Muddled

The half-burnt tire lay in a corner, like an ugly word that had taken a bullet before it was out. The walls were graffitied with the standard anthems. Crushed cans of beer and butt-ends of cigarettes. In the center of the three walled cabin, like the jewel of a bad circus, was an ugly head, its hair matted with dirt and face covered in the grayish litter of a thousand fags.
Another woman joined the threesome on the bed. Lionel had the time of his life. The screeching of car brakes. The clunk of closing metal doors sticking together with science. Silence. The bullet did the 15 meter sprint with a red flower display of victory on the wall behind.

It’s a long road home,
Long like the lie of fidelity.
Spoofing the winds,
Some bird gargled it redundant ditty.

The man’s webs were strewn
As bombyliidae witnessed his bad rhyme.
It must’ve been a pretty rough road home
For the lights in the window
Were not often so warm
Nor the door so handsomely oak.

Devilishly tricky, she hadn’t let the sun rise.
The clouds were pregnant and scarlet.
The savior fetus stayed trapped.
So, it had been a dark day
(With a tinge of scarlet.)

When you’re at the gate,
Watch the lit window, wait
And savor the warmth behind closed oak doors.

There. Now, will you tell me how the geisha dance? Or heck, just stick a cigarette up my lips?

Pigs

The only light on the wide street below him, came from a street lamp, recently renovated for him. H e could feel the pain killers dying inside him and waves of pain moving about his bullet. He wouldn't last long, he knew. Not like this.Anytime now, the woman would cross the street, bullet-proof except for the head.It would be a long range shot , but he would strike gold. He was good. He smiled to himself. He could almost hear the little pop of the silencer and see her go down.'Pop'- ten points. Then he would be free to get help for his throbbing veins and arm that had shook slightly beyond his control as he tried to hold the rifle straight.

He was walking on tended grass through an orchard, the sun washing eveningly yellow through the leaves and over the tree horizons.Beyond the trees, were endless fields with black white fat cows that did not move much. He could not see them through the trees but knew that the grass was the rich green of Swiss countrysides on childhood milk cartons. He walked past oranges that smelt like marmalade. The air felt like the caress of a warm naked body under thick sheets, with the biting cold waiting just outside. "Do you believe in apricots?"


He came around with unconnected words ringing in his head. He could have missed her. "blasted Gad". He had no sense of time. He looked down at the street over his Whitworth. His hands didn't shake so badly now. He emptied the last of his pain killers. There was movement on one end of the street below- the little woman with her bundle of medicines was slowly hobbling across. He took a deep breath and steadied his rifle. For the umpteenth time, the trigger was pulled. "Pop". Splattered blood on the pavement.The woman was down without a cry. A slow stream of crimson grew around her head like an angry halo. Not red. Not any color, but a living thing. The blissful numbness was dead. His whole body shook as weeks of pain and fatigue washed over him. The smile was back on his face. He was going back now. Some well deserved rest. Treatment, a warm bed, warm pie. Dropping the rifle, he stood up. Somewhere on the other side of the street, another trigger-happy finger relieved him of all misery.

He was walking through the orchard, the sun half-blinding him. A cow's head turned lazily to look at him, behind a black white fat bottom and said, munching a blade, "Do you believe in apricots".

On

FILMS

I'm grateful for Modernism, Stanley Kubrick, Scorsese, the Coens, P.T. Anderson, Darren Aronofsy, Charlie Kaufman, but over the revolutions, I'm glad we have Nolan, Fincher and Jason Reitman.


CULTURE

From Mangalore to Mumbai, Indians have had to hear the
propagandist slogans crying for Indian culture, against the dissolute
Western influences that have defiled 'culture' .‘Protecting Indian
culture’, ‘erosion of our culture’, ‘our cultural heritage’, are
phrases we hear much bandied about. Bangalore shuttered down its malls, pubs, shops, movie houses and recently, the last of the hotels, with an 11pm deadline- in the name of safe-guarding our precious culture- to the effect that any of the thousands of people who work at night, in this Metropolitan city, have no place to go for a bite. In Mumbai, people were threatened away from theaters because some extremists did not want a movie screened.

So, what is this fearsome entity, ‘Indian culture’? Before we get to
Indian culture, let’s try to define culture. Culture is defined by the
dictionary as the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns,
arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and
thought. Simply put, culture is how we live and what we do in the
course of this living. It is not a static entity. It is not even a
glorifiable entity, like it would seem from the throwing around of the
word by the culture-conscious. Like the poet said, it is simply, an
accumulation of things left behind. When the Mughals came to India,
they left an indelible mark on the traditions and practices in the
parts of the country that they ruled. Thus Indian culture before the
Mughals, is different from the Indian culture after the Mughals.
Similarly, the British, the Portuguese, Christian missionaries, all
left their mark. On a simpler scale, changing patterns of monsoons,
scientific methods of farming, the printing press, newer instruments,
electricity, and a million other little factors changed our culture,
because they changed our practices and the way we live. Culture is
ever-changing, like a river that drops stuff and picks up new stuff on
its way to the sea.

So, what is Indian culture? The question, in itself, is wrong. One
would have to ask, ‘what was the dominant culture of x village at a point of time, y. It would be difficult to quantify the culture of a huge geographic area, like a state or a country. Practices could differ even within families. Thus it would be grossly wrong to say, 'this is the culture of this state, and we are safe-guarding it’. Indian culture is not wearing dhotis or not dancing. They may have been one of a million factors of the culture of a small geographic area at a particular time. The culture of a country or even a state is too vast an entity to try to define or control. Culture is not static. It is ever-changing and efforts to harness it at any point are hugely misguided and can only be futile.

I'm not saying it's just us Indians struggling under heavy delusions,
either. The great shadow on the cultured white race, was of course, the holocaust. The dead millions from Sierra Leone to Bukavu were not global disasters because cultured white folk were not involved. Even humoring the dominant discourse, the Milgram experiment proves for me that the holocaust was not the last display of distopia .

Floydean

My reference is to some kids with tails,
One of whom asked that he be cremated,
So friends could smoke his ash.
Tomato reds too, red, bleed pale.
Sin in a cup, in rolled up plants.
Just how scared are you
that you'll wake up tomorrow?
A yellow's a yellow,
Add white or brown.

I like silence with the TV on,
Of old God and unequal blood.
Prostrating fools have mute songs in their heads.
Love of a mad country can drive you to heat
The bad sane act with falling ratings
Will break anyday. I've got to escape
Where barrels of maggots can stay by your bed.
Wake up each day and count moving heads.
Breathe in the divinity of fresh angel rot.
Kill your last men so you'll wail true
And walk in the land of syphylitic daze.
Babes-in-arms know not, the mother's regret.
Fed thick white hatred of nip.
Roll over roll over roll over.
Wake up so you can sleep.

Wings

Sodden mist on my tree, yellow.
The yellow of teeth.
The mist,
The mist around the talk of old people.

It was born dead, the tree.
And grew grandly dead.
With dead leaves,
Dead yellow fruit on branches,
That stained yellow, our washing.
(The yellow of teeth.)

In this part of the world
(Where the rain never stops.)
There is no autumn.
So the leaves should never fall.

When the uncles came visiting,
We needed more branches
To hang our washing
And we wished for more dead trees.