Did you say pain, Sir?
My sister is married to pain.

Every night, he peels her skin,
turns her into mashed potatoes
And devours her in starved mouthfuls.

Every morning, he vomits my sister back.

You won’t hear any wails.
Each cry, each shriek turns into supersonic angels,
Who come directly to my bed and rape me en masse.

What, Sir? Fear?

I can write a book on fear.
So can you, once you meet my mother.
That is, if you don’t recoil in horror and run away.
No, Sir, she is a woman all right.
But her head, arms and legs have shrunk inside her torso.

She is a diminutive figure of solid fear.
Fear oozes out of her body,
Constantly filling our home, our bodies, our souls.

Do you think I am hallucinating, Sir?
I look into the mirror and see a garbage can
Constantly being stuffed with litter, staring at me.

I am worried, Sir.
The dump in my soul is slowly fermenting into pus.
Don’t you think it’s dangerous, Sir?

Especially with safety valves all clogged up.
How much longer can I hold the pressure?

I am going to explode, Sir.
I am going to blast this sky with a nuclear shriek.
Yes, Sir, very soon.                           

Up in Hilltoptown in summer, distant from the sultry plains,
That’s the place to be, me hearties, that’s the place until it rains.

There’s a toy train that chugs up and down twice a day.
It has first class and second; dogs travel with the guard.

Here they flock-the rich, the mighty, parvenus and panjandrums,
Sans-culottes and sandal-wearers, ragamuffins and hoodlums.

And the plebs, in their moth-eaten, mothballed woollens
Come to ogle the beautiful people at play.

Housie in the club at forenoon, lukewarm large in the bar,
Veterans’ band in park at sundown-you can hear it from afar

Playing waltzes and dirges and hot favourite urges
The scores are goe-eared and the trumpets are bleared.

Pony rides a tenner hourly; bikes on rental (rates ad hoc);
Chemist shop and video parlour-they stay open round the clock.

In a lane round the corner are houses of pleasure.
The girls are quiet comely, their favours are dear.

Callipygous Catalina, pendulating down the mall,
Brings the traffic to a halt and drives the coppers up the wall.

And the hopeful Lotharios loitering around.
Set to pursue her tail with their eyes all agleam.

Weekend bonus for teenagers, disco dancing by the lake,
Monotonometronomous rhythm helps you keep awake

Through late in the night and into the wee hours;
It’s a satiated crowd that greets the new week.

So the show goes on through summer, all the way until the rains;
And the shops and restaurants, they multiply their business gains.

When it’s over, the hotels reduce their rates,
And the season of sales reps’ conventions begins.                           

I have learnt to love, what was
superimposed on me-the English
language. Like a pregnant woman
I have borne it with hope. God’s
aesthetic sensibility
seems to be rather limited
as he had implanted pleasure
in the wrong places. The gods put
pebbles in my mouth to impede
the river. For many years have
I strutted in an English garb-
a ventriloquist deceiving
the cuckoo. Only in drowning
could I get a mouth to mouth kiss.
And how I have become a pebble.

I have whistled for the Thames standing
on Ganga’s bank. What dominion
have I over the 26
fishes of the Enlgish sea? What
can I do with gobbets of English
blubber when my soul cries for Krishna’s
flute? I have traded my mangoes
for daffodils and my tongue has
found an alien grave. Is this the
                  end of my Tibet Road?