Street Truth

On my way home, turning the wheel this way, I suddenly spied Aamil Dehli. I could see him grinning in my rear view mirror, sitting behind in my old beat up 8503.

I shook my head and wondered why he was sitting in my car. So we talked a bit. I asked him about his life and he asked me about mine.

When I heard his story, I yawned. There was nothing much in it.

But when he heard mine, he roared with laughter, shaking like a needled balloon, this way and that. And when he was over the fit, wiping the tears from his eyes, he bent forward and said,

Maar diya papar waley ney! hain?
Muft huey badnaam...Maya mili na Ram!

And I joined him in his laughter.

I am going to tell stories

Though I know in the corner of mind I will hurt for you Gatsby, ol sport, and the grass that grew wild in your well kept lawns and the graffiti that the kids scrwaled on your white marble steps after all the parties were over and the women were gone,

I will tell nobody about you.

I will tell nobody about how tender was the night. I will tell nobody about the beautiful and the damned.

I am born with a mind filled with little coloured bangle shards like they used to stick into cycliderical cardboard kaliedoscopes that sold for a few rupees on the railway station in the early 80s.

I got it all in here between my ears. The big cars and the dirty gutter, the desperate love and the meaningless fuck, the daze of disc lights on the floor and the walls and the slowly sinking sun behind the Aravalis.

I will tell nobody about you, Gatsby, ol sport because I am going to stick my tongue in the mouth of the world and I am

going to tell stories like never told before.

Watch me.