A Small Town woman in New York

Another

2010-08-27T10:20:00.000-04:00

The earth
Has now
Two orbits.
I am told
Another sun
was born.

What was that line?

2008-11-21T02:52:00.009-05:00

What was that line
I wrote,
Of pebbles and the insomnia?
What was that dream
I scribbled,
Of the sun and his bride?

Oh the words in my dog-eared diaries
And the underlined paragraphs
Are fading once more,
The sound of my old voice and
The sight of my imaginary home
Is sinking and diminishing, once more.

Even as Heart, the blind chaperone
Keeps the feel of it so pristine,
But Mind, the unfaithful servant
Refuses to retrieve,
What has been parted by
Time and distance

They say, such is the fate
Of the Exiles and the birds
When driven
Out of their homes,
They have no luxury of carrying
Belongings and the loyal memories.

What was the giggly proverb
She said,
Of daughters and the mothers?
What was the drinking smile
He toasted,
To our success and our happiness?

Oh the giggles and the smiles have gone
My existence is disappearing fast
Now an ailing mother watches me
Quietly on the monitor for finite moments
A sad father continues to speak
Cathartic silences over the long distance calls

I doubt, O sweetheart, I doubt
Exile is your reality.
This is self inflicted, says the blind escort,
It is not you who has been thrown out
It is you who has been running away
From home, once more!

Suicidal Notes

2008-11-03T20:00:00.013-05:00

I could not laugh. The slide show kept running- the images entering through the corner of my eye, his satirical and sarcastic eloquence generating louder laughter - I looked straight into his eyes. I could not laugh.

I kept assimilating his rage that seeped through his hands when they raised in the air and thumped at the desk, through his fingers when they pointed at the existent and the non-existent audience, through his eyes when they widened and narrowed, through his voice when it ascended in passion and faded in sorrow, and through his lips when they curled downwards in disappointment and upwards in smugness. I could not laugh even as everybody else in the room chortled at his sardonic attack on a system that had failed its people. From the corner of my eye, I was revisiting my country buried under the weight of the corpses of the farmers.

The messiah of the rural, the poor and the underprivileged Indians spoke of the agony of the suicidal farmers, the greed of the rich immoral corporations, the pompousness of the free-trade economists, and the superciliousness of the elites in India. The anger that he had passed on to me gazed at the blankness of my head and re-emerged as shame and despair.

Three days have elapsed since then. My anguish stays, my remorse has spared me. Provoked by anger, my disgust for the rich has disappeared, my hope for a better world has revived. It has revived because I am reminded of a little story:

Long ago, a poor farmer in a village of Kashmir, standing near his farm, looked far beyond the edges of his small piece of land. He wondered if he were to live just for two meals a day and die as an illiterate man. He wondered if his children were to perpetuate his penury and ignorance.
The next morning, he packed his rags and started his journey on foot towards the small town which was 40 miles away from the village.

Like Antonio Ricci in Ladri di biciclette, the villager's new life started on a bicycle. He was the new newspaper man on the bicycle, distributing a local handwritten newspaper in the town. In few years, he taught himself how to read and write under the lamppost at the Red Crossroad. With his nose to the grindstone for decades, the newspaper man finally made a living for himself and his family.

Like all real stories, the poor villager stayed poor. None of his children rolled in money either. Yet they were relatively better off than the villager. They were moderately educated. They became teachers, artists and small businessmen. Their grandchildren struggled even harder and they are now a part of India's growing educated middle class. Some of the grandchildren are striving abroad to fulfill the vision that the villager had when he stood near his farm, 80 years ago.

I had dwelt on what had been shown to me for three days. My instant response was to go back home and follow the angry man's crusade. But then, the Kashmiri farmer's memory floated as a small speck in the shame and despair that had clouded my eyes. He stood there and began expanding like an ink drop on a blotting paper.

You are dead

2008-10-11T15:19:00.004-04:00

Only Gods and infants
Don't blink,
Says a man who lives on
six bottles of beer every day.
Gods are dead,
Infants are yet to feel alive.
The lids don't flutter as such,
Eyes don't shut to the touch.

And You who pierces through
My demons and my virtues;
My silences and my larynx;
My nothingness and my action
Without a blink,
Must be
Either of the two.
But any which way
You are dead.

S&P Ratings

2008-09-15T22:24:00.014-04:00

As a contemporary Indian, it is quite intriguing to see the Palin Phenomenon in the west. Sarah Palin is a strategic choice indeed, very well suited for the aim that Republicans have in sight. If the agenda was to draw Hillary’s women votes, she is just the flamboyant, the snazzy and the la-di-da Matron. If the idea were to cover for McCain’s lack of orthodoxy and youth, then this double edge knife is sure to slash the Republican way to the presidency. This is plain politics. Such public maneuvering is routine in India. And it can surprise or shock no one there, not even an Indian whose access to information is only through a transistor or a black & white television.

Having said that, Sarah Palin is someone who stands no chance to win if she is placed in the Indian setting. Cynics, who disparage India’s growth and development, divide India into two countries- Urban and Rural. The former is literate, developing and modern, the latter is illiterate, under-developed and backward. Nevertheless, being the latter still does not guarantee victory to Palin and her likes. The simple reason being, in rural India, people are more worried about sustenance rather than the social code of conduct or religious frenzy. So even if it were granted that Sarah Palin got elected as a legislative assembly member from some constituency in Rural India, no political party in its right mind would field Palin as a Deputy Prime Ministerial candidate (the American equivalent of Vice president) in India. Not even the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).

I am drawing parallels between BJP and Republicans only because post-1980s Republicans are characteristically somewhat similar to the Indian post-1980s BJP in India. The differences between the two, however, remain.

Sarah Palin’s demeanor, her lexicon, her ecclesiastical doctrine reminds me exactly of some of the dissimilarities. The difference between her and Uma Bharati, a former BJP leader and ex-chief minister or for that matter, any hardcore right wing female leader in India is so glaring. The difference is that Uma Bharati cannot dictate social behavior and yet get elected as Chief Minister, let alone deputy Prime Minister. The difference is that Uma Bharati cannot sell her asceticism, vegetarianism, sexual abstinence, teetotalism, and her saffron wardrobe to any urban Indian. If Uma adopted Palin’s doctrinal idiolect, she would not have been even qualified to run as the BJP candidate for Chief Ministership (American equivalent of Governorship). For good, she was thrown out of power and kicked out of BJP as well.

A state legislative assembly member may represent a religious conservative constituency in India but a Chief Minister has to have some appeal at the capital of the state, which is mostly urban. The Chief Minister is supposed to talk the modern urban language and not the primitive tribal dogmatic lingo. To be eligible for a deputy Prime Ministerial or Prime Ministerial post, a candidate cannot afford to be religiously or socially conservative in India. Our Prime Ministers don’t swear in the name of God. They are not even allowed to.

When BJP was in power at the center, the party conspicuously shut its religious rhetoric machinery and distanced itself from any religious issues that would earn them scorn of the urban India. Urban Indians may like BJP for its economic liberalization policies but it did not hesitate from routing out BJP nationally, when the party chose to stay silent on a pogrom against minorities in a region. Bigotry and social conservatism is not tolerated at national urban level in India- that is to say in 60-years-old democratic literate India. In the US, it is not only tolerated but it is also lived – at least that’s the reality that has emerged in the last two consecutive Republican terms. Such being the case, Palin is a tailor-made Machiavellian choice!

PS: November 5, 2008- My respect for America has been revived today. Palin's candidature to Vice-Presidency was depressing but America rejected Palin's bigotry and religious rhetoric. Americans have stood upright again. I stand vindicated that even though Palin was able to mobilize the right wing nut jobs but her regressive ideas did not hit home because America is much more self-introspecting and deprecating than most people imagine. Politicians like her have been rejected in last two consecutive elections in India; she could not have won in one of the greatest nations of the world either.

Cocktail Bigots

2008-07-14T11:35:00.054-04:00

Under the porch of a lofty building, Ms. 'Internalization of Pain' and I stood in rain-drenched clothes, waving at the cab driver who had halted to drop off his passengers at the riverfront. One glance at a pair of recoiled soaked cats against the wall under the porch and another at the ruthlessness of the downpour, the passengers seemed reluctant to step out. We were disappointed and didn't care to rush for the cab.

A couple came running from behind and ran towards the cab, leaving us even more dimwitted as the indecisive passengers made up their mind to dare the rain, in the spur of the moment. A one armed man along with a female bag of bones, dressed in a diaphanous strapless long evening gown, emerged from the cab and hurtled towards us. We were sulking over our obtuseness when the same cab driver gestured at us to cross the Line of Rain Control. A new lease on life in such a bad weather - of course we jumped at the offer! Very kind of him, we thought. The cabbie suggested a deal that he would drop off the other passengers first and he would charge us at a discounted rate. We all agreed.

....He looks and sounds like an Indian, probably a Punjabi Sikh in his 60s....While sitting next to him, I gauged from the cap he was wearing....Very much like an American Sikh who hides his small bouffant on the frontal lobe of the head under the visor and trims his grey beard to look chic and quite integrated in the society.... A silver bangle in his right arm seemed to confirm my imagination. He pulled over at the first stop, took his money from the passengers and looked across the street- A gentleman was holding his briefcase over his head to shield himself vainly from the unsparing rain. Jump in, the cab driver asked him and 'Internalization of Pain' made space for the new passenger.
...He didn't ask us for our approval. Ah well! He is just being kind to stranded people in this nasty rain....

"Can first I drop him?"
No, I said instantly.
....I don't like this man, he is getting much bolder than I expect....
I have to take a flight out of the Capital, I argued.

"How much time long you take at hotel?"
.....I don't want to go with this cabbie; he is probably an Indian thug. I should rather use the good services of a thing called Lie.....
It will take me half an hour at the hotel, I need to pack things, I replied.

"Alright, then now I first drop you two first."
It was too cold. As I changed the direction of the air conditioning vent to his side, he began, "If you ate meat, no cold."
I am a meat eater, I said.
"Then you eat lots lots of nuts, very very good. Feel no cold then. Where you from?"
India.

"Oh, India is a beautiful country, I lived in Calcutta and other places," the American at the back seat, told my friend.

The old cabbie went on, "But very very strange. Indians eat no meat eating. Where in India from?"
Kashmir.
"Oh, very very old fight between India and Pakistan. Pakistan want Kashmir but you people say no, you people very problems."
I immediately looked at the fuel sheet lying near the gear box, displaying his name, Mr. Zaidi.
....Why have I been such a muttonhead today!....
You are from Pakistan?
"Yes."
Why would you even demand Kashmir?
....here is my chance! Teasing is so much fun....
"Because all Kashmiri wants Pakistan, because Indians kills Kashmiri. Murder many, torture many, rape many, very very bad for our brothers in Kashmir."
I sniggered and so did 'Internalization of Pain'. We are Kashmiris too, we don't want Pakistan, I chuckled.
"No, I talk the other Kashmiris, the real, the many many Kashmiris, our Muslim brothers," Mr. Zyaada Azadi retorted.

"You have a misperception. Kashmiris don't want Pakistan and you must pay a visit to Kashmir to know who is killing whom," my friend spoke.
The American gentleman sniffed at the sensitivity of the issue, “I don't want you Indians and Pakistanis fight again. Kashmiris want independence."
Yes, just that India would not want to leave it to be guzzled by Pakistan and China, I turned my head towards the moderator.
The meter rolled the receipt out amid the debate and Mr. American Politeness immediately offered to pay on our behalf as well. We refused the courtesy.

"Sir, you let these miser Indians pay. Penny-pinchers Indians, very very tight on the money," Mr. Too much under the cap, under the Topi, Topizaidi- Capizaidi pleaded.
'Internalization of Pain' handed over the dollars to Zaidi. There was no discount. She paid the penalty instead, twice the due bill. The previous passengers had paid the full amount too!
"I keep all money. No? You fine, I keep your all money. Yes you fine," he looked at me.
Please, do.

I stepped out even before my friend was finished with the business of reconciling to zip up her fleeced wallet and concluding her discussion with the American. I waited there under the open sky, under the relieving shower of rain.

Something needed to be washed away. Since morning, the heat of the sun, the creepiness of the deserted streets and the noise of cocktail conversations and silences had gotten under my skin. By Indian standards, it was not very hot. Nevertheless, at 9 in the morning, I just didn't like the gnawing brightness of the sun on the deserted streets of Farragut Square. Perhaps I was bothered by the ghosts of Iraq war having a gala time in broad sunlight at the backyard of the White House. Or was it their absence that peeved me, knowing that here were the Americans – all of them in the arms of Morpheus till late mornings of slack Sundays with sweet hangovers from last night and of a comfortable living in the US?

….hah…as if I don’t love sleeping till late mornings of the weekends…as if I give up my sleep for the misery of the world…none of us do really…Perhaps I am no different than the rest of these Americans….it is just that I am awake today while the rest are still in their beds! “Alright! But I am awake today and surely I am not one among the perpetrators of the suffering in Iraq. ” It was perhaps the sheer irritation that the ghosts of Iraq war were letting Americans rest in peace while the people in Iraq had lost track of time and bodies! Bush has been in a perpetual sleep, the deserted streets around the Constitutional Avenue echoed loudly.

I smiled, just as I realized that the walk from the subway to my destination was over. I was at the door steps of 'Internalization of Pain'. I had often wondered how she had immersed herself into a selfless mission of helping Kashmiri Muslim victims of violence while dysphoria had been for long, striving to consume her personally. "I am a Hindu by birth but I am a Buddhist, a Sufi and a Sikh by my disposition. I know nothing other than love," her eyes would glitter; her smile shine and her voice sweeten – that has been the answer to my awe!

With the same unspoken response, she gave a tireless audience to Mr. Know-All- Contractor. "Oh, I am on a contract – but not to kill! " he introduced himself at the breakfast table immediately puffing his chest out, "I am proud of my military background though." Forget the official designations, one could simply say that he was a contractor to disseminate knowledge.

Knowledge it indeed was- just that it was a garrulous encyclopedia with half the pages painted in Red- the Indian equivalent of Saffron.“Oh lots of Chinese who come to the US from their Godless country find Christianity very appealing and illuminating. They like the way we offer prayers, light candles in the Church and above all they find it non-clumsy as against some religious practices in their native land.”

‘Internalization of Pain’ and I exchanged glances and unasked questions... Ah, this is what 'Internalization of Pain' was referring to the day before. She was right to say that Mr. Know All Contractor knows too much. More than we need to know, more than we need to respond to, more than we need to react to. Just like the cabbie Mr. Capizaidi. But Shall I tell him I am Godless too? How would he react? ...Quite titillating but the only danger here is that his ‘Mrs. Bates’ shall hold me for the rest of the day! I forced the fork into the sausage and watched it closely while he kept drifting from Churches to Mosques, from Mosques to American Presidents and from Presidents to the towns named after Kings of England.

"You see, once a Muslim American lauded the American constitution, it’s every single word, every single amendment saying that it was the best document in the world, except that Americans need to make one major amendment – Instead of Bill of Rights it should be Allah’s Bill! The Preamble, he said should look like this: We the People of Allah, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Allah to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish Allah’s Constitution for the United States of America and the rest of the world.” These Muslims, he went on, you see, need reform and America is working hard to reform them.

“But who are you to make any reform. Any reform must take place internally,” my self-control failed me. Yes, yes, very right, he fumbled and suddenly entered into another realm of his cross word thinking as Mrs. Bates would. “American presidents should at least have some Defense background, like that of McCain, the soldier boasted. But you see, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republic," Mr Know All Contractor of the Republicans kept denying even as his Bullish Bullshit Bushist republicanism kept overflowing in his long narrations of Southern history, the American faith "In God we Trust" and the American culture.

I thought of the contractor, but I could not locate him among the New Yorkers sitting at the Bryant Park. He may have been playing chess, or reading books, or boozing, or working on his computer, or just sitting there watching the passersby and the green grass carefully, just as the rest were. Instead a salesman stood out!

Mr. 'Le Rêve Français' had warned me of the Langotiwala Bodhiwala as he was approaching us. 'Langoti-bodhiwala' -the chef turned ascetic, in a loin cloth, with his small pigtail hanging at the back of his tonsured head. Blasphemy, blasphemy – not the pigtail – 'cow-tail' perhaps would be a better word as my dictionary fails me to find the exact word for 'bodhi'. Cow-tail might be too long for his small plait but I am sure he won't mind it as long as it is not associated with the pigs.

The ISKON salesman, the Super-Consciousness Himself, the Divinity Himself, the Messenger of the God Himself, had walked up to us, greeted us in His Holy style, 'Hare Krishna' and began disseminating the Supreme Knowledge. Just like Mr.Contractor-But-Not-To-Kill! The lion-clothed, cow tailed, squint-eyed salesman was contracted by Hare Krishna himself, not George Bush, to sell His books, His unadulterated vegetarian recipe books, His health books to Americans. "What is America, haan… what is Iraq, haan…this all you see, haan…was India haan…once upon a time! We all, haan…are His creation haan!"

I can laugh loud here...there are no sausages and no forks... but precisely because this one is on an open mission....no, perhaps because he is not a foreigner....perhaps because I feel a right to laugh at him on his face.

"Geography can't get better than this," I giggled looking into his one eye that appeared to be at the righter angle than the other one. He laughed too and then pulled a chair to sit right across. Mr. 'Le Rêve Français' engaged himself in leafing through his sales material, quietly. I engaged the ascetic in his personal story . He claimed he had worked as a chef in three and four star hotels in India. He used to smoke and cook non-vegetarian food before he joined ISKON. His family had abandoned non-vegetarian food after he became the Divine Preacher.

"It is not good for health...haan, meat eating is bad, very very bad…. haan, when there is so much to eat from the nature around, why kill animals, haan…and of course, it is a sin to kill cow, haan..Cow is the mother, haan…cow feeds all of us...haan… in all we have seven mothers haan….and we respect the beings that suckle us..haan," he declared. He went on and on about the breast feeding and suckling, his squinted eyes squinting even more, perhaps at the thoughts of the same.... Poor celibate vegetarian priest! He has missed everything Mr. Cap-tap-i-Zaidi has enjoyed, for the sake of disseminating divine knowledge. But he has missed everything that Mr. Contractor has enjoyed even though both have the same mission!

voodoovocals

2008-06-19T00:23:00.013-04:00

‘mora gora ang lai le, mohe shaam rang dai de’, Lata, the cuckoo in the transistor, is buzzing softly into my ears. My heart throbs at the thought of fleeting Sunday and at even scarier reminder that I haven’t done Ms. Lovely Dovely’s Maths home work. “Oh, I will do it tomorrow morning in the school bus. What then if it turns out to be a little dirty with the bumps and shakes of the ride,” I smile with my eyes closed and my one arm resting on my forehead. Nothing like this tinned slanted roof, which has turned so warm underneath and as grandpa says nothing like this vitamin D penetrating the bones. I am lying on the tin sheets of the slanted roof, with my toes crawled inwards and gripping on to the screws of the roof, my one arm holding the ridge of the roof. It takes a lot of practice and skill to climb a slanting tinned roof and of course it takes lot of adventurous zeal to enjoy a summer siesta on the slippery slope of such a roof in Kashmir. I had both.

I learned the art of tightrope walk and ‘tight-edge embrace’ from my sister ‘Say No To All’. Grandpa has a funny poem for that dare devil name. The crux of the poem is that Ms. Say No To All challenges the authority even at the expense of her daily meal and it started from the time when she was to shift from breast feeding to her new meal- six bottles of lactogen milk a day. Granny often comes to her rescue if not anyone else. I often crouch like a little sissy ignorant of every single crime that I committed as her accomplice. Just like the one right now- I am lying next to her, pretending as if our mother’s loud calls are screams of God from the Hell fading into light breeze and silence as they reach the heaven- it is so much of an intoxication in this warm sunny paradise after days of hide and seek between the overcast sky and the hypnotic spell of this Hydrogen Helium lady.

The announcement that the train to New York/Boston is late by another hour, brings me back to the Padishah Zelabidin Echber and Empress Zelabat Giloriana, the former saying to the messenger about the latter, “O poor benighted England, we pity thy people for that thy queen is an ignorant dunce.” I am lying on the parapet between this small railway station and the rail tracks, reading my book on Mughals and Europeans. Unashamed. Unnoticed. My skin around the neck quite exposed to the vitamin D. It is warm and quiet. Passengers are sitting in the chairs around the waiting area, which is more like a balcony. ‘mora gora ang lai le, mohe shaam rang dai de’ (Drain me of my whiteness, tan me into your dark skin) flows from my ipod.

The train as usual was late and after a moment’s disappointment, I actually chuckled at the opportunity I had been granted yet again. Of late, I have started relishing the train journey instead of the lousy air flights in the US. The domestic flights here are as bad as their equivalents at home when it comes to their sense of timelessness. Not because the air travel is inefficient. It is the air traffic – the congestion in the lungs of the sky that coughs into long delays at the runways. At the waiting halls inside the airports, there is still a lot one could do. Watch the Indian lady fiddling with her gold bangles and her authority while the rest of the family comes across as candy-asses, overhear conversations of this Iraq returned young female soldier who makes brief calls to her grandmother 59 times in an hour, wonder at the newspaper holding wall street strutter whose shoes are being polished by a white girl, admire the short man with five kids who all are carrying their share of burden meticulously packed in their transparent bags. But once you board the plane, the senses are restricted from such activity. It often comes to just reading your book that seems to be too far away from the ending and time becomes elastic while waiting at the runways for a green signal to take off. For some reason, I have always felt the need to see stories than to merely read them.

Trains here are different. If they are late, you are stuck at the ‘tales narrating’ railway stations. But there is no boarding until the trains are ready to go. After two years of domestic air traveling in the US, I have arrived at the conclusion that I like trains better. At home, one despises the travel by trains, the sheer stink, the chaos at the stations, the filth of the washrooms in the trains and much more- even though the best stories that one may narrate to the future grand children could come from the Indian railway stations and the train journey in India. But unlike Indian trains, American trains are late only by hours and not days. I remember, once my train to Lucknow was 24 hours late.

My train to New York was half an hour late. The waiting hall was too chilled or perhaps too empty. I pulled out my Kashmiri Pashmina shawl and stared at the lady sitting across. I wanted to boast to her that it was too priceless for bland Americans who have no appreciation for the most beautiful things in the world. As if she even acknowledged my presence! At another look at the shawl, I thought of the craftsman who might have blinded himself embroidering it or who might have been killed in an encounter in Kashmir. I don’t know why I wanted him to be dead in either case. Or perhaps I do know. Anyway, poor craftsman – the victim of my under- developed imagination! He could have certainly done better.

My cold feet started heading towards the door to the boarding area- the balcony enclosed with cemented parapets - it is bright and sunny - I am lying on the parapet watching Claudia Cardinale serving water to the cupped palms of the laborers, showing off her luscious breasts and gesturing at me to look at the signboard - 'Train to New York- Left. Train to Miami-Right'- that was placed on this station- 'Once upon a time in the West'. Perhaps this station too was soaked in the blood of the villian Frank, the hero Harmonica and benign Bandit Cheyenne. Oh but it is East. Perhaps it took a civil war to set up this railway station.

I go back to my Rushdie book again - East meets West - Akbar and Elizabeth- here I am (the east) in the west. The trains are late in the west, the train of thoughts are so fast - my sister 'Say No To All' is lying next to me, Ma is calling us - I am lying alone, the enigmatic voice of the cuckoo from the ipod - 'mora gora ang lai le' keeps bringing me back to wakefulness- on the tin roof- on the parapet.

Vendor speak

2008-04-29T00:30:00.010-04:00

"How much is this for ?"
Eight dollars,
sells the old man with tied hair
I lift the auburn color stones
woven into a necklace, embrace it to my neck
look into the mirror, the old hand holds.

What are you learning here?
"World-Affairs-Economic Policy"
My foot! he yells, don't bullshit,
with a Gramsci and Marx adherent
I am not a babyboomer,
I sell the stones, the beads
I was the Anti-Vietnam war slogan
I want a state for Palestinians
Till then, will not step on the Israeli land,
yet I am a Jew.
"I like the necklace,
But aren't you an American?"
A different one, surely yes. I want war,
Iran to be bombed
"Oh, why the war?"
I am the Anti-Ahmadinejad protester
I am happy the Shias rule Iraq
"Oh, why no inclusiveness?"
That is true! the old man pauses
Hillary is my choice, not Obama
"Why not McCain, if war is what you want"
Republicans are outdated, the old man drifts
I never had this conversation ever before
No one asked me questions, the old man smiles

On the steps of Low Library
is a fair of sorts
with paradoxes galore
dont judge the man,
tells my friend not until
you know him some more.

Tall poppy Pope

2008-04-21T23:09:00.006-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI
wears a pair of red shoes
just like I did
when I was a little girl.

Pope Benedict XVI
wears a fancy crown
just like I didn't
when I was a little girl.

PS: My friend Aparna questions :

Are you sure the wizard of oz didn't steal dorothy's ruby red slippers by mistake?

Sale

2008-04-21T01:02:00.034-04:00

Sale, sale, sale

In the sale, was Wordsworth
and the violet Lucy in my scrapbook,
In the sale, were women in saree and kohl
sketched in my little notebook

In the sale, were the plastic toys
now dead, old grandpa bought
In the sale, were the comics
very unwillingly, my young uncle gave

In the sale, were the snap shots
of my tom boyish cropped hair and loose pants
In the sale, were the stones and marbles
collected from the kitchen garden in the backyard

In the sale, were the sea shells
I had earned in the last Shivratri gamble
In the sale, was a set of playing cards
two siblings marked with colors for cheating

In the sale, were the little frocks
that I sew for my pretty doll
In the sale, were the peacock feathers with some sugar
lying in the books to multiply next winter

In the sale, were all these heartaches
under the debris of a destroyed home.
In the sale, were stories of a lifetime
under the rubble of a burnt shelter.

All our memories of a lost dwelling,
my defeated father finally sold.

PS: The last time when I went to this ache called 'home', I tried hard to dig all my assets from the wreck with little sticks. For the new dwellers, it was such a spectacle and for the non-existent one, it was such an agonizing disappointment - my sticks were not strong enough to retrieve anything that we have lost!

A Lost Paint Brush

2008-04-20T13:16:00.031-04:00

A camera and lenses from Nepal
died in the corner shelf of his color room.
Miniature black and white copies of
Leh deserts, Kashmir jungles
sighed in the black old albums,
with a bearded drunken man
sweating out to death.

The candle post cards from Japan
burnt in the cupboard on the deck.
The white bone china, the fine glass
that served the master's life style
paled quietly in the meshed showcase,
with a little girl's sculpture
withering out in the rain.

The oil paint tubes bought in poverty
dried up in the wooden box under the bed.
The colored canvass, the brown nudes
that poured out of the master's brush
aged with time and dust,
with a paint brush's bristle
shedding like a woman's hair.

This is what happened
and not the marauding loot
hopes the man.
....A paint brush was lost
and not vandalized,
hopes the man whose artistic soul
was murdered, back home.

PS: Dedicated to Dad

We Part Often

2008-04-20T11:09:00.006-04:00

Some of me is gone, when he goes
Some of him is left, when he leaves
The echo of his dense voice,
fades in the silence
The smell of his chest,
vanishes in the cold air
I slip into the quilt, lie in the bed
Some of him is still there
Some of me, he has taken away.

Long & Short Options

2008-04-19T23:48:00.010-04:00

.....someone is shorting stories,
someone is longing audience
Who are you, where were you born
When were you born,
to whom were you born to
is all that takes to
long your wishes and
short your name

...at the school church, the bride in her white dress,
with her blue escorts, longed her wishes too.
But why would I want to get married in the Church?
"It looks beautiful!" she shorts
....shrimp dumplings; Lamb Hunan style
turmeric gravy, hot red oil
white rice and soy sauce
"Some mustard prawns too," he longs

His is a white shirt, hers is a white shirt
the worry of curry stains hangs from the face
White paper sheets shall save them
and yet market strains has caved him in
In the Manhattan bar, the cleaner climbs the glass wall
Wipes the stains of the fading business
He shorts his sweat, we long the sight through the glass
Across the street, are the new greens of the Spring

"Pope and the Indian uncle"...where am I?
"Free trade and the lefties"...what is this talk
we ramble, we gamble...who is talking?
Sun was selling on the morningside,
after a long winter, some warmth today.
why did you short your wish,
why did you long your head...