Monday, June 30, 2008

Kilos

There is no Bengali word for graffiti
Or for Spanish Rice that has been cooked
With Kashmiri Spice!

I can rhyme well
When I cannot find the right words.

Amidst a city, serving alien fish egg kichdi
That my friend had noticed first
I can only remember the highway
That lead to my official materialism
Where I sat - blinking at my tits carved in the cold
Admonishing it to get tame and settle down with the rest
Of the team members...

I must remain a bengali
Talking in a half-baked language with my mates -
Bengali, that I picked up in campus,
Sitting with the bad boys and their good guitars
Good girls with their bad hairs
Bad girls with their good mothers
Good boys who have been forgotten by now.

I have travelled without knowing myself
Sometimes.

I have taken a bath not knowing
How to caress myself.

I have eaten
Knowing I cannot ever be fatfree,
Or a respectful vegetarian.

Every night I watched TV
Knowing I will shit it out in the morning
Not the content, but the hours spent -
In the jumbled dictum of thoughts who know you know they are worms
Eating at your precious madness
That you had whipped up with fantastic pleasure
Of educated shamelessness.

I am not surprised at the fake eternity of things
That you can memorise out of any literary anthology
Eternity, that Joyce had feared so much when a boy artist.
Eternity, that is fatfree and pretty darn long - a size zero
That can exist anywhere without occupying any space
Even inside the air of a padded bra.

I am fond of tea
And Rum
And my thumb
The rest can go to hell without an orgasm.

I think women like to talk sex
Only when they can affect a liberal mind,
Or a desperate urge to feel fatfree.

I have not seen it all -
But I can hold a good bottle of vodka
Infront of my eyes and wink at myself
Just for the kicks.

I write when nobody is looking.
I feel insulted when I read canonical writing.
I repeat the fantasies of ophelia -
For brand effect - I am a fake amusement park
To those who come to desire me
For I can never return a promised ride.

1 comment:

Shamik Chakravarty said...

I think women like to talk sex
Only when they can affect a liberal mind,
Or a desperate urge to feel fatfree.

yes yes yes. This is what what I wanted to point out to the world! The more these so called liberal minded women spoke of sex, expanding their enlightenment, they reminded me of those women in 1984 with red sashes and ANTI SEX BRIGADE written across(and yes rotten smelly vaginas). You know why? It was as if they trivialized it, reducing it to material titillation, omitting the sacred ideas of trust and disinterestedness involved in it.

As for the rest, you've pinpointed almost everything one faces in Urbania. The winking at myself with the bottle of vodka, the TV, the blinking at my tits and of special mention with regard to form. You've followed the Rule of 3 with regards to a climax so well, from 'I have travelled...respectful vegetarian' with the extra line in the third stanza in this sequence.

All in all, very American, Walt Whitman, Syvia Plath tradition, especially with the first person. Congrats. You just gave me a major complex.