exploring the riverbed

Flower in the box

2011-04-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Sourness of an unknown tropical fruit took you through the colours of the the women's market.

You walked in trance passing Phaneks and faces wrinkled like intricate folklores.

In front of the Kangla Fort, you saw bare bodies of mothers screaming at the cold iron gate of a rapist state..

In Manipuri farms, rubik's cube of political strategy lay shattered with blood clotted all around it..

Snakes slithered through your dreams as you clutched the pillow for help..

You watched thousands of Jasmin flowers blooming in distant lands, while the flower of Manipur waited inside the old steel box of inexcusable insensitivity..

Irom Sharmila Chanu..

Unstaged .. unnoticed .. she is waiting..

Cain

2011-02-20T07:54:00.001-08:00

There was a place where I used to hide..

The place where I was assimilated with the melancholy of loneliness.

Under the creaky bed, where the spider with zebra stripes lived.

I lay there watching the theater of feet and slippers, fought with invisible enemies and watched the spider as he waited for his prey.

I wanted to take my little brother to my world.. To the source of the stories which I told him before we went to sleep..

One day he saw the place and tried to sneak in with me and that ancient dark anger filled my heart..

I pressed my feet on his soft chest and pushed him out of my world and guarded my world enjoying the power of denial..

I saw him going out of the room beaten and battered with my feet imprinted on his chest forever..

Into my pain of guilt, he came.. with the smell of moist soil and blood.

Cain .. the lightning in sandstorm, the man with the blood of his brother in his hands..

From the deepness of his throat, words resounded across the realms of my hideout.

"I wandered around the world with this ancient horror. Not the wrath of an unjust god, nor the tears of mother, but that kiss which dried up long back in my lips which I kept for the pale skin of my brothers cheeks.."

A white light surrounded me and I saw Abel smiling at me with tearful eyes. I extended my hand to touch him..

My fairies

2011-02-13T03:38:00.000-08:00

They came first time in a cool December morning, when I was snuggling myself back to the bed of laziness, enjoying the sacred ennui..

Grandma's little angel, who used to fly through the invisible crosses around my bed kissed my eyes and dissolved in the cold air that day..

Leaving me to the fairies..

They warmed me with their smooth skin .. They winked and told me their secrets.

They stroked me with their soft small fingers over the goosebumps gifted by the first rain of monsoon.

One day I realized that they are making my dreams come true.

But my boundless dreams started to shrink down to the borders of reality..

Today, I am sitting here wondering in this dry early morning, which is trying to weave its thread through the night sky.

A am I living my dreams? or do these dreams live through me?

Fairies are flying all around me in sacred silence.

My passion .. my laziness .. my purgation.. my sin ..my pride ..my fear ..my love .. my hunger..

My fairies...

tunnel

2010-09-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

The tunnel was cold, dark and wet... We ran to warm up our bodies ..

I felt cold water soaking the way in through my torn shoes..

On feeling my feet getting numb, I ran faster.

I heard her rhythmic foot steps keeping up behind me..

We, sound of our foot steps and our breaths filled the tunnel.

We ran out and dissolved in the bright light of mountains..

We saw Grossglockner standing there with the all knowing smile of an ancient mountain god..

We stood there holding our numb hands.

Songs of Gond

2010-05-17T01:27:00.000-07:00

I left the gigantic melancholy of the city behind and walked through the rocks towards the sea.

Crabs ran around crazily under the rocks tricking the fishermen who were trying to catch them.

Around me, inside invisible shells created by couples for themselves, faceless men and women became reflections of the city behind them. Reflections of repressed sexuality, loneliness and never ending lethargy.

Then I saw a face, facing the city where the bungalows of the rich stood like the trophies earned by the city..

It was Gond and he was singing.. The songs city never heard in the noise of traffic, festival load speakers and IPL matches..

Songs of his Gond gods from hills, rivers and trees..
Songs of his grand fathers and grand mothers..
Songs of brothers who were forced to fight each other..
Songs of the son of poor farmer who was send to burn Ghond village ..
Songs of pictures painted in the walls of Gond houses with the blood of the sons of farmers and adivasis..

He sang to the city which is fattening with flesh, blood and tears of his tribe..

The city which filled the pores of the jungle flowers with cement dust..
The city which told him that his dance, music and gods are vulgar..
The city which found creams to cure his dark skin..
The city which gave him dreams which he could not understand..
The city which called him a traitor for defending his last bit of land..
The city of faceless people..

I walked fast towards the road looking for a taxi to reach the comfortable slavery of my laptop.

Dry lands and wet lands

2010-01-17T01:37:00.000-08:00

I cried through the pangs of my purgation with tears filling my eyes and flowing through the dry lands of my existence, blooming thousands of sun flowers.
Tears withheld for long in the unseen corners of my masculinity, tears which never flowed for the love, loss and defeat.
Tears .. like magic goggles showed me pain, love and life which I always refused to see..
I saw souls with scars, beliefs and burdens around me.
On my shoulder I felt dry breaths of lives which are taken, lost and hidden.
I continued writing.

I walked

2008-05-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

River was frantically rivering with all its riverness..
A cool mountain wind passed me.. soothing the bruises from river rocks.
I walked..

Snakes copulated among dry leaves with never ending spiral frenzy..
Empty beer bottles and condom covers scattered among the remains of the abandoned forest watch tower.
I walked..

I sat among the yellow flowers and ancient rocks, as arrack traced the perimeters of my intestine.
Fireworks from a distant temple painted flowers in the dark sky..
Flowers transformed into snakes .. peacocks .. butterflies .. eyes...
I smiled and slept..

riverbed

2008-03-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Boy dived into the river...

Water pressuring the ear drum and lungs..

Water creating another space with a dimension so abstract.. so hypnotising..

Each grass.. each small bubble escaping from the lungs, moves with the splendour and energy of a cosmic particle..

Moving up to the surface..taking one deep breath, he dived back to be greeted by the mud and sand, disturbed by himself previously...

Clutching handful of oysters and pebbles, he came up, paddled back to the shore and lied down there.. closing the eyes..feeling the pulsing heart and lungs.

I cycled through the riverbed...

Feeling the vibration on bicycle from the fissures of dried mud and stones.

I raced to trace the dried river.. with evening wind against me...

Sal trees over the ridge above stood in dark.. waving the tops slowly as if they are on a Qawwali concert..

Taking the cycle over one shoulder, I climbed up the ridge to see the sun going down slowly..

Now with wind on my side, I raced down to the riverbed avoiding big fissures and rocks ...

On one moment of ecstasy , I flew and crash landed on the riverbed ..

I lied down among broken shells, with small grass tickling my neck.. feeling my whole body pulsing and then slowly relaxing to defy the pain..

I became the boy.. dreaming of water flowing through all molecules of my body..

Sal trees watched me from above as night spread over the riverbed.

Out of womb

2008-03-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

Colours masqueraded behind my eyelids, dancing to the rhythm of metro.

Opening the eyes, I saw shining crystals fluttering in the light that comes through the window pane.

Slowly I crawled out of the fleshy, wet, comfortable womb of beliefs.

Standing up naked.. vindicated, I waited in the center of universe...