Just Another Weekend

It is Saturday. You know, your typical, run-of-the-mill weekend morning where you wake up at eight in the morning, squeeze shaving cream onto your toothbrush, enter the bathroom and fall in the tub.  Well, you maybe. I do not do such things. 

In fact, for me it was a, you know, typical, run-of-the-mill weekend morning where everyone’s favorite cricketer had retired yesterday, and the internet was full of fawning posts, everyone having forgotten the abuses heaped on him thirty days ago, and I was kept awake till late in the night sobbing with happy memories of the times I had watched the man on TV and cursed and cursed till ad breaks saved me. I swear that was what I did all night, and nothing else.

Now, normally, I would not recommend waking up at eight am on a Saturday. In fact, I would not recommend waking up at eight am any day, but it seems some idiot had set the alarm for seven, and there is only a certain number of times you can press snooze before irritation gets the better of sleep. So I woke up at eight, for some strange reason, feeling very hungry despite not having eaten dinner yesternight. All very strange, I tell you.

 So I went to look in the fridge, and found a can of beer, and above the fridge, a pack of Oreo cookies and a pack of Goodday biscuits. From now on, it is very easy to guess what I did. I took out the beer can, wiped the moisture off it, placed it back, and did not give a second glance to the cookies. No, not even I drink at 8AM. 8:30, may be, but definitely not eight.

So I came back and checked the time on the computer, just to be sure, and it told me it was Saturday, and not Friday and that I did not have to go to work. I cursed my bad decision with the beer, but let it pass, logged on to twitter and expressed the wish for a burger. No one picked my call. That was when I realized that the McDonald’s at Infinity does not open till 11am. But, of course, the Bikaji Food Junxon next to it is, and that was where I found myself a few minutes later, having passed a few Honda Citys who seemed to have played Holi with other Honda Citys, and whose owners, for some strange reason, seemed to think that green Holi colour streaks on their cars seemed to go quite well with their dust-covered white exteriors.

Anyway, so there I found myself with a plate of Chhole Bature and a plate of Puri Bhazi, staring in the eyes of a beautiful girl who was two tables cross from me just about to tuck in a plate of pao-bhaji when the sight of my breakfast seemed to disturb her. I gave her the evil eye and tucked into my breakfast, and she returned to her butter soaked, unhealthy, too-heavy-for-so-early-in-the-morning-god-knows-how-such-people-live thing. Fifteen minutes later, I looked up and fell in love with her.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she was reading. With her breakfast! I was immediately transported into a dreamland where I was already on the fourth of fifth date with her, pictures of she and I sitting in a corner table in Oh Calcutta, deferring service for a few hours while we sipped our beers, absorbed into our novels, not speaking a word to each other, already flashing in my mind. And then she decided to lift the book up from her thigh and prop it on the table, and I saw it was Immortals of Meluha, a monstrosity it had taken me some seven months from purchase to completion. Heartbroken, I finished my breakfast and left.

If any youngsters are reading this post, remember, this is why you should not wake up early on Saturday mornings. The office does not serve breakfast.

Goodbye

Though it did look like we
might have a happy
ending; we will, mostly, not, and
let us say goodbye, now. While the going
is easy.

Till Such Time You Are Here

While I wait for you, I think-
till such time you are part of
my life, I think I should get a hobby. A
garden in my balcony,moneyplants in pots
pale and green, splotchy as the past, maybe
I will water them everyday, grooming them
as other people groom purpose. Or maybe, I
should start collecting stamps. Collect
expensive fragments from other people's
pasts. I have always been good at that, haven't I?

Or maybe I could get a cat? Let it
take over my life, while I
wait for you here, I could watch
the cat-curled up in a corner, smirking
at me, twirling its whiskers at the smell of
my stale beer, and my tired poems. Do
you think cats like cigarette smoke? I
do not really know much about cats.

Till such time as you are here, I guess, I
shall do nothing- just mope around. I shall drink
the beers that send me to sleep (or sometimes, fail to), I
shall stand in the balcony, strain to look at the stars,
I shall, till such time you are here, smoke
all the cigarettes I want, and then collapse
on the ill-advised mattress in one corner of my
world. I shall buy a thousand books
and sometimes, I will even read them-till
such time you are here, I
will write these stories, all of them,
meant for an audience of two. And one winter night,
I will burn them.

They will always be there in my head.

Circles

Something is on my mind, all the time-

I worry that has turned into a nag, only

I do not know what it is about. A vacant

mind, locked up in a room, time slipping

through my fingers like frozen sand. I do not

know what I am worried about, a

perverse funk about the suspicion that

I might be in a funk. Most of the time, I

am not me. Other times, I worry-what if

most of the time, I am me.

Catalog

A few hundred books, dusty

shelves. A few abandoned shoes, some

beer cans. Compact discs with heartbreaks

burnt on them. A vase full of

plastic flowers. A couch-witness to

sleepless nights, a bed-rejected, unmade,

lonely. A few boxes full of paper- paraphernalia

of a time forgotten. The ghost of

a fleeting touch, a whisper of disappointment, a

song playing in a neighbor’s flat. Traffic

noises, stale food, the clucking of sleepy

pigeons on the sill, a half packet of

cigarettes, unexplained silences. A ruined

painting, the remains of last night’s dinner. An unfinished

poem, scribbled on an overdue electricity bill. A silent

phone. White noise.

A lifetime of accumulated failures.

Silence

There is only one language I

know to speak. All my guilt,

my hurt, heartbreaks, the moments

I was wrong, all the

rejections-made either

way. I know only one way to express

it all.

There is me, and

my silence. And despair

that you will never learn

to read either.

A Whole Lot Of Disasters

The night when I had gotten rid of

it all. Or almost. I doesn’t matter,

I told myself. And you came back

And asked me, that question; that one

I never will be able to answer.

Do you write any fictional stories?

Do you,

really ever give yourself

over to imagination? Do you

think too hard about thinking?

I often wonder about

what you did not say. I do, or

like to think I do. There is no

running away. From you. Or your shadows,

have you imagined werewolves? Howling

at the night, changing forms, getting pathetic with

the pain of transformation? Have you imagined

how they die a thousand lives, crying out

to mirages? My room is cold,

I have a fever. There is one more beer

to be drunk. There are despairs

that I will find tonight.

Stories, these. Yours’, mine. Yes, ma’am, I

heard you on the tinny piano downstairs which

promised me my first five cents of heartbreak. Smoke

wafting from burning hearts. Did you know, heartburn

was not good for your health? I have loved you

knowing that this will end in ashes. But

you and me? Na, that is just a dream. We

couldn’t really have made it better. You

would just go away. I

would just smolder.

Let us end this. Right now.