THE LAST CUE....

Raised voices, fingers and flying plates of bone-China nudged the night awake...Sleep slipped down slimpy water-pipes, heaving a sigh of relief...He swore, dramatically and with eloquence...they, the three-and-twenty ancestors framed into captivity with steadfast devotion, wished and prayed to be devoured by termites or be felicitated with cobwebby wreaths...She, wrung her heart dry...not a single drop of tear left to be spared....

And then...the Silence, counting its breath.....She, combing her hair, tapping her feet to the dull rythym of the breaths...waited for her cue.

Her cue..it came...and she walked away with appreciative pats on the back...flicking jealous glances off her shoulder, smiling at the camera...waving at the stupefied world....a world that had dragged Her by the collar and dumped Her into the reeking box of 'the sufferers'...'She would be wipped and caned, Her eyes gouged out..and yet She will stay, rising for gasps of breath from the sea of self-inflicted grief...'

But look!

Look how the puppet hangs by the strings from the gnarled fingers of the ceiling-fan! Look at Her!....See how she hangs....Defying the desperate pulls of the infinite strings, She hangs motionless...

A puppet that would dance to the tunes of her puppeteer no more....

BEAUTY OF BRICKS!

Ah! The beauty of the bricks! Of the motar...of the sands...and of the Dreams!

Their enticing nakedness, making a thousand hopeful blueprints errupt in the mind. Bring in the potter's-wheel!

Blundering my way out of the musty womb of eternity, aided by a pair of forceps and prayer beads, the furnished world that greeted me with a toothy smile, was disappointing. I had expected disorderliness...chaos...the inexplicable charm in an upturned water jug or a Van Gough hanging carelessly by one arm on the wall. Then with my bulldozer i would have come, the blueprints receiving indelible wounds of the pencil all the while.

What about the hands that itch upon seeing a well-combed hair? What about the tiny ant of irritation that fastens its seat-belt tighter around your gullet when confronted with a creaseless milk-white shirt? It is then that we loosen our hair, kick away the sandals and run roaring towards the sea...the sea- unkempt, shabby, reeking of dead fish and skipped baths...The sea, rolling on wet sand, getting teary with laughter, pointing a frothy finger towards the world...a furnished world that had disappointed me.

Centuries of careful ironing has rendered the apparel too stiff for wearing. Now it hangs by the shoulder in the cupboard..the shoulders, too stiff to slump...too stiff! too stiff! A stoic without a choice!

This world then, has lost my attention...i will let it go, and search for alternatives here and there. Search for a place where my builder's kit and rubber boots will be of use....where my handiwork would speak for me....where i would decide after much contemplation, whether Van Gough should hit my visitors in the eye upon entering the sitting-room, or choose to sneak up on them as they sipped coffee in the dining-room!

For Ah!...The beauty of the bricks!..Of the mortar...Of the sand...and of the dreams!

THE STORMING.....

Dried slices of mango, strips of green and red chillies, deliciously pregnant cubes of lemon…all stamped into submission, staring out at the foggy world from their mustard oil-filled glass prison…intermittently, choking…silently spewing oily rivulets of tears….the tears, their only letters of unconvincing assurance to the loved ones around….’I am fine! I am fine!’
Then, a dull thud! The hot summer air drew in its breath…sharply. An army of ants scaling the rusty yellow pipe of the water tank for the fifth time, stopped in their expedition, shock gleaming loud and clear on their perspiring brows. And then, a nanosecond of ominous silence, followed by a thunderous crash!....and little Raja has set them free! The glass prison has been stormed…it has fallen, limp and defeated at the hands of a single thread-bare duce ball!
The exodus of the jubilant prisoners...the dying shards of glass counting their last breath under the smirking sun…the pools of oily blood, expanding, flowing into each other…drowning all long bottled-up grief and suffering in the massive ocean of freedom…..This moment will be remembered…remembered and recorded in little Raja’s personal archive…The day the glass prison fell!

LOVELESS...ALL BUT WE...

Where will you love me?

Where will i love you?

Vindictive park-benches screaming urgently, 'Wet paint! Wet paint!'....

Rude rings of the cycle-bell, Tring!Tring!, making us pull away,painfully...my lips, left the thirsty traveller..yet again.

Bleary-eyed streetlamps jolt themselves awake...cringing in disgust, repugnance...they flood the dark dreamy lane with nightmarish light...you slip your land away from across my waist..i feel the one tenacious iron railing giving way...i fall.

Malevolent blades of grass beckon to us with batting green eye-lids...we sigh in relief...finally!...Our tattered little tent we thus put up...you follow me in...'let the bud bloom just this one time'..i pray silently, my ears deaf to the hicupps of chuckle from beneath...

Slice! went the unforgiving knife...like the hungry scalpel of the surgeon, it tore through our tent...it collapsed with a defeated sigh,the smirking blades of grass denying its soul, a resting-place....

The city chased out Love ...chased it out with brutal severity, like cleansing the bowels of a lamb for purposes of its 'eternal' installation in the biology laboratory.Love,took to its heel...bewildered, hurt, tired...

I am tired too...so are you...this loveless city of rioting bricks and warring stones has closed its blood-stained portals on us too...

So tell me,Love...

Where will you love me?

Where will i love you?

THE HUNT...

Large hairy hands wriggled their way out through the hairline cracks on the red brick walls that stood sentinels on either side of the narrow lane...they clawed at her,seemed to derive immense cannibalistic pleasure at the sound of the sharp scratch! of their yellow nails against her soft flesh and thus,clawed for more....the bricks salivated...licked their tongues..smack! smack!...she screamed in terror...

The flourescent colour dial of the wall clock stared back at her prespiring countenence.Through the pitch black of the night, the left edge of it's ridiculously-thin black metal lips twitched, the honest efforts at keeping a straight face in a gallant show of mock sympathy...it would be a mere five minutes before this mean parody of greek tragedy will fall through...2:50 am that would be.

It has been happening every night...the choking, salivating walls..the ear-splitting cry of terror that seemed to play only in her ears..like through a set of ear phones..then she would break through the nightmare and fall back hard on her stiff bed... a confused heap of tousled hair,ruffled beadsheets and beads of sweat adorning her neck and temple....her terror-stricken eyes staring up at the senile ceiling-fan....and the sole spectator of this play, a cynical flourescent coloured wall clock...a play that plays to an almost empty auditorium every night...and yet,it gets played.

Morning dawns....she sees the sky undress yet again, stripping off the smoky-black smock of Night and buttoning up the A-line tunic of Day...the vigorous polishing of shoes,the concentrated combing of hair,the quick gulping down of milk...and the sky is ready to take on the day!

Then,the furious banging on her door...the one feminine howl that she has come to dread....her mother at the other end,saying- 'wake up sleepy head!...the fifth family will be coming to see you today!...do not forget to oil your hair well...heard the guy appreciates long black hair...eyes parched in USA,you know?!'

And she knows...the walls will hunt her out yet again..again..and again..and again.

MY PRINCE...AND I

I had no way of knowing that He was my prince…no burst of confetti at my feet, no conch shell clarions in the air , no cheeky bee buzzing past my ear saying- Watch out! It’s Him!
Life was still the same…the same old life refusing the plaintive calls of the garage mechanic for immediate servicing. Yawning, Life rubbed it’s eyes dramatically and announced- Do not bother me!....So, we were left alone...not bothered…we, Life and I...left alone to yawn and rub our eyes, dramatically…and in harmony.
Then the sudden Scritch! Scratch! at the window-pane…a traveller probably, halting for brief respite, a morsel of mouldy bread, a glass of water pushed in slight irritation through the window…profuse and comically-elaborate ‘thanks’…and we return once again to our yawning and rubbing of eyes, dramatically…and in harmony.
But oh!...This traveller wants no bread or water, and yet an outstretched palm stares back at me. I notice the soft milky pink of the palm, shockingly reassuring…an icy lump of confusion starts sliding painfully down my throat…The traveler wants no bread or water- whispered Life into my ears…words pregnant with caution, fear, apprehension….
‘What do you want?’-I ask…and He says, ‘Your heart.’….
My prince was born to me the day I handed Him my heart…I, quivering in ecstasy…He, with outstretched palm, receiving the poor patch-worked thing and cradling it in his arms….His arm around me, like the pebbled yellow beach girdling the heaving blue carpet of water… would make me dissolve into nothingness…blissfully oblivious to the world without. His dimples, two perfect holes drilled into his cheeks by the naughty fairies with their powerful drilling-machines, would smile at me...and I would wonder, what secrets are stored away in those dark dungeons?..And the dimples would whisper back at me ‘Love! Love!…and I would snuggle closer, wishing to petrify with the flourish of my magic wand, Life and its menacing alarm clock…
Now, when a single doleful tear slithering down his cheek wishes to be collected and boxed up in a case so that it may not go to waste, I crave for home…our blue cottage, eclipsed by the foliage of love from the malevolent piercing glance of the cemented world around…and our brown boat…
My prince…the one who never galloped into my life astride a milk-white stead with his shining armour on…the one who never made confetti burst at my feet, made no conch-shell clarions…nor employed a cheeky bee to whisper into my ear- Watch out! It’s Him!
Yet…I call Him my prince…for he has made me feel like a princess…..

CUPID ABOUT TOWN...

Cupid walks in soft woollen socks over pebbles and rocks....A faux pas to the core,he trips over other peoples' careless shoelaces, mumbles an embarrassed 'sorry!' that is audible only to him(and to the laces ofcourse) and bumps into disapproving brick coloumns that make gleeful sparrows and winking stars do a mambo around his halo...His journey had been bad,bad enough to stuff 'it' into a non-recyclable polythene packet, throttle the gaping mouth of the packet with a silvery twine and then kick it with the fury of one whose 'love-coated' arrows and golden bow had been detained at the airport security-check for want of a licence! Then there had been the ruffians at the bus-terminus...the apparently 'busy souls' who bump into people with the Providential duty of relieving them of all wordly possessions...Bumping imto him had been disappointing for them,he had no pockets...but for him,the violiation had been complete...first of his powers, and then of the snug overcoat of immunity that he believed, protected his immaculate frame from the dangerous eddies of 'imperfect human life' manifested in the impatient honking of ghoulish metallic animals, ridiculously high electric bills and ofcourse, licences!...
Thus Cupid walks still...blistered feet,blood oozing through the tiny windows of his soft woollen socks...but the steppings are more confident now,more adapted to the merciless pebbles and rocks...he now swings a grim-looking briefcase in his left hand,with the right, takes a long contemplative drag of a cigarette...and while he walks,he smiles...a sudden secretive smile like a sudden naughty peck on the cheek...a smile brought about by the thought of that first glimpse of a tattered dictionary where under the word 'Cupid'(searched out in an initial desperate attempt to assert his position in this alien world) he had discovered a still better word...a much more interesting prospect..a word that was to become his gateway into this world...the innocuous word- 'CUPIDITY'......