Work

I begin work at my new job today. My first proper job, with respect to complete allegiance to one organisation, after a number of internships and freelance work. I'll be working at this magazine called Better Photography.

I expect that would make me a better photographer. But not someone with a better sense of humour, obviously.

Cube

Biona's, a tiny eatery on Hill Road, Bandra, just got tinier. Sadly.

The shawarma is still brilliant, the open pizzas still good, and the coffee is still pathetic. All, at higher prices, of course.

And of course, the sugar cubes are very much there. A friend and I finished an entire bowl of sugar cubes, a couple of days ago.

Should I allow this sugar cube to melt?
Or destroy it, the teeth offensive.
We are diabetic now.

The Untitled

While it may have been a mere part of my course curriculum, we made a documentary that took up a large amount of mindspace while in-making and after. 'We' means myself and a group of a few friends and a few non-friends. A few people and a few others making a movie on we the people, and the supposed others. While our attempt was amateurish at best, the process, with its varied idiosyncrasies, was a journey that I hope I am still on, and hopefully am not done with.

The movie, titled The Untitled, was an analysis of the role of the media in the stereotyping of Muslims in India, and the subsequent discrimination they face. A dangerous, multiple edged topic with layers that just add on to its complexity. I don't know if we were able to manage even a fraction of all intended, but the moving images and multiple perspectives we projected through the documentary have just led to some more ideas. And words.

==========
The Untitled
==========

India is a story of stories,
A potful of convulated tales
First person narratives, voyeuristic perspective
Some notes of eminence and a bagful of woes.

I have come to tell you about this blessed map and its wretched lines
Languishing in the throes of the theory of inevitability,
Here you are, there we go
On the quest for definition,
I am I, so are we
You may be you, but not me.
Scattered and splattered across the dawn,
We rush to our burrows,
Breaking through the exterior.
An orchestrated stripshow to expose the core,
Digging further and further to the end of the world
Forced and enclosed, a glass shield around us and we throw stones
We the people, and they the others
The untitled.

The great Indian soap opera
Is now up on 70mm.
Let us all go to the movies
We, and you too, if you please
Case in point for an exercise in futility
A group of groups, fictionalised factions
People peeping into a peephole
Of moving images.
Punity in diversity, pointed fingers and relegated corners
They are cast away, like swatted flies
A buzzing, blood-sucking mosquito
The noise is missing, it’s a silent murder.

Subconscious lines that draw on reality
Misconstrued images in predefined mindscapes
Characterise,
Categorise,
A type of a stereotype.
Them, the others.
They are the who.
Not a part of the movie that’s scripted
Yet a part of the cast.
Extras, individuals, yet a collective
Spot boys, maybe or protagonists of the film reels left behind.
Edited out, timeline to the recycle bin.
Not the premiere in Premiere Pro
Tightly clenched sand, with the fingers slipping through
Choked, cloaked, a mask unmasked
A shared history and reversal of time,
The untitled.

Wide Angle

Wide angle lenses fascinate me. Are they the all-seeing? Self-conscious to the point of being reverent, the appeal lies in seeing more than your eye can cover. To look at more than you think you can see. Do you see all you look at? Do you encompass that which lies in the corner – the shy and the outcaste. And that which distort if you don’t strain hard.

Sleep

My sleep is a psychedelic journey, doomed to end in wakefulness.

You

Every time I write you something, I give you a part of my soul. A part, that inside me, would consume me. But what if I keep giving you these fractional selves? Will these pencil shavings kill me one day?

Is that what death is all about? Or disintegration, a devolution into nothingness. Or merely a change of form. A transfigured state of inevitability.

You

You.
I talk of luminous ideas
To reclaim what belongs to me.
The ones, the others, you and the world.
I talk of ideology, of complicated neurotic algorithms
That keep your logarithms in check.

You.
I read what you write,
Multiplicity of consonants
With a few vowels thrown in like specials of the day
And blank spaces like dessert.
I take it all in, like a last best supper,
Your words, incantations
Just a dimension to my hallucinations
You talk and talk and never stop,
A downpour, forming the blessed oasis.
I listen, to process meandering phonetics into my dancing soul.
Poetry in motion, the scapes we explore.

You.
I try to see,
But can only watch.
My eyes, wandering wandering into familiar unknown
I try to look through, but there are too many of you.

You.
My perspective.
My perspective’s you.

Big Brother Diaries

Divinity, forgive me,
I plead guilty,
Guilty of my actions, guilty of your thoughts,
I took the ones you left behind
And they took a part of me
Away.

Secret diaries, illegible curves,
The lead has smudged and the ink runs all over
Here and there, life of its own
A new story, new thoughts, new words
A rebirth maybe, or co-existence
Two lives, parallel worlds,
Those worlds in words
Enclosed, but exposed to bugs
It tends to happen when your voice croons to clinks
When your face demands a thousand faces
Like overpriced tickets and ubiquitous malls
Your life is for me, your life’s for all
You may be rising, but we wait for your fall
Like the scribbles you have crossed
And those beautiful places your mind decided to stop.
Ink blot.

I write my diaries but I read yours,
Peeking, prying, seeking, spying
A lens to sense.
Why do I feel like Big Brother?
Oh bother.

Queue

This single file of linearity
With rhythmic evolution at time’s behest,
Individual stories in one narrative
Stacked together, and they all fall down.

Can you believe these fit into the same jigsaw?
Diverse threads, knotted at one end.
An extra piece, trying to break the line,
The other, untitled, out of turn, out of order, breaking order
Some muttered disapproval and a simmering brawl
But the big picture changes only to ease in the other.

One for all and all for none.
Kindly maintain order, the bus has come.
Split, shuffle, stacked, unshackle
Dissemble, disturb, detours astray
In the midst, disintegrate.
Enter.
Break in, now.
This is nuclear fission at the neighbourhood bus station.

Utter, My Butter

Buttering and mutterings,
Utterances sprinkled over
Like added twists of the temperamental chef
Added and added, garnished with juice
Bad taste, some spice, and I need some water, do I?

Barbeque chicken roasted too long
A burnt sizzler and over brewn tea
Vindictive teachers, non-practising preachers
A mother and a father, a grandmother and two grandfathers
Uncles and aunts, none of the latter being sexed up Robinsons
Lousy old farts and grouchy twitting know-it-alls
Saccharine lollipops that tint your visuals all blue
Spoil my evening supper, like a Big Brother in the chef’s new clothes.

Yes right yes, I do as you say and say as you do
Feed me for I’m hungry or feed me for I need to be fed
If you say so, as you like it
Cookbook recipes with two teaspoons of olive oil
Slices of butter and individuality denied.

Pungent words, sweet voices, saucy goss and bitter remarks
The beer isn’t cold enough and the wine’s too new.
The salt’s not enough, Shake it baby
Oh not like that, why don’t I tell you how … what, why, who, huh.
You ought not cook, why create when the meal’s ready
No thoughts of your own, you take it all in with some good old brandy.
Ready-made menus and a kitchen hidden away
You get what you want but there’s the Special of the Day

Bitter beans and bottoms up espressos,
A resentment against a barrage of all
Shove in the apron, clam up the wall
Abstinence, you xerophag, xerophag, zero of a fag
Throw away the spoons and fuck the forks
You, robot, fatter than Asimov could ever be
Taking it all in and throwing it all out
Bulimic pride that never tells me who you can be
But only the garb that’s grub you’ve been served to eat.