A transpacific call

A transpacific call, the night, your voice,
Your lips that nestled round the words you said.
A sudden stab of longing, but there's no choice
Except to hold your image close instead.
This wounded distance seems to swirl and turn
Our thoughts and faces, like disembodied signs.
And every second, a second which we burn
Away down into these strangled telephone lines.
But softly through this link of satellites
you say the words, to make distances dissolve.
For just one moment, we touch, through the nights
of time and space in which our names revolve.
I hold you nearer, this faith we understand.
The mouthpiece, earpiece cradled in my hand.

(by Suman Subba)

He said

he wanted to drink coffee out of my navel
-that boy with the most gorgeous eyes.

He said
he would buy the entire town out
just so that
he could make love to me
all over the place
-that boy with the most persistent smile.

He said
he wanted to cook noodles for me
read me poetry
and make me happy
-that boy who doesn't believe in sin.

He said
he wanted to love in the shower
take me in a forest
and come in the rain
-that boy who wanted to consummate love in a temple.

He made me laugh.

But he wasn't you.

What Security?

The policemen stood in a file. The sign said- Suraksha Jaanch Hudai Cha (Security Check Going-on). My brother clutched at the brakes. The policeman nearest to us, asked my brother what he had in his bag. Art books, he said, instead of flaunting his press pass. His books on sketching and sculpting were brought out.

After entertaining a long look, I prompted myself to ask if he wanted to check my bag.

Lipstick ta hola ni, he said. Must be only lipstick. Janus. Go.

As my brother rode us away, I said lipstick chaina. My bag rarely accomodates cosmetics. But I smiled at the thought that the policeman had thought of me as a woman. I found his sexist remark flattering.

During my teenage years, I always had a problem convincing my male friends I was a girl. With my boy-short hair and the willingness to sit on the pavements any time, they always thought of me as one of them. Many times, I had wished they thought of me like they did about the others- like a girl. But the policeman thought I looked like a woman!

Sexist!

I actually think of the "suraksha jaanch" policemen as a breed, who stand on the streets, nights, getting tortured and torturing unnecessarily, while letting go of the wrong people.

They never check a car that says PRESS. How do they know the cars do not need security checking? Whenever (which is always) they let our office vehicle pass without security check, I feel like requesting them to check every car that reads PRESS including our own. I also feel like asking them "whose security"?

The Catcher in the Rye

Manila
melted under my feet
that evening
as I walked back to the dorm.

Germie, as always, lay on her chest on her bed strewn with books on the lives of saints. She only turned around briefly to tell me how painful the deaths had been and went back to reading, her legs propped in mid-air.

The electronics didn't keep the heat out of the room. (I wondered out-loud to Germie, how people could possibly make love in such heat. She laughed and called me crazy.)And the walls were no guard aginst the shouts that bounced at the dorm gate from the tricycle stand.

It was on one of those evenings drowned in paper-writing and youtube videos that I discoved a line for you in my head. "How are you?" I typed and dashed it off with a click at SEND. Not that I missed you. How could I have missed you when I didn't even have a memory of you then? You were just a a voice that said "Thank you" over the phone. But if I had thought hard enough, I might have recalled the Pikachu tattoo. Who knows! But that was before we became grown-ups.

Anyhow, I had no memory of you at that time.

Months later, we would sit across the table on our first meeting; you trying hard to guess if what fluttered on my eyelids was blue dust and I would gaze at your voice and decide to read "The Catcher in the Rye" again.

stay?

today

i
watch you
walk out
the door
again

our hearts that churn dreams
also fan infernos

how can we ever ask one another to stay?

When Aki leaves

I can never quite explain what it is that Aki always tries so hard to tell me when she looks at my face. It's like she looks deep into my eyes- almost touching my soul. When I sent her off to Chitwan, I felt she was asking me why she was being sent away. She almost jumped off the car as they drove away. She did the same today, wanting to jump off the car, still clenching my tee with her fangs. She actually tore it and dashed my glasses to the floor, smashing it. Again the same look in her eyes. Can't believe she's grown into this girl who can knock me down, from the little one who used to sleep on my chest. But the same baby eyes! They will always make me the mother I can never become.

SHAMROCK

There was this girl who had very pale skin, fine-thin light brown hair and albino nails. Her eyes were soft brown and her lips the softest pink. I wish I could say hazel eyes and chestnut hair. But I won't because they weren't. She was this plain, pale girl, who spoke with a lilt, as though she was afraid, even when her voice laughed. She was called Shamrock.

Everytime I think of her, I have an intense urge to describe all her features with added intensity and make her fiercely beautiful. I guess that's because I do think of her as "fiercely beautiful".

I don't remember a time when she looked strained. Only shy and ever-smiling. How apt for her name!

Rosy and I spent an afternoon in the Oval garden, plucking four-leaved clovers, pressing them between pages of Indian and European history and the History of English literature books. It was as though we'd pluck them just so that we could say the word "Shamrock". It did something to our teeth and lips when we spoke the word- leaving a light hoarse strength at the bottom of our throats. And we wanted to repeat the word, as we counted every new discovery.

The four dimensional green leaf of hope. So, so like Shamrock's shy smile.