Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Kari And Ruth

When I'm with you, it feels so wrong, it feels so right
When I'm with you, I feel what you say, I say nothing at all
When I'm with you, I want to remember, I want to forget
When I'm with you, I want to surrender myself, I want to be free
When I'm with you, I reveal myself, I hide their true lies
When I'm with you, you understand, they interpret
When I'm with you, everything's clear, reality is blurred
When I'm with you, I rise in love, I fall from grace.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Images In My Mind

A magician conjuring up a bird from a handkerchief and then, the bird flying off into the air...like our thoughts...

Me and Shreya in a box labeled "Unbreakable"...like our friendship...

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Of Cab Drivers

You know how, in movies and music videos, cab drivers are always friendly? Well, that’s what’s on my mind right now. In the video of Dido’s song ‘Let’s do the things we normally do’ the cab driver in question is a woman (ka-ching!) and not just any woman but Shahana Goswami (once again, ka-ching!). She happens to be a witness to the lives of all her passengers. When one of them gets a call confirming a job that he had applied for, Miss Goswami joins him in a little jig of joy on the beach. In another instance of cab-driver-friendliness she leads an old woman into a coffee shop whose trail is littered with memories.

In the movie ‘Bong Connection’ Parambrata Chatterjee – the latest Sector V employee to be shipped off to ‘Aamerika’ – befriends a Bangladeshi cab driver who, despite being an illegal immigrant, gets to sleep with a bevy of gorgeous women. His story is supposed to be heart-breaking…He’s always on the run from the cops and all he really wants to do is earn a living ‘honestly’ so that he can go back to Bangladesh and see his daughter again.

But in real life cab drivers aren’t anything like that. They never tell you that life is a loom. They only play stupid bilingual Punjabi-English rap numbers when you’re desperately unhappy, dying to get home and take a hot shower and craving for some time to be alone with your thoughts on the way. It just breaks my heart.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Happy Ending

“Don’t tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams,
I don’t want to weep.
Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other from a lifetime of cares.” - Joan Baez

They met like any two strangers. She decided to close her eyes on the world that she used to live in. They built an alternate reality together. She found reasons to smile about. It wasn’t love. It was the satisfaction you feel in knowing that someone will be there to bear witness to your life, laugh at your jokes, make you dream.
Then he moved away. He lives alone in a forest now. He misses her. She lives in a world where, everyday, someone wants to serve her oblivion on a sugar cube. She misses him. She knows that life is beautiful – as beautiful as teardrops on a pillow in the light of the moon. She still laughs. Lately she’s been restless. She’s been muffling the screams that almost escape her lips when she lets her guard down.
A month more must they keep the matchstick alight. A month more. And then they can bathe together under a waterfall as if they’re free. Then can she be who he wants her to be again.
Oh, Time! Listen to the silence. Let not the west wind rise yet.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Of 'Iris'

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to forget yourself? To forget what you do? Forget who your friends are? Forget what a spoon is? That’s what Iris Murdoch dealt with in her struggle against Alzheimer's disease and Judy Dench brought it to life beautifully – so beautifully that it hurt to watch it. The scene that particularly touched me was where a postman came to deliver letters and Iris had forgotten what it was that this man who brought the letters was called. When John Bayley (played by Jim Broadbent) reminded her that he was called a postman, she followed him around listlessly saying, “It’s only the postman. It’s only the postman”.
After her friend Janet’s funeral, while she and John were driving back home, she got restless and panicky and threw herself out of their car. John immediately got off to look for her and ended up falling as well. While rolling about in the dirt, he bumped into a heap on the ground which turned out to be Iris. Iris then laboriously said, “I...love…you”.It made me laugh.It made me cry.And that’s what makes a scene truly powerful.
Iris wasn’t your conventional novelist-and-philosopher. She was openly bisexual. She believed in free love. She was fiercely independent. She didn’t care what people said. In one particular scene, John woke up in the middle of the night and asked iris who she was with then. He claimed to hate her. Iris just touched him lightly on his upper arm and he calmed down.
John always remained in awe of Iris (like the rest of the world) , even when she died a peaceful death with him at her side.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

If you're asking me for help-

It's hard for me to save you when I can't even save me from myself.
I'm still pretending to know the answers to the questions that people ask.
Well, I'm only deceiving the flowers in the breeze.
I'm nobody's true north,
nobody's reason to change,
nobody's season to change.
I'm only the blind man's blackness,
the deaf man's silence,
the sick man's cancer.
And one day when I don't roll anymore
I'll reach that place no one knows how to find on their own
and I'll know how I gave forever to the ones I touched and kept.

Monday, February 15, 2010

POEM TO AN ALMOST BOYFRIEND

Yesterday was everything it promised to be-

I saw you again accidentally.

You called out to me with that voice I once knew

And it brought back memories hidden from view,

From the farthest spaces of my mind-

All the thoughts I’d left behind.

I thought you’d always be there to catch me when I fall,

You’d always be there to answer my call

But when I wept for you that night in the dark

And I realized all of it was falling apart,

You closed yourself up like you always do

And I knew for sure I’d lost you.

You never touched me, I don’t know if you wanted to

But as to what it is you wanted, I hadn’t a clue.

You gave me so many subtle signs

But the truth is you failed to define

What you wanted me to be for you.

You weren’t perfect but I can’t blame you

I was too late; we both know it’s true.

You screamed out when I hurt you, but I turned a deaf ear

Now all that is past, it’s been about a year.

I still think of you suddenly in the middle of a crowd

And back to haunt me come all my doubts.

But I steady myself; I’m not as weak as they say

We’ll always have our memories; no one can take them away.

If we meet again, say, ten years from now

(I don’t know where that might happen or how)

I promise you this; once again we’ll find ourselves-

The way we used to be-on memory aisle’s dusty shelves.

We’ll make those moments special and they’ll get me through

The rest of my life without regretting my encounters with you.

P.S. You punctuate me!


Monday, February 8, 2010

HUNGER

(Inspired by the movie 'Blood Diamond' and the Live 8 concerts before the G8 summit)

After a hard day's work at the diamond fields,
they come home and this time they won't yield
to their mother's lame excuses,her borrowed time
"We want food!",in unison their voices chime
"We don't want hot water with shards of wood.
We want something to chew upon,mother,we want real food.
You can't tranquilize us anymore promising food when we wake,
The hustlers down in the fields have taught us,it's all fake.
They've taught us-if we want our bread,we have to induce fear
into the minds of those who claim they love us and they care.
So here we are,back with the Master's gun
Let us know when your cooking is done.
To our hearts' content,we'll have our fill
and then we'll go back down the hill
to the river where our sweat and blood flows,
where cruelty speaks and anything goes.
Your fairytales never taught us how the real world works
Only the hustlers' ambition could do that,for in our nightmare lurks
the mad cracking of the Master's leather whip
and if you ever wondered,that's why we scream in our sleep..."

Saturday, January 16, 2010

If asked to give an acceptance speech

Inspired by a sequence in the movie 'Capote'

Awards do not make life worthwhile but I’d like to live a few years more to see how people react to my receiving this one. Crazy is each of us, amplified. I’ve been near my highest truth for as long as I can remember, only I haven’t known what that means. I would like to thank everyone who has handled my Veronica-isms over the years. I wouldn’t have, so the fact that you did means a lot to me. This is my chance to be heard and I’d like to say-don’t believe the truth and make the world a simpler place. Goodnight.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Of 'The Catcher In The Rye'(ignoring the digressions,of course)

I just finished reading ‘The Catcher In The Rye’ by J.D.Salinger. I don’t see how it could have made anyone want to kill anyone else. Supposedly Lennon was assassinated by someone who read it and wanted to preserve Lennon’s innocence. I can’t, for the life of me, remember the name of the movie I saw that in. All I know is Philip Seymour Hoffman played the killer. He was fantastic in ‘Capote’ too. I really wanna call old Phil up and have a conversation with him. Somehow I’ve been trying hard to understand the inside workings of psychopaths’ minds since last February. I guess it’s just my way of trying to figure out what I have in common with them. They’re special. I wish I was too. I wanna read the lyrics of ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. It all makes sense now.

I can’t really identify with Holden Caulfield too much. I mean, I get the fact that he finds almost everything boring. But other than that, there’s not too much in common between us. I wouldn’t want to have a conversation with him. He wouldn’t wanna have one with me either, I’ll bet. Hell, he doesn’t even exist! But it’s nice to be naïve once in a while and think about non-existent stuff. Non-existent people too. Sugata Da, I miss you. Did you know that? I bet you think I’m lying. I wish I could have caught you when you jumped off the edge. I wish I could’ve been the catcher in the rye. I wish I’d known how to save a life. Those Monday night conversations keep coming back to me. And your five-word suicide note. It was so you. It’s been 13 months. I’m still angry. There may be just one good thing that came about because of your not taking me along-I got to read ‘The Catcher In The Rye’. It made me realize stuff. I don’t wanna say what. It’ll depress you. Anyway, it’s been nice talking to you after so long… One last question: Were you the one who made my head spin in bed last night?