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.

goodbye

You're facing her, in a bus terminal, or a train station maybe.
You forget sometimes, but you're both holding suitcases and you're talking and laughing, and one or other of you will remember when it's time to go.
This is how it always is, stranger-talk understood familiarly, on the way to the same place.
People criss-cross the station, shouting in bunches and singing and hurrying, even passing between you sometimes.
You get up to get some coffee from the stand, fresh from laughter, wait in line, and think about the conversation.
Talking and silence, and talking and silence, and you can't remember any more what it was about, as always.
It's like it never happened, the gap; or rather, like you'd always thought it'd be- the gaps didn't matter.
Ha.
After refusing to shove people at the counter for long enough, someone finally gives you coffee.
It's the wrong kind, and they charge you too much, but you don't have the heart to fight for the right kind.
Walking back, you realise you were carrying the suitcase all the while.
When you reach the benches she isn't there.
And you know that she's gone to catch her train, that it isn't the same one as yours, that she'll learn to manage to catch it on time, as you will.
Is it alright ? you ask yourself, sipping the scalding wrong coffee, blowing on it, whistling in between.
It isn't- you swerve to avoid a little girl insistent on running pell-mell into you- but it will be.
You pick up speed as you catch sight of a terminal clock, running onto the platform as the conductor starts yelling, get into your seat.
Everything is, sooner or later, and you will be.
Rummage for a napkin in a pocket, and wipe the coffee from all over your coat while drinking what's left of it, straight up.