Palm Tree Poesy

Torrid original poetry and phantasms of inspiration.

[suraahi]

Something

These words that are yet to come

I am tucking them behind my ear

Like a strand of brown hair

My fingers will touch my silver

Jhumkas next and slowly make

Their way onto your shoulder.

The way this day wraps around me

Is the way it might feel to love you

Beside a glowing moon in winter.

All around the year actually.

The words do defend themselves to me

Later when they are breathing in the

Space unspoken and loud.

I am beginning to knit a sweater

In sentences. Some phrases are alien

To me. The ones about love

Drape snug like a phulkari dupatta.

I knit that in to.

The words finally decend from the highs

And lows of my love lorn lips.

I kiss them on to a silver ring

And press it into your palm.

I tell you that if the sun begets us

If the world begets us

We can both quietly love

With hushed tones

Under my daadima’s shawl.

[suraahi]

Sari

Bua bought saris over like the color of autumn. Rust colored and green with zari. I like the one with sea painted in green, the black one too with roses stitched into sequins and the blouse that reveals a lot hides a lot too. 

Ma in a frenzy opens her own suitcase, and unveils the jewel of banaras (with its own blouse) , the one she wore as she eloped behind a motorbike sailing away on the highway with her lover. The maroon and gold stretched over the green asking to be pleated into a an occasion. 

She clutches the one with green bandhani print all over it and gold on the border. It is my favorite too. The light cotton is then draped over my shoulder falling against my skin settling into a home. 

Bua clutches another one to her heart   but gives it to me she hands the black and the gold as if giving away both her days and nights nights and days, and tells me to wear it anytime. 

Ma pushes a chiffon one too  it’s light and spooling as if it spilled over itself as it struggled to come out of the suitcase. the flowers embroidered over it sparkle in unison glad to be called out at last after  The  grey that lay on the floor breathing heavily after falling off my head, the smooth silk sliding off my fingers as i scrambled to grasp it.

soon we sip masala chai as we sit on the floor amongst  the great treasure of woman hood, that has stood by us in lust, love and spring belonging after all these years all this time. 

[haphazardheuristics]

Shoes Make the Man

The last pair of shoes I had, got stolen from the South Gate of the Jama Masjid and I walked across the street to buy hawai chappals and a meetha paan to get the bad taste out of my mouth They were Woodlands, rugged and imposing like the man I was trying to be, they promised to let me  go anywhere, anytime - across Himalayan glaciers and through the Sunderbans and on the salt flats of Kutch but I wasn’t that man, I could barely walk a hundred metres without hitting a rock or a pole or a tree, and before crossing glaciers, I had to scramble through tiles and roads covered in a thin sheet of water without slipping like a figure skater dancing on ice; I don’t know the man that I am or can be - am I the sneakers guy with a bag slung across his shoulders and a Casio on his wrist sensitive, introverted and yet, ready to slow- -dance with a rose between his teeth, or am I the trekker with waterproof shoes, dull grey and striped in red, to lumber and to stomp to stumble and to plod, across broken pavements, manholes and mud, stepping through puddles rather than skipping beyond, finding spontaneity in steadiness instead of whimsy - after all, shoes make the man, don’t they?

[haphazardheuristics]

On Curtains

When I moved into this house, before it became a home, we hung the curtains you bought bright and white with stripes of gold and black marching down, they embraced the floor-length windows much in the way you cover me, thin enough to let the sunlight stream through yet thick enough to shelter us from the blaze;

I remember the first time we made out when the curtains were left open, and the aunty from the opposite building shut hers in disgust, I remember the days we stayed in bed as the curtains fluttered in the December winds; slowly, steadily, the curtains gathered ash and dust as we indulged our chai-sutta rituals, our eggs-and-bacon breakfasts, our songs and our dances in the night, until the brightness and the whiteness surrendered to the grime and the dirt; With the opening of my eyelids each day came the pulling of curtains, and looking out into an uneven city that seemed simultaneously confident and confused between skyscrapers and villas, some days, you would be there to join me for a cup of frothy South Indian coffee as the curry, mint and basil plants flourished, as our naked feet warmed up on the boiling tiles. Now, the plants have dried up and the curtains are unrecognisable and the aunty on the opposite balcony doesn’t need to draw her curtains anymore you and I have left our days of basking behind and the ashtray fills up no more, yet I’m loath to pull down and wash the curtains for then I’ll have nothing left to shelter me like you once did.

[haphazardheuristics]

Dear pancakes

Once upon a time, I used to know you so well - I knew how to fluff you up, how to crisp you down, I could make you smile with chocolate syrup and give you blueberry eyes, I’d eagerly wait for you to bubble up for you to look back at me with a hundred eyes, ready to cradle you with my spatula, and gently flip you over; in your mottled, golden-brown back, I’d find a thousand, splendid sunsets, I’d find the shimmering of lakes against dawn, and there is so much love I have yet to give you, alas, from those early days of Betty Crocker mixes to have come here only to find that you and I no longer understand each other, even without vanilla essence you mock me with tinges of bitterness even with the drizzle and dazzle of maple syrup, even with drops of honey and dashes of cinnamon, you refuse to carry the love I freely give you, you have ceased to be tender and flavourful and you no longer crumble like rose petals or cotton candy; now, it isn’t going to be long before I hang up my apron and relegate you to remain as 2 cups of maida, 2 cups of milk (or lassi) a spoonful of baking powder, salt and few more of sugar, unsprinkled with cinnamon and unknowing of my love.

[haphazardheuristics]

A Manufactured Helplessness, in three acts

Act I The door creaks and the hinges heave, I pull my quilt closer as if it were a magical shield against whatever was about to come; Perhaps this is a nightmare I have been trying to have for so long, like a sneeze that's been stuck in your nose for so long that you don't know how to breathe without it, and I don't know how to dream about falling and flying, sliding and gliding, without first listening to the thudding the slow pace of feet being dragged and the nails scraping against the walls It's all in my mind, I know, I just need to get out of my head, yes, I am in control, I can steer it where I want to go, And yet, I'm still here wrapping the quilt around me tightly; I can almost ignore It looming over me until the quilt itself swallows me whole And as my limbs scramble to tear it apart and be free, the quilt embraces me tighter than ever, muffling my screams and trapping me before the dream can begin.

Act II The first breath of air comes with sunshine – I swallow it until I feel sick – then I see It Eclipsing the sun And then I see me Naked and shrivelled a flaccid penis under an imperial paunch with stretch marks instead of battle scars and scattered constellations of pus-filled pimples It pulled the quilt away and exposed me to inspire disgust and revulsion, It gathers me in Its arms As It would a new-born foundling from the woods I hear It croon You are the most beautiful thing under the sun.

Act III I wonder where does It begin and where do I end as my arms and legs intertwine around It and what happens when It pulls away – what will I have left of myself; Every second finds me bargaining for what I will let go and hold on to I am not trapped and I am not free I stumble around in a maze built on contradictions I must fall in order to fly I must surrender my self to be the best version of myself; No, I can’t accept that I am in control here, for then, I will have to accept where the nightmare ended, and where the dream began.

[haphazardheuristics]

Solace

is found between 2 and 3 in the morning, when you switch off one screen after another, increase the fan speed by 1 and turn the light off, open the windows without worrying about moths and crickets sharing your bed, and look to the distance and see a city flickering between aircraft warning lights -- as if the buildings were politely coughing don’t you land here; solace is that puff of a cigarette not the first or the tenth but somewhere in the middle when you’ve briefly paused breathing in tar and blowing away your troubles; solace is in embracing that pillow with your legs and your arms as the sheep counting in your head turns into a gnawing in your stomach, and in that tale you tell yourself about how tomorrow won’t be like today.

[haphazardheuristics]

Meditating on Love

“To fall in love is to be reminded of a frustration you didn’t know you had.” ~ Adam Phillips, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

With countless aphorisms about love collected over thousands of years from literary works and media, it seems like we have a very comprehensive idea of what love is. Or at the very least, we have been able to describe many loves that have emerged over time. We have psychologists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and philosophers who have made it a subject of academic discourse and on the other hand, we have oodles of empirical and experiential evidence documented in everything from songs and sculptures to BuzzFeed interviews. However, despite having access to this ever-growing repository, I do not believe that I know what love means.

I have grown up, as many of us have, with warped views on gender, sexuality and relationships - much of it formed under the pressures of religious indoctrination, patriarchal conditioning and a dysfunctional family. So, when I finally began to unlearn and disavow what I had previously clung to, I also gave up on two things that had been foundational to my life - faith and hope. 

That led me to ask - what kind of love exists in the absence of faith and hope? I kept wondering about this over the course of the few relationships which gave me the privilege of being my whole self. To begin with, I could define what I meant by “I love you” as “I am glad that I can be my whole self with you and that you can be your whole self with me” But, how did this comfort and space to be oneself in a relationship distinguish it from an intimate friendship? Perhaps, if I were to account for my self to be dynamic, ever-changing and a sum of choices, actions and experiences then I could possibly tweak the definition by saying “I am glad that we can witness the choices and decisions that gave shape to who we are and together, accumulate more experiences and actions that will go on to shape us” By no means, will this suffice as a complete definition but it is one that captured what I knew of love. 

Lacking faith and hope, I never concerned myself with what love could or would be. Growing up as a Christian, I was often reminded that faith was “the lively expectation of good things to come” and how unlike hope, faith meant seeing what you wanted to happen as if it had already happened. Having faith meant asserting your possession of what you claimed, irrespective of when it will come into your hands. And having often seen that our cultural messaging through romantic novels, shows and movies regarding love and relationships calls for a faith akin to this, I can’t help but think that however, I  choose to define love, it must be empty without having this unshakeable faith ensconced within. 

Now, upon contrasting this bundling of love and a lively expectation of good things to come - this “believing is seeing” - with the opening quote by Adam Phillips that falling in love reminded us of a frustration we didn’t know we had - we arrive at a neat collision of a lively expectation with an unknown frustration. Does love, then, coalesce into a constant conflict between our blossoming expectations and our inexplicable frustrations? What of our need to assert individualism colliding with the self-annihilation that we welcome as we fall in love and build a relationship?

An oft-quoted mantra that I had long accepted to be the function of love and a fulfilling relationship, has been that the act of loving draws out the best self of the lover. In spite of my inability to know what love truly meant, I have always held this to be the ultimate litmus test for my relationships. It seemed like the perfect compromise between that need to preserve the self, in all its dynamism and evolution, and the self-annihilation we must accept to forge a path with the beloved. The notion of the best self itself gave utmost importance to the elevation of the individual without privileging the ‘worst’ aspects of the self and so, they conveniently would get pruned in the process of self-annihilation. This was often echoed in some of the most memorable relationships in fiction and popular media from When Harry Met Sally to Garden State and La La Land. In fact, the now-common Manic Pixie Dream Girl (and, the rarer Manic Pixie Dream Boy) employs this two-pronged approach of elevation and annihilation for the personal development of the protagonist such as in (500) Days of Summer and Ruby Sparks (although the partners, in these cases, were almost always neglected in this boon of self-growth and often, limited in their agency to only act as catalysts for the protagonists). 

Circling back to the core problem I have been grappling with, I have come to question both my understanding and assessment of love. Confronted with the abundance of dysfunctional relationships around me, starting with my family, and the aggressive messaging that dominates the cultural consciousness regarding love and relationships, I can’t fathom how to steady this see-saw of expectations versus frustration, individuality versus self-annihilation. Discarding faith and hope, I took my lovers as they came and loving them was underwritten by low expectations and an irreconcilable need for preserving my self. 

I guess it says a lot that one of the things that frightens me the most, is an all-consuming love that ravages and ravishes until all I would see of myself would solely be contained in the union with the beloved. And once that love burned away like a leaf under a magnifying glass, an empty shell would remain where I once was. I’m terrified of being hollowed out emotionally until a permanent numbness settled in and being reduced to insipidity and helplessness. Thus, how could I ever be truly vulnerable and truly love without accepting the possibility of total self-annihilation?

And so, this is where I have arrived to find a new meaning for the love I have to give - an acceptance of possible total annihilation in order to bridge the space between the self and the other. A revolt against the tyranny of the self, fuelled by a faith and a hope that the act of love will not cage and demolish me. At the risk of confronting what terrifies me the most, my loving affords my beloved and I to freely unveil the whole self. More importantly, it beckons us to look outward and beyond the self, together.

[suraahi]

Dedh Ghante Di Mulakaat/ An Hour And a Half Long Meeting by Amrita Pritam

An hour and a half long meeting. Like a piece of a cloud, Stitched to the Sun. Unraveling, flowing, But nothing becomes and it seems That between the Sun’s red fire The cloud is woven.

An hour and a half long meeting. Today in front of his street I am standing like a watchman. I have closed the passage to my thoughts After putting them in his hands. God knows what I had asked….. God knows what he had asked…..

An hour and a half long meeting. I am thinking, that like a tribal woman I would get a chillum. And an hour and a half’s worth tobacco Kept atop the fire, I will smoke away….

But before my thoughts lose courage, And move towards a wrong path. Before a cloud is driven away by winds As far as the width of the Sun. Before the memory of this meeting turns into hatred.

An hour and a half long smoke. Some I drink, some the breeze takes away. Before the blame, My Love, comes upon your tongue. Before, my Love, a piece of you hears of this. Before it becomes an insult to A man, woman or a caste. Before it dishonours A man, woman or a caste. Before that….. Before that…..

— Translated from Punjabi by Tanya Singh.

[suraahi]

For Roo, on the occasion of our first anniversary.

This grey sky is blooming like a desperate cry formed from my lips You and I together complete a shape becoming and looming far above our hearts. 

This love with its rough edges melting inside coffee you make for me on Saturday had toegther with fried eggs your favourite. I ask you- What would you like to have today? 

This is first sign of love. This is the in between space within   a celebratory crowd. Where i stand waiting for you until you come running and we hug for a while. 

We often lock ourselves in side a room. We love and love with the rhythm that only our bodies have found and have only found with each other. This is the second sign of love.

Giggling between the sheets and then dissolving into sleep. I wear your name like a decoration on my body An ornament of moon ascending between my brows.   I say it again, feeling the letters on my tongue calling the A and the I to settle on the roof of my mouth and this name is where I begin and where I end. 

This is the third sign of love, This closeted blooming under a grey sky, The desperate cries rousing each other. the indefinite splattering of kisses on my cheek and my lips.

Yesterday I loved you, Today I love you, tomorrow I will love you.

[haphazardheuristics]

This is the next level. :)

[haphazardheuristics]

Humayun's Tomb

Let’s flee the city together To this poor imitation Of heaven on earth Walk with me, I’ll be on one side of the empty canal And you be on the other Let’s sing Ho Hey As we carry An imaginary picnic basket An imaginary sheet to lay on the grass And an imaginary dog whom you detest Listen to me I’ll tell you about the armies That camped once on these lawns I’ll take you back centuries with me I’ll show you the double dome being laid, The architects playing with strands of light The marble breaking into the red sandstone Hold my hand, darling, and escape time with me. Will you sit with me Under the mango tree I will pick fourteen grass stalks One for each month I knew you Bits of earth will come out too And I will ask, how long will you take to heal Hoping to pull the scabs off of your wounds Without taking care of the blood that will trickle slowly Down your legs, down your feet.

[haphazardheuristics]

Untitled

Ma weaves through the air with a bat Breaking the horde with 1500 volts It’s 7 pm and the cats mewling downhill Remain unheard between the whoosh of the bat And the crackling of bloodsuckers Caught between electrodes Ma, why you bother with this They won’t stop coming I hold half a coconut And like a knife in the back, The grater’s ensconced within I begin scraping off the bits Concentric circles emerge Ma snores inside The grating is her lullaby Wild daises grow in the crevices Of the unpaved road that crumbles downhill Ma picks one for me Stumbling before she reaches the gate Her sun is just rising after a night away She winces and walks back up the hill.

[haphazardheuristics]

Tandanu - Indian Ocean ft. Shankar Mahadevan

Click here to Subscribe to CM Music Official's YouTube Channel http://goo.gl/LM8zqS Presenting you "Tandanu" the seventh album by Indian Ocean. The album fea...

Best to make you get out of bed and dance.

[haphazardheuristics]

I Don't Mind - Vintage Las Vegas Style Usher Cover ft. Wilkie Ferguson

**Get this song on our brand new album**: http://apple.co/1NPDAvZ Postmodern Jukebox tix: http://www.pmjlive.com Those of you that caught PMJ on tour in the ...

Up for tap dancing?

[haphazardheuristics]

Jan Garbarek & Ustad Fateh Ali Khan - Ragas and Sagas

℗ 1992 ECM Records 1. Raga I - 0:00 Ustad Fateh Ali Khan 2. Saga* - 8:45 Jan Garbarek 3. Raga II - 14:15 Ustad Fateh Ali Khan 4. Raga III - 27:26 Ustad Fateh...

Eternally lovely.

[haphazardheuristics]

You knew how it was to be alone

You knew how it was to be alone, ma, watching raindrops drip down from the pipes above, with each drop a second passed till the sound of my car reached your frail ears; departing from the shelter of the verandah and the embrace of your empty teacup, you would rush till the earth sloped beneath your little feet, treading on a carpet of coconut husks, wild grass and weeds, and you would wait, your arms folded in an absent embrace, as you smiled, watching me come up the hill; did you think of all the times before, from a previous life perhaps, of a little girl in pigtails and a pretty frock, running up this hill, hoping you wouldn’t notice her yellow shoes all muddy and wet from dancing in puddles on her way home; you knew how it was to be alone, ma, making fish curry for lunch thinking of all the tales I would tell you and your exasperated laughter when I sneaked an extra piece under your nose, until you realised you couldn’t hear me chasing the cat outside, you couldn’t see me, standing on my toes, trying to watch you fry peppers and black cardamom, and the fish curry would simmer and growl, the oil furiously rippling as a tear fell; you knew how it was to be alone, ma, writing letters when you couldn’t call, long letters in Malayalam carefully creased twice, replete with questions and hopes and barely any sorrow, now, I read them nestled in the cane chair that once held you at this edge of the earth, cradling your empty teacup and wondering when he’s going to come up the hill.

[haphazardheuristics]

Arundhati Subramaniam hitting the nail on its head.