[Short Story] Eros

                                                           

                                                            Eros 

As he made his way over the rocks of the much-traversed path of the mountain, Madan thought over the events of the past few days.

One by one, his mind replayed the things that had gone terribly wrong in the exact sequence, increasing his frustration. He tried consciously to blot them out. He tried hard to concentrate on other happier memories. Like the time when they celebrated the positive results at the lab or the evening at the science expo where he had met Ragini for the first time. Their first kiss upon the beach in the quaint seaside town.

But try as he might, he felt the dejection, the anger, the rage, return. What hurt the most was how he had let down his loved ones. His father’s words rang in his ears. ‘Son, of what use is my money, if it doesn’t aid you now? Take everything and return it in installments so your mother and I can live independantly, as we age.’ Madan had laughed and replied, ‘Baba, this is the nonsurgical cure for arthritis that the world has been waiting for. I’ll double the sum at the very least and return it to you!’ Ragini had pawned all of her jewels, without a second thought to pay for the marketing.

But what has seemed so promising at the experimental stage had tanked at the launch. His close friend and co-founder had ignored a crucial detail which surfaced then.  The scientific community accused Madan of fabricating the results. Heroically he took the entire blame upon himself but as he went down, he lost everything – his reputation as a scientist and the company that he had labored so hard to build. Now there was no turning back.

As he climbed jaggedly across the uneven rocks, he stubbed his toe. It began to bleed. The pain was intense. He laughed hysterically which echoed all around him. What would it feel like, when he took the actual plunge over the edge, would he hear his bones break? Would his death be instantaneous, or would he writhe in pain till he passed out? But the thought of physical pain seemed less severe than a lifetime of shame and regret.

He looked around, he had reached the summit despite the bleeding toe, which had gone numb from the pain. Poised at the brink with one foot firmly planted on the ground he stared apprehensively at the deep gorge below. He saw a tangled web of vines, dry brush and bramble amid the rocks and pebbles of the hillside.

He took a deep breath and let himself fall; a shrill scream escaped his lips.  To his surprise, though, he found his bruised hands clutching at a thick vine that was embedded in the vegetation. He was surprised to find that his body was not willing to let go of life all that easily. The vine dislodged bit by bit like a buried rope preventing his fall and he found himself landing feet first, on a ledge. His heart was pounding wildly, blood oozed onto his torn clothes from the many cuts in his body.

He sat at the ledge, woefully out of breath, his hand still held onto the vine. It looked brown and lifeless. Yet, surprisingly, it had taken on his body weight and prevented his fall. He found its roots growing close to the ledge. To his utter surprise, he found sections that were turning green. Nature, it seemed, never gives up the fight. Never dies voluntarily. Dead plants spring up after the slightest rain. Dormant seeds sprout life. As he stared at the root he smiled for the first time and found the heaviness dissipate.

Fate had given him a second chance at living.  Contrary to what people said, it did take courage to take one’s life but what is even more courageous is to fight back. Death would have been a quick end to his agony, but would have caused his parents, his Ragini, a lifetime of misery.

He would live, he would fight and if he fought back hard enough, his fortune too might give him a second chance.

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Poem] Summer Sun

A burning sun
Jaunts across the earth
All day and part of the night
Leeching water from every pore
Parched throats clamour for refill
Dust storms rise
False rain mists dusty windows at night

I am a tortoise in a shell-

Through drooping lids I dream
Of a balmy breeze 
Lacing its Spring fingers through my hair
The flowers compete
Waging a war of scents 
Plaguing every sense 

Pathways glow 
With soft petals of every hue
The bees sing and dance in a ring
No fear of a sting
The leaves sport all shades of green
As they preen under a gentle sun
The rising dew sprinkles generous droplets
Over petal and leaf goblets

Children play all day
Their voices bouncing on the  green
And laughter springs from every swing 
If only 
All of earth had Spring and only Spring

[Poem] On killing a Tree

On killing a tree

So, they fell like leaves
In the sadistic Storm
The men the women the children
Swaddling babies
Captured by deceit, coercion 
Smoked out of hideouts
Caught before they could flee
The branches, leaves of the Ethnic Tree

Bundled into trains
Carted off to feed
Every burning pyres
Or flogged
Till backs broke,
Spirits and bodies fell-
Pell mell

Their belongings piled
Mounds upon mounds
of suitcases, footwear,
Clothes, toys --
Rotting leaves
Awaiting release


Brutality
Has fancy names
Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing
 Attempts made time and again
To expose, exterminate, expunge
Entire communities

Yet,
There is Survival
Revival.
Return.
So, it is never done.

On Killing A Tree
#KaafiyaMilao

[Poetry] Picture Poem

The poem was written in response to this picture.


I will walk into the tide

Break and fall upon the waves

One by one I have undone

my hold upon the world

The world is a blue void

The sky above the sea below

The sand sinks softly under my feet

Soothing calluses earned

From thorny pathways tred

The sea would fall

Caressing, lavaging the pits

And undo it all

The world is a blue void

Hearts with love devoid

Man, a trampling humanoid

With every fall

No hope at all

The race is lost

Before the start

The relentless waves

break hard against the shore

With a vigorous uproar

The sound and the fury

Of infinity

The salt from my tears

Blend with the spray

I blend a finite life

Of petty woes

Pitiful throes

I find my peace

I find my cure

In this azure eternity

[ Short Story] Afternoons in Childhood

 

 

Amrit threw down the pencil in frustration.

Doing fraction sums on a half-empty stomach upon a Sunday afternoon was neither easy nor desirable. His textbook lay open to a page of problems that seemed designed less to teach mathematics than to punish children for existing. Three-sevenths plus two-fifths. Find the common denominator. The common denominator, he felt, was misery.

His stomach growled- a long, theatrical rumble, the kind of sound effect his body produced when it wanted to remind him that principles had consequences.

He should not have protested so strongly about the beetroot curry. The protest had been righteous - beetroot was purple and tasted of earth and had no place on a plate that contained rice. But righteousness, he was learning, did not fill your stomach. He had pushed his plate away with the magnificent disdain of a boy who believed his mother would eventually cave. His mother had not caved. His mother had said, "Fine. Go hungry." She had said it with the terrifying calm of a woman who meant it.

He crept into the kitchen to see if the plate was still there. His mother sometimes left it covered on the counter, knowing he would return, occasionally adding an enticement — a papad or a small bowl of sev. But today the counter was wiped clean. The plate had been cleared. Even the sev jar had been put away on the top shelf, which was his mother's way of saying: I am way beyond angry with you.

He tiptoed to his parents' bedroom and pressed his ear to the door. The steady, nasal drone of his father's snoring confirmed that the Sunday afternoon shutdown was in full effect. His mother would be beside his father, reading or dozing, and would not surface for at least an hour. The house was his.

He wheeled his bicycle to the elevator, carefully, silently, lifting the front wheel over the door frame so it wouldn't thump, and pressed the button for the ground floor. He lived on the fifth floor of a nine-storey apartment block, and the elevator smelled, as it always did on Sundays, of someone's sambar.

Outside, the backyard was deserted. The summer sun sat directly overhead like a headmaster presiding over an empty assembly hall, daring anyone to step out. The heat rose from the concrete in visible waves. Not a single friend was about. The swings hung motionless. The cricket stumps, three stacked bricks, stood abandoned near the compound wall.

The only living creatures were the crows. They waddled about near the overflowing dumpsters, pecking at scraps, their feet sinking into the soft, sun-warmed earth. They moved with the unhurried confidence of tenants who paid no rent and feared no landlord.

Amrit chased them on his bicycle. They rose in a furious, cawing cloud, some wheeling away, others diving back threateningly close to his head, as though personally offended by his existence. He passed the dumpsters. The crows resettled behind him the moment he passed, like a door swinging shut. He grew tired of this. Even the crows seemed bored.

He circled the building slowly, shading his eyes with one hand, scanning the balconies of the monolithic column above him. On the third floor, someone's laundry hung motionless in the dead air. On the sixth, an old man sat in a plastic chair with a newspaper over his face. On the seventh, a woman watered plants mechanically, unmindful of the water spilling to the ground below.

No friends. No activity. No hope.

And then, carried on a current of hot, still air, a delightful smell reached him.

Potato bhajjis. Frying in oil.

The smell hit his empty stomach like a fist. It was the smell of sliced potatoes dipped in besan batter, spiced with chilli and ajwain, fried to a perfect golden brown. It was a smell that could make a boy on a bicycle stop pedalling, close his eyes, and forget, momentarily, every grievance he had ever had against the universe.

The hunger he had been holding in abeyance surged back.

He took a couple of slow, listless laps around the building, tracking the smell the way a dog tracks a scent, noting where it strengthened, where it faded, narrowing it down. Fifth floor. Left wing. Vipul's flat.

He hesitated. He could go home. His mother might have softened. She might have left a plate out after all, guiltily, silently, the way mothers do when they regret being firm but cannot bring themselves to say so.

Or she might not have.

He made his way irresolutely toward the elevator, pressed five, and stepped into the corridor. He parked his bicycle against the wall, not outside his own door, but outside Vipul's and rang the bell.

Lalitha Aunty opened the door. Her right hand was caked with besan flour. Behind her, at the dining table, sat Vipul, Amrit's classmate, neighbour, and closest friend, his cheeks bulging with bhajjis that had been stuffed into his mouth in desperate haste after he heard the doorbell ring.

Vipul glared at Amrit. He shook his head vigorously, a furious, emphatic, bhajji-cheeked Nooooo that communicated, with the eloquence of a silent film actor: Go away. This is definitely not a good time. I do not want to share. Leave now.

Amrit ignored him entirely.

"Aunty," he said, turning to Lalitha with THE smile,  the smile he had been perfecting since he was four years old, the smile that worked on mothers, grandmothers, teachers, and anyone else he wanted to impress, the smile that contained just the right mixture of politeness and charm, "I wanted to see if Vipul could come out and play?"

Lalitha Aunty looked at the boy, the smile, the sun-flushed cheeks, the slightly too-casual posture.. She was a mother. She recognised the manoeuvre. She had probably executed a version of it herself, many years ago.

She stepped aside and waved him in.

Amrit walked past Vipul, whose expression had progressed from outrage to despair, and sat down at the table with the quiet satisfaction of a general who has taken a city without firing a shot.

He had been right about the smell and the house.

Lalitha Aunty placed a plate of hot bhajjis in front of him. He picked one up, bit into it- the crunch, the soft potato inside, the heat of the chilli blooming on his tongue and chewed slowly, eyes half-closed, while across the table Vipul watched him with the impotent fury of a boy who has just had his pleasant afternoon snatched from him.

Amrit, however, froze over his second bhajji when Lalitha called from the kitchen, "I'm calling your mom to let her know you're here, in case she's worried..."

[Poem] The Woman in the Woods - An Ekphrastic Poem

                   
                            Painting by Sushmita Gupta

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I spied her among the forest trees
Her soft humming echoing in the dusk’s stillness
A forest nymph swathed in green georgette
Hiding her long lustrous hair in a tight oiled coil
I lost myself at the brink of the deep swirl of her liquid eyes
Evocative, their power moated by kohled rims

She plucked a hibiscus and struck it absently in her hair
I knew it would remain there
Secure – much like her fastened thoughts

The stark vermillion mark on her forehead
Was it there, to ward off advances
Or was it a symbol of her own confinement?

I wondered…

For, her lissome beauty

Would enslave all that she surveyed

Even the modest beads swinging from her ears and neck
Shone in borrowed glory

Yet, the downward curl of her lips,

The angry red spots on her cheeks
Invaded my aesthetic ruminations…

I drew closer.

Dear woman, you are no Ravi Varma damsel with bashful eyes
Life had visited you Time and again -
You bear its marks
The angry red streak on your forehead, perhaps sustained from a fall
Your cheeks roughened by vicious assault

Yet you go on
Defiance burns in your eyes
And in the firm set of your lips
Life’s attempts to break you fail
You fight back
And sport with the dragon flies

[Poem] The Curse of Modernity

This poem was written in response to a contest conducted by Dr Saantosh Bakayya, who took the above picture. It was declared as a winning entry along with four other poems, in the literary group The Significant League. 

Please click on this link to hear the audio recording of the poem

https://soundcloud.com/bhuvaneshwari-shankar/the-curse-of-modernity


When did my world begin to change?
Frozen in a dizzying time warp,
I stand nailed to the ground
Feeling a a giant train blast through me
Littering my world with alien debris

The television came
With it, the advertisements
That bid to change with the times
Oh! the relentless bombardment
Day after day
Bewilderment
Day after day

Watching shadows, I could tell the time
Unlearnt it - to own a watch
My spun cotton no longer trendy
I spend a better part of my earning
On clothes that no longer fit
In pantaloons badly stitched

The local grocer changed his ware
Traditional was passe
Potato silvers, biscuits, soft drinks in the display
We ate that too, because the advertisements told us to

The rich own the world
They always do
They get the best slice of the consumer pie
We get the crumbs
 And call it nectar

All this talk of organic farming
But we have always been organic
Till the pesticides came on the scene
Our water ways on the verge of pollution
The village air
Toxin free for now
I dread the sick world
Which is my child's inheritance

The local shaman has been shamed
 By men in white coats
He has not the wherewithal
To fight diseases of the modern world

The city - a tantalizing temptress beckons
Dimmed- the senses lie, in the bright lights
 But I have come not to drown in her pleasures
Disease is a demon at my back
And, I have come gathering  all that I ever owned
Fear compels, so does hope for a death postponed

The giant shark waits
Its mouth wide open, fangs exposed
It swallows all
And hungers for more
My money, my dignity, even my footwear
My life is a study in despair

I await the word of the shaman in a white coat
Little realizing that he is but a sham
I squat here my defilement complete
In a shabby road unkempt
The corporate shark has sucked
My life's blood
Barely have I, anything left
for a meal or even a bottle of water
A hotel stay is but a pipe dream

All around me vehicles blare and hurry past
Men and women move fast
Hurrying towards something
I am all alone
In a loveless world
Shorn of everything
I squat in the filthy street
Dreaming of the green fields back home

[Poem] Temptress- A Feminist Reading

                          Image source:https://www.arab-painting.com/pic/Oil

The Virgin and the Temptress
Have always been here
Since Creation

Born and reborn in myth
Only, the Temptress
Siren Eve, Shurpanaka, 
Time and again
Reinvented
She is a courtesan
A dancer, musician, an entertainer

The temptress today
Unveil her many graces
In celluloid
As voyeuristic cameras
Explore her in the minutest detail

Men will of course call her a goddess
worship her in the silver screen
Yet
Gape at her posters
Salivate in private
Call her
Unfactually
Unfaithful

Neither goddess nor nymphet,
She is
A mere puppet
In the (film) Maker's hand

[Short Story] Tall Tales We Tell

Arjun sat on the sofa, changing the songs on his play list agitatedly,  tiring easily of each one. Either he didn't know the whole song, or the lyrics were bad, or it was too tough.

He felt his mother's touch on his shoulder.

'What is all that frustration for? 

I pity the music player.'

He plucked out the headphones and flung the iPod along with it on the sofa. 

'The culturals start tomorrow.
The music competitions is day after.
The seniors are banking on me.
And I haven't even chosen the song yet...'

She sat next to him, and rubbed his back.  He slumped down on her lap. He even let her ruffle his hair, which he had stopped her from doing ever since he joined college. 

 

 I think I can help you there.  I have saved some new songs in a playlist... you know... the ones that you haven't heard ... maybe you'll find something interesting...' 

Mothers know their sons best - he did find that magical song.

The beautiful love song, sung in his earnest voice moved almost everyone in the audience. 

 

'She floated into my vision 

 

Like 

A Blooming rose

A Poet's dream

A brilliant sun beam

A deer in flight

A moonlit night

A soft word of delight

A lone lamp in a temple aglow

Every girl present there felt, that he sang the song just for her.

The song helped him meet and marry his future wife Kanishka.

II

Arjun stood in the kitchen, making dhal and parathas. Masala chai simmered on another burner.  The kitchen was an absolute mess. It didn't bother him though since the cleaning lady would take care of it in the morning. 

 

Marriage was fine but it involved sacrifices, chief of which was his inability to meet his friends often or have late night parties with them. He hated having to behave so responsibly all the time.

Now that his wife was away after their first big fight, he wanted to make the best use of his time. ‘Freedom from bland cooking! Freedom from rampant nagging! Freedom from over snooping! Freedom from sermonizing!’ he laughed out loud. He felt rather proud about how he was able to vocalize his frustrations poetically. He slathered more ghee over an already soggy paratha with vengeance.

he was tingling with excitement for the evening that lay ahead. 

Finally, he was having all his friends over. All they wanted was a simple meal, loads of fun, his songs and chai to keep them going till the wee hours.

There was a lively song that was on everyone's lips and he was eager to present it that evening.

He sang it loudly experimenting with dance moves to go with it. 

In his enthusiasm, he failed to notice the generous drippings of ghee that had enriched not just the parathas, but the floor as well.

He feet slid down and he fell in a perfect straddle that any gymnast would have been proud of. He felt  a little dizzy and intense pain. He watched helplessly as the paratha burned and the dhal and the the tea spilled over shutting out the flame. As he dragged himself painfully towards the stove to turn it off a scream escaped his lips and his eyes welled up.

 

He contemplated hoisting himself up slowly to get his phone and call for help. He heard the key turn in the door. 

 

 Kanishka had chosen to cut short her visit and come back early.  She helped him up, contritely, her eyes brimming with love. 

 

III

Over the years she pruned and perfected the retelling of their 'story' to her children and to any one else who cared to listen  of how her husband, had loved her the very instant that he had set eyes on her and how he had even changed the song that he had planned to sing since he was so besotted with her. 

She would say how deeply in love they were and of their first fight  ages ago and how upon her early return plagued as she was by pangs of guilt, she had found him slumped on the kitchen floor, crying his heart out for her.


She would also tell them of her firm resolve to never leave his side, ever again…

And that, my friends, is how myths are born.

[Poem] Hymn to Defeat

                                  Image was found at http://dods.gamebanana.com/maps/664

I walk this road
Alone
Axing
Beastly foliage
with bare hands
If I fall
I crawl
With the insects in the dust

I walk
Clawing at cobwebs
Mummified in grey tendrils
A noose gripping my throat

In dark caves
I cower 
Fear laughs
And swings from the roof
Or hovers
Overhead, leering
Waiting to taste despair

Yet

There is no turning back
There never was
Will each trudge
Towards the Promised Light

The landscape shifts
Paths become roads
Roads turn to ruin
Dust powders buildings
Rust and grime reign tall

[Poem] Empathy?

I see the tears in your eyes
In a broken voice you share your pain
I offer comfort
My words sound hollow
Even to me
For within me too lies
A crater
A void
Where pain and self doubt
Rage
My eyes rain tears
And hurt wrecks my heart
You are of this earth and so am I
I can neither feel you pain
Nor halt its return

Yet, I say the things you want to hear
Hoping, praying
it will bring you lasting cheer