Writing

Is this a macabre joke?

I console the woman
with whose husband
I once entwined with?
I try and feel
that righteous anger
but somewhere I
know I am as fake
as that anger.

She says
betryaed
She says
infidelity
I mumble
hollow words

because I know
one day she must
have voiced those
words for me too.

Sometime in 2009.

*********************************************************************

Pain from the memory

It’s that day when,

My womb remembers you

And weeps blood red tears.

I woke up with a jolt,

Clutching your memory,

It still causing me agony.

Wondering if you ever

formed  a thought?

And wondered why

you had become?

My bed was blood red

Today morning,

As I woke up with a spasm

I remembered that night vividly,

The meal, the unnatural silence

The sheen of tears held back.

The futility,

and carelessness of it.

The waste of that life.

All I seem to

Want to say

Is sorry.

December 2009

*********************************************************************

Follow your dream

Everyone tells you..

What nobody tells you

Is that expectations

Will act as potholes

And people you

Love, as hurdles

When has it

Become a crime

To follow what

You want?

What is support?

If it isn’t saying

Do what you feel

Like, even it is

Something we won’t?

Why is support

Ridden with

Guilt riders?

I didn’t enjoy my

Life?

Why should you?

August 2009

*********************************************************************

Numbers are so important

How old am I

How many more years of constantly being there for myself

How many minutes I spend combing my hair, before it gets too late to leave

How many hours I spend travelling

What about the minutes that go in daily ‘snoozing’ of the alarm

The hours spent in sheer willing away of distress

How many years it’s taking me to get my heart under control

How many minutes I spend meditating

How many times I chant

The number of days still left to chant

How many kilos I have lost

The kilos I am yet to lose

How many times a day I drift off

The number of my feed reader

My unread mails

The number of unread books and unbought books

How many times the same line line speaks to me, in different voices

How many times I still dream of him

How many more years are left?

How many times will I resent the same things?

Minutes, hours, days, months and years..

it all just boils down to numbers.

August 2009

———————————————————————————————————————-

Untitled

It’s a luscious thought

to slowly draw a line

across my wrist.

Watch that line

deepen with burgundy

and belatedly feel the sting.

Watch that line blur

proportionately to

increase in pain.

Watch the blur

become mush and flood

and smear, all red.

April  2009

__________________________________________________________

It is good for me

My skin’s softer
My lips, fuller
It’s good for me.

No more dead cells
Thanks to the stubble;
It’s good for me.

Cycles are on time,
Stealthy languidness;
It’s good for me.

I sleep deeply.
My body feels softer.
It is me.

25th October 2008

********************************

Moments captured

Shards of broken
green bangles
testimony to a new beginning?

A chocolate wrapper
haphazardly torn
no pleasure in greed?

A pack of cards, scattered
some face-up, some face-down
down on their luck, someone?

A nice, black
stacked heel
with a silk-stockinged foot

the admiration stumbles
a little, seeing a small,
perfect hole in the trouser-clad leg.

September 2008

+++++++++++++++++++++++

My Bookshelf

Every book has ‘a’ story.
It’s not always printed within.
Sometimes it’s a crease or a fold.
Sometimes it’s the lack of one.

Little memories are found.
Bits snuggled in spines.
Tickets and stubs and dried flowers.
or a just a hurried splash of word.

‘Bought at a sale with D’, one says
The book wasn’t figurative but
food writing has never been the same
thanks to Nigella Lawson.

‘A brunch with mum at TC’, another says.
On windy, wintery morning.
Inscribed in Nehru’s
Discovery of India.

It lies ignored on the bookshelf,
hidden out of sight,
not unlike the relationship
with my brunch companion.

‘Dharamsala ’98 —
hols with the fly’.
A murder mystery by Tartt,
I only remember not being able
Justify a book instead of silver earrings

‘The rainy afternoon
at Literati in Goa’
came back with me
in Murakami’s surreal world.

The book becomes what
The bookstore should
have been for me.
A realization of a dream.

A parking stub from Olive
as a bookmark with a car
number I don’t recognise.

Whose car was this?
Has so much time passed?
Who was I with?

And the book’s title
fittingly, is ‘What Am I
Doing Here’; Bruce Chatwin.

Coffee house receipts,
prescriptions and filigireed
bookmarks — all yodle their own
in this silent, printed world.

August 2008

++++++++++++++++

Good intentions

It has begun.
The same song
The ritual dance.

I zero in on him.
For reasons I
Can’t explain.

My eyes become
A mirror.
Showing every thought

That crosses my mind.
I wake up to hoping
He is thinking me.

I fall asleep praying
‘Please let him think
of me in his last thought.’

Before he closes his eyes.
I wonder why
It’s him I seek

Right now all he does is
Cross eyes with me.
Every time we do but

I pour every intent I have
Into my kohl-rimmed eyes.
Hoping he reads what

I am saying and not.
It is a matter of time
Before we begin.

The same song.
The ritual dance.
Him with me; mine with his.

September 2005

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

An image I will not forget in a hurry…

She smacked her lips,
Tongue darting in and
Out.

She was happy and
Satiated.
Why wouldn’t she be?

She came darting down
The wall.
Irritated with that butterfly.

She slid across and
With consummate ease,
Took the butterfly in.

Such a small lizard
And an even smaller
Mouth.

No hope of eating that
Full bug there.
Maybe just for revenge?

But no. She chomped
On it bit by bit.
And Ate the goddam butterfly!!

+++++++++++++++++++++

Learn well

You taught me how to control my temper
You taught me how to channelise my energies better
you taught me how not to hold grudges, despite holding them yourself.
But you also taught me how to never ask you a question you will not like answering.

You made me want you ..unimaginably
You made the present synonymous for me, with you
You made me love myself… only till we were together
Though you have never said anything nice

When we started I was dead sure
you and I naah! I mean seriously!
me the fat, ugly and frumpy
and honestly never got to you

I never thought about it.
I was amazed, touched and
certain it was love…
just to hear about “the orange skirt”

it was bound to happen
i was prepared I thought
why am I so surprised
so hurt then?

Because you, by which I mean I, are a fool
you actually thought you
meant something -all those
conversations and all

You had to find out like this
no?

May 2007

+++++++++++++++++++

Stranger in the night… two lonely people

He turned his face away

sulking?

She sat twinkling away alone

bereft

The distance between them never

reducing

The crescent became brighter and

shinier

The star still remained blinking and

away

December 2005

+++++++++++++++++++++++

In a fit of madness …

You need me
I can feel it
deep within
a call.. pulling
tugging at my
tummy. telling me

you need me
me to sit by you
soothe your brow
make you tea
kiss your forehead
lay it on my lap
and rock you

You need me
to hold you
and tell you
that those frown
lines needn’t interfere
and all will become ok
and one day of rest
wont stop the world

you need me to
will the ache away
from your eyes
to tell you
all is as it
should be

but you never
did say anything
never gave me
a chance to
say anything
such is life they say.

March 2007

++++++++++++++++++++

I have visible scars when you pushed me
Off the rusting slide — it looks like a see-saw
Did you say sorry then?

I have invisible scars when you squeezed
My budding, little breasts
squeezing harder when they became bigger
Did you say sorry then?

All you ever wanted to do was
‘sleep’ with me…
so why were you sorry when you heard about
mourning him who isn’t there anymore?

November 2007