Poetry: She Sat Beside Me On the Minibus

Clad in tattered white and a toothy smile

She huddled beside me on the rickety minibus

I didn’t say hello, never asked why

She told me anyway, her destination was the Ultadanga Terminus.

The Transport Department were pussies, she said,

In terms more colorful than I can in decency convey

The municipality? A bunch of thieves!

Sprayed diluted pesticide, never swept the leaves.

Her husband, she said, had been an officer,

Might’ve been a peon or an auditor.

Either way, he showed ‘em their place

Fought the good fight a fortnight, then vanished without a trace.

Swatting a mosquito with dirt-stained fingers,

She told me the Chief Minister will die of Dengue fever.

Rubbed her face with the frayed ends of an ancient saree

Assured me the state of the nation was quite dreary.

Had she been in government? A private petitioner?

Her nephew’s in the Assembly, her son a commissioner.

She has nothing to be afraid of, she’s quite sure

At 82, there ain’t much she hasn’t endured.

Gazed out the window when the conductor came by

Muttered about inflation and ignored his cries.

I bought two tickets, one for the Ultadanga Terminus

The man cursed, she smiled, I got off the bus.

Poetry: An Elegy on the Death of My Fake Leather Sandals

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Starry-eyed, I peeked at you through the shop window

The salesman’s toothy smile was nothing to your new-polished glow.

Your fake leather belts and stiff rubber soles

Made me dream of journeys sans mud, debris, and potholes.

The salesman whispered the ‘discounted rate’ delicately into my ears,

I glanced down at my slender wallet and blinked back my tears.

My feet slid into your gentle folds, a warrior coming home,

I was fifty short but in your embrace, the world I wished to roam.

Your beauty was unsurpassed, though the insoles did itch,

And your buckles gleamed like fairy dust, when the toe-cap pulled a stitch.

You helped me traverse wet sand heaps on under-construction roads

You stood with me on the roller-coaster of rush-hour public transport.

You were with me through the muddy puddles, of early monsoon

Caked with dirt, you stayed alert, through alleys litter-strewn.

You held me in your hard embrace on broken footpaths

Helped me slink through curfew gates not even the cat could surpass.

And I should have known, you were too good for this town

My fake leather sandals with the rubber soles of brown.

As I hung off the bottom step of the spasmodic minibus

Beneath me the buckles ripped, the outsoles gave up.

And I know that over the months, we’ve had our fights

And I’ve said more than once that you were overpriced.

Though it’s true that I think you could have done with a discount

Never let them tell you, our bond wasn’t profound.

All my neighbors know of your tales of valor

What you lacked in durability, you made up for in glamor.

So what if the heels were rickety and the insoles tickled?

The road to affordable beauty with potholes is riddled!

Poetry: In Honor of the Late Electric Kettle Martyred on the Promise of an Elusive Education

This poem is dedicated to:

Kirti, Pallavi (roomie), Khushboo, Priyanka, Kanchan, and last but not the least, my darling dead kettle. I miss you all!! :*

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For nine months we were Rapunzels

Languishing in the tower of redundant education

Bidding civilization a teary farewell

To buy a degree with the currency of isolated frustration.

And through it all, you were there

By my side, when the world seemed dark and bare.

Oh, beloved companions of my embittered soul

My electric kettle and my Maggi bowl.

Through the heated – if slightly inebriated

Political debates of 2AM

You kept us full and caffeinated

You are the Magi of Bethlehem.

And even when our packaged noodles

Were pilfered (or borrowed) with dubious consent

And even when our budgets frugal

Had all been on clothes and vodka spent.

Through those tumultuous times you kept us fed,

Never went hungry to the creaky hostel bed.

Neither snake nor monkey on those haloed grounds

Ever wanted for tasty food within your compound.

And here we convey our sincere apologies

To the morning lectures, whose many qualities

We shall never know, for they were always missed

With a commitment that bordered on religious zeal.

And here too, we must admit

That we never really gave a shit

About the assessments or the flashy PPTs

Of imagination and research a shapeless potpourri.

But my friend, you should never believe

Anybody who tells you they didn’t grieve

For the cheap momos and cheaper pav bhajis

When the town of Dhenkanal they had to leave.

And it was a strange and glorious land

Where mosquito troupes and reptilian marching bands

Danced to Bollywood numbers on command

At night when all was dark and grand.

Boiled Maggi and filter coffee

Had never tasted better than on the crappy

Sheets of the rickety hostel bed

With music loud, the future on an arrowhead.

And it was the best of times

Though we were broke and bored, didn’t have a dime

Yet we got the lesson of our lives

Never miss the chance to have a good fucking time!

Poetry: An Ode to Rejection

It’s good, but not what we’re looking for right now. 

Oh, but it stings. And how! 

The position’s closed, better luck next time 

Your lips are bruised purple from that smile. 

We loved it, but it doesn’t fit with our current line-up 

You take a bitter sip of the salty tea-cup 

It’s good, dear, just not for me 

You nod, you understand, ‘cause it never is. 

Your throat stings from not screaming loud enough, 

Frustration the itch of a swallowed cough. 

You’ve heard it a hundred times, and yet the hundred-and-first 

Burns like every regret thrice reimbursed. 

But while they wound, they aren’t nearly as bad, 

As the radio silence of indifference ironclad. 

Refreshed inboxes and double-checked call logs tell 

The sordid tale of a dream drowning in the wishing well. 

Vacancies disappear and resumes languish 

Receptionists pout in parodied anguish. 

It’s never you, it’s always them, 

It’s never you’re-not-good-enough, it’s always not-the-right-fit. 

It’s all the same, yet unique every time 

Nobody’s got a minute, but asking’s not a crime. 

It’s self-flagellation with a calling card 

We don’t give a fuck, best regards. 

Your name’s not on this list, or the next one 

And yet you walk, ‘cause you can’t outrun 

The ghost of a dream, of a hope long gone 

Of finding the happily-ever-after in life’s lexicon.

Poetry: On Seeing the Sun on a Weekday

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The frosty LEDs flicker overhead, 

Dispersing monotone rays of white on beige 

I feel a fresh migraine approach 

Sip the stale coffee cooling next to my keyboard. 

The girl beside me in the rainbow dupatta, 

Leans over empty staplers and stained manila 

To whisper: ‘The boss is going on a holiday,

Won’t be back before salary day.’ 

I’m told this is cause for celebration 

The best you can make of a bad situation. 

And I suppose I’d feel some of this ecstasy, 

If my soul weren’t screaming for aspirin. 

The words on the screen swirl and dance 

Dupatta girl spares me an expectant glance 

Before turning to the gentleman to her right 

Replays her message of freedom and flight. 

‘It’s been a while’, someone says 

Since we’ve seen the sun on a weekday. 

‘It’s been longer’, snaps another 

Since I took a smoke break and wasn’t bothered. 

I grant these are all valid concerns, 

Nobody enjoys a meeting with flooded lungs. 

We also need a new coffee machine 

Someone really should get the filters cleaned. 

They filed a report with the HR department 

Got an electric kettle and a higher sales target. 

Which they didn’t meet ’cause the phones were dead 

And were allocated a raise of two percent. 

That’s ‘cause you can’t put a Band-Aid, you see 

On a laceration of the third degree. 

Sunless days of endless excel sheets 

Aren’t fixed with extra caffeine and weekend retreats. 

Still, you can give me a ride back home, 

When the sun’s gone, the streets are monochrome. 

For now, I’d settle for a quick smoke break, 

Vitamin D’s overrated anyway.

Poetry: A Tendency to Wear Hearts on Sleeves

(Image Source)

I log into the network of my self-esteem,

To see the hearts and the wows and the laughs flooding in.

A simple 'like' wouldn’t cut it anymore

‘Likes’ were so 2010, even 2010 was bored. 

‘Cause that’s the zeitgeist of the age, you see,

A tendency to wear hearts on sleeves.

Loves and kisses are a dime a dozen,

With a million friends and followers double.

National debates and social justice petitions,

Real crises, distorted renditions.

High definition photos of disaster zones

Flash up against cat videos on every smart phone.

Snapchat filters do not lie,

Just tell a story of hours gone by;

Selecting the perfect background, the ideal shade

To express love on the dozen’th date. 

But that’s the zeitgeist of the century,

A tendency to wear hearts on sleeves.

To document in minute detail, with extensive pictorial evidence

Clockwork days of humdrum nonchalance. 

And perhaps the generation that came before

Would call it vanity, vainglory, or something more.

But it ain’t like they were without their sins,

We didn’t invent tabloid columnists. 

And now that we are at the end,

Let me sign off with this request:

Like, comment, and share your love

Let your heart fall out of your shirt cuff.

Poetry: You Cannot Buy Groceries with Potential

(Image Source)

They’ll tell you that you have ‘potential’,

That with the proper degrees and the right resume

You could get it all, make every dream real,

Go up on the stage of life and have your say.

But they’ll only ever whisper in parenthesis,

That this fairy tale had its genesis

In the blackened ashtrays of airless office rooms

Broken bodies lost in the factory fumes.

They’ll say you can be anything you want,

Just so long as your plans don’t interrupt

The 9-hour shift and 3-hour commute

Plus any housekeeping that you can contribute.

They don’t call it a hustle ‘cause it’s easy,

Life ain’t supposed to be breezy

You pay your dues and you bear your cross

And if all else fails, just please the boss.

They’ll say it’s not sleep deprivation,

If at the end of the year you land that promotion.

Creativity is a small price to pay

For petrol, a roof, and a biennial raise.

Cost of living adjustments and dearness allowances

A trade-off for the rose-tinged contact lenses

Of limitless potential and classroom lectures

Beige colored dreams and dead-end conjectures.

It wouldn’t be a ‘job’ if you liked it,

And the rent still needs to be paid.

Power and Wi-Fi aren’t bought with ‘potential’, baby

For those, you need a higher pay grade.

Poetry: Aro/Ace - On the Slightly Awkward Subject of My UnSexuality

Closet? What closet? I'm coming out of an antique mahogany almirah decorated with rainbow butterflies. 

Aro/Ace –

Sounds like the kinda thing you’d say on Tumblr.

Or would have, when you were fifteen,

If you were into that sort of thing.

I wasn’t, personally. I was too busy–

Trying to make friends (with dubious success)

Get passing grades (a huge fucking mess)

And simply exist (without knowing it) as an aro/ace.

What’s that? I couldn’t have told you.

Not then, when it was all confusing and new.

I barely understand it now, and I’m just a year short

Of a quarter of a century to the day I was born.

Well, I guess it’s a distinct lack of butterflies,

In your intestines, where their natural turf supposedly lies.

I s’pose it’s also a few awkward dates, a few epic fails

But that, in my life, is just a reasonably good day.

You prude. So rude. What the fuck, dude?

That was a perfectly good platitude

Of romantic intent, if a bit commonplace

But who said teenage love was about originality anyway?

A shrug. Coffee mug. I’m not against clichés.

I’ll drink it black and wallow in my own uniqueness.

I’m a strong, independent rebel who doesn’t need no man,

Unless he can play guitar, then he’s part of the gang.

‘Tis a bit of a strange identity

To be not who I am, but what I mustn’t be.

The unoppressed minority,

Or just a pretentious wannabe?

And sometimes, it’s just confusing as hell,

Did I break the fucking Kinsey scale?

Truth is, I’m all of the above

Though to get there was a bit of a learning curve.

But hell, I’m a year short of twenty-five,

Too old for this angsty Tumblr jive.

So there, I said it, I’m aro/ace,

And with that I conclude this awkward exposé. 

The Poetry Post #5

Crispy Fried Chicken

A thunderstorm beating against my ribs,
The sun glares into my eyes and screams –
Wordless terror; as claws, a monster’s dibs
Snatch her from the coop. ‘Take me!’ I weep.
‘Tsk tsk – too old. It’s a party!
I’ll need tender meat.’

Stench of sweat, rotting flesh
Or minds, festering in metallic confines,
Crumbling feathers, dying babes
Snatched by demon hands from damnation’s cage.
Wings torn, breast ripped – she was mine!
‘Crispy wings, stuffed breast’, they wink and smile.

Crimson hands feed crimson eyes
From the dinner plate of corpses;
Beat my wings, scratch my feet
As he too is torn and twisted.
That makes two; two gone four to go
Of the little ones I tended.

Their crimson blood must’ve reached the skies,
For it’s bathed in burning red;
The demon’s hand darts in again
Into our cursed little shed.
A wordless cry, twist, rip; the bloody flaps of dying wings
Into the butcher’s knife, I fly; one final remonstrance.

A Shrine to Pointless Things

In my corner of the flat, I’ll build
A shrine to pointless things;
To broken pens and chequered notes,
Old stamps forgotten in the bins.
To rusty screws, empty batteries,
A shrine to battered memories
Of lives lived as in a dream.

Oh let me but a corner, to build my empty shrine,
To a broken bangle, martyred in her prime –
Not to love, nor war: but the pointless drudgeries of life.
We fight for no grand causes; we build for no great men,
Our highest aspirations – food, shelter and a peg;
Our shrines all shorn of glory,
To discarded dreams, a testament.

So in my corner of the flat, I’ll build
A shrine to trivial things;
To plastic flowers, dog-eared journals
A homage to mundanity.
The world glories in grand things –
Great passions of love and war;
My words, hence, are for all trivial things
By obscure smiles and tears marked.

Poetry: A Letter to My Best Friend

Well, there isn't much to say about this one. It's right what it says on the tin. An elaborate proposition for potential cohabitation to my best friend. Featuring five years worth of inside jokes that you may or may not get. 

It isn’t that I never lied

Never spouted facts and figures unverified

To impress you, proselytize you

Opinions too many, confessions too few.

It isn’t that you never cried

Hurled accusations, indictments unjustified

To convert me, evangelize me

Passions so many, compromise an enemy.

But then, we’ve never needed perfection

Kicking and screaming, we agreed to contradictions

Mindmates on a play date

Soulmates are so mid-2000s anyway.

It isn’t just that I want to play house

Without a ken doll, outside a wedding hall

It isn’t that you shouldn’t drink, sing and carouse

Until the vodka spills and the cocktails run out

But I must say, it would be okay

To have a dog or three, and walk ‘em every other day

It wouldn’t be half bad, to have a semi-clean flat

With a sparkling bath and an angry stray cat

It isn’t that the future’s certain, or the past unblemished

It isn’t that I trust you not to leave this fanfic unfinished

But the climax is a spoiler, and completion is overrated anyway

I’d take it as a victory, if all we ever had was today. 

Poetry: An Ode to Durga

So, I had to write a poem for the annual Dussehra (Durga Puja) magazine published at my residential complex every year. Well, I sat down at my laptop for this year's installment, and this is what came out. Enjoy!!

They told us that you’re handsome, that you’re strong

They told us you felled demons, righted ancient wrongs

We were led to believe, we didn’t need a fallen Eve

When we had you – rising, flying, fighting, and free.

You’re feminism in a saree

Rebellion ornamented with filigree

Not the deity we deserve, perhaps

But the Goddess we need.

They told us you’re Kali, who dared to be

Dark when pale was in vogue

They told us you’re Saraswati, who by all accounts,

Was pretty, but preferred paperbacks to the dance floor.

But of course, Lakshmi too is a part of you

She liked being rich, and was gorgeous to boot.

You’re diversity in a bindi, a neglected inheritance

Independence that doesn’t select for an English accent

Ironic, I admit. Guilty as charged.

Using foreign syllables to sing of my own backyard.

You were the original heroine, before Supergirl came along

We thought we could do it too, if you’ve been at it for so long.

You’re the one with the third eye

And in hindsight, I realize

We had you all along – defeating our demons, fighting our fights

Even as we looked to Disney and DC to bring order to our messy lives

Provide us with repackaged role models

Hanging by their tattered capes, from capitalist citadels.

Now wake up, take charge

Come home and show them who’s the star

Of this silly little primetime show called life

The fighter, the scholar, the fashionista, and the wife

You’re the role model we need,

Though perhaps not the God we currently believe

They said you’re strong, righted all the wrongs

Come home then, and teach us again, how to march along to your victory song.

Poetry: To the Faceless Co-Passenger on a Crowded Public Bus

I can't believe I wrote an actual poem about my epic (and well documented) awkwardness on public transportation. Well, here it is. Don't ask me what you did to deserve it. Commuting to work is hard, okay!! 

Dust motes and sweat stains

Faded graffiti over rusted steel plates

Advertising everything, from politicians to a massage parlor,

The engine roars disgruntled, in smoky rancor.

I stepped on your feet, said I was sorry

Tell me mister, could you tell I was lying?

Pushing through the rush-hour crowd

I finally found my footing and was proud.

Well, there’s something to be said for low expectations

A word of praise for cranky co-passengers

Not that the polite ones aren’t fun

When they smile and roll their eyes like they’re so done.

And it’s not that I’d ever expect sincerity,

At 10 on a rainy Tuesday morning

I’m not a nihilist, or even much of a cynic by default

 But at 10am, I take nice with a bucket of salt.

I put on my headphones, crank the volume up to max,

Sway to the shrill screeching of pirated tracks

I’m sorry, did you say something? I can’t really tell.

It’s not you’re uninteresting, it’s just that this song is swell.

And maybe I could’ve made more of an effort

Gotten to know your name, exchanged toffees and emotional support

Maybe you’d have told me your story, if my ears were free

Maybe we could’ve found something worth a keep.

But you see, mister, it’s not you it’s me

At 10 on a Tuesday morning, I’m not the best company.

I hope, tomorrow, you’ll find a co-passenger worth your time,

As for me, facelessness suits me just fine.