Contained

Mother always insists on tucking the pleats of the saree "just" below the navel. That's how it ought to be worn, she says. I don't like doing that. It shows off my birth mark. A broken cloud. Uncontained.

She pleats further up on my chest and I'm lost in my mother's quest for beauty.

Each time, mother sarees me up she promises herself to feed me more and more so that I flesh out more and more and the world would begin to look more and more amazing to my tired, tired mother.

Each time she sarees me up, she thinks of a happy marriage. She thinks of yellow knots.

Each time she sarees me up, I too think of knots. I too, think of claustrophobia.

Each time she sarees me up and fixes my hair, she transforms me.

I become my mother.


Now Playing:: Tumhen ho na ho......Runa Laila

Poetry of This Kind

When will you 

learn to understand that every word is a

closure, every word a mere reminder of a 

hopeless memoir that could have been. There's

no longer a poetry of illusion, not even love's

auld poetry of assured happiness, only a certain 

a kind of poetry has hit my taste, one that I find

in dogs, one that I've found in every carnivore which

is resolved to eat out of hunger, but then eats more,

out of greed. Throw a piece of chicken to a dog and

see how it eats. Watch it tear! Watch it bite! 

Watch it chew! Nothing exists for it anymore,

not even Time. When the flesh is gone and the 

white revealed, wait as it settles down for a 

love making of a longue duree. It licks and sucks and

sucks and licks until, the white, supple with all the 

sucking splits in a single bite and the dog

in a final act of vengeance bites more ravenously

into the white, this time well assured of a salty

after-taste when it has licked the marrows off,

and in one swift sweep of the universe 

the crumbs are gone too.

Now Playing::Hum hain rahi pyaar ke........Kishore Kumar

Day Three

To see you amidst others is a torture.How 

shall I break open my mind and let you in

and make you stay for a while? Is it too

wayward, too selfish, this search for love? 

You said something in that disconnected gathering

and for the first time in the evening I became

aware, aware of your laughter, aware of the deep

knotted mound of your throat. I traced your voice.

I traced my tonic. Did you notice me at all today? 

There was a song in my mind, I was trying to 

contain hysteria. There's a hint of cigarette smoke

in my hair, and a deluge of verses in my mind, and

one winter night to ask you, 'Are we serious, then?'

Now Playing:: Piya tora kaisa abhimaan...........Hariharan

Day Two

I think of you, my gaze fixed at the bookends,
a gift from another friend, who was quick enough
to extract a promise to not let slip prose in between,
it's meant for poetry alone, he said. I've lost touch
with him, I know where he is, though. He, too, talked
about revolutions, about things that I cannot learn,
about things that I cannot, may not, and will not
remember. Why is it that you strike root in these
trivial details? What if the revolution fizzles out
in spite of you? Where shall you whet your appetite, then?
What if the revolution takes you in completely and you
disappear without a trace? Whom should I apply for
help, then? I'm worried to death. But if you come back,
we'll meet at the same place and talk. And if you don't,
I cannot and will not belong to any other.


Now Playing:: Aakhon se jo utri hai.....Asha