Varali

Dark convoluted locks reaching out like night's fingers. That is how she first appears. Utterly dark, dark like the shadow of a moonless night. Only hair, copious waves of it. They screech against the void like dark nails against a darker board. At the same time, the cascade of locks echoes the melody of a violent sea...noiselessly.

And then, a gentle hum, a drone of the bee - the kind of bee that occupied the imagination of Appar[1] and the Lord Sundareshwarar Himself [2]. A gentle hum, of a bee that is seeking the honey.

And then in a flash, the locks fall back and her face breaks out like a thousand suns. Its the face of a queen, a regal face with a royal nose. Her smile is like twin serpents - coiled in mercy and contempt at the same time. The forehead bears a mark, a dark crimson circle. It’s a spiral, the dark locks, then the refulgent face and then the dark kungumam. She mesmerizes, not by her living features but by the dead signs.

The hum again. Here the bee is a queen drinking from the divine lotus; there a dancer giving life to an imaginary bee with her hands and eyes. The hum dances wildly, one feet grounded in reality, the other raised to illusion. And yet, the grounded feet seem to hover and the raised feet firmly ensconced in the sky.

The lips now come to the center stage. They shine in the hypnotizing red of a bride's hand with too much marudhAni. Look now, they are repulsive, repulsive because of the desire that is worn ostentatiously. Now shut and open your eyes, they draw you, with their regal command to do their bidding.

The bee rises now, the queen bee. The queen of the honey bees, the dark ill-tempered blackbee. Say it now, slowly, roll your tongue over the words - karuvaNdu, ka-ru-vaNdu, an involuntary quiver just as you say vaNdu. That is how the queen rises, from the eyes of the brilliant face with a quiver when you least expect it.

She flutters near the eyelashes, takes a fancy to the dark locks and merges with them before being enticed by the dark lips. There is a quiver again, this time the quiver of desire, a tremble as the blood rushes through her body. In one flutter, before you could blink your eyes, she lands on the lip.

Then there is a gentle sigh, a sigh of relief, of satisfaction. And then, after she has been satiated, she unfurls her thin proboscis to drink the nectar. The queen bee drinking nectar from the lips of the queen... reality filling its void with illusion.

She can be seen here.

(Corrected after Viji's comment)

She can be seen here.

[1] - mAsil vInaiyum mAlai mathiyamum/vIsu thenRalum vInggiLavEnilum/mUsu vaNdaRaip poigaiyum pOnRathE/Isan enththai iNaiyadi nizalE - Appar's thEvAram
[2] - konggu thEr vAzkkai anciRaith thumbi - 1st song in kuRunthogai written by iRaiyanAr or God Himself.

P.S. I couldn't find a picture to go with this post...maybe I can get a sketch done someday, of a dark bee sitting on a darker lip.

Ever seen a prettier sight?

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இது ஒரு புது விடியல்!

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கல்லொன்று தடுத்து காரிகையின் சாபம் கொன்று
வில்லொன்று ஒடித்து வைதேகி காதல்கரம் வென்று - மீட்டும்
வில்லொன்று ஒடித்து வன்முனிவன் தவம் வென்று - தந்தை
சொல்லொன்று எடுத்து சுடுகொடுங்காடு சென்றானே கதிநமக்குு

ஒன்றே சொல்லாகும் ஓடிவல்லவன் உயிர்குடிக்கும் அம்பும்
ஒன்றே வாசமலர் கொண்ட மார்பில் தான்கொண்ட அன்பும்
ஒன்றே அவன் பெயர் ஒன்றே அது இராம இராம இராம
என்றே சொன்னால் எழுபிறப்பும் அன்றே அற்றதே

Spiral

Gentle night comes in
Songs awaken from my desk
I write some silence

And then...

Morning walks through doors
Shadows sleep shrouded in light
My pen smiles dryly

And then...

Gentle night comes in
Songs awaken from my desk
I write some silence...

Life, Colour and Woman

******************
Dedicated to J.A.B.
******************

Have you noticed how some ideas pop up at you when you least expect them, like a hunter jumping at his game from the bushes? This is one such idea. It jumped at me yesterday night, when I was snuggling in between the sheets reading a Mark Twain story - 'The diary of Adam and Eve'. It just shot at me out of the sheets like a cork out of a pop gun.

This idea gave me the queer suggestion that colour came into existence only after women were created. Maybe the world was colourful before women came in here, but noone could recognize that without a woman. So the world was as good as colourless, the idea suggested. It slowly unfurled itself, the idea, spiralling and turning in my mind's eye before it had me in its thrall completely. Not one objection could I find to the suggestion. No woman, no colour! The world must have not even been black and white, just colourless like water. The idea began to charm me. I trusted it.

How could man have possibly recognized colour ever? How could he even create it? It takes a woman's coyness to paint the evening sky in shades of crimson. It takes her dark tresses to daub the entire world with the shades of night.

How would spring burst forth in all her splendour if woman did not laugh her silvery cascade? How would fall bring out her rich shades if no woman lay curled in crumpled sleep? Where would the raging forest fire dance if not for a woman's passionate kiss?

The deep oceans, don't tell me they with their teasing waves can get their blue hue if no woman lit her eyes with the light of love. Where would the cascade get her silvery sheen if not from a woman's tears? The lush green fields would not shine so if no woman became a mother. The rainbow! We would have no rainbow if a single woman did not clip her nails and cast them away.

The idea went on thus. It twirled and twisted into coils, coils that enchanted the mind into trust. It spoke the truth. Woman brought colour into this world. Just like she brought magic into life.

And life...life has its own colour as well. A colour that is different for each life. A colour that is not seen by eyes. A woman gives life that colour.

The name of my life's colour is that of a new-born calf. A calf that has a new colour everytime it is born.

So what colour has a woman brought into your life?

Completely Wrong

I wonder what is wrong with me...besides me of course. That there was something wrong with me...no, not the first wrong with me about which I was wondering but the second one, that is the actual me that is wrong I mean...oh well, figure it out for yourselves, let me get back. That there was something wrong with me being me was known to me for long. I knew this when I choose the fool's day to be born. That would mean I knew I was wrong before I was born and further mean that I was conscious before I was born. That would of course mean that I was born before I was born. There is something definitely wrong with me.

Getting back to what I was trying to say, I feel that there is something wrong with me now otuside what is usually wrong with me. Now that is unsually wrong. I don't mind what is usually wrong with me, but unusually wrong needs to be looked into. The idea here is that, if you are usually wrong, then over time it becomes right to you and then only the part that becomes unusually wrong becomes actually wrong.

So I started by checking my head. I reached up and was mortified when I realised my head was not where it was supposed to be. My head for one might not look decent or respectable but it is a decent and respectable part when you see that it has been staying where it must stay (I guess it is over the neck, though sometimes I also feel it might be under the spine.). Decent and respectable heads don't walk off your neck just like that saying "OK pal, I'm tired of doing all the thinking at least whatever was there to be done now you try doing it!" It took me 15 minutes to realise that my hand was searching for my head about 5 inches higher than where it actually was (the head, I mean). The problem was I did not have my spectacles on. My hands are blind without the spectacles. With the spectacles they are still blind, but they don't see it then (see that they are blind).

The landing of the hands on my head was not exactly pleasant. This is due to the fact that my hair had at that moment got into a rather heterogenous composition of quite a variety of variegated stuff like hmmm...stuff. Listen, in simple words, my hair had the sort of stuff that Calvin would look at and say "Eww" before applying it all over him and grossing out his mother. Having thus confirmed that my hair was wrong as usual and not unusually wrong, I proceeded to face (rather hand) the face.

My face is something that has been very much wrong for an unusually wrong time. But that doesn't make it unusually wrong, in fact it makes it most usually wrong, if you can look at it the way I do. I have wasted a good deal of shaving razors, foam, water, keratin, blood and the other things that usually go wrong while shaving in an attempt to make it right, but it usually went unusually wrong so often that it ended up being most usually wrong. I reached upto my eyes and realized that they had suddenly turned into glass eyes. Then I read the previous paragraphs and realized that I had realized I did not have my spectacles on and so wore them and so I now have them on. I removed the spectacles and poked my eyes gently. I let out a small whimper and tears flowed (Why should the past tense of flow be flowed? I would have asked for flew.) from my eyes to my mouth tasting salty (the tears tasted salty, my mouth tastes...I digress). So, sight, touch and taste OK.

I reached upto my nose, up if you look at it from my point of view. The nose if it had a point of view (I don't mean a point from where you can view the nose), would possibly have an entirely different point of view about this whole business. When my fingers were about 30 cms away from my nose, my nose sent a panicky message to the brain saying "MayDay! Mayday! Make this bloody nitwit wash his fingers once a year." My fingers on the other hand (other hand in the metaphorical sense) sent this message to my brain "Paralyze me so that I don't have to enter into a mucus pit." In other words, the mucus was mutual!! But somehow I managed to check my nose through a set of complicated (pronounced obscene) procedures and made sure it was OK (usually wrong, that is).

Then came my ears...actually, my ears came long ago, almost about the time when I came, but they came now in a figurative sense. Messages similar to those with the nose ensued between the ear and the fingers. The ears however gave in sooner (actually it was the fingers that gave and went in) because they could not smell. It is a different issue that both the ears and the fingers smelt (rather stinked), but they could not smell. At first I could not hear anything. At first nobody heard anything (till somebody got tired and made the Big Bang), but this was not that very first...I mean the first in which I started checking my ears. Then I pulled my fingers from my ears and was able to hear. I put them in my ears (the fingers that is - I think I am suffering from a rather profound pronoun problem here.) and found that I could not hear again. I did this four times and was satisifed.

I then proceeded so on and so forth to check every other part - armpits (smelly and wet), back (smelly, wet and dirty), chest (goes in when I breathe out and goes out when I breathe in, very interesting) and bottom (position not changed with head as of now). I realised nothing was wrong with my physical self, unusually that is. I then started thinking if there could be something wrong with my mental self then. I thought for about 30 minutes with absolute concentration and concluded that it is possible for me to have a mental self. In fact, it is very much possible for me to have a mental self so mental that it might imagine a physical self. Now this got me thinking further. If my mental self was simply imagining my physical self, then my physical self might just be a mental self. This might mean that my physical self which is now a mental self has been imagining a mental self which was the original mental self which imagined the physical self which is now a mental self. To present the same idea in a brief fashion, I am now physically mental and mentally physical. I believe this is one of those metaphysical states, but you can never be sure.

And so here I am in a totally mental state which I mentally believe to be physical wondering what can be wrong with me unusually. Then I realise it - what is wrong with me unusually is that there is nothing wrong with me unusually. All that is wrong with me is usual at least as far as I am concerned. They might be unusual for some Tom, Dick or Harry, but I am not Tom, Dick or Harry and so it is usual for me. Now this is a very unusual thing for me. Unusual outside the usually unusual of course. Ah well, I guess it is just like me, as usual unusual!!!

P.S. Yes, I've completely lost it!