Leaving Home

To explain why I sing
may take (at the very least)
years.

The queen of the night is a flower
How can you expect me to forget its smell
outside the window.

Endlessly, we lived in this place that has
come to be called home.

Death, sickness, puberty. Children.
Loves.

We learned, unlearned
There are rules for everything.

We lived out of suitcases
cartons of unpacked magazines spawning new mice.

The bike does not run, the antiques are old.

Tradition did not give us longevity.

When she died they cut the gold bangles off her wrists,
with pliers.

I rode my bicycle (my aunt's, rusty)
through the cane chair
that was a wicket that day.

My memories are many,
Many kinds.

Six foot boy, scared of my grandfather at the gate,

Birthdays and custard-jelly.

The lamp is still lit twice a day,
even though she is dead.
He lights it now, having quit smoking at seventy, after she died.

I could have children by now.
The bread-wala will call me baby till the end of his days.

We came here, scrubbed the floor on hands and knees,
grew roots.

The city that (should have) meant nothing to me
or any of us
Tamil speakers, outcasts in Madras
The city I call home.

I sing,
I cannot begin to explain why

Unless you had seen the inside of the bathroom,
climbed up the rotting ladder to the roof
to find the carcass of a bird in the kitchen tank.

I can invite you in,
because I wiped the fungus off the sofas this morning.

Last Call

Long, torturous conversations
devoid of body language,
all wit and pleasantry
till we started to feel.

Stories came out,
secrets
and not so secrets.

We fell
not in love
but into memory
which is older and richer.

Wind, Sand and Stars

Here is the tale of a composition, and how it overtook its creator. The song opens with the composer doubting its very existence, "Einmal ist keinmal", meaning "What happens but once might as well never have happened at all". Influences on this piece are various, ranging from the books of Antoine de Saint Exupéry and Milan Kundera, to the music of Eric Whitacre and Béla Bartók.

But most of all, with the inputs and criticism of the entire choir, an idea became a song. By the end of the song, we hope you will feel the thrill with which the composer declares, "Einmal IST!"


[1st public performance IIT Delhi, won 1st in Western Group Song competition, part of Rendezvous '08, 20th September, 2008. Composed May-September, 2008]

Wind, Sand and Stars

Einmal ist keinmal
Once there was a letter
Then there was a word and
Then she wrote a sentence
And one day they heard a

SONG!
(she sang them,
hesitatingly,
hesitatingly)

(Swept away by wind)
"Swept away by the wind
Or should I let the stream take me?
Should I let the wind sweep me off my feet or
Should I let the stream drag me underneath, oh?"

She sang to herself and no one else

Einmal ist keinmal

Under the stars, over mountains of sand
Taken as light as a feather by wind
(Windblown sands and stars all twinkling)

Colours waltzing

Fingering the light
She tasted words
Oh sleepless nights she wasted

Trying to fathom (lands all unexplored)
Biplaned through her mind (driven on by wind)
Spiralled inward (endless poetry)
She was writing

Words come tumbling
And forgotten images
Remembered verses

Then in her ears she heard a multitude of voices
Come tell us all the tale of the dream that made a song

Winds may stall
Sands blow away
Stars disappear in the clouds

Listen for this song
Till the end of TIME!

Einmal
IST!