The plot

In Borges’ short story “The Plot” the gaucho is set upon by other gauchos among whom he recognizes his own godson .

“Pero Ische ?” says he . Like  “Et Tu ,Brutus? “said by Caesar when he recognizes Brutus among his assassins.

He does not know he  has died so that the scene could be played again .

The plot is complex and never-ending and encompasses all times and all spaces. The irony  here is not inherent in the scheme of things but is only  read by history.



A girl in white stands with the right pigtail defiantly slung on her left shoulder.

There at the corner bleary-eyed moms stand waiting for dirty yellow buses to take their kids to reluctant schools.

It had rained last night on the black plum tree and then there was wind and violet rain from the tree.

The puddles under the tree were violet with the tiny ripe fruits mashed under feet in rain water and mud.

The woman takes the white dog for a walk but the dog pulls her sideways for sniff-sniff.

The dog has fiercely independent views.

An old man with his lungi tucked above the knees is dragging a kid into the house .The three year old is defiantly bawling and dragging grandpa away.

The kid does not see eye to eye with his grandpa on all issues.


Six ’O clock and it is time to repeat ,on scale, joint walks, up and yonder.The overcast sky says much nothing.We understand life beside the tree.

Repeat the tree and the old dusty car with the same old names washed off in yesterday’s rain, waiting in new dust ,for the same names, heart and arrow.

You looking for repeat arches in art?I have them plenty in my digital box, in old tombs where angry sultans lie in endless repetitive arches of beauty where men vanish in trees at the end.

Our walks are repeat feet under shoes occupying space, little by little, in sky.The feet shuffle slowly, one behind one.Eight ’O clock is time to repeat on scale,a bus of people on rods, lunch boxes touching sweaty bodies tantalizingly.


In the afternoon we visited her in her old home. She stood there near the water cooler expecting us .Just what she was expecting. Someone would come. The others expected someone of her kin to come.

There she was, shaking like tree in the wind. There was electricity passing in her as if she was just an old tangle of wires. As if a lightning struck her from the sky and reached down all the way to the earth.

Doctor? It is all a mental thing. How does one get out of these mental things? Nobody believes her. Nobody does.

I want you to say something. Don’t keep quiet.Say anything. A story, may be.Say it for God’s sake. Tell me a story.Your silence is my utter darkness. I cannot breathe in such darkness. Her eyes dilated in horror as her words flowed in a cascade of fiery rebukes and pitiful entreaties.

We did not have any stories to tell her.

Self and myself

My self, like a high bird’s self, is walking along the seashore and self’s blurb is flying a sky and body is walking by a sea and world is shaping round it.

Self calls it down by flapping boy fingers for whites in them .They are bird-like falls in them.They are of a self of yesterday.Today’s whites are other thing. A world is shaping around me. My whites fly away by fingers.

The fingers snap at the blurb and we break the magic spell.

Rainbows and leaping hearts

The poet says the heart leaps when it beholds the rainbow . Child is father to man in all such rainbow views. The triolet trio by another poet  says the words are truly wild. How can that be ? It must be man is father to child.

The poor poet of the triolet trio has limitations. He has to repeat the same line at 1,4,6. in an eight-lined poem. With such limitations , he cannot say much.

Or may be ,father is child to man. Have you tried Cockles’ world famous  anti-bilious pills? The next door neighbor is saying there is no news in the Times Today .You plough through its pages for three hours to verify the claim and find it is true.

In the meantime the child has grown to grandfather whose heart leaps on an ECG monitor.

(referring to G.M.Hopkins’  poem A Trio of Triolets )

Love is mud

I go into the very slush of words plucking poems in a recent movie. Boy and girl kiss in squishy mud as in circus feat high on the roof. We yawn into this slushy movie.

A kiss takes place in stark mud. It was high like simile’s circus, one attempted in the top of tent. All the while the tent is a sketchy sky with its hole , a chink letting in starlight.

Tent is very rope bridge balancing history of the country with movie going love. Bridge undulates like terrain, like waters about a head in river.

A bridge is like a sword that swells to feed army to free the country. My word comes out of a slushpile ,a poem for the day from a night.

(after watching a movie “Rangoon”)