A land of salt and pepper

In a land of salt and pepper

Resides the interloper

In a castle of middle-aged stone

Alone

She collects the master’s footsteps

Plucking them from the air with red forceps

She stores them in crystal drops that hang at her ear

The next best thing to him being near

The careless looks he tosses in her direction

Are captured in a moment of reflection

She stores them in a gilt mirror, against her eyes

The look of her savior in disguise

He passes by in a light cloud of cologne

She inhales deeply and makes the perfume her own

Stores it in a tiny stone that decorates her nose

The grand allowance of olfactory prose

Sometimes his elbows brush past her skin when he’s in a hurry

She commits the gossamer path they tread to memory

Stores them on a map, spread across her forehead

Traces them every night in bed

All that is left for her to do is steal a kiss

For the sense of taste is yet amiss

If she is to be from her crucifix unhung

She must have a piece of him against her tongue

Bye, Paco

By some crazy design of the universe, I fell in love with the song at a time when I stood quivering, shivering in the middle of two magnificent bottles of hypnotic tonic water. Entre Dos Aguas loosely translates to the same thing… between two rivers. I had heard the fading notes of the song at someplace insignificant and knew instantly that I wanted to make it mine.

The opening bass line of the song was an enchanted door that landed me in a sunny Mediterranean street. The beats that followed… they seated me on a comfortable stone by a broken fountain. Then the strums came. They unseated me expressly. I was transformed into a real woman of the earth- not the cold sculpture my soul calls home in reality. I was dressed in a vibrant, many-layered skirt. A voluptuous string of carnations lay serpentine in my hair. My face was suitably accessorised with pent-up emotion. I had my dancing shoes on- they would act as a leathern stylo through which I’d relate my story- and I was ready to present my case. Words have only ever failed me. But dance…

Is it possible to talk by dancing? And yet I dare swear that's how the gods and devils must talk to one another. The famous line by the manic, magnificent Zorba comes to mind.

So, I shut my eyes and let the tunes touch my skin. Like a balm, they slowly entered my blood stream, veneering my conscious with mystic myrrh. I cleared my throat and broke into a slow canter, covering all corners of the crowded plaza, appealing to anyone who would listen to my tale of confusion. Give me answers, I mumbled, ‘a solution!’ I flexed my fingers into symbols of deep grief, all the while executing simple pasos of pathos with my possessed limbs. My voluminous skirt flounced about as if trying to rid itself of an invisible resident evil.

And then came a point when I could no longer take the callousness of my audience. So, aided by the progressive aggression of the suddenly-rogue sonata, I became more vocal. I stamped my foot till my knees hurt, beat my chest till it turned red, reached for the Gods till my hands protested, twisted my hips till they impinged upon every surface of  indifference. Jumping, shuffling, slithering, shimmying, gyrating, waltzing with the twangs, the slides… My voice exploded in a moment of hoarse lucidity. This was ecstasy. I kept at it till the tune tapered off into nothingness. Exhaustion. Bliss. Lucidity. I would pick neither tonic, I decided. I would find my way forward in between the two rivers.

Some days ago, the wizard behind the song- Paco de Lucia- died. His heart stopped. Just like that. I remember watching a live concert video of the legendary flamenco institution, as he played alongside two other guitar greats- John Mc Laughlin and Ai Di Meola. The three of them, each equipped with a piece of wood and a few strings- were in the midst of building heavenly castles in the air. McLaughlin smiled, rapture oozing from every pore of his body. Di Meola nearly laughed with delight. But, de Lucia… he didn’t smile, he didn’t even move that much. He sat cross-legged on a stool- his trademark position- brewing distilled magic. As if it were the simplest of procedures. So, while his fingers struck great stories upon those strings, the master himself stoically refused to read his letters of rapture. He would not sip on his own magic brew, it seemed.

No wonder; his heart must’ve simply imploded with all the contained emotion.

Goodbye, Paco. Dethrone all those lyre-bearing angels in heaven and show them how it’s done.

Curd Rice Or Pizza? The Last Meal Conundrum

I woke up in a cold sweat this morning. It was 48 hours before execution day and the warden walked into my high-security prison cell. “What will it be, then?” he inquired. I was supposed to have made up my mind. But, deciding what I wanted my Last Meal to be was proving to be a tough, tough task.
I was favouring curd rice, potato fry and mango pickle till the night before. But, the wild spices of Mangalorean ghee roast chicken had voodoo needled their way into my system, pricking away all manner of lactose from my memory. And, yet, when the scary warden stood before me, all I could think of was sinking my fingers into a massive hunk of dark chocolate cake. Err. Err. Tick, tick, tick. “…your time is up.” I had a sinking feeling in my stomach when I woke up, mid-way through the harrowing dream. Did I get my final meal? Or had I sacrificed it to the whims of my indecisiveness?
I confided in a friend who had the misfortune of having called me. I told him everything, right from how I was given a day to decide, to how I had acted like a gold fish when it was time to utter my final cibo syllables. “Oh, cool, so, what’d you go to prison for?” he asked with all the sensitivity of a saw dust heap. Men. Pfft!
 I hung up and retreated into the culinary chambers of my own imagination. Just in case I had the dream again. I wanted to whet all my options and come to the best conclusion.
Straight off, I decided against the curd rice-potato fry-mango pickle combination because it was home, and I’d remember the taste of home even up in heaven (haha, I wish). The Mangalorean ghee roast chicken… well, the fiery red hue of chillies and aroma cocktail would linger on my fingertips for ages. And, this might make me homesick, as I tried to teach Mathematics (my idea of personal hell) to noisy school children in the nether world. Chocolate cake. Sigh. How I’d love to. But, I wouldn’t want my family to go through the shame of having my extreme chocolate addiction going public.
How about a rich, coconut-y green Thai curry? Sure- except, the coconuts of my native place in Kerala would weep toddy buckets at my traitorous ways. Hmm, I could make the government pay through its nose for a platter of fresh sashimi. Or not. I don’t want to risk ending up a fish in my next life. I don’t trust karma.
 Pizza!! It’d go viral. “Indian criminal’s last meal is American!” would proclaim all the dubious-yet-addictive websites of the West. It would be heralded as the death of Indian tradition and culture. Italy would be mighty angry too. Global mayhemmmm. In your face, government, for killing me!
I’d certainly put a good mutton biryani on my list. Also, chicken 65. Bacon and cheese. Coorg pork? Yes, please!  Ghee dosa and fifty little bowls of piping hot sambar. Check. Gotta have a good pasta. Dal rice and tomato pachadi… only if made by my aunt. Hot coconut payasam… only if stolen from a Syrian catholic wedding hall.
When I called my insensitive friend, to discuss my list, he was far from supportive. In fact, he went so far as to insinuate that I had gone to prison, in the first place, for a food-related offense. “You must have walked into a food store, seen the last pack of your favourite green American Lays and killed a woman who happened to reach for it before you,” he said, paying no heed to my fragile emotional state. (I had, after all, just escaped the execution chair and lived to tell the tale. Insensitive cow.)
So, to make myself feel better, I turned to my good friend- Mr Emotional Binge Eating, who also goes by the name Mr Giant Ice Cream Tub.  And yes, in life as I would be in death, I was at peace! 

Memories in fabric

The fabric of his imagination

Comes alive, in a light rush of light blue and indigo cotton

Threaded together by its soft touch

Bearing still the memory of her careless caresses

And Arden, who co-habits with the dying spice of her tresses

He wraps this inebriating cloth around his neck sometimes

To feel her fingers tracing his being, chin to clavicle

Coiling with it, into a place of ceaseless wonderment

Flashes of laughter, innocence and worship

Whip past his face, as he spins around the room

Flushes- carnal and karmic- make his visage bloom

Even as a lone salty, crystal ornament glitters down

With all the purpose of a slow waltz…

… his legs are affected by it too

One step to the back, one forward

One reaching for castles in the air

A tinkle touch lands softly on his feet, as on cue

And, once again, he is dancing with his lady of honeydew

But only until the dotted stole comes undone

Extricating man from memory

Extinguishing happiness from his armory

A cotton circle unto eternity

Out of the mouth of a 'babe'...

‘Hey babe, sorry babe.’ Instantly, I was overwhelmed by a burning desire to rip the bonnet off my car and smack the criminal’s head with it. I was almost run over by this particular roadside Romeo, who was riding his bike like the street belonged to his ancestors. Still, I would’ve let it pass because I was in a hurry. But then he went and ruined it all by referring to me as ‘babe’. Twice. Naturally, I felt compelled to bestow upon him the most riotously potent version of ‘sod off’. Tomorrow will be better, I semi-growled to myself as I walked away from the scene of crime. This was yesterday.
‘Thanks babe.’ This greeted me earlier today. And it roused again the many-headed monster that was already seething from last evening’s attack. This time, all I’d done was convey my warm wishes to a male friend, it being his birthday et al. And ‘thanks babe’ was how he recognised my gesture. It was absolutely uncalled for and I was, understandably, b-stung. After all, I am not this nincompoop’s girlfriend. I am not his blonde secretary. I am not Cher. Or Sonny. I am not a cute, talking pig. And I don’t have the IQ of a sponge. So, I sent the only appropriate reply. ‘K’.
It is bad enough that some of my female friends refer to each other (and me) as ‘babe’. ‘Me n ma babes’ is a standard group photo caption these days. Might as well proclaim to the world that we're a bunch of brainless dingbats whose hobbies include ‘gtng manicures’. Still, I swallow my annoyance and put it down to severely deficient vocabularies. But, when a man utters the monstrosity, I want to freeze him and catapult him to another galaxy in which everyone’s name is Babe. In that distant land may he spew the word until he’s gotten it out of his system. There’s one thing worse than a man who calls me babe… a man who is a stranger who calls be babe.
There is just something so inherently off-putting about the word; in my case, even when it is said in context. (Context being if indeed I were an infant, an innocent simpleton or the utterer’s romantic partner.) It is sexist. It is condescending. It sounds like a blob of phlegm. The only environment that is conducive to the usage of the term is if one wants to describe a good looking woman and decides to say, ‘She’s such a babe!’ Cool, that’s acceptable.
When I discussed this with a male pal, the ignoramus simply shrugged and said he thought ‘babe’ was the equivalent of ‘dude’. A female acquaintance said the word was just a substitute for the word ‘dear’. (Oh dear, that’s another word I despise when used loosely and out of context.) She calls her husband ‘babe’ even in front of others, especially in front of others. As though the word is an infallible indicator of relationship strength. My heart goes out to the poor emasculated being. Yet another young woman said she in fact liked being called babe because it brought in familiarity to the equation. Like guys call each other ‘mate’, we girls must call each ‘babe’, insisted she. ‘Kinship will come off,’ she added eloquently. K.
And, then there are my closest friends who think I am far too reactive for my own good. Well, I seem to have company this time, ladies. #dontcallmebabe was trending on Twitter sometime back. Besides, according to a survey, ‘babe’ has been voted the most hated pet name for women. ‘But what if your future partner likes to call you babe?’ one of them demanded. I will call him Princess Consuela Banana Hammock till he gets over it.
Think I am being irrational? Yes? Okay, talk to the hand, BABE.

Leather bound, dust found

My longing for you swam in a secret place, hidden from light- incorruptible and criminal at the same time. I will never wake it from its lust-drugged slumber, I had decided.

But now, we’re both at a party and there’s a chance for a little dance. A spin with a dangerous romance. You tie my hands up in strips of coarse crocodile skin and steer me around- the willing puppy-t. My feet, you bind to your own with shoelaces of plaited leather. We dance. It’s dreamlike. An enchanted dust is manufactured right there on the dance floor, the particles swirling slowly, percolating body heat and the thickness of wanting. The ashes of combustion they are. Combustion of a combined desire. The dust is amorphous but threatens to crystallise unto eternity if not handled with calculated wantonness. That’s why you used leather, you whisper; so that neither of us strays from intention. You tug, I turn. You pull, we embrace. The shimmery gun-powder shrouds us, absorbs every worry, falls to the floor as photons of dull grey. The effort has turned our bodies scarlet. The perfect hue to be overcome by, given our state of satiation.

Let’s jive and grind till we grow tired. Till we’ve burned off the carnal calories that have been getting in the way of every normal function. Let’s hold each other tight and spin till we’re lean and wet with exhaustion. Till we stop producing that intoxicating dust of ours. No more magic powder to snort. Why would we stick around beyond that? With spent bodies and rent souls, we must say au revoir. And face up to the inevitable withdrawal symptoms that present themselves as cruel reality. I will have secretly stored away some of our private dust. To ease my way back into grey, the unwelcome successor of red. 

Sri Lanka: Good Monning and All for You!

I was back home… it felt like my heart would drop to my toes if I dared move. The sinking feeling had begun at the airport, as we- my friend and I- sat in the lounge area waiting for our flight back to India. We were still in Sri Lanka, but I was already sorely missing the simple, innocent beauty of the country. My mind still lingered on the beaches of Hikkaduwa and the smell of fresh prawn-and-crab curry. And, my heart… it scattered itself in little pieces, across the expanse of the lands we’d traversed. Like pollen grain that surfs the wind and settles in the unlikeliest places.
The past four days had been… well, perfect.
Surprisingly perfect, in fact. It was my first time travelling with this friend. We weren’t even, what one would call, close friends. She is an ex-colleague of mine and we’d spoken several times about doing a trip to Gokarna. That never happened. Somehow, Sri Lanka did.  And, I wondered if we’d get along. They say that you can only really know a person when you travel with them. But, that worked out wonderfully too. Over a shared love for inane humour, minor gossip and character analysis (assassination?), Rickshaw Reddy and Stroviya Reddy (a.k.a us) bonded and explored Sri Lanka in effortless companionship.
When we landed in Colombo, it was 2.40 am. Two girls in an alien land. My guard was up and working overtime- fuelled by a good dose of sleeplessness. So, when a middle aged airport official offered to help us get a cab that would take us to Kandy- our first stop- I was instantly suspicious. I made up aliases for us both and even went so far as to tell him that we had a bunch of friends waiting for us at the destination… just in case. Naturally, when we reached Kandy safe and sound and said our goodbyes to the kind driver, I felt a little guilty. Why was I unable to trust anyone? Had I really lost ALL hope in mankind?
Hanthana Home Stay, perched cosily on a hill, was our first home in Sri Lanka. And, the owners of the place made me realise even more how beautiful the human heart can really get, with their hospitality. The house itself was divine… our room had high ceilings with wooden rafters and the balcony opened out to the great mountains. It was rather grudgingly we left it, after a fiery breakfast of sticky rice cakes and chilli paste, to head to the famed botanical gardens. We paid a bomb to enter because we were ‘foreigners’, but I’d say it was semi-worth it. The greenery was breathtaking. We passed countless young couples lounging about under the thick canopy of trees as we lost and found our way through awe-inducing palm avenues, orchid enclave and grassy knolls. It was special for me, in particular, because I happened to chance upon the tree that pretty much defines my childhood. The tree that I would worship when I’d go to the park in Calcutta every summer, when I was a kid. I found it is called the Cannon Ball Tree. I took a few flowers from the tree to my nose and absently ticked a minor point off my bucket list. Kandy reminded me a little of Kerala and a little of the Bali in my head (I’ve never been). The giant banana trees with their flappy, floppy elephant-ear-like leaves are what define my idea of Bali. And the skirt-sporting people… they could be my neighbours in Kerala, with their unaffected demeanours and perennial umbrella-using.
Next up- the tooth relic Buddha temple. It was magnificent and beautiful and blah, blah, blah. However, the walk around the lake that frames the temple was great. We ate cream buns, took photographs of flowers, interacted with people, explored the town on foot. We finished off with a stout at The Pub, where we traded travel stories with two girls from Denmark. They wanted to know all about India. I warned them against visiting. I also warned them against not visiting.
The train journey to Hikkaduwa was manufactured in a horror story. The trains in Sri Lanka are like feral horses. They buck, they tremble, they jump, they shriek. (All hail the Indian railways.) And, to make matters worse, we sat in third class even though we had first class tickets. We were misled by a kindly Korean lady who didn’t speak English to save her life, let alone Tamil or Sinhalese. I wondered how she managed to get about in the country. Bless her. Also, damn her. Anyway, we got to Hikkaduwa… with the raging appetite of a pack of wolves. Salvation was sweet… and spicy. We sat by the turquoise beaches of the coastal town enjoying the most bliss-inducing meal of buttered prawns, crab curry and rice, and the sight of surfers paddling to catch ‘the wave’. We had decided in advance to ‘chill and go with the flow’ and did this by walking up and down the town just taking in our colourful surroundings. Multi-hued tuk-tuks, beachy apparel stores, green palms, blue sea. Our room in Vibration Hotel was out of a Mediterranean magic book (white textured walls, stone furniture, bathrooms out of the Flinstones) and, in it, we leisurely got ready for the night to follow. There was always going to be a ‘night to follow’. The Tsunami-ravaged gem doubled as a party town, after all, and in the evenings, it turns into a whimsical, lantern-lit stretch of lively shacks serving scrumptious seafood and ambrosia. The clubs take turns in staying open all night to host ‘the party of the day’ (everyone does business that way… can you imagine such an arrangement in India?) and entertain out-of-towners. At Funky de Bar, which was right opposite our digs, we met a nomadic German paper-cutting artist who was sweet, interesting and fresh out of a five-year-long relationship. He tried to flirt with my friend, who was happily uninterested. (Speaking of which- while Kandy was filled with lovely people, Hikkaduwa was all about roadside Romeos inundating us with ‘hey baby/honey’ and ‘hi, wanna danze?’.) On the bright side, the owner of the place- with whom I’d had a discussion on business, journalism and my nose stud- took a fancy to me and therefore took care of our tab. Yayy. We left when the night had just begun. At around 12 am, that is. When I woke up at 6 am to use the restroom, I could still hear the music from the club. How do people do that?!
In the morning, after a hearty English breakfast, starring Mr Bacon, we headed to a turtle farm where I met a 40-year-old guy who wanted a piece of my butt. He was an old, crippled Olive Ridley. And, for some reason, he kept lunging for my derriere. And then, there were those tiny little turtle that so-cutely played dead when I held them (a defense mechanism against prey, I was told). The story of the farm was sad, as many stories in that region tend to be. The place used to be the owner’s house. One day, he’d gone to work. When he’d come back, the house was gone, along with six members of his family. Taken eternal hostage by the Tsunami. With somber thought playing on our minds, we headed to a moonstone mine. It was supremely unimpressive. But, the cinnamon oil pressing process- that we were shown as a side-show- was amazing!
Then, it was time to head to Colombo! Again, we were thrilled with our guest house in the beach suburb- Mount Lavinia and wasted no time in making our way to the beach. Unfortunately, we were accosted by a plentitude of unsavoury elements whose main profession seemed to be The Objectification of Women. Luckily, we stumbled upon a gem of a place called Shore by O, which afforded us a gorgeous view of the sea, classy live music, good people, and a taste of the best Sri Lankan curry we’ve ever tasted. I salivate even now, thinking about that plate from heaven. There, a rich man- who called himself the unofficial Ambassador of Sri Lanka- chatted with us. He told us that if were to come back five years later, there would be flyovers crisscrossing the space right above the ocean. Umm.
The next day, we hit Colombo city with a vengeance. Dutch Hospital, Odel, Cinnamon Grand, food court, beach, walking… dreading the night. We’d have to leave back to India then. So sad. Heart wrenching. I didn’t want to go back home. Not because I hated home. I love home. I love the people- canine and otherwise- in it. But, something about Sri Lanka had me hooked. Or perhaps it was the wanderer in me who finally found how to use her marvellous wings. I was just so happy being on the move. I felt liberated. The feeling of being far away… incomparable.
So, sitting in the airport lounge, between Rickshaw and Stroviya jokes (they never get old), I made up my mind to indulge my wanderlust, come 2014. I want to go where the wind takes me… so long as the wind doesn’t strip me off my job. I will need the money to plan my subsequent travels. The food- yes, I’d like a lot of that, please. I believe that you can taste the essence of a land merely by biting into a chunk of a native dish. I’d like to aimlessly wander about on shiny tar roads, cobbled streets and dusty bylanes, entering charming little bakeries and leaving them with a full tummy. I will use the yellow brick road as my map, and my dreams as a navigation tool.
I want to NOT visit ‘sightseeing’ spots anymore. I might die of boredom if I entered another Buddha temple… it feels like that’s all I’ve been doing since 2009! I am happy enough to JUST BE. Enjoying the unique fragrance in the air of a new place and taking many long walks. I want to travel and meet and interact with different people. I find that it’s like reading a book… only in live video format. I want to get over my innate lack of trust in humanity. I need to travel as much as I can to design for myself a more wholesome, real and healthier view of the world and its so-often-lovely human cogs. I want to leave my fortress of suspicion and distrust. I want to scale the walls of my many fears (except lizards- they can go to hell). I want to not run away from danger… I want to face it. That said; I want to also be sensible. I don’t want to rub the Italian mafia the wrong way or decide to take on a hungry shark all by myself.
But, for most part… I want to get lost. I want to find myself. I want to be free.