December 26, 2013

Remember the walk you took one early winter morning

November by Ted Hughes

The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land
Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake.
Treed with iron and was bird less. In the sunk lane
The ditch – a seep silent all summer –

Made brown foam with a big voice: that, and my boots
On the lanes scrubbed stones, in the gulleyed leaves
Against the hill’s hanging silence;
Mist silvering the droplets on the bare thorns

Slower than the change of daylight.
In a let of the ditch a tramp was bundled asleep.
Face tucked down into beard, drawn in
Under his hair like a hedgehog’s. I took him for dead,

But his stillness separated from the death
From the rotting grass and the ground. The wind chilled,
And a fresh comfort tightened through him,
Each hand stuffed deeper into the other sleeve.

His ankles, bound with sacking and hairy hand,
Rubbed each other, resettling. The wind hardened;
A puff shook a glittering from the thorns,
And again the rains’ dragging grey columns

Smudged the farms. In a moment
The fields were jumping and smoking; the thorns
Quivered, riddled with the glassy verticals.
I stayed on under the welding cold

Watching the tramp’s face glisten and the drops on his coat
Slash and darken. I thought what strong trust
Slept in him- as the trickling furrows slept,
And the thorn roots in their grip on darkness;

And the buried stones taking the weight of winter;
The hill where the hare crouched with clenched teeth.
Rain plastered the land till it was shinning
Like hammered lead, and I ran, and in the rushing wood

Shuttered by a black oak leaned.
The Keeper’s gibbet had owls and hawks
By the neck, weasels, a gang of cats, crows:
Some stiff, weightless, twirled like dry bark bits

In the drilling rain. some still had their shape,
Had their pride with it; hung, chins on chests,
Patient to outwait these worst days that beat
Their crowns bare and dripped from their feet.



December 19, 2013

December 14, 2013

Cosmic

If a diver from outer somewhere
dives into the atmosphere
10000 years from now
he will find inscribed in the caves
and trenches
his own homelessness and loneliness
so that the story shall begin again
of our paths intertwined
so that all the stories will be of me and you only
and maybe in that way together we will be.

while
the buildings and trees come and disappear
like mushrooms
while
the sky changes colour like the northern lights.



(where i end and you begin by radiohead)

December 11, 2013

Landscape

The hillock over there 
With dry turf brooding brown ancient
hollow windy 
and asymmetric 

To all patterns and geometry-
a failed trapezoid 
toppled topology 

The memory of our endeavor
Bringing other memories
One forgetful evening 
The grasses seem ghastly 
Under the halogen lights.

December 10, 2013

Quitters, Inc.

Now that I am trying to quit it seems that nothing comes to an end..the whole attitude of a goodbye is goes missing when you quit. I hope you get me.The alkaloids sort of gagged your sunny hopeful attitude and took you to the safety of  that  interminable unchanging soliloquy heard behind everything.Now without it I feel that there is no way to say goodbye to the conscious now and retreat to that inner world. At least no way in style.

By the way any one trying to quit can consult  Shri Shri Prakash Guru Ghantal Baba Bangali Sealdah Wale .Really helpful.

December 6, 2013

Bengali Intelligentsia (read aantel)

Too often maxims and talismans handed down to us by great men of past become a straightjacket-used by the complacent bureaucratic order  against freedom loving and thinking individuals.So that the very liberal and democratic(a deconstruction of the binary opposites implied is welcome) spirit of the maxim is reversed.


The same is the case with Bengal.Decades after decades of Tagore , Ray , Vivekananda worship have turned their teachings into cliches and deprived the people of any challenging spirit.Who said that you can't be a better poet than Tagore, or a better filmmaker than Ray?.And why treat the Naxalite movement as if it were the  illegitimate  love child of the whole of Bengal? Could it not have been communist  adventurism? The whole growth of Bengal  is stunted by such a decidedly demented mentality.

December 3, 2013

Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think

The years have passed
Taking field notes of  the  hues of the day
The gait of the millipede, the smell  of burnt  hay
And the  occasional measuring of heart beats when she is around.

Thinking that you  are going home
Like  each of the faces on a passing train.
For them
You are  also a passing sight.

Preserving pain as if they were jewellery
In letting go you thought you were wise
But all hope inevitably fall in that precipice
You cannot step into the same river twice.



(The title is the name of an essay by David Foster Wallace )

November 20, 2013

It seems that I dont know a Thing

One day a lot of furnitures were  moved.
The house revealed some long lost treasures
Like a red ball from  childhood, a crumbled answer sheet of a failed exam etc
The afternoon sun came directly through the glass windows -now that the curtains were not in their places


One day she was married off
The night before we stayed awake
And decorated the courtyard with flowers and kite paper
In the uneven light of tungsten bulbs
The shadows were  dark and new
The floor was cold .. you could feel the sand beneath the feet

When they had returned from Honeymoon
They had brought green apples from the aeroplane
The photos they took in London showed a overcast day
He thought of a land where it always rains
And the water drips down the beautiful green apples


Then she turned up one year later
With a baby in her lap
And when she gave it a bath
The water turned hazy
As the baby splashed the water
It seemed like a photoshop glow effect in real life.

Then one day they cut down the guava tree
And built a new rcc house there
He thought nobody would use kerosene lamp anymore
In such a beautiful house
The petromax lamps were no more at the shop
Perhaps it was to do with the kerosene becoming blue.

Looking outside the window
He had a shiver as he thought of time
Everything is changing.





November 11, 2013

The abyss

If only you mattered to me more
If only tomorrow had the certainty
Of tomorrow only...
Why these repeated visions of an abyss
and my smallness?
Each sentence known or uttered
Never did justice
To what if feels like to see a freight train
Passing at midnight
Like makeshift houses
Each love was just a name
For the vacuum in my heart
An insatiable ambition
That always leaves me behind.


Stewisms

Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid. 
I see you lurking there on the periphery of my vision.
 But when I try to look at you, you scurry away. Are you shy, squiggly line?
 Why only when I ignore you, do you return to the center of my eye?
 Oh, squiggly line, it's alright, you are forgiven.

November 10, 2013

Scratching The Eternal Itch

"So why is critical  thinking discouraged?", one of my colleagues asked me.It is an inevitable turn any discussion on present day society takes after sometime.The immediate answer that I came up with -"it is the doing of the big mncs" seemed kind of lame.When confronted with such a straight forward question (which you will do if you discuss a lot with people outside of this art-blog-melancholia-unrequited love-literature sphere) and unable to end it with such ubiquitous quotes like "The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not"  leave a very bad aftertaste .Things that are accepted no question asked by anybody versed in modern literature and 20th century intellectual history seem so out of place in talking with the conformists/normal cool guys that everything needs a reaccessment.Thats why it is important to do it-to give yourself a reality check sometime.Though it maybe ugly and compel you to come out of your coolness.

So why is critical thinking discouraged? One of the answers that people -so proud to tag themselves as honest and hardworking-give is that modern life is fast and people are under so much duress that they don't have time to think.But they somehow get the time to update their Facebook status 15 times a day and spend hours on Whatsapp. Anybody tagged as philosopher or thinker must have a nightmare nowadays.Its that uncool. But that is just a banner under which runs the deeper thought of whether you are a fake/pretentious.So are all the activists/philosophers trying to save the society actually fake? Nobody can answer that to be honest.Only things that one does naturally-take a shit, make love(have an orgasm), eat when hungry, fall asleep when tired etc are granted approval by everybody and are not fake/ pretentious.Everything that requires decision making  carries a risk of being pretentious.It is good to remember Existentialism here-that we give meaning to our lives by our decisions -there is nothing pretentious-only it becomes pretentious if you believe it to be.Such maxims are good sounding but hard to carry out in  life -I do understand but once you are concious of being free to decide can there be any other way?Camus was far more human-in saying that we all are judge -penitent ..that we all are Sisiphus.One day if hit sufficiently hard one will come to realize the lack of authenticity in their life.Oh that will be a gala day! but every disaster has a management package now a days-nobody goes as far as Sartre to come to terms with it.Its a matter of ambition maybe -you are free to choose (yeah I am Morpheus offering the pills!).


Self reference is a dangerous game.But if I have started playing it so one more thought.Some  argue that all that such ideas are actually manufactured by self important egotists. And a generalization may be done that only alienated people come up with such ideas to usurp the peace of the general people.So without further ado I will just repeat the age old dictum that if everybody thought the same nothing new would have been done.Aslo there is a new tendency that only branded subversive ideas are given importance-like whatever I am saying would be given much more importance if I already had a Penguin published book or I was a graduate of any Ivy league college.But such people are always surrounded by like minded people and have their own society.Its better  to stay in the uncomfortable boundaries.

But its best to stay objective and avoid such vicious circles altogether.

Another idea is that the people are reluctant to think because thinking is a boring process.So they stick to the conventional ideas -popular ideas-and dont want a radical reaccessment.Besides its a priviledge to belong to the majority -you dont have to defend yourself-because the whole of society is there to defend you.Lucky bastards.And yes its true partially.Such conformism and pride in belonging to the majority is one of the biggest ills of society.Historically its been the reason behind some of the most heinous crimes done against the minority.

The society also has a sense of the extravagant experiments of Nationalism and Communism and Religious Fanaticism so that even the parents discourage thinking afraid their kid turns out to be a Kobad Ghandy or a Golwalkar.The middle class is having their best  time ever it seems- the economy being globalised and and foreign investments invited -the people are literally invited to a unabashed shopping spree.That's the basis of such  modern day quotes  like "Nothing is impossible".The thing is such ideas( "its the doing of the mncs") have a very distinct desi flavour to them.The ideas that we get in  anti-globalisation anti-liberalization books fit so well to the heavily urbanised and alienated fragile man of the big city but scarcely does justice to the social-religious form of consumerism that's prevalent in Tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India.Its a tougher job here.There is no guilty conscience and fragility and loneliness(well not that much).Everything is absolved in the care of the family and society.



So it boils down to "its the doing of the mncs".Ok .So how does it serve the mncs if the people think less.For one thing it helps if the whole of middle class just does not  accept that there are millions starving,that the Tribals are  indeed being exploited,  that the middle class man is being led to believe that the saddest thing that happened was that  he could not send his son that convent school it helps if he does FB and mobile phone analysis  6 hours a day but does not get time to read a single sincere news article.It helps them to sell more and more under the banner of  the ever more illusive term "growth".I am not going to go on  citing such examples.Its already an overdone field.Some even fear that propagating such ideas will lead us  back to Nehruvian socialism.Well dont we all want a Ferrari showroom in Kolkata?


The next question is easy -how do the lobbyists do it? By the media of course.The media is under their control.By the millions spent on 'manufacturing consent"



(This is neither a comprehensive essay on the subject nor was meant to be. I will try adding to it)

October 30, 2013

We made you the store house of our guilt and shame
So we had to hide you
Each step towards the temple
was a departure from nature
what the water washed away had to accumulate somewhere

There was no denial on your face
Only we denied ourselves
What did we want then?
The father reaching out to us?
Oh the uncertainty!
The fruits of denial dispersing through posterity

October 28, 2013

Alberto Balsalm

The crazy guy near Jama Masjid  with a dream  of empty warehouses and birds

Alberto Balsalm By Aphex Twin




October 27, 2013

The Rise of the Benchods

And talk more in haryanvi slang - the benchods the madarchods the abe saales so that you are man enough in the eye of the boys and naughty enough for the girls-the indian girls - the radhas waiting for their naughty krishna kanaiyas.

Nauseating.

Whichever Way You Come From

If everything had turned out alright
Would you have been here?
The small man hugging the giants
Will forever invite caricature.
"Oh to be true and feel the flow of the world
through oneself"
It was you
"There are mysteries best solved by a good night's sleep"
It was you
With a mouthful of charcoal and
Confusions that should  intrigue a writer-
You played both their roles
The writer and the character!

Nobody knew however
The weight of your ego
They had no model for a human ..perhaps too human
They had no model for a man who knew he was a man.

What remained was to eat drink and fart
And talk endlessly about false starts.
And whichever way you come from ...
Everybody can see that you are here
In this endless afternoon ..this humid tropical air.

October 25, 2013

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?

The loss of reality -
She has an practical idea of being romantic
You have a romantic idea of practicality.

October 23, 2013

ambient

i have not heard better ambient music.wonderful on a brooding train journey.and dreaming of pale bleak lands and dry reeds or enormous castles  while you are surrounded by the smell of piss and shit!!


Global communication 76:14
http://www.allrovi.com/music/album/7614-mw0000118739


October 22, 2013

Another Place Another Time

Sigur Ros Heima


















http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1094594/

And oh! ...another language that I dont understand.


October 13, 2013

And do you measure your dreams?
And have grown up  with no would have beens..
Do you know what red yellow and green mean?

Well  nice to meet you
Where do you live  now
Where have i been ?

I sell things that never were
But can you tell me what blue means?

October 6, 2013

God of small things

Who gave this book a booker prize?
Just felt like a hindi movie with way too much  exotic metaphors ......

September 18, 2013

Nouka Puja Barak Valley



In childhood I had heard from my Grandmother of an exotic and pompous worship of  Goddess Manasha called Nouka Puja. Lately I have searched a lot for some material on it in internet without any success. Then I came across a book called "Folklore and history-A study of the Hindu Folk cults of the Barak Valley" by Dr Sujit Choudhury, Indian Institute of Advanced Study , Shimla. The following are photographs of the chapter on Nouka Puja in the book and a photograph of the puja, printed on the cover of the book.I could not find any other photographs of the puja in internet or anywhere else.In the book it is noted that it would cost around Rs 2000 to conduct the Puja in 1931.So now it would cost way more than Rs 100000  to conduct it  inflation adjusted.No wonder that it is not conducted anymore.




















Well, copyright infringement? I think I am obscure enough

August 26, 2013

Secret

Do you know  what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?....the freaks are born.

August 20, 2013

Deeper Into The Night

The day marked by boundaries-
Edges of things and time.
Divided into discrete  ideas
That keep their distance
and wait  for goodbyes
after making love without contact
Till the night comes
Like a black chiffon sari
falling on top of another
Continuity like your body imagined
and the fragrance of invisible flowers
So close so close
you are ..the hidden stream the speech of birds
leading my trembling heart to a dream of dawn
The sun comes up
And you are gone.

August 3, 2013

The Status of the finished product

A hundred essays written by geniuses cannot equal a single book published by Chetan Bhagat. And you know why? A finished product always carries a greater weightage in the eyes of the reader than the drafts written by his friend.

Seems like a gray area .....

July 30, 2013

Mountain Flower

Not These -
City lights or country mornings
Friends or enemies- so well organised
No,  these cannot be the truth
That I want.

Truth was like the mist fallen
On a distant mountain flower
Truth was like the delicate poem I am yet to write
Truth was that distant glory
Your bare desolate hand
Resting on the balcony.

But truth it seems-always  evades
A human story
The essence of the mountain flower
Evanescent and so solitary.




(Your bare desolate hand
Resting on the balcony....Jibanananda Das's Nogno Nirjan Hat)

July 18, 2013

Les Riches

Get rid of the sadness .Get rid of commies.Oh no they don't even know about them.They survived the 70s, they survived boiled potatoes and mustard oil meals.Now their sons work in PSUs and multinationals. They want the good life the good life...they want Katrinas cleavage and morning Gayatri mantras...they want modular kitchens and obedient servants....they want social status and a cup of tea with the minister.
Who can blame them ..don't they now deserve  the good life? Their grandkids with spiked hair and flashy clothes ..liberal flirts but no sex addicts ....the IIT and the IIM graduates ..but don't be so fast now....look closely ....in the lips of the 15yr old there is irrefutable logic about Hrithik's dialogue in Koi Mil Gaya.

July 8, 2013

POEMS

After courage shall come  fear
After fear shall come nausea
The rain  is primary & primitive
Like the
The man who forgot time and space
Like a momentary bell on a temple
And a lamp and its warmth
But between infinities
Exactitude
Achilles never overcomes the tortoise
And nothing ever happens

Outside the world of snakes and reptiles
Feed on eachother
Copulate passionately
Only granting you permissions
To leap from one paradigm to the other

June 21, 2013

Gates of Tomorrow

Thornless Rose

http://www.hortidaily.com/article/2613/India-Scientists-at-IHBT-develop-thornless-rose

And all those poems are wrong. Poor Poets ...and shairs....
What more?
Genetically Engineered Designer babies?
Immoritality?

June 15, 2013

June 14, 2013

The Poem Of Boundaries

You sank into the sea
While I kept looking at the line
Where the land meets the sea -
Separating one  from the other.
The morning breeze diverted my gaze
Then there was air.

I drew the boundaries
I arranged them in hierarchies
Till the water rushed up the land
And erased all my maps

The mermaids  and fishes invaded the land
Giving new definitions of beauty
I hide with my old maps and ego
Thinking whats wrong with me?







June 3, 2013

Trading Grace

Since our lives are not our own
Then you can hope of salvation
By someone else's devotion
In return for all the kindness
All you could give was ask again for forgiveness
Look at
Cowardice merging into love and then to tyranny
When you take shelter in
The ignorant's prayers
And then you demand it.

Who will understand these age old weeping?
Warped by space and time
Trying to accommodate  infinity in infinitesimal life.

May 16, 2013

May 15, 2013

In praise of Muersault

To  bear the burden of your sins
Without God
Without love
Without a friend
Without family
In  a path that leads to nothing.

Is this how the test is?
and who has set it?




Stories

Who will find the story
that he wrote and then burned down?
To sacrifice everything in the name of purity
and then to erase the story
Don't you see how far the ego goes?
What consolation for the for the one
Who never let know
Purity is not some white cool cotton sheets
But a dense mass of dead cells and pus
Purity is a black hole
Now washed down the dirty drains of cities
But still impenetrable
Still useless tasteless colorless odorless

April 20, 2013

Late Afternoon

Another morning.

Ranadip woke up...no he had woken up much before or even before that.He could never remember a moment when he was unconscious.It was a long long consciousnesses as far as he could remember it.There were no surprises here. Everything was pre-decided. Or so it seemed to him.


The sounds of the city gradually came floating in.His ears picked up a careless laughter, some shrill car horns, a guy screaming" benchod"..the etc and the etc...The sunlight pouring in through the window glass seemed stale -as it always did before he had brushed his teeth and taken his bath.He left his bed and went to his father's room.His father had again wet his bed and was babbling about something.(the constant babbling- while awake while asleep while on an outing) Ranadip helped him into his chair and then changed the bed cover. There was feces too in there.He put on his handkerchief like a surgeon and put polythene bags on his hands and proceeded to rub the mattress with a piece of cloth -removing the yellow stains as far as he could.
There was no other option.He could not wash the huge mattress and the housemaid would not put up with this shit.

His father just sat on the chair -panting and babbling.

The housemaid came at 9:30 am.He was already late for his office.He showed her the blankets-all she had to do was to put them in the washing machine, told her about his fathers afternoon medication-he had separated them and put them in a sachet.Then he went to his father
-Bye papa...going to office-don't go outside. and please take your medication.
and then to the housemaid-Don't forget the medicines masi

His father said-Where are you going?

-to the office papa...to the office...to the office ....masi lock the door.He went out.


Outside the heat was scorching.The commotion had grown into a din- a pool of auto rickshaw horns, the exhaling lorry engines,the blinding  glitter of the sun from the edge of a car,the zeal of life in the swamp of faces busy in their clever bargaining.So many businesses, so many transactions so many levels of clever talks...so much to learn from all of these.So many details escaping our tired nerve ends already overloaded and bored.

Inside the bus he took a look at the girls around and then almost automatically his eye roved one or two of them.He imagined her naked on a bed, his hand resting on the smooth skin of her belly and slowly going downwards.She is smiling with an almost condescending smile.Once he used to imagine that  getting a girl naked on a bed would peel off her last layers.And then they would be like children free of the burden of maturity and reason.There would be an end to that titillation inside of him.But his brief tenure of married life had shown him that there were other layers too..more deeper more impenetrable more slowly revealing.He was 38 years old and divorced since 5 years.They had produced no offspring.One more clever twist of fate to leave him out of the story.

Every time his marriage came to his mind, he would envy his father.His father was everything that he was not.He was shy, impotent(hence the no children), emaciated, barely five foot tall, with an overtly large forehead and a shaky demeanor.While his father was the very ideal of manhood.He loathed his father's bawdy jokes, his rowdy manners, his coolness in the company of ladies, his unwavering beliefs in his powers and to top it all off his sense of righteousness which he hated the most.He hated his mother's devotion to him while she was alive.Her constant pampering , her frequent remembrance of how handsome his father was when they had married.How they went to see Sholay for the upteenth time.She treated him  like a baby even in his 30s....couldn't she see it?'That he was past the time of all of those heroic deeds and nothing like that had happened in his life . Couldn't she feel that all of this only reminded him of his deficiencies.?Of all the human beings on earth he loved his mother the most.But his father always came between them.It went as  far back as his memory went.When he was a child, late at night his mother would leave his bed and go to his father's room.To have sex of-course.When on waking up he would not find his mother by his side, he would be inconsolable.He wanted her by his side constantly.He never could understand  why his mother sometimes slept with his father ..that ugly man with a beard and a smell of guthka. While his mother was pure gentle and and his own property as all children feel.He would then  feel rebellious and would not talk with her for a whole day..He felt he never understood the adult world of suave moves and indecipherable jokes.He never could get an entry to it. He felt the same rebelliousness  even now in his 38th year. Still an outsider.Random images of his fathers's dick(now that he saw it everyday while changing his father's clothes), his wife's rump, his own little weenie kept coming to his mind.The threads that connect the holy family.

He left his office at 2 pm.When he reached his home he found the front  door open.A hot wind from outside was swaying the balcony curtains.Patches of sun were sparkling on the beige walls along with shadows of foliage gently moving with the wind.All seemed so silent.The constant noise from the street was there but he was drowsy and the sound barely entered his ears.The coolness of spaces where the sun could not reach mixed with a dampness oozing  a smell that assured him ..yes he was home.

He called - papa-papa.No answer.He searched the kitchen, the bedrooms the balcony. He searched everywhere. Then he heard some noise from the bathroom. He rushed there.

His father was  scrubbing the feet of an ugly 5 year old boy-a street urchin. The boy had a box of Haldiram's Kaju barfi in his hand.
His father saw him and said-Look Ranadip who I found? ....Dadubhai(grandchild)..I found  dadubhai....but he was so dirty and hungry from playing outside ..so I brought him home..and gave him some barfis.

Ranadip just stood there in amazement.The afternoon heat had lulled his responses.

His father was saying to the child- do you know that you are the prince.and how come being a prince you are so dirty?.a noble prince should not be so dirty ....this whole land is yours...come have some more sweets....I am just an old man but  one day you will be king ..don't play on the outside anymore ..from now on you will play with me, your humble servant.
The child was terrified by Ranadip's presence and shook himself free of the old man and ran away.Then from the front door the child shouted -"Tera baap pagal hai"(your father is  mad).

His father tried to run after the child but Ranadip held him back.Then he sat on the floor and kept saying-why have you sent him back? ..he has not bathed properly ..oh the little prince ...Why have you sent him back, Ranadip? call him back...he will get sick playing in that afternoon sun...please call him back.
His father started weeping.

His father whom he hated, his father who even in his old age seemed more well built than him, his father under whose shadow he had passed his unending infancy, his father to whom he compared his life(to the point of comparing their dicks) and always felt inferior ,his father whose shit he had to clean everyday.. in-spite of all these , there is something in us that does not want change.That still wants to serve the king.It broke his heart to see his father so helpless-senile and frail.

Ranadip took his father to the bed.When he calmed down Ranadip said
-I am sorry Papa..I am so sorry...Not sorry for this incident not sorry  for  my life. My pettiness, my  doubts and confusions that grow like fungus at the damp corners of the flat.Do you know I wake up at night and wash the basin , the commode and then take a bath again?.But the fungus grows back instantly.So much ugliness so much needs to be cleaned.
But no papa that is not what I am sorry for.You don't know what happened on my way back from the office.
A truck hit a motorcycle killing a woman and her daughter on the spot  while the husband and  their son  were luckily unhurt. They kept screaming for help but nobody came to help them.It went on for an hour.I was passing by that road on foot.But Papa, I could not gather the courage to help them papa.,I am sorry ,I was gripped by a fear so strong, that I just stood there immobile watching the last shreds of civilization disappear.It was a hole, Papa, I am sorry- , a hole  in the fabric of our civilization- a single man fighting  against the colossal sun that  lighting up  all the corners of the nakedness of our existence.I was weak papa, I was weak ..too weak to cover the hole.And I laughed  like a madman at the idea that we may forget all speech from then on...because we have no name for the the hole ..the open cavity showing us the  stars and the planets ...the cosmic dust -all lifeless and indifferent to us , the open cavity sucking all our speech, our society , our humanity, I am sorry papa, I am sorry papa, I used to think that only a sense of beauty  could overcome all but it was not enough papa, it was not enough

While returning on the bus I had the recurring image of you slapping me.I could barely meet the eyes of people less so of any woman. And all my social life seemed sly like snakes mating in deep black pits of guilt, in search of easy love among the less intelligent-We are not kings and princes Papa...we are knaves and  no heaven has been described for us...the doubtful"


His father had fallen asleep..He looked around the room-the curtain was still swaying but the breeze was cool now.Soon it will be evening.He was kind of feeling better.He felt that his body was betraying the grave thoughts inside of him. He tried to think of something else -yes after all these years he had the feeling that yes life indeed  has surprises sometimes.



April 15, 2013

Affluent India

Affluence is a phenomena  in which everybody wants to become a photographer by capturing sunsets and flowers and buying entry level slrs.
Affluence is the middle class dicovering single malt whiskey and endless talks about nike vs adidas ...turtle vs blackberrys.Affluence is the phenonmenon of spending "quality time" with your girlfriend at the posh restaurant with religious devotion and then a bottle of redwine to discuss the meaning of life.Affluence is the attitude in which the remedy for proverty is putting benchod and madarchod in the mouth of the poor.
Afflence is defining the meaning of life for yourself and fuck all that  altruism and philosophy  when your " baby is not safe from harm".

Being Young

Being young means a dive into the turbulent history of the world and coming out with nothing
Being young means crash courses in the arts and chemicals and not defending  one
Being young means discovering love..and then forgetting it all cause it was just masti
Being young means experiments and then giving them up for that lucrative MBA
Being young means your young  ideas that you cant defend.
Being young means betraying yourself and never knowing it.

Its a shame to be young in India.

April 14, 2013

Dear Kierkegaard

An idea maybe great , untouchable in its reasoning but its quite another thing to  stay with it for years and years.A man cannot be personification of an idea. Abraham had only 3.5 days to go.Just imagine if he had to travel for years with it and then I would like to see how well he sustained his faith.
The point is not how pure one's faith is..the point is how long can one sustain it in  living with common folks and being bombarded with too much information each day.
Every idea is limited by one's body.
I bow down to great Abraham in reverence but sorry Kierkegaard yours idea of faith is just not human and all your text seemed proud of that only.
(Camus is much more human)

April 3, 2013

Abar sei gan

Jokhon mone hoy sobai bari phire geche
Nijeder itihaas niyei sobai besto
Ekhankar hazarta doler majkhane
Dariye tui bolte cheyechili
Oke
Ay dekh
Kemon kore prithibita purche
Jar mane  chilo
Tor kothao jawar nei
Ja ichche koreo ber kora jaini
Mukh diye
Tai sekhanei dariye roili
Ora jokhon bolto janla diye
"Oi baje cheleta..oi pagolta"
tui chure marti
"todaer sobhyota meki"



Tai aro kothin
pothe chute jete hoy
Jodi sondhay
mone hoy foothpathtai bari
mone rakhte hoy
chute jete hobe
aro kothin pothe
aro kothin pothe




March 21, 2013

March 17, 2013

Writing Your Story

You find yourself there
It just  happens to you
You cant help falling  in love
You wonder at the slant sunbeams
Each morning you wake up.

Writing your story
You are walking with me
Thinking
These things happen to you
Like they happen to me.

Hide beneath my good words
You happen to love these words
They ring so true
That's when I envy you

To decide what to  feel
To decide what to see
Do you know you are free?


March 16, 2013

The Man who

1.As the days pass

You  who searched for dawn
 at the deepest corners of the night
You who looked for  peace
At breakneck speeds
Did you even have a name for your dreams?

The walls emerge at the boundary of each word
And ancient debates that you dint take
Only you have seen the days racing into the night
The tip of the tide never knowing itself
before receding into the sea
But pays repeated pilgrimages to memory
As each story turns to a anecdote
Do you ask yourself
In being wise how much did you loose?


2. Each Day

Each day a want is converted to a need
And a pile of guilt is shoved to the background
Each day we make a new wall
And hide beneath it
Our own dull heaven

Each day we long for childhood
In love's eyes
But how much will it takes to play this game?
How much will will it demand
To convert this love to a need
From a want?

3.Mirrors

He passed by the market
And placed a mirror in front of the coffee house
He went to the bar and
placed a mirror there
We fell in love with her
and placed a mirror in her face
He failed the test and
placed a mirror in his house

So everywhere he goes
He meets his own gaze
And they keep saying to him
"There will be no goodbyes here
Each inch traveled will cost you pretty dear"




March 5, 2013

Summer Overflowing

The autumn of the summer day
The earth has had its fill of the sun
Colors tend to spill
out of the of the dimensions of things
The yellow turns to a stale amber
In aneurysmatic waves
Come memories
Of auburn days in the country
Of medieval bazaars
Of  enterprise ,of community.



March 3, 2013

Inherent Vice

I shall  meet you in a bridge
At the edges of the wolf kingdom
With a promise to shed all skins
I see you standing with a bowl of sugar
You the unknown sugar seller
My concealed strategies
Your terrestrial vice
Our war of confused identities
Where to hide?
Cause the wolves are all around
Cause the wolves are howling in hunger
But you keep feeding me sugar
Where do I hide you?
To have more of you
More than these wolf laws can give
But look ...even less
Even less than what you need.

March 2, 2013

Andaman




 Real Funny Places



 Nepali in Andaman!








 Fuckin itinerary!....A K Hangal telling the old days at Cellular jail ..
 


Bagwatis ....(.for a contemporary reference or whatever  )
 


True Blue
 


Finally clear about starboard , deck and port


The Cellular Jail....fav holiday destination


 Consider the 3





 Bal ......Hailakandi aigelam na kita?


Here and beyond
 


  Is it panic in its eyes?  

 

 Fat martin's
 
 Surreal..eh?  


 
 





Anupam kher....dont ask why?   just anupam kher






Say Cheese.....now come on ....dont stare like that!
             


Girlie stuff



 Everything is illuminated




 

August Gathering 


  Rahu



A  scene from the blair witch project






   Found Nemo
     
"Don't it just look so pretty 
This disappearing world "

David Gray.