A Scene

Between two halves of sleeping comes a thought... Looking down from the airplane, I saw two ramose trees perfectly placed in the middle of a cropped square field. The wind must have been gentle if ineed there was wind, touching the spindley edges of the branches. The trunks were grey. There was a wintery solitude about them as they stood flickering between existence and non-existence as clouds danced between us. The green grass was ploughed around them creating a small oval of roughness. A small road went around the field and entered into a brick-making factory. Then the whole scene disappeared.

These are the moments when I remember Richard Bach and Illusions.

Sleep, perchance to dream.

What if?

Contrary to the normal custom, he did not wait for permission before walking in. He walked in after gently parting the curtains and without much ceremony, sat down across from my father. He was dark and short with his unparted curly hair shining with a generous application of oil. The wetness of his forehead was either excess oil rolling down or perspiration. Either way, it was shining in the government-regulation light in the room. it would indeed be so, to begin a story like this rather affectionately since I was not there. I don't even know if this is how it all happened, but sitting here thirty years later, I might as well imagine it so because it gives comfort to my memory and makes it come alive a little better. He began, then clearing his throat, staring at my father's bewildered face - not in the sort of way a rude man stares - but in a gentler way of the sages, sir, you are perhaps wondering who I am. I am not here for alms or with some scam to separate you from your money, and above all, I seek no favors from your office. I am just a passing astrologer with some predictions for your family that I thought I will pass on to you. I am not looking for any money, not in the least bit, but perhaps a cup of tea would be nice. As he spoke, his eyebrows moved up and down, the way two fish meeting each other accidentally in a fish tank. Two cups of tea were promptly ordered, just as they always are in government offices. A bell was perhaps rung, a man in khaki pants perhaps peered in, my father raised two fingers to make a sign of V and the khaki-pants then departed most obsequiously behind the curtain. Perhaps a cigarette was lit and my father, as he always did in his office, stared unsmilingly at thick files tied together with red ribbons while the visitor sat silently under the whirring fan waiting for his turn to begin. Such visitors were rare to his office to be sure, and when they did arrive, it was often with more notice and ceremony appropriate for favor-seeking. As soon as the tea appeared and the curtains closed behind them, the visitor cleared his throat to continue his conversation. You have a son and daughter, he said, without waiting for confirmation and the son is the oldest. My father agreed while thinking who in the world has told him this. Then the visitor dropped a ton of past-hints that no one else could have known to achieve some hard-earned credibility. Thus having captured his attention, he said abruptly quite like the way things happen in the horror movies when you least expect it, you know something, I want you to be warned of something. Your son and daughter will both die together when he is forty-two in a plane crash. That night, my father came home, and told his son, that is me of course - who was a rather bookish eight then - you see son, there was a man in my office and he claimed to be an astrologer. Then foolishly - because you ought not say such things to eight year-olds - but he did anyway; he was that sort of a fellow, he said that you will die in a plane crash at forty-two. Not a problem, I agreed vigorously, I just don't have to fly that year. This posed no problems to either of us at that moment, because in my household, flying was a very rare occasion, and those days in India, you flew only when you absolutely had to and it was a rare event. So keeping his son from flying for a year was not a problematic solution to the tricky problem for my father.

So here I sit in the lounge again - and I have taken a flight pretty much every other day this week or every day of the week - often more than one each day, and I think this is what I have to look forward to. A fiery death at the age of forty-two. I am not a believer of fate, astrology or God. So it is quite evident to me that the prediction from this random astrologer to father's office, the memory of which has stayed with me forever since, is nothing but pure rubbish and that I am going to live past forty-two and see my fifties with its accompanying midlife crisis and baldness. But then again, one in a while, the thought occasionally props up in my head:

What if he was right?

Silly Poem

a dream of Summer madness dies
under the weight of an untimely spring,
last of this impertinent winter,
a snowflake has gone meditating

Under the clouds stands a crane
waiting for rain drops
the wanton greens of spring
masturbate at the sight of sun

In this fine divide between seasons
I wait with my watch set to autumn

Cliff Notes on Travel

After logging more than twelve thousand miles of flying this week, I am exhausted. I lie awake in bed, but I cannot sleep. Too much to process and too much to digest.

Canada was cold, Argentina was warm, and it is snowing in the US. In Ricoleta, I had walked through the lanes of the national cemetery speaking on hushed tones into the phone. Each mausoleum was built like a house right next to another and everyoneone was interned overground and there they rest under the giant shadows of the city. City of the dead. There, without rents and changes of address they rest, generals, musicians, scientists, dictators and Eva Peron. I didn't feel the need for the sort of sad introspection one feels when one is normally walking through such places. I felt vacant.

Outside, I sat alone under a giant banyan tree. Its branches covered the whole park. There was an orthodox Jewish couple sharing a park bench. Next to me sat an old woman who had the looks of a retired lounge singer. It was hot and sunny. Even though summer was technically coming to an end, it felt like the middle of summer.

Later I walked on Avenia El Salvador looking for paintings. There was a jeans store that looked like a church and a shirt design shop which only has clothes in "Small" size. The waitress in the Asian fusion restaurant was pretty and could have passed off as a Bengali. Her ear was pierced at a wrong spot, almost too close the face. The soup was so hot it made me finish two bottles of water.

Later in another country, the emmigration officer questioned me about why I was hopping around so much. There was snow in the ground and I was cold. Airport was full of bearded Pakistani types in Southwest Frontier costume.

Altogether it is a happy week.

Buddha At The Traffic Light

"There are only three sins - causing pain, causing fear, and causing anguish. The rest is window dressing." - Roger Caras

Crossing the streets in Ricoleta
I ran into Buddha this evening
As vehicles raced through the slit
Between the amber and waiting
I saw him wavering nervously between
Non-violence and indecision

I tried following him
But was cut off by a white limousine
You were driving it with cruel words
And I was falling under your tires
I was dream-walking
And you were dream-speaking

There were no trapdoors as I fell
Just open pits of the dream sequence
(Watching the acrobats perform
On the mean streets of Bario Norte
I wonder if they understand
The true meaning of life

I have given up the ghost
Of the search for true meaning
The meaning is forever lost on me
Even on simple quests
Otherwise I will know to step
Aside from open pits and racing cars)

That is what I think
As I fall through them in Palermo
On my way down I was gifted
A train of thought
Without an engine or a signalman
But with repeating memories of guilt

I boarded the train and waited
For a ride out of the pit of despair
The guard was wearing words in layers
Over the under-garments of meaning
This twilight is the beginning and end
At once of meaning and silence

In La Boca when I ran into Buddha again
He was smiling at my bandaged face
While stuffing his mouth with peanuts
This time I ignored him safely
And followed cruel words and tear ducts
To your painted bedroom window

Buenos Aires, Argentina: First Impressions

I just got here from Washington DC this morning. It was rainy and muggy and I saw the city slowly waking up. Buenos Aires has a European feel. It almost felt like the child of a marriage between Madrid and Kualalampur. It is humid and tropical and summer is barely over.

I walked to Boca Bario which is the colorful quarter where the poor emigrants once lived. From the look of it, the poor continue to live here. The neighborhood is colorful and made of corrugated sheet metal. There were live tango performers on the street and Brazilian acrobats. The famous Boca Juniors football club (Maradona's home team) is named after them.

I was also driven around to the more posh neighborhoods as well. The usual museums and craft fares and antique dealerships followed. The city is clean and impressive. The old port district has been completely transformed into a great chic restaurant and shopping area.

The rain went away in the afternoon. Now I am exhausted. More on Argentina later.

Bullet Bites The Bullet - Part Uno

Bullet Balasubrahmaniam sat up in his seat and exhaled deeply. he had this habit of exhaling deeply whenever a deep thought occurred to him. And the thought that occurred to him was indeed heavy. His maroon safari suit was drenched with sweat and the only reason you could not see this was because Bullet sat in the dark even though it was 8 PM and everyone else had gone home. His entire career flashed before him as he contemplated his next move.

Bullet had sailed through his life mostly on his intelligence, his complete and utter lack of initiative and his unwillingness to confront higher-ups on any issues material to his job. From 1982 onwards, when he joined the IAS, Bullet was known as a "loyal" servant in the academy for his unwavering support for the official line. He could be trusted and counted on to do the worst for the Government if that was needed.

"Do the needful," the high-ups would say. And it would be done.

"For your perusal," the notes would say. And the notes were perused.

And this is the thanks I get, he thought bitterly.

It all had started innocently enough. The prime minister had a strange and hurriedly concocted idea to standardize the scripts of all Indian languages. He got this idea on an official trip to Poland to study the effects of running a country with a twin. PM was seriously considering cloning himself so he could also be President.

Instead he came back with an idea for standardization of scripts. First, everyone secretly laughed at it. Then when it would not go away, they tried to buy it with feasibility studies and judicial commissions. That did not work either.

Then came the deadly weapon. Mandal was commissioned to write a report on minority languages and language reservations. It was deemed that 40% to 60% of all the letters in the alphabet needed to reserved for the exclusive use of minorities. This was a sure fire way to stop such nonsense.

But the prime minister would have none of that. He just added 40% more letters to the alphabet representing clicking sounds and Arabic-sounding gutturals and added them to the reservation quota. And Bullet was tapped on the shoulder to start the implementation. Bullet felt the tap quite sharply, but there was nothing he could do. It was that or the career-dead-end at Sreeramperumpadoor as the assistant special offer of the reconstruction office. He had to consider the schooling needs of his children.

So Bullet consented.

That is how my friends, the beginning of the end of the career of Bullet Balasubrahmaniam began.

Bat Out of Hell

I didn't get back from my last trip until very late last night. So, exhausted, I missed the alarm for this morning and got up at 5:40 AM. I had an international flight at 6:35 to catch with luggage to check.

The solution: skip the morning shave and shower routine and drive like a bat out of hell and hope I make it. Fortunately it is early morning and the traffic is light. So I make it to the airport at 6:05 AM.

Mind you, the flight leaves at 6:35. And they are already boarding when I got to the counter. Long story short, I made it to the flight. (Kids, don't try this at home. Your uncle Blogger practically lives at the airport so they cut him some slack.)

So the last thing I wanted, in this unshaven and unshowed state, was to be seen.

With my luck, the CEO of the company comes in and sits next to me.

There goes my elevator speech.

Fortunately my layover in Frankfurt is long enough for me to go to the lounge and take a shower and shave.

Now shaved and showered, I wait for my onward flight.

Death becomes the postman

The house remained dark for most of the day. The matriarchs lounged in white clothes, some new and crisp and others yellowing past their prime, waiting for death to consume them. Of course, the long interlude between the present and the final state were consumed by unspoken stories and unshared gossip as always, shared meals and rare feasts and most importantly by the arduous wait for the time to pass.

The fact that time refused to pass was a source of great tension between them and the bearer of all time, the postman.

The postman came by only when there were letters. The fact that his visits were rare did not preclude the inhabitants from waiting for him and to calibrate their internal clocks by his arrival. He always passed by the house exactly at half past eleven on all working days when post was delivered. He passed without noise on all days in bicycle when he had no deliveries for them. On other days, he stopped his cycle and rang the bell twice. He was the one thing that made time move in the house.

He was a lanky dark fellow with severe smallpox scars on his face. He was polite without being given to frivolous conversation. The weight of being a central government servant and thus its representative to such gatherings hung upon him like a heavy shroud.

At the same time he was careful to linger around long enough on days when the inhabitants received a money-order from a far-living child for it was customary for them to thank him with a token appreciation from the proceedings that they were fortunate enough to inherit because of him. It never occurred to the matriarchs or the postman that he was just an agent in the middle and his presence in the discharge of this function was a routine and replaceable one.

Unlike the other visitors, the postman was the written record keeper bringing to them actual records of events and memories that could be held and read out without adding or subtracting to them with ambiguities. The matriarchs, not satisfied with this, sometimes read meanings into the pauses or cancelled out words. For fear of this, nobody ever dare to cancel a word out when they wrote letters.

On Sundays, when there was no postal deliveries, time stood still around the house. As time moved slowly outside the universe of the big house, the sun rose and set around them without bothering the upset the pretence of this timelessness. The matriarchs rose when they pleased and ambulated along without precision and languid aimlessness until mere exhaustion and ennui claimed their purpose bidding them to repose.

This arrangement worked well for them. They contemplated the endless death for six days and on the seventh, they stopped time altogether and rested.

Every now and then, they will let out a sigh and remember one amongst them who had already died and say, "lucky cow."

Then they went back into their dark corners and rested again. In the dark corners, they shared their space with apparitions of death and the postman. In their feverish dreams, the postman merged with death creating a three-dimentional form that cajoled them into living. They rejected such nonsense outright and preferred to wallow in their morbid fantasies.

(From the novel I am forever writing)

Problem Solver

Blogger:
Hello, good to see you. I have some new ideas about linguistic evolution. Have you noticed how complex it to communicate with each other in India once we leave the rarified environs of the cities? Of course, you have. First hurdle in reducing this complexity is the existence of all these bloody scripts for all the Indian languages. I wish we could standardize the scripts. In a country where over 50% of the population is functionally illeterate, script standardization is a great idea. Throw away all these 15 different scripts and pick Devnagari or Roman script for all Indian languages. Besides, most of the South Indian scripts are woefully inadequate to handle borrowed words. Look at the way Mallus go around saying nonsense like "I went to the soo to see a sebra" or "the kyoon of England is a kyuck witted lady." It is easier to standardize northern languages since they already use standard Devnagari or a variation of it. Elementally, we have more similarilities than differences among all South-Indian languages. Mostly, the grammatic rules are similar, tense deployment order is the same, 90% of words have descended from Prakrut and Proto-dravidian. So why not also get a single script to go with it?

You, the reader:
Bloggerji, good idea but try getting one billion people to agree on that.

Blogger:
But you don't need one billion to agree. Let's look at the math. First of all, exclude the 60% illeterates. It makes no difference to them. It is all Greek to them, no pun. So, that leaves 400 million out of that 43% already know Devnagari script.. and perhaps 20% or so know Roman. So if you take an imperfect union.. 53% of the 400 million already know the replacement script. The actual number is far higher because excpt for TN all literates in India study Devnagari. That leaves you with some 197 million. Now eliminate very old and very young from this. Very young have no voting rights and can be retrained. Very old have no stake in this matter. So, if you do a simple breakdown of the demographics and using a forward correction (Since percentage literacy improves as population gets younger), we eliminate another 100 million. So we really only have 97 million to content with.

You, the reader:
Ninety-Seven million is a very large number, my friend.

Blogger:
Not so fast. Decisions are made by elected representatives and not by people directly. Approximately, each MP represents about 2.3 million people, so you divide the 97 million with 2.2, and what do you get?

You, the reader (now exhaused):
Now he is asking questions!

Blogger:
You get about 44 MPs. So to change the scripts, we need a swing vote of 44 fucking MPs. Is that so difficult?

You, the reader:
You bet.

Blogger:
Then elect MPs who are more amenable to the change. Change requires political will. This is where my Nationalist Draconian Party of Planetary Love (NDPPL) comes in.

You, the reader (confused):
You have a political party now?

Blogger:
You bet. We run on a platform of many draconian things that are good for you. Our party flag will feature broccoli.

You, the reader:
And a bit of spinach thrown in for design value surely.

Blogger:
Are you with us?

You, the reader:
(silence)

Blogger:
Because either you are with us or against us. Together we can form the coalition of the willing.

You, the reader:
Ouch.

Blogger:
We will invade the hearts of people, we will be greeted as liberators from the tyranny of myriad scripts.

You, the reader:
The axis of terror or some such thing?

Blogger:
Of course. Represented by all the Sahitya Academy types. There will be a show trial...

You, the reader (sarcastically):
Yeah I see them supporting your cause.

Blogger:
I will proclaim "mission accomplished" from the top of a typewriter.

You, the reader (hopefully):
Good. So then we will finish it and go home, right?

Blogger:
No. Then the war will drag on as the complexity of traslating the million billion existing documents becomes a nighmare.

You, the reader:
*shudder*

Blogger:
If anyone disagrees, I will leak out the identity of their wives' secret life as government stenographers.

You, the reader:
There is no shame in that, so what if they are stenos, they have done our work proudly, holding head high and all that.

Blogger:
Eactly. So there will be an outrage. It will be a scandal. I will have someone with an appropriate nickname of some lightly motorized vehicle in my office standing ready to take the blame for it. May be Moped Mehtaor Rajdoot Singh... How about Autorikshaw Apte?

You, the reader:
Bullet ...

Blogger:
Voila! Bullet Balasubrahmanian. It has a ring to it. Belongs to IAS, 1982 cadre from Tamil Nadu.

You, the reader:
Bullet Bala pyaar se.

Blogger:
He wears thick glasses and has a serious credible face. See, nothing is impossible.

You, the reader:
And a healthy paunch.

Blogger:
Under that light brown safari suit. Matches the official white ambassador car. Now I wish I hadn't given up my Indian passport... Uski hi kamee hai varna. I would be climbing the ladder in my perfectly creased and starched ministerial white.

You, the reader(relieved):
Yup. No chance of being an MP now.

Blogger:
MP bane mera naukar... mujhe to seedhe Pradhan matri ban-na hai.

At which point, you run away and politely suggest that I ask my doctor for an increase in dosage of my psychiatric medication.

Mulund Musical Fountain

In 1985, with much local fanfare, a musical fountain was inaugurated in a neighborhood park in Mulund East in Bombay.

Mulund in those days was the last outpost suburb in Bombay in the Central line. It was a sleepy little place that was busy yet not hip. Mulund East was cut-off from the West by the train track except for one precarious level crossing and one pipe lia narrow subterranean connector. Neither of these were reliable or convenient, so the eastern part of town evolved differently from the western part. I can't remember if there was a connector to the Eastern Expressway or not. There might have been, but it was not much used.

I have been to Mulund a few times in those days. My friend Sree lived there in the East and occasionally, on Saturdays, I would trudge up all the way from the city to Mulund to visit him. The musical fountain, it so happens, opened in his precise neighborhood.

He was quite excited about it. For some reason, this was a remarkable achievement for a neighborhood that was quite sleepy and solidly middle-class. They managed to cut through a million yards of bureaucratic red tape to actually construct a usable public park and plant a cheesy but large water fountain in the middle of it. In the evenings, as all the retirees and young children descended on the park, the fountain would come alive with music and primary color lighting. It elevated the neighborhood from solidly middle-class to solidly-middle-class with water fountain.

But I still remember the visit to the water fountain park. One Saturday, I visited Sree and he excitedly took me to the park and showed me around. At 5:00 the lights and funny music came on. People relaxed around it and older men took their constitutional walks around it. It was quite lively.

This memory has stuck with through all these years. If you ask me about the most important fountain in Bombay, I will still tell you about Flora Fountain. But for the neighborhood pride, this little local fountain still retains its top place in my heart. I have walked past many wonderful water fountains around the world. Some of them were very impressive with wonderful histories and remarkable architecture. But may be it is the fact that I connected with the locality and the story, this is the one fountain I like to remember.

Perhaps there is a lesson in this. It is not the most talented or the beautiful or the most impressive things or people that you care about the most, it is those who we connect with in a more natural level. I admire the magic of the former, but I love the latter more even though I know how the rabit got into the hat in the first place.

I don't know if this fountain and the park still exist in Mulund East. I have been to Mulund West a few times in the last few years, but the place is scarcely recognizable. The industrial compounds of yesteryear have been razed and replaced with a series of malls. The well-paying jobs in those factories were replaced with fickle mall employment. But people seem to be happy and the town looks more upmarket. I don't know anyone in Mulund anymore and there have been no reasons to go back to Mulund East.

Too many lessons. Too little time.

Mañana.... Mañana

It is one of those days.

All through winter, we had no snow here all through winter and now it comes with no bloody apologies. Like it has been here all through winter, sneaking in through the backdoor so the weatherman wouldn't notice. All of Northern Europe is caught in a snowstorm as well. Looks like seasons have shifted. Spring is now winter and summer is spring. What do I care? it is all the same to me. Far-East is balmy, Northern US is still cold and Europe has funny weather.

Al Gore, are you listening?

But I am not here to talk about the weather. I finally have a reprieve from travel for 2 days or so. This is very good news. Hopefully, if the day is not entirely crazy, I will actually call people and ketchup! May be, by then, this strange stress that i am wearing like a tight-fitting vest will fall off and I will be in eternal bliss. Good things may happen.

I have not been that regular with the blog. Or with pretty much anything. That is what happens with all this running around the planet situation. I was recently in a country and the luggage did not arrive when i did. Finally a day after I landed back home, I was able to go to the airport and pick up my suitcase. Airlines are such dahlings, aren't they?

I was scheduled to be in Napa Valley end of this month drinking some wine and visiting my little nephew before heading off to Singapore. Instead I am in Rome and then off to Argentina. What the hell is wrong with this world?

Mañana.... mañana

Europe's Uncle Tony

(Written on a plane to far east. I had nothing better to do.)

Everyone has an uncle Tony that they are not proud of, especially if you live in the East coast. You know him, he lives somewhere in Jersey, wears too much gold and laughs and talks a little too loud. His friends are unsavory types and some of them “go away” for no reason. Most of them have done time or will do so. They have this “either you are with us or you are against us” attitude.

You hate inviting uncle Tony to your parties. He says stupid things and burps loudly. Moreover, in polite company, his jokes are crude and racist. Nobody is supposed to talk about what he does for a living and in his world, things fall off trucks on the Turnpike all the time. He is quite an embarrassment to the family.

On the other hand, you are secretly glad he is around because he is your muscle. He “takes care” of things for you, after all Tony loves his family. Just a phone call and the pesky town inspector learns to look the other way about your illegal fence or the town hall expedites your permit. The neighbor who crossed paths with you one too many times meets with an unfortunate accident involving a baseball bat and a broken knee. All said, you know deep in your heart that you are better off with him around because he looks out for you, You just have to pretend he is just an annoyance and keep you away from your cultured friends and social gatherings. There are plenty of family barbecues in South Jersey where you will run into him anyway.

And secretly, you are glad he says those racist and sexist things you wish you bad the guts to say. He is the spokesperson for your naughty inner child.

So why all this rumination about uncle Tony?

Because I think America I Europe’s uncle Tony. Like uncle Tony, Uncle Sam keeps company with many unsavory figures in the third world who oppress their people and meet most of the characteristics of Tony’s friends. People who disagree with Uncle Sam also meet with unfortunate accidents (or get killed in carpet bombing).

I could go on. But you catch my drift. I knew you will, after all you are very smart (Yes, I am talking to you. Hey where are you going? Come back…)

But what irritates me is the self-righteous pompous attitude of Europe. As if, deep in their heart, they are not thankful for all the horrors of uncle Sam. Remember, these same critters who protest America so much are also member of NATO. They are so opposed to nuclear ambitions of other countries (and say non-nuclear) because America has pledged through NATO to defend them.

In other words, they are glad America is generally doing the dirty work for them. Getting them cheap oil, keeping the poor countries in line, keeping third world countries from UN security council permanent seats, discriminating against blanket populations in the name of “war on terror” and saying all those awful things that they wish I had the guts to say.

Further more, they consume American movies voraciously, listen to American music and when they get a chance sit up all night and play quarter slot machines in Vegas. McDonald's is doing brisk business in France and rest of Europe (everywhere except UK) but they have the American fast food culture.

It would be interesting to see how Europe keeps their act up without NATO and the US doing their dirty work for them. Bloody hypocrites.

Gedanken von einem Flughafen

I write this from an airport somewhere. It has been weeks since my last post. I haven not had much to write. Nothing has changed. I am still nursing my annoying illness while continuing to travel. Sometimes in this process, I manage a little bit of rest, most times I dont. I hear the constant noise of coffee cups behind me and it annoys me. A banker is speaking rapidly with another man; a silly man is hiding his face behind a newspaper. I would much rather stay lost in thought.

There have been frantic visits to cities I have not visited in a while. There have been lost pieces of luggage; there have been silly fights, many frantic trips, transitions, and sometimes, there is hope that one could stay longer.

I shop listlessly for a suit when the luggage is lost so I can make it to my meeting. I am generally happy even though the lost luggage number directs me to an Indian call center where `Sam` is singularly unhelpful. He "authorizes" USD 50 for incidentals which does not even cover the cost of a tie. But I am generally in good spirits. I remember that I have been in this mall before. Many times. This time it is different.

Sometimes when you relocate an experience to another city, things appear very different. In spite of all my jokes, I acknowledge how polite people are here. They laugh a lot easier unlike in America or Europe. They are more friendly.

I get tired very easily these days. I end up taking more naps. I ought to see a doctor but I am in four different countries in the next four days. I know it is a silly excuse, but that is how things are. My body needs rest. I hope in May, if not April, I can take a week off and go some place where I can recuperate fully.

Then, perhaps, I can write again.

Pit of Despair

Going through terrible highs and lows. Sometimes the high is so high, there is no time to write. And at other times, the low is o abysmal, that words become so sticky and morose. These are the days when I would rather not speak to anyone, rather not communicate at all.

In this death ward of this great silence, I float listlessly. I hear screams and tears flowing my way from far away, for the sins of a lifetime, mostly unatoned. I feel the fever of loss in my veins, sometimes for a moment, mostly for a lifetime. Memories grow and wither and I have nothing but a silent benediction for the dead, for the lost and for the overwhelmed memories in me.

I know these are the mornings when I see nothing but gray. Is there a poem in all this? I am sure there is, but a better person must write it.

Somewhere there is a buffalo stomping his feet, someone is weeping silently, a bundle of sorrows is unhurled in a room far away. It has been three years since he died. He was led silently to his slaughter by the disease that raged through his body, yet he held his head high and went with dignity.

I wish I could apologize everyday. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to do. But in the end, all that was left was a dream and a short phone call. Three years pass ever so quickly. My life keeps getting complicated. You are not there to teach me to be a man when I am challenged with the burdens and decisions.

I miss you dad. I really do. On a day like today when there is nothing more I need than to make a phone call and reach out to you.

Nail Bites - Nonsense poems

It didn't start as a thought on poetry
Something stuck in my throat

It was just a silly memory
A discomfort in the evening
An overdose of migraine medication
A really dry throat from a word misspoken
A silent scream when slipping in the toilet
A line from a movie seen long ago

Not that I started to think about poetry
But now I am pacing restlessly

***

The soup had brown swirls
like the pictures of the solar system
From the new text books

The salad came in four different
square plates, red, white, yellow and green
Like a flag of a nation yet unborn

A boat went from one chair to the onother
with notes, mail and parcels
and little morsels of rationed feelings

By the time desert came
the ocean had caught fire
and the sky started bleeding

so all that was left for the boatman to do
was to play the riverdance songs
on a harmonica

***
type furiously
always the letter i
hit the spacebar
follow the sunshine westward
over the ocean
float by the snow-capped mountains
spacebar spacebar spacebar
capslock
through airport doors
waiting taxis
enter
apartments
unpacked boxes
new bills
old letters
spacebar
carriage-return
go to work
feeling light
over the cubicle
like a floating cottonball
hit the backspace
then enter
then ctrol-c and control-v
and keep going at
it
until
all that
is
left
in
the
whole
room
is
just
you
and
i
floating
like
the
cotton
ball

Sick

So, I have been deathly ill. OK, deathly is a little bit of an exaggeration. So, since today I have been able to stand up and walk and breathe through my nostrils, I thought I will post something if this is the last thing I do.

Happy Valentine's day everyone. Unless ofcourse, you think Valentine's day corrupts your culture.

OK, gotta go lie down. Ciao.

Post-modern

1. Brand Management
I postponed my suicide
For a day
Considering
The ratings
And negotiations
For a better sponsor.

2. Anna Nicole
How much
Valium and Methodone
Do you need
To qualify
As a celebrity death?

--------------------------------------------------------------

Untitled

Laughter is our language
Poetry our lifeblood
We come alive in the evening

I came this way by accident,

like a bird retiring
And found my branch for the night

You came a decade later
To the next branch
With water and warmth

Some nights when I rose up
In nightmares of past sins
You sang me a lullaby

So say good-bye with a poem
Before the night is over
While we are still laughing

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turning Tricks

Outside the academy
The language that has many
Wonderfully empty words like

-- Humanity
-- Kindness
-- Righeousness

Is calling the passerby
Enticing them with ideas

I watch the torn underwear of the language
Peeking from under its pretty skirt
Today she is quite flowery
But like a cheap whore
Standing around Paquis
For a quick fix

I kept walking because

I had no poems to spare

Nevertheless

By mid-morning I was in the middle of a moderate panic attack. Perhaps the stress of everything that was beginning to catch up. I probably could have run away somewhere dark curled up under a bed. But I had meetings and had to act brave. I walked straight through a glass door and broke my nose and walked for an hour with my nose covered in ice to stop the bleeding.

The gift from that encounter? A massive headache.

***

Just because I don't say it doesn't mean I am not. After lunch, I sat in my car and watched the cold gray sky. I will learn to drive around the curves without making my passengers sick.

Take a deep breath. The day is yet not over.

***

I walked past the store twice. Each time, I would backtrack and return to the same spot. I was walking aimlessly around town for the last hour. I had enough quarters inserted into the parking meter to cover two hours. I don’t know what I was looking for. Perhaps a dark suit, as if I was going to a funeral. But I was not going to a funeral and I didn’t need a suit. There was a swimwear shop right next to Men’s Warehouse, and the ad displayed at the window, in larger font size and with a color picture read, “What a girl wants, To have the best swimwear.”

It showed a blond woman on the right side frozen in mid step with a wide smile on her face. There were beads of water around her spilling into the rest of the page and onto the letters without smudging them. Plastic beads of water danced around the page without falling off. She didn’t particularly look happy to have what she ostensibly wanted, the best swimsuit. May be the swimsuit she was wearing was not the best, I reasoned, and that is why she is coming out the water looking for what she really wants. The shopgirl came to the window and looked at me with a halfsmile.

The day was too cold and gray. I kept walking down the street away from the nicer part to the dodgier areas, past the nice-looking shops and restaurants until the place decidedly took a downturn. Pawnshops, adult book stores and seedy furniture stores took the place of boutiques and Thai restaurants. I looked out of place but I didn’t care. I looked out of place because I was dressed in a suit and I had no winter coat. I took a side street and walked in front of small single floor houses with iron grills on the windows. There was an eerie violence in the air, which I am sure, was all in my head.

I am going to a funeral, I said to myself, and continued walking. On the street corner, there was a tear graffiti painted on a wall. Under it, there was a photo of a young man left on the sidewalk by a grieving family member with assorted candles and dried flowers. This part of the city loses people regularly to senseless death; gang violence, police violence or getting shot by being trapped between a shooter and an intended victim. There was no method to this madness, people simply dropped dead at nineteen or twenty and their friends added another tattoo on their bodies as a living memorial to the fallen friends. The shooter probably added a tattoo too, as a memory of his act. The police went home and calculated their retirement income. The mothers grieved and left pictures on the sidewalk where their sons fell. Los Angeles Times covered these stories in the city sections sometimes where the stories were sandwiched between the ubiquitous anti-emigration and urban proliferation stories.

At the end of the road, there was a hedge that covered a boarded-up house and its unsightly overgrown yard. The road ended on a T-junction, and I decided to turn right. A woman came out of her door into the front porch and looked at me. She was in her fifties and wore a dark shapeless matronly dress. There was a picture of Jesus on the wall of the porch and an empty place where another picture had been. The empty spot was darker with a strange stain that looked like the forehead of a man. It felt like a house that was comfortable with loss.

I felt that this was the funeral that I was searching. The funeral of time and gray winters. I stood there for a minute not knowing what to do.

Then I turned around and started walking back to my car.

Cranky Post

I am very cranky today. Personal life, work life, emails, and an unwanted (and ill-prepared for) work dinner/schmoozing session tonight.

I wish I was driving to the little chinese restaurant somewhere in the back of beyond of Versoix and having that carafe of terrible house red and eating some god-knows-what meat.

I am really stressed. I hope things go my way. Is that too much to ask for? Sorry for sounding like an idiot. I promise my mood will improve considerably by Friday and I will have a happy post by then.