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