Destination Wedding

[I first wrote this as a teenager and tore it up because it hadn't turned out the way I had wanted it. But when IISc Bangalore organised a Literary Festival last month and announced a satirical poetry event as part of it, I considered reviving and revising Destination Wedding. I'm glad to say that my nineteen-year old self (with a little help from my present self) ended up winning Sultans of Satire!]

I snuck a furtive glance at the bride:

‘Let’s run away? Meet me outside.’

She looked away shyly at her papa and mama

and the other actors in her wedding drama

on stage, and slowly cried.

SHE loved me still after all these years.

Her big kohled eyes did shed black tears,

yet not for me but this thick smoke

of the holy havan that was making her choke

with soot up to her ears.

I saw her stand as Brahmins old,

with bellies holding pots of gold,

spat out chants shlok after shlok

in an archaic tongue that no one spoke,

nor whose meaning we were told.

SHE (hidden in the holy cloud,

exit stage right and) merged with the crowd

of wedding guests in showy silk saris

and treasure chests and excess accessories;

my eyes did course her out.

I stalked her walking up the aisle

of masquerades and put-on smiles,

past drunk uncles and sick of aunties,

uncalled-for pests, unknown invitees;

I followed her all this while.

SHE passed the caterer’s table in haste

whose food would mostly go to waste

like the gifts: the flowers and vessels,

microwaves and cooking utensils;

and still, the bride, I chased.

I met her out of her marriage hall:

her family’s savings spent on walls.

We mounted up the groom’s white mare

and rode away far from that fanfare

to the shehnai’s siren call.

WE eloped that day from our own wedding

and galloped for good, by goodbye bidding

to cacophony and phony ritual,

to somewhere silent and spiritual.

WE ran to the sea and a fantasy ending

up in each other’s arms.

Flash Fiction in Reading Hour

[A piece of mine came in at second place at a flash fiction competition held by Reading Hour as a lead-up to their March-April 2014 crime and mystery special issue. The challenge was to write a criminal case that was concise (500 words) yet complete. I wanted to capture in words a serial killer who would never be caught. Once I knew who that was, the story came easily enough.]

There is a serial killer on the loose on the streets of Mumbai. He is known to prowl around the slums of Dharavi and near the State Transport bus stand at Nehru Nagar and beside the railway tracks at Tilak Nagar station. Some of his victims have been found strewn all the way across town on the isolated beaches of Madh Island. He mostly murders homeless children below the age of fifteen and on rare occasions, goes for the odd octogenarian vagrant. Police have yet been unable to procure any information that might lead to ascertain the killer’s appearance or his intentions, and eyewitness accounts from parents of the victims have been sketchy at best.

They say he would strike three times a day earlier, then he came down to striking twice a day, and in the last few days, he struck just once, at nights. His modus operandi is to sneak up on a sleeping child, grab her by the throat so she couldn’t scream and crush her stomach till it caved in. Often the parents wouldn’t realise their child had been slaughtered till the dawn broke. The assassin is silent and leaves no clues. Nor does he drop any tell-tale signs of who his next victim will be and where. Fathers have taken to staying up all night watching the construction sites near their shanties and mothers cite the killer to scare their children into eating their meagre meals.

Mohsina is one such mother who lost her daughter Saira Bano to the serial killer eight days ago. The dirt on her cheek mixes with her tears and falls into the bowl of rock salt and rice she is trying to feed her four-year-old Asghar. She fears for his life and wishes the killer kills her before he takes her son. The worst thing for a mother is to survive her own children; she knows this because she has been through the brutal butchery of her daughter. She also knows that the Government and the Police are apathetic to her situation. She has not received any assurance for the safety of her son nor is the administration taking any measures to arrest the serial killer. Policemen have told her they are happy something is wiping the muck of migrant workers off the slums and streets of Mumbai.

...

Beat Constable Jadhav of the Nehru Nagar police chowky was on his early morning round of the ward when he stopped by a circle of construction workers. At the centre of the crowd was Mohsina wailing over a sleeping Asghar, prodding him to wake up from his slumber. Jadhav did not need to move closer to the corpse as it was lifted into the air by the men to comprehend that the serial killer had struck again. A post-mortem analysis would not be required to determine the cause of death; Jadhav did not even file an FIR. Hunger is hardly a killer that a constable can catch.