i forget

memory plays deafening tricks on me. i try hard to remember things, places, sidewalks, the colour of shirts, ink deepening into your skin and a sky that was so angry it was about to pour. i can't remember anything now, but the sky. because i do that just as much as the sky does, when i'm mad. just pour.
i'm losing my hold over memories. i'm forgetting passwords, clues and the location of unopened envelopes. i'm forgetting so much.
i wish i could at least remember where i left you behind.

medias res

she has stuck in me like the still walls of the corporate office she always sat against- radiant. she only becomes more beautiful in my memory. her smile always stretched to the corner of her lips, baring a slightly unruly tooth, that kept girlhood intact on a face that ran a small corporate world. and how perfect she seemed in that chair.

life seemed perfect.

a day of smiles at work, getting picked-up every evening to go home to a beautiful daughter with an energy that always made her smile. i describe that as perfect.

but the night Spain and Holland were busy kicking the ball, the air and one another, he broke to me what i still find hard to believe. i still can't believe she dimmed over a bottle of poison, putting off forever, what might have been a fun afternoon of reunion. it would have been sudden, but i would have been there, dropping in just to say that working together had been fun.

and now, she sticks in my heart every day, in the beautiful face of her five year old daughter, who i don't have the courage to meet.

Blue lashes

"two blue butterflies
stand guard
over your eyes,"
you said

and i looked-up
just in time, to dismiss
what might have been
longing

i wish

Kanchu is a warm fluff against my feet, where she lays fast alseep, probably trying to find comfort for two days of bleeding. I can see it has been confusing her. She can't understand why I keep saying "NO" when she tries to get on the bed. She can't understand what I've been trying to do, inventing diapers for her and dressing her up in loose lacy underwear, making her look rather dramtic. She can't understand.

I wasn't so baffled when I first encountered my blood. The thought "hemmorage" did strike me first, but then I understood. It's easier to deal with such things in life if you have your mother around. Mothers are the answer to everything.

But there isn't much help with a mother like me, who can't understand what it is to be a one year old Golden Retriever, who's just started menstruating. I don't know how to take care of Kanchu right now. And I wish you were here to help.

It still rains

on a rain-spilled morning like this,
you came back
to say monsoon was almost over.


coffees and teas
were done

the sidewalks
had been exhausted
with conversations

and i had forgotten
to flip the calendar.


on a rain-spilled morning like this,
i dreamt you'd come back
and could not stay.

sleep

and it felt last night
like i was weaving you
out of the thick blankness
that forced
my eyes shut

and in that i hoped
that somewhere
the heaviness
drooping my eyelids
would put you to sleep

Another Country

at work today, rabi dai played me "another country". i'd left my desk to go and work in the sport section because i can't work if people around me are talking too much. of course, newsrooms are supposed to be noisy. but i can't handle too much talk and too much tv while i'm working. i like a lot of my quiet moments, although there have been years when i couldn't write a word without leaving the music on.

so, anyway, he came and left his phone on my table. i was enjoying the song. i played it twice. when it was playing a third time and i was completely drenched in the need to fall in love (you know how some songs make you feel that way), rabi dai came and took it away because he wanted some one else to hear some other song. rabi dai always has his phone full of songs.

it had been a while since he played me anything. he did today but he took it away halfway, making me feel like something had just been snatched away. i told him later that he had ruined my "moment". and it does feel like he'll always owe me that moment. but nothing can mend it anymore. it will always be a lost moment. it will always be a song, half understood. and playing it now, won't restore my loss.

so many other things in life are like that. left dangling at an ellipsis.

you're one of them.

Sleep

how wide do you shut your eyes
when the nights
coil out
to bring back memories
of transpacific touches
where we were both absent?

Jukebox

nhooja has something playing on his jukebox. i don't know what it is. but it's a single guitar and it's good. i've been living on borrowed music for far too long now. it's always things i catch on other people's computers, ipods, phones.

sometimes, rabi dai plays his 80s numbers for me at work.

he'll leave his phone on the desk for me to listen to and then ramble along with the lyrics and surprise me with his taste for poetry. he doesn't even realize it's poetry, but what he loves with a prosaic mind are always the most beautiful lines.

he will do that like a kid- get super excited about the song and tell you what it is about- the situation if it's a track from a film or just explain the circumstances the song was written under or who it was written about/for. i've often just smiled, heard the songs, liked them when i liked them. or just heard them because rabi dai is a great editor and i love good editors.

but as the guitar plays on right now, i'm thinking i should have played stuff for rabi dai too. how little we think of giving back!

it's almost time for him to leave and there's going to be no one at work anymore, who'll play a song for me on his phone and leave it on my desk for me while i rush with the stories.