time's running out

 

On many nights my friends and I would take ourselves

out to the main gate to buy a lone cigarette. A pack

would tense our lungs but a singular one is noble. Laughing 

at something from emanating from our phones. An undeniable 

tune stuck in all of our minds together. When we 

collide with friends of yesteryear — the herd

expands into a precipitous army of voices and madness. Talking 

over one another and cultivating four conversations at once. Where else

but my college campus would I learn about the sound from 

the operatic chinese flute dizi. or the developments in my friend’s 

curious polycule of lovers. or adorno’s dogged but futile attempts at 

employment in america. we’d take the forest shortcut back

to our rooms successfully using the pythagorean theorem

to make our routes exactly eleven minutes shorter. Starting to think 

I want those eleven minutes back with my friends 

my many muses

there is a dog
outside my door
scratching persistently
dreaming of the pedigree packet
leaning on the door's other side

there is a dog
outside yamuna hostel
he loses himself on purpose
everyday. wandering around the buildings
in dreams of the windy scooter ride

there is a dog
outside the dhaba
rolling feverishly in the mud
hankering for some romance
fondly jumping on my white clothes

everlasting city, everlasting heart

 

walk ahead. the vastness will swallow me

windows unfurl sun into empty harems.

making a wish, consuming some apparition of a glorious past.

maintain me. keep me from decay. touch me where a thousand have before

reading statistics - there is 6400 times more fecal matter than the recommended limit in the yamuna under the taj mahal. i suppose some fecal matter is always recommended in river water

walk ahead. i’ve got calluses that nothing can repair 

we’ll find passages of survival, ways to ride out the impasse

when the morning sun squints down on the sandstone tower

we need a benevolent emperor to kiss us alright 

written on a trip to agra

summer fruit

ate a persimmon today and thought of you
you fed me my first persimmon a year ago
it is sweet to the tongue - like the love child of a mango and a cantaloupe and it comes out every summer. a tropical creature
the seeds are like kidney beans and there are four in each fruit. three if you're lucky
can a sweet fruit ever go bad in your presence?

desire will never let us down

this is where we live now. meaning is only born from schism.
desperation is the same as romance i think. disillusionment is only natural.

we must remind ourselves that our desire is not the lack of. it is not a negative space.
it makes the world go round. and it makes the world stop in its tracks. and rotate relentlessly. and pause
and move again on its tilted axis.
science is turning onto itself.
a heatwave is fast approaching
i want you in the mornings. and afternoons. and when i walk back from the station. there is no end to the wanting.

the people go to work and smoke their cigarettes and eat paan and get on their buses and hold their flighty children close to their bodies and the work day ends in the evening and they go back home to their husbands and wives.
the earth moves once more while they all sleep and i still want you. routine is good for the heart.

 

most condolences are not heartfelt

in the absence of your voice i construct a day for you
what are you doing? besides being far from me
daydreaming of your day on the way back from work
are you skipping breakfasts or walking to class? what movies are you watching? and whose mouths are you touching?
i hope it is you. my skin, my eyes, my phone, my shampoo, my nails, my ears,
my door, my laptop, my utensils, my books, all hope it is you.
my heart is a heavy, brute, unwieldy cyborg
and it beats too fast too hard too willfully

we have a neurosis in common

we have a neurosis in common. her and i. a blithe
worldview is unbeknownst to us. a way to read.
a way to interpret. a way to dismember the
events of the day. locked out of my own room
staying up late into the midnight hour. wondering
if i am any good at all. she thinks i am i think.
aren't we all praying for something or the other.
i am praying for her. it leaves and comes back and
it leaves and comes back and it leaves again.
it being the fever. the fever is persistent. and
the falling down is too. once she is done seeing this city
the burning will come down. the waves will subside
the clouds will part and the flowers will change
into their summer forms. she knows too much
about herself. she knows she is on my mind.
i am left alone with her madnesses when she is not with me
nearing the finish line. have so much to say but nothing at all
there must be a celebration in her spirit.

around me

you lay down next to me and look at your phone.
im watching something too. isn't this what people do these days?
you're shifting moving searching for something not in this room
i wish i knew what you're looking for.
i am inheriting diabetes and guilt and overbearing love
from my parents
this is when the smallest sliver of light breaks on your window grills (the sun never reaches your side of the house) and
you have your rituals with your lights. you hate the unforgiving white tube light in your eyes
you change the light - softer and warmer through an application on your phone. the lights are app-enabled these days.
how could i possibly compile a litany of reasons to be angry at you?
you don't really want to leave this house
i don't want you to leave me

do you think we'd have been friends as children?

written for my best friend 

he was looking for a water bottle
maybe we are returning to the ways of ourselves. last week we saw a young boy in delhi on the floor of a restaurant looking for something and he was sticky in the way that young boys are. he was looking for a water bottle to go into his backpack
then we walk around tossing our appetites back and forth between us

he's wiggling his hips
we run into the little boy again; this time he's on a skateboard trying to do one of those tricks. he's wiggling his hips now to be more aerodynamic
we fill ourselves with trinkets and knick knacks and window shop until late into the night.

he's playing with his friends
his backpack is flying in the air and his friends are laughing with him while he zooms past us on the skateboard. he's playing with his friends and he probably has school tomorrow and his mother will call his name soon signalling the end of playtime
we reminisce and i wish i knew you when we were young and growing up

summer evenings

the mayflies are loving. loving with all their might. the adult mayfly dies soon after mating in a day or so after having lived as a larval young thing for over a year. they come to my bathroom floor to die when it rains outside, carpeting it in large numbers. they only live to love, and loving becomes the thing that kills them.

it is summer and the air rests hot and heavy on our shoulders, there is no breeze. it has rained and the mayflies are colliding with each other on the window, falling lifeless onto the sill.

we are on wikipedia together hyperlinking from one page to another. we were looking up elton john's romantic entanglements. and while the skies turned dark outside and the mayflies' curtains call, we have traversed the digital quagmire and find ourselves on the wikipedia page of a film about a cow farm in oregon. and it's so hard to convince you that reading the plot of a movie on wikipedia does not even come close to being the same as watching it.

Haikus written at ADG's Haiku Writing Workshop

 the day breaks

laptops must open

to worn-out faces

 

a ticking clock —

laptops shut close

until the next day comes 

silent and angry in the car 

bickered at dinner 

over nothing

These haikus were written at Prof. Anannya's haiku writing workshop with her guidance. 

time is both a sorrow and a friend

make haste, we have no time

make haste, our lovers await us

make haste, we have so much living to do

leave without me. i have some praying to do. the runts of the litter will find ways to survive it all

leave without me. the persistence of the sun is getting to me and my tread is heavier with each step

this is not the time to touch skins or look at phones or buy trinkets for the sake of it. this is the time of faith.

a separation, a passenger, a tourist.
a ruin, a preservation, a monument.

(written on a trip to pondicherry that i took with my eight best friends)

the most sincere i can be

do you think everything should have remained the way it was
but the way it was was devoid of faith. was was.
some tautologies are deliberate because meaning is born from repetition
and you have never been one to care about words like that. maybe.
let us lay honestly and then when the dog comes back
from his routine walk, he will roll himself clean on the mat
and settle down to sleep for the night. peace.
i long for laughing children growing up in my dreams
and my heart is resting easy
a rom-com has restored my faith in the world.

a break in my walking

written as I recover from my first (and hopefully last) fracture

inauspicious circumstance has befallen me and
a Jones fracture has made me its victim
the bones of my foot have broken, how futile and grim
a month goes by, the injury becomes a calendar.
Now I limp again, impatiently awaiting
the union of my bones, patiently ossifying
i drench and drench and drench
my callouses in oil
but they remain unyielding and barren
my limbs cannot walk, they have forgotten.
my mother prays for my overcompensating other foot
and my father doles out advice, impersonating a podiatrist.
there has been far too much feet talk this month
skeletons mend themselves is what I'm told

in my house

cars and trucks and vehicles approach. daunting
me and my posse, off to the nearby shop. feeding
snacks and juice and much needed novelty. trusting
dogs follow us demanding love and conversation. ringing
in the aches of boredom that come when my hands have nowhere to go
my fears collect in a petridish. exaggerated
engorged. examined. enlarged on a sheet of glass.
ready and prepped to be surveilled
observed dissected and gazed at in laboratory premises.
certainty is beyond you and me - so i cannot find solace in it anymore
so we lie in a dark room and we watch television
so let us while away some more time
don't leave so quickly it pains me
don't wince when the bodies are hurt! it's just television, not real life.
affliction and disease and stink are here again. wanting
organs are storing a lifetime of attrition in their cells. resisting
white blood cells are working overtime. forming
platoons to keep you and me alive together - this is it. the last leg of the tour.
everything after us is immaterial.
sometimes when you sing in the shower - i am listening, ears against the door intently.
let me be here with you, ailment and all. the fruits don't go rotten in our company.