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

Invisible Ideas

My mind
reads like
the open canvas
of a New
Word Doc.
Barren blankness
spread out thinly.
I rummage through
the recesses
of my brain
and hack hard
at the keyboard
without a flow
of thought.
Stream of
Consciousness
is a dwindling
brook with
spurts of water.
Little winged
black birds
dip into this rivulet
and splash across
the parched screen
with a voracious
appetite for
vocabulary.
Strung by the
invisible chord
of syntax
and the unused
facets of grammar,
they cluster
in seeming
randomness,
forming syllables
in a sharp
unbold typeface.
The birds are
backspaced
while other
clusters are
pasted elsewhere,
flapping wings
to stay together
as a whole.
Forced to migrate
from a different
starting point,
they fly across
with meaning
on their backs.
But where
the heck
is the damn
punchline?



* For imaginary garden with real toads
** An attempt to parody one's own style

Hark! Hark!

The Lark at heaven’s gate sings
like a snow Goth minstrel.

Halo punked and wings pierced,
she’s zipped her fawn boots to the knee.
With lips that ope to concert lights,
she head bangeth to a little rhapsody.

A newly wired electronic harp
finds psychedelic love in angel tunes.
Soulful notes are amplified
through manna snorted melodies.

She screeches for thee, oh human one
To shuffle off that mortal coil
For heaven paints a picture bright,
but it ought not to be as bad.

* For: imaginary garden with real toads

** Inspired by a few lines from the 'Bard.'

A Wednesday

She stood there in the cold, dressed in a faux fur coat and leather overalls. Flicking her wrist, she raised the tobacco-stained ochre end to her trembling lips and filled her lungs with pretentious comfort. She stubbed the last ultra-mild under her stiletto and strutted towards his car.

This was not the first time.

He would park his black Sedan at the corner of Mt. Vernon street on Wednesday nights, and wait outside Delilah’s till she had wrapped up for the day. She’d hop in and they’d head to a pre-booked suite at a wayside inn.

Mr. Maloney was a reputed judge who had spent 30 years of his life to serve the law. He was a dedicated husband, a devoted father, and a man whose career panned out without a blotch on his reputation. Tina wasn’t his first escort, but there was something about her that kept drawing him back to Delilah’s. He never realized that his mild interest in this pretty young thing would grow into a form of wild obsession.

For three months they met once a week in discrete motels on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and this Wednesday was no different. They headed straight to the room and ensured that their murmurs of pleasure would be confined within the walls of these unfamiliar hotels.

He lay on his side as she pulled out her well-concealed revolver from behind her garter. She sat there in her corset holding the cold nozzle onto his temples. Closing her eyes, she clenched her index finger and splattered his brains out on the pillow that cushioned his head.

“That’s for Sammie’s sentence!” she breathed with relief knowing that it had taken her three years to bring her plans to fruition. Wiping the threads of blood from her face, she touched the gold band that was still clinging to her ring finger.

The praying mantis walked out without fear, as the sounds of the gun kept ricocheting through paper-thin walls.

* For 3WW

Our Inexplicable Love for Gadget-Squealers!

It’s amazing how you look back at your lot when you’ve looked away for a bit. We Indians are obsessed with little inventions that can scream, screech, shriek, belch, beep or cheep (like listening to your neighbor yell at his wife down the street wasn’t enough!).

Let’s put us in an analogy. We are to small squawking devices like the Japanese are to a camera trigger. What is it that makes our Indian gene so hyperactive when we see a little machine at arm’s distance?

Hitting the honk button for the 7th time in a row will not take you anywhere! If you stopped playing ‘snake’ or 'angry birds' (or whatever else you use to twiddle your thumbs) for a bit and dug your face out of your phone screen ever so often, you’d notice that the light is still Red. The odd chance that it is Green doesn't justify your need to go palm-happy on the steering wheel. You don't need a degree in math to count the five cars between you and the open road!

Ditto for calling the elevator shaft to your assigned floor. It’s a mechanism with a set trajectory that sometimes does have a mind of its own. But it's not a wish-box! (Stop looking for the I-live-at-the-Empire-State-building pity vote!) Contrary to your continued expectation, poking and jabbing at the little arrowed button will not make it appear out of nowhere. Tried and Tested.

And thanks for making me jump out of my skin with the 4 continuous ting-tongs outside my door. Yes yes, getting my daily dose of packetted milk at 6:30 in the morning ranks very high on my emergency list! (I agree, you’re concerned that I might develop osteoporosis in the future, but 4 doorbell alerts? At six-effin-thirty in the a.m.? Like seriously?)

Going by this list, I would’ve easily concluded that we’re a lot that's just always in a hurry. I won't discount that completely, but on careful speculation, I know it’s more than that. As much as we try to hide our li'l secret, we just love gizmo-induced sounds! Period. So much for cheap thrills and vulgar joys.

How else would you explain the need to download annoyingly loud sms tones to your already busy phone! Isn’t the cacophony of conversation doing its bit for you? Why would someone, in their right mind, wish to endure listening to a baby bawl or a cow moo endlessly if they didn’t secretly love being sadistic? It might seem like fun the first time around. But when you get a string of 30 sms with the same baby crooning for help, I’d want to thwack the little thing and put it to rest!

Grah!

The Voiceover

From washing gravity-challenged curls in cold water and stepping out in the blazing sun, to applying curds on the scalp and sitting under the air conditioner. From eating unbranded hand packed sickeningly sweet fluorescent candy, to gorging on 4 germ laden ice shaved golas on Juhu beach. I'd done it all!

This wasn't an I-will-test-my-immunity (or stupidity??) contest that I was trying to win, or a suicide diet to look pretty at death. Nor was I getting paid to conduct research on popular ways of contracting pneumonia.

In my defense this was, in all earnestness, an attempt to retain a 'husky' voice.

As retarded as it sounds, do you have any idea what it means to get complimented on a borrowed voice tone? Especially when 'normal' means that the inherited vocal chords vibrate only within the soprano range, and being 'excited' means emitting ultrasonic sounds that can only be appreciated by cats, dogs, and screeching bats?!

Thanks to common cold, phlegm, and the entire army of waterworks, there was hope. Let alone the fact that I now looked like Rudolf on Prozac, carried three packs of Kleenex in my bag, and couldn’t tell the difference between nutri-wheat-crackers and cardboard - I sounded perfect!

The cell-phone was ringing. The hottie-with-the-long-sideburns had his name flashing across the touchscreen. Dashing for another Kleenex I went through a quick round of the sniff-snort-cough-cough routine. Stomach tucked in, chest pushed out, I looked like someone in dire need of the Heimlich maneuver.
But the hottie couldn't see all of that now, could he?

The phone was answered in under five seconds.

'Huh lo-oh...' I teased. The femme fatale had just walked into the voice box.

I breathed out a wry smile, and continued to look like death. But it didn't matter.

Cause Jessica Rabbit had finally agreed to do a little dubbing for Ms. Swan.

Ouch!!

Her silence was so loud that I had to play my iPod to mute away those sharp notes of nothingness.