Dr Ambedkar and other shorts

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

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

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

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)

# 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

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

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