My tribute to MJ..

After a long time I had found a seat in the local bus to Dhulikhel. I was enjoying my time watching the lady beside me in a deep sleep. The bus driver was a man in his forties and that’s why I concluded he had the radio on-tuned to some F.M station.

Two kids got on the bus from Sallaghari. The sister was irritated for no reason with the little brother. She didn’t get a seat and was standing. The bus jolted and she nearly feel down. ‘You should hold the iron handles’ he told her. ‘Hey! Why should I do what you ask me to do’ she retorted. She was a lot older than her little brother and taller. I couldn’t comprehend why she was irritated. The bus drove on and the news from the F.M station came to an end. The news reader repeated the headlines.’King of pop:Michael Jackson dies at age fifty ‘.Oh!

Tormented

before it burns out

It’s the tip of the iceberg.
It’s an old memory.
It’s the Beatles.
It’s while my guitar gently weeps…….’
It’s ‘across the universe’
It’s an ant song.
It’s about immigrants.
It’s about voices.
It’s rhetoric.
It’s the meaning of hermeneutic.
It’s the rose in my desktop.
It’s that damn music the neighbors play.
It’s about writing.
It’s about filling pages and pages.
It’s not plagiarism.
It’s an idea.
It’s ‘Finding Nemo’.
It’s philosophy.
It’s a stream of thoughts.
It’s a chain.
It’s about choices.
It’s leaving.
It’s the subconscious.
It’s an advice.
It’s a glass of water.
It’s an action shot.
It’s a relationship shot.
It’s propaganda.
It’s cynicity.
It’s a syringe.
It’s half a dose.
It’s ‘Mister Durand’.
It’s that idiot box.
It’s the first shoot.
It’s the eyes.
It’s in erasable.
It’s in the pages.
It’s the hot summer nights.
It’s the 60’s Indian music.
It’s technology.
It’s Kishore Kumar.
It’s superficial.
It’s a piece of the chunk.
It’s the weekends.
It’s the newspaper.
It’s a murder.
It’s revenge.
It’s crime.
It’s the fear of repetition.
It’s the price of paper.
It’s the price of a journey.
It’s the heat in the head.
It’s the fat in the body.
It’s a slogan ‘use and throw’.
It’s- hurried foot steps.
It’s not pretty shoes.
It’s power.
It’s independence.
It’s fear.
It’s time in passing.
It’s blood.
It’s a tool.
It’s reversal.
It’s late in an idea.
It’s hard work.
It’s money.
It’s flying.
It’s drowning.
It’s wet footsteps on the sea beach.
It’s not leftist.
It’s no revolutionary.
It’s life.

Birthday Blues..

Sahidgate, Kathmandu

They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated like ghosts even from our pity.
After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whisky in the towel.
“Want any of this stuff? Jordan?…Nick?”
I didn’t answer.
“Nick?” He asked again.
“Want any?”
“No… I just remembered that today’s my birthday.”
I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a new decade.
………………………………………………………………………………

Thirty-the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

……………………………..
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
(Excerpt from ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F.Scott Fitzgerald/Page 126)

Acronyms

To be or not to be? The statement drags me down a corridor of memories, a long library, beautiful books, yellow dusty ones illustrated with wonders I fail to recall now. In a corner, a huge beautiful green trunk, someone sits in the dark flipping and flipping, finding and losing, searching and searching.

A test -one of many, many among one. You must me in another space learning all the chemical equations, calculating the sums. You escape as always to find hope- to hang on to a strand of faith. It won’t be the same day. You only pray to a picture and cry silently. You sleep after a little stupid indulgence-very stupid.

Do what I tell you. It will cost you your marks. Prepare for the test and bring me the report. What do I make out of half finished sentences, acronyms that I have never heard, a somebody’s face I don’t have a picture. Lie to myself, teach myself half ricks and play the game.
It’s a game you play to lose. If only you played to win….