Sketch of a night

Whirlpool of faces sounds arms voices:
smooth sound of African Jazz rising up
settling down like liquid under my skin.
Sweet nostalgia of warm lighting, live music,
new friends dizzy with dance and drink.
Sweet seductive smell of alcohol
floating like a feather in the wind.
Winding up in unfamiliar arms, hand
in sweaty hand, head on a new shoulder.
Walking in a daze through the swaying crowd.

Later, careening down the stairs with dancing thoughts.
I hear histories repeat themselves in my voice, bleary eyes.
The feather floats, stays with us on the streets, in the car.
Sitting straight and suddenly quiet, I look out the window.
I'm curled up tight in my mind, twisted driftwood.
Regret and yearning sit, heavy and unbearably light,
in the nape of my neck, countries of my body.
I woke up in the morning with watery eyes.
Inebriation and quiet memories leave
a strange aftertaste in my mouth.

Nostalgia

Sometimes I am afraid I write too much about the Valley, talk too much about it.
I'm sure people get sick of me, you know. I'm sure I come off as strange.
I'm afraid that I'm so used to saying beautiful things about the Valley, that I can't see it for what it is any more. I'm afraid of the next time I go - what if it isn't everything I hold it to be?
I'm afraid of thinking about it too much, to be honest. I'm afraid of putting it down in words and images and sighs, because I don't want to steal away any of its magic.

And then some days, when I'm stealing away the last hour of sleep in bed, a liquid ache settles in my bones. What is this, prose or poetry? I don't know. I'm afraid of being overly sentimental - and I'm afraid that someday, I won't be. A liquid ache settles down in me, and my body hurts to be so far. So far in both space and time. My body hurts, I lie in bed and hold it to myself, my knees my arms my wavering heart. I'm on the precipice, somewhere important, it's a boundary a border an edge. I might cry. I might cry, and I don't know where these tears come from, and I try to pin it down, travel deep down the lines of my body to remember.

When I start to remember, that's when I ache.

I sit in class sometimes, paying attention, writing notes. In a cold windowless classroom, I might turn back for a second to listen to someone. They've raised their hand, they're talking about Shakespeare, they're talking about Hume and how he contradicts Plato, they're talking about how power distribution is the foundation of all political activity. This is where I want to be. This is what I want to learn. I see myself grow every day. But when I turn back, sometimes, I realize that I'm not there, I'm sitting in the library on a magnificent golden afternoon. The desk is under a window, and the window looks out onto a pond in the administrative block. I can see artwork on the softboard outside, and everybody who passes by and sees me smiles. I smile and wave. There are pink lilies in the pond, and a frangipani tree. Delicate white flowers have fallen on lilypads, on the gravel around the pond, and in the water itself. They float. Next to me are books which opened up so much to me, so many ways of thinking. These books are the reason I'm in this college right now, genuinely excited by Plato and Hume. My bag is on the floor, some books in the damp sunlight on the desk. I'm sure I'm working, but I rest for just a minute. I float.

One of my hiding places was between two shelves in the library, on the floor. Light filtered through shelves and dusty books, and nobody saw me there unless they looked. There were poetry books there, and I curled up in a corner, a part of the wall the straw mat the white shelves the books themselves. Pablo Neruda and Vikram Seth, Eliot and Wordsworth, obscure German and Native American poets - they all sat with me, silent. They let me discover them, devour them; in turn, I let myself be devoured by them. I let myself be devoured by their words, and then by the delicately worn books themselves, incurably romantic objects. I let myself by devoured by the library (curled up in corners so I was a part of it) and by the forest that surrounded it. I have been devoured by the people, the trees, the sky of that school.

I don't know what to do with the great swirling sea inside of me.

Today morning in bed, I felt like being kind to myself. I let myself remember. And when I let myself relive whole days in the Valley, everything comes alive: mornings where I wake up myself with the birds and the dawn floating in through my windows, evenings where I detached myself from the laughter and conversation to look up and watch the sky, Orion winking at me through the clouds. There's too much to remember, and I know that forest like the back of my hand. Every winding path, I can trace it on myself. My footsteps remember the uneven terrain, the steps, the rocks.

All my life, I will write about the Valley. I will write about the Valley even if I mistrust my writing, because that is all I can do when it hits me like a punch in the gut. It's all I can do when I look back and remember days filled with magic that seems unreal from where I am now, from where all the world is. It's all I can do because I am exhilarated when I think of the Valley, and I am unbearably sad, and Sylvia Plath told me that I will be okay as long as I can wrench a piece of hurt and beauty out of my life and put it on paper, that I will never crawl back home broken and defeated if I can make stories out of my heartbreak. I will write about the Valley because from where I am in my life, those seem like the happiest days that I will know. I don't know why - was it the people, the trees, the sky? Was it what those rambling paths awoke in me?

I will write about the Valley all my life, and I will search for ways to go back. I will go back, I know it, but it will never be the same, and that nostalgia (straight from its Greek derivative, "the pain of an old wound") will sit with me, both heavy and unbearably light, for all my life. There will never be enough to say about it. I will make paintings when I miss it, and fashion critical thinking essays justifying why Valley is home - although the answer is here already, solid and tangible, sitting inside me and smiling.

There is a liquid ache in my bones my voice my mouth my hands. There is a liquid ache, and I might spill over. How to explain that this is not rhetoric, this is something real and alive inside of me, a fire and a flood all at once? Perhaps on somebody else's tongue, these words will represent only pretense, artifice. On my tongue, these words are a desperate plea to the gods of expression. On my tongue, these words are all I have. Pause. Breathe. I have to go for class now. I won't let myself think of Valley for a few days - too much of me is ragged and fluttering in the wind right now. Let me gather myself, so I can begin again.

The Nature of Desire

Words float down the breeze

to me. Across windowless cold classrooms.

'The nature of desire is such'

he says and I give myself

a cold hard look,

'that it is never ending'.

'The nature of desire...'

I test it on my tongue.

An earthy word, stable,

that settles like dust

on the sensual sound

of 'desire'. Wisdom

perhaps is the greatest

vice, gently pulling you

from side to side, open

to the storms of the world.

Screw this. I don't want

to know. (Who am I kidding?)

To know, to believe, to

understand, and then give way

to yourself to grow. I want to

be wise, and yet I also want to

possess you, and everything you

stand for. And not only you,

and not just in that way. I want

to hold on, desperately,

to every moment, every sight,

every limb of mine desperately screaming

'desire'. I desire beauty. I desire life,

and knowledge, and joy, and youth.

I desire every galaxy, every photograph,

every deep-veined leaf floating in the wind.

I desire - and I sit, on the other side

of the mirror, watching. I sit 

in the eye of my cyclone, listening

to myself think. I lie down 

in a golden field at sunset, and

fashion rhetoric from my words.

'The problem of possession', I say.

'The existential angst'. The grasses

lap like waves at my feet, blown astray

by the wild, wild wind. The sun rests momentarily

on the taut string of horizon, a deep orange orb

against sky.

I languish

in a fragmentary existence.

Ready to leave

I am ready to leave.
I have been ready to leave
for the longest time.

Still, dust-laden roads
line this city. The conversations
are tired; the sky a weary shade.
I am a stranger here.
I know only that pulsating screen that pulls me
like a planet, a dangerously divine orb.

My story gave up looking for nourishment here.
I lit it up from within, a vanilla candle in a ceramic frame,
casting a midnight dance of light and shadows,
upon the walls of my mind, within the belly of Time.

But I have a home (although it's not here,
in this deeply-bricked complacency
I hate within myself). I fell in love
with a forest at the edge of a city,
a thousand miles from here. And
that is where I will belong. For even
as I languish in the heart of a city
I never loved, my plot lines escape me.
They flutter in the cool wind of a Bangalore evening,
beneath the gently waving trees. My plot lines
are fragile, ragged, wild. They write me a poem
loose on a breeze, a vagabond of Love.

Now I'm leaving home, physically,
(and so in my mind, too). As I pack
my bags, brush my teeth, get into the car;
as I drive past the streets I never held close;
I must also leave what is home in my mind.
I will have to call out to the wind,
go rambling down loved paths to call back
my ragged nostalgia, my fluttering joys, my plot lines.
It's a relief to have found a place I can always return to.
It's strange to leave my house,
and not head to my valley of yearning.
It's strange, but I must do it anyway.
Who knows what I will find on my paths,
what deep-veined red leaves, what feathers,
what polished round stones, what stories?

It's good to keep moving. It's good to have hope.
It's a beautiful day, and I hope tomorrow is better.
I hope to find within myself all the magic I have sought,
and I hope to have the strength to keep seeking.

I'm ready to leave, it's good to keep moving.
I'm tip-toeing, balancing on a well-settled life. Packing away anchors,
(in my mind and out, in suitcases and backpacks and memories)
sipping the deep form of ocean from the hollows of my hands.
Now I'm putting up sails, bright yellow against a swaying shade of sky.

Where the poetry goes to die.

There is poetry in me.
In the gravity of the black alphabets
I am able to make sense of.
(I tell myself).

The windows mist up,
clear. The green outside
is fresh and crisp; waiting
on the clear wings of dawn.
But on a cloudy day, sometimes,
when I forget to be living a meaningful life.

I see the absolute
futility
of a human life in search of beauty.

(I tell myself)
There is poetry in the feverish chaos
running in the wrinkles of an aging face.
In the cynicism that punctures
something important within me.
There is poetry, also,
in the deep well of stillness I feel in the wild.
And in the pulsating power of a harsh screen
that pulls me to it like a planet, there must be poetry,
in the malicious bubble
of complacency and lethargy
that fits around me like a glove.
There must be poetry in this maelstrom.

Some days, the storm is raging and the light harsh.
In the meandering mess of this mortal life,
in the rolls and loops and webs of stories,
relationships and people and arbitrary memories,
in the faith you must put in your existence
in order to survive, yes, make it through
another day, in the existential struggles of
crossing the road or having a meaningless conversation;
the futility hits you hard. Where it hurts.

What if
there is no poetry there?
What if I am able to, really, see the world
without the overbearing cloak of beauty
that I assign to it, surround it with?
"See the world for what it is" -
do you know what dangerous advice that is?
I sleepwalk through the hours. It is a desperate attempt
to hold on to sanity and purpose. I dive,
wade through the days and float through the nights,
hoping to come across an island, a salvation,
a catharsis to this ever-growing sea in my soul,
a veritable ocean of ephemeral silences, senseless rhythms.

Grace

“If there is a knower of tongues here, fetch him;
There is a stranger in the city
And he has many things to say.”
[Mirza Asad Ullah Khan Ghalib]

He will say what he has to, of course,
but to learn to listen, that is the greatest trial and joy;
To know of love, that insidious stranger,
that magnificent word, to fall
willfully and with the grace
that love demands, and the surrender.
For on the other side
of reason and rationality
I often forget something important.
With all of my logic, my caution,
my 'self-awareness', my exhaustion;

Sometimes I still wade through my days
and float through my nights, and emerge,
dry driftwood,
untouched by the the ocean, caressed by no wind,
tossed wildly in ecstasy by no frothing waves.
I am, but a stiff white skeleton of what I might have been.
Safe, safe but with no grace. I learnt how to live
once, under the bowers of towering trees,
but in the callousness of rubble and city lights, I forget.

There is no grace
in the passing of time without the giving of myself, broken as I might be,
indiscriminately. There is no grace
in holding back, deliberating,
forgetting where a day began and where it is ending.
There is no joy in living this life if I live it hollow,
if the echoes ring back to me in my fragile dreams.

I worried I would forget
the massive vulnerability
I hold in myself, so carefully.

But it is a joy
to know that there is still grace.
There is grace in the newness you open within me.
Grace in the delicate fumbles in the dark,
in the wonderful awkwardness of
freshly born lovers. There is grace
in the notes of your classical guitar,
resting on my skin like gentle drops of dew.

There is a stranger in my city,
and I wish to know him. I will learn the tongues
and wait in the rain in a blue dress.
I will open myself to the skies, and my skin
won't be burned or numb. I want to feel the drizzle
slide off my arms, and I want to feel a thunderstorm
beating in on my worn-out door, if it has to.
I want to hold every moment
in the hollows of my hands,
and partake of it well and deeply.

And perhaps when it passes
I will let myself pick up the glass fragments
of once-seamless hours, and hold them up to the light;
watch the sun break through the dust, and smile
at the grace of life.

Tears

Words rumble and roll down mountains of youth;
Down valleys and rivers and gurgling brooks
until they come to rest in this darkened pool.
It is still and empty
and
the magnificent thunder of silence
rings in my ears.

I wept for the stranger in the photograph.

Stand as high as you can and hold the sunbeams in your hand;
isn't possession all you want?
Irrelevant human.

The tears were so silent. So sudden.

Pick up the shattered glass pieces of your life
and hold them to the light.
Let them tell the story you're afraid to hear.

My face, my neck, and my collarbones.
Wet. The ridges and curves
it took thousands of years to perfect.
Atavistic mechanism activated.
Watch the lights and the shadows
dance in the belly of time. Impatient.

Hold my salt-dried face in the hollows of your hands.
Let me cry if I need to.

Someday, I want to be
a poem that would shake you.

Grey

In the chaos in my mind, there are images, fleeting.
A yellow window with shadows flitting.
Footsteps. Leaves. Bad decisions.
Later, sitting on a pile of chairs,
I could be the last one left here.
The crumpled edges of clouds float by.
The leaves forget to flutter. I hold on
to the armrests, grabbing them tight.
I'm in a ship, unsunk, yet
floundering in this maelstrom.

The meowing cats and graying sky,
violently loud to my silent mind.
Momentary madness.
And everything gets rolled up
and punches me in the gut.
It's heavy as iron. Rusted and raw.

Sunday afternoons are the worst.
One doesn't know what one is waiting for.
Everybody is a mystery. Everything obscure.
Freedom was always the colour of the sky -
Until it faded into a pale, washed-out grey.
The clicking keyboard. The bent back.
Unable to really look up, to see. To change.
To run like the wind into faster days,
instead of easing into the future
like pickle leaking out of a labelled glass bottle.
Staining the mantelpiece a shadowed blood red.

What am I doing? I should be doing something.
But I look around, and it hurts even more.
The lives, so many, hollowed out,
like the deep gorges carved on aged faces.
It makes no sense. The ache in my chest,
it deepens. Homo demens.
I drift further. In my mind, even further.

When I'm desperate, though, it's easy to console myself.
You see this mess? It isn't me.
I live far too meaningfully.
My real life isn't here.
It's by the swaying trees
far away. Where the sky is blue,
and the birds sing anew every day.
And I'll watch the clouds from there:
By the fields where the dogs lay.

Numbness

A hundred, a thousand
neatly folded slices of history
carelessly packed by grimy hands
handed to guards, deposited in yards
and street names and numbers zoom
past wobbling bicycles
the day awakens lustily.

A hundred, a thousand
cups of tea
a veritable ocean on the stoves
of a thousand squalling kitchens.
Early morning hands unfold the papers,
bleary eyes peer through warm tea vapors.
Sleep swollen mouths sip, pause.

         what
                    and he died
          again
                         cheating
      and lying
                          we died
again.

Sip again. Swallow.
What does it take for a man to give up?
For a spirit as wide as a sea to hollow.
What does it take to kill a child? Hold down a woman?
What does it take to steal, to lie,
To die. To kill.

A hundred, a thousand
stories we tell. Can you imagine
the sheer power of newsprint
deliberate and dark
holding tight behind walls of alphabets
stories of infinite endless unspeakable violence.
Day after day
                  after day
                           after day
                                       after

and we are numbed, blunted
heavy thuds leave no impact
sharp jabs provoke no pain
we have layers and layers
of middle-class protection, of artificial conscience

We have lives to live.
Lives to lose.

So we read
halfheartedly about
Suffering;
watch it on the screens
keep it fresh with the coriander leaves
in the fridge, cool
under the children's mattresses
behind cobwebs in cupboards
hidden under the scream of the pressure cooker.

Someday we will do something about it.
For now, fold and live.
Fold and live.

Getting Lost

"The art of losing isn't hard to master,
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster." (Elizabeth bishop)

Beginning after ending is so strange,
Going the whole way, learning and unlearning,
Growing and shrinking. Believing. Losing.
In psychology, they say
development is not linear -
it takes the form of a spiral.
Can you see it?
You, in the roller coaster of your life.
Constantly in flux.
Progressing, then regressing.
Before moving on, you must assimilate.
You must consolidate.
And yet, you might go right ahead and do the stupid thing.
After learning better, you might fall harder.

So be patient.

Sunlight slants through the blinds,
A yellow gloom rises in the room.
I feel the soft-footed nostalgia of a thousand things
that are yet to happen. My heart swells up like a raincloud.

I'm a little lost. A little found.
A bit of a square peg,
and yet a little round.
Who I was is now folded in flowers.
Deliberated in memories unearthed in weaker hours.
Who I was became who I am,
before I could lose myself again.

A man bears beliefs like tree bears fruits -
And love and life will grab you right by the roots,
Shake up each and every one of your truths.
What remains? Spiraling onward,
Weary traveler of time,
Be patient.

Stand up to your full height in the storm,
            and succumb.
Let the wind take you where it may,
Let yourself be blown away.

Let yourself be found,
In the art of getting lost.

Life lies in the gentle caress, the fierce passion
of Love. In the vulnerability of living and losing
and living again. There will be a thousand endings,
I assure you, there will be a thousand beginnings.
A thousand truths you and I will reach,
and a thousand more we might lose on the way.

Let yourself get lost.
In the depth of the darkness,
in the eye of the storm,
you will be found.

So be patient.