you died
long before i could save you
in many ways
and long before my days

that color of delight

a moon, even on a moonless night

was that even a color

in her cream diary

i find a yellowed wedding card

with decades of age

and yet, she found it hard to discard           

an indistinct one it was

a few lines in black and red

a sheet of paper, a judgment

tied in auspicious yellow thread

the card once read over and over

slowly moved to its restful place

few months and it was forgotten

in favor of a life waiting for embrace

but life, it never tried to charm her

instead it gave her reasons and grace

and she rose like single green sapling

with wild weeds and creepers to race

with little rain, little sunshine

and still a long way to go

she wilts sometimes and she whispers

that there is nothing for her to show

someone tells her that a slight shore

will soon guard her from waters rough

and hopes that she will someday see

that she has always been a reason enough

stunted branches

once grown to kiss

free from the prison now

begin to miss

the feel of dim light

the enclosed bliss

they grow away and ignore

their familiar abyss

if i may ask

isn't beauty grey

can't we keep a little black

and give some white away?

a single hand

with a single mind

the best of art

the rest can't find

for creation is an act

of a solitary kind

that none can touch

like a spell that only

a single hand can bind

between the crests
he rests
after a tussle
with the waves
when that star gives in
and they are alone in the dark
without the shine
that many think divine
but what light they say what star
what road takes you that far
that a night falls short of dark
and love isn't a lark

cushions on jute

in warm colors

and gold trimmings

that nobody promised

would bring such joy

have already come to rest

in my mind and beneath my chest

like a packet of dreams

tucked away in my closet

what lies

between your sighs

and turns 

when your gaze runs

and flits

when we are away

and cries

when we part ways  

time
it always travels
on its toes
but we don't see it
till it hits the shores
but the waves
they always know within
that the endless shores
will someday give in

on this day
give me a gift
look away from the present
and glance at what has been

look through my eyes
at the man i always see
at the struggles overcome
and the storms yet to recede

and tell me don't you see
what a lesson you've been
to show the world digging gold
what silver can mean

happy birthday, baby! :* 

if today
light were to say to me
why the dark
chased it all the way
i wouldn't
defend the light aflame
for always
i've seen light slut its way in
while the dark
hadn't even tried to begin

why plant
and not water
why entice
and not share
why seek
and not build
why dream
and not dare

right under the inky sky
i try but cannot deny
that this is the color
that my life has taken
yes maybe i have mistaken
a single sunrise
for a season of warmth
a single victory
for a fabulous story

not too early
and not too late
sometimes we even
forget the date
but so glad am i
of that whimsical day
when my made-up mind
began to sway
toward a face
that has come to be
the real dream
i never had to seek

the shelter and shade
of this deep green tree
is it really meant for me
walking this endless way
the trees have now begun to sway
i know they will come down, for
time has come with a saw in hand
and i see indifference, even in the land

like a pebble
of momentary worth
you pick me up
after a cursory glance
to throw me back
into the wild waves
thinking it is your imprint
that the sea really craves

the circle

there is this complete silence
and that's all there truly is
no sun, no shoots of defiance
no signs of this being my place

please
release me
from the trials
and the many denials
that render no meaning
and chisel away all feeling

each dream
like an old letter
tugs at your swollen heart
like a friend about to depart

life
is not
in the skies
or even in your eyes
it is just
a set of lies

so much noise
so little rhythm
so much around
so little within

a second stint
or my first instinct
why is it so wrong
to look a little beyond

did anyone watch him
take that unusual walk
after making stale promises
to the mirror faces
he knew so clear
that held him so dear
just like the brush
all fresh with paint
and some sludge of the river
that never did return him
despite the promise of the giver

you slipped
so suddenly away
that even now
every night and day
stands barred by the
words and things
i cannot do for they
would remind me of you

because i write
in words away from your own
do not destine me
to be woebegone
for you may have seen
the world a bit gay
but I have also
found a place to stay
whether in my drudgery
or my elusive dreams
or in the life
of the greens and streams

a question slight
or an eclipsed delight
on my way to the moon
a little too soon

He shifted his weight from one foot to another as he rang the bell. He questioned himself as to why he was standing in front of this door again. Yet again. While waiting for the door to be opened, he surveyed his clothes. Yes, the tear in his t-shirt was hardly visible. Yes, the ink he'd dropped on his trousers was now dulled by the dirt and grime. Yes, how old his shoes were could very well be passed off with a whine about the dust on the city's roads. Yes, he said to himself as he wiped his eyes just in time. She opened the door.

As he walked in, he handed her a fresh set of white flowers he'd picked off a plant on his way. They spoke of the weather outside but not a word was uttered about the weather inside his mind. Was a storm brewing? Had the rain stopped? Would the sun ever shine like it used to? He shook off the questions lest she saw. Yet she saw that his eyes were full of questions, that his t-shirt had a tear for it was the only thing he had to wear, that his shoes resembled a mouth open, and that his trousers had not been cleaned barring the sudden afternoon showers.

Small talk has an expiry period as though it were a medicine. Soon it was time to leave. He wished he could stay longer. "Not that hungry" he said in the hopes that she might insist to cook him something warm, maybe an egg, maybe coffee in a keg. But life has its ways, people have their days, and his days were probably over. He left saying his son had been repeatedly asking him to join in their friday dinner.

As he walked down the steps, the flat numbers began to stare back at him. Where would he go next? He collected his bag from the security and made another friendly call but cellphones can shut the world out and then, who was he in the world to anyone? A worthless son? A repenting husband? An unwanted father? A guilty man? A nobody? An outsider? Open the door to accept an outsider, would you?

as you went

if you had only lent

to the one left behind

a fraction of your strength

the many whys
of my livid life
are all over the skies
and welling in my own eyes

that tidy little roll of gauze
is like my dreams of dawn
here, but not here
unattainable, yet so clear

no prayers
no worship
no seekers
and no search
just a step
a single change
not the sea
but a raindrop

my ideals
are not like gifted lies
or mirrors so thin
that i'm lost within

my ideals
are not like azure skies
or roads so long
that i'm all wrong

my ideals
are not like happy sighs
or an alley so blind
that i've a captive mind

my ideals
yes, they are all mine

a drop of your own
a ray that had shone

among all the toys
amidst all the noise
bare of all the bright
is a message of light
the light says to me
that i must let it be
for i'm an inky stranger
better outside the manger

It's been eleven days since I stood by your side and watched the light in your eyes dissolve into your release and my captive tears.

It's been eleven days since I covered you in your cream towel and kissed your forehead, while it was still warm.

It's been eleven days since I let you go from being my honey bunny baby boy to the deceased pet whose CUPA number was 1551.

It's been eleven days since I came back home without having you standing at the landing or barking at me from downstairs.

It's been eleven days since I came home to find your blue medicine bowl and steel meal bowl empty and dry.

It's been eleven days since I put away all your medicines into a big red packet that you were sniffing at madly just a week ago.

It's been eleven days since I put your chains, collar, bedding, and your red brush into a big box you would have loved to chew.

It's been eleven days since I started sleeping with a big gap around my knees that you, and only you, could fill that snugly.

It's been eleven days since I have come home to hear no complaints about all your misdeeds from the day.

It's been eleven days since I have seen anyone at home have their routine biscuits with their tea.

It's been eleven very long days. I hope you're good, lazing with Rustom thinking of your next meal, while the current one is still awaiting digestion. Maybe you will bump into Jimmy or Stupi. Maybe you will all sit and woof away about us. Maybe once I'm there, too, we can play chase, eat Marie biscuits, and nap chest-to-chest at eleven in the morning. Maybe :)

the best dressed lie
of all our lives
is the endless sea
where loneliness thrives

an unhappy chase
under lights so limp
is bound to hurt, to
throw a little dirt

when ready to leave
you must believe
that i was in queue
just behind you

when ready to rise
you must realise
that along your side
is where i reside

when ready to deny
you must try
to dye my red eyes
for denial never cries

an ajar door
is only half true
which one is me
and which one is you?

on this dimly lit night
i hardly have any sight
i feel somebody here rakes
into piles, my many mistakes
my fallacies, my lying errors
my slowly glowing terrors
of lives coming too close
of much heavier a dose
of my ideals spurned
of my fingers burned

the brown of the eyes
that i so deeply believe
are clocking a curse
and i cannot but grieve

words
fly like kites
trifle too light
to fill the expanse
of my blue mind

i was once the sea
raring to go
with every wave
seeking life
in the darkest cave
but i'd rather be
the land so still
let the waves come
but leave me to my will

your life is but an empty jar
that lonelines tilted much too far
crumbs in its fingers
defeat in its dark eyes
it drops the jar, it still defies
but the jar breaks into a million more lies

truth was heaving over me
but i stood still
i did not give in
to his wretched will

take me back
to my mother's stories
of Sirfira topiwala's feast
not cds of beauty and the beast

take me back
to my quaint tiffin box
with two cream biscuits of joy
not tupperwares and foils

take me back
to the excitement of new books
brown paper covers and labels so clean
not words in copies or blurred onscreen

take me back
to games of my own imagination
some cloth, some grain and solitude
not eric berne and colours crude

PS: Sirfira Topiwala is a character from a story my Mom made up from real places and events in a town I used to visit every other month till four years of age. It talked of how this lazy topi-seller uses his brains and makes a lot of money at a village fair and goes home happy - with food, clothes and goodies in the climax and so, the feast. I believed it to be true then and I still wish it was.

when it dies
it takes away
the zeal
the drive
the will for the way

when it dies
it leaves behind
a gap
a grief
taking up all your mind

when it dies
it gives to graves
your words
your moves
dust fills up the caves

when it died
three quarters into memory
the might
the measure
were unknown to all, to every

in my mind
are your old lines
about the crabs that are
tweaking away my delicate designs

amidst other sounds
your old words now crown
memories in my mind merge
but your prediction stands out loud

You were once a stranger. Amidst all the green, you had eyes just for what you liked in me - the sights, the sounds and the small feet wrapped in socks. Years have gone by and your eyes and your life have grown to accommodate my madness, my moods and my mistakes. Sometimes I think (but mostly I overdo it or sometimes I just go by random impulses) and I wonder how confusing it must be for you. Sometimes I decide to set something right and it turns itself over thrice. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes. After yet another such sometime, I want you to know that as mad, nervous and incomprehensible as I may be and I am, I deeply appreciate how your eyes, despite knowing all of me, still choose to focus on what you first liked.

Love you.

do not play
the angles so steep
a doomed triangle takes
an eternity to reap

do not paint
in colours so gay
these eyes are not blind
and you are only grey

do not glide
on your words of paper
i can smell the rains
i can see you vapour

the shoots so green
and the yellow bamboo cluster
like that tamarind so lean
begin to whisper to me that
by my side, agaze and alean
lies my life - in bloom and gleam.

two years have gone by
as i've watched the dark
catching you on the sly
but you only smile wry
and walk the remaining
of your maddening mile

those pots of roses
into which dida
added used leaves of tea
sometimes the summer
returns to me

those rays running breaking
my night's snuggled sleep
lost in dark hours now
sometimes the summer
returns to me

those empty straight roads
leading to quarters in cream
with charming green mangoes
or eleven trees of neem
sometimes the summer
returns to me

those stolen fish fries
in bowls too hot for my hand
or rasna and maggi-lined smiles
lost now in mealtimes so bland
sometimes the summer
returns to me

strand by strand
through your warm hand
runs a bunch of my hair
and the dreams I live to dare

listen to me

words come in millions
welding into chains of thought
that grow tighter around
a boxful of wishes
that were never to be found

a seeker of silence
once tiptoed into the noise
she had only thrice betrayed
her mind's scrubbed voice
that sounds accost sanity
that one trips over light
she learned on her way back
by the shadows of a calling night

watching your back
time tussled with your ties
to your listed priorities
then it bade heavy goodbyes

I was there all the while.

come build a fence
come rouse a rage
the home can wait
the regrets so late

there are no shores
just islands few

…and in those dreams
the inhabitants of limbo
touched the wisps of thought
as they formed and dissolved

the sounds of children merged
with raging sirens
as tokens of life
or reminders of impending ends

…now beyond those dreams
a voice calls back to reality
for the inhabitants of limbo
to be awakened now

dust may collect on daring dreams

and doors may hang heavy under dead locks

but you are the life that flows in shiny streams

beyond dear days and timely clocks

The mirror was where our eyes first met that morning. Half a sight of mine was enough to catch your conspiring gaze. The lines I was drawing to dress my eyes went awry as I saw you, languorous and longing, stepping out of bed to make your way to me. Your sleepy eyes took in all of me - the shining eyes, wet hair, suppressed glee and all things that only a lover can perceive. You hinted that undoing has a beauty of its own and I looked to see if the mirror agreed. My pleats followed one another into a silken heap and you then wrapped me in your arms...

The mirror was where our eyes met later that morning. Half a sight of mine was enough to catch your spent gaze. The lines I was drawing to dress my eyes...

a wavering will
is the hardest thing
shivers through shadows
and the self stands still

the bits of being bounced off
your futile hands
they now lie tumbled and troubled
on the staircase
you built to take you nowhere

A friend of many years left the city today to start his program at IMA. He is probably one of the very few from my batch who went the Army way. Calls for admiration, respect and cheers to the times together.

take that frame
right off the wall
the departing illusions
just asked me to stall

May I never hurt more than I can heal.

this journey
one among many
and many among some more
let's look for a shore
let's look for a shore

i am so vague
that i can hardly take
a collage for a mind
with no more glue to bind
the stray squares of thoughts
like random bits of paper they
fly by
waiting to be held together
firmly onto the grey sheets
to patch the spilling psyche
to cage the captive birds
to string the floating words

i can
face an ocean
but not that door
it opens into life
you know

i can
see that door
bit excess of ajar
little short of inviting
it bangs all night
against the walls of my mind
you know

i can
sense its dusty eyes
its warm musty breath
like a lover starved
awaiting my sorry steps
you know

i can
like a novice dancer
learn the steps to take
or so wonderfully fake
this stupid life-ly dance
you know

stories

pen running on paper
or lip wrestling lip
hands waving in the air
or a long lost grip

Love in the air and everywhere!

A lot of love is in the air suddenly and quite a few friends have recently dived into the committed category. Smiles are floating like CET-coaching flyers outside MCC gates and it's a good thing to sit back and watch. Hair care and words like "understanding" have become neighbours in almost all the messages I get. Nicknames are created, refined and used dearly. Conversations now include detailed descriptions of what was done, said and left unsaid for ocular communication perhaps. Words are dissected finely and garnished with sights glazed with the love drug. The first more-than-friendly hug is shared like a freshly developed picture from nineties and later, framed for the best room in the mind. Priorities have suddenly been rehashed with academics and work plunging like the BSE on a bad business day and phone calls (and this we owe to the telecom boom, Dayanidhi Maran could be the modern day avataar of Cupid) are having to stretch themselves like my Mum's patience. Reality testing especially with regard to time has taken a backseat so far behind that it's out of the car itself and minutes, hours, days and months have merged into one mass with the only point of reference being the someone special.

Jokes apart, and yes those were digs; I say this because you guys are way too much in love to even realize perhaps that the jokes were on you, I wish all the new lovebirds a lot of lovely lovebirding. Keep at it :)

oh forsaken merman
in your mind's cave
i still see remains
your sandy saintly grave

your grey eyes
almost always belied
the desperation
the dementia
and the drowning
of your greyer strands
of your ever shaky hands

dear dadu, the calendar says it's been over three years, but then that's just the calendar...

spread across
the pages cream
scrawny little
letters scream

that one night

there shine
like silvery stars
in the darkest night
of my kohl lined eyes
the joy let loose
by your smiling
distant eyes

silly chirps
a maroon phone
to my ears
you only drone
petty prescriptions
come by easy
oh so free
i begin to wonder
what bird could
at once be
a nightingale
and a nasty crow

hues
strokes
tears
and jokes

Ramya

Because the word conversation gains new meaning when it comes to Ramya

Because Ramya says the cutest “ayyo” after having forgotten behind something that she was sure she had brought along

Because Ramya comes with a force that doesn’t show itself off but doesn’t disguise itself either

Because Ramya walks like Xena, the warrior princess

Because Ramya reminds me of striving and strength that can be created every single day

Because Ramya flips her hair like she’s on camera all the while and I like that even more than her fab hair

Because very rarely is there a day when Ramya cannot leave you feeling better about yourself

Because Ramya carries with her a fund of golden guts, a bagful of quirks and a small wrapped pack of dreams that she will make real

Because talking about Ramya lends a light to the eyes of her Mom that nobody can miss

Because with Ramya can one share, justify, validate everything they ever went through in one Saturday afternoon

Because Ramya always gets my unmentionable jokes

Because it isn’t too often that you comes across a Ramya, and when you do, it changes your life somewhere.

Happy birthday, bum!

Love you :)

Mamma,

I want to tell you that you are wonderful.

I want to tell you that you have been wonderful every single day that I've known you. And you're someone I've known the longest and so, how much having you around means to me is something that only I know. I also believe that we've something amazing going on between the two of us. Everything - the tea times together, the ranting, the reminiscing, the days (and nights) we've been through wondering how we would pull through things to come, the regrets, the little joys, the laughs laced with stress at Min's jokes and Astro's idiosyncrasies and the insatiable need for mishti – all of it makes my life today what it is. When people tell me I look, act, sound like you, I want to tell them that there is no bigger compliment that they could ever give me. And you are like wine, you'll just get better and better with age. So a big cheers to everything you say and do, happy birthday, Ma.

Love you.

just a few
gingerly seconds away
from my fingertips

Tuesdays with Winni

I've been asking people I know well to come up with ten or more adjectives that describe who they feel I am - an offshoot of an activity from my classes on Personality. Responses have mostly been predictable, consistent and a little indulgent perhaps. But that's not what this post is about. I'm looking for my backbone. I'm sure I was born with one but it began crumbling by the time I was 4 and by the look of things now, it will completely cease to exist by the time I get to 24. Of course, I say this in the metaphorical sense. My body is fine but when it comes to my mind, I think I have doubts and very reasonable ones at that.

My counselor often talks to me of scripts - our conceptions and beliefs about our life and life in general that guide how we perceive and respond to all that happens. A script, from my understanding of what he tells me, is rooted almost completely in one's childhood and once developed, this script remains unchanged and holds the key to all kinds of success. Or failure. My own script is something I haven't really been able to apply much thought to. Maybe I don't want to even as I fear my script translates into the life of two decades bygone and the lifetime to come absolutely and starkly empty. Sounds like a dramatic statement to make, I know and I'm guessing that is the issue with soul-searching in prose - what sounds true to the mind always sounds silly in sight and sunlight.

Talking of the adjectives activity, the ten adjectives my Dad listed out were profoundly positive. Things that sound profoundly positive don't really exist. Think of hope (the paradise for fools), eternity (who has ever seen eternity?), meaning, beauty, perfection and on and on. Similarly, my Dad's profoundly positive perception of me doesn't really exist. It may exist in parts, in masks, in habits and simply because in my life so far, I've had no way to walk but for his way. Stepping out of his way incurs immense wrath and I'm not one for facing conflict. I'd rather bend my head than bare my mind. And I like peace, at almost any price. The problems arise because I don't like his way. And I'm beginning to become pretty certain that he wouldn't like me any other way. The daughter he loves doesn't completely exist. I fear the day he faces more than the usual amount of disagreement from me, he'd disown me in his rather verbal and noisy fashion.

My Dad and me. We never went the close-and-later-grew-apart way. Instead it took me 18 years to freely even get down to speaking to him. Today he proudly talks of how we're akin to friends, we eat out together, shop together, rant together. In a way childhood with my Dad's just begun for me. He's never raised his hand against me, never denied me of something he could provide, given me the options that were inconceivable in his life. He trusts me implicitly. All of those count to me beyond measure but things that aren't as simple as agreeing on a shopping list or a place to eat exist. There's talk of curbs when there should be freedom, there will in the future be talk of marriage that him and me won't see eye to eye on surely and there will obviously, be a decline in obedience - the most worthy aspect of me in his eyes. It will hurt him. I don't want to inflict this rude awakening sort of situation upon him and knowing my sub-zero levels of guts, this may never happen but things have been wrong a long way, awareness must come in no matter how late in his life (and mine) and consequences have to be borne.

For now, I'm still doing this stretching between what he wants and what I want. And it's starting to hurt. It's taking a toll on me that might's always right in the place I call home. It's taking a toll on me that the freedom he wants to give me involves letting me drive a car, stand up to the demands that are made of me and always be able to see his perspective but I'm worried that the freedom to seek my life and speak for myself will probably never be mine. That's too big a price to pay for peace and too small a price to reclaim a backbone that will last this time around. This tug and shove situation, the hopes, the disappointments and the absolute disillusionment are getting me down in a big way. Sometimes, everything I've done so far - all the experiences, learning, joy, pain seem null and void because I feel as though I'm nobody, as though I've no say, no way and just no worth.

Feelings like that don't knock before they come. They just come. And I'm yet to regain equilibrium from things that have happened, from days that I have seen and there are things that happen day in and day out that don't really help one move ahead. It isn't as though I'm trying to say others have it easy. I know people dealing with harsher realities and doing it exceedingly well. I'm coming to terms with the fact that maybe I don't hold up as well. I know it takes me time, I know it's never complete, I know that somewhere I'm still not as easy with things as I'd like to be. Obviously, I'm looking for a way out of this, I'm on the way and it's taken me to some breathtaking moments, some wonderful people and little steps of building faith that I need so bad.

At each point of my life when I was drowning, I've been very lucky to have people who've seen the best in me, who've shook me and deafened me till I heard and believed in the things they valued in me. A lot of people have held up the me without the backbone and I really do think it has translated into some of the backbone you see in me today. And in the smile that I sport ever so often. I wish others were as lucky. I wish luck could be shared because acceptance can feel truly wonderful, especially when I know that I come as a complete package of rent-free accommodation to fears, a bland sense of reality that can ruin all fun and shell that I'm trying to whittle away very hard for very long. I can be a difficult person and so for everyone who put up with all that and eventually learnt to love me despite the dark, I owe you a lot more than the biggest thank you.

PS: A lot of really good and really bad things happened in the year that went by. One of the really good things are the sessions with my counselor. Tuesday evenings have been redefined and we start sessions from next tuesday after a month's break. We would've had one today but he isn't keeping well. Get well soon, Winni and a big thank you.

measure after measure
and day after day
losing the only treasure
and emptying it on your way

at the doorstep
that you can't always see
unpolished, rough and uncertain
that's where she may just be

once housed, then homed amply
behind every blink and every tear
the awareness now duels fears calmly
across pages turned back by many a year
and i find myself holding up pictures
do the frames smell of ugly dark fear
have the falls written in destined scriptures
entrapped the awareness i hold so dear

Yes, I don't have all the answers. To make matters worse, I also fall terribly short when it comes to guts, dreams and faith. In fact, the only things I excel at are to carry on, to care and to listen. And there isn't much gold to be found from digging deep among these either.

in your claims
a trifle too early
i reclaimed myself
but a little too late

in your dreams
a trifle too bare
i began to fill in hues
but with a shaky hand

in your games
a trifle too startling
i learnt to play
but i'm still struggling


I owe you :) and here's my down payment :)

it's not so green around here
and the seasons need never turn
it's never too late they say
when we're born only to burn

Apparently, we are adults.

say something nice

the sour tamarind
the wispy little wind
sent into my eye
a twig so sweetly sly
that's when i found that right here
lay the blessing of my dusty tear

we
who are let loose
by the facts that fell short
by the figments that aren't unreal
and the selves that never spoke
will we never learn?

to get that water first
for she had sensed his thirst
a little bowl in her dry hand
she crossed all that land, but
the water that emerged in that bowl
would never quench his parched soul
it seeped away from the bowl so worn
from the years of scrubbing that it had borne

dear december

a very different december
at the doorsteps of my mind
it peels away silly solace
hiding colours for me to find

straight picture syndrome

a tilted frame
now inclined towards you
pretends to kiss
the walls of our minds
one corner off
two others chipped
we begin to balance
on the sole corner
dying to be left behind
a straight picture syndrome
among the sights set free
a straight picture syndrome
don't you ever see?

a little lived life
went really far away
and when it came back
the bones began to play
half un-lived this life
and half began to sway
life took strange pause
and went off on his way

watered not much
not much sun shined
and yet that stray sapling
among the rest, survived.

For the three best things that happened to November.

i have a bunch of wishes
the kind that come true
among the million hitches
if you only knew

a story to tell

letters linger
and words sigh
spread across your
bright blue sky

images flutter
and gaze belies
emerging from your
stark naked eyes

words border
and the page flies
telling the story
in a few lovely lies