Mind Tavern

The sea roared in a kettle, signalling to the lone occupant that cold winds do not come bearing gifts of tea and wool. Lifting the lid, one is reminded that every peek is reprimanded by those that pay silence to avoid consequences. The flux of leaves and water seemed like a dance of November. They would lose their colour, yet flourish like an aerated whirlpool where burns release from a dark, eternal torment. The wobbly chair from Mother's wedding found its perfect fit between two eroded rocks. Their erosion was not apparent because it had so taken to the mahogany of the limp chair that it wished to birth the seat from its own womb. Alas! If stone did birth trees, none could be a greater sin than to hide the fact about wildfires from them. They aren't a wisp to embrace, but a sight that pushes senses into the roots, so in all that ashen numbness, one might still qualify being alive. These years gather on the eyes; I dreamt of a box full of them, little fish scales stuck to

I cancelled the paper today. The paperboy wondered for a while, then rigorously scratched my name off the list as if rewiring his route not to leave the four-rupee English daily at my doorstep. With the paper, I parted with my awareness of dates. A quick glance of the top, ignoring all advertisements in the periphery and I would know if the cabs are going to be surge-priced for the day. There was something today. I could hear my mother part with an amount of money that was considered obscene by my father. Regardless, the unsung matriarchy in the typical Bengali household was not a new sight. She’d been a bit sick for the past few days, much to the amusement of my physician, who was more fascinated by her internet research than years of medical expertise. But today, she felt a need to be better. The afternoon almost deceives you into thinking that ordinary days turn into ordinary nights. I’m not of the time when the postmaster used to sort through piles of letters to be sent out

In this seaside mortuary most lives begin with a swoon, when one of those mountain lasses come across a hardened goon. These rag stitched cocoons cover the frigid grasp of the sea upon their hearts. There was a small shrine next to the church; both Gods sat one day and from the saline clay wrote her chronicles. They talk to me about her in a drawing; beautiful, kind, grateful, all that could be called good. We like to plead before time, but we never know what to say; because I wouldn't remember how rats chirped when they nibbled at loneliness or how fingers withered but never stopped brushing tears. The truth is, she belonged to a cremated future, and she took me with it where sandcastles slept. Absence without a reason, and only having hearsay to fill it is perhaps a pain I've grown accustomed. I know not to reach into empty coconuts where crabs would bite me, or swim endlessly until a ravine relieves me of breathing. But, sometimes when the elders say that the monsoon i

Don't keep me in your mind, Instead the flickers of the sky In your eye, on the way to a shrine, Beside the telephone line. Let the king speak Through a mongrel's beak And havoc wreak upon a unchecked freak, Now a car stops in the parking lot Her touches the tyres jot. Stubborn kids on mountains tall Drink the miner's wine, to deaths they fall, But did they ask the coaly gasp Of the amber laughs in an anxious grasp. The drawers flung in the burning sun With a heart that mites couldn't turn And even though the train didn't show Letters fall off pigeons, dangle in the snow And then we leave a light off for the neon crow. Over time, our songs morph into this reiteration of busted roofs and the flying wheels above the cable lines. Sometimes, an ambitious plastic bag latches onto the clothesline and as your wish to set it free often comes at a price. Human love is eternally divisible, given to the most unsuspecting soul on the mass transit or the gre

It's past that time of the evening when mosquitoes bite because anybody who decides to take a stroll at this hour is devoid of any substance. Post curfew, our only stimuli were groaning slum boys on cheap psychedelics and the stubborn hope that they'd drown out the screams inside us. Our senses are strange, they don't know when to stop and be idle, not dysfunctional just numb. I remember lying beside her when she told me, or rather warned me of what lay ahead. I assured her that I'd slay all the dragons, like a medieval king in that clichéd children's book that I loved. I couldn't notice how worried she was behind that pale smile, or how helpless she felt. Jane's in middle school now; I took a few pictures on her first day. She keeps complaining about her lunchbox; apparently I put in a lot of food and the teacher scolds her for wasting it. I guess I never really learnt proportions. How tall were you again? "Aye mister, here to see someone?&quo