Shorts

It’s the first week in a new school. It’s a class with boys, alien creatures in her single-child life. She has never felt so alone, friendless. And for reasons she never fathoms fully, the teacher makes her a candidate in the class election. Pitting her against a boy, whose popularity is so obvious, it seems faintly ridiculous to have an election at all. Heck, she wants to vote for him herself, though she does not. The defeat is crushing. Twenty six votes to four. She wonders for the rest of her life who those three kids were.

They have never had a conversation. The most popular boy in class and her. The boys in the class adore him. The girls are secretly in love with him. But these are the years when boys think it’s below their dignity to talk to girls and the girls are too superior to make the first move. So they go about their lives, not talking, never acknowledging each other. But she is conscious of him in a way she never has been conscious of a boy ever since. Three years. And then he leaves school for another city. And google has a name to search for now, forever.

It is a school camp. In a forested area near the city. It’s her first night away from home and is exciting in only the way any ‘first’ can be. They find a group of older boys, college kids in the camp. With long hair and guitars. Curiosity drags them near. The older boys laugh at them and drive them away. They slink back to mosquitoes and bad food and the stern teacher. But not before the nice looking college kid casually says to her, ”You have the loveliest eyes I’ve seen.” It’s a line she holds on to, into an adulthood that does not find her that lovely again.

Six Sentences

The body is giving way rapidly. That kilo does not disappear with a couple of missed meals and stress. Half an hour on the treadmill is a marathon. Sleeveless needs careful consideration. The grey is definitely more than the black. Death is the next stop.

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Remember the feeling. The very first thought as you wake up. And the last one before your mind shuts down for the day. The reason you drag yourself to places you don’t want to go. The near-constant presence in your head through the day. Obsession.

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Do you care for a short walk on the wild side? A wee touch of bohemia? Some unexpected spontaneity? A little less restraint? A bit more cleavage or leg perhaps? Or a line of cocaine?

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You feel yourself getting harder. More impatient with random foolishness. Less inclined to give anyone the benefit of doubt. Uncomfortable with anything out of sync. Every moment needs to be counted and there is no time to sit and waffle. Even if the time deserves a little waffling.

100 words or so

I used to think Colleen Khan in the Pond’s talc ad was me in some conceptual sense. And that I was Imran Khan’s soul mate. That dark could never truly be beautiful. I used to believe I could never flunk an exam. That sex before and outside marriage wasn’t something good girls did. I knew for sure that communists were noble. That there was no way a woman could fall in love with someone younger than her or someone not at least 6 inches taller. I used to think 40 was very old. It’s funny what changes and what remains the same.

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You were an old tired man, the kindest man I have ever known. I was this bored young girl in a never-ending summer. My refuge was your tiny little room lined with old books and Hollywood magazines where I first encountered Hilton’s Shangri La and Carole Lombard and Clark Gable and Bette Davis and Spencer Tracy. And there was your exquisite classical music on the veena and those songs you sang to put my young cousins to sleep. You had so much to offer and I was always running away. A stupid girl too dimwitted to recognize a treasure in the backyard.

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I see them play in the weak sunshine – the white, blonde couple with their 3 white, blonde kids in a simple game of frisbee during a short break between ferries. The blue of the sky complements the blue of the ocean that complements the bright blue of the woman’s t-shirt. It is a perfect scene, the tall, fit, healthy bodies moving with an effortless grace, the bright yellow hair glossy and shining in the sunlight. For that short time, there is nothing discordant, nothing at variance with the universe. God’s in his heaven and all’s well with a perfect world.

Confessional

There is a room in my head

The door is whimsical and moody

The key keeps getting lost

And getting in is usually serendipity

I know it’s a parallel world, like Pullman’s

Things happen there that do not here

Beggars speak to me as do kings

Bored housewives, songwriters past their prime

They tell me their stories, show me their wounds

Laugh with me, tell me preposterous lies

I see through them in that room

I know them, like God knows his creatures

The colours are deeper there, vivid, blown up

The voices are clear, there is no noise to drown them out

I love those stories, love that I can hear them

Love that I can live in hope of one day telling them

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I am suddenly tired of words

Tired of hoping against hope

They will yield some import

Yield resonance with something deep

I scramble around for the right ones

Doubtful of ever finding them

Tired of forever playing games

Hide-and-seek, catch-me-if-you-can

I am slowly growing old playing

Despairing of ever forcing a win

It is a young man’s sport

A lifetime ahead to try, to fail, to try again

Yet they draw me back over and over,

Drug-like, over peaks and valleys

Challenging, deriding, playing coquette

And I start to play again.

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It comes crawling out of the mind’s woodwork

Hurting, stabbing, burrowing deep

Gnawing away at self-esteem, eating away steadily at ego

Burning to a cinder all that’s good in me.

While your coffee talk turns to dinner conversation

My small talk becomes the insignificance it truly is

And I prepare to go quietly into a lonesome night

When jealousy comes crawling.

Snippets

Morning Rush

The day had not started well. She missed the 6.40 bus. Ashu had thrown a tantrum and refused to take what she had prepared for his lunch. He did not want the poha, he wanted a sandwich. That was the problem with sending him to the English medium school with all the rich kids for classmates. Now the next bus would arrive 20 minutes later, which means she would be delayed reaching Sharda bhabhi’s house. She would get an earful. Not a good day for asking her for that 500 rupee advance. Maybe she should ask Neetu bhabhi in 1201. At least she would not refuse point blank. What if either would not give her the money? What would she do for Ashu’s exam fees this month? There was the bus. Hopefully she would get a place to sit. The only rest she would get for her feet for the next 6 hours.
It was the 3rd time this week. No matter how many times you told her, Geeta just came and went as she pleased. She lit the lamp and surveyed the mess her kitchen was. The dinner dishes in the sink and the ring of burnt milk around the gas stove. And there were the clothes to put out to dry and the credit card cheque to be dropped at the bank and the 9.00 am meeting to boot. What a day for Geeta to turn up late. Could she skip the cheque she wondered. But she knew it was cutting it close. That last month 500 rupee late payment fee had caused such a row with Dinesh. As if it made such a difference. But better not chance it again. There was the doorbell. Maybe she could still make the 9.00 am on time.

Creation

She isn’t a great cook, not even a very good one. But she loves the feeling of standing in her kitchen and acting like she was whipping up a feast for the gods. With the recipe book in front of her as her inspiration. The feel of the paneer under her knife… or the capsicum. The smell of roasting garlic and the sound of sizzling oil. The ladle is the magician’s wand and the wok is his hat. The suggestion of creation is irresistible. So what if the result is less than what her mother can manage with her eyes closed.

Fear

Today I met the boy I want to spend the rest of my life with. He has the most amazing smile I have ever seen. And a habit of looking at you and listening to you as if you were the only one in the whole wide world. I know I will dream of him all the nights of my life. I know he can break my heart. So I walked away. I don't think he even noticed.

Joys

The warmth of a cozy bed

A loved body nestled close

Stretching out time just a little bit

And a lazy interlude in a busy day

Green red and yellow beneath my knife

A heady leafy smell on my fingertips

The whirr of grinding spices

And the timeless act of everyday creation

The giddy tang of a sweaty body

Ache of muscles unused

Racing heartbeats pumped up blood

And body and mind pulsing to a perfect place

Words that strike a chord stop your breath

Hold you beyond time and place

Quiet evenings lost in alien worlds

And language more real than life itself

Silent conversations stolen moments

Gateways to buried thoughts

Introspective questions contemplation

And the joys of hushed solitude.

Shorts II

Stories

The gritty wet city was rich with a million stories. Clandestine love under the bright blue umbrella; the giggling schoolgirls postponing the inevitable homework in front of shop windows; the drunk outside the seedy country liquor bar wasting a perfectly good life; harried working women with plastic bags hurrying home to be superwomen; the earnest man with an umbrella getting wet in the rain trying to keep his indifferent girlfriend dry. The gleam of the street lights on the puddles on the roads had an outlandish beauty. Even the lines of traffic had a kind of symmetry to them. The poetry in the city night was there for all those capable of seeing. It broke her heart that he was not one of them.

Longing

She is stunning in a way that makes him breathless. And the beauty is tantalizingly within grasp. He can feel that instinctive primal need to possess, to make her his for the world to see. He knows he is deserving, worthy. What is he waiting for, he thinks, stretching his hand out to feel that rich silkiness. And draws back. Temptation is a superfluous stain in his middle class soul.

Desperation

Do you feel sometimes like the world was terribly alive and bursting with so many lives to be lived? And that you have only today to live them all? That the flame had to burn so brightly because it had so little time left to burn? That anything left untried was a life lived incomplete? That today nothing deserved a no even if it meant you had to pay for it with tomorrow? Is this feeling what growing old was all about?