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.

When oceans begin to part in the service of sympathy,
When laughter begins to fade in the arms of longing,
When enigmas begin to unfold in the depths of your eyes,

When caution begins to beg for courage,
When fortune begins to fight for freedom,
When emotions begin to embrace eternity,

When age begins to accept mortality,
When melancholy begins to merge with maturity,
When patience begins to crave for company,

When monsoons begin to migrate to the mountains,
When sunshine begins to sing sparkly songs,
When winter begins to vote for white,

Then and only then
will I fall in love with you!

By the side of a fallen branch I found my little heart,
covered by a coat of newly fallen leaves. So surprised
was I that for a second I forgot to breathe. But when he
started to labor in his patient beating I knew I was wrong
in holding my breath. So I let the summer air into my
lungs and offered him some succor.

I asked him, “My dear heart, what are you doing under
these leaves in these woods? Why are you not behind my
heaving ribs?”

He glowed as red as a virgin’s cheek. Was it the shame of
suffering or the anger of abandonment?

But he replied in the voice of a strutting Jagger, “I’ve divested
myself from you. You heartbreaker! Always, you punished me
for your inadequacies. Every time you stared at a woman, it
was I who suffered. It was I who burnt words onto your stubbornly
silent tongue. It was I who was filled with feelings most profound.
But you, with your asymmetrical ass and crooked jaw, you never
noticed the difference between rhythm and beat. You never ever
grasped the yawning gap between lust and love.”

I hung my head with shame upon hearing words so true and precise
but could not help asking, “But dear heart, how will I live without
you? Nay, how will I ever love without you?”

Upon hearing my words filled with a sadness most real my heart stopped for
a moment, formed a council with the leaves and pondered for a minute. They
twittered. They murmured. They even burped. And finally my heart squealed
with joy and offered this unique compromise, “ Fall in love within a month with
a woman who wears red and has CC cups; I’ll return to your chest
forever.”

So here I’m, dear ladies, in search of my very own woman in red with CC cup
size. If you know someone with such dimensions will you ask her to get in
touch with my hopeless heart and save me from a lifetime of heartless love?

Aqua - Turn Back Time

There is a certain desperate beauty in not sleeping. To lay awake the whole night and do all kinds of vague unimportant things. To stretch time that keeps pushing down on our eyes in the form of sleep. To overcome the sleepy tiredness that grips your body at around the time the clock inches past 3 am. It is an exercise in patience. It is also, for want of a better term, an art form. Something that can only be achieved after endless nights of determination and perseverance.

What is the purpose behind this you might ask? What great scientific truth lies behind this seemingly pointless pursuit? Is it for an apprenticeship in the Dark Arts? Is it to appease the goddess of night and secure great boons from her thin dark bosom? Is it to pledge your soul to the virile pleasures of a sinful midnight?

At the risk of causing great disappointment to my comrades dabbling in the occult it is for none of the above reasons. The answer is much simpler and perhaps, depending on your perspective, mundane.

It is to celebrate dawn.

A perfect blue slowly brushing the blanket of night off her beautiful brow and opening her eyes of azure. It is a unique joy to stand at an open window and peer in to a world so still that your heart aches to echo it. The quiet bliss of inhaling clear crisp air, rising off the awakening trees, to purge the darkness of the night from your lungs. To stand still and listen to the birds sing with the happiness of first light tickling their feathers.

In spite of the insistent hands of sleep clawing at your eye lids, in spite of the weary creak of your tired bones it is worth it.

It is worth it just to stand there as if you are the last person left on earth and welcome dawn into your open arms.

(On June 1st this blog turned two years old and adding the two years time I wrote on an older blog elsewhere that makes it a total four years of blogging. So instead of the usual anniversary post I decided to ask four of my favorite bloggers to contribute a guest post here. Happily, they all accepted immediately. So here is the second guest post. The rest will follow roughly in the chronological order in which I came to know them. Each guest blogger will directly respond to your comments to their respective posts.

Australopithecus has been blogging for about three years now and spreading cheer and laughter throughout that time. What I love about his writing is his sharp wit and the keen insights he offers behind what can often seem to be harmless humor. Sarcasm and irony mixed with humor are not easy bedfellows to manage but he makes it all look so easy.)

I get an email from Anil. He wanted me to have a guest post on his blog. More like a pest post I thought. Anyway since it was his blog and therefore his funeral, I asked “What flowers should I send? “

All right. Blogging and all is fine when it’s your own space to abuse. The moment someone else lends you his space to (ab)use…(are you regretting this already Anil?) that’s when you’ve got to think. What does one write about? Anyway since you idiots err… I meant you fine readers are stuck with me…I might as well dish out my usual drivel.

The presidential elections seem to have captured everyone’s imagination. Well at least the alleged imagination of all the chaps down at the mere 141542 X 10234 ****odd news channels that seem to occupy the airways. Before the major parties announced their nominees all these chaps were obsessing over it…like those kids that write the JEE. It’s not half as important. It seems an easy job. All one seems to have to do is to stay awake during the most boring occasions, apply a deft rubber stamp here and there as and when ‘Madamji’ instructs you to…Oh! Wait! Am I getting confused with the office of the Prime Minister? Anyway. One gives out awards to those whom you are told to give out awards…is it just me or does this job sound more like an office peon. The only difference is instead of awards peon hands out salary cheques instead of awards. In fact the peon doesn’t even have to be awake during important functions.

Oh and when there is competition and elections can mudslinging be far behind? Let us take a quick look at the hopefuls. (For the hopeless, please look up Wikipedia for condition of the Indian people)

One of the candidates that seem to have emerged is Ms Pratibha Qatil.