Tonight

Tonight could be just another of those nights 
When the world sleeps as some lie shivering awake
under sad and forlorn neon lights
obscured by the fog passing cars make.
And in the midst of the year end's festivity
there could certainly be that whisper now
of a little conscience pricking gently
that nudges the heart to see somehow

that tonight is just another night in the cold
for some to whom this is just another date;
and if the year grows young or completely old
their gross reality it does not obfuscate.
What joy, what hope, what happiness ahead
to touch their lives when this year too is dead?

Last night when I was dropping my friend home, we noticed a group of people huddled under a flyover. The memory has haunted me all day, and, facile though it seems, I would like to dedicate my last poem of the year to all the homeless people for whom this is just another date.

Transformation

I love how your fingertips make poetry with my skin;

How your eyes watch mine, pleasured by my pleasure;

How you are at once strong and gentle within;

And how in your arms I feel like your treasure.

When with your mind's lovemaking you lead me to an arcane shore

And you play music that touches my soul --

I know that I have never visited this landscape before:

rugged mountaintops, soft sandy beaches and tides that roll.

Then your tactile teasing to drive me wild:

Here and now, moments of ephemeral eternal delight --

You turn me into that forty-something child

looking for, searching for, seeking an epiphanic insight

into life's greatest mystery:

how love transforms the worst warped history.

Budflower

22 December 2015

23:17

Last night, here I was again; brokenhearted as is the wont

Crying in the searing pain; a careless word the font

While the world slept with a clear conscience, oft rare,

And others shadows of their innate evil, like a shield or burden bear.

But how could it end… or end… or end; before a sliver of a chance

two off-chance paths to blend, together a graceful waltz to dance?

And though the heart shattered through acid tears

a cosmic joke it was not, played on an unsuspecting quarry's fears.

Battered and often bruised on the altars of love;

eschewing constantly the middle path which,

Sensible, though it is, little it offers

to the dry leaves of grasses that twitch

to save those little budflowers from certain doom --

To give each budflower what it needs to bloom.

A Sonnet for Quitters

23 December 2015

22:37

On the fringes of the brain

insidious cravings creep:

Triggered by an infinitesimal waft

resolve weakened, lulled to sleep.

Not now, not just now, maybe

later, should it get worse --

Stomachpit kicks itself, gut

clenches, with the effort.

But there are no excuses

and nothing is reason enough

to foil this repetitive attempt

if one's made of stronger stuff.

And though someday the worst will be over

The abyss awaits always, a puff away from surrender.

Want on

19 December 2015

22:17

And suddenly…

In the middle of a brightly lit street

Under a particularly bright street lamp

You finally decided to…

Or perhaps it was a decision taken out of your hands

Compelled by… what?

Held back by a myriad reasons…. but…

It happened, and we did…

Was it the cosmos that shifted

Shivered, shook and shushed,

as we sought what has eluded

for long?

So was it that wanton, then,

just coz it was the middle of the street?

With people padding past pretty oblivious

Or were we oblivious?

Anyway, that's just semantics

Or some such erudite diversion

That should serve to take our minds off

the real thing…

But, it doesn't really work, does it?

Every hour drives the next one to craziness

Though it would rather prophecy an end

to the longest five days we have ever

had to live through… While each minute

drips with possibilities of when

anticipation turns tactile gentle fingertips to

Fulfil the promise of that eternal moment

Under a particularly bright street lamp

In the middle of a brightly lit street

when suddenly… right in the middle of a sentence

and the street… we kissed…

Kindling

Eagle on thermal highs

floating free across

enchanting azure skies

as smooth zigzag patterns enweb --

But sometimes a long melodious cry

a call to her mate?

And sometimes in song-like harmony

another call melds with the one

another pair of wings zigzags

an aerial waltz in tandem.

And raised above the mundane city

throbbing along in a glide

wingtips feather in a gentle touch

kindling

while a soft breath ruffles the down;

And the only sound --

the mingled thudding of two hearts.

The Ballad for an Unknown Candidate

Hesitant, unconfident, you step into the space

to seek numbers to an enmeshed land

the solace of an uncertain dream

in an unclear, distant map of shifting sand;

Tripping on the arcane syntax of a foreign tongue,

bending your mind around diction to enable

the esoteric grammar of an unknown culture -

while the examiner across a makeshift table

Genial but essentially cold to the passion

that burns a path, tears your secure world apart,

smiles comfortingly as your words stumble and trip

a stranger to the dreams that wing your heart.

You watch fascinated as the cultured mouth

forms the well-turned white-accented phrase

as rehearsed and unredeemed words pour forth

from a countenance as brown as your face

poses one insane question after another to which

sometimes you have an answer; but mostly, like fiction

you just wish for a magic wand to turn the tables

on this alien space in your own land of contradictions.

And in that moment when faced with those

dreaded questions, sweat breaks out,

Karna's curse kicks in: the word, the phrase,

the idiom you long to shout 

Memorized, frozen

on the edge of your mind

paralyzed by first-language interference

You seek and search but fail to find --

And once more the mind is colonized

by the hope of a better day:

In a better someplace

In a mad bid to escape, run away,

from a mundane, dreary existence devoid of

the power to raise you from the cesspool of pelf --

And disguised this time as the flight to

the land of opportunity:  History repeats itself.

Waiting to Become

Sometimes I feel as if I am waiting to become

as a bud may wait through winter to flower

or a shooting star still in a night-filled sky

waits for its moment to blaze a meteor-shower.

And pent up inside me a creator waits to pounce

on a thought, a word, a theory to propound -

Long years has it borne ennui and self-distrust,

lived still and breathed in darkness profound.

At times like a chained beast it rattles the shutters

that keep its light from shining through;

Gnashing teeth and gnawing at iron shackles,

it howls its angst at such imprisonment too.

But sometimes for an ephemeral eon it flies -

Soaring and glorying in infinite, empyreal skies.

When the Demons Gnaw

Sometimes, if you have been around thoughts of death a lot, you grow indifferent to the point of apathy towards it: perhaps you feel that in any case in the larger cosmic context, nothing can really save your life. And maybe then the indifference or apathy doesn't spring from callous desensitization or anaesthetized horror but from the calm acceptance that no one can escape this moment of truth. You can escape being born but once born there really is no way to avoid death forever.

So, of course, I toyed with the idea of death -- suicide, murder, flying off a building without wings, slow poison -- the range, you know, when the prisoner knows really no other way of escaping the psychopath holding her puppet strings. Well, don't judge me, will you, please?

By the way, I've been meaning to ask you about that white lab coat you have on -- why do you wear it? You're not a real scientist anyway - just a shrink!

They called it a pseudoscience when I wanted to take it up in college. Oh, and btw, you have a spot on that collar… no, the right collar… yes, there it is… could you wash it out, please? It really bothers me. Makes me smell that stale smell which makes me nauseous. What? I shouldn't be able to smell anything through this thick glass, eh? Why not? Well, I CAN. And it reminds me of HIM…

Ah, yes, you want to know that story, do you? You would. Shrinks are so voyeuristic; did you ever realize that? Oh no, no, not in the sexual sense - HE was that! A sex freak and a voyeur, one of the sinister people my mother constantly warned me about. Of course, I didn't believe her for a second! Would you have, if you had grown up with chocolatey boys and girls, kids of highly intellectual people who taught for a living? No, I guess not. The worst thing that happened to us as kids was the occasional adult pervert who felt us up. Not our uncles and aunts or even friendly neighbourhood professors -- but the incidental chowkidar, the swimming instructor, the piano teacher -- those sorts of people….

Am I raving? Aren't shrinks not supposed to judge? Ah yes, you're not here to shrink me. A "psychological assessment" they called it -- to ascertain without a doubt whether I am sane enough to stand trial.

Well, that does raise so many questions at so many levels now, doesn't it?

Is anyone ever completely sane? To what extent can anyone BE completely sane? Yes, I loved theory of knowledge from the moment I met it! There was something so vast and open about it; you could question knowledge itself! You could say, "Why should I believe that?" and keep searching for the answer till you got one that satisfied you. And then look for the next answer… so vast… so open… unconfined to little boxes with ribbons on top.

Box. Ah yes, the psychopath and the box he kept me in. For weeks there was just a chatai on the floor -- you'd think that was the hardest part but it wasn't. I was used to the simple life. But take my advice, would you? If you're ever having sex on a chatai don't let him get on top… or her, though it's different between two women… You blushing? Seriously? How old ARE you?

He would've liked you. He liked fresh-faced innocent girls with a propensity for gullibility. What drew him to me, you wonder, don't you? I think it was the safety and security of someone with intellect. Someone as gullible as the next girl too. Like I said, chocolatey boys and girls don't quite prepare you for psychopaths. I should've listened to my mother but I knew she was faffing; just trying to keep me out of "trouble". What did she know about psychopaths anyway?

So, yes, returning to the narrative, which is what you are here for, there was this box, a flat without a fan, without furniture, without a single pot or pan… I bought everything for it down to the last spoon. Spent several months of the pittance I got. Boy, how he cleaned up my bank account while he kept his money for booze or for his family.

Jeez, this story sounds like so many I've seen on the screen. Almost unbelievable, right? But I have the scars to show for them. Not all the scars are visible, of course -- I'm pretty sure he cracked one of my four cracked ribs but it could've been the other guy -- but that's another story and that guy's still alive.

But tell me, little shrink, why was I such a BLOODY victim? Well, wonder away. When my friends ask, "Why did you allow him to do that to you?" I want to laugh, you know! No one allows herself to be bullied and beaten and battered. But sometimes I do wonder if I could have escaped. When the demon memories gnaw and rage inside me I create these scenarios, think back on those chances that I could've taken but… there were no alternative realities. I had hardly any money and absolutely no one on my side of the rink. Just some fantasies in which at least one of us ended up dead.

Especially when he put on porn. Sick, sick porn, unimaginably sick. I would feign sleep just to be able to shut out that crap. He watched everything; but the one that really freaked me out had this young girl who was crying, her eye liner smudging wet cheeks, creating black tracks down unmarked skin.

It got to me so bad that I locked myself in the loo and tried to cut my wrists with a razor. Don't try it, ever. Those bloody safety razors are no bloody good. They hurt like the dickens without cutting deep enough. But that child's face, dear god, that child was real, not an actor in a carefully orchestrated low-grade film. If this is what the rest of my life will be, I thought, there is really no point in living on. Sitting with a sicko getting off on… the years stretched on and on and on, endlessly. And in any case, what WAS there to live for? It's not like anyone was really missing me out there.

So now you want the climax, I guess. What really happened that night, the night of the fire? Did I make him drink a gallon of alcohol and leave the gas on? No, your honour, I plead not guilty! Did I light a cigarette and let the house go up in flames? No, your honour, not guilty. I had quit smoking months ago and he drank the alcohol without any help from me. And I didn't know where the lighter was -- that was the crazy thing, see, because he hadn't been able to find the lighter and lit his cigarette using the gas stove.

By the time I woke up, there may have been no escape for either of us except that something forced me to dash through the blaze and smoke and somehow push open the door. Did I try to wake him up? Try to drag him too? Yes, your honour, I plead guilty to that. Why did I do that and waste precious time? … You weren't there, remember?

Did it take me 10 minutes to crack the password he had locked my phone with? Yes, your honour. It was not his birthday, or his mother's birthday or his father's or his brother's. Ironically, it was my birthday, and I thought of that last. Did I call the fire service? No, your honour, I couldn't remember the number. But I did dial 100 and someone came… but they came too late. It was too late even by the time I had got out.

And did I laugh hysterically when they brought his body out? Yes, your honour, I plead entirely guilty to that! You see, first of all, I suddenly realized that I was free! Tears started pouring down my cheeks at that thought - yes, tears of sheer relief! And then I saw it, the all-but-melted lighter clutched tight in his hand. The asshole had set the house on fire and been too drunk to wake up. The cosmic irony of the thing, your honour, it hit me somewhere in the midriff. That's when I burst out laughing… and couldn't stop…

Wouldn't you have, little shrink?

All right, all right, I will separate the fact from the fiction. There was no fire. But I DID escape. And when the demons gnaw and grind their teeth inside me, a little fiction feels so, so good. Hey, don't be so Protestant about this! What's a little fantasy between friends?

A Sonnet for Sara

Wraith-like in your first moment of truth, you yowled;

as the doc grinned and said, "a baby girl, ma'am. . . Only a woman can yell this loud!"

protesting, doubtless at this violation of your comfortable fortress,

scolding the doc for causing such distress!

And once you found movement, you could never be still,

and when you found speech, your words each silence did fill.

As did your lisped-out perfectly pitched songs;

and soon little fingers found a way to play along.

Twenty years, a lifetime lived in each swinging moment,

from great joy to the deepest angst to torment

a heart that feels too much, imagines the worst

a mind too often plagued and curst

and yet that spirit which belies it all

the quicker you rise after each fall.

One Flew Over

Kindred spirit, battling demons too ferocious

to conquer with élan or wit,

Faces in crowds, the stink of yesterdays,

rise from dungeons of dread and flit.

When paths cross and roads meet,

where destinies are unclear;

peopled with memories of screwed up pasts:

A future confronted with fear.

When life and death become a sometime thing,

stuck in a child's-play video game;

plastic monsters with grotesque faces

plague the twilight of sometime shame --

armed with fake shotguns we shoot them down

but they return again and yet again --

Lend me a hand, o winged friend,

let us banish such forever pain.

Cross the rainbow to the morning star

that shines away the night,

in poetry starkly writ across

the sky in shadows of glorious starlight.

For, the skydiver confessed to real fear

of unopened parachutes as death hovered near

and that moments before the jump

one thought does wisdom lend:

Egos, fights, pettiness are nothing but

a vacuum when faced with the end.

When the Dark Enfolds

For Nayanika, Sahar and Ananya

I remember when the light when out

in the middle of the day

and the hot sun sent chills down my spine.

I remember being too lonely to want a friend

and too sad even to cry.

I remember when the night was less dark than

what filled me inside.

And I remember when the shadows overwhelmed me

enough to want to die.

And yet I remember how there was always that illusive light

waiting somewhere beyond my reach.

When it took every ounce of strength to keep searching

for that passage seemingly leading nowhere.

And somewhere from the great beyond voices called

out to me, unheeded, unacknowledged, undermined

by the deep dark pressing against my forehead.

And yet, someplace buried deep there was still the will,

the hope, the vision of what could be.

If only I could touch its feathery wings and take flight

out of the awesome silence

the stillness of being.

And when the dark enfolded me I found

a place to hide.

Tears, fears and dreadful years were washed

away by the callous tide.

Desultory, disconnected, disenchanted stories

interrupted by flashing migraine lights.

Clinging to straws of hope in the midst

of soul-numbing fights.

The ragged pain of breathing

through broken ribs.

The numbing of arms when your

spine is hit.

But it was no worse than the pain

of being born, drawn out by a vestige

of a chance you take in seizing the moment.

The moment when trapped within those

impenetrable walls, of a mind too destroyed by

its own capacity to self-destruct, you reach for the last straw

And pull yourself out of the abyss

of detached despair.

For, sometimes, just one straw is enough

to craft a set of wings.

Faces

In the metro Women Only

a secret world shielded from lecherous eyes

women shed their faces, become lost in their worlds

safe from a slew of spies.

Mother chats with her very hyper child

who poses a riddle a minute

jumps and leaps, swings from the holders wild

With laughter in eyes deep and infinite.

"What sort of riddle are you," his mother asks -

Motherhood so obviously for her a pleasure -

"When will I solve that riddle, wild child?"

she adds, hugging her treasure.

Mother on her smart phone

With a prettily dressed girl

Squatting on the floor clearly too young

To read "Do not sit on the floor", the little pearl

knows her way through her favourite game

while her mother stares sightlessly

through the door, as harsh lines enflame

Perfectly groomed cheeks, lines painted away flawlessly:

What she's thinking turns her glassy eyed

And that not in a happy way.

What compelling thoughts pre-occupy her thus?

exiled from her little child's love, turned away?

her life a trial? Feeling, perchance,

that she signed up for something else?

Regret? Passion wilting? Non-existent individuality?

An overwhelming urge to annihilate her self?

And across aisles eyes make contact

Very brief connections hastily broken

For women know about precious privacy

And respect the other's, thoughts left unspoken…

For this is a place where faces are shed…

Where thighs are not scrunched together

To avoid contact with a potential threat

Elbows brush with gay abandon, a-feather

As young girls' laughter relieves the end of the day

A shared joy, momentary but profound

Before they go back to a possible daily prison

The freedom of this capsule, safety abounds.

No need to be someone else

for a short time and space -

In a city full of noxious predators

A haven from the predatory gaze.

On the other side of the seating place

One young woman lost in her earphone-aided world

Suddenly hears the drone of the approaching destination

Combs her hair, applies gloss to the lips, hair hastily curled

Checks her reflection in her smart phone

And in seconds is transformed

Now her face is on and she can take on the world

Eyes, lips and hair, all neatly adorned.

She looks up and meets my eyes

And smiles not knowing that I invaded that space

Not knowing, certainly, that inside my head

I wrote a poem about her putting on her face.

Wasted

Nothing that this pen sets down

can even begin to describe

the story told by a picture worth ten thousand words

no meaning can it ascribe

when inhumanely shut doors

wash up a three-year-old body -

A hapless, blameless victim of wars

in a shameless political battle of custody.

The ink will only blur these pages

in writing of his last painful breath

too young yet even to dream or hope

the only truth he knew was death.

What if he had grown up to become

a peace-maker with a touch to heal

or if he had a future writ of altruistic zeal?

Who had the goddamned right to steal?

And who will stand up and be counted

amongst those who slammed their doors?

Did the white man's back break with its burden

after centuries of raping our shores?

Will this picture worth a million words

speak to cruel humanity, or be wasted

as one did decades ago of another child,

crawling, soon by a vulture to be tasted?

Perhaps this was not a wasted life

but one spared the indignity of seeking refuge

in cold lands, from chilled hands

whose tight-fisted treasuries are huge -

from bellies distended with surplus resources

but hearts as small as mice

spared the agony of watching his family drown

as the wealthy watch with eyes as cold as ice.

What power on earth or sky will judge

Such a vicious sodomy of childhood -

those that can only write vitriolic verse

and no longer distinguish evil from good?

Sweet Insomnia

After T. S. Eliot and Driftwood Ashore

Peopled with shadows falling, scattering, muttering unintelligibly

Sweet insomnia is preferable to such disturbing wandering sleep

And Prufrock's blumbering, fumbling, clumsy fingers

Unable to keep trysts, piling broken promises in a heap.

To unwritten books left hanging, blank, on shelves

"sorry" becomes a meaningless word mumbled or uttered

to blank canvases on nails, backcloths and settings for absence

to a song never sung nor strung, only fitfully stuttered.

Faithless now and etherized as the dawn and dusk

The fourteen lines stretch and strain but fail to rhyme

The question unasked that fails to thaw refrigerated hearts

The tide that leaves no shiny shells on the sands of time…

Through such discordant nights then best to stay awake

Nothing is now, no longer, any more at stake.

Pages

The burning stench of rubber soles

that once stood on a burning bridge

abandoned by feet walking away

from smoke clouds on a distant horizon

thickening the line between possible endings

and impossible longing

clogs up the nose with memories of

hapless waiting; the thunder of silence

belts out against choking eardrums

obliterates the will, the wish, the want,

the dream, the desire, the dawn

as the gibbous moon shines down on

neon-lit trees gently ruffled

by an impotent Zephirus that fails

to impregnate a jaded August.

And somewhere in the lamplit darkness

fingertips turn rough edges of an old chapter

to touch with careful, gentle grace

the smooth, unlined blank face

of a fresh clean page, waiting,

for the kiss of the pen.

Shattered

Of extended distended metaphors

and foolish pathetic fallacies

a bandwagon of shared-knowledge fantasies

and withering glittering generalities -

that a drunk oxymoron questioned,

rhetorically, in anaphoric verse:

"Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?"

And there came a sinister cosmic reply

ricocheting hyperbolically off the edges of the universe

in manic depressive laughter-laced prose:

"Why not? Why not? Why not? Why not? Why not?"

But at least it was free of the

terrifying, petrifying, de-carbonated, dehydrating

sound of silence.

And when the Fool had committed his

extra-vigilant folly

of seeking cosmic significance in

a grain of sand -

Infinity and Eternity cried out

in gut-wrenching camaraderie

in a crescendo of heart-wrecking agony

torn from the bleeding lips of a scattered soul:

"Take this simile and toss it

For it is shattered and cannot be fixed!"

Unbalanced Equation

Words choke the pen's ink, when

hope and silence the pillars

of an uncertain edifice

support an insecure façade

the frontpiece of a hollow,

empty space, with

drooping dead-end eaves

a quagmire for a patio, with

a pain-wrought portcullis

the restless garden oft absent, and

flowers of bizarre purple prose people

beds of tectonic rifts

surrounded by deep ravines

gullied pathways,

each step fraught with the risk

of further friction with truth -

Where does this monument begin

or end? - with folly or without it -

where angels fear to tread

and fools rush in to claim

a falsified paradise

robbed of faith and knowledge

where emotions run riot, ravage, plunder,

destroy, raze to the ground

an unexpected one-way street and

an unbalanced equation

belie the nature of knowledge

deny the coherence of truth.

Compelled by Passion

The Making of Raju's Story

Actors flit about like shadows on the worldly stage but in the playing area, bring the strangest characters to complete and vibrant life.

Habitually living from moment to moment, a week - seven days - can feel like seven months or seven years. In a good way, of course. And there is the downside. So, for me, the hiatus from Theatre-in-Education (TIE) that has lasted eight years has felt like the eternal wait for love to strike as lightning might - an impossible dream and unbelievable hope, both rather unsteady companions. But patience and a coming together with the cosmic forces of Harshita and Pavan (yes, in that order), quite literally in corridors, and the ActIII TiE company was born.

Harshita: I really miss acting! And living here… what can I do? How can I even become a part of a group or play?

Me: You want to do TIE?

Harshita: Yes, yes! When, where, what?

The dialogue was set outside the main doors of Takshshila and with a promise made, we decided to attend the Blah-Blah-Blah TiE Company's workshop in SBS, Noida.

And a couple of days later, standing in the Atrium, Pavan was reminiscing about the play he put together for Ubuntu last year.

Pavan: I miss theatre! I really want to do more theatre. I want to act!

Me: You want to do TIE?

Pavan: Which is….?

Me: Participatory theatre. Experiential. Sometimes the audience is inside the play…

Pavan: Yes, yes, please, let's!

And the cosmic force Harshita just happened to be walking past just at that moment… Coincidence? Grand plan? Who cares?

The three of us are actors and educators, both vocations of great passion, and therefore in our burning hearths or passionate hearts lie the embryos of endless possibility.

So, compelled equally by our passion for theatre and for education, with the blessing of Sumit and Arvind, we trotted off to Noida on a hot day in May and spent a magical day with a group of incredible people - well, anyone moved to such an extent by passion has to be incredible!

There is one word that can sum up TIE in its entirety - MAGIC! What we create, together with the audience, is sheer, unadulterated MAGIC. No one can walk out of a TIE experience untouched by the magic, unchanged by the wonder - not the audience, nor the facilitator, and definitely not the actor.

Without giving away too much of the story, Raju came alive in our minds as we grappled with a History unit for Grade 8. "A young boy, just like you, only born in a different context, but who has your dreams, your hopes, your aspirations…" And why not?

Through evenings and weekends we bonded, improvised, rehearsed, scripted and planned. Like I said, compelled by passion, we did not begrudge our free time for this work. After school we would appear in the AV Room like wet and jaded dishrags but leave after two hours bouncing and airborne like helium balloons. It helped that we got along famously, were mature enough to immediately resolve differences of opinion, really and truly listened to each other, and left our egos outside the door with our shoes.

On the eve of our very first (of many!) productions, I salute the creative genius of my two partners in this crime (!) of passion - Harshita, Pavan, long live this Act (of) III!

Obituary

Drop by sanguine drop as passion

Leaked out of the heart

When the text did not ring through

the phone, the hollowing heart echoed

The tolling silence of the call never made

With the resounding absence of meetings

that never took place

and the heart, in memoriam, spoke out -

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: "la brisa es un céfiro

Y el viento quiso, lo mucho que queriá que estuvieras aqui…

Pero el viento es destrozado porque no estás conmigo."

For as you juggled work, home and seraglio

the heart grew cold on the reserve bench

As crevice and chink let through

Every last drop of desire that dissolved

into the nothingness from which it came.

For love is not an easy thing
there's only so much baggage that you can bring
But for you, there's nothing you can leave behind
so love is now impossible to find...

And the stilled heart sits vacuous

Not shattered, not destroyed, not even

Broken -

Just emptily writing,

"y estos son las últimas lineas que escribo para ti."