The thunder thieving

It seems strange to me that lumps in memory only happen to a few of us, at least consciously. For me, a concentrated mulling is the roadblock of the otherwise speeding attention wagon, like water passing through a pipe with lumps of acerbic soluble substances, passing each time, melting a little of that and this, renewing throbbing pain, nostalgia, anguish, little brush strokes in the larger dark daubs of angst. I should not even begin on the German-ness of angst; it turns me into a Greek tragedy conversely.

The beginnings of an Indian summer, although drastically changing with the passing days, still ushers in the usual love-hate with sweet heat and occasional breezes in the 4 p.m. culmination of a not hurried, never occupied day. These days remind me of the “mighty heart” metaphor, huge and bulb like, rising like hopeful dough, deflating in familiar normalcy. Despite the general pleasantness of these surroundings and a color palette of dark browns and ochre of the shedding trees, anticipating little moist spells of air, when I am spiraling down, it’s just further downhill. No self picture of a girl with a backpack and a paper plane in hand, no catching the wind in hair as faint freckled pink turns to sandstone on skin, nor any spontaneous buckling under a greenwood tree and reading some Rilke poetry. It wasn’t always so, of course, not until the newest lump.

He and many others laugh, or dismiss with a “not-again” groan, when I often mention of my cruel ‘love-spots’. Of love I have much to say, but that is reserved for wittier days. Love spots are typically those ‘Alchemist’ spots where “the whole universe conspires for you to fall in love…”In my case,music moves my cheese. In the last remains of my romantic imagination, there would be a spot, a situation and a song in the background that would all ‘enable my access’ to love, like a bomb blast in the background and a Faiz recital in the side wing or a sulky Darbari song. Less dramatic, to wake up and march in the lobby to Bjork or walk through a loaded day with Fiona Apple and get drunk and lip-sync to Portishead. The list goes on and love-faces could be many. But, basically, one needs a background score to the play of daily life! This should answer my parent’s persistent surprise at teens with headphones.

The more I realized this, the abysmal lack of possessing one became. An i-pod that is. Or any music player, I am not an Apple snob. Switching over, after months of losing it to you, oh nameless thief of a commodified market, I weep silently every noon. This is where the impersonal industrial society pokes me in the shins and this defines oppression for me. Not burgers and colas and sky scrapers.
There used to be a roaring cloud above the head with ears stuffed beneath. The thief stole all my thunder away. Gone far away.

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.