Lesser words, more images

I
What was above the bed?
The empty ceiling sheilding more questions
lying beyond in the hermit sky.

What was under the bed?
The dead cockroach flakes
warm at peace.

II
Residue of exhausted lungs
Like Periwinkles on your doormat
Too dear to discard that
You silently elbow them
With closed eyes.

III
Donot claw at the dust
Leaves grain in your nails
Look straight, keep staring

Until the dawn sweeps in
Its blinding light
And you become numb
With fresh air.

On the other side of an ISD call

My feet are so firmly grounded on this land
Almost as if caught in the most banal quicksand
Tell me how it is to fly in a plane
Tell me, does it smell different when you breathe
Is it just in the mind, or are places actually special?
Do they really produce better fibre of cloth?
Why does it smell so good out of the cargo?
Why does the wait never disappoint?
What is it about a foreign land and crossing over?
Can only few privileged make it by providence?
Will I ever cross the seas and breathe else?
Or is it always here, waiting for the imported chocolates, perfumes and
watching films and reading books?
Will I also sit in a plane and tie my shoelaces?
I want to board a plane, break the sandbar of fortune
No more Australian beer, Swiss chocolate, Beat books and Canadian shirts
I feel blind when I eagerly ask how it all looks
I have to rely on their pictures and words
I also want...
Why are there seas? Can't we just cross on foot?
Why is there money? Can't we get generous hitch hikes?
There must be an easier way than facing a consulate
To fill bags of imported chocolates, perfumes and colorful clothes

When I play push on the edge of my bed

I push and I pull. Of course my ownself. I just keep pushing and pulling in thoughts and words and sighs and moans and tears and shouts and I mumble imagined dialogues in between. I keep at the edge and roll a few marbles bigger than the crevices. They keep awkwardly slipping through each corner and they hit the little multi-layered multi-colored sedimentary rocks and roll down in the water. I love igneous rocks better. They should never hurt cuticles or you feel pain, horrible pain. I just take that one step because I am so adventurous and then I brood over the huge step and its shreds around, then I just sulk and gulp up the whole thing as if some sour milk and sleep over it. Next morning it is not so bad and a few days later it is frozen well only to come out in sleep talk when i am possessed by Mara. Smile. I fear falling down, not so much as I hate the fallenness and the inability of "Sartre on Sex and Love" to soothe. So, probably as my way goes, I will deliberately fall a few more times and sit down not to fall or just sleep on the ground if no one pukes on it.

Congrats! Statistically you are a man

The fingers frantically clicked away
At revealing the true self
Could she know really
If numbers predict what she hides so well?

Gulaal

Usually I never comment on films I watch. But for this, I just felt like doing it.
I was actually quite unaware of what the film was about, to start with probably inadequate publicity or just the image of an off-beat film. The coloring, settings and costumes are eye candy, marvelously fauvist style loud vibrant colors to match each character. The story starts off really well and I loved the Ran-saa character. It is so true as Sonali pointed out the other day, Dilip the protagonist does not stir up any liking or connect, he remains hanging somewhere in the middle all the time. The second half was again, as for every recent film I've seen, draggy and incoherent. The story loses pace and vigor. Female characters wer "lameness" personified. Agreed, the editing was bad, some sequences were unnecessary. The whole teacher character given to the female was useless, some weird reproduction of a modern age, pot smoking cool babe (probably Kashyap is falling for the abuse of "showing drug use" in films). Piyus Mishra dazzles with all that John Lenon obsession and witty verses. The narrative was interesting because it cuts in and out of past and present (very common these days though) and uses music for progression (which is hardly the case in hindi films since 60's). The close ups are beautiful, K.K and the last sequence of initiation of the mud blood brother and his sister. Script is tight, almost no useless violence revelry. Mahie Gill is wasted and annoying. I loved the film for its visual appeal and music. Gives me all funny powered thoughts. I like.

The bunny looking heavenwards

At night when I walked in little fury, some daze, I passed the huge tar paved roads of my college which looks like a gothic set floodlit in orange. It was dark and silent as usual. People and purpose are to be explained in every inch of the college. No purpose no people. Wondering and wondering, on and on after two years of having been in here, I just looked around to see if anyone felt so helpless as me. But to my surprise I saw you, Bunny dustbin, looking upto the heavens, as if calm and saturated, no more willing to give way to the bickering of dissatisfied voices. I found solace in you

Genetic affinity to Jerks

This sounds so incredibly girlie and "how opal mehta..." kinds considering that this rant must not even be original. But, the more I wonder, the clearer I see a pattern in the kind of people I end up falling for or admiring. They are all, as some people say, Jerks, with a capital J. Jerks because all of them come with an expiry date of association and because all of them are highly unique, information seeking, self-obsessed and most importantly, emotionally challenged (by choice or disposition). The fact that people are so self immersed drives me nuts and draws me to them. But, then they cannot understand that happy beginnings should conventionally end up as happy endings. In most cases that surround me, chicks and monkeys with lower I.Q and worse looks have been able to secure huge groups of friends and their special charming toads. Somehow, I seem to be inadpet at either. I almost never crave for a huge group of friends but I would love to have my own toad who is hungry to know more, wants to travel, eat almost anything, reads when s/he is not asleep, watches movies and listens to music when s/he is not reading and sleeps when neither of this is happening. Of course wakes up only to talk to me. Probably it is too much idealism etc but then, why not? I am sure there are those kinds. I am so bored of lawyers, DJs, designers, teachers, musicians, poets and engineers. Can't there be a hybrid? But by this time, my cup of coffee is over, people are staring because I seem to break into tears the next moment(thats how my face becomes when I think too much) and I get up, eh, why bother so much when in the end you want to quit them all and run away on an individual journey. With all this exams bothering I can't even read, eat or write in peace. Broke as I am, can't go to cinema. Is there no middle option between riding a bike and learning everything at the radio station? I am tired of jerky rides, I want a smooth road for a while to laze around.

Is the Third eye to Open?

I am painfully relieved of lust, love, the sensation to finger touch and excitement from warm breath. I am in full control because I am in complete consciousness, false included. I can consciously love, hate, imagine, determine how much to give and turn the knobs of the intensity of pleasure. Am I just bowled over or is it a liberating irreversible corrosion? Can it be profanely illuminating at my age, my left over shreds of desire, my cognitive limitations or, is it a mere phase? Will a sequence of such phases give me a solution or a restful way of dealing with the probable large surviving chunk of life knowing that in all my quest for knowledge or otherwise, one day or one nihgt, in a fraction of time, I will cease to happen? Is waning of sensual hysteria a help to know more about the state of happening of life which is so futile that it is born to lose? Then why am I clinging so tight to a body which is a mere page in the universal storybook of my soul? Is attachemnt not beautiful? Or is it just wrong timing to be born in a post-industrial society?

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,
rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

The only way to get back

Shruti lost her bag. She would think it too selfish for me to narrate my similar experience. So, I am blogging it. Someone stole it from the library locker! No fault of hers but money, debit card, project gone. We roamed all around the college for an hour or so with the security guy. Some utterly inhumane conversations in between:

Library guy (sitting, reading): Oh, you should have brought a lock along... (reverts back to reading)

Reception guy: Um...No, I TOLD YOU ALREADY, WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT! There is no lost and found department, hundreds of laptops are stolen everyday but a bag, this is first time...mmmmmm...

Library lady: Go, now take a lock and put

This all just took me through a familiar stream of thought when my phone was stolen twice. On the one hand this lady was crying her heart out because theft indeed IS the worst emotional hurt you can inflict upon someone and on the other hand there were people acting like a bunch of jerks in the newest of fashion.
In fact its not their fault because most of us don't even know how to react after 5 seconds of shock to a person who has just lost something, forget someone. More than that was the bitter experience of gulping down the visits to every jerk administrative office in the college. You just realise the mindless, unintelligent, crude lack of organization and insensitivity to student needs embedded in this kitsch, dirty, porous imitation of an american university. The problem again, is not that they don't care, but that they reinforce faith in anti-establishment and the worst: they make you feel helpless, miserable and ruin a couple of your days, leave you in the corridors wondering why you ever admitted yourself to an institution like this. This apart, this is just projection of the loss of the bag/cell phone/purse etc onto the peripheral terrorists.
Then, when I was walking past a dustbin gazing at Shruti, I felt, what if I go to the library now and steal a couple of other bags. Would that make her feel better? Of course, some others will cry like her, but who cares? Either its just me with the kleptomaniac tendency or disposition to get over affected by theft or the only way to get back and make your day is do your little bit of "swapping" and balance your losses. Mind you, I will be a different theif, even today when I see a pink and white phone I suspect it is mine, travelling through hundreds of chor bazaar lanes and finally landed in this filthy hand that I just saw. When you steal, you steal a piece of my mind, a piece of my over sentimental heart and my dear bag/purse/cell phone. The only way to get back I see now, is to become like you.

Few days later:
Me: Hmmm... you lost your self in this place, ma? Too bad. Should keep such things in a safe (back to sleeping)

I am India

This is a little lame poster that I designed as an assertion of the indian identity. Chumma. Pass time. No appreciation entertained ;)

When I first saw the sea

One of us, she saw the sea for th first time ever in Manipal. The trip was fun. We walked and jumped and spoke and ate and travelled. I had a weird feeling standing at the brink of the sand dispersing in water and was so tempted to write. No camera could pan the whole sky, the sea up till the horizon and the stretch of white sand that my eyes were feasting on. Blue wisps of liquid hit my white pearly walls. Plastic, oil and sand were gracing my scalp cream. Rub some slick ash on the border of my vision, the Sun has already friend my pink, deep golden. Smoothen the waves and curves of supple margarine bosom,brush red mud off my soles and wave my hand to little clusters of tadpoles. I breathed air. I had fun!

Performative thought

I sit clawing, scraping at the blue flakey walls of your skin,right where your spine does a sudden curve and changes to opaline, hissing green in time when you trigger the sequence even without poking a lash. I cannot bear the ecstatic, cathartic chewing noises from father's mouth mixed with wet fingers on my shirt. Let me ululate into this tender ear of yours and generate low frequency waves like the drone of a blue scooter, the rattle of a cottong grey cloud, the biting and chewing of your brown hair by copper moonlight.
Cut me up, slightly, by each grain like a red watermelon's womb and make an eight on the peach with the tip of my finger before it punctures a hole. Create more fury by dipping finger in the vermillion tube. Rub the paint, smear, smudge and rough it up against the skin texture. Pour some oil, breeze through a bucket balancing on dead curls of fibre and mosquito legs dismantled near the drain. Do the yoga of my unstable wants and grin with me. Get up, its morning.
We are free, from jealousy.