I finally publish

Cosy in discomfort

2010-02-15T21:46:00.000-08:00

I lie
Nestled between the scars
Of yesterday and tomorrow.

These shoes are meant for shop windows

2009-11-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

So he bought new running shoes.

Out of shape he calls himself. Perfect is all I see when I look at him. But I get what he means. I'm the kind of wife who always understands- especially when I don't want to. He'll disagree on this. And I will agree with him.
See! No see? Look again.

He tells me, I'm gonna go running. Far and far and far. So far, I might not even come back.
He pretends not to see I am hurt. He's very good at that. Not seeing me.

I don't hear him go out in the morning. No sound of the lock falling in place that denotes sure exit.

So I wake up in total panic. My mind's been running to catch up with him already. And I lie awake waiting for him to come back.

What if he doesn't?

He does. He takes his time... as always. He loves to make me wait... as always.

Where do you get shoes that make someone run towards you?

When there is no call to wake up

2009-11-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

It was a Monday of sorts. Unformed completely. A little bit of the Sunday borrowed, reluctant to now part.

He wakes early everyday.

There was a time I used to rush to wake with him, my sleep trying to catch up with his. Then I gave up- I give up very easily. I wake to turn when he gets off the bed. I smile at his non seeing back. Its difficult even in hazy mornings to see how easy it is for him to walk away; no turns, no fond looks, no tender eyes.

I curl up the other way, the eternal companion of a pillow always on the other side; cold, pummeled hard and yet waiting.

I don't know why I do this. I might as well wake up.

But there are some days. After he walks around the frozen house, reads all the news that has already been made, puts the packet of milk on the kitchen counter and doesn't know what else to do while it thaws, that he comes back to me. Not exactly me. I have to work to not ruffle his ego and my sense of misplaced importance.

My mind is like an unfinished book; read and unread. By me even. Especially.

He walks over to the bed and tries climb into the blanket that is tightly wrapped around me. Its always a fight with me, even when I am pretending to sleep. I let him in or he lets himself in.

We both want to.

And then we both wake up.

Between nobody

2009-10-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

I plucked a silence from you
I plucked a silence from me
And entwined it into a conversation of sorts

Leaving myself behind

2009-10-28T00:10:00.001-07:00

For every step I take towards you
You take none
And so I take two back

For every step I take towards you
I walk further away from you.

Blue Melody

2009-02-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

It suddenly came upon me when we were in the auto. Like that. Some things happen like that you know.

I took a look at him and started to cry. Just like that.

He'd read somewhere that women were hysterical creatures. Men who write about women should be shot. And he was sure I fell in that classification firm. So he didn't seem too perturbed by it.

That just made me cry harder. What tears unseen worth anyway?

If he'd waited any longer, the auto driver would turned and offered me a sympathetic shoulder and that wouldn't just do. So he asks me, 'Why you crying?"

I never accept I cry and especially when I am.

"I'm not crying"
"Yes you are"
"I'm not"
"Yes you are"

What's the point of saying something we both know true anyway? So I go back to crying.

"So why you crying?"

It is with great reluctance I tell him my answer. Not that it matters much to him, but it sure does a lot to me. The weight of significance isn't uniform.

"I don't have any defences with you"

He doesn't say anything for a while. I look at him with tear filled eyes- he appears blurred. Am not sure exactly how far he is, but he appears blurred. I am sure exactly how far he is, a shoulder touching distance away, but he appears blurred.

"Why do you want them defences?"

That’s when I begin crying harder. Harder than the harder before.

His hand on my shoulder grips me firmer.

He reads the boards of the various shops we pass them by. One by one.

"Cell city"

"Juice wagon"

"Jolly tailors"

"Lovely snacks"

I stop crying and look at the names as he reads.

There is a blue cloth that flaps by the mirror in the auto. It makes a nice warm sound in the wind.

The next first time I meet you

2009-01-03T00:52:00.000-08:00

This is where I always wait for you. And I always wait.

I don't exactly know what it is I wait for. That first glimpse? That overwhelming feeling oh so inexplicable when I first lay my eyes on you? Or is it I wait for you to disappoint me by not coming? You buy that quiet certainty which is a recomposed emotion that I put out for you pretty effortlessly. I've become an expert at hiding my emotions. I'm becoming more of a woman everyday.

Every vehicle that pulls closer to the curb of my house, the eyes shine a lil more. So many vehicles pull closer to that curb... The eyes dim a lil with disappointment every time its not you. In those moments between anticipation and disappointment, I live. Life is a process of slow disenchantment. You don't think Sleeping Beauty ever regretted being kissed awake? She found comfort in the story that was her. Somewhere in it she held close the purpose of her existence.

I don't know the exact direction you will come from. The head turns restlessly this side and the other. I don't want to know anything for sure. So I pretend to be unbiased and look on either side of the road at not so equal intervals. I gave you all my love. It didn't matter to you that much.

In that first moment where I see you before you see me, I crease out the folds of the silliest smile you ever saw. You never saw rather.

And then I see you. The feelings that rush up... one of these days I'll learn to not hurt so much.

I hang up my face and pick up my collected mask. You know it better. I'm learning to know it better too.

I don't rush into your arms. You don't open them for me.

We meet a zillion first times.

Hi.
Hi.

Say a lil prayer for me

2008-11-22T07:26:00.000-08:00

I took the bus to school everyday. Clusters of friends. At the bus stop. In the bus. And back in school. Different people in different worlds. My worlds never mixed. And there was embarrassment when it did try. Leaving me confused, a little bit of oil in water, or a little bit of water in oil.

I envied S's world. She had but one world. Sane. Clean. Uncluttered. All her friends- branded and marked. I was the only one in borderland. And I guess I stayed there for her to constantly remind herself other worlds existed and she was infinitely happy in her own. My mistakes and confusions stopped her from exploring. My dissatisfaction helped her find and keep close, her contentment.

So there was this once when she asked me- I saw you come of the chapel.

She never paid too much attention to the interrogatives we learnt in English I guess. I got the question though. 'Why?'

I don't know. Maybe I just trailed behind all the girls who stepped out of the bus and went in to offer a prayer. Maybe I liked the cold quiet of the cozy dark chapel. I checked the flowers everyday. My favorites were the tiger lilies. Maybe it was to see the white clad nuns half asleep feigning prayer. And there was this statue of Mary with a serpent coiled around her feet. Its mottled body and forked tongue which I looked away as soon as I looked at…The candles that burnt themselves out staying alive…

We sat silent a while.

You didn't pray.

Yes. I never prayed.

And relief lifted off the air, light and carefree once again.

Posting secrets

2008-09-28T04:41:00.000-07:00

Of course I am scared. Just how much, is my secret.

Will you come? Somewhere I think I stopped waiting.

You see my smile. And you think there's so much hurt below. I like what you think more than what I really am. Makes me feel so much deeper.

All my time is spent with you. And I like it so. Just that I like complaining too. 'I hardly have the time to do anything else'. But really, there is nothing else.

I don’t tell you how beautiful I think you really are. Sounds very overrated. But it really isn't. You are more.

Every thing you don’t tell me, scares me more than all things you have told me. My assumptions are worse than reality. Wonder what life I’m living.

The tip of the horizon

2008-09-02T01:54:00.000-07:00

An abandonment like a washed shore. Frothy remnants of something gone. A few shells left back like scars on otherwise uniform skin.

Missing someone forms a dull ache that you learn to live with.

This year I missed you a little less than the year before. And gradually I'll stop remembering to miss you. The heart is a traitor, a sellout for reasons of expedience.

I must've loved the rain. But it was you who made me realize it. When the first unexpected summer rain fell, mother and I ran out to pick the clothes from the line. Mother even in that moment of urgency, sanity always her being, insisted on flinging a cloth over our bare heads. You tugged mine off and asked me to enjoy the rain. You told it was beautiful and it was a shame to watch it through soggy layers. It was. It still is.

It was you who pointed out the stars in the sky and told me their names. Sleepy eyes hardly got it registered. But I always knew you would be there the next night to tell me their names all over again. How foolish was I. Never again will I see a tomorrow except when I see it.

I've actually forgotten you. Most of you. You stay however in stories I tell people. In smells and nostalgia. You stay in the empty space that you left behind.

A girl I know...

2008-07-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

There's this girl I know. Nothing really swell about her. But... she's the kind of girl who's got the sun in her eye when she laughs. Even on a rainy day.
Especially on a rainy day. Those kinds, they're hard to come by.

She knew all my friends, not that there were too many too. And she'd listen to them all, even when they didn't have anything to say. Those kind of girls, I tell you, they're hard to come by.

She had a mole in the shape of a butterfly. Now, it never looked like a butterfly to me. But she said it was, the wingless kind. She knew most things and I agreed. I agree to most things she says. The part where I disagreed, we never stumbled on anything like that until later. Later than too late.

Those kinds, they're hard to come by. The ones you fall in love with and don’t realize until lost.

And fools like us, everyone is.

She fell in love.
And I died.
And we refused to die again.

One way ticket to heaven

2008-07-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

That was the year you died. So you aren't expected to know what happened after that. I stopped living. For a while. That was but expected.

I gave away your shirts, the worn ones and the not worn ones. Your watch stopped. Again. You'd forgotten to change the battery. Your sandals were in really bad shape. I kept them. For a while.

Your books... they took some time deciding what to be done with. I still am deciding what to do with them. For now, they stay amidst my books. They must've been confused, parting from known neighbors. We all had to live different, now that you'd died.

I gave clear instructions that I not be let know what was done with your armchair, writing desk and typewriter. Now I wish I'd kept them. But then I also wish you'd lived longer.

You'd given away your bike. Not that you knew you were going to die. You'd have told me, we never had secrets between the two of us. And once, when the young boy who got your bike rode past home, I ran to the balcony, forgetting you'd died. I think I cried that day. For a while.

Singing spaces

2008-07-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

We sleep like two open brackets lying on the same side. My hair is forever in your face. I push it away exasperatedly. You are gentler with it. And when it finally comes in the way of a kiss, in reckless abandon I ask you, shall I shave it all away?

Your eyes are the most unreadable things I have ever turned to. I'll learn their language one of these days and know all your secrets.

There is a conversation. Airborne alphabets caught by half listening ears.

Your hands cup my breasts. They feel small. You assure me yet again they're perfect. The many ways we make lie a truth.

Give me a love bite, I ask you.
You try. And again. You tell me you really don't know how and you'll only end up biting me hurt.

It turns me on and I curl a little tighter. I haven't reached that stage when I can easily let you know what happens with me. You haven't reached the stage where you assume you know what I want.

There's you, me and some silence in between…tightly packed, not much room between us.

Economical not

2008-07-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

Born businesswoman that I am, I sold my body to you.

And you paid in love.

And that now my dear, is a currency with the highest rate of depreciation.

Liff

2008-06-30T01:05:00.001-07:00

I heard
his heart
beat my name
but
with
a
wrong spelling.

Lonely shores

2008-06-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you have had a poem written to you. Or for you. Or even about you.

Frankly, I never thought I'd be at the receiving end of one. Its just way too big a gift and I'm the one usually doing the giving. Acceptance has always been difficult.

So when he sent me one... the emotions weren’t exactly in this order, but still...

There was amazement, shock, bewilderment, overwhelm and then...Hmmm... an infinite sense of loss followed by a finite sense of gain.

Do you remember the times

Lonely, we spent there?

The rocks cushioning

Our wearsome frames

The waves kissing our feet, bare

Yours, ankleted;

Listening to stories and songs

The waves whispered

Into ears strained.

We listened, we laughed

We made the sea a comrade

Spilling our secrets into

The departing waves

Stories to be carried away

To other awaiting shores

And a little guilt washed away.

Now, I sit here alone

And the waves,

They seem hesitant, wary;

A guilty messenger- almost.

Unfetched letters for an eager recipient.

Empty-handed, they approach

To listen, carry away, wash away

A little sorrow.

P.S: The anklets are now silent. The bells have fallen off.
And you aren't there anyway.

The heart is a lonely hunter

2008-06-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

It was the year of long skirts. When more cloth overrode comfort. Stiff white long petticoats under longer colorful skirts; petticoats that rubbed raw against your legs. Petticoats that saved you from your two sticky legs being seen as silhouettes. Marilyn Monroe disagreed. So did I. I don’t know what Monroe's mom had to say to her, but I sure heard a lot from mine.

And that’s how I was dressed to go for the concert. I loved music. But I loved disobedience and rebellion better. So I was seen protesting, sulking and agreeing- all for something even I wanted.

We had good seats. They became the best seats when I saw you. I guess it was my lucky day, when I was asked to sit beside you. You smiled me a smile. A smile that was all mine. I pretended to adjust the creases of my skirt.
All that it takes to transform a girl into a woman is a smile.

I always held it against my parents that they weren't better friends with yours. Our mothers talked in friendly politeness so characteristic of acquaintances who would never be friends.

When the curtain rose and the hush murmurs drowned themselves out, I stole a look at you. And then ever so often I'd look at you, casually so.

The music must've been good.

When the curtain fell again, you turned and looked at me. Complete attention that I didn't know where to tuck away.

You asked me about school. About friends. About what I was then reading. I never asked you anything back and that was only because there was so much I wanted to know.

Mother on coming back to her seat gave me a not very happy look, seeing how unabashedly happy I was. When my smile fell as her frown tugged it down, you noticed it.

Just as the curtain rose and the lights dimmed, you took my hand and whispered 'Lets go out'.

I knew for sure I had to go back home with mother. And maybe that we'll never meet again in the same romance. You might fade. I will fade.

We brush aside several looks of disproval and step on many polished and unpolished toes.

Those were the years of scooters. Bikes were a luxury. Stolid blue scooters parked in military fashion.

You sit on one and pat me the empty seat beside you. I take it.

We don’t talk. The music sounds better from where we now stand. I turn to look at you ever so lightly. You catch that one.

I go back to just the music.

And again when I look at you, you turn to me.
We both smile.

When the next time it happens, I am flustered. No woman who is woman enough lets her love be seen. I was but a girl. And you were but my first love and mistake.

You smile and point out to the shadow we make on the wall.
Of a boy who sits on a scooter.
Of a girl with her head slightly turned… looking at the boy beside her.

The shadows just don’t show me blush.

Coffee.com Series

2008-06-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

S and I met. Again.

Coffee.com is our attempt at writing, abstraction and honesty.

Disclaimers come usually in the end. But then we decided, we are but usually unusual.
I'm not a mother. But if I was one, I'd still read it. And I'd wish my daughter would too.

Residues

The smell of burnt out lamps.

Almost dry semen left unwiped complete.

Your sunscreen on my lips.

Your smile left incomplete.

An edited story.

Chai leaves on drunk glasses
Lipstick printed.

Cigarette butts in almost empty whiskey glasses.

Locked windows, bolts thrown in
Open doors...

"Thank you, last night was great"
I've had better.
And I want more.

After the end

2008-06-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Quite frankly
I don't know how to love.
Not just you
Or maybe just you.

So
I take the oft repeated paths

I send you flowers
You don't understand them.

I cook your favorite meal
You never tell me how bad it is.

I watch while you sleep
You don't look any very good.

I call you when I don't want to talk
You never pick the calls.

I hate it when I lie.
You love it when I do.

I tell you I love you.
You believe me.
I don’t.

So
Hmmm....

Love
is a blanket
too small
to share.

Love
is a dead end.
Any further
The journey is in circles.

Love
is two measures
Unrequited
And the longing.

Love
is
overrated anyway.

But you are a song

2008-05-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

This time when you went away, you took a part of me that I didn't know existed.

Waking up together and in the same world was the best thing this summer. You were still a phone call away but the distance was shorter. And hearing your morning voice, the one-before-best thing.

I could only whisper into your ear that I loved you. And you held me a little away and looked into me and told me the same. And I believed you.

And the next secret I whispered to you, I kissed you. Both of us were shocked. Its just that I couldn't resist touching you with my lips when you were but a nose distance away.

And we went to your college. You showed me everywhere that mattered and that didn't. Everywhere mattered really.

We'd squeezed through the prickly hedge and sneaked into the football ground. That was the prettiest night I ever will remember. You'd held my hand and we'd walked a little. We heard the drone of a faraway plane. We listened to the intimate night sounds. And we kissed.

I had to stand on tiptoe to reach you. Aiming for greater heights.
You had to bend low to reach me. So you lifted me up.

People tilt their faces while kissing otherwise which the nose comes in the way. We didn't have to. I have a small nose you said.

And the first time we had almost sex. You'd flicked a condom from your unsuspecting friend. And you'd confessed to me with almost embarrassment that you'd thought about carrying one.

Do you remember how I'd always said that we move from first base to directly the third? There are no shortcuts I learnt that summer when your hand went under my blouse. And how it paused every inch, worried. And finally when we were done with removing the many layers which we insisted on wearing even in summer, I looked at you. And you at me. The sunlight dappled on our naked bodies leaving fragmented patterns of warmth.

Do you remember how the doorbell rang and we jumped out of our skins. We didn't have any clothes to jump out of them anyway. I discovered that day how soon I can get dressed. Before the second insistent peal could be heard, I was signing for the courier in my roommate's name.

I'd staggered back and pressed into you, relieved. We'd both burst out laughing and gone inside to wear our clothes properly all over again.

It was the summer of incompleteness. Of almost sex and never enough kisses. Of watermelon juices that got over before you drank them to fill. Of bike rides that were too short. Of insatiable hugs. Of damp beach sands that dried too soon.

How you left is another story.

Rough drafts

2008-05-19T00:30:00.000-07:00

Family
the cut cord
which refuses to remain uncut.

Love
like twisting pain
searing
asking for a choice.

Relationships
demand
a sacrifice
no less than
giving up
me.

I write
in broken words
so
people understand
less
or
more.

Son.
Daughter.
Mom.
Dad.
I hope you enjoyed the sex while you made us.

I never claimed to be
intelligent.
You assumed.
I pretended.

I heard
his
heart beat.
His
heartbeat.

When he wrapped his arms
around me
I wanted to be
a better gift
than I was.

No reason to love. Not even love.

2008-05-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

I always tend to misspell love as lone.

You love me coz you are tired of your loneliness.
Its worse that I know it.

I'm scared you'll stop.
That I'll be a habit you can discard as easy as you got it on.

I'm scared of the buttons you'll open
And discover a body not very lovable
And even more about how you'll pretend its ok.

Once again I make the same mistake.
I stop being myself.
And try be what you want.
And end up being what neither of us wants.

I wait for you to call me.
You never do.
And when I do
I wait for me to hang up.
And I promise myself I'll not call you.
That is
Until
You call me back
And so I break an already broken promise.

I search for you
In old mails
In past friends
In touched places
In stored SMSs
In movies.
And I find you
And everywhere.
So I never call out
As that will make both of us uncomfortable.
Found
and found.

From this moment, to this moment

2008-04-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

Right here right now
I want to have sex with you.
Love waits for us outside the almost closed door
To be picked up on our way out
And to be used on someone else.

Each time you come and go
I want to tell you
I don't run a brothel in my mind
Instead
I open my clothes for you
Noiselessly.

My tears
make interesting patterns
on your shirt.
They will dry again
when you leave
and she wont see the stains
that aren't there.

In one vulnerable moment
I lift the heavy curtain of hair
And show you the secret mole
What I don't tell you is to kiss me there
And when you don't hear my unmouthed words
The curtain descends again
And we both shrug off the uncomfortable moment
When I gave you more.
And you wanted less.

What's a young girl made of?

2008-04-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

That was the summer uncle returned from Bahrain. That now is a place full of crystal sands and blue beaches.

He tucked his overgrown son into the non existent curve of his hip and whispered loud of secrets and unseen wonders that would soon come out of his suitcase.

We all stood in a row waiting.

Once the best gifts were dispelled, then came us visitors.

We always did things in Army fashion in my family. By any order I was last.

I watched an airplane being given away.
A red and yellow train.
Many books.
A whistle.

And then there were none. This time I was forgotten.

My uncle looked around apologetically. He hit his head playfully. Everyone laughed. I didn't find it any funny.

Plucking a ball from the hands of his overgrown son on the hip, he gave it to me. Everyone hastily left the room pretending of work when he started howling.

My mother plucked the ball from my hands and gave it back to stop the howls. We are an Army family maybe, but not yet Animal farm.

I scowled with disgust, an emotion totally wasted on him.

I walked out, kicking a random stone now and then. Generally walking you know.

Dad was always smoking.

He blew me a few hollow rings.
That don't impress me much.

He looked sideways at me.
Dissatisfaction I wore well.

Go to Bahrain. Now. I told him. And get me toys. Lots of them.
He thought a while. "It’s very far you know"
I didn't really care.

"I'll be gone an awfully long time. You’ll stay and without me?"

Recklessly and selfishly, 'Yes'

I felt ashamed a little later. But the need for the toys was more important I guess. Or the fact that even I could have things. So much so that I refused to see his hurt.

We never talked much after that for many days. I pretended I didn't care. The distance between us was greater than far away Bahrain.

Days later I wandered into my parents room and found mom packing. Seeing the neatly pressed clothes I found something amiss. Only father's was being packed.

My voice shook. "Is dad going somewhere?"
Yes.

I ran out, tears blinding my eyes. Running into dad, holding him tight I sobbed fiercely "I don’t want toys. I hate them. I really do. And Bahrain is so far away"

Dad considered deeply. "So I need not go to Bahrain eh?"

No. Ever never.

Dad was going for a conference to Pune for 2 days. Humbug.

Build me no walls

2008-04-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

The April day was so humid and I know thats the only thing you actually remember about our first meeting.

I know you don't really remember the red off shoulder blouse I wore. I'd of course not pictured you'd look like this else I'd have worn something terribly sober.

My roommate and I stood by the dusty window overlooking the most crowded street waiting for your first glimpse. I did feel incredibly foolish and excited. I was old enough not to do such things as meeting an almost stranger and young enough to meet a complete stranger.

We went to the beach that summer night. We went to my favorite restaurant. Do you remember how we played 20 questions? You never answered any. I couldn't ask many.

Your pauses when you replied to my questions made me smile.

My roommate fell for you instantly. So did my sister. In their smiles, I began to love you. When my sister ate uncomplaining at a restaurant, I loved you for the peace you brought into that dinner. When my roommate bustled around making you the only thing she knew to cook, I loved you more for the small joy you brought into our overcrowded hall. There was always a little room for more love.

I spoke to you about all the men in my life. You never spoke to me about the no women in your life. Of course I knew I was special, you didn't have to tell me. Though it would have been nice to hear it in your quiet tones and a faint laugh that you'd use to dispel the bashfulness.

One night when I missed the ride home it was you I'd called. And when you came, I'd climbed down 9 floors wondering how I got so lucky with you.

You took me to the secret beach. I've never told anyone about it, I couldn't bring myself to share it with anyone else.

You took me shopping when I wanted a grey Tee with a collar. We never found it.

You gave me a bracelet when I first went away. I never wore it.

You called me when I first went away. I never returned any.

And then I went away nowhere.
And then you went away somewhere.

I'd forgotten to build walls with you. By the time I'd remembered, you were already inside.

R.I.P

2008-04-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

The knife cut sure and strong. Clean, close and swift, were the words that came into my mind as I saw the silvery blade of a goodbye descend.

Thats how endings should be. No remnants.

Unlike me. I'm still saying goodbye to a person long gone.

Never forever

2008-04-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

It was an old photograph. Black and white and slowly yellowing on the edges.

Two children. Barely 2 years old... I am not too sure, I never am good with children's ages.

Both of them on the floor. The girl clutched on one hand the figurine of a lady carrying a pot full of water. And the other she used to lean into the boy's ears and whisper something. He... he looked happy as always, especially with the girl. Until she killed him . But even then he died smiling. He hadn't seen the blow coming.

One was of course me. And the other him. Oldest of old friends. So old that even gender discrimination didn't exist in our life. Before you could say 'hey boy'.

Our parents had caught us in an unknown to even us, intimate moment.

What was I telling you, I'd asked him once.

Oh, that?, he said, squinting his eyes to avoid the sun. And he told me that I'd told him about fishes and stars and kites and horses.

We looked at that photograph.

What was I telling you, I asked him as always.

Oh that?, he said. And he told me that I'd told him about Pondicherry and foreigners and blue school uniforms.

And one summer when we went through the albums again, I discovered yet again that photograph.

I'd forgotten its existence, I told him.

If he appeared disappointed, I never knew.

Wonder what I was telling you, I mused out loud to him.

Oh that, he said. And he told me that I'd told him about this boy whom I was going to fall in love with.

I'd blushed.

And then we grew up.

The lady with the pot of water broke one of her legs. And yet she stood on one leg unfailingly holding the pot, not spilling a drop of the clear liquid. And she forgot how not to smile.

And he stopped hearing what I didn't tell him years ago.

Glass drops of rain

2008-03-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

A gypsy drop of rain falls on the eyelashes. Caught between parted strands of unreasonably short hair, they linger a moment. The lashes struggle with the unexpected weight. They cant hold longer onto what will be lost. I close my eyes.

-----

The misty sprays fall on the face. Very like the first wash of the morning. When the white worn cotton towel doesn't rub off all the water. A little moist they stay only to be drunk by the later sun.

-----

I see 3 pairs of slippers mom has scrubbed clean. She'd left them in the sun to dry. The sudden rain had caught them unawares. I refuse to take them inside. They can dry again in a sun that will always come again.

-----

I write on a paper that gets wetter every minute. My sister gets me a steaming mug of tea. I let it rest by my side. I see the pale brown tea jump out each time a drop of rain falls in it. A runaway hold-cold drop touches my arm. An unfaithful drop of rain washes it away and it trickles down my hand like a vanishing memory. I drink it all up later, with more water than what my sister added.

-----

I watch a single raindrop. The perfect place to build a castle. I walk away before the drop falls and the castle...

Full circle

2008-03-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

I like the concept of skipping ropes. No matter how high you jump, you always have to come back to earth with a thud.

Ouch.

Sooner than soon. Or later than...

2008-03-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

In a small town beauty is overrated.

Here’s what happened the other night. I meet her after a long time. Years. But she always was there. In a book I read for 5 minutes at landmark. In a poem I heard the neighbor's kid recite. In blue school uniforms that pedaled on thin tires in the morning sun.

I wonder what to wear. It’s after all a date.

We never hug. Or it’s always awkward. The hands are either too soon, late or never. So we grin.

We decide to walk down to the restaurant.

It’s a new place, as shiny as a freshly minted coin.

Sitting opposite each other, we check the other out, after pushing the too cheerful vase of flowers aside.

She leans forward and winds her finger on a messy coil of hair. They haven't straightened out in all these years, I hear her unsaid words.

We are ageing gracefully, we both agree.

There's a melancholy jazz player playing. I play with a lone aster.

Shall I wear it on my hair? I ask her

I'll pretend we aren't vaguely related, she assures me.

So I wear it with careful carelessness. That’s my style statement this beginning of summer.

You look beautiful, she tells me.

It was way back in school. She made a dashing Romeo. And I made a vulnerable Juliet. Her boyish charm and confusion added to the endearing nature of the Romeo in our schoolgirl hearts. The ridiculousness of the situation and me as Juliet added to my complete misery.

So I stood there feeling completely idiotic behind a flimsy curtain, on a stool stolen from the school convent. And looked dolefully down at Romeo.

You look beautiful, Romeo said in unwritten Shakespeare words.

Only both of us knew it wasn't at Juliet that they were directed at. It wasn't even Romeo talking.

We both remember it simultaneously.

You look beautiful, she tells me again.

And so I become. For her. And me.

The streets are quite empty when we walk back. She takes my hand while crossing the roads. Our minds are filled with the conversation of the last few hours and so no words on our lips.

We reach the gate of my house. Mom's left a light on.

Warm lips fall on smooth skin. There's a friendly smell of gin on her. And a smell of long absorbed perfume, a little stale and a little salty.

I don’t tell her that she's carrying faint trace of lipstick on her cheeks.

Goodbye. I'll see you in a week. Or some months. Many years mostly.

Burnt out

2008-02-25T16:06:00.000-08:00

Writing
from inkless pens
of translucent sadness
leaving an impression
illegible
only to feel
in sunken depths
of lifeless paper

Flowers on the pavement

2008-02-19T23:37:00.000-08:00

The whole road was laid by fallen flowers. Crushed, defeated, they left behind a few wet tears maybe, as spidery patterns on the black road.

I loved those flowers. The elegant pale green stalks that burst open into five feathers of white. And the yellow stalks that peeped out shyly from within. One always longs to look beyond confines.

And we walked... talked occasionally. The smart crisp sound of steps in an unfailingly regular pattern on the otherwise silent road.

Those were the 'certain' years. One was certainly not a kid. One was certainly not old. One was certainly uncertain.

A fainéant beach breeze of the summer evening, a trifle warm. I watch him gather flowers of all colors. They make a startlingly colorful bunch.

There is a bend on the road home. The steps become shorter. Reluctant. We'd gathered more than just flowers. And none of it could be taken home.

The front lights are already on.

We stay out a little longer. Lying under the damp shade of the tree he places flower by flower on my hair. I laugh. I know how ridiculous it all would've looked. He smiles.

We now walk back home. Again.

The flowers drop one by one. And our steps away from what we've left behind.

The last one stays, trapped somewhere between tenacious strands. I like it that way.

It's still there; in between the pages of a book I no longer read.

Do you know how long longing can be?

2008-02-11T18:32:00.000-08:00

Childhood friends are something else. Years of silence, mistrust and pain vanish with that single 'hello' over a long distance call. And the fact that he recognizes your voice- its time to brush those tears that weren't called for.

How did you know its me?, I have to know.

I've called you too many times to hear this voice.

Let them fall, the tears.

And I lean on him across the distance... once again, after so many years.

More than a fistful of sky

2008-02-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

The anklets slip off the moment he touches them. They always went even before he called. He never called.

He plays with my toe ring. I wince a little when he finally manages to remove it. There is always reluctance in parting.

He's got the most beautiful fingers I've ever seen. The long stalks that held pencils, pens, paint brushes, cigarettes and women among others. Cigarettes didn't suit him some years ago. They now do.

Women. It was a singular thing in his life before. The past never is really past. I always look back.

Tell me about her. And her. And her. And every one of them. 8 years of women to catch up with.

The numbers and name roll off his tongue.

Really? So many?, I never ask.

And the sex?

Its always been interesting. Its different... different women different times and same woman different times.

Oh.

Tell me more.

We never had secrets. And when we finally did, they ate us up. Secrets not shared become bigger than you and they gobble you up.

It was a train journey. The flimsy curtains showed more than they covered. But one hoped they covered more. Train seats aren't really meant for two to lie. And in that lay all the fun.

He stops abruptly. He stretches his hands towards me.

His fingers that unhooked many layers off many women. His fingers that trembled when they wrote his address on a book I still have saved. Fingers that caught a handful of sky, more sky than my small ones ever could. They're still as beautiful.

I'd lent out what was mine.

I take them. Back.

'Thank you' cannot be gift wrapped

2008-01-25T14:08:00.000-08:00

Your gifts always make me cry. Did I tell you that I opened the first one while walking back home in a light drizzle of a rain? How I stopped and stared at what came out from the tight folds of the crisp wrapper? How I was glad that the wet drops on my face could be called raindrops?

I know I didn't thank you enough for the Madeline, oranges and apples, each bite of which took hunger and loneliness away.

I know I didn't talk much when you walked me to the train station everyday after work.

Why are you so kind to me? I don’t know what to do with so much of it!

When we waved goodbye and I saw your car turn the corner and I realized that I didn’t have the keys to the hotel, I wanted to call you who'd already gone.

When people leave they should be let. Not that otherwise they won’t.

And then when I tried talking in strange tongues to another fellow-out-of-the-hotel-locked and we wondered how to wake up the neighborhood, why did you come back?
Some goodbyes don't mean a thing. And when we kissed each other in the dimly lit lobby, I didn't tell you how scared I was. Some kisses don’t mean a thing. And the same mean more than I dare understand.

I know I didn't hug you longer when we last met at the airport. A second longer and I couldn't have gone away.

I know I can never tell you I love you and how much. Because someone else did...long before me.

Down to the last cigarette

2008-01-23T15:36:00.000-08:00

It was one of the few birthdays he had. It wasn't too hard thinking of a suitable gift.

His eyebrows went a tad up I think on seeing the perky red ribbon. All gifts are to be wrapped, I insist.

A pack of cigarettes. Happy birthday.

He was convinced yet again that I was the only person who ever understood him.

I saw him wonder whether to light one right away or whether my sentiment would be offended if not. Women's sentiments were a sore subject with him. I saw his quizzical look gauging both my femininity and sentimentality.

A smile offers him the answer.

How long would he take to smoke it all?

Soon.

How soon is soon?

A day, he sighs.

I was to be called when he lit each one. It isn't a woman's duty to make anything easier.

I watched him light each one.

The smile wore down at towards the end... I think. I cannot be sure on that.

When the final one was lit n blown away, he aimed the empty carton at the basket.

Oh no! He was to save the golden silver paper of the pack, didn’t he know?! How else was my present remembered!

As he watched in trepidation, the small chin quivered in protest at this seemingly callous thought of his. Or lack of thought actually.

He later confided to a grown up chin, that it was the first time he considered quitting smoking.

The place outside the mind

2008-01-11T03:37:00.000-08:00

Sleep comes in a small bottle of clearless liquid.

Conversation comes in the silent call of a phone that never rings.

Laughter is a strange sound that falls on the ears.

Forgetfulness is an art in the course of remembering. I should remember to forget.

Love is a feeling too scared to explore.

The voice is always too far away for the fingers to touch.

Questions are the answers one doesn’t want said.

Sadness is the coziest chair I ever sat on.

Choices are the most difficult decisions to never make.

Tears are the bookmarks at every event of my life.

Death is a photograph on the wall.

Stars don't cry

2008-01-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

Do you remember...

How we met one summer- just as you were going out and I was coming in?

How the next summer we went to the zoo to watch the Hippos yawn? How we'd laughed at monkeys and people alike?

The summer that we first dealt with death? Your hand that you gave me across your bed and mine. I'd taken it and slept holding it. 'Stars don’t cry'. I’d wiped my eyes.

Do you remember how you'd come to see me, dirty collars and a dusty cycle? How we'd talk sitting beside each other on the brown steps of the neighbor’s house, ignoring the pointed looks of our chaperone?

When the next summer we went to the snake house? Why did we go to strange places? When you tapped on the glass cage and the tired snake gave us a scornful look, I know we both were a little scared though we pretended otherwise.

Do you remember how you confessed your fear of spiders to me?

Do you remember how we would long to be alone, away from the curious eyes of a cousin neither of us wanted?

Do you remember that sultry summer when you told me I'd changed. When you smiled at the changes of my growing body? I'd smacked you from behind the chair you sat on, trying to hide my blush. I was glad you'd noticed it. It really took a painfully long time growing!

Do you remember the saree I wore for your brother's wedding? Managing it was a so damn irritating especially when my eyes kept looking for you. I know you searched for me too. When you finally found me and brought those friends of yours and I saw their mouths droop in disappointment, my lips trembled. But when I saw the way you always looked at me, the blue saree didn't seem too awful then and I smiled my first smile of that day. I always looked best in your eyes.

Do you remember when we sat on the beach holding hands? I want you to forget that conversation.

You remember how you walked away and I never called you back?
I never knew you walked away.
You never knew I’d called a thousand times.

Stars don’t cry. Only fallen stars do.

Hey Stranger...

2007-12-31T20:45:00.000-08:00

Frankfurt airport is always crowded. So every week when I had to get to Paris, my mind was always heavier than the luggage I dragged along. Thankfully they don’t ask to check in your mind.

When the first time I had to produce a credit card I didn't have, I really looked around in despair. 'No credit card' counter didn't exist.

That's when I met him. The guy who guides lost people to the right place. Only at the airport. Don’t ask for more than you can get.

Eyes do speak. When he asked me where I was going and I told him Paris, his eyes filled with longing for the place he'd left behind. How often he'd have heard of home and visited it more times than every aircraft that flew over him, to count that I didn’t know enough numbers.

When he asked me why I didn’t have a credit card, I wasn't offended as I wanted to, pretence to this invasion of private space. Too poor. We laughed. When I asked him how often he went home, he told me, not often enough. We laughed again, this time in sadness.

We became almost friends. A quick ticket to a queue isn't a crime among almost friends.

I met him every week after that. When eyes would search among unknown faces, he would always materialize by my side. 'Hey stranger'. I was the no-credit girl. Returning was never my forte.

And I'd tell him yet again how beautiful everything was back in a street he'd walked without realizing he'd be away. Back in a street where he hoped he'd go away from. Back in the street where he now wanted his feet touch.

So when the last time that I had to go away, I knew I wasn't to return. For at least a long while. And I brushed aside my fear of 'what-if' I didn't meet him to say goodbye. But as always, he came.

I told him I was going away. He signaled to his colleague he was taking a break. Pulling one of my now eager bags, we walked to a coffee bar. He told me he broke a rule that day. I never asked him what it was. That’s when we became friends.

When I stood uncertain of how to say goodbye, he put his arms around me. I broke a rule too. Arms went around.

Merry Christmas. I'd wished you last year.
Merry Christmas this year too. It comes again. Returning is characteristic of it.

Have a good year you all.

Paper boats on waterless seas

2007-12-26T01:53:00.000-08:00

Clouds
Dark n swollen
Like overripe plums
A lil squishy
But awfully nice

Stains
Like blackberry juice
on white petticoats
Like unwashed sin

Rain
Earth
Wind
No fire.
Just everything drenched
All thirsts quenched.

Swollen
Like the river.
Overstepping bounds.
With mischievous fingers
Groping always.

Wet
Like a washed calm
of thoughtful sunsets.
Fingerprints
On sprayed windows
Slithering down.

Brown.
Of wet earth
On sides of long distance roads
Of sun kissed tomatoes

Ripe
Like suckered nipples
Or if you find that not in taste
Rum soaked raisins
Wrinkled edges
now drunken smooth.

No room, no door

2007-12-17T22:23:00.000-08:00

I came too early.

When he was with unprepared words and jumbled thoughts. But I got the gist of it. Oh, he loved me alright.

I came too late.

With prepared words and neat sentences arranged in a row. Like perky school ribbons. So I tell him casually on how I considered it all. In entirety and random. I pause to see the effect my words have, they were of course meant to impress.

I am not thrilled with his expressions. Maybe I should reconsider...I'm almost gathering said words...

That's when she walks in. And his hand that goes clumsily around her as if in response to her questioning glance.

Well, his taste was quite bad. Women should spend on pedicure I say!

A Christmas Special

2007-12-11T01:23:00.000-08:00

Secrets
Like rum
In closed dark chocolates

Sharing
Like red wrapper
That crackles when you open
The sound unshared beats the purpose

Lost love
Like after Christmas
Waiting for the next birth

Forgiveness
A vindictive feeling
Of having to perform

Hope
Like the lifeless butterfly
In glass crystalled boxes

Death
Is the only end
To a story.

The sea of stories

2007-10-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

He could tell stories. Let's call him Shah of Blah. Whether the stories were real or not, I don't know. But they were as all stories go, magical. Avant-garde. He would weave them swiftly, in bold and colorful strokes, picking a bit of fiction from here, a bit of reality from there, throw in a few reflections of people, some smiles, some chuckles, some tears and would present me an intricate arabesque.

I know not how many people have heard it. I know not how many will hear it. But this much I know, I am glad I did.

Nights would find me listening to his voice that would take me to a world that is beautiful only because you don't live there. I would listen on, enthralled but conscious- it would end the moment he realized its too late in the night. And then, I would be sent cruelly off to bed with words, "That's enough stories for this time". It never was enough.

The Shah of Blah was not this obliging always. You never knew when you got lucky. And I knew better than to ask.

What would happen when one day as everything ends, his stories too would; I often wondered. There will be more stories, I consoled myself.

I started writing his stories as mine. A feeling of guilt existed, oh yes. But as all feelings go, you can ignore them if you want to.

Popularity is desirable. Yes.

It was a growing sin. I might not have told the stories as well as the Shah of Blah did, but I did my best.

People came and people went. Appreciation too followed suit.

But now, his stories ceased to amaze me. I knew I could do better than him. What I failed to realize was that, without his stories, I could not decorate. That I was only the superfluous storyteller… That the stories were his…

I am tired now. Of trying to better him... For people who haven’t heard him, think I am good. I alone know.

I asked him one day, “Do you tell these very stories to many people?”

He replied thoughtfully, “The stories… they reflect the listener. If I tell you kaleidoscopic stories, that’s because you bring out the color in the stories. I could tell a gray one. I could tell a white one. I could tell a black one… each different as the listener. But you, you take a part of me away with each story. Not many do that…”

Of late, his stories to me have been losing color. The shimmers no longer exist. His stories are now a shade of myriad monochromes. We wring our minds in frustration…

He tries to be a better storyteller. I try to be a better listener. We fail.

He told me sadly, “You are pushing yourself to be the best listener than you can no longer be. You are pushing me to be a better storyteller than I can be. Go now. I have no more stories to tell you. Go, before what’s left is lost. Everything doesn’t have to end on a sad note. Go, when we still have a bit of ourselves left. We need it.”

I am going. When I still have a bit of me left. When I still have a bit of his stories unshared.

To the moon and back

2007-10-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

It was an old pier. Abandoned almost. But protected. Oh by abandoned I meant left alone except in wishes. So maybe that's the wrong word there... But a lonely pier it was.

Footfalls were but in the memory. The only sounds it now heard were the faint sounds from scattered beach cafes, the relentless waves that crashed around it, the sophisticated cry of urban seagulls and the distant cough of the caretaker.

So that's where we went. Without knowing it.

A pack o cigarettes always come in handy- dad was as convinced of it as... what's it with me today? Am fumbling for words like looking for lost stitches in sweaters. Hmmm...

So they both sat down and smoked halos that went beyond the hover around the head.

The gatekeeper had long forgotten how to say anything but 'Shoo...go away' and 'Not allowed'. The urchins didn't deserve even that- his scowls n the stones that he almost hurled were enough.

It was a moonlight night. Dark and dewey and faintly ghostly. That's what my mind of few years felt, faintly shivering.

Dad had a way with people I realized yet again When the caretaker searched upon his person for the key that wasn't used.

I hoped the gate wont creak. I don't remember if it did.

10 minutes, the caretaker said.

Waving to his companion of silence, dad nodded.

It was a road for robbers and highwaymen. The wood that shone a purple glow. I could see the blue waves through the cracks. The wind that blew the curls in all directions but forward and ahead of what you left behind.

And at the end of the pier was the moon. This was the way to get to the moon I was convinced. A giant teardrop of a moon, just formed.

I was sure that I could touch it at the end of the pier.

It was a yellow cheese moon. A Bollywood moon. A dream moon. A cheap theatre stage moon. It was a moon made of lover's imagination. It was a storybook moon.

The moon grew with each step towards it.

When we reached the end of the pier, the moon just shuffled a little back.

Unreachable as always. Temptation, just beyond easy reach.

Do you think a boat would get us there?

I like answers that come after a pause.

We could try.

Do you have a boat to the moon?

Not that I have heard.

I always was creative.

Maybe we can ride people to the moon for a fare.

I always was secretive.

Let it just be our secret, the way to the moon.

Bridge Across Forever

2007-09-27T22:24:00.000-07:00

am easily talked into things, I muse. Sitting in the car on a day that I am stolen from office. I couldn't resist his wind washed hair and an unspoken promise of fun.

Its a dark afternoon. Pouting clouds. Just a fistful of sky.

We love bridges. Both of us. Places that connect unwanted paths. Or desires even.

The first drop of rain on asking arms. Biblical almost...

And we stop the car to get down... amongst hurrying passersby to safer eaves. The wind that's picked up dust from unswept corners that pushes everyone away. A tug at a scarf, a pull at the person, a yank at the umbrellas...

Raindrops knock on unopened eyelids.

The car's blinkers rhyme in unerring patterns of light.

It rains a generous rain. Our clothes tired of protest, give up and cling to us in the beating rain.

We stand at a point where the bridge arches in defeat.

Descent... he corrects me.

What's the exact point called, we both know not.

Bridge-0-bow...

The exact moment his lips close on mine I think is somewhere between the half formed O and the surprise caught beforehand.

Maybe this is what is called stealing words from one's mouth.

Nameless here forever more

2007-09-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Hers was the first face I saw everyday. And the times she wouldn't be there when I woke up, before the panic rushed in, I'd let my hopeful fingers run on the pillow. Her note was always there if she wasn't.

'Call....will be back'.

'The milk... will be back'

It didn't matter what the words said. My just-flickered-open myopic eyes hardly read what was written. The starchy feel of paper and her voice in writing was all that mattered.

And when I left, I forgot to leave behind the habit. Fingers that sought disappointment. And found it.

Coffee... Odds and Ends

2007-09-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

The best thing about Tamil Nadu would be the filter coffee. The rich brown swirls in steel tumblers and humble saucers with elevated edges. The warm smell that shoves you gently to waefullness. The slight bitter aftertaste that is oh so transferable in a kiss.

That's how he fell in love with coffee, he tells me. The girl's long gone but the acquired caffeine taste stayed on...

And I am supposed to be the person of words!

I make him the bittebest coffee ever. His nostrils lowered half into the coffee mug sniffs and draws into the smell hungrily. Its been a while, he tells me in nostalgia scented tones.

Its been some years actually. When the last I saw of him was when he gave me a 'going away' present. He was the one leaving. I remember, an awkward slip of a girl I was. Standing by my vehicle-of-taking-away, I stood alone with unsure, unshared thoughts...

Unshared silences this time, years later.

Its the best coffee he's had, he tells me resting his head on the solitary wall of my house.

Even better than your mom's?

Best happens to be superlative, I learn that day.

We'll never turn back

2007-08-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

Had I known it was the last time I would see him...

- I'd have kissed a less harder

- I'd not have called him as soon as the translucent grey puff of smoke from the bus that took me away, disappeared into the sky.

- I'd not have spent most of the night watching him sleep.

- I'd not have let him hear my heartbeat

- I'd have told him that I loved him. Just because he didn't deserve it.

For you see, all along he knew that it was the last time he'd want to see me.

A life less stationary

2007-08-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

Copper sulphate. Its a shade of blue. And that's how identities are. One used as a reference for another.

It was always like this. An illusion of freedom. There was a world out there which I could see. Glass cages all of us are trapped in. Go... but where? The answer to this question is never sought. Just go.

A life less stationary was all I asked for. Fate is a cruel joke as always. One must be careful what one wishes for.

Bubbling away and going nowhere on orange-violet flames was the freedom with a string attached. A life less stationary.

-------------------------------------

People all around me went everywhere. And I stayed right there. If there wasn't so much of a hustle around me everyday, I might not have minded all that much. But wanderlust... and its urges. I didn't want to be the one to die where I was, with the travel inside me.

A life less stationary, that's all I asked for. Less. That's the wrong word I used.

The lay new railway tracks. Now I lie all alone. Unused. Unrubbed. Untouched. Noting around me moves much. Except the pinched-cheek, runny-nose children who carried rusty tins of emptiness and the yellow withering flowers that grew around to die. A life less stationary.

Bombay dreams

2007-08-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

For a small town girl like me, you'd think Bombay was an experience. It was.

I loved the anonymity in the trains. Pressing against unfamiliar bodies. The stale smell of sweat and the intimacy of another person's odor. You frantically lower your head and soak in the familiar smell of your own body and take deep breaths. Refuge in the known.

I loved bargaining with the shopkeepers. We both knew I was lousy at it. But the sense of importance you feel when you quote a ridiculously low price, the mock horror at his being almost robbed, the pout that is reluctant to leave and his coaxing of your petulance. All the world is a stage.

I loved standing by the waterfront, the arabesque sprays touching your salty skin. Our umbrellas flap recklessly. A scarf that's curved fashionably on slender necks tugs to let go. If alone letting go was that easy.

I loved sitting at marine drive. An old friend and past conversation. Somewhere in between we'd stopped making new memories. So this time we made an effort. Her eyes are watchful of the many bags of won deals that I have carelessly scattered around me. She is on her guard, lest someone nabs what she considers my recently acquired possessions. I don't have the heart to tell her that I never wanted most of what I bought. They'd remain in mothball scented cupboards, a memento that I'd never bother looking at.

And the stars... Oh, we never saw any.

A Shadow A Song

2007-08-13T03:05:00.000-07:00

He is

…an S&G song

…a huckleberry friend

…the now missing mails in my Inbox

…an unwritten letter

…a husky laugh

…a wood scented voice in the head

He is a wavery watery shadow of a person gone. Of a person who perhaps was never there.

Nooks and crannies

2007-08-08T13:59:00.000-07:00

So we were lying on hopefully-washed-hotel-sheets. Separate sheets of used white. The space inside one feels too lonely. So I crawl into the barely enough of the other. The shifted warmth of a body that moved aside to make space for me, the sunken hollow of the bed that becomes ready to now contain my tired body.

I slept well….Our fingers bridging gaps and forming almost a prayer.

The key that doesnt open any door

2007-08-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

He asked me why I came back.

He never asked me why I went away.

I can never tell you how lonely I am

2007-07-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

It was one those days. Where the earth sighed in contentment after a rain drench. The air heavy with the misty sprays. And people walked in lazy languor in the hope that the weekend would follow their pace.

And they walked too... Oblivious of people and their thoughts. In the rickety elevator, they held hands pretending to be oblivious to the frown of the bald guy with the religious line on his forehead.

His little space of a balcony… Which looks out to the lonely little temple on the hill to which no path led. He holds her. His hands touched her in suggestive places.

Sighing in contentment, she whispered, “What is the one thing that you would want to do with me?"

He was always one to have a lag in his answers. Like in those old long distance telephone calls. She was used to his pauses.

"Spend the rest of my life with you"

An act of sex would have been what she expected. And that would have been so much easier.

And that's how he said what she didn't want to hear.

And that's how he said something he'll never say again.

-------

The hill now has some grooves cut into it and there is the temple.
His hands touch me in suggestive places. But he holds me without words.

Oh yeah

2007-07-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

In a life.

They were always nameless women. Sex was the same. Same organs. Different noises and patterns of breathing. Different passions. But the same still. All take and a pretence at give.

------------------------

In a life.

They were always men with different names. Sex was always cloaked in making love. All the giving and no getting back. Because getting back always extended beyond the four posters of the bed.

On an anniversary note

2007-07-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

He was always like that. A terrific teacher. Words scented by woody cigarette smoke.

It was the day that college began. The worn corners of the old windows and the joy of balancing on narrow windowsills. Life on the edge.

Freshmen year. Most of them without a clue as to why they were there. That always happened to his class. Which I sometimes felt was a pity- he had so much to give and if you strip away the hollow of expectation, then everything becomes more than enough. Asking for more was what he always wanted. And that's why I was sent into his life.

His books which had innumerable strips of papers eagerly waiting to be pulled out and read. Scribbles of his thoughts and what he wanted say. There was so much I didn't understand. There was so much I understood.

So sitting by the windowsill, I heard the white finger of chalk squeal on the summer-dust-collected-board that had been wiped almost clean that morning. Scars always remain.

His handwriting was terrible. Achingly painful was the feeling as always, when I saw him address a crowd. As in response to his hope that this year would be different.

The words that stayed on my mind that year. And forever.

'Hitch your wagon to a star'.

And that's what he did. On a wagon that moved too fast and all that was left behind of him was a whiff of stardust.

Everything movies

2007-07-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

So the movie is a nightmare. Violently violent films should go the animation way. Thank you Tarantino.

The light after the darkness is always blinding. It follows the principle of getting-used-to-in-small-measures.

He is furious for making him walk out of the movie. I gave him a choice that never was when I walked out.

And so he yells. He liked the movie, he liked the violence and he found the heroine damn hot!

I recognize logic when I see it. After all he also paid for the tickets.

I want to shout back too. Not because I am angry. But fury requires retaliation does it not? His anger is genuine and in retaliation does not suit me.

Instead I link my arms with his.

He is surprised, I can tell.

I like being predictably unpredictive.

From the bottom of a shallow heart

2007-06-30T22:05:00.000-07:00

The time has always been late. The voices alone change. The conversations follow the voice.

This time it will be different, I promise myself.

No more tears and no more crying. No more giving and no more taking. Because his favorite answer is no.

But he has to ruin it all. As always because I hate taking responsibility.

Irises that do not watch the rain through his uncurtained glass windows. Darkness. Everything is forbidden entry into his life.

His voice from far across where it's been raining continuously for a night and most of the day, follows a pattern. Of a song I wish I didn't love so much.

"...Parsley, sage , rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a sweet love of mine."

My mind refuses to accept what he has given. His voice which sings the unused words and suggests of an intimacy that perhaps never is. For me. The possibilities of assumption tempt me. He sang it for me.

No. I'll borrow his favorite word.

The simple life

2007-06-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

His fingers don't fumble when they open my clothes for the first time. I pretend his expertise doesn't bother me.

My icy cold fingers for once I hope don't write a story. Better still, he doesn't read.

The weary fan that repeatedly moved in same circles. How tired I am.

What would you want me do?

That's a question I never answer truthfully. I would just want to sleep. Or I would want you to run your fingers through the tiny smattering graph of tiny moles on my hand. Or just hold me long enough for me to cry.

Instead I tell him what he wants to hear. Its easier... For him to understand. And for me not to explain.

And the fan moves in before touched spaces. How tired it must be.

Finding borderland

2007-06-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

It was a dingy hotel room. Didn't look at the curtains. Forget the bedsheets and the shapeless satins left by nameless people. The smell of antiseptic soap, the smell of once washed and many times touched white sheets.

I watch him shave. Through the half open door. Shaving, the old school method. He is like that in most things- traditional and not changing. At least I always knew where I stood with him. Outside his life. Or on the border when we had sex.

I don't care much for hotel rooms. The carpet...

He comes over to the bed I am sitting on. "Do you want to watch a movie?" he asks, taking my hands in his. I nod ecstatically.

"Dinner, movie and dancing if time permits." he adds in reckless measure, "the next time I promise."

We have sex and he sleeps. The movie plays on the television in the neighboring room.

A song of sixpence

2007-06-03T03:35:00.000-07:00

I am very cruel he tells me.

I like hearing of personal despair.

Tell me more.

I broke so many hearts.

This is a story of personal vanity I realize with a pucker.

But I like those too. My life is often filled with other people's living.

And what happened... to all the broken hearts?

I never cared.

Typical, I tell him.

But I now want to... To measure the hurt of the past. To take stock of the loss.

What if there wasn't any?

And his look- of scornful, confident youth. Of good looks and black sparkling eyes.

And we both know, there must have been.

Smiling he tells me contentedly, I am so cruel.

Curtain Fall

2007-06-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

It rains. In small dainty drops of virgin brides.

My aunt doesn't seem to mind. I see her talking to her cow. In cross section- through the iron bars on my window.

The orange chintz curtain, from the cloth that my uncle in one of his travels brought back. Along with his mistress. Family secrets that do not deserve to be told.

That's why my aunt must have cut the pretty cloth- the joy in shaping at least something.

And my cousin. His hands that turned green whatever they touched.

Food that were laced with green peppers. Spices of varying scents, flavors and textures. All from his garden. His garden which changed tastes to suit his mood. There was the summer of anger. The winter of colorlessness. And the spring that never blossomed.

When I came back from my travels, he asked me what I had brought for him.

No green saplings. No brown seeds. No red flowers. No earth touched roots.

The only thing that I could afford to carry was my loss. It occupied all the space there was.

The Last Time I Committed Suicide

2007-05-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

People with an imagination and a vivid one at that never commit suicide. Take me for example. I really thought about it.

Standing in the train station at Frankfurt. The cold clean gleaming tracks that meet only to part. A casual fall when the train enters the station would be all that it takes. Till then a cheerful countenance and maybe even strike up a conversation with the fat lady beside me. Oh- I am terrific actor alright. I remember Sr. Joseph wiping her eyes seeing me die as a very young Romeo with a penciled curling moustache. Juliet found it difficult to hold back tears hearing my dialogues- she wasn't supposed to, remember she supposedly dies before Romeo.

So as I was saying, I would maintain a light and perhaps even witty dialogue with the fat lady. And my shoelaces that always come undone would conveniently come undone when the train enters and I would lean a tad too forward.

And the silver shuddering train that always rushes on precarious tracks. It would mostly be in black and white because I like it that way.

And the fall. In slow motion. Gracefully- as that would be my last fall. I can't fall any lower.

And the train like angry words that cant stop too soon would run over me. The smell of crunching bones and flesh in squealing protest. The blood alone in red. Like a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The warm and rusty taste of it. The trickles in small rivulets. And my last unsaid and unheard thoughts.

That's how I never committed suicide. One just shouldn't think too much.

I got into the train. I'll imagine an accident till I get off at work.

Knocking on heaven’s door.

2007-05-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

The smallest thing makes me cry these days.

Look what happened the other day.

In the fading light of the day, when my cousin and I sat on the steps and he took out his flute and played me a song. Till then all was fine. When the sharp tones and harsh edges were smoothened by painful practice and afterwards when all that was left was the shadow of the music, he told me- that was your favorite song, wasn’t it? I remember. I practiced it for you.

I wish I had forgotten. When my eyes brimmed with tears, he played me another song. His favorite.

When I wiped the dust off my uncle’s gramophone and thought of the old music we used to listen to, I searched for the old records. I never found them. That evening while waiting for the rain, I heard the rasping voice of a singer crooning in sultry tones on our unused gramophone. Old records from a shop somewhere far far away. For me. We didn’t turn on the light in the parlor. My uncle and I sat in the dark and listened to Lata Mangeshkar call for a lover who would never perhaps come. Only the tears came.

Then when I looked through old albums full of forgotten people, faded sepia tones and the glue that held together all these people and some lost memories. I too would be soon one of those people in old albums- stiff smiles and no color. Myriad monochromes. All the pictures were happy pictures. The pain just couldn’t be captured.

And so I snuck it away. And sometimes wipe away the little translucent crystal droplets of pain.

You are cordially not invited

2007-05-09T03:20:00.000-07:00

My favorite things in Indian weddings, especially in the South Indian ones, are the flowers. However ornamental the others might seem; roses, orchids, gladiolas… however they tower in splendor and however much they glisten with color, the undefeatable smell of the jasmine ensures it stays in front of them all.

The closely knit, the warms white buds, the secrets within, the proud pale green stalk that form long chains and the clasps that are reluctant to let go…

From the same string of tied flowers, my mother and my maid cut out adequate quantities and weave them onto their hair. Communists I think jasmines are.

When they open, they surely must be whispering secrets- look, the groom is so ugly. Or perhaps- look the bride is plastered under makeup when all she would have needed is us to make her more beautiful.

I understand flower language. They speak the same words as I do.

So when I am getting married, my topmost item on the list - the flowers. My mother irately strikes them away- they are the least of important things she says.

The hall is booked with crisp notes. The cards are printed in erasable ink. The news is told in distorted stories. People come with fake smiles and what they don’t say deafens what they do.

And then the day that wasn’t to be dawns.

People are begged in embarrassed whispers by my family not to come. There isn’t to be a wedding.

Reason as it exists is really flimsy. Like the barely enough saree of a Bollywood heroine- it just refuses to cover the necessary.

So that just leaves us. The flowers that are now dead. And I, wondering whom I will now speak to.

Crystal Lullaby

2007-04-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

Grandfather's letters were always the same. Crisp white envelopes that dared not crumple in the long journey, strong black words that spelt my name and address and on opening smelt of cardamom, pepper, rubber, nutmeg or any of the innumerable things he grew that year.

The words... stern, straight backed words that dared not lean, quite terrified of this forbidding old man.

But this comes later...Let me tell it as the story goes.

Grandpa was a stranger all my early growing years. He was someone who was just around the house. Like the walls or like the furniture even. I really didn't know a use for him, except maybe to give admonishing stern looks that quelled everyone except grandma. Everyone was scared of grandma. Grandpa secretly so.

It changed. Not the fear, but who I knew as my grampa. Even the words took an almost personal nature, a tone of belonging- grampa. With a wrong spelling that otherwise would have self corrected itself, ashamed to belong to the correct man.

It was a boring Math class and a more boring professor that changed everything. I'd written to everyone I even vaguely cared about. I'd written to people I didn’t care about. I’d even rewritten my will, leaving everything behind to my sister- now that would give an idea to the kind of mood I was in that day.

That’s when I wrote that letter to grandpa. A cheeky letter to a man I’d rarely heard laugh. An exaggerated description of my professor, his gestures, mathematics in general, my view of life at that moment, about the guy who always stared(at first I thought it was me, then cold realization that it was at anybody) and everything else a 17 year old girl could write decently about.

Had I been given time to think over it, that letter would have found place in my pack of written but unposted letters. They would have whispered secrets between licked and sealed covers, a letter to a lover who stopped being mine, to a friend that no longer was and a bunch of other unsent letters…

So when I get a letter in unrecognizable handwriting, typical of me, I sit and wonder who it is from. Opening and finding out would to me then have been pretty lame. What seventeen without the romance of thinking of innumerable people who would write to you.

It was grampa. It told me on how irritating mathematics can be; but to be kinder to my professor and asked exactly how old he was; that life would change shapes over the years; and guys staring was quite ok- just don’t stare back.

And out tumbled an envelope, with grampa’s name and address and a stamp stuck proudly on top. It was for me to reply.

I write back, your writing is almost like a chicken scrawl.
Martin Luther King, Jr’s was also called the same, I learn in rely.

Over the mails they went, to and fro we covered the seventeen years of unspoken words, acts and love.

These days he hardly recognizes me. Not my voice over the telephone. Not even when I walk in to his house. His memory is almost gone, they tell me.

I reach out and touch his hands that once wrote strong black words that my name, address and more.

Raining under my umbrella

2007-04-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

So what if you have to deal with a little bit of rain if you have to get your weekly shopping done? Ok... So you didn’t anticipate it and you step out and you feel the drizzle.

You contemplate if the drizzle is worthy of carrying an umbrella. After all you are from India and more so from a part of India that is blessed with rain almost all year through, so much so that it becomes a part of your life- like morning tea.

People don’t stop to consider if it’s raining. My aunt would forget her handbag, her husband and her children- but never her umbrella.

So I think all this and get quite wet. The drops fall slowly but surely. And I don’t know what rules apply to a wet passport and I don’t want to risk what I really do not know. So I walk back inside after opening two doors and look for the umbrella that came with the house.

Tiny umbrellas are the latest in India I heard. And I am not too pleased with the only offer I have. My grandpa had a better one… but well, enough of all this complaining. The shops close early here.

So I walk down, armed with an umbrella that can house an entire family- a conservative, listening to the government and investing in condoms family I mean.

Rain anywhere is beautiful.

In front of me walks an old lady; wispy white hair and all…

The drops glisten on her cobwebby hair…

I think of home and an incident of rain-kindness.

And pay it forward.

I walk forward and pause when my steps rhyme with hers. Slow and small… The edge of the umbrella moves sidewise, making her a part of my life of a few steps.

She looks surprised. Startled, I must confess.

Smile- the first language we have in common.

And we walk along. When it comes to the bus stop that she must get off, she touches my arm that holds the handle.

Touch- the second language we have in common.

That’s where I leave her, under the canopy of the bus stop at the corner of the street.

I hope I made her a good story to tell someone who would care to hear.

Its time to close the umbrella.

So I killed a hero

2007-04-10T03:37:00.000-07:00

Paris is addictive. Every trip there I get a little more drunk on the place.

The streets of St.Michel with their clumsy, warm, cosy cobbles. The number of footfalls on the old stones… imagine the number of stories they would have to tell.

Of happy skipping steps...
Of sad lingering steps...
Of drunken non-caring steps...
Of curious wonderstruck touristy steps...

I play hopscotch on my mind, the stones are too tempting not to and I am too old to.

‘So tell me about your book that you might never write’, he asks.

I push the marker with my mind, stop, think and don’t answer him.

‘Where is it set?’

This I can answer. ‘India and Paris’.

In a fit of magnanimity I tell him some more.

‘The girl is Indian.’

Hop.

‘And the hero is French.’

I hear his quiet voice tell me, ‘There are no heroes’

Except in books, I want to tell him. But even they are created.

The marker falls on the line. The game ends.
The stones are cold now.

Redemption Redefined

2007-04-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

I wash my sins with his guilt.

Frankfurt diaries

2007-03-30T01:37:00.000-07:00

I am alone in the room. By chance. And it makes me happy no end.

I like the sounds my fingers on the keyboard make. Serious typing. Or random drumming when I am thinking. These sounds that I don’t share with anyone…

I like getting out and fixing myself a warm tea. Opening a bag of Tetley brought from India. The warm smell that wafts out of the mug when I dip my teabag. The swirling milky drops that change colour especially when I stir furiously. And the taste of home.

I like standing by my window. Hail in Frankfurt is as pretty as it can get, but only when you are inside. I sometimes open my window and throw my hands out. To catch the falling flakes. They are an illusion that disappear in your warm crisscrossed brown palm.

I like pulling my scarf into various knots around my neck. I like the way it flaps in the wind. I wonder if I will run behind it if it flies off. Knowing me, I would just let it go. I am tired of trying to catch things that run away.

I like standing near the crackling heater in the hall. The strong heat of which reminds me of the summers in Chennai.

I like watching my mobile. Willing it to ring. Most often just the time digits in the display change.

I am the lost jigsaw puzzle of a single piece set.

Mélange à trois

2007-03-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

D- German. Always has a BASIC QUESTION. Pragmatic and ambivalent are his favourite words. As a matter of statistical importance, every 2 lines have either word. My personal favourites are when both occur in the same line. He can never understand why I suddenly break into a smile at a statement. I am not telling.

S- German. Always has a FUNNY STORY. Most often they are not funny. But I laugh anyway coz I like him.

I- Indian. I always have a DOUBT. I am the observer. But you already know me. So I will next myself.

H- French. Is always agreeable. She has a language problem. But saying yes in any language is easy. So she does that. But I like her. Especially when she looks at me over plates of French food and asks, "Yes?" Saying yes in any language is easy. 'Yes.'

M- Italian. Is always MELANCHOLY. He is like a suffering bird. In his long black coat that covers is almost cylindrical body, his hunched shoulders and his hands cupped behind him; he reminds me of a penguin. But beyond all this lies unexpected wit. He rarely talks, but when he does it takes me a moment and then I burst into peals of laughter. He never is too comfortable with his jokes understood. Unhappy Feet.

Rhyme and no rhythm

2007-02-22T21:11:00.000-08:00

I have been a bad friend
Done things I cannot mend
Damn, I didn't want that to rhyme
Now I'm left with a poem that's turning into a mime!

Since am a poet bad
I'll give an explanation tad
Coarse dialogues and actions too
If that's not a mime pray tell me what else will do!

So I've broken words and hearts of course
And absolutely no remorse!

Its a habit me thinks
This breaking things and needless rhyme
Now that I thought I almost had it there
Bang it goes and stops that flow fine!

Its like silly doodles one draws
On late night long distance calls
When the cost exceeds the words
This bugging random verse
One cant stop and it gets just worse!

I think I am a feminine rhyme,
Putting everything in trouble
And in quantities that's but double.
No more of this next time!
(See it does rhyme with rhyme!)

How can I help you say goodbye

2007-02-12T04:34:00.000-08:00

We were her regulars. It’s seen by the way her hands hover over the largest ones in her pile. Our smile makes her decide. And later the extending fingers of the smile roped in her family.

Certain days it would be husband who chopped in quick sure strokes our daily dose of good health. We would see her sit in the shade of the tree they have claimed as their own, nursing her baby. Once in a while her little daughter would stare at us, her small features forming into a prefect scowl.

The unseen cool waters of the tender coconut that rushes up the transparent yellow straw…

And so it was everyday. Only the straw colors would differ. And yes, the scowls too- with varying, or sometimes I thought, deepening levels of intensity.

So when we didn’t see the entire family for some days, we were worried. I think it had to do a lot with the breaking of a pattern. In the many months that we knew them not once have I cared to ask their name or if at all I had to take steps in familiarity it would be to shove their little girl in a warm bath and scrub her to cleanliness.

And she magically reappeared claiming her same old tree with her green bunch of coconuts with their secret waters.

She didn’t appear surprised when we stopped. Holding the chosen ones in my hand, I ask conversationally, “Where were you all these days?”

She leans on the car while she tells me what I shouldn’t have asked.

Her 5 month old baby died. Just like that one morning. After she nursed him and put him to sleep. She woke up as usual, bustled about the house, maybe picked up his dropped toys which she was too lazy to pick up the night before. And when she had to cook breakfast and realized she was short of food, she picked up her what she thought sleeping baby to go shopping with her. When she pressed the cold lifeless body to her bosom, the first realization that something was wrong struck her.

Her final realization after that period of numbness filled with waiting in the hospital watching busy doctors, sicker people, and a proclamation; was of loss.

No one knew what had gone wrong. She least of all.

I think her story stopped long before I realized it did.

She was back to work. She did not have the luxury to dwell in grief.

This isn't to you

2007-02-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

Women remember to forget and men forget to remember.

Boys mean friends when they say friends. Ask them what do they 'mean' by it and they would shrug? I asked!

They wouldn't call everyday but be there the day you called.

They wouldn't know what exactly to tell you about the color of your nail enamel but they'd never see just the dark circles over tears.

Guy friends after they get married are another post.

Girls have best friends. Many of that. Ask them what it means? They would gush.

They'd exchange bands in school but forget voices that once held forbidden phone cradles and sneaked to console a broken heart.

They'd wait to have lunch at the canteen in college but wouldn't bother taking a girlfriend for a lunch date.

They'd cry over the 'Titanic' sharing tissues but wouldn't shelter an abandoned girlfriend.

Girlfriends after they married are a paradox.

Same old song and dance

2007-01-21T20:37:00.000-08:00

I hate men who sulk. Especially who sulk after the vile words leave their mouth. It’s my hate for him that holds us together.

Rich and cheap perfumes waft around. I push into the crowd and walk as fast as I can. I know he is not following.

I hate myself for turning and looking for him. Then searching.

I push and elbow trying to get out of the store. Reluctant panic. The reluctance is the crowd’s and the panic is mine alone.

I sit down on a newly vacated bench. The warmth of the seat is unsettling. Unknown shared intimacies.

He comes… picking at his teeth.

I wonder when I began hating him.

It was easy, his claustrophobic, probing questions and his stealing of an anger that should have been rightfully mine at most instances.

It’s easier if I call it love and men was her advice when I told her about it.

Unrelated relatives

2007-01-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

Relatives. Highly useless species. I mean not dormant like stuff. They have to do things. And always in the negative!

"Hello"

My mom is the one who picks up the call as always.

And from then begins a spate of words each more spiteful than the other. Its about my blog. My mom's reaction goes from bewilderment to shock.

I have written about an army cousin! Really? I never once thought he was worth writing about!

I have put up pictures of them! *Shudder*

The family name and honor is at stake! I never knew we had one!

The accusations have been many.

15 seconds of fame. Everyone seeks.

I would like to say some things to all my so called 'relatives' reading my blog. In defense or not.

• My writing is my own and if any resemblance to any person living or dead is but natural. Live with it. At least let me.

• There is a word called verisimilitude. Look it up.

• If you have anything to say, say it to me. There is an email id on my profile page and I truly respond to any emails that come my way.

• And please, if you can...spare me the joy of being read! I really don't like any of you and I know that the feeling is mutual. So why?!

• And on a parting note. Be more courageous. My mother is not the one writing. I am. All answers, if any required, come from me.

To the rest, and I mean the nice people who read me and are not related to me, I will be back with a post and soon. After all there are stories to tell….

With love from Milan

2006-12-12T02:35:00.000-08:00

English is common only in India.

Brown means familiarity. Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and some Desis have all asked me if I come from their own country. A flicker of almost hope that I soon extinguish.

I-N-D-I-A.

Pictures that form in some minds are colorful. Oh so colorful!

Tigers? Yes, in zoos.

Snake charmers? I don’t believe this. I thought we had helped erase such pictures! But yes… I haven’t seen many. Maybe one.

Rajahs? The ‘h’ in the word exists am sure. Dead or no longer living as one.

The first act of kindness was being given a potted Poinsettia by the woman at the cafeteria. And then there were none.

I opened a jar of mom’s pickles. Brushing aside few tears that didn’t seem to understand they were uninvited, I called her. Long distance.

She was of course asleep. I wake her up to talk about how cold it is here. People, place and thing... like a nice Pronoun. Abiding by rules of Colderdom.

She knows everything. So she knows that I have more.

We wait in silence. Then all of a sudden words rush. They have a long way to go…maybe that’s why.

I opened your pickle. I miss you so much… they taste wonderful mom. As always Mom…

She is silent when she shouldn’t have been.

I bought them.

For sale: Mom’s Recipe Mango pickle.

Recommended...Not

2006-11-21T01:03:00.000-08:00

Sex always begins with a No.

Yes.

Apologies to my blog

2006-11-10T02:44:00.000-08:00

I know how you feel. Like an old lover. Abandoned and slightly bewildered as to the reason why. Why suddenly...

And I like the bad lover make up excuses. Ummm... I was busy.

If there is anything I want to say at the moment it is that there really is nobody else. I swear.

Loving and Leaving Paris

2006-10-30T01:55:00.000-08:00

Fragrances of various shades and intensities waft around. Women and dogs of fashionable clothes totter around. Ok- so this is what makeup is. I scold myself for staring. What would mom say? She with her prim manners and primer ideas on ‘genteel’ and ‘ladylike’ would have outdone the women by ignoring. But Indians are normally very curious and I am very Indian.

Champs-Elysées is one of the prettiest walks ever. The French have no doubt, it IS the prettiest. I do not disagree.

Jean Paul maintains a pleasant flow of conversation. French history is better heard when from him. I am amazed when he dashes of dates and years associated with places. The non-believer in me wonders if all of it is correct. Both eyes on the road, one ear listening to him and the other listening to my thoughts…

We take the Parisian customary photo in front of the Arc d'Triomphe. I make a note to myself not to get a copy of it.

Souvenirs hold no interest. They are forgotten memories one insists on trying to remember. Blurs of smells, sights and sounds... I fool myself by forgetting. These days I forget even the forgotten.

Jean Paul once visited India. I took him around Pondicherry. He knew not a word of English and I knew few French words. Suffice to say it was a disaster. Most of the silence when we bicycled or sputtered around in my Kinetic was dispelled by coughs, cleared throats and while in quiet places, by shuffled shoes. He gave me a French book on parting hoping I would learn. In the years that passed, he learnt English. People have been suffocatingly kind to me.

Shopkeepers who returned more change when I bought clothes. And after painfully counting the coins and stretching back the rest, a conspiratorial wink and pressing my fingers back to enclose the cold circles.

Strangers who stopped cars and stood on gelid pavements while first determining the handwriting and then the address on the crumpled paper.

The day I left, the Chinese good luck doll that I got. A French guy who gave a Chinese doll to an Indian girl.

Universe. Globalization. Kindness. Or a bit of it all.

Huh ha!

2006-10-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

Parties extend normally longer than they are expected to. You usually miss the part when the hosts begin to keep quiet and wonder how to get this all of a sudden too noisy crowd out. They push the unwashed plates, the remaining food and disarranged stuff forcibly out of their mind. I have done it.

So we were returning from the party. The lipstick remained in traces. Part of it on wine glasses. Partly on people’s cheeks after I’d downed more than necessary. Mostly on the glass I’d say. A girlfriend once told me that you should discreetly lip the side of the glass so that your lipstick doesn’t transfer. That I found terribly undignified. Nowadays non transferable lipsticks are the answer. But I do wonder where it al then goes.

I hope he didn’t count the number of times I switched glasses. I hate this cheating. But I love my peace better.

I worry if my thoughts can be heard by him. I search for a suitable music station. Ah, jazz. I like jazz. I don’t know anything about it but just that I like the sound of it. A friend once told me that you need to understand music to appreciate it and understand it better to love it. I wouldn’t still agree. Jazz makes me feel sophisticated. Mind you, that’s not the only reason I like it, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it counts for a large share.

He finds the music repetitive. But I like jazz.

Se, this is what happens when I have too much to drink. My thoughts shift patterns like my fickle friend. Well, she would change boyfriends more times than… I can’t find the right analogy. But you get what I mean…

His voice is jarring. I wonder how I once found it suave and cultured. I am sucker for such things. Before when we didn’t have so much money, I would walk through stores and find the best bargains. Then I would buy la-di-la labels from the sneaky little Indian guy and sew them on. Like careful little Chinese seamstresses. And make sure that people noticed. Ah, I was once very cunning. These days I am quite out of touch with the general cunning I had. These days, I use it like Chanel no.5. On special occasions, lest he catches on.

‘You don’t laugh at my jokes these days’; his whining voice sounds like an instrument out of tune.

I wait a moment before I laugh uncomfortably.

Apparently, that wasn’t meant to be a joke.

Haute couture

2006-10-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

At the coffee machine.

Coins clanking when they touch another metal. Settling with the familiar, which we do not hear. But they exist am sure.

Bonjours and kisses in the air.

So I pick up my cup and stand by the window.

The window is to be shared I see, when someone walks over. I move to accommodate.

We sip our coffees in silence after the smile of unfamiliarity and civility.

Nice shirt, she says.

I smile and say thank you.

Unfortunately I do not find anything to reciprocate.

I look at her colorful shoes a second longer than necessary. Red, blue, yellow and was that green?

She laughs. That’s my daughter who wanted me to buy them. They go with none of my clothes, but well...

I laugh too.

How old is your daughter?

10 almost.

I smile.

As I go back to my coffee and open window, she asks, 'Do you have children?'

I tell her, 'I'm not married.'

Once again I almost return when her expectance pulls me back.
I see her question has not been answered.

'Oh. No. I do not have any children'

The French!

London, September 2006

2006-09-26T02:07:00.000-07:00

London. West Hampstead. The tube.

Caught between the underground and the sunlight. Drops of sunlight dancing on your body. On the pages of your book. Then there is darkness. Your eyes unhappily adjust to the changing phases of light.

I lean on the bar, flipping the pages of the book as my eye reaches the end of a page.

My colleague finds an empty seat and rushes. Musical chairs had a significance behind it in case you haven’t already realized.

He grins sheepishly at me when he catches my glance. I didn’t want to look reproving. He gestures his willingness to switch. I shake my head in the negative and return to the sunlight playing peek-a-boo with the pages of my book.

A lot of people get in. A lady with a baby. She stands there shuffling her baby from one shoulder to another. The train isn’t very considerate. Lurches n all that. I stop reading.

In my country this wouldn’t have happened. No, not ladies having babies. No, I don’t mean trains lurching either. But people who stare away deliberately or not. But definitely oblivious to the discomfort of someone with a baby in hand. Many stations pass.

She still stood on.

This wouldn’t have happened in my country.

London. Wembley. The bus.

Have you been to Wembley? No? Well, it’s a place full of Indians. I'd be more accurate to say Asians. Different shades of brown. Varying accents of English. Navrathri was around the corner and it somehow managed to reach even London.

Colorful skirts are on display. Sweets. Pan. Dosas. Thaalis. You name it. A cleaner version of one of the market streets in India.

I deliberately do not look at any of the price tags. People do not smile at each other. I'd have thought it would be easier. After all in a strange land even strangers are familiar. And brown is a good color to begin with.

It doesn’t deter me somehow. I keep smiling at people I meet. Once in a while I catch one back. Maybe I remind them of someone they left back in India.

We get into a bus. It’s already quite late and my feet ache from so much walking.

I lean back into the seat of the bus. An old man shuffles in.

The lady in front of me gets up and gives her seat up.

He doesn’t acknowledge her gesture. He keeps standing, his gruffness pushing away her kindness.

Embarrassed she sits down.

He was white. She was Indian.

This too perhaps wouldn’t have happened in my country.

2006-09-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

~~Life~~
Existance.
Sigh!

Dar-e-Salaam

2006-08-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

Dar-e-Salaam.

That's where the neighbor's son went. To make money.

I don't remember a day that went by without her coming home to meet Mu and tell us about Dar-e-Salaam. I'd asked Mu where it was. It was somewhere far. Far far away. Farther than the road beyond the green fields. Farther than even Pondicherry where my parents lived.

The neighbor in her crisp white dress with her crisp red mouth who spat betel juice in a quaint old jar that she carried when she came home. She wouldn’t spit in Mu's garden. Oh no. Deference, my first sight of it.

Mu would offer her tea everyday which she would gracefully decline pointing to her blood red mouth.

Mu would sip her tea and listen to her stories. Of big buildings. Bigger cars. Lavish lifestyles. Of letters with exotic stamps which she would graciously give me. I steamed out the stamps and pressed them, still with fragments of ink from a strange country into my notebook. My notebook pages that whispered to the stamps from Dar-e-Salaam.

The stories were always happy. They made my neighbor happy, that is.

I'd sometimes go over to her in a fit of boredom and sit on her mulberry lined wall.

"Tell me about Dar-e-Salaam" and she would tell me stories of tigers that roamed the streets and animals of colors that existed not even in the paint box I got last summer.

"Are there ghosts in Dar-e-Salaam?", I once asked her.

She thought about it.

"Yes", she decided. People die even in Dar-e-Salaam.

And went on to tell me some of the most fearsome stories I'd heard in my childhood. And in my ignorance, I didn't realize that the ghosts in Dar-e-Salaam too spoke last words in Malayalam to their victims.

Mu put an end to those visits after she was repeatedly woken several nights by my tugging of her saree. The toilets were too far and too dark and the way was paved with ghosts of increasing cruelty.

But the other stories continued. Though Mu was unhappy with her for scaring me with her stories, I think Mu visited the Dar-e-Salaam in her head when she spoke. I had one too. Full of dark blue tigers and orange peacocks and ghosts with white sarees. That I would never go there was certain.

It was then that it happened. Her son died. I don’t know how, but he died. And he was brought home in a brown box.

It didn’t have a stamp on it.

We went visiting. Her screams of grief terrified me. Mu hastily walked me back home.

I brushed aside the uneasy feeling that there perhaps was someone else who walked with us that evening.

His ghost after all would be in Dar-e-Salaam.

Elegy written on a rainy vacation day

2006-08-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

Some people can’t be forgotten. They can’t be remembered either. They just exist in your life. Maybe as tucked away memories of hurt... Or whispers of something you imagined…

This is about him. Someone I met years ago, who walked in uninvited into my life. True that I’d hoped fervently that he would. True that I’d thrown open doors for him to walk in. But uninvited still. I can’t bring myself to accept that I’d invited trouble.

I met him at a wedding years ago, to which he’d come on invitation.

Blue crumpled silk skirt which held my complete attention, strands of hair that were incessantly being pushed back and wouldn’t stay on, anklets in gold that I wasn’t to lose- you see, it was just too much of attention on myself coming from me. But this is to tell you how young I then was.

Young and almost innocent.

The next time he came in, he came as a letter. To an address I’d written on the back of the invitation or his palm- I don’t exactly remember. But I knew it was something quick and away from the eyes of my grandmother.

His letter, which I hid from mother. No, not under pillows. But among the numerous books on the bookshelf. You see, almost innocent.

His soft, pale envelopes and black inked writings came to signal something achingly secretive. Something I when tried to share, became distorted.

He wasn’t a lover. But I loved him.

He wasn’t a boyfriend. I had another.

He wasn’t a cousin. I had many.

He wasn’t a friend. I didn’t need one then.

His letters, all then carefully stored in a brown jute bag. Letters that bore fingerprints from constant reading. Letters that were opened proudly in front of girlfriends and read to memorize. Words that were stored in your mind. “I will look you after…”

I opened my heart to him in words. Girlish secrets of periods and pains and the furtive joy in sharing this with a boy. Childish guilt that was salvaged and presented. Almost innocent.

He was the one I cried to when my first love was discovered lost.

And then he walked away.

Reason as it existed, didn’t make much sense. Rather, there wasn't much of it to go around.

I wrote to him. Feverish scribbles on envelopes with his address. I kept writing to a reply that never came.

It hurt that I didn’t know the exact moment when he ceased to exist in my life. I didn’t even catch his shadow.

It was the day before having to go home after 4 years of early morning alarms, shared bathrooms and study.

College had wound up and serious decisions had to be made about memorabilia collected from the years. Gifts that were re-gifted. Pressed flowers from the numerous occasions that always existed in college life. Love letters from non-lovers. Things that mom would easily classify as- junk.

The brown jute bag that had remained idle for many months now. It would have made more sense to either keep it or throw it all away. But on the wet terrace of our house, in the fast fading light of the day, I sat down to tear all his letters.

One by one. My fingers hurt. The soft envelopes weren’t as soft as they seemed. They were more than I expected in number. But hot wet tears helped. They fell fast and furious on the black ink and turned them all spidery. A shivering spider.

My best friend sat watching me; her pile had gotten over quite sometime ago. I kept tearing and tearing. I finished them all.

He was now officially a memory. RIP.

Center of the middle

2006-07-31T23:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Mother,

This is a letter I won't post. For you aren't to know all this.

What do I say about him?

That he is kind? He brings me flowers for the remaining change that he has. Flowers of the season. Sometimes they smell good. Most often, they smell of my boredom.

That he is loving? The fan up there doesn't dispel the smell of our sweat. And love making. It makes me blush to write of such things. But that is what even you would call it, no mother? Making love? We all make love in the hope that it exists. Else we invent it. I do.

His smoke stained kisses... His pen holding fingers... When they touch me...mother, what did you feel when father touched you? I don't want to know, lest they confirm what I don't want to hear.

We live on the fifth floor. Higher than you can imagine. I feel like a queen sometimes. A queen in my loneliness. With no subjects and an abandoned kingdom.

Down below stay a family with a kid. The kid sometimes runs up to me. It smells of baby powder-fine, soft and warm. They speak a different language. Or maybe I forgot how to talk.

The streets are long and endless. I hold his hand when we walk. He likes it that way. I? I don't mind.

I broke some of the bangles we'd bought for the wedding. I'd saved them up for the parties, wrapping them up in old newspapers as I'd seen the bangle walla. And then yesterday, they broke. Now I don't have matching bangles for the carefully chosen silk sarees. What will I wear to the parties? There are no parties.

I am happy. For that is what I am supposed to be.

Love,
Your daughter

In the beginning of the middle

2006-07-26T03:43:00.000-07:00

Train travel always does that. You carry unwanted smells from one place to another. The smell of rust and iron, of grime and dust, of sweat and boredom, of anticipation and tiredness.

She'd refused her early morning tea. She never drank it without brushing her teeth. He pretended to do the same. Slightly angry with her for his pretence, he bought the newspaper which he barely read.

"We get down at the next stop. Be ready.", her new husband said.

When the train pulled in at their station, she read the black letters on the yellow background. They spelt a new life.

Her silk saree in a state of great horror at being treated so- by the same woman who would take it out and sigh fondly into it, rebelled by crumpling some more.

She didn't have too much time to contemplate her first step. She always had a problem with right and left and in the fluster of embarking from a train, she lost which it was. It didn't matter too much anyway. Her mother of customs and traditions was almost one day and a night away.

What were those queer things? Those half-covered, rickety contraptions?

"We'll be taking a cycle rickshaw to get home", his pompous voice sounded again.

Ah, cycle rickshaws!

He couldn't bargain with the beedi smoking guy who pedaled the vehicle that would take them home. He didn't want to sound cheap in front of his new wife.

The pedals moved rhythmically. With each roll of the wheel she was taken a step ahead in her new world.

What were those things up there? High above every house?

He noticed her eyes look up. He read the unasked question in them.

"Do you know what they are?"

She nodded her head in the negative. And the new wife, remembering the request from the night before said, "No"

Pleased, he pointed to the television antennas and replied, "They hang clothes on them to dry."

His new wife nodded her head in understanding and wondered at how tall the people of the place must be to hang clothes so high up.

He laughed at her. She laughed with him.

It did something to him, that innocent laugh of hers. Taking her hand in his, he promised to himself that he will be kind to her.

Blushing at the act of her husband's, she thought, "Perhaps there will be swings"

New beginnings and old pasts

2006-07-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

He'd just married her. Untouched still. They had been packed hurriedly to an almost stomping, impatient train. Rather it was his impatience, to be alone with her.

Summer months are dry. They kinda dry up conversations too. His carefully planned dialogues, ones that were to draw her out, impress her to how witty her husband was, tell her about the politics- just a little. They had all the time to discuss that in detail later. When she would rub his tired legs from doing nothing the whole day...

She sat, timid and terrified. This being her first journey anywhere. And especially into the unknown.

She hoped her husband would be kind. Not like Latha's or even Padma's. Rather like Annie's, the kind who would smuggle the strong smell of flowers in plastic bags and weave it onto her hair. Then they would hold hands and ....How childish were her thoughts, she scolded herself. She was married. And married women didn't think of flowers or swings or holding hands. What happened after that was quite vague, but her mother had promised her that all her answers were in the cookbook. That was her forte. Just the right amount of color, spice, salt and sugar. Concentrate on that and your life is almost made out. She clutched the stylish handbag her uncle had given her- as part of a present.

It had nothing except a comb, few lace handkerchiefs and a crushed rose. The crushed rose, being what she had picked up after her ex-lover had dramatically thrown it. Shhh... He was in the past. One mustn’t think of such sinful thoughts.

He bought her the rice and dal that was served in aluminum foiled packs. She wanted to save those shiny foils, but they were way too greasy and they would stain her handkerchiefs. She wouldn't use those lacy wonders even when she had a terrible cold. She'd take them out when they went out for the parties. Matching them with her new sarees. She hugged her dreams to herself.

Did we check if she could talk, he wondered frantically. He'd never heard her open her mouth all the while. Or if she did, it was in the louder noise of trumpets and relatives at the wedding. But his confidence in his tyrant of a mother was more than his fears. She must have checked to the last little digit!

"Aren't you sleepy?” he asked her.

She nodded in the negative. This was cause for concern. Maybe his mother slipped...

"Well, I am going to retire for the night", he sounded as pompous as he felt.

Her eyes widened in admiration. He sounded like the curled-greased-oiled-moustache hero in the only movie she'd seen. She remembered every frame of it. Especially the stolen kisses. Shhh... She banished the sins again.

Changing into checkered pajamas, he told her, "I'll see you in bed and only then sleep."

She waited not sure of what that meant.

"Do you have anything to change into? Something more comfortable perhaps?"

She clutched her silk saree tighter. There was no way she was removing that.

She nodded her head in the negative. This was cause for alarm. He pushed down the panic that seemed to rise with every passing monologue.

"Which berth do you wanna take? Would the middle one be too high for you?"

She smiled thinking of the number of trees of dizzying height that she'd climbed.

He caught her smile.

She nodded.

"No. Speak. Let me hear your voice” he insisted.

The train's rhythmic beat, conversations from neighboring coupes, the whir of the fan and the whoosh of the wind was all that hovered around his ears and in front of her lips for a few seconds.

Voice demure with fright and lack of use, she murmured, "I'll take the middle one. Thank you very much"

It felt like music to his ears. She could speak!

She hoped she sounded sophisticated. She hoped he heard the thank-you parts. She'd practiced them to almost Scarlett O'Hara perfection.

3 lines of life

2006-07-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

I made a mistake this morning.
Yet again,
I woke up alive.

I am charlatan.
I peddle false emotions.
Mine which I am too scared to call my own.

It happened to me.
But when I write, it only maybe happened.
I can be everything I am in my writing.

I can only laugh at my foolishness.
And yours.
But mostly at my own. Ha.

I am a feminist when in other people’s rights.
In my own,
I am a coward.

For me with love and squalor

2006-07-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

"It’s always about you", he said sulkily.

I usually shrug off his comments. Else they would mean too much. But this one refused to be. Shrugged off, I mean.

Is it now? Always about me?

Remember the time I stopped reading books at night because I was too tired? It was the exhaustion of entertaining you.

Remember the time I stopped cooking? It was of the taste that never was your mother's.

Remember the time I stopped talking long hours with my friends over the phone? It was of the time that never was there after you.

Remember the time I stopped writing? It was to squash your fear of being replaced.

Remember the times I refused to be hurt when you flirted with other women? It was to escape from hating you.

Yes. It’s always about me. It is the only way to stay on.

Meet the friends

2006-07-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

I am charming. Witty. Smart of course. And pretty in an unconventional way.

I am the aunt that my cousins' children will whisper secrets to. I am the cousin that cousins hug at railway stations and hold hands when they cross the road. The fact that I am terrible at crossing roads is another story altogether. But you get the drift don't you? I am the girl that aunts always say nice things about. Uncles love talking to. Ah- I see you've got it.

No, not the angelic one. But the smart, witty- the first line things. Yeah- that's it.

So why the sudden attack of panic when he asks me to meet his friends, you might very well ask. Oh- is it natural and hence you aren't?

My hands shake nervously when I wear the eye liner. It looks like something my cousin's 3 year old son has drawn. This is the part where I should down a gulp of Scotch to steady my hands. I'll stock it up, I promise.

The dress feels too loose. The hair is better not talked about. I'm heading for the barber shop when this is over.

But I do look nice. Not as nice as the day before- but still. I wait for him to pick me up. He doesn’t say much. Maybe we should do this another day.

When we park the car, he points to the other car in the driveway saying it’s them. And adds unhelpfully, "You bet every eye out there is on you!"

The heels were too high. But thankfully the driveway wasn't too lit.

Here's the gist. My carefully planned conversations, suitable answers, and smart repartees weren't used. You can borrow them if you want.

They were a rowdy bunch, oh yes. Food was devoured at a pace I watched stunned. I’m never inviting them home.

And language. Well, I’m gonna make sure my mom never meets them.

And they so excluded me from there conversation. Half an hour later, I joined in lustily. I hate being left out.

If you thought I didn’t like it, well no. I quite enjoyed it. Well, I am always like this. I crib about everything I like.

But I am gonna pay him back for this. Coz I am a woman. More so, coz it’s just me!

He’s gonna meet my friends. And I’m picking the worst of the lot.

Let me see… there’s one who only talks about animals- her cats. He hates cats.

And there’s this one who talks about the latest book on the top charts. He never reads.

And my own favorite who talks about her Randle Patrick McMurphy in her psychiatry department. He hates cuckoos.

An apology to remember

2006-06-23T04:31:00.000-07:00

I loved him. Which is why I died the other day.

A scar feels real between two places.

I’m wandering already. This is about how I died and I better stick to the topic.

I wasn’t like others. The only person who scared me was I. The things I thought of. The things I was capable of doing. But one can’t run away from oneself.

I won’t go into the past. Because it is so relevant. And somehow it makes me feel less guilty. I don’t want that. Wallowing in guilt. No self pity. Never.

Marriage. I was married to him by many threads.

I hadn’t been but discreetly unfaithful. I had demanded. I had cried. I had innumerable accepted fallacies. I was most often if not always; wrong. I wasn’t pretty. I wore make up twice a day. Once in the morning. Because that’s the thing to do. Again in the evening. To cover the tiredness. I picked his calls on the second ring. His mom cooked better than I. I moved from a woman to his woman. That’s when I panicked.

If he hadn’t walked back into my life… somebody else might have. Or maybe not… But that’s just wishful thinking.

Else I wouldn’t have pushed him to her. He hadn’t realized it. I used his guilt to cover for me. Like stealing bed sheets.

I could smell her on his shirts. That made my baths reasonable.

I could see his hands shiver on picking up a call. That made my cell phone bill reasonable.

I wouldn’t have left him. I loved him.

He was honest enough to admit his affair. Of course I knew it. I’d wanted it that way. But I hadn’t wanted him admit it.

It made me feel small. How I hated him for that. Things had been fine. Just the way I’d wanted.

He was stupid. An affair isn’t worth killing oneself for.

He died. And left me alive. That’s when I died.

2006-06-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

Until
we met again, I knew I wasn’t in love with you

Now
I'm not sure if I am not in love with you.

And
I know this unsureness exists

Only
because I know you aren’t.

Again
I lie to myself.

Always
I'm an expert at pretending.

Mistress of Spices

2006-06-06T03:30:00.000-07:00

We women in the family always had a thing for spices.

My-other-gramma of handbags and sleeveless blouses and nail polishes, would always carry a finger of clove in her mouth, nestled in the space between her molars. The dried flower bud, wet and soggy in her mouth wandering about desolately, missing her teeth, when they all fell away. My-other-gramma who withered like dried flowers. Both from her life and mine, leaving behind a stain like that of pressed flowers in white notebooks.

Mu who would grind nutmeg on her magic stone. Nutmeg and honey being her eternal cure for every ailment. It didn't save her though. Naked brown nutmegs, she would lay scattered among her clothes. Which would share their treasure of a smell to her off-white sarees. The spidery lacy mace which she would remove, replacing its delicate sweetness in favor of the stronger one of the nutmeg. That's how she changed, from sweet to sweeter. Adorable to more. Even after she died. Filling my life with hand picked saccharine dreams.

Mother of cardamom. Dark like the closed capsulated seeds, her secrets safe with her. Secrets. Mind the plural. The many that were hers alone. Cardamom tea when she would serve us all, we always knew, she'd broken a pod of her secrets. Their smell and taste almost pungent in the brown swirling liquid in front of us.

Have you seen cinnamon trees? Smelt their cinnamon smells? Chewed their cinnamon leaves? I have.

It was tree that didn't fit anywhere. Standing right in the middle of the pathway. The pathway accommodated it by curving around it. The mango trees with the passion fruit creepers entwined around them, lifted their roots and walked a few feet away one night. The two nutmeg trees- male and female, Mu would insist, together always. None of them anywhere near the cinnamon tree.

It was a mighty tree when I was young. Thick green leaves of serpentine curves. And on them thick green caterpillars, wooly and terribly itchy. It was an unfriendly tree alright.

But the taste of cinnamon... the warm and fragrant smell of your breath after you chewed the brown bark, drew me to it. Many a days Mu would rub balm on my swollen body, while I sat thinking darkly of ways to eliminate the fuzzy caterpillars, chewing meditatively at the curled quill of cinnamon in my mouth.

I'd cut off the bark at random reachable places. Shaving off the bark to reveal the pink grated skin of the tree, I'd pretend to ignore the gaping wound. But I always felt the pain of the tree. The sharp stinging pain which would spread in my mouth when I bit the bark. The cycles of punishment were always quick in my life. Swift and ruthless.

A bed of her own

2006-05-30T03:39:00.000-07:00

Angeline Mary came into my life quite early. I wouldn't say 'life'. Threshold of it. Like in class photos. The girl who helped during school dramas to plaster yourself with cheap makeup lifted mostlty from older sister's make up kits.

She had no special friend. Like one of my friends said- Angeline Mary was everyone's friend and yet nobody’s.

Frankly, we never could believe anyone had so sweet a disposition all the time. Swapnil often would come to find her pencils sharpened when she'd kept them blunt to draw caricatures of our teachers. It was a tough task to stop Swapnil from what she threatened 'beating up' Angeline, but we were successful nevertheless.

So when she joined the same college as I, it was but natural that we huddled together on the first day while being scrutinized by fearsome seniors.

When we were allotted cots, it was but natural Angeline gave up her cot when they discovered that they were short of one. It didn't matter to whom her cot went. All that mattered to Angeline was that the shine on her halo didn't diminish.

4 years of Angeline again seemed bad. Especially when we were at a new place where familiarity meant best of friends.

I was the unlucky one to whom she 'gave away' her cot. This happened only because of my prolonged goodbye to mother whom I kept saying goodbye to, long after she was gone. Standing by the iron gates of the hostel, looking at an empty road with a few stray dogs and a car that stays only in front of your eyes; I was late on my first day.

That made a misplaced sense of guilt on my already guilt laden shoulders. First, I pretended to ignore her walking around with bed sheets and pillow in hand by staring studiously away. Or sometimes right through her.

But after most of the lights were turned off, I'd walk across rows of sleeping girls, looking for the lump that was Angeline. I always found her in borrowed beds. Maybe she was dreaming borrowed dreams...

Though she was later allotted a cot of her own, I'd see her walk around looking for an empty cot everyday.

For someone I thought wasn't worth thinking about, I thought a lot about Angeline. I'd see her wash her face everyday, squeezing the honey brown gel from plastic tubes of Pears. The smell of which would linger in the washed air saying, "Angeline was here".

She's wash her face every twenty minutes or so. The smell of Pears was forever.

Once over yet another late night talk, I remember someone sniffing the air and saying, "Ssshhh... Angeline is here". We'd discovered one of the sleeping forms in the room to be Angeline's, her freshly washed face making almost a glow.

In her world, in which hardly anything belonged to her, to even call her own- even a bed of her own didn't make much sense I guess.

It was the weekend when almost everybody went home. I hadn't.

When Angeline Mary walked that night with bed sheets in hand and her pillow, there was an extra bounce to her step. It was her day of choice. Not so many beds were to be chosen from everyday.

She chose the empty one near mine. I pretended to read my book… pretended to be thinking great thoughts…I was concentrating so much on pretending, that I actually started on hearing her voice.

I am not sure this happened. But it did. We talked. About school. Past ghosts of teachers. The skeleton in the biology lab which we were convinced belonged to Sr. Regina who went missing. Hangman's copse and the story that came down with it from generations of seniors. Friends. Acquaintances. Incidents. Angeline Mary knew every play I'd enacted in school. Every character that I'd exaggerated, getting into skins that weren't mine. Every story I'd recounted to open mouthed girls, drawing them closer with fabrics of fiction.

She'd held her sanity by belonging to what was dutifully others'. And she'd held it longer by not sharing her secret. She was part of a gang that excluded her. She heard words not directed at her. She played roles not given to her. And she never shared credit that wouldn't have been hers.

That night was perhaps Angeline's. And mine. Ours. To share but with ourselves.

Tomorrow was another day. We had our separate worlds. She would never be welcome in mine. And I could never belong in her borrowed world.

We didn't sleep that night. Just to share it a little longer.

I have it on my lost autograph book, that she dreamt the best dreams while lying on my bed.

The begining

2006-05-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

It rained the day I was born. An unexpected Libran rain. Kottayam Medical College found itself walked on by women with lifted skirts and men with their mundus hitched higher than the high it already was.

Mother must have screamed, her first and perhaps only emotion when concerning me. And I cried for I hadn’t wanted to be born.

After the many nurses touched me, cleaned me and handed me over with forced emotion to my mother’s mother. It was she who first held me. I’d fallen asleep in her arms, tired from my journey.

Taking one look at my not so pink cheeks and the lower half of my body that was wrapped snugly in a clinical white Turkish towel, she’d prayed that my father wouldn’t be too unhappy. The first born being a girl.

Father was too drunk with joy and alcohol. He couldn’t have cared less. He was a father. A product of his elaborate efforts at love making with his dark and passive wife. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to go through the act of sex with her after this. He hoped so.

Before handing me over to him, my grandmother had pinched my cheeks to make them redder. And I’d woken up to cry in protest. Through his red eyes, father held me uncomfortably and awkwardly. When placed into his hands that formed the most uncomfortable cradle ever, he looked at everyone around foolishly.

Already in a strange land, I was moved from place to place. I’d stopped crying because I was tired of crying too- yes, even then.

The last person to hold me was mother. And when she did I’d realized, she hadn’t wanted me born either. The hostility and hatred penetrated through the warm folds of the blanket and making an effort through all the fear I felt, I’d screamed; terrified.

How do I know all this?
Because I know everything. That’s the curse I am born with.

Many persons of love

2006-05-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

Tell me you love me, I demand. An arrogance born with knowledge of superiority.
He shudders his love to me.

Tell me you love me, I moan. The words make the act more respectable somehow.
He answers. I believe in it because I want to.

Tell me you love me, I plead. Don't make me beg you again.
He obliges because he wants it done with.

Voyeuristic confessions of the eye

2006-05-09T22:03:00.000-07:00

We'd kissed and with careless abandon. In front of people and not.
We'd held hands.
We'd danced.
Sure fingers that entwined suggestively.
Laughs that carried far in the summer wind.

I'd locked him out of the car only to let him in after he'd kissed the dust stained windows more times than I wanted.

Eyes. They watched.

Resentful looks. Envious and bitter looks that bruised us purple. They were the ones who married without love.

Lost looks. Bemused ones even. They were the ones who lost a love after they married.

Scornful looks. Dripping with contempt and disdain. They were the ones who were the infidels.

Shy looks. Bashful and coy, like a teenager. An innocence that will soon be raped of.

Sneaking looks. Warm breaths drawn back, lined with sidelong second glances. Voyeurism even when not from a secret vantage point.

All the people who'd watched us must have made love that night. Or at least had sex.

A summer kind of love

2006-05-03T21:04:00.000-07:00

I look at him, he who is sleeping in the crook of my arm. No, not because he likes it there. Because I do.

Those perfect eyelashes that fan around those perfect eyes.

The traffic outside is loud. So are the voices in my head. Both clear and cluttered.

The unbearable heat of summer. And a summer kind of love. Seasonal. Strong. Potent. Leaves you exhausted. Very like the way we made love.

The clumsy fumbling of our fingers in the dark, cursing hooks and eyes and buttons and belts. The frantic removing of our clothes and shoving them aside...

The scattered clothes around us, a testimonial to the love we made.

His breath touches those soft hairs on the side of my neck. I stroke his hair. I hope he's having a good dream.

His breathing labors and turns into snores.

I cannot sleep with someone who snores. But I never sleep. It’s always the other person who does. I wait to pretend waking up. To leave. I always do that. Before the other does. They always do. So I leave before them.

He can snore. I will be gone with the summer.

We'd laughed a great deal that day. He'd said I need to laugh more. Makes me look younger.

I fondly wipe those tiny droplets of sweat on his forehead. I also wipe the fondness aside.

That tiny mole on the corner of his lips. One kissed a thousand times by me. And a thousand women before me. A hundred later maybe.

I hate them all.

He opens his eyes to find me looking at him.

Smiling he says sleepily, "If our children have anything but brown eyes, you're gonna be in serious trouble lady."

I hug him and tuck him into where he belongs. For now.

Maybe I'll stay this time.