For No Good Reason At All

And if suddenly,

the wafer-moon is flooded with memories of a rouge summer, I will
get your window to spill 

a little champagne light on 

that pillow cover. The one still

tangerine-violet after 

all these years of my not

getting around to burying

a sleepy laugh in it. You

may not ask

why 

No MakeUp Look

And April pours onto the Fool's
jaywalking fingers, told you the sun's
a guerrilla snowflake. Sweep
the corners of your dream or just
put a silly face on the
carton. But by the time
the frock crumples, if
you are still on the deck watching
those rock-salt skies fade with your
wonder at the strength of his arms,
stay where you are, I'll join you. Stay
where you are, I'll



join you -

Sunk

Funny little letters, rising 

falling

together

alone

out of pace

out of breath

undisturbed

unperturbed

sand-dunes.

Where there was a voice, 

there is a desert.

Can I sink?

Can I

please?

To Jude's Ma

Dear

Woman-I-dreamt-of- a-hug-from,

the bridge that you cannot seem to cross is the one

under which your little boy waited alone

to sell off his shy song

to the friends with all the Coolness and the

Girl with all the mistakes.

Thought you'd want to know.

Hug

hug

hug,

Girl with all the mistakes.

Knowledge

The sunlight on the cemetery grass will tell you.

The moon with the off-white bones will tell you.

The dust on the tri-cycle parts will tell you

the final thing that you'll fall out of love with 

is 

the circumference

of

your wonder

.

Too Cool Only

Also,

did I tell you

that the love letter you wrote this pretty city

twelve years back 

is now the funny jingle that is raking in

millions for the bosses who pay me 

to circumscise the stars

in your little girl's 

eyes?

Cobwebs

Mumma,

you say I am too young to tell Zinnia's from cobwebs.

You scold me when you see me saving up all my rickshaw coins

to buy a little china vase I can put my Zinnias in. Cobwebs to you.

Cobwebs, you say.

You love me, like I cannot remember loving people. 

So you scold me. Why must a girl of twenty-whatever water

cobwebs with dust from a borrowed water-strainer with a 

broken spout? Too much of Eliot and Plath, too long

with the wrong man, you say.

Mumma, you love me like I remember loving people.

People that became book-pressed Zinnias that became

cobwebs in little china vases. Cobwebs to you.

Mumma you love me, you say.

Then why won't you tell me that somedays

cobwebs are Zinnia's  and Zinnia's

are cobwebs and

Eliot and Plath and the wrong man are the only right

ones to hold against my chest?

'First Breath After Coma'

And then, at once,

She pulled out one quartet of the orange,

had her fingers work their way around the fragile

white threads to tug out the rind in

one peeling spiral and

tick off the slipping pips so 

She could

cup her citrus hands

over his shineless eyes and whisper

"The earth is not a cold dead place

 The earth is not a cold dead place.."

Fog

When I grow old I want to

remember that check shirts and

pushy puppies and silver clips

and shrinking socks and highway

guitarists and starry skies

and orange peels and frayed laces

and bubblegum suns and 

silly sparrows and night trains

and shampoo-noses and

twilight-coffee and

snowfall paintings and

smiling omelettes and 

runaway friends and

freelance lashes

made me

happy

but not remember

just why

:)

Ribbon

Ei bar jodi jiggesh korti
ki chai,
just
boltam na!

Things People Say

*Friend1:

(looking at her oily lunch)

"I think Ma is secretly seeing an Arab Sheikh.

 ETO tel pae kotha theke?"

*Friend 1:

(After I have fallen off a swing, therby dropping the Cadbury Crackle in my hand)

Picks up the crackle, goes to a corner, holds her sides and laughs:

" O God, Sholo bochhorer bondhu ta ke na tule Sholo minute er Crackle ta ke tullam! O God, ami just

kirom?"

(Breaks crackle and puts into mouth.

I am still on the ground.)

*Kid Sister

(Looking at her HUGE piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken Breast)

" Bujhli Didibhai,

Ei murgi tar buk er pata chhilo!"

*Kid Sister

(On her take on the new One Direction Video)

"Mone hochhilo 5 ta Justin Beiber Sea Beach e chhute berache." 

*Friend2:

(Supposedly disillusioned.

After I have told her I want her to be OKAY.)

" You want me to be Okay.

O-ke. Ki funny word! O ke? 

Who is that?

hehehe"

*Friend3:

(Trying to prove that he wouldn't go back on his promise)

"Mard Ka Baat/ Haathi ka Daant"

*Friend4: 

(Casually commenting on our colourful college ambience)

"Ekhane shobai ek.

Keu chokh maare,

keu lok maare."

*Friend4:

(Looking at a tall girl by the canteen)

"I am the height of her thigh.

sigh.

*Friend5:

( Venting her anger over the fact that Trinity Dublin would

fund Engineers and not Literature Students)

" Mane ta ki? Ora Trinity Dublin gie ki korbe?

Irish hammer die machine banabe?

Hammer gulo import kore nilei hoy na?"

*Friend5:

(in the middle of a class discussion on how Christopher Marlowe's death could have been staged)

"Kintu Marlowe ke ke marlo?

Marlowe ki tahole shotti morlo?"

*Friend6

(Grilling me about my non-existent crush)

:find anyone cute?

Me: Not really.

He: Arre bol na.

Me: Shotti, na.

He: Na boltei hobe.

Me: okay fine this guy from Ogilvy, may be.

He: ooo. And did he Ogle? 

Friend1:

(looking at me in a concerned kind of way)

"You toh live in your own crazy world where everyone actually believes je you are not all that crazy."

Friend7:

(Chilling, arguably not stoned)

    :I don't really understand that She Will Be Loved Video.

Me: Arre the dude hits on his girlfriend's mom.

Friend5:

(genuinely confused)

So then. Who will be loved?

Friend5:

(Worried over her lack of emotional stirring during a supposedly intense literary experience)

'Na mane shotti. Shobai teared up, ami chhara! Even you did no?

Me: Um. Oi ar ki. But I am toh a little, you know.

She: Sohini, I think where there should be a heart, I have a cavity!

 (Friend 8 starts humming *Empty Street/ la la la/ a HOLE inside my heart*, quite accidentally.)

* Grandmother#with highly questionable eyesight

(On seeing LA Reid in X-Factor)

"Oma eki! Obama Gaaner competition e?"

*Grandmother# a few weeks after a lunch at Marco Polo

" Arre, oi shundor resturant ta, jetae shedin gelam amra! oitoh,

Vasco da Gama, na ki jeno?"

*Father#during India Match

(On the phone with his friendly collegue)

"Erom time e Karishma ke bat korte namalo?"

Read: Karishma= Ajit Agarkar.

Yes.

I live in brilliant company.

Watch this space.

In the Name of Morning Classes

Ten:something on a woolly winter morning and the College Street crossing is crazy as ever.

You adjust your hood, double-stretch your sleeves and look to your right.

look to your left.

You are crossing the tram-line,

on the look out for any early buses that might appear out of nowhere and body massage you.

There are none.

In your head you let out a little sigh of relief.

You are mid way through your precarious road-crossing mission when

suddenly you find yourself surrounded by a PINK flock of SHEEP.

You tell yourself you are dreaming.

Yes you are probably still in your bed, dreaming of the journey to that Metaphysical Poetry class that you are going to miss.

Dont panic, these sheep are not real.

It's only a shamefully unimaginative dream-metaphor for all that sleepiness,

you reason and then

one of them mangy little sheep,

a PINK little sheep

headbutts you in the knee.

Aww:o

Okay.

This is no dream.

But you are going to miss that Metaphysical Poetry class anyway.

(College Street is one of those delightfully random places where you cross your roads with buses, trams, copy-wala-theyla-gari, Book-Vendor-Rickshaws, Band-Wallah's Ponies, and as I found out today, pink, hyper sheep. Apparently, the owners mark their flocks with one particular dye to claim proprietorship.

I wonder how the males of the flock feel about the colour choice. Err)

Survivors

The day you

pasted orange peels all over the sky

threw your books and socks into the suitcase

scribbled a verse on the one way ticket

scissored out a sparrow from that last ten rupee note

pressed your freezing palm over my eyes and 

whispered

'Polar Express, look!'

was the day I knew we would never make it to

the other side.

Our side, our

tumbling tectonic caving-in side

was

way too beautiful

to be going down without

Us.

Chuppi

The Book-cover On the Window-ledge

Lying here in the humming sun.

Looking around for the book that I used to cover.

The light flits in through iron bars and lands on

my skin, every inch of it crowded with impressions not my own.

Well, not anymore. Ink drops, thumb prints, margin-scribbles, coffee-coloured

ciggarette holes. Names and dates and feather-touches. Guess I am bound by their

journey, to remember. I don't want to remember. I don't want the sun to shine into

my lost secret core. I was not meant to have a secret core of my own. Or lose it.

I was meant to sleep on my book like a strong soundless shell

while others dug into it's heart, misunderstanding it in newer ways.

I was meant to be a book cover.

Covering my book well.

It was not for me to remember.

The Rock By the Sea-Line

Lying here on the brink of my waters.

Dreading one wave at a time. Every sign on

my bumpless body washed clean. Never been allowed a mark. 

Never been asked to remember. I cant tell the scent of the salt

from the song of the shells. I want to remember. I want to remember 

the first sea-bird who stopped to rest on my shoulders on it's way south. I want to remember the

direction in which her feathers were ruffled. Did she marvel at how strong I was?

Did she hate me for being strong?

I want to remember the sand castles people built. The grains they sunk their toes into.

The silence they carried home. The words they left behind

for the sea to console. I want the sun to scortch caves into my body.

I want some young boy to carve a tender name upon my skin between the arrival 

of a thousand waves. And the vein-like letters of her name to cover me 

long after he has forgotten about her sad-song eyes.

All I want is a memory I can save from the sea.

I don't want to be strong anymore.

Just broken enough to

remember.

Since I turned out to be too dramatic for my own liking#

Life is mostly as stupid as chilling with your favourite people
while doing your favourite thing (nothing)
in the middle of your favourite month,
only to end up missing one bright-eyed, Kerala-twang-ed nurse-woman who had
spent an entire saline-drip afternoon listening to you talk
when you had nothing to talk about.
That was September.
You have woken up since.
People around you talk and talk and talk.
Perhaps you listen.

Do I have to fall asleep with roses in my hands?

Then suddenly,

you wake up from your dream 

as the 3:30 winter-light steals in through your

apartment windows and into your waning slumber.

You spring off that messy-since-last-week bed and

put on your dad's old sweater and do not

stop to lace your sneakers or explain it

to your mother.

You speed down the stairs of your building and past the

drum-room and out through the gali onto

the road where a yellow taxi finds you.

You exchange a word with the cabbie and your

taxi tears through the city like a comet through

a June night

past the red-tin minis and the chattering school buses.

Past the warm-rug pet stores and the jingle-bell cake shops.

Past the map-lost tram line and the verse-etched cemetery,

your taxi shoots,

hurling past the brooding greens of a lush evening and the browns

of some grazing ponies. Past the whites of the Memorial marbles and

the scent of the childhood stadium.

Past the starry restaurants and the hippie foreigners,

past the universe of silence that dents the rest of your

dull-leather seat and suddenly

you arrive.

You walk past the balloon-and-rifle man, the

pav-bhaji wallah, the odd begger, the haggling

boatmen. The river has already swallowed the sun but 

the metal necks of the bobbing buoys bear orange

burn marks. You look out at the ferry-dotted waters and

start descending the weed-water stone steps of the ghat. 

You are this close to finding the magic winter afternoon that got

lost on these steps, down this

water. You are sure it is still there somewhere in the trembling belly

of this river, wrapped up in a soggy flipkart cardboard.

At least that is how your dream went.

You close your eyes and argue your limbs for

a cold

plunge -

Then suddenly, 

I wake up from my dream.

31/1

Soon you will be gone
really, completely gone.
Soon there will be others feigning to fill up your fields,
like the music of a sinking stone or a
toy store xylophone
filling up the blindfold spaces of an afternoon apartment.
Soon.
But for what it's worth, you
are here
now.
Just the way I remember you.
And all your pretty wrappers.
All of them.
That sky-wool sweater Dida knit for my second birthday.
That dwarfy Christmas tree with shiny purple balls and the
wax santa with a broken nose.
The Hit-Me and the Rocking-horse that I insisted were, like me,
females.
The Tri-cycle I used to ride around the roof,
wiggling through Thammi's Patabahar and Noyontara 'woods'.
The smell of orange peels upon my Chamber of Secrets, pg 103.
The scent of a brown face in a half-boiled sun and a
hard-bound Feluda,
and oh, the scent of birthdays :)
Then there was that Rudolph costume from my junior school recital,
those horribly golden pompoms from the sports drill,
that Tagore House Prefect-badge too.
Also, the bunny pencil-bag my bucktoothed best friendS picked up
for me on our way back from school -
now ink splattered, now out of school,
now mine as ever :)
Then the one
face I missed from across the hurtling
b-boying banner-strung
hall. Then
the scarf.
The shoe-lace.
The googly-eyed seal.
I said all your pretty wrappers,
I said 
all of them.
Soon you'll be gone.
Really, Letter-lessly
gone. And soon
there will be the others.
But oi
December,
you were my
first. I think I'll
always love you
some little.

Hazy

Roll up in your woollies and
walk down a winter's evening with
a song and an ice-cream moustache.
Let the chill sleep on your nose, twitch
it only when you are thinking.
Pull down your sleeves till your fingers are just
woolly paws with which you can twist
your Fiama ponytail. Feel a little giggly when they look
strangely at the cone in your hand, how would they ever
understand?
Brisk steps to nowhere,
amuse a skinny puppy along
that pavement with biscuits and fake mews. Then may be
stand somewhere
in the middle, catch a
leaf and a smile. And
on your way back home, when you pass the
Phuchka-kaku, don't stop.
You still haven't figured out what to do with all
that imli-water.


"if I forgot who I am, would you please
remind me?"

Secret

'once broken,
 always beautiful' ,


said the mirror to the music.



'yara tere sadke/ ishq sikha
main toh ayi jag taj ke/ ishq sikha'

Scrabble

You scoop up shells
and thoughts
from the sandy waters that
he no longer cries into.

You zip all your pretty words
into the blue rucksack
now too old to carry his laughter
to the fields.


Why did they tell you
you have a way with words?

You have a way with words only
when you give them away.
You have a way with words only when he walks them home. Or
leaves them behind on the tongue-tied scrabble board.
You have a way with words but



he knows your way by heart.

Cover

It'd be my favourite time of the year and

He'd be dressed in his January-best.

We would be old enough to pick any pretty restaurant

we liked and I would have my hair tied back
in that old messy pony, the hazy smell of a winter-night
lingering around my wrist.

He would lean over and ask me something, I would

look up and say something nice.
So far it'd be all-things-my-favourite,
so far

he'd get everything right.

Then when the music starts to waft down
the shadow-lit hall,
I would not bother correcting him.

Perhaps I would have, had I remembered to record your low-sung cover
from all those winters back.

'...She can't remember the time, when she felt needed/ 

if love was red, she was colour blind...'


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCm6gRHINqA

Saturdays and Such

There's something particularly strange about Saturday afternoons,
something that makes you want to find yourself in a particularly quiet
corner of Starmark, with a particularly lazy song on. May be even be surprise-treated to a  particularly favourite meal out of the Selimpur Dominoes by no-one-in-particular.
All that, without particularly going out of your house.

I could go on and on about this one, but then I am not
particularly bored.

O (my) Malley

"Isn't it the same with all men"?
"No, to some men their family is everything"
"And, these men..you, know them?"
"Yes. I know one of them.."


I'm glad  Grey's Anatomy finally caught up with me.
It's the way I used to be about Bones all those years back - Google-ing out every little background score,
writing down every other dialogue that stirs something within. Waiting for 10 pm like my life depends on it!
And then there's George O'Malley to make things better:)
Honestly, I do not get the brouhaha over McSteamy. I mean, that guy looks like the love child of
Brad Pitt and Betty-the-Bull-Dog :|
McDreamy has his charms allright, but I don't think much of his character in general - wayyy too wrapped up in his own..err, dreamy-ness, if you ask me :P
O'Malley, on the other hand,
is all that that guy was supposed to be  - warm, goofy, unassuming.. adorably unaware of his obvious aww-inducing element. Georgie is man enough to be sensitive (in an unapologetic way),
and occasionally, sensible.

'You were a good kid Georgie..always so sensitive..I'm sorry you  had to grow up feeling different from us all' ..
*siigh*

They just don't make O'Malleys outside Seattle Grace, do they?
 :(

Cursive

Riyaa...?

Riyuuu ? Raka?

The strangest thing was happening to Mrs Roy Choudhury as she sat in the shiny-tiles lobby of the insurance office, checking

with her husband's umpteenth policies that were now supposed to get her by.

For no good reason, She was trying to recall her nickname - you know, that

often funny, always  pointless, quarter-of-a- name

that our close ones insist on calling us by, despite the fact that we have a perfectly spellable ,

fairly whole name anyway. That sort of thing,

Mrs Roy Choudhury was struggling to recall.

For no good reason, she could not.

She was positive it began with the same 'R' that opened her own name.

Or was that her surname? Mrs Roy Choudhury tried and she tried some

more, but for the love of life, she could not

recall.

'Maa'm, this is where you sign..here'

With a confused jolt, Mrs Roy Choudhury found her way back to the roller-tip pen that had somehow gotten between her fingers.

Slowly, she

traced the cursive loops of the surname that she had been bestfriends with for the last seventeen years.

Roy Choudhury -

'Is that all? Do I need to sign anywhere else?' she asked with uncharacteristic deftness.

' That would be all for now Maa'm' , the young agent smiled sympathetically.

Slowly,

Mrs Roy Choudhury got up to leave for a home where the other half of her surname no longer waited

for her to return.

It was still her home though.

And it was still her surname. But, honestly,

what was that funny name they called her by in school ?????

For the love of life, she could not

remember.

'Yuhin, pehlu mein baithe rahon..

aaaj jaane ki..zidd na karo...'

Fraying Still

We all would have given up somewhere in between,
if not for the replay button on our MP3s.

'and I would have stayed up with you all night/ had
I known how to save a life..'
:)

2012

I learnt a little Math.
:O
Twenty Twelve.
:D

Vanilla Clock

My fingers still smell of vanilla! That's the best part!
Besides the part where you get to crack the egg like you are
a surgeon making a heart-tear. (No, honestly, egg-cracking is the most underrated art ever. There is something oddly satisfying about getting it just right.)And the part where you lazy-whisk it while
watching tv. Or rough-whisk it while watching tv. And the part where you finally dip your hands into the deepest layers of the by-now-gooey batter and then lovingly, violently tickle it! Not to forget when the gorgeous cocoa sprinkles turn the flour-yolk-butter-sugar-milk-vanilla-thingy a lovely light brown! Or when you place your batter-bowl inside that yellow-warm micro and shut the mini-door with a spirited smack.
I would have been sitting right in front of the micro at the moment,but
Ma reckons those evil rays from the machine might
dumb me down or something. *rolls eyes dumbly :P*
Baking's always such good fun. But I was only half-right about the best part thing. The best part,
is the forty-five minutes of vanilla-whiffed wait.
This, is the best part.



I hope it is a round little cake:)

Forever and for Always

I had nearly forgotten how much I adored those old cassettes from... backintime.
They don't make cassettes anymore. It's all a click or a share away, all the good/bad/debatable music you ever wanted to listen to. Cassettes are essentially like our grandparents I suppose - you know, the last of the living witnesses to the epic-ness of a World War II or a Satyajit Ray... a bumbling, awkward memory of that kind of grandness that is the thing of lazy-noon stories today.
I was cleaning out one of my less-sociable shelves,and the good(literally)old(literally) fellows
just stumbled over into my hands, at once making them dusty and happy!
It had been so long since I had held them, or even seen them, it was almost like the whole *first time* fondness all over again! You know,when you've just brought it home from the ever-enchanting G55-store at Dakshinapan,when you know it's about to be wrapped up in cute blue papers for your birthday the next day, when you are so impatient to check out the songs that you refuse to sit still till it is in the stereo,that kind of instant, unshakable fondness. The ashen layers time that had accumulated on top of their still-as-pretty glass covers were at once a reminder of their age and their agelessness. It was a strange strange thing.
Browsing through, I came across a Toybox ('Tarzan is handsome,Tarzan is strong /he is very cute and his hair is long! :P), one Aqua (Dr Jones probably still hasn't picked up the phone, ha ha)
Nursery Rhyme Hour by Preetie Sagar (apparently this was a lunch-hour ritual after returning home from Humpty Dumpty - my funny-named prep school), Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come,  one MLTR, a couple of Shania Twains, one particularly damaged Backstreet Boys, Taal, Atif Aslam:Doorie, Kaho Naa Pyar Hain (stop staring at me already) and of course, the cult, Titanic. I was sure I had a Westlife somewhere, but it was not to be seen.
Looking back, that was probably the time when we didn't bother to judge the music we listened to. We just listened to them in good faith (and some madness)
But that was then. Now we have learnt of genres and sub genres vowed our allegiance to our choice of bands. Now we won't be caught dead tapping our feet to a pepsi-pop number, no matter how groovy it happens to be. No, that is just not cool enough.
After half and hour of dust-cough and dilemma, I somehow decided against wiping the grayness off those covers. One by one, I put my old friends back into their musty dark jam-room where they can be themselves for a few more years to come.
Somethings should get to stay as they are.
'Cause I'm keeping you forever and for always..' she had said.

Well,
Almost always :)

Cold Quill

Graft it on your skin then. Drill it in, till
the Tea Party settles down right at the pit. Then
just forget about it. Or may be even














forget about it.

One-seventh of a Sweater

'Aree hoy blazer ta khule feyl noito
pull down the skirt! Mone hochhe tui khali blazer pore,
ha ha ha ha! '

'Kintu blazer khulle thanda lagbe toh'

'Tahole skirt ta namie ne?'

'Na motei na. Only Krittika Guha (*name changed)
type people wear orom long-long skirts beginning from their diaphragm.
Ami blazer tai khule ni.'

'Tui already kaapchish!! Ei take my sweater. I'm not cold. Ne. Uff.'

'Na na, then you'll catch a cold and aunty amae bokbe.' ( shivers a little)

'Arre naa amar lagchee na thanda, onnnnnn god. Ne tui!'

'Thanks :)'

'Kaeda kore sweater na kine blazer ken aro!'

'Are blazer ta e *courage to know* ta golden e stitch kora! Pretty laglo. Tai.'

'Tui na seriously khub neka!'

'Hehehe, jani. Tiffin e ki enechish?'

'Chocos. Tui?'

'Ei AMIO chocos! Chol share kori!'




Today,
these two girls caught a three-second glimpse of each other across a particularly crowded city crossing,
roughly seven winters after they shared this strange conversation.
Winters are always so strange.

This-gruntled :/

*note to self* -> I HATE TERM PAPERS
like I love John Foreman.
:|
No, really.

Let Go

Take away my lamp-green winter and

I'll give you poetry.

'It's alright, cause 

there's beauty in the 

breakdown - '

Passage

And now
faith is a stranger's face at a tram window.
Always at a safe distance.
Passing.
Slowly.


Surely.

Aircrash

: Are you trying to woo me again?

: I'm trying to write.

: stop trying to woo me!

:You want me to stop writing?

: Don't you stop writing!

: But I was trying to woo you, you know?

:Yeah. Oi.
Write something new today?

Tung Tang

Brishti tui
tung tang, raat jege
bhul bhaal,
cheshta kore geli / Ar

amar shaanto-chokhe,
lokkhi-ghum
ektu rege gelo


Brishti tui
tung tang, raat jege
bhul bhaal,
cheshta kore geli?


Brishti tui amar chokhe,
ghumer cheyeo bhalo.
:)

Little Glass Bottles

Little glass bottles gather dust.
On their lap, a tiny rubble of white sugar balls lie still.
Months of un-use,
and you can almost expect the sweet ovals to break into a sticky sweat against the
waiting glass walls.
The mark of touchlessness shows the deepest,
and the little glass bottles don't escape it either.
I don't quite speak the language of little glass bottles but perhaps
they want to roll around inside giant school bags, clinking
against each other as you carry them around those Southern streets and then secretly,
to your little room. Perhaps they still
want to be that little form of powerless love that you reach for,
when a sudden cold or an ache
bully your toothy smile at the end of a roguish day. Perhaps they did get
used to your confused label-reading after all..a pretty pair of tired eyes,
squinting hard to tell apart a swell from a sneeze - I see how that can be the cutest goof ever:)
People, when left alone, come up with the strangest of things.
The little glass bottles just said something pretty strange too.
Of course, I don't really speak the language of little glass bottles, but
I think they said they are willing
to gather dust
forever.The tiny white sugar balls are okay with melting away in sleep, you
see?
For I could be wrong, but I think they finally trust you
to fight off the cold or the ache with just
that toothy smile of yours.


'Kuch aetbaar kia, kuch naa-aetbaar kia,
Wo bekarar rahein jisne
bekarar kia ..'

Boneless Chick-eh

It just hit me.
If  it gets any more dark and broody in here,
I'd need  to design a separate sob-section to this baby :/
I gotto stop doing an Enrique all the time, you know? :p
Wit,
or Wit-out?
 
*cue, thinking-face*


Also,
Who broke the funny bone?

Who, hoo hoo, hoo? :| :/

okaytatabyenow

:P

Inkling

You are only starting to loathe your scribbles because I am

beginning to 

be them.

BRB

Take me to the drowning afternoon dotted with water-tanned
ferrys.
Take me to the smiling phuchka-Buro from a hundred winters back.
Take me to the bustling tiles over the balloon-shaded parking lot.
Take me to the chillah-wala.
Take me to the ice-cone-man who has only
brushed wet red on sweet-ice crushes all his life.
Take me to the railing you fell off from.
Take me to the jheel you twirled me by.
Take me to the movie we never went to.
Take me to the stairs you found love on.
Take me to the day I scolded you for too long.
Take me to the cold green lamp where
kids tug at grass and smiles. Take me there.
Leave me there.


'Tui ja, tui jaa. 
Ami aschhi.'

Probability

You feel like you had fallen asleep with your head on the scolding river-bed rocks.
Water over you.
Water within you.
Weeds around your ankles and an old
white pebble clutched in your creasing fingers.
Decades of comatose Time has washed over you,
swallowing every inch of your human skin. Stirring, selecting
scalpel-ing  every
mililitre of your human memory. Now with the water over and
the water within, they have all dissolved - the sunsets and the silver and the
socks. They have all dissolved into memories
of memories.
Perhaps you are a memory.
Perhaps you are water. Perhaps
you are memory doused in cold river-water.
Perhaps you are.
Perhaps.

The Clock and her Commitment Issues

If you could have loved Time as
nakedly as I
did, between the two of us
clocks would have cracked open
into
screws and
bolts and
kisses

I Want to Worry

I want to worry.

I want to worry about the five minute-late call that would happen in ten more minutes, exactly.

I want to worry about the big black bag weighing you down when you walk towards your closest friends.

I want to worry about the red peels off the metallic paint of your soon-to-be-ugly-pink Manchester lighter.

I want to worry about the saltiness of your lost-match sweat 'ruining' my purple kurti.

I want to worry about the man  at the corner table violating our quiet-breath moment with his careless gaze.

I want to worry about the Phuchka-kaku refusing to give us an extra 'Phau'.

I want to worry about the skinny puppy not returning your bright-eyed love.

I want to worry about Mishti-Paan-Man not getting our green-roll just-right.

I want to worry about that extra tea-spoon of vanilla essence I might have slipped into your February-cake dough.
I want to worry about not finding enough small coins in your pockets when our Laathi-dida comes around, smiling.
I want to worry about you finishing off the munchies from your secret-stash before we are rich-again.

I want to worry about stupid things.

I want to worry about useless,happy things.

I want to worry. I don't want to worry
about never seeing your face

light up again -

Why I am a Number and That's Not Good News

I still run from Maths.
But of course, now there's no skirting around the fact
that I am one of those Godawful 'problem's my kind spend their childhoods
running from. Worse, on a particularly pro-division day, I may also become the 'result' to that brain-belittling problem. Yes, Irony is Life's personal aphrodisiac.
On those days, I feel
alarmingly like a number. A fucking odd number with multiple multiples breathing down it's neck! Blah. So much for being the perfect math-retard.


Yes there is finally no skirting around the fact that I am a number.
But if it makes any difference at all, I am not just any number. I am

the sum of all your Tazos and your troubles.
the sum of your Ghazals and your indifference.
the sum of your Accent and your quite.
I am
(WinterYou + SpringYou), I am
(Youasyouwere) + (Youasyouwouldneverbe)
I am you and you and you over and over and
over again, 
as and as and
as I received you on
each of those numbered
grassy days,
okay?
I am an odd number.
Because you are an odd lover.
I am not your friend.
I am
you.

(Now I am you and you are
running.
I was so harsh on numbers.
I was so harsh on numbers.)

Mary

Mary,
welcome home. I won't ask you about the journey -I'm way too tired to hear about journeys or handmade cards, I,
hope that's okay. You'll find I have left the keys under the (once)secret shaft. If you don't find it there, it'd probably be around that red cactus tub on the landing. Yes, the flowers are quite pretty, no? Just don't get too close. (But you obviously will. Just wanted to say something..wise and ineffectual, haha.)

Once you're in, feel free to sing, weep, dance, sleep.. just suit yourself, see? It is, after all, your new home.
Only don't write in there. Really. Please?
These windows were not always blue, Mary. That was me, some eight hundred autumns back. That was me being a dodo. That was me being at home.
But like I said, that was some eight hundred autumns back, so don't you worry. You do one thing, paint
the windows red. Or paint them grey.
Paint them any fucking colour. But blues are bad news, okay? and then there's that uncold fridge you have to keep checking on.
If you like you meals cold, like me,whisper a few tender words to that moron of a machine. It will turn cold enough. Then there's the creaky stair-step. Sixth from the last. Ignore it, don't try to fix it..
It has a sighless voice. Yes,
terrible, isn't it?
And.. and.. and..of course, the bedroom carpet.
Cigarette holes. Like black holes, almost.
Almost.
Threads. Soft brown threads,
tangled up in each other's unfaithfulness . And
wayyyyy too many
Spill marks. Biriyani wala Raita, fake Tabasco, Strawberry icecream. That's
my bedroom carpet. Your
bedroom carpet now.
Mary, there's writing on the restroom walls. Use one of those extra large sponges that
they use in the Asian Piants Ads and you'll be good. I'll be
good. It's good that you are home now, Mary. Your's
is a nice home -
brilliant. lazy. destroying. peaceful.
But mostly nice. So.
That's it then. You are already here.
I'm already gone. I have told you all that I wouldn't have, and I
don't know why. Mary,
you are home now. Be comfortable. Be happy. Just, be, and all that
jazz. But Mary, when you step out to buy a bottle of old Port this evening, I'll be on a deep blue bus and praying. Praying that you never find your way back home. My
home.
Keys and Curses,
Usually Good Girl.




"I don't know how..nobody told you.."