For Us

I was lost
under what they said about me.
I wore all their words,
weighing more than my bones,
carrying them everywhere I went.

I couldn’t find myself
beneath those dirty fingerprints.
It was not me I saw
in the mirror, but I found
myself for you, for me, for us.
I pierced through the sun
to burn it all and to
come to you as I am.

We’ll meet under the moon
while the night clouds
float through my hair.
I’ll hold your hand
and nothing will weigh me down
while I fly in your love.

Author Notes:  My poetry book is a compilation of heartfelt verses that I’ve penned over the past few years, originally meant solely for my personal solace. However, after concealing my thoughts and emotions for an extended period, the yearning to step into the light became undeniable. I aspired to reveal my true self authentically. This petite yet significant book represents a vital aspect of my being, and unveiling it to the world fulfils the desire to be acknowledged for who I truly am. Moreover, my passion for sharing art further motivates me to extend this creative endeavour beyond the confines of my own contemplation. I invite you to explore my art, as I embrace the courage to be seen.

Boy from The Poems was published in December 2023 on Notion Press.

1. 

• Look at that guy, dude. He is so f#cking hot. Hey, see, see, he is looking at you
• Oh God! He is so damn good, man. But, what’s the matter? You are checking out boys? Have you been changed? Umm, Do I have a chance?
• Shut up!! I am arranging one for you, dumbo. Otherwise you will remain my roommate all your life. And waste your life by shopping and watching movies with me. And in the meantime I also won’t get a girlfriend.
• Ok ok!! Let me find one for you too. Look at that girl in blue kurti. Like her?
• Phew!! You look better than her.

2.

• BJP is losing this time. Mark my words.
• BJP? And losing in Gujarat? Have you gone crazy, sweetheart?
• If it does, then?
• Then…I will kiss you.
• In your dreams!!! And what if it wins?
• Then you kiss me.

3.

• Babe, it’s been a long time since we’ve watched a movie together. Let’s watch.
• Not a bad idea. Tomorrow is Christmas holiday too.
• Yes. Then today itself? After food?
• Great. You finish your lunch. In the meantime, I’ll finish my dinner. Then will sit together.
• Okay. Which movie btw?
• Dhoom 4? Is it on Netflix?
• Dhoom?? Uff, You will never change!!

4.

• Babe, which one do you like more? Spooning or getting spooned?
• What the hell is that?
• Sh#t!! You are so unromantic. Will you cuddle me or shall I?
• Honey, at least until we arrange for an AC, let’s keep some distance on the bed. At least, for the summer?

5.

• You snore too much when you sleep
• No, I don’t. Rather, it’s you who flail your arms while sleeping.
• That’s for defense. To stop you from snoring.
• Nonsense.
• Nonsense? Didn’t you listen to the recording?
• Conspiracy!! That’s not me. Someone else.
• Don’t say like this. If you don’t do anything about your snoring, I shall sleep in a different room from now.
• Go, who is stopping you? But don’t come back to wake me up at the middle of night saying “some shadow is moving outside”.
• Don’t laugh. Seriously, there is some spirit in this house.
• Sure there is. But not one, a pair of them. One snores and the other flails arms during sleep.

6.

• Someday, I will leave this house and go far away.
• Good idea. When are you going?
• Oh. You are waiting for me to leave? Listen, I’ll go nowhere. I’ll stick around here only.
• No no. Let’s go somewhere. You and me. Together.
• No way. If I go with you, you will again irritate me.
• No, babe. Just one cup of tea made by you in the evening. That’s it.
• OK, got it. Wait for couple of minutes. You won’t let me rest!!

7.

• I am now taken for granted for you, right? You don’t really care anymore.
• Huh?
• Did you even listen to what I said?
• Wait for a min. Just let me complete this e-mail and send it to my office.
• I am thinking of going to Kolkata to my parents for a month.
• No. Not this month. Next month.
• Why? Just because you have year-ending workload in your office?
• No, because your annual medical check-up is not yet done. The way you are going out of breath while fighting with me, it’s not safe to let you get close to to your brother and sister-in-law before you get yourself an ECG.

8.

• Who is that in your office party photo? Never seen her before.
• Newly joined. Very efficient.
• Yes, I see.
• Now, you are after her?
• No. Was just saying that many new people are joining your office.
• So what? They’re joining the office, not our home.
• Who is resisting even that?

9.

• …
• …
• …
• …
• …

           Complete silence.

10.

• I always pray to God to take you before me.
• Why? Why you want me to die before you?
• Without you I can still manage. But, without me you will be a complete mess. You are old, but you haven’t grown up. You can’t manage life.
• I shall learn when required.
• Seems so. Not that easy.
• Even harder than living without you?

11.

• So, finally you left me. Probably when the call comes, we all have to go. But, don’t be so happy about it, ok? ‘ Coming there very soon to irritate you. But next time, I shall go before. You can’t leave me alone like this every time… that’s not fair. You know, I don’t fear ghosts anymore. Moving shadows now just feel like you. But, I don’t get good sleep at nights. Doctor says it’s my high BP. He doesn’t know anything. It’s your snoring that I am missing. Without that, it’s difficult to fall asleep. Anyway, ‘coming to you shortly. We will start another journey together. Yours truly.

‘Together’ is a series of conversations between two persons. There is no clear indication whether the two are the same or different in each episode. An attentive reader might have already noticed that the persons involved carry no names. Not giving them names was intentional. Names map to certain identities, labels and stereotypes.

For example, if I say they are Mansoor Farhad Yusuf and Dr Nupur, you will understand that this is the couple from Kavi Nagar (Ghaziabad, UP) whose wedding ceremony was vandalized by Hindutva groups.

If I say they are Ramdulari and Ayushmaan, you will understand that they belong to different socio-economic backgrounds.

If I call them Divya and Ilavarasan, then you will understand this was the couple who were violently separated and the latter murdered because of their caste difference.

If I say they are Moumita and Venkatesan, you will wonder if they had faced great troubles for their different food habits, after starting to live together.

And if I name them John and David, or  Geetha and Priya, you would exclaim in disgust that there must have been some mistake.

My dear friend, although we tend to classify people by imposing artificial labels, in certain things we are very much the same. Our feelings of love-hate, joy-sorrow, likes-dislikes, really do not know these labels. Living together is a canvas where all these colors are painted. Irrespective of caste, religion, gender, ethnicity and mother tongue the picture painted is equally beautiful. For every one of us, the eternal happiness of holding the hand of the beloved is the same. Same is our sorrow when the loved one leaves us. Believe me, the labels we have don’t matter at that point, even the slightest.

Keeping that truth in mind, let us accept equal rights for all couples. Let us make ‘live and let live’ the music of our lives. Rather, let us focus more on loving each other. You will find the world much more joyful that way my friend. Colours of spring will fill the earth.

These musings were sparked by reading my young friend Samarpan’s inscription on the wedding card of his sister: see below.

Author Prof. Abhijit Majumder is a faculty member in the Dept of Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay. He works on stem cell biology and tissue engineering. Writing on different socio-political issues is his hobby. Views expressed here are the author’s own.

Translator Arpan Kundu is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, and is part of the Orinam collective. Apart from his studies, he has a keen interest in Marxist Feminism.

Artist Sulipto Mondal studied painting at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, and obtained a Master’s from the Department of Visual Arts, Kalyani University, Nadia, West Bengal. He is an event decor artist by profession.

This line from Terribly Tiny Tales inspired the following piece of art by Rajat Saini, a 22 y.o. undergraduate student in Delhi. Check out his other work on the FB page ‘श्यामश्वेत : colors of life’ here.

Says Aditya Shankar from  Saathi, the campus LGBT group, “…the video was made for sensitising IIT-Bombay freshmen on sexual orientation. The languages chosen reflect the undergraduate demographic composition. But the video was specifically made so that it doesn’t become very specific to IIT-B as was the video last year in which I came out of the closet.”

Kudos to SAATHI for this effort! Click below to watch the video:

He was stark naked in the bathroom, razor in hand, and had shaving foam covering his entire torso. Blood and the white of the foam together made a royal mess. Even then, with his heart racing at the sight of blood, he could not help but think that it looked delicious in a way. Like someone had thrown red velvet cake splat on Chinna’s chest. To get some ice, he would have to go to the kitchen, but before that he would have to wipe himself clean and cover himself properly. When he poured water over himself and let it wash away all the foam, he could see his chest hair still sticking to him in patches. He had only been half way through the shaving when he cut a nipple by mistake. The bleeding refused to stop, and it stung. He held the breast firmly in his hand, and it only made him bleed more. Without a moment’s thought, he tried to do what he had always done whenever he cut his fingers while chopping vegetable, and much earlier while using shaving blades to sharpen pencils at school.

He tried to squeeze his breast up towards his lips and suck the wounded tip. He couldn’t. However much he lowered his head, pressed his chin to his chest and stuck his tongue out towards his nipple, he couldn’t make them meet. He threw his head back in frustration, flung the razor away, slid down the wall, and cried silently, mouth wide open.

Sharpening pencils was one thing. But is altogether another thing to use the blade to blunt your edges, smooth out the sharpnesses that both mark you to the world and also flip around to cut you from the inside, like a revolving double-edged dagger that, in its great speed, looks like a benign spinning ball of the self. The more you send it out into the world to let yourself be seen , the greater is the vehemence with which it comes back to shred your to smithereens.

In the spacious studio apartment, Chinna stood at the kitchen counter, with his back to Ron, heating milk for coffee. Though they have only been going out for a few weeks now, he was used to Ron’s quiet, unobtrusive presence in the house whenever he came. He usually sat down with some book while Chinna did his own work. Sometimes Ron just dozed off, lying flat on his back right there on the mattress on the floor, with the pages of some open book embracing him over his chest. Looking at him during some of those times, he has wondered if Ron managed to drop into everyone’s life so quietly, without raising a ripple.

But today was going to be a challenge, thought Chinna. It could throw even Ron out of balance. How could I have sex with him today without letting him in on how much I hate my body right now, that I would rather close my eyes and will myself to be someone else? Chinna feared one of two things could follow such a disclosure. A conversation. This perpetual celebration of talking, this belief in clearing things out by talking, as if words ever really had that kind of power – he had no energy for that, at least, at the moment. Or it could be a shrinking back and rejection that he feared. He didn’t have energy for that either.

He felt sex was not such a good idea then, but then he wouldn’t know unless he tried. Usually, he avoided sex when he felt so unsure of who he was.  But it might have to be different today. As he leaned over the counter, he looked down to check for blood stain on his shirt. He had done that the entire afternoon, sitting across from Ron at the restaurant. He was afraid that there might suddenly be a splatter of blood spreading across his chest, giving him away.  No blood.

“Cream and sugar?” he asked, turning around. Ron looked up from the book he had opened randomly in the middle. “Yes! Thank you!” he smiled.

Chinna wrapped a towel around his waist, threw another one over his shoulders and walked out of the bathroom. Before stepping out of the bedroom, he opened the door gently and peeped out to see if his mother, who was visiting, was in the living room, and if he would be bombarded with questions for taking ice cubes from the freezer. She didn’t seem to be around. On the way to the refrigerator, he caught through the corner of eyes his quick reflection in the full-length mirror propped against a wall in the living room. His quick, tiptoed run took him a few steps ahead, but he halted on his track and took a few quiet, slow steps back, turned his head alone to the left and stood looking at himself, in profile, in the mirror. He lifted slightly the towel that lay over his shoulders covering his nipples. When he thought he could not see clearly, he took off the towel completely, but before doing that he looked in the direction of the kitchen to make sure his mother was not around. She didn’t seem to be.

Focussing again on his sideways reflection in the mirror, he thrust his chest out a little and made his nipples look prominent and imagined that they pierced the sky in front of him, making a small tear in some invisible but persistent layer he could one day step out of.  This made the arch of his back pronounced, and his butt too stretched out into a deeper curve, into a bigger bubble. Lifting both his hands simultaneously, he touched himself on both his nipples, felt the alert areola reacting to the recent touch of the blade, he held the curve of his breasts on his palms for a second, and brought his hands down to his waist and took them around his ass.  Then he threw the towel back around his neck and walked swiftly to the fridge.

He could find no ice cubes, but his mother’s ice pack was in the freezer. He grabbed it, rushed back to the room, latched the door on the inside, and pressed the ice pack to the nipple. It hurt like hell. He sat down on the bed and leaned back on the pillows. He removed the ice pack from this chest and took a good look at himself. The right side of his chest was shaven smooth and clean, and the nipple stood clean and poised, while the one on the blooded side stood surrounded by strands of hair. He was disgusted to see patches of hair still on his half-shaven chest. Still, he ran his fingers over this torso, wondering if he could will himself to like his body as it was. He stopped when his fingers reached the towel fold around this waist. He dreaded what was to come. He knew he would be flooded by a massive wave of disgust, but he braved it and undid the towel. Never before did he hate the irrefutable solidity of the body so much. Its stubbornness, it’s utter refusal to be anything other than what it was hurt him afresh each time. He spread his legs a little, and with vehemence pushed his penis and testicles down with his hands, closed his legs tight, and pulled out his hands slowly. It gave him some comfort not to have to feel them with his hands.

Ron was sitting on the mattress on the floor and looking at Chinna pour coffee into mugs. As Chinna walked towards Ron and gave him his coffee, Ron patted the mattress, signaling Chinna to sit next to him. They sat, their backs against the wall, and just above their heads the bottom rod of the blinds over the window beating against the wall in the wind. Ron had his feet stretched in front of him, and the light through the blinds was now casting moving shadow stripes on his feet and jeans. Chinna too felt like putting his leg out to catch the lines of light and shadow on his feet. And he did. “This would make a great photograph,” said Ron, “just our legs and these stripes of light.” Chinna turned to smile at Ron, who had a twinkle in his eyes when he said, “But this light play will look much better on bare skin. We can be zebras.” Chinna did not say anything in reply, but he turned to look at his legs and gently pulled his trousers up to reveal more of his ankle and lower leg. Ron laughed.

Chinna closed his eyes and touched the tips of his nipples gently with his fingers. As he played with them, his erection threatened to spring up from its confinement between his thighs. So Chinna stopped and waited for it to subside. Then suddenly he squeezed his breasts violently and stopped only when he felt the wetness of blood from the left nipple again on his fingers. With equal vehemence, he crossed his legs at the ankles and pressed his thighs together until everything hurt.

They now lay facing the window, with the light through the blinds casting its stripes on their faces and naked torsos. Black and light and black and light. Chinna had one leg bent and the other leg balanced over the bent knee. Like he was sitting, but had only decided to change his plane. To look skyward instead. He looked at his legs and tried to focus on a part of this light play where a strip of shadow ended and a sheath of light began. Though the plastic strips of the blinds themselves were quite solid with sharp edges, their shadows appeared to have lost their confidence. Their corners were blurred and looked even more vulnerable when they moved in the wind.

Ron turned on his side and propped his head up with a hand. “You are awfully quiet today. Even more than usual. What happened?” he said.

“Nothing really.”

“Then it is something not-so-really? Tell me, tell me,” Ron teased, putting his forefinger into Chinna’s deep navel and tickling it.

With his other hand, he touched Chinna on his neck. Chinna lay, with his eyes closed, his legs crossed at the ankles and his thighs held tight against each other. As Ron’s hand glided over his neck, Chinna clutched at the carpet below with one hand and laid his other hand over Ron’s, that was playing with his navel. Ron’s hand moved down to Chinna’s chest and very quickly to his right nipple.

“Nice. Did you get it waxed?” said Ron.

“No. I shaved. Waxing hurts.”

“Hmm. But it looks like you have hurt yourself shaving too,” said Ron, and brought his head down to kiss Chinna on his left nipple. His tongue moved very gently, but Chinna could still feel the sting from the cut. He winced.

Chinna kept his eyes shut and forced himself to imagine his body otherwise. He thought it should be easy. At any given moment, Chinna could not really bring to his mind an accurate vision of himself as he was. He could never clearly remember himself. Whenever he stood in front of a mirror, there was a moment of “Ah okay,” as if he just recognized himself. So shouldn’t it be easy now, he wondered, to see myself as altogether something else? Not with these sad little hairy absences, but full, rounded breasts, with large areolas stretched out with the fullness of the milk inside. Not with what were dangling between his legs, but something else, something that draws inward. But it wasn’t easy. The body was all too real to be thus willed away.

Chinna chose not to force it, not to fight his body so much. He was holding his body so taut that every inch of him hurt. He decided to let go and relax. Just as he began to loosen his body, his eyes still closed, it happened. He got, for just an instant, that vision. He saw himself inside his eyes just exactly how he wanted himself to look; he saw his body as just exactly how he wanted to see it.

Ron’s tongue continued to play on Chinna’s left nipple while his fingers moved down to his tummy. Chinna felt seized at once by pleasure, pain and panic. As Ron’s fingers explored further down, Chinna relaxed his legs and hoped that the miracle would happen again, that he would get to see himself, at least in his imagination, at least for a split second, as he wanted to be, not as what he was. Till today, he doesn’t know what gave him the courage to trust and let go, to not be on his guard. But that’s what he did.

Until then he had held his body taut like a catapult aiming a sharp attack at god knows what. Much like a boy who has suddenly lost interest in his target and relaxed his aim and dropped down the weapon, he loosened himself. His body remembered the time when he once managed to float on the shallow waters of a sea. Seeing one of his friends just lie back and float, he asked to be held while he tried it too, though he couldn’t swim then. In the very first attempt, he had floated, with no hand supporting his back. He dropped his head back and arched his torso out towards the sky like he was asked to do, and he floated. Chinna had thought at that moment about the rules for trust for different things. When people free-fall during para-jumping, they are asked to arch their head and legs in trust and glory towards the sky, if only to give the monstrous, rushing wind the least resistance possible. On the ground, you are supposed to give yourself to whatever surface is beneath you, let your body drape on it and take whatever shape of letting go it wants. And on water, you let your head down backward, raise your bum, thrust your torso up towards the sky that is suddenly all over, more all-over than ever before.

“Just trust it and let go,” his friend had said then. And Chinna had found that an absolutely natural thing to do. For a while after that, he had consciously called on that bodily memory whenever walking on steady ground felt like a shaky proposition. He drew comfort from recollections of floating, of being held and rocked. But like most experiences, it had slowly receded in significance. Until today. He floated again, even if only for just a tiny moment.

He unclenched his abdominal muscles and released his firm hold on the world. Salt water sloshed against his ears and he could hear no more the clack of the blinds against the window or the room heater resurrecting after a brief rest. All that he could hear was the heady whispers of the sky and the water asking him to trust them. One from below and the other from over him. He was being bounced up and down, and he drank some water. It was incredibly salty and made his nostrils burn. His fingers let go of their claw-hold on the carpet next to him and let water buoy up through the gaps between them. Sensing it was not hard ground that could give away under him any minute, he gifted away his weight, opened his eyes to the bright blue sky over him and breathed out gently and for long.

Right then, Ron pressed down gently below Chinna’s navel and stopped suddenly. Chinna was very confused. He opened his eyes and saw that Ron had risen slightly, propping himself on one elbow, and was looking at where his hand was on Chinna’s body, all the while pressing it down gently at the same spot. When he saw Chinna’s perplexed look, he relaxed, but he did not remove his hand. He smiled awkwardly and said, “Sorry.”
“It’s alright. But what happened?” Chinna asked.
“Oh it is really silly,” said Ron, trying to dismiss it.
“It is okay. Do tell me.”
“No, I am sorry. It might be hurtful.” Ron was really apologetic now.
“No, I can handle it. Tell me.”
“Well,” said Ron, “I think it was a moment of hallucination, but when I pressed my hand down there, it felt suddenly like I was not touching a man’s body.”
“What do you mean?” Chinna smiled and rose slightly, propping himself up on both his elbows.
Ron felt encouraged by Chinna’s smile to go on. “I could have sworn that my hand just expected not to find a cock there. Something else. Does it make sense? I am so sorry. I am blabbering,” he said and looked away in embarrassment.
“No, no, no,” Chinna said and turned Ron’s face back towards him. “It makes sense. It so does. Thank you so much.”

“But you are crying,” Ron said in mild panic. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I am sure I was just imagining it. My mind playing tricks on me. Please don’t cry, Chinna.” He sat up looking very concerned and held Chinna by his shoulders as he covered his face with his hands and wept.

Ron moved closer to him and put his arms around him. He sat there holding Chinna until the weeping stopped, and after.

I am hurt,
These wounds even Cupid cannot heal,
Why have you done this to my heart?

Those bows and those arrows,
Which you carry so confidently and valiantly,
The sight of bees,
Singing of parrots,
And the
Scent of flowers,
What fragrant flowers they must be,
Inflaming my every thought.

Why was I not born the
Parrot that is your vehicle?
A flower out of the five that decorate each arrow?
Or the bees that make up the string to your sugarcane bow?

Do you not see what you have done?
Freshly wounded,
And this is only the first arrow,
What am I to do?

Oh Cupid, Oh Kamadeva,
Each arrow I hear,
Is enveloped with an emotion,
Happiness, fear, anger, delirium, and peace.

I cannot describe the misery and ecstasy,
The pain and pining are so great,
I seek refuge in your heart,
And in your smile,

I shall stay here,
In hapless and hopeless
Love,
Withering away,
And awaiting
The fifth and final arrow.

This poem is part of the Orinam V-Day 2013 series called The Original L Word

Everything seemed so auspicious. I was bathed in turmeric powder and decorated, my father made me wear my paatti’s Pathakkam. A fresh veshti was draped around my waist in the kshatriya fashion. The moist and sweet-scented smear of Sandalwood paste on my forehead looked like the Third Eye. I lifted my left foot and squatted on the floor looking at the idol of the  eternal dancer, Siva as Nataraja, that was before me, glowing bright in the middle of the nilavilakku and the agalvilakkus, oil-wick lamps of various sizes and shapes, placed in rows and circles. The beating of the cymbals began, and I moved my feet in exquisite patterns drawing crescents and suns on the floor.

“He will be called a sissy boy”, my mother protested. My father did not echo her sentiments, nor did he voice his support for me: he was the proverbial cat on the wall. I had to fight the most vicious demons called religion, gender and caste. At the end I emerged the victor.  I simply must  have it, the joy of dancing; yes I have to; and forever. “Aadinakaalum paadinavaayum chumma irukkadhu!!” The feet that dance and the lips that sing never stay quiet….

The aptly-named Guru Uma Maheshwari hails from a family of Devadasis, dedicated temple dancers for several centuries. Her face is  calm and  always exudes joy and peace, making her look like she really is the daughter of King  Malayathwajan, the Pandya king who fathered Goddess Meenakshi. Her curly locks, decorated with pearls and held in place with pins, always look proper and prim; the string of mallika, pearly white jasmine flowers, subtly entwined with her hair,  makes one wonder if she was born with it. In rich red fabric, she is a carefully and gorgeously decorated Amman statue ready for an Oorvalam, a procession to grace the world with the vision of her beauty. My feet danced, feeling no weakness for hours, to her brisk chollukattus[1] and the beats of her thattukazhi[2]. I was her only male student, and she was proud of me. She knew it all and taught me all she knew. We would finish choreographing intricate pieces of dance in just two or three classes. We became mother and son in dance; I started calling her Amma. She taught me shringaaram, love. Not the mortal shringaaram, but  Shringaaram, the essence of life, the love that is without blemish; unconditional, true love that is omnipresent, andomnipotent, the love that is divine, the love that is me, the love that is God. I was shringaaram myself, mortal yet immortal.

The words of one lover in the middle of a sweaty coital rendezvous resounded in my ears – “You Malayalee boys are blessed with huge eyes that are hypnotic and gorgeous”. The memory is still fresh. Though only partly Malayalee, I felt flattered and cocked my head to the side, avoiding his breath in a gesture of sheer modesty. He said,“I want to look into your eyes,” and held my face tight in his strong, virile hands. I looked into his eyes as he closed them tight, and I knew what would follow–a moment of rapture as we both reached the peak of what seemed like a mixture of lust and love, and exploded. Covered in sweat and our own love juices he lowered his head to place soft, wet kisses on my eyes; kissed my upper lip with passion and probed into the warmth of my lips. I felt like his exclusive courtesan. He unleashed the Mohini that remained dormant within me, hitherto unknown even to me.

The part of me that is from the God’s Own Country needed acknowledgement.  The beats of the edakka and the maddalam,  drums that rarefy the air during dance and theatre performances in Kerala, have always made me sway in unending semi-circles. She brusquely said no when I articulated my desire to learn Mohininadana, the dance of the enchantress. “It is against my faith and I have taken a vow not to dance again, I am a baptised Pentecostal Christian and you are a BOY!!!” my aunt Omana explained. I convinced her with my promises:“ Ammayi, you will only teach and not dance.” I sold her my sh#t.

I moved my torso in the crescents of ardhachandraas and strutted like a peacock. I swayed in rhythm like the paddy field that dances to the breeze. I moved my eyebrows to the enchanting edakka drum, emoting love.I needed an elaborate bath in chandanam, kasthuri and milk to quench the Shringaric fire within me. And men noticed it, the fire called Moha. Even women-lovers appreciated it,  and one said , “You have the eyes of the Mohini, I smiled turning my head towards him  and said, “I am the MOHINI, and I enchant.”

This essay is part of the Orinam V-Day 2013 series called The Original L Word

I like them short. 

Not because they identify me
as a member of a particular group,
but because I like as little of the white there.

Every other day
I snip away.
A routine that borders on
Ritual.
I hack away at the hard,
Dead wall
Between raw flesh
And outside unknown.
The less between me 

And you,
The closer our flesh is.
The pinkness interior
Of it.
Them.
Not so much a glove
As an echo of a
Pulse.

But I cease to break down
The barriers of keratin anymore.
Let them grow unwieldy, formidable.
Claws.

For I am tough as nails.

This poem is part of the Orinam V-Day 2013 series called The Original L Word

After many trials and errors, I have come to a point in my current relationship (which, I hope with the same, persistent naivete, will last for the rest of my life),  where I am getting present to this conflict between my need and demand to be loved in a certain way and the way in which my partner loves me. There are some distinctions that my mind cannot hold when it is consumed by emotions and when it is busy projecting its past on to the new situation, the new partner. For instance, there is a subtle distance between feeling unloved and feeling loved in a way different from the one I want. All of that is too theoretical for me when I am caught up in my shadows. In those moments (honestly, they are days and weeks, not moments!), I cannot even read my partner’s love for me as love, because I lack the patience and clarity to read as love anything that is different from my notion of love. When I get present to this, I shudder at how unaccommodating and closed I can be. I am shocked by the violence I do to my lover’s love by not even according it the status of love.

How then can I truly understand the limiting nature of my idea of what love is? How do I live the next many days and weeks in a way that helps me recognize my limiting conception of love, bracket it aside, and receive what my partner is offering me? The primary act of love I can do now is to acknowledge his love for me as love. Since it is important to remember that love is also a verb, a set of acts, a mode of being in the world, and not just a cozy state of being where things happen to us, how do I be loving in a way that seeks to undo my hitherto violent rejection of love that has been coming to me from my partner?

I think it is very sad that we are never really taught these things. I understand that life is to be experienced, to be learned as we go on, but I do wish someone taught us, even as they were busy making us learn how to balance equations and to remember dates of wars and conquests,  to love ourselves, to examine our fears, apprehensions and projections. Oh I have nothing against balancing equations and knowing dates of wars, for I do find this world fascinating and want to learn as much as I can about it. I only wish our inner worlds weren’t neglected this much and left for us to figure them out on our own.

As we get close to yet another St. Valentine’s Day, I cannot help but muse on the theme of love. The language of love continues to be occupied by a consciousness that is all about young, heterosexual coupledom. Sadly, this currently available language falls woefully short of addressing even that one form of love. The glorious light this language of love casts on mushiness, the good feelings one is conditioned to feel and want, the unqualified longing for love one is supposed to feel, casts the darkest shadow on all that needs to be worked through for love, in love and through love: our fears of abandonment, our unexamined investment in patriarchy and other ways of wielding power, our readiness to sabotage something beautiful before it threatens to destroy us, our adamant refusal to believe that something good can ever happen to us, or, even if it did, that it should last, and many more things.

If I were to embark on a personal reclamation of St. Valentine’s day, I would, at least this year, make it my project to turn the light on my shadows where all the real business is, where all the things are that most urgently need the light of my love as well as my partner’s. You can ask me why bother about St Valentine’s Day at all, or some might even ask why bother about romantic love at all, that smug and narcissistic form of love that often relegates other relationships to a side, at least until the heart invested in it is hurt and comes rushing back to other relationships for comfort and healing. At one level, I will tell you that love seems to be badly needed in the world, that the recent discussions around sexual violence, the resurgence of violence on inter-caste unions, etc. point to our failure in thinking critically and usefully about love.

At another, more honest and personal, level I will tell you that as long as I seem to be bothered about love and romance, I think it would be a good idea to look for more healing, less turbulent and less toxic ways to love.

So, this year, for the first time, I have a proper Valentine. Myself. Love.

This essay is part of the Orinam V-Day 2013 series called The Original L Word

• My Valentine, by Vinodhan
• Nails, by Edwina Shaddick
• Bharatham is my love; Mohini is who I am, by Taejha
• The Fifth and Final Arrow, by MG Ashley
• time, by L Ramakrishnan
  
• 1989: a love story [தமிழ்], a short story in Tamil by Shri, podcast narration by Lakshmi Sriraman