Preamble.
No mogra flowers
To decorate
The hearse
No farishtas
To welcome
In heaven
Even Yama
Has given up
1.
There is
An undetermined location
Of which no one knows
So this is a secret
Between you and I
As things go
In the middle of our nation
Exists a smallish aberration
Concealed by a cloud
With a smallish forest, a smallish meadow
A smallish spring
Surrounded by tall walls of steel
This undetermined location
Found on no longitude or latitude
Is inhabited by
They
Who Fear Nothing
Seated on their sofa sets
As high as a hillock
Made of red particoloured wood
Maintaining a temperate mood
They
Who Fear Nothing
Expect the planet
To walk on their knees
As they munch on algorithms
In pieces of broken crockery
For dessert
They suck at the perspiration
Of the people
Till exhausted
The people jump off terraces, hang themselves
Or drink pesticides.
They
Who Fear Nothing
Speak in cryptic rhyme
To each other
To ensure pontification
And ramble-fication
And ghazalification
At night, they wave their encrypted wand
That ensures a barbiturate and anacin overdose
Planting melancholy in the soil of our land
They inject pessimism in the water supply
Two taps in the public toilets: doom and gloom
So that tomorrow
When someone somewhere jumps
In front of a train
It causes copycat suicides
In this way
They
Who Fear Nothing
Ensure a non-stop supply of suicides
One way to end (forever) the ennui
The entire operation carried out
Undercover of a no moon night
With an old-fashioned mantra
Pointing at the forehead
That causes the body to be flung
Skulls smashed at the bottom of a well
So all in all
Everything is tip top
Except
For the
Aroma of the Nag Champa
It lingers
Sort of hangs in mid air
It
Threatens to enter the lair
Of
They
Who Fear Nothing
They
Who Fear Nothing
Peel
Off their gas masks
Sniff with their nose
It brings a smile
That
They
Who Fear Nothing
Start to fear
Promptly
An anti-smile ordinance is issued
To the department of defence
"Please: Trample the aroma of Nag Champa with deo
Don't get a psychiatrist; just crush it under a hippo-rhino"
Over and out
In this way
They
Who Fear Nothing
Save their fortress
From a new kind of foe
But
Somehow-somewhere
The frangipaani incense
Hums a ditty
She adorns a saree and drifts
With the decaying wind
All the way from here to Sind
They
Who Fear Nothing
Have an inside out frown
On their brow
They don’t want an end
To the
Reign Of Mental Disorder
They consume a bottle of rum
Fornicating on their bright green bed
Due to a rare pedigree of vellum
What happens next?
That too, shall be subsequently told
Wait and pay heed
Remember: This tale is worth its weight in gold
2.
So
In the bowel of this undetermined location
Of IQ-freeze and sterilisation
There levitates a cream-coloured box
Six locks to its bottom
Made of hand-crafted paper
To reach it you have to open a trapdoor
Very very high
Up in the sky
You need no map
A good nose will suffice
To follow the scent of
The Indian Magnolia in the region
Red coloured petals that sigh
They
Who Fear Nothing
Tried to trample it under their feet
It started a domino effect
Laughter was sterilised
In all this
There is the aroma of the Nag Champa
Which leads the people to
The Princess of Peekaboo
She looks out of a quarantined window
Left profile
Sulphur light glows on her nose ring
Clumsily lodged on her left nostril
She says
See me
In a way
I am lit
By my own sun
Just then
Hundred yellowish crows arrive on the scene
They caw caw tales from her past
Perch noisily on her head
Like a Greek chorus, they prophesize
Her future drips from their beaks
It's a sign from the gods
Rescue me, she says
From
They
Who Fear Nothing
How can we rescue you?
O Princess of Peekaboo
Ask the crows
Can we hide the noose that has been designed for you?
Can we offer you the original Mona Lisa painting?
Can offer you a helpline to hell?
Can we the crows perform the Swan Lake?
Can we?
The Princess of Peekaboo
Who has seen it all
During her days on the Island of Hypocrisy
Retreats into world weariness
Her scrap book of cut-and-pasted tragedy
In that cream-coloured box
That has an aroma
Of the Naga Champa
She tries a smile
But tears appear
Out of her mouth
Becoming a kernel
That flies away
With those crows
Forever
They
Who Fear Nothing
Know about this
Seated on the marble balustrade
Sipping on their mustard coffee
They apply Amrutanjan
On people problems
They spout high philosophy
Speak jurisprudence and equity
About profit and loss
In the interim
There is a criss-cross
Life it catches up
As it tends to do
Nine shots of vodka I gulp in one go
Meanwhile
Life circles the earth
And
As I disembark the 4.44 local
Smithereens my liver sclerosis
Once and for all
I lie prostate
Half-drunk
I lie on a railway bench
When I speak
Someone places a thesaurus on my mouth
The words dry up
3.
I am silent
I see nothing
I feel nothing
Except the taste
Of morning dew
On my lip
That's when
I realise
I am chained to the bed
My wrists bandaged
The nurse-maid bathes me with sponge
She opens one window
Its the fragrance
Of frangipani
It emanates
From five and a half petals
My dose at dawn
Yes, I know what it is
It is
The aroma
Of Naga Champa
Once banned
In these parts
I smile
A honest smile
A rarity
In times
Such as these
That night
The Princess of Peekaboo
She plays Bach
That's her way of soothing strangers in her box
I watch her fingers
She has a face on either side of her head
She cackles
It's because I utter two truths
At one go
Two sets of words
From either side of my mouth
Then she clasps my fist
She bathes me in a whirlpool
A fig is our soap
I pour rain on me
Wrapped in a deer skin
I see her strum a harpsichord
Which instead of playing a symphony in G minor
She produces a rainbow
In 13 colours
I place my hand on her head
Craters
I ask her what is this
She guffaws
Like a Yakshgana dancer
Every time her heart broke
She threw her head away
It always rolled back
Damaged and dented
And glued itself on to her neck
She reassures me
My tectonic plates are intact
On cue
The plot thickens
They
Who Fear Nothing
Know about me
They want to capture me
Cut my happiness into tiny pieces
With their magnetised knives
In their orderly kitchen
Have me for vegetable broth
A chimera tells me this
My crime
I am trying to live, in a heroic-happy sort of way
They
Who Fear Nothing
Have read my dissertation on how
Life can be beautiful
That the people can be happy (in a way)
Instead of switching on the gas
And striking a match
They
Who Fear Nothing
Say this is not good
I have to be extinguished
My carapaces and elytra torn off
Along with my propensity
To smile
Pain
Felt most
On a sad Sunday
4.
The Princess of Peekaboo
Will have none of it
She extracts a secretion from my grin
Offers it to the frangipani
With a bit of mumbo jumbo
The fragrance of frangipani, lingers
In the box, the city, the nation
It percolates the dreams of flora and fauna
It floats up
It kisses the sky
As a result
Even the ghost of the Nag Champa
She stirs
In her grave
And bellows a Ha Ha Ha Ha
Followed by a Hee
The Princess of Peekaboo
Grows her mane like frangipani
Her arms replicate the stems
Her tiny eyes resemble the petals
When she kisses a frangipani flower
It says, your kiss is better than me
That's how it is
A smile-revolution
This aroma
This persistent aroma spreads
The air is frangipani
The atoms are frangipani
The emptiness is frangipani
It irks them
Especially
They
Who Fear Nothing
Who want to win the war of woe
Will they?
Or will the victor be the aroma of frangipani?
Or will it be
They
Who Fear Nothing
Who want to seize all smiles
Bury the laughs
Burn the root of it all
All of this through a writ petition
Yes, that's what it is
It's a well known Habeas Corpus
A case study for the next gen
When the fundamental right of smiling and laughing
Stood abrogated
Q.E.D.
5.
It's the future
I see it (sometimes, when I focus my eyes)
Me on my death-bed
I gaze above
Into the sun rays
The Princess Of Peekaboo
She swims in the air
Her white hair swirls like a Kathaking dancer
She kisses an asteroid
That's passing by
I send her
A morse code
She looks down
From that great height
She sms-es me, and says,
I am gay and glorious
And also so lonely
Just then a whiff of frangipani, appears
The sms never reaches me
None of them, do
The Princess of Peekaboo
Plays a drum beat
One single hand in multi taal
To scare the suicide disease away
A garuda appears
She climbs it
Drum in her hand
She flies away
Once and for all
I sit there
Look above
An abstract of bleak black and grays
A solitary streak of a bird
Postscript.
Eons later
A frangipani falls
From the sky
On the top of my head
It's a gift
From the Princess of Peekaboo
The five and half petals tickle me
Again
And again
Five and half times
Now I must find some way
To stop dangling
From the beam
In this shed
I request someone
To unknot this rope
Around my neck
I say to myself
With a smile
