One is impaled on a temple spire. One strung from the high wire. One feisty one that circles the sun. One fakes injury and floats down, ever so slowly, undulating like the last leaf of autumn. Then it rears its head and cuts the umbilical cord off a competitor and rises majestically to the sun. There is murder in the skies above. And the earth, a graveyard of Kites. One block after the other in my dreary low-income neighborhood little fate-masters, their little black heads bobbing up and down the parapet...wage war. Little boys wade in a suburban marsh of mud and mobil oil, pampas grass and plastic bags...trudge knee deep with swine as they hunt for fallen kites...free from one puppet-master over the parapet and into the hands of the other. I remember when I was a little kid. All scrawny and rough knees in khaki shots and a Lord Fauntleroy kind lacy shirts. I remember...

I may be a beggar and you a queen but the sights are the same. Patna stinks. The floodwaters got wopped up one sunny afternoon and all’s that is left behind is the slime. Green lumps in puddle ponds line the streets. There is a wince on every face. The stench is worse than Hagrid’s underpants. It’s a Sunny day and I love animals. So I am off to the Zoo. A family of burqas and goatees celebrates on the road to the Hyena enclosure. A speckled shadows splayed on the checked cloth, puris and subzi, chattering kids gone crazy, ustad alla rakha mourning on the radio, a myna joins in; ah contentment. The Hyena lies flung in a corner. An IAF chopper rips the sky above, on to another village, another marsh; another tragedy. A sad little monkey has his arm burrowed out the mesh. It looks ridiculously tiny. Peanut husk litters the cage. An otter swims in rancid water. 3 feet of water and the tiles can’t be seen. A black bear swoons and swims in the empty air. His eyes closed, his head sways like Stevie Ray’s. The Sun’s strong and shade’s not. A tiger mops. His fur haggard. A lioness claws at a tire, her mane depleted in patches. She looks like a discoloured porcelain fading away. A parakeet pecks wildly at its self, drawing blood. A coiled viper coils evermore, coiling in so as to forget. Calling out. An Emu disgorges bits of thermocol and corn and then takes it in and then disgorges a rubber band… A fishing cat stands on its hind legs, rheumatic. An albino tiger, its fore leg bent like a swan’s neck paces and grunts the wall sniffing the air and smells humans…whole hordes of them…everywhere. An enormous hippo lounges in a tank rancid and dank. A simpleton chews meditatively on a neem fag and tosses it sharp end first on the bright red gash on the black bloated body. He is in raptures; the water horse in pain. Where there must’ve been another enclosure of some torturous description, a dusty couple is curled around each other in yin and yang. A hanging peepul branch brushes the lass, the leaves glistening in the angry noon light. This is for the benefit for the Patliaputras. Those who are shunned all over India for their indiscretion over spitting pits and a crippling handicap in sibilant pronunciation. This is redemption. Poke eyes out of the endangereds, stab at the sleeping, spit and colour the yellow parakeet red. Welcome to Patna Zoo. ...

We moved out of our crumbling hotel marked '1905'. It could very well have been a boutique colonial B&B. The shower was a Dalda tin can with pinpricks. The service was white-gloved. The double bed smelled of roses and was wrapped in perfect white linen even if it had been abundantly clear that it was to be shared by two staunch heterosexuals. The side-table had a 'snuff box' stuffed with a dubious brand of candy. Outside grime covered walls were plastered with calls for revolution, advertisements for the Ross Clinic, a Mithun movie 'Minister' and neem fag chewing Biharis racous and content. Tram tracks ran cautiously on dislodged cobblestone. We tramped out on the tracks on the advice of a drunk and the tracks opened out into a clearing otherwise called The Park Street. The avenue was broad and well kept, a shy park peeped behind a row of grand trees. Yellow taxis hurtled on. A statute of Mother Teresa shone beatifically...

Here goes a test, and if a success, then an ode to the non-censorship of employee posts...however inane they might be: When cars meteor on NH-24 blaze at 8:30 a.m. coursing through twisting on the turns turning on the twists the morning sun bleaching cars to white bouncing sun off windows screening off as if nameless faces inside reside a cheeky young langur dares cross the path of the meteor shower the unthinking simian screeches and jumps for a rotting peel of fruitless banana another, perhaps a mate blurts a warning call not unlike the comma in the first line of this para she/he lets not be sexist, perfectionist, obfuscationist, but come to the point she/he langurmur calls out but it is late for the meteors find their impact an unbleached Dodge impacts on a red bum, anatomically speaking and a lemur breathes his or her last. -in the memory of a martyred lemangur who passed way in the middle of the NH-24 on 28th November for the benefit of a car insurance that was to be used, a bored poet and a frustated mate. Testing 123 Testing 123 Romeo Check Alfa Check...OK ...