Please. You know. Matlab ab kya kaha jaaye. Kya hi kaha jaaye. Show-off. Aur main! Me, oh my, please tell me no. Or know. I mean, matlab, you know naa, ki (chhoti maatra waali) ki matlab I am not a show-off, or some show off, or some show, of some off. Hai naa?! Paagal saare! Mummy! But no, no Mummy-Shammi, I
am okay, I am adult ji, I am faain only, please
don’t maind.

Lissan bhai, look around joo, aaaal around, thain tail me. Not tail, I mean don’t get after me like a poonchh or something like that, I meant tail me.

What? But what? Whatnot? You are tailing me?? But why are you not telling me that joo are tailing me? I mean. What? And whatnot?

Look. But probably not. Don’t look. If you look, you may know the truth, and the truth is not the best of things. You know! Truth may be second best or third best or fourth best or whatever best but truth-truth is not, you know what I mean. Anyway. Anyhow. Chalo. Let’s go Dildaar, hai naa? Chalo.

Where are we to go? Do let us know. Dildaarji! Where are joo?

Here I am, with nothing to show and joo are not willing to even see what I do not have to show? Hain? What nonsense is this, and what injustice too? Please look and have some consideration. Matlab, consider.

Consider all those things I am not showing off, then only come tell me or speak to me or speak about me. That’s fair, only fair, is that it or is that not it? Think about it. Anyhow, where were we? We are always lost. Is that what it is? That we are meant to be lost? Who knows. Anyhow. Anyway.

No show off. No showing off. Why, but why? There is not much to show off. There is much not to show off. Or even show. You know. Of course you know. Look at those curtains, those ones whose lengths no darzee would ever have known to be real. Them curtains, hanging, from up there to down there, from arsh to farsh, the sky to the ground. You know. You must. Those curtains do not show off. Those curtains hide. They hide you know what. Let me not have to tell you. Please. I am no show-off. I hide. Because there is so much to hide. If only I bared my heart and you could have a peep into what lies there. All the blackness and all the bleakness, and all of that which one day I want to wholly and unabashedly pour out, all that rusted refuse waiting, and which I still do not have the courage to reveal. And you call me a show-off. Abhi tumne dekha hi kya hai? There is so much to show, there is so little I have put out.

What you are looking at
Look carefully please
What do you see
Truly please, what do you see
Kindly. And please please please
Will you tell me please.
Nobody tells me.
Did something happen?
Something dark and dead?
Will you please? Tell me?
Now that I am showered
In this rain of petals.
I cannot clearly see.