Guilty Nothings ('Happy Birthday')

...

These
Girls
And boys are
Ghosts. They meet me every day
And go home and die and reanimate
Before they meet me again, tomorrow. 

They whisper in my right ear
Drunken soliloquies, and
We pretend that each is another
And satisfy ourselves.

...

The sunlight on your leafy
Veranda was real. It burned a tattoo on

My right forearm as I lay with you, down
On your veranda, as
We scandalized your neighbours.

The broken metal chair on that
Veranda was real. I used to look
At it while you undressed
Your fears for me, sometimes; sometimes
You'd undress your ears and naked,
They were so shy. They
Used to surface, and peek out at me (sometimes)
From underneath
The sea of your hair.

Your childhood clock
That hung from your bedroom wall was real.
I took the broken chair, and
Flung it against your
Bedroom wall, and it hit your clock and
Time burst
Into a million pieces of
Old plastic.
And we smiled and held hands
And later, on your bed, measured out the rest of the day
In each other's heartbeats. 

Your glass-walled eyes were as large as
Cigarettes, as
They watched me roll a tube of herbal
forgetfulness;
And soon it was done, and we 'borrowed'
Your father's lighter, but the flame
Was inside us.

And I would steal
Coloured bottles from
The glass cupboard, and
Dilute my blood to the
Soundtrack of your nervous laughter,
As you delighted in vicarious
Guilt.

And naked you were the day
We smoked the drowsy stars on the
Quilt of your parents' bed.
And we both exploded.

The quilt caught the charred feathers;
They floated on the quilt before
They dissolved into nothingness
And we dissolved into nothingness
And nothingness dissolved with us.

And for an infinite second,
The mind stopped. The pale

Fear that like fire feeds

Off the crosses of our lives

Died like Christ, and was replaced

By a benign vacuum (nought).
We only
Heard the ticking of the
Bedside clock, and
The snores of your dog, as she slept, and
Each other's ventricles as they
Pumped away dully; like an ancient
Beast who has forgotten why she
Exists.

A damp scent lay heavy, as a reminder
Of the fate of requited love.
You wore the quilt like a bridal gown
And we galloped away into an all-forgiving slumber.

...

How can this much happiness be immoral?

...

I remember your 18th birthday. I remember looking at you from across an over-priced-pasta laden table, while you laughed like a demented penguin at some joke our friends made. I smiled and mouthed sweet nothings at you, and you giggled and darkened to the colour of your dress. I remember how afterwards at your house I reclined on your bed as you washed up in the little washroom adjacent your little room and your mother cooked biryani for us and your father played with your overweight Labrador retriever. I remember thinking that right in this moment--within the span of this infinite second--I was safe inside the bubble of my happiness. I was happy.

I am happy. 

Happy birthday, Dani. I hope you like your gift.

Dadaist

I just realized. I can do anything. Anything. Anything. 

I start with this blog post. I have never posted anything except poems/stories which on re-reading sound like someone put honey powder in a glass of water and swirled it all around. That changes now.

I wish you could feel me. It's so... liberating.

I could make up a metaphor-like simile which makes no sense, and claim that it makes sense to me. And then you would think hard, and realize with a whooshy sigh that it indeed does make sense, and that I'm right. Except that I'm not.

Why does this blog exist? 

Hi, you. You, who are reading this. Why aren't you talking to me instead? Send me an email. Call me, definitely. Discuss the span of your mind until the day wakes up. Are your thoughts linearly independent? Do our basis vectors match? We should be friends. Hi.

Cat.

Doughnuts

Dawn.

Veins of gold and
Thickening copper running through the pre-pubescent sky.
The subtle pink of newness
Turns darker and darker; 

Pigments into a gruff, unshaved maroon. 

Already the sky has flecks
Of colloidal white in its countenance; the
Salt-and-pepper of my morning eggs.

Stay, the morning.
Why do you hurry so?
You and I are both young,
Yet you seem so eager to
Attain grey maturity,

Move on, but I
Clutch onto my black hair
and un-ridged
Brain.

Time has not yet left its grooves
On my face, though it
Presses harder
Each day. 

Stay, yet.
While the dissolving dreams yet
Funnel through my narrowing consciousness,
Never to return again, yet always
Familiar.
While your touch melts still, like body butter,
Upon my left knee, where you casually
Brushed against me, just (it seems)
A few seconds ago. 

Your floating crystalline-pink perfume
Shall condense on the center
Of my tongue as I
Walk to class, and
You shall exist
In every disappointed quarter-take. 

You shall
Inhabit my liquid daydreams, slip
In and out like a fleet-finned dolphin,
Whisper creamily
In my left ear, demand
My present in return
For your affection.

Stay.
Just a few minutes ago (it seems), you
Nestled against my chest,
Your burntchocolate hair straying mischievously
Like a monkey
Of its own mischievous accord
Onto my desert face; my eyes record
Feverishly your index finger's movement.

Your nervous giggles that
Collide and rummage at the back
Of your throat, and tumble
As my left hand
Snakes across the ridged plateau of your
Back,
As we burrow into my too-small bed.

And we lie on the sleepy sheets, and
Eat metaphors like doughnuts.
The pale yellow crusted with snowy white;
The centre of mass floats
In thin air and
The sweetness gives me bloodthirst and
It shall kill me. 

Stay.
Your spirit flies like a madwoman
Every time the yolk of the morning
Dribbles in and pools in oblong splashes through
My calcificated blinds and
Onto the non-stick floor; flies
Thousands of miles
Across the ocean.

Stay.
But it's all right if you don't.
I shall meet you again
After tonight, in the interstices
Between sleep and wakefulness.

And we shall dance and play
And laugh and sleep
Under a guiltless milkmoon
That never changes.

...

Yet every day
I wake up from the loving
Of the night, it seems
Your heart beats a little less,
And your breath is a little less moist
On my yellow mouth.

Sticky Chocolate

For you. But you already know.

...

We went to the temple.

I just remembered. It’s funny; I never thought about it all these months. In retrospect, our having gone there seems symbolic and powerful and loaded with metaphor; just the kind of thing I like to make myself miserably nostalgic over. I also wonder now why I went. I had willfully stayed away from anything that stank of religion in this masala city before. I was (and am) in-between ages: too old to believe, and too young to understand.

The temple was just near the college backgates, in the parking, from where we’d walked out almost every evening because we were too late for the main gates. Both of you were with me. I remember you told me that you’d never even known that we had a mini-temple-thing on campus; such adorably pathetic powers of observation you had. I remember you told me that you’d only come here once before, when you were desperately hoping you’d get into this college. That had amused me – for all your sketches of rationality, you were such a profoundly Indian girl. I’d never liked you more.

The three of us solemnly went up, removed our shoes – I remember cursing myself for not wearing sandals – and shuffled our way to the idol. I don’t remember which particular deity it was, exactly; they’re so many, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. I remember thinking that the three of us looked like out of a Yash Chopra movie. We just needed the sound of pealing bells and singing voices in the background. And, well, cosmetic surgery (me).

But the bells couldn’t have rung. It had been a still day, and moisture lay like an overlarge comforter over everything. Even the dust looked subdued, and we were all so lost within ourselves. I remember wondering what you were thinking. I still wonder.

We’d prayed for a long time. At least, I hoped both of you did; I could feel nothing but pure emotion swelling like a wet balloon from somewhere above my solar plexus into my chest cavity, straining and struggling against the confines of my body. I tried to channel it, and hope somehow that the stone idol in this small stone mini-minaret who had the weight of so many anxious students’ fervent last-minute prayers etched onto its skin would understand that through the overburdening of my soul, I was praying for both of you.

The both of us finished long before you did. Watching you pray, I’d thought about how your frowning, concentrating mouth gave you the appearance of a little puppyrabbit who was convinced it had been wronged. I remember vividly the single tear that had curved silently down the convex cheek I had always wanted to lightly pull out of heavy affection, but hadn’t ever, because you’d once told me you hated people who did that. 

Oh, and we’d also made an offering, hadn’t we? So cute we were. We’d put in three ten-rupee notes, one for the each of us – God probably got home chicken for dinner that night – and we’d put chocolate.

Why chocolate? Some instinct probably told us it wouldn’t be appropriate to the somberness of the moment to be blazingly capitalist. The occasion demanded something more… wholesome.

So the half-eaten bar of Cadbury Silk it was. Our last, sticky chocolate. The one you’d given to me so that I would have something to eat on the ‘plane.

Ironic that the one person I hated the most that day laid claim to it.

I wonder what happened to that chocolate. Did it decay slowly, spread maudlin on the base of the stone platform, and stain the idol? Patiently dissolve into a pool of wistful sweetness? Everything melts in the hot Indian sun.

Or did someone pick it up? Eat it? Someone who took care of the temple, maybe. A boy. I wonder if he still believes in the little stone idol, or if he’s just going through the motions like the rest of us. I wonder if he liked the chocolate. I wonder if it tasted more significant to him, somehow, compared to the other chocolates he’d had. Did he feel anything different? Did he roll the bitter-sweetness on his tongue, press it against the roof of his mouth? I bet he didn’t like the fact that it was all melted and gooey and sticky and messy. Me, on the other hand; I only like sticky chocolate these days.

I also wonder what the rickshaw-wallahs thought as they watched the three of us walk out of college on a hot Sunday afternoon. Bratty kids who couldn’t do their hugging in the privacy of their homes. Come to think of it, they probably didn’t think anything. So many people pass through these gates all the time, every day. 

So many people. Every day. 

The everyday, the ubiquitous, and the familiar.

…

I’d rung the bell on our way out – you know, for good measure. And we had walked out. Slowly, heavily.

…

I still have the wrapper. It lies, hibernating, in one of the shelves of my desk. I could touch it if I wanted to. It’s a nice wrapper.

Fall

The trees are blushing. They hesitatingly slip

Out of their emerald lace; at the behest of

The grinning, adulterous wind, discard

These flaming leaves which then

Melt into gold and indolent green

And dark grape and then back again, and

Crunch in murmuring protest as you walk over them

In necrophilic delight.

A lonely squirrel bounds from branch

To branch in impartial and impersonal curiosity,

Unknowingly helps a particularly shy tree –

Startles the boy and girl

Sitting beneath to laughter, and the girl rests her elbow on the boy's shoulder

In thoughtless mirth.

How beautiful you are in death, year. How

I begrudged you your bloom, and how I am

Moved by your

Falling façade in your infirmity.

How the freshly-trimmed verdurous growth of your youth is

Covered now in splotchy splashes of unkempt colour; your beard shall

Soon be powdery grey.

You shall, in short order,

Retire to rest in your ivory tower,

And a bloodless blanket of a pins-and-needles inertia shall

Creep up like cobwebs upon the world.

And then, you shall die.

Through the long, unfertile months of

The coldly quiet sorrow that follow,

I shall remember your playful maidenhood.

Your childish flirtations, and

Your spidery promises.

I shall keep vigil, love. I shall gaze upon your shroud

From my lonely lit window, and

You shall live in my honey-lined daydreams –

Until we meet again, next summer.

And under the sticky, scented sun of an Indian afternoon,

You and I shall sit and play and talk.

…

Until it is time for you to die again.