🐳 Hemingway 👴

For forty four minutes today I napped

Dreamless, divine, sweet and deep 

I forget this occasionally:

Control is a futility, in matters of sleep

Elastic is the mind but oh it snapped

Might give into the shortlived weep

Then it is easy to accept resolutely:

Climbing's hard, when the hill is steep

My joints jolt, the ones that are capped

But the knee can do with some upkeep

With this I continue my sprint strongly:

Keep moving, or become a scrap heap

Potential isn't missing, but untapped 

Examine inwards and be ready to leap

The point I must propose pressingly:

With direction, what is sown can reap

My words lay vulnerable; unwrapped

Seeking validation, I risk a peep

But then I epiphanize suddenly:

What I have, is what I choose to keep

A love note to ideas

I worry about -

- not having enough space for you

- the available mindspace not being fertile enough for your nourishment. Like a middle aged Indian aunty fussing over a houseguest

- the confines of my mind not being enough for you to be conjured with the sass and spontaneity they show in movies. No fiery a-HA! moment would be possible because of all my careful caution

- not being open enough and rejecting you without reasoning

You're just an idea who will -

- pay only as much rent as would be the agreement 

- take up only so much space as per my consent 

- continue your tenancy for only as long as I want you around 

- stay conspicuously absent unless I bring you front and center to the living room of my head

You're just an idea who could -

- breathe new life into old, likely rusty, chains of thought

- delicately or assertively rubbish old comfortable notions 

- change the way I feel about the morning sun 

- radically impact my sense of humour about life 

- fuck with my deep seated complacency 

I see you for what you are while you're outside my mind -

- defenseless

- standing on just the one leg

- hopeful

- a stranger not entirely in disguise

- cleverly trying to create familiarity 

- as if you need me more than I do

But if I let you in, all I have to do is -

- welcome you with fortification and whole hearted acceptance

- not question you or be so suspicious of your motives

- understand how potent you could be to aligning or altering the other solid ideas you will make your acquaintance

So I just need to be aware of the fact that

- you can only be brought to life with my adoption of you

- you can't sustain outside of my brain for too long as time is fleeting 

- you rarely make a stop like meteors from a big bang

- you chose, of a billion other minds, mine to visit

- you're already mine, regarless of whether you'll belong in my mind 

- you are precious, and you have purpose, just like the mind you intend to inhabit

If I had to make sense I wouldn't ask for your 2 cents

Where are the holes in this smooth blanket?

Forgotten like long buried potted plants from the nursery

Woe is me again as I'm 

Swollen and puffy

from dental surgery

Could you snooze & doze till noon?

Dreams of lavender fields

& cherry blossom trees

Sunday morning feeling

all the way

through September and June

What can be scary at this height?

Friskiness and recklessness

feeling like buddies

Only and always, at the very edge

do I dare to recognize

my self inflicted plight 

Will we sit in pregnant, forebearing silence?

Observing with awe

new lines on each other's forehead

Like in a new school notebook

With every swoop of a tightly held pencil

a small imperceptible smile of confidence 

Would it be ridiculous to splurge on both a new guitar and piano?

The frilly white dress is hanging off the window sill in plain sight

My hair is fresh, too damp from my longish shower 

It's been 2 years since I wrote a song

So if you nod now, I may take that to positively mean "no"

Why do I love the logical?

You have to entertain the possibility of the wrong path

Simulate the path till the wrong end is seen in the mind's eye and ruled out 

So the satisfaction when you arrive at the right path is all the fruitier

And I like fruits and fal

Spot me some supper and send me on my way

1997

Sipping directly from a gigantic orange while in the backseat of the Jeep on the way to Abidjan

2000

Salivating over a box of mulberries in the Opel Corsa through the ghats on the way to Panchgani

2004

Stuffing myself with fresh Rabdi from a clay pot in the 2nd class sleeper train at Mount Abu station

2005

Snarfing down a quintessential NYC hot dog while admiring the Lady of Liberty on the Staten Island Ferry

2006

Sitting, mind simmering with steaming plastic containers of Gushtaba on my lap in the Shikara on Dal lake

2010

Sampling my first ever Starbucks gazing out of Star Ferry on the way to Tsim Sha Tsui

2011

Sharing a pack of Haldiram's Aloo Bhujiya on the bus to Mysore Palace

2013

Snacking on a Princessa candybar on the Polskibus to Krakow

2013

Satiating my appetite with some Boots meal deal sandwiches on the London Tube to Camden Town 

2015

Scooping greedy bites of strawberry cheesecake icecream on a Ferry in Sydney's Circular Quay 

2016

Snarfing down a magazine coneful of Sukha Bhel on a Local train to Vashi

2017

Savouring a 7-Eleven Onigri while on the Shinkansen to Shibuya

2018

Snarfing down an unhealthy amount of Skittles while riding shotgun into Flagstaff

2019

Swallowing handfuls of roasted whole peanuts on the Neeta bus to Pune

Spontaneous condensation

I inhale slow and deep

Imagining the oxygen in the air

grow heavy

Heavy enough to dampen

like a single lonely rain cloud

Then lay a generous drop on my parched tongue

Making waves with my arms

every time I decide it's too cold 

Or too hot

Or when my own pulse is too loud in my ears

Thinking about counting how long it would have been since I last saw sand

Felt it beneath greedy soles succumbing into the gravity of the low tide

158 days 

If my math is right 

Since I wore shoes

with socks

Or heels with straps

Held my hair to my ears

during a windy morning

auto rickshaw ride

Sipped cheap, overly sweet tea

from styrofoam cups

Out of a whim

From just finding a 10 rupee note from the bum pocket

Rode an elevator with perfume and body odour both wafting

Scents I can never place

but were familiar as the wind itself

Walked on a busy footpath

on the side of incoming traffic

Just for the thrill of it

And get much more than I would like to seek

158 days since I crossed any road

Seen the lazy yet loving stray dogs

Sat in an Uber

Used my trusty green umbrella

I hold on for too long in this thought canopy

I will will sleep

to barge into this insomniac mind

Despite the thirsty throat plus swelling bladder

But then I give up

Pry open unwilling lids tightly squeezed out of stubbornness

Drink that damn glass of water and empty my bladder

Get back under the covers

And the cycle, at my behest, begins again 

👵👴

Where with a sea view and vows we started our nuptials full of joy and plenty of pale ale

Now we slither into separate tiny cots in an oldage home forgotten with faceless nurses, the fabric of our skin, breadlike and stale

Where once we would play online chess through bites of cheddar sandwiches, our unwashed selves hidden through the internet's comfortable veil

Now we stand too close in this infirmary bath sharing soap, sliced through the middle, all thanks to your weirdly sharp big toenail

Where being puzzled and brainstorming in the middle of an airport terminal: was it egg or chicken that came first and why the chicken crossed the road or was it rail

Now we samba with fingers on the shared bedside table, my phalange chubbiness against your papery thumbs, until our eyes give unto sleep, surrender to fail

Where it started sixty seven years ago with me checking you out and began to end fifty nine years later when you checked us into this jail

Now every day is a Sunday repeated in shadows of sunsets I half remember as nice and you misremember as too yellow: sights from that boat left alone to sail

Do Re Mi Poemy

Abuzz and alight 

Listening to the night 

Tired but alive and so I decide to write

Shall I suggest that you please mind my thought canopy

Where ideas are microwaved rather than slow roasted, maybe not your fancy

Where the imagination has an amazing line of credit with no extra fee

Obsessive tongue cleaning, brushing with soft bristles while trying to be quiet

The act of teeth brushing always significant, luxurious, full of bite

It's the hours after dark when morning tasks somehow feel quite right

Busied by nocturnal loveliness at the edge of the bed where I'm sat

Watching the papaya tree, her branches distressed by the clutches of an awkwardly tiny baby bat

Just how much damage could the little one do? I attempt to work out the math

What's this life for, if not for questions that probe deep, that dare to seek?

Contemplating the cons of a templatized week

Amidst a depraved world with pouring news in varying degrees of bleak

What a small existence is mine, castled in with all this comfort in sight

No flight or fight and no need for might

Trying to be meaningful typing into a 6 inch screen with a blue filter so not so bright

Another day ticked off on the wall calendar tomorrow, another passing date

I have to, tomorrow, wake up at eight Despite being in bed early I end up sleeping late

I'll be back in a cushioned chair with all the peeking of my growing bottom parts

Somewhere soldiers are laying down their lives on battle lines, so dutiful in their hearts

While on my keyboard nimble mindlessness of fingers tap away, creating pivot charts

I was born with stubby toes and that's why I'm called stubborn

I'm supposed to get better at the stuff I like and I'm decent at, but sometimes it's better to unlearn

To let things loose, to allow the alarm to snooze, to be on yourself, a little less stern

Pretty Petri

When was the last time you allowed your own mind to think for itself?

Should you?

The mind is like a petri dish

Delicate like the glass it's made from

See through (at least to you) like it's transparent

It's also completely open

Until you choose to culture bacteria

But in this case, your thoughts

Your thoughts are like bacteria

Some good for you, some bad enough to infect the good ones

But it's up to you to mind that petri dish

So no, you shouldn't.

This morning I woke up at 5.41 AM 

The first day of June 

I woke to the ever sweet smell 

of Petrichor

Seeing puddles and very insistent drops falling steadfastly into them 

The first rain of the year is the very first rain for so many baby birds

Bird moms and dads talk about the first rain with gushes of excitement 

Baby bird minds imagine delighting at pretty clear droplets falling down before ever seeing it

I saw a video about how if you give an egg to a dog, they would be very careful not to crack or drop it

Orphaned baby birds probably instinctively feel joy when they see their first rain, without the preparation to feel it

Firsts are so memorable

The first, distinct time I learnt what's right and left, directionally, that is

I was in the second standard and sitting in the far right of the classroom 

The teacher was doing some sort of cute morning exercise with us

We were all standing and swaying about

She said, "go right" and I went left

I remember so clearly because my bench partner went right, toward me

Looking beyond him, so did the rest of the classroom

I know what's right today because of that day 

Small hand reached out, and index finger pointing to the wall to the right of me 

All microsecond flashbacks

Conjured every consecutive time I was asked to go right, almost till I was old enough to know without the visual cue

Winnie the Talking Poo(c)h

I thought I saw a piece of chocolate on the ground

"That's poop, no doubt" said my good old hound

When he was a little 4 month old puppy, abandoned, he lay in a dirt mound

My little Winnie, in a white plastic bag, with unimaginable cruelty was he bound

If it wasn't for his plea, if it wasn't for that extraordinary sound 

The words "Help me" would have been lost, in the city hubbub, they'd have drowned

A happy day that was, for a forever home Winnie finally found

I named him so, because he won our hearts, and was thus rightly crowned

Talking dog or not, I couldn't have imagined a cooler, more loving family member around

His best talent, however, went beyond his vocab, it's the speed at which food he downed

After fourteen years of gorging mouthfuls of meat by the pound

I trust his sense of smell and walk past that chocolate coloured poop, during our breezy afternoon round

Wham Bam

I drew him a diagram

Explaining the value I derived from being active on Instagram

He said it was a total sham

That so much of my time be devoted

to content created by a phone's cam

But I'm not in it for the glam 

Whiningly I expressed, aching for

a pop of diazepam 

At War with Words

Do you remember?
Words were the first friend you made
When you were on your own as a child of nine
When reading time at boarding school was once a week in that Hogwarts-like library
Your journey with words has been long and enduring
From being a passive reader of them
To a voracious writer of them

Writing is embedded like a video on a page in your soul
It’s up to you keep that video on autoplay, or mute, or to comment it out
You can’t erase it though, try as you might
It’s your burden to bear and prize to ply

The desire to turn away from the ambiguity of authorship, or to wish for your vocabulary to shrink, these are all very escapist

No one ever warns you or prepares you for the tsunami of words coming at you, coming from you
You think you can be absolved of your art,
But it’s that very art that keeps your head on your shoulders
You know you can’t resist the seduction of it
So go ahead, I’ve just filled up your Faber Castell with the blackest black ink that you love
You have a duty to yourself to fulfill

I have a lot of Sunday poems lol

If this were a regular Sunday
I know exactly where my whim would take me
I’d not be living with trepidation
Imagining I’m Corona positive
Just because the Dunzo guy touched my hand for a milisecond

If this were a regular Sunday
I wouldn't be moping around with a permanent scowl
It’s like ear wax in the ears of Robinson Crusoe
Would he have asked his man Friday to fetch a twig?
Maybe fashioned a earbud from soft yellow petals?

If this were a regular Sunday
I wouldn’t be obsessed with sketching eyes
Filling in the eye balls
Making sure that I leave a hole of white around the dark iris so the eyes look realistic
I’m always enamoured by the symmetry of eyes
How two things that never see eye to eye - literally - can be so aligned, alike, attuned…

If this were a regular Sunday
I wouldn't be marinating in last night's pyjamas till late afternoon
Closing my eyes in the silence
I wouldn't be concentrating long and hard
Imagining I'm far away without a mask and free as free can be

If this were a regular Sunday
I’d be on the beach about 432 steps away
The sea breeze wouldn’t ask for permission
"Oh, could I sweep you away?"
It’d casually threaten my growing frame and then give up for a more mobile prospect ahead

Wrote - Woven

There’s something about us this Sunday
I can’t put my finger on it,
But then again, I can’t put a finger on you

You’re a few hundred kilometers away in your land-locked city
You miss the sea breeze, you say

Being so far apart
Silences can be imagined
Manifested from the lack of face-to-face

I can sense your trepidation
There is such an urgency to reunite
I'm symmetric to you and we're on the same page

Despite the distance, we manage to hold on to each other
I write you 5 words off the top of my head
And you weave me a sweet story

Sunday Sleep

Some days, like today, as you wake up, you’re still asleep
Seep induced lucidity stays till the very first sip of chai
But then after the chai cup is rinsed
After the slow Sunday shower is taken
Somehow sleep, like a pesky pest, tries to sneak back in
Sometimes in the linger of a blink a few seconds too long
Or in the meditative reflection of staring at the "enter" key on your keyboard while the laptop fires up

It’s always those few minutes before sleep, I find, that are the most delicious
The randomness of theories only the confines of your own mind can comprehend

On Sundays like these, I like to take a nap not around acceptable nap-times
The more unusual the time, the better
When you nap from 6 PM to 7 PM
Or even 11 AM to 12 PM
That’s when your mind really reveals itself to you through complex dreams, or indescribably deep, coma-like sleep

Post Lockdown

This time will be different

When I take the elevator to go downstairs after work
I’ll not linger on the street waiting for the auto
There’s no need to rush
Taking the long way home
I’ll do the 15 minute walk

When my dreams wake me up at 5.43 AM three days in a row
I’ll stay up
I’ll fight the laziness inside
Grab my pink Reeboks that have been unworn for months
I’ll do the morning jog alongside sleeping dogs

When mom’s toothpaste is finally over
I’ll replenish 2, instead of being forced to use the one
I’ll relish the fluoride goodness of my Colgate
And it will bother me no more that she presses on the top of the tube as I’ll be pressing down

When I hear your voice change
When it goes quiet like it used to
I’ll go quiet too
Fighting my stupid impulses
I’ll finally find the strength to leave it alone

When iTunes accidentally shuffles the Lockdown playlist
I’ll smile with knowing
I’ll think of all the insomnia, the longing, the restlessness
And then I’ll hit "next"

💙

For the longest time I’m seeing blue

I sleep facing the window
I used to sleep facing the curtains
But I flipped to the cooler side, where I can be right under the fan
I happen to be right in front of a blue light
I see it when I’m just about to doze off
But it’s starting to feel like it sees me just the same

I dream in black and white
Because I have no memory of colour when I recall my dreams
But off late my dreams are kaleidoscopic
Maybe it’s because I’ve been sleeping in
When the sunlight warms my eyelids
Somehow when you have bright light over closed lids
It looks like the colour blue
And that’s how I dream the blue

The days bleed into the next
The nights blend into the next
And I feel blue

Seeing blue
Dreaming blue
Feeling blue
And today I’m even wearing blue

Blue has been a mood
It’s been a song that I can’t stop singing
A verse I can’t stop writing

Pop goes the Weasel and Poof goes the Pandemic

Pen your plans on paper

Push people outside your personal perimeter 

Please prevent panic

Percolate positivity through this pandemic

Predict the passage of this peril

Perfect and pour energy into a promising skill

Peace will prevail with the power of prayer

Stay poised despite the persistent pressure

Practice patience and persevere

Life is still beautiful with pain and pleasure

Pages from our poignant past is a preview

A peek into profound suffering mankind's been through

Perhaps what keeps us from plundering

Is knowing that this peculiar pest is perishing

You are predisposed to go participate in this particular predicament

Prudent is the person who prioritises proactive imprisonment

Proclamations in print or in the press

Will point you toward the path of distress

Promoting self isolation isn't policed properly

Private safety is pivotal so prepare for a casualty

Pertaining to products, pouches and packages

Preserve your pantry with prerequisites

Pensively ponder your precious privileged life

Priceless is your position, your lack of strife

Play it safe and protect your family

Put away the passports, bring out those puzzles finally

Close your premises and pools and cancel your parties 

Ping your pals with puns and cover up when you sneeze

Being passive is a pistol in this pertinent period

Being active can lead to piles of bodies in a pit

Perceive this not as poetry but as a prescription

That is pretty with P's and rhymes and alliteration

Love = Mom

I was 12 years old and my family and I were on our trip to chilly Jammu to visit a temple up very high in the mountains. 

I was afraid of the climb: the almost 10 kilometre hike up the mountain. So my parents put me on a horse to ascend to the very top. On the way up a particularly steep horse path, I happened to look back to see very dense darkness of a pine forest.

It was beautiful, no doubt, but considering it was 12 noon and the rest of the landscape was sunny and bright, that one glance down was quite breathtaking in a thrilling way. 

Almost instantly after I saw this dark forest foliage, the horse bent down low; a misstep that could have very easily cost me my life. 

My heart started beating 10,000 beats per minute and I simply couldn't calm down. I couldn't say anything either as I was all on my own and I had to brave. I was a young girl alone in the mountains and I didn't want to draw any unwanted attention to myself.

In another 15 minutes or so we reached the very top. It was bustling. It was so crowded and I felt so alone. All I wanted was my mom. 

I started walking towards the canteen and to my utter surprise, I saw my mom walking towards me. And my mom was having almost exactly the same expression I wore of being lost and in despair. 

We finally reunited in an embrace I can never forget. It is one of the most amazing moments of my childhood.

The best part is also the meal we had soon after. It was a traditional Punjabi meal of Rajma chawal for 9 rupees a plate. It was perfect in spices, and I can still remember the taste of the thick starchy rice. No meal is complete without dessert and our mother daughter treat of the day was some amazing Malai kulfi.

Till today whenever I have either Rajma chawal or Malai kulfi I am taken back to the top of that mountain, sat besides my mummy in the crowded canteen.

Travel if you must, but at the speed of light and thought too

The moving light is heading to the still light

From all the way up in the stratosphere my guess is that's a car and that's a home

But the moving light doesn't stop at the still light

The car doesn't go home

The moving light is moving, still moving and then I don't see it anymore as my flight is moving much faster

All this happens in less than one second

It's enough to spark this idea that maybe the moving light doesn't need to stop moving

And more importantly

Why did it I want it to run perfectly and then stop and join and unite and meet the still light?

Maybe the still light is happy to stay still

The moving light is happy to keep moving till it decides it wants to be still

Maybe the still light moved a lot too like the moving light did

So then why am I wanting the moving light to collide with another moving light and come together to become one big light?

Maybe that's how stars work too

In the beginning there were two stars that collided into one big star and then the combined star pushed out two more and then those two stars collided eventually to make the second star and so on

But that's like star incest

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🌻

I know what song that smell is

The second I get a sniff, it takes me back to that beat

I can hear it resounding in my very bones

A connection too profound to discern

And to go off and reverse the gears:

Should there be a Shazam for scents

Perfumes would sell more than they do

Not knowing what the scent is that triggered the full blown musical in your head is frustrating

Does "within the hour" mean before that specific hour ends or within sixty minutes? Or names that end with the letter "R"?

Does "bi-weekly" mean every 2 weeks or twice a week? Or an Indian maid that comes in weekly?

If I like the sunset more than the sunrise does that mean I like sitting down more than getting back up?

When you find purple bruises on your body it's such a revealing moment because you realize your body is so vast and there is so much buzzing activity - heart being pumped; uterian lining being shed; a follicle under your chin sprouting out a tiny peep of hair. Your body doesn't need you to sign papers, to authorize the many micro deals, joint ventures, contracts, and agreements that your organs make with each other. Your body demands the respect you forget to give it.

Thin wispy brown spiders that eat black ants are the very example of gluttony

To eat what you can't possibly metabolise

That spider has been attempting to do it for over 28 hours now

Still folding the dead black wire-like body into two and yet somehow, like elastic, it retracts back to its original shape

I am amazed by a lot and seek amusement a lot

But I am also sometimes seeking nothing

I am fascinated with the idea that everytime you begin to empty, you are ready to fill; that somehow every time you free or quiet your mind, you have more, not less. It's like your brain grows when you relax it.

Give or Take, it's as it should be

Give

Give into me

I am darkness

I am where the unexpected lives

I am also where you archive things

Things you thought you'd move on from

Things you knew you could revisit later

Take

Take from me what you must

I'll share the thoughts that tickle you

I'll share your favourite stashes of hoarded emotion

I'll share the stuff that makes you smile in a sad way

Stuff you felt you never needed but want anyway

Stuff you got to have, compulsively, unhealthily

Bring

Bring me what I like

I like things

I like stuff too

I like things and stuff of my own, believe it or not

Things and stuff that I think I want

Things and stuff that I know I need