Rigor Mortis Love

Some days it’s a chipped nail

or a forgotten scar

the memory of a child I never had

the peculiar lump in the throat

that thickens with the smog

My writing is a variable matter

Semi-liquid-solid

Translucent-fragile

Its roots lie

somewhere deep inside

maybe under my lungs

from where I breathe

or in this life clock in my chest

Tic-toc, tic-toc,tic….

My heart is a kaleidoscope

It makes images

out of broken colorful memories

and then it’s a killer

Its weapon- again memories

Am I losing it?

What if I never had it?

that valued thing

called S-A-N-I-T-Y

Rigor mortis love

looking for its mortuary

Buddha and peacock feathers

and a cup of limp tea

Another day in what you call life

and I call unfinished memory.

A day in my magical life

the smog sits heavy
like the carcass of
a dead relationship

in the rhythmic jostling of
a cycle rickshaw
lies the irony
of the ego spins
we derive
from the race
for being the superlative

the sedatives are strong
they blur memory
and sensation
but pain can't be extracted
like a rotten tooth

my fingers itch
my eyes twitch
looking for the next object
to scrub
while my mind fiddles
why ? why?

my late father's voice
reading out aloud
the laws of insulation

I know he is dead
I know the word "hallucination"

I close my eyes
and I jump off the cliff of self
into me

now I scrub
my soul's lamp
waiting for
some real magic.

 

NAVRATRI SNAPSHOTS 2015



•  A 40 years old, mother of two teenagers is distributing ice-cream sticks on the road near her apartment complex to street children. Some of them pre-teen and teenage boys, soon she is being pulled and groped and loud whistles and leering and she runs back inside the gated residential complex. The misguided kids enjoy the free ice-cream, aunty goes back to her condo, runs a hot bath and all that remains of the incident are the wrappers piled on the footpath.
  When we let go of any incidents as minor incidents of street harassment, don’t we pave way for far more dire incidents?
  What makes our boys believe they are entitled to rowdy behaviour ?Is our "Charity" misguided?

•  I am watching news, my little one who is unaware of the technical gross details of sexual violence and RAPE, knows the word and knows that it is a cruel and bad thing to do to anyone. She stops colouring and after overhearing bits and pieces of a debate over the rape of two minors, she asks, "Mumma why do people hate and hurt little girls , so much? " I have no convincing answers.

• In a neighbourhood Kirtan, almost every other song or line has the word "laal" (red), traditionally the colour for married women ( Saubhagyavatis), those singing these lines loudest are widowed mothers, sisters and wives , sitting in a corner away from the deity, the inauspicious women.

• Not far from the Indian capital two little children are charred to death because they were not fortunate enough to be born upper caste, we look away and feel we have done our bit for the future kids of this country by distributing a few plates of poori-halwa.

•P : Mumma we Indians are generally brown you said , because of our genes and race and ,and climate.

Me: Yes dear.

P: Then why are all the goddesses fair, other than Kaali?

Me: ahmm....

P: and why don't they make Kaali beautiful? If a woman becomes angry does she become ugly?

I have taken some time from her to answer these difficult questions.