[A Mouthful of You]

City streets on the window, Are reflections of this day: Passing people, cabs and buses, Memories of urgent lovemaking Dissolving into shades of gray.

Ominous flash of sheet lighting, Twitching branches of birds and trees, Dull honking of vehicles and desires. The world, Darling, falls away when my mouth Fills up with pieces of you just as the windows Are obliterated by the splashing rain.

Written to the soundtrack of ‘Before The Rain’

[Calling Beatrice]

It’s raining over the sea, the world Becomes the sea, you are the sea. What fruit of sadness do you hold? It spills out of your black eyes Smelling of burnt camphor.

I am at the window counting days On the grille - an abacus of water. Fishermen are hauling in their catch, Forms and voices lost in the bi-directional spray. Will you, Darling, ascend from the deeps Or descend from the heights? Answer For I will know which water to drink

Written to the soundtrack of ‘Il Postino’

That small patch of your cheek shivers in that cold touch, and you giggle within, the warm breath and the cold of the red nose swim over each other like two seas dancing together for the sky to see. I look for such love and such lovers in wide-open fields and I see none. So you, me and a Dog named Love and a Horse named Lover crossed over to the field to fill it up with unseen flowers.

When do we ever grow Lover asked me. And I turned to you. You twisted little blades of grass around Love's paw and laughed at Lover who sighed a soft sigh, only as soft as horses can be. I grew when I slept. Everyday, the picture was colored a little more. When I was awake, the years seemed to swirl around me, and at night, they swept over the bedcovers and entered me through my little toes.

When the babies will be born, Love can watch them grow. For Love in later years, wants to look at young things grow in the shade of wild trees. Love stretches its neck for me to scratch it and I laugh as it yawns into the cold Sun's face. When I close my eyes, it is suddenly night. And I open them, and daylight, strangely resembling the softness of moonlight, floods in and the eyelids feel like red curtains.

Far away, small button size leaves find their way into Lover's mouth. You, me, a Dog named Love and a Horse named Lover have often been here, in our search for a house to live in. But the house played hide and seek and hid in corners not yet touched by daylight. Love and Lover then look for that small house and we sit under trees counting falling leaves.

Kutti was my female alter-ego/shadow, whom fate or whatever causes people to run into each other, caused to dash into me. However after I left India, our collisions grew errant and have then ceased, almost. I had discovered her unique poems, stories, wonders, what are they?, earlier today, so here they are.

Flying, floating, tumbling spirits sit on windowsills and watch the world go by. The city moves as if remote controlled, and in this vast space of bricks, love, tar and tears, stories grow like tendrils over old buildings. New names interposed with ancient emotions. Luck like errant drizzles pours over some stories, and the others remain stunted and invisible.

Marathi, like little pebbles playing noughts and crosses inside a tincan, finds itself thrown in the open streets. Do you want to buy watermelons or bangles today, Ananth? Ananth, the one who doesn’t end. Bombay moved, and he stood still. Infinitely still, in the flurry of madness all around him.

Kavya, the poem and the poet walked the same city. Neither mirrors nor movement betrayed the poem within. Small windows to her small room. The sunlight barely enters, and then the sun moves. Time has such an effect on most, they move. They change.

How much water must we pour for this tendril? How must this story grow? Green and leafy, or tangled and dry?

The infinite will be old in some years. For some time now, the wind has been playing with the lines of the palm of his hand. Lines that yawn and stretch out, lying tangled like fallen leaves from mango trees. Some that promise fortune, and some that promise unpredictability.

As one grows older lines appear all over the being. Its almost as though that God forgets that the palms are not enough to be records of every laugh laughed and every tear shed, and then the ripeness runs through and bursts like small tributaries. Everywhere.

Poems are young, so young that the ink that crafted them never dries. And they talk of the most ancient feelings. They are like precocious children who stand and roll in the mud talking of dialectical materialism.

Yesterday, Kavya bought a dozen eggs. Ramnath told her that he would sell the eggs for seventeen rupees and no less, and she fought with him. And tired of bargaining endlessly for space and justice, she resigned herself to 15 rupees instead. He growled and told her that he didn’t have change, when she flashed a pink twenty-rupee note in his face. So she took out the carrom coin like 5 rupee coin, and in return, he gave her a ten-rupee note.

Day before yesterday, Anant had been eating an omlette with onions and coriander. The omlette-bun cost him eight rupees, and he gave a ten rupee note to the omlette maker. What a curious label, an omlette maker. Book maker, Money maker, Peace maker and Omlette maker. Omlette Maker bought ten eggs at a trader’s discount, and the ten rupees landed in Ramnath’s hands, and it sat squat in his tin box. The infinite and the poem were connected through an albumin and yolk smelling ten-rupee note.