Finished

How many times has this been finished before? I can't recollect the number of goodbyes folded neatly into tin trunks of quickly forgotten nondescript train rides, those furtive night rides of urgent telegrams of lost grandfathers and imminent weddings. But today I sensed his silence meant what his eyes had once said. We are sad, but this is truly finished. Finito. Khatam. Spring, rain, winter's whims; hell even summer changes its unrelenting stance and then, everything changes and maybe falls apart on the other side of the globe. I was nineteen. He was born on the same date a year before. We celebrated our birthdays together. I knew all of him: red knickers, stubby camel brand pink flowered white pencils, acoustic guitars and slow moving Adam's apple and a penchant for my spectacles.

Our moms were friends. I guess you could say we were too. Except we weren't really. His elder brother and I were. He was always a little different, happy on his own. Actually, never really happy. His smile shone like the half moon, vaguely poignant and something about his tall frame sang aloud songs of ancient retributions. Perhaps the gods fought their battles with the demons between his ears. He would always take his time to respond to his name. As if Chinna was someone else he had to summon up from elsewhere.

Then we moved out of the school and his neighbourhood. 

Moms continued to visit each other but we quickly got lost in our own lives. Maybe five, or was it seven years after I last celebrated my birthday with him, Chinna called me on his sixteenth birthday. We never thought of meeting, it was funny if you put some thought into it now. It was. But we spoke, each Friday afternoon at 3, two sharp rings meant he was home alone and I could call. We spoke of his dreams of being an Air Force pilot, I spoke of my imminent nobel prize for literature. He taught me all about cars and cameras which was all promptly erased by the click of the receiver. I read to him anything from Marquez to Dante. And Tagore, many times over, Tagore. Some days I would slip my furtive writings and could vaguely sense his thrill, pride or sheer amusement. He was always happy, a little too happy.

One day though his voice sounded like an old Hindi playback singer. I told him so. He said he saw that happen. He saw his Mother being smothered to death by a pillow by his Father. I thought he was telling one of his Roald dahlish stories. I let that be. Mom was surely meeting Durga Aunty for all these years. Wasn't it last Diwali that we exchanged sweets? Chinna was making it up until the story was much too gory in all its details flashing in my imagination, as real as real gets. It was around 11 in the night. His brother was in bed and he was playing with his cars which went under the door and he followed them to a ghoulish scene. A white pillow, his mom's purple saree splashed all over the bed and her eyes, red and teary and struggling to live. The keeper of the pillow it seems was supremely composed. Smiling even. And when the act was over, he went back to sleep next to his brother 

The next days he said were all in a blur but his Mother was draped in a red saree not purple and that was the last he saw of her. His Father gave him her ring to wear but it was way too big so he let that be in his school bag until one day, he realised it was gone too, like her. Inexplicably gone. Not even a goodbye. I told him good bye then. And placing the receiver down, ran straight to my mother's arms and smelled only her perfumed hands for the longest time. I said goodbye to his horrible tale. The next Friday afternoon, I was in the bath. A week later, with a book and a few weeks later the telephone stopped ringing.

Did chinni direct a movie yet? I asked and the brothers' Russian wife looked shocked. It seemed he died a few days after his twentieth birthday. By asking for too much sleep from his Pharmacist Friend. And I was left craving to say good bye to those memories that are so fresh and so long begone.The brother held me for a long time and all that could have ever been stood between us finished. Finito. Khatam.

But there was so many jumps and starts! There were so many  fights and make ups. Months of ignored calls and weeks of make-up calls lasting all evening. A whole year filled with growing up together virtually. Was there anything he would not say to me or I to him? 

But, goodbye, How could we say goodbye now?

Lara

Lara was necessary for dr zhivago. But she was also necessary for the count who raped her, for the rebel who saved her life and the doctor himself who was married to another. Lara was the theme of his life. When around, there was no other. And yet, other ideas of russia transported him and others like him until he realised his privilege and family could still not keep him afloat from the currents of the world around him. In all the time he grappled with the ideas and ideals of a new country that allowed and exalted his love story, dr zhivago always knew, Lara stayed true to herself. Part and apart from the world around her, Lara was a force unto herself. In a manner he could admire from afar, but never be.

The story of an affair that ended

Of all the stories I have learnt to listen, you know that there is only one theme that keeps recurring in my mind and around the space that shapes letters into colors, smells, tastes and touch somewhere within. So today, I will tell you a story. Half imagined and half listened to. I haven't read the novel that is supposed to recount a love more tragic and heartfelt than that of Tolstoy's Anna. But have scooped love in my cupped hands many times over from the gentle rain of RK Narayan's the English teacher. This is the story of his mentor, one who is supposed to have been at once a spy and a literary genius. A nobel nominee who irrationally, inexplicably and irrevocably fell in love with a mother of five.

Up there on the first window from the left, can you imagine for me an exquisitely talented Greene? And his married, catholic muse? Namesake of the lady who brought tea to England. Wife of an extremely rich catholic. A devout catholic herself. How many passionate afternoons and poignant dusks has that window been drenched in more than a Hundred odd years ago. I felt that cold hand of separation pass my heart too when I looked up too. Did you see passion?

They say Greene was a woman's man. He chose to be catholic after he met his wife, twenty years before he knew C. Some say he was disturbed deeply, prone to bouts of depression. There were times when he attempted to end it all but suicide isn't a writer's muse ever, is it?

And so childhood grew it's dark dreams within but elsewhere  there was poetry, pages and pages of a voice that craved to take shape in letters, Rosetta stones of desire waiting to be deciphered. One after another, spring and winter vied for that particular blend of happiness and heartache found in fingers intertwined, remembered long after faces, lips and limbs cease to coexist.

The years passed in a blur. He met his wife, knew he must have been in love. Converted and promptly got two kids. Restlessness never left him though. He travelled to remote corners of the world. Worked in exactly those activities that are bound to make you feel alive with the thrill of death close on your heels. Spied for the British, the Mexicans, the Cubans and all the while, filled pages and pages of unfulfilled longings. Other people's stories, other people's lives. Yes, but were there glimpses of his emotions, moods and colors? His portraits of thrill and luxury and leisure? Did I say love? Because he never did.

At first, they just glanced at each other when each thought the other wasn't looking. The magnets are not jut drawn to each other but draw power from other's force. Slowly, the fire consumed until it burned their nights, days, friends and holidays. Perhaps he dreamt of it all and she was just drawn to his fame. Or maybe he was drawn to her clearly unfulfilled needs. Yes, there are hormones everywhere. Growing beards and drawing periodic blood baths but those hormones, they existed in all those people living below that room and above, no? So who gave her the courage to draw him out in a Long kiss right there in that room above the coffee shop? This is why the Protestants said Catholics should be banned from politics. You see, they worshipped those pagan gods with Christian names. Someone named Eros was meant to be buried. What business did he have in a church?

But no one in that room could hold himself away. Long afternoons filled with the throes of letters, words, poems of sighs and skin upon skin. Separation, another day, another week, another month of not knowing whether the lips will meet ever again, that font of liquid life.

He moved out of his house. Could not bear to have another's perfume on his bed. Another's presence in his space. She continued to keep her home. Taking extreme care to keep her blinds on. The Husband's each need was anticipated and not merely met when requestsed. Who knows, he must have fallen in love with her again because of this. But Greene? Oh poor Greene burned of jealous wrath. She wouldn't come because of this and that and him, the husband and her, the child.

The war loomed closer, his jealousy even darker. Each day, he followed her. Kept a track of her movements. Who does she talk to? Why does she not come? Was there another? Did she have enough of me? Was I merely a temporary shack of pleasure? Round and round his thoughts went and all his travels couldn't bring down those curtains onto his mangled thoughts. But those moments that she came? Ah, the windows were lit in gold. The moon and stars dallied in bright afternoon light. Greene levitated into another world. Was there any other than that place above the cafe?

One day she said she can't anymore. And she didn't come. That was it. As simple as that was the end of that affair.

That story was longer than mine though. She prayed for her husbands safety and vowed to stop her affairs because of which she thought god spared her Husband from illness or thunder. Greene found out a tad too late. God took her life instead. But those stories, those stories make no sense. Do they?

She must have known it was to end. He knew it had to. But if it did, how was he to breathe? She died and filled him with her breath. How easy it is for writers to make up stories. As for me, I think my tales stop short of being stories at all. Just at that point where life starts screaming aloud in my ears and says. There is no point to all of this. Move on, write a poem. Move on, get another pen.

An evening walk in London

So today was raining and the classic English weather. Foggy, misty, dickensy and a little bit of Moor's last sigh touch to the air

Decided to join a walking tour which explores the "city" of London. Old London founded by the Romans, the Londenium. Today, home to some hundreds and thousands of Bankers by the day and a mere handful of thousand ultra rich guys by the night. Most expensive real estate in the world I am told. The walk rightfully starts here at this luxurious shopping mall :-)

This then is the oldest bank in the world- Bank of England: which still pretty much holds most of the world's fortune hostage. Imagine those days of the plunder, er the empire and the blood starts to slowly warm up your Temples with an unjustifiable rage for all things to do with time and whatever it is that runs this world. Or is it money?

Don't miss the pink flowers there. Quite symbolic I thought. The prettiness of fortune framing the intent to overpower

While such uncharitable thoughts ran amok in my brain, someone started to kiss right there and suddenly, I felt fortune and love were Mother and Son. Lakshmi and kama. 

This building to the left is home to "the city's" own Lord Mayor. Not Londons mayor. The banking district is its own city with its own mayor and police. Er, anyone's Guess why democracy doesn't work in financial district eh? Fun part is the Lord Mayor is not paid. But can drink and eat and stay in one of the most expensive homes in the world. I was beginning to fantasise living there with no salary but all decked up in luxury. A bit like a keep to the city's churlish fortune.

That street is the world's shortest street apparently covering one building. Ofcourse the Lord Mayors mansion. Simply called, the mansion. London baffles you with its straightforwardness. The inner city is simply "the city". Lord Mayors mansion is simply "the Manson". Place where they sold poultry is simply "Poultry" symbolised by that statue of a boy on that building doing unpalatable things to -what's that bird? A goose?

Now it's time for some random shots that look like I knew exactly what I was looking at through my lens. Not

Let's get back to the story, shall we now? Along came an Australian sometime in the nineties and decided to add some coloured stone to the landscape. Apparently they sent that architect packing. But the building is impressive for whatever it's worth. Not least because it hosts one of those expensive French restaurants with exclusive balconies which were a great window to escape the heartache of being let down by the goodness of wealth operating via the Lehman brothers. Suicides after a glass of white wine continued to a fashion and less of a news item for a couple of years apparently. The French restaurant, continues to operate, unashamed of being part of life and death so intimately. And true to London tradition is called "the silver bird". Bird, for poultry. Silver for er, the instruments used to dismantle the bird, I Guess. 

During the blitz, those years of the world war when London was constantly bombed out, this site was discovered to have remains of a roman temple to Mithras. Yes, the Romans were fond of the Iranian sun god it seems. What matters is that Bloomberg which took over this site keeps those thousands of years worth of artefacts in a private museum. And then we keep wondering when will Britain return us the kohinoors and chola bronzes!

The great fire of London in 1666, September-ofcourse, which other month can it be but that- ravaged the city and brought it down to its knees. Wiped out two thirds of houses, some 80 odd churches and because we don't know the numbers, perhaps not too many people that mattered. Some building scaffolds remained only to be fashioned hundreds of years later into...Starbucks. What do we know!

Don't you love looking at all these well dressed men looking all important and animated and so sure of themselves at after hour drinks? Do we appear that way to children at junctions who look into trains and buses and cars in India?

And so the story goes. London's great fire started in a bakery by a maid who didn't put off the wooden fire. It might have started because of a mad Frenchman who claimed he started it and was therefore hanged for it. Or maybe it was the envious Germans who did that to spite the English. Perhaps the king ordered the fire to get rid of the plague which threatened to spread further into the royal ramparts? It doesn't matter much now, does it? Who started the fire and why. Because, as with life, whys don't matter. What happened because of the fire is significant too. A rebirth. A chance to forget and soar. And Christopher Ryan was the genius who soared on the wings of misfortune. Rebuilding the city. Refashioning an imagined future. Recreating some 50 odd of the 80 Churches that were gone. I liked this one the most. Rebirth is almost always stark and significant isn't it? Why involve frivolousness that belongs only to moments?

Somethings were surely learnt from the fire. Enough of wood said the architects. More of stone. Separated archways and window frames. Regulations on space. City controlling living spaces. History is all of our life put together in flashback sequences that lose their weight but stay on as colors of the dusk. That particular way the door would swing in your open top bathrooms of the yore. Now, no more.

When I say no more. I mean ofcourse, graveyards where life is no more. But weight is still left around. Piled on top of each other until the city can't take the rising mounds anymore. Dickens liked this graveyard it seems. Maybe he sat with his muse on evenings like this and revoked all of his could have beens into his unreadable stories?

Empty chairs near the graveyards. Perhaps for those of us who would like a muse too. I imagined walking around there when the lights went off at night. They said at one point the coffins were recycled. And much to the horror of the residents, they had among them, nail marks and scratches. Did they bury some of them alive? Maybe they should make sure like we do and burn it all to ashes

Just when you think graveyards get too gloomy, along comes a remnant of summer and cheers the picture frames

To stay put in this mood, we chose a place which is shady. Er shades apparently had nothing to do with hritik roshan. Just drinking spots. And this one apparently survived the London fire even!

As soon as I ordered my pious port (remember I am fasting 😂), this group of gentlemen started bitching about someone's- Wife. What else?

Read closely. Don't say it aloud but I Guess they do have a point.


And so some three drinks later, I couldn't care less about bitching, graveyards or the effing fire from five centuries ago. But onwards we marched in solidarity and did I mention rain, racism and political correctness of never mentioning the British empire in front of a drunk Indian? Here we stood in awe of this memorial tower 200 feet tall standing extacly 200 feet away from the now hallowed bakery that started the inferno. All symbols of hope are engulfed by time who has wings. He holds, he flees. Does he heal? Who knows? He  never stays Long enough for us to find out right? But see here? He holds wounded London in his arms and there she rises in hope again. If only we can all erect tall towers for all those infernos. And pay homage to all that was burnt and lost. And then just move on like Shakespeare did each day that he crossed the London bridge to his home.

And towards the end, there are always markets. Somehting to buy to ward off guilt or whatever it is that aches at the bottom of your heart that can be nicotinised for a bit with carbohydrates and chocolate and green prices of paper.

Don't you however, love the place where you can buy pens. And books and harry porter dreams. Right next to where cattle are hung on hooks.

The dragons are everywhere. To ward off the evil eye. With the upcoming brexit and three hundred years of acquired karmic debts they better have a thousand of these handy. what an uncharitable thought! But well, they looted us to where we stand now too.

The first two pictures of the upside down building are for my architect Friend. Lyods the insurers of the insurers. The richest buggers on earth. And they chose that steel and concrete too. There must be something to stripped raw power exposed in concrete no?

And the last memory I have of my drunk evening. No the penultimate one because the last was even more special. This is the church of "happy clapping" as our guide called it . Apparently. This is where Shakespeare prayed Everyday. Until he bacame too rich to live in this part of the town.Prayer and wealth. Something to that too.

And to close your vogan session. I was dropped off at my hotel tired and exhausted by a taxi driver who was a professional boxer, an avid reader, a meditation junkie and a Christopher Hitchins and Sam Harris fan. He said he was in Thailand to find the one thing that he is missing in life. He didn't know what it is but he knows he will find it in India. And me taking the taxi was a sign for him to follow his true calling. I wished that I don't say anything more to ruin his moment. And came back to a sleepless hotel room. If something is indeed missing in my life, do I even wish to find it?

The last train caught my attention then. 

Origins

I have no origins, no beginnings and endings 

Atleast, I remember none, except maybe 

Anxious Diwali evenings spent waiting for 

My glorious, lonesome Ammas' scooter to 

Be parked where it belonged.

Flooded streets on monsoon afternoons

Holding hands with a little one who thought

I knew our way back home 

A cyclone that could have eliminated 

A busfull of sixteen year old dreams of a world

which they'd live to never find

Much awaited flight to cold chapters 

of loneliness from an unworldly passion

That never stopped yearning 

Hands held after tears dried up 

Into easy compromises, smooth evenings

Long afternoons of sad songs on loop 

Maybe, the beginning was as in movies

from Russia, something as pointless 

as fingers pointing together to a red star

Your Story

Your stories are all silent movies of the yore 

Painted in every shade of white and grey

In the hushed hours between wakefulness 

Jump, start, loop and return to where 

Everything is only just beginning.

And you, the hero of every book I ever  read

At that turn when your story met mine

They say night jasmines bloom to this day. 

Telugu Song

There we sang our love song

Twins bound by destiny,

Resting both our heads on arms

of life, dear life, as precious 

As paramecium, amoeba,

Redwood trees, Brahminy kites.

And therein we sowed

Lies that kept us alive 

Water, air, that deep blue 

sky, all but real, a screen 

Perhaps for what lies

Deep inside you and me

Then they sent us to earth

But when we fell from those stars

Your flesh was made in another's 

Womb. My heart beat to a strange

Rhythm. In time, screens and frames

Made me a different you. 

Our forgotten song smudged 

by stardust, buried in oceans' roar 

Caroused through my veins, your

nerves. A stranger's sigh, another's 

Nimble limbs: all these and more, 

Echos of a past that screamed to live 

One afternoon, 

one evening 

and one full night,

dear twin, we hummed

that sweet telugu song 

Lo, we were alive

One, never alone

I will rise above this treacle spill

of sticky, needy desire to belong

Like a bird soaring on high winds

One day, I will look down on these

Lonesome musings as oceans that

Hide mountain tops of unheeded love

There above the clouds, beneath those

Stars, in that unending blue, I will rise

To hold all your hands, all your hearts 

And each of those moments filled with 

Tears, laughter, passion, quiet solitude 

Which only deepens with two, never one

And I will be one with you all.

And never again, will I be alone. 

If

If you were there 

where I was,

then I wouldn't be

Where I am now.

But then, you and I 

And nothing else

Matters in this night

Of utter gloom.

Tomorrow, the sun 

May shine his 

Crinkled smile;

But today's moon

Will remain doomed,

To fourteen days of 

Trying to be full.

Only to let go

Of all that is light.

If you were here,

Where I am,

Seeking switches 

In sheer darkness;

You would know

or maybe not,

How sunlight smells 

On empty nights.

Kisses

Heart broken, drunk on your kisses

I melt in my tears forlorn, forgone 

Your eyes meet mine up there in 

Those clouds and loneliness smiles

In heart broken kisses 

Lonely

I dare them all come to claim you

Those who left you to dark nights

And one day, give it a smile, give it 

Ten thousand guiles, call it a day

And get on, with being friends and all

I dare you to say you feel lonely