I like the night.

Sounds amplify November nights as winter settles in.

Distant traffic sounds and dog howls, clock ticks and baraat dhols.

cold numbed toes mingle pain and pleasure.

Cigarette smoke along with brittle thoughts drift off the balcony.

loud heavy wintry silence thuds into my chest.

It's a good moment, this.

Kyon Karti ho itna pyar hum se? Itna lagav theek nahi hai. Baad mein bahoot yaad ayegi.

Rajwati di and Bala di live on the city's edge, at the semi-somewhat-city-like fringe. It is a haphazard colony that looks clumsy, like an absentminded accident. The building reminds me a little of the old jnu hostels, with a central corridor and small rooms on either side, a bit like a train bogey. They walk to my hostel every day, fifty minutes each way. I don’t know how they do it, that too after sweeping and mopping and cleaning for eight hours.

Rajwati has being calling me home for many months. Now she has lost all faith in my empty promises and never fails make a big show of it. Eyes role dramatically. Yeah yeah like I’m going to believe you. Today I am sad. I want the comfort and security that only home can provide. I want to be smothered in Rajwati’s unconditional maternal love. I want to whine and grumble and be looked after. At the doorstep I hesitate awkwardly for a fleeting moment. Rakesh-ke-papa is lying on the khat. She orders him to get up. Dekho mein kisko layi hoon. Dekho. He shuffles out of the room, smiling and nodding silently. I flop down. Too sleepy. Too hungry. But I get distracted by Shahid and Katrina's gaze. There is also a large poster of a big white baby which is quite frightening.

Chai is produced. A woman smiles at me from the doorway on the opposite side. It is Poonam. She comes in and shows Rajwati her bruised shoulder and the bump on her head. Last night her gharwala dragged her by her hair and beat her. By day he is rickshawallah and by night a drunk abusive husband. Last night Rajwati heard the commotion and came running and began screaming at him. Immediately he withdrew.

Poonam is tough and hard to break. They all are. Resilient and difficult to crush no matter how hard you hit. It is really good that you have people like Rajwati who intervene na, I ask to Poonam. No. she shakes her head. How much can I burden my padosan? yeh theek nahi hai. Later at Bala di's house I ask her why all of us can’t get together and beat up these husbands. She whispers mischievously in my ear, Mein to vapis de deti hoon. You should teach everyone one else how to hit back. We laugh. Marna sikhana chahiye.

Poonam's infant children come stumbling-bumbling inside. Sumit and Sonia are ragged and caked in dirt. Soggy shirts and bright eyes follow me around for the rest of the evening, twirling and tossing and covering them with emphatic kisses. but Rajwati does not approve. Dirty children. Bala di curses when they drop food. maroongi haramjada she shouts at the one year old. All the children love her. She always has food to give. Bala di, bala di, galiya dena sikhaon na. She laughes and tells me to shut up.

I drink some chai with Rakesh-ke-papa and and Sooraj. Rakesh is the son who is married and never visits. Rajwati only refers to the gharwalah as Rakesh ke papa. Sooraj also is a rickshawallah. He wants to know about Bangalore. Tumhare shehr mein kaam bahut milta hain. Mistri ka kaam. Mere log vahan hai. The next morning when he is forced by Rajwati to drop us to the main road I say, toh phir milege. I work around the university but you won’t recognise me he says. Now I scan every single rickshawallah that passes me just to prove him wrong.

Rajwati's daughter is eighteen. Her name is Arthi. I am nervous about meeting her. If some stranger walked into my house and acted as if my mother was hers I would be pretty pissed off. But Rajwati tells me to stop being stupid. Arthi comes back from work at eight thirty. She gives women facials and threads their eyebrows at a beauty parlor. For 10 hours of work she gets paid 1200 rupees. When I come out from Bala di’s house Arthi is waiting. Hi she says. Jao gale milo Rajwati snaps. So embarrassing.
She is eighteen and ready for the marriage market. Later that night we dissect two ladke ke photos. They stand stiffly and stare into the camera in front of fake waterfalls and lakes. What a hero I say! We make many hero jokes. She likes one of them and talks to him on the phone all the time much to her father's dismay. Who is your boyfriend rajwati asks me. Aaj kal sabka hota hai.

After dinner we go for a walk and I again bring up Poonam. Thank god Rakesh ke papa is not like that. Rajwati closes her eyes and looks up at the heavens with gratitude. You know when I come back after work he makes me chai. Nowadays he makes the sabji also. But sometimes when we fight he says - Kyon ki tum bahar kaam karti hoon, samjho nahi ki tum mere sir pe bath sakti ho. Just because you work, it doesn’t mean you are the boss of this house.

It is time to sleep. Rajwati is feeling bad that the mehman is sleeping on the floor. It is my turn to tell her to shut up. But those massive rats swinging from TV cables scare the shit out of me and I can’t help yelping every time I see one. I fall asleep finally. Limbs entwined amidst rat shadows on the walls.

Empty passion fruit shells.
Sour tongue. sour lips.
One am.
Wet towel on chair.
A distant hum of a brewing resistance.

I wonder about the challenges of decision-making in a democratic forum ,one which is slowly taking form, emerging gingerly but with determination. Afraid that it might remain a prisoner of our imaginations, we try an breath it to life by bouncing ideas in cyberspace...

book of Neruda's poetry on the table.
I havent read a single word. But it lies there for
good luck and affirmation of a world full of
magic and pretty sentences.

I used to write a different sort of language. My words were arranged with large open spaces between them so that I could hear the whistling of the breeze through them or even catch a the last glint of the setting sun. nowimafraidmywordsareallbunchedtogether.

I dont want to lose poetry to the grand sounding words of politics and academics.

Don't make me choose.

Im reading coetzee. He slows down time as I listen carefully to his words, following them, waiting to see where they take me. Although, his writing is extremely melancholic, full of crushed hopes and unfulfilled lives, there is something strangely soothing about reading many of his books. They retain a soft gentleness, while being breathtakingly sad.

Yesterday my grandfather’s niece and family visited us. They had come down to India from Singapore for their twelve year old son’s upanayanam. The evening before, Thatha had informed Appa that it had gone very well. They were doing very well and had come with gifts for everyone. Many of the guests who had been at their wedding had made approving remarks. He was beaming. My Thatha never beams so it caught my attention. Why was Thatha so uncharacteristically pleased? I later asked.
Fourteen years ago Leela Akka (the bride) had fainted in the middle of her wedding. I remember that image: her lying on the floor, surrounded by a crowd of people while her mother sat beside her wailing. What I did not know about was the complete mayhem that followed, which put everyone present in a tizzy. Apparently it is common knowledge that such a turn of event puts the bride’s family in an extremely precarious position. The groom’s side usually postpones the wedding until further investigations are made or even pulls the plug entirely. It reeks of dirty play and immediately arouses everyone’s suspicions, explained Appa. Like what? My bewilderment was genuine. Like the possibility of the bride’s family not being entirely honest about her health, in essence withholding potentially disadvantages information and trying to sneakily pass her off - Like damaged goods. After all, Fainting can be the sign of epilepsy or any other disorder.
It is only when you hear these stories do you realise the implications of marriage being a contract between two families. And like all official agreements it must be clean, untainted and transparent, preferably without the fine print. By not questioning the sanctity of the contract and tossing Leela out of the mandhap (which I assume is the standard response when your prospective wife faints) Ramesh the groom, had in effect, demonstrated (much to our relief), his enhanced goodness and virtuosity. This thread ceremony was a public statement to the world, a display of their success at being a good brahmin family, in spite of the catastrophe during that auspicious day. It was an attempt to restore their respectability and status, hence the extravagant event. Amazing.

The Heartbreaker

You are my little dew drop dangling on the blade’s edge.
You are my little piece of sunshine on this gloomy overcast day.

I think it is because you are so tiny and easy to pick up, but mostly because of the way you tuck your head between my head and shoulder while your eyes linger as you watch the lizard on the wall. I keep thinking up of new monkey tricks to make you laugh that uncontrollable laugh. I tickle your belly or hide behind corners waiting to pop up in your face. Boo! Also I show you the first book you have ever seen. You don’t even know how to turn pages but still know how to recognise Kaka and Meow and Kozhi and nai. Woof woof. Bow bow. Meow meow.

Miniature Vasanta who is the nervous new baii at our house comes with a miniature baby. While she washes and wipes I babysit. The babysitter entertains the dewdrop-sunshine babysitee who never fails to reduce the sitter’s heart to a gooey gunky mush. Just when the said sitter thinks she has earned the baby’s love and respect she begins yowling. Ammmaaaa Ammmaaa Ammmaaa. The above mentioned gooey gunky heart flutters pitifully and the sitter again resorts to cheap circus tricks to regain the child’s affections.
BOO! MEOW! OINK!

I want to write on skepticism. Skepticism is a state of mind. It is a kind of spectacles which moulds the shape of experience and the world in a specific way. The skeptical-spectacle way. It allows you a distance which helps you raise an eyebrow and say 'oh really? is that so.' with a touch of doubt and a tinge of irony. A skeptic needs to be convinced because she will not readily accept. statements like god exists or coke is better than pepsi will have to be substantiated. meaning is never the the encompassing unquestioned cloak the world is dressed in but is a flimsy, translucent skin which routinely changes colour, size and shape. When doubt becomes a way of life it can however turn in to a problem. It becomes crippling and convenient and lazy. Yet another guise or yet another shielding mechanism is invented. the world assumes a form so fragile that it threatens to dissolve by your breath. The ground beneath your feet shifts and slides and tosses you about like a scrambled egg. it a tricky balance, skepticism and belief. doubt and certainty.

A house is dead when all the sofas are draped with old bedsheets. The purpose is to create a protective layer which prevents the settling of dust, cockroach shit and such like.Time passes. The home is unattended and is disguised by its cloth armour. The walls contain nothing but silence, while memories like the sofas, are preserved. Memory of those who have passed. Swept away by the undercurrent of time tunneling by. We feel it too, sometimes it nibbles like curious fish, othertimes, it pulls impatient and childlike. Time twists itself around nana's legs and gently begins coaxing him to wander a little further. Until finally my nana slips away, shedding his life like an old skin. They wrap him in cloth.

I attended an intense and exciting discussion on Delhi where many fancy people spoke. By and large the following is a patchwork of their words. A total mishmash of voices,deas and arguments. hope it is some what coherent.

They talk repeatedly about Delhi and the loss of memory. The long, forgotten past which is erased from our collective memory. A pathological inability to recall the biographic journey that brought us to here. We advocate a sustained determined effort to unlock the gates of memory and end this distorting amnesia.

Indulge in guilty nostalgia. The Sarkari city of the 80s and the government bungalow, the open spaces and the fifty bird species in the garden. You become an easy intellectual target who is attacked for being a middle class romantic, longing for an invented past . But dont dismiss nostalgia you say, draw upon nostalgia as a technique of critiquing the present can be a useful exercise. However, while reconciling the experience of the endless centuries gone by with the chaotic present, one must also claim the future in a conscious way. The has been a lack of public debate when it comes imagining the future of Delhi. That is to say, debate about contemporary architecture, about housing, about alternative city plans are absent. We need to construct an imagination of the future in the most democratic and open way possible. City planning is not a technical process but is instead deeply political. We can not entrust the planning of the a city to 'experts' and 'technicians' whose objective is to mould cityscape as per the power of their will. We are trying to plan the poor out of existence-eliminating them from imaginings of the city, sweeping them off the map. Our city will never resemble a master plan. After all, how do you plan informality? Can you plan informality?

Delhi is a city of migrants. Regional identities dont really matter. There has been no aggressive assertion over the city by a regional group because there is no 'local' community, no archetypal Dilliwallah. However, its a misleading to construe Delhi as a an accommodating, benevolent cosmopolitan city centre. It doesn't give a damn where you come from but asks instead why you have come in the first place. It not pro-migrant but ruthlessly anti-poor. How else do you explain the repeated evictions and slum clearance drives, the determined attempt to make city space free of not poverty but the poor themselves. Delhi has a terrible record of its treatment of the urban poor.

snippets:

What has happened to the ecology of the city over the decades? The ridge and the river are the brackets which have enclosed the city for centuries. An assault on the ecological environment of the city.

The surrender to capital. A new shrillness to the city.

How does post reform capitalism not just close certain channels but also open new ones. The proliferation of technology and media. New forms of pleasure.

The strong exclusionary tendency when shaping city space. However, Sarkari Delhi was more 'open' not intentionally but by neglect. Now the system has ways of being selectively and brutally efficient when it so desires.

We must be aware of Delhi's historical intellectual privilege. These forums for reflexive debates on urbanity is unique to Delhi. The urgent need to create an alternative city archive.

The need to rewrite and restructure space in the most democratic and inclusive way possible. The republic of the streets must survive.

remembering the traumatic sites of Delhi history. 1857. 1947. 1975. 1984. Revisiting the dead and exploring this emotional landscape. How does the memory of trauma survive?

This may be a stupid question but there is something I dont understand about the dichotomous American political spectrum. Why are social and economic and political positions conflated into two positions: Conservative and Liberal. Republican and Democrat. Red and Blue. What I mean is, what do anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-family positions( issues broadly contested in the socio-cultural realm) have anything to do with the right wing neoliberal economics? why do these go hand in hand in the American political framework? what does you stance on abortion or homosexuality have anything to do with your stance on the workings of capitalism? I feel im missing something here.

And what about these moments when I feel beautifully stunningly unbearably vulnerable a thin transparent film of fine dust made of blowing light. I ask what of these moments when i am nothing but a vague outline traced over with a pencil, visible on a precariously tilting lilting paper page. I am the house of cards. I am the distant applause. I am the muted conversation. I am this jaipur night where the kids talk about Farmvile and read out smsed jokes. The older ones drink green glass bottled beer in the far corner. White skins and brown skins and all skins in between clap for Clapton in malkauns sung by Amit brown skin Choudhari.

Now I want these kids who are laughing silly about mispronouced words and fart sounds to stop annoying me and shut up.

I need to rediscover the rhythm and beat and flow of my words tap into wild mind and recover the images that exist only in dark shadowy corners one day I will be brave enough to venture in there and reclaim fearlessly those broken words and fit them into liquid sentences without faltering and feel them take form in the molten core of my imagination I will not pause and I will not shade my shy words with the curved shielding palm of punctuation the tyranny of the complete sentence I will allow myself to fall weightlessly into the spasm chasm of effortlessness where rhyming chiming words find each other where you are nothing but a spectator a limber limbed athlete and it may not make sense and simply sound good to a tabla beat beside a sexy guitarist in a red shirt and the disco lights will flash as paragraphs create themselves I will turn composer I will catch the poetry of city chaos in little toy cups and store them and label them and stack them in wooden chests which I will not bury finally I ask what to make of the pungent smell of alcohol and if you dont know the word pungent does it remain the nature of its smell?

Jaipur diary (Literature festival)

I love the chair wars. When there are 2000 people and 500 chairs us respectable middle class folks reveal our not so respectable side. Never do we raise our voice or create a public scene during the subtle scramble for seats. We instead deploy the Raised Eyebrow. We mutter spitefully under our breath. Biting remarks loud enough for the occupant to hear. disgusted head shakes. Nasty hisses in the ear. Underhand tactics.

I want to write about a six year old girl. She got into the metro at chandi chowk. The doors closed and her parents were left on the platform. she screamed and she wouldn't stop. she was shaking uncontrollably with terror. she continues screaming and doesn't even pause for breath for she is trapped in an alien land, dangerous, unfamiliar and terrifying. Her screams drown out very other sound and every other movement. all that exists in this silent vacuum are the convulsions of fear. All else is calm. You read a paper, I think about dinner and he texts a friend waiting at the coffee shop. But her screams continue. The girl is now clutching desperately ( for she is drowning) to the woman who asks her to get off at the next stop. But she cant hear the aunty who carries with her faint traces of mummy. The flowing salwar kameez or maybe the softness of skin. The intense life threatening danger she senses is alive to her, like a large lumbering monster that only she can see and feel I turned to see her on the chawri bazaar platform looking around wildly reaching out to the aunty. When I wake up in the morning tomorrow I know I'll remember the look in her eyes.
Pure, distilled terror.

Only a mother whose child has been snatched away from her knows the true meaning of suffering, she says. wet-eyes in the winter cold. he died in her lap. she felt his heartbeat, his dharkan, stop under her hand and knew it was over. he was special. he was hers. he is dead. three of us sit over the hot plate, leaning into its warmth. she finds solace at hostel where she works and talks to us. it helps her dull the pain. the yaad. When some of these girls leave hostel they take with them a piece of my being. khaleja. rone sa lagtha hai. Jab tum jaogi mein zaroor rongi. they all remember with much tenderness many of the previous inmates who kept aside food for them or gave them shawls in winter or asked for their ashirwad before leaving. kamala didi notes that some girls after they return from home dont even wish hera good year ahead but just ask for kamara safai. The one word that is repeatedly used is majboori. again. and again. Majboori hai.

She refers to her husband always as rakesh ke papa. he works 10 hour shifts at the metro for three thoudand rupees. Arthi is her papa's laadli. the thought of her inevetible and fast approaching marriage is greatly upsetting to him. he fights with rajwati accusing her for being in a rush to marry her off. slow down. whats the tearing hurry? But she knows there isnt much time. ladka chhooth jaiga. Aisa rishta phir se nahi aega.

I like sitting around with them. gupshup. bath-cheeth. They are very liberal with their love and affection. scolding me for not eating. for being pathli si and kamjor. for wasting my baap ka paisa by not waking up for breakfast. how easily they slip into the maternal role. eat well. sleep well. keep healthy.

dinner. rooftop. sam's cafe. paharganj. we ask for the bill. old man hears billi. old man sends waiter holding a brown confused cat to our table.

today was a spectacularly cold day. Overcast, grey, and foggy. The circular bookshop janpath sells books at a 20% discount. A lady wonders if life of pi is good. we show each other books we like. Behind her is a sign that catches my eye. Boyyourtoy@gmail.com. male escorts. The auto driver doesnt know where agersen ki baoli is. We are approached by Munna. Munna tells us he know every inch of the conaught place area. every gali and every modh. he is the only one who knows the short cut to the baoli.

Agersen ki baoli.
lodged between non discript apartment buildings and government staff quarters is a seven hundred year old rectangular tank which is connected to a large well. Not containing a drop of water the structure stands bare and beautiful. We walk the various pathways and find concealed stone steps up to the mouth of the well. loveliness.

So many little leftovers from the past lie folded in forgotten corners only to be explored by wandering tourists and pigeons. Munna gets curious and walks around the insides with us. bas bahar chord deta hoon to undur kabi nahi dekha hain. In the auto he tells us his lambi kahani. there is no time so he tells us the shortcut version of his journey from banares to delhi. two ten year old friends ran away from home. from school. from the abusive alcoholic father. they worked in restaurants, as shoe shine boys and finally auto drivers. thees sal ho gaye hai. he has his own beevi bache now.

Jama masjid rises from the ground more dreamlike than before. If i touch it, it will melt away into the fog. An optical illusion given life by our collective imaginations. The cold is mean and nasty.

Wow. So nicely I used to write in 2007 and 2008. Without fear I created sturdy sentences and strong images. My brush strokes were firm and determined. not timid. not apologetic. Something happened in 2009 when I wasn't looking. I lost something along the way. Didn't even hear it drop and roll away. didn't even rummage. or question a passerby. Have you seen my perspective? I seem to have lost it.

I read about the Partition. our history is drenched in blood, our past etched into our flesh. and then we wonder why our wounds fail to heal. our bodies carry the within them only the memory of pain and the distant stench of a rotten bloody past that we will never escape. The fact of murder and rape and homelessness. The ground beneath our feet exploding into unimaginable choas. disembodied limps tossed everywhere. The bawl of children.

our children. their children.

Delhi Diary I

They say Delhi is one of the oldest cities. That its history runs deep. Following the epochs which are piled one on top of the other, one is led futher and futher away from the present. Digging in the backrooms of time you watch the city re create its shape and form. again. and again. death and reencarnation the endless cycle. Jama Masjid monday afternoon. The only thing constant century after century must surely be the sound of frantic pigeon flutterings and the precise colour of red brick against sun.