Identity

You are the light.
You are the boundless.
You are the madness of a cyclone.
You are the piquance of creation.
You are the horizon of beauty.
You are the fragrance of an arcane flower.
You are the flavour of the creator's taste-bud.
You are the fight in the phoenix.
You are the hope of the deprived.
You are the wildness in every street.
You are the animate.
You are human.


You - do not walk -
Fly!

Puke That Out

It's a shame.

It's a savage insult.
It's an egregious mistake.


So far, so bad.
So what?


Fuck off!

The Beggar

I saw a little boy on the road.

His eyes, sullen and blood-red.

He begged by a signal uttering God's name

pocketing some change and stale bread.

He ran through the vehicles, like

a dexterous snake on prey.

He incurred insults, drenched

in the road-side dust and spit.

Below the flyover lay a ragged man, who

was the boy's father, smoking weed.

He lay in the dirt, dismantled

like a demolished building.

His shawl aged with penury -

a skeleton of his decrepit self.

The signal flashed three lights,

one by one, into his frail eyes, periodically.

He sputtered. And spat at the signal -

an inebriated indifference that bred inside him.

And recited some infernal chants that

rang harmlessly through the stale air in the vehicles.

The boy did a snake still -

that infamous artistic sprint.

Placid, he battled the heartless sun

that watched his childhood being undone.

The world moved ahead

as the signal turned green.

I moved, too, like an impotent spectator

interrogating a transitory superiority, ashamed.

The Crazy Bird

And I followed him -

that odd little flying object

traversing oblique paths in the sky,

in search of something unintelligible

against the winds that blew him away,

against the birds that went the other way.

The crazy bird.

Higher and lower, and

straight and circular,

and almost random - he went

like an animate cyclone in the sky.

Impeded by monstrous branches

of envious trees

Quarantined by the flocks

of the birds he flew with

was the crazy bird.

And as fell the rain -

harsh and fast,

the homeless creature -

stood all aghast.

Marred by foes, and

betrayed by friends,

he flew alone -

battling tough winds

and demonic clouds.

Alone. The crazy bird.

Thirsty, he flew.

Hungry, he grew.

In search for self, and

answers that the sky had

enveloped in many a million voids

that nobody knew of but him.

And he flew -

attacked but survived

murdered but alive.

Alone he flew -

that crazy bird.

He dotted the sun

over a crowded mosque;

attended bhajans

from a temple's edge;

and wept on a church's tall tower

to enshrine himself in god's own den.

Flew he once again,

high and higher,

bustling with desire,

soaring the sky.

Into the frayed ends of day,

and arcane realms of night,

into the voids enclosed by the sky

lingering upon the suspense that grows in them.

High, went he

staging a worldly escape

with his sparkling flight.

And higher he went -

the crazy little thing -

fading into a place, where

the day meets the night

beyond the fringes of the world's shadow,

to a surreal layer of the universe, where

there is no pain and no tomorrow.

Just Another Day

Today is just another day

when she wakes me up

from my disgruntled sleep,

to a series of unanswered whys.

Today is just another day

when with the foam of the toothpaste

I try to spit her out of myself

only to be belittled by the mirror.

Today is just another day

when she seduces me

like a distant memory

into a world wholly undone.

Today is just another day

when I see her sway

to our private tunes

that are trapped within me.

Today is just another day

when through the window

of the car I travel in

I see her on a secluded cloud.

Today is just another day

when I lose myself

in an inescapable void

that looks like her.

Today is just another day

when she crowds my mind

with three and a half years

that make me puke tears on my desk.

Today is just another day

when I find absolutely no escape from her

as she dissolves in me

like a saddening drug.

Today is just another day;

her twenty-third birthday.

Just another day, when

all my rationalism fades

and I long to be with her.

The Shady Bar

Tables, small and congested, populated by,

black, brown and colourless drinks,

that are reached by narrow lanes and secret doors,

seat a conglomeration of people.

Hazy eyes. Haywire tongues. Husky voices.

Zonked faces release unintentional glances.

Some go on a rampant monologue;

the others in uncanny trances.

A man talks of his lost love,

another throws a diatribe at the world.

A group in its mid-forties contemplates

over superfluous alcohol.

A lone drinker breaks down at the wooden table,

staring at the neglected indicator of time that hangs here

while a group of youths live the thrill,

of the new-found euphoria it has begun to wear.

Any woman is a seductress here, for

there are almost none of them around,

they are all asleep in other corners of the city,

sleeping someone else's sleep,

having robbed of their own by one man or more.

The waiters are swift and skilled, and

are continuously called out to,

with a third-world politeness, or

a pseudo-sophisticated arrogance.

And both prevail with their own flavours,

dissolved, as everything else, in alcohol.

It's 3 A.M and it's a bar, which is

drunk-enough to be cut out from the outside, and

rich-enough to buy the law.

And it is Bombay.

It is Bombay escaping -

from its own ruthless reality,

to an underground arena,

one of its secretly treasured avenues,

at a place where all enjoy a surreal equality,

in being intoxicated.

It is Bombay compensating -

for the million struggles hiding behind the glasses,

from one break of dawn to the next one.

And it is Bombay accepting -

what it is.

And trying to free itself, for

at least a matter of minutes.

The Agony of being Different

It is pointless to roam around as an intellectual on the streets of Mumbai. You are just being pathetic and leading yourself nowhere if you think differently from most people you meet. Gradually, will you be eaten up by the impish society that looks after its double-standards like a mother to a teenage-daughter.

The best of your friends, your lovers, your family will one day push you away for the very fact that you have cherished thinking differently from the rest, you have attempted to murder traditions, you have acquired iconoclastic tastes and formed esoteric opinions in an attempt to understand and define art in your own way, you have been asking yourself questions on the creation of the cosmos since you began to think and you think that those are fundamental questions that influence every aspect of your current life. In short, you are being cruel to yourself if you are being original in any way and if you think art and intelligence are two of the greatest aspects of life, for the very fact that being this way will lead you to seclusion. You shall be increasingly unacceptable to the society and, in all probability, will you incur the hatred and wrath of most around you, most of which will be hidden, hypocrisy being the hallmark of sophistication in our society.

Here are a few pointers that I think I could have considered and some of you should consider to lead a happy a life and to be one with the rest around you.

1) Fuck Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Led Zeppelin and the likes. Listen to Pitbull, Justin Bieber, Jay-Z. Swing to their tunes. Play it loud.

2) To hell with Kishor Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar. They are 'boring' and 'dull'. Punjabi and Bollwyood are the 'coolest' types of music. "Just check out the beats, man!". Jugni Jugni is the new-age holy chant.

3) Start watching every American TV show. That is the easiest way to get involved in a public discussion. You are an omniscient dude if you know what the fuck happened in the 7th episode of the 4th season of a show on how somebody met somebody else's mother.

4) Accept that poetry belongs to about ten people in the world and our generation should not care a flying fuck about it.

5) Very importantly, do NOT quote Prufrock to anybody on your table while getting drunk. Everyone is far from it. People will start cursing you as you leave. T.S. Eliot, Edagar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, William Wordsworth and several such are names that are not to be ever uttered by any 'cool' youngster in Mumbai. You shall be dubbed old school.

6) People will detest you if you ever talk about history, socio-economics of the world and different countries and cultures. For any worldly pleasure, please avoid discussing all this. Because a discussion on the dark ages of Europe might contribute to people making sure that your life turns out to be a dark age.

7) If you are a man, or so you think, think of women as a commodity. Consume them. There is nothing that a man should expect from women apart from sex. If you are one of those who believe that there are many greater aspects to life than sex then you are both anachronistic and incongruous. Worse, if you miss an opportunity to score for your loyalty towards someone else, or if you refuse to take advantage of a drunken girl talking of some kind of morality, then you are a fucking loser.

8) Remember that politics and current affairs are only for the elite. Do NOT ever give them any importance. The hallmark of general knowledge is discussing commercial movies, specially Hollywood. Not knowing who Pranab Mukharjee is alright but not knowing who Russell Crowe is will attract opprobrium.

9) You are an outright 'chutiya' if you think you are a man of integrity or you want to be something like that. If morality, commitment, honesty are things you think about or things you even consider then you should sulk with the fact that you were not born in the Satya Yuga.

10) Oh yes, never discuss mythology or ancient literature. Never read the epics. It is derogatory and completely 'uncool' to have read books like the Mahabharata. However, it is a symbol of class and sophistication if you have watched Troy which is based on a book that is now considered a lesser epic to Mahabharata in most of the western world.

12) There are two major classes of youngsters in Mumbai - the wannabe westerners and the orthodox fundamentalists - and you must belong to either of them. If you are one of those pricks who think of a crossover of cultures and accept a lot of the west while not losing respect for their origin then you are just wasting your time. You will keep arguing with both the classes all your life and shall be labelled as a 'chutiya' by both.

Well these, and several others that I have missed out on, are easy escapes to a happy social life. Following all, or most, of these will promise you a healthy interaction with people and a lot of easy smiles on your journey across the streets of the city. I suggest, it is best to be normal and pretty similar to people around you since the trade-off between being different and going through all the pain is not just worth anything.

If you are someone like me who, despite understanding the obvious benefits of being common, has made an irreversible journey to weirdness, I have only my sympathy for you. Because, you are the underdog. You are the only red in a green basket. You are going to be betrayed frequently and will have to be crying regularly. And hence, as I said, I have only my sympathy for you, and a quote that might light a tiny candle against the plethora of darkness spread all over.

"To be what you are, in a world that's trying its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the toughest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings

Choose what you want to be, wisely.

Numbers

Numbers had me fumble

when she told me we were one,

and extended my existence

from a walk to a run.

After that never ever

was I less than two,

No day will pass softly,

I told her, without you.

In the jumbled numbers

I found her to be one with me,

one was two and two were one,

as I could see.

From zero I started counting

and had just reached three

when she ran away,

with my numbers to an infinity

Since then I find her

in every number thrown,

Two are broken, one is gone

and I am less than even alone.

The Shirt

The cloth that hangs,

on the door of my bedroom,

is an anachronism

that once was a fancy shirt;

that once was flaunted;

that once was unbuttoned

by the loveliest hand in the world.

Now has ended its glory, by

a wicked pun played by time

that has left the shirt in tatters,

infested with a nefarious fungus

that slowly reduces its existence

to a nothingness.

The cloth hangs on the door still,

untouched and neglected,

through the brightest of the afternoons,

and through the darkest of the nights,

longing for its lost glory,

longing for another pun

to be played upon it,

longing to be worn again,

and to be frisked and unbuttoned,

by the loveliest hand in the world.

Also published in the October 2011 edition of Kritya - available here.

The Diatribe

Time is nobody's bitch,

and often anybody's whore.

Caged and tormented like a medieval slave,

and smothered by a million woes,

I lived a week sulking alone.

With sullen eyes I went to work,

in silences elongated by a native pain,

in melodies converted into dirges,

I abused the fuck out of myself,

to nobody's bother.

I was a loner.

A loser. A bastard.

I was the last moment before the sunrise,

waiting for the last tear in my languid eyes.

I was suffocated like a Jew in Warsaw,

and split like two ends of hair,

dissolved in a time-bound misery,

that perhaps, time could only bear.

I hit the walls but whom to blame?

I banged the keyboard but whom to blame?

Blame it on the bastard of the night,

Blame it on my dullness.

Blame it all on her laconic eyes.

Blame it on my shameful self.

Blame it on the reciprocal mistakes,

and on the smiles we did not share,

and on the love that left me alone.

Blame it and just blame it,

and blame more!

This is a blame-game,

and melancholy galore.

No rose blossoms, in this rhyme

no star shines and no moonlight spread,

For this is a diatribe, my love,

and not a fucking serenade.

Just Another Poem

And the flame in the lamp fluttered.

Reflecting in the glass,

of pain and agony,

and a contrasting hope.

A red-lit arena of hollow youngness.

In it, I live many lives.

In it, I search for self.

My wanton ambition,

intercepts my reality,

of darkness and abnegation.

Now, I try to fly.

way, way up high.

I try to fly,

beyond boundaries

that I don't conform to.

A futile indulgence, or

a fierce hunt for nirvana?

What is it?

What is it?

HER

Stolid stones and mundane conversations

have enclosed a finality of time.

She has escaped. From my ego,

through two-faced streets, into

another layer of the universe.

I am split like a bisected earthworm,

into two insignificant selves,

at the wake of a private apocalypse.

I have tamed into normalcy,

like a man with combed hair,

I have no doors open, and

none closed either.

I have no doors at all to see through,

on this hopelessly dull night.

I am the primary agony of my room.

I am annoying like a spelling mistake.

I am a pun on modernity, and a

euphemism for abject pity.

She has faded. Into a distance,

far from my pitiable self, floating

on amicable waters.

I walk like an old man,

looking at stolid stones that

play Gods to weeping worshipers.

I weep too, don't I? I cry dry.

I am caught up,

between several stones and many Gods,

unable to detach myself from any.

Because I weep. Yes, I do cry.

My wired wishes,

have her kidnapped.

I have arcane dreams of her.

They are wild and vivid.

And they have her kidnapped.

But there is no ransom.

She has escaped.

There is no ransom.

She has faded.

There is no ransom.

There is no her.

And I am done. Fuck!

Am I?

Also published in the October 2011 edition of Kritya - available here.

Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara - A Commentary

I was 13 when Dil Chahta Hai was released. The movie marked one of the most important stages in my understanding of cinema. It gave me something that I had never seen before. It glorified friendship without romanticizing it, it chose banter and quick-wit over slapstick comedy and told a simple tale of three friends, without being a captive of comedy, romance or any other genres that were prevalent in Bollywood, with such effortless ease and honesty that the movie went beyond what any Hindi film had previously touched, it and remains, to this day, as one of my, if not the, all time favourite movies.

I am not sure if Farhan Akhtar gave us Dil Chahta Hai or Dil Chahta Hai gave us Farhan Akhtar but Hindi film industry would be indebted to both Dil Chahta Hai and Farhan Akhtar for giving it so many things it was deprived of till 2001.

Well, I am undoubtedly a fan of Farhan Akhtar and at the same time have always believed that Farhan could never touch within himself what he did while making that gem of a movie back in the day. However, he has been close to brilliance in Lakshya, experimental in Rock On and acceptable in Don. Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara, the movie this article is supposed to be about, is perhaps the closest he and his sister Zoya have come to the legend of Dil Chahta Hai but the comparison of, and the similarity between, the two movies would be the toughest challenge ZNMD would have to face.

The brilliance of the movie lies predominantly in its gentle character and lovely screenplay. The performances, along with the ravishing locales in Spain, embellish the movie to a spectacle. Farhan Akhtar is spontaneous, funny and a live wire as Imran, Hritik Roshan puts forth the best performance of his life after Lakshya to create an Arjun who is both stylish and materialistic for a reason. Abhay Deol's Kabir is not as fantastic as his other two friends but he adds an element of sobriety that compliments well to the crazy scenes created by the other two leads.

The adventure sports, especially free-falling, are awesome and really enthralling. One of the greatest achievements of the movie is that while the three friends look fascinating together and their humour is of the kind one can easily relate to, their personal stories and troubles - which we can call subplots - are captured with great care and grace. May it be Arjun's silence after meeting a quarantined part of himself after the sea-diving incident or Kabir's memory of a marriage proposal that happened by mistake, all the subplots are respected equally. Yet, the best to me was the one that features Imran's search for his real father. The meeting between Imran and his father Salman (played by Naseeruddin Shah with remarkable grace) is one of the most influential scenes in the movie.

The small flashbacks - a trademark Farhan Akhtar style - are used as effectively as always. Zoya Akhtar extends her talent from Luck By Chance (which itself was a good attempt) to direct with greater freedom. Imran's poetry, written by Javed Akhtar, appears at apt moments and reads very well to the poetic ear. Katrina Kaif looks beautiful as Laila and is marginally better than the dull actor she has usually been. Kalki is decent as Kabir's fiance. The music flows well through the movie. Dil Dhadkne Do and Senorita are particular nice tracks. The effect of Der Lagi Lekin is enhanced by its fantastic timing in the movie. The stallions running parallel to the vintage blue Mercedes seemingly compete with the beauty of the latter in that obscure, surrealistic, extravagant location in Spain.

Overall, ZMND offers a type of sanguinity that it can justify. It is an honest attempt to glorify life without glamourizing it senselessly just like the masterpiece of Dil Chahta Hai was in a certain way. Although Dil Chahta Hai still remains, and perhaps will always remain, the best movie Farhan Akhtar was part of, ZMND can very well come second, and being a Rahul Dravid is no small feat in a system where ranking starts from second.

Someday

Someday, I'll fly,

High. Way up high.

Someday.

Of Dogs and Bitches

My grandmother once told me a story.

There was a bitch who produced children. She fed them and brought them up. Gradually, the eldest dog turned into an adult. He left the bitch one fine day and searched for a new home. He established an identity in the outer world, formed a region of his own, never to come back to the bitch. The second child followed the same trend, so did the third, the fourth, and so on and so forth.

Then came a day when the youngest was the only child that remained with the bitch, still learning to bark, a young adult. The youngest dog refused to go away from the bitch, without caring about a new region, sacrificing his future, for the mother she had been to him. He saw the bitch through the torment of aging, through the pain of worldly isolation, and looked after her till the last day of her life.

Then came the siblings of the youngest dog, the dogs and the bitches, to wave their mother a final goodbye. And as went their mother deep down into the earth, they hugged the younger dog, paid him their respect and proclaimed him to be the king of the region, for all that he had done, and moreover, for all that they could never do.

This was the story that my grandmother told me, of dogs and bitches. But we are humans, aren't we?

The Crossover Wind

The crossover wind,

Whistles through the woods,

traces an arc above the sea.

An enclosed sea coast,

Being spied on through the window,

Of a cheap hotel room,

Draws a face, so lovely.

Inside the room, a dusty lampshade emits light,

in the shape of me. The shape of me,

and the crossover wind,

travels a distance over the sea.

The crossover wind,

trapped between the hotel and the sea,

A prisoner of the evening.

The frayed ends of the evening,

prick in my eyes,

initiating the gradual process,

Of engendering the night.

Two eyes. Two anachronistic captives of an anachronistic night,

hunt for their murderer. Their murderer,

like the crossover wind , mad and noisy,

seeking its own identity, restlessly wanders.

The crossover wind,

Greets this town, exchanges a smile,

Grabs a whit of it from the native air.

The midway hangs,

Cut by the sea-shore off the midnight,

Like the memory of an ex-lover

suspended in the twilight.

A private shadow, entangled by the hotel walls,

sinks in the sea. Sinks in the sea,

when the crossover wind,

frisks the him within me.

Also published in the November 2011 edition of the Enchanting Verses - available here.

Home, Away, and Home Again

In this house am I today,
willfully cornered like a passive smoker.
The windows separate me from the without,
The scattered light resigns on the glass breaking it,
into several unintelligible products of my imagination.

And in this house am I today,
where the void lived so peacefully,
in places in the house created by death.
Protected by the walls that stood for years
spectating endless fights for existence.

The night is spread out across the house,
Romancing me like a seductress.
A private encounter of a faceless night with a face,
Raw and vagarious like a dream.

The fumes chase the native air
forming and breaking known shapes,
I linger on the bed understanding life,
in the dark corners of the house
that I own.

And here I am the emperor. I am the king.
I own the mornings and the afternoons,
the evenings and the nights,
I own everything around here,
even the darkness that teases my sight.

I have walked on a broken floor
through delicate doors to nowhere.
I have seen smiles brutally murdered in the house,
the lights turned off for an eternity.
But now again the sun knocks on my door,
uncovering me from a ragged blanket.

A hope now blossoms,
quietly conquering the places within the house,
The past has surrendered to this new night,
in the place that I have just re-espoused.

Also published in the October 2011 edition of Kritya - available here.