love story of chefs...

If she served him with green salad as a prelude to love,
 He made chicken tandoori...red, hot, steamy...
Then...
He dished out pasta...light and slippery...to add zing to love...
She prepared the apple pie to make it sweet, delicious, like her supple lips;

If he created poached pear...to add to the sweetness of her lips,
To instigate him, she would  present the creamy soup with truffle...with three distinct colors-white, pale yellow and yellow...so sexy!
Thus they tasted each other...
From the appetizer through the entree till the dessert...

ageing...

discovering Eve...

Never thought I would find you there...
Sitting on the staircase of that lonely worn down temple in the midst of the thick dark forest-
That evening...sitting alone...leaving behind all your adornments...
Only the brightest moon fell on you
Like the arclight spotting you there...sitting nude...alone...
I stopped and only brushed aside the cobwebs of the last generation...
And the branches of the trees acting like clumsy brush stokes...
I just shoved them away and watched you...
As the moon touched your tresses of hair that fell over your innocent bosom like a garment almost...
I watched you sitting there...beauty incarnate!
My evening stroll went haywire at the loveliest sight...
I felt like the Adam...
Though found no serpent near...
I thought I would become the serpent myself and bite you being tempted by the wild ecstasy -
That made my face flushed...
And my body burning...within...touched by the fire of insatiable lust...
O Eve!
Why you sat there lonely?
O why you burnt my tapestry?
Discovering you, in the midst of the forest alien
Bereft of concealment...
Left me poorer of my wealth...
Left me so perished and ruined...forever!

son...

You are the greatest gift His Holiness has sent me...
You...
And your daily moves...

Your naughty smile...
And your grins...
And loud shrieks...
And pillow fights!
And fiddling with the computer...
And paintings on freshly coated walls...
Your excuses of not doing your spellings right...
Your scribbles on my softboard, pinned on my work schedule...
Your bicycle kicks that sent the ball shooting into the washing machine with the lid kept open!
Your roadrash...
Your queries about birds and bees...
Your jumps-high and long...
Your sitting by me in the car and unnecessary habit of pressing switches on the board...
Your sketches so unintelligible-reminding me of primitive drawings on the rocks!
Your music...pretending to be a rockstar...
Your musings of newly learnt rhymes...
Your running round the park with no good reason...
Your impromptu jigs...
Your act of gobbling up potato chips...
Your hiding behind the door when I call by your name...shouting myself hoarse...
Your sliding down the staircase rails...
Your ways of finding strange figures in clouds...
Your dozing off on my shoulder listening to bedtime stories...as the night descends...
Your sleeping face...
O! I just love them all!
Son...
You're God's greatest blessing...to me...
To all of us...

to you from me...

Dear...
I know all the hardships you face everyday day after day;
And believe me, I salute you...
And if you allow me
I'll kiss your feet dear...your feet...
For I know...how much you go through...
Every day...
Day after day...
You wake up at five...
And the first thing you do
Is to make coffee for your sleeping husband and infirm dad-in-law
Then you wake your son up...
Put clothes into the machine...
And if the maid is not turning up...
You start cleaning dishes, scrubbing them with that dish-cleaning greenish liquid...
Then you go to the garden...
Give your fond saplings water and food...
They also wait for you...
And that goldfish in the jar at your living?
Doesn't he also wait? for you?
And then you call your maid...
Requesting her not to stay away the next day...for next day you have urgent works to attend...
Your aunt is in hospital and given your husband's tight schedule...you'll have to visit her...taking that jar of health drink...
And you have to look at your son's school diary...what the class teacher has written over there in red ink? Gosh!
Your kid is not doing his crafts well!
Then your father-in-law asks you to put the geyser on...
And your husband can't find his favourite blue shirt at his closet...
You just run...
From one end of the house to another...
Still you go to your work...
On the way...a male passenger brushes against you awkwardly and you just feel so bad that you feel like slapping that f...k out!
But you don't! you just give him a cold stare...
And luckily he moves away...groping...
You reach office...
And arrange files...
And stands by your colleague who weeps inconsolably as she has lost her heart somewhere...someone played a spooky game with her...you feel bad...and you try to cheer her up...
Then you come home...
On the way you see the sky...getting dark slowly...and the moon on the wane...hidden behind that big tree...
You look out and smile...
You live...
Everyday...
Every moment...
Just like that...
A foot soldier...
Running round...following the clock that ticks away...
Dear...
I know everything...
Your tireless work
And your tired soul...

by default...we are gadgets!

You and Me...
Both of us are bestowed with some features by default...
Just like gadgets!

You are a transmitter
Emitting signals all the time;
I am a receptor,
Receiving your beeps all the time;

Your mind's screen is wide...showing reflections of every minute movement around you...
By default, you're a giant screen...just like the sky...almost...
My mind's screen is small digital display...it only shows a particular frame...the frame I'm in
By default, I'm a small display...objective, pin-pointed, sharp...just like the lightning that stays for a while...

You are essentially fluid...liquid...subatomic particles play themselves, though inconspicuous, in you...
I am essentially solid...fixed...molecules play in me straight...visible and too apparent;

Your circuit design is labyrinthine...having several junction-points to weigh in and weigh out options;
My circuitry is like a flow-chart...having junction-points to eliminate options by diodes and gates;

By God!
We're so much like gadgets(sic!)

the walk...

my city and me-perennial lovers...

Sometimes I feel
My city has grown its streets and pavements and parks
Within me!
So when I get a little time in hand to explore the cityscape-
I find myself exploring the sides of me...
I explore...
My city and my self...
The dead alleys of the north
Bring me to my desolate one...dead...silent...moribund...
While the south is all about the neon lights dazzling in my heart...so young, vibrant!
At the malls the hedonistic monster wakes up...within me...as 'I shop till I drop!'
Then I come onto the footpaths...thronged by the homeless me!
My city...and me...
Are like twins...
We grow together...
We grow old and young...
We become freaky
And somber...
We...
Walk side by side...
As lovers also in parks and Victoria grounds...
At the Nandan compound...at the Academy...
Me and she...
We are perennial lovers...

after every twelve years...

I was not startled...why should I?

Your looks carried nothing to be amazed of...
You are purple...
Hundreds of your sisters are purple too...
You make Nilgiri purple...
Hundreds of your sisters make hills and plains colorful too!

But then,
As I stood before you, and touched your softness
That smoothed my turbulent soul...
You nodded gently in the air...
As if thrilled by my touch!
You nodded and like a whisperer of knowledge told me-
'I don't bloom every day dear...
I don't come everyday...'
I drooped to hear your whispers...
I drooped down to get your smell...
And You then, let the greatest secret out...
You kissed my freckled lips and told me...
'I come only after every twelve years...'
I was dumbed by your declaration...
Then you revealed another thing...
You told me...
'You have also come to me after a long time...last time when you touched me...
This millennium had then just set in...
And Y2K bugs were making you crazy...'
I stood there...
Looking at you...Kurinji
As you nodded again in the gentle breeze

That unfurled my soul's parchment...

At Crossroads...

smokes...

 The evening was bright as moonlit evenings can possibly be;
And I saw you smoking
Keeping the perspective of the orange city skyline
right at the back of your sensuous silhouette...

I keep watching
You and your smoky being...
So tranquil and fluid
Like a fleeting mirage
As seen through my blurred vision-so myopic!

I keep tabs on your moves
Your fag emitting white lucid joy
Triggering me to break into tempestuous melody...
Of love, illusions and gaiety...
Atop the sacrosanct monument
That rose to kiss the orange sky
Of my gray city
And its smoky space...

The evening
It smokes...
So you...
So the city sky...
So me!

shoot me!

Wish...
You would shoot me
With your majestic Baretta 92fs
And shoot me away
From this world so full of hungry sad faces
And sad sad eyes...
Shoot me if you may...
Away away... from this insomniac world-
Hazy maze filled world!
For this world is not for me...
(Not for you either!)
But as you carry the gun...
And fifteen lead pellets...
Just open the safety latch...
And shoot me away!

If you can't-
Make me your lead pellet then!
And propel me away...
Providing that terrible thrust by the spring and the combustion...
Shoot me!
Shoot me...the lead bullet...
Make me thy bullet...
Discharge me!
Make me fly...
Till I carry the thrust at my back...
Till the gravity pulls me down!

Shoot me!
Send me away
Till my mass and gravitational decceleration
Conspire to effect my Fall!

At College street, after a long time gap....

Every street has its own pulse...
Every street...
Anywhere...
Has its own beauty...
Walking down one of my favourite streets of my city-
And that too after a long time,
Is a kind of revisiting my past...

The bookshops in makeshift stalls with books of various designs and colors on display in the open,
Under the mellow sun of the afternoon,
At College street, have their own smell...
The air was smelling books and coffee and young students...
So vibrant!
O  How I looked at them!
Students in baggy jeans...in torn jackets...
Young ladies
In body fitting tees...
With big...really big ear-rings that swung like pendulum...
Their ways of smoking and chatting and calling each other by names...

Then the chaiwallahs
Pouring invigorating tea in earthen cups...
And grilling breads on stoves...
I looked and looked
And thought I revisited my days of gaining adulthood just!
I saw my self in one...a young man with a bag full of books on his shoulder strapped...
And
My love in another woman with specs on...sipping coffee under a tree with a paperback in her hand...


Walking down College street...
After so many years,
Is like going back to my past...
my days without cares...and...
Full of love and warmth!
So unadulterated!

The phone call...and the sighs...

'Hey! How are you?'
She called me one late evening...
At first I couldn't recognize the voice
The phone was in my pocket and my handsfree device never show the number...
So...
I parked myself by a less boisterous place...killed the engine...
And brought the cell out...
Raising my back a bit...
'Hey! you! How are you?'
I asked, feeling elated to hear her voice after a long time...
'Fine...'
She said....'What about you? on the road I guess...'
'Yeah...thinking of returning home...'
I said;
'O...Sorry...I might call you later on...You're driving, I suppose...'
'Was driving...not now...I am now stagnant by a lonely park...'
'Which park?'
She asked...
'Millennium Park... '
I replied, casually...
'Milliennium park? Is that you said?'
She asked;
'Yes...'
I replied, a bit loud;
There was an awkward pause at the other end...
'Hello...'
I thought the line hung up...
'Yes...'
She said...stretching the word as if she was going to doze off;
'What's up? feeling sleepy suddenly?'
I asked, curious;
'No...actually the name of the park...Millennium...it reminded me of a wet afternoon...I went there with someone...we were then living in the same city...we were then meeting all the time...we went to so many places...together...me and he...we went to the park...we had taken peanuts in paper bags...we chewed and munched on them so happily...someone held the umbrella over my head for hours to save me from the drizzle, though I actually wanted to be drenched...someone ...'
She stopped saying all these, in fits and starts, ruminating...
I fell silent...
I looked out of the window-
To see the park in the evening;
It was closed...
I looked at its main gate...
The white and blue gate had remained the same...
The benches were still there...
I noticed a peanut seller going home with his empty basket...
The other end of the phone was silent also...
Only I could hear heaving of a sigh...
Me sighed too...

suicide...

"Now that you are contemplating committing suicide,
I will not deter you, sure!
Only...
I'll ask you to read a few lines from a book
Before you commit to your ways...
Read David Emile Durkheim...

His book 'Suicide'
Read it...
Before committing the gravest Sin
At least know the Sin...
Know Suicide...
And then...choose to die...
Knowing whether you're altruistic or egoistic...
Towards death..."

My city of seasons

Sometimes she turns up like a deep thirst...
At the end of a long walk down the scorching asphalt
-A big banyan tree spreading wings
At the turn by the gas station, in an otherwise
Arid, dry, desert of concrete!

Sometimes she arrives
Mirthful, across the slice of wintry sky, blue,
As seen caught between the twin towers by the Maidan...
In which horses run and children play foolish games...
As their parents loll over the grass, lazy...

Sometimes she becomes my Venetian maid, true!
Rowing a gondola and singing songs from tearjerkers of yesteryear...
Across the rivulets running through the streets of Shravana....

Sometimes she comes like an enchantress almost
With a riot of colors all over her smooth body...
Over her every part...stealing a rainbow!

My city...
O how she envelopes me in her beauteous folds!
Every single season
Like a season...

the traveler...

He has traveled...
Long distance...
So long a distance of space
That he has forgotten what was the exact appearance of his front door...
And what flowers bloomed in his garden last spring...
He has drifted away...
For long...
So long that his memory of time has got scrambled
And he has not seen how time has changed his home town...
Its people...
His wife and son...
And even his pet dog...

rendezvous

Seeing her coming towards him,
He jumped with joy...
God! please don't make me look messy...
He, prayed silently, looking upward at the slice of evening sky as seen through the trees and the towering buildings of the city...
She waved her hand...
'Did she wave? didn't she?'
He thought as he felt like walking towards her...
To shorten the distance of her walk...
But he was transfixed...couldn't move an inch from his position-
That is, the second lamp-post of the sprawling campus, beside the pool and the cafeteria...

'How long have you been waiting?'
She asked the first thing, after she came near;
White salwar, silver flat shoes, a silver bracelet and a white dupatta going round her neck...
'Not for long...'
He muttered, trying to garner up courage...a bravado...male bravado...
She smiled again...
'Could have waited three or four days here...or anywhere in the world...'
He thought within...but said nothing...
'So? what's up?'
She asked, looking at the pool and the people sitting on white chairs...
'Thought to meet you...after-all,going away soon...'
He said...
'Oh...what we are going to do then? now? movies?'
She asked, without expression, as if she was prepared for anything and everything...
'No...I mean...as you wish...'
He said, coughing twice...clearing his voice;
'O! really?'
She said, looking surprised a bit this time...
He stood looking at her eyes...
'Yes...if ...you've any wish...'
He mumbled...almost shying ...
'Okay! let's sit by the pool...'
She said and started walking towards the chair...
'That's it?'
He said...following her...
They sat...face-to-face...
'Allow me to get for you something...'
He said, helping her to sit, pulling the chair for her-
And as about the attendant...
'No! I am not hungry...'
She said...
'Take a juice then...or coffee...'
He insisted...
'No...I'm sorry...I'm here only to have a look at you...'
She said, looking at him, turning her head a bit...
'God!'
He almost shouted had not something broke into his vocal pipe...
'Got married?'
She asked, as he stood there, transfixed again, by the table...
He nodded in affirmation;
'You?'
He asked;
'Yes...'
She nodded;
'Sit...'
She said;
He sat...feeling uneasy now, ruing the fact why had he called her...after so many years...
'So...got kids?'
She asked, bringing out her cell phone, looking at its screen with furrowed brows;
'Hmm...one...seven years...'
He said, softly, looking down at the table napkins white, kept in triangles...
'Got his picture with you?'
She asked, a bit excited, for the first time in the evening, looking at him, from the screen of her cell that glowed;
'Yeah...'
He fumbled out his cell and selected one out of the several photos in its memory micro card...
She almost snatched the phone from him and
She looked at the screen...
He watched a slight transformation of her face from silent, pained state to joyous as if she was smiling...
'seems like he is taking after you...'
She observed;
'Only hope he would not grow up to be someone like you...leaving behind people, forever...like a traitor...'
She stated, mincing almost and handing over the phone, she suddenly stood up;
'You're not going away?so soon?'
He asked, standing up...
Alarmed, surprised, hurt;
'Got to go...bye bye...happy journey across the sea...'
She uttered and took her purse up from the table and started walking briskly towards the road...
He followed her...
But she didn't look back...
Walked hurriedly to the sidewalk and hailed a taxi;
The yellow filthy looking cab came, she got in and the junk took up speed...
Leaving a trail of smoke on his face...

your name...

Every afternoon, at the break,
I am reminded of you dear...by simple things...
A tinkling sound of someone's bangles...
Or by a sweet honey dew potion...
Or by the sight of a yellow dupatta aflutter...
And I go to you...
Every moment that is mine...
Every day that is ours!

Your name dear...
I find in posters and banners, billboards across the city sky...
You looking at me and smiling...
Calling me to join you all the time...

You...
Come to me in my morning dreams...
And also in late evening...
And at night lit by the moon...
Like the angel from the sky...
Carrying...
Sweetness of the most glorious kind;

You come
Following your name...
Like the Great Inundation...
To drown me and my civilisation..
Under your waves...so strong and wild!

the missing golden peacock...

Her golden peacock ear-stud
He discovered...
Inadvertently...while vacuuming the floor;
It went through the nozzle straight into the dust paper bag
And while emptying the paper bag into the bin...
He heard it drop
A metal hitting the bottom of the bin-
Sending a signal perhaps!
Curious he, stooped and picked the thing out...full of dirt...
He felt the thing in his palm...
Placed it under the tap...
And it shone...like a gem glittering and wiping out the dark...
He smiled...
O how she had searched for the thing!
Silly girl...
How reddened her face was not finding her favourite ear-stud...a golden peacock!
O how she wailed...as if she had lost her heart somewhere...
He tried to console her...giving her promises of newer ones...
But the peacock!
'You don't understand! they were paired! One gone! how could the other live?'
She had wailed profusely...
Almost a dirge!

Now having the peacock in his hand...
He thought to go back to her...
'Hey! I found the one...where's the other?'
He thought
He would ask her...
And he was afraid...
That she would not find the other...then...