Rhyme and Reason

I have never been able to write poetry. Unlike most of my friends who can wax eloquent, complete with rhyming words and all, I cannot for the life of me rhyme. Maybe it is because I have a predilection to use big words. Maybe it is because when I was little, I thought every line in a poem must rhyme. By the time I learnt of non rhyming poems, my mind had already been restricted.

The joys of haiku.

Never will I sample.

Pedestrian prose I write alas.

Coming from a family of poetry lovers didn’t help either. Dinner started with Thiruvalluvar and Kamban and dessert was served with a good portion of Khayyam. All I did was eat at that time. Sure, I do appreciate the occasional poetry, it moves me sometimes. What I cannot do is ooh and aah at implied metaphorical marvels that I cannot get. Nor does it irritate me to see people get Goosebumps at the mention of a particularly meaningful line.

Prose is capable of stirring emotions and encouraging thought. Prose is abstract and grounded. Beautiful, earthly, and solid. Poetry shifts meanings, allying itself to one of the many moods of the fickle mind. Vande Mataram makes me all quiet and contemplative. Jana Gana Mana commands respect. An occasional Gulzar or Vairamuthu will stir me. Random lyricists will have me in splits. But somehow I feel the pull of prose. Poetry is like the hot girlfriend. Prose is a comforting mother’s arms. The effect Tolkien has with his words, or the way Archer moves crisply, the way technical manuals go on for pages, without actually saying anything, crappy page 3 news full of rubbish with words littering the glitterati. Words by Bachi Kakaria and Bill Bryson will have you laughing, Lahiri makes you see futility and Tolstoy reduces to a teary rubble.

I try and try

But cannot rhyme

The output of my efforts, wry

Not worth a dime

Me and the racist store clerk

Just because my skin produces more melanin, does not make you superior. I am probably more educated than you ever will be, and you have the IQ of a platypus’s ass. I could have said all of this to her face, but all I did was give her a look of supreme disgust, mumble something under my breath and leave.

Cyclic redundancy

A warm evening, so unusual for this part of the world. As I lay at home curled with a novel I thought of the bizarre turn of events that had left me employed, but unemployed. With nothing to do, I would have breakfast at noon, lunch by five and drop off to sleep whenever the fancy struck. I took long walks by myself which manifested themselves in weird dreams.

A few days into this, I suddenly rediscovered the joys of cycling. Cycling not only exercises the calves, but also sets the spirit free. Sounds like something a nineteenth century French philosopher would say, no?

Still. It is true. As I began going around the familiar streets encircling my home, I forgot distances and a few minutes I was roving like never before, one minute huffing, gasping and cursing up steep hills, the other moment, rewarded with wonderful views, steep downward slopes and the feeling of flight. My feet, that night were in their own world of pain but that did not matter. I’ll keep this up after I start working, I promised. Cycling I went twice more till the email came asking me to join ASAP.

Now the borrowed cycle sits in the hallway, gears set, greased and seat adjusted to my height. Probably its own purpose in life was to keep me sane all this time.

Summer

Come on…quick…don’t be scared, Solapur is a water filling station, half an hour to go

And so the day would begin. The Madras mail left Mumbai at midnight, and this was the first thing I would hear the next day, with my father prodding his scared son to leave the confines of the great carrier that is the Indian railways.

Summer vacations invariably meant heat, mangoes and trips to madras. I used to love travelling by trains, I still do. I’m a complete sucker for trains. There is an irresistible romance associated with train journeys that flights just can’t make up for.

And we always took the madras mail, even though it took 30 long hours to cover the distance between home and a city very very close to home(not geographically, of course…of all the insanities that one could attribute to me, geographical incorrectness is not one of them). The train would speed through the fertile landscape, cutting across states, blurring views, relentlessly southeast. Solapur would be followed by Gulbarga, and the names of the stations would no longer be in comforting Devnagari, but in alien squiggles. Karnataka would pass by in a blur of a small novel and lunch. Andhra was always dreaded because of the heat. The landscape was unforgiving as well, barren parched earth, clumps of trees. Here and there a farm would exist, defying the lack of water and the killing heat, shoots of rice swaying to the trains slipstream. Crossing over the Krishna and Tungabhadra granted views of sandy expanses, dry riverbeds and occasional relics, sure to be submerged with the oncoming monsoons.
Another thing that would occur would be that chaiwallas no longer served chai, but coffee. South India slowly began, Hindi would be replaced by a patois, of Telugu and Tamil. Rotis would be quickly consumed and curd rice would be the main course. Onward we would go, Cudappah and Renigunta and finally Arakkonam in the wee hours of the morning. The train would suddenly bustle with the eagerness of people to leave the train. Groggy eyed, I’d embrace the hot morning air (only in Madras, can even the mornings be hot). And near basin bridge, the inevitable stench of sewage, as the train pulled into central. Sunrise and I’d be bear hugged by any aunt, (who had managed to wake up by then). Madras. Marina. Grandmom’s. Cousins. A whole month of fun. Aah…nostalgia.

Dawn

I miss Indian mornings. Mornings back home were a time of peace, quiet and of a drowsy wakefulness that a good night’s sleep brings. Strains of suprabhatam, coffee, agarbattis. The milkman, newspapers and brilliant golden sunlight.

Pandigai mornings were busy. Amma running about in a madisaaru, the kitchen bursting with the aroma of a million dishes, relatives pouring in at the crack of dawn. New clothes, ritual baths, holy fires, gods, vanquished demons and sweets. With no television to add to the ambient noise, every sound had its presence, form the ubiquitous bird calls to the mani adchings in the kitchen.

Mornings in America however are nothing like that. First of all there is none of that brilliant golden sunlight, the sun dazzles in summer, with the brightness of noon, and makes you long for it in winter. Mornings in USA mean sleepless nights, hangovers, dunkin donuts, black coffee (thin enough to make you swear off it) . There is none of the sanctity that the Indian dawn brings. Morning arrives here, like a natural successor to nighttime. Dawn is rational, solely attributed to the earth’s evolution. Mornings in India are spiritual and more than just cold logic, or planets rolling about. Like a reset button, they erase out yesterday. Dawn creeps in so quietly, dark blue then red, climaxing at gold, paving the way to daylight. And chaos.

Haiku*

haiku is hard
five three five it goes
my mind runs

summer here comes
hot days force boxer shorts
ice cream melts

flies drop dead
water hisses flowers concieve for
summer goes then

hunger comes here
somalia is far far away
maggi is repetitive

she sells shells
on the sea shore see
waves drown woman

cherry blossoms crowd
white lilies float leaves green
i step on cowdung

morning brings sunrays
sleep infernally draws closer inwards
buzz not alarm

i master haiku
years work in a day
poisonous mind whirring

*haiku
A Japanese form of poetry, consisting of non-rhyming words, in odd numbers.

*#$%^&(!@~()$!!!

“You look like a giiiirl”...my friend screamed. “Do not” I retaliated…so what if my earmuffs are pink? I mean really, when it is eighteen degrees below zero and the whole world is freezing, the last thing one worries about is colour co-ordination. Apparently not. Winter in America is the real deal. Cold, chilly, damp, windy, sunless and snowy. Not the pleasant drafts of coolness that the subcontinent is used to during this time of the year. Hoary winds, snow and a piercing chill that makes you long for the Indian heat. Snow drafts that get your socks wet if you don’t walk too carefully and thin ice that will make you waltz like a Romanian gymnast on Prozac. However I shall stop cribbing, for spring is here. Nope the leaves haven’t begun sprouting yet, nor have the flowers started blooming in abundant profusion, but hey the sun no longer sets at three, and stays till eight! That’s spring enough for me. Positive temperatures too, now-a-days we get. No more the irritating chill that tingles the ears as soon as you step outside or the numb feeling and dread that comes with the realization of having wet socks. No more dark afternoons and dreary days. No more dressing up, which beats everything else. After six months of wearing layers that would make Pamela swell with pride (haha..pun or no pun..getit?) come single layer clothes days. Maybe even floaters...Hope.

PS: Minutes after this post was written, a snowflake wafted on to the authors nose, causing him to scurry for cover and generally curse the vagaries of weather, in a language that would make a bihari truck driver blush.