Sunday Morning

I took a shovel and I began to dig for words. I dug deeper and deeper and still found nothing but dust. So instead of feeling frustrated and inadequate I went back to a man who's words always renewed my hopes of one day being able to write something as good as this. One of my favorite poems - "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens. Enjoy....


Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Premiere Night Ruminations

Yesterday night was the big screening/premiere of "Aisha". As usual, it was an unusual and complicated night for me. The storm that lives in the hollows of my bones came out and hammered against my shell like a demon rattling its cage. That heady, almost cloying feeling somewhere between nausea and elation built in me like the sudden urge to run screaming through the street. I think I might have hugged a few too many people too hard.

But the night ended like any night, with me under my reading lamp with a book in my hands. I had picked up a book of poems by Rumi. And as I lay there reading them in random order, my storm grew quiescent and the fever left me. I moved past the need to feel anything at all just because it was THAT night. So rather than tell you what I was feeling and get overly prosaic as I'm wont to do sometimes, I thought I'd share some of those poems :-

What was in that candle's light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my friend! The form of our love
is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.
There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something
from your soul. I drank water

from your spring and felt
the current take me

_________x__________

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

_________x__________

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.
You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

_________x__________

There is a light seed grain inside.
You fill it with yourself, or it dies.

I'm caught in this curling energy! Your hair
Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!

_________x__________

When I put away the book finally and turned off the lights, I lay back on my bed and stared up at the dark ceiling with its murmuring fan and peopled the darkness with all the lights of my future. And felt good. I felt right. I felt I had deserved the quiet peace of this night, and the storm inside curled happily around me like an old dog, wagging it's tail periodically with contentment.

I am who I was meant to be. More than less, I am the man I wanted to be.

Amen

Me and Mr. Marley

Turn your lights down low,
and pull your window curtain.
Ooh, let your moon come shining in.
Into our lives again.
Saying, Oooh it's been a long long time
Got this message for you girl
But it seems I was never on time
Still I wanna get through to you girl
On time, on time.
I want to give you some love
I want to give you some good, good lovin
Oh I, oh I, oh I,
I want to give you some good, good lovin

Turn your lights down low
And whisper softly to the night
That you and I, that you and I babe
We're going to strike flint to tinder
Rub warmth into the winter
When the seconds fall like rain drops
and the winds sighs proudly
When Jah up above smiles and smiles
Letting the smoke of his love curl around us.
I want to give you some love.
I want to give you of that old world loving.
Let the chords change every silence we enter
Let the shadows move like warriors around a fire
It's been a long, long time
And I've forgotten the words to my prayers
I've walked every road and found no destinations
Beside lonelier folk with no comprehension
Of where it was they needed to be,
And why they were here, walking besides me.
I love you, and I want you to know right now.
That I, that I, that I.
I wanna give you some love
I wanna give you some good, good, lovin

This ocean might turn into a potion
For the ills that married me,
When I passed through the doorway
Into this world of your blushes and caress
If you're asking, I'm telling you it's yes,
We need to move like poets moved,
When the ships still sailed and the
Music forever ever grooved.
Turn your lights down low,
Oh let your moon come shinin in
And let this wandering soul
Within.

Blink

I fell through the cracks in my thoughts, down where dreams dwell, like forgotten lotuses on a hidden pond. Into the waters of my fantasies I splashed, like a dog into the azure swells of a Mediterranean shore. As the waters closed around my ankles I felt a coolness that had nothing to with my body and everything to do with my spirit. The waters were now up to my knees, and the coolness had begun to spread upwards and outwards, until it seemed to pour out of the very limits of me. Deeper I waded into that pond, where shafts of moonlight seemed frozen in the air like soft, luminous stairways to heaven, or the dangling arms of an angel reaching down to brush the skin of my face. Still deeper I waded until every hair on my body rose up and hummed like a struck tuning fork, every pore on my body electric.

I inhaled and dove down into the clearest water with the surety of a man who finds himself for even a brief moment exactly where and as he's supposed to be. Down I went into the depths. But the light here grew brighter as if the sun had given up the sky and waited for me below. The light filtered up in the water lazy and pink and the fish swam by and around me with wide grins and winking eyes. I wanted to ask them if I could stay here. As if they could read my mind they laughed, bubbles of amusement everywhere, and swam in joyful loops that spelled out "forever". Laughing with them I swam down, every now and then, twirling this way and that with a grace I never possess in life, down baby, down down.

You can't always get what you want. You don't always get what you dream. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. Down in amongst the verdure coral of my hopes, where the best parts of me stayed, hidden from all the negativity and the filth. Every one I touched pulsed roseate and surreal and full of energy. With each I felt their power become mine, rubbing away the edges and lifting up the defeats. I was beyond happy. I was ME, completely, unashamedly, unbelievably me. What the world never touched, and the girls never hurt, and the swirls of light never dimmed by a jealous crowd.

And then she came to me. My Goddess, my guiding star. My last hope, my only Shangri-La. She wore the face of every woman I've ever loved, or ever will. She smiled like a Goddess should, and waters grew still. Around me she swam like a poet mermaid, a Sufi eel. She held my face, in wide soft hands until only my eyes remained untouched. Into this she poured her liquid fire, her burning life, her fuschia desire. When she kissed my mouth closed I felt her regret, that she must send me away, and make me forget. That we ever swam beneath the Moon and above the Sun, where waters of eternity and Love will ever run. She kissed me until I started to remember, where I needed to be tomorrow and in November. And as I floated away, she whisked her tail.

Then she was gone,

And I exhaled.

While Listening to the Rolling Stones

I can almost hear you sigh,
I can almost hear you cry,
What'll I do without ya?
Where did it all go wrong?
You acted much too strong
Left me feeling torn
With that strange look in your eyes
I was walking down the street
Had another girl to meet,
When my thoughts ran your way
Before I got collected
Brain dead introspective
Need a heart break detective
To tell me what I did was wise
You wanted me not at all
Now angry I don't call
Lord please make up your mind
We can't dance no more
Or walk down that shore
You're not welcome anymore
This ain't no damn movie, this is my life.

Heaven

Got feelings trapped inside like prisoners on a sinking ship. But even if I free them, we're still in the middle of the ocean and feelings can't swim. Wish I could write better and bleed all of it into ink, and then onto the page, and out of my heart. But I can't. So here I sit, past the witching hour, itching for a cold shower, and a smoke of that sticky sour, wondering why the world keeps forgetting to look my way. Or maybe it's me that's turned away, standing alone in a corner facing tomorrow when I should be talking about today.

Someone told me my writing is pretentious. She was right, but not in the way she thinks. This isn't how I really feel. How I really feel has nothing to do with blogging or writing or words or express-ability. I can't tell you how I feel. I can't tell myself how I feel. Because how I truly feel terrifies me, exhilarates me, leaves me numb and breathless and out of place and confused. It's never just one feeling at one time. How do I begin to write about that when I can't understand it? How do you write about something you've never seen, or describe somewhere you've never been? You don't - you pretend.

But the alternative would be to write nothing at all, ever. And I can't do that. This way I at least try to come closer to the truth. This way I at least try to face this stampede of emotion. This way I at least get to go to sleep at night with a lighter heart and a clearer mind. And I can wake up in the morning and smile when the sun hits my face. Did that sound as pretentious as it does when I read it back to myself? I hope so, because it's not true. I don't want to face that stampede, I really don't think I could handle the truth, and every morning I wake up happy and confused and aroused and disgusted and bladder-full and stinky. And I never smile, I stumble out of bed to wherever the gremlins hid my alarm clock at night and I practice my Muhammad Ali impersonation on the snooze button before crawling back under my blankets face first.

I don't know what happened to the world, to this city, to us human beings. Was it technology, was it Facebook, or mobile phones, or satellite television or designer clothes, or Westernization or antipathy or any of the wonderful things we've accomplished as a species? Or were we always like this? Lost and bewildered and full of false bravado. Or am I just in one of those complicated moods where I can't quite decide whether I love the life or just hate everyone in it? Or whether I should be doing something more exciting and productive than rambling online.

I'm just as lost and confused as anyone out there. Damn but I wanna go where the wind ever blows, cool and soft, ever autumn never snows, and the mountains and the sea are as close as lovers' elbows. A little house on a hill halfway between the surf and the sky, with a hearth big enough to sit in, and in which we'd light a fire every night. And sit close together, all of us who would be there, and drink from our cups, and laugh at our jokes, and smile at the stories, each face warm with the light from within and the light from the fire dancing with the shadows cast upon it. There would be dogs, gentle giants with friendly tongues, wet noses, and eager paws. They would lie at our feet as we sat around the fire, and stare at us and laugh in their own silent, tongue lolling tail wagging way.

I wanna go to a city full of cafes and bookshops and cinemas and promenades. Full of lovers holding hands and pretty girls holding on. Where life moves slow and languid, yet fills you with scents from forgotten gardens just around the corner. Where taxi drivers are full of stories and waitresses full of life. And the restaurants are full of the kind of people that you see in the good movies, and Rita Hayworth sitting in a corner waiting for you, wearing a gown and a smile. A city where cigarettes are full of nectar and fill your body with warmth and vigor, and drug companies are run by hippies who've learned how to cure everything except desire and ambition.

But who am I kidding? I'm sitting in my room, surrounded by the paintings I've made and the books I've reread a dozen times and loved every time. I can hear Laila and Mishti scratching at my veranda door waiting to be let in, so they can lie on my run and listen to my music and wag their tails lazily while I whisper to them about the future I dream about. I can hear my sister's always-too-fucking-loud music playing as she dances around her room and acts silly. I imagine my parents sitting in their room reading their papers and doing their crosswords wearing their love for each other like their favorite shawls on a winter day. And I am happy.

This is not paradise, this is not perfect. But this is where I am happy. Today, this night, this is Heaven.

I wish you could have been here with me.

Whoever you are.

Wherever you may be.

I'm coming.

Some Nights

Some nights go exactly the way you'd hoped they would. Some nights are given as karmic presents for the good you must have done in another life, because you certainly can't think of anything you did in this one worth this smile sitting across from you. Some nights begin with that roiling cauldron of anticipation and dread and fear and longing - yet end with a quiet gratitude towards the powers that be. Some nights everything that could have gone wrong decides not to, and you start scratching your head wondering if you wandered into some body else's night, or even into a Twilight Zone episode staring you! Some nights you feel blessed to be on this here planet. Some nights you forgive God his mismanagement. Some nights are like a mosaic of faith's perfection, glittering in your mind long after they're done. Some nights make you search for the right words and actually find them. Some nights remind you that better times are coming, you just have to have faith. Some nights you go to sleep with a big fat smile and don't dream - at all, you don't need to. Some nights are just so sweet you want to smile and hug them. Some nights, you feel like the best possible version of you, instead of the ogre you normally see in the mirror. Some nights - are perfect.

Be Still

Be still young heart, at times there is nothing to do but be still. When the world becomes unknowable and the rhythms move in flux and the rains never cease. Be still, my dear, never will you have to fear. There is nothing you cannot move, nothing you cannot smile through. Watch the palms flicker in the breeze and the rain sussurate off the balcony tiles and the crows flap and twirl like tango dancers on the street. Forget where life is taking you, whatever it has in store, whoever you may have to face, whomever you are waiting for. For now be still. Take long sips of coffee and rest your head on the window sill, watch the sky and be still.

Another work rejection today, another path closed forever. Is there a worse feeling for an actor than to be found inadequate by people who don't know what they're looking for in the first place? To be judged and weighed and discarded just like that? Yes, there are worse feelings, young fool. The world is a dark place, yet your world is full of light and laughter and pretty pretty smiles.

Be wise, my dear. A rejection means freedom from waiting, freedom to step forward and continue. A rejection means - nothing, except that another person will feel regret one day for passing you by. Be wise my dear, never give in to fear, stride ever onward with a soldier's pace. Wipe disappointment off your face and show the world your truer cast. We all feel betrayed by our expectations and our hopes, but they are not to blame. They are the only renewable source of energy in the world. Even after a man has lost it all, he can still find it in himself to hope to rise again.

Be wild and free, young blood. Be more than the world around you, more than people expect you to be. Be yourself joyfully, and see the world bow and ask you for a dance.

"I hate that I like you!"
I didn't know whether to smile or duck from the expression on her face. Then she put her head down, with that cascade of black hair veiling her off from me like a purdah. For a second I actually thought she would look up with her eyes milky white and start speaking in ancient Aramaic with that Exorcist voice. But she just snorted a little wine out her nose trying not to laugh and looked up at me, mimed throwing something at me. Good sign. Anytime a woman seems to mime violence my way, or indulge in a little bit of slapping or shoving, I know things are going well.
"Interesting," I mumbled in my best channeling of Humphrey Bogart, with that sort of "you left your lipstick in my bathroom" expression.
"You really suck."
"I really do. Why exactly?"
"Because here I am, telling you I like you, and you're looking for a waiter."
"Only because this announcement calls for champagne."
"Shut up! I hate you."
"I know. You've mentioned that once or twice."
"I don't want champagne."
"I know that, silly girl. I want to pay the check."
"Why? I like this place."
"Well I don't. The lights are the wrong color for kissing."
"Who said anything about kissing?"
"I did, just now. Didn't you hear?"
"You're a bastard."
"No, my parents are happily married and very proud of their little puppy."
She giggled and took a long final swallow of wine and tottered to her feet like a queen who had gone slumming in a tavern and thoroughly enjoyed herself.
"Well I need to use the bathroom."
"Good luck to you, my dear."
"You're supposed to walk me there."
"I trust you not to beat up anybody on the way, love. Or to run away."
She slipped into my embrace, all five foot ten inches of delight and contrary to her earlier, rather militant views about public displays of affection, kissed me as thoroughly as I had ever been kissed. When she walked away, her step was steady and my head was rolling, like I'd done all the drinking. Goddess, what a delightful puzzle are your daughters.
The waiter came over with a knowing smirk that I returned like a happy fool. All around us were groups of people with their eyes glued to whichever football match was going on that night. Don't ask me because I wouldn't remember even on a night I didn't have a beautiful woman making my head spin. Paid the check, tipped the waiter a little extra, slapped him on the back and strode out the bar smiling at the maitre'd, and the hostess, and the hotel janitor sweeping in the corner, and the receptionist, and the door man, and the valet who took my ticket and ran off into the pouring rain.
It had been a perfect night. The kind of night that the gods decreed could exist only a few times in a man's life, I suppose. And as I waited for Her Gloriousness to emerge from the powder room, I felt that wonderful anticipatory murmur in my stomach. I smiled at that reminder that for all my charm, and all my experience, somethings should always remain unexpected and blessed.
There she came, hair flying like the banner behind a charging knight, and stride as determined. I didn't know whether to brace my feet or tuck tail and run. She click clacked down the stairs and click clacked into my arms again, once more proving that she really didn't mind the public so much when the affection came calling.
"My dear girl, you're drunk. And I am as sober as a monk in a well."
She giggled and traced her hands down my chest.
"You say the silliest things."
"Anything for a giggle."
"Take me home, sayer of silly things."
I tipped the valet, held open her door and put the car in gear. She grabbed a hold of my iPod and began to shuffle through my music. I loved when she did that. I don't know why. She seemed to have the closest taste in music I had encountered to mine in years. Pretty soon, we were cruising down on that long road by the sea on the wed roads, with our windows down, and that thick loamy air buffeting our faces, and the Roots' new album beating up the speakers.
"So how long will I have to wait before you ask me out again," I asked.
"Why do I have to ask you out?"
"Well we've established that you're the aggressive one betwixt us, so the onus of responsibility is on you."
Her laughter caressed my face as light as the wind, as soft as her hand on the back of my neck.
"Betwixt? Really? Who used that in proper conversation in the last century other than you?"
"Fair wench, as I tire of repeating, it is a part of my antediluvian charm."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means shut up and kiss me again."
"You want more of that, you need to pull over or get me home faster."
"Yes ma'am."
Pedal to devil, and the metal on the floor. Behold, fair drunk lass's apartment door.
I parked the car in her building telling the watchman I only needed to go up to use the restroom, and would be down in fifteen. He grunted in disgust and waved me up and away.
She waited by the elevator, still and expectant.
"You're coming up." It wasn't a question.
"The Spanish Inquisition couldn't keep me."
"Good. Whatever that's supposed to mean."
Ding the elevator, bing she's pulling me in. Back to kissing.
She opens her door, and out jumps a fat labrador.
Pet pet pet, nuzzle nuzzle nuzzle. Get off me pooch, I've got work to do.
"Wait here," she points to the bed and smiles. "Don't move."
"Frozen in anticipation madam."
Tick tock tick tock tick. I lie back on the bed and stare at her ceiling. Then her hair appears and then her face. Fuck off ceiling I'm busy.
When we come up for air she says she wants some water.
I go to the fridge, push away the labrador from my ass crack. Pour two glasses, push away the labrador from my crotch. And smiling enter her room.
And there she lies, as perfect as only the Goddess could make her - snoring softly under her lazy fan.
I nudge her with my foot. I put the glasses down and kiss her cheek and call her name. She smiles in her sleep and her snores fade away, her breathing deepening into the tempo of true slumber.
A laugh escapes me and I don't begrudge it. I leave the water straighten my clothes and head down.
As I drive off the guard smiles and waves.

What I Like These Days

Long hours on an empty road, and a cup of cutting chai at the end of it. Hip-Hop music bleeding through my speakers, loud enough to shake my soul : Common, 2pac, Nas, Jay-Z for the obvious choices but I bump The Roots new album, my iPod serendipitously played the entire Doggystyle album while on shuffle! And my car transformed into '64 Cadillac, chromed out and rollin'. I play B.O.B. and Drake and J. Cole and my smile gets wider and wider. I've even started flashing the peace sign coupled with that New York head nod 'Sup to people stuck in traffic around me. Bombay City knows not what to do with the kid.

I love my new Chevy. Twenty years old, but she still got it. A little love, a little paint and a whole lot of toil, and you should see her. Girl looks mean. Can't go too fast but like Kanye said, "Ain't no rush to get grown, pump your brakes and drive slow homie", which is exactly what I do (plus she can't really go that fast). But when you drive a car like that, with the joy she brings me, I don't need to go anywhere - I am the destination.

The monsoon, brothers and sisters, the monsoon. I had forgotten what a Monsoon (capitol absolutely) used to be before I moved back here to the tropics. We're talking wrath of God rain, wash you down and knock over trees rain. It's so beautiful when it catches you out on the street. For the first ten seconds you hate the world, and then it washes even that hate away until you're left smiling, wet, and fucking care-free. The world's problems and your day's stresses just do not matter for that moment. Granted it turns Bombay into a fucking nightmare but we're Indians - we get used to it.

Did I mention coffee? I must have. There have been many odes to Coffee that I have written, and yet...it's never enough. How I adore thee, I refuse to count the ways. You wake me up, and supercharge my days, you fill me more life than the absent Sun's rays. You make my breath smell like coffee bean trays. And my poetry stinks even after I drink you, but I find I don't cares.

The fact that I'm writing again. God bless the ghosts of Hemingway and Billy Shakes, and Shelley and Yeats, and my main man Wallace Stevens. God bless them for watching over me and making sure I strayed not too far away from our beloved Pen. I'm grateful that I found my way back to this art I love, and this desire to be better at it. I love it. Now I just need to dust off the old sketchbook and get that sketch hand strong once more.

The trailer for the new Stallone movie "the Expendables". Damn! Have you fellows seen that shit? Looks friggin AWESOME! It's probably going to suck but best believe this man-child shall be at the first day first show with coffee (of course) in hand and a giggle prepared. Nicholson can act his ass off, Spacey and Pacino ain't no slouches either, Bardem is the dude and Robert Downey Jr. is the king - but Stallone? Stallone is the ultimate dude. Ay yo Adrian, I'm back! Word! Welcome home Sly, welcome home. Show em how it's done, because his action scenes aren't blurry and annoying like all Hollywood action scenes have become, with the camera shaking so hard and fast you get a headache before you get a clue. Stallone don't speed the camera up, he slow it down. He wants you to see him knock a mother#$#!'s teeth in.

And many more things, but I'd rather be doing them than talking about them. So I'm going to go and do that right here, and I'll tell y'all about it tomorrow.

One love...

Sometimes

Sometimes I wonder why I wonder so much, when all my muscles get weighed down just by the pressure of my thoughts. Sometimes I drink one coffee too many and start feeling ants crawling around behind my eyes and an itch right under my foot. Sometimes I leave the lights off in the bathroom so I can't see the mirror. Sometimes I write so badly I vow never to write again. Sometimes I can see my name in lights and a beautifully wrapped book with my name on it in the hands of a pretty girl. Sometimes I'm just plain shallow. Sometimes I can spend the day reading Batman comics and think it a day well spent. Sometimes the loneliness and anticipation that go with my acting job get so heavy I want to sink into the ground and give it all up. Sometimes I drive into rush hour traffic just to feel like I'm part of the herd. Sometimes I want to leap out of my car and start dancing on the roof. Sometimes there's a whisper in the air just behind my left ear, like someone said my name and then disappeared. It's always a female voice. Sometimes I wonder about that. Sometimes I actually believe in destiny. Sometimes I feel ridiculous for having done so. Sometimes I accept party invitations just to remind myself why it's better to grab a good book and stay home. Sometimes I actually have a lot of fun. Sometimes I catch myself thinking Bombay is a good city to be in now and then. Sometimes I look and love every single thing I see. Sometimes I walk into my apartment and for the first time since I left home at seven years old, feel like I'm returning to MY home. Sometimes I feel like shit, and wish I could forget, and just be normal for a bit. Sometimes I can count the number of friends I feel I have without raising a single finger. Sometimes the love overwhelms me. Sometimes I pick up my phone and go through my contact list, and wonder who I should call just to hear another human voice, then I switch the phone off. Sometimes I watch silly Hollywood movies and eat chips and feel completely at peace. Sometimes I actually slow down when walking in the rain, while everybody dashes around. Sometimes I dream of her, sometimes I actually see her face. Sometimes when I sleep I do so on the floor with no quilt and no pillows. Sometimes I wake up and feel like I've slept for a week straight and the most important moments of my life have been missed. Sometimes my phone rings and I refuse to answer it or look to see who's calling, imagining instead who I wish it was. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't think so much. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't smoke so much. Sometimes I wish I wouldn't write so little or sketch so rarely. Sometimes I actually believe I'm gonna rule the world with my eyes closed, in slippers sipping Sangria wearing a black robe. Sometimes I want to leave the country and travel to the Shaolin Temple and ask them to teach me kung-fu. Sometimes I want to pick a fight just to get knocked out. Sometimes I have nothing to say and I just stare and smile and wonder when the other person will figure it out and shut the fuck up. Sometimes I write without pausing, like this, and read back what I've written and start laughing. Sometimes I think - time to look for a good shrink. Sometimes I smile and start over.

Lonely Friday Night

i get lost in these streets,
with no one looking to find me,
every night's another trial,
that I lose, guilty of crime, me
and all I used to think defined me
dissolved somewhere between goodbye
and the first time you kissed me and smiled
we broke curfews and drew shadows
like curtains and breaths like sips of wine
we poured into each others mouths
everywhere we huddled was a little shrine
to hope and love and a future and all
the silly little things that seem sublime
to a boy whose sixteen lost in first love
with the scent of your hair on my mind
that still hasn't faded. i never touched
your heart, you never returned mine
now these girls wonder why my
eyes never return their smiles, and we
never seem to make it past the point
labels get attached and roles defined
i'm sorry i kill us quick, darlings, before
your smiles shine in my eye likes hers shined
and fills me with that traitorous hope
that broke my heart and left me blind
wandering these streets hunting for a scent
i know to be hers but hope never to find.
dear god i'm strong but helpless under these
chains you chose to bind me.
release my heart, release my love,
and let a jasmine breeze find me.

Tongue Tied Up

They leave me reeling, women do. Tongue tied up and hurting. I know this may not be the most original subject for a piece. It certainly isn't an original predicament for us men. But I swear to the Goddess, every time I talk to these here girls feels like the first time. Each conversation begins with me not knowing a damn thing about speaking to women. Like I'm sailing in uncharted waters with no map, no depth awareness and no destination in sight. And if I like her, let's through in some shallow reef beds and a squall on the way, shall we?

I wonder if there will every come a time when I can breeze through a conversation, hitting all the right notes with precisely the right rhythm. Instead, even when a conversation is going well, and her hands keep fixing her hair, and my smile keeps getting Cheshire wider, I feel like I'm a musician performing a piece that I've never played before, but one the audience knows intimately and refuses to let me look at the sheet music. Too dramatic? Well how about a song they've requested only without telling me. I'm supposed to guess what they want to hear. And I can't mess up neither, because then smiles will disappear and frowns parade out the door.

Dear Lord, if I didn't love the delicious awkwardness and slow conversation tango of it all, I would no doubt have taken vows of chastity and secluded myself upon a forbidding forbidden mountain-top with only my ice-hard nipples for company, the second I hit puberty. Now there's an image! I still remember the first time I saw that first girl smile, when I was a boy, and had no idea why a girl I've seen smile before, has suddenly smiled like she's never smiled before. And what's going on in my pants? Do we ever really outgrow puberty, or does it all get camouflaged under practiced poise and what-we-think-to-be Humphrey Bogart swagger?

I can get them to smile. I can get them to laugh. I can stare into their eyes without feeling cliched, and with absolute certainty, and absolute joy, get lost amidst the twinkles. What I wanna know, what I'm writing to understand, is what in the name of Cupid's waxed testicles happens to me after that? Is it that I snap back to a banal, unpalatable reality so abruptly that it ruins my optimism and poise? Does my cynical mind fast forward through scenes of the entire relationship/association to come, up until the ultimate undramatic uninspiring end (whichever end of the uninspiring spectrum it may fall) and revolt in denial, and in desire for an Indiana Jones romance complete with bullets whizzing by and fisticuffs aplenty and hot Nazi torturers and eternally witty banter throughout?

I know not. But I need an intervention, or a clue, right fucking now. Life cannot be a Milan Kundera novel, and it shouldn't. I don't think I have the maturity or the joie de vivre to see that much drama through. I'd probably ask for the check and chicken out at her doorstep.

Ha! At least I amuse myself. It's either that or prescription pills and a silly looking psychiatrist. Pray for me...

Soul Scraping

I haven't been writing. Everyday I sit myself down and say "today" only to find myself on my bed and night with all my thoughts unsorted as sleep takes me under. It's been months.

It's always struck me as strange and a little disturbing how swiftly my attention shifts from intense and riveted to uncaring and superficial. There are many things that I was good at, that I loved to do, that I felt I had real talent for, that simply fell by the wayside on my journey towards today. Talents lie dusty in my attic, cobwebs stretch across my dreams, and the man I am today is not the man I'd hoped to be.

I loved writing this blog. I don't know why, and I know it wasn't the sort of content that most people wanted to read or even had any interest in, but that even a few did and responded and question made me feel a little more confident about the dearest of my talents - writing.
So after many many unforgivable months of ignoring my metaphoric pen, here I sit, fresh out of the shower with the taste of coffee still thick on my lips, wondering just what the hell it is that I have to say.

But I didn't start this blog to say anything at all. I'm no preacher, no expert on any subject, nor very interesting in the important ways. I'm just another flawed wanderer searching for an oasis in this here desert of life. I write to understand that wandering. I write to understand the journey. And in the end I write just to write. This isn't soul-searching I do, it's soul-scraping.
Writing takes me away. And where I go there are no truths, nor any lies, and words can describe and overcome all evils. Where I go I am forgiven my false, and my suppressions, and my constant pretending. My skin doesn't writhe with the inertia of this life, and my dreams don't scratch at the insides of my eyelids, like good dogs locked in bad kennels.

I go to a place where she never walked away from my disregard, and she smiles slowly like I remember. And we walk down fragrant, monsoon-wet streets, our bodies fitting like jigsaw pieces side by side, her chin on my shoulder and her laughter in my soul. Then I return...and take a breath. All I can hear is my unquiet silence, and the traffic outside, and the petulant staccato of my keyboard, as I struggle to finish writing before my mind wanders away again.

That may be the truest reason behind these posts - the desire to nail my thoughts down. To make them sit still long enough for me to have a look at them. Will that interest anyone? Doubtful. But I'll be here, now and again, scratching at my third eye, wondering if there're any eyedrops for my condition.

Going through my old notebooks....

I came across these fragments and unfinished pieces. The notebooks themselves are falling apart with age and neglect. Thought this would be a good place to preserve and clean them up.

***

Lonelier than the people I see
Feeding pigeons in the sun
Whistling to the squirrels
Begging them to come.

I sit in a crumbling tower of dreams,
Behind a forever-locked gate.
Staring at the empty pages
Smoking the cigarettes I hate.

Trying hard to capture a moment
Feeling unworthy every time.
I look into mirrors to remember my face
Reading words that can never be mine.

Who am I pretending to be today?
A poet, an actor, a wandering flame
Trapped in a stillness of spirit
Looking for something to blame

Searching for my corner of Beautiful
Somewhere to hide the love I keep.
To greet the dawn with a smile
And dive a thousand kisses deep.

***

You remain hidden from me,
Like all the hopes
We dare not breathe.
Sometimes I catch your scent
Lingering. A wisp of magic
In a mundane day.
I see a smile I recognize
On an unfamiliar face.

I search through Coltrane
To understand the meaning
Hidden just beyond the words
I don’t quite understand.
All these words…
What happened to my voice?

I can’t force a picture to smile
Or a glass of wine to be truthful.
We are all locked within
Parodies of ourselves.
Searching not for a way out,
But to trap another within.

***

Where do your dreams take you
Love?
Into the meadows we were banished from.
Into the songs the Seraphim hum.
Feathers on the summer wind,
Where do your dreams take you
Love?

Do you see my face, there
just beyond the Light?
Where all the things you wish for dwell.
Waves of hope against the darkness swell.
Do you see my face there
Love?

I cannot make the words beautiful.
I cannot make them sing the songs I hear.
You are the beauty and the song
The flame of my hearth.
You are my burning bush,
my desert cave.
My brimming cup of nectar.
You are my final goddess
My last loss of faith.

The Silence of Us

There are silences within us
We, who reflect only moonlight.
Silences they cannot drown
Or wash with television,
Silences that never whisper
Music that never stops.
I do not remember
My dreams.

I search the faces,
For the bright ones,
With eyes like drops of nectar.
We gather the sheets, and
Whisper “Good night,”
to empty beds.
Linger with the shattered
Things, and whimpered dreams.
Away from the silence.

This begins with guarded smiles
Safe distances, excuses wrapped
In Hookah smoke and Turkish coffee,
And two perfect cups of lemonade
Wearing matching smiles.
Words dancing to her voice.
Fingers weaving around each other
Like dragonflies in the sun
I take her eyes in mine
And forget to look away.

A song sung by this woman of quiet,
Distant places, and desert suns.
And hair that curls and flows
Like the pen of an Arabian poet.
A woman deeper than all of this,
A sound vanishing beyond itself

She sprinkles me across her sky.
Jasmine dreams in a secret garden.She gives me the wordsI told my ears to forget.
A prayer calling its priest,
As I take her in my arms,
And welcome her home.

This Is It

I decided to finally stop procrastinating and go see Michael Jackson’s “This is It” tonight.

Moment of silence…………………………………………………………………

Words cannot begin to describe the nostalgia, the euphoria, the overwhelming shaking of the booty, and the heartbreak I felt whilst watching. I have loved that man’s music ever since the first day I heard “Thriller” playing, in July 1991. In Swedish House Dormitory at Kodaikanal International School. I was all of seven and a half years old, and I had told my parents the year before that I wanted to go away to boarding school. I have no idea what had gotten into me to leave my comfortable home and my doting parents and move to the other end of the bloody country, up a mountain, and into a boarding school.

I remember the green stucco walls of the dorm. I remember the alien sounds coming out of the Tamil maids as they cajoled, pleaded, screamed, and jovially pushed all of us into the cafeteria for dinner. I remember the white tiles on the floor that smelled like spilled spaghetti sauce and Coca-Cola spills. I remember the heady aromas wafting out of the kitchen which wasn’t really separated from the cafeteria by anything except one of those saloon doors that they show in the old Western films. And every now and then, Mary, the chef’s wife would step through like Clint Eastwood and thump unidentifiable stuff into the bowls in front of us.

I remember that first dinner, sitting at a table alone, watching everyone so comfortable with each other and themselves. I tried to understand all the jokes, decipher the stories being told and the references they used. I knew nothing, and noone. I had grown up on a pretty secluded farm, with my only contact with kids my age at the local public school where we all had worn uniforms and not really talked to each other.

That’s when I heard the music. Michael Jackson playing on the most beat up tape recorder I had ever seen. But this kid called Dhanus Nair, who would later become my room-mate and my friend, put it on and did an impromptu jig in the middle of the cafeteria. Our dorm parent, Mrs. Lazarus, a tall statuesque, Amazon of a woman (who later become as close to me as my own mother, through my time in that dorm, and later, as I moved on, grew up and grew out) come storming through the doors like one of the ghouls breaking down the door in the video. But I, sitting alone in the corner, was the only one who noticed her smile when she turned away again to walk out after chastising Dhanus.

That smile was the first moment I felt the weight and the fear lift off my chest. And I’ve always associated that feeling with Michael Jackson’s music. It’s one of those strange psychological associations that happens. Doesn’t have to be logical, doesn’t even have to matter to anyone else.

Till this day, all I have to do, to feel like a kid with an entire universe of adventure ahead of him, is to play Michael Jackson.

You were an angel Michael. An angel we raised up then tore down and threw away. How we wailed when you died…how we beat our chests. But what we cried for wasn’t that you were gone, we cried that we had ever known a moment of doubt about you. That the world made us stop loving you as much, even for a little while.

Forgive us.

And thank you.

For the music, for that feeling, for the love.

You were it.

Have fun teaching the angels how to Moonwalk.

Something in the AIr

I feel the weather changing. There was a promise of relief in the wind, just the barest brush of better times ahead. Bombay never really gets cold, but the wind tonight seemed to promise some respite in the future. I hope so. I am not a man suited to this humidity and dust. It’s been only a week since we all came down from Rishikesh, and every morning I wake, I can feel the siren call of the mountains throbbing against my eyes just after they open. In that half moment betwixt slumber and when I toss aside the sheets, I can almost taste the thickness of the mountain air in my mouth.

It’s strange how I’m always wishing to be somewhere other than I am. I wonder if it’s my own personal purgatory, or do others have a similar ache in their hearts now and then. When they look around a room, or stop at a red light and stare outside their cars, do they long to be anywhere but in their present circumstances. I’ve been working at not being so disconnected with my present, and am proud to say that there have been mostly successes on that front. But my rambunctious mind and it’s endless, bounding energy to skip and twirl and disappear into fantasy, like a pup chasing into a thicket after a rabbit, it always takes me by surprise and snap! I’m away in another world.

I found myself doing that very strongly this last Thursday night. I was invited to attend the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image’s Eleventh Film Festival. Truth be told, I went more because the opening film was going to be Soderberg’s “The Informant”, a film I’d been jonesing to see ever since I saw the trailer earlier this year. But before the screening, there was a long drawn-out introduction and opening ceremony, with many speeches and many moments of applause. It was very well done, heartfelt, a bit sloppily staged, but sincere. And yet for the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to actually pay attention to my surroundings.

Thankfully the movie started and gripped me from the first moment. Matt Damon who, after watching him in the “Talented Mr. Ripley”, I have come to greatly admire, was unbelievable in “The Informant”. The man altered everything about himself, body-language, mannerisms, idiosyncrasies, tics, speech pattern, even his body shape. It was a humbling experience watching an actor inhabit his role so completely. Realized I have a long, long way to go before I can even claim to be an actor worth the mentioning. If you get a chance, watch this film. Aside from “Frost/Nixon” it’s probably the best film I’ve seen this year.

After the screening was a dinner, but everybody seemed to only want to head home. So I peeled away too, took in a nice quiet meal at a nearby restaurant. Something very relaxing about eating alone in a dimly lit joint, with smiling waiters and perfectly decanted port sparkling crimson in a glass. There’s definitely something in the air these days. I don’t quite know what it is, only it fills me with the oddest surge of hope. As if something’s coming, or has already arrived. I keep walking into rooms hoping to find IT there, or turning corners hoping to glimpse it.

Now to be away. Brand new book sitting on my bedside, and a steaming cup of kahwa. My apartment smells like champa, and the wind’s tapping softly on the windows, asking to be let in. I think I’ll oblige. Excuse me…

Regret

She told me that her favorite song was “Again” by Lenny Kravitz. Her voice was a soft whisper in my ear, and her body a softer one beside mine, separated only by the arm of one chair and every fear that glistened in her eyes. We were both high on more than weed, and we were both exhausted, and we weren’t alone, but we might as well have been. The laughter of the other’s around us, their jokes and their back-slapping camaraderie merely added to our isolation. They were no different than the moon flitting in and out of the swaying branches of the trees above, and the moths and the candles locked in their deadly tango. The night it seemed, and all its children were there for us, and for us alone.

Or at least, it was so in my mind.

Now it’s the following day and I’m listening to the song, again and again. “All of my life, where have you been? I wonder if I’ll, ever see you again. And if that day comes, I know we could win. I wonder if I’ll, ever see you again.” And I wonder about a girl who could love those lines so much. Where every pleasure was deferred, every wish was killed by negativity before it could ever take flesh. The search for the perfect love, the finding of it, only to cast it back into the wind hoping life and destiny and chance bring it back into your arms again. It’s a great song, but a sad one. How you can meet someone completely amazing and yet you can let them pass you by without saying…anything. Then you wonder why you never meet anyone truly amazing. How could I have let last night pass me by without fulfilling it’s promise? How could I have been so stupid?

I wanted her that night, from mind to body, follicle to toenail, but I did nothing. And she wanted me, inexplicably to her and to me, and hesitantly for sure because she didn’t trust that part of herself that was drawn to me, and she trusted the world not at all. So she pushed herself away from me, from the table full of kindly laughing faces, and away from that night of seductive shadows. She pushed herself away with a snapped “Good night” and fled down the hallway. The moths flitted after her, drawn by the dying heat between her and me. She pushed herself away, and locked herself away in her room, alone and wondering. And I sat outside, with my laughing happy friends and felt myself seized by the oddest mixture of rage and sadness and lust and loneliness.

I remember us, and our canted postures, our breaths doing what our mouths wished to, our hands finding reasons to brush up against each other. It was our last chance for a dance; our last night together before the world intruded and work took us away. And we did nothing. I sit alone now, drinking teas of regret, while she lies in her room, surrounded by friends and familiar things. I wonder if her thoughts are straying, stumbling their way towards me. I know they are not, why would they? She is a woman that ever will ask “Why”, never “Why ever not?”

But what galls me is my restraint, my petulant insistence that the next move be hers. The things I could have said, the things I should have done, all carefully and brightly wrapped in my mind, of no use now. Just extra clutter in that room we all have in our heads, the room full of things we never said. Mine’s more a mansion than a room now.

It amazes me how much we think we’ve matured, become scarred veterans of this bloody war of the sexes. Then lightning strikes and we’re left just as blind and scared as we were the first time it struck. How pathetic this must sound? How weak and despondent? I’m writing now to turn my face away from the mirror. I don’t need seven years of bad luck. I’m writing because my disgust must not be allowed to ruin the fragile castle of patience and faith I have erected. I’m writing because out in the real world, I feel like a coward of words.

September

Almost exactly one year after we made “Sikandar” in Kashmir, I find myself once again under the ageless gaze of the Himalayas. This time it’s Hrishikesh that’s playing host to this wandering soul. The undying Mountains and the undying fires of faith being assailed daily by the polluted river of humanity, that crash against it without pause, without pity, and completely without thought. It hurts me to see the garbage heaps we’ve turned our holiest and most beautiful places into. But that’s what we do, I guess. I might as well try to change the Sun into a gentler watcher, than tell my species to stop befouling their surroundings. Probably have more luck with the Sun.
Been shooting for a new project for about a month now, and have been quite underwhelmed by work. Not been working as often as I would like. And nothing saps my energy quite like inactivity. Pathetic excuse for the lack of any blogs I could have posted, but it’s the only one I’ve got.
I’m just grateful to be working again, even if it’s a relatively small part. I’ve had a great time working on this one. The crew and the directorial team are all oddballs and fun spirits. And a truly blessedly wacko bunch of co-actors which always is preferable to the stuffy, stiff-shirts that one can across. This bunch is all young and funny, and uninhibited and chilled. It’s a great atmosphere for work and contemplation of nothing much at all, just sitting in the evening light on wicker and plastic chair circles with laughter and coffee fumes floating up and startling the birds sitting overhead in the temple trees.
I went white-water rafting today for the first time and had myself a big, bloody blast. Half way down the trip the guide told me that I could jump out of the raft and body-surf the next bunch of rapids. My companion hit the water wrong and swallowed a rather unpleasant mouthful of the Ganges and then panicked in the water. But I reached him in time and propped him upright, after which he laughed and got the hang of it. So barring that first terrifying minute until the smile reappeared on his face, the rest of the body-surfing section was the about the most fun I’ve had in a long, long while. I highly recommend it to all of you.
This is what I love so much about my job. To go routinely travel and stay in all these places, the nomadic life, the life of new faces, strange tasting waters, odd-smelling rooms, and the bonds I make with all the people. Some which will last only until the filming lasts, and some a ways longer, but all dear and all interesting. Life is grand.
The only thing I miss from the city is the cinemas. I’m craving a dark auditorium and a bucket of popcorn. I was hoping to be able to catch the new Tarantino flick in the cinema adjacent to our hotel in Delhi on the last free day before we travelled to the mountains, but there was a party and there was tequila and pretty girls dancing, and much Mary, Mary, Mary… So yeah, that plan didn’t get executed quite as smoothly as I had anticipated.
I feel strangely blessed to be where I am right now. It’s not a deep or moving feeling, simply a quiet satisfaction with my present. I’m coming closer and closer to living in the moment only. I still manage to stray from it, but I’m gaining my stillness. The more I wander, the more I work, the more calm I seem to become. Bless you Lords and Ladies for blessing this unworthy fellow.