The Informer

Attended a meeting
This one was important
For me, since it was
My thousandth and one meeting

I celebrated with sookha bhel
Reading my Kali Ganga
And waiting, and waiting
Not more than 77 of them

I jotted: Organised by alphabets
Shri B
Shrimati M
Shri C
Shri R

Once upon a time
B and M copulated
C and R were an ideology
Now everyone is solo

I know some alphabets
Who never organise meetings
They never volunteer
They never speak

My department awards them
Q and X are honoured, annually
With laddoos and modaks
And grants and Padma Shris

Anyway
This meeting was harmless
Except some new alphabets were being born
They were becoming a word

Bloody annoying
Ideally, I should have called Shri Clause
Ordered him to send a battalion of erasers
White ink and pulpers and guillotines

While I sipped my cuppa of tea
The first word they formed was: committee
Just then entered a pretty noun in a gown
They formed their favourite: rights

Speeches were made
(Blah blah bleh bleh)
I heard better ones
Especially madam’s

On 26 June, 1975
One cue, others marched in
Numbers
Rational
Irrational
Prime

I saw an integer
Talking to a fraction
Co-efficient was fact-finding with zero
I smelled a conspiracy

Treason
Sedition
I sent a morse code to ____
A pigeon arrived with a warrant

We gheraoed the hall
At 3:33.33 am, an auspicious hour
Joint case against 26 alphabets
Plus the infinite numbers

Trials
Tribunals
Imprisonment
All numbered, all sentenced

Peace in the suburbs, now
No more meetings to attend
I polish my badge of honour
They stapled on my conscience

All is well
Promotion
IPL passes
Except for insomnia

I hear the sound of decimal points
Semi colons, commas and full stops
Underground, I hear their march
At 3:33.33 am …

MY SORT OF T20

1.
My shadow, she and I
Are not on talking terms
Every time I crack a joke
She refuses to laugh

2.
Saffron, reigns supreme
The reddish revolution is
Becoming a tepid green
Thankfully, I am colour blind

3.
She looks average
Exaggeratedly poised on the ground 
Never dresses up for an occasion
Just dabs of wettish moss
When you sit on her
She accuses you of negligence
On her dark, irregular face, there are layers of suffering 
Which does not stir interest

Yes, she remains my favourite rock
She says, nothing remarkable about me

4.
At Khar Danda
I stand in the morning
As the fishing boats
Return with fishload of
Odour, nets, a koli day dream,
An hopelessly out of tune folk song

5.
O rain, why are you ever so eager
To drench me, whenever you fall

6.
I weep, as I see
A broken leaf
On the ground
It reminds me of you

7.
Have you measured the speed of darkness

8.
The wind blows here and there in order to cover its nakedness

9.
Suffering looked at the poet and said: you are faking me …

10.

EPITAPH
Here lies one who said he was the best
Of the court jesters in today’s world
He died due to cirrhosis of laughter
With tears, in death, do let him rest

11.
Silence, it hovered over my head
So I stepped out and aired it in the sun

12.
Your breasts, they are sagging, I said
She replied, quite untrue, I never had any

13.
My shadow seeks it own existence
It has even applied for a passport

14.
She wanted to exit, long ago
But my love, jammed the door

15.
All I do is, sit and measure time
As it passes me by, every day

16.
She knotted and unknotted her lustrous black hair
Into a small bun, pinned up, with her hidden desire

17.
Mister Sleep and I simply do not get along
I am awake, and he has gone for a walk

18.
Two strands of winds made love inside a cloud
When they were done, it created quite a storm

19.
I turn a page of the wall calendar
A date flutters and falls on the floor

20.
Darkness, what is it, you see …

I know Vinda

I
Interrupted
Neruda and Milosz
In their chessboard game
And kissed the cosmic atoms on their feet

By saying
They are better than me in every regard
Except
I know Vinda
And they do not

12 shorts on a rainy day

1.
I visit the market
Purchase one fish
And a fresh set of lies

2.
My first date, I recall
The water I sip, tastes like blood

3.
What if God is pretending to be someone else?

4.
Today, I’m Sherlock Holmes
I reach for my cocaine vial
Then set out to spy on Mr and Mrs Watson
When they are making babies

5.
The orphan boy who delivers my newspapers
Offers me peppermints
He says, no news today
All the ink has dried up

6.
It has started drizzling, again
How many droplets make a rain?

7.
Great openings are for rookies
I collect endings

8.
I watch the movie in mute
My Oriyan neighbour wails
She is being beaten by her husband
Yet again, in teen taal

9.
The bunyan tree has a nice shape to it
What is it?
Arjuna making love to Draupadi?
Bhim wrestling with Duryodhana?
Perhaps both?

10.
When he died at 87
They buried him with a ledger in which he jotted down the names of his friends from class one
None of whom attended the midnight funeral

11.
I dust inanimate objects
They come alive
My nightmares multiply

12.
I call the local police station
When I spot Orestes being chased by the Furies
In the middle of the night

The policeman on duty tells me he can’t file a FIR
Silently, I turn the page

R.I.P.
(Homage to a dead scribe)

When he was shot dead
The PM sent a letter to the CM
The CM sent a letter to the Deputy CM
The Deputy CM sent a letter to the Home Minister
The Home Minister sent a letter with a RSVP to the top cops
One of whom got transferred to arms control

On cue
Four under-paid scribes went underground
A few wept copiously
Hundreds protested

That’s when you realised
Beneath the banter of Old Monk and Thums Up
At the Press Club
There exists a world where nothing is quite what it seems to be

And basically how totally fucked up we are

Ten shorts in honour of Nagarjun

1.
This
Nagarjun
Wrote in
Maithili
Hindi
Bengali, too
Sanskrit, even

And I cannot read him in no language, properly

2.
Why, no taxi on the road
Why, no taxi wants to go
Why, no taxi coughs
Why, no taxi laughs
Why, no taxi talks to other taxis
About such taxing things

3.
My solitude has gone for a walk
Don’t worry, I’ve telegramed him

Come back, soon
Pick up, a broom and dustbin and Harpic powder and pins and a stapler on your way

I will cleanse and staple you to me
Till infinity

4.
Once
There are so many tallish women
When they woke up, their tall heads
Bumpetty Bumpooo-ed into the sky
RBC oozed from all their skulls
The atmosphere clotted
And darkness prevailed

That’s why they don’t manufacture tall women these days

5.
On the day of Shravan, I tickled a joke
That’s all

Now you may please proceed with your busy life

6.
The imli tree asked me, what will you do with your discarded old shoes, the ones which serenaded the songs of suffering, while you marched from Sindhri to Gulbarga via Jallandher

That was then

Now the tree has a sole, and my shoes collect tamarind seeds
This is what is known as averting a balance of payment crisis

7.
The warkari danced
All the way to Bodh Gaya
Sashaying to the beat of thunder and lightening
He, smiled, his compassionate smile
The rain has soaked my karma
Bring me a bamboo umbrella
I need to find my moksha

8.
When Time was born
The Earth and the Sky
Installed a faulty dial
As a result all of the planet is running around, here and there, always, late for all appointments

9.
I decided to embark on a Stupidity Yatra
Baba re, millions of people want to join me

10.
10th November
You Know Who
Opened his right eye
Sipped his ayurvedic chai
Brought by his yoga guru
All okay, in the streets?
Any sign of revolution?

No, no, Bhai
1.4 bn people
Are still asleep
Watching ads
In their dreams
Long live the King
Long live the King

Ganapati Bappa Moryaaaaa

Ganapati Bappa Moryaaaa Pudchya Varshi Lauvkarya
But Ganapati Bappa has no Aadhaar
His UIDAI number is so bekaar

Shiv-Parvati think about what to do
Sue the Government is Narad’s view

There is sullen silence inside 7 Race Course Road
33 crore Gods are tweeting, Bhai ghammand chhod

The Bhakths and devotees say it’s bad luck
Cause this year, they won’t get free modaks

Ganapati Bappa Moryaaaa
Pudchya Varshi Aadhaar Gheeon Ya