Thursday, June 16, 2005

Pish Pry

The weather changed and they hauled in a big catch. A piss off commented that he might try putting a jellyfish on bread and eat it, but Tari was already gazing out Eastwards. She was so exactly across the world from where she first washed ashore as an infant that she was just as far from home anyway she looked (discounting the polar flattening of the earth of course). She shook reminisence out of her eyes and asked the writhing fish to join her for dinner. They all seemed to jump out the container as she apologises "I have place for just one in my oven". She picked up a fish and put him in her pocket. Head sticking out, he looked to the heavens and fish-mouthed a thank you and turned on his headlights to face the tunnel.

She smiled as she added haldi and laal mirch to the lacerations she had made in this fish flank. In indian cooking, the wait between the frying pan and the fire was a long one. One smile down and three more to go. She no longer enjoyed smiling and felt a sense of betrayal as fishermen made offerings at temples dedicated to her. Here she was smiling among gizmos and central heating while the tide turned on Konkani fishermen and fish alike.

The day her menstual cycles kicked in, there was a storm. Aetheist fishermen were swept away and swallowed whole by the sea destined to reincarnation as sole fish floundering around at the bottom of the sea with an eyes atop to testify that they had finally seen the light. From that day on, the tides changed each time she smiled.

Bashkako the blind Malabari had fished her out of the shallow reefs when groping around for sea slugs as he was known to do on the exposed reefs of Ratnagiri. He ran home ecstatic to his barren wife catch in hand. Dada - as she now called him professed that he had learned to see with his hands since the first time he held Tari - but that he also saw pain and vowed not to fish again. He still enjoyed the essence of rawas in his par boiled rice but massacred only vegetables from that day on.

She had laughed in the monsoon rains and turned tides to chaos. Big men from small countries took measuremnts and gave fancy names to her mood swings. El nino, La nina, ENSO phalana phalana. When dada died, aai followed his ashes out to sea. They were reborn as plankton - drifting, rising, falling, eating and being eaten. Tari was adopted by a stray anthropologist who took her across the sea to keep her smile away from the eyes of prdatory men. The one story they didnt tell her was of Issa bhai and his penile disfunction ever since the day he insisted on offering her place on his lap in the local bus.

Neap tides came with every period and spring tide with ovulation. She bled every new moon and meteriologists held on to their beleifs a month longer.


She had felt it coming and was only half surpised to note the absence of a surge in tides the last time she made love. "Tsunami Baby number 636 adopted by Konkan family" read a newspaper column. The sea was suspicious of her and seemed almost disillusioned by the predictability with which she had taken to smiling thes last 10 years. For Tari, it gave her reason to live life burdened by gravity on land. She was due a thousand reincarnations high on the food chain but resisted the temptation to drown herself. Her job, thermal underwear and passion for quiltmaking were only ways to mark time. Real joy happened when she smiled.

She savoured every bite of the fish this morning, adding salt as indulgence. Sea godesses binge on salt. She sat down and listed 3 reasons why she might smile today were she to need them. She took a deep breath and prepared herself for the test. Whatever the outcome, she could not afford to show emotion this way or that lest the wives of fishermen loose faith or appreciation for her work.

Her urine sparkled in the glass vial as she swirled it round in anticipation of the colour developer. The first drop was tentative. The second questioning. The third spelt out motherhood.

Walking back to the fishing pier, she sensed a young girls confidence in the tide. It was no longer her. Baby 636 had take over. She asked a Chinese deck hand and joked about whether he could drop her off at India."If you can pay" he said grinning at her breasts. She shook her head and walked on towars the seaward end of the pier. "I'd rater swim" she said and jumped off the end. The deck hand ran to the edge and waited for something to surface too busy to see a manta ray barrel roll away in its new found freedom. It was a short flight from here to India and the catering was good all the way through.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Love story in F sharp

It starts with a mint and ends with one. Mint - accomplice to all evil. Cigarettes and Alcohol shed their machismo and hide behind stunning mint breath as it changes seasons. I am a sinner with winter in my mouth.

If there were a God, I would have congratulated him. That God dosent exist, I can better understand her beauty as freak chance. I can better appreciate the fact that she wears an aura of the improbable around her. Improbable that the day I was to meet her, would overwhelm me with bad luck and beat my bumpy ego into shape to receive the news - the final piece in this puzzle of gray.

I never read much as a child. That leaves me disabled to this date. Reading signals wrong in an accent only an alien with a taste for human flesh might relate to, i have a collection of emotional faux pas to pass on to my granchilren. I have booked my one way ticket to mars some distance from the window. I quite content not seeing the Earth disappearing from view.

It went thus. Mint - obsession - mint ..........and all was over. She has a man in her life and I have a row of poetic fragments eagerly lined up whom ill have to disappoint. "Not today Yates ke chhate aulaad - there will always be opportunity in future". I must console myself thus - perfection never knocks twice at the same door. Wait at thy neighbours or repaint your door.

Its a strange ending but after one beer they all live happily ever after.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Teething

If I had a million for every perfect tooth that lived in her mouth Id have 31 million. Not enough for the fortune five hundred but enough to roll many joints with having run out of paper or the use for it. There is that one wisdom tooth thats off to the East, beauty is in the mouth of the beholder. None of my wisdom teeth are currently talking to each other and face away in permanent stalemate.

Were these our milk tooth days, i might serenade her with the strange dizzyness of my head and she might respond with tolerance. But now i make desperate advances lest i be left behind. She smiles and im smitten again.

Double guessing hasnt changed. She loves me - she loves me - she loves me- she loves me - she loves me not. Dandelions in a 5 beater taal. I might never get an odd time signature but these are days of miracle and wonder. She loves me not everytime. Were these teeth new, she might have braces and i might be saved the heartache. I might buy her colour co-ordinated rubberbands to complement the hazelnut in her eyes. I could stare at her eyes till the braces come off but time pulls at my pants like a child posessed by candyfloss .

Another wench, another dandelion. She loves me - she loves me - she loves me not. 3 beater - waltz - oom pa pa, oom pa pa. She turns me on so that I might want to eat masala fried peanuts off the ocean of tan that lesser mortals call her navel. But I waltz with precision. I am a snapdragon not a dandelion. While I wear my inner beast on my slleve, i must profess that my snap is worse than my dragon. Masala peanuts roll off my callused hands into my mouth.

I am as tragic in summer as I am in winter. Then i dreamed of pumpkin boiled golden. Now it is masala peanuts. But its summer time and my fish is jumping. The living isnt any easier and my daddy isnt rich. I might spew blue effervescent venom to blind all who even so much as look at it. Her teeth and hazelnut eyes keep me from erupting.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

3 ages of artistic indulgence

Despite art being indulgence, we ratoinalise our need for it with arguments only rivaled by those offered when picking up a cigarette after having quit. Talking cosmos to justify my scribbling comes easy. Today however I balance drunkenly on the ledge that separates the last two phases of literary art.

Alas all ye wasted MBAs, for there are only 3 phases in my component analysis of literary art. No abbreviations can be used to describe just 3 phases without highlighting deeper desires to sound qualified. I wouldnt know my nuts from my noggin when it comes to the history of literature, but being frivolous leaves me expert enough to make as many phases as I please. Three is my lucky number.

Phase 1. (I read in class 2)

Phase 1 must unfortunately must be the polluting of ones mind wirh other peoples verse. Art dosent come naturally to junta - we must learn to waste time in a truly wasteful manner. I often wondered why there exist no good bookd for adolescent boys. I now realise that for those not indoctrinated early into the arts (like me), Jerking off is a perfectly good alternative. To date, I jerk off better than I read. Alas we must learn to read, appreciate, deconstruct critique and then add write more syllables that time dosent give a flying fig for. I now consider what ive read as achievement, while my seed lies unsown and my selfish genes are fast admitting failure. I read Dr Sseuss after a long time yesterday and am quite convinced that since 400 words communicate more to me than the few thousand of other books ive read, that this phase must necessarily have ended..

Phase 2. (Mai bhi Machiavelli) or Yan can write so can you

Phase 2 "my shit is candy" normally happens when we mature enough to realise that almost everyone is overrated. That Arnold can become senator andRabri devi often adds Habeas Corpus to her cattlefeed. So you write 2 lines and someone says he sees shakespeare in them. Of course he was hinting at plagiarism but jo bhagwan karta hai.... woh theek karta hai. And so of course you begin writing. A different age might have looked upon an artist destroying his creation as dramatic/tragic/poetic in some way. Today we preserve every turd of creativity as bits and bytes that this automatised art arsehole churns out. So bankrupt are we that we expect an organisation to confer awards of creativity on authors even though they couldnt come up with anything better than "the booker prize" themselves.


Phase 3 (Painting is creating but im just erasing, crystal clear canvas is my masterpiece)

Returning a thought to the recesses of your mind where it can take on its original form - not tied down by fancy words and rules of grammar. In my mind there exists no place for full stops - just round and round and round and round - like that. No bachche mustnt cage thoughts, after all they also have feelings. On my birdday i will take all the caged thoughts on my computer and set them free. No more fear of entering 'my documents' for fear that i might encounter my self as other see me. Delete karo. If i need to be poetic, I shall spout Jethro tull for he has paid poetic dues for half of humanity. I shall use my backspace to rewrite many pieces. Its amazing how easy brevity really is. I asked ex girlfriends to return letters so I could incinerate them. For once these women seem to have co-operated - in advance.

Cleaned out shelving on my hard disk makes me wonder what to fill them up with next. I no loger store pornography so filling them up will be tougher. I pick my nose as i wonder. Today id like an e-booger to stick on the underside of my empty writing shelves so i can once again proclaim them to be my own while i think.