5 Paintings of Me

2 months back I did five odd paintings as self-prescribed art therapy.
It was getting difficult for me to think in words, since I was back writing storyboards at work and after work, my thoughts had the same old things going round and round in my head. Needless to say, I was trying to deal with being left in lurch limbo by my wife, who took my baby girl away as well.

this was the first, while my wife was still around and is my tribute to Santana's cover of Arabaxas, the actual painting is called the Black Madonna.

did this next, needless to say i was missing the wife and kid and

Third, needed to work it out within myself.

grew a little tired of too much and tried to be minimal and differently colored

fifth made me realize that what i like best about my work is that I can stare at it for hours and still see things

in this, the last one, i pulled out all stops. in a sense it is also my current position in life

Way I am now

Its been six months since i saw my baby girl. By now she must have started talking and would be taking her first steps.

It didn't take much more than me not having a job for four months and a fight where she was abusing my dead mother and in retaliation I lied that I was gathering just such evidence. Her mother's voice in the background told her, 'Enough, now stop.' And that was the last I saw of them. Poor things, living at my father-in-laws house with all amenities and me not having any source of income must have really stressed them out. Still I love them and miss them through the daylong and waking nights.

Since then, I have tried calling, mailing, posting and even visiting the apartments where they live only to be told by the guard at the gate that they did not want to meet me, or they had no time, etc. I went there on Independence day when I got a job and later on Diwali. Now I will be too broke through Christmas and New Year to think about any moves. I still need three more weeks to get completely out of debt and pay off the back rent to my landlord that is pending from the jobless months. 

Not that I managed much, my first job was with an HR contractor as 3rd party labor which sucked, but now I am well ensconced in a huge organization and directly on the payroll. I got rid of over 100 kilos of stuff in the house, ranging from books, metal, dishes, electronics, extra tv sets, and now I plan to cut down from my pre-marital number of bikes from four to two. I have managed to get both hands on the job, survived these months against massive isolation (true, my mom who passed away in Feb this year had a lot to do with my current predicament. As I got used to living with people around and having someone there in the house to talk to whenever.) and am no longer sandbagged by the sight of couples with kids, small babies and things which remind me of what I love, miss, mistook and learned I should have hung on to without opening my mouth. Where I have learned to open my mouth and ask for help was with friends, who literally kept me and my dog alive through those initial, bewildered months on my own.

Now I know that she's been away too long to be able to face me directly without finding some noisy higher ground and I try and imagine not saying anything because what's been done is beyond my feelings and talking about it. Nor do I want to create a scene, like when spurned at the gate. I have seen enough of that and for a while, my mother and I were mistaken that we could be like my wife and her family who just love shouting matches. Probably living with my father in law who is a former cricketer (and current-day sweet shop partner in old Delhi)  has something to do with their natural tendency and tolerance to noisy fights.

Way it seems to me, since I have nothing left to loose, I shall stick to the truth as it makes it clear who's right and wronged. Won't have to change a thing that way and be truthful, which I swore to be in life since I survived my few near-death escapades. They have everything, including my daughter who is very much a reason for my existence, my wife who has run out of rebellion and strength to go against dear old dad and thanks to a little social engineering, have managed to keep me away from her. That besides the fact that I have absolutely no intentions of doing anything unlawful or force anyone. I have always kept the door open for my wife, which she used on couple of occasions after fights. I didn't complain or resist when her dad called the cops and I did not pay off anyone to get off the police hook. I got booked for disturbing the peace and paid a fine and did my six months of probation even while the wife had come back to me after the big fight and mom had died (against her father's wishes, who said something to the effect that she had also stabbed him in the back). Then I got laid off at work.

No wonder I listen to reggae more than rock.

It happened at night

when i first met your mother
i was just another poet, biker, lover
until the day things happened at night
Yeah, that's how you were born all right

we never knew what to do
but we knew for sure
when it came to marriage, i gave my word
that it was a fight to keep you
alive and all right, early bird

you came home in the third month
but your mom still pulled a matrimonial stunt
I knew right then things would change
my life started to re-arrange
until te day things happened at night
my mother, her mother and your mother started to fight

i tried but we were all so uptight
her father even put me in jail for a night
by the next morning, friends had me sprung
but it was the begening of the end of fun

i loved her but it wasn't enough
me mum died swearing I'd be tough
she came back but things went rough
and her father took you both away
just when he learnt i'd lost my job

since i had no money, he thought it right
to rob a father of his daughter and his rights
now a father the grandfather of his daughter can curse
Still i don't need to know i came out worse

It just happened one night
I learned never, never again to fight
now the moon's her and you are the evening star
If you want to, you can always be my daughter
You will always be and if you are my daughter
I know you will understand.

It happened at night
It happened at night

Outside My Window

Outside my window is a street
There you used to be when we used to meet

You called a friend and said what
First left from the gate then left again
knock on the first window on the right
Not too hard a house to spot

All those evenings I came home
You didn't wait for the engine to stop
Right at the gate, right at the door
Holding my baby who could ask for more

[Br.]
Then there were dark days
When clouds came into our room
Until I had to ask if the tears
Don't stop, could I drown?


In the valley of cold wind now..
[Ch.]
Outside my window is a street
There you used to be when we used to meet

its getting colder in delhi and I am getting more into work. doing everything from recording scratch voice overs to storyboards, reviews and now i have to firm out a few processes. i got to survive till next month, when i can pay back some remaining debts and even get a little bike action going. meanwhile, have been junking stuff from the house to lighten my load for when i move houses in spring. also need to save money to pay back those who spent on my daughter's hospital bills. start sending some money to the spouse as well, estranged it may seem but i still love that woman. just managed to get my mind in check and no longer get emotionally mugged by sights of family life and baby girls. still every day i mist them. years of having people around has given me a habit of wanting to talk to someone. i thought i was a home boy. now am a home alone man. thank god for the dog. strangely in these times, it was easy to get laid off work, fall off the mountain, see the wife walk off with baby and not want to know me now, fight fire with fire and generally do inadvertent damage. It is harder to climb back on the career ladder, i finished my HR vendor contract and have found happiness as a permanent employee with a huge major. i like being an instruction designer again and have a spiritualist for a boss. now i need to get out of debt and save up. shift home and finish what was for years my life living with my mother. must remember to be the change i want to experience in the world (as the Mahatma said). that's what all positivism boils down to. amen.

http://www.matrimonialbank.com/jokes.html

e-will

‘Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.’ And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together; you have a thing called a happy family.

You can make Agreements that:

Protect your rights only     or     Respect your spouse's rights too

Are only good for you     or     Are good for everyone

Give your spouse less     or     Give your spouse what is rightfully theirs

Do not inconvenience you     or     Work well for everyone

Need frequent court hearings to enforce     or     Need no court hearings to enforce

No Matter What!

once

once we were young and took things easily. Now i hate being alone and am overwrought by my thoughts of my daughter. Must become a workaholic at this rate since my job is the best thing that has happened to me in years. Maybe i should look at my work as my wife and my ever present laptop computer as my baby. No jokes, i need the dislocation or transference to keep me going. All day I hear and see kids and try and keep my mind blank so that i dont fall down right there and break into pieces. I know i am strong because i have survived so much already. I just don't know how strong and don't respect strength that comes from surviving. Its a skill that i needed to learn to keep me alive as a kid but i always believed my strength should come from what i can create in life or change for the better in this world. some of us have made the grade and others have stared at a hard life in the face. truly none is greater or lesser than the other. life's randomness must make playthings out of us for our gods amusement. yesterday was half washing machine and half whiskey bottle. today was spent in a fell swoon sleeping through last week. slowly i push various rocks up the mountain in an aesthetic and snobbish fashion. to explain survival skills: since i stopped insisting i was right when i knew i was wrong people have been getting the best of me. literally getting the best of my behavior and abusing me. it happens because i love the buggers and won't be drawn into the temptation of being as bad. i refuse to live as an animal and will survive as a man. until Stoicism ensures my mobile face never makes a call.

pratchett

Personal Job Shakedown Strategies

Everyone finds their work life boring. They wake up, go to work and come home. Work used to be exciting when there was more ahead than behind you. Questions regarding what you are going to do with the rest of your life run through your head and you find your self having to come to terms with the fact that work is going to be just like this forever. Time is right for a shakedown. Given these tough economic times we are going through, maybe it would be best if you take things in your own hands and give yourself a job shakedown before the (now-inevitable) company shakedown!

Flat Spot-Rut Paradigm
Flat spots occur in every automobile’s acceleration curve, where the engine hesitates. The feeling of not going anywhere in life is like the proverbial plateau or glass ceiling that has started to limit your vertical, as well as horizontal horizon of possibilities and (here’s the bad news) abilities. The same old routine has an uncanny ability to simultaneously be your limitation. Welcome to your own well-worn rut.

If you do not know how, or are afraid to break out of it, then you must come to accept the end of your growth. For many of us, what is at stake here is the basis of our very identity and existence. Work gives us a sense of identity. Just ask anyone to tell you a little bit about themselves and invariably they tell you what they do for a living. Our sense of achievement (both past and future) and self-esteem is connected to it.

Unfortunately, mastery at work also brings tedium, ennui and a rising tide of dissatisfaction in life that eventually does start to spill over into our daily outlook. Even promotions die out, if they do not punish you first by leaving you removed from the actual action in a senior administrative/managerial post. 

“The tendency to economise task performance leads to an inappropriate reduction of effort, thus causing errors.”

When things you thought
That were built to last
Become a thing of the past
That’s when you ought
To ask yourself how much
Do you still feel the need
And if you’re still the same.

Memories remain and a name
That requires you to explain
Those gone cannot complain
When you learn better than before.

The pain stays but you can be more
On your own in a silent space.
So how can you be sure or unsure
Till you stop looking at the door
Never knowing, never feeling enough
Too busy in your own life dying
While the rest of the world remains sore.

we collide like stars

we collide and crash like stars
knowing that we just gave birth
to an engine of re-creation
While the rest of our issues
struggle for justification
we know the things we push
away today will return tomorrow
to miss and haunt us as we go.

It's true; some days are diamonds
the rest is also true while you
are lying in the gutter your mind
can clear out some of the clutter
that you find in the back of behind.

Ever wonder why you react the way
you do and reasons for what you say

Circumstance just pushing or fading away?


The gleam of my regret shines under
the doorway while my regret wont let
me forget what I did. I could feel more
than I could ever begaet, it's true
If I cannot let go of my anger and what
makes me more than my insurrect brain.

She cried when she could not understand
what makes a woman more paitent than a man.
I thought you would realise the pain
that kids go throujh just to feel the main
thought that recourses through your refrain
that you've bugged me enough, so shut your brain.

Ten fingers and ten tiny toes
Cannot tell me where your milk goes
Still I must waint and measure
What the future can only promise

Naked you are my third hand
while our baby looks at the future.
I wonder what sin this wroght
But I am sorry, I just forgot
that I was writing and leaned back
to bump my haead and forget all thought.

To morrow, while in repose or the onslaught
of a workday morning, I should remember what
I could not do and should be done in the light
of what into the wold I broght
Another sorry pun, but I regret to say
I shall live to type another day

Everything shaking 1

Not letting me see baby is not fair according to me.

Either you can't do anything or you do not want to do anything about it.

I'm no saint and you don't exactly smell of roses either.

If you agree with the screams in the background that you are better off, let me know.

Families really don't have much choice of emotion, action or reason but you and I do.

Everything shaking 2

Everything is shaking. I guess it just breaks my heart to hear the venom in yours. Seems like we were two different people when we met and fell in love. Back then you were fantastic at handling my house, I was proud of my little home and I had never even visited your house. My mother could not stop bitching but I could not kick her out. At the same time I cannot bear to think about the truth in my face that things will never be the same again. After having seen your anger at my mother, how can I believe that you can evolve?  Especially since she’s now dead.

Here I am, surrounded by angry people and I just don’t know how to stop it. I have taken blame for things no one even knows about. I took in mom and junior because they were only things that seemed worth hanging on to. Not because they were not grouchy and mean tempered, but because I could not leave them behind. Over the years I have stuck by them and they have stuck by me in some pretty impossible situations. Not that anyone of us improved, we just stayed together because we knew no one really wanted us. Just as today, I cannot leave you. In my heart, I really believed in this marriage. I hung on to thinking everyone will get along simply because I believed that thinking positive will somehow cause things to turn better.

At the same time I have been a realist enough to know that there are points of no return. I don’t know if you will still want me but I know I will get a job pretty soon. Maybe a bigger house, even a divided house, but not one built on serial desertion and vehement farewells. Eventually I even get grudging acknowledgement from those who hate my guts. I have also lost it as of today.

Until I can have my marriage and home and family all together, the way it was for about a week when everyone was happy we were together, regardless of what words have been said and what they did to the ones they were said to, I shall not be the first one to actually commit a heinous deed such as turn my mother out.

I know neither of you will be easy but I won’t be ridden by either of you. When the situation is in my control, I shall ask you to return but at the same time I shall also wish to know if you love me enough to choose your memories.

I don't believe in tomorrows. All my competence eliminates wonder. Life's limits make me glad we live in a round world. Gods, ghosts, memories and duties; I'm not going to be of much help today. Sick, tired, drunk, befuddled, disheartened and mortally afraid of how lightly words which will kill my daughter in the future still float around, fed and raised by others.

no one can last forever

When there's no one else around
and i'm quite alone, sad and broke
when everything i knew has changed
why should i still be provoked

Everything shakes when i think
how much longer must i live like this
i cant reach the ones i love
all i can is simply stay alive and wish

I thought love was the reason i had
sometimes what you love makes you mad
stuck between ghosts, memories and duties
i knew i had it coming to me

I don't believe in tomorrows
the better i get, the less i wonder
about the laws of life and nature
life's limits made me glad
nothing and no one can last forever

I know my needs
they are few and frequent
especially the last one baby
you know how it went

It's been a while
since i spun my wheels
i know i'm going
into a sunset of deals

Yeah, i'm going to do my best
and leave all the rest
to the good lord and kindness

I don't believe in tomorrows
the better i get, the less i wonder
about the laws of life and nature
life's limits made me glad
nothing and no one can last forever

If you should choose
i would never regret
living this life again
but with a better budget
but with a better budget

i wonder what Junior is dreaming. Does my dog dream of rabbits he's never chased? Or does he dream of me; after all we've seen fourteen years together. Oh, he is my dog and i love watching the breeze ruffle his tail fur just so. Where does this gush of love come from? Is it just his impending bath that motivates my feelings?

What is so great about Bengali cinema anyway?

What is so great about Bengali cinema anyway? It's all very copy-book, studious and done with an inward grunt of intensity. Agreed; there are moments when the sense of borderline suggestiveness can drive you crazy enough, given privacy and good breezy weather but you are just as likely to wake up in a Merchant-Ivory production. Perfect for afternoons on clerical holidays and idle moments committing the number of thick black spectacles that you can spot in the theater. At worst, banal autel porn. Hey! that goes for 36 Ch... as well. So quit grousing, which you never will. 

 home once again after a full day of story-boarding at work. walk dog, wonder aloud and no longer feel. rebuild my life void of rabid hounds of hell since I have been taken too far. it’s the same world, I am on my own and pretty clear on how people can get or be. I gotta get a routine, liquidity and build layers around my core of peace. at least I’ve set off and left another shore. It’s strange, from rebel without a cause to rebel without a spouse. Still I have other things to do like managing life as a HR vendor employee hired out to corporates. This current one is a four month contract and I am mortally worried about the paperwork between me and the HR firm that has hired me out as my documentation is not yet done. I still have to get a copy of my bloody college degree and for that I have to go to college and for that I need the time. Currently Saturdays are spent catching up on sleep and cooking and Sundays are spent hanging around the washing machine. It’s a slow, agonizing journey back to the light I volunteered away when my father died and now have chosen to go back to since my mother recently passed away. Two strange gateposts through which the rest of my life passed. Somewhere in the middle I had my own family too. Now it’s far from done but at least my assumptions about myself and what I am worth have been right. All that remains is to polish the skills I grew tired of. I have literally been through and forgotten so many things that it succeeded in allowing me to have four lifetimes in one. If I had collected all I learned, I would have an encyclopedic law book. Instead I make do with a handy booklet of principles and an absolutely reflective attitude to the rules of the game. Still I know the outlines of my personality and no longer wish to let it distend by circumstance and causative irk. My expanding funnel of work is my only disconnect from the jawbone of being. So much so that the two hours it takes to get to work are spent peacefully in the company of ‘allo allo’ and Lucky Luke. 

Whole Lotta Lavanya and Some Musing on Creativity

Well, an impeding conversation for a job profile that requires 'creativity over single-track thinking' got me thinking as to my own ability to create things from what is at hand. On one level, I felt that it was all subjective and I create as I go along. Then again, there are also exercises in sheer objectivity, as in the case of anything you make that is site-specific. I gave up on that train of thought and caught another. I remember how Salil used to point out that it (creativity) was something that just came through you. I agreed and have spent the last 20 years trying to be a better conduit for the ideas that came to my mind.
Recently, I came across an early teen 'cool' movie of my memories; Footloose...Around the same evening, I came across NASA selling large size posters of outer space taken from Hubble, and so on. It was a cool idea and too bad, Indian Govt departments are not so savvy to 'cool products' but I kinda like the photo they used to advertise them. All big, red, inviting couch and all...

So I took them both, and of course, another pic of Lavanya's and tried to combine them. Now, of course, that you know the ingredients, you might not like the end result as much, but I know I managed to combine three disparate images into one homogeneous, flowing whole. Which is currently my desktop and giving me much peace at night. Which brings me back to my main personal point about cre8ivity, to me and quite a few, it is enough to have managed to do justice to the original idea in our mind. Sure, the world has various constraints that will make it interesting as you go along and even change eventual outcomes, but at the end of your labor, the utmost satisfaction is in having followed that line down to just like it was in your imagination.


Oh, yes; extra points for finding the faint outline of the Jawa in the same image. So long and I'll be seeing you seeing my creativity at the opposite of 'large.'

A Prayer For New Beginnings

Today is zero.

Today the rest of my life begins.

Let me face the days with hope.

I must be all that I can be.

I must leave all that I have been.

This is right in a ‘new start’

Especially when the road behind becomes a wall.

Any step now I might fall.

Within me I must not hurt so much that

I withdraw from participating in life.

[Personal Note to Readers: I already know the limits of my mind, body and soul until this point in life. This predicament cannot change at any point in my life.All I shall have is all that went by me before; my past. It did create me and contains my growth but my past does not stop me from facing future-forwards.

It is my duty to absorb as much ability as I can so that it increases my definition of myself according to my past like a hungry vacuum cleaner draws in all to feed its hungry bag of past debris, literally.]

Bad times won’t last if I can last longer.

I want to see the end of my life.

I want to see how I made out in the end.

I must be there to witness my own scorecard
at the end of this life.

I want to make it a good one since today
I am making an appointment with myself at the end of my life
(and it doesn’t have to be in a restaurant).

Casey Jones Moments

Select the most correct option:

a) The great man is lost in thought.
b) The great thought is lost in man.
c) The great lost is thought in man.

Happy First Birthday

Happy Father's Day

Nappy Father's Day

You could be just another statistic sprayed on the sidewalk. What’s to stop me from cupping my hands around your fragile flame? What’s to stop me licking your gummed flap and sealing your envelope? My sweetest sorrows served up in a silver salver.

War Comes To A Home In The Country (A Script)

Duck: DUCK!

Duck (2): “WHO’RE YOU CALLING A ‘DUCK’?!

Duck: …. Too Late.

[The End]

They say man is imprisoned by legends and he seeks unity within his own legend. If I look at life, it slowly crawls towards the end of mine. Will it be the end of time or am I just a man out of time? Would you forgive me if it was the other way around? In either case, I am still watching the evenings come and go, unrelenting against half standards in a crowd. Shaping my thoughts with repetition; spread-eagled eyes on a sore back pitted again with remorse. Stark thoughts brush my feet in descending flurries.

Grateful Dead & I

Today, I understood why the band calls itself The Grateful Dead and look so happy about it. After all that’s done and gone upon the human heart buried in a damp patch of tears, two green tendril shoots could be seen poking out. These days, when I think of my heart (rather than deep sea adventures) I see roses — dark thorns and red roses and it all makes sense.

Make me gopher power. Make me imprint my plasma upon your ageing mind. The diuretha of my spasmic existence shall fry your home grown brinjals all the way to homily hell. I’ve existed in this two-way torment of your pomp and my circumstance, or my pomp and your circumstance until I went mad convincing myself I wasn’t insane. Now I know there is no asylum for me outside the ones of my own making. Any creature of my sort must make up a birthplace before it can lick its wounds. For years I trembled at every hollow-point gush like a sinner with a super-suppressed conscience before the confessional. But there was no coherent comfort for me to escape and regenerate. Every time I stepped out to where passages were lit with only starlight; I tried.

Only to wake up in the morning realizing it’s easy to loose one’s way and return to civilization in the end. If I was to live, or rather, go on living, I would need to get a map.
Still tired; tired of staring up at small pieces of daylight. They set me up on this path and said, ‘Walk.’ Only each time I fell into these holes in the ground. Some of them had underground water and each time I climbed out, I felt happy just be out. Happy enough to go into the next hole. Times I got more happy than holes and other time I got more holes than happy but I went on.

Every time I felt cheated:
• There is no doubt
• Everybody’s favorite subject
• Silence
• Not that it makes any difference
• Right; no reason it should
• But don’t forget, you asked ‘why?’

A zillion red-spot-headed toadstools littered my path — glinting harsh lights of sun shining around it. Insipid tea never tasted so good. Rock those taste buds back to infinity. Feel the cracks in the packed mud. Why doesn’t it rain before the water bearer?

Gotta go on, get on with it. I’m beginning to loose my own coherence in this mess. Gotta come back from worm headspace crawling into a starched ant on a white Formica table. I like this table clean because I work here. So please…

What I felt was a wavering, an ache in my joints, lassitude and tedium at the burdens of work. A friend suggested I needed an ‘alternative to stress.’ At that time I honestly replied that I would have to find out the hard way. Later, I figured that the only thing I could come up with was suffering in the same room with the same person. (What do you do when all your girlfriends tell you to seek professional help?)
I am the dirt that pours down the staircase when water is thrown. I could stop my joys in life and nothing would change. No one would care, no place will beckon. It’s over. Pretty soon I’ll sell the bike…..break my guns…..burn my notes…..cut my hair.

Life sounds out people and the hollowest end up as marketing executives. No one realizes that more chaps in the same market equals diminished sales. I’m sick of being in the middle and my sobriety brings many recollections of how I’ve been done in by friends. I felt it build slowly, the need to rampage in disgust at my surroundings. I want to write. It’s just when I most need accomplishment. But that’s the good side of things. And it doesn’t fit in with things, except briefly.


The universe wobbles. I can feel the cold on the top of my head. Where it sticks like water on oily hair sheened wet. The ache grows and mingles with a dull throb to the bone. Numb skull skin stretches around the edges of my face and the hollow darkness behind my lips, nose and ears. Not the eyes; eyes give out light and are therefore, sources. Yet, even they too can ache — languid, sweet-sour ache that suffuses your body as you were parchment. Dry as yeast and crinkled to an almost transparent brown. Now you can feel the air around your limbs while your head doesn’t quite fit into the roof of the world. The trembling rhythm of your activity seizes you in speedy fits and taut pauses. The warmth you seek is simply the warmth you need. If you’ve been in similar spaces with yourself, you’ll proceed to make yourself as comfortable as possible without asking too may questions that might interfere with your feeling of interconnectedness in your life and idea of self. Your memories of your life seem chained and end in the past where you are spear-heading a new experience. The fewer doubts you have about yourself, the truer your actions shall be. You belie you can co-exist alongside your fear; each inhabiting the same body in time and space. It’s okay.

Then, like all joyrides, once you start realizing that you must have forgotten about your self back there for a while, you know you’ve peaked. You feel the backward steps. It’s like the moment you start thinking about your present experience, you are back with a bang. Connected with your trail of existence, identity, sorrows, joys and the weird familiar continuity it leaves us all to be hypnotized with. The air around your head is not as thick now and you can see isobar zone-like circular lines wound around yourself depicting your aura. You become isolated in your experience of nature and anything before you that might interest you or give you pleasure. Can anyone be immobilized or transformed by these effects?

No; you are simply indulging in ‘back-of-the-brain’ travels. You can still go on with the task at hand but not without a difference. Namely, the sense of awareness that is different from the one you normally feel. Details are important, as well as well worthy of more attention. Regardless of your duties, you are aware of the deep internal game we all play in our casual states which makes us not give-in and indulge in everything that catches emotion. However, I am equally aware of the important wonder catchments at events and a sense of humor to keep you going when time seems sluggish.

1

Sparrows bursting from the bush ahead like buckshot from a shotgun.

2

The only kind of saddle that can be fitted onto the man-animal is the kind with wheels behind him.

3

They made and remade the promise of better goods in the market.

4

Early Flight: I trilled my wings to gain height.


5

Ganpat the eunuch said, ‘Aise bewde toh maine roj theke pe mare hain.”

6.

He lit up like a young snake w(h)etting the back of his fangs with a forked tongue.

7

You’re like Kashmir to me; I keep hoping there’s no foreign hand behind you.


8

Why are gentlemen fascinated by the stuff that comes out of the center of the corner of their eye?


9


Only a snake can sleep with the children of the sun.

10

Yon Pari (depends on how you spell it)

Lissandra…

Lissandra… red pearls and golden jeweled feet
Lissandra, you came to me
Through the morning dew brightly
Lissandra, would you know me again
When we meet tonight?

I’ve come to the land of dues
Only to find no solution call
Any more lower for my heart
I have no use at all

The waistline decline
And your hand in mine
There really is no end
Just another beginning
Until the next death
Just a bend in the river
Westward chances for redemption
Floating its carnage upstream
Until the next death
Scream, Scream, Scream

A silent casket screamed
With colored and loud squares
Entrances by payment only
Detractors should beware
Television and the medium churned
Turned around and mixed
From raw documentary to
Parental guidance restrained.

Pissing-onna-wall (Answer Nature’s Call)

He was walking down the road
Carrying such a heavy load
Any moment now
Feeling like he’d explode

Everybody must know
A man’s gotta go when
A man’s gotta go
So line ‘em up
Against the wall
Answer nature’s call
And be careful
Where the drops fall

Pissing-onna-wall
Answer Nature’s Call

He was walking down the road
Carrying such a heavy load
Any moment now
Feeling like he’d explode

Pissing-onna-wall
Answer Nature’s Call

It’s nothing new since we came down from the trees
Just to learn that paper brings us to our knees
No matter how safe we keep the young
There’s nothing we can do to help them belong
They must learn anew from a previous generation
So they’re schooled until we’re through
Giving them their gods, telling them the odds
Against them just like you

Long ago, a pre-historic ancestor of man stepped out of a cave and picked up as stick. It took four hours before he learn to throw it away from him. A hundred years of evolution passed before an idea struck — why not throw it at someone. Like that Nub-Dring-Blah who’s dragging She-Gronk into a cave right now.

Thousands of years passed before someone decided to throw something harder. That was it! From there to now, it’s been a mad dash for a stage when man could calmly peel a banana in the knowledge that if someone hurls a stick at him, his sticks will automatically rise up in an offensive defense.

Give me someone for the truth and some one for the pain, and someone for what comes after tears run dry. Like a sandbar on a jagged coastline reef with water foaming on rocks all around, whenever I feel strong I put out poems in bottles. Each next morning, the sunlight glints off the broken glass on the rocks.

Take my base value.
Multiply it by time.
Add experience.
Subtract love.
Divide family.

What you get is the present.
The present would be better off in the past
Right now, my present has its eyes fixed on the distant future.

She left it behind and I figured her thoughts had turned from priests and religion to suitors and sex. After all, a woman approaching 30 has to think!

He checked his watch, 9:30, it said and hugged his ribs. “I wonder how it ever became so finite,” he wondered, “Come evening and I begin to feel my limits. Wonder how did I get to become so finite…”

Delhi Indian Summer

Anyone who has hacked it in a single room tenant-ship without a cooler in Delhi summer will know this. When the heat grips you above the hairline like a numb skullcap, when matka-cool water seems incandescent because it is less turgid than your blood. When lying on your mattress on the floor, you see the heat beating out your bowels and the food-you-had-no-desire-to-eat within into a liquid patina that runs into the bathroom while you lie there dourly. Waves of thoughts beat upon my mind in the dark where I can lay out my prayer mat in the shadows of my skull. Giving thanks to creation which gave me sensitivity to my condition; in time I was to realize that I was in time. And that was the big one.

Life is made up of crabwise movements. With each calamity (mainly emotional) I gained greater understanding. A sum of experience that totals up to experience itself, “Yes, I am and I have been…”

A stupid, young, over-smart friend once told an equally stupid, young and over-smart me that I reminded him of the sea and fisher women. He then went on to make it up to me by telling me how ‘sensual’ they were when they walked or moved.

My blood is going to seep out. It is gonna spread. It is going to wet this bed. Everywhere sheets a closing red patch. Each little bit that pours out could have still been inside my warm skin, trying to live.

I waited till the winds hollowed out my chest. Until I felt nothing but the vibrations of those around me dance through backbone to ribcage. Oh! it started off in the usual enough way; with a hole where my heart used to be.

How To Build Johnny’s Garden

4 cabins
1 dorm subdivided into three
a restaurant on the same level
kitchen garage workshop shed and stores
bunch of trees by a gravel drive
Road visible sign

Awnings for the restaurant
Wheelchair access to the mountains
Food, phone and hot water
Trekking supplies and guides
Photo supplies art supplies anyone?
Reading room and photocopier too.
But no TV!

Malekut's Story

Malekut stood facing the mountains and the sun showed up just in time to catch rainbows off the falling water. He’d driven off the telephone and into the drink. He’d developed a wide shoulder and decided to give it a break. Raking furrows into his painted face, the light inched across the open glade. Pianos played rolls in his head in accompaniment to the smile on his face. The treasure chest besides him smiled back in the sunshine.

Round House By The Ocean

Going crazy
Kissing thru tears
Landslide of freaks
From those missing years

Love on the ice
It can be nice
Come back to life
Father, son, child wife
Your mother is waiting
And you’ve started hating
Your best friends

Schoolgirls will bitch
Your boyfriend isn’t rich
But his hair’s grown an inch
Since you last saw him at
Your round house by the ocean

Balconies of emotion
Selling fossils the flower thief
Soapboxes with hearts on them
Love on the rocks y’know
The way he talks tells you
Tells you all about them
When you see them
Just play dumb
He doesn’t give up
Storm in a teacup
Common malaise
I like your eyes.

Some Things You Just Can’t Control

She couldn’t believe
Her love could retrieve
Her loss from death
So sudden and harsh
The lifeline snapped
He fell over with a crash
But now he’s back again
She knows but cannot explain
He held her hand
And it was cold
His face was muddy
Like he came out of a hole
Some things you just can’t control
Some things you just can’t control

God is in my TV set
God is collected on the road
Where a little dog died
Rub the dust and you’ll see
Where blood soaked through
Just like glue
Now here he is back again
She knows but cannot explain
He held her hand
And it was cold
His face was muddy
Like he came out of a hole
Some things you just can’t control
Some things you just can’t control

I’m Done Before I’ve Begun

I’m sitting late at night
Hoping to get it right
With my accounts in hand
It’s not hard to understand
I’m done before I’ve begun

I’m going down into the ground
I’ll lie down and die without a sound
Hey heroes, I’ve been had
Before I started, ain’t you glad
I’m done before I’ve begun

I’m done, I’m done
I’m done, I’m done
I’m done, I’m done
I’m done, I’m done

When it Comes to Love His life is a Bitch

Don’t make any moves
This silence is bleached
You know the moon
It’s still out of reach
Some days he’s strong
Some days he’s weak
But you can be sure
His life is a bitch

They said he was wrong
But they couldn’t teach
Him to win on his own
So when it comes to love
His life is a bitch

Bouncing off the walls
Screaming down the hall
They tied him down
They locked him in
So he wouldn’t sin
Against the system, mmm…

Where no one goes
He’s lost in a dream
Behind locked doors
How can he redeem
Those who told him that
He could be sure
His life is a bitch.

They said he was wrong
But they couldn’t teach
Him to win on his own
So when it comes to love
His life is a bitch

Got laid off yesterday
Couldn’t start my bike today
I have moments of indecision
Wondering which way
The least failures lay
Got a moment to pass?
I’ve got some topics to flay

It’s easy when you
Know how to survive
It’s crazy when you
Don’t know how
To stay alive and kicking
Alive and kicking

It’s easy when you
Got someone to support
It’s crazy when you
Don’t know how
Long they’ll stay
Alive, alive, stay alive
Alive and kicking

It’s easy when you got
Someone to support you
It’s crazy when you
Don’t know how
They’ll stay alive and kicking
Alive and kicking

What can you be
Thinking in the
Middle of this road
Of doubt, do you stand
All alone and shout

Prevention is Better Than Cure

I was shown mirrors
And the scars are still there
I’ll keep getting better
Coz it’s the only kind you respect
Introspect and I suspect
Prevention is better than cure

Come a little closer
And let me see your chest
To the left, that’s my heart
Coz it’s the only kind you respect
Introspect and I suspect
Prevention is better than cure
I once was a fool but I was pure

--
Prevention is my cure
I was a fool but now I’m sure
Prevention is my cure
All the rest is just pain
Prevention is my cure

Sex

Sex is
Seven seconds
Of protein loss
At four liters
Of body fluid cost

Then we
Fail to see
All pornography
Is meant
To be lost

I’d never
Take chances
Often forgetting
To wear
My protection

Don’t you
Worry about
Anything when
This song is
My connection

Motherland

Let love fill your womb, O mother
Let freedom chime across your breasts
Your offspring who kill one-another
Shall know when time puts them to test.

Ode To Joy

Cross my heart and hope to die
Many’s the time I’ve borrowed your help
Many’s the time you’ve seen me through
This is just to say,
Man, I love you.

Delhi’s Civil Construction Safety Record & Metro

Take another look
I’ll be around
Stay the while
Don’t make a sound

Watch the deep
It’s there still
Shining above the dark
Shadow of the hill

Take another path
Take another route
Take another road
Traffic jam! Mixed fruit

This is a big city
It swallows us whole
The only time we stop
Better not be under
A crane or a traffic pole.

Won’t be long

When we wake up from childhood
And find things are not as they should
Do we stand and say it out?
If they don’t hear you whisper
Do you shout it aloud?

This time I will be heard
I tell you, this is absurd
The way things are going on
It won’t be long, it won’t be long.

Information isn’t meaning
So stop all that screaming
Can’t you see nobody’s winning
My imagination isn’t dreaming

Look where you’re headed
Your folks have already been
On this trip and dead-ended
Themselves to what could’ve been

This time I will be heard
I tell you, this is absurd
The way things are going on
I won’t belong, I won’t belong.

And So We Go On

Somewhere there’s a chance
That doesn’t need explanations
From you and me cause it’s easy to feel
Forgiven all around
Forgiven by the sound
Forgiven as it’s all around
Forgiven cause it’s surround sound
Everybody in this town
Everybody in this town
Makes their heart jump around
And so we go on, and so we go on
And so we go on, and so we go on

Take an another look
I’ll be around
Stay the while
Don’t make a sound

Watch the deep
Is there still
Shining above the dark
With shadows on the hill

Take another party
I don’t want to cook

Take another path
Take another route
Take another road
Traffic jam; mixed fruit

Is this a big city?
It’ll swallow us whole
If we call a stop.

Living in the holy land
Can’t you see it get canned?
2000 years of culture
Circle overhead like vultures
Demanding to pluck out eyes
As we stare at certain size thighs

Living in India
Just one in millions like me
Just for fun, just imagine
All that love, respect and freedom
Divided among three million
Sill my country’s up for grabs.

Too many quotes
Not enough séances
Too many presentations
Not enough production values
That’s where we’re headed
No one knowing where it ended
This river has the bends
Without telling where it flows
The stars button the skies
To tree-lined banks on both sides
Behind me is a beginning
Like so many others
Before me is an ending
That can only be mine.

Bad Brains

Bad brains, bad brains
Gonna beat it all out
Gonna stick it all up
Gonna gum up the works
Gonna kill it if it shrieks
Gonna hit it if it jerks
Bad brains, bad brains
My brains gone to town
Can you explain
Bad brains, bad brains

Dead River Body

Across the bridge
Can you see the water
Under the foam
There’s a river flowing
Next to your home
Dead river, dead body
Dead river, dead body

Washing vegetables
In the water
Black water,
White cucumber
Do you remember
They threw coins
In the river
Dead river, dead body
Dead river, dead body

If you’re hanging around
At night you might end
Up face down
Yeah, right
In the water
Dead river, Dead body
Dead river, Dead body

Warm chemicals
In my blood stream
O happy blood
Sounding out
Foam-flecked seashells
Float in the breeze
Another induced dream
Nicotine drenched clouds
Where rain comes down
Enchanting an amused smile
Paints her face with lies.

I made a lampshade

I made me a lampshade
It took all night and day
When I wasn’t working on it
I simply sat and stared
Till bit by bit, it began to grow
Each time I added some more
At last it began to take shape
By then I’d learned to gape
At it for hours on end.

Not Everyone Who Wanders

Go from pain
In a shell
They can’t explain
You must be well

Yesterday’s clouds
With their bloody lining
Are mental shrouds
Intertwining

Coiled together
Breed apart
Running forever
From the start

They like to roam
Not everyone who wanders
Is lost to the unknown

Legacies

So they ripped her flesh in birth
But the fruit were bias
The river ran deep
Deep and red in it’s death

Men were born no more
No more than they lived
But flew back to the system
For reasons only they knew
Power replaced no pain
While the fever ran cold
And tears ran so free

What could be left?
What could be done?
Ever.

Birds hit the wall
So their souls were united
Oppression, they screamed
When last sighted

Men left behind words
In silent hallways of truth
Words of learning ran amok
Anthems to revolution stood
Up words in effect
While outcasts strayed
To the edge, hand-in-hand

Their history in their creation
And their creation in limitation
Stood hollow and empty
Yet tall, by design and definition

Time was swollen
Winds began to shift
Uncovering golden visions
and original symbols of light

Times were wrong
Sanity was suspect
The edge was too close
It had to go wrong

The lights were across
The river in spate
The silent boat drifed
While fingers grew roots

Shedding all vestiges
Some screams to the wind
Same stories every night
Forgive me for I have sinned

Our father who would not exist
Fearing multitudes in need
Long since made to desist
Say naught of my call

Wrought-iron wafers slip
Along their memories of life
Leaving behind mense rust
In alleys of fate seized
Raped was her call
Wild-eyed before her kin
Her back against a familiar wall
Cold steel began to fall

No more should deeds bury
No more should colors dry
No more should outcasts recall
No more should words be small.

The need
To reflect
On life
Is every warriors
Strife

From creature comforts
To the horrid sort of danseuse
From narcotic chanteuse
To sheer verbal abuse
I’ve passed through my mind
Every kind of woman and even
Regretting missing those I could use

S. stood and stared

S. stood and stared
At accusations and fingers
Pointed at him and his sins
Till now in the world

Be gone united
Feel free divided
Stand straight
And get chided

When he was a boy
They never said
No matter what you do
Virtue is no reward

S. stood and smiled
At his confusion again
They knew his mistakes
But couldn’t explain the pain

It came and went
Until every memory
Was marked ‘sensitive’
Till he had a human moment

My Love

My love don’t bring me diamonds in the night
Suck the marrow from the core when my steel’s too tight
Or maybe she’ll bring pearls in her ovaries, lenses
Inferiority complexes and stage fright
By when she would’ve left me to make it all right
My love don’t bring me diamonds in the night

I don’t mind the owls

I don’t mind the owls
I’m just walking my way
I know where the mushrooms grow
And I know this is the end of today

Keep out of my head
Or hear me shout a lot
Camelot had nothing
To do with this

Keep out of my head
Stay out of my mind
Keep out or you should
Prepare to meet your end

Once I held my breath
Nothing to do with this
I had the power
You had the need
And I stayed away
From your greed

Keep out of my head
You don’t belong
An accident, no blame
My visions can be wrong
Still my mission’s strong
I keep my distance
I keep my silence
None can be freed

Cardboard construction
Of courage
Jig your tree
Become free
From liberty
Roads go on
Forever using
Milestones of pain
Along the way
A running whisper
In the middles
Of your life
That the end
Is coming soon.

On The Bike

Riding a light beam straight into darkness
Soundscape following me round the bend
Swinging between what I know and know not
Arc lights tremble like driftwood ensembles
You know, you can’t tell if its heaven or hell.

Don’t want to suggest
Something negative but
I think I understood
What we should and
It don’t seem good
To carry on this way

Don’t want to say
There’s no reason to stay
I must do something
That seems to carry on
From where I left you
Yesterday; yesterday
Come what may

The way we go on
Reason to be strong
Sickened by stresses
Oops! In another mess!
What’s all the fuss?
Today, ever since yesterday
There’s not much to say.

Tears

We ring your eyes with evidence
Washed up from the shallow grave of your sins
We fell when they crowned the prince
We flash when the usurper wins

We climb the mountain trails of history
Making our symbols on this moonlit tree
We broke out when the smoke rolled in
We announce the triumph of the free

Within the electronic tube of image
Or hidden as emotion amongst soft pages
We open the warm brim of your heart
With women fight their many stages

We link expressions in the face of a lifetime
We mark her departure from him
We stood, a small price at the brink
Of isolation, watching the sun

Every circle
Would straighten
Itself out
If only it knew
Where to begin

First there was an opening
Now there’s a concern
Somehow trouble and I
Seem to get along

There’s something screaming
There’s something inside
It’s so strong

Your breath burns my skin
Forever, that’s how long it’s been
Since I killed anything

How do I ask you my reasons
When I know you’ve been
Through the worst and
Why do I open my mouth?
Why don’t I open my eyes?
And see you there

It’s because I am
Makes me this way
Don’t look now,
You’ll catch me
Arm-deep in your head
Searching for your heart
Which if I tell you
You’d hurt me right there

Finally I’d say
Sod the tears
If I had to go
Well, it was anyway

Shell Talk

Mother Venus asked a crab
What it was doing in there
(He) Said, ‘Im securing my shell
There’s an ocean out there
Can’t you see, if you hold me up
You can still hear it roar
Enjoy it but understand
I’ve got to live in it
Until I can get out of here
Leaving behind sounds
That are empty as hell

Milestones

22nd Milestone
Childhood’s end and
They all end up like me
Watching time for
Some meaning to life

32nd Milestone
Sound makes my bed
Hate collides with hate
You’ve just settled
For the year-long rage
By refusing to accept
This single outburst

42nd Milestone
“Bus; stop!!
Let me down”

I Went Out

I went out stupid today
I went out to the marketplace
I lost when I should have sold
Now I can’t go back tomorrow
It’s true: everybody is a waking suicide.

Just Deception

I spend my time
shamanizing everything
Floating conversations like
Breadcrumbs on soup
Nah! I don’t wanna change
I wanna like myself
When I change
Others might like me instead
But have I changed
And what has it got me?
Do you see a new line
Upon my face every year?
My mother refuses to relax
She says she’s preparing for death
And I alone carry stories
Of what might have been
I spend more time
Describing how I spend time
Thinking up more ways of description
Oh, it sure feels good
Even if it’s all just deception

Urban Digression

We all came from a village
Once upon a time, all of us
Executives and MBAs divine
Your fathers dug the earth
But it takes interest rates
For you to measure its worth

Is there no prayer that works

For a restless imagination and lonely heart

Is there no way to reach the end

When you face pain even before you start

>

On a tumbling staircase

My screams made spiral sounds

With a hint of fear

Freedom from Freedom descends

I close in captive relationships

Which abused my morals

For just looking.

I've Been Had

Shrieks?
I burnt your curtains
Broke your telly
And smashed your face


I should’ve known better
The beginning of the hunt
Always comes
To the end of the chase.


I would kill
If I knew what I wanted
So far gone
This is my reward

No more lies, only anger
I’ve been had

Life In Delhi

I came to Delhi last.
From train windows
I grew childhood associations
From Delhi, I went the most
In all four directions
And returned to rest

In Delhi, I grew the most
From boyish wastrel
To the husk of a man In those windows
I kept my signs
From those rooftops I painted designs
(Needless to say, on the sky)
On those staircases
I heard voices
Stopped to pee

I miss those elevators
That never seem to work
In these colleges
I learnt to rock
From these markets
I learnt wholesale talk
On these roads
I learnt to ride
I also broke a tibia and fibula
- period.

Dig-ability Factor

The prophets say the markets push
The agents talk through their pocket linings
The artists create volumes of space
But only time tells tales of success

What Am I Writing

Beginnings, ends, middles; all notes over ten years. Imperfect prose, shorthand prose, easy poetry, involved illustrations, ruled copybooks and a stagnant pool of paper that is going nowhere. Maybe now I can get some fish in it.

More promises to myself to write down some angst and grudging portions of my childhood. Abuses of power that children notice, jading of younger energies in people already dead — social vampires who move unknowing through circles, sapping energy in the twilight.

Statement of Purpose?

ANTI-NOTICE

I don’t have any product to push
I don’t have any dogs to distribute
I don’t have a business to run
And I don’t have any furniture to sell
Therefore, you don’t have a reason to read this
And it’s best we never met

My baby girl

Messiah: The Second Testament to Punk Rock In New Delhi India

Five years back, Messiah supplied The Antidote to the rapidly developing formulae rock all around us. Sick of cover bands and heavy metal’s scared shitless intellectual content, they did their own music, our way!

Not that it was easy, from the manure beds of the Delhi college band scene, the band grew independent of trend. Experimenting with a bizarre range of selective covers and always with an emphasis on making our own songs, everything they played eventually ended up sounding like Messiah music. While they bandied categories like punk, grunge, alternative and new wave, everything was still distinctly Messiah — raw, in-your-face, and markedly different from everyone else. So too, were the regulars who followed the band’s progress simply because they were tired of what was all too easy to be real music.

The band grew from an on-stage trio to add a 3-member road crew, picked up a minor but dedicated following in Mumbai (Thanks Rishu!) and against all apprehension, awkward instances and disapprobation from fellow ‘experienced’ bands when they went into the studio to record The Antidote.

After recording the first album, The Antidote, life finally caught up with the trio. College was over, careers were calling and while attentions were divided amid these, things cooled down for the band. After a 5-year hiatus wherein Mickey (Bass) and Sumit (Drums) became professional sound engineers and Kush (Guitar, Vocals) added degrees to his educational qualifications, it was the intermittent jams that kept the name alive. After all, jamming together had got under the band members’ skin, like blood.

Now with careers, parents, girlfriends and everyone connected assured that the trio were not a dead-loss-to-humanity, the band is together again with new-found maturity, skill, equipment, strength and the same old purity of purpose. All that was needed was a trigger on the event horizon.

It happened and the band is back with a brand new single, Boys Don’t Cry, and pleasantly surprised at their brevity in the face of the same old insanity; a new and improved method to their madness; if you will. Still, at the heart is the same old Messiah, hunkered under new musical muscle, promise!

LYRICS TO "BOYS DON'T CRY":

How long i gonna cry?
As far as i remember boys are not suppose to cry.
My love still got force,
In one leap I can take off to Mexico,
C'est la vie you said,
What a great escape and you changed a little too fast,
But Gogo you should know
All the things I left behind to just be with you
With you

Loving as you were
One day you thought you have had enough
You have to complain
But Gauri listen this is no time to play games
Mired in your caste
You are trying to do your duty at your best
My dreams aren't dead
One is broken and others are obviously dead
Is out of sight is out of mind is out of mind is out of sight....