कुछ महेंगे ट्रॉली बॅग में

कुछ पोटली-संदूको में

ख्वाब तो हम सबने क़ैद कर रखे है.

दिन गिनना तो कभी सीखा नहीं

और अब तो साल गुज़र चुके है

भूल गये है कि ताला कब लगाया था.

एक वक़्त था जब यह एहसास था

कि जो है जैसे है, वोह महफूज़ है

किसी और को ना हि दिखे, हमारे करीब है.

कभी रेलवे क़ि पटरियों पे

कभी टूटते चलते बसों में

उसी की टेक लगाकर रात काटते थे.

आज वास्तविकता कुछ और है

हार की निराशा से, रंज और विवशता से

हमारी पोटलियाँ भारी है.

तालें आज भी लगे है,

जिन्हें खोलने से हम कतराते है

सोचते है कि जो क़ैद है उसे क़ैद हि रहने दें.

खुल कर जीने की आदत कब छूटी, यह भी भूल गये.

Back where it all began

Standing there on the terrace, the early whispers of winter in my ear, I was thinking of us. When I looked down at the courtyard, I saw it come to life with a DJ, the veiled women and all of us dancing our first dance together like our last dance. You see memories are like an army waiting at the gate, waiting for a single drop of the fist or a call to attack so they can charge in unrestrained. So in that one moment, I could see Cabiry teaching Govind how to belly dance, Philip’s futile attempts to play a few English songs on the console, Sarah’s sagely advice to Johann on not smoking, Josselin’s imitation of Ranveer Singh’s Ram Leela moves. I saw red wine on the windshield looking eerily like blood, our little game of guessing what colour the next fireworks in the sky would be. I remembered Shakti. I remembered Gerti and Anna. I remembered a place and a moment that would never again be.

Did you know then that we would never see Shakti again? Do you know where Gerti and Anna must have gone to since then? One of my complaints with life is that all of us will quietly grieve, fall, and lose in different corners of the world and nobody else amongst us will possibly even know. After all the happiness we shared and all the cheer we brought to each other, we will never have each other’s shoulders when we need them. What I do know though is that people as beautiful as you will find strong shoulders and deep-running friendships to help you beat back the maelstrom of life.

You may not have known this but each one of you has changed me a little, and when I put all of that together, I realize how everything that started that new year’s eve was to change my life forever. On that cramped dance floor of On-The-Rocks, in that classroom where we rolled our eyes in resignation when the prayers were recited, over the many drinks on that terrace in the biting cold, beside Esme’s twinkling eyes, Sorcha’s ready wit and Lilli and Sarah’s chirpy banter. When I walked through those lanes of Jodhpur, I walked again with you. And that’s the thing, you didn’t just change me, you changed that city too, indelibly.

Maybe one day all of us, some of us at the very least, will find ourselves back there together. A ‘revival,’ as Sarah would call it. Maybe then, we will get to wipe off the old imprints and leave fresh ones. That would still be a different us. Not the ones that sat on that terrace laughing tomorrow away and wondering exactly what it was about Josselin’s lighter and Chilly’s rear.  

When the homeless write their will

Let it be a quick end
On foreign roads and an unfriendly chill.
Let it be an unremarkable grave
Hastily cobbled by strangers who
Have somewhere and someone to get to.

That incomplete love of mine
Let that be buried too.
To be desecrated by the
Unapologetic pissing vandals.

All those partially written letters,
May they serve as a bed
For naked bodies to grind against
Making love on the sly.

If the dust of passing years cloud the grave
Let the only names visible be those of
The drunk despondent lovers, whose
Scribbles will outlive their pain and mirth.

Let no poet ever find me.
May I never be the fodder for the
Metres and metaphors of those, who
Smilingly let their truths be devoured by their rhymes.

A few will wonder, yes.
But wonder has a way of losing its voice
In the harsh howls of time.
Let that voice too lie in rest
Anonymous, uncelebrated, utterly untainted.

See this night through

The thump in your heart doesn’t lie.

You can hear it through the laughter

on the brave face you’re wearing tonight.

It is louder than Comedy Central can ever be.

It drowns out the pressure cooker whistles

and the neighbour’s droning generator.

And it only grows louder because

the day has passed and a long night awaits.

You never were one for sleeping much

and now you’re left with this loud ominous beat

at an hour when all sounds retire.

It’s the rhythm of a pendulum that counts down

to an implosion you can’t assign reasons to.

All you know is you can see it coming

and you have retreated as much as you can.

Now you can only sit and wait.

One of the two things could happen.

It will build up to a deafening bang

Spitting out little shreds of meat from your chest.

Or you will finally learn to sleep.

Happy fortieth, Stan

Stanley should have read the signs before he booked the tickets and packed his bags. When Michelle and he were looking at possible travel destinations, his first choice had been Coorg, while hers had been Goa. Goa got its way and Coorg settled for rejection. It didn’t surprise Stanley. Their relationship had an unspecified pattern; if they didn’t agree on something, he would eventually agree with her.  For once, following her lead did not ruffle him. She could decide where they went but the reason for their vacation and all the celebrations that were to follow were entirely his. It was his birthday.

“So it’s all decided then,” cooed Michelle in his ears the night before they were to leave.

“We are staying in Miguel’s shack. God, I can’t wait to see him, it has been so long. He is so sweet, when he heard I’m visiting he moved his guests to another shack so we can stay at his. Isn’t that just amazing? I have picked up a nice shirt for him. That’s the least we can do for him, right?”

“Of course, that’s really kind of him,” Stanley agreed emphatically. He had learned over the years that merely agreeing to what a woman said was never enough. You had to find the right expressions and energy or they would see right through you. If a distant insignificant relative of hers died, you had to wear that look of devastation to go with your commiserations. If the conductor had short-changed her on the bus, putting your arm around her and saying that it’s okay was never as effective as punching the pillow and cursing the corrupt “fucker.” Yes, it’s one of those rare occasions when you could use that word and expletives in general without earning a scornful stare from her. He wondered why this was never written about. All men did that. You read up on relationships and the Mars-Venus theories, you would find it all about women faking it in bed. He never understood why no author had caught on to the distinctly male act of faking it in everyday interactions.

Michelle’s impassioned recital of their itinerary didn’t let him hold on to that thought for too long. She was determined to make this big. From staying at Miguel’s to setting off Chinese sky lanterns to bring in his birthday and ‘losing the plot’ at the Tantric Turntables gig by the beach, it was all set. The Facebook album for their Goa pictures would be called ‘Goan with the wind,’ after her favourite book. “Trust me on this, you are going to thank me for giving you the best birthday of your life,” she grandly signed off. Stanley chuckled at the sudden recollection of all his previous birthdays, before he had met Michelle eight months ago. She didn’t need to know, she had never made the effort to know. Their relationship had just two stories, her story and their story. On days, he was convinced that both were in fact, just one story. He had his moments in a story that was hers.

Later that night, unable to wait for the morning any longer, Michelle decided that their meticulously planned holiday would be advanced ahead of schedule. The party had to start now. She fixed up two glasses of her favourite Cardhu. She mixed it with ginger ale. He preferred just ice but the memo to him was to be open to new experiences, while on holiday. So he complied. The music was turned up loud.

“Come here, dance with me. You’ll love these guys. They’re called the Psychedelights, oh I just love how they transport me into this space, where I can just be.”

It made sense. It was his birthday and he was supposed to be having fun. So he trudged toward her and tried gracelessly to match steps with her. She seemed one with the music, moving to her left one moment, whirling another. Her hands moved like they had surrendered to the tune. And he just moved awkwardly, conscious of every step, awed by her fluidity. He felt stiff as he laboured along because he was supposed to be dancing.  

What had happened to him? His mind raced back to a time, not so long ago, when the discovery of a new piece of music filled him with a joy he couldn’t contain within himself. He would note down the artiste’s name, look up the lyrics online and create a playlist. He would dance without feeling exposed to invisible eyes. He would move unrehearsed and happy. And here he was, feeling like an intruder who had walked into someone else’s moment. The songs, the celebrations, the place, the dance, nothing belonged to him. He was an outsider trying hard to rediscover a sense of wonder and abandon.

Suddenly, a queasy discomfort took over him. He was no longer sure how he felt about the impending turn of a year in his life. Perhaps, age wasn't a number after all. 

I did not write today

I did not write today. How could I? The happy stories have all been written and the vagaries of life, increasingly, have a sameness to them. There are no mountains or seas left to escape to. Strangers no longer smile in jest; they just walk past, their drooping shoulders burdened, their barren eyes hoping to finally sleep a night.

The newspaper guy duly deposits more noise at my doorstep while I stay under my quilt inside, too afraid of what it might carry, too sick from a permanent throbbing sense of foreboding. But it has all been written about. So I did not write today.

There is fatigue from the empty discourses of a higher purpose, from those shallow expeditions to the sanctified soul. Nothing yields. Causes sprout like weed, causes sprout from weed. They are celebrated in angry songs, loud exhibition and commemorated, before the sober purge begins. The governments crumble under questions and dissent. Dissent tires of itself and questions age into history. There are no answers I can write about.

I did not write today. But everyone else seems to have written. About the crushing lies of their lovers and a longing that is senile from having waited a bit too long. About the white noise of their loneliness that makes them sleep on the bathroom floor of their marble palaces. They have created literature out of everything. From the squalor of the man who scavenges by the sewer to the oddity of rat poison by the artist’s bed.

Who do I write about, they’re all claimed. The dying soldiers, the drunk poets, the sad gentry, the loveless seekers, they’re all taken. I did not write today because literature is born from art. And art out of passion. My passion is spent. 

I did not write today. I don’t know when I will.

The ceiling is leaking and the tea is too cold

It's the middle of the night,
I'm not sure what time exactly because
I haven't kept time or kept up in a while.
This bed is yet another strange bed
I have gotten used to waking up in.

Making friends with silent lobbies
and leaning on indifferent walls has
its own nuances, though.
I had never before wondered if the
bell boy sleeps at night when the guests do,
though his eyes droop under the weight of sleep too.
Or if the silent gardener who is barely spoken to,
misses having a workplace romance.

There is sameness in strangeness.
The people I meet, they're all weary.
They don't want me to know but their words let it show
that they've hedged on what tomorrow might bring.
Their lives are consumed by mere habits,
and passion is just another thing they read about
and marvel at, between their forced highs.

They're all home but seldom at home,
and if given a choice, they would all rather be
elsewhere.

Elsewhere, that promised land.
Where roots run deep,
Where homes stand,
Where there is comfort in a lover's hand.

This place, this strange place,
is strange to everyone.
The bell boy, the gardener, the smiling musician,
they would all rather be elsewhere.

Years ago, a writer told me through the hazy air
of an afternoon, heady with the pretense of art,
"why do we even need roots?"
I gleefully agreed.
After we said our goodbyes, he went home
and wrote about his charming wife and the dog.
I read it much later on a humid night
in a smoky hotel room.

I couldn't help but feel betrayed.

I don’t sleep much these nights

These days, every day comes with a fear

of the impermanence of meaning

in your shape shifting words.

 

Hold my hand as an act of pity, lest

I sink deeper into the quicksand

of our conversations.

 

Talk to me like you would to a child;

explain every sound, every phrase.

Break it down so I don’t wonder

if your laugh was the idiom

or the veil.

Don’t trail off with a look,

I can read words, not vacant faces.

Don’t leave it to me to discover

the codes and the subtext.

I wish I had the sanity and control

to tell your art from your lies.

Don’t leave me holding on to a mangled mess

of masked expressions. 

It’s slow death.

A cheat sheet to 'getting functional again'

Those spaces that she lived in,
fill them with things.
Lay a rug over her footprints
Repaint the walls she leaned on.
Move that bed around, change the sheets.
Blacken the windows,
And memories of her sun-kissed smiles.
Drive down a different road,
Take the longer course so you don't
see the coffee shops and bars she loved.
Change your number, delete the playlists.
Pretend you never loved her taste anyway.
To those asking, offer no more than a smile.
If they ask another time, never see them again.

Fill your spaces with things,
for no person can.
Come morning, if you still wake up in pain
Make that call, plead, and undo it all over again.

Don't come to me for the calm in me.
I can't envelop you in cool assurances
and the gentle music of peace.
I can't caress you and wash you ashore.

Come to me with your madness
Show me the glint in your eye that
tells me you will plunge headlong into me
and embrace the darkness and fears of the swirl.

Bring me the frenzy of a dervish.
Bring me the hurt of a thousand unfulfilled loves.
Love me like I'm flight, I'm the fall.
Love me like I'm a raging whirlpool.
Tame me, chain me and take me home.

Reconciliation

One day, we all end up on the couch

Letting a stranger in on our fears and angst.

Paying someone to assuage our pain because

those we love are beset by their own.

One day, we all stop fighting

We tire of building an imagined future

and sharing them with people who

never stay.

The journeying stops too, one day.

We realize the roads can only carry us so far.

We never get far enough from the questions.

We never get close enough to the answers.

We speak little, as conversations lose to conceit.

We accept defeats and let them find a home in us.

We wear our scars and learn to love them.

We finally concede that life isn't entirely ours to live.

I'm flying at 38000 feet above sea level.
I've been higher before, of course.
I've soared and glided and seen
A bird's eye view of an obtuse world.

It's a rather pleasant evening except
For intermittent bouts of turbulence
That threatens to jeopardize my carefully constructed
Cosmetic peace of mind.

I don't want to rock back and forth and get thrown off by
Surprises out of thin air, but
I will be, says the weary stewardess, unless I heed
To her third reminder to wear a seat belt.

She is rather unfriendly, she spilled a drink on me.
I like her still, I would rather she sat down
Next to me and spilled her guts out.
A sign of pain, a sign of life, would be
Welcome in the programmed hum of this machine.

Manufactured heat so we can eat our food warm
Controlled temperatures too, our comfort comes first.
Seats that recline, tray tables that fold
Belts that keep us from straying,
Oxygen masks to help us breathe, should something go wrong
Life jackets to keep us afloat when we're all at sea.

Everything imaginable to keep us unharmed
To feed our illusions of flight.
Man didn't discover flight.
He tamed it,
So we would never have to fear a free fall.

Maybe science is progressing well.
Maybe one day, we won't need to fear
Falling in love either.

There is nothing left to do

His name is Selva but you called him Chinnu. Or at times, just an aii. For two years, he has been showing up at your doorstep unfailingly with a cup of tea, brewed just the way you like and served just when you want. You have taught him a few English words. You have always had plans to rescue him from the unending cycle of penury that afflicts people like him because there aren’t enough people like you. And one morning, Selva is gone. Just like that. A day passes, you think he is unwell. A week passes, you think he has gone home. A month passes, you think he has run away. You keep an eye on the papers, what are they saying? Is there a missing report? An abduction? A murder? A trafficking case? Or burglary? A brown boy, maybe 12, maybe four feet, maybe frail-ish, what are the papers saying about him? You take a moment and consider the number of ‘maybes’. Yes, the boy who showed up at your doorstep every day for two years. Your losses mount.

This season isn’t like the others. It isn’t raining as much. There aren’t half as many rainbows. Sure, that means fewer traffic snarls but also much lesser hope in the mornings and much lesser consolation in the evenings. Your mind harks back to the summer which wasn’t like the earlier summers either. And spring neither. The winter had been tepid too but at least you were younger then. When you look around, you see fields that are unsure whether to sway in anticipation or droop in despair. The lakes which once gurgled are now barren and wrinkled, punctuated by little pockets of water that look like open infected wounds. The monsoon of romance and memories? It has passed, with no word of a return. Your losses mount.

The gates are rusty, the paint chipped and the only personality it carries is due to the red ants who solider along on them, in a strict rank and file. Could they possibly believe that there was work to be done and that things could be set right? Delusional. The solitary teak stands at the far end, watching over the house. He’s the only one who has survived your journey from a boy to a troubled man. Every time you looked at him in the past, he seemed to be saying, ‘don’t worry boy, go on, I’ve got this.’ Now he is old, no longer useful, and must be made to step down from the watch, however he may resist. In a few hours, your mercenaries arrive and you watch them hack into every pore of his body. They pull him by his hair, stab him, puncture wounds into him, and dismember him. Aged and feeble, he goes down without a protest. You stand there as a party to the successful obliteration of your childhood. And your home. Your losses mount.

He barely speaks to you these days. You hear him when he is annoyed that his bath water isn’t warm enough, or when there is no salt in his food, or when the Communist Party wins an election. He blames your mother for all of that, of course. Every time she exits his room, she has a mischievous grin on her face like there is an inside joke. Yes, he doesn’t share a bed with your mother any longer. Their marriage is firmly tethered to the bare essentials that constitute the smokescreen of a happy family. You realize where your fear of commitment comes from. When you see him try to get up from his bed and struggle to walk, you want him to stop clinging on to life. Just let go, you want to tell him. This isn’t the same man. The father you know, has been dead for a while. Your losses mount.

You have always lived with losses. You lost what you had in the past. You will lose what you have right now. Unlike some people you know who possess, nurture and create something beautiful out of everything that matters to them. You fumble awkwardly, say the wrong things, allow your darkness to pervade everything you touch, and mourn its loss later. You are neither a mother, nor an artist. You’re not even a creature of habit. So you don’t know how to get used to this unending spiral of losses. Nothing prepares you for it.

Nothing prepares you for the goodbye. As she gets into the taxi, you know promises are lies. That was the last embrace. That was the last kiss. That was the last time she lied to you. She will speed away in that black taxi and then on a plane. She tells you this is not the end and that she will give it her all. You say no such thing because you know better. A new life awaits her and it has very little room for you. A new life awaits you too. Of piecing together moments from the words of a song. Of beginning to say something but stopping midway because it reminds you of something. Of finding a person in places. Of laughing at the things she said, laughing at yourself, laughing at the four walls and the cobwebs and the mirror because, there is nothing left to do.

The losses mount and there is nothing left to do. 

Serendipi-tea

She keeps waltzing in and out of rooms. I try to keep up with her for a bit, then give up and station myself near the kitchen platform. It’s a Sunday afternoon, I’m sleep-deprived and haven’t had a half-decent cup of chai in a week. Maybe she senses my deprivation. Or maybe that’s how she is, always coming up with the right things to say at the right time.

Would I like some tea, she asks. I nod with the excitement of a boy scout. Would I like some tea? Would the dying like a little serving of life? I follow her into the kitchen. A pack of ginger-lemon tea bags comes out of nowhere. She throws me a few other options but my heart is set on the thought of ginger tea. The aroma of potent ginger that wafts in with a sting, the tang that numbs yet soothes the throat, my mind starts dusting off the afternoon daze. She keeps talking and moving around in a gentle unrehearsed dance. I could get used to this.

‘Should I let it boil some more?’ She asks.

I pretend to be in control as I murmur a yes. Beads of steam form in the water. I’ve been here before but this time, I feel at home. In her busy chatter. In the promise of what’s brewing.

Should she leave the tea bag in the cup? No, I say. She picks it out with a spoon, winds the thread around the spoon and gives it a tug to squeeze out the last bit of goodness. She does that with a deftness that catches me by surprise. How did she do that? And how had that never occurred to me? I’m embarrassed but fortunately, no one needs to know.

We sit back on cushions and talk. A long-forgotten memory revisits. It involves tea, conversations and promises. I brush it off and return to the now. We talk art, cupcakes, school romances, piercings, and her flight the next morning, in no particular order. I feel the tea coursing through my spirits. I forget the revolting heat outside. I think of all the ways I had imagined this afternoon would end. And then I think of my being here, drifting happily in the heady sips of her tea. She smiles at something. She asks me if I’d want to carry a few tea bags with me. I refuse.

I decide I’ll keep coming back to her for more.

Scrub. Flush. Repeat.

Poop stains. So many of them that the toilet bowl looks a dirty yellow. I stare at it for a minute and feel vomit rising from my stomach, through my throat. This is no place to live in. I dart out and lean on the window sill. The towel-clad obese dude from the bext room nonchalantly walks past me and pats my shoulder with a smile. The bathroom door clicks shut. I stand still, wiping the sweat off my forehead. I feel dirty, I need a shower. It would help if I could get inside that bathroom without fainting. Actually, scratch that. I'll get myself a chai. I walk to the kitchen with my mug, my mind in a state of precarious caution. I count my steps, read what’s written on the mug, file away the to-dos in my head. I do whatever it takes to not think of what I saw earlier.

It’s an apology of a chai. Milky, syrupy, benign as baby-feed. My mind promptly holds on to the visual cue of baby-feed. Thick, viscous, off-white. I look at the film of cream that’s forming on the insipid chai. I imagine a film of cream on my tongue, I imagine gooey baby-feed in my mouth. Before I know I’m imagining the poop stains on my tongue. I run to the sink and I puke with a force that causes my lower back to momentarily snap.

‘Are you okay, bro? Can I get you something?’

‘I’m good. Just something I ate.’

‘Watch what you eat, bro. This isn’t the season for it.’

‘I’m good. I’ll go lie down.’

I walk back to the room, turn the air-conditioning on and take my t-shirt off. I want to take a shower. I need to be cleansed. But falling prostate on the bed is what I do. The room gradually cools down. The smell of the mosquito repellent wafts around.  I light up agarbattis and close my eyes. I’m not really here. No, I’m not really here, I’m somewhere else. On the hills, looking at the Nilgiris. A vast formidable expanse of blue hills. There is dew on the leaves. It’s so cold that a loveless couple seated nearby is beginning to rediscover the warmth of intimacy. I could stay here forever, but for a raucous interruption. It’s someone talking on the phone.

He wants a cheaper deal for his holiday. His discomfort is apparent. I can’t tell if it’s from the contents of his conversation or the itch from his balls that he is tirelessly scratching. He takes a break to examine his nails and goes back to scratching. Meanwhile, the Nilgiris melt from a verdant blue into stale green sewage in my head. Let me get out of here.

I walk into a supermarket that looks rather welcoming. I spend more time looking at the perfumes and soaps than I need to. I move from aisle to aisle, picking up nothing. There is a vortex in my head. The lady attendant stares at me rather sternly. I wonder why and then I realize I’ve been staring at a shelf full of sanitary pads for a while. I find it amusing and catch myself smiling in a mirror.

What would she have said about this? She always gushed over my absent-minded smiles.

‘There you go again, what are you thinking about?’

‘Huh? Nothing, why?’

‘You were smiling. What is it?’

‘Was I? I don’t know, I wasn’t really thinking.’

‘But you look so cute. Why don’t you smile like that always?’

And now, in that supermarket aisle, I realize what that smile looks like. Not bad, she has a point. Finally, I settle on what I walked in to buy, the toilet cleaner. Yes, if it’s to be, it’s up to me and all that. I pay the cashier and walk out with purpose.

I am bare-feet in the bathroom. I’m staring the toilet bowl down like a gladiator who is face to face with a predator. There is gunk under my feet. I can feel it eat into my soles. I try not to think. Dew drops. Nilgiris. Eucalyptus. Dew drops. Dew drops. Leaky flush. Eucalyptus. Slime. Nilgiris. Open sewer. It’s not working. Her smile. Yes, I settle on that. Her smile. The way she pronounces the word ‘delicious’ with her teasing lips. The drop of her shoulders when she laughs. I plod on. I keep scrubbing. The drop of her shoulders. The three-coloured hair band. Scrub. The nose pin. The loose curls. Flush. The pink shade on her lips. The wine that washes it away. Scrub. Her walking around the house in my boxers. The tautness of speech when she is sad. Flush.

I’m done. I fall back on to the slimy wet floor with the dripping toilet brush in my hand. Her defiant refusal to meet my eye that night. I’m tired. I sweat. I cry. I ball up my fist. I hold back a wail. Then I let go. I make a start.

How can you be teetering on the edge
Never falling, never staying on your feet?
How can you not be worn out?
From the every day and the day after?
How can you feel the things you do?
And still go to bed,
And still wake up?

Something tells me I’ll love you for a long time

She stands at the end of the room not taking her eyes off me, while I, head bowed, walk around in a mock trot, stepping only on every alternate tile. I can feel the stare. It’s not cold and scornful, but expectant and anxious. That makes two of us, I feel like telling her but she isn’t in the mood for conversation I suppose. I look up and finally face her.

‘Why the shoes,’ I ask her.

‘Not just the shoes, take off your socks as well. I want to see your feet.’

‘I didn’t take you for a cleanliness freak. My shoes are clean, you know.’

Now she is getting impatient. ‘It has nothing to do with that. I just want to see your feet. I know it sounds weird but it’s hard for me to explain. It’s like your fixation with zombie films.’

Great. I fell in love with a woman who was seated across the table at a business meeting, I got her number citing work reasons, asked her out a week later and now I am in her living room, waiting to get my feet examined. What’s with my feet? She doesn’t look like she is nursing a kinky fetish. Maybe she wants to know if my feet stink or if I’m wearing torn socks, which by extension would imply that I am careless about personal hygiene. I’m not but this makes me uneasy. She seems so anal about this ceremony that I’m worried the stray strands of cat hair on my socks might upset her. Wait, I know what it is. Doesn’t the size of the foot have a positive correlation with the size of the penis? No, actually, that’s the palm, not the foot.

What are the odds of her asking me to get out of her house and not seeing me ever again, because I refused to take my socks off? I don’t want to know. Let me just show her my feet and be done with it. So I take my shoes off, deposit them carefully by her shoe rack. Then the socks come off. I turn around and find her walking towards me.

‘Sit here, the light is brighter here,’ and she leads me by my hand to the centre of the room where there is a bean bag. I have no idea what is happening to me. By this time I have even considered and hastily dismissed the prospects of an ‘Audition’-style torture.

She sits on the floor in front of me and places my feet in her lap. She straightens out my big toe and the long toe. I’m mildly ticklish but I bite down a chuckle. She then examines the other foot, repeating the ritual again with the precision of a cobbler who is about to stitch me a shoe. Then, without a word or a warning, she bends down and kisses my foot. I’m not prepared so I involuntarily withdraw my feet.

‘What was that?’

She is smiling now, what a relief. ‘I’m in love with you,’ she says.

What? No, I didn’t see this coming. ‘Okay…I’m sorry…no what I mean is, all this is a little surreal.’

A bigger smile, ‘I know. But I mean it, which is why it was important that we got this out of the way.’

‘That’s great if we have, but what exactly is that ‘this’?’

‘You won’t get it,’ she says. The smile hasn’t left her face for a moment after that private revelation. 

I’m tempted to just forget the events of the past ten minutes and pull her into a kiss. But I need answers for the trauma I was put through. So I press,

‘Try me. I really want to know.’

Now she gets serious and lets go of my feet.

‘I have been in love thrice. Like, really in love. I’m someone who invests everything she has into a relationship, if she thinks it’s the right one. So I thought I was in the right relationship, thrice. Have you ever really been in love?’

‘Umm, yes. Once.’

‘Okay so you know how it is. The getting-to-know bit, the moving in together, the cooking, shopping, the evening walks, the conversations, the holiday plans and so on. You dream up a future with the promise of the present. And when that promise fades, the inquest begins. It happened to me thrice. It was the same pattern. The loving, caring, sensitive man would start turning slowly, much like your zombies. I would find myself letting go of one dream at a time, one expectation at a time, until their gradual domination of my life was complete. And when I would decide to walk away, I had to also take the blame. ‘You got him used to it,’ ‘why did you let it fester?’ etc. So I would decide to be more careful the next time. And then err again. Has it happened to you?’

‘Well, the specifics may differ but…’

‘O but you’ve been in love only once so you wouldn’t really understand,’ she says without waiting for me to complete. ‘So this once, when I was still smarting from a failed relationship, the third one, this person asked me if my men had a longer long toe than their big toe. He said if the long toe is longer than the big toe, it’s a sign that the man has a dominating streak in him. That’s when it occurred to me. He was right. All the three men had unusually long long-toes. And they were dominating, aggressive, all of that. I decided that moment I would never date such a man again.’

She pauses to study my reaction. I struggle to keep a solemn look.

‘You don’t have anything to say?’

‘It’s kind of different. I don’t think anyone thinks like that.’

‘All my rational, logical reasoning failed me so what’s wrong with this?’

‘True, but were you really going to accept or reject me based on the size of my toe?’

She smiles one of those beatific smiles again, ‘will you accept it as a quirk? I’m a normal girl otherwise, I promise. When one fails at love so many times, having a little hope gives her the courage to try again. It’s just that.’

What I want to do is wrap her with promises of velvet evenings and spring and merry music. But I settle for a long silent hug. Her hair has a familiar shampoo smell. Her breath normalizes on my neck. Her arm on my chest rises and falls to a rhythm. I gently break the silence,

‘So who was the wise man who told you about the toe-theory?’

She stays in my arms, eyes closed, and whispers, ‘I lied. It wasn’t someone I met. It was that babaji on Teleshopping Network.’

You are the verse I read

Here is a confession, I haven’t read the letters and verses you lent to me. Instead, I was reading you. I read, for instance, the note scribbled at the beginning of the book. There is a word struck out at the beginning of line four. Did that make you chuckle like it made me? The writer of the note signed off with his name but got the date wrong, I suppose. ‘Silly, adorable goof,’ did you say between a laugh? I noticed you have dog-eared pages three and five. I read them twice, hoping the words would stun me with the revelations they unraveled to you. Was it the poet’s angst at wanting to walk down a course far removed from what the world had saddled him up for? Or was it the perceptive discourse on what it is that a writer should write about, or should he write at all? Did it reveal an answer you were seeking? Or did the sheer force of the argument make you stop and think?

There is also a page that is torn ever so slightly. Maybe that happened one night when you fell asleep with the book open on your chest, and drugged thoughts of a young poet. Or maybe you mulled over a few lines for so long you didn’t realize you’d been clipping the page with your fingernails all along. On the last page, you’ve scribbled a verse. Is that yours? I spent several minutes looking at it, half amused at the carelessly thrown ellipsis. I agonized for long over the garbled first word of the last line. A lot hinged, and hinges still, on what I think it is. So I hope you won’t ever tell me what it is.

As I get to the end of this book, I realize I might have to revisit it someday to truly appreciate the poet’s work. My apologies, dear poet, for I was reading her in your words. I may have read her all wrong, but I’m just a reader after all.

Displaced

Your feet itch. It’s an itch unlike any you have felt in a month. You’re going home in the morning. You cycle aimlessly, smiling at strangers. Today, there is no ducking for cover when it rains. When it stops, you go out dancing. Your feet itch still and morning hasn’t arrived yet. You spend the night staring at a strange sketch on a door in a strange room you’ve let yourselves in to. In the soft lights, you can’t quite tell what that sketch is but it doesn’t matter. It’s just a point of concentration. It’s one of those nights when you let in thoughts that otherwise unnerve you. Your fears are tempered by the serenity of the face lying asleep next to you. As always, people comfort you the most when they don’t mean to. Tonight, tomorrow looks beautiful, because tomorrow, you’re going home.

When you step off the plane in the morning, you instantly seek out the familiar. The minty breeze. You let it into your cab despite the driver’s protestations that the air-conditioning is on and will need to be paid for. You are unhurried when you arrive at home. You take a walk in the yard, inspecting your plants and picking out weeds before you unlock the door. The room is dirty. The cat has thrown up. It’s not the sight you wanted to come back to but you banish that thought promptly. It starts drizzling a bit but you don’t have much time to revel in it. The power goes out. This means you can’t clean up the mess in the house. There is a day-old pile of dishes in the sink, left behind by your friend who was staying over in your absence. You haven’t slept a wink all night but there is work to do. Laundry. No power. Vacuum. No power. Dishes. You don’t feel up to it. So you decide to make your first cup of adrak chai in a month. But instead of your tea leaves, you find a packet of instant coffee in the dabba. Then you notice the steel dabba in which you’d left laddoos for your friend. They’re still in there, stale and smelly. More work. You notice two new picture frames in the room. You also notice there is more food in the cat’s bowl than is needed. That’s now how they like it. They like small servings, replenished periodically. Meanwhile, the cats themselves aren’t entirely sure about your presence. They tip-toe around you, alert to any sudden movements. You chide yourselves for thinking that they’ve forgotten you.

Exhaustion catches up with you. You want to sleep but you notice new sheets in the bedroom and unfolded blankets. Neither are yours. So you pass out on the couch instead. When you wake up, it’s evening already. You look at the dirty room, the stale laddoos, the dishes in the sink and the cat-food. Afternoon naps have never worked for you and today is no exception. You feel sick. It’s a gloomy day. It starts raining in sheets and you sneeze your first sneeze of the day. The familiar allergy is back. You pore over your phonebook. There isn’t a name in there that you feel like making a call to. So you fix yourselves a drink and get down to work. The floor is scrubbed, the laundry is done, stale food in the refrigerator and the laddoos are emptied into the trash. The cat food is replenished. The dishes are done. Much wiping, much scrubbing, much cleaning. The day has passed. Without one conversation. It’s dark outside. You’re tired. You don’t want to take a stroll outside because the roads are dug up. 

What you want to do is go back to the city you couldn’t wait to escape, a night ago. Home isn't the escape. Home isn't the consolation.  

I live with the shame you leave behind on my bed

Of late I've been wondering if this sex is making me sad.

Does it happen to you too when you sneak in quietly into my lane?

Do you feel everyone who sees you knows why you’re there? Does the lying make you hate us?

Do you wish you didn't have to do this just for an afternoon of being in my arms?

Have you ever wanted us to be naked in the same bazaars that we hurry through,

And make love with the stench of rotten vegetables washing over us?

We could tell the onlookers, “yes we are dirty but you are not to judge.”

Have you felt a slow rise of revulsion from your belly when you’re reading and

Come across a perfectly innocent phrase like, ‘between the sheets?’

Does it all come back to you like a foul guttural smell carried by the wind? One that you can’t wait to cleanse yourself of?

Is that why you’re always in a hurry to leave when we’re done instead of lying in bed and making conversation?

Is that why you wear a fragrance only when you’re leaving?

In my idle dreams, I don’t see you wrapped around me with the curtains drawn.

Instead, I am a husband debating with his wife if bhindi is a good idea for dinner.

When you visit and leave, I change the sheets, let the light in and spend an hour under the shower.

‘I could tell them all about us, I just don’t want to,’ I repeat to myself. It never works.

Do you also stop to chat to people about their kids’ grades and fuel prices,

So you could reassure yourself that you’re no different from them?

Of late I’ve found myself wishing that someone would ask me about you

So I could plead my case and win. Against myself.

Of late I’ve been wondering if everything we claimed we never would be

Is just what we should have ended up being. It’s just happier that way.

Do you suppose the east wind has blown over?

Three years ago, someone bought me a collection of short stories from Pakistan, titled 'Do you suppose it's the East Wind?' It was a well-thought-out gift for someone who was a sporadic reader with an interest in stories from 'across the border.' Somehow, the book stayed untouched and unattended to till today. It's not uncharacteristic as I tend to accumulate titles, even when there is no urgency to read them. This evening, I picked it up on an impulse. Five stories and a hundred pages into it, I can't help thinking that something is off.

None of the stories I have read so far has drawn me out of a reader's space and into the author's world. The stories and its characters seem strangely distant. At first I put it down to the translation. The originals are all in Urdu so maybe the English translation has robbed them of their depth and idioms. Or maybe it's something else. Maybe the partition- and shared-identity-narrative has run its course. These stories don't move us much because the wounds don't hurt as much. The next generation will probably see the neighbours as just that and not have to tie knots to the stray ends of our history. We may even realize that the partition is not the blemish we have made it out to be, but a resolution. Of course, by that I mean partition as an outcome and not an event, which will hurt forever. Maybe the next generation on both sides will be able to get along just fine without having to call upon the shared heritage and history. If so, such stories will become less relevant. They will always remain important but will no longer run through our veins. That healing might have started already.

Or maybe, I'm reading too much. Either way, I will persist with this book and let it speak to me in a manner it chooses.  

The Morning After

An entire night's worth of life had been erased. He remembered not a thing. The last confirmed sight in his head was having, what was probably, his sixth shot of the night. What had happened after that?

He had to remember because the circumstances of his waking up had greatly puzzled him. He had woken up in his room, in his night wear. The other side of the bed looked perfectly creased and slept-in. It was evident that she had slept by his side like every night.

He waded out of the room like he had the webbed feet of a duck. He investigated every room with the discerning precision of a crime sleuth. A crime sleuth who had spent the night soaked in a vat overnight.

She was gone. Doubly puzzling. How could his wife have gone to work like it was any other day? It was clearly not. Nor was the night before. Exactly what had happened after that sixth shot? For that matter, what had happened before it? He retched on the stairs. He felt vomit in his nasal passage. His head felt like a construction site.

Maybe it was his guilt that throbbed in his head. He didn't know yet what he was guilty of but all evidence (or the lack of it) pointed south. He had to pull himself together and piece the events together. What did he know? He had walked in to Hic!, the neighbourhood bar, to catch a game of football. BFC had played Mumbai off the park. Keshav Thapa, the talismanic import from Sikkim had dazzled with two assists and one goal. The game had ended at 7.30.

Status at 7.30: happy high at three pints of beer.

Then the first round of shots arrived. The local lads had won. The i-league was going to be theirs this season. That called for a shot.

The second shot arrived twenty minutes later because only pansies stopped at one.

Then there was a break during which a pint was emptied in the restroom and promptly offset with another at the bar. That is when the DJ stunned everyone with a rare Benny Benassi track. It was the track in which the vocalist kept mispronouncing 'hour' as 'How-er.' How he loved singing along to that. In a matter of minutes, everyone was on the floor.

A third shot was gulped down 'for Benny and the good old times.'

Status at around 9.00: Throwback to a young Travolta from 'Grease.'

His recollections after that were sketchy at best. A periodic status log was impossible. Much dancing had happened. The women had taken to him. He had complained about age 'taking the steam off his engine' to someone in the restroom.

At some point, his wife had called. The contents of the conversation had been wiped clean from his mind.

"Come here and dance, you old fart." Again, no recollection of who had said that.

The ketchup song. Those wretched steps he hated seeing on tv but didn't mind matching with her last night.

Wait, what? Who was the 'her?' And at what point had they kissed?

Was it before or after the sixth shot?

How the fuck did it matter? He had kissed her. Another woman. At the ripe old age of 45, he had crossed the line. Or had he?

No, no. His mind was playing tricks. It hadn't happened. Surely, it hadn't? Right?

But it had. What a kiss that was! He could still feel the part minty part beery taste of her mouth. Her body had felt like it would collapse into his arms any moment. He wasn't sure but it must have been something really important that interrupted it. Must have been the sixth shot. Good, so now events were gradually settling in a chronological sequence. But that solved nothing.

How had he gotten home? How had he made it to the bedroom? Where was his car? Who had driven? Where had the woman gone? God! Who was that woman?

He went hurtling down the stairs and out of the door. His car was right where it should have been. He ran back up and into his room. His wallet was on the table. Not a note seemed missing. Then who had paid? Was it her? So she had paid for his drinks and driven him home? Why? Had she thought she could come over to his place?

At that last thought, a chill climbed up his spine all the way to his shoulders, causing an involuntary shudder. And another more disconcerting thought occurred to him.

Did his wife know? It made perfect sense. The woman from the dance floor had driven him home, mistaking him for a lonely, rich guy she could get lucky with. But once home, she had come face to face with the wife. Much name calling had happened. The wife had called her a whore. She had unkindly reminded the wife of her inability to keep 'the man' at home. Then she had left in disgust. The wife had cursed him, her fate, her parents and Vijay Mallya before tucking him in.

She knew. If everything was in place and nothing was out of the ordinary, it was just a passive-aggressive build-up to the tempest that awaited him in the evening. Probably earlier, if she couldn't hold the rage in and took half a day off from work. That also explained why he had seen beetroot paranthas at the breakfast table. After all, it was his favourite.

It is sheer mastery at mind games that makes a woman treat her man with affected love on a day she plans to guilt-trap him.

He retched again. This time, in the bathroom. On the third attempt, he successfully threw up. The regurgitation brought some much-needed clarity. He had to address the situation. He had to address her and explain himself. He wasn't a serial cheat. He was feeling let down by himself. There was no excuse. She could punish him however she wished. He would tell her all this. He couldn't call her because she couldn't talk about it at work. It was too long for a text message. He couldn't wait till she got home because then it would all blow up in his face. He had to act. Now.

So he decided to write an email. Even if that didn't strictly qualify as a conversation, he hoped it would soften her up a bit by the time she got home.

'Hey honey,

I know you are furious about last night. I would be too, if I were you. I have no excuses to offer for what happened. I screwed up.

Trust me when I say this, I have never cheated on you in all these years. Until last night. I kissed a woman I hadn’t met before. I don't remember when I met her or what really happened. Looking back, it feels like a horrible thing to have done but I promise I am not having an affair.  

I was drunk. It was a moment of weakness and it just happened.

You don't deserve this. But can we talk about it and move past it? I know things haven’t been great but we could start working on them now.

Let’s talk, yes?

Love'

After much contemplation over the phrasing of his note, he sent it out.

There was nothing to do but wait. That made it even worse for him. Till that point, he had a sense of purpose, something he had to do to set things right. Now all he could do was await his damned sentence. It was the wait of a lamb at the slaughter.

Every few minutes, he checked his email. Citibank was offering him a platinum credit card. A Nigerian widow wanted him to inherit a stately sum in dollars. His wife was in no mood to put him out his misery yet.

More junk mails arrived. And after an agonizing wait and a dozen deleted junk mails, the note he was waiting for arrived -

'When you asked me to join you at the bar, I should have known it wasn't you speaking. That stranger you kissed was me.

I allowed myself to think that life had turned a corner last night. I am not so sure any longer.

I’m spending the night at Diya’s.'

It was resignation that pushed him to visit the palmist. This mysterious science, he hoped, would tell him his story with a clarity he was trying hard to find. Not one to believe in the wonders of astrology and palmistry, merely walking into the slight, gentle-looking palmist’s room felt like a defeat. The litany of predictions and advice barely made it to his absent mind. He realized the futility of his visit even as the sagely-looking man started talking. Midway through his consultation, he abruptly walked out with a half-muttered apology. Once out, he hurried his steps as if he didn’t want to be spotted there. In a strange city with nobody but a crowd of tourists milling about, he felt an urgent need to hide.

He could see a ghastly picture in his mind. He was in the middle of a court in session and a hundred pairs of eyes looked at him, passing their sentence even before the court could pass its judgment. They kept a safe distance, careful not to be in the same space as him but the weight of those eyes was palpable, causing him to slouch a little as he walked. As he rushed away with his eyes pointed at his toes, he hoped to forget all about having visited the palmist. He hoped to forget that he had been so weak.

That evening, he had found himself on the cold and unwelcoming floor of his terrace, smoking the carefully preserved half of a cigarette. He had been off smoking in happier times but it was yet another promise he had reneged on to escape his temporary hell. He felt the revulsion of a man who had just visited a brothel to make his loveless life bearable. Except, the dormant misery always returned with a ruthless fury once his short-lived escape was over.

His heartbreaks were no ordinary ones. They always showed up with a viciousness he could neither foresee nor defeat. They were not the outcome of a mistake or the fall from a missed step, but the tempestuous revenge of the wronged. Here he was, far away from home trying to deal with rejection all over again. He couldn’t take comfort in the familiar sight of his neighbourhood park or the long drive out of the city or call one of his colleagues and get drunk till the only worry for him was a headache from hell, the next morning.

Instead, he was on that gelid terrace floor, replaying a few words in his head. It was a dangerous game to play, for every time he played them back, he discovered a new ominous meaning. A loosely thrown comma became an emphasized pause, an ellipsis turned into reluctance and innocuous words transformed into diabolical puns. Everything sounded caustic. He tried to piece everything sequentially, every word she had spoken and his reply to each of them. He tried to cut through the mist in his head and decode how she had gone from “you have no idea how invaluable you are to me” to “I think our little story has run its course,” within two days. He tried but he could not nail down that moment or that turn of phrase which changed everything.

After a while, he gave up. He decided that he would wait for the answers to present themselves when they chose to. That was probably the cue, for that is when he heard the little girl sing. She was on the terrace next door, picking up clothes from the line. She was probably singing to keep herself warm. Her voice flowed in like it didn’t quite belong there and had been planted for a reason. It was like the waft of a fragrance completely out of place in the mustiness of that small town. He wasn’t sure she even knew the meaning of the words she was singing.

And summer will soon arrive with fanfare;

And burn your skin with its deathly glare.

And the rain will batter down in a torrent

And pierce every pore; it won’t relent.

The promise of tomorrow will only make it worse

For what’s within you is your curse.

So make of this day, what you will

The evening won’t wait for your heart to heal.

It was a song he had never heard before but it was one he knew he would remember forever. In that little girl’s voice. In that velvet whisper of a cold evening in dusty Mirajpur.

It brought upon him a stillness he had missed. Perhaps, certainties were not for him. He would need to eke out his comfort from words thus carelessly hummed and gestures of kindness, completely unintended.  

Between the sheets

He doesn’t know that I’m banging his wife. Every Saturday we head to the stadium together and cheer our team. He is a guy with deep pockets so we usually cap off the game with a pint at the pub nearby with him footing the bill. He gets off on that show of large-heartedness and I love my free beer. It is fun being around him but it is even better when he is not around. I get to meet his wife. Our modus operandi is pretty simple; she leaves home around the same time he does. He comes to the game with me and she goes out to her spa. When the game and the post-game beer are done, I head straight to my apartment, where she waits for me. Yes, she has a spare key. He thinks she is still out with her friends. Or as she puts it, he doesn’t think. After ten years of being married, one no longer concerns themselves over the details. What was once ‘going out to Cristo’s for the karaoke night with Neetu and Shraddha’ now gets conveniently abbreviated to just ‘heading out.’ ‘A late pitch for Yeslife Insurance due tomorrow’ becomes ‘working late.’ So he doesn’t ask. She doesn’t tell. 

She tells me, instead. About his depleting sperm count and growing annoyance at the suggestion of IVF. About the progress she is making at mending ties with her estranged father. She tells me how yoga helps keep her fit but what keeps her calm is lying by my side, talking to me. I listen, without ever proffering advice. I don’t think she needs it because she never seems to notice my lack of participation. In that respect, she is as selfish as I am. On days when I’m not in the mood to listen, I start kissing her toes mid-conversation. It turns her on enough to stop talking. She never asks me why I’m with her. In a way, I’m glad she doesn’t because I don’t think she will like the sound of my answers. She has the most perfect ass I have ever seen. When I hear all this talk about Pippa Middleton, I wish I could line them all up and show them what is in my bed. Actually, she’d probably like to be told that. At her age, she would like nothing more than being told that she has still got it. The message would need a little working on but I think I could make her like that reason. The second reason is that she is my friend’s wife. My friend drives around in a BMW, runs a successful management consultancy, constantly finds himself on the back pages for his golfing exploits and somehow manages to stay humble through it all. And his wife sleeps with me. Lastly, I like her because I am a selfish writer. Writers don’t care as much about material pursuits as we do about the pursuit of material. She provides great material for the stories I write. The last one I wrote about a father who lusts after his young daughter only to be consumed by remorse in his later life was almost entirely based on her troubled relationship with her old man. I was told by those who read it that it is my best work yet. It wasn’t good enough to be published though. All the publications I sent it to rejected it. 

That doesn’t worry me. I am convinced that one day, she will help me write a story that will have the critics drooling. I hope this fling lasts that long. I pray that he doesn’t find out before that. What if he does? I will lose a rich friend, a fuck buddy and a muse in one swoop. On second thoughts, what a great story that will make. I’m sure the journals will fall over each other to publish that.