Ahem

When I lie
to you, you cough

Not a hacking,
accusing bark
outraged at the
untruth
but a gentle,
gentlemanly ahem,
properly done
into a clean
handkerchief.

As if to say-
Excuse me,
I didn’t quite hear
that.

~

related.

Second home

Varali now has another blog. Named for one of her favourite trees. Into which she’ll throw some poems and perhaps prose she doesn’t want to post here, for complex reasons.

But this new blog she wants to keep private. WordPress is a delight in many ways but doesn’t allow passworded blogs. So she won’t link to it here. But if you ask nicely (on email), she’ll give you the link. And hope you won’t share it.

Conversion

L, the lady who comes to help my mother with chores around the house was crying today. I asked her why and she said her daughter had converted to another religion. Her daughter works at a small scale factory, making some plastic ware. She discovered the religious pendant on her daughter’s chain yesterday.

When confronted by the family, her daughter told her that everyone in the factory had been coerced into converting. Refusal meant losing the job. When I suggested she could find work elsewhere, L sobbed louder and said all factories were the same. They all wanted you to convert.

I am not particularly religious, and don’t see the problem if the whole world were to convert overnight to one or another religion. What does bother me is the use of coercion. Forcing anything on anyone, whether a religion or a food habit or a clothing sensibility, gets my hackles all raised and my neck bristling.

I feel helpless for L, because they need the money her daughter brings home desperately. Buying their religious allegiance is blatant exploitation. Being told if you don’t want to convert, you are free to quit the job is clearly giving you a false choice. But I don’t know what options she has, considering her daughter did not even complete class 8. If anyone reading this has something to suggest, I would be happy to hear it.

untitled

All this talk of blood
and bruise, scars
and abuse, blackness
and swollen blues,

Closed rooms, muffled
cries, public lies, disguise,
bound ankles, burnt wrists

Nooses, shorted fuses,
kerosene, gasoline,
hush money, gunny
sacks and broken backs

Is real. And makes
for something worse
than bad poetry.

Birds from my balcony

Come winter, the mango-tree in the old, crumbling house behind our apartment building becomes a very interesting place. White-browed Fantails, Brown Flycatchers, Orioles and on one occasion, an Indian Pitta, turn up either for season-long stays or just for one evening.

Other birds regularly seen on the tree include Purple-rumped Sunbirds, Great Tits, Pale-billed Flowerpeckers, Common Tailorbirds, Red-vented Bulbuls, Coppersmith and White-cheeked Barbets, Rose-ringed Parakeets, White-breasted Kingfishers, Brahminy Kites, Black Drongos, Common Koels, Jungle and Common Crows and Common Mynas. There are surely more, but these are the ones I can recall off the top of my head.

I haven’t made more than a couple of very lazy attempts to photograph the birds. But here are two pictures, both taken about two months ago. The yellow one is the Black-naped Oriole and the other is the Brahminy Kite.

Post some Pink Chaddis

The Pink Chaddi Campaign kicked off on 5 February 2009 to oppose the Sri Ram Sena. The campaign is growing exponentially and that is not surprising. Most women in this country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Of course, a lot of men have joined the group as well.

The first part of the campaign is to gift Muthalik and his goons with pink underwear on Valentine’s Day. Everyone is invited to mail in their pair of the pinks!

Am sending off a large parcel first thing tomorrow to:

The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
C/O Alternate Law Forum,
122/4 Infantry Road (opposite Infantry Wedding House)
Bangalore 560001
Karnataka

Contact persons:
Nithin (9886081269)
Jasmeen (9886840612)
Divya (9845535406)
Nisha ( 09899228060)

A sunset

Divakar is no more.

Yielding

on my arced back
a naked drop of water

begins its lazy descent
navigating
the gentle speedbreakers
of my yielding spine

gathering along
its brown way
circumscribed smells -
desire, dread, defiance
past and prescience

coming to stillness
finally, in a small, quivering
sphere. a summary of
secrets from my sweat.

untitled

They come and kiss me, like butterflies.
Shimmering phrases, gently drifting over the fence
as I watch, away, away from memory and mind.

I do not grieve for the unwritten line;
more of them fluttering free means a greener, shadier world.
More grass.

I remember the sight of one, as it stepped off the air
and sat itself down on the black gate. Seventeen sapphires
dropped from the silk and turned to azure ashes on the ground.

A passing ant picked, neatly, a single particle, tasted it
and turned into a jewel bug. She lives on at the top of a leaf,
waiting for a cat with cobalt eyes.

Yet, I let the winged lines go. Perhaps they will learn to know
I will never net them, perhaps they will grow me a garden
with their yellow burdens and when it blooms,
come listen to the golden guitars the breeze will play.