Whatever!

Felicity

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:54:00 +0000

With every cracking of a can, comes a swathe of emotions, ranging from curiosity, hunger, primordial urges, laziness, and joy. Occasionally, disgust, and revenge, at something unwanted or untimely. Instinctively, it was but a shell that kept Felicity away from dinner. So while the distant metallic crackle rings like a soup kitchen bell, something stirs overhead.

Sacrificial cymbals down the stairs, like an unfortunate old man’s tumble. At the edge of the stairs, she waits for her prey to come to her. A little spider lady for her overfed prospective spouse. Eager eyes and the in and out of her finger nails gouge the air until it falls limp to but a last-second balloon exhale. Phhhbrrroeeey.

Silences are two-faced; farts in a crowded street or in a two-person elevator. In unbroken silence, Felicity toes on all fours, seemingly unseen, under the couch, behind my legs. The twitch of her whiskers brush and paint a fresh tickle against the Achilles in my right foot. I fell in love with an icy nose and emery tongue, as she gnaws my fingers and smells the semi-open dinner. Tuna.

Pickily, she walks away, like the fish died for nothing, as I slice up some blood on my thumb while opening the can. In a lazy flop, the can of unctuous flaked fish falls shaped like the can’s inside onto Felicity’s saucer, wafting away in her unnoticed smells.

And every time I enter my home, I smell it. Ready and generous. And every time, there seems to be a little nibbled and missing. In secrecy.

For Hobbes

Yeti

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:37:00 +0000

When a yeti sweats, it wicks the ends attached to his scalp first. Growing towards the ends in little journey surges, already evaporating by the time they reach the edges. Poof. Beaten and a wet lion, Haaga stretches the nails of his chair until they sag and yet hold its splinters together. He stares past his humid and matted bangs into the darkness. A shadow walks in, smelling of tobacco in echoes, behind.

“Hungry are we?” snarls from the dark.

“I want my momma.”

A clap and the chair gives in, thumping Haaga onto the dusty floor that sticks to his long hair. The shadow gulps in his stand, tick-tocking his eyes, listening to the rustle of hair in the humid breezeless air. The smell of Haaga rustles by in hungry husky breaths.

Four thumps to the right neck, and the red tip of the cigarette flies in swirls to the floor. The shadow mingles with the remnant darkness. Sexed out.

Where does the wind waft in from, in a square-hole room with a single light bulb, swinging that way and this, misappropriating the cone of dirty light that came with it, widening his stolen but earned cigarette-smoke rings, and chilling his palm-hair that stand on ends? He singes a dozen white-gray strands off his beard in every draw, blowing more rings, and wishing he could jump through one of them and emerge clean and with size 9 feet.

He should have listened to his mother.

Dice

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:52:00 +0000

We watch the corners of his eyes, a little black game of tennis against the edges, as they make us want to cry. Half of my cattle, a third of my mother’s rubies. The brothers are broke to their careless loin-cloths; a shameful day to pick a windy verandah for a game. The lines on his palms have lost to the crackling-rubbing of his dice. He barters any remnant self respect for precision in one smooth whisper to probability; a thirty-sixth of my cattle to feed the gods, cackles he.

He tosses the dice to the board, as they thump the vicious snakes in their eyes; his bold golden kings nifty-catly climb ladders. Up and up, while my fingers burned, and palms frazzled, and my cowardly cowries snuck their tails in and roll down, snake-bitten-blue.

At least the alcohol is good and foreign. Ten thousand pipes, they say, from a distant land, where there were no hangovers, or rubies. At least not for a few thousand years more.

Sending word to the accountants, they flank my side in nightly servility, smelling of sleep and breast-milk, with rolls of paper-wealth, that they toss in the ring for the next round. Government and all.

Twelve minutes, each one for each face of a pair of dice. I lose it all, including my accountants, that are sent away with wishes to finish their paused women near, and a condom.

I think one of the beastly guards clobbered me on a bathroom break. Back on the floor, loin-cloth and all, I smile and throw up.

Did we know that his palms were the kings of chance, as we pawn our woman?

Radio Lady

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:48:00 +0000

When she celebrated her ten thousandth mile on a sunny fall evening, there was no one around but the crackled brown leaves, Elvis, and dusty wind. The pink bike squeaked and needed oil, unheeded for amidst the music. She stopped for a minute, looked around, set her rock-hard calves back on the pedals and sped, background scored.
She cried a hundred wind-swept tears, lining her cheeks in salty war-marks. Panting up the elevation, she rode. Gunshots in the air, half-dead geese plummeting faster than their plumes. Sunny, warm turtles drip back into the river, offended. The wind zzzed, plunging like chunks of wood between her tire-spokes. Rain felled monsters washed all, a hated, controversial water colour canvas.

Two blocks east of shelter, there was a little explosion. Blip. In an insignificant little bubble, the front tire fell and breathed off, dropping her at a friendly puddle swish swash. She reached for her Elvis machine love and shoved it into her bodice, hugged her bike and walked. The puddle in her sneakers.

The door slammed bam. And she stood in the doorway, the howling rain in her soaked gray hair, stapled to her head. She wheeled in, the front tire sagging liposucked, and felt for her heart, tapped the radio on its head until it swung back to life and doled out the Jailhouse Rock in baby vomits. She turned back to me and grinned.

“Ten thousand!”

Keys

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:04:00 +0000

Daymare. That forty thieves had had their way with my apartment. Funnier still, they hadn’t even had to chant a little jibber-jabber to enter. I had left the keys in the door. Snickering, the chief turns the knob counter-clockwise and lets them all in, one by one. They all look like they share a mother or a father and an evil grin. They run around the house, like noisy neighbor kids, chewing on wires, tripping the desks, strangling the lamps. And when they are done, they leave in a file, like order were so fucking necessary now.

I rub my eyes and pockets awake to check for my keys and sanity. Neither. I dash home.

The winds, a howling. Through the doors and windows and broken everything. A livewire buzzes in a corner, while doltish ladybugs lie fried beside it. The food’s all licked clean. Literally. I stand amid crinkled wrappers and opened cans and cracked Tupperware and feathery cushions and soiled sheets. In one gulp, the tears rush and burn.

The key’s still in the door, in the harmless clinking of the two bells, a lizard and a name tag that are attached to the keychain.

On second or rather the fifth thought, I turn around and bury my keys and hear them chunk into a growing-grown potato. Safer. Baked keys for dinner in a few weeks.

As dramatic as dreams, as I would like it to be, summers are not. Bleh.
No thieves, no broken stuff and no key dinners.

Train

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Janifer dreams of the knocks. Cork on willow. Like unwritten percussion. And the seething green grass that was never so more out of place than in the middle of a hot and dusty Madras.

Pressing times, with the fresh tinkle of change in a worn out khaki pocket; the fibers give way and a sneaky coin falls through and rolls, lands tails on the grit. Janifer bends her knees and picks it up, a perverse trolley three-wheels by, peeking at her in ninety degrees, wishing her pants were down and shirt were up. Flipping it twice, she lands it on the ticket-man’s little jail window. He barks at her, and she withdraws her hand and puts it on her cheek. A brief altercation and they agree upon a nightly pass. She yelps in joy, as he makes a rocket out of the ticket and flings it through his grilled window; it flies expertly as his eyes envy its ability and not his. She runs faithfully after it and expertly lands it on her palm. Ten trips! This way and that.

Janifer hoists herself onto the groaning train, her hands slipping on everybody’s sweat on the paintless handles. She cups her palms and smells, of Madras.
So when she throws herself onto a vacant seat, the rubber farts back, violently.
She stares out the window, wishing she had the money to do this another way. But apparently, not.

The train pulls her with it and throws her back like it didn’t like her. The drone of the wheels scratching against the rails, a cricket in her brain. Zzz.

And from the distance, the white lights come closer, a sudden dawn, as the rush of cheers from the field eats the air. Her window draws nearer to the field and she swallows the heart that wouldn’t leave her bloody throat. The familiar burst of yellows and blues; us and them. As her window sweeps by the stadium, a blue man swings his bat and sends the ball away from her angle of sight. She closes her eyes and wishes it were six. But the train, moves on, unstoppable, super-man. Bastard.
She feels the change, now a ticket, in her pockets and steps out at the next station. Four minutes until the next train.

Smores and Rhubarb Crisp

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Mon, 10 May 2010 02:07:00 +0000

A shiver haunts me, a shade, as a carefree zip of lightning ruins somebody’s home somewhere before choosing to rumble sneaky. They were coming for me. I could tell from how the thuds were louder now. I hide into a warming southerly corner of my tent and feel at home for a fucking less than a second. The grass wets my pants in batches as I scramble to find a dryer spot to cover. The slow, stealthy beginnings of a long, wet night, camping.

Movement creeps shadowy on my strong, nylon walls. I hide in a hug.
A distant pee of lighter fluid and a scramble to keep a match dry in the flirty drizzle. The clunking of iron and is that somebody prying open a pack of something with their teeth? Crip-crop, chopping fingers. Enough heard, the unzip-wave of twelve campers.

I smell my mother like roses, like home, like tea and catch her in my empty, wet palms and smile.

We follow bugs to the fire and read the dessert menu in drools.

The fire was a reluctant virgin. But stoked with our huddle of marshmallows, he crackles in joy, like love. Smores and random rhubarb crisp under the curly black skies.

Like home.

-

For mom.

Frying

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:57:00 +0000

Treasured box and the little Amish girl that is feeding a blade of grass to a cross-eyed goat. His handsome gray beard flies in the direction of her hair and floating pollen allergies. The goat and the girl, still guarding candied imports that I no longer remember the taste of. I rowdily rip the felt off the insides, sniffing eagerly.

Sitting on the awkwardly balanced moped, I stare at the rider in the round hornlike mirrors. Handsome. Drrr!

I break the stray chewed blackout candle in half and light the wick on one, sitting it in a puddle of its own drips. I pause to pick between the felt-less box and the goat-girl lid. Her smile hits me in the shins. Like it were of a happiness that wasn’t for me to bite into. I upturn the lid, and wait for the girl to fall off. With the goat.

In wobbly kicks, I set my slippers flying and rock the moped. Oh stop whinnying, you steed!

Magical sprinkles of expertly grated wax, that melts as they touch the heating lid. I goat-stripped my grandmother’s plant and dropped them in.

Oh the pedals! I whirr them this way and that; one leg down and the other comes up. Faster and faster!

Bubbly leaves pop like poppadoms.

The chains decide to slickly sliver off my right toe-nail. I wait until I can run to my grandmother’s arms to cry, as she boils the overtly chlorinated city water in a stainless steel bowl and fries gramp’s glass syringe and menacing needle for my painkiller shot. “Just two minutes!” and the smell of sanitizing alcohol, dyed pink.

Wax fried basil and the charred candy girl’s smile.

Post summer fake limp at school and shared recipes.

Grasshopper Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:32:00 +0000

Lazing by, fat on aphids. A loathsome bunch of them try and flip-flop around my insides and die in the process. I burp rancid. Hopping was out of the question. There were no questions either. While I had life all figured out, or so, an unmindful car ambles by, whooshing me onto its front. I scramble on all sixes, staring emptily at the moron behind the wheel, as he parks like a bastard and runs out. People.

I wait and eye the plush insides and out. I begin questioning. Sigh. A burp frees a lucky aphid. I let him fly away.

I could fly. But I won’t.

I could trot by this dirty glass for the meadows but I can’t.

I could reach for the clouds of lingering aphids above me, but I don’t.

I could dance my wings and wait for a flying-by love, but I shan’t.

I choose to ride. My dear driver walks back in and shuts his door. He stares at me and contemplates the wipers and squirts for a minute. Shit. I am all over the place, as the mechanics scrape against the glass. The idiot forgets the squirt button and the wiper trashes his windshield like shit in one big scratch.

Giving up, he chokes the car and drives.

I fill my wings, thirty miles per hour. The two lonely hairs on my head slick back. And in one big hop, I am where I wasn’t. Whee.

So? The conveniences we pick for what.

Found

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:06:00 +0000

Three red lines up my arm; like surrender pleasures; to fostered instincts. The fence. A wall. As resident draftsmen fought for the right to use the geometric rulers, I ran the tip of my tea-burnt tongue over my salty fingers and a distant unfortunate speck of gunpowder or fence-venom stung. Pthu.

Above me, I see my friends. Leering. For even when I was being buried, I chose to play the funny one; an occasional jerk of hand would send a baker’s dozen down into doubting their sanities. Foot after foot, the petrichor filled in. I downed it like I were flying in the rain. Vs in the sky that hunters could never reach. We were Vs. Breaking breezes like primetime television. Quack. And as the sun closed up, a silhouette draws itself. I am dark; the sun a Florida orange. I draw a deep breath as I choose fall.

Days. I longed for him. As I opened my eyes, I saw him in the sand. In waiting, I grew. Smiles were unheard. Tears unseen and fallen to the ground. Rain. Rain.

But one day. The comfort of a spade hit my left foot. I woke up in grins. My rain had fallen. My sun. In clumps, the spring of twenty feet above me seeped in, as in blisters, this leper, did.

Caught in the arms of my man, I finally indulged my eyes to find a scene. He smiled back and offered his hand and heart.

He. Was like a tuft of coriander down my throat.

I was found.

The Writer's Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:14:00 +0000

An always pencil on paper, his nick. For if there weren’t a greasy near death pencil pegged upside his right earlobe, a moment of shock would eventually find it on his left or in his hand, of course. He haunts my dreams, he does. The scribbles write original scores for my office day-dreams; for whenever am not working or working, the rascal pencil is all I can see through the see-through cubicle walls. Scribble doodle. Doodle doodle. We gift a fly-size security camera to the voyeur cop guys; conveniently choleric, sits the bug, capturing his scribbles over his shoulder. Zoom in, dammit. We swat the inefficient fly that dies in a scratchy lemmego. Gossip creeps until I could smell the alcohol on the vine. Oh god; now someone’s drinking at work. I rummage the employment files and let out an evil guffaw, dangling his folder in the air. His job describes him as the writer. A legal topple, as I feel my ass in my throat; can’t blame a writer for writing. Smells. I look out the see-through and find a couple of hundred ass-heads staring back at me. I turn to the writer and he scribbles more, grinning as he does.

The day after then, I receive a note that sends my skin temporarily out the rest of me. It’s from the writer. He invites me to tea over a couple of notes. In minutes, my cube is a die of minced people, crushed into every cornery shape, all their eyes swooping hawked at the note. Some say I should destroy the note like it never arrived. Some think I could rather eat my balls than do that. Decisions decisions. I fight my way to steal a ‘go away!’. My room empties and still feels of the reminiscent meat. I decide to sweat copiously and die before I meet the writer. The former works like Houdini. Death wouldn’t bloody come. And the clock rips the day towards tea time.

I leave traces of sweat that seep by my boots as I walk up to his desk.

‘Umm. Tea, Mr. Writer?’

‘Sure!’

As we hop-trot up the stairs to the tea canisters, he smiles like a darling, while my fake smile freaks him out.

‘So what’s this all about, huh?’

‘What?’

‘Theeee…ummm…aa...you know…theeeaaa…the notes.’

‘Oh these?’

He seems to grab his groin as he struggles his way into his pockets. A thousand notes he sets afloat before me. He sheds weight like fat people on television. A flappy wind, as untimely as a reset clock. Within seconds, he is invisible. The writer has vanished into his notes. I reach out to catch a piece of him.

‘I hate my job.’

It told him what to do. For the second time in two days, I felt like my ass.

Ice

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 04:35:00 +0000

The ice broke like mugged bones and my feet sunk into mystery. Stepping ahead, I ninety degreed and picked at the cracks. Icicle. Broken icicle. Mud. Half an unfortunate earthworm, the rest of him dragged by a former passerby in footstepped goodbyes. Whitely chewed gum, good for nothing. Falling icicle; sudden-sunshine melts of trodden snow. And underneath this wintry world, a little thankful tuft of green runners. Mystery. I read it like it were Poe, squinting my eyes at the blushing grass that now stretched, crackled and went this way and that to butterfly-catch the sun in their green palms and steal it in mousy bits to their little hearts like no one was watching. I scooped a handful of these bold jacketless survivors and held them adjacent, as I walked against the vengeful wind whose I don’t know whom I had killed. Entering the indecent warmth of the howling-murmuring radiators of my home, I frapped the blind-ropes one by one, as everything was flash-bulbed and revealed. I stole an origami of four cups and divided my grasses like a usurer. Leaving them to find their sun, a week passes by, unnoticeable and cold. Another day, I walk in, blind by the white everything. I steal a breath of the sun, the warm blast of ginger and tea in me. Four green gentlemen tug at my arm. I turn, as one raises a finger to my lips. Another ushers my thumb into my agape mouth, as two more gently sweep me off my feet, swinging lull. As my plants grew up, I grew down. And dreamt of a distant future where I would grow up. Human after all.

Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:04:00 +0000

I seldom do jogs; they machine life into my otherwise dull and grim shoes. In an innate vengeance for all the dogs they had to fend off or surrender to, they bite back, deep into my feet. I jog-walk with sore feet, down a path. I choose to forget where it leads to, every time; contemptuous. Familiar. With red houses all around, and red people walking their red dogs and the interesting douse of ashy perfume, this point always brings me the same memories, even if the houses were a greying white, the people shadowy dark, the dogs still shivery spiked from a recent monsoon, and the air, a morning’s morning breath.

It is at this point, that I stop and draw a canister from my pocket. I look around, the three pronged lanes stare back at me in a been-there-done-that. To the last drop, I drain the contents of the can, sliding it down the lanes, one by one. The silent morning seems to trickle down its neck onto the concrete. When back at the junction, I pause and crouch and draw a box of matches, always stained in jog-sweat. I count today’s quota of ammunition, and place them in careful parallels on the road. The first crack of friction breaks a match that I flick. The second dies in vain bravery, sparking twice before snapping. The third illuminates my face in an interesting warmth, as I draw it down to the junction and drop.

It fascinates me, how fire spreads. In magical straight lines, it burns the peace signed kerosene. And suddenly, the world is red again. My memories flood back, as a hundred staring eyes reflect the crispy licks of yellow and red flames. Someone screams. A lonesome cur whines and runs by with its tail into its behind. A drunk wakes in the sudden heat, smiles at his invisible wife who just brought him a blanket and falls back into dreams. A burning wheel runs by, unmindful of the crossroad traffic. The flame dies in a minute, sapping the last drops of fuel into smoke.

And as illuminating my efforts to burn peace were, I realise they were worthless. For everything is morning again. And the smell of sleep nudges the smokes away. I jog-walk back home. Somebody who is everyone should try it.

Bhaja Govindam

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:36:00 +0000

Another translation that I've been wanting to post in a while now! Makes enormous sense; almost like the whole Bhagavad Geetha condensed into thirty three verses. I've tried my best to keep the translations intact; do drop me your suggestions and corrections, if any.

For more on the work, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaja_Govindam; I just noticed that they've a translation posted too; but I think mine's way better and more precise.

Bhaja Govindam

Worship Govinda, the cowherd,

Worship Govinda,

Worship Govinda, O Fool!

When you have reached the very end, your rules wouldn’t save you!

Oh Fool! Give up your desire to heap riches,

And in a good mind, be content with all your heart.

What you get is a result of your actions;

Festoon your mind with such good thoughts!

And in the illusions of a woman’s bosom and navel,

You would fall in lust; but these are but mere flesh,

Think and rethink; these are but mere flesh.

Like a drop of dew on a lotus leaf, so is a man’s life,

We, the world, all grieve, are egotists, and are diseased.

As long as a man raises and protects his family,

He earns the respect of his peers and they hail him.

But to the lived man, with frail body;

No one asks; no one speaks.

As long as the breeze lives in a man,

All question his good health,

And the moment the air skips the body,

Even his wife fears what remains of him.

Strength;

As your childhood, is spent in games,

And youth in the women,

And as an elder, in thoughts of the past.

Without a thought to the creator.

Who is your wife? Who are your children?

In the ways of the world, these are like bursts of surprise.

Whose are you? Where and who did you come from?

Think of these truths here, dear Brother.

From the friendship of the good, stems non-attachment.

From non-attachment, you lose your desires.

As you lose your desires, you stand your ground.

And as you stand your ground, you realise life.

As your youth goes by, who is the lustful?

What is a lake, when the water is gone?

As your money is spent, where is your family?

As the truth is revealed, what is the world?

Don’t pride in your wealth, people and youth;

In a minute, time would sweep it all away.

Kill all your desires and illusions,

And realise the truth and God, enter.

The days are just evenings and mornings.

The seasons, just winters and springs.

As the games of time takes your life with them,

But the winds of your desire never leave.

These blossoms of twelve verses,

Were imparted to a scholar,

Through the knowledge and enlightenment of Adi Shankara, the honourable.

Why would you think of your wife and wealth?

Oh fool! Don’t you have a guide, a director?

Hurry and hop into the vehicle of the good,

Free from the pulls of the three worlds.

They roam the world in matted locks,

In tonsured heads, in orange robes,

In many colours;

But as fools, they don’t see the truth, even when it is revealed,

All guises, of their worldly bodies.

The body is weak, the head is bald,

The teeth fallen, his bones in pieces,

The old man has been cast away from home,

Despite all, he clings to the spheres of desire.

The fire in front, the sun at his back,

And in the night, he hugs himself, surrendering to the cold.

His hands stretched out, he lives a mendicant,

Despite all, he clings to his wants.

Journeying to the holy river Ganges,

He holds his fast, gives all he possesses,

But the knowledge eludes him, despite all,

In a hundred births, he isn’t blessed with the truth.

Live as you would under a temple’s tree,

Wearing deer-skin, the earth as your bed.

Give everything, your greed, in sacrifice,

Would this not fill you sate, this pride?

The way of the sages, or the ways of the greedy,

The friendship of the good, or devoid of friendships,

The scholar who loves thoughts,

He is the one that is blessed, and the only blessed.

The one that thinks in the Bhagavad Geetha,

The one that drinks but a drop from the enormity of the Ganga.

The one that recites the name of the flutist.

He hasn’t a word to quarrel with the God of Death, Yama!

And we are born, again,

And we die, again,

And again fall into the wombs of the mother,

This odyssey, is too long, too tiring.

Protect me, Oh flutist, please do.

Rags on the road, he picks for clothes,

The scholar that counts his blessings and walks,

He is a scholar that has mastered his senses,

He walks on, like a child, like a drunk.

Who are you? Who am I? Where did we come from?

Who is my mother? Who is my father?

Question thus, while everything else is tasteless,

Let go of all, all these pointless dreams.

There is but one Protector; in you, in me, in everyone,

So quell your anger and deceit, meaningless.

In an equal mind, you’d dwell everywhere,

And you are the Protector.

In enemies, in friends, in your children, in kin,

Don’t fight, for love or hate.

In all, in you, you’d see the soul,

In everyone, for this difference is but foolish.

Lust, anger, greed, desire,

Cast them away, become your soul, become the you.

The fools that can’t see themselves,

They would suffer forever, like in hell.

Recite his thousand names, sing the Bhagavad Geetha,

Think of his many forms, the lord,

Lose your thoughts in the company of the good,

Give to the poor,

And needy.

The man who lives in pleasures and joy,

Leaves his body, to disease, like prey.

And even though he would die, and fall to the Gods,

He is still haunted by his bad deeds and sins.

The meanings and meaningless,

Of the happy life,

There is but no joy in that!

The rich man is afraid of his own son!

For that is wealth, as we see it, all over!

Control your breaths, every meal,

And your joys and sorrows, know your discretions and indiscretions,

Chant his name, to your end, through your fate,

Give yourself to him, in care, and more care.

Oh follower of the Teacher, at the lotus of his feet,

May you be free of everything worldly, soon.

And your senses and heart, be one with the Lord,

And from your true soul, you would see him, the Lord.

A fool, there was none, but the scholar of grammar, his vision cleared,

By Adi Shankara, the holy one,

Taught by him as yearned, shown the arms of light.

Worship Govinda,

Worship Govinda, O Fool!

Chant his name, and everything is revealed,

For there is none other to cross the ocean called life.

Cat

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:57:00 +0000

With darker forces at work, a half a pounder brain was considerably easy to defeat. All they had to do was roll their tongues and slur Texan; “Stick ‘em up, buster! Game’s up!”

Now our not so quick somebody, in a philosophical outburst, says “What game?! I’ve been sitting with nothing to do in the middle of the day and the middle of the night for I do not know how long now and you accuse me of having completed this “game”, which I refute, for I do not know what this game is that you are talking about and even if I did, I can most certainly assure you that I am not playing it right about now and have not been playing it.

The darker forces, thicker than their owner, of course, let bollocks be bollocks and repeat “Stick ‘em up, buster!”

A duh moment; nobody speaks and while we wait for something to cull the silence, the man and his devil’s breathing in and out are all our sources of happening. Another dull day.

Breathe in; and a couple of airborne chopped moustache pieces fly in and choke our man. He coughs and as he coughs, a couple more from the previous breath fly out. Adamant kids at a theme park. “Wheeeee! Can we go back up the water-slide, Daddy?!” “Sure, son! Just wait for the next breath.”

It was art; existential silences. An art that nobody died perfecting; they just went on and on, like journeys back home, and eventually, either gave up or died giving up. But our man was in the middle of one such vicious silences; so edgy, that he spent two days observing rust patterns on his last customer’s shaving blade. That did not mean that his last customer dropped in two days ago; just that he started noticing it then.

And like televised economies with tuxedoed grouches screaming for goodness-gracious-some-money, his cash box just excused itself, blaming it on the dog that ate all the cash. No money, no heat, no electricity; boy was this getting boring.

So one day, he sprang upon a resting cat that smelled fresh from the night’s hunt. And while it squealed in purrs to get away from his grasp, he ripped a new blade off its casing, slid it into the razor, kachinking it in place, he slid the lather off the disgruntled cat. In patches through the lemmego protests and in expert moves as it white-flagged defeat after yesterday’s mouse burned itself out.

Tada! A shaved cat.

Falling

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:34:00 +0000

Thirsty Saturday night in a crowd of simpler beings. Nothing was new and hence the spectacle that the light taking the stage was, wasn’t too much of a surprise except to the little ones that stared in surprise for a minute, understood worthlessness like a mating call and lost interest in the snap of a finger or two. But as a relative newbie, I wagged my arms in the air, flagging a poor cousin bulb of the light that was taking the stage; poor cousin; he wasn’t taking the inferiority too well; the closer the light got to the stage, the dimmer he burned; mutinous or defeated, I could not figure.

I must describe his or her walk; slicker than a biro on ruler. And when in circles, like the unnoticeable this ways and thats of a stalwart lover’s eyes. As uncanny as my comparisons may seem to you, I but have to put down my knee-weaknesses when he or she rose to the podium before I forget and turn a simpler, tired, bummed, overfed, non-working, complaining family man of a government servant; a commandeering species.

On the dais, he welled in a flick, commanding a hush that worked a square stop button on each; eyeless or eyed.

So! Because there is a tomorrow, we meet again. At this August American pause, I should like to show you where and what a simple holiday from home could give you.

“We call it life”, parroted the three eyed, ashen-blue, mat-haired dancer in front of me. “Thank you.” said he.

Sure, Mister Mercenary; shouldn’t we respect the ones that do not know their options?

“Well, since it is about options, why don’t we ever get to hear about the other one; to just…stay?”

Well, don’t we all wish to be wanderers? To see the world?

“Yes; or just get back as sore losers, beat and smaller.”

Hush. So. As we were talking. Life!

A picture of earth pops out of nowhere, a disco ball that looks just as sexy when viewed as versions “frequencies of crime and hate” or “obituaries, the world over”.

As always, life had little takers. But small and thick as humans were, a bevy of them choose to lay down their heads in easy surrender, like pumpkins or beans. And like the simpler beings that fell to earth before, with and after, so did I.

The Meat Bank

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:12:00 +0000

The meat bank was where healthy animals were brought to when they had grown just enough dear; it marked the lines between where humans loved their animals as family and where they loved them as dinner.
They took in anything from goldfish to lions; exaggerating, of course; they’d rather let the goldfish slap about in the drains and the lions enjoy a meal of their owners in a cage. But, they served the town like faithful dogs; dogs were a delicacy, burying every man’s burden of bones in a frozen cellar to be unloved. It was an experiment in moral education, they claimed, the government; to measure human sensitivities with the material things that they are born glued to; like how a cousin tossed an old hat and a condom in the Ganga; the old hat being his father in law and the condom, his. Another adopted nothing, to shun the very possibility of a material attachment; he’s a nudist on a sun-stroke beach. But we have more sensitive gentlemen at the top; they let us save our love in frozen chambers. But only until the day arrives when you prove your indifference and un-love. They let you withdraw your stashed animal and usher you into the kitchen for a final few moments. A zero Fahrenheit facility, the blood hangs in stalactites from the kitchen hooks; while the floor displays drag patterns like tie and dye.
“So how do you want your cat? Minced or diced? Scrambled or in a pie?”
Two years after I was forced out of my relationship with Calf 231, as a rebellious young man, I let myself into the freezer against the law and broke my way into the cattle chambers to find 231 all grown up and proudly building family trees with my neighbour’s 431 and 232. The sight brought tears to my eyes.
I walked out wondering what they had destroyed. Love?

Mule

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:56:00 +0000

We owned a mule together; he wasn't a fabulous creature. But, neither were we. And every time he three-wheeler honked, we ran to his rescue, thrusting his print-stained jaws apart to treasure hunt a spit choked piece of a movie poster. And thus we followed the entertainment news. We were intelligent. He brayed normally. Phew.
It was a tremendous task; teaching him vegetarianism. For he insisted on a juicy terrible intake of paper, despite the over-growth of random grass in our area that otherwise survives on rusty water from rusty lorries that dollop half their contents into underground tanks that were cleverly built as neighbours to sewers and half onto the regularly chlorinated road. We munched on this gift of grass while he was around; wishing he would pick it up. His nearly asleep eyelids reveal a line of eye-whiteness, reflecting a garish starlet cuddling a moustached man into her bosom. New movie!
Once upon a time, we garnered the wish and wonder to experiment stereotypes. A stroll to an everything seller gives us a Rupee's worth camphor. It smells its way to the gods that were built to customised belief, the flame breathing what is left in the sanctum, torch-lighting the god, organ by organ. Like a doctor. Ding ding ding.
The salty lump sweats in the heat of the day, as he grows smaller, younger, as we wait in envy, for today's honk. Evenging is heralded, as the earth breathes the day out. Enter a grubby woman slapping our mule's behind as he walks in, disappointed and hungry, a makeshift muzzle around his snout. A printer's wife, I presume. Or a rich mendicant with stacks of currency notes.
I was nearly right; she turns out to be a rag-picker. She leaves the room, momentarily satisfied at having muzzled out stiff competition. I help him slide his mouth out. He honks. And everything is normal. And now for the experiment!
I crush the lump of white and smell the room. I set the crystals on fire. And together, we
full-lung the smoke. The mule runs away. From the fire or from the smoke. Shit!
I suffer third degree burns, as the mule haws a cough. It sounds like a laugh. Bastard.

The Careful Art of Picking

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:09:00 +0000

I spot a pair of dangling legs up a teenage mango tree, veins camouflaged in the green of a fruitless tree in the month of December. Shabari. As if a rainy canopy were home, her cracked legs dance in mid-humid-air to a distant tune that I cock my ears to hear but fail.
She smiles into her palm, pretending it were an award. A rainy wisp flies by, taking a third of the white blooms with it. Shabari cringes for a moment and rushes her arm to heart to save her prize. The wisp pendulums the dark wood she's on. Her legs resume the dance, like somebody just pushed play. She this way and thats her head, presumably to spot a coming burglar bird or a surprise wind. She brings her palm back to the two thirds of an efflorescence and opens it, as a black beetle prize jumps out and buzzes into the whiteness of the flowers. A curious picker, he pauses at every bud, as Shabari listens. Yezzzz. Nooo. Nooo. Yezzzz!
Another killer of a wind breaks a branch on the other side, as the tree wakes up and swears with the rest of its many hands and twigs. Shabari catches the nearly fallen bug with her forefinger, as he faithfully climbs onto it and jumps back into business. Yezzz! Shabari claps her hands in a baby cackle.
And as Rama would eat but the best of fruits as he came home to grace the summery months of May or June, she opens another careful palm that houses but a simple beetle; he buzzes black like the wintry air were Swiss.
The sweetest mangoes were summer beetle graves. I look away.
The white, sappy flowers felled by monsoon, garnish fresh bird droppings atop my car, as a guilty bird on the tree caws back at me like it were my fault. I stare back at the doe-eyed bird, as she promises to gouge my eyes out in bird tongue, and I wish she'd let Shabari's mango flowers ripen. With the beetles.

Twenty One Blind Shots

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:23:00 +0000

At somebody-big’s gravesite, on a thick as bad latte day, twenty one blind shots are all it takes to bring down everything on air; three infidel birds in mid-air love, five rusty leaves as remnants of spring, twelve bullets muffled by gravity and one smashes a monocle off a weary flight commander, two thirds asleep, flying to anywhere on auto-pilot. As intelligent as its flier, the machine wheezes sudden activity, sprouts sudden razorblade wing things and a machine gun with oxidized cartridges like your honor’s wig, pops boxed jack from beneath of our dreamy gentleman. The light around him, suddenly tinted red, blinks and beeps “Attack”, as he is already lucidly out of his canned fat body, swimming with a naked Marilyn Monroe. Unaware, he benignly takes turns in squeezing her front, as she giggles and thinks insurance. A happy day.
The machine, upon enough inactivity in the midst of an attack, assumes the death of its martyr pilot and swings around in fury, as the ground commanders hear of this solemn event and uncork a bottle of what only smells like alcohol but nobody knows what rotted.

‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest!’
‘Alright men; Jimmy’s kicked it.’
‘Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!’
‘Alright men; Jimmy’s kicked it.’

Thirteen knots a minute, flies the brave machine! Fifteen! Eighteen! Spotting the group of sods that shot our man, it flies over their heads, as they run around in circles like in a silent mime show.

Breaking fire on the silent bums, go twenty one blind shots.

‘I drink to thee, Uncle!’

Machine-bird, just as much brained, realizes that its just murdered twenty one men on its own side. Flushing with robotic innocence and self-disgust, it rams its head into the ground and goes down in history.

On base three with Marilyn Monroe.

‘Alright men; Jimmy’s kicked it.’‘Who died in that bottle?!’
‘Alright men; Jimmy’s kicked it.’

The Hams of Broadway

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:11:00 +0000

Somebody told me that I could not act. And ironically, that day, I feigned an innocent tardiness, while it spear struck me in real. I boomed into the middles and highs of a lengthless monologue at anybody and flopped in a Beckett silence under a dead tree that suddenly seemed to make sense.
The terrifying air on the lonely stage held me with its inactivity. I butted a palm onto my chest and heard it thudding death in a megaphone, awaiting the curtain bell.
A distant screech told me the show was about to start. And as the curtains rose and the sudden yellow halogens burst my eyes apart, I stammered blind. The play had begun.

Where was I? Did I want to be here? I didn’t ask to be. Here. Or anywhere. Now am awake; awake? Now what could that mean? Did it mean that right around now, everywhere in the world, there are people running about, minding their own businesses, procreating and crying for the dead? Or did it mean that the same rabbit people waited for the night to turn away from wakefulness? Rabbit people in a closed room. Man. Woman. Rabbits. Night. Rabbits. Children. Man. Woman. Morning. Rabbits. Run. Run.
I shut my ears and opened my eyes and I was still where I had always been. I vice-versaed the eyes and ears and I still hear the same silence of the place. The place. I shut my eyes and ears and flung my arms around; the same familiar air broke me into sweat; and the smells of the same people entered and re-entered me, like rabbit sex. Mechanical. Productive and yet unproductive. So as I run into another circle, I demand to know if I was going clockwise or not. Clockwise, said the wise man. Anti; said I. Did that mean that I was not wise? Did that mean that I was not a rabbit? That I was a dead bird in a smelly rabbit hole? I looked for my feathers. They seemed severed at birth, their reminders like unhealthy infected stubbles, waiting to grow out but never would. There were no wings. I was not a bird then? Or was I a bird in a cage?

Will you shut the fuck up?
Just.
Shut up.

The lonely man in the third row from front stared into my eyes, his shirt a terrible misery with dark Cs around his armpits. His hair slathered like a limp wig onto his wet scalp.

He was coming towards me. He cupped my face in a friendly embrace and said I was beautiful. Confused and rabbity, I felt lonely and crowded on the same clock. He said he was sorry that he had made me cry. A stranger apologized to me for life. I told him I wanted my legs. He carried me and promised to be my legs. Down a flight of stairs. And up again. I flung up the board that said the show was off for the day. I felt sorry for the other lonely man that sat in the fifth row from behind on other days. Where was he?

If only walking up an unlit flight of stairs were as easy as coming down a lit one, I would have prayed for the legs for it; legs that would have me sway in a spotlit dance, seemingly simplified by the lilting pings of drumstick on xylophone.
He carried me down to bed and dropped me down, as my legs bumped into the bedstead. Where had they come from? I realized that all the stage was a world. And as a failed actress, I refused to go back to it. Thank goodness I knew now. I am. A ham.

Legs

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:57:00 +0000

On a random baked day, as we see a lonely tree oozing ocean blue blood into the sky around him, and a lonelier leaf stares in last minute despair at the unsparing sun before he surrenders to gravity and the still air and falls a defeated foe, our memory fried, fails to understand a simple conflict that governs none but is a conflict nevertheless. As might is right creatures that can sniff out a problem even in absence, as absence is considered a horrendous void of problems to discern, we spot a pair of inseparable legs in the midst of an intriguing mindbender.
With no one to judge or present his opinion of the truth or make a compulsive decision, the two legs fight for precedence. The right leg says he wouldn’t be left behind. The left says he could not be right in front.
The argument grows, with each leg searching for a path in the seemingly leading to nowhere dry sand. And with each step, the other takes one as well, in an known reflex. At a juncture, of time of course and not of position, they refuse to move; as each leg learns that he has to but choose a direction and his sense of direction would prove that he were the one that was ahead. But as birth would have its restrictions, that was made biologically impossible, the tendons crackling and nerves falling sore in a disgusting lump at the slightest opposing movement.
As stunned dragonflies in a droll drunken end of the day buzz, the legs scratch the lines of lazy surrender to summer and fate.
But I love the games we play. I blink and clouds gather like silvery wool sheep in heat. The legs wake to a slathering rain that now promises to drown them. They stand in a military attention. Without a moment of forethought, they break into a run. Left right left! Left right left!
The question remains. Who came first.

The Fly-Paper Cavalry

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:16:00 +0000

As patriotism is as free to adopt and express, as caring for a dark baby or as writing the truth, respectively, our dearest cavalry fought from within and exploded like a sick bluebottle. And since they couldn’t really move ahead or about, as they were stuck put to the ground, fly-papered to respect their mothers and motherlands, they blathered about claiming the land they were standing on. They called their two feet squares countries, and their arm-span two feet their rightful properties too, what with them having a hold on the square’s air and space and weather. There were four lands named after Cordelia, the faithful cavalry whore and expectedly, trouble brewed, shameless as she was, she flirted with more than one infidel soldier. They settled for one country, with four states; north, east, west and south Cordelia. But that wasn’t all, since the woman wasn’t very geometrically correct; her man of the north was effectively in the middle of seven such ias, icas and istans. He had a tough time, fending invasion from them. Poor man.
They were two hundred and eight in number; a random number. None of them had been recruited by force. Come to think of it, they had all wished to be a part of the Fly Paper Cavalry. They had come because they knew that they would form their own worlds. The prospect had seemed interesting; without blame, for their spirits jumped clown jacks as they filled the papers. And on the first day, as they were all given their respective positions on the fly paper, you should have seen the smiles; like hash-high junkies that couldn’t help smiling, they smiled until their cheeks ached and sagged and soon turned stupid frowns. In return, they were hyenas in sketching their boundaries around them. And once the lines were done and fought for, as they grew into caretakers of countries, from just standing soldiers, they faltered as all leaders did. The power got into their heads, their heads now stood a couple of feet above where they were asked and used to. And as their heads grew taller and interestingly mellony and fat, their snake spines gave up. They stooped now. As they stooped, their legs wore out soon, forced to sit down, punished kids. And as they sat, they claimed more space, forced to fight again for two feet squares.
When I visited them in the eighties, they were all sitting, swatting the flies that now swarmed around them, in mocking circles. Fly-papered themselves, they envied the fly’s freedom.

As the King of the World

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:35:00 +0000

His legs crackled in expected wastage and he wished that he would shed them like hair one day, as the many many minarets of his time toppled to the earth, like fruits rotten while still on the trees. A memory leapt up of when he had once insisted in bathing in gold. Mysterious women had scooped the gold into basins and showered him. The coins hit him like hail and his legs couldn’t budge in the wealth. And the wealth flowed like shower water.
There was a crude man that his son had called to think for him. He had suggested that the thumbs he had severed, be sewn together into a garland of memories and adorned to the king when in exile. The garland lay in a corner, in a macabre smile, creative fingers that seemed to voice a laugh and tell him of how he had so many fingers and nothing to do with them. He tried picking them up, and attempted surrogate creativity, drawing a picture of his view of the tomb, in the sand. And as the thumb wore out and the dead skin peeled, it didn’t hurt anyone but him. He threw the garland away, wishing.
It had been forty days since the single beam of dusty light from a faraway sun stopped bothering or fascinating him; the initial days of hourly different shadows were thrown into the back of his head, like mouse-eaten negatives. He ran his fingers through his beard that he had proudly let grow since his weeks of fasting at God’s mountain. He remembered that a fellow pilgrim had thrown a proverbial black rock at him on the day of the stoning. It had been aimed at the devil. The metaphor of the stoning ceremony struck him now, as he sat alone, brewing images with the static of his beard, as a retired monarch, jailed by blood, with but a view of his lover’s tomb.
He raised his head to the heavens, spread his arms in an eagle Jesuit crucifixion, bore his feet into the soil of his birth and he was India. The cheat and the cheated.

Comb Marks

noreply@blogger.com (Arun Sethuraman) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:43:00 +0000

It was an uninteresting ritual and yet a bunch of bastard urchins that looked vaguely reminiscent of one casanova-father, pushed and pulled around the little girl and her tonsurer like flitting moths to a god-knows-what-yielding-bulb. The girl did not protest or cry like the older customers; someone in the distance did the bawling for her, whom he assumed must be a sister or a relation by sex. The thought made him snicker. She sat still, while he scraped his razor onto the weathered stone, this way and that, testing it against his tongue every ten swipes; the tip of his tongue nearly pronged from all the testing. When he thought he was ready to go, he slapped a palm of water onto her little head that wasn’t bigger than his palm itself. And as the drops of water slid down like creeping thieves down her long black hair, he scraped the razor against her scalp, and tossed every fallen bunch into his bag for post-processing. The girl sat, stone, like it were an event of everyday, though she did not recall ever being rid of all that weight on her head. And as he scraped more, effortlessly, the simple tresses fell into his palms, fearless and unharassed as the girl herself. In a minute, he was done and the girl nearly fell asleep, rudely awoken by a little palm that rubbed her bald head like it were a dog. She could hear the barber shoo the kids away with the threaten of a tonsure, followed by an unabashed guffaw from the lookalike urchins.
The guffaw was turning louder. And the little girl still could not understand what was so funny. She was ten and didn’t look very her sex herself, what with the age and now the tonsure. She looked from face to face and saw that she would look just like them, if only their father was hers. The barber slathered a paste of sweet chemical sandalwood that was supposed to cool her but burned her instead, for the first time. The laughter wouldn’t cease and she stood up and walked to her new room, beside the gurgling temple-shit that foamed above the alligator-prone Ganga. An urchin or two followed her, flicking pebbles as she sped down the street. She flicked a couple back at them, giggling like it were in a game.
The next morning, the woman that was wailing by the fire, was sitting beside her, with flaming eyes, as the little girl woke up and rubbed the sleep off her little doe eyes. She smiled at the woman. The woman stared fire. She drew her breath in, in one huge draw, like she were emptying her lungs off her life, and spat on the little girl’s face and rushed away, before the girl could realise what went wrong and where.
And as she washed herself in the little basin beside her mat of straw and slick bedbugs, she noticed her baldness for the first time, in the broken mirror. And there were the bloody comb marks, like racetracks on a fairground. She missed the tug of her mother’s hands, as she scraped the wooden comb through her hair, and her cries of pain.
And as the man whom she had apparently wed, burned on a pyre of wet twigs, by the smelly river that carried sins, the little girl shed her first tear.
She stared out of the lonely window, to seek a tomorrow.