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I have prided myself on my eloquence

eloquent ahona

aur kuchh kaho naa

but my body hates my mind

o what could be more kind?

my mind has drawn a blank

i wish a cheque would be as blank

so that i could fill it

then i would bill it

but my mind has played a prank

come back, my sweetest mind

knowledge let us together find

i think i could do it

body would boo it

body-i'll woo it

dear body please co-operate

don't hate me, i'm always late

so i've loved you before

and i'll love you some more

as for now, come back

marry my mind

i'm your progeny

illegitimate progeny
a daughter of hate

(please co-operate)

ahona's body really loves ahona's mind, where be you nice people? come back

This is going to be a strange post.

I am unhappy. Deeply unhappy. I wish this unhappiness never afflicts anyone. I don't know why I am writing a blogpost on this, but I've been thinking You Never Know.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio than can be dreamt of in your philosophy.

last november post.

What conversation can you have with a corpse? Averting eyes

from the dead. Thinking, I sit here speaking lies.

Not speaking at all. Why did you have to die? Thinking

how we noiselessly cry. Stare at her, the unblinking.

Why do they block your nose with cotton?

You smell sweet, yet are they scared of the rotten

aroma of death?

I still hear your breath.

It smells sweet.

Why do they wish to carry you away-

you, peacefully sleeping?

While the insipid throng is weeping

And those who love you

Stand above you

Smelling the incense and crying.

I wonder which of us is dying.

You always love the dead. They are beyond our hate.

I can't tell you how I feel, I guess it is too late.

I tell you I hear your breath.

It still smells as sweet.

Which of us is dying now?

I'll tell you when we meet.

That alone gives the dying peace and the living hope.

That we shall meet shortly

Even though only one of us is crying-

We never know who's dying.

bloddddy

All Bengalis have bad stomachs. It's the way they are made, they can't help it-the poor gobets. Just as Punjabis reek of good health and butter masala, lobster in mustard sauce does the poor Bengali in. Why must the Bengalis cook all his dishes with mustard and the Punjabi dance in every Hindi film in vast stretches of mustard fields? I have no idea.

I was thinking of expressions like paagol na pet kharap and paagol chhagol and wondering would you really suffer if you ate a mad goat the way the British suffered when they ate mad cows? Then I think; how is this going to help me?

The point is that only eating chocolate cake can help. But that contains egg(mostly). Which is sort of dangerous because really...

I mean did the egg come first? A primordial egg, an egg that started it all, the first egg as the embodied First Cause. Or was it an insufferable, know-it-all, obese/stringy, clucking chicken that said "Howdy?We're gonna make the world rowdy. Now let's all come oudie, man!"

I want ham. Now! Glazed with honey and mustard. Otherwise I'll ham it up ad infinitum.

Bandy gave me oodles of cake. Now I want to be her poodle. Toodles. She's my favourite, just the way that wretched character (sickny) in Jab We Met goes "main apni favourite hoon"...arrey woh meri favourite hain, kyunki ushe pata hain ki bhukhi petni bahut badtameez ho sakti hain. Or sumfin, gott, amar khide paay ni bhogoban, ami bangali noi.

Disclaimer- I am a great Bengali. Good Bengalis are reborn as la parisiennes and bad bengalis are reborn as Bengali Americans. But great bengalis are reborn as tamils!

yum, i'll have rasam and finish a PhD in maths by age 13. Guru, aashche jonme jaa hobe na! I feel pleased right now. Mmmm, rasam.

No, I think Really Great Bengalis are reborn as Really Great Bengalis. It's a cycle of divine lobster malaikari blessing and maangsho bhaat blessing. In fact, I have an inkling that I was Bidhan Chandra Roy. Or Noti Binodini. Ginni, khete daao. uhhhhh.

Ten Great Truths.

1. You cannot make people like you, not even if you are me.

2. I cannot make people like me, precisely because I am me.

3.Life is weird. Especially if the first set of people you meet in the course of the day are stoned out of their wits. One of them claimed that his aunt has stopped drinking water. She is 60 and drinks only wine. She keeps a jug of wine next to her bed every night with a goblet. He also claimed that when he was five his father got an eagle home and the eagle lounged on the sofa,but his father denies this story.

4. Do not expect much from the State. The State is out to get you, even if you are not a Maoist. (Paanchu paach chhagoler maa, Paanchu hege chhonchaaye naa! i.e., Paanchu is the mother of five goats, Paanchu does not wipe her rectum after defecating!)

5. Don't trust this bitch of a month. November is Mata Hari, November is Cleopatra. November is the Black Widow. November is Aeneas who betrayed poor Dido.(Not that "widow"/"Dido" rhyme.)

6.Don't watch the dailies on Star Jalsa if you don't want to snigger all night. Today I stared open-mouthed at this guy who went to a shop to get himself a swanky new car and said to a dealer offset against this very corny set- I want to book a....cur.

7. The stoned friend from above with the famous aunt also reported that a crocodile once ate his shoes.(No, the shoes were not made of crocodile skin. That would have been grotesque.) I do not know how this point constitutes a great truth, but I suspect that it is still profound.

8. The centre of unity will inevitably disintegrate. It's called a minor gastric problem or simply put pet byatha. Some people (rude Bengalis) could also call you; paagol na pet kharap? -thus associating madness and insanity with aforementioned gastric problem. Indeed the medulla oblongata then, in the words of the famous Professor SwapanKumarChakravorty, requires some serious water.

9. The Butler did it. What? You don't have a butler? You don't know on whom to pinpoint the petty theft/major burglary/awesome murder? How do you solve the problem in the Indian context? The baai did it sounds wrong. As if you're accusing the poor maid of suspect liaisons. The problem might as well be scrapped altogether.

10. Don't read this blog. You will learn absolutely nothing. It's not going to help you. At all. It's going to screw you. I feel sorry for you. Bye.

This is not inane.

I love crossing the road like a madman. You know, when you sprint across a speeding road like a blind person, absolutely insane person, and everyone stares at you. Your friends shout out your name as if this is it. There is no more to be said, no more to be done. And then you think; what is this rushing adrenalin-is this how I felt last winter on the ferris wheel? Or is this really it? Or was that really it? And then you see the madly honking cars whizzing past. You think this is how life whizzes past too. A horrid smug grin that could be misinterpreted as suicidal mars your pretty face. Everyone hates you, indeed you are the outsider, for you could be killed.

But you are not doing it to be killed. You are doing it to show that traffic cannot slow you down. Besides the traffic in your mindscape is even worse, all those things overcrowding a brain! You shriek; I want this to get over! But the shriek drowns in a blare of horns. You simply stand in their way. They ask you to move aside.

Of course I managed to cross the road. And it was raining too. I had phuchhka and cha a little while back, the tamarind had curdled the tea, and my stomach was full of a fulsome yoghurt? chhaanaa? I wanted to puke. But I simply vented my rage on three friends. I sprinted across into the great ether of 8B where millions throng for sundry vehicles. Snort. And they stared at my disappearing back, wandering whether I had finally let the November sun kill me. (The November sun as we all know is detrimental to one's mental and physical health. It implies dissatisfaction with all things material, and beautiful pain in all things spiritual, and assures pots of snot in all things bronchial.)

Now of course, this is a brilliant analysis, but the sun was not up today after the first half and I am positively boring in the second half i.e., after the interval. Like all Bollywood movies, yawn. Now I keep thinking that if I lived in a larger cosmopolis I'd be dead by now. And I have this one friend who keeps cutting her hair these days. Like me, she now considers her hair to be The Abject. I, for example, adore my crap, my vomit, my snot etc etc but I cannot stand my hair sticking around on my scalp for too long. But she does a better job of abjecting it, I must say. I have another friend who has some sort of a bipolar disorder and either sulks until I feel like sprinting across the road like a madman, or laughs maniacally until I feel like sprinting across the road like a madman. Ahem.

Correction; Madwoman. Sigh.

I am glad that I have ranted and disenchanted, once again. I have written too much poetry of late, both sad and funny. By the way, this is killer stuff:

Do I dare

to be; May Sinclair? (My sarcasm is on a different plane of reality altogether.)

Would I dare to do

Charlotte Mew? (She, as a closet lesbian, jumped on the rather unattractive May Sinclair.)

Would I dare to resort to frowning

To stop the prolific Mrs. Browning? (If only that could have made Aurora Leigh shorter.)

And what would have happened if I dared to smile

At Tennyson, Arnold and Carlyle? ( For the sake of poetic beauty I did not include Ruskin. I hope the Pre-Raphaelite brethren did not smile at Ruskin too often.)

Darkness III. (Not!)

[My tea rests near my elbow. I wish to knock it down.

Because my elbow cannot resist my frown. I wish I could

haiku; but I say kaiku? And that is because once more

I have too much inanity only in store. Frothy and light

is my cappuccino existence. (Will I go to Barista tonight?)

Indeed not. I am broke and my elbow hates my tea.

Coffee is rare, but hot chocolate is for me...]

My tea rests near my elbow. Not really, I just knocked it down.

I think I am a tragic hero, but mother calls me clown.

That is so unfair, like Prufrock, must I dare? To shake

the universe is such a jest. When I break

a leg after I shake a leg, mother calls me pest.

And you know what they say; mommy knows best.

Now whisky rests near my elbow. I will not knock it down.

I shall paint the city red while you confine yourself to town.

Scarlet is my choice of colour, euro or I want a dollar

Don't call me, don't holler. I see lipstick on your collar.

Oh you nasty horrid man, you call me frisky?

Of course not. I am sheepish. I think it is the whisky.

I know what you think of me. Delusions of grandeur.

But really, I am honest. I have such refreshing candour.

You look at my header and you see an ugly poach

Which I call "french omelette". (Must you see me as a roach?)

I wish you would rest near my elbow. What would I do?

Nothing really. Except poke you through and through.

[I am not deceived by Plath-itudes. I like my life happy.

Just don't give me a baby with a horrid dirty

nappy. Don't act so very shirty, and dare not call me flirty.

Don't take me out for coffee, don't look at me like that-

(I know I am fading funny like a whimsy Cheshire Cat)

It's not a beverage but it's the fact that I'm me

Such a sweet changeling addicted to black coffee...]