Post-structural Spasm

The butterfly effect today morning

Was in the flutter of a pigeon’s wings

outside my window.

A winter morning

Like many mornings I haven’t seen

clouded by manic evenings

and pensive nights

In walled cities.

The grave isn’t yet ready to bury

A mother’s cry through a history

Of manmade separation

Or tumultuous waves of terror

Or hungry metal and bone

Or a poisoned meal for the famished

Dig more

Feel the morning roar

When it can echo

Migrate when you can stay

Run when you can walk

Bite when you can speak

O, mangled monster of ringed fingers

How much for an eye

A tooth

A finger, perhaps?

Weighed on the ruins of incomplete histories

Replete with hedonistic satiation

Customised to taste - 'Medium rare'

Dear bare bodied infant

Whose arms will you sleep in?

More than another take on The Vagina Monologues

Firstly, thank you Eve Ensler. I first saw a live performance of The Vagina Monologues two years ago in India. Next, i wished i could see a dialogue! However, recently, a great post by Nilanjana Roy released a flood from my conscience and the precursor to this piece was me jumping up from my bed and starting to write this. Phew! some rush that. If somebody was watching, making a record of all the reactions on my face and body between all of these events, this would also make for a very entertaining video blog. Alas, i don't record myself with a spycam and thankfully, no one else does either.

Anyway, thank you for bearing that cathartic release of humour. The point is, i'm terribly sorry as i write this. Consent is my issue. It has been in life. In my life as a woman, that is. When i was a girl, it wasn't. I hadn't grown conscious of my Vagina then.

I have been unconscious of how the word consent has been a ball of tumbleweed in the desert all along. Now, I'm sorry because i let it be. The first pangs of being violated was when i faced my first episode of being eve-teased on Delhi streets. It was an idle afternoon and there was no one around. Co-incidentally, i was also responsible for getting my little cousin sister home that day. In my attempt to push her away, i had to get closer to the young boy who passed his hands over my legs, groped my skirt and felt my thighs. I was so ashamed of myself, and so stricken with fear in that moment, i could not even turn to run. I saw my sister run away before me and walked away slowly, with my back turned to the fellow and my head hung in shame. For as long as i lived at that address, the memory would pass my mind in a flash every time i walked by that spot.

Years later, on a bus to college, i was groped again. Till today, i don't know whether or not to call it molestation. I turned back and violently pushed the man who was standing behind me. I expected that the conductor of the bus would come and tell him to get off the bus. The man kept standing there. I had to get off at the next stop so i did but i felt like i lost, again. I had never been given a choice to consent to any of these. But that doesn't mean that i gave my consent. My silence doesn't mean my approval. And i want to shout that out from the rooftops.

I may like to listen to a Bollywood number but that doesn't mean that i become the object of the song. I did not consent to a body which is similar to mine being filmed like that. I did not consent to parts of my body being touched or stared at like that. And most importantly, i did not say that entertainment was akin to life. The performer consents to perform but that does not mean that 'women as viewers' accept the implications. Women may reserve the right to be silent in the theatre where projections become the object of various expletives and abuses. Our silence is not denial or acceptance. It is an individual right.

Girls everywhere(i beg the right to make a generalisation here) are conditioned to move in a collective from when they are young. We are told that we are little vulnerable flowerlike, tender creatures that must take care of ourselves and our virginity. We are taught to be daughters, mothers, wives. We might as well be proud of the abilities we develop in those roles but our lesson in 'becoming' is flawed. The flaw is that we are also taught to be 'afraid' in our acknowledgement of our girlhood, our womanhood.

And this fear is constantly woven into our conscience. Hence, many of us take it for granted. Our ability to embody our womanhood is not our weakness. But we're afraid of our bodies because they become marked in our imagination. Marked with stares, violence, burns and all other sorts of impressions, many of which are not self inflicted and some of which are. Because we consider ourselves vulnerable, we imagine these as pollutants. We fester under the scrutiny of these marks.

 So where does consent figure in this equation then?

The way i see it, the taken for grantedness is where many of us lose sight of consent. Sometimes, we travel far from that word in embodying the conditioned qualities of womanhood. We give up the right to our bodies, or it is taken from us. Our vaginas are taken for granted or the right to feel them is taken from us. Like we are conditioned not to feel masculinity, masculinity is not conditioned to understand womanhood. Consent is that neglected, morose grey area in between these two conditions. This is my attempt at reclamation and i want it to be here, on my blog, to be 'felt' rather than to just be 'read'. This is my apology to vaginas and bodies, including my own:




I'm sorry for all the times that i let you be hurt, tousled, torn
I'm sorry for all the times i couldn't say no
I'm sorry for all the times i cried to myself because you felt used
I'm sorry for all the times i took you for granted
I'm sorry for the pile of abuses i let you bear and stored up in my mind
I'm sorry for subjecting you to silent tears
I'm sorry for thinking that you were smelly and meant to be neglected
I'm sorry for refusing to look at you all the times that i thought you were hurt
I'm sorry for just calling you 'something' under a pile of hair
I'm sorry that i just let you be there
I'm sorry for never being curious enough about you
I'm sorry i apologised for your presence at times
I'm sorry i let you fester in fear, quivering in the shallow presence of an impending crime
I'm sorry for not calling a crime, a crime
I'm sorry for all the time i have lost out - in excuses to not care enough for you

I love you

Here's to reclaiming the Vagina, my Vagina

The importance of sunshine and other thoughts

The first day we met, we laughed at silly jokes, talked for four hours and ate and drank our way into the wee hours of the morning. The three of us. A month or two later, i had a fight with them. ‘I’ and ‘them’ being the operative words here. Where the ‘them’ arose has a lot of explanantions. Age, and frames of reference being the two most important ones. The ‘I’ was me, freely expressing what i wanted to express, how i wanted to express it. ‘They’ also did, and that is probably where the dreariness of the ‘them’ stepped into the argument. There weren’t two ‘I’s, there was a ‘them’.

We all share a country, and common experiences – some more common and some lesser. We used to share food and dinner time though my tastes differ a lot from ‘them’. In time, I wanted to cook for myself. And so i started doing my grocery shopping and cooking separately. I suddenly also wanted a lack of conversation because i thought i was losing a hold over who i was - trying to fit in with them. I needed to reclaim my diet, my words, the originality of my conversations, and my idiosyncrasies. In time, i did. I went farther from them and was very happy with myself. They frowned , wondering what i was doing and why. Perhaps they never thought about how important the withdrawal had become for me.

So what is this world of ours really doing to each one of us? There has always been a ‘them’ and ‘I'. It depends which one we choose. It matters whether we fiddle with our blackberry in one hand whilst emoting with the other, and how many times we facebook in a day.  It matters because it changes the quality of the ‘I’ in us.

Being popular is fun. We all take turns at it. Some of us love following those popular ones and bask in a shared glory. Most of us probably love them because they can often make us laugh. Our inner worlds get darker as we acknowledge the burden of knowing more about the world we live in. We love facebook because it lets us all be happily popular. We also use it as an escapist means. But it also kills the time in which we can be ourselves. Talk to ourselves instead of newsfeeds and webpages.

What the three of us thought was a great friendship was now only ‘them’ and ‘me’. There is a point at which friction arises because we blur the lines between friends and family. Can friends be family? Well, yes and no. We use the term friendship to meet our various needs. Some friends can make us laugh, some can make us so happy. We also visit friends who can make us cry. We remember them forever. But friends aren’t family. But that is probably not the only reason why some relationships start out like they were always meant to be and jerk midway to take an unexpected downturn.

We stop listening to each other. We listen to nagging devious questions in our mind. We listen to the voice that says ‘this is dysfunctional’ and go along with it.

Conversations are not about efficiency and posting a ‘like’ on the next thing we’re going to say to each other. Our faces and bodies are not instagram photos in all their perfection.

Conversations are about celebrating the imperfection in ourselves and each other or about unnecessary indulgence. I don’t access them with a password to redeem myself each day. I talk because i need to communicate, laugh, cry, and feel. Let’s not breed a coup of silence. We need the sunlight to stream in through the boarded up windows once again.

TEA

I yawn

When i’m bored

Not when i’m tired

I sleep then

I’ll only laugh when asked about favourites

Sometimes i drink tea

Not the milky white one

Neither the one without

Then, tea smells of the woods

And dew

And autumn beginnings

There are tremors

When i miss grandma

And think of smiles

That vanished with them who left

Some words stayed back though

And pages full of holes

Once called stars

A blank page full of them

In a tumbleweed jungle of pile

That pile, pile of dreams

Pile of childhood

Pile that we left behind

Pile called Rubbish now

Games of dream and lose

They play everyday

They work, fix things, get thrown, throw others

Play ball

Call it a day

Sleep

They drink coffee

Beer too

I drink coffee too

But i drink tea, sometimes

I told you

CELLOPHANE

Tell me about yourself?....

I had heard that question in Mumbai after a whole year. I was so overwhelmed at getting an opportunity to speak that i got tongue tied and almost forgot my lines. The lines that would tell my story because it was mine. That would relate those bits and pieces out of the gamut and suspend the listener in a universe of very temperamentally selective perception. To create an obfuscating galaxy of a brilliant, incessantly inspired reality which would envelop the spectator, and rid my conscience of the melodramatic suffocation of its cobwebs, i thought fickly.

I sat for a job interview in the office of the CEO of a media company which was four times the size of my one room kitchen in a barren smelly corner of Yari road where sundays were dead. "Amar, have some water", he said. Yeah if water could solve this, then i'd prefer scuba diving right now. I wanted to say exactly those very words at that point of time. Maybe i'd get hired because of the wit, i thought. Then, suddenly, with an insidious, enthusiastic spurt, I decided to fix my gaze on this man. Eye contact- they wrote chapters about it in self improvement books. So i looked up and stared back at him to realise instead that his listless stare was already fixed on me. Though, i soon observed that it wasn't on me. It was somewhere far beyond me or my physical reality. Almost like he was sleeping with his eyes wide open. I'd unassumingly been gifted with a chance to think what i wanted to say, though i couldn't help thinking about the live sculpture sitting in front of me...If only i could've made this moment count with a camera. Just then, entering a moment of blinding desperation, i subconsciously shared a deeply rattling insight with myself.

Cellophane Instinct, i thought. This city had made of him just what it had made of me. We were both in a prison. In the present circumstances, it was just that his cage looked more attractive than mine. There was nothing natural about the way we behaved. Our minds were engaged in an intensely obliviated state. Everyone, regardless of who they were in this city or out of it, bore a maniacal streak. You had to watch carefully and you were sure to spot it. It was present in their most silent moments, in the cacophony of their minds. They couldn't scream out though, or they'd be forced out of the act. And you couldn't afford to be out of this act, this act of a city. You were nowhere without it, but the tragedy was that you realised that fact only once you reached that deadline you'd set yourself -to quit the act.

The man in front of me, Mahesh Mahalingam, was a tall, 47 year old Tamilian Brahmin. As he had thrown open his tie closet that morning, to choose a slight variation of the same blue pinstripe that made up a large part of the spectrum, his son had announced his departure from ‘their’ house. The rest was supposed to be in the letter he'd left on the dining table.A detail that he’d added in a sharp note, as he banged the French oak door behind him.

Mahesh had two children. One from a marriage that had broken a year ago. The second from a woman who was fascinated with the idea of being a beneficiary of his gene pool which she thought would be a surefire recipe for the success of her child.

 He had won the case in the court for keeping custody of his son from his legal marriage. And now his fears had come alive. He had been afraid of the dark as a child, and lonely stretches of road haunted him. Now he would have to wake up to an empty house for the remainder of his life. A huge two storeyed villa with French furnishings, brimming with shadows. Shadows with promises of desolation and despair. A mistress wasn’t a bad idea, he thought.

This man, sitting before him reminded him of a day in his life as a 22 year old fellow. However, it also reminded him strongly of his 18 year old son. Mahesh was a single child who was doted on and loved to death by his parents. At 20 he had been pragmatic, idealistic and a dropout. Immensely talented, and a potential multi hyphenate, he was exuberant, confident, yet nowhere in the material world. Jilted and hurt around the same time, by an older woman he was smitten with, he had later proclaimed to the woman he would marry, that he had arrived at a truce with himself and he loved her, though did not expect her to keep any expectations from him. She had agreed and he loved her motherly attitude towards him. Though over the years, he had forgotten to be a husband. Like a son, rhapsodic in the shadow of her grace.

And then he had fathered the ‘other’ woman’s son. He had reasoned with her in clear terms that the settlement would be purely one sided and he would just be a sperm donor. Though when his son grew up, she insisted that he share the financial burden of bringing up his child. She had accused him of beguiling her and as he later realised, secretly been in love with him. She had almost lost track of reality, and was tired of being a single mother.

And all this chaotic while later, this sort of retribution seemed far too bitter for him to swallow. Still, he wouldn’t let his faith falter. He was a survivor and would remain one. His parents had always admired that about him. And he had been a good son to them in return.

"Uhh I am a self taught photographer, i run a very popular blog, and i'm a trained animation artist", I started, sounding reasonably in control of the situation. "I have also been actively involved in a theatre production outfit for the past one year and have performed in Delhi and Mumbai".
    And your working experience? You wrote in your Resume that you have four years of work experience, said Mahesh. A blizzard of images ran through my mind...a five square feet prison cell, a dog chasing its own tail and an avalanche. 'How could i best explain to him that i was one of those rare multihyphenates who would be great at whatever they put their mind and hearts to? Honesty I thought...... answering honestly was the best way here. So i said "I started as a copywriter in an Ad agency, and got saturated so i was a graphic designer for a while after which i decided to turn to documentary filmmaking. And then i decided to use that experience in Production though you know how Indian Television is at the moment, so i left that and started working as a photographer for a travel magazine. While i was at it, i realised that i had no editorial control over what i was creating, so i decided to apply for the post of a visualizer, and i was loving my job until the man who was running the production house decided to shut down one fine day. So here i am". 
"Don't you think that's a bit too erratic, Amar"?, exclaimed Mahesh, widening his tired eyes.

'Wow! so i had just spent most of the energy that i had stored for the day to dedicatedly summarising my life to a person who didn't have any respect for my breath whatsoever'. "Well, I was being very honest with you", i said, and looked up at him.

He had the distant stare again, though he was looking at me this time. He was looking at me and yet looking somewhere beyond me. This man really had mastered the art. He should have been an actor, i thought. His dull eyes still displayed that glint of years of piled up angst. Enthusiasm that he had probably bottled away in a corner of his dark cupboard. An old Dramatics Society sweatshirt, maybe.

"I'd put it down as a lack of tact", he snapped suddenly. 

"Well, you can choose to do that, but its the work that matters at the end of the day", i said. 
"Amar" he began in a very unusual dreamy baritone, "I began by making rundowns on the second floor of this very organisation and it has been ten years hence and now i run this place. A concentrated effort speaks for itself. You need to pay a price for consistency. There’s no way you can possibly resist the irony of that”.

"I don't believe in compromises ....I believe in living life in all its splendour!”, i exclaimed.
"You sound like a hollow Hollywood film to me, but putting personal opinions aside, If you carry that attitude with you, you wouldn't be able to work with anybody in any organisation today", he said. 
An hour into this languid, uninspiring conversation, I'd started to draw up a phantasmal caricature of this man in my mind, as a survival strategy. I could not help feeling even more staunchly about my ideals than ever before. And then, it dawned on me like a premonition. I imagined myself waddling about this office nodding up every whim of this man's plagued mind a year from then.

It was time, i thought and i started in the most controlled tone i could muster " I think that i am capable of handling the job responsiblities of four individuals in your organisation. It would make my job easier, my day more satisfying and would be called an Economy of Scale by you while appearing in an interview by a prestigious news channel. Mr. Mahalingam, the post that you are interviewing me for, is actually below me in terms of my skills but i still appear at such interviews for lack of a choice, primarily because of a politics pursued vigorously by the group of management officials in your organisation you call the Human Resource management team. I refuse to put up with this any further"......I knew i had blown it even as i stared at his gaping face.

So i decided to tear myself out of this seeming gas chamber and make for the door. Even as i reached for the doorknob something made me do this. I turned around and looked at this man sweating it out in his airconditioned cabin within the layers of his expensive corporate attire, tailored to his needs.
"Have you ever waited to see the sunrise from the bridge over the sea that connects the city to the suburbs?", I said. His gaze which was already unflinchingly fixed on me , suddenly took a break, as if in a moment of sudden realisation. Huhh? he groaned, unwillingly.... "I have", i said, and left him with a smile as i closed the door behind me.

   

 Now really, when was the last time he’d felt the sun rise, thought Mahesh. He remembered letting the warmth seep in and watching it resonate in his wife’s caramel eyes that morning they had woken up together. When they’d conceived their first child. He had told her then, I’ll run away after she’s all grown up. I won’t be able to stand it. I know how men think about women. I can’t see her getting hurt. She’d laughed out loud and asked him, and what if we have a son? I don’t know, then i’ll probably run after he’s married or something. And what about us? , his wife had retorted calmly. He had just embraced her snugly in response.

Though he couldn't put his finger on where he'd lost out on me, that young man who sat before him a few minutes ago. It seemed like he was slipping into oblivion looking for the answer. He was finally in the quicksand he had been churning knowingly, all this while. But then, why was he in here. For the first time in what seemed like a prolonged age -Mahesh Mahalingam seemed refreshingly devoid of even a morsel of a word, even as he sat on his desk made of the finest Ebony, holding a Cartier pen between his fingers. The silence within was just beginning to devour him.

A week later, as i sat before the ambitiously designed french window in my living room, which was probably the only dignified source of ventilation in my apartment, there was a knock at the door. The courier guy delivered a parcel into my hand. I opened it to find my portfolio which i'd forgotten on Mahalingam’s table. Enclosed, was a recommendation letter by him and also an offer to join the organisation. I laughed and smelt the sheets of paper. They smelt of the black printing ink. There wasn't even a slight crease on the paper. It was a dictated letter. He had not bothered to hold it in his hand and read it even once before dispatch. I slipped the recommendation letter into my portfolio and posted the offer to join on my souvenir board. I went back to sipping my Chai in peace as i penned down the next caricature for a national daily. With enough money in my bank to sustain me for six more months, i was absolutely sure that i did not want to work with Mahesh Mahalingam. 

AFTER DARK

Bum to crotch, crotch to crotch, bum to bum, crotch to shoulder, hip to crotch, crotch to ear, and all those other unimaginably incredulous permutations and combinations are a routine flavour for everyone on the go in a DTC on a typical day in delhi. For their insidious pleasures, the voyeuristic fluency of their minds, or the cheap thrills of ego boosts and adrenaline rushes of the perverse kind, the average man from delhi will be the man from delhi and for the very same reason, the delhi woman will be the quintessential woman from delhi.

For if equations were to change, wouldn’t the possibilities post the same be a life difficult to imagine! As a girl child growing up in a Bengali family, i was always protected from the delhi that was out there. I lived, in the delhi of my imagination. And oh my, it really was amazing to wallow in its wonders till one fine morning, on my way to college in South campus; i saw road rage at its best.

The DND flyway had just opened up and it was obvious that the delhiite’s demand for decent infrastructure had just begun to be answered. As a testimonial to that fact, it was packed choc a bloc that morning. However, our dear delhi man had found a way to display his angst even in the middle of this involuntary gathering. And with the bumper sticker backups of jat is king, the site seemed no less than an impromptu akhada. A spectacle to behold even as they undressed each other in furious attempts at ripping apart each other’s underwear which were of course completely successful for the fear of being proven the lesser mortal on those grounds.

That morning, on the flyway where no one was exactly flying, let alone moving, everyone got ten concentrated minutes of gawking at the scene, and some even cheered, of course not without taking sides. Our men had also found a great excuse to let their egos consume their itineraries for the day. Of course there were appropriate bruises to show the authorities they were accountable to, that is, if they did consider them authority at all.

However, in all those years of overhearing the regular behenchod maachod, there, and everywhere - my senses evolved in all crookedness. The remembered Delhi of Sunday mornings spent in a middle class neighbourhood in East Delhi remained intact while the lived ‘Dilli’ grew on me. As a woman, i was made uncomfortably aware of the seven o’ clock curfew, like i was living in a strife torn area. But my journalistic beginnings kept me out till late. Ultimately, my parents gave up on trying to maintain a curfew and just kept calling me an alarming number of times in a day. In those times when i reached places like Vaishali at 12 or 1 on a few days, i just had a strange spiritual conviction that nothing would happen and nothing did. I was not followed, teased, and rape was a far cry. But the strong realisation that i was roaming the streets of this city with these ‘terms’ in my backpack was enough to send me back home at a ‘decent’ time. I accepted my paralysed existence. The issue was, that given a choice between exploring the city and staying home, i was afraid that i would, in time, fall in love with the latter.

While this was the case, among a majority of us, on this side of the gender divide. The grass was undoubtedly greener, stronger, and abounding with strength and vigour on the other side. While we packed up for the day at 7, the men were just beginning their plans. And while those who had boyfriends and brothers were very fortunate, a lot of us cursed our sibling-less existence or just resigned to our fate, hiding in chocolates, family time, or books. Though a few of us, did manage to slip out for late night parties in the company of reasonably responsible men and the other lot of us thought we knew better than that; all of us who lived in delhi in those years can vouch for the fact that things seemed better back then. For we were to see, what we would probably term ‘worse’ in the years that followed.

In the times that ensued, I and a few other friends moved to cities like Mumbai, and Ahmedabad. We breathed in a fearless existence, staying out nights to quench our thirst from deprived years, even if it meant waiting alone for a local on a platform. We could embrace our sexuality freely, feel less masculine, and the unnecessary ruggedness disappeared from our personae in time.

But most of us left our parents, or what was the paternal or maternal ‘home’, back in Delhi. And somewhere down the line, the pull was inevitable. And so we gravitated back, more ‘woman’ than we were before. It felt ‘normal’, like we were finally breathing. We got back to Delhi, and were happy to note that the patrolling rounds were more frequent and we could see a larger deployment of police personnel on the roads. However, the fact that we had worn out a bit of our hardiness made our re-synthesis with the city a bit turbulent. Our body language on delhi roads was unconsciously different from what it used to be. We embraced a less alert, happier gait in no time. The metro made me feel safer, but those of us who could drive cars, did so.

On one of these happy evenings, as i sat in India Habitat centre with a friend at sundown, chomping away on momos, we gladly lost track of time. Catching up on almost three years worth of experiences, the clock struck eight and she piped up cutting a great evening short. “My god! ...Its eight! we have to head home now”. Sadly, the evening lost most of its charm as we called it a day and cooed to each other on our way to the auto about how we should meet very soon. As she stepped into the good old hari peelee, happily settling for somewhere close to the obnoxious fare demands of the autowallah, i said goodbye and decided to settle for one of my favourite walks in Delhi.

The two or so kilometre stretch from Habitat to the Khan Market metro station is one of my favourite stretches in the city, apart from the ridge area around North Campus. The evenings always seem nostalgic there. That was my claim to holding it so dear. However, on that day, five minutes after i crossed the India International Centre bus stop, i realised that i was being followed. Looking back to confirm, i overheard these two men commenting loudly about my gait and other details. As Khan Market drew nearer, i increased my pace and crossed the road more than thrice. But it was not before i entered the market premises, and lost them in the crowd, that i sighed with relief. However, for the first time in twenty odd years of being in Delhi, had i felt that surge of panic in myself. A few hours before, i had heard a friend recounting a horrific story about a common friend who was dragged out of her car in front of Akshardham temple in the early morning hours of a usual weekday, and beaten black and blue by a man with the city traffic rushing past them. All that the police personnel nearby could do was to plead the man to spare her. The justification that was given to her was of the order that this man happened to be holding a reputable position in a national bank. The incident was followed up by several calls made to our friends in the media, resulting in coverage by the print media. The perpetrator was jailed, post which he managed to get a bail. However, he was imprisoned a second time following a strict scrutiny of legal proceedings by the victim.

Between then and now, a considerable amount of time has morphed into indifference. A state of silent mourning, as i see it. My friend is driving her car to work again, and i am more cautious. I have even begun to think twice about wearing what i usually would, in a city like Mumbai. The Delhi police and their alter egos are on the prowl. One can’t be sure of which one to be more afraid of or of which is which. Amidst the delirium, Delhi women seem to know, that ‘Two is better than One’ and Gurgaon has posters and protests alike. In hope of a ‘someday’, they rest their cases in the comfort of their homes, conventions, and the arms of delhi men they know will protect them.

The larger question, however, remains ‘how do we define belonging?’ and when it comes to that. Do we belong to a city or a space at all? And what gives us the right to belong? The Oxford dictionary puts down the definition of belonging in three ways

·                     1 (belong to) be the property of

·                     2 (belong to) be a member of (a particular group or organization)

·                     3 [with adverbial of place] (of a thing) be rightly placed in a specified position

¹Though, what we know belonging to be, as individuals, or as men and women, completely depends upon how we build a ‘place’ into a ‘space’ in our imagination full of an accumulated sense of attachments and sentiments by means of everyday practices. We develop our belonging or attachment for a place on the basis of our spatial knowledge of the environment as well.

Growing up as women in delhi, we were mostly witness to supervised visits with our parents to sights and sounds in the city, that were relevant to the family. While conditioning was meant to be internalised by both the sexes, it worked that way only for the other half of us. The agency which would enable us to belong to the city faded away because we grew afraid to explore it beyond our fears. While the boys from our teenage days, and the men from our youth gallivanted or rode across on their bikes, and often made gifts of their visions of the city to their pillion rider of a girlfriend. We scurried away into our cocoons of ideas of Delhi by a safe time under the sun. We saw the city of the day and remained happy with our memories. And on a day or two, when we were stuck outside at an ‘indecent’ time, caught in palpable throes of distress (mostly in our imagination) and our thoughts ran amok in the middle of nowhere, we called up everybody we knew to find the nearest shelter we could escape to for the night. A crisis, a love affair, and paranoia. But mostly, a man. That is Delhi.

And the rest is determined by the fact that whether belonging, is at all, a choice anymore?

1.        Reference to ‘Gender and the City: The different formations of belonging- Tovi Fenster’

Theater

A schedule was made
to stage the imminent
on the night


When we exposed expectation
to the wilderness
of the crowd's imagination


Analogy was our honoured visitor
when Brecht, Ibsen and Shakespeare
dined with us


With gorgeous appetite
and voluptuous pride
we began to play


with a million stares
on our exposition
we began


It was called
Inside Out


Nothing they'd ever seen before
they said
was so honest as this
It was called
A revelation


I feel i have seen this before
said a voice from the farther rows
Probably in your own backyard
or a premonition
said we

It was called
A churning


We waited for the gallows
in resolute silence
It inspires me to sing
said another



It was called
A revolution



The final chapter
Resurrection
said we


I found my mother's buried treasure!
exclaimed a child
It was called
A Passion


Drenched in glory
some sat on the pyre
while some submerged
in the wealth of  an afterlife


It was called
The Theater

Visitor

Somewhere in my heart
Where i'm afraid to go
A bell rings often
And the embers are still alive

A visitor is rare
though intruders peek through the glass
Now all foggy
The edges rusty with time

The white morning
is often a gust
that visits the window to the backyard

It bangs with fury
like the walls had known once
when storms raged in the outer hall
and an infant cried from the room upstairs
When the images of the gods trembled
and thunder raged in the outer garden


Where there are weeds now
and shrunken relics
Lost in the nowhere
amidst the overgrowth


Where the key lies buried
There is one who knows where it went
How it fits into the groove


The visitor


The front door gets knocks
but to visit
must be different
With expectation
love
remorse
kindness
anxiety
patience
reverie
and wildflowers
because they are tinier and more beautiful


To meet
To greet
To find
To be found
To trade earthly musings
for a day's worth of amusing
To present and embrace
To become grace
To smile and enchant
To hide and flaunt
Every weakness and sorrow
Like there's no tomorrow


The visitor smiles
Because love travels miles

YOU SUPPOSE

You suppose...

While i laugh away

And gnaw at my sweet tangerine

Between wide eyes and sunny laughs

You suppose...

Now, should i cry, should i laugh next?

Or will you wipe the frown from my brow next?

Which one is it today

Chillies, Chocolate, or Ice?

You suppose...

Now i got gooseflesh

Tell me, should i dress up for a party or will the salsa do?

Or wait...I could write a poem for you

And wait for your critique

Then do i rejoice or furiously contemplate

 The ingredients of the evening?

You suppose...

Black goes with white

And red goes with blue

But i could be a rainbow

And still like you

You suppose...

My heart is your playground

My soul your farm

You bask in the shadow of my love

But you have an affair with your decree

I hold your hand

The moment is tender

Let’s be

But then

Do you suppose?...

You don’t feel the need for me

The Other Side

A transgression
What is it
that makes it seem so sterile
Shivers and raised brows
is all it gets for performing so passionately


In the insidious cave of impulse
you don't know what colour to paint it
Is it white?

White as the morning light
through half open eyes
On a winter morning

It may even be a shade of black
Black like the boiling tar they placate potholes with


Take a cauldron and brew
all the words you will never speak
all the gestures you will never use
all the roads that will be blocked
till it lives
latent as vapour
at the back of your mind


Is it temptation?
Is it the lust of tearing through the naked wild?
Is it a sorrowful evolution?
Is it the cat hiding in the closet?
Did i find something i never thought i would?
Am i out of breath?
Is it a boxing match?
Will there be a stone pelting ceremony?
Is it something called random?
Will they find a word for it?
Will they put the word in a cage?
Is it the truant missing from school?



Is it Life itself?

WINTER CITY

Naked tree

Infant being

Dew on ancient veins

And all nocturne

Hush

The winter city does not speak

It creaks

It moans

It whispers

Rasping yet calm

From deep within its Immense grey nothing

Of a childlike orgasm

Oft from the away

Of the deep, dark, warm blooded secrets of a cure

Come now, blizzard

Snow or dust

Infinitesimal and wise

We’ve hung our wounds out

We will rejoice

While we find colour

Burning in your brilliance

Alabaster, gold, honey brown and chestnut

Now we’re all camouflage

The grass is olden, wistful and unkempt

We’ll look through and find each other

Or maybe a passing bird will carry us through

To other realms

Or back to our wombs

 Like the echo of steely friction

And the prick of alpine thorns

Like a thousand needles

From the paraphernalia

Urban nomads play on

Amorphous and obscure

Boldly proclaiming their dissonance

And in its trails

The treacly placid darkness engulfs

the mind

with its Itinerant leftovers

from an infantly battle

 It returns

To sleep

To heal

To prepare anew, for a duel

In the Winter City

Immortal Night

I make my way through neon fury

Into a dizzying blur of heads

I think i see mountains in the distance

The darkness hides the concrete mounds from sight

Child imagination

For this night make them those mountains

From the time that your gait was free and your feet tiny

O Immortal night

Turn the gravel

Into the wistful green that cushioned my soles

Turn the amber of my room into a bonfire

let me look upon the city lights from the shelter of my tent

O Immortal night

Let Wodehouse laugh from beside my bed

And turn midnight fury into a wisp of smoke

Douse the embers of the day with the silver juice of the moon

While i rest at the root of the hibiscus that bloomed when i was ten

O immortal night

let me dip my quill and rejoice in the ink of your innocence

for the chatter of voices past fills my cave

from shelves they read out their favourite lines

as Blyton speaks to Shakespeare

and Dahl courts Woolf

their spirits high and their voices low

O immortal night

Let the tooth fairy knock on my door once again

Its been ages since i met her

Let the mystery of the future

Stir my soul

With millions of questions

Blind me with the succour of my faith

O immortal night

Lend me belief

In the sunlight of rhythm

While Belafonte spreads his warmth

Let the oil paints make a marble on my ceiling

And beckon to the stars

I am

Because you are

A Certain Uncertainty

A certain uncertainty

Between that man and that woman

When they tug at their sleeves

To swim through the silence

When their palms grow sweaty

In anticipation

When they speak to each other

For each other

Without wanting to know whether

They’re listening

When they embrace themselves to go away closer

When they want to feel wanted again

Under their breaths

In the shadows of warm amber nights

In the friction of moist skin

When they find themselves staring

Hunting desperately for a clue

On the maps of their faces

When the perfunctory hurts too much

And they stop looking

Morphing into cocoons

Then they remember how they’d forgotten

To stop when the lights turned red

Busy flirting with neons and bourbon....

Stepping back into the sea

Fighting the tide

Into the mosaic of the horizon

They will anew, for a bond

For a realm

A certain uncertainty is what they’ve inherited

That boy and that girl

Because when their mother left the house

And their father shut the door of his study

They thought of going out the window one day

But they found in their backyards

A seed called craving

And a flower called addiction

And now it refuses to go away

This monster of a flower

Once so pale and ethereal

Its wilted remains grow out of them

Throwing furtive glances at the world do they retire into silence?

A certain uncertainty

Between this mother and this father

She’s made coffee with milk for years

But now he wants it black

She glances often at the younger women

As he stares a windshield down

Its been years of driving down that road

Steering up the driveway

They call for their child

Her embrace tight

She buries her face in his hair

Stroking his neck

Till she feels numb

He thumps his back

Hugs him

And they talk about life, and the country

He tells him about the girl he’ll marry

He’s married one day

And as he drives away

She looks at him from a corner

How young you look today, my love

She whispers to herself

And just then

He turns towards her

And a half smile sprouts on his wrinkled face....

Beloved....

Her love was of black and whites

Of blues and greys

She loved becoming and change

Almost a transaction of ‘i’ and ‘you’

Troubled by a thousand scorpions was her sore soul

It lay in a cocoon now

Where the mind was locked

For fear of feeling pain, she laughed

Her laugh made me cry

So poignant, aswell with the injured heart’s fury

Forgetting to smell the raw in a wound,

To feel the vitality

To imagine the vividness

The heart had forgotten

Now in it lay concrete in the making

A stubborn erosion

An aching cancer

A scar of twenty years

Her fear of being alone

Unloved

Caught hold of the senses

Yet unable to express

Understanding would not come about

What do you do when love to possession to hatred you become

Running the race to the justification of scrutiny

Shall you go to a messiah, a man of silent sainthood

With nectar of truth in his gentle warmth

And see your reflection in the water he holds so calm

Or shall you find the peace which you invoked

Had you ever loved one to the heights of no return

Where your beloved could love you no more

Yet you would love

Why do you ask love of your outer self

Your other will not forgive you

How can you feed your child, your god, with ignorance?

To be broken, yet to bloom was her religion

To keep alive the faith in life

in vitality

the spirit of a wound

Her face stood still and her eyes shone through

The light she had lit within all these years

The tears that were still alive within

Shone in her caramel eyes in the amber light of his office lounge

She sat there typing away

With her hair falling out of her hairnet and loosely over her face

Delicate, yet never vulnerable

Nothing could harm her

Determination had grown steely

It was time’s gift to her

Pain was love and love was pain

The determination was to live

Filling the blanks for all around her

There were only blanks on her page

No full stops though

Her mother had a heart that was so swollen with pain

That she would laugh and cry at the same time

And a dad who got lost

Could you blame them for their lack of strength

Had they ever felt love? Only possession, i shall think

Sheer possession corrupted the soul

A lack of understanding is harmful

Very harmful to the enlightened mind

Yet the love of such a brethren nurtures as well

Yet in such nurturing you shall only grow closer to the material

The hurt you inflict in reaction to such hurt is not justified

Take shelter in forgiveness

It alone is the greatest life giving force that one can draw upon

Journey

Sitting at a window by the sea,
I sought in a faraway land
with wanderlust soul

With the mind at war
and infant heart
journeying within

Like trodden clay
moulding anew
with each stroke

Love became stubborn
Faith wasn't humble
for a ceaseless quest was mine

The twilight ocean gleamed in my eye
painting innocence
the sun grew on my window
and a sapling bled green on the linen curtain

the air grew sheer
and the soul took glorious flight
i bid farewell to time

Climbing higher
the roots had grown moss, i saw
and the bark smelt of home
scratching the surface i found a face

a frozen smile
a broken embrace

The limbs held strong
branches, cradling my presence
sweet little was the fragrant fruit that grew ........

The Excavation

As the ropes grew tighter
and the walls grew strong
The sky caved in
The blue was no longer meant for flight

And suddenly, the screen turned off
The distant hills were clear again
and the water seemed crystal in the sun


As the first brushstrokes
unearthed the remains of the day
The stars twinkled clearer
and the galaxy breathed

I threw a pebble
and it danced on the water
The ripples laughed back at me

I dug deeper
to find random moments
caught in between
Calcified in time- Pristine

I held them up to the day
they glistened
lighting up my face

Then, windborne promises
Swept past
Waiting to find the stars
or maybe a heart

The sun prodded on,
Go ahead, dig deeper
Your need is to discover!
Preserved in tiny streams, i found gold
from memories of springtime

I asked them for answers
where have you gone?
why did you leave me behind?

We travel with you, wanderlust soul
we live in your journey
they said
and i felt a hand in mine


I scratched the surface and sand gave way
encased in a petal were ashes
Remember, when you buried us, they asked

That moment of remorse
Those blunt violent words

A bitter recourse
I said

We fed on your regret all this time
I stroked them with my fingers

I forgive you
And they vanished

Dismembered remains
missing parts of puzzles come next

I never thought that one went there

Well, now you have the answer

I know, i say

Corpse remains vanish from my soul
Their funeral now complete
and i see the circle
and find a buried ring
faded and burdened
a promise holds it strong

Till my dying day
i pronounce you husband and wife
i remember those words
and echoes fill my conscience
as i wake

The morning streams in
As i lie beside you

Addiction

On this afternoon that i sat down at a delhi cafe in the middle of the nowhere lane as i liked to call it out to myself, they played these two songs, Breakaway and ironic. I was born in and brought up by delhi. I felt the umbilical cord tug at my veins, a tingle in my belly, and a silent vibration clamber up my heart into my mind. There was nothing ubiquitous about this feeling. I was nostalgic about Delhi sitting in Delhi.

I was putting up at this friend's place. He was a stephen's graduate. The place was like a stopover on a bike trip on high altitudes, and convergence produced fissionary reactions, and brilliantly colourful deconstrution .

The quintessential 'chaupal' of the university tribe. There was one in every micro commmunity that made up the vishwavidyalaya in delhi. I too, belonged there, or did I? The dynamicity with which this stream of consciousness evolved, prevented me from acknowledging a prolonged loyalty. Three years ago, when i was graduating, i would be fighting for recognition, love, popularity, and adulation in the middle of such a gathering. Thrre years later, i sat as a qualified journalist, an filmmaker, and i absorbed the atmosphere of such conversations, rejoiced at the nostalgia of having been a student in DU, sulked at not being there anymore, and plainly let this monster of an emotionally driven uprising that was taking place in the pit of my stomach, dissect me into a thousand different mes from within.
No, existentialism, was not a far cry, but it wasn't the overpowering ideal anymore. I was mouldless now. Circumstances, had led me, to consequences, which needed me to motivate my mind to engage in creation which did not arise from within me. I was robbed of choices. Ironically, my angst kept me alive, and made my ideology stronger. The cherry on the cake was the fact that they said you had to pay for independence, like a toll post where they would charge you your life savings to be on the highway to freedom.

But this highway to freedom, you see, was a mystery. The horizon was blind from where the road took a downhill slant and dipped downwards. The personnel from the toll post was never allowed there. The penalty for trying to escape the toll post was prosecution, and i already told you, they charged you your life savings. And, no one was ever known to come back from there. It was the promise of eternal oblivion in the middle of a defined world.

The price i had to pay for independence, i did not have the resources or the will to provide. It either went against my grain or my plans of saving up for a bad day, week, month, or year. My strategies were difficult to execute but it really wasn't like i had a choice, was it?

My strategy became the middle path. A path where the trademarks were subversion, inspiration, motivation, irritation, tenacious determination. Not out of choice, it was a compulsion. Now, why a compulsion, you'd ask? Why was i trying to create a frankenstein? All frankensteins, by natural rule, broke out on that one fateful day, didn't they?
Defeatist thoughts aside, i was packing in ammo to face a life of believing in determinism, in my middle class existence, and so i would execute it to guard my homeground. I had to play the game without gaining opponents, or components. Vitality had to be that ineffable, overwhelming life source of my existence, lifestyle, and behavioral architecture.

I wanted to be the god of my world. I wanted to be a magician.

Back in the cafe, My life trailed in my mind's eye like a gradually engulfing haze, sometimes it seemed like a train that on the road to nowhere. Like the edge of a cliff, jumping off which was the toughest call i ever had to take. 'Would there be enough water at the bottom to cushion my dive?', i wondered. The lurking fear of the question remained. It lingered in my mind like a rolling stone. The problem is, it was rolling in this closed room with no windows, no door, and four walls. I'm very mortal, i thought, and jumped off. Later, after an escape into what seemed liked an obliviated escape into timelessness, i was alive.

Yes, i was experiencing nostalgia of a delhi gone by. I couldn't find the delhi of my childhood. And so, one of those evolutionary insights took over. I realised the potency of my imagination, and learnt a lesson in faith. In the middle of a suddenly alien city, i began to see familiar faces again...