A Windy Night

She howls like a hurt child

Twisting and writhing, relentless and wild.
Holding her poor broken heart to her breast she flies,
Jewels on her robe, silver streaks in her hair.

Her tears splash on my window panes,

Her urgent knocks weaken its hinges.

I open the window, let her in,

Her pain pricks me with thousand ice cold needles.

A Writer’s Block

It was after he had covered half the distance that Shahid realized that he was running. It was two in the morning. The monsoon had just hit the coast and the air was heavy, with a slight drizzle. But he did not care. He ran on until he reached the bridge that over looked the port. Walking a bit further he reached the pier. He looked out at the sea from its edge. The dark curdling vast stretched on endlessly in front of him. The straight line of the horizon was uninterrupted except for a fishing trawler out at sea. From the distance a lighthouse beamed on the deserted pier periodically lighting his face up in an eerie glow.

“So we meet again,” he said out aloud in a firm voice. The silence of the night air echoed back to him.

Now to the regular person, this sketch of a young man talking to himself by the sea at night might seem a tad fantastical and perhaps even comic. But before you make your judgment, know that Shahid was one of those in whom such extremities are tolerated and even celebrated. Shahid was a writer. What was more, he was a poet. And most importantly he was a poet who hadn't written for a long time.

“I…” Shahid began again but had to stop to catch his breath. He was still panting from his run. He crouched down on the pier for a short while to catch his breath. When he stood up again and prepared to deliver his speech to the ocean, his whole life or rather the events that had led to this night flashed before him.

Once a rather poor engineering student, Shahid had recently rebelliously walked out on his B.Tech degree. He had then made his parents pay his way into an arts college in the city where he immersed himself in the world of literature and philosophy. The first few months of his stint as a student of literature went brilliantly. He read and wrote vociferously, had intense discussions about the past and future of humanity and felt intellectually stimulated as he had never before. His poems which were published in student magazines gained him much popularity. He soon had many friends who admired his work and took much pleasure from his peculiarities (many which he appropriately cultivated). Shahid for the first time in his life found himself truly happy and appreciated for being the special being that he was.

But most unfortunately shortly afterwards, at his desk one night Shahid found that he had nothing to write. Try as hard as he might he could not bring himself to write. Taking off his large glasses so that he may see clearly he tried once more but to no avail. Puzzled at this sudden pause in his genius, he thought of possible explanations. Could he actually have run out of things to say? No, that couldn’t be it, he consoled himself.  After a while the metaphorical light bulb lit up above his head and he concluded that he had encountered a writer’s block. This lifted Shahid's spirits for now not only was he in a predicament that all the world’s greatest writers have been through, something he had always fantasized about, but he also knew that this would gain him much attention. 

The news of his predicament soon spread around and friends and admirers gathered around him. They brought him food, ran errands for him and did his assignments as he walked around in a daze, his eyes always fixed on some far off object. Shahid lost no time in making most of his writer’s block. His hair and beard grew long, he stormed out of rooms, he tore up books (careful to avoid his own), he stopped mid sentence to look out into the horizon. People spoke in whispers around him; they shook their heads in sympathy when they saw his untidy form around. But unfortunately this trend of events did not hold out for very long. As two months passed and Shahid’s writer’s block showed no sign of relenting and other writers continued writing, he found his fan following significantly diminished. No longer the centre of attention, he felt lost and dejected and was surrounded by uncompleted assignments and dirty laundry. He tried harder to write but to no avail. Nothing inspired him, words failed him. Artistic frustration built up inside him, until tonight when it burst open like a volcano making the young man shoot across the road at 2 AM to the sea, a rusty tin under his arm.

“For 20 years I have labored under the delusion of being a poet,” he resumed his speech to the sea. “But no more! In this tin is every word I ever wrote. Devour it and be happy, for I shall never write again. This is the death of a poet!” He flung the rusty tin far into the sea. For a minute he waited expecting something fantastic to happen. Nothing did. Disappointed he began to wonder if it had been a silly thing to do after all. A minute later when loud sirens and a flash of red light rose in the air, Shahid mistook it for a divine intervention, the spirit of the universe asking him to take back his terrible vow.

Half an hour later seated in a dingy room in a police station facing two grim policemen, neither of whom had big moustaches and pot bellies much to his surprise, Shahid was still trying to figure out what happened. While he was still toying with the idea that he had been arrested for the crime of denying the world his poetry, the truth was that the pier where he had his performance was a high security area. The customs division had been monitoring a trawler in the sea which was approaching shore for smugglers when Shahid had heroically thrown a box towards it. His half an hour long interrogation had done nothing to clear matters up. His story was dubious and Shahid found that the police officers did not share his friends’ admiration for his abstract and disjointed manner of speech.  His appearance certainly did not help matters.

“Are you part of any religious groups?” he was asked currently.

“I’m an existentialist, I don’t believe in religion,” he replied promptly. Seeing the frowns on their foreheads deepen he was about to give the policemen a speech on Kierkegaard when the ACP, Ayush Raghav came in to the room. Shahid looked at him with hope.

“What were you doing at the pier tonight?” Ayush asked him.

“Putting an end to my poetic impulse,” Shahid replied.

The officer gave him such a stern look that Shahid began to worry for the first time that things might be more serious than he had thought. He was suddenly reminded of the time he had tried to correct his college football captain’s grammar.

One of the inspectors brought Shahid’s tin to the table. His work had been salvaged! Shahid was delighted.

“What is in there?”

Shahid was about to deliver another speech but recalling how things had turned out with the football captain, changed his mind. He said, “My writings… poems, articles I have written.”

The officer looked at him with distaste. He looked around to one of the inspectors and asked,

“Have you looked at the documents in there?”

“Poora bakwaas hai Saab. It doesn’t make any sense, it could be coded.”

“News on the trawler?”

“It isn’t the one we thought it was. It is just a fishing trawler. They have inspected it and found nothing.”

Ayush looked at Shahid. Now Ayush was a reasonable man. He had dealt with many young men like Shahid before and at any other occasion would have let him off with a warning. But tonight he was agitated at being called to work at an unearthly hour under a false alarm and he found himself suddenly irritated at young people like Shahid who lived in their own perfect little bubbles. Something about Shahid’s lean face reminded him of his young son whose artistic tendencies Ayush had been repeatedly warned not to stifle and consequently whose guitar strumming had kept him awake until he had been beckoned to work tonight.

“So you are a poet?” he asked Shahid with a smile.

“I was,” Shahid continued after a tragic pause, “But tonight I gave up poetry forever. I can’t write anymore. A writer’s block has killed my poetic impulse.”

“Hmmm,” Ayush said, “Son, do you know when the greatest poets of the world have created their most inspired works?”

“When they were in love?” Shahid asked his eyes lighting up.

“No, when they were in jail,” Ayush said. Reaching into a drawer of the desk he found a notepad and a pen. “You are in luck. Now you can deal with your writer’s block, like all of them, in jail. Here take this, if by morning you have written something worth reading, you can go home. If not I will make sure that you stay here long enough to forget every word you have ever written.”

Shahid was confused. He tried to believe that Ayush was joking but the look on the officer’s face killed all such hope. Suddenly frightened, he looked back at the other two inspectors who had questioned him earlier. They grinned back at him.

“Your poetry can buy you freedom, now isn’t that inspiring?” Ayush smiled at him.

Shahid was terrified now. “But… You can’t do that… I can’t write like that… I want to make a phone call…,” he started panicking.

“Sathish, put him in a cell,” Ayush told the officer behind him.

Shahid soon found himself bound by the strong arms of the officer. When he was being taken outside the room Ayush smiled and said “Now there are few things I like better than poetic irony.”

A Lost Thing

To the place where dead dreams go,

Where laughter and tears disappear to,

Forgotten memories and lost love too flee,

Come with me,

And search for a lost word.

There in the rubble, help me find once again,

That dream,
and the childish impulse to dream it.

The Palmist at the Beach

Warm and salty, the sea’s breath on my face is intimate. Its heavy, sticky fingers follow me as I move. In the sky the round orb hangs dreamily, iridescent. The water reflects the full moon lighting the beach in a mystical, silver glow. Walking on the deserted sands, my toes digging in to their warmth, I’m blissful. Between me, the water and the sky only the waves sound.

Walking languidly along the beach, I see a woman sitting on the sand watching the waves. She smiles as I approach. 

“Come, I have been waiting for you,” she says.

I’m perplexed. “Who are you?” I ask.

“Can’t you see? I’m a palmist.”

Looking at her closely, I realise that she is right. She is middle aged, dressed in an old, frayed cotton sari. Her black hair, held loosely in a bun with a strand of Jasmine flowers, is shining in the moonlight. On her round face is a big, red bindi and streaks of yellow turmeric. She is holding a tinsel framed rod that I have seen the beach palmists carry. Beside her is a cloth bag, out of which I see other odd objects of her trade stick out. She looks at me with her big, kohl smudged eyes.

“Can you tell me about the future?” I ask, sticking my hand out.

She smiles and shakes her head, “I can’t tell fortunes.”

“But you are a palmist!” I remark.

“Child, this beach is my life. When I first came as a newlywed bride to my husband’s home in the fishermen’s ghetto over there,” she said pointing to one end of the beach, “it disgusted me. I hated the fish stench of the air, the sand that followed me everywhere and the heavy sea breeze that made me ill. But with time it became home. When years later I found myself abandoned with two children and no means to live, this beach became my destiny. Telling a few stories to amuse rich people seemed like a small price to pay. I became a palmist.”

 “But why did you stop me then? If you cannot read my palm, what can you tell me?” I ask.

“A story,” she replies. “I can give you a story.” She stops and looks at me. I sit down on the sand next to her.

“It was years ago,” she begins. “One cloudy evening I was walking along the beach trying to find customers. It was a dreary day, not many people were out. That was when I saw a woman sitting by herself. I walked towards her and asked her if she would like to know her future. She smiled and held out her palm, she did not even stop to bargain the price. I took her hand happily and recited my practised lines.

‘How many children do you have?’ she stopped me midway. She had seen through my act.

‘Two.’ I replied shamefaced.

She smiled, ‘They are lucky, they have a very loving mother.’

‘I have to feed them that is why I do this.’ I tried to explain.

She nodded, ‘I understand. I have a daughter,’ she paused for a while and then said, ‘And today I will abandon her forever. There was such sadness in the hollowness of her voice that I did not interrupt.

She pointed to her handbag lying on the sand beside her. ‘In that bag is a bottle of pills that will kill me today.’

I was shocked. I could feel the pain of this beautiful woman’s impending death, and I felt tears well up in my eyes.”

“But why? Didn’t you ask her why she wanted to do it?” I interrupted the palmist’s story.

“No. It never occurred to me to ask why. There was such truth in her eyes that it forbade all questions and doubts. It was enough to feel her pain. She then reached over to her bag and took out a wad of notes. She handed it to me. I stepped back and refused to take the money. But she looked into my eyes. 

“This is all the money I have left from my life. Buy something for your children.”

I couldn’t refuse. I took the money. She looked away, and I was about to leave when something stopped me.

‘But can I do something for you?’

She looked at me for a minute and then said, ‘Yes. You can give me my story.’

I was confused, ‘But I can’t read or write how can I…?”

She shook her head, ‘Years from now, another woman will come walking down this beach, lost and desolate as I am. She will have my eyes and in them will be the same pain you see in mine. Stop her and give her my story.’

The palmist stops and looks at me. Something in her gaze unsettles me. I decide that I do not want to hear the rest of the story. I try to get up to leave. But the woman continues, her gaze fixed on me, 

“She said, ‘In the drawer of my books, there is a copy of the book Silappathikaram; in it between pages 30 and 31 I have buried my story. Give it to her.’ I gave the woman my word of promise and walked away.”

I have grown very agitated listening to the palmist speak. The intent of this woman’s story dawn on me. I get up, angry and upset. “No. No. It is not true. How dare you! You horrible woman! Liar! It was a heart attack! I know! She did not kill herself. Stop it!”

I am almost hysterical now. She looks quietly at my face. “You do have your mother’s eyes.”

Her face zooms in on my consciousness until it jolts me out of sleep. Shocked, I sit up on my bed. Opening my eyes, it takes me a while to shake off the dream and recognize where I am. I realise that I had been screaming out in my sleep. My face is wet with tears and my whole body streamed with sweat. I can hear my heart pounding. I am breathless.

I jump out from the bed, search frantically and turn on my night lamp. Squinting in the light I hurry to my desk, knocking down things on my way. I pull out a cardboard box from the bottom drawer of my desk. Searching inside, I find a tattered copy of Silappathikaram. My hands are shaking furiously as I open the book. It opens easily to page 30. There squat between the two pages is an envelope. And on it, in that tiny, wiry handwriting that I so love, is my name.