why is it that fake love
looks so much like love

i told myself i did not want the moon,

just a little glimpse

and thought i'd capture an image forever

but even that was not to be

the moon, when it came

was obscured by the clouds

It's that time of year: days are short and nights are long. Perhaps it is in these long stretches of darkness that we feel our mortality - and our fragility - the most. Perhaps that is why universally reach out for sound and light. Every culture almost has a festival of light and darkness around now. From Diwali to Samhain, with Eid-al-Adha or Las Posadas inbetween. Many of them have a theme of battle between good and evil, with the ultimate victory of morality. Light plays a prominent feature in most of these. Symbolically, it may represent the light of knowledge and wisdom (as in the Hanukkah candle) or it may just be inspired by the literal need for light to vanquish the growing darkness.

you

When I had you, I was so lost in you that I was blind to the world. When I lost you, I was so drowned by the shock, that I was deaf.
Now I've made peace with your ghost, comfortably perched on my shoulder

But I am trying to reach out and hold real hands too

Of wolves and dogs, Re-done

I don’t know what hunger or tiredness feels like to you.
Personally, I can go for days with little food or sleep.

And you don’t know what boredom feels like to me.
It implodes in slow motion in my brain.

And makes me desperate.
Like a corkscrew turning slowly in my soul.

And then there is this emptiness,
and this city of every man, peacefully slumbering.
And there is me, trapped in the middle of all this normalcy.
Wriggling uncomfortably behind my funny-friendly mask.

And behind me, desperate, howling, half crazed,
there is a rabid wolf crouching;
and he is seething in hate at the our comfortable nest,
in the golden cage around me

Pre, February 5th, 2015

http://recerche.blogspot.com/2015/10/of-wolves-and-dogs.html

i had been so long with my opiates
that i thought my pain was gone
but it rained. and someone brought news from home
and there i was, as freshly homeless again

funny how life goes. I found this old blog post from 2005. It ends saying another year is over, who knows what the next year will bring. If only I had known, it brought the most exciting, transformative and yet deadly years of my life. Years to which I sometimes think, the rest of my life will but be a lame sequel. And yet years which are irrevocably gone - like borrowed moment lived in somebody else's life, or a dream. You would think it was unreal, and yet it has really changed you forever

"its december: that time of the year, again. there has always been something magical about winter, for me. Shamiana's in the sun, international-night, bakery carnival, steamer parties, baba's holiday home, endless invites, baba's birthday bash, baba's month at home, boro din, Flury's, cakes, santa claus, christmas trees, picnics, the zoo and a gentler sunshine.

and now its carols, live at surprising places; decorated shops, eateries and office spaces; twinkling street lights every evening; long luxurious nights and tiny quickly over & done with days; cuddling in under big, soft blankets with Floppy, a book and a hot drink. buying cards; getting cards; looking for robins; fairs and markets on blocked streets; glittering frost and snow, on everything;

there's a village-market-style fair set up on fredrick street. as well as, the german fair in princes gardens. tomorrow, some people from work are going to see the roselyn chapel. i want to go but i want to sleep, as much! I am reading the town below the ground: Edinburgh's legendary underground city: its not awfully well written, but its about Ediburgh, and its got some interesting explanations. i think i fall a bit more in love with this place everyday. of all the places i have ever lived in, or even visited, this is the sweetest, funniest, prettiest, to date! and the people are the wonderful!

so 2005 is nearly done. at the end of every year, there is a sense of excitement and anticipation; a rustling in your breath; like the tissue paper under a folded party dress. making progress. getting along. rocking on. what happens next ... what will the new year bring?

Originally Posted at Prerona."

today

oday I went to a meetup group in san francisco that reads hindi and urdu poems together. it was spectacularly fun. like the tag line of meetup says "come find your own people".

today for the first time, I read out in public something I had written. I felt so scared inside that I could die. But I forced myself to just go through it blindly. I also shared something I had written with someone for the first time, whom I have known forever but never shared anything like this with. It takes a lot of courage, coming out

today i discussed exile and migration - the things I feel so passionately about - with a group of unknown people. to be away from home, alone, can feel like exile. but to be away together, can become an adventure

today, as I rode back from the center, down California street, I saw a young man sitting on one of two fascinating benches, that face each other, right next to a busy intersection, and reading. I have walked by them so often and thought of sitting on them I had felt like they were mine, in a small way. In new places where I am unknown, in airports, and stations, I always feel stripped of my some of the burdens of my identity. I feel free. And strangely I feel at home - just in my skin. That is how I felt about that bench - so that the young man became a guest in my home.

today for the first time, for fraction of a second, this strange place looked like home

Our ways. Their ways

We went for the Durga Pujo at some California suburb. Wandering about in San Francisco, where I dont know a soul except my husband and have noone but my sister on another coast on my speed-dial, I could never imagine so many bengali's existed somewhere nearby. Resplendent in red, white and gold, smeared with sindoor and smiles, I could not help imagine what they would look like tomorrow, back in their "normal life".

As I got ready to leave, I thought about watching my mother get dressed every morning. The whole process had its own grammer. It was made up of little things she did, like holding the sari pallu with one hand and the pleats with the other in a final adjustment, before she turned away from the mirror.

I never thought - maybe I dreamed and wondered - but I never really thought, that my life will end up so different from hers. I wore a Tashor sari today for Ashthami, and in my head I could hear the litany of voices explaining every thing that made the material special. Usually followed by a smooth segue into how everything is a metaphor, Hindusim is philosophy and not a religion, etc. I think about how noone will tell my my children - or rather my sisters children, more likely - these things. They will grow up in a different world and inherit another.

Sometimes when she was in a specially good mood, my mother used to say "I took flesh from my flesh, bones from my bones, heart from my heart, and I made you. My grandmother as she washed and fed me, and caught out my ridiculous lies, used to say something like I made the womb that made you. I know you because you are a part of me. Thus I carry them in my flesh, and in my heart. As long as I live, their hearts will go on. As long as I talk, dream, think, their stories will live.

But then our ways will die out. the saris, the ululation, the stories, the romance, the madness. Maybe my grandmother felt like this too, moving into a virgin south calcutta flat in salt lake with a man from another world. Maybe the world changes on every generation. But it turns slowly, so we don't get giddy and feel too scared to go on.

But like a rolling stone, before it festers, it turns.

Pujo. Crowds. Sari's and Jewelry. Beautiful laughing children. Young couplE looking for a perfect selfie shot. Later I see her stare longingly at the playing kids. Woman singing from Chatuskon. Surreal suddenly, bangla songs in the dark school room. Woman with chicken roll stall shouts at her husband - he is not being very competant in his helping out. An elegant old man & older lady - a couple - sit in a beautiful companionship - looks like an old marraige or friendship.

i have so much, i feel like i am suffocating
and yet i feel bereft
i have walked for miles and miles
and still i could not escape my shell

there is an a point where all things come to an end
threats. one-up-manship. knee jerk reactions. spiralling escalations
even for vishnu-shesha. even for taylor-burton. even for us and our brothers we love to hate when we can tell ourselves apart
there is a point when we need to grow up and get on with our lives
we all have a tryst of some sort we need to remember

To: The world
Re: Photo of boy from war-torn Syria

When I see you crying over the photo of boy from war-torn Syria
I feel more wonderful than emphatic 
It cannot be you, so it must be me
and my weltschmerz

Truly, i am scared to look at the news
Not just because of the preponderance of evil,
but because it does not seem bizarre
And because the good - the tiny flames
in a downpour of madness - feels a bit pathetic
and exceptional

but about the boy,
what about the other boys. and girls
how many can we save?
what will we do with them after

what if, like beauty in the beasts magic castle,
they are not happy in a strange new world
and would rather be home than saved
but their home is gone. and can never be won back

what if by earthquake or tsunami and war
through some strange subconscious statistical calculation,
we decide who is us and them
but what if tomorrow, we are them
and lose everything

what if slowly only the richest & strongest remain
and is that how it has always been through time?
and in their insulated gold pods
who will they then sell and preach to, and cry for

justice does not concern me anymore

because as my days grow fewer in number,

i have lost interest in accounts and record keeping

of what happened

the only thing that interests me now, is today and tomorrow

tell me, what will you do today, and what will that birth tomorrow?

i know that I am not what I look, but what I feel inside

also, i am told i am not what I feel inside, but what i do

lately i have been feeling i am not what i do, but what i wish i did

i know i am not who you think i am. perhaps not even who i think i am

all of this is so confusing.just tell me, am i? sometimes i think i am not

hot summer days

i cant think of anything to write

but i will try

my soul has congealed in the heat

and city has gone to sleep like a panting dog

there was a spring

and there will be another

inbetween is the just the road

and the road is all there is

the stars come out one by one

i count as i wait for the wakefulness to pass

i pat my temptations to sleep

and lovingly kiss each one

the hours run out one by one

till soon, the night is done

thus, slipping tumbling, plodding on

i go on. and i try to become a better man

homesick, Cal-sick

Every day I force myself to write something, whatever it may be. I want to write something from my heart, something that is true, I want to be honest and brave and clean. it rarely comes out that way, but still, every day I try.

Here is today's truth: I suddenly miss 'Calcutta' like crazy. Before this last trip to Kolkata my angst was like a shattered mirror: with different names and faces on each piece. But something about seeing her unexpectedly, with her madness and contradictions; her rawness and sophistry; the memories and the unfamiliarities; made me either forget all the other wounds & sores, or made them all look like reflections of the original pain: of displacement and disinheritence.

Seeing 'Calcutta' in the streets of Kolkata unexpectedly and unprepared is like seeing the your naked childhood photo on an advertisement in an unfamiliar town

twinkle twinkle berkeley lights

there is a friend, the view from who's house never fails to disarm me. i wish i never had to go. in the middle of a party on the terrace, I snuck away top the dark, deserted living room and looked at the bay and the city lights beyond, laughing as the day ends

i laughed a lot today too. the end will come to all things - whether you fight it or not. days end. love ends. life ends. periods end. childhood and youth ends. chances end. hopes end - eventually you have to let it go

i was sorely tempted to relapse today. a social affair is very surreal when you dont eat drink or smoke. or chit chat, for that matter. but i didnt. very mara

i'm curious to see how long the intoxication of this new indulgence lasts

in some ways losing someone is like an accident. weather it is a lover, a friend, a partner or a parent - you could get over it to some varying degree, or you could be paralyzed: stuck in that moment forever. it could depend on your current state, how hard you work to recover, time, or just fluke chance. 

the depression and the light

i thought depression was a bottomless pit of numbness. but the darkness is pierced by nameless dreads and burning anger

the dog follows me from room to room. does she want to guard my fleeting peace of mind

my favorite fairytale was always beauty and the beast. over the years i have found so many metaphors in it

the phone rang today, but it was too late. after a while even friendship will not pierce the scales on the skin

the wind howled and howled. where must it get all the spirit to mourn

heartbreak is so fragile. and nameless. yet it can shatter you - after many seasons

you are so good, and so beautiful. my heart aches to look in your eyes. can all your goodness dissolve the sin in my heart? or will i dissolve you in the acid of my nameless angst and bitterness of my self loathing

like a lone light in the night