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.