Orion

In the light of the day,

I fear we are

Much too far,

You and I.

The charcoal waits to erode graciously,

Like a sugar cube on the tongue, 

In drawing the curves of a cat's tail

Or a still eyelash of the same girl

I've drawn since I was five. 

Instead, I pretend that the paper 

And my dusty, grey fingers are

Much too far,

Like you and I.

But when I raise my head

And the sun has set

Leaving no embers

Like my crumbling charcoal, 

I draw a line from my heart

Shooting straight into the sky

Where stars have waited for all of eternity,

One for each of our hearts.

And one for us to meet halfway.

So when the dots are joined

On earth and in the sky,

There we are,

Not so far.

You and I. 

today

Is the blinking of your eye a greater task,

today?

Is it because the world is too much to take in,

today?

Is breathing ,is  walking, is the beating of a heart - 

the clockwork you forget about,

an unfailing companion from the start,

is the beating of your heart close enough

to ripple your jaw today?

They say the world will not end

with this and that,

not with failing the gargantuan examination,

not with the itch of predestined disease,

not when someone shakes you out of your delusion.

Heck, the world will not end

Even if you do.

But yours will.

What we grow from day to day

is not a new heart or younger eyelids,

We grow memories in the magnitude

that only memories can grow in.

And they become a mirror of

what we want

and what we want no more of

today. 

And only memories are visitors

when there will be no visitors tomorrow.

And when tomorrow will be the same as

today.

And beauty is and youth is

a scandal of 

today.

And if the look in someone's eyes

is bribe enough,

what you want is yet not

a memory.

Beauty will follow purpose,

and the time is

today.

On Religion

Place the lay monk in a room

full of earthen statues of men in prayer.

So that when he opens his eyes,

he finds mute reassertion.

And everytime he believes

that it is time to end a prayer,

He shames himself in the reproach of

a thousand glassy eyes raised heavenward.

And each time he places his folded hands

on the warm,thumping cloister under his robes,

To him,it reverberates in the chests

of the solid, cast men around him.

So that all his questions are answered in silence.

And any movement made by him,

driven by his own will,

is an act of infringement.

And so that his fear resides,

Not in forgetting the One

whose name he chants in cycles,

But in being seen when he does so.

good measure

Whoever it was that told you

it's worthwhile to dream of wings

has a stiff-necked, singular way

of looking at things.

There are beings that give up flying

to crawl on all sixes and fours

for wings are no good

when it's pouring outdoors.

Two

It is the easiest thing

To go missing.

It takes a second

Of loose footing

In the sinuous stream

Of entwined cogs,

It takes a distracted

Shift of the eye

To discomforting fogs

Of strange faces.

It takes the chasing-after

Of honking blurs in new places.

It takes the shared shock of strangers

In rooms with a tipping ceiling.

It takes the overlooking

Of a single hurt feeling.

It is easy to go missing.

But I will find you,again,

In this conundrum of give-way gears.

I will deafen it’s humdrum

For a familiar whisper in my ears.

It will take you the effort 

To look twice more

And recall my name.

This much I ask of you,

When I find you again.

Say you will, 

And I will whistle a song

To reach your ears

Over the city’s saucepan

And its senseless hissing.

Say you are, because I am.

And it takes two to go missing.

isochronous

It is a peculiarly celestial sight.

You turn at your speed and i turn at mine. 

And if I see you or not, becomes my day or night.

In the Sloe Mo World

In the Sloe Mo world,

Babies stay babies longer,

Everybody can't help but wave back,

Strobes lights don't affect the epileptic,

All stitches are in time,

There are at least 4 generations who can compare
 their childhoods at one time,

Popsicles melt slower,

Popcorn stays crunchier,

Food chews itself,

Food stays warm longer,

There's more of food,

Which is a good thing because like happy 15 year olds

everyone is always hungry,

People always forget what page they were on,

instead, they read the ribs and spines and veins of books,

like it should be,

It's easy to keep track of the phases of the moon,

And the sea washes everything ashore that left home,

It brings me back to being a simpler life form that

has the time and willingness to evolve,

(but only in another lifetime)

and is happy to eat and be alive.

(maggi break)

In the Sloe Mo world,

Skirts are delightful,

Implants are frightful,

And the perpetual return of fashion keeps everyone

satisfactorily in mode.

Uno goes on forever,

Board games stretch across 4 tabletops,

Crayons have a mind of their own

And clumsiness is a certified state of being.

There are two good listeners to every conversation

And it takes rudely long to figure out if the next person

is a he or a she, so people have stopped caring.

No one spends free time on narcotics

because they finally take the time out to see the world for

what it can do to the senses, if given time.

Everyone can put out fires in time and still gaze at the

mad beauty with which this unfathomable state of matter

consumes every other.

In the Sloe Mo world, there are no deadlines,

And you don't hate yourself for prioritizing,

So a-waste-of-time becomes far more subjective,

And know this, that the people whom you'd

traverse time and space for, never are...

In the Sloe Mo world,

everyone has a time for a cuppa

what they like

and a spoonful of what the tongue feels

happy under

and you and I have time for a chat

that lingers

longer.

Good Ol' Days of Yolk

The monotony has set in. Week after week I carefully plan a 10:30 am wake-up, for Sunday breakfast at my PG mess. But today was different,I did get up at 10:30, but something made me forgo breakfast. Later, I had a small bowl of muesli to keep up with the barrels of work that keep rolling ahead, taking my eyelids with them.

But Sundays aren't about muesli, even with candied fruit. They're about two eggs (as you like them) and toast and hastily spread Amul butter among sleepy faces in the PG mess, with greasy newspaper with Amul butter thickly spread. I happened to go without eggs, as I like them, this morning by some strange vociferation of will that I don't quite believe now. If I meet that nasty urge of will right now, I'd punch it till it chickens out.

For as long as I can remember, eggs have been my second fuzziest comfort food, and at most times just the best thing to trigger nostalgia. When I was very small, and despite my Dadiji's discomfort at my eating eggs and onions in the same meal, had grown fond of omelettes for breakfast it would take all of my mum's effort to keep me from having too many. Two a day and no more was the rule and rightly so, high protein is hard to digest and I have a troublesome stomach. It helped that omelettes can disguise the number of eggs and serve disillusionment beautifully with the size of the pan. My mum was probably very pleased I asked for seconds, even thirds for any form of food at all and she knew the feeling well, that of loving omlettes...

...because no one spins an omelette like my Naniji, my mother's mother. They're sinful, widely known, and are better at drawing you away from under the sheets, from the painfully organised archival chests of drawers or from the bookshelf at my Grandparents' home at Kanpur than anything else can. The.Smell.Of.Those,Omelettes. The simplest but best of everything goes into them and they go best with everything else.

Eggs taught me how to handle cutlery. It was mimicking my Nanaji, whose indifference at the table I'd irk by reaching out for my omelette with bare fingers, that I gave up a finer sensory experience for a fork and knife, (which being left handed I would prefer to keep switched but not anymore). The only time I'd raise my eyes from my plate of eggs was to watch Nanaji gulp his pills with tea before leaving for his clinic, it couldn't have been very hot tea, but every morning it was that one thing I wanted to excel at when I grow up. I wasn't on any medication myself but my aunt, who had just finished studying medicine would feed me digestive biscuits saying they were dog biscuits, but only if I behaved like a pooch for most of the day. Now I know this form of adult tactic as one-of-those-things-to-shut-kids-up.

It is over one of these summer vacations at Kanpur that I decided I had had enough of omelettes and I announced that I had to test my taste buds and the deftness of cutlery on fried eggs, runny side up. I had a sick sounding name for them that I cannot disclose. But that texture and colour was the delight of my seven year old life. It was a shocking change for the table from Naniji's omelettes, but there was a short hush and not much else against the sizzle of determination.

Then there are egg rolls,in Calcutta. I don't remember much of them from the 3 years that I spent there when I was very young. But my parents and brother have memories that pour out each time my mother makes egg rolls or egg paranthas at home. And since I happened to visit Calcutta very recently, I see exactly why the pleasure of having a piping hot egg roll on the pavement, in all its chat masala and butter paper splendor, would stay with one forever as a memory that you can't help but revisit. I think my mum mastered the art of them and someday I hope I do too. Or else there's little else I need to give me a reason to keep visiting Calcutta.

Well, I ping-ponged through all of childhood between omlettes, Spanish omelettes that got slightly ruined for me because of a bitter capsicum, and sunny sides (which was a phase and took far too long to eat) with bhurji now and then to add to the scramble.I even helped my mum make eggs.But in my early teens, when I decided to wander in the kitchen for longer than to ask my mother about a school assignment, I discovered the ease of boiling eggs and making egg salad sandwiches. My mum says that she let me take my time with kitchen tools to let me choose which hand they should go in. And soon after, I was addicted to my messy,drowned in ketchup, over-salted but all mine egg salad sandwich.

There's a certain memory of burnt fingers, calcite odour and care to keep the shell in halves that I attach with shelling boiled eggs. It's a lovely feeling that was sometimes paired with seeing the grey of a boiled yolk which was a fascinatingly distinct change from the yellow of cracking eggs. And cracking eggs if one is allowed, any child will tell you, is one of the most triumphant feelings. Shelling eggs also meant cooking egg-curry, that I discovered both my parents are absolutely amazing at and would never refuse to cook even  though it was a tiresome task compared to our quick TV dinner of bhurji.

And it has been so every time I have come home from college in my vacations. Except that now I am simply, utterly grateful to be eating eggs at home, in all shapes, colours and sizes. The thought of it makes me smile and the act of it is so fulfilling that I could be smothered cozy under a giant mother hen. I am as amazed as discovering that there are eggs for any meal at home as I was when I found out that an egg could even go into things that are sweet (this dates back to 1.When I first saw my Nani's divine chocolate cake being produced. 2. When papa was checking the packaging of a swiss role for the vegetarian green dot before we could serve it to my Dadi.). Eggs + home = the same feeling you get when you kill the last nasty squeaking red demon in a cave in Diablo II and the gold spills out of nowhere.

I am very very fond of eggs, it's my favourite form of poultry produce, yes, more than chicken. But now in college, I've met people who are far bigger egg lovers. I moaned and craved eggs during the bird flu but I don't remember complaining a whole lot. And I've met people allergic to eggs. Sundays however, remain the only time when egg lovers appear from all crooks and holes of our PGs and I see for myself the wonder of eggs that makes people rise a little earlier than they would've on a Sunday morning. I wouldn't miss it for the company either. Amid sleepy, happy faces at home or in the PG, amid people I know and love. That's how I like my eggs.

save your breath

Ok, here's something very cool in the blogging world that Kanika, a very close friend and housemate (I could practically hi-five her without moving from my desk) is doing on http://stone-paper-scissor.blogspot.in/ this February. It's called the Fantabulous February with one inspirational post a day.
Click the link and behold. Here's the Wednesday,15th of Feb post,

And here's what I have to say about this picture..

It made me think of all the times I fought for the last row of seats in the school bus, which was always a privilege for the seniors, and how all of a sudden there were no seniors left to fight with because everyone leaves school someday, and whether you can or not becomes obsolete. And Route No. 4 and 5 become strips of yellow that you visit every year when you go back to school with a visitor's pass and wear something carefully chosen because you've lost the right to wear that uniform of the best twelve years. And also because your school shirt reads things you can't make public written with markers on the last day of XIIth. The faces in the buses look older of course, and trying very hard to be. And there are faces of seniors from so long ago that the kid on the last row wouldn't even know that his isn't the only face peering out the window in all of the history of Route 4 and 5. But you remember those faces of long ago, even the worst of the bullies. And you forget that some of these kids who don't know how lucky they are to not shave/wax/thread yet, know you as a forgotten face. Before long, only the window will stand witness to your having conquered the last row....but such are school legacies.

And this picture reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you know when Jim Carrey comes from that place and meets you know who. Do watch it if you weren't nodding along!



And now, for something I'd been thinking of. A periodic ponder.

Do you find it easy to believe? How often do you find a thing worth pouring your faith in. Something strange and complex that falls in that murky half-understood world between like, love and fear.

Would you give a part of yourself to something above, below, outside, inside of you ? Something so large it makes it binocularly impossible for you to fathom, with presence you cannot deny. Is it so microscopic that you would let yourself wander in tireless search? Is it heavy, so heavy sitting on your shoulders and weighing down and all you can do is submit to it without once seeing its face? Or light and slippery, gliding with you from stone to stone, obliging you with its presence? Sight, if not the most deceptive and overwhelming, is the most useless sense when it comes to the comprehension of faith. It is mostly a more subtle bodily exchange with the very ordinary or the extraordinary that makes you humble. Like the touch of freshly washed floors. Or the sound of rustling lace.

God. BlunderGod. Underdog. Spirit. Jinx. Force. Cusswords. Crystals. Celestial bodies. The Animal world. Sacrifice. Plants and their byproducts. Food. Heroes. Family. Childhood. Morals. Alter egos. Guitars. Winning at arcades. Peace. Sleeping over troubles. What is it that you call your belief to tell me that it exists ? Would it matter if I name it differently?

In cinnamon sticks, in choking swirls of incense, in faint remembrance of something floral and green that is now a crowded building with uric odour, in the visceral smell of fear in prayers, in the oily vapours of potato chips that always sit in boxes of board games, in the heady whiff of thick candles, in the calming smell of the bath products of the people you miss. In smells, you lock a belief.

Noses have rich memories that need no comprehension and are impossible to ignore. Don't care to explain how, who in and why you believe, I could trace the arc of your eyelids as you allow yourself to inhale to see
what makes you strong and vulnerable at the same time. That is explanation enough. The effort you take in heaving your chest to infuse a moment of your life, will tell me what you follow.

For those who ask you why you believe..let them know it a matter too personal for them to question. It is no one's right to know.They may be the sort who are looking for something that they can believe in that wouldn't betray them.
Do not look for reasons, if you say them aloud, they might dissolve.
Do not explain that you are forced to believe in something that is greater than you to the degree that you can be enslaved. There is nothing that could enslave you but you.You make your day and nights. You run yourself in a way that is bio-chemically beautiful and unbelievable. And it is a miracle. But it is you you believe in least.

Let your nose guide you, not a finger you can't question, that points in a direction that defies the gravity that keeps you ground bound and makes walking with your favourite wig on impossible. Let your nose guide you and you'll find a belief. Hold your tongue, it may try to reason with what is illegal, infantile, illogical and immediate. No, don't reason with tongues when you find something to believe in.
Save your breath.

Never Say

When life changes in a way you don't know, you tend to resist. Of all the crazy possibilities that can be with lives, I think this one is my favourite. I don't know if you see what I see or what you see at all, but I saw that I wasn't asked to shut up or grow up or dress differently or think less dark or be less embarrassingly clumsy. If I have changed, it happened so naturally that I didn't even notice. I guess that's the only way you do not resist a change that you do not foresee, when your life changes completely, and you don't have to change at all. 

Thank you.

Never say

Things that you cannot talk about

For the fear that they will stop being.

Like how you never talk about what

Made you grin and your eyes were shut so

I couldn’t read them.

The small unmentionables that

I would rather smile to myself about.

Like you never mention the times

When you forgive me and why.

Like grateful palms hidden under sleeves

That stretch way down the knuckles.

Too bad they went unheard, these observations

Of peculiar chews,

Day-wear shoes,

Loose clothing,

Secret loathing,

Submission to pain,

The slightest weight gain,

Fortunate glances,

Happy dances,

Days of scruff and dust,

Unmistakable trust,

An absurd jinx,

Touchy things,

Material wishes,

Intangible relishes,

Scarlet hue,

That i love you,

Collecting clutter,

The nervous stutter,

Slight nudges,

Growing-up grudges,

Smug pride for each other,

What you’re called by your mother…

But never saying it.

Like looking at what we share

But choosing to squint.

So I know I’ll learn to see it even

On days I see less of it or with little care.

Knowing, however, that there’s

More life in that doesn’t speak but keeps

Your secret jars of clutter from breaking.

Like breathing through your ear into your pillow

And hearing it breathe back.

Tough to chew

Q. What do you call an omelette  with bits of chicken in it?

A. A momlette.

I sense some very hateful avian vibes.

The Odds Are...

Here's introducing you to the very private lives of the folk who live in my spiral pad.
Some of them are a little cooky and a little odd, but they're not shy of visitors.
(click on the image to view in lightbox)

Well, the whole point of putting them in one spiral pad was to frame them in neat squares but there, I ruined it by scanning them and cropping them in various sizes. As soon as they were on my screen, I couldn't help but include the spiral edge and a little of the grey scanner bed. And yea, all that scratching and overwriting looks like a mess too. All this makes me rather hesitant when I think of making my work public. I should just give up on being neat. Or try harder.

 But in any case, you should come see them in the spiral pad where they spy on
one another under the pretext of keeping each other company. And it's always nice weather in the spiral pad.

The Paradise Unsoiled

There is a foetus in a jar in the bio lab of my school. Students come and go and dust settles and glistens and is blown away from his glass case in golden puffs but he doesn't move. He shares space on a shelf with other non-fussy and brooding specimens of the living world, so I am not afraid that he will be lonely. In fact, something tells me he would have grown to have changed the world. Something always tells me that. Maybe it is the amount of time he has spent in that lab, which is longer than any of us.

Does he have any fears? The catfish looks threatening but his eyes are closed, whether in nap or in meditation, it is hard to tell with the Shinto devout. The chameleon looks friendly and a little silly even. He seems to get along well with the catfish,his whiskers like tell-tail smoke of  last night's conversation. The frog is,well,dissected and looks accusingly at you. And all the other animals have too many legs to bother with this little person. Or with the students who come and go. The human skeleton is harmless, he's plaster cast and has no life. The foetus cannot fear drowning, there is nothing else he has known, before or after the jar. He cannot fear dark. He cannot afford to fear prying eyes and gaping mouths. But his head and his body is bent inward in the shyness of his translucent, revealing self.

Or he is self-absorbed in the act of learning all that he must know before he steps into the bright, loud, white and yellow scrambled egg din of  a life, before he paused in unripe confusion. To follow the simple command that ebbs from himself to grow into a unique self with amazing clarity and understanding of the human  design, with little regard to mis-form and mal-function. For that is for the people who look at him to question and mock. As if a mis-form of his body matters, as if the act of having created himself is a lesser wonder.

His arms,slender, breakable chopsticks,end in determined little fists. His fists and all the little crooks of his body that like all foetuses bend, to slowly sketch the lines on our palms, behind our knees, around our neck,encircling our toes for a period of nine months, that stay engraved for the rest of our lives. To sketch the lines that some say, spell our fate. The foetus knows what to sketch. Perhaps we are born wiser than we think, it is fascinating how quickly we lose our senses in the world. But this foetus is 5 months unborn, taut and no lines. I think that's what it is, not fear or shyness, but the weight of his wisdom that bends him into himself as if curling into a benzene ring.
From and of and back to the hydrocarbons that make our essential self, beneath all that we possess. From and of and back to, except the pickle solution that keeps him from going back. So he can be looked at with the questioning eyes that hover on his indifferent little self, unwilling to spill a single secret.

Thank you for keeping me company and keeping the secrets of all who sat by you in wonder of you to forget for five minutes how simple and complex life and school and what-after-school and such can be. I'll come by and visit soon, if that's ok with you. Just five minutes or so of your time and then you can proceed with your unending introspection and bemusement at all who come and go. 

The Pullover

images from The Pullover, a project that looks
at the varying levels of human empathy,
through the lens of self-induced abortions.

The Loss of Bearings

If you find the truth by the toe,

let it go.

You will not make sense of the world,

Even though you were taught of 

Its ups and its downs.

Of East and West at fingers' ends

And tainted horizons with no bends.

But they who made the wind vane

And the hour glass and the scales

Do it knowing that we are mammals upright

But were you not born of your mother headfirst?

Like she was of hers?

And would you have remained so

Had you not been turned around?

Had you not forgotten before you stood so tall,

Measuring the heavens,

That you were born upside down?

about time

Hello,
It's been a huge while since this blog came into being and had remained so, with
close to nothing on it. A few days back, it struck me how my blog,
rather the lack of it, puts me far behind the rest of the world. 


Not that that is a new thing, but there's far too much changing in the world everyday.


The little creatures on my desk are collecting dust.


There's more clutter and less space on my memory disk, my cupboard and my bookshelf
than I remember but I feel no better equipped to fight any aggressive predatory species -
physically, intellectually, instinctively, riddlewise or otherwise


The people I am grateful to know, love, hang out with and would give most things to
meet with do live and will in the near future live away from me.


The people who are most likely to live around me in the near future may need a place to know me
and the work I produce whether, in my personal life or in the work scene (the very mysterious,
totally intimidating, wonder-if-i'll-ever-earn-a-living, should I be grateful for anything with a desk and lunch tray,what-are-the-odds-of-ending-up-as-a-slimy-children's-librarian-in-a-stone-walled-library, the one with the elusive wage that lets me buy candy and presents for people, the never seen, work scene).


The tv networks I used to follow as a kid and myself are at war, thanks to their sudden love for utter dung.


The shape of my pillow is slowly morphing despite the erratic hours it sees the back/front/inside of my head.


The ratio of broken/ torn things with the hope to be fixed vs things given up on but occupying precious space vs new things with a disgraceful lifespan is tipping dangerously on both ends with a lazy sway in between.


I'm in my third year of design school already though the last time I checked I broke a methyl orange flask (the last one, meant for the entire class) in the Chemistry Lab in 11th grade. No, actually the last time I checked, I was 15 minutes late returning from the jungle gym because I was dodging alligators.


There are more and more books to be read and there's a new daily special everyday on the menu that I promise myself to order but give in to an old favourite.  There are new facts about the living world. There are new apps to pretend they heard them first. There are new one-liners to rebuke them.


There's always another glance that my favourite poems await.


There are alligators to conquer in playgrounds.


I'm growing up and refuse to see it.


There are all these reasons and many excuses that took a while to admit to myself,
but now that it's resurrected, I hope my blog makes the most of it and keeps me busy.
There's enough catching up to do with the world away from the desktop.
But if I ever need a diversion, I'll find this a space to linger in.

Do visit to see what I've been upto lately.