My Anadi in Kannadi!

Im so fucked up at times. Trying to understand my trying emotions that often go haywire… has never been easy. And you are responsible for this. You are bloody responsible for this!

I mean, I was a nice boy. A nice seedha-sadha TamBrahm from the new of bombay. And see what you have done to me! See what you have done.

I remember three days before Independence Day this year that I met you and lost my independence forever. O I remember, that night that I was criss-crossing around in the gay lanes of a dating -mating site and I found you. you seemed so different. You had your whole CV put up on a dating site. Aiyyo! I thought, you had real balls. Like I do. Unapologetic about what you are born as. Then we chatted over the phone. It was shocking to know that you were a southie too. And a tam. And a brahm. And a chemburkar. Happpa! Too much I say! I quickly started drawing family trees in my mind. Aden Gappa… so wonderful it would be to know that one of my cousins was gay. And “out” out there. Id love to retort when some crazy atthai /chottai of mine says “aiyyo! you do boy-boy”.. with a candid “It is your gene’s coy-ploy”. Wallah!

I decided to meet you for a decent cup of coffee. And no hanky-panky. I was waiting at vashi station, close to the ticket counter. And there you stood… kaan mein jhumka.. chaal mein thumkaa.. types. I still remember that anadi in kannadi, wearing some crazy thing on his wrist. You were yapping away to glory intellectually over the phone. Like a zygotic hybrid of bappi lahari and jumpa lahari. You then kept your phone and started talking to me. And mashhallah! In less than ½ an hour you shared your akhaa khandaan ka details. I thought you have your screw dheela. Then I thought about how I used to start ranting about the ifs and buts of my life, to any stranger… with dew filled eyes… full of hope… you almost had shamelessly taken over the emotions that I so fondly had a copyright on. HUH!

 

we dined and decided to take a walk in the straight lanes of vashi in the dead of night. We walked from one gully to the other, from cross roads to dead ends, from foot paths to man holes. I remember I was so engrossed that I hit a lamp post and had a bleeding toe. Inside I was going aiyyo aiyyo.. outside I was smiling and yapping with the yapping you. That dud of a thing, were you. 22 years young. And I the fataaka at 31. Soon I realized age is a matter of the mind, it doesn’t matter if you don’t mind.  We walked chumma chumma over the streets…  and we did no chumma-chaati. I looked at his lips and his beauty spot. But nothing lustily. Guess, we cant “lust”ify  and justify everything. 

In the middle of this beautiful night that I was spending with you, Platonically. Under the lonely moon that was just out of the cocoon, came a screeching noise of my mom. She had the dinner ready and wanted to sleep. i had to bid good bye to you and rush home. You said, I will follow me till my house. I wondered in my mind, that is to much illaiyya? … for a 22 year old tamil pullai to be so late out with a 31 year old ghabru jawaan… it was some 12:15 or so. You came to khandeshwar station. I stood there, with you. we were late. Real late. You had to head back to your  chembur. I offered taking you home. But inside inside, wondered what I would tell my parents.  The police uncle, I asked “last gaadi kitne bajje ki hai”… and it was a train to belapur.  Aiyyo. Calculations started in my Tam Brahmish  mandaiii.   The taxi meter was speeding in my mind. I thought “how will a young boy spend so much to go by cab from belapur to chembur” … I asked you if you had money. And you said yes.  

Then you left. And I kept thinking on my way to home…. Thinking why I am thinking so much.. about some stupid mad fellow whom I know just since a few hours.  I thought it was love. Then I thought no way. Then I thought I wish to adopt a child like him. And then I thought no. 

And fuck! And fuck! And fuck! My first thought should have been my  last thought.. for that lasts forever. 


I was a nice boy... and now am mad. mad in looov

 here is glossary 

Kannadi = spectacles
Aden Gappa = O my god!
Tam Brahm = tamil brahmin
illaiya = isnt it? 
pullai = boy

games people play...

the hazaar karod balloon at the opening of the common wealth games did manage to shift our focus from kalmadi who was chewing india like he would some bubble gum.  

but it sure scared the shit out of the chief ministerni, when our desh was rangeela, peela peela was our sheila...

no wonder while the world was waking up to glory of india, sheila was busy singing " you are my sonia"... sitting baaju-baaju with the mrs. of gandhi.

here in bombay, (oopsie - mumbai)... all are hand in hand .. big boss and candyfloss.. devi, devil and the wohs... with added attraction by sena's who never shy from showing their "mard taange wala" attitude and press the trigger with no agar magar. Big boss is definitely tempting... we love gupshup about love sex and dhokha, more than we love "love or sex".. here voyeurism gives us more orgasms than what an human organism would.

our land is ripped and raped... by the goons of our world... and lust is the reason... the sole reason... the lust for money for one, and the lust for power. one uses violence, other balloons.


as they look into the matter,
the other critical matters get overlooked.

coming to games...

our gajnified memory... benefits our kalmadi, our modi...
unkaa game nahi bajjega.

game khatam paisa hajam!
it soon will be another case of "khao khujao batti bhujao"

in our country, we have seen so much keeda- kaandi- that we can easily forget, forgive and enjoy another kalmadi.

...Care To Share

crossposting my column in  PINK PAGES - the premier LGBTI webzine. 

It was a crazy summer afternoon. I was out on a movie date with a friend…a friend who I knew since the past 3 months. I picked corner seats, the cozy ones, aloof from the rest of the crowd. Our intentions were definitely not noble. Within a while, the lights went off, the screen was lit and the Dolby was on. My hands touched his, and we exchanged a kiss. His hands moved over my body and I ran my hands over his. He suddenly got scared. He jolted, he shook and he stormed out of the theater. I followed him out. He was crying in the corner next to the popcorn stall. I went over to him. Hugged him, looked into his red eyes and understood something was indeed wrong. I didn’t know what to say to him. I did not want to say the wrong thing and cause him more pain. I was scared. I thought it was my provocation that was the reason behind his tears. I watched him in despair and did not know what I should do to show that I cared. I did not say a word, just held his hand…and did not let go of it till he spoke to me. He continued weeping profusely and I just watched him in the dumbness and stillness of loud silence.

He gave me a tight hug and drowned his head in my chest as if he was hiding from the rest of the world. He and I sat gazing at the moon, letting our silences speak. After a long pregnant pause he delivered his first words “thank you”. I acknowledged with a nod. He smiled. Took a deep breath and started speaking. And now, he was speaking as if he was possessed. He wasn’t bothered of who was watching him cry and swear. He turned pages of his life backwards, to reach the age of 8. He was at home then with his aunt. Alone with his aunt. His parents had gone for an overnight wedding. They were to return only the following day by noon. His aunt, a young 20 something, college going girl, thought it was the perfect opportunity to call her friends’ home for a party. She called a couple of her friends and asked them to get booze and cigarettes. They came and the music was set blaring. The smoke engulfed the room. My friend, the little boy, was introduced to all his aunts’ friends then was asked to go and sleep in the room. The time passed, and the boy slept oblivious to understand what was happening in his house. As he slept the volume of the music blared. At unease, he woke up in the dead of the night. He walked in the darkness to the loo. He passed by the Hall where he found his aunt getting cozy with her friend. He came back from the loo and when he was on his way to his bed. He was stopped by one of his aunts’ female friends. She was scantily dressed. She lowered her cleavage and asked him to touch ‘it’. He detested. He was scared, but he obliged. She kissed him and went naked in front of him and she felt him up too. He dint know what was happening. But he just knew that he was not feeling nice about it. That little child had an irreplaceable dent in his mind forever. He grew away from the girls in his class. He never liked the idea of marriage. He always spent time lost with himself…he grew up to be an introvert loner.

When he had his first night fall, he was furious and curious at the first feel of sperm. Furious, because he thought he had some female disease and had started milking from the wrong side. And he was dead curious about what was happening to him and in him. Days passed, the issue recurred. He woke up spending time and life in the closet of silence. He wondered why he got aroused thinking of his classmate who happened to be of his gender. While his friends always talked of and stalked girls in the neighbouring school, he would spend time ogling at boys. He found endless joy in just being with that special boy in his class. The days he would get to sit beside him, when his leg would touch his and the days when he would get a chance to brush on him just with no one actually knowing of his innermost feelings…these were the days he would very eagerly look forward to. He was happy on one end, and on the other he was scared and troubled. He had no one to share his feelings. He thought he was different, sometimes he thought he was cursed. He felt special for his classmate, and called him his “best friend”. He went from school to college, and they continued to be classmates till graduation. It was at graduation that his classmate started dating a girl. And he felt completely left out. He woke up to the existence of his sexuality amid devastation of losing his beloved eternal classmate, his best friend to a girl. Best friend is many-a-times, though not always, the nick for a crush, especially when language and understanding is challenged. Like we see in movies, in frustration and the undying urge to find himself and be himself he found refuge in alcohol. He thought his instinct towards men was because of his sexual abuse in the growing years. He was in a state of ambivalence, a state where he wanted to have sex with men and also had a feeling of extreme aversion towards it.

My friend hugged me and cried. For a long time. He confessed to me that meeting me and getting cozy was just because of the similar past of child sexual abuse that we had experienced, something that I was open and candid about. And this was something that actually prompted him to share one of his worst kept secrets with me who was just a couple of chats old. Thereon, I met up with him, everyday. Not to judge or to preach or to support him. Not by kind words or the usual “see positivity all around you” talk, but just by listening. I realized pain is such a binder. And listening is an art. Glad I could listen. That was one of my first memories of counselling… by chance though. Sharing makes a lot of difference…sharing of tears, sharing of joy. I call it the “flint stone effect”. Though not everyone can come ahead and speak openly about their bad childhood experiences, the ones who can, if they would, it would help someone find that one friend who serves as a flicker of hope.

…the hope to find oneself in this quest and to realize the power of Aham – the “me”.

love is praying!

don’t worry, don’t you cry,
this distance is a moment,
this too will silently pass by. 

when the wind is blowing,
sometimes too hard!
when your shadows are
yet so near, yet so far.

  

i am near.
with you dear.

feel my breath,
feel me wet.
my tongue my lips,
between your teeth that are kept. 

close your lips,
trap me in.
hear my beat,
let’s do the sin. 

feel my palm
over your hair,
feel my heart
beat in despair.

in a night so young,
with a moon over blown.
let the bed get drenched in our sweat,
shut it's eyes and hear us moan.

let me touch your hip,
and take a dip.
while you take a sip,
of my lip.

let me die this moment,
let me be born.
lets wake up beside,
and wish the night was long.

   

let us grow long,
let us grow along.


why do you shy,
why are you sad and scared…
you aint dirty,
i aint bad,
our today’s needn’t have our yesterday’s clad.

we are still as pure as dove,
no matter how many we have loved, 
or with made love. 

love is but not about bodies preying
it is our bodies,  where love is praying!

i could, if need be, wait longer…

distances make hearts grow fonder…