The light blub gave out on me this evening. I don't know when. I had left in on since the last evening. I had closed the blinds as tightly as I could against any daylight afterwards. I just didn't want to know what time it was. I ate an hour ago after thirty hours or so. I wish my body didn't know what hunger was. Then this room would be a perfect tomb. Hermitically sealed.

Two hours ago (what are two hours I wonder, what are two months, what are two centuries?) I had opened the windows and saw that it was dark outside. The trees stand in a hushed attention outside, each red leaf, distilled to a rich color,waiting to fall in preperation for the winter. I have been doing something like that. I have slept, for god only knows, how many hours. A darkness to block out other darknesses. Someone said I seem to be well adjusted to be a poet, who she termed tortured souls. I was ashmed at myself.

Is the mask I wear, working so well? Are they no chinks, no cracks in the wall through which my bones might give witness to what I really am? I should know better. I guess I have gotten good at this. Tear ducts have stopped working well. So in the absence of any lubrication, I escape by closing them out to the dry landscape of the soul. Things are working well and equilibirum is acheived. Why disturb it with agitation, by taking a knife or a blade to the veins? Why leave any more bloody marks on carpets in these houses I am passing through? Let every sentence end with a question mark. Let "." be banished from the language.

Somethings are better left raw just as some things are better and bitter, eaten raw. Mangoes for instance, green mangoes. Or sugarcane eaten raw. The rawness of the mangoes tingles the teeth so much so that they hurt. And while chewing sugar cane, as the sweetness sinks downwards, in the gullet, the unaccoustomed tounge is cut raw, red. Maybe what I have experienced is something like this. Maybe even life is like this.

I have sent my emotions out into the space, to take a walk. I imagine they are flying over all the cities of the world. Manhattan, San Francisco, Bombay, Casablanca, Copenhegan and finally standing on the piers of Howarh Bridge in Calcutta, that dark city that lives with wounds so deep that the air quivers with a smell of anguish that pervades everything and from which escape is impossible. Where Kali, the terrible Mother godess, is worshipped every harvest and whose clay idols are set adrift in the river Hoogly when the festival is over.

Now I am the core of a frozen glacier that is slowly breaking apart at the seams awaiting the sudden collaspse into the waters, in a thunderous crash of white foam or some kind of release.

Goodnight.

Last night I went out and celebrated sadness. We celebrate joy but we don't celebrate sadness given that perhaps sadness is a much more authentic emotion we feel. One can fake happiness but rarely can one fake or would want to fake sadness.

It was a Sitar concert, Hindustani classical music. A few raagas that were played are, Raag Shaam Kalyan,Jihnjhoti, Ameer and Misra Pilu. It was an ecstatic experience, a journey to the roots, which defines who I am. Given the inherently turbulent and confusing times I had been going through, such a journey was very welcome. And now I sit here listening to Mirza Ghalib, the unrivalled master of Ghazal.

The ghazal goes something like this:

dil-e-naadaaN tujhe huaa kya hai ? aaKHir is dard kee dawa kya hai

O unbelmished heart, what has happened to you? And what is the medicine for this ache?

hamko unse wafa ki hai ummeed jo naheeN jaante wafa kya hai

Fidelity, I had expected from her, one who doesn't know what fidelity means.

ham haiN mushtaaq aur woh bezaar ya ilaahee ! yeh maajra kya hai?

(mushtaaq = interested, bezaar = displeased/sick of)

I am interested and she is displeased! O God! why these dilemas of the heart?

jab ki tujh bin naheeN koee maujood fir ye hangaama, 'ei KHuda ! kya hai

And given that there was none but her, then all this turmoil, O God, why?

dil-e-naadaaN tujhe huaa kya hai ? aaKHir is dard kee dawa kya hai

O unbelmished heart, what has happened to you? And what is the medicine for this ache?

Joy! Sashi

Sunday morning, I wake up to a rain washed sky and air that is steadily become cooler. There is so much silence at this window and more than silence, stilness. This in the place of last night's agitation. How soon the stroms pass, the rain falls and the sun comes out. Everything is it's place.

Last evening I spent wandering around the bookstore. I walked down to it, a distance of a little over 4 miles. That road, Ponce, depresses me every time I walk down it. Whores, winos, drug pushers, staring vacant eyes, deep blue eyes behind a veil of smoke, probing asking a question, what do you want and how much will you pay for that? Folks shuffling down the stained sidewalks, "Howdy brother? Got a dollar?". Smell: there is a smell to that road, smell of smoke, urine, of vomit, of spilt beer. I was thinking of De Niro in "The Taxidriver" and his dialogue, "I wish that these streets are washed clean".

But then I caught myself, am I any different from these shells, these hulks that were floating up and down the street? Don't the same rivers, except maybe in a transformed sense run within me? I am listening to Tracy Chapman's New Begining as I write this and as I do, I recall the various emotions that were coursing through my body. Anger, humilation, lounging and loneliness. Are there any different from what those winos on the street feel, day in and day out? This is too much noise and I am tuning out for now. On to Tracy's beutiful song....

........remembering your touch, your kiss, your warm embrace I will find my way back to you, please say that "I will be waiting for you"......