The Mirror

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

I hate technology.