Dear Suzannah

Copyright © 2014 by Pankhuri Sinha.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4990-7839-8

                eBook         978-1-4990-7841-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/02/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

539971

Contents

The great stalemate

The Incomplete Story

That poem

At home

Where the talk was stuck

Meeting someone

The desire to move people so much

Busting the drink racket

The problem with that kind of socialization

The Politics of the Mirror

The sticky point

The crisis of acknowledgement

The known perfect method

The crisis of the third person

The market of love

Capitalism’s crisis

The game was

The office tours

The office hours

Problematizing sex

Speed Dating

In the footsteps of the previous one

Picture politics

Godmaking

The Grocery stores of other countries

They just did not let me move an inch

Had to defend then,

move now

Making everything about money

The having of the affair

Having my rights in his pockets

Coming back to the alliance statement

What I was told to stand up for

Playing the politics of the automatic

And I could not do it

All I had to do

Those In Charge

Playing the politics of abandonment

All they wanted to hear

Those who crept inside all talks

The art of talking

Their most recent kill

The road to the grievance talk

Like the evaluation of currency and other things

Something like modern economics

Campaign grounds of upcoming elections

Locating the war

The equation

The half truths of taught lessons

The Position Measurements

The need to laugh back

A mockery of the good old dictum

Matrimonial bliss

The fitting into the pattern

The politics of being made to consult an attorney

The announcements of position taking

The display of insecurity

The power of veto on matrimonial website

In my police complaints

And that’s a checking of our system right there

The Confidence Game

On not fighting, simply moving on

Meanings of words

The great game of adjectives

Authoritarian structure of relationships

Appointing authorities

The phone lessons

Invention of languages

Creating a perfect identity of the victim

Odd patterns

Need all poetry be spiritual

Why is a bearded man following me

The green nights of Alberta

Stories of well being

Integrity of work culture

The validity of proposals

The pyramid structure

Exit strategies

The cult of fear

Who and what people are

Don’t go back there

The need of the last phone call

Phone Hanging

The goodwill calls

The cheerfulness of the secretary at the law firm

Happy Is

Love is

The mentalite of obedience

The porter competition

The exactness of the word

The entrance of a new argument

The chorus inside my head

Writing the literature that no one wants

Dark poetries of Coco Picking

An oil drenched sea bird

Talking with everything at stake

Normalizing the cyclone of people

The Spanish accent in which she said bread

To not even write poetry

Drugged Slumber

To the extent that I had left him

The politics of re-starting

Cat Moods

Topaz eyes

On eating welfare cookies

Cat silences

Cat sleeps

Cat touches

The day’s math

Mirroring my work in my daily life

The hacker’s nightmare

Eating out

How they tracked my reading

The metaphor of speaking in French

The official speaking of French

Patient poems

Getting to work

The unclear things

The talk about free things

The age of sentences

Laughing alone in home video

The visibility of my work

The writings about strange prisons

Retrogression

Not

communicating right

The girl with the big eyes

Bride Burning

The knitting classes

The knitting yarn

The trouble

And the afternoon was made up of

Going first

Outside in

Shoplifting

Selection

The artist’s journal

Very hard prison

Reading

Talking

That poetry has been written

Still that poem

The golden coin

The enigma

Another enigma

Why would you steal people’s rights, so that they would need to complain?

Politics free talk

The role of prayers and wish making in infiltration

An administrative post

The arrival of the English question

Stealing Prayers

Shopping mistakes

From under the pine tree

The Twin Defences

The Crime Scene

The Arab acquaintance

I know what she is doing

More on campus police

Psychological frameworks infront

The New Atrium

Picking myself up or just working

The dance tunes

Its pure simple racism

The job not done and the job undone

The charity dress

The overdone math about your being here

Almost mid-day

Yesterday’s mid-day

The napkins from the library today

The apple poems

The fear festival

The artful cat bites

Monday morning

The instrument of the phone

In Jackson Mississippi

The invisible war

Response Regime

Paid for, free, welfare, and merit

Just names

The huge Ironies

Wander

Intravenal Feeding

Pointlessness

The survey phones

The politics of what they talk about

Calling upon fever

Coming and going during meal times

Coming home after a buffet over eat

Campus Police

Replicating rants

In the great living abroad of the fellow country folks

Asking you to stay

Freshness has a taste

Strange Similarities

The dance of satisfaction

Getting rid of the nurse

The hospital should be a calmer place

Campus violence

The violence of own people

On having rented a place to write

The Stomach’s Capacity to Digest Anger

The Assassin Last Night

The walk yesterday

The walk outside right now

How her lover became her landlord

Urgently needed

The politics of wastage

The silence of his not coming back

Changing channels

The single who that mattered

The rumors and suspicions

An all too familiar mechanics of persecutory talk

On being stuck

The obsession with things

On change

The linguistic insistence

Explaining the carnivore

Guessing the nationality of the man on the street

In building the brand of the nation

Politicizing response

The cry about working

Free labour

The neighbours right in front

Of actually harming, while claiming to help

In the glorification of the country

Polite talks with the cat

The official disturbance

The map of the afternoon

The constant harping on reading

Ice cream, in the middle of fever

The sum total of all of my presentations

Relishing Quarrel

Of the many ways, in which she was out of this world

Illegal

The Embassy

The replication of her drawings

The returning fever

In a eunuch country

Analyzing leftovers

The unique allegations

Of always making you comeback to that same point

Cat pictures

Post-colonial discourses

A country incapable of freeing its people

The Asking

The secret of the Password

Further secrets of the password

The very tricky situation of half told stories

Chamber Music

The acquired right of asking how do you have what you have?

The dethronement of my baby

Loosing the last ally

On not bringing in personal stuff

Uncommitted love

Not calling it a relationship

The script about the temple dancers

The beginning of the stealings

Why we name names?

Problematizing relationships

Problematizing things

On eating Lettuce with bare hands

Like Bread

What Felt Most Legitimate

On Making Eating Unbearable

Suzannah Poems

The googling of heart diagrams

Loving him doesn’t solve things

The pick up with a smile

The smiling rehearsals

Laughters in Grocery stores

Living close to the hospital

The story of the spelling mistake

The story of further spelling mistakes

In this latest round of musical chair

So nice to sit together and talk

Comprehending narcotics anonymous

Those without languages

Some things are just not done

Of just not being able to help that voice

Comprehending the language of video once again

You can display it on your car

Her German history

A very big brain game

Making it all about voice

The point of my speech

The school yard outside my window

What is

persecutory delusion

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Jennifer, Jenny, my class mate in school, who had volunteered to sit behind, at the back, when I first got my glasses, this was in class 7th. The year was 1987.

It reminds me of that moment of entrance, in University, in 2005, when having written many, many stories, I had enrolled to study history. It was a very big moment of my life, one I had worked very hard for. But it turned into a moment of theft, when a lot of credit was stolen from me. This has continued ever since.

In the seminar on how to succeed as an International Student, a professor of Indian origin, from the department of computer science had said, if you sit at the back, and do not ask any questions, you will be in trouble. I had not imagined that my life would be up for discussion, and I would need to ask questions, in order for it to be not stolen from me. I would need to ask questions in an invented language, a language completely unfamiliar to me.

This was also the moment, after which all control over my life, began to be taken slowly away from me, mostly in the name of Immigration. However, to so kill somebody’s talent, ambition, actually the entire person, in the name of Immigration, is a grave crime. This book talks about the discrimination, I faced at the hands of the academia, and academic corruption. What I am most dazzled by, are the twin letter incidents. University, allowed me to drop my status with Praxair, offering me an F1, a study permit, and then wrongfully cancelled it. And then, again, in Canada, the University residence did not give me my visa interview letter. These are incidents of unprecedented brutality, that should be investigated.

However, before it all went wrong, the moment of entrance was a wonderful life turning moment. It turned into a life turning moment in a ghastly sense. After the alleged disappearance of my six year old status, which was put under review, I hurried back to campus, half in disbelief, was arrested for criminal trespass, detained, and deported back to homeland. A letter of cancellation had supposedly been sent to my small little hometown, of Muzaffarpur, in eastern India, where I had grown up going to school with Jenny, Jolly and so many of my friends, and teachers.

This book is also dedicated to Jennifer’s grandmother, who was my first teacher, in St. Xavier’s School, whom I faintly remember. She was an Anglo-Indian, and a very strict teacher.

It is also dedicated to many Catholic, Methodist, and Protestant churches in my town, whose architecture I used to admire, while going to school. I think of these buildings specially, as I find myself surrounded with a war around religion.

I hope that religion is never used as a weapon of war. I hope that people are not simply recruited in a war, they do not even understand. This book is also dedicated to everybody who works, and strives for peace, and to those who fight for it. Sometimes, peace is not one of the objectives of war, victory is, conquest is, at all costs, at many costs, at prices so expensive, it is hard to describe.

This book is an attempt to do so.

This book is also dedicated to the memory of Rupali Hota, a very dear friend, of whose death, suicide, I found out in the second semester of my Phd, after divorce, detention, deportation. After complete heartbreak. I remembered many light hearted moments with Rupali, and what she used to say about the office becoming larger than life. I remember I had walked to the office that day, in complete shock, sat down in my chair, and touched the wall. I felt so much had been taken away from my life, so little remained. I was struggling to pay my bills, already, and a couple months later, when my visa interview letter was not given to me, I lost more of my voice, further control over my life was taken away me. Did not finish my Phd, someday will, but Suzannah, is the person who spent a very hard time in the University hostel. Of course, she also had a hard time outside of it. Coming back to the continent, yet again, was a trying experience. Will have to plan and prepare. Suzannah is also the person, who did manage to have some fun, and a fine time, nevertheless.

The great stalemate

The great stalemate

Within that situation

That I needed to tell them about

The stalemate they just could not see

Or could not fathom

Or simply did not accept

Despite its visibility

Or said

It wasn’t visible enough

Was a stalemate made up of strange suspicions

And actions emanating from there

Or elsewhere

But

Having suspected

That she was going to leave him

Was going to eventually leave

Although

Why would a girl do that?

Or how could a girl do that?

And if he had a time for her leaving in mind

For girls ran out of time

Something, even she forgot

Living in that stalemate

Living the suspect’s life

Being quizzed on daily things

Being quizzed on basic things

As though, to find out

Where it all was going

You see

Living a life

Where all doings

Seemed to be doings inside the props of a set

That one day

Had to be taken down

Where all living

Was living on a stage

Within the script of it

Being written

Very funnily

For having said

That his baby

Would be very fat

Fat indeed

Fat and healthy

He receded into total distance

Not just distance

But withdrawal

Into a coldness of not doing anything

After making a mockery of doing anything

Anything physical

That had to do with love

Or lovemaking

At every single moment

Where it could have been possible.

That this was the result

Of a one time denial

Was a reaction

Out of proportion

For comprehension.

There was

Had to be

Another conspiracy

Behind it.

And that I had to somehow break

The perpetuating stalemate

With all the praises

Coming just for him

Was an inhuman task.

The Incomplete Story

Being left

With that single sentence

I cheated on him

Was a very incomplete version of things

A very inappropriate picture

It was a big admission

A big confession

Took a toll

Each time

It was made

Took a lot of guts

Making it each time

And there were many times

She came close to making it

Found herself hanging there

For the question of what had happened

Loomed large

Not just in memory

But walked with her

Every step of the way

Although

The roads themselves

Seemed to end

Or simply go around in circles

And the memories lingered

And walked with her

Literally every step of the way

Not just in her changing status

And in the sale of things

Also in their display

In the great war

Of purchasing power

And all that it purchased

In the vicinity

Everything