Another End

Tonight is quiet.
In two inches
Of water turned wine
I can hear the slow slither
Of an entire year.

A whine,
Of early,cold months
In a window stuck half open.
The hoot of glee
That was a mid-semester break,
A week of lassitude. Ennui.
The whistling of the wind
As you and I wound into the hills,
Bickering,
As loud as that passel of brats
That nightmare brood.
The nagging of the sea
That followed me ashore,
And made sure
I'd take you along
To lie by her side again.

Tonight
I'm unchained,
Held tenuously to the night
By this one glass
And its twin,
That purple bit of gloss
A little mine, a little yours.

R.I.P.?

When you protest rape
I hope you realize
It makes you a hypocrite
If
You go back home
And
Wait for your wife to make tea
To bring food to the table
To get the children in bed
To have sex when you want.
If
You're the wife
And
You must do all the above
Because that's how things are.
If
You ask your sister
Where she's going
When she'll be back.
If there will be boys.
If
You will, tomorrow
Gawk at a girl.
Laugh with your friends
As she passes by.
If
Without
Pasting links on Facebook
Using trending hashtags on Twitter
Changing your profile pic to a dot
Carrying placards
You will not remember
Not one,
But a hundred women
Were raped on December 16.
More than one died.
More than one does not
Rest In Peace.

Goa Diary #2

It is so easy to slip into an old skin. To light up that one last cigarette. That never quite lives up to that onerous title. To have a beer with breakfast. To sleep in.
Takes a little more time to wear a new one. To let go of walls. Literally. To wash under the sky. To walk barefoot. To smile at a stranger. To learn to be still.

Goa Diary #1

After some time you forget that the fisherman or his toothless crony are keeping up a barrage in a language you don't understand. After some time, you don't mind that the husband has scooched into the far end of the boat. You lose track of time. There is no external world. There is only that blue expanse. You forget grocery lists and chores and that the dog needs a new chew toy. All that matters is that hint of a fin. That flash of a dolphin belly. That sweep of white that was a gull.

Alternate Realities

At five, it was dolls.
Little white houses,
Long, carpeted halls.
They had dresses.
Long, blond tresses.
I didn't have their blue eyes
Or their long, curling lashes.
I bit into all the lies
Of pretty pinks and sashes.
At five, I learnt
I had to be leggy
Just to be loved.

At fourteen
The rules hadn't changed.
I learnt the codes.
To cook, to clean,
To keep house.
To iron a blouse.
To remove stains.
To wear little chains
And call them jewellery.

Twenty came and went.
As did the boys.
The lean, the mean.
The poetry spouting geek.
The touchy-feely creep.
The sensitive dweeb
Who turned into a tiger
Once inside a cage
Of his choosing.

Another decade disappeared
In calling names,
Being called some.
A feminist, a dragon.
A crier, a whiner, a woman.
Outspoken, radical.
All insults.

I learnt to bake.
To keep accounts
And keep house.
To walk straight, not slouch.
To plump cushions
To mend rents.
To clean kitchen vents.
To swear.
To drink the guys
Right under the table.
To say no.
To go out after dark.
To not need to be looked after.

And the five year old cried.
The teen threw a tantrum.
The rules rewound, rewrote.
The leggy dream
Never did come true.

Rain Rage

Slash the sky.
Fall.
In a million meteors.

Lash windows, doors, walls.
Break and enter.

Impale the earth.
Throw down spearheads.
Shatter.

Hang on to rails.
Linger on stairways.
Slowdance down panes.

Once spent
Or satiated,
Stay.

Make puddles.
Splash gently.

Sing to the wind.
Soothe the grass.
Kiss them well,
The flowers you tear.

Slip in silently,
Slide into my dreams.
Speak in sibilants.

Till the next staging,
Coil into a secret.
Stay.

Static

A blip
On a green-black monitor.
An irregular rhythm
On a night-skinned drum
Plays in my head.
Syncopated thrums,
In three long nights
Each a year long.
Mornings, noons, evenings,
Swollen, consumed.
Paltry remainder-
An unforgiving insomnia.
Loops of that still dream
That uncoils and stretches;
Lulled into ennui.
Another day
A lifetime away
It might awaken.
Rebel.
Climb on a string
And hang in the sky,
My blameless moon.

SkySongs

Sometimes the sky sings to me.

Catches on fire.
Wails.
Makes me cry.

Or whispers secrets
Of lovers
Entwined in passion,
Lost in a stray wind.

Dances
On a whim.
Sheathed in red
Sparkles in pirouettes.

I love her
Like a best friend
Sometimes.
Hate her like the evil ex
Sometimes.

But never do I love
The changeling more
Than when she weeps
Tears so cold
They fall on burning flesh
And make me whole.

Silence

A tree doesn't shout.
It sheds leaves, limbs
Discreetly.
Sways with the wind.
Sometimes, falls.

The sky goes everywhere
Silently.
Changes moods,
Colours,
Like a fashionista.
But silently.

Stars hide,
Or not.
Playing their quiet games.
Flash, flip, fade.

While down here
We're swamped with words.
Unnecessary.
Superfluous.
Jamming airwaves.
Punishing ears.

If we moved higher
Or they swooped lower
Would we too then learn
To be sublimely silent?

Relapse

I did not miss you all winter.
Felt no pangs.
Did not die
of desire.

I had recompense.
To warm me,
To satiate.

But summer did me in.

A dull memory
Turned to dark desire.
Turned the balance.

The sun
Heating the air,
Crisping my skin,
Burnt shadows in my eyes.

Each pinprick of heat
A reminder of you.

Till, bending to your beckoning,
Succumbing,
I held you,
Slender, virginal white,
Between parched lips
And touched you to a flame.

Re-igniting
An old, precious love.
In two pulls
Of raw, ravishing smoke.

Survival Strategies #1

I could never tire
Of reading
The planes of your face.
The slopes,
The tilts,
The ridges,
The hollows,
The crests,
The troughs.

I could never
Be bored
Of
The shallow sound of your breath.
Your skin wrinkling into a frown.
The narrow pleats of concentration
between your brows.
The incurable curl of your hair
that you pull into straight silence.
The tiny scar from a past
I wasn't a part of.

The sum of the parts
May not be the whole.
But, on a slow day
This itinerary of effects
Can still see me through.

Wasted Weekends

To be wasted
Is not the same
As to waste.

Wasted weekends
Are just two days
Not put to use.
Not rolled in a joint
And smoked to a haze.
Just Allowed to float
Into purposelessness.

A book finished,
Lazily,
Slumped in bed.
Another started.
Breakfast
All bunged together
In an old, sorry, pot.
Teamed with tea.
Warm, withering,
Well-steeped.
Cigarettes,
Burning holes
In mattresses,
Bed sheets,
Comforters.
Lazily laying ash deposits
In undulating creases.
Movies,
Old and new.
Magazines,
Sunday specials.
Telly reruns,
Predictably reassuring.

All striving
To stave off
Stimulant starvation.
Singularly,
Spectacularly
Simple.

To waste
Is sometimes
Symptomatic
Of
Wisdom
Wistfully won
In wordless swipes
Between
Stasis and storms.

Cuckoo-ed

There's a koel
outside my window,
And she's cuckoo.

She's merciless,
the Diva.
A veritable Castafiore,
she pitches her song
deep into the night,
Shattering my dreams.
Like her eponymous clock,
every quarter hour
past two.

She might be another insomniac,
lonelier at night.
A nightbird.
An aberration,
Who sings
of love lost
or a heart halved.

But if you ask me,
I'm kind of certain
she's a sadist.
A cuckoo;
Part of the cosmic conspiracy
to never let me sleep.
To drive me cuckoo,
Too.

In the Deep

Desire
is a roadmap.
The shortest route
to things I covet.

The pursuit
of
objets du desir.
Today, it becomes
the pursuit
of happiness.

I swim in the shallows,
I know.
I have depths
you couldn't begin
to explore.

I want.
To bottle beauty.
To capture seconds.
To taste the tartness
of an orange sun
on my tongue.

Why contain
lust
to the flesh?
Let it loose.
In shop windows.
On web portals.
On sidewalks.
And rude bazaars.

Let me touch.
And feel.
Sexy touchscreens.
Complex lenses.
Fresh pages.
Soft linen.
4 inch heels.
Let me own.

Desire,
mostly delectable.
Desire,
when
for its own sake.
Desire,
lovely
as snakeskin.
As rich,
as wrong.

But where
ever
was the fun,
In anything
that was
ever
right?

Bite-sized

The ugliest day
Has moments
Aesthetic,
Uncompromised.

Today,
A full moon,
Glowing,
Corpulent,
Hanging
Between branches.

A garden bench,
In tableau
With a tall tree,
Petite blossoms.

An old crush
Glimpsed.
Still beautiful,
Sharp.
The one-minute answer
To life's
Complex questions.

Biting on a lime.
Tart,
Seductive,
Sublime.

An illusion
Finally cracked.
Like a mirror.
Each shard
A picture
Hysterically,
Satirically,
Bitterly,
True.

Metro Perspective

I like how people walk in
Mostly in twos,
Making their own Arks
To subvert singledom
For the duration of one ride.

Opposite me, a couple.
Much in love.
With each other;
Or the notion
Of love
And how to behave
While in it.

Touching,
Smiling,
Staring.
A prototype,
Regenerated
At every seat corner.

If they could see a little further
Than their hands and lips and eyes,
Sloping shoulders and warm arms,
Stray hair and eyelashes shed,
They'd see their future selves
Spread on the same seats.

The bride burdened
By her jangly jewels,
The cluttered sari,
The weight
Of the blood red streak
Running through her hair.

Or, the apathetic mum,
Happy
With her fifteen minutes
Of zen,
Letting her kids
Transform the coach
Into a bedroom,
Jungle gym,
Potty.

The bored,
Small time executive,
Peering intently
Into his neighbour's
Book/magazine/ newspaper/ file.
Anything that lies outside
His pitiful,
Everyday life.

The slightly sad
Teacher type,
Hiding behind
A book,
Behind earplugs,
Behind diffidence.
Seeing
Her past selves
Holding hands,
Not knowing what
Distance
Space
Individuality
Choice
Will come to mean.

After today.

Ten turns of the hand later,
The date will turn.

Will not turn my fortunes,
My opinion,
My temper.

The calendar will read
Second April.
Will no longer be
All Fools Day.

And yet,
I shall continue to be
A fool.
In love.
Sometimes out of it.

Mostly in between.

Rituals

The city does not make it easier.

First there is the house.
Yesterday's leftovers,
Skin turned to dust,
Coating all surfaces.

Pick them up,
Put them away.
Stray socks,
Dirty glasses,
Stained cigarette ends.

Feed the dog
Pick the poop.
Water the plants,
Straighten the droop.

There is also the spouse
Who needs tending,
A little bit of mending,
A constant bending
Of rules, empty codes
You might have made.

Hire a ride.
Haggle,
Fight a daily war.
Knot those thirty miles
Of noise, and fumes,
Speedbumps,
Odours.
Throw them all
Into a blackhole
Of unremembering.

An accident today.
A crashed car.
A jangled spine.
A broken light.
A broken resolve.
A cussword.
Or ten.

The city does not make it easier.

Dark

Days in a dark haze.
Disorienting, this dark.
Partial faces, all.

The Reluctant Custard

"What do you mean,
I should have set?",
Said the custard to me.
"Did you ever ask,
What I wanted to be?

I've had it up to here"
(This with a rise, an inch high!)
"With your mix and whisk."
(And expirated with a sigh)
"That vanilla bean just don't fly!

If you hadn't meddled,
You inexperienced rookie,
I could have been
A world-famous cookie,
On a nutty reality show.

Instead, I sit here,
Bludgeoned on the sides.
Unevenly caramelised.
Your stupid venture making
My slices look like slides."

My quip, you ask?
I obviously have none.
Shamefaced and sorry,
I stuff my face
With the reluctant one.

Of the Moon

Hide in dark shadows
Of the moon.
Phases renewed,
Faces forgotten
Of the moon.

Dive into the valleys
Of its scalloped surface.
Swim in the seas
Of derelict dreams.
Those ones, niftily spun
By the woman who lives
In the moon.

Wax and wane,
Tune your rhythm
To the ebb and flow
Of the diabolical pull
Of the hungry moon.

Sing the songs,
Of loss and love,
Of lure and lust.
Songs with no words,
Songs of fading echoes,
Of amorphous, liminal halves
Cleaving to the moon.

Become, then,
A diurnal dirge
To the incandescence,
The gloaming glow,
Of the mercurial moon.

Snapshot II

At the edges,
Hazy rings of purple.
Overexposure
Or
A sunlight spill.

Inside the lines,
Two pairs of eyes,
Two noses,
Conjoint smiles.
Hair streaming in a halo,
Spiralling into the sun
That peeks from a corner.

Further,
The sea,
Bright, blue, busy,
Threatening
To drown the sun.
Buoying the mad laughter
In those seaweed eyes,
Looking into the lens,
Seeing only the other.

Snapshot I

"Hey!", I called
To see you turn.
One quick click
And you were trapped.
Forever.
In a moment
Of exquisite perfection.

A smile,
Quizzical.
A slight squint,
From the flash.
Two seconds
Before
The smile turned
Into a scowl
Of protest.

For always now,
You might scowl,
Smirk,
Scold,
Scoff.

I'd still choose
To remember,
That fractional twitch
That played
At the far corner
Of your lip.

The one I caught
And refused to let go.

Silk Cotton

It stands there,
Proud,
Vain,
Tall.
Three feet away
from the street.

Like a summer queen
imprisoned in chill walls,
Suddenly set free,
It sheds the old,
Dons the new.

No more green.

A few noons ago
It stood naked,
Showing off slender arms
and cinnamon skin.

Today,
It burst into
incendiary blooms.
A glossy red,
Shiny,
Like a favorite lipstick.
Young again,
Magically,
That old Semal tree.

March Haiku III

The moon sings tonight,
Of dreams, hubris and lore.
Hums in a rain cloud.

March Haiku II

In your arms tonight,
The sentiverse turned axes.
Burnt white with mute love.

March Haiku

Cinnamon coloured,
Tepid, post-spring, twilight sky,
Turns a spiral; falls.

Speaking in Tongues

If I could do Donne,
I'd call you Sojourner Sunne.
Compare your rays
To a hundred compasses.
Arrange your feats
Into neat little conceits.

If I could speak Eliot,
I'd tell of Michelangelo,
Of women who come and go,
While you shrink away
(Much like poor Prufrock's hair),
and make me fret.

If I had symbols as neat
as those of Yeats,
I'd dub you,
in sheer defeat,
a dark angel,
of the Second Coming fleet.

But since I have nothing
But a clumsy, fumbling tongue
I'm asking you to stay put,
Nicely, with a please.
And if you still don't listen,
I'll speak you flogged and hung.

Transference

I live in the crease
of a withered leaf,
Dry, insensate.
Easy to crush.
Easy to burn.

I breathe
in the glow
of an anthurium,
Luminous
in noon light.

I thrill to the touch
of a twice-born sun.
Its shallow whispers
tracing sleepy patterns
of pleasure
on my pastiche skin.

I swell
with the silence
of cold sandstone,
Spilling the shadows
of a thousand footfalls.
Waiting to be freed.
Or ever heard.

I burn
in the pale tallow
of a cheap lamp,
Uneasy, unwilling,
Unruly.

Monochrome

Mutely monochromatic,
The moon in a silent sky.
Swollen,
Coarsely corpulent,
Glistening grey.

Monochromatic,
Like Joan Crawford
Or Bette Davis
In an old, old movie,
Brilliantly beautiful
Or beautifully brilliant?

Shivering in monochrome,
Missing the warmth of red
Or butter-yellow,
A bleak, post-winter noon.

Blissfully monochromatic,
Wearing a lifetime
Lived internally,
Partly intellectually,
Grey hair and greying.
Colourless,
Not bland.

Tercets

A sweet Chardonnay
Kisssed my lips; swore to obey
One insane heartbeat.

Sing a dulcet dream,
Spin a fantastical ream,
Before the moon sinks.

An unsettling read: A Cupboard Full of Coats

What can I say about a book that made me want to give the writer a long, hearty, hug? Yvvette Edwards, in this debut novel, makes such a powerful statement about abuse and love, desire and forgiveness. She makes you sit up and pay attention. Woman, you are so cool.

The book was long-listed for the Booker in 2011 and other than being a thumping good read, is a critical voicing of issues that are often only whispered about. It tells the story of Jinx, a Caribbean-origin, British girl, brought up by her widowed mother, the lovely and luminous Joy. The narrative begins 14 years after the violent murder of Joy by her abusive boyfriend. It works around a series of relationships and traces patterns of love, dependence, and almost debilitating desire.

It is incredible how Edwards is able to detail a history of abuse through the evocation of the simplest images. She cajoles her characters into remembering and narrating, thereby expiating themselves of the guilt each of them seems to have been carrying for years on end. Hers is a nuanced exploration of the burdens of motherhood, of the secret, keen pleasure of desiring someone completely "wrong", of being utterly selfish in love. How then, can you not fall in love with the book? It has a searing honesty that is impossible to ignore or to devalue.

A Cupboard Full of Coats might not be the most well-written book of the year. It sure is the most powerful.

Mario's Stripper

There is
a naked woman
in that picture
I bought recently.

Goth-eyed,
she holds herself
contorted.
Unblinking, unreal,
on an over-lit stage.
Undressing,
as if
for a lover,
crueller than most.

Men sit at tables,
Women too.
Some lost
in themselves.
Others in the glasses
they spend nights
exploring.
A lucky few,
in each other.

A cloud
of cigarette smoke
obliterates details
in one corner.
A strobe light
throws uneven shadows
in another.

There is drama
in there.
A hint of tragedy.
A little slapstick.
A soupçon of lust
And even
a promise
of love
waiting to inhale.

And all anyone can see
when it hangs
on my wall,
Is the woman
dancing naked.

The shameless hussy.
She who dances,
And
She who displays her
on her shameless wall.

Valentine Veto

I promise
To love you
Forever
If you never
Use the word
"Valentine".

Buy me flowers
Any random day.

Don't get me
Chocolates.
They're no good.
Intead,
Get me a book.
Today,
Later,
Whenever.

Let the rest
Hold hands,
Book tables,
Wear red.

You and I,
We'll stay in
And watch
The world dance.

Boheme, Hauz Khas Village: Late Winter Perfection

February afternoons in Delhi are magical. The sun is out but not with its May-June agenda of incinerating the world. The sky is clear. The chill of the previous months seems to have been wrung out to dry. The perfect Sunday afternoon then, would be at a languid lunch with friends, exactly what was achieved last Sunday at Boheme, Hauz Khas Village.

Reaching Boheme is a minor achievement of sorts. Tucked in a typical Village alley, the restaurant is a steep climb above five flights of stairs, above the legendary Gunpowder, which in turn is above the promisingly named Golcanda Bowl. Pedigree established yet?

Once you've trudged up though, be prepared to be very, very gleeful. The sun hits you in the face and the open terrace is tranformed into a laidback, bohemian, happy space. The number of tables is limited but the owners have introduced the smart move of allowing people to order drinks and hang around. As a result, there are several groups of 20-somethings, displaying the sharpest lines of the season, oversized Tom Fords perched on their sunblocked noses.

The bar counter runs along the length of the front half-wall and offers a spectacular view of the lake. There are the usual hanging lamps and strings of light and pretty pots that up the aesthetic quotient but the sight of the lake glistening green, is something else.

The food is well worth the long wait that seems to be usual on a busy Sunday. We started with a hummus and pita to go with our beers. The hummus was perfectly seasoned and of the exact right consistency.

The pita could have done with some light toasting. For our main course we ordered a Fettucini in Alfredo sauce that turned up deficient in salt.

The Chicken Maison was a huge portion, accompanied by a lightly herbed pat of rice and a cruchy side of vegetables. The chicken itself was moist and succulent, the cheese soft but not runny.

Food, definitely a winner.

The downside at Boheme is their service. The place is grossly understaffed. They forget orders, forget the number of portions, take forever to get the food on the table. If it wasn't for the company and that delusion of sitting at a lazy Goan shack, we'd be complaining.

So, in a nutshell:
Food:7.5
Ambience: 8
Service: 6

At the Lake

I

Thirty five greens,
A full forest palette,
Reflected in water.
Shadows creep quietly
Over its surface,
Carefully steering clear
Of deadwood arms
Eerily sticking out
Of the deep.


II

A twosome,
Geese or swans,
I can't tell.
Drunk on February sunshine,
Or revelling in their stark
Whiteness,
Glide rapidly away,
Dipping and bobbing
To their own song,
Of love?

III

A narrow slab of wood
Transforms
Into an intimate table
For four
On a sun-flashed terrace.
Absorbs beer-bottle rings,
Flecks of ash,
Spilt pasta sauce,
An erring blob of hummus.
Ties together threads
Of stories shared.
Becomes a prop
For heads thrown back
In unfettered,
Uncomplicated,
Laughter.

All,
Under a steady blue sky,
Over a living, green, lake.

A Mistake

Just for today
I'll be a creationist
And believe
That god God
Made man in his image
And woman?
From a random rib.

To live in eternal bliss.

And the bitch screwed it all.

Therefore, now,
She pays the price.
The cow, cunt, whore.

She can't do math.
Her boobs are too small.
She burnt the food last night.
She didn't spread her legs.
Her skirt's too short.
She talked back.

The bitch screwed it all.

She asked for it.
To be slapped.
To be raped.
To be burnt.
To be ridiculed.

For the bitch screwed it all.

And I wish
God in his infinite wisdom
Had made woman a rhino instead.
Her thick hide
Able to endure
Everything.

Surely,
God must be a woman.

For afterall, the bitch screwed it all.

Artefacts

A crossword,
Eleven years old,
Missing.

A cartoon I once drew
Of a teacher who drove us mad.
He lives in a bubble, you said.
(I filed away that sentence too.)

Shared agonies
Of what we saw
As intellectual persecution,
(Arrogant bunch of brats, no?)
Scribbled in ink.
Preserved in a battered notebook.

A book refernce
You wrote with my eyeliner.
Pinned to a term paper.

The stain of a spilt cappuccino,
The echo of the spat
That flowed from/with the coffee.
Imprinted on that ugly sweater
You still insist on wearing.

A cheap toffee wrapper
Twisted into an armless dancer.
Crinkly, falling apart.

A ring of tarnished silver
To tame my truant middle finger,
Now discarded in a square box.
In it's shrunken girth,
My F.0. finger liberated.

The smell of a rainy afternoon
Trapped in a tub we floated boats in.
Chipped now, and grey in patches.

The sum of years
When broken down
Leaves so many artefacts.

Fragment II

Love, to be, must mean
You read each word I ever write
Like you wrote it first.

Fragment I

Selfish waterworks,
Perfectly synchronized now
With my winter's heart.

Sherlock.

You have to love the BBC for the full-fisted punch it delivers in Sherlock. I thought Guy Ritchie had proved himself the master of re-invention when he gave us the punch-throwing, wisecracking, devastatingly handsome Robert Downey Junior as Sherlock Holmes (2009). Then came Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat with their Sherlock last year and blew our collective socks off. I've only just finished watching both seasons and am sitting, basking in the happy afterglow, trying to pick my five favourites from the awesomeness that this Sherlock is.

1. Benedict Cumberbatch with his chiselled profile, his beautiful gray eyes and his plentiful curls could have been a marble bust. Instead, he is a 21st century, smartphone-toting "consulting detective" insistent on living in the heart of London. He looks like an androgynous, ancient-Greek-artist's muse and has a voice that would make a stained-teethed, balding, wannabe-hipster attractive. He's a sociopath. He's rude. He's sexiest when wearing a sheet. Or maybe, when he's laughing, while wearing the aforementioned sheet. He brings back nerdy-cool in a big, big way.

2. His room-mate, Dr. John Watson, is played by Martin Freeman who I can't help but remember as one half of the heartbreaking cute couple in Love Actually, the body-doubles standing in for some random sex scene. A lot of laughs and a LOT of butts and boobs. Slightly difficult to see in him the soldier from Afghanistan but well, I got over it. And he makes a wonderful Watson. Not side-kicky. Not stupid. Really smart and really popular with the ladies. How he's constantly mistaken for Sherlock's gay partner is easy enough to understand in that last scene where Watson stands in front of Sherlock's gravestone and you expect him to blurt out a too-long-repressed avowal of love. I so did. So are the makers cocking a snook at the homophoebe in so many of us? Like I said, there is so much that is brilliant.

3. Moriarty. One huge sigh. Where do I start about Andrew Scott? At the swimming pool when he walks in in that crisp suit and claims the shadowy name of Moriarty? When he sits in the Tower of London in the royal crown? Or when he cowers before Sherlock in the sicko journalist's apartment? He sheds skins with the ease of a Kingfisher model shedding clothes. The man is a stunner. And he's hardly Andrew Scott. He IS Jim Moriarty.

4. England. I loved Sherlock's England. The streets, the taxis, the multiple accents, the rain, the bleakness of Dartmoor, the picturesque country-side, the sweeping landscape. I wish I could pack my bags and just go.

5. The fact that Sherlock gave me the perfect excuse to put off writing my research proposal and immerse myself in a perfect fantasy. One that is more intelligent, far crisper and infinitely more entertaining than that research proposal is ever going to be.

Stuck. And sullen.

I've been trying to write all day. A few words, a line or two. The tragedy is, this seems to be turrning into a Ph.D.proposal. Not a single idea in my under-challenged head.

Usually, it helps to focus on a real incident/feeling/ thought. To just put it on paper in a cathartic regurgitation. Much like an incontinent cat, just marking my territory, making sure I remember I was there. Today, all my self-help has fallen flat. I cannot focus. I cannot opine. Hell, I can't even vent.

Am not enough of a writer to be experiencing that glamarous malady, a writer's block. I wish I was but even in my most grandiose moments, I can't help but be aware of my pitiful limitations when it comes to actually expelling that bolus of non-articulation that seems to have travelled from my head into the pit of my stomach and is sitting there like a
tightly-knotted, malvolent, malignant, lump.

I wish I could be more like the proficient word-weavers I know. That I could be inspired. That an idea would take root and sprout into a surprisingly tall tale.I wish could switch it on and let it spill. Instead, I wait, conflicted, confused, almost concussed. Critically crippled.

I wish I could creep into that gap between the concave and the convex. Stay there. For a few minutes or all of perceived eternity.

I wish I could un-cork that de-oxygenated partial-brain.

I wish I could comprehend String Theory. Maybe that would give me something to say.

I can't write

I can't write today.

There is too much noise here.
In this room.
Inside my head.

The harmonics of a hungry stomach
Drown out all remaining thought.

Why can't the bell ring sooner?
Why don't the hands
Of that ugly, ornate clock
Run a little faster?
Like an arrythmic heart.

I can't frame sentences.
Or hold a thought.
Chase an idea.
Or turn a phrase.

There's a window
To my left.
I wish I could fly
Right out.

Or failing that,
Be able to write
Five words that matter.

An Unfortunate Case-Study of 18 Modern Women

A room
Slashed in two.
Only men there.
And none here, please.
Let's not be savages.

Pretend at civility.
Smile, only at those
Kitted exactly like you.
Put your square attitude
In a square hole.
 
Run
When conversations run
To anything beyond   
Your holy trinity
Of husband,
Children, 
An in-law or two. 

Judge.
Comply. 
Obey. 
Venerate.

And if you 
Ever
Find the time,
Grow a spine. 

  
 
   

Agneepath. Or, The Return of Mega Masala Bollywood.

I HAVE to begin this with an analogy. Agneepath is like masala chai. There is cinema which is subtle and nuanced. Like a perfectly brewed first flush, Darjeeling cuppa. And then there is that glass of kadak, dhabe-wali chai, robust and full-bodied and bursting with a million, loud flavors. That is the category this Dharma Productions fare belongs to.

The movie is a remake of the 1990 Amitabh Bachchan starter by the same name. Interestingly, the production house chooses to retain the time frame of the original instead of contemporizing it. It begins in 1977, in a small island off the Maharashtra coast, where a fiercely idealistic Master Dinanath Chauhan is trying to teach the important lesson of self-reliance to the exploited populace of Mandwa. The feudal structure obviously can't tolerate dissent and the schoolteacher is implicated in that most-heinous of crimes-the sexual abuse of a poor, polio-stricken, girl child. Three strikes. The man is brutally killed in front of his son and pregnant wife. And thus is born the avenging hero, the conflicted, complex, brooding Vijay Dinanath Chauhan. Destined to be eternally locked in battle with the menacing Kancha Cheena. 
    
Hrithik Roshan makes a handsomer Vijay than Amitabh Bachchan, for sure, but the baritone of the original was something else. The recital of "Agneepath", easily the high point of the Bachchan flick pretty much misses the mark here. Hrithik serenades the viewer with his beautiful green eyes, his emotive face and the extreme vulnerability that has been his trademark from his very first film. His nemesis, appropriately attired in black, represents the opposite bed of e aesthetic spectrum. Sanjay Dutt flexes his bulk, his tattooed arms, his padded-up face and produces an immensely repulsive villain. The other baddie is played by the one-time teen heartthrob, Rishi Kapoor, who throws off his charming persona and spouts dialogues about the nubility of under-age virgins, instead. He is creepy and sleazy and perfectly cast.

This then is the canvas of Agneepath. A movie with heroes and villains, each in their separate, pre-defined roles. It takes us back to an earlier age of Hindi cinema, one where the hero cannot die without fulfilling his raison d'être, the reason for his existence, no matter how many blows/bullets/knife-thrusts he takes. It isn't a movie that provokes thought or generates a discussion. It asks for complete suspension of disbelief and transports the viewer to a world that necessarily balances itself out at the end of the day. It makes Hrithik dance and Priyanka Chopra look pretty and Katrina Kaif defy each one of Newton's laws of motion. It showcases violence. There is blood and copious amounts of it. There are beheadings and gruesome murders and fires and explosions. And surprisingly, it all works together. Karan Malhotra, the director-protégée of the absurdly non-nuanced Karan Johar, has an interesting sensibility and manages to give this overly-dramatic film a cohesive, non-parodic structure.          

Agneepath brings back to life the early 90's over-the-top drama and does so minus the overt vulgarity and the aesthetically challenged colour schemes that defined the genre. If only it had wound up in 2 hours instead of the once-mandatory three, I would have been sitting in my seat, whistling, as the end credits rolled.   

A tortured Haiku

Freezing cold outside;
Inside, heat from hundred yawns.
Better out than in.

Accidentally

I saw a butterfly
Dancing on broken bits of glass.
A shimmering yellow
Flitting through reflected light,
She cut such a pretty picture.
The glass lay untouched,
Scattered like cheap beads
From a child's box of baubles.
Somewhere in the middle of a busy flyover.

Horror!

Last evening I watched Paranormal Activity 3. It was scary, in bits. It begins with the kid who can see the resident ghost, the innocuously named Toby(who is, but doesn't want to be called fat). 5 year old Christy talks to Toby, has him attend her tea-parties, runs around the house, chasing him, at 4am, jumps from her first-floor room into the living area below and lands promptly on her feet. Toby the goof then goes rogue. Like Jason Bourne on steroids, he upturns furniture, sticks it all up on the ceiling, picks up the other kid by her hair and whirls her around gleefully, pulls beds, slams doors, smashes a perticularly ugly lamp. I could do with some of that energy. And how cool would it be to have ALL the furniture off the floor when trying to sweep and scrub!

Anyway, the story goes on, mostly operating in horror cliches. There is one scene of crystalline perfection. The baby-sitter, goofing around with the kids, dresses up in a white sheet and goes about flailing her arms. She then sits at the kitchen table, reading under a pretty Tiffany lamp and right behind her is a kid-sized shape, draped in the same sheet. She turns and poof, the shape collapses, leaving the sheet behind. Scary? Hell, yes!

Hardly had I finished with one scary kid when another jumped on screen in last night's episode of Supernatural. Sam and Dean (and the sexy car) go after a killer painting and the homicidal ghost turns out to be a chit of a child who had offed her entire family with a rusty razor that surprisingly enough is painted into this early 20th century family portrait. The kid is creepy, even without the artistically painted dark circles under her eyes. Her doll with the unblinking eyes is worse.

I thought I'd had enough exposure to the horror genre already but then came this morning and I found myself in class on a Saturday morning, attending a pointless lecture on writing research proposals. And I finally figured what real horror was all about.

Learning to teach.

Day 2 at the Orientation Course for supposedly newly-appointed under/post-grad teachers. The genreal junta is upwards of 40. A lot of grey in the room. Grey hair. Not cells. Those seem to be in severe shortage. The first session is with this decrepit old dude who laughs mid-way through every sentence and insists on calling pedagogy "peda-goggy". Surprisingly enough, his lack of a sense of humour meets with distinct approval from a snickering roomful of mostly-inarticulate teachers. End of the session, the sexist pig (all teachers are "he", all students are "she") points to me, sitting in the backbench, fiddling with my phone and says, "You're not listening. I can't see your face with all the hair." Said hair was obviously all over. Like me, it has a mind of it's own. And doesn't react well to stupidity. Or sexism. I tuck my hair behind the ears, freeze my face into a wide smile and go, "See all you want, now." The schmuck has the decency to look embarrassed while the class titters. That went well, right?

Session 2. Another long lecture. This time about education in India. A lot of faff. Way too much idealism. Too much of socialism without any background of politics/economics/reform. Guess that is what teachers all over learn to do. Be all full of hot air, ready to explode. At least, always ready to release.

It scares me, this general air of incompetence. And the validity it seems to have acquired in my profession. This perhaps is the future we are faced with. At one point of time, it was "publish or perish". Now, it is "plagiarize or perish". Do not try to think. Do not even think about being an individual. And do not be embarrassed while at it. That is the lesson I came back with.

Death of the teacher?

I hate you, but then you should know.

[Everyone writes love songs. They roll right off the tongue. But we don't write enough songs of hate, do we? Of gut-wrenching, stomach-cramping, ass-hurting hate. Here's mine. Not heartbreak. Just hate. As crazy as that first flush of mad love. Don't take it too seriously. Can't do that with love. Or with hate.
Add a few fa-la-la-las. What's a song without them, anyway?
And always read between the lines.]


You should've been ugly.
Outside, instead of in.
I wish you were ugly.
Ugly as sin.

You make my skin burn.
Not with desire, no no.
You make my insides churn.
It's so not love, oh no.

You're such a dreadful slob.
Your stuff all over the place.
Such an unhinged,smutty slob.
I'd never ever suck your face.

You make me hurl, you do.
You break my heart in two
Million pieces. You do.
You Janus-faced douchy poo.

Do I need to say it?
Do I have to spell it out?
I hate you, you git,
You're such a sodden lout.

Metronymic, of sorts.

Sardines packed in six cars
Three hundred commoners, we.
Jostling, almost jousting,
Protecting an elbow, a knee.
Sqeezing in in-between spaces,
Contortionists for a day.
Balancing in vestibules,
On our stinky, weary, way.
A headphone creates illusory space
Or serves as a prop
When we wish to eavesdrop.
Friends are judged,
Stories are spun,
Gossip dispensed,
Especially in Coach Number One.
We fit all possible types:
The geek, the muse, the college prude;
The hair-swishing bimbette, the sporty dude.
A hipster sways, a lech stares;
In one corner, a harried mum glares
At a privacy-deprived randy pair.
We peek, we prod, we poke, we pry
We're the Delhi Metro,
You, you hapless commuter, and I.

Comfort

Sometimes my refuge is a book.
Sometimes it's the bottom of a glass.
An amber swirl, a golden whiff of agave.
And sometimes a clear, vodka-crystal kick.
Sometimes, words make magic.
Spin worlds, implode and explode.
Cascade. Cavort. Crash. Cure.
Words, sometimes, are my curse.
Easily spoken. Stubbornly unbroken.
Inconveniently true. Sometimes.
And then there's the comfort
Of an old friend. And tequila sunshine.
Or the long-suffering lover
And ageing Scotch.
Or even the long, single afternoon
Of images, memories and a fast-beading beer.
But the best, by far,
Is recognizing in you
A little part of me.

In a Sulk

The door stared right back at me. Go away. Turn right around and go away. I wouldn't listen. Couldn't afford to. Everything I wanted was in there. One plank of wood in between. And two unyielding egos. I tried staring it open. It sighed. You should know better.

The mirror squealed, once. It was only calling attention to itself. You don't trust me. I didn't. It was too old. Had seen way too much. Of me. Of the other. It hung there, quietly reproachful.

I sat down at the desk. Traced the scratches on its surface. Make me a portal. I'll make it easy. I covered it in scribbles. In noughts and crosses. It sat back, silent and indifferent.

Death Comes to Pemberley: Austen re-visited?

I fell in love with P.D. james when I read the first Adam Dalgliesh mystery. Cover her Face. The book had me hooked. It reminded me of the classic Christie. The setting was period. The English countryside. Contemporized with a generous dose of sexual desire and intrigue. When I then heard of Death Comes to Pemberley, I HAD to read it. A sequel of sorts to the eternally entertaining Pride and Prejudice. Murder in the Victorian country house, beautiful men and women, familiar characters. Got to be good, right? 

Well, the book was procured, begun with much fanfare and devoured ravenously to the last page. 

Unfortunately, there isn't much I'd be able to say about it that would live up to the hype. Admittedly, it is well-written. The historical research is detailed and rendered as authentic as is possible. The characters are all logical extensions of Austen's world. James spends a considerable amount of time setting the background, developing the histories of Elizabeth and Jane and Bingley and Darcy. She gives them the right clothes, the right words and the right emotions. Despite the correctness of all formal elements, the book doesn't work.

Elizabeth and Darcy are passionately in love. "In love" like in a chick-flick. He wants to hold her hand so he can feel his world righting itself. She looks up to him as only a Victorian woman can. Jane is as much in awe of Bingley as she was when he was walking all over her in deference to the snob values of his best friend and his sister. The man is still a pushover. As a 21st century reader, the least I expected from a "Murder Mystery" based on Austen's novel was a little bit of spice. Darcy unhappy. Stuck in an "unsuitable" marriage. Bingley having an affair on the sly. Elizabeth running a women's rights group. Jane fed up of bearing children every alternate year. At the least. Instead, what we get is an insipid extension of the period drama minus the edgy intensity that has so far defined James's work.

The writer spends most of her energy and the reader's time in getting the background right. Therefore, there is the working class, circumscribed by it's desire to please and it's recognition of it's rightful, subservient place in the order of things. There is the usual distraught woman, the threat of scandal and subsequent overthrow of the social order. Feeble clues in the form of initials carved on tree trunks and a rather unconvincing murder. It follows logically that the final revelation of the murderer and the cause of the crime are even more unconvincing. 

Anti-climactic doesn't even begin to describe it. It's a yawn and then two more.
What really bothers me, at the end of this rather unsatisfactory read, is why did James do it? Why take on characters that daunt you instead of setting you free? Why handle someone else's story as a historical relic instead of making it your own? Why negate the very idea of an adaptation? That, and not the murder, is the real mystery I wish P.D.James had solved for me.

Dogma- Watch it!

The best test of whether or not a friend is going to be around for the long haul? Ask them to recommend a movie and watch it.
I watched Kevin Smith's Dogma(1999) today and know that the self-confessed nerd, my colleague/friend SGJ who raved about it, could have been my soulmate in another dimension.

The movie has everything going about it. The cast is a Kevin Smith special of sorts. There is Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, and Jason Mewes from his earlier features. Smith himself plays Silent Bob and steals the thunder from even the incredible Alan Rickman. I want more of Silent Bob.

Ben Affleck is almost tolerable. He actually is good at being bad. What a revelation! He killed Armageddon, put me to sleep in Pearl Harbour and really stank it up in Daredevil. And all this while the dude could act. Waste of time, all these years.

There is also Matt Damon doing a reasonably good job of playing the conflicted angel. Loki's argument against organized religion, based on Lewis Carrol's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" had me hooked from the word go. Damon's convincingly, self-righteously borderline-evil. His Voodoo moment is pure gold. It is also rather interesting how Smith turns the relationship between Bartleby and Loki on its head, transforming the pacifist into the maniacal avenger and vice versa. Smart movie-making, that.

There is more to it than the cast, though. The movie explores the difficult territory of religion. Like the best fantasy and the best satire, Dogma uses humour to deal with a serious, ponderous issue. The one brilliant idea that emerges out of this cinematic experience is that ideas are more important than beliefs. Beliefs are rigid. Ideas are mutable. They evolve. Religion, therefore, can only be interpreted by the individual. God as male/female, black/white, flower child/skeeball player, depends entirely on how your rational/irrational mind perceives it.

The one problem is I have with the movie is how it moves away from atheism entirely and seems to endorse the existance of an omnipresent , omnipotent god. On the other hand, that is probably the framework within which the movie purports to work and to expect "Dogma" to transcend religion altogether is perhaps a little far out.

Dogma is a smart, intelligent film. Funny, sharp, and with a massive bite. If you've missed it, like I did, compensate. Right away.

Stupid Sun

Where are you, you gormless ball of fire?
You golden-gobbed, gilt-fleshed glorified globule;
What in the deuce, if I might enquire,
Is the meaning of this disappearing act you pull?

Like hair off an ageing superstar's head,
Like a hausfrau's frown after a Botox shot,
Like the red of that haircolour that's bled,
You've gone off absurdly and frankly, lost the plot.

Mornings have been gloomy, dull and grey
Afternoons morbidly slow, sluggishly two-tone.
Creep that you are, you've suddenly gone fay,
Sneaking into some hidey-hole, some off-radar zone.

So full of gas(literally and otherwise),you old humbug,
You make promises of bliss that you shamelessly renege.
If only I could trasmogrify your Midas-touched mug,
You'd end with your beatific face beautified with egg.