Last few chapters

Dipping feet in puddles
as I wash the muck away
stuck in my black and green methiyadi's
for 45 minutes I've been doing this,
Infinite number of deja vu's
flash right across my eyes
in the form all the red buses

one goes to kothrud
next goes to Pune station
the other one goes to another destination
where I don't belong to
I wait as my offwhite ikkat kurta
continues to get drenched.
The only time I get rescued from the drops
is when an occasional cover from
a stranger's umbrella
pass by me, to catch that
Kothrud or Swargate or station bus.
Sometimes it's only till Shivaji Nagar.

What if one of those Umbrellas have
the same destination as mine.
Now I get a burp.
I can taste the night
in my mouth.
The whiskey
The Tobacco
The laughter
and the pain

I see an old man.
Waiting for a bus. Shivering in this rain and cold.
We are in a similar state of mind it seems.
He is limping. I am numb.
He is pale. I am scared.
I think I am him.
And he is me.

The wait has made me
acknowledge the taste of bitter things.
Spiked with subtle sweetness,
CHEAP BLACK COFFEE.

Mint lemon ginger has vanished
all of a sudden.
Comfort has been replaced by a kick in my face.
The throat misses the warmth of my favorite tea.
I have stopped dreaming these days.
And the smell of the horrible black coffee
brings me back to reality each day.
And keeps me awake and awake.
And lets me forget the embraces and the warmth
that I don't deserve anymore. Or need anymore.
At least that is what i tell myself.

I am standing on a little slope now.
Under the Katraj bridge.
Where buses to my destination refuse
to be on time.
And the rain continues to flow down
like a stream.
As If Im walking down the Katraj hills.
Shall we make paperboats?
My chappal decides to get off my right foot
and goes with the flow.
It wants to join the frolic of the puddle maybe.
Accompanied by a small make-believe paperboat?

I wake up again
Smell the imaginary coffee.
And still wait for my bus.
To be greeted with the cup
of lemon ginger mint tea in the end.

Yeh hai rang mere Sulemani ka. Aur Tumhari? 

I am bad at haikus. And short-lived happy experiences. I hate common names.

Red ants trembling 

on skin

- of warm bodies

aloe vera mixed with sweat

his scent on my skin

-a breezy hilltop

rain outside the window

drops on the rickety bed

inside.

warmth of the 

textured bedsheet

- a substitute lover

lessons in kissing

through the deep forests 

of your body

- nothing but waste.

As you exploited my space. 

Questions. 

What makes you go silent? You and me on that hill.

3 things you think about the most? one...two...three

What kind of a lover you are? Needy and a Provider. You suck. 

And you have sucked the need out of me. The need to provide anymore. 

He often complained about her not looking back with a parting smile and a 'see you again' smile on her face. By the time she learnt how to do it, there was no one left behind to say bye to.
He was long lost in the woods he came back from.

Kal Nazaara tha lekin yeh aankhein nahi thi.
Aaj aankhein mili, toh nazaara gaya.
- by some big shot shaayar whose name I can't recall right now.

Sex

Films

Past mistakes. And you. Three things. 

These days in this cold weather, every time on a lazy afternoon when I am contemplating life and other mishaps, and the electricity goes off and the wifi stops working, I realize how useless the ceiling fan is. I try to save electricity as my surroundings provide all the warmth that I need to heal myself. And then when the electricity comes back and the fan starts moving again, I turn the regulator to zero. That's what I like to feel sometimes. Zero. But infinitely warm.

He said he could not sing. Then they both had conversation through dreams and bodies.
It was her turn to ask now. " How do you feel?"
His senses broke into a song by James Brown called ' I feel good'.
She found love in the mad unstoppable laughter. She found love in an honest but yet to be discovered lie.

Poem time. Because Haikus are painful. And short lived. Just like you. 

I will not attach
The beauty of the weather outside
To my words anymore
All you need to know is that
The ink I am using
Is green on paper.

I take you through the woods
we are leaving a trail of footsteps behind
On the wet laterite soil
And fallen leaves
How we have been/seemed hungry
For the lush, the alive. (this is my favorite line too)

As we walk and listen to
The rain falling on the trees
Protecting us from the white sun
I can smell the scent of jackfruit ripening
From a distance

I can hear
your breathe on my back
The rhythm of the pace
Releasing me of my thousand million knots
I don't know where is this poem going
Just like I don't know where we are.
( hell now I do)
Maybe we need to sit.
And follow the path of this poem
and the road and the white sun
And maybe live our entire journey,
the journey in this small friction of a second.

And now you have became a painful knot.

I wasn't kidding about the Jackfruit though. 

 Also these days, It only rains when Im feeling sad. What relation you have with me rains?
I used to be happy when you poured yourself down on me. Earlier. This year, you have been just laughing at my pain. I miss when you blessed me with your lovely 'paaus'. And your 'kosaa-bosaa'. What happened this time? But since its almost 11:30 in the night and you are happening again over me, I shall dedicate this to you. You make me happy even while mocking me.

Our last poetry together. 

A poem dedicated to my past lovers, make believe friends, and the universe.

Its been a really long time. 

Since I last kissed someone. 

That I feel now that I have never been kissed at all. 

The space between my ears and shoulders has been long empty, 

Forgotten that if it even exists. 

My hipbones and my knees,

They have forgotten whose lips they miss these days. 

The contours of skin are hugged only by sweat and fabric lately. 

Why should this piece of land suffer so much? 

If the mind fails to find love. 

The land has its own list of needs.

Sometimes governed by lust, sometimes confusion.

When you call me fat, 

I hug my mother, 

And lose myself in her breasts. 

When you ridicule my pain of hunger and laugh at my loneliness, 

I feel like eating ice cream from a bath tub. Full of it. 

I imagine myself to be in it too, sometimes. 

I am slowly becoming ignorant to your opinions. 

Does my existence oozing out from my skin is so threatening to you,
that you greet me with insecurity? Each time that we meet?

Go get a life.
And a sandwich for yourself maybe.

This body of mine has been keeping me together. 

Others came and went. 

The body stayed and So did I. 

And you kept running after others to complete you.

There is nothing which can complete us. 

As I am the universe and the universe is me. 

With the flaws and the miracles embraced in one long breathe.

The ghost of Cafe Garden.

chai mein idhar ab woh bhaap nahi,

garam rehti hai fir bhi hamesha

chini-mitti ke pyaale mein.

Yaadon mein ab woh baat nahi

fir bhi basi hai idhar ek bhoot ki tarah

Got a yes in confirmation earlier. Was happy to be making plans about it. To capture it forever before it could be taken down. Like all the other things in life. Before the ghost could consume me, I had to bury Cafe Garden in my own breath for eternity.

Such simple choice of words today. 

Went there a couple of days back. Sat there. Sketched. Wrote. Endless cups of teas and received innumerable number of looks glancing towards me. Took pictures and footages. Thought I will go ahead and make my move. The old kitchen was being broken down. I heard the flooring is going to be changed. I later heard that the place will be shut for a month. Shit. How will I paint on my canvas now? How will I ever going to frame it on the walls of my memories now? For a change I sat for more than required. For a change I romanticized with my reality with this city a little more in all it's glorified loneliness. For a change the bill was not of Rs.78, but of Rs.130. A cup and bun maska extra. I was scared if the yellow old dirty walls and ceilings will be replaced too. So much change, so much irony, so much symbolism with regards to my own reality. 

But luckily I have been missing the ghost by a few minutes or hours or days every time. So much so, that If I ever come across this ghost, the ghost of cafe garden that is, it won't be a mere co-incidence. It will just be a resident ghost visiting his own yard of thoughts other than his mind. And me, the haunted migrant to this city, picking up the pieces of my past to be taken and submerged away in the deep waters of some delta forming zone of the world. At least someday. I am not sure the pressure of the water bodies will be enough though. Deltas seem slow. Like the end of certain relationships. Like the end of the relationship of the river with the land beneath. 

good for nothing rolls. But pretty looking rolls. Panchgani ones are better.

Not for me. Only for the people at the cash counter.

I feel like this cup sometimes

Maybe the ghost sleeps inside the middle one

And when Im not here, It sits on that chair.

Back to self-obsession.

Just another attempt to shoo away the ghosts.

The Almighty one which has almost seen it all. But the ghost knows better. 

It lives in these chipped off crevices I think

I change my position. Some sort of scarred symmetry.  

That place seems safe. My favorite spot. The last one in the corner.
But not that day since the flooring was going through renovation.
Water tank issues. Yes, the tank had broken down that day instead of me.

Who knows whether the recent changes are bothering him as well?
It's a an old establishment. From the 60s. Or maybe he is just submerged in his phone.
Look around dude! The plug points are more interesting here. 

What if the ghost breaks through this 'roshan-daan'? 

Or make this part of the ceiling rot too? 

I bet it can't break through the metal part of the ceiling.
Maybe one day I will be as solid as those beams and balance myself out too. 

Does Munna, my imaginary friend, looks at his reflection
in this only available mirror sometimes? 

Munna is not the ghost, you know. He is the migrant.
But that table used to be my favorite too.
But now nothing is permanent.
'Favorite' changes. 

So much uncertainty was today. So much dilemma. This place is dilemma. Some people scratch nostalgia out of dilemma and call it romance. The yellow here speaks of pure melancholia at times. Is that what I have been assuming as romance all this while?

I assumed that the place did not want to be captured. Maybe it wants to be captured by someone else. Who 'maybe' loves it more than me. Feels more possessive about it. I am certainly not. I need to go one day. I am practicing the art of detachment everyday. Surprisingly, the forces have been going strong. I like to tell that myself everyday. 

The universe opened up and gave me other options. Opportunities. That is how it is going to be. 

A similar ghost once asked me, "Shubhanshi, why do want to be a film maker?" 

I remained silent. Like always. After a few hours I realized, maybe I will myself know the answer, once I have made a few good films myself. 

After an year, even though I still haven't, all I can say is, or ask myself rather, why is it that, films want to be made by me? What have I done to earn such respect from a story that it wants to be made by me? Hope I get the answer soon. Otherwise I am wasting everyone's time. 

That evening I think I saw the ghost. That night, I could not sleep in my bed. I twisted and turned till 3:30 am. Then I thought of the ghost. The ghost put me to sleep. The more I saw the ghost as that was the only time I could spend time with him, the more my eyes and body refused to move. Probably he was the best place to visit in all of this city after all. I had comfort to myself at least. I din't feel haunted anymore. I just had to accept the ghost. 

I sat on my second favorite table next to the grill at cafe garden today. After a long walk through the dastur meher's and the taboot gali, I sat. To my delight, Naseer khan was back at the cafe post gallstone surgery. I could have asked him for permission to shoot there. But by that time motherearth had given me what I needed. I thought to myself (and dear Pragya, this is for you), somethings better be non-judged-non-analysed-unfilmed ( vocab-lord is gonna kill me) and what not. I understood the importance of the word 'personal'. The ghost was trying to tell me something. No matter what I do, I cannot capture the ghost on film. Maybe someone else will one day. Good for that person. But to see your personal feelings getting criticized is not a nice feeling.  

Capturing this personal space is like filming yourself having sex with your loved one and sharing it around with the world. The only thing being disrespected and at stake is the experience itself. The experience will be so upset with you that it won't happen to you ever again. The same happened with Rajhans. But I am happy about it. It was some sort of a brainwash. But it wasn't happy when it happened with the other ghosts. 

That's why I did not try for the permission. Let the place be. At least for once, one emotion of my life should not be made public. Images are fine. Soundless, movement-less, harmless. 

Also giving a chance to the one who gave me priority first was important too. So Plan b is not always like a bad compromise all the time. 

The ride back to the dusty land was unusually beautiful. I was without my camera so I was soaking in the visual tapestry of this world even more. 

Enough abusing of time. Time to sleep. Without the ghost hopefully.