Poem | Anish Vyavahare

Source : freeimages.com

On Being a Poet


On days when words come to you like luscious
grapes deseeded and deskinned,

You feel intelligent, accomplished, vain,
pretentious, like a poet, an insider.

Elitist.

With airs, pointy shoes, English pipe, upturned
nose.

Monocle.

You feel intelligent, accomplished, vain,
pretentious, like a poet.

With airs, earthy kurta, imported leather, shabby
hair.

Monotone.

You feel icky.

You feel defeated.

You feel the pain of so many other poets if not all
poets.



You forgive yourself.

You couldn't even manage being yourself.

You became a character, a trope, your fate;

The sawed off part of your dream.

You couldn't brake before the finish line.



You forgive yourself.

After you are sober again

And you have shed at least some words.

Poetry| Dibyajyoti Sarma

Abstract Art by Carmen Guedez
Source : http://fineartamerica.com

In which we dream of fish

I cannot eat fish anymore. The bones prick my gullet.
I cannot eat much else either, an old man without teeth
imprisoned in his bed smelling of piss and filth
waiting for the boatman to free me of this body.

I close my eyes and my mouth tastes ilish with mustard seeds.
I gulp and I see other fish – a roasted dark goroi for the
breakfast of water-soaked rice, a dancing kawoi in the courtyard
a kingly bhokua caught in the bamboo net in Moranadi
a rough kokila for the uruka feast
and a single scale of a tall rou, wearing which
she pledged her miserable life to mine.

I turn and find myself in a rice merchant’s barge
riding the red torrents of the lunatic river.
Is he Tejimola’s father
in the quest for that lonesome lotus which would be
his daughter destined to be murdered and be born again?
Is he Chando Sadagar
who would share with me the oozing pain of Behula’s floating mausoleum?

The lunatic river takes the rice merchant underwater to keep
company with the childless widows, ugly virgins, paddy
seedlings and mute goslings, and the boatman tells me how
a mermaid stole his heart and how he now fills the emptiness
inside his ribcage with hyacinth roots and dry fish bones. He
opens the cave beneath his withering flesh and I see
the river dolphins in the waves taunting my ambition.

I ride a river dolphin and escape the lunatic god
for the tattered embrace of the wizened Beki, who takes me
to her jubilant granddaughter, the dancing Manas, who
insists I join the feast within the breadth of her betrothed.

I turn and Luit shallows me. He is the creation, the farmer of
the fish, the satiation of man’s hunger, our very breath, rice
fields, thatched huts, betel leaves, fishhooks. I dazzle in the
sheen of the silvery embrace like the fins of a kanduli, amidst
the sandy islands the Old Man River wears like golden
armour to fight the surging blue waves in a faraway country
which is his enemy, his one true love, his everlasting death.

I follow the creator’s son on his endless hunt, lose my way and
find his offspring, each bountiful, who offer me fishes plucked
from their hearts, puthi, darikana, moua, bariala, pithia, pabho, the
restless chegeli, the fulgent chanda, and the reeking gethu, magur and
turi and brown little crabs, tadpoles and violent hyacinth flowers and
yellow bamboo shoots, red tomatoes, and creamy elephant apples and
magenta banana flowers, blue flowering stalks and green leaves.

I jump from one boat to another. I cross from one river to another.
In Bhogdoi, I witness Sukaphaa’s royal procession. In Dhansiri, a
Bihu dancer washes her glee. In Dihing, Joymati keeps quiet. In
Barak, the Goddess dances naked. I find grandfather’s bones in
Kolong. In Kopili, rice fields turn golden. In Subansiri, I mourn for
Jhonki and Panoi. In Kushiyara, I meet him again, desperate lover
Luit, the mortal enemy, rushing to his death for a new birth.

The Old Man River, he cannot wait. He is now his lover
Jamuna, fertility spilling out of her uncontainable youth, drowning
villages and cities, until they would come to life again when the
youth was spent and she was an exhausted old crone, Meghna, at
the edge of that inevitable end where memories are mirages and
expectations are prickly thorns in the heels, where you despise
your desired destination and you have no ways to begin again.

I close my eyes and my mouth tastes ilish with mustard seeds.
I cannot sleep, an old man without teeth
imprisoned in his bed smelling of piss and filth
waiting for the boatman. He would not catch me a fish.

Author's note : These lines are for my paternal grandfather who spent much of his youth as a priest somewhere near Rangpur, now a city in Bangladesh not far from Cooch Behar in West Bengal. He claimed he had a large farmhouse somewhere in a beautiful village there, which my grandmother, who was left behind, dismissed as a tall tale. For, in the end, on a hot July morning in 1947, he returned to his ancestral home in Nalbari a beggar, with just a handful of Queen Victoria’s gold coins tucked to the knot of his dhoti. Yet, until the end, he would regale us with the stories of the open country blessed with Teesta’s yearly visits.



In which we are in the city

The Djinns have abandoned the city, this city of rattling
bones and dreams of power, leaving behind a diminished
sky and putrid air, where concrete structures sprout glass
shelters for those who cannot tell apart past from future

and the dead, who haunt this wreckage, trapped in the cracks of
these seven cities, one growing from the ruins of another, like
mushrooms in a rainforest, cannot leave; their sighs escalating
the summer days, their despair suspending the winter nights

and Abhai Chand waits for three hundred years, his eyes open
his mouth shut, outside the bloodied shrine of Sarmad Shaheed
for the return of his naked beloved who rejected the divine to make
him a god, to sing to him again the glories of heaven in a speck of

dust, where next to the ittar seller, outside the diseased steps of
Hindu Rao hospital, Ruqaiya Begum hunts for the tabiz she lost
the morning the firangis arrived to decorate the blood-thirsty
pillars of the Khooni Darwaza with the bodies of her three sons

and her grandmother Anarkali, who rejected pearls of the prince
for the throbbing arms of the wheat merchant’s son, who traded
her nights with the waking dream of her lover crossing the river
until jealous Yamuna claimed him for herself, now collects firewood

for the blazing pyres of the Nigambodh Ghat, where memories
outlive scorched flesh, where the young stable boy digs for the
skeleton of his liege, the shepherd who built a city of stone
amidst dry grass, Qila Rai Pithora, where hiding behind the

crumbling walls beneath the glimmer of neon light, Jamal Yakut
remembers another city and another ruler who drew the plans of
her perilous ascent on the chasm of his dark skin, the power of
which he cannot escape from even in death, and now he frequents

forgotten museums and dead trees, amid the tourists with their
children and their selfie sticks and their water bottles, where in the
far corner amid broken faces of dancing girls, Dharmapal, the monk
guards his master’s ashes, until Kanisha returns to dominate the earth

and Maitreya arrives to free him from this cycle of unending death
when this wait would be over, when the summer days would collide
with the winter nights in a whirlpool of dust storm exchanging blood
for bone, when the Djinns would return to claim their shares of death

Poems | Michael Creighton

Artwork : Divya Adusumilli

Left Out 

The fan may whine
but the curd and pickle
have no sympathy.
Anyway, there’s really
no helping it:
the rice pilau never
could take the April heat.

Outside on the doorstep,
the newspaper waits
for the day to unfold.


Sway

I didn’t get a look at her face
as she darted past me

in the back of that three-wheeler
on Ring Road—

just a glimpse of her long neck
as her thick black curls

flew up in the April wind
like a flight of startled swallows

or the feeling you get in your stomach
when something shifts

under distant mountains
and the tall buildings in your city

suddenly start to sway.



Water and Smoke

In the sudden rain, there’s no escape
from the dank press of men
beneath the paan walla’s tarp.

Some smoke, some scowl,
one laughs as he shoots
red streams of betel nut juice

into the flooded street.
Last night, I dreamed
I dropped off the edge

of the earth, into rough sea—
and now I see my reflection
in the window of a car

running slow through rushing water:
new lines, gray clumps spreading.
Across the street, the asphalt mixer

belches steam and soot
and the wind picks up,
throws rain across our shoes.

From a passing radio,
comes the high pitched wail
of an old Bollywood show tune:

Tonight, a burning lamp 
will turn to water and smoke—
ten rupees buys a single, then:

scratch, suck, glow,
and the easy brush
of shoulders and smoke.

Poems | Lorri Primavera

Source : http://www.123rf.com/

America

America
You have betrayed me
I am a prisoner in your walls
When you stripped me naked of my clothes dignity and my love for you
Things will never be the same between us
America
You have betrayed me
 and things will never be the same between us


3 Haiku


Hernandez sits quietly
He doesn't speak much English
Our smiles meet

Slipper socks
Hospital socks
Slowly slouching off my feet

Sun shines outside
Leaves move in the breeze
I sit locked inside
shivering in my hospital robe


Jack Kerouac and Day 2

Jack you old fella roma through the Americas
Jack you old romantic old love in New Mehico, Califonee, NY streets
 all love
Jack you beat old tattered flannel
Jack you get me through Day 2

Poems | Karan Mujoo

Artwork : Chintu Das

About nothing in particular

I have just come back
from the market,
where I bought rice at a loss
but pickle at a bargain.
I went to the loo
and heard the rain song.
‘Monsoons already’, I wondered.
Then I realized I had
left the damn motor on.
There are some things in
life you’ll always be bad at,
for me it is leaving the motor on.
I meditate on a hundred
things and do nothing
substantial at all.
I have bunked work,
to spy on my day,
figure out what it does
during my absence.
I feel a bit like an intruder
but it’s alright.
I have the time today,
to hear the chirping of birds,
to realize that the
squirrel is just a mouse
with a bushy tail.
To think about the
woman who loves me
and the woman I love.
But in the end
I give it all up.
I embrace
my own private
brand of nihilism
and watch the army
of seconds go marching
on and on.



Guilt of a fat bourgeois 
or Janpath pe Lathpath

I was walking in Janpath
today drunk and stoned.
Drunk on expensive beer
and stoned on free hash.
When I came across a sprawled
baby, dead or alive I couldn't tell.
It just lay there, the little babe,
as if it was no big fucking deal.
People walked right by eating
their burgers and laughing.
I too have just walked by,
millions of times,
eating burgers and laughing.
but this time I couldn't .
A woman, head bowed,
hair matted with dirt
sat next to the babe, tired, lost.
The third member of this
unfortunate entourage was
a child or a man or a man child.
Who lay fatally and foetally.
In throes of drugs, or drink,
or just plain old fucking sorrow.

So, I did what a fat bourgeois does best.
I dived into my wallet of privilege,
took out the father of this dying nation.
And I applied a band aid
to a mother fucking haemorrhage.
And all this while the giant
Indian flag fluttered in the background.
So proud, so proud.


Average

I was born in an average house,
with average doors and average windows.
In school, I was an average student,
with average marks and average pranks.
An average child who could just about
read and write.
In the playground, I was an average player,
an average batsman with an average average.
In love, I was an average lover.
An average kisser, with average technique.
At work, I am an average employee,
with average output and average lunch breaks.
At home, I am an average son.
Part black sheep, part decent one.
I am an average elder brother,
with average words of wisdom.
I am an average writer,
with average words,
writing this average poem,
for all us average people.




The shouting lady

There is a factory in India
that produces short, stocky
middle aged, domesticated women
wearing sarees that look the same.
One of them lives next door.
The first time we met
she was shouting at my roommate
about something trivial.
That was her thing,
she loved to shout at people.
She shouted at us, at her sons,
at our landlady, at her maid,
at the garbage guy, at the kiryana
store uncle, at the world, at the moon,
 at the stars, at God himself.
But for some reason
I never got angry when
she shouted at me.
I always smiled and joked
with her.
Slowly she came around
and I can tell you for all her
shouting she had a heart
of gold.
She doesn’t shout at me anymore.
But as I am writing this,
her son is getting an earful,
he’s giving some back,
but it’s useless,
she has too much
experience.

Poems | Kevin Pennington

Artwork : Divya Adusumilli

As Joe Feeds the Koi

I walk in a blackbird's shadow
mumbling poetry I forgot when I was
in the realm of the dead.

I am standing on Joe’s bridge
that crosses his electric creek,
I am both living and dead.

I am writing in a death of prosperous
Lilacs. Everything is seen with eyes
the color of rust.

What are you and I, Joe?
Are we nephilim,
seraphim,
or just a hologram?

We talk comics & watch TV.
He reads me haiku he wrote in
English & Japanese:

a race of orange
under the murky water
as Joe feeds the koi.



Mandala

Monks pour sand
slowly by hand;
clockwise we spin,
a motion in the wind.
We are a living mandala,
drawn with Dharma
in colored sand.
We are a net thrown wide,
each knot a human heart.
A circle of death, life, and rebirth.
We are Four Gates.
Breath in, breath out.
No rising, no falling.
Brush away fear and pain
until only compassion
and dusty wind remain.



Faded Yellow Kansas

My father still plows
the farm we lost. His back
hurts all the time. He rides
the John Deer of his mind,
planting vast fields; behind
faded yellow Kansas grows
corn, wheat, maize.
A fire-forged Baptist, he taught
me to wake at sunrise,
to drive the blue pickup,
and to piss outside. My father is
a stone, eroded to the core.
In summer, the sunflower faces
live in drainage ditches;
the creeks dry up, ponds empty,
fogs of dust, floating sandpaper
in our eyes, in our skin.
This is the hushed place,
forgotten by all,
only a whisper in the
wind.

Poems | Daniel Barbare

Artwork : Chintu Das

The Janitor Says

When I feel like a fool in a

   lonely world

happiness is like polishing

   the sun in the sky

and the silver lining on the

   sill

is like making a window

somewhere out there shine.

Mopping the Tiles

In

the

deep

and

the

dark

in

the

grout

of

the

groove

of

things

happily

like

clay

I

find

my

medium.

Poems| Changming Yuan

Source : Free images

Loose Thought

Like a tiny fish

Swimming along a summer streamlet

Elusive

To the nimblest human hand

Even after rushing into a pond or lake

It can never be caught

Within the largest net

Of language

The Meditating Mind

Imagine, how it bubbles

Bubbling like a swamp

With broken bubbles  

How it calms down

All ripples vanishing

Under the still starlight

An ocean of lotus

That blooms

Towards wisdom

In the Peach Flower Garden

You see no point

In dreaming the only dream that contains

Only fragments as unreal

As a collage in a mirage

The only fragments that make up history. You see

A point in the unlikelihood of a world

Where other creatures have long stopped

Dreaming

Swirling

Among the seven colors

Of the paint, the painting

Gives rise to a swirl

Turning fast enough

To send you up to a little cloud

Like an eagle gliding through

The serenity of autumn sky

Neither the eagle nor you cast

Any shadow down as the earth

Keeps rotating as leisurely

As any other day beyond the black hole

When you return and stand on a

Hilltop, the painting is still

Unfolding itself, but the eagle has

Vanished high up into another sky 

Prose | Harish Mohan

Source : http://hivewallpaper.com/

Shekhar Joshi and the sport of life

The time reads 07:30 am on a large oversized clock which dangles in long intervals at the platform of the Vadodara railway station. As you walk up to it, you read  the words ‘ Time Controls’ written in big black front placed right at the center.  I recalled having seen something similar at the Mumbai Central railway station. These must be old Victorian clocks from the British era which must have stayed on with the Indian Railways.

On this unusually cold morning towards the end of March, I found myself philosophizing in front of that grand clock of the railway station. By my accounts, I had reached early and there were about 15 minutes before the arrival of the train. I had seen enough of the surroundings to be thrilled by any new phenomenon particularly so early in the morning. I had seen the porters still reluctant to make their peace with the morning while chatting with the food vendors over a cup of badly brewed tea from the vending machines. I had seen the dogs being shooed away by the people who used to clean the railway station. They are a happy and a proud lot these days. They have been given fresh clean uniforms by the government. Under the Swacch Bharat initiative, they seem to have found a new sense of respect. At least the dogs definitely seemed to think so, or it seemed from their faces.

With nothing much to do, I ventured out slowly to the newspaper vendor hoping to buy a book which may keep me occupied if I was not asleep on the train. The newspaper vendor looked at me with a happiness which made me think that I was his first customer for the day. As my eyes searched through the magazines, I heard a faint chuckle on the other end of the stall.

“Saala, bach gaye kal. Match jeet gayein.”

These were the only words I could make out from his betel-stained mouth. It was not too difficult to see who they were. The two ticket collectors stood out the platform in their black jackets draped over a white uniform with a pink tie. They were the figures of authority, government servants who had got a comfortable job in the Railways and now seemed to be cherishing their slow paced life. The man who had said these words was a bit on the older side, with his faint flickering white moustache. On his right was what seemed to be a man just about entering his middle age. He looked to be about 5 years older than I am and I am by no means young. ( Officially, that can be vouched by the fact that I have even crossed the great demographic that the National Population register calls as the ‘youth of India’.) The man on the right, who looked like the younger of the two, seemed to silently approve the remarks of his superior.  Not wanting to be a fly on the wall in the conversation, I immediately picked up the newspaper and rushed to the nearest bench to read it.

I can still see the two from the corner of the eye. Their figures are blurred, existing only in silhouettes. I am trying to keep my attention on the newspaper but there is something at the back of my mind that seems to bother me. I cannot really put a finger on it, but it seems to be one of those tiny little nuggets of thought that have led a dormant existence in some deep dark corner of the brain and are now crawling on the surface of the cranium to express itself.

The face of the young ticket collector seems so familiar but I just cannot commit it to memory. My eyes are wide awake as I begin to shake off my stupor. Both of them have their back towards me now. They exchange the names of the passengers on the list. The younger one has broad shoulders and as he turns towards his superior to exchange and submit the final list, a small little ponytail at the back of his head flutters in the air. The only term I can give for it is the one we used to call it in our childhood, the puchdi.

The puchdi. It was Shekhar Joshi after all.

Even though it has been about 20 years, I remember the events of that morning today with as much freshness and clarity with which I now recall Shekhar’s face. I had enrolled myself into the Kiran More Sports Cricket Academy during my school vacations and found myself training for cricket with many other talented cricketers. It was more a reflection of my childhood dream to pick up a sport in any way and excel at it. During all those family functions when relatives used to prod us and ask that all too familiar question about what it was that you wanted to be when you grew up, I would always say that I didn’t really know. But I knew. Deep down, all I ever wanted to be was a sportsman. So to the constant bewilderment of my parents, I signed up for every sporting course available in the vacation and cricket happened to be one of them.

I used to go to the KMSCA grounds in the morning batch. There were very few players who used to come in the morning batch. Most of them were school kids who were sent for their vacation camps. They were called the amateurs. Then there were those who mostly belonged to the evening batch. They used to come to the morning for some early warm-ups, bowling drills, and light exercise. These consisted mostly of Ranji probables and the people who were filled with potential wanting to make it to the Ranji team. They were called the seniors. In between both of them were the people who were potentially good and more skilled than the school kids, but really not good enough to make it to the evening batch which used to be more intense and had greater competition. I say this because, on some rare days, I was called to the evening batch and asked to bowl leg spin for over two hours at the nets to local cricketers who were polishing their skill for the rest of the season. Looking back, it was one of the greatest moments of my short life as a wannabe sportsman. But a more apt description for it would be the Spanish phrase  ‘Fuera Bonita Miestra Duro’ which literally translates to ‘It was great while it lasted.’

There were different coaches for the morning as well as the evening batch. Funnily enough, in the morning batch, the coaches thought of me more as a batsman than a bowler. There were hardly a handful of potential batsmen in the ‘ in betweens’ as I called them  and this meant that during the morning nets, I had a good chance to have a twenty minute net in front of the bowling machine and the local ‘senior’ bowlers.  This was the greatest moment of glory in what was an otherwise dull morning training session. There was a small kid who showed amazing skills who used to pad up first at the nets. The coach and the bowlers took it easy with the kid. The seniors would run up short and bowl their arms over to the kid who would time each ball with effortless ease. I was up second after the kid. By the time  I went and took my mark at the crease after the kid had left, the senior bowlers had gone back to their original run up and marked their territory by ferociously brushing their studs against the turf.

It was scary.

Fast bowling is the most beastly act in cricket which is often called a gentleman’s game. Everything that they tell you in television about facing fast bowling is true. The heart palpitates at an unbelievably fast rate. The feet try and shuffle a bit if they are not shivering. As a fast bowler approaches the bowling crease with the gait of a horse and the body of a bull armed with a big red leather ball in his hands, all you can hope is put your feet where the ball pitches and hope for the bat to connect with the ball. This, of course, is a highly unlikely event. The more likely event is that before you can blink your eyes and put your feet forward, the ball has already whooshed  past your body and the world around you looks shaded in a dizzy haze. You are then brought to earth by the grunt of the fast bowler as he catches up with his breath at the end of the run facing you with a glare.

As I marked my spot and looked forward to face the bowlers at the nets today, I try and scan the herd of fast bowlers for all potential signs of warning. There is the usual lot and having faced them a bit now, I can sense whether they would be hostile purely by their mood before the run-up. That morning with the rest of the bowlers, there is a new addition from the evening batch.

Shekhar Joshi.

It was difficult to miss Shekhar during the evening batches. He was one among many of the young boys who had come from Ratlam for the camp. Most of them had  fought with their parents to take up cricket as a professional sport. Their arrival was their sign of rebellion and independence.  They were a bunch that stayed together in cramped rooms and looked around for jobs when not training to become professional cricketers. Cricket in those days was hardly a shade of the glamorous sport that it is today, but they still carried those dreams in their eyes which had never left them  as children.  Shekhar was the apple of every coach’s eye including Kiran More. They had singled him out for his pace and felt that he could belong to that rare breed of Indian cricket who are called fast bowlers or pacemen.

Shekhar was quick, agile, athletic and used to train immensely hard. He carried with him the fancies of adolescence as he sported long hair and cracked lewd jokes about women with other boys when the coach was not looking. But when it came to playing at the nets, he bowled with a zeal and uprooted many a stumps and bones of Baroda hopefuls. The coaches groomed him as a long term Ranji prospect. Even in the elite batch, batsman used to take turns to face Shekhar in the nets.

This was it then. Taking my stance, I looked up to the heavens one last time to tell the almighty that I was too young to die. Shekhar started the session and the other bowlers were to follow. He came with a brisk gallop and delivered the first ball with his trademark grunt. I heard the sound of the ball kiss the concrete and thud against the net ropes. The pattern repeated itself with most of the fast bowlers. Shekhar beat me many times before my coach rose up in exasperation and asked me to hit the ball in the covers imagining that there is a gap in there. It was the last round of the nets having completed four out of the mandatory five rounds allocated to each batsman. The coach walked up and shouted ‘Last Round’ which meant that the batsman had the liberty to explode if he wished to. Shekhar took a step back and allowed all the other bowlers to bowl their share of the deliveries. On my last ball, Shekhar looked down before the run-up and then looked up immediately, beginning his charge on the crease. The coach and the rest of the players took a break to watch the last ball as Shekhar had a longer run up. Out came the jump before the crease, the ball left his right forearm like a slingshot and connected with my bat right in its sweet spot.

Poetry.

After having finished that net session I sat down and watched the morning sky against the large backdrop of the cricket ground.  The indescribable feeling of exhilaration that came over me made me believe that this is why my dream of being a sportsman in some form was worth it. Because sport, they say is war minus the bloodshed. It is the most glorified form of combat there exists. This holds true for the team and individual sports. Probably more so in an individual sport, as the biggest demon, you are fighting in an individual sport is the one within you. But perhaps that was not the only glorious thing about sport and why most of us as kids cultivated that desire of becoming a sportsman. Sport teaches us to be a gracious loser, accept and assess our strengths and weaknesses and on some levels, makes us more aware of whom we are as individuals.

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990, p. 3)

In his seminal book, the psychologist Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi explores a condition of optimum performance in the human mind.  These are moments in which your mind becomes entirely absorbed in the activity so that you “forget yourself” and begin to act effortlessly, with a heightened sense of awareness of the here and now.  Athletes tend to call it as ‘being in the zone’.  All of us  course are likely to experience this state hopefully in every aspect of life at some time or the other. But the most beautiful physical depiction of this is through the medium of sport. You must have seen it or experienced it while playing a sport. You are simply one with your physical motions and there exists as a sense of timelessness as you execute your actions with grace and each action is produced with an optimum effect.  You may see this in a Roger Federer backhand on TV as much as you can see it in the intense monologue of a brilliant actor towards the end of a movie.  The world of language has also lent some adjectives unique to the phenomenon of sport called gamesmanship and sportsmanship which can be seen perhaps in all walks of life but comes from the practice of playing or watching a sport.

I was to see Shekhar only once more before this fortuitous meeting. It was another chance encounter in the local municipal swimming pool.  I had heard of him on and off, having once read his name in the newspapers as he eventually went on to play for the Vadodara Ranji team.  Stealthily, my chest swelled with pride at having known and played with a sportsman, albeit for the brief tenure of one bright morning. He was there at the pool in a much more stout and portly frame. He was teaching his kid how to swim and seemed to enjoy it. I was not surprised to see that he hardly recalled my face as we exchanged glances for a second. But I was amused at how a figure who I had admired and dreaded so much as a fast bowler was now a happy dad trying to teach his toddler to rough the waves.

But as they say, a sport is not life and life is not a sport. Cut to the present and I find myself running to catch my train which has arrived. I have the newspaper bent against my arm as I settle myself into my window seat . I open the newspaper and the front page carries a big photo of Sushant Singh Rajput as a railway collector playing the enigmatic Indian captain M S Dhoni in his biopic. The story is about MS Dhoni’s rag to riches story from being a ticket collector on the Eastern Railway. I strain my eyes to catch a glimpse of Shekhar Joshi in an animated conversation with a passenger through my window which is glazed with the morning mist. It should come as no surprise that being a true mascot of the “in betweens” in my cricket academy,  Shekhar still doesn’t have any clue about who I am. But as our train leaves and I find him looking onward with the hum of the train whistle and the figure of the giant Victorian clock as a backdrop, I try and picture the present portrait of the man who I once  admired  and dreaded as an aspiring childhood cricketer.

Put together, the journeys of M S Dhoni and Shekhar Joshi say all there is to say about all those professional sportsmen who live out their lives in the hope of achieving their dream. Some make it and some don’t. After a small stint with the Vadodara Ranji team, Shekhar seems to have made his peace by being a railway employee and watching the trains go by on the Vadodara platform as the big clock passes by us with its ominous words that still read “Time Controls”.

(P.S  Much as I would love to say that this whole thing was a figment of my imagination, Shekhar Joshi is actually a real person. His Cricinfo profile is here)

Poem | Vince Rappa

Artwork : Chintu Das

Prose Don't Rock it for me Like they Used To 



“We're all Fell Out from the System Shock” I whimper          “and I think I can make sure
that we see daylight
never mind don't derail my downtime
                                                      shucks, man                            can't we make it past the first twenty minutes
of this shit
                                                                                                                I'm sure this movie's about something
              Don't fuck with me, bro
                                                                                                                      Everything is not daijobu


                                             I think if I put a section of prose in the middle of this I can pass it off as real art, ya know, like the kind of art that people from the William S. Burrows of New York do and get real awards and get published in places that pay, don't play the fool. Do you think if I spend enough taxed time on the internet not chasing my dreams that we'll achieve the singularity and I can finally have sex with a robot? I Have No Wifi and I Must Scream. Cream filled crawdads and now my clam strips are dripping syrup, how wonderful—I hope I don't have to pay for this nonsense first steps in between 'Cleanliness' and 'Godliness' is sugar flavored ichor in place of my cocktail sauce. What a wild way to experience Boston. Are you there, Joyce? It's me, the asshole who's frustrated with your work. If these people have forgotten how to move then do they feel pain? If so, how can I join them not moving for the rest of your life sounds like it could be cool but only if you were in constant bliss and dreaming all the time not the kinds of dreams that I have where the house is burning and Oh God why are these melted corpses moving but a real kind of 1-2 punch don't make fun of my prose, professor. As I lay-laylay me down to sleep give me a full head let me not go back to the bad days, crumpled garbage gives me sneers and hisses at me to snap out of it.



This is a Real Handcrafted Letter to           a ll                               the people I made uncomfortable in high school
I               was going to address                 it to some girls in particular              but that seems really

shady                                                                                                                         please stand up

Oh shit I'm all coked up with no Mountain Dew left that's what you
get when you use
 Pepsi Products
                                                                                                                                       Bye-Products Buy Bye
Pro ducks          

                                                                                                                “Not with a bang but with a

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