Stream of noon

The nude face of the sky
is thirsty of joy
soaked in yellow
discerning a disease
-of mind or body!?
cringing like an infant
in torpid lap of afternoon
the infant who fondles
her mother's breast
in loose aspirations
for it to milk

tehelka expose, volume I

The placement ghost has followed me to the end of the sea, where there is no escape. No faith, no friend, no father. Each time it stormed I sought shelter in my own arms; like the violinists that stuck to their tunes even when Titanic was neck deep in misery. But things don't seem as bright hereafter.

The repeated bouts of failure have a deeper meaning and purpose than mere foreplay of fate. How else can i explain my blanking out in the interview that was held most righteously. The lady admired my writing but didn't find me convincing enough. unlike others I read that magazine several times a month and subscribe to their ideas but why couldn't I express it? Because I wasn't sure if I am bold enough at this age to write for a magazine known for its razor-sharpness on matters of arts and politics.

The verdict is out. I need to come out of the nebula that breeds in my head. The daunting rounds of self-questioning on my writing style and area of interest. Most importantly lack of schooling. Perhaps one year was too short to justify my derailment from the career-building path. Ogilvy sacrifice is meant for bigger things of academic nature.

Tehelka exposed my follies this time. Long live tehelka

into the sea of no shore

Hey musician walking by the quay,
turn around and listen to the waves
The dash of silence
and hush of birds
the blues of the wind
and whites of the tide
OBLIVIOUS
To the world this side
huddled in mud
to the blood that's
saltier than water
and storm thats devours
the hungry men.

Walk on to the sonnets
that have a face
walk on even when the
faces fade.

Placed under a shower

If Siddhartha was born today, he would have been likely to attain moksha in a bathroom. Repulsive to you, isn't it? but how else can I possibly explain my divine interventions at a 3.am at the mouth of a faucet. The purpose of the shower was too unwind myself of the placement doldrums(a sublime rheoteric here). To throw up all the reading I had done over the weekend, compensating for the lack of it in the entire year.

Newspapers make great mats for undoing fruits, sounds proverbial doesn't it? If it hadn't been for the compelling Suduko squares, I would have saved myself a penny or two from the Hindu subscription.

As things turned out, I connived myself to believe that I too can participate in the hobbies of the hairy, double rim spectacled, armpit-stinking nerds. Not in any manner to contest with them, but to taste all the obscurities of J world. Through the hazy bubbles of shampoo, the consequences of this proposition appeared infinitely unworthy. I cannot excuse my temptation for experimentation. Just like sleeping on the tracks to feel the commotion of the engine. Daft enough.

The schematic train of thoughts then led me to the road less traveled.I don't need to go through a god-damn academic exercise to test my merit. What i need is time to enrich the institution of the self; that has practically taught me everything academic and non-academic.

I have nothing to lose. Time, money, age, nothing whatsoever. I need two years of the kind of ambiance i'm currently absorbed in. Nothing less, nothing more. i need more books on my shelf and double the Dvd's. A guitar would be luxury :) A back-pack just too godly.

So here I have my official laugh at you desperate job-seekers, go fight your battles while i just ended mine .

/m\ Bengaluru

My mama always says that I can never do things the right way. The reason she promulgates is my breach-incoming to the world. Nothing more complicated than the fact that i was pulled from toe to head from the fetus against the norms of head-first-push deliveries. Why i say is because I land at the liquor belly of the country on a dry weekend. Unknowingly of course. But the idea of Bangalore on a dry weekend is plain shockingly absurd. How do I possibly describe my reaction to the "close till sunday due to election" board? Frown-face with twisted eye-brow? The I-will-smash your balls so what if 17 and a half-year old who is denied entry to an Adult film look.

At that point, It only helped to think that I am not a dipsomaniac. But my motive-supremo was to expose my auditory faculty to some hard-rock and comfortable-metal(if it does exist)as pubs it Bangalore are held as the mecca of music-lovers.
I then pursued the mood-enhancing thought of the auto-rickshaws that play Metallica. Courtesy- a friend's first-hand experience of the rocking auto-ride. Needless to say, I didn't find one. But what i found was a megalomaniac display of books. From roof to ceiling, in multiples of hundred hurled in one stack. The Mahakumbh of papyrus, in L, XL and XXL denominations.

Arthur Miller's plays at Rs. 50 can shock anyone's wit right? The charcoal-folds of epistolatory gave me a cerebral seizure. Wondrously, there was no place to collapse or even squat to scurry the desired tome for that matter. The literary fest sprawls across the three floors; compartmentalized into: Philosophy and fiction on the ground floor. Literary fiction on the first and science fiction on the second. The depraved looking store-employees bowl you out with the speedy quest of the title you desire. The modestly dull staff carries Foucault on their sleeves. Yes they spell it accurately too.

Four-hours well short for the book-mall, along with the booty. i pensively picked up my annual reading list of twelve while rejecting a stack of meaty ten. Blossoms- my singular honey-moon destination, if i marry a millionaire.

Bangalore other than booze and blossoms is unabashedly cool. Be it the local weather or the local intellect. Whiz passig the crowd of drab techies, one effortlessly spots uncouthly men in curly beards like the interface of Greek god of music. Suave and uncanny, they become piping eye-candies. The girls are loud like any other Maybelline-applying chicks.

The libertine use of material reflects in all architectural archetypes. Malls, office complex, residency or even shady restaurants. The spirit of mankind is rendered aesthetically in tall structures that stand for modernity. The Randian panorama of architecture can be scaled in the cloudy fields of Bengaluru sky.

Like any other metro, the speed of life is expressed in mbps. Work-hard but party-harder syndrome seems to infect everyone. Rat-race should be declared the official sport of the state. Technology becomes religion and heterogeneity defines culture.

If booze and blossom compete for the potential b of Bengaluu, Brigade road braces victory. The c.p of Bangalore, brigade road is one-stop destination for shoppers, party-goers, readers and gluttons and even angora-lovers. The road dons a shop that rears nine angora-cats only for recreational purpose.

As days passed, I saw my trip turning into a pilgrimage. I couldn't have asked for more. The independent train and bus-rides were beyond good. The 3 am premier of DDLJ in hindi (played in the volvo) was way too beguiling in a predominantly Tamil and Kannad speaking passenger majority.

you can run and you can hide :-)

Things can't get any better when you make yourself run 4 km's to fetch the drool-dribbling, eye-popping, moaning-groaning-adrenaline humping chocolate fantasy at subsidized rate only to opt for an unflattering cold-coffee priced at a modest 35. 'Joy sans pleasure'(borrowed from Robert Jensen's speech), i reckon.

The unwinding roads at IIT Chennai offer a perfect picturesque for fitness enthusiasts and the unfitting exercise procrastinators. Talking about the lush landscape would be stating the obvious but oh deer! what fun in spotting them like former class-mates in a foreign city.

At Twilight, the moonlight pierces through the willows; casting abstract shadows on road that seem to compete with the beauty of the willow itself. The pace of your steps against the throbbing music redefines melody altogether. After a point reality hops into oblivion, leaving you comfortably alone with your thoughts.

If walking clears your head, running, vacuum cleans it. The world looks fresh, even though its bathed in sweat. 'Running without getting anywhere'experience feels as spiritual as it sounds. What does one run behind? Ordinarily-a bus, ambitiously- money and notoriously- woman. But running purposelessly overtakes all of them, even logic and rationality for that matter.

In a span of two days I have begun to think highly of athletes, installing my faith in the 'brain with brawn' species(Hello, are you listening?. And ofcourse you can run and you can hide the adipose. The strategically located cafe coffee day(4-km away from the IIT gate)suitably awards your chiseled tummy.

Why bother with further explanations. if forrest can run, so can I

When aghoree turned into emo

Orion and Artemis

You came to my life draped in white, carrying sunshine in your palms.
I, the infantine hope
of a withering blossom,
Melted In your folds,
in exact widths and proportions
Fitting into the ethereal poetry, that was ever etched
On the nape of the earth.
Love? Was it?
Annihilating all the existing paradigms and notions,
As you scribbled freedom on my wrist.
And danced all the alphabets in exultation
-celebrating the communion of our musk
Love in freedom and freedom in love
Days slipped by like pollen from rose
You and me heading to We
I clinged to us,
blinded by the fire in your eyes
A fire that devoured me, like a hungry giant
Through a royal invitation to the house of pyre
Burnt? Bruised? Any injuries?
So how do I spell mortuary?
Drawing castles out of gelid ash on a foggy night.
A night that limps like an ageing dog
Waiting passionately for sunlight no more.

inside me is pain;
Flowering like lichen,
over a dead body
bereft of a face,
stolen of a name
rooted deeply in the gravels
of an edgeless shore
Seeking showers;
of an untimely rain
inflicted by derision
in the charcoals of time
turning memories into sonnets
that refuse to be recited

Distances

How can one run out of
the sun, moon, and the rain?
The poet assures himself,
sitting by the quay
drenched in mud and paper
beginning to trash his voice
(in split-syllables of cry).
Just then he sights
a stripling playing flute
to the passing flamingos
in broken silences
of the vehement tide.

He pounces on the artist
staging a relentless ballet of fingers
in staid, stainless afternoon
over his clumsy shadow.
"What inspires you to play
against the writhe of Boiling May?
Her memories! Where are they?
Stranded on the roads that have drifted
her away?"

And explains the thirsty urchin
in half-notes of composite smiles –
about her memories resident
in the bounties of his fist,
of bridges built to jump
from one finger to another,
of a fragrance hidden behind
the minarets of his collar –
Occurring and recurring
like melody in a tome,
bringing him her chuckles
through carriages of love.

A portrait.

I draw you in the moss-devoured
face of the lake.
Can you see my fingers
reaching out for your eye-lashes?
In the neon clouds of slate
Twitch- your eye-lids
falling like stars on my palms;
Drowning all the sky
that water once contained.

Evening

Brightly lit like a bride
walking tip-toe
over waning shadows
Silently in her drape
that falls over the sky.

A Verse

Words grow like cotton-balls,
In the Springfield of your hair
words, with no hands and feet
Crawling on my back
like rivers on the map
Drawing you in my pale memory
as i recall the last moon i saw.

Words, scatter as i bring them on
like dust of the forest fire
words that sweetly glance
the way infants look at,
every passing balloon
Leading me to the roads you take,
as i greet my journey tonight.

what's up?

shadows fall upon road,
sherlock picks up the phone
vessels scathe,
slayed is the house
spouse, your maverick spouse!
bus-wheels screech
clock-towers preach
one o one at night to five
and hounds..
circle city parks
like cops on chloroform
in the societal trash
of plastic toys and plastic cash
streets weep, sweepers merry
wild goose, wilder berry
forests hide in clouds of smoke
smoke, smoke-0-choke
and buildings..
with long nose
like a queen riding
on haughty toes
wearing botox in her slim wrist
caging dreams in her fist
dreams cooked in,
fast-food oil
brought to you by
the delivery boy

incantation

in the hour-glass of life,
time slips by,
like river from the edge of the hill
like hill from the edge of the sky
with shiny silvery eye

Noiseless like hymns and echoes of a broken bridge,
noiseless, just you and me
in the chest of a giddy night
in the night of a giddy tide
purple our incantation be

the soft thoughts of you,
in the sun-burnt mind of me
wind, breeze, zephyr,
wind, breeze, zephyr
sometimes a fragrance,
in the blue fields of sky
moist and mercurial
moist and mercurial
like the talking rubies
in the cradle of your nape
words and pearls
words and pearls
exuded from the chestnut
of your cherry-bright heart

the indolent face of calamity
walking closer in abrupt shadows
to the night that pretends
to be lady-like.

In the hurricane of procrastination
hurryhurryhurry c-a-n-e
Night, that drops her face
To the calamity, that devours the night

on the loop

The lines that follow are fleeting bubbles of a recollected cognition.

1. A new year is a new year even in the absence of merriment and pompous welcome

2. Tears are cowardly bastards that refuse to show up when summoned

3. Metal is good, the videos are not.

4. the desire of building a tree-house has steeped in course of multiple trips undertaken in the recent past

5. Dogs compulsively isolate themselves in their exiting moments. By this logic they become more profound than those on two-legs

6. writing letter is as necessary and beneficial as sky gazing on a full moon night

7. Facebook ensures you don't turn into a dim turd.

8. Love exposure is good for most part of the film

9. I have lost the stomach for binge-booze

10. John Lenon is a dude but Jim Morrison is an enigma

11. Southpark is not wrongfully hyped and eric cartman has a cute arse

12. A 17 rupee bus ticket to mahabalipuram kicks the butt of an average auto-ride worth 70 bucks for a one way rise

13. Bonne and clyde are coolest couple that have been around

14. Shoplifting is a foolproof mood-enhancer

15. Lucid dreams are irresistible

16. Dumb callers should be quarantined all together

17. A bloated fish possesses secret of the universe

18. fantasies are the only existential truth

19. crackers allow guilt-less binging

20. i have stopped missing people altogether and stop responding to those who claim to miss

21. Golu, the campus dog is not my foster-kid because I'm wheatish and he's white

22. Big words turn a writer into monopolist, fundamentalist too

23. blowing nose while bathing is a bad idea when you share room with three more who;re now forced to wake up at the same time

24. i cannot sustain fear of politics for the sheer unavailability of this philia

25. i should write more than a jabber of grammar-humiliating lines.

26. People think I'm nimble, i let them be

27. sleeping on an operational laptop is pure bliss.

28. Auroville, is haven for bohemians to paint themselves in colours and threads

29. jeanette winterson is the mommy of magic-realism

30. all this is crass

an unsighted leap
from the caverns
of land and sea
to the chills of a city
conceited skin-deep
and what lies in between
are trenches,
alternatively replaced by
thick and thin memories
a hybrid lemonade
a glassful of hybrid lemonade

a rain

the sky spreads open like an umbrella
to the star that predicts
a season of uncertainty
to the tree,
that awaits golden zephyr
to the bees
that have no place to nest
to the soil
that witnesses a cremation day after day
to the wind
that's lost in transit
to the toys
that fancy other eyes
to the autumn
that carries burnt maple leaves
to a heart
glistened in soulless memories