Break

There is much work.
Subjected to the shirk,
Neglected for eternity,
It now threatens sanity.

See you in a ten days. Or eleven.
Who knows, it may just be seven.

Godawful poetry

In celebration of the Godawful Poetry Fortnight which originates here.

My heart leaps up when I view
  A rosogolla on the menu:
So it was when I became diabetic
  So it is now my self control is pathetic
So it be when I develop cardiac disease
  Or let me die!
The sweet is the bane of the tempted
And I could wish my artery wall
To be unclogged by cholesterol.

No apologies to anything or anyone

untitled

You are an accident
on the pot-holed road
of my memory.

We pick ourselves up,
so suddenly thrown off
vehicles of lust, lies and longing.

We examine our mounts
for bends, dents and scratches;
compensation comes in kisses.

On that road of recall
I drive recklessly still
while scars from our collision
softly bleed.

And we are back!

Go on, ask them

He wanted to be an engine driver. Growing up in a house situated a stone’s throw away from the Palayamkottai station, he spent hour upon hour swinging slowly on the big, reluctant iron gates watching stately steam engines come and go. At fourteen, he mustered the courage to talk to one driver he had spent many years observing, and managed to blurt out his secret ambition. A few months and a wonderful friendship later, his boyhood dream came true – he rode with the driver in the engine room, watching in complete awe as the fireman fed and tamed the blaze.

He became a chartered accountant instead.

~

An elderly man returns home one evening with an impish look on his creased face. His wife has not seen that smile for a score and ten years. It worries her. He reaches into his bag, and pulls out a stethoscope.

“What is that?” asks his wife, convinced that this cannot be a good sign.

“A stethoscope. I’ve always wanted to hear what my heart and insides sound like. I bought it at Jayanthi Pharmacy today. Here, try it!”

Curiosity overcomes skepticism and she puts the instrument into her ears. A slow smile appears on her face. Soon, the two are listening to various parts of their aging anatomies and giggling deliriously.

~

A young girl wrestles with income tax sums in a numbingly boring maths textbook. Dull, insipid, unvaried, she thinks of strings of adjectives to divert her mind from the tedium of tax calculations. She simply cannot understand how her father could have wanted to be an accountant. When he comes home that evening, she asks him the question. And hears about a boy who dreamt of fiery coals and hissing vapours. But for whom life had other plans.

~

That generation had all manner of aspirations, but stuck to the well-trodden path. In the indignation of youth I thought they were chicken, not daring enough to be different. That they sought the solace of the familiar. Mellowed by age and my own failures I now know these weren’t surrenders, they were sacrifices. Very often made at the altar of dire financial and social straits.

That man who works in the bank knows a card trick. Or two. That shop lady’s house has the most gorgeous watercolours you ever saw. Go on, ask them to show you.

(Danke, Fraulein Mercury. We bow to your feed reader.)

Arrgh

Trying to embed a video unsuccessfully, one experiments with all manner of things and then deletes two posts by mistake. Full irritation and then hajaar sadness only.

Shut up.

I don’t know about Vir Sanghvi and TCA Srinivasa Ragahavan but there are dozens of others on mailing lists, blogs and everywhere I seem to (mis)step on the internet who have an opinion on a land they have never been to, on a people they have never met.

For once, can we all just shut up and hear what the Kashmiris have to say?

Update in response to philramble’s post: Of course it is an oversimplification. The valley has suffered enough – both from Pakistan and from India. Have you ever heard the disputed area being referred to as Azad Kashmir by anyone in India? That is what it is, really. They have elections and political parties and leaders. And a government. Just because they are Muslim does not mean they are Pakistani – PoK is a political term and a lie. Kashmiris I know say they just want to be left alone. Without food being smuggled out or drugs being smuggled in. Or their women being raped.

Yes, yes, there is a strategic problem with China being so close, etc. But isn’t it blindingly obvious that it would be better to let Kashmir go, to support the local people’s decisions and to win their trust as a way of ensuring that they back India rather than China during a crisis? Beating the hell of out them seems like a very stupid thing to do, if we really want to have on-ground support, in the event of a conflict with Pak/China.

I am all for separatist movements. The EU set up works best really – many countries but one economic region allowing free movement of goods and labour.

(And thus I disregard my own advice to SHUT UP.)

Promises to self

At sixteen (yes, how cliched!) I watched Charulata. And discovered the soft, gentle world of Bengali music I had only known in snatches until then, through the occasional performance during a school Annual Day. I also made a promise to myself – that The Boy would be one who knew and could sing this song:

A few years later, I fell in love. With a man whose films I wrote a dissertation on, simply so that I could lie in the magical light and shade of his movies, wallow in the searing lyrics of his songs, lose myself in the dark gaze of his eyes. And then I set down a new test, a harsher one. The Boy would know the lyrics and meaning to this song:

and be able to sing this one:

Boys came and went, few with any inkling that a man such as Guru Dutt Padukone once walked this earth. Those that did could not sing. One did attempt playing Chaudvin ka chaand on a jal tarang, but I will be kind to him and say no more.

Years later, I did find The Boy, but had forgotten all about my promise to myself. I think it may have been then the lilting Lalita he played or the haunting Sindhubhairavi or even the devout Kalyanavasantam that erased all memory of my strict conditions.

And then one day last week, I woke to a strangely familiar humming. The Boy had been up hours before me as always and was sitting at the desk, coffee in hand. He turned to me and asked, “Do you know the words to that Charulata song?”

A sweeter question has never been heard.

Reetigaulai

This most graceful of ragams has featured in many blogs lately. First Krish Ashok mentions it in the same breath as onion rava dosa and harp-playing angels, then Swaroop finds love with (in?) it and now, the beautiful Tamizh Penn asks for a boy who appeciates it charms.

One likes.

~

There’s a rendering of Janani Ninnu Vina by K V Narayanaswamy that I would like to post, but silly wordpress says I need to upgrade to do that. Time to move to my own domain perhaps…

Update: The KVN recording is available here. Thanks, Swaroop!

A biding: extract

Forbidden to touch
barred from approach.
Caged, my passion paces in pain
retracts its claws,
waits for the cover of rain.

~

This seems quite complete in itself, doesn’t it?

A biding

After a week, sunlight.
Thwarted by clouds, but dodging them,
yellow streams flow into the room
lighting your shoulders.
A golden fringe forms
around your graceful limbs,
silken hair on sinewy arms
take on a flaxen hue.

The sun has moved now, slipping
between cracks in the heavens.
A gentle ray falls on your cheek,
I watch it caress you
in a way I never can,
with a lightness of touch
not given to my clumsy hands.

So this is how I love you -
from five feet away, forbidden
to touch, to approach.
Caged, my passion paces in pain
retracts its claws,
waits for the cover of rain.

A meadow and its family

If you happen to walk past my house heading uphill along the street, going right to the top and continuing past the two large elms that mark the official end of the road, you will be well rewarded for your undeterred progress. For beyond the dark clump of wood lies a gorgeous, green meadow.

Untouched by the council’s civilizing hand, this verdant expanse is a not-very-well-kept secret among the neighbourhood’s residents, although I made the delightful discovery only recently. Many make their way here in the mornings to work off the guilt of recent indulgences; later in the day love, young and old, arrives seeking the serenity of the setting. A few foot-beaten paths run along the contours of the common. Dotted among the tall, waving grass are some benches–put there by some thoughtful soul decades ago and thankfully forgotten by those mysterious beings who keep lists of public furniture.

When the burdens of my vocation become too heavy, or (more commonly) when lethargy towards gainful toil overcomes me, I slip into comfortable footwear, forget to take the house keys, and head to this haven.

The happy absence of lawnmowers and garden pliers has allowed many small animals and birds to make their homes in the grass and shrubbery. Sometimes, if I am quiet and well-behaved, these creatures will allow me to watch them go about their lives. On one such occasion a few weeks ago, I observed a pair of blackbirds at a nest.

The couple had evidently made the decision to increase their tribe somewhat late in the season – it was mid-July already. But no matter, they seemed to think, we still have a few weeks of sunshine. Their parental labours had a hurried air, as though they were trying make up for lost time by working harder and longer. For the two hours that I sat watching, they took turns flying to and from the nest, bringing worms and insects to their three seemingly insatiable offspring.

While the male bird kept guard close to the homestead, the brown and unremarkably plumed female flew along the hedge, stopping on the branch of a holly bush or perching on the boulder by the path to check for unwanted presences, like that of a cat. She always rummaged in the same patch of leaf litter under a large maple, returning with what looked to me like dirt, but was clearly gourmet fare to her ravenous family.

When it was his turn, the glossy black male chose his pickings from a greater variety of sources. He sometimes scratched about under the hedge to find crawly grubs, at other times he hopped around the mossy bole of the oak. Occasionally, he would dive into the grass and disappear from my view, emerging a few moments later with a struggling worm in his bright yellow beak. He didn’t care to give his prey a quick and merciful end, preferring instead to stop at the far end of my bench to watch me awhile to ascertain I meant no harm, before proceeding nestwards.

The untiring efforts of the pair had evidently paid off, for today I saw mother, father and two spotty but nearly full-grown blackbirds hopping about in the same hedge. My earlier investigations had revealed three juniors, but today I saw no sign of a fifth member of the family. Perhaps a magpie or sparrowhawk had had a particularly good lunch sometime.

Nevermind, I said to my somewhat sorrowful heart, as I walked slowly homewards. There are at least two more blackbirds that will sing next spring.

Hit

Three daughters in Palayamkottai
One wife gifted with the ability
to make kaara kuzhambu
with fewer ingredients
each passing week.

He struggled to remember
their faces. The names
were easy enough. Malli,
Valli and the unexpected
Roja. But he cannot match
name to face.

For that a father
has to live at home.
Not labouring in a city
fourteen hours away
by the Nellai Express.

Better still he should
be alive. Not in this
expanding pool of
red
under my car.

Arundhati Roy’s new short story

Read here

The tone is inconsistent, the story sags with heavy technical explanations, and the idea pretends to be prophetic but any high-school kid can envision that sort of future. I wasn’t blown away by her essays, but at least they had passion. This piece seems forced, even contrived.

Very disappointing.

Fired, fried

I dry to a crisp
like a vadaam
laid out under the hot
summer sun.

Pieces of me
shrink and shrivel
parched to a desirable thinness
in the shimmering air.

An then the initiation
by smoking, hot oil.
I emerge enveloped
in scalding blisters of grease.

‘Kataak!’ I break
as you hold me
brittle in your beefy fingers.
I am crunched, consumed
and cause heart trouble.