey…blue…

Morning brought with it a fresh wave of sanity… panic and despair seemed to have disappeared with the stars that have always been deceptive to me… stars that misled… I wrapped the painting in crisp new paper and ready it stood to be framed.

I was free now… at least until I finished another piece… I knew that this depression would return in an even more appalling form next time… it happened every time I finished a painting…as soon as I rested my brush… as soon as there remained no more strokes I could confer upon my canvas…