Saturday, September 5, 2015

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop.

Greyish skies, monochrome people, slanting rainfall,
A strong chai by the roadside, an assortment of bajis to eat from.
And, a city inside this city, that has to be pulled up,
that had been kept deeply buried in woolly memories.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop.

Brightening and simmering headlights with prancing droplets between,
Bobbing umbrellas and running people and confused street dogs,
Warm-hearted Malayalis dipping their noses into businesses, big and small.
Always prying, advising, policing to preserve a once-tremendous-culture.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Seven cents of land with your name marked on it.
With tapioca and bananas growing in it, to keep the soil wet.
For that time, when you will return bearing all that dust on your face
North Indian dust and if-so-happens, American and European dust.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Two parents, growing old together and wide-eyed waiting,
for the shorter-than-seconds moments together
With rasam, murukku and paayasam.
And the separation growing longer and longer and longer

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

As dreams sour and stale and become cliched,
Paths become murukky loops and you dance on the border of your equilibrium,
The steamy chai and the watered air conspire and moist your glasses
To blind you to the apparitions walking around from your memories.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Apparitions and their mirrors in reality, the change and contrast,
the ageing, the greying, the clouding, the water-exposed wrinkling,
the maturing, the 'practical'ising, the wearing down
Apparitions of connecting webs, still lingering from the past.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Against that all, an animalistic love is let loose into that bulky air,
A-class Malayali love,  dusky, bubble-gummy,coconutty,
A love to the faded and the beaten and the average and the struggling,
To the lonely, to the distant, to the separated, to the long-lost
To the oily, unanswered prayers and the unheard, fresh-smelling archanas
It balloons and wafts and floats and sinks
And lights a fire in those dying scars

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop