The Angel's Share - Front Cover

Cymbal #43:: You Will Rise

Howard Carter widening a crack, pushing a light through it, blinded by gold – it is one of the authentic dreams of our age, that the earth is not dead, only sleeping. In wooden chairs, gilt and horsehair, rock hewn chambers, lives a dream of limitlessness, a seductive whispering of untold power. Wisdom in scrolls, wisdom in sand paintings, astral wisdom in colorful disguises, pulsing powerfully, it draws you in. For this, a man could leave his home, abandon his wife and children, commit crimes that thin him and dry up in the desert sun till he leaves only a husk like a beetle.

But remember what Carter found in the innermost chamber – the Verdant Osiris. Stone Osiris, lined with linen, filled with the soil of the Nile and sprinkled with seeds of grass. Pulsing life, waking in spring like grass -

- pulsing in green and yellow, like handsome Mondamin, the corn god, at Hiawatha’s door at sunset, commanding him to rise from his fast. Hiawatha complies. 

They wrestle and the warrior feels like life is pounding and laughing in him, flowing like a mighty river. The next day, Mondamin returns to Hiawatha who is wasting away, and again challenges him to wrestle. They lock as the sun goes down, a burning cinder, and again Hiawatha feels the river rise in him. Then, Mondamin tells him that he will come again the next day, and Hiawatha must kill him and then bury him, sweep the loose packed earth over his face, close his clear eyes.

Woods - Death Rattles - 2010

And Hiawatha waits, gaunt and wretched, bloodless. Mondamin comes. They wrestle in the pink and golden light, their muscles rounding, breath ragged and then the god is no more. Hiawatha pulls his green and yellow husks off him, pushes him into the loam, lets it roll across his body till he is gone from sight. He sprinkles the mound with water.

Nobody is gone long, it is only the means of return that concern us.

Jonah on The Literateur

It appears that The Literateur, that most excellent online journal, has published a poem I submitted a while back- 'Jonah'.

I wrote 'Jonah' in 2006, when I was a student in Bangalore.

Frankly, I'm stunned. This is just great luck.

Gone to Presses

Since HarperCollins are going to press today with my novel, I've set up a Facebook page for it:

It is: - The Angel's Share

Of course, cups and lips do that famous slipping thing, but hopefully it should be out on shelves by mid-June.

Cymbal #42:: You Need to Buy A Helmet

Morning comes early- the summer is here. If you can no longer sleep, if there is no comfortable compromise brokered between the blanket and the A/C, if your eyes are not stinging, then rise and saddle up. Stretch quickly, throw your phone and wallet into your slingbag and push off.

Up the first meager slope your thighs groan and complain, they too are waking up. You pass all the sleeping cars, and one woman who is bleached so pale and tucked so heavily that she has no expression. She too could be asleep, with her eyes pinned open by some cunning surgeon.

The tennis players are up too. One stands at the baseline slinging leaden-footed forehands. His tutor stands patiently at halfcourt with a cart full of balls. You know half the balls are bad but they leave them in the cart anyway, from when you were a child, walloping dead balls into the net, and looking up like-I-swear-it’s-not-my-fault-I-bent-my-knees-and-everything, but no one buys it.

Around the corner, the school parking lot is filling up with cricketing. Don Bosco himself sits princely on his stone throne. Down the road, through the Alaknanda market, where there is only one person, an old man in a white topi doing breathing exercises. Past the cops at the chowki, where one holds his back and leans.

The Hotrats - Bike - 2010

Back up through the garbage strewn Gobindpuri back lanes, where stray dogs trot, patchwork dogs rummaging through rubbish heaps. Drop a gear, pedal faster. Around the corner to Kalkaji. There is a big modern concrete Church of the Holy Spirit, a plaster Jesus welcoming above the gate, the high concrete tower above the chancel breaking through the trees like an aircraft carrier. A metal staircase leads to it. Beside it is the Sri Balavenendu temple, with its multitude of gods on the nominal gopuram. You contemplate taking a picture, and then scold yourself for being a tourist.

School buses crowd up outside the apartment colonies of Alaknanda. Parents look at the windows which contain their squalling brats, an eternity of painfully early mornings, you think. You have to watch for school buses. Their drivers have no heart, it has been screeched out of existence by thousands of children. They will run a cyclist over and laugh, and all those children will laugh with them, because children are cruel like crows.

Up the hill, pump pump pump, and then down the hill, coast, to CR Park. The markets are empty. Even the famous fish-market is empty. A big dog sits on the table and yawns with equanimity. Millions of flies buzz around it and it is not bothered. Through the backlanes of CR Park, past the Kali temple, past the police station where you once came to reclaim your towed car. The small roads twist and turn, and you see small parks for children, morning walkers, determined. Boys everywhere wash cars. We too should use first-world terms for our city, you think. Why do we not call CR Park a quaint ethnic enclave? It is Chowdhury after Bhattacharya after Ganguly after Dutta after the delightfully spelt Mowdgal. One lady looks at you while she waters her plants and frowns – a young man on a bicycle joyriding on a weekday morning does not compute.

The Beatles - Good Morning, Good Morning -1967

At the corner back to GK-II, four older school-girls stand in wait for their bus. Three are reading magazines and one is putting her face on. Big shiny Punjabi GK-II – a beautiful woman learns how to pilot the Mercedes from her husband. In the balcony of the top floor of a new glass and marble three-story, a maid takes a break, her hip pressed against the railing, looking into the neighbour’s.

You pick up mangoes at the corner fruit-shop. Then you pedal home slowly, pick up your bike and take it in. Your heart is singing with the glory of the morning and you ring your bell – trangtrangtrang- joyously. 

Cymbal#41:: One Eye Up

'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.'

-Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act II, Scene II

‘I never sleep, ‘cause sleep is the cousin of death.’

-Nas, N.Y. State of Mind, Illmatic

They come, Malcolm and Macduff, Ross and Siward, brewing medicine from the blood of babies.  Kid gangstas, young punks, packing heat. The hand moves across the sea. Your kingdom groans, the exchequer runs dry. It’s a poor year for grain. No one’s buying rock.

You cannot sleep, thane imperial, for the long knives move in the heather. Strange designs on banners, strange arms in holsters.  There are Uzis where you had Glocks. War will come to you behind your walls of intelligence. It will seize you by the throat. You’re not safe in your own walk-up, not safe on your couch, the projects buzz with threat. You cannot laugh a siege to scorn with one meatloaf and two loaves of Wonder Bread. And so you cannot sleep – you rest one eye up.

Sleep is your last drug, old man. In your sleep, your murders are multiplied. When you sleep, you are Gaddafi, you are Assad. When your eye drops, your heart quickens. Your grip on your sword tightens. Your mind is infected by demons; the nightmare rides your chest.

If that door opened and you knew not the hand on the knob, would you even care anymore? The leaves have turned again and good seasons and ill have visited you. No one survives you. You will not hold your fire, but when that door swings open, will there be a sickening fall, or a lifting in your throat?

Nas – N.Y. State of Mind - 1994

But only sleep will set you free. Only when your face slackens will you be noble again.

Cymbal#40:: Under A Blood Red Sun

Through the thick fields of grass they came to answer the siren call, on all fours, the puffs around their necks full of blood, suffused with what they knew not enough to call faith. The grass rustled around their bodies, their long heads pushing it through it. The knots of ganglions which constituted the brains set all the way down their spines tingled as if they smelled blood.

Roland saw them from the last watchtower on the plains. They moved in rows, all aligned in the same direction, and the red and grey of their bodies pulsed through the grass as far to the west as he could see. He lowered his field glasses and shouldered his plasma rifle. The device hummed awake in his hand as it recognized the signature of his body. He focused on one of the forerunners and fired. A mile away, one body stopped. It was as he suspected. The cooperative instinct of the tribe had broken down; each of the giant lizards ran forward in its own blind drive.

There was no hope for the rickety wooden tower. Roland turned and tied his sleeping bag into a precise roll and picked his leather saddlebags off the nail in the wall. He descended the wooden ladder to the stable below and removed the horse’s nosebag. Then he saddled and mounted it. In minutes, they would be upon him.

To the river, to the river, he thought. While there was no guarantee that water would in any way deter the lizards, the river lay parallel to the run of the horde and not in its path. He rode hard, digging his spurs into the thin side of the horse. He need not have. The smell of reptilian flesh so close behind them had terrified it. The sinews on its neck stood out with effort, crisscrossing the ropey muscles. A froth of fear dripped from its mouth.

Pallbearer - Devoid of Redemption - 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKACdmfdkO4

When he reached the river, the lizards were only thirty yards behind them. Roland could see their faces, their tongues flicking as they ran towards the smell of fresh meat.

He jumped off the horse, grabbed his bags and the rifle and waded into the river, keeping his arms carefully above the water. It came up to his ampits. Then it came up to his nose. He swam, uncaring that his possessions would get wet. If he ever had a chance to use them again, he would learn to deal with the discomfort.

The horse did not follow him. It neighed and pranced in panic, for its instinct did not permit it to enter the fast flowing river, a thing it had never seen before, but it could smell the rampaging horde, and it knew danger.

Roland crossed. When he turned back, he saw that the horse’s hesitation had cost it dearly. He could hear the snapping of bone and the tearing of flesh. The only thing which had saved him from the same fate was the twenty yards of river.

Squatting on his haunches, Roland wondered what had occasioned this carnivorous tide, flowing in the same direction, so relentless, onward to the red sun. He dismissed the thought. He did not have the luxury of asking himself questions he could not answer.

His path lay westwards, and now he had no horse.