Steam

The man gobbled
up a plate
of assorted snacks
as he spoke.

With his mouth
full of potatoes
still releasing steam,
he spoke of the storm
in a language
I don’t understand.

It was raining
so he didn’t seem
to mind the steam.
It gets cooler here
when it rains
like it does in most
other places
I have lived in.


He spoke of the storm
and quoted lines
from a poet
in his language.

I don’t remember
what he said
because it was raining.

The raindrops
get noisy
on the tinned roof
and the café wants
to fly in the storm
away from the cigarette
smoke we plaster
its walls with.

The man with
dry eyes
came and sat with
us there on another
day and he wiped off
the eyes drops
as if those were his tears.

But that was
quite another day.

August 12, 2009

Dark glass jars

I didn’t eat my plums
when I had them.
Never put them
in an ice box
nor in the fridge.

I punctured the plums
with wooden
toothpicks instead
and left them
to ferment in
sugar.

I soaked
them in spirits
and hid them in
dark glass jars
for months
together.

Let the spirits
sap the plums,
let the juices
turn to spirits.

There are no
plums now.

August 12, 2009

(I wrote this on the morning of August 12, 2009. I woke up and logged in to Facebook. Dilip Chitre had written about staying up the previous night, making tea for himself and eating plums in his status message. I was reminded of WCW's "This is Just to Say".)

Untitled

A thousand and six years
have passed
since she sat down with
her head drooping
like a withered stalk.
If you go closer
she is a fresh flower
closer still
a dead stalk after all.
She sits, smells, stinks
she sits and does not
smell
-- an odourless stone that she
Is.

The inscriptions on the stone
hide a story
the bent head hides the
inscriptions
stories lie in
the forgotten grave.
Forgotten she is
but only till the thousand year
old wind passes that way.
Till it arouses
only to numb again.

The body of stone turns epitaph.

The epitaph that speaks
inscriptions that tell a story

© Jatin Gandhi, 1996

I love the colour red, but...

They have been in a bit of a tizzy
since they heard of the rainbow's
plan,
it won't be Vibgyor any more
it has said.
It likes red the most,
so it must come first,
followed by blue, yellow and
then, other colours.
They are quoting naturalists and physicists,
to get across the point that
a rainbow can't change colours
without triggering chaos.

They don't have to worry
the way they are.

I am not a cynic,
but I know new year resolutions
don't last long.

January 4, 2009.

The last few sips of doubt

It got out of hand at
some point,
the comedian’s act.

There was a psychoanalyst
in the audience
who came for a drink
with her sociologist friend
and spoke what she thought
the comedian meant.

They argued over this and that
in the act
till the comedian had heard them
and then left.

They passed through the old road
by the older tomb
where
seven tramps with eleven eyes
between them
lean on the medieval wall.
Every day.

It won’t give away
any time soon.

The journey on the
sunlit patches of the road
is like a dream
that they will dream of
sleeping
or awake in the time machine
later.

They will hold hands
before they part
or may kiss.

They will write
To each other
Till they meet again

But the comedian’s
not what he used to be,
he’s busy digging for roots
each time
under the follicles of hair
on his head
of what he said and what he meant.

January 3, 2009

The seventh admission of a manufactured personal history

In this mix of sleepy insomnia
and ennui,
I have carefully crafted a nostalgia trip.
I have booked us on journeys
through places that don’t exist
and plotted events that never took place.

I have it all laid out along the paths
of memory –
small, round, distempered, white
stones
relocated from free river beds
and lined up like soldiers
or school children waiting
for the march past
like fake anecdotes.

I have it all ready,
the blue prints
and the maps
of a relationship
that never existed.

I have imagined it
all here, waiting for you.

But come soon.

The road to madness is about to end.

December 10, 2008