Until you reached for me,
we were the old cliché.

You:
faint,
solar,
spun outside your orbit,
star without system.

I:
cool,
polar,
consumed by my spirit,
terrorized by glass.

Until you reached for me:
No state, no reason;
no reason, no form;
one to another,
no pause, no surrender.

But then you reached for me,
crossed your heart
and hoped for me;

moved me,
rocked me,
tilted me;

kissed me,
licked me,
melted me.

—

Vinayak Varma, 2016

Dear dengue mosquito
Trapped in my car,
You think you’re so saucy,
Such a fucking Sheba,
With all your groaning,
Your sighs and whispers,
Your legs and wings
Brushing the backs of my knees.

Yes, keep nibbling at my ankles
And tickling my neck, go on,
When I’ve said NO, like, thrice already.
All this flailing and screaming
Doesn’t imply pleasure, you know.
That’s right, you bastard.
My blood type does not
Determine my consent.

That shut you up, didn’t it? Hello?
Oh, please. I know you’re still here.
I can see you lurking
Behind the dashboard.
Kindly end your tiresome games,
Your silly hide and seek.
Your brooding and sulking
Doesn’t impress me.

Really, you drive me so crazy!
This is the last time, I swear,
That I make the mistake of
Leaving you such an easy opening.
And I WISH we’d agreed on a safe word
Back when this damn thing got started.
(I asked for “release”,
But you wanted “death”.)

—

Vinayak Varma, 2018

Some moandays and bluesdays,
So dang sprawled across the summer earth,
Your tongue in the air like a poikilotherm,
Most of your joint in ashes,
All the light of the world
Having stripped off your eyelids,
And your hunger a mere
Rasam-itch in your stomach
(Not yet that unpleasant gnawing
For an everything-dosa
Or a nothing-but-vada),
It just ups and happens:
A window begins to vibrate,
Then the whole house gets the shakes,
And it feels like you’re jittering
Between four opposing realities,
You legendary, timeless pendulum,
Rattling through their eggshell skins,
And yet you fear — you know —
That when the disruption subsides
You’ll land back in the same soft
Life you’ve always inhabited,
That the adventure of an all-new,
All-shiny timeline will elude you;
And you despair, of course, you despair,
But feebly, politely, without the kind of noise
Needed to drown out your still-baying hunger,
Or the horsefly ranting in your ear —
After all, the sunlight still warms your legs,
And the wind so smells of storm;
So you let those storybook characters,
The bears and crones and superhumans,
Back in your brain again, only because
Some pleasures are multiversal,
Because there are always timelines
Within timelines within timelines,
And because no later is better or worse
Than the sweet pain of now and again.

—

Vinayak Varma, 2020

(I love drawing hands, especially wrinkled hands that have learned to hold time.)

Less is more
And more is less,
More or less.

—

Vinayak Varma, 2020

I was a sickly child growing up, constantly afflicted with an irritable stomach that threw industrial-sized tantrums at the slightest provocation and unionised sinuses that went on strike every time a single grain of dust entered the air. My parents tried all sorts of treatments on me, from allopathic antibiotics and anti-allergens through ayurvedic ghees and cordials, to — being good parents, their desperation at my suffering must have surely led them thus far at some point, I’m convinced — even the dark arts of homoeopathy, numerology, Reiki and witchcraft. (Somewhere deep in the nether worlds, goes a recurring nightmare, there is a demonic soul-mortgaging contract bound in an ancient skin that bears my family’s name in mirror-writing, and the damned thing is filled with fork-tongued promises of impending good health.)

At no point during these medical struggles was the concept of tea as a tonic ever raised in our home, because, of course, the imbibing of tea and coffee has always been considered an adult province among the Malayali Hindu orthodoxy. My brother and I were often fed the egregious fiction that tea stunts mental and physical growth in children, that if we drank the stuff we would inexorably become deformed idiots. The truth was that the grown-ups were probably tired enough as it was, having to deal with our youthful energies, without us being supercharged with caffeine and bouncing off the walls like a couple of coked-up Koosh Kins on the warpath. (Tea is “too strong for children”, all the aunties and uncles would say, even as they poured you a mollifying tumbler of Thums-Up or Campa Cola. So much for the wisdom of one’s elders.)

I’m properly into my thirties now, and while my immunity continues to show no miraculous signs of repair, age and experience have brought with them the knowledge that I can exercise some measure of control over how my illnesses pan out. Having fought the same battles countless times already, I have an array of strategems and weapons ready to be deployed on my bacterial nemeses, and among these a good, strong cup of tea has time and again proven my best counter-measure. When I have a bad tummy, I get better by eating dry toast and washing it down with warm, mild black tea. When I have the flu or an inflamed sinus, drinking lots of hot, spicy tea helps unclog my breathing tubes. Whether I’m stressed or cold or hot or tired or travelling, I always drink tea. It’s the only medication that’s independent of occasion, weather, mood, and geography.

I wish I’d known about this palliative aspect of the beverage as a child, every time I was sick and helpless and stuck in bed waiting for help from the grown-ups. But I got around to it eventually, once I’d left home as a seventeen-year-old, thanks in part to roadside bicycle chaiwallahs who were the only source of sustenance in the cold wee hours after a night on the town, friends who made excellent masala tea on working evenings, and repeated references to tea and its wonders in my other go-to source of comfort: the writings of P.G. Wodehouse (“I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat. A deep sip or two, and I felt — I won’t say restored, because a birthday party like Pongo Twistleton’s isn’t a thing you get restored after with a mere mouthful of tea, but sufficiently the old Bertram to be able to bend the mind on this awful thing which had come upon me.” This is valuable advice from Bertie, particularly if your whole life seems like the destructive aftermath of Pongo Twistleton’s birthday). The first time I had the flu while living alone, after arriving in Bangalore for my higher studies, I brewed batch after batch of tea to right myself. And when the flu left me a couple of days later, it was probably for the first time in my life that I felt in control of my own health. This was a big deal for me.

Much has been claimed and disputed in equal measure, by the so-called experts, about the restorative abilities of tea. The pro-tea lobbies keep making the usual fuss about anti-oxidants and tannins and longevity and suchlike, countered by other amateur scientists who say that the only real benefit of tea is that the water it’s steeped in has been boiled free of germs. I don’t know sufficiently about chemistry or the human physiology to adopt or deride either viewpoint. To be honest, the positive impact of tea — that of the leaf and its chemical composition — on our health could well be a placebo effect, for all I care, and for the purposes of my argument I’m willing to fully embrace that possibility. In fact, let’s just go ahead and assume that tea is merely flavoured water — no more, no less. Such an assumption, however, still doesn’t detract from the fact that a cup of that empty flavour, such as it might be, has always made me feel like some faulty component of my body has just been serviced and upgraded. It’s a flavour that clearly has a bit of a kick to it. It improves my mood and fills me with a general feeling of benevolence. It’s a soothing balm for the mind and body. And when you have a nervous stomach that’s often aggravated by mental stress, a little mind balm goes a long way, placebo or not.

By that token, tea is a sort of rough sketch on a blank canvas that makes room for all kinds of creative experimentation, adaptable to every manner of palate and need. This is an idea that we Indians, in particular, have happily picked up and sprinted with. Our tea-drinking culture isn’t merely limited to the somewhat dispiriting English cliche of the limp teabag in a mug, but that of rampant rule-breaking and world-building. For us, variety in tea isn’t just about where the leaf originated but about a million different modes of preparation. It’s about chai and cha and lalchai and suleimanis and kahwahs, it involves not just tea leaves but the addition of ginger and cardamom and pepper and liquorice and almonds and cloves, it’s served not just with biscuits or toast or scones or cake but with pazhamporis and onion pakoras and samosas and daabelis and rusk and bun maska and Bombay toast and vada pav and dosas and murukkus and luchis and momos and… you get the drift. The list has no limits. We’ve understood and thoroughly applied the knowledge that you can customise your infusion precisely to what you want it to achieve and to what degree. You can even build an entire diet plan around it.

My own canvas of tea, over time, has taken a rather Cubist multidimensionality. My mid-morning green tea wakes me up and helps me think (and, if what they say is true, lose weight and age well), my postprandial ginger tea kick-starts the digestion, and my cinnamon tea in the evening rids me of headaches. I’ve got it down to a science now (even if such a science might be inconclusive). I still fall sick every so often, sure, but the feeling of it isn’t quite as horrible as I remember it. I have all my many sick-day teas to look forward to now, and they, in turn, work in concert to make the whole ordeal just a little bit happier. And that, for me, is a game-changer.

—

Vinayak Varma, 2016

(First published by Still Steeping, the Teabox blog.)

The evening flappers –
the crows and the hawks,
the crap-happy rodent pigeons,
the rubbernecker ducks,
and the lightning-rod bats —
they litter my terrace skies
like torn plastic liners
and brown-paper bags
relieved of the bin life.

If I could bird like them,
I would forget the earth altogether —
for why, then, must I,
grey-eyed and mysterious,
persist with the gravity of things?

—

An old poem from when I lived in a barsaati and spent my sunsets perched on the watertank — a dull, wingless thing watching those splendid things with wings doing unimaginable things in the sky. The accompanying illustration is from my book Jadav and the Tree-Place (Pratham Books, 2016).

—

Vinayak Varma, 2020

Is no one else troubled by the lie
that lets these water parks function
while our reservoirs and dams run dry?
Nobody? Just me? Oh, come on!

And you’re all perfectly at home,
are you, with those ghastly little brats
there, drooling their entire microbiomes
into the goddamn hydrostat?

Not to mention that gassy grandma
who’s been yellowing the children’s pool
with a steady dribble of piss and drama.
(“I checked,” she claims. “I’ve broken no rule!”)

And those Speedo-goggled aunties
in their salwars and nighties,
hurtling down the water slides,
their faces deliquescing
like daydreams in the noontide,
like a salad undressing.

And check out the boxered brah-men
blessing the musical fountain
with their dripping holy threads,
their tripping, bobbly heads,
exorcising guilt and lust
with plangent pelvic thrusts.

Oh, that food stall’s meant to look like a bird.
(It looks more like a dinosaur’s turd.)
The poor ticket seller’s dressed like a bat.
(Seriously, boss, what’s up with that?)

I’ll come clean: I was only lured here
by the promise of free lunch and a beer.
So, no, I’m not getting in that queue.
Yes, I’m quite alright, thank you.

While you’re all swimming in e-coli,
I’ll be right here, chilling, getting high,
safely wrapped in raincoat and umbrella,
jotting down ideas for a horror novella.

—

(For G. & K.)

—

Vinayak Varma, 2020

Warm glass to cold plate,
prattle or oscitate,
complain or distort:
“Life’s too short!”

The only window in the den
trades smoke and oxygen
for half-gentle mocking:
“Except when you’re talking!”

—

Vinayak Varma, 2020

—

(Illustration from ‘Good Night and God Bless’, Anita Nair, Penguin, 2008)

At unbridled, untethered twenty,
I would measure my rides to that
(certainly not this) college town —
that lemon-and-eggshell homeostatic
asylum for creative misfits — using,
for signage, succour, pitstops and piss stops,
lakes, banyan trees and omelette vendors,
barbershops with chrome-and-rexine chairs,
crone men with beedis behind ears
hunched around the daily weather report
like crows worrying at a fallen squirrel,
jasmine, jackfruit, flames of the forest,
snake-infested ruins of temples
for misappropriated gods,
the old brick factory, its tall red chimney
blowing smoke at the police station athwart
like a lonely, ageing pothead
courting detention, courting love,
this Andhra mess with the curd
so thick you could sculpt it,
that vada joint with the paperplane dosas,
the reaching wind,
its fingers running cold and warm,

raking sharply across all of nature,
prehistory, my flatted hair,
reeking of permanence,
every bit of it a glorious lie.
Because six hard lanes
have since stamped out
every living feature,
every fold, hair and pimple,
on Bellary Road, and I can’t see
my place in it any longer.
The old map is ash and rubble.
The Parsee Tower of Silence jitters
with the rumble of jet engines, cash registers,
and the screams of ride-sharers
and gig-workers hailing swift passage
away, across, aloft, anywhere but here.
The vultures are dead, gone, eaten, beaten,
overtaken by their own morbid function.
Townships, Layouts and Communities
have uprooted or walled away the hallis
like unclaimed, unmarked graves.
The granite hills are bombed out shells.
No, I cannot reconcile these two highways,

the one I see and the one I remember,
just as I cannot fit my bloated thirty-seven
into this jigsaw hole that’s still shaped
like a crisp-edged twenty.
What, then, gives me the right to judge
the art, the passion, and potential
of these soft young hopefuls
who look and sound the way I still feel —
bright, brittle, afraid, and full of bluster?
When so much of the world they inherited
is so dulled and compromised,
why must they also tolerate
the criticism of strangers?
Or must I show them truth and horror
so they may harden their backs
against the highway’s next assault
on fragile, aimless memory?
Or perhaps the highway will, one day,
wind back around, disappear into itself,
and re-emerge as a smaller,
milder, less ambitious metaphor
for expectations, progress,
or the many crimes of Time.

—

For the students of Srishti, old and new.

—

Vinayak Varma, 2020

—

1. In which a complaint is firmly dealt with:

28 Oct. 19XX / XPM

Caller: Hello? Is this the Telecom Ministry?

D.I.B. Mr. XXXXXX: Wrong number. [Hangs up]

X:05PM

Caller: Hello? Is this the Telecom Ministry?

D.I.B.: I told you, you have the wrong number! [Hangs up]

X:10PM

Caller: Hello?

D.I.B.: Hello?

Caller: Who am I speaking with?

D.I.B.: This is DIB XXXXXX speaking. Who is this?

Caller: Ah. So this isn’t the Telecom Ministry then?

D.I.B.: No, it isn’t! [Hangs up]

X:15PM

Caller: Hello? Is this the Telecom Ministry?

D.I.B.: [On intercom to Sec.:] Mohan, pick up the parallel line. Yeh call trace karo. [On telephone:] Yes, that’s right, this is the Telecom Ministry. What can we do for you?

Caller: Yes, well, I am calling to make a complaint. All my calls to the Telecom Ministry keep getting forwarded to the office of the Director of the Intelligence Bureau. It’s most annoying.

D.I.B.: [On intercom] What? Traced? Good. Have this joker arrested, locked up and beaten mercilessly. [On telephone] Sorry, wrong number. [Hangs up]

2. In which a violent death is reported:

31 October 19XX, XXPM

D.I.B.: Hello?

D.G.P. Mr. XXXXX: Directorji, hello! This is XXXXX speaking! I assume you have got the news by now?

D.I.B.: Hello, XXXXX-ji! What news are you referring to?

D.G.P.: That Mrs. GXXXXX has been shot, of course. I called to ask if…

D.I.B.: My god! Mrs. XXXXXX has been shot?? XXXXX-ji, I have to hang up, I’m sorry. I must speak with the A.D.! [Hangs up]

D.I.B.: Hello, XXXXXX?

P.A. Mr. XXXXXX: Yes, sir?

D.I.B.: Connect me to Mr. XXXXXXXX immediately.

P.A.: Yes, sir. Please hold the line.

[Shehnai rec. plays for approx. 15 seconds]

A.D. Mr. XXXXXXXX: Hello?

D.I.B.: Hello, am I speaking with XXXXXXXX?

A.D.: No, sir. This is Cutts, sir.

D.I.B.: What? Who?

A.D.: Cutts, sir. The butcher, sir.

D.I.B.: What?? Who??

A.D.: Hahahahaha! I fooled you again, XXXXXX-ji! Hahahaha! A little Hergé humour there! How do you like that?

D.I.B.: You idiot! You [expletive deleted] idiot! Mrs. XXXXXX has been shot at! Haven’t you heard??

A.D.: Hahaha! Good one, XXXXXX-ji! Good one! But I’m not so easily fooled! Haha!

D.I.B.: This is no joke, XXXXXXXX! It’s a genuine emergency!

A.D.: Aahahahaha! That’s good! An emergency, indeed! That’s priceless! Hahaha!

D.I.B.: [Expletive deleted] your worthless [expletive deleted], XXXXXXXX! [Hangs up]

3. In which a large order is executed:

2 November 19XX, XXAM

D.I.B.: Hello?

Caller: Hello! Hello, sir! [Static] six kilos [static] sent!

D.I.B.: What? I can’t hear you! Six kilos of what? Sent where?

Caller: Yes! Six! The purest grade of [static]… It will be a [static] explosion of [static] sir! Aapke mehmaan sab [static].

D.I.B.: What? An explosion? Where? [On intercom to Sec.:] Mohan, pick up the parallel line. Yeh call mein trace lagao, jaldi!

Caller: Sir? [Static] Sorry, cannot hear [static] hope it will [static]. It has been [static] for hundred heads, as [static] ordered.

D.I.B.: What? Who is this?? I repeat: WHO am I speaking with?

Caller: This [static] from [static] Chandni [static], sir. Where we [static].

D.I.B.: [On intercom] Traced? No? Hurry, Mohan! [On telephone] Er… Hold on. [On intercom] Mohan, do we have a unit in Chandni Chowk? [Expletive deleted] it, I cannot understand if this is our person or theirs. [On telephone] Please explain yourself! Are you making a threat or identifying one? Hello?

Caller: [Static] your house. [Static] sent. I will call [static] bad line [static] okay. [Hangs up]

D.I.B.: Hello? Hello? [Expletive deleted] hung up. Trace mila, Mohan?

SEC.: Location is Ghantewala Sweets in Chandni Chowk. That was the proprietor, one Mr. Jain.

D.I.B.: Oh. Him. Ah… I was expecting his call. The four hundred besan laddoos for the party. I forgot.

SEC.: So there is no bomb threat?

D.I.B.: [Expletive deleted] up your [expletive deleted], Mohan. [Hangs up]

—-

Vinayak Varma

(First published in Cyclostyle, Issue 1, 2012.)