I had a Poet Sister.

I had a poet sister
 or should I say a poetess?
She was a little fairy and when she was twelve
years old she wrote a poem about a birthday party
that  made my mind go sad and arty.


Do you ever wonder how sadness
permeates the world of twelve year
olds who roves by the moon but is a creature
of the noon. Broken beautiful creatures is a cliché,
but then there’s another niche-
the ones with heart of gold.

Writing this I feel sad, perhaps a little lonesome and curtly

bad. The candles were all burning right,
the friends hadn’t lost her for a moment’s sight,
gifts and love was all at large,
there wasn’t any sadness barge.
But all she thought of was a delightful culinary
that reeked of heavenly flavor. And when the party was
over she wrote,
yes she wrote a line that I must
quote:

‘Did they celebrate my birthday or a chicken’s death?’

(As I read those lines again today my heart trembled a little.)

I read those lines over and over again
for I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t written
since then.

Diary of a Piano Man.

I lay here in the bathroom floor, my eyes are yellow
from last night's puss,
some-days they are like the sun too. 
I lay here and think of
how I arrived here - in the juxtaposition of
space and time, 
or
perhaps 
in transposition of 
joy and sorrow.

Last night while in the bar, I played another 
deceptive cadence,
I played on and on: 

"let the music last until
my fingers run out of breath" I told myself; 

There was silence and tears amidst 
the tone friendly 
drunkards. I don't forget the ovation,
those sparkling eyes, it was strangely beautiful
like always.  But you know what, at the end of it
I didn't hear what I played. I heard
another voice.  

Do you know how the music goes on
After the music has stilled?

My back aches now, 
the walls are littered with
parallel lines of water, but why does this smell
of ammonia invade my 
nosebuds? It's bitter, 
God save me. 

Where is that voice?
I feel safe.

Last night I rose, I rose in that cadence, and
I rose higher and higher, and then in that momentary
crescendo of intonation 
I fell.

The end of music is like the end of a love affair-
And the love that stays on hurts
the most. The love that stays on.
The redolent voice
of the past.  

(Beautiful things that heal,
go astray and 
kill.) 

I am hurt, 
my backbone aches, poor are them whose
heart don't ache. 

I wake up here in the bathroom floor
of a Picasso Deli- a left liberal graffiti
of Lord Shiva etched in the wall 
looking over pissing mortals- trying to say 
something, but
what do pictures say when the Lord is 
silent?

My hand stepped over a broken syringe
that reminded me of those noir-novels, so effulgent
in violence and decadence, writing about
fallen people like 
me. 

The voice has stilled now.

I wake up here in the bathroom floor and I 
wonder if I arrived here in the 
ambulance of forgetfulness or in the 
bubble of a pill-laced dream that burst 
too soon, heaving a mortal sigh. I lie here 
and think, and think, and think 
if music couldn't heal what 
could?



Perhaps death, 
but 
I will live.

The shadows of goodwill.

‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’

Tennessee Williams. New Orleans. USA. The movie was amazing too. Marlon Brando. Vivien Leigh. So much drama. A streetcar named Desire. I know what I am about to say has nothing contextual with that beautiful line. But words always convey different meanings to each one of us- we understand and percept it differently, we filter out whatever we don’t want to percept or sometimes we even delimit our perception for our own well-being. Being someone who has this penchant for writing sappy things, I have always wondered what the point of studying literature was, you know, like there’s the circus and the joker has a role in it, and there’s life and some say literature has a role in it. Mind the analogy, I don’t want to hurt any feelings.

Since you like specific identities, I will tell you this- I am a science student, and since you like categorization I will tell you that I have been a lot around literature students- most of them were pretty girls. 

I have always wondered what the point of literature was and this was surely unchartered territory for me. For I am not supposed to wonder about these things. What do I know about the realists and the post modernists? What do I know about the catharsis and hamartia? Fancy words I must have come across somewhere. People make careers out of those words. So I sat in this lecture hall and listened carefully to everything this US University literature professor was saying. I could hardly understand much, but I did have an idea about ‘Modernism’ and the likes (thanks to this creative writing course I had back in IIT days). I did feel a sense of comradeship in some of the names he mentioned- like Joyce, Baudelaire, Flaubert (he mentioned Madame Bovary- there’s this entire Julian Barnes book dedicated to that novel which I had the good fortune of reading and wallowing), Eliot, Woolf, and the likes. I wondered if everyone felt like that too. Did they feel their bone shiver with the mention of their names, did they smile in acknowledgement or were they still busy hardwiring their brains trying to decode the ‘–isms’ that words didn’t convey. 

Oh how great those names were- who captured their age and place in their own way and here we were discussing them over power points in closed auditoriums. What would posterity know about power points? Who were we then? What were we doing? Facebook literature? It won’t last a year. And then there were names I haven’t heard of. At the end of that academic talk I felt that my level of intellect had risen a bit which was all good until something happened that made me a little sad.

Compassion has never been my strongest suite, it is hard being compassionate I accept, and this is a selfish world and we are all out here making careers, minting money. But sometimes I try to be principled and I try to feel. It bothers me how the world works at times. I don’t know if I pretend to do that, I have always been hard on judging myself so I will leave it for the ‘other’. Here I was standing outside the auditorium, two books dangling out of my hands when an old man with missing hairs and missing teeth walked up to me and in broken English he told me-‘this is something new. Want to read?’ It was a booklet in Bengali and it contained five or six, what you would call tiny stories.   You know I normally don’t practice philanthropy. On bitter days, I despise beggars. But I do eat in small shacks or tea shops by the roadside because I feel I owe this much to these people who don’t have much. What more can a privileged dreamer do? This old man was no beggar. He was selling stories for twenty bucks. I looked at him through the lens and wondered if that’s how I would end up. I bought his booklet. I had already made the judgment of supposing them to be bad stories even before reading them. Such strange creatures aren’t we? I don’t know if it was compassion or a sense of helping out a fellow who claims to write ‘different’ stories that led me into doing this. But whatever it was, it felt real good. Everything always points back to the ‘I’, doesn’t it? I felt good. It was about me. I bought it and walked away and you know what made me sad, rather surprised me-

‘We are not interested’ said a few literature students whom he approached. (I am sorry for this categorization but I had to do this because I have a point to make.) But it only costs as much as two standard cigarettes, I thought. Perhaps they were not rich like me.

 I wondered if being ‘disinterested’- in your age and time, in your surroundings or in the stories of an antediluvian figure is the theme and heart of our age. Is that what we as youth collectively represent in this free flowing material world? Disenchantment and a singular vision of a wealthy, healthy and a banal life – is that the dream?

And therefore, I beat myself in the head and wondered into those labyrinths of useless thought-did literature not teach human values anymore or did I just do a better job staying away from ”-ism people” and getting wasted with those who never read much books but would rise and fight against everything that was wrong with the
world.         

‘But I have always depended on the kindness of story tellers.’
I hummed it to her while I walked away from the semi-lit quadrangle of a place that was once known as Presidency College.    

Online Hindutva- regarding the dire strait of education

Last time when I was coming down from New Delhi I met an well educated man working in some finance company. He was really pissed with the Indian educational system. He was saying to this other person what was the point of studying history. It's of no use. 'Mera koi Kaam mein nahi ata hain yaar. Point kya tha parneka." One practical man I tell you. But then he says 'yes histiri - fistiri Jaisa subject bandh Kar de na chahiye.'
My earphones weren't working. Had I been a better orator or had my Hindi been a little more fluent I would have liked to say something. Alas I am not much different than him. I chose peace and indifference when the virus was spreading.

With the advent of social network, the extent of human stupidity and the hegemony of general badwill comes to you with nerve wracking speed. Recently , Times of India posted a photo of a US journalist who was about to be beheaded by a militant. The photo was shocking just like most these photos are- it generated an interesting and predictable comment chain in the social network.

After being part of one of India's most prestigious institutions I will forever be skeptical about the kind of minds they produce: not worried about the money minded and indifferent lot, to some extent we all are; what worries me are the ones with a false sense of ideologue who thinks by the virtue of their education they are very important. Let's not damn our Indian society that feeds their ego. We are hard wired to glorify such achievements , we weren't taught much about humanity.

I was honestly lacking work and looking for materials to write so I browsed through the comment chain. Some of the comments made me throw up. A certain MBA from Mumbai- says 90 out of 100 Muslims are evil minded. She also says I am not saying all Muslims are bad though but well she knows her numbers. Indian education. 

Someone from a certain St. Xavier's college in a neighboring state said keep calm and support Israel. I sincerely hope he meant it in the context of a football match. There were many other inane comments as usual.

The climax was rather nice- when a certain mechanical engineer from a very rich city with lots of malls said that we needed a world war to clean all those evil scums. I must mention he is a very good looking man with a good job- a suitable boy tailor made to extract a large dowry.

The Help who serves us food doesn't know how to read or write, hell, she doesn't even know how to count money- and she doesn't give a shit what gods you worship. ( I used god and shit in the same sentence. I mean no harm. )

Poetry 17/18?

Me:
Remember childhood
excuses to stay home:
little abdomen that would never ache,
But schools that felt like jails could
make our hearts break?

Remember when you grew up
Those excuses to stay away
Could be bought for friends
And lovers who decided not to
Stay?

I wonder where I am
In that child or in that man
I wonder if i am safe inhabiting
None.



Her:
Remember childhood
excuses to stay home:
little abdomen that would never ache,
But schools that felt like jails could
make our hearts break?

Remember when you grew up
Those excuses to stay away
Could be bought for friends
And lovers who decided not to
Stay?

I wonder where I am
In that child or in that girl
I wonder if i am safe inhabiting
All.

18th August, Jadavpur University
Kolkata
(words forged while
sitting in a nanotech lab
and doing nothing)

An Awful Story.

A friend once told me that to win the affection of another person you have to tell that person a good story. He is no more alive. A part of him perhaps lives in me through his words. Today I decided to tell her a story. She knew I was fond of her, if only she knew how much, but the idea was to make her fond of me, just a little. I kept on thinking what it would be like to say an honest word or a sentence that would poke her heart with the warmth of a winter afternoon. With her it was never easy. What would be the point of my love if I had told her a sappy story that ended in rose gardens of affection? Many people could do that. Some were doing it already. This made me jealous too. I could feel myself saying- she deserves better than just sugarcoated words, she deserves better than that. But what was I doing anyway?

Nothing much.

To start off with I had decided to tell her this story of a bad man, a lion and a house in the jungle. It was banal and boring. As you can guess- she fell asleep halfway through the first sentence. Most of the time I know, I can’t tell a good story, but when I do she is always in there somewhere- in every words typed out, in every honest sentence. This is why I would tell her this story of a girl who had a lamp whose light turned yellow every evening because the sun would come and rest inside it. It happened one day long ago when this girl was very sad. The sun had arrived at her place to console her, and ever since that day, seeing how nice and lovely she was, the sun had promised to come down to warm her up. The sun was truly in love with this girl and so it found a safe haven under that lamp, so that it could spend time with her and subdue its fire. The girl loved the sun too. Everything was fine until one day the sun got a little too careless in love. The skies lit in fire and it burnt the house where the girl used to stay. The girl died in that fire. As usual, the people blamed love for her death and not the careless Sun.

I would tell her such a story because she prefers a tragic ending-but if I were to tell her that-in her sleep the girl was dreaming of the sun and her life together, and a dream sometimes last an entire lifetime and by the time she would wake up she would have lived and loved, perhaps tasted it all, would that make any difference?
I guess I look for meanings in the saddest places.

Stories end, either happily or sadly, maybe with a tinge of both. Perhaps it all depends on how it’s told, perhaps it depends on that last sentence of the last paragraph. Stories end, but lives go on. And that’s why when I tell her I love her, I don’t limit it to paper, it extends beyond this and I hope she feels that you know, for life is infinitely more beautiful than a fairy tale.

“Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite.
‘Fool’ said my muse to me, ‘look in thy heart and write!’”


She is smiling now, it’s an awful story, she thinks.

Lets exchange Places

I had this beautiful woman friend in New Delhi, and when I say beautiful I mean it. This beautiful woman friend in New Delhi wanted me to exchange places with her- I know she meant it in a strictly poetic sense, but her loquacious nature also made her pretty honest at times and that’s how I got to know that she wanted to know me better. There was a time when I could pretend to be lost in my head, and I mean the word pretend because you know what, I hardly smoked any weed back then and yet I could redden my eyes and I could look at the sky and say ‘’hey I am groovy kinda high’’. Free of everything and by everything do I mean feelings?
It was a talent of sort they said, and then words would come fluttering out of nowhere. Damn them, words. That’s how I got to know her anyway- through words, but perhaps more through those accidental touching of skins while crossing the bruised traffic in rush hour, circling round and round through the edges of Connaught Place, unwary of the world. We could talk. We just went on and on. Our quibbles would touch forth the various spectrum of knowledge, sometimes revolving around conspiracy theories but mostly resorting to our mutual doped out ignorance of what the other deemed important. It’s kind of funny how we never settled ever for a truce- blaming our cultural and gender differences. 

‘Let’s exchange places’, she would, say.
‘Fine let’s do it,’ I would tell her. 

And we would keep on walking the sprawling boulevards of the new capital. Sometimes we would see peacocks. Sometimes we would see fornicating dogs. It seemed we could only agree in silence, in the unison of our vision, because in some distant corners of our heart perhaps all of these made a different sense. All of this meant something different to us. Yes, we were story tellers who would write each other letters at times. Sometimes she would mention her boyfriend who lived in some other city. I didn’t pay much attention when she talked about him.

I left New Delhi.

Here in Calcutta, there are so many people who dress and talk like me, who read the same books as I do, listens to the same music and radio- that sometimes I feel I have no identity here. I wish that I could go back to the capital where my beautiful woman friend lives, now with her boyfriend. Sometimes I do feel like exchanging places with her, only to know what she was doing. I don’t write letters to her anymore, all I can do is wonder. We are both busy in love. We are both busy in life. We inhabit different cities and when darkness settles here she is perhaps still enjoying the dim November sun in a Mughal garden. Does she still fight like that? Does she still fight for every word and everything she deems important?

All I can do is wonder.

I took a rickety-rackety government bus today from the southern end of the town where the lakes still harbor sea-weeds and fishes. I sat by the gate and watched the road with the corner of my large glasses. I put on the earphones and as I could feel Vivaldi dulcifying my ear with four seasons the bus hit a red light. A passerby hurriedly came up to the window and asked me something. I couldn’t hear him so I took off my earphone only to enquire what he was saying.

‘Lake Town?’ he demanded to know.
‘Haan,’ I shouted back. 
This kept on happening through the entire arduous journey back to the north and I didn’t mind it. But at the end of it I realized that I had kind of exchanged places with the bus conductor. My heart ached a little only when I realized how back in those days, I was hopelessly in love with that beautiful woman from New Delhi.

‘Let’s exchange places,’ she used to say.