The Fable of the wonderous Calcatian Chinaman.

For a long time I thought Paris was for the romantic pansies. Or the pansy romantics.
By the way, I have never been to Paris. I had read about Paris and seen Paris through the eyes of the dreamers. I had seen Paris when Patricia Franchini was selling newspapers on her streets. I had seen the Boulevard des Capucines in a misty snowy afternoon through the eyes of Monet. The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, on a starry night. And the champagne and the wine, I know of. Most people, even those who have never been to Paris, I met, have had a picture of Paris in their minds which was as beautiful as a city can get.
Given a choice I did go to New York or Barcelona or Venice.
Now Lee, all he wanted in life was to be in Paris. No, Lee was not the hopeless romantic types, who would sit in a corner café, with a book and table wine all day long gazing as the pretty young lass working in the café on the other side of the road. Or maybe he was. It’s a pity we never found out. Because he did all his ogling bit secretly. Or that’s what we like to believe. The facade that he put up of himself, in front of us, was quite contrary. He behaved like the ruthless street fighters of the bad ass American underground. Put aside the hip-hop bling. He was for real. He wanted to fight. Fight to break, destroy, even kill if need be. Again, do not portray a leather-clad hefty 6 feet tall on a black Harley, sporting a mustache whose ends kiss his chin. No, Lee was rather soft looking human being of Chinese origin. Mandarin and Cantonese blood, was what Lee was. And a character full of contradictions, as you might have already noticed. All of us had heard of expatriate Chinese folk who sell food in East London or Queens. They become hair dressers all over the world. Some also become IT professionals in Uncle Sam’s band. Lee was neither. He was a musician who lived in Calcutta. And aspired to go to Paris.
But this story is not about Paris. It just one of those silly ways you refer to start coming to the point, just because you are supposed to be writing.
Lee landed up in Delhi, one fine day, looking for a job. And here is where our story starts. Lee and his paranoia.

Just The Right Sunday....

Just the right Sunday evening. The nor’easters have hit and the following rains have washed the city clean. The sky has turned an azure once more. A few gallant cars zip through the gray of the street here, cutting through the puddle like Moses did through the sea. The drizzle has brought down the mercury by quite a considerable bit. People don’t mind getting out of their houses to smell the fresh wet earth.

The stage is set. The lights in the audience dim, slowly. The cacophony drowns in a pretentious silence of intellectual traits. The auditorium fades into a darker shade of grey. Up go the curtains. A spotlight kisses the center stage. A 5 feet 11 and a half man walks into the spotlight. And announces, “The Play begins”.

And the play began.

And rummaged through civilizations, eras and cults.

Made fire, invented the wheel, got nominated for the Oscars and invested in mutual funds.

Out-ran the horses and saddled them, wore the shinning armours of knights and kings.

Built summer-castles like paradise.

There the milk spraying from the fountains washed their feet.

Saw wailing babies looking at the sky begging for food and water.

Bellies swollen in Ethiopia and Somalia, with dark big eyes.

The locusts coming to fields of golden corn and a civilization gone with the wind.

The play dragged women out of the purda and lifted their skirts,

Because the veil wasn’t lowered enough to guard those eyes from their lust.

And the bust, well that didn’t matter.

The Afghan girl with hungry eyes, hollow cheeks and a flat chest,

And 7 fat cocks inside every hole of her body, yet to harvest pubic hair.

And gas chambers made our eyes misty.

And just when the cold queasiness was about to flow abundant

They tell you, “it’s only make belief. It’s a play”.

And then the nightmare started again.

On a King's Birthday

Let me take you long years back to the kingdom of King of Wu. There lived a man Sun Tzu. A man who had just finished authoring ‘The Art Of War’.Ho Lu said to him: "I have carefully perused your 13 chapters.
May I submit your theory of managing soldiers to a slight
test?"
Sun Tzu replied: "You may."
Ho Lu asked: "May the test be applied to women?"
The answer was again in the affirmative. What happened afterwards is not consequential to this piece of writing. Everyone knows. While Confucius’ scriptures burnt in the fire of passing time, Saun Tzu’s ‘The Art Of War’, is a consistent bestseller even after centuries. Great Kings are not born in families. Great kings don’t sit on the throne merely through lineage. Great Kings are just born. It’s the power of the arm that holds the scepter that determines the glory of a King. And here there can be no compromise. As we keep faith in our king, we look back to that day with awe. This day a few years back. The moment, which shall be glorious for years to come. Happy Birthday O mighty one. May the halo of your wisdom shine on for years to come.
May your soldiers, Sire, be properly drilled and disciplined. They can be put to any use that their sovereign may desire; bid them go through fire and water, and they will not disobey. May your shield be high at war and after.

The Unborn

I go philandering around the nights of Delhi

I see fast cars, restless like meteors eager to burn

The darkness weaves oily dingy alleys in my head

And the end is light.

where I see crimson, white, golden carnations

Corroding into white blobs of semen.....

The unborn.

Vasant Vihar Arcade an hour past midnight,

An hour past midnight

The night birds are out on the streets

Locating their day's bread.

The garish red lipstick, and the glitter on their jeans

Talk of Glamour and glamour-coated agony.

The yellow of the chrome plays hide-n-seek with every passerby.

A large yellow 'M', neon and proud of its American origin and obese heagemony,

Spreads its legs for the ones with the gallant wheels.

And she grins at the squalour around. Not knowing.....

A bunch of tall coloured men lurk around.

Sharing a joke or two in native speech.

The kind they used to call the Niggers.

Far away from home their genitals ache.

And they see spectacular, buttery, shapely legs.

And skirts, eager to slide off, covering one fifth of them.

And their genitals ache.

A dark shadow sits in a corner.

His dreams shattered and the pieces of those ruins scattered all around.

He looks down on each piece, his pencil scratching his cranium, and recollects a faded memory each.

His genitals ache. His gullet is dry. Almost choking him.

One last cigarette, one last drop from his hip flask.

And dreams of one more for the road.

Dirty Room

So what if you have been patient?
So what if you still have the faith?
So what if green is just a colour?
Are you aware of the horizontal space
Eager and empty, frivolous in anticipation?
The jaded bed sheets with polka dots
Circling round about an empty bottle of booze.
And lots of cigarette burns and lots of stories.
Each one for one.

Remembering the last lover he meet
Dripping mellow stains
Melting in her heat.
Anna she called her.
Ann he called her.
And yesterday was dead and gone
With her kiss, sweet as sugar, mellow like wine.

They old LP played Ravel, Bolero.
He looked into her eyes,
Eyes droopy and hypnotic.

The world turned upside down
As they emerged into each other
His circle and her’s meet
A little pause
Split seconds beat
And a Ravel soprano.
And what’s left of it is, a few dry petals
And he is too lazy to throw them out.

Revisiting Kerouac on the road......

So this one time, at office, I was getting bored. So I downloaded the pdf version of Kerouac's On The Road again. Was reading it after almost two years. Since college.

Till date it happens to be his most talked about novel . Ramblings inspired by the drug-fueled cross-country car rides that Kerouac made with Neal Cassidy (1926-1968). Since then it has become the face of 'beat prose' as well. I somewhere read that when his friends did not like On the Road, Kerouac started to write inserts to patch up the work. These grew into a new book. Although Ginsberg considered it a "holy mess", he did not change its rambling style and discontinuous structure which had the improvisational quality of jazz.

Sal Paradise is a young writer who life takes a wild course as he meets Dean Moriarty, a crazy young man, previously convicted of several crimes including car theft. Dean comes to Sal to learn how to write. Together they go drifting around America, and testing the limits of the American Dream. Through rural wilderness, sleepy small towns, urban jungles, endless deserts-all linked by the road, they go looking for a vent for their expression and find freedom. Often finding pleasure in sex, drugs, and jazz.

Sal Paradise says: "life is holy and every moment is precious", which explains why Dean" seemed to be doing everything at the same time". To describe the likes of Dean, Kerouac writes," It's in prison that you promise yourself the right to live." And probably we all relate to it someway or the other. Especially if we have a bad habit of being optimistic about things.

Sal loves his homeland, especially the grandeur of its landscape, the variety of its people. But it is changing, and he is disappointed by the change at times, like when he tries to sit on the banks of the Mississippi River and is stymied by a chain-link fence. There seem to be two sides to everything. The vast emptiness of the American West can either fill the spirit or be the epitome of loneliness. On one side is Terry, the pretty Hispanic worker Sal spends a couple weeks with in California, and on the other are the suburban teenagers who shout at her from their cars. There is Dean, who is the spirit of the West, and the suspicious policemen with power who eternally pursue him. Sal's dreams of America are both realized and parodied, as in his first trip to the West, when he is happy to see real cowboys, but also sees the hokey Wild West festival in Cheyenne, and the tourist town of Central City. All the gold that was mined out of Central City is being returned to it in the form of tourist dollars. It is an America which is still plagued by class and racial divides, but changing rapidly.

"On the Road" is about experience; it tells tales of mad and the best minds of a generation destroyed by such madness evoking only feelings of confusion.

ON THE ROAD races like a mad man desperately looking for his something that he still can't define. A mad man looking to break away from servitude, a man who lives in all of us in some form or the other.