Venus

Twilight tortures the twinkling star
Venus - goddess of goodness-what-you-are
If, even you,
in all your might,
can't change this heart or share some light

Forgive me if I smother you
but I need you like my mother's jasmine shrubs need the earth to spread their love

The Curse of the Locksmith (or the Secretkeeper)

the locksmith knows the working of locks -
their mysterious levers,
clutches and chinks;

he knows how to pry forth
from their machinations
treasures, fortunes and dark desires

can unravel their enigmas,

lay bare their twists and tricks

in the blink
of a broken promise

.but he doesn't.

-this secret keeper
is no oath breaker
- is no one to steal pleasure
from the prepetrator

Semi-colons

twelve leagues under a sea of darkness
sinking with the weight of summer,
the ghost of last year's unforgiving slumber
filled up my drowsy thoughtfloat bubble
with a series of
silly lemondrops

"Semi-colons!" I cried
much to my dismay -
but they hadn't a care
for my fullstops

they only shoveled and pummeled
every one of my memories
that would've rather just stayed away
from this fray,
from being dragged out into the open
into this melancholic display

I live precipitously from moment to moment,

sifting sand and dirt from
grimy thoughts that stray into my mind,
folding in wonton déjà vus
and prophetic lines
that bear no resemblance to a place or space
or any state to which I'm inclined
except in a wistful haze
of wanting-ness

wanting and not knowing-ness
of things locked in entangled mazes

In fortune's blissful whiff I found you
sitting by me
by the sea
on a seat made of heathen rope
and soft reverie...

trying to remember what it was i wanted to be

Mar / Sea

a veces
yo olvido como nombrar algunas cosas –
camas, tazas, sillones -
como se llama una idea en esa lengua
o en esta –

anoche
dentro de unos de estos peleas,
me subí a la espuma-
a las olas que no olvidan nada
y no recuerdan todo
pero ya lo saben la lógica de vivir,
conocimientos de ser
y la verdad sobre el lugar
donde amor se va
cuando no puede soportar su peso propio

yo las pregunté muchísimas cosas
pero ellas no me contestaron nada

solo adelantaron, me tocaron y volvieron a su rutina

de pronto
me di cuenta
que en lugar de cada ola atrasada
una mar me haya envuelto

(*)

At times
I forget the names of things –
beds, cups and armchairs –
how to call things in this tongue
or in that


last night
in the midst of one of these fights,
I went down to the surf –
to the waves that don’t forget everything
and don’t remember everything either,
but already know
the logic of living,
the knowledge of being
and the truth about where love goes
when it can no longer bear its own weight

I asked them many things
but they didn’t reply

they just rose up, and, touching me,
returned to their routine

and all at once
i realised
that in place of every wave that had abandoned me
a sea had risen to envelope me

Cornered

(*) from what corner of my mind
do I gather the memories of your voice,
your touch
when we have never met;
when you don't even know
how I feel
without you

No tengo las palabras

(*) I don't have the words
to tell you who I am
and who I am not

I only have these pages
to show you a window, an image
of a girl reflected in these mirrors

Si yo te dije

si yo te dije que haya una tormenta dentro de mi -
una mar furiosa por la que yo no puedo navegar sola
me acompañarías hacía la luna -
hasta llegaremos en un campo iluminado,
pinchado por memorias estrellitas
a un cama donde podemos soñar en paz -
el paz de los angelitos,
en el silencio de unos millones deseos?


(*) if I told you that there is a storm inside me -
a livid ocean that I cannot navigate alone,
would you accompany me to the moon
until we arrive in a twinkling field
pierced by starry memories,
and lie in a bed where we can dream in peace,
in the angelic peace
and the silence of a million little desires?

Upon learning a new language

Upon learning a new language,
one discovers - among other things
that pictures can be squares,
that sense is not always sensible
and that mothers - like the Universe - give light to new borns.

Now ensconced in the ruffling of meanings,
I realise that,
as if identity wasn't already a tricky creature pinned to a picture and a piece of card,
it becomes a looming idea
fraught with the travails of being,
becoming
and, having been,
of something thought -
fidgeting somewhere between flighty fancy
and the permanence of stone.

One discovers then,
that there are many ways of being,
many ways of seeing
and in a moment - in a word -
the act of collecting eternity and all its allusions
into a single string of sounds
played out in a melody
of beautiful syllables throbbing, alive and unbound.

(*work in progress)

Monday morning's a nice shade of blue

was it Monday after all
roads afresh
sparkling gold
alert, engaged
green-lit sentry poles
to gaurd my way
on a calm new day
when my hapless heart
was already astray?

was it Monday -
- sprightly, gay -
or was it just you

- or maybe me-

after all?

Even...

Even mariposas must wait
for autumn to turn to spring
for flowers to bloom


(*) mariposa = butterfly

¿Quien eres?

¿Quien eres?

¿imagen del que esta anhelado
O testigo de los trocitos de mi imaginación?


y porque no me vuelves
para volar un poco,
flotar un poco
en la sombra del verano
feliz, de las estrellas?


(*)
Who are you?

an image of one who is awaited
or a witness to the fragments of my imagination?

why not return to me
to fly a little
to float a while
in the shade of a happy, starry summer?

El futuro es espacio - II

(*) I wish I could understand my future
but the future is space-
space the colour of my soul
soul of a dream
where nothing exists
not even time
only a moment complete

up & home & away

Volando en los cielos

(*) Flying with my thoughts
Verily, is it verity
that birds are the souls
of my curiosity?

Coaster Drawings

For you-know-you-are

Summer Days

Contemplating tomorrow

If tomorrow my eyes would close
and forever be laced with slumber
my only regret, just one at all -
would be that only I had seen this lonesome sun
set into burning orange and fiery amber

Back to the Big Tree

I'm an amateur of the sea...

Yo me conozco

Soñar con las estrellas

Ahmedabad Postcard

Diarios despues de cervezas

(*) After a couple of beers
I like playing around with my thoughts.
They're a lot more lively
and I'm in a good mood
when we can understand each other.

Epiphany II

I will make it my happy song again:
the one you so unfairly ursurped and interrupted
whilst I was being myself around you.
I will sing to it again,
rise up above the alpine air
and smell the fresh snowy day
when I knew it was my tune
and that my time and place had come:
when I had stood outside of myself
in perfect exstasis
and seen that destiny had come a-knocking,
that yesterday was only a tangle of memories
waiting to be undone.

This is already my song today
I have nothing more to win now
and nothing left to lose.

La poesía

"Y yo, mínimo ser,
ebrio del gran vacío
constelado,
a semejanza, a imagen
del misterio,
me sentí parte pura
del abismo,
rodé con las estrellas,
mi corazón se desató en el viento"

- de La poesía, Memorial de Isla Negra
por Pablo Neruda


(*) The following translation is by Alastair Reid

"And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
and my heart broke loose on the wind."

Celebrity Crush

In coming face to face with a childhood god
I suddenly remember
that first tingling of skin
as goosebumps parched the throat
and I became aware of
a heart-skip-beat-thump
at the sight of a long haired t.v. man
who played music to my ears
in between glimpses of delight to my eyes.

Dance shimmy shake away I say!

Meses Pasados

En serio,
estos días han sido tan tercos conmigo
¿Qué te puedo decir?
Sus horas me odian
Y yo no tengo paciencia con pierdas

(*) I doubt if the translation works, but here goes anyway

seriously,
these days have been so stubborn with me!
and after all, what can I say?
their hours loathe me
and I don't have any patience with stones

Home, Rajpur Road

What I love most about your home
is not the half a dozen or so dogs
scrambling for a hug or a pet at the sniff of my coat,
it is not the walk down from the road
past the quaintly composed garden
with its archways and cobble-stone-sounding paths,
it is not the sunny chaises basking in your balcony overlooking a bubbling ravine,
not even the wooden steps up to meet you both
or the gravel in the driveway with its octave cowbells,

it is the simple silence that surrounds us,
our glasses tinkling, punctuate our stories
as I imagine a faint hum rising from the Tibetan home beyond.

Time Lost

How easily wrapped around the metal straps of my favourite watch
were the memories I'd divined of my grandfather
in the years since his passing
which from every corner of my mind,
I had gleaned and dusted
and then attached
onto its bright orange dial.
How resolute they all looked there, side by side
the green digits neatly arranged around the circle of their hands!
Shining back at me through every one of my trials and tribulations,
they had joined together to bring me luck
and to soothe my pain
everytime the seconds hand
glided over effortlessly collecting moments like faery dust
for the sprinkling of a little girl not ten years old.

How easily lost that watch is
taking with it,
for all the time in the world,
the time I'll never have again.

Me, myself and i

I'm a selfish sort of person
I love what I like
and I like what I know best.

Which is not to say that I'm hard to please
I'm just not that easily distracted, that's all.

see
a thoughtfeel painted
in verse
squiggled in and around
mindlines
windmimes
sandrhymes

Immersive Experience

blink
think
sink

And how many languages would you need after all

...if you haven't said everything that you wanted to say
for fear of being misunderstood?

With

I passed by the same places we drove past together,
The same song rising and welling up inside me,
The same tune that greeted me on the doorstep
of a lonely hart island hotel,
The same words that lifted me up
above the alpine air,
Now overwritten by memories gone sour -

an echo of something
that used to be divine:
a song that is ruined
for no reason or rhyme.

I like purple nailpolish on my toes

No Ser

No soy poeta.
Soy solo una viajera paseando
por sus pensamientos
en los barcos de estas paginas.



* for the "linguistically challenged" :)

Not To Be
"I am not a poet.
I'm only a traveller
passing by her thoughts
in boats made of these pages"

Moonflowers

Se Souvenir des Belles Choses

Feliz Año a Ti

Espero el fin de un año
como un cesto de doce uvas amargos
que no puedo tragar.

Quizas el proxímo
va a darme un poco del zumo
con todo su sabor.

Smoke

Thirteen times the dreams came to me like ghosts
Riding the waves of each episode,
Leaving ghoulish trails inside my head
until only sleep could relieve me of their stench,
of their ugly melancholic clouds:
clouds like bracken smoke,
like the heathen, putrid, gnawing smoke
That refuses to be shaken out of your coat
the day after you've returned from your night of drink
a night on some or the other cataclysmic brink.

That sinking feeling

As if it weren't already so damn tough
to keep these things together
in one place behind a straight face,
this space is losing trace
of any semblance of who I used to be
or the thoughts I used to see.

Poet-ing and Picture-ing

I use words to describe thoughts and things
instead of thoughts and things to describe the words I feel

If I could play with pictures to produce picturesque prose
I suppose I would make a little more sense

Silver Leaf Curtains 2

These silver leaf curtains
they hold a candle to my thoughts
fluttering in the rainy breeze
incandescent through the grainy trees...

Silver leaf curtains

Rendering...

That Fresh Feeling

" Birds singing a song
Old paint is peeling
This is that fresh
That fresh feeling

Words can't be that strong
My heart is reeling
This is that fresh
That fresh feeling" *

I been soooo distracted the last few days, but I woke up this morning and everything was clean and fresh and new and happy :)

Here's right back atcha Mr. E!!
















* Check out the full lyrics to this song by the Eels here

The Deam of the Rain Swept

The stupor of the wind swept
rain swept
eyes laced with lethargic gold
and silver drops in shining lights
suspended
in verdant window frames
bursting at the seams
with dreams
and a day's worth of cinematic haze:
the dregs of an imagination
put out to graze.

The day the sun stands still

The solstice orbs are hidden in the clouds somewhere.

This summer day looks still and rainy -
insubordinately grey -
as if to protest our forgetfulness:
trivial memories
that seem to have let slip past
the magnanimity of Osiris' magnificent sun
as it rises above the pyramids at dawn
flooding the Nile's banks,
drawing shadow snakes on antipodal stepping stones
and bringing fire to Midsummer lawns.


At Uttarayan we flew kites and ate jaggery above the streets of the city;

Today the sun is netherworld bound,
the nights will - instead - move on.


(*) to know more about the summer solstice follow this orbit

24 at 22

Four and twenty times today
I've counted seconds in the day
Four and twenty times these things, the thoughts
(the damned juggernauts)
stood up and then just dribbled off.

Two and twenty times I said
I'd wait for the tide to change,
but sixteen hours and twelve minutes later
everything that had come in through that window pane
had sighed and swung and left.

Dreaming of Dehra Dun

Back to simpler things

The Kiss

I wrote this on the steps of the Schloss Belvedere in Vienna after seeing The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. It's one of my favourite paintings.

...I think I just sat in front of the painting for about 30 mins in complete awe of it

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt
1907-08
Oil and gold on canvas 180 x 180 cm
Österreichische Galerie, Vienna

Conflict

A drawing of someone I saw on the Paris metro...this Arab looking man, carrying notebooks titled "Identity" wearing a map of the world on his red shirt and another file stickered "I Love Palestine"...the sight struck me

It shouldn't be odd, but it was. When you're assaulted by all the irony at one go, its difficult what to make of it right away

.

.

re-connaître: to know again

Sometimes it's important to go back to places to see either how much they've changed or how much you've changed since you were there last.


Panjim is one of those places that seems to stay the same no matter what happens to the rest of the world. Here's two pictures of one of my favourite spots in the world. I love the purple and chrome yellow of this building. It just looks so warm and sunny and well...nice


The first one is from Feb 2006 and the second just last week

Parting and all that...

I've heard it said that you never know how much you're loved until you're with the people who gather to say goodbye at your farewell...

Caught

If I could code these verses in my head
they'd speak of love
sing of hate
and regret the things I wish I hadn't done.
but the words have broken, crumbled
under the weight of a million thoughts ;
Tomorrow will be another day
in between these moments caught.

4 Fridays Ago

Cinnamon smells, my girls!

Cinnamon smells and catwalk twirls,
talk of dreams and dusty, foolish spells
We sit in earnest
conversing with our silly, honest selves
As if time hasn't passed us by,
As if these pitchers daren't leave us dry

I wandered lonely...

Floating people
living temporary lives,
in an imaginary sandcastle
the highest in the sky;
you wonder aloud
at the fate of the clouds
that wander in over the dunes
(the vales and the hills)
vapourise and vanish
in the dust of the crowds
gathering at shopping mall cash tills.

If this is a life
and these are the days
then I'm lost like rain in the sandtraps;
Tomorrow's arrived
and I aint gonna be here
so let's all wear our sun shades
and smile for it.


*I'm goin home for good!

Linger

I stay longer in the minutes of each day
than time will forgive me for.

These thoughts have lost their ways
in the indiscriminate brambles of my mind
and I linger here undecided.

Slowly


the springs unwind

après le soir/la soireé

Even at this hour
the world is incomplete

I've seen today,
and tomorrow:
neither resemble what could have been
or the hours you claim you've seen.

the pursuit of happiness

happiness is about the simple things

like silence,
or a conversation
a hug,
or a glass of magic

not that you would understand:

you think all of life should be compressed to your shades of black and white
on your terms
in your world.

blank sheets of paper scare me too
like blank soundscapes scare you sometimes
but
even crayons make their squeaky marks on empty moments.
ever try fulfilling them in between the lines before?

Mended Meanings

(and so we've defined our spaces:
you to yours,
each to each)

These moments are meaningless
for all the vacuums they deign to conceal:

you have your indecisions,
~ me ~
my indistinctions,

and between us,
this promise has broken the seal.

Contemplating

I left my watercolours in another land,
my senses when I lost the plans
today has come and gone again,
tomorrow might be a darker pane
in the window of all that's been
and all that could have kept me sane.

Long lost memories

"Viva forever, I'll be waiting
Everlasting, like the sun
Live forever,
For the moment
Ever searching for the one

Hasta Mañana."


* Old songs from younger days

Neruda on the mind

"El futuro es espacio,
espacio color de tierra,
color de nube,
color de agua, de aire,
espacio negro para muchos sueños
espacio blanco para toda la nieva,
para toda la musica."

- de La Memorial de Isla Negra, Pablo Neruda



*for a translation, you're gonna have to ask :)

Away

Always a better place to go away to:

Like home instead of here

Like the shelter of your arms
instead of the edge of this sofa

Like the crest of these waves
or the vibe of those beats

Like the slow tandem dance of strangers
and the cosy, knowing silences of friendly songsters.

Last Lines

Walk away now
before the call of the muezzin
leads you away
into the nostalgic depths
of time and tide:

floating
in the stagnant shade
of a sun-dappled stage:
home to the squirrels by day
and lost dreams by night.

Walk away now
before the brickwork crumbles
and lays bare the futility
of plan and method -

rejoicing instead,
in the abandon of the winds
that carry the call to prayer
unto distant lands
over the crests of these distant dreams.

Walk away now
from the malarial haze
and water gone stale;

Walk away now
from these insular clouds
of comfortable lazy days:
the luxury of irresponsible greys .



* These words were written in the NID Amphitheatre on the 15th of Sep, 2006.

The place always held a special significance for me: the shade of those trees was often my secret place when I needed to unravel. I've spent many winter afternoons sitting there after lunch with a piece of Bournville melting in my mouth but the two times I remember it most are on my first day in NID in 1st year and the first time I ever visited the campus in 2001 long before I joined it. It just became my own little sacred space after that.

The call to prayer however, was and still is a part of my daily routine: something that floats in and out of my subconscious when I least expect it to. The day I was leaving NID as a student soon after my final jury, I sat there for about half an hour when these thoughts came to me in the midst of one of these summons.

It was time then to move on to some else.

Here and now, I think - I hope - was that something.

Peek-a-Blue

The dome over the Persia Court at Ibn Batuttah Mall, Dubai.

(This mall is really somethin else!)

Republic Day Blues

Arial Underbellies

In every other place I come to,
I sit below the flight path of departing planes,
guessing games,
predicting names,

getting carried away

by the fantastical make-believe of
their contents' destinations,
travellers' tales
and the thought
of transit spaces miles above the earth.

And then I imagine myself inside these arial underbellies
wondering that
(beaming out of an airplane window)
the world always looks like a more tolerable place.


Entre deux endroits
it's easier to orient oneself to navigable maps,
avoid ideological mishaps
and leave behind the thinking hats
that come from knowing too much.

Rainy Tuesday, Another View

The building behind this mosque is the complex where I live. It is, in fact, built on top of the oldest mall in the entire Gulf region (some claim to fame that!) called Al Ghurair City. It is a city in many ways and there are entire weeks when Dad doesn't leave the complex. His office is in the next wing and we get everything we need and everything we want from the shops downstairs.

Talk about self sufficient!

The previous post (Another Blue) is a collage of the view from the window where I sit and work on my comp. There are many other blues too... you'll see them here soon.

Another Blue

Nightfall

In the urban sprawl
Of bling, glass and concrete
scintillating lights,
and floodlit superhighways,

The solemn call to prayer.

:the call of the muezzin
asking you to walk away from it all,

To walk away now
Before the glint off the shards
leads you away
from the sacred dunes of the desert -

the whistling dunes of sacred sands.

Maxims to live by

"Live long.
Love fast.
Drink slow."

You have it all figured out.

So how come I don't?

Desert Dunes

Landing at a new crossroads,
Over the desert dunes of empty roads
The last year has been lost in a flurry
of confusions,
apologies,
excesses,
resolutions for new beginnings,
hopes for happy endings.

Would you understand me
If I asked for a little space
- a little place
where I don't always need to explain myself
where I can forgive myself before I defy you again?

This is me too:
Floating above the desert.

Can you see the horizon melt into the sand?

Window on a Lake

I went away.

I stood at the edge of where I went
and stripped down naked,
plunged into the murkines
of my own mistakes
looking for the shiny pebbles I had lost;
pebbles collected
on the shores of many lakes
between here and there:

Lake Michigan and Pangong Tso.

I didn't find them:
they have been lost for forever
to the earth and the rain
and the silt of time.

That rain
it beat down hard on me
when I returned.

And then it took with it
the afternoon mist
leaving behind the inky air
made of all my pen-stained compositions from last year.

Eternity has come and gone.

But these clouds
have since refused to clear.

A Dream Misplaced

And thus I return
to this familiar corner
this unfamiliar space
unsatisfied, unfinished,
unaccomplished.

These days
they died an untimely death
with the dreams we thought we knew.

Our inheritance has already been usurped
and squandered.

I found
that after all the times we shared
in the shelter of each other's arms

that paradise was not blue.

The Morning After

This city will not bend
it will not break:
its spirit will not shatter
like the bursting forth of tin can boxes
that tried to pull its life asunder.

We are a conglomeration of improbabilities
Held together by the fabric of our indomitability.

Not rain nor shine,
Neither mud-slinging
nor explosions
will hold us ransom.

Tomorrow will never die.

Traveller on a Street Corner

The stuffiness of the afternoon
was dissapated by
a promenade in the rain:
rambles under a generous umbrella
turned inside out.

I saw you standing at a street corner
waiting for the wind to take you somewhere
as the drizzle on your parka
mingled with the confusion of foreign words
sliding off the streets like water.

Those blue eyes:
they apologised for everything
even though the universe had not yet transpired.

Tomorrow I will seek them out again:
only they knew of of what it meant
to be standing at the foot of a slope
waiting for the rain to recover.

Torrential Spell

The morning rain shut out the sun in defiance:
I couldn't tell today from yesterday
or yesterday from a tomorrow that never came.

The afternoon rain hammered on in silence
As I sat behind a windowless wall
pittering and pattering on plastic keys in its place
As sullen as its own insistent pace.

At night and in evening time,
It drowned out the sound of my own voice and
the noises in my head
bouncing its tiny bullets off the transparent rooms that separate us;

I resisted an invasion.

I knew my spirit couldn't withstand the shock of the world outside:
I had fallen to its torrential spell
Even before the nimbus had raised a cry at dawn.

Here

I feel like I've been here forever,
Like this day has gone on forever.
As though I can neither escape the dread of the night before,
Nor the weariness of the morning it preceeds,
The afternoon, the evenings,
the week that returns home sullen, unforgiving and fallen,
the nights that melt into oblivion...

El sabado le samedi, phir aaya shanivaar

In between saturdays
nothing happens.

The days stand still
and I,
whether in patient waiting
or by restless choice,
drive around-
point to point
end to end
of weeks and months ,
around the occasional moment of truth-
barely rising before being able to fall;
barely engaging before
being able to let go of it all.


(*)El sabado
le samedi
phir aaya shanivaar.

Deja vu

Qui sas

Perhaps the morning prophecies
will live up to fulfilment today.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

Entre des Espaces

Between here and now
then and there,
Floating on a cloud
of pink and purple flowers
From aeons ago

Escapades in Ennui

Winding lines
in drowsy climes,
I drift into the wilderness
of a long forgotten rhyme...

un peu d'esprit

First Whiffs

In the moonlight filtering through great swathes of tropical sky
We stood there in our cotton nightdresses
(terracotta tiles glistening beneath our feet
the smells of coffees, cream and expectant earth)
Toasting our bent glass flutes to the harbinger,
To the aching thunder's beat,
To the silk of the palm fronds,
and the crust of our skin
seared by the heat of a testing summer,
The forgetfulness of a trivial winter.

Fate Accompli

This is the city of my dreams:
the place I seem to run away from,
the only home I know how to return to.

This is its web of trials and tribulations,
decisions and indignations:
the tangle of Fate
and fait accompli.

This is a daily death and resurrection
of hope and fear and longing.

amuseum

Collective memories
repositories
observatories
conservatories

History in deep freeze

To muse or be bemused?

That is the question.

Momentary Recollection

These are not words
but the moments themselves
suspended in thought,
or contemplation:

the mindful indignation of a life moving on
while time stands still
in the snapshot of a memory

built

and so very nearly lost.

Paranoid Morning Cries

Wake up

In a swirl of places,
faces,
dates & numbers;

Days in dreary sunlit haze.

Tasting the salt of one air,
breathing in the peace of another
gasping for cognition

In a profusion
of moments so dream-like

They were real.