stranger than paradise

mein freund

it’s easier to leave than claw your way back

your morning faces on the train

stumble dad you’re 6 feet tall

the dust rising through the ends of my fingers

what grows through you? rises through to the roof

faces perhaps

but really, more internal irrelevant

churnings. eyes closed, walk through

you collide with

ka-os, and

his estonian robotmaker

hi i’m bengali i’m german

i’m black and white and still i can’t see you

where is my war? we pull up to a cop station

a gas station

a petrol pump

we pull up stoned looking for ice cream

for chunks of chocolate spoons hidden in cups

ridged ends of spoons for my fat asian hands

we pull up, shiver

potbelly quivers

eyes narrow, eyes meet

alarmbells ring: you square your hips and shoulders, walk towards me i keep the car running

strangers rape in stranger’s cars and strangest of all

the paradise that you and i are here

my rape has happened: we were born to it

little girls on laps wet kisses in oily corridors

tears rise screams between my ears

ma, help

this mans fingers are running down the line the separates my buttocks

his arm has an iron rod, i wonder if that’s what makes him broken inside thats what makes

his touch so hideous

my rape happened, where were you?

trapped in elevators

while on escalators

a woman squats to pee

it trickles down towards me, waiting

for a bus in the night

waiting for groups of men

waiting for groups of boys

men

boys

men

--

no i will not go softly

into the night

i will stay here, eyes shutting in sleep

i will stay here to watch

the exact way your fingers curl towards your crotch

flicking from left to right

your testicles

i will stay here and stare you down blood rising

From forgotten meetings, May 17th.

dry, sunday night

here are the small flowers i rescued, stole, grabbed from the dining table,
I don't know their name, they droop
 but sometimes  they waft their bouquet towards me, and i catch it, despite my burnt lips and dry mouth, itchy face
 it transports me somewhere where i understand 
the value ma and manna would place on things like
that shade of green, that song, that painting
I nod wisely if I squint, just so, I can see
those flowers are arranged
just right
 --
dryness become a state
 like the faded blue velvet sofas, it holds so much in its discomfort
just clean enough to remind you of the dreams of the sombre bihari boy who cleaned it, who toils endlessly, draped in the chemicals of dry-cleaning, 
just soft enough to sleep on and wake before your drool spills onto it, just full enough to wonder what weight fills out a second hand sofa
--
sometimes things evaporate at just the right temperature for us to dislike each other instantly and for eternity, or is it just that i am poisoned
--
i am tired of watching what i say tired of making sense
i just want to slip into the comfort of words tumbling out of me slipping out in a noose a mattress a hammock and hammer words that fumble together hold onto each other break away just for sounds fuck all this meaning

my art is here to help us forget

remember,
vandalise! force your art upon the world!
 forget for a moment, that so much of art is vandalism, just by existing, not even the pleasant kind but just the sour fart smell of vapidity, like bad shit as you told me that floats on top,
art is meant, i thought,
to shake you to the depths of your soul. i use remember, as a command, not just a place holder. we talk about sticking ceramic tiles onto the cityscape,
using the city's fluorescence to chip away at it, reminisce about the lack of gloss as we watch our reflections in more glass and chrome -- use this to be that! hello, good bye. 

read more, consume, slowly, paste precarious ceramic tiles onto our mindscapes, slowly move through it, you can't airdrop onto everest. rub texturize annotate the
 create hooks, smother
 with araldite, putty, industrial mixes of cement and glue, you now know blutack to be the tacky, capitalist dream of a childhood spent in government houses, of posters that miraculously stay on the wall and yet leave without a trace, like grey chicken soup out of a packet, at once existing and not.

paris special, or why it stank

how softly that city kills! do you remember? we met at dusk, i was waiting at denfert like you told me to. an old drunk man tried to talk to me, je parle pas francaise i mumbled. then you arrived, drunk. we kissed on the train, i wore my new red lipstick did you see it? it was a paris special. 

you left for work, we slept apart. i walked onto the street outside your apartment, terrified someone would talk to me. three euros 

don't get you very far. i bought a baguette and ate it on the train, it was dry and plain, the train smelt of old cheese. 

on my way home i stopped at a vintage store, breathing in the musky hopes of african immigres lost in cold winters 

then it was time for you to return and i brought you red flowers i found on the road. 

i put them in a jar, i took a photo of us, i watched you talk to computer, dressed up, talking fast. i wore my special dress, did you notice? in the mirror behind you, i watched myself watching you,  

that cat looked best silhouetted against the sky, upclose she stank, that apartment stank. (later you told me eric kept her litter carefully stacked behind the machine, why was that?) 

i tried so hard to be a part of that house! i swept the floor, used that little trickle of a shower, bought overpriced strawberries. they were so sour, do you remember? 

that city stank. only the buildings sparkle in the night.

meanwhile american tourists line up, grumbling, gypsies reach out, grabbing, old men walk by with postcards, hustling. i was broke and hungry and it all stank, except that hour before i left and you held onto me, sobbing. 

house help, part one

basanti was the magical one, the dreamer with the slow smile, her hair wispy and unkempt, skin mottled with unfinished thoughts. she was beautiful as she floated through our rooms. we shared our dreams every morning, as i sipped my green tea and she chopped and diced for our breakfast. mine was a recurring one of being chased by wild animals, meticulous panthers and rhesus monkeys that would appear and chomp my arm off after a short chase. hers were also recurring, alwayz about struggling to fly, as she ran away, from animals and from  her mother, who chased her with a stick. when her mother came to visit from the village she was tiny, no bigger than her 3 year old grandaugher, and i couldn't imagine how she'd infected her daughter with a life long fear. 

but silky was different, much more pragmatic, poring over the hieroglyphics in the kannada newspaper that came specially for her. another rape! she'd say with almost gleeful horror, he gagged her with an iron rod, broke into the house, you can't trust any one these days. I'd shake my head, tut-tut, and so the gossamer mornings were quickly burnt away into the banal horror of everyday life.

what does it mean to let someone into your house, to live your life just one degree removed from their skin? her hands chop dice cook wash everything that goes into your mouth. her fingers massage your head and back, fill rubber bottles with hot water in the winter and crush ice into glasses of iced tea in the summer, smooth over the creases in your bed every mornings, scrub your clothes, wring out even your inner clothes, your bras and underwear on days you're particularly lazy, hopefully your mother doesn't know. she hangs your bags, fold your clothes, pins your sari, give you sartorial advice on your new clothes, this is too wrinkled, that color is nice. pushes you to attend social obligations you don't intend to fulfill, but its her wedding how can you not go? 

But today there is a crisis to be solved. we need to talk, she says. she looks determined and troubled. i ask her to come into my fathers room, this house is all windows and no doors, voices travel through it like the gust of wind from the gigantic cooler in the summer. maybe this is why things just go missing, because the borders between being and non-being are just too porous.

her eyes quickly well up and her voice rises, shrill. i come here to work, she says, there are both of us, and yet i hear things, i heard from the garden bhabhi asking about that girls clothes, but i don't wash them downstairs, i finish the work here, and then i was upstairs today and everyone knows my name has been mixed in the mud and my son, i can't lift my head with what he did i know what you all say about me and i ignore it but it can't go on like this i can't live like this. i cant live like this. i move uncomfortably towards her, pat her shoulder and quickly take my hand away, unsure about how to comfort someone when you're the source of her misery. she's miserable, but there's something unsettling. even marriages break up, I tell myself, mothers and daughters vow to never talk to one another. but something here isn't right. I mumble about trust and the lack thereof, the funny thing is how often this word is thrown around in my life. speak the truth baby, says ma, and this dicta is my heavy albatross.i drank with a friend later that night, and he laughed at me, what is this christian attitude towards the truth! do what you have to and deal with it later. but, and this is the power of imagery, ever since I couched this feeling in colerige's calamitous metaphor i feel the physical weight of every untruth and half truth.

what is it about little lies that is scarier than big ones? i can't tell, can't tell if she's a hounded animal, back to the wall, snapping at every movement towards her in the only way she knows, that acid sharp smile and crisp denial, banking on the dreaminess our heads are wrapped in - or if this is calculated, and we're too busy to notice strings emerging around us, tightening to draw us in. like a bond movie! don't be idiotic. but the signs are there, i saw her fight once, like a panther at her door, sinewy and snarling.

I don't know why you're waiting, says achiles, waiting for a real calamity to jolt you.  

do these things happen? the world is a strange place, I can't forget how boring and brutal it can be. we  lie and cheat, steal and hack through relationships and lives for opal rings and for our muscles to contract in orgasms.

hello, this is a tabli

you show off, trying to turn me inwards
but see
the game changed suddenly
you looked at the music, all of it, filling my room
forcing your way inside my head.

here's teen taal, think of one beat today, the next tomorrow, the infinite moments in between
each beat, flat, and yet

dha - dhadakkadhin
dha dhin dhina dha

you say it's poetry, my fingers can't move this way, my bones don't keep time
this is alien to my flesh and yet I feel
we're all parts
perhaps bits of a longer day

locking horns

And we fight and we end, like always,
With indigestion, mine
And sleep, yours.

You insist, I rage
Grind teeth choke back salt
Feeling through our thoughts and wants
like blind rats in the rain, confused
moving towards a dull longing to be warm and dry

knowing all the while to become so
is to be so alone

battling with your knives turned in

1. truth-telling:
I am battling with Ma’s moral compass, hung like an albatross around my neck. It's like she gave me a shot of veritaserum instead of breastmilk. She told me speak the truth, baby
and you have nothing to fear. But the truth is a sharp knife, and if you run with it you will cut through your skin and slash through the jungles, decapitating people you know and love. If you can't see the cars you have no business driving.

2. trust-trees:
Shadowy metaphysical nightmares, because you can burn them and slash them and cut them in a million ways, and all this with your eyes closed and ears blocked, with the barest wriggle of epiglottis. But they grow slow, and have shallow roots.

3. tortured troubled trite
my yoga teacher, in his quavering voice tells me close your eyes and relaaaax observe the changes going through your body. know you can control your body, and your mind. I twitch, resisting the inward gaze. I feel like faulty apparatus, lazy and stupid, insincere undignified and trite

you can know people when you know their worst nightmares: on a moonlit night I tried walking across the sky, but not with you watching

an enthusiastic

insistence on self contained happiness sets you on edge

easy slow

burning out slowly like camphor fuming and then erupting into sudden flames without body that die out before they begin taking with them light leaving behind a slight acrid smell
oh and talk the same talk and smell the same smells

panta rhei?

I see a streak of colour, a boy in a red sweater runs across the fields that stretch along the curve of the river. They are vast gashes of green and yellow, sloping towards the river that eats into their existence, cutting away at the cliff they stand on. A stray eagle bobs on the air, now coming straight at me, now just a straight line as it dips and soars far above the horizon. I want it to be intoxicated, consumed with the thrill of being alive, momentarily forgetting to look for the dark things that scurry underfoot.

My grandfather’s ashes were released into this river. Set loose from the confines of skin and clothes and wood smoke and metal, as only primal elements can be. Feet sinking into the sand we stood at the river, around the only one able to lead us through our grief, the local madman. His low constant chant our numbness: isko doodh mein dhoh, apna is patte se katori banao, aata ko iskme dalo. Behind us a swollen cow lay on its side. हम मोक्ष दिलवाने आये थे, कोई बिन पूछे पा लेते है. Ma broke away from the group, unwillingly boycotting a ceremony she came uninvited to. She teetered on a rock, unable to look at the river carrying away her father.

Bua had stood knee deep in this water, flicking his fishing road towards the millions of fish rushing along in the water. I stood at a safe distance behind him, away to the side ever fearful of the prospect of my nose being ripped off my face by the adamantine hook, wondering how anything had the wits to grasp greedily at an inviting sparkles as it struggled along the whoosh of the water. The irony of a life of struggle ending on the end of a nylon string. But Bua always released the fish he caught, after it was carefully weighed and photographed. The futile endeavor of a lifetime, to know, name and own the contents of the river.

We came visiting my grandparents’ orchard atop the river in the hot summer months. The trees bent towards us laden with leechis and mangoes and fruit flies flew morbidly into our eyes. We were told the river was dry: it still looked menacing to me, glinting invitingly in the sunlight.

The murky, placid waters of the Ganga at Varanasi are a constant reminder of death, like a picture postcard. Bobbing atop a placid boat you release little bits of fire onto her. The fiercer Yamuna, fiery in its youth beckons to you, reeling you in with a magnetic urge that makes your bones hurt. You fight, but scores of people can’t and don’t. Senses perhaps blunted by alcohol, they slacken their grasp on this world, and the world slackens its grasp on them. They leap into it in a rush of adrenaline to fight the only fight they ever want to lose, finally giving in a wave of panic and relief. But we know nothing of this struggle, just reel in their grotesquely swollen bodies.

The stories ringing in our ears we climb over the string that demarcates the end of the village meant to keep out bad spirits, and roll down the path, pulled towards the water. We try to follow the source of the river and scramble over rocks and crisscross the stream that runs into the main tributary. We exultantly strip down to our underwear, spread our limbs out in the water. Squinting at the sky, with the sun warming our shoulders we bask in our youth. Growing up with a larger than life sister means you rarely have to raise your voice -- the river today is my vocal sibling. The rocks I balance on slip from under me, tumbling towards the bottom, far away to the sea.

Ever changing, never the same, and yet more real than we as humans will ever be. The river unnerves us. Scurrying in our cities we drug her to forget this, clogging her with rank sewage and black murky waste. Building walls to contain her, and she retaliates in kind, flooding our cities with our own waste. And yet we worship her, calling her mother, beseech her for support as we give unto her our dead and our grief. But it flows on, defying even our anthropomorphism. Heraclitus knew what we can not accept: the river, like everything, changes constantly, impervious to our stepping in. Not once, not twice, nor ever.

us/them

i see this in my head: they deliver to one another a curious silence. uzak, screaming together as they jump into the sky

here we are saddled with other kinds of distance, less heartbreaking and less grand because real life isn't, right? it just dissolves and moves on, absorbing new forms

us, and them: blood only courses when we're at a distance stealing time for each other. zzz lick. but just us and i and we disintergrate. i block from sight touch and smell all evidence you were in my head.

no there isn't an us without them

but clearly that isn't real. i see in you the hurt as you think of your her, a lithe warm body contorting to the sweat of who you couldn't be.

our demons make us real! knocked over by dissatisfaction discomfort and we are propelled to one another.

leaving you without fullstops is leaving space for more for less for change

baarish

the rain fails it cannot calm anger

watch our shame as we bombard each other with our rants, writhing and gasping for air. us who eat more than we need and think less than we should, we are entitled to claim as our own the crater filled roads and crumbling bridges. and as the rains come down to flood us we clutch onto our concrete slabs and see everyone but those washed away. honk our horns and cry aloud. boycott! we yell, baying for blood. we who claim as our own the immense mammaries of the welfare state sit in bars and chuckle proudly at our excesses.

v is in kashmir, capturing the scent of an angry people. I make some vacuous joke and forget to think about children who collect tear gas shells fired to douse fear and disillusionment.

the rain comes down hard it washes us out and you can see our dirt, spread out for the world to smell

little frog, big city

fresh, real rain and old music that belongs to someone else's heart and someone else's back

waiting to write is like waiting for rain like this. you want it and can smell it but it isn't here yet and won't come until the clothes are hung out to dry and then dada's lawn is keechad and you have to jump and slide to avoid the frogs.

little frog. I hate living in a city that made me scared of them, hopping in my bedroom. throat bobbing. then the chuha, little beady eyes looking up at me both of us stunned and waiting for the other to squeak

akira doesn't know what to do with the chuha in my room. she prefers socks and jhaarans that don't run away she doesn't walk enough i hate roads she loves mud it doesn't work.

noni and akira lick bite roll over each other the whole day- are 2 year olds supposed to be this smart?

but i still love the rain, everywhere. in my tropical home I tried to explain to my bemused class the rhythm of my bones: as goosebumps erupted in time to thunder and lightning. they didn't get it, they slip and fall I skip more alive then ever. driving in time to weird music slippery slippery roads and slippery thoughts . its scary I don't hear horns i just see your angry faces and want to laugh and i do. i love driving welcome me to your entitled spaces, carved out on roads that we defend so righteously.

car = fast i have to be somewhere now. entitled where ever you are. in a car you're angry and hidden outside you're wet and slippery and the horns are so loud . the metro is crowded like in Jharkhand, rolling slowing, sweaty mass moving as one. my hair gets stuck in a fierce lady's hairclip . i clambered onto a bus forgotten how much i love it but then its just the day you love everyone today. then there's the pretty girl you'd love anyway she catches your eye you smile because it feels good to be beautiful in an ugly city.

lady tramp woman
man how easily we inure ourselves to names like boxes how easily words I didn't know i knew come to me

finger cramps.

2 year old Noni and my small speakers open the world to me: she puts bhindi on her forehead pulls Akira's tongue

be young and shut up

but keep watching the whites of their eyes

he does his work, and I mine.

Reading through words spewed in similar ways, all important words spun and flung at the world. Like Noni, hiding behind a door, we watch the counters, maps locations pointers. Hoping numbers stack up, re-reading surveying scrolling, changing links and colours, pictures and numbers.

Smell like burnt toast caught in between a toasted lizard and thick hair clustered at the back of her head. Green eyes and a striaght

rant.

What about this is nauseating?

The extended sighs in between sentences curled lip and contrived word placement the discomfiting secretive grin the eye rolling and quivering lip you are throttling and you are choking because you are like a lungful of mercury flooding through me, gushing into my veins and thoughts. You remind me of another smell I could no longer bear to be around. Even now if I happen to share space with this I must hold my breath -- as inconspicuously as I can-- to keep the bile rising through my throat. Because we must be civil mustn't we.

No I want nothing to do with you or the ghosts that you battle with thank you very much. All in all it's like I walked into a shop with yellow clothes and a big SALE sign on the door and its obviously much less than the life I thought I could have had at bargain prices at that.

converting vegetarians

I remember battling with this.

For animals, for suffering? Ma (for I am her most obedient sheep) would suck her breath through her teeth, muttering across the table from me as I guiltily nibbled on unctuous keema-mattar. Blood! Stinking rotten carcass. While wandering through the village she'd up a lamb, clasping the wriggling, baying creature to her chest and smile at me. Look, your lovely leg of mutton! But even the smallest sheep can stray. I finally learnt to shrug, to become immune to the graphic imagery. How can you draw this line for animals? Closest to human beings? What about heads of carrots and heads of lettuce and eyes of potatoes? Tomatoes you'd watch growing, and pick to squish between your teeth.

For my insides? I could feel better, cleaner. But I could also collapse of anemia, going out to inky blackness and head buzzing in grand swooning spells. I was pieced together by lamp chops and steak, pork soup and sliced fish noodles. My stomach liked the animals swimming around it in, more than the nauseating iron pills. Another stop.

And then there's J, newest acquaintance. (For you can never really be friends with a Buddhist right? Just hope to be slot into brief pockets of time)

For sustainability. Every meal is a series of questions: fish skin? (maybe) Roe? (possibly) Salmon (never, especially not norwegian). My leftover chicken dumpling? Yes. Because otherwise I would throw it away.

As simple as that.

Nothing violently shoved in your face, no discomfiting thoughts of suffering livestock or pools of blood or heart attacks, as important as those all are. Just a belief in a sustainable way of life, and a real move to support it.

When my cousin was five his well meaning, and in my opinion idiotic public school teacher asked his class what their "family motto" was. His cherubic face absorbed all the idiotic answers that the question befitted, and when it was his turn he said, lisping through his esses, We only kill what we can eat.