Dream Motion

Observing Time: Intervention

Observing Time: Thames Walk

Observing Time: Walking Through The Trees

Observing Time: Tea and Carrot Cake

Observing Time: Florence go-round

Part of a new series of photo-collages I'm working on called Observing Time

Via Marconi, Polverigi

Wouldn't It Be

Star

"I love the piece of earth that you are,
because of all the planetary fields,
I have no other star"

- Cien Sonnetos de Amor
de Neruda

Writing Letters -II

Cloudy

Not

Writing letters - 1

O.K.

Water Lilies

shot on 120mm film with my Diana

As fragile as a paper memory

Knowing

I know where to find you
even before you know you're going to hide.

It's one of those things I have a sense for
but I wish that I didn't.

It's so hard after all,
to see your outlines crumble
as you stand at the edge of a cliff,
waiting for the wind to sweep you away,
waiting for the water to grind you into the ocean
you fear so much
even though you've taught yourself how to swim
many years ago

Did yesterday know

Did yesterday know that today was going to be like this?
Did it read the forecast, cast the dice
or calculate the angle at which the projection of your shadow was going to fall on my face?
Did it count the steps to the staircase that would lead it blind into memory,
up a hill, behind a mountain and into a cave
of dankness and cold sleep;
away from morning, noon
and afternoon light
filled with amber wood
and Sunday delights?

Cartography

Illustrating a map
is an exercise in diplomacy.
After neatly following black flowing lines of political propriety,
my hand begins to itch after a while
and I ask myself
where, for example, does India end
and Pakistan begin,
and what do I do about China's persistent butting in?

Is Antarctica ever anything but white,
I wonder,
and how do the Chechnyans sleep at night?
Does the isle of Taiwan get its own colour
and will Israel eventually manage to get it right?

In an act of absolute anarchy
I pick up my eraser-ing tool
and wipe away all those border conflicts
that have angered you and worried me so.

The continents are now just islands -
large, intricate masses of white
surrounded by deep blue mysterious oceans
reflecting clouds, the stars
and generous astronomical light.

It's a sunny kind of day today,
and I'm in a benevolent mood
if I could go back to Babel
and leave alone the sky-reaching tower,
I'd wipe out the languages too.

After the rain (after Ezekiel)

I've been away so long
I've forgotten how to put words together:
how to say what I mean,
without saying it directly;
without chiselling it out in stone,
and going over the outlines in bold.
I used to know how to blur the edges of things
and let colours melt into gold,
but ever since the wind swept the rain away
and the sun came out from the clouds,
things have become sharper
and brighter
and the edges of ideas stand out once more

Ezekial once wondered if after a rain the air was clearer.
Now I agree:
It is just so,
just so

Sunset

Squeeze a drop of lime into an ultramarine sky
layered over strawberry cream clouds:
the scent of freshly washed leaves flowing in the air
as a grey, wet and windy day folds to a close,
in an uneventful sigh
mixed with orange rinds,
conversations
and chocolate hazelnut smiles

24 hours in Firenze

Enter Easter
rain

driving through
a landscape of marble churches,
cobblestone filth
and triumphant Madonnas
hoisted on walls and altars
following crosses through streets,
into processions of devout,
divine, divided hoards
of people and tourists
- all strangers from foreign lands,
travellers through time,
periods and histories
of a world painted in brush strokes
sculpted in stone,
installed on corners
in piazzas and palazzos
that invade the orthography of a sterile mind

Birthdays

I thought it was your birthday today
but then I realised it wasn't.

It was yours.

Annoyed,
I needled my brain
for remembering such a considerate detail
when you've never returned the favour,
never bothered to acknowledge the fact that I left,
or that you left
me
the city
and the sun

City Window

Bird of Paradise

Found Flowers

Window City

A Line From An Old Poem

Pregunta

1968

Night of Stars

14 minutes past the hour

Why

Speak of Time

Look

Post-It Poem: Waiting

(*) click on the image to see a larger version. Alternatively, you can download it and zoom into the details

Of course, this piece can be read in any order you like, although there is a general narrative idea to it. The last slip is silver in colour but well what can I say, it just looks better live than as a photograph

Post-it Poems: Siempre

These are part of an exercise I'm doing for a writing workshop at college.

They're visual poems that can be installed anywhere, on any surface.

This is a small one that came out of today's feedback session. The larger, original one that started my new preoccupation will be posted tomorrow

Stamp Colour Gold

I wish the computer screen could show the gold wash on these...

Thought - I

it's so foggy
that the tower where you sit
has only just emerged
for the day

but the day is
done:

half past noon and a morning
cloudied by half dreams
and old mists
and lost sleep
caught between weeks
and words
in the sun

One Afternoon. July, 2006

A digital flourish,
clickety click beep and
tapping grids in two-by-two frames
stretched by fourteen hours of strain at a desk in a loft,
sandwiched between a wall, another desk
and bricks
and sky
and falling drops of afternoon rain
haunted by a stranger's eyes,
an apology
and a winding column of humanity making its way into every direction
except for the one I'm headed in:
alone under an umbrella
in search of the perfect fountain pen
to write love letters with
on yellow paper
in green ink
on a grey day

सूफी गाने के कुछ लब्ज़

Drawings from Khandala

Dark Implosion

Sometimes I feel as if I'll implode into you -

into all the dates and names and songs,
rhymes, places and spaces you talk of all the time
because at some point, I've been there before:
inside the same cryptic words and texts
you hint, mention and throw into
the volley of ideas that I launch around myself:
thoughts like a suit of tentacles
that reach out into the darkness
of unknown possibilities
and odd prodigous events

From a book I received many years ago:

"You are searching the world for treasure
but the real treasure is yourself.
If you are tempted by bread
you will only find bread.
What you seek for
you become."

- Jalal-ud-din Rumi

Songs for You

I wonder if you'd understand
the irony hanging in the air
- as we sit talking of inconsequential things -
of the fact that all my songs for you
played one by one in the background
of their own accord,
in their own fashion,
even though they mean nothing,
not ever,
not now
not to you
anyhow

विलायत में

विलायत में
some things went out of fashion a long time ago:
things like soap boxes, clothes brushes,
the kinds of mops you get down on your knees and use,
plain cotton handkerchiefs.
and ten penny ball point pens in blue.

I don't know what gadgets people invented in place of them,
but everyday tasks just aren't the same anymore.

When you can find these sentimental,
but entirely useful things in an English store,
they tend to cost the earth,
and I find myself longing for Santacruz station market
where I can always find a little ठेलावाला wedged
between the fruit vendors and cutpiece cloth shops,
plastic wares on loud display,
waiting to part (for a few rupees) with his rainbow bric-a-brac
and little objects that just make a lot of sense
in a silly, material, technological world.

Resurrecting a Phone Book

for Sneha and all the people we Green Teen-ed with

Second names, numbers, addresses:
they all sublimate rather quickly
when you lose a phone book,
and precipitate at the peripheries of your mind,
when the smell of patchouli incense
reminds you of the people you lost with it.

There is no way to call him or her -
the person you wished you could remember -
to say you miss them
or that you thought of them
in the intoxicating swirls of wet earth
that envelope you in the monsoon dance
you do in your head
as rain showers the city
and makes it white.

There is no certainty as to where they lived
in the days when you sent them hand drawn cards
and long letters at birthdays,
because maybe,
you've forgotten their birthday
as well as the pin codes on the envelopes.

It doesn't matter that it wasn't your fault:
that your phone book got left behind in the frenzy of packing.
There's nothing to be said for it now.

Maybe it's in some dusty corner of an old house you can't return to
and maybe someone found it
and tried to return it to you,
but that wouldn't mean so much anymore
because you've had to resurrect it
piece by piece,
and number by number,
alphabetically.

It's almost complete again you think,
but then find a page left blank
for the fragment of your childhood self
that only the receiver of those cards used to know,
and write letters to,
all those years ago.

Cacophony

I'd forgotten the cacophony of this country
and the effort it takes to be still here:
to remain calm in the crests of the throbbing pulse
of a billion entangled lives

Maybe it's only me
and I've become too accustomed to the rustlings of red socks on blue carpet floors,
the cracklings of radiators
and the sound of sleepless commuter trains
far, far away

Ma's Letter lyric

A BBG
T PO G!
PK I G,
U P OG

I love it!

In The Deep

after Bird York's In The Deep

I'll hear the melancholy loop of this song again;
float in the water of its melody,
sun sparkling nonchalantly through the notes on its surface
onto the dark pond bed of words below.

sink
slowly into the depth of its aching beat,
life swirling around me
carrying echos into my skin
like bubbles into the open air
of a summer's day in May.

December

December always brings me home
to the smell of salt in the air
and the heartbeat of the sea;
to the thought that
a traveller's life is nothing
without the knowledge
that his home embraces his hardships
and forgives his trespasses
as soon as he has had his fill
and turns around to leave.

स्कूल में पढ़ी कबीर की एक कविता

मोको कहाँ ढूंढें बन्दे, मैं तो तेरे पास में |

ना में देवल ना में मसजिद, ना काबे कैलास में |

ना तो कौने क्रिया-कर्म में, नहीं योग-बैराग में |

खोजी होए तो तुरतै मिलिहौं, पल भर की तलास में |

कहैं कबीर सुनो भाई साधो, सब स्वांसों की स्वांस में ||

Planeta sin órbita

(for Jinx)

The thought of you standing in my doorway -
in need of a hug, hair in a tease -
came to me quite suddenly this morning,
and it made me want to reach out to you,
you little planeta sin órbita,
and give you a tight tight squeeze.

How many late nights we've spent together,
huddled around our kettle boiled teas
gossiping, plotting and planning revenge
on all the people that just never got us:
boys, professors and silly old hens.

Barely coherent the next morning,
after less than a few hours of sleep,
I'd try to wake you on my way to the showers,
and again on the way out,
but you'd always just keep on snoozing
until your alarm screeched its morning bells
and you'd have to get up and get out.

You asked me once why I gave you shelter
when you zipped through my city
on your whirlwind tours,
and I remember telling you,
you'd pay me back one day,
without knowing the whens or whys of giving
or even the hows and wherefores.

And so planeta sin órbita
as you travel at your lightning speed,
unbeknowest, you're returning me many favours
each one unique
in a different candy colour,
each as inexplicable
as the stockings you'd often wear in the summer.

Only

Old Friends

"I'm heartbroken,"
I told him
because it was the only way to explain everything:
this sensation
that nothing could be mine,
that I couldn't know it all
and couldn't love it all
no matter
how hard
I tried
or how many of these hopeless laughs
I cried.

I like living a little more each day.

And that makes me less afraid of death.

With the right music in your head, anything is possible!

Un Gris Día

Necesito los abrazos del sol
en este gris tierra:
un gesto de buen voluntad del universo
que me recordaría
el valor de paciencia

Twil-i-ght

I'll tie a twine to thee
and tie a twin to thine
into these two we'll wind the times
and twirl away the tides

The weird and wonderful night time world around London Wall when there's nothing and no one but ghosts, goblins and tall glass buildings

Bouncing Light

The sun reflecting onto the pavement from a reflection off a building the day autumn blew up a pile of leaves

अंदाज़ अपना अपना

I thought this line from the film was really funny until today: I'm having real trouble with my moong dal

Saving daylight and other things:

Autumn Arrived

सोते सोते मैंने सोचा

City In The Sea -II

(*) click on the image to see a larger version

Waking and Sleeping

I wake up to the sound
of children laughing,
joking,
playing,
hula-hooping,
chasing,
counting,
and sing-song chanting.

When I sleep however,
ambulances and police sirens
are always screaming
far into the dark night,
panicking,
stopping,
saving,
frightening,
warding,
always shouting,
always lurking.

The sun robs the soundscape
of its innocence
and in its place,
all kinds of emergencies emerge.

दिवाली

अमृता प्रीतम ने पूछा

Four Seasons at St-Martins-in-the-fields

I lived through a year in an hour
in a church in a square
where there used to be fields
and there used to be a figure
of a son of a god on a cross,
but where,
now,
there is a circle of light
that welcomes the sun at the altar,
and candles in the windows
that tremor
at the mention of Vivaldi.

Barbican inspired brutalism

Faces on the Underground

On the Underground no one speaks.

No one talks to their neighbour
or looks over the shoulder of the nice lawyer lady
in an attempt to read her paper.
There are no women sitting by windows,
chatting, cutting vegetables
or discussing Salman's moves
in the latest Bollywood blockbuster.
There are no men playing cards perched on briefcases,
as they furiously debate the fate of the stock market.

There are no ladoos distributed
for the birth of a daughter's son
or the 90 percent score of a cousin's exam result;
nor any marzipan strawberries to celebrate Christmas.

Instead,
there are people on the Underground
trying hard to read the London Lite
while plugged in to their selfish melodies,
white earphone wires disappearing into black coats
or black bags or black pockets in black pants.

There are faces that you meet-
brown faces on the Underground:
eyes looking for recognition,
wondering if you're a tourist
or a commuter,
trying to figure out which part of the subcontinent you come from
and if you might
just
happen
to speak the same language.
There are glances on the Underground:
looks that say they've seen you,
and they know how you feel,
as you try your hardest to navigate a new city
from the inside out,
within this bubble you need for yourself
and with nothing
and no one without.

Looking for a Poem

Today was National Poetry Day -
not that I knew this of course,
when a couple of hours ago
I was searching for a poem:

a poem, a verse,
something to look at
to remind us that we've met
under a street lamp
over cola,
or coffee,
maybe in May;

looking for a prophecy
that would emerge
from flipping the pages
of a book by a man
from far away
and long ago,
who once sat
upon a dark island
and said to himself,
"I've travelled the ocean;
now where do I go,"

looking for a note
that you may have left me
in my travelling fray:
something to say that you missed me
in your awkward day,

but there isn't
and wasn't
a rambling rhyme,
just a moment and silence,
a bittersweet sourness

and the difference in time.

Mi Diccionario

Mi diccionario tiene todo el mundo
en sus hojas:
un universo del amor,
del odio,
del desgracia,
que se disolvió en siglos de impaciencia
cuando perdimos el camino de ser
en un desierto de estar.

Entretanto los vientos de acentos
forman montañas
de differentes significados,
el contiene un mar de actos
rodeado por vallas de palabras
que suscriben nombres
pero no describen cosas.

Colinas y valles
suben y bajan alrededor lagos de comas,
paretheses doblando como arcos iris.
Entre el cielo y la tierra
se encuentra suspendido el aire
de todo lo que se suena
y todo que se llama
La Lengua