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.