THE RIGHT TO TURN

See the winters breath,
That cried to sleep
With the sun that lent its decaying arms
To the stooping forked shoulders
Of the mangled trees.

We are married she said.
Married till I wash the dirt off my finger.
We are looking for a shiny piece of nothing
To save our lives,

As we walk to the arena
Of gaudy freaks of mouth
Dribbling drink.

Make love to some with sin
Some with love
Some with gin.

Carve out nothing u have ever seen.
Buy a new bust.
That will adorn some corner
Of a prestigious institution
In your pedagogical mind.

She tells me not to turn
But I do.
She freezes half clothed,
A cloud of perfume
Halo on her breasts.
Whisky on her rye.

Dream up a sage
Who never turns when
She says don’t.
So I turned the last time she said don’t.
Lost my eyes to the sage who
Never died.

The right to turn.
They used it in the wars,
Until they all got killed.
In the shower
They got billed .
For all the water they lost off their backs,
Yet ,they did in the tower,
Let some dreg disappear
From the cursed prison of fortune.

The right to turn was marred over years
Into being just an innocent act
Non-malicious intent
Yet what it was a singularly
Capable destroyer of the waist, of the handle that jiggled along
Around her belly.
That twist that broke his spine under the yellow lorry
The lorry that turned to escape,
Being turned into a killing machine.

Why did we die when we said we would,.
We could have always cheated.
Always lied.
Always denied the right to turn
Into dust.
Always cried.
Virgin mannequins of bland delight,
turned their right to turn into sagging masters
of another generation of sex goddesses,
into a race of embroidered jeans
in a third world country.

slaves

Ink films over,
Blood enraged.
Clenching,
Biting down,
On what is not ours to deem.
We are all slaves.
To our own sacredness.

A shadow trampled his man as he walked up under the streetlamp.
He dug his cigarette into the black sole ,
not his ciggy really,
he poached it off his chimney friend.
He waited there, yellow earth for a companion.
And a empty carton of appy,
leaking its last bile onto the dark sky.
Eagerly waiting for a disappointment.
And a disappointment is like ..
prawns?
an allergy to expectation.

weapon

He walks with a permanent slouch.
Not the old man slouch,
not the hunchback slouch,
not the habit slouch.
His was the kind that people
force on to themselves naturally.
His hands aiming desperately for the ground,
swivelling from his rounded shoulders.
His jowls large, and droopy.
His greeting in the morning like a
tired mule with a mouth ulcer.
But somehow one saw a promise,
a ray of light in his hand,
a jolt of power,
a weapon of mass fuckin destruction.
with just a pen,
a pen in his hand.

An exhaustive description of a place

location : hospital
exact: room 16, north east corner.
time: 09:30
position: horizontal

2 tube lights
5 curtains
1 saline drip
2 stands
1 stool
2 waiting beds
2 beds
1 old man
2 young men
2 red chairs
2 cupboards
1 black phone
2 table with draws
5 pillows
1 fan, one blade slightly bent.

Morning ,the sun enters, hits the wall and falls on the floor.

Mid- afternoon the sun bounces of the floor to the ceiling,
makes soft triangular slashes on the ceiling.

Evening, the small squares of yellow move across the curtains, fast.

Black leather bag on black rexine seat, contiguous.

Old man fingers his black nose,
with his white fingers.

White-jacketed woman nods

absently.

Old man chuckles like old men do.

One cupboard with a piece of gauze or fine white cloth tying the doors together.

Second cupboard closed with a piece of plastic tube.
Fan more to the right than left.
In
su
lin
dr
ips

s l o w l y.

One blue notice board


empty.


Doctors are young and pretty, looking like airhostesses.


Bright things:
2 red chairs, stacked.
bedcover with purple stains
old man’s sense of humor.
red chairs outside reflect on lavender walls to make pink reflections.

Bland things:
grey door to bathroom
old man ‘s relatives’ eyes.
2 types of curtains, both with flowery patterns.
one green leafy
one with pink and blue flowers
They are drawn as the nurses in blue uniform walk in.

Attitudes in the room:

haughty old man

hesitant young relative of old man.

nonchalant friend of relative of old man.

familiar surprise of doctor to old man’s haughtiness.

contained irritation of nurse to old man’s haughtiness

spectators detachment of the sweeper.

THE DIG

THE DIG

Bring her to the wooden table in the
centre of the room, without hurting her.
Now, tape her mouth for I don't want the swarms
of her angry blue on my virile charms.
I know what you may be thinking, young man,
He is a white-haired gargoyle-faced bitter man.
And there he is forcing this one with hopes
of bloodfill in his piece, see if he copes,
see if he rises to the occasion.
But you, you brash, ugly, arrogant one,
you have seen nothing yet, of love, of lust.
Blue as a rotting corpse, hand on her bust,
I shall conquer a drowned one, bloated lips,
her immense body, her heaving lead hips.
The seed shall be sown in an afterlife,
And I shall capture their souls, she my wife,
All my wives, my babies, shall be born then,
In that place between blood and life rotten,
So place her well, place her to let me in,
to take my seed and sprout repulsing sin,
On the other side, where none yet has birthed.
As her grave takes her back ,untouched, unearthed.

SHORT PIC ABOUT KILLING

??????

PETRARCHAN SONNET on DIWAKAR cruising

Diwakar’s Rosebuds

Gather ye rosebuds, my friend, while ye may,
Said a young man now in his entombed bed,
Diwakar got up with inspired head.
Never had he combed the hair that there lay.
Now, rosebuds in his eyes, chance on his side,
Clipping his nose hair, combing sprightly bush,
Stripping his moustache and scrubbing his tush,
Revving his engine, cruised for a one night bride.

Long tresses, slick face raced his stubby buff,
Eyelashes spread long and tight firm booty,
Preferably a down and out starling.

Women they stared, his extravagant puff,
Men they dared a mate to call him fruity,
His slinky night bride, a man called Darling.

shadow path

their eyes dyeing.
a coloured man's shadow.
WHite.
To accept him.

BULLFROG DEATH

He looked down, his head heavy,
onto his swollen throat,
deformed/overformed.
A bullfrogs pride maybe.
A magnificent pouch maybe
Bloated words maybe.

But his jaw would not fall.
His neck could not turn downwards.
He could have laughed throaty,
head to the sky, a free deep laugh.
His swollen throat would allow it. It would pass its scrutiny.

But he hadnt laughed like that .
For 5 years.
It plagued him, his fat, fleshy piece of force field.
The human -shunner.
The overgrown bully who kept the world away.
That bull, nagging, nudging blob,
that makes him feel false pride,
His nose being forced up into the air.

But I can say one thing.
He fulfilled a wish he had for the last 5 years.
When he took,
A blade and ripped it open.

heart specialist

Neck bent like a listening bison.
strangled fingers with familiar silver.
White knuckles, splitting red.
thread of blood on his face
hard red, wet red.
That sprays across my eyes .
As i spring lithe.
Thrust across his chest.

NOthing like the smell of fresh heart
first thing in the morn .

HAIKU

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Roof-hung linen white.

For grey,attacking cloud is,

A banner of truce.

cruel bugle

Why does the bugle blow in this age?

When the sirens dance red and blue?

And shuddering electricity spits out music.

cuz I hold the fuckin bugle.

Its animal roughness in my hand.

I wait to be saved.

Like Ivanhoe caught goin down shit creek without a paddle.

They told me to blow it .

As loud as I friggin could.

So I am .

Blowing on the fuckin thing so hard my lungs are bursting.

But there is no one.

The jungle I live in, green tongues licking at me.

Waiting to eat me.

All that’s left is the bugle.

It sways and hiccups. It beats and bangs

And smacks and duds, stabs and thuds.

But they roll me in their wet folds.

They curl around my eyeballs,

My jaws and teeth bite down on their fuckin ignorance.

Green blood mixes with red.

Red and green.

My flag of death,

sickly black wet death.

dymalin 2

Blink. Blink.
He blinked. Reality? No. Something else. Yes.
Reality? Yes. Something else. Yes.
Blink. Blink.
So he lifted his adidas ,flat-soled ,black with three white-stripes off the ground and ventured to take his first step. Suddenly for the first time he forgot the natural instinctive force with which he usually put his feet on the ground, if it was hard ground, that is. Yet somewhere he knew how much pressure was needed if the ground was softer than what it looked right now.
So there he was, his right foot in mid-air, his neck cocked, like he was concentrating really hard to hear something. Something the air said. Something the walls would let him know. Something the ground would whisper into the capricious corridor.
So hard was he concentrating, his little decision makers scurrying about in the labyrinth of his memory tunnels for some sage with a blue beard to question, that his foot stuck where it was. The Paralyzed man! What had he said?
Yes. There was a nugget of advice, a translucent bubble of intangible meaning that he needed right now, a sentence he had uttered.
“ He who walks on water , does not need to know how to walk on land” came a clear sharp voice from his right.
He suddenly snapped back, like a loaded spring , his foot falling down onto the floor without a decision of the force it needed.
“Babies learn how to do that faster than you, but well, you succeeded ;if only because I spoke out of hand. If you know how to walk on water , one might as well forget how to walk on hard , unfeeling ground. All one needs to learn is how to unlearn what one learned before and all is well. You achieved that by default a few seconds ago , because of the vulnerable state of surprise that humans attain with something unfamiliar and sudden. Not that I’m not human , mind you. Neither is that vulnerability bad, as you have seen yourself.
He stood there, leaning, almost spitting these words out. Disgust? Sarcasm? Arrogance?
None and all. If one saw this man in the course of “normal” events, then one would not believe his eyes. He could be called a surrogate sand-dweller son of the inhabitant-stripped deserts and the extravagantly “cultured “ occident. Simply put , an eclectic Rajasthani . Essentially, a son of the soil , yet ,inessential in essence. Now, what was that again? An Aryan face, brought to the western deserts of India, tanned and nurtured with a twirling moustache, hawk nose, glistening black eyes, jagged jaws, high cheekbones , broad forehead and shortish hair, spiky as they fell to the right .
He had a short black jacket on, with mirror work and embroidery, although finely cut, with sleek cuts , had the look of something stitched by Savile Row, and mended by a ethnic Lambani. He wore a white inner vest with a circular cut . His trousers started with that semblance of something they call “trousers” and ended with a flourish of folds , that hung heavy on his juttis.
“ Never seen something like this before eh?” he posed.
“ I know, I know that expression , something I live for! Not that I don’t have enough reasons to live, someone give me a reason to die and I’ll castrate him. Anyway , quite a Jawanar eh? That’s what I call it . Don’t ask me where I got that name from. I happen to act like those buffoons at Disney or DreamWorks once in a while! Calling a mouse Mickey, a duck Scrooge, an ogre Shrek and that unidentifiable irritating object that lusts after a nut, Scrat!”
“I made it myself , if you’re wondering.”
Ok, then . Enough about you. Now about me.

DYMALIN

There was a flash of light,sparks-green, blue,gold writhing in the still air as the naked wire fell from his hands.....onto carpeted floor.
He shut his eyes ,darting specks of the remnants of harsh light in the green- brown blackness of his shut eyes.He slowly opened them ,one at a time.
"where the heck am I?" he exclaimed.
He'd heard Blind Man once say,"When in doubt as to what u see, blink twice rapidly and you shall perceive".He always listened to the Blind Man.So he blinked twice in quick succession. By the blasted sixth sense of the Blind Man.!.What he saw nothing but the same ...
It was odd.Not my home at all, he thought ,no , not at all.
Yet it seemed like he belonged there.It was like an architectural ecstasy, that could not be defined.He seemed to be standing on higher ground ..yet it seemed to rise as it went away from him ..not a wave....no, definitely not.
The whole corridor had walls like ..like the walls of a cave of rock crystals.. Only the floor was carpeted so it had to be made like that, it wasnt natural.He took a few steps forward ,he wanted to see more , know more about this place he suddenly found himself in.
It was all so intriguing, a welcome change from the drab square world that he lived in.But what was it? This place ,it seemed neither ancient nor modern nor from any documented era he knew of.It seemed to be of its own will carved from its own mind, a figment of soemone's imagination.His?
well, it certainly did not seem like he was dreaming.Where were the lights? The corridor was lit up like Mysore palace but not a fixture to be seen.Terribly odd.
So, was this a Mulligan's Mulch from an Ayn Rand fantasy of the hoarding of genius away from the looters of the world, or an accidental alternate existence he chanced upon?Maybe the answers are further down the hallway.
Well, one way to find out. The magic word -"explore".

Struggle

Will someone tell me why Ive lost something tonight? And what ?
What is it I've lost?
I sailed the extent of this rainy night, attempting to work, but feeling vaguely vacant, lost in this cube of a sea.
I sit at my computer. I can see someone get up from my chair, the yellow one with wheels, and pick my phone up,make a call. I dont know who he calls, but he talks to her ( undoubtedly a woman) detachedly , with a hope to gain that leaked out sliver . He has a look on his face, a elation as the rain drops down on him, the smell of the dry earth rising and engulfing him. He talks cautiously, decidedly slowly, afraid of what? But it is still latent, this fear. He finishes with the call. Comes and sits back in my chair.
What do I do? Sitting here , watching a bright screen, waiting to see this person i knew.

He gets up, restless, calls Bombay. A leap of honest joy i feel in his eyes, as he walks into the rain , in my terrace.He looks up, and a drop of the sky wipes the joy away. His expression then changes slowly, a face in metamorphosis. A gradual realisation, a struggle to speak, a stumble with his words, he gets hasty. A stage with false props, a thermocol stone, a paper wood.
He laughs at something she says. I look up at him. HE seems uncomfortable, yet he's trying to revive some lost scene in his memory.
Finally, he baulks at himself and the futility of it all.
He drops the phone on the table and sits back down with a sigh.

A purposeless conversation. A search for a lost cog. Futile.

I look at him, this man with a familiar face, and as his curls spill over on to his forehead, i cant help but notice the anger in his eyes.
Suddenly i know, it has nothing to do with the calls.
His struggle to accept me, the noiseless splinter, the procrastinator, the dim wit, the social reject, the Nakata of his world. His struggle i can see, in his eyes. He cannot live with me , be left alone with me.
Its a tough one.
I know it is .
Because I cant accept myself either.

why

We stood there, yellow figures in the black light,
200 paces between us.
For a while now.
A cold breeze pulled space and time further apart.

The black light turned a dull grey ,
the yellow us, faded into the smudge.
until today, I came to know.

Freedom shuns intimacy.

I saw the mist clear,
like it never existed.
and left only one black figure in the yellow light,
one figure , who turned on his heels ,
and walked on,
jacket flapping in the orange wind.

GOkarna

So, are you coming or not?
Yes.
So there i was waiting at the KSRTC bus stop, taking my never before evening walk, up and down the bus stand, watching as the irascible conductors, in their khaki uniforms , screamed out the names of the places their buses were headed. I never understood why they would want to do that since when they would, it would be like bullfrogs croaking out their mating calls to unheeding females. As you can imagine, no one really understood their proud croaking. So it was back to scrutinizing the hundreds of boards declaring the thousand destinations in this impossibly crowded country.

After spending a good 30 mins doing just that , Pooja , the girl who thinks the only thing i do is criticize her work apart, calls me and says that they've bought tickets from a private agency somewhere else. (when Sabu gets angry , a volcano erupts somewhere, from an Indian comic character's reactions) .Well, I wasn’t the least perturbed, No sir, I wasn’t , if you happen to ignore Mt.Popacatapetl spewing angry mountains of red, boiling lava. And don’t blame me when her next piece of work, faces the sharpest edge of my mouth.

So I walk to the main road, my heavy bag, drowning me in pain, as my obstinate back made its twisted presence known and cigarette shops on the way denying any knowledge of the mysterious "Ayurvedic tablet" that my friends wanted me to procure unwittingly from the neighborhood shops. I met them at the VRL agency and its man Friday took us through the most cramped side lanes, packed with vehicles, a labyrinth of streets that led us to the mammoth bus.
"I'm so excited", she said.
"Hmmm", I murmured. "I just want to get my sleep till I get there. I’ve been missing nights of sleep".
"What a dampener you are!"
So we left for the unknown Paradise, and settled down in our green seats, with the awkward head rest troubling my back. I shrugged it aside, waiting for my beauty sleep.

But little did I realize that my gift from the road for the night was the power to jump as high as a kangaroo on steroids. It would have been a tremendously joyous occasion during my college high jump competitions, but for now, well, you might say it was a trifle unwanted.

At a point where I could not even distinguish between two mighty jumps off the seat, and as I was up in the air, I pondered over an Ad campaign against the government infrastructure by VRL that read," is Vinay Really Levitating?"
After a sleepless night, of playing frog, hare and kangaroo, and of betting on whose head hits the roof first, we finally reached our destination.
GOKARNA.

The place in the myths where Vinayaka was said to have tricked the demon Ravana into leaving behind a Shiva lingam .In spite of the might exerted by Ravana (Maha Bala), the Shiva lingam stayed fixed, hence the name Mahabaleshwar. The pull exerted by Ravana, is said to have caused the Shiva lingam to resemble the shape of a cow's ear and hence the name Gokarnam.

After a night of loud yelling and cursing using the vilest words possible , a slight faux pas occurred when , as I initiated a conversation with my neighbor I came to know that he was a priest . And blooming praise to the lord, he knew English perfectly well.

The Gokarna town was a gold mine for a photographer and I went crazy with my shutterbug instincts. They all seemed comfortable with it, since the place was infested with foreigners with their small silvery shining digital cameras, anyway . After a good photo op we headed towards om beach , and stopped at a point where the sepulchrous expanse of the gokarna waters smeared itself across our canvas. I on my little flighty adventure, climbed down a steep incline into a menagerie of huts that dotted the path below.

A crowd of firangs, dressed in sarongs and cotton cloth fashioned to resemble nothing ive seen before, yet managing to cover vital parts. The strains of a guitar wafted in the air, and the inevitable thought entered my mind. The ultimate desire of the materialist world had found this solemnly carefree land to fulfill. The aspiration to live free and unhooked, doing whatever one felt like in a country where the judgment of another , did not even begin to matter.

As I walked across, a man passed me, almost oblivious to my existence. He was most likely Aryan, with blond hair and blue eyes, his hair tied in locks in a large crown above his head like a maharashtrian petha, its gold flecks glistening among the dirty brown, and a few dreaded locks flicking onto his face. His face was premature with hard angles for jaws, yet sparse and puberty-ish hair sprinkled forth from them. There was no age to him, and he seemed aged yet adolescent at the same time. He seemed peaceful and seemed not to care about my presence.

As I peeped around I noticed that these huts had walls which were made of hard weaved cane. Inside were mosquito nets that straddled mattresses placed on the floor. A candle lay half melted beside it. The mud floor was absolutely barren otherwise, exposing the frugality they imposed upon themselves in search of a life without deadlines and communication, privacy and detachment. As I headed back up , choosing a slightly steeper slope, intending to challenge myself since the josh was unable to escape, I saw the same man again.

Now he had stripped to the basics. He now wore only white silk underwear that barely covered his vitals. He stood there in the clearing, is head straight and arms by his side, a curled snake upon his head. The sun peeped in through gaps in the trees. His white body gleamed and shined and seemed to acquire a particular luminescence that I cannot ascribe to anything I have ever seen. Slowly he raised his arms, moved his body slowly, almost trying to feel every bit of it as he moved. Slowly, almost agonizingly he moved, and I watched and could not get myself to believe that I was there, I such a holy corner of the incredibly culturally fortified India, watching this celebration of the senses by a supposed intruder, who believed and acted as he wished. I somehow found peace in it, like I have just picked a grain of sand among the drivel that lies on a city road, unbelonging yet, somehow comforting.

We resumed climbing upwards in the general direction of the highest point from where we could survey the entire sea. We passed a man, disheveled and intoxicated who from the corner of his mouth, muttered as if he were speaking to the warts on his sole, “Ganja chahiye kya?”
It was almost like I didn’t hear him, and yet I knew it was that he said. I still could not attribute it to him as he sat there smoking his Gold Flake, looking like he never uttered a word all this time, and was just sitting there like a mouse. One should always believe the more than clichéd phrase, practice makes perfect, or when it is apparent there can be nothing better than it.

The afternoon swept on, discovering new heights and protruding rocks from which to view the magnificent ocean. Finally we settled down on a low promontory of rocks that extended into the sea. They were completely covered with small white tufts of hair like threads that imparted to it a kind of softness, a pattern that meandered with the undulating rocks.

A friend of mine, slightly on the healthy side of plump,( this is me banking on the fact that my blog is read only by one tall , lanky guy who happens to connive in its making) refused to make her way down to the rocks. Such were the times for which the Adidas tagline comes in handy. “Impossible is nothing”. Unfortunately I had the grave displeasure of finding out the reason why television lines are best kept to television.

And if you were an adrenaline junkie-trekker-athlete, trying to convince a girl whose t-shirt read ‘By the time I’ll be thin, fat will be in’, to climb up or down a hill, you would need a damn good reason to do that and then an ambulance to try shove back the hand she ripped off you.
Once my hand was back on, we sat at the edge of the rocks. Now, another friend Rebana, was the more adventurous version of Virginia Woolf, and she sat at the extreme edge of the moss covered wet, slippery rocks, seemingly waiting for a bitter end. Incredibly before I could say anything, A wave, probably enraged by human proximity, leapt up, grabbed her and pulled her
into its gaping mouth.

In a moment she was inside, sucked into its eddies, churned a bit, and for a second she disappeared under. I, sat there stunned not moving when she was pulled in. The moment I lost sight of her in the water, my mind flashed a message to my body to move, to jump in . And before my body could react to it, it was like the water, in distaste, spat her out. Her hand reached out, a form heading towards me. Suddenly I was holding her hand, the tightest I’ve held anyone before, squeezing the blood from her wrist, yet she was slowly slipping and I was clenching it harder. Absurdly, she began laughing or crying, I still have no idea, since I was more preoccupied with trying to haul her up. That close shave , she cherished somehow, I could see her revelling in it. A near death experience. In a world of the experiential this beats them all. And I almost envy her. Almost.

A MIDWINTER NIGHT"S DREAM

I sank slowly into the sand below the sleepy stars , and it swallowed me in like a free gulp of Humanacolada. It was dark, dense, and sublime Rest slept by my side . I let myself go, melt into the night's leisure.

All of a sudden , the sand spat me out like it just came across a rotting taste of me .I lay still for a while , wondering why i couldnt will myself back into it. I heard a small noise , no, im not sure it was a noise, an instinct maybe of impending trouble. It jolted me slightly out of my reverie and i twisted my head back to see what it was.

It was black, clumps of the trees' fingers rubbing each other in quiet glee.

A yellow light bulb from the shacks behind, shot its rays out into the darkness, accentuating the leaves ,still ,in their conspiratorial silence.What was it , I felt emerge ,a shadow under the low trees, an enemy behind my back, catching me at my weakest?

I looked back, and the yellow bulb rays, flashed into my eyes. I held my hand up to cover its strike into my eyes, when i felt a hand, out of nowhere , catch mine. I saw a whitish shirt as it stood above me, the light still, shining into my eyes. I felt immobile, unable to move, like i had just suffered a paralytic stroke , as he touched my hand. I had no control over my body, my mind screaming at me to attack . He just held my fist , and slowly reached at my bag lying near my head . Slowly, with an agonising , sadistic smirk in his actions , he unzipped my bag. It had both my cameras, money ..but it was not the cameras i was worried about. It was the fact that he violated my possessions without me being able to do anything to him, that scared me , that trembled fear into my mouth. Just as he reached into my bag to take something out , i closed my eyes, and with every stagnant breath, nerve, and ounce of will , i dashed up, yanking my hand out of his with a small scream of challenging violence and turned to face him, this thief of the solemn night who dare force me into paralysis, an anaesthesia of actions.

I faced nothing .

Hurriedly i looked around , in every direction, desperate to pounce on this fiend . All i saw was the still leaves now swaying in the yellow black. A jerky sway . Were they holding back their laughter ? I didnt care. I looked down to my bag. Went through it , each pocket, feeling inside it to check if bag had its organs intact.I sighed.It was all there. A whiff of salty sea breeze tickled the leaves and they all broke into rustles of laughter. There was no inkling of it being a dream, every detail, every form was similar to this reality, the light rays as they shone into my eyes, it was all there, the leaves , the light , my friends sleeping beside me, the stars, the sand. How could i generate such an exact verisimilitude of my actual reality? I shivered in the breeze, scared of my own mind, and the tricks it could play on me.

Myabe it happened . I could not believe this gritty exactnes, maybe he ran away, maybe someone actually tried to rob me and my dream saved me, or there was a time lapse. I do not what it was but as i slipped back into my abode of the slowly opening sand , i felt it was saying something to me, my mind ; the mind that lies below my reality.

The mind that coaxes into a flame, what slips away from the recesses of my conscious mind as just a spark.