An unsent post

I want
to do with you
what Spring does
with cherry trees.
-Pablo Neruda




Dear You,

Yesterday, I started to write you a long hand written mail. Aki started nibbling at my shoelace and I couldn't finish it.

I went back to it later and thought of rewriting it. But I kept staring at the half-finished mail and didn't get about to writing it any further. It struck me that it was pointless writing it when I don't even have an address to send it to you at. Besides, who cares about hand-written letters anymore? They are a thing of the past now. But I do wish I could write you volumes and neatly pack them in envelopes, label them in clear neat writing, paste stamps and send them off, hoping to hear back from you.

These are, but dreams.

There's no address to write to you at. And you probably forgot a long time ago that there was once this old-fashioned girl who believed in old-fashioned things, such as hand-written epistles and staying in love forever.

I've walked past where you and I said good-bye, a number of times now.

I noticed every day, that the cherry trees were in bloom all the way to the Japanese Embassy lane. And I thought of taking pictures of them for you. But I only walked under the trees and looked up at the spotless blue sky from the spaces between the cherry blossoms and dreamed of you. Never got around to taking pictures.

The blossoms must have started to wither while I looked at the sky beyond. For yesterday, I realized that the flowers were all gone and the leaves had turned a dense green and clouds had started to appear in the sky.

It rained hard last night. Thunder, lightning and wind. I turned toward the window where the curtain fluttered and thought once again of the letter I didn't finish. I started crafting it in my mind, and I guess it tired me to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, the clouds had disappeared, declaring summer. And I just knew it was going to be several summers before I could even hope for my heart to understand that you do not exist.

Yoursasever,
Me

blue

dead ends...decay...should not have been the words as spring crossed into summer. but how else should it have been? we never discussed that.

the city has started soaring above us again, lifting in a heat we are calling "global warming". i think of it as claustrophobia. and i think of claustrophobia as a feeling of people breathing down my neck- all of them pushing me into believing you will not return.

i've often thought of how you spring from my entrails, consume my fears and lie low inside me again like you never changed anything. but what's that to the city? the city, like I said, has begun to rise. i see it in the honking, the swirling of dust in the afternoon wind and the stench lifting from massive gutters that were once rivers.

the city has no memory of rivers. only the sewage now and the stone spouts that trickle drops into plastic containers.

the butcher's wife stands across the street and looks up at the sky, shielding her eyes with her hand stained in blood. With the other hand, she clutches her apron- soaked in blood. flies swarm her best chicken breast. she waves a hand at them and looks up a the sky again.

the sky is blue, blue, as though they draped an ocean over the city. not a single hint of cloud. the butcher's wife must love the blue.

but she turns away to look at the city and i follow her gaze.

i don't love the blue anymore. it reminds me of these endless spaces where i cannot find you. and the city is a constant reminder that you don't live here anymore.

milestone

i stray-
from me
to me.

You used to be a milestone.

If it ends

and should the world end tonight, my darling
amid birds chirping premonition,
and the roaring of airplanes in the sky,
i will still have loved you
like I did
when the earth was still about
morning dew on petals,
the coy moon over green meadows,
and the soft drizzle of April shower.

web

there were days
when it felt like
all i had to do was
to reach out through a mesh of waves to touch you

there were days, when the waves
sent you tingling through
my nerves
restoring into me, life

but these are days
of the invisible web
for all the layers i navigate
you still do not appear

a little love

a little love you asked for
making me want to give endlessly

a little love i asked for
you wanted to but could not return

i became
what you wished to become to me

and you became
what I never hope to become to you

after dark

and it felt like the stars had been missing for ages and the moon had been gone for decades. it was impossible to figure if i had just forgotten to gaze at the sky or i was only sinking so deep in my ruminations that there had not been time enough to look up. but that's how it felt. with the blankess of the skies, nights were nothing to look forward to. that darkness of waiting for a single star to show up had started taking its toll on my psyche. while i reported the rising death tolls from earthquakes, floods and snow storms, i saw my own flesh emerging further scathed from the experience of being cast headlong into a darkness from where it had become impossible to reach out to you. and the little hope that had been there for daylight flickered and went out for good.

Shadows

Kathmandu kept growing into concrete
from where we sat and looked down.

These were "pretty" buildings.
But none of them was home for us.

I heard him talk about his family
in a tone that removed him elsewhere.

The Shivapuri hill started catching fire
and I had no voice to point it out to him.

I was instead thinking of the crickets
and the Nagarjuna hill that shimmered in your voice.

When we stood up and started walking downhill,
the streetlamps lighted our back.

Our shadows- oblong,
were awkward as they walked.

His tone made me want to hold his hand
as he tripped on words.

My eyes, on the shadows trailing down the hillside
almost knew the feel of your hand.

March 3rd

from march 3rd then to march 3rd now, i am no more me.

a room of one's own

What wouldn't a housewife do for a room of her own?
Imagine the entire...the entire room to yourself! It means you have the windows to shut and open as and when you want. The door ajar if you like. Or wide, wide open or latched.
You could leave your piles of book waiting by your bedside table and get up at any odd hour of the night to pick one and read it. All you have to do is extend your arms a bit and touch the lamp on if you have poetry rambling in your head in the middle of the night. There is no need to worry about waking someone up when those lights come on.
Without the husband in the same room as you, you never have to worry about picking his clothes up, his cigarette stubs or the paint brushes he leaves on the table, on the dresser and the floor.
Without the husband in the room, the sheets are never disheveled, your bottles of cologne always in order and your night cream always intact.
Without the husband in the room the water-jar always has the lid on it. So does the tube of tooth-paste. And the bathroom is smoke-free!
Why encourage a woman to give up her space?
Abolish marriages!

P.S. Wife and husband should have the liberty to have separate rooms to work and sleep if they prefer. Of course it works! Like Heaven!

Ms.Carriage

One afternoon, Kriti Mukherjee walked across the Common room and asked me, "Who wrote LOVE'S LABOUR LOST?"
"Shakespeare."
"No", she said. "Miss Carriage", followed by laughter.
Of course, I laughed too.
But I don't laugh at that word anymore. The word is synonymous to anything but laughter.

This morning, my colleague came back to work, ending over two weeks of emergency leave. We had been told she had slipped in the bathtub. When I asked her why she had been away, she said she had miscarried.

My reactions suddenly changed from general concern to consternation. I sat down on the visitor's chair in her cubicle and looked at her for a while, before I could say "sorry". She said, "it's alright", so as to comfort me. It should have been me saying that. But it wan't alright and we both knew. Miscarrying is not only about losing blood. It's about losing a part of you. It's about losing hope while losing someone, who might have been there to hold your tired hands in your days of despair. It's also about losing someone you would have showered with love.

In the next ten minutes, my colleague would talk of her depression, her attachment with the baby in the twenty days from her discovery to the loss and how she can't believe she lost it. I would tell her, mothers usually miscarry if the baby is already unhealthy. I would tell her she could make a baby again.

She's awfully depressed at the moment and I can't but think of the way I had felt after my loss.

Right now, I feel a void in my womb. A miscarriage is irreplaceable.