-A window ajar is a prelude in building to the joy of being limitless! That uneasiness of being familiar somehow, sometime, somewhere.......

Friday, December 31, 2004

Notes on nicotine

~First string~ page 13
Outside it was drizzling; a sort of programmed rain as if some master benevolence was in control.
The drizzle was unexpected for this season, but it didn’t stop me from my usual evening stroll. As I stepped out I got a feel of dampness under the feet, the whispering wind chilled my marrow and I knew I was due, for my cigarettes.
Monsoon smoking is a privileged indulgence, you can say, a rare kind of bliss bestowed upon only a few. The shopkeeper was a pretty woman in her early thirties with a strange but fair attractive face, an intriguing pair of button eyes, an upturned nose and sensuous full lips.Can’t remember how long I gazed at that face. Sure must have been drowned in the devil of meticulity. As in any other such elevating moments that life offers us seldom, I was beside myself. Suddenly it felt quite awkward. Her eyes just told me that. Silently. Out of acknowledgement, she blushed crimson. I drew a pale blank. In the practice of life, things can get out of control just like that. Playing the old pretext of looking for something, I broke eye contact. Needless to say, It was hugely relieving.

I served under 'time' for some moments, then I asked her in my best of the charming ways for my particular brand of cigarettes. A sultry reply arrived in an apologetic tone for not having that particular brand followed by if the ‘double strike’ would do? She almost recommended it. Bright, beautiful sparkling set of teeth. And what a smile!! ? I would have jumped into a compliment any day, but today, I found myself holding back, stuck, and why? Was she so extraordinary? Was it the weather? I tried hard not to succumb to my own thoughts. I won! Now it would be easy.
With my seventh smile I asked for a pack of what she had suggested and as I collected the box from her hand, I felt the feminine gentleness of her fingers that you often read in the books. She reflexly withdrew and stood silently with a palpable approval within. Encouraged, I asked for the light in the most casual (Im not in this world) manner a.k.a. ‘Humphrey Bogart style’.
This took time or so it seemed.
But she dropped the lighter into my hand from not more than a few inches, which seemed to me, like light years. Her little caution had turned into my big void.
And I turned to go she called me with a melodic “excuse me” and placed some loose change right into my hand. I felt more than her hand and now the very familiar smile was picnicking in the corner of the frame. I slowly fell into the abyss of her eyes, half closed gazing vacantly towards the floor and the angles of the lips curved into a tentative semi-smile, that’s going to haunt your soul like a devil when you sit with a steaming cup of coffee on a rainy evening.

When I walked back home, I caught smoke from a distant chimney caressing the raindrops in the horizon. There was some life there, may be inanimate, but there......

~Sixth string~page 47

Past the whoosh of whirling spires parks smiles and courtesy nods with the calf crying tired by pumping blood against winter and gravity I stand before the library desk split within between catching air for my lungs and looking to add a memory for the blonde librarian before me whose early twenty image with that body language reminds me only of students working in supermarkets to colour the shades of their future; yes, of course this place is a less competitive supermarket with black shadows of wanton souls impressed on paper as word-epitaphs assembled by their deweys waiting to be sold, bought borrowed etcetera filling the whole room with a scent of bare buoys sleepwalking in the broad daylight. What was such a devil's delusion that the god was tempted I mutter to myself and then she calls my first name in a timbre that it can mean only one thing in the universe that my book request has arrived, conveyed in a safe box from far away and I acknowledge all that by smiling and scribbling a residue of what is supposed to be my name and a smell of dying carbon engulfs me as I open the box; ah now I remember wasn’t she the girl who wavered off my fines some weeks back and called me the nice chap who had participles with salads for breakfast whilst laughing a laugh that left you itchy, salty, and drowned yeah, that tsunami laugh. Returning the pen I noticed that she had long slender hands with fingers delicate and dangling that would have inspired an impressionist into a mad frenzy to paint them playing a piano, not poor me I ponder what neruda would have said of those hands if he ever shook it, would he have kissed it or would he have shared it with silence and wrote about it later ah what a cocktail of borderline and schizotypal onions with romanticism pickle, then I catch myself gazing at my own arthritis aspiring fingers that would have made even Tolstoy proud for carrying unabridged war and peace for a continuous month and then as she whispered a farewell into my ears I caught her fingers now laid bare over the white table clearly presenting at the distal end a faint dark stain of unmistakable nicotine a story of woe, silence and epiphany in the making, subfusc subfusc I meditate aloud......... only to be drowned by the rain outside.


Wednesday, December 29, 2004

empire 'zero' central

empire 'zero' central

d i S-----t u R b---e -D
d
- i -----st---- or-e t--d ,
d / i/ s / mem / / be // r / ed/ ,
(self- d i s.... p e ....n s.... e d, daaaaaaaaaazed)
and
distr
aught

floating through
hazed invisible
c
~ l~
~~ o~~
~~~u~~~
~~~~d~~~~
~~~~~ s,~~~~~
whispering naked((secrets))…........... you can’t find
and


when

time tears through
the innocent heart,
B
l
e
e
e
d
into the
sorrrry mind.

wedded to soaking red memories
walk……..a--w---a----y..
all the
retinues of your oxygen(o2) ,
in fruitless enqu???iries,

distr
aught
(self- d i s.........p .....e.... n s e d, daaaaaaaaaazed)

d/ i/ s / me // mbe// r/ ed/ ,
d- i-- st---- or---et-- d ,
d i S--- t u R b------e--D.................

-- ( fall 2002/onboard cauvery express)

so long,

A reason to hate you....

When the weariness of the day pushes you into an almost sleep and suddenly you are jolted up to grab the pen and jot down whatever the pen wants to say.......

A reason to hate you....

No!
You are mistaken.

I did not
hate you when
you seduced me that night
and
dropped me like a fulfilled dream.

No!
I did not
hate you when
you pretended
to be busy
and
did not
return my calls

But,
I hated you
when
you spilt wine on my new skirt
and
tried to wipe it off with your tie
Of all the things…….


so long,

Sunday, December 26, 2004

They gave us a white christmas , did'nt they??

White noise.


Meant dampened feathers, nothing more.
Forceless upon our backs there fall
Infrequent flakes hexagonal,
Devised in many a curious style
To charm our safety for a while,
Where close to earth like mice we go
Under the horizontal snow.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Snow Storm


Frozen silence


Thursday, December 23, 2004

The story of The Choice.

This write-up is a byproduct of a discussion with a friend.Any credit, if at all worthy should be reserved for her for digging this from withinme.

Crescendo-The Birth of the Choice.

Choice. One word. Two different directions. Small challenge for conscience. Between pain and less pain. First you dismiss it as trivia. You presume you can work around it. There is no respite for such false conjectures. You think you can succeed in escaping into fiction.But it only takes time to separate fact from forged.The escape seems almost effortless, until it slowly dawns upon you. It did not chase you instead you have chased yourself into it. What seemed a beautiful reality has been ruthlessly shattered by an ugly unreal. You want to hold onto something, but there are no planks in the mind. A culprit has to be desperately assembled now, painted with excuses and draped by emotions. A neurotic search is on for what was always yours but you never owned; your mind.Since it is silent you assume everything is fine, but you do not know silence does speak.Pleading for forgiveness you hear a faint voice, you wish it was someone’s; sadly it is your own. The growing voice tells you that the world has betrayed the morality of truth and laughed at your misery. Amidst this terrible pain of chaos you start feeling it but you are not sure what within you feels it. The feeling unfolds from the void of within building slowly inch by inch into an unbearable force, an impulse, a choice.

Decrescendo-The Death of the Choice.

An overwhelming initiation takes over your entire being directing all conflicts into a state of logic which looks absurd then. Yet it makes complete sense because you badly wanted this and this can arise from absolute chaos not order. Now the ego can be trusted to build on this denomination and beat a slow retreat from self. Well secured you deduce that the universe is a silly joke that nobody wants to laugh at. There is no other truth higher than this you scream at the top of your lungs. Laughter abounds now, not at the universe but at you, you have become the joke. You search around to find a face that laughed but the universe is faceless. You recede to check your premises, but all appears quiet on your front. To catch a glimpse of any heaven you must kiss death first. Your weakened conscious is a danger to itself and to others. Your memory is dementing but your choice remembers the universe. Some of it remembers you, some of it doesn’t. Consequence is the final installment of that choice. You will die now with your choices. The choice did not fail you. It has fulfilled its purpose. You now comprehend it. Another simple game. New universe. Counterchoice. Choice.

If gone unnoticed, the first para comprises sentences carrying one extra word than the preceding ones while the second para is a tone down completing the harmony of the paradox.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Word-Verses

Gaurdian last month published the most beautiful words in english based on a British council survey.This is an attempted verse-project of some of my favourite words amongst them in regular use.

Mother
Her highness
A singular exception
of unconditional everything
in a very demanding creation.

Sweetheart
A skipped beat
of a dying diabetic
poisoned with
the sucrose of love.

Sunshine
An invisible proof
from an opera
of burning helium
adding colourful emotions
to the vision.

Hilarious
A word astray
in the
Post modern seizure
of
Rolling on the floor
and laughing;
(Yeah good one dude!!)


Passion
Unprincipled venom
defining humanity
that can be draped by no vein
from unmanifest.

If
Power of laconic
smile that can amend
fortunes in a single breath.


Smile
An arcane window of
conscious hidden within
Silent invite to
woe and wonder akin.


Blossom
Innocence lost,
Unfound.. ........


Gorgeous
A sublime secret
shared amongst
a Miss, a Mrs.
and
a Mistress
with nature.

Hope
A dear negotiation
for a better breath
in optimistic free trade;
paid in small
instalments
over time.

Serendipity
An unexpected kiss;
My first
password
at
Yahoo
dot com.

Love
An elusive mirage
Often chased
Forgotten when reached;
A lingering memory left behind.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Life and times of a Cynic.

Been busy of late, hence just fishing some random thoughts but not exactly in the cynical order.
So here we go,

O boy! Way back from the clinic
I bought a hat navy-blue
The hat that read a bold cynic
And then O boy! as I wore it anew
They called me "hey cynic, you"!
"Cynic who"`? I said, "O no boy! I’m just askew".


Literature-fiction:
Much for the best seller halo that engulfs it and the repeated insistence of my friends finally finished Da Vinci code. I felt like a horse taken to the water and then all of a sudden the water evaporated before you. Earlier books used to manipulate you emotionally now they have even started meddling with the intellect. It’s going to be some time before I actually lay my hands on another fiction.

Blogging:
Nietzsche once said In your solitude if you have talent to think deeply about anything but not enough time to write a book about it then you will make good letter writer.
My corollary In your solitude if you have talent to think deeply about anything but not enough time to write a book about it and have a career then you will make good blogger.

Personal:
And then yesterday I had it again, standing in the parking lot was just about to turn when the slow reprise of the almost forgotten gradually building into a silent climax came cutting across time space matter into a overwhelming memory of déjà vu .
I gazed at the cars, the tall buildings the trees and the whole premise looked so very familiar, I smiled and told myself Oh yes! I was here before.
******
Got two unexpected e-mails this week:
P sent me Freud on religious practices and A sent Rilke's Letters to an young poet.Though from very unlikely sources, it was absorbing reads.Got to blog about them sometime.Thank you and keep them coming folks.
******
Another one this week:
Me:u remember? I signed off 'borderline'?
Carl: Oh yes! U R very well adjusted.
Carl coming from you i m just taking it point blank.
******
This another James Joyce story for Jane Eyre fan who visits here;
Young Joyce on meeting WB yeats:
J:Im twenty, How old are you?
Y:Thirty six, well actually thirty seven.
J:I thought as much.I have met you too late.You are too old for me to help you.
Apparently an offended yeats told his friends later''such a colossal self-conceit with such a lilliputian literary genius I never saw combined in a single person''.
Well what can one say, JOYCE IS JOYCE.
******
Contemparary Politics:

A tale of two American heroes-Tom sawyer and Thomas jefferson!
Characters:
Tom- Tom sawyer/ Thomas Jefferson.
Aunt: Statue of liberty.
Huckleberry finn: George W. Bush Junior.
Genre: Parody.

"Tom!"
No answer.
"Tom!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You Tom!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, looking over a piece of paper.
“Y-o-u-u Tom! “What is this??
Tom came back “Yes auntie'', peering over a paper that carried his own handwriting he said with pride “That is the Declaration of independence of United States of America”.
''Oh! I know, And what is this''? She asked excitedly.
''That is Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness''.

The aunt was astonished "What? Tom your are such a dunce! If you put a whole nation in *pursuit* of happiness didn’t it occur to you that the nation might not recognise happiness even if it bumps into happiness on a road?"

“Err” Tom looked sheepishly. Huckleberry was grinning widely from the corner of the room.

Sports-Indian cricket:
As predicted in the cricket-blog circles, sachin blasted a hapless Bangladesh attack into record books. Well even zaheer did! And now sachin and kumble will be sung to the tunes of great heroes. Kumble is the greatest vegetarian wicket taker, how does that sound for someone who can’t bowl without six men around the bat? And speaking of sachin, of late he has let too many undeserving rookies kiss his stumps. Sad though, it is a fact we all know and never want to acknowledge that he is just not the player he was! Where is that arrogant lil nudge to the third man?
Meanwhile Arsenal are riding their sine wave from the peak to back home.But it was absolutely great show guys.

With this big birthday coming up things are going to be hectic.
Jesus Christ! Got to go now….
Have fun time,
So long

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Elle and Lui

There she is. That pretty face. I still remember the first time I saw her. Those alluring eyes which gives out a light that makes you so naked. The eyes that could singe any man. You should see her laugh with those eyes, as if she owns everything that ever was and wants nothing from anyone. Sometimes I feel I should leave everything in the world and just sit before her, silently gazing into those deep hazels and I still would find everything I left in the world hidden there. She knows that.That's why, She always hooks my lips with a focus like she wants to burn it. Such a pity that she can’t see the beauty of her own eyes. And when I kiss her she selfishly shuts her eyes into magic. My love.

You,
Who shone a pacific
in your eyes;
Why
let it close
when I gently
wet your lips
with
mine?



There he is. That bold face. I still remember the first time I saw him. Those sumptuous lips which gives out a melody that makes you so wanted.The lips that could dissolve any woman. You should see him stare with those lips, as if he owns everything that ever was and wants nothing from anyone. Sometimes I feel I should leave everything in the world and just sit before him silently gazing into those pouts and I still would find everything I left in the world hidden there. He knows that. That's why, he savours my eyes with an appetite like he wants to gobble it. Such a pity that he can’t taste the splendour of his own lips. And when I see him he selfishly curves his lips into magic. My love.

You,
Who smiled a music
With your lips;
why
let it die
When I fondly
watch your lips
in
love?




Saturday, December 04, 2004

A memory of mixed doubles!

Call me fundamental and biased but my interest is human consciousness. I wish to focus this post on two very extraordinary lives. Both, unlikely, unrelated, uncharacteristic yet are the very same, deep inside. Chances are you may know either one of them but not both.
I dare not call them heroes, but yes, they definitely are the masters who show us the value of life and more importantly the human spirit.

First is an Indian, who woke up one night, 20 years ago, to see her entire city devastate before her and a generation mutilated. She had hell for a gift and poison for food. Fate brutally navigated her life into a lament. Destiny deceived her of justice.But she continues to live against a world that failed her. No, she doesn’t know anything about google and She doesn’t care who won the election, but she is no lesser than any so called modern woman. She works six days a week and feeds her ailing husband. A woman of substance.She doesn’t need to watch A Shawshank redemption to be educated about hope because she is Raisa Bi.The woman. And there are many of them.


Raisa bi

Next is an American, twenty four and dead.Long distance runner. He puts into shame every victory built on deliberation.He is remembered, not because he ran but because he ran for a promise he kept to himself-To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. In both life and death, he never broke that promise. Never did he settle for the second best because he is StevePrefontaine.
I was lucky to be introduced to him very early through the movie Without limits.You may have only heard of the expression guts and glory, he simply lived it. The man.


Pre-fontaine


so long,

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