Non-painting Series-1

Refraining from calling it a painting. A 10-minute watercolor sketch it is.

I pine for thee. Hence, I paint thee!

Missing home is usually ensued by looking at photographs taken by friends or me of signature Delhi-ness. This is based loosely on a picture, taken by a dear friend Ankit, in Mehrauli Archaeological Park.

Tinkerbell size me!

I put myself in a washer and tumble dryer

On high heat and become a tenth of my size.

Wrung out and wrinkled 

I beseech them to carry me in their pockets one-by-one to you.

I ask one to dust me a little 

And iron my creases out before you take me and stretch me out again.

Alas, I am parched and flattened

As I lie on his table.

My planar existence is an oddity 

In your world of multiple dimensions. 

I hope he crumples me in a ball and

Not fold me with clean lines or leave me there with the window open.

P.S.- Cold War Kids song may have been in my head or maybe Calvin. Who knows?

The Clap Complex

He kept a strand of her hair

Wrapped around the refill of a ball-point.

They met as children with an air of adult sang froid.

Her hair fell below her hip then.

Times were simpler.

He liked to be her voice of reason.

She called him a bullshitter rubbing her skinned knees.

"Don't get convoluted.

Act selfish."

Did he think he was a good teacher?

He failed that course terribly himself.

A decade of acquaintance, love, acquaintance again later

Simpler times are an apparition.

When was he born, again?

She is amused that she still does not know.

They are adults with an air of childlike smugness now.

Her hair is above her shoulders

And she has her strand back.

Inters(j)ections

Walking across a street in Delhi is an ordeal. Bonne chance if you appear on the other side alive. People give you dirty stares if you land in front of their car and they have to stop for you, almost like they are doing you a favor. And you give a dirty stare back. In this country, on the other hand, people stop, wait for you to cross the road, and sometimes even pass on a smile. Freaky, eh? Funnily enough, I hate crossing roads here. It seems equivalent to performing for an audience who stands at the traffic signal, looking through the windscreens like you are on the television, measuring you up and waiting for that trip and fall. Uber entertaining an act, if I may say so myself. Like Jo from Little Women, I never know what to do with my limbs either, or even my face. Do you walk slow, fast, look down, look unaware?

In my city, people have no time for any of that. They jostle on their way to work or back or just anywhere. Everyone is more concerned about whether they are are going to be late for their appointments, if the other car is going to manage to swerve and miss the red light while they remain stuck in the synchronized pattern henceforth, or if the kids would still be awake by the time they do reach home. I know that a moment after I get the dirty stare from the unfortunate person who had to stop his car for me to cross the road, he will forget me. He does not give me more thought than he would to paramecium. And THAT is the most comforting thing about the dizziness-inducing, disillusion-fostering crowds of "Dilli", where everybody is a nobody and anonymity is so under-rated.  I miss it.

Time zones!

Detail

Broken Color

We run into each other
Yellow ochre and ultramarine on a watery palette.
Diffident of nefarious violets and virtuous scarlets
In maelstroms of sable and camel and fingers and gravity
And all we make is a dirty green.