Change

Time flies, On My Watch

My watch is too old for these times;

It would sit idle on my wrist

Refusing to calculate my pulse

Or show me a map to the nearest doctor


lest I fall behind.

It is powered by ideas of men long dead,


Not solar energy as I had hoped.

Finally, I had to abandon it

because it kept only time.


Now,


I grow old

With every application upgrade.

I grow old

With every software update.

I grow old

With every Apple event.

I grow old

With every accelerating net download.

I grow old

With every DP I upload.

I watch myself grow old

With every old watch I own.

Memorial to Immortality

The 9/11 museum is one of the oddest places in the world.

It is almost unbecoming for an act of terror to be marked by so elaborate a memorial. To be recorded with such faithfulness that it hurts.

I am not sure those who built it fully understand what they have done. I am not even sure those who go there understand why they do it.

It is hard to decide if it is a bandage or a badge. If the wounds beneath are healing or meant to be preserved forever.

What is there to be salvaged from the debris of death?

Maybe love.

I am Love agnostic. There are some ideas that are best spelled with capital letters and left alone. Love, like God, is an idea too powerful to be touched with language. It slips through language because it lives despite defying meaning. Everybody uses the word as a projection of a different idea that nobody can perfectly convey.

Like water in the metaphorical world these shape shifting elements fill any mould and quench any thirst.

A professor once said in class: Just because you don’t understand it, or agree with it, does not mean you deny its power.



I felt the force of such an idea as I stood transfixed in a dark corner listening to passengers of a doomed flight leave messages for those they left behind.

It was raw and surreal. Like being unable to wake up from a terrible nightmare that you know is unreal. Except this was real. Too real.

It was a brutal thing to sit through. One by one the voices came on. A woman telling her partner she loved him. A man telling his mother he loved her. Someone else leaving the same last words for their family.

A reminder that when pushed to the end where everyday words abandon you people will call out to you in a language that they hope and pray will convey more than words.

Those who chose to call it an act of God, went down with the words “God is great.” Those who faced death chose “Love.”

Somewhere in the darkness of that day those who were lost became, like the words they spoke, something more than themselves.

Womb

Just like any love, it is hard to say when you fall in love with your city. 
The exact instant when the word means something more than a dot on the map.
 
Like that moment someone calls your mother, your mother- is that your mother? 
And you turn around and there she is, yes silly, that is my mother, 
who else is she supposed to be? She is not just a woman. This is not just a city.

Like the time your friend hits on your childhood sweetheart, 
and you glance in her direction and marvel at the discovery of new old love. 
As if by ignoring her all this while you contributed to the sudden beauty.

And its boundaries, never known to you, never seen by you,are still yours,
Like the underside of your ass. If a stranger told you of its sweet curve,
You blush with excitement at their observant nature.

When you understand not just the language but the grammar of the city,
the metaphors, the idioms, the jokes, the poetry. And she seeps into yours. 
Making you her own.

You know you love a city, when you feel her pushing you away, knowing you never belonged to her,
knowing that there are desires and dreams that will remain unborn 
if you remained in her womb, in your womb.

Demean: (v.) Loss of Meaning

If you pull the thread of meaning,
the entire world will unravel, as if it never was.

Even the fastest horse needs blinkers,
But only it sees, there is no start and no finish line.

The world is never right, or left, it only is.
You can swim against the tide not take it with you.

There is no He, or She, only bodies built for life,
and very susceptible to decay and death.

There are no answers,
Only questions in disguise.

Bunkers of our Hearts

Protecting the men of peace till this day are men of war

Zealously guarding the fragile humanity of the masses

Frayed sanities are still tacked at the seams with the thread of barbarism

Stabbing the very fabric of civilizations to wrench them together

As if what binds us most tightly is a deathly embrace

As if the trenches of our minds were our rightful homes


As if the bunkers of our hearts were still our rightful masters

Crumbs

I hunger for the rich unboundedness of a past life,
when I knew the fields of Rumi's paradise.

I search for the sights, sounds and sensations that spilled over,
which once rioted within me, in the raw.

I lust for the sensation of rolling down moist grass on a hill’s back,
dancing with the earth, cheek to cheek.

I chase the wind that washed me over as I surged on a swing,
escaping gravity, only to be caught again.

I yearn for a time when the world had not laid siege on my dreams,
when the protrusions from my body did not get in my face.

Can I will my memories to cling onto the shreds of my being,
swirling and curling in tiny tiny helical homes.

Can this dream of a past not be my destiny?
and the cookie not grow old and crumble.

Showers and Lovers

There is only one thing more despicable
than lying cheating lovers; 
lying cheating showers. 

I come to you in trust and openness
Ready to bathe in your warmth.
But you choose not to play your part,

Standing there all proud and smug, 
looking down on me.
“You are pretty sure, but is that dandruff I see?”

Oh you, you don’t understand how I feel.
Forever spouting nonsense at me.
“How insensitive can you be?”

You burn me and leave me out cold
You grow hot and you grow cold.
“And I am supposed to adjust??”

I cannot get a handle on this thing that we have
Going round and round in circles.
Every day the same old story.

But I think I finally get you.

Then one fine day, 



you decide to swing the other way.

Umbilical Discord

It was a baby blue,
passing from a darkness to another
Did it ever live? they asked.

A pregnant pause announced its arrival,
bated breaths, waiting for the singular cry,
But it was only a body snared in itself.

The nurturing was a noose,
Vestigial ties to another life,
It was a twisted beginning in the end.

Too late to disentangle life from death,
the cries came muffled from the mucky sheets,
Was she ever a mother? they asked.

She yearned Freedom, Life, the bloody bastard,
delivered;  kicking and screaming,
as it deserted her loins.

Beyond the Pale

This crumpled gown may pale before bejeweled bridal trousseau,
But it too came with a heavy cost, that was not all paid in cash,
either to shopkeepers or the keepers of expensive honor.
Safe, dignified, mummified livelihoods were left to unadventurous men,
Who will one day be matched with our CVs and rejected for poor judgment.

Because our guardians stood like oaks around a nascent crop,
Cheering our growth from the sidelines; the leafy shade to our failures,
Calling forth the rains; nourishing our spirits with freedom.
Thwarting pesty uncles from eroding our idea of ourselves,
Standing up to blinded aunties arbitrating right and wrong.

Fear not, that we have veered so far from the beaten path,
That we will fall over the edge of their old flat earth,
That we have forsaken responsibility and thrown caution to age,
Rest assured, this pale blue is also a symbol of commitment,
to what one loves. And what more could you ask for? 
And what more could we ask for?

(Dedicated to all parents, who have let their daughters determine their dreams and destinies, be it vows, oaths or degrees; they are the ones who have truly pushed the boundaries, more than we ever could.)