Water cooler

Between two ticklish ticks of clock,
a teeny tiny instant of electric shock,
struggle, surrender.
Yes, I won't be surprised to see
in the next day's newspaper,
"Boy, 28, found frozen by a water cooler"

Death, a deja-vu.

Basic Tenets Of Writing

1. First 10 words are harder than the next 100 words.
2. Writing session starts with pre-writing activities: ideation, planning, unconscious writing etc. Acknowledge them.
3. Writing session is a period of stillness, intense focus and awareness - threat to the normal mode of mind. It will get in your way.
4. Regularity gives strength, irregularity breeds guilt.
5. It is courageous even to keep sitting on a chair, not writing - making this choice over distracting oneself in the event of non-writing.
6. Protecting writing schedule ruthlessly gives big returns which can be acknowledged only by looking back.
7. Challenges of writing do not melt down because you have figured them out, met, conquered them previously. They come afresh every single day and you have to battle out all over again. There is no other way.
8. Solitude, silence -must.
9. Reading helps you get in the mood for writing. Music can help set the mood for reading/writing. Music can enthuse you, pacify you; reading helps you recall all that you know about writing. Use them wisely.
10. When you sit down to write - enter the battlefield that is, you feel unarmed.  It is only when you fight it out that you find your weapons again: they come as you need them.
11. A good period of writing is too precious to terminate when satisfied. It is rare, be in it for as long as you can; utilize it.

(11, because the back side of the used paper was over. Will append, when and as they come)

Grave matters

Two meters into two meters
What we gravely fight for.
Quarter to two I am,
And you are little too;
Land enough for two graves?

Hence, unedited

This, this period,

This now,

This I forget

Wilfully.

What do you do

Before you do?

The Bride's Father

And indeed, what could be done now?


The seven pheres have been taken, the vows of fidelity have been exchanged, and all the mantras have been unerringly chanted: for the next six lives and this one, the daughter of Lakirdas will serve as a wife to this impostor - an ugly, elder cousin of the man who was supposed to marry his daughter. Had the sehra, the customary veil of bridegroom: his flowery deception, been lifted before the rites were performed, Lakirdas would have beaten him to death in a single blow of stick. But now that this man is his daughter's keeper what could be done or undone?


Surrounded by only his closest relatives, Lakirdas cries cursing his fate at a corner of the party lawn. They chide him, console him, and then, they counsel. The TV, the fridge, the jewelry, the household items - all of them will be used by his daughter, but what use could an air conditioned car be for this man? He works on a farm, not in any computer company in city. Don't let him have the car, they say. These fraudsters played with your trust, they had the gaunt to cheat you on your land, in your village, you can't just let them have it all.


Lakirdas agrees.


Having cried all his tears already, he now hastily bids his daughter wishes and rushes towards a truck parked at a distance. The car needs to be smuggled out or rumors here will spread.

Whining is not acceptable

Running breathlessly
- for that's how I run -

I may run out of breath,

or trip, tumble, topple, 

- the trek a cinch isn't -

leagues before the top,

then fall flat on my face.

You can jeer.

Jeering is acceptable.

But, idling in your farms,
fenced and too familiar,
- as in the tired allegories of yore -
whine not about absence of adventure
while I still venture:

whimpering worries the winds,
the winds worry my heart.

Running breathlessly

- for the air there is thin -
I may run out of zest,

and weaken, wear out, wilt

- the trek a cinch isn't -

leagues before the top,

then tread back with a lost face.

You can jeer.
But, sitting sullenly,
in your farms,
fenced and too familiar,
whine not.
Whining is not acceptable. 

Two minutes

In the midst of this sport,
this mirthless sport of survival,
of striving for survival,
- the survival of the grittiest,
a gladiator puts his armour down
and appeals for a time-out

Two minutes, he says
Just two minutes
to quickly drop his pants somewhere;
and ejaculate in a jiffy

He may not survive the next blow

Two minutes, he says
Just two minutes.

He won't keep the audience waiting...

At my desk

While a bunch of baboons,
quarter-consciously,
engage in homosexual buffoonery

Black gets greened
Beauty gets breathed in,
breathed out
Patterns of the mind of god
get pinned down and
put to use
And the power,
that captivates, inebriates
the quarter-conscious quasi-humans,
gets entrapped
(only a fraction of it,
 but daily)

Each day,
at my desk,
I become stronger, wily,
contemptuous. 

Drops of life

Dirt, dust and dread - washed away

Dogged, defensive mold

dissolved

The self - rusty, faded, abrasive

- tired and weak,
 - exposed, and

coated with reassurance and spirit

Drops of life, me, 

fearlessness:

Bring-it-on!

*

To them,

I was sad and it made me happy

To them,

that is all to bathing in rain.

A meditation on my writing

*Wrote a while back

I work like an architect. When I see an empty piece of land I start constructing a building, on paper. The construction goes systematically, brick by brick, floor by floor, each step following rules laid down by my styles and my limitations, knowledge and understanding, until the building stands firmly in it's entirety... on paper. Then (and only then) the first brick is put, and engineering starts. Building's integrity is questioned here by the actual laws of physics, its feasibility tested by the properties of construction material and its beauty judged by minds other than mine. This is the part I dread.


I love architecting stories inside my head. They start with an idea, or a vague notion, or sometimes an unidentified feeling. I let them grow and gradually, the stories start taking shape as I pace up and down frantically inside a room, or on terrace in nights - places where I can be my weird self. Explicitly delineated characters emerge who interact with one another and their environment, gradually imparting that world a reality more convincing than that of the world outside my head. I admit I am a tyrant; their freedom is tightly constrained for they must act in accordance with the very purposes that had led to their coming into existence... yet it is this purposefulness that makes their world more ordered, more comprehensible and more convincing. They do come up with their suggestions sometimes, yes. They improvise. That is why it is recited numerous times - the story plays itself like a motion picture or a drama in rehearsal, edited and revised until every word and action appears to spring out naturally, one followed by another meticulously.


At this point I become ready to write. Unfortunately, at this very point I question the very motive behind writing.

Stories inside a head have only as much utility as buildings drawn on a paper. Yet it is not utility but creativity that inspires me - the joy of creating something out of nothing... the marvel of the power and watching it work.
At this point, when the story already unfolds in my mind in one perfect linear flow, picking up a pen to transcribe it becomes mechanical, laborious. It is like recounting details of an incident to investigators or telling a stale joke to an audience. Writing down becomes a process of creating an imagery, vivid and detailed, of the story that is now part of my memory. All the questions are already asked, all the answer explored for. All the possibilities already
considered and the most suitable of them already chosen. Why should a story already scripted be written down then? Does a drama, practiced to perfection by crew, necessarily needs to be played in front of an audience? Would an architect enjoy constructing the building he designed?

Oh no, I am not suggesting otherwise. These questions, ridiculously naive or stubbornly revolting though they may sound, are only surfacial. Nevertheless I have started my meditation on writing with these questions, for they will lead me to other, more urgent questions: should a story be written down when it's not perfectly scripted in head? Can and how much can the process of writing and creating be integrated? Should writing be done for the sake of
writing, at the cost of quality of script? What does one learn by habitual writing anyway? What is it's utility?

You see, I struggle writing 500 words a day, every day. It's not because English is a second language to me, it's because language is a second medium for me. My thoughts are abstract, shapeless, chaotic. To learn them, I have to greet them, calm them down and unravel. They reveal themselves to me through feelings and images; finding correct words for them is an effort. If I imagine a large building, for example, I wouldn't know if it's
big or huge or colossal or gargantuan or gigantic or monumental or, well, large. I will have to pick each word, look for it's precise definition and see if the terms conveys what I want to. As words form a sentence I have to check if the tone of the sentence is in sync with the tone of my narrator and as sentences make a paragraph, I have to
check if the paragraph maintains the course of the narrative. Precision takes priority over expression, plot over prose, a sense of order over aesthetic sense.

So how do I go about Writing-500-Words-Daily project? How do I make the best use of it and is it really the best way to exercise for me? How will my daily struggle with it end?

I am sure with a better command over language, the tussles with writing prose will become enjoyable. There are scores of areas that I am yet to explore, nuances so obvious that I oversee them and rules so intuitive that I don't even know I follow them. I know the more often I write, the more secrets I learn - about language, about the art of
story-telling, and perhaps most importantly about how I work, about how I am.

Wandering

Smell of flesh,
that touch of those eyes,
loneliness;
a ball, a pitch, a battlefield,
glory;
last night, guilt,
1995;
desire and death

- memories made up,
remembered, recalled.


A new paragraph,
five fresh lines,
then, Wandering.

Growing Up - Snippets

When Shruti and I would sleep on our mother's lap, she would cover our heads with her dupatta. They felt warm and safe, and smelt just like her. I would often open my mother's wardrobe and take those colorful, rectangular pieces of fabric out, just to smell and kiss them.
Now that my mother insists that Shruti put one on when there are guests in house or when she is going for tuition, I feel confused. (Shruti has suddenly grown tall and got breasts and I have to be really careful while punching her.) Now when I notice a dupatta hanging loose by a chair or a door knob, I try not to think about it.

*

Could it be, like my friends tell me, that couples make love even after having kids? My parents never kissed in our presence, or held hands, or talked like how those couples do in the movies. I had caught my father singing a romantic song to my mother once but he said he had heard that song on the radio that morning and asked me why I did not do too well in the maths test.
Could they be hiding something? After Shruti and I go to sleep in our room, could my parents be husband and wife at night?

*

I don’t pick up telephone unless I am alone at home. At the end of the other line, it’s either a salesman or my parent’s relatives or their friends, and they all confuse me for my mother. Rajat, Rahul, Tanmay, Naveen, Dheeraj - everyone sounds like a grown up now. Naveen drank thick shakes for five straight days once and his throat got infected and that’s when his Adam’s apple ‘swelled’, he confided to me. Protrusion of thyroid cartilage (Naveen thinks it's a swellling because he plays tic-tac-toe in biology class) does not have anything to do with throat infection, I know, but then why hasn’t my voice changed yet?
I will prefer chilled thick shakes over milk and cereals next week. What's the harm?
                                   
*

It is illegal for kids. Besides, there is a statutory warning printed on every pack and we were taught in biology class how it contaminates lungs but Dheeraj still smoked cigarettes - daily, at The Korner Cafe after school hours (he said so himself). I think he was just trying to show off because he was not good at studies or sports or debates or playing musical instruments, and that’s why he passed comments in class even though they were quite silly and teachers punished him.
On Niharika mam's insistence, I became friends with him and helped him with his homework for a while. If you were patient, you would not think of Dheeraj as a very stupid boy (after I explained basic principles and derivations in detail, he solved almost a whole exercise by himself) but one day he made a dirty remark about Shruti and I punched him twice on his face and broke friendship.
He did not hit me back.

Last Night

An itch in the elbow
switched the attention.
Arrival of the verse
arrests.

The itch in the elbow,
a trick by the heavens?
A verse with the word
itched.