Uran

With patches of palm tree and the shinning glare of expansive water appearing, I knew we had reached Uran – a place visited once in childhood and frequently in memory.

Finally.

And nothing had changed though things had grown smaller, like the guest house with the titled roof where yesterday’s children ran in and around balconies playing or hiding each other’s things. Later those children were shouted at by their mothers because a half-read book had got left behind.

Had I come back to get it?
No.
I don’t even remember which shelf the book was left on or if there were any shelves at all. I had come to see the intactness of the place. I was but a passing warrior laden with thoughts.

The place was unmarked by sunlight and surrounded by trees winged with cool air. I marked the place from where the cane baths were removed with a dry stick on the sand. These were the hideouts our younger selves had chosen to hide buckets of shells reeking with black silt and salt water, to outwit the boys.

Under the trees plastic tables and chairs lay. We arrived and sat upon a centre table with a hole at its middle announcing its ability to hold an umbrella. Palms and coconut fronds left breezing shadows on our skin. We ate hot fish. The waiters had changed, but obviously. And amidst the roar of the noon sea came the rotting smell of weed.
I set my squinting eyes on the sea's horizon humming inconsequentials and matching word for memory. The silt and the immovable black stone yawned in the noon more bleached and porous than ever.
A seabird made a shrieking call to the quiet.

“Pleasant?”

“Hm.”

Words hung and droplets of sweat etched our backs. A scent of afternoon as contaminated as leftover food, the moo of a distant cow and passing clouds eluded us on the periphery of our minds.

At that moment we could walk into any place restored by memory. We could also live on the other side if we so chose.

Once in a while.

Just once upon a time.

Unfinished Goa

Sand swipes my eye
I cannot see
the fisherman’s trail

Boats wobble
till my eyes steady

Elephants of the sea
call out to giraffes of the sky
they are all grey

In mental combat
I drink hard glasses of wine

The road rips the field
the rain, the road
They are all mine

The food grows alive
in me

dawn arrives
as the first thought
on a second morning

A city confused,
a cousin of the village
- a disqualified town

Bartholomew James Jude
Sinners in ripe youth
Dance in music and
mandos

(c) Rochelle Potkar

Phook

Phoonk – the apparently best surprise comedy I have ever seen in years.

And they didn’t even tout it as a spoof-of-sorts.

It starts out all fine with the director believing in telling us right from the start who the perpetrators were going to be and by the interval what they were going to do. So all we are left with is to add up the trailer and the hype and there: you have just the execution and “the how” left to see.
So when it disappoints, making you chuckle instead of jitter you don’t even think ‘why’. Because everything has been already told!

I won’t go into the bickering. I am done. I ‘used’ few friends over a cuppa for that. All I really want to say is about the structure, maybe plead: Couldn’t they play with it? Like not telling us who the perpetrators would be.
Right. It would then become a thriller-horror or some ill-fitting genre but hic “Who cares?”

At least it would have entertained.

at Shah Farm

There was so much green on the outside
that you could be sick, land sick
like sea-sick.

And lost

And sad

And ‘in the middle’

And left to the chance
of a hot meal
when your survival instincts
revive

People spill over the house
like froth from a beer glass
- how well they adjust to
nooks and crannies
how barren are the rooms
- a mind with its ideas, a room with its furniture
gives character
It struck.

what remained weren’t words
but the rusty, rain-watered swing
and
Shah or Shah Impersonator’s bean-counting face

the grassy dirt paths home
and wet winding wheels

and the people at the back (of the car)
gagging you with rock songs

I told you
there was too much green

-Rochelle Potkar

[we won’t talk of the states of mind we carry.]

Be like my city/reverse justice

heartaches
quake
bombs and
bomb blasts

riots
rains
and loves that don't last

my city keeps moving

...

What is the distance between darkness to light?
A hair's breadth.

rat

when we were above the ground
it was sushi on the round

when we were above the ground
the rail tracks made an arresting sound

when we were above the ground
sound of a large sea surround

when we were above the ground
the wind sped abound

when we were above the ground
the rain fell sound by sound