If for instance I decide to lose myself
In a cave as big as London,
Don’t find me
-find me.
Don’t follow echoes of my footsteps,
Or the smell of cigarettes,
Or the sound of breathing,
And especially not the squiggles on the walls,
Those are escaped thoughts
And will lead you astray,
In a cave as big as London,
Don’t find me
-find me,
Don’t follow the trail of pebbles,
And paper,
And peanut shells,
And a coil of thread that leads the way
To a pool as wide as the Thames,
Don’t cross over to the stalacite as
High as St. Paul’s Cathedral,
Don’t weave your way down a passage
To a hole in the wall,
About 452 yards away,
On the right,
Because you won’t find me
-find me
Sitting at a table set for two,
And if despite of all this
You still do,
Then shh…
-let’s eat.
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Walking home on Sunday night
I passed a couple at a bus stop
Loving each other
With eyes locked into eyes
And arms locked into arms,
And just as I reached them,
I heard him say,
- You know something I’ve always
Wanted to do but couldn’t do?
And though I wanted to stay
And listen,
I knew it wasn’t meant for me,
So I just made up the rest,
- I want to race an airplane on a runway
And win, till it crosses me by,
It’ll be a short race,
I want to bite the end of the cone off
And suck the whole scoop through it,
I want to make love under a streetlight
(To which I’d like to imagine she’d push
him away, but just so)
- I want to play hobo for a day, then take
All the loose change and toss it into the Thames,
Watching the tuppence plop, one by one,
I want to pretend I’m a busker playing an
Exotic instrument, when in fact I’d just be
Beating an old shoe box,
I want to read the Ulysses and get past
Page 255 for once,
I want to burn my laptop, Blackberry, iPad,
(And she would remind him he didn’t have an iPad)
- I want to own an iPad… to burn,
(Yeah right, she’d say, but how will I reach you?)
- Just call my name,
(She’d laugh- That’s silly!),
- Shh… I want to find a magic lamp and wish
That I may breathe you forever,
Breathing me,
So that’s what I thought he’d want to do
That he couldn’t do,
As for me, I wanted to call someone,
And hear her say,
- I was just thinking of you.
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There is something about faces today
Something that’s constantly changing like
Punctuation marks in a badly written poem,
There’s something about people
Walking in and walking out like
Three dots of the etcetera,
Except they are walking alone,
They are always walking alone,
Always punctuating their walk with
Gestures that bring full stops to imaginary
Conversations,
There’s something about faces today,
Squirming like doodles on the last page,
Endlessly etching the complexities of their
Kind,
Like maps that lead nowhere,
Like a crazy cartographer who can’t
Get rid of the world,
So he draws one that throws others off,
I really feel there’s something about faces today
That I can’t put my finger on,
Something about erasing lines,
And leaving behind just dust and fuzz,
And I could brush it all off,
I could turn the page, except.
How do you turn away from a window
When everyone is looking up and staring?
And those faces, silently ask, no, plead
To be acknowledged,
I exist, says a face, I am here, says another,
I live, I believe, I am the extra in a bad dream,
I’m the wrong note in a symphony.
I am the broken heel by the manhole,
I’m the cancerous fat of kebab shops
Clogging the sewer,
Look at me, a passing face says,
And I’m bound by its brittle eyes
To not look away.
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We are like worn jeans weathering,
Like the slow creasing of time,
We are like torn pockets
Spilling loose words on the street,
We are like parallel conversations
Sulking on the edge of the bed,
We are like pillows between legs
Cradling wet dreams at dawn,
Like the sun breaking in to
Moist and crusty eyes,
Like a stretch that touches
Both walls,
Like a shadow in the nightclub
Shy of the strobe,
Like a kiss on the cheek
That catches the ear by mistake,
Like one breast larger than the other,
A mind angry and wrestling
Prejudice in the dark,
We are like twiddling thumbs and
Tapping feet at the railway station,
We are like the hour lost to
Daylight saving time,
Like crosses on the calendar
Marking the years gone by
Waiting,
Waiting,
Waiting for that one day
When we’ll wear the world
Like a pair of new jeans
That fits just right.
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A smile with lazy regret at hours spent
Wondering
If roses were better than orchids,
And realizing that time fades both
But doesn’t ensure another cup of coffee
Or better conversation,
Or a second meeting to explore
A gruesome love stained portrait
At the Tate Modern,
That neither understand nor wish to,
Where you just wanted to frame her butt
For the perfect symmetry of her cheeks,
And she caught you window shopping,
Because eventually not everything
Can be bought with petals,
And so that smile, in retrospect,
Tastes like
Bitter chocolate with orange rind.
Standing on Millennium Bridge at 10pm,
Trying to light a cigarette with a lighter
That behaves like old ambitions,
Sparking, dying, sparking, dying,
And it’s decided if you can’t light it
On the seventh try,
You’ll toss the cigarette away and drown
Those ambitions forever,
But on the ninth flick, it flames up,
And you pull and sigh,
You carry your personal city fog
Across to the other side and stub
The cigarette out,
And pocket your lighter,
And ambitions follow you home,
Trailing the stink of stale smoke
On your jumper.
That tastes like
24 Hours Colgate Protection after 10 minutes.
Then lying on your bed and staring
At the ceiling, giving shape to feelings
In the stains and shadows that play
On the walls, and thinking,
Of everything but what’s important,
Thinking of how that stain
Looks like a heart,
Thin and famished perhaps,
Then plucking on a guitar bought on eBay,
Because it was said to be so old,
You wondered if the juju of a
Million plucking would miraculously
Unfold your sense of jazz,
And it still sounds like a C, A and a D,
So you put it down,
Order some Chinese and that finally
Tastes like
It should.
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The view from my window is not
Quiet,
It’s like a painting
Still and moving,
Like a river, like the Thames maybe,
Like the Ganges before summer,
Like depression, like balloons
Filled with laughter and held by a string,
Like tomorrow as it feels today,
Like 5 pence from Britain
In Zimbabwe,
Like the price of bus tickets,
The price of tin box promises
Paid with silence,
Like red hot guilt simmering
Just below the surface,
Like numb and running noses,
Like the sun, bright, and empty,
Like the snow in February,
Falling, stalling, falling, stalling,
Like an old dog, chasing rabbits in
His sleep,
Like old pictures, stacked against
Empty bottles of water by the window sill,
Old pictures that rewind and play
Memories of multicolored days,
Old pictures, sad pictures, the
Smiles that don’t get wider anymore.
The view from my window is of
Sloping tiles, and smoking chimneys,
And albino pigeons and guano
On gray streets, and if I hang by my toes,
Just maybe I can glare back at the
London Eye,
And taunt the BT Tower,
And wave my phone at it,
And frankly I wonder why,
Because I don’t want to speak to anyone,
And I don’t want to see anyone,
Except for a girl back home,
Whose window sees different things,
And I wish my window faced hers,
So I could see her curtains like hands
Billowing to me in the breeze,
Smell the fragrance of simple dinners,
And feel the promise of an evening
Spent smiling, and talking, and smiling,
And hoping, and talking, and smiling,
And know the color of her mood,
By the colors that she wears,
And let loose balloons filled with
Laughter,
Presents barely contained like the longing
At my window,
Still and moving.
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Yesterday afternoon in the
Hostel toilet
I came across an
Underwear
With musical notes
All over it,
And from the time I
Unzipped
To the time I
Zipped up,
A flood of thoughts
Ran through my mind
In that
Toilet,
I thought for instance of
How
Could someone forget
Something like that?
What was it like?
Did he just come in
Do his bidding,
Then button his jeans
And leave?
His underwear forgotten
Like the thoughts we think
On the bog?
And when would he realize his
Mistake?
Walking down winter’s street,
Hands in his pockets
Scrunched up into fists,
Thinking about how cold he felt
All over,
He’d hurry to find the next
Public washroom,
Being denied rudely
The privilege
Of using the one at the last
Italian cafe,
He’d stumble upon the
Spotless pay as you go
Loo,
And unzip
And find
To his impatient surprise,
His frozen balls
Resting unhappily
On his lap,
Like the hobo’s dog
On the sidewalk outside
Tescos,
And wonder
- What!
And the last thought that crossed my
Mind,
As I shook off the last drop,
Was about
The music notes
On the underwear
-What song did they sing?
So I am back in my room
Penning these thoughts
Lest I forget them,
An elegy for an underwear
Shed off like music lessons
Or the ghost of a symphony
That’s been carried for too long.
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Don’t get upset. Get ANGRY. Get FURIOUS. Scream and shout but do something about it. We talk too much and do nothing. It’s time to show that we care.
This is just a glimpse of what had been achieved:
This is what they did in one evening:
The spirit of Mumbai has been attacked, raped and pillaged. Families, kids, youngsters, the people of Mumbai had gathered to make a difference. One road in the city of grit had been transformed into something beautiful. Then the movie marketing vultures in their own cold, calculating way swooped down and ripped apart the spirit of solidarity, collaboration and pride.
Tinsel town was supposed to be a city of dreams, welcome to the b-grade movie nightmare.
Are we going to take this sitting down? We say… NO!
Here are a few action points compiled by us:
- Movie promotion agencies put posters up. They did it the last time and it’s no coincidence they’ve done it again. Putting up posters on these walls creates controversy. Any news is good news. We need to figure out which agencies are behind this and target them.
- Likewise, we need to get in touch with the producers of the offending films. Rumor has it that Aladin’s promoters have apologized and have offered to remove the posters. We won’t believe it till we see it, still if it’s true, there is hope.
- BMC has been exceptionally helpful. Really, they’ve surprised us with their initiative. We need to respect that get them on our side. However, we need to check up if any permissions were granted by BMC to the poster people. If not, then we have a serious case against the poster guys.
- We need to reach Big B on his blog. He apparently writes it himself. He might not be responsible for the damage, but his movie poster is up on those walls. He is the face of the film and since he wants to “connect” with his audience, well… we are reaching out to him for help. His voice has effect. Will he help?
- Salman and Sohail Khan need to be seriously addressed. The last time round, Kissan posters had killed the walls, this time it’s their latest blasphemies- London Dreamz and Gair. Salman calls himself an “artist” and if he doesn’t react to this, he’ll just prove we were right in calling him a blowhard.
- I’m not sure if a poster ripping campaign will do any good. It’ll backfire on us. The ripped posters will cause more damage more ugliness. Does anyone know how to get that trash off the walls without damaging the art behind it?
- We need to contact the likes of Barkha Dutt and other journos and get them to empathize so they can reach a larger mass with the story… more outraged people. So if you are in the news industry, please let them know. Get them to react.
- As Pratishtha has put it on Facebook… we need to use words like BOYCOTT. Show the filmwalas what our priorities are.
This is just our list. Feel free to add your suggestions. Better still… act on them. Use your contacts to reach the right people. Get active on your social networking platforms- facebook, Orkut, Twitter or whatever you use. Form groups.
The same collaboration that helped make the city beautiful will also bring the offenders to their knees.
Do it NOW.
UPDATES:
As of 5pm, October 27:
- Idea Smith had posted a strong article on boycotting the offending films: Gair, London Dreamz, Aladin. Some support there. Though even if we boycott the films, from a revenue hit perspective, it’ll be a drop in the ocean. However, loud enough media outrage will do the trick. Received a confirmation from Gaurav Ghosh on facebook that Midday has in fact covered this stance. Click to see comments on Idea Smith’s post here.
“seems like the posters have been torn off.. the publicity guys must have got scared and have removed them.. however the damage is apparent and all our fresh paintings look like a year old..
A retouch would be required in either case!”
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Rome has the Pope. Pakistan has the Taliban. And Nigeria has its fraudsters. But not for long. The Nigerian Anti-Corruption police has launched a massive offensive against all the colonels and their widows who want to transfer a million dollars into your bank account.
Colonel Mojombo's Widow has Manly Hands!
The deliciously dubbed operation, ‘Eagle Claw’, in conjunction with Microsoft has shut down 800 scam websites and busted 18 email fraud syndicates. Using a mix of super sleuthing and smart technology, the operation should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims in the next 6 months.
I hear a resounding WTF. Thousands of people around the world still respond to the thousands of mails sent out by these frauds. Greed is a powerful motivator I guess. Then again, there is no limit to human stupidity, and nature follows the law of duality. Light and dark, big and small, the wicked and the dolts.
Just in case you are wondering how the typical Nigerian Scam works, it’s simple, they offer you a million dollars for safekeeping, your reward being the interest earned on the amount. You share your bank details, and they screw you over the processing fees. Needless to say, the promised blood money, oil money, alimony, never arrive. Another nasty version involves hacking into celebrity email accounts and requesting money from their contacts.
Do not fall for a Nigerian Scam. If you have excess money, share it with us. We’ll bless you with a happy marriage and a thousand bonny babies.
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This morning I was foxed. A notice showed the names and credentials of the State Assembly Elections Candidates for my area. Here are some of the details.
Total no. of candidates: 14
No. of graduates: 2
No. of candidates with Class X education: 5
No. of school drop outs: 7
So who do I vote for? Simple… vote for the educated guys except that 1 of them is an MNS goon.
So vote for the other guy. Sure. Except that both the graduates have pending criminal cases against them.
Now for the moment of reckoning. Potential Criminals vs. Illiterates: Who gets my vote?
Neither. I’ll spend most of tomorrow in bed. And here’s a finger to anyone who asks me to vote for change.
Here's My Vote
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