Sweet and Sour

A poem I wrote with my dear friend and fellow poet, Justin Davis. Recalling memory on tales we shared, trips we took, all that food and candy we ate together and the conversations that settled between us like star bursts. I miss his presence but I know we can take off from where we left off, one week or ten years from now. 

I swallow tasty sweets like I swallow my pride, it's all stored in an unhealthy place,

Sweet or sour, how does it matter when all you can do is swallow lest you taste them?

Both, I say, the sweet cuts my spicy disposition, while the sour leaves vengeance best served cold,

And here I was, searching for our fate in tea leaves, despite that sweet sour melody humming in the trees.

A gulp in time to remind me how the melange of emotions keeps me afloat, dancing on the world's tight ropes,

This confluence of you and me now shines at the crossroads where we smiled a melancholy story as the world danced around us

My taste buds juxtaposed to my feelings of love and lust, the sweet and the sour, sipping my hazy drink, I devour thoughts of you and me, and me and you. 

There are pages torn from each life that you and I relish, sweet and sour, who are we to judge except when it's us we taste.

Pages that turn themselves, quickly passing over parts of sadness, leaving memories erased. 

Not nearly as quickly though as the star bursts that bound you and me, me and you together in a candy bag.

The sweet of the candy and sour of the lost romance leave us remembering days in dark jungles, lurching leopards in cracking fires. 

The spicy disposition, the swallowed pride, the devouring hunger for taste, for an edge is how I'll remember you

A feeling of full, complete, the lethargy sets in, I curl, draw my lids, a dream of sweet nothingness, until we meet again

Farewell my friend.

The Art Of Living (sic)

“You’re so full of positivity”, said he.

“And that’s a big compliment”, said she.

We shook hands after, and we let the touch linger on, a second longer.

You see we have seven principles of life.

And each one of us, lives through only a few of these.

The body. Oh, my hair, my skin, my clothes, my shoes define me.

Say the ones who look no further than the glossy confines of the spa

And the shiny tags of the fashion house.

You and I? We see beauty in the dust that sparkles on our tanned hands.

When the sun shines upon them. When the little hairs on our unwaxed arms hold up

Specks of dust to the sky.

Breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

Do you notice its presence? When you make powerpoint presentations at work?

When you sip on that beer or milkshake and secretly promise yourself to run an extra mile on the treadmill?

Do you notice, that you’re breathing now? In and out, in and out.

Or do you forget? Like the greeting card you spent hours making for your first love.

Like the hot cup of tea called home that greeted you for a weekend away from the job you prized above feeling.

The intellect. Your intellect makes you experience things and record them.

Your intellect makes you decide right or wrong.

It fools you, don’t you see?

To believe that the man in the ordinary clothes and broken English, must lack it.

To believe that the baker has no right to talk about philosophy.

Its your intellect that captures you. Till the very end.

Unless you happen to chance upon memory.

Memory is persistent. Memory is painful and happy.

Memory is the sound of your last uncontrollable laugh.

Memory is the taste of the best meal you ate.

Memory is the image of when you looked best, not in an expensive dress or suit.

But in dirty clothes that couldn’t paint shabby over the smiles you shared.

But memory too, can cage you.

Memory too can keep you away from the mind.

That curious concoction of intellect and memory.

That place where you cease seeing it as a machine of neurons.

That place where you fold up your knees, put your head down and lose time

Knowing and muttering, “I am home”.

Beyond these five, lie the two often quoted, seldom met.

The ego and the self.

What if I were to say to you, “I love you”.

How would you respond? Would you accept it?

Or would you reject it basing your judgement on past experiences?

Now what if I were to compliment you? Or insult you?

“You look beautiful”, “Your nose is too big”

It would pinch, even if just for a bit, wouldn’t it?

And that’s your ego speaking out loud.

And the self? The self just wanders in and out of the body breathing, memorizing, loving, and egoistically intellectualizing your life.

It walks in and out, much like a cat with a mind of its own.

Meanwhile, you and I smile at the memory of the touch that lingers on our hands.

Meanwhile, you and I sit back and remember.

Meanwhile, you and I will leave this place and continue walking.

Memory keeps the self trapped away. Don’t you see?

The Forest Is Changing

Those leaves are a light, shimmery green at the top

Right at the precipice of branch meeting air

Those leaves are held strong by the binds of those beyond—

Dark green, strong; almost like the sweating sinewy arms of the trench digger

The man who spends all day, digging.

Digging up the mud on the roadside of the cosmic ridge

Digging up happiness that he can find in the one full meal it buys him.

That’s when I notice the yellowing, dry leaves. The old ones.

Stooping, coloured, weak.

All holding onto the branch of life, the branch that feeds, soothes and eventually, let’s go.

The two brothers standing in the doorway between the tree and the trench digger

And the comforts of those seeking food and comfort on coffee tables and laptops

Those two brothers guard this experience. From loss, from too much memory.

I sense the rising tide of too much memory.

The forest is changing, you see.

And so am I.

The mountains are as picturesque as all the books you read,

All the movies you watched, all the calls into the wild you experienced.

The mountains are as daunting, haunting, alleviating, changing, sensual.

As no one who lived here for years ever tells you.

The forest is changing you see.

And so am I.

Love exists here, not in animations of hearts and songs.

It exists, in the cup of tea the trench digger buys me

For taking his picture, for smiling at him.

It exists in the young boys running down a pathway to a fresh spring

To carry jerry cans of water for the pregnant lady.

All for the few ripe berries and green chillies in her garden.

It exists in the magnanimity of the sheep herder

Who lets his sheep enjoy a moment of chaos,

Only to help the new tenant light a wood stove for a simple meal of rice and beans.

And while all these images jostle for space in your mind;

The forest is changing, you see.

And so am I.

A mist engulfs entire hills and valleys, right before my eyes.

Like a hungry wind that wanted to touch all it sees.

The hills glow golden in the nights, parts of them that seem to scream out

“Here I am, look at me!”

Much like the woman whose shined up nails, sequined dress and high heels

Failed to capture the attention of the man she loved; but she thought he liked that image from the magazine.

And just as a small part of her dies in the attempt to impress

So does a small part of the forest die in the burning wails of a fire that annihilates.

Smoke that creeps up like the stove of a giant, but burns all in its path.

The forest is changing, you see.

And so am I.

These mountain people have smiles that can douse those fires.

Forest fires meet fire lines. Fire lines, drawn overnight, amidst laughter and roasted pine cones.

And the next morning, a silence screams through the pine trees.

The wind seems to mourn its own work—the smell of death is upon us.

The forest is changing, you see.

And so am I.

I woke up to another mist this morning.

It was dark, laden with spirits and lonely.

The mist touched my skin, touched the burnt grass, touched the trees, touched the earth.

And it was lonely, it was searching.

Almost like the lone survivor after a storm.

When it didn’t find any it loved or knew.

It cried; it cried so loud that I could hear it pattering on the roof

Like drums at a wedding.

It cried so painfully, that I saw the leaves shiver in silence.

It cried so pitifully, that my dog ran out to soak some of its tears.

And I watched, I watched from the shade of the dying tree.

I watched as the smoke from the tree’s pyre met the mist of tears…

And I let the tears fall.

For the forest is changing, you see.

And so am I.

Nameless Memories

A teardrop and the sheer weight of this thought.

This will be the last verse I write. This will be the last fairytale I will tell you.

The persistence of memory is such. There is no other way.

A minor fall like that of a petal, drifting down to settle on stone

A major jump into tales that I told you of a long, long time ago.

You needed proof, and I showed you

The beauty of the forest, almost translucent in its depth.

All you said then was, “the persistence of memory is such. There is no other way”.

And I? I simply followed.

I wonder what the forest holds beyond this path

Where you and I looked, smiled and walked on

Letting the silences between us talk all along,

Of nights and times and fathers and brothers and grandmothers.

The persistence of their memories kept our tears at bay.

The world whistles along our melodies

The world of people you see, is abounding with energy.

In the forest, you and me? We’re just two little birds lost in the woods.

Two little birds flitting past, a blur that disappears

Like that snowflake you held in your palm

Wishing it all away.

The persistence of memory is such. There is no other way.

Words, hands, leaves, snow peaks and silence

A silence where we shudder against the growl in the dead of night

A silence where we looked for shooting stars, creating a tiny puzzle.

Of you and me, fearful of the forest, mindful of our distance and cautious. Oh, so cautious.

A speed bump too small to notice on the pathway

Becomes the speed bump too huge to cross over in bed.

So we play along, a mindless symphony to forget.

The persistence of memory is such. There is no other way.

He and me, you and her, them and us, we and ours

Becomes lost in transition from here to there, this place to that time

Our story to their history, his tears to her smirk.

Yes, I reversed the gender roles. He cried, and she walked away.

Let’s talk about feminism another time.

Did I say this was a fairytale?

Forgive me, will you?

The persistence of memory is such. There is no other way.

Rain at Rainbow Resort

I’m at Kasar Rainbow Resort, savouring a deliciously warm mint tea, sitting apart from the group of hippies at the café. Why do I sit alone? Maybe because I’m an Indian girl, being eyed curiously by the dreadlocked white people who haven’t seen a brown girl in shorts in the mountains.

Outside, the rain beats down on the tin roof, the roads stacked with pine needles, a riot of dull colours—grey, orange brown, green and a sheer blue. I’m listening to music that my brother Jennie liked; that he spent hours installing on my computer. Memories of more than a year ago, and I “Faithfully Remain” loyal to those tales. Somethings are lost on the way, some are found and the rest just wait. I lost Jennie to death, I found poetry on the way to acceptance of memories of my brother as my only choice and the rest, well the rest just has to wait.

I find myself wondering how I will explain this life to my own future past. You can tell, can’t you of how lyrics, movies, people and a specific culture are colouring this rambling? Do poets imagine stories from and of the people/things they experience? Or do they add the magic of words to memories otherwise laughed over a pint of beer?

I find myself remaining faithful to the passage of time; perhaps this, right now, is what “feeling alive” is meant to give to you. Perhaps the end of a song, ends the rambling of a solitary city girl, challenging herself in the mountains.

They are inaudible melodies in my head; people who I loved and lost and found; memories that once were life, and now are mere tales. It’s strange, is it not that rain makes one ponder, euphorically or with regret. I find myself having conversations in my head with Jennie. More conversations in my head than we ever had while he lived.

All that comes now to mind is what he’d hum in his soulful voice, a voice that experienced more in life than it could ever keep up to offer to him. And when the highs and lows became one straight road, Jennie walked on, leaving me with this:

 “Slow down everyone you’re moving too fast

Frames can’t catch you when you’re moving like that”.

Let Me Be

Let me be. Is it too much to ask from a fellow human being?

Let me be. Is that a boundary you crossed or I did?

Let me be. Does that mark the end of a chapter or the beginning of a new one?

Let me be. Is that a will to live or the need to survive?

Let me be. Sobbed the woman into a pillow after her husband raped her.

Let me be. Screamed the son, tearing up his literature scores to settle on engineering.

Let me be. Sighed the tired salesman to the expectant faces at home.

Let me be. Grunted the mother haggling with vendors to save a dollar.

Let me be. Cried the man who loved another man, to his neighbours.

Let me be. Yelled the man from the hospital bed, to the insurance company.

Let me be. Begged the soldier caught prisoner and tortured by the rebels.

I listened to these implorations and looked away

I heard them not as cries for solitude

I heard them not as a will to disappear.

I heard them as cries for help

I heard them as a yearning for more, for less, for clarity.

They made me say to myself “Let me be”

When you did worse than walking away.

They made me say to myself "Let me be"

When you let the silence take over till it screamed over and over.

Between you and me. To let us be. Strangers of the multitude.

Post-dated Resignation Letter

I’m a cog in the wheel

I’m a cog in the wheel

Repeat after me

I’m a cog in the wheel

Now ask yourself

Why?

Are you mulling over the thought?

Savouring it? Like the first spoonful of hot soup

On this soft winter day?

But of course, your desire

For warm bread, for ‘owning’ things

Surpasses this feeling.

I just quit my job

And the very first sentiment was

ECSTASY

Not because I’m lazy

Not because I’m rich

Not because I’m not passionate

But because

I was a cog in the wheel.

You share pictures of athletes failing and standing up.

You share ‘inspiring’ quotes to urge yourself.

To rise above the mundane,

To speak up against the numbness.

And yet, your ticking watch

Your laptop screen and your telephone screen

Keep you hooked onto the salary cheque.

It’s time to move beyond real time.

It’s time to reject the virtual world.

To live in warmth

Not from an electric heater

But from the shining sun in a park full of laughter.

It’s time to say NO to the ATM machine

It’s time to look beyond a day’s minutes into life over the years.

Would you rather say that you spent 50 hours a week, working?

Or that you spent a week, living?

The park’s lawns are calling out to me.

The satisfying smile of a small bank balance and a large heart of happiness

Await me.

On the scrabble board of life.

It’s time now, for me to play with words and create meaning out of ‘me’.