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.