The Tweeting Haijin

He was a Sainik School boy, since his 6th standard, then NDA, then IMA. 45 years of marriage to my mother did not get that out of his system. I was internally devastated as we wheelchaired him to the Navy hospital ward. He'd lost weight and energy and, as it seemed, the will to live. At the Navy hospital, we weren't allowed to stay or minister to him. I thought I had seen the last of him. In the night call with mother he told us what he ate at the Naval hospital: noodles and manchurian for lunch, chapati-dal-subzi for dinner. We had struggled for weeks as he nauseated food, and ate nothing but thin buttermilk. That was his home, among the men in uniform. The boy just got home, after 30 years in the wilderness of civilian life. finally finding what our pet likes eating most — attention Published in Glomag May 2025

 Keys to a bicycle. Photographs of grandparents. A chewed block of wood, with the teeth marks of a dead pet. A diploma, tattered at the edges. My baba-suit, enshrined in crinkly tissue paper. A large collection of mismatched socks. first cry my newborn father wipes his face (Published in Cafe Haiku on 01/12/2022)

 Morning Dog … is what Myshka is not. The thought of a walk in the dawn chill fills her with dread. She stays curled up till the sunbeams light up her nose. evensong the koel’s notes sleepier * Jerky Justice Unlike the fable, the monkey (I) ends up overfeeding to keep the balance between the senior and junior retrievers. sibling envy the aggression in the tail wags * Moving On “You don’t make me wet anymore” she said drily. dried petal now who was it exactly? (Published in Cafe Haiku on 29/04/2023)

winter clouds this silent scream in my eyes The loo stinks, the tap runs and can't be closed. The risk of dying of a urinary tract infection or asphyxiation is still the same. The sole policeman visible, young and unarmed, is ostensibly guarding the ladies' first class. The rather bright lights are a change though, but they seem to make the place seem a wee bit less crowded. Seem. There are people sitting on the platform, waiting for their trains. Many in their Sunday best. Popcorn-sellers, peanut-sellers, kulfi-sellers are trying to get me to shed some money towards them, even as I wait for the samosa-seller. yellow leaves the old woman sweeps up yesterday It's getting on eight (time for the Titwala Fast to leave), and last-minute boarders are jumping in. The popcorn-seller is taking his last chances before he moves to the 8:13 Khopoli Slow. I don't know how many of the guys around me are pass-holders or even bothered to buy tickets. I do know the police didn...

Our e-book, the taste of sea breeze , was published as a celebration of two years of IN haiku Mumbai . This anthology contains haiku, tanka, senryu, haibun and renku, alongside a form which we think we invented - the renbun (haibun linked to each other on the lines of renku). Available on Amazon.in , it is edited by Rohini Gupta ( who also did the cover ), with contributions from Paresh Tiwari, Mahrukh Bulsara, Brijesh Raj, Gautam Nadkarni, Sandra Martyres, Kasturi Jadhav, Rochelle Potkar and yours truly. Here are a few reviews so far on the Amazon page : A Lovely Tasting! (Kashmira Raj on 16 July 2016) For Haiku lovers, this book packs a punch. There are some pleasant surprises here and I found several 'aha' moments. Some verses have touched the heart bringing to mind visions from my past. The beauty of this is that it sometimes evokes an entire thought process, different from what the writer may have meant to convey, thereby leaving an indelible mark. Not only th...

The grating rises. Inside, great coils sear with redness. The shroud is ripped off and thrown to a side. I look away: grandpa's belly has bloated beyond measure. They wrench my hands away. With a firm push, the trolley races into the coils. Huge flames erupt, licking the seasoned body. A lever is swung, the grating crashes down. Morning. An ashen-faced man scans a shelf. An urn, neatly labeled, is placed on the counter. Ashes and a bone fragment. A priest chants by a river. A brinjal and some white flowers float away. mother's song the pressure cooker hums with her (Published in Haibun Today June 2015)

Mother gave me a patch of garden when I was eleven. I ploughed it with a trowel and seeded it with dahlias, geraniums, marigolds and chrysanthemums. I watered it everyday and watched with delight as they began to sprout. Then one day I saw a new plant, with tiny bright green leaves. Mother didn’t know what it was. Se called it a weed. She told me to remove it. I didn’t. I thought it was pretty. Prettier still, when it had tiny, yellow flowers. And then there were other plants – short ones, tall ones, prickly ones, with white, yellow, even red flowers. One flower had petals that were violet outside and yellow inside. Mother called them all weeds. The geraniums and dahlias and chrysanthemums didn’t seem to grow well. They were short and had small flowers, not like mother’s patch which had big, pretty ones. Mother said it was because I had let weeds grow. But I had lots of little flowers – like little me. Mother said I had grown a weed garden. So she took it away. But it was a nice ga...

I have before me a tourist brochure. I think it is laughing at me, the way ink soaked into paper can laugh. A way that is silent, malignant. It seems amused. That I have come to gawk, to gape. Where my forefather once cut down other people's forefathers. Like that of the brochure writer's, perhaps. Or did not. I must trust the story the ink tells me. For the blood soaked in the ground isn't saying anything. the last installment of our home loan – father's last sigh (Published in Shamrock  issue 31)

Encased in concrete, with a dying orange above, and the silver turning grey below, the waves crash futilely against the old Portuguese fortress at Bandra. I suppose one might, on careful listening, hear steel versus steel again. Boats bob by those decayed ramparts, signs of of an eternal poverty dependent on the wealth of the sea; on the open sea the Bandra-Worli sea-link's lights shimmy: a half-finished proclamation of victory over nature. Above, the clouds thicken as if in impudent demonstration of whose writ truly runs. In the shanties of Bandra, in the towers of Worli, and in the middle-classness of Mahim, lights come on one by one - a dying day, a sleepless city. morning rush hour: the beggar sets up office where he sleeps Published in A Hundred Gourds

सिद्धार्थ  क्या मेले के गुब्बारे कभी ख़ामोशी की तलाश में भटकते होंगे? क्या पूनम का चान्द कभी अमावस की आस रखता होगा? शहर की बसों ने कभी ढूँढी होंग किसी गाँव का रस्ता? क्या सागर की मछलियों ने एक दिन किसी वीरान कुएँ का ख़्वाब देखा होगा? मैंने न तलाश की न ख़्वाब देखे हैं, इन सियाही की लकीरों में मैं कबसे गुमशुदा हूँ| पीपल वृक्ष — एक त्रिकोण पत्ते में समक्ष भू Translation: Siddhartha Do balloons in a fair ever go wandering in search of some quiet? Does the full moon ever yearn for the new moon’s night? Have a city’s commuter buses ever looked for the road to some village? Did the fishes of the ocean ever dream of an obscure well some day? I’ve neither sought nor dreamt, for long have I been lost in these lines of india ink. peepul tree — in a triangular leaf the world  Published in Chrysanthemum 17

It is still too early to say what memories will crystallise around you. For now, it is the bedpan not emptied, the smell of ointments and pills in your room and your waning voice damning the world. But once my tears have dried and the puja flowers have withered, perhaps I will freeze you at an age when you looked better. Will it be the black and white honeymoon photos taken on a boat in the lake in Matheran when you first let me down ( couldn't you find any place cheaper?), and the mundan of our first-born where your mother made such a fuss and that stupid photo from the wedding of some cousin of yours where your middle-aged, balding face and paunch made me fall out of love with you for the first time? And yes, the shaadi-ka-video, the cassette recording of our kid reciting nursery rhymes and certainly all the unrecorded fights (you never earned enough, drank too much and never bought me enough flowers) and that ne'er-do-well son you gave me who lamented loudly at the funer...

They see much, these statues standing guard at Goddess Kamakhya's dark temple; there's a nose lopped off here, an ear eroded there, by wind, by time, by swords. Now they've become nesting sites for doves that mate, rear chicks and shed guano on these timeless sentinels. They see cows amble around bestowing sacred dung, they see the fresh blood of sacrificed buffaloes. They still stand, these statues, their thousand-year silence covered with vermilion and ash. They see the rag-clothed pilgrims shivering in the morning drizzle or wilting in the noon sun not unlike the oleander petals and mango leaves that they bring as offerings to the tantric Goddess. They see the priests in red vestments; arrogance writ large on their pouchy faces. They see the banana, papaya, margosa trees shelter a sacrificial goat. And they see me, eager tourist trapping them in camera stills. monsoon showers— the forest bursts into flames blossom by blossom (Published in cattails May 2015)

And so they came to my door. They didn't have to sneak up on me, they knew I had nowhere to escape. The engine rumbled arrogantly; quiet, well-repaired engines are for the powerless. And then it stopped, merging into the night's silence, as easily as it had shattered it. I could then hear them, the sweaty, nervous militia men cocking their rifles. I parted the curtain, and there they were, barrels aimed at my windows. Fully surrounded, as only the might of state can ensure. No escape then, no terms of surrender. I could go out in the blaze of guns the bastards wanted, for their glory, their honour, their shiny medals. Or I could choose a few more days of breathing. Panting more likely; I have asthma and they know it. A kangaroo court, a monkey trial. Blasphemy, treason, undermining the revolution, poisoning the peasants. The impassioned defence, the booing rabble, the shooting squad. It was so tempting then to consider cyanide. And yet no, perhaps the fascination of the imm...

I jingled them in my hand. I had no fresh notes to crinkle. No soiled ones either. They were all that was - four nickel coins. I looked up at the counter, at my palm, at the counter again. It lay there upon the counter, encased in thin plastic. It too, was all there was. The choice was clear - either the acid in my stomach digested it, or the acid digested me. The coins now jingled behind the counter. The plastic crinkled in my hand. I threw it away, and fingered the bun. Hard, stale crust, thankfully not mouldy yet. Cold, oil-oozing patty. Tomato slices, slightly rancid, their sourness accented by fermentation. Limp onion slices that failed to sting. The onions failed to sting. My desperation did. half-eaten sun; the street urchin sifts garbage Published in Cattails

Déjà vu m'arrive tant de fois, mais pas dans le sens psychological. La semaine dernière, nous sommes entrés dans Suzette, un nouveau restaurante breton dans Mumbai, offrant une gamme des crêpes. J'étais excité parce que je n'ai jamais vu une crêpe avant. J'ai demandé une "crêpe aux épinards, feta, basilic frais et tomates fraîches", en essayant mon français livresque au cours. Que j'ai reçu était une choc électrique. J'ai vu des crêpes avant—elles sont appelées les "dosas" dans ma langue. Les bretons les préparent de sarrasin, nous Tamouls de lentilles. Je viens de payer 20 fois plus pour quelque chose que je mange chez moi trois fois par semaine! J'admets qu'ils n'ont pas du fromage feta et des épinards, mais je peux les mettre dans un dosa, n'est-ce pas? Les seuls choses français de cette affaire etaient les couteau-et-fourchette, le désespoir Houellebecqien, et peut-être le Chopin jouant en arrière. Et bien sûr —déjà vu. ...

What the six Brandenburg Concertos do to me is this. They simply fill me with music, surround me, isolate me, gently tease me away from my cares into their Elysium; they permeate every nerve, till each has become, as Khusrau wrote, a taut string vibrating with the sound of the universe itself; they at once excite and becalm, distress and elate, arrest and move; they hurt me, they make me feel small before the universe and then they heal me and make me one with the universe. Add to the experience my hormones coursing adrenaline and testosterone, and sleep deprivation and the flush of success and the inebriation of starvation mixed with coffee—something strange happens, I am at a sudden high of consciousness, at once depressed and euphoric, for a fleeting minute—nirvana. dust patterns . . . the ghostly outline of my turntable (Published in Haibun Today  September 2014)

The orchestra played Mahler's 4th Symphony. Timing is everything in Mahler, yet immeasurable, like the water in a leaking clepsydra. The audience sat entranced, glazed eyes peering. It was surreal, like a Homo habilis skull in the hands of Richard Leakey, glaring impassively from its eyeless sockets. Trying to tell, perhaps, of its timeless irrelevance. Irreverence even, as I come to think of it. A kind of gleeful mockery, saying that you too shall be mud in the course of time. Perhaps covered in an old cover of Rolling Stone and pissed on by passing hippopotami. You will disappear, like Basho's frog diving into its pool, and you might yet live forever, like Basho's frog diving into its pool. morning fog... the train whistles by broken bottles (Published in A Hundred Gourds 2:3 June 2013 and republished in  contemporary haibun  Volume 15 )

What an interesting number—ninety-nine! One short of the most magical number ever, one more than the most nondescript of numbers. Ninety-nine, the number that judges everything, from the sincerity of a lover to the contamination in a bar of iron. Ninety-nine, a hungry number, besmirched by an accusation of incompleteness, yet perfect in form—its twin members so beautifully illustrating its two divisors. The first one less, the second one more than that other fabulous number, ten. Ten, which multiplied by itself yields that magic figure all men yearn for. Perfect and yet always incomplete. Ever hungry, ninety-nine.  Hide message history whitened sky... in one drop the rainbow (Published in Frogpond 37.1 (2014) Republished in South Asian Ensemble 2014)

An interview by Raamesh Gowri Raghavan http://glo-talk.blogspot.in/2014_09_01_archive.html My interviewee is a person I share much with - a biology education, a stint at TIFR with K S Krishnan, a love of nature and now haikai literature. Though his association has been much older and much richer than mine, to emerge over time as one of India's leading haiku and haibun writers. As he describes himself, "Johannes Manjrekar grew up mostly in Mysore, South India. Childhood love for mucking around with insects and birds eventually led to a PhD in molecular biology. Has been teaching at the Microbiology Department and Biotechnology Centre of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda for many years. Speaks six Indian languages (counting English!) and one non-Indian. In addition to haikai style writing, very enthusiastic about photography." Interspersed with the questions are Johannes' haiku and haibun (reproduced with his kind permission). *...

The grubby boy washes out the steps of the half-closed eatery. A dog stands by; tail a-wag in expectation. In the next shop, a light peeps from beneath a nearly closed shutter. The butcher's shop is still open where a gaunt attendant scrubs a knife. Blood mixes with grime as it flows out to the gutter, only to be dammed by cabbage and mango leaves. The marigold and jasmine seller cries out to the hurrying passers-by, “Three for the price of one.” So does the vegetable woman, her head half-covered, as her voice shears the silence. Eloquent and persuasive, the cadences rise and fall as she plies her rehearsed pitch. A shutter closes with a clang, followed closely by a motorcycle roar that soon groans away into the darkness. The clock-tower rings and I quicken my pace. I can hear the hum of the last bus' engine, and the whines of the drunk I shoved and sent swerving across the street. Elbows clash as I run through the customers of the busy, busy cigarette shop, but the bu...