Still Life

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The Encounter

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‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ ‘Yes please’. ‘Earl Grey? Or English Breakfast? I also have Darjeeling if you fancy some’. ‘The Earl Grey would be very nice, thank you very much’. The irony of such a display of politeness before the signing of the deal did not escape me. Contrary to the barren, desolate landscape of my imaginings, his ‘office’ was a plush air conditioned room with large comfortable sofas. We were seated on navy blue swivel chairs across a beautiful mahogany executive table. There was a filing cabinet in the corner, with large, foot long drawers. For a moment I had the absurd image of him as a recruiter, with the drawers containing files with the CVs of the candidates entering into a contract with him. The room was lit up by strong halogen lights that cast harsh shadows all around. The overall feel of the meeting that day was tinged by a very strong sense of bathos. I was expecting a grand denouement, the final act of a tragedy where all the tragic el...
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Floodgates

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I buried my feelings deep within the recesses of my mind, Hoping that by not acknowledging them They would somehow cease to exist. But my wounds, raw and blistering, festered. They feigned docility at times, And obediently throttled my attempts at dissent. But when angry, they would poke through the delicate film That held together the shards of my mind, Letting my feelings gush out, Not as poetic words, weaving the pain and sorrow Into incandescent streams of thought That would reflect some of the pain that others surely felt. Not as jagged barbs that would surely drive home The validity of my grievances. But as mute, glistening tears. And others would see only my weakness, my frailty. They would not see the scars that formed a fortress around me, Allowing the occasional river to flow While keeping the floodgates tightly shut Clasping the ocean firmly within its breast.
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The Writing Block

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Ma keeps bemoaning the fact that I don’t write anymore. Tui koto likhtish, kobita, golpo…aajkaal aar kichu likhish na (You used to write so much, poems, stories…nowaways you don’t write anything), she complains. Sadly, this is very true and the reason is, I think, a mixture of a grown up horror (in itself a tad pretentious) at the pretentiousness of the solemn poems that I wrote when I was younger and sheer laziness of mind. When you are a kid you can unabashedly think of rhyming words and then ‘construct you poem’ around it (though, of course, you don’t think of the process of poetry writing in such grandiose terms). I remember one of my poems going as: I have a sister who can dance I have a sister who is in France I have a sister who is naughty I have a sister who is haughty… And so on… The cuteness of these poems are ‘awwwwd’ at, and rightly so. And then comes the stage where you have to compose solemn, serious verse pondering on the meaning of life and deep metaphy...
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