wordstalker

2011-07-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

The man is locked away in a diary

Written by me

For this standard words

Can only be unlocked

By your sharp looks

Through that curls of hair

Smelling raspberry and olive

Scattered by a breeze

And my breath

Epitaph

2011-07-04T03:18:00.000-07:00

Another rain from another time

There are no universes with a roof
You drank from the moon I have buried
For the dreams in it, poisonous
You are addicted now, for
You have nothing to say about me
But at my expense you made lot of jocks
The rain is hilarious as it pours in another time

There is nothing to hide now
The leaf is as green as it can ever be
The forest is as dark as it can ever be
But still I walk in my sleep to a poem
I have never written, for
You will understand them if I recite
But, no, I won’t, because I can’t break
My image of toughness or arrogance

There, dear, is my grave. Come, read the epitaph
Life is what made me and broke me
Life is what given me a grave this beautiful
And I am thankful to you both.

.

The Journey

2011-06-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

Every tree is

Part of a great journey
As every leaf is
Fraction of
An infinite green

Map to a great
Journey
The branches
Mould into a
Space not fixed

Rain travel through
Roots to leaves
Whispering the
Language of clouds

Every leaf is there
For the journey
As the sun soak them
In golden silence

2011-06-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Dry land to

A bed of emerald
-Monsoon

Dry branches to
A green length

Yellow bird is
Playing
With rain drops

News of an attempted murder

2011-05-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

(You may not hear it in any news)

A thin string in

The neck

Gloved hands are

Dark

Bitter

Angry

A train broke

The silence

Opening me

To a death yet to come

I am happy to be here

In this eye of hurricane

Dark

Bitter

Angry

The string chokes

Opening me

To a dark desire

Engraved in my loneliness

Remote Love

2011-05-16T12:08:00.000-07:00

Night

I loved her

Through my phone

We are together and apart

Alone in the midst of a web

Hot and cold at the same time

Made love in between

I loved her

Like a cold wind loving the

Dark night

Whispering to the

Split bamboos

The final mourn escaped

From her lips

Reached my ears

Heart

Hard on

It split

Spilling my identity

Hot, rusty

My body crumpled

As an antique ship

A scrap set to melt

Traveler

2010-09-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Traveler, I can not ask you, now

To be here with me, spend some time

Since, I am buried under this field

For a thousand years.

But I can tell you

Through the bright flowers

In this field, that, how history

Shattered this place for years

I can tell you through

This small stream, that,

How lush is this place

And even daemons loved it

I can tell you through

Every rock in this place, that,

What a rumbler is this castle

Telling stories all night

I can tell you through this

Mountain in the east corner

That how a shadow move

Like a snake is this place

I can tell you through the

Chinook wind, that,

How mystic is here at

Every winter and early spring

But traveler, now I am lost

And buried

In a quadrate of solid darkness

That, I can not understand you

From your foot steps

That who you really are and

Which trails you will suffer

The pain in your eyes

Where they came from

Traveler, I can not ask you, now

To be here with me, spend some time

Even if a second before

Your toe touched my heart

Traveler, I am buried and then lost.

Nocturne

2010-04-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

My burning stigma

Effaced by her touch

A headless horseman

On a gothic painting

Passed through

Our aroused silence

She embraced me

Escaping from the chill

My body taut

Fingers entwined to

A ball of fire

Ignited by her red nail polish

Breasts on my chest

Her heart

A primeval drum

Pounding with the rhythm of

Our mating dance

I kissed her nape

Breathe the scent

Molecules of desire

Loneliness and sweat

Eyes closed

I stood on the shadows

Hearing only

What her body told me

I wanted to swim

Across her body

She understood

Her hands encircled

My neck to drop me

Into her ocean

We kissed

A burning tongue

Etching her shape on

My abdomen walls

I lost her there, but

I know she is waiting

A half-moon on

A pedestal of darkness

Mumbai – 9/11

2010-03-20T02:25:00.000-07:00

The guns are awaiting
An accurate moment

A chillness
Frozen the time
To make every target still

Rusty road
Smoky walls
Yellow-black auto rickshaws
Red buses, metallic cars
Trucks, an ancient palette of
Red, Yellow, green, violet, blue

Motor cycles and handcarts
Stench of urine
Pan Masala and beggars
Sharp edges of
Pouting structures
Busy moving eyes, legs, hands
Flabby arses
Doves scattering like an offbeat song

It’s time to fire

Bullets penetrating through
Hearts and disappearing into many dreams…

2010-03-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

1

flaming stairs
keep climbing
burn alive
till
sparks shape
a figure of you

2
Words faces
hands
steps legs lips

smudge – weaving
a shroud
so lengthy

3
A wave long dead
resurrected

- where is the sea?

Bombay, a March Vacation

2009-11-21T06:11:00.000-08:00

Bombay, a March vacation
Met Sreya Sankar
In a double ducker bus
Shared a seat, lines of a magazine
Taste of some poetry
She told me of various mangoes
Experiences from her fruit store

Bombay, in March heat
Hot saucepan of
Bodies and buildings

Bombay, in March heat, we met again
Walked long walks
Shared peanuts
Silly laughs and
Browsed through
Church Gate second hand book shops
Bought Michal Ondaatje’s
The Cinnamon Peeler, once

Bombay, in March, a bitch in heat
Felt it in my spine
Eyes on her breasts
Hands on her shoulder
Wanted to feel her dark lips
Wanted to taste the mangoes
From her tongue

Bombay, in March, my last vacation night
We left Silky Bar, drunk
Carried her through the beer
In a Premier Padmini
To her apartment
'You smell like a mango'
'You smell like a mango'
- She, drunk in the car
I was enjoying her breast on my shoulder

She vomited in her bedroom
For me to clean

Bombay, in a March night
I slept alone in her sofa, drunk
Morning, she made coffee
We made love on her hard bed
Done it again and again till noon

Bombay, in a March vacation
Train to Pune was late
At the platform
Reading Cinnamon Peeler,
A hand touched me from behind
‘Where is Sreya Sankar?’

Bombay, a March vacation
I looked back into her past
A chill drilled holes in my heart
Loud cries
Dark crimson pool of blood
Half nude girls
Violent sobs, shouts
Hands, legs, sweat bodies
Red eyes

But she couldn’t hear me
But she couldn’t see me
But she couldn’t reach me
Then she died again

Bombay, a March vacation
A seat in the Pune train was vacant.

Transparent wings

2009-11-11T07:55:00.001-08:00

Trapped in a tight
Screw like passion,
A black moth

Eyes focused
Yet distant
You lay on
A moonlight rug

Black moth
Fluttered around
Transformed
As my passion
Rested on you

Filling you
With
Transparent wings

Rain

2009-10-24T08:19:00.001-07:00

When
Angels dance

God
Smile upon us

Rainbow Station

2009-10-22T06:12:00.001-07:00

This railway station
Stops every train
The tickets can be reserved
But can’t be cancelled

This station is built on the
Breathe of silence
Even the horns
Whistle and talks are silent

In the platform
No green or red flags
Those who miss the right train
Becomes the porter for a life time
Bearing the entire load

In this railway company
No track is fixed on the earth
They never know the dirt
While hanging on the misty clouds

My son first saw all this
And told me
I still wonder
Who the station master is!

Last breath

2009-10-13T05:37:00.001-07:00

Shadows of
Burned out stars

Touch
The silence
With
Their last breath

Gallery

2009-10-01T08:16:00.001-07:00

There is a picture

Me with my baby, Louisa
One year old, in my flat in Paris

There is a picture:
Me with my parents
My father, 50
My mother, 40
In our home in London

There is a picture of me
With my friend
Her name is Carla
She is from America
We are on holiday in Spain

There is a picture of me
With my husband
He is young
He is tired
We are in our car in Paris

Louisa looks at the pictures
Louisa looks at me

There is a picture of me in her eyes
Me with my silence
In my home in heaven

History Book

2009-09-25T01:15:00.000-07:00

Sitting on a history book
Swords scratched my bottom

Potholes, dust, heat,
Blood, horse hoofs,
Camel dung, war cries,
Rape, death, conquest

Sitting on a history book is horrible

Post Script to an Accident

2009-09-23T00:29:00.001-07:00

A narrow pencil
On your colourful walls
Sketching lines
Not so correct, direct or sharp

You lay here like a butterfly
Pinned to a white board

My eyes burned
Seeing your daughter
Drawing on the wall
You must have restricted

A pencil intruding your
Perimeters
Even before you are some
Smoke or ash

Last midnight
A hump on the road
Wiped out many restraints

bare land

2009-09-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

In the bare land
shadow of
an aged tree

Sun
sand
mirage

Sun
sand
mirage

Every dot of the sand
hot with memories
of an old wilderness

Letters were black

2009-08-19T07:11:00.001-07:00

Letters were black

So are the words

They became a platoon
And started the war
Burned entire pages
Anthology
Language
Town, country

I have gone underground
Fearing poems may
Betray me and kill

Letters were mean
So are the words
So are the poems

The Road to Noyal

2009-08-18T08:11:00.003-07:00

1

Road, a blazing black strip

And a wayside sign

- Noyal, 20 KM

Sleeping in midday heat

A lust burned inside me

Seeing the raw magnificence

I urinated in the dry soil

Amorously touching her with my

Warm arch of urine

Slowly something spread in me

And somehow felt, I am pregnant

The village

Grown in me, minute by minute

Second by second

Along with her history and hope

Small huts, bright colors

Graceful Tamil slang,

Sugar cane fields, dry lands, buffalo, rats

Grasshoppers, crows, bullock carts

Tube wells, tamarind trees, bicycles

Folklores, culture, music

- An entire village within me

2

Yesterday night, burning

With feverish hallucinations

Yelling and vomiting

Everything I carried inside for centuries

Came out, making my room the village

Small huts, bright colors

Sugar cane fields, dry lands,

Buffalo, rats

Grasshoppers, crows, bullock carts

Tube wells, tamarind trees, bicycles

Filled my room

The road to Noyal coiled and coiled

In my room like placenta

I shut tight my eyes and lay curled

Warm, as in a womb

A horn shook my room

And a wayside sign glowed

In the beam of a passing truck

– Noyal, 0 KM

*

Noyal – A Tamil Village

2009-07-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

am raining

Rain is rain is rain
drizzling on my face
dripping through my eyes
to the gutters
of black and white memories

GO

FIND UR WIND
HUG
GO WITH IT
TO THE HORIZON
STILL
ORANGE WITH
THE SMILE OF
FADING SUN

its a shadow
of me
of my liquid self
i flow and flow

A KISS
MELT ME TO THE CORE
WHERE I STILL AM ALONE
WET
LIKE A MOUSE
IN A RAT TRAP

I TOUCH U IN ME

am raining

2009-07-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

Earth
Glows on the
Tip of a green leaf

Where
A sparkle of dew drop
Dangles

The halo of wet soil
On a frozen
Moment

alchemy

2009-04-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Drizzling midnight with
Pradeep and Kavi
Sharing the eerie silence of
Kozhikkode beach

Silver sand
Cement bench
Orange street lights
Rain
The odor of the armpit of
Vasco da Gama
Vodka
- Cocktail of our friendship

From the unkempt hair of Pradeep
Saline music
Trickled to the bluish sand

There was no sky above
For Kavi
To conquer a starry night
Slowly
He retraced his footsteps
To translate the hollow streets beyond

With reverence
Pradeep touched the ocean
Two surfs forming his wings

An alchemist
Spreading the wings
He stood over the ocean

Singing soulfully
‘Pottithakarnna Kinavinte Mayyath
Kettippidichu Karayunna penne…’

Transforming the
Alkaline water
Into sparkling alcohol

*
Hey woman, tearfully hugging
The remains of a broken dream..

Adam and Eve

2009-04-20T03:27:00.001-07:00

Trapped in a room

The cloud

Heard dialogues of

An old couple

Cold

It rained on the love

Scattered around the room

Matrix

2009-04-16T05:49:00.000-07:00

My Latino looking grandma
Died in a tram accident
My cousins state
I have her hair, walk and talk
Anyway I love them as much as
She cherished them
Then in a bleak morning
I lost them all in a car crash

My daughter loves bubbles
As one of my deceased cousin
And she love eating
Fish as another cousin
My daughter even looked at me
Like one of them did, long back
A slanting gaze end on my nose top
They are all here as my daughter
A vintage grapevine of gossip
Knitting us together

There are graves and graves of them
Where I can always meet my cousins
I dream them as sleeping in a dark box
Filled with melted colors or dark chocolate
But the stench is always is of disinfectants

I tell my daughter a bed time story
As I recite it to my departed cousins
We play hid and seek as we all
Played together in our childhood
Only, I wonder, why these nights
They glitter with a phosphoric density

My daughter bourn at a midnight, told me
All dark places will sparkle
When our breath knock on a mist so hollow
And she put the bunch of roses on my chest

Silver fish

2009-04-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

Trap
In the middle of
A stream

Caught

A lightning
To be a silver fish

together

2009-04-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

He kissed her
I wanted to taste your smile
How does a smile taste?
Like sunshine, this universe and the orbit

He kissed her
I wanted to taste you
How is the taste?
Like fresh earth dug out of
This bleak graveyard

He kissed her
I wanted to taste your shadow
How does a shadow taste?
Like honey, past and the present
Missing only the taste of
Our future together

Undeniable Ecstasy

2009-03-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

Search for me
under the bridge
under the streetlamps
under this vast silence
My long legs
for you to walk
my beehive to hide
from the dark Gods of
your night
My lips
glossy wet and
slippery for your taste

This street
a nightclub of
criss-cross bodies
you
make love to me here

Even if
I am afraid of
the Creeping smell of
your eyes
decayed tooth and
armpits

Engulf me with your lust
so pure, absolute and original
it is me and you
under this rusty bridge
in our only place of undivided attention
In our only moment of undeniable ecstasy

Dream in its beak

2009-02-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

A rat
In a mail box
searching for dropped dreams

Enlightened
A crow
Waits on top of the red mail box

Running around
Stirring the darkness
The rat
Slowly dissolved into a
Transparent whirlpool
Of dreams

By noon
The crow flew off with a
Dream in its beak

Angel

2009-01-22T05:27:00.000-08:00

When kids sleep
I saw them smile
Frown
And speak
To someone we never met

I tried to fathom
The depth
They travel
Through the tunnels of
Their sleep
Decorated with dreams
Colors or anything
We never remember
From a childhood so distant

Many times, I wondered
Whether
God just borrow their
Souls to be his angels
When they sleep

Holy Pregnancy

2009-01-17T23:17:00.000-08:00

I died of fear
And my neighbor too

He was born again, a stray cat
That ate a snake
That was I

I used my venom
He vomited, and died a second death

I was in his body
Not dead
But, etched on the cells
The soul never escaped
From the rotten body

In a Monsoon
Sharp raindrops shattered the putrid body
I ended down in a well
A pretty girl drank up the water
And got pregnant

A holy pregnancy

My Shark My Whale

2009-01-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

It rains, darkness
From the pond
My fish, winged and thoughtful
Ran away with the light

A shark saw this
Through my eyes
And went along

It rains, darkness
And after, light
In the light
Hungry shark saw the fish

Stunning light
After a rainy year
A year of pain

The rain ended
And hung down in the sky
A word,
Declaring all fish
Winged and thoughtful
Are whales

My fish, now a whale
My shark died of hunger

From Old Testament

2009-01-03T02:33:00.000-08:00

Bangalore

The mezzanine pub, Metro
yellow and blue
red strips on the wall
cool interior, low fast Rap
a pitcher of beer
silhouette of a couple kissing
- working day noon

Sharon and me
friends, politically apart
sat on a shady corner
talked in different accents

I listened to her, floating on the low Rap
Every word fusing images foreign

She came back today morning
from her country
wearing a gray T-shirt, still on,
stenciled across the breasts
- My Mind is My Own

At the bar counter, wine glasses
hanged like lucent mangoes, throbbed in a pain
her voice carried, and it clogged
with the corner shadows
I felt her dipression creep into me

She was drawing a Star of David
with beer spilled on the table
- Israel is a great country, I said, pointlessly
Sharon sat there in silence

- Let’s go out and conquer this city
for a change, I suggested, maybe
the travel, alcohol and me
made Sharon an Israeli again

She left me there, alone,
gone out to the busy MG Road, and
parted the traffic without a staff

m

2008-12-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

Last night
My daughter drew
A twin mountain
Out of an ‘m’

A sun shining
In between
Her smile lit up
The entire room

I first took her
In my hands tiny
Now grown up
To this four year old

Amazing, how fast
A small curve of a letter
Grow into a mountain
Inside a kid

I pain for a pain

2008-12-12T08:21:00.000-08:00

I pain for a pain
That is not a pain
A pain then is not a pain
Till another pain defeat
A pain reside inside burning

I pain for a pain
That is not yet a pain
I pain for a cold pain
That doesn’t hurt
Then I pain some more
My pain doesn’t hurt

I pain for a pain
Sharp and transparent
Steep and spiral
Hellfire and an ocean

I pain then for a pain
That is not yet born
Till my being metamorphosed
To a pain long described
By a holy book

Undeniable Ecstasy

2008-12-11T02:56:00.000-08:00

Search for me
Under the bridges
Under the streetlamps
Under the silence
My long legs
For you to walk
My beehive to hide
From the dark Gods of
Your mountain
My lips
Glossy in this dark
Wet
Slippery for your taste

This street
A nightclub of
Criss-cross bodies

You
Make love to me here
Even if
I am afraid of
Creeping smells
Your eyes
Decayed tooth and
Armpits

Engulf me with your lust
So pure, absolute and original
It is me and you
Under this rusty bridge

In our only place of undivided attention
In our only moment of undeniable ecstasy

Story Time

2008-11-18T21:43:00.000-08:00

A black moth
on windowsill

Sharing
a story with
my daughter

Both Immersed
in the story

My whisper
embracing them
together

Fable

2008-11-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time
in a village

Fearing the cot
grandfather
lay down to die
father lost his sleep

His stare
day and night
killed the sleep of
my mother

Frustration
in her eyes
made my sister and
me sleepless

Owl became
my surname
humiliation
swaddled our days

Yesterday
rewriting the
story of
our sleeplessness

My sister left
to sleep in
an ancient
pond of a prince

Now
my eyes are drowsy
feeling
the depth of
her rewritten story

Scarlet Nun

2008-11-03T01:28:00.000-08:00

For Sylvia Plath

She split

An ocean into two
Walked
To the depth

Called Daddy
The bastard

A line of ants
Followed her
Black letters
Trailing ants

She split

A lightning into two
Walked

To the grave
Her Daddy lived

Story long forgotten

2008-11-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

Story long forgotten
Retold by my baby

I never understood

Sad
She slept again in the womb

Herald of Absences

2008-10-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

I saw him sitting on a whale
Herald of absences

Wearing the mask of an old man
The boy
Typed his life with one finger

I met him last on a sea shore
Surrounded by crabs
Writing
The length of his evening

Grand Trunk Road, Bombay -1992

2008-10-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

Bombay, clogged with your smell
paint peeled structures
cinema posters, Premier Padminies
stalks of noise, shadows
scents of Grand Trunk Road

Cloth lines in the faded
balconies spilled bras, panties
dark colored salvars, kurtas and summer

The hijada pimp, wearing
glass bangles, long skirt
black dotted bandana
at the ash painted stairway
asked for an identification and taste

Pebble like rhythm of tabla
rumbled through my eardrums
So rude, the horns in the street
She disappeared into a narrow corridor

The door opened again
A Begum draped in a scarlet sari
emitting fumes of heady Pan
smiled like a vampire
Strong, cheap perfume
knocked me off for a full minute

Evening daylight sketched
protracted shades of our walk to a room

My eyes throbbed
Intruding into the dark
Puppet theatre

In the stale air
primeval smells of bedsheets
potpourri, talcum powder and sweat

She came close and I smelt me
in her, a stench of camouflaged pains
I touched her, feeling for the
puppet strings, glossy fake silk

In the dim lit box, poised
to strike, my body froze mid air

Above the creaking rough bed
Portrait of a man in sepia tone
White kurta, sharp moustache
twinkling eyes, watching
the celebration of glistening nude puppets

‘My Appa,’ she said

In a sweltering Bombay afternoon
aroma from the downstairs puri-bhajiwallah
swathed us like an invisible magic blanket
*

From My Novel...

2008-10-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

1

I have rented the old blue cycle from Settu’s shop. A damp yellow evening with cool breeze. Husky hum of pigeons from nearby Kutchimemon Masjid floated around like an untamed composition. When dusk fell, this symphony of feathers and throat fill the entire compound. I mounded the cycle, pedaling through the red dirt road, towards west. A cycle rickshaw passed me. Red, yellow and aluminum coloured insect with three big wheels. One of its back wheels zigzagging with age. I peddled the cycle, slow, passing a large Masjid pond filled with blue funnel- shaped flowers of African water lilies.
Straight, I can see the high wall of Armed Reserve Police Camp. Turing right, I reached beside the canal and again turned west to the beach. The canal is quiescent, after centuries of hard labour. In its depth, history lay as mud. From the remnants of the old white washed Victorian buildings around, ancient silence trickled. As if a hollowness so pristine settled in the marrow of the town, it spiraled in to the nether world calmly. I peddled slowly to the pier. These roads are always so serene. Listening to the glorious past, they remain quiet. Even not talking to the thick shrubs beside. This drizzle is bringing back my tonsillitis. The sour taste in the mouth is the sign.
Reaching Muppalam, entered the south bridge of the three, and pedaled straight. Passing the high wall of an old factory in the left, a smell, a whiff of tapioca cooked on steam reached me. I recognized it, when snakes open their mouth this smell will spread around like smog. I have a phobia against snakes and always loathed their oily roundness and wax feel. A shivering came out of the rain and fear possessed me. Looking around with fright, I have seen old Zachariah Hajikkagothi, the magician, sitting on a pile of dried marsh mallows on the canal shore. Hajikkagothi sat like a cluttered fog in his magic attire. I stopped and dismounted with awe. I have seen him with his snakes before, in my dreams. Always near the snake cages, or near the snakes, talking to them to scare me.
As per the legend, Zachariah Hajikkagothi migrated to Vattappally from Lakshadweep. He was the magician of a ship. One day, centuries back, walking through the ancient port town, Hajikkagothi reached Zachariah Bazaar. It was the land he searched for. But an eccentric foreigner to them, he was denied of a space in there. Still, Hajikkagothi left the ship, came to Zachariah Bazaar and turned south to Vattappally. Behind him were processions of cages. Different coloured snakes, cats and birds. Eventually he built his empire around them, alone.

Hajikkagothi was in deep meditation. A meditation only dead can achieve. He was in the ship. The day he had conquered the ship’s main mast. For the first time. From there he had seen the port city. Felt the destiny calling. From the dark horizon in the west, he heard the order. He climbed down to the shouts and cheers of the fellow sailors as a new man. A sorcerer with an impossible mission, but he was confident, for he had seen the future in advance.
Later Zachariah lay in the cabin hearing the outline of the sounds from the deck above. Shoshanna stood by the bed. She came into the cabin naked. There was no sagginess about her. Tall, black and balanced. She smiled and extended the right hand fingers. Zachariah touched them and held them lightly. Aroma of boiling meat from the galley filled the room. The cabin looked like an erotic painting he had seen somewhere. Glossy shapes flowing without curves in the soft yellow light of an oil lamp. She knew his fascination of woman’s breasts. Shoshanna’ breasts were beautiful and firm with big nipples. She touched her nipples with his fingers.
‘Does your back hurt?’ She asked kneeling forward on the rough matt.
‘It’s alright when I am not moving,’ He said looking at her.
She lowered herself towards him, moving like an animal on the matt, her breasts hanging down. She looked like a female wolf. Sparkling eyes. Sharp teeth. A necklet made of unknown stones around the neck. He pushed his hand out like a snake, touching it in the soft channel between her legs. She remained on all fours and he pushed his fingers along the warmth of the crease and held her backside in his hand. He could feel her place pounding like a fish on the shore. Wet and Slippery. The sound of water pounding at the side of the ship reached them, rocking the vessel in a slow rhythm. He removed his hand and with both sets of fingers began tugging her breasts like an apprentice ship bell-ringer, watching the tight dark nipples erect.
‘Put it back, please,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Your hand, and your fingers, for God’s Sake.’
‘I forget where it was’
‘You are a bastard, Zachariah. She caught my hand and threaded it like a ship through the channel to the port in between her legs again.
She moved on to him now, careful not to press her weight into him. Her tongue went into his forehead and touched it as though in some sort of benediction. She began to run it down towards the centre of his eyebrows. She was doing it like a holy ritual. A slow erotic body rite. Zachariah opened his eyes and a light from the lantern of lighthouse flashed through the porthole.
‘What’s that lighthouse doing in the middle of this port?’
Her tongue stopped at the bridge of my nose.
‘Do you want to know now?’
‘I saw the light in the window and it seemed strange having a building just for showing light to the ships. I could understand it in a secluded island’
She brought her tongue down to his lips. They kissed passionately then, for a long time. Wet. Slippery. Her hand gone down and had hold of him like a sailor holding a stiff rope. He was feeling explosive.
‘Why is it there?’ He asked.
‘Because I chose to put it there.
‘The lighthouse, I meant.’
‘Oh, it was built to…’
‘Yes?’
‘To guide ships to the pier. Years ago.’
‘Who built it?’
‘You bastard. Crawford. I know because I read it all up. Centuries ago. Turn over and lie on top of me now. Please.’
He did. They were exactly the same size. His eyes were an inch away from hers. He felt like floating in a marsh, before going down. Her eyes were closed. When she opened them again his eyes was still an inch away still looking at her.
‘Who was he?’
‘Zachariah, I feel terrible.’
‘So do I. Thinking of something else. Like the lighthouse. Who was this Crawford?”
‘All right.’ She muttered. ‘Crawford. An Irishman. An engineer. Oh, gently. He built the lighthouse. For the Sailors...
‘It looks like a phallus’
‘Zachariah,’ she pleaded.’…….Zachariah…’
‘Does he have a wife?’
‘Yes…yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Bastard. You really are. I have met some… ah… but you are the biggest. Oh, Zachariah...
‘Who was his wife?’
‘Mauve.’ She said and the pounding of the water at the ship’s flanks increased with the high tide.
‘What’s that? I couldn’t go on much longer. Not the first time’.
Her eyes were screwed up. ‘That’s me.’ She whispered. ‘That’s all I can let you have. I can’t tell you the anatomical name, but it’s me. My very end. You can’t go any further.’

Tin Fish and Sleeping Buddha

2008-10-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

Morning:

A Tin fish
Swimming in silence
Pleaded
Buddha to deduce
Emerging dreams

Behind Buddha
A halo
Waiting to rest on his head

For a tin fish
An ocean is a dream
A pond is a dream
Water itself is a dream

Since
Nothing can quench his thirst.
Buddha never wanted
To comprehend
A dream so liquid

Night:

There was a void between
Tin fish and water
Buddha and dreams

Meditating
Buddha dared not
To infer a void

Slowly the halo rested
On the stillness and
Knowing smile of Buddha

Away from water

Without answers
Tin fish
Slept with Buddha

Shadow

2008-10-17T04:19:00.000-07:00

A blade of light

Sliced the darkness

Fell down piece

- Shadow

2008-10-17T04:12:00.000-07:00

Pain of Growing Up

2008-10-17T04:01:00.000-07:00

The town looked more aged and gloomy.

Every thing looked right except my growing restlessness. Anger and sorrow filled the lungs. I expected a rope appear before me any time to climb up to disappear in to the thin silence above.
I slept sparsely, filled with dreams. Reading, characters question me of their existence. Places hound me. Later, the boy who ran away from the home, spider killed by a girl, pirate after a failed attack, a race horse shot when he is aged, a discarded car after an accident, a stabbed man, everyone will appear to pay homage to my sleep.
Morning, I will rent a bicycle from the near by Seth’s shop and browse the Town for hours - Beach road, Ground, Light house, the silent narrow roads between aged coir factories - and when loneliness tire my bones, I stop at Rajan’s Tea shop near Beach Hospital. A small hut made of coconut leaves, his shop was always alive with politics-surly leftist- or cinema gossips. Whenever he feels up to it, Rajan will tell me amid endless coughs and beedi, of the town’s past communist leaders and their visit to this small shop.
His father was a communist, and participated in the Punnappra- Vayalar Communist uprising of 1946. From him I understood, in terms of its role in the course of the political destiny of Kerala, Punnappra-Vayalar is the biggest struggle of its kind. Estimates put the number of casualties on both sides in the armed confrontation between the army of Sir C.P Ramaswami Iyer, the then Diwan of the erstwhile Travancore State, and Communist revolutionaries in Punnappra and Vayalar at around a thousand. Rajan’s father was one of them.
My politics was different. I was trying to interpret the politics of my body, my adolescence. It was like reading a book without understanding the meaning of it. I just felt it, unable to understand.
I just heard him, of the injustice of sweeping the issue away from the independence struggle, telling that the activists, throughout their struggle, had not raised slogans against British imperialism. Then some times the discussions will take an another tack, about instigating the cadres to face the bullets alone, an act of cruelty since all the leaders escaped from the scene after hatching the conspiracy to attack the police camp.
I was not aware of the politics behind it. But I was aware of the pain in Rajan’s eyes as an orphan he had suffered. Now only a yellowish black and white photo of Rajan’s father hung on the tea shop’s wall: eyes staring ahead, ears listening from the martyrdom.
For them nothing changed socially even after the bloodshed. Everyone lived in the same huts as before, same hunger ruled the lives, same fear attacked them, and same social injustices prevailed.
Rajan’s family also belonged here. Living in a small uncompleted brick house, with mud encased courtyard, goat’s cage and the smell of fresh coir, his wife and two kids helped him in the shop.

Anjana was Rajan’s sister in law. It was strange, the feeling, seeing Anjana first time. Her eyes locked into mine for a moment and a frost wrapped my heart. A chill touched my spine, breathless and frozen; I fell in to a dark pool of solitude. Fragrance of old coconut oil spread as a thin mist from her hair entered my nostrils connecting me with a new sense of body. Slowly the chill turned into a pain, unbearable and infinite. My loin seemed to be in fire; a smile so feeble escaped her lips and touched me. Her dark body with round face and protruding breasts through a long blouse and skirt transformed the emperor with papaya leaf sword into a man.
That night, in my dream, I have seen an antique port town with a pier. The sand was gold, everything glittering. From the gaslights a shy light fell on everything casting a shadow and glitter. Above, the lantern beam from the lighthouse circled as a white tail of a jinni. The sea shore was empty. Only the sound of waves repeated rhythmically. Slowly overpowering the lingering silence a foghorn sounded. A ship with two vast wings appeared on the horizon.
Waiting on the old pier, I have seen her disembark and walk on the water to me with faceless black men and women like a panther. Fragrance of old coconut oil, Smokey smell of Copra, pepper and rotten sea weed filled my nostrils. She was wearing a mist so thin, which melted and evaporated a mile away by my breath. I extended a hand to touch her, and everything diluted and spread on the sea as an iridescent carpet.
A fire so hot melted my abdomen. Loneliness so cold froze my heart. Night, sweating and numb I lay staring at the spiraling fan above like a screw tightened in to the air.
It was the first pain I wasn’t disclosed to my grandma.

Chronicle of a Witness

2008-10-17T03:56:00.000-07:00

My experiences with death started on a Sunday. My father was in government service and this time we have shifted to a small village. A place nature painted with different tones of green and gray. Here my childhood synchronized with the rhythm of nature for the first time. We have lived in a large spread of land with a pond, mango trees, banana plantation, a big tamarind tree and several other small trees. I was the emperor among them and I ruled the kingdom with a papaya leaf sword.
I was alone in my shell. One lonely afternoon I have sketched a boy soldier’s picture in my bedroom’s wall from a Russian Children’s book. He became my guardian angel from scary dreams. I talked and talked to him of my dreams and fears. He must have disappeared under the stones when the house demolished for reconstruction later.
Thankachan came to our home regularly with his Amma and slowly merged into our household as a member. He was young, strong and entrusted with the role of an elder brother. He taught me to ride a bicycle, swim, raw a boat and to catch fish. I have followed him everywhere like a faithful puppy. It was a great learning experience and without my knowledge I have touched nature’s gentle fingers through him.
First time I have seen blood through a microscope was at Varghese uncle’s clinical laboratory. He was a handsome man with beard and sparkling eyes and had the lab in a small line building near a tailor shop. Once when testing the blood sample of my sister he allowed me to look through the microscope. I was awestruck. Something like little bedbugs in blood made me terrified. Even if he has explained me of blood cells and all, it hounded me for days. The odd shaped things traveling through my vein made me creepy. In sleep they came out of Varghese uncle’s microscope and formed a dominion inside me. In murky liquid of my horror they existed without any compassion. My Russian boy soldier was the only comfort.
By the time I have settled into the new diagram of life, Thankachan patiently listed to my complaints and tried to sort them out. When we have bought a big valve radio Thankachan and my father placed it on the shelf away from the reach of small children including me. At that point of time I never thought that radios always remember me of the death of a loved one.
It was a Sunday night and I was sitting in the veranda with my father listening to the radio. Thankachan was doing something nearby. Suddenly he started vomiting. My mother asked him and he said nothing. Then his friend Ravi, our neighbor came and said Thankachan ate a wild poison fruit betting with the friends that he will not die.
But he failed for the first time. Next day when his body arrived from the hospital in an ambulance, his serenity made me shivering. My eyes tried to break his tranquility and find a motion. Instead I have seen a small fleck of blood near his ears. Suddenly the entire surrounding froze. The chilling touch of red creepy bugs from Varghese uncle’s microscope slowly started to slink to my brain. A pale light enveloped and carried me into the caves of unconsciousness.
In a hot day – frozen cries and barking of a wooden bell in the background was the sound of death.
I have not seen him buried. When everything was quiet there was a white dhoti hanging in the cloth line. I tightened it around me like a shroud and cried. I cried alone for him- as one cry for his own life.

Chronicle of My Grandma

2008-10-17T03:50:00.000-07:00

He has created the heavens
And the earth
With the truth,
And has given you shape
And made your shapes
Beautiful: and to Him
Is the final Return

- The Holy Qur-an

God has endowed man with unique aptitudes, faculties and capacities which raise him at his best to the position of vicegerent on earth. The land between the sea and the trellis of water flowing into it – was a gift to him. Obscure memories form Paleolithic age to modern history made the sands of this town silver white. My quaint little town is gracefully old now.
A small seashore town. Cool, aromatic, antique, brackish, and regal. Two canals end to end of the township, roads and connecting bridges were its signature – quiet, beautiful like my grandma. Both were content, spiritual and loved and ruled us with their heart.
Call for prayer from the Mosques, smells of coir, old pepper, kitchen and salty heat were the day. It ended under the soothing old blanket of my grandma at night. I called her Angumma in my language. I was the favorite spoiled grandchild from an army of different aged grandchildren from her Kingdome. And stories at night were my privilege. My summer holidays were always filled with narrations of her past, Arabic and animal stories.
When about three, my schooling started at home on a Vidhayrambham Day by Teacheramma. An old, tidy and scholarly lady lived alone in a small house nearby. My youngest uncle was like a son to her and later a will bestowed all her possessions to him. As per tradition most of us young ones started writing the first letter on rice by her. Still I can hear Teacheramma’s faint laughter and smell of betel leafs emerging from the dark corners of our ancestral home. Speaking in a slight Tamil accent she too narrated stories and past. In our home, there were always an aura of art, music and literature.
My grandma lost her husband at a very young age. He died of tuberculosis, forcing her to live alone with seven small children. The youngest was only seven months old. Living in that big house, even with her brother was not so easy. The scars those years were made etched to her eyes for ever. Nevertheless, with enormous willpower she kept the life flowing for them. Seasons changed and children got settled but nobody understood the pain and fire she locked away in her core.
It was not the only resemblance of my town with my grandma. Like her, every mark of pain concealed, it lay confined to its past. Many times, I felt they merged inseparable, intervened and surged into the ocean like a stream of roads.
The town rain is a beautiful experience. Sea with mountain like waves, a lighthouse immense in its structure and drenched as a scarecrow, football fields with rain water, coconut trees, bridges – especially Muppalam – the three bridges together near the sea shore, canals, crows, cows, bicycles, cycle rickshaws with its insect like look, lazy people with beedies in their hands, gloomy school children with their wet backpacks, silence, a parasol above the old tranquil structures - all participating in the celebration of monsoon. As an artist molding sculptures in an enormous space, sky with its cloud exhilarated the ambience. Monsoon with its drizzle and fury made everything fresh and sparkling.
My grandma’s mood was always good when raining. She conversed with every drop and comforted them to settle in the new atmosphere of fresh earth. It was nature and mother speaking through the chatter of monsoon. She heard. She understood. She shared.