Poetry From Bombay - Volume 4

As for the winners out there – they’re so fucking used to winning

That they can’t stomach the real shit when it comes shooting straight at their guts

The losers are more used to this. They take their share of punches and then they stand up again

Because they have got no option but to.

And thus, through millions of years of evolution and stuff

It’s inside their genes, and they survive everything.

As the winners get extinct, put out like the stars at dawn.

I remember that hour – i had morning classes to attend when i was a kid

Father used to take me to the busstop and we used to wait for the bus

And i used to observe those stars getting put out,

And i used to think that they are the losers and the morning sun is the real hero of this story

But now i know that it’s the stars and the darkness and everything that trumps the sun every night

But the sun being the real scum has no choice but to get up and blaze through the day.

It takes all the shit –

Clouds, rains storms hail

And worst of all, the night which punches it off every time it gets close to the eastern horizon

But it gets up again alright what other choice has it got?

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My room’s at the far end of this long corridor

And there are several rooms on both sides – each with white walls and each as tiny as the other

And inside, each room has pale yellow walls and each has a vacuous man inside –

Who stares at their television set or at their newspaper or their paperback or laptop screen with the same blankness with which they walk and talk. And each one has to get up early in the morning and Monday mornings are like hell to each. Each has a woman they want but can’t get because had they had the option to get her, they wouldn’t have stayed in this semi-flophouse.

It’s like this hall of death, and it’s really no different from any other place.

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Back in my city at every crossroad below every signal at every zebra crossing a recorded voice says that we must cross the streets carefully because there’s someone waiting for us at home.

I don’t know whose bright idea was it to play this shit but if i ever get hold of the motherfucker, i would just grip his collars give him a good shake or two and say:

“listen you sonofabitch, you dumbfuck moron, everyone’s not like you. You have a house and a family and all that load, but there’re people, and many of them who don’t have anyone waiting for them at home and they cross the streets all the time!”

But back there i have a family too who wait for me at home.

Down here where I am staying there’s no one to wait when i get back to my hotelroom

But they don’t play that shit at crossings here, and whenever i have to cross the streets i remember that recorded voice and i smile.

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At the end of the day

all you can trust

as your own

Are your instincts.

Because–

They are the very first things you get –

You get them before your sex-drive your ego your hunger your greed your love

Your dope your words your job your house your friends your intellect your ideals your enemies your boredom the stuff you do to kill your enemies and your boredom and everything else.

You get these instincts from inside your mother’s body which is the first thing you get to know –

And that is your only sacred. You defend it against every shit that comes by – and for that you need your instincts –

the only stuff that belong to you

to defend

the only sacred you know of.

The funny part is that it’s that sacred that gifts you those things –

It’s self-preservation i guess.

And you don’t need Freud or Foucault or the others who belong to the dreary world of books and maddening numb intelligence and not to the world you inhabit to get to this.

The idea is to look straight and not get distracted by all that shine. And this is what we suck at – avoiding distractions.

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There’s a similarity between my hotelroom and languages and ideas and expressions and thoughts and feelings and love and the capacity to think or feel or love. All these are so small that you seek to break free every moment and this smallness becomes unbearable with time.

You start with rebellion –

You kick and punch the walls.

But the walls are strong and solid

And you are weak.

Before long, you knuckles and toes start aching and in the worst cases, bleeding

And you realise that you have no option in reality

Now you start believing in miracles. You start banging the walls with your head

And before long you get a lump on your forehead and it aches as much as your knuckles and toes

And now with your bruised head and knuckles and toes, you give up – and you start waiting –

For some more miracle – a stronger one this time

But no miracle happens and the walls remain as they are – strong

enough to bear the weight of time through ages and centuries

And now, you start getting tired of waiting, and your faith in the miracle withers away

Now there are three distinct possibilities that might happen to you at this stage, one of these three does indeed happen to you:

1) you go crazy and start behaving that the walls never existed at all

2) you seek refuge in things such as ambition and religion and ideals and fairy tales and intoxication and family – all those hollow stuff that squirm around in the dark of your skull – waiting to seduce you and to pounce on you at the first signs of weakness.

3) you get bored of everything. Plain fucking bored.

As for me, i belong to the third category and boredom i tell you is a ghastly disease and it spreads fast, very fast. When it infects it eats up everything – first it gets at the center and gets you empty, and then it gets at the cover and you cease to be anything at all

Such, my friends, is the deal with captivity. It remains.

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There are times when things change so fast that you have little time to

Realise where you’re hurt when you get the kick

And then there are times when time runs slow and you have all the time in the world

To build yourself a nice warm cocoon and wrap yourself up with all the warmth

You can afford.

But there’s the catch –

It all boils down to what you can afford

It’s like you have the choice between sleeping through all of tomorrow

Or else you can wake up,

Take a nice warm stroll by the sea

Treat yourself to a mugful of beer and a movie

If you can afford.

If not, then stop whining about how unjust everything is and

just sleep

Well things are unjust –

Both of us know that

So what’s the use in complaining?

You can’t change the world

You are no superman and you are no messiah

So accept the deal and survive through it

The idea is to survive, and just that.

Everything else – ideals, ambitions,

Missionary zeal and jealous missions

(not my pun mind you) –

They come from boredom, ennui and

Warped intelligence.

They are there

And you,

With all your shit

Are here. Right here –

Busy surviving

And that’s about it.

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And this is for all of you out there who write or want to write –

Stop theorizing.

It’ll take the life out of your words

Like a sharp switchblade

Takes blood out of heart and the guts.

It’ll trap you to the valley of the thirsty dead

Who can see the stream flowing by and who can hear it too

But can’t get any closer.

Take pride in the fact that

You are the God of the empire you create out of your words.

But stop calling it names –

For words, i tell you, hate being called names

They are meant to be just that – words

And nothing more.

And once they get pissed off with you

They’ll depart you

Forever.

So for heaven’s sake, get real and stop borrowing overcoats from other people, other times,

other worlds and other lives –

And just be honest to your words.

That’s the only thing they ask from you – honesty.

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There was one whom i loved and who loved me back so much that i couldn’t take it

And then there was one whom i loved and who i thought loved me but today i doubt

And then there is one whom i love and who loves me too but from behind strange a haze of colours and shadows i can never reach.

Gah i’m running out of bullets fast and soon i’ll be heading for doom or surrender or oblivion or maybe the valleys..

But i think i will stop thinking of this and shut my eyes and fall asleep – fast asleep

And i’ll dream of forests where the lions roar

And of rivers where the piranhas await supper

And of children who play from dawn till dusk without worrying about these damn bullets and this damn pain.

Why the fuck does it not go?

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In order to survive

You need to sell whatever sells

And to look out for your back

There’re people ready to stab you. And angry mob.

A hell in fury.

Sell whatever sells – your life

means more to you.

Sell your dream, sell the cold feast

Sell your friends and enemies

To those on the other side –

Cold people, they’ll buy if you advertise well

They’ll eat if you cook well

And your prayers will be heard

(of course, for a reasonable fee, duly levied, to be duly paid.)

(and, given that there are so many things you pray for, don’t expect all your prayers to be heard)

Roses bloom in gardens

You see the guru dancing

You see birds getting shot

You see the redeyed red

It’s coming for you.

Evade it.

Run faster than the mob

And don’t trust anyone – all are assholes –

ready to gut you out.

Just sell whatever sells.

And you’ll get through.

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It’s strange how different you feel with the lights switched on than when they are out.

You’re a slave of your senses

And they are the only weapon

With which you fight with boredom and the blue

And your eyes are the king of them all –

They can win you kingdoms and take you places

But once you take the light off them –

You feel too helpless to deal with devil and the waves,

To save you from drowning.

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She says i can eat up the yellow void

I can’t seem to see much of it –

Just yellow walls and yellow shades

And that’s about it.

There’s a yellow who’s going abroad and one who deals fast

And there’s one that hangs from the walls,

A Van Gogh imitation that can’t hide much pain with the curtain of beauty

They’re all down today and so is the moon

As we live from one station to the next –

Both having their names painted in black on yellow boards

And God who is supposed to be yellow

Strides from shore to shore in yellow slippers and the sands are yellow too

And she who sees yellow in the void i supposedly eat up

Is going to find a way out soon –

Through the mountains of dawn

And she’ll see much yellow but not much of the void

Thank heavens that i don’t get these visions like she does

And i see things the way they are

And i eat things the way they are

And i shit things the way they are

And i screw things the way they are –

And i pretend to be the holy of my world –

With my yellow kingdom in the concrete yellow zone

Between mist and the mercy of starlings –

What splendid yellow beaks they have! –

Birds, supposedly, of the void.

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Neon in the streets

Soldiers in heat

Rats in trashcans

Praying for the love

As i settle for the crumbs

From follies

And

Bad investments –

“he was too rash

But he couldn’t have hurt a fly”

They say.

Banal saints – too lonely for words

Too silent for the world

Centuries in

mud.

We wait.

Rain – rain –

“He ran for his life”

Thus the story goes

Of the knights of these nights

As devils chip through the bulwark

And perfection – with its velvet sabretooth –

It’s there.

Monstrous reptiles crawling through the night

Dead girls walking the sidewalks of historyland

Priests chanting the carnage-hymn

Pale nuns of the dark stripping down

before the unicorn

Gladiators striding the clouds between thunders

Skeletons clapping as the flesh shows its final trick

before the stage vanishes.

Burrows glowing in strange green

Everything catching fire.

There’s a big round hole

In the sky

Where the moon was supposed to be.

And a couple more

In the skull

Where the eyes were supposed to be.

THE HOUR OF THE FORMLESS TIGER APPROACHES.

I stitch no fairytale

Of games lost and won

Of People in the alley

To sleep the deepest dream

And seize the endless time

Rain – rain –

They made it to my brain

It was an Autumn Leaf

It was the Chariot of God

I stole

I lied

I was real.

Flames leapt up and grasped my throat

I saw flowers in the flame

I saw moths by the lantern

I was chained

It rained

And it rained more.

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