The Sunset on August 5th, 2020

The sun’s decline is both

a spectacle and a discrete proposal
for us to decide over, to veto the power

of the strongest-

since ignorance of the masses

cannot be an excuse always-

"The sun set on the British Empire",

they announced on the loudspeakers

"And wrested in the hands

of a few good Chitpavani Brahmins",

they sniggered under their breaths.

The tea shop below our house

stopped selling milk because of the Sun,

its movement making Bappa ji hysterical

at times, while Morya threw away

the spoilt milk,

(instead of making chhena)

The paying guests complained of

direct sun rays giving them headaches

but only on alternative days of the week.

They performed Surya Namaskar 8 times

on those days, offered water to the Sun

from the lota each morning on the terrace,

worshipped the Sun-facing Tulsi

and performed parikramas around it

Yet till this very day,

the moment the ache dins

and takes control of their minds

a little red light glows on their foreheads

They start swearing the Sun

left, right and center

for its unmitigated tyranny on their bodies

for getting inside their neural network

and making their fingers

tap on unrecognized keys

on WhatsApp, on Facebook,

on Twitter and on EVMs

until they find themselves in the middle

of an unrecognised disaster.

"Was it a sudden, unannounced earthquake

Or a slowly brewing gas leak?",

They ask on New Delhi television

"It was as imminent as the sun rise",

They snigger under their breaths.

On Love

My lonely arms wait

not for someone else, but for you

On the solitary balcony in a run down suburb,

I stood with you, my entire heart

overflowing with love, inversely

proportionate to the deficit in our water tank

directly proportionate to the energy it took

to fill it up

Love that I hadn't known, that which wasn't

felt before, love that was mine to keep for

however long I need

And that freedom is enticing, that power is

glorious till the moment you can see love

exist right before you

but love, like life, is no thing really

It doesn't exist without the other,

it doesn't have a body or form

it is, like life, a certain organisation of molecules,

letting your brain function in a particular direction

by exerting forces inside the body

Love, like life, is an emergent property

And so it doesn't show up while you're at

the same wineshop buying whiskey

for four days straight,

it doesn't call on you when you're flushing down

Biryani with Sprite in the family section of

Hotel Hyderabad

heck, it doesn't even knock at your heart

when you're in someone else's bed

after a dinner of peanuts and alcohol

trying to find your release and fall

Love only emerges from something,

and don't ask me what, I have learnt nothing

but I speculate that in the deeps of

my heart, and yours,

we knew what was emerging

how the molecules inside were

forming a bond,

a bond that may be an intensely tight one,

a double helix that was held together

by something other than hydrogen,

a bond that could perhaps emerge out of

what Neitzsche had called the will to power

and the will to power can only emerge

alongside the will to know

Love, my dear, maybe only what we know

It is what we know happened when the molecules

formed the bonds tightly held,

not between us like an invisible string

but inside you, inside me,

separately.

Denial

You don't need to read a Murakami story 
to judge if women make good drivers,

revive me from my passivity 
and I'll tell you the answer

Tell me, what'll make you listen?

I have called forth the hurricane inside

and cried "Poseidon!"

to save all the plasma and red blood cells

drop by and say hi, protector of seafarers

Give them a hand to stay afloat 
in this ocean of flesh and bones,

the heat is rising, the ice melting, pick up a scale 
and measure the rhythm of my palpitation

Sample it and replay, until

you find the two right notes and a power chord,

make me a song, cry me a river, break me again 

and put it on repeat 

I had already mastered the art of losing, and faster

now I'm learning how to write it like a disaster

while I steam my lungs clean and make them pure
to consume Afghani hashish re-mixed 
in the streets of Delhi

(we take their drugs while they take our wheat)

every relationship is a relationship of exchange
but I think I'm done, 
I don't need your cure 
anymore.   

For Araku

(A valley that falls on the Eastern Ghats of India, located in the Vishakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh)

I haven't seen your crests or felt your air hitting my face
neither have I walked past the greenness reproduced in my head

I have circled around you
in breaks, but like a good falcon,
gone back to my abode when needs reckon

Yet I have inhaled the scent of your earth

in dusty whiffs of a good spliff, I have tasted 
your soil that is thought to be only as good 
as the tons of bauxite 
it produces for industries and governments

I have redistributed the control of your fertility
in my small drags of resistance.

I haven't been sheltered by your deep enticing caves
or met the eleven species of owls that you house in your thick forests,

But in palm-length buds and slender stems,
I have consumed the sweet scent of your creation
like a plant-worshipping pagan, I too have teleported to places
other than the Deccan.

And when the time comes, I will have met your people
who can launch a thousand spears against any Naidu or Adani,
and refuse to mine aluminium in place of the most aromatic coffee

Araku, I will pull myself asunder to see you
for one stimulant doesn't seem enough to be. 

Your Skin

Wondered how thinking about your skin
can make me crave, salivate
swallow the juices produced inside my painful mouth
(with sores on the tongue pricking from all sides)
that rests on too much salt
sticking on the edges of the weirdest muscle of the body
(the tongue is transgressive; both inside and outside)
like your skin that shivers, before our bodies
take hold of each other’s-
that process which I found out is called ‘horripilation’
and which further makes me wonder
why the language of pleasure shares itself with that of horror,

is this why Dracula is the cultural icon of the seductive monster?

All bodies are grotesque
but not all are salty,
I have tasted bitter hearts and cold lemons before
that did not make my tongue sore
but I want to consume you
because thinking of your skin can bring me tears

(and I always liked consuming my own tears)
Salt, salt, salt that can touch my tongue again, sore it again
bring my mouth to pain even when the tongue isn’t a prisoner
of either pleasure, pain or horror
it is the weirdest muscle that can feel your skin best,
and maybe ‘horripilation’ breaks down in meaning
when the salivating tip of my tongue touches you

maybe it tickles, raises the thin hair on your back
but the violence of pleasure is a different kind of violence;
it is neither horror nor pillage
(nor anything entirely external to the body)

Maybe it is time to stop iconising the Dracula,
Maybe it is time for the tongue to sore with too much salt.

'the imperfect is our paradise'

The staircase is endless now,
and the window is an opening
stretched elastic by mosquitos in need.
But you and I,
we haven’t grown more different
from each other than how we were
in the beginning,
or have we?
Does living together
also mean growing apart?
But distance may not follow difference,
we could’ve been clones and yet been
repellent to each other,
yet not found closeness in smelly mattresses
and half-torn bedsheets
yet not fallen asleep together

But we did,
and who promised that it would be painless?
who swore that you wouldn’t be looking for me
when I was right there?

Presence changes
As people change

Maybe my presence smells like the plants
we killed together
leaving them beside a light bulb for too long.
Maybe that’s why you smell of musk
and not minted ice anymore
and that is what perhaps dogs sense better than us,
perhaps that's why they don’t need an epiphany
or a breakthrough
because we are so hopelessly experiential,
tied down with a leash to our living conditions
so momentarily sad-happy-existential-sexual,
always looking to complete the whole that
we think we deserve to become,
sooner or later

that we dive right in
when the opening feels like an elastic peephole.
Yet, maybe in the January of 2015,
the mosquitos in need found what they were looking for
rolling along with Maynard’s passivity,
lost again
but a better lost

You and I, my love, are imperfectly evil predators

and this is our paradise.

20

the time you turn 20, your throat will be a thorn
more like a cactus,
filled with lonely thorns standing apart
or perhaps double-edged nails
dancing along the slim skin around the tonsils
remember that it's an acidic reminder
for all things lost,
for all things gained,
for the similar acidity you felt
before the good things in life played

your heart will be pounding
for reasons bettter left to the chemical
cluster of the body
palpitation was your old friend
but now as your stomach punches itself,
forces the insides of the body to scream
and scratch against the double-edged nails,
you remember,

remember the time when your father told you the story of his father's friend, who always fainted on hearing Begum Akhtar's 'Ae Mohabbat Tere Anjaam Pe Rona Aaya'
how he was widower, a soul lost in the remnants of love like all of us, and you imagine all the things that might've been floating inside his head transmitting through his body,
how this pale, thick gurgle of cough binds you and him together for seeking remembrance
how love is but another reaction to a song gone by, but a song neverthless