ARC

(On June 1st this blog turned two years old and adding the two years time I wrote on an older blog elsewhere that makes it a total four years of blogging. So instead of the usual anniversary post I decided to ask four of my favorite bloggers to contribute a guest post here. Happily, they all accepted immediately. So here is the second guest post. The rest will follow roughly in the chronological order in which I came to know them. Each guest blogger will directly respond to your comments to their respective posts.

Australopithecus has been blogging for about three years now and spreading cheer and laughter throughout that time. What I love about his writing is his sharp wit and the keen insights he offers behind what can often seem to be harmless humor. Sarcasm and irony mixed with humor are not easy bedfellows to manage but he makes it all look so easy.)

I get an email from Anil. He wanted me to have a guest post on his blog. More like a pest post I thought. Anyway since it was his blog and therefore his funeral, I asked “What flowers should I send? “

All right. Blogging and all is fine when it’s your own space to abuse. The moment someone else lends you his space to (ab)use…(are you regretting this already Anil?) that’s when you’ve got to think. What does one write about? Anyway since you idiots err… I meant you fine readers are stuck with me…I might as well dish out my usual drivel.

The presidential elections seem to have captured everyone’s imagination. Well at least the alleged imagination of all the chaps down at the mere 141542 X 10234 ****odd news channels that seem to occupy the airways. Before the major parties announced their nominees all these chaps were obsessing over it…like those kids that write the JEE. It’s not half as important. It seems an easy job. All one seems to have to do is to stay awake during the most boring occasions, apply a deft rubber stamp here and there as and when ‘Madamji’ instructs you to…Oh! Wait! Am I getting confused with the office of the Prime Minister? Anyway. One gives out awards to those whom you are told to give out awards…is it just me or does this job sound more like an office peon. The only difference is instead of awards peon hands out salary cheques instead of awards. In fact the peon doesn’t even have to be awake during important functions.

Oh and when there is competition and elections can mudslinging be far behind? Let us take a quick look at the hopefuls. (For the hopeless, please look up Wikipedia for condition of the Indian people)

One of the candidates that seem to have emerged is Ms Pratibha Qatil.

(On June 1st this blog turned two years old and adding the two years time I wrote on an older blog elsewhere that makes it a total four years of blogging. So instead of the usual anniversary post I decided to ask four of my favorite bloggers to contribute a guest post here. Happily, they all accepted immediately. So here is the first guest post. The rest will follow roughly in the chronological order in which I came to know them. Each guest blogger will directly respond to your comments to their respective posts.

Phantasmagoria was a regular and very popular blogger on Rediffblogs for almost 3 years. She recently stopped writing there but I hope she will soon begin again elsewhere. What I love about her writing is her simplicity and economy of means. Using the simplest language and minimum number of words she manages to evoke the deepest of feelings.)

You’ve left.
But memories of you fall like warm summer rain.
It was just yesterday that you had wrapped your
arms around me, pushed the hair out of my eyes
and kissed one questioning eyebrow and then the other.

This way, I tell myself, I live the day twice over.
It was at this time yesterday that we pulled up
at a mountainside store and asked for directions.
It was now that you drew patterns on my thigh,

Let me sleep, I would plead. Sure sweety, you said
And started to write my name, then yours, and then
suggestive messages. It is a whole day later and if I
close my eyes I can as yet feel your hand around me,

pulling me closer into you, stealing kisses on the
road that leads straight into a sky heavy with rain.
I am dreading tomorrow or the day after. Will we
forget the sulk I was pulling for not getting my way.

I have already forgotten the song we listened to as
we drove through the rain falling in sullen sheets, the
mountain is now littered with discarded words of a song
that filled our silences. And now possibly discarded

memories will flutter out of the grasp of our entwined fingers.
Your body curves into mine as we lie on clean, antiseptic
sheets. The sun outside the window sets without ceremony.
The day draws to an end and even the banter has slowed down.

We look at each other longer, kiss softer, hold tighter.
The streets are bright with the fallen rain and the lights
from passing cars. Yesterday at this time we were saying
goodbye and I was saying, not yet. Let me make a memory.

Yesterday at this time you had already left.

© Phantasmagoria

It looks as if some banks in India consider themselves above the law. In spite of a Supreme Court order to the contrary, banks such as the ICICI Bank continue to employ private agencies for debt recovery, which in turn employ goons and other anti-social elements to intimidate the defaulters and make them cough up the money. Recently, in Hyderabad, this has resulted in the tragic death of a government employee after he was allegedly held in confinement by debt recovery agents who worked for a loan recovery agency which had a tie up with ICICI Bank. The bank and the agency of course deny any wrong doing on their part.

Failure by the police to control these agencies has resulted in the banks blatantly ignoring the Supreme Court oder, which expressly forbids hiring goons and using force to recover defaulted loans. While the defaulter is at fault for not paying up on time the bank should not resort to illegal means to recover the money. Given India’s glacial judicial system where it takes years for a case to be resolved it is no wonder then that private banks are resorting to force and coercion to get back their money. However, this should be condemned and prevented as no bank can and should consider themselves above the law. If not anything this will lead to the strengthening of goons who might resort to other illegal activities given their patronage and protection by the banks.

The police should make sure that the guilty parties are brought to justice in the above case and make sure that the said bank/agency and others do not resort to using the same tactics again. Bank customers should also put pressure on their bank when they hear about such cases to desist from using such unlawful means. After all, the one thing these banks fear is bad publicity and that is a power bank customers can use to influence their banks to mend their ways.

The clouds hang in the sunless sky like fluffy pink pillows.
The air is still between us. I smell you between the smells
of growing grass and blooming azaleas. You are curled up
holding my hand between yours. You can feel my little finger
move slowly along your stomach. Textures are teased out in
an exploration of tender territory. I lean forward and run my
tongue along the back of your neck, through gleaming hair
and salty skin. The still air between us suffers, squeezed
between shivering bodies. Your leg slowly slides along mine,
miming a language in movement. I let the light of dawn flow
across your freckled forehead and pool in your opening eyes.
I wait for the breathless breeze to surround us and then blow
through your hair. I bend over and touch your lips, soft like sin
and flecked with spots of red teeth marks. I close the gap with
my lips and lazy light struggles to escape their locked confines.
The careless cries of birds wash over our aroused senses. We
sink into seconds and stretch them along our sinuous spines.

Silently, dawn parts from us like a jilted lover. The yellow overseer
is riding in on her familiar coattails. The brittle business of another
day awaits his grim golden gaze. You leave too as morning moves
her mundane face on us. Fie! A perpetual interrupter of intimate
auroral moments is here yet again to erase the early spoils.