For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror

“One more page”, whispered the insistent night, rubbing lecherously against the nape of my neck. In cocoon of light cast by the table-lamp sat I, reading Poe. And yonder could be heard the night, munching on the words dislodged from the pages, driveling the vermin of fright. In sleep, the night had opened the portal of my dreams. The fumigated, dead parasites of the bookshelf had then scurried under my skin. Afraid I made a pact with the dark, to feed it Poe in lieu of wakefulness. And now even the midsummer’s light cannot burn the ink of that night.

A road had finally broken through the copse. It was not an uncertain muddy meandering trail but one metalled with murderous intent. Unheard sounds had now taken root in the heart of the thicket. The insidious ivies of noise had woven a gossamer of fear around the wilderness. Dread distended the dimensions of four  yards. Peeved by the scurrying of furry little feet on its body the road responded with growl of engines and whine of horns. Then on one cold evening when the wood was shivering like a tramp in tatters and the wind tossed about the screaming colours of  autumn and the cries of hunger I found myself jogging on the road. At a distance I saw a man negotiating a bump on the road, with his scooter trample the sod. On approaching I found it to be mongoose still wedged with a sliver of life. Upon me could I feel the glare of a host of beady reproachful eyes as I deliberated on its fate: to...

Night had wept herself into a puddle, in a pothole on the street On the edge he sat panting, sniffing at the teary  and smoldering retreat. The innocuous looking festival of light had always fomented  with an insidious intent. It had violated  the modesty of darkness. Escaping, she stumbled  on the thresholds of lamps. On the window sills she  left her laments. Seeking refuge in  the corner of loneliness, she met him, terrified  of the gratuitous generosity of the ill-bred lights. Cowering under the pyrotechnics, pelted by bursts and illuminations, hither-tither did he run witnessing the evisceration of the night. And when the daylight ended the fluorescent  gloom of celebrations, night was still in the puddle, wheezing the promise of resurrection to her lonely companion.

Could I ever measure, the void across her face? If so, what scales or units would suffice ? Would the shudder  of recognition  be adequate ? Or will the incessant jibes of mirror  be enough ? What about the depth of the scar ? Was it deep enough to be the void in her identity ? How about the  confusion of expressions ? Was that smoke, from the fires burning in the void, emanating from her eyes ? Or was it the dim light of a fading smile ? How much love could stitch that chasm, or unstitch that moment when liquid hate had gnawed her sinews of humanity, to leave a void, at the center of her being?

Beneath the rug of the city, the earth felt uneasy. She felt disembodied in her eternal body. In an age, she hadn't been felt. No foot had lost its shoe to probe her wetness. Fingers hadn't tousled her, grabbed her and then let her run free. Long had it been since she drifted into eyes and had become an irritant, like a dream.

For months I have accumulated, my soul in the soles, of my shoes. And now  I am going to wear it down, on the road, and expose all its layers. At first,  I will scrape the grime of the city against the gravel. Naked, rolling on the moist verdant grass, I will wipe off, the indifference of the, "now". And when my skin is green and raw, and the wounds  expose me, when the cold wind purifies the oozing self, I will offer  it to that dwindling  path in the forest. There will be  no return, for the soles shall be so worn, that the soul will be a demarcation of  the roads

Darkness squirmed above the tumult of flailing limbs. Caresses deft spilled light soft, from the conjoined flesh, over the brim. Rivulets of light tasted like the sea, salty and incipient of life. The lapping sighs, and the crashing waves of guttural moans unleashed an odorous strife. In the redolence of our entangled breaths we discover, the pungent, ancient ocean of creation. Through our eyes we drain it into our memories as an act of preservation.

On the hallowed steps of a cauldron ancient, I stand. Where the alchemy of symmetry was sculpted by unknown hands. On the pallet of the sky were chiselled the ‘ nagaras ’. On the mountains of clouds were carved the ‘ vimanas ’. Into the inchoate stones were engraved the music of ‘ ragas ’. Into the unformed shapes were sculpted the tempo of ‘ talas ’. Curlicues multitude depict the legends of yore. O mighty ‘ Chalukyas ’, the arabesques intricate speak of your lore. In the darkness divine of ‘ garbhagrihas ’, still linger your passions. In the quietude of ‘ mandapams ’, echo your victory chants with, effusion. O temples of ‘ pattadakal ’, you are the flowers of imperishable bloom. In rains do your beauty awaken, to fight off time’s impending doom.

यह एक टूटी फूटी सी कविता है। कुछ शब्द जो हैं इसके, वो सपनों से  हैं टूटते झड़ते । इसके कुछ पत्ते, लायी हैं तोडके झंझावातें, किसी दूर देश से । ये दिशाहारा , रास्तों ने जिसको  बरगलाया है,  राहों के कंकड़ पत्थर में, ये अपने अस्तित्व  के शब्द खोजता । तंग पंक्तियों में  उलझा हुआ ज़िन्दगी का तुक खोजता । कभी-कभी इन गलियों के अंतहीन शोर में, जाने पहचाने शब्दों का सन्नाटा खोजता । भटक रहा है उस एक किताब, उस एक  पन्ने , की तलाश में जहां उसे पनाह मिले । ये टूटी हुई कविता , एक टूटा हुआ इंसान ही तो है, जो रात के अंधेरे में अपने साए को खोजता है

When I entered that room, I left time an errand, to find the “measure” of her future being. And now I wait at the centre of her heart. All alone I wait, while time twists and writhes around the dials and dissolves in the vials. In a space crowded with sounds, diseased, I wait. Her ailing sobs do their dance of victory around me. The drips that give her life make noises strident in the silent pool of my heart. Every injection awakens a new portal of the dormant pain. A scream, stifled, reverberates through the body knocking at the door. I travel to the edge of her being to save her soul from sinking into the morass of desperation. But in the narrow streets of her arteries, hope lies abandoned. The image of her rotting visage and the looks of shudder, it bore, all jostle inside “chemo”, which was her blood now. I take a bite-sized  piece of time, in whose peregrinations I sought the proof of her life....

I do not remember Falling into this pit But I do remember falling forever. Its glassy interior offer no footholds. In darkness dim, dance ghostly lights. In terror do I behold the reflections, of an inchoate past, enacting their caricatures on this glassy screen. They connive, they collude and beckon me into the realms of dreams. In fear I seek; the ladder of crystal meth to climb out, the rock of white powder to shatter the glassy canvas. In the numbness of the pit of life, the ladder climbs into me and these little pills shatter me.

My first short story Crossing the Road “Rasta cross karate?” he asked in his vanishing little voice. Amidst the maddening yelp of the traffic and the incessant bark of the sun, I dismissed his half-heard appeal, thinking it to be an attempt to inveigle money from me. Ignoring him I walked past. But the shock of recognition made me turn back. “That scrawny little guttersnipe, was he really the city of Nizam”, I asked myself. In his flimsy and thin hair I could make out a strand or two of the nights when Musi’s rage had over flown her banks. Somewhere far and distant into his eyes I could catch an evanescent glimmer of moonlight reflected from the chowmahalla palace. From his cloud-capped eyes occasionally rained tiny tinkles of feminine laughter. Perhaps he was reminiscing the time spent at his harem. His clothes though all torn and tattered, were held together by the intricately woven saracenic arches. In warps of the threads I could perceive the curlicues of quranic phrases. The...

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As I stood there where the wind chafed my chapped skin, a howl of mourning played on the reeds of plumbing. Wind who is a friend, is cruel at times. She insists on playing off-note keys of the broken piano and pries open the closets of my bosom. And then out come tumbling: the shrieks of laughter, the wafts of sunday brunch, the moans, groans and sighs. All sights and sounds of human existence. Hurriedly I shoo her off closing the doors on reminiscences painful. Fire had been their family member. A recalcitrant child, admonished and often neglected, whose rage had burnt down my contacts human. Rain is the cruelest visitor of all, sprouts life, on my barren facade. Every little root tearing into me, undressing me for the voyeuristic world to peep into me. But I have begun my descent via the narrow stairs into the cold darkness of the basement where they say the kindred spirits of my kind reside. A few moments more for I let the...

I know I shall meet my end by the stomp of a boot leaving a smear of me on the carpet, a reminder of my kind or perhaps a forgotten one on the soles of a shoe. But untill then I savour this upturned view of humanity. These hollow, empty and painted vessels, spilling their screams, cantankerous cacophony of their wrath. For bear I not, a testimony: of their effluence, of blood and sputum, of the foetuses unwanted, of the corpses rotting of the tyranny of stench, and their exhaustion The entropy of fear that they could not hold behind their walls. A token of savageness that they could not contain beneath their cities. The pantheon of their false gods, that always seek light and in darkness abandon the teeming forms of life. Of the faith that desires uniformity of shapes. Am I not that chaotic shape in their manicured spaces? My flailing arms and legs a reminder of death in the mirth of their life's embraces. 

The pen was stuck and the ink congealed. Blood was entangled in the cobweb of apprehensions. Paper was a rough barren landscape, unpliable by the ideas, impenetrable by the seducing pen. Within a cocoon, they reside, of flesh and blood. Inside of me and independent of me. However hard might I try, no dangling threads can I find, to unravel the life and to disentangle the poetry.