Doppelganger

Last week, I dusted some of my old photographs and left them on a seat under the light of the sun to thaw. While some reflected the tint of sunlight that dared stumble upon it, others drew covers over themselves, that took more than a maid's hand to dispel.

This is a photograph of me

prostrate inside a wooden

almirah,

lying on its own backbone

it stood on wooden pegs

scathed by dust so

dexterous, it began to slump

.......................................

It is written, 1984. Was it Orwell's 84?

It was year I remember nothing of.

..................................

You are right. The glass has tinted with

time. But it charms she who sits

inside the wooded--

Look! there is a crack

on my cheek, that is new

unlike all else in this photograph, unintended-

a first piece of a countless intended

........................................

I remember everything of 2009.

Even the bloody mudded waters of the

paan I had last Febuary.

.......................................

While this photograph surveys,

I sit shifting the weight of my

head

into the cups of my hands.

Oh, there is no sense in looking at '84!

All that is in it is magnetic, it swallows

and mocks and prays and

.................................

so full of pride, to outwarp itself-

jammed between machinery

and desire,

and imaging-

so when I look upon it

O doppelganger-

It is I who beckons.

The winter ate the hungry dog and the fiery cat.

:::::

The eternal winter has set my feet on fire, fructifying
step-by-step willowherbs that rise unexpectedly
from the dark.
Every part, apart from each other
thrives on a season of its own.

That fiery cat’s lost carcass is here, swirling
into the winter solstice nostalgic about
the ill-humoured equinox that
mocked the summer to frenzy
It blew the birds away, chased
squirrels to the burial ground,
called the winds to play on mountains
that sprayed lava, lava, lava:
              
It is lava where I lay,
             Is it summer in a tray?
                God help me when I pray
                   Tell you, the poor cat’s a stray.

In the cold bed, he took off his arm
and slept on it. He opened his mouth
to reveal a stretch of denudated road,
lined with feline fur.
Dog-ear hours to dog-ear days, he did not
cut off sense sensibly. The bark burnt,
the bark burnt swiftly and spread

to my feet of flaming fire. Now,
is it not enough that our minds
are churning in an immutable vertigo?  
Man is a hoopla: a mere phantom as he goes 
to and fro. He bustles about, but only in vain. 
He sips the fog, and spits the fire.

Resemblance

There is an intensity

in the resemblance that embraces

you and then, me.

We are a performance

accompanied by mathematical deductions,

minutes longer than the quartet.

A hurried composition,

between insight, assumption

and a bottle of crass liquor.

We are inside a womb,

impregnated by abbreviations

of night and day.

And beneath this ocean bed, there is a choir of us

reciting dialogues of riddles

that you made from me.

What life is this,

you get to be chalk,

and here I am,

melting butter.

Tonight my delinquent mind dearest,

will forbear the conundrum

and watch the pots of heaven

overflow with the juices of the earth.

An aplologist for Poetry

After much ado on my part, I have changed the title of this piece to "An apologist for poetry" from the former "Penny for thoughts." 
:::

I cannot identify myself in long sentences

or abysmal paragraphs running on spiral staircases,

like the town crier- I am

exasperated by the 8th syllable.

Short clauses it seems, are arrogant, cloying,

full of rhetoric and

take another 25 rupees to draw.

I'd like to transcribe a motley sentence

of another town, and another time

as vociferous and impudent as

Michael Jackson's death, and let it run
into another town.

My sentences remain at the crossword

between the deleatur and the coma,

resisting the fullstop. They're like that.  

They stick needles into my blank lucid mind for a brief moment,

and skitter away into the wretched nothingness.

As forcefully as I bite into the sugar

and force it all down into the skirmishes. 

There is more to be consumed though,

monstrous paraphernalia bought but 

sold in delicate sachets of silver. 

Just a post.

:

I find inspiration in the most uncouth of places.

Like the left back pocket, two spaces, of my blue jeans.

I found a fifty and two twentys yesterday

and today,

I worked all noon, and did not

stumble once through the evening to the moon.

:::

Physical Geography by Mahe Jabeen

The moment I am told

it will burn me,

I want to embrace the sun.

Just once.

That's how I am.

I always want to do

what's prohibited.

I erase boundaries.

The sky is my limit.

I lifted the veils of waves

of blue seas

and studied the freedom of water.

I swam against the current

and joined the battle

of the waves against the ocean.

Now I have to go get the essence

of the thundering clouds

and rub them into the vocal chords

of my people.

Sometime soon

I will occupy the ocean

and sow my dreams in it.

Hi

Hi,

Please excuse my absence. I haven't been doing any blogging for the past few months in any form, and yes it sucks deep! I have had to submit the manuscript of my dissertation to my supervisor by May end and it has kept me on my toes. I must add, I did suffer from an attack of writer's block sometime around the 13th of May (it being my birthday etc, i know ;) ) but nevertheless, somehow have managed to write it accompanied by quite a few errors. Over the next few weeks, my work is to sit and await. :(

Anyway, all said and done- I have written a few lines last week that i will post on the blog. Maybe i will, maybe i wont. I don't know. Maybe later in the day.

Till then,

Have a good day.

XOXO

No posts

*
**
***

Pardon me,
I am too weak in spirit to finger my thoughts
and drape them in an appendage
of words, culled by
a fraying mind.

This much for me today,
I will post soon. My mind today, like yesterday
and the daybefore has been
ill fed by the academy.

Night

:::::

At last
the night
last night,
surrendered to his sleeping pills.

Nobody nowhere knew he had gone home
after by the river Spur
he showered with the women
with friendly voices, telling
their tales of waiting, woe & desire.

*

With all his 10 hands
he ate the mushy oranges and slowly
his heart grew colder.

He called to her mercilessly and
told her that he loved her,
that he was afraid,
that he was falling somewhere,
that he had incongrously consumed the pills.

But she was no more.

He sat watching her blue baby face
with no make-up on,
proud she was her mother's daughter
whom he cast out

As the hungry night advanced,
there was very little breath left
and he fell somewhere,
a colourless parrot looking
outside the window of his mother's home.

*

When they found him,
he stank of the river's waters-
thunder, lightning and burnt charcoal.


A corpse with only
God as his witness.

Musings in the morning

::

Whats in a name?
[mother father grandmother
& priest]
when there's nothing to tame

Whats in a mouth?
[alphabets scales vegetables
& juice]
when there's nothing but a pout

Whats in a verse?
[song elegy poem
& epitaphs]
when there's nothing in the purse

Whats in a dance?
[conversation lust regrets
& training]
when it's nothing but a prance

Whats in a life?
[work gossip death
& tears]
when there's nothing but strife

March, 2006: Floating egg yolks

:::

The last time we played Holi, we ended up smelling like rotten eggs. It was back in 2006. Ever since, I have somehow procrastinated: either stayed away at a friend's place, or found it the best time to go visiting... Home. But that year I was chasing a rallying MA degree, juggling friends rooms, eating too much, pardoning semi-clad feet by vigorous pedicure, amounting on noctural Kleptomaniac hunts (We caught one particular Manisha who incessantly stole anything and everything she beheld), washing clothes in the bucket and living an absolutely sedentary lifestyle. Ofcourse, then we weren't provided with Laundry Machines, a luxury we would only be bestowed with 2 years after-& because primarily we were'nt a central university yet - we were ergo, poor.
Anyway, i was there with Ashu, Aku and Christine (my BFFs at that time) snacking up a breakfast consisting of a gourmet chai made from a tiny immersion rod dipped into a rickety handel filled with water to the brim, a few egg sandwiches and chips.From our 1st floor window, we could see throngs of men and women and animal smeared in colour & liquid, chasing each other as if Twister approached, shifting places and fighting an all-out colour war. This is so fucking annoying, i thought.
I must admit i had then the frightening feeling that comes over one, who in a fit of nerves senses impending doom.
"They're coming to get us," said Aku.
The next few minutes went swiftly. We beat 10 eggs in a mug, filled two buckets with water (and shampoo) and stood still against the latched door, dreading the worst.
And then it happened.
All very quickly.
They banged on the door, and we could hear them calling us out- First Oren, then Ruth, Vandana, Asen, Slyvain and what seemed to be an ever increasing amount of adversaries.
We struck our plan after10 minutes, mostly because the people behind the door wouldn't budge! We jerked back- opened the door (to some 10-odd coloured people), swung the buckets of floating egg yolks right on their faces. But not before we got a taste of slimy coloured water running down our backs and hair! And then a tussle followed. The encounter lasted about 30 minutes- to and fro the bathrooms, the cubicles and the lawn- an opera of shrill voices penetrating deep into the dingy hostel corridors- till the last of the powder was consumed by the fraying skin.
Tired and tested, we returned to our rooms much later- the walls now a shandean barrel of coarse graffiti atop with raw-poached eggs. But we didn't have much to whimper. The floors had to be washed, the curtains taken down, the beds rearranged, the cane chairs washed and we ourselves, to be discoloured.

It didn't matter. The battle was over and we were going home in the spring.

I'm a technocrat, let's talk no more of it

*

Piano

Sometimes i like to believe that my piano holds the key to those unfinished tales and songs that my grandfather left me with. My parents bought me my piano in 1993. But it was 1993, and my grandfather had died long since. I never met him. He left me on the day of my birth. Some people told me he was borderline terrorist, my mother said he was an alcoholic and some said that if he were still alive he'd be "Chief Secretary", by now. Tales are few and testimony, fewer. He only left me stories in my grandma's voice, in my mother's songs, in my granduncle's library- heaps of books upon books, all useless. So far i have only found more clutter where i thought was once, meaning. As if one who's speech runs amock, he left the misfit, king in his own kingdom. He knew his right note, found perhaps before one of his escapades, whatever they were - It is that shrill D minor on the violin. What a bugger. Lucky old chap, dammit. I would miss you if i knew you.

Hide, Hyderabad

::

The city of djinns
in secret, lies under
Hyderabad. Where streams
of meanders
criss cross citypaths,
drunk in pagentry.
More coveted,
less cherished.

it is the city
of my lost lover,
where other loves were found
while some lost.
where the sun rises
upon the tea-pot
long after the washwoman
has finished
her bathing

Shiny disco lights
upon curvy
charminars,
a lady will sing a
song for three rupees
light the bidi
and dodge the other rupee
just for your attention

Eyes that hold
her captive,
his silhouette is
a dirty black,
merging into her
and upon the sunset
a woman will look
at her lover and wish
"it will be better"

Nevermind the soultalk
autowallas, they will talk
while round & round
they go, full- free city tours
upon the
fabricated shore
where fishes stench
of feigned deaths that die

I heard the song
that my distant love
once sang
upon this shore,
where lovestories
wrote themselves as fables
but once the eve wore itself on
the muzzein called us on
and my lovesong
was gone

Untitled

:

philosophy, there is none
fancy, a little bit
opium, ensnare me only slightly
words, they are ill-fitting tonight
i stooped, I will not write

My postmodern God

:::

Rivets
Bills
Irremovable nail paint
Voo doo dolls
Cheese
Notebooks
Watch dials
Being minority
Hearts
Open books
Cupped Hands
Procrastination
Google Maps
Fallen trees
Adhoc Meetings
Cigarette Stubs
Bread
Lilac glasses
Hair loss
Delays
High heels
Grey Skies
Lost causes
Traffic
Port Wines
Versace
Coffee
Carpenters
Black children
Nazi Camps
Suiting Up
Suiting Down
Oh my God
Eyeliner
Cuban Cigars
Words
Poetry

Such stuff that dreams are made of.