A simple man

A simple man that is what he is

A 9 to 5 routine no singing, no dancing, no drinking much

A nut for many, a genius for none.

Does he mind not having a mansion or a missus?

Well, when I look at him, it really does not look like.

Every morning at 6 his daily ritual begins in his only room

Get up, compulsively shave, cast a vacant look at the vacant room

Sit into the office bus and wait for the road to turn into something new

Maybe a palace with a lovely princess or simply into a magical chamber with a view.

To me he is an amazing guy

I can vouch – have never seen him pick up a fight or check a woman out on the sly.

He does secretly admire one vivacious woman though

But has never found the courage to ask her out or tell her that he is her guy.

Now is this turning out to be clichéd for you?

The same old geek and beauty tale, be warned it’s not your time to boo.

Our man is a strange fellow; there is something strange about the way he never agrees to spend any weekend at office

Making colleagues wonder whether that’s because he is simply an escapist or a guy on the precipice

“He never hangs out with anyone man”, says one.

“He doesn’t even have a girl friend. What does he do? Hang out with himself winks the other or get high on whiskey or wine”!

Saturday is a different day

Wake up at 5 and take the bus on an unfamiliar and long yet short route.

Almost run on that kachha lane and never forget to put his mobile on mute.

Its time for their morning prayers.

He wonders aloud, “I know Mr. Raghavan will be late and the ultra – religious Farida taking the second of her morning showers”.

The old, dilapidated building is holding good

It really depends on when it’s going to sink to the ground and change its mood.

These old guys are going to be around till then

Strange, how they resemble this building, thinks our simple man.

Anyways let me start the favorite part of my week and be around as long as I can.

By: Chitrangada

Working really…

I am working really

Come on does it sound so damn silly!

Well let me explain

I have been up in the morning at the right hour, packed my lunch, served breakfast and taken the overcrowded and unsafe train.

I could have died in the commute

The fact that I am alive my God is to you – a personal tribute.

Huff and puff, huff and puff

This is how I reach office everyday, switch my desktop, check my mails and attempt at being on the top

Look into the screen and see galaxies and the milky way

Where is earth – my planet I ask?

Maybe I should look for it some other day.

Lost am I in this beautiful world they call the internet?

How can it be? This is my bread and butter, my worth, the place where fate brought me closer to my present mate.

Well it’s not all lost if knowing that pleases you

I have my days of high – adrenalin pumping to create a new tomorrow

Shared happiness – me and the inflowing currency – absolutely no sorrow.

I am working really

Come on does it sound so silly!

I reach home at a certain hour each day in the evening

My cook is ready to tidy the kitchen and lay the table and I can positively hear my stomach growling.

I call my mate – my husband – when will you arrive?

He says, “In an hour baby, I have so many sales targets to drive”.

Do I wait for him or have my dinner?

My socially educated voice prompts – “come on wait for your husband. Were you brought up without a manner”?

I have my dinner any way

I will wait for him some other day.

Late at night my top corporate performer decides to check in

Did he have an option? I remind him, “mister this is no inn”.

He is all honesty and very romantic

My heart tells me see you married the right man

He is the one who will stand by you in shine and rain.

I smell alcohol in his breath to my despair

But then fighting against my mother’s voice in my head I think a man drunk is always honest

So I can now have a good night’s sleep without feeling alone, desperate and lost without a pair.

I am working really

Come on does it sound so silly!

Next morning is a different story

I decide to start my day by listening to Vedic chants

Huff and puff – mind you only to practice better breathing and race for lost glory.

“Let’s see how stress does with me today”, I say rubbing my palms.

My maid at that auspicious time shouts, “amma the sugar jar has many, many ants”.

Many, many ants? Right that’s what people at the station look like.

Why does my office with so many people of different shapes and sixes blur into a dazzling ant hole?

There is that common buzz again and all the big, black ants shout, “when are we getting the annual hike”?

I am working really

Come on does it sound so damn silly!

Silly maybe, but is there an option for us industrialized folks?

Is there a way where we could feel like this is our highest calling really!

Fill our pockets doing what we love

Maybe just sit back and watch for once that rare flight of the dove!

There is a strange consolation in my fellow, enterprising ants

We will all relax have a lovely house, kids, dogs and a garden

When? Well, a few years from now.

At the breakfast table my husband smug and all smiles suddenly remarks, “I will then burn those black pants”.

Right! No work what will we do then? Are we going to beg, borrow, or steal?

We will be entrepreneurs he coolly points out. Tell me then my sweets how you feel!

Yes my darling, we can then be in love again – without the sales targets and the chaos at my desk or in the kitchen.

No boss to smack my creativity or manipulate my dynamism

Yes. Yes. Free at last. But what about the market forces? Man do I have to kill the fledgling optimism.

His face looks calm still. He looks right into me and closes his mouth to say we will. Someday we will.

By:Chitrangada

Happiness

Happiness is tough to define

Miming the word fashionably is a pathetic attempt mostly to prove all is fine.

What could be happiness?

A misleading word created by a dope head or a sudden feel of eternal sunshine!

Wondered, read, spoke, listened, meditated and wondered again

Does it have something to do with killing or evading pain?

My mom taught me to live in pain, disbelieve every man who said he could make me happy

“Don’t believe a scoundrel who says he could produce stars in a jiffy”.

I once told her in distress – ma it’s not only about men.

I can endure polygamy, infidelity, change of preferences just like anybody.

It all begins and ends around me without messing my heart or brain.

Maybe ma happiness is about living each minute in flesh and being alive

Maybe it’s all about getting drenched in the rain.

And then I entered an age when education landed me in a different space

No ma this time

Only brittle egos and bustling roads with two destinations mainly my residence and the dreary workplace

Learnt a new word to express days of blue when nothing was going right and nothing seemed true

They called it stress

An amazing word to describe your emotional mess or amusingly your so called boss’s resultant agitation and complete distress.

Sometimes the only excuse to make a huffing exit out of a corporate race.

Then heart beckoned and I married and found a soul mate

A man who against my mother’s worst fears decided to fight fate.

My mother called – are you happy or is he turning out to be an average mate?

You could leave him and be with me she said.

Being independent is what today’s women do

They live on their own and they take their pride and success to bed.

I am already married ma and I can afford to take more than pride to that cozy bed.

Life then began to turn grey; I put on years and saw my reflection change

This time my worst critic and my friend – ma was gone

Now I knew that even with a man and a child I was still taking my worst fears to bed.

I was still thinking about life and death and was grinding in fear – my man thought probably I was deranged

I looked for answers and saw my childhood flash right before my eyes

I woke up each morning and found myself playing in the friendly rose garden

To me this was my personal paradise.

 Is this happiness I thought?

Yes it must be because this feeling of calm, of being one with it all

This is what I always fought.

I always looked for that external cause, a trigger that would start it all

How odd when the easiest way to be happy is just to be.

Stupid, stupid and oddly childish

No I disagree, there is definitely something more and this is plain gibberish.

And then I dreamt again – I found myself in the red rose garden.

Strangely I was not looking for a rose to make a bouquet

The garden was my playground and my destination.

There was nothing to do but only to breathe and smell the fragrance

I had probably found the only way to happiness so I decided to relax and let go of the earthly madness.

 By: Chitrangada

On: 23.01.10

Dead yet Fresh

 Saw fish on scooter

 Sharks black and tiny, dead yet fresh

 Sweeping pucca, urban Chennai roads with their tails

 A man, guess a seller, trying to reach his morning destination on his old and ugly two wheels

 Movement hurried, have-to-reach attitude

 Fish eater mind thinks – remove the tail area to buy and eat

 The selfless mind thinks death is like that

 Love what? A  fleshy- bony body suit.

Useless when left behind for fire or earth

 If the fish can lighten the platter, increase good fat in humans

 Contribute to culinary art

 Beautify leaving rooms by being trapped in boxes

 Can the human body give in death?

 Be eyes, lungs and liver for some 

 The selfish mind butts in

 Hello! I want to live.

 Live through multiple bodies for many, many years.

 The rebellious mind shouts

 Break the time limit He had in mind.

 Fight against what He disposes.

 Rebel in death.

 The logical mind intrudes

 Religion, family approval, life-after-death, fear of closed spaces.

 Reasons more concrete than Chennai’s pucca roads

 Human body is a gift most useful

 No discrimination really

 A man, woman, assassin and assassinated

 All can give

 All can live

 Be dead yet fresh.

By: Chitrangada   On: 04.01.10

Transform

 Transform now if change is what you want

Transform yourself if change is what it’s all about

Transform the little space you breathe in

Transform the noise you daily seep in

Can the little space be brightened?

Can lives be changed?

Can the planet be touched?

Questions to debate cynics can fight

Transform my friend if you seek to fly in the endless sky of possibilities

Transform if you want the world changed Into an equal space with no casualties

Transform if you crave for that homeless kid to smile

Transform and the world around will go that extra mile.

By: Chitrangada

On: 24.11.09

Objects of desire

The table to keep

The chair to sit

The car to travel

The stereo to listen in

 

The objects of desire once

The objects for granted now

 

The chair can twist your senses

Make for a partner in leisure

The table can be the cynosure of your friends

It can hold your fragrant flowers

The car can kill

It can lead you to your destination

The stereo can be sweet melody

Your inspiration and shrink in depression

 

It’s an existence and a non existence

Often buyer’s pleasure

It’s in news when it kills

Tells its story when you decide to tell

 

It’s blind though

Doesn’t see who you are

Doesn’t judge your worth in life or death

Stands stern in dawn or dusk

Takes the beating of time

Serves a span if well made

Dies if not.

By: Chitrangada

On: 04.09.09

A man meets a woman

A man meets a woman

A woman meets a man

A connect found

 

A pleasant situation

A little strange circumstance

An unchangeable social dictum

 

A man meets a woman

A woman meets a man

The man cry

The woman wonders

 

Pain, anger, hatred

Union of souls or not

Love lost and gained

 

A man meets a woman

A woman meets a man

A child almost born

 

Fear, analysis, distance

Barriers created

Two entwined bodies depart

But the souls?

 

Maybe next time

Maybe next life

Maybe never

Maybe now

 

Demands for a clean slate

Erase memories

Erase the unbearable nausea

Erase all heaviness

Erase the common madness

To start life anew

To begin where it all began

To make no mistake

To be perfect

Or to be human?

The Crow

A bird invisible

A life unnoticed

Nature’s janitor

 

A journey still

A morning to dusk rhythm

A free soul

A bird you see

 

Is black the reason?

Is the beak too long?

Is it plain ugly?

 

Fear, disgust, indifference

The emotions you feel.

 

Goes on though

Lives its life

Feeds, mates, plays

Sits firm in the eco cycle

Departs without disturbing you

The crow.

By: Chitrangada

On: 29.08.09

Dream and curse

Women should bear children

Women should marry

Women should love

Women should submit

Women should be happy

Men should earn

Men should learn

Men should marry late

Men should lust

Men should be brave

Men should be strong

 We make these rules

We inhabit this space

 Yet we fear

Yet we despair

 To be that one left out

To be singled out in a crowd

 Be satisfied with a puny life

Sit in comfortable rat holes

Dream and curse

Dream and curse

 Play this twisted game

Till our minds are numbed

Till our limbs have given up

 All hopes for a different tomorrow.

 By: Chitrangada

On: 20.08.09

Helpless Tears

Boys slain in the land of poverty

Women ravished by the men of God

Human sins punished to instill fear

Lives terminated

Vaginas ripped

Limbs amputated

Mother’s abusive tears hurled

Father’s silent, unmanly tears of desperation ignored

Greedy bystanders hungry, shameless gaze fed

And a distant sister’s helpless tears ridiculed.

Written by: Chitrangada

On: 19.08.09

Subject: Protest against the duel amputation of boys and the stone-to-death sentence meted out to a rape victim in Somalia.