The Drummer Brothers of Ikku Ukku
Heard from the bathers that-
The Princess had been abducted
By the Dark Beast.
A bounty of thousand gold coins was announced
If you brought her back alive and the beast dead
And Death if you brought the beast alive and the Princess dead.

The Drummer Brothers of Ikku Ukku
Hung their drums around their necks
And drummed their way
Through the Forest Dark

When  the Elder Brother drummed the sleep-inducing roll,
The storks that roosted in the trees
Dropped as if they were one big bunch.
He picked them up one by one
While the younger one,
Elated,
Shouted 'Pelicans!' and drummed the defeathering roll
Upon which the plumage came off
The Elder Brother drummed the roasting roll
And the birdflesh caught fire.

On the second day a leopard that looked-
More like a boulder in leopard's clothing
Lurched at the brothers.
The Elder Brother drummed the age-reversing roll
And the poor old leopard grew younger and younger
Until it became a watery foetus which-
The Drummer Brothers ate,
Dabbing crushed chillies, and sprinkling salt.

On the third day a bear of grisly proportions
Ambled, roaring, into their sight
The Younger Brother drummed an *****-enlarging roll that-
Stretched the bear's mammaries far too long-
They dragged on the ground like two pythons.
The Elder Brother drummed the light-the- candle roll
And the oily **** caught fire like wicks.

Having vanquished the two deadly beasts
The Drummer Brothers of Ikku Ukku met,
On the fourth day of their journey,
The Dark Beast.
The Dark Beast, as it turned out,
Was no beast as such
But an Outcast once expelled
Into the heart of darkness
Who wrapped himself
In the dark of the Dawn
And became one with All the Beasts
And rumbled.

The Princess' pygmy horse was impaled
With the stake coming out of its mouth
Grossly gory, its hindlegs missing
And the blood, coagulated, hanging like icicles.
Near it was the Princess herself,
Naked, except for the gold waist chain
And the anklets.

The Drummer Brothers of Ikku Ukku
Drummed a very ordinary roll,
Steady and throbbing.
The Dark Beast who listened to it
Was transported into his past,
His memory of listening
To the old drummers of Ikku Ukku.
Excited,
He spun on his heels and stretched out his arms
He gyrated and pirouetted-
And on reaching the peak of his frenzy
Exploded, like a watermelon
The pieces flew in all directions.
The Drummer Brothers picked them up
And licked
While the Princess, shaken out of her languor,
Rose and sauntered towards them.
Holding out her honey hands
She said, "Now I belong to both of you."

The Younger Brother came up with a plan:
The elder one would have her from the waist up
While he would have her from the waist down.
The Elder Brother approved.
Vain and coquettish,
The Princess rammed her fists into either drum
And said: "I loathe their sound- too unrefined."

On the fifth day,
The Drummer Brother  drummed a jazzed up roll
On their new drumhead
Made of the Princess' hide.

When poetry comes calling to you
Never turn your back on it
And don't show that you are cross, either
For it scares her and would send her
Scurrying to the man next to you
Instead,
Let her climb onto your lap
Her knees kneading your thighs
And pearls dropping onto your pants
Until, arching over your body,
She starts to undress
In the meantime, you should, as a rule,
Press her fingers to give her the essential warmth
That turns her Lily white into a brick-red colour
Then,
Your right hand, not knowing what your left hand is
Upto,
Reaches into your pocket
And produces a hanky that when you pull it out
Becomes gigantic and blankets the naked woman
And you bundle her up into a fine bundle
And ****** it into your pocket and standing up from the bench and dusting out your pants, you whistle your way home

The Giant felt betrayed
He remembered how-
Climbing onto his mighty, cosy lap
The Dwarf would curl up
Like a beefy baby
He'd allow himself to be undressed
The Giant would put him into the tub
Soap him and scrub him
Meanwhile, with gleeful gurgles
And goo goo gaa gaa gaa
The Dwarf would let out **** bubbles
The Giant would dry him and neatly powder
Baby talking all the while

Then, one day,
The Dwarf began to speak like a man
He'd fallen for Orange,
The Unicycle Girl
The Giant saw him mount her
As the caged lion looked on
The balneal visits soon ended

The Giant felt betrayed
(Like a mother at her son's growth, he thought)
He blew his nose into the nose rag

What do you mean they are also prophets?

Far below, on the beach, were his friends
Half-naked bums
Partying in the sun
There were atheists
There were *** maniacs
The fat old Bumbo was a crazy bartender

I thought I was the only One. The Chosen One
I never knew they came in packs
All of them?
Even Bumbo is a prophet?
You mean to say you make me climb this eyrie-high
To tell I'm just one of them?
I'd rather not be a prophet

It was the day I hugged myself
I knew it was a long time coming
My body was not all that bad
My tummy felt sort of like a baby's

Running short of cuddles
It's what you turn yourself into-
A Baby Man
You are nobody's man
You are your own man
A Baby Man

Dear teacher,
When you strut about the class, I get the eerie sensation that you are buck n.
May be it's your pink colour doing the trick, spreading from your skin, enveloping your clothes
And also, your ponderous bums
Two melons nestling inside the sack
Or should I say balloons
Or bowling *****?
Your cheeks, the cleft chin and the stubble
And the feminine dimples you make when you
Grin
Your lips that are too pink and fluffy,
Babyish
Upon which I plan to plant my garden of kisses
Your Adam's apple, the size of a cherry
The thicket of hair in your armpits
That I steal a glance at
Every now and then
When you raise your hands
To demonstrate-
Your argument.
Coal-black, steely, squiggly mesh
No, teacher, I want you the way I see you
ie.
Clothed
I don't want to go deep
And dig
Excavate
The meat-eater in front of me and the two vegans
On my either side
Would go for it
It's the way you call my name-
'Lola' 'Lola' 'Lola'
As though you invented it
And breathed into my nose your breath
( And taking two not three steps down the palate)
I know it's your heavy fondness for me
That does the trick
Mounting your tongue and taking it
Just to make your 'Lola' sound sensual
And tempting
And your ears...
Lolaaaaaaa!
( This time the teacher shouting)

I'm the OT God
I'll strike you down with attitude
If you indulge in platitudes
The world is full of phoney dudes

The world ain't cool
You can be a lot more droll
If you obey my rules
My poor old stool

On the rocky Mount
Where the rams are locking horns
You'll come upon me
A tongue of fire

Rosemary spotted a big rat in the water
Her Momma wasn't particularly impressed with her finding
Rain drops hung on their waxy, pink skin
In the rain they looked like two rain-hammered flowers

All around them was muck

The boy came sploshing through the floody water
The scrawny thing was shivering and he-
Embraced her Momma
Her Momma let him join her under the umbrella
(And there was on her Momma lips a big Momma smile)
Rosemary was quick-she saw that he'd bent his head
And was burrowing... burrowing between her Momma's legs
He pulled down his shorts; his little bums were saggy
Rosemary hated her Momma for standing dumb and dumbly gasping
She hit the boy on the back of his kitten head
And clawed off a slice of his peachy ***
(Still he clung to her Momma, like a half-shaved dog)
And then she said:
'I know your parents. I'm gonna tell'em'
That drained all glee from his fiendish mien
He stood there for a moment before he pulled his tee over head
And when he was gone, Rosemary let her *** pass down her legs
(As she often did in the rain)

His younger sister was the bride
And he sat facing the gushing girl
He fondled the **** of his walking cane
As he waited for her eyes to meet his gaze;
When they finally did, he smiled a knowing smile
A vexing, blackmailing smile
That sought a response- a glint of acknowledgement;
It sent chills down her spine, sweat broke out on her back
She now regretted having been the one who'd started-
The impetuous demands that violated the natural
And made them feel like some Old Testament pairs
He'd become relentless, with pickpocketing deftness
At the drop of a hat, he'd drop his pants

Now, rising from his seat, he blew her a kiss
And that did her in

I was playing ping pong with the little one
When she came in with the young man
Seeing that her hand was around his his waist, the little one asked me:
"Is this my real papa?"
I shook my head; dandruff fell on my shoulders
I shook hands with him; handed him flakes of d.
He was younger, taller, stronger
He lacked eyelashes
His feet were bigger
'I love him'
'You don't love me?'
'I love him more than I love you'

'Don't put the ball in your mouth'
I stood up and and walked over to them
I lifted his hand from her thigh
And moved it across my face
I climbed into his lap and kissed him-
On the mouth
'I love him for I love you
I love him through you
I am the Love King
I am the God of Love'
(The little one was blushing)

The mother was warming her little baby
Pressing it to her sticky sweaty body
Her sari shading its doughness
That gave off whiffs of b.powder and biscuits
When the little boy looked up
Abuzz with shivers
And with a little purring sound
Turned around on its belly,
Ball-like and full of milk
And spinning, slowly soared
His voice a trailing tingle
Out through the window he went
The speechless mum was lost in a gasp
Her milk freezing in her mother glands
The f.passengers on that halted bus
Shot out their arms but in vain
Against the sky-cleaving whiteness a dot he was
And wending, as they watched, was gone

Boredom exceeding the limit, I reached out
To the shelf full of cassettes and
Sliding my fingers down the names
Stumbled upon one, dustier than the rest
That one, obviously older, bore the name
'Du Dlux Dlan' (Which you may say rhymes with Ku Klux ****)
Something he'd bought feeling a liking for its name
Its quirkiness, as was his wont
I played the cassette, anticipating a flurry of blows and kicks
A curio. to unravel the mystery of its name
The movie , as it turned out, was not a movie
But what I think they call a footage,
On the screen three crosses erected in a desert land, with a man hanging on each.
The three men were bearded, the one in the middle
Looked calm and serene ( as if he'd been tranquilized)in spite of his ****** body, all battered and beyond recovery
The other two, I found , were kicking and whining (in their constrained state, of course.
Kicking with their nails, that is)
Hanging men get their peckers stiff and up, I knew it
There were soldiers around them, occassionally raising their spears and with its tip, tickling the men on the crosses out of their wits.
And then...there was a gunshot
And the clatter of horseshoes
Holding their guns aloft, rode in a pack of three cowboys
Then pointing their guns at the hanging men, they exclaimed:
'What the....., they are nailed to the crosses!"
Wasting no time, they swerved their horses around and rode away, leaving the men on the crosses for dead and me, gazing at the blank screen of the TV and asking:
'Who could the Du Dlux Dlan be?
The three men on the crosses or the three wranglers?'

Raju, the hollow-cheeked overthinker,
Whose nose had grown into his navel,
Hanged himself in the hostel room

They found a note-
With rejected love as the cause
And then there was another note that read-
'rejected manuscripts'
A third one: 'to join my dead Appa'
Still another, in bold, etched letters:
'The fatal accident', and another-
Wedged in his buttcrack:
'the repressive education system' and 'the procrustean examinations'

Could it be that all of them were true motives or-
Did they represent a steady progress in the search for one?
A case of as many notes for as many selves
Or did he mean it as a puzzle, as his friends conveniently took it for, to weigh the notes and find the best?

It was a mystery and a pity
How, every afternoon, the brightfaced girl
Lost all red juice from her face
The biggest girl in the class
She lay like a big, gasping fish on the bench

Only part of me was inside the class
Part of me, on the yellow beach,
Busied itself with digging the pit
I'd kiss her one last time
That'd seal her sickly sleep forever

If I hadn't been asked to solve the problem
I swear i'd have buried her alive

The final hours of the Sunday market
Chellama thought of how she'd spend the night-
Lonely, in her mother's company
Eating the fruit of her labour

Hearing a babyvoice call her name
She looked up and found-
With fire in his hair, a little man:
A sungod of a dwarf
Her toyman;
She felt the boars of fire
Bang on her inside
He asked for her hand

They rolled like dice
In the hay; only the dogs were near
(The urchins lifted cassava roots from her stall)

She found the dwarf had lost his fire
He turned cold and-
He was dead
Chellama pulled herself up and scampered to her stall and-
There, cooling herself down, thought of how she'd spend the night
Lonely, in her mother's company

Johny Christ, the hitman-turned-messiah,
Conferred Death Painless with his barehands
His ads were passed on secretly
And invalids formed his early clientele
The depressed, the spurned and the real thinking folks,
All awakened to Nirvana Call, called him
He left no trace, and the deaths looked natural
Death Painless- quiet as breathing
His popsicle-*******, while administering, kept the people guessing
Where his powers came from

Johny Christ was not without his own share of Temptations- he fought, for example,
The urge to Save the roly-poly kid
Who was clumsy with his hands and Stood over the dropped food and Looked clueless about life

I was playing ping pong with the little one
When she came in with the young man
Seeing that her hand was around his his waist, the little one asked me:
"Is this my real papa?"
I shook my head; dandruff fell on my shoulders
I shook hands with him; handed him flakes of d.
He was younger, taller, stronger
He lacked eyelashes
His feet were bigger
'I love him'
'You don't love me?'
'I love him more than I love you'

'Don't put the ball in your mouth'
I stood up and and walked over to them
I lifted his hand from her thigh
And moved it across my face
I climbed into his lap and kissed him-
On the mouth
'I love him for I love you
I love him through you
I am the Love King
I am the God of Love'
(The little one was blushing)

18 minutes agoDetails
Rosemary spotted a big rat in the water
Her Momma wasn't particularly impressed with her finding
Rain drops hung on their waxy, pink skin
In the rain they looked like two rain-hammered flowers

All around them was muck

The boy came sploshing through the floody water
The scrawny thing was shivering and he-
Embraced her Momma
Her Momma let him join her under the umbrella
(And there was on her Momma lips a big Momma smile)
Rosemary was quick-she saw that he'd bent his head
And was burrowing... burrowing between her Momma's legs
He pulled down his shorts; his little bums were saggy
Rosemary hated her Momma for standing dumb and dumbly gasping
She hit the boy on the back of his kitten head
And clawed off a slice of his peachy ***
(Still he clung to her Momma, like a half-shaved dog)
And then she said:
'I know your parents. I'm gonna tell'em'
That drained all glee from his fiendish mien
He stood there for a moment before he pulled his tee over head
And when he was gone, Rosemary let her *** pass down her legs
(As she often did in the rain)

When Mr. M came to their house,
Little Gigi and her sister could hardly believe the fact-
That he was not their late papa
Such was the resemblance
Perfected by Mr. M to a T
Even the mole-thing on his cheek
Looked the same as their papa's.

You could hire Mr. M
To Metamorphose into any person you wanted
-A dead husband or a quadriplegic wife
(i.e. before they became dead or quadriplegic)
Or a celebrity beyond your reach
Or a college sweetheart-
Mr. M would transform into that person
With the right prosthetics and measurements.
(Besides, he had a highly Malleable and characterless body)
He'd learn their manners by watching videos.

Little Gigi would not run into his arms
Unless he called her the way her papa did
Mr. M cast a sidelong glance at the mother
At whose smile he regained confidence and cooed:
"Come to papa, my bouncing ball"
At which the girl shot herself into his arms
Like a cannonball.
Her sister followed her, although indifferently,
Her hands behind her back.
Little Gigi thanked her mother
For hiring the man.

Mr. M's service lasted for a period of three months
Or until the clients got over their feelings for the person.
Mr. M was sworn to secrecy
About his clientele and his 'lives'.
Nobody bothered about his true identity
So long as his name was reduced to a Mystery.
Mr. M never forgot the details of his 'lives',
Unlike how his ad had once claimed-
Which he later removed (and no one seemed to notice)
As he was taking a hot bath-
His mind wandered to a recent life.
Dressed up as a woman named Jessy Peter
Mr. M was ushered into the bedroom by his nervous client-
A bestubbled young man rejected by Ms. Peter.
He said he was drowning in a pool of jealousy
As she kept taking one lover after another.
Sweat ran down his face
As he took off Mr. M's skirt-
And with apprehensive fingers
Pulled down the *******.
His face shone brightly
At the perfection of the work
But his expression soon changed
To a blank faced melancholy
He said he was still heartbroken
As he could n't **** the real Jessy Peter
(Stubbly cheeks against Mr. M's fat shaved thighs
He whimpered through the night like a child).

Little Gigi said Mr. M smelled exactly like her papa.
Mr. M smiled, taking it as a compliment.
"...like boiled beef," she added.
Even after Little Gigi had left,
Her sister remained a little longer.
Then, slowly she placed her bottom-
On Mr. M's hairy thigh and sat there,
Her eyes fixed on the wall opposite
Mr. M, nonplussed, broke into a sweat
And thought, of all things he could do right now,
Stroking her hair was the only right thing.
The girl sat like that for a while and then
While leaving she said he was a nice person-
Unlike her late papa.

Is it a changed world
Or am I a new man?
Finding her at the bedside-
What'd have been only a dream before-
I was elated and made for her cheeks.
The glossy warmth of her flushed skin
Radiated in the yellow afternoon,
Which I reckoned was the kind of my Childhood naps:
Resurrection is not the erasure-
But the totality of memory
In this new world,  reconfigured around My figure,  the Chosen One,
(The choosing by myself through  self-destruction)
She'd left all her men to lead and follow me
With the maturity that comes with sainthood
The bustle of bodies was heard outside,
Waiting to worship the one they'd failed
Let them wait,  I thought, her beatifically beating body in my arms

On the cluttered table were a 7Up can and-
The bowl he'd eaten banana chips from
He'd drawn on the lingerie-ad-girl in the mag a bush
And there was on his shorts a big, protein stain
In his diary were kept two photographs:
One, of his love and the other, with his parents
(Taken when lions were still used in circus)
The last entry read how painful it was-
To find there was little of himself in his life;
He'd invented, out of his desire to beat-
The flow of life, a moment to act

Anna had pooped in her pants
A prim and proper girl, and yet she pooped
A creepy, drippy mess- dark brown stool
She brought shame upon the family name

At school they said it was the baby
(It was one of her boyfriends, they said)
I denied the story and told them
How fond she had been, of babies

He'd seen only the back of his victim.
From the oily,  slicked back hair
He imagined a face as he ran to his scooter
After hurling a large stone at the man,
Who died without the least human sound.

The random victim didn't make the ****** motiveless
His motive was to **** a man and drown in guilt
And when the guilt overpowers the right to life
Have reason enough to end his own life.
Thus his jumping off the cliff would be,  he thought,
At the end of the day justified.

A little bit of skin
A little bit of warmth
A little touch of your puny hands
To make sure that I'm alive
To make sure that I'm not the only person alive