Thursday, September 06, 2007

Mujhe Jhakjhorti smritiyon me
abki baar
thakaan ke alaawa
bastar aur loktantra

jaan kar maan nahi paane ka dukh
jaise dopahar do ki deewar
aur samudra ki kaid

kapde utaarte eeshwar
nange nakshatro ke alawa
yaad waali aurat ka jooda

harqat ko bazaar banate
vishwa ka anant
syah-safed
lal cheentiyon ki ankahi


translations welcome

Monday, September 03, 2007

On the terrace opposite
she skipped ropes in time

as clouds made shapes of her going away
we tried

to assign
smells to touches
and colors to tastes

for years now
the streets flood
in stories of her children

one of them
as i remember
crawls to my bed

underneath pillows of stones
where are the tiny fish
that once tickled her underfeet

dried to a drop
is that my kelo

are these the stories now
that i tender
for times after her going away

Thursday, August 16, 2007

a butterfly lost its way through an evening crowd of returning people on and along their vehicles

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

6-number

Chote pahad ki dhalan utaro to H block
kuch aur aage P&T colony
fir C-Block ki pehli Kataar

Ek aam, dedh aakash ke neeche
Rajan Arora ka ghar

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Her smells were ten thousand afternoons away from me
I remembered that I can forget
it s so easy

Friday, June 29, 2007

Rear view

----Scribble-----------------------------

This is not an arrangement for winters to fall in love with women wearing red undergarments, neither is it a report on the infant mortality rates in Dantewada- SouthBastar.

Not to be precise, it has nothing to do with what Savitri’s father left for her before leaving for his seventh pilgrimage in the mid of a soaked rainy day; her mother was irrevocably sad.
In between, they were those same rogues from the Kaser Para who stole in to the courtyard before it just got dark enough to tell the roses from chrysanthemums. They were seven of them, about the same height and stature and even voices. Savitri for that matter had never been to differentiate anyone’s voice on the phone.

(Grandfather detested the phone just for this vice to it. On the days when he still had the strength to find his way into the street and knock Munshi’s door for an orgasmic vent of nostalgia, he laid out an elaborate plan for a rebellion against the Department of Telecommunications in the country. Munshi is believed to have perished under the burden of quoting the cost of the movement which by any chance had to be raised at the mercy of their sons and daughters)

“She is in” first voice
“He out” Second
“Pluck it”First
“Why was he called the father of the nation when its more like he’s the grandfather”Third
“Shut Up Tamboli”Second

Did Tamboli shut his mouth or not is a question of infinite importance for the story to continue. But for the time being readers have to console with a rather cryptic piece of information that 26 years later when Prof.Jambalendu Khotishi was to deliver a lecture on alternative agricultural practices at the University of Budapest, the student who repeatedly looked out of the window and winked his eyes 61 times a minute gestured him for a private talk.

“I need to talk to you”
“Talk” said the professor
“Not here…come with me”

“He actually had not kept his mouth shut” the nervous boy told after they journeyed to the other part of the city, far from the calm of a university, into a mesh of shops and lights.

“And why do you tell me that” the professor pretended not to look quizzed.
“Because Savitri had wanted it “
Professor knew that it was important to know about Savitri., but the students were waiting at the University, and the officials even, how embarrassed they must be feeling at the guests queries, after all those bespectacled oldies on the first row had managed to be there for his speech…But even hearing of Savitri was more important than other things…leave aside getting a path breaking information of her whereabouts…what does it matter that all this boy churns up here is trash…he seems to be uttering SAVITRI…what a solace in all these 26 years when he had been used to hear this word only in his voice…

“Savitri had wanted to undress Tamboli that night..Mishra Ji misunderstood the offer and then even the roses didn’t smell like roses, you know these hybrid types…the boy continued for exactly 3 hours 28 minutes.
Later that evening when Professor recounted the incident of meeting Savitri’s mitochondrial boy, he wept.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

ZOBROED

I

It has been a couple of years that I died there. Nevertheless, the place continues to be the same .
Its even true for me.
Death didnt change much of my apetitie even. I am still a small-eater.


II


BOOKS

FILMS

SMELLS

TOUCHES

HOURS

MY RIVER

HER PAINS

Maaya in Marquez - I

Its time that I write about Gabriel Garcia Marquez again.(Or do I write because of him.)

‘Memories of my melancholy whores’ is Marguez’s first work of fiction in the last ten years…That’s what the introductory blurb to the book says. The previous book by him had been ‘Living to tell the tale’. Orthodox literary reviews suggest concrete autobiographical attributes to that book. In fact it has been accepted as an autobiography.

I have read them both, proudly enough within a month of their publication. The result has always been the same, an irresistible urge to fall in love. May be with words, or with that old woman announcing her presence at five in the morning through my deserted alley.

I have been seeing her for the last thirty years or so, with a basket atop her head carrying bundled sticks to brush our teeth that she barters for a handful of rice. Her skin seems far to meager to contain her body and the wrinkles identify with dunes of a great desert. Every so often I think what sounds would wake my alley up after she dies. But isn't she more than dead, walking twenty kilometers for almost a century, challenging the MNC’s like Colgate, HLL, etc. with her brush-sticks she collects in the jungle to earn a little rice; or is it life?

Garcia Marquez and the old lady raise certain simple questions. In this writing, I want to put up few points regarding the much structured definitions of Fiction and Non-fiction as two distinct genres, specifically in the case of Marquez.

Before I get into my thesis, here are a few humble and honest confessions.
This writing is purely non-academic, drawing from an organic point that it pens from someone holed up in an obscure place in semi-urban India without a scholarly attitude but a genuine interest to read and get inspired to write.
This is not a book review either.
Finally I would like to title this piece as ‘Maya in Marquez’

On his ninetieth birthday, a man decides to gift himself with a night full of wild passion with an adolescent virgin. The encounter spurs his nostalgia. He recounts and relives his past libertine excesses, only to console himself with an unavoidable truth that sex is a helpless substitute for love. This agony guides him to his solitary escape as a writer. He writes about his love in his weekly newspaper column and in turn becomes the most famous man in the town. That’s the story for us. Fiction; one may call it.

To the earlier book now- ‘Living to tell the tale’. In the first page itself, Marquez receives his mother who wants him to accompany her to sell their ancestral house. Subsequently we learn about their bizarre journey to Aracataca. Re-unions with bygone familiarities. We get informed of the author’s passion to become a writer despite considerable domestic resistance. His education. His politics. Women. Life. Music. And success. The narrative is nonlinear and is structured in concentric spirals of tense. Non-fiction; one may term it.

After reading ‘Living to tell the tale’ I realised that almost all I have read of him have had their embryos in his real life. In a sense, his writings do have a strong autobiographical basis. But the point is, whatever the case may be, autobiographical resources contrived with imagery or pure fancy interweaved with factual events, it makes a little difference. Because what ends up are printed pages bound in a book, and the grind of creating it is a different realm. It can never be comprehended by structured conceptions of the real an unreal. Just the way, one cant comprehend life in conceptions.

Art and only art has this power to transcend reality in order to comprehend it. Marquez does it by telling tales and the old lady by selling her stcks.

To be contd.
For desires I would like to harness, a poem after long.


A lesser gray agianst a dark gray against the black
Hills and nights

Intimate murmurs against a silence against the wind
Rivers and nights

Old smells against her salty back against a desire
Nights and nights

Dumb-Bell & Plastic Money

I bought the dumbbells and a pair of skates and even a carrom board. Significantly for me I paid by the debit card, obviously for the first time in my life. It was a nervous decision. For once, I even decided against undergoing this tech-ordeal and stepped out of the shop. Outside, by the street, vehicles threatened with their volumes and sounds. It would have been a rather foolish decision to venture into searching an ATM, withdraw cash and return back. Withdrawing cash is always a dicy proposition, you never know how much to spend and hence withdraw more than you need and the remainder evaporates mysteriously. I even came to think that when I had almost succeeded in accomplishing my task for the day (imagine I had searched a sports shop and despite its grand looks managed to step in and despite the in-crowd which seemed far too much comfortable than me, had managed to communicate my needs to a salesman) why retrace?
Should bank on the situational progress rather - I thought as my hands tremored while handing the card to the salesman. I followed him to the machine which reads such cards. A dark strip on its back tells things about my richness or poverty, the machine learns inroads to my wallet and debits the need-sum to balance the payments. I do not surprise on that. It has been long that I pride my scientific acumen.

On the way back I call Mukesh and relate him to this new achievement. Plastic money experience comes to me only months after I saw a barter trade still so much alive in south Bastar, Chhattisgarh.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Tresspassing

It has just been over a year that I wrote anything on this platform. In between, I didnt actually write anything at all. This particular writing happens from a moment of absolute blankness. I am on a table with a system thats not mine, my head is oscillating between two thoughts of buying dumbells or not. A thick book, that I have been reading for the last one day is threatning to pull out its spell on me and I fear I might again relapse into that pleasure of not having to read to write anything.
And thus precisely this writng commences.
I have had this recent desire to write a political fiction on Bastar. May be about the kids with whom I spent a wonderful learning time, or about the tribal who are suddenly subject to endless urban vices and yet survive. It may also shape up like a travelogue, or a report. A short story would be what I prefer.
Then I have those aborted stories still infecting my mind. A couple of them potential ones I bet. Or should I give it a try in Hindi, has been 6 years that I wrote in that language.

Nevertheless.

I want to think this useless thought again - why to write ...or more precisely, why to write when its not happening the way I would have longed it to.

I searched the answer for hardly ten seconds - the easiest reason that comes is that its good to be typing without bothering about the language, without caring the syntax, the structure, just concentrating on the speed. And how it pleases when one entire sentences goes on correct without the finger forced to trace a back key.

Its good to be typing, honestly, without bothering for the traffic jam that sounds at the corner of this street, without bothering that this street which is more than 1700kms away from my home has been seeing me for the last 26 days and yet I find myself a stranger here. Or in that case its simply fine to be typing without considering the new sticky mass of memory thats just started growing in my guts like a freah algae cover on a decaying old wall.

I dont know if this is the reason why I should write but more importantly I would not like to know a reason for writing and understanding why Pushkala is not here with me.