She was singing
The microphone touching her red lips...
The creamy satin top made things conspicuous as the light brought the shades purposefully
On her every stop...
And the light fell on her legs in particular...
Her legs...thonged...
They were also dancing to her tune...weren't they?
Her music flew
And the legs caught all the light...
Her legs...
Asking mine to go to the dance floor and join hers...
The legs...
They talked-
actually,
While I sat there,
And she sang...
After the poisonous liquid... singed our throats...
Our adda session reached its height,
At Trinca's-
Under the soft light of the chilly night,
As the year was closing in;
Old buddies we, gelled as if we had gone back to our old days...
Our days of playing naughty pranks...
And Sachs ...ordered more poison ... Boom, as usual, was in his crankiest mood...
Zipping in and out with jokes of the monks!
Jokes and anecdotes flew
As 'Kolaveri d' set in ...
Coming intermittent...like the lights that played on our faces...so bright...so bright...
Outside, the childish evening turned into voluptuous night...
Simmering all the way...dressed in white skinny attire...bare arms under the arclight...
So young and tempting-
Carrying the infection of love that crossed the frames of Time...
Horrid...cruel...Time...
We placed arms on each other... and presented a story...
A story of old friends meeting again, adrift a strong current...
Like birds meet on the flight!
Old feathery friends meeting up in the sky...
Against the blue..
At Trinca's, 'Kolaveri d'
Came to break our walls... Time gave in to spontaneity...
Space became illusory...
Only bonhomie triumphed,scoring over all-
All ills and emptiness...
And pulls and pushes...
At Trinca's...
Nine hearts meet...
After nine lives!
There lies the bicycle...
Against the rusty iron-gate...
I look at its handlebar, still not lost...
Its hand grips have the shine still...
The pedals...one of them broken...make screeching sound...
The tyres are flat...the spokes are brown and reddish...rusty...doubtless...
I touch its leather seat...small...but sturdy...could still carry my weight
As it used to carry my five year old body...
My aunt gave it to me once, on my fifth birthday....
O how many adventures we took part in-me and my bicycle dear!
We rode through the mud and the slush...
Once while returning home, after heavy rains-
When the ponds brimmed over to the streets...
I fell into a pond with it...someone pulled me and my bicycle luckily...saving us from being choked under water...hyacinth filled....e.azurea...
We were retrieved...then by that kind soul;
The bicycle mine!
Still not lost...
Rusty might be...
But who doesn't be?
'Come'n dad!'
My kid cried...
Seeing the water of the lake so cool blue reflecting every bit of the clear sky above...
We two
Got out of our home
Early in the morn and drove almost fifteen kilometres to find a sopt to play and dance and do whatever we can...
For it was our day out...
The day out of the father and the son!
I looked at him...
My seven year old kid...carrying my chromosomes and hers as well...
Our offspring!
'Come'n dad!'
The kid cried again loud and clear...and the distant hills echoed his words....
I saw him unzipping his trousers and getting rid of his vest...
'Hey! let me join you!'
I shouted at him and ran towards him...
Leaving behind all worries...all cares...
The pier was long...wooden...mossy...
'Why fumble?'
My kid asked me, as I stood undecided...
'Come'n! let's take a jump!'
He said...with his eager tiny eyes bursting with vivacity...
I surely got infected by his instinctive gestures...his brown hair being brushed by the breeze...
His earnest eyes so bright...so happy...
His smile so candid and fresh...
Methought I could afford to be a kid for few hours...just like him...
Methought I should be like him...the kid...
And
The next moment both of us took the jump, together, holding on to each other...our four legs spread in the air...yelling all the way...
'Yaaaaaaa....hooooooooooooo!'
Our conjoined cry found an echo soon...
Last night when you left
Your shame
And near me came
To wrap me under your folds...
Believe me dear, I felt experiencing the Time Warp;
Last night when you chose
Your secrets to be shared
With me lying bared...
To take me to the Colorado...
Believe me, dear, I felt like a twig on your river;
Last night when you touched
My heart with your heart
Kissing me apart
To take me to Hell...
Believe me, dear, I was truly unveiled;
Last night when you gave
Me the deepest thought
Akin to some desperate, thirsty drought...
To make me a desert
Believe me, dear, I felt like a lone castaway;
Last night was the night
For you to meet me
Like a flower meets the bee...
To help the generation to prosper
With newer pollens and nectar..
Last night you made me
A river and a bee...
A flower and a desert
A volcano and a wizard...
Last night...
You did
Whatever you could
To make me wild
To make me soothed;
The grand old Murphy transistor radio...
Which my grand dad left to my care, before his demise...
With a smile on his freckled thin lips...
Still stays beside my bed...
I clean it everyday...
It stays mum, however...
As its round knobs had for long resigned to indolence permanent!
Its speakers don't hum...
It stays silent...like an old photo-frame with an old picture,sepia...
But it has stories of its own...
On lazy wintry afternoons...
It had the habit of presenting to our ears...the 'Musical bandbox'
And as those tunes and music alien lashed onto my shore of heart...
I surely felt so happy within!
I surely loved those songs of Clapton, Carpenters, ABBA...
I loved my grandad's Murphy to take me to the days of mystery stories...'Shonibarer barbela'...
The programme had a prelude...an opening tune...taken from Kraftwerck's 'Man-machine' album I guess...
I had goosebumps for sure...my eyes popped up...
As the voice on the radio took me to some eerie haunted house...
Then my mom would call me to lunch...
And I would carry the radio straight to the dining...
Listening all the way...biting my tiny nails,as if I was very much part of the story of the radio-play!
My granddad's Murphy...
It took me to different places...
It was a world for me...
For all of us...
So...
It still stays...
By my bed...
Telling me silent stories...
Seeped with nostalgia...
'What?'
I yelled almost
To my geeky friend...
Who just spelled the doom...
'Yes, buddy...' He said, placing his hands on my shoulders and looking into my sad eyes...
'Yes...reconcile to the hard fact that your cell phone's operating system got crashed!'
'My god! now what?'
I asked...my wetware(brain) reaching its second phase...
The first phase started a few minutes back when the screen of my cell phone got blank...and I was on a call then...
A very significant call...from her...
She had been talking about her life...with nothing else to do...
She had been confiding to me...her secrets...biological secrets...missing cycles...social secrets...
Missing friends...and I was also reaching a point of emotional stress...for her tone was so melancholic...
For she was pouring out her secrets of life...of nocturnal frenzies...of boozing and smoking hideouts...
Of rains making wet the arid soil...
And the operating system got crashed!
'Damn you! OS!'
I yelled...
My geeky friend smiled...
Geeks have curious kind of intelligence...
They find easily the interruption-points of flow of thoughts in mind-circuit...
That what I thought...when, he, the geek, told me...
'Don't fret over these things buddy! life goes on...only the OS got crashed...and believe me...it saved your soul...you are saved from listening to someone's pains...you're saved...'
I smiled, said nothing...
Only the wetware within me was sending me signals to make a connection with her...
Somehow...
The third phase got started...
A phase of hopes and dreams...
A process of reinstallation...
Reformat...
Hopefully without bugs...
Without trojans...
Without malwares and spywares...
The OS got into the self repair mode...
Searching for the last good shape...
The last good condition...
Look at you boy!
I'm amazed by your struggle...as you grow there
On that wall made of bricks...
You found such a small space...full of concrete...
Only that particular spot...a tiny chink in the armour of the wall-
You found it and spread your roots...
You had sent your roots drilling into the tiny space...
You must've been the most persistent one ever born...
You must've been the bravest and the most persevering one!
How come a plant choose to grow into a wall?
How come a small kid like you survive in such dry, rocky conditions?
Without food...water...and light...none can grow...actually...
But you have made it...by Jove!
You're really the sapling of the struggle of the ancient times...
When all beings had to fight all odds...
When there were no air-conditioners or room heating systems...
When fight was the name of the game, really...
Hey you! the sapling of the banyan!
You're the true warrior!
The air still carried the scent of the flowers
Which bloomed at the garden...
The statue of the saint bearing the slant rays of the sun is still there right at the spot
Where it had been staying put...
All have remained the same-
The big playground of our youth...those goal posts...those cricket pitches...
The known smell of paranthas and the curd...at the second dining...(designated for the seniors)
The asphalt bypass leading to those rooms of our midnight guitar-plays and songs...lined by lemon trees...
The courtyard which had witnessed our shouts-shrill and playful...with those flower-pots with red borders...
The walls with paintings and photographs...
All...shone bright...as we arrived after a long time;
The commons with that blue surface still shines...
The air of the prayer hall is still dense and somber-incense sticks there still burn...
The whole campus bears so many things-
So many of them, are now part of our associated memory...
Those trees...those benches...
The gym, the canteen, the dorms...
Luckily all have remained the same...
And we, who have come from different parts of the world...
Still have the same gusto and the grit...the same naughty jokes...
Same cards to play on...
Only,we have grown a bit old...
Only our rooms like E19 and E22 have been occupied by others...
And we are no longer allowed to stay together there!
On this Christmas eve...
Like the last thirty years or so...
My wishes are just the same...
God...as you reside within us...
Make us even more strong to face all the hardships and pains...
And
No more fights for a single crumb of bread on the street...
And
No more tears on the eyes of the lost...
And
No more ugly greed for trivial papers with special marks and security threads...rectangular, mostly in dimensions...which we use for bartering...usually...
And
No more sights of women dressed purposefully, lining up dark alleys of the city...selling beauty given by you for mere survival!
And
No more smell of gunpowder and iron pellets hot spreading like the dark red saucy thing on the walls and ridden bodies...
And
No more modern equipments replacing the old ways and means of dehumanization...
And
No more acid rains and gray soot covering the face of our cities...
God!
My wishes have remained just the same...
God!
I just scribble...
And
Can't produce breads aplenty!
As the waiter put me at the corner of the hall...
Allowing me to sit there comfortably and scribble on my notepad...
Away from the friday crowd...young and bootlegged...
I sank into the soft red leather...
The chill outside was biting on people...
The warmth inside the hall was invigorating true!
The bar was being cleaned by a woman with white gloves on...
The chairs and the high stools simmering under the soft yellow lights looked beautiful bits of furniture...
'Tennesse Honey...one large...on rocks...two '
I placed my wish...
He, the waiter, in black dinner jacket nodded and smiled...
'I am leaving you here...with something to look at other than the young ladies!'
He whispered and switched on a lighting system installed right beside me...a few yards away...
The thing was simple...a turntable with a circular tube with holes on it standing upright...
And there were bulbs in the tube...
Being switched on, the turntable started to rotate...at an uniform speed...
It had its own RPM...
And the light of the bulbs came through the holes...at regular intervals...
Creating circular, moving spots on me...on the wooden floor, on the ceiling, on the bums of the ladies shaking legs...
The tube kept on moving...
So the lights...the circular spots...
And then came the music!
The ladies...four of them...were getting tempted by the light and the sound...
They shook their body...
I watched how the spots of yellow and red and green and blue played on them...on their faces, legs, bosom...
I noticed how the light came on me...on my eyes...creating temporary blindness...
I was bedazzled...
The hall was bedazzled as well...
And the Honey came in a glass accompanied by the bucket...
I dipped my ringfinger into the liquid which was reflecting the spots circular...till I stirred it...
Took two quick sips
And brought out my pen... 'You can check out anytime you like...but you can never leave...'
Don Henley and his friends screamed though the speakers...
Followed by the guitar duet by Felder and Walsh...
I felt I could never leave my dream...
The circular spots...on me and my notepad...
Usually, he walks by her house every morning...
Sweated, usually, after the morning jog...
That he has been doing every year...
Barring, of course, the season of rains;
Usual practice of walking by her house with a small garden at the front...
Spreading a sweet sight like a known fragrance...
And watching her maid cleaning the portico with water and broom...
Made his morning...
Sometimes, more often than not, he would see her sitting on the cane chair at the portico...
Sipping from warm cup...
On winter mornings,
Usually he would find her covered by a shawl...
And sitting outside
Under the soft sun...
The sight of her sitting there...had...over the years become a habit...
Much like his morning jog round the park;
He never talked to her
She also never talked to him...
But...usually when he would pass by her house he would invariably cast a glance at her house...
And she would also look at him...looking up from her newspaper or coffee-cup...
That was a ritual of sorts...
However,
He caught a bad kind of a cough once...
And the doc prescribed him rest and no morning jog...
He woke up but stayed on bed...took medicine...and missed his morning jog...
And the beautiful garden and the portico and the woman sitting there with her cup of coffee...
He missed the ritual...
He tried to imagine her exact posture...staying on bed...
Would she be wearing today that cream colored gown?
Would she be dangling her white stockinged legs?
He thought and got up from bed
And walked down stairs straight to his front door...
He felt the cold breeze of the morn...
He felt the north wind playing with the leaves of the deodar tree nearby...
He felt...
Someone walking by his house...
He winked
And saw a white stockinged woman wearing a pair of white tracks walking briskly by his house...
He looked at the woman...
She also looked at him...
And at that precise moment the church bell rang!
You arrive
Bringing the mayhem in toes
I guess!
Yes...
You arrive
And the mayhem arrives...
For I see how people go scurrying for shelters...
How people run helter-skelter...
Seeing you coming like a phantasm!
Sudden...
I go by plan a...
The original one...
Someone finds plan b...
Another goes to plan c...
Some travels fast from plan b to c in lightning speed!
You arrive...
And the mayhem arrives for sure!
You-the mayhem, arrive...
Turning things topsy turvy...
From Budapest to Tokyo!
Who caught the drift first, for example...
You...caught it earlier? or me?
I caught it...you had caught it...
Then the infection of a tingling sensation on the left side of bosom...
Who caught it first?
You had caught that even before I got into it...
Or it might be the other way round...
Standing on the station for the last train...
You had boarded it before I boarded?
The whistle of the train must have been sounded a few minutes earlier-
Than our meeting the boarding norms...
We must have bought tickets even before that...
We must have come to the station even before that...
Once we all must have been kids!
Once...we were born into this beautiful earth!
Once the earth was also born!
Once the galaxy was not there!
God!
Past perfect tenses are really for those who are brainy...
Past perfect tenses are really confusing!
Any form of tense is a teaser...
For Time is a continuum...
And we are just little subjects!
Come'n after all these talks...
Let's get physical dear!
You would pounce on my nakedness like a true bitch
Tearing me apart...
And I would deliver the warm joy
Upon your unrequited soul...
Come'n!
Let's be animals after our civilized collisions...
Violent like the mob
On a shooting spree...
Come'n...be gutsy man!
Stand erect
And land your vengeance full on my empty belly and filled up soul...
Just a second...
Even before we get physical absurd
Let's get to our brains once more...
Last time...
One time more...
Let's determine...
Who's going get the priority?
Your chemistry?my physics? your Math? my biology?
Or
The souls of us?
Which journey we are to choose? really?
Body to soul?
Soul to body?
Soul to soul?
(considering we're human of the species...improper animals!)
It was a simple snap...
A blue blue ky...
And a vast expansive field ...a paddy field...
With layers of varying degree of greenness...
Different patches of green...light....dark...yellowish....
And in the midst stood she...happy...
The picture was simple...
He looked at the picture and....
And he was at once reminded of the day...
His semi-liquid memory brought before him the day...so clear...
As if he became that vending machine with slots into which
You drop a coin and your picture comes out...after a brief, momentary flash of the bulb...
He felt the soft yielding ground beneath his rubber soles...
All the time he was dropping down a few fractions of a centimetre...as if sinking...
His feet was sinking into the ground...
The soft breeze from the north was blowing so as to put a few strands of her hair on her face...
And she was smiling...full of joy-
On being out into the open country...after a long pent-up life;
She was telling him:
'Come'n! how long should I wait like that?'
He perhaps said, keeping his eyes on the viewfinder:
'Only a few seconds more...just stand still dear...'
And then he had pressed that black oval shaped shiny shutter-button...
The momentary blueness of the sky...
the breeze blowing over her hair...
The end of her white golden bordered saree flapping and
the paddy waving...
All got into the shot...
And the happiness too!
And that flight of a bird...in the sky...
And a farmer resembling a dot...at a long distance...
And their car waiting several hundred yards away...on the highway...
And the driver chewing pan masala and listening to a Hindi film song...'Munni badnam hui...'
Everything...
Everything came out of the snap...
Told and the untold stories...
Like a vending machine...ejecting right information on printed cards...after the coin drops into it...
Initiating a complex electro-mechanical process...
Gift me your shadow please...
Your sweet silhouette...that kisses me...on this beautiful morning of the blue...
Till you come again to meet me...here;
Au revoir!
Please...
Leave me with the perfect shadowy outlines of your legs and hands and curved body...
Upon me...giving me the comfort in the days of my wait...
Till you come again!
Till you come with your poems and prose...
Your bitter sweet lips...
Your high heeled pencil that made marks on the grounds of me...
Your tales of myths and memories...
Your notepad that recorded so far all of your winnings;
The seat upon which he was sitting
In the bus, was not by the window...
And crowded as the tin box on wheels was...
Claustrophobia was setting in gradually upon him...
Added to the discomfort of being herded with a lot of people in a box...
That jumped up and down the potholed road which resembled a mountain terrain almost...
He was feeling insecure-
For his camera was there
In a leather bag on his lap and the filthy crowd was pressing on to it and him...
Darn!
He mumbled...
Irritation boiling up within...like a steam pressure cooker getting ready to send a strong whistle...
Steaming out...
Just then...
He noticed a part of a hand clinging onto the hand rails overhead...
In the midst of hands of dark pallor...
He noticed the hand...feminine...with different colored bangles on it...swinging in the jarring movement of the tin-box on wheels...
The hand...
Feminine...soft...with a few beads of sweat perhaps...glistening...
He slowly unpacked his camera...from the leather bag...
Opened the lens cover...
Held his breath...steady...
Put his legs tight against the back of the seat upfront...sort of fixing his posture...
And adjusted the focal length...
Bingo!
The soft, pale hand in the midst of dark ones...against the blue ceiling of the bus looked great on the display!
He pressed the button...putting the flash off...
He pressed again...
After the shoot...
He got busy with the display...scrutinising every bit of the shots...thinking of cropping one...
Meanwhile the owner of the hand, a teenaged girl with sharp exterior...
Came and sat beside him...
Looking at him...all the way...
Curious...surprised...perhaps-
For she had noticed, like other passengers how the man took pictures of the ceiling of the bus!
He didn't perceive all these...
He didn't notice that the seat by the window was getting vacant and someone moving in...
He was looking at the digital display of his camera;
You come like that dense fog...
That covers my city in wintry mornings...
And mystifies all elements of urbanized living...
Clouding the roads and the streets
Making things screened...veiled...vapoury...
And I try to get closer to you...
Ethereal you...
Feeling blinded by your curtain of whiteness;
I try to move...
And every inch I prosper
Leads me to uncertainty more...
And every inch I leave behind...
Seemed equally hazy...non existent!
Moving through you
So translucent...
I find myself embraced by the densest realization of being myopic-
That only makes one perplexed...
And yet I move on...
For foggy mornings
Bring in charms too!
Foggy you...
Helps me find winter's glory in my sultry, tropical conditions;
Fog...
You give me that terrible pining for a cup
Of warmth...
Fog...
You accentuate the feel of the chill
And make me the mystic traveler...
Fog...
You make many unnecessary things blurry...
And I love you...
So dense and soft...
