FRAGMENTS

• I am in fragments;
  Future in my dreams
  Past in my subconscious
  Present torn apart by
  Past and future.
  The only time I was
  Complete
  Was when I was a child.

***

MELANCHOLY

• Why does the dark horizon
  Or a lonely water-drop on a grey leaf
  Remind me of a forgotten past.
  And why does the mind
  Inescapably visit those unvisited corners
  Just to check there is nothing,
  Though it knows there is nothing.
  Does melancholy hold an
  Inexplicable happiness the mind loves?

FARMERS' SUICIDE, IT'S NOT COOL

• I got up feeling sweaty. Must have been 34 degrees Celsius yesterday. Hot. Inside bathroom. It’s sauna. Impossible. Must find a small AC for my small bathroom. What is the world coming to when a man has to wilt like a plant. In Chennai, we must have only house cooling instead of house warming ceremony.
• I look outside and wince. It’s like Sahara. And it’s only early summer.
• Noon. I switch on the AC and go to sleep. Feel like I am in heaven. Dream of water in all forms… waterfalls, oceans, lakes, ponds, rain, and bottles of cool water.
• Now it’s time to go to office. Outside is hell, burning and tar is bubbling on the road.
  Reach office. It’s an ordeal, I tell you. Now I am inside. Ah! here they have centralised AC. Must find whether they can AC the bus. Lalu Prasad said he would AC the local trains. Good man he is.
• Now it’s cool. Work goes on at the newsdesk. Lots of shouting and instructions. Take this, take that.
• Hey. Somebody call maintenance and ask them to step up the AC, they want us to fry here?
• What story to take, asks someone. Try that farmers’ suicide, some damned place in Andhra or Maharashtra. Try. If you can’t fit it in see if Shilpa and Gere kissing thing will fit. Good news and picture too.
• What the hell I have to call home and ask them to put on the AC. Don’t have an AC car. Must have my room cool when I go home.
  Hey, that farmers thing is not fitting, Shilpa is fine.
  Go ahead, do it. Have to rush home. Don’t bother about the farmer thing. Go.

DESIRES NEVER DIE

• I died yesterday,
  As down went my desires
  Deathless Hydra-headed
  Desires,
  A Herculean effort
  Still puts no end to them
  And as a minute weds a minute
  A desire is born,
  (And the wish to vanquish them
  Is yet another).
  Jealousy, hatred all
  Have their seed in desire.
  And in ashes I lay defeated
  Only to rise Phoenix-like
  As a million other desires beckon
  Again and again.
  Defeat becomes a thought
  Defeated by desire

FAKE CREATORS

• A perfect moment,
  Always poised between
  The skeletal start
  To the flair-filled finish
  And oftentimes
  Lost midway,
  Is never to be.
  Sunrise, waterfall, rain,
  Rainbow, birdsong,
  …. all perfect,
  The creation of
  An unconscious genius,
  The unseen hand, the unexplored mind
  But can never be replicated
  By the ever-thinking mind.
  But try we do
  Like children scaling peaks
  With small imaginary fingers.
  Midnight hours lost in chiselling perfection
  And a morn paints us
  As mere fake creators

VANISHING MAGIC

• I remember Chennai only by its cinemas.
• Mount Road had all our favourite haunts. I remember watching Godfather and Jaws at Casino. Magnificient Seven, Bond movies Sathyam, Bridge Too Far, Battle of the Bulge, Safire, Wild Geese Pilot. Devi theatre once featured a Chaplin festival. Blue Diamond had continuous shows.
• After cutting classes, I would always go home, tell my mother I was going to a film and then go after changing the school uniform. We would go to one film watch it and reserve a ticket for another. Sometimes we would go for matinee and if we did not get tickets will wait and watch the evening show. English films were our favourites.
• With DVDs powering themselves into the scene, the mountain has come to Mohammed. The rare charm of waiting and watching the stars has faded. Their greatness has been robbed by the frequency with which we see them. The silver screen had a magic that made stars and stories appear far off and mysterious. Films used to dictate our life. We had to cut classes according to the show time and wait.
• But now, thanks to DVDs we can control all the stars, we can watch any film any number of times whenever we want.

NOT A STRANGER

• The morning breeze, brushes my face
  Where it comes from, there it goes; woes
  past, thoughts it has none
  Gathers it does as one
  Yours and mine
  Gives me yours and you mine,
  I look at you
  ‘cause, your thought came to me
  Why look at me like that
  No stranger am I,
  I touched you through the wind
  I spoke to you with it
  Not words ears hear
  Waves mind knows.
  I died your death, twitched in your trauma
  Died too in your love
  Not a stranger
  I know you —
  You, he, she, that child, and all of them
  From the past
  Not a stranger —
  Outside the hospital
  Waiting for father’s body
  That night flowers smelt of death
  It spared not your father
  I know your sad face,
  Visited my father, it did, next week
  Flowers smelt of death
  Not a stranger
  And you, broken in love, looking, waiting
  Waiting and looking
  The chill wind touched you
  And you knew somebody knows.
  That child there
  I was he
  He will be me.
  Here in the breeze
  You will find in the morrow
  Buried pain, joy and sorrow
  That was once mine
  Was once his
  And before that his
  And before that…..