My take on gender

Perspective 1

I am not the only child in my family. Well, it is questionable whether I am a child anymore, but that aside, I have grown up with my sisters. 4 of them. I have grown up in a joint family. And I can boast of having been exposed to a multitude of arguments, opinion and perspectives on gender. And this is where the catch lies. I am not going to spill any more beans about my family. What I will do is tell you my experiences and sensibilities. Trust me, this has not shaped what I am going to talk about now.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Vivek Sharma, and I am not the co-founder of the Poetry Club Mumbai. I was born and brought up in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Left home 10 years ago and have since lived in Kota, Guwahati and now Mumbai. Perhaps a journey typical of a small town boy, trying to make a place for himself in this world. A dear friend asked me yesterday what was it that would keep me occupied this weekend. I told him I would be celebrating gender at The Hive. He mocked at me, not because it was funny, but because he wondered who I would be targeting.

It is not easy, trust me, to convince myself to talk about gender. Not in the least because I would be talking to people who are far more sensitised to gender than I have been. Not in the least because I am intimidated when people talk about gender. Not in the least because I am still trying to build an opinion basis which I can talk intelligibly. And importantly, not in the least because more than 70% of friends I have are girls.

Ok so my side of the story now. I kind of get uncomfortable when I see a girl smoking a cigarette. I get scandalised when I hear a girl hurl abuses. You know the ones I am talking about. I freak out when I see a girl driving a motor cycle. And I still get uneasy sometimes when a Eunuch passes by at a traffic signal. To some, these might be cultural shocks for a small town boy who has moved to Mumbai, of all cities. To others, these might be instantiation of a staunchly patriarchal mindset, or rather a very regressive mindset. I am still trying to figure out, and trust me. But where these arguments converge is gender.

We are here today, not because we don’t already know what the issue is, nor because we care any less. In fact on the contrary. We are here so that we can step outside of our activist selves and scrutinise the deep rooted notions we have about gender. To lend a voice to the innumerable instances in our everyday life where we condone or perhaps, to put it mildly, overlook acts or notions which our activist alter-ego would vociferously condemn. I am not saying we are hypocrites. I am saying we need to talk a little more in the spaces around which our society flourishes, or otherwise languishes under the cloak of tradition and culture. We are here because if we find ourselves in discomfort when subjected to ideas that break the gender mould, we should know that we are the ones compromising the movement towards celebrating the individual. Gender is my right, not anyone else’s wrong.

Perspective 2

It is not very difficult either, getting burdened by the sheer force of the topic we set out to talk about. As human beings, we are very comfortable living in narratives that have prevailed for a long time. Ideologies are an inseparable part of such narratives, and as communities, we are very passionate about defending ideologies, and holding on to them. In my short lifetime, I have seen the public discourse around ideologies evolve faster than most of our society. I am a part of the same society that becomes an easy target when it comes to passing the buck. We are here because we don’t want to be an easy target.

And this has put us into a rather fortunate position of talking about matters which would have seemed alien to the now developed nations at this stage in their history. As Indians, we seem to have evolved much faster. The important bit here is that our evolution is as much conditioned by the times we live in as the evolution of gender was.

My name is Siddharth Warrier, and I am a doctor by profession. I have built a perspective, and at the risk of sounding very much like everyone else present here, I dare say a unique perspective, on gender through my understanding of the evolutionary history of humankind. And I think we are here today not only to undo gender, but also mould perspectives through a discussion that itself makes an attempt to understand why gender in the first place. I will begin with sexuality.

From an evolutionary sense, why does sexuality exist at all? Most plants are hermaphrodites, that is, both male and female characteristics found in the same organism. While only 5% of animal species are hermaphrodites. This separation of sex features is important for a reason - to grow as a species. It was only by dividing the genetic library, and selecting different mates, that enough mixing could happen to create better individuals for natural selection to occur. 

Now we come to human history, and their attempt to deal with sexuality. Sexuality is natural. Gender is manmade. A simple Google search reveals differences between meanings or definitions of sex and gender. What this has not been successful in doing is dispel notions that prevail around what these concepts means.

In the beginnings of society, humans divided the roles of early society between men and women based purely on physical attributes. Men were stronger and more capable of gathering wood or farming, while women were capable of giving birth to offspring and caring for the household. At that time, these roles were neither better nor worse than each other. They were equally essential for mutual survival.

Fast forward a few thousand years, and the surroundings have changed, but not the definitions of roles. This is explained by inertia of the collective public. Neither has man evolved from their role of 'protectors', nor woman from 'protected'. In a construct where labour, in any form, is being replaced my machine, do we really need gender identities? We are increasingly getting stripped bare of the rationales that existed for as long as humankind, for us to be able to define gender.

How ironic, that the more we progress, the more basic things seem. We are still a species, evolving in search of identity. I am here because I feel the need to be able to deconstruct gender from sex.

Perspective 3

When I was growing up, sex or sexuality was a taboo. As a matter of fact, a liberal discourse was a taboo. Which did nothing but stunt my growth as an individual who could rationalise a lot of ideals that I lived by. Expression of self, physical and otherwise, was limited in a certain respect. As I grow up and look around myself, there are many avenues where I see a disconnect. And I am not saying this purely because I live in Mumbai. I am saying this because I see this disconnect even in the most cosmopolitan of the Indian cities. And this spreads to virtually every facet of human life. Starting from socio-economic background to racial origins to colour and to gender. We are here today not to patronise the discourse on undoing gender. I think we are here today to explore ourselves and dig out the deep rooted prejudices that we still have somewhere inside of us, instead of blanketing them nonchalantly.

A few notions that I have harboured inadvertently as a product of the times i have grown in include the idea of superiority. Of one human being over the other, which manifests itself through race, colour, caste in our country and gender. What surprises me is that this is not just limited to our society or country, but permeates through the very skin of our species. Despite having witnessed a series of cultural revolutions that have challenged, at various points in time, the long established norms dictating our social behaviour, I think we have yet to harmonize the beliefs we harbour as individuals for us to change collectively.

Superiority has been the focal point of classification of our society from times immemorial. Men are superior to other genders because they are anatomically stronger. And the thumb rule of evolution is survival of the fittest. Not wrong, the latter part. But what the former misses is that there is always some way or the other where a species is found wanting in. Superior anatomically does not by itself guarantee superiority or a complete social dominion. Which is what we have been assuming and living by. I am here to because I want to explore and do my part in dismantling this. Not because I am a feminist or I hate met, but because as an equal species, we have a right to live as equals.

Which brings me to another thought that I have long nurtured. One of entitlement or right. What entitlement does is limit the freedom to explore beyond that entitlement in a social setting. Does a superior species experience emotions? Of course, every one does. Is a superior species entitled to express his emotions? This is where it gets fuzzy. Our concepts of superiority have prevented us from really seeing through the mist of prejudices to what lies underneath. Some of us are entitled to certain things, which prevents us from exploring alternate identities that we want to align ourselves with.

Take theatre. Men played the role of women. Not because there was not a sense of superiority. But because it involved a lot of aspects that were deemed to be inappropriate for women. Bodily contact is the easiest example. Who would want someone else to touch his woman. But the society needed entertainment anyway. So we bent the norms of superiority, which altered our sense of entitlement at the same time. Today, we have a more liberated woman living amidst us. Which has devalued the sense of entertainment of yesteryears to the point of derision. It is not surprising therefore that people who want to go beyond the boundaries that their gender has built, are not considered a fit in today's society. 

I am here because I want to understand what has been defining this sense of superiority or entitlement. I am here because I want to deconstruct what it means to belong to a particular gender. We are here not just to nod in agreement because that would be what is expected, but make an attempt to argue and see our sensibilties around gender getting challenged and overturned. Deep down inside, we are products of our times. And I am here to learn what lies beyond our time.

Ladies and Gents, My name is Ankita Shah, and I am a co-founder of The Poetry Club Mumbai.

Somniloquy.

I have developed a habit
One that I might come to regret
Some day. Eerie.
Habits don't last long
This one wouldn't either
But it has. 270 days now.
I sleep late. That often ends
In groggy mornings at work
And fulfilling nights.
Not that way, stupid.

I am resolving a few knots
That have rankled
My conscience for some time
Not continually. But consistently.
More than 3,000 days
All this math, sometimes works
Moulds perspectives.
About time, I think.
To move beyond the math
Beyond fathomable.

I never could learn swimming
I am afraid of depths
As much as I am
Shallow. And heights.
I can't hold my breath
Literally. Figuratively,
I once did. 3,000 days ago.
Hoping I would survive
A lifetime of breathlessness.
Wasn't a habit. Did me in.
I gave up. In 2,730.
Swimming in 3.

There are two things
To this new habit of mine.

What I gain. Time. It waits.
Trust me. And restlessness.
Night brings that. Disquiet.
Solitude is ravaging
And canny. Like a Mongol horde.
Breezes past my conscious defence

What I lose. Lull. With it, the war
Between objects. And people.
In my subconscious.
Lotus. Ruins. Rains.
A face here. A phase there.
Creativity. For elsewhere,
It's a travesty. Things that I control.

When I am awake, I struggle
With the knots. Any amount of time
Apparently, is not enough
For them, knots. Nor for the naughts
That I have been drawing
Out of my hat for 3,000 days
And 3, in the pool
While swimming.

When I am not awake,
I effortlessly swim
Through them, knots.
A part of that is because
I manage to find someone
To help me in the process.
That someone always talks.

I miss conversations.

Rant. Typo. Rank.

I am sitting at my table
Repugnant. Putrid. Rank
Poetry.
I need to write about something
I feel, but not quite,
It is like being there and back again
Only a little lesser
Than what was there
Remains there.
Only a bit lesser 
Of what went there 
Comes back
This is a war of attrition.
I have gnawed away enough
At emotions to feel one
Or choose not to.
I am a veteran

My eyes are heady. 
Typo. Heavy. Leaden.
Banal.
I am good at what I write
I feel. But I need reinforcement
Only there is no one
Who reads. Or wants to.
I am an accidental writer
With an increasing burden
Of periodic revaluation
Upwards. IFRS.
Never liked them, 'murican bastards
My skills are not a fixed asset.
Anyway.
I am supranational. Interstellar.

I have a galaxy put up on the ceiling
Earth. Sun. Her.
Black Hole.
At the centre of my galaxy
That consumes every speck
Of matter. Or no matter.
I tried to sling past. Without conviction
Hoping to fail. To be drawn into
Nothingness. Unknown, rather
Unbeknownst. To myself.
And succeeded accidentally
Now I can't go back
I am a floater. Again.

I gulp a gill of alcohol.
Scotch. Single malt. No, blended
Fuck.
I am broke in more ways that I can count
And I chose whiskey.
I hate alcohol. Makes me wild.
Typo. Mild. Euphonious.
Adjectives
That people, no I, rob me of
Civilisation counts on alcohol
More that it deserves to be relied upon
By cowards. And strongmen, alike
I will let her decide for me
Like she let me decide
Our split

April

A drop of rain hurtles down my brow
Or sweat? 
I know not
I am drenched
It never rains in April
They say April is the cruellest month
I was born in April
They say I am cruel

I feel a sensation. Surprise,
Cruelty screams.
A tingling behind my ears.
It can't be sweat. Must be rain
That can't rein it its unruly drops
And crashes like a chandelier
Dimly lit, now dying
All over my body
It doesn't feel like anything
Of the past. Unpleasant. 
It is. At once historical. Pleasant.
It feels like nothing.
Imagine a crash
In vacuum. I can't.

Last spring - 
Well April is not spring
May be it is in England
But they still call it cruel - 
I built a house
And instated that chandelier
It wasn't necessary
April is bright. Sunny.
Dry. Wicked. Warm, already.
I would rather it were cold
As cold as I am now
I am shivering. I normally do.
When cold, yes. But
Mostly when nervous. With people
In spotlight.
Today, it is gray. Like snow.
Imagine snow.
In April. I can.
I am shivering. As anyone would.
Warmth? Snow? April.

It was a small villa. Concrete. 
And wood. And lot of glass
Transparent. The French windows. 
My heart? Not quite.
Brittle. The window panes
My heart? Leaden.
Cold. Like snow in April
Guests like warmth.
My April was chilly. Cold to the bones.
I don't like guests.
None visited my house.
Until one. Became permanent.
I realized. Mirrors,
And her eyes.
One and the same.

My home was in the woods.
Lonely. Dark. Deep.
I made promises. I wanted to keep.
So I built a keep inside,
Deep inside, my heart. 
My home.
It was warm. 
Like a spotlight. I become 
Nervous. Shivered
In the warmth. 
As much as would melt
The glass of my villa
So I locked it. The keep
And with it, my house
My home. My heart.

April reminds me of many things.
A scent of dust
Entangled in her hair
Clouding her eyes. And my judgement
I can't see through the smell
I am allergic to dust. That always shone
On her face. 
It was raining then.
And the unruly drops
Singed the dust from my face.
I could see clearer. My house.
Not her, though.
It rained. The cold reached my bones.
I wanted to run for my keep
Yes, the one deep inside
Myself. So deep. I ran.
I lost my way. In that labyrinth.
I am wandering.

I came out with the sun
And the snow. I had been inside
For more than eternity
It feels fresher. The dirt
Has all but vanished
And I can see through
As far as my eyes would let me
I can't see just her still. 
Just a face
In the snow.
I reach our for it, but it melts.
And with it, my villa
My house, my home
I hate snow. I start shivering
I am aware. Conscious. Nervous.
No one can see me. I shed a tear.
A warm drop of water. From my eyes
That are now transparent
Singes the snow.
I look inside myself. 
The sun helps.
I see the keep.

I hurtle down the tunnel. Yes the tunnel.
One that I dug up to the keep
To keep my promises safe
And memories. And her.
I can't see her. 
I remember the melting snow.
I reach out for the doors.
There seem to be none. 
But I can't feel
Obstruction. 
My palm goes right in.
And come back right out. Is it there?
I pick up the stone nearby. Feels heavy
Not as heavy as the lock. 
Sealed with promises, with more inside. Of more inside.
I am in a quandary. Over my promises
To not break promises. To always keep
But I can't remembers most. 
I can't see most. Inside the keep. Those.
I have to break the lock. With it, promises
Who says promises were ever kept
When in a keep, with a lock.
Of promises. I break some.

With them, the spell of cold.
Gushes forth the smell of dust
Wrapped in promises made. Yonder.
Long forgotten now. Rendered meaningless
Reaching for the sun. Slapping me down.
Like those rains in April. 
But blunt. Lethal.
I decide to move beyond the gray.
I get a chandelier for my keep
My villa, my house, my heart
And never to lock any
I want visitors. Ones that heal
The wounds of these rains
And scars of these promises
And myself. She tried. I didn't let her.
I let go. She melted. With the snow.

People like brightness
My chandelier gives them. When not silver
I have people. Visitors. Welcome guests.
And past. One that always makes its way
Into my villa, my house, my heart, my keep
When it snows. I resist the urge. 
Cold. Reaches my bones.
I don't bolt the door. It becomes cold.
People think I become cold.
They leave me. Alone.

This April, it was windy.
I left the door ajar. The winds ravaged
My villa. My chandelier. My self.

Sonnet XXXII: Frost

It's not tough, not being who I was

Nor tough it is to wear a mask

Of stoic countenance, because

I can. I can as much as ask

You, leave me for what I've become,

And tread alone to promised lands

We once believed existed, home

To quaint emotions. But these sands

Of time are cold, is cold this gust

Of wind that peels away all day,

All night, what's left of my unjust

Visage, no more untrue they say,

Than flaky, white, October frost.

For me, I know I've loved and lost.

Sonnet XXXI: The Brook

I know that churlish brook that by the day
Tiptoes behind the woods unto the sea
Of endless questions. By the night to play
A spade and quarry all and more it'd be

Some gravel, mostly shiny, and some clay,
A handful broken twigs from underneath
A stoic vignette fighting to convey
The blooming buds atop a sombre wreath

It takes them all to sea through trough and crest
I wonder if it tired of the weight
Or if indeed it's this it was to be

And set afloat a boat atop its breast
Which sails on with the sun, I watch and wait.
They say this brook / boat will go on endlessly

Boomerang

I don't particularly cherish memories.
Bygones. 
I feel nauseated. 
Good memories are far too good for me 
To enjoy. 
And far too few 
To take note of. 
The more painful ones 
Offer some consolation. 
They are not many either. 

I guess I never thought 
Of registering  incidents in my brain 
As they occurred. 
I scour those leftovers 
And chew on them. 
Like a dog chews a meatless bone. 

I am mostly indifferent
Sometimes hopeless. 
I have been lucky to have people around me. 
I am nasty. 
I once used to be popular. 
I was never friendly
Not with strangers
I once used to be a rogue. 
I was a nobody. 
All my life.
I think I was mostly a conformist. 
A strictly passive romantic. 

Sometimes I feel robbed. 
Sometimes I feel incredibly light 
Without the burden of happiness
Or the weightlessness of guilt.
I feel robbed.
Mostly.

Sometimes I feel a heap
Of expectations inflicted 
By self.
Or disregard for them
I carry a weight of weightlessness
My steps have spring
Ones that I want 
Ones that would someday propel me 
Outside of this Earth
The earth is full of people

People are nauseating
People are memories
People become friends
I have lots of them
I had lots of them
I met lots of them
I created lots of them
I imagined lots of them
I can't recollect most
Perhaps any
I think I am a nobody

People fall in love
With themselves. Mostly.
Sometimes with others
And then fall out of love
They say love is curiosity
They say love is foolishness
They say love is foolhardiness
My family loves me
They are not fools

People cry (I don't). 
I don't cry because I don't want to
Over memories
I wish I had memories
I wish I felt like crying
It is difficult to know something and not experience
Love. Sex. Dhokha.
I have received lots of love
My family loves me
I reciprocate

I cried once. When I was uncertain
Uncertain of myself
But I was never more certain
Because I knew I was uncertain
I am always uncertain
But I am never aware
Maybe I am. But I never acknowledge.
That I cried. I want to. 
Cry. Acknowledge.

I am strong from the inside
Strong as an elephant
Elephants remember stuff
I feel stuffed. 
Like a toy elephant.
Is it memories?
I wish I had a closet
I could clean it regularly
And stuff it regularly
With the elephants in my brain

I am sorry
For most things I have said to people
I know people hate me
I know people love me
I know someone loved me
More than most
I reciprocated
Like to reciprocate
To my family

But there is an elephant
That needs a lot of room
I have a small brain
Small enough to hide myself
Small enough to hide that someone
Small enough to be ignored by the world
But the world never ignores
There is a God who sees everything
In addition to the world

The world does not forgive
It chooses what to forget
The world is a bad place
I was born into this world
Am I a bad place?
Am I in a bad place?
I am afraid. Am I a coward?
But there is a God
I have faith in God

I am not a God fearing man
I used to pray as a kid
Sincerely
Because I was told to
I started enjoying
I forgot suddenly why I prayed
I stopped
But I fear God. He knows I am writing this
He makes me write this

He makes me meet people
People I like. People I end up loving
People I don't enjoy
He makes me yearn for some
He makes me forget some others
I like the flux. I wish had more control
God is an autocrat
I was born in a democracy
I am confused. God makes me feel this way
God is a cheat

God created man in his own image
God is a cheat
Man is a cheat. So are women.
I am an advocate
Of gender equality. Man equals Woman. Vice versa
Woman is a cheat.
But it helps. In exams. In love. In life.
I did not cheat. Except in exams. And life.
My woman did not cheat.
Nowhere.

I am afraid I am not making sense
I will lose my reader.
The reader who has already lost me.
Lost my purpose. I don't care.
I am avant garde.
I am progressive. Just not enough
I have leapt
And come back
To the same place
Boomerang.

Sonnet XXX: Distance

I long to hear that prickly din before

The sickly sun surrounds this sooty space

I call my home. A home without the floor

To make a bed or dream of dreams to chase

I left myself behind a while ago

To sit atop the tiny wall I’d built

Around my home, in white, awash, aglow

And take a plunge to rid me of the guilt

The guilt that I would know not what it meant

To step outside and never to come back.

Now far enough, I’m as serene as spent

To ever hear that din of white and black

What distance is as far enough from self,

As one that questions whither you belong?

Sonnet XXIX: Talk

How long until your silence tranquil means?
For until then my words will find no place
Inside a flustered, un-quiet heart that weans
Itself on hope unfounded, and retrace

To whence they came. How long before the dew
Wipes off the dust that burdens morning bloom
And glistens in a dawn that starts anew
A conversation that had to resume

For us to see how far we'd come our way
And if we were together, or estranged
And see those tiny things as they convey
How all this while had our perspectives changed

Through/For all the jolly times we trudged along
So let's now talk it out on what went wrong 

Sonnet XXVIII

Were I to tell you what I am inside
And what my love for you has come to be
Pray, tell me, would you still come home to me
And unto me your heart would you confide

For I no longer dare to dream galore
Nor light my sunset lamps with laughter pure
For long since have I eschewed the allure
Of starry nights, of morning dew and more

All I am now's a bouquet full of weed
That cannot bring delight to ailing eyes
A journey man who's lost his love for skies
A fallen fruit that has no flesh nor seed

So tell me would you push to me that rope
That binds at one end love, at other, hope?

Sonnet XXVI, XXVII: Ballad for the Loner

I met them, friends of yore, in times of love - 
Them snow flakes weighing down on me with glee.
They melted. Then some more, until above
My line of sight, the sky could see through me

I saw then, friends of yore, through orange veil - 
Those sparkling shadows blinding me with hope.
They vanished. Left me gaping at the trail
A fading star, and darkness then, to cope

I saw then, no one, heard no gait nor call
Of whistling wind atoning larceny
They slept. I started walking through the sprawl
Of jilted leaves, derelict memory

And as I pass, I slowly understand
I've been a stranger in a stranger land

A land with trees all stripped of foliage
A land that shackles fondness in a cage
A land that's now a vapid progeny
Of lucid dreaming in melancholy

Melancholy that grinds me to debris
Melancholy that robs all my belief
But I'll endure it as that naked tree
That shadows still, with just that single leaf

A leaf, once torn, that will not find its home
Though myriad promenades it might adorn
With sprightly hue. When quietly turned to loam
Will humbly coalesce to be reborn

Reborn, oblivious of that odyssey 
Perhaps to lead a life of ecstasy

Homecoming (IX)

"It is not something that will go unnoticed. Were I to try and ascribe an adjective to what I make of this lifetime, it would not be much different than dull. Why then, you would question, is this likely to get instantiated at all? Because this is how we live - vicariously through someone, someone who we think is far removed from what we are, a life that we secretly wish was a part of our definition of self, only a little covert. For certain things are pleasurable and hurtful alike to all of us; for certain things wouldn't necessarily be wrong - just that a surrogate experience would make us that much more complete. Who I am or what reasons had I to eschew a life more meaningful, in certain respects, should be peripheral to you. That I am giving you something which shall go a long way in defining you in your moments of indiscretion should alone be reason enough for you to savor this."

This had, over time, stopped being funny to him. What had germinated as an idea of excusing himself from the real world into Elysian Fields had now started blurring in vision. The glass underneath had started cracking and the soot from a charring life had started darkening the air. There was no quick fix. Rather the only one he could think of was the absence of smoke. Unsurprisingly, he would himself have to come down. All this while had been spent procrastinating. On a second thought, not really. All this while, a larger question of making a choice had been impaling his mind. A now-imperfect world lay on both sides with a fractured glass film somehow holding them apart. Which of the two he wanted to see through to fruition was the question that had made him dispassionate about either.

“I am not going to lay blame at anyone’s feet, and there is no reason for that either. I was born, and with me were born certain identities that I carry with myself – that I lend meaning to. The metamorphosis into what you read now is perhaps a little simpler than what it would seem. I seem to realize now that we are all bodies floating somewhere, with or without its cognizance. A nihilist in me would go to the extent of calling us all the constituents of the Styx. But I pull back. Some of us do – we fight against a force which does not exist, towards a cause that now seems an empty ecosphere. What are we to make of our lives? The dichotomy here is if chance is all that separates us, and to what extent. From where I see, it’s an external agency that causes ripples in an otherwise perfectly harmonized flow.”

He got up to get a glass of water. Some people have the knack of finding humor in craziest of instances, he thought and laughed aloud. Glass and Water. A quick gulp and he felt the smoke getting doused. Life has its quirks. He was distracted by this little stream of consciousness. On the way back to his table he dropped a gaze onto a sleeping wife and envied the peaceful state she must have been in. He saw his kids lying on the mat in the other room, and cursed his inability to prepare a more comfortable bed for them. As a consolation, they would have never known what difference that would make. All they knew, he sighed, was a particularly capricious princess who would not sleep on twenty stacked mattresses. He could not decide if this was a welcome break.

It was getting late in the night, one of many when he had tried to write something. Anything. He absolved himself of any shortcoming, though and declared to himself just what he had written – his life had largely been dull. What he wanted to get across through this effort was that there is a spectacle in everything. He thought he could do justice – and had been struggling to find this in every one of those notes he had been writing since. A couple of those nights, he thought, were more about indulgence than urgency. This was slowly turning out to be one of those.

“I will begin by stating that I failed in almost every major decision I took towards forging an identity for myself. I will start by calling out every decision I took as being thoroughly moulded by stories I had heard all my life; a desire to live long after; a wish to hear people talk about me in the same vein as those stories and a hope that I would be alive to see all of this unfold. My name is Mantu.”

There is no point in conjuring up an alter ego, a thing of myths he thought. 

Sonnet XXV: Elegy written on the death of poetry

Before I lay this flowery wreath on you
A carcass now, and painstakingly still,
Before a drape this mourning black anew
O Poem! Wouldn't you rise again and fill 

For one last time my heart with ecstasy,
With rising suns and promised lands afar,
With pain of loss, despair, melancholy,
With hope that rises, healing every scar.

I find no rhyme, no rhythm drums its way,
Into my soul, ravaged by words that snore,
And unto me no artistry convey,
So one last time o! Heart let me implore,

From ashes rise and rid us of this curse
This blasphemy, the blemish of free verse.

Wartime Stories

As an aside
Let it be known to you
That I don't like you
Or I don't know you
Perhaps I've never met you
But I see you drifting
Drifting anachronously in rain, in shine

As an aside
Let it be thrust upon you
That your will was sabotaged
Or you never realized your self
Perhaps you never had one
But I see you pushing
Pushing your way through with unfounded determination

As an aside
Let your eyes rest upon the scape
Which is not quite deafening
Though a thousand throbbing hearts burst out quietly
After a last shelling or the ensuing palpitations
Laying bare your identities
Identities that were born with you

As an aside 
Let it crush you, the leaden air
Laden with blood. With tears.
But certainly heavy with inertia
As faces fade and rise with the day
And trespass into pandemonium -
Pandemonium that their parallel universe is

And when you chew this
Let me get myself across to you
And let you know that I am dead
And not because you killed me
But because you don't see my person
Because without your self, you push through -
Through bodies floating in the river

And now, to the point.
You are no different
In that you are like the rest of us.
Floating. And conflicted.
In that some day you too will wake up
Hanged. Drawn. And quartered.

Sonnet XIV: Love begets...

While there's still a few drops left, of darkness,
And the moon rubs off its face the sunshine,
While sleepy stars with brooding trees entwine,
To paint what's left of your unfurling tress,

Let me sit back and take a calming breath.

I see in your eyes a dwindling fire,
A sense of oneness with the dimming grey.
Morning falls, I see yourself retire,
Into my arms, submission you essay.

I whisper in your ears few notes of love,

And call your name with passion running deep.
A mumble and a snore is all I get.
To turn you over and find you asleep,
All I can do is simply fume and fret.

Sonnet XXIII: The Bird in the nest has found its sky

It's often in the chiming wind that I
End up not finding blissful solitude
And straining, striving midst a multitude
Of humming birds and starlets to defy
The concoction my love that you've become
I find myself ensnared.

For songbirds cannot bring to me the joy
Nor starry nights enlighten sullen keep
They are but torpid instruments that weep
Dissonantly, in absence of your touch.

So tell me how I bring my pen to write
And summon notes of passion all alone
When every word is now a hapless plight
And all my notes your absence do bemoan.

Sonnet XXII: Till Death Do Us Part

He turns his head to acknowledge the thud
But finds no soul nor shadow lurking there
It's all so silent. But the wailing moon
Which keeps on screaming, blazing in despair,

Embraces him. He flinches nervously
And wipes off gleaming drops that scour his face
He chose this moonlit cavern purposely
But knows when he's done he should leave no trace

With trembling hands he pulls her carcass down
And smiles at himself, kissing her blue lips
His fingers get entangled in her brown
But silky hair. He chops her head and quips

"Your dying shall not ever do us part,
Your head, my love, is, simply put, the start"

Sonnet XXI - Gore

He ran his fingers on her supple breasts

And singing softly, gently stroked her hair

While submissive she lay, curled in her dress

Which splattered red and melted with her flair

He slowly unbuttoned her, took her cloak

And turned around to light the dying flame

But ere he could, he felt a strangling choke

Dismembered, saw her naked gleeful frame.

A stream of blood ran down his broken nose

And bloodshot eyes burst out of gaping holes

His punctured lungs spewed moistened reddish prose

As he begged mercy, holding quivering bowles

She nailed it on the cross, his lifeless form,

And walked out smiling midst the raging storm

Sonnet XX: Redemption

Sometimes I wander into emptiness
Inside my head, tiptoeing timidly,
And sneaking over edges, acquiesce,
In thoughts of life and death, and vividly
Sculpture the cliff with epitaphs. Sometimes.

And at others, I track back, hearkening
To what sails in the wind, flutters and chimes,
To whatever's left amid darkening
Dusk, the orange, eviscerated sun.

The lure of the fall's never been stronger,
Never sweeter the desire to shun.
I smile at that precipice. Death monger -
Hoping to trip but failing in gumption
Absolve me, pull me to my redemption.

Sonnet XIX: Turn the page!

A panoply of words and chest of love,

A tumbling gratitude for bygone days,

To expiate those thousand years thereof, 

And restitute the awful, wretched ways

That bore the brunt of dwindling passion's rage,

And distorted what comfort meant to me.

I stand at crossroads, still to turn the page,

Musing what is and what was meant to be!
Come, save me, lest I wither in remorse
And hear me out for all I have to say
And though your love might just have run it course
Your tenderness for me cannot betray

That while it was, it was a fiery spark

And when not, it would strive to quell the dark

Puppeteers

Only that what I am meant to play with are real people.

I don't like being called a puppeteer, I don't like to consider myself one; but there are few choices in life that I have been afforded. Deciding what I can do and what I can't is not one of them. It is ironic in its own quaint way; on the one hand I claim that I don't like it when people call me a puppeteer, and on the other hand, I should admit that there is little control over the choices that I make. It is not a sudden realization that has dawned on me as I complete a quarter of my life. It was always so, and, as a matter of fact, I had enjoyed it. Everyone would enjoy feeling that bit of superiority over things that have little say in their actions; what people do not enjoy is taking responsibility about the same. That I no longer desire it is what is sudden. It is strange how bubbles burst - quite the same magical way that we conjure up alternate realities, transitioning from being to nothingness in the snap of a second. But we are used to it; we are used to getting over such things. What proves a little more difficult is reason, for it takes time to create one, and even longer to come to terms with one. As a puppeteer, I would not really mind fiddling around with the strings, when I am afforded the conscience to overlook the fate of one of the shows, should the strings break. Much to my chagrin, I am not. 

I never thought I had a world revolving around me, that the gravity of my existence had, until now, kept many other lives in a constant, almost dispassionate, orbit, without even bothering to let me know. Existence is not merely being, but a cognizance of what it brings along with itself. That I exist is a testimony to the fact that there are many things, many lives, adding meaning to my existence, some to the extent of, perhaps, being the driving force behind it. However, I must also acknowledge, the sooner the better for me, that there is a certain other being that draws the same vitality from my existence. Whether it would be in the form of drawing life from me, or sustaining my life, becomes of little importance then. When I start lending meaning to more lives than mine, I want to take a back seat and introspect. 

If, for some selfish reason of my own, I disregard what everything else is, I choose be an outlaw, which is fine if there are mechanisms to ensure that everything falls in place. But in a real world, we trade order for chaos. Everyone has a different meaning of order, which, again, is fine, so long as it does not absolve itself of an awareness of the ecosystem. The fixation with a certain constant, and the submission to / dependence on its causal forces creates an impasse, which, from its very core, opposes an evolution. I do not intend to generalize, but I wish we let things take their natural course more often. At least we would have been able to see what a dystopian world would be like. But somewhere in the quest of enforcing reason into what would otherwise seem perfectly reasonable, we get stranded between what could have been and what should be, motionless.  

Who the puppet is, or should be, and who the puppeteer is, or should be, is then a question of megalithic proportions. What I know is that being either of them is a sorry plight.