The Screen

As we look at this large screen looming upon us, we cannot help but wonder what they, the million black pixels are trying to tell us, and by what chance have we landed underneath one so that we may stare at it till the end of time. They say this screen is for a message that will flash upon it and reveal what we might be waiting for. The message, it turns out, may not be of any significance, but we have no choice except to wait underneath this massive congregation of black unflinching pixels until some of them turn green and read out to us the prophecy. We are all children of the same question.

Online Calligraphy

Found an online 'paint' here. Had some fun.

 

Chai

There! Drink up sir! That is my Chai, laced with ginger and turmeric. I bang my wares upon each other, but it is made with all the love you can find in a tea stall under the shade of the banyan here on this crowded Bombay alley. Things are so transient here upon this city and so much more on this alley. The faces are new, the weather uncertain, the politicians, poets and parents all talk differently with passing time, even the street changes it's colour. But me? No sir, I stay right here giving you this adrak wali chai laced with the love that is found only in this sweltering shady tea stall. This place is that one unmoving spot which you will know exists when your spouse fights with you over breakfast and that bastard in office bums you out again. My Chai is the unchanging parameter in your insurance policies and in how you bring your kids up, as you discuss them with you friend. We need these honest faithful parameters don't we sir? With all these crazy changes there ought to be some honesty in our existence, that is my job sir, I give your reality a sense of truth and then of course, I give you Chai.

The First Page

There I begin again O! diary, like the many virgins I have stained and left unfinished, unsatisfied. I am not sure why I start over again this time, or for that matter why I started the many literary affairs in the past with other diaries who could have done better as pure virgins than as relics to my reckless fantasies of the ink elevating your purity to the status of a work. It must have something to do with that look of fresh balck ink from my quill forming neat letters upon these pages, it pushes me into a trance. What will I write in here? Like all the times, I only have a vauge idea, and I give myself leave for that, for how does one concieve of an idea that fills a diary this long in one go? I would have to wait an eternity before such an idea fills me with its stupor. So like all the times I will begin with this stale vaugeness and proceed to write upon your virginity with abandon. I am willing to, deep within my counsious mind of course, for my waking self would never permit me such depraved behaviour, stain a thousand such virginities for a single diary that I will elevate to the status of a work. You may or may not be that sacred pile of paper, one can never tell, until I fill that last page of yours which screams to be written upon, they are a piteous lot, these last pages, how unfortunate, for they almost never get written upon.

Be that as it may, but here ends your first page and thus has begun your life as a diary that has been used, I wish you luck and a last page that is written upon by the stains of my quill.

The Lost Wallet

Hello,
Look no further dear sir/madam. This is the only piece of parchment in this wallet, and it is in some way a practical joke that my eccentricity compels me to play. I left this wallet on the gray side walk, next to the Azad Maidan, nearer to Eros. And now as you read this letter I sit on my cane chair imagining you, a passerby on the sidewalk, bending down to pick that leather wallet lying so conspicuously in your way. The vehicles passing you by, some honking, some zipping by under the blue town sky mottled with white clouds. I really can't help but think about what must have gone through your mind when you saw this wallet lying there on the road. Did you think of the many bombs that have gone off all over the country? Or did you think of the money? Maybe my address that you could have possibly found tucked in somewhere with the bank notes or on my employer's card. Possibly your mind was thinking of all the above, thoughts racing past you as you stopped to pick that piece of leather up. You were probably imagining me, somewhere in some part of this huge city, waiting for that one call from some decent soul who would tell me how to get my wallet that had my salary in it. In any case, here you are, with that wallet in your hand, standing on the side walk and reading this curious piece of parchment, probably angry or amused. I only hope you read this letter to the last word, to me it is important, for I am imagining you reading this and thinking how clever it was of me to have played this little joke. It would be a pity if you threw this letter away into the bushes. I like to imagine you standing still on the very spot you found this wallet and reading this message as the people, cars and clouds zoom past you. I like to think that this letter has caught your attention, for one small moment of the millions that your life is made of. Tonight (for I like to think it is evening when you find this wallet) you will go back and tell your family about it. They may not seem so amused, to them it is some incident that floated in and out of their consciousness while it was bloated with the TV soap or the video game or the cooking or the fatigue that the days in a city burden you with. I'm not so concerned about those people, I am only thinking about you dear sir/madam, the reader of this letter. Now a suspicious citizen, now a greedy passer by, now a benevolent human. But I should not let my imagination run wild, it may lead to disappointment, may be you just picked the thing up and thrust it in your pocket, may be you opened it and found this piece of paper you can't read. May be it is not evening, just some Monday morning, when you are not so interested in what I, an eccentric fool, have to say. It may not hold your attention, this letter of mine, and the sky may not be the blue thing mottled with white clouds, but a gray dominating canopy about to pour it's fury down on you.

Our Lives

1

I hate this love, slithering in the coffee shops, flowing in the classes, seeping out on the roads. I hate it. It is so fucking stupid.

2

Unbelievably mundane, the most morose predictability, careers, marriage, sex, children, dining sets, sofas, kitchenware and more nonsense.

3

They keep losing their bearings to food, insurance, education, shopping, holidays, all the usual shit. Lives that have become compromises.

4

Broken hearts, lost faith, wandering around illusions powered by fear and vicious greed, we are lost, and with us, our whole vibrant lives.

The Sidewalk

Everyday, on my way to the breakfast table, I take this side walk. It is lined by flowers, long stalked flowers and delicate scents, bobbing gently in the virgin breeze. They stand there, in their innocent impermanence, replacing each other, day after day and every week of the season. Sometimes, I meet people on the sidewalk, I wave at them and in the radiance of these colours and scents I give them a smile.

A character

This is about a young man. He comes from a respectable middle class family, lives in a suburb of Mumbai, has finished his schooling and college from a local institute and is now on a job. Quite well paid; like most other software professionals in the city, and single. His family has it's own income and does not depend upon him for money. He has all that he earns for himself. With a roof over his head and a city around him, he has little to worry about. Weekends are spent at the local bar with his colony friends, who like him work and earn, they all grew up together. Once in a while he fucks a woman, a meeting with whom he arranges through a shady acquaintance of his. These women are not professional prostitutes. They are women from the city who want to sleep with men outside their acquaintance for various personal reasons.

Notes From a Poet

Allow me gentlemen, if you will, today, to tell you why this world irritates me when it deals with the fact, that it is possible to seduce women, so callously as it were utterly mundane, a fact to be noted and ignored with a shrug. Obviously? Do I hear you say gentlemen, that women are just as human we men and then that argument about biological desires..... and the rest of it all? That they are human and just as human as we men is indisputable and I as a man am a staunch supporter of that view, why it does not even need support, for it is a fact, not a view. I have, however, some problems with you telling me this: from the fact that women are as human as we men, it is easy to deduce that the possibility of their being seduced is just another fact of this world and that there is nothing truly marvelous about it, that when we talk about a woman being attracted to a man, we are justified in discussing it in the tone we discuss a man being attracted to a woman, and that we can talk about a woman being seduced by a man, while we do our laundry or brush our teeth.

I might sound mad, gentlemen, but allow me, this one observation: We attach a set of emotions to the male kind, and 'caring' is certainly not the first emotion that comes to our mind when we begin building a list. I have this to say: It is possible to seduce women, but not even in the faintest figments of our ideas about the mundane can we talk about it like we talk about all the other things we discuss over beer. One has to discuss a woman being seduced in the same way as one discusses a bud bathed in the morning dew opening to the first rays of the sun. That female seduction is an infinitely sensual thing, wondrous in all it's majesty and only as mundane as the morning fog dispersing under solar warmth.

Faces

Why do these faces on a busy morning look up with rebellion against my ways? Why do they look up, eyes leading the face, with brows knitted?
I have chosen a way, and do they not see how far it is from theirs? Do they not see how unrelated I am to them? But I think they are completely justified in this loathing, for is it not out of the absence of a relation that the deepest of hatred springs? But ah! I have seen deeper spite take birth in the cradle of a bond.

An apology

She was expecting them, as she played around with the paper weight on the ebony desk, the union had grown unusually strong and the apology they would offer was a confrontation more than anything else she wanted it to be. It was late afternoon, the sun drew parallel lines of light upon the walls and the paintings it held. The air within was conditioned but her forehead was moist with anticipation. The corridor housing her office housed only three other offices and the hour demanded that they be vacant. Bodyguards were wrong strategy, her superiors informed her, as it would symbolize lack of faith. The corridor to which the narrow door of her office opened ran both ways and one could run a whole minute without once having to look at a stair that led to the other parts of the office complex housing similar corridors. Her mind drifted to the main entrance of the office complex and from the nook that she was thinking it seemed a mile away, she would generally not journey towards the entrance alone, for it was unbearably quiet and claustrophobic in the several long corridors. There was a window at either ends of the corridor covered with milky glass, the light was just enough to show the staff to the stairs.

The appointment was scheduled at four in the evening and it was five minutes past four now. She had pulled on her overcoat, for it was slightly damp and musty in the room. She could now hear the muffled footfall of several men in the corridor.

Untitled

Am I looking at what I loved watching?

Untitled

Out in the wood, there is a road by the sides of which are yellow flowers and on them flit buttercups, I have been on that road when it was redolent of the wet earth and warmer days. It led me home.

Tired

The evening had set in and presently looking out of the kitchen window, one could see a few buttercups flitting on the marigold ablaze with the evening sun. My feet felt heavy and my mind was adrift. I moved into the bedroom and sat on the chair before the window looking at the trees with drooping leaves that shone under the last rays of the western light. I could see a woman take a walk in the park holding the hand of a child whose other hand was busy waving a bright yellow ball in the garden air, the ball slipped out of his hand to land into a bush, the woman let go his hand and with all promptness set about his hunt for the ball, I could see the boy bend down, his head disappeared into the soft green foliage, the woman busied her self in a conversation with another lady. The boy had found his toy and one could see him hold it with triumph into the air. The woman finished her conversation with the lady and held his hand again and presently he was bounding away, one hand in hers and in the other the bright yellow ball.

Something

It made rickety sounds walking it's way across the grass that was turning yellow with the season, the wind was like dry perfume, the wind rustled as it combed itself with the pine leaves. The tanned leather on its hide was old and showed wrinkles of a lighter colour, trotting downhill, one could see the slope covered with wild grass and an occasional stoneseed or a forget-me -not. Humming the tune of the old mountain brook as it went downhill into the small town at the hill's foot, it possessed a pace that talked of the ripe apple upon the vernal trees and morning dew upon white Lilly petals, it told stories and sang odes of days that turned into nights with a habit of descending peacefully upon the town . It had bells that would tinkle like a brook in the deeper wood and sing it's tale to kids who ran on the small lanes of the town, kids who chattered, around small shops glowing peacefully in the light of oil lamps.

The Monster

I was turning down alleys I knew until I came upon the one I did not know, and as I entered this alley I had never seen or heard of before, it led me with splendid obviousness along a path of cobble stones lined by street lamps with a yellow glow, into a large hall, whose walls were smeared with slogans of protest against a rite, slogans- the people in the hall told me- said by the prophets, passed down with great care through generations of ignorance and faith. I saw throngs of men all unanimously flaying a monster, red eyes, large claws with nails caked in dry blood that had turned black, a long lashing tail and a royal insignia on it's human like breast. Ah! But how beautifully the monster eluded them all, and they managed, only, to flay their own hide.

The Fire Hydrant

It was on the bend of the sidewalk that took you to the beginning of the third avenue, and when looked at from the twenty fifth floor of the Ashen vale business park, it looked like a speck in the morning smog of the city. It was, as it stood, the last of it's kind in the city, for every building now had its own fire fighting equipment and was well equipped with state of the art smoke detectors. The dogs which inhabited the cracks between two skyscrapers or the small alleys leading to the basements and repair chutes knew about it's existence, it is easy if you like fire hydrants and the one near the third avenue is the only one you have.

The night was when they gathered around their prophet appearing through the labyrinth of concrete and glass. The winter is generally cold and full of snow flakes that swirl in small eddies in the deserted corners that are formed where buildings stand. The officials from the sanitation department had known of this hydrant and the pests it attracted in the dead of the shimmering night. They had their equipment ready, vans, nets, sedative guns, which is a handy tool in case they try to act nasty, all this was set at the ends of alleys which opened their mouths to the hydrant. One could see the officials in their blue uniforms ironed to perfection with their cuff buttons shining in the light of the few solitary windows that glow with the energy of a workaholic, with rigged leather boots all polished and hats with shiny rims. The canines emerge from the alleys in their hundreds and their eyes shine in the light of the siren of the dog van. Their number is more than what was expected, and they are coming from all the alleys that open to the hydrant, the sedative is not enough and neither are the nets, for what comes from the alleys is a pilgrimage to the fire hydrant.

Existential Abstraction

Everybody knew about the other guy's existence and this they took for granted since they could talk to each other by e-mail and hear them on phone or see the list of names on the web page of the School of Mathematics. There were no photographs on the page, somehow they did not seem to care, the bare essentials for asserting their existence were available, phone calls, e-mails, publications, and they were too busy to ask for more. The corridors were long and empty, lined by offices of these people who existed through their stationery and bytes and electric pulses. They did not bump into anybody in the corridor for they did not exist outside minds of their colleagues.

It was a place where your colleagues existed in your mind riddled by abstraction, in the assumed vacuum of the long corridors and empty elevators, in the content and exact silence of the place.

A Train Accident

The morning was an hour old, and the smell of his bathing soap still fresh on his skin, Hurriedly he had his breakfast of boiled cabbage and wheat dough to rush out of the door into the cold swirling morning breeze. His laptop case dangled about his hips as it hung form a strap on his left shoulder. His shoes clicking away into the cold unfeeling air of the hour young morn. The alley was flanked on the left by a series of apartments with a similar story to tell. All had the dim light , all had a breakfast somewhere in the corner of their yawning cavities and all had a watch that ticked away mockingly into the morning.

One house however, was different, Its walls, as one could see through the large window, were smeared with blood, and the table had a butchers knife on it, no breakfast, only the knife, red with the blood on the wall. Somewhere nearby at the foot of the red wall was a little finger and on the clothes line on the window sill was the news paper for the day. The yellow lamp on the table was flickering, sobs emanated from somewhere within the yawn.

He went clicking his shoes into the morning, into his office. His assignment was due and complete. The project was coming up next week, he had plans for a holiday the week after that. At lunch he told his colleagues about the incident and they shrugged. The evening tea had forgotten about it, and the longing for his abode grew strong.

Tired and high on coffee he made his way back to his alley, the apartments were on his right this time and the bloody apartment of the morning was missing, he underwent an involuntary quiver and pressed the door bell. His wife opened the door for him, walking in he saw the walls had wall-paper on them.
"Why the new wall paper honey?"
"It's better that way darling, if it gets dirty, we'll just strip it and put a new one".

The Swing

He entered the garden and let his vision drift across the landscape, the slide was spiked and the kids ripped their bottoms apart as they slid downwards, their clothes red with their blood, their bottoms a mangled mass of young flesh and blood, they died as they reached the end of the slide, crying out a frail cry and falling upon the heap of the others who had taken their turns before them. This did not seem to bother the other kids who were clamoring for their turn on the slide.
The merry-go-round had become a centrifuge and was smashing kids out onto the walls of the garden where they stuck as a mangled mass of bright clothes, young muscle, ligaments, blood. The flowers in the garden had withered away into the afternoon breeze, and the setting sun was fast dissolving into the haze on the horizon. The garden has three things to play on, the slide, the merry-go-round and the swing. The swing was solitary, not the usual pair that you find in most gardens, and unlike the other two toys this one seemed to be alright, nothing wrong, a tall frame from which the chains were suspended that held the plank over a foot above the ground. He walked towards it, for a moment it looked like a mist had suddenly appeared above the tall frame from which were suspended the chains, it made him stop and consider his decision for a while, but the mist appeared to be thinning away, he walked on. The swing creaked a little under his weight, he began giving himself swings, first slow and serene, slowly pushing the ground beneath his feet. He went back and a sudden gloom took him in it's grasp, a gloom so dark that he felt like being on the slide. But the swing moved forth and an equally strong elation filled his inside and the flowers seemed to have blossomed again, the feeling exhilarated him and he pushed the ground beneath his feet harder, his time he was pushed into an even darker gloom, the intensity increased with the increase in the amplitude of the swing, the elation was equally strong, it made him forget the gloom and made him push harder, with each swing he would curse himself for having pushed so hard and then forget it in the moment of elation, but when the gloom took over he would not forget his elation and his mistake of pushing the swing harder. He continued to swing and did not stop.