Scribbles

Defining a room

I was supposed to call you
And here I am
Trying to decipher the meaning of a room
Whether it defines the space it holds within
Or the space without
Or even memories
Dreams
Clinging to it
Clinging to the moments
Of changing shadows
Giving it shape
Snatching them away


I was supposed to call you
And yet here I am, running away
In the variable pursuit of a design
It rained yesterday
or
It didn’t
And the spirits of umbrellas groaning
In premonition of an arcade
Going down

A market is placed somewhere
Between probabilities
And here I am
Ready to trade the last
remains of wonder
for a semblance of meaning

Going Fishing

So, it’s been a pretty long
Winter
Lack of sunlight
In no uncertain metaphor
Now that the temperature soars
I guess, fishing is not out of question
anymore.
Markets are thriving again on the rumor of growth
The tribals are back with home-made curd
Vegetables, catches of miniscular carps

We all are interested in growth
Degradable or not
Growing together is the culture alright
Well, everything grows in culture
Market, ambition, desire to elitisize
The threshold into the elitist world
Despair
Everything grows in culture
Even bacteria

Coming back to grief
Well,
Does anything grow in grief
Except
Probably
“you”

For me fishing was never an option in reality
It was rather the prospect of fishing
So in cultivating grief
I stumbled upon mirrors
More concave than ones sold in the auto-shops
Well, metaphors are always uncertain
Though not the concept of metaphor
Can a mirror really be a metaphor
without your participation
I ask

It had been a season of haze
Though now there is sunlight
The haze still
Is meandering
Yesterday I whispered to myself
I will whisper to myself again

I will go fishing this time

Art and Therapy

The therapist said --
Poetry is all about treatment
The morning dose of Prozac
And the related contemplation of multiple suicides
It’s always about what you don’t see
Using a song as filter or not
Doesn’t matter
It always is what you don’t see
Coming, going
Wandering under lampshades
On the bathroom tiles
And always reciprocating with what it doesn’t see
You open the innards of a road out
The unseen gutters and the brothels
Dingy curtains, plush pink sofa-sets
Used syringes, the sudden gale
The uptown flower market
Banana and melon peels
And the rings of Saturn around your left ball
And they all are reciprocating with what they don’t see

see, the game of hide & seek
has essentially 3 games in it
hide
seek
hide and seek the essence of what shall remain hidden, including you

Do you matter?
Do I matter?
For the record, I no longer do see the therapist
And me


Art, society , therapy and relevant mosquitoes

The therapist said—what is art
But an organic
accessibility to intuition
a superfast feed-forward reaction leading to a non-value
before you can say “shit !”
(the action is hidden for the time being)
alienation is what a performing artist does best
so, try define society
in terms of art and
bingo !
Gentlemen, you have successfully reached The VOID
It’s been a long time
Since we watched TV together in a shallow room
Taking care not to drop blueberries on the couch
Meeting eyes on an instinctive basis
Mosquitoes : Anopheles, Aedis, Culex
Smile, grimace
And the loft had its fair share of spiders
Weaving, sitting idle, not a single mosquito in the web
A perpetually dark toilet
Water stains
I mean, see, although you have moved to a better house
3 bed rooms, living cum dinning, 2 toilets and a kitchen
Can’t help miss the studio
It’s the miseries that bond people
Make a society
You want to call the new house a home
Bring on the
Leaking shower
Switchboards that come out
when you literally pull the plug
And there you go ...

Alienation is what a performing artist does best
While truly pursuing a de-alienation
Without caring to know
How very similar it may look
The mirror image is always reversed


How do I write in Bangla ?

Any train is supposed to have
its relevant mosquitoes
and I come to think Bangla is a rather obdurate
archaic and heavy language
good for drapes on dark walls
odd curvings
on Burma-Teak
or even for putting plasters
on yellow urinals
laced with graffiti

Gabbar and Basanti
watching Sholay
a coffee table, between them
no coffee
popcorns on white china
and an orange light
descending
directly over the popcorns
on the popcorns
only on the popcorns

there you have it
Talking about Zen
body is not free of matter
The mind is
take the train
moving solidly
and the relevant mosquitoes
and inertia
the mind can be free of matter
but is not from the concept of matter
and
it's not about unlearning the mosquitoes
but their bites

Coming back to Gabbar and Basanti
Coming back to Bangla as such
I bring back the coffee
it's a green light now
descending on an oak table
It's oak because
it has to be heavy
to have an impact
difficult to tear from
the brain cells declaring the table as a table

Someone told me to write about "sirens"
not the Greek ones but industrial hooters
and my brain
perpetually tries to decipher
the dog dangling from the balls
of the nightwatchman in wee hours
wails

and this whole thing happens
when I try to think in Bangla
and drink the morning tea with powdered milk
so this dilemma
the enormous Bos horns
one west one east
should ask Holub
which one to take on



(Miroslav Holub: a Czech poet and immunologist, suffered from this dilemma to write in English or Czech: the motivations were different though: to be famous (English) or write freely (Czech)

Dilemma: The word is obtained from the horns of a bull, The question is which one to avoid ? )



The Indian whisper

Sometimes it takes just a whisper
To do the trick
You sit down
Relieve yourself
Of the smudge
Left on your retina
And look again
Search for another source
The same shit that they call a soul
Well, smudge and soul almost always make a good pair
Here, the explorer exclaims
Why the crowd
--the Nawab is flying paper-kite
It’s nothing to do with reality as such
It’s the river that paints itself
Upon reaching the banks
Among huts, coconut groves
Washing women
Dyeing laundries
Flying red and yellow
There used to be paper-kite tournaments
Shadows of the contestants, the kites and the flight
Gale
still floating, distorted a bit here a bit there
It’s not a dream either
See, they always are the co-existing factors
If one fails the other succumbs too.
I mean, we have a festival called “holi”
It’s a dyeing/dying game, basically
Interpret it as you wish
And you shall know—
Of nights, of rights
Of pervading songs
Roasting meats
And whispering flower wristlets
And the returning explorer exclaiming
Why the crowd
--the Nawab is being arrested by the British

(On his journey to Tibet, Rahul Sankrityayan was passing through Lucknow. He saw a large crowd on the bank of Gomti and upon enquiry found out that the crowd was witnessing Wajir Ali Shah’s skills in flying a paper kite. While returning from Tibet, through Lucknow, he again saw a large crowd on the bank of Gomti and was informed that the Nawab was being led in chains by the British. I came upon this anecdote in one of Dr. Irfan Habib’s speeches)



Drinking from new cups

At least we got new cups
Not styrofoam but the real china
And a road winds through
Relative obscurity of a bird sanctuary
We drink in sips
And poetry is not about a point
I mean not wanting to score a point
Or make one either
The marsh right now harbours
Egrets, cormorants
Crested herons, blue, black, white
No declarations
They will go back March/April
And the haze will dissolve
It’s never about a point
Or the road
Or the strolling as such
I mean, art does start from a point
Or points interfering, merging , clashing, chasing or simply
Choosing not to exist
A tit-lark will sing, if it wants to
We drink in sips
We will drink in sips
An algae-crusted boat meanders
Sometimes there is a breeze
And vague smells
Memory is not a place to stop
And search for the obvious
Isn’t the search supposed to be for the corners
Bends, faces--
dark, obscure in their past versions
Unseen.
Basically,
A mirror can teach you
That, farther you go from yourself
Objectivity increases
It’s all about visibility of the wounds
Isn’t it
Sipping from fresh china
Counting tea-leaves notwithstanding
Is subjective

What we are drinking, does not matter
As long as the cup is new
And china it must be
Coming back to art
The black flock flies
Haze permeating among the ranks
Time is a distance
That can be measured
Without much physical activity or fuss
And a tit-lark sang,
Question is, did it want to sing ?
The road bends its own way
The points a notion in Brownian motion
We drink in sips