Shimmer

You know all, don't you? Now, tell me why.

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After a day spent at work, when I leave for home, as the lights from the streetlamps along the path coruscate dimly off the sand swept glass facade, I always notice a couple wait, outside the front gate, hand in hand, barely audible words said and replied, one pair of eyes holding the other, the world around as diffused as a white blur, as vague as the mirage rising off a heated tarmac . A strange couple is what I remark to myself as I wait ten feet away from them for our bus to arrive. Although her sunken eyes and pale complexion suggest a far eastern forefather, I feel she is from somewhere far closer home. I remember how she looked when she had just arrived in the city, when they were yet to meet: her face was as devoid of colour and life as the sideA of a rift riven band. Things have improved now, and a year of sprucing up and addition of right colour and cream have succeeded in suppressing whatever little beauty her face had to provide and stimulate a look that would help her gain greater acceptance among those she wishes to spend time with. He, meanwhile, is far taller than her, blacker eyes, sinews popping out of limbs, clothes that rarely crumple - a build and carry suggestive of far too much time spent in the gym and in front of the mirror. Neither are they the first couple to wait outside an office nor will they be the last. Despite their differing characteristics and nature, they seem comfortable in each other's presence. Sometimes I wonder if it is all a pretence they want to maintain until it gets to them and they admit to each other that it is all a pretence. I do not know why.

Beside us, cars and buses stream in and pause till the seats in them are occupied. Their drivers, with their tobacco spittle stained shirts, well oiled hair that turn rust coloured as they drive around the city with the window open, often get down from their vehicles and cluster together beside any of their rundown vehicles and speak in hushed tones amidst a lot of limb stretching, yawning and the occasional passing of a cigarette. Those whom their vehicles carry, their names are rarely known to them - conversations are rarely struck and at best avoided.

The couple usually board the same bus that I do. Although we wait alongside each other, it has never struck me nor them to speak a few words to each other. We recognize each other by sight alone. I wonder what their names are. Our ID tags are wound and dropped into our bags as soon as we exit our office and they are too caught up in themselves once they board the bus and contrive somehow to avoid venturing a word or two with those around them.

The bus drops us two streets away from my home. The driver always struggles to navigate his vehicle around our neighbourhood and has to move, nudge and literally curse it with an unceasing stream of nastiness, us lined up one behind the other on the footboard of the bus, fully cognizant of the fact that had we not been travelling in it, the driver would have been left to steer his vehicle in bus-friendly environs. We get down and walk away in directions opposite and ways unknown to the other.

Our names are not known to us. We live nearby yet neither our houses nor the way to reach them are known to the other. What do we opine of each other? Nothing? Does it matter?

Seam

Dirges do not accompany these dead,

heads immersed in madness lay down the laws

- draws open wide their eyes and holds them apart,

depart not, drift not apart - where the wails have gone?

- Don black instead, indulge in sullen stares at the sky above.

Doves come by and grip the dead's floating tress,

bless-ed winged ones prefer to fly off decaying spawls,

caul shadows over October's shallow seam,

gleam like stars across a sky hooded in grey,

stay, stay - a few lingering clouds call by,

try, ignore and fly back over the white lane,

lanes with no trails to guide,

glide in silence over these lands too painful to rest,

rest not, lest the thread come apart.

The Three Tableaux

The three Tableaux, right beside the ferric brown arch of the city gates, the philosopher mentioned to us disciples once, will allow those with an affinity to walk through it to pause and ponder, if only for an infinitesimally small period of time, what their life might be if they were to take heed of its contents. It is very much like the tacky Government ad - intended to educate every citizen but failing to hold the attention of even one. This one fared better; it held mine.

The three sentences below were scribbled across the bottom of the tableaux, providing a semblance of context to pictures that otherwise might have been taken to be the scrawls of a fidgety mind.

Today is one of those days when you will end up doing what you have always accused your fellowmen and women of being guilty of.

Learn to starve. It will come in handy when you don't want to eat what you are served.

Thoughts might like to travel faster than light but words prefer to walk.

Ficciones

Frames of fiction fall oft an inch or two short,

an empty pane having to cede and pander to reality.

Authorial fingerprints smudge the written word,

sentences are collapsing bridges requiring columns of real meaning to hold them up.

Paws of memories advance through the fictional realm,

shuffling over the blind spots, the present fudged

by what is not.

A Trap

There is a trap, a rattrap,

wielding a passive lure -

like all traps,

a thick slice of kernel between its lips,

set like the one in the bedroom,

beneath the bed where mom and dad sleep,

and the other in the kitchen,

next to the aluminium canister filled with sugar,

and another beside the fridge,

the Amul butter in it, melting faster

than the candle lit in the living room,

where the family is assembled,

blinkered, in silence, abrupt, around the table

the table with a remote control on it, awaiting

the resuscitation, of pixelated images

of life peeled, bleached which is now ,

like the visor of the Splendour

parked outside, bright red which was

once, when there were no rats.

Still the guitar gently weeps

Carlos Santana has covered rock classics in his latest album Guitar Heaven. Here, along with India.Arie and Yo-Yo Ma, he covers, what in my opinion is the greatest song of them all.

Arrival

The first word is written with great trepidation, as if a wrong word might sicken the paper. Despite innumerous tries, you never are sure. The paper registers whatever you write - an axiom you fail to grasp. Sometimes the words blot, causing the ink to drift towards an untraceable drain.

The second word is written with greater composure. The assurance that the mute paper provides - Thou shall not be spit at - spurs you to write more.

The third and the fourth words are written with an ease that causes you to pause and review the words. Something is wrong. You stop now and ponder. The pen is no more held by the fingers of your left hand. The paper looks at you in askance. Write more, it seems to implore. But all you do is to crumple it and fling it over your head.

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Walk.

Puddles perceptibly dot the streets and hold the light from the lamps along the road. They are almost in a straight line, a discipline that seems alien yet local to the surroundings. Slush of the brown non snow variety; the cloth bits heaped outside the tailor's; the stink from the just emptied green bins, the refuse gorged by the bin truck moving away, its sides dripping liquid waste; the flower stalls, their owners spinning and readying garlands of rose, jevanthi and jasmine, flowers whose fragrance are a great antidote to the stink of the aforementioned truck, flowers which seem bathed and fresh and willing to be woven over a string, at such a feverish pace that you feel invigorated, despite the odd hours, despite the fact that you are returning from work; the curvy bits of tomatoes and onions that seem to stream from the chop worked by the steady hand of the bakery help; the watchman outside the ATM whose snore is as content as that of a man disdainful of the money held within the machine; the attendant asleep on the bench under the awning of a 24 hour clinic, the green curtain outside the doctor's cabin buffeted by the air from the table fan beside the empty chair of the doctor.

You turn left, clamber up the stairs of a house you often hesitate to call your home, change to your night clothes and try and fall asleep as the sun is dutifully awakened by the rooster's call.

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She threatens to slip from your dreams onto your reality through the tiny sliver that memories and hope tear open.

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