Penumbra

You send me photos of irises enlarged
I see points of absences
And slipping light and
that is how I have learnt myself

The light has fallen in so many shapes
Father offering water to the sun

Practically naked

The light has split into fingers and lit
Up your skin marking all the
Off-limit places.

I wrote you little poems on postcards
In my head
I imagined little bullets
In your head
Either way I wanted
The same response anyway.

Practically naked

Reflections where our eyes meet, Recognising flecks of desperation
'Do you wear lenses
Your eyes reflect too much:

Practically naked'

Of course I broke glasses and pushed little cups off
China when no one else was looking
Of course I wanted light to shine
And break against my feet
Because no one was looking
Of course I made little ceremonies

Of Leaving blankets
Blanketed in mirror shards
Because that is how we will remain
Limb on limb,
Practically naked

And yes the light on the wall
Is the trophy I award myself
Because the only other time I ever see light splitting like that
Is in reverse,
Reflecting chain-link fences

And how do you unbecome?

I am trying to make
The last verse
The worst
Happen.

This is the moment
That we capture the sky
This is the moment
We will later eulogize:
sky
Fell into tatters put on a strip show maybe the sky isn't
All about light.

Mapping the Self: Three Points Around Which I Walked to Understand Myself Better

1. Graffiti, Zamrudpur (picture above)

Do you know what a quarter is? 

Currency, ek chauthai, part of a grapefruit 

-Mausumbi- 

Haan malum hai. 

Papa ke paan ke dokaan ke bagal mein raat mein bolte Hain 

'Quarter, quarter' 

Sniggers from four corners

This is a joke created out of the spaces 

Of why they would always sit opposite me, 

Not next to me. 

An eight year old learnt fractions with alcohol quantities

An eighteen year old spelled out

In the retreat of the evening

How he thought it was 

what he thought I was 

When I didn't know what they were talking about 

when they said knowingly,

Papa ke paan ke dokaan ke bagal mein raat mein bolte Hain 

'Quarter, quarter'. 

*

2. The Waxing Lady's Tale, GK1

She's seen her legs the way you wouldn't imagine them.

If you've crossed LSR in February there are flowers that fade 

Come April 

After the flower has been seen.

She is the gardener. 

Pull, tug, tear down, border off, landscape 

Limit wilderness to where you might find it beautiful enough to award it a token of appreciation:

A cup, for example. 

Drink her in slow, 

Because she spent three hours on achieving that glow 

That you're going to give a cursory glance to. 

She's doing it for a filter less selfie 

That she's going to drown in filter anyway 

(Even the golden honey instafair instaremoval nohairdontcare can says 

Valencia)

But just so you know 

She touched her there and there and went down south 

To strip down the Amazon basin

Before you even found your Brazil. 

The difference is, she stopped to question 

Why the basin had rivulets in red 

And knows enough about blades To say 

'Ma'am, aage se mat kariyega.

Yeh toh bada dark ho gaya.' 

*

3. Cosmetic Surgery, Amar Colony 

I bought Whisper 

She decided to stay free 

By choosing an alternative for (a) good foundation-

What you must skip on a menu card

But pause and consider in a cosmetics shop-

Soufflé. 

Each poster said natural, natural, natural 

I remember the ice cream company 

and vanilla and chocolate and 

Placing my arm on my friend's and 

Making chocolate and vanilla ice cream, naturally. 

Woman, subtle woman, smart woman, cool woman, 

saleswoman,

Considerate enough to stop and look from friend to me 

To consider skin colour before 

Choosing what was an appropriate foundation. 

Naturally. 

Vanilla soufflé on skin, 

mixing so perfectly that you

wouldn't even know it was there.

But it was. 

The foundation was always there. 

When asked what was better: 

a fair or a natural foundation, 

She said, 

'Natural, naturally. 

You have to make the foundation look natural.'

Two Days

(For 21/2/16)

Today was a really good day. I mean it. I went around the LSR Campus taking photos as an evidence of spring happening. Later, I explained spring happening to a friend of mine who can't see. Photographs aren't evidence enough, so I made her feel the flowers in the pictures- those whose names I knew. I also told her about my favourite flower, camellia. They break really easily.

Last year, after reading The Narrow Road To the Deep North before boards, a friend of mine and I had become obsessed with the flower. We had a camellia bush in school, which shed flowers everyday, as though to incentivize me to not leave. I gave a flower to everyone I loved then. They break really easily.

My friend promised me she'd tell me when the bush bloomed again.

I got this today.

So I wrote this:

Two Days.

30/3/15
When I offer you camellias,
Hold them like you would hold
yourself
When in the absolute fear of breaking.
Camellias break with touch,
And I give them to you as a metaphor for
Bigger Things
They will come apart, whorl by whorl
But on early mornings, in the middle of boards,
They are drops of blood scattered on
mirrors that ripple with a touch,
The ground rippling with the need
To hold something as delicate as a camellia,
Resorting to its oldest trick:
Gravity.

If impossible is an absolute
And it is impossible to preserve a camellia,
Tell me you'll love me absolutely.

21/2/16
How do you explain colours to someone who is blind?
You describe.
Draw shut your wrist, I'll colour it red with my fingers
Sketching circles with the pad of my thumbs
Can you feel it? My delicate camellia?
The sun looks like this, like my Palm opening into your Palm
The world may feel blue, but it is green,
Green as in you can walk uninhibited,
Green as in the earth opened its Palm into the Sun.
And that's a bougainvillea that I have put against your cheek
It feels like leaves, but I bet you haven't felt leaves
On your cheek at least.
Pinecones are prayer-shaped, like my prayer on top of yours
And the serrations of our fingers
Is what our prayers have to offer.

Think innocence for light,
Think fifteen and in love for the first time.
Think passion for deep,
Think fifteen and out of love for the first time.
Think light and dark heart-shaped drops
Which will come apart
Whorl by whorl.
Can you see it? My delicate camellia?

Made Up Stories/ A Rainy Valentine's Day in the Park/ (500) Days of Autumn

Every once in a while, I call your name
To make me believe it happened.
Autumn, Autumn happens.
In secluded corner of skin we carve
Seasons to explain wind and rain and that state of
Droplets heavy with hope.
I have washed over pages heavy with residual droplets
From three monsoons ago
With words like
Fall.

Add 'in love'
Before or after.

Some sort of laughter that drove us up against the wall
And out on the streets
Teenagers driven by some strange idea of
Invincibility, invisibility
Maybe I built a voodoo doll and stitched your name on it
And asked you to tear it apart when (if)
We separated
Because that is what I would have
Liked to do to you.

The trees here are growing old and bent
And I think their age is an invitation to be touched
Like when we made up love stories, we would
Like when we carved monuments in text, we would
We touched, we touched like
Lips and skin and a mutual dizziness
Ground pulled from beneath our feet
Aftershocks the rumbled down our throats into
Smoke in the pit of our stomach
The unpredictability shook us, the fingers, I remember the fingers
The shaken, beaten,
fingers we used to taste the
Carpet of grass that held water in a tight embrace
The fingers we used to break the electric tension of fragile love:
It was all a monsoon hangover anyway.

In a way, aren't we all the love police?
In a way, isn't love going to dismantle us?
In a way, haven't we fingered the past enough to
Blur dew and rain?

The choice was mine, you said
Where I wanted to damage pre-existing love stories
Where I wanted to write love the love that has never been written
Because it has never been created
Except in the impression we left on the grass.
In a way, didn't you tell me it was my choice to
Choose to be destroyed by love?

Every once in a while, I call your name.
A friend told me her boyfriend told her
Sikkim has autumns.
Fall.
In love.

Dining Hall Conversations

Sixteen.
There were always lines meant to discipline,
Meant to hold back,
Meant to extend the distance between
You and food.
There were fingerprints all over the plates,
Incriminating those who felt, who ate, who
Took up too much space.

Sixteen.
'My thighs/arms/wrist/clavicle
Gap/stomach/waist/cheek
Chin/back/butt/leg
Fat. So. Fat.'
Words were laid as memorials to the
Heavily drawn lines of how much, how little
We ate.

Nine.
Ten days of parental absence,
Chocolates bought for each inevitable tear,
Chocolates meant as survival strategy.

Thirteen.
Arms grew past the span of your index and thumb fingers
'But do you want to dress like that
But do you want to eat that
But you are two kilos too heavy
Take away the butter platter.'

Seventeen.
Tablet sized dream
Exploding in your stomach
Lines of blood in your thighs
Demarcating
Where battle scars need to become
Lines of Control
Hills on your wrists, collar,
Strategic advantages for luring rivals in
The inward crater in you that rumbles
Avalanches of hunger with every breath
The no-man's land between your thighs
To build a country for men.

Fourteen
'Lauki. Lauki is the answer to everything.'
If you have large eyes,
Add some desperation.
If you have a pouty mouth,
Add some traces of lips chewed clean.
If you have shiny black hair,
Starve until your skin shines as well.

Meanwhile your diagrammatic representation of perfection
Comprises parentheses,
Set against themselves.

Seventeen.
Chocolates discarded.
Oranges. Water. Daal.
Your body is 70% water and
The 27% of tears that it empties out can be replaced with your special secret:
Liquid diets.
You secretly fantasize fainting because at least
There will be some legitimacy to your brand of
Martyrdom.

Eighteen.
Classroom:
Tables facing Table
Tables questioning Table.
'But does being pretty amount to anything?
But female beauty standards are a patriarchal construct.'
But Skinny, tall, white, is an unnecessary ideal.
Give my back my freedom.'

Eighteen.
Phone Conversation with Mom:
Long distance that amplifies love
And blinds us to all that surrounds it.
'There is a lady downstairs ... she is quite healthy ... she is wearing trackpants and a t-shirt.'
'So what? You can wear it too.'
'Yeah, but ...'

Eighteen.
Contents in the wardrobe:
Some clothes; many earrings, shoes
Space, neatness
Sizes create inevitable spaces and blocks
Of clothes worn on endless repeat
Clothes whose fabric and cut spell 'If only'.

Eighteen.
Dining Hall:
Tables
Surrounded by people
Blemished by food
Squandered, divided, reduced,
Left unconsumed.
Amidst the echoed clatter of spoons tasted selectively
I hear the battle cry
We learnt with our baby food:
'I wish I was pretty.'

To Love, In Retrospect

The thing is
Something about the way we pronounce desire
Something that is born from the core of our bones
That grows disproportionately
to the extremities we've known
That grows till we begin spelling it with
In the chatter of our teeth
In the skin maimed by indents
In the way we swirl tea
Some call it charting a destiny.

"Build a map".
The cartographers' skill we used to mould
Shapes, like imagination can only bend in so many ways
Before it becomes a repetition.
"Build a dream."
Like the house my mother's mother made in pencil
And the home she makes everyday by the art of breathing.

Build a fire, a song, a whistle to create in empty corridors
The kind that makes the glass hallway shake.

There are so many kinds of incineration, and
Words that light up in the shadow of absences
-Like the cigarette butts you lit
But I burnt out into blindness-
Are my absolute favourite.

The Unfinished Capsicum

Maa ne kaha tha,
Shimla mirch ki sabzi nahi banate,
Bachpan mein
Bettiah mein
Shimla Mirch nahi milti thi,
Jab milti thi toh sabzi nahi banate.
Kam tha na.
Fridge mein Shimla Mirch rehene se
"Rich lagta hai."
Ghar mein aaoge toh,
Fridge mein shimla mirch katti hui milegi.
Puri shimla mirch aaj bhi nahi istemaal kar paati.
Rich lagta hai.
Marwar ki raeth mein,
(Oasis)

My language enters my mind in a flood
Alphabet soup
That drowns me out with possibility.
I have sat on the edge of the flood that is self-perpetuating.
Some say that a flood like that
is a lake
But I know the difference between a resource
And an inconvenience.
Ghar ki dalheez par khatam hota hai.

I walk home
having waded in the flood
having floated paper boats where wooden ones would break
Having seen/imagined the tadpoles
That swim past me and return, as I do,
Home.

I wipe my feet and dry my calves
And hear the sound of rain muffled by dryness
Roll down my jeans
And walk inside.

Maa kehti hai,
Tumhari poetry samajh nahi aati.
Kuch kehte ho,
usse sirf thora sa
hi samajh aata hai.

If you ever come home
You will always find
unfinished capsicum.