Love Tales

Erotic Book…the last thingsYou always find to say are charming, and rescue meBefore the night does – 'My Erotic Double,' by John AshberryNo, it was not my father's – and neitherMy grandfather's – as one would rather imagineTo have happened, as it happens in otherRecollections, from a time when a freckled,.Balzac- or Tolstoy-hunting youth sneaks intoOne of those waylays which the affluent call a study,But among the lesser echelons is merely a shelf for hidingOther books. Another kind of books, which one must not.Lay hands upon. Especially the growing son, orHis grandmother. Yes, it was hers. The signature,Betrayed it. Just as my grandfather signed every copyOf a book which he bought, she too had done the same.On one of the last pages. By the time I came to it,The yellowed parchment had begun to crumbleBy the spine and the edges, and certain meaningsOf certain words had dissolved in the oxidised lignin.Of the alternating rough and smooth texture of my grandmother's….The nose! They always pointed out to the nose. From a framed picture.Of hers, which hung about in the second floor, of that house.– Not too far from where Tipu's sons were exiled –.I saw her, a child, in a chemise. And everyone would say.How I resembled her, mostly because of the nose. I had never.Seen her, except in her chemise. Yes, another time, of course.In another picture, where she wore vermillion, and a saree,.Beside my grandfather – who was looking somewhat self-effacing like.Humphry Bogart (why, he had been to Cairo, at least, if not as far as.Casablanca). But the nose, was our shared instrument.Of claiming a bond of secret sign, which I discovered,.In fact, I almost invented it. For I had never seen her signature before..Yes, I could almost have invented, what I call her sign….And our shared exile, of an exiled book. I read beside that rack. It was.Like a writer's first attempt at braising a metaphor. I imagined her nails – my desires, peeled one after another – stroking the pages, enticing.The precipice of every sheet with the flavor of her tongue – it came down.To the releasing of my rind – she must have been forgetful of the mustard oil.Left on the heat – the marinated rind of fish – does it have to be fish, she would have wondered – then let it be a vegetable, I decided – and thus a splash…."Things gone into hot boiling mustard oil," as she always said (I heard.From someone) "would only come out, pure, without causing any damage to.Caste or digestion." And so she would pour everything into hot oil,.All those things which had been touched by those who were not supposed.To touch them, or the way or in those places where things or parts.Are not meant to be stroked… I too, went down inside the crucible.Reading what she had read. And as my fingertips felt the viscid.Water from tonight's showers, I saw her standing on the terrace.Her arms outstretched – in the rain the human form, takes a much.Sharper relief, and so did she – Qasim, as I read to her.From her erotic book of memoirs, which you had mistaken,.The other day, for my books of scriptures, and had said.Astaghfarullah! La ilaha illaallah!. * * *.The Tenant. On the clock's dull dial a foggy finger,. Moving to set the minutes right. With tentative touches that lift and linger. In the wont of a moth on a summer night. – 'Old Furniture' by Thomas Hardy.The dark corridor to her parlour.trails like the aisle of a chapel,.yet, arching as a tool; near the hilt,.a counter separates her from me..The architecture: religious, but not quite;.two chairs – Hitchcocks – one ribbon back,.a smudged Via Dolorosa on the lectern,.tethered to her pen-stand; on the wall,.a framed facsimile of Flaming June;.her desk, like a credence table, that holds.a bowl of drupes, the crystal refracts.the Alexandrite sapphire on her finger..She taps away the seconds on mahogany,.with her nails… her nails are the skin of citruses,.her skin too is humid as citrus… Peel….her face too young to be my landlady,. peel this orange for me, as you talk.. "Thou preparest a table before me…,".and, the psalm goes sinking in the clamorous waves.of the viscous olive sea that frowns behind.her chequered shamrock windows; she resumes:.The rent is easy, how long will you stay?.A mauve bead trickles down her temple, to her throat.and, the wooden beams smell of a forbidden,.fermenting tangerine: two nights, at the most.three; how much do you charge for a night?.Nineteen lines; checkout at twelve, noon..So, a villanelle a day, you mean?.No rhyme scheme, no form, anything goes,.blank verse, free verse…feel free at home;.weekends, a little extra – a love letter a day,.my lodgers like to trim them with some red pepper lust….But, you have no lodgers around today?.She giggles like a merlin's twitter, lilting.into the distant jingle of Church bells,.with notes of Ave Maria di Lourdes..She handed out to me for the day,.a lilac coloured page, torn from the centre.of a ledger left open on a teak rehal..Remember, no meals here, just sometimes.there may be some leftover bacon, if only you….I left for an afternoon at the shore,.leaving on the sheet the first twenty lines,.and folded it at her credence, beside the bowl..She had swopped the fruits for beige shingles,.and stood at her terrace – as I looked back –.shadowed by the hollies and buglosses,.she looked like a vine of yellow lime.dipped in sunshine coloured water,.with a sun frozenly writhing above..I returned at about 9'o clock:.she is still not at the counter,.the sheet and the bowl have both disappeared –.a scent of fenel lingers, in the mildewed.varnish, I enter my rooms, where she is seated.on the solitary Morris, her back to me.I see a knife in her fingers, slice.strawberries, into the cream of a dish.kept above my folded poem..The light is as dim as the passage I have crossed,.or, dimmer still, she speaks:.These lover like footsteps, I wish you really were….your 'Lines to K,' are they really for me?.Who is flattered, she or I? Fenel, or fenugreek? Who hallucinates?.I stand indecisively, she turns abruptly and says:.Turn off the light, her teeth piercing the tip of a slice,.I bolt the door; the switchboard clicks,.the chink of her sapphire on a wineglass;.the rest is all left to darkness, and the chiming.of bells in the night of this seatown..I saw her through the turbid morning.coming out of the Mediterranean;.I saw what was dark last night.I saw her through the shamrock window.I saw her as I sat down to write,.a thousand lines for my summer's rental;.granules of the distinct strawberry.were stuck on the palette of my mouth..Last night… deep, too deep in the night,.she whispered upon my chin.Do I have a witch's laughter?.I shuddered quietly as I saw.the fireplace catch flames, by her words:.the embers, and a saffron glint on her thigh..The young idol kept peeping at me –.her face too young, still too young –.for many hours, as by my elbow.she perspired in blistering peace..* * *.A Contract of Faith. It is not you I love,it is the form . And shadow of all lovers who have died . That gives you all the freshness of a warm . And unfamiliar bride.– 'Infidelity' by Louis Untermeyer).How odd you think is a paramour's ditty,.Or this too is perhaps a sacrament.In a poem of infidelity.Love is ever sought as permanent.As if you who I had loved on the sly.You for who I would have breathed my last.You – who I will never come by –.Still keep on rasping my living past.As I was saying, a poem of unfaithful love.Always aspires to be a pious strife.As though it were a vision from above.Of a Zeus being stitched back with kisses to life.It is always voluptuous, with undertones.Of the glib, the profound, the mystery touch.Of the golden voice of the prayerful groans.Of epiphanies, but all hysterical as such.Of sunshine trickling through a muslin sleeve.Upon a skin, beneath, of lacteous gin.Of olive secretions too viscous to sieve.The oil of a magdalen from a virgin.Or the good old metaphor of fruits –.The fibers of a summer's melon peel.The leaking cromophyll in a ravioli of roots.Reposing on the countertop a rosé-tinted steel.The scurrying of berries from an upturned basket.A claustrophobic fall which precipitates.Their sauces, like marrow broth on a gasket.While a plate of Morlacco di Grappa awaits.The dessert allows for the sighs to arrive.And our darling faith has taken a blow.We know the only reason this must thrive.Is that the papillae of guilt are slow.We dress some poultice for our jaded joints.Our chests battered by a luscious secret,.The grilled limb of lamb, and our sated entry points.And the rest all humid like the plumage of an egret.The fears, the ecstasy, the contrition, the urge.Have elapsed in the shallow marshmallowed kiss.From our evening's embrace, and the diurnal dirge.Of our farewells by the imaginary trellis.We go on being mesmerised as though we were saint.To one another, and our imaginations.Never short of being just that faint.Reflection of Ilium's topless constellations.You might not call this refined discourse.For it changed from being a conscientious one.Into something disloyal, something too coarse.Or something undeserving of a lasting religion.The poem, you will later realize, has so many idols.They will harass you to read and savor the slush.Of melons on my Sufiya's down; or the idylls.Of the song of an April's thrush.It is a contract of faith that you must return.Like a refrain that throws up a new hidden strain.Qasim will know there is water deep enough to drown.By the wraith of curlews, the wraith of his first love again.* * *.June. June efforts quietly. . I've planted vegetables along each garden wall.– 'Dear One Absent this Long While' by Lisa Olstein.The month reveals itself like a fox come out of hiding.From somewhere where it was warm in winter.Where it was too abashed to have strayed too long,.While some alpine vegetation noisily trembled..I was talking about the month, not the fox, and certainly.Not about you. I shall not talk about you. Each time I start.Taking about the grocery, the electricity, the hinges of my door.The rusted locks from old soppy verses, the burlesque of Cervantes,.The baroque of Borromini, bewildered by his own melancholia,.Weeping by the cloisters of San Carlino, or looking up.At the oval entablature, and disguising the enigmatic foliage.In his mind as dreams of some divine erotic illusion, from his first commission….Or simply, even if I talk about religion, the prophets,.The sundials of ancient Abyssinians, your nose.The trenchant abyss in your eyes, oozing a solitary tear.A magnificently enacted curse of separation, and nearly everything else.Is a reminder of June, a sacred month of sendoffs and departures –.The conception of a lurid dream, voices of mellow disease.In the rapture of deathlike sunshine upon the mango trees,.The succulence of yellowing drupes, in the feeble echoes.Of a Nino Rota composition, I like to yearn in my yearly throes.Qasim, until the years have toiled back to the shimmering noon of the vintner's perfume,.While she watered the raisins: spare me the hauntings, my Sufiya is June..* * *.While she told me of the Cyclone of '64.I sat by her knees. She gleamed in that hint of helium from the watchtower, in the dark room. I let her talk, and from what I heard not much could be forgotten. The broken syntaxes broke my restraint. She took me with her into the bore.. "I see a peninsular town, I hear them talking of the day my mother was born, the winter of '64, they say, the day of the cyclone, but I am not there, yet I can hear, their voices rise and fall as the wind screeches outside, they say, the candles can no longer withstand the dirge of the monsoon, they say, the wax bleeds on to the window sill, I sink and turn, and feel the dirge within an oyster like sea, the lonely coast flattens its shores to the odorous braided mat of palm, it carries the chemmeen, pink and onion like, the wine of its flesh, they peel, they shred like cheddar, the red, vascular creatures, the middle passage, red and green, creepers, reefs, they talk about me, I think, and a train, they say it was a cyclone in the sea…. I removed the anchal of her saree, her waist, the membrane of gravel. She was an island sweating in the heat, as I crumpled it in my fist, and slid my fingers over her skin…. "which swallowed the bridge, they say it has swallowed the train, a face in the paddy fields, the green, tropical green, green ocean of the womb, the green coconuts, it is red beneath the feet with clay, the clay stuck to the feet like blood, a man who ogles at my breasts and my navel ogles at the others too, I am jealous of the sea of breasts huddled up before his eyes, in an absent minded menstruation I become a woman, I have, says my mother, grown the pelvis of a fisherwoman, the flesh of onions, the flesh of breasts, he looks as he sings, he stares and rows, looking over the virtuous ocean, biting from the virtues of a fisherwoman, they say he is circumscised, unvirtuous, the station master of the town, the only town without a train but a station, a road, a crane, they're building a road, the cyclone has extinguished the candles, they call me Karuthamma, and I am naked beneath the mundu, his gaze tremors on my heaving breasts, as the draft from the song of the sea penetrates across the fronds of coconut, the oil in my hair, the oil on the scales, the oil of chemmeen, the oil in the discharge from my areoles…. I swerved my knuckles around, and caressed the droplets away. Her eyes were closed and her hands withdrawn, her knees were in subsiding drowsy calisthenics, and the murmuring endured…. "while the station master awaits the train that never came, a daughter of a fisherman weaves in a shanty, she is sold for some hours to a man from Mangalore, your song haunts her as he fornicates on her, there are strands of it after he has finished, it took three days for the sea at Kambankulam to recede, they talk of Ramayan, the bow and arrow, the bridge that went down, the railway station, the solitary station master survived with his daughters, his wife, they say, it has become a ghost town, the fisher-folk leave footprints for miles on the sand, where the stench of dead fish goes into sleep with the music of the waves, we eat the chemmeen, you eat the sea, you rub the salt all over me, you steal the salt of my thigh and rub the seams of your nets into my groin, the surplus of your dried fish you couldn't sell, it goes into my womb, my down throbs, my palette throbs to feel your pepper, the mustard of your tongue scrapes my arm, the boats scattered in the salt lick by the sea, the cumin of your knee chisels the shell of my groin…. I felt my lips over the island, wetted its bank and rowed my tongue across the bay, sensing the granular skin, while her hands quivered, as the thunder shook the suburban apartments, in approval…. "I struggle to find a way amidst those who crouch in the ocean, I turn in the womb of a sea, chroniclers have arrived to count the bodies, the whining of airborne ambulances penetrates the surface of green skin, Kambankulam they say, it vanished from sight, a church, a temple, a police station, a mask absorbing sunlight, you ensconce the nutmeg of my bosom in your mouth, you wriggle your finger over the anise, you breathe of burned carbon and asafoetida, bending like a gopuram over my breasts, I see shadows of motionless crouching faces, her face, my mother's, I have seen her face in that day of cyclone of '64, smelling of naphthalene, smelling of glycerine, smelling of blood, her eyes placid, someone has died, they wait at the sadhya, my lips are dipped in the oil of your mouth, you call my lips the cloves of garlic, I am browning, I flake in the oil beneath, as I clench my teeth, I groan, I bleed, and the candle bleeds, which they say won't last, like I won't last they say…. I crouched in the dark, and then flattened my palm upon her, feeling the erect bristles, inching the tips of my fingers towards her groin, and stroking with another hand the elbow of her left hand, careful not to rush in lest she stopped her murmuring, which seemed to come from a detached alien voice from above—whispers in another language of a foreign land, her body, a foreign territory…. "as they hear the hooting of a ghost train, the lines have been washed under, but the trains know the way through the sea, the crouching passengers have not yet drowned, those hundred and ten, whose hunger I feel, they thirst for an ounce of my skin, they thirst for an ounce of the sun, they are buried for long, though the sea is warm, lukewarm with the skeletal remains of those hungry who never reached Kambankulam, to become a hillock under the sea, and the submarine hills crush our genitals, crushing us into each other, they feed the breasts of the mothers to the dead mouths of the men, and I suckle a dead son, I suckle my mother, who is about to be born, the rows of the gopuras on the roofs, the orange gables, you call me the voice of terracotta anklets, you call my areoles the ferment of burned grapes, you eat the chemmeen in my hovel, as the voices warn me you won't return after the raw garlic is consumed, the steam of the sea froth marinades your parting, the rain on the sea brings the lemon to my cheeks…. I groped for her lips, I pressed them with my thumb, rubbing my chin on her neck, as I groped for her back, warm, she tilted her head, and the murmuring went on, as I plucked a hook after another…. "Pristine death, the old shattered country of fishers, those nets have melted upon our ribs, our ribs have melted into the corals, my ribs melt upon your tongue, my neck throbs, an oyster throbs, I am in heat in the cyclonic sea, I am breathing under the foam of your mouth, you play with the gopuras of my earrings, they jingle as if they're the melody of your groans from which I parted as I sank, I suckle the hillock, and I groan again, when he crouches over me, I struggle below his heavily heaving head, struggling to swim up, floating in the womb, struggling to remove the clutching of his hands, as the hooting becomes a song, of a groaning man with my mother's face, the face of the station master from Kambankulam, leaves for Mangalore, the priest is chanting for the spirits of the dead, the cold leaves my elbows dry, they fry the chemmeen, an aborted child becomes the dew in my eyes, you give me a new name, Sufiya, as I sob in the darkness, the distant syllables of your name, Qasim…".~ Arup K Chatterjee is the founding-chief-editor of Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (International Journal of Travel Writing): www.coldnoon.com and the 2014-15 recipient of the Charles Wallace fellowship to the UK. His forthcoming book on the Indian Railways will be published by Bloomsbury.