Ramblings from the Edge

Dear All...

2006-12-20T06:46:00.000-08:00

For those few who have been wondering whatever happened to me? Well, I have been working on a book of short fiction.. After struggling for the last six months, I have managed to get right the titles for 8 stories... Now, if only I could get the rest of the elusive words in ! I might revert to this blog if I fail to live upto my expectations, as somebody had once said "All failed writers become poets." Meanwhile, I would surely be visiting and reading all you lovely peoples blogs . As in James Laughlin's immortal words:

Nunc Dimittis

Little time now
and so much hasn't
been put down as I
should have done it.
But does it matter?
It's all been written
so well by betters,
and what they wrote
has been my joy.

Seasons greetings and best wishes for the New Year to all you people who have given me so much joy .

I once killed a poet

2006-06-25T06:08:00.000-07:00

We crouch in the dark foxholes
afraid to breathe out loud.
The air raid siren is whining down
like it was burrowing into
the safety its own hole.
In the eerie silence, a child
cried somewhere and the mother yelled
“Shut up, or we’ll get bombed out.”
More sshh shhhing and then all of us
are scanning the moonless
cloudless starlit sky with trepidation.
How I wished I were a pilot shooting
down those bastards who made us tremble like
scared animals in the trenches past midnight.
“My grandmother says stars are the
eyes of our dear protectors,” she whispers.
If I could, I would have gouged
them out, to make myself less visible.
“But I think they are more like the
beating hearts of our dear fairies,” she says
clasping her hands together in a fervent prayer.
How I wished I were in the sky, fighting
the enemy instead of hearing such pansy stuffs here.
Someone coughs loudly and apologizes.
How long will it be before the all-clear
siren comes, I wonder, how long
will it be before I finish school and
get into the Air Force , how long…
“I think the moon is like…”
I pinch her budding breasts and she
winces in pain and shuts up. I can see
the glistening swell of tears in her
eyes as I return to the sky
to shoot the bastards down.

Uncle Joe

2006-06-13T05:16:00.000-07:00

“I think I have TB,” moans
Uncle Joe, “ I don’t think
the doctors here have
diagnosed me properly.”
I nod sympathetically.
He looks so shriveled,
and skinny that
one of these days,
I feel he’d just
turn into a wall paper.
I feel sorry for him,
because he was a doctor himself
and yet suspects his own clan.
Perhaps he has his reasons.
“I think the nurses
are trying to poison me,”
Now he’s suspecting them too.
“Uncle, they are doing
their best.” I say, “I mean, they’re trying
to heal you.” He misses my gaffe.
Doctors perhaps, make
the worst patients.
“My teeth are becoming
powdery,” he whispers.
If I’m an 86 yr old like him,
I’d be very glad if I
just had my teeth. Powdery or not.
“I am in this trouble all because
of your aunt,” he claims, “She
had no business to leave me like this.”
Bless her poor soul. Even dead,
she is blamed by him for all his ailings.
So like the unfortunate women of her generation.
“Take me to some other hospital,”
he pleads, and I nod, though
I won’t. Sooner or
later, he’d realize he
can’t trust me too.

2006-05-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

If the other branch
is not taken,
would my mute presence bother you?

When a tree falls- paradox

2006-05-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

When a tree falls in the
forest and no one is around,
does it make any sound?
Maybe they are so
close to each other,
it merely leans on its neighbor.

A Lose-Lose game

2006-04-28T06:24:00.000-07:00

Hi Love, How are you?
Your mobile was switched off since the afternoon
(Me flopping in the chair wearily)
Sorry the battery was down.
But you have a car charger
(Wondering why I didn’t grab a
bottle of cold water before I came in.
The bottle here has ordinary water)
I was driving the van today.
Then put a charger in the van too
Ok, sorry. I will tomorrow.
(I stare at the pale blue walls of the hospital.
I’d been driving around in
the hot and dusty roads the whole day
and am feeling so caked with grime,
that if someone took a section of me,
from the rings of the dirt
he’d know which part of this city
I was at what time of the day.
Just for a moment I wonder
if the pale blue wall were a
pool, how, I could have dived into it.)
You don’t know how difficult
it is for me waiting the whole day
for you to come in the evening
(Coming out of the empty pool
feeling more thirsty and dirty)
I’ll come early tomorrow.
It’s so damn depressing here
(Looking at the sudoku puzzle in the newspaper nearby)
You’ll be out in a couple of days
And the pain
(Ha, I know where #7 comes in the 9th box)
Yes I know and I’m sorry.
What do you know about pain and
don’t gimme this sorry -warry.
(Taking my eyes off the paper)
Look I can relate to it.
You can never relate to the pain of anyone
who has just had her insides scooped out.
After all, you are just a man.

I have no words.
Neither has she.

The overhead ancient fan
creaks apologetically, and
blows down more hot air into the
tinder dry room ready to
turn into an inferno if one single
word is uttered.
We wait silently,
till one of us is spent of
of our own rage and misery and
holds out a tentative flag of regrets.

Meanwhile, its getting darker outside.

2006-04-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

Well, this was the poor thing I wrote about in the earlier post.

Condemned

2006-03-31T07:33:00.000-08:00

On seeing recently a beautiful but deadly adult Russell's Viper being killed by the roadside. I just was too late to save it :

Five minutes ago fifty bucks
would have freed me and the snake.
Now I carry it lifelong.

Forever

2006-03-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

Luscious fluorescent green caterpillar eating
away my expensive palms leaves.
Capturing its beauty in
various angles, exposures etc.,
I flick it
off and squash.
I’ll enshrine its pics
on the internet.
Like the trapped insects
in translucent gum
from the Jurassic age.

For Junior

2006-03-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

There he lay
in my palm.
Wet and rubbery.
So shrunk.
A miniature
me, who couldn’t
wait till
count nine
to be free.
Jumped the
gun in four.
“If it were a
girl,” the doctor
says, “this miscarriage
wouldn’t have happened”.
Meaning
guys don’t
stick on.
In or out
of the womb.
I burn his
delicate features
in my memory.
So if I were to
pass by him in
a specimen jar,
I’d say, “Hi kiddo!”
and move on.

Seven sketches of a scene

2006-03-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

Lately, my 18 yr old nephew is
wearing his broken heart on
his sleeve, pathetically
mourning his being dumped.
What do I tell him?
That being discarded
runs in our genes?
That I’d been given the stiletto heel six times?
That I’ve probably got the
most articulate/literate singeing
put offs ?
How then I had wished it were as simple as in
some enlightened tribes, where the woman just
keeps his shoes outside the
house and the man gets the message.
And stays away.
No drama. No prosy stuff. Simple.
But I say nothing to him.
A lovers hurt to him/ her is, the
most painful of all in the world.
He deserves his
legitimate quota of depression.
I won’t stop him
from wanting to drown
in his toe deep sorrows.

2

Thinking of you
I can still feel the reverberations
of the crack up surging through me.
The fault lines have vanished into the horizon.
But I can never get that far
to be immune
to the after shocks.

3

Some of us ooze so much bathos,
we should have a stay away alert sign
around our necks:
“Caution, don’t throw crumbs of kindness.
Character likely to melt in gratitude.
Please move on…”

4

The ripples continue.
Long after the motion has ceased.
Defying laws of physics.

5

One mans misery is
another’s muse.

6

Blues have many hues.

7
Blues make bad news.

A New Life

2006-02-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

Spring cleaning the house,
I find an old name board that
my dead sister-in-law had at her clinic:
“ Dr. R----------------------
M.B.B.S., M.S (Gen. Surgery)
Clinic Timings:……….”
The board is quite big.
About 5’x2’ and pretty strong.
The metal sheet is rust free.
The wooden frame, termite free.
Even the paint is not flaked or faded.
Though my memory of her is.
I wonder whether to throw it.
Or keep it.
I decide to repaint and
use it to cover the new birdcage
in the balcony, protecting them
from the sun.
She’d have approved the recycling
and her place in the sun.

Never dissect a Poem

2006-02-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

When I was young,
I was naive and impressionable,
and always desperately trying
to impress women.
(my buddies claim I haven’t
changed a bit…)
On a vacation trip, I came across
this poem* that really moved me.
Promptly, I wrote about it to my
new pretty English teacher.
Line by line I paraphrased the poem,
explaining how good it was. What
the poet meant etc., etc., Finally after
showing off my alleged acumen,
I had the audacity to ask her,
“What do you think
of the poem ?”
And I waited anxiously for her reply.
“That is a beautiful poem,” She wrote back,
“You have pinned it on its back, exposing
its soft, secret sensitive areas.
Very nice.” I felt thrilled and read on.
“But, you didn’t stop there,”
she continued her critique, “ You had to
cut it, quarter it, gut it,
show me its raw innards, its fading beating heart,
its gasping lungs and its
naked slimy soul.. Tell me, how can I fancy
this poem that you’ve
so clinically dissected ?”

*The Guy in the Glass

Missing The Tree

2006-01-08T06:24:00.000-08:00

Last January , a friend of my wife
from the US dropped in at our home.
Going through my personal
library, he fancied a particular book.
“Take it,” I offered rather generously,
because I’d often claimed I’d rather die
than part with one.
He said he’d take it, only if
he could pay for it.
I dismissed his offer as a crass joke
and said, no, please take it for free,
I don’t sell my books.
“I think nothing should be given
away free,” he insisted, and offered $20 to me.
I thought it was his politically correct way of
meaning anything can be bought.
I was aghast and felt awfully insulted.
I refused the money. He persisted.
So there we were, arguing adamantly
when my wife said to me privately, “Just take it.
and anyways you guys are
turning this into one big male ego trip.”
Castigated, I buck-led, though under protest.
Later, I fumed at my wife for making
me accept the money. “What are you being so pseudo
possessive about,” she asked me disparagingly,
“after all, you have hundreds of them lying
around. One less wouldn’t matter.”
Her claim was, since I rarely read what I buy,
they are uninvited, unwanted,
and unworthy to be attached to.
“Like Imelda Marcos and her shoes
collections,” is her cold constant refrain.
Chastened, I carried around the $20 bill
in my wallet for ten months,
like a festering wound to my national
and personal pride.
Finally I passed a shop that
exchanged currencies and I went in
and got for $1=Rs42.87.
Told my wife about it.
“Oh good," She said, "Hope you didn’t
get some more orphans to populate
our overcrowded pad.”
I nodded sheepishly that I had.
“By the way, what was that
book you had sold your soul out for?” she asked me mockingly.
I thought hard and realized,
I just couldn’t recall the name.
And, she just smiled enigmatically.

Promises to keep

2005-10-31T08:45:00.000-08:00

In Japan, there was a time I believe,
when acclaimed writers after taking
hefty advances,
would rather sleep, take a bath,
research or just loaf around.
Do anything but write.
They were not particularly
fond of deadlines/ delivery schedules.
Their exasperated editors,
finally used to resort to kanzume,
or the Japanese tradition of “canning”
the writers. They just put an errant writer
in a hotel room, without newspaper,
TV, books or any other form of distraction.
Until, he delivers the works promised.
Unfortunately, I am not sought after,
nor have I been paid any four figure advances
that anybody need to develop ulcers over.
I won’t therefore be forced into
a hotel room, to lay the golden egg.
So, it’s a difficult task
to goad oneself to take up the
joyless, scary inner journey.
There were always so many other
easier, irrelevant things to be done.

Now,
no more escapisms.
No more excuses.
No more distractions.
No more delays.
No more friends.
No more forgiving audiences.

Just me and the person I think
I should be, as my task master in this
daunting expedition.
I think an Editor
would have made a far
better slave master
and simpler to please.
More human and
easier to deceive.

Who Can it Be?

2005-10-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

Late last night trying to cure my insomnia,
I was reading through the tome
Contemporary Poetry. Having
read it so many times before, it was
almost like my mates body to me.
I knew exactly what was where.
There is so much pleasure in such predictability.
So much bliss in the expected
that can be brailled out unerringly for solace,
in the darkest of the dark moments.
These poems were tattooed by
by my inane overboard exclamations,
“Wow, “ “Good”, “Great”, “Too Good” etc.,
that if the authors had seen, would have
banned me from reading their poetry altogether.
Or sometimes, if it was a particularly puzzling
Pound like piece, it would just sport
a date when I had first banged my head against it.
Thought provoking lines were highlighted.
These I reread, relished. Like they
were my hard won trophies of
surviving my trips through the
poets whirlpool of words.
Browsing across one such oft reread poems,
I saw a line that I did not understand.
But I had underlined it.
I stopped still.
If I didn’t understand it,
then why did I underline it?
If it is not me, then
who else would have?
I felt enraged, as though I was violated.
Worse, my lovers body, defiled.
With my insomnia now
totally un curable, I tossed about
through the night, trying to decode
that underlined sentence.
What? Who? Why? When?
Finally in the bleary early
morning light, I reread that line,
and I understood.
Maybe there is more in me than just myself.

Voices

2005-10-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

4.30 pm .My workers are sawing
some logs for the last couple
of hours, and only the last one is left.
It is the thickest of the lot.
All we have to do is cut it into two halves.
The prospect of finishing it off early and
heading back home is quite
exhilarating, as we can avoid the
excruciating evening rush hour traffic.
So, with renewed energy, the guys
attack the final frontier.
But to our surprise, after 15 mins of sawing,
we have not even cut through 3 inches .
A fresh crew exchange places,
and the work resumes.
5.00 pm. The jolly banterings has turned to
profane mutterings as we have reached only
half way and it is getting ominously
dark and cloudy and windy and cold.
“The saw teeth aren’t sharp enough,” grumbles one.
“Let’s turn the log and try from
the other side,” growls another.
“The angle of the cut isn’t correct,” grunts the third.
“Maybe its too dry,” grimaces the fourth.
“We should have an electric saw,” groans yet another.
I, say nothing. Because suddenly, I have
this eerie feeling. That the log is
not dead. That it is alive. That it
isn’t giving in so easily. That it
is fighting us with its every single grain as we
gutted it. Of course, I say nothing. Because,
opening my mouth with such pro log
sentiments is sure to get me into
serious physical trouble
with the already short fused surly crew.
While they sweat and swear and saw
for another half an hour, the shadows lengthen,
and I am silently and hopelessly
rooting more and more for the log,
even touched the wood, to wish it luck.
When it finally snaps
with a heart rending groan,
in the raucous whoopee of the
victorious men, I think
I heard a feeble cry of the dying.

Almost a Perfect Day

2005-09-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

Standing on the fifth floor terrace
of an apartment complex
under construction in Mysore,
I gaze across the horizon. It’s a
magical monsoon Friday afternoon.

The verdant Chamundi hills is
silhouetted behind the
sagging clouds and as the misty
fine rain turns to a light drizzle,
it’s like being in Munnar or Kodaikanal.
The lush hill veiled by the
gauzy downpour looks demure,
like a shy bride of the yore.
How nice it would be to right now
sip a cuppa steaming tea
and read/write in a verandah hammock.
Or just stare at the mystical rain
from a balcony.
Or go plant a tender sapling somewhere.
Or just roast some grounduts and eat.
Or just drive in the slush,
and listen to some sad songs.

Bursting my bubbling holiday spirits,
I walk back to my dingy
site office, to finish the days work.
And maybe I’ll have to work on
the weekend too.

Only mad dogs and Englishmen
used to be out on hot afternoons.
Now, only idiots and me
work on gorgeous days like this.
Almost a perfect day, to contemplate on
stepping off the terrace.

The One Who Flew Over

2005-08-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

My father is a writer.
So is my mother.
So was my Uncle.
My sister used to
dish out those obdurate
spaced out poems that
I don’t understand even now.
It’s a genetic disorder that runs in
my family. Like some families have
drooling imbeciles or suicidal characters
walking around aimlessly.
Of course, none of the
above writers ever published what they wrote.
But that never stopped them
from keeping on scribbling furiously.
The best of the cursed lot was my uncle.
He used to write in the night. Rather, type.
Strange stories about weird heros whose
last wish would be to sleep in
the cellular jail in Andaman’s
for one night,
before dying in the burning pyre of
his dead wife. I never
understand any of these,
but these always sounded exciting and exotic
to me and so Uncle was a hero to me.
He used to write on an
old Brother typewriter, while I would
be scrounging his overflowing library, looking
for English paperbacks with dirty parts in them.
Only grandma used to have her feet on ground
and moan time and again that her family
is being ruined because of the writing mania
for pleasure and not for profit.
Not a line brings home a piece of dosa on
the pan, she would cry out.
Unfortunately, everyone was oblivious
to all these shortcomings.
But the things came to a head when uncle
refused to marry a wealthy guys fat daughter,
and refused the even fatter dowry,
just because she had never read
Chekov and Marx.
Instead, he was believed to be secretly meeting
a poor school teacher who had admitted
of vaguely having heard of Maxim Gorky.
Now grandma got real real mad, took
the poor type writer
and flung it on the dusty road in front of
our house and it was promptly run over by the 1130
nonstop and expired. Probably,
the only typewriter to ever die so.
Uncle went into such a shell shock,
that he meekly tied the knot
on that fatty, and gave up
his writing altogether. As usual,
another hero of mine had let me down.
Secretly though,
I think he was looking for a way to
give up his miserable run with his writing
and grandma gave him his reason.
Anyway when granny died, there was
a big commotion in our household.
No, not wailing their hearts out near
and dears, but everyone wanted their epitaph
on Granny’s tomb. You can imagine the
riotous scene that must have been.
Writers squabbling! That too amateurs…
Finally, my Uncle who had kept away
from all these bickerings, quietly
erected the tombstone with this brief :
“Because she died,
we are alive today.
God bless her.”

Darkness at Noon

2005-08-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

The iridescent
baby cobras
lunged at me.
I struck them down
and
the day became
a bit darker.

Why Masquerade ?

2005-08-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone
is a poet, in private.
Some of us being
exhibitionists, publish.
Though anonymously.

Anonymity perhaps
helps in reducing
our sense of shame,
for exposing ourselves
before total strangers.
But how come we don’t
mind exposing our
most private feelings,
but not our face ?
It’s like streaking,
but with a mask on,
and the fig leaf off.
Leaving one with a
sense of relief of not having
exposed the most vulnerable
part of our body.
Maybe that’s how the
phrase “Can’t show my face…”
came in to vogue.

In the Eye of the Beholder

2005-08-01T07:57:00.000-07:00

We are dining in a crowded
restaurant when in
walks a beautiful young thing
with gorgeous, straight and
long, long hair.
She sits with her back to us
and her sinuous hair cascades
over the chair’s back.
Every time she shakes her head,
it comes alive, sizzles and crackles.
Man, woman, child,
everyone around is
mesmerized by it.

“Oh its like as alive as
the snakes coiling on
Medusa’s head...”

“It is as thick and heavy
as the monsoon rain thats falling
in Bombay now...”

“Oh it looks like the
fine spaghetti I bought
at the market the other day...”

“It’s the kind I could easily sell
to buy a watch shop as in
The Gift of the Maggi...”

“Maybe she’s the one
from the ivory tower
who uses it to entice
unwary knights
serenading below…”

When even the ordinary
folks let their hair down
and talk so eloquently,
I couldn’t help, but be honest.
Gulping down a generous
measure of beer, I give
them my own version…
“It looks as enticing and
obscene as when Pam Ands wears
a wet T- shirt that screams “These are
REAL !”..."

And I get whacks showered
on my balding pate .

Never be honest.
Be a poet.
The more fanciful,
the better. And safer.

Who Needed Whom ?

2005-07-02T06:03:00.000-07:00

Though hard I tried,
I couldn’t often avoid bumping
into D, as I walk thru the major
construction site in the evening
to check what my welding crew
had done for the day.

Catching me trying to slyly
sneak away from him,
D would corner me
and start talking, making me his
sole audience for a soul
to soul talk, oblivious of
all the din, clang and
general mayhem around us.

He is a short plumpy guy, with
thick 6 mm glasses and
a week old 3 mm stubble.
His ballooning belly
was surely a beer
lover’s and this he acknowledged
many a time, proudly.
So there we would stand
like a couple of wastrel
roosters crowing over a fence.
The only difference was that
rarely did I get to open my meek beak,
while D did all the gabbling.

The sweat would build up on his
forehead and it was a sure sign
of him trying to gasp for breathe
above the torrent of his words…

D and his family were from Bombay,
and my town bored him so much,
that he had an infra dig, was vitriolic,
to say the least.
“Is there any life at all beyond
M.G. Road ?” was his famous refrain.
The slow take-it-easy slug like pace
of my town needled him and
everybody in his family,
making them wish they were
back in the good ole fast,
furious and bad Bombay…

So on and so forth,
he would rant on,
about how he and his family
spent their miserable
weekend in this apology of a city,
where they went, what movie they saw,
what dinner they ate later, where…etc, etc.,

All his family minutia were
laid bare to me and I had a secret
contempt for him
and his needing to unburden
himself on somebody, to salve his
hurt Bombay-less ego.

I felt superior, and condescending
because he needed a hick
like me to be his Freu(n)d indeed.
I frequently mimicked, sneered, made
monkey faces and mocked
at him from behind the couch,
as he rambled and raved on.
Finally, I’d lip sympathize
with him for all his troubles,
mouth some solemn inanity,
hint that his time was up
and that I had other cranks
milling around impatiently
in my crowded waiting room…
And he’d reluctantly
get off the couch and
I’d go, attend to my business.

Then, one day, when I
came back after a long leave,
I found D had gone back to Bombay…

That and following evenings,
I felt abandoned. Lonely.
No one else was overtly
friendly with me at that site
(becos I wasn’t with anybody ).
Nobody had any time for me.
My visits became boring,
routine and dull, and I started to miss
D and all his vituperative babbling, his
Shankar Mahadevan kinda monologues,
his voice, his lust for life…

I think I will go lie down
on the couch.

We are Still Waiting

2005-06-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

There we were, a bunch of guys
drinking and generally having a good time
in our favorite pub, when into
the reunion party walks
an old associate of ours.

“Look who is here !” we exclaim
and there is a lot of fake enthu,
shaking hands, back slapping…
The newcomer was whom
most of us contemptuously
referred to as the Rich Rasputin,
dressed in white like a politician.
New round of drinks is ordered,
to try to forget our envy of him.
RR was our most successful peer,
generally resented by most of us.
He was also once
my idol, in my gawky-eyed years*.
And that is why I am
the only one still
admiring him.

He however refuses to share
the spirits with us and we feel hurt.
And offended. It’s as sacrilegious
as refusing to break bread.
When there is a loud round of
indignant protests, he raises
his hand and says,
“Guys, I am trying to say
goodbye to all my vices…”
But why ? we ask .
“Well, I guess I’ve
had enough of them, to do
without for the rest of my
life…” he says philosophically.
Now I understand his
Swamiji like dress.
He does look enigmatic to me
as ever, whether while rolling in sin or
relinquishing the same.

“You mean you’re giving
up booze ?” someone asks
incredulously.
“And cigarettes,
and many more things…”, he smiles.
More groans of
collective disbeliefs
rend the air.

“Like some richie rich diamond
dealers in Gujarat who renounce their
incredible wealth, women and world
and go to the caves in the
Hima for the rest of their
lives?” some guy asks.
RR nods, “Almost.”
We feel bad. Here is a
guy who is a regular
Pg 3 Item and lives with
a gorgeous woman for
whom we would have
willingly traded all our
women put together
and he is planning to
leave everything.

For nothing.

Somehow, it is not an event
for us poor ordinary souls
to rejoice about, as you’ll see :

01. He had wallowed
in numerous luxuries earlier.
Now, he is going to subtract
the same.
Either way, he has
multiplied our miseries.

02. Why is it that he who has everything,
does not want them ?

03. Why is that those steeped in
sins want to become saints ?

04. Why is it that the vicest,
want to become the virtuoust?

05. Why should such weighty
thoughts arise to me only
in stupid bars ?

Life certainly is
unfair, unbalanced.

Then the Inverted Guy** speaks up.
“You are planning to give up all
your vices, you say ?” IG asks curiously.
Like IG was insinuating
that something was still left
to give up, to attain sainthood.
RR nods, already sagelike.
“Have you ever tried giving up lying?” IG asks.
RR looks nonplussed.
“Just try not to lie to yourself,” suggests IG,
“for an hour. A day.
A week. Then, come back to us.”
RR leaves, smiling and shrugging
his broad shoulders. Like it was the
easiest thing for him to do, and that
he would be back soon…

That was some six months ago...

* Being The Lackey, Nov 2003
** The Inverted Rainbow, July 2003

The Enlightened Scribbler

2005-06-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

He who can’t write good,
must read.
It might not make him
a better writer.
But it might just stop
him from being verse.

The Chennai Trip

2005-06-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

2 a.m

am sitting beside the transparent airconditioned
coffin of my recently departed aunt,
at a nondescript village near Chennai.

We are a few close relatives who
are keeping all night vigil,
for what reasons I don’t
know, except to
salve our collective remorses
of not having spent time with her
when she was alive, lonely and sick.

Am sweating profusely
in the sweltering night,
the oppressive heat,
and feel jealous of my aunt inside
the cool coffin.
I can see the icicles clinging to the
steel sidewalls, below the
clear glass top.
Perversely,
wished I were in the coffin,
instead of her, just
to escape from the glowing
embers of the night.

The incense sticks thick smoke
around the coffin gets me high,
and as I look at her face,
I feel as though she were
reproving all of us, at what we
were doing or were talking about.

Worried that
I am hallucinating, I walk out
and sit in the verandah and
smoke, to keep myself awake,
waiting for tiredness to take
over my guilt feelings.

3 a.m

I stretch my legs walking on the dark
rough stone road, beside the house
and am warned of venomous snakes
abounding in these areas.
Hoped I could see one or two,
just to make my night. Or morning.
Whatever.

Suddenly, I am punched in my face by an intense
fragrance, and I look around dazed, and I
find blooming mehendi flowers.

The fragrance is intoxicating, and
it’s the first time I have felt its
full allure. I just stand there in the dark,
drinking the heady scent,
god knows for how long.

4. a.m

I come out of the mehendi
trance, break a branch of it
and bring and lay it among the withering roses
on the coffin. I am afraid to look at her face.
I join the silent and now dozing
mourners in the verandah again.

A rooster crows nearby and I’m surprised
because I never hear such things
in my city. The crowing is answered
by another awakened rooster, a bit away.
And by yet another, farther away.
Then the main guy starts crowing again,
and the others follow the sequence.
“Must be a cock from Malaysia,”
my bleary eyed Uncle and says, “it must
be breaking dawn down there.”
Funny reason.
But couldn’t beat the logic. The crowing
cycle goes on, for about five times.

5 a.m

Having driven 350 kms
last night to be here, am beginning to
feel bone tired and less guilty.
I get into my car, lean the
seat back and go to sleep.

I’ve done my mourning bit.

Whether my
Aunt repudiates me or not.

Just Another Sunday at Home

2005-06-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

It’s Friday afternoon and I get
the call I dreaded most.
“We’ve decided on Sunday,” says Dad.
As though it was a family get together
he was inviting me to.
“I’ll come,” I say.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “Otherwise
I’ll call somebody else…”
“No, I’ll be there by 10.00,” I say
brusquely, angered by
his eternal distrust of me.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. I know
my responsibility, I tell myself.

I reach home and
Mom is all dressed up.
In black. Like she was
attending a funeral. Wasn’t she ?
Dad of course is in his
usual cold, remorseless self,
reading the paper.
It is just another
Sunday for him.
I too act nonchalant,
as though today was no
big deal for me.

I walk up to mutt, who is actually
Buddy, a name I had fondly given
long, long ago.
Almost a brother I had grown
up with, who had shared my
secrets, my joys, my tears, my bed.
Now he is senile, stinking,
almost blind and paralytic, among
other infirmities. He senses me and
as I rub his ears, looks at me through
his bleary rheumy eyes.
His tail twitches spasmodically,
but he can’t get up. I feel awful.
But there is little I can
do for him, except
continue to rub his head
out of affection.

10.30 a.m. “The vet will be
here by 11,” says Dad, glancing
at his watch. He is a stickler for
timing and sometimes I wonder
whether I was born at the time
he willed. Maybe I didn’t,
and so, I’ve never ceased to
disappoint him since then.

Mom gets me tea and
I can see her eyes moist and
she is babbling her head off,
about some inane matter
to no one in particular, as
she is wont to when she is
all tensed up.
The mood is turgid and charged,
as though
we are anxiously waiting
for some exam result of mine.

11.15 a.m . The vet comes and it
is all over within minutes,
with least resistance.
I feel the life ebbing from
the limbs I’m holding
and they stiffen.
So wooden. Dad is watching
me closely, as though
he expects me to swoon on
my feet like the the sissy
he believes I am.
I can feel my heart hammering,
face flushed, sweat trickling
down my spine
to between the tensed cheeks.
But, I hold my ground and
the carcass.
I surprise myself.

And disappoint Dad.

For once, I have not lost
to him in our never ending
battles of one up manship.

Yes, yes, yes !!!
I gloat and
smirk at him and
look for Buddy to
share my rare joy.

That’s when I
break down.

The Hollow Man

2005-05-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

Everybody has their own visions
of terror. Something they are
mortally afraid of.
That they cannot face.
However brave they might be.

Mine is,
coming home to
an empty page.

It always feels good
to come home looking
forward to rereading
and moulding some
germ of an idea.

To try to…
capture a bolt of lightning
paint a smile
stitch up an unhealed wound
recall a fragrance
revivify a fading memory…

Or just conjure up a scrabble
to brighten up
a dark day,
merely by wordplay.

I destress myself, spend
absorbing time with them
and then go to sleep
a good nights sleep, because
of the numerous germinating
ideas on paper.
And in my dreams.

Its like, words though
inanimate, makes me feel alive.

Few live up to their words.
Even less, for their words.
My words justify
my nondescript existence.

So its scary. Not easy
to look at my emptiness,
when there is nothing to
look forward to
come home to.

An empty page.

Terrifying, like
I got no face,
when I look at myself
in the mirror.

Some thought

2004-11-18T06:04:00.000-08:00

Walking thru the cemetery one morbid evening,
reading all the heart rending sorrowful messages on the tombstones,
I wondered,
what would I like to put on my own,
which could shock some gloomy soul like me,
to smile?

After numerous revisions,
I came up with this one.
“Here lies siggy,
who was mostly put on iggy,here.
God help Him there…”

To Each, his own poison

2004-11-08T06:09:00.000-08:00

It was tantalizingly placed above
the crowded bus stop. Thousands of people
always milling around.
Very difficult to miss the ad
unless you were plain blind.
It showed a young
girl with her jacket unbuttoned
and just exposing two lacy
black cups. As usual, the ad guys
had got it all wrong. It was an ad for
a brand of jeans. Not for
what every guy was looking at.
It was there for almost
two weeks, before the
moral brigade got into the
act and put a piece of cloth
across the offending exposure.
But they too had got it all wrong.
The eyes were the most
enticing and it now seemed,
as though she were
mocking at me wickedly.

A visit to the home for the aged

2004-11-05T06:11:00.000-08:00

Some are old enough to be your great granny/granpa.
Others, your grandparents.
Many are abandoned,
few are here by choice.
But all are victims of lack of space,
time, warmth and love from us.
Few are so shrunk and wasted,
you are afraid to sneeze,
lest you blow them away.
Some in wheel chairs,
some in walkers.
Few tread
the ground as though it were
thin ice.
Or mined.
Many wish you warmly,
without any reservation and you
feel bad,
because you didn’t
take the initiative.
Their expectant eyes hurt you most,
because they look at you with hope
and you refuse to befriend them.
And when you finally get courage
and overcome your revulsion
and hold one of those frail, wrinkled
hands, the bony fingers pincer you like claws.
It takes guts to be held by them.
But you are just another coward,
just like all those who had abandoned them
to this cruel fate.
You try to withdraw from the physical contact,
wondering whether you are any better
than the Nazis.

Have We really Won ?

2004-10-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

Now that we have feted and felicitated
our great heros, and are giving every
sundry quite a bit of
the generous bounty,
a nagging feeling remains.
Like an irritating leftover from a feast,
stuck way behind and
between our teeth
that can’t be extricated
or reached by a toothpick.
Have we really won?
Do we really deserve the gung ho feeling,
the machismo, the victory march,
the tonsuring of the head etc..etc ?
What are we celebrating by bursting
crackers, distributing sweets about?
That we are not
going to lose anymore
selfless brave cops and ordinary people
ruthlessly shot or beheaded by
a beast of a man?
That a nation of 100 million
held to ransom by a common
poacher for 20 odd years,
has finally been freed of
the thug?
That we who have weathered
the crafty Chinese/Pak couldn’t
catch a wily brigand?
That we who have technology
to scan our land to a meter’s
resolution from our satellites,
couldn’t see the murderer
because of the the forest cover?
That it took a 700 plus special
cops to finally nail him?
That it took 400 odd bullets
to hit home
fatally with just three?

That a mustachioed demon
fed by opportunist politicians,
saluted by
spineless local cops,
exploited by ruthless
press persons and voraciously
read by the peeping tom public,
has bit the bullet?

I beg to differ.

The entire scenario resembles to me of
hundreds of Lilliputians gloating and
prancing and singing over a fallen Gulliver.
We may have won the war.
But we have long lost our
honor in this battle,
that can never be won back.

Somebody is having
a long, last laugh six feet under.

A Wino's Wonderings

2004-10-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

Late evening, the pub is
pulsating with camaraderie
and laughter. But all I have,
is a fellow bar fly
repeating his sad
story, for the nth time,
like a stuck audio CD.

Looking abstractedly at the
people around,
suddenly, I wonder…

Why do I not
see women trying to
drown their sorrows in bars?

They always seem so
hip, hep n happy.

Is it that,
they just wanna
have fun here?
Or is it due to
their self control?
Or lack of sorrows?
Or is it just a masquerade?
A self preserving
mode of concealing their hurts?
Or is it due to their rigid
cultural conditioning of
concealing their pains?
Or, are their sorrows
not drownable?
Or do they
cry in
Women Only Bars?

Or, maybe,
women are made
of sterner stuff
and don’t hit
the bottle
every time they
get hurt or hit.

Or may be,
they only cry in private.

Or is it that a man’s
sorrow is supposed to be
universally exhibited and pitied,
while a woman’s,
is hers alone?

Or, maybe, men try to live by
trying to forget the details
and women, by trying
not to forget them.

Or, maybe…
I should try not giving superficial
explanations to serious
social problems…

So, I just strangle my pretentious Freudian
wonderings and continue listening to my
friend repeat his n+1th sob story
version…

Should I ? Maybe not

2004-10-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

Had we met years ago,
I would have worshipped
you, shamelessly.
And you may
have enjoyed it,
secretly.

Now I merely wax eloquent,
and you think I am making
a pass (which by the way,
I think, you are worth making one).

Then, probably I would have
been more impulsive and
you, less cynical.

And maybe, we’d have remembered
forever for our lives,
that one brief moment,
when our dull lives were
brightened by each others
starry eyes.

Among Men

2004-10-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

When we guys get together,
we talk shop.
We share info.
We network.
We brag,
about our latest
conquests/acquisitions/deals.
We try to dominate
each other, to be
the alpha male.
We crib. About our work/wives/women.
We gossip. About those who aren’t present.
We tell nasty jokes. X- rated jokes.
We drink, get drunk,
get louder and boisterous.
And slobbier.

But we never get to
know each other.
We never confide
our secrets.
We never reveal
our dark side .
We never show our
weaknesses, lest we
get mocked at.
We share no hurts,
no fears, no misgivings.
After all, we all
are supposed to be Supermen.

We part, as we had met.

None the wiser, happier
or enlightened.

I Don't Get it

2004-10-10T05:56:00.000-07:00

Out of sheer stupidity
and not by design,
I betrayed a dear friends
trust in me, recently.

With a contrite heart, I confessed,
apologizing verbosely for my reprehensible act.
"Is that so? You are such a funny guy !" was all
she said.

Penitent, I fasted every Friday,
laid off books, booze and blogs
for six months, to pay for my sins.
At the end, I felt I had righted the wrong.
Again I confessed to her about my sacrifice
that, like a dip in the prehistoric Ganges,
I claimed, had absolved me of my crime.

"Is that so ? You are even more funnier now !!" was all
she said.

Words

2004-03-09T06:01:00.000-08:00

Sweaty Saturday late afternoon,
and I’m in a strange city,
going to the airport.
It’s been a lousy day.
My presentation had gone bad.

I had also prayed for a
chilled beer in the afternoon, before
the presentation. It hadn’t happened.
And then the presentation
had to bomb…

To add to the hurt,
I am being driven to
the airport,
on a road by the seaside.

Having been essentially
a land man,
I HATE the sea.

Give me a mountain to climb,
any day. But I won’t wade into
the sea, even if the most provocative
nubile mermaid were to offer
me my wildest wishes
coming true… or,
even if it meant I’d die
on land.

And as if it had finally got its chance,
the sea vicariously rubs its salty
wind on my multiple
wounded ego…

The airport is still an hour
and a half away.
Only one thing I know, that
can put me out of
my present state of misery …
I pull out a fat book
of short stories from
my bag, to drown
my sorrows in …

The story I read is so,
so good, that it lights up my
dampened spirits.
I feel high. My spirits, that,
half an hour ago,
were drowning in the
depths of the pits,
are now
soaring in the sky...

I remember about a
character who once claimed
why she was a teetotaler,
because “… the intoxication
that one gets from reading
a written word
is far more ethereal and satisfying
than that obtained from
any brewed liquid..”

Now I felt exactly what she meant !

I ask the driver to stop beside
the seemingly never
ending beach.
Ah, I might as well
try to get over it, I feel.
I remove my shoes and socks and
carrying the tome of a book, walk by the
seashore. The early evening crowd
is enjoying themselves.
The breeze cools
my sweat and balms
my wounds.

Cautiously, with great trepidation,
I touch the waves,
with my toes.
They seem like giant
undulating tongues
of a green monster
trying to lap me up..
I scramble out in a hurry.
Maybe some other time,
I will overcome my fear
of the sea.

I give a friendly smile to
the people on the beach.
Me smiling? Me happy !!!
I shock myself !

The driver waves out,
pointing his watch out to me..

I feel invigorated and,
I am ready to take on whatever
is left of the day.

Well, just goes to show
that words do make a
day, for some people…

Yet Another Sad Song

2004-03-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

In her eyes,
I see tender, desperate love,
for an insensate egotist.

She loves him because,
she needs to love.
But not necessarily,
someone deserving.

Like a vine,
she clings to
the first wall
she touches.

A love so true,
it’ll die unknown,
unrequited,
and uneulogized.

She’ll fall in love again,
even after she gets her
tendrils scorched.

But,not as passionately.

Canary in the Cage

2004-03-04T10:27:00.000-08:00

Why are you so negative?
So pathetic, so tragic?
Always blue, always brooding,
you accuse me, my friend,
in your angry mail,
after reading a few of my
scribblings that I had mailed
to you.

You think our Indian society
is so bad ? you ask.
You are merely highlighting
a few random cases,
which are rare, and
not the norm, you say.
Our society is as good
and vibrant than most,
you asserted.
You need to get yourself
checked, you advised.

So had commented most of
my well wishers who
sometimes read my
ramblings
(if they had nothing else better
to read…).

I thought, all of you
people were perhaps right.
Maybe there was something
wrong with me.
And decided to see a
shrink…(seriously).

Until, I read about
a strange habit among miners,
in the beginning of the century.

They used to carry canaries
in cages everyday and
keep them in the mine floor
and work. If there was a build up
of heavy poisonous gas in the mine,
the canary would keel over and die.
That, was the sure sign for
the miners to quit for the day.
It had become too dangerous
to be around…

I feel like the canary.
Keep a careful watch on me.

Advice to JJ (on her exposing her breast)

2004-03-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

If you git the urge
to go agin
bust.
Take me advice, baby.
Charge fer it.
Then you’ll have more
lechers asking fer
more flesh fer
their pound/dollar.
And less prudes raisin
hue/cry n
dust.

The Artist and his Muse

2004-02-13T08:32:00.000-08:00

Read recently about
a well known American artist
and his obsession with
a model for 15 years.
He had made some 200 odd
drawings/sketches/portraits
of this one single woman,
shown standing, sleeping,
pensive, in the nude, brooding,
staring, sitting etc., etc.,

What kind of an artist is he?
Ha, no imagination at all, I dismissed
him, arrogantly. And the sketches
drew no more
look from me than of the
of the lecherous kind.

But later, being bedridden
for a couple of days due
to a leg problem, I went through
the book again. Out of
idle curiosity. Wondering, what
was in this one woman that the artist
could shut out every other woman
from his vision.

For 15 years.

She looked plain Jane, sharp featured.
But as I kept seeing the sketches,
I felt she was not the same
in any two drawings.
Every one of them seemed
the same, yet, different.
And I started to look
at her with fascination.
She did look ordinary,
but extraordinary, too.

I knew, the artist would
have been honest and would
not have bestowed on her
any more vitality than
what she possessed. If he did, he
wouldn’t have been the
great artist he was.

So, what he had captured
in essence, was her inner glow.
The woman no longer looked
to me,
like I’ve-seen-one-sketch-of-her-
and-I’ve-seen-her-all.

I was glad that maybe I do
have something as an
artist streak going for me, as
she started seeming
half as alluring to
me as she did to him.

Now, if only, I could get
a willing model…

On a serious note, though,
someone had once said,
a woman needs to know
just one man and she’ll know all
Men. Whereas , a man might know many
women, but will never
understand a single Woman.

This artist could be the only
exception to that.

I salute to him.

Why My Woman don't grow no beard

2004-02-05T10:20:00.000-08:00

Lazy Sunday morning.
Watching my woman staring at herself
intently on the mirror, with tweezers,
searching for that
nascent one culprit of a minute
hair on her chin,
I am confused.

For I too had stood before
the same mirror,
sometime ago,
and was depressed because,
one single hair from my
scalp was found on the comb.
One. Not two or twenty.
Suddenly, I felt so aged and insecure.

But why should my woman
pull out that one teeny-weeny
hair from her cute
chin, as though it
was a blemish on her
otherwise good looking face?

The question was of a single hair.

But both of us viewed it differently.
I was worried that it was
disappearing, and she, for the opposite.

So I ask her why ?

“Why, you think I
would look good to you
if I grew it ?” she asks seriously.

She was
viewing her, herself,
as I would look at her.

Whereas, I looked at
myself, as someone else
would look at me.

Honestly, I was worried I might
become less appealing to
women,, if I had a
bald pate (was I ever more ? I
like to fancy myself I was ).

Whereas, my woman wanted
to please only me.

Who ever said women were vain creatures,
couldn’t have been more wronger.

I needn't Worry

2004-02-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

Had a rather disconcerting
dream last Sunday night.

In the dream, it seems, I had gone
to a Doc for my aching
legs (I had climbed a hill
that day) and as any Indian
Doc would, he took my
weight, height, ECG,
pulse, piss + blood sample
and yes, my purse,
and tells me
that I have only 2 years to live.
Of course, my legs he forgot
to treat.

That’s when I got up sweating
from the nightmare. I checked
and found my purse and
the pain undiminished…

Later during the week,
I got thinking.
What if it were true?
Would I feel bad ?
Would I feel sad ?

Perhaps. So many
unread books, so many
untravelled places.
So many people
I havn’t met.
So many people
I havn’t hurt.
So many people
I havn’t driven up the wall.
So many blogs I havn’t
scribbled.

If it were true,
can I do all the above in two years?
What about my near and dear ones?
Would they miss me more than
I would miss them ?

What would I do with my
book collection?
Who will dust, clean,
annotate and add to them?

Frankly, I felt I didn’t
fear death. I feared more for
things I was leaving
behind. Like the only dog-eared
book of my great- grandfather
that has survived.
There is no photo of him,
no trace of anything else
he left behind.
Except his faded
comments, criticisms, by the margin.
I probably treasure this book more,
than if his entire fabled
library were intact today.

There in I found the
answer .

Fragments of memory
are more precious.

Than an entire life in a CD.

The Epitaph

2004-02-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

There was this guy
who finally got sick of
his writing (his poor, suffering
readers had got sick ages ago).

So he decided to kill the
writer in himself.
Not surprising , because the
bad writers always kill themselves, while
the smart ones are busy counting
their royalties.

Having decided,
he wondered, how ?
Since he had never showed
any originality in his
writing, he felt, he should be original
at least in killing himself.

Gas him self? Nah, Sylvia Plath
had put her head into it.

Disembowel himself? Yukio
Mishima had committed hara-kiri already.

Blow his brains ? Sadly, Hemingway
already, albeit famously, did.

Poison himself ? Arthur Koestler
and his wife already had drunk that.

Jump of the bridge?
John Berryman had taken the leap.

So our poor guy got disgusted.
Wasn’t there a novel way
to kill himself?

He wondered.

Thinking hard,
finally, he gets the one
and only original brainwave
in his brief literary life.

Why not hang from a bridge?
Nobody known had done that.

Our friend felt very happy,
that in death at least he
would stand out. Or hang out.

Whatever.

So there he was preparing
for this momentous act,
when his writing peers
passed by and caught sight of him
in his heinous act.

“Hey, Look,” one of them shouted
and our friend looked startled
and stopped in his stepping-of
the-bridge-with-the-noose-
around-his-neck act.

“Hey, he is trying to kill himself,”
the discoverer exclaimed.
“You know,” chirped another friend,
“He’s a Saggi. Only they
are capable of
such grandiose foolish acts.”

“No,” intervened another knowledgeable,
“I think Taureans are more
flashy in such acts.”

Now, the crowd really got
into the act of arguing
about which sun signs are
more prone to commit
spectacular suicides.

Slowly, they walked away from
our unfortunate, and wound up
at a nearby pub, to discuss the
issue more seriously,
in more amiable environs.

Our poor sap, who had momentarily
felt that his life was afterall, worth living,
after seeing and hearing all
his friends around him,
fell into despondency again
as he saw the
last of his friends
back vanishing into the
warm, inviting and well lit pub.

So he decided to go ahead
with his interrupted
act, before someone
else comes and makes him
again wishy washy.

So he took the step into the empty.

The crowd in the meanwhile,
after a lot of rounds of
intelligent, sensitive,
and forceful arguments,
.finally agreed that everyone was right (because
everybody was so intelligent,
nobody could be wrong).

Suddenly someone asked.
“Hey ! Where the hell
is our poor friend ?”

They looked around, and
didn’t find him. They had
expected him to be sipping
his stuff silently in a dark
corner, alone, as usual.

“Don’t worry about him,” the clown
of the group chortled, “He must be
hanging around
somewhere.”

As usual,
he was dead right.

On Reading a Letter from your Beloved

2004-01-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

I read the hand written
letter from my beloved,
with my heart.
Not with my eyes.

Line by line.
Between the lines.
Between the words…

The margins,
the postscripts,
all are very special
and enlightening to me.

The commas, full stops.
the paragraphs.
All the punctuations
are seriously dissected.

I even hold the letter
against the light,
to see if there are any
hidden messages.

The style of the
hand writing
itself is intoxicating,
as distinct and exciting
as the writer.

Oh, I get a kick just by
feeling the kind of
paper it is written on.

Why, even the envelope looks
so sensuous to me !

Ah ! For a man
who gets so turned on
by the hand
written words,
my practical,
unsenti woman sends me
short, to the point,
e-mails….

I guess, I have
a very valid point
for breaking up
this relationship….

Or does she ?

If Only...

2004-01-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

If only…

I can stop seeing your
face among the teeming mass of multitudes.

I don’t hear your beckoning voice
among the urban street day to day clutter.

I don’t smell you
every time I see a champa/parijatha/mallige.

I can stop myself exclaiming
“Hey ! Listen to this…”, every time I read
something funny…

I can find the TV remote/car keys/
the book I was reading yesterday
by myself.

You don’t
come to haunt me in
the still of the night.

I don’t search for ur e-mail id
among my incoming mail.

…horses could fly.

One Warm Afternoon

2003-12-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

Still pond awakened from
its siesta by playful dragonflies
skating on its surface.

The Long Wait

2003-12-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I reread
my writings,
I get these scary out-of-the-body
experiences.

Who is this stranger, I wonder.
Why does he at all write?
Why is he unsocial
in the midst
of joyous chattering voices?
Is he incapable of
communicating?
Or has he shut his ears
and closed his eyes ?
He seeks no approval,
he cares nought for
disapproval.

All that matters to him
is what he thinks,
what he writes.

That’s not how the
others are.

He sticks out unpleasantly,
like a prickly cactus
in a garden of flowers.

Frankly, he is a puzzle.
He gives me the creeps.
I’m uncomfortable
with him.

Maybe one day, I hazard a wish,
he will understand himself,
and all the others around him.

And then, hopefully,I will be
able to understand him.

I am waiting for that day.

It might take eternity, though.

Looking for the Leopard

2003-12-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

Last week, I spent a few days on
a peculiar assignment.
Of taking care of a friends
deserted farm, against a leopard.
His caretaker had fled
with the rest of the villagers, scared
of the marauding beast.

Tuesday Night

I had made myself
available for this work,
to get away for
a while from books, booze and blogs.
Even if it meant I had to live in a cage
with the lions, I had felt.

The road to the tiny hamlet was
deserted , dark and scary
at 11 pm as I drove to the farm.
Spent the night fitfully, as I
wound the bed sheet around me
like a mummy to escape the
ravenous mosquitoes.

Wednesday

Morning, I stretched
my legs around the
farm. It was set against a couple of hillocks,
with low bushes and rocky outcroppings.
I scanned the rocks, to see if
I can see the beast sunning itself. But it
proved to be prudent and shy
and was nowhere to be seen.
Felt disappointed.

Walked by a dry rivulet by which I had
once spent a couple of nights in a tent
with my wife, when we had just got married.
The rivulet then used to bubble
with water, and now, like my own
life, had turned arid and dry.
I remember, my wife
had sat and played with her legs in the water.
“It’s so cold,” I recollect her telling me.
“Hey, there is a water snake in there,” I had
lied and she had scrambled, tumbled and fallen,
bruising her elbow.
I had laughed but she hadn’t
found it funny at all.
“You know, you are are a sicko?” she had accused
me, with tears of fear in her eyes.

That was when the rift had begun,
and was never bridged, I realize.

The small tree by which we had pitched the
tent was a huge one now. Nature, left
to itself , flourishes. Man, left to himself,
crumbles.

Afternoon, cooked, ate and slept.
Got up in the evening and felt
sluggish. The first day of
abstaining from any vice, is the
worst to survive. I know,
if I can get through,
I will survive without my crutches.
For a while.

The night is beautiful. The moon is
three quarters full and shimmering.
Memories of the nights I spent here
comes flooding thru me. It seems
just like it was yesterday. But in
reality, eight years ago.

Why did it go wrong? Of all
the people, why, for me?

I realized that I had never thought
so much about my problems,
for such a long time.
I got some answers to some,
and few leads to others.

Slept may be past one.
( I had thrown away my watch,
switched off the mobile,
to make my isolation complete.)
Didn’t hear a meow of the big
cat. Must have been hunting some dog
somewhere, if not me.

Thursday

Spent the morning chopping some
logs near the house. Slept
like a log after that strenuous work.

Evening, got fever because of the
abstinence and over worked muscles.
My entire body ached and shivered.
Had hallucinations that night,
of many wild animals chasing me.
Thought I saw my ex leading the
pack.

Friday

Felt tired and worn out, could hardly
move around.
Thought I won’t make it till
the next day.
Saved by my friend and family
who came to spend the weekend.

“So, you didn’t find the big cat,” they
asked, as we raised toast to the cat.

No, but I did find a lot of other things,
and I raised the toast to myself.

The Revelation

2003-12-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

Came back to my town
after a long time.
Walked into my neighborhood
provision store to buy feed for my
starving, hungry frig.
Browsed around,
found what I wanted.

The check out counter is being
manned by an old grouchy man. I look
around for his ever-smiling son, who
normally used to be in the counter.

The man, though having seen
me many times before, seems
preoccupied as he is making the
bill, and does not acknowledge my smile.
As I extend my hand to collect
the change, I ask, “Where’s your son?
I don’t see him around…”

The mans face twitches.
His mouth struggles to
find words. His hands tremble.
His eyes suddenly fill
with tears to the brim, that seem
threatening to overflow.
My heart sinks, as I feel I
have committed an
awful faux-pas.

“He died last month,”
the man finally is able
to prise the words out of his mouth.
He starts to wobble on his legs.
A shop assistant comes and helps
him sit down and she
gives me a nasty “How-can-you-be
so-inconsiderate” look.

I shrug apologetically, and say to her
with my eyes, “Hey, I’m awfully
sorry, I didn’t know.”

But she doesn’t acknowledge,
and takes over the counter.

The son was only 28 and
had had a heart attack.
“He was such a good son,”
says the man, still miraculously
holding back the tears. “he took
care of his wife and children
and his parents, so well.”

I nod. I don’t know what
to say except that he was
so friendly to customers.

But the man is in his own world.
“Whatever I touched, turned to gold,
but God has cursed me when it comes
to my son,” he mourns. “What use is
all these wealth, if I don’t
have my son?,” he asks.

I can’t answer the question,
Because it touches a raw nerve in me.

We are quiet for a few minutes.
It seems so odd, in the middle
of a crowded vacuous evening shopping,
the two of us are in deep, serious thought,
on life and death.

“Do you know what is the
worst curse God can give
a man?” he asks me suddenly.

I don’t know and shake my
head in helplessness.

“It is, to condemn a man,” he says,
“to outlive his progeny.”
Now the tears break free
and scamper down his cheeks,
and he suddenly seems
to age considerably.
He seems not unlike a collapsing
balloon, shrinking, shriveling.

I know I can’t talk to
him anymore. I cannot
lessen his sorrow with
any of my cursory words.

I walk out of the shop, crestfallen.
I feel awful. Here is a man, who
has lost a son who was so close to him,
all these years. A son, whom he used
to see everyday, talk everyday…

What if there is a father, on
whom his son had walked out of,
on some ego problem?
And what if that father were condemned
to such a state?

Ten years is too long a time
in this short life to hold a
grudge. And I don’t want to condemn
that father , if it happens, to
an even worse fate of not having been
able to talk to the long lost son…

Then, that son would be even
more cruel than God.

I reach a nearby long
distance telephone booth.
As a familiar and authoritative
voice answers, I choke.
There is a long
moment of silence between the
thousands of kilometers of
telephone lines. And even longer
distance between two estranged hearts.

I finally mange to blurt out,
“Hello, Dad…”

Unfunny Moments

2003-11-30T09:48:00.000-08:00

AS A KID

Me Mom told “ If someone asks
you to eat something, please say
politely, Thank you, I’m not hungry.”
Because, I had this awful
habit of wolfing down food, not
unlike, Mowgli…

So, in a friends house,
when his Mom asked, “Why don’t
you eat something,” I said,
“Thank you, I’ m not hungry,
though I am starving.”
His Mom looked amused
at my reply.

I wish I could say that about
me Mom, when I truthfully
told her how I had followed her
instruction to the word.

AS A 12 YR OLD

The guy whom I worshipped,
whom I thought was a genius,
answered to my curious query,
of why the Queen of England always
wore gloves when she shook
hands with the public?
“Because”, he said, with his I-know-all-
look, “If she shakes hand with any man
with her bare hands,
then she’ll become pregnant.”

I wish I had kept that ultimate secret
to human procreation to myself,
instead of imitating my hero and narrating it
to the class in my next school.

I wish I could forget the howls of
derisive laughter that followed…

AS A YOUNG GUY COURTING

I was tagged with this nice chick,
and one evening, when she came late
for a tete-a-tete,
I asked , why she was late ?
“I had gone to the Veterinary Clinic,” she said.
Confused, I asked, “Why, what was wrong
with you ?”
“No, no,” she said, “I had gone with
my Uncle.”
“Why?” I asked, still puzzled,
“What was wrong with him?”

By the time I could understand
that it was her Uncle’s dog
that had some problems,
I had plenty of my own and
the chick ceased to be nice.

AT THE MOMENT

At a crowded party,
I was deciphering Milan Kundera’s
“Why Do People Write”, to a spell bound
audience of five that got
mysteriously reduced
to one, when I returned with a refill.
She was pretty and receptive to
my ramblings, but
she never spoke a word. Just
kept nodding and fluttering
her eyelids.
Until, the hostess came and
spoke to my admirer in
French.
“What's going on?” I asked.
Pretty chattered something
to the hostess.
“She is telling me” the hostess
translated, “ That though she doesn’t
understand English , she loved
your animated expressions.”

No wonder, I
don’t often smile .

You can't go home again

2003-11-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

Weekend, and I start showing the
familiar signs of withdrawl symptoms.
I am edgy, highly strung-up,
hands are twitching, and I know that
I will not last longer
in my present state of abstinence.
I must have it.

Immediately after work,
I rush to the comfort of the
book-shop.
My nerves are calmed, and my
hands are steadied by the sight of all the
racks of enticing books waiting to
be caressed by my hands
and loved by my mind.
I knew I had to buy one book,
to spend my weekend with.

I had waited for long,
for this moment.

After a long debate among
the various goodies available,
I nervously pick up Catcher in the Rye.

As a policy I don’t like to
re-read, but somehow, I felt I must
read this classic again.

So spent the weekend reading the
book at one stretch.
And in the end, felt hollow,
hurt, cheated, disappointed.

Years ago, I had bought the book
for a couple of bucks from a roadside
second hand book stall.
And had gone crazy over it.
Holden Caulfield felt so real and everyone
else seemed phony. I cried when I
read of his unrequited love for Jane.
He became my hero, and I imitated
him to the bit of even flunking a term.
J.D. Salinger became my idol.

But today, I’m older and cynical.
I find the book so amateurish, so
immature. And sadly, it is Holden Caulfield
who seems so phony. I fail to understand
what was in this book that had attracted me,
and made me swear my life by it .

What did I see then, that I don’t
see now?

J.D. Salinger doesn’t hold
me in awe anymore. But for his
single masterpiece Franny,
I don’t even think of him.

I realize that books that we once loved when
we were young, are like our long
lost heart throbs.
At best, they are great experiences, freeze shots
of some phase in our life. To be
preserved in memories.

But never, to be re met or re read.

Treat her gently, my friend

2003-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

Got a call from an old friend Y.
Said he had come down on a holiday,
from the land of gold diggers.

How about meeting for a beer?
Sure, I say, as any reason or no reason
is good enough
for me to down a tankard.

So here we are, drinking and joking
and generally making silly fools of ourselves.
As normally two old friends do, when
they celebrate their reunion.

But as we get drunker, I find his talk turning
very materialistic. He recounts the
bank balance that he has. How much
he and his wife earn. The house
by the lakeside for which they had paid the
last installment , the new car on which
he had splurged etc. etc. I start feeling
depressed because money is something
that one should state, but never boast to
a friend.

The evening is turning sour and I
wish I had not met my friend at all.
He seemed so changed. So American.
I am looking at my watch when he
springs the question I was waiting for.

How is X ? He asks solicitously.
She is doing fine, I say.
I believe she is still working among some
tribals in Ooty?
That is true. I say.
She still single?
Yes. I agree.

Vino de veritas.
Wine brings out the truth.

Now I understand his reason for
this outing.
It is not to know about me
as much he wanted to know about X,
who was our common friend,
and who had once loved him.

You know, I think you are
her lover, he says with such
an animosity I never had seen in
him before. It is like an animal
side of him.

You are drunk. I say. Because sober,
he wont dream of uttering such nonsense.

Tell me, he asks, you meet her often?
Yes, whenever she comes to town, I say.
I think, he says, you two must be sleeping
together. I laugh at his
preposterous statement. But I am mad. As usual, if
a girl becomes close to a guy, the world thinks
she sleeps with him.
So clichéd.

Between us, he slurs confidentially, tell
me if she is a good lay.
I am about to blow my fuse and
explode and it takes me immense self control,
not to take the beer bottle between
us and smash it on his leering face.

After all, he is also my good friend,
who is just drunk bad.

Enough, I say, suddenly feeling cold
and sober and sick.
Come, Ill drop you home, I offer.
But he don’t want to leave.
It is like he wants the answer for
something that is gnawing his innards.

Tell me, why, she left me? He asks,
Why she refused to come with me?

Because you fool, I tell myself,
her and your destiny
were incompatible, so she let you go.

But of course I don’t say this because
it wont make sense to a sober guy,
and much less to a drunk.

Ha I don’t care, he shouts, as
far as I am concerned, I am happy, I am successful,
he crows. And she can rot with them
tribals , he curses, in their thatch huts among
vermins, dysentery and snakes.

That’s when I knock him
out cold.

You can bitch about
a girls character. You can slander
her reputation.
That’s how loose tongues wag
in this world.

Ok with me.

But never, never, with me,
belittle her ambition, her ideals,
her chasing her own unattainable rainbow.

Why Blog ?

2003-11-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

Because it beats drinking
Because myself I rediscover by thinking

Because it clears my mental clog
Because through my own mazes, I slog

Because it is an emotional catharsis
Because bad memories it cauterizes

Because I am too lazy to write letters
Because I can showoff what little I know to my betters

Because it is a kind of an eerie free fall into the net
Because I am also as hooked as the rest

Because it is the only sunlight from my prison I see
Because I feel it might set me free

Because I might just manage to be readable to just one
Because the rest don’t give a damn and it don’t bother me none

Because living with an illusion has never been so much of a fun
Because it gives a breather to a man on the run

Because I get up in the middle of the night and feel I gotta write it
Because if my day has been bad, I always know I can make up for it

So the less of me you see here , the more happier I am.

Being the Lackey

2003-11-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

I was the kind of guy, whom people used to love to hate. It was not without reason, as you will see.

Have you ever fell in
love with your
friends lover?

It happened to me.
The girl I liked was
my best friends girl.

She was a simple girl.
But, like my friend used
to say, most plain girls
were virtuous, because
of the lack of opportunity
to be otherwise.

My friend was handsome.
Dark, and brooding.
Like the devil.
And the women felt, they
needed to care for him.
To correct him.
And how wrong they were.

So he would pick the girls,
make them feel good and
when he discarded them, the
girls felt more grateful,
than jilted.

For he had
brought, the rare bit of
sunshine and romance
that they ever
saw, in their dark
prosaic world.

And I used to be the fall
guy. The messenger, the
excuse, the mask. For
all his deeds.

Rather, misdeeds.

I never cared much for them
women. I felt, if birds
had no brains, it aint my fault.

But this girl was soft, and
sweet, like a pineapple sponge cake.
And I felt, for the first time,
angry at my friend,
and his wicked ways,
and sorry for her.

I also felt, for
the first time, what a fool
I was. Being his dumb
sidekick, in all
his dirty schemes.

But,
I did nothing.

My friend went
into the usual routine
of wooing this poor girl,
and she was as besotted as
the rest before her were,
like bugs around a blazing bulb.

And when he dumped her,
she realized what a cad he was.
But unlike the rest, she felt
she had been cheated, let down.

And when she was killing herself,
I said to her, I love you.
She asked me, why? why ?
you never told me this before?

I thought and said, my loyalty
always comes before
my love.

Because, I am a man.

Down, but not out

2003-10-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

There is no heart ache more
painful than the first rejection.
However, after a couple of rejections,
you become a pro.

But nothing comes near to that
first time rejection.
The pain, the bitterness,
the loss of face.
It is an exquisite feeling
of shame, hurt.

You feel it is the end of the world.
You feel as though you got
such an awful love battered face,
that you wish to erase it
from everyones memory, forever.

You wish you were an
ostrich, that you could
bury that face in the sand.
Eternally.

You lose your appetite,
You feel suicidal.
You feel so negative that
sob love songs become
your anthems. Girls, ooh
you dont want them again.

Ever in your life.

But then,
after all said and done,
you look at another new face
and you feel the pulse again.
You feel wonderfully alive.

Ready, to be battered again.

The Latest Tragedy of my life

2003-10-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

When I joke, people
treat me solemnly.
As though I am
reading the obituary,
of a dear departed aunt.

When I am serious,
people laugh their heads off,
as though I am Charlie
Chaplins avatar.

This has been, the
tragedy of my life.

Why, see that gorgeous woman
across the table? Years ago,
she was my first and
only original love
(all the others were carbons).

Yet she had laughed mirthfully,
when I solemnly
proposed to her.
She said, she knew I
was just joking, and that, I was
sweet (ugh, what a bitter word).

I was distraught. But, I did not,
drown myself in drinks
and
bawl out outrageous heart break sob songs
and
kill myself imaginatively.

Instead,
I went to the
gym and punched the sand bag
(yes, my sadistic coach had
filled it with sand),
till my knuckles
bled raw, and I felt
empty of her.

When I look at her, now,
I am feeling the same,
intense aching pain.

In my gnarled disfigured knuckles !

God, now, my heart too
is laughing at me.

Are Good Guys not around enough these days ?

2003-09-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

Had an awful
feeling of bad vibes.
Called your office,
on a hunch.
They said
you wont be coming,
you were not
feeling well.
Called your home, and
the phone was off the hook.

Didnt like the sound
of it at all.
Decided to
drop in and check.
You are shocked as you
see me at your door step
at 10.30 am, Monday morning.

I too am shocked
looking at you.
You try to hide your
face as you welcome
me inside.

Your place is in shambles.
Things strewn all over.
Stale cigarette smoke
and dank smell of sour
liquor greet me,
as I remove some of the
scattered things from the chair
and sit down.

Clutching your crumpled nightgown,
you ask if I would
like coffee.
I say yes.
Give me 10 mins, to freshen
up, you say, here, read the newspaper.

You go freshen up, I say,
I will make coffee for both of us.

You are too tired to even
thank me.
You vanish into
the bathroom, as I get into the
kitchen.

I know, by the time you
come out,
you would have somehow
concealed the black eye, the
imprint of brute fingers,
on your swelling cheek.
You will fool me, like you will,
and all the others, as in past.

But tell me, can you pick the
shards of your heart? Can you
mend your fractured spirit ?
Can you balm your
branded by terror, psyche ?

You will never admit that you
are a victim of
physical abuse.
You will never ask for help, advice.
And, none, will be offered.

I wonder why, I wonder,
as I get the coffee ready,
you are clinging on
to this bloody relationship.

After all, you are smart.
Beautiful . A rare Portia. You
could get any guy you want.
If only, if only,
you will let go of this one.

But you wont. You will hang on
to him. Damn you and the thread
that you wear around your neck,
that according to you,
sacredly and eternally binds you to him.
And his sadistic ways.

I wonder, if intelligent women
are really intelligent ? I doubt,
by seeing the kind of guys they land up with.
And also, from the
kind of guys they refuse to part from.

Is it that I value the
intelligence of women
too much, with respect to their
choice of men ?
I could be wrong, I admit.
As Truman Capote once
wrote,… “Women are like flies. They
settle on sugar or shit.”

Maybe, sugar is short
in supply, nowadays.

But, I think, TC missed out
on the third category - salt.
Some women seem to relish
in rubbing their wounds against.

As I get the coffee into
the living room, you
are magically back, as the girl I know.
All the bruises are made up,
expertly. May be from practice.
You are no longer the battered
and torn aging woman whom I saw
at the door. Why,
even the room is straightened out
with no signs
of any disarray.
It smells better, and seems cheerful,
with the room freshener you have
sprayed on.

Once again, you have
managed to conceal all your hurt,
all your pain.
And putting
on a show of being the strong woman
I know.

Playing helplessly
along your sham,
we bury yet another
sordid chapter
of your life.

We sip the coffee, making
mundane conversation, oblivious
to the tragedy. Suddenly,
your face becomes a
waterry blur, as I cant conceal
my care for you.

I wonder,
when you will
save yourself?

Or kill yourself.

Friends I would like to keep away from

2003-09-20T05:08:00.000-07:00

Meeting you again,
I am nervous.

After all, you have hurt
me pretty badly years ago,
and I am still bleeding.

However, you are
sweet to me. So concerned.
So like you.
First you will
trod on my toes,
and as I wince,
you would ask if
I am ok.

You want to know
how life has been treating me.
Pretty kind, I say.
My work? Nothing to complain, I say.
My... ? No, I'm single yet, I say.
Some lucky girl
waiting for you,
you joke. Ha,ha,ha, I laugh.
Knife thrusts would be
a gentle caress beside your
verbal enquiry..

Watching us chat, you would
think I am so uncouth,
while she is so caring.
So concerned about
a bum like me.
You might even think that
I don’t deserve such
a nice girl as a friend.

You are right. I don’t
deserve her.
Like some wise man said,
next to the wound, what
women make best is the bandage.

I don’t need a Nightingale
like her.

For my own safety.

Reaching out

2003-08-17T05:05:00.000-07:00

Walk with me to the edge of the precipice,
and I might just stop from
throwing myself over.

Listen to my silence,
and I might just start talking.

Touch me and
I might stop shivering.

Hold my hands
and I’ll believe,
I too am lovable.

Look at me and
I will have reason
to live.

Talk to me and
language becomes meaningful.

Share my dream
and it will come true
sooner than I think.

Believe in my vision
and I might see the light at
the end of the dark tunnel.

It matters to me most,
that you, and of all,
that you, have time
for me.

My Daily Deaths

2003-08-09T04:58:00.000-07:00

Looking
at you,
I die every day.

Your voice hypnotizes me,
and I sleep-walk dangerously,
in my awake state.

Your scents swoon me,
and I fall unconscious
by the wayside.

Your eyes like whirl pools,
attract, pull me under
and drown me.

Your gentle laughter like
melodious wind chimes,
makes me amnesic.

Your articulate expressions,
makes me want to commit hara-kiri,
at my own corny
mish-mash scribbles.

Why, even your dainty manicured nails,
like stilettos, slash my heart to shreds,
when you sculpt by your fingers
describing something excitedly,
to your privileged friends.

But, what really tortures me most
is that,
you don’t know any of
my feelings for you.

And that, I will never have the
guts to tell you…

Things You Left Behind

2003-08-05T04:54:00.000-07:00

There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature – Lawrence Durrell

Came home last night
to an empty house.
Stripped of all essentials.
Picked clean like a fish,
to the bone.

You cleaned out
pretty meticulously, like only
you can.
Furniture, furnishing, crockery,
linen, music system, washing machine,
cosmetics, the magnetic stickers on
the frig.
You even took the lone bindi,
from the bathroom mirror.

All that are remaining, are my
books, looking forlorn, and forsaken,
stacked against the wall.
Like stricken,
abandoned pets.

It’s like, you didn’t
want to leave behind, anything,
that might remind me of you, of our
love that we once had,
of the joys we shared.

But, you are wrong.
There are so many things,
you have left behind.

The long drives, drenched in
monsoon rains ,shivering
and sharing a cuppa chai,
in some remote dirt road.

The surprise Sunday mornings when I served
burnt toast and bland tea,
to your royal highness, in bed,
to your amusement,
and my consternation.

The musky amorous outings that
notch the bathroom door.

The night I drove to you,
from miles away, as you bled,
losing our only baby.

Or the days you nursed me
as I deliriously rambled from
some strange fever.

The times we went to plays,
browsed in book shops, or just
doodled on each others
passion spent, basking bodies.

These are the things you
left behind, indelibly etched
in me.

How I wish I were a bird , that
I can molt memories, and
begin afresh.

The Inverted Rainbow

2003-07-27T04:42:00.000-07:00

I never knew it existed, until...

The Inverted Rainbow

Spiralling cigarette smoke vanishing like
an Indian rope trick to the ceiling.
Men laughing at their own nakedness
as the drinks peeled layers of shyness,
peg after peg.

Waiters, harried, running to and fro
looking tipsy with all the brews fumes.

"What ?" some dope asks," Is
the most beautiful thing in the world ? "

Answers from the sublime to
ribald to the risque rakes the
bar's smoke fog, followed
by guffaws.

Until, one silent man sitting in
the corner and seeming to
grow inward as he got high
and higher, opens
his mouth.
"I had seen the inverted rainbow,"
he says solemly. So out of place.
"That, was the most beautiful."

We howl,"He is the drunkest,"
"Or cock-eyed," quips the jester.
"May be he walks with his
legs held high and his head firmly
planted on the ground," the wit says.

More comments, critiques and wise cracks.
More sniggers, taunts, barbs.
More drunken laughters and back slapping.

"He is the weirdest," we all finally agree,
as the silent man finishes his drink, and
we are tired of laughing at him.

He gets up.
He looks unwounded by all our lethal
jibes and snides.
He holds his head high. "I had," he says,
looking around pityingly at us
soggy to the gills sozzlers,
"Seen my girl smile."

And he walks out.

Why I'm a Blog bin sifter...

2003-07-25T04:22:00.000-07:00

Too many writers,
hardly any readers.

Too many talkers,
few listeners.

Too many voyeurs,
hardly anyone looking.

Too many confused,
the few knowing,supercilious.

Too many poets,
where are the critics ?

Too many obfuscating confessions,
hardly any candid.

Too many faking the wounds,
naturally, no one relates to the pain.

Too many masks,
only a few, honest.

Too many generalisers,
who generally lie.

yet,
when you read that one piece
that makes your day,
then,
you want to sift through
the blog bin again...

and again...