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.