Chiffonesque

My friend and I were at the Barista at Bandstand the other evening. It was around 8 o’clock. We had just about managed to book bus tickets to a place and were broke. So broke that we had no business deliberating over vertiginously layered concoctions of chocolate and cream. But there is something about a dense, monsoon night by the sea that makes you feel rich. Lush. Giddy with the prospect of abundance. My friend ordered a chicken puff and a cappuccino. I got myself a cup of ginger honey and a banana muffin. We munched our food quietly, watching little frills of foam kissing the rocks. Slowly, two big jigsaw pieces of clouds shifted apart and a tiny star shone through. It looked like a sweet little starfish that had gotten washed up in some celestial shore. It twinkled up there, alone and afraid. Then there was a strong gust of wind. Another large plank of cloud slowly moved in and covered the pretty, shivering starfish. Sometimes, I think, no matter what it is, everything is the

Reached home late last night. Woke up late this morning. Okay, not so much late…but lat- er . Overslept a sinful ten minutes. Missed the office bus. (This bus is a strange entity. It demonstrates annoying punctuality when it’s raining like crazy. However, on days when cupids and angels are prancing about on tufts of cloud, the bugger is always delayed.) Now, my choices are either a BEST or an auto. In either case, the wait promises to be long. Soon enough, though, I get an auto-fellow willing to take me to Marol. I settle in, take out my book (The Carrie Diaries – not too bad), and read. Or at least, try to. As we go through Asalpha and Ghatkopar and other places with scenic ‘War of the Worlds’ collision landscaping, I realize that my auto-fellow is anti-life. His and mine. Several times, I clench my teeth and shut my eyes. When I open them, I am disoriented. I imagine that I am dead and yet, still in Asalpha. That is a very depressing thought, by the way. I could write a script

It was midnight and she stood in the rain, wearing pink. She tried to pin up her frizzy hair but the mushroom-colored clip was too small. A Sumo whizzed past, dunking heavily into a puddle near her. Grimacing, she stepped aside. Her chartreuse skirt was splattered. She looked around for a safe spot, amidst the Hades- type potholes. A few bystanders glanced at her and walked on. A man in a yellow vest, spit next to her and scurried away when he realized she would probably shove him. She settled down and folded her arms across her chest. It was late, after all. There was a bustle, of course, but she would rather be home. In the couch. In her bed. On her terrace or in her garden or in her kitchen… brewing a cup of orange-cinnamon tea to wind down for the night. Any place, where this wet, cold aloneness didn’t cling and swirl around her. Or drench her little by little. He’d be coming soon. That’s what he’d said a half hour ago. To be fair, it wasn’t his fault. Saki Naka in the best of

It floated past like a gilded rose My life beyond The pond that froze On a summer evening with tangled storms With leaves of night, with sheaves of thorns It comes back now On broken wings Bleeding blue Yet it lightly sings This memory of a forgotten time With unswept mess on the floor of rhymes A purple petal in a room of ice With cinnamon flutes and walls of rice Where madness had made such a mess But that room, too, once housed a ‘yes’ A ‘Yes’ that tipped the moon and sent it falling A ‘Yes’ that lived it all when life was calling Now it lays down quiet near a frozen pond Staring up, looking beyond It lays down quiet while its heart still sings Of gilded roses and broken wings

This is a time of incredible beauty in the city. For so many months in the year, we are parched and wrapped in withered, old, soul-less paper. Sometimes, though, we get glimpses of purity here and there. But these are  fleeting. One spends a second beholding it. Many months after spotting such a moment, we speculate whether it is to be part of nostalgia or imagination. Then it rains. Skies get grey - so grey that everything with a little smudge of color swells into a globe of its own. The wind gets wet - so wet that every stray piece of aching loveliness gets stuck on to it, the way drenched leaves stick on to car windshields. The sea gets high - on power that you can hear in its deep, sonorous roar...on joy that you sense in its interminable little heaves breaking onto rocks. And the mind gets full - full with analogies to explain everything there is, was, and will be. Last few days, I have been going around the city a lot - mostly by train. That's my favorite way to travel, b