Stems roots and leaves, and now an urgent reprieve from a bent mind. To underscore for some time to come, the absolute need for a sober calm. When it was Christmas the nativity of our lord, his benediction was this unseemly discord; in me. Under a moonlit sky a color of magic and echoing music and certain dialectics of proud logic. And later abandoned by the night floating in sleep on two strips of wood. Soaked gently by an invisible rain. These days ricochet and come back again. Just one night spent away from her like many others that are tied each to each devoid of intimacy and coyness. She danced under the open sky three hours long and I too danced differently to different songs that at that time seemed to lend themselves more to longing than to an exhilarated thrall. The morning after I wished her Christmas and she already knew that it was that time again but this time it was wrong to have been somewhere else in some other ball. Thus it is that a fairy tale one night long has two versions jingle bells and santa claus.

Sunday morning violence in jodhpur bazar. for our afternoon repast. A chicken, a kilo and two hundred grams neatly dressed, still warm when handed to me in a polythene carry bag. 66.50 but the obliging salesman was happy with 65. I’ll keep going back to him. While taking the balance I saw that he had washed his hands, he must be washing them every time a bird is sold. There is a certain kind of guilt in spilt blood, no matter where it belongs. I was wondering, its cold now, his hands must be getting pretty numb by the time he’s done. Inside the dingy abattoir in one corner the entrails and feathers of the flightless are gathered to be disbursed amongst the lower animals at the close of business. Is nutrition a grim business, is cuisine a brutal art.
These are obviously gratuitous and useless observations. Happens every time im sent to fetch meat. My mental make up I conclude is very thin and weak. Nausea forbids violence. For me at least.

The redeeming lunacy of our destinies. To be slapped by a chimp that is frustrated at not being able to escape a zoo, whose love life is all a shambles and a placid existence itself as an exhibit threatened by a prospect of half a century’s cohabitation with the object of his greatest rage. Oh why o why chimp why did you love in this zoo. Be that as it may, babu the faith worker who had shaken his cage door assiduously for the last five years finally had his patient industry rewarded yesterday morning when his cage door snapped open. A chimp don’t need anyone to tell him what he oughta do when this happens. But with a chimp couple that has seen happier days out and about in a zoo crawling with people, no one was ready for the melee that ensued. The chimps leading the panicked people ran pell mell. Nervous confusion led to frustration and one (its not clear which) chimpanzee slapped a visitor. . .

oh consumed copious quantities of the fairy tale drug in the afternoon today and then exhausted by tragedy and farce collapsed into the stupor of the calmest black that is unruffled by the incompleteness of the stories that lie jumbled in my mind like the narrow lanes of the old quarters of a timeless city and through which at odd hours lovers and thieves move with a nervous stealth. I woke woken up by ma and in that moment opened my eyes in a dream inside a dream and saw for a fleeting second that time of fairy tales when its neither dark nor light, a suspended hour of magic hung like a lamp from a tree in a far corner of an oriental garden under which the first born has hidden the most valuable belongings of his childhood at just such an indefinite hour when a hole is dug that is filled up by little hands that will soon never turn a page in a fairytale anymore and for whom this secret consigned to the deep is at the same time an adventure and a departure, a time when something ends and something begins, and where this treasure lies like the oldest and the smallest coin in a jingle of coins in the pocket of the old itinerant salesman meandering around the yellow or whitewashed houses whose women sleep in the afternoons with their ears to the street so that the moment they hear the rusty drawl of our merchant they can rush out to exchange for old clothes useless items of grace and beauty. It is a quarter whose streets are traveled by donkeys and traders and their cocky apprentices whose robust claims about the wonders of their wares and distressed litanies at the offer of prices far below a bargain open and close days like a east facing window of a tropical climate whose well worked hinges never creak but suddenly on a day will come off and hang for one whole day like round spectacles from the eyes of an old old man who has slipped into sleep with a book in his hand in the arm chair in that bright fork of light that shines bright into the room in the afternoon facing which only the old can sleep because they always sleep as if inside a dream in a dream.

im stupid and more suddenly
than how sudden it dawned on me that im stupid
i felt this cold creep on me
by the marge of the field and
i was sure of it
by the time i walked back to the bath
to cold water and disinfectant cream
that ive strafed myself a cold chill grief
grievously misunderstood
the portent in my gut feeling
and poured a bucket on this foreboding
now with fever and assorted pills
covered from head to toe
my bum to bed and nose to the ceiling
i rue this certain ill my stupidity

This season began when the dogs curled up in the sand in the late afternoon, when the sun on the field seemed like lovers of a long long time in an embrace at the end of a long day at years end trying to forget a year long agony just before the lights came on and we sat around the tv. Me my skin turns to chalk and my wet palm I run over it to wipe the marks that my nails have left. Mosquitoes gather with the gathering black over my head and moan a solemn hymn of thanksgiving; for blood and for human beings. The nights are cavernous deep and when I shout after you just before you turned the corner my voice echoed how much this night is lonely. Seeking warmth thirstily I wrap my fingers around the two rupee cup of tea like I can forever enclose this warmth and touch pink carnations to bloom on my pale ashen cheeks. The tiny blades in the air nip the skin off the lips and I suck onto them pondering the taste of blood through a very thin film. and I am entombed in layers of wool packed like a box for the Christmas eve but no theres no toffee inside. A dry heat kept from the dry cold.

The latest concern is over my form. Im thinning down after years of corpulent well-being to a reed, bent and whittled, like something amongst which moses was found. And like at that time, so now, the reed isn’t important at all. Im no moses. To investigate this widespread alarm Ive had to revisit my childhood. Yes, I was disgorged from the womb plump and succulent, an offering to the demon, and was then nourished by a cornucopia of farm and dairy products, we being humble village folk from south-east India (if I give any more away il become a victim of racism). So, to come back to the meat of the matter, my childhood, my teens and my adolescence was round with no sharp edges. I entered adulthood healthy and with the avowed purpose of taking every tide in my affairs at the right time. All the tides were high, low only occasionally the morning after. They left their residue around my waistline. It was only in the past year that the storms of sahara have blown over my body. I got jaundice. It was to this dreaded disease of the government water dept. that I gave 10 kilos of flesh as ether, and it gave me cigarettes and lots of dope. Because with jaundice began 5 months of arduous prohibition. Then came a whirlpool of activity, frenetic and mad. There was a play(15-20 cigarettes daily), m a part 2 finals(10-15 cigarettes),comeback parties(10-20 cigarettes),blank afternoons(ditto),lonely nights in front of the tv(5-10 cigarettes). So there lies the genesis of my impending ruin. An embryo I could have left unincubated, (hint-an embryo that is good to avoid is egg. helps as a first step towards weight loss). But I have made a firm decision that the moratorium on alcohol is over, thank you very much, a decision to be honest , that id made sometime back. Ive been warned ad nauseum that the drugs are no longer working on my mind, but now only on my body. I have to parachute down. So ive gone straight ahead and chosen life. A career. a faaking big television…you know the rest.

Ive only skin for my eyes
Like some decadence has
Only dignity for comfort

And my revolutions are embattled
fancies of iconoclasm
like a one legged soldier’s
damaging passion
that with his love he will dance

Asleep in memories
This city now lies
closed lightly is its opium eyes
Flowers scattered from garlands
float aimless in water
In a mourning of butterflies

I see the ghost of a lover walk the streets
Every street I go
Are the black magic men doing something about him
Or is this their business

Post-colonial bemoanings
Americans have this way of playing with english, rendering its most serious ideas informal and the most trivial solemn. And our media of communication being American in reach, currently more widely heard and emulated. We’re all here to look for America.
Football is the only area where I feel intimidated by the british. I respect and slightly grudge them this gift. If man is only a gross physical animal then I grant that the civilization is that of the west.
the french are the connoisseurs par excellence.haute culture.
we're there with our middle-class ways.starters in a race where the slower competition has far surpassed us.
the latin americans although more colonized,yet are rebels and iconoclasts,traits of an entire culture that erupts irradiant in the persons of the magnificent.
for nidhi-
Love is full of such trials
When you don’t know if its love
Or a fear of rain
A preference for the dry over getting wet
And for all that disgust
Helpless to resignation
Over our asymmetrical fate
That wont let us live on sea
Or keep us alive
In an empty deserts tranquility
We too will commission boats and ships
To wage our war for spain
And call the proudest man at war
Nidhi sen
Again and again

The binary scheme of the lord’s seasons, his daily eccentricities. It is a metaphor strong but without reason. After rain there’s shine followed by the flood (the last bit only in my city which never sniffles but only howls). On my lap im holding an urn warm and plenty, round my neck obviously the albatross. This is the time for anthropomorphic god slander, the rain god, who at least in hindu myth is a shifty deity. But im not saying this. All I have to do is to wear a pinafore, a raincoat and rihanna’s umbrella on my head. She for all the love that’s gone to her head was clearly not speaking universally. English officers of the law posted in cherapunji were driven to suicide by the rain. Not all of them, but quite a few. Hence the expression every cloud has a silver lining. It was after all this strength of the English constitution that ensured the longevity of the crown dominions in asia.
Among other things as parnab would so sententiously say im very domesticated now. At home in a world of my own. When the prelude to this update was written it was raining. Now it isn’t and im the happier for it. Evenings are a golden weave. In deshapriya park squatting on the grass with Persephone i saw the embryo of the fair to come. The rides were being put together. The giant wheel and the pirate ship. Theres a thievery corporation song called spliff odyssey. That’s what the days to come remind me of. It is in a very dramatic oxymoronic way a memory I have of a time to come. Not in the sense of the debauched and wasted but in the way the luminosity and the throng would engulf in a haze. Incense and the smell of jute. And the smell of new in everything. Everywhere it’s the skeleton of the festival trying out clothes. I too did my shopping. Not wholly or in full measure but very substantially.

These are sunkissed days now. like the eponymous oranges of the same name, benign in temper, mild in presence, languid and moody, sweet in nature, but piquantly surprising. There is a sense of beatitude, no. has churned my faith to belief, accidentally of course, but there has been a coincidence with my rediscovery of a world of an outside more various and wide. not fatally interesting as I was becoming in myself in a phase of retreat.
Then I will love you
And you’ll not be conscious of it
Beneath the table I wont hold your hand
Or run my toe up your calf
When the light of day
Is like the breeze of the sea
I’ll not gaze into your eyes
With you I’ll be drugged to sleep

Ps-
Such feudal decadence in the muted sun, should not be wasted in reverie and grandiloquence. That’s it.

There. It has started collecting at the side of the roads. Secretly like rebels before an insurrection. What nonsense is this. Erom brishti. My perceptions getting blurred. I feel like sardar don Quixote. Very soon, if the water don’t recede and the rain don’t stop, im going to charge at these puddles and kick the water about. They’ll set the dogs on me after that.
To think the weather report is the dull last few seconds of tv news, the insignificant bottom left margin. No ya, to me its very important. Kothay bhaabhchhilam ektu khela dhulo-ghora ghuri kori.
But no. the weather always behaves like a coin flipped by the wind that has landed on its heavier side.
Pure plan pe paani pher diya.
oh you need to hear this. From khushwant singh’s joke book.
A sardar kid was asked to translate the following from hindi to English---“kiye karaye par pani pher diya” which is roughly, “ruining almost certain plans”
But the enfant terrible of grammar goes----
“after urinating he flushed the pot”

Epilogue-----

on Monday, arunabha, arko and I went to athee’s to play cards. It was raining but the waters were still humbly rolling at our knees. Carefree and confident we lightstepped to lake gardens. No sooner were we inside and dry than the skies opened up with their true intention. All it demanded was appease appease appease. Slay a lamb and make a tribute of a nubile virgin of the forest with uncut hair. Srinanda and tinie were the other faithful foolhardy compadres of us wastrels. The rains kept falling in a wanton frenzy of rancour. Daggers drawn. When to leave we waded it was at considerable cost. Arko lost his phone. Sunk and lost. I lost mine. Sunk therefore useless. Arunabha too. But his tragedy far exceeds ours. His was a wonder phone. Hence sturdy too, it survived albeit with scars.
Next year
or when its rains next
I’ll be prepared
and not vexed

--------from the prayer book of Athena Sofia, the queen of the islet

i was reading a history of post-independent india by ramchandra guha,when i was seized by this unfortunate curiosity to find out about the state of the nation in the time when i was born.viz-1984.i read with gradually surmounting distress and discomfiture and despondency.
some thoughts-----

On the English throne roosted Maggie t
Our democracy orbited a dynasty
population and penury couldn’t stop me
From coming in
It was ’84 0r ‘83
In the former year
Gunned down in a mess lay indira g
grey streak dividing the black in her hair
whip in hand she had clutched her chair
for putting a blue star in the political firmament
she paid the price
her children pay indemnity
terrorists and separatists couldn’t stop me
from coming in
the exchange rate was a joke
in the country humble village folk
were tyrannized by goons
and upper caste dragoons
the upholders of the law
poured acid down the eyes of criminals
chaos and anarchy couldn’t stop me
from coming in
seed was robbed from farmers
kidnapped in hordes from their fields
the son of the iron queen
wouldn’t countenance our high yields
he vanished into thin air
the reluctant heir was proclaimed rex
servility and nepotism couldn’t stop me……..
but if such was the time
what were the newlyweds doing having sex

It was a heroic predicament
When she let drop to the floor, her raiment
She motioned me to close the door left ajar
I knelt for her that I had worshipped from far
Her face in my hands revealed above her lips a subtle mole
Her eyes this night held the cure of my soul
It was the last quarter of a waning moon
Naturally our rebellious passions ended soon
My goodbye was hasty, guilty and terse
I thought to myself, my imperfections have hidden hers
I spent a night with a gun in my mouth
The same whose trigger was pulled by her pout
Amid roguish desires I nurse stabbing moral fears
Haunted by the dangerous skin between her shoulders and her ears

ps-read sentimental education

ive nursed a pain to healing without letting it fester
that was after i had just essayed the noble jester
i have to be glad for all that has passed
the eye of the tiger,an artefact thats glassed

what have i missed
a journey on wheels given
to take as understood
the undying love fledglings have for their nests
still for this precocity
and still
i have reached late
but what age are
drifters
in the month of may
its dry in the city and
moist on gravel and clay its
where i spend now the
love of my most precious days
buy from the unperturbed green irredeemable
tokens of earlier repented days when
i should have played this
and stayed closer home for an easier rest
im learning now as truth
what i felt before for you
i have gripped tight
dancing ferns
of your month of may
while the grass bends lower with
the dew
that announces the end of the heat and rain
and a reluctant welcome to colder days
another year jealously
i'll lie with you
but only if you let me play

ps----chilled out today evening with the typical accoutrements in j u.probably the first time went to j u with an intention to timepass.worked well.how this univ is more than the sum of its many myriad parts, and for me its plural pasts.good place.this univ

a birthday
this year sow anew
wild crops
and silver coins
where you will find it
profligately fecund or prosaically heavy
when a toss cant wait
this year too
mark with your lips
a sign on the wall
placed higher than you are tall
your feet may ache this protest
to her love
but
tell them
this last year
youve lived in air

an even rains pasting dust onto the city/it will be ready tomorrow to receive the imprints of pilgrims and labourers.no football tomorrow,cant play too well on wet surface
i read something today that made me think of how you sometimes sleep with a long forgotten smile.i want to go to its heart and stay there
i get worried when i cant find examples to bear my assumptions/unsupported hypotheses disturb me/i search meaning and design hoping to discover a technique/the trouble is another reckoning that suggests no technique,but hints a pattern/and this is true for many cases i can think of/
while generalizations look for a technique in execution,i imagine a pattern in outcome.laziness
needless to say im confounded
needless to say
i kept the lights on in the drawing room
we are here and
we are home watching tv
where would we be
without
or
within
without this instinct of machines

why is this city
where to shout
is a risk,lest all wake up, so
in days lived only past midnight till
morning,alerted
with every flicker of the senses
theres a secret longing
to speak and be spoken to
with sibilant whisper and sly wink
built in haste is an intimacy
that rests if only momentarily
in hyphens
days begin and days blink out their fatigue
like by the riverside,lanterns on country boats
fragile when silent
elegiac with eyes closed
it is in the cadence of her speech that
she supplies dreams with a convenient universe

ode to blankness

stretch tight across/a plastic sheet
and daub white paint on the bedlam of earthworms/heal them
before they reach pandora/who strides a porcupine/resplendent in
an ochre garb of rhino hide
take the hour hand from the london clock
and make a monument to martyred flies
drink acid and spit out your words
or drink drink and never say
if your rhyme is unhinged/unlinked
its cool/today bengal didnt think

nightly shadows cross my mind
ink that is dark and flows spurious
down the drains clogged by many, many puerile dreams
has held the curtain thick in my eyes
iridescent mornings spin me dizzy/find my hand

is it you, is it you

are you hiding now
menoka mathay diley ghomta

send me sweets for an afternoon
only if its you
remember the roads to my house pass through yours
rains brought waters in while I slept all morning
your road is now lost, but it is all I am looking for

ode to nafeel(maybe)

the end of the chickens road
was fleshless, and crushed
the early glutton smiles
at this lightness of being

the relish of thugs
and their heretic doom
is not in goats
nor in any length of wing

the mooring of the tongue
is on a lurid spastic gasp
and as a parasitic wasp
it plaudits an artless sting

we have our vanity
in the rich depth of willful lard
we have our redemption in a
judicious palate and commensality

theres nothing to write.what grief.i thought of blogging today but alas my story at this moment lacks zing.a report on the activities of the last few days may be a substitute.this is a period thats worth recording
i could submit my term paper on monday(as per schedule),tuesday was spent in skirmishes with the apostate,football.shit i remember very little of my immediate past.there are certain caveats to weed that im ignoring for sure.
wednesday thats yesterday is a bit more clear though
see morning i went to chochu baari and had a conversation on hot air balloons.she knows a lot.pretty given to fly haan
then in the afternoon came back and am now reading this book 'temptations of the west'.its by pankaj mishra.piquant read.then night i went to binoo's.stoned on the road at 12 in the night,in salt lake,rajarhat,sector v-----an almost erotic foreboding,eerieness of empty,wide roads,salt alke is sinister,im very gregarious
oh before that went to nafeel's.i can now probably situate the calm of this day.twas the dinner of last night
an ode to nafeel is in order

procrastination.reading darwin on a tree,lazy,whats the man saying really.now when you leap struck and coiled first see if youve not left your pillow on the selfsame tree---grapes?no whine.masters inside the album.

hello whats this here in this rain
bent impress on my step piggies in my shed
pluck sundance and a yellowish prep
rain pretty on scarlet red
bring cowbells and blueberry breasts
and pink snot from bigboy chests
and where is chochu,where is she in the fancy dress

beautiful girl/nimble feet
come dance for me
my flute is silver
my tune is sweet
dance for me
do re me

i wrote a song for you
and the tune i set
is threaded finery
wear my bangles on your wrist
and dance to my
do re me

drink to my health
nevermind my frailty
turn round and round on slender hips
i'll recline on the bed and hum you my tune
sway gently to my sovereignty
do re me fa so la ti

rush to the river
heed my call
dont tell me you cant swim
my voice is golden
lose your life to my
do re me

think of a time
when we will cook out in the open
lay a table for a moveable feast
laugh loud and smile elegantly
and waste water
mix in it all the colours you can name
mix in it secretly
the blood of all the animals that are tame
cup your hands for a toast to thirst
and spill most of it on the grass
lets build a house without a roof
and sleep on the branches of trees
time passes by quickly
lets please walk on our knees

a story to be told
has an ending in the skies
you should listen to it with eyes closed
when a friend drew it in her mind
listening to it like somewhat blind
she saw the rings of Saturn
and thought she saw herself in lavender green
somewhere wading in a stream with bare thighs

when i first heard this story
i was in the mountains
listening to faint echoes of my voice in vast open spaces
i closed my eyes to see
a child in army uniform trapped inside a bubble
trying to prick it with a bent spear
and shying away from his reflection on its walls
scared of hurting its body double

masters over.i cant decide whether i should take the 6th as the symbolic closure of my uninterrupted career as a student or consider the last working day a couple of months back as the parabola of a convex trajectory
if it is going to be the last working day,then its just a faint tint/i dont remember much of that day/
on the other hand 6th was a ritualised acknowledgement of the end of college/drinking eating and suchlike/therefore probably it will remain longer as a memory/
before when ma stitched often,i was fascinated by the craft/the box which held the sewings was full of buttons/from shirts that were torn/those that were no longer there/the eyes of teddies/and the big buttons from their jackets/assorted buttons that ma would never chuck/shed put them in that box and find an appropriate use for it/
with its drop(accidentally)the box would scatter buttons all over the floor/under the bed/if it was a dark button,camouflaged by the darkness underneath the bed/or hidden behind the legs of the furniture/
on such occasions ma would fetch the broom and sweep all over the place/most buttons got recovered/
and sometimes there were unexpected finds too/10p coins 25p coins/a missing receipt/erasers that had been replaced/which therefore would now be saved and put aside till the present eraser was lost/
it was easier to think ma was just habitually thrifty but more than once i had seen her thoughtful after sweeping the floor for buttons/and shed already gathered like hundreds/after a small pause shed be onto the floor again,looking/her face stern with determination but if you noticed carefully with narrow eyes that suggested uncertainty/
i knew from the second time that even in that heap of buttons she remembers a one that she did not find among those that she picked up/the uncertainty was maybe because she wasnt sure if shed already used it/
shed find it though/and if she didnt find that button,shed find other buttons/and if she found no buttons shed find something else that would take her mind off buttons

life is not well;we're just suffering well
----23 yr old woman in the rohingya refugee camp,nayapara,bangladesh
existential crisis?
bah!humbug

why we must meet today

last night i slept on my feet
with a picture of florence with the lamp over my head
today i think i have eyes in my rib cage
i feel blindfolded by this vest
come meet me and tell me how i look,the mirrors too high for my chest

come with me
to the well on the hilltop
alone this day will go to waste
looking for polished stones
and somewhere discarded a jar of clay

manana.the spanish fruit
ripens on the guards chair by the carousel
it can be plucked by only those
that smoke 15 a day and stub the ends
in the same tray by the armchair

we'll have to put a photograph on the mantelpiece
before and after food your face
and next to yours mine
with a fixed gaze.you will with patience and some effort
remember me the time and place

yesterday was momentous.a lot happened that surprised me,strenghtened my faith and showed me the seat of god/
preeti one of the few spartan women i know,got engaged.she was looking very beautiful.i havent seen beauty like that in a long time.the other spartan women are from the same family.i got drunk with her delight.very
when people marry/its no longer about tom and harry/nor is it about that unnamed prurience/those things now/will be spoken of in past tense/lets celebrate now/though/as vicarious joys/those marbles and ponies/of girls and boys
then in the afternoon i got a peep.bambi da and bala showed me where god lives.newton and einstein/theory of relativity and the laws of motion.i never thought i'll ever regret my loathing for exactitude,a discipline in imagination.but man the earth we live on and the nature we live within is the most beauteous whole.no energy lost.things she does is all for all of us and we still want to capture the radiance of a thousand suns in a desert.destroyer of the worlds you are not,and nor are you a child gathering posies for the baptism of its pet ant.maaafaaakaaaa
i have decided im going to try and understand and respect.my atheism or casual faith are both supercilious and stupid.
but i have objections and they were confirmed.einstein was looking for that one theory of all theories that would explain everything.he didnt succeed,the rest didnt either and we are made to read the pretzel chronicles of neurotic bakers.in the sense we learn of answering faith with science.bambi da said there is a lot we do now that nature didnt want us to.she did all that for us not as ego but as nurture/sounds platitudinous.but seems true to me
so we are looking for the first cause,we have been able to explain all away,the mystery of this sphinx,but the secret of fire still escapes us]
st augustine---god is the first cause
baruch spinoza----is one sole and infinite substance of which extension and thought are attributes and individual beings are changing forms
bless this evanescence with humility
i love you 9.8m/sec sq.

it was a naked afternoon
when i slept
with a narrow slit in my eyes
she saw me to wonder
such a narrow passage for your dreams
i did not wake when she was here
she left a note by my pillow
thats how i know she was here
i had kept my eyes closed
and walked to another emerald isle
maybe she could come with me
but i called her a cab
she measures distances by hand
while i dream of four minute miles
i revel in myself
of walking on water
and healing by touch
of feeding the starved with mandrake plants
as a mystic with a cubist church
she paints with her feet
and feeds pigeons in a graveyard
she sleeps in the open on cold nights
and feels the warmth of distant stars
how does faith love a heresiarch
with the narrow slit in my eyes
ive seen her dancing on the bridge of sighs

stuck as a feather to the window grille
you helpless traveler on a windless tropic
a white cloud alone in an endless sky
separated from the flock at a time of play

laugh and laugh ancient mariner
desolation is not of this earth alone

you will become a ghost so it transpires
is there a one you wanted to know
when youd read of love but felt much more

who speaks to you of brazen fiends
who tells you theres no gold on mars
you think your love will become
a bloody white rag in a time of war

now where you neatly keep your folded clothes
an eyeless moth lives beneath the heap
when you undress it catches a smell
of that body which from a touch you keep

but you don’t want to suffer a glance
you prick out its eyes with an iron pin
the blind moth now wonders hard/what it is it hasn’t seen

you should wear gladioli in your hair
and grip the sword with both hands
if caesar wants you to fight to be free
say with pride/say ‘death to me’

of course youll have sand in your hands
youve traveled thirsty youve been to the sea
at your feet pebbles/but you only stood on the shore

i’ll stand explained
with retrospective clarity
captured in a thesis
and an anti-thesis
between being and becoming
lost in a labyrinth
without a thread
i write as paean
all to myself
the maze im lost in
theres been noone here but me

sent to replenish rations which mashi's awol finds depleted
early morning life in jodhpur bazar.milk--check,loaf of bread--check,offering to the lord--check
outside the bazar saw a signal to abandon.ya a scooter.but thats not important.it was a lime green scooter,standing in daylight with the frank candour of a faaking heretic
the security alert code of the day is,yes lime green
the terrorizers can write almanacs/the boys sip molotov cocktails and sleep with the fishes
lord give us our daily spade,we dig six feet
the time comes but it comes when we must meet
the propaganda declaims but does not tell
will we get to meet if its hell
i offer you this marasmus
a chocolate wrapper washed in rain
will you lower your eyes/or blink even once
when you learn my faith was bare
believe me my anger is also only a prayer

i walk through this city
with a presentiment of accident
glossed over in florid detail
by sombre scribes sculpting with cement

but here and again
it is a specious argument
over the length of rope
when upon the edge of fields fetid excrement
and other putrid human insolences
their cleanliness contests the price of soap

its blanket doesnt cover the feet of my city
the crows in a murder exclaim oh what a pity

sic semper tyrannis

i love better now
ive learnt to hurt
bluebirds like my love
are set free
on a landless earth

i can tear my flesh
with my nails or yours
ive conquered another
tied her to my feet
i drink her blood

i keep falling
into a still sea
there is a tyranny of love
if once i escape it
it can never catch me

fairest is that fair thing
yet the guard was felled by a hairpin
i too have done battle without armour
was brought to my knees
by the vulnerability of a charmer
all that can be broken
between the finger and the thumb
is always glass
with a scent of water in her blood

she laughed/said
makes no sense to me
what you write
there is no sense in words
troy came to grief
because helen was beautiful

jama masjid

on a sunday in delhi we went to jama masjid/
meena bazaar/karim's/daryaganj/
i was awed by the mosque,a teeming concourse of faith
the red fort was at a small distance on the left
we passed khooni darwaza on our way from jnu/
nidhi had been to the masjid before,so had abhirup,i kept my eyes wide open in amazement
we did not have to take our shoes off/you just carried it inside with you and then keep them on their sides along the walls
it was the first time i had been inside a masjid/there were pigeons/it seemed thousands of them and probably/those who had finished offering their prayers were feeding these pigeons/children would come running and scare the birds off whod inscribe a circle in the air and come back again to the grains/
everytime they kneel down to pray
silence spreads like a wave
and breaks at the altar
with a hope of benediction
everytime when they rise
they set a thousand pigeons flying
beautiful is the whispered word
that has asked for deliverance

orestes

what are these days
these deaths,these wilted flowers
these hatreds,this disgust,these revulsions
derided and desecrated/this debris of misplaced passions.betrayals
we drank wine and had bread
we drank blood and shared flesh
what is this eucharist/this thanksgiving/for thirty pieces of silver/comes the quisling kiss of judas/the barter of faith
i live in these times

sure,
we can break up
in an hour if you so wish
it would in all
be a little more difficult than waking up
this the sleep of a romantic dream
we could like warring parties
now in peace(because the tumult is over)
engage in a mutual restoration of pride
or if the ego is too badly mauled
we could turn away and hide
there is a smart solution
we can forget about everything
it will take time but we will be able soon
to match times insouciance with our forgetting of the afternoons
we could break up
if you are not happy
yes go ahead
change this leaking nappy
dont vacillate between will I or wont I
we are one but also with an unmistakable certainty
we both can claim that I am mine
you are yours, and I am mine
so once you serve the notice
i too will fall in line
all of this will take very little time
almost erotic
this snap solution
it abuses violently all the time before
yet if you wear black at my hanging
i promise you I will forget the orange you wore
so like small children in a cold country
lets roll all this time into one snowball
and hurl it at each other
and then run back to our mothers
yes,sure
we can break up if you want
it will take just an hour

i have to tell the rebel on the bridge of sighs that the war in kashmir is a proxy war/
ive been thumbed down by junkie hikers enough
marie and pierre went on the tour de france for their honeymoon.they were physicists
or nuclear scientists,or chemist and druggist.immaterial
all of the land surface was one before/it was called pangea/it wasn’t much worth fighting for
harry potter loves a chinese girl.she lets him down eventually.the influence of media in reinforcing cultural stereotypes.hearsay
oh today is rath.the juggernaut mob frenzy/juggernaut is pagan.what god fearing people will worship a limbless god/juggernaut rabblejerk
but rath was a legitimate excuse.nothing is now
the maverick on the bridge of sighs/knows the use of weapons/and will use if provoked
no prisoner of conscience should ask for a calender/
infundibulum
these days narrow
as the mouth of funnels
into the routineness of a science experiment
but every science leads credence to voids,says
there is love amongst androids
we live in the future
as we live now
would peter pan sue glaxosmithklinebeecham and/or Heinz
naivete is a virtue of hyenas/

long hours spent in extending dubious enfranchisements to laconic patrons who say(very little)and take me too seriously.
their verdict.burial in a swamp after a long and consistent crucifixion.we're all hemingway christs
you are being watched
every move,in your caper
under cherry blossoms
its a lie
to think we'll be sitting
in the upper house
on the day of the lords choosing
if youve stabbed
then lick the blood
the fault dear brutus
lies in us
that we are
born of a vagrant lust
the papers said
how the bombs failed
that’s how it is
to err is human

between the devil and the deep blue sea.the rains were much better.i didn’t complain so much.but god this heat.the tissue and the skin are getting mixed in a bilious uneasiness of sweat,nausea and despondency.the despondency’s mine,not really connected to the heat.but it does dovetail nicely with the climate.
snake charmers are lulled to sleep
in this scorched torpor
blessed are those who live in shadows
blessed those who die in peace
been watching quite a lot of movies lately.this time shrek 3 and crash.good movies both of them.no not really.not really shrek.crash though has probably lacerated the smooth smug kosher surface egalitarianism of our american cousins
noah did not know
about the other animals
no one told him
and
peter denied any knowledge
of the key
in physics,there is a chapter on light and mirrors.a demonstration I remember was when an object is placed between two mirrors.it is a reflection of a reflection of an ad infinitum.
i feel the same way.
that I stay between
two mirrors

football.played so much today,had a mild temperature when i got back.insane.
but play i did.after a long long time.
the exams becoming a worry that i find increasingly hard to overlook or ignore.its ticking away
there are bones that the dog refused
these are days of ascetic rigour
its always delusion then disabuse
when the outcome is a paltry figure
oh yesterday,man,i saw a film id seen almost a decade back,and did not forget.brilliant
an imperial hero, a child,a king,sliding down a rainbow,and a petal holding a teardrop,delicately sings
shokhi bhaabona kahare bole
shokhi bedona kahare bole
there was a time we didnt speak in ellipses.we completed our thoughts,in words,in actions
like when humpty dumpty fell off a wall,and we'd throw our arms about to gesticulate the distress of an egg in a world of hard surfaces
now humpty dumpty may fall off walls and.......
okay that was oversmart(but couldnt resist no)
how can you say kiss
and how can i open my pursed lips
how can you say speak
if you do not say speak pig
but yes
weve lived in those times too
when our lessons rhymed
youd asked me to draw you a rose
and id scribbled in your copy
from side to side

reen

in the name of the father
who left his village for a living in the city
who carried me on his shoulder
when the streets were flooded
who carried me
whenever i said my legs pain
he fought for the vanquished in waterloo
and now prepares his exile
he will love me

in the name of my friend
whos left everything to me
she takes my hand
she walks with me
she walks slower than the rest
because she is taller than me
she loves me and will love me still

in the name of my mother
who offers my faults as her own
and holds a morsel to my mouth
who gave her womb that i could live
and she hadnt seen me
she has eyes where
the soul heaves a mortal beat
i love her

to other

last night had a very acerbic and incendiary argument with the tigress on gender and feminism
full of an invective of violation and the angst of being 'sublated'

'humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him;she is not regarded as an autonomous being........He is the subject,he is the Absolute--she is the Other'------Simone de Beauvoir

to__________as the dishonoured heir
of adam's multiplying world
as a sufferer too
and a traveller in time
as a partaker of his crime

to__________as the first womb
of motion
in the forward flow of time
the first word for untrained tongues
as pieta,the redeemer of a penitent christ

veni vidi vietnam

today is an unremarkable silent day
full of the dumbness of confused anxieties
what can be said,can be better seen
it is understandable therefore that theres very little feeling
of purpose or object, and love, tenderness, happiness etc
very little sense in things too, im forced to add
otherwise this will read like
a weeping space for woody allen
in the land of giraffes, (very neurotic gaffe)
the rational principles of existence have to be rethought
weve got to work more on the escape velocity
saw anand last night,very casually,I wanted to be involved,but was sincerely unable to
very blasé I was
a first proof,ive seen medusa with my eyes
there is a remedy,I know,there always is(he touched her with his feet,and she was beautiful again)
but if that does not happen,then
in the not too distant future
in one of my inescapable reincarnations as bodhisattva
I’ll be born a lemon
In a family of confectioners
If I don’t attend art of living,or some such casuist thing I’ll be condemned to horrible deaths of neglect and lovelessness
On rainy days
The leeches eat
The human meat
Is also prey

to kunal

in the morning im asked to
match my tyranny to my will
and not dance at all
at night a day has ended
that the morning had shown
and i havent danced at all
in such scant measures
the days pass
in a meagre rhythym
i havent found my feet
yet yesterday
under the northern lights
for once it was night
but never dark
open eyed i remembered
the bourbons of france
in their palace of versailles
went to sleep
with a fervent prayer
oh lord may we dance

dodger

in the bazaar stands
a seller of aphrodisiacs
a personable doctor of love
standing all day in the human throng
his clientele comes from below and some from above
our friend is a listener
a counsel of intimate hazards
of inarticulate desire
the truest mate
and that is how each day ends
he stood all day in the centre of a circle
and pulled hard evey way
at home at night hes torn by pain
and the only salve he has
makes it all come back again

4 in the morning

my memories are
of dead children
that did not grow up
to the recriminations of age

emon bondhu aar ke

of consecrated love
a second spring
of consummated love
a second coming
of constant love
a sister is a gentle thing

lemmings

i'll run out into the city
and die on the streets
on my knees i'll beg reprieve
wash my hair with the grease
in this arid undulating plain
i'll find a cliff
and sit with my feet
dangling from the brink
i'll drink from the gutters
and write on its walls
the story of my faith
an epitaph in careless metre
i'll join the chorus that sings
requiems for all passing things
i'll walk with the funereal band
that ignores the road its on
i'll love a necromancer
and be loved when im gone

mizoram is where the sun rose

its time now to be talking about sunny days
the rain didnt impede much today.the four of us went out,watched a movie,had momos,got crazy in the water,played 29 etc etc
we took to the streets like ducks to water
oceans 13 is such a joyful watch.brilliant movie,suave cast
today the grand plan though is to study,which i shall do earnestly and sincerely(lord hear our prayer)
marianne is the angel of redemption.i am hopeful about the exam

nao saraiya de

this marshland
my home
does it have fish
and other creatures of the deep
i know,no
people wake up
tired
they’ve been swimming with tadpoles
in their sleep
weve been prisoners in a mermaids dream
these rivers
these roads
do they have boats and ships
i know,no
these rivers of dead leaves
don’t flow into the sea

dampness

the state of yesterday still persists
and i keep asking with the imploring persistence of children when will the rain stop
and the casual answer,oh right now,or tomorrow
in 100 years of solitude,the rain in macondo goes on for four years,some weeks some days
i was telling nidhi now it feels like im never going to see her anymore
that the water will climb up to our floor and drown us while we're asleep at night
baba was home the entire day.spent time just both of us being around each other
nidhi says we too are playing out the curse of the buendias,the trick of a guileful time that appears to move forward in a straight line when it really is going round and round
came back home today from athees to a full house,or at least coming back to the three of them to fulfil a design
ma baba dholu,and me
in about a month food will be consumed cold
clothes will lie in a worn,musty heap
i will drink water that an inverted umbrella will hold
home will be just a bed to sleep

meghnad badh rachana

whats with the weather ya.what i had welcomed once has become a frankenstein,a gnawing tearing depression
makes me feel suicidal when alone,but then theres me homies and playaz and i dont feel that bad anymore
arka came over in the afternoon.arka means the sun,brought me none,sadly
so did kunal,athena and azeem(in that order)
a faint sliver of hope for a dreary day
kunal and i went on a cycling trip to mashi.tour de trance
who mashi---the most important relationship in calcuttas youth consciousness
but jesus son of mary
and mashi mother of hari,what a cycle is haripada's(the mashi in question is my mashi).the handlebars inclined,the pedals broken,the brakes dont stick
felt like the last action hero riding it
we resurrected further memories from the play.snaps,videos and audio clips et al.diverse alarums
what a bond they share
the clouds and the moon
every morning the sun is blotted out,wet and cold
and every night the moon
is cajoled out in a sequined sky
what a time to be alive,and to be young very leaden
the heretic,the apostate,the convert
praised the devil and damned the lord
a god that is spoken of in lore
as retributive as punitive
brings us floods,and after him the deluge
the pupil that was the diminutive
favours our joys and protests our woes
the scriptures talk of a ghastly guilt
warns of a rain to wash this sin
he too was the salt of the earth
whom the gods felled to save the queen

the king of portugal

its late to be writing this.prophetically apt thing to say
but kunal and then srinanda,minstrels of intimate circles sing a dirge
kunal a martyr of love
a dismembered self torn to bits by the houdinis that fate destiny and other remorseless gods make of us
kunal with hands still warm with his own blood will ask
et tu brute
hes been reading julius caeser a lot
training in this is hard.really
ive seen them leave
one by one
i will follow
each.to an equal day and equal night in the antipodes,the opposite end
the thing to become is astronomers and look for life outside the milky way,outside ursa minor,a restaurant,for real,at the end of the universe,to confirm the hypothesis that there is nowhere that people have not been to before

to do

this blog things still very new to me
i am filled with this sense of profundity
god
i shouldve gone to howrah today,seen calcuttas towering severe iron breasts,drawing natives from the hinterland to wild dreams of plenty
the weather still reflects the mood of orphans,
the behaviour of lemurs should be studied(this is an aside)
among the things to do is
studies in general
less of mind bending and/or expansion
look for that job to be in delhi
this might in the days to come become the diary of a struggle
in delhi a girl i know
draped herself red and pierced her nose
shed swim at night and tell me
forget the day
ive seen apollo tied to the rock
she calls me now
to where she pirouttes
along the boulevards,and on the streets
she beseeches a longing in me
to see her blossom in an arabesque

sorry

god this got posted too far
four times.fuck
tecnologys not for me.it always has the last laugh
sorry.it looks awful

foolscap

as the situation returns to normalcy in parts of the play hit cast,it gathers for a review of its own performance
as the rains frustrate the gloomy with erratic bouts of trickling wheezing,umbrellas have been lost to disdain
as and when it begins
yes today has been without incident much.ektuku choan lage re.but not really in the grip of anything.which sucks
no binding commitments,no inviolable promises to keep
the tigress roared deep inside me today.she lives inside me,but i am sadly not her
the afternoon was good.gariahat revisited.anekdin por.daarun laglo
in came the apostle with a prophecy of disater,and a cure for foolhardiness,baba
ey rokom hoyei thake
je aami byartho samayer pradarshani te
phite kat te pitrideb ke daaki
kintu uni shonen na kichhui
ashen bolen aar kete phelen phite
aajo tai holo
ta te kiba eshe gelo(hirak rajar deshe)

flesh in white sauce

i was disturbed by a fly
in the course of my meal
it thought it a pool,what was really my dish
perhaps because floating in it were small dead fish

the spectators gasp on a deathly blow
the beast radiates a deathly glow
the matador fumbles on a graceful bow
the chefs special is a cow

the toast of a morning is on both sides buttered
the rose and the carnations even in monsoons are watered
weve been thinking a lot but weve never really bothered
did the goat think before it was slaughtered

i'll sit down to lunch in some time from now
to white linen,silver cutlery,delicate china and how
for universal peace it is a white dove
but for me,its a chicken i love

tokenism

gultu got out the boat
and the duchess the rope
we started at the right time
it was monsoons the early overtures
the witches brought light
and the duke tended to the dark
there were many amongst us who thought
this play is but a lark
kunal kept the score
we all took turns to open athees door
we did this play
with a small prayer of hope
if there'd be no applause
let there be dope
was there there was
practise that poached rest
the preacher spoke in jest
granny nanny and the child
the baby if you want
i held her trembling
she forgot her lines fumbling
whod believe mo is bedlin
the monsoons an excuse for maudlin
memories
in the morning we woke not from sleep
but from a stupor of bees
in the morning the music died
but gultu keep the boat ready

ode to flossy

the cakes and cookies
lie uneaten many days
adorned by moths
are also the sides of the windows and the door
balmy afternoons bring back
the ghosts of a christmas past
and now look at us
at the peak of a high
felled by a thrill binge
a melo theatrical coitus
ha ha ha
therefore the laments of impersonators
of knaves and cons and other double beings
are mistaken as the longing
for interesting and different things
there used to be a dog between us
we used to be bitten everytime
i used to be smitten all the time
the breeze rattled the wind chime
and i wasnt looking then,i had let go
i feel we're all looking back now
in the supine theatre of dreams
in variations on the same theme
but this isnt about us or me
its about the dog
it has a name
the unknown but the present
bow wow flossy