Walls

Garbed in the white cloak

She buries the living, the animated

Herself in silent, eerie graveyards.

She immolates herself every day

And sees a part of her rise upwards.

Amidst the smoke, she sits and laughs

With a dozen surrounding her,

And none see the creases, folds

And the little rips that show her skin.

She ladles out herself for a few,

She shows them where the cloth rips

She shows them the scars, the scaffolds

That in the newfound light seem big to her.

And startled by the brilliance, she cries

She speaks slewed sentences, sliding

Onto the floor, the cloth comes undone.

And stark naked, she lies, in the wait

That someone will pick her up.

He comes in, an armor in place, yet a shadow at most

Of the graveyards of the animated he frequents

And sees her lie naked, and he tries to help her up

Only to see the wounds entangle with his own metal self.

And yet in her distress, he enchanted, gradually slowly,

Undresses himself, in the pale ethereal moonlight

Until flesh to flesh, bone to bone, the robes lie forgotten

And they sing symphonies to the overlooking stars.

... And the blood gushed down his arm, while his hopes stood salivating, staring at him. He held his other hand steady and slowly bent to pick up the pieces strewn around him. His head throbbed, and his bloodshot eyes that knew no sleep, oozed out a different blood.

He looked at the pieces. He looked at his hands. His hands never had long, dainty fingers, they were ugly and stubby. The air whistled a quiet cruel laughter into his ears.

He couldn't afford to start, again.

...and next time she can't hear you on the phone, and "Hello?" is all she can come up with it, quietly whisper,

 "I'm here."

That one thing changed her somehow. 

She lived in two worlds now. A world that was tactile, real and her own world where drama came to life. She craved attention now. She forgot her old friends, but still clung on to them. She thought a lot, spoke little, when a lot was bubbling to come out. She could write, but it would all construe around the selfsame thing.

Everything was duality.
She knew how to stop. But she also, did not.

Behind Mohd. Jinnah Hospital

People never went there.

Eagles swooped from the West
Over Mohd. Jinnah's head
His face contorted, with the worries

Maybe of being called the Father of a Nation

That lay in tatters, with its spirit alive

Or just because of the odour of animal faeces

Of used syringes, of uneaten food,

Of dead hopes, of lost words.

Or maybe the clangour of the crows

Blackened, yet trying to peck their way

To survival amidst all the eagles and cows.
Or maybe it was his own children he could hear

Walking down the narrow alleyway behind

Noses covered, eyes scrunched in disgust

At the Government's inefficacy, or maybe just

Because the hospital blocked the light

And they couldn't read.

People never went there.

Yet one night, in the darkness, Rashid tiptoed, 

He gleamed in the moonlight, a Farishta

He bent and dropped a dark moving bag

And a trail of silver perspiration. Until

The next morning, or maybe the morning after that

The eagles and the crows had rejoiced 

Mohd. Jinnah's brows seemed more furrowed.

Women were free in his nation, and he saw how.

Queen

She left the hospital
On Monday morning
For the highest bungalow
That stood on the corner
Of Mother Teresa Street.
She left behind little things
She didn't need anymore.
Her hair clips, her green gown
The books she read
Her little prop-up table
That she ate her meals on
The flimsy ring her man
Did not think before giving
For purple was not her colour.
And the little bloodied bag
In the trash, that was found
By a ragged hag the next day
To be moving, and possessing
A vagina.

Threshold of Pain

"You write of pain", she said
One fine sunny day
"But you never write of love."
But isn't love the most mundane,
The most basic of all names
Attributed to a feeling
For is not love nothing
But all the other feelings together?
"No", she vehemently denied.
"Love, for one, increases
the threshold of pain."
I looked over my little diary
And into her the depths of her eyes
And she smiled, almost dared me.
I contemplated, slowly opened my mouth
"Aha!", she said, "My point exactly."
"You have never been this patient."
I closed my mouth, opened it again,
'fore her lilylike face, she however proceeded.

"Do you remember the day we first made love
And I bit onto your earlobe to keep from screaming
And you bled from your ear as much as I did that night
And yet you know how you felt.
Do you remember that one rainy night
When you drank the drops from my skin
And Mother called saying Nanna had died,
Yet you didn't know till next morning?
Do you remember that summer afternoon
With the curtains drawn, I saw Conjuring with you
And your favourite Zidane jersey never dried?
Do you remember that night when your uncle..
When you did not talk, well your eyes did
And you slept with my hair in your wet eyes
And your head on my sunshine yellow skirt
That you always said looked like an omelette?"

And today, as I sit at my desk, with a dry pen
Barely scratching the pad, tearing pages meanwhile
Are you still waiting for me to write of love?
And when the unforgivable sheet of rain knocks
On your window pane as much as mine
Do you still reprimand me for not liking rains?
And lastly though, if you ever chance on reading this,
Do you think this is of love, or is it just me
Increasing my threshold of pain?

Must We

Must we
Embark on this sojourn
And see the northern lights
When we know the darkness
Will catch up to us.

Must we
Believe in the bubble
That casts rainbows and call it love
When we know nevertheless
That it is hollow within.

Must we
Be two placid orbs
Rambling in the skies
When we know existence
Simultaneous, is mere finite.

Sensibility

Quietude is broken by
The whir of the note counting machine.
In the dim, a deep measured voice
Slowly recites Frost in my ears.
And yet, I do not turn.

I am not reminded of the boisterous
Kolkata streets with the humid weather
The big mosquitoes, and the little alleyways
That only the cartman could navigate.
I am not reminded of the mighty Victorian skyline,
or the tiny drops that look as wonderful on your skin
As absent from your eyes, and as present on
The little blades of grass all around.

All I'm left with is an insipid nostalgia
Of times better spent, imagining your hands
Trace a yellowed paper and bring it to light.

For now though
I don't like your poetry.

The Church of Tomorrow

Meet me someday
In the Church- of Tomorrow
I'll be sitting in the front row
Holding flowers, in a three-piece
With a bow tie you like so much.

And we shall that day
Swat Death as his impending hum
Echoes around the large dome
While you will point to your watch
And tell me that you are busy.

And I will, even that day
Look into your eyes and remember
The charcoal sketch I drew
With you in my mind, never having
For even one second to erase
Or re-draw the contours.

But I will cough, and you
In your pant-suit will motion to me
That your Limo is waiting and
That paupers can never turn kings.
And I will slowly rub the sweat off
My palms, on my corduroys.

And I'll slowly look down
To my bow-tie, when a gruff voice
Would announce your name
And you'd run into his arms, leave me
Staring into the nothingness.
And Jesus- with his pain-stricken face
Will look down, as I would be
He without a bow-tie.
Me with one.

Tempest

The rain falls in unforgiving sheets
And the wind in its drunken stupor
Stumbles onto my window pane,
Takes a step back, only to fall again.
And I sit, wonder to myself

In the relentless darkness
That when I traced circles with
My fingers on your smooth forehead
Did that start the sandy storm
That rages in your mind.

Ritter, Tod und Teufel

He glimpsed at the clock from his newspaper,
As she walked in with a smile splashed across her face.
He went to the balcony, lit up a cigarette and,
Looked far into the lights, until she meekly called,
"Dinner is ready", she whispered, with a soft touch
Sending fire inside him, the tip of his fourth glowed
In the darkness of the night, he replied hoarsely
"I'll be right there."

In the night, when she had curled into a ball,
He slowly dragged his unkempt frame to the mirror,
Stealing glances through sips of Jack Daniel,
Sometimes touching the bags under his eyes,
The stray hair on the face and chest, and his little potluck
Hard-earned through life, as the dent on his chair testified.
A little voice, groggy with sleep called out, he flinched,
And in the darkness of the night, he replied hoarsely,
"I'll be right there."

He slowly shaved and showered, the next morning,
He slowly dragged his clothes and placed them on his frame,
He took a few swigs of his coffee, and then drained the rest,
He heated some of the food from dinner, packed his own lunch,
Left the stove on, turned the lock slowly, and said hello to Rita
The motor roared, and he slowly disappeared, a black spot
In the distant horizon of whiteness.

He came back that night to see his abode on hell like flames,
The police found a scorched body in the bedroom, Rita tells her,
He cries, testifies to the police and slowly drives away into the night.
In the darkness of the night, he replies hoarsely,
"I'll be right there."

Darkness and Blackness

Lately the fine red branches have
Slowly crept up, little by little
Reaching for the dark brown orb
Arm raised, hoping for better springs
Of mellow fruition when it would not
Rain so much, and nor would the twigs
Choke in the artificial grey smoke.
But the clinic heart is not breaking
So healing stays long aloof.

And her eyes sink beneath clouds
Of blackness, thinking of days
When the sky would rumble with noise
And her world would fill with darkness again.
Drifting away she'd find a friend, to reaffirm
Darkness and blackness are not the same.
Darkness is the absence of light
Blackness when light ceases to survive.

The Best Juice Wallah in Town

He rose, filled with juice,

As the first rays of sun threw needles

Into his eyes through the holey tarpaulin.

He took a bath while the

Other men squabbled with their wives.

He loaded his cart with the

Oranges and Yellows and Greens

And his beloved Usha,

While other loaded up their carts with

Lakshmis, Radhas and Poojas to sell.

He half ran, half glided across the road

To his spot of twenty years, outside the hospital

And waited, sign ready and in place

Bombay Juice Wallah:
The Best Juice Wallah in Town.

He put in the globs

of mellowed sunlight

And thrust with all his might

One hand moving the wheel, 

Grinding, extracting juice out.

He'd pull out the ugly carcass

Fibrous, tired juiceless mass

Devoid of any use

Falling wrinkled onto the

Flat plastic underneath.

He'd serve the juice with 

Right spices in the right amounts

He'd take his time, let the spice mix

Before he'd serve it with 

His own zest and fervour.

Evenings, he'd stumble back

Into the tarpaulin, having had

A juice quite unlike the one he served

Listen to his daughter sleep beside

Her ragged doll and her little two times table book.

He would kick his wife awake

And smell the municipal water on her breath.

He'd make juice like in the day

And roll back to sleep

Leaving her to cry in silence

For the tarpaulin was thin and

People would talk and in the moonlight

And the eerie shadows of the tarpaulin

She'd see he wasn't a good man. 

The day when "Call Me Maybe", "Raining Men" and "Irreplaceable" become acceptable songs, we know Indian society has definitely come a far way.