Jam Session at SAC, 22nd August 2009

Jigsaw puzzle pieces in their hands
Holding, turning them over, looking,
waiting for a beat; skipped;

Some pieces don’t match
and are discarded; some
moved around until-

Like a sunlit clearing,
Like a math problem solved,
Like easy inevitability-

They move into place
A perfect fit.

On the Road

“How much longer?”

“Are we there yet?”

As the man smokes cigarette after cigarette

And the woman looks away at the dusty road

“Maa, how much longer, I’m so bored”

“Read the signboards beta, look at these charming towns!”

But the charming towns have nothing on display,

except grimy shops and bovine soirees.

Stale sandwich smell from the backseat fills the air

“How much longer for us to get there?

This plaintive cry snaps the man out of his reverie

“In twenty minutes, now be quiet for a while”

And so in silence passes almost a mile.

“Twenty minutes are over and I feel sick.”

“Oh give her a paper bag, quick!”

The sick was a false alarm, and the car speeds on,

Into the dusk, and then at night

It finally stops, and the parents alight,

Carrying their sleeping child.

(The painting is by Randy Hryhorczuk and belongs to him.)

Pavement Dwellers

Opposite a swanky hotel,

Under a blue plastic awning

They go about their daily rituals-

Sleeping, defecating, starving,

Immune to her sunglasses-clad eyes

Disdainfully looking through them, nose 

Effacing their Smell. Yet, begrudged

Revulsion, ugly Guilt threaten her carefully built

Sanctity, when their orbits briefly collide. 

Sunset on Marine Drive

Lit end of a bidi

glowing frenzied orange in a breath

then falling to dark ash;

stubbed.

I feel like the Prince of Denmark, despite being completely broke.

Much as I despise people who put up famous works or song lyrics as sorry excuses for blog posts, I find that this is the only way I can express what I'm going through right now.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
...
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."

The next post will indicate what finally happens. Hang on to the edge of your seats, people. Or not.

A Monsoon Post (Because of the Heat)

Dark sweep of washed sighs along the gutters of the hutments
overflows into wish-rooms; they surrender, falling
into the brown stream, the collected waste-
dead hope, fallen dreams, the carcasses
of an adulterous woman, a government clerk
(earning 5000 rupees a month, in line for promotion)
and a child that would have been discovered to be autistic
had she lived.
a cat shivers under a blue plastic sheet while
people wait under the railway awning,
their eyes turned inward as they wait;
for the next fix, hit, these empty eyes reflect
raindrops like exiled stars on the concrete.

The Cry Of the Nocturnal Goatsucker

A tangled bedsheet of broken curves and angles
Distant siren wails, dogs bark and are silent
fading into unreality until the next set of wheels
and they bark once more.

A glowing screen in a pitchblack house,
the clicks of a mouse the only signs of life
that, and the silent clicking in my head-

everything that could go wrong, gnawing
worries- past, present, future-
meld; iron ball of paranoia
dissolves into my gastric juices

parentsfamilyfriendscollegelovesextripsworkhappinesscreativity while
sleep evades: dissolving into the cry of the Nocturnal Goatsucker,
it's fevered warbling melting into the shriek in my brain.

-------

PS: I am back.
Disclaimer: The Nocturnal Goatsucker belongs to Kurt Vonnegut. Read his book 'Slapstick' for further details.