Strange Cities

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.)

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

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'

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!

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…