Winter fortress

All manner of riff, raff and trash

The unholy, the ugly, the unintelligent

They flock the church

In a procession of silent adoration

Hopeful hymns forming in their hearts

That never dare leave their lips

It isn’t a beautiful structure, the church

But it beguiles in its solitude, in its lack of apparent beauty

Leaves the viewer in the lurch

In a land of excess in the way of gleaming glass tower

This tome made of the earth stands like a warlock in power

Written to completion

With bricks of contradiction

Particles of dark secrets, so fine they’re almost colloidal

Collide with sterling specks stolen from the Nephilim 

Ancient gums of tempestuous love

Piece them all together

Giving the institution a stench that

Altogether cannot be ignored

Like dogs drawn to a bitch’s piss

They come sniffing greedily

Put off in the gut, turned on in the gonads

But the unholy, the ugly, the unintelligent

They’ve been deceived wholly

For, the church isn’t a church at all

It is a winter fortress

A glacial manor

Closed for renovation, go away

Twins

Twins they may be, with diaphanous DNA strands that beat with the same helical heart. The strands float like jellyfish- empty and packed with sting all at once- in a bloody ocean through which echoes a steely whisper, 'They are but the same, they are but the same...'. In every way an exact copy of the other. Identical, down to the purple moles on their left earlobes, the Roman noses with Parisian peaks.

Destiny has deemed their faces disparate. For, their sorrows haven't cried the same tears. Their cries haven't plucked the same heart strings. Their hearts haven't sung the same bird songs. Their songs haven't painted the same love stories.

Therefore their faces, as science insists, are but the same. Their souls, however, paint a coat of varnish across their visages. An invisible paint that trumps science. An invisible paint that is more blatant to the keen observer than the purple moles, the Roman noses with Parisian peaks.

My Mother's Magic Madness

I remember London’s cosy underground more vividly than I do its drizzly above-ground. That was the trip… the one where I started inheriting her magic madness for travel.
When I was 15 years old, my mother insisted on spending an entire day exploring the London underground. We were on vacation and the nomad-at-heart, who had long fantasised about visiting said city, declared that the Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Madame Tussauds could wait. Down under before all else, she announced. So, armed with a day pass, we got into our first train. At Paddington, we de-boarded and began walking around- never leaving the station itself (we’d cleverly packed sandwiches and fruits). Pierced and patterned stray buskers vended their electronic art, two men smooched, a homeless old man sang the blues... we took photographs of them all. When we’d exhausted all the entertainment options, we got into our next train, only to jump out at the next stop, regaled by the sight of a man who seemed to be reciting poetry. On closer inspection, we found the bard was crooning loony tunes. He began chasing us, angered by his own madness. We ran for our lives and right into an incoming coach, laughing our heads off, half scared. We kept at this flighty behaviour- trainspotting and hopping- until sunset. Then, it was back to ground reality and ground level.
The adventure was not to end yet, however. As we ambled onwards arm-in-arm, we chanced upon a wig shop decorated with plastic streamers and Moulin Rouge lights. She pulled me in excitedly. At this dystopic Barbie-land, we spent a good hour trying out a series of outlandish mock manes- blue, blonde, curly, poker straight, crimped, satiny, cheap, exorbitant. She looked like the most beautiful woman in the world, in a certain black silken wig that brushed against her hips. The amused shopkeeper wanted to gift us a smart bob. No thank you, bye. Skipping, conversing, cackling, we next made our way to an empty Indian restaurant that was dying to the tunes of an outdated Hindi film song, in which my dear vegetarian vagabond asked the waiter a million questions about the peas pulao before settling for a simple dosa. Back at the hotel, she tucked me into bed and secured all the locks. Together, we made great plans for the next day- riding a red bus, tickling the royal guard, posing by the Big Ben, a Happy Meal at Mc D,  waxing eloquent at Madame T- till sleep shut us up.
Such was the average day spent with my mother. And I inherited some of her madness.
In Dandeli, where I went on a short trek last year, I encountered a poisonous cobra. I near fainted but could almost hear my mom giggle and inch closer to the reptile, to stroke it. In Bangla Road, I knew she was ready to drag me back to the hotel as I continued dancing towards a tequila sunrise. She was the perfect company on my drive to Auroville- she didn’t change the music, she didn’t tell me how to drive, she left me be. When I held the pocket-sized Olive Ridley turtle in Hikkaduwa, I felt her blowing them tickly air kisses past my ear. In Melaka, I sensed her guffawing at the young mother who had her two tots on a cotton leash. In the Himalayas, she and I had great, wordless conversations as I trudged through snow, water, mud and silence. On my many train journeys to Bangalore, she tells me stories of my younger days, just as she always has.
Except nothing is as it always was.
The travels are many, the adventures aplenty, and I’d be a fool to grumble. As long as she’s there in spirit at least, I shall resist uttering words of complaint. After all, her magic madness is forever and inextricably entwined in my own DNA. 

Faded blue hat

The faded hat was once a regal, royal blue. The faded man who wears it now was a regal, royal boy when he first saw the hat on his pillow.

He was 14 when his mother left the striking new cotton helmet on his bed. ‘Wheee!’ he had cried, spotting it in repose on his pillow, when back from school. The pages of the much-thumbed magazine in which he’d first laid eyes on the royal headgear perched on a blond model’s crown gently rustled in the sleepy evening breeze, as if celebrating with the young man. In front of the mirror, the proud owner stood for hours, taking in his newly-regal reflection. The blue perfectly matched not his deep brown eyes but the depth of his determination. To be worthy of the hat someday.

Fifty years on, the boy, now a man of 64, twirls his hat absent-mindedly, till his eyes settle on the vanishing words etched on the inside…

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Love forever,

VA

So used is he to seeing those words, he merely regards them as a part of the hat these days. But today, the memory haunts him.

They studied in the same college and she was taken in by his wit from day one. He took his time acquiring a taste for her, but when he did, he wanted her to be his every meal. They spent all their time together. Reading, creating, loving, just being. Seven years later, she was taken by the Grim Reaper. The pain was acute and he buried his head in his hat, weeping endlessly. That’s when he noticed the tiny inscription from his lost love. He didn’t even know when she’d written it there- lines from her favourite poem. She’d loved him in secret between the shadow and the soul; now, between his head and his hat.

The years succeeding the death of VA went by in an OH-and-ho fuelled haze. Some of the drunken nights were really not too bad. His mates and he would hit the local pub and drown their respective worries in pegs and pints. The revelry was there; so was the occasional rivalry. The rust-coloured spray on the brim of the hat was testimony to the swipe he’d taken at his best friend who’d sneezed blood as a result. It was a silly fight and the swipe was meant to be light. The stain stuck; luckily, so did the best friend. 

His buddies, most of them collected during his school days, are just as faded as he is. Jaded as he is. And to think something as stupid as a food fight could excite them back in the day. The tiny stains strung together during those chip wars now present themselves as a necklace of persevering oil beads. A chain of good memories.

A memory he isn’t too fond of… the period when he’d abandoned his hat at the back of the closet, in favour of a shiny silk fedora. He was a successful businessman at that time. With a dog, a house and a trophy wife who’d picked the new hat out for him, to go with his newly-acquired invincibility. When it had all come crashing down two decades later, the vultures fed hungrily on the remains, leaving naught but the faithful blue hat. It was in quite a state, having been fed on by all manner of pest and pet, but came back to life after a wash- retaining only a few itsy-bitsy holes.

Wearing it, he ventured right back into the rat race, starting at the bottom of the pyramid- where the perks are few, but perspiration is aplenty. The streaks of sweat decorated the hat too, in the manner of an ECG, as seen through the eyes of a drunk.

It was stressful. The hat has the rapidly-falling hair to show for it. Brown hair, grey hair, even white hair sometimes. His hair is fading. The memories seem to be fading faster. His eyesight too. And his sense of smell and taste.

He hangs up his hat. On the steel bridge beneath which lies a sea of eternal solace.

Summer is a fruit

Orbs of varied greens and varying sizes lie in a state of restless repose on hot hay, as if waiting to hatch. Hatched they are by a hatchet in a moment of thirsty rage. Large cups of watermelon soaked in Ballantine, mix and make merry in our small intestine. Pink blood dribbles down the corners of greedy lips, black seeds slip out inconspicuously and settle into the earth, hoping to be caught by a stray wheel and transported to more fertile growth zones. Thus begins the summer every year- in a feverish flash of green, red, stripes and fruit flies.

It’s like a carnival. Vendors haggle, their voices carrying way over town in musical, manic notes. The fragrance of dry hay nudges images of past summers' rustic rendezvous into our heads. Roadblocks are rife where there is an obese watermelon and a sharp knife. We are all like patients at a clinic, waiting in line for a precious transfusion of liquids. Smiles intermingle with sighs of ecstasy, as couples feed each other and kids jiggle their bottoms. There’s laughter and an unsaid communal dance in progress. Freeze the moment mid-note- when the Sustainers strum and the flies hum… mid-step- when there’s an entwining of limbs and a visual exchange of untainted nothings. The moment, all shy and gooey, is sealed by a concentrated ray of sunshine that reflects off a passing car. Laminated for a lifetime in a sweet glaze of transitory innocence.

Generous fruits they are, that give their lives up for us. The watermelons we consume now will, till the time we say our final goodbyes, remain with us, captured by our clever memory cells. We are all part human-part watermelon. Man is melon; melon is man. A great conversation starter for sultry soirees, in the midst of hubris-cloaked herbivores and uncaring carnivores, perspiring bodies and precipitating thirst. The seeds that we accidentally swallow… we can only hope that a watermelon patch may, several generations later, grow over our final resting spots. A communion that is to never break. Like foetuses that are nourished and held in place by a conduit called the umbilical cord, we too delight in being nourished by our vine-like conduits. We hold on to them and begin the sweaty trek out of summer.

Meanwhile, the sun continues to slowly disrobe, exposing us to an inch more of his harsh perfection every day. In a few days, the melas of melon will begin to rust. The heat will dislodge logic, vendors will vanish, kids will collapse, couples will breathe synthetic ice in concrete caves. Green globes will be smashed upon jagged pavements. Tread carefully, man of melon, lest you trip on the very flesh that sated you so. Be prepared to be afflicted by the inevitable seasonal jaundice that will skulk through your veins and cloud your vision. You will begin to see the world like a much-and-many-times married Mughal emperor might have gazed at his nubile lover through a cut of topaz.

Rest awhile, thirsting comrade. In a few days, the sun will ripen to a sweet slush. We can then squeeze it, scoop it, bite in, let it run wild down our hands. In our dreams, we can dance the mango tango as pulpy cords bind us to heavens of swarthy skin and fluid flesh. The saccharine scent of summer will eventually arrive to make juice out of our jaundice, and tide us through yet another season of rust, lust and daydreams of August. 

Middle earth

The eerie voice

Drifts from snowy caverns

Drips from dangerous distant stalactites

And I rise from a strange sleep, to follow the soulless melody

Syringes and hard boiled plastic deck the land

Copper wires lay discarded on the ice

Still throbbing mildly with oxidised blood

Keeping tune with the dead beats of decaying hearts, the angst of chalkboard scraping

I am gripped by a steel addiction, an unidentified affliction  

Harsh white light aims needles of oblivion at my phantom cerebrum

A visual monitor that is carved into a blade shows me vaguely familiar images

A surge of fire is stifled, destined not to burn

It’s going to be a long winter

Monkeys covered in wire wool clamber to warm me

Their eyes are like granite

Inert, impressive

Terror grips me, icicles pierce my chest

I run for warmth on a floor polished with my plasma

Run for release to a dark beach

Of mercury seas

Deserted waves weep tinsel onto shingle

Shingle tingles

As a spectral resident attempts to immolate herself, unsuccessfully

A lethargic rage echoes through the expanse

In the midst of all this is evident the sound of slow, hollow breathing

My eyes are pulled to a bench of daggers on which sits a thin man

A mane of iron filings shimmer down his back

And he waves his arms as if in a trance

He conducts a mass of black energy into a flaming peephole

White energy, he puffs up into vast space

The grey energy- the one that is like dust but glitters in sunlight, the one that resembles me

He keeps, locked in the middle earth

A nanosecond in the life of a mind

It’s a crowded railway station. Shoulders rub against and bruise my own. How smelly. Puke. Footsteps are carefully choreographed. Tock, tock, tock. People run towards wrong trains. Tick, tick, tick. Before I digress, I must tell you about that time when I was playing tennis and a nasty boy kept tossing balls at my bottom. Oh my god, arthritic woman, you’re missing the train. Run! You’re going to be late for your exam. Have I packed my pens- black and blue- and my ruler? Frick, frick, frick- who was the ruler of Greece in 496 BC? You’ve missed the train. Go back home. You can’t come late for exams, admonishes a severe teacher. I beg, I cry… please let me attend! I haven’t attended a single grandparent’s funeral. Stupid, unlucky heap of muck, I am. Pigs feed on muck. And I feed on pigs. Oh my, wouldn’t it be nice to have a hearty steak now. Medium-rare, waiter. And you, friend? Will you have a mug of beer to wash down your fries? Stupid boy, stop aiming tennis balls at my bottom. What is your problem? But you do have such a cute smile. He’s so cute, I bleat. My friend agrees. We’re walking around a park. We’re supposed to be running. YOU’RE MISSING THE NEXT TRAIN TOO, HAG! You are making me very nervous. I need to be at the exam hall an hour before the exam begins. The driver is late. Hyperventilation. Hey you, good looking man, you’re stuck in my head. And I’m stuck in a moment. That walks of yours is driving me nuts. Don’t smile- doesn’t suit you. Try to get lost, please. Just two more hours and I have to get ready for work. I am going to feel so sleepy all day. Oh god, oh god. I look like a wet sock. And that pimple. I look so disgusting. I should run away to a mountain forest and begin farming. Waterfalls, fresh air, red-nosed, alone. Echoes. A fresh start. But, who will cook? So depressing. I’ll have to cook and farm? The waterfall sounds so nice. I wish I could stand under it and will it to cleave my body. One half for the kitchen, the other for the farm. Salt and pepper is the colour of your hair. Take me to your lair. Do you dare? Do you not care? Please be fair. We’d make a fine pair. Okay, okay, I’ll stop my poetry, whole. Yoinksss, all that poetry that was written for me. Eyes like a cooking pan, words in Tamil I can’t understan’. I am a black hole- mysterious and bearing powers of suction, you said. So sweet, so lame. You, yes you man of salt and pepper. You’re still here, I see. Why won’t you sod off? My best friend is this close to disowning me.  Sigh, she’s been there through all my self-inflicted nonsense. The sound of the departing train is killing me. My mother almost fell in that stinky gap between the train and the platform. Angels in white saved her, she insisted. Angels in the outfield. Such a nice movie. Flap, flap. Just like that Hindi song in that bromance movie. Flap, flap- retro style. Remember when we went for one of those school culturals and everyone started flapping when the song played? I had no clue what on earth they were doing. I was so uncool. Am uncool. Always the mouse. Mysterious mouse, I give myself that. I would donate myself to a lab. As long as I have my daily fix of methanol. Swig, high, drunk, dead. Oye, salt and pepper, come back, come back. I almost forgot about you. But you look positively delectable today. Just don’t smile, please. Stay stern and middle-aged. And do that walk. I can watch you do that manly sway all day. Hey, hey, here’s an ode to you. Type, type, type. And the poem is done! Just one more hour before it’s get-ready-for-office time. I will get back home early today and sleep. I will drink cough syrup. No, cough syrup is terrible for my skin. Beer is good. My steak is better. The lard is melting in my mouth. I might die of contentment this very moment. Swig. Hmmm, then what else? How’s it going with your lady? I have no boy scene. Blah. I don’t know why. Haven’t found Him. I haven’t visited my friend and her baby after the little dude’s delivery date. Should go, should go. Prioritise, Anu! I must visit the aunts too. I worry for them. So old, so frail, so insulated. And dear father. Sigh. I am so selfish. That’s hardly breaking news. I should run away to a mountain and farm. What kind of stuff grows on mountains, anyway? Tea? What else? I need to get away. Jeeeezus, airfare discount. Let us book tickets and go to Osaka. Flights. I won't sleep. Budget airlines and cramped seats. Malaysia Airlines. I am not scared. Whatevs. Dying is not the end of the world. Oh, hi. You like me? I like you too? You’re not really my type. But I like you. Salt and pepper. Salt and pepper… fades to grey. You want to give it a shot? Sure! Yayy. Let’s talk some more. I spoke like an idiot and ruined it. Good lord, I am hopeless. Salvation is never to be mine. Come back! One more shot? I look so disgusting. Eeeksarama. Anush Jal is a brand of water, did you know? I was named after my star but then they found out… oh you’ve heard that story a million times. Some more mash please, waiter. It’s terrible but I need it to finish off the remaining steak sauce. Slurp. I’m going to become so enormous. I want to be imprisoned in my room. With my books and music. That’s all I want. Sigh. Life is so unfair. I AM SUCH A WASTE OF SPACE. What am I doing with my life? My career? I will never live up to my potential. There’s still hope. I might die at 28. A year more and a few months. Over, gone and out. You’ve missed the train. Goddamn you.