EQUIVOCATION

Strange is the heart; it keeps stock of infidelities

With utmost care, and the breaking of promises

So many of my lovers have been undeserving

And yet, to feel tenderness, affection, almost

Strange is the heart

MUDDLED

Some cold, drowsy mornings
Awaken a sense of loss
Misplacing something vital, but
Je ne sais quoi

Absent-minded mornings
Blurring light and sleep
When I cannot recall if
I dreamt of you last night

LOVE IN THE TIME OF WAR

Your glacial eyes tore my heart apart
Before shifting their gaze
Away, forever

O how do I grieve the loss of love,
While my people, my land
Are raped by the King's men? 

SHUTTERS

I miss window shutters:
Sunlight split through louvres
Of tapered edges
And bevelled ends
Framed in the warmth
Of wood that bears
Cuneiform scriptures
On brittle palimpsest
Of myriad paint-jobs,
Which had vainly attempted
To cover the crow's feet
And whirling laugh lines
Of droll, old trees.

These factory-produced,
light, and cold
aluminium sections,
Forever shuffle
a feet and a half
each way, each day.
They lack the animation
Of rusty iron hinges
Opening wide embraces
In perfectly pivoted,
graceful arcs
To left, to right.
Perhaps their banality
Is a fitting companion
To the naked view
Of the unfettered glazing.

Think, instead,
Of nine square nine inches
In ground glass, panelled,
At the upper reaches
Of the louvered shutters
Beyond the inquisitive eyes.
Nestled in between
Would be a  slender tower bolt,
The curve of its knob
Felt in daily caresses
As distant and acute as your memories.

A POINTLESS LAMENT FOR CHILDREN ABANDONED

It is well past four,
Ante meridiem,
And Insomnus, old friend,
You visit after long.

On this wet wet night
Ringing with rain,
Chorus of crickets,
And distant rolls of thunder,
My ears miss your soft soft heaving,
My boy, and the twitching
In your dreams,
And the warmth
Of your coat.

Somewhere by the night
In a cove or cornice
Two sisters keep watch...
Or huddle half wet,
While my girl walks the night,
While my girl prowls the night,
And two spots wait,
And two spots yawn.

It is well past four,
And a wet wet night
For even the worst
Of fathers
Have known the best
Of love.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID DYSTOPIAS

I write the symbols
Trying to smell them
In memory: that mistress
Of deception, who resides in
And spawns my being
I rummage the smells
In metaphors and processes
The air I breathe
Cat pee, and gardenias
I walk down the corridor
Past room after room
Camphor, sandal, soap
Inscribe the otherness of
Dog-coat, musk, mouldy fish
Transposed in dream
Salty loveless touch
Of bare skin to skin
The unpleasant odour
Of post-coital sweat
Coffee, stale, and rain
Smouldering tobacco
Cat scratches and pustules
With the sticky smell of blood
I write the symbols
For the mistress to note
And reflect in nostalgia
At some future dystopia
On the thousand splendid ones
One has lived through, before.

RDD

Unannounced, like a winter shower,
You come to my arbour
The skies are grey,
The birdsongs lost
How long shall this affair
Last, this time around?

AUTUMN-WINTER 2013

There are days
When I could be a bird,
And days of being
A leaf.
Autumn rolls on to winter;
A pillow sleeps in my embrace.

ONE OF THOSE DAYS (OR WEEKS)

Sometimes I need help,
Or chocolate cakes, and lemon tarts
I lift a pen; I draw a line,
And pretend to be all fine
Only to turn in bed,
Dreaming flights, falls, and things that smart

DUALITY

*
I moved away,
Started a new life,
But did I move on?
The past still seems real,
The present, just a dream.

*
I seldom think of you now.
My children sleep.
Pinpricks of rain
Dust my skin in
Slate-grey mornings.
Birds chirp; fans whirr;
Days roll along.
Love resides quietly, hidden.

DEATH OF A GRANDCHILD

Sitting on the bed

Mercury-lit road-bits

To the right

Whislingpiercingshooting trains

To the left.

Why should one live?

The eventful life

Of forefather, to the left

Ennui and worthless future

To the right.

Why must one live?

Slowdown,

Breath,

Sleep

Forever.

The hurt shall subside

Someday.

When you get over the death

Of a grandchild.

LET IT RAIN

It is 4:50 in the morning; I couldn't sleep.

An insomniac night flows on,

With me sitting up in front of the laptop,

And hearing the tireless drops of rain

I wonder if you got my sms;

I wonder what you are up to.

I wonder what life has in store

For the countless people who are up tonight,

Sitting in front of their laptops,

Not knowing for sure

Why they cannot sleep

Tomorrow shall be another dawn, another day.

Tomorrow shall see another night.

But it is never the same...

The waters of the river flow by.

This I of tonight will never again miss

The you of tonight

The way I do now.

A night car grumbles,

Halts,

And leaves a vanishing trail,

As it heads off to I-know-not-where.

People are travelling tonight.

People are laughing,

Drinking,

Studying,

Crying,

Making love and dying

Tonight

My longing is just one of the things

Just one person, on this whole wide world, is feeling.

Insignificance

And the insignificant longing curls up my fingers,

And tries to traverse the significant distance between us,

In an attempt to touch your dreams

And your lashes harbouring those dreams,

And surreptitiously return to this wet wet world

Of late night rain and shivering black leaves

That can be heard, but not seen, and

Insomniac solitude

It shall have to return

Before the new dawn of tomorrow,

The new day of tomorrow.

May be it shall wake up again

On another night tomorrow,

But it is never the same.

I grieve the loss of these moments,

That shall never return –

The loss of the longings,

That shall die with dawn,

Never to be fulfilled.

Allow me to grieve them before I raise a toast

To new longings of newer nights

Let it rain.

FEVER, MONSOON

I miss your arms

Twining around me

In a cool, comforting embrace,

A thumb grazing my collar bone,

Your knee snuggled behind mine

And how you would suddenly ask

A random prosaic question,

Heightening the habit of domesticity

The evening is accosted

By apparitions of loving limbs

Mingled with the smell

Of damp laundry

Nine thirty-seven,

Pee em.

That odd part of a day,

When it is too late to socialize,

But too early to be intimate.

Anyhow, I could afford neither.

Penny and Julio busy themselves in catfights.

Tooth-paste.

Night-clothes.

Para-ceta-mol…

A million milestones to go before I sleep

A million miles to go before I sleep.

REPRISTINATION

As another morning

Tiptoes through darkness

Serenely sighing, and

Stretching sleepy limbs

To birdsong,

Love sheds all resentments,

Coiling content beneath

A pool of cool comfort,

Rippled with sleep and

Delirium.

And how many regrets would

You twine round your ankles?

The best measure of life is

Found in its moments

Of madness.

HAIR

Twirling, black, wet

Decapitated vanity

Scattered on the floor

Did you look away, as we made love that night?

Did we make love that night?

Did we ever make love?

Because I hungered for that

Which I never deserved,

Because I hunger for that

Which I cannot have,

Each night, a zombie with haunted hair

Traverses a mobius strip of nostalgia

Someday I’ll kill the beast

And bathe these tresses in its blood

Twirling, red, wet

JULIO

No poem was good enough for Julio, so here is a love story. It lasted not more than a week, but what seems like a lifetime. That is the magic of love, I suppose: it allows you to live several lifetimes in one.

It was a severely cold January when I met him first: the third day of the new year. A handful of students, who had stayed back on campus during the vacation, flocked at the market, probably trying to hold on to the elusive festive spirit the way I was. The queue at the golgappa stall meant I had to wait. There he was, sitting still like a stone, not trying to avoid but ignore the trampling of the crowd engrossed with their savoury delights: a wet, cold and terrified ball of fur.

Why doesn’t anyone bother to move him away from there? I realized I could just as well be that anyone. Picking him up was no trouble, but putting him down proved to be a challenge; he would meow his way back into my arms, and soon enough, into my heart. There was no way the authorities would allow scholars to keep pets at the hostel, but it took me not more than ten minutes to decide on gifting the poor dear a home. How strange is it for someone who never identified as a cat-person for thirty-two years? I suppose it does not matter, for I did no adopt a sick, shivering, frightened little kitten that day; he adopted me.

What does one name a white-and-brown kitten, with whiskers only on his right side? ‘PoMo’ was an instant hit with my friends and associates (yes, you are allowed to snigger at the myopic vision of the architecture academia), while ‘Baburam’ came to me naturally. For a while, I also contemplated on names with an initial R, thinking of christening my new-found love in memory of the love lost. In the end, I decided it was all unfit, as it had to be about him and not about me. Julio, a sad pun on hulo,was an epiphany, possibly somewhat catalyzed by Paul Simon’s music.

***

Two days after we met, returning from my morning class, I found myself in my room with no trace of Julio; not even a suspended Cheshire smile. The only way out of the locked room could have been my second floor balcony, but all I could see form there was a completely different cat sun-bathing on an assortment of rubbish piled below. I do not remember what it felt like (or I am too embarrassed to admit it), but I reached out for a pack ominously imprinted with ‘smoking kills’, and in spite of having no hope, slowly trudged down the stairs to inspect the site of the possible accident. The gentleman was sitting there all huddled up and frightened just the way I had found him not too long back; thanks to his patchy coat, I had been unable to make out his divine presence from the upper floor. How is it that I felt lighter on my way back, even though I was carrying him then?

Julio seemed to have learnt his lesson: after that day, he didn’t venture too far off the room unless I was in visible proximity. I started to leave the doors ajar, and even if he bolted out with his natural sense of responsibility to enquire the cause of strange sounds and smells, I knew it would not take him farther than the stair-landing, and he would scamper back the moment I went up to him and walked him back to the room.

I collected several pieces of common knowledge: tom-cats do not make the best of pets, and do not recognize anything beyond momentary self-interest. I kept preparing myself for the day he was old enough to run away and fend for himself, and regularly mentioned the immediate possibility of such an occurrence in my casual conversations with friends, possibly trying to convince myself I was comfortable with the idea. However, I wished for it to be a distant reality, and, may be subconsciously, hoped for it to never happen.

***

A kitten made a father out of a silly love-lorn bachelor, and almost mended his erratic, whimsical lifestyle. There is no way you can stay up all night, aimlessly surfing the internet, if your bundle of joy creeps up on your lap, and demands to be caressed to sleep. A few times I had tried quietly lifting him off my chest, and putting him down on the blanket, thinking he was fast asleep, but he would just open those drowsy eyes, and without much ado, crawl back onto me. He made me choose between an exciting flux of virtual socializing and a singular but living, breathing, meowing love; reality won.

Gone with the nights of insomnia, were the days of waking up at noon and lunch for breakfast. He would be up early, but strangely, never made me get up until I was ready to; though, with my first foot down on the floor, his reprimanding ensued. I could never be quick enough to stir up his platter of morning milk without feeling guilty of making him wait for it too long… far too long; Julio sure knew how to sound plaintive. His thirst quenched, he would make an amusing display of the proverbial feline curiosity: running after bits of paper, fallen leaves and bugs, pulling at shoe-strings, pajama draw-strings and belt straps, hunting slippers and shampoo bottles, inspecting laptop keyboards, and exploring the dark worlds hidden behind doors, suitcases and cupboard shutters. It did not go on for long though, for my kitten was even more capricious than me. My attempts at starting the day’s work had to be punctuated to personally entertain him with kill-the-ball combat trainings, come-bite-my-finger drills, and okay-I-shall-brush-you-to-make-you-purr routines.

All of a sudden, I was left with no time to even consider how laid-back and easy-going my life was a week ago. I had to keep running to and from the shops, buying pail, jar, fish and milk to arrange for his meals, bucket, mops and disinfectants to clean his shit, a ball to keep him entertained, a pair of slippers to replace the ones he had ripped apart, and of course the injections I had to take because he had scratched, and made me bleed. Add to that the hurried bicycle rides back to the hostel room, flung between classes and café-symposiums, to replenish his pail, clean up after him, and check if he is lonely. Surprisingly, now that I had to be busy for him, I suddenly found all the time I needed to complete the work I had piled up over months, thanks to my erstwhile, incurable procrastination. Winter too was kind; the chill gave way to days of sunshine and I was full of energy. A friend rightly remarked: was I a blessing for him, or was he one for me? Life works in strange ways; one of the strangest of them is love.

My friends also supplied a continuous string of complaints: I was smothering him, bothering him, restraining his freedom, and making him incapable of fending for himself. Sometimes I wondered if I had done worse with my lost love, and backed away, but never for more than a few hours. Julio accepted my continual attentions with only occasional and feeble objections. He would meow now and then when I cycled with him haltered in a scarf, and protest by pushing off my hands when I cleaned his ears with cotton-buds or pick out fleas. Other than the bathing, which happened just once, there was nothing that he wouldn’t agree to, once I managed to catch him by the collar.

***

It had been an exhausting day at the university, and gulping down my black coffee I rushed back home to see my feline son. Taking him up in my arms gave me the usual sense of eternal bliss. Julio had had an extra pail of milk with his fish lunch, but I decided to give him another extra pre-dinner serving; he did seem hungry. Leaving behind half of the warm milk, Julio suddenly bolted out of the door. I went after him after a while, and was alarmed to see him not on the corridor anymore. But a flight of steps down, he was loitering around: I would like to believe, waiting for me to join him. Each time I went to collect him, he went down another flight. Finally, I quit following him and just let him go on. I was simultaneously annoyed at his new-found audacity, expecting and hoping he would return looking for me any minute, scared of being all alone and away from his father, reasoning and defending his action against my own emotions (after all, my room was too small to keep him entertained), questioning the adequacy of his diet, and disoriented by the idea of spending the night alone, with Julio somewhere out there being preyed on by the many tom-cat thugs.

I went out for a cup of coffee and promised myself I shall not look for him… after all he is sure to come back at night looking for the warm milk, the warm blanket, and the warmth of my caress. A pragmatic and rather mean alter ego reminded me that it was equally likely that I may never see him.  On my way back, convincing myself I am not looking for him, I went down to the courtyard while trying to figure out an alternative reason for going there. Julio was amongst the other cats, and did not run away when I caught him by the collar; I was relieved to take him up in my arms.

As I walked back up the stairs, I realized he didn’t really like it. Even if I was doing what I thought was best for him, who was I to decide that anyway? Wasn’t I just being selfish in love? As he struggled to get off, I gently put him down on the steps and watched him run away, without a valedictory meow.

At night I went around looking for him one last time, but all the cats of the world seemed to have gone to their hidden world. I console myself: Julio must have found his place amongst his kind. Winter has suddenly decided to come back with all severity, and I just hope he finds a warm spot for himself.

***

I expect to spot him sometime amongst the other cats down at the courtyard, surreptitiously waiting below the concrete benches, and running after morsels of food carelessly dropped by the university scholars. At night, I keep my door unbolted and a platter of warm milk ready.

In the end, like all love, it is about learning to let go.

PLUNGE SINK DROWN

Singed breath and twitching limbs in

Liquid sleep gushing onto ‘morrow

With blended dreams of rage and longing

A cloudy morn in its ebb

A tortured night in its tide

What would it take to get over that smile?

STRANGE

Why conduct a cacophony
Of my unrequited longing?
O! Not all love need be declared
Some sorrows may suffer smiling
And so I'm strange, as a stranger
Should be. Strange, thy name is me.

Sometimes I think: do you think of me sometimes?

INSOMNIA 4

A metronomic ceiling fan measures my hearbeats: a deja vu of separation.

I remember your brow against my breast; do you remember my stifled sobs from the next bedroom?

Now the night alone thinks of me tenderly.