Ten years later, I look at a letter from my friend. I remember that curvy loopy handwriting, artistic and idealistic. He was writing from some remote village in Gujarat, India. He says that he has only little time left to finish the letter I am reading, before the sun sets in the distance, beyond the valley behind the River Narmada. He says the sun is so beautiful and so bright there unlike in Bombay. Bombay where we were students together, living next door to each other in those dorms, filled with Pink Floyd and the best damn minds in India and perhaps the world. He says this letter would have be to carried on foot for about thirty kilometers before it can be dropped in the nearest post box. He also says that since he couldn't really afford to pay the postage of fifteen rupees for air mail and that Namrata, one of his friends persuaded him to allow her to pay for the postage. He writes that he is waiting for the rains, waiting for the dam waters to raise. He says he is awaiting death by drowning. He says that he dreams of making love to a woman one more time before he dies. He says he smokes cheap beedis and hopes that I have stopped smoking.

He says he was beaten a week ago in the middle of the night. He says he still can't believe if grotesqueness of power is real or surreal. He says he remembers crying out in pain when his skull broke open like a coconut when the police baton fell upon his head. He says he was anointed in blood. He says some days he doesn't understand what he is doing, because on some days he doesn't have food to eat but then he says is not alone in his hunger. He says the bellies of kids are protruding and misshapen because of malnourishment. He says the hired goons of dam builders burnt this year’s crop to drive people out of their homes. He says he is waiting for those bellies to crack open like pots. He says he is waiting for archeologists to move in to excavate graves and carbon date these piles of walking bones. He says he feels so much anger at times that he feels like killing the assholes. He says that he has learned how to meditate and control his rage. He says he keep remembering King’s I have a dream speech and feels strong. He asks how is that America, one he so dearly loved?

He says he hasn't heard any rock music in ages but adds that he was learning folk songs from Aakash. He says Aakash is what the World Bank calls an indigenous person, a tribal whose hut he had been living in since a month. He says that finally his grandfather's communist roots have got to him. He says on some evenings when the Milky Way unfurls over the hills like Aladdin’s flying carpet he remembers the lights of Manhattan off Brooklyn Bridge. He says the stars are much more beautiful though. He asks how is Becky? Becky was his partner in crime, the impulse behind his guitaring. He was a beautiful guitarist. Beck was a woman we both loved, but he more than me.

What should I write back I wonder? Should I write I have become the boss of my own division? Should I write I am the planning lead for the NASA's mission to Mars? Will any of it make sense? Are our journeys even comparable? His, into this horrifying world I can't even comprehend. Is that any less wonderful in sheer reality than in putting man on another planet?

And what should I write about Becky? That now she is a lawyer and the head honcho for intellectual property in one of the big three drug companies? That she is the lead negotiator and the spokesperson who beats the hell out of tin pot dictator of some African country for breaking patents but who needs the drugs to which she metaphorically holds the keys, because he realized that if he doesn't pour drugs into his country, soon he will have none left to brutalize? That she is married to a lobbyist and has a sweet daughter called Angela to whom she is stranger, who in fact calls her Mexican nanny mom? I met her four years ago in Washington DC and I was left wondering was this the Becky we knew? What is this twist of fate, you went to the left, she to the right leaving me stuck in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, really deep down too afraid to go anywhere?

Remember how we used to take the bus down from Cornell, Becky in the middle of two Indian guys, laughing at us, when we opened our mouths staggered by the lights. Now I don't even notice the light anymore whenever I go to New York which I try to avoid. They say that New Yorkers do it in cabs, in rest rooms, on park benches in Central Park. And I remember our visit to this village, I don't recall it's name now, it has been so long, out of Panvel , that hiking trip where we unexpectedly came upon this girl taking a bath in a green slimy pond and how she scrambled for her ragged sari to cover herself. That was the first time I saw a naked woman and I still am horrified. Is there any link between people fucking their minds out in the upper deck of the Yankee Stadium and that element of fear we saw in that girl's eyes, in that slum, that feeling of being trapped by strange eyes? I have been running from the country for years and yet still it stays all over me, just like this skin I can’t discard. Am I becoming sentimental here?

My Daily Notes

The new love poem is known for its honesty. The new love poem says I don't love you.

The new love poem remembers the old love poem in which a woman's body was compared to the entire world. The new love poem tries not to feel superior to the old love poem.

The new love poem can live on a steady diet of bitter fruit. The new love poem thinks sweets are for children.

When the new love poem sleeps, it dreams of getting old, of shriveling to a chrysalis, of something with wings and color so loud it talks emerging to thrill someone who doesn't know any better and who doesn't want to.

---

Perfect poem for a night when sleep is impossible.

2002:09:01 04:00

Big Book Of Poetry

ALVY'S VOICE-OVER After that it got pretty late. And we both hadda go, but it was great seeing Annie again, right? I realized what a terrific person she was and-and how much fun it was just knowing her and I-I thought of that old joke, you know, this- this-this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much how how I feet about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and ... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.

From the movie, ANNIE HALL

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