placesotherthanthis

A ballad to democracy

2012-01-30T00:52:00.000-08:00

1.
Democracy is its people who sleep for eight and a half hours a day

2.
Democracy is a scab
In the first place it ought not to be there
Then when you scratch it, it gains in stature
The more you itch, greater the satisfaction

3.
Does democracy vote? Ever?

4.
Does democracy stand in a line when it decides to vote?

5.
Democracy is determined by the collection of rare pens
With special nibs
Creating grandiloquent speeches
Its followers memorise and publish

6.
Democracy is a joke we are solemn about

7.
Last time one of us dialled democracy - all the lines on that route were muffled

8.
Democracy's claim to fame
It hasn't missed a single debate in Parliament

9.
Democracy is a noun

10.
Democracy is a clause

11.
Democracy is an irregular sort of verb

12.
Democracy is demoncracy - the fear of monstrosities

13.
Democracy broods
When asked why
It says I dread the day someone will read the Constitution

14.
Democracy is democrazy

15.
Democracy is more demo than demos

16.
Democracy is the voice of the people that speaks 2,176 dialects

17.
Democracy is fragmented

18.
Democracy is absolute

19.
Democracy is public

20.
Democracy is personal

21.
Democracy is next to godliness

22.
Democracy a day keeps election expenses away

23.
Democracy: A fool's paradise?

24.
Democracy: All's well that ends well?

25.
If it isn't monarchy and it isn't fascist there's a good chance it's democracy.

PS: Now tell me, is your democracy better or mine?

25 ragas of sorts

2012-01-29T18:13:00.000-08:00

1.
What will fade first?
The ferns I forget to water?
Or my memory of Bengali?

2.
B told his son
Every fifth brick in that house is laid by me

3.
A test for true music is to stand on your head and listen

4.
He was my best friend because he owned an owl, a Bullet motor-bike and back issues of Playboy

5.
The angry young man told the rich man
Time has been synchronised by the Swiss
It's 12 o'clock no matter who you're

(Please nb: they didn't use the line in the blockbuster film)

6.
The bandicoot, crushed on the zebra crossing, has become two-dimensional

7.
Every time we pass the kebabs and paya stalls
The BEST bus belches and burps
It's a sign of hunger

8.
I stare at a Hebbar
It declines to look at me

9.
Do pigeons shit in the darkness

10.
The Chief Minister smiles at his people, everywhere in the state
Except the lady's cloakroom

11.
He bathes with beer
If he had the money
Says he would have preferred scotch

12.
His feet are in a trance
Every evening, the camel trots faster than usual when he approaches home on seeing his beloved partner
Is it love?
No
It's the fear that the foodstock will be consumed

13.
The cloud resembled Gandhiji's head
All the other clouds stay far away from it

14.
The grass has over-grown, he says
As he has been repeatedly saying everyday

15.
So many donkeys in the bazaar
All braying in togetherness
It's a sign of the times

16.
The tea tastes better whenever the sun enters the glass

17.
A young boy reads the political poster along with me
Until a friend came along and told the boy to stop pretending he can read

18.
The rice mill shall be no more
Where will the rice go

19.
Whose life do I know better?
Proudhon? Ramprasad Bismil? Or mine?

20.
The bust of Narmadh in the town-centre has been displaced
Like his poems never shall be replaced

21.
The two ladies on the jhoola count the dust particles on the sole of each other's feet
That's one way to pass time

22.
A cat on a pile of books about philosophy somehow looks sexier

23.
In Tollygunje he learnt three things
Naxalism, Ray's cinema and that he looked prettier in a frock

24.
The official guide narrates an entertaining history of Hampi
Till he loses his job for indiscriminate lying

25.
The town was renowned for
Dhrupad, doctors, donkeys, dust
And despair

Four shorts of sorts

2011-10-16T06:21:00.002-07:00

1.
The balladeer hummed
Incomplete songs
Hoping
That someone in the audience
Would remember the forgotten words
That he was trying to recall
Desperately

2.
They built pillars
Solid and formidable
With the best of material
Superbly engineered
Four on either side of the railway tracks

Someone forgot to build the bridge

3.
The egg seller
Balanced 56 symmetrical eggs
On a single plate
Audaciously cycling through crowded bylanes
In order to ensure the eggs reached their destination
Every day

For four decades or so

4.
The debauched man
Was cursed by god
A lightening struck him on the head
Man said, ouch
And told god
Its not my fault
You made me imperfect

Why we require agarbattis in an agarbatti stand

2011-09-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

Before sun-rise
He bathed
Prayed to Goddess Laxmi
Offering agarbatti fragrance

Everyday
A new brand
Rose, jasmine, sandalwood, mogra, champa, tarangini

While G.L. swallowed superior-grade smoke
He repeated his daily money mantra:
Devi-ji
Maate-ji
May the people of this land remain stupid, eternally hereafter
So that people like me can gleefully fleece them and triple my bottom-line

The logic of the honky-tonk man

2011-09-25T07:06:00.000-07:00

What's more important
Asked the honky-tonk man
Eating yesterday's left-over

Love?
A day job?
Just a song on the radio?

My friend's uncanny knack

2011-09-24T00:49:00.001-07:00

Uncanny knack
My friend has

With his travels to Equitorial Guinea
To Belarus
To Uzbekistan
To Kazaksthan
To Iran

Last week,
He did deals in
Ethiopia and Rwanda

Don't you travel to happy lands?
His daughter asks him

He sips his single malt
Issues an opprobrium of sorts

Thick skinned countries
With thick skinned leaders
Create thick skinned citizenry
Who don't require high and mighty lectures and ideals

They require money
Which we pour
They require largesse of guilt
Which we leverage

Saying so my friend planned his next trip
To Eritrea

At route number 524

2011-09-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

At route number 524
Waiting for the bus
He took leg stump guard

When no one was looking
The septuagenarian
Twirled his working folding umbrella
Tapped the ground thrice
Bent his knees
Leaned forward at a right angle
Unleashing the most perfect drive through cover

Something Rahul Dravid would have been proud of

A Callery pear

2011-09-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

This is my story

My parents
Who were they?
I hope they loved me

My latest birthday
I became more deciduous than I was ever meant to be
Brylcreem for my foliage, green
Bespoke tailoring for my branches, weak

I want to tell the story of my life
It is the only I know to tell

This fall,
My leaf turned shiny dark red to scarlet
I realise the grotesquery of my flowers, white
I pick up conversations from the bees
About sweet shops and bakeries
About grated Grana Padano and the aroma of fresh dill

Granite slabs for tombstones
Oak trees for company
But I can't dialogue with a 30-feet statue of Plato
Or the Tanagra figurines at my feet

I'm a marvel
In front of me
Silhouetted bodies pay a ticket
To mourn
They egregiously kiss
The tip of my fruit, inedible

If I could talk
I would tell you my fate
Today I plan to self-immolate

Quite elementary

2011-09-08T07:05:00.002-07:00

Quite elementary

He was told

When he was born

Please pray in Sanskrit

Communicate with your grand-parents in our mother-tongue

Four lectures per week in school in the state language

Attend office in English

Government-speak in Hindi

Order wine in French

Give gaalies in all of the above

And never-ever lapse into silence

Let's talk poetry

2011-08-31T06:43:00.001-07:00

1.
Two fonts stared
At each other
Across enemy lines

Till one said to the other: Let's talk poetry

2.
Long long ago
I covered
P V Narsimha Rao's 7 am election rally
In his constituency in Behrampur

Woke up with a jolt
Having over-slept as always

The sun had risen
I rushed to the broken window with tooth powder on my forefinger
Realised my mistake

It was bright light from a lamp-post
The street was illuminated
Behind the plastic curtain

You see
The local administration
Had switched on the power supply for the PM's rally

3.
Every evening
The old man knotted fresh champa flowers
In her hair
She placed her hands on his shoulder
Walking into the night

I could have burst into tears

4.
I mustered courage
Invited her home
For the first time

She stood above my bed
In her white cotton saree and said:
What's all this

I replied:
My thermos flask with hot water
Crocin strip
An old train ticket from Sindhri to here
Hair brush, nail cutter, transistor
A book of poems by Nagarjuna with two pencils in it
And lots of dust

That's when she undressed
Folded her saree
Placed it on yesterday's newspaper
Picked up the broom

Restlessly
I watched her
Clean my room
For hours and hours
Till all was spic and span

Then she left
Without a word

5.
She
Couldn't sleep
It was a terrible day
She stepped out for a glass of water

And saw
A cockroach crawling all over the elephant god's trunk
Instead of screaming
She went to sleep saying: what am I?
These days, even the gods are helpless

When it rains

2011-08-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

When it rains
I wrap myself in a grey plastic tarpaulin
A yellowish carton to cover my head

And cycle
Through tiny puddles

Instead
Of counting rain drops
Behind a dirty window pane

Of saints, falsehoods and other things

2011-08-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

1.
Today morning
The sun refused to rise
She tried to bribe it
With a simple prayer

Last heard
The sun's rays were sentenced to six years of RI
As per the new law

2.
So
Jyotiba asked Babasaheb
How does it feel?
This new Marathi Mahatma
Who pooh poohs the preamble of the Constitution
And doesn't know our names
Yours or mine

Babasaheb
Scribbled with a stick
Near the water-tank in Mahad
Mahatmas come, Mahatmas go

The show must go on

3.
A new epoch has set in
A nice new revolution was made
All expenses paid

10% service tax

4.
The laughter of the world
Is a constant quantity
For each one of us who laughs
Someone somewhere else ceases to do so

This is inversely true of a farce

5.
The annihilation of corruption
Scripted by Bollywood
Drama, action, naach-gaana, nautanki

That's why Ramlila Maidan and not Dalal Street
That's why Parliament House and not temple trusts
That's why meditation and not Manusmriti
That's why like-minded people disagreeing with like-minded people

Since
History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict
Victory is always with economics

6.
Periyar says
The struggle of the saints do not have any effect on society
When a man is earning Rs 10 per day
His self worth does not originate from Bhakti
Or public fasting on a public stage

Saints fast
That's their trade

But fasting has an unhealthy effect
It provides the saints with an excuse to silence the rest of us
With their Smriti-religon

Till they break their fast with coconut water
And imported honey

7.
Tiny ants
Working hard
Continued to slave

In ant language they wondered:
What is the per capita bribe ratio in the ant world?

8.
Equality for all

If the worker and his boss sip the same wine
Attend the same weddings and circuses
If the lady who collects the garbage is as fashionably made up as the daughter of the house
If a Dalit owns a jet-plane
So that the assimilation is complete

Alternatively
Everyone dehydrates
And lives happily malnourished ever after

9.
Crow 1
Who was perched on the branch
Of the Ficus Religios
In Bodh Gaya
Woke up

He wondered what the fuss is all about

Crow 2 said: Caw Caw

Roughly translated, it meant: It's something called democracy
Nothing has changed
The human race like Prince Gautama Sidhartha
Still seeks enlightenment

Saying so,
Crow 1 and Crow 2
Went back to sleep

The only Anna I believe in is Anna Durai

2011-08-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

1.
The only Anna I believe in is Anna Durai.

2.
The corruption of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of mere mortals.

3.
Mulla Nasruddin says:
It's a matter of time
The day has come, yet again
When I will turn and churn in my grave, yet again

Why, you ask?

Oh
For there are fools bigger than I
Says Nasruddin

And
This planet of ours
Has a special knack of celebrating a new fool, every now and then

Just
One turn more
To complete a billion and one fools

4.
Reality is notional, and mostly unlikely. That's why it cannot be tabled in Parliament.

5.
What Mahadevbhai taught me: To die for a Gandhian cause is easier than to live it absolutely.

6.
That's why my idea of Paradise is kind of Dravidian.

7.
I have a simple solution. Eliminate black from the CMYK printing-ink formulation. That's one way to prevent the production of black money.

8.
I prefer my neighbourhood whore to tax evasion. The former fucks me (Rather reluctantly, too sluggish, she says); and the latter screws we the people

9.
My paan-wallah explains:
Politics is not a cliche

When you head a political movement
It's like trying to make a paan for the first time
It requires trial and error, experimentation, practise
Reasoning, seasoning
It is hard work

You can't medidate for 57 minutes
Open your third eye and say: QED.
Now, brothers and sisters
I present to you the perfect paan

10.
Anna Durai
Studied files
For weeks
He wanted to set up an aluminium factory in Salem
An iron and thermal unit in Vridachalam
Atomic station in Panruti
Create an export zone from Pathamadai

When
Anna Durai looked up
He was told to resolve the matter of a party worker
(Who had walked 200 miles)
And prevent a messy divorce

He did so
Draped a hand-made shawl around the husband-wife

Next day he faced a no confidence motion in the assembly

This is in the nature of things

11.
An afterthought

Arun, Sudhir, Vernon are rotting in prison for endangering our nation
Their opinions ephemeral
Their words a threat to national security

Then what explains this incertitude

So readily
We accept a man
For trying to overthrow a democratically elected government
In the hope of installing a Gandhian dictator

Is this a precursor of things to come
Where our right to refute shall be ratified
By a joker

Why drinking is injurious to health

2011-08-21T02:06:00.000-07:00

His wife told me
This tragic story

Her husband drank and drank
From his collection of booze bottles
Sourced from hooch factories in Umergaon

One night
She woke up and saw
Her husband aflame

The booze he was drinking
Had combusted
And caught fire
Inside his body

Ten Tech Thoughts

2011-08-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

1.
How I wish
I could Photoshop
All my meals

2.
What do we do
What do we ever do
Musically asks
My collection of vinyls
To all my spools

3.
How would I know
Oban is a typeface
In the spirit of the woodcut

I thought you were ordering
Two bottles of Jamaican rum

4.
It would be terrific
If newspapers front-paged
The murder of a great idea

That's one way
People like me
Would not stumble from one obsolete skill to another

5.
Lily or Franklin Gothic
The better font
For a political slogan in Azad Maidan

6.
One day I hope to grow old
And manage to read
Most of the books in my bookshelf

7.
One day
I hope to celebrate
My own death anniversary

8.
Matrimonial ad:
Looking for a male
One browser, one size, one code
Preferably with live sex apps

9.
Apple
Has launched a new gadget
It's called reading

10.
One day I'll need GPS
To help me understand
Where I am going in my life

Reflections about a vexillographer and other things

2011-08-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

1.
He
Spent so much time
Admiring the outstanding label
On the bottle inside an ice bucket
That he forgot to drink the wine

2.
The Mahatma said
Healthy dissent is a prelude to progress
Why then is progress not a prologue to dissent?

3.
We're the largest producer of licit opium
And milk
And babies

Some connection there
I'm trying to find

4.
When I opened
My copy of James Joyce's Ulysses
Molly Bloom started dancing
She started speaking like a ZooZoo

That's how I realised I'm watching too much TV

5.
A bemused commoner (that's me)
Is peering through a telescope
He is a peeping tom of sorts

He scrutinises the lives of others
Sodomy, sordidness, adultery

He starts to describe
In detail
The mating of two lovers

Members of the state police appear
To arrest him on grounds of obscenity

The bemused commoner (that's me) protests

He was describing an innocent affair
Between a blue chested kingfisher and a golden breasted kingfisher
On a neem tree

The state police say that's against the law

6.
A bemused commoner (that's me)
Sits in suffocating silence for three minutes
Plus a few seconds

Suddenly, a mob appears
The mob applauds lustily
Copies of my silent speech are distributed to the audience

I'm the new oracle
I'm the knowledge and the truth

My book which has the complete collection of all my silent speeches becomes a best-seller

7.
1.9 million miles of roads in India
How many road-side dabbas and tyre-makers does that calculate into
And obsolete road-signs

8.
I meet a young man
Name is Hamid
He tells me heart wrenching rural stories
In a bhatti in Kurla

This included one, about how he purchased a tong (instead of a toy)
For his aging grandmother

I weep when
I hear these poignant poverty stories

Years later
I realise Hamid was merely re-telling Premchand
Regurgitating stories like Idgaah

See, that's why one must read Premchand

9.
Typeface is everything
That's what RK said

Should I change everything on this site into MetaSerif?

10.
Twice a year
The vexillographer sells flags
The rest of the year it's cigarettes

Both businesses are lucrative, he says
Plus they provide for a certain sense of freedom

Random ruminations

2011-08-11T18:54:00.001-07:00

My new ringtone is Stalin's cough

Fewer people call me, now

The glossary of my life

Will be pretty short

A for alcohol

B for barbiturates

C for chuckwalla (the pet I never had)

What if life on earth gets reduced to

Pepsi? Coke?

I met her after 10 years

She was ungainly but happy

Said she could have cycled around the world

(For which she had a sponsor)

Instead she married a dull sort of man

And they lived happily ever after

When I grow up I want to fly an airplane in autopilot

Can I?

Good taste has bypassed India

My theory is

If you've good taste

They suspect you may bring down the government

Last night

I walked up to a dinosaur

And said: It's a pity your species hasn't heard about the survival of the fittest.

He replied: Neither has yours

Can you suggest a good coaching class

Preferably dirt-cheap

Where I can learn how to break rules

For 91 years

She listened

When her skull cracked on the funeral pyre

The priest was astonished

Her brain was missing

Please vote me for PM

2011-08-10T03:19:00.000-07:00

Please vote me for PM
Your country I shall rule

I won't sign no papers
I won't make no speech
I will amend all the bills
For cabinet ministers who stick to me like leech

Oh
I will work so hard and slave like a mule
My only qualification is: I am some kind-of-fool

Love

2011-08-07T01:47:00.000-07:00

He loves her
She loves he
He loves him
She also loves him
Him loves her

Now her loved someone
Who wonders "am I really someone"

And all of the above,
Drown their sorrow in paan
And Raga Pilu

The depreciation of intangible assets in a family

2011-08-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

What a lazy fellow
If he goes on sleeping
Like this till noon
There shall be a gradual and permanent decrease in his economic value
Hmm
Jhunjhunwala's daughter will not marry him
Said the stock-broker father
To his wife

He is not sleeping
Said the mother
To her husband
Offering him five pieces of badaams from Iran
Our son is amortising

Why monkeys are addicted to opium in these parts

2011-08-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

The moat around the maharaja's mahal
Is filled with attar
The maharaja resides in the maharaja's suite
Actually, an ancient prison cell

The mahal has 600 rooms
A mile tall cupola
An indoor polo ground
To host royal weddings and births

Everywhere
High security gates
Uniformed soldiers on steeds
To safeguard
The gravevard
Where the royal family conducts public burial ceremonies

Such has been the way of the high and mighty
In these parts
Thought a particularly redundant member of the human race
Preparing 1:3 dosage of opium
Dissolved in water

This
He offers
In a cupped palm leaf
To the local monkeys who visit his factory
In the outskirts of the town

After
The monkeys taste it
And approve of it by falling off the tree perch
The royal opium concoction is despatched to the maharaja
To be served with
A freshly cooked portion of monkey brain

Short tribute to Stendhal

2011-07-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

1
When
Stendhal started to rummage
Through his 19th century memoirs
The dust made him sneeze

2
He wanted to read Goethe
To her
She wanted to dip Parle biscuits
In a cup of tea

3.
In the East Khasi Hills
They record rainfall in metres
He said to himself
And wet his Italian sandals
In a dirty puddle

4.
He picked up a new book to read
With eagerness
But was too tired to turn the pages

5.
Brutalised in love
She kissed him
Hoping he wouldn't reciprocate

6.
She walked into the showroom
Sought a perfume
That had the fragrance of the first rice cultivation

He walked into the showroom
Sought a perfume
That could prevent him from falling to the ground

7.
When he saw her emerge
From The Madonna's Shrine
His syphilis made him dizzy
Some say: It was love at first sight

8.
When she learnt
Stendhal had died of seizure
On the streets of Paris
She smiled her tragic smile
And recalled how he preferred dictating his final book to her
Instead of consummation

9.
The happy few ...
Who are they ...

The Proto Mogul of our times

2011-07-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

Parked his steel grey Bentley
Bedroom lights were on
Perhaps she was reading
Or he had forgotten to switch off

He did speed dial
Asked for home delivery
Of instant karma
It will take seven minutes, the voice told him

Too slow
Too slow
By then, the speculators and share-holders
Would have fractally traded Rs 1,400 crore
On the stock exchange

At this rate
He calculated
The world would simply run out of algorithms
And stupid people to fleece

A tragic woman

2011-07-18T10:42:00.001-07:00

Today
I see a tragic woman
From inside my car
10,000 cars beside me
In a traffic jam

This woman
Tapping her scintillating umbrella
On the entirely granite
Hard English-made metal
Of a bridge (as ancient as her)
Having bi-lingual thoughts

Sliding across the bridge
She stumbles on a ripe pumpkin
Rolling down from the vegetable market
She unclenches her fist
To scatter polished grains for pigeons
All of whom disintegrate
Due to a bolt of lightening
Causing confusion
Among the locals

Time halts

Thoughts criss-cross

This is what I see
Noisy motor engines, cars annoyed
The woman rests her forehead
On a solar street-lamp
A waft of paalak and pudhina
Till the earth shudders
A little volcano erupts beneath her feet

She breathes, again

Time re-starts

She looks up
Sees me
Smiles

I try to reciprocate

I can't

Her sadness has engulfed me

It was that sort of day

2011-07-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

I chewed and chewed at my purple-coloured toothbrush
I looked through the frosted stained pane

I counted each and every drop of rain
That drenched two sparrows on the window grill

It was that sort of day

In high tide or low tide

2011-07-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

In the monsoon
The city dweller wrapped himself in a blue tarpaulin
Walking bare-foot
All the way to the Haji Ali Dargah

With every drop of rain
He rendered a qawwali
For Sayyed Peer Haji Ali Shah Bukhari
Whose coffin
With his body
Floated all the way back
From Mecca
Till it rested on the rocks off the coast of Worli

For five hundred years,
The city dweller never entered the Central Shrine
But his qawwalli did
Reaching out to the tomb
Beneath the red and green chaddar

Why reading is injurious to your health

2011-07-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

Why reading is injurious to your health

On 24 January 1556
Humayun wants to read, something, anything
He climbs the steps to his library
To procure a good read

While descending
With many big books
He hears the mullah's call for azaan
Duty calls

Humayun tries to do namaaz
In doing so, he slips
He dies

When
A scrupulous and honourable God
Hears the news
He says: Beware
The word, especially when its written, is injurious to your health

Hello Mr Tolstoy

2011-07-09T04:49:00.001-07:00

Hello Mr Tolstoy
You're genuinely too good
Why am I, still, so impressed by you?

What about you?
Have you read Dostoevsky?
Impressed by him?

When you pray at a temple
Who appears?
Shakespeare? Dante? Or Mister God?

Words

2011-07-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

Everyday
I water words
I've meticulously planted
In mud pots

I fuss over these words
Fertilise them
Sing a melody
In the hope
They will blossom into a ballad or love song
That I can type out with my tongue
One day

Three shorts from KL

2011-06-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

1.
The meek shall inherit the world
If not, they shall
At the very least
Nudge it
A little bit

The Tunisian fruit vendor
Mohamed Bouazizi
Who
Had a fracas (to salvage his male ego)
With a woman police officer

Leading to protests
That toppled a government, sort of
And modified
The future of Egypt
In a way, its citizenry never-ever dreamt about

2.
The blind brother number two
A proud Cambodian
Removed his dark glasses
And roared
The judicial investigation is unfair
It lacks transparency

This
After the supreme judge
And the tribunal sentenced him

For
Emptying the cities in the country
Abolishing currency
Shutting down all schools
Killing 15,000 people in a day
To ensure the long life and good health of blind brother number one

Relatives of the murdered victims
Shouted slogans
Outside the court
That blind brother number two
Should be buried alive in the mass graves
In Choeung Ek
Tit for tat

A small minority said, spare him
For a small mistake
The Khmer Rouge did what it did
To ensure the prosperity and progress of our nation

So then
What is this thing called justice?
Asked the custodian of law
For he
Knew the name of the concubine
Who delivered sudden death to blind brother number one
By poisoning his bed tea

3.
When
The law abiding authority
Told protestors
Tomorrow's march has been declared illegal
That if anyone took a step forward
Legs would be broken
Skulls smashed
Slogans water-cannoned

One of the protestors
Came up with the idea: There's no law
That prevents rallyists from walking backwards
Into the city centre
And
That's what we must do

PostScript.
Greeks of the world, unite
You've nothing to lose except your billions

A tribute to her

2011-06-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

Kiss me
She says

He stares at her sweet, drunken lips
Not knowing
What to do

Exasperated
She goes home
Scrapes the chunna off her bedroom wall
And licks it
To assuage her broken heart

PS: In this way, she notches up one more avtaar of sadness

PPS: And for him, one more missed opportunity

The saga of the noted botanist

2011-06-26T02:58:00.000-07:00

Two years, later
He returned from the rain forests
With the Rafflesia Leonardi

His grand-mother (maternal side) used to call it the corpse flower
And his grand-mother (paternal side) the meat flower

He caressed the five-petalled flower
All 39 inches of diameter
22 pounds
Brownishly grayish with dotted design

His bestest gift, ever
For his beloved wife

She was asleep
She generally was

She yawningly squealed and said:
What a strange flower
With no stems, no leaves, no roots
Plus it has the horrible stench of dead meat

Please throw it out of the window
Immediately

Baba Ramdev sat on the wall

2011-06-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

Baba Ramdev sat on the wall
Baba Ramdev, he had a great fall
All the PM's Ministers
And all the PM's men
Could not make Baba Ramdev do his asanas again

It's all Greek to me

2011-06-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

In a small town
In the middle of nowhere
The man helped his mother get off a crowded truck
He carried her
On his shoulders
To the only clinic in these parts

Mother has TB
A month ago, dysentery and snake bite
It is curable
Technically
Said the doctor to the son

In another part of the world
Economists gathered
To diagnose the Greek economy
As to how a minor cold became a flu which became an allergic rash
That became a disease
Crossing borders

And is that curable?
Yes
Said the suited-booted men
During a secret meeting in Luxembourg

And
This time someone did manufacture life saving drugs
Administered in the nick of time

Oh, to be in Sialkot

2011-06-15T09:53:00.001-07:00

Oh
To be in Sialkot
And write like Faiz
About knees that caress each other
Hearts that pound
While alcohol flows as freely as her hair in the open air kitchen
Fraught with tension
In which she must re-build her life

She kneads the dough, serves rotis
Which she serves with a smile

All I want to tell her is
There is a world outside
And she will have to oil the hinges of the doors
Step out of her grandfather's haveli
Or else the road will be empty
With no one to show her the way

R.I.P.

2011-06-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

When he was shot dead
The PM sent a letter to the CM
The CM sent a letter to the Deputy CM
The Deputy CM sent a letter to the Home Minister
The Home Minister sent a letter with a RSVP to the top cops
One of whom got transferred to arms control

On cue
Four under-paid scribes went underground
A few wept copiously
Hundreds protested

That's when you realised
Beneath the banter of Old Monk and Thums Up
At the Press Club
There exists a world where nothing is quite what it seems to be

And basically how totally fucked up we are

How to topple a dictator ...

2011-06-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

Basically, three ways

1. You out-pay the dictator's cronies
2. You start a people's revolution when the dictator is aging - and research indicates that his oil resource / bank balance is depleting
3. You play Bridge with the dictator, and poison his mind - and bed tea

Mamta appears in my dream

2011-06-01T11:32:00.000-07:00

So
Mamta
Appears in my dream
In a crumpled cotton saree with a green border

With clenched fists
She is heading for a rally in Lalgarh
And to attend a plenary session in the house

She asks me
What should I say?
What should I do?

Bhai, help me!

She sips tea
That I've prepared
In order to buy time
That's when I tell her:
Please request Budhadev-ji
He'll write your speeches
Draft your proposals

Maa, Mati, Manush
I'll decimate you with my Dhanush

She pours tea
On my head
Walks off
Muttering even people's dreams are infiltrated these days

A gentleman's will

2011-05-31T13:41:00.000-07:00

His safe deposit locker
Revealed a will
Which bequeathed hectares of property
And bonds to her

Plus a handwritten note in a buff coloured envelope
That said -
Dearest
I meant to say this, everyday, for the past 57 years
Please don't play Schubert after Mozart
It ruins everything

Why she didn't get Binayak Sen's autograph - and other shorts

2011-05-31T07:25:00.000-07:00

1.
Ideology is detritus
And hard-working governments
Manipulate it better than we ever can

2.
He prefers
Anonymity to self-promotion
They prefer
A Mahatma and a good-looking poster boy

3.
Politics is theatre
And yet, people abhor plays that make them think
Since it can spread brain disease, you know

4.
World social forum or social world forum?
Where media junkies try to persuade the masses
About what's right for them
In their pitiable ghettos

5.
When she strode upto Binayak Sen
For his autograph
He was calculating the body mass index for ordinary people

Alarmed by her own obesity
She turned around and walked off

Two short speeches about governance

2011-05-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

1.
There are more cabinet-reshuffles
Than popular uprisings
In this country of ours

2.
Sometimes
I wonder
Who lets me down, oftener
The government I vote for
Or the people I think I know

At the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese

2011-05-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

At the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese
The priest spoke of God creating the world
In six days

The young man who was studying science in standard five
Asked his mother, "Didn't God hear about carbon dating and fossils?"

Susan Sontag sneezed on my face

2011-05-15T05:30:00.000-07:00

1.
He got a special darshan
At the Vaikunta Perumal temple
Due to his upper-caste status

Plus the billions which were stashed in opium fields

2.
The dyslexic
Pressed the wrong button
Voting for the wrong candidate
In spite of his best intentions

3.
Memory is deceptive
Said one physicist to the other

Instead of talking about mechanism design theory
They plugged gigabytes of hard-disk into their brains

Continued with their lab work

4.
For decades
The district was known for 0% voting
100% poverty

5.
I ran after Amitav Ghosh
For an autograph
At the Frankfurt Book Fair

He ran away
Faster than me

6.
The 125-year old shepherd from Jhunjhunu
Married for the first time
His 16-year old wife told him to gift two goats from his flock
To each of her thousand family members

He obeyed her
In true Shekawati tradition

7.
I stepped out of the cloakroom
Stretched my hand out to greet Susan Sontag
She sneezed on my face

Since then, my life is a blur

One bar girl's mantra to the other

2011-05-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

1.
Time to exist
Was one bar girl's mantra to the other

Instead of a time to exit

2.
Tuscany's red wine
He could easily de-code
With his tongue

That made self-consciously long speeches
At business banquets

In between which
He, intermittently, insulted his girl-friend
Who was flesh and skin
Since the day she was born in Dhanbad

She
Stroked his pony-tail
As he roared his BMW Z4 model

She
Remembered how she loved him
He loved her, too
When he rescued her from the ordinariness
Of family life

From Z to A

2011-04-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

1.
Inspector Z
Scrutinised
The bullet ridden body of Monsieur Poirot
Which was discovered
After a month
At the bottom of a swamp

Inspector Z
Applied Vicks on his nose
To ward off stench
Made a note
That
In the absence of a superior faculty
And investigative skills
The murderer of the French speaking Belgian detective
Shall never be nabbed

2.
A time shall come when there will be No Entry signs all over the city; and the streets shall have nowhere to go

3.
I wish I had 400 nostrils
And even a bad cold
Could not deter me from smelling bread from the bakery
On the ground floor

I wish I had 400 ears
So that the sea breeze
Could (and would) whoosh through them
From one ear to the next one

I wish I had 400 pairs of hands
To soap the back of the one who loves me
Even though I snore

As I oil her hair
She sighs
Seeking 400 nights of silence

4.
My poverty is bigger than yours
One country said to the other
And started begging at the crack of dawn

5.
Bulls-eye
Yelled
The artiste
As he sauntered
Into the breakfast room of a high-priced hotel
Located in a snake sanctuary

He spotted 37 bald men
19 bald women
A few children
Also bald, I hasten to add
Who were gobbling fried eggs
Sunny side up

6.
My mummy
Loves power cuts
Since my daddy
Proposed at 9:32
During one such cut in Nagpur

Mummy says daddy had nothing better to do

7.
Astride
On top of the mountain, he stood
He mounted the periscope onto a tripod
But instead of continuing his deep study of the stars
As per the Hirji calendar

He removed his kufi
Off his bald head
Prepared a kettle of sweet tea
Sat down
Stroked his white beard that touched his broken knee
And sipped noisily

8.
The Minister
Sort of knew
That the unruly bunch of rowdy rascals
Who were protesting the unprecedented price hikes
And diesel shortage

Were planning to self immolate
In front of his Swiss villa
With
The aid of adulterated kerosene
Procured from the black-market

All thanks
To an officially notarised communique
Which the Minister had stamped
For a tiny fee

9.
Up above the sky
So high
I smoked ganja
On the sly

10.
Sartre
Invited Descartes and Locke
Who in turn invited Kant and Hegel
For cappuccino on a summer afternoon
To confabulate
Once and for all
About
Whose ideas were the profoundest

That's when God
(Well, for the sake of argument, lets assume he exists)
So God
Asked Kierkegaard
How many tree saplings did you nurture when you were on planet earth?
How many lives did you save?
What kind of good deeds?
And so on

Socrates, who was chairperson
Swallowed
A foul odoured potion
Yet again

The hemlock was confiscated
The meeting was adjourned

On his way out,
Nagarjuna while chewing mawa with Confucius said:
I'm afraid the question could not have been answered

To do so
Would have been to acknowledge
God's existence

An abhang she sang

2011-04-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

1.
He told me, and I agree
If elections in this country would be truly democratic
Voting will be declared illegal

2.
When the 20 year old died
Unexpectedly
We couldn't take our eyes off
His young mother who wailed
Tore her hair off

We shut our ears
To her cacophony
(Almost woke up the boy)

All through the night
She recited the most exquisite
Abhangs

The century-old songs of wisdom
Putting the boy to sleep, forever
Once and for all

3.
There are two kinds of people
Those who bathe religiously; and those who religiously bathe
I belong to neither

4.
When her grand-mother
Heard the verdict
She vigorously shook her mane
Tapped her skull

Her lord
Resided inside, in there

If they knew
They would send a mob
Smash her brain
Jail her lord
Inside a brick and mortar cage

Where her prayers
Would be contaminated by summons
From the Highest Court in the Land

5.
On bent knees
He proposed to her
With a red emerald-cut diamond

He awaits her reply

The matter is sub judice
For two decades

Salaam: Narayan Surve

2011-04-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

1.
She said to the apothecary:
My heart is broken, sort of
Do you have a prescription for unhappiness?

2.
Everyday
He walked through
The city roads
In the sludge and filth
Day dreaming about becoming
A star vendor for oranges in the city bazaar

Just then
A pack of dogs barked
Chased him
He panicked
He tried to run, he tripped
With his basket of oranges

And his dream evaporated
When the dogs unpeeled the oranges and squashed them

3.
Every time
She stepped out
To purchase yesterday's vegetables
At the lowest market price
It rained
And she got drenched

Every time
He stepped out
His troubles began
He knew not how to re-pay his family debts

Every time
The two of them stepped out, together
It was to save the fare to the nearby station
That's how their love began
In a rickshaw with the slogan
Dosti pakki, kharcha apna apna

4.
When Narayan Surve exited
They blew their own trumpet
Draped him in the national flag

Would have been nicer if they
Honoured him with a flat
When he was breathing

5.
She saw him
He smiled back
And got a 17.5% tip

6.
My wife
Does not mind me taking a book to bed
Which I read
All through the night
Since the book is harmless

But
She knows not
The book I'm reading
Is potent

It
Has caused the downfall
Of three tyrants
And their military governments

7.
She reached home
Sipped warm water
Swallowed a pregaba

What would it be?
Verdi's Requiem or Handel's Messiah?
Before she could answer
Her head
Was spinning, swimming

She fell asleep without feeding her kittens
All of whom
Perched on her back, playfully
Yet again

8.
The young intern
Who her boss said: resembled the woman
In the renaissance painting
Worked 14 hours
Daily

One day
When she entered her boss' cabin
To leave the quarterly report on the teak-table
She looked up
Sighing

She had vanished from the painting

9.
My death is planned
A funeral pyre next to the sea like Shelley
The fire providing warmth to rats, urchins and addicts
Some music, no dance
Free arrack for all

My ashes being washed away by the next tide
Intermingled with the early morning ablutions of Koli women
Who will wash their bottoms with a bit of me

10.
So? Who did Godot wait for?

A donation of sorts

2011-04-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

We've painted all the cows in our village, saffron
Plus bullocks, oxes, calves

Next we shall paint whales, lemurs, hippopotamuses, elephants, armadillos, unicorns
And a few mermaids

For which we require a generous donation

Booze, Cassandra and Cai Lun

2011-04-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

1.
Booze should flow, always
At least that's what I believe

When Wang Xizhi wrote the Lan Ting Xu
The most celebrated piece of calligraphy
In the world

Cups of
Strong wine floated down the stream
While 35 poems were composed

2.
While he stayed awake
Tossing and turning through the night
Plotting
On how to squash his opponents
And conquer the world

She woke up
Early morning
Sipped green tea
And plucked a few white lilies
For her hair

3.
Cassandra saw the future
Except her own
Except her own

And
When Cassandra saw her future
She couldn't live in the present
In the present

4.
AD's launch of his coffee table book
On the history of zebra crossings
Was cancelled

They say AD's motor car got stuck at the city's oldest traffic signal

5.
So many years had gone by
She was a whore
Of sorts

They paid her no salary
No polite words, either

Her solace was an unresponsive God
And a line of red ants
That marched past her mattress
And sensed her anguish
Every time she heard
The evening prayers from the minaret

6
The best selling author
Wrote no more

Since the next day
His damn words
Protested
And transformed themselves into the exact opposite
Of what he wanted to convey

7.
It would be super interesting to meet
Cai Lun of the Eastern Han Dynasty
In the elevator
How do you do sir?

Lun would rub his hands together
Replying in that 50 AD Chinese accent of his:
I've run out of paper. Can you lend me some?

Dr Ambedkar and other shorts

2011-04-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

1.
Lalji
Travelled many miles
From Champaner
To Mumbai

In silence
He paid obeisance
At the memorial in Dadar
On 6 December

Although
He could not read or write
Lalji
With his meagre savings
Purchased eleven books that had Doctor Saheb on the cover page

He
Returned home
Didn't eat on the train
Determinedly
Clutched the eleven books
Which his three daughters
Would read, again and again
For a year

Till the next anniversary of Doctor Saheb
On 6 December

2.
THE RIVER WAS ABLE TO CHANGE IT COURSE

After
The village
Which was vacated
In the middle of nowhere

Is
Now engulfed
By barbed wires
And the smell of dead jacarandas

3.
After
A day of stuffing letters into envelopes
Which no one would open
Serving machine tea to people in puny cubicles
In which no one knew his name

He waited for evening
When they would broadcast
A Rafi song
On the radio

That would make the rest of the day
Less miserable than it was

4.
This is a true story about repressive intolerance, I'm told

The Maharaja
Known for defenestrating people who worked for him
Built a massive-castle
Whose spire
Could be seen from the moon

The Maharaja
In a hand-embroidered robe
With his face on the back of it
Created with rubies, jade and diamonds

Visited the massive-castle
In a Benz Patent Motorcar

The handle of the door to the massive-castle
Refused to budge

The Maharaja
Pushed and pulled
Roared in frustration
Till a pair of white rhinoceros
Imported from Czechoslovakia
Were pushed out of the window

And that's how monarchy was crushed
In these parts

5.
The
Precocious young boy
Told his father
Tapping the keyboard of the latest gadget in his palm
It is unicode, it is encrypted
Papa, you won't understand

The
Father smiled
He wanted to tell his son
How when he was young he ran into the storage room
That stored thousand sacks of coffee beans
To do his calculus homework
When he heard his father's footstep

How he skipped
An extra helping of avial with lemon rice
When his mother transmitted signals
With her eyes

He could have
But he did not want to
After all, his young son would never understand the secret code
Of bygone times

6.
Everyday
I smoked a cigarette
Under an old baobab tree
That stood there with a certain amount of equilibrium

It was all very reassuring

Last night
It came crashing down
For no rhyme or reason

Even
As I decided to quit smoking
I saw scavengers pick up one branch after another
Trampling
Green leaves
And a bit of history under their bare-feet

7.
He made a kite
For his son
On his 11th birthday

It was a beautiful kite
And the last one he made

He remembered all the details

Especially
How it flew away
With his only son

Actors, Peacocks and Poets

2011-04-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

1.
I
Interrupted
Pablo and Czeslaw
In their chessboard game
And kissed the cosmic atoms on their feet

By saying
They are better than me in every regard
Except
I know Vinda
And they do not

2.
The
Yellow Back Sunbird
Imitated
The Peacock
Taking tiny steps
Twirling it's feathers
Desperately
Trying to attract my attention

It didn't know
That the Peacock
Was exhausted
By the constant preening, daily wooings

Oh
How the Peacock wished
He could be a Yellow Back Sunbird
For one rainy day

3.
She didn't know how to explain to her 12-year old daughter
That the two ugly boils which were multiplying on her chest
Weren't a curse

The bigger the boil
The lesser the dowry
Her unemployed father would have to pay

4.
Very bleak
Too damn comfortable
So damnably easy
Muttered the thespian
Staring into his lucky mirror
After a thousand and one perfect shows

He knew
What to do
Press one button
They sighed or groaned
Another button
They gushed and roared

They even applauded his pregnant pauses
Shouting encore
Analysing his famous silence on their journey home

And yet
He despaired
He peeled off his wig
What new role?
He wiped off the foundation cream
What new method?

While he gargled
Unbeknowest
His acting muse bid adieu

Tomorrow
The Thespian would falter

Day after
A blur
He would forget lines

In one year
It would be splutter, stammer, stutter
Commas, semi colons, hyphens, full stops
Until finally
There was nothing

He sat in his balcony
Feeding sparrows along with his grand-daughter
Together
They surveyed the cityscape
Reveling in the infinite silence
Which he had sort of perfected

That's when his grand-daughter said: "Say something, na?
You're always so quiet, dada."

5.
Warplanes in the sky
Tiny boats drowning
Someplace, somewhere the government takes big decisions
That matter to no one

She who knows nothing
Brushes her hair
On the shore
Orders a platter of fresh fish

She is surrounded by kittens
Who can sense that the next three day's meals are taken care of

6.
Every full moon night
The goddess of eternal abstinence
Waits for the
Virile long-haired boy
And the older girl
To make love
In front of her stone idol
In the 12th century temple

The next morning
When the priest
Washes the floor with coconut milk
Lights a lamp and decorates her with kadamba flowers
She runs out of the sanctum santorum
Totally nude
And dives into the temple tank
To soothe her passions

7.
In the summer night
The rain
Did its pitter-patter

On cue
Hundreds of peacocks did their dance
For the benefit of the ladies
Who
Were suitably unimpressed
As they had been
For eons

Random Ramblings about Mary Quant who did invent the mini skirt

2011-04-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

1.
The greatest invention on the planet
(According to a girlfriend who, repeatedly, thrashed me in badminton)
is Mary Quant's invention of the mini skirt

2.
The well-known Malayali author is dead
His fans weep
A former student writes a never-ending obituary

His wife is most happy
She does not have to prepare cups of tea
She does not have to sharpen his pencil set
She does not have to grease the ball-bearings of the aging swing on which the great author, thought

His publisher scratches his pate, and says what a great man, sir
Finally one copy of the great author's book will sell

3.
Millions of activists
Gathered in the capital
In order to press their charter of demands
That included
Non stop supply of
Ganja, arrack, cheroot, state lottery tickets, tapioca chips

Plus whores who delivered
A discourse on democracy
Every time they were screwed

4.
Instead
Of lighting the diya
The VIP tripped
Inauspiciously fell down

And all of Saraswati's Vandana
Could not lift him up again

5.
It's quite umm extraordinary
Said the Trotsykite
To the Marxist
How the umm movement has collapsed

The Leninist nodded

So did the Socialist
Who rubbed his stomach, anti-clockwise
And burped
Revolution Zindabad

That's when
The Maoist told the Stalinist
Lets burn the Parliament
Lets overthrow the Government
Lets Kranti

The others silenced him
We speak of the bowel movement
The most popular movement of our times
Among our people

Saying so
They scrambled to the bathroom
To sit on the potty

6.
He was thrown
Out of school
For day-dreaming

The class-master didn't believe
He could decipher complex arithmetical algorithms
From patterns
The clouds made in the sky

7.
Early morning
After a good shit in the fields

The villagers laid siege on the river bank
Armed with petitions
And axes

Rubbed their eyes in horror
One seeing how the government babus
Had a permanent redressal to their grievances

When
Instead of river water
They released paal payasam
From the local dam

A few women I know

2011-04-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

1.
That day she cooked
The most delicious dish in the whole world
Which no one was permitted to eat

2.
The three urchins
Jumped into the dustbin
To hunt for bandicoots
Which they captured
With a rusty iron rod
Dipped in a flame

They prolonged their game
As long as they could
Until she got hungry
Picked up the bandicoot
And ran
All the way, home

3.
The six year old
Picked up the
Cyan and magenta crayons
And painted her version of the planet
Ugly, unaesthetic, irrelevant

But with no political boundaries

4.
What goes down
Will come up one day
She said
Inside her burkha
When we met in Luxor

After 30 years
Her prophecy
Is coming true

5.
The lady
Who launched a thousand face-lifts
Walked through a broken
Security system
Stared into the CCTV camera
Finger-printed her toe
After they had frisked her bag and body

One hour later
She hob-nobbed with power brokers of the joint committee
On the 17th floor
Discussed the resource crunch
With the fat-cat minister
Who used to mastermind kidnappings
In his days of youth

She
Walked out of the Secretariat
Carrying the Minister's fortunes
To Berne

Unsurprisingly
No one her frisked her
On the way out

Everyone merely stared
At the sashaying hips of
The Maharani of Money

6.
When
The child
Sang a nursery rhyme
The great classical singer
Was wonderstruck

As to how someone could manage to get every note
So horribly wrong
And yet be musical

7.
Every morning
You're not there

All that remains is
A crumpled bed-sheet, three half-read books
(Including Banna Bhai's letters which he penned in Central Jail),
Your asthalin pump, nasal drops, pain killers
A weathered saree you use as a pillow

My memory of the night
Is a blur

All I remember is
You slept
And I counted every single breath

Ten shorts from Tamil Nadu (May 2009)

2011-04-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

# 1

Everyday
He read a big fat pedantic tome
Full of phantasmagorical words
That tickled his palate no end
But unknown to him

Daily
She used to swot house flies
With the same book
While he had his afternoon siestas under the oak tree

# 2

He saw a herd of donkeys
Crossing the street, purposefully

In a rare moment
Of honest incandescence
He forgot who he was

And started to bray

# 3

Very confusedly
He paid obeisance at the memorial
Of the martyred leader
On his 17th death anniversary

He muttered a silent prayer
For the lengthy life of the martyred leader's assassin
Who may or may not be alive
Or dead
According to the people of the land

Who no longer distinguished good from evil

# 4

Her seven daughters
Had nimble fingers
With which they collated splints
Transformed them into matchsticks
With a sulphur dip
Faster
Faster
Than anyone in the district

Not that anyone
Knew
Not that anyone
Cared

# 5

Not knowing
Where he was born
He uprooted trees
With his bare hands
In order to reassure
His inner self
That all things have a root
Of some sort

# 6

For 58 years
He plastered movie posters
Of all shapes and pedigree
On the city walls

Genres appeared and outgrew their purpose
Movie stars ebbed into wilderness
Golden Jubilees celebrated

He knew it all
Until one day his vision faltered
Due to c-grade adhesives

His grandson double-seated him on a bicycle
En route to the optician
That's when he asked his grandfather if he had ever seen a movie in his living life

# 7

One by one
He fed wrinkled pages to the fire
To ward of the winter chill
In his index finger
That had once pencilled words
One by one
On those pages

For hundred and one years

# 8

The elephant is no no more
In fact seventeen elephants are no more

The elephants had survived
The Aryans, Buddha, Moghuls, East India Company
All the Gandhis

Until it raided a semi-solid shed
That stocked chewing gum
Which the hungry elephants swallowed ...

# 9

He tells me
Mosquitoes invaded our township, saar
Causing allergy, malaria, malaise

He hasn't slept from full moon to full moon
So he dozes in the office
His children scratch their skin, incessantly
Instead of solving algebra and calculus papers

But my wife is happy, saar
Our relatives will not visit us
You see, mosquitoes have invaded our township

# 10

The river has changed it course
Tanks, wells, spring channels are dry

All that remains is sand
Which is being stolen

By the people of the land who have three choices ...
- To Steal
- To Migrate
- To Search
For water, 500 metres below the ground ...

Four shorts of sorts

2011-04-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

1.
Every morning
He gargled his mouth

He saw
A stranger in the mirror
A face that was not his own

So
He peeled off the mask
To reveal someone else

Yet again

2.
I swear, it's true

The hot springs in this cave
Beside being geo-thermal and therapeutic
Tastes like sugarcane juice

3.
This village
Was a special one
Since all the inhabitants carried a bright coloured cane basket
On their backs

In which they carried
A piece of the blue sky

4.
My niece was elated
The first time she saw the Himalayas
From an ashram
That served Maggi noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Next morning
She was heart-broken
Look, the Himayalas have vanished

I was tempted to tell a tale

Instead
I explained how it was due to fog formation
The difference between temperature and dew point

And
It had nothing to do with skipping her homework
On transitive, intransitive and incomplete verbs

2010: Three final shorts

2010-12-29T01:06:00.000-08:00

1.
A kite he built
The prettiest in the world
Simply refused to fly

2.
A snail
Stood in front of me
She started talking about army tanks and a cruel chief minister
That crushed her family

I kept wondering
How the snail had learnt
To speak in an extinct dialect of Gujarati

3.
When
He tasted the cup of tea
I made out of coffee beans
He hired me for the job

Life need not be vexed

2010-12-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

Life need not be vexed
If you are a dog
Who goes to a tall wall
And pees on it
When Daisy barks
From the other side

Akka

2010-10-31T00:31:00.000-07:00

The day
She visited
The Stasi Prison - Bautzen II
The largest political prison in East Germany

It reminded her of home

The All Knowing Empress

2010-10-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

The Empress
Who was all-knowing
Appointed a blind visionary
Who
Along with his fleet of blind students
Drafted
A national policy
That the people blindly followed

Two types of people

2010-09-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

There are two types of people in this nation of ours
Those who are malnourished
And those who are mall nourished

The Dubey brothers

2010-08-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

The Dubey triplets
Who typeset in Sanskrit
For a two-hundred year old company
That published subsidised copies of the Bhagwad Gita
(Sold for 50 paise only)
Passed away
One day after they were given their resignation letters

Three shorts by the sea

2010-08-01T19:36:00.000-07:00

1.
Mr Barrister
Your late father was a gentleman

He would have been reading
The small print
Of the petition on your table
Instead of staring at my beautiful lips

2.
My darling is home again
My pretty one is here

Asked where she had been
The darling brushed her hair
And replied
To London to drink whiskey with the queen

3.
Man is a disease
For which a woman offers many home-made remedies
When the disease is incurable, and all remedies fail
The woman marries

Two shorts: The young girl and the matriarch

2010-07-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

1.
The young girl
Who resembled the tacky woman
In the phillumi poster
Worked so hard
On the streets

That one sultry night
The tacky woman from the poster
Stepped out
Offered a marijuana leaf to chew
And told the young girl
Take it easy, yaar

2.
The matriarch
Who gave birth to 16 high pedigreed sons
Lay on her death-bed

She
Hoped her 17th son
Who the village elders said
Measured his own shadow
Predicted earthquakes and floods and droughts
Would sit by her side
Hold her mangled hand
And prevent
An inevitable death

The father's idiot son

2010-06-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

When
The local idiot
Spread a rumour about excavating
A dinosaur testicle
From the village Ramlila ground

He didn't realise
It would be as much fun
As the time, a sea monster with 97 legs
Crawled onto the beach
Mistook his father's bald head
For a turtle egg
And dragged his father
Into the depths of the ocean

I wish ...

2010-05-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

I wish I had 400 nostrils
If I had a bad cold
I could still smell baked bread
From the local oven

I wish I had 400 ears
So that the sea breeze
Could whoosh through them
From one ear
To the next

I wish I had 400 pairs of hands
One pair to wash my bums
Everyday
A fresh pair of hands

My lover
Who hears me,
Sighs
She seeks 400 days of silence

Dr N and Dr B's pet

2010-04-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

A dog
Has made my swing
His home

It is thin
And resembles a fox
That's why we call him, foxy

I feed him milk from a saucepan
Sometimes popcorn
Sometimes mango cheese cake

It tries to play with me
But weariness takes over

Eyes shut
In the middle of the summer heat

He listens to my scratched record
Of Monteverdi
And moves its tail in slow harmony

One way to live

2010-02-10T00:53:00.000-08:00

Before falling asleep
He sipped his rum with warm water
Switched on the music player

What would it be?
Verdi's Requiem?
Handel's Messiah?
Or just a good shag?

This was his way
To purify the brain
Of the thrash
It put up with during the day

Her life was a simple statistic

2010-01-26T00:56:00.000-08:00

Her life was a simple statistic
Rs 750 for a single session
Rs 600 for the regulars
Rs 500 for oral
No twosomes, no threesomes

Life was uncomplicated

She sought solace in prayers
Every Tuesday
For which she walked miles
In chaste clothes
Barefoot
After swigging a bottle of whiskey
Along with tandoori chicken

To muster courage
In order to say sorry
To her god

Best Gizmo of the Decade Award goes to ...

2010-01-01T06:43:00.000-08:00

The greatest technology
On this planet
Has been invented by the Maldhari community
Who created the virda
Shallow wells
In the Thar Desert
That store rain-water
Separating potable drinking water from salt water

The drummer

2009-12-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

A man
With no special talent
Loves to drum his ancestral drum

He drums all the time
Always, he is drumming

While breathing
While eating
While sweeping the streets
With a broom
While sleeping
While dreaming (which he rarely does)

He drums
His ancient drum

One day
Under the full moon
He bathes
He sees a pretty girl with mogra in her pig-tails
He falls in love
She is everything

Secretly
Their eyes meet
Till the meetings multiply

She can't drum
Man trains her
He tries
She tries
And tries
And cries

One day she runs away
From his drum beats
It is too noisy
Her parents say: it tarnishes the family reputation
Her neighbours say: it is diabolical

Man is distraught
He sits beside the river
He sweeps
He weeps

He decides to forsake his drum
He throws the ancestral drum into the river

Life plods on

A new day
Many months
Perhaps years

Man is lonely
Very very lonely
He is old
Very very old
He has swept the street
He is tired
Very very tired

He sits on the bank
To wash his feet in the river water
He sees a fish
Many many fishes

The fishes see him
One smiles
All smile
He plays with one, he plays with all
He is happy
His heart beats

Is it really his heart beat?
No

It's a drum beat
It's many drums that beat
The drums beat, together

The man looks

The fishes are drumming
The fishes are dancing
The fishes invite him
He jumps into the water

And drums happily ever after

Three shorts

2009-12-29T01:01:00.000-08:00

1.
When my mother
Went to school
She was the only girl student

Mother carried her books, slate, drinking water
Plus her own jute sack
With which she could sit on the cold floor
With dignity

2.
He
Was the richest man
In the world
And he was very very happy

So happy
That he had forgotten
How to cry

3.
The baby wiped her mouth
And hungrily asked her mother
Why does daddy have nipples
If I cannot suckle milk from them

K

2009-10-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

The innumerable false conversations
She had daily
Made her lie down
In the rice field
Waiting for the breeze

Three little gems

2009-09-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

1.
In this land of ours
The little boy
Asked his maulvi father
Why do trees have Hindu names?

The maulvi whacked him on the head
And said
Don't create a new set of problems

2.
My uncle
Who was a Gaussian inspired economist
Said to me
A nation's prosperity
And true worth
Can be judged by the pedigree of
Her whores

3.
When
I opened the door
Victor Hugo met me
And he was naked

Hugo had surrendered his clothing
To his valet
Who was not to return it
Until the day's writing had been compiled

Murud

2009-09-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

He slept
Under the pine trees
Covering himself
With a blue tarpaulin sheet
To prevent scalding hot, bat droppings from falling on his face

Unknown to him
Every sunset
Thousands of bats
Flew many nautical miles across the sea
They returned in the morning
Exhausted

That's
When he woke up
To their sunrise babble

He
Folded the blue sheet into a neat quadra size
Patted his own back
And said, how clever I am

Sahara

2009-08-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

When he saw
The monsoon clouds
Up above the sky
And the approaching rain

He started to run
Till he reached
The Sahara Desert

Four stories about women I know

2009-07-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

1.
She was renowned
For her home-made butter
Of exquisite taste

For which she nurtured a special goat
Stocked secret ingredients
Hid recipes under the ground

Until the day her grand-daughter decided to marry

The dowry was the goat
Whose head would be sacrificed
On conjugal day
To guarantee
The eternal happiness of the newly wed

2.
She told her
The water in my well is sweeter

Her told she
The water in my temple tank is holier

Unknown to she and her
The woman with a tattoo
Overheard
Their tattle
And sighed
The loudest sigh
In the world

This sigh
Was heard by a solitary rain cloud
In the sky
Who wondered
If this was the signal to end the drought

3.
When she completed
123 years
She did not recall
She had carried excreta on her head for
111 years of her life
Through the by-lanes of Madurai

When she completed
123 years
She emptied basket-loads
Near a Jacaranda tree
Whose blossom was the one thing
That brought a smile on her
Forgotten face

4.
The cling-clang
Of urban space
The blah blah of uncouth neighbours
23 family members
All migrants from Sindhri
Inhabiting a 275 sq/ft tenement
Plus 11 children

How do they manage it
What for she asked
As she prepared lemon tea
Which she would have with home-made cookies
Feeding crumbs to the fish in her aquarium

Happy Wedding Anniversary

2009-03-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

The secret of their 2,000 year old marriage
Was neither lust
Nor the polite thank yous

It was based on a complex taal system

The number of her snores during the night
Equalled his flatulence during the day

Printer's Day

2009-02-24T17:34:00.000-08:00

The master printer
Created patterns
On rocks, leaves, utensils, wedding sarees, carpets

He invented hues
The world had never seen
Even though he was colour blind

Five special men ...

2009-01-26T16:41:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you about the five special men
Who have five special hobbies

Man one is a snake catcher for 33 years

Man two speaks 19 languages
Including Braille

Man three has memorised Rimley's special chess games
All of them

Man four has a lab on the hills
From which he comes tumbling down
Every time he discovers something like an alternative
To plutonium
Preferably a thermoplastic compound

Man five gets a hefty commission
From the oil mafia
Which he diverts to a school for special children

These are the five special men
I wanted to tell you about

With five special hobbies

Every day I aspire to have some such hobby
As my forefinger is poised to enter my nose
For the nth time in the day

Yasser Arafat is no more

2008-11-30T03:30:00.000-08:00

I met Yasser Arafat
For the first time in Egypt
His body was on a horse-drawn carriage
As part of a military funeral

I asked him:
Sir: how do you do you?

He kissed me (he was forever kissing people in spite of doctor's orders)
And said, Not too good
One, I'm dead
Two, I am in Cairo and I do not have the time to see the pyramids

Saying so
He readied to play out the final charade
That began in a military hospital in France
Unto his temporary destination inside a cement container in Ramallah

All this
To the greater glee of his hecklers in the Arab League
The F-16s in the Israeli Army
And paid assassinators

Yasser Arafat knew this
Since his days in a windowless room
Inside his muqata in the West Bank
Where he used to lie down on a single camp bed
Watching rarefied species of lizards and rats, scurry around
Here and there

Finally
At 11 am
On Friday
Arafat discarded the olive green uniform
Said adieu to me

Then
He wrapped himself in a white shroud
In which he knew he would be buried
And re-buried, forever

Mister God

2008-10-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

Er ...
Mister God?
Can I ask you a question?
Are you religious?

It's all a bit stupid, really

2008-09-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

1.
It's all a bit stupid, really
You are born
Then you die

2.
After years of great sex
She felt love
Next morning, he left her

3.
You can go to Fatehpur Sikri
Bow your head at the tomb of Salim Chisthi
Or have a nan kathoi

No Tamasha this season

2008-08-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

No Tamasha show this season
Says the veteran Tamasgir to me

Tomorrow it’s Dashehra
Followed by Diwali
The rice its peaking
The rains are ceasing
But no Dholkicha Phad this season

Seven months of silence
210 dreary days
210 lonely nights
No sound of the applause, no razzmatazz of lights

150 theatre companies, they fold the travelling tents
They iron their costumes, they tune their instruments
They tell their children about ideal prognostications
Of how Tamasha performances entertained the nation

That was then
This is now

Eighty jatras
300 performances
No Suparees
No encores for now

No Tamasha show this season
Says the veteran Tamasgir to me

The numbers don’t lie
He unwinds his paghdi
Our artistic reputation can't grow
Due to inconsistency of cash flow

There are no yearnings
Therefore no earnings
Plus there’s a no-show
From 9 pm to 5 am, my friend
A court ruling that bans us after 10

Unemployed are the artistes
Female dancers and singers
All of whom migrate to gambling dens
Where women are paid more than men

We pay money to the wealthy Sahukaars
We pay for the diesel, we pay for the car
We pay for rentals, we pay for the hiring
We pay for taxes, we pay for complex licensing

We pay for the insurance, we pay for bank loans
We pay for costumes, we pay for the cell-phones
We pay for the generator, we pay for sound and lights
Whatever remains is for government babu's bribes

That’s why
No, Tamasha show this season
Says the veteran Tamasgir to me

Chirimiri economics, it makes no sense
State subsidies are fucking nonsense
There can be no co-operative theatre movement
When we are being crushed by our own government

That’s why
There will be no Tamasha show this season
Says the veteran Tamasgir to me

Water, water everywhere

2008-07-17T05:58:00.000-07:00

The government babu
Unveiled his water formulae
And theorems

He said:
If you connect the Ahars and Pynes in South Bihar
With the Baoris and Khatris in the Himalayas
And the Chappris and Chaals and Talabs in the Deccan Plateau
With the kuccha wells in the Gangetic plains
With the Bandhinis and Shilotris in Konkan
With the Katas, Mundas and Bandhs in Orissa
With the Thurangams in Kerala and Sisandras in Karanataka
With the Virdas in Gujarat and the Beris and Taankas in Kutch
With all the Jheels

Everyone in the nation will have access to water

That's when he realised
His throat was parched
The glass of water on the podium was empty
And there was no way any of the upper-castes
In that hall
Were going to re-fill it

The one-third syndrome

2008-07-03T04:58:00.000-07:00

1.
One-third of the people in our country do not possess a single certificate nor document (never have, never will)

2.
One-third do not know what to do with theirs - even though someone in their family has stored all the papers in some form or the other (always have, don't know what to do with it)

3.
One-third of this one-third who own the official stamps and seals in their office desks - ensure 1 and 2 remain in a state of oblivion while they ensure two-thirds of this one-third accrue the benefits (it's part of the job profile)

4.
The rest make money

5.
In fact let me hasten to add, the rest make a lot of money

When you're a profligate idealist

2008-04-24T05:47:00.000-07:00

Tough only life is
Life is tough only

Only tough is life

Is life only tough

When you're a profligate idealist

The missing doctor

2008-03-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

Do you have
The telephone number
Of the old doctor
Who lives down the lane

He mends
My broken heart
Expertly
When it goes TWAANG

I'm told
By his daughter
That when she saw him last
He was rolling a beedi
Lost in thought
And may have set-out in the morning
To search for Sant Tukaram

Happy Birthday Gutenberg

2008-02-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

1.
Gutenberg
Proposed to mass-produce
32,000 mirrors
For the Aachen pilgrimage
And make a return of 16,000 gulden
For an investment of 600 gulden

Circumstances
(Like the plague, lack of finance and a law suit)
Ensured Gutenberg
Could not produce mirrors for one lakh pilgrims

Instead
He invented
The movable type

2.
Amor vincit omnia
Love, she conquers all
And eros, she is the mother of everything

Print merely illustrates this
So that we follow our own pleasures

3.
You and I see
Bark of trees, hemp waste, old rags and fish nets
In a dirty pond with mortar

But in this
Ts'ai Lun conceived the idea of paper

Make my country awake

2008-01-28T21:09:00.000-08:00

I tried to make my country awake
But it's pockets are empty
It has run out of cash

Now I'm told
Nobody wants to lend it money for a cutting chai

Four To Go + One More

2007-12-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

1.
WHAT THE PROPHECY TOLD ME IN MY SLEEP
Remember: The silence which surrounded Milton's head
Was not the end
It was the preface to paradise

2.
WHAT I INTEND TO DO - SINCE ONCE UPON A TIME IS NOW
I want to memorise the facts
For things have no past
Haven't you noticed the disappearance of language, songs, and simple food eating habits

3.
WHY I WANT TO CONCEAL MYSELF, TODAY
I do not want to be a bronze statue in a museum
Instead
I want to transform into a keyboard, and alphabetise other people's treasures
Their ideologies, idiosyncrasies and irrelevancies

4.
MY WIFE FED PROFANITIES TO THE PIGEONS THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW
Because one day a dinner guest swallowed all her expensive alcohol
And didn't realise it
Instead at 3 am when the shops were shut, he said:
"Can I've some more? My glass is empty."

5.
THE HISTORY OF AN ACTOR
For years I have been trying to figure out
Whether he was a celebrity in a mohalla in another city
Or a nobody in a rival theatre company
Or someone from my neighbourhood who collected match sticks, and firewood for her own funeral
Before she passed away

If I Had My Way ...

2007-12-18T15:42:00.000-08:00

If I Had My Way ... plays would have an expiry date labelled on their foreheads.

If I Had My Way ... I would have a two-minute silence before every show in order to express my sympathy with the impoverishment of theatre in India.

If I Had My Way ... I would ask of Lorca, why does he discomfit his reader? Almost all his characters live in the presence of death.

If I Had My Way ... I would commission a vague, clever sort of play about everything. After all, we Indians have become generalists, and very rarely are creative thinkers.

If I Had My Way ... I would form a guild of producers. The theatre needs producers to produce our cheap, shabby, half visible, half audible, drama methods. Which is what Bollywood is about. But Bollywood has Salman Khan.

If I Had My Way ... I would translate Shakespeare into Tulu. Because even a poor translator of Shakespeare is much better known than an original inventor of ideas.

If I Had My Way ... I would want to see a play that is truly realistic. Unfortunately, that term is used loosely on the stage where most of the so-called realistic plays deal only with the appearance of things. A trulyrealistic play deals with what might be called the soul of the characters.Strindberg's DANCE OF DEATH, perhaps? It deals with that thing which makes the character that person and no other.

If I Had My Way ... everyone would be forced to read the shabdha sadhana of Muktibodh, in a day and age in which politics, media, cricket commentators have hijacked words, and the true writer has become his own enemy.

If I Had My Way ... I would ban the word, parampara. We may not want to become a suburb of the USA, but then neither should we remain a shanty. We may want to preserve our soul, but what about an unhealthy, unhappy mind?

If I Had My Way ... I would remind critics that the best examples of Total Theatre and Physical Theatre are not Artaud, Brecht, Peter Brook, Grotowoski, but THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and LION KING, which have entertained millions of theatre audiences. And earned millions of dollars.

If I Had My Way ... I would want to bring Sartre and Tagore face to face with each other, in the after-life. Sartre would say, "Hell is other people." And Tagore would exclaim, "So is heaven."

If I Had My Way ... I would initiate a national debate on, is the theatre a discipline or a profession? Or is it a service or manufacturing industry with a growth rate?

If I Had My Way ... I would invoke Kedar Nath Singh's poem that leaves the pages of a slim tattered volume of poems and springs into action while the poet is imploring it to return. I would search for that poem. I would file a FIR and report. Poem missing. Description: words, words, words.

If I Had My Way ... actors would be fitted with a heel. Even Achilles is insufferable without his heel.

If I Had My Way ... men of genius would be blessed with special interests. You see, Shakespeare would never have re-written HAMLET or OTHELLO or ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, if Lord Southhampton had not given him 1000 Pounds. Speaking of Shakespeare, the popular taste of his day was worse than ours. His worst play, TITUS ANDRONICUS was most popular, performed hundreds of times in his life, whereas HAMLET was only performed 12 times, and KING LEAR, once or twice.

If I Had My Way ...I would introduce QC labs and ISO 90014 certification in the theatre. That way plays would be benchmarked and there would be no counterfeiting of bad plays.

If I Had My Way ... I would eliminate apartheid from theatre. That is, the apartheid of ticket pricing which prevents millions of poor from enjoying a good play.

Two: Good To Be True

2007-12-16T19:42:00.000-08:00

1.
After straightening
His noose
The hang man
In a rare moment of retribution
Promised
To colour dye
With an optimistic yellow
The loose strands
For the next candidate

2.
Sometimes you're so busy
Discovering new friends
You rarely recall the ache
You rarely recall the gentleness
You rarely touch the marks of a lost world

That gazes at you
Hurrying, from here to there

In appreciation of Astad Deboo’s work

2007-12-10T22:31:00.000-08:00

1.
For many years
I sought treasures
In far-away lands, across the seas in celestial palaces
I hoped to become a rich man

For many years I read the Holy Texts, and even Nagarjuna
Exchanged views with a sage on a hill-top
I hoped to become a very wise man

I searched for wisdom in the books of the world

Until, one day I met a solitary old tree
Who had grown wise
Accumulating treasures of leaves.

2.
Everyday, I devour my meal:
Of wheat and millet
Organic plants and spices
Which praise the earth
For generating invaluable fortunes

Which one day, I vow to return to Her.

3.
I had no place I could call my home
I am a citizen of the world
I have no address
I am a visitor on this planet
I am merely passing through
In the hope that I would befriend someone, anyone
On this trip.

4.
A prophecy was murmured in my sleep!
Remember: The tranquility which surrounded Thyagaraja’s head
Was not the end
It was the beginning of music

5.
Every time my friends ask me for the road into the sea
I show them a path
They don’t see it
Maybe they don’t want to…
Maybe they cannot sense the goodness of the waves
From the distant shore

6.
Since
The man
With the calliper
Could not enter the Sea
And swirl along with
Waves
He sat on the shore
He dreamt about make-believe
Creatures who whirled out of the foam
In the dark of night
To play children games with him

Six Citizen Shorts

2007-12-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

1.
When
Malik Sunder
Was
Escaping
Through The Royal Passage
Beneath
The Sacred Tomb of the King
He
Was Overjoyed

He
Built Secret Underground Tunnels
Instead
Of A Municipal Sewerage
As
Was Promised To The People
Of The Land
During
An Election Campaign

2.
The
Thunderbolt
In The Azure Sky
Was Meant To Herald
Wet Rains

Instead
Of Striking Down
The Solitary Metereologist
In
His Observatory

3.
Every Fort
Has
A Temple
Where The Citizens Pray
For
Good Rulers
Who Win Wars

And
Declare
Public Holidays

4.
Miles
And Miles
The Two Epigrammists
Walked
Knowing They Would Have To Brush
Away
The Polysyllabic Phrases
And High Theory
To
Decipher
The Dust
And Rubble

5.
City Crowds
Are Rushing From Street
To Renamed Street
But
Seldom
Are City Crowds
Moving
In The Wrong Direction

6.
When
The Wise Man
Saw
A Rock
He Sat Upon It
And Pondered
About The Inevitability of The Historical Processes
Whilst
Defecating

My 52nd encounter with the peacock

2007-05-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

It's a rainy day
Petulantly, he sat under a pink umbrella
Surrounded by rubber plants and peacock friends
Who were staring at me

It was his marriage day

I hesitated to invite you
Why so?
It's your fourth marriage?
I never met the right one again
It's onerous

Splinter of ice in the heart
The sun declining to rise
Descent to hell
No exit
No return

I generally like she peacocks
But today I would prefer an overdose of crack cocaine
Mixed with alcohol

Here
Have some rooh afza

My 51st encounter with the peacock

2007-05-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

I dream of a delicatessen
The peacock places a plate in front of me
What's the breakfast menu, I ask
I'll serve you weariness
Two spoonfuls

My 50th encounter with the peacock

2007-05-26T06:55:00.000-07:00

The peacock had flu
I stuck a thermometer into his beak
Fed him spinach soup
Through a straw
From a porcelain bowl in which I mixed two paracetamols

Into the bottomless night
The peacock souped
Reading aloud from a crumpled paper
He found in my wool sweater

Who invented multiplications?
Why do tables have four legs?
Did Hitler kill five million or six million Jews?
When a cat gives birth to a rat, will it be evolution?
Are thieves taxed?
Do parallel lines meet?
Is geometry, abstract or for real?
Can I marry an elephant?
Et sic deinceps

Next morning, the peacock
Poked me with his toe

Good morning
You say the sun rises in the east
My momma and poppa say it rises in the west
I think, the truth lies probably somewhere in between

My 49th encounter with the peacock

2007-05-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Why are things, irregular
Says the peacock to me
You speak of words and their prophecies
Or you speak of the weather, I enquire
After all
No sun in sight
For 12 straight days in a row
Rather irresponsible, I say

I speak of the mind, and its mindlessness
Meaning what, dearest peacock?

I speak of this ancient tree
I'm perched on
Does it have a brain or not
Or does it monotonously, live

Have one of the zillion trees
Ever asked
Are we nature's experiment?
The peacock paused
Held his poise
My finding is
Trees are over-rated

Just then the chromosomes went cling-clung
Buds blinged-blanged
The stem heaved and ho
One branch belched, crackled into two

The peacock fell
On his backside

And all of me
Could not get the peacock
To discuss the said subject ever again

My 48th encounter with the peacock

2007-05-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

My feathers no more
Like leaves on a branch
Like mortal men
Like the memory of their lives

Look
How this wind scatters my feathers across the earth
How the teak tree bursts with new buds
How the sun is swallowed by a cloud

Now
The sun rises again
So it is with my feathers
One generation comes to life
Another fades away

And
In this way
The peacock dictated his first poem
To me

My 47th encounter with the peacock

2007-05-15T05:58:00.000-07:00

This river has become really mischievous
Too much
Means too much
Why what happened? I asked

Today as I stepped in, said the peacock
The water started to tickle me