Fire-fly Loves of Mumbai

My dear friend 204, the brilliant voice couched in darkness,
had left a comment on my previous post with the same name as this one.

I sensed the answer floating within me then, but could not entice it to the surface.
Now, something has come up.

By "fire-fly loves" I meant those many momentary romances in the busy city of Mumbai, where young people living away from their families, in stressing jobs seek solace in a faint semblance of love. If there is not total commitment, its fine. They are not seeking a cure for life, they just want a pain killer for loneliness, a band-aid for other relations - family, friends - torn thin by distances.

These loves - in the intense, empty darkness of overcrowded Mumbai - seem to burn as true and bright as sunshine. There is a false, yet glowing warmth in them. Its easy to fall in this love, and far less painful to get out of it.

And for some people that is not only sufficient, but perfect.

These people are veterans of such loves.
With someone this week, and someone else the next.
Chance meetings ending in crumpled bed spreads.
Burning brightly now, dead the next moment.
Its perfect.

What really hurts them, what burns them, is when the embers of one such dead love continue to burn in their memories.
When they frighteningly realise, that perhaps, they have actually fallen in love. The purity of it is a scary thought.

sunshine I didnt seek, for it
binds me
blinds me
The small, glowing, ephemeral intensity
that hugs you tight for a moment, then sets you free
a falling feather from a flying dove
I just wanted a fire-fly love.

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पिशाचार हूँ मैं
निशाचर हूँ मैं
आस नहीं थी मुझको सूरज की
प्यार नहीं माँगा था
पाक नहीं माँगा था
बस एक भूख थी निर्लज सी

तुझ संग खाए कुछ फल यौवन के
पी कुछ बूँदें तेरे तरल मन से
कुछ बूँदें
जो उस रात मदिरा बन छलकी थी
अब कंठ में हलाहल बन जलती हैं
जलती हैं
गीली आग सी पिघलती हैं

बस दो पल साथ चलना था, फ़िर अपने रस्ते जाना था
तुमने भी तो इस शर्त को माना था
.......................फ़िर क्यों ?
फ़िर क्यों अब भी जब भी सांझ ढलती है
तेरी याद मेरे संग संग चलती है........
>>
>>
>>
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प्यार नहीं माँगा था
पाक नहीं माँगा था
आस नहीं थी मुझको सूरज की.

Fire-fly loves of Mumbai

My feelings are shallow,
yet the pain is deep;
If you were just a bad dream
why can't I go back to sleep?

Dreams stare at the empty skies,
sitting in my empty eyes;
If you were just a passing star, a falling one
Why does the sky still burn?

WHY AM I HURT????
Why this pain??
If it was just a dance in the rain,
Why are my eyes still wet?

If it was one of those ephemeral fire-fly loves of Mumbai -
now-burning-now-dying -
just a fling,
Tell me, my sweetheart, tell me
Why does my heart sting?

Bombay would be...

Do cities also have desires and ambitions?
A sense of destiny, dreams troubled by visions?
Does a city say, when I grow up,
I will be so gross, that people will want to throw up
(kolkata)

A city that feels that discipline is all that the world needs
A straight jacket to fit all human greeds
For licentiousness too a license
Rules! Yes rules! whether or not they make sense
Walk the line
Else pay the fine
(Singapore)

Pining for the unrequited love of that imagined beauty divine
Chewing on words
And spitting out verse
the colour of heartbreak and wine
Does a city want nothing but a poet’s life
Never mind the spit marks, and the querulous wife
(lucknow)

ever ready with a clap-on-the-back or a slap-on-the-face
wearing idiocy without disgrace
swinging between “Saale ke do thappad maar”
and “Kee farak painda hai yaar”
a loud guffaw
an eternal faux pas
The democracy of fun, food and boisterous..err....sex…ahem..
the world laughing with them, for them, and at them
A city that will grow up to be a joker,
And so absolutely hopeless at poker
(chandigarh, punjab)

An elegant, extravagant beauty
Loved and hurt
Desired and burnt
A smile trampled to bits
Lovely, long, wet, downcast lashes
As little men fight over the ashes
Of this burning phoenix

Free from being coveted…Free from being owned…..FREE!!!!
A beautiful lady who just wants to be.
Queenhood she doesn’t want,
she pines not for a king’s stares
Her dream, is simply
to be free of nightmares
(Srinagar, Kashmir)

Does a city want to grow up to be a historian (Delh)
Or just a coarse mouthed ruffian (Haryana)
A delighter of senses, a belly dancer (Goa)
A worshipper of death – a necromancer????? (Kabul)

If cities can dream, if cities can desire
to make it big, or in peace retire
If a city can choose between
steady love and a passionate fling
Then Bombay is the mad genius
that wants to be everything.

Rain in Mumbai is like an assassin’s hit – a few brief seconds of life-shattering intensity in a busy street.

Mumbai ki Baarish...

Dil tha mera kala samandar sa,
Sannata tha isme bhayankar sa..
Lekin aaj is samandar se ubharta
attahaas ka tufaan nazar aata hai..
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota....aasman nazar aata hai

Aaj subah se ek khushi bewajah hai,
Ek chanchal bechaini naache hriday ke satah pe
Uchhalti, Khelti....Taaron se jhoolti, Sheeshon pe fisalti
boondon me natkhat muskaan nazar aata hai
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota....aasman nazar aata hai

Ye chhaaton ko katoriyan banati purzor hawa,
Pyaari si ladkiyon ke baalon me ulajhti munh-zor hawa..
Rahgeeron ke beech daudti,
chhedti,
Hawa nahin, ek bauna shaitaan nazar aata hai
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota...aasman nazar aata hai

Yeh geeli barsaati subah
Yeh meethi khushi bewajah
Yeh Khelti boondein natkhat
Yeh daudti hawa sarpat
Mumbai ki barish ka rutba
alishaan nazar aata hai
Yeh faila seena, yeh chhota asman,
kisi ka....ehsaan nazar aata hai

Mumbai is a straight-line city,
where the people keep moving in spirals and circles - dizzingly upward spirals of immense opulence and downward spirals of crushing, dehumanizing poverty....or just circles of survival.

It is a city that will make you run very hard just to stay in the same place.

It is a city that works on a huge amount of grime and human grease.
It is life accelerated.

Mumbai sometimes scares me. But what scares me even more is when people say, "Three months in Mumbai, and then you can't live anywhere else. This city grows on you."

I always beleived that there is no city in the world that I can totally hate.
Do I hate Mumbai?

No, I am still struggling to come to terms with its intensity. With its accelereated densities.
How can I bring myself to hug this giant when its immensity and rawness still awe me?

I am suddenly, brutally shocked - like hitting the cold water of a pool flat with your chest - into the realization that there is no other city like Mumbai. There is nothing you can point to and say, "this is a bit like mumbai, with perhaps this and that changed, intensified, decreased, enlarged" No.....you can't compare Mumbai with anything. It is a concept in itself.

Perhaps, I need three months.

Till that time I shall continue to impress these pages with whatever Mumbai hits me with.
If these small images turn out to be the footprints of my reluctant love story with Mumbai then let it be so.

Mumbai, wet and dirty, sucks.

Not in the way that makes you want to come.