Intoxication

She wasn't all bad 
Not even a little bit
She was just a girl
Brave enough to admit
Admit to wanting
To pour herself a draught
Just the slightest bit
Into nerves a wee bit taut
Ah the sweet release
From the trap of the mind
To fly beyond the senses -
The albatross to humankind

What Happens After The Leap

Lambent twilight
A gentle breeze
Are around me
As I attempt to seize
As I float on my way
Mid-leap
Trying to gain footholds
But the limbo is pretty deep
It gets crazy at times
All howling hurricanes
And lightening crackles
Setting aflame our feverish brains
And then it gets serene
The silence of the wise
Of quiet confidence
Tiny in time, endless in size
Both these stay with me
In times when I flail
Coz there are those too
No discernible sail
Many a slip between
the cup and the lip
The cups are craggy tops
The lips many miles to ship
And yet I float, dip, occasionally fly
(Mostly) Enjoying the journey
To stable ground
Onward to another tourney

Futur

I have been shopping all day today. It’s a special day, the day he proposed to me. Now I know, I know, we Indians greatly misuse the term. Or at least how it was used centuries ago, by long dead Britishers, so alienated from us in their habits and hues as to render their views on our language, quite irrelevant. Coming back to my special day, yes, he asked me out today. Told me he loved me, was in love with me. With a steely glint in his eye, a determination that one associates the better with marathon runners in their last kilometer or observes perhaps in the eyes of patients about to pop in some nasty medicine. You see, I had tried my best to discourage him. I knew this declaration, a thing with a life of its own, equipped with its own pair of tiny lungs and a fragile puppy heart, this declaration, I knew would change my life. It was scary. 
So, I am dressing up for him today. He likes me in yellow. Truth be told, he likes me in anything really, but I know he is partial to yellow. And I want to make it a thing, you know, our thing. Sometimes these traditions, remembrances start to mean more than what had sparked them off in the first place. We need that amplification. 
Like the meal I am going to cook him. It’s his favorite, he is not a foodie, but he likes paneer butter masala. I had to travel a bit to get fresh paneer, the Indian shops are all situated in an older part of the city; it’s slightly seedy, this locality. I know he wouldn’t like me to go there alone, but I can’t really serve him rubbery paneer, today of all days. 
The neighbors all know today is special. Ordinarily I am a little reserved with them, you know, strange place and all that. But I couldn’t help but notice their enquiring glances as I worked like a maniac yesterday, spring cleaning my house, disposing of the millions of articles that find their way in and build up into a mountain of junk. You know, the boxes, and bags, and the ubiquitous stack of bills, papers, pamphlets. My apartment is tiny, at best slightly larger than a doll’s house, and I run the risk of drowning in this rubble if I don’t drain it out routinely, and yet I don’t till the waters come rising. He keeps telling me to clean. Like every day. It’s the first thing he notices. And so as a gesture to our special day, this time I cleaned. Can’t wait for him to see. 
As we approach the hour, I look around pleased. The house is spotless, the masala is simmering, and my outfit is laid out, ready to be worn. Now the only thing I need to buff and shine is my own self. Oh yes, you bet I will! I am going to be first thing in his line of vision, and I want to fill his senses, fulfil his senses. He loves my skin, he always says it was the first thing he noticed about me. Tonight, I am going to make it sing. 
And so it arrives. The moment of truth. I am a mass of sensations, surrounded by a mix of aromas, the luxurious waft of the paneer butter masala mingling with the fruity fragrance of my DKNY Green Apple. I open my laptop, and there it is, right by the clock, at 3 am Greenwich time, a video call from him. 
It’s the third year of our marriage. And our fifth year apart. There were a lot of naysayers, with everything from logistics to law thrown into our faces. But like the language of speech, the language of love adapts with changing times too. And we are pioneers, a generation of explorers charting the rules of cross-continental living, and loving.

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

The first time he had seen the painter, a mild tremor had run down his body. Something about him, his eyes maybe, had that seismic quality. But that was before he heard him speak. He realized that the eyes were merely complicit in the crimes his words perpetrated - each one polished to perfection, never a second too early or too late, opening his mind up to possibilities and to the possibility, of something emerging from all this.
His own was a profession of creativity, he was into the business of bending music to will. But never before had art as intrigued him, as when he stood in the painter’s gallery, trying to piece together the jigsaw that was his personality, each part hidden in a separate painting.
The painter himself had been there; not alone, with a glamorous wife in tow. They said she was a poet, and his muse.
Their eyes had met yet again, they even exchanged a few mundane words. And somehow, somehow, he discerned the painter’s loneliness, that no ordinary muse, no matter how beautiful, could dispel.

They played a game of cat and mouse for an appropriate amount of time, each trying their best to not make the first move, yet always be within touching distance of it. And then finally it happened, a memory of which he had felt upon seeing the painter for the first time; call it memory or omen, time can run in either direction.
Finally, it happened, a coming together of his music and the painter’s art, of his rhythmic fingertips and the painter’s aesthete touch. He felt as if the entire world stood still, as audience.

Except, of course, that it hadn't stood still as much as it had carried on, business as usual.

As he rubbed sleep out of his satiated eyes the next morning, he noticed a few missed calls. They were from his girl-friend. The two of them were college sweethearts, their love made sweeter by the fact that each had rebelled to be with the other, she against her entire family, and he against his own instinct.

But missed calls were of no consequence that day. This weekend was to be theirs, his and the painter's, no interruption big enough. They spent large parts of it talking to each other about this and that. From dreams to delusions, from poetry to playlists, they discussed it all, walking arm in arm, knowing they were away from all prying eyes.
He’d spoken to the painter about his girl-friend, and her hold on him. She was in love with him with an intensity that was all hers, he could never begin to reciprocate and they both knew that, to varying degrees. So far, he had stayed, drifting with the flow, but at the end of that idyllic weekend, as he alighted from the painter’s mustang and turned around to walk the few blocks to his home, he made his mind up to leave.

Things took a strange turn after that. She had not believed him, not that he wanted to leave, and especially not that it was for another man. So much so, that he’d had to fabricate another woman into existence, the one, the other, for whom he was purportedly leaving her.

Her, the woman who’d stuck with him through thick and thin, through his playing in seedy bars, and even on the streets; who’d left her plush existence behind just so that she could leave a trail of ash-filled whisky glasses in second grade motel rooms, accompanying him and his washed out talent, once so vibrant, like his love.

He realized that this was her narrative, her little story of betrayal, that gave her the strength to move on, fanning the flames of a love, that was all hers. He was a man of few words, unlike his painter, but in one of his more lucid moments, he’d spoken about the power of one-sided love, about its purity, its unadulterated longing, undivided by each individual’s interpretation, unbesmirched by expectations – lofty or mundane. He had felt a tiny swell of pride as the painter had watched him, solemn, struck by the loveliness of his words, haltingly spoken though they were.

***

Many years later, he came home one day, to find a letter from her, his one-time girl-friend, now wife, saying that she was leaving him, was, in fact, gone. It was a letter of love, of tender remonstrances, and deep deep pain. It ended with a thought, a shadow of another he himself had had long ago, on the power of unrequited love; the thought had undoubtedly made the rounds of much better company than his own in the intervening years, in being articulated much better, rather like an Urdu couplet than the broken introspection of a man of no importance such as himself, a mere DJ, DJ Ali.

The Jaipur Literature Festival, 2016

Okay. So I shake out my cold nervous fingers to get some heart back into them, a spiritual response to the gargantuan task of chronicling the phenomenon that was the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2016.

Here goes.

JLF, the world's largest free literary festival, is quickly becoming a must-do for us. We went for the first time in 2014, and left fascinated. 2015 saw yours truly participating in, and winning, one of their contests, and consequently becoming the recipient of free accommodation for the duration of the festival, but due to unforeseen circs, in the form of upset innards of the significant other, the year failed to see our jubilant selves at ye olde Diggi grounds. Though the final month of the year more than made up for the disappointing start, when we did the litfest circuit with IIMBUE at IIM Bangalore (though technically not a litfest, but a not-so-distant cousin) and the Times Lit Fest in Mumbai.
The shenanigans at these two are now the stuff of legend, and I am living in the hope that the day shall dawn when, in between writings of great import, of the suitability and non, of girls and boys, by dint of a charitable soul and a curious mind, a two-line or even less expansive missive will be scribbled and sent on wings of ether, to my inbox. Mr Seth, I live in the hope :)

2016 dawned bright and fair. Truly, it felt like the year of change. It was time to lay in stone this new family tradition, of the annual pilgrimage to dear ol' Diggi.

This time too, I tried taking part in the creative writing contests, 'tried' being key here as I found myself having exceeded the word count on the story, and having created a beast of no mean exoticity in the poem. Of course, one cannot discount the possibility of both of these being simply underwhelming, but intact entries they were not.

Under the tyranny of not having got anything for free, one fine day we saw our bank balance visibly shrink as hard-earned cash dissolved into plane tickets and hotel bookings. But you know, we are what you call - hedonists, out and proud.

So, we arrived in Jaipur on the third day of the fest, determined to stick around till Diggi shut its gates on us on day 5. The air was nippy with promise. Color shone everywhere. The sounds of silence had given way to erudite speech, with tent upon tent of people - curious, energetic, insatiable - people.

It was a magical three days. We have come a long way in the last two years, and the span of things that interests us now is much wider, the knowledge we already hold much deeper. Made the experience even more pleasurable. I am going to try and capture some key highlights here, and to make it palatable, let me do it via my favorite social media tool of the moment - the tweet.
Now I am quite a social media savant, wearing different accounts like a modern day Edward De Bono. At JLF this time, I decided to live tweet my observations, partly to have a lasting memory of the many ideas being thrown at me, and partly to engage with others similarly inclined. Turns out I ended up belting out more than a 100 tweets over the three days, and even won a prize for one or the other - a signed copy of one of William Dalrymple's books. Some consolation :)

So am going to pick out some of the more evocative tweets, and try and transport you to those sessions, those ideas.

"The next time you see a hijra on the road, and she isn't Laxmi, show her the same respect" - Jerry Pinto, at the end of the session with Laxmi, the famous hijra.
India is indeed at some strange crossroad today, on the one hand, an unconventional person like Laxmi beams into every middle class living room as part of the BiggBoss family and on the other, women are still raped for - simply existing. I saw the crowds interact with Laxmi that day, and she was like opium for the masses. They cheered her on, applauding all her provocative sound bytes, and paying her the biggest compliment of all - that of attention. There is no doubt that India is changing, changing out of its straitjackets into garments that allow movement, but the real test of its newly minted mindset will be when no family will feel compelled to throw their gender-bending child onto the streets.
In the meantime, my review of Laxmi's book - here.

"The public doesn't want to pay for media, leaves them to the mercy of advertisers, outside funding." - Shoma Choudhury during the debate on 'Trial by media'.
Now, Shoma C is a wonder woman. Rarely have I seen somebody with such well-thought out views about such contentious topics, The panel was one of journos, from Madhu Trehan to Avirook Sen. Trial by media, that insidious outcome of a damaging set of inputs, the inputs including the usual suspects, corporate interests, favoritism culture, governmental threat but the biggest of all, without which none of this would have been sustainable - the two-headed monster of public voyeurism and public apathy. The public craves sensation as if it were a drug, and in chasing that immediate gratification of having the fastest information, it does not stop to think if it is accurate information. Living in some sort of narcotic-induced haze, neither does it care for accuracy, nor does it want to pay for it. It is indeed tragic that today public sentiment can force media outlets to take unconsidered stances that have such disastrous effects on people's lives.

"The Arab spring has told the world that we are not happy and we are unwilling anymore to live in chains." - Mona Eltahawy, the revolutionary.
Yes, we had a flaming red-haired revolutionary on the panel for the debate 'Beyond the Arab Spring'. It spoke about whether the revolts having taken place in 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere had failed or whether they were simply seeds sown, waiting to reap fruit over time. It was an excellent panel, comprising academics with deep knowledge about the Middle East, immigrants impacted by the dictatorship regimes and revolutionaries ready to die for their cause. You know, there is such a marked difference in the way an academic speaks versus how a revolutionary speaks. While the academic infuses her speech with refinement, a flattening out of every statement in terms of intonation, even-sounding, the revolutionary speaks with a crescendo building up towards the end of every sentence, that feeds into her next, herself getting more and more impassioned with every argument, culminating into an explosion. In this case, it was an explosion of applause that greeted the end of every one of Mona E's fiery speeches. What an experience.

"He is not serious enough to have a sense of humor." - Oscar Wilde, channelized by Stephen Fry. It was mostly entertaining to listen to him, but at times, awe-inspiring as well. And what inspired awe in me was the same old chestnut that I have been struggling with for so long - a life spent in pursuit of what you really love to do - to be or not to be. Mr Fry is a case in point, as was Mr Wilde, one with a happier story than the other. Stephen Fry's reverence for Oscar Wilde is not unknown, but I had not known how deep a connect the former feels for the latter. It is amazing and gratifying to see people live on, immortalized in another's life, inspiring generations separated from one's own.

So these were some of the sessions I loved the most. There were a host of others that were equally thought-provoking, with panels ranging from lawyers to politicos, to doctors, and social workers. From talking about the possibility of a 'Partition museum' at the borders, to a new way of looking at geriatric care, from Shashi Tharoor's intellectual quips to his equally shameless BJP-bashing at the slightest chance, from Irving Finkel's witty enthusiasm to Desraj Kali's languorous irreverence, it was a feast for the mind, heart and soul.

And how can I end without touching upon the grand debate? The debate to end all debates, that took place at the end, as a fitting climax to the five days of stimulation. Well, that's what it was supposed to be, but it turned out to be a war zone with these usually sane individuals turning into rabble rousers. And as you know, it is mighty easy to rouse the rabble these days.

"Have never seen such a politicized atmosphere in India as in the India of today. Every debate is a debate of political affiliations." - Me.

So the debate was about Freedom of Speech and more importantly whether it should be absolute or not. It had entities such an Anupam Kher and Suhel Seth on the Nay, and Madhu Trehan, Salil Tripathi and Kapil Mishra on the Aye.
It was a crazy debate, surreal, with each speaker playing to get the maximum cheers, claps and whistles, trotting out flogged-to-death arguments that a high school student could have thought of. Some bits were illuminating like Madhu Trehan's examples from her early journalistic days and her information on why article 19 was laden with qualifiers (was due to Nehru's personal insecurities as per her, have to read up on this), as were some of Salil Tripathi's comebacks acerbic enough to raise a laugh. But mostly they all of them missed the essence, choosing to debate more about Freedom of Speech and less about its Absolute-ism.
It was fun though, good to see some good ol' punch-in-the-face tactics sometimes.

And so the event wound up, and one thing that stayed with me as the organizers and festival directors said their good-byes, was Namita Gokhale invoking that rarely called upon entity, Saraswati, to bless everyone.

When Bertie Met Jeeves

Guys, wrote this poem for a ‪#‎Zeejlf‬ contest. Reproducing here. Think not many may get the context given is based on two authors and their works. Will be ecstatic if proved wrong.

*******

    A knock on the door
Followed by light throat-clearing
Startled little Bertie
Shook him off his bearing
    Coz it was half past nine
In the Pollock household
But then you might ask
How was Bertie being so bold
    As to be up at this hour
with Mama Pollock next door?
Well, it was imperative
As he needed to make sure
    He needed to make sure
That his mum did not intend
To attend the school annual day
As the year wound to an end
    And you might be forgiven
For thinking ill of him
But if you knew the plight of B.Pollock
You'd not take a view so dim
    You see there was an essay
He’d written in ‘Evolved Thinking’ class
About (hypothetical) mothers who smothered
It’d been graded as well above pass
    And now as was the norm

It was to be displayed
At the year end jamboree
    It would be an understatement
To say his soul was afire
To prevent Mum from going
Was his only fervent desire
    Checking the RSVP box
On the frustrating invite
He saw a large green tick
That intensified his fright

    Right, back then to the knock -
dignified in timbre & beat
With heart beating hard
Bertie crept with silent feet
    He peeped through the keyhole
Saw a chap, tall & serene
And perhaps it was the angle..
But he had a pretty large bean
    Suddenly Bertie understood
It was the fellow from the papers
The one who promised
To clean up after capers
    Now Bertie was no average kid
He was well above par
On intellect & sensitivity
And he knew this was bizarre
    A chap from the papers?
He had certainly thought twice
Before ringing him up
And seeking his advice
    And here was the guy
Come down to assist
To save his mum the pain
And get her to desist
    So he let the fellow in
And a good decision it was
Coz even in mellow light
He looked imbued with cause
    He looked like a saviour
A sartorially impressive one
With a calm, intelligent face
And a head that weighed a ton
    And in quick hushed whispers
Bertie told the sordid tale
Never once did the man flinch, though
he might've gone a bit pale
    At the mention of the mother
His gaze did seem to haunt
As if recalling another world
Awash with strident aunts
    So Bertie stood politely
Till he returned to the now
‘Well Sir, this is quite a pickle.’
He said with raised brow
    But we shall find a way
To get Mrs Pollock to stay away
To put her off the notion
Of attending the annual day
    With that promise, he glid away

    A week hence this incident
A gent came home to talk
And it would not be amiss
To pronounce I.Pollock in shock
    You see she’d been propositioned
No, not of the indecent kind
But one that meant to compliment
Her apparently brilliant mind
    You see the national paper
Led by a Mr Reggie Jeeves
Wanted to do a piece
On I.Pollock & her peeves
    Capture her very essence
Get her views to share
And if you knew Irene Pollock
You’d know no paucity there
    And as you might guess
There was only the one day
When said interview could happen
Old Murphy again, you could say
    She tottered toward Bertie
With a deeply worried expression
Young Bertie was alarmed
He was a child with consideration
    Then she said to him,
‘Bertie, what dilemma!’
‘My life has become’
‘No less than comic cinema!’
    Attending your annual day,’
‘You know is so very vital!’
‘But to edify young Scotland’
‘Is bigger than any recital!!’
    And dear Bertie,’
‘I know you must feel so bad,’
‘But I have the only one chance’
‘And it simply must be had!’
    I shall make it up to you,’
‘My sweet boy so kind!’
‘My gracious polite son,’
‘Do you terribly mind?’
    Young Bertie kept his face
Steady as can be
And with sweetness & grace
Set his tortured mother free

    So it came to pass
D-day passed without comment
But Bertie learned a lesson
Of never to (accidentally) foment
    And he remained forever grateful
To Mr Reginald, that gent so sage
Especially when his mum’s article
Featured on The Scotman’s front page

Potential to Kinetic

Find what you like
Not like what you find
No, don't you just settle
No, don't be that kind
(of person)
You are so lucky
The world's at your feet
Opportunity's round the corner
Believers crowd your street
So, COME OUT NOW
Out of your bubble
Folk that pull u down
They're just pure trouble
You don't need anyone
But yourself, I kid u not
U do have to work
At figurin' what u're about
But once that's done
Or even half-way through
Just start from there on
Ur journey ho gayi shuru

And there comes a time
In everybody's life
When u gotta get simply -
- fed up of the strife
You are SO much
So find your own synergy
And help ur Potential
Become Kinetic energy

****
Hope we all find occupation that is a natural extension of ourselves and of our unique passions. Nothing else should do.