Less and More

You tease me as heartless,
I tease you as brainless.
This continual bantering lessen,
What was more in life before,
Aimlessness and hopelessness,
Many more sorts of -lessness.*
But this combo is more than being,
Heartless, lifeless and loveless,
As the bantering continues,
Day by day with more wit,
Energy, drive and spirit,
To find each other new epithets.
Still this world of less is more alive,
Than before the day I found you.

For my love on a nothing special day

Some days ago, I fell into a deep slumber,
From which I thought I would never rise again;
My limbs tied with some strange force,
My heart full of fears of the dark.

When I rose, terror flashed before me,
So did my love for you, my dearest,
What if you never know how I love you
More as days and weeks and months pass.

Memories of terror may flash again,
There is no restraining them,
Your love has been like an anchor,
A strong hold that I can depend on.

The words of anger may be a ruse,
For I know, you will be there always.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go, quote Oscar Wilde

Sometimes, I see that life works perfectly if only all the people that you associate with on a daily basis are in harmony with you. Work-life can be in shatters, if you have somebody who irritates you with persistent negativity. Not just me, a lot of people have this habit of blaming others and circumstances for not being focused enough. But how much is enough?


I was just a sit-at-home graduate in English who wanted to work from home for a hobby. I started doing some content writing projects and daily blogging. Nowadays, I am swamped with so many projects that I have forgotten the already rare visits to the beauty parlour, the occasional evening walk (the accumulating fat will tell the rest of the story) and unfinished household chores.

If you see no posts in a place, where there were regular posts (even though they were not great, but readable) please take remember that this idle singer of daily life in the form of writing has become a multi-tasker engaged in her struggles with Good English.

Bad days

Shell

Meetings with no purpose,
Words with no meaning,
Promises unkept and broken,
Intentions no longer clear,
Everyday has such ruffles,
Brain-devouring carnivores,
Who stop not at tears or anger,
But only at killing the heart,
Till you learn the best way out,
To resist this energy drain,
Is to go back to your shell,
Keep respectful distance,
From all and not wielding power.
For who knows with all these rules,
You will die from plain exhaustion.

Dieting

The thin bodies of models
Tease from advertisements;
While I try walking, running
Skipping, skipping meals,
Doing whatever I can,
To get slim and sleek.

But the chocolate cake beckons,
From the nook at Spencer's
So does Crackle and Five Star;
Not to mention the ice-creams,
Fruit salads and carrot halwa.

When I see these delights,
All ideas of dieting lost,
The dream of a thin body,
Purged of its extra roundness,
Lost amidst bites of sweet,
Forgetfulness.

So I binge more on sweets,
Think of exercising tomorrow,
While days pass one by one,
The models tease from ads,
With their thin sleek bodies,
But they can't have such delights
The way I can live on sweets.

Madness

The pale hairy hands stretch from a white coat,
A falsely made happy face enquires about you,
Was it yesterday that you had screamed aloud,
Asked for euthanasia and that you want to die,
While he looked worried and showed you
Pictures of shapes and spaces and flowers
Describe this: You told him of Carl Gustav Jung,
About Freud and what you have read,
Anima and Animus and the theories meant,
The male creative spirit in the female,
The female creative spirit in the male,
The pictures that Jung used to treat people.

The doctor ordered the nurses to sedate you,
Till you remember nothing of Jung or Freud.

The victim of a mousetrap

"An Introduction" by Kamala Das

I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
Don’t write in English, they said, English is
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone.
It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, don’t
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
Incoherent mutterings of the blazing
Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.
When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask
For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door, He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me.
I shrank Pitifully.
Then … I wore a shirt and my
Brother’s trousers, cut my hair short and ignored
My womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl
Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook,
Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh,
Belong, cried the categorizers. Don’t sit
On walls or peep in through our lace-draped windows.
Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better
Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Choose a name, a role. Don’t play pretending games.
Don’t play at schizophrenia or be a
Nympho. Don’t cry embarrassingly loud when
Jilted in love … I met a man, loved him. Call
Him not by any name, he is every man
Who wants. a woman, just as I am every
Woman who seeks love. In him . . . the hungry haste
Of rivers, in me . . . the oceans’ tireless
Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,
Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I
In this world, he is tightly packed like the
Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying
With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.

Tribute to Kamala Suraiyya

I want to be loved
And
If love is not to be had,
I want to be dead; just dead. (Kamala Das)

Kamala Das aka Kamala Suraiyya aka Madhavikutty reigned in Malayalam literature like a queen. One of first feminist writers in India, she was a prolific writer who wrote both in English and in Malayalam. She died today after being hospitalised because of respiratory troubles. A tribute to her, this afternoon on hearing about her death.

You were brave enough to bare your soul,
When other women played with hypocrisy,
You dared to speak of things that mattered,
To a woman more than anything-love.

Your quests for love shadowed your stories,
Poems revealed the highs and lows of love,
True to the dictum that poetry is a song
From a broken heart or a smiling mouth.

Others followed the trail that you had set,
In a land swallowed by traditions and rules,
You broke all rules to follow your own heart,
Frank, straight and a trigger of controversies.

Mother, your words soar like the eagle you're,
Lone but high above in the clear blue skies.