Twenty of them

There are twenty of them.
I counted them once.
Blue skin, twitchy veins
lurching on my couch,
study table, inside my closet.
They follow me in shower.
Climb my body, undo my clothes.
I resist. But they are too many.
Those hundred dead tips
hunger for the mark. They celebrate
scratching, pinching, grabbing
my flesh. They move inside me.
My blood dilutes in water,
draining the echoes of my screams.

My skin is brown, chocolate brown.
Lips - pink, hair - dusky. Not black.
Smile - perfect. Eyes - wide beautiful.
I have youthful gait, tender bosom,
nearly neat body. See my curves?
I grew into them. I wrap a robe.
Retreat in my shell. Avoid your
gender. Yet somehow I am on
display. Perhaps the walls are
see-through. I'm jailed in your gaze.
Your stares strip me naked.
They scan my raw inches.
They see me. They come everyday.
There are twenty of them.

An encounter

She pushes me hard towards the edge of the door and swiftly makes her way through the crowd inside the 7:09 pm Panvel local at Kurla station. I do not mind. We are in the flow, moving inside the aluminium belly, which never swells. Instead, we squeeze ourselves and our belongings against each other so that we all get to ride cheap on government wheels. There, inside, everybody is still, everybody adjusts with little movements at intervals. I can not look around for my hands and body are weighed down by my handbag and two or three sweaty bodies surrounding me. So all I do is stare at some random distant object, think about my day and at random intervals answer in negative to questions like 'utarna hai kya?' or 'utaraaycha ahe ka?' or 'you getting down?'. Mine is the last stop. So very slowly, with all the patience I can manage to maintain, I make my way through the stinking bodies toward the seating and look for the booking, asking randomly -- 'kahan utarna hai?' or 'kuthe utraaychay?' or 'where you getting down?'. After enquiring about seven to eight ladies, I get my seat. Fourth seat. But it's manageable. Fourth seat invites unease but I take it with great joy in heart. I grab a pen, open Frontline and start again from where I had left in the morning journey. The train-sellers start cutting their way through the suffocating crowd and the fourth seaters are affected the most. Fortunately, I do not have to wait too long for the third or the second seat. Chembur, Govandi, Mankhurd arrive quickly. Sometimes I have to wait until Sanpada comes. But it's okay. I have a seat. The girl who pushed me, at Kurla station, gets down at Vashi. She didn't  get a seat. She didn't do the booking. She just stood leaning against the metal sheet, with her back facing me, playing around with her mobile, lost in her world. There was something unusual about her. Her hair, her clothes, her hand bag. There was something unusual about the time and place and people all around, something like deja vu. A shudder ran through my bones when I saw her face when she got down at the station. I do not know if she is or she was. I can not believe my eyes. But everything is in present tense. Right at this moment. She is young. She is average looking. Short hair, smart clothes. She is a college student. She is me!

Romance with nights at IIIT-H

I dearly miss those late delights when I roamed alone on the streets of my campus, where I stayed for two crucial years of my life. There was no one to bother my aim-less leisure walk in the silent darkness. I walked those lonely roads on the boulevard of....nah!, not broken dreams! My mind refused to dream then; so I just walked with a mind full of emptiness. I liked it. The huge trees, standing arm-in-arm, lining all the mountain ranges -- the Nilgiri, the Vindhya and the Himalaya -- seemed to slip into a deep sleep, as soon as the evening would mature, over each others' shoulders like brothers of wars. There was a strange noise which I could hear, when I walked below their senile arch and a strange wind, that hit my cold flesh, which I could feel almost every night. It was as if the invisible nostrils of the trees inhaled and exhaled to warm up the atmosphere for me on the cold nights.

There were few nights when, with no one around, I walked bare feet on the soft land. Every step was different, every step was special. The feeling of Earth beneath my feet was quite something! That was my campus where I could live my fancies, unlike my home city where the roads -- full of potholes -- can never be called mine. The dark sky with few stars gave a relaxing sight, a sight I never missed while on my way to/from NBH from/to library, till the end of Vindhya and the only sight against the vastness of Felicity ground. The NW-facing stage seemed like it was set only for the purpose of star-gazing. The magnificent expanse of the constellations of Virgo, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Orion, made me feel so dwarf and tiny -- tinier than the speck of dust. I remember watching the shooting stars, for the first time in my life, from the Felicity ground. O man! How excited I was then! But the stars were not the only objects I saw, there were artificial satellites, a man-made wonder, hovering thousands of miles above the Earth's surface. They all were my 'firsts'.

Then there were those nights when you impregnated me with your ideas. I still can sense your presence, after so many months. I still can recall your words. I still remember the way you pointed at those stars and planets and showed me the rings of Saturn through telescope. Your life stories were life-lessons for me. Never did I miss a single emotion in your talk. You just spoke and I listened. I adore your diction, your language, your grammar. I adore your honesty, your passion, your integrity. I adore you. Those night gave me You.

They gave me a definition of a Man, much like Ayn Rand style. They breathed life into my freedom. They allowed me a space in their uterus, a space for retreat and escape from the white walls of the ordered 115. That was my place. Those were my lanes, my silence. That was my campus. That was my home of mystical nights, the nights I lived through every passing milli-second. That was my IIIT-H.

Wind

Neither here nor there,
unlike any life form
settled calm,

moving stones, water alike,
the cold, invisible
shapeless, flowing on duty

imposed. Just that.
Every rock directs
journey up, journey down.

I shape them.
I mould them.
I bring them.

I give false pride
to none but reflection-less,
shadowless, weightless.

I cry out - wild, untamed.
My chest harbours a cyclone
choking me with my own

breath. I regret.
You shut the windows
in horror, o indifferent!

It doesn't matter.
You are none, to me.
Neither here nor there.

Neither at the place
you call home.
I do not have one.

I elope with forgery
at 11 of the night.
He gives me a face-lift

and promises a wine
for my crumbling grip.
I accept.

Even the devil that's in
the rules, the dog-tags,
the desk-chair. I accept.

I travel across
borders in search
of white.

I start then pause
then start again,
slow then fast

then slow again, I move
move like a headless
ghost. Move in search.

I travel a lot.
My body aches.
You futile pain!

Do not trace my path
o seer! I have no
place to rest.

If you find me
in the tunnels of malls,
know that it's a slow death.

Then there's the garage
and the hookah 
who poison my lungs.

So do the sweet
expensive fragrance.
They replace.

No where there's safe
for my jewellery.
Homeless. I am wind.

What did you do?

A flight in a room
towards the white light.
It's not true, it's not true.
Sometimes in a park
on merry-go-round with -
pretty pink and sun-kissed yellow.
Is it a fact? Who tells you?
It moves, over a tea cup
thinking brown, being blue.
Midsummer heat bakes
crisp the body of wings.
Coffins too attract, so do
the sight of falling cards
four, three, two...
First on edge then below
like a cold debris, it lies
in dark, looking at you.

The gin

I carry it throughout
in a jar on my chest.
Sweat on palms, damp linen,
I lost count of creases.
Easing, I thought, would be the secret
I share with my old mem-pals;
Now as inches begin to pale
the hole in heart grows wide.
Why didn't I spill it before
when my arms were right?
Now every drop makes it heavy
as the candle destroys itself.
Weak are my knees, feet sore
dragging my sack towards window.
I have put up a display, will you come?
I'll give you the gin before I disappear.

My seed

You wandered in the smiles of chasing breeze,
from a pod to springing sprout at dawn.
You were pink in the cherry blossoms on trees,
green on the blades of morning grass.
You ran gentle into the lotus leaf
and carried gold into the old boughs.
Your feet danced as the curls of the twigs,
revived to kissing touch of the sun.
You limned yourself with daisies and lilies,
on the planes of river with tender hands.
You were my seed who refused to grow
and chose to rest on my palms tonight.

Stupid stuffs

Stuffs,
You're one thing I hate to the core. People have you but still crave for more.
You start your journey in a factory where you are made and assembled. You get recognition from some dumb celeb and then you are faked, branded and sold.
Empty tag lines are your junk jewelry. The cheap graphics is your makeup.
Sometimes in elegant shop, sometimes on road side, I  find you everywhere.
You are never tired, you never get old.
You fill my friends' rooms, from ceiling to floor, from window to door. You survive every catastrophe.
You do not have any inspiration. You do not have a hero amongst you. But still the whole world, the world revolves around you, O stupid stuffs!