To own a homeTo own a home is to ingest it and hope the concrete doesn’t reverse track. It is to pray the apartment breaks down into paste in the entrails — a process that takes as long as final possession. It is to serve the carpet area with a side of dadi’s pickle (which the broker enjoys) while the builder consumes seventy per cent in cash, deep fried, and the rest via bank transfer. (No salad.) It is to feel lime-washed walls slide down the throat with deceptive sweetness and swirl in the abdomenalong with years of EMIs. It is to brace for the acidity of loan interests, corrosion of the inner lining, lacerations and leakage. It is to tackle complaints from neighbours, which involves too much caffeine. It is to watch the ceiling peel, which is nobody’s concern but yours. It is to devour meals on the sly like a sleep-eater. It is to decorate each room with care and diabetic sugar, hoping everything dissolves easily into bile. It is to feel as if you have swallowed a rock, though others are quick to assure you this is normal for property ownership and crucial for a comfortable life.Coastal roadThe coastal road curves above the diamonds of the Arabian Sea like an armful of edelweiss. We drive towards its hologram of urbanity, watching it expand like a promise, noting how it links dreams to the soul. My father marvels at the speed of progress in the evening light in which even the blue tarp of need is made picturesque by the sun’s wet kiss. As we cruise onto its other limb, metal and cement grow familiar under a fuchsia sky. My father ruminates on the vow fulfilled in his lifetime, and the imbalance from which came this moment of awe. To one end, it seems, are our lives: a melding of gold and survival, while the other holds hope. Between them lies this longing, these aspirations that soar like comets. Sitting beside my father, watching him accept his mortality, I hold on and focus, like him, on the direction of love.A Byculla poetAfter hearing him ask her at a literature festival whether there exists another that draws Chinchpokli into poetics (because such a thing is an absurdity), I, a Byculla poet (of which I may be one of two, the second being a name on a mural), sit in a cab and fly – since it is a good day — past buildings, two of which have a coconut tree standing awkwardly between them like I would have stood with the luminaries had I courage to tell them I use the name of that very neighbourhood as an endearment to elicit my parents’ smiles. Instead, as their conversation ends, I choose to shuffle away with downcast eyes and fly under a moon gilded by the pair, thinking of how to mark my home too within the luminescence of poetry. Corporate jobOver rows of desks joined in reverence of a capitalist goal, under a roof of glass, natural light spills like a mistake. Here time is full of insects buzzing with seconds, and rays swerving like swords, attempting to slice heads while I, in the office chair, work against its progress, glaring at the computer’s slow rise from outdated sleep.Bhaji wali She announces her arrival with a call that travels from her lips to windows a generous radius away, her vowels growing wild, expanding with an elasticity that mesmerises, the eeeh and aaah roaming like wind and petering to the slow breath of a summer breeze, leaving you to mourn the energy that dissolved to naught. Encore.War poem Here there is no blood —tainted phrase releasing like a bullet. No artillery —laden words joining arms, forming battalions. No rage. No tears. Not much of anything. Only this pillow —soft resignation to provide a gentle, pointless end.Excerpted with permission from Absurd Theatre, Suchita Parikh-Mundul, Paperwall Publishing.