Rohit Karir
Booked
After zigzagging up and down the aisles, burning calories while pulling down and placing back softcovers and hardcovers, cranking the neck in tangents, flipping pages, and reading blurbs while managing bum traffic, my heart skips a beat when a paragraph grabs hold of me, and the search ends.
As I turn the pages, my thumb and forefinger are on the ready, poised to jump ahead, two paragraphs in advance, impatient to know if she’ll agree to spy, will he double-cross? Well into the book, which I can’t do without a sip, I get the feeling I am conscious of the world only after I step out of the one I have fallen into.
Sooner than expected, when I plunge into the last page, all the characters have spoken, the plot is at its last gasp, the next page a blank, and a sigh envelops, unable to let go of days-long immersion, wanting one more long scene, as if bemoaning the stub of a gobbled up icecream cone, I want to plonk the author in front of me and petition more pages to stay in the lives of those who still echo.
As it resonates less and less, lying entombed between tomes, retired in a nook, resting on the mantelpiece, lent but throbbing from where it is, tucked away in a mass of neurons, it flickers alive in patches as my life unfolds, shot by scene.
And after the book is a mist, it washes all over me, when the seams and buttons of the works I read become a tuxedo, saree, sherwani, shawl or a beret, that I grew up faster in the world because I’ve already met the people in it—why they would say and do—in the books I swam through that now form the spine of how I relate.
Java by my side
Arabica, Robusta, Liberica, or Excelsa
after you zap my cells and relieve the paneer parantha
multigrain sub and anjeer burfi, stuck midway
to its final destination, I dash out with a coat of caffeine
Arriving at the office, my first port of call
is a steamed double espresso cappuccino
before darts fly, looks freeze, words chill, moods fry
It’s for you, I make trips to the grunting machine
with a touch menu, nozzles, and a haughty hiss
which oozes you into my waiting cups
till the day turns caramel, morning blueberry hits
On the day it counted, I downed two Americanos
cream cheese swirl on muffins with my sweetheart
after I love you, do you, was a breeze
and had you in shots and go-to cups as I developed roots
navigated twists, made U-turns, and a buck
Today, as I relish you, icy or with froth on my lips
I wonder what the legendary Kaldi
the goat herder in the hills of Ethiopia would think
the pulp from the berries that his goats ate 1200 years back
but didn’t sleep the whole night, a wink
would one day be called Satan’s Wicked Brew
until a Pope would drink it and baptize it anew
He would cherish Mocha, Red Eye, Vienna, Macchiato
Latte, Cortado, and the ambrosial Breve, Affogato, and nod
spout like a geyser, ride a triumph, eat neurons-in-a-sludge
black, brown, or caramel: coffee has no parallel.
Rohit Karir has a background in selling books, glow signs, and food sponsorship on the street and door-to-door; public relations; advertising; magazine, newspaper, tabloid, news agency, and online journalism, with stints at Mail Today, the German Press Agency, and The Times of India. He has the revolving-door instincts of a poet, journalist, and fiction writer, and a dive-dive-dive submarine eye for history. Sabr Tooth Tiger, Books Ireland, and Paragraph Planet have published his flash fiction, and Serotonin Press, Haiku Shack, and Delhi Poetry Slam have published his poems. On X, he’s @RohitKarir and blogs at medium.com/@rkarir.
Featured photo by Hatice Baran (Pexels)
