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.