Sand Wind and Stars~

Dear Dadaji,

When I look at your picture I am amazed at how many parts of you have left around us like the sand wind and the stars. Your hands that live in Papa’s hands, Your gentle presence that Papa exudes just the way you did, sitting hours in the winter sun.

I don’t remember your passing away bringing up any sadness in my 5 year old heart.  The stench of urine that coming from your room cut me off from you. I was so scared to enter then. You were growing old and I was growing young. I was getting the power to make choices to be with people or to avoid them. I would avoid you for days and days when you would call for me. I felt I could altogether avoid the unnecessary involvement with death disease and decay (Although not so consciously!) Sometimes when I could muster enough good sense to enter your room which had Papa’s tools hanging on the walls you would lovingly tell me broken stories. Some stories that I already remembered, some I recognized to be warped some completely drones of your sound breaking.

On clear days you would come out of your room and take a walk. And I remember your lively long stepped walk. You were such a tall man. It was difficult to think that someone so well formed could be falling apart in body.

Its strange I never saw you intensly alive. You were always my old dadaji to me. The most electric I have seen you were in your stories of travels across the world. Your days of fighting the world war in Hungary where you got lice in your hair. Your hundred stories of Raja Ram Chandra of Ayodhya who had a dutiful wife. The stories of your illiterate brothers and  your bringing them to civilization and farming in the terai of Nanital. I still read your books kept in the dingy store room in Bareilly now. Although I find it hard to imagine that you read them too. I still remember your shiny white strong teeth. They lasted you more than mine will! I remember that Tall lanky figure with a flowing white beard and didn’t quite know what kind of a man you would have made for woman around you. But I know the man you were in your bones and blood. I carry you inside me like the sand wind and stars.

Love

Seetal

Be my Calender Boy Mr Kingfisher!

Dear Mr Mallya,

As I stare uncomfortably at the Kingfisher calenders protruding out of nooks of the worktables of offices,I feel a tweaking tinge of irritation threatening to blow up into anger! Scantily dressed Barbie dollish women twining around a creepers, bathing in scanty waterfalls. All women beautifully shortchanged in this whole process(the ones being parading in the calenders,ones who start aspiring to be in these calenders, the ones who will never make it to these calenders(not to be forgetting the ones who write pieces such as on 'the calender')

This heady sense of exclusivity that money can offer, The cameras transforming
penis's into lens! the models exclusive pedigree like some sort of hybrid horses/or bitches. Your Big Idea of harnessing these natural resources in a calender!( boobs bellies and and legs of of pretty young nubile women) Everybody loves these calenders I am told so whats my problem with this kind of exclusive high art? My problem Mr Kingfisher is that I think It is a bad show! And i hate it when it gets plastered around the walls! Why should I be forced to indulge your fantasies(or of those who aspire to be like you?!)?

I am not impressed at all! Why should your constipated art take the place of honour in my terrain? Why should my opinion be held any lesser value than yours? I am the customer king Mr King of goodtimes! I buy your beer, fly your airline,and watch your channel!

My calenders ought to have a certain standard! I don't want these neo'rich babes crowding my breathing space. I like Royalty! I think you would make a very interesting calender boy! That royal ruddy shining on your skin(like burnishing gold! literally!!!) I even think if you were to bare your belly on an exotic location my fantasies may spiral up till the sky! Your smile is so sexy too. I want to see you smile at me on my table top. And those layers of flab on your shoulders never matter to anyone, they are soo big with power. Let me see you stretch for me till the two ends of the horizon just like your property. I soo like you rich stinking money body odor man! Why cant you dance naked on the beach for me(and for those other women who pay for your beer in their hard earned cash!) Lets carve out fair terms of service now! Give me a fair worth for what I pay! Dance naked for me old man I(we) will bathe you in money too, and I dont mind real life blemishes and old age!


Looking forward to some good times

(Not on your calender) woman

Staring at you

Dear Buddha,

This hunger doesn’t go! I go around the world in the nakedness of my hunger only revealing it to the world in the greed of being fed! I try forgetting it and moving on with ‘better things of life’ But when its noon and and when its dawn, when I sleep and when I get up, early morning and late in the night the hunger remains. Its hard to get over it. My dream doesn’t break and my hunger doesn’t recede. I remain as small as ever!
I want to bite the long giants walking past me. They don’t seem to be bothered with things like hunger at all. I know they have their own journeys and I have my own crosses to bear and yet they seem responsible for all that I lose in life. I bite them and they kick at my stomach. Shame follows. It has happened so many times before and every time again and again my hunger resounds gurgles and gets me up on my feet from my stomach.I am up biting them again. Shame doesnt last longer than hunger!There is a strange omniscient persistence in this hunger. I have to bow to it against my efforts(I dont get to own a WILL) I am not being wily, I am only being hungry!
If only these giants could spare some thoughts for my life.I would have blessed them But they are arrogant rascals! They think they can kick and walk on! I don't have any defense against my hunger Buddha. I get back and bite for the cause of my hunger. Help me either cure my hunger or bite off the head of these Giants!

Unhappily
hungary ghost


Image Courtesy-http://www.greyfotos.blogspot.com/