Elbow Room

The water is scalding hot. It pours in a thick linear transparent line in the empty plastic bucket — resonating around the tiled bathroom walls like drum rolls. She sits in the cold on the silver steel settee, naked. Her body hunched and gathered in her arms, swaying back and forth — waiting. She watches the steam rise like smoke from a funeral pyre, divine and purifying, disappearing into the ceiling.

Slowly, very slowly, she puts both her feet into the bucket. The warmth attacks her toes, feet, spreading to her legs up to her cold bony knees. As she does that, the water spills over from the bucket onto the floor, overwhelmed. Bones in her thin legs crackle like cold logs in the fire. She puts her hands and arms in next. She finds a therapeutic relief in the boiling hot water that almost burns her skin. It feels like she could go to sleep under that effect. Stay here forever. The band that holds her hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck, she loosens with a wet hand. As the warmth reaches up to her thighs and back and neck and face she feels renewed. The warmth seeps into her very being, getting the blood frozen in her veins moving again. Hot red thick liquid. She can feel it travelling in her body like tiny fishes. All her troubles seem to melt for a while. There she sits, hanging suspended in mid-air in space-time continuum.

Now that her body has adjusted to the hot water, the heat that had embraced her body like love begins to abandon her limbs. She takes her arms and legs out of the bucket and stands up, her teeth clattering against each other. Her hands are wrinkled and pink. Water drips like greed from her body. She stands there contracting back the cold slowly. The wind jabs at her naked soggy body as she stands shivering... defending herself with a dry towel.

The curtains over the windows block the rain falling outside from view. But I can hear it crash on the winding rocky garden path outside. A thousands jabs on my heart. The smell is intoxicating. Ive always wanted to make a perfume out of it. But thats nothing new. Many love rain, many love that very earthy wet fragrance that oozes like a genie from a bottle, awakening all desires. It isn't for the first time that rain has fell on someone's dry thoughts as they do on mine this moment—rinsing them alive and breathing again, throbbing on the temples. Not for the first time has the sound of thunder sent blood shooting down someone's veins as it does in mine tonight, as pipes and sewers are unclogged in a rainy gush. It isn't for the first time that a memory has opened its arms to lament the romance in the air. Nor am I the first one to wipe a tear escaping through the corner of my eye as i sit facing only the sound of rain.

Its not an easy tear, one following the other, like the ceaseless rain outside. Its a hard-earned tear like a drop from a dry tube well on famished earth. And im grateful for it. Even though a torrent would be so much more merciful than this suffocating starvation. I stare at the curtains, imagining the lush greenery dancing, shivering in the wet wind. Sheena is in the bathroom, talking to Bhuvan. Its Valentine's. I wished id have given them some privacy but its 1.30 in the night, and i cant leave the room. Its isnt Valentine's Day thats making me cry. The rain is. But for the rain, it would probably have been just another practical day. But for the rain...

“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, comtempt, and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love...the total passion for the total height - you are unable of anything else.”

Something inside me—like a shell—which was protecting me till now, saving me from an unknown malaise, is beginning to crack. I can feel it inside my chest. It cracks, sometimes it melts, sometimes it wants to come out with a final push like a baby is born. People around me, i see, have it already broken in them and its not a defeat. Its a predestined failure to save a beauty that was born to die. It was meant to be broken, like a fruit is meant to be eaten when its ripe. I didnt even know such a covering existed—over your heart, over your soul, your innocence, your self. It breaks one by one. A million cracks slowly spreading over a block of ice.

Some are immune to it, those who were born that way or make themselves immune to its stranglehold. Others like me must find Knowledge a painful evolution.

I can hear it cracking inside me. Inside my womb, evolving to die, like an aborted foetus. Under my chest sometimes, tapping it from inside every hour, ready to burst out with a gasp. Sometimes like a woman sick with pregnancy i wish it'd just come out. And i know id be someone dead, someone changed, someone new.

From the suffocating warmth of the crowded metro, she walks with a vague sense of momentary purpose towards the escalators that perforce augment her as an inert object out onto the threshold of the whistling cold wind. The gust of wind that greets her threatens to send her hair into a disarray. She flips them aside with a jerk but they strike back with an equal and opposite force covering half of her face trying to block her vision. She takes her hands out of her jacket pockets and shoves them behind her ears where they lie confused like a child who doesn't know what he is being punished for. She folds her arms on her chest and grips herself tightly, as if her body will drop lifeless if she were to let go. Like the metal ball in a pinball machine, her surroundings and her routine carry her mechanically, sometimes aggressively launching her aboard, at other times she just falls limp and is sucked down the vacuum into an abyss. She hears, sees, responds, as best as she can, but doesnt register the ambience around her. She is somewhere far off no matter where she is. The cold wind falls disappointedly on her insufficiently clad body. Unable to draw even a sympathetic shiver from her numb limbs, it coos away spiralling up rustling wry trees.

But she keeps rolling on, waiting for a push, a jerk that might send her shooting up like the metal ball under the glass surface of the arcade game of life, only to be dropped down again, and to be thrust back up again and drop again and up again...

She says with a sense of urgency to me, 'Settle down. I can only take so much. I can only hold on so long.' Makes me want to delay more. So she can take it for some more time, so she stays for some more time. I cannot leave her alone. She, who takes care of everyone, how will she survive without that trope? Without that next short-term goal. Because thats all she has. A lease, which she has assigned to herself, a lease not of life but of perseverance -- it keeps renewing itself. She thinks she is indispensable just for me. Even then she thinks i can well live my new life without her. What about the others who demand not only perseverance but her selfless unconditional nurture. They need her more than she realizes. Or she thinks she has set the little boats afloat to their rightful streams--and thats where her duties end. They must maneuver the waters themselves--she has equipped them well for that.

What about her? Where will she go? 'In solitude, silence... in the shadows' she says with a wry smirk, belittling her self or may be for the first time giving her self a substantial thought. I dont take her seriously. I mock her plans with my blunt logical questions, trying to convey how dramatic and unreal she sounds to me--hiding my ignorant fear that she might carry her plans out, at the same time. She knows that i'm not taking her seriously, that i think she is merely reacting to the immediate dispute thats occurred. She does not try to make me believe her plans are real. That she has been so troubled and consistently unhappy and dissatisfied that she will actually have the courage to follow them through. She tells me she has no reservations of family or society. That the pain is too much in its slow and steady grip that by the time I settle down it will have mastered her and she will finally be able to free herself from the stifling perseverance.

i think of those empty lonely eyes as i lie in the dark beside her, uneasy more with the closeness than with the gulf between us. Soon I will throw myself in the automatonlike routine of tomorrow and get sucked in like a card in the ATM machine-- till im reminded of it the next time...

im like half a curtain
drawn to you, but can't and won't
come all the way to meet you
you have to tread the same distance or more
to meet me here.

meet me here
for the sun is harsh on my face
for i need some shade, shower, security
barring pesky reality from view
closer to a cocoon, draped of me and you

Must we lie suffocatingly symmetrical
like two cushions of different designs
on the same sofa?

im too afraid, too too afraid
come take me by the hand and show me
how to open my eyes to a plunge
teach me to let go
to embrace you
to face you
look into your eyes
and not be afraid to claim you as my own

teach me slowly, tenderly
how to take your hand in mine
and have it there forever
teach me the conviction of eternity

hover over me like a banyan
green and fragrant and full
let me hug your bark and soil my clothes
let your strong roots steady my shaking heart

tread slowly like a thief
but firm and daring
drown my fears with chloroform
show me the place where all is fair

whisper softly to my disbelief
this isn't too ideal to be true
there are flaws, there needs some work
that the house of my dreams
creaks by the door

And then assure me you will mend it.

In the midst of divorces, shattering remains of broken hearts, scars of iron on pregnant bellies, a promiscuity born of a broken illusory sanctity, she found herself irredeemably in the tight grasp of love. She blew bubbles in the stern face of reality trying to block her view.

They walked in the cold streets of the evening. The cars whizzed past them and the leaves on the trees crackled and rustled in the cold wind heralding the bitter winter that was to engulf two warm green hearts. Like the road beside them that ran ceaseless through the night without stopping for a breathe, they too let themselves run headlong into a bottomless pit.

Freefalling is a scary addictive idea.

सहला फुसला के एक रात
सुलाया था एक सपना

सुनहरी पलकों से इन आँखों ने
झपकाय था एक सपना
अँधेरे में जुगनू सा
जगमगाया था एक सपना
बड़ी मुश्लिल से एक रात
सुलाया था एक सपना

सारा दिन पेड़ो पर चड़ा
धुप से सिके फल खता रहा
नदी के किनारे पैरों को
पानी में नेह्लाता रहा
टायर के गोले को डंडे से मारता मारता
गंदे कपड़े और
छिले घुटनो के साथ
घर लाया था सपना

मैंने धुतकार के जब
कान खींचा था
लिपट कर कमर पर
कस के बंध गया था
मेरे मन की कठोर सतेह भी
पिघल गयी थी
उस नन्ही गिरफ्त की गरमाहट में

उसका चल-कपट हमेशा ही मुझे
विवश कर देता
अपने संकल्प को भूल जाने पर
आज नहीं मानूंगी आज नहीं मानूंगी
पर हर बार उसकी प्यार से भरी आँखें
जैसे सम्मोहित कर लेती

वोह खिलखिलाती हंसी वोह शरारत वोह उम्मीद
आज बिस्तर पर बीमार पड़ी है
ना जगती है ना सोती है
ना परेशान करती है
जब नहीं होती में सहलाने के लिए
अचानक उठ कर रातों में कभी
रो भी पड़ती है

थी आंधी,थी बिजली, थी घरघराती बरसात
दिल का दरवाज़ा भी उस रात डर के मारे चरमराया था
इस तरह रोते रोते जग पड़ा था अचानक जब
कांपते हाथों ने प्यार से थपथपाया था

पर वास्तविकता जैसे परदे के पीछे ही थी छिपी
भूत जैसी काली, और निडर
छोटा सा सपना भी छिप गया
मेरी गोद में अपनी आँखें मूंदें ...

किसी तरह, सहला फुसला के
सुलाया था एक सपना
सुनहरी पलकों से इन आँखों ने
झपकाय था एक सपना
अँधेरे में जुगनू सा
जगमगाया था एक सपना
बड़ी मुश्लिल से एक रात
सुलाया था एक सपना

I look at the endless queue of streetlights on Shanti Panth from one of the many windows of the crammed DTC bus where i sit privately, observing silently the surroundings, and my thoughts. They cast their soft yellow rays on the dark sleepy roads; roads which wind around like a world too preoocupied to look up and notice the tireless effort of the stars who brighten their concrete ebony nights.

The arrythmatic drawl of the DTC bus gives me a sense of disorientaion, as if im doomed to travel endlessly without a destination. The jerks of the bus allow my body to dangle forwards and backwards. I recieve this abuse in an unquestioning resigned state, almost agreeing with it. I want the bus to keep on moving for i am settled and though somewhat uncomfortable, in a patient pensive mood. I have known journeys to have that effect on me. They set in motion a series of unconnected thoughts; some triggered by the constantly altering scene at the window, while others just waiting for a moment of privacy.

As I heave an unhurried breath and continue to look at the calm and calamity of nature through my window, i glance at a young man at the Chanakyapuri bus stop. He is scrambling through the crowd to catch the 680 in which i sit. He wears an official double-knotted tie which stands out like a sore thumb on his trivial half-sleeved informal shirt. He looks quite ridiculous, actually. He has a bag that hangs haggardly due to the thrustings and jabbings from the crowd, on his lean side. He needs a haircut, i observe, and a shave. The crowd rushes past, over and through him towards the bus, and he fails to make it in for the bus is already tilting to one side with the weight of its passengers. The bus stops at the stop for less than a minute and as if like an old lady with arthritis getting up from her bed, starts again. I turn back to look at the young man. He stands with his now ruffled hair and haggard bag, with a sense of a totally wasted effort, and in the midst of the small dust storm that resulted from our bus, waits listlessly for the next one.

I dont know whether i am supposed to but i dont feel like feeling sorry for him. As i said, i am in a patient settled state. I resume my forwards and backwards rhythm and soon forget all about that man with an official tie. My own discrepancies and everyday struggles cloud my mind as the sky outside my window is overcast. Like a journey that will lead nowhere, i keep forming intricate patterns of thoughts in my mind. I look at the crippled beggar at the traffic signal, and feel a sense of empathy. Not only do i feel the poverty, i feel the handicap, to supercede my indignant position. Richness visits as an illusion of ample alms, mostly leaving me with a wretched realisation of my own inertia.

I think of love as all do at some point in their lives, as some do in all points in their lives.

I am thinking of an impossible dream that sits up propelled on its bed, waiting to sleep, waiting to be realised before even venturing into the vicinity of any further realisations. But something won’t let me dream my dream. It’s as if i must sleep with my eyes wide open like that mythological King who was cursed to die in his sleep.

With some effort, I heave another breath, instead of several short ones, and Judy Garland sings in the earphones plugged to my ears,

"Somewhere over the rainbow
Blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why..oh why can't I?


A rain-drenched breeze meddles with my hair and heart as the bus picks up speed and turns a corner... I change the track to a less depressing one... The bus is emptier than usual now and everyone is drowsy around me. It’s not everyday that you get to sit alone in the bus without any mullered male figure pretending to not rub his presence into yours until you shift uncomfortably in your morsel of the tight space and try to deny him the silent and shameless euphoria as best as you could. I slide my legs down a notch in my seat, fold my arms, and tilt my head to the left, in alignment with the leaning of the bus, and rest it on the sill...

I know if I close my eyes I will soon give in to this rare comfort and doze off to sleep, which is something I avoid, for I don’t want to wake up looking into the eyes of strange men hovering over me, having taken me to the recesses of the city to probably be held for ransom, or raped, or both. So I shake myself up into my seat, put an upbeat track and sit uptight pretending to be alert when all I want to do is close my eyes and let the Devil care. I disallow myself unwillingly the luxury of such becalming foolishness. My eyes are heavy with tiredness and defiance; the many crimson furrows on their edges are like the fissures on the road on which the bus uncertainly carries its weary body. The patience with which i began, and bore the journey till now, begins to abandon me.

I am wearing my narrow-bottomed jeans which are much in vogue. As my forced discipline turns into crankiness, I pull at the tight ends of the jeans and stretch their mean mouths, which appear to be feeding on me all of a sudden. I want to change into my skirt which I can picture lying folded in my cupboard, I picture myself in it, breathing and twirling freely. But home is still another world, a far dream.

I feel like a neglected child whose mother forgot to feed her and is off to a kitty party. I want some one to help me change into something easy and soft, then take me into their arms, caress my face with a warmth that my cold cheeks have not yet encountered, which therefore might even burn them, and rock me gently forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, and put me to a deep sleep...

My eyes brim up with the very thought of such gentleness, softness and love. I dont want the responsibilty of this maturity. I think of that limbless beggar at the red light with a piece of cloth spread in front of him.

I wonder how many deep breathes away is my stop. A couple of minutes later, I finally reach the Central Secretariat metro station, the Lutyen’s Delhi is a sigh to behold. Lush green foliage surrounding neat smooth roads, the overwhelming Parliament house looking straight into the eyes of India Gate at the distance. Add to it a light drizzle and the setting sun, and you can not suppress a sigh at the wonderful amalgamation of nature and the intelligence of human design.

I get down carrying a heavy bag and heart. The metro is unusually crowded for the Jahangirpuri to Central Secretariat line has been extended to Huda City Centre. I squeeze myself in the metro which at times appears to me to be the symbol of an absent-minded mankind, technological grotesqueness and an impossible insufficient existence. I think of a catroon series I loved to see on TV as a kid, Jetsons, who lived in the outer-space and worked under oxygen globules...with space-scrapers and flying saucers zooming past and many blinding blinking lights and gadgets and other technological hurly burly.

I wish to go outside in the rain and trees from the stench of air-conditioned technology in this confined stuffy space. I am getting worked up and nauseated, thinking of simpler times before mobile phones, and metro, and an evolved consciousness. I feel like an adult which I scarce let me feel and I feel burdened with an unknown responsibility, probably my own. The bag on my shoulder is heavy with my lunch, my books, and other useless knick-knacks. I shift my weight from one leg to another impatiently and still have about 18 stations to cover. All I can think of is soft clothes and warm hands on my cheeks and begin to feel like an unappreciated housewife.

I look around at the crammed human race in this compressed artificial space. I avert my eyes in annoyance, unable to avoid them. The lanky boy with his headphones plugged in his ears taps his feet intermittently; the old man with the salt-pepper hair with his white sports shoes and white kurta-pyjama staring at his wrinkled hands seems like an old street dog past his prime, the fat girl with red cheeks and a ridiculously body-hugging t-shirt is like a prisoner in her own body, the middle-aged man in the formal corporate attire with his blackberry is like a robot... You all are empty and you are blind and you all are ill. And if it was for me I would have this entire metro along with me in it blown in...

“Excuse me, do you want to sit?”

I am interrupted by a young boy. He has a large set of curious eyes that cast a soft gentle light on my concrete pale face. I think of the Shanti Path street lights. I think of the stars. I am already palpitating being stopped short in the middle of my frothing invective on mankind. The tired yet insistent frown on my forehead evens out as I look at him. He must’ve seen me massaging my neck and shifting my weight from one leg to the other uncomfortably.

I look at him, taken aback, as he waits for an answer unlike the rest who are waiting for my denial so as to pounce on the golden seat, while staring at me in bewilderment. Suddenly it feels as if my hard bitter carapace has melted and lies in a pool of water on the metro floor. I fumble for a second or two...and at last give him a stingy yet polite smile saying, “Thank you so much, but I can stand”.

And then, i could.

in a neglected corner, lying hurt
a hungry abandoned child
a jagged annoyed melting outline
faces derelict walls
an ego kicked about
like a stray dog, will not let him cry

on a low fire in a cold cold kitchen
simmers a volcano on an unhappy stove
shall burst like a bubble
at the next ignorant prick
but the eyes, they must stay dormant
no, not even an austere blink
there must not be no tears

the flood knocks for the drowning
the back is firm on the gates
defiant grip may slip and sway
but reserve like a slave must work
no, it must not have no break

hearken ye saintly men
ye saintly men of yore
in the meadow there hides a wench
on her knees there's weight of the world
the earthworm ploughs his field
the woodpecker drills the tree
with sprightly paws a dog
digs a hole in speed
the clouds too waiting hold
their waters in their arms
she tears the grass in pain
while a wretch tugs at her heart
but oh she dare not sigh
no,no, she must not cry

...yes, bar your windows tight
go lock your children in
the metal bars wont keep
the caged agitated gorrila
much longer now.

It is not love for love

is a melting glacier

that drowns your earth

in a flood of trembling desire

An overwhelming expanse

Of sky dressed in a blinding fog

Below a heaven where

Two doves perch upon a cloud

It is your fill, your hilt

Your cup, your bone

love starves

like a goat in a meadow

it is your only piece of warm clothing

as you walk naked

knee-deep in the white snow

holding on to it for dear life

It is not love for love is

the tin shed over your bald head

where the rain plays her tambourine

and those few drops that trickle down

to wet your lips

It is not love for

Being in love is not a question

it's a surge, it's a ghost, it's to feel

it is not to ask, it is to know, it is to be..

Eyes or are they rings of fire
Desire at the fringes reddens and rakes
Swollen like a pregnant belly
Reproduce a cry, when the water breaks

Oft they will hallucinate
And abnegate what present be
Cobwebs will form on the palpebras
Rewinding and playing memories

The broken mirror of things past
Where sunshine brims the brow with sweat
Reflects a sorry soul who will
Drown in nostalgia and regret

The insidious glance of Used-to-be
Might wound some dreams with jabbing darts
Those eyes that must casualties see
Will also truly purge the heart

Anon in forgetfulness they will smile
Bounce back the moon as they once did
A rising tide from the shore draws back
Soft pressing of palms on the lids

Dear Cyrus,

I love you, honey. I miss you. Im sorry. Im sorry I wasn't there. I cant believe I wasn't there. How could I not be there? Just because the vet said he wouldn't do it in front of me knowing how attached I was to you. Just because mom did not allow it. Why did I not fight? How could I just let you go alone? You must be looking for me, weren't you? Wondering why I wasn't there? I always took you to the vet. It wasn't mom. Or Atul bhaiya. How could i? Why didn't I hold you in my arms then? Everybody said I wouldn't want to remember you that way…that I wont be able to take it. But you needed me then, didn't you buddy? I should've been there. I should have been there. I cant forgive myself for that. Was I selfish? I should've made a hue and cry. It must have been scary for you….i know mom was there…but didnt you look for me too? You were in pain, honey. I had to let you go. But why did I let you go before I had to let you go? I haven't cried as much as I thought would cry when the time to let you go would come …but I haven't cried as hard. There was a poignant relief in not seeing you suffer anymore. I have missed you, yes I have, so much. Now when I cry, it's as if im trying to tell you that you meant so much to me. As if not crying is selfish of me. As if I moved on. And forgot. But i haven't. I never will. I never can.

Please forgive me for not being there then. I love you so much. I miss you. So much.

You will always be my best buddy, my baby. No other pet will ever be as good, as special, as much to me as you were. You loved me. And I love you. Always. And Always…

  

A parasite of inadequacy nibbles at my insides at times when I come across a good piece of writing or an original piece of thought. Confidence, rather an extended lease of over-confidence over my own unexploited potential, clouds the possibility of selfless admiration. What is left behind is a lacuna, a painful reminder of my own lack of progress towards an intended future. And future not just in the vague, ever-receding sense but one the furthering of which every passing second affirms.

I need to write. I want to write. For long I have been unable to, rather withholding myself from it for reasons I don't know. Every time I hear or see or feel something, I take a mental note and in that moment there are so many permutations and combinations in my mind and heart. The feelings that all my experiences evoke in me splash inside me and attack me with a violent fury. They wait to find salvation in expression, tired of passive contemplation. A half-clad girl on the traffic signal performing acrobatics, her dark hands meshing with the sweltering black concrete, or a skeletal of a dog on the side of the highway to Jammu with death hanging on its dry tongue, or a poignant feeling of helplessness at seeing the dark circles under mom's eyes, the same that look over/after everyone, and every time I read into an expression on the face of the young helpers at my place, one that instills the luxury they extend to us with a guilt, and every time when personal disappointments make me want to give up, make me want to run away to a distant shore or hill, every time I stand in the balcony staring for hours at the queue of raindrops hanging on the electricity wires in the street, hanging for dear life, every time the thump of the rolled morning newspaper on my head slaps me out of my slumber……

I want to write and find myself. As much philosophical as it may sound, that's what I think is the logical culmination of writing. Probably I have been too afraid of myself. Too afraid to look within, deep enough, and find those words to describe what I'm really, really feeling. For to write you must dig. Where was it that I read that a writer to write a great piece of work must commit to isolation? It is in that state that you can begin to dig and dive into your heart and surface with something worth writing, worth sharing. I have been too afraid of isolation. Outside and Inside. Too afraid of a calm, of silence, of popping out of my bubble.

I have always been surrounded by people at home, ours being a joint family. Always had a best friend to talk to, been in a 'group' in college, had a gang of cousins while growing up, have been shy but never a loner. Back in 12^th class Farewell, Hotel Ashoka, everyone around me dancing in saris and suits, there was a time when I felt alone, neglected and isolated from everyone around me…and what did I do? I ran. I ran from the claustrophobia of that isolation.

Even my diaries, I sometimes feel, I have been holding myself. Trying to avoid acknowledging certain feelings, certain events, fabricating a past I didn't want to remember.

But I feel its isolation, not an unworldly kind though, that unleashes the true self. To be able to write you need to have experienced a privateness, a solitariness of being. I have been running away from that solitariness. It scares me.

What I have come to realize is that escaping does not necessarily exorcise it. What does that, is the act of what they call 'facing your fears'. Of 'getting down to it'. And the contentment after having written a page, of having truly expressed yourself on the draft of your blog compares to nothing. It brings back the ability to admire others. That had never been jealousy in the first place anyway, only a misdirected rage and frustration at the inability to find my own calling in life. Once you've used that rage to create something, It's liberating. It creates form out of the chaos that is your life. The lacuna begins to fill, then.

Sometimes I want to shriek. Loud and far. So that I may hear in the echo, the ear-shattering sound of something I need the most right now-inspiration.

…

She is bright and illuminating
The glow of her cheek hushes the sunshine
Her gaze stark and steady
She is unshakeable

She stands afar
She stands alone
She stands in midst of a flowery field
Reaching her ankles they hug her in devotion

She looks up, her hands on her waist
She looks up in competition
Her unblinking eyes mock the Phoebus
She smiles

She smiles like a quivering river
Thirsty with its own fullness
Powerful and Powerless
She falls on her knees crushing the flowers,

Still looking at the sun, she smiles
Challenging her numb eye
The sun bows and hides behind a cloud
The tears precede the rain

Her tears mesh with raindrops
Her eyes fill with clouds
She shakes her wet hair in wild frenzy
And shouts hoarse the scenic calm

Far away on the mountain
The sunshine makes love with the raindrops
The dark sky transforms
In the valley resounds the first cry of the rainbow

Her hair flies in all directions
She is mother earth in weak power
She shakes her head from left to right
Tearing away the wet kiss of her tresses

Drenched in exhaustion
She falls down cold and shaken
Wild flowers perfume the blood
Trickling down her scraped knees...

Its getting cold, isn’t it? I got up to get the Vaseline lip guard from my dressing table the other day, my lips were beginning to feel dry. It’s been ages. I always use those 80-something lotus lip balms - vanilla, cherry, chocolate flavoured ones. They are yummy! But they never remind me of my grandmother the way good ol’ Vaseline does. I had forgotten how she smelt. She smelled of old days,yes. Her eyes, ever-tearful, and buried in the hollow of her bony face. Her quivering voice. Her shaking hands. Her bag of stories, which opened into an abyss of past memories. Her grey, thin, shiny, slightly charged-up hair. Her religion, her Gods, her prayers, clasped in a plastic basket to her bosom and carried wherever she went.

Winters were particularly hard for her. She often fell and hurt herself no matter how careful you were with her. The cold accentuating the hurt and leaving a red-and-blue mark upon the body part which bore the toll. Her paper-thin crisp wrinkly skin -as if winter had spread over the season of her body too.

My mother had given her the Vaseline, for the two curved lines that formed her lips. She woke up at 4 in the morning, took a bath, and even before she sat for her morning prayers, she put oil in her hair, combed them vigourously, tied them up in a small bun, and rub the Vaseline on her lips. And whenever I went to her and bent low to allow her to kiss me, I would be filled with that smell of the old days interspersed with dry-skin therapy.

I stood there, in front of the mirror. I held the little white tube in my hands, and remembered her with a deep sense of guilt. It’s been two years since she left us and I couldn’t recall to mind immediately the last time I gave her a due thought.

My maternal grandma, however, smelled of ‘Charmis’ cream. Ah! Round, fat, pink bottle. Just like her. It always used to stand on the shelf by her bed. I can still picture it there, and her sitting cross-legged on the bed, attracting company from her children and grandchildren alike, like moths to a flame. She was our nucleus. And we hovered around her like electrons. She never cuddled you much; even so, her love was very palpable, her demeanour so warm, her motherhood so supple.

Cyrus, my dog, had his own unique doggy-smell. But I also remember him by the distinct pungent smell of Betadine which i used to apply to his injuries. Though it brings back memories of tough times, the last few years I spent with him….struggling to get him to be okay again. But even then, anything close to Betadine takes me away to the time when we were at least together. It’s like he just rushed past. (I miss you so much buddy!)

Chicken Sausages and Kebabs. Heh. They transport me back to my Nani’s place in Jammu. To those rare occasions when we had non-vegetarian food there. All of us talking, laughing, and of course quarreling. The soothing sound of nani’s voice, the creaking of those old doors as people kept flapping in and out of them, the hurried footsteps and the drawl of the helper Sanju Bhaiya’s voice as he served us food, the star-studded night sky visible from the verandah where we huddled in a group, the sound of nocturnal insects.....oh just the bliss of togetherness---all comes flying back to me everytime i smell chicken sausages or Kebabs frying on my kitchen stove.

People leave things behind. Mostly they leave an aura of their presence in their absence. It ceases you so profoundly sometimes, almost as if you have received a message from the Beyond. It awakens a dormant feeling lying neglected in the corner of your heart. And somewhere amidst the revelation and nostalgia, it begins to hurt. It takes you away from your present context, in a fraction of seconds, to an old and smudge-y memory, of a time that meant so much to you. The kind which makes you smile and cry simultaneously.

Sometimes when I am lost in my own world, preoccupied with the thousand bickerings in my mind, a breath of fresh air brings a familiar scent. I halt my steps and hold my thoughts and wait---take it all in, and try to rummage through the room of the subconscious, wondering, overwhelmed, who has come visiting this time...

जब जिंदा की मुठी में कैद
इक जीवन घुटने लगता है
हथेली की फटी चादर से
आस का अमृत रिसने लगता है

वजह की उंगली जिस पल
दिशाहीन होने लगती है
हाँ, उस पर भी तब
आशंका होने लगती है

जब तन की शक्ति , घीली घीली
आँखों में , सूखने लगती है
साहस के घुटने हिलते हैं तब
रीड की हड्डी झुकने लगती है

जब स्पर्श को बढता अनुरागी,
कंधे को शत्रु लगता है
मित्रों का निश्छल स्नेह भी तब
तरस सा लगने लगता है

बरसों मूक इक जीव्हा को शब्द
किस पल मिलें, कब कौन कहे ?
भरे हुए प्यालों से भाव
किस शन गिरें ,कब कौन कहे ?

एक चित्र सजा के रखा है
सबको दिखा के रखा है
उन सच्चे रंगों की गोअद में
क्या झूठ चुप्पे , कब कौन कहे ?

तारीफ उस पल शायर को भी
उपहास सी लगने लगती है
जब सोती महफ़िल के आँगन में
वह - वही खिलने लगती है

धुत्कार के आदि कानो पर
जब मीठे बोल बरसतें हैं
सूखें खेतों पर यूँ मानो
इक बाड़ सी आने लगती है

ना झूटी तारीफ ना सच्चा
प्यार सहा अब जाता है
करें भी तोह करें क्या ,कहिये
किया भला क्या जाता है !

I have a fairy by my side
Which says I must not sleep,
When once in pain I loudly cried
It said "You must not weep"
If, full of mirth, I smile and grin,
It says "You must not laugh"
When once I wished to drink some gin
It said "You must not quaff".

When once a meal I wished to taste
It said "You must not bite"
When to the wars I went in haste
It said "You must not fight".

"What may I do?" at length I cried,
Tired of the painful task.
The fairy quietly replied,
And said "You must not ask".

Here is to all musicians everywhere…especially to a stranger I encountered in CP’s famous Rikhi Ram musical instruments shop who held me spell-bound while he blew negligently and silently in his flute, unperturbed by his noisy surroundings, unaware that his ‘hissing’ distracted the cacophony of the surroundings to a halt for a minute or two…and also to the old gaunt flutist you may encounter in Kamala Nagar who sells flutes crouched on the side of the road with a ‘lambi judaai' or the soundtrack of the Jackie Shroff's old movie 'Hero' to his lips.....and to Hariprasad Chaurasiya.


crumpled linen like milk stirring
so peaceful..in a stance, he looked
a feet on one knee, right hand on another
in hand a cylindrical wood

a spitting white kurta he wore
it exposed his dark brown frown
folded parallel of nature dark too
brown.....white....brown....

i came I saw, i didnt yet see
my tuning yet was due
awaiting the brown to play the brown
expectations i had but few

the window crammed with a painful street
...a frame of disharmony
a crippled beggarly voice afar
there resounded a plea for money

just round the corner, careless she sat
the sun slapped her state
little hands tucked at flat dry bare-chest
a curse there echoed at fate

just then the dark twins did part
he formed something of an 'O'
then fashioned a perfect embouchure
in the hollow he began to blow

out released from tiny holes
a spell of fairy-dust
it flew in the mellow steady breeze
and settled everywhere it must

dancing eyebrows and dancing fingers
danced the soul in his eyes
the last i checked i was awake
from what slumber did now i rise?

it carried me atop a cloud
that blew with the wind from his lips
in a trance i rocked forward and back
strange tyrant with a strange whip

the painful window sang still though
its own sad little song
what then had soothed my aching heart
the flute did not right the wrong

from my high place i looked at him
shut eyes, his fingers aced
his lips in a kiss with the aerophone
the melody still caressed my face

i looked about in my vicinity
on clouds sat not one but many
the beggar, the mother and her hungry child
it was an epiphany

the baby slept in his empty kitchen
from the music of the flute
the empty brazen cup of plea
its woes seemed shortly uproot

the Phoebus neither did let any
clouds over its merciless band
it shone brightly sweltering over
not charmed by the wooden wand

to the sweat and heat of the day
and to a doomed civilisation
he gave no ultimate relief, just
exploited the art of distraction

Sometimes it’s a sudden smile
The kind which smiles u and u don’t smile it
Catches hold of you and it wont leave
Try however hard until the moment goes by

Sometimes it’s a heavy load of chains
Tied at either sides
To the frail red pump of your life
Pulling it further asunder

It’s mostly like a prick from a rose
The softness of the petal apologising
To the crimson oozing from the tip of the finger
The rose shamelessly beautiful still...

Concerning an earlier post (February, 'Stray Cerebrations')..i found this picture. A moment captured in time, giving evidence to the one etched in my memory, a strand of my childhood straying in my mind that i have often loved to reminiscence..accompanied by an everlasting wish to return, if only for a peek.

Rock-a-bye, baby
In the treetop
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock
When the bough breaks
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
Cradle and all

Baby is drowsing
Cosy and fair
Mother sits near
In her rocking chair
Forward and back
The cradle she swings
And though baby sleeps
He hears what she sings

From the high rooftops
Down to the sea
No one's as dear
As baby to me
Wee little fingers
Eyes wide and bright
Now sound asleep
Until morning light

It was so far away. She slowly guided her head upwards and had to go till her chin was in a straight line with her throat, and not at a right angle. The ceiling gaped down at her and filled the room with a hollowness that scared her. She felt an eery loneliness with so much vacuum above her. The window that opened onto a view of a large Peepal tree was situated in the direction of her feet on the bed, facing her. It was like a TV on the wall with only one channel on. Sometimes when she sat on her bed looking at the tussle of the mighty tree with the yawling wind, some leaves would fly in through her window and settle near her. The tree grew along the side of the road that was a source of constant noise throughout the day; the same, during the night acted in the exact opposite manner. The suddenly deserted road made the ears, used to the honks and screeching wheels of zooming vehicles throughout the day, echo with an unusual silence which was deafening. Like a house sans the hustle-bustle of its inhabitants-suddenly abandoned. The occasional swooshing of a few after-midnight trucks or cars only making the stillness more profound and the sleepless nights prolonged.

She liked her room well-lit. Preferably, the white light of the tube-light or the candescent tubes. The dark yellow night-bulb reflected the furniture and the cream-coloured walls in her room in a morose dimness that gave her a sinking feeling. So she had to choose between absolute darkness and the glum light yielded by the night-bulb at night, before she retired for the night. What she used to do was put the night-light on, sprint towards her bed, and cover her self, with the bed-sheet over her head, tightly shut her eyes and wish fretfully for sleep to come. The switch board was a four steps walk from her bed, on the opposite wall, inches away from the window. She wised it was at a hands' reach so she could switch on the lights if the need arose during the night. If only she could make her heart beat on a steady pace, she was sure she could manage to sleep quickly. But it kept running ahead of her. And the more she tried to breathe slowly to catch it the more it sped away. She forced herself to focus on the days' events to drown her self into a stream of consciousness and divert her mind. It used to be easier during the school days when there was so much to ponder over, along with the next working days' anticipation, but the holidays were uneventful for her. The days flowed in a monotonous similitude. Her new-born baby brother was too young to be played with. And she had nothing to do.

All day long she sat in her room, doing her holidays’ homework and mostly looking out from her window at the workings of the gargantuan Peepal tree. It was overpowering… the circumference it mapped with its boughs. Even when the window was shut and the curtains drawn, she could sense the tree in all its singular magnanimity. She was afraid of ever standing under it for a more than a split second, afraid of it engulfing her, afraid of its long arms to close their wooden fingers around her neck till she could not breathe. The mere idea of not being able to inhale any air, stifled her. She wished that when she died, her soul would leave her body the second she inhaled the last ounce of her destined air, that she should be dead before she could exhale that air out; she wished to die with some air in her lungs.

Sometimes while bathing, she used to feel drowned with the gush of water on her head, and shudder frantically tearing the water from her face with her wet fingers, trying to make room for oxygen to enter through the nostrils or the mouth, gasping like a fish without water. She never used the shower. Once, while bathing, she suddenly had a random thought; she hated this, sometimes ideas just propped in her brain even before she had conceived any of them. She imagined the wet floor beneath her suddenly dissolving...into an open mouth of a large whale come out on the surface of a bottomless sea, its sharp teeth and salivary glands glaring out of a black pit. She used to get up in a fright -letting the bathing mug full of water tumble on the marble floor, the drops of water shooting up towards her face-and come tottering near the closed door of the bathroom and keep her hand on the door latch, ready to open and feel the ground solid beneath her feet. After a minute, she would calm herself down and hurry through the bathing trying to push defiant ideas into the recesses of her mind.

They were like virtual flashes in her brain, uncalled-for. She couldn't help escape her own imagination. It was like a civil war within the state of her being...as the flashes came unannounced from the chinks and corners of her mind, the remaining logical part would try to get rid of them...as if the ideas would fall off like droplets from damp hair by shaking the head violently.

As the hands of the clock doctored away time to suit her miseries for the approaching night, the flashes would begin to hit her like pointed darts, catching her unawares. The household machinery would slowly halt-the clanking of the utensils being washed would cease, the maid would sweep the kitchen clean after the dinner,the cacophonous diversions of the television would be plugged out, the wailing baby would be put to sleep, the lights would be switched off, one by one...flick, flick, flick… darkening the halls and passages of the house, and her parents would retire to their room and shut the door, the house would come to a standstill. The roads and streets and shops and hawkers and vendors and passersby- everything and everybody would be put to pillow in the neighbourhood...and the neighbourhood of the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood of the neighbourhood of the neighbourhood...one by one…flick… flick flick…

Everybody would be sleeping, and she would be wide awake inside her bed-sheet under the dim yellow light, feeling the swaying gargantuan Peepal tree outside the window with the crow perched on it, hidden by the dense branches, tearing on the remains of the dead rat, with its black pointed beak. She would be awake...

Puny little nothing, shivering under her filament cover. From under her sheet she ventured her gaze around the four-walls of her room onto her house to the neighbourhood to the city to the country to the earth to moon..the other eight planets spinning independently in the universe, the Milky Way, the galaxies and even those undiscovered hidden planets and unidentified stars and aliens...It were as if she was unfolding this piece of paper folded infinite times...which got bigger and bigger as she opened each compartment.Like her gaze had suddenly acquired the birds eye...except the bird was flying above the outermost atmospheric layer and rising further and further beyond..

She would be so far away..so removed...so alone... in the macrocosm. As good as bound and gagged.

And then for the flashes...she was alone in her room. She was sure. But for a little girl with deep dark circles under her eyes, on the far-away corner of her room, sobbing silently, just crouching there, minding her own business. The dark vacuum beneath the bed, the one above her. The ticking of the clock in her room, the droning of the nocturnal insects...the silhouette of what looked like a person with charged hair behind the curtains, the occasional clonk at her door....an old woman standing at the foot of her bed..just standing silently, watching her effort at sleep...

She shifted towards the center of her bed for now. A wall of pillows surrounding her. One supporting her spine, another hugged under her left arm, her head on the heart of the pillow, clutched tightly. Her knees rucked up. So from the view of the mangled carcass circling above her on the fan, she would appear lying in the shape of a C.

Her heart beat away in noncompliance matching the drone of the insects. Breathe slowly..inhale exhale...slow..steady...The Carcass...no..no...think of something else..something happy...her friend was returning on Tuesday from her relatives’ house...she will go see her...what will she wear...what will they play..her favourite orange top with the red flower on the right top corner and her white skirt...but she wouldn’t be able to go cycling in the skirt...The Sobbing Girl in the Corner...she will have to wear her jeans...and she has to get the brakes in her bicycle repaired...Sobbing...and they will go on a hike...The Curtains...The Tree..The Carcass circling..tuesday tuesday tuesday...The Charged Hair…The Dark Neighbourhood...the flower.the cycle brakes..The Empty Streets..the brakes...The Universe.....She was losing...the sweat was trickling down her back...her breathing heavy...her heartbeat fast...she had to escape...to her parents’ room?...she must.

“TO HELL WITH YOU…IVE NEVER…” what was that?, she shuddered. Mom? It came from their room..Why were they screaming? Oh she dare not go now...The Crow..The Mouse..The Yellow Light...The Ceiling...she frantically pushed the bed sheet aside and sat up erect on her bed,panting..

“I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF…” She couldn’t keep her feet on the floor...the vacuum under the bed seemed to reach out to catch hold of her feet..but she must be brave...she got off with a jump..and ran to the door..but the latch...oh it wouldn’t open..it got stuck..her sweaty shaking hands couldn’t get through with it. The baby had woken now in the other room because of the screams... She could hear him crying, along with the sobbing girl in the far-away corner in her room though she couldn’t dare venture her eyes in that direction...She let the girl cry.Let the baby wail.

She cannot go out... But..but...her room and its occupants...the flashes....were closing in on her...She scrambled to her bed again...and pulled the sheet over her...re-arranged the pillow-walls around her...petrified. There was nothing to be done now. She let the deafening noise of the empty road shatter her ears, the swishing of the peepal, the sobbing now hiccoughing girl, the dissonance of the sharp circling metal panes of the fan...let all of that get lost in the clamour of the wailing baby and the occasional screams of her parents. She didn’t want her parents to fight, neither her baby brother to cry. But in a sadistic way, she could feel their presence across her room with these noises, and that soothed her slightly.

She shut her eyes on the damp pillow under her cheek, hugged the one beside her as if it would wake up, embrace her back,caress her hair gently, and sing her a lullaby. She shifted, so as not to lie directly under the fan..and...gave in...to all of them. Let each flash engulf her...and take over. She let her breath and heartbeat race...and thus she lay there, shivering in anticipation of the first rays of the sun to come and knock at her window so she could finally go to sleep...

An assortment of fresh healthy veggies
leafy and green and godly
strewn over pasta -just macaroni and fusilli
celery broccoli chopped spring onions
tomatoes just the right colour and firmness
cucumber baby corn, and bell peppers
green red orange but not jalapenos
the tang tailored to taste
umm...Cherries make it too sweet
but a healthy colouration is requisite
though the tomatoes will bring the red
the cherries do bring in a dissimilar chromatic quality
now for the dressing-the adornment
mayonnaise wee bit extra
shrouding the vegetables thoroughly
without making them soggy though
the way it sometimes gets
thats a turn-off
the crunch should remain
'Coz therein lies the punch
but that's a trick to achieve
it shouldnt taste raw you know
the crunch should compliment the marshy quality
otherwise its all just a big sham
And cider-vinegar, crushed garlic cloves
salt and pepper to taste
the fluxing and mixing is as important
as the chopping with a precise hand into precise shapes
the tossing-careful without being sloppy
the dressing should seep in, embrace the items
thereafter comes the aroma..oh...
the aroma of perfection..beau ideal
it fills the lungs with appetite
-the mouth with gustatory perception.
the aroma is a tell-tale.
besides, the presentation is prime
like an architectural wonder on a plate
the aesthetics wedded to the build
ah! there it is..just the way i like it..
Spot on-ready to be dug in..
Oh...but wait...whats that-
there..on the other side
there...looks like.. Roasted Chicken
oh a pox upon it!
she couldnt eat the whole in one sitting?
umm...luscious...doesnt seem over/undercooked
The way it sometimes gets
juicy and meaty...sinful..
oh...just the way i like it...

Few worlds within me crammed
some thoughts in veins are jammed
the crimson tide does chart
the lunar surface of my heart

For heaviness lies heavy
in places from comprehension privy
the sailing of breath is cankered
the vessel within has anchored

Is drowned the he who risks
face-first the depths of abyss?
clutching the sinks of the fall
for him no more the bell will toll?

Forgetting oneself in gloom
for hope yet have no room
that in fact might lose
the being within the hat and shoes

warm cheek, clumsy motions, sweaty palms
a dark sky wetted with wind
a trusted topsy-turvydom
tiding ebbing feelings

two pairs of two tens- a stumbling cry
the pouring pelts profile with disarrayed ebony
untangling alien fingers feeling face
a race of breaths, a pounding in the chest

a cherished seclusion-a possibility
a togetherness- but not too much
his penetrating eyes
her palpitating smile

inwardly hoping
appearance prohibiting
outwardly threatening-
essence hesitating

halfway about-turn
two windpipes choking
a heart seeking touch
a touch seeking heart

here modesty
there diffidence
and the moment is past

For appetent soul, a measly drop
...Fuelling the thirst like fire dry
...Like on parched earth from the sky
Ere falling...the rain should stop

(This is a very very special poem. My maternal granma who now resides in UK and terribly misses her hometown and her family-is a wonderful poet- wrote this for my mom...it brought tears to my eyes the first time i read it..its a striking expression of nostalgia and a trajectory of a life)


Bhool nahi paati hoon main
apne desh ke khet khalihano ko
hariaale chaye bagaano ko
ganga kee nirmal dhara koo
banaras ke kashish nazaro ko

bhool nahi paati hoo mein
saagar ke mast hiloron ko
mele mein lage hindolo ko
holi, teej diwali ko
ugte sooraj ki laalee ko

bhool nahi paati hoon mein
apne ganno kee galion ko
tioharon kee rung ralion ko
chooran kee khatti goli ko
sakhion kee bholi toli
mamta kee meethi lori ko
gaanv kee alhadh gori ko

bhool nahi paati hoon main
saawan kee mast ghataon ko
peepal kee thandi chhanv ko
panghat par baithee gori ko
gunney kee meethi pori ko

bhool nahi paati hoon main
babul ke piarey aangan ko
sasural ke pahle saawan ko
bachpan kee meethi ladhaeeon ko
bichdhe hue bahen aur baheeon ko

bhool nahi paati hoon mein
chourahe ke golguppon ko
buso mein khae dhakko ko
daria ke meethe paani ko
sakhion kee preet purani woh

bhool nahi paati hoo main
yauvan kee piaree yaadon ko
kiye gaye un vaadon ko
woh choodhion bhari kalaiee ko
us pyaar kee gehraee ko

jo sapne peeche choot gaye
lagta hai mujhse rooth gaye

bhool nahi paati hoon main
Do sunder pyaree aankho ko
jo rasta mera takti hain
kabhee roti hain kabhee hansti hain
kabhee mujhko paas bulaati hain
phir neend se main jug jaati hoon
burbus aawaz lagaati hoon
maayoos na hona bitia meri
yaad mujhe bhee bahut aati hai teri..

Sappho wrote in a precise yet pregnant verse-

Without warning
as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart ...

let it rain when my heart aches
let it rain when it thrives
let it rain on happy times
let it rain on painful archives

let it dampen my laments
let it shower over tears
let it drizzle over smiles
let it moisten dry fears

let it submerge me in a freshness
so my soul never withers
let it nurture me to a blossom
so my heart never shrivels

let each tiny droplet
from the seas may rise
let all the heavenly drippage
the life in me oxidize

as love moves me to blushes
let the rain fall down upon me
A mighty aerated lightening
let the rain strike down upon me

let the ankles drown in puddles
let the skin douse in a shiver
let the peacock perched within me
in a dance - catch a fever!

let it shine through the pelting
in a rainbow let me beam
let me swim into the rain
like a salmon upstream....

'let it rain let it rain
let the rain fall down on me'

(Eric Clapton is duly acknowledged for the inspirational last lines)

a lonely balcony
a cheerless floor
no hanging tongue
no biscuits' store

no scratching doors
with paws so spry
no wagging sweeps
no famished cries

no catching food
up in the air
no tearing toys
and guilty stares

no guests arrive
with faltering steps
no strays pass
with territory threats

fallen yogurt
nostalgic hands do weep
no greedy licks
will spills now sweep

no tugging at heels
no wake-up barks
no on green grass
runs in parks

no trembling head
within my palms
or to the vets'
any dragging qualms

no hungry accompaniment
into the kitchen
no sniffing the air
for appetising chicken

no snooping luggage
no whimpering byes
no acting cross
to left-behinds

no slimy licks
on tickling ears
no head on knees
consoling fears

no expressing love
with possessive growls
no frantic chasing
away the fowls

no sorry licks
follow harmless bites
no bathing tantrums
reveal stuffed-toy white

hearty welcomes
are long gone by
no four-legged dash
to whistles comply

half-chewed slippers
wont grace the feet
no playful frenzy
will pull at leash.....

Whats not is what is
left of you
past joys galore
new pains so few

For quite some time now I have been deliberating to relate this incident. This was not merely shocking but acutely puzzling.

It was a regular day. I had gone to Model Town with a friend after college. I got late while coming back -and was expecting a subtle thrashing from Mom since I was on a roll since a week. As I was soft-footing my way into my room so I could quickly change and pretend I had been back long before Mom saw me, my brother casually told me that Mom and Dad were out. Phew!

I was on a call-when I heard some loud noises coming from outside. It took little time to recognize Sangeeta Aunty-our boisterous and voluptuous neighbour's loud voice, "I will not leave without meeting Vipu.." (Thats short for Vipula, my mom)

I got off the call and walked inquisitively towards the door..my aunt who lives on the third floor of our house(ours being a kind of a joint family..the reference is to my father's elder brother's wife..i call her Tayiji)-was trying to calm a frantic Sangeeta aunty who seemed to have seen the ghost of Christmas past. Uncomprehending, I appeared on the scene and threw in my frail "namastey" into the fray. Aunty was seemingly not in mood for greetings. As soon as she saw me, she held me by the arm and went on rambling with Tayiji, shaking me all over as she spoke. I noticed, Aunty had come with a small retinue of hers. Her youngest daughter Aashima and a lean girl who seemed to be their domestic-help. Finally, I asked if everything was okay which was clearly a very stupid question to ask -considering a very angry Aunty, a baffled Aashima, a nonplussed 'maid-servant' and a "what-should-I-do" Tayiji!

I had barely finished my question when Aunty began to fill me in. Aunty lives three houses away from us and from our chatt its an easy two hops to hers. She spreads her washed clothes for drying on her terrace, like most of us. Now, strangely since three or four months- someone had been messing around with her clothes that she put out to dry there. 'Messing' here translates into practically tearing them to shreds!

It'd been a harrowing four months for Sangeeta aunty and her family.She went on railing about how her favourite Bombay Dyne bed-sheets, her husbands' imported shirts, her daughters' newly-stitched suits, their night clothes.....kept getting torn in the most uncanny and violent manner by a mysterious hand.

It would also do for you to know that ours is one of the most quiet and uncontroversial families on our block. Aunty did not suspect anyone...which is to say, any of our domestic-helps, from our house to have been involved in such a mad act. These couple of months she went on knocking at every door on the neighbourhood she suspected, picking up fights and major quarrels with everyone in the process. The Moonlight Furniture shop adjoining her house was the first to bear the brunt. She would line up all the workers there and threaten each one of them individually.

To suspect domestic-helps and subaltern workers in such matters is not just empirical for people but has also become a habit nowadays. Why? Well..in the popular jargon- they are "Chottey Log" with "Chotti Soch". And that, my friend, is that.

So every 'servant' was threatened and questioned thoroughly.(Servant! a word I flinch to use....these people work and we pay them for their services...not to mention the illegality of keeping underage domestic helpers and mostly all of them are underage!...SERVANTS! We might as well call 'em 'slaves'!)

So, after much ado, the mystery was driving Sangeeta Aunty over the edge and rightly so. She is a little over-the-top, in-your-face, and irritating, yes; but she is not of a maligned heart. She always...err.. means well. The shredded clothes left her high and dry every time! Her three daughters and she decided to even install a secret camera but that plan failed on feasibility. They started to live in constant fear--trying not to dirty their clothes and so have to wash and consequently dry them only to have them meet their horrifying fate. You know, it is not easy for a mother of two daughters to go through something like this. Its scary, if you look at it that way. She said the clothes were torn in a particular style. The shirts would be cut from the collar, the suits would be cut with a blade-like thing---in the style of a cross. These crosses had her suspicions drift towards involvement of some jaadu-tona !!
Clearly, the poor woman was in the woods!

Today, finally, the mystery was undone. Her domestic-help, Rekha, had gone to their chatt to fetch the clothes she had put out to dry when she found this young boy in a pink t-shirt armed with a knife-like thing holding aunty's bra!As soon as he realised that he had been spotted, he hopped two chatts and came to ours- and bolted!

Aunty carried a poly-bag in her hand which was full of her torn clothes. She showed me the items one by one-finally revealing her bra -cut in the middle with apparently a single incision. She couldnt be more furious! She said it was that undergarment that did it! That was the last straw on the camel's back. She wouldnt have otherwise come barging in our house-like a madwoman just released from the attic!


Some familiarity with our home seems necessary at this point-
Ours is an extremely busy household. We live on the first floor while Tayiji and my two elder cousin brothers live on the third floor with my dad's elder brother (Tayaji). We have a Girl's Hostel on the second floor of which my mom and Tayiji are in charge. And on the ground floor is a Reebok showroom that we have rented out space to.

We have employed (illegally, like many) two teen-aged boys who make this elephantine household machinery tick. They come from Bihar and they are brothers. The elder one is Badku and the younger one is Sunny. Badku's elder brother Sandeep also worked for us some years back till he left to take up other jobs...For a time, he used to sell peanuts on a cart and now he works as a plumber. I was never fond of Sandeep..also because he was older and so, less lovable; and was very unruly sorts. After he got married, his wife came to work for us for a while too and she used to tell mom that Sandeep beats her. I remember advising her to give it back to him since she was bodily stronger than him...

But I am extremely fond of Badku and Sunny. Badku even has a twin brother in Bihar. Strangely I always felt as if we were keeping the twins separate! Sunny, another from Badku’s gang of brothers, came after Sandeep left. Badku had been working long before Sunny came. He used to take my dog Cyrus for a walk...and give him food when I wasn't around. A few months after Sunny arrived, I remember telling Mom that Badku had become very inactive. He had stopped joking around and laughing as much as he used to. Mom and I used to teach Badku a little now and then between his chores..and he was losing interest in these classes. Gradually he shunned them altogether...and we were all too busy in our own lives that we seldom mulled over his disinterest.

Sunny came along like this new-spirited and gung ho lad, very eager and happy-go-lucky! He never complained of having more chores at hand than he could singly handle. He is easily found singing Himesh Reshammiya songs while cleaning the floor or dusting the house, or making funny faces in front of the mirror while dancing his exquisite break dance that once Badku boasted of! He was like the new kid on the block! He was enjoying his comfort and new routine that Badku had grown casual with and may be wearisome of too--apparently that is what i came to think.

Sunny on the other hand, shows eager interest in studying-I tell him to catch hold of me when ever he finds me or anyone else free..and he used to come with his books and pencil and do exactly that. It was a pain trying to teach him the English letters-he would look up from his book, having only reached till L or M since three days of rigourous drilling...and frowning-and half-jokingly say- "didi..yeh kitne saare bache hain...padna kab shuru karenge?" He is cute, really.

And now and then I will find him doing the dishes while counting his numbers in English aloud. And he would turn as I will enter the kitchen for a drink and ask, " didi yeh 59 ke baad kya aata hai...?"

I would slap him at the back of his head, smiling, and say, "60!"

Badku and Sunny play together on the chatt
and the room where they sleep at night is also on the chatt. Both of them sit watching saas-bahu serials with gusto while chopping vegetables at night in Tayiji's room on the third floor(tayiji's influence, must say!) or some Govinda or Mithun Chakraborthy movie-and would act deaf and mute if somebody called them during it-only budging when Tayiji's howler had reached its crescendo!

Sometimes I felt Badku got jealous of all the attention and praise Sunny fetched on account of his unmitigated spirit to work and not crib about it and his eagerness to study. Dad would draw comparisons a few times in front of Badku to have him stimulated. But I thought it worked just the opposite way! However, I felt and still feel that it was just a kind of innocent sibling rivalry. They seem to play and have fun together, no doubt about that. But Badku I was noticing had become very weary and reticent. But I didnt give much mind to it and I can never be certain if what he did was a result of his getting tired of his monotonous schedule, or anything graver.

Rekha was sure it was Badku who 'lit out' when she spotted him on the terrace shredding Aunty's bra. I stood there in our lobby, listening to this narrative. It was so bizarre! I almost in reflexive told Aunty it can not be! Badku would never do anything like that! I went up to Rekha, who seemed to have won my disapproval automatically, and I asked her if she was sure it was Badku. And she said she was and that he is wearing a pink shirt today.

In my head the following ideas had begun to prop their heads- May be Badku and Sunny played a prank on her and Rekha is trying to get back at them by fabricating this enormous story having cut the clothes herself! Or may be.......it could be..... that it was a Monkey! (they keep straying this side sometimes and once they even took a bottle of cough syrup which was lying in our balcony; ……shredding clothes to pieces seems less bizarre an act on a monkey's part than stealing Glycodin to cure his cough, you know!)

I proposed the latter Monkey possibility to Aunty. But she looked at me in disbelief! Yes, it didn’t explain the Rekha story. Who was on the chatt then? I, Holmes, was acting my own Watson, here!

Aunty could sense we weren’t believing her! She forced us all to the third floor to Tayiji's apartment. It was time for confrontation. Tayiji called Badku-who indeed was wearing a pink shirt! As he appeared on the scene-Sangeeta Aunty immediately held him by the collar-and turned to Rekha- "yehi tha na?" Rekha nodded convincingly.
Slllllaaaaap!
Our dining table shook, along with me!!

She hit Badku across the face with the force of a lightening bolt, my fragile "Aunty...naii" was lost in the commotion that followed! She hit him again! And threateningly asked him, "tu hi tha na? bol de varna mein nahi chodungi?" I gathered up enough courage to hold Aunty by the arm and beg her to let me ask. Badku was red in the face. I told him what Rekha had seen on the terrace. And I asked him, very calmly, if he had done it and that he needn’t be afraid. He said no.

Meanwhile my elder Brother had appeared on the scene. He came and questioned Badku politely but sternly. Every eye was digging at Badku now. Aunty in a fit of anger, pulled Arut Bhaiyya aside, narrated the whole story again and to Arut Bhaiyya's great embarrassment-revealed the torn bra to him!

Aunty went up to Badku again-puzzlingly calm and composed-asked him again to tell the truth since he had no other way out-and Badku finally admitted to his crime-but he was adamant he had only gone their today and he hadnt been doing this since 4 months!

The moment he confessed-aunty's transformation was quick as a cat! She hit him ferociously across the face--tearing his pink t-shirt apart with her bare hands in an act of barbarity-saying -Didnt you do the same to my clothes!!

Then followed a third-degree police investigation-
Why did you do it?
Did you have any enmity with me or my daughters?
Did anybody pay you?
What time did you come to my terrace?
Who else was involved?
Was Sunny involved too?
Are you mad?
Earlier you used to tear suits and shirts and bedsheets?what made you tear my undergarment today?
What was going on in your mind when you tore the bra?

Each question accompanied a slap or a demented hair-pulling - answered by silence from Badkus side.

It was a pain for us to see Badku being treated like a lowly criminal. Aunty was merciless. Badku had confessed, I agree, but I still couldnt swallow this frantic bombardment on him by Aunty.

I begged her to stop hitting him. She turned to me. "Do you have any idea what this means? Today he tore up my bra Hina! what must he have been thinking! He had some brainwave, Im telling you! I cant even say what i am suggesting here! Tu samajh rahi hai na?" then turning to Tayiji, "I cannot allow him to stay here..a young girl is living in the house-He will go to the police!God knows what is going on in his filthy mind…or what could he have been planning next…"

Frankly I couldnt see the hype she was attaching to her undergarment. It was as if he had symbolically attacked her sexuality. Her anger was understandable and very natural but to hand-wave logic and rationality like this was ridiculous! It didnt seem to me that he had picked on it intentionally or in a fit of sexual excitement.He was what..15!

Aashima,(a tenth standard kid..as old as Badku i guess) who was constantly slipping in a line or two here and there in the entire episode- finally said with a maturity of an 80 year-old lady-"Didi, there is something wrong with him! Yeh mental case hai! He is a psycho!"

I was at a loss for words. Tayiji kept telling Aunty that Badku has never done anything even remotely close to this..and thay she still cant believe this! I added, trying to regain lost ground, that he is certainly not mad. He has never so much as looked at me in a nasty way! I have been teaching him for god's sake!-he is like a kid to me! He has never shown any dubious signs..his demeanour has been as normal as could be! He has worked for 4 years with us and nothing ever felt out of place!

But nothing would calm the frenzy that Aunty was! She asked Badku to bring the ‘weapon’ he used to shred the clothes…As Badku went up to the chatt…I called Sunny who was crying in the kitchen. All he knew was that his brother was being beaten. I asked him if he knew anything about this and he said no..and I could see him shivering.

My younger brother, Annie and I then followed Badku to the chatt. I asked him again to just tell me what made him do it. Even Annie was very polite but Badku would not concede. It wasn’t as if he was being adamant. I felt he just didn’t know what to say or what was happening or even why he did it. He only knew that he did it.

He picked up a broken blade and took it downstairs to Aunty. But Aunty held him by the torn collar of his t-shirt and shook him hard, saying she was unconvinced that such a blade could make those cuts. She took the blade from his hands and bought it close to his cheeks and threatened she would cut them like he cut her clothes.

I, standing at the head of the sofa where she was sitting now..with Badku kneeling at her feet -happened to think of this incident in Bihar where a pick-pocket, on being caught red-handed, was tied behind a motorcycle –and was dragged around the city-after having one side of his hair shaved off and mercilessly beaten by an angry mob!

Justice and Revenge-was the line that divided the two getting thinner in today’s sentimental, unforgiving and over-sensitive society?

I pushed the image back into my mind and begged Aunty to not exert herself-and thus kill the kid. What made Aunty furious was that Badku wasn’t crying or begging to be forgiven…he just sat there with unblinking eyes, bowed head, and braved the blows, trembling slightly which was being translated into his shamelessness. I was beginning to get impatient and angry at his silence, too.

Arut bhaiya and Tayiji were intimidating him with the anticipation of what my Dad would do to him if he finds out-my Dad, known for his short-temper and less active but heavy-hand! It was apparent that it had the desired effect on Badku but he still couldn’t figure out what to say.

Eventually, Aunty had to leave since Mom and Dad weren’t coming anytime soon. Thank god for that! Tayiji and I talked her into allowing Mom to tell Dad about the incident herself.Aunty left along with her paraphernalia.

After Mom arrived, I sneaked her out of our floor and took her upstairs narrating the tempest that had just passed. Then arrived my eldest brother, Atul Bhaiya…both of them gave this weird, uncomprehending look…which followed the interrogating “WHAT??!”

We planned not to tell Dad that night. Mom decided to call Badku’s elder married sister who lived nearby to take him to their jhugghi and talk to Badku privately…Mom and Atul bhaiya also made vain efforts to talk to him but to no avail. All that he uttered to why he did it was, “Pata nahi...” or “Aise hi…”

On speaking with sunny and Badku’s sister, we found that Badku used to have epileptic fits when he was in his village in Bihar. We then decided it could be some…err… psychological malfunctioning. Mom thought it was unfit for him to stay with us any longer since the issue would’ve spread like wild fire in the neighbourhood by now. And considering that Badku could prove detrimental to the neighbours was a matter of contention. We were sure he wasn’t dangerous to us but we could not risk any further activity in the similar vein to befall on anyone else. What everyone in our family agreed to was that he wasn’t a ‘maniac’ or a ‘mental case’ with preposterous sexual fantasies or manifestations or that he had Rape on his mind!

Yes, there was something wrong and Mom decided to consult a psychologist. But the question whether Badku could continue working at our place loomed large. And of course Dad would decide that the next morning.

I was in college. And when I came back I was relieved to know that Badku would be continuing with us and that Dad had been equally puzzled at his actions and had not skinned him alive…(phew)...only a slap…which I was proud to know he didn’t wish to register on the already shaken child’s cheek…but thought it necessary in order for Badku to keep fearing Someone in the house so that he wont do it again!

Sangeeta Aunty settled for 3 months of Badku’s income to be given to her as retribution for her loss. And Mom’s calm reassurance discouraged her to not report Badku to the police.

Badku is still working here. Things are back to square one. Initially, he found it hard to meet our eyes and would silently carry out his chores for the day without so much as looking at anyone. He wore an apologetic and sad expression for several days on end. I also felt an awkwardness seep in between us and was trying to avoid him so as not to make him feel uncomfortable after Sangeeta Aunty’s subtle ‘suggestions’ of what must the mental case have been anticipating with regard to an impending doom on me!



My grandma used to narrate me this story of Gautam Buddha and Angulimaal. The latter being a famous dacoit and murderer whom the former was bent on transforming. Buddha walked into his den one fine day and unperturbed by Angulimaal’s threats to kill him-showed faith in him and his potential for good which totally touched the murderer thus transforming him into a good man. I remember I used to love that story…

I know Badku is no mass murderer, neither do I claim to be any large-hearted ascetic-but the point that I wish to make is that love and forgiveness have transforming qualities. While separatism and prejudices can only unleash Pandora’s Box and the possible evil in us all!As much theological as it may sound-it rings true to me!

I cant help but wonder what effect would it have had on Badku had we sent him back to his village in Bihar or worse still to the police.



The other day, I was making Maggie in the kitchen-and had sent Badku to fetch those finger-like namkeens that we eat with our tea…For reasons beyond me, I have grown up calling them ‘mattar’ and so does everyone else in our family. I remember telling him clearly, “Chai wale matter lana ok?”

And not so surprisingly, the chap returned from the market with a pack of green peas (mattar)! I looked from the pack to Badku and he looked from the pack to me, knowing he’d bought the wrong item…

That inconsequential moment in the kitchen sort of liberated us both-and we just laughed!

After the humiliation and trauma that followed -over something that he probably didn’t have any control over.... I could see Badku was slowly getting back to like he used to be as he retreated with the peas in his hand, scratching the back of his head confusedly-and went to the vegetable market to return them.

That was the first time when I said to myself-“what a mental case!”

She was ashamed she felt that way. I mean..they are your parents for God's sake!You cant bargain on your parentage, now, can you? But there was a difference in perspective here. The question was not about parentage...but of marriage..and a yet larger question of existence and individuality. And it was not just her subjective consciousness, it was her mothers'.

She wrote in her blog, "Have you ever dared felt that your mum married the wrong guy?"

It was a thought that sometimes struck her as a kind of blasphemy. At other times, She felt as if she had risen above the immediate context of her relationships and the world, as if she was floating above her own house and looking down on these people....not people....characters...right out of an Absurd play! And wondering, if her mother..nay..this woman....married the wrong guy? And that if she deserved better? If she ever wondered that life hadnt turned out the way she had planned or dreamt it would be...and that now there was a cul de sac. This was the flow chart of her life...and she was analysing it with a feeling of ruefulness about lost dreams...about that empty idealism that instills each one of us when we are at the prime of our lives!

And now Elvis had left the building and the show was over. For her.

The other day she found a handwritten paper from her Mom’s cupboard...lying forgotten with some other old stuff at the back….she opened it and saw a letter to the principal of a local school in Rohini. It was a job application. Dated 1990. She felt a thud in her heart. She got reminded of the fact that her mom held an MA B.ED! The paper was tearing at her heart. A scroll from history-a yellowed dream of the past-lying crumpled in a ball-in an old cupboard.

And as she wondered whether her mother looked back on her life and thought all this--she felt sick. She felt that all the novels and all romantic poetry that she had read till date...was nothing but an expression of that same idealism that is nothing but wishful thinking. All the stories of Romantic possibilities and endings…of Elizabeth Bennett finally overcoming her own prejudices and finding her true love.....of Jane Eyre sensing Rochester's cry from miles away......of Celie's brave movement from a site of domestic violence and racist past to a life where she 'wore the pants' and sewed 'em too…….! Everything...all feminism-dripping tales of revolution--suddenly seemed bland to her.

It inhabited a world of fantasy...of far-way realities and unique cases of rebellion.

Then again she wondered, if it was too early for her mum to ask that question about her life to herself. That How has my life ultimately turned out? Why did she feel that her mother felt she had hit a cul de sac? Or if she would rather have married some one else...?Did she ever think that she deserved better? Or does she think that that's what she deserved? The latter was still a solace-but the pain and unfairness of the former could be suicidal.

No, her father was a good person. Her mother had spent 22 years with him and there were things her mother knew that could be boasted about in him. But over the long course of these years-things had changed. Life had become a routine.It was as if she was on auto-pilot. The hope that she entertained a decade ago-did not come to her as a saving illusion any more. She thought she knew now, that it was not going to change. She thought she knew that the only way to survive was to fall on her tired knees and bow down to it.Whatever 'it' was.

She poured her feelings on the anonymous blog of hers, in an effort to empty herself or at least exhaust herself so she could think no more. She was crying a little but she was not simply sad-she was pensive. It threw everything out of focus. She didnt feel like going to her literature class tomorrow.

She remembered once when she was watching this romantic movie on TV with her mom. She remembered dreaming-replacing the heroine with herself-feeling the kiss of the dashing hero on her own lips-blushing at the thought of ever having some one for her own with whom she could share the endless love that this couple on the silver-screen depicted. She had her whole life in front of her-she sighed-there was so much to happen to her-she wanted to fall in love-she wanted to become a lecturer-author a bestseller--conquer the world!

As she got lost in the crystal ball of her own future, she forgot the presence of her mother on whose knees she rested her head. She was chewing the gum,carelessly blowing bubbles which kept bursting as the air ran out of them.--Suddenly she felt her mother's presence as the love scene ended .Her mother cleared her throat. Then followed the awkward but subtle fidgeting that follows the discomfort of having seen such a display of affection on screen--with your parents. There was certainly nothing vulgar about it (she wouldve changed the channel immediately otherwise)-but there was an under-text of the union of two people in love-which does not necessarily have to be expressed in the word 'sex'-but which still made you uncomfortable in company of your parents. But there was a class, a beauty in it.

Like a slap in the face- she wondered if her mother felt the same emotions she felt. How can she not? She's a woman. There might still be some residue of a girl inside her. A frivolous, carefree young girl. And why not? Who said anything about feelings getting old??

But there she was feeling unsettled again. Its your mom.You cant look at her in that way! She cant have such.. fantasies... for heavens'sake! ewwww! and theres DAD! But does mum still feel that way for Dad? Ohhh...she needed to get this feminist streak in her to shut up! Because if mum doesn’t feel that way for dad-then what comes off the feeling that the romantic movie ignited in her? Does she feel it for the moment and then brush it off from her head so she could go back to her dreary dry world again? Or does she inwardly laugh at the silly youthful days of desire and love--long lost! Is it at such moments that her mother feels the cul de sac?

She heard her mother calling her from the kitchen. "what will you have for dinner, sweety?" She was joking away with Dad who had come back from office-It wasn’t like the days they fought —It wasn’t ugly or bitter today.

She went into the kitchen, looked at her mom...she seemed happy- --she looked just fine!

She went up to her-took the knife from her hand with which she was slicing the onions-and said, "Let me make the dinner tonight...."

She is restless and unsettled. Whenever she feels like this..these are the two precise words she uses in her diary to define her state...restless and unsettled.but at some level even words fail..they can give a vent.. but they cant soothe the tempest inside her.And to think she was so blissfully unaware of this impending sadness yesterday when she was on best of her moods...makes happiness so fleeting...and all the more illusory!

She is not unhappy though.She is sad and yes..unsettled...She sighs more often than she should..and it only establishes that something grips her heart ..something that she wishes to unbutton..unscrew..so she can breathe again.What will lift the heaviness?

she pens these words in her diary--they just flow...falling into rhyme..even though her mind and heart refused to do so...

My eyes explore but cannot find..
The pre-occupation of my mind
Who has entered the grove of my thoughts?
What has unsettled my calm recline?

What will soothe my tempted nerves?
When will the ripples cease to quiver?
why am i lonesome and disoriented
Not a sight my state does mirror..

Everything has lost its value
The times when a spade is not a spade
When your heart beats in your throat
What will gulp it down to place?

They say hunches, portents and omens
My troubled monster will exorcise
But would i indeed recognise
Were it to hit me between the eyes?

The swish of wind comes like a sigh
The rise and fall of breathe, a game
Why does the air smell of sweet wait?
Why am i feeling so lame?

The soul turns inside the body
The mind grapples with new invective
The inside is boiling and seething
The surface apparently, inactive........