LEOPARD
Thus walks a beast in Eden,
Oblivious of a long thinking tail,
Thinking nothing of who wove the
spots,
Why velvet hands carry the most fatal
claws,
but during thirst, when water stabs a sight,
a doubt,
deep into the heart.
NOW I CAN LOVE THE WIND
She breathes a cool kiss, but I’m not swept away. Nor am I unmoved.
MINAHS
Under my window, a few sweet-sounding birds congregate.They dart their heads and walk like thugs with pompous chests.
They are territorial.
Sometimes they fight crows, or each other, over a fallen mango.
When I have nothing better to do
than thumb my nails,
or count my teeth with my tongue,
I break bread
to start a fight,
as when
God was neither cruel nor merciful
as the heathen and pious claim,
but simply bored.
LORD OF THE REFRIGERATOR
An unmarried
mercenary who fell in love with his refrigerator, Gopalakrishnan
escaped from an orphanage to
Visakhapatnam in his teens, where he repaired radios in a
ship. One day, the captain, a white man, invited him for a drink
in the largest room he had ever seen, and let him taste the
coldest water, from a pebble-edged
beauty ‘Refrigerator.’
Gopalakrishnan lipped the word: a queen’s name
no doubt.
How he loved opening and closing it, opening and closing it.
How he slept to its sweet purr in the night. Old, with a
handlebar moustache, he laughed to himself.
500 years ago, if he had lit up a refrigerator, he would’ve been
the ruler of a small kingdom. An emperor might gift him two of
his most beautiful daughters, and half his elephants, for
a touch of a cold melting diamond.
The natives would gasp at his queen’s sterile white gums and
wintry breath,
and her heavenly yellow glow.
‘Lord of the Refrigerator,’ they would prostrate.
‘Let thy milk never go bad.’
Joseph Antony is an investment banking professional from Mumbai. Previously, he was an editor with HarperCollins India and Penguin India. He has written on cinema and culture for various magazines and newspapers. A love of literature and a game of football in the evening make his life bearable.