ARC

Salted beans
Swirling in the green
Liquid, like
Submerged elephant-gods

I dip my finger
Into the verdant concoction
Parting the colliding
Waters, like a modern Moses

A delicate softness
A sweaty embrace
Steamy yet sublime
Wet yet velvety

I lick my finger
A twang of lime
A breath of garlic
A whisper of coriander

An invisible explosion
A subliminal movement
A steady flow of
Sensual sensations

Is this for real? Do countries still exist, which will allow only “healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress”? And this is the same country with which the world is bending backwards to do business with? The engine driving global growth, subject of innumerable economic encomiums and the standard bearer of globalisation. What ever happened to the endless posturing on human rights and democracy, espoused especially by Western media?

Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair (and others of their ilk) are you listening? What happened to your noble sentiments of standing up for democracy and even defending it with war? But I forget. This is a world built on the twin pillars of hypocrisy and capitalism. Idealists, go drown in a glass of whiskey.

In the black light
Of night
I want to merge
The acme of my emotion
In your fervent receptacle

—–

The warm afternoon
Sunlight
Plays hide and seek
With our shadows
As we stare
At each other
And wonder
How many years
Have gone by
In the outside world

—–

We walked
Through the silent leaves
Crackling
In our heads

We talked
Through our thoughts
Making patterns
In our eyes

We united
Through the limpid waters
Collected from
Our frazzled souls

—–

And I looked
At the sky
To see
Dark clouds
Form your face
Distant, unperturbed
By my fears
And desires

—–

We talked
Through the night
About old loves
And new wants
Holding hands
Watching the dew settle
On the tired grass

—–

In your ears
I whisper
Sublime sounds
Making you
Squirm with
Repressed passion

—–

You sleep
Beside me
Golden dust-motes
Hovering-
Around your head
I look at you
And wonder
Why you love me

—–

I lie
In you arms
Day-dreaming
You ask me
“Is there love dear?”
I smile
“Look at me?”, I say
Question answered

—–

In the shade
We sit
Back to back
Watching the sunlight
Create warm patterns
On the fallen leaves
The slow breeze
Flowing through us
Like a brook of bliss

—–

I sit here
Counting the snowflakes
In your wet hair
Drops of water
Drip down your cheeks
I lean forward
And lick them off
Colored waters of love, from
The depths of your pensive soul

—–

Oh!
At the end
Are we?
Scaling our thoughts
But not the feelings

Do we really understand
Each other?
Or is it a masked dance
Of decaying deceit?

—–

Enough now
Of this hide and seek
Let’s lift the blindfold
And see
Everything as it is

My love
Spread like used color
On the floor
Your love
Curling into corners
Each scared
Of the other’s
Iron grasp

—–

I was
A fool
To believe
Your fingers
As they traced
The outlines
Of our hollow love

—–

Our stream
Has come
To a stop

Reading this made me think about the effectiveness of imposing a dress code by an educational institution, particularly on female students. More importantly, is it right for an educational institution to impose such restrictions, which smack of sexism? The arguments most often given to support such a stand are about how ‘proper’ dressing prevents sexual harassment of women and leads to less distraction of their male counterparts. But this, once again, is looking at things from a typically paternalistic viewpoint.

To argue that a woman who dresses in modern clothes will serve as a distraction or make her more prone to sexual attacks is forgetting one important point here. It is the male who is essentially a problem here. The Indian male, for the most part is still caught in a time-warp where a woman dressing in, say a sleeve-less or low waist jeans, would make him automatically assume that she is loose and not to be respected. It is a problem which stems from a society that has taught men that only women dressed conservatively are to be considered respectable. So for an educational insitution to attempt to ‘protect’ female students from this essentially male problem reeks of hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness.

This begs another question, touched upon nicely by the above article. Is it right for a place of learning, meant to promote egalitarian values, to impose such cultural mores? Who is right here? One does not attend a college to learn how to dress. On such potentially divisive issues it is best, I feel, to leave the matter to the students and their parents. Let them regulate themselves. Externally imposed restrictive orders will only make matters worse.

In her mouth my words swirled like white wine. She opened her mouth and I took her tongue into mine. A soft taste of conversation and sweet saliva. We kissed languidly, looking into each others eyes. It is a wonderful feeling to kiss with eyes open, fighting your body as it wants to close your eye lids. She caressed my chin and rubbed my ear. I explored her tongue, our mouths lost in each other, my hands roving through her hair while she caressed my neck.

We lay back and held hands, my fingertips restless and exploring the minute imperfections of her silken exterior. They stopped at her rigid nipples. Mottled and subtly erotic to the touch, I traced their pointed outlines. She turned and let out a long sigh into my ear and closed her eyes.

I closed my eyes too and felt her solely through my fingertips. The delicate flesh of her drooping breasts, the baby fat of her shoulders, the smooth rigidity of her stomach and the shallow depths of her belly button. The language of love being felt and re-written by my fingertips on the palimpsest of her beautiful skin. Slowly, we dissolved into each other, our peaks and depths framing the tangent of love as it was meant to be.

The evening falls
Like wet tears
Its shadows coursing
Down my cheeks

Loneliness
Creeps in behind
The fading light
Softly, silently

I labor
To breathe
In the heavy air
Filled with my yearning

For

Your smile, your smell
Your skin, your taste
Clinging to my mind
Like fading memories

Time seems to slip
Away
Into the cracks
Between our separated souls

As I look
To the east
And watch
Your flight to freedom

Can you talk in images? Can you paint the colors of my land in three dimensions? Can you evoke the smells of forgotten memories? Can you differentiate the manifold tastes of an entire ethos? Swades, the film, did and does that for me. Arguably, the best film to come out of the Indian mainstream cinema in recent times.

From the beginning to the end, it is filled with profound dialogues, scintillating and soulful music, brilliant performances and vibrant cinematography. It brings to life the true India; the many inconsistencies, the innumerable inequities, the uncountable hurdles, the heartbreaking poverty, the heady feelings, the wonderful warmth, the sensual colors, and the sense of being and belonging.

Each time I see it, it is as if I’m seeing it for the first time. Each time I share the joy, sadness, love and laughter of real people in a real film. Each time I miss the many things I’ve left behind. Each time I yearn for a land that is far away yet makes my heart shed a thousand tears. Each time I remember what I gave up in search for material want and worldly knowledge.

Almost every frame is a study in perfection. The film is full of iconic images, the boy selling water at the train station, the lead character traveling in a boat, the language of love spoken solely through the eyes of the actor and actress, the electric bulb lighting up the face of a half-blind woman, the nostalgia for one’s own country told through one heart wrenchingly beautiful and powerful song, and how can one forget the sheer beauty of the music lending an extra dimension to all the scenes mentioned and more.

Every Indian should, no, must see this film. And not just an Indian, anyone wanting to experience what it is to be an Indian and what she is at the core needs to see it. Don’t give in to the clichés of cows, beggars and poverty. India is justly more than the sum of these parts. India is indeed the crucible of all civilization as someone rightly said.

This film is worthy of a hundred awards. I bow to the courage of the director to make such a film, a film which did not appeal to an audience deadened into accepting overacted melodramas, disconnected dramas and unrealistic love stories. I salute the near genius of the music director and I congratulate the visual poetry of the cinematographer and production designer. I hope this will bring in a revolution in mainstream films and mark the beginning of an alternate approach to film making. A style of film making that revels in telling a story and yet does not shirk from pointing out the truth, disguising hard reality or including a message.

We need more people like Mohan Bhargava. We need more dreamers like him who have the courage to fashion a new India, an India worthy of admiration, an India leading the world again, taking her rightful space at civilization’s forefront. To paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore, let her become a teardrop on the cheek of eternity.