For Home

For you have been at the back of my mind,

and the front of my mind,

for years,

and for you the city is no more home

than it is for me,

for we both wandered there,

or away from there,

for reasons sometimes sentimental.

For going home is a process,

for peace of mind and a piece of memory to check on,

once in a while.

For you complete me,

you with your way of changing,

ever so often.

For you are home.

Manual

        This is how I begin to fall in love:
it all starts with walking
with him,
in a sparse moonlight
and scarely more drizzle,
some ganja, some music,
and small steps.
Little things.

        This is how I hold back:
walking three feet asunder
while he asks,
'Do you know what is going to happen?'

        This is how I fall out of love (a):
a phone call from you, far away,
telling the story of a storm and a Jewish house in Boxburg
where you stayed a night, and read Camus.

        This is how I fall out of love (b):
a couple of folk musicians from Shantiniketan, 
friends of friends,
staying up all night to the sound of khomuk and dotaara.

        This is how I fall back in love:
the sound of your voice in my ear,
        — unmediated by head phone, ear phone, mobile phone —
and your hand in mine,
your knee under the table,
your laugh like a child’s.
Looking at you,
just looking.
Absent little things.

        This is how I live.

And when you tell me you are going to travel 
some more this summer,
and 
“Backpacking across Europe!” I say,
And you say, “I have to buy a backpack, actually.”
I forget all else and laugh full and loud.

        This is how I survive the distance. 

Comes to the North

Death comes to the North
by inches
Like frostbite
Turning everything black
Starting with the ear
That hears the news.

Far away from Coimbatore,
Where most of the family lives
and dies
In a place called Vanaprastha;
an old age colony,
very popular.

This stage in life
- and the next -
Is for meditation,
concentration,
renunciation -
In the forest, only bare essentials.
You mean
Concentration Camp?

We avoid eating tonight's meal
Lest our lukewarm sentiment
should make the food unpalatable.

Our roots died today;
We go on,
Like headless chickens.

Death comes to the North
at two rupees a minute,
relentless, like the cat
that tries every morning
to enter the kitchen,
warm milk.

Death comes to the North,
Briefly,
a syringeful of anaesthesia,
one prick and you go numb.

Death comes to the North,
then goes away,
flying south for the winter.
It is too cold here
for news of Death to cause a stir.

A Day In The Life: Moving - 2

My parents were married in August 1980. My grandfather was in Sudan just before that, the next posting in line for him was Srinagar. His boss told him,
Dekho, being a South Indian you may not want to live in Srinagar, but that is the only vacancy just now. Your son is to be married, you take leave for a few months. I’ll sanction three-four months leave for you.

After the marriage, Thatha was restless, and unused leave is encashable. So he went to Srinagar, with my grandmother and their two daughters, one of whom went to school there then, at Presentation Convent, and the other, who had a Masters degree by then, had nothing to do at home till come next posting (Cuttack, in Orissa) and joining a B.Ed. and then a teaching job.
Thatha had promised Patti (Dadi) that he would take her to Srinagar when he got back from abroad. It was inadvertently prophetic.

The bulk of their saamaan was on its way, by long, winding roads up mountains and down them again. They had some ten-odd suitcases, and stood around at the busstop;
Saab, houseboat? Houseboat? Haan, saamaan hum le lenge.
Before they found the bungalow they later moved into, they lived in a houseboat.

God knows where they got water from, Anyway there was one tap... There is an island in Dal Lake. We were parked near the island. We were going to a Gujarati place to eat; after a few days a Kashmiri woman started to come and make roti for us, cook for us, on the houseboat itself.

Yesterday I bought a book of Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry. For a change, I found a book I was looking for in one shot. Telling S, I find that a Kashmiri friend of his had discovered the poet a few years back, and was ecstatic by this find.
What is it that binds us to our roots? I feel a rush of oldworld pride when I say we are Palakkad Iyers, makes me feel like I belong to some ancient clan, older than living memory, older than time and place can say. I feel a tug, like the tug of a kitestring, when I am home, in Lucknow; to fly away and be tied down.

As I crossed a bridge today, on the way home
Flying over a sabji mandi
I spied a kite
Stuck flapping dustily
between two wires, power lines,
And below me a train flew into my line of vision.
Symbolism washed over me,
a wave to drown in;
Patang-baazi is this:
Being stuck gathering dust
between two strings.

Thatha spent ten days in Jammu once, long ago. The river, he says, is cold; it comes from the mountains, from frozen peaks. And Jammu is hot in the summer. This is what you do in summer in Jammu, he says; you sit on the riverbank, buy a mango or two (there will be people selling mangoes right there, just for you; and you can take the office car and go with the Assistant Engineer for company), wrap it in a handkerchief and toss it into the river.
Cold mango, hot day.

I don’t live in the part of the city, or inhabit the world of patang-baazi, kiteflying. I am an urbanista, it seems.

I opened a book of poetry by Anurag Mathur, of all people; having read only The Inscrutable Americans, I was curious.

He who belongs everywhere,
Belongs, I fear, nowhere.
Where do I belong?

It's not a new sentiment. In 2006 or 2007, I was writing:

I belong everywhere
And so I belong nowhere.
Who am I?

Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter that much to me, in real terms where my family, “split establishment” lives, since I don’t live at home now anyway.

It's never a new sentiment; but a story only becomes your own when you've worn it for a while, broken it in, and had corns on your feet to remind you.

The Case of the Elusive Curio

They must have been grey.

I never knew the colour of his eyes, but I had heard the soft cadence of his Urdu a thousand times, and once, only once, caught a glimpse of neat fingertips through the chink in the door.

After Nana died, everything went haywire. So what if the girls were going to England to study. They were expected to respect the zenana there as well. God knows whether they ever wore the burqa in London as they were meant to, but we made it clear to them that if they tried to sow wild oats abroad, we would come to know, and consequences would be dire. They lived in Golders’ Green. What did they think? That Ashraf mian and his brothers would not keep an eye on them?

At home, I was very strict about the zenana. I would hear of no frivolities like these girls like to indulge in – giggling away about which boy said what to whom, how he looked at which sister. I know I was one of them, but I was a good ten years older than Rafiya, the next one after me, and you, Shabnam, jaan, whom I had to bring up like a mother after Ammi went.

I was going to be married to Amjad sahab, he was Ammi’s uncle’s grandson, a very bright spark they said. My age, because he had been in Jeddah for several years, unable to afford a ticket back home for a long while. Of course, by the time we were finally married he was rolling in riches, he had bought a Mercedes and what not.

I was really happy with Amjad; it feels so strange, Shabnam, to say his name, but you insist so! Why you want me to, I just cannot understand! But then if you want to hear the story, what can I do, I’ll try.

He treated me very well, you know, he was one of those “modern” types – the sort that wants his wife to talk openly about her desires; you can understand now, jaan, can’t you? You’re a married woman after all. But he was very particular about maintaining the purdah. I’m glad. I did not wish to wear those dresses and hijabs that seemed to be so popular in Jeddah.

But look, you can’t expect me to talk of him without recollecting every old memory...no, not Amjad, I mean him, the one you are so curious about.

He was just a boy, Shabbo, and I was very mature for my age – Ammi went and I had to be strong. He had just come from London, he had met our sisters there on Id-ul-bakr. It was nothing compared with the daawat at home, of course, but I think it was then that he began to think of our family like his own. No one knew why he divorced himself from his real family later – they were the best of people...they say it was because of some girl, it was inappropriate alliance...no one ever knew exactly, but he was lonely even before, a rift was always there. Strange, he would tell me everything, but never this. It was apparent that he was in love with someone; no one could speak like that otherwise. But you know what was surprising – he spoke like a shaayar but wrote rather badly – he was dabbling in Farsi as well as Sanskrit at the time – some fancy research in England. But he was perhaps destined to study language, not master it.

Even so, I don’t know if this was even correct sentence structure, not knowing Farsi myself, but he had just read that famous inscription at Lal Qila and was deep in thought over it for many days. After which he passed a chit to me, in neat, if slightly immature handwriting,

Jahan-e-ishq zaminast
Salim, aashiq haminast

What he meant, I think, was,

There is a world of love on earth,
Salim, the lover is here.

He brooded over this so much, as if it had some hidden meaning. This meaning became clear later, but then I was too thrilled to see his handwriting, and read his poetry, preserve it, rather than hearing it through the crack in the door.

This door was locked. It had been for over a hundred years. This house, you know, was built in Bahadur Shah Zafar’s time, two families made their home in it, a wall was erected, and a door put in place, in simpler times, if ever a neighbourly service be called upon.

Salim began to talk to me by chance; I had just been married, Amjad had flown off to Jeddah again, it would be a year before he could return – some bureaucratic reasons. I was standing there, by the door, on my side of the wall. Nobody was home. I couldn’t stand the silence; said, to no one, “Aaine se baat karoon kya? Shall I talk to the mirrors? Huge mansion of a house and not a soul here”.

And to my surprise, a voice answered, “You can talk to me. I think we both need a friend”. He said “raazdan”, keeper of secrets, so hard to translate that word...

We poured our souls out; he was right, we both needed a friendly ear. After that we began meeting at night, when everyone was asleep. People assumed I could not sleep because Amjad was away, and I was restless. This was very true, but curiosity was what pulled me to the locked door night after night.

I don’t want you to think badly of me, I saw him as a confidante; not really an older brother, because he was younger than me, and boyish in his ways too – raazdan is the only word that can accurately describe it. We never saw each other, it was only fitting. I was, after all, married to Amjad and very much in love with him – perhaps distance did make the heart grow fonder. My letters to Amjad speak as much – I would not show those letters even to you, Shabbo Rani!

But Salim understood me, and my desire to see the world, and how it conflicted with my rigid views about the zenana.

“Your place is not here, begum, it is in the bright yellow afternoon in Hyde Park, in England where the sun shines till ten o’clock in the summer”, he’d say. “Begum, I have found this perfect little spot to hide treasure – where two apple trees crisscross in the park, a left from Speakers’ Corner and fifty feet as the crow flies”.
Such a boy, I tell you, adventure and treasure were no fantasy for him, they were that real.

I met Salim in October, by next September Amjad sent word that he would be returning in two months. The day I received the letter was the day Salim disappeared. No one ever heard of him again, not even when Ariba Hasan, you remember our second cousin, went to Rome and tried to look him up – rumour had it that had been planning to run off to Italy for a long time.

I might have been the last one to speak to Salim before he vanished...

He heard the news of Amjad’s impending return and said mysteriously, “There is something I have ordered to be made for you, begum, in Venice. A curio especially for you, to thank you for your patience. You will find it when the time is right, and I hope you do not find it soon, because I know you would forget me otherwise, but your curiosity will keep you from forgetting!”
I asked him what it was, what curio?
But he said if he tried to pass to me, the crack in the door would open so wide it could never be mended.

“You’ll find it, begum, it rests where you belong”.



Shabnam, I can’t tell you the anguish this little mystery caused me. Amjad, as you know, never returned, God bless his soul. My heart was broken, I was widowed after having spent no more than a few months with my husband. When I needed a friend the most, my Salim was nowhere to be found. I searched high and low for him, and for that accursed curio he had promised me – I was certain it would lead me to him. I asked everyone, I abandoned all shame, revealing I had been talking to him – I was a widow, I had no need for pretence – I had never been in love with Salim, I was not adulterous, he was my friend, keeper of my secrets. I asked everyone we knew, everyone who knew him. By then we had international dialling on our telephone, I telephoned people in Italy whose numbers I had to hunt for like a raving lunatic. I looked for him in London, seeing England through the eyes of our sisters who would call from there, and report, always, nothing, nothing, give it up, Aapi, give it up, he has left us, forget him, have you no shame left, grieve for your dead husband.

It came back to me years later, when you had also moved to London. That is why I let go of any remaining concerns of propriety and asked you and your husband – bless him, he’s a saint – to fly me to England. Don’t feel bad, Shabbo, jaan, I really missed you, but you were not the only reason for my wanting to come here. It came back to me, you see, his silly treasure map! It was in Hyde Park, buried, it had to be!

I wonder sometimes whether it was all a ploy to draw me out of my zenana, travel to his England, his London. But how did he know I would do it for him? Travel all the way? What if I were married still? But these are questions that have no answer, Shabbo, no answer.

This is what I found. It’s a paperweight. I mean it was. Now it’s just fragments, of course. I could see the paper inside it, it was made to be broken to read the note inside the glass.

You can read it, go ahead. It is very simple, all it says is

“It was you, my begum –
Where love exists under the earth,
And the lover is here”


I honestly don’t know whether he is even alive still, but I doubt it, Shabbo. My curiosity led me to the elusive curio, but it can’t lead me to him. How did he know I’d come all this way? I never even loved him. How was he so sure?

You made a mistake, Shabnam, you thought you’d get a mystery story out of me. But this is not the kind of mystery that can ever be solved.

What time is it? Ten? Look outside, I don’t understand this country, the sun is still shining.


[Excuse this random detail: Winner of creative writing contest at Litmus 2008, LSR, DU]

Changing Hands

It was a book that he had given me,
Old, but intact, filled with the anxieties of reading it for the first time.
It was beautiful, poetry or prose, it was all music to me,
I wanted to share it,
Tell the world such beauty exists.
What is the point of knowledge if you hoard it away in secret?

So I gave it to my friend, who gave it to another
Changing hands, the book aquired new character,
It began to tell a story not within its pages.

Every time it would come back injured,
Pages loose, cover scored,
Coffee rings
Drops of midnight oil;
It would be taped,
Restored,
welcomed back and then released again into the world.

After many years of travel
Across the globe, as it were,
The volume returned to me
Tired.

It seems it had managed to find its way to the one who had set it in motion
Even before I had.
Coming to me from where it had before
I instantly recognized marks
Marks of memories, soiled
of longing.

Strings

Tears have been shed,
It’s too late now,
You cannot bring back the salty warmth,
The truth.

Locked away in the confines of your mind,
There is the version of the truth that you liked best,
The one with the least potential to injure.

The old world is coming
A few years staggered, to meet the new world,
younger, more life
than it remembers.
The language has changed,
The old cannot understand the nuances of the new.

They grow themselves, like cobwebs;
Strings, attaching secretly
Into the old world haven,
isolated, oblivious,
Entered like chillies grown from seeds sent
over hill, plain and river.
A foreign plant, invasive.
Always in flower,
Always fruit, biting.
Biting them will burn, but honey
will cool your tongue,
a sweet forgetfulness.