Blue

I want to tell you

A story that creeps up from behind 

And wraps its barbed wired
Treacherously around my frail neck
For years I have laughed off
The cold spidery fingers that urge me
That urge me.
During the distasteful closing notes of a popular wedding tune, she decides she would be that poet.
Of course, she had the idea scribbled in several corners of her scattered mind from the time she had known Alex. Even when they'd shown her the cellophane packets that took her to the blue mist. No, even earlier than that. Even when she was seven and wrote an amusing little rhyme about a chomping cloud.
The parents had been just that, amused. That was what she saw anyway.
I cannot say if her eyes are narrow and constricted. I cannot be sure. After all, we only see what we want to see.
She is not stupid. She is a spirited obstinate child. She is only mine to play with and criticize. So don't you judge her, when she sneaks out in mended shoes carrying a few meaningful trinkets and cellophane packet, hoping she looked like the stanza of a poem that had always played in her scattered mind.
The parents don't see yet. It is a crucial and expensive wedding.
Soon she is in on a train, it is an ugly maroon dump of of grimy men and women against grimy walls pacifying their grimier children. She is playing out her suppressed poems on the broad barred windows and a woman with intricately cracked heels is asking her why she is alone. I'm off to meet someone, she says, fascinated and terrified by the deep cracks. Next she is tracing a few small words in her notebook, about the music of the ugly train, but instead thinking about the depth of the chasms she is falling through.
She has always wanted this fall. It always chokes her to know what and when and how. She delights in the sheer uncertainty of her destination and thinks of the worried parents and the hum of the television set and crying babies at home. They shouldn't be selfish, she reasons again, the poems and the blue mist need her more than ever.
The poems play again, more gleefully.
I will plant seeds on the bleak barren mountain
And the empty clouds will give in and rain gloriously
I will break my heart to a string
Of ungrateful unfaithful lovers
I will weave in and out of misery and uproar
And tap my feet to the music in dingy taverns
They will look around and frown
And frown.
The evening darkens, and she doesn't admit it, but i know she is missing the feel of her slippers and her pink nail-color. Instead she thinks of Alex. He had come to her out of the blue mist like the perfect poem he was. He had told her she was too beautiful to waste away methodically in the stupor of a city with its dusty lanes and petty quarrels. School had been an orderly flurry of notebooks and class tests, college was a needle pricking her temple. Alex had given her the gift of the truth, a truth she had seen all along but resisted because it was surreal. But time was slipping away and chaos was evading her. She couldn't take that. Alex didnt want sex, he wanted her attention and he wanted her to come with him. He wanted the corner of her lips to crinkle. He had filled her notebooks for much longer than he had stayed.
So you see, now she fancies herself a rebel. Rebelling against everything that is real and orderly. Where is she going to? To this Alex, I think.
I know now. He is a cruel boy with an iron grip on her frail neck. Love is the most poisonous of poems. And she is in love with the dark-haired Alex and the truth she has always seen.
Her notebook feels grainy as more dust pours in and settles on the full, creamy pages. Something is not right. She inhales. Where is the ridiculous rush that was to drown her in the happiness he said she deserved? Devotedly she thinks of Alex again. His preoccupied green eyes and promises that she will find things that will move her to tears. The hint of a stubble under his firm mouth that will graze her nipples when he makes love to her.
Now I see it. Alex has pulled her into a ghostly canyon where they would dance to wild music and wash off the mundane world they were caged in. After the fall they would reach home and things would be alright.
She is a stupid girl, eyes clogged with stupid poems. I cannot rescue her. I am only a pair of eyes, judging, playing, watching with malicious relish.
She is breathing, eyes half closed, when the train stops. The woman with the cracked heels swears and spits, and it is revolting and strangely comforting. She still has her feet planted on the lackluster world she has turned her back on.
It is this comfort that she despises.
The train has stopped and they're looking for her. The parents. The police. The fear and mystery are ebbing away. The blue mist is clearing. She hasn't even written the first word of the poem.
Now I can see her, almost hesitating.  Almost doubting the truth around her frail neck. 

But there is Alex. The perfect poison. The perfect poem.The cellophane packet. She is off the train now, drugged from their reunion, perfectly happy in his arms, in his clutches. I see them now, tangled against another cold train track, the blue mist closing on them. She smiles contentedly as she feels the tracks sing with the rhythm of the approaching train.

Pretty Medusa

The snakes that I let crawl up my stomach

They live on my head now.

Only thing is, often they throw these hissy fits, It's

Something I shouldn't have allowed.

The neon green baby wants to play in the rain

But Orange-with-brown-spots here

Thinks he has the pneumonia. Blue ribbon fancied

Blue-eyed boy, but,(said another), he's stony 'n austere.

I just can't seem to focus, there's already an awful

Lot to do, a diligent young gal like me.

It's a shame these slimy darlings have their stupid

Little problems, they just wont let me be.

Everywhere we go,even nosy passer-by s

Make sure they don't stare. 

But they do call us an 'eye-sore' (I really am not)

And hire people to chop off my hair.

They're being rather mean, but that's okay, I've got

Too many friends anyway, they'll only ever have a few.

We grin knowingly, they just don't know it yet

They've got snakes whispering from a midst their hair too.

Songs of sad folks (everything is broken)

Songs of sad folks (everything is broken)

She writes with a broken nib

Every curvaceous word breaks twice before it ends.

While the broken legs squirm

Under the weight of the broken glass tabletop which pretends

Otherwise, just like the broken door 

That she locks every night, ceremoniously, hiding the key 

Inside the hideous broken vase with 

Its long-wilted flowers, that heirloom of a broken family.

He drives a swanky new car

With a broken stereo set, and every lyric breaks twice

Before overcoming the erratic waves

And gliding past the streets broken from jagged malice

That somersaults its way down

His narrow driveway littered with broken whisky bottles

From the last night's new year's party

And fits snugly into the symmetric cracks on his broken walls.

One day at daybreak, they will meet

Under the broken billboard, walking gingerly and vexed

Around the fringes of the broken earth,

Unromantic and sullen, hoping, hoping to be fixed.

Baking : the sheer joys of batter licking.

  Let's be honest, most of us, all of us, live to eat. Even my most determined girlfriends, swearing on a papayas-only diet, you take a look at that fluffy,gorgeous brownie, that silky fondant adorning it, and you have to have it. BROWNIE COME BACK HERE. There. I think I've made my point. Cake spreads the lurrve like nothing else. Stick around pi-r-cube during lunch and you'll see half a dozen groups of big and small people, screaming orgasmically and throwing cake onto each others faces, hair, nostrils, you get the picture.( I am strongly against this. Happy Birthday to you. Got any cake left? Some of us like to eat it too).
So why wait for birthdays for a bite of paradise? Here I give you fun new hobby : Baking.
You will need : An oven. Or your neighbor's oven. No can do without that. Sorry.
                       A couple of hours(for most recipes). C'mon, you're not tha-at busy.
                       The will to get off your butt and move around.
Once you've got that oven, you need a recipe. If you're holding that stirrer for the first time, I strongly recommend you don't attempt the 8 layered upside down cake you watched on Masterchef. A simple sponge-cake tastes great too.Call up that aunt you've always avoided, for her recipe. Or maybe just Google.
Once you've picked something mouthwatering enough (and doable) walk to supermarket (Yes, walk. You're going to be stuffing that cake down your throat in a few hours). Gather your supplies, and its time to get your hands dirty.  Now I wont pretend to be a proficient baker here and give out sophisticated advice, but stir, stir and stir. No lumps. That's the secret to a good cake. As simple as that. Pre-heat your oven and get your cake in. And the best past, the remains of the batter on your mixing bowl, go ahead, taste it. You made that. Tastes even better now doesn't it? And your cake is baking away and that aroma is swimming around you and you're drowning, drowning in the glory of your produce. Sigh. Bliss. Warning : Take care not to burn the cake while you're in dreamland.
 So don't be lazy, don't wait for someone to come knocking at your door with a pretty basket of cupcakes (lovely as that would be, such things seldom happen). Lets see(and taste) some of your brownies, cookies, maybe cheesecakes too. Boys don't be shy, we all know you've got that baking talent too, and just so you know, the ladies love that *wink wink*.
 Here's to a Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year and to the start of something beautiful.

Eggless sponge cake by yours truly

Creation of my friend Nandini, she's almost professional

Real

Real

I know you aren't real

But I'll put on my new purple scarf

(I've told everyone its a gift from you)

And trail these large footprints

Still fresh on last night's snow

And I know this snow isn't real

(It doesn't snow in the tropics, does it?)

But I don't need to wear gloves to save 

My half-blue fingers because soon you'll

Hold my hands and we'll kiss

As the fireworks tumble across the horizon

(They aren't real, but you know that)

Like in all those movies we watched,

But didnt, and then criticized.

And your scent is teasing my hair like 

The prelude to an invisible snowstorm

And I know your scent isn't real

(Am I the predator darling, or are you?) 

Ha, you think I'm still oblivious.

This sheet of fog I'm running through,

Don't let it clear yet, let the cold shred me 

To smaller bits tonight, so i can diffuse into

This breathtaking lie

That is you.

Rapunzel

Rapunzel

Don't sit shuddering by that damp, wasted fireplace

Strike some stones together and burn your ache.

Don't take orders from that green nailed witch.

There is no glory to your bloody tears, punch her on the face.

The world is wider than the square picture on your wall.

You are stronger than your dainty fingers and silken hair.

Don't just spend your nights singing songs for the doe-eyed prince

He could take too long, or could turn out to be a blithering idiot.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair?

No.

Drool

Drool.

Its only just past midnight,

I could seduce you now (of course I could)

I just cant decide how.

I'm hazy( even with my one track mind)

Everything

From the roots of my hair to my stiff toes,

Is stern but excitable

Like the edge of a raised whip.

I could be forward, cheeky,

Stride up to you like the secretary in glasses,

From those cheap erotic novellas, selling on footpaths;

And just eat out your face (There. Sigh).

Or do I have to measure out big words

And write you a fancy poem

To tell You what I need?

Or I could sit back, and play your

Innocent, aloof princess, tucking hair behind her ear,

Like in those Oh-so-phony music videos, that always make me 

Cringe and splutter and change the channel. 

And have you come to me, and eat out my face (sigh).

Or do I have to look up the big words I've learnt,

And write you a fancy poem

To tell You what I need?

These clumsy words, that drool down my tongue

These traces of kohl, dragged under my eyes

Are all I have, to tell You what I need.