We wanted to ride rough-shod

(Why not better shod, again?)

Over all their nonsense. All their

trivial pursuits, their petty rivalry,

Back to the basics—or rather forwards.

Pure thought, and pure sensation,

The totalitarianism of Youth.

No more living for the future.

Now is enough for itself, and for us!

But you have to plan beforehand for a revolution.

And a first-div is required to rule the world.

empowerment.

i give him the once-over.

long legs, broad shoulders,

casually loose shirt, lean,

not-too-full lips, high cheekbones, sharp nose.

look again, appreciatively.

see it register, the split-second almost-smile, the triumph.

when he passes, turn. nice ass too.

say it loud, as invitation.

why not? i have a (bed)room of my own. seeti baja, seeti baja ke bol.

Bring a light when you come, for it's dark on the highway
And trucks roaring along grimly, in the dark, with lit-up jaunty cabins
Will jauntily run us over and be gone.
Mid-morning will find us vanished into tubes and chalk outlines
With the tar just beginning to bubble and absorb the last of us,
Moustaches shaking knowingly at those
Crazy youngsters on bikes, trying to get free,
Or whatever,
Causing heartache to parents and wasting their money,
Though we're not them.

In full rooms, with full lives, we're happy just trying,
But they'd mark us out as anti-socials,
Delinquents, Sallu-aspirants or shameless (-ful?) women
With troubled childhoods, oppressed by the drought of civilization,
The pressures of the information age, the ruthless competition.
Like elephants dead in the electric fences of sanctuary
We were caught getting in or out—
A State infrastructural lapse.
We might've even got bullet-holes, and become
Would-be terrorists, or Maoists; "How a child from such a good family—?"
And so on. I suppose we should've expected it.
Here we were, trying not to take
The path less travelled by; what would make a difference?

It's funny how you know people.
Collect bits of them—
an Oh, He's So Hot accidentally dropped within earshot,
a Did You Hear whisper, heard from inside a cubicle,

sequences shot from the corner of your eye,

inconsistencies you only noticed when someone else was saying something else,

a wretched fight, not worth the trouble,

the thing you gulped down, rising like bile into your mind,

the things they laughed at, and why.

It's gotten easier nowadays, with

Facebook and all that.

But the old ways had much more style, and took more skill.

And you didn't have to stop and realize how jobless you were.

It nibbles its way out.

Somewhere, imperceptibly,

A cheek shivers, a jowl wobbles.

The teeth are gnawing

Juicing tearing

Rabid, driven;

It gets through.

Peeks its snout out,

Sniffs, darts a glance around,

Scuttles again.

I particularly dislike it when it comes back to me, with an air of relish,

As though I hadn't told it in the first place.

She came and brought a feather,

wafted it onto the desk with

thoughtfulness and affection.

She thought of me when I wasn't there

And brought me a tufty white thing. ?

Then she said nothing and smiled

At my grinny thanks

And went away.

I'm so horrible but a feather

Is so artsy and I'm so not,

And why didn't she say anything What

does she mean by it We never talk

nowadays.

She came the next day to borrow a book.

Looked at the single shelf in my wall

that had books in it, picked up a book of fairytales,

(Perrault, not Grimm) and thanked me quietly.

Why does she always have to pick airy-faery

stuff And why did I just spell fairy faery And

why can't I get through a book, any book

whether serious or fun without it being compulsory

Oh God I'm turning into one of those colossal(ly)

bitchy bores that can't Think of anybody else and why

Are my capitals going Haywire and my line lengths inconsistent

And Why am i stuck in internal monologue?

BREATHE! BREATHE!

[gasping sounds. other people presumably come on stage]

Narrator (also me): Yeah, so. Pity the tale of she, he, whatever. This is just One of the many people (p.c.pronoun) knows.

guts

"Dude, he doesn't put his money where his mouth is. (though being commie, of course, this 'money' is just metaphorical) He says he's all political and shit, and then he doesn't speak up when people in his own department are being fuckers. It's such a turn-off!"

I am evidently not turned off,

but it's not that.

Only, I have no right to speak

where courage is concerned.

I haven't even done what I wanted

in the face of indifference,

Forget opposition.

on privacy

They are adding bricks to the wall of my grandparents' house

—there was never traffic to intrude in Harrington road, now there is—

And we (bourgeois-ly) don't like it.

There are dire warnings, now and again—

The State will pry. It will swallow up

all the information on all the forms you've ever filled,

And then you.

I slump in the chair on the porch, barefoot, coiled up,

and stare at chameleon on the wall, who is

failing to blend in with the new white paint.

A gate and wall can only be so captivating.

What's the big deal about privacy?

A lot. Why should we adjust without it

If it's a Right (enshrined, etc.)?

And Ayn Rand said that civilization

meant setting man free from man.

I don't underestimate freedom.

I need it. Yet

—perhaps this is indoctrination—

I have grown to appreciate

the relationships that grow

out of not being able to lock the door

and of being locked in together.

I defiantly say: my personal is political.
I get—I take—more out of this than they do.
I negotiate, I change
These aren't just readings to me.

Admission: they aren't even readings to me.
I don't read them.
And yet opine, question, discuss.

When my father says
In Incontrovertible Rightness, with Finality,
that when I have his grey hair I will understand,
I say Experience is important, but it's not All That.

I believe this, my concession to his knowledge,
But it's also strategic, an assertion of my maturity,
My brown-black, densely populated head
—I believe/ wish—
speaking up for itself.

How can I explain?
Sometimes he doesn't know
(The way people think nowadays, for instance)
Sometimes I don't
(I don't read the papers like I should)
We each say, when we do not know,
Oh come on. Everyone knows this.
And win to ourselves, in our heads.

I know I'm not talking nonsense (mostly)
When I set up the argument in class.
I know it's frequently useful
When I don't agree,
And I know I accept, correct, when I am wrong.

And I know I am unethical
When I could have known
And should have known
And when people respond thinking I do.

My mother has a point when she says what she says about history.

(She says it's useless.)

The usual progress-and-change argument,

And I always hotly defended the worth

Of my 94 in ISC

In the subject that investigates and records what people live by.

I don't know anymore.

How much can we leave behind,

And how fully?

I cannot say that I have forgotten

Even when I have (hopefully) forgiven,

Though my memory for facts is like

A baked-goods smell in a bare kitchen.

Lingeringly, heartbreakingly empty.

And how much do I even want to forget?

How much is the child the father of the man,

And when does it become

Sins of the son visited on the father?

I am not Nemesis. I can only

Remember, catalogue,

Perhaps provide some leads to proof

When the case comes up in court.

I cannot even say what I mean. Cannot

Rise in protest like those

Brave young college students of the seventies

(now mired teaching us)

Who feared neither torture nor incarceration.

It isn't that, now; I speak in metaphors

Because of the anecdotal evidence

Of generations of Experience telling me

That Growing Up and Succeeding In Life

is learning to shut up.

Even if you remember.

How much use is history?

Perhaps students must put up

Parchas and morchas in soundproof corridors

And other academic circles.

And maybe then they will remember to change.

"Soft of heart to succour Woe"

Well along pregnant, she was as alive as it's possible to be, I guess.

Then stuff happened. Accident, statistical exception, tragedy—

There are many ways to describe this sort of death. It had a bit of everything.

But finally one corpse inside another, inside a box.

[(Eurocentrically) Metaphorically speaking].

I have the words, and inside the words

Hopefully profound meditations on death, on life,

On pain—Within myself, I try to pay my respects

by thinking sombre thoughts.

Respects to Death, maybe.

To hers as my own. I fail.

The arrogance of the living.

Cain's offering was rejected, after all.

Death is normal, and only loss

Gives birth to grief; else it gets stuck in my throat

And dies coming out. It was never real.

And all there will have been for them to miss

Is me. And I moved on, leaving them bereft.

It disturbs me sometimes that I can't remember what I used to think. It's like I wasn't there.

I used to be a horrid tattletale (or so I am told by past victims)- but I can't seem to remember feeling like one at all. But then, maybe I'm thinking of the Blyton description of tattletale-psyche and missing the same viciousness in my own head. Maybe this forgetting was convenient.

I can't remember the me who wanted a textbook on talking to people. I can't remember what it was like inside the head of the girl who wrote on my old blog. I can't even remember, and this was only a year ago or so, what it was like to blissfully contemplate a life spent running a cafe-cum-book and card shop.

I know I'm forgetful, but even I should notice leaving selves behind.

People are really quite beautiful.

They pop up, in dirty gullies with dead rats and much dung and vegetable vendors married to household help, and make you filter coffee and make you grin.

She is a wife-beaten.
Yet she comes upstairs sometimes to reassure me
about sitting alone in the office—
I am not to worry, because
She doesn't let just anybody into the building;
Yes, that's right, I should have no fears on her watch.

And I don't. While she,
and the old women who chastise trespassers
in the women's compartment,
and the women who come up discreetly in public places
to tell you you've stained your skirt
are around, I know
that I'll deal with the screechiness
and silliness
and yuckiness
and pain
of being female.
We'll get by.

Maybe they'll reserve a whole metro-train for us soon,
so girls in stilettos and pinstriped pants
won't have to stuff wrist-to-elbow I'm-married bangles
in my face.

"Ya, the bathroom is so dirty nowadays. It's the painters. I went there and asked them, Bhaiya, are you using the bathroom? They said no, but later I saw one of them combing his hair there or something, so I went and said, Are you using the bathroom? I know you people are using the bathroom, and that's okay only, but you have to pull the flush after that. Really, ya, it's too disgusting. I went in today, after you got out after your bath, and there was pee in the toilet ya.
(Quiet protestations that the other girl hadn't even looked at the toilet, etc)
"Of course, ya, I know, it had to be the painters only. I told them. But that girl is also dirty- the one who lives in the corner room. Only she, you and I use this bathroom, the rest of the girls use the other one. She's damn dirty. And you know what? I heard from aunty that she uses other people's toothbrushes! I heard that, and I was, like, shocked! I can't imagine, ya, it's so disgusting. If you use other people's paste, that's ok—she takes it and doesn't give it back also, she calls it 'sharing'— but seriously, using other people's toothbrushes!
"She steals also— some people have lost thousand-thousand rupees— You lost money, too! Oh god, it's that girl only. She takes everything. She's been caught doing it also, many times. But uff, she doesn't stop! Yesterday or the day before, Aunty was telling me that she told her it has to stop. Aunty said, Listen, Elsa will offer to share her toothbrush, Elsa's very generous—you know Elsa, the dog downstairs—(giggles) she said, Elsa's very generous, but you can't go around using anybody else's toothbrush.
"I don't know, maybe she is poor, or maybe her parents don't give here enough money to spend, just enough to pay the rent or something, something like that. Anyway, when I couldn't find my charger and earplugs, I just went straight to the girl, and I said, Listen, have you taken my charger and earplugs? They were on the table in the corridor. She said no. I said, Are you sure? Really, ya, you never know with this girl, she'll take anything. Di also lost her charger, also upstairs. Maybe she's selling them! (giggles)
She used to go to this cyber cafe—maybe you haven't seen it, it's close by— and one chap used to hang around there, and she made friends with him, and then made him her boyfriend. We went and told him what all she does here, and you know what he said? You wouldn't believe— we told him she steals stuff and all, and he said— 'That could be. I mean, she takes money from me to get herself waxed.'
Can you believe it?"

I get to call him Anand.

He sits with his back to me, two tables ahead, the table between us unoccupied. I peer out from behind the computer screen to sneak peeks, sometimes. Neat, square, muscular back, broad shoulders noticeable through the loose linen shirts.

Crew-cut, like naval officers (you who are female will know what this Means). When he suddenly swivels around in his chair, his eyes are sparkling. Answers questions with energy but not fervour, precise but not painstaking; walks over to the dark wooden shelves and selects a book effortlessly- his book, his shelf, and he knows them- peels it open to the line that clinches it. Suggests casually that I read it- it’s a good book. [I do, and it is.]

He’s short and fair-skinned and straight-nosed. Aryan-looking though short, but if that’s a judgment in your head then there's a problem. We discuss issues over lunch- Issues, yes, and he’s an Issue-er, but without the sanctimonious air- and discuss spicy chicken curry-which he's made, and we're eating- and the work of genius that is the iMac.
Is it love?
Nope. But it’s kickass-ness.
I'm a lucky girl.

'My bowl is empty and my spoon has been licked- Yuck! And my chair is broken, and my bed is taken. MA!'

'Be generous, little one. She was alone and tired and hungry. Such pretty golden hair, poor child! I'll go make some more porridge, and don't you dare be a crank and wake her up.'

'But- but- they're Mine! Why can't she go to Her house ? But- maybe she doesn't have a house. Or a mamabear. Or a papabear. I should not make a fuss. I'll go and help mamabear make the porridge; I'm sure she'll be making some for me, to make up for it. Maybe papabear will let me help him fix the chair, or even get me a new one. This one was getting kind of small anyway.'

Dear Diary. Goldilocks (yes, people can actually be named things like that) is going to stay. The chair's fixed and being given to her, and I get the old beanbag, and a room of my own- the attic. She's kind of annoying and immature, but I feel really cool and old, and I'm getting my space. And she's really polite and grateful, she really must've been hungry when she ate my porridge and all that, the poor kid.

I still don't get the fuss about the yellow hair, though.

Scrambles to his feet, hurry, messy, beats dust off his bum, his elbows, his knees, stands up straight. Yes Sir. Drop-dead silence in the lines behind.

Right Away, Sir.

He runs, leaning to the right on a limp, into the Acco. Kicks off his boots, stands in the shower for a minute. Drops the torn vest, sweat, blood blotches, grit on the floor. Pulls another vest on.

Hesitates a moment. Picks up the mangled remains and stuffs them, awkwardly, in the back of his cupboard. Trophy of his trying.

He is cowering in his shower. Global warming made his shirt sticky and the shower curtain nearly fell on his head and a large and ugly rat that was scared by it scurried across the path of his exit and is cowering behind the pot.
He sinks down into the tub and leaves a trail of wet, half-sweat half-bathwater on the white tiles. He will not leave a trace, or an impression. His brain is quite blank and it has been for a week and the presentation he has to make today is shoddy. He is avoiding getting out of the tub and putting on his tie and going to work because he does not want to present it. He wishes he had the courage to go to work dressed in only a tie because it is a lousy place to work and he doesn't have the guts or the initiative to quit.
The tap at the sink is leaking, but undramatically- wheezing and spitting like an old man, and he is guilty that he has put off fixing it for so long because he is wasting water, and because his old man sounds like he might go any day now. He feels guilty because he’s been putting off seeing him, his Own Father, but he doesn’t go because his father is unreasonable and crotchety and disappointed as old men are and have the right to be, only that he himself doesn’t want to have to be around while they’re doing it. He’s going to be one soon enough.
But since he's not, yet, he remembers that he also has to file his income tax- he earns quite decently, really, as he should for doing such godawful work, even though not too well and with no enthusiasm. He also needs to get his blood pressure checked, feels a little weak about the knees, is a little weak about the chin, and is trying desperately to grow a beard, or at least a goatee, to cover up, but he’s never been a testosterone type and the stubble refuses to grow up. Perhaps he really isn’t well- needs to go for a checkup- maybe he should just take the day off and deal with it tomorrow.

But- but- I try so hard! I try and- and- I do what I'm told, and- Nothing happens!

She is weeping bitterly, the little girl, and I do not know how to tell her.
I know what I must not say. That it is about fair and unfair. Or about what just -shrug of the shoulders- happens. Or about just Doing Your Best. And that It'll All Come Right In The End.

But how should I say that it's about waiting long enough. And then, if things really don't happen, about honestly finding out why. And then keeping on working to make it better.
I cannot say it because it sounds didactic and unsympathetic and because I do not have the words or the bond to explain.

So I hug her tightly and read her a fairytale. Hansel and Gretel, or maybe Cinderella.

hubristic of me.

Dust and books line the walls, piled on the furniture, floor, everywhere, blocking the light from the flickering lantern. Thin and hungry and brilliant, eyes red-tinged and lit, voice squeaky from disuse, lips cracked from the cold, Faustus screaming at the heavens-
"Why won't you talk ? Why so unreasonable ?"

silence.

"My Soul, what price?"

silence.

But it turned out not to be a monopsony.
Omniscience, did you say ?

Love her too much to let her go.
Love her too much to have her choose otherwise.
Love her too much to share.

Is jealousy wrong ?
It is but natural.
It is natural but
In Kindergarten they teach you this stuff-
Share the crayons.
Don't hit the other kids.
When you're grumpy, it's time for a nice nap.
And hot milk. Maybe even a cookie.

And this is how we counter those things-
The wrath of Achilles and the vengeance of Othello-
Cookies and teacher's perfunctory pat.

The book of poems just sits there,
Brash gold-and-silver wrapping,
Too much sellotape for too little experience,
I look at it longingly sometimes.
In the passing of hours in
This assignment, that required-reading,
This meeting, that talking,
It laughs at me, crackling.

I can pretend that the ugly purple cover,
The bad translation, the vernacular-ness,
Mujhse door le jaati haai,
Kii ye koi class-vass ki baat nahin hai,
Sirf- it is not like me.
But it is.
And when the dog falls asleep and the tree cries
And the words I only half understand grasp at me through sheer sound,
Hurl themselves at me,
I feel a surge of something.
Is it relief, hope, despair ?
Ki woh mujhe chhod kar gaye nahin.

I need to reassure my cynicism. It wavers, sometimes.

I need to read poems about consciously being mad[ly] in love.
So much so that we now use the clichees consciously, defying
Both those who use them ignorantly, as commonplaces,
And those who studiously avoid the pollution,
And so Proclaim to the World that our love Subverts Conventional Meaning-
Ours is Language and the World that's in it!
While believing, beneath, that it's all just hormones anyway.

I need to attend plays of socio-political Worth.
Nod vigorously in self-righteous assent, like everybody there,
Be suitably dressed, nothing too bourgeois, like everybody there,
Critique State oppression, middle class Conservatism and Indolence-
But I can never prevent those popup points:
My family's Middle Class. I don't know who the State is. I don't see
What use it is to the downtrodden that I use my leisure time
To nod vigorously at their hurt.
I need to believe that they'd stutter, ashamed, helpless, without answers.

I need to imagine those scenarios, you know the ones,
Where my friends turn out to not give a damn,
The men I love forget me, my family dies on me
[The self-absorption reaches its peak here but,
Threaded through the shit, can you see the naive trust?]
I die, and nobody cries
[Wryly smiling, viciously reminded
That I am not free of the proverbs, Chinese, Yiddish, mother's]
To remember, grateful for the harshness,
How little I have grown, contrary to unreasonable certainty,
Or hope.

I need to hear of people who have done badly
Despite being born with effortless perfection,
To despair, fear though never pity,
Throw up my hands, exasperated at the futility,
To Believe, desperately, and realize the familiarity
Of it, like I never stopped doing it, and
Hope that that is true, to mitigate the petty calculatedness.

I need to be reduced, to be crushed and trained to cringe,
Because- one final confession-
I cannot live in the moment, extempore,
Steadily leaving the minutes behind, like emission trails;
I am tied to each one that passes as if I gave birth to it.
I cannot easily turn my back on
Lost friend, disappointed hope, on emptiness,
Without practice.

[she Saves Everybody's Ass.]

Freezing winter night, the rumour goes round it's three degrees or less, we tell each other and nod, for once in agreement with the Met department. Logic textbook tells me there is no agreeing with the Met department- they are not announcing propositions, but "facts". I snort, snuggle down.

Wix gravitates towards the bed to sit under the rezai, promising herself, promising us, making us promise her, that she won't fall asleep. TONS of syllabus left to do. No, actually, that's my pre-exam state- she needs to complete her revision of the last few articles.

The back door flings open with a clatter of rattling glass panes against time-tested wood. Well, perhaps not tested so much. Most people gingerly try to wiggle it open without being too obvious.
Heads jerk up, interested. Heck, anything this energetic is more interesting.

She comes in, furiously curly hair slightly flyaway around her head, Demands to learn logic. I quail at the proposition of teaching her. O-E is unfazed, coolly passing the buck onto me. She promptly forgets all about it though, goes on to a professor is a darling, that she’s heard the economics subsee course is harder for people who did c.b.s.e. till the twelfth, someone's been saying she's in love with a first year, what nonsense, a boy in class is such a lickass, her mother doesn't understand the accent in old Hollywood movies, the man selling strawberry icecream says 'breast' instead of 'burst', and that too Twice. She fills the room, her earrings dangle furiously in emphasis, she laughs loud, says she will go and study and leave us to it, she's disturbed enough people already.

And I have a sudden Vision. Of little spots of warmth in rooms at random along the corridor where she’s been, when all the decorations have been taken down and the excuses for partying [at any rate, I don’t see what’s fun in it, ya] are over, leaving just exams and cold and ceaseless hunger.

How am I to account for it ? Not quite Santa Claus; with a Mallu ass and hating it, and messing up even the logic paper [what she said, she’s right- you have to get an Award for being this stupid],-
and yet when strains of ‘Summertime’ come up to us in the dead of night, it’s her.

Yawn. Yaaawn.
Sun. Winter sun, so it's never quite warm enough.
Sidney, something, something.
Hm, hm.
It'll happen.
Turn over, stretttch the blanket.
Eyelids sinking.
Smile lazily in the warm, rub tummy.
Flick fly.
Sonnet, something, something.
What if, just now... And then,... and then.
Wake up an hour later, mildly head-aching from the sun, dawdle off to drink coffee.

No wonder the exam went like that.