Rote and His Talking Mirror #17

"whoosh. whoooosh."

"i thought we were trying to sleep."

"that was nine days ago."

"no it wasn't - i can see your calender on your wall to the right of your harpsichord."

"well i can see yours to the left of yours and yours says 21."

"turn around, you strange projection of your strange projection of some strange suppressed part of your subconsciousness - your calender says 12. and what's more - it says 12 Aug, unlike mine - which just says guA 21 - and only if you think your '2's and your 'g's are written backwards!"

"you missed out the 'u's."

"it's a goddamned sans-serif, Rote."

"whoosh. whooosh."

"oh - ignoring me now, are we?"

"i though we were trying to sleep??"

"damn you."

Rote and His Talking Mirror #23

"i know who you are. you're that person with those strange things you call opinions that you tell yourself are hidden deep in your head - but they're spewing out all over the place. i can see them oozing out of your ears. hah! there - there! look at that particularly fat looking specimen that's casting a lens of an extremely unattractive colour over your eye. i know you. you're bubbling and bursting with them - you can't contain them. quiver now, like a dead jelly, pink and glorified - that's what you do. you think i can't see through you - i don't have to. you're bursting at the seems. i despise you. i despise you with your judgmental eyes and cautious tongue. you think you're safe - you think you try? you don't know shit. you don't feel shit. you don't. you think that's dirt and muck under your fingernails? it's raw flesh. and it stinks. it stinks of FREAKING opinions and FREAKING rubbish that's all stacked up to the rim in that feel-good brain of yours, dressed as you trying. don't you think you can fool me."

"fool you, Rote? tell me something, when you describe this vibrant imagery of the pink jelly that's so lovely in you're head, are you at all aware that we share the same features. if i'm a jelly, with or without my so called burden of heavy opinions - so are you, with your own larger than life opinion of who i am. what do you think you look like to me? a dish of slimy porridge? that's simmered down and curled up satisfied - you're a goddamned jelly as much as i am - and what's more, you KNOW it. what are you doing - what do you think you're doing? slapping a kitten into left-over laundry? i'm not scared by your i'm-too-scared-to-say-bad-words. oh hell i'm not. and if you think you're fooling yourself by letting your tongue run loose and do all the screaming - just take a second look at what you're screaming at. just take a second look at that goddamned mirror and decide if it's doing you any good despising your own reflection."

a square in my pocket

Open publication - Free publishing - More square

Twitch

Who screamed? The piper screamed.

You couldn't hear it and neither did I.

Between the tip of a white edged nail

And ridged skin - you can't hear it cry.

Who moved? And crawled... and twitched.

Red. Red. Red. You can't see the red.

It isn't fun - not if I say so -

But if you listen really well, it's something well-fed.

Who's trembling? Who's not really there?

It was - it was - but it's not. Not now.

Silent and still - and undeniably killed.

Well-fed, and empty, and wondering how.

Packing for the Summer

It’s a night for sepia stars

Smiling softly their twinkle-less smiles

For the brink of a season – printed paper-boats

Bottles and bottles of homemade preserve

Newspaper and taxis and crumbled tickets

Where we were – and where we’ll stay.

Goodnight faces, the curtains still whisper;

It’s a night for remembering – we’re happiest today.

Follow the cold star, the bright star, the still star

The waters are pouring, the dusk and the day

Sneakers and cartons and bright yellow flowers

Geometric magic – and the rest have to stay.

Huge purple cases with nametags – and scribbles

Stamps and stamps and signature ink.

Journeys are ribbons – and journeys are nametags

And journeys are brinks – and they’re here to stay

The wrapped and the packed and the sent away bagged

The stored and the floored and the above-the-front-doored

Some things are happy – and some things just fine

And some things best kept between two frozen lines

But the most that could happen with fried-egg scorched sunsets

Are the things that have left – not the things that have stayed.

They come back greeting – in the thick of our meeting –

The sunsets are fried eggs and the bags are unpacked

The lines that were frozen melt softly and gently

Into two little pigtails – and they tumble back.

Into still framed smiles – some twinkle-less smiles

When we move ahead leaving sepia behind

And the stars are the ones that’ll stay here forever

And we – very quietly – have left them behind.

prison paintings

hack. hack. hack.

they're called fixed dimensions.

you can't hack. hack. hack.

into the insides of this skull and make it bigger.

and i've been dying to get out.

i'm brilliant at this.

spraying the grey matter with coloured swirls of chaotic imagery.

i've always been brilliant at this.

running around the insides of this brain with my paintbrush of emotive visions.

creativity. i'm a genius.

but a genius gets bored

with fixed dimensions.

hack. hack. hack.

there's not room enough for me within bone and scalp.

there's not room enough for me within tight walled in stories of beautiful colours and images.

Ugly. bright. bright. ugly. beautiful.

No. Not enough room.

There's a way out.

Hack. Hack. Hack.

And I've carved another one.

Layers and layers of breathtaking sculptures in this skull.

A gallery of the most beautiful images you've ever imagined.

This brain's ever imagined.

All me.

And all spaced

Within fixed dimensions.

Hack. Hack. Hack.

http://prisonpaintings.blogspot.com/

here again.

These are the hills that I know

Rising and falling

In front and surround and mass.

Green into blue – and then into purple

And a stream through a shingled white cast.

These are the hills that I know

Of caked brown footsteps by rainshine

Down-paths and up-paths in fog

Where the thunder of crickets match the thunder of water

Not seen – just felt – in fall.

These are the hills that I know

Mountains and forests

That shrug into white-feathered sky.

Highland and lowland and rushes of green land

Bowing to green-whiskered I

These are the hills that I know

White browed memories of autumn

Tooth and warmth in jagged lines of mist.

First born to snow and last born to winter

Sleepy low lines of purple to kiss.

These are the hills that I know

A touch of smoky steaming

Brushing by eyelashes dim

Muffled and soaked in mudpaper cloaked

A little path with a wood-peckered rim.

These are the hills that I know

And a little window calling

Into drowning foraging sky

And the first bird that wakes – and the last bird that calls

And the sun that blows the peep by.

These are the hills that I know

A faraway yearning

Growing smaller as they fade beneath the sky

A wheel in a storm – and some hush-hushed forms

Of music – and fried-egg goodbyes.

waiting for the evening

I remember where we were.

The cold red floor and the soft drip-drip-drip of the last remnants of the afternoon’s rain from the damp yellow windows beyond.

Me on the tattered sofa that had somehow become yours since they’d brought it over from the house that was being sold.

And you – a half-closed eye in a dream, off running through wild grasses on some strangely coloured hill against some strangely coloured sky.

I remember how loud it was – the sound of the clock from the next room – the clock that always ran late because everyone forgot to wind it – the clock that was always so loud when everything else fell silent. Most evenings when it was just me and you and an empty floor.

A book between us and you were always only waiting for the evening.

Sometimes the fan would be working – that huge hulky fan that drowned out the clock and conjured the old ghosts under the cupboards. And under the desk – and the table – but never under the beds – because they knew where you were.

We’d leave the room and go off wandering now and then – your soft footfalls treading through the house like some sleek searching spirit of wakefulness. And mine, trudging through the grime of some unnamed hill after Charlemagne’ s army. And when we’d return, yanked back to the room by various entities, we’d listen for a while, for each other’s presence, to be comforted by a special kind of quiet silence that was ours.

In some strange miscalculation of time, we’re still there.

In that cool quiet room brimming with ghosts and words.

Perhaps it’s wrong to tie you down with it, the red floor and the fan that never works now. Wrong to tie you down – you of the strangely coloured hills and the strangely coloured sky.

But that quiet silence is tied to that room – and it drowns the clock, now that the fan doesn’t work anymore. And you will always be in my quiet silence, even though your footfalls are free now, on that strangely coloured hill, against that strangely coloured sky.

And all of those colours break in through the yellow windows and spill across the words. And the ghosts. And the tattered sofa. And that shadow by the bookcase.

Where we still are. You - the half-open eye in a dream, waiting for your evening. And me on the tattered sofa that will somehow always be yours.

Fragment

And she went so far out to sea

That she couldn’t see the rain

The wind there was like the sea itself

Dark and deep and wild

Like mountains that moved with the storm.

 

And every fog she touched

Was like her own breath

Whistled towards a long-lost coast

Lost and lost again

With each passing mist that wreathed her.

 

And each passing day that left her

Washed by another salty crest

Another salty breath

Of a certain sort of yearning

That is born only in the stormy sea.

 

Where grey hills rise and fall

And stretch to the edge of the world

In one giant circle that trembles

Beneath one giant sphere

Swirling grey – and grey – spiraling into each other.

footsteps

Blind Mrs. Mitra sat by the iron-barred window and listened to the rain. Drip, drip, it went, on the brick tiles of the roof and splash, against the aluminium frame of the window, newly installed, because the wood, a hundred years old, had been eaten away by time. She could feel the city outside – the air felt grainy, like the air in front of the grinding mills at home, a long time ago – but colder, and harsher.

The sound of the city was lulled by the rain – and the metal sounds of Pratima, her daughter-in-law, washing the dishes in the little kitchen next door. The sound of the dishes reminded her of her knitting – she felt the cold steel of the needles in her palm and sighed. Clickety-clack, they would go – with the rain – but she felt like remembering, now.

Ajay had presented her the knitting needles – Ajay, her brother’s son, orphaned as a child of four months. The same day, it was, that Ajay and Prashant, her own son, had graduated from the military academy together – two smiles, so similar, so indistinguishable – she had felt them with her old wrinkled fingers on their lips, a foot above her head. Prashant had gifted her the aluminium window frames. Pratima had laughed, but she hadn’t found it funny – cold, instead, as if Prashant didn’t know how to love.

Splash – and thump – boots in the street. Then footsteps came loudly, and slowly, up the stairs and stopped in front of the door. Mrs. Mitra turned her head towards the doorway – it was open, she knew – it was always open. She wondered who it was – those boots were heavy on the red-cemented floor – a raincoat? Or was it a jacket?

“Pratima!” she called. “Look and see – someone is here. See what they want!”

There was a clash of metal, again, from the kitchen.

“Ask them, Ma – I’ll be a minute.”

The boot stepped into the room – thud, it went, a duller, softer thud, lulled by the water it carried from the world outside. The step startled the blind woman, sitting so placidly by the window across the room.

“Ajay?” she cried, half-croaking, half-whispering – and ran across, into the man’s arms. She lifted her old worn hands up to his face – the funny lumpy cheeks and the lips – so similar, so indistinguishable.

“You’re home? From the war? Why? When? Why didn’t you write – my darling –”

She stopped suddenly. A whimper – soft and yet so unbearably loud in the room. A small wet spherical circle dropped onto her outstretched fingers. Plip – louder than the loudest whiplash of rain outside.

She tore away and looked back – “Prashant?” Her voice was steady. “Has Prashant been killed?”

The man opposite her broke into horrible heart-wrenching sobs. Pratima hurried in from the kitchen, her footsteps hard on the cold floor.

“Prashant!” she screamed – “You’re home!”

Footsteps rushed across to the man. The blind woman collapsed to the floor. A quiet thump.

“No –“ she whispered.

“What’s wrong?” Pratima was saying. “Ajay? Is he hurt?”

The man rushed blindly across to the blind woman – flaying her arms about her, searching, searching – for those cold steel needles – so full of love.

He handed them to her and hugged her, sobbing.

“I’m so sorry – Ma –”

But Mrs. Mitra raised her head, surprised. She had felt love in that embrace. The needles felt cold and distant in her fingers, like they were saying goodbye. She had felt love in those arms. In the wrong arms – but love, nevertheless – so similar, so indistinguishable.

playing pretend

            She was a little older than I was – about twelve. Her braids hung loosely over the low garden wall as she leant over it, smiling at me with a strange pair of liquid brown eyes – which dazzled red when they caught the sun.

            “How old are you?” she asked me, and I blinked, because her lips hadn’t moved.

            “Ten,” I replied and her eyes widened.

            “I think I can read minds,” she said.

            It was a funny way to begin a friendship, but she crossed the wall and entered our garden, landing on the tulip bed. I pulled her away hurriedly: my mother was extremely sensitive about the flowers.

            We were children and it was easy to believe. She spoke to me always with her mind, and projected what she read in others’ minds into mine, so that I could share. We learnt many things about the world that way, and it was frightening sometimes.

            One night my mother came home from work crying. She pretended her eyes were dry, but we could always tell.

            “How are you today?” she smiled, before she went upstairs. That wasn’t the sort of thing she usually said. She gave me a strange look before she went, a half-hungry, yearning look of despair that lasted a second before she turned away.

            My friend looked at me. Both our eyes were brimming with tears. And both of us knew why.

            “I’m sorry,” she broke down. “I didn’t want you to know.”

            And she ran out of the room.

            I stood there, unable to move. My mother was going to die. She knew – she hadn’t wanted to tell me. But I knew. And it was terrible. Every day after that was forced. I couldn’t talk to my mother – every word I said, every look I gave her was unnatural. And this made her sad. She couldn’t tell me and she didn’t know why I wasn’t myself. Every hour of everyday went by just as before – a little strained, neither of us knowing what to do, but both knowing what shouldn’t be known.

            Sometimes not knowing can be a good thing, I told my friend. Knowledge can be terrible. And sad. She never wanted to do it again. She hated her ability. Ever time I met her, there was something in the way she talked that told me that what we had discovered had affected her so much that she’d forgotten how to live. She was older and it was my mother. There are some secrets that should not come in the way of love, she told me, sounding wiser than her years. I didn’t understand. She had grown older.

            “I have to tell you something,” she began. I wasn’t listening. I was staring at the sun, just about to be covered by a massive cloud, grey and huge – like some huge hungry monster of the future. And the sunrays were struggling. It gave me peace, somehow.

            “I can’t really,” she said again.

            “Can’t what?” I asked.

            “I can’t read minds.”

            I looked around and stared at her through my eyes. Hypnotizing apple-green eyes – my mother used to say. I just found them somehow frightening in the mirror.

            “It’s true,” she said. “I have never been able to do it alone. It’s all you. You’re the one who can read minds. I was just pretending it was me.”

            I turned back towards the sun.

            “I know,” I said.

From a little bit of April

This is where I was. On a bad-worded Sunday evening in a paper-boat hat off the east end of Hebbal.

It was Easter. Almost.

But the words never went. They ran ink – in the untimely April rain. Ran ink like the open wound would never heal. Ran ink as if the summer couldn’t suck it dry in its dusty incomplete swell.

But I knew it could.

I knew it had.

But the ink still ran – into little gullets in the newly laid pitch. That swelled and bubbled where the sun’s rough touch played it into sticky tar. The kind that trapped boots. And heels. And other things that feet liked to kiss.

Like the earth beneath it. And grass that disappeared every second Thursday of the month. Magicked away by April-ness. That wouldn’t be there in May.

And the little white world of ink and things that I’d thought I’d left behind eased gently out of my fingers in the tugging wind and floated away in a gust of some more April-ness to a faraway island I couldn’t reach.

The barbed wire winked at me in the sun. Something about April flashed in the clouds overhead before disappearing over a smoke-lit horizon. And a line of cool grey cement.

The flyovers swayed in the wind – sagging in the April heat…screeching at the tug – and then almost snapping – but not quite.

Where we stood still yesterday.

It is a paper-boat hat now. Running ink in non-existent rain before it floats off in a non-existent wind over a non-existent road. It is a non-existent paper-boat hat now. Drinking it’s fill of April. Over and over and over again. Till Sunday gets lost somewhere in between all the letters that hadn’t been posted yet. In between the five-rupee stamps that tasted of burnt coffee on a foggy morning. In between cigarette-coloured socks and half-remembered tomorrows.

It is Sunday. Almost.

the brink

This is where we should fall

On high ground bristling with grass

And other things – beating

Wings in the dark

Too much to hold – and too little to not

There’s a soft glitter here

Whispering. Crashing.

Splintered wood and stone

Rippled in dense memories.

Craving and breaking and reaching.

Like us. Bound to the dust.

Bound to nothing. And everything.

Swirling together and lifting in the gale.

Where the thunderstorm rises dark and wild and free

Over the horizon

Something threatens. To begin.

Or to end.

This is where we should fall.

Riya.

Riya. She was named after my mother. Three years old and pleasantly shy – she had her eyes. Not an unusual colour, liquid brown and strangely evocative, but hauntingly beautiful. And when you looked into them, you looked into innocence, in a strange simple blend of mystery and reality, the way the world might look to a child.

Her mother’s hand rested gently on her light curls, as she stood timidly by the door, sizing me up. “Do you remember your grandfather, Riya?” Pratima said, softly.

She cocked her head to one side, her ear brushing against her needlessly elaborate collar; her frock fell in lacy swathes about her ankles. She hadn’t seen me for a year and a half.

I hesitated for a second, and then stretched my arms wide. And the girl ran into them, laughing, as if she’d known me for years.

Pratima smiled quietly and disappeared beyond my doorway.

“Do you like it here, Riya?” I asked. “Up here in the mountains?”

“Yes, Dadu.” Her voice was young – far younger than any I’d heard in years and years. And her words clear and distinct – unusual for her age. “When Ma told me about the mountains I didn’t think they’d be so pretty.”

“You don’t feel lonely?” I asked, her confident words and grown-up phrasing unsettling me. Had she been taught what to say? “I know you don’t really have anyone to play with here.”

“No,” she said, bright eyes traveling quickly to look into my own, a little perplexed. “It isn’t lonely. There’s the rose garden – the flowers. The trees – ”

And then, in the same distinct clear voice, she said – “And there’s always Adi. He plays with me. So do Ashok and the other Riya.”

I blinked. Breathing fast, I looked at her face. She was so young – so little. Was she playing with me?

“What names did you say?” I asked, gripping her arms tighter than I should have.

She looked away, a little frightened. “Ashok, Riya and… and.. Adi.”

I let go of the girl and slumped back onto my pillow. Ashok was my father’s name. And Riya – my mother. They’d died years ago – years before Riya was born. And Adi – Aditya was my son. Pratima’s older brother who’d left us at the age of…of four and a month. The house was miles away from the nearest hill station and monsoons were treacherous n the mountains.

“You… played with them? You saw them? Here?”
Little Riya laughed. “Yes, yes I did! We played pretend. And horses… and the other Riya told me stories about the moon and the stars. Adi, Ashok and I played catch in the garden.”

“How…how do they look?” I asked, weakly.

Riya turned towards the window and a smile spread across her face. “Adi’s calling me now, Dadu. To go out and play.”

She bent over and kissed my cheek. Then, in a whirl of white lace and brown curls, she skipped out of the room.

I turned slowly to look at the window. Sunlight poured through the empty archway, lighting up my little lonely room.

______________


My wife died that year. And my health failed. Always shut up in my little room overlooking her rose garden and the hill slopes beyond, I waited. Pratima came to visit in summer, she hardly had time anymore. We’d talk now and then over the telephone – and there’d be a few letters. But the post was slow in these areas. And Pratima never had much to say. Riya was growing older – she didn’t like lace anymore.

A year since I’d seen them last, Pratima and Riya stood at my door, looking uncertainly at me. Riya’s eyes were different now – older. Stronger.

I sat up, just as before, and held out my arms welcomingly to her. And just as before, she smiled – perhaps a little quieter this time – and rushed into them.

Pratima left quietly.

I waited till she was gone and leaned forward excitedly. I had been waiting so long.

“Riya – do you see them now? Ashok, Riya and little Adi?”

The girl flinched – and drew back sharply, her brows knotted.

“And Dida? Do you see Dida?” I asked, eagerly.

Riya shook her head, her eyes puzzled, and … afraid. “Dadu, what are you saying?”

I searched for that gaiety in her eyes – the confident friendly assurance that I’d seen before. And I didn’t find it.

She drew back slowly from my bed. “Who are all those people?” she whispered.
And then, even softer, leaning her head forward and drawing her feet away slowly, she said – “Dida – Dida died last year, Dadu! Don’t you remember? How can she be here?”

I stared at her – my arms going limp – my eyes clouding over. “You…don’t see them?”

She looked at the door wildly. “I think… I think Ma’s calling me, Dadu. I have to go.”

And she backed away towards the doorway, keeping her fearful gaze on me. Then she was gone.

My wife tightened her grip on my hand from her stand by the side of my bed as I watched the girl leave. And little Adi just stood at the foot of my bed and smiled mischievously at me.

when we look away

A breeze meant to blow through the woodwind rushes lost itself in step.
And thunder once awoken grew older and older till forests swayed and broke.
And today the stars fell behind to sound impure by the darkness of a lens.
A flash where the laughter was – and the rest is old magic tomorrow.
And we forget – only to remember – the glint of an eye in the dark.
And magic where it wasn’t – old songs in the old rain.
Much that was ours is the wind and the sprites play softly.
Softly. In the dark when we look away. They listen for our tears.
And they grow wiser - the notes grow wiser at the wetness if things.
At the dryness of love washed away by the hours – and the wait.
The thought is remembered and the song plays on forever.
A whistled tune in the growing silence – till only silence moves on ahead.
Much that was ours is the earth and the sprites sing softly.
Softly. Beneath the dust when we look away. They listen for our tears.
And we hold the world to account – time to account for our mistakes.
Spent and sore in remembrance – till the laughter reaches us again.
And the dulled lights return – fleetingly – for a glimpse of something left behind.
The stars rock gently, cradling them to a lulled sleep. We stay awake.
And whisper things left unsaid across worlds that never existed.
Till the waves break again on the woodworked shore. A dream wakes.
Much that was ours are the dreams and the sprites play softly.
Softly. In the memories when we look away. They listen for our tears.

A Fable of Fools, Part 3

read part 1

read part2

Then the stars came up.
And the intellectual tried very hard
To trace out the constellations.
“That’s the Dancing Palmyra,” he said at last,
Pointing at a smudge of stars directly overhead.
“It means we’re in the southern hemisphere.”
“It means you’re making things up now.” I said.
The D#s were more frequent at night.
But no one asked the piper to stop.
Something was washed ashore in the dark.
But no one got down to find out what.
I noticed the plumber hardly slept
Or maybe it’s a little hard sleeping on a shared palmyra palm branch.
He wasn’t counting the stars and yet
His eyes followed their cycle all the way.
Dawn was shriek from the racehorse rider
Who had no memory of dawn.
And a loud swear from the intellectual
Followed immediately by a poetic description
Of the dazzle on the wet waves
And how the refracted rays reach us early.
This time I’m sure he knew but none of us were listening.
The piper had been playing through the night.
And now he began the morning with a major progression.
The D#s screeched in our heads.
As I joined the racehorse rider on the sand.
The something was a little black flag.
It didn’t have the skull and cross bones we were expecting.
But the painting of a small dog
With a pink ribbon on her head.
And a pink coat below it.
And a pink tongue hanging out of it.
And presumably a pink brain inside of it.
Since it had succeeded in washing up
Onto a five-foot diameter island
In the middle of the Pacific
With five people on a palmyra palm.
Which was hanging noticeably lower than yesterday.
And wrapped in the flag was an egg.
A bright pink egg with a small crack across it.

Since there are always cracks on eggs that turn up suddenly.
The intellectual was all for eating it up immediately.
And we guessed the piper agreed.
Because we heard an accelerando.
The racehorse rider was wearing the flag as a cape
When the plumber suddenly came out of his trance
And demanded the egg.
“I eat one-fifth!” the intellectual was saying –
“Not to eat – to hatch,” he said.

Chinese tea.

Chinese tea?
He looks up, confused.
At least his movements are confused…dazed…like he’s forgotten his glasses and just realized they weren’t on his nose.
But behind those shades…blind? Is he blind?…it’s impossible to tell.
There is a silver chain dangling out of his breastpocket.
A pocket watch? Vintage?
He slips his hand out of his coat pocket.
A handkerchief.
Laced…it’s laced?
White and laced.
And he wipes the sweat off his brows.
Only there wasn’t any sweat to begin with.
The swing doors glide apart and a blast of hot afternoon Kolkata air storms into the air-conditioned room.
Chinese tea?
No…er…what was that?
Chinese…
He waves his hand.
Not now.
His shoes…look for his shoes.
Kolapuri sandals.
And a bloodstain.
Blood.
Dull dark black gory magic.
Run away.
Is he hurt?
Are you hurt?
Just the market? Chicken? Fresh meat...?
He stands up.
Heavily.
The loo?
And sits down again.
Not sits…falls. Into the plush seats. Cheap plush seats. Beautiful cheap plush seats.
That way.
Which…what?
Drunk?
There’s a scent of aftershave. Cheap aftershave. But aftershave. Subtle.
Not drunk.
He’s breathing fast. Suddenly.
A doctor? No. Water? No.
There’s a shout outside. Traffic. Crowds. Heatwave.
April. Kolkata April afternoon sun.
A doctor.
Another shout outside.
The swing doors screech.
He’s standing up.
The loo?
They’re running. He’s running. The swing doors screech in the tension.
Kolkata April afternoon sun.
Traffic. Crowds. Heatwave.
They’re rushing in. Everything’s exploding. Fire?
Just the sun. And the crowds rushing in.
There’s been an accident.
He falls over.
On the floor.
Shiny polished marble. Kolapuri sandals. A bloodstain.
He’s run over someone.
A little girl coming home from school.
Two little pigtails.
Kolapuri sandles. And a bloodstain.
A shiny polished marbled floor.
A white ambassador. A red ambassador. An orange and yellow ambassador. A black ambassador. Dust. Rust. Dust. Rust.
In the wind.
Kolkata April afternoon sun wind.
A trail of sweat on the polished marble floor. Where they dragged him out.
Into the Kolkata April afternoon sun.
A white laced handkerchief. A red laced handkerchief. An orange and yellow laced handkerchief. A black laced handkerchief. Dust. Rust.
Shattered glass.
Not inside.
The temperature levels as the air-conditioner restores the cool.
Fresh meat.
Chinese tea?

...and a memory.

This is the story of a song.
It is a song that grew –
Running around the flowers
Bitter-sweet dewy mornings.
A song that tried
So hard – to break out
Into the world.
A song that hummed
Inane unheard fantasies
In a tousled head
Behind lost eyes.

This is the story of a song –
A song that found a tune
Among half-lit stubs
Of glowing cigarettes
And little toppling stacks of ash –
Dust grey and yellowing.
Among baby green blades
Of new grass – underfoot.
A song that flitted around
Untuned guitars –
Laying to dust in a sunlit corner
By a cracked window
And a misfit curtain
Canvas and the paints
Were lost somewhere in between
With the fifth string.

Between the broken semitones
Of an old piano
With a croak.
And lay to rest
In the folds of the draperies
Magic and coffee
On a winter morning.

A song that trembled
On drunk fingers
Yellowing skin and uneven nails
Resting against the keys
Jerking to life –
And then laying down again
Withered and wearied.
A song that died
On an empty gravestone
With a voice –
And a memory.

Tamu.

Tamalika. Running to the camera. As usual. The yelp at the beginning is bhoda, who she used to sing 'my bonnie lies over the ocean' for. You can see him at the door. Googli at the camera.

sketch. thing.

paint again.