Memoirs of a Poet

अन्ना

2011-08-19T23:16:00.001+03:00

सत्य राजनैतिक नहीं होता
सिर्फ नैतिक होता है.
वह गाँधी टोपी पहने
लोगों में गाँधी बोता है .

सत्य अजर होता है.
उसकी धमनियों में
रक्त
युवा दौड़ता है .

सत्य का धर्म केवल सत्य है
उसकी जाती केवल सत्य है .
बामन या शुद्र नहीं सत्य .
धनवान या धनहीन नहीं सत्य .

राजाओं से ऊंचा सिंहासन
है इसका,
जड़ों से गहरी इसकी जड़े हैं.
यह सत्य , कभी अर्ध नहीं होता.
यह सत्य , कभी दर्द नहीं होता .
जटिल नहीं होता
मलिन नहीं होता
सत्य ये .

बहुत दिनों बाद
सत्य ने कुछ माँगा है .
हम उसे न नहीं कहेंगे .

बहुत दिनों बाद
सत्य हिंदुस्तान आया है ,
बहुत दिनों बाद
सत्य दिल्ली की और चला है .

मैने सुना है कोई नया नाम
खोजा है उसने .
और वही नाम
अब चाहते हैं शहर भर में
सारे .

मैं भी - अन्ना हजारे .

before the rains, 16

2009-06-18T18:20:00.003+03:00

no one wants to break a man’s heart, especially when he’s heartbroken. and i was young - i liked the idea of seeing her. a woman who can do this to a man has got to be something.
so i say, sure thing, whatever you say.

he lights up his cigarette and i light up mine and we lie down on the wet grass. i never did lie down like that ever again.

now i look back and realise, you don’t need to be in love to feel that. you just need someone else to be in love; you need a lazy evening and you need a sense of humour. and, if the time is right, rain.

i looked for it many times after,

but i never did lie down like that ever again.

before the rains, 15

2009-06-09T22:08:00.003+03:00

yeah,
i am sharp, right? that’s why i work out; i do ten kilometres everyday. except sunday. sunday i sleep.

praise from men makes me nervous, though. that actually scares me, just in case.

but the man in the park wasn’t gay. he said she liked men like me. she liked hard men, apparently.

he said i should wear a black jacket and black pants when i ride to her place because - and i quote him, verbatim -

in the traffic light you will look like man from sin city,

that’s what a real raincloud is, man from sin city in the sky, and the lights catching his chest and thigh
from all the streets, roads, houses, cars, all the people

below.

i think he might have wanted to be that man in the sky, but i didn’t tell him
that i thought so

before the rains, 14

2009-06-06T20:06:00.004+03:00

there was drizzling and the grass got wet, but it wasn’t the rains really, just some. my neighbour’s wife sends more water down washing her balcony.

so we sit there like that and get wet.

now the man, he’s got a clean look about him, everything in place, hair, shirt, shoelace, buttons, cufflinks – i mean for someone lives alone and talks to me only – cufflinks,

weird.

and with his neat fingers, he draws his map in the mud complete with landmarks. it’s got leaves, sticks, stones, pebbles and what-not he’s picked up from the park. nuts

we huddle over it and he looks deadly serious and points at two odd shaped pebbles in the map, these,

cloud, these
are our apartment blocks, you start here
and ride north down
the park the f block market left
from the main gate, and down here
the bus-stop. here call-centre girls are growing frisky because it's evening
and it's time.

they think you're a movie star with the wind behind you. but you're just my cloud,
on my map,
no?

before the rains, 13

2009-05-31T21:56:00.004+03:00

then, he pulled out two cigarettes from his trouser pocket, right one, and a matchbox from his left pocket, lit up, and smoked for a while. i made a few calls, one to my brother who heads sales in a mobile company, and one to my mother who lives in gurgaon.

it’s amazing how you remember some things and forget so much. i don’t remember the man’s face. but i remember him drawing out a detailed map to her house with his finger, on a wet patch near the bench. i remember him advising me to avoid the office hour, the traffic, cp in the evening. I remember him saying go early and have a drink at volga.

and i remember him smile as if he could see me sitting at volga with a beer. and i remember him say, it’s a good place to relax, it’s got large windows, and when it rains outside, you can drink yourself dead watching the waters run down the panes slowly all evening.

i even remember me asking him where tunisia was, and him chuckle.

that's when the sky cracked up bright like a carnival and the kids in the park and the girls all ran for cover to the trees

before the rains, 12

2009-05-27T22:19:00.005+03:00

a woman is a city. really,

give her december, she gives you dark. give her the sun, she gives you laburnums. send her a large cloud, twenty one something, crouched young over his motorbike, dark brows

fast fast faster
ha, and will she give you rain

laughter

before the rains, 11

2009-05-23T23:36:00.003+03:00

it was a pleasant evening.

the sun is gone, the sky is dark, half, and stray dogs are chasing squirrels in the lawns.

when we were young, he says, when we were young, she and i would wake all night during the rains. i’d tell her ghost stories and we’d push buckets into corners where water leaked down from the roof.

she loved the sound of thunder. loves, i mean.

when you see her, tell her
a white bird followed you. tell her it’s still on her terrace. that it won’t go. that
it means she’ll travel far: tunisia, istanbul...

she loves to travel far.

she won’t believe all of it, but she might just believe one half.

besides, it might make her laugh
again

before the rains, 10

2009-05-23T23:35:00.002+03:00

and the poor man must have made up his lines for her, sitting there.
must have thought she’s waiting, that she’s kept an exact count of days in a diary, or on the bathroom wall. or wherever girls keep count.
i hope i never age like him. my heart’s just a pump man; I hope it never catch his pains,
and never acts funny before the rains.

before the rains, 9

2009-05-20T23:33:00.004+03:00

what an evening that was!
if i shut my eyes, i can play it right back again.
this man’s sing-song, his happy, fun, sad, wrong, ramble, and
swoosh the wind over the park in waves, you know, very soft, and sounds of birds doing it in the bushes, in the jasmine bushes –

walking through that corner always smelled like walking through women in a night party.

and yes, a crow

on the head of a ten feet cactus, frowning and cocking his head at

me. cloud

before the rains, 8

2009-05-19T20:39:00.002+03:00

you’ll go riding with the winds and the truckers,

and girls waiting for boys on the kerb and women waiting for husbands at windows will look up at the sky

they’ll pretend they’re not trying to catch your eye.

it’s that season.

all men go home in this season.

and i go walking in the park, many circles

before the rains, 7

2009-05-19T20:38:00.002+03:00

and after that day, he never called me by my name. it was always hi cloud, you look tired cloud, it’s hot cloud – need a bit of you cloud. and much later, on a december evening, he returned a thousand rupees he’d borrowed. the money was in a white envelope with a

thanks cloud.

that day in the park, i am surprised though.

cloud, he says, can u carry a message for me? not very far, though it’s far for me.

i know where she must be. in another busy street, another cramped flat. same old place, but a different corner

of delhi

before the rains, 6

2009-05-17T12:11:00.005+03:00

we only met at the park, you know, weekday mornings, weekend afternoons, or sometimes at shambhu’s shack, getting our stock of late night cigarette’s. me, two packs of charms and he, a pack of benson and hedges. lights.
i am sure he didn’t read me right. because a while after calling me good boy, he leans to my side of the bench and says

i want you to tell her for me.

even if you don’t actually tell her. i want you to.

better you, on your royal enfield, beautiful, jobless, wild, young, every girl’s dream, and reckless like

a cloud who loses his way

than someone like me who does not

before the rains, 5

2009-05-16T21:56:00.004+03:00

now,
i can drive you to connaught place at midnight, drink with you till morning, tell you what buttons to press when you’re necking.

but i wouldn’t know what to do with love.

if you’re looking for that kind of thing, you’d look for someone smooth, an older guy, someone good with words. someone into such things

as feelings.

not me.

definitely not me.

before the rains, 4

2009-05-16T19:12:00.002+03:00

must have been the rains. or he was scared for her? or because
he still cared for her?

perhaps he thought
if i told her
he was fine, she’d get back her old laughter.

i don’t know why, but he smiles at me, pulls out a white temple-flower from his pocket and sticks it into mine.

and says – you’re a good boy.

before the rains, 3

2009-05-16T11:08:00.003+03:00

so we sit on the park bench. he glares at the clouds, i watch the young girls jog by.
suddenly he says, you know,
even a young man grows sad before the rains, even if he has a woman by his side, if she’s making him warm, even then.
and i don’t have my woman, and i am not even young. and if i feel a little sad today, it’s ok I think.

i say yes,
it’s ok
because i can see him trying to hold down his mess
in his eyes.

before the rains, 2

2009-05-11T21:42:00.006+03:00

and there - between the park and the flat with no number, he was many months drifted. you could tell by the hunger in his eyes, by the way his hands held. or his fingers felt,
where once there was something.
a ring, perhaps.

it was an evening in july, and the sky had come down upon the rooftops like a hundred black helicopters.

before the rains, 1

2009-05-10T10:40:00.007+03:00

this man i know lives in a flat like mine, across the park with the white temple-flower trees and the water-pump station. he's got the place on a one-year lease,
he says. he says he'd messed up something - back in the old days when he still had a woman - a home - and was not quite so alone. in delhi

English! Come home to mama!

2009-03-27T11:36:00.002+02:00

The apparent purpose of translation is to convey truthfully in one language what has already been conveyed in another. The politics behind the purpose, a most fiercely discussed contemporary affair, is neither my area of expertise nor the purpose of this essay. I shall, instead, discuss translation as a revitalising and a significant shaping influence on language and literature.

The most crucial of the revitalising influences of translations lie in its ability to create what I’d like to term the ‘first utterance’ affect. By ‘first utterance’ affect I mean the use of a word, a combination of words, in a manner that is reminiscent of that phase of language when the metaphoric potential of an expression is still relatively uncharted as its meanings are not yet fixed across multiple contexts. Since it is often difficult to find equivalent words while translating, the equivalent phrase, neologism or compound expression manufactured to approximate the original word, tends to create the ‘first utterance’ affect in the language it is carved from.

Girdhar Rathi and Mahendra Bhalla have translated Bhalla’s Hindi story Kuttegiri into English (published in Indian Literature). While I haven’t had opportunity to read the Hindi ‘original’, the title of the translated version, ‘Doggery’, should sufficiently illustrates my point about ‘first utterance affect’. The translators explain the term in a rather curious footnote: “In India most dogs are stray. The term (here it is not clear whether they’re referring to Kuttegiri or Doggery) has come out of their way of existence.”

True to the promise of the footnote, a great deal of Doggery does stray into the story. The narrative opens with a declaration made by the narrator’s friend – “I import dry fruits from Pakistan. That keeps me going. As for the rest, well, I’m free to indulge in my doggery.” In another dialogue between the doggers, the word is re-constructed:

“We human beings have just one Coffee House, but these parakeets –they have by the thousands, I bet...”

“Doggery?” I needled him.

“They are all real doggers…and not just them. All birds.” He insisted.

“Then why not call it parakeetery?”

“Do, if you wish. However, doggery is the thing. Dogs are dogs even if they live in a city.”

The term is further fleshed out later in the story: “Suddenly it occurred to me that he was making a fool of me, and that he had been doing this all along. Always cheating me – drinking coffee and whisky out of me, all under the guise of a feigned submission. If that was part of his doggery, he was certainly a successful dogger.”

The use of the term Doggery is possible only because it was being translated from the Hindi kuttegiri, a term in circulation; if one were for a moment to assume that the story was not a translation, that the writer were penning it in English as the original, a whole set of paradigms involving ‘doggery’ would change. Doggery, to begin with might be replaced by loafing, or described through a phrase or description where loafing is the functional word. Doggery, with all its associations of life in the alleys, stray dogs, cunning, sexual scavenging, is less likely to seek birth in a work that is not a translation because the local social context within which ‘doggery’ functions precludes English. If kuttegiri lived long enough, and got translated more often, not only will loafing have a more lively bastard sibling, but doggery is likely to inject a new spirit into an idea that is now socially passé.

My experience with translating texts, especially ones that are removed from contemporary language not only by linguistic difference but also by time and taste, has led me to that oft acknowledged by-product of the process of translation – rediscovery and refashioning of literary form and the reconfiguring of contemporary sensibilities, however transitory and ephemeral they might be and however limited be their scope of influence. My interest is definitely not something novel. The blank verse owes its pedigree to tinkering with translations of the Greek Alexandrian line, the hexameter. The English sonnet, the villanelle, the ode, the eclogue – all were not native to the English tongue at the time they were fashioned. It was a combination of an active interest in the Latin and Greek forms and an ongoing process of translation from these languages into English and the consequent formal adjustments that gave English language more than half of its standard, canonised literary forms.

On wonders, however, why then, has English not been able to fashion in its three hundred odd years of interaction with languages of India, a single recognisable form? Perhaps, it has to do with the difference in the relationship that English shared with Latin and Greek, from the relationship it shares with Indian tongues. Perhaps the time was not ripe. But the possibilities are aplenty, and it is bound to happen when English transcends its function as a language of utilitarian functions and begins to seep into the collective consciousness of India, the moment we have sufficient versions of English that correspond to the innumerable micro-communities that make up the subcontinent.

There have been tentative beginnings. Rukmini Bhai Naiyar’s attempts at an English shloka, are delightful in the manner they mirror the Sanskrit form. Rukmini’s versions too, like the best shlokas in Sanskrit, lend different meanings if split at different points of the conjoint compound words; they are essentially based on a quantitative meter, and don’t rhyme as their Sanskrit originals don’t. Where they probably fail is in their inability to duplicate the compressive power of the shloka and their lack of courage to substitute ‘compression’ with a new function or functions.

Since, Rukmini’s English shlokas are not strictly speaking translations, here’s an example of a translation that learns from her formal experiments. The Sanskrit original, is probably one the best known shlokas from the Gita:

Nainum chindanti shastrani, nainamdahati pavakaha

Na chainam kledyantyapo, na shoshayatihi marutaha

Nevershallitshallnevernowordsever

Shallneverknowhurtshallitnever shrivelinnoflaming

Fire. shallitneverwetineverwetwater

Noraridairdryitshallnevernever

But there are other forms that are begging to be looked at: the chaupai, the epigrammatic doha (Pope would have flipped on it!), and in prose-poetry the paheli. Another interesting form from Tamil literature, an oral tradition of performed poetry that is essentially ‘travelogues in verse’, appears to hold great promise for anyone who has the courage to seize upon its potential as a literary form. I do not claim these as forms that will remain, that are sure to offer definite answers to how a fledgling Indian English can grow, but they are sure to point out directions for its growth and appear the best way to bridge the gap between a foreign tongue and an appropriated one.

My own translations from Sanskrit and Hindi literature have, I confess, offered me far more by way of formal possibilities and challenges than any contemporary work in English has. The forms are startlingly original. Had the author/authors of the Kathopanishada approached a modern publisher, he/she/they would have faced one pointed question – What kind of work is this? As a translator, I ask myself, what the answer should be? These are not extended poems, though they are in verse; these are not short stories, though they are stories too; and of course these are not just philosophic aphorisms and ruminations though there is a healthy matrix of both.

The verse form used in Taitriyopanishada, ‘the anuvakaha’ anticipates the modern prose poem in its terseness, its alternating use of heavily end-stopped lines and precariously incomplete sounding endings. Sample this:

Haa vu, Haavu, Haa vu!

I am anna, I am anna, I am anna.

I am annada I am annada I am annada.

I am the maker of shlokas, the maker of shloklas.

I am the first born among the seasons.

Before the gods out of the belly-button.

He who gives me away

Protects me.

I am anna who eats the eater.

I have contempt for the world.

- Taitrriyopanshida, Bhrigu Valli, Dashama Anuvakaha

And this

When man will be able to wrap the sky

Like skin around him,

Then,

Even without knowing gods,

Pain and grief will be destroyed.

- Shwetaashwataropanishad, Shashtha Adhyaya

And this

I am the bearer of the tree.

My fame is like the mountains.

High and pure of men

I am my own nectar.

The effulgent flow.

- - Taitrriyopanshida, Shiksha Valli, Dashama Anuvakaha

My translations of these verses, the anuvakaha, led me to fashion a corresponding English rhythm that was closer to the contemporary style, less earnest in tone, but one that retained the incantatory, prose-poem like sounds.

I am well versed in the rites of the visit.

I have stories and tales. I have talk.

I have he wisdom of laughter.

I have the wit of a smile.

I have the measure of the roads.

I know m city.

I am curious. I speak with strangers.

I listen to friends. I have no foes.

I balance my tongue with my ear

I balance my eye with my nose.

I am prepared. Always.

I wear light clothes.

I wear the fragrances of flowers on my sleeves.

I keep my feet clean.

I keep my coins in my purse.

I keep my hands in my purse alone.

Where I am invited there I go

And the bell rings always

When I am come at the expected time,

In my ladies chamber.

Over steps that lead to the shrine.

- From Atithi, (unpublished work)

In addition to the vigour that re-discovery of forms through translation infuses into a literature, translations also contribute in fashioning a new rhetoric of the language, first within literature, and gradually even in speech. My Penguin edition of Bhagwat Gita, a translation by Juan Mascaro opens thus:

“On the field of Truth, on the battle-field of life, what came to pass, Sanjaya, when my sons and their warriors faced those of my brother Pandu?”

Now, this is a translation of the celebrated opening:

“Dharmakshetrey, kurukshetrey, samveta yuyutsava,

mamakaha pandavascheyva kim kurvata sanjaya”

I do not pretend to stand judge on the quality of the translation; each translator has his own parameters of translation and seeks a different kind of truth-telling in the translation. I would, however, like to point out what gets left out, what added, and how the very manner of telling gets affected by the shift in language, and how this change in the manner-of-telling can affect subsequent literatures being produced in that language even if they are not translations.

In the above example there are several things happening: for one, the translator chooses prose over verse. The result is a certain flattening of the declamatory tone – not necessarily a negative as the English language is not given to a rich hyperbolic poetic tone (Swinburne was crucified for it, and Dylan Thomas escaped because he died too soon). The translation also loses out on the literal meaning rooted in the story of the Mahabharata, when it attempts to reach into the philosophical basis: “the field of truth” and Dharmakshetrey are not synonymous; while “the field of truth” points only towards the metaphysical battlefield of what is right and what is not, “Dharmakshetrey” signifies much more – duty, action and responsibility. Similarily, “the battle-field of life” misses out on Kurukshetra as a tangible geographical entity entirely. The term “yuyutsava” that means an anxious eagerness to do battle, so crucial to the opening scene of the Gita, is entirely left out for the sake of brevity and simplicity (perhaps).

Yet, the translation fashions a new rhetoric for English language in India. It sidles away from the heavy-laden-with-multiple-meanings construction to a simple more prosaic one where the metaphysical and the physical are kept neatly apart. It chose, however to retain a version of ‘elevated speech’ that is created by combining clichés from ‘oriental stories’ like ‘the field of Truth’, ‘the battle-field of life’ and ‘what came to pass’. Once the translator is better aligned with the contemporary post-modern ear, one is more likely to get a translation that reads like this:

“In the battlefield of Kurukshetra and Dharma, collected, arrayed, eager to battle, my sons and Pandu’s boys! Sanjay, what are they doing?”

Raja Rao’s Kanthapura benefits immensely from a combination of standard English and English usage that came into circuit and became acceptable only by the influence of translations into English of Indian works. Sentences that could never be conceived of in English except as translations from another tongue dot Raja Rao’s narrative and consciously help achieve two things: a) communicate the fact that while the language is English, the context, the narrator and the speakers are not speaking in English, and b) to thus attempt to synthesise an Indian English that could be read without their British, American or other foreign associations. Thus, the opening

“Our village – I don’t think you have ever heard about it – Kanthapura is its name, and it is in the province of Kura. High on the Ghats is it, high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up up Mangalore and Puttur and many a centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugarcane.”

Now, where the “is it” and the “is its name” comes from, and where the seamless narrative will become clear from the following translation of the “translated tongue”:

“Humaara ganv (a sigh here) – mujhey nahin lagta tumney uskey barey mein suna hoga – Kanthapura hai uska naam, aur woh tehsil kura mein parta hai. Unchey Ghat par basa hai who, unchey paharon par jo samandar ko muh kiya hua hai, Malabar key tat sey uttar ko hai woh, Mangalore she bhi aagey, Puttur she bhi aagey aur…”

It’s a crude translation, and ideally should have been in tamil I think, but Hindi will do here to illustrate my point. The only reason why Raja Rao was able to use an alternative rhetoric and deviations from standard syntax is due to the pre-existing “translation English” that is recognised as “Indian” as against other standard forms of English.

Sometimes, this “translation tongue” can form a separate idiom by itself, almost a sub-language, a little like the Anglo-Indian community in India that can choose to lay claim to a dual parentage, but almost always, tend to align themselves to one or the other. Here’s are two amusing examples of this “translation tongue” that could easily form the basis of another poem on Pushpa T:

“Desirous of sustaining the life of his wife, as the month of Sravana was drawing nigh, and therefore intending to send tidings of his welfare (to her) by the cloud, the Yaksha (himself) delighted, bade welcome, in words full of affection, to the cloud to whom an offering of fresh Kutaja flowers had been made.”

- Cantos 4, Purvamegha, Meghdutam, The Meghduta of Kalidasa, Edited by Gopal Raghunath Nandargikar

And, in case it appears an exception, or a case that afflicts only Indian translators, here’s another:

With relish due ambrosia, a dog eats a meatless bone,

Wormy, spittle-wet, putrid, and vile. He would eat

Without qualm even if he saw the lord of gods nearby.

A wretch does not assess the poverty of his lot.

- Among Fools and Kings, Poem 30, by Bhartrihari, translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

These, obviously are no Ezra Pounds at work. But if they were, perhaps, English would have interiorised the shloka and the rasa, the ghazal and the nazm, as much as it has the Haiku. If English literature is to come home to India, creative translations, even mistranslations, if they are better than the ones I have just quoted, will need to lead the way. It is common knowledge that languages are always rooted to experience native to their people, but it is also a fact that languages change, grow and evolve, that when a word is appropriated by a powerful people, it will lend the meaning it is ascribed. If that were not the case, India would have been known by a different name.

This song seeks

2008-10-01T21:13:00.000+03:00

This song seeks
The grasses, not men,
This song seeks
Earth’s end
Winds without body,
Rocks without soul
This song seeks
Things, not beings, seeks
Of time, seasons; of place
The city, the cold mountain,
The lifeless moon,
This song,
This song in want
Of feeling, form; of life, seeking,
Of lust, anger; of love
Nothing at all.

This song stands restless
Stamping
It’s hoof in the dust.

And its mane – dry hair
On its nape, bristles
And crackles,

And its tail flicks away
All tiredness.

Look at it
This song
-A shiver in the knee,
In the flank,
The thigh-
Is braced
For the last long journey
For it is saddled in kinship’s leather

And the horseshoe
That comes away never
Is hammered and nailed
Into the sole firmly,

Lonely
Lonely
Lonely
Lonely

This song forever.

What Sakha Said On A May Afternoon

2008-09-27T13:06:00.001+03:00

I called him Sakha and he called me Sakhi. And we did not quite care what the others thought. He didn’t. He was used to unusual relationships. I didn’t, I was well married. Five times married and never divorced.

Anyway, this thing happened one afternoon in May – and was it like last year – or was it the year before – sometimes you can’t quite tell how long ago things happened. It’s like the skin on your bones. You look at it and you see the wrinkles, but you don’t feel the years. It feels like it’s been there all along. Like you’re still the woman you were, arrow-eyed, fire-breathed, curved along the waist and shadowed under the ankles and the elbows and the small of the back and fragrant under the knots and creases.

Oh did I digress? It must be the summer riding down the foot-trails. So what was I saying? Oh yes. The month of May that year. It was way into the other part of hot season and we were all tired and run down, camping in the forests, trudging along so slowly that it made the snails appear like the spring winds...read the full story here

Old Uncle in an old house on the forgotten hill noone visits

2008-09-26T21:05:00.001+03:00

Popeye's June Diary

2008-09-14T14:40:00.003+03:00

June 1. 1978

My dearest diary,

Today I got up from the bed at 7 o clock and got ready very very fast for the school. Mama got angry but she did not tel me anything. but I know she was very angry. Then when I came home in the evening she had forgotten that I had gotten up so late and troubled her while taking bath also.

So because she had forgottewn it she kissed me and hugged me tight. And I liked it so much.

You know Mama also told me that it is going to rain this month. This month is June. Mama said it rains in June. So I am very happy now because when it will rain I will ask mama to make me a big big boat like papa makes with the newspaper paper. I wilt el her to make twpo boats actually. One I will wear on my head and the other i wil tak out and play with Mahesh near the naale where D souza uncle stands and catches all the fishes.

Now I must realy sleep otherwise mama wil be angry again tomorrow. I wish it will rain today night. If it does I wil sleep with mama holding her tight.

With lots Of Love and kissses
Popeye Mehta

June 4. 1978

Diary,

I am so sorry that I did not even write to you on june 2 and june 3. thats because mama had got very very sick. I did not tell you before about it because I felt very bad talking badly about my mama. But you know mamas stomach has got big and fat and she is telling me everyday and every evening that I wil be having a small sister with long hair and ribbon and frock. But whenever I asked her that mama please tell

me how will sister come out from stomach she does not tell me.

Now mama is calling me. I have to go. She wants me to press her back and apply iodex on the back so that it does not pain more.

I wil tell you what happens later.

With regards,
Popeye Mehta

PS: it has not rained even til now. I wil tell mama that she must find out why it has not rained because I want to play bot and cap with Mahesh.

June 7, 1978

My dear friend Diary,

I cannot even tell you how happy I am. I am so so so happy. I have a sister. I am happy happy happy. That is why I could not tell you anything about what happened.

After I had wrote to you that day, I had gone to sleep with mama. Then my eyes opened and I looked at the cloack. The big hand was on eleven and the small hand was also on eleven only. And mama was trebmling and crying and she was putting on her sari. So I got very worried and aksed her what happened. She said popeye go and tell parthasarthy aunty to come and help your mama because mama has very hard backpain.

So I went running at full speed to parthasarthy auntys house and kept ringing and ringing the bell one hundred times. Then I told aunty what mama had said. And then she came home and tied mamas sari. And parthasarthy uncle drove his creem color fiat full speed. Mama was crying and crying. I was very woreid. I kept very quiet. Because papa one day had told me we should not talk to the driver when he is driving. When we reached on the bridghe the car stopped. That was because there was a traffic jam. Papa says a traffic jam is not like butter and jam. It is when all the cars and trucks and bus come and block the road anfd nothing will go here or there. I did puja to Vishnu because mama said Vishnu has so many avtar like Krishna and ram and all many more. And mama was right because the traffic opened and we went to the hospital.

They did not allow me to even go inside. I sat and played on one uncles scooter that is like papas scooter. It was also blue and white. Then afterwards parthasarthy aunty came and told me that I can go and see my sister who has come out of my mamas tummy. So I went to the other room where they were doing masag of the baby. And I did not like her looks. She was very small and like dirty. And she did not have any ribbons and did not have any frock also. And she was having not even one hairs on her head. That was very sad. But I did not tell mama that. I told mama that sister was wearing everything and had very long hair.

But I am happy now because we have come home. And papa is also going to come home tomorrow from Bombay.

He wil bring me so many things like gun and helicopter.

Now I wil go and sleep with mama. Maybe it wil rain today in the night. My sister wil also like it I am sure.
With lots of love and kisses,

Popeye Mehta

June 10, 1978

Dairy I am very sad. I should not tel you this because I promised mama but i wil. Because you are my best friend. So maani things happened today so I will write them down in points only.

1. papa had come home so he gave me the gun and the helicopter. The helicopter does not fly at all.
2. I was very happy because it rained in the ground and the roof and the naale from morning only. It is now also raining only. Papa made for me the 2 boats. One boat I put on my head and other one I took to play. Mahesh did not come to play but his sister anita came to play. I like anita because she is so pretty with her red frock. I gave her my cap boat. We plaed for much time.
3. when I came hom my mama was sleeping and crying. Papa went to the market for the fruit. Mama is very afraid of the thunder. So whgat I do is that when the light comes in the sky i tel her that there is ligt and now the thunder wil come. And then she puts her head under the pillow and hides. And I then hold her. My mama is very nice. I am sorry that I told her i wil shoot her with papas gun and make hema malini my mummy because hema malini is so beautiful.
4. then mama and papa went to the party of parthasarthy uncle. There they all danced and ate good food and papa drank very very much. Mummy told her not to drink also but he did not listen at al. then when they came home mama was crying and papa was angry. He said bad things to mama. He said mama went and danced with that uncle and that was bad. So he pushed mama and hit her on her head and hand. And now mama cannot move her hand at al.
5. papa is sleeping in the bed. His pant is open and his shirt boton is also open now. Mama is crying in the vbalcony with my sister who has no ribbons. I am very afraid. I do not know what to do. I promise i wil never beat her when I grow big. When I am big I wil mary mama and make her very happy.

Now I must go to mama because I just saw a lightening in the sky and it wil be thunder after this. Bye

Popeye

PS: it is raining so muych that water is coming from the roof and falling in the kitchen.

Ija's old glass and tumbler

2007-12-10T23:32:00.000+02:00

Six months before Ija died, I'd dreamt she was dying and took the first bus to the village. I reached home at 7 in the morning and it was cold in the mountains. I reached at the right time because I found her curled like a foetus n the middle of the large bed in her room. Her body had turned blue with pain and lack of breath. The women of the family were out in the cowshed, the men - as usual - were asleep. I walked 13 kms to the town and managed to bring Dr Shrivastav home in a cab.

She recovered.

Two days later, as we sat talking by the fireplace - she was telling me about her brother (she said I always reminded her of him...that he was a scholar...a learned man...his sanskrit was fluent and his pronunciation impeccable) - she suddenly rose and opened her cupboard and brought out an old brass tumbler, bowl and plate. She pressed them into my hands and asked me to keep them. They had been given to her by her mother on her marriage. She asked me not to tell anybody that she had given them to me because all her sons would want them.

Ija, I never ate in your plate, never drank from your glass and never used the bowl you gave me. Because I could never be the man your brother was. I could never leave home n search for knowledge. I could never be the scholar or the monk. I know I had the makings of one. But I just could not. I was too weak. Every time.

And everytime I see that glass and that tumbler by my bedside, I think of you only 13, standing like a pillar by the side of a man disinherited and poor, I see you toil in the fields, I see you build with your impeccable character every brick that went into building grandfather's great financial empire. I see you command villages, I see your empathy, your pity, I see your firmness of resolve, I see your beautiful lips curved down with pain, I see your beautiful hands, your petite frame that nobody, NOBODY could ever transgress. And I wonder if they make women this way anymore.

I miss you Ija. And unlike the old times, I think even your appartition does not stand by my bedside anymore.

Could you give me another chance? Just one more chance to be the man you wanted me to. Just come to me once and I will.

How do you write without memory

2007-11-26T21:58:00.000+02:00

I have always thought that meaning is the memory of a word.

But I never knew how true it was until now.

As i attempt to write the 2nd chapter, I fumble and falter and try not to draw upon my teasures of meanings - they are too hurtful.

So if there is no memory of word, just the word, how would my story mean?

The Fabulous Crossroad-interrogative 6 Worder

2007-11-12T14:16:00.000+02:00

The disintegration is near complete. Emotional, intellectual, moral, artistic and now financial too.

So when all goes, comes a kind of anaesthetised consciousness. Like looking at the world from the wrong end of the telescope.

It's class X all over again.

Shut the door. Shut the window. There is no high and no low. Life's got even.

That's when Hamlet posed the fabulous crossroad-interrogative 6 worder- To be or not to be?

Which meant, to feather and blow or to rock and chip.

To stand and do. Or to lie and be done.

And it is amazing, how the solitude of pain is as singular, as forlorn as the solitude of pleasure.

Sepulchural.

Terra Infirma, I Turn 35

2007-10-30T10:34:00.000+02:00

Terra Infirma.

Such things as a day caught between two seasons. I love you darling but. I think you got me wrong. Leme get back to you. No, nothing. And the eyes shifting for a nano second to an unnamed corner of the room.

Terra Infirma.

A face caught between two thoughts. A thought between two faces. How much? Lots. O please! Drown the sop and talk shop. Draw up a budget. Plan. Keep it simple. We can even talk about quick ways to cure your freak pimple.

Terra Infirma.

Such things as bushfire in a forest of memories, smells on a winter night, and wondering which house will it be this night? And will it be at all?

Terra vera vera Infirma. Hic!

Such things like a body that is changing and a body that is not. And names and language that are stuck between what they meant and what they don't anymore. Such things, as you. Especially you, and the odd, unconvincing, talk-interspersed - I love you.

Terra Infirma. I turn 35!

Rip Van Winkle

2007-10-21T00:20:00.000+03:00

What does one write at 2.54 in the morning? And what does one remember?

MK used to say, a mask worn long enough becomes the face. Fine, but what becomes of the face?

Phoebe is getting married on the 23rd. Hasn't sunk in. Nothing seems to sink in. As if there is no 'in' for anything to sink in.

Everything has changed as if I was away for a century. Everyone has changed, as of they are all reborn as somebody else.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle. God! I had just dozed off in the hills. When did all this happen - back in the village?

A love letter

2007-10-15T01:45:00.000+03:00

My dearest song,

Go away. GO AWAY. GO AWAY.

For you are of no assistance in this wee hour of the day, and you are of no assistance at night. You are such a disappointment, eh song, you spread-legged bitch of a poet's wrong. And your words are but a pissour of marble, stained in yellow and with the stench of strange skins that I cannot recognise.

Sonnet, ode, couplet, ballad - Ah I have seen all of your curves and so have everyone else - isn't it? Yeah? Between the lines I scrawled in long hand on your thigh and your back, you got graffitis by other hands. And you - free verse - you are the worst. You neighing mare in heat! You catnip sniffing feline poetic fart - ha well and so there is no wrong! and there is no right after all! Hahahaha! Hahahaha!

Yeah song, get lost and do not let me remember. Anything.

Street Truth

2007-10-10T21:35:00.001+03:00

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

2007-10-08T22:17:00.000+03:00

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.

Smells at Night

2007-10-02T23:03:00.000+03:00

Mahatma Gandhi's birthday was spent pretty much at home. There was little reason for violence or non-violence.

Though I was a little violent to the dog who was violent at me. And the feeling was pretty much reciprocal.

Brunch constituted of mutton cooked day before yesterday and rice prepared fresh.

Dinner had to be made thrice - eggs and sandwiches because each time I'd make it and dash off to wash my hands in the loo, the rats would come and break the sunny side of the egg and move the bread around a bit. I was third time lucky.

There were many phone calls. I think I will keep the phone off now on when I work.

And of course didn't write.

First you prepare to do it. Then you prepare to prepare to do it. Then you prepare to prepare to prepare to do it. Let's try again tomorrow. There's got to be some way of breaking the vicious cycle!

And then tomorrow is a workday. Which means the corporation. My Mama. Muah. I love you, my employee. My management. You are so good. You fuck me more regularly and with greater monotony than any woman would could will.

I dont think I will sleep tonight.

A thought suddenly came stuck. It was about the smell of the raat ki raani flowers in this season in Delhi. I smelt it the other day, returning from work. How does one describe it? How does one draw it?

And most importantly how does one hide it? It is like the sadness that darkens the valleys around your eyes. People see it and shake their heads. And then they say - Nothing is worth it. Nobody is worth it.

LOL. What do they know?

Kind mama

2007-10-01T23:11:00.000+03:00

There is a species of madness that goes undetected. Unfortunately it has no name.

It does not live in you, it lives outside.

It moves skulking in the streets of Delhi. I saw it once at Nizamuddin. It was standing by the road and staring at me.

It is not evil and it is not good either. But it makes nothing. It comes from the land of breakings.

One day, I remember in 94, I was standing on the edge of the wall of near Khair ul manazil and it nearly tipped me over. I am alive and kicking, but maybe it did tip me over and I do not know about it.

Anyway, tomorrow morning I will sit and write. And if I do, I will find out what Vivek said to Sharad on a summer evening in CP.

The corporation is a kind mama. It hold me to its bosom and will not let me go away ever. When I grow up, I will not live with mama.

Remember Faustus

2007-09-29T23:42:00.000+03:00

It was a curious day. Said bye to dad and drove to what used to be home. I don't know what it is now.

The dog looked happy to see me. She doesnt like to be alone.

I had my two bags with me. And two polypacks - my clothes, underwear, toothbrush and stuff.

I ate the stuff Dad had packed for me.

I felt heavy all the while but it was not the food. It was in the head.

The TV ran like crazy and I kept flipping channels.

Dad called twice. He sounded nervous and worried. They think I will slip. The way Sanyal sir did. Maybe I will, but I hope I wont.

MK says - Remember Faustus? You are living him. A life without redemption. This is truly the end.

And then I felt hungry again and made myself maggi and two sandwiches. Then I slept for a while between phone calls from human beings. There were two calls from office too. But there were no long calls.

Then there was cricket, which has little class left. Very little class or craft.

I don't know why I kept thinking about the month of October. I hate the period between October and March. It sucks.

The dog kept barking all the time. And I kept barking too.

Then the maid came. Actually her daughter. She wanted to know what to cook. I got her to cook Bhindi ki sabzi and dal.

I ate late.

And right now, sitting and typing at 3 in the morning, I thank the corporation for the wireless internet connection. And I remember Faustus, in his room, abandoning all learning that his genius had gathered to devour in one room, and the faustian deal he strikes with ...evil. And the what the chorus says when it is all over.

And I wish I hadn't memorised the lines in 94, It's been 14 years. Why can't I forget?

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power permits.

Terminat hora diem; terminat auctor opus.

The blue badge bus, the red badge bus

2007-09-24T12:04:00.000+03:00

It was 1977 and dad was out sailing many months. The coconut trees were tall. And the rains happened all the time in Cochin.

The KG school had two buses. One with the kids who wore a red badge and one with the kids who wore a blue badge. I liked the red badge but I wore the blue badge. The red badge kids would go to Katari Bagh, the blue badge kids would cross the Tewara Bridge and come to many bus stops near my house in Palampali Nagar.

One day I broke my blue badge when I was playing in the roundabout in the park of the KG school. I cried a lot and put my blue badge in my pocket.

After school was over, when the teacher started to put all the children in two ques, one red badge que and one blue badge que, I went into the red badge que because I liked the red badge so much.

So I also got into the red badge bus and not the blue badge bus.

When the bus started to go, I was happy because everybody in the bus had a red badge. But then after sometime I realised that the bus was not going over the Tewara Bridge. It was going to Katari bagh.

Also, all the children in the bus were other children. Only two were my friends- Tillu and his sister who were saxena uncle's children. Saxena Uncle was papa's and mummy's friend but he did not like phantom like I did. He liked tarzan.

This made me nervous and scared. I forgot all about the happiness of the red badge now. I thought I will never get home. I thought I will remain in the road now and no one will know where I live and I will become a beggar. And so I began to cry. And I cried so bad that my nose began to run down my chin and I shut my eyes tightly.

And the funny thing is that even when Saxena uncle dropped me home in the evening on his scooter, I kept crying. As if now, even if I had come home, I could get lost anytime because I had travelled in the red badge bus.

After that, I always held on to my blue badge very tightly, but I loved the red badge even more.

Whore

2007-09-19T09:59:00.000+03:00

I like the music I am listening to. I like the drive in the mornings, alone, screwing up your eyes against the sun, I like the changes when September skirts around October. And the Kaansh is growing spectacularly beautiful this season.

I like what I am writing too. Not this, but the book, the 1st chapter. It's coming out beautiful. Moving and sensual. With all the verve and the energy of the city, with all the ugliness of its people, with the pathos of love and longing, and the kick of betrayal.

I like my car. She's old and beat. But she's a good car. She always starts, always runs, always gets me where I want to go.

I like my talents. I like the way I draw figures out of nothing, tales out of everything.

And to the things I do not like, I wish to be impervious.

If life's a whore, i'll buy her, but I wont be a pimp.

They who mutter under their breath

2007-09-14T15:22:00.000+03:00

Elves!

You who mutter under your breath, you who breath, you who talk, you who tempt, taint and tug.

Show yourselves one time.

Come out from under the tables, from behind the curtains. Get off my shoulders, my knees. Come out! Come out. Out! of my shoes, my pockets, my underwear, my drawers and my cupboards.

Come out of the dark for god's sake.

Naked children, you feotal monsters, will you please for once

let me be

In peace.

For once, please fall into line, one word at a time, grammatically correct, aesthetically pleasing and a little - just a little - human.

Please.

So much for dream seasons

2007-09-12T15:06:00.000+03:00

I used to have dream seasons once. They would come suddenly and stay for a few months. They would throw my life out of gear. Shake up my sense of time, induce queer visions, be marked by a complete lack of hunger and sleep, a chronic aversion to human contact.

Now it will happen to me no more. Perhaps because I am not a poet anymore. At least not in the mode I was.

I am, instead, turned into that creature I call the New Aesthete. I have no past. I do not care for the future. What I write is not contemplative now, it is seductive. Sensation over emotion, brevity over infinity.

The image of the thinker is gone, replaced by the face of the 'sneering gargoyle of Paris' - Ugly, mocking, sneering and supremely disinterested.

In a prosaic world, one only does prose. One cannot 'do' poetry. First there was beauty. Then there was the beauty and the beast. There is only the beast now.

I do not wish the dream season anymore. I will not permit it to touch my eye. It is too noble a season to touch me anymore.

But it was good while it lasted.

The Crocodile's Back

2007-08-30T07:06:00.000+03:00

I moved into that mad salvador dali world around 1 at night with a tired back and a near-numb head.

It was a trip to a familiar corner of the mountains that frequently features in my night trips, only this time I was driving my ol beat-up baby 8503.

The colour of the air was an orangish something and the frame of the world was a little tilted. I drove up to a many-storied house, curiously empty. The verandah was familiar and I felt a funny feeling in my head.

And then I slept in a large room, on a large bed, under a large fan. It was strange. Everything there. Like when you watch TV with the mute button on.

I turned on my side and realised that there was someone sleeping INSIDE the thick mattress under me. The mattress was transparent, jelly-like and inside it was a corpse, stiff and nude.

I jumped off the bed feeling revulsion and vomitish. Ran out and jumped into my tired cranky car and drove off. And the mountains were all barren and lifeless. There were no humans, no animals, no trees. Just mountains, large and bare and dusty.

And at a pass, narrow like a woman's word, the car came stuck and wouldnt move. I shifted gears and pressed the pedal muttering please please please please - and I could still feel the skin of the corpse on my skin. The car didn't move but a black dog floated out of the air and stood staring at me.

And thats how I remember the night.

A picture from a distance:
The car in the mud, the dog staring, the memory of a naked corpse in the mattress and the mountains stretching on all sides, grim like a crocodile's back.

Diamond Merchant

2007-08-27T17:10:00.000+03:00

I play the fool usually and keep quiet. I only speak when I write. Truly, that is.

So most bright souls think I am the village simpleton and can be had. That's a disadvantage to me because I have to suffer- a little. But it is also an advantage because though they do not know, I observe and note and weigh, and never reveal what I have seen and heard and known - the slyness of the in-between hour. And I am patient. When I laugh, I am quiet inside.

My secret room in the head has a large shelf with a board on it that reads ARISTOCRATS. It was a board I had put up when I left school. And each time I write a name on it, I make sure it is written in chalk, so that when the truth about people comes spilling and adds up, I can walk up to it and wipe it clean with a damp cloth. And wait.

Every name I write goes.

I remember having read once that - Treason is like diamonds; there is nothing to be made by the small trader.

I am a diamond merchant not a small trader. :)

If I am quiet, dear names, it is because I know more about you than I show.

Lear in the river

2007-08-24T13:40:00.000+03:00

It is that time of the year again when the rains desert Delhi and you can sense the stirring of the autumnal month, and autumn stirs like an invisible apparition, a phantom presence by the roads - you drive alone and quiet, down the dusty highway to Delhi at sundown, and suddenly you realise that the wind has changed its touch on the trees, a mere caress, a nudge is scattering bagfulls of leaves, cracked like palms, in the dust, against the windshield.

You drive on and suddenly you realise that you are looking into the future as if you were looking into the past. That you are smiling as if at someone else.

The grasses are greying in patches in the river, on the banks. In october they will look like white fire. The beard of King Lear.

"Nothing will come of nothing: speak again."

Doppleganger

2007-08-21T15:46:00.000+03:00

It's been a recurrent dream. And while the settings vary, the central theme remains the same. The boy with curly hair in jeans and T, holding a large pile of red books. It happens in London once, once in Delhi I think and once somewhere that could be anywhere. It is followed by earthquakes and mass destruction, but he is there and I can't figure out who he is.

I am told it could be my way of recreating my old friend John.

I am not so sure because John figured in two of those dreams with us.

I suspect it is my Doppleganger.

And something, somewhere has set him free. if only, he'd step out of the dream. It's the creatures who hover in dreams that are more dangerous than the creatures who inhabit the day.

DO NOT USED

2006-11-15T13:16:00.000+02:00

Sign
Pasted
Above urinal
In office loo

An omen
Set free
In wrong Grammar-

A bathroom notice that
Locks past, exiles future
Yet looks
Amused

"DO NOT USED!"

Glass eye man

2006-10-27T12:17:00.000+03:00

I slept late yesterday. And woke with a nightmare.

Everyday, while turning in, I go through a whole range of mental paroxysms. Mental, not intelectual, not emotional. I lie, my eyes shut, and as I try to sleep, I listen to my voice in my head and try to figure out which of the many figures within this skin has chosen to surface with sleep.

I do not remember who fell asleep when I lay down yesterday. But when I woke, I woke with a nightmare.

The world of dreams is an amorphous world. What you remember afterwards is not the whole story, more like a few leaves from an old book, that you try to order and piece together, try to build a narrative from- grope at certain images and faces, trying to figure out why they appear so familiar.

I do not remember whether I saw one dream or many, one leaking into the other, after I fell asleep yesterday. But when I woke, I woke with one dream.

This much I remember though, a woman in a black shroud, waiting - I think I desperately wanted to meet her. And I remember also, a room with damp walls, musty but large. And I remember someone patiently stalking in the street, on the roof, behind the door, on the pavements, feline, predatorial: tall and lean and pale, with green glass eyes.

I wonder who woke up in the morning? Him or I?

Memory off Old Delhi Railway Station

2006-10-17T13:03:00.000+03:00

(from an old scrap I found in an old diary from the old days. And it had faithfully recorded conversations of a bright-eyed group...and hope...and madness)

-Ah!There you are!
-Oh hell-O
I was looking around for you!
-Hello
-Hi, this purple T-shirt looks beautiful
-Thank you, thank you very much.
-This is for you.
- Ah! They're going too!
-Yeah!
-What time's the train?
-Eleven
-I've brought you something
-A poem?
-Well yes!
-Where's the ca mera?
-In my bag
-Shall we have a photograph?
-When are you back?
-Monday. I wanted you to come too but you see things didn't work out. Like a cigarette?
-Where's the lighter?
-It's with you
-Do you know how to fix a roll?
-I'll do it
-But are you sure you know?
-I have done it
-Come on, let's stand this side
-It's liek a school photograph
-So what! Is it fixed right?
Oh he's taking the photograph!
Are we all in the famre?
Come closer! Come on click!
-Oh shit!
-I knew it wouldn't work
-It's never happened before
-That's ok. Try again.
-Shouldn't it go under this?
-No, no it's like this only
-here have a look at this.
It's a 17th century lyric.
-You got it from the Internet?
-Yes! I am sorry but you've got to jump from this line to this
-Right! That's ok.
Ah! Beautiful. That's all?
-Well! There's another...it's called
-Right! Right! I get it.
It's good isn't it?
-Hmm.
-I think it's done.
-Shall we ask somebody who knows?
-Ask the boy overthere
-The boy with the specs?
-he'd know
-The IIT type
-He'd know
-I think it's done
-OK come together. Let's give it a try
-Oh! God!Not again
Thank you anyway
-This isn't stopping
-It must stick into the hole. Mustn't it?
-No! No! I'll do it
-Shall we go out and get it fixed?
-The trains about to leave...

Spiderman

2006-10-12T11:55:00.000+03:00

Then one day Spiderman thought Peter Parker was an impediment.

Peter was a drag. Peter was always under debts. Penny pinching bastard. Peter. Peter had no fans. Peter had no social life. Peter never achieved anything! Not a thing!

Peter was always in the lab plodding. But he never got any results. No discoveries, no inventions. He was such a, such a bumpkin.

Such an embarassment.

And so Spiderman killed Peter Parker. Starved him for food, thought and time.

And one day he found Peter dead in the room. (or so he thought)

And he dragged Peter's body out and away to the kitchen garden. There he dug a grave and buried him.

All the spiders of the neighbourhood rejoiced. They crawled up and down walls, hung from fans and cielings and clapped.

They talked and yelled and sang and made merry. And Spiderman, a little nervous, clapped and danced and swung with them.

But when the spiders quieted every day and lay in their webs, when there was no chatter, and when the lights went out in the city, Spiderman was afraid and wary

Because Peter
That measely eater
Though under the flowerbed
Was
not
quite
dead.

And called out
From beneath the mound
A muddy muffled sound-
I am not a spider, I am a man
Buried by the
Friendly
Neighbourhood
Spiderman!

Conversation between bullet and breast

2006-10-09T19:46:00.000+03:00

The bullet
Said

To the breast

You have
An outside chance

To live
Again

Beautiful one.

I
Have

None.

Dear cap

2006-10-08T22:39:00.000+03:00

Dear cap

I love you

More

Than

My

Head.

Incommunicado

2006-10-06T08:12:00.000+03:00

I am a
Table

I
Do not speak

And
No one
Speaks with me.

And each autumn
I
Remember

What it was like
When I
Was a
Tree.

Hard is the new blood

2006-09-24T15:32:00.000+03:00

So hard is the new blood that walks the streets that it always flows in its own veins.

And I always thought myself a man of his age, one who keeps up with a spring in his stride with each new wave of human specimens that sprout out of women.

But here's time for reality check and drawing the line.

These things shall not pass muster with me:

1. ENTERTAINMENT/AMUSEMENT: These are loaded terms closely aligned with the sensibility of boredom. Thus, the new blood seeks entertainment and amusement as a means to stave off boredom, which is a perpetual threat looming over their heads. At this point it becomes increasingly important to make clear what this boredom is, how it works and what it looks like. Long periods of exposure to this ingenous beast through the new blood minds has acquainted me to its peculiarities. Boredom. It's nature, unlike in specimen of old blood, is one of indistinctness and amorphity. While earlier, one was bored with specific elements in specific circumstances, for instance one could have been bored by 'Jane Austin like novelists' when one was at college or 'small town life when one wanted to make it big' or 'afternoons at puja when one was a teenager', now things have changed. Boredom has taken a more blotted, leaky self - now one is simply bored. Of what, one urges, and learns that one is bored because one is not consuming anything. Consuming what? Excitement. But what kind of excitement? The kind you can predictably buy off the shelf. Branded manner of conversation (the brand is established by fastmag and fastcine norms), branded urges, branded hungers, a branded way to pass the evening, branded sex (i saw them say...i heard them say...i checked out on the cyberspace...). The engagement needs to be well established as 'exciting', canonised by the media and valourised by gossip before it can suffice as a knight to fight off 'boredom' and entertain or amuse. It is supposed to be gratifying so long as tows the 'novelty line' where novelty itself, of course, is well worn and stamped by every authority from the latest Holly flick to the latest Bolly squib.

2. IN-YOUR-FACE: This, obviously, refers to an attitude. But it encompasses a whole weltenshaung. It means when I stand in front of you, puny construct o fhumanity, you shall see nothing but me, hear nothing but me, and if you should, by any chance of fate, be able to well up enough courage to step aside, you shall carry with you an image of me that shall frighten the daylights out of you. You shall fear me. You shall be in awe of me. You shall think of me as second to no thing else. You shall not even whimper in any form of protest. Also, as a footnote to that, if you should be audacious enough to adapt a similar attitude, you will need to answer for it in terms of crudity (for that becomes you not!) or face a higher form of the same called the "WINNING ATTITUDE". (more of this in the next point)

3. THE WINNING ATTITUDE: This is the Zeus of all new blood gods, the Shiva of the new blood trinity, terrific in aspect, swift in dispensing punishment and/or granting boons. It is a craft you are required to learn early on in life; its principal tenets include - flaunting what you have (and you need to insist you have), seizing the moment (which is always ha so momentary), harbouring no doubt at any time at all (except when someone asks you which quality of yours is more worthy of worship), and always travelling on the fast lane (this constitutes some extremely dimwitted exchanges with extremely dimwitted people in places one is confident one can find them - glass in hand). The parameters of measuring victory are inevitably linked with the parameters of measuring loss, and this we shall look into in the next point which is THE LOSER.

4. THE LOSER: The Loser and the losing attitude is the natural antithesis to the winner and the winning attitude. THE LOSER is the modern pariah of the society, marked by the stigmata of AGE, WEAKNESS and UGLINESS. If Mohammed Bin Tughlaq were alive today, he'd be a very happy man indeed- for all world is slowly but surely turning into HIS DELHI, where the YOUNG, the STRONG and the BEAUTIFUL are insulated from the degenerates of teh world. But I digress! Coming back to the LOSER, who needs to be shunned and kept at a distance! The new blood is one that does not live, does not intend to live and completely refutes the very existence of life as a parabola starting from birth moving on to youth and then slipping down to the autumn of life. The new blood freezes time. Life is a movie played innumerable times where the characters are all hip and replay the same scenes again and again, ad infinitum, mouth the same wisecracks, cry the same glycerine tears, commit the same crimes and seek the same pardons.

5. MONEY: Did I say something that made you smile? Bring in the glow in your face? This is no laughing matter, this is grave as a tombstone. This is the keeper of all things precious. And why? For the simple reason that somewhere deep within the new blood knows that you cannot control age (though you like to forget it), you cannot keep up the strength (notwithstanding hi-tech gyms) and you cannot keep the wrinkles away (though you yoga and do herbal somethings). The new blood is afraid. New blood knows that when the time comes for its banishment from the kingdom of new blood joy to the land of forgetting, only one god can stand by it -MONEY! This god can make your lips appear full and kissable, make your cheeks rosy, stir the sinews and the muscles with the energy of the young and make your vaccuous expressions look thoughtful and deep (even Rodin would prefer you to his thinker).

And so the new blood flows, thick and fast, but always in its own veins for it is hard and will never know the insides of another.

Mr Entropy

2006-09-17T12:10:00.000+03:00

Entropy is a natural phenomenon. It refers to the dissipation of efficiency in any closed or open system. It is a significant word for it is the precursor to the word and the phenomenon called 'end'.

One of the chief characteristics of entropy is its inevitable, unmistakable slowness. It is not a process like pleasure or pain where onset and growth can be felt tangibly, even measured in terms like - I was happy in October, I was happier in November. Or in terms like - I was pained in January, I was pained most in April.

One cannot say - Entropy came into my life on 15th August. Or peaked on 26th January.

Its nature is like the nature of growth. Imperceptibly slow, gradual, so that by the time one knows it is there, was there, has worked its way into the vitals, one has already travelled far into the land of diminuendo.

Yet, the human spirit has amazing resources. It is like a Hero from a B grade movie who is left with every bone broken in his body by the goons, but returns after 10 years and says, before he finishes them off - You should have shot me when you had a chance.

Well Entropy, you twin tongue of life, you should have got me when you had a chance. I've got you. I am not giving up.

Autumn grasses are white

2006-08-25T22:32:00.000+03:00

The difference between a boy and a man is one of seasons.

A boy reacts to them. A man anticipates them. A boy gets excited if the season is good, he sulks if the season is a let down. A man knows what the season will be like. He is never taken by surprise.

It's autumn stepping in. The riverbanks are white with the kaansh flowers.

Am I boy or a man?

Either ways I am not going down.

It's never endgame.

Never.

The danger of not

2006-08-22T11:54:00.000+03:00

The incentive to live on lies in the next street.

Man wipes perspiration and smoothens the crease on his trousers. He says to himself there's got to be something round the corner. he's not sure what. Yeah?

Could be people laughing as the sun slips down, he can almost sense the shadows lengthening.

But what if there are shadows without bodies?

What then?

"You have to be careful, ask yourself questions, as for example whether you still are, and if no when it stopped, and if yes how long it will still go on, anything at all to keep from losing the thread of the dream." — Samuel Beckett, Molloy

Nightworn

2006-08-09T08:41:00.000+03:00

A few days back I had a dream and I woke in sweat.

Dreams have a funny way of seeming more dangerous when asleep, innocous when you wake and lethal when they come true.

I was in a room. Or was I outside? It was raining I remember and it was night. And it was raining demonically.

Then I got beat up by a few people. Who were they?

And I ran out disgusted.

Suddenly I discovered I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt.

My state of undress didn't seem to bother me.

It was cold and I was shivering.

I walked all night. In the streets. Can't remember what city it was.

Saw a tree and stood under it.

Felt disconnected.

As I was about to think what next...where next...I see a big black book near the gutter. It's got 'THE BIBLE' written on it in gold.

It is soggy and worn out.

I pick it up and feel there's a message in it for me.

Message my ass.

Unwell is bad news

2006-07-17T13:44:00.000+03:00

Not feeling very well at all.

Work at office is many little disjointed things. People with little imagination and lesser ability.

But then, when was it ever different? And where was it ever different?

As for writing, there is little that has happened. Health has been down, though I am fighting it. Desperately. Do not want to go down the degenerate road.

But don't feel well. And what's scary is that I am not too sure if it is the body or it is the mind. Or something else.

My nerves are completely frayed. And I am unable to focus on my thoughts that lead to writing.

Will I even out?

When will it happen?

When will the ordeal end?

How much lonnger?

Snatches Wisps Slivers Crags

2006-07-17T09:13:00.000+03:00

"Go take a walk. All of you. I mean, everyone can go take a walk. When it comes to me, sorry, I am selfish. I like my career. It's important to me. It's important to me. I mean that's more important to me than anyone. Even you. No, that's true."

- and what about the cold breeze i have left bridled between the rocks for you my love, and what about the sunrise that waits behind an unmade house, and what about the windows that are waiting to be opened and a fire that is waiting to be kindled in the hearth?"

So I say man, what passes is just a dream. In ten years time no one remembers a thing. No, it's a fact. No one remembers. That's why god's given us this ability to forget. That's life. One can take anything. This too will pass. There's nothing that will remain. So what the fuck! One ought to do what one wants."

- so what was it about the lines i have etched on my skin? why do they refuse to go? why is your palm etcheh on my body? why can i not erase you from the markings between my fingers? and even if it grows old, i think the legs still remember how they once crawled, and the lips without teeth remember how it was to have spoken the magic words, perfectly pronounced, softly uttered under the breath.

The Animal Is Angry

2006-07-17T09:11:00.000+03:00

In the middle of the storm is the moving of eyes now. Morning is rush. Work is a wheel.

Hunger does not want food.

Blindness does not want eyes.

And what you want kept gets broken. And what you want broken gets broken. And nothing gets built.

And these hands that seem mine, that are torn from me, one to seek, one seeked by the storm, will be seen as the hands that disturbed the winds.

And no one will know of the animals that thrashed about behind the mountains and under the earth, that raised this madness from beneath and from behind.

Engineering confusion

2005-12-28T05:57:00.000+02:00

Comes a time when your tediously long train of perfectly linked, smoothly drawn carriages on unshakeable rails, their insides insulated from the grim air and jaunty light begins to rattle. The engine, so long disciplined to move, station to station, trained to learn and know only the next direction - and to know it well - to think nothing but onward momentum, forward draw, to know only the pull, the roll, the pusrposeful slicing of air and fog and dark and day, and to whistle and blow, that it could all move that way or that - that engine, draws to an abrupt halt because someone somewhere, a human hand, has pulled upon a dangling chain of questions that have the power to slow, confuse the mindless pistons, stop - and I am afraid, even derail.

So AJ, what way, and with what new certitudes? And how do you know there is a station at the end of this journeying, with light and sandwiches and the promise of warmth in a restless waiting room.

A Crocodile story begins

2005-12-21T08:55:00.000+02:00

Once there was a crocodile and his name was crocodile. He lived in the marshes with no crocodile. He had crocodile skin, crocodile soul and crocodile mind. And he knew all the crocodile rules well -

1. Do not seek them out in the forest, they all come to the waterplace.
2. Be patient. Let them find you.
3. Do not scratch your own back. There will always be someone who finds benefit in scratching it.
4. Always keep your head above the water.
5. When hungry, eat without guilt.
6. Everything the world has to offer is in the marshes.
7. Move only when you cant help it.
8. Human beings walk and talk. They haven't evolved to still-life and silence. Avoid the unevolved.
9. Food comes before thought. Body before soul.
10. Want what you dont have. Want beauty.

And he sat and learned the rules again and again and again. And did the crocodile-do in the marshes.

We are unsettled with us

2005-12-15T05:44:00.000+02:00

I know we are unsettled with us. The life we lead is too much in the light. And then the hands we have, look at them. We know each line, each growing wrinkle. And then our commerce with ourselves - observe, how we know it all - each joke, each sad memory, each corner of our minds.

I told you yesterday to seek out someone and you did. And you invited to our table a new creature. What shall we call him? He looked pleased with himself. He was a hungry shifty bright-eyed unfeeling floating person. I saw him. I did not speak with him. I wanted to see what he could do. And he did much. He did not seem capable of friendship. Friendship does not devour. And, frankly, I thought his humour acerbic and unsavoury, not quite the kind we share. But he was different. And he did things.

And then, it was refreshing. After all we have been unsettled and cramped in our little space. There's you with your brooding against the wall, there's him with his dialectics at the desk, and him with his contemplative cover on the bed, and him with his cunning at the window, and him with his memories frantically rummaging through the cupboards, and him with his keen eye and twitching fingers fixing the eisel, and him with his tireless ambitions - cleaning washing fixing mending making, and then, there's that keeper of rhythms and songs who walked off the roof some nights back and will not return.

It's been a crowded place with us. And maybe we need to get ourselves a new home. A larger one. And call a few more faces to run the show.

It's like having just one story and one script for a million nights. When you are done with the reading, you know you cannot change the words. But you hope - sitting on the fan, dangling your legs, looking down with curiousity - that maybe the story will tell you something of the gardens and the cities outside, if only you screwed a new face into the reader's neck, a new pair of hands into his shoulder sockets and a new set of lips that will whisper in a new tongue.

What do we do now AJ?

2005-12-14T06:07:00.000+02:00

You know, AJ, the second innings is often more difficult than the first. So as we walk out to the middle, with the stadium buzzing with expectation, and as we survey the field spread out around us, what do we do?

Do we think of what is expected of us? Do we think of what we should do or not do to stay there -at the wicket - a little longer? Do we think of how we'd deal with the red cherry that will zip past our ears? Do we think runs? Do we think of the bowler who licks his lips with anticipation?

Or do we feel the white flannel on our skin, smell the willow, see the sun soak up the green, smile, grimace, screw up our eyes, and take guard?