wordmonkey

Back and back and diversions and diversions

2009-04-04T22:33:00.000-07:00

Back to the blog after a while, and to bombay after a wonderful vacation.
A long post on that later.

First a post on Sudarshan's new book -

The 65 lakh heist is a rip roaring read. A taut 200 pages, the book is an English translation of a 1977 Hindi crime classic - 65 Lakh ki Dakaiti or The 65 Lakh Heist by Surender Mohan Pathak.

The novel features Pathak's popular anti-hero Vimal, a reluctant member of a daring bank robbery that forms the heart of the novel. Set mostly in 1970s Punjab, the novel moves from heist to cross and double cross. Each chapter number is accompanied by the acetylene torch that plays a huge part in the robbery, and the book features reproductions of a few of Pathak's original covers.

A must buy-read. Read reviews here, here and here.

after a shamefully long haitus...

2008-08-26T06:06:00.000-07:00

... a new poem

This poem

This poem will start simple
and speak straight to you
because you wrote it yourself
but
you will forget this poem
as soon as you've heard it.

This is the poem you
tried to write at sixteen
and would have at thirty
if not busy buying a living.

This poem will change nothing.
This poem was written in Bombay.
This poem is a road
you can either walk down
or rename.

This poem has seen death.
In fatal railway track crossings
and exploded first class carraiges,
Blood on riot born swords
and from every day
mosquito bites of indifference.

This poem has cried itself to flooding,
drowned in its own tears
and still lived to complain
about the city's under-performing gutters.

This poem is sunlight
and life giving rain. It
rises up and shakes it's
filth covered fist at the sun
laughing at its own bruises.

This poem is dead. It
wrote itself on the back of
an unencashed compensation cheque
passed from father to son.

This poem is ordinary, thats
why it is beautiful.
This poem is breath- sweet
smog coloured concrete scented
breath, the scent thrown off
by huge metal animals
in a steel and brick forest.

This poem would be ordinary
if it were beautiful
with burgundy dyed similies
and streaky blond allusions
but this poem is bald.
It uses none of it's
own words, instead it uses
ten rupee roadside words
stuffed in pavs, with onions
and two types of chutney.

This poem is washed over
in the surf of a thousand
other poems whose sentences
clamber over it like children
reaching for view of the tamasha
and yet its shoulders stay strong.

This poem will win no awards
This poem is unoriginal.
This poem comes without intervals
or toilet breaks, this poem
would be longer if the neighbours
didn't play-their-music-so-fucking-loud

This poem is a thief.
It sips your sweetest dreams,
gorges on your laughter,
wins your children's adoration
fucks your wife, your husband
and leaves you to navigate
those empty afternoon hours alone.

This poem is always simple
and speaks straight through you
but
you always forget this poem
as soon as you've heard it
because you write it yourself.

Mango Fudge

2008-04-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

Mango Fudge

Part I - Recipe

Holidays
are made of this -
a basin of warm weather,
filled with a generous helping
of days as easy as
a lazy

river on a leash
friendly chatter like cold beer
down a throat dry with
shouting at four walls
moments

of drunk laughter
silly humour, not pieced out
in chance bites but spread
smooth and deep delicious.
The sun

a generous mango dollop
on a plate of sky
a day you reach into
a bag of sweets with
no fear of finding
empty wrappers.

Part II - Digestion

Confessions after the second
evening drink are the easiest
to forget and swallow with
the next.

It's the mid-afternoon
story of a child's death
that makes you think of
the screams

that have no walls
to bounce off here, perhaps
they collect as those black
river-shore rocks

hidden under deep skirts
of water in some weather,
in others lying naked, bawling
to the sun.

Part III - Fudged

The woods are silent
when they creep up on you
The woods are silent and still
You ride an empty road
comfortably through a country
of burnt grass and rock
until

They're on you in
row after row, still and bare
Regiment after regiment they drill
past – a sepia evening parade
coming at you in thin
slices

Of time as if
This road dipped in and out
of sleep as it dices
talk into slow spaced words
scattering breadcrumbs of sound
smelling

Of sweet witch cake
that stains your hand yellow
as you try to ring the bell
on this door of perception,
that remains closed for yet
another spell.

The Other Butterfly that Stamped

2007-10-03T05:25:00.000-07:00

The Other* Butterfly that Stamped

Rohinton Daruwala

A man, looking out a window spies
Two butterflies in a tree,
A male outside, while a female lies

Emerging from her cocoon, still not free.
The male over eager to mate,
Tears at the cocoon impatiently.

The man makes jokes at their fate,
Can't emerge now - my hair's not dry,
Reservations at seven, we'll be late.

He watches the male try after try,
And then sees him fly away
Into a lonely piece of sky.

The man imagines him making his way
In through window onto instrument panel
A green yellow stone in a garden of grey

Floating and landing in a careless channel
Of buttons, activating sequence pins
That launch missiles, whose metallic enamel

Like the teeth of fire-bearded djinns
Open up to swallow a city complete
In a single giant mushroom that spins

Out a gift of radiational heat
That warms the female butterfly
Now emerged and in all conceit

Fluttering impatiently, wondering why
Her mate wandered off and whether
The suddenly darkening sky

Is another case of butterfly weather.

*The entire story (thank the public domain) is available here

Seasons

2007-06-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

Seasons

Before, your thin wick burnt
unnoticed, aflame in summer heat.
Now stumble, stumble in the cold rain
dissolving your melted misshapen feet.

Of catalysis and stranger reactions

2007-04-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

Browsing the scifiction archive, was delighted to find to find this piece by Michael Swanwick, which of course reminded me instantly of Primo Levi's Periodic Table. The wikipedia entry refers to all 21 entries as "short stories", but from what I can remember, the majority were memoirs.

From my undependable memory - Hydrogen and Helium were childhood memoirs, hydrogen with the classic eyebrow-erasing chemistry experiment
either Cerium or Chromium a memoir of a desperate concentration camp existence
I have a distinct memory of one being about ammonia or ammonium, which of course can't be right, but it was about a chemical factory, so it probably is "Sulphur"
Either Lead or Iron, is a genuine tale - the life of a middle aged smith or quarryman

but all of them brilliant. It comes as no surprise that the book won this

And even the memory of Levi's books stirs as it did on reading, memories of the more weird-historical paragraphs that seep into chemistry textbooks - images of Sulphur vapour condensing, the rejected slag of an iron extraction, the long long pathways of sulphuric acid production - the alchemical dirt under the fingernails of modern chemistry.

Listen

2007-04-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

Listen*

Listen
tea, rhymes with gold,
or better still,
sunlight breaking through
the trees,

the coldness of stone
with the first touch
of a still pool
of water.

There's music
in sea-waves waking
at dawn,

in watching a man walk
watching a woman walk
or a child run
across a street.

I could paint you
a whole story
using only

the peach soft touch
of a first kiss

the hunger of
the endless empty hours
of midnight

the roll of
cool water down
a parched throat

the touch and
embrace of skin
warm as honey

and with the burning
lonely shame
of tears.

Listen,
When I speak,
even in my silence.

The best poems
are written in silence,
to the rhythm
of a beating heart.

*written for/inspired by a friend's sign language workshop

Changing Planes

2007-04-16T03:15:00.000-07:00

Judging a book by its foreword isn't as big as a sin as judging it by its cover, but it does come close.

I ignored Ursula Leguin's Changing Planes on bookshelves for quite a while before stumbling onto a library copy.
I had somehow gained an initial impression that the whole book was about air travel, but it isn't at all (well except for one part which is delightful)
What it actually is, is a woven-together set of short tales, each one describing a society on another "plane" that is just a little bit different from ours.

The first one - Porridge on Islac - is a gently dystopic view of genetic engineering gone horribly wrong.

My personal favourites are the two language ones (not least because I'm struggling at the moment with a language story myself):
The Silence of the Asonu - a few words on a society whose individuals literally never say a word and
The Nna Mmoy Language - a tale of a people whose mono-syllabary language is completely (and hence unintelligibly) contextual.

The third-last tale - The Flyers of Gy - whose bootlegged copy I'd read a couple of years ago seems appropriate for an end to a book about planes and planes. It describes a society of bird-like people, some of whom can actually fly, though for a change, not all of them want to. Its a completely different take of course from the normal fantastic/exultory approach to this (for a brilliant execution read Lisa Tuttle's Windhaven)

And browsing the Wikipedia entry for the book I stumble onto a new word - ethnography
Ethnographic it is then - 15 planes in 200 pages - not a bad deal for an evening's virtual travelling.

Take a listen

2007-04-11T00:40:00.000-07:00

Asimov's Nightfall read out as a podcast

A stroll around Lankhmar

2007-04-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

being yet another pointless book reaction....

Ahhh the sweet self-indulgence of escapist reading.
I'd been holding off reading Fritz Leiber's First Book of Lankhmar like a bag of sweets for so long.
So it was a sweet weekend troddling along with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Leiber coined the term "sword & sorcery" to describe his stories, and there really isn't a better phrase. The stories describe the adventures fantastic, swash-buckling and occasionally comic of Fafhrd a huge Conan-ish barbarian and the diminutive Gray Mouser. There are few "heroes" staining these pages, as the pair battle demons, thieves, wolves four-legged and two-legged in the search for, for the most part, the usual exotic treasures - jewelled skulls, caches of rubies. Enchantment blows across the landscape often, with the occasional whiff of bitter revenge.

The stories beg comparison, with Robert E. Howard, but we will leave that for another post (and when I've actually finished the book, not too much sweet after all all at once)

inane observation -
It took me a couple of stories to guess that the constantly fog ridden and marsh approaching Lankhmar, with its deadly ancient streets smell probably a lot of New York.
Leiber's opening story has a troupe of travelling actors, something he probably knew quite a bit about being the child of two Shakespearean actors.
Those two things fix for me I think correctly how that old maxim should really read - its not "write what you know", it really should be "write and you'll probably end up writing what you know"

inane observation 2 -
the comforting thought, that even after these 600 pages, there does exist (on some bookshelf somewhere waiting for me) a second book of Lankhmar
which of course is like that most important of Sunday dishes - the second dessert

Ugli Fruit

2007-03-02T00:09:00.000-08:00

much bad rhyme ensues on reading this post on this fruit

Ugli Fruit

Would you be green
if I picked a tangerine?

Would you be yellow
if you caught me with a pomelo?

Would you to care to kiss the nape
of the neck of a grape?

Or would you prefer
to grapple an apple?

Or dawdle and sample
a chickoo or two?

Another week till Spring
drops off into rot.

Remember, some day
they'll all taste the same,
and that some fruits
are ugli only in name

The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu

2007-02-19T22:35:00.001-08:00

The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu

What does a book that's been
silent for seven hundred years
say when you open it?

Does it mutter half-sentences
in crumbling dusty dialects?
Or do the words burst out
of the page inexplicably like
a spring rising out of desert sand?

Perhaps the books are more ordinary
and like their curators
firework-bereft and bald
Tracts political, historical,
astronomical, and all in verse
enlightening, undramatic, practical
their ancient authors
unencumbered by the West

How often has a book that's been
passed from generation to generation
been read out loud?

Enough trickling out perhaps
to stain shores more familiar now
A sufi tale or two in Andersen's
with clothing heavier for the Danish cold
The silvery glint of a medical
treatise in Crusoe's empty island

Which of these thousands of books
Which of these millions of pages
Soon to be gathered up by academic
hordes, by armies of vain collectors
will be left to the careless wayfarer
blind to the beacon of Shining Africa?

Perhaps a thin sheaf of love poems
Like the claws of a meaty beast
Cast off as offal, but still the shape
of those that still mark our flesh
as we stumble blindly in the desert
in the slow search for the Caravan

Cigarettes and Dawn

2007-02-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

Cigarettes and Dawn

his old man fingers shake a little
as he lights up the unfinished morning
and speaks

the myths are all wrong
Prometheus as a clumsy
found out thief
the real discoverers of fire
were a couple of neandernethals
trying to light up a joint

he takes another puff
after the joke's spilled out of him like smoke
a sliver of ash
falls onto the table like grey rain

ask yourself just what I'm smoking
he says
you'll probably start
with the smoke rings
cause they're so pretty
and thats as good a reason as anything
I'll bet you could float up there
for years and years

then, later
you might get down
and double up on the ash
evidence of the crime
and maybe you're real smart with evidence
you'll have at it with cold science
and all your machines of logic

and, later still
you'll think about the cigarette itself
you'll get past brand names
sink those fingers
right into the tobacco, the paper
you'll smoke em yourself
the real real experience
and then you'll think
you've got me

he coughs, and then
his voice lies still on the silence
like it were rich carpetting

if you're lucky
he says
you'll catch a glimpse of the flame
and maybe you'll get
to stare at it a little
baby-eyed unblinking
before it goes out

he's done smoking and as he gets up
to walk into a pink-grey morning
of half-filled tea glasses
he's got an old man's face
craggy and unshaven
with yellowed teeth
and two unblinking coal-black eyes
that could stare the Sun into shame

Second Place!!!

2007-02-14T04:40:00.000-08:00

yay!!!!
second place in the Kala Ghoda poetry slam
and the poem I sent in

resolutions shmesolutions

2006-12-31T22:03:00.000-08:00

prodded by a caf thread
for 2007 - my (writing) resolutions:

I will write every day.

I will take the brakes off when I write.

I will start actually using my blog for blogging.

I will take my head out of the barrel instead of scraping the bottom.

I will work at not working.

I will try to remember there is more to Fantasy than Tolkien and Howard.

I will try to remember there is more to Tolkien and Howard than Fantasy.

I will learn.

Lunch with the Aztecs

2006-12-20T02:42:00.000-08:00

Lunch with the Aztecs

We sit down to eat
in pleasing familiarity
tomatoes
beans
the perfume of flowers
freshly picked
The mother smiles at me
with folded hands
In the bathroom
she says
father's in the bathroom
shaving
I imagine him
the last smooth scrape
complete
he considers the blade
and why not?
an offering
a minute sacrifice
a slice of skin
for family health
a promotion
kinder neighbours

I wonder
if I listen close
under the sound
of my breath
What will it sound like?
Knife
splitting skin like butter
or the wicked wicked
sawing through
of tough leather
and will it boil over
like thin red lava
or splatter splatter rush
out like a river
subterranean once
now liberated

And then he will sit
with us
his fresh wounds glowing
with the pride
of paternal self-sacrifice

And the snake will dance
before me
its thick green body
swelling
with its sap of life
adorned with feathers
bright bright feathers

Atop the dizzying heights
of a decaying pyramid
I will squint
uncertainly
into a valley of bones
sharpened to daggers
and count which ones
I arrange for my enemies
and which ones
are arranged for me

When the Words Matter

2006-12-04T03:07:00.000-08:00

When the Words Matter

It happens when I am sunk
deep into the ink black night
Or when I'm burnt brown
in the unflinching noonday Sun.

My Words lie on my palm
like hard empty diamonds
with no trace of breath or blood
in them, no trace of life.

They slip away onto the grass
in a hundred irrelevant arrangements
And I am left standing to ask
Do they matter? Matter at all?

And I consider myths
The general inspired by a single
line of verse to raise an army
and lay waste a kingdom.

Lovers seduced by a single
word, its syllables blooded
like rose petals, by a phrase
spelt like a chain of promises.

Words that have carried shame
and hate and hope and laughter
like thin shelled eggs
shed to hatch demons.

This much then is given -
to be the weak triggers, keys,
linchpins of events and happenings.
But this is not enough.

An argument that bends
weakly like the blades of grass
crushed under the wordless
demanding weight of my body.

And the meaning of the words
comes to me with the coolness
of an arriving dawn, the warmth
of a departing evening breeze.

It comes to me with the
raking sound of the nails of
a demon of pain that will not
depart until you coin its name.

With the sound of the ache
of an ecstasy of love that will
burst you open like over-ripe fruit
unless you vent its description.

With the unsounded scream
of terror at the deep night
of aloneness that swallows all
curses, hopes, pleadings poured into it.

With the unyielding will of
a prisoner knotting his own nerves
saying I will not forget ever
I will not will not will not

The Muse

2006-12-04T03:06:00.000-08:00

The Muse

Each night he writes and writes,
Scratching out black gashes
On the thin skin of notebooks,
While I hover inches from his lips.

Each night he wants me to come
And light up the tender tallow
Of his flickering imagination.
Each night I come to him in vain.

He chose this house for its
Quiet solitude, but he know not
What lurks beneath its floor
Each night I try to make him see.

He thinks I come to help him
Write his sentimental verse.
I come to try and make him see the
Demons scraping up towards his feet.

Second Place!!!

2006-11-12T23:22:00.000-08:00

Yay!!!

Second place in the TheScian SF story contest.
Read my story To sleep, perchance to dream on the site

and the rest of the stories

and discuss the stories

Diwali

2006-10-31T03:05:00.000-08:00

Diwali

You're up early
while I'm still sleeping
You have a puja to perform
of course.

So many names
for you to remember of
so many relatives crowding in.
I'm sure

you've forgotten
my name that lies afloat
like oil on a diya lit late
last night.

You're dressed
in a bright bright sari
that you're happily uncomfortable
wearing.

And unseemly
I am more concerned with
the taking off than the putting
on of it.

Past evening
I will walk to you through
the Sulphur of exploded
crackers

and stop
your mouth for a kiss with
your body soft between
my arms

like a broken-off piece of mithai.

untitled poem

2006-10-31T03:03:00.000-08:00

The air tonight is clear
as a pool of water
So many things have gathered
shape tonight - hard and unforgiving.

They no longer murmur to me
in disjointed geometries.
Tonight they lie orderly
like letters on a page.

Tonight, even the cement road
seems smooth without the stubble
of small stones and potholes
an unblemished grey sheet.

I might lay my smooth cheek
against it, the short swim
of air between here and there
is invitingly cool to my skin.

It is easy to imagine -
my body soft in sleep under
a streetlamp whose light
congeals under my fingertips.

Time flutters for a moment
like a page from a book
and then lies still and cool
undisturbed by my breath.

Your Name

2006-10-10T01:44:00.000-07:00

a work in progress...

Your Name

It comes to me with a soft
shock of pleasure, finding
your name in print or
in speech.

Surely your name does not
embody you. You cannot
be spelled out in a
few letters.

Yet, there are times,
interrupted in thought,
your name tumbles out of
my mouth

like a flower held
between my fingers
that drops softly to
the floor

Later on, of course
there will be other names -
sweeter, more intimate and
unshared.

But until then, this name,
with its worn unfamiliar
petals, this name of yours,
will do

Leaving

2006-09-06T05:34:00.000-07:00

Leaving

Like stepping out of the rain
Into simple sunlit days that
Burn away dank memories of pain
Watching rain through windows whose
Stillness say never never again

Offering

2006-08-22T01:02:00.000-07:00

Offering

The first offerings to the rains
Are always from the trees
Trembling and shivering in the wind
They bow their bodies, drunk on showers.

After them, the world changes itself
Into a series of small pools and rivers
Afloat on the pitted brown bodies of roads
Tossed across each other like fallen tree trunks.

Red buses roar across them ceaselessly
Like healthy animals, careless of
Lesser creatures and indifferent
To the clean shine of their own hides.

And from me also the rain plucks
An offering like a jealous goddess.
At first, she touches my brow and lips
Ever so gently to remind me.

Then she rakes cold fingers
Down my chest, across my back
Paints my skin with shivers and
Waters my eye with reproachful tears.

She plays a silent music through
The narrow flutes of my veins and arteries.
My body thrums to the silent music -
Alveoli puff like small balloons,

A few explode like raindrops and
At the end of a coughing fit, I produce
Two red spots on a white handkerchief
And the music is allowed to subside.

My body is bowed like a tree leaning
With the weak branches of my arms
On the impatient flank of a waiting
Bus that soon departs belching ridicule.

Plastic bags like leaves float by
In colours garish in the gloom
The first offerings to the rains
Are always from the trees

A Plastic Flag

2006-08-15T00:59:00.000-07:00

An I-day post -

A Plastic Flag

This year I bought it on the street again - a plastic flag.
Orange and green leaking onto white in a small stain - a plastic flag.

Tacky? Yes. But cheap, waterproof and flag-poled
By a thin straw, it flutters gently in disdain - a plastic flag.

The chakra - count the spokes for every dialect and sub-dialect,
For every fence and flavour - count, lose count and count again - a plastic flag.

The future after all always comes neatly packaged and labelled -
So put it on your desk, no need to explain - a plastic flag.

From another letter from Lesbia

2006-08-09T04:01:00.000-07:00

Written in reply to a Dorothy Parker poem From a letter from Lesbia

From another letter from Lesbia

...While Sappho watches the Soaps my boy,
Listen carefully to the tip of the day
Love any lass you like, be she bold or coy
But not a poet - you'll wish you were gay.

You'll be up all night, while she
Works on her blank verse novel
After that, she still won't let you be -
She'll feed you each stanza with a shovel

If you're lucky you might get to see
Films that aren't sub-titled or slow
And you might even not have to be
At every single Vagina Monologues show.

Stay away, even if you yourself write verse
Even if she's sweet, supportive with differences few
For to put it in a manner most terse:
What if she's better at it than you?

2006-08-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

Distracted

Tonight your eyes,
are pools I can
no longer drown in.

Conversation lies beside
our fingers like an
untouched appertif.

Your moisturizer protected
palms on the table lie
like two white napkins

or envelopes of
questions but I can
only stare above you

A painting of a
girl too innocent
to have applied

the Kajal herself has
her pallo round her head
and tween her teeth

She's coy, but papery age
has pulled a tear from her
eye that beckons me

And leads you to ask
my absent self -
"Whats wrong?"

Whats wrong with the
flavour of my lipstick
stains on your neck

the spice of my scent
that you wear like
an afterthought

the waft of the gold
highlights in my hair
that light your eyes

And I have to honey
my voice and say -
"Nothing. Nothing at all."

I used to be Gene Kelly

2006-07-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

I used to be Gene Kelly
At least - I was -
When the sidewalk could take it.

I used to stand open faced
Dry shoed - or wet -
And spin clouds into laughter

Now I dance in June - too soon
In August -
Because I must, but never in July

Mumbai keeps earth-quakes strange
Tremors - 5 or 6 -
Bother it less than a drizzle does.

Sometime tho, resentment boils
Like lava - and -
Sometimes falls in endless cold rain

Raindrops gather in a mob and
Lash lash out
In a fury beyond all sense

They come in different colours but
Its hard
To see which won, which are dead.

Moses supposes he counts his toeses
Correctly - but he -
Knowses there's scarcely point at all

Its enough to stand in a puddle
In the sun
Its enough to be standing at all.

But there's still a love song
Saying - have you -
Ever kissed in the rain?

Kissed? Yes - kissed it all
Goodbye - down -
Down the overflowing drain

Watched it swirl around in
Cold cold July
And still say the next day

Good morning, good morning
Its great to
Stay up late. Good morning

To you, and you, and you
But - how few
Of us are left, how few

Now to walk down that lane
And - cough up -
A happy refrain, and keep an eye

For those dark dark dark clouds again.

An unamused reply

2006-06-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

An unamused reply

How quaint they are
These careless entreaties
Of yours.

As if I were a merchant
Selling verse by the kilo,
Or the pound.

Your partner only dances
As well as you do, and only
As badly.

Do not think me cold
Of course, we have danced
Together -

Through sonnets, sestinas, villanelles
Epic trilogies, thunderous dramas and scripts
Through love, hatred, war, farce and tragedy,
Even death.

Your offer me your starvation,
Broken relationships and alcoholism
As gifts.

I do not need them, I bring
Them myself. They drip onto your hand
From my wings.

Lure me instead with your
Careless inward eye. Do not underweigh
Your indolence.

I come only as holy witness to
Your sacrificing yourself on the altar
Of yourself.

I do not come to entertain.

Upside-down Kiss

2006-06-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

Upside-down Kiss

Upper lip on lower lip,
Lower lip on upper,
Held together delicately,
Before they part into each other.

My nose fits cutely
Into your dimpled chin
Your breath on my neck
Stumbles like a startled mare

You on a sofa, me behind,
Tipping your head back
With my fingers
Or you flat on a bed

My eyes hold yours,
While my face descends,
Clumsy until my tongue finds
The warm familiarity of yours.

Mouth raised, my gaze tumbles
Down your lovely neck and breasts
My eyes read yours, I search
For a sign of amusement.

But they only say to me
So this is technique then -
Turning the same body upside down
On the same familiar sheets.

Where are the simple phones of yesterday?

2006-06-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

an anti-mobile villanelle (you knew I'd get round to it someday)

Where are the simple phones of yesterday?

Damn these mobile phones of today.
Built in Finland, styled in France
Where are the simple phones of yesterday?

At a movie, a dinner, even on holiday
Silence no longer has a chance
Damn these mobile phones of today.

No call waiting, we'd talk and talk away
Alas, talk's no longer an uninterrupted dance
Where are the simple phones of yesterday?

The secret contact that's a single 'A'
We won sordid affairs for fine romance
Damn these mobile phones of today.

The "guess who's this" games we'd play
Not just identification at a glance
Where are the simple phones of yesterday?

How long will these carcinogens stay?
When will we break this ring-tone trance?
Damn these mobile phones of today.
Where are the simple phones of yesterday?

extended limerick

2006-06-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

meant to be read in limerick rhythm

There was a young girl from Bengal
Who had no phone manners at all
She'd yack and she'd yack
You couldn't talk back
Just mutter resentfully at her gall
And wait for when in love she will fall
With a guy named Jack
Who'll put her out of whack
Wondering just when he will finally call

Set Dosa

2006-06-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

And with the rains come more slush
And with the rains come more mush.....

Set Dosa

It comes in five pieces. A pieced-out mash of yellow potatoes wrapped in five pieces of crisp brown dosa cloth. With impeccable accuracy, the waiter puts down the plate exactly in-between the two of us. The sambhar is like nectar. I can tell that even before I taste it, as I watch you a swallow a spoon of it and see its colour spreading in your cheeks. We never talk while we eat. At least, not with words. You won't speak even to disapprove of the way I dump the sambhar and chutney on my piece of dosa before swallowing it, treating red-orange nectar and green ambrosia like they were just two flavours of ketchup. I still haven't absorbed the habit of having them separately with a spoon, like you do. You only speak when we get to the fifth piece. You say in mock pleading, "But I'm hungry". And I have to laugh, and surrender spoon and fork.

A light drizzle has started outside the restaurant. We have two cups of coffee while we wait for it to stop. We blow the cool air of nostalgia over warm reminisces and sip carefully of the trepidatious future. We avoid talking about the present. As if it were something that needs to be held just right - like these stainless steel coffee cups, filled to the brim, held just at the top, too loose and it spills over you, too tight and you burn yourself.

Its still raining, even after we pay the bill and walk out. But for once, you don't mind being led out into a warm drizzle. And I don't mind either. Its been years since I walked you home in the rain.

How did Jim Reeves do it?

2006-06-06T05:07:00.000-07:00

attempt in a caferati writing exercise.....

How did Jim Reeves do it?

This modern existence is the pain.
Put on hold on mobiles, land-lines,
On IMs I'm minimized away again.

Never alone with you despite designs
That involve candle-lit dinners, walks alone,
Weekend cottages, the heart still pines.

I hope this ancient black telephone
With no call-waiting might contain
Just our voices at last alone

The wurble puss of Jam Tree Gully

2006-05-30T05:06:00.000-07:00

considering the usual state of my mind, the strange thing is that its taken me this long to get around to nonsense verse

The wurble puss of Jam Tree Gully

The wurble puss of Jam Tree Gully
Is certainly a handsome beast
In her coat of bright blue feathers
That's stunning to say the least

Its fuzzy wool warm in winter
Sparkling bright in the rain
The careless love larks of summer
Dance round it again and again

You'll find her on Tuesday evenings
Hunched behind the dairy stand
Quietly munching a dahi-kachori
Stylishly held in the left hand

If you're brave, my dear, go close
And have a look at her eyes
But step slowly, hold your breath
The wurble puss doesn't like spies

One's a small brown marble
Warm and friendly as can be
The other's a big black scary ball
That stares and stares unwinkingly

But really she's all right, as long
As her eyes don't turn green
Then its far too late to run
Or slowly slip away unseen

Then do exactly as I say
Touch right thumb to your lip
And turn around twice
But be careful you do not slip

Blink twice at the wurble puss
Quick and nasty like a cat
Skip once forward and twice back
You can't do better than that

If you're lucky or you see some
Pink cotton clouds in the sky
She'll run dropping the kachori, never
The dahi tho - she's far too sly

Once I even found a blue feather
Dropped off her coat you see.
Come visit me, and I might just
Use it to flavour your tea.

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations - again

2006-05-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

I DID like the story version of this I wrote and posted earlier.
But I thought I'd experiment a little.
This is the same story and embedded poem, but with the "plot" expanded and a "character" added.

Let me know how the two versions compare.

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations

I.

Around afternoon after lunch-time
Rashmi Sinha sits and thinks
Of what she supposes is sublime
And her artist-ego wakes and blinks

And that is me - Rashmi the writer
Rashmi the artist, not the woman
Who's Mumbai-bred-tough-as-a-fighter
I mark paper with spoiled bitumen

Being only half-awake after lunch.
Half-baked inspiration is foisted on me.
Caught helpless in a crunch.
I decide to behave indulgently

Rashmi wants to save the world,
Which is surely a noble ambition.
Visions of Flags of Peace unfurled,
Crowd around in the most naive tradition.

But what annoys me is the verse
I must pen on the silly subject.
I give in, but I am terse -
Four lines to satisfy her object.

In the bright afternoon sun
Of today, skin colours light
And dark melt away into the
One bright colour of tommorow

The verse done, she slips from me.
I relax and wait for her to voice
Her satisfaction, but she dejectedly
Shakes her head, does not rejoice.

She's crushed to realise that her
Words - my words are so trite
And I suddenly feel with a shiver
My death coming with her next insight

Her self-confidence cannot shatter,
Or it will take me with it.
I console her on the matter,
Promise a better poem on revisit.

II.

It is a humid suburban night
In the dark, she lies in bed
Her tongue twirling a chocolate delight
A strange idea pops into her head

Poor Alok who ever so politely
Had just fallen asleep after sex
Is shaken awake, and not quietly
Prodded by middle finger and index

"I've got it by Georgette!"
She says to his sleepy back
"People are like chocolate -
There's no white, brown or black."

"Of course not," he says
"Blood types make more sense"
She interrupts him in a daze
"Listen! Don't talk nonsense."

"All skins are a chocolate shade
Thats what my poem is about
Now I see how it should be made"
Her mind now is free of doubt

Ever so easily, she slips into me
Grabs pen, paper and artistic pose
The poem I slowly begin to see
And then silently compose

On a sweltering summer day
As body after body passes me by
Words for skin - black, white, brown
Melt away into meaninglessness.

Rich shades of chocolate skin
Assail me. Arms, shoulders, backs
Dare me to name their colour and shade,
Invite me to discover their texture.

Skin is beguiling, but does its shade
Really matter? If I put my mouth on
This man's neck and run tongue over skin,
What colour is that intoxication?

Or if I join my mouth to
That man's, what shade, what hue
Can I put to the careless
Abandon that explodes within me?

To my sun-infected eyes, half-open
Shirts and collars assume the shape
Of chocolate wrappers, waiting to be
Opened and swallowed in laughter.

After that, lying sated in the shade,
I could put a name to each single
Taste of skin, but to group them this
Way or that would be pointless.

While I stop and pause for breath
Alok, reading the pages opines
"Men through the length and breadth,
Not a woman in all those lines."

I pause and chew my lower lip
Searching for the next line
Ignoring the movements near my hip
Two more stanzas are at last mine

A woman whose skin flows under
Your arms like liquid chocolate,
Melted by love. Do not judge her
By the paleness or darkness of her skin.

Embrace her sweetness and her bitterness.
Bitterness is also richness. Beware
The unmelting hardness that comes
From long cold years of neglect.

I swallow a piece of caramel
For Rashmi's hunger and mine
The pen four more lines does travel
Inspired by chocolate softness so fine

All children are caramel. Your sweet
Years with them melt away quickly,
Leaving photos, empty rooms to recall
The taste and colour of their voices.

With that Rashmi slips out of me
And considers what was written
She stares at how dissapointedly
Passion has crept in unbidden.

The pages then fall like rain
Onto Rashmi Sinha's right thigh
Flutter with an unwanted child's pain
Discarded with not even a sigh.

Now she feels the mouth that begs
With its tongue travelling round her waist
Responds to the hand slipped tween her legs
Turns her mouth to his with haste.

III.

It is evening now and all quiet
Alone and watching the setting sun
She slips into me as day into night
And one more poem is begun

Today I wrote down words for skin
On paper - black, white, brown,
Nut, chocolate, ivory, ebony
Caramel, olive, sand, wood.

The Setting Sun laid his fingers
On these, wrapping them in
A golden warmth and a glow
That blinded my in-turned eyes

The Setting Sun unwrapped my skin
Like foil - Gold and Silver underneath
Ran through the rivers of my blood
And whispered to my bones

Think of a man - write of the gash
Of Orange Sky between his fingers
Think of a woman - write of the clouds
That float silent in her hair

Write, if you must,
Of the skin of real things
Or better, if you can,
Of the silences between them.

Rashmi and I, the both of us
Read this back both silent
As the Sun sets without a fuss
At once peaceful and violent

"Is this the poem?" she asks me
I say I do not know
For today, lets leave it be,
Come back and write again tommorow

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations

2006-05-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

The Chocolate Theory of Race Relations

It was on the fourteenth of April, a humid suburban Mumbai night, that Rashmi Sinha was on the cusp of discovering the key to World Peace. It happened like this.

She was lying in bed, in the dark, eating chocolates from a box on the night stand. Next to her, Alok intermittently tossed his semi-slumbering bulk around. As she twirled a caramel centred piece around her tongue in delicious abandon, something struck her in the small of the back of her imagination. Shaking her groggy bed-mate awake she said, "Alok, wake up, wake up."

"What?"

"I just thought of something. People are like chocolate. There's really no skin colour like black, white or brown."

"Of course there isn't. Blood types are far more important in dividing..."

"To hell with your blood types. Just listen. All skin colours are just different shades of chocolate" she said in feverish excitement. "I have to write a poem about it. After people read it, they won't be able to look at each other the same way. Are you listening to me?"

"Of course I am sweetheart."

Alok looked at her sleepily as she switched on the bed light. Her long hair hung ragged round her oval face and on her shoulders. Her forehead bulged forward a little too much to let her be pretty. Her dark eyes, turned inward now in concentration, lay above a sharp nose and a small mouth and chin. He watched her, as then and there, in the dead of night, she began the misty process of composing.

On a sweltering summer day
As body after body passes me by
Words for skin - black, white, brown
Melt away into meaninglessness.

Rich shades of chocolate skin
Assail me. Arms, shoulders, backs
Dare me to name their colour and shade,
Invite me to discover their texture.

Skin is beguiling, but does its shade
Really matter? If I put my mouth on
This man's neck and run tongue over skin,
What colour is that intoxication?

Or if I join my mouth to
That man's, what shade, what hue
Can I put to the careless
Abandon that explodes within me?

To my sun-infected eyes, half-open
Shirts and collars assume the shape
Of chocolate wrappers, waiting to be
Opened and swallowed in laughter.

After that, lying sated in the shade,
I could put a name to each single
Taste of skin, but to group them this
Way or that would be pointless.

Rashmi stopped scribbling, and looked expectantly at Alok for a response. With the experience of having walked this tightrope, which could leave him facing either tears or crushed silence, Alok simply said, "But that's only about men. What about women?"

Rashmi turned back to her pages, chewed on her lower lip for a while and then wrote.

A woman whose skin flows under
Your arms like liquid chocolate,
Melted by love. Do not judge her
By the paleness or darkness of her skin.

Embrace her sweetness and her bitterness.
Bitterness is also richness. Beware
The unmelting hardness that comes
From long cold years of neglect.

Rashmi, for artistic sustenance, bit into another piece of chocolate from the box, which led Alok to say, "I thought there'd be something about caramel in there." So she put in one more stanza.

All children are caramel. Your sweet
Years with them melt away quickly,
Leaving photos, empty rooms to recall
The taste and colour of their voices.

"Well?", she asked, "What do you think?"

Alok weighed his choices carefully and decided to take the suicide plunge of honesty, "Its all sex."

"What?"

"All of it. Its really all just about sex. Look."

Rashmi stared at the pages, frowning. "Well, maybe after a second draft." She then began her diligent job of redrafting. And this is the point where tragedy occurred. If only Rashmi Sinha had been less conscientious of spelling and grammar corrections, if only she had safely put away her first draft in a drawer. If she had, it would not have mattered that by the time she had added her second momentous comma, Alok's mouth had begun to do unfairly interesting things around her waist and that by the time she had corrected the metre in the third stanza, his talented left hand had slipped uninvited between her thighs. The fragile pages housing her poem were soon crushed and scattered about the bed. If only she had remembered them as she fell asleep, or in the morning before they were swept away as trash, things might have been different. But they were not. Now, the world is condemned to move from summer to summer, sweltering in the chocolateless existence it always has, and perhaps, always will.

Duck

2006-05-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

Duck

Out from the mouth
Of an inter-city bus, I
Emerge gingerly from the mist
Of early morning sleepiness.

A small forgettable stop,
Like so many others where always
The same cup of tea bubbles up,
As if from a shared reservoir.

On a grassy patch a duck
Squats half-asleep, its neck
Turned backwards, bill buried
In the feathers of its back.

As the bus leaves, it stirs briefly,
Tastes the morning air, full of the
Danger of lonely departure, and sinks
Gratefully back into soft feathery sleep.

one more insult

2006-05-10T01:10:00.000-07:00

one more from the insult verse category.... this time not really aimed at anyone in particular...

Unsent letter to the office whore

Your punctuality my dear
Has to be seen to be believed
Exactly two hours late every day
Is a talent not easily conceived

Of course I do understand
Squeezing into clothes three sizes small
Can be an ordeal for you
Do you use that gym membership at all?

I know little about military matters
But a little treadmill action
Might improve those ill-concealed
Weapons of mass seduction

You do of course get your exercise - verbally
Those cigarettes you puff all day
That give you that charming asthmatic cough
Not that in a conversation you have much to say

Except for that delightful Hyena laugh
That can curdle blood
Or any other liquid. No wonder
There's dahi every day in the canteen food

I have to admit though
You are a modern liberated woman
I applaud how you never wear a bra
Why submit to that male subjugation

I could call your career a rudderless
Boat adrift but with your admiring cohorts
On second thought its a tramp steamer
That calls on most lewd sailor's ports

I could cut loose and call you
A bitch, a slut, a whore
If only your best friend didn't
Already call you by these and more

I intended to add these things -
The way the sides of your mouth
Crinkle up when you smile
Naturally instead of fakely pout

The way the sunlight caught
Your hair this morning
That suits you better than the make up
You always insist on adorning

Or the way you show genuine concern
For the abandoned pup across the street
And ignore a human being
Lying unnoticed at your feet

But these are better left
For another poem, another time
Its a poor sort of rant or curse that
Turns bitterness into a confessionary rhyme

and more exercises

2006-05-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

One more caferati exercise, insults in verse...
this one aimed at myself(where could I hope to find a better subject)..

Self-flagellation, verse and worse

I sat down to write some verse
On you of all unseemly things
But fell asleep fore the first curse

Had left my lips, which brings
Me to the first of your faults
You boringest of Caferati's underlings

Of course you do spew out vaults
Of horrid verse and rhythmless prose
All those brainless verbal summersaults

Princess stories, love poems and those
Too nauseating to mention
GETTING A LIFE might end those woes -

But saying that I should perhaps then
Consider the disadvantages you suffer
Starting with that weak receding chin

You manage to look even more a duffer
With that receding hairline
Forgivable if you were tougher

But your tendency to whine
And permanently lost look
Make you appear perfectly asinine

I find you unkempt, uncouth, and a kook
A net addicted disaffected nerd
What was the last time you read a book?

Cursing you is easy , you're so absurd
But I have only so much time to waste
On such a hopeless piece of turd

Go pop em suicide pills with all due haste

lyrics

2006-05-08T22:16:00.000-07:00

and for a change of pace, some music for your entertainment

lyrics courtesy yours truly
music courtesy Nameet
vocals and instrumentals courtesy Nameet
crazed female fans flinging bras onto stage courtesy lurid imagination of yours truly

the song link
Kashmiri Girl

and the lyrics

Kashmiri Girl

[guitar intro]

Met you on a monsoon day
Sweet fairy shivering away
Forgivin' of bad pickup lines

Couldn't get you to stay any longer
Than the few months when the
Seasons change between two lives

[chorus]
I want to.. take you down off your.. snowy bed and kiss.. away
All the places.. you silently.. bled your life.. away

Washed our feet in laughter
Streets like flooded rivers
On drunken rainy days

Boys like brown frogs in water
Never saw them trippin' on gunfire
On cold lonely ways

[repeat chorus]

[lead]

[bridge]
Me drunk and helpless while
They took you out to die like
A shower of rose petals on the snow

These nights I search the sky
For the colour of your hair but find
The stars mocking me so

[modified intro]

(How can forgiveness grow
On ground where shame still burns?
Your breath accuses me now)

[repeat chorus]

On a Mumbai monsoon day
I beg the rain to take me away
Down to the silent snow

and more parodies...

2006-05-08T03:54:00.000-07:00

and a parody of Suniti's poem, The Unicorn and the Maiden Fair

The Unicorn and the Dark Maiden

In a magical forest
In a faraway land
There lived a Unicorn
Who great stature did command

No ordinary unicorn was this
Most unicorns have manes of snow
But this one was jet black in hue
From nose to tail to toe

His mane obscured the sun
His snort blew leaves off trees
His hooves thundered the ground
But the unicorn had a rare disease

Unlike other unicorns who traipsed
Around with all manner of Maidens Fair
He despised these apple cheeked blossoms
Still there was something quite not there

He galloped through the forest
In a mad furious flight
And the dust clouds dark
Turned the day into night

He reached a lake one afternoon
And his eyes beheld on the lake shore
A girl With skin dark as a nut,
Weeping. The unicorn paused unsure

And then he approached and said
"Lady, I bring a gift"
"A gift?", she screamed
"Sir twas better you practiced thrift

"I've been mocked and fooled
By so many charlatans before
Keep your fairness creams and potions
Your spells and charms and lore

"I'm dark as night, ugly as sin
Princes and paupers pass me by
Taunts from ivory blondes and brunettes
Long ago ceased to make me cry"

"Lady, I bring a gift"
The unicorn said again
"But tis not for you
Allow me to explain

"Long have I searched for
A girl with skin warm as earth
With hair bewitching as the night
And limbs that move in such sweet concert

"Take a single hair from my mane
And bind it in your own, you will not
Change a bit, but it will open the eyes of
These foolish men who care for you not a jot"

The girl dried her eyes, approached
The unicorn and raised fingertips
To pluck a hair from his mane and
Let his mouth gently brush her lips

She bound the silky thread
Into her dark lustrous mane
With that the unicorn vanished
And she never saw him again

Thereafter, fools and princes alike
Fell swearing undying love at her feet
Tho at first bitter memories ruled her heart
One fool carried her to a sweet defeat

These days she does not cry
Except in happiness
Her days and nights are warm, she
Basks in her long awaited bliss

Still some nights as she lies asleep
In her lover's arms, it seems
A dark mane just brushed her lips
She smiles, closes her eyes and dreams

parodies

2006-05-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

huff .. puff..
been working a few caferati writing exercises

here's an entry in the parodies exercise

a parody of Jhumur's poem, Tempt me Tonight

Tempt me tonight

Tempt me tonight,
Come home before midnight.
Slip past the ogre boss,
And short-skirted secretary

Startle me tonight,
Tell me your mother wasn't right,
About every goddamn thing.
Name a dish I cook better.

Trace your longing,
In silver foiled chocolates,
Flowers or perfume or
The bestseller I haven't read yet.

Let the taste of pleasure,
Not be some hidden treasure,
You only seek after planning and plotting.
Turn me over like a bag of sweets.

Journey through
The so very few
Things it takes to please me.
Say "I love you" to me again.

Seduction by Fruit

2006-04-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

Seduction by Fruit

Drunk, in your cider sweet breath,
I devour the scent of apples,
Clinging madly to the last bite.
She shakes her head in disappointment.

Plucking the raisin tips
Of your ripe mango breasts.
Stop, she says, before I
Have to get up and leave.

Picked up each of your angry words,
Peeled them off like Litchis,
To expose the sweetness' within.
Nice, she says, but not enough.

String you out into six hundred
Soft gasps of pleasure,
Swallowed whole or peeled like
Quivering grapes between my teeth.

She says nothing,
Takes three perfect grapes,
And crushes them
Between her perfect teeth.

She smiles and waits with
A knowing patience for
Me to kiss the drop
Of juice beside her lips.

Memories of Water

2006-04-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

Memories of Water

Alone, on a parched day I
Wander silent empty rooms,
My dry soles beating out a
Rhythm of distant liquid longings.

I put myself under a bathroom shower
And in my private rainstorm
Watch cold jewels slip down my
Skin and shatter noiselessly.

I drink in the shower water.
I cannot get enough.
I suck dry taps, bottles, ice-cubes,
Freezer frost till I threaten to burst.

And then I lie silent
On the cold cold floor, and
The liquid inside me dreams. I
Am a cold floating ocean of dreams.

And the water dreams of sunlight
Like sweet music that kisses it
With the honey lips of morning,
As gentle as the dawn.

It dreams of days when it
Wrapped itself in a cloak of sky
And ran past rocks singing
Brightly into their hard ears.

And it dreams also of darknesses,
Of running through rocky caverns,
And lying ever so still in
Silent virgin pools like grey mirrors.

The water dreams of men also.
Inside of me, it slop slop slops
Against the inside of my skull,
Dissolving memories into itself.

I saw a man being beaten once.
They whipped him with leather belts
And curses, and I watched
Awash in a sea of impotence.

It was a murky grey-skied day,
The kind that hatred breeds. Either
The man would bleed or it would rain.
Red drops fell when clear ones didn't.

I do not know if he died there.
I do not know if he lived afterwards.
I do not know if he sobbed and sobbed
In shame as I was never able to.

On the floor I turn over and over,
Until the tears come in a tide.
I lie face down, palms down,
Lips touching the salt wet tiles.

I get up and shower again.
I watch the water run into
The drain dragging skin and hair
With it and I realise something.

Water remembers, but it cannot see.
It accepts, it absorbs, it swallows
What comes to it without question
Or comment. It cannot be sated.

It lies still on wet floors,
In closed taps, on kitchen counters,
In glasses, in bottles, in the air
We breathe in and out. In our bodies.

It hears me sleeping and waking, talking
And listening and alone and embraced.
It hears me make love to my wife and
To myself. It hears me laughing.

And yet it cannot know what a man
Is. What a woman is. It
Cannot count the million lovely breaths
The flow in and out of a breast.

It carries only shadows in itself,
Flat mirror images of feeling.
And yet the sea is endless. The sea
Holds worlds and worlds within itself.

And I feel the substance of myself
Drawn slowly to the sea,
Down the long fingers of time,
Breath by whispering breath.

One of them Princess Stories

2006-03-28T06:28:00.000-08:00

One of them Princess Stories

One upon a time, on a dark and stormy night, a princess decided to live happily ever after. Having been read far too many fairy tales as a child, she thought this meant finding a suitable husband. So strong was her conviction, and her shrill voice, that she managed to wake up both of her royal parents. She demanded that they find her a husband the very next day. Being kind and indulgent parents, and also a little groggy, they agreed.

The very next day, the announcements went out. Suitors from far and wide, assembled at the the royal castle for the chance to win a fair princess' hand. The king, however, being old-fashioned, decided that merely letting the princess choose her husband would be too untraditional. The suitors would have to prove themselves by serving the kingdom in the slaying of some foul beast, or as the king put it, "knocking over something interesting for lunch." Something interesting turned out to be a rather large and noisy dragon, enjoying his daily ravage of the countryside a few miles away.

This announcement managed to reduce the crowd of suitors considerably. In the end, there were only a set of three brothers willing to take on the task. The royal entourage travelled with the brothers to where the dragon has last been spotted.

The eldest brother was the first to challenge the dragon. He wore a suit of shining golden armour. Confident in the speed of his mighty steed, and the strength of his still mightier arm, he charged boldly upon the dragon. It took the dragon two bites to finish him off.

The second brother was a little cleverer. He brought with him a huge crossbow along with a mighty arrow, guaranteed to pierce even the rough hide of a dragon. He charged boldly upon the dragon. When he was within shooting range, he raised his bow at the dragon, but to the horror of the onlookers the bow appeared to have jammed. The dragon offered two words to the knight before eating him up - "safety catch."

The third brother came forward. He wore a suit of simple iron mail. The princess smiled. In all the stories she had read, it was always the youngest brother who succeeded. The youngest brother was clever. Instead of coming forward directly, he sent in his horse who was carrying on him a pouch of some poison strong enough to kill the dragon. The dragon swallowed horse and pouch together. The dragon fell to the ground and began to roll around in agony. The knight came forward to slay the fell beast. Unfortunately the dragon chose to belch rather loudly at that moment, roasting the knight alive. The dragon then swallowed him whole.

The princess was more than a little annoyed at the turn of events. She approached and began shrilly reprimanding the beast. The dragon, being really a kind old soul, offered to disgorge any of the knights she chose. The princess however, was screaming too loudly to listen. The dragon decided that it would be best for him to fall asleep, and the princess to also fall asleep until she learnt better manners.

The princess slept for days and days. The king and queen decided to move her to a quiet forest, with seven suitably dwarved (some operations were necessary) attendants, until she could be awakened by the kiss of her true love. Years passed. One day the princess awoke to the softest, sweetest kiss she had ever received. She sat up in her bed and saw a middle-aged woodsman in front of her. Oh well, she said to herself, maybe he will be kinder and gentler than a young knight. She smiles at him and offered him her hand. "Pardon me miss," he said, embarrassed. "I didn't mean nothing by that kiss. I'd best be running home now, or my Mrs will have my head off." The princess stared after his shuffling departing figure with disappointment.

The princess left the lonely cottage and wandered far and wide through the kingdom. She grew wearier and poorer as she went. At one point she fell prey to a wicked woman and her two daughters, who kept her prisoner and forced all their housework on her. One night, the night of a grand ball, a fairy appeared to her and liberated her. She was given fine clothes, a carriage and two coachmen to wait attendance on her. She reached the ball, charmed and danced her way into the prince's heart, and at the stroke of midnight, left a glass slipper behind as she departed. She waited days for the prince to find her, and find her he did, one unlucky day locked in the rough embrace of one of the coachmen.

The prince felt enraged and humiliated enough to lock her up in a tall tower. She stayed there for years. One day, the prince, still unmarried and finally much mollified, called out to her to let her house down, so that he could climb up and free her. The princess stared with horror at the small pair of scissors she held and with sudden realisation of what the storeroom full of shampoo bottles was for. "What do you mean you cut it off?" were the last words she heard from him.

She eventually freed herself from the tower by climbing down a rusty fire escape. She wandered far and wide in search of a suitor and eventually settled on second hand shoe salesman. The moved to the New England countryside and had kids. The princess wrote several funny warm domestic books about her family life and was promptly sued for plagiarism by Erma Bombeck. Her publisher suggested writing about the early part of her life for a change.

She sat down one day, with a brand new notebook to begin. She wrote, "Once upon a time, on a dark and stormy night, a princess decided to live happily ever after." And then she paused. She wanted to pen down all the long years of frustration and humiliation she had suffered , but all she could thing of, were these things. Running in between bright leaved trees as a child while her parents chased her, the taste of the tea she had been given after being taken penniless into an old woman's house, the whirl and the music and the thousand awed eyes watching her as she danced in the centre of the ballroom with the prince. She read back what she had written. "Once upon a time, on a dark and stormy night, a princess decided to live happily ever after." She added, "And she did. And that's all," and she closed her notebook.

more Pern-iciously inane thoughts

2006-03-19T06:23:00.000-08:00

Read a good SF piece by Anne McAffery lately - a pre AI piece about man bonding with machine, only in this case the "machine" was a doomed-to-death human being who had been welded into a machine(spaceship), and who was essentially the ship

anyways, inane thought is as follows, McAffery uses a similar scene in the story and in her Pern stories - a Swayamvar essentially.
In the story a ship gets to "choose" the human pilot that will fly with her on all her missions.
The dragons in her story get to choose their riders in a ceremony.
Although, now that I think of it, the dragon-rider bonding was always male-male and female-female rather than the other way around.
Before anyone yells gay, methinks its more Tango-and-Cash-ish than that.

inane thought, avoid if you're allergic

2006-03-19T06:11:00.000-08:00

I haven't been accquiring a taste for crappy music lately, as I thought I had been.
I've just been starved of real music.

Rain Poem

2006-03-17T07:16:00.001-08:00

It rained in Pune a couple of thursdays ago, and then the next day dissapointingly didn't.
I did however get a hundred liner out...

Rain Poem

Good news, my darling,
It rained today,
I announce loudly, tumbling
Droplets onto a white-tiled floor.

I've been walking, wading
Through so many fresh rivulets.
It took the rain an hour,
To wash off so many months of sweat.

My lungs were breathing cool air
All along the way here. I've been
Hearing a rolling tumbling music
And been bathed in drunken laughter.

Peeling out of my wet clothes I say
I met a man you'd like
He stoutly carried a big black umbrella -
A lonely soldier with a sullen standard.

Tone deaf to the rain, I say. Amused,
She watched me undress and says
With all that music, you could've
Given me a more graceful striptease.

As I shower, she talks to me
Through a closed door, her words
Dripping onto the floor and pulling out
Strange patterns from water and street dirt.

The lights were out while you were gone,
She says. It nearly drowned me,
Drew me up in a soft warm black bag,
Left me screaming in a dark black ink.

I could hear the rain all around me
And the darkness all through the city.
I could see you walking in the darkness,
And stumbling and falling and not getting up.

I stood over you and watched you die,
Drowned you in my own salt tears.
You saw my face framed in lightning,
And thought I was life and death and wisdom.

And then the lights came on, I say,
Opening the door a little. No, she says,
Handing me the forgotten towel,
I just learned how to see in the dark.

She's cold when I hold her,
And her lips speak to me
Of the storm in waiting,
Of the tempest sleeping in skin.

Lightning carves up the sky,
And then rejoins it in a new pattern.
It says her name and mine again and again,
In a hundred whispered voices.

We lie in the heart of the storm,
Skin wrapped in skin.
We drink it in, drowning
In a mingled breath.

And then there is silence wrapped
In the drumming rhythm of rainwater.
She whispers to me that
The lights have gone off again.

I tell her I switched them off
Before we started. And then,
There is only the silence
Wrapped in rain soaked skin.

Her ears are sharper than mine.
The light catches the ear-ring
On a soft lobe, as it turns
To notice the dull sounds of a leaking window.

There's a soft pool at the side of our bed.
In this darkness, I cannot tell
If it it warm blood or clear crystal,
As it is shattered by a new droplet.

And we talk, in her voice and mine,
In the mingled voices of the rain,
And the pool grows larger, its surface
Pulsing between dream and nightmare.

She draws apart long enough
To gather sheets around us.
She hears the hollow beast sounds of the wind
And wraps us in a cloak of warmness.

And we drown together in sleep,
Which is a final drowning.
Drawn apart at last,
As rainwater slips between skin and skin.

The morning cheerily awakens me,
With fists of careless brightness,
Determined to massage a healthy glow
Onto poor rain soaked skin.

The day, rid of the rain,
Wraps itself in the ritual
Of habit. By evening a neat
Erasure of yesterday's events is achieved.

I sit on a large soft arm-chair,
Drinking a comfortable cup of tea,
Trying to discern in the sunlight
Shapes of burnt up dreams and nightmares.

She sings while she puts on
A second cup. Bright spirits
On a bright day, with neither
Space nor time for senseless dreaming.

But there's hope yet. She curses
The dangerous storm soaked days
And praises bright ones, but still
Has left that window carefully unfixed.

Yet another tea poem...

2006-03-04T01:07:00.000-08:00

Morning tea meditation

Brewed long, brewed warm,
In the civilised patience of pure porcelain,
Poured out like a household blessing.
Hands clasped round the cup meditate
On the self-satisfied tea pot
Growing brown liquid contentment within itself.
Sip long and slow at this cup,
Wash yourself over with its contentment,
And learn the wisdom of sitting still.

2006-02-19T05:29:00.000-08:00

one more for the weirdly stupid .... or stupidly weird:

In a bookshop- Lolita in the "Young Fiction" section

Which reminds me of one for the recommended reading list:
Granitas - (at least I think it was called that) - parody by Umberto Eco of Lolita - the narrator is obsessed with an elderly woman with "lasvicious white locks"

which reminds me of the latest parody I came across - a parody of The Chronicles of Narnia called...The Chronicles of Blarnia (or something like that, I really need more sleep)..... four kids enter a magical land through an enchanted wardrobe and do what you'd expect them to - break stuff and teach all the magical animals foul language. And the book has an assortment of mangled names - The Wide Witch and Astma the cat (only a foot high).

which brings me to a cliqued observation about spoofs - for a spoof to "work", you need both a writer and an audience who knows (loves) the work being spoofed - so here's to being spoofed someday, because parody is the second sincerest form of flattery

2006-02-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/

incredible blog - really worth a look

an Indian journalist, currently touring Pakistan, with some genuinely interesting stories and pics

turns out there are two Parsis in Islamabad - guess that brings the grand total to 50,002. Wahoo!!

.....and worse verse

2006-02-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

Making Tea

Boil the water she says,
Till its warmer than common lust,
But cooler than a hot temper.

Pour the water, let it sit
Longer than an impatient child's pleading,
But not as long as brooding jealousy.

Pour it out into cups.
Add sugar sweeter than kindness,
But not as sweet as indulgence.

Stir after you add milk,
Enough for the colour of compassion,
But not for the shade of weakness.

Serve it, with gentility,
That falls short of servitude.
And sip it, with gratitude.

Valenpoem

2006-02-15T07:57:00.000-08:00

Anyone asking how personal it is will be very personally drawn and quartered -

Maybe

Maybe it was the roses,
That told her to get up and leave,
Too many thorns on their long stems.

Maybe it was the coffee.
Its sitting there sulkily undrunk,
While she's outside on the phone.

She's back again, lost in a smile,
With a bright warmth in her voice,
Tho maybe, just maybe, not for me.

First Place!!!

2006-02-14T07:22:00.000-08:00

First place in the SMS Poetry Contest at Kala Ghoda. Yay!!!

currently reading

2006-02-07T07:27:00.000-08:00

Evolving the Alien - Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart

The book is about the science of evolving workable theories as to what aliens (IF they exist and WHEN we run across them) would be like.
The authors discuss the science of "xenoscience", using whatever they can of terrestrial biology, astronomy and astrophysics.
The book also attempts to answer the question so many people asked me when I told them I was reading it - why?
Why bother? Apart from the nutcases who burble on about being "abducted", who has actually seen an alien?

Here are the book's and my reasons combined (because it's so hard to remember whos ideas are what in my raspberry jelly brain ):
1) If we (as in the Human Race) are ever going to intelligently look for signs of alien life, spaceprobewise or SETIwise, we should try and make an intelligent guess what to look for
2) While terra-forming or inter-planetary colonisation still looks more fictional than real at this point in time, we're not too far off from the point where discussions of the "environment" will have to be prefixed with a planetary name to be clear
3) If enough of us talk seriously about the subject, we might actually be able to beat some sense into Star Trek fans (on the plus side for trekkies, although the book doesn't look kindly on the aliens created in most sci-fi shows or movies, they provide a (plausible?) explanation for the evolution of "tribbles" - you do remember THAT episode don't you?)
4) Stepping back a bit from the view that Earth is the only planet which supports life and can support life, helps us to understand life and the evolution of life better

The sweet pieces of the book for me are the small blurbs of SF novels they've sprinkled liberally over the chapters.
That and the eww-gross delight I take in discovering just how weird some creatures are - nasty frogs that feed on the tadpoles of their own species, fish that change sex as per convenience and an Indian (and I thought I was the only one) stick insect which has given up sexual reproduction as a means of reproduction.

If you have read this far, DON'T try and borrow the book from me - I've already got too many friends on Betelgeuse 7 waiting to get their tentacles on it.

2006-02-07T07:24:00.000-08:00

line popped into my head while ghordoping on malang's blog
read it an advert somewhere long ago - can't remember where

Children walk to school, children run home

about as profound as watered down reader's digest I know, but still, true

2006-01-26T05:36:00.000-08:00

confirmed it - odigo is very much alive and kicking ass - chatty days are here again

pachydermia

2006-01-22T02:31:00.000-08:00

a point for the it-only-happens-in-India or new-meets-old fans:

Passed by a big BPL mobile signboard on J.M. Road yesterday - only it wasn't your standard obscenely large wood and paper sign - it was a somewhat parched looking elephant, dawdling on the side of the road, with a big advertising bandana on his forehead and some more advertising signs on his sides.

Before the peta-betas accuse me of being unkindly mirthful - I've decided to take up a collection to buy the poor hathi a decent leather jacket. Send in your donations at www.hathicanbecool.com
(If this works out I may start up another one for a big - ok really big - harley)

so talking does help

2006-01-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

just one more "technique" for the what-do-I-do-when-I'm stuck-with-a-story list

TALK to someone about it - preferably another writer

Yest Sud helped me sort out a particularly hokey plot I was stuck with into a still hokey plot I can see some possibilities for
Like he says - doesn't work every time, but enough times to be useful

And my second technique if #1 doesn't work:
Well then you're probably just being lazy - so get the fuck on with it, even if it hurts.

The muse isn't a woman scholarly or beautiful, she's a nagging bitch who won't let you be till you're done and without whom you're forlorn.

And yeah Sud, I'm sorry I dragged you into the post too(see if you actually read my blog more often you could tell me to stop)

the roads that lead to nowhere

2006-01-07T04:55:00.000-08:00

All these damn road "improvements" in Mumbai remind me of a line in O Henry's The Cop and the Anthem

"Soapy walked down a street ruined by improvements."

Its not an important line in the story, but it brilliantly summarizes the daily annoyances, caused by City Hall, that people in New York (or Mumbai) have to deal with.
And in eight words too!

And yeah, Malang, if you're reading this - thats where I got that ghord. About time we started plagiarising some Americans, not just the brits, what say?

Happy New Year

2005-12-30T21:50:00.000-08:00

Just in case there's a Y2K6 bug around, let me get this out before my machine/ISP/blog provider trips into the great electronic dustbin.

To all those who will bring in the new year jumping and screaming,
To all those who will be dragged into the new year kicking and screaming,
To all those who will toast at midnight,
To all those who will toss and turn dreaming of tommorow's burnt toast,
To the ones coseted by lovers, friends and family and to the ones hopelessly alone,
To those of the spirit and to those who have lost spirit,
To those hopeful and to those tired,
A long-interesting entertaining-fulfilling painless-eventful joyful-instructive funny-meaningful new year to you.

I'll see you all on the other side of today-tommorow.

Odigo is dead!!!

2005-12-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

Yes, my favourite IM has been dead and gone, and I didn't even realise it.
And apparently I'm not the only one to miss it.
Odigo always had a buggy client-server connection, but it was one of the most convenient interfaces for chatting with random people.
The funniest thing is that it seems to have vanished virtually without a trace.
As always, there are the substitutes - ICQ, IRC, meetro.
But nothing quite like Odigo.

second whine in one day - yes!!!!!!!

2005-12-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

been reading some hindi short stories - In Translation - yes yes i know, how WOGish can I get?

But its a good collection - translations of classic short stories from a number of Indian languages - and surely there isn't anyone out there who can read them all, is there?

great short stories can be inspiring sometimes, sometimes they can also make you realise you've been writing hollow crap all this time
there is a William Blake quote for that I think - but aaahh I can't quite remember it
something about not only the sweetest voiced bird singing in the forest

and I'm up to two posts a day - Wahooooooo!!!!
hows that for wasted electrons?

ghost words, lost words

2005-12-23T06:50:00.000-08:00

struck me when writing to a word-endowed friend -

there should be a word for all those words you come across in books just once, barely find the meaning of and never find again
what could you call them
nomad words - nowords u think? or ghost words - ghords?

You can look them up in dictionaries, shly question your local literary authorities, do blind searches in google and turn up nothing useful

yes it would be a lot easier if you could recognise a ghord the moment you read one, but you're too caught up in the book, story or article at that point - the word is half glimpsed like a girl's momentary dropped veil in a bazaar - its gone before its charm registers on you

later on you've lost track of the book, but the ghord comes back to you again and again tormenting you

some ghords you'll never find again

some you'll come across again - and they'll be plain and ordinary at second look - the bazaar girl is back - plump, well wedded and unveiled and wondering why you look at her so quizzically

somewhere out there ..... maybe there is a collector of lost ghords......

One more poem

2005-12-22T07:04:00.000-08:00

Slow Walking Through Winter

Setting out on a tired afternoon,
Hauling exhausted flesh between cities,
I can sit and watch Winter pad
And grin at me like a cold hungry dog.

Though I am poor pickings this season.
My flesh is thin, my skin weak
And far too soft for chewing.
But winter long ago dropped off its tongue.

Fools fly after fits and fevers,
As if they were coherent creatures,
With soul and breath enough to whisper to them.
Madnesses cannot be picked and chosen like fruit.

Steel frows brittle and weak in this cold.
Fresh flowers wither quickly.
But wood, even if cut off from it's roots,
Survives and ages gracefully.

Dips it's tongue deep
In what water it finds
And wraps around itself
The dark comfort of melancholy.

more whinin on writin

2005-12-19T07:28:00.000-08:00

so much for the "new approach"
poor deadrim hasn't had a single adventure yet
he does have such a good sf/f name though - the poor bastard deserves a story or two

i suppose the lesson in all this non-writing is - write a damn story everyday stupid!
deadrimical or otherwise

a new approach

2005-11-09T01:23:00.000-08:00

seven pathetic posts in two months - that is way way too little
i need to do something to jumpstart this goddamn blog

so lets write some stories
every posting from now on is a mini-story featuring.....featuring........Feridoun?
No. I just like the sound of the name because I've been making a belated effort to read up on my own culture - make that a Westerner's bad translation of my own culture.
60,000 rhyming couplets and all that Helen Zimmern has is 18 lousy chapters.
Well i suppose its more of plot-outline than translation.
Turns out you can learn Avesta online - whoop de de
Now I can finally learn what those prayers I say mean
Yeah sure - right after I finish my Ph.D. in Hindi.

But i digress - the character's name, his(or her?) name
Now isn't that supposed to be the most difficult part - the name?
Keep looking heavyfoot - now there's a name - Heavyfoot
Drumweaver
Lighteater
So much for the power of word association
Lightweaver?

These are all too corny
But then again aren't story names always a little corny?
Deadrim?

Good enough for now - the (ever so) forlorn adventures of Deadrim - coming soon (I hope)

blogs, diaries etc

2005-11-07T02:30:00.000-08:00

read a newspaper article yest - Iran is apparently the fourth largest blogging nation in the world (and no, it didn't mention the first three) - numbers as high as 46,000 and 75,000 are quoted
this was offered as evidence against Iran's reputation as a close, repressed society

the obvious conclusion is that the only reason for so much blogging from so few is the repression
without newspapers, magazines or tv as an outlet, the internet is a fortunately (and probably temporarily) overlooked medium

coming and going

2005-11-07T02:03:00.000-08:00

i drafted this a while back - decided to publish it as it is

i should be shifting back to Pune soon

i hear( and utter myself) too many meaningless phrases these days about "good work" or "different work"

i've lost and a lot of my peers have lost a workman-like attitude that is the only real way to work.

maybe this is just the nebuously unsatisfactory feeling you get when you're not doing what you think (or want) you should be doing

laziness

2005-10-24T22:23:00.000-07:00

so what does it take to get yourself to write everyday?
discipline?
a steadily angst inspiring lifestyle?
having nothing to do all day?
being frustrated enough as a writer to want some output channel?
or actually having something to say?

I'm pretty sure its all of the above except for the last one

back to bom

2005-10-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

back from bangalore
At the end of the week I'm wondering why i've visited three malls and no gardens - i guess i'm wasted on the garden city.
In a week I'd forgotten what real rain is.
Of course even getting caught in a little bit of rain in Bangalore was enough to give me the shivers - the cool and pleasant weather isn't quite so pleasant when you're soaking wet.
Besides, if the weather is always so pleasant what do people talk about?

mornings

2005-09-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

when you wake up each morning check if this is in your morning routine?
do you look out of your bedroom (or in my case living-room) window before you leave for the day
i realised today how important that is to me
if you look out the window you probably -
1) can squeeze in at least a few seconds of wistfulness in your day, and I can't imagine life without a little dreaminess
2) you are looking for something beyond the here and now - some people might say that just means you're not happy with yourself
3) it gives your poor overburdened subconsious something to grasp at outside the unchanging morning ritual

its a noise nuisance to have your window face a road or street rather than a building compound, but like the road - most roads, even little ones are not the same every single day

of course there are lots of other small places people dream - brushing their hair, shaving, in the shower

but make sure you find time to dream a little - sleep without dreams may be restful, but a fully conscious day without any dreaming sounds much like a prison to me

more sf

2005-09-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

more and more sf
i don't believe i'm ever going to read anything else :)

found a magazine that concentrates on the "gosh wow" kind of science fiction rather than the shock/social analysis kind
Amazing Journeys

been reading two collections of sf stories this weekend - one of the gosh wow kind and one of the shock kind and I have to admit I lean towards the first
I like being educated while I read but I won't read to be educated.

Finally got off my ass and started writing a bit this week.
How long it continues of course remains to be seen.
So far I have only one crappy unpublishable story.

I did understand one cliche this week though - "Writing is like standing in a rainstorm waiting for lightning to strike."
Here's to getting my hairwet a lot more often

cliches

2005-08-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

I've been plunging into some sixties sf over the weekend,
and was a little dissapointed with how cliched the stories feel -
tough square-jawed guy helps equally older general/scientist/businessman win war/buissness deal/factory explosion disaster with brilliant idea.
The older guy always has a hot daughter who treats our hero with contempt at beginning of story and falls into his arms at the end of it.
Then again i guess there are always some takers around for the "Forbidden Planet" formula

first post

2005-08-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

so wordmonkey was already taken

to start on a slightly sardonic note - physical doppelgangers of ourselves are exciting, mental ones are just reminders of our own ordinariness