गाड़ियाँ

कुछ गाड़ियाँ  ऊपर गई,

कुछ गाड़ियाँ नीचे आई,

कुछ और गाड़ियाँ ऊपर गई,

कुछ और गाडियाँ नीचे आई.

कुछ गाड़ियाँ किनारे की गली में घुस गई,

कुछ गाड़ियाँ साँय-साँय करती हुई सीधे निकल गयी. 

मैं उन सब गाड़ियों को दूर खड़ा देख रहा था, 

सोच रहा था, काश, इस मनहूसियत में कोईबदलाव आये,

एक के पीछे एक, दो गाड़ियाँ ठुक जाएँ,

कोई कमअक्ल, जल्दबाज़ी में एक गाडी के निचे आ जाए,

कोई बिदका हुआ कुत्ता, मुल्ला या पण्डा अचानक से यहाँ खड़े कमक्कालों के खून का प्यासा हो जाए,

दो गाड़ीवाले, लड़ते लड़ते, एक दूसरे के सीनों को, अपनी बाप की बंदूकों से काली छन्नी बना दें,

दूर खड़ा वह ठुल्ला बिना वजह, पास खड़े भिकारी का सर खोल दे,

कहीं दूर से आता Indian Oil का वह टैंकर, एक धमाके के साथ सबकी तेल बनने की प्रक्रिया शुरू कर दे. 

हाँ, वो नहीं आई,

और अब शायद आएगी भी नहीं.    

The expanding Universe

Source: Hubblesite.org

Amoeba: a single celled organism.

Cerebral Cortex: Outer layer of the brain, plays vital role in memory storing.

The Creation of Adam: is a fresco painting by Michelangelo, which forms part of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.

Centrifugal inertial reaction: a force that appears to act on all revolving objects , drawing them away from the axis. It is the reason for the formation of waves in the ocean.

Zeno's paradox: In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.

The Universe is expanding since Big Bang.

The Universe is expanding and,
galaxies filled with stars, planets, matter and us,
have been hurtling outwards at an incomprehensible speed.

Like scent, diffusing in all directions,
like the contours of an Amoeba,
with no rational logic,
without us noticing, 
the Universe has been expanding.


NASA's estimate places the figure at 46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles per second,
but I, somehow felt that it was quite an underestimation
as I walked your street again after those four awkwardly silent years.

The houses lining your street and the cars outlining them seemed to have moved further back since I last visited.

That badminton court at the corner and the park opposite it seemed to have acquired new dimensions. 

The trees, the electricity poles, the garden hedges and even those rugged white stripes on that only and annoying speed-breaker seemed to be further apart than ever,

just like us. 


I won't heap the newly discovered vastness of Noida Sector 48, Pocket 4,

         on the immensely heavy ocean of longing in my heart,

or,

on the inevitable errors and upsets of the memory storing neurons in my Cerebral Cortex,

or,

on the fact that every time I visited you, things somehow got crammed in my pants,

or that my heart was always in my mouth trying to jump out and enter yours.

No, I will reason logically and make the widely acceptable scientific phenomenon accountable for the increase in square meters of your block,
the Universe is expanding.

Could it be, 

that our  words, promises and our confessions,diluted as they traversed this space oddity to reach our feeble ears and got incoherent? 

That your goodbye, to reach me took four years and now my don't go will take another eight and your reply 16? 

That when every time I left your place it took me more and more time to come back, till I was so far away that I could not locate you anymore? 

That as you waited for me to come back, you went further and further away to a place from where you couldn't see me, feel me? 

That all the time we were together, we barely managed to keep our hands clasped in a wildly swirling universe and now have become the gap in The Creation of Adam that can never be filled?


Just like,

every time the body grows and separates the heart and the head further,
every time the centrifugal inertial reaction due to Earth's rotation sends a part of the ocean crashing into the shore; never to be its own again,
every time Achilles runs faster Zeno moves the tortoise further away,
every time the craving is so much that the craved becomes irrelevant,
every time this sum total of archaic carbon atoms executes free will to harm itself,

we never knew that while we played spoons leaving no space between us, we were being flung apart at 46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles per second because, 

the Universe was expanding... 

  

Prelude and epilogue

Prelude

Sometimes,

I wake up to find you,

sleeping all over me,

Your legs royally,

making a pillow of me. 

Your arms,

cordoning me,

from the world like a prized possession.

Sometimes,

I wake up to find you,

fussing about the room, 

as delicately as possible

 to not,

wake me up, 

but somehow, I always do. 

I,

have woken up,

to find you talking to me,

just to stop after,

seeing my eyes opening.

Then you seal your speech with a kiss. 

Every morning, 

waking up next to you, 

the preceding nine, ten, twelve hours,

feel like a beautiful reality,

stashed in some other dimension.

But,

yesterday, I wasn't your pillow,

yesterday, I wasn't your confessional,

yesterday, you weren't my night,

yesterday, I was just a guy who had slept with you.

It's true, we will not forgive each other for this. 

Hormones & processes

I know,

when I see you,

the adrenaline causing the,

excitement before that,

gives way to,

dopamine.

I know, 

when I see you, 

my body produces enough,

estrogen to make me,

feel overwhelmed. 

I feel,

it'd be the testosterone, 

causing all the vertical movements,

when in between talks,

I catch a waft of,

your breath. 

I think, 

when we are together,

I am not thinking of you,

or you of me,

but our own separate

imagined version of us. 

To say,

that I am writing this for you,

or you are singing that for me,

is somewhat not true,

for all that we know of each other,

is just a memory retrieval at that time.

Intermission

Reality is a function of real,

& unlike the universal ones,

the glowing sun and the sinking moon,

our reals are fickle,

& our reality subjective. 

You disappear,

as you dip into my personal space,

to kiss me.

Only the experience remains,

and then the memory,

copied, converted and protected

to suit my cognition. 

Of my existence and yours

There is something that,

connects the morning you,

to the night you,

the sad you,

to the hyper you,

the stoned you,

to the sober you,

and that something is me. 

There is something about me, 

that makes you,

an angel, a rainbow, a comet,

that makes you, not you,

but what I imagine you to be. 

When you are next to me, 

you are me.

When you are looking at me,

it's me looking at myself.

When you are talking to me,

It's my introspection.

For me, without me,

you don't have an existence.    

The familiarity of your lips, 

the non-mystery of your thoughts,

the smell of your hair,

which I know so well,

all have existed in my head always. 

To say that I've just met you,

or that I met you then,

would be completely false,

because I've never met you, 

every time it was just another version of myself that I met. 

Epilogue

Peeing out of the,

two one-inch

 circles,

I can't see the world in its totality.

Calculating inside those

3 pounds,

I can't reach anyone

but myself.

And I know you feel the same. 

  

India

 

India,

You are a son of a bitch.

You are a mother who never gave a fuck about her kids.

You are that fragrant aunty from the neighborhood,

who is always found in parlors,

parting in parochial bliss.  

India,

You scum, bum, a dried stain of cum,

You have raped your girls and made mouse outta your boys.

You take pleasure in brawls and fights,

but chicken out at the sight of them Uncles and tough guys.

You bolt, when I need you,

you halt when I wanna move,

You say no, when I want to,

and you never say yes,

 just to make me hate you.

India,

Tell me why should I love you?

Have you ever given me anything I have asked you to?

"You have taken my crops and fattened the industrial pigs. 

You have taken my rights and fed it to the undeserving nitwits.

The degrees you have given me are not even good to wipe ass with.

When I am crying in the streets motherless, you've made me wash dishes.

When I was sick, you have given my kidney to the rich.

You have shattered my dreams for the big cheese.

You have handed me a garbage bag when I needed a pen,

and when you gave me one, it was to sell for cheap on a traffic signal.

You took away my self esteem India, and instead,

pasted there posters of jealousy,

And your self-pompousness?

Man, get a life,

Get your head outta your poor pathetic ass.

for the two digit stats,

never helped a man on the side of your grotesque flyovers.

India,

Maybe your men are Madarchods, sick, worthless chums.

Maybe your women are all lame fucks, sitting ducks, ready to get humped.

Maybe you yourself are a land of water downed sperm,

Maybe you are nothing about a dandy selfie under an accumulated historical sum.

And I am horrified at your apathetic neutralism.

I remember India,

I played in your lap once,

I shat in your gardens and had fun in your streets once, 

I danced, sang and sprang from childhood to adolescence in your presence once,

I hoped, dreamed and dared in your corridors once

I saw the moon from your countryside once,

I saw a mother and a father in your city once, 

But remember India,

had it not been for my biological mother,

you'd never have thought twice,

before making me feel forsaken .

You really are a bitch.

India,

Your women are mean, your men are mean, your shops are mean, your ways are mean,

your gods are mean and your god-men are mean, your genes are means and your mothafucking

DNA is mean, your ministers are mean, your people are mean, your Parliament is mean and

your hospitals are mean, your trees are mean, your water is mean, your relatives are mean, your

friends are mean, your business partners are mean and your lovers are mean, your dogs are

mean and your cats are mean, and  India you chut, YOU are mean and you are turning ME mean

even though I don't want to.

India,

Do you really think elections every once and then are the answers to my problems?

Do you feel that your corrupt committees can measure my potential?

India do you think your pathetic patriotism can buy me food?

Do you think Modis, Gandhis, Adani and Ambanis can do me any good?

India, you

a collective of bigoted, baniyas and chutiyas,

You have no concern for my human soul,

You have no concern for my feelings, my wants, my dreams, my thoughts,

You, India, you,

why have you placed this misery upon us two?

India,

you selfish Raghuram Rajan,

why you never give me presents on my birthdays?

why you not tell me I look good?

or that I can do anything that I want to?

Why am I not my own,

in this land that appropriates even selfless saints and sadhus?  

India,

will you listen to me once?

Will you think about what I am telling you just this once?

Or India, will you, yet again, call me anti you?

Me, someone who has never known anyone but you?

Listen to me you,

your mosque demolitions and temple blasts,

don't give me anything to laugh or cry about.

Maybe you made the first airplane,

but the falling MiGs don't tell me the same tale.

It could be that you were great, (and I know that you were)

but memories don't make me feel

motivated, fulfilled and satisfied again.

But India, to you I say this,

"Rise, I tell you, rise,

rise like a phoenix being born again.

India, rise,

rise like a forsaken lover decides to rise again,

India, rise,

rise like that farmer who decides to sow his crop again.

India, rise,

rise like that broken employee on your Monday morning.

India, rise,

rise like your army of cobblers, technicians and potters.

India, rise,

rise again like the smell from Kabir's dead body, which was nothing but flowers.

India, rise,

rise again like those Maoists, Separatists, Jihadists, who are your grown-up children." 

But, India,

PLEASE, for fuck sake,

don't sing me those moony lullabies again.

Don't tell me what I can't do,

for all that I do, is for you.

Tell me where I can go,

But don't block my way,

I'll fucking break through anyway,

India,

be my lover, my mother, my man, my bro,

But please, please, don't copy paste on me your worthless fuckadabadus.

India,

you are my only one,

and I know I am one of your only billions,

Don't piss me off India or cut me out.

India,

be mine, and I'll be yours

like lovers, sisters, daughters, brothers, mothers, fathers and the rest of them all, 

we'll roam on your shores

till infinity...

Alternate Movie Reviews#1 - Birdman

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

                                    - directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Cast-

a Certain Uncle - Barack Obama

Brat Guy - Vladimir Putin

a Certain Uncle`s twisted Daughter - Narendra Modi

Insecure Actress - some unknown insecure actress

Sidekick Actress - some unknown sidekick actress (maybe insecure but doesn't show.)

Birdman is a powerful unintentional satire or prophesy about the world and what grabs the viewer by the nuts is the vaguely real, bordering on quasi- Kafkaesque story line.

The movie starts with a Certain Uncle suspended in midair, a possible yogic posture or maybe a Godot of a situation or a Black Hawk ready to attack. It becomes clear that he is trying to revive the glory of his past accomplishments as a superhero ( WW2, Cold War, Afghanistan, Iraq) which ended with a flopped black comedy, Vietnam. A Certain Uncle, to be a superhero again, has adapted a Raymond Carver`s short story for a Broadway performance, which just seem to have one dialogue regarding how true love is (or isn't) about killing people. The play is sure to suck, as the movie in the beginning suggests.

After the Certain Uncle injures a lead actor ( Pakistan) by his psychic abilities ( yes he does seem to possess them, destroying things without touching them, which is quite ironic because the things he does want to affect, like his relation with his daughter or girlfriend or the world in general, seem not to be affected, touched or untouched), Brat Guy comes in to rescue the production.

Now, Brat Guy from the start has an upper hand as he is not only a better actor but is also artistically very weird ( or more weird) ( he tries to bone the Insecure Actress on stage { the preview show becomes a major hit when he steps out of the bed, on stage, with a " Massive hard-on"} and Ukraine doesn't take it in good artistic spirit.) Brat Guy seems more at home in the world (theater) doing everything according to his whim, while a Certain Uncle just keeps fucking things up for being in control and what not.

A Certain Uncle also has a twisted Daughter, played superbly by Narendra Modi. She is just out of rehab after ten long years and is trying to be, well, inconspicuous, and fit into the world. She is a mess, even after being inactive for ten years. The relationship of the Twisted Daughter with a Certain Uncle is a complicated mixture of hate, admiration and frustration( she is his ' assistant' but actually can just as well be considered a helping hand, a woman Friday.) What she says ( will walk, talk and even roll around if it gets her a nice treat) and what she does ( smoke pot behind his back) are two polar opposite things.  But she surely seems to have the hots for Brat Guy. They eventually bone too, which doesn't seem to sit well with the Certain Uncle but begets her a promise of 12 nuclear power stations and hell lot of oil and natural gas, courtesy, Brat Guy.  

While all this is happening a Certain Uncle is haunted by his Birdman superhero past, which in a husky military general voice keeps telling him that he is ummm... a motherfucker and a no good and a wash out and all that kind of jazz. But a Certain Uncle is hell bent on being ' Relevant' again and chooses to ignore the George W Bush voice in his head, and carries on his innocuously innocent plans of performing a lame-ass show for the world.  

A sequence towards the end of the movie is quite interesting in this respect, i.e a Certain Uncle`s desire, bordering on an obsessive compulsive need, to prove himself worthwhile again, to be a world saving hero. A Certain Uncle realizing that the Brat Guy is humping his Twisted Daughter,  goes out to well, let the cigarette do the venting for him, and involuntary finds himself locked out of the world with the end of his robe stuck in the door. A Certain Uncle, who has to get into the world to prove himself and well, act his part in the play, takes off his robe and marches in his immaculate white and quite tight briefs and enters the world from the front door. Hell is raised. His semi-naked video ( about training Al-Qaeda and making out with Saddam Hussein) goes viral. The play is a hit.

But these were just preview shows, and the main critic, Old Woman who Licked a Homeless Guy`s Ass, has not even seen a single one of them, though is ready to trash the whole thing and throw him out of business, as she tells a Certain Uncle in a bar. Basically Israel is pissed because she isn't as famous as the Certain Uncle and doesn't want him to take the limelight away from her as the main Muslim killing machine.  A Certain Uncle gets very fucking upset and throws crap at her, which is the usual shit a washed out artist tells a disapproving world, that she can`t 'feel' and she just labels, she doesn't  'see' but just..well whatever. Old Woman who Licked a Homeless Guy`s Ass is unperturbed.

Just before the main show, a Certain Uncle has a major but uplifting psychotic episode. He gives in to his past, who is now walking ( and flying) and talking to him visibly in reel-time, dressed as the Birdman. A Certain Uncle jumps off a building and with impressive drone attacks destroys Iran, Syria and is ready to save the world( himself?) from the Islamic terrorists by being ready ( finally) to kick the world in the nuts. He glides down  in front of the world from his world conquering but imagined feat and goes in without paying the taxicab driver who actually got him there and is a poor, beaten and fobbed off Red Indian.

A Certain Uncle goes into his dressing room, picks up a real gun ( which is supposed to be not real and just a prop) and goes on stage, says his lines and BOOM! blows his brains out. Old Woman who Licked a Homeless Guy`s Ass, is the first to leave, hurriedly.   

This is quite unlike a Certain Uncle and might hint at his presence in the China occupied Tibet, where he might have learnt Vipassana meditation and probably the art of self sacrifice. The viewer is made to believe that the miserable fuck of a Certain Uncle has finally said good bye to his meaningless life, but, no. The viewer is reminded of the dialogue between the Certain Uncle and W Bush voiced Birdman, ' ...and rise again like a Phoenix..'  Well, that's what happens. He is miraculously saved. The certain unworthy a Certain Uncle has paid for his, well, arrogance and dumbness in real life blood and every critic is sold. Even Old Woman who Licked a Homeless Guy`s Ass, who writes the best review.

A Certain Uncle turned Phoenix now looks surprisingly like a ripped off Birdman himself ( with sucky art direction and costume design) but he doesn't stop hallucinating and sees W Bush again, taking a dump and sounding disappointed with him. So he goes to the window, and well...yes, jumps off.

The last scene of the movie is quite symbolic. A tired and shaken, Narendra Modi enters her father`s room and obviously because he isn't there, and the window is open, she goes there panicking and freaking out, sure to see her father`s body, a mere pulp on the sidewalk. But no, the viewer is made to believe, through her gaze that he is not down there, but up in the sky, probably flying, soaring high like a Black Hawk, destroying and killing innocent people, without even touching them.

The beautifully cinematic experience that Birdman provides to a viewer ( if the ripped copy is of good quality) is majorly because of two reasons.

a) the balanced real life CC and

b) the one long shot that the movie is shot in ( and some montage sequences at the end)

It is a movie about a nation relapsing into its normal abnormal self and its good Republican propaganda for next US elections. 

Ishan

Ishan,

I have seen you create demons and angles out of the atomic blanket of atmosphere,

Seen you talk for hours in perfectly structured sentences without making sense to the surrounding,

Seen you running for your life ducking in alleyways, dodging vibes, light, WiFi signals and rainbows.  

Seen you create castles and no-man's lands of your ideas and thoughts, packed neatly in an immobile montage of insanity.

And I am proud of you.

Ishan you,

a fissure in the cosmic, brought down to the galactic, then rendered earthly, your craving for that extra activity in brain cells is not unjustified.

A thinking man's Prophet Mohammad, a sensitive man's Jesus Christ, just before their deification, parting packets of wisdom, which no one understands.

A four billion year old bacterium, collapsing into itself with every new life, shouting obscenities in the face of its own understanding, is finally evolved enough to frame questions to her own existence.

And what have they done to you?

I know the voices you hear are real.

I know you are the next messenger on an earthly recce,

I know you know, it is all going to end.

I know you fear not death, but oblivion,

I know you are here to solve the cosmic puzzle,

I know you are here to save us,

But, we have already locked you up.

Ishan,

We have seen the fabric of time and space, all bundled up like a crumpled bed sheet, overlapping, merging, extending and going round and round at the same time.

We know what is real and what is not, we know we cant talk in absolutes, never a fixed amount of dead cells left our body,  as humans we are bound by perception, not even causality.

We have seen ourselves sitting smoking in a cafe, through a Google Earth sort-of-view, the horizon of rooftops giving way to city connected by roads to hinterlands.

We have seen ourselves from the Moon, from the Sun, through Mercury and through Venus. We have seen every one from a distance of a thousand light years, living their irrelevant lives.

We have felt the hum of the universe reach us, the slow rumble of the divine dynamo,  before anyone told us of Om or CMBR.  

We have seen the tail end of things and thought, "What went by?" just to forget about it before it went by again.

Ishan,

I know what you are thinking is right.

I know you are working backwards from a plausible answer.

I know you are pissed off

I know you are not at peace.

I know, they know that you are losing it.

Ishan, a name, an identity, an authorization code,

I am with you in Vimhans,

where your serum swollen

                       veins have turned                           you into a vegetable.

I am with you in IHBAS,

where your head hums with the
latest doze of ECT.

I am with you in AIIMS,

where your bed hurts and you 

munch meds more than food.

I am with you in Apollo,

 where they are working 

                  night-shifts to make you forget                     everything,every feeling.

                                                                   

I am with you in RML,  

as you lie curled up in your bed,

 distort,distant and paralyzed.   

I am with you in Max,  

where the needle hurts not because 

it pricks but because it is followed
by a darkness that can never be measured

    on a clock or a calendar. 

I am with you in those pale dusty dawns,
when you are all alone between

gathered chorus of oxide-in, dioxide-out,
and feel hollow and
truncated.

I am with you in those compulsory garden strolls,

               where the trees don't  speak to you, as                      they did a week before, while your vigilant mother 
provides a background score to soothe your numb mind. 

I am with you in every room, cabin, canteen, hallway,

where you'd probably need me, as 
they try to calm you down, slow

you down, put you down, and don't let

them convince you otherwise.

Ishan,

In the absence of activity there is an activity nonetheless,

Between vocal chords changing their dance move to produce another sound, there is no silence.

The space between the alphabets of a word is not empty. 

The period between breathe in and exhale is not breathless.

Between synapses and the jumping neurological signals there isn't a nullified gap.

Ishan in that place of chaos and nothing, you and me are the same, diffused and  amalgamated, inseparable like two atoms of hydrogen, two grains of pollen, chromosomes in a cell nucleus.

And Ishan, there, I will always wait with you, for you.