Olfactory Games and 5 other poems

and wonder what’s wrong with them? Among the more vivid
embarrassments of my life, ones that insist on staying relevant

in the mind’s passive engine, is a failure of mine to connect
a flash drive to a CPU in a jam-packed lecture theater, the professor

assuming I had completed the menial task successfully, waiting
for the icon to show up on screen to begin his presentation. A friend

sensing my trouble, volunteered to help and slotted frictionless
the candy bar of a machine, much to my dismay, right into its

port. This was a decade back in engineering undergrad, when I was starting
to understand machines, when I was starting to understand my body,

when I was starting to understand after a brief limerence here,
an infatuation there—there is no understanding attraction. My hands

here too: sites of turmoil, the wrists in lonely prayer in my hostel room
wringing the only four lines of verse I knew in Sanskrit, the palms glassy

with Goa’s beady coastline sweat when I wondered why I was always sinking
in love and never quite falling in it, a voice from the medulla tickling my

nape when the one I liked sauntered into class, the voice offering a nippy
hymn in resignation to the turbulence of fast youth: oh dear, here we go again.

The same voice, in an entirely different context, rears its squeaky head—here
we go again—when my phone refuses to charge. At the only Apple servicing

center in the state, I wait in the queue for a couple of hours, reminding
myself it is fascinating how so many folks are having trouble with their

iPhones at this very instant in their lives. After the executive has a look,
he asks, your battery is done, do you want to replace it? When I ask if I have

a choice, he slides slyly across to me the latest model: you can always
buy a new phone. He almost winks. I almost snigger. At home, I clean

the possible buildup of invisible debris in the phone’s lightning
port. After a heartwarming surge, the new battery gets stuck

at 47%, leaving me uncompensated for the day’s hard
work. How sad that a machine manages to break

my heart. Such hope for validation hinged on this hardware marvel,
the software running through its guts and bones honed every hour

by engineers working in another hemisphere—it’s obvious
evidence of our accomplishment as a species—but to distill fixation

from achievement is something that hasn’t quite intrigued us
the same way. The phone suffers as long as I do. My species will

suffer long after I have stopped suffering. Breaking news pops up
on my phone—ALERT: NASA predicts record global flooding

due to lunar wobbles. My phone battery heats up a little
and underneath I presume, the sea-level rises a little. How this dark blue isle

of an old battery must have aged, little by little, over so many years. Any
daily variation unremarkable, the cumulative ordained to be

fatal. I used to prefer a cocktail called Apocalypse over tequila shots
at a favorite bar on karaoke nights, believing it made my voice less

melancholic, more mellow. Now, I’m tired of that word.
I haven’t been to a bar in two years. My father has

never been to one, or so he says. I watch him drape
a wound on my mother’s knee with a band-aid. Reinvigorated,

while cooking she adds extra cornstarch to the chickpea
curry. She knows I like the gravy thick. The next morning,

I wake up to a cloud in the window, disintegrating
while passing. I glance at the battery

bar on my phone, blinking blood
red, almost drained out. Remembering

the slots open today for booking my parents’
vaccination appointment, I leap for the charger.

In the corridor on the ground
floor, the dog smelling the orange

to sniff out its intentions as if a shrunk
planet had landed in sinister disguise

on earth. Right above, on the first
floor, the door snuck out of its loose latch

letting a longitude of light ornament
your shy calves. You rose, heaped up the medley

of clothes lying on the floor like urchin stars
banished from the ceiling and launched them

into the laundry bin. And then suddenly
remembering, you fumble through the pile

to find a black vest, veil your face with it,
smelling its fabric worn by your beloved last

night. You’re hungry but your stomach is so
full you can’t eat. You wear the black vest

underneath a black shirt and go to work.
You wait till sunset to have your breakfast.

In the garden, we saw a cat flex its body to take a shit. It watched us watching it. The awkwardness dissolved when there came the notorious sound of early morning traffic from its anus. In the cab back home, with the kind of self-assured poise we had seen the cat demonstrate, you opened two of my shirt buttons, unbuckled my belt. The night shifted moods. Saliva came running unabashed towards every milestone on that long tryst of a road. You said you wanted a mirror on the bedroom ceiling for a top-view of us making love. When the doorbell rang, I couldn’t find my clothes. Wrapped up in a blanket to hide my erection, I opened the door. A feather. A newspaper. An eviction notice. Things had a velocity I was struggling to keep up with. My coping mechanism was watching movies and going to the beach. On full-moon night to my surprise, the waves didn’t dare touch the rocks. The rare hare on the surface of the moon waned into extinction when you decided to leave the city. Who was I going to suffer for now? The river in the town dried up after I set my tongue to its water. It became in the day a graveyard of leaves, moonlighting seasonally as a bonfire alley. To blame for these disasters was the cursed heat of my mouth. When the leaves were burnt, their mint green veins melted into a rare iridescent ink by virtue of which most of the graffiti in the town was painted. There were anecdotes scribbled on the walls. One episode elucidated the time I waited for coffee, freezing under the rapid blades of the colossal ceiling fans at Goa airport’s boarding gates, when you called to wish: Happy Birthday. I was hearing your voice for the first time in years. Shivering, I mumbled—thank you. My birthday came three days later. Of course, we celebrated again.

Lying low and mysterious like tombs
Of bone, my knees invite glances of intrigued eyes
When in a game of truth (and dare), to the question
Of which body part in you would you want to replace
With an improved version, I say I’d like to have
Sturdier knees, and I’m immediately asked— for what?
For running marathons, I say, carefully avoiding letting fly
The possibilities of kneeling better at prayer or durability
While making love, all the while loathing my instinct
To say something odd or controversial in a public setting.
Here in the rockiest part of Karnataka, the walls turn hot
From the traversal of lizards, the floor lubricious
From the spilled alcohol of styrofoam cups we had
Earlier used to play beer pong, the little table-tennis balls
Floating and rising like amber night suns supplying faint
Light towards the inordinate whims of our hands and tongues.
From the kitchen a mutton curry aroma greasing the air thick,
Tantalizing for the tingly nerve that loves to lick, always alert
To the strong-scented, to release on-demand a dramatic sneeze.
Early morning, on a trek, before we reach the summit, a friend
Whose apparel e-commerce business has recently boomed
Tries to inspire— don’t let the fire of wanting to be recognized
Overpower the fire of wanting to do something special, he says.
My approving knees nod, quivering slow from the arduous climb.
Atop the hill, looking down, all around I see fields of snoozing
Rocks, scattered and watery in May’s shaky heat, eagles drawing
Close sometimes, soaring regal over this exhibition of knees.

March comes with the ghosts of winter
collapsing on my bed, orphaned and fragrant

as petals torn, rolled and crushed
with wet thumbs. To my washing machine, I feed

the bed sheet twice, the pillow covers thrice. And yet, a wetness
grows velvet on the back of my neck like the persisting

touch of the towel we drape across our backs
lying on the terrace. Beneath the moon being slowly

fashioned by the evening, naked. When you howl, it cracks
me up; I hurt my stomach cackling. The ground appears raised

like a coffin to receive the body of work
known as mutual pleasure. Stars gleaming

like newly minted coins nodding their shine
at the starkness of our wealth. The sandwiches go

soggy in the rain. Your lips part
the fog in the morning. Around us lie

leaves in the shape of a word our gummy
tongues are too astonished to spell.

In a slow motion video,                my sneezing face
                           is an abyss                    seized by light and water.
                                      It’s a turning point
for my shutterbug friend’s                        confidence. I loosen
my shoulders
                                to hug him tight,    feel the nest of his ribs
                                          humming                                the hope

of a post-lockdown
world. I am happy to contribute         to the renaissance
of his creative juices,              just like I was                 to forge

my father’s signature              to send you a prescription,
the antibiotic working like a charm,                coaxing every night

the frosty orchard of your sore throat                  into slow bloom,
the seductive fruit                                of your words
yellowing by the minute.

                       Your sickness aside, there is nothing I fear more
                       than my criticism of something
                       just because that something                   isn’t like me.

My father cusses over the phone              and in anger, I spit
at the wild berries
                                         imploring my paralyzed mouth.
In the moments just after anger, my tongue, winged and arrowed,
                  is grateful to be rooted                 to the floor of the mouth
where most of my longing lives,                        sharing space
with a few syllables
                                          of prayer I have somehow not forgotten.

Unexpressed feelings are unforgettable, says a poet
in a Tarkovsky movie, the dense fog
                                           of his liquored breath
settling over a swamp                              inside a derelict church.

                         Where’s the altar       where desire burns?
                         Inside the chest        or back of the throat?

                                      Across the country,
                                                                   ash makes small anthills

of mercy overlooking pools of grief,
the riverbeds speckled            with shallow graves,
                                                     rivers swollen                with bones.

Time has stopped                            and yet there’s no time to process.

Cumulous clouds                   of untimely monsoon

foam into elephants                         inside my hallucinating mouth.
                                                                                           I wake

with chills for a month, start praying
                           to a layer of exposed brickwork
                                                  in a corner of my room’s wall.
During an evening storm, windows
                                                            of the city’s apartments spill
                            long shadow,
                                             dark wind.
I light a candle and its legacy
                                                      is the memory of your face.
In the center of the flame, lips
                                                                                    part.

I can’t tell if you’re smiling.

Do you want to say something?

Do you want me to say something?