Exit the queen

(Click on it for the enlarged version)

What do you say about the first woman who let you in.. after the many you fell in love with?
In some strange way without saying the words, this is what she leaves me with ..

Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. Do things without always knowing how they will turn out... (And ofcourse take off your top whenever you want to, on the beach, at parties or when its raining. For fuck's sake dance once in a while)

'You're curious and smart and bored'. There are so many I know now about whom this could be said .. as if life is failing us in a hugely obvious way, and all we can find to do is to squabble about what we put in a cunt.

Isn't the answer -- everything?

Mood: Nostalgic about yesterday
Music: Crazy (Gnarls Barkley Lounge Cover) by Nelly Futardo

no no no..i'm not going for rehab

How are you doing?

So I finally found the answer to
How are you doing? asked with tender excruciating concern ...
The answer is (overheard at Koshys-the big nipple) is (hold your breath!).. not bad at all..

It acknowledges multiple layers ..

-- that the idiot asker may have compassion/intense curiosity about the nature of grief that you might be going through, since their lives are so dull. And how they deal with something getting over would be even duller, probably Brahminical almost. (See Jerry Pinto in Tehelka, that had me in splits)

-- it goes beyond okay ... which sounds like yeah, I’m surviving which amongst other things is just not true, because you're so much better off. If third hand reports of what Proust had to say, is anything to go by, these are the days I will remember. And considering the sudden shooting up of number of people with whom coitus has been achieved within 12 hours, these may be days that in my dotage I will treasure. And another upside, I no longer need be embarrassed playing truth and dare with gay men (or queer women either)!!!!

-- it doesn't say good .. which is just disrespectful to the grief that you might be going through, and again not true. There are moments when you have mistaken an ordinary chest ache born of over enthusiastic yoga as intense heartbreak. And that mistake has cost you many tears..

-- it sort of accepts that certain surprise within yourself that you are still standing, and not just that but laughing, eating, drinking, connecting .. maybe even far better than before. That you've learnt to live with the doors open at night, and it works for you.

humko aaj kal hai intezaar

Where Will the Next One Come From

The next one will come from the air
It will be an overripe pumpkin
It will be the missing shoe

The next one will climb down
From the tree
When I’m asleep

The next one I will have to sow
For the next one I will have
To walk in the rain

The next one I shall not write
It will rise like bread
It will be the curse coming home

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Tasseomancy

(a poem pretending to be the baptism|killing scene in godfather )

one of my lovers says that his
ex lover was hooking up with
someone, when her lover's
mother was in hospital ..
and that is far worse than
anything we have ever done
forgetting that he hooked
up with his (another) lover when
my mother's hand was fractured

i imagine respective mothers
raising eyebrows, lines around
their face stretched.. thinking ..
..like i care.. why didn't you call then?

meanwhile do you care/know that
i pick up a lover whose other
lover doesn't know, and another
whose other lover knows, and
complicated desires flow from
me for my lover's lover... (and
none of this is in reference to
lover above) ..while there are
people dying, caste atrocities,
wars churning, rumsfeld writing
poetry, bush declaring mini-wars
slums demolished, children lost
and a 7 year old organization
struggles to find its raison and joie
and various other objects lost like
dumped tea leaves in the bin
trying to tell us our fortunes ...