Girlfriends

am thinking of how your eyes
dipped in the coffee-mug
bitter-sweet
in between our conversations
in the cafeteria
where you toyed with cake-crumbs
and how the fly
surrounded your hair
drawing a halo
before deciding to land
on the cake instead

-we were made up of angst
we still are

we drew circles within ourselves
of what we knew was negation

you clung to your Communist
with a clear crisp voice

i, desperately clawed at what
i thought might perhaps be love

we wondered at how it would be to love,
to make it

we touched the Kathmandu wind
that dissipated, even before

i remember, the pussy-willows and cat-tails
were in full-bloom, then

in Delhi,
we touched

through a mesh of what
tangles life had become

marriage, sex, drugs,
rejection, want, need

we drove though the streets
dragged ourselves up the narrow staircase
on to the landing
as it struck, that
things would keep moving despite us
and so would we

i look at your beautiful face this morning
and smile the taste of coffee in my mug
you always photograph
just as you are.

I shall rise

you destroy me again. 

i am the Phoenix

Poetry

the pitch, the lilt, the hum, the nasal
and the air that escapes in between syllables-
there's something insanely beautiful
about listening to poetry in a language you do not understand.

(Kathmandu Literary Jatra)

the eyes

will never get out
of the purple dips
patched from
nights of nothingness

the wait

Babu's toes, spattered with mud is all I can remember of last night's wait. That, punctuated with little walks into the emergency to see if ajee was breathing alright or to give her the bed pan.

Outside, where we sat, the night had started freezing- a reminder that the festivals were nearing and then it would soon be winter, before you even realized. Baa's parka kept the wind out for me. But Babu froze in the NSD anniversary jacket he was curled inside. His torso hung in mid-air as he fell asleep on those metal waiting chairs, fixed permanently at a distance of 15 inches each.

It was the only time I could remember, sitting in a hospital waiting-room that had no walls. In between the snatches my eyes slumped into, I caught the figures of women, spread on the cold floor- waiting in their snores. My limbs hurt from being confined to a chair. But there had been hospital nights before. Only, not so cold and hungry. Hungry. I hadn't had the time to eat the previous night.

So, Babu and I headed to the cafeteria at 4 am, our feet just a drag. A man, blinking his sleep away, sold us milk coffee from the vending machine and two slices of bread pizza, which he quickly micro-waved and sliced into smaller pieces. We sat in a long hall, filled with black metal chairs, again with a 15 inches gap in-between. Maybe 10 inches. Even in that anxiety over ajee's wheezing, her rising potassium level and the plummeting sodium level, the bread pizza tasted better than the New York Firewood pizza I had had a few days ago, between pamperings at a beauty parlour.

Hunger and mud-spattered toenails- what things to remember from a sad day like this.    

belly dancing

at this talk with a group of college kids yesterday, a girl asked me if it wasn't the responsibility of women as well, to change the way women are portrayed in the media. isn't it also them, who should refuse to be portrayed as sex objects?

why always blame men for everything?

i long

for something like you today
-terse.

Saturdays with Mamu

I take Mamu for granted. I seem to think she'll always be young, beautiful and strong. But I look at her closely and it's not true. Mamu is ageing. Her hair has more gray than ever and is more wavy than my baby curls and her breasts are sagging swiftly- toward her navel.
My Saturdays with her have not happened for a while. Because I take her for granted. But I watch her today- around baajyaa-ajee, around Kanchu, I watch Kaaley follow her down the road. She forgets to remove the apron sometimes, after cooking. Mamu is ageing.