the importance of being earnest

For whom the bell tolls
The ball rolls when
The veil drops
And the flower falls
From the flowers
Garlands form and from
The petals pollen dust
Is scattered in the wind
For whom the bell tolls
In garlands, mobs and feasts
He is going down for sure
Where he will be her man
by the sea, old hopefully
but thus not lacking company


A few days back end of imagination and now at land’s end. For as saireet and debasree took the plunge I find myself (and this is a sentiment I share with other eyewitnesses) out of depth. But this sinking feeling has nothing to do with being thrown in the deep end because as of now I haven’t been thrown in the deep end. We haven’t been thrown in the deep end. For I’m talking of the great Indian wedding, the commonwealth games of wedlock. The land’s end is the saat phere which constitutes for me a different sphere of existence. The point where one faces the protean expanse of the sea having leapt over mountains and hills and jumped across plateaus and rivers of the plains. For this is another territory, the realm of the deep. To go onwards is to complete a circle, to circumnavigate. Something worth doing even if it is only a normative achievement. But the stories sailors have and the places pirates sail to. All in all the high seas are heady.


Married
Like ahab
And moby dick
Having
A whale of a time
unashamedly

political expression or the b sting

Left —
To me what is important is class. One’s got to have it. But then there are those that think it crucial that there not be any and i cannot agree with them more. They are the left. To leave is also left. B is leftist.

Centre —
In my opinion everyone should have some aim. You know a central target. And then there are those that aim for the centre. I’m aiming for the centre. To centre is also to cross. I have a mountain to cross, but just now i'm a little low.

Do a left and a centre make a right then

driving me daisy

Flowers explode
in the gutters
and come down
in a shower
springs bubble
in the sewers
and the light
shimmers in the water
purely as a spectacle
this city can
do no better
than have you
as the lover
to whom it
opens its heart


All my attempts at writing have been offset by my experiments with streamlined thought. Notwithstanding which I would have churned out a bloody substantial body of work had it not been for the fact that all my experiments are thought experiments. Although a digression on the armchair would have been apposite I am quick to realize that that would have as little to do with streamlined writing as, without taking names, a psycho on pills.
But there come certain such periods of intense focus during which one becomes pathologically hooked to the moments that make up a day. Those are the sad times. These are the sad times.
Streamlined right now is a natural disinclination to speech; three parts reluctance, one part reticence and another pain. But coming back to the point, I have taken up the pen once more to record the minutes of each day.
Like that day when I went northwards. To College St. to buy textbooks. Which was simple. And easy enough. Then I roamed about a little confused, even a little frustrated, with location and timing. Location of Publications Division shop. Timings of selfsame shop. Found the shop. Found it closed. Then went off to Nakhoda Mosque area, and, there, in the shadow of the great prayerhouse, had Royaler biriyani. And, like the cabbieguy said, Royaler chaap. Packed some for home. Tipped modestly. Came out, found a tram and hopped in. Got off at Mullick Bazaar and took a cab home.
That above is all of a magical five hours. Streamlining, exercise I; Female voiceover, editing of.

going pains

Yes we have memories
But we also have scurvy.
At partings I’m nervy
Worried what binds
And what is it that frees

there and back again

had bewitching love
and bewitched i stayed
drunk, daring not to ask
whither untrained heart
but patient or restless
here i am
clutching at what
of the day remains
we travel far
and further till
we know
that ha the world is round after all
for even those that move sideways



i'll make sure that on the spoon
the lemon stays
when you see me at our meeting place

sperits

Let me remember
How it is
To hug ma frens
My lovers and my knights my dames
My dusky husky sweetie pies
My heroes in the skies
My people my element
My primer and the cutting edge
The burning sensation
The thirst insatiable
The deep breath
The life force
Maa aamar maa
The more I chant
The more I want
Elo elo elo
Elo vee ee


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41s4IMyamQ&ob=av2e

seabitch

The sea is warm at sundown
And cool by the day
If you swallow seawater
You have hell to pay



It was to be the small bang before the bigger bang. It ended in a near mortal whimper for me. I am like that I’ve seen. A pussy when sick and here I think that my resistance is pretty high. Well here we was on the beach and all oiled up (twenty buck massage by a mobile masseuse; he was no good, especially since he wanted the entire custom of the group, five in all and so while the others grew restless waiting for me to finish after I’d gone first, he made haste with me and to no relief) and we jumped right in without much ado. I speak for me because I realized I should have weighed the pros and cons of so recklessly hitting the sea. It is salty water and in Digha, a dull brown tepid ditchwater. Jumped in I did and soon was gulping the shite by the mouthfuls. Was half full of that bile by the time we was out I’d say. On the second day I was slightly glitchy in the morning and had a sour stale burp but more of that in the post mortem report. Dinner was murgir jhol and thick bullet rice. I wolfed down great quantities of it and then some more after I got served more than I wanted. Upbringing and the ancient sense of duty not to mention immediate reproach in the cartel made me cram some. But there is no sense of foreboding where folly is riding the crest of a wave. Thereafter liquid diet in hotel room till well past. Good boy said good night and went off to sleep in non aircon. Fucked woe be to. First crap: 5 am. Shit #2: 6:20. #3: 7ish. In my current line of business I’m getting to know about AP/GP and frankly, a man gets to thinking what it all means and he gets to watching hisself and finding a meaning. My loose tummy situation was just insane. And how can I ever forget advice from the coterie — strongly advise lunch, have lunch, you’ll be hungry, ’tis a long way, a light lunch never did no harm. Lunch, Parijat hotel, flower of heaven garden. Strongly recommend shukto, have shukto, roughage. What! Had shukto, made from milk, tssk tssk, have charchari, roughage. Charchari then. I was with a plan too at mention of lunch and had dal and aloo bhaja by my own genius. A sachet of eno had preceded lunch. The clouds had gathered but nothing was rumbling yet. Kolaghat in safar sans suhana. Dry and prostrate, sprawled on the back seats, ready if it was time. Ah, someone mentioned tea, petrol pump. What are friends for! Just before Kolaghat, when the cronies had alighted for a quick bite, between puffs, Pintu, the guy at the wheels, confided that he thought the charchari funny. Them wasn’t good vegetables he said. I coughed up some yellow phlegm and spat, you boys finished, let’s go on now. Petrol pump, God bless Pintu. He rushes first thing to the loo. I opt for a drag to begin with and he has the start on me. He is out before long. A little relief is all I get although I had expected more from the nearly three hours of discipline showed by the tummy. On the second morning my stomach was already a tight drum stretched across my chest by the time we went down to the beach. There was football happening and an old tug got pulled inside being for a sudden second, but verve was in me by then a little rat’s tail sticking out under the cupboard for a brief second after the light came on. I was relying on smoke and went along in the water, it was bloody crowded and all everyone was shouting was beer; one was even shrieking holi hai holi hai, aste bachar abar hobe. I looked in the water. It appeared to me as shimmering. I looked closely, let the sun fill my palms below the surface and brought it up slowly. Fine specks of sand caught the sun and danced in it but that was all a fleeting glimpse; very soon the water was the same brown liquid. The water was dirty all right.


And grapes sour.

ju after ajus

She did not look
Because the boys did
All the looking for her
For when she passed
Under their feet
the earth shook
and in their veins
the flames burst
and they were all
fainthearted on mars


in my acquiescence
is implicit
the reason why
we do what we do
because even when you propose
im the one thinking for you


I am not you
And you are not me
What page
We are not even
On the same tree

The uni after to hell and back long. And what weather to be doing this in. For to do with football my best skies to visit the place under. The sun strained the colour of sugarcane juice under pale grey clouds. But no rain. That is important, JU like most places on earth is much better with a chance of rain than in rain itself. Although I prefer people to stick to the time it is not a perfect world and when I feel like indulging my friends in their innocence of the moving hand I look at dogs. I will look at dogs if any are around, at any rate, from now on, if I can remember that I should be doing it. It happened in a stream of consciousness sort of way when I picked up share-teen of yore yonder outside the library. It was a lazy time and poor old dogsbody was feeling lazy. I was sitting across from him on the other side of the road, past bachchan family. Share-teen was sniffing the air and casting desultory glances around, although all the while he kept his ears pricked. I observed another, this one much younger and on all fours approaching from the field side. A bitch, brown. This was seen by one of a similar coat that was idling near the statue. Male. He went forward to meet her. Share-teen was craning his neck. But what’s this? A car, stealing up behind haseena. She becomes aware of the vehicle and road romeo at same time. In a clever manoeuvre she stops and turns with the car, but in an anticlockwise direction. The boy had anticipated she would cross the car in front, or wait for it to pass before she came across. But suddenly she wasn’t there. He had an absolutely bewildered look on his face. But share-teen still wore a look of apprehension. The bitch did eventually go off 3 no. gate side with brownback in tow. Share-teen looked on like Snoopy all hurt for some time and then settled down again, to sniffing the air and looking around.

red rag

she wanted to cry
after she'd been
to hell and back
did she ask herself
if such is the stench
of suffering
why they live
why do they die
or did a flower
of the sun
find herself
engulfed at sunset
by the darkest night



in autumn like the leaves fall
in winter like the snow
from green and blue the tear
drops and in the river of kings
the red flows
in the vale of kashmir

Bobodom

Now is a time bandhs don’t matter. Hell they’ve never mattered.


Why do they shout
Why are they hurling stones
How they have not a moment’s rest
Lo how well they impose this calm

I’ve been always enamoured of the bandh. But so has the rest of mankind in some way or the other. I praise it here because of our observance in surfeit of this social unifier, the universal invitation to leisure. Although it has been generally recognized that the strike is a harmful instrument of political maneuvering, in no way does the resorting to it at the drop of a hat suggest stupidity of the citizenry. After all with great discretion comes the power to let go. And the difference to the trees and the birds; the air is different, it is a phenomenon I’m sure has as much a basis in science as in romance. But yes even if the crow takes a shit on you (you missed the fine print even though you were looking at the trees) it is worth it.



What do you want
The details
Or my delight in it
Because as you might
be knowing
I’m in love

hyderabad and how

fear of the fever
fever, hot and cold
harsh sun, pouring rain
liquid intake, fluid state
five days gone up in smoke
disagreement, distress
discomfort, disregard
say nightmare and
we can laugh at a joke


where to begin on the insane hyderabad getaway. at a ripe old age of 26+ to call it insane would be a disservice to me and my friends all of whom can vouch for our commitment to a wholesome experience.
but when the telengana farmer led us to his hut for what we anticipated was tari only to come out with the flowing dhoti of a second back rolled up into a mean loin cloth which as it turned out was the preliminary to him clambering up a taal tree to fetch with a beaming face for some overwhelmed cosmos what he promised was the plantation's finest, you know you have to go on all along for quite a long while to even begin to sum up the weekend.
throw in whispering valley and roaring rain and homeless falling back on banjara hills and all contradictions and all opposites feel the same.
i can just begin to imagine why some people find jumping off airplanes, cliffs and buildings and the scaling of mountains and peaks, not to mention skidding off ramps, hills and highways exciting.

a,a,a,a,b,b and the gang yay
\m/

handonchest/kobirchokhe/etc

now that im on my way
i was no more than a rabbit
given a field to run
and devoured each night by the exacting predator
was brought alive everyday
by the special 'uns

for an honour and a privilege
i,m,a,s,s,k,m,c and the golden generation

Next door napalm

The ministers of freedom
With scythes in their hands
Go out in the fields
She’ll get killed hopefully after all this
With the hysterical confusion
Over freedom and justice


Freedom and justice, are these coexistable? Do they coexist? Freedom is the freedom to do things and justice is what? To do it in good faith? To do it without harming anyone, or is it to do with being just in harming someone or is it harming someone with your hands moving under justice’s blind notion? Like a war can be fought by wiping out a people or is fought by killing your enemy? The case against conflict has been too often overstated for the just cause to be ransacked again by me. Needless to say these are human prerogatives and human anxieties. Our sense of justice may deprive others of their freedom but do we not know what we ourselves are capable of?

Khardah retake

Maybe a lot kinder
Maybe a lot more balmy
Was touched by the fatigue of traveling
Maybe I should have traveled with you

Khardah is in the North 24 Parganas district. Well, it is north and way down deep along BT Road, near Titagarh in fact, which appeared to me the one and the same place. Extreme suburbs, the transition begins somewhere over the Tala tank bridge. The khal maybe is what it is. We reached there in 45 minutes and 75 minutes early, for which my photographer rebuked me and the driver who in turn claimed he knew all along that the distance could be covered in 20 minutes. Indeed, he had been sanguine about making it quick when we set out but of course he didn’t know what time we were targeting.
My assignment was a Santosh Trophy, Cluster II match between Nagaland and Punjab. So whatever, we were there in a jiffy and then the business of killing time presented itself. Clouds stretched across the sky and the light was pale but not really gloomily so. The air was moist; the Ganga I was told was 10 minutes away but this came up quite late in the day so there wasn’t no actual visiting. We basically took a long circular path through Khardah and around Titagarh where the railway station made me suspect I have passed it before on a long distance train. Khardah, or at least the parts of it I saw, is something of a Muslim ghetto, only its being way out makes it just an amorphous cluster. Nonetheless there are quite a few mosques and makeshift shops selling cheap and excessively bright chiffons, sequins and zardosi. And yes the place was crowded. It being a Sunday sure didn’t help here where all the people had come out on the road to take the air while haggling over bric a brac. I couldn’t see much more except that we also thought of eating to pass the time but imagine the horrors when I saw weevils the size of pen caps hovering over every sweetmeat in every sweetshop. Crazy.
Back at the stadium I was ready with a little masala and that had me all set and looking forward to the match. The match was okay. Punjab were really good but unidimensional. Nagaland were nimble and frisky yet very feeble. Punjab won 1-0.

fatigues

Watching me while I walked back
There was only one
Then, turning around
I take a step back and
The thousand guns of empire
Go off
They all ask the same thing
Why you scared.
The patriots of the monsoons
Have dug trenches
And wait in arms
They would rather
The blood stained their shirts
But woe be to passion when
It’s colour is overpowered by
The slime from mud slinging

cosmic relief

I’m guilty myself of
All that I blame you with
And in a way
This story will go like
Revenge of the sith
Six chapters
With all the takes
And retakes that means
A story that has to end
Each time before it begins


When the curtain rises
For the last time
For the cast to take a bow
The leading pair
Is nowhere to be seen
the couple dead
in their last act
had left the building
the critics scoffed
at the timing
of this sequel without a script

In shiny pants
Move legs that
Frequently insist
We time our steps
On stairs and streets

explanation follows

The troughs seem to get wider
Physically this time there is a strait between
And straits ahead period
But thats a different thing
Now the head is swollen and heavy
Lifeless a mast without the sail
Mocked by an annoying weathercock
That with every wind turns its tail


In the bay
There is calm
Out on the shores
There are lights
Under nights blanket
Up creeps the day
Like a snake through the grass
And stings the eyes

i alone love you

From the guru I expect
Time, a headstart
And a demeanour
Deserving of friendship
While he leaves me alone to pursue
My understanding of all things
And the above


i don't like the twilight girl because she looks drugged against her will and anyway i don't like twilight because i think its too gimmicky. maybe them two going around too is a gimmick. though robert pattinson looks believable enough to be the boy that could use some bullying with if i was cast villain opposite him. homeboys got weak jaws for a vampire.

an arm and a leg

There is a moment in the heroic saga which cinema has captured very well. That particular moment when the storm breaks and the audience knows that, very melodramatically, the end has begun. But since in the real world all outcomes are not so unequivocally preordained as the climax in movies, I reckon, that albeit in the short term, the World Cup has kicked off a bad time for me.
Suddenly I am doing one thing and one thing only, the one thing it is all about. Back end staff to the World Cup fever; good in itself, my trouble is that I cannot describe the symptoms all that well when that is what I’m supposed to do.
It is a feeling well-known to me, when all the balls fly over your head and you can reach none.
The football metaphor is very strong with my circumstance right now so much so that when El Diego spoke of this 30 days being nothing in the life of a man who wants to kiss the World Cup, I cried and felt there was football in my veins. A true son of Argentina.
But since my metaphor is not as literal as Maradona’s in that in it there are shifting goalposts and no balls, it figures that I cannot get my hand to it and claim God on my side.
Moons come and go, and this will wane too, 90 minutes at a time. While it does, more than once will I think how, when it was high tide for him, he had the gumption to reach for it with his hand whereas I take too many touches and end up shooting wide.

ales like teen spirit

Dirty slithering snakes
Sticky chattering apes
Surrounded by such
A bird in a cage
What a pure thought.
The cheat hath
Touched the flame
And having styled himself a painter
Went back to cheating all the same



Having lost her mane
She is the lioness she never was
Now that the lion chooses the kill

loco pilot

In the onrush
Heart rending brutality of survival
Scores of them hurtling forward
Some thrown aside some dragged along
A riot
Albeit one they are all used to
In the middle attend
There is the tragic baby
Lost and pitifully crying
It has evoked poignant sighing
For 17,778 nights running
We do the anarchy bit well
The popular drama company
Knows this about itself



When the gates of heaven close,
Acid burnt asses
Will try in vain
To get entry
As noble gases

freak thermometer

Women who use chewing gum in their aspect
Can be seen here on the streets of Calcutta
Jostling for space with other mouths that draw attention
As they come in groups or single
But it is something about them rolling their tongues around
Busy cheek by swarthy jowl



This is not my focus, it is the fluff
So soft on my face
In soft light in a soft breeze
It lulls me to sleep
I’m sad but poetic
That would do I think
One way or the other
With my final sigh
I’ll remember my father and mother

suite apres-midi

Frenzy
Like chopping at potato
With a furious knife
Whatever comes out
Is alas
frenchified

whenever you start on that
walk
you gather sunset and carry it
forward
in the distance
your light is golden

my bark reached the beach
and then did I sound whiney
with my pupils dilated and my wits forfeit
I feel beat and my feet feel tiny

Hammer on skin
Has never produced
Anything more rousing
Naturally
The hair stands
And all within that’s hiding

I love this city because
Here, I think I’ll find the song bird
she can hold an illusion
like a jug at a table
and wait upon the secret sigh in the rabble
while a toast is raised to babel

With these eyes
I have to lose
Everything
Finding matchboxes
Noticing a fault
And the ability to keep from falling
But getting up
To sighs

Love o love
Cheshire cat
May the talk be always of you
If not straight
Then in aliases
And may you always smile
On those that

night comes down
in the business districts
like murder in the alley
why suddenly
hyperbole

at play with the gods who should say this but

Soft toys, automotive toys, videogames, robotic toys, educational toys, cycles, sportswear, CDs, indoor games, fountain pens of dozens of varieties, novels, story books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, clocks and watches, telephone diaries, crystal articles, wall hangings, chocolates and several other items are there to tell the parents that their children have a choice to make.

oh my godot

A woman is nothing if not proud and that is the one most exasperating quality for a woman to have,
I don’t say this but suspect this might be true. A little of this I’ve doubtless intuited, seen around myself, but I love them all the same. So here’s the problem, the best thing about you is unlovable and the tritest and the most insipid thing that keeps us boring deep where love is at its shallowest, is missing the point. One way or the other what do we do?
And to think in the midst of all this we are like playing a card game, so the one move is in response to the other even if it is to pass the time. Now the question is you wanna play or not? Basically all the possible endings are question marks? Your move please

I’ll have my own brick road to
Journey to the emerald city
Oh it will be emerald for sure
Everywhere I go is green
And I’m green too
Under an enormous cloud of gloom
I’ll be riding a mule
Across a bare landscape
All green plains and plateau
The earth rolling in beds of moist red gravel
When it rains on the traveler
Who is rolling too



Not a sticky substance
And here you say chewing frees the gum
Searching a friend for life
And never made anxious by a chum

28 janwary marg

I found you behind the stairs
With a knife clasped in your hands
And I woke in the bedchamber with
blood on my chest.
Out there on the glum coast
The captain sailed home with his plump boats
He was taken goods, women and all
by pirates
How can I forget
It was there we met
In just such an age
Of fairytales
We’d sat on the gunwale
And knew that though all conditions were met
The time was not right.
Needless to say the seas have been wild
And we’ve traveled well

if matters came to a head

Nevermind
For when I die
Or wear the cross of thorns
(whichever is first)
I’ll bequeath the realm of my mind
To you
See what you can do with it
See what you find
Don’t stop at the surface
Look in the pulp below the rind