Vengeance

Why should I let you have that hungry kiss?

Why should I let your lips seal mine?

Why should I let you find moments of relief from your pathetic existence

When I find none?

Again, tell me, why should I let you have that kiss?

The incessant struggle of my lips against yours,

All that rubbing, rolling and pushing against each other

To divert attention from a tongue-

Angry, tired and molested.

They are two medieval knights fighting for a stretch of land- our lips.

While you devour my lips I close my eyes and count

One to ten and again backwards.

But it doesn’t work

For my ears are still hot. And I still want to stab you in the back

While you wipe your mouth and brush your hair

Before getting back to business.

Spring

Must I stop missing you?
Must I forget your smell?
And wait for our worlds to collide again,
Till ages turn into eternity and eternities into infinitude,
Till we bloom again
Like the purple amaranth.

Infidelity

The one who loved too much
The one who did not love enough
The one who was slightly intrigued
And the one who inspired the seventh verse-
Barely knew the meandering mazes of love.

Straightened bedsheets, creme white curtains,
Fail to masquerade the musty smell of fornication-
It rose from the barren beds and merged
With the smog outside the third floor window
To produce the piercing sensation
of a lingering pain-

a thorn on a freshly plucked rose.

Autumn

You were economic with words as always.
A few pregnant pauses, slight whimpers
Unavoidable sighs and uncomfortable silence
Was followed by an agreement.
That it was never there.
We shook hands, smiled nervously
Gulped down our drinks
Thankful that there were no hurt feelings on either side.
It was mutually agreed upon
That bothering about the gifts would be too puerile.
I stayed a little longer to admire the new painting on your wall.
A cold winter evening descended outside your window.

While Negotiating love

“You never ask for too much from Men,

They invariably fail you”- Didi devised a smile

With one hand on her now swollen belly.

“They don’t have the power to love as much as we do, didibhai,

They can’t bear the pain of it”,

Burimashi observed as she mopped the floor.

“Sacrifice is the woman’s virtue, men can love,

But never can they sacrifice for love,”

Maa spoke as her experienced hands deftly shaped the chapaatis.

“You are always giving more than you get, why my love?

I shall tell you why. Because you are a woman,

And all women are like mothers,

And mothers always give more than they get”

You said as your fingers twisted my curls.

But I expect, I demand, and I ask for more

And I break my own heart every now and then

And I hug you and cry.

I thought it was love.
But now you tell me it was a transaction,

A lucrative one, for you, for sure.

Interim

And thus it endeth,

The longest vacation

And it was yesterday that the green grass even greener with virginal showers,

Dampened our skin

When we sat under the mighty banyan tree.

The robust sentinel concealed us in its ancient silhouette

And it seemed appropriate that you plant a sudden kiss.

The moment of trepidation transpired

With great palpitation, and a little perspiration.

We giggled.

And thus it endeth

Every time.

And now as we merrily wave adieu

I wait to catch one last glimpse

The green of your eyes

The lilac of your touch.

And there are a hundred thousand faces smiling

A thousand hands waving

The gold of the sun, the silver of the clouds

Beneath which the flames of your breath had once burned my skin

Leave lingering questions and a crimson hue.

It is not time to end my poem. Not yet.

Invisible

          New year! One step closer, one step away.
 I always thought it's pretty easy to shut out the unholy truth- pressing my palms firmly against my ears I pretend that I haven't a clue as to what's going on. Slowly the murmurs die down, the expressions change, and nature changes its course too.

             I detest resolutions. And I detest social networking. And I also detest people who (ex)claim that they looove dogs, though I do not particularly hate the species myself. Perhaps I would enjoy human life as a primitive being. Sometimes I wonder if I’m essentially hostile. May be twenty years from now, school children will call me all sorts of names and steal flowers from my garden. I look in the mirror and try to picture myself with crazy hair and brittle limbs. I think I like children, as long as they are not mine.

           I had awaited this moment, feared it, anticipated the consequences and yet approached it like the moth approaches the flames. Applying a clichéd romantic metaphor to describe the one monumental confrontation of my otherwise dreary life is not something I longed for and neither was ‘the confrontation’, a grandiose Shakespearean episode, where nature conspired with the occult and orchestrated thunderous roar and torrential downpour, preceded by a monologue. It was a ping.

             The inauspicious green dot sent streams of alarms through my body. The nervous system is exceptionally sensitive in matters pertaining to the heart. The one thought was to be ‘invisible’; the one thing that had haunted me for most of my life on campus. It was unnecessary, which I realised only much later, because I was invisible to the people on campus. Only this time there was an option- a ‘invisible’ option. Much to my surprise, it only complicated things- and also taught me a thing or two about the human psyche.

                I decided to end the relentless staring of the tumultuous one minute and a half. I blinked. Nothing changed. The green dot was still sitting pretty right on the top. It was time to put an end to this obscure complicated relationship with a chat application. I almost clicked on the ‘go offline’ option, and there it was: the life altering ping.

·         Hey!

·         Hey..

·         Ssup.. I saw u the other day..

·         I know. I saw u.

·         You’ve gained some flesh it seems.

·         Yeah.. I know.

·         You used to be quite slim

·         Yeah..

·         Blah blah blah

·         Bla bla bla

                        I was more like an invalid around him, always a non-entity. And I liked it, partly because I didn't want to stammer if he spoke to me and partly because I could stare at him without getting caught. Later at nights I would fantasise about him, about one particularly profound look of his that I caught or a funny chuckle. And even now, my increasing waistline or my receding hairline never came in the way of my imaginations with the exception of today. I felt old. It was no longer difficult to imagine myself with crazy hair and worn out limbs.

                       The naked branches of the corpse like trees will be covered in lavish foliage soon. I shall neatly arrange the pile of redundant thoughts and lock them away in a rusty box and I won’t blink. As planet earth duly completes its revolutionary circle around the blazing sun, my resolutions take shape, only to wither away in drunken fit of frenzy. I squash them beneath my spear sharp heels, as the newborn sun peeks from the horizon of a mundane world.