Skype

My grandmother
holds up a half-finished #FF0000 pixel,
in an anxious voice loud enough
to traverse the seven thousand miles between us
asks if I like the colour.

Now, Internet speeds
in the Newest of Delhis
are from the 90s,
but can she hear the pardesi (but desi)
guilt in my assurance
that I love the scarf?

My grandmother smiles, then coughs:
adds a million particles
to the ppm of pm10
(thankfully, the PM is zen
about pollution.)

She coughs, and the audio splinters, reminds me
of how my voice kept breaking up
the last time I saw my grandfather's face
(his nostrils were stuffed with cotton,
against the poisonous air) -

Precious pixel-packing packets
lost somewhere in the seven thousand miles between us.

v ~ 1/T

I remembered...

'A lifetime is measured in a predestined number of inhalations' said my uncle apparently quoting barenaked gentlemen who practiced breathing control in rarefied reaches of the Himalayas to which his wife of twenty years remarked wryly that clearly the thing to do then was to not partake of breath at all...

... as my heart audibly measured the inexorable milliseconds, gauche in its frenetic self-assertion, until you ordered it unsleeved
on your solitary night stand
where it wouldn't come between us.

Aftermath

After we slow kiss until both lips
start chapping from the normalcy,
After we tell our mothers and fathers
and brothers and sisters and friends
and ex-lovers
about the intimacy between you and me,
After I have wrought rotten poems about
the tiny things that make you you,
Now what do we do?

After we have spent many days assembling
our life like IKEA furniture, and pretending
that the world ends where your curtains begin,
After we have corked every debate, and stated
every thing to have been said, and unsated
have supplanted conversations with skin,
After we have walked a lot
because there's no reason to not
and besides
it gives us something to do,
Now what do we do?

After I realize that we had simply pickled
leftover passion
in saline promises seasoned in the season's fashion
and the asinine sweetness of summer's evanescence (an absence
of sense, a lapse, adolescence - perhaps
could explain
why we bit off more than we could chew?)
After you disappear and stain my atmosphere
a permanent shade of You,
Now what do I do?

Baseball

At half past one
At a gaudy expensive Indian
Buffet with a Murakami menu for
One, (the butter chicken is a symbol,
not a sign, of good food), the realization fell into
My naan plate like a baseball,
That all I need is affection,
fiction and work
to be done.

The Right and Privilege to Protest

I read about Anti-Canada protests (http://globalnews.ca/news/3570572/clac-protest-against-canadian-colonialism-on-canada-day/) and was fascinated.

...

150
Years of
the freedom to criticize
A hundred and fifty years of
Colonialism. This freedom of expressing
Unpatriotism may not feel
like a big deal, but where
I come from, we still
Sometimes
Choose between cows
And human beings, confuse
The bovine for the divine. Your
Harry Potter prime minister
Loves the liberal limelight and
Lives on Facebook Live, labours
Under the delusion that the
Marginalized identify
Themselves as house elves,
That his multicolor multipurpose socks
are magical instruments of liberation,
But where I come from, The
Man would ban libations
And deviation in how
We clasp hands;
In love and in
prayer. More power
To dissent. It's a right -
But be aware of those who would
Give right arms and legs and
Youth and language to walk
Arm in arm in this very
Park. It's a right, and
Perhaps is a
privilege. 

Lynchings in Kashmir

Separated from local headlines
By space, time and
A genocide,
I wonder why 'lynch'
Is such an ugly word.
Perhaps it's because it
snaps with a wetness in your mouth,
a motion brought
to a sudden, sickening stop
Like stepping into a puddle
Or a face.

Once upon a time,
My mother tells me,
Lotuses used to bloom in the
bracken mud of the Dal
Before they were uprooted
And their roots cooked wazul, in
red gravy, and served
Upon silver spoons of rice
To the children whose fathers
Hung mocking garlands of marigold
(like yellow stars)
On the doors of their fleeing neighbours.
Now
The Dal knows only mud
And we shall all live
Unhappily ever after.

One might call this karma, but
There is none in the Valley -
ideas
(like gods)
need believers
in order to be potent.

...

This poet, on the other hand,
Is secular rationalist -
He calls it
The potential energy
of violence.

4.82

Lithium-ion batteries (often used in phones) are tested at various temperature cycles. Highest of these cycles is often at 250 degrees C (or Fahrenheit 482), the temperature at which they catch fire, and burn...

...

"You are Sneha?" asked Francois (4.7) with the white Toyota Prius.
"Oui," I answered, wrenching open the rear door and making space for Sneha as she hurried down the front steps of our Airbnb. Only 14 minutes late. It had started to drizzle.

"How's it going guys," remarked Francois cheerfully from the front of the white Toyota Prius once we were buckled in and on our way.
"Good! Et toi?" responded Sneha.
"Fantastic! First time in city?"
"I went to university here, she's visiting me," I said a bit shortly.
"Ah yeah, this city, amazing for students. Half my money I make giving rides to drunk students coming back from St Laurent," he chuckled. "And they always rate me a 5 on the app too."
Sneha smiled politely.

"Sweet hai yeh," said Sneha to me in Hindi. He's sweet.
"Haan, kuch zyada hi." A bit too much.
"Delhi ke taxi drivers se toh better hai." Better than Delhi's taxi drivers.
"I would rather ugly honesty than dishonest sweetness."
"Well I would rather good service than platitudes, tee bee aitch."

"So you guys are from Punjab?" asked Francois who continued trying to make conversation.
My family is Kashmiri but we moved to Punjab after the genocide in the 90s and then I moved to Delhi for university before dropping out and leaving India. Sneha's parents are from Andhra Pradesh but she grew up in California...
"No."
"I had an Indian friend who was from Punjab. Good chap."
I rolled my eyes at Sneha. She smirked.

"Someone's grumpy," she whispered as she slipped her hand into mine and leaned her head. I smiled slightly, thought for a second, and then smiled properly and squeezed her hand.
"Look over there," I said pointing out of the window as we lurched through the leftover traffic from rush hour. The residual rain had smudged together the colors on the glass, the pixels exploding prettily. "Michael and I used to live there, senior year. And that's Pikolo, my favorite hipster coffee house. They don't even have WiFi. You have to sit and enjoy your coffee like some kind of monster."
"It's adorable."
"And that's La Subway. You can get all sorts of sandwiches made to --"
"I'll take the grumpiness over the lame jokes actually," she groaned as she punched me.
I grinned, and continued reminiscing. The past was coagulating already, warmed by the present. My mother had told me once that everyone is always nostalgic for the city they studied in. The stress drains out eventually from muscles; the memories succumbing to a kind of Stockholm's Syndrome, stuck to places and faces.

"Did you hear about the new ratings thing?" asked Sneha, interrupting my reverie.
"No what?"
She unlocked her phone. The ride-share app was already open on it, and she swiped right to bring out the side menu. "You see the rating next to my name? Now the drivers can rate the passengers too."
"Sounds like something out of Black Mirror," I remarked.
"Guess so. My rating is pretty high though, hehe."
"It's because you're such a cutie."
I pinched Sneha's (4.89) cheek. She stuck her tongue out at me.
"What's yours?"
I pulled out my phone and navigated to the app. Swipe right.
"What?! Only a 4.3!"
"Haha I beat you. Guess I'm just way nicer than you."
"Ya probably." I regained composure. "But also who cares."
"Ya of course, it's pretty silly. I think​ you're nice tho."
"Thanks, tho" I muttered, half-sarcastic and half-affectionate.

"But actually, think​ about it - we are now rating each other on our ability to make small talk for twenty minutes," I remarked after a little while.
"Hmm I think​ it's mainly to discourage people from being late or forcing drivers to drive around to pick them up, stuff like that."
"Yes but I wouldn't do that. Do you think​ it's because of my accent?"
"No of course not," she said soothingly.
"I'm telling you, people really don't like Indian accents..."
"I think you overthink that."
"I wonder if they normalize the ratings based on one's past ratings. My idea of a 4-star ride might not be the same as someone else's idea of a 4-star ride."
"I'm sure they employ only the best data scientists."
"Hmph, is that why I see products with five stars but only one rating on Amazon."
"The real question is when we'll be able to rate yuppie organic apples on Amazon."
I chuckled.
A couple of seconds later:
"Do you think this is discriminatory towards people who are on the autism spectrum."
"Hmm."

Minutes passed in quiet contemplation of the rain-splattered windows.

"Did you end up reading that short story in And The Mountains Echoed?" We'd both recently fallen in love with Hosseini's beautiful and emotionally-abusive writing.
"Yeah I loved it. I liked how he suggests that though the protagonist's cousin does nice things for others because of selfish reasons, so that they love and respect him, this was perhaps better than not helping people at all. Interesting idea."
"It reminded me a little of my first year philosophy course. We studied moral frameworks, and as part of that we compared Kant's deontological ethics and Mill's brand of consequentialism."
"Yeah I see how you mean."

...

"All right here's your stop. Hope you guys have great day!"
"Thanks! You too!" I said with a huge smile.
I got out and kept the door open for Sneha, shutting it carefully behind her.
"Thanks for the ride again man. Cheers!" I called out cheerfully. But I heard Francois (4.72) get a rider-match ping, so understandably he was too distracted to respond.

...

Later in the day, on further musing, I (4.3) remembered it was Sneha (4.82) who had booked the ride. 

Tool

Have you ever tried
To not clap
When everyone around you
Is losing their heads
At a concert?
If I can't even disapprove
Of Justin Chancellor's (normally
Impeccable) bass, what immunity
Do I have against
Memetic virality.

...

You are lucky if your
Skull
Is the only bubble you're in.

Gig economy

Some​ of my most stellar

smoothly sycophantic
small-talking successes

have been in the backseat
of starry-eyed strangers.

Future

I want you and me to be
The kind of couple
Whose Polaroids of captured
Impetuosity
Warmly amuse their children
And
raise a soft delighted
exclamation mark with their
Children's children,
(When even the photographs
Have crow's feet on the
Corners)
As they sigh
Over how difficult
love is
In these chrome days. 

Tradeoffs

Cormen,
Leiserson,
Rivest and Stein
give us no
Big-Oh
For dollars, yet
I trade money (SFO-YUL)
For time (a week) and space
(A two meter radius
around the centre of you).

...

The tradeoffs between us
are trivariate.

Nashe si chad gayi

Vaani Kapoor is having none of it.

Brought up to believe (in part through old movies that infect the collective cultural consciousness) that desi women are to dupatta their chest, to cover their bra straps when pointed out in hushed tones by well-meaning aunties, Vaani Kapoor puts her hand on his aggressively bucking pectoralis major... and bucks as well. The pulsating hand keeps pace with him, measures out the nouveau-Bollywood hearts of a billion, brilliant young women and men who speak French, and English, and Hindi, and Telugu, and the Punjabi they've picked up from Yash Raj Films.
Vaani Kapoor raises her chin, and smirks.

Zubaan pe chad gayi.

A billion that listens to Lean On while stuck in traffic in Chembur, and plays Sapnon Mein Milti Hai on YouTube sometimes on vacant evenings in Geneva when there's chai brewing next to their Developmental Economics textbook.

Le désir coule dans mes veines.

A billion that buys front-row tickets to Penn Masala when they sing in California, and vacations in Chennai where well-meaning aunties tell them to not wear jeans to an Arijit Singh concert; the Chennai women at the concert wear miniskirts.

A billion who thinks well-meaning aunties are the bane of their existence.

A billion that wears a cocktail of kitschy ittar-scented Indianethnicwestern prints to an upscale bar in Hauz Khas that appropriates the aesthetic of a Punjabi village, drinks a Long Island Iced Tea out of a lassi glass.

Half-a-billion that is exasperated with the veritable farrago of Indian English colloquiums the other half-a-billion spews in reviews while uninstalling Snapchat.

Net se torrent jaise.

Half-a-billion whose idea of foreplay is liking Facebook posts about protests in JNU, and has a collective crush on Arundhati Roy; the other half-a-billion gets off on standing up for the national anthem, and has a collective crush on our jawans.

A billion that is still suffering and stretching against the same lines that the British drew, within and without, and now laughs on Twitter about them drawing lines around themselves.

A billion that is quite done with Bollywood video songs catering (only) to the male gaze, and through 239,084,002 views lets us know that they are having none of it.

Kudi patang si lad gayi.

The Rubaiyat of Edward FitzGerald

Talks movingly of
the unmoving prettiness of women
says
that if he were one
he would sit for days
and ponder upon his own beauty
like a flower.
But -

I'm in love
with the calluses on her
fingers. Flowers
don't get calluses.

Grandmother

"Thank you for calling",
she told me - the woman
whose love (once removed)
is the raison I exist, thanked me for
pressing a button. Dotingly,
she spoke of dusty anecdotes;
self-medicating
antidotes to her asymptotic
days, as I accurately acquiesced
in well-worn pauses -
pauses that I knew
like the saltwater
grooves on her face (and 
am beginning to know
on mine).

Adult

Every day I sell my hours for soup,
Trade my week for a weekend; a weak
End draws closer every day and I
Could be mining my mind, minding the
mines of creativity, I could be
Writing in coffeeshops and drinking coffee
In bookshops, but instead I write
Everyday
The software equivalent of Evian water.
Everyday
Drive a car one kilometer to the gym
Everyday
Trade smiles for Starbucks.
The Number is incremented
Every two weeks, and just inside my skin
I bear it proudly. Every two weeks
I spend evenings with pitcher perfect
Men and women who sip wine like
Delicate prose. Enough
Jugs of wine and enough bread and
I forget thou. More, and I forget
Everything, am
refreshed for another day.

Tourists in Verona

We used to spend the nights
We used
To knit the afternoons
From wool of common memory
Dyed in ink, but now you have died
In ink I look for you,
strawman threads came undone
Under (y)our nitpicking; Friday evenings
Are spent,
unused.

...

I just want to love you in my own language.

∆

Evernote Goals 2016

Irascible Art

The tiny slip of pink, a hint of a bite, a bit of a smile before muscle is made fluid and her liquid mouth slipstreams, her eyes slipstream behind the rest of her as she pirouettes; the celerity casually disobeying the physics of conservation of physical conversation. She pirouettes, and is simultaneously a wave and a particle and I’m scared of staring too much. Sinew made sensual, every smile a skirt.

The stray slap of a guitar, betraying the riff and the rhythm, sparking between the twin flint stones of thrill and impatient skill. Stings and bounces, in between, in the interstices of the beat, an insolent court dancer under the tyranny of a musical scale.

Irascible art in complete control of itself, exuberant with the confidence of competence. The most purplishly beautiful thing in the world.

...

Writing, on the other hand, is art extracted under torture.

2084

Tar myself with days.

Twenty eighty-four swore and

Is in; golden spring.  

Meter

Night coffee at Tim Horton's discussing Moxie would be sweeter
Now that I discovered your name is in iambic dimeter.

To the Uber driver who drove me to the New Delhi #IWillGoOut protest

This is the problem: when it is most essential for us to keep our wits and deploy our arguments in the battlefield of debate, our tongues fail us. The time and place of crucial skirmishes are never to our choosing. Caught wearing our airport brains, reluctantly shuttling between our air-purified bubbly bunkers, we splutter in righteous ineloquent indignation, and fail to defeat in conversation the very person we most need to convince into submission. Untouched by our ideas, a billion people with voting power vote into power the powerful while we shout slogans and articles at each other.

“If girls dress the way they dress (every day, less!)
how can young men not want to cop a caress?”
“But should they not possess the Freedom To Dress
 that you and…” “Nonsense, young man, you're a pawn in the chess
political parties play every day, sway
kids like you who should be studying not shirking;
these protests prevent people like me from working"

In similar rhyme and with similar reason my fellow citizen, this 5 foot 8 inch long summary of everything my blue-and-white opinions oppose went on until he begrudgingly dropped me off at my protest march against the New Year mass molestation of women in Bangalore.

Lotus Temple

This entire atrium seems to be stuck inside a wobbly 30 year old soft white silica-gel silence. Every action, every thought relaxes into existence. Every sound persists, trapped, fades rhythmically down to the floor until all that remains is a far-off roar — like that of the sea — undercurrent to the quivering silence. A girl behind me coughs; I hear her cough a thousand times. A boy beside her swallows, and I hear the two sounds mate over and over again, the friction achieving resonance. This dense lake of sound is the anchor to the silence superstructure, the rock upon which this temple is built. The silence is merely an airy ideal.

...

The girl coughs, louder this time, and everyone chuckles at the loudness.

Nests (haiku)

Inspired by Tagore's letters to Victoria Ocampo.

...

Hard to kiss mothers
Goodbye; nest is a worthy
Rival of the sky.

demonetized

So cashless,
That I have no cash left. We are all
Finally equal
in the name of "doing something".
Makes sense:
We gave the world zero.

Hindu

Unable to fall in love
With human beings, I
Make my parents proud. Like a true
Hindu, I only worship
Old photographs.

Trump

Scantily-clad ideas
In a gold-trimmed pageant, exhibit
The Cheerleader Effect for opinions:
Individually deplorable but collectively
Presidential.