On My Poetics
I write poetry to let the breathless thoughts in my head find a resting place.
My writing seems to get better with time; the progress albeit is at a glacial pace.
These days I write sort of okayish poetry, I was insufferable at first.
I have chosen to live in Singapore because as a family we love it, but I always
get a feeling of being disembodied. In my mind I still walk the bylanes of
India.
get a feeling of being disembodied. In my mind I still walk the bylanes of
India.
I was introduced to modern poetry by an anthology of poetry by Jeet Thayil,
which I picked up from a bookstore near the Sitladevi temple in Mahim.
which I picked up from a bookstore near the Sitladevi temple in Mahim.
Swept by the poets featured in there, Arun Kolatkar, Nissim Ezekiel, Arvind
Krishna Mehrotra, I imagined occupying their atmosphere, like I am a Bombay
poet in exile in Singapore.
Krishna Mehrotra, I imagined occupying their atmosphere, like I am a Bombay
poet in exile in Singapore.
My poetry is perhaps an act of cartography, mapping the vaporous terrain
of my interior, as I keep mutating as an entity.
Don’t Listen to Sad Music
Don’t listen to sad
music girl I said to
my teenager
music girl I said to
my teenager
Don’t listen to sad music on loop,
because it will coat the sides of your
young soul cup, with melancholia,
like sticky cocoa
and butterflies will appear like moths
and lone park benches will seek
your company and empty
restaurants wave invitingly
and window seats on lone buses will
call out to you and abandoned
bicycles unprompted will start
narrating their stories
and the aura of battles fought you will
witness around hunched old men with
a walker
and the likeness of your father you will see in the
greying waiter struggling to keep up with the band of cocky young servers
and you will prefer sundown to sunrise
and will want to perennially bathe
yourself in the yellow ochre hue of the
lampshades,
and look like an aging
Bollywood starlet, beautiful,
but wasting herself on liquor,
like an oil starved wick gradually turning to ash
and during brutal Nagpur like summer mid-
days of forty plus, you will not imagine
possibilities and
days of forty plus, you will not imagine
possibilities and
build an aircraft to fly off to temperate climes
but will instead lie supine as if in a
chandu-khana, breathing the bland
nausea of afternoon nothingness
chandu-khana, breathing the bland
nausea of afternoon nothingness
and you will feel kinship with the lone emaciated farmer
prodding his bullock in the meagre fields of crops that
haven’t been rained upon and that go running the other
way as your train whizzes by
and you will feel for the stationmaster
of the small barren railway station
through which winds and plastic bottles
roll freely, unhampered,
and in the corner a she-dog lies lazily, her
teats plump with milk, feeding ravenous
round fur balls;
desolate train stations that reek
of mystique but also of stillborn dreams
Don’t listen to sad
music girl butterflies
will appear like moths
and in parties, you will seek solitary smoking spots
Don’t listen to sad music
Listen to ‘California Dreaming’ instead
These Days
Once I ran
across cities
because they
said
you were
standing on the ledge
for a whole day
and you stepped
back down only
when you saw me
because I was always
melancholic and you
were always drunk
and we fit into
each other like
the phone in its
cradle And once
you waited about
in the office reception
every day till I came
back to
my senses
and we left hand
in hand because
like a poet I
was always drugged on dreams
and you lit one cigarette
after another and we fit
into each other
like the phone in
its cradle
These days
no one runs to
save
save
anyone
anymore
and phones
don’t have cradles
Pretense
There were
at least two
kinds of poets
Those
who pretended
to
be sad
in their
poems
and those
born
with
sadness
like a
black birthmark
on the
clavicle
often visible
throughout
the day
Urdu
O Urdu
you are like a
fleeting view of
an intoxicating
beauty in the
window
of the 6pm bus
you fill my
head with
giddy resolve
to
routinely
bump
into you
till one
day
we sit
glued
together
fingers
entwined
O Bartender
O
bartender
am jaded
mix me a drink
uncommon something
phantasmagorical
Shake me absinthe,
chai, wine, gin,
umeshu, sniffing
glue, sweat, piss,
pearl of
lachrymose oyster
tears of honey
badger Islay malt,
cactus milk
and ink let
me be
blinded
don’t give me a
Tom Collins Go to
the 90s
make me a drink of
my hormones mix ash
turds of Wills
cigarettes with Tequila
and weed
smell of heated
cassette tapes Old
Spice and blood
let red deltas form in the
veins of my eyes let pores
open up, let spice tumble out
Go to the barber
make me a pert drink with
champi oil, eau de cologne, rum
and water spray Go to the street
hawker
make me a dirty drink with vodka,
masala, tape-worms, tamarind, sake,
guava and popsicles Go to the Ojha
make me a satanic brew with arrack,
tufts of hair, dried gourd,
chopped fingers, vermillion,
lemon and chillies
Go to the
shikari make
me a drink
with mud,
adrenaline,
beer,
gunpowder and
tiger spoor Go to
the nautch girl
make me a maudlin
drink with the
sweat of matted
hair and drops of
cheap perfume,
wafting fragrance of
paan, elaichi and
exploitation
Go to my
childhood
make me
a drink
it’s the first day
of school
and am
lost
mix starch of clean
shirts with peach
schnapps,
talcum powder, bubble-
gum, spit and fear O
bartender
gum, spit and fear O
bartender
am jaded
mix me a drink
uncommon something
phantasmagorical
These poems were part of The Poetry Issue 2023, curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of these poems should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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