The Songbird on my Shoulder

My mother knew I was a writer

Long before anyone else did,

Least of all me.

When I was 7, she told me to write a poem about

Flowers.

And I did.

And it appeared in the school magazine.

Bitten by the lust

To see my name in print

I realised

that I must, indeed, be a writer.

When I was 11,

It struck me one day

That the words that flowed from my pen

clever phrases

catchy words

elegant descriptions

crafted metaphors

(show-off images)

Were actually automatic.

And I pondered

often

on their source.

So many years have passed.

I lived through

a long, barren period

in which I never wrote

a single word

but spent long years

accumulating “Material”

(quite unawares)

on which I could write.

And when I finally sat down again,

with pen in hand,

The words flowed

initially rearing and bucking

initially other people’s words,

– and even now,

When my words flow,

smooth and beautiful and artistic,

swiftly clattering

out on the keyboard –

I wonder ...

Where do they come from?

This metaphor of

the song bird on my shoulder

(for instance)

the constant and reliable companion

pouring its sparkling wit into my work

independent of my meagre consciousness –

isn’t it something

someone else

has mentioned before?

Everybody else is mad, except me

Everybody else is mad, except me.

In complicated discussions

rooting to the deeper meaning

of an elusive end

I suddenly find myself

all alone.

People understand, but only up to a point.

Thereafter they flounder, 

and I have to leave them

stranded on the rocky beach

of unreasonableness

while I swim happily away 

– far, far away –

safe in my private sea

of superior wisdom.

All this leads me to conclude

That all around me

are insane.

Luckily, 

I hold on strong

to every thread of logic 

and am a bulwark of

reasonableness.

In a world of insanity

surrounded by 

idiots and madmen

I give deep thanks

to the higher intelligence

for sharing some of it with me.

Lovely short pants for madam

“Poora Bombay mein AC lagne wala hai!” and he swept his arms in a huge circle to demonstrate, wriggling his eyebrows and wagging his head knowingly to provide that extra bit of entertainment for the yokels gawking, fascinated. “Agli bar Bill Clinton aayega to aisi garmi nahi na hogi!”
The yokels, who giggled on cue, were my teenaged Pune-bred children, and we were on our quarterly pilgrimage to Fashion Street, Mumbai, to stock up on some essentials. We had stopped now at stall No. 61 A, owned by Bobby Roy, entrepreneur and entertainer.
When Bobby confided, in an early encounter, that he is also a dancer and sought-after dance teacher, I couldn’t help gazing with fascination at the long line of men – young and old, crude and sophisticated, friendly and surly – each positioned in front of a ramshackle wooden stall hung higgledy piggledy from top to bottom and side to side with garments of every size and description. Here they stood, remote in time and space from the villages of their birth, calling out with great guile and persuasion, “Madam, Baby, see this side, no!” and “Lovely shorts, come here Madam!” “Best price, for you only!” “Sir, shirt for you, you son?” (and so on) to the ardent bargain hunters. I wondered how many more gems of purest ray serene the dark unfathom’d stalls of Fashion Street bore.
The goods are largely unremarkable, but with some patience, and a bit of luck, you can take home garments of excellent quality, at a fraction of the dollar price quoted on the labels they invariably sport. For those who frequent Fashion Street, treasure hunt is an exciting hobby. Each piece must be checked carefully for fraying, uneven warp, crooked necklines, and other minor defects; deep colours that might bleed to death in the wash are regretfully rejected.
Bargaining, naturally, is an institution. Some Fashion Street familiars go by a fixed formula: offer half, or a quarter, or a tenth, of the price initially quoted, and work up to a mutually acceptable mean via the age-old courting dance in which feigning shocked disbelief, and outraged demands that the other party come to their senses forthwith,  play an important role.
The other, more sophisticated, method is to take a good, hard look at the garment under consideration, and make an offer based on what it’s worth to you. Pre-requisites to this free-market act are a strong sense of micro-economics, and stable self esteem. These will ensure that you close the deal at your price – with the Fashion Street ace of “okay, fine, but just add five rupees to that. Five rupees is nothing to you, right?” Which is fair enough.
At Bobby Roy’s, where my kids outfit themselves with jeans, ‘cargo pants’ and an astonishing range of  trousers, whipped with a flourish out of wooden crates like rabbits from a hat – we pay what Bobby recommends. It’s invariably a bit above the market, but a reasonable margin for his jokes and enthusiastic personalized service (Bobby even remembers our myriad waist sizes!)  when we visit the frantic, unfriendly city.
By contrast Mahadev, another long-time supplier, is sober and professional. His stall is the single major contributor to my own wardrobe, and we operate on a flat price established years ago. I now enjoy the facility of one who slips in discreetly, selects independently, offers a secret bundle of freshly counted notes (thereby confounding other shoppers still engaged in price debate) – and quietly departs with a large white polythene bag suspended from two fingers.
The other day, Sara, an American friend, admired a flower-embroidered t-shirt I had bought at Mahadev’s, remarking how beautiful it was. “That would be the height of fashion in the US!” she exclaimed.
I glowed inwardly, and wondered if I should be shameless enough to say aloud what I was thinking: “Naturally it’s the height of fashion. I bought it at Fashion Street, didn’t I!”
first appeared in Times of India, Mumbai 24 May 2001

Tiger chase

At the gate of the Panna tiger reserve, our jeep driver confided that a tiger had killed an antelope and now lurked nearby. Just the previous day, he had driven in some foreign tourists and as the tiger gorged the remains, the tourists feasted their eyes. And two days ago, his jeepload had seen all of four tigers.
Until that point, I’d been sceptical. I grew up in an area replete with wild life. We drove through the nearby sanctuaries dozens of times and I never once saw a tiger in the raw. I had come to the philosophical conclusion that to see a tiger in a jungle, stepping haughtily through the undergrowth, was simply not in my scheme of things. But now there seemed new hope.
We drove through wild tracts of great beauty, ignoring acre upon acre of golden grassland that would have driven Van Gogh’s reapers green, intently scanning its deepest reserves for streaks of stripe. Every rustle in the thicket drew the jeep to a halt. The guide generously pointed out wild boar and sambhar, antelope and spotted deer, mongoose, langur and birds of every kind. We resented the lot, knowing that if they roamed free thus, no tiger lurked nearby. When he indicated a tree with massive claw marks running down its sides, all we could think of was Baloo skipping along, singing about the ‘bear necessities’ and carelessly outwitting Shere Khan.
We stood over the Ken River in a remote tree house restaurant, and it flowed gorgeously blue and shimmering in the morning light, rapids rippling over elegantly configured rocks, and dense thickets encroaching down to the water – but what was the use? There simply wasn’t any tiger, crouched on the banks, sipping of its bounty.
We stopped again at a picnic spot, with what was probably a stunning view of a slate-encircled gorge, and the guide leaned gallantly over the protective fence, shouting, “Hello! Hello!” to the resident echo and I pleaded, “Tiger! Tiger!” in the hope that someone would hear and do something.
Several bumpy hours later, all covered in fine clay-dust, we drove, dejected, towards the exit, musing bitterly that we hadn’t even seen tiger pug marks. (Everyone I know has come home having seen at least pug marks).
And then it happened. I gasped. A dim, majestic shape loomed in the distance, merging subtly with the trees in the forest light. My heart leapt with joy. But then my eyes focussed and it took form. How embarrassed I was to realize that this was only another sambhar. Tall and beautiful, wild and proud it was – but, for god’s sake, it was not a tiger.
From Panna to Pune is but a short syllable away and soon enough we were back in the big safari park in which we live. Dog committees congregate on street corners, yapping canine concerns deep into the night. As we drive along the road, herds of plodding water buffaloes amble, pendulous and ponderous, out in front of the car. It’s true that ‘Buffalo, buffalo, burning bright …’ doesn’t have quite that ring to it – but for the time being it’ll just have to do.
Fewer buffaloes are herded through Pune traffic in 2011 - though the bikers and motorists are just as unsightly and dangerous.
first appeared as a Times of India Middle on 17 Apr 2001

Tetris

5.30 a.m., when the alarm bibbibbibbips

and you stumble out of bed

with only three or four hours of rest inside you

for the business dinner that went on late,

… good food, good deals

so you’re not complaining,

not complaining, just exhausted … 

and spend the next few hours 

cooking breakfast

seeing your lovely kids

off to school,

packing dabbas

(each especially catered to a different taste

because you do enjoy indulging them)

and then,

rush to get ready for the office

and you’re still not complaining

because you only have to walk to office,

not take the commuter train,

and in any case, once there, they all call you Madam,

and do your bidding entirely 

– no,  not complaining, just exhausted – 

and finally get home, along with the lovely kids

all jabbering fast

so much to tell! so much to share! so many complaints!

so many jokes!

but there’s still laundry to be done

and dinner to be cooked

so, of course, you do it,

and in between when you need a rest

you sneak into the loo

not to smoke a cigarette

which is what you actually want

but it’s too smelly and besides 

if you won’t look after your lungs, who will?

so the cigarette must wait

but you can reach for your little

hand-held video game

and waste a little time, having fun.

Symbiosis

colonizers of a virgin planet.

constant companions.

of lovely long tresses.

scratch, scratch, scratch.

god! are they

breakdancing 

having sex 

digging holes

all the way to China?

scratch, scratch, scratch.

face wash, lipstick, kajal, perfume.

(scratch, scratch, scratch).

medicated oil and shampoo.

tormented writhings. 

fevered imaginings.

little settlements

– no,  whole civilizations –

annihilated.

tiny wriggling body

frantic waving legs

scratch, scratch, scratch.

thumbnails meet.

loud click.

one black dot

is now deceased.

scratch, scratch, scratch.

first appeared in Femina magazine 15 Dec 2000

105.7C

Mercury is a temperament

and Mercury can also be

a god

and a planet

But Mercury is also

a thick silver rod

encased in a glass tube

which jolts you

as 

rigours

vomitting

listlessness and pallor

simply cannot.

And Mercury is

the potent rod

that can direct you

to the dread

antibiotics

which you have long forsworn

in favour of

Alternative Medicine

and 

Natural Healing.

So he’s better now.

And I’m exhausted.

Please can I have

an antibiotic too?

first appeared in Femina magazine 15 Dec 2000