To My Grandmother

I go down to sleep with grandmother
Frail with age, a web of wrinkles
I can't bear to think of old age sleeping alone,
Compainonless.
And, she can't bear to think of my lusty youth sleeping alone,
Companionless.
I go and hold her matchstick hands
Which feebly encircle me
I hold on to time,
Feeling the sea snatching the sand under our feet.

Death of Pain

She was the proud mother
Like the hard tree
Suddenly surprised,
Overwhelmed
By the appearance of tender leaves
All over itself,
She was swept off her feet
By the new birth.

She cuddled the baby
Held it close to her
She had felt it pulsating
Growing inside her,
Filling her whole being
With nothing else
But itself,
Smothering her,
Rending her apart,
Tearing her flesh into shreds,
Anointing her with pure, sacred blood.

She clutched at it,
Esctatic in her agony,
Proud of her pain.
She clung to it,
Adamantly believing in past springs
When she could no longer do so in winter.
She held onto the dead body,
Carrying it proudly
Waving it like a flag,
Loud advertisment of pain.

But the dead body shrivelled,
Decayed,
Changed its chemistry of appearances
From greenness to emptiness,
And one day,
She realized the death of pain as well.
Shattered,
Leaving the ashes,
She emerged,
With a bowed head,

Humble.

End of Love

We filled our silences
With words-
The weather, other people,
War and the woman who came to beg.
We filled our words
With silences.
That rattling silence
About the pain of laughing
Being normal and easy
When lips were twitching
Hands shaking
And memories,
Flashing,flashing, weighing

We were very clever dear,
No one else would guess
That we had a festering wound
That had bloodied our words
They were so nice and smooth,
Elegant as polished china
Holding cooked meat.

Meticulously we kept out
The hungry beast aside,
Temptation to just flash
A sharp, hurting word at the other.
To drive it into the soft flesh,
Just a little,
And feel the thrill of yielding flesh,
And then give way to it
And then drive deeper and deeper,
Till we both cried together,
In sheer esctacy of
Binding pain, drawn blood,

But no...
We kept off.
We parted,
With curt goodbyes
Like perfect strangers parting
Cordially,
With just a twitch of a lip corner
Which only you and I would notice.

Futile Waiting

The sound of boots
On the polished floor
Trampling on a lonely girl's
Beating heart
Into flutters of excitement
Approaching, receding
And then...

Dying.

Intimately Desparate

Time stands unruffled
In my cloisterd room
Into this still pond
You enter, stealthily,
Touch, as cold as an icepiece,
Distant, yet all encompassing
Your face, a mask of unknown feelings
Yet, we touch intimately...

Almost like lovers!

Touch, Skin-Deep

A touch is
Written desire
Desire of loneliness
Crying out like
A wild animal caged
Desire of the ancient forests
And their great fires
Desire to know this
Mystery universe
Through another's lonely desire.
A touch, my darling,
Is precious.

But,
After all
A touch is one skin contacting another.
It is skin-deep,as they say,
The waves of friction
When skin swims on skin.
it desires nothing but forgetting.

For a Friend

Your one-petal lotus
Hidden in ordinary grass.
Should I thank you, dear
For pointing to my steps
Trampling tiny veins of soft pink?

Adolecent Refusing Fantasy

I don't need you tonight
Familiar matinee idol
To spring suddenly to life
From a two-dimensional glossy poster
And press yourselves into
My sterile dreams
To rake it up,stir its muddy depths
And then put me to a drugged sleep.
No, tonight let me be fully awake.
And listen to the roar of the great wind outside.
My small closed room
Where life stands still
like stagnant water.

Don Juan Speaks to Woman

It was years ago
That I lost my name.

Caught in the midst of mad, young lust
A mere child, a weakling
Their little brother.
The garage door which slammed before me
Along with all the roads my young, male body would have taken.
The humiliation of rape on a frail, young body.

'Woman, you and me are one.' speaks a crushed boy mind
Fear, blood, gasps for a little air
Penetrating erections of sharp, male lusts.
I want air, clean, clean,clean...

Woman, I clutch you, I cling to you, then gasp,puke,
Vomit, vomit, vomit...
Then I leave you
For another clutching, another clinging,
another gasping, another puking.
'Woman.' I cry.'I don't want to be you.'

Yes, now i have a name,
A neat name.

'Thankyou'

You thanked her
For a night of unexpected love.
'Thanks' for what?
For being a 'sister of mercy?'
Who opened up at the first knock
Unfurled her full body
To your lust
Generously showered her passion on you
And stopped caressing you
when you were spent on her?
Dear wanderer, beggar?
'Thanks' for all that?

Love or Lust?

Wild before us
Rose the magic land
Of mystery and body.
Maenads rose out of water
Covered in seaweeds
Fragrance of slimy earth
And fertile sea beds,
Murmurs from closed rooms
Of frustrated women
Vanish like wiped out alphabets
The earth becomes
A shower of gems in the moonlight
Glitter, sparkle, fragrance, music and silence...
Perhaps dear...
I did know lust!

Devastated

Experienced man,
I am a proud woman,
I will not show that
I am defeated.
I will march with flags
Of victory.
Fluttering displays of
Detachment, Forgetting,
Exuding pure pleasure.
Never turning back
Marching like other proud women.
But dear...
i am vanquished, defeated, crawling,
I only have a flag of
Useless detachment
I am helpless and crying
Like a child.

In Hate with Goodbyes

Written by a friend who shared her love for Saqi with me in those days of playfulness and pain...)

Oh Saqi, I need your assistance tonight,
Filled with sorrow, my heart needs your jug by its side
You should save me, if grief tries to hold me too tight
Oh Saqi, I need your assistance tonight.

Oh Saqi, you were there to share my joy,
You were there when I had to dance off the night
You had taught me that laughter belongs to the right
So Saqi, I need your assistance tonight

Oh Saqi, you were there to share my fear
You were there when I learnt running a kite
You helped me to trim off the fear and fight
But Saqi, I need your assistance tonight

Oh Saqi, will you help me to get through the storm?
Are you here? Think we can sail on with no sight?
Please make sure the jug is full through the night!
I better sink in it, and rather drop out of sight
So Saqi… I need your assistance tonight!



My Reply to her

Darling…
Let me hold you tight…
For…
Today your cup overflows,
Not with wine, but with tears.
There is only one rule in this game, my love
Hold on tight
To your cup
Drink deeply whatever it holds
Then…
Wine tastes like tears
And tears like wine.

Love and Equality

She did not love him.
Yet, her sorrow was making her cling to him.
To keep him from leaving her to face her deep loneliness
She was uncovering her womanliness
Dazzling him for a quick second
Catching him like a prey.
Knowing full well the futility of playing woman
She was still performing that old story.

Yet for him...
She was drawn to him
Like a moth into a flame.
He remained, the powerful watcher
The male animal
Who waits, watches and then pounces...
At that moment
A record of all his conquests
Would replay in his mind
Giving him an empty feeling of power
While...
It would make her feel drained and suicidal.

After the night of empty conquest
Both returned to their respective loneliness
He to the silence of his power
She, to the silence of her humiliation.

Yet...they both pretended
They were equals in an unequal world

Families

Families are places
where words spill out
like old, festering wounds
they reek out centuries of vomit, spit, semen
And…of course…Blood.

Rejection

Years ago,
Her youth loved his vast, expansive maleness
Which had roamed the world
Known it, tasted it, and retained it
In his lilting walk, and blazing eyes.

Today,
She was experienced
With many sorrows
That had sedimented over
His rejection of her
That happened
Years ago.

When ever he saw her
He relived his youth
Its foolish and brash power
To reject.

That moment,
of absolute power,
of rejection and abandonment,
Would replay in his mind
For years and years...

She became a mythical figure in his mind

For...he knew he was being cowardly
He knew he could not take her,
Her sharp gaze and her sharper tongue
Which was fragile in front of him now
But, which could turn to hit him hard...

Thus...he had taken the power which he did not feel
To return her gift of herself.

The Laughing Woman

Her laughter was loud.
Like a man’s laughter…
Her mother had always told her
“Women never laugh loudly.”
People used to turn away embarrassed
They pretended she did not exist…
For, her loud guffaw would reverberate in their closed rooms
where good women moved quietly
Weighed by gold ornaments
And absolute obedience…
But…
She only laughed more.
For herself, and for them…

She started laughing
To hide herself.
To pretend a confidence that she did not quite feel
To tell the world she did not care.
In a world where she met other laughing women like her
She felt the suspicion finally…
That she was accepted
With her guffaws and loud entries.

Yet…
She knew deep within.
That, it was not a pure laughter
Her irony was the cloth that she clutched
To cover her naked desperation.
Her guffaws were only there
To hide her sentimental tears…
She had inherited the fine art of convoluted speech
From the dark side of her suicidal family
Where...
A smile meant revenge
A tear, victory!

Home

A music strip
Binds the brother and the sister…
Through an alley of their common language
Of childhood tunes and forgotten memories…
Where, you wandered
Thinking you were alone…
But, discovered each other
Just before you turned
To finally reach home
Together…

Mortality through Text Message

The text message which flickers late at night
Waking me into a dazed world of alphabets.

It was him…
The untold words between us
Flood the short message
Peeping through the tiny window of the cell-phone

His words are all about his lover
Whom I have never met…
The imminent death which waits the corner
For all of us…but, for her, now.

I let the insistence of his message
Rest for the night.
Not wanting to hear the need behind it
Not knowing what to do if I hear it.

Working Women

The Whore and the hijra
They shared a seat
In the early morning bus.
Going back after a night of tired work.

They were both speaking animatedly.
Friends meeting after so long,
Grabbing, savouring that moment of respite
After the labour of the night.

The Hijra wore cheap gold-plated ornaments
They dangled against her glistening, black skin.
The whore looked dishevelled.
She was not more than twenty.

They must both have blotted out from memory
That previous night of desparate gropings
Where time sucked rhythmically
Their youth away.

That night...
Like any other night...
Of sweat, labour, police whistles
And hard-earned coins.

Male Autobiography

The woman in his life
Appeared before him
With her spread out legs
And cavernous black hole
Trying to fill her interminable vacuum
With his sprouting seeds.
Stifling, smothering…like water around him.
He would surface once in while at stag-parties
For that breathe of fresh air
But, like a water animal
Would soon crawl back home.

Once the young ones started coming
He felt strangely relieved and relinquished.
For the first time
He understood the emptiness that she felt till then.

With no one now smothering him
He tries to sleep alone.

Being a Teacher

The everyday hostile mob
Hateful looks, sneering laughter,
Questions which do not demand answers
But are asked only for approval from behind
Displays of pride and arrogance
Where wealth and its words articulates...

Peace, Hard-Earned

The light winter sun
Filtering through an early morning window.
A lover bidding a reluctant farewell
A piece of hard-earned peace!

The Body Remembers

The body has ways of remembering.

While massaging oil into your scalp today,
That careless knock on the head
When you bent down yesterday
Resurfaces again,
Surprising you with the memory of a wound long forgotten.

Wiped out by daily life and nagging chores,
The endless cigerettes of loneliness and pain
That you lit long ago,
Breaks into cancerous nodes inside your tongue today
Surprising you with its ferocity in keeping your past.

Comicstrips and Peotry Writing

The ten year old girl
Used to hide in the ancient attic
Where sunlight used to filter in
Through the single glass tile on the roof
Creating a square patch of slanted light.

Bending in the strip of filtered light
She used to devour volumes of comic strips
Mandrake the Magician and Phantom, the ghost who walks
Passed through her universe of absolute solitude
Undisturbed by screams and shouts from the world below
Where relatives arrived as hordes of judgmental comments
Where her mother’s endless demands
Were finally reduced to her being shown off for a single moment before them
And then withdrawn with embarrassed laughter
But, the cruel looks would by then judge her to be deviant
Some of them even squeezed in one or two disparaging comments.

At thirty five
She came home again.
To confront her tired parents
And still-thriving relatives.

Like before, she still escapes through words...

Numb

First came sorrow
In uncontrollable gushes of tears
Which soaked her lonely pillows.

When she realized
That tears were worthless
Not even worthy of a second glance or a forgeteful hug
They stopped.

Then came anger...
It burst out like a long sleeping volcano
Jolting her with its violence and force
After the flames and the lava drained out
Destroying whole nations in its wake
The embers settled and the ashes covered the floors...

Then came numb silence
Which she had seen, feared and avoided
In both sorrow and anger...
It finally came...

A Glimpse in the Morning

The open window
Behind it
The silent man.
A glimpse of a woman
which takes him
Into the morning of work, books, libraries...

Blanket of Words

I weave a blanket of words,
Under which I shiver in desparate nakedness.

Growing up to be a Woman (Savarna)

I remember the early years of my childhood.
it was so difficult to convince others that you are an individual
you are a citizen with rights
which includes the right to privacy.
your letters are "your" letters
they cannot be opened and read and commented on by everyone
your time is "your" time
it cannot be pried open and demanded for public display.
i remember the days and months and years it took
for my family to just leave me alone.

by then, i had read feminism.
i had understood
it was really difficult for a woman to be an individual
and
being a person with rights? - a citizen?
impossible!
by then, i had a name to call myself...

a woman in patriarchy.

then...
after years of discovering women's friendships and the cracks within them...
After years of silence and madly running away from all that i had learnt.
trying hard to unlearn them...
after discovering that my freedom could be other women's rejections
my space could mean threatening for other silent women...

I ran into the arms of my father's waiting home
Where kithen utensils were to be cleaned endlessly
Where the time you spend in folding a soiled sheet used by another person
Is time spent, unacknowledged.
Where, I learnt to enjoy cooking different recipes
Though it was hardly noticed before being consumed.
Where, I became more accountable than my earlier self
Where some time spent with a long-lost woman friend
Came to be entered in the ledger-book of liabilities
That you had to pay off by days of silence and nights of lonely tears.

I realize...
i am facing the same situation
That i used to face as a child...
All families are alike...
Yet...
I had escaped apparently once...

the painful years when i spent in utter loneliness
in a women's hostel in a far away city
were also exhilarating years of freedom and exploration.

now...freedom is a word of disrepute
my freedom means his hurt and humiliation.
my rights mean his utter degradation!

but,
wasnt it the same for my father? my brother? even my mother and grandmother?
they left me because
finally, i was a woman.
someone who will go away.
as long as i don't express freedom (which was loose sexuality, for everyone!)
under their noses
their tattered respectablities would be intact.
and, i left them!
i cut off from the everyday negotiations that were necessary by simply walking out.

I think I will have to walk out yet again...
this time i am not saving his respectablity...
in fact, i can do that only by being bound.

but...
I knew what I was saving before...
my self...
Now...
In my shameful confusions and cowardices of middle age,

I am not so sure.

End of the Honeymoon

Only in moments like this
Did her life become clear to her.
censoring ...
her gazes,
her words,
her laughter,
her movement,
her thought,
her "self"
Covering her body...
Covering her mind...
so that others finally understood her
As an insipid, dead person.

Life and Writing

"Life itself has never been enough. It became real for me when I fashioned it into stories."
Murasaki a character in Lisa Dalby's The Tale of Murasaki"

A Quarell

We had a quarrel…
About the fragrance on the way
To my room
He said they were guava flowers
I was positive they were the heady smell of the pink and white flowers
Which lacks a name in this foreign tongue.
Finally…
We both turned out right
We saw the guava trellising the creeper of the pink and white flowers…

New Habit

We had finally understood
That we will go on like this
Without talk, without love,without tears
And more frighteningly...
Without hatred too!

Yet,
I have developed this new habit of late,
I weep incessantly...
Loudly, embarassingly, crudely
When I read any cheap romance of grand passion
Picked up from the roadside.

Peace

We have finally found peace,
The peace which settles on a loveless marraige.
The peace which understands
That our lives will always run parallel.
The peace when the eye still fills with tears
Yet, one takes care to wipe it out fast.
The peace when one is awake alone
And composes her tiredness
in interminable poems.

Marriage

Resounding silence of a tired relationship
Surrounds me in lonely, married evenings.

Time for Myself

This ten minute gap between two rushed buses
Spent in a strange, untended park
Filled with middle-aged morning exercisers
And beedi-smoking homeless young men
of this vast, lonely city.

Marital Rape

My past was pried open violently,
Petals of an unopened bud
By insecure male hands
which tore out long hidden memories
in gushes of disgust mixed with relief
in that night of separation and togetherness.

Madly Reading

I devour words of others
because
i cannot create them anymore!

I have tied my mouth shut
for morsals of doubtful love.

Life's Gifts by Olive Schreiner

Life's Gifts


I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift--in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose!"

And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom!"

And Life said, "Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand."

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.
by Olive Schreiner

A Child is Born

Are children ever born in love?
Or, are they products of adult confusions?
Decisions to create children...
Are they taken in mutual understanding?
Or, mutual desparation?
Tied to "family responsibilities."

Powercut in Hyderabad

It is a powercut
In the summer-blazing evening of a deccan city.
A woman weeps in the corner of a dark, lonely home
Where doors have slammed shut on her face
Where a useless fan hangs from the cieling
And days crawl past, dragging her youth along

The First Showers of Summer

The night of the full moon...
We saw the abyss into which we both had drifted...
Me...Away from your stifling and secure arms
You...into a private world of grief and illness.

We could never come back together
Lying in the steaming heat of a Hyderabad summer
Midnight birds, the only company in a strange land
We both came together in a shower of tears and embraces
Where forgotten secrets of the past
Were dug up and displayed
To quell the doubts of today.

After stifling us for hours with the crippling heat
Suddenly the night decieded to change colours.
The full moon shone from the early morning trees
Which we saw between silhoutes of branches and cigerette smoke
The wind was passionate and all embracing
It rocked the leaves and pulled the trees in its pent up fury...
And we both watched a new dawn and the first showers of summer
In each other's arms...

That Evening in Cantonment

We entered the magic land
Aware of our outsider-status...
We were entering the gates where we should not be...
Me, a settled woman,
You, a young exploring man.

We cycled through the setting sun,
Aware of only ourselves.
We walked into the deer park
Our hands clutching at each others selves,
Desparately, beautifully.

We knew that this would be our only evening together
The darkness which came into us
Enveloped us with a motherly blanket
Of forgetfulness and sweet sin...
It dragged us into the land of dark woods and frustrated passions...
Of guilty minds and clutching hands....

We watched the setting sun together
On top of small hillock
Which we both climbed with bated breath
That evening in the cantonment.

A Broken Relationship

What is a broken relationship?
To you, it is a break of trust.
To me,it is a broken space.
For you, my time with my self…is an assault on you
For me, it is a fragile moment which requires looking after…

These Words are All I Have…

These words are all I have…
These words are all I clutch…
There is a spot in this wide, wide web
Where I pen my life into words…
Where I shirk myself to fit the world
Where I survive, in spite of repeated attacks
Of ignoring or humiliations…
This spot…these words…

What Happens in a Divided Mind?

What happens in a divided mind?
Any touch reminds you of what you miss.
Your mind becomes a parallel processing machine.
A walk in the starlit night with your man
Who supposedly shares your life
Ends in uncomfortable silence after you
Both have exhausted the roll count of
Vegetables in the fridge.
Yet, you remember what could have been!
That you both could have just looked into the open sky
And seen the single star blazing down upon you.
This is what happens in a divided mind.

Major Decisions in Life

Major decisions in life
Are taken in lonely restaurant tables.
To give up identities...
To submit for life.
Because, he understands
Love only as submission.
To give up the flighty mind...
So fragile, so precious...maybe slightly mad,
To bear down with responsibilites...
Of adulthood and womanhood.

Restraint and Wildness

What is there for a man to be restrained?
Nothing...
Whereas...How can a woman be wild?
In this mad, sad world?

Honesty

...is the best policy,
Says everyone.
But, in relationships
Lovers turn out to be
More and more efficient liars.
Marraige is responsiblity...
Extravagances of sacrifices are demanded,
Withheld first...
and then given under duress...

It Rained Yesterday

It rained yesterday,
After days of stifling heat,
Dust settling in road, leaves, rooms...
The sky broke into peals of lightening,
Clouds gathered,
To fall down in huge droplets of water
Breaking the parched earth
It rained heavily, yesterday...