Dirty Laundry

The neighbour on my left
has a large slab of stone
stuck out in the sun.
Each afternoon, when the sun is past his rise,
she accosts her laundry and takes it by surprise.
Spinning a shirt high up in the air,
she brings it crashing down on the slab.
Colours bleed freely, the skirt has seen better days
and all the broken buttons sigh,
but they come out looking cleaner
if less healthy.

The neighbour on my right
has a big white washing machine
that shivers in the laundry room.
Sometimes, it shudders.
You know something’s going on there,
but you can only tell on really quiet evenings.
On really quiet evenings,
the silhouette of my neighbour slinks up to the machine
and throws in a bundle of screaming clothes.
(If her dog isn’t barking in the garden, you can hear this.)
Inside the box, the clothes perform unimaginable calisthenics:
Twists, twirls, taps and the meanest pirouettes you’ve seen.
They come out squinting and with their tongues hanging out.
Sparkling, but almost entirely strangled.

I live isolated without stone or box,
but my neighbours are- shockingly- kind.
On weekends I hand over my whimpering garments,
first to Beatrix Kiddo on the left,
then to Terminator on the right.

I may be alone,
but I want to give my clothes the best of both whirls.

It's been a while since I wrote:

Cities
changed their wings, broke mine and sent me
Home
changed hands, fixed mine and sent me to the
Hills
changed people, beyond recognition, and sent me

Back
where nothing has changed, everything is warm,
Arms
wrap themselves around me, but I remember how to
Breathe
the old Karkhana air, the green air of the mountains

Where
my soul will fly back on the back of a Hornbill
When
my body is done with this devastating city
Which
pulls me back whole, my weak hand, my strong one

Dying
to leave, but still
Living
in a changed city, changed people, changed air, changed arms
Born
free, but everywhere,
Changed.

'Fear not', said she, for mighty dread had filled their troubled minds

Hello, hello, hello! Clearly you are curious about the silence, and wondering about my whereabouts. Thing is:

1. I got mugged in Secunderabad.
2. I was two minutes away from my house, walking, and got my handbag snatched by two men on a motorcycle.
3. Because of what we refer to in my family as 'chest-hair attitude' which, as it turns out, I have, I did not let go of the bag that was being snatched.
4. I held on, fell on the road, got dragged along for a bit on the very unfriendly tar and...
5. ... broke my wrist.
6. Yes.

It has now been over a month, my cast is 5 weeks old, and I have but another week to go. So hang in there and don't get your chaddies in a twist. Typing with one hand is really REALLY annoying, so I will now stop.

Meanwhile, my next adventure/project takes me to Masinagudi, at the foothills of Ooty. The jungles beckon. At least a book that is waiting to be written and edited thereabouts. So watch out for this dog, in the midst of- hopefully- no muggers, but the lush green and the occasional rogue elephant.

I'm a tiger when I want love, and surely you know what I am when I disagree.

She who cannot write three decent sestets

Winter is in the twin city,
although you can only tell
by the slivers of white on your skin,
the embarrassing crackling of smile lines.
The sun still sizzles in the sky,
an old dog with an old habit.

Between Karkhana and Lingampalli,
sweaters sheepishly hang on roadsides
waiting to be bought,
while even old Hyderabadis laugh to see such ambition.

In the irrepressible smog of Diwali,
you realise the shortcomings with a start:
You are not a consumptive poet waiting to die by the sea.
You are a little bit of your parents,
a large question, round parantheses
surviving behind the refuse of Karkhana.

Surviving, in spite of yourself,
with a little October shiver, sparklers, someone else’s poetry
and asthma that is entirely your own.

Not Jewel Box

At Rs. 16 a cup,
the coffee seems a bit steep.
Fish and chips at Rs. 150
seems grossly over-priced.
Especially for a place that looks like
maintenance involves
washing the floors every second Saturday,
and changing the furniture
once every century.

Of course, by that argument,
this city with its half-price roads,
trade-reject infrastructure,
power-cuts and barely-there footpaths,
should have been deserted years ago.
Bearing no resemblance
to abandoned towns in B-grade Westerns,
both city and coffee shop flourish.

The old furniture is not glamourous
as any one of the elderly tubelights will tell you.
Neither is the ground you walk on.
I wouldn't call it squalour,
but squalour's distant cousin
starts on the floor
and crawls all the way up to the ceiling.

The proof, they say, is in the pudding.

Those who breakfast here, eat heartily.
The lawyers and government officials at lunch
know best why their lunch break is interminable.
Come evening,
groups of pensioners get off buses,
college kids shriek into corners,
bruised and beaten office-goers
sink into comfortable shadows
of themselves.

Most do it for a lifetime,
and not without questioning themselves.
The answer?
Perhaps a little too trite
for a shop owned by a man named
Prem.

Love, then.

A cup of coffee after work,
a wholesome family dinner,
a tankful of pop-eyed fish,
beer with friends on a rainy afternoon,
barely audible fingers of jazz
touching you from fuzzy speakers,
sharing a cruel joke
with a brass-buttoned waiter,
regulars observing regulars.

A newcomer wondering
what the fuss is all about;
an old-timer throwing up his hands,
mystified.

Come as you are

For Kurush

You appear in my dreams
as characters other than yourself.
Last night, moving furniture
then lying heavily on my divan,
perhaps you were a character
from what I can only imagine
was a movie of questionable virtue.

Never, then,
the coffee-sharing friend
with a mind of fine balance
and nonchalant wit
while driving on the streets of Colaba.

Never, either,
the tousled lover
seductive of hand
and meditating in autos
on bylanes around Church Street.

Tonight in my dreams,
come as yourself.

I'd enjoy the warm fireplace
of your humour
and the prime real estate
of your shoulders,
in a third city.
Maybe we can joke about phone bills
in a smelly boat on Hussein Sagar Lake.

Pint o'clock

For JVG


The minor miracles of perfect sentences.
The joy of punctuation excused of paying unwarranted rent.
The misery of the untold…
The Ghost of Errors Past.
The euphoria of a well-deserved semicolon.
The peaceful death of a story well told.
The execution of a much-hated grammatical hang-up.
The poisoning of a structural hiccup.
And, most of all,
the inexcusable ending of four-hundred words
with a cliché from the past.

Nothing makes up for the abject demise of
a time when time was well-spent
if time meant a verbally flattened pint
with you.