the hundred year old stairs
wakes up from its dreamless slumber
to find the world has spun
for an infinity too long

it once roamed
and ruled
the household of Chathanathodi
making way to the rooms
upstairs
that conspired a thousand
whispered secrets

simultaneously
sprawling its termite-infested legs
to make way
downstairs
that injected an aura of
omnipotence

its laddery body was now a little chipped
and its creaky joints, a little shaky
but it didn't matter
as it was still conspicuous
and strong
like Hercules
leading unsuspecting mortals
upstairs and downstairs
to its universe of Gods

Shalini Nayar
© 2001

They call this a form of madness because you stepped into my void right out of my dreams where you reigned free in my subconscious waving like the good naval officer that you were returning home after a long mission wearing all-white linen none out of place crisp clean-cut shoulders padded with shiny metals head balancing the white hat that sat tall there like a good boy behaving in the church pew and all I feel is your radiant smile glowing out of you like a million little sunbursts swallowing me whole by the pier leaving behind nothing to prove I even existed.


Now, isn't that madness?


Shalini Nayar
25.11.14
(c) 2014

A perfect man for me was never moulded by a box,
A box that screamed multitude of labels
To satiate the chaotic minds of society,
A belonging judged by feudality, no rhyme or reason required or questioned.

A perfect man for me was never measured by material things,
He gives abundantly by just being around,
An illuminating source of comfort on the other end listening,
Empathising and leaving a trail of laughter that makes me fall even deeper.

A perfect man for me was never masked crusader (okay, maybe Batman sometimes),
He is maskless for the world to bask in his genuity,
No bounds or limitations set on his acts of kindness and love,
Selfless and generous with his time, blind to any creed or pedigree.

A perfect man for me was never one to run away from problems,
Valiantly facing the raging bulls head on,
Inner strength personified by his poise and determination,
"I will get through this unscathed and no one will stop me".

A perfect man for me was never an owner of a cold crackled heart,
Headstrong, gallantly keeps the family together in a bind of unconditional love,
Lovingly adores his sunshine, making sure she knows she is loved with the same fervour,
Day in and day out, void of complains and pettiness, as the world turns.

A perfect man for me was never perfect,
Owning up to his flaws and shortcomings and being aware of mine,
A cycle that is never vicious but one that is laced with acceptance and non-judgments,
He inspires the best version of myself as he aspires to better himself.

A perfect man for me spells Y-O-U,
And the way that you are is exactly how I love Y-O-U.

Shalini Nayar
24.11.14
(C) 2014

This is me, pouring.
I know what/where it is now.
I must be patient.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

The candy-cane stripes mingle freely among the
Saffron-clothed C moon and fourteen-handed star.
They swim navy-like in the blue.

The reds and whites alternate
Till the states are properly represented.
They ask of nothing more, nothing more.

What does it hold? What does it teach us?
The wild history of it roars and thunders
Like a hurricane that never stops.

But it did. How did we overthrow
Something so mighty, so white
As an unstoppable hurricane?

And the purpose of it all? Freedom.
Freedom and independence. Two righteous
Morals so hard to obtain.

At what cost did we attain them?
Bloodshed, shrieks, lies, torment and tears.
It was all worth it, love, all of it.

When Jack finally crawled down the beanstalk,
We never flew higher, braver or breezier
With such dignity and unfaltering spirit.

We have come so far to this place, this place
Where hatred shreds to little warm hearts and people
Are just people no matter how colourful they are.

We’re a rare hybrid of ethics: the sarong-laden man milking the rubber tree
Is no different than the blackened faces down in the tin mines
And the ones that hand-built the train tracks, woody and sturdy.

Seven chants of it that fateful afternoon
And we cried knowing, knowing we have made it.
Toiled sweat never tasted sweeter. Merdeka!

Most of us laughed and rejoiced.
Some were heard wailing and flying off to where
They rightfully belong. We don’t want you here. We never did.

The dove’s free now,
Free of thick metal bars
That caged it for centuries and

It flies now, wings spread into
A feathery horizon, windily flapping back and forth
Into a new world, a new promise called Malaysia.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The moon cracks and blooms.
Its grey nowhere to be seen,
It shawls itself with a bleak cloud.

The floating pearl biscuit
Busily dictates orions and dippers.
One travels, and people start wishing.

They are hopeless: the people and their pretentious wishes.

The jackfruit tree bears only death: dead leaves, thorned fruits.

Under the nocturnal skies,
It is the great witch.
Silent and black. It is voiceless.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

look up, look up
pretty bride
look how the seats are arranged
just like your marriage
promising a plethora
with three knots of the saffron string

look down, look down
blushing bride
look how your hands are laden
with orange mehndhi
matching your silk orange sari
with your sparkling diamond and gold jewels
blinding the third eye on your forehead
that blinks uncertainly

look around, look around
naïve bride
look how the sun rushes through the hall
waking up sleeping jasmines on your hair
fading away the wretched past
ending your stormy dormancy

look right, look right
****** bride
look how your husband-to-be is next to you
cupping his hands in yours
receiving the priests' blessed blessings
and sharing the confetti of thrown rice

and you close your eyes
tired bride
praying to live
happily ever after

Shalini Nayar
© 2001

The Godly air consumes me as I tiptoe across the marble floor,
Icy, tightening their grasps with every step I take.
Stories around me come alive in magical paintings, snaking their way in every corner,
And in sculptures that speak an unspeakable history, ancient truths that we all try to seek.
Their stony eyes follow me wherever I go, priestly and judgy.
As I glide, my heart flutters with rains of fear and thunders of uncertainty,
But as soon as I catch you sitting at the edge in your calm, patient demeanour,
A mere turn accompanied with that smile melts away all stormy qualms like nothing else.
You are my truth and I have sought it.

Shalini Nayar
7.11.14
(c) 2014

Leave me here basking
In this sweet garden of lust
Longing for your scent.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

Her song swims in waves into the river,
The swift current cradling it by.
Her melody stumbles across the rocks,
The quavers settle offshore till the wave-bubble
Licks them back.

The scattered ashes come to life.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

"Not too long to go now," your bones squeak,
Your feet has seen things, your eyes have travelled far and wide
The promise of a new land
That peeks through the stony shreds
The quiet murmur of freedom the masses dream of,
For justice to finally matter.

And oh, how the heavens creaked open
Illuminating its light on all that is holy
'This land is rightfully ours and it shall be with the rightful owner' you demanded ever so gently,
People of the land marching in solidarity on the barren sand cheering,
"We're with you bapaji, never give up!",
And the foot trails you leave behind unshackle history and make new ones
That will be whispered in centuries from now.

The road forks ahead, ever more complicated and rusty,
But you trudge on to not break those hearts
That have taken upon themselves to beat against yours,
Your walking stick stabs the earth as you inch towards the promise behind those walls.

Not too long to go now.

31.3.15
(C) 2015 Shalini Nayar

I remember the red flag symbolizing the sun,
With white and black horses running through
The meadow, their hooves destroying everything in sight.

The mist seeping into our blood,
Tingling us both.
It was the duet of our blossoming romance.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

“How do you want it?” the hairdresser asked.
“Bald.” I quipped.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The night is full.
It is simply in its element.
The clouds invade the dark universe,
Curtaining the stars and their moony mother.

Down here the cars don’t **** by much.
The roads are perfected,
Down to bits of fresh-hot tar rocks
And Chinese-lanternesque streetlights.

Houses yawn and drag logs of dreams
Into them. The patrons need it (it’s its excuse)
After a long hard day.
Everything else creaks and blooms. It is dreamy.

This dark hour asks nothing more than creation
Of something. Something eternal that rings us
In this golden circle of mathematics,
Complex and unintelligible.

It is child-like, this algebraic world.
It is simply in its element.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The wild current flows, stopping for no one,
As I reach out to grasp what was left:
A hint, a memory waving by like deja vu,
Random access memories;
Perhaps I've imagined it all.

Here I am grappling again,
With that titanium door bolted shut,
Safeguarding anything that tries to trespass it;
One word, a grunt, a slight nod, casual shrug
       Indifferent smiles
As you flow over rough and rocky terrains,
Boulders sharpening your edges,
A gaze here and a whimper there,
Your mind jostled, warranting rhymes,
As my heart gets trampled by the one you love.

Lucid dreams morphs into lucid visions,
I try to see what you see through the eyes you possess in the islands of your heartbeats and the crimson nerves coursing through your veins,
Alas the curtains come billowing down shut, "Nothing to see here, go on back home folks" and the circus ends for the night---
           Not till a stubborn tug in the depth of my soul says it deserves
           A slight hope that one day you would weave me unconditionally in your reflections,
           To navigate the mountains together---
But for now, the ringmaster declares the show's over.

My weary heart has seen it all, heard it all, always sleeping with one eye pry open,
The other eye shut in prayer this wouldn't be the norm,
As I hold on tightly to the current, wildly rushing through the fabric of time,
Leaving no traces of faces behind but a faint tapestry of a memory
By the lake, held tight,
Supported by wiry artistry,
Calm on the surface but paddling nervously underneath like those waddling ducks,
Your lips and eyes melting into mine,
Asking me to be yours.

19.2.15
Shalini Nayar
(C) 2015

Velvety smooth like cocoa butter voice,
In strength and poise you honour and bask,
Just to hear you laugh being silly is my task,
In your arms I'd want to be forever if I had a choice.
Beautiful inside and out, you've brought being a gentleman back in fashion,
Everyday is a joy with you that keeps getting better,
Always reassuring and sweet with your words and actions,
Reigniting fiery flames whenever we're together.

Shalini Nayar
27.11.14
(C) 2014

she was like an inviting lotus
seducing into her roots
of sensuality and infinite pleasures

her love was of a collage
of blue and purple pigments
tainting its withered petals
enticing the skeptic

she was an Immortal
like a beautiful mystical goddess
inducing intrigue
inviting the uninvited

Shalini Nayar
© 2001

My hands, my knees.
Look at it jolting out of me,
Cavemen clubs with nowhere to go.

The passageway now hurts, pushing out
Whatever that went in.
Liquid, solid, knives,
Lies, lies, lies, grievances.

The forcing, the cough, the blow
Right here, into the middle of my stomach.
The stupid things I do sometimes
Just to feed the pressure.

The oil greases over me,
It’s hard enough to breathe in here.
Hear hear, I speak. It is you I want.
Mr. Grape’s hair I gently stroke away in that trailer,
His lips I gently kiss to an ******.

Right there, in my neck,
Between the pulsating veins,
The urge hissing on my tongue.
That’s where you must belong always.

Mamma, won’t you get off
Your fat back and your fat haunch,
Off that sweaty couch, off that shaky little house
And get me out of this god-forsaken land?

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

The whole drive I could not stop the stream,
Hot and urgent they let themselves go,
Gleaming like shiny babies in the artificial white lights.

The bald heads vacantly size me up as I arrive;
These ghosts have seen their share of streams
Till they have none left to reminisce.
They nod knowingly.

I hurry to the mirror to destroy any evidence and......I smile.

These tears have created the perfect smokey eyes.


17.4.15
(C) 2015 Shalini Nayar

All that glitters never meant much to me,
Petals fall & fade, withering along with time like its temporary immortality,
Money joining suit in its temporary fervour, but never buying love as the Beatles crooned.

So let me tell you what does:

The look on your face when I've made you happy with a surprise or two;
The sound of your laughter reverberating through the air as I cowl in my witty silly remarks;
The mental connection that pleasantly astounds me with every thought-stealing line and mirrored gestures-humour-reaction-action;
How your words has awaken the inner dormant writer/poet and inspired to put my venomous quill to paper again;
How you make me feel beautiful, appreciated and respected, just the way I am;
Your empathy and understanding that chase the dark clouds away and silence my demons;
The way we make love with the glances we exchange in public like there's no one around;
The way we make love with our bodies, explorative archaeologists tracing each other's landscapes gently-sweetly-devilishly;
How you claim my arm across, intertwining with yours, caressing it as if it's a part of you;
When your palm holds my face lovingly while we exchange sweet kisses, nibbles and all;
Blowing soft breaths onto our goosebumpy skins, whispering how much we love each other;
Cheekily stealing smooches at traffic light stops which never seem to be long enough;
Resting your head on my sturdy shoulder as I cushion mine into yours, christening it with my lips,
As we serenade that BSB song transporting me back to 14 again.

And the realization pierces me through like truth always does:

That I would not trade any moment, any era, any wish, any desire
Than the one right now with you that has headily grasped me so:
A dizzying cocktail of drugs that is you.

Shalini Nayar
31.10.14
(c) 2014

In the darkest hour the sliver of light pierces through,
Illuminating the bones of our truth,
Rearranged and remoulded by the sands of time,
Revealing its raw crevices for the world to see

They say it's darkest before dawn,
In the still of the night, they danced in unison,
Intertwining individuals intercepting fate,
Setting forth a fiery flame for all the pawns in this game

Carnal desire madly racing through their veins,
Pulsing the minutes as if life depended on it,
Passion enveloping the world only they could bear witness to,
As the crack of the moon dragged her blacks across the Jungian skies

They fight for the other like no other,
They will wait out stormy seas and torrents of trouble,
Where does faith lie but if not in their hearts that had been glued back?
For the bonds of love can weather through any matter.

~Vijaya Balan and Shalini Nayar
21.10.14
(c) 2014

Whatever may come,
I know I can survive it.
I can cook **** well.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

I have always known.
But you know me, impatient.
I try wrong ones first.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

It whispers to me everyday, wide and deathly.
The heartbeat of it never fades.
The garland grows rounder and vague.

It’s like a warning, only you cannot avoid.
Where it will descend: on the dandruffed hair
Moping the pimpled cheeks? or on the

Origin of the thumps itself, losing the will to beat?
They do not speak, but their act volumes like nothing else.
The black magnolias bloom and bleed

Odours of life. Do not believe their
Scented breath. It is almost beautiful
Like ten minutes of peace.

I’m no longer afraid, my flowery enemy.
The buds sleep while monoecious parents
Mother a silent death.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

This is a special typhoon of sorts.
It revolves and turns;
A windy conch-shell blowing in a
Random, disorderly manner.

The patrons that travel in them
Are enviable. Unclothed and unashamed,
They are useless to be reminded.
They remain oblivious throughout this

Journey, that demands so little out of them.
They get a whole world of ***** love in return.
Yes, it is love, the sick purity of it
Makes them feverish. It’s like being

In the middle of a tornado of
Hot-coal, with no control of the temperature.
It is quite a traffic in there, with hordes of
Turned-on traffic looming together

With the cheekiness of rotations.
Clockwise, counter-clockwise,
Either way, they look comfortable being
In their own skin.

This twister are more like telephone cords.
Not so black, but with the same
Terrible, manic curls, each concocting
Its own love story. The lovers are wind-bathed

And pampered. The flawlessness that resides
In their hair, faces, bodies! They are so white,
They’re almost perfect. It is so pure, so magical
In there, it is heaven!

If only the wind lasts forever
In this eternal sea of people,
The world would start
To utter more sense.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The star breaks into
A million false hopes, dashed dreams.
Awake my blind child.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

These words may not do justice,
But it's all I've always had,
Now they bear meanings only you and I know.
And I knew that when we ventured far and wide
Through the Roman fields and back,
Exchanging banter and doses of sarcasm,
That you were a special one.
I knew that wasn't the last time I was going to bask
In your radiant smile and that mischievious twinkle in your eye,
As the Universe conspired this connection
To unravel at the perfect time.

Shalini Nayar
(C) 2014 (13.10.14)

The vein bleeds into routes on the flower,
Spreading rivers of nodules and colours,
Fastidiously opening up its body
To receive the ravenous bumblebee.

It is the beginning of a friend ship, a love
Consummated wholly with carnal desire
And mutually symbiotic congress.
The bee drinks up the nectar like its last supper.

This connection doesn’t demand anything.
They give and receive, void of expectations and desire.
The animal and the flower exist in their au naturale state
Long after the romance of spring **** them by.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

Another four legs and a tail fall prey.
The pink tablets are too believable.

The family does not contemplate.
They only eat and eat and eat: disemboweling.

They run along the white
Tubes, filled with grey straws

That spawns red, yellow and black.
But do not drink from them.

Their ears rise up like antennas
Picking up signals they worry to decipher.

They only run and run and run.
Hear those patters. Hear them chasing death down the stairs.

Their buckteeth carves through the pills,
Lulling them into dehydration. Death craves for thirst.

And when their stench bleeds itself across the room,
It ferments electronics and shuts noses.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

Love has made me foolish.
The joke, har har har, and they go.
Carrying you, and you, and you
Has taken a toll on me, my heart.
It is the emotions I miss, the rush of it.

Whenever I think of you, I think of lies.
This was supposed to be our year, you remember?
The art galleries, the plays, the orchestras,
The million meaningless things we said to each other,
We promised each other. Laugh! All lies.

Whenever I think of you, I think of foolishness.
For you’re still a young boy at heart, so naïve.
When you find love, you let it go, and settling for less
Every single time. How stupid of you.
Your smile melts me, but I’m undaunted. I laugh everything off.

Whenever I think of you, I think of bravery.
Bravery that got me through the mess, the rude ordeals,
To finally say it to your face what I really thought of you.
I hated you as a person, every atom of your stinking presence,
So much so it choked me at times. Now I laugh, thinking back.

I would fall into it just to feel the surge of everything alive,
Just because I really missed it pulsing in my veins,
And not because I pride myself on finding my soul mate.
I’m too cynical for that.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

“What do you do for living?” I asked, examining the bronzed boy.
“I love,” he said, with a smirk and a slight touch on my fingers.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

I must have a stupid face.
The smiles, the cold hooks
Tugging at my heart like a lunging fish,
Narrowly breathing to keep itself
Alive, only for the moment.
Then gone.

I love this, this resurgence of things
That may come. All true, you believe,
Till they prove you wrong.
The murmurs, do you hear it?
Through the steel, the pages,
Shakespeares I and II.

Cold, but loud. They buzz all around
The years, old and new,
Stillborn and cursed.

Don’t stop, they want you too much now.
I turn and turn, I do not hear anything.
No one comes up to me,
I don’t want to hear anything else.

The cold surfaces, the white acetylene tables.
Burp burp, who goes there?
Who’s arranging all these?
Yours, yours?

I mock you,
I mock your noise,
The silent shudder of you deciding
To leave me.

The hurt, the stinging pain.
The loud crash of it.

This is the sinew of my curse.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

My heart aches a thousand times more
Each time my mind wanders.
It is the voices that rage me.
I hold my chair tight till it tattoos marks on my palm.

Because of you, because of your *****,
Your *******, *******, worshipping the ******* blue ******,
You have made me so jaded.

The naivete that I carried on my sleeve,
The sweet innocence looking forward to wonderful,
The trust I invested in total strangers,
The belief that there was good in every mankind,
All lies. I am now blinded by brutality and deceit.
I lost trust and I lost God. Both never existed.

How manipulative, calculative you were.
Not to mention your sister-*****, who later became your own concubine,
How she'd tricked me, lured me into believing every move.
I nodded, smiled and laughed along with the deceit.
All along a big *** knife was ****** into my back.

Who knew backstabbing was your favourite sport.

Shalini Nayar
© 2005

They fall inconspicuously, these fleeting memories,
Racing against one another piercing the electric air,
Reaching the earth only to marry each other like a perfect jigsaw,
As they meander through the burgeoning of their beating hearts.

Where do beating hearts reside but in our guarded rib cages?
Vibrations tremble through them as our minds recall past ages,
A twinkle in their eyes, indicators of a point in time,
Where their memories converge and haughty hearts beat furiously.

It never came easy this journey, the path once strewn with things they wish they can take back,
Now strewn with things they never want to let go,
Found in one another as though they've always been there to be discovered
By the one that braves a thousand thunders as they clap through the cardiac waves, beating as one;

Fluidly shifting through dreams of despair and profoundly yearning for hope,
Embracing many potential endings ravenously, onto resilience,
Having eternally reached memories, infesting them
Planting new seeds of faith, erasing all that is dark and cold, but maintaining an authority of importance.

~Shalini Nayar & Vijaya Balan
5.11.14
(c) 2014

the marbled kitchen floor
now inherited shapeless
broken pieces
of plates

she sees him walking away
after his cantankerous
plate throwing spree
showing no hints
of an apology
or remorse

she ponders about what kind of
metamorphosis has belied
her once
considerate
hopelessly romantic
debonair
non-alcoholic husband
she once thought she knew
she once thought she loved

she continues to do the dishes
now washing slightly chipped glasses
and looks at the empty plate rack
and thinks
I shall buy new ones tomorrow

Shalini Nayar
© 2001

Love, relationships,
Men, boys, ******* tingles.
All those things bore me.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

It is a Russian dish, they say.
A plate of two diecious moons
Rising on different waters.
They reflected a common bond:
The mushroom sauce that
Goes with anything unmushroomy.

One side was a pile of rice,
Yellow fleshy seedlings, brown
Chunky gravy for headtops.
They mountained over like uneven Alps.
They kissed the air, like good army boys
And rose their spice to dance firely

Within me. They spoke a foreign tongue,
That deciphered itself in my mouth.
The credibility lies somewhere my love, but try
Finding a speck of truth in a death full of lies.
It was painful to hear its story,
The way it winces and rolls over to convince you.

Being genuine is something special, sacred.
It can’t be too hard. Just when my fork
Scooped up a bite, the lambs started hooing.
They were in juicy threes, each with
A bone and a bit of marinated flesh.
They smelled like grazed greenlands.

It is something else with mint sauce
But I hate it. Truthness lies somewhere
In the nervous system of its body,
That is bloodless and tender. They too, attempted
To lull me with an anecdote, fallibly in its juices.
The grain and meat are proud godfood
      with histories tailing like dreams.

Whom should I consume and believe? They
Withered and tempted me like a candystore does
To bored children. It is too agonizing, I’ve become
The middle woman. Two moons, jaundiced and stony
Stared back boney, and sick. The overcrowded trash
Had acquainted two odd friends that night.

Shalini Nayar
(c) 2002

The meat stinks of sticky blood.
Ants fear the red flood, they flee;
Abandoning their mountainous
Playground-cones.

The gazelle stares, shooting blanks after blanks
Blindly and stupidly.
Its stained teeth grins and screams
But it is voiceless like the desert itself.

Lazily, a lion paws the earth.
His mane bloom a hairy sun,
Illuminates the scarce ground to bits of gold.
He sniffs, and turns away yawning.

He is used to this plate death serves him.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

My skin goes up in flames
Incinerating the fine fibers

That hold too much history.
Too much pain!

The water rushes down like a modest waterfall
By the rocks, cleansing the shiny soapy edges.

The rocks hold their breath
Until bubbles germinate.

Those dews of contradicting virtues
Flow off my burning skin, gently crossing each other out.

Like warships in full reign,
They torpedo ragingly, missing their marks,

Bombing themselves. The ash suffocates the sea.
The fishes gossip and their ryes burn, burn, burn.

Oh, the agony of a misfire: incineration, gossip, untimely death.
Too much pain!

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The apple’s shot through,
Wormy and brown but it is her lunch.

Through her hood, she sees the buzzing market.
She is condoned as always, the ***** brown

That harbours near the fruit man, like an unwanted
Sofa, lumpy and ******. Only her grandma-fingers palm through.

Her mane of rags render translucent pebbles of benevolence:
A rare cinematic view of the world, her weary eyes absorbs every colour.

It is gentle and kind these holes: a myopic happiness
That triggers this lady to jump about, and holler and

Holler until the random clanks in her stainless steel
Plate drum up impressive beats. It is encouraging to her,

This sympathetic validation. Though she knows
false hopes don’t hold up too long. It is her sunrise,

The kind of thing we often take for granted.
She cradles the apple (the raggedy couple symbiotic in nature),

Smoothing out its ciders. It is her afternoon’s asset,
Tasting as foreign as mother’s milk.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002