HIDING PLACE...

In his own shadow, he finds a hiding place. Clawing desperately at its edges, he attempts to pull it tight around himself...hopes the black cloak would pounce on him and devour. Not a trace of him would be left then. Just a figure in misty black, rubbing its paunch contentedly, belching rhythmically...

But it seems as though, the monster never swallows him...it just pushes him to the side of its mouth and keeps him there...and when the celebratory arson begins in the east, the monster spits him out. There he lies, defenceless and weak, the cloak having slipped off from over him, leaving him shivering in his sleep...

The world flashes torches on his face...rudely, mockingly. The stones roll over stealthily to his side of the road and wait to make him stumble. His habits they know well. His comical gait they ape when they gather for their nightly ritual of ale-drinking and merry-making. He walks with his eyes closed..this they know. Thus, he never notices the lean lamp-post striding puposefully across the street, egged on by the enuthusiastic clamours of the stones, pillars and flower-pots, as it posts itself innocuously just where it is sure to collide with him. And their plan succeeds...like always.

His letter-box bears no ruddy roses with shy pink ribbons clinging on to them with the committment of a lover who has been sentenced to indefinite exile, and for whom, these fragile red petals are the only carriers of the agony in his heart. No. His letter-box bears no token of love. It shifts laborously all the way to its owner's door and knocks angrily...a pregnant blue letter-box bursts with irritation as he opens its door. Unpaid electricity bills, letters of warning, rejected resumes...each battle with the other to reach him first, not to be wisked off their feet in a bear hug, but to be torn open and done justice with.

Euthanasia they beg for. And he begs for it too....

he searches for corners to hide in...but realises, that the world is but, round.

LOVE...IT WILL BE

Bangles i like, and their sound too....the way they clank and cry, giddy with happiness...the little rascals!

And oh! The pinch of vermillion...how the red dust snakes its way coquettishly along the parting of my hair, and having completed the journey, look up innocently in denial of the carnage they have caused!

Yards of brocade in peacock blue scale my frame, twisting and turning, contorting, bunching up conspiringly at my belly and then diving in. Almost instantly, twisters of intoxicating sensuality ravages through my being. Wholeness consumes me.

I smell fresh jasmines...feel their soft pulse under my finger. They embellish my tassels with surprising feminity. I close my eyes and dream of soft satin sheets and polished four-posters..of the deep breaths of insense sticks and of slender hands pulling at the strings of the sitar...also, of urgent explorations on a moonless night.

I want to blush....to feel the heat rising like the sun in my cheeks...

I want to gaze at my reflection on the mirror through kohl-ladden eyes, and lower them abruptly as you enter the room....

I want to see love settle contentedly, on my bangles...on the lids of my eyes...on the parting of my hair...

Flecks of love it will be, billowing out before me, caught in a trance in the light falling through the shutters of my window as i wipe the tops of cupboards and dressers....Yes, love it will be.

THE WAR....

they fought all night till their eyelids drooped in protest.....
the next morning she rose early to continue, but he never woke...
there he was, pushed to the extreme left of the bed...had thrown up his hands in submission and let her claim that coveted side of the bed that ensured sweet breezy dreams....
now, his submission seemed eternal...complete.
the upper edge of his lip seemed to have pricked itself up just a bit...the grin never had the leisure to assume its full form, but there it was, jeering at her- 'which side of the bed will you sleep on now?'
it never struck her that this sudden elimination of her rival called for celebration...burst of confetti? popping the corks of campaigne bottles? three loud cheers?
now, after all those tiring nights of epic warfare, why was she sitting by his side, wiping away the quivering pellets of sweat lining his forehead? the pellets he had gathered meticulously through the night...a temple-ful of evidence to bring under the glaring scrutiny of some imaginary Justice, to expose before all, the hegemony of his wife. now, she wiped them away...softly, lovingly, longingly...'destroying evidence!', he would have barked, but in that room of controlled breaths, wispering voices, mournful sighs and a general oppressive air of reverence, his voice passed through the sieve of silence...and melted away...
the war has ended. peace unfurled its pristine white flag, mockingly.
they carried him away in a glass box, leaving her with sweat on her palms...and nothing else.
the bed looked massive at night, it seemed to rise and expand before her eyes...she could attempt to swim across it, and give up midway in fatigue. ..
her throat hurt...irascible words scratched against her voice box...'let us out!', they screamed.
but the nightly rituals were done with...words and thoughts has been burnt at his funeral pyre.
now, she sat picking at her own ashes, while shooting jealous glances at the left side of the bed...

OF LIGHT....

Patches of light, moonlight...

click! click! goes the knitting needles, steel striking steel.

The patches quiver painfully as they are made to twist and turn, loop their hundred-and-one tentacles over each other, stretch till they whine.

Two bony figures, one shorter than the other, crawl on all fours to reach the twelveth hour. Once there, they sigh, joyful for the brief respite...their temples dripping senility....

The Hour....has been reached.

The knitting done.

'i am safe..', she murmers, the iron claw gripping her throat, slowly loosening its hold...

' another night...will Pass..'

Wrapping herself up in the newly-made cloak, she sits at her corner.

The singular cockroach marching resolutely towards the warmth of her bunched-up frame does not stir a single muscle on her face...

She keeps sitting at her corner...the blazing cloak, clasping her, tight.

She sits...two blind spots distended mercilessly over the hollows that should have been her eyes.

She sits...

gathering wisps of courage to brave a world that she can not see....

THE GIFT....

I put her to sleep with a snorkel in her mouth, held on resolutely as her pink rubbery lips tried in vain to push back the intruder from storming its portals, and having finally succeeded in my seigh, kissed the two faint eyebrows good night....and waded out.

The brown envolope lay on the shelf, i had read and re-read it, memorized the obese words spattered across the page, till they had started to do somersaults around me with surprising perfection. Now, i stood ready for my oration....
He, my singular audience, sat on the couch, dispassionate eyes tracing the trials and tribulations of a terrified treadbare duce ball as savage men hit at it mercilessly with bats and still others, chased it to the farthest ends of the arena. I could hardly see him, the world swam before my eyes, like looking through a curtain of smoke....he, knitting the curtain with a deftness that shocked me, still....
Finally, my cue...the comercials came on...
"Thank you for giving me this...", said i, and threw down the X-ray report before his eyes.
Two over-cooked brinjals with their stalks sliced off, stared back at him, glumly...
"What the hell are these?!", he exclaimed....
"My lungs", i replied.

Trudging through heaps of ash, diving through giant smoke rings in an act of mock celebration of my fate, i turned back and looked at him for the last time...
"Don't worry..i havn't told her that she has it too...not that i wouldn't have, only, it would have been a tad difficult explaining the beauty of cancer to a six year old..."

DARKNESS....

The Night gathered strength, forming ominous dark puddles at the foot of my bed. Where the rheumatic street-lamp offered its last bleak services to the world, the coconut tree, reclining against its quivering net of light, rose to a menacing stature against my wall. Moonlight there was none...just wisps of greying hair gliding indifferently in a bucket of inky black. An eclipse formed over my eyes, disturbing shades of darkness waltzed around me...every single object in my room seemed draped in black...draped and sashaying about, their feet barely touching the ground, or so it seemed to my blind eyes, for not a single noise did they make. The Night walked barefeet, painting my oh-so familiar world with the shades of unfamiliarity....'What was this place?', I wondered aloud...a timeless, formless space...a space that escaped the clutches of definition. This space i knew not...this place was not Home.

Do not forsake me at the tentacles of rabid Supposition.
Love does not dress in mourning black, but, in pristine white...in shining yellow... in rippling blue.
Our childish little plastacine world i have carefully built...the walls against which, many a times i have rested my tired head and dreamt...dreamt of petty squables over the logic of hanging a Chinese fan on it's face!
When your boat hit the side of mine, the wound was mortal...my boat sank, but my heart...you saved. After years of dormancy bordering on death, my heart finally gave a little leap...a tiny, elusive jig...and the world unfurled before my eyes.
Finally, i could see where Life would travel from here...the ports it would visit, the inns it would put up in...the inconsequential feats of greatness it would perform in public reading-rooms. Finally, i could build...build and make indomitable Hope the skeletal framework of my creation...
So, having lighted up the candles along my way, do not snuff them out now.
The darkness will raze down my dreams....it will trample over the candles, make them moan in pain...our plastine world will melt into nothingness....Armies of Doubt and Fear will march in, lay seigh...
All will be lost in the hot frothing claudron of Darkness...of death before dying...and my heart will stop breathing...again.

WATER-SHOOTERS!

The world seems weary of soggy shoes….of papery gondolas bobbling up and down in murky puddles, holding up traffic…of wet widow-seats of public buses, enticing yet unaccessible.
Something must be done….and so be it.
‘Government calls for a state of emergency! Hike in all prices…umbrellas and raincoats will come free!’
Free! Free! Free!
Sticking out defiant tongues at bundles of pregnant clouds above, military helicopters zoom across the sky, dropping carters of raincoats and umbrellas at the sneezing, coughing, shivering world below…Where they drop with a deafening thud on the soil of Iraq, men, women and dogs alike, scream in terror till their lungs expand and burst…phut!
Around the world, water-proof mushrooms blossom…like a Mexican Wave they pop-up…from west to east, south to north. Skyscrapers button themselves up in the massive raincoats, streetlamps look grumpy in their comically oversized cloaks…their gumboots like empty flower-pots, humoring the balancing act.
‘The Government is satisfied…all seems dry with the world…the battle has been won!’
But what of the clouds?
‘Will you not rain?’, I ask them. A shadow passes over their countenance, darkening them further. ‘We are not needed anymore…’, the tears they shed fall Plink! Plonk! on the stupidly grinning umbrellas below….
I grind my teeth….
Something must be done…so be it.
Bleary-eyed, slumping, swearing, the sun emerges from behind the moping clouds…A frothy toothbrush in mouth, it tightens the string of it’s night-gown….grumpily.
‘Eh! Disturbed sleep last night sir?’…My cheeky question flares him up…angry spits of burning flint coupled with specks of white froth dart out of his mouth…I hold up a woolly cloud in self-defence, and my shield deflects the raging arrows….down down they shoot….towards the earth…and phisss! Singe the leathery skin of the umbrellas….
‘A hole! A hole!’ I shout in glee…
The clouds they scream in ecstasy…do cartwheels across the sky…and then with loaded water-shooters, advance…..
Rain! Rain! Here they come…
Here they come…Again!


But I, have other jobs at hand….scaling slimy water-pipes, evading the watchful eyes of the wise, cynical world, I would have to make my way to the printing-room…
For, without me, who else would ‘Forecast’ the weather?