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View from the fifteenth-floor terrace
is refreshing
after a long-houred city job.
It’s as dark as a city can be.
The froth in the mugs
dies spurting.
‘Can’t get over it!
35 rupees to Salem, imagine!’
‘Really?’ incredulous pours beer nonchalantly.
‘Who goes to Salem!’ half-laugh digs the toothpick
into the gory red insides of glistening
Gobi Manchurian.
‘Who goes to Salem!’
It’s not a question.
Nor a thought.
Does he think it’s demand and supply?
That way…how much to Bangalore?


Blood

A faint moon lingers
the sky not yet dabbed with the morning blush
I rise only so I can see
the parijaat rain
the white skirt sits at her feet
when I bend to pick
she dresses my hair with some
I do not shake them away
but I always ask
holding her gift in
my palm bowl
‘Can I take some inside?
You can see them.
And they you.
I’ll keep them on the sill.'
She nods
and continues to dress my hair.
Yesterday when I ran to her
Late, I thought
And so picked a handful in haste
The chaste petals
were stained.
Not bruised by the fall.
Not yet bronzed by the sun.
But embossed with scarlet veins.
I looked up to ask.
She was bare.
Not one left to put in my hair.
I dropped my saffron-tipped jewels
and rushed indoors.
My feet on the wet floor
left prints
like a bride’s
red with alta.
They looked at me with horror.
How dare
I reveal
what must stay inside!
Chide me like when I soiled
your floor with my muddy babyfeet.
Scold.
Hold.
Don’t cry.
Don’t ask if it hurts.
I won’t lie.
Just hold me to your heart
For you still hide stuff in there.
I will not learn now.
But before I take leave
Let me feel the warmth of that which runs inside
as it must.


The Nightie Seller

No–nonsense ones
in which women can walk into balcony
and answer the door.
untransparent to be exact.
the nighties they sell.
I don’t make eye contact with salesmen
especially those that sell women’s inner wear.
Must be something from the past.
I’ve been coming here for
more years than I can remember
for these lovely white cotton nighties
with little flowers – not chintz, not calico.
A garden, a spray of mauve, blue, pink or orange.
Loud colours keep me awake.
Big prints want to eat me at night.
They know, the sellers.

But who is this that picks
each by its ears?
I see young hands that bring one by one
from the pile
not holding, but barely touching
as if afraid
it may offend me.
He lines the counter with delicate flowers
cotton smooth as a peaceful dream.
If I take the mauve flowers home
will the sea green hurt?
but the green is too like the green bedspread
won’t I get lost?
or they?
the green in green?
so in the morning I wouldn’t know how to tear away?
and may take some of the bedspread’s green with me.
depleting it every day...
I’m thinking when the call comes
the azaan from the mosque
across the road
his hands become restless
as I linger over sprigs
then he lifts his cap to his head
and I look up into
slate eyes
so dense the colour.
Slate. Nah.
Warm.
Cool.
Crystal clear, opaque but.
How do they see?
they hold
as me now by my skin…soul.
I’ve made my selection.
He hurries away
adjusting his crochet cap.
The gray will not blend into the green.
nor bleed into it
like an impatient watercolor.


Fallen Trees

Stunningly stripped
They stood in the water.
Pale bodies,
arms raised skyward
Taut to a smoothness.
Bare gopis.
Days and months and years
against the gossamer Bangalore sky.
Long lost childhood dreams
began to breathe.
A small bookshop
Sitting beneath the traffic
selling glossy stories
of Svetlanas and Ivans
in a bare, blank
Russian winter landscape.
Then the machine gang came.
‘Heavy duty’ chainsaws.
Against the sullied Bangalore sky
I saw them
fallen in the slush.
Arms above, stretched in surrender.
Cleared.
A clearing.
To be filled with
grey living holes
booming contraptions.
Vera must turn into a picture again.
The blue god will need to play his flute elsewhere for me.