Chennai in July

Cotton clothes dried in the sun
Varieties of sweet mangoes
Fragrance of fat jasmine in bloom
Cooling thundershowers each evening
Chennai in July

Dusk in Shanti Colony

Shut the doors
Shut the windows

The mosquitoes will swarm in
The traffic noise will drown our voices

Lock the doors
Lock the windows

Now we are safe
Now we can hear us talk again
And catch what’s being said on TV
Now the dust stays out

But so does the gentle breeze
And fresh air
(Or whatever is left of it)

I sit directly under the fan
And wonder what it’s like outside…
Warm? Humid? Raining?

I drown in sweat
I get drowsy in the stale air and the humming of the fan
My head heats up from the depths of my skull
And is ready to explode
I put out the fire with mugfuls of cool water just before bedtime
And go to bed reeking of mosquito repellant

I crack open the windows and the door to my room
And lie down under the fan
In wait for dawn
When the flat can be opened up again
For a couple of hours
Before the heat takes over.

The Trip Back

The white fields of Europe in March
Merge into the grey nothingness of the horizon
That blends into the peach and mauve bands of morning light;
And the clear blue sky expands above.

The magnificent flying swans of Lufthansa
Come home to roost briefly in the pigeon holes
Created on the outer walls of giant concrete structures
Before filling their bellies again with humans and taking off.

Within these concrete structures surrounded by criss-crossing miles of concrete strips,
Security frisks you
Duty-free shop lights blind you
The PA system announcements startle you
Coffee smells tempt you
The automatically rotating self-sanitizing toilet seats comfort you.

And you wait. And wait. And wait.

I am drowsy;
I don’t know if it is hot or cold outside or even if it is day or night;
The time on my watch doesn’t help -
It is the future in a place I’ve left far behind.

The coffee and biscuits and peanuts revive me so I try to read
But not for long because my mind wanders;
I think of the people I’ve had to leave back in the place that is no longer home
And wonder when and under what circumstances I’ll see them next.

The cigarette smells waft over but Sudoku takes my mind off that until I get stuck
And my mind wanders again;
I realize that I’m excited about going home.
How long will it take me this time to get back to a “normal” routine?

The waves of tired travelers have now come and gone and I wake up from my stupor;
I walk for an hour and unlock my limbs knowing I’ll soon be strapped in the belly of another flying swan;
This time the voice on the PA system doesn’t startle me because I’m waiting for it;
The glare of the clouds over the Atlantic is blinding so I close the shades of my window;
The end of my trip has just begun.

HK Lights

The giant S in bright yellow of the Shangri-La next door,
The white rods chasing each other up the angular Bank of China tower

Like lightning bolts in reverse,
The horizontal bars of light that flow up The Center in shades of red and blue and green

Beautifully merging into each other,
The ugly white claws of Two IFC,
These are the views at night from Conrad 6005.

Jetlagged, I wake up before dawn.

Thankfully, Two IFC and most other buildings are dark
Allowing the gold and silver dots of the harbor to greet me.

Soon, clouds roll over from the west
Shrouding The Center and the nine hills of Kowloon in majesty.

The bright yellow S starts to fade
And Two IFC, still ugly, heralds the rising sun
With red and gold reflections off its glass.

Getting Older or Old?

Wrinkles -
They creep up on you;

The first time I saw them was a few years back
On my neck when I twisted it in some strange way;
Luckily, difficult to recreate.

Then I saw some today
On the bottom of my upper arm
The part someone nicknamed reverse biceps;
Again, only a brief appearance when I did something unusual.

On Sunday Meena and I were discussing hair coloring
When her six-year old Borun points to a black head of oriental hair
To show us the color of his hair.
When I reminisce that my hair used to also be that color he says
“But now you’re old”.

Old in Singapore
A city where the only old people are the really old Chinese men and an occasional tourist.

It won’t be long before we all get treated like the couple in the elevator this morning:
On entering they found that Level 1 was correctly pressed
But both the bus boy and I couldn’t help pointing out that the lobby was on Level 3
Just because -
They looked old.

Swimming Pools and Dragon Flies

It’s not that I don’t like the water;
I just don’t like to swim.

I don’t like water in my nose and ears
And if I let myself think too much,
I don’t like imagining all the fluids in the pool from the other bodies in it.

But this morning all the stars lined up and I got in the pool at the Shangri-La.

The changing room was close by
The water and air the right temperature
The morning shaded light perfect
And hardly any other bodies in sight.

So I lay on my back
Suspended in the water
Refreshed by the morning breeze
Surrounded by the fragrance of tropical flowers.

As I watched the clouds roll by a crescent moon
And followed the patterns of the palm fronds against the sky
I realized that if I lay perfectly still
Dragon flies will alight on me.