Pennies

You can have hundreds of rupees jingling inside you pockets
and the English would never have a clue.

For every pound they return to you a penny
bright, shiny, coppery new.
"A penny for the your thoughts,"
you tell them,
but they never have any to spew.
So you collect the precious pennies,
fill them in jars and pouches and socks
hoping to get change for a quid or two,
but them fellows never take those pennies back
and they're just as useless to me
as to you:

sitting on the other side of this ocean
separated by spices and rani pink hues

If someone had told me how warm and fuzzy fresh laundry feels out of a dryer,
I would've tried my hand at it sooner
than when I did
just today

.

On why I see so many déjà vus

Sometimes I make up worst-case-scenarios
of unlikely situations:
unlikely moments that can,
nevertheless, seem quite grave
while I imagine how I'd respond in them
mustering up the courage to be brave.

I've seen fires and medical emergencies,
traffic, wars and tsunamis
sweeping over my beloved Bombay in waves;
I've been through trauma wards
and psychological examinations,
kidnappings
and LSD raves.

The truth is that life isn't as exciting,
as petrifying
or even as grey
as the bleak drought I've painted in my head
and the reason why I've lived it by proxy
is so that when the time comes to face it,
I'll know what to do then
or at least have a witty thing to say.

Lovely

We who suffer from disappointment
prepetrate it upon the rest of the world.

It feels like a cheap china vase
that comes wrapped in a a tacky box:
the thoughtful gift of an overbearing relative.
A vase,
a dust collector that no one wants
but one that gets passed on nevertheless
to the aunt's cousin's in-laws
at the next obscure wedding in a small mofussil suburb
of a large sprawling metropolis.
A metropolis
or a city
spread over damp hills and lakes,
squalid drains and super highways of human etiquette
social compliance,
and other ways to show you care.

But you don't.

And it doesn't matter,
'coz we'll pass the vase from table to gifting table
pretending it doesn't exist
and hope it ends up in the hands of someone
that thinks it's pretty enough to put up on the mantle shelf,
dust it every day,
arrange a few plastic flowers in it
and call it lovely.