Another use

Love, my love
Is ground glass
With jagged edges
Don’t let it fall
Or hold onto tight
You may get a cut
Don’t look through it
World will appear blur
Just make it into shades
Wear them on your eyes
It will help you focus
On keeping me in your sight

---

A sheet of ground glass is used for the manual focusing of both still and motion picture cameras - Wikipedia

Q*: Have you tried going cold turkey?

A few authors in this world are not just mere mortals sitting at their writing desks and penning down stuff. They are pure evil. They have devilish powers and they have ulterior motives. Their pens are filled with magic potions. They are like those drug peddlers who will entice you, enamor you, engage you and finally, end you. You start with reading one of their books and you know what... it's already too late. You can't escape. You are addicted. You want to read ALL, ALL, ALL.

So, let me put, in chronological order, how I have been doped all my growing up years by the following heartless brutes...

Enid Blyton
She brought a spark of Satan in my angelic childhood. For her sake, the only person I have ever ass-licked in my entire life is my school librarian. But since I was issued two books instead of one every week, I think it was all worth it.
Also, I had an invisible friend called 'Shy' for a few years. She was a long lost twin of Amelia Jane. I had hyped her enough to make Emma Bee extremely envious of her. It was a lot of fun seeing her shout at vacant spaces, in pretence of arguing with 'Shy'

R.K. Narayan
I only read his first book after I had watched a good amount of 'Malgudi Days' on DD-1. I loved Swamy and his antics and fantasized about South Indian life and its food( which I have had enough of, by the way). He provided an insight into an India which was so alien to me at that time that I just wanted to go there and see it all by myself. His books were a perfect everyday read because they made simple routines sound so interesting.

Agatha Christie
She is the worst of the lot. You start a book by her and you do not put it down till you have reached the end. So what is you become asocial or irresponsible... So what if the school homework is missed or your mother keeps calling for dinner or there are guests you are required to greet or the hell breaks loose and comes crashing on your head...her books are a break free read. Front to back. Period.

P.G. Wodehouse
This sunshine author is my savior. I was miserable in the last two years of my school life. I had taken science and maths as my electives( Can you beat it! BY CHOICE!)... I couldn't study, hid in my shell, lost all interest in life and was like a zombie... till he dropped by and resurrected me. I read him on the sly, hid him in my text books while the classes were on, and flunked my way out of those two years laughing my head off! I have read and re-read all his books... and yet whenever I am in one of my morbid moods, I pick him up and voila! I smile.
Also, he is responsible for my love of everything English... and since he is dead and I can't treat him to an English brunch, someday I will have a cupboard in my house full of hard bound copies of all his books (which of course, I will keep locked, in case you are making plans of borrowing him)

Vikram Seth
He is my kind of a writer... honest and simple... who one can read right through like an open book. He writes fiction in a real kind of way and I am in love with his poetry. Since I read 'The Golden Gate' five years ago, I suffer from this terrible urge to rhyme everything. So, you can blame all my verses on him, for he is the one who inspired this art, what can I say more except that, he is the man after my own heart.

Salman Rushdie
What an obsessive compulsive disorder he is! I can't understand what he writes, the way he writes it and why he writes it... still every time he writes something, I have to go to a bookstore, buy it, attempt it and then throw it on my bookshelf! Maybe subconsciously I want to be a part of 'that group' which 'can understand' what he writes...for what else can be the reason for this irrational behavior in which I flush my money down the drain, buying the books I will NEVER EVER READ!

Margaret Atwood
She is the recent one... and is turning out to be a persistent one... she has sort of brought up the girl in me into a woman... and is making this 'feminism' affliction worse day by day... so may lord bless the guy who ends up with me... for he is going to have SUCH A HARD TIME! No, seriously, whatever gender you are, read 'The Handmaid's Tale'... its like being delivered into a completely different perspective... like you have scuba dived into the some unfathomable depths and saw something brand new... it is a cathartic experience.

Aksar
Since I read as many blogs as books, it's only fair I get addicted to at least one, isn't it? And so I am. I think I will end up stalking this blog to its death( No, I take this back, please don't die). It is like my daily bread and there has not been a day when I have not visited this site for some poetry... I just click on a random archive link and soothe my stressed nerves ...this works wonders, believe me! This is one blog which should be a book (which I can help compile, really!)

--
Reading a particular author repeatedly is almost same as discovering a new person, befriending a stranger (albeit in a very one-sided way)... because no matter whatever degree of fiction an author pens down, a little bit of him or her always creeps into it... and no matter with how much of a detached critic's eye you read a book... a little bit of it creeps into you too!It's only fair...isn't it?

----
*A: Did you really ask that, DID YOU? Are you even aware what contra indications of this can be, ARE YOU? I tried it and yes, I got random urges to steal books, flick them straight off the bookshelves of fancy stores (though I can blame SK for putting this fancy idea in my head in the first place)... No, I would rather be a chronic reader than a kleptomaniac any day... Wouldn't you?

The Scorecard

Life isn't arithmetic.
I know that, you know that.
Still, we will keep the count
Of who called whom and when
And how many times and for
How many minutes in the
Abacuses of our minds

I always lead the score
And I do wait for you
To catch up with mine
But you never have time
So I will again make this call
Life isn't arithmetic, I know
But life is in love, after all

--

Qateel Shifai would have sighed, shook his head and just said...

Thak gayaa main karate-karate yaad tujhako
Ab tujhe main yaad aanaa chahata huun

[I am tired of remembering you forever
Now I want you to return me this favour]

From a pair of lost ear rings

Amid an altercation of egos
And my growing suspicions
You shout, "Get Lost"
I play along, "I will"

--

Anyways
It is not that difficult to get lost these days
I know an art, opposite of personification
I can’t recall the word but I read somewhere
Objectification? Abstraction? Dehumanization?
I don’t know ... but I sure know this trick
In which I become a pair of gold ear rings
The same ones you buy for her birthday
The same ones that manage to get away
In the friction of your lust laden love
Marred by giggles and pushes and shoves
I conveniently slip out of her ears
And lie in a crease of the sheet
Witnessing both your bodies meet
And regretting all my marital years
Next day when you leave in haste
Because whatever said and done
A marriage needs its proper place
Even if it is to disguise disgrace
I am still hiding in that crease
As lost as you wanted me to be

--

I don't know yet how this will end
I may walk away, start a new trend
Or I may endure what I don't deserve
For it's not easy to un-learn love

Even her dark side is witty

It is such a delight to discover a poet like Dorothy Parker.
She is funny, witty and such a 'wisecracker'.
I can imagine her, wearing a fancy hat, sitting in one of those upper class Manhattan lounges, sipping a margarita, and driving everyone crazy with her candid conversations.

No poet is spared a dark side and because I have such a pre-dilection for exploring dark poetry, I present a simple yet pensive account by her of why she stopped attempting suicides (and died a natural death at age 73).

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Here, she is a little cynical about love(maybe like everyone who has experienced the falling in it is)...

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Aah! What a woman!

PS: If you want to read more by her, click on the title of this post. It has a link to most of the poetry written by her.

Pictionary friends

Look! Look! What I re-discovered after a gap of nearly two years!



My heart was so jumping with joy
That I could neither guess nor draw
I kept losing hands over fist
Caught curses in two full lists
Still, let me get all poetical and say
May pictionary intersperse all my bad days

It is a truth widely acknowledged that a real game of pictionary cannot be played without shouting at your team mates and almost strangling the competing ones! Maybe that is why the last line of the pictionary rule booklet reads "Remember: Friends are or life, not just for an evening of pictionary".