Tuesday, August 31, 2010

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/

Sunday, August 22, 2010

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

Thursday, August 12, 2010

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?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

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.