I write poetry to let the breathless thoughts jostling in my head, 

find a resting place.

My poetry is everything inside me. 

The debris I carry from Bombay, Baroda, Poona, Assam. 

I am built of these geographies and ONGC colonies I lived in. 

Am a child of the Nehruvian public sector.

It all starts with a feeling, that comes out of nowhere.

A line at the back of a bus, some flashy handbag in a queue, some kid yellingat the mall, and I start time travelling. I always walk around a bit dazed as images starts spinning in my head. Stoned immaculate, as Morrison said.

I balance this with being a brand consultant by day.

I have chosen to live in Singapore because it felt like a good place for the family, but I always get a feeling of being disembodied. In my mental landscapeI still tread the lanes of my past.

I was introduced to modern poetry through an anthology of poetry by Jeet Thayil, which I picked up from a bookstore near the Sitladevi temple in Mahim. I was swept by the poets featured in there, Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla, Nissim Ezekiel, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and whenever I write, I imagine occupying that atmosphere; like I am a Bombay poet but in exile in Singapore.

So here am I, my poetry originates in my hallucinations that traverses between now and the 80s; between Singapore and Bombay; between brand consulting and ONGC colonies; between nowhere and everywhere.

My poetry becomes a journal to capture the history of my feelings. 

My poetry is maybe an act of cartography, it is an atlas of the vaporous terrain 

in my mind that emerges and disappears every day, as I keep mutating as an entity.

Taking all those photographs of birds 

I had finally become one.

One afternoon I flapped my thin arms 

and took flight.

Tall Hafiz uncle, a pathan from Afghanistan, 

was dwarfed the last as he leapt up 

to prevent me from floating away.

I soared past fourth floor, it was rumored

Mr Tandon beat his wife 

and this I saw with my own eyes to be true.

On the fifth floor, it was said, Mrs. Moitra, 

the Bengali beauty, 

put it out for the boys, 

and this I could now verify, 

was no tall tale either.

I got the whiff of Mrs. Bharucha’s tarelimachchi

on the 6th floor

and I sailed closer to the kitchen window 

to grab it like a sly cat.

Sanjil on the 7th floor, a school topper 

was hard at work at his table; 

though he frequently ogled at 

a Zeenat Aman centerfold in the Sun magazine.

Finally, I flew past the penthouse of the Singhania’s;

their daughter was a model for Bombay Dyeing 

and had appeared in a Limca commercial in a bikini. 

Lime N’ Lemoni Limca!

The thermals swept me quickly to Band Stand.

I was now with the raptors, 

a speck in the sky. 

I soon floated like a tiny zeppelin to Marine Drive. 

Later on, I spied Morarji in his bathroom, 

filling a glass of his own ‘piss cola’

and saying cheers to no one in particular.

Whenever I lost friends 

and colleagues 

their song snatched mid-verse

It was troubling to see

people move on quickly

sparing sparse thought 

for the departed

These were solid gents 

who tenderly cared for their family 

and were gems to their friends 

We love to yap about crooked men

and produce TV shows to ‘em

but good guys disappeared without a mention

I wanted to pen an anthem 

to these unknown soldiers

and wrote a few stanzas

but, ‘the ode to the family man’ 

sounded all pious and vacant

Maybe

maybe

that is the entire point of being 

a regular guy i reckon

It takes guts 

it takes moxie to be ordinary

to not be a phony

anxious seeker of glory

and say ‘fuck it’

to slogans like ‘fake it till you make it’

It’s perfectly alright if only a few people 

turn up at your funeral

and two of them get stuck in traffic 

and reach late 

and no media covers your story 

and all that ball curry

It takes nerves of zen 

to live your life plain

in pursuit of simple joys

and say goodbye without 

making a royal fuss

I say farewell aloud

to you O’ everyman

and thank you 

for the lesson

Like Osho said 

smoke it meditatively

in slow motion 

you will see the silly of it

Pull it in

Pull it in

Pull it in

I pull at that cigarette with such fervour

I pull in the entire atmosphere

I am a gargantuan vacuum cleaner

I pull in the trees

trunks bending helplessly

I pull in houses, bicycles

cars, telegraph poles

flying trash, jhal moori cones

flowers, leaves

plastic bottles

tricycles

fruitwallah thelas

I pull in entire cities, towns, villages

I tug at the stratosphere

shown like a protective sphere in the geography books

It collapses like a deflating bubble gum

Blow it out

Blow it out

Blow it out

Like a million chimney stacks of China

blowing out a billion billows of smog

Like an obese Djinn in need of a bariatric surgery

who insists on

full on smoky theatricality when appearing

I blow out anxiety, depression

paranoia, fear

long locked up secrets

suppressed ambitions

unspoken nightmares

well cultivated jealousies

stuffed like debris

in my unexercised belly

my interior architecture 

of vulnerability

Now all expelled in 

a gigantic ball of smoke

The size of storm Phailin

half the size of India

whipping the coastline of Orissa

Father is like a mother 

without breasts.

He cares for you 

with every heart,

compensating 

lack of ample softness.

Mother is like a father 

without a spear.

She feeds you iron 

with her milk.

They wait 

to watch you take on 

the sabre tooth fearlessly

outside the cave.

A for Apple

B for Ball

C for Cat

Am a few months old

but the pictorial reading books foretell

I will learn English

I will rattle it over my mother tongue

I will leap over the hoi polloi

My father won’t bequeath me riches

but he will give me English

to win life’s game

Look at me speak rip-roaring English

when I visit my parent’s homes

in the heat belt of Central India

Though my patois is from Bandra

‘Come men bugger’

‘Don’t act shaana’

Look there’s a crowd gathered

listening with rapture to every word I utter

destined for ordinary lives they watch me soar

A for Aeroplane

B for Beach

C for Champagne

Nobody officially speaks

Hindi or Marathi in my school

My teachers sometimes speak Hindi

with the touch of the firangi

rolling their Rs

heads held still

without any nodding

enunciating clearly

‘Di wall ke pass khada rahney ka’

‘Shrimps nahin pata, prawns log ka baba log’

A for Amusing

B for Bandra

C for Catlic school

Look at me devour books in English

TinTin, Asterix, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Robinson Crusoe,

Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Bernard Shaw, Ludlum, Sheldon,

Ignorant of Indian literary greats

Growing up behind the bars of the English alphabet

A for Arun Kolatkar

B for Harivanshrai Bachchan

C for Chaayavaad

I will give up names like

Pitru Chaya and KantaNivas

and move up in posh apartments

like Bluebird and Manhattan Heights

I will be embarrassed to give my children Indian names

why call them Gitanjali, Mohan, or Lakshmi

when I can call them

pan-global names like Hana, Anya, Jay, Tanya

A for Abandonment

B for Brown Sahib

C for Culturelessness

They stormed 

the American 

parliament 

uttering battle cries 

invoking

an orange Caucasian man 

with flaxen hair 

and a face like

meat slab 

and frozen butter 

but

this 

was a pale mob

compared

to their ilk

in my country 

who

bludgeoned men

and

raped women

for a 

blue-skinned god 

they 

enacted stories of 

in makeshift theatres

on riverbanks and playgrounds

while 

drinking 

moonshine

liquor