mosquito replies

My dear ant,
it has been long since we wrote to each other. yesterday I did see you hanging by the bushes behind the cafeteria, but couldn't come up to you and talk to you.
the problem is, I', not comfortable. I don't know if the bloodline that gave birth to me and the many drops of esteeemed blood I hold still match up to the societal standards you have. you call me individualistic. But think about it, I have always been an individual while you always had a group. Where will I create this group from so that I can cease to be individual?

you always speak about hardwork. You speak of the weight you carry, of the distance home, of your efforts in your haveli to secure the best piece to give it to me later. You then accuse me of doing nothing, of just singing around. What can I say, I am not walking on land like you. I am in the air. Each drop of life I get, I have to fly to. and each drop might prove to be my last drop. Think about it, you can earn your bread without taking it away from someone. the earth is bountiful, the seasons forthcoming and fortune promiscous in your world. In my world, everything is a competition. And all depends on my wings.

May be one of these days I'll gain more courage and come and speak to you. But please do know, that I love you. I can ofcourse not blame you for not meeting me. I'm in the air, and you down below. ha..ha..ha..

one has to write

the thing is, one has to write,
write fervently, incessantly, till words turn around themselves to make more of them, mate copulate fornicate, mix the right kind of genes, the right kind of association civilization,
and words are all there are,
God, Mighty in heaven, Lofty on earth, in all his ninety nine plus the all encompassing One name yet didn't relieve us of the burden of ignorance,
for he left words again,words inexhaustible, though all trees turn pens and all the seas flow in to roll on the sheets searching in vain for a finitude of expressions.
words still persist, now flowing, now stopping by, now like the beasts of the land blessed with the hundred years of sloitude bound by the mercy of the letters that hang by a clothesline, or rather, its unreadability ; and now like the woman who turned herself into a mansion of memories, words decked as tubelights and buckets and microwaves, to be retrieved slowly, one by one, and the past comes falling down from the hazy mirage of racks built between her eyelids.

the thing is, one has to write, in saffron on a marble bowl, and wash it down, and civilization burps out the ghosts from the past.

secrets

there are few things the world should not know
like what intonation to her name will she respond to
the street vegetable vendor, desperate and pushing his cart of your halluciantions as her sweat wake you up
the exact meaning of the dark mark under her lower neck
the goemetry of humility counted in length and girth


what does it feel, that if on a lonely day on a lonely path you feel a deja vu?

canaan's first para before death

My name is Canaan, and I am about to die,
Right now I am on this hillock and I can see water rising around me, now the plains to the west, the post offce to the south, and the myriad houses to the east, all submerged in this deluge,
I can see that my father will live on for years, but I know I am about to die
the silver owl that I reared in my bedroom, the owl which froze time in my watch with its stare, burnt out the electric lights and deciphered all the known languages and those coded in the syllables of Babel; the owl told me that I would die, in an hour it said; and then it committed suicide, biting its own toenails.
Long back when my father had come to this town, after years of wandering in the uninhabited West, this place still had pigeons as postmasters. My father erected a shack and gave a name to the place, and names followed names, and then he erected a huge rack with boxes in them and names of places indicated against themn, and the pigeons took them for nests, or atleast that is what my father's diary tells me,
the washerwoman half a mile away (I use to hide behind the rocks and heat my eyes lookingt at her washing the clothes in a purple dotted lungi that rested on her dark thighs as an altercation of granddesigns of life) told me that the pigeons were protesting against lay-off. I have no way of knowing as the owl had by then accepted a principle of principled equidistance.
....
....

Davian and Marjoon

"Marjoon, do u think you can lend me a pen?"
A whistle blew outside, the sky was darkening. in the West, an orange glow blurred into the red bricks of the three storeyed school building.
marjoon didn't switch on the light. There was a comfort in the the orangy aura that Davian had this dusk. It made him more human, more like himself. Marjoon was afraid that brightness sparked doubts and questions and anxiety and curiosity in Davian. Doubts that made the teachers teach beyond the last bell, curiosity that gave Davian the strained double-humped forehead inspite of being the top-scorer of the batch. Marjoon wanted Davian this way, silent, pleading, in a dark corridor.
Marjoon was never as comfortable with Davian around. In this dying light he had caught Davian away from being the good boy that he was. Davian was there in this dark corridor in this dusk, the azaan for the maghrib prayers was long called, and from the mosque barely twenty metres away by the bird's flight they could hear "aameen" dissolving into the evening stillness, the "meen" puffing itself against the fainting aura of Davian.
"Sure."
Marjoon didn't have a pen with him. But he didn't want to let Davian fade out blot out against that darkness. He wanted Davian there, till the prayers ended and the men dispersed and they wondered where Davian was. They will surely notice his absence too, bit there was nothing new about it. He missed prayers, forgot homeworks, made faces, slept through classes, blew off bulbs with fifty paise coins; while Davian was first to the mosque, first in the class, cleared doubts and walked eagerly, in the limelight with a pointed forehead.

"Let me see, your pen"
"well... but isn't it dark here?"
"Isn't iit beautiful that way?"
"I don't get you"
"I want to write what others shouldn't see."
"What is it?"
"Why will I tell you?"
"Well, shouldn't I known what use my pen is put to?"

I know you are not exactly my friend. But can I call you my dear? My dear, I want to die. But what would that mean? The prayers can go on without me, the classes will. My bed will be occupied by another, and since I die on the corridor, no room will be haunted.
My dear, do not think I'm cruel, honestly I am not. My dear, can I kiss you once. I know you don't like me that well. It's true I too do not like you that well. But...when I see you alone, in the dark corridors, in the corners of classrooms kneeling down making faces at the seated yea-sayers, when I see you stealing even the Holy Book and covering them with newspapers and appropriating them to escape from having to kneel down at six in the morning and then to have to miss breakfast, when I see you, jumping from ledge to the wall to the open paddy field outside the high walls of our hostel...I felt how beautiful it should be o be you, to be uncaring about all these,
my dear, I am not cruel, but I want me to be missed and you to be caring and missing something in life. Let me kiss you and die.

"Oh, if it's too much to ask for, I'm leaving. I don't want your pen".
Davian faded out in that dark corridor. The lights went on and there was Marjoon. On the other end was the Warden. He had a cane in his hand.

my near dear....

First I kept away from ur friends,
they were too chirpy they disturbed me all the while
Then I kept away from your engagements,
they were too loud and congested they squeezed my jaws into unacquiescent "yes"s
Then I kept away from your home
it was too crowded to be mine
Then I kept away from your phone,
it rang in a strange cacophony they jumbled my head with jigsaw of secret confessions I made to myself.

But all the while,
my dear,
I just wanted to keep away from you.

ant-mosquito

In the end the ant decided to leave the mosquito,
in fact the decision was mutual
the mosquito could fly,
"my mother could also fly" said the ant.
the ant could lift more weight,
"but I can lift all that I ever need to, and I won't be dead if I don't lift six times my weight", said the mosquito.
The mosquitoe's father had mounted the best of flowers, the ant's father was the first to mount on the queen,
The ant's grandfather was a legend, thanks to his feat of twenty lump bodies in the Battle of the Haystick Yard,
The mosquito's grandmother had caused malaria to the King's only son,

The ant had courted two before
The mosquito was bred on promiscous blood

they reviewed all the differences,
but one detail was too common to be forgotten:
both of them left a swelling pain.