this morning

All the things
I hoped would go away this morning.
The stuff I live with every day. What
I’ve trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.
For when I turned back i didn’t know
where I was. Until some birds rose up
from the gnarled trees. [...]

stories-redux

Every minute spent with you is another page in a story which will not be written. Because all the stories worth telling are already done, and there are no new tales.
You want to be simple. Normal. And you are more complex than a system of Chinese boxes. There is always something new. Like your admission [...]

straw men

In their own sweet time, the books will be read-
Stories told. Heard or unheard, who cares?
Truths and lies, disguised in fiction-and lost
Parents mixed with trees and flowers muddled with lovers?
Stories, illuminated in incense, and corrupted-
By desire of never ending- half understood,
Similars and dissimilars, stories- remittances made to uncertain futures.
You. Me. Everyone. Who understands, and who [...]

Book Reviews: Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel’s Booker winning novel, Wolf Hall is, at its best, a novel left incomplete. At its worst, it seems superfluous, a novel unneeded, retelling a story which has been told hundreds of times in history textbooks- dry as dust tomes languishing in dark, musty corners in school and college libraries the world over have [...]

arz hai…

‘jeene ke arzoo me mare ja rahe hain log;
marne ki arzoo me jiye ja raha hiin main.’
(chaapoed from a hindi movie)

pre travel weekend

1. drink three beers on friday night.
2. read till 2 am in the morning.
3. wake up at 11am on saturday.
4. ask the bai to cook chicken and rice.
5. order two beers.
6. watch a movie on laptop, forget to eat lunch till 5pm.
7. order another two beers. read a book till twelve.
8. remember to eat leftover [...]

all that is not a dream

Let us forget all about her,
The weather is sultry and there is no moon,
And even the stars hide,
As if scared of looking into her eyes.
She is gone, and there will be no coming back,
And the words I should have told her-
Have been left unsaid.
Pending work, left in the in-tray, forever.
The night is clammy, and suffocating,
And [...]

invictus (or the box of painkillers)

Let us look at the world, not through it. That’s a pretty big proposition to put at the start of a conversation.
Why are people lonely? Or maybe what is loneliness? Is there an absolute like loneliness? Is it not more of the togetherness of others? Just like there is no dark, there is only the [...]

reconciliation- short story

(Aching across time, we live in an endless void- you and I. There was a past once, in this void, but now there is nothing- shared memories float in the streets like derelict pieces of paper carrying upon them the scripts of endless designs, plans, and projections- abandoned futures. The void is like a ghost [...]

in which i go blah, blah and blah

well…happy late year to all and sundry, i have not made my customary new year crib this time round, and did not have much to write about or much time to write about anything as such. so there. some updates are in order: i am back in mumbai (a few hours ago- came and found [...]