September's Fern

I was looking for that title
amidst a heap of old books
when suddenly those golden letters
glistened in the dark.
Switching on the light,
I felt the hard bound spine
ripping at the center
opening up to the folds
of an overused page.
Therein lay the frail veined carcass
of this perfect autumnal leaf.
Holding the framework of a fuller past,
it was fragmented with slashes of symmetry
with perforations as frail as
a spider's web.
Outlining the remnants, I drifted
back to the Fall of 2006
when I had moved to the United States
to pursue the passions of a geek.
September unraveled to a newcomer
like a bag of skittles.
With a promise of change,
of happiness, of love.
A motley of rust, yellow,
green, brown and red.
A crispy nip in relationships,
that would make me sing songs
and dance around trees.
I lifted that fossilized leaf
and held it against the sky
to sieve out stars.
Appreciating the current summer
thanks to that year's Fall.




*For An Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
** For 3WW
*** Photo Credit

Bandra in my Nose

This whole land was the sea
And we stood on the shore there every day
Sand sprayed
With grains of salt in our hair
And the scent of fish dragging behind our feet.
Bandra smelt like the residue of the Ocean
Pure and aquamarine. Not like your cheap Cinthol soaps.
Freshness meant plunging into the frothy waves of salinity
Licking the seasoning off our lips.
And then the land was reclaimed.
The sea vomited on us
Repulsed by the fact that we had pushed her back.
So we threw out more shops.
Shops with spices to mask the putrid smells.
Vendors sold fruits to allude sellers to freshness
The musk of incense sellers, attar manufacturers and bakers,
The stench of milk and mawa makers
All found their place on the street
To distract us from the scents of our childhood
But deep in the heart of the bazaar
As I twist and turn through its narrowing roads
I find myself gravitating to the center of the fish market
With dried mackerel, pomfret, shrimp and crab
Oozing odours that dance with my olfactory senses.
I just close my eyes and find myself
Flooded with memories of the forgotten sea.


*Photo Credit: Makrand Karkare
** Musings for The Collage Collective Studio, Bazaar Road, Bandra

New Old Cold!

I stood there
Anaesthetized and
Frozen to the sidewalk,
Engulfed by the echo
Of a whistling windchill
That found my skin
Through layers
And overalls.
Cold and fear
Amalgamated with
Pinched memories
That spiked
Like shards
Of uneven glass
Splintering through
Follicles of gooseflesh.
I pictured his kind face
Like a hologram
That stood out
And blended
Within the crowd.
Prickled skin
Softened to faith,
And sensation
Kicked in
As I held that
Accustomed cup
Of sublime heat.
I quickly learned
To jumpstart
My world
To the present.
To the love that
Brought me back
To a country
Long left behind.
When suddenly
Those relentlessly
Nipping reflections
Of minus degree'd
Hardships
Melted softly,
Like the season's
First snowflake
That assimilated
Into this
Untouched mug
Of caffeinated delight.







* For 3WW

** For Theme Thursday

*** Photo Credit: Design-Dautore

Shutterbug Souvenirs

Times Square

They stood there
Captured
In the middle of the crowd.

A moment of bliss
Seized
Amidst seconds of pretend poses.

The frenzy of travel
Stamped
Across their postcard-couple faces.

Episodes of uninhibited joy
Confined
Within the boundaries of the four by four.

With "I heart New York"
Marked
To sign off that adventure.

One that began eight years ago,
Sealed
With knickknacks of vows made in the Big Apple.

Trinkets of fond memorabilia, now
Boxed
In a carton of cardboard from the past.

Little pieces of glossy paper that stood
Unfazed
Next to the menagerie by the mantlepiece.

Bollywood Revisited

Remember the good ol' times? The times post the black-and-white era and the reels that graduated from Eastman Colour? The times beyond sepia prints, 70s winged-eyeliners, conical bras and bird-nest hairdo's?

I'm talking about the times that have made an impression on every 80's child in India. It's called surviving a time warp that's now referred to as B.C. (or Before Cable). An age when Bollywood wasn't just fancy coinage for a film industry - But a way of life.

A time when movies made their way to dinnertime discussions on a daily basis. The epic era of bad hindi films (while some might argue that the said era hasn't ended yet), with movies so bizarre, that their connection to reality is purely unintended!

Films that shamelessly followed a set formula. Where lanky heroes with long side-burns were the norm. When being beefed-up and owning a 6-pack meant you had a promising career as a villain or a visible part of his posse. (Someone please throw Uday Chopra into that decade, NOW!) In fact, despite eating right and hitting the gym everyday, you'd have been tossed around like a toothpick in the hands of Mr. Scrawny BigStar himself.

I'm talking about a decade when Mithun's pelvic thrust was the epitome of all things macho, and an Anil Kapoor roamed topless, revealing his welcro-like back without having to bother about sex appeal (what's that?).

When heroes danced in 2-inch heels, wore their hair to the nape, put on horrendously mercurial Aviator shades, and strut around in costumes that would give Lady Gaga some competition. 

When 'stylists' were still called 'tailors', when a 'wardrobe' mean't double doors that open up to a clown's closet, and when 'heroine's outfit' implied a quick-fix from the previous movie's curtains.

Biker gloves, blue pantyhose, red socks and yellow pump shoes.
That's the way, aha aha, I like it, aha aha.

Bibs are not meant to be worn there, Ms. Kapoor!

Note 1: Curtains can be replaced by anything colourful or unusual. Even birthday streamers will do, so long as she looks like she's emerging out of Draupadi's forgotten costume, or a 7-tiered wedding cake.

When all-natural and voluptuous was considered beautiful. When women like Amrita Singh played lead roles (up until the point where she started resembling the hero's younger brother.)

When hotness quotients were defined by Rekha in her avatar as a cool vengeful fauxhawk-wearing  momma with a face-lift... and a tummy-tuck (erm, but the darn crocodile only bit your cheek, lady!). 

When skinny little Sonu Walias could fall off the stage (or the villain's life, or the face of the earth) if Ms. Ample Hips obliged.

When villains were put on a different kind of pedestal.

Firstly, the bad guy = bad GUY. (If you were a woman and a bad one at that, you were either Bindu, Aruna Irani, Shashikala or a slut. No grey shades there.)

Coming back to our typical villains, they came in different sizes of obviousness, cause subtlety is for wimps!
They either had a physical handicap (movies with Prem Chopra, Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover, Danny Denzongpa and their ilk), were subject to some unexplained abnormality on the face (hairy moles, scar across eyelids) or were just downright ugly (Cause if you're ugly, you're going to be pissed with mankind, right?).

On the rare occasion  that life had chosen to be less mean to them, they'd sit on a skull throne all dressed up in alien clothing and a bad haircut (e.g. Mogambo, Shakaal, Dong) expecting the audience to cringe in horror!

Mogambo, khush hua!

Note 2: The villain's plans could involve hijacking a 2nd-hand cycle in a busy market area, but even such a seemingly irrelevant plan would've been strategized sitting in a helicopter that can land anywhere unannounced [air regulations not applicable].

Note 3: Our man, Scrawny BigStar, might have never set eyes on a dumbell in his life. However, when thrown into the fighting arena, he can take down 5 WWE wrestlers at one go. He's not called 'Jay' 'Veer' or 'Winner' for nothing! (Hint. Hint.)

Note 4: The hero might be a chauffeur or a vada-pav stall owner, but he (almost always) has the supreme wisdom to outwit the villain who has been planning to release weapons of mass destruction around the world since he was born!

I'm talking about that time frame in Bollywood when actors of today, like Emran Hashmi and Mallika Sherawat, would've been jobless for years! When everything around was symbolically suggestive.

Lip-locking and making-out was inferred when flowers (out of no where) would rub against each other. If flowers were out of stock, they'd replace the frame with oranges falling off the actress' body.

[Disclaimer: The video below is more than suggestive symbolism. 
Yikesss @ Jeetendra! You just killed 'sweet-limes' for me, forever!]

Flower on flower mean't happy times, but bee on flower mean't rape. Other symbols for 'rape' in that era include over-boiled milk (talk about corny imagery!), a goat staring at a butcher (again in the middle of no where), or an old creaking ceiling fan (erm, I'm still trying to figure that one out!) that continues to whirr till the end of what seems like eternity.

A time when animals seemed to have meatier roles in the film (pun unintended). Movies that brought 'ichaadaari nagins' into our collective consciousness such that you'd anxiously wait for every girl with light eyes to transform into a snake.

In fact snake movies broke lose a new genre of creativity to include plots that were as original as having Aruna Irani breast-feed a snake for reasons so bizarre, I'd rather you go and watch it for yourself!

If that's not all, we have Amitabh Bachchan calling a dolphin his mother; a pet pigeon who helps Anil Kapoor in robbery; and a pomeranian who behaves like the 11th incarnation of lord Krishna by saving Madhuri Dixit from marrying Mohnish Behl in Bollywood's longest marriage movie (Ok, so the last one was in the 1990's but they don't change overnight now, do they?)

With all their antics in place, these bad movies have made their mark in the most unexpected recesses of our minds. While some of us might pretend we hate that stuff, there's no denying how we automatically parrot dialogues and songs from movies long forgotten.

I just hope and pray that this disgusting Jeetendra-Meenakshi song was NOT a part of my earliest childhood memories!

Rickshaw Ride

When your motor skills are slightly challenged and you have trouble with hand-eye coordination, you should instantly understand that - Driving is not for you.

But people sometimes behave like I love being called an imbecile or something. "Come on, now! How hard can that be? Driving is the easiest thing on the planet."

That's as good as yelling at a dyslexic kid about the difference between bar and bra. (He's probably too young for both in any case!)

Besides, if you have an internal GPS as warped as Moses in the desert, there's absolutely no incentive in overcoming this handicap of being a wuss behind the wheel. With a stroke of luck, if you've figured how to change gears while you foxtrot on the accelerator and clutch, you've probably forgotten where you wanted to get to in the first place.

To add to the mix, if your direction sense sucks, the last person you want clarifications from is someone from Mumbai city. My people are cool and all, but if there's one thing that I just don't understand, it's the fact that when it comes to directions, they can NEVER get themselves to saying "I don't know."

In fact, I think when Christopher Columbus was asking people to guide him to India, it probably was that lone Mumbaikar on his boat who jumped to the occasion and grabbed the role of playing navigator. ("Let's go straight," I believe were his last words.)

But I don't blame that guy alone. Clearly he's been raised in a city where official signposts beam at you with the profound confidence of a broken compass. Imagine my horror when I spot a bottle-green signboard in Khar West that reads Go Straight for Mantralay with no distance indicators. That's as good as telling me, keep going straight and you'll reach Bangalore... well, eventually.

Let's see, so here I am with all the permutations and combinations of reaching WhereTheFuckAmI land.

I promise to meet this friend for rehearsals on a Wednesday afternoon. "It's the second bungalow on Chapel Road, Bandra West. 2:00 pm. Don't be late!" she warns, knowingly.

I hop into a rickshaw and mumble the necessary keywords to get me to my destination, and continue to multitask with a sandwich, the cellphone and a book in tow.

We maze through millions of cars, buses, 2-wheelers, 3-wheelers, and dodge over the little hindrances in our obstacle race including THE divider, a bicyclist (who are they anyway?) and a cow's oblivious tail.

Through this chaos, I sit there beaming, cause it's 1:45pm, and for the first time in a very long time, I'm going to be there, On Time. Phew!

We reach Hill Road and I'm mean't to direct the driver behind the Indian 3-seater from there.
"Bhaiyya Chapel Road likha hai." He looks like he's going to call my bluff, and presumes I'm not from the city. He's lived in Khar-Danda all his life apparently and is convinced that I've got the address all wrong.

He defies me into asking someone on the street.
"Chapel Road?" "Chap-pill Road" I scream from the other side of the street, when a soft-drink stall owner points straight ahead towards a forked path.

A couple rights, lefts, u-turns, lefts, straights and zig-zags around the corner, someone suggests that I'm not even in the right part of the city. "It's probably in Malad," a passerby assures, again pointing straight ahead, towards Mantralay. Grah!

I look at the rickshaw guy through the rear-view mirror and charade my way by saying:
"Arre bhaiya, wahaan par sab bungley hai. Address mein Bungla #2 likha hai"

He parks the rick on the side and asks me to show him the address with the air of a veteran detective. Something dawns on him, and he looks mightily pissed with me. Grumbling through the traffic he takes me via a by-lane and points at a dilapidated signboard with 'Chapel Road' in clear letters.

"Kya Madam. Kaayko shtyle maarta hai? Chappal Gali bolneka na, seedha seedha," he says, waving his slipper in his hand.

I wasn't quite sure if he was still in the mood for playing charades there.

And I didn't wait long enough to find out.





Photo Credit: CNN

A little dash of Amreeka

You know what it feels like to give that usual smile to your paani-puri waala down the road, right!? Of course you do! Didn't we like totally like accommodate like this-is-what-the-next-gen-should-know kinda jazz from Family Guy and South Park? Aren't we in the world of Simi selecting and simpering over pubescent celebrity men in true cougar town shows? Haven't we often felt like Central Park was just a couple blocks down our street?
So then you know what I'm talk about, right? NO?!?

See, I thought we were doing everything the American way - where it's perfectly normal for a bus driver to greet you with a chirpy 'good morning', and for you to wave back without ever stopping to wonder if he's going to hijack the bus to molest-station.

"That happened in the late nineties, early two thousands...!!" I tchah-tchah'ed to myself all along the way. India's changed a lot since. What with FB, Twitter and the whole gamut of worldwide people on the computer screen, we sure have adapted well now, haven't we?

And so I went to the same old paani-puri waala who I'd visit regularly on my yearly sojourns to Mumbai.

With a mouthful of spicy gol guppas, an almost runny nose, and a sentence punctuated with appropriately slurp-ish sounds, he seemed pleased to have found my appreciation for his culinary skills.

"Hellooo Maydumji. Kaise ho aap? Aajkal aap dikhte hi nahi ho" he managed to mutter through his permanent smile in one uninterrupted breath.

I exchanged the usual pleasantries and made small talk, until I touched upon a seemingly personal question.
"Waise, aapka naam kya hai?" I asked, wondering if his name would reveal a little about his roots.

The habitual smile dimmed behind his glorious moustache. He focused on cracking the epicenter of the next puri with absolute concentration, and coyly revealed "Prem." 

I almost choked on the gol guppa in my mouth, and the spicy paani felt like a shot of wasabi streaming down those nostrils.
"Prem Dayal" "Prem Dayal Shukla," was repeated in quick succession which, if said with a little more panache, would've passed off as a good local impersonation of the classic 007.

Beaming ear-to-ear his annoyingly white, symmetrically toothed smile had returned to his oily face. Putting two extra puris on my plate, he casually asked me the same question.

Oops! Spurted it out in a matter-of-fact manner. How often does one go to their favourite street chaat corner with an alias identity in mind? Okay, I said it! The local paani-puri waala knows my name.

So what? It's not like he can do much with it. It is the American way. It's cool to know people on a first name basis.

So what if I now have a creepy looking picture of a 'Shukla' requesting to befriend me on Facebook!

Ready for the Kiln

Your fingers.
Those long artistic feminine reins
With flesh, bone and supple skin
Met mine
Manly, unpretentious and calloused.

Your little palms
Were lost in mine
Finding comfort in the gaps.

Emotions cemented skin on skin
Contours and crevices well-fused.
We held our fate lines
In one firm squeeze
With the head and heart in place.

Giddied by your touch
My thick stubby hands
Transformed
Into dancing dervishes
That whirled and swooned,
Pivoting slowly
Around the wheel
Of your assertive palms.

Those small stern hands
Were indeed your own.
But in yours alone
Mine were clay.

A Bagful of Reminiscence

The brown satchel sat there, snugly tucked between her winter clothes and overcoats. She'd rummaged through this section of her wardrobe hoping to find something casual to sling along her left shoulder. 

The tan leather looked raisin-creased in an unaired closet with faded impressions from over use. She loosened the contents hastily, with the glee of a child waiting to discover the trinkets in his mum's forbidden drawer. 

Dried flowers. Lost perfume. Expired paracetamol tabs. 

Gooey chocolate. Gandhian coins. Sticky change in between. 

Deformed granola bars. Parched wet-wipes. Gunk.

Chipped sea shells. Two movie tickets. Cufflinks.

Duplicate keys. Pantyhose. An invitation card. Rust.

Sandy grime of time on things.

On photographs and filigree alike. 

She recklessly overturned the forgotten fragments on the cold floor. And then swept the remains into a biodegradable bin.

Realizing, that every once in a while even old memories can do with some recycling.

Second Chances

It didn't happen very often any more.
It had been 73 days since they'd been to the home by the country-side.

Unbrushed, unkempt, it seemed like one of those 8:00 mornings when she would walk straight to the patio, opening her eyes to lush verdant liveliness.

The roof alternated slats of solid mahogany with clear glass creating a piano-like shadow in front of her feet.
She stood there in her night shirt and soaked in the morning sun like a little child in the meadow. Dull gold rays highlighted her cheek bones, revealing hints of crusty mascara and patches of unremoved make-up from the evening before.

He squinted in her direction, rubbing traces of indulgent sleep from stubborn lids, and stared at her silhouette with no guilt.

She was prettier than he could remember.

He worked his way into the kitchen and came back with two cups of piping hot coffee - Hers, 2% milk fat and his, half-and-half. Accompanying them was a tray of her favourite dark brown biscuits with sugar crystals encrusted around every edge. He put them on the patio table and carried their cups to where she stood.

"I hope this isn't awkward..." he paused looking away towards the hills. She took two steps closer and curled her fingers around his arm.

They had married each other 9 years ago.
It had been 73 days since their divorce.

Muted Thoughts

We sat there quietly in the snow,
Under the same moon of the year.
And slouched together, back to back,
Staring at the woods from two sides.

Filling conversations with muted words
We dialogued over thoughts and things.
She said I said she said I said;
Without so much as opening our lips.

Who'd break the silence?
Who'd make the first move?
She knew I couldn't
I knew she wouldn't

There were silences before.
The Sound-less silence.
The Judgment-free silence.
The I-understand-you silence.
The You're-a-bitch-but-I-love-you silence.
But the jagged edges of the How-could-you silence
Kept echoing all around the space.

We couldn't pick up from where we'd left
In five revolutions around the sun.
So we sat there tongue-tied, back to back,
Glaring at the same dark sky.

I wanted to remind her
She wanted to remember
The amazing friendship we had once shared.
But we continued sitting there, back to back
So that neither of us was cold.

Leaving [D.C.] on a Jet Plane :(

Staccato voices over the microphone, whirring engine blades getting antsy for the next take off, sleepy passengers waiting to nod off in peace, and the writer reminiscing about the good times with the silly ones!