Months here...weeks there...
Memories haunted
Present distorted
Grappling with that which is gone
Struggling with that which stays visible
Dreding that which will arrive
Sit and anticipate whether i will survive.
The body exists in solitariness
Accompanied by no life
My breath stays suspended
Amid the thousand miles
I'm fragmented
Fragmented and broken...
Scattered into space -
Space of time... Space of thought
Scattered in my life
No emotions relive here
Every tear is for the past
Every joy has lagged behind
Scattered i live now...
Scattered in my lonely mind.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Face Pack
Hidden are the wonders.
Antiseptic power?
Whitening ingredients?
Anti blemish?
And all that perjury.
Shameless claim?
Or guiltless blame?....
Factories born.
Darkness scorned?
Anti tan.
Grab your man?
Buy. Daub. Chafe???
Pasty potion.
And what is to gain?
Identity?...or false reflection?
Self image?...or developed delusion?
Wrinkles prove my joy.
Tan, my glowing health.
If I may choose to have the pigmentation, spare me
I need not your advice.
Or your critical gaze.
Need not your mask.
Nor your unguent and emolument.
My selfhood defines me
My identity is not coloured.
I censure our social order.
I blame the male sex.
Your sexist perception…
It is unfair.
We are not.
Antiseptic power?
Whitening ingredients?
Anti blemish?
And all that perjury.
Shameless claim?
Or guiltless blame?....
Factories born.
Darkness scorned?
Anti tan.
Grab your man?
Buy. Daub. Chafe???
Pasty potion.
And what is to gain?
Identity?...or false reflection?
Self image?...or developed delusion?
Wrinkles prove my joy.
Tan, my glowing health.
If I may choose to have the pigmentation, spare me
I need not your advice.
Or your critical gaze.
Need not your mask.
Nor your unguent and emolument.
My selfhood defines me
My identity is not coloured.
I censure our social order.
I blame the male sex.
Your sexist perception…
It is unfair.
We are not.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
I existed within 4 walls
The walls are still as blue as when I left them…
The lamp still sits in its cozy corner…
The carelessly placed chair that never has a particular space yet always managed to fit in…
The door that has opened up to people who have walked in…in my life and then walked out…
The beige cream curtains…hiding the large windows that have opened up to such fabulous sights… snow and rain…hail and heat…
Time isn’t fluid here…it is frozen…
It is my escape from the hurried existence we call ‘life’…
Not one book out of place…
Not a little shift in positions…
The dusty shelf peers at me…
Memories plastered over the walls…
Words, cruel and kind, splattered over…
My confusing puberty encapsulated within these walls…
The lamp reflects my despair in semi-darkness…or my warmly lit happiness…
The windows frame my midnight talks…
The table holds my imagination…through my sketches…it captures my impulsive scribbles…and the ponderous prose…my fantasy that I penned…
The bed …those lazy mornings…the bouts of sleeplessness…the dreamy hours…
My blue phone…the endless conversations…
The music still fills the space…
This space that I call my room…
My room…my existence…
In it I have lived the true me…been the real me…
Lived my insecurities, my pms days, my morning coffees, my fights and subsequent slams, my lonely hours…
It has given birth to my thought processes…my room has been my own cocoon…
If only walls could speak…mine would have a thousand tales to tell…
But then again…some things are best mute.
The lamp still sits in its cozy corner…
The carelessly placed chair that never has a particular space yet always managed to fit in…
The door that has opened up to people who have walked in…in my life and then walked out…
The beige cream curtains…hiding the large windows that have opened up to such fabulous sights… snow and rain…hail and heat…
Time isn’t fluid here…it is frozen…
It is my escape from the hurried existence we call ‘life’…
Not one book out of place…
Not a little shift in positions…
The dusty shelf peers at me…
Memories plastered over the walls…
Words, cruel and kind, splattered over…
My confusing puberty encapsulated within these walls…
The lamp reflects my despair in semi-darkness…or my warmly lit happiness…
The windows frame my midnight talks…
The table holds my imagination…through my sketches…it captures my impulsive scribbles…and the ponderous prose…my fantasy that I penned…
The bed …those lazy mornings…the bouts of sleeplessness…the dreamy hours…
My blue phone…the endless conversations…
The music still fills the space…
This space that I call my room…
My room…my existence…
In it I have lived the true me…been the real me…
Lived my insecurities, my pms days, my morning coffees, my fights and subsequent slams, my lonely hours…
It has given birth to my thought processes…my room has been my own cocoon…
If only walls could speak…mine would have a thousand tales to tell…
But then again…some things are best mute.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Plastered in Paris
As I walked down the shiny streets of Paris…
And saw around me…
Bodies swathed in mulberry silk
Lips smeared with gooseberry tint
Faces caked. Eyes smoked.
Yards of cloth…blues, blacks...swishing in the wind
Clinging to the skin…
Pretences? Cover ups?...ofcourse…
Truth is naked. Like the primitive man.
Naked and stark. Like the stray dog.
That has no multiplicity- it is what it seems – lonely, greedy, sometimes kind?...
Would I attribute the same adjectives to a man?...
Same maybe…but not more.
Not more because I see none.
Only pretences cloud my vision. I try to blow it away.
Like the rain, I wish to purge. I cry like the clouds.
Droplets turn to showers. Showers will give way to storm.
The floods will then wash it all away.
Wash away my pretences. The clothes of lies.
The coat of malice. The silk covered construction…
The body is a construction.
The construction of the mind.
Bricked with heartbeats.
The foundation, my soul.
The skin will, but wither.
The seams will give way
And in nakedness…the pretences shall fall.
Pretences of culture…
Of society…of class…
No more…
No more will then I wrap myself in silk.
But now – what choice do I have.
I continue to pretend. Continue to choke.
The scarf around my neck tightens.
Why?...
Because I am human?...
Why, I’d rather be a dog.
And saw around me…
Bodies swathed in mulberry silk
Lips smeared with gooseberry tint
Faces caked. Eyes smoked.
Yards of cloth…blues, blacks...swishing in the wind
Clinging to the skin…
Pretences? Cover ups?...ofcourse…
Truth is naked. Like the primitive man.
Naked and stark. Like the stray dog.
That has no multiplicity- it is what it seems – lonely, greedy, sometimes kind?...
Would I attribute the same adjectives to a man?...
Same maybe…but not more.
Not more because I see none.
Only pretences cloud my vision. I try to blow it away.
Like the rain, I wish to purge. I cry like the clouds.
Droplets turn to showers. Showers will give way to storm.
The floods will then wash it all away.
Wash away my pretences. The clothes of lies.
The coat of malice. The silk covered construction…
The body is a construction.
The construction of the mind.
Bricked with heartbeats.
The foundation, my soul.
The skin will, but wither.
The seams will give way
And in nakedness…the pretences shall fall.
Pretences of culture…
Of society…of class…
No more…
No more will then I wrap myself in silk.
But now – what choice do I have.
I continue to pretend. Continue to choke.
The scarf around my neck tightens.
Why?...
Because I am human?...
Why, I’d rather be a dog.
Poetic photo??
Me the photographer…
Yes I can handle the camera after all…
I can pick, click and the photos can be pretty slick…
I always doubted my skill as a photographer…its one thing if the composition is wrong – its absolutely another if you cant hold the camera stable to save your life…
Such was the sob story of my life…
My first photography practical in college and I mess it up like a mega disaster…which was accompanied with much depressive bouts and sulks…
And I thought I was the worst human being yet born to hold the camera the way I did…
I have taken masterpieces of what a photograph shouldn’t be…
The eyes have often been misplaced…the nose had been superimposed on the mouth…oh and sometimes, it has been an exemplary form of modern art – to decipher what was the subject would have been as interesting exercise for Einstein…much less for the lesser mortals such as you and me…
And then with much bravado and courage, I picked up that box-like-instrument once again… then I learnt the functions…oh it was painful to raise that heavy SLR and go into flashback when I have given birth to a whole new living specie in my photographs…
But one must put the past behind…and so, again, I took up the mammothian task of learning photography…
I am an art lover…a secret poet…an amateur painter…and I have always related photography to art… and have always desired to learn to take good photographs…
It is something else to see an object from your perspective…you can never explain it to another person unless you have the power to capture that moment or that angle from your own camera…
It frustrated me to no end to not be able to hold that expression on the road side child’s face or to see the stream of light flicker from between that hose pipe and not be able to show it to someone else…or to just click a corner or the sky or the tree or the grass as I see it…
Every photograph is poetry…carefully constructed…uniquely built…
It’s more like poetry because once that moment of magic is over, you can never recreate it again…in your eyes or in your head…the words are lost just as that stream of light is…
So when picked up that intimidating object called camera again, I was petrified…petrified of creating some more new species or some more of the types of Picasso’s absurdity and lose heart again…but I learnt…
The aperture…the shutter speed…the lenses…the direction of light…I lapped it all up like a hungry cat trying to absorb as much as my head allowed and put some of it to practicality…
A trip into the Himalayas came out of nowhere…I got a chance to experiment what I was grappling to learn…in a passionate frenzy my eyes kept darting around to create new visual poetry…and the sound of the camera became a sound of pleasure to my ears…the ‘click’ was almost orgasmic…it made me skip a beat just thinking and praying that I managed to capture that moment as I saw it…and around each photograph is a story…that I unravel in my head as I see them develop before my eyes…an eye-full of poetry rather?...
And then I was re-born…
Me the photographer?....nah…I still prefer Me the poet…!!
Yes I can handle the camera after all…
I can pick, click and the photos can be pretty slick…
I always doubted my skill as a photographer…its one thing if the composition is wrong – its absolutely another if you cant hold the camera stable to save your life…
Such was the sob story of my life…
My first photography practical in college and I mess it up like a mega disaster…which was accompanied with much depressive bouts and sulks…
And I thought I was the worst human being yet born to hold the camera the way I did…
I have taken masterpieces of what a photograph shouldn’t be…
The eyes have often been misplaced…the nose had been superimposed on the mouth…oh and sometimes, it has been an exemplary form of modern art – to decipher what was the subject would have been as interesting exercise for Einstein…much less for the lesser mortals such as you and me…
And then with much bravado and courage, I picked up that box-like-instrument once again… then I learnt the functions…oh it was painful to raise that heavy SLR and go into flashback when I have given birth to a whole new living specie in my photographs…
But one must put the past behind…and so, again, I took up the mammothian task of learning photography…
I am an art lover…a secret poet…an amateur painter…and I have always related photography to art… and have always desired to learn to take good photographs…
It is something else to see an object from your perspective…you can never explain it to another person unless you have the power to capture that moment or that angle from your own camera…
It frustrated me to no end to not be able to hold that expression on the road side child’s face or to see the stream of light flicker from between that hose pipe and not be able to show it to someone else…or to just click a corner or the sky or the tree or the grass as I see it…
Every photograph is poetry…carefully constructed…uniquely built…
It’s more like poetry because once that moment of magic is over, you can never recreate it again…in your eyes or in your head…the words are lost just as that stream of light is…
So when picked up that intimidating object called camera again, I was petrified…petrified of creating some more new species or some more of the types of Picasso’s absurdity and lose heart again…but I learnt…
The aperture…the shutter speed…the lenses…the direction of light…I lapped it all up like a hungry cat trying to absorb as much as my head allowed and put some of it to practicality…
A trip into the Himalayas came out of nowhere…I got a chance to experiment what I was grappling to learn…in a passionate frenzy my eyes kept darting around to create new visual poetry…and the sound of the camera became a sound of pleasure to my ears…the ‘click’ was almost orgasmic…it made me skip a beat just thinking and praying that I managed to capture that moment as I saw it…and around each photograph is a story…that I unravel in my head as I see them develop before my eyes…an eye-full of poetry rather?...
And then I was re-born…
Me the photographer?....nah…I still prefer Me the poet…!!
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