A Spanish love poem

Marianna grew up in a sleepy little neighbourhood, 

In another part of the day and world.

When she was young and all of sixteen,

She would paint her toenails a bright red 

Her hair always gathered in a mass of tumbling brown curls.

Their paths often crossed those days,

She describing him to her friends as an unsuitable boy 

from amongst all her other suitors

Who would wait below her two storeyed building,

Vrooming in their flashy bikes

Making catcalls with their collars upturned 

And their slick hairstyles.

He with his ordinary mannerisms, 

bespectacled; carrying an air of unusual calmness,

He hiding behind books most of the time 

or tending to roadside kittens, by feeding them milk and other titbits.

He who would look at her from the corner of his eye,

When she took short walks with her mamma.

Wearing bright purple and yellow dresses

and to church on Sundays a red pleated one 

with frilly smocking in the front,

Stitched by her Papa who was the best tailor in town.

He who would always patiently wait, 

At the bus-stop, outside the library,

And next to the college canteen,

He who would seamlessly blend into a crowd without anybody noticing. 

And then there arrived that one day 

When he walked up to Marianna with faltering steps 

And handed her a note.

The previous night she had seen him waiting long enough 

for the other boys to finish a game of night football

And then he had sat under the flickering light

Maybe pouring his heart out onto that piece of paper.

There was a kind of wretchedness in Marianna then 

One could only blame it on the age of raw adolescence 

No words were exchanged. 

She left the note unread 

crushing it under her feet

Tossing it onto the nearby brown puddle. 

His look said it all then

As though the gates of hell had opened up, 

Mighty dragons spitting venom all around

All his dreams and hopes getting crushed in an instance.

She felt the tiniest bit of regret

But was too flippant and young enough to care much.

She watched him walk past

Never turning back

His broad shoulders glistening under the glare of the hot sun

                                                 ******

Marianna still likes to paint her toenails a bright red 

with a shade called as Fiery Rasputin,

Her hair is whiter than ever before,

And there are weight laden bags underneath her eyes now.

Her feet has purple spidery lines running all the way up to her knees 

That creak a little whenever she walks for more than half a mile.

Now at the age of sixty, married but separated,

She has three children and six grandchildren 

A whole boisterous lot 

scattered across different parts of the world. 

She has come back to her home in Toledo 

where the papaya leaves still turn a shade of olive green 

when monsoon settles in

and the jackfruits hanging in the garden are all big and sombre 

resembling her papa's mood when he used to come home tired and weary 

after a hard day's work.

Word gets around. 

Marianna's friends tell her that he has always remained single;

Some days she sees him at the sidewalk

with his group of old cronies

Looking all distinguished and sacred 

Today it is she who waits to catch a glimpse of him

From behind the sheer curtains of her window

Knowing truly well that he shall never again approach her

And neither will she.

But there is a memory of a little boy

etched in her mind

Wearing worn out slippers

Hair in a tousled mess 

But his eyes carrying a searing flame 

That would light up every time he saw his lady love passing by 

Marianna still wonders about the unread note

Did it profess undying love

Did it contain vows 

Did it mention about growing old together

And was it finally sealed with a kiss

Her heart stalls for a second 

She would never know

She would never ever know….

A walk to remember

I get caught on the surface sometimes, 

laughing at my own naiveté.

I stand still and stare hard at the flowers blooming in the garden,

The flaming orange of the gulmohurs and the crimson reds of the poinsettia's as though are anxious enough to start a conversation with me.

There are days when my footsteps are slower than other days, prompting me to halt on a hot sultry afternoon, 

when the sun is blinking harshly from above. 

What has caught my fancy then is a row of six cuddlesome puppies in various shades of brown and orange

hungrily suckling at their mother for milk.

I bend down on my knees, and tickle a fawn coloured fellow who has stripes running all over his tiny frame 

like that of a hyena.

The ever so protective mother, 

seeming not too excited at this unnecessary indulgence 

lets out a snarl, her canines positioned outwardly, 

ready to attack.

I back out, allowing my submission known thereof, 

towards her rage that is justified

I move along a little further.

A packet of half eaten black raisins lie strewn on the path.

Of the puppies a brave fellow, finds it endearing to leave the comforts of resting on his mother’s belly and has faithfully followed my tracks.

As I stoop down to look at the raisins that resembles warm pellets of maybe a goat’s droppings, the enthusiastic fellow has already clawed open the packet with an appetite that must beat even my grandmother’s who at the ripe old age of eighty eight always has food on her mind.

On certain days, she enters the kitchen sneakily when people at home are enjoying their afternoon siesta One can then hear a tiny rumble of tins getting opened and closed.

A slight groan from my mother, sleeping in the adjacent bedroom is enough for her to dash out with a forced agility. The loose ends of her saree covers half of her face and behind the thin cotton I imagine traces of coconut biscuits with sugar dressing adorning her quivering mouth. When I later spot half closed plastic tins and a row of ants marching along with the weight of sugar crumbs stuck to their little forms, I break into a half smile.

The little puppy looks up endearingly at me; his red coloured tongue now sprayed with black and purple stains after he has devoured every last bit of the raisin.

I lift him up carefully and as he snuggles deeper into the crook of my arm, I rest a kiss on his upturned belly so soft and soothing to touch. His coat resembles the shade of a burnished orange reminding me of a maple leaf I had stored in a History book long ago.

With a heavy heart I carry him back to his mother and make him lie next to the bundle of the other five litters.

Such an alluring sight.

An afternoon that I cherish and is indeed truly well spent.

All the way up and all the way down

Steps

Steps that take her up and bring her down and on certain days manage to leave her at intersections and crossovers where she bumps into a former lover. They share a friendly hug. It gets awkward at first and the awkwardness slowly melts with time when they started talking about Toby and Mathias their friends from the library.

Toby had once let out his plump faced hamster from the bag causing a stir in the library. The hamster kept hopping from table to table, and finally when he landed on the librarian's desk, they both had an eye to eye moment causing the stern faced librarian to topple from her seat and let out a loud shriek.

"Where did he vanish? said a baffled Toby. 

They all had then searched for him high and low, underneath lined bookshelves, spaces between antique looking cupboards and peeped into wastepaper baskets. But they couldn't locate him and had finally resigned to the fact thinking that maybe the poor fellow had gotten around making a nice home for himself in the midst of books that carried the faint scent of war stories and stories of unrequited love locked within.

She wondered about him then and she still wonders at times whether he had shown some refined manners by not going around tearing pages and on second thoughts if he did, whether he had made a nice makeshift bed from those very pile of pages. He would have then sunk deeper into the mound seeking warmth on rainy days when it kept pouring really hard outside.

Steps

A day she remembers climbing nearly a hundred steps, that went winding all the way up with tufts of green grass growing in patches at the sides. Once on top the view from the hillock was magnificent. The depth of the city with terracotta tiles as roofs over houses displayed a brown hush everywhere. In the background the sky kept changing its colours from a livid orange to a tempered brown and by evening the daylight had shifted to a purple haze knocking off the sun behind. But the evening mostly carried with it the fragrance of jasmine buds growing in clumps beneath her feet. 

Couples sat in various corners, their bodies fitting snugly in stone-walled arches, arms and legs colliding with one another. She simply sat on a battered ledge drinking in the view. Occasionally, she watched those couples from the corner of her eye with a growing agitation fuelling inside her; waiting for the boy whom she loved then and who she knew was not going to turn up.

But with the shift in time, she felt subdued and a sense of calm settled over her agitated nerves. The boy, the lecture that she had missed to come here all the way, her evening coffee, friends from college all felt hazy in the background and what took centre-stage then was the horizon, the melee of houses below, the rocky valley and the sounds of exotic birds that filled up the warm afternoon air. 

In her own company she realised that sometimes it is the ordinary things in life that can bring you sheer bliss.

Lovers can always wait. 

Truth-or-Dare

Truth or dare

A game I loved.

My eyes closed

I opt for a dare

And as if unwittingly the other person 

Reading my mind 

Lays out a dare.

I place a hand over my chest

My heart beating wildly

As if a hundred horses are galloping all at once.

I walk up to him

To look into those coffee brown eyes and utter the magical words. 

To tell him, I saw him in my dreams last night

His face lingered around long after I woke up.

To tell him I snatch every bit of conversation I hear about him

In corridors, in public parks and in local libraries

To tell him I even know about the faded mole he carries in his left palm, 

Unobtrusive from the rest of the world but not a secret to me anymore. 

To tell him about every shrinking detail I have of him in my memory.

He sings a tune, my favourite too.

A long legged girl walks up from behind 

They share a kiss

She cocooned in his bear hug.

I wish to melt away

Instead, I withdraw, slowly and silently

The ‘Dare’ wilting away like a forgotten summer rose

The ‘Truth’ left hovering between my lips.

Truth or Dare

A game I will never ever play.

The daily travails in an Electrician's life

I knew an electrician, who had woken up on a certain morning with a pounding headache. The previous night’s dreams had assaulted him; where he had seen hammers and pliers everywhere. Outside his tin roofed shanty that morning, the birds were unusually chattery, leaving behind  droppings on his window sill.
Just before the birds arrived causing a cackle of sounds, he in his dream, was searching for screws in a room that had hammers lying in abundance everywhere. 

Jolted out of his reverie, he dashes to the bath for a quick shower before lighting up a stove to make himself a cup of tea which turns out to be pale and watery. All dried up, he opens a wooden shelf and notices a jar of half-used face cream, a tin of talcum powder and a packet full of colorful bindis. He pictures his mother with the red dot on her forehead and his eyes glisten unwittingly. He doesnt find it important to dispose any of his mother's bare belongings after she had passed away a few years ago. He locates a plastic bottle, lying at the far end of the shelf that has a fine layer of oil stuck around it's edges. On opening the cork, a strong whiff of jasmine scented oil arrests his nostrils. Pouring few drop on his roughened palm he gently applies it over his mop of curls and slicks it on to the side.
The tiny mirror by the kitchen window catches his blurred reflection showing few strands of grey sprouting at the temples. At the age of forty, intentionally single, he has no complains from life and busies himself in re-arranging the contents of his toolbox. The morning outside is nice and bright carrying with it the smells of chicken curries getting cooked in the neighbouring kitchen. His weather-beaten toolbox in tow he then heads to travel to faraway distances. A bus that he alights in takes him to a nearly dried up creek bed. Once he steps out, placing a leg atop a slithery stone; the toolbox held close to his chest; he takes two long strides and crosses the creek to get on to the other side. 

Every now and then his feet take him to strange unnamed streets, alcoves that look haunted, narrow gullies that are stretched forever. 

The sun today is certainly not kind; the harshness of the weather bringing in big droplets of sweat that drip casually from his underarms. By day end he would notice angry red blisters gathering in a clump at the soles of his feet. 
Days when he is fortunate enough to make a quick buck, he finds himself in dark sullen rooms wearing a slim torch like a band around his head. 

Behind dingy cupboards, the plaster peeling from wornout painted walls he discovers crumbling old switchboards. 
The switchboards he realises always made a creaking sound when drilled with screws and pliers. Once in a while he hears a splinter of darkened wood tearing away. A tangle of wires get ready to greet him sprouting out of those moth eaten wooden boards. The light shining weakly from his torch; he fumbles with a hundred open wires knowing exactly which one to puncture with his array of instruments. 

There are times, when he comes across buildings that are torn down and dilapidated; the owners themselves over ninety years old, coughing and tottering around with their walking sticks screaming out instructions to the electrician. 

On a certain evening, like today, when the sun is dipping behind the shadows, he is called to fix up a house that is enveloped in darkness due to the breakdown of electrical systems or faulty wires. The sight of half lit candles meet him everywhere; the melted wax dripping in a continous stream. 

Inside those rooms, where the blinds are perhaps raised to catch  the last filter of sunlight, spiders in a corner are busy rustling up a patchwork of intricately sewn cobwebs and roaches have a gathering of sorts in between weedy spaces of thin cupboards. 

Nothing misses his eye like today. His torchlight catches a flash of a mouse or two darting across from one end of the room to other, scurrying beneath the wooden four poster bed, and chewing at the weathered ends of a tray table. 

Under the glare, the mice appear to be frightened, taken aback, as they stand exposed to their crime. But in true sense, they are cocky enough to know, that the man standing before them is benevolent and is compassionate in nature and means no harm. And even if he decides to run after them with a stick in his hand, as they had often seen the old couple do, they had their runaway route planned. A hole in the bedroom wall, that was dug after days and days of perilious labour now stood in front of them worthy enough to justify every means of their escape. The meek mice stand at a distance, guilty as charged. 

The sharpness of their teeth amazes the electrician, and he  wonders in his head whether bits of flattened wire would have got stuck between their teeth while tampering with the switchboard. But answers he has none to and there is nothing much he could do, other than fixing those half chewed wires. The mice aware of his growing dilemma stare back at him, brazenly flashing their teeth. For a moment they both lock their gaze. In a flash of a second, they escape promptly by vanishing into their cubby hole. The last image, he catches of them is of their grey tails sweeping the ground below. 

The lights in the house is now restored, and the angry wrath from the old couple’s face is replaced with smiles and thankful gestures. 

Some decent money in his pocket, he stops by at his favourite Iranian restaurant. The owner recognizing that he is a regular, offers to add an additional spoon of sugar into the already sweetened milky chai, to which he gladly obliges.
He has his first proper meal of the day. Two slices of buttery toast with a spread of strawberry jam mocks his tastebuds and he devours it in an increasing speed. He leaves behind few annas as a tip which he has never done before and steps out of the place. 


The night breeze is cool as he resumes his journey back home. The street lamps glimmer on the pavements. Hunger-ridden moths circle wildly around those lights making it their home for the next few hours.

Lights, he wonders out aloud. The reason he makes a living.

A childhood gone by and a bucketful of memories- Fishy tales

Every now and then snippets from my past make its way into my mind, getting me reflective over all the sweet memories.

I was in the fifth or sixth grade when I remember taking walks with my Dad; hand in hand, my stubby fingers enclosed in his large ones. We hardly had any idle chatter going on between us as he was the silent types and we would busy ourselves in watching the surroundings around. A certain kind of quietude filled up our walks and now when I look back, I felt there was a supreme grandiose attached to those walks, merely by the sights we got to encounter.

The roads those days used to be particularly dusty but it was a treat to watch a rare Ambassador car zooming  past us crisscrossing in those narrow lanes leaving a trail of dust and billowy black smoke behind. Our local cobbler with his thick bushy moustache and sunken eyes waved out to us whenever we passed by his little shop painted a pretty fluorescent green. It was ensconced in a corner with tufts of grass growing all around it. I think even the cobbler then was part of my so called acquaintance list, solely by the number of visits I kept making to his shop to mend broken slippers. 

Dad & I often stepped out of our house to run errands which either included going to the bank or for dropping letters into the post box that my mother had written in her dialect to her sister in Mangalore or it was simply about planning a visit to the fish market.

The fish market was out of bounds for me to otherwise go and explore on my own. So on Sunday mornings when Dad suggested a visit, my eyes would shine with excitement..

The fisher-women; Maharashtrian ladies clad in their Navari saris, their broad beautiful butts staring hard at our face were the nicest. Loud mouthed, with their gold chains jangling around their necks they called out to my Dad in their raspy voices, 

“Bhau ya na ikde, taaze  bombil, surmai, bangda, khekda gheta ka…”

Dad would smile at them but at the same time reluctantly shaking his head he would keep moving further. Trudging on close heels behind him I tried to keep pace with his hurried steps.

Finally we would come to a spot where Dad's regular fisher lady was found seated on a tiny stool, with a string of fresh mogra flowers wrapped around her oiled bun and lips that were painted a jarring red. Supposedly, her catch was always considered to be fresh and on whom my Dad had enormous faith in. He immediately got on to the task of inspecting the fishes. For Bangdas he checked if the fish carried a metallic sheen on it and for surmais, she gladly obliged by allowing Dad to check it's gills; if they were a deep red in colour he pronounced their freshness by nodding his head slightly in agreement.

While all this was happening, I sometimes caught sight of black crabs hobbling around, leaving the comfort of their woven straw baskets taking a walk to nowhere. Anxious looking kittens kept watching their every move, but at the same time they used to go and purr near the fisher-women persuading them to part with chopped fish heads.

The whole buzz of the place with men and women haggling about prices being too steep, rancid odors emanating from a variety of fishes, the hustle and bustle left me spellbound.

A bunch of hungry crows cackled loudly from top, seated on wooden ledges.

 The muddy stone floors, filled with grime and remains of dead fish were enough to nauseate anyone, but for me it was a thrilling adventure all along.

With the gullets of the fish removed, their tails hacked off, the fisher-woman would make precise thin slices and double wrap them neatly in polythene bags. An assortment of crabs was packed  in a separate one. Dad & I would then leave the place with our bags full and our hearts seeping with joy. A wee bit of trepidation used to bother me, thinking about those live crabs getting hurled against each other, jostling for space in the cramped polythene bags. 

I would get excited to reach home and showoff our booty to Mom. But more than me, I think it was Dad eagerly waiting to catch Mum's expression on seeing the fish that was considered as a stamp of approval. Being raised in a coastal land, Mum was considered a fish aficionado of sorts and hence was famous in expressing her pleasure or displeasure by observing the contents of the plastic bags.

 Also, by then, I was old enough to read her expressions well. When only vegetables were bought, she let out a smirk and the vegetable bags got plonked on the dining table, without even a second glance. But any fish items in that bag, was enough to lighten up her face with the brightest of smiles. I remember relatives long after visiting our house wherein lunch used to be a lavish affair, with a delectable spread of fried fish, curried fish, prawns cooked in a tangy masala would reminisce about all the soul food that mum had cooked for them and how they had immensely relished it.

Soon, Mum would get down to peeling the polythene bag and exploring its contents. Occasionally, when crabs were bought, our place turned into a riot house. One by one they would come out of the plastic bags, crawling all over our two by two kitchen space. A few used to go hiding behind the grinding stone and some found solace behind wooden shelves. There were the brave ones who mindlessly roamed without a care and unfortunately were the first ones to get swooped up by my Dad who wasted no time in getting their claws clipped and dropping them in hot water.

Once, I perfectly remember, of having an insidious desire to pick up one of the crabs and keep it as my pet by hiding it inside my book shelf. I imagined taking it to school the next day and wondered about my best friend rolling her eyes in excitement on discovering my precious find. 

But then all my thoughts had come tumbling down that day, as I morosely stood watching Dad drop the last of the crabs in hot water. 

What followed then was a finger licking crab curry prepared by my mother. 

With all our tummies full I later would roll in bed on lazy Sunday afternoons, sometimes clutching my stomach in pain on having eaten like a glut; greed outpowering my tiny appetite otherwise. Mum would immediately make a concoction of jeera water and make me take slow sips of it.

By evening, I was perfectly fine, urging Dad to venture out for yet another one of our memorable walks.