Skin-Whitening Cream and Soaps

All you white-skinned men and women

Showing off on the television’s tinsel domain

Makes me wonder if a black man or woman

Has a place in this land of dark God Neelkantan.

I shake my head and in I groan in pain

God! What have I done to deserve this bane?

You created this land of dark people and Gods

And dipped them in tubs of skin-whitening suds.

Now all I see are dark faces white-washed

Hair as if streaked with rays of golden sunlight

Creams that promise white skin in a week

With which you can marry a stud, not a geek.

Girl on television you may be a big star

But beneath the discolored skin you are hiding a scar

The way God created you is on hold

With skin-whitening creams you have been sold.

Yes, they say the cream sells more than aerated drinks

Thirst is nothing so far as you don’t look like Michael Spinks

Armed with cream and umbrella you must march

Down the ramp to celebrate the Ides of March.

DANCE GENTLY TO THE RAIN’S MAD RHYTHM

When you feel let down by the world’s trechery

When the air is thick with arrant buffoonery

When fools go where mortals refrain

When atomic wars threaten to draw the final curtain.

Dance gently to the rain’s mad rhythm, my friend

Go gently into the rain, don’t hesitate.

Raiiiin oooo raiiiiinnn oooooo! (2)

When anger is on every face and begets new anger

And nobody’s stuffy ears are willing to listen

To an old man playing a guitar and tambourine

Tossed around on silver seas and wastelands.

Dance gently to the rain’s mad rhythm, my friend

Go gently into the rain, don’t hesitate.

Raiiiin oooo raiiiiinnn oooooo! (2)

We are here to make the night last long

Don’t fill our nights with the ghost of hunger

Protest we must if our rights are trampled on

Guns we must face and be prepared for confinement.

Dance gently to the rain’s mad rhythm, my friend

Go gently into the rain, don’t hesitate.

Raiiiin oooo raiiiiinnn oooooo! (2)

This rain will pass and another monsoon too

Try not to shield from its fury, it’s liquid onslaught

Then we will dance on fallow fields and limpid lakes

What remains of its legacy in its wake.

Dance gently to the rain’s mad rhythm, my friend

Go gently into the rain, don’t hesitate.

Raiiiin oooo raiiiiinnn oooooo! (2)

(c) 2012

Doodles at the Sahar Airport

Distraught mothers waving sons goodbye

Harassed men pushing carts loaded with many bags

Sweet-looking, brusque, beautiful hostesses

New mothers holding wonder-eyed babies

The computer professional, knapsack on shoulder

Executives striding confidently, nervously

The confused tourist carrying backpack too large

Painted women whose stilettos make them imposing

Confusion of passports, boarding cards, endless queues

Gun-holding security men in starched uniforms

The strong smell of disinfectant, sanitized food

The airport is where voyages are embarked and disembarked

Not in steamy hot man-o-wars of yore, but

In air-controlled seclusion, and sequestered egos

Where every man and woman is an explorer

Compressing months of travelling into a few hours

And merging people into one palimpsest of cultures.

The Code Coolie

You pretend you are a code warrior, fighting

Battles with the lines of code you are writing;

You carry a back pack to work in the software park,

Dream of being Bill Gates and steering a sports car into the park.

ASP, Java, Oracle, SAP are your fine forte,

Logic, workflows and syntax your areas of comfort;

Your happiness centres on a chicken tandoori,

And a movie in the mall in East side of Andheri.

You will marry a fast-talking high-strung woman,

Happiness will be a short honeymoon to Konkan;

Then fights will start in blessed conjugal-dom

Cries of “Need my space; I need my freedom.”

The U. S. A.’s a happy energetic place for everyone,

But there are immigration officers and mad men with guns;

Then you will have children, one or even two,

And your joys will re-appear over a year or two.

But what of your parents who made you walk upright?

You left them, backpack over shoulder, into the night;

They cry hard tears, “Where’s our child, tell us truly?”

“Have we worked all our lives to beget a Code Coolie?”

Wisdom of Crowds

(Wrote this today in the train, standing, a request for an ample-enough sitting space refused by the consensus of co-passengers, on the way to work!)

In urban sprawls and in the countryside,

There prevails wisdom mala fide,

People wrongly call it crowd’s wisdom,

But I call it another name – officialdom.

Crowded committees, panels, boards, conclaves,

They are now people by crooks and thieves,

They waste their time and of the nation,

With their reports, trite, they have no notion.

They don’t know when around their waist they grow fat,

Their bellies protrude, oh! Look at that!

They run the nation, the economy, you know,

It’s they on whom fate power bestow.

I know them, I am one, but I don’t belong,

I’d rather write, compose and sing a song,

Of black deeds of men in starched white,

And their lumpen cohorts who decide what’s right.

Oh! Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Oh! Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

Holiest of holy cities

Cursed by the Nazarene:

Nameless, faceless,

Besieged, bombed,

Occupied by militias, armies,

It's unbelievable that once

The messiah of peace walked your streets.

Now you are rubble,

Bomb-hit houses

Lying in a mangled haze

Your hospices filled with the dying

Now you show signs of prosperity

But death still waits at your doorsteps.

The Cedars are bereft,

Alleys are filled with twisted steel,

Your people are not given -

A chance to survive, make peace.

Inside you there are enemy streets

Where children fear to walk

Afraid of hidden gunmen.

Will you rise from this debris?

Bring peace to your proud monuments,

And foliate your naked Cedars

With the leaves of verdant summer

In their shades women wouldn’t wail,

Of disappearances, shootings, and ransoms,

Of men who misunderstand the love of God!

To a Reluctant Writer

You can pick meaning off words,

You can paint pictures;

You can laugh at them,

Who laugh at you;

You can mourn

The follies of the unwise.

To write is power,

Of words, thoughts,

Limitless and boundless,

As the sky above and earth below;

You will never be alone

When words churn in your mind.

You can be heartbroken,

And cry and cry;

But a poem would wipe tears,

Puts a smile on your face,

Erase the pain

Of loneliness and love.

So won’t you write?

A letter, a poem, an essay;

We would gladly plunge in its depths,

Smile at its humour,

Relish what pains it took you,

And forgive friendly trespasses.

Anthonybhai's Song

Anthonybhai’s Song

(In Mack English)[1]

Kya, re? Know something, men?

Dis big, big; new, new instrumen’

Mobile phone and internet, wot?

Such confusion really I neva thought.

This pre-paid-post-paid I don’t unnerstan’, please tell,

Anthony’s simply want to know, what the hell,

You are not to be seen only, these days,

And you don’t call, even on Sundays.

I feel you’re going far, far away,

Some fuckin’ Katlik boy’s come your way?

I will break his legs, just you watch,

I won’t let you be an easy catch.

I know pucca you are flirting girl,

It shows in de way your lips curl,

You have no patience only with me,

But for him, that bugger, you’ll bend and curtsey.

“Wot’s my fault?” I aks Fadder Fonseca, he say:

“Son, forget her, forgive and pray

Treasures and eternal life in heaven above

Are your rewards than this worldly grave.”

I say, no, Irene’s my senorita, Fadder,

I don’t want to be treated, no way, like a ladder

Another man to step and take my girl away,

To the holy alter; and then “I do” say.

---

[1] A pidgin dialect spoken by Goans, East Indians, Ango-Indians, and other communities mainly found on the West Coast of India.

Apocalyptic Rain

The Apocalyptic Rain

(Dedicated to: father who died on a rainy day.)

I

The day father dies

The rain murmurs on glass

Through night and day,

Like apocalypse is today, now

It courses down the eaves at 3.30 a.m.

At 4.30 a.m. it’s still trickling

Thinly

Wetly

Damply

Hungrily

Silently.

We pause to look at the sky

And murmur, “It’ll never end.”

“The rain will take us as did father.”

We are wondering whether

The food will last

The oil will burn till midnight

Till we sleep the wearied sleep

Of wanderers of those days

When electricity slept in rich homes

Not brick hovels.

And in the morning

We wake up in a daze

To hear the rain still pounding

Pitting the stones

Drilling holes into roads

Fearing the worst

The swirling deaths

Washed out homes

That came calling on July 26

The day the skies wept.

II

Once there was a boy

Who, when a rainy symphony played,

With open book on knees,

And parents’ warm cares

Read “Paradise Lost,”

And dreamed of poetic fame

Lost in a haze of innocence

Unprepared

Docile

Ingenuous

Rebellious

Handsome

Ugly

Sensual

Unrefined

Uncouth.

“Will he ever survive this world?”

“Look at him, he is so silent.”

“Why is he so different?”

“How has he become thus?”

They ask.

III

The dream of trophy girls is now

The tattered cloth of a mendicant,

Stained and threadbare,

Threatening to rend

At the most delicate touch

As rain comes down

On hills and grey factory roofs

Marble monuments, their treasures plundered

And plastic coated glass

Reek of human enslavement

Nomenclature-ed

Numbered

Synergised

Compartmentalised

Ergonomised

Promoted

Demoted

Transferred

Filed

Forgotten.

The rain stopped

11.30 a.m.

Just as the pounding in the brain

Ceased.

Made tea

Drank cupful of heat

Satiated

Laid down to rest

Slept the tired sleep of the lazy

Woke worn out to rain pounding again

Rivulets on glass

Head aching from countless

Confusing dreams.

IV

One similar night of noir dreams

Death snatched father

It rained great floods that week

The rain came so thick

That the river changed course

Marooning the house

Father built

Our abode

Of parsimonious money

Made from the pain of my hunger

The house of our deprivation.

As the flotsam receded

Leaving the ground slushy

In the 1.30 p.m. rain

He was interred

At the family graveyard

After the priests

Chanted

Prayed

Sang

Mumbled to each other

Dropped mud on his coffin.

He must have heard

The thudding

Rain

On palm trees

The wind sighing in leaves

The susurration

Of tiny rivulets

Into his new abode,

Felt the wasting

Of a body

Dissipated

Drowned in grief

That no longer mattered

When the 11.30 p.m. lull had come.

The Old Church

The old church –

Thief of the best Sundays of my childhood –

Is dilapidated.

The courtyard is unkempt;

The parsonage is surrounded by weeds;

The Belfry and Vestry need maintenance;

The Alter, I don’t know;

The garden has a few shrunken shrubs;

And, some shriveled betelnut trees;

The trees under which we ate potluck lunch are gone;

So is the Sexton’s wooden cottage.

Yet, there it stands erect;

Having seen Governors, freedom struggles,

Teargas shells, riots,

Deaths, births, weddings, confirmations, and christenings,

Passing by below its arches.

Yes, now when the bells of St. Mary the Virgin toll

A sad funereal message,

I feel like a child again,

Lost in innocence.