There I lay open,
on the examination table,
all my parts jumbled
like a bad biology puzzle.

My separated eyes
leaking blood
into my upturned palms.

My grey and white matter
mingling with the filtered contents
of my drooping kidneys.

My shriveled testicles
in the company
of my jaundiced tongue.

My constricted anus
ignoring the abuse
of my screaming lips.

My enlarged liver and my enraged pancreas
creating an identity crisis for
my depressed penis.

My sunburnt skin sloughed off
and arranged in small piles beside
the mutant glow of my bleached teeth.

My adrenals exchanging high fives
with the spliced end
of my sexy spleen.

My pretty green gall bladder
tangled up
in the chilly red of my arteries.

My throat cut off in mid sentence
leaning against
my fragile funny bone.

And there in the center,
my vacated heart,
still pulsing and dripping,
waiting for deliverance
from an unsatisfied question.

Where did the ends of our worlds meet?
In the shallow landscapes of our palms?
In the hardened furrows of our foreheads?

Where did our conversations go?
Into the shifting winds of our swollen egos?
Into the languid spaces of our memories?

Where did the lights of that night disappear?
Into the moonlight shivering on the edge of your spine?
Into the allergic depths of true love?

In an instant
I’m plunged into
the old roaring of words
that fell from the soaring heights of
our eyes
to land like rainbow colored mist between
our toes.

So we looked and
found each other
again,
our respective fate lines
tied in a knot.

——–

I miss you
still,
kissing our memories
on quiet evenings.

——

My hands
crave you,
moving through the air
of their own accord
drawing your diagram.

——–

Your absence
gives shape
to my
loneliness.

—–

Our lives
keep diverging
like the lines on my palm.

Leave this hour behind
inside me
like a signature of your smile
on the blind tips of my fingers.

——

The fog is thick between
the dust colored sunshine
and the fading smell
of last night’s jasmine.

——

Waiting across the hall
is anger accumulated
against the unchanged
arc of intimate history.

—–

Memories are rust colored
in the hour glass harmony
of moments flowing across
the gaps in remembrance.

——

I’m here at the end of the rainbow
watching the heavens wheel across
the arch of time

marveling at the clockwork precision
of the universe and the unchanging rhythm
of moving time.

(Note: This trip report was first published in the April 2009 edition of Bird watchers’ Society of Andhra Pradesh’s newsletter-Pitta)

They say that you can never forget your first tiger sighting in the wild. The majestic walk, the earth shattering roar and the easy but arrogant confidence apparently imprint him in your mind forever. With such descriptions and statements in mind I set off back in late January 2009, to the Jim Corbett National Park in Ramnagar, Uttarakhand to join that relatively small club of people who have seen the magnificent beast in the wild. While two days of frantic dashes and sudden hushed stops throughout the length and breadth of the Brijrani area of the park did not yield even a small glimpse of that much praised animal (except for some fresh pugmarks), in all those wanderings I did get to see an amazing variety of bird life both in Corbett and a few days later in the Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur, Rajasthan. And in the latter I saw a sight that completely drove the tiger from my mind. It was the most beautiful bird I had ever seen in my short birding career. But more about this bird and the Bharatpur sanctuary later. Let me first guide you through the foggy grasslands, thin gurgling streams and cool woodlands of Corbett by conveniently concentrating on birding aspects of the trip and ignoring for most part our increasingly desperate attempts to spot a tiger.

We reached Ramnagar too early to enter the park so our jeep driver took us to the Kosi river to pass time. It was still dark but a thin light was breaking out in the east marginally illuminating the murky riverbed that was mostly dry except for a small flow. As we stumbled over the smooth and rounded pebbles of the river bed, a sudden clear ringing rent the perfectly still dawn air. It was the di-geri-doo call of a lapwing. Although it was still too dark to see the bird. I wanted to hang around a bit for the light to brighten to identify the lapwing and see if there were any more birds but it was time to proceed to the park.

As we waited to collect our park entry permits at the Brijrani gate and be assigned a guide we saw that ubiquitous septet, the Jungle Babblers (Turdoides striatus) hopping around. After we proceeded into the park, as soon as we passed the buffer zone and were crossing a shallow stream we saw a Red-wattled Lapwing (Vanellus indicus) running away from us. After crossing the stream and climbing the crest of a small mound we found a rivulet below on our left in which we observed through the rapidly thinning fog a group of Black Storks (Ciconia nigra) out fishing early. We continued towards the canteen at the beginning of the park proper to quieten our grumbling stomachs. Stomach filled, I was sipping on some hot Bournvita when I spied a little bird hopping around the tables in front of the canteen with its tail raised. It was a White-Capped Water Redstart (Chaimarrornis leucocephalus), a bird I did not expect to be so used to civilization.

No sooner had we left the canteen, our guide Mahesh pointed out a Lesser Flameback Woodpecker (Dinopium benghalense) in the distance seemingly bent on breaking its beak on the bark of a tree. As we were driving through a wooded area we heard the harsh bark of an Indian Muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak) from near us and stopped by the side of the track to investigate. A flash of color in the dense bushes next to us sent our pulses racing. Alas, it was not a tiger passing through. It was only a “lowly” timid Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) giving us the once over with its bobbing head!

Towards late afternoon we made our way towards the Malani region of the park to catch a glimpse of the core forest area that no day visitors are allowed to enter even with entry permits. Mahesh, sharp as ever, pointed out a group of birds in the distance sitting high in the branches of a tree well above the average tree cover. Their bare, red colored fleshy necks gave them away instantly. It was a group of Red-Headed Vultures (Sarcogyps calvus) seemingly relaxing under the late afternoon sunshine.

Walking
one afternoon
on a path that led
into thick bushes
I came upon him,
fully formed
and bright.

Wings tucked in
on the edge of a jagged leaf
he sat
contemplating perhaps
the great drop
below.

I approached quietly
with
my viewing box
and
held it up to my eye.

He swam into detail
like a boat nearing the shore.

Off white wings
divided by
bright orange lines
flecked with silver.

Two thin tails
parallel
like the latitudes
pointed away
from his striped body.

Beneath the tails
two threads
that dropped away
like anchors.

He and I
waited
there in the bushes
surrounded by bird call
and the distant beat of a fast flowing river
until suddenly the branch above me moved
and my shadow fell across him.

He rose in an instant
on those wings dipped in silver
and fluttered away
before I could take
another photograph,
before I could
introduce myself.

The beast rose within
to smash the mirror of memory
that hung on the
low wall of self loathing.

—–

Watermelon dreams
stain the skin of summer
as she smothers the city
in her blazing yellow shamiana.

—–

A gap in the stars
A full stop out of place
The twisted sky falls apart
The world sleeps.

—–

A sudden hush descends
on the neon painted night scape
washing the empty gullies that
sing cement colored sonnets.

—–

There is a shadow on her lip
as she stares out of the moving window
watching the traffic glide
between her screaming fists.

—–

They were watching TV
India Shining in their eyes
broken, battered pasts and totalitarian presents
erased by a clever copywriter.

—–

Death begins with doubt
inside corners
that inhabit our shadows.

In these arms I gather
the loneliness of your dreams
as you curl into my corners
lost in a shapeless geography.

In these arms I gather
the trembling lips of dawn
as she awakens you
from night’s deep dark abandon.

In these arms I gather
the wet whispers of your hair
as they slither between
sunshine and shade.

In these arms I gather
the invitations of intimacy
that traverse your tongue
as it explores a new vocabulary.

In these arms I gather
the songs of your breasts
as they breathe between
your heart and mine.

In these arms I gather
the essence of ecstasy
as you arch your back
over the bridge of my fingers.

In these arms I gather
the tenderness of twilight
as the light sinks
into the night behind our words.

In these arms I gather
the silver stars in your eyes
as they search
for stardust in mine.

Ever since the growth of the so called ‘multiplex cinema’ it has been fashionable among some quarters to keep stating at regular intervals that the Hindi film industry has finally come of age. In other words, the Hindi film industry has finally shed its insane plots and acquired a global persona that everyone from San Francisco to Sydney can relate to. For a long time I believed that to be mostly empty hype. Having seen Dev.D yesterday changed my opinion. If a crazy, beautiful, hilarious, sad, mad, ugly beast of a film like this could get made in the context of mainstream cinema and receive a wide release then indeed Hindi cinema has come of age like no other language cinema of India I know of has.

Anurag Kashyap always had a reputation as a talented and controversial director and through Dev.D he demonstrates why he is one of the best directors Hindi cinema is lucky to possess. Saratchandra’s Bengali novel ‘Devdas’ has been a perennial favorite among Indian film directors with as many as 9 versions already made using it as a source. Kashyap’s film is anything but faithful to the novel. Along with co-writer Vikramaditya Motwane he twists, bludgeons, and mutates the novel into a contemporary setting. He wisely avoids going the melodrama way like other directors before and instead concentrates on the core, the emotional attyachar if you will, of all the central characters and especially of Dev.

Abhay Deol is steadily building his reputation as cross over cinema favorite and with this film he demonstrates why he is so good in such ‘auteur’ films. After a stunning performance in his recent ‘Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye’ he cements his indie status with a sterling modern take on Devdas.

Newcomers Mahi Gill and Kalki Koechlin are equally stunning in their roles as Paro and Chanda aka Chandramukhi. Mahi as the headstrong Paro and Koechlin as the disarmingly seductive Chanda prop up the emotional core of the film with star making turns. The transition of Koechlin, in particular, from an unconventional school girl to a professional seductress of great charm is both stunning and shocking.

What is even more remarkable is how strong Paro and Chanda are. They are completely unlike the simpering, crying-behind-closed-doors, always-waiting-for-the-hero ‘Bharatiya naris’ that you usually find on Indian film screens. Spurned brutally by Dev Paro soon moves on to her new life without a second thought or signs of weakness. Spurned by her parents and a hypocritical society Chanda soon makes a life for herself, and even if she has to sell her body and voice for that life, she does it on her own terms. I wonder what the regressive Indian right wing organizations will think of such strong characterizations?

The cinematography by Rajeev Ravi is another aspect of the film that hits you with a solid fist in your visual guts. While the camera starts sedately, almost conventionally it steadily deteriorates into extremely ugly close-ups, insane time lapse sequences, flashy over saturated colors and kinetic character driven movements mimicking the emotional upheaval of the film’s central characters. The frenetic, adrenalin-infused editing needs special mention even if in certain segments of the film the edits should have been much tighter.

The soundtrack by Amit Trivedi, to put it simply, is mind blowing. It is music that grabs you by your auditory balls and just does not let go. Be it the raunchy Bihari twang overloaded but hilarious ‘Emosanal Attyachar’ or the world weary beauty of ‘Saali Kushi’ the music is an aural romp through ever shifting soundscapes.

Final word-get out and immediately drive to the nearest film theater and watch this mad fuck film. It will be a blinking benchmark on your filmy radar. And if you can, watch the film after sampling a few choice shots of vodka. Taken over and ruled completely by the film for 172 minutes your roughly surprised senses will thank you for it.

Between uncertain unhappiness and the smells
of sunset and sorrow there was a space.
A no man’s land of abandoned heartbeats.
A no woman’s land without a horizon to kiss.

No sunshine ever smiled there.
No sounds ever laughed there.

It was my space; most private and most precious.
Into that space, she came riding in like an unexpected answer.

The hidden horizon came coughing through her hair.
The sullen sun started smiling through her shadow.
The lonely land began to flirt with her feet.

Was it an invitation or was it an invasion?
Or was it just a spectacular vision?

My friend, it was none of the above. It was instead an awakening,
an opening up if you will, to her coal dark eyes full of new vocabulary.
With an echo of her heartbeat hovering in my breath
I began to love once again the sudden heartaches of dawn and the lonely tenderness of twilight.

(Note: Something written in the autumn of 2000.)

This one had, when we started, the omen of being a good smooth one. I sat on the platform of the abandoned railway station with my friend. The rusted rails ran to the horizon on either side of us. The area around us was wild, every inch clogged with shrubs and weeds. The journey began. Initially, there was nothing. Then, slowly, I rose through the evening air. I was above the world surveying the light sinking into the horizon. Hands shook caught in some unknown emotion. I was traveling alone as my friend was still far below. I started to come down after completing the first part of my journey when he started on his. Time passed. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours.

A train went by us ponderously as if contemplating our unexplained presence in the wilderness there. Faces in the train, making a horizontal journey, were far away but somehow still seemed familiar. Perhaps, as they were on a voyage of their own.

I tried to get everything into perspective. I read out some of my favorite quotations and also read some sentences from a book on Kant’s philosophy. Then I started having some food. Even though it was stale it gave a punch to our throats with its sudden spiciness. The sun started its final descent into daily oblivion. The shadows around us grew grotesque, twisting familiar shapes into something unearthly. We started back. I was at peace.

Suddenly, a new taste started spreading on my tongue. It was as if my saliva was evaporating as soon as it came into contact with my tongue. It was eerily similar to the sensation of alcohol evaporating on skin, rapidly cooling it. My friend gave me a small cola peppermint. The taste was exquisite, sublime in its surprisingly new sensations. The metallic twang of the cola instantly evaporating gave rise to an awe inducing experience.  We passed through a park, the air around us was cooled by the trees. I began to feel as if I had just been immersed in alcohol and taken out. My face felt as if it was evaporating under a gentle heat, without pain but with a lot of coolness.

I took a bus later to go home. The first half of the bus ride while I was standing was normal. Only when I turned my head suddenly did I feel as if I was moving my head against my brain’s will. It was as if my head was underwater and the water around was making it difficult for my head to move. Once I sat down I felt as if I was sliding into a world unknown, a world where ordinary faces looked out of place, normal sounds lost their insistence. People scurried to climb the bus like ants before the first rains. Distances traversed, landmarks lost in a host of trivialities.

I got down from the bus. Immediately, something curious started to escape from my head. At the same time my neck seemed to stiffen. As I was walking, my right leg started to feel as if it was moving too rapidly, then it started to sublimate in stages until the only indication that it was even attached to my torso was my movement forward. As suddenly as it had started that fantastic feeling ended in my right leg and took over my left leg. Again, the same curious pleasure of something sublimating. Then, it spread to both my legs at once.

I went to a sweet shop and bought something to eat. I started to eat. My throat refused to respond! It was as if my mouth and throat were two independent entities, my mouth trying to push the food in with my mulish throat not allowing anything in without a struggle.

I came home and crashed on my bed. I closed my eyes. Zoom. Stop. Zoom. Stop. I opened my eyes. It was an amazing new feeling. My brain was racing. I closed my eyes again. It started again. My brain and sight started rotating. Faster and faster, still faster until the speed did not matter, only the feeling did. It was if my head had detached itself from my neck, went up a few feet and started to rotate on its own as if a hidden energy source inside was powering it. The amazing evaporating tongue taste again. I finished three apples. The same race against speed feeling I had experienced in the bus with an erection in tow. Sensual daydreams. Thoughts in a muddle. I had to keep back certain things. Sudden movements. More new sensations as if each part of my body had now proclaimed independence. It was not an homogeneous whole but a multitudinous whole. A democratic dictatorship. A sub state reached between sleep and consciousness.

I started to read a novel- English, August. Words took on a pleasant incomprehension. The feelings evoked were sublime. Ordinary paragraphs suddenly expressed profound meanings. Landscapes were peaceful, people were receding in the background. Thirst. Water tasted as sweet as sugar but without the excessive sweetness. A right balance between reality and distortion. A peaceful present unfolded deep inside me. I slept.

he moved through the shadows like death…fiddling with his dark coat…blending in here…shape shifting there. he woke up slowly…almost gently like from a vivid early morning dream…his breath was cold and his senses clouded…he felt like he was in some immense space, all alone…so totally alone like it was the end of the world…there was only the soft hum of a cooling fan around him.

—–

it was so crowded..his head, the world around him…every inch crawling with every form of humanity and animal life…it hemmed his thoughts in…created a claustrophobia that threatened to engulf him..he felt like taking a blow torch and putting the world around him to the cleansing breath of raw fire…like he used to do with a matchstick to ants when he was 7 years old..that sense of total control over life…a deeply addictive smell…the smell of burning flesh like an opiate for his tingling senses.

—–

he remembered her from that night…that night where every moment seemed special…like it was made for him…the way she climbed over him and lifted her t-shirt up..the way moonlight moved along her spine…the way her hair dropped away like rain in his hands….the way her breasts heaved under his moving fingers…she had that special smile in her eyes as she leaned forward to kiss him…in the house everyone was sleeping….she moved onto him like a warm feeling and took him inside…it was a sudden movement but it all felt so natural…and they moved with the night and bathed in the light to crash on the shores of dawn…little did he know that it was only for one night…when morning came he had to leave her behind…she refused to come with him…to even entertain the thought of they ever giving the coin toss future a shot.

—–

for a long time i thought of locking that part of life forever in a room that could never be reached, whose color of the walls i’d not remember, whose key i’d conveniently forget somewhere in a coffee shop corner of the mind.

—–

in between these little illnesses i wonder about what the world will be like on the other side. when you go past all the potholes and dead-ends to reach a world where every dream is a reality, where every lungful of air sings through your veins, and where every object is suffused with a golden glow. will it be as good as they say? will 40 virgins really be waiting to take care of my very conceivable need? will i sit at the feet of a golden god and sing his praises?

but this life is more important than that life. loneliness is more important that some golden heaven where you will be happy at last. speaking your heart, telling that important person how much she means before it is too late is important too. but how does it matter? will talking about something change the outcome? will revealing your heart move someone enough to want to go back and begin something new? no, all that happens in novels with neat endings. this is life we are living after all. not some technicolor dream of an idealist.

(Cross posted here.)

The guns have finally fallen silent. The staccato bursts of gunfire have died down. The intermittent explosions have stopped. The pigeons which flew away after every explosion have settled down. But something does not feel right. This was not like one of those bomb blasts we have been seeing with such regularity in India over the past few years. The blasts, even though extremely tragic, had a neat closure to them. But this siege was not neat. It was brutal, ugly, bloody and drawn out. To think that a dozen terrorists made the city, the country, nay even the world stand still speaks volumes both of their meticulous planning as well as of the utter failure of our security apparatus.

I’ve never liked Mumbai as a city. I’ve never lived there but while I was in college I visited it every year for four years. And every time I came away irritated by its insane (to me) rush to get somewhere, its ugly contrasts, mixed with a little envy too perhaps that Mumbai was so much more cosmopolitan than Hyderabad. I’ve always thought people made a lot of unnecessary fuss about Mumbai, its so called spirit, character and every other clichéd adjective you can think of. But this time, unlike the many tragic events before, my heart went out to Mumbai and its people. As I followed the breathless TV reporters fall over themselves to bring the rest of the world as many live images as possible of the ‘unfolding situation’ I was filled with a curious mixture of emotions. There was sadness at the needless and immense loss of life. There was multi-directional rage too, at the politicians who seem to mumble the same platitudes every time something like this happens but are soon back to their ways, of dividing this beautifully complex country to suit their narrow needs.

There was rage too at the terrorists, a helpless and hopeless sort of rage mixed with some despair. I’ve tried but I still cannot understand how someone of roughly my age can take a machine gun, walk into a hotel, into a railway station and start shooting indiscriminately. How can he look into the eyes of a woman trying to go home after visiting her relatives and shoot her in the throat? How can he separate people based on their nationality and gun them down? Try as I might I just cannot comprehend this inhumanity, this utter, deep dark hate that someone has inculcated in him. After all, he was not born with it. He was somebody’s son. He must have experienced some love. How do you go from being a human being to someone who does not blink twice before pressing the trigger and pumping bullets into fellow human beings, irrespective of whether that human being is an old man, a woman or a child? This hatred is beyond me.

And that fills me with a certain hopelessness. How do you guard against such unfathomable hatred? How do you tackle it? Will a more proactive intelligence help? Will upgrading our archaic police force into something more modern and efficient help? Perhaps those measures will help in the short term. But in the long run we have to reach out to the source of such hatred and wipe it out. Not with guns or smart bombs as so many have now begun to advocate, the ‘Israeli way’ they call it. For that will only lead to a never ending cycle of violence. But by understanding the roots of such terror and turning people away from this futile murderous orgy; through education, through alleviation of poverty, through better job prospects and through respect. For nothing blunts hatred more than happiness and peace.

In these teeming billions
I’m just another tear drop
flowing down the cheek of mortality.

—–

Inside you
the dust has spread
like a common rumor.

—–

In these woods,
between birds and butterflies,
between music and motion.

—–

Away from the frigid wastes.
Away from the loudness of longing.
The slow turning of time.
The warmth of familiar water.

Peace at last.

Yesterday night I talked to a wall,
a brick red barrier off which bounced
my monologue like a bad mystery.

The words were stale, like bad breath
before a beautiful morning kiss. They
had been festering far too long in closed confines.

They talked about desperate, unsatisfying sex,
about violence weakened by desire, about the
arc of answers that dug into my dull senses.

The night faded into neat patches of Indian ink
but my speech continued with only broken
mortar as my mute spectator.

I talked about the insistence of innocence, about
the precious pursuit of politeness, about the mystery of your
marriage to mediocrity, about the mechanics of martyrdom.

It is difficult to define the direction of ignored words,
they have a life of their own, seeping into skin like sunshine
on nights when the world is weeping big fat whispers.

The thrust of my argument fell on the ears
of an unpainted understanding between three neighbors.
The bricks broke rank with their sleeping masters to listen at last.

So I talked to them about the angry appearance of silence,
about loneliness that surfaced like a sudden itch,
about moments that mattered most when you and I last made love.

The sudden fiery outburst of a flowerpot
next door
sharpens the evening with the smell of sulphur.

Rockets rise like resurrected gods and explode between the
wispy clouds
into red, yellow and green showers.

I remember lights from the past,
one time
father was sitting in the balcony and a rocket
came through from under his chair and burst upon our bedroom wall.

Old friends standing on the roof,
silken silhouettes
laughing about who lost how much nerve when it came to lighting big bombs.

The sudden blast of a hydrogen bomb is a primal kick in
the gut,
a slap of surprised sound that silences all speech.

That one word fell between us like a raindrop,
smudging the intimacy inside our eyes.
That one word fell between us like a punishment,
stifling the laughter in our love.

It was not harsh, no; harshness was still a distant stranger
yet to make our acquaintance. It was like a hailstone hurled
across a street onto a windshield. Our world cracked but
did not break.

I remember the earthy brown smell your hands
left in mine. The smell lingered like the smell of the
first rains on dry earth and mingled with the taste of temptation
in my mouth.

Curious the memories that rise to the surface
when the ocean in our minds begins to part.
We are not God’s chosen couple. That much I’ve
come to understand.

Still the bird inside my heart cries for the
rains to return. To bring back the season when
streams flowed in our smiles. To bring back the season
of opaque windows.

Yesterday, I went to a poetry reading where
a forgotten poet was resurrected. His history
made human. His work made familiar.

Srinivas, Sridala and Jeet put words and images
in my head, putting the feeling of creation
but not the tools to create in that empty space.

This urge to create, to write great poetry
is tempered by an inability to choose,
to pick meter over rhyme, or free verse
over silence.

I sit down to write something about you,
about the fragmented forces around us,
about politics and purity, about faith and fashion,
but the words just slip away into a space I cannot fathom.

Today, I surfed the net with a great suspicion.
Who are all these new Indian poets populating the virtual world?
What do they hope to achieve with their navel gazing and inventive wordplay?
Did they not hear what Jeet had to say?

In between, my mother interrupts, breakfast is ready she says.
It is fish today with chapatis, rice is not cooked yet. Little does
she know that I’m writing something important here. The state
of contemporary Indian poetry no less. Breakfast can wait.
The mumbled conversations of my stomach can wait.

So coming back to Jeet, with his distinctive shaved pate shining
under the glare of the tube light and a singsong voice which was equal parts hip hop and poetry.
What did he say you ask? All you poets and professors hear him well.
He said, “Poetry doesn’t sell, to make money write fiction.”
How true that is. Poetry, the language of silence versus
fiction, the language of finance.

Vacant stares populate the empty night around me. The warm neon folds into me like a whisper. Solitude can be a strange companion in an urban setting where you are never truly alone. The buildings lean onto you like old friends. The roads slither under your wheels. The traffic seems to part beneath your defocussed gaze.

As you navigate the night the great drift happens. An interchange between two worlds. One second you are drowning in a cacophony of great sound and in the next instant the world seems to stop and take a deep breath. And you enter this sudden bubble of calm where every sensation is muted like snatches of music heard from a great distance.

There is still some motion all around. The hustle and bustle of people rushing home. The excitement of the pub crawlers mixed with the lonely despair of the pavement dwellers. You take everything in but nothing registers for you are in a world of your own making. You feel as if you are beneath a giant pillow. Your senses seem to register every sensation with a one second delay.

One after another thoughts drift in and out like travelers in transit. The movement is pleasant and comforting. Random figures drift into focus beneath the glare of a billboard. A passing headlight illuminates graffiti scrawled on the side of a dustbin. A new politician beneath a half-peeled poster stares at you with still intact dignity. You collect the different frames for future perusal.

The pale beginnings of a midnight hunger pulse beneath the perfect calm. It is time to take the roundabout and head home, leaving the neon night behind in the arms of approaching dawn.

(The following is a true story. It really happened. Names have been changed to protect identities. Most of the conversations that form part of the narrative are based upon that most unreliable of friends-memory or from conversations after the fact so some literary license has been taken in narrating the precise sequence of events.)

A fancy red Chevrolet smoothly glided to a stop beside us as we waited for the light to turn green at the Dairy Circle cross. But it was not the car that attracted our attention; it was the pulsing beat emanating from within it. An unknown song of the techno variety was playing. The bass from it throbbed and seemed to overpower our heartbeats into voluntary synchronicity. It was an excellent sound system. I turned to the auto driver and said as much.

“Kya sound hai na. Mast system hai!”

“Arrey, hamare pass bhi hai boss. Main mera system lagaye tho mera auto bhi dance karne lagega.”

I smiled at the infectious enthusiasm of the driver and his obvious pride over his auto. In fact it was a most interesting auto. Its interior was festooned with ribbons of multi-colored lights so that it gave you the feeling of being in some dingy dance bar.

I did feel like dancing though. What seemed like a bleak and hopeless case had turned around in a most dramatic fashion. The many twists and turns tinged the whole week with a cinematic quality. Even now, when I look back, I marvel at the wonderful adventure it became in the end.

Saturday

Like most things in life it started in an innocuous fashion and can be traced back to my insistence to get out of the city for the weekend. Since a common friend was going to Mysore for the weekend and invited us we decided to follow them there. So the three of us, Pavan, Anand and me took an auto from Pavan’s place to go to Brunton Cross Road to another friend’s place. The plan was to pick up a friend’s car from there and travel in that to Mysore. Pavan was in a hurry. He wanted to be in the car as soon as possible so that he could catch up with our common friends somewhere on the road to Mysore. The auto we had taken was one of those old, sputtering and whiny ones. It was going too slow to suit Pavan. So we got down opposite Shopper’s Stop on Bannerghatta Road and took another auto. The auto driver of the initial auto we had taken saw us take another auto and was of course not happy. He started cursing us. We were of course in too much of a hurry to pay much heed to his angry words.

The second auto was new, fast, relatively quiet and smooth. Since we were three people in the auto with two being considerably overweight there was not much space for us to sit comfortably. Therefore, Pavan asked me to keep his bag behind us. His bag contained my Macbook Pro laptop apart from his wallet, cell phone, money, clothes and some documents. I was carrying my camera bag; a constant companion while Anand was carrying his own bag. The ride was uneventful. We braved the horrendous Bangalore traffic and reached our friend’s place on Brunton Cross road. We got off the auto and I took out my wallet and started taking out money to pay the fare. In the meantime, Pavan and Anand started asking the auto driver for directions to go to Mysore Road from where we were. The auto driver seemed helpful. I paid him. We then climbed to the second floor flat of our friend to pick up the car keys. We drank some water, checked out the flat, locked it and then climbed down to the garage. We got into the car. I got into back seat and Anand, who would be driving, gave me his bag to keep it in the back. Pavan asked me to keep his bag too in the back.

“What bag?” I asked him.

“My bag re. Don’t you have it?”

“No, I thought you were carrying it.”

Pavan turned to me with a shocked face and cursed in a loud voice.

“Shit! It is in the auto man.”

Our lives were not the same after that.

“Ok, the auto would not have gone far so let’s go looking for him,” said Pavan.

“Alright, we might have also forgotten it in the flat upstairs so let me go up and check and you two go look for the auto on the road.” I suggested.

Anand and Pavan left in the car while I went upstairs to look for the bag with a thin and already fading hope.

There was no bag in the house. I went back downstairs and waited for my friends to come back. The laptop was a recent acquisition and as such I should not have had much attachment to it but even though I hated to admit it to myself I had been bowled over by Apple’s sexy design. It was also bought from money that I had saved by forgoing parties and healthy food! And that made the loss acute.

Anand and Pavan returned soon after and one look at their faces told me the full story. No auto. No bag. We decided to search again on the road, as the auto shouldn’t have gone all that far. So I got into the car and we set off again. We looked at every auto along the way hoping against hope to find the auto we had taken. As we searched I asked Pavan to use my phone and call his mobile that was in the bag. There was a chance that the auto driver might hear the phone and answer it. Pavan’s phone kept ringing and ringing for about 5 minutes before we got the dreaded message. His phone was switched off!

Pavan apparently also had an unknown amount of dollars in the same pocket where his phone was present. So I instantly began to theorize that once the auto driver heard the phone ringing in the bag and opened it he must have found the dollars and then the laptop and decided to keep them.

Unfortunately, honesty is in such short supply in contemporary India that whatever little hope we had entertained of the auto driver answering our call flew right out of the window once the phone was switched off.

Still, we searched for the auto all along M.G. Road, Brigade Road and Ashok Nagar but to no avail. We went back to our friend’s place to ask the caretaker of the building if in case the auto driver had returned. The answer was negative.

With a heavy heart we made our way to the Ashok Nagar police station. There we talked to a young SI Mohan. Mohan listened to our sorry tale and asked some questions.

“Do you have the auto no.?”
“No sir.”
“Do you have the police serial number or DL number of the auto driver?
“No sir.”
“Do you at least have the name and address of the auto driver?”
“Not exactly sir but we remember reading the license display board of the driver and remember his name and the locality he lives in.”

“(Smiles wryly) What is this sir? Without the auto number or police serial number there is no way to trace the auto. You can register a complaint but to be frank I suggest you stop hoping. 99% of the auto drivers in Bangalore are corrupt. It is next to impossible that you will find the bag now. For your satisfaction I’ll ask the constable to send out a wireless message just in case the auto driver has returned the bag at a police station.”

“You know you should change your T-shirt,” said the SI pointing at Pavan’s T-shirt, which mocked the iPOD frenzy with a drawing of a toilet and iPooed printed above it. “These things will happen to you if you wear such sarcastic T-shirts.”

We thanked the SI for his reality check, for stating the obvious and went and registered our complaint. The constable who registered our complaint was properly shocked upon hearing that we had forgotten our bag in an auto but he also repeated whatever the SI had said and asked us in future to note down the police serial number of any auto we got into or at least take a photo with a cell phone of the license display board. All good advice but which came a little late in the day to help us. A case of locking the stable after the horses had bolted?

With our hopes slipping by the minute we decided to follow the advice given by a traffic inspector we met in front of Garuda Mall before coming to the station to register our complaint. Apparently, there was a database of all Bangalore auto drivers at the DCP (traffic) East office, Shivaji Nagar Bus Stop. The inspector had suggested that we try our luck there with the limited information we remembered of the auto driver.

So we made our way across town to the DCP office. But by the time we battled through the traffic and made our way there it was 6 pm, past closing time. The person who managed the database was long gone. Another person offered to help and with his assistance we managed to narrow our search and get a few addresses based on the auto driver’s name and locality. We were asked to return the next day to seek formal permission from the DCP to resume our search for a needle in a haystack.

I had been hopeful until I saw the sheer size of the auto driver database. There were apparently one-lakh auto drivers in Bangalore. Finding just one in that sheer size based on our limited information seemed a Herculean task, an almost impossible exercise in sheer futility. The faces of my friends also bore the same signs of despair as if they were thinking along the same lines.

In between these lines
you can read all the meanings you want
because you have peeled off the paint
from our world of possibilities.

—–

All those evenings,
when the winter sun slowly sank
into your eyes, I waited for
your fingers to curl around mine.

—–

Dusk seeps into your eyes like
ink into paper and in that
gathering gloom I search for our former glory.

—–

As the rain fell between us
you picked up a pebble
and polished it with your silence.

—–

Turn the page over and look behind,
you will find stick figures holding hands,
imitation human beings, imitation love.

—–

The sudden attacks of nostalgia are the worst,
with transition comes a terrible clarity.
All that we wanted, all that we turned to dust.

—–

Once there was a dream that
took birth in the space between
two heartbeats. It now lies
on a stretcher covered by a white shroud.

They came armed with bulldozers and bulletins
onto our verdant fields and into our modest homes.
The government wanted to build a big dam,
arrest the mighty river and submerge our sunshine
beneath placid dark green water.
We protested, tore our hair and hearts
but the babus did not listen.
Progress is not pollution they advised.

The sounds of industry echoed between the twin hills.
The wall grew, inch by inch, a barrier for Bhagirathi.
Our fields, our homes swallowed by the rising waters.
Our tears traveled down the hills to pool on the plains.

Lives uprooted we moved to the hot and dusty plains,
(proud hill folk) we left the sickle and took up the hammer.
Never bound by the horizon now our imagination is
limited by the claustrophobic closeness of this crowded slum.

Up in the hills our blood will stop flowing soon. The Gods will
not be pleased by this arrogance. Their downstream daughter
is being widowed. One day soon the Lord of Kailas will descend and dance
destruction with Dharti mata and thus will man’s folly be finished.

(To know more about what is happening to the great Ganga in the mountains of Uttarakhand do read this.)

Five years is a long time. The city has changed so much. In fact, it would only be a slight exaggeration on my part to say that Hyderabad has changed more in the past five years than it ever did in the first twenty-three years of my life that I spent growing up here. That fuzzy feeling of familiarity it had as the place I always called home has vanished with all the old buildings that were like loyal friends to me.

Perhaps it is because of the glitzy malls that have sprung up like a litter of rabbits seemingly out of nowhere? Perhaps it is because of all the new money that has transformed Hyderabad from a sleepy, laid back provincial capital into a pulsing cosmopolitan melting pot? Or perhaps it is because of the insanely dense traffic that has turned driving into a most unwelcome chore? Strangely (on second thought ’surprisingly’ might be a better word) I don’t think it is because of the above reasons. Instead, I think it is because of a new found hurry everyone seems to be in. That typically Hyderabadi unhurriedness has been replaced by a rude rush to get somewhere. And that has made this place, these roads, this city seem unfamiliar. Now, the city seems like a friend I’m meeting for the first time after leaving school a decade back. There are parts that are comforting in their familiarity but for the most part things have changed. So there is this awkwardness. The awkwardness of a long absence. There is distance too. A distance born out of that very same awkwardness.

In the first month, after I came back, I roamed around some places that I used to frequent in the hopes of finding that old familiarity again. That long stretch of twisting and turning road between Taj Banjara and Nagarjuna Circle over which I raced on empty nights against the adrenaline churning through my veins. That beautifully scenic but lonely road that starts after Tolichowki and continues till the second gate of HCU.  That upstart addition to the spine of Hussain Sagar, which dared to call herself a Necklace. That hole in the wall bar beyond Bahar restaurant where you get the best Chicken 81 in the world. Finally, HCU campus itself, which was so wonderfully wild, more jungle and shrub than university. Beyond subtle traces of the old they all seemed to have turned into pale shadows of their former dusky glory. Perhaps their souls are spent under the weight of all the hurry that seems to have invaded Hyderabad. Why the sudden rush? Or is everyone actually running away from something? The old genteel culture, the nawabi laziness, the slow passing of the day over multiple cups of Irani chai; all replaced now by the gloomy glamor of globalization.

I know change is inevitable. In this world nothing stays the same for long. Heartbreaks get transformed by nostalgia into experience. Experience gently develops into wisdom. So a city is no different. It is only a sentimental fool who looks at the past through blinkered glasses colored by false nostalgia. The heart yearns for the familiar but the mind knows better. This duality of reason and emotion drives me into this curious state of lethargy where I seem to be waiting for something to give. Five years can wreak havoc on expectations built across the divide of continents.

However, five years is also a weird length of time. It is not as significant as a decade nor is it as quick as a couple of years. It is somewhat like that indeterminate time between dusk and night when familiar things take on a melancholic aspect that cloaks their true character. So I may be jumping the gun as usual. After all, it has only been a couple of months. Time can heal the awkwardness. Renewed friendship can bridge the distance. Is it possible? Only the city can tell.

Their fingers touched briefly like two flowers brought together by the wind. The distance was bridged if only for a few seconds. She held her head against the window and slowly broke contact. He watched as she closed her eyes. He wanted to say many things but it was not the moment for dredging up the past. The lights from beyond shone through her hair like little diamonds. In a few hours the bus would stop and the present would catch up with them again. Words would slip out of their grasp and leave a heavy but familiar silence behind. A silence whose heat had already evaporated all the warmth between them. The roar of the engine mixed with the turmoil in his heart. He leaned against the head rest and closed his eyes.

—–

Beneath me the earth moves in waves. The ground beneath seems to dissolve into layers and each such layer flows inwards to a point in front of me. The wind rushes through the leaves far above me.

In the distance peacocks cry out for the clouds to stop and rain.

I pass through the trees and shrubs, unseen and silent. Around me things slither and slide away into the undergrowth.

The world is in motion.

—–

There are people whispering around me. Music wafts over their heads, forming an interesting counterpoint to their sonic uniformity. I wonder. I wonder.

Thoughts from the past flit through my head, shapeless drifters caught under the magnifying glass of nostalgia. A face there, a curve of a smile here, a random word there, a touch of warm skin on a cold night here-a mental slideshow of fleeting moments.

—–

The alcohol took complete control of him. He talked non-stop to fill the gaps between us. He forgot details but he remembered the roads. Every turn evoked a different memory. Under the uniform glow of neon he relived all the little adventures that made up his life.

We wanted food and he claimed to know all the spots that would still be open at 4 am. We rushed through deserted roads that increased our hunger and loneliness. The promise of early morning idlies and thoughts of the best bread-omlet in town vanished along with his hopeful words. All the roads led nowhere and everywhere at once into worlds we would never see or cross again.

—–

I came too close to the coldness around. A new hole was punched through soft flesh and everything bled out. The will to love and live. The random laughter that erases lines. No one can understand the loneliness of unfulfilled desire.