Irresolution

[The entry for this week's 3WW prompt. Thanks to Teal for helping out with the editing]

---

Everywhere, I see shapes grimace

into punctuation marks.


Tear shaped pauses I spot here:

raised ones curving along the spines of dogs asleep on the road;

inverted ones drifting along the cheeks of

a four year old.


Full, solid stops a few are - fraying at the edges,

disintegrating;


wrinkling, white surfaces console

me on a bright night;


singed ones,

letting out phantasmal shapes in the dark,

offer quick fixes.


Sidebar legend:

lemon green marks strangers;

ashen ones hide those we seek.

---

Today, I misread the print:

'the universe likes to grow forever';

grow into what I ask ?

---

Here, we await a punctuation

at the corners,

stumbling towards it

in the made up darkness of our streets,

ready to believe tombstones will

hold us up to light,

phase out the wrecks in us at last,

and relieve us of our monochromatic breath.


But surprised we are, when our

souls boomerang to life after death.

---

Ka

Your name is Ka. Literature abounds with your namesakes. You are named by your father in his only ever moment of inspiration . We all came out of Gogol's overcoat- a sedate Irfan Khan explains to a baffled Kal Penn the rationale behind his name in that movie. Your father doesn't bother you with an explanation. You find that out yourself.

You step into a school just as the first shower of June sweeps the city. Your rain coat forgotten, you are drenched when you step into your class. My name is Ka, you introduce yourself to your fellow classmates. They laugh at you as only your classmates ever can. You are not adroit enough to handle it and break down. More laughter booms through the class. Even the rain stops and greets you with a hearty roar of its own.

Why is he named Ka?

He is such a bore that his parents forgot to name him fully.

Why is he named Ka?

One of his ancestors is a crow.

And so on.

Their cruelty doesn't deter you from being cruel to Vidya.

Vidya is fat. Takes after her mother. A shade fatter that is all. But fat nonetheless.

You taunt her. Call her a cylinder. She never breaks down. She fusses over you. You have too chubby cheeks to be taken seriously, she says. You do not understand. You stand in front of the mirror and try and pinch your cheeks but the pair never come off.

She has chubby cheeks too. Ever frozen ice cubes lodged at the far corner of your cheeks, you remark to her one day. She doesn't like them and asks you to help. You think of melting them. Eureka! She obliges. You drink your glass of milk and go through the plan with your mother during breakfast. Your mother stops you from proceeding further. A few terse words and slaps do the trick.

Vidya is sad.

She has curly hair. A pair flank her forehead, undulating along her temples. She wants them removed or straightened. You suggest creasing them. You spot the electric iron unattended to at a corner of your father's room. She obliges. You plug it in and fiddle with the panel on it. Cotton, Linen, Wool. There is no mention of hair. You ask her. The two of you decide on linen. Line-n, you pronounce it. The light on the iron blinks on even as your mother rushes into the room and grabs the iron from you. Slaps. She cries because she is sad.

Your father predicts you will be a writer. A writer of lofty ideals and immense ability. You do not understand the words. You impress your English teacher and very soon, you become her favourite. You do not bother to learn other subjects and sneer at them. The rest of your class learn to ignore you. You survive class only because Vidya is your bench mate. You like her. She likes you. 1=1. 2=2. Your class 5 life is filled with such simple equations.

You learn to love English. Shakespeare greets you in the morning, Tagore walks with you to school and at night, Twain reads as you drift to sleep. You talk in aphorisms and wonder why sonnets cannot have more than fourteen lines. You learn to be spare with words. Your teachers concede that you have talent. Your father is happy. You too are. Vidya jumps with joy.

Not so far in the future, you walk home alone one day, your school bag slung over your shoulders and your shoes held in your left hand by the pair of laces. Your mother waits outside your house. You shove the shoes under the shoe stand by the door and drop the bag on the sofa.

You lock the front door as your mother kick starts the scooter.

Your mother paces a ground floor corridor as you try to resolve the meaning of the giant red cross staring at you from the wall opposite. There is a door next to it, opaque glass save for a transparent perforation right in the middle; a view hole you try hard to jump and look through. Cold air greets you from the underside of the door. Does it contain the breath of someone dying?

Your mother leads you into the room. Vidya is lain on the bed. White tubes run across her, dipping in and out of her body. You spot a bag filled with a yellow liquid strapped to the side of her bed. You run out and retch into the basin outside the room. Your mother is crying. So is her father. She beckons you to come nearer to her. Your mother prods you to hold her hand. You are too shaken to react. You run your frigid, feeble fingers over her forehead and start to bawl. She smiles. She points at the curls alongside her temples. You hold and try to straighten them. She winks at you. You smile through your tears.

You walk out of the room along with your mother. The door is closed behind you. You jump to look at her through the view hole. Your mother wipes her tears and lifts you so that you can look at her.

You spot each other and grin.

You do not write a word after that.

Prelude

[My entry for this week's 3WW prompt]

---

What could arise out of a simple question asked of a stranger, a question fielded about an address on a rumpled piece of paper, a question put forward by a woman while walking along a footpath covered with leaves led dither by the busy wind? A revelation? Or a bait?

The man walked around the bin capsized just to his right, its content strewn out of its mouth and out across the sand, the stench unbearable but forgettable by habit. He jumped over the plastic bag that had flown the farthest, the few paper packets of stale food contained within interesting the limp and rabid dog presently hopping over milk crates - upturned and blue in colour, the blue of vivacity- the crates equidistant, consecutives just far enough for a human leg to stretch and reach, an arrangement necessitated by the pool of water left behind by the previous night's half an hour rain.

They met.

He was asked the address. Turn left and the fourth shop from the... There lay the dilemma. She mustn't be told.

Friday dressing for him consisted of a pair of jean torn at the right ankle, only there and an yellow t-shirt hurriedly washed the previous night and left to face the heat of an early morning sun. He didn't bother to press them. He was to wear the work overalls at the factory and for the journey on the footboard of the bus, with one leg of his hovering over the road and the fingers of his right hand barely grasping the cold rails of the window nearest to the door, this worked.

She knew the days but their occurrence had lost their significance long ago. Only one thing mattered: the recurrence of the date on which the most singular event of her life had taken place. 72 hours separated her from that day.

There goes an educated man. One who would bother to pause and answer. Surely!

He did.

He read the address on the sheet of paper, its letters black and all in capital, shy, spaced out far enough to indicate a writer unsure of her own literacy, blurred by the sweat that had leaked from the afore held hand. The address was familiar to him. He held the paper with his left hand as his right hand unconvincingly drew a map of the route from their station to the place quested after as he explained the same to her. She wasn't to understand.

The statue at the centre of the square...whose statue was it? He had forgotten. Shiny. Silver? Bald. A true leader. No spectacles worn. Was there a beard? The pose and poise of a masterly orator perfectly captured. A hand fused to the hip and the other grasping the sides of an invisible lectern. His pose in his final photo? Just before the bullet had silenced him. But who was he and why, despite passing by it twice every day, did his name escape him at this moment? Why did it seem so important?

As the route was being explained, time stood by her for a moment, allowing her thoughts to take over and tangle themselves up as she appraised the person standing before her. An apparition of her seemed to queue up beside time and appraise him too, as if the distance and relative solitude mattered and could offer a different perspective. The past of a stranger-how much could be deduced from the first meeting? It mattered, the accuracy of this deduction, for she knew that the future with him could either be spent happily affirming positives or whining about the negatives.

The statue and its name were temporarily forgotten. Instead, he asked her to take a left, a right and then the third right and then...

She shook her head and made to grasp the paper.

The fourth store from the...

the?

...the liquor store.

A sense of propriety had prevented him from land-marking the liquor store. Poor man!

She smiled and thanked him.

He would be there. The man to whom she was tethered. The dog was busy with the stale food.

He hesitated before returning the smile.

Next moment, one of them moved away. The victim was left behind with the dog.
---

War

A bit of a delay. This is the 3WW entry for the previous week's prompt.


Forsaken limbs' trial

in the infernal;sculpted

praise-gentle or vulgar?

Let them be

From the footsteps of a bus,

the polymath proclaims:

Never erase those flashes of thoughts

that flicker in your mind.

Come rain or sun, like

hays from the meadows,

spread them out to shine.

Let them be and foment.

Free the reins and let loose the anarchy of chance.

In time, the traces left will coalesce

and ideas will arise from the subliminal trance.

Such Such are the joys

It makes for a strange experience this viewing of FIFA World Cup 2010 in India. India, because of the shambolic state of its football infrastructure, administration and development, has never been able to send a team to the World Cup. Football fans here have always had to make do with borrowed devotions ( the absence of any recognizably good footballing nation in the neighbourhood hasn't helped either). Hence, instead of debating the squad structure, agonizing over formations and fretting over tactics of the Indian National Team, we are forced to first choose whom to ally our allegiance with. It usually is Argentina, Brazil or England. Spain, by virtue of sizzling in Euro'08 has also staked a claim in recent times but come World Cup, the streets of Kolkata, Mallapuram and Marmagoa are usually bedecked with Argentine or Brazilian flags and jerseys (a cliche it is that passion for football overflows only in Bengal, Kerala and Goa but it is important to note that the recent exposure to EPL, UCL and La Liga has resulted only in more jersey sales and spawned good FIFA10 players in the rest of the country than footballers; it is deemed perfectly alright to soak up footballing knowledge and facts and play it all out on a PC).

So when a friend asked me yesterday as to who it is I am going to support this time, I could only offer a shrug in reply. Last time, my team of choice had been Italy ( the neutral's favourite - their off-field problems had made them underdogs and who would the neutral support but an underdog? Throw in the siege mentality as well - is it any surprise that they won?). This time around, nobody is enthusiastic about them for the team is almost the same with replacements coming in only for those who have retired over the past four years.

While Italy seems content to let the media and armchair pundits overlook them and downplay their chances, among the rest of the teams, quite a few should feel confident. The draw for this year's group stage coupled with untimely injuries to some of the stars has thrown open this year's tournament. There is Brazil with its relatively dour game play, their tactics built upon solid defensive work and excellent counterattacking skill instead of their legendary Joga Bonito^TM oomph. Then there is Spain so supremely blessed with talent that anything less than an appearance in the final will be taken a failure; there is Argentina with Lionel Messi (ah! what pleasure it would give the wise old enganche Veron to choose any one from Messi, Tevez, de Maria and Higuan/Milito to pass the ball to) ; then there are the usual suspects - Germany with a talented yet slightly inexperienced squad, France with their noxious manager Raymond Domenech and a squad still mired in schoolyard like squabbling, Portugal for whom Cristiano Ronaldo (yes, Him) has so far been utterly uninspiring, Holland with Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder (yes, Them who led their respective clubs to the UCL final with this, this and this). Since this is the first World Cup to be held in Africa, there is renewed hope for an African nation to emerge victorious for the first time. Ivory Coast (with their petulant Messiah Didier Drogba), Ghana and Cameroon are the favourites among the African participants.

And then there is England.

To the English media, the World Cup is the Holy Grail, the conquest of which, they appear convinced, has always been, and will remain, beyond their team. This is much evident from their incessant rambling about everything related to their team - the deficiencies of the current squad, their perceived inability to hold the ball and engage in any kind of tactical buildup play, their positional indiscipline on the field and behavioural failings off it. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to think of the English players as Big Brother house occupants for such is the level of media scrutiny there. A win still comes with its attendant hyperbole, but this time around, everyone is seeking to mute it or deflate their own expectations. Sometimes it seems they would have been gladder had their team never made it to the World Cup finals at all.

Despite the air of fatalism that pervades the English camp, other countries are still wary of England for they are coached by Fabio Capello, a man whom everyone loves to imagine to be as strict as Eric Blair's schoolmaster.

It was presumed after the ignominy of failing to qualify for Euro 08 that discipline, hard work and selflessness were the attributes sorely lacking in the English setup and Capello was drafted specifically to inculcate these values in the players. They breezed past their opponents during qualification but their form since then has been wobbly and their recent performances suggest a regression to pre-Capello days. The media, who had slowly began to envisage that the steady if unspectacular performances might result in a run beyond the quarters, lost no time in performing a volte face and declaring that their team had as much chance as doing anything of note in the World Cup 2010 as discovering a nutritious meal in the local McDonalds' menu.

So it was with crackling nerves that the English players lined up against USA last Saturday to kick off their first match. Just around the fourth minute, their captain Steven Gerrard took a beautiful first touch and poked in the ball into the goal beyond the flailing hands of the American goalkeeper. England it seemed were intent on changing history. But not for long. Soon, they became complacent, their midfield slowly disintegrating under the relentless yet largely feeble pressure of the American attack. Around the 40th minute, from just outside the English penalty area, the American midfielder Clint Dempsey drove a weak shot towards the English goal. What should have been a regulation collect and throw resulted in this.

The howler seemed predestined to happen. At the half time whistle, Robert Green trudged back alone to the dressing room, utterly despondent at having conceded such a soft goal- yet another addition to the annals of infamy to which recent English goalkeepers seem intent on contributing. The game ended in a tame draw and their performance did everything to suggest that England had rediscovered its ability to contrive to lose from winning positions out of sheer complacency, overconfidence and lack of skill.

The England-USA game was preceded by a cracking game between South Africa and Mexico, the game provided the much needed initial momentum to the tournament. Other memorable matches in the first week include the 4-0 drubbing that Australia received at the hands of Germany, Argentina's 1-0 victory over Nigeria featuring the heroics of Vincent Enyeama, the Nigerian goalkeeper who did everything humanly possible to keep a fiery Lionel Messi from scoring a goal, South Korea's efficient dismantling of the famed Greek defence resulting in a comfortable 2-0 win and DPR of Korea's defiant display against Brazil, almost holding the Selcaos to a draw before losing out 2-1.

The matches so far seem curiously lacking in the spectacular with teams adopting cagey tactics and generally being unadventurous in approach. Hopefully, this will change once the final round of group matches take place for a few favourites might get knocked out, thus providing the drama and action, a tournament of this stature, richly deserves.

Thresh

[My entry for this week's 3WW prompt]

---

Yesterday,

amid the pouring rain,

in a building standing tall, unhidden,

a cup of coffee was had,

the most beguiling view of the sea admired,

the sea attired,

in the same blue as the sky.

In the mind of the one

engaged in a sempiternal roam,

a question naturally arose -

could he afford the same view

a day or two later?

The man with the answer,

a bard prepossessed with his noble shrine,

prevaricated thus:

to the immortal is known the age of the world

and to death is known the future.

In other words, no.