(Is fair work rewarded often? Du Fu was a great Chinese poet who lived from 712 to 770 AD. He was doomed to a sad and deprived life as he failed in his many attempts to qualify the official civil service examination, which had poetry as a compulsory subject. Many lesser men of his time [...]
Read moreThe Giggling Gladiator (Part II)
March 7, 2012
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(Read the ‘Part I’ here) If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, Nalini Nayan came right from Uranus. She was a female form hacked out of the purest permafrost. Everything about her was sharp and angular, right from the rhombus of a face that tapered into a pointed chin. She had thin [...]
Read moreThe Giggling Gladiator (Part I)
March 4, 2012
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Chhotu is the secret police. Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti. Period. For the incredulous, yes it still exists. Of course, it has a different name. Dare me not to come clean. If I expose him here, he will be soon found floating in a pond full of frogs with a hole between the eyes. So will be [...]
Read moreZinfandel Moments
February 26, 2012
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The mind is a muddle of Zinfandel. Unlike Coleridge however, no rhymes pour forth. I become an extension of the furniture I am wedged in. So, I can’t tell you about my crush who kissed the neighbourhood clown behind the closed doors of an electricity control room just to let me down, even as the [...]
Read moreTo The Living
February 21, 2012
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You want me to spread my heart on the bed, It’s both, broke and cold; I watch my feet as I move ahead, There are cadavers on the floor. What is this they won’t let me peel? A sheet, a grief or a shroud? Who is this who sleeps so still Heedless of lifeless crowd? [...]
Read moreFor My Eyes Only
February 19, 2012
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We’ve been old mates, glasses and I! And when I was visited upon by the first installment of friendship, fancy dealerships were not in vogue. The optometrist, who pronounced my fate in terms of twin minus fours, also scribbled the name of a ‘reliable’ outlet which I suspect was partly owned by him. We found [...]
Read moreGhostwalker
February 11, 2012
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(Ghostwalker to my Father) Standing on the untilled land, The wind sliding past my hairless pate, I proffer water with trembling hands And light the lamp of a withered fate. They said your soul will wail and wander On the breath and the beat of the beloved lives, Till an exorcist coldly tears us asunder [...]
Read moreMy son, must I stay?
January 25, 2012
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“I fear yours is no living soul. How could it make this distant flight? You came: the maple woods were green. You went: the pass was black with night.” -Du Fu / Vikram Seth The hamartia that ruled my father’s life was his obsession for the well-being of his companion, my mother. He sired a string of [...]
Read moreA Burqa for Noida Girl
December 27, 2011
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On a day when Kisan Bapat Baburav Hazare threatens to take on Mumbai , on a day when Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar threatens to strike the hundredth hundred, I am moved enough to remember all those eyes that peer out of darkness of veils. You feel the impetus is seriously misplaced? With half the women in [...]
Read moreExistence
December 21, 2011
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(Excerpts from 2009) “The wind is free, but the sand goes where it is blown. Unaware of the world around it, whirling on the breath of the Gods, at the mercy of the storm that engulfs it. What is one grain of sand in the desert? One grain amongst the storm?” The haunting voice of [...]
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