honey, you!
nimmy joshi
If you were here, I would sing it to you. But you keep me away. Like a punishment or a chastity belt. And in vengeance I just want to deny you the luxury. The luxury of the sound that your voice leaves in my head. And like Sand paper I wear away so fast, and it is not daylight yet.
Feels like a thousand days of blue ahead. But I see the hook of your nose. And my perversion! I want to see the sun glint on the ring. I hold to my face a mesh of my own fingers against the Sun.
In the afternoons I hid under the bed. To not see the goat eating Red Goddess. The man-she is who breathes the long-life into my winged wishes. Wish blood drops sputtering, dripping off my ears. I wanted to be his death-wish. Purest and strongest. Like incest or lust. There is a denial from you? What is this I see? I must have misheard you. Is that a word? You’re my ‘Highway-man’ and the ‘albatross around my neck’, rolled into this terrifying snow ball.
I have split my soul-face into a thousand pieces of a broken clay pot. Perfect fit but you can never really fit them back again. Agent Orange, come see me. I am beautiful, well read and cultured too. My friends grudge me that. My life is a black and white rendition of a silent movie. Of your conventional chequered boxers and the unrejecting-rejection. A confused blob of cloudy thoughts. Around your own head. Not even American born. Like the illustrated Ink strip of the first generation of English-medium-school-bred-children.
rainbow coloured
So it all started when I was 13. I was damaged. Forever. Thinking back I could have been on Marijuana. Oh except, I didn’t know what it was back then. I didn’t really believe the birds-and-bees story. But nothing could erase what I saw. No happy memories could summon the courage. Not even my grandfather sitting outside on the verandah plastered with cow dung, shocking white starched kurta and dhoti, fountain pen in pocket calling me, grinning through his glasses.
And now I am in Bangalore. I try to retain but my brain has holes. And thoughts keep slipping out, like water from a ‘Syntex’ water tank and falling on concrete. Hard cold concrete.
At least with a viable conclusion.
A teenage story. I mean the story would be a teenager if it were a person
But it is not a person.
It begins at eleven o clock
On the terrace of one of those small cute apartments
with all cars red.
And all windows shut
Where nerdy bachelors live.
The nice people.
Socially clumsy.
Tending to invisibility. With flats so clean, you could eat off the floor, except that they never let you. Polite people. Normal. Just like us, Reddy. But you had promised you’d find me when you look for me. Well, as for me I never really tried to find you. And I was happy that way. Knowing that there is a wall. And I have not become a drop of ink again.Why did he ruin it? I would have been over. Like the beer in my glass. And like him. I wish I had dropped it instead of letting it get a grip on me.
I am fresh faced? Am I? You know better. You know things that I see. I saw him doing the dance that Cranberry juice does when it falls into a crystal! But someone splashed something on my face, just then. It smelt like raw onion juice and a goat. Live goat. With those whiskers that look so scary while they twitch. I lost my toe ring. I wished that the twinkle would hold your gaze. On my feet for a while. And then you could pinch my feet with your big toe and second toe. Nicky da will go put the ‘transistor’ on now. And if I float into the future right this minute. I would be on the Red Volvo bus and I would be so sleepy that my scarf would slip from my head. Blue Scarf. The Scarf that seduces people. Scarf that knots itself into an explosion of clear water. So he woke up. He startled the air that had started sticking to his body.
There are times when I can feel my heart coming right out of my chest. In small waves. Flip side. Except that there is no sunny side up. No bright yellowness blinding my eyes. So I would read the Braille the beads of sweat were typing on to him.
I wrote a letter to you and sent it. 4 page, about 2000 huge round fat words and ’27 shades of grey’ like that song. And I sealed it with a kiss. Did you read the silence of the crowded mortuary?
more by nimmy joshi
image by gopal MS