Chiffonesque

I was at work, typing away through a headache. Thought it would be nice if the day ended with me playing with something cute. Something cute, at first, but unknownst to me it would get bloodthirsty when the moon peeps out. I'd have my arms round it and it would stiffen as the hour approached. I would feel its blood turning cold, and its eyes getting clouded for a minute. They'd be grey and rheumy. It would give off a faint, but noticable stench...of evil. And then, just as I am about to nurse it, it'd get a bluish-purple-scarlet glint in its eyes. It would breathe out sharply, and my skin would get lacerated. A single, thick, yellow tear would run down its wrinkled rubbery face. And then the next minute, it would be small and pink and cute. Fitting nicely in the crook of my arm and the nape of my neck. My own sweet, double-faced wizard of a shark. My shark called Oz.

One spectacular evening…one that began when the sky yawned and the first shower of stars got sprayed out. Stars that looked like icy confetti. The evening stretched out like the sky above and the sea before. The sea where ships and horizons and shorelines melted and fused and morphed into a platter of fantasies. One morning…that began with the howl of wind and crack of thunder. With a friend sweetly massaging my feet and then getting up to make hot, ginger tea. A morning that was to be a regular April Sunday and got tipsy with fun. A morning so special that it doomed one to expectantly look up at summer skies forever after to catch a bit of mystery magic. One dusk. Driving back home on Palm Beach road – open, slick, and dark. A heavy-lidded winter evening. And in one second…in a split-second… all the lamps along the road get lit at the same time. One afternoon. It’s Kashmir and I’m eight. Sitting by the fire in a houseboat. Am with my grandparents. Grandmom is unwrapping a pista-colore...

This city is definitely a creature of the night. After sun-down, the energy changes to a light throb, instead of the rabid gush of day time. The roads are slightly empty. The weather's mussed with an almost-winter coolness. It's difficult to articulate it...whatever 'it' is...but you feel it. A little electric blue crackle blitzing somewhere around you. You thought you saw a flash, you thought you heard a snap, you turn around and it's not there...oh, wait...there it goes again. Nights are when Mumbai breathes. Lets out a deep, restful sigh. It's still busy and still noisy, but people now would stop and notice a shaft of light if it filtered down from somewhere. This is when the city dreams...eyes flickering in semi-consciousness...as much asleep as awake. Last night, I was at Ivy Lounge with my cousin. Saw Nandita Sen (I think that's her name), the actress. Very, very pretty. Lumniscent, actually. Her skin positively shone, like it had been massaged with go...

I am really upset today. Lost my cool after very long. Yelled so loudly at a cabbie that he started crying. Of course, saying sorry after that was of no use. Scraped my car against a tree. I don't understand why people create such a hue and cry over cutting trees. All those things should be uprooted and burnt, so that people can back up in peace. I hate this...this having to meet human beings every single day. Why can't I just get a job where I could sit somewhere by myself and work? Also, I wish the year ended. I wish the world ended. I wish I ended. I wish everyone ended and all those damn trees got razed to the ground. Maybe that's how I'll end. I'll be under a damn tree when it gets razed to the ground. Life is so funny. And Death is a stand-up comic.

Life is sometimes filled with such Gatsby moments...moments that are beckoned by things such as this: http://www.tiffany.com/Catalogues/BrowseItem.aspx?pc_id=582683&pc_item=04G&page_no=0&search_params=s+5-p+2-c+-r+-x+-n+6-ri+-ni+0-t+#p+24-n+6-cg+viewPaged-c+-s+5-r+-t+-ri+-ni+0-x+-pu+-f +

I wake up on Diwali morning and realize that I don't have kandeels, lanterns, flowers, or diyas to decorate the home. There wasn't any time to get any because I was living the joyous life of working the graveyard shift. But I'm up at six a.m. anyway, since I spent the previous night talking to a cousin. The morning is cool with the faint stirrings of Mumbai winter...winter that is not really a color so much as a hue . Slightly foggy, slightly misty, slightly grey...but a perfect background to bright orange lanterns and sparkly white and blue lights lit up all along Pali Hill. I run up the zig zag road, wanting to fill the lungs with sharp, fresh air. I walk down Carter Road, watching groups of happy construction workers have tea and biscuits next to a pile of bright Diwali decorations. They'll probably take them to deocarate their homes. I feel a little sad, a little left out. But a stall, bright and magical in appearance calls out. Marigold garlands beckon. Fuschia, tu...

In a country called childhood where he knew he'd be king He built a palace of sunbeams And trained nightingales to sing... ...of stories of waterfalls That fell into the night And fortresses of dust-storms of formidable heights He guarded the valleys With skies crotcheted like lace But by the time his country was a republic Children had left the place

It lays spread before me Merlot blanket of time and tide This glossy breadth of upheavals That, in due course, would subside Some day this will be paradise The home about which I’d lied But this eternity, it’s a wasteland Where hopes and tears collide

I swear my work is self-mutating. It’s impossible that I’m working close to 12-14 hours every day on something, and it doesn’t seem to end. I get really impatient when I’m on a project for very long. It’s like having something stuck in your teeth for months. Last night, I reached home at midnight. I ate a bowl of daal and vegetables. I sat and chatted with my cousin who was telling me of a flat in Bandra available for six thousand rupees rent per month. It’s got a terrace. And sea-view. ‘ Is that possible?’, I asked myself. Anything’s possible, I told myself. I really want to take a quiet four hours off. Four hours of not having a gnawing sense of urgency in the pit of my stomach. I’d gone to town this Sunday, and it was so glorious! Those areas – Kalbadevi, the book-sellers at V.T., walking to Gateway, getting drenched in silver, cold rain, and watching ships docked in mist…these scenes, those smells – they just fill me up. But Monday happened, and that sheath of peace just got lifte...

Larks flying in the topaz sky Melodies engraved on a Saturnine ring Buds, timid, yet waiting for applause Moon looking like a spot on a butterfly wing.