Haiku to you too

FELINE HAIKU
Me-aow-me-aow-me-
aow in the sun. Seventeen
syllables of fun.

HAIKU-COO-CA-CHOO
Too old for a boy,
too young to be somebody's
Mrs. Robinson.

DEWEY DECIBEL HAIKU
Sometimes when I sleep,
I wake up screaming to Miles
Davis on trumpet.

Notes to my family

My brother-in-law made this postcard for me. The two yellow dots are artistic representations of my cats. Dear Pink, you made my day. Your mental picture of my cats is perfect. And since we have no explanation for the red background, allow me. Red is for all the bloodshed, while they sharpen their nails and teeth on Sabbah and me.

~

My five-year-old niece has recently informed her father that she will be marrying David Gilmour when she grows up. And that she will be calling him 'honey' once they are wed. Dear Murli, it's all downhill from here. You know that, right?

~

Ma.
My cats refuse to be good Brahmins. They eat fish and chicken and all kinds of animals. Okay? Okay.

Too much water has flowed under this bridge

My clichés
ring in my ears,
Mocking everything I ever
did or said or sang,
which now seem so pretentiously
off the bruised and beaten path.

My bruised and beaten path
curls up and dies
in a corner of my living room
where the cats will
poke and scratch and re-open
a thousand gangrened histories.

A thousand gangrened histories
fill their lungs with air
and look over the edge
of this bridge
as they cry,
“Too much water has flowed under this bridge”.

Too much water has flowed under this bridge
and your soul washes farther away
relieved to part
from my well-worn shoes
along with all my
clichés and their thousand histories.

Nine Lives

Your big eyes
have none of the wisdom
that I wish upon them.
Not by half.

And when mine cry
your casual claws
scratch the surface
as you laugh.

When you glide
into my yellow life
you hiss and spit,
my courage dies,
I realise
that I have one,
but you,
you have nine lives.

Velma discovers fire

Hunch

Over the years
I developed a hunch
about you.

There's a bit of grey
in your beard
and in your eyes too.

You walk with a lisp
and in your voice
a bit of blue.

Over the years
I developed a hunch
and so did you.

KroaKing Season 2- Opus, Wednesday nights

It's back!
Every Wednesday at Opus, Bangalore. The search for KroaKing 2007 is on. Who will be crowned the Kroaker of the Year? To find out more, check out the Opus blog, or the Kroaknights blog.

To take a shot at being the KroaKing, all you need to do is land up and sing. There are many many prizes to be won.

Also, for the KroaKing season, I will be updating the blog. Yettanother reason for you to show up. I might write about you. How exciting for you. Wink.

St. Ang

Writing here has become something of a laboured process. Mostly due to mundane tangible things like too much work, too little distraction and next to no inspiration. I've almost completely stopped laughing unless I absolutely owe it to someone, or people are looking expectantly. Why, even my kittens think I'm a sour-puss! And a day without uncontrollable laughter is not merely a day wasted. It's greater consequence is in being unable to contribute to my writing.

I spend the better part of the day entertaining myself with puerile wordplay, but I never get around to seriously writing. Instead, I hang around wearing the face that I keep in a jar by the door. I spend all my alone-time preparing a face to meet the faces that I meet. And it's nothing more than a mildly poetic idea, this amalgam of Eleanor and Eliot.

I guess a holiday is in order. In exactly a month from now, my dear friend Swetha is getting married. I'm hoping the couple of days that I take off for her wedding will translate into a week's holiday. Maybe I should go away somewhere quiet and pretty for a couple of days. But I have daughters to think of. Let's see. When things fall apart, they often tend to know how to fall back into place. If that's as true as I think it is, in no time at all I'll be writing again.

Cats: The Imaginary Generation

As a result of gentle prodding by Amit, I'm bringing back to life, a collection I started writing in 2004. Hopefully this time, I can make a complete story of it. I would appreciate your opinions on what I write. Leave your comments, okay? Okay.

Presenting Cats: The Imaginary Generation. Dedicated to Roxy and Velma. Also to Notrussel, a cat I've never really met.

We've got geese!

In the solid tradition of misplaced nomenclature, I cannot call a cat a cat. (Or a spade a spade, I'm sure, but then I've never met a spade. Though I've met a dog that's been spayed. See how confusing this gets?)

Anyway. The Saab and I would like to believe that we've adopted these two. But owing to their feline nature, I'd much rather say "we're having some friends stay over". Meet Roxy and Velma. Ours is just a noisy hall where there's a nightly brawl.


Roxy is a month and a half old. She loves to chew on fingers, toes and dog food. Yes.




Velma is the same age as Roxy. She spends her time sleeping and watching the fan warily. She reminds me of me.



Roxy and Velma went to Cute School, where they were taught how to pose for pictures. It's very endearing. And alarming.

A minor diminished point of view

They say it’s about perspective.
Diana Krall sits at her piano,
Playing it with the incorruptibility
Of the only schoolgirl who labours at algebra
In a classroomfull of pigtails writing margin notes.

She sings about love
Like a woman freshly in hate.
I try not to squirm, with that spine full of emotion
Challenging me to a duel.
(Wodehouse wrote that a woman should never betray her emotions; I gather, better late than never.)

Somewhere in the nonchalance of her fifth crescendo,
the penny dropps, but mutedly.
It stays at the feet of my sanity, and I pick it up
Belatedly:
It is about perspective after all.

The sun rises because Miss Krall un-learnt her vibrato
And tore out the sleeve that displayed her heart.
It sets when she plays her last notes,
You know, the ones she just made up in her head;
The ones she plays with her feline indifference.

And you go to bed so that the sun can rise again. Without misgivings.