Ethics

“Appa…”

“Hmm!” said appa, without looking up from his newspaper.

She was about to go back into her room. He did not seem to be noticing that either. She stood there hesitating for a minute. A sneeze startled appa’s attention. And a bout of sneezes continued to rock his constitution.

At the end of it, he was too shaken up to go back to his newspaper. And she kept standing there.

He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time in his house. He said “Yeah?” “Are you waiting to talk to me?”

She nodded.

“What?” said appa. She was quiet.

There was a very amused, curious expression on appa’s face. He started biting his nails.

She said, “I have fever..”

Appa said, “Oh!” He had been too distanced from her to feel her forehead and check if she was running a temperature.

“I have no idea what to do.” said appa. He sounded genuinely confused and mildly distressed at his own inability to help.

She said, “No! Anyways I take two antibiotics everyday. I’ll just go to sleep now.”

Appa was slightly alarmed. It showed in his dilating pupils. Now he was thinking.

“What about office?” “Have you informed them?” Now he began thinking she is feigning a fever to escape work.

“Yeah I just text messaged my colleague. The air conditioner at work is too strong and directly over my head. I don’t want to go there and aggravate my fever”

“I see!” Appa was thinking hard. “Why don’t you take a scarf with you? Or a sweater?”

“No, pa” she said, “It is neither so cold you should wear a sweater, nor so warm you can go there with a fever. It is damp there..”

“What is happening with your current project at work?” asked appa.

“Umm.. we are still in the initial phase..” She cleared her throat because something seemed to be choking there. She coughed now.

“Will they be ok with it if you don’t go.. I mean, you’ve just started off with your new project and everything” Appa was trying really hard to sound concerned, polite and persuasive at once.

“Is your fever so significant that you can’t go to work?” appa asked.

She was quiet. Her throat felt dry and irritated. Some germs must be having a rock show running in there, she imagined.

“I’m going to sleep, pa” she said. “I’ve body ache”

“Fine.” said appa curtly. “I have some interesting stuff to read in this newspaper.” He went back to his paper.

She went into her room and shut the door. She called her best friend who was never there when she wanted him.

“Hello” she said.

“Hi” said he.

“Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” she asked cautiously. Time with her best friend was always rationed out according to his needs.

Surprisingly, he said, “Yes!”

“What would you say if I said I have fever and I’m not going to work?”

“Go to sleep and take rest. Take care of yourself”

“What about somebody who says, ‘Is your fever so significant, you can’t go to work?'”

“That person is really concerned.”

“About what? My work?”

“Yeah!”

“But that person has nothing to do with my office or my work”

“Who was it? Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“He has good work ethics.”

She talked to him for a few more minutes and for some unknown reason he hung up on her abruptly. He did not answer the two calls she made after that.

She had nowhere to go. So she wrote everything down.

Redness Imposed

I’m a chair. I don’t exactly remember when or how I was born. I had been too young then to begin the drudgery of assimilating ideas or accumulating memories. However, I’ve been a chair for as long as I can remember.

I sit here day and night. I know you’d have never imagined a chair, sitting. Some chairs that I’ve known, stand. They live in the houses of rich men who spend their days surrounded by flatterers. Those chairs wait. “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Luckily, I’ve sat all my life in this garden. I watch the red earth brimming in the flower pots and cobwebs growing and disappearing in the stalks of the overgrowth. I’m a chair in the garden under the sunshine and the rain.

Sometimes, the old lady of the house spends her time in the garden. She places her walking stick against me and sits down. She religiously places both her hands upon mine. I hold her. I’ve seen her cry at times. She is alone. Alone and old. Alone, old and doddering. Clumsy and alone.

Some children came once. They preferred the swing to me. A small child chose me. The child imagined I was the safest place to be. He was tender and I wished I was cushiony for once. I held my cast-iron frame and legs firmly to the ground so as to not fall. The child began all his antics on me. He tried sitting on my head. Scratched my hands and rocked me back and forth. I almost fell over a couple of times. I was very frightened. Then he got off and ran away for want of better mischief to do. I heaved a sigh of relief.

Twice a day, severe sunlight beat down upon me. Every part of me turned hot, fiery and unfriendly. I only wished the shade would come over me soon. Then, when shade came back, the tendril patterns on my frame cooled down and I once again became contented being a chair.

Rain is pouring down on me. Sometimes it feels salty and smells exotic. My feet get buried in the red soil. I watch the grass and mushrooms sprout around my legs. There is green moss spreading over me. Some black ants scuttle over me while the rain clouds take a short nap. I love the fragrance of rain. For days on end, I listen to the pitter patter. I watch the rain trickle down in small rivulets all over the ground. The leaves endlessly drip. It becomes silent and sad. A puddle forms on me and under my legs. I get chilled to the bones. Sometimes I contemplate over rain but without too many answers. A chair can only think so much.

When at last sunlight comes around, there is red dust in my crevices. Life bustles in the garden and bird droppings are generously shed on me. Of late I’ve noticed I’m turning orange. How does it feel when you’re turning orange when all your life you’ve been a harmless green? Ask me! It feels cold and sour. It smells pungent. And as time passes, it feels awkwardly warm, like you’re some new wood with caterpillars tingling on your twigs. And embarassingly enough, the sun keeps shining on you. Till grandmother comes back to me, I’ll remain orange, dusty and beautifully ugly.

A catastrophe. Nobody listens to the complaints of a chair. I vehemently disapprove of what happened to me in the recent past. They have dug up myu legs from out of the ground, massaged me with slimy oil and painted me red. I smell horrible and and feel sticky. The ants avoid me. The birds are worried if I am some new animal. I really wish I could go where the broken swing and grandmother went, than sit here painted and shiny.

Painted, shiny and red I was hauled to a strange room beyond the garden. Some old lamps sit here, dry, dusty and solemn. They try to look their once-immaculate selves but fail miserably. A red carpet is rolled up and parked against the wall. Some sunlight enters this room through tiny holes in the wall. The wind also trespasses through these holes with a lot of dust. There are a hundred barrels sleeping quietly. Occasionally someone enters, fumbling in the dark, lights a match, and collects trickling old memories from the barrels. It is moistly cold in here. I miss the pigeon smells. I smell dampness instead. I miss the swing, orangeness and the mushrooms.

And here I sit awkwardly amidst solemn old lamps, a rolled red carpet and barrels of intoxication fermenting in the cold. Here I sit painted, red, and smelling intolerably perfect.

Yeri Aali Piya Bin

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/8586263/view]

Listen to another version here

Sakhi yeri aali, piya bin
Yeri aali piya bin
Kal na padat mohe, ghadi pal chhin din.
Yeri aali piya bin…

Jabse piya pardes gawan kinho…
Sakhi, jabse piya pardes gawan kinho
Ratiya katat mori taare gin gin
Ratiya katat mori taare din gin

Yeri aali piya bin…
Sakhi yeri aali piya bin.

Girl.. ever since he left I count every day
Ever since he left to another place
I spend the nights counting stars
I spend the nights counting stars..

..More on Raag Yaman at Kalakari

Ashwini Bhide’s awesome rendition of Mo man lagan lagi ends with the best version of Yeri Aali I have had the fortune to listen to.. Mo Man Lagan Lagi

Tantalus at Lethe

I pray
Not to god
I pray to fragile sweet things
To pass on their sensitivity to people

I pray to the wafting sounds
To fill my mind with chaos
Chaos that prevents me from remembering

I pray to invisible sunsets
Beyond the visible blank wall
To shatter the places around
And make refuse out of tomorrows

I pray to insanity
To bind me in its clutches
Escape reality and fall into fetters

I pray to animal killers
To clip my feathers
And render me incapable of flights of fantasy

I pray to that face
Which makes living hours a nightmare
To forget to enter my eyes for a day

I pray to the scars
To remind me of the pain
Over and over again
Till I forget to forgive

I pray to cold winter
To visit my doorstep once
And teach me the tactics of indifference

I pray to my tears
To wash myself away
Like the stains of a blood red drawing
That dared to paint itself

I pray to the fish
To keep churning up the oceans
And make eternity an endless fear
Cyclical ebbs and tides
Neverending and cripplingly fierce

I pray to colourless dreams
To kill my intensity
Suffocate my heaving pride
And make me impotent and limp

I pray to my own violence
To not hide under ethics
And my flamboyance
To breathe through my words
If only insignificant and ignored.

I pray to cold fingers
To grip me in their lack of movement
To stagnate my journeys
Across painful past and past-stained present

I pray to you
To teach me hate
Secret love
And forgetfulness
And feed me with a potion from Lethe
That the gods drink deep every night.

Note: This poem has no mythological connotations. Only figurative.

Sunset

This is something that I drew based on the tutorial in this link.

Click on the image to view a larger size. (Pssst.. it is a mess in a lot of places.. :p)

🙂