Remember Faustus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.