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

Life need not be vexed

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

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

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

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

The Dubey brothers

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

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

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

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 ...

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

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

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

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 ...

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