Dying in the dreams

2:57 PM A: have you ever died in ur dreams?
2:58 PM Me: yeah
two times at least

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have dead forever.

A: what happened after that?
Me: I was wide eyed dying on the street
I couldn't help dying
but I wanted to not die

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever

A: you saw it in third person?
Me: no
2:59 PM I could feel it
like game over
like this is finally happening to me
A: wow that's cool!
Me: and dying can feel really flatly dead

The autumn will come with small white snails,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

A:hmm...
I died last night
for the first time
Me: then?
A: didn't feel anything
Bomb blast

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Me: didn't you feel parts of you dangle and fly?
3:00 PM A: no
Me: or at least some ugly burns
A: I was too close to the blast
Me: Boom

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

A: yeah
Me: and you were dead
A: then I became a ghost, and started spying on people
anyways
It was on my mind, I thought no one died, since no1 knows how it feels

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

(Absent soul- Federico Garcia Lorca)

Full bodied, pink alonesome

Snore dead pig, snore in looping tired wheezes, little light pink umbrellas open as air thrusts in, the suction makes a 'crow' of the umbrellas and out it goes, ripping tiny layers of dusty cellular post cards flying about in the air. Gone in the air like a sack thrown out of an air-plane, lost like an exhausted army of sperms, either inhaled or falling at the edge, gradually perishing, withering in slow dotty vertical trails as if squished against an imaginary hard glass wall, exuding out of accident, not red, but sticky turbid white scrolls of penile histories.
Punching in the body clock, by the end of this old year, miles of tons of heavy dithering words have been dished out. I set my heavy face to the heaving hillside and set my sad eyelids to the far ordinary clouds, my tongue laps up the green ripples, out of focus beneath the broom lashes. Long as a young girl I often kept repeating, "something good must come of it" But, now holding you from the handles of your narrow hips, trying to make you sync in, make square leg motions and awkward jumps...(Tortoise: Glass museum plays)I simply can make no promises.
Three little figs or two big berries, one ugly long toe nail or hexagonal rubies on the tongue. All can be touched and felt, seen and heard. In the soft underbelly of your soaking, bloating, pouting spilling, gradually I am drawn in. (Cul de sac: I remember nothing more). All I ask is to be indulged, to forget to write to be able to think of how to speak to make sense of things that make a difference to you can string me in and jerk it is to realize I am switched on the table nudging here and there is what is written. Is written. In wheezes of the pink pig again, the same snores mean a little different after our journey.

My colorful self

I am not really going to elaborate on the dirty word queer. In cultural studies, queer was often problematized as a word that excludes in articulation, yet mainstream 'queer' culture has often resorted to the word considering its rebellious overtones.
Well, apart from that there aren't many gay proclamations for me to make. I went to the Delhi pride this year, quite fun. The usual colors and masks and song and dance. But, I have been wondering for sometime, how does queer/sexuality studies scenario in India make peace with the huge divide: the body of knowledge on sexuality and its queering with Indian dynamics is mostly disconnected with queer movement in India, the practice part: NGOs helping sex workers of different orientations, transgender rights, problem of the elite, educated, urban gay. Still grappling with the politics of the personal/public and such questions of the bedroom on the street.

Of Pushkar and towns

These are pictures of the Pushkar fair that happens in Rajasthan every year. You can find more pictures on my facebook album. In the month of travels, the next destination was Pushkar. This was almost a photography trip, eight people armed with seven SLR cameras only to reach and find another thousand odd camera loaded curious tourists around. However, this is not only about Pushkar. The inklings of the experiences I am about to narrate started in Gokarna and Hampi, a couple of months ago. Little kids running about offering to pose for photographs, women swaying their colorful skirts nod, heads slanted, perfect play of light and shadow, camels decorated so elaborate and their owners curling their mustaches. You almost want to rush and talk to them, how is it to live in a desert? How do you cook and what do you eat? Sigh, if you could only speak their tongue. Or, maybe not, what would you like Sir, Madam? Deutsche ou Francais? Hablo espanol, even better I am fluent with Hebrew, will that do? Tired of our local food, would you like some falafel or Malawach or Fatut? How about some peach flavored iced tea under the mud thatched roof?
To the unsuspecting Indian tourist, this might just look like a film set. Backdrop of giant wheels, bubbles in the air, turkish pants in the shops and one exotic photo for only five rupees pliss pliss
This is not to scowl or mock the exotic tourist extravaganza on which these places survive. Rather it is for those who like me realize late how the rural to semi rural spaces that used to define the essence of India are holding on to those huge colorful placards of charming Indian-ness while adapting to urban consumption underneath. The language of consumption is so skewed and firmly performed, managing to serve daal baati churma and Scotch in the same wink clearly shows things have changed so much.
Again, this is not to make a point or argue for some colonial dips that keep circus artists and camel riders in Pushkar and such towns alive. It's queer, almost unsettling, how the longing, aloof sand dunes that I was so eager to sleep on are a mere construct, towns of cardboard and nicely placed dolls. I move along, munching on Bruschetta, sipping on lemon tea, my embroidered jhola drags along.

The Taj hugging story

For those who wonder where I have been, I was off to Agra to meet the dead queen :P
Quite literally this month has been the most apt definition of adventure, not necessarily pleasant though. With a weekly record of losing almost everything valuable, including a phone (and hence no communication for days now on) I have done it all. This trip was with the Mumbai friend who had also (like many of us) not seen the Taj Mahal! Back when I was a little girl, my mother showed me pictures of her first trip after marriage ( I won't say the word!) and there she was, standing as tall as the Taj Mahal and touching its tip with her fingers! The photo caught my fascination and ever since I had been wanting to make "the" trip to Taj Mahal. We also visited the ruins of Fatehpur Sikri. A small advertorial note: choose youth hostel if you know not where to stay!
But, all the minute travelogue details apart, I have been asking myself, why write a travel entry? You would surely find a million others on famous places as such and once they are old, the information obsolete. Also, I have realized that increasingly, my travels are not about the place, they are about places within. Astonishingly how, while reprimanding a wicked bus conductor or bargaining with a guide, frowning at the fellow tourist or laughing as you eat aloo tikki in Taj ganj, every street, every wall, each man's two eyes and every woman's pocket holds just one little thing out to you: mirrors. They keep reflecting facets of you that come out, or are born in not-so-ordinary circumstances.
Coming back to this trip, as we walked patiently entering gate by gate to see the white marble monument of love and grandeur, people's voices kept ringing in my ears. Many told me how I'd be disappointed,how places don't live up to their hype. For me, it wasn't true. It was so gorgeous that we circled it for almost two hours before we even touched a brick of the main building. Almost postcard-ish in memory.
Such was the romance of the dead silent place it continues to ooze in bits and pieces, I can hardly visualize it entirety. While leaving, as I hugged it, I donated two beats of my throbbing life to the slumbering queen inside.