Dinesh Thakur and two other shorts

1.

The marigold said a birth certificate is unobtainable

So the notary jotted in the certificate

Cause of birth: Dubious pollen seeds

2.

Good thing, the sun is a punctual riser

Said the darkness to the night

3.

(For Dinesh Thakur)

For you

I picked up a pebble at Moliere's grave 

From the Père Lachaise Cemetery

By the time, I met The Imaginary Invalid

On the hospital bed

The stone had hemorrhaged

Three palash stories

One palash said to the other
When they placed me at Saraswati's feet
I had to compete with marigolds and chrysanthemums


The other palash said
When they placed me at my master's feet
I had to combat arthritis and old age


The baby palash told the two
I don't want to be plucked, ever
Who is Kelucharan Mohapatra?
I want to become him 

Three shorts on a Sunday

1.
Mrs Bose chose Rabindro Sangeet
Over Das Kapital
Since it meant Bengali sarees and rosagullas


2.
The churchbell rang
As Tuka stood on the steps with a red clothbag
Selling agarbatti
At 40 paise a piece
To the warkaris
Attending Sunday Mass


3.
Why do my words catch fungi
By the time
I transfer them onto a slate

When Valmiki and Vyas met

The highway robber and fisherwoman's son
Were felicitated
During a literary seminar in heaven
For composing the Ramayana
And the Mahabharata, respectively

Five shorts on a Saturday

1.
Ever since I tamed a million bats as my pet, I sleep upside down.

2.
An idea for the government: Charge VAT for new-born babies.

3. 
Human beings that run on batteries? My next invention.

4.
When he looked deep within his soul, he saw the family heirloom, an alarm clock set for yesterday.

5.
A brothel with a R&D centre? One more of my inventions.

The diplomat's dilemma

Do you wonder, sometimes
Tugging at the grey safari suit
What you say
You regret, later
Er ... Sir I think that border would look nicer 
If we shift it one latitude to the East

No reply
The emissary scribbles a jotting
Pause
Longish pause
No translation for that (as yet)
No chance to second-guess
To re-organise the strategic advantage
He sips his grey-earl tea, bland

Speculates
The formal confabulation of eight hours
Full of twists, traps, awkward testaments
Makes you dislike yourself
What you say
As much as the cunning ambassador
On the other side
Of the table
Who wheezes

Its yourself you blame
Your arbitrations are discomfited
Your underwear itches
Why do words tumble out, such?

So
You change the subject 
Sun Tzu, Arthashashtra, Battle of Qadesh, Vienna Convention, cheap wine, tailored suits 
By then you realise 
Nothing more to discuss

Only silence
Aided by the hottest day in Delhi
Which makes negogiating an international treaty
Oppressive

A fairy tale ending

A passion for order
For symmetry
Everything trignometrically placed
Not to be shifted
Like Aryabhatta
A passion for zero-precision

Like her Umma
She wanted
A world, un-unruly
Everything fixed
Permanent

So
Love (and husband) at first glance
When she had a bath in the river, a bandish played
When the evil kaka spoke, she heard snake hiss and scorpions slithering
No homework was accompanied by gales and hailstorms
Champa-mogra fell from the sky
When she painted a rangoli

Everything picture perfect

An orderly quest for beauty
All well
Kerchiefs ironed
Hair polished
Navel shampooed
Mind manicured

Then one day
A gaze
Of ugliness
A frog requests for a kiss
As she rushes to her odissi-class
She reciprocates
Frog puts tongue in her throat
Flesh on flesh
Moist

A realisation (finally?)
There exists a new world
Unhygienic

Life stands still
Forever
An end to fairy tales
To happy songs

Three shorts about artistes

1.

In the shadows of the Nil Vilaka

The thespian tries to die

To the rhythm of the Mizhavu and cymbals

The audience eggs him on

2.

No Durga idols, this year

Kumartuli's clay modellers are on strike

They wonder why the banks cannot waive

Their loans

If the gods have waived their sins

3.

Wagner and Strauss

In a quandary

Ever since they forgot

The password to music

Beethoven could have helped

But he was very busy

Tuning his piano

Balivadham: Moral of the story

Of all lies
Love is the most untrue

In the forests of Kishkindha
Love is what Thara feels
As she forewarns Bali
She pleads
Fight not Sugreeva

Brave boastful Bali
Had never conceded a battle
His heart thumps even now
Like an adolescent
When Thara enters his chamber
With turmeric perfume 
Her lily 
Clinging to her hair
All of which will be crushed
By mythology

Bali scratches
His armpits with toe-nails
No truth in what Thara says
Just perception

Bali the braggart is scared
(Is he?)
He will lose Thara
To Sugreeva
Again?

Stares in the mirror
What he sees is not a vanquisher
Of Indra, nor a reflection of Narasimhavatharam
His fore-arms want to be the master of what it does
Will it churn the Palazhi ocean
Will the formidable fists grip the mountain Mandara and serpent Vasuki
To extract amrutha
Again?

The devas and asuras
Have forgotten this tale
Not the mirror
Who has heard this tale from Bali a million times

Thara sees
She sees quite a lot
For what a wife sees
The husband can't comprehend

It troubles Bali
This deplorable mania of doubt
It exhausts Bali
These days, he doubts everything
Even his own doubts

Bali battles Sugreeva
Even though he knows he will be comprehensively dead
The gods have conspired
Stubbornly, as they always do

Or is it Bali's fate?
The more he peers over the edge of the cliff
Looking at the abyss
At the bottom of the ravine he sees an inexpressible idol
It is called eternity

Thara understands
She says: Beware
The more the gods advance, the more humanity is degraded
By then Bali is dead inside a dust-storm

Off stage Thara sobs
The gods hear her whisper
Her aide hushes her
The gods (especially that younger hot-blooded one)
May take offence

That's when Thara utters her curse
Don't ask a cow to lay eggs
Gods for justice
Life for happiness
A husband for love

Contrariwise
The epistemologist states
Bali did manage love
Didn't he?

Well almost
That's why they say
To be in love with your own wife
Is to be Bali-ed

Certain intangibles

1.
The route
To the root
Is no where


2.
Is a cow permitted to drink cow milk?
Does a labour union have a labour union?
Can a guru's shishya be a guru to his shishya?



3. 
The ordinary people, everyone talks of, who are they?
I dare you to come out and show your face to me


4.
I went to Purulia to master the Chhau
You can't, said the cultural head to me
It will be a bit too intangible for you


5.
There is no god, I said
That's when the mob threw
Their Bibles, Torahs and Korans
At me

Once upon a time ...

Once upon a time there was a sea
Who fell in love with a water fairy
He adored her more and more
Till he became quite a bore
And started to resemble an oak tree

St V and the City of P

1. 
In 79 AD
The sea asked the mountain
Who is older?


2. 
Domenico Fontana
The emperor
Orders you to cover the frescoes
And stop discovering new ones

I've already done it, melord
I did not want my children
To replay
The hedonistic illustrations
Of life in Rome


3.
When the ash settled
In Pompeii
Pliny's final letter
Sophocles's 120 plays
Art, gardens, the villas, the aqueducts
Slaves
Were missing

What remained was: vulgar graffiti 

4.
The ash, pumice and gas
Could not subdue
The largest erection belonging to
Priapus, the ancient god of sex and fertility

Today
His plastered penis
Is locked, forever
Due to prudishness
In the city's safety vault


5.
Whatever little we know
They are re-burying

Tashi Delek Tenzin

Tashi Delek Tenzin
How be you?
I have forgotten Wen Jiabao
I remember you

Admonishments: 1, 2, and 3

1.
When
The snail admonished the pebble
For blocking his path
The pebble refused to budge


2.
Melancholic
I asked my watch
What is the time
It admonished me
And said: Res Ipsa Loquitur

I speak for myself


3.
When
I offered sinistrums to Rameses II
And Nefertari
They admonished me for being a baboon
Having outlived my stay on this planet 

Sedition and two other shorts

1.
Someone with broken fingers
Held my hand under the bloody sky
My mind is under arrest now
Since every thought is seditious


2.
So nice of the Neel Kurinjis
To remember to bloom
After 12 years
The blue mountain is happy



3.
A black crow flew
Across the road
At the Richardson Crudas signal
With a bit of evening fog
In its beak

Five shorts from South East of K

1.
Two young lovers
Can't elope
Curfew in town, indefinite


2.
Who am I to complain, sahebji
Says the rickshawallah
Even our government
Runs on back-seat bickering


3.
Seven year old chained to a brick kiln
One way to prevent her
From stepping into her own
Kabrastan


4.
Said the CM
How I wish I was never elected
Someone else from my clan in-charge
Speechifying
To a community of rat-catching girls

While I slept
With coconut oil in my hair
And a massage for my back


5.
How much dust in dusty?
Said one town to the next

The moon hums a thumri (and other shorts)

1.
It was odious
No whore willing to have him
Due to his dog's breath



2.
After the earthquake
The village women
Started to stitch the ground



3.
Work is consolation
Said the prisoner in solitary
From the andhaa cell
Breaking stone with a blunt hammer



4.
When I held her hand
It was blazing hot
She laughed
I am a piece of the sun
That fell through the sky



5.
The tree squinted at him and said
If I was a cypress
In Varanasi
You would worship me
With oily diyas
Not chop me
Into tiny pieces



6.
They put him in a washing machine
His thoughts emerged dry-cleaned


7.
A camel sat in my empty suitcase
Pack me, he said
I want to travel to Havelock Island



8.
She refused to forgive her father
Ever since she saw him
With another woman
In his grave

9.
Very few people know
That when the moon goes round
And round
Planet earth
It hums the thumri
In purab ang

Seven shorts from Dharampur

1.
Tomorrow is a Sunday
I'll take it a tad easy
Said the tide
To the beach



2.
Eyes shut
She knew he was done
When all that remained
On top of her
Was his heavy breathing



3.
With a matchstick
He lit the sky



4.
One tree swayed towards the other
Whispered in the wind
It's our wedding anniversary today



5.
At 3 am he woke up
Wondering what is the speed of darkness



6.
Every time she loved
And failed
She notched a chalk mark on her heart



7.
The pillow was sleepy
Being in bed all the time

Vaitarna

Today
I saw the Vaitarna pass by
She looked exhausted

There was a tear drop in the sky

1.
Once upon a half time
There was a tear in the sky
When I looked up
It had turned into a smile

2.
All tears, unlike
Some unhappier than others

3.
My left tear drop and right tear drop
Had a conversation
Trickling down my cheek
Right tear: When I opened my eyes, I saw primroses and lilac. You?
Left tear: Onions

4.
Every self-respecting nation
Has a good cry
On the sly

5.
The tear knew he has grown up
When he was accused of gloom
Brought to trial
And found guilty

Syria

Poor dead body
Dont know what I can do
If I had a white cotton shroud
I would have covered you

Five tiny shorts on a rainy day

1.
Her father promised a million laughs as dowry
That's all he could afford


2.
The fish visited her family doctor
Sir: I am feeling kind of sea sick
In the waves


3.
Just one single copy of Abu'l Fazl's
Mahabharata in Persian
No one knows where it is


4.
One rock said to another
From tomorrow you will be a fossil


5.
I wish I had a broom called Myiagros
Who could chase away these flies

Salutations, O Ganesha

Hello Supreme One, you’ve returned

To Ganesh Galli, Tejukaya Mansion, Chinchpokli

Please come to Khetwadi and Kumbharwada, too

Where for one year, I’ve waited for you

See this old gelatinous hole inside a brick wall

On Sankashti, I sketched your curved trunk with a chalk
Created a 30-feet tall idol with my hands and bamboo shoots

You won’t topple even if Karthikeya, puts stones in your route

See, how I’ve made your jewellery shine like million suns

My blind father taught this to me, his surviving son

To hand-paint your skin with vegetable dyes

Pencils, paint brushes and bhakti (on the side)

May you shower your blessings on everyone

Particularly the 80 sculptors who create you with mud

My jobless friends in Podar and Swadeshi Mill

Who want you to kindly remove all obstacles

Oh my lord of lords, the greatest of idols

Stop being idle, and please do your thing

Always and forever support our activities

Our endeavours during the season's festivities

Or else I’ll paint your eyes cock-eyed
O Ganesha

Three more shorts

1.
Two dozen donkeys
In front of my house
One sees me and hee haws
Hey, why don't you join us


2.
She was to appear in his dream
As usual she was very late
For the appointment


3.
Juliet stood in the balcony
Chit-chatting with Romeo
Who developed a crink in his neck

Three shorts of a kind

1.
The Economist
Advising the FM's cell
Looked out of his Porsche Boxster
To see the delay
Caused by a BMC dumper
Clearing the garbage

Irked, he was

By the five pariahs, barking
Aloud
Much like the high and mighty
When their subsidies were denied


2.
Two felines gaze
Till he hisses
Swishes his tail, erect
Trudges off with a meow

She says
What do you mean
You can't come for a cappuccino
With me

Our pinds
Match not

Says he hopping from
Tree to tree


3.
My husband is not drunk
He is simply inebriated with life
She says

Hoping he will have a drink with her
At least once
Before cirrhosis scars his insides