Month: February 2022

I read, I feel inadequate.
I lead, I feel inadequate.
I write, I feel inadequate.
I fight, I feel inadequate.
I learn, I feel inadequate.
I earn, I feel inadequate.
Asleep, I feel inadequate.
Awake, I feel inadequate.
Regardless of accomplishments,
Again, I feel inadequate.

I trust you with my present thoughts
So you can keep me unbiased.
I’m pretty good at making up
A rearview story in regress.

Forgetting how confused I was
I blame myself for bad results
And take the credit for the good
Arising out of randomness.

I play a mental see-saw game:
“I did not see it coming in”,
“Of course, I saw how things would turn”,
And so decode the craziness.

I trust you Dear Diary
To take me back to how things were,
And not to how I see them now
Through memory’s distorted lens.

“But let me say, Dear Minakhi,
That I can only hold your words.
And all you write are excuses
In hopes of gaining forgiveness.

“Already narratives are formed,
Already you distort the facts,
As if against your future self
You’re setting up a game of chess.”

It baffles me how so many
Of friends who are intelligent,
Aware of worldly finances,
Aware of costs and expenses,
Forget to calculate the costs
Of keeping dying men alive,
In hopes of strong recovery
For months and months and months and months.

You never ask them for a dime
And they assume you’re deep in cash.
They act surprised when you admit
You don’t have high-speed internet;
You don’t have Netflix, Hotstar, Prime;
You don’t have stuff on EMI;
And though who study investing,
You don’t have any active stocks.

And then, forgeting all the things
They take for granted in their lives
They ask you why you don’t purchase
A chocolate cake for “birthday bash”,
Or send some link on Amazon
Of something pretty expensive,
Of something no one really needs,
But they think you should look to buy.

The only thing that makes it worse
Is when you ask them to their face
To guess your monthly expenses
And they come up with numbers that
They think are overestimates
In the hopes that they don’t hurt
Your clearly hurting sentiments,
And then you have to ask them to
“Go higher” once, and twice again,
And all they say in response then
Is, “Oh, I did not realise.”

I threw the book across the room.
(It landed safely on the couch.)
I pulled another from the shelf,
But kept it back with shoulders slouched.

“The drama doesn’t heal, you know.”
I crashed into the couch myself
And tracked the lizard on the roof.
“It’s time we started seeking help.”

I scrolled across my contacts list,
Avoided typing in the search.
I found the number, dialed it in,
And waited for the belly lurch.

“The number you are dialling is…”
I breathed a sigh of much relief.
The book again was inviting.
I opened to the dog-eared leaf.

I sit and look at candlesticks,
The red, the green, the fat, the thin,
With double-ended smokeless wicks,
Pretending I know how to win.

I look for hammers, up or down.
I look for shooting, morning stars.
I look for spinning tops around,
Forgetting all my burning scars.

I use stochastic modeling,
The fancy math that gives me hope
I will be right in predicting
The fifteen-minute pricing slope.

But when it comes to pressing keys,
To clicking buttons – buy and sell –
I think about the broker fees
I have to pay for loss as well.

I think about the short-term gains
And all the taxes they invite,
And question whether what remains
Is worth the pride of being right.

I love my daily kitchen chores:
They show me how much fun it is
To peel some hours off the day
And find it’s rotten anyway.

The only way I make it through,
Without a walk down Sylvia Plath,
Is taking things in iron grasp
And channeling my inner tsar.

I rail against uprising milk,
Volcanoing in mushroom shrouds,
With threats to drown the flame beneath
In angry, spizzing, rebel shouts.

I, then, suppress the boiling force
The moment whistleblowers stand
And gather steam to cry against
The pressures of the Gulagland.

I drown the ones who make me cry,
And slice their layered loyalties.
I flay the ones with many eyes,
And mash them into nobodies.

I pinch the salt into their wounds,
And brown their pain in pools of ghee,
And with some twists of finger fate
I spice their boring misery.

I put them all into their place
And sanitize the crime scene.
So, when the Mother Goddess comes,
She smiles to find her temple clean.

The demons of my inner world
Are asking me with impatience
If I am ready yet to quit,
Admitting my incompetence.

They know my answer, yet they ask
With power of repeated doubts.
I tell them under groaning weight:
“Perhaps tomorrow? Thereabouts?”

“But not today?” “No, not today.”
“You sure you want to take no rest?”
“Oh I will take my rest for sure.
To quit, I have no interest.”

“You know it will be harder, right?”
“Perhaps it will be. Perhaps, not.”
“You have no say in what will be.”
“I can’t lose what I haven’t got.”

“You cannot win this game of life.”
“Is there a winning, anyway?”
“Your friends are winning, don’t you see?”
“I wonder what their demons say.”

1.
Lines of ants predict much better
Rainy days than Google Weather.
Genetic stakes are high for them.
Being unprepared’s bye-bye for them.

2.
Empty necks predict much better
Murder rates than ‘paper headers.
After mortgaging her silver
Husbands somehow also kill her.

3.
Price of wood predicts much better
Daily deaths than government ledger.
After parents burn on pyre
Children sell the house entire.

If there’s a song for every mood,
For every changing state of mind,
The one that says, “I am okay,”
Is one I need to somehow find.

I woke up fully rested now,
And learned that all is well around.
It took me many moments to
Believe that all are safe and sound.

That there are smiles instead of frowns,
No gloom of death of someone new,
No talk of viruses with crowns,
No expert with their expert view.

A morning calm in feel and form.
Is this a quiet coming storm?

While everyone is paring down
Their fooding, clothing, lifestyles whole,
He’s started bringing contractors,
Upgrading ceilings, floorings, doors.

He wasn’t ever moneyed much,
And never held a moneyed job,
And never sold a lot of milk,
And never walked with shoulders tall.

And now his house is growing big,
And now his wife is wearing gold,
And now his kids are getting gifts
For doing things as they are told.

His cows are same, their milking same,
His customers are buying same,
So what has changed that he now boasts
A larger forehead kumkum flame?

Some say he sneaks into the night,
Returning when the sun is out.
He must be in some smuggling trade,
Something no one knows about.

They ask his wife, they ask his kids,
And all they hear is “gov-ment post.”
With “overtime” and “nightly shifts,”
A “temporary bonus” flows.

He must be smuggling, nothing else.
Which gov-ment post gives bonus pay?
And so the men arrive with drinks
To bribe their way into his trade.

He keeps their bottles, keeps their cash,
And says he’ll talk to higher-ups.
“You know how long the gov-ment takes.
You know their milky chai cups.”

They wait, he only shakes his head.
They wait, he blames the pandemic.
They wait, he says the higher-ups
Are themselves falling Covid sick.

They lose their cash, they lose their calm,
They raid his house in daylight broad,
Demanding show of gov-ment cheques
To prove he’s innocent of fraud.

He wraps his arms around his head
Refusing any show of proof.
He says his business is his own:
His own to make, his own to lose.

They beat him with their cattle sticks.
The wife and children cry in shock.
The mob ignores their pleading sobs,
When someone lifts a lying rock.

The wife no longer thinks of shame.
She wants her kumkum on her head.
“He burns the dead,” she shouts aloud.
“The gov-ment pays to burn the dead.”

“To burn the dead?” the whispers ask.
“To burn the dead?!” the men demand.
“A cowherd of our cowherd caste?!!”
They click their tongues in reprimand.

They shun him for his custom breach,
Deny him water from the well,
Revoke his children’s playing rights,
And steal his dairy clientele.

The second wave of Covid hits,
Their panic builds, their incomes fall.
Into the night the men dissolve,
With drooping heads no longer tall.