My Take on Relationships--!

Every relationship has a life of its own. Things start not working after that. There necessarily is no specific reason. Or any big fight that puts the final full stop. There always could be a series of small tussles, revealing the actual incompatibility of the persons involved. Superficiality just doesn’t take you a long way. Just that feelings do not contain the warmth they contained earlier. Two people can’t stay in any kind of a relationship with each other forever. It’s not the ‘love’ thing I am talking about. I am stressing on plain and platonic friendships.

All music stops sounding sweet. All of a sudden, your nice friend of a couple of months starts having priorities more important than giving you the customary daily call, a howyadoin sms. It’s a something in which none of the warring parties take an active part in; even then they are silently responsible. They call it off without consciously being aware of their actions. And all of sudden one day, they realize that the once vibrant rapport, has stopped buzzing. It occurs to them that they are giving a last try to revive the erstwhile charm of their bond. This kind of a break-off is so poisonously passive, and involuntary. Looks like it happens by de-fault.

And I don’t know why this happens. But I have seen this happen. I guess it’s a part of being human. And that people actually do get bored of people. And look out for something new. Just for a change. Life takes its own course. I am sure many of you wouldn’t agree. But this is just what I feel…

Ten years hence--A Story

She had been to the mall with Simi. Lazy Sunday afternoons, you know what they are like for a person like her. Simi had almost coaxed her to throw away the novel she had been trying to wind up for the past three months (thanks to her job!) and help her shopping for her (Simi’s) wedding.

Browsing through the bookshelves, reading the epilogues of books she had always wanted to have, she saw something. She saw someone. Someone who reminded her of what she had been like. It brought back her face, ten years younger than today. She realized that she had not been imagining it all, it really was him. The same man, tall and spectacled. Hair, slightly longer than normal that fell on his cheeks…that stoical indifference in his eyes. That inane shyness. Hardly anything had changed about him. The man she had desired at some point of time stood just two feet away.

She saw him coming her way, and hid behind, something…she hid because, being her true self, she had always wanted to keep certain things to herself. Some secrets are between just ‘me and me’ for her. So she would never let him know that she had come across him somewhere…and went unrecognized.

The passionate days of her youth had passed. Giving way to faint wrinkles that now showed on her face. Many of her haughty and cynical girlfriends had begun too look out for men who could equal their charisma. But she never grew up to that age actually. Age doesn’t matter for poets. She had stopped growing when she was eighteen.

She heard Simi shouting out to her for something, and afraid that he just might get to remember her name if she calls her yet again, (Simi had yelled loud enough already!) she joined her.

When she had been an early twenty something, or younger, whenever things as these happened, she craved for a listener, immediately, but now she didn’t. She wasn’t as excited as then. Thirties had taken their toll on her. Time passed slowly for her…now.

She tried to choose between the bad and the worse dress that the unusually short and stout Simi had chosen for herself. Amongst Simi’s numerous questions like “ How’s this Dini, How’s that? Will this make me look taller?” and the types…. our Dini wanted to believe that she hadn’t seen him. At all!

The wound had been uncovered. It was nothing like she loved him or anything. But the ‘rejection’ came back to her. Those nightmarish experiences of being sidelined by someone she had been awestruck by, had shattered her confidence, and made a thousand streams of tears flow… It had taken so much time to heal.

But then you learn things in life and move on, don’t you?

She thought of all this, before Simi asked her to get inside the car, they were leaving…and for the umpteenth time, she sighed, “I’m just alright!”

Wildflower---A Story---

It has been raining since morning. The way it rains in the hills. I have been born and brought up here; even then, the way the drops of water slide down lively green leaves brightens my eyes.

Today, early in the morning when I was asleep, Sony left. Grandma tells me, she couldn’t afford to see my face. She couldn’t have been able to see me, helpless, this way, when she was going away for ever. Daddy says she is away just for two years, to get her Masters done. And after that, we would have her back; things would be like before, four of us, Sony, Daddy, Grandma, and me of course.

But no one comes back from the land of immense opportunity, does she?

Sony only charmed her teachers; by the way she studied, all through school and college. I had seen her burning the midnight oil, night after night. She always wanted to make it big. As big as Daddy did. She switched her timings efficiently enough to spend time drooling over books in the library, to reading bed time stories to her perennially ill younger sibling, that’s me. The swiftness with which she ran about in the house amazed me. The amazing bounds to which her beauty grew and the first day she brought Sisir home, to show him to me and Granny, I remember everything.

I never saw school after sixth grade, though. Even being taken out for a stroll in the garden was life at its best for me. My thoughts never crossed the boundary that cut off our house from the rest of the world. The world that would never belong to me. The one in which I would never be able to walk without the help of a Granny.

Due to the accident in which I had lost a mother and a leg, feeling the wet grass shy away under my feet, had become an unrealistic daydream. Strolling in and about the vast backyard of ours with my mother was some age of my life; I could never go back to. I wasn’t easy to convince myself, that I would never have anyone like Sisir walking straight into my life.

Initially, for a few months after the accident they had arranged a tutor for me, Daddy didn’t want me to stay an illiterate. But I overheard them talking in the study, Daddy and Teacher. The teacher coaxed my father to understand that my mind was hurt more than my body. The shock I had earned out of losing mother had numbed all my senses. And so I would never be able to study. I wanted to kill him that moment. But I knew, it was all true.

I would look at the oaks stand tall near my window pane. Its hands reaching heaven. Birds defying margins. The horns of the vehicles, that hardly ever penetrated the jungles around our home, always called me. To roam around in the city, like people do. But you know, I am such a problem for my folks, seating me in a car needs a sturdy person. Granny can’t do it anymore. I have seen her grow older day after day. And she has seen me become more and more dependant, vulnerable and helpless.

Oh god in the heavens, I know you exist. Take me out of this world, my world, your world. Give me a hand, take me into the light. Let me touch the seamless brightness that is there, somewhere a little beyond my limitations. Lend me one chance to dance in the pouring rain. One chance to walk talking to the green mountains, singing to the trees as if I were one amongst them. Climb up to the roof on my own, and talk to my dead mother, who is one among the stars…

Lend me one life, without my wheelchair…

To someone not so special---

To the someone who ceased to exist for me:-

I shall be waiting your way to return
Sans you life is not that much fun

Colors go pale
And its things look so stale

Eyes with expectations galore
With every moment, they grow more and more

Every gust of passing breeze
Makes my heart freeze

May be it is you again
I unlock my door, but all in vain

Waiting for you maketh no sense
Oh! I am filled with so much vengeance

That agony of rejection and betrayal
Would never fall short of such a portrayal

Your smile, your love, your sense of humor
Thinking of them now, fills me with rancor

But your, memories don’t leave me alone
And I am always stranded in the days bygone

Soulful music doesn’t satisfy
And all borders does my heart defy

The past gives me a painful spasm
Your void has filled me with sarcasm

With you gone forever
I can’t even respond to any other admirer

But you have to take things in your stride
In order to live and not just survive

To India

‘It would be a real injustice to bracket India within the underdeveloped world. It sure, would become a world power very soon. We have sons (and daughters of course) of our soil running things of indispensable importance world wide…’—this is what many of us people think these days…be it the IT industry or our business conglomerates procuring international giants, or the escalating stock markets. But let me have my say. Stated below are three incidents that shattered (yeah, shattered…I’m not exaggerating in any way) my ideas of India growing out of that bracket:-

1. You heard about that couple from Karnal? (Karnal, the place so famous as the hometown of the martyred Kalpana Chawla.) The guy and the girl loved each other. They belonged to the same gotra (clan). And marriage within the same gotra is considered evil. So after they got married, the panchayat got their hands and legs tied up. They were fed pesticides, and thrown away in some river. Pinch yourself, this is true. This is as barbaric as barbaric could be…

2. There was this news about a Muslim couple from somewhere; they had their twenty-third child on the twenty-third year of their marriage. And this is the way the celebrity couple tackle the intense media glare, on their tiny little happy family—children are Allah’s gifts and we don’t have the right to stop them from taking birth. He creates them; he will take care of them. Allah will make your children literate enough to sensible humans? Allah will feed them? No, dear man and woman, He wouldn’t. You should, because you are the unfortunate reason of their worthless existence. Where can ideas like these lead us in time? Only backwards…

3. The news that Lalu took the Indian Railways a long way from being a tattered organization to one profit making empire, felt good. But now they include it in their private property. There is this brother-in-law of Lalu’s. He, asked the Rajdhani Express to pick him up from the platform no.1 instead of platform no.3 because that would be more convenient for him. He delayed the departure of Rajdhani because he was not accommodated in a first class AC or something. He was heard saying “I am Parliament”, what he meant was “I am a parliamentarian”. Never mind. But what the hell was that?

People, you can say India is becoming rich. 8% growth and crap. But I have seen the poor sink into abysmal poverty. Whenever I hear about India shining, one memory comes back to me.

We had been away on a picnic. Our destination was very far. It took us through numerous villages. And just as our bus passed a village, I saw a bunch of four urchins; all of them pitch black, without a thread of fabric on their bodies, jumping in the shower created by the crack in the pipeline. They were gurgling out laughter. They were screaming out ‘bye-bye’ to us…waving to us, till we drowned below their horizon. May be they had eaten nothing since morning. They compel me to think India has a long way to go. We have a long way to go…right?

Dear Stranger

Now that my holidays are almost over, it’s time I sent away the thank-you letters to the wonderful people without whom it would have never been possible to make my summer break an astounding success as this one. Haahhhhh!!! Here goes the first one…

Dear Stranger,
I am quite sure you do not remember me, but I can’t wipe you off my memory. It was one of those monsoon afternoons I met you in front of Archie’s gallery. It had been drizzling through out the day so far. And the wind was fast enough, to carry away volatile hearts in its hands. And I was there to buy mummy a present for her anniversary. After I got out of the building with the gift, the wind was kind of aggressive then. And my scooty was all jammed inside with some ten odd vehicles around it. I couldn’t get it out of that mess. I called the security guard there, he didn’t budge. And there you were right beside me, chatting away on the phone to a distant someone. All the time you were on the phone, and you gestured to me that you were there to help me. Oh! What a relief. I had been uttering curses to myself all along. You asked me to move out. And as I stood there away from all this lump of vehicular congestion, you struggled for me, and got my scooty out.

And damn! All the time you were on the phone with that ‘distant someone’ talking about train tickets to Warangal. May be you study there or something? I doubt, whether you heard the nearly mute ‘thanks’ that escaped me lips, because you were still on the phone. So let me thank you now…
Yours truly,
Another stranger…you would never know who!

The next letter of thanks is to my CDwallah~~~:D

To someone special---

To the other woman:-

You have a fairer color
A slender figure
And hair never out of order

A smaller face
A gait of better grace
And earrings that heighten his craze

Eyes deliquescent
More intoxicating a scent
With my man, may you never repent

Dexterous fingers, polished nails
And to share with him, a lot better tales

Things very rare
A voluptuous stare
Inestimable care

It’s got something to do
With your lowered gaze
Enthralled, he is always full of praise

About your lips that lure
Your eye balls azure
Your person, so demure

Enough!
Let me cut it short
With you, may he never flirt

May neither heart ever break
I know the ache is too much to take

Take good care of this man…
After all, you will grow his clan!!!

PLAN-'H'

I had big plans for the holidays. Well, my holidays do stretch for more than two months and a half. And you do actually start making plans a couple of weeks before they start. My end sems happen the last week before the holidays, and by that time my head would be over flowing with the thoughts of silent afternoons I would spend in my room, at home, doing all the typical holiday stuff. And now my vacation is on the verge of termination and if you ask me what I did the whole summer, you would silence me. Seriously, I have lived this entire time, without the vivid memories of a single day.

What I had planned to do? Well, wanted to sink my teeth into c/c++/java all over again. Honestly, it would have been my first time. And I wanted to drink all the good fiction written. And I had planned movies also. And e book adventures also. Make myself learn that the internet is made u of stuff better than orkut and gtalk. Blogosphere is definitely, its weight in gold. More than anything, one thing that I wanted to be done with is as follows:

Most importantly, before the holidays, throughout my life as sophomore at the godforsaken college of mine, I at times was made to feel like a misfit. Definitely out of place. Someone who lives too much herself, for herself. So I made up my mind, if it is so, then so be it. I shall shrink more into myself, and expand! But only with better sense. I wanted my existence to make some sense, of all people to myself. I wanted to have an opinion about things in life. Earlier it used to be so that, I was always hung in mid air. I couldn’t say what is wrong and what is right. I felt faintly rebellious at times though, for some causes, but argument always gives me shivers. I run short of points in my favor. So I felt I could overcome this shortcoming by reading like a nut. And getting in touch with what people feel. But to no avail. I never did that. And even today, I feel as if both the warring parties are right at their own positions. Let them fight, and die. What do I have to do between them? I am cool. I shall never improve, I know.

Gradually throughout second year, I have lost my fervor, my zeal to work hard. And the maddening ambitions that empowered me back in high school. Now that I had none of it left within me, so these holidays I wanted to gain some part of it back. I wanted to take the big decision. What after B Tech? MBA? MS? What? Or just any other job? This was what I was supposed to decide, I was supposed to meet people mature and experienced enough to guide me, show me some light on what things are like in the big bad world. I think I did come across people, but I could not boil down to anything, substantial.

One thing I did? There were certain decisions I wanted to be done with by the end of June, about my feelings for certain people. Which ones were walking out straight of my good books, and which ones I was asking to stay back. And I think I am done with that. I have the answers for myself.

And one thing I couldn’t do? I wanted to instill the conviction in me that people do not mean every thing they say. I have to live beyond my naivety. But I have been one horrendous failure at this.

It’s all about becoming self sufficient. One big time, successful woman! And also a lot happy, if that comes along with it…

~honest mumblings~

Me and my life
We have made our harmony
Signed a truce
No more
No more of thinking till it hurts

The touch of the midnight is so healing
So soothing, that all that is past is forgotten
There is peace, despite the turbulence
I am free from ‘growing up’ now

My eyes can sense a coolness
A stability, enough of day dreams
No expectations from anyone
No waiting for the special arrival

I am happy with all I am left with
Not unhappy for what I lost
My inspiration is long gone
Even then I am inspired

Every day I am a step ahead
On the path of self discovery
But all I know is
I am my mystery!

today, it so happened that i wrote the truest poem of my life. here are exerpts from it:

'of the wishes that took birth in my heartdreams that i saw,
eyes wide opendoing every thing that a normal human would
and deep within, being the thorough bohemian i am
i disobeyed rulesi roamed around guardless,thought like a gypsy
i freed my spirit from all chains chains that i found would make me mundane
restrictions that prevented me from living,
living like a thing so porous,letting life through
living like a flower so wild
i stood amongst you all
while my heart flew amongst the stars'

'i tried to get back the past, the shade of the trees,
the dusky breeze, that nostalgia
i tried to live the future in my own way
a future i wanted, fate sent it back to memy dreams of glass crushed,
as if i were an unwanted dollused and thrown
anyway, i love myself, let things pass,i knew they would
and when i could take no more,
i resorted to my pen, to my god, to tears, to crying alone'

'and of love?
i waited for it, all along
got it, lost it
housed an imposter for the lover
despite what i am
i still cherish sunshine, the dew
i love the first rain, the gush of a wind
i love the written word
i even do write a word, which noone reads..'

'i craved for care, for praise
for love, for passion
at times like a foolish frog,
i waited for fairy tales to come true
and even today, when i stare into the depths of my soul
i know, i am the same person
untouched by times
and so it shall remain,
the 9 year old thinker of my memories
will live in the 50 year old wrinkled face of mine'

untiltled

Date: may ** 2007
Time: 7 pm around
This should be the happiest moment of my life. Should be. ‘coz I just got whatever I wanted for quite sometime in my life. If I could, I would have frozen these moments in time. And I am so shocked that I can’t even relish this state of mind. My muscles are ready to jump into the air. I am feeling a little too crazy, and so I cant absorb all the happiness around. What should I do? Thank you God. Thanx a million for giving me these tears of joy. Love you…forever…nomatterwhat…love you..muah!

PS :
And I will just to add this as I end this. When you have been dying for some wish to be fulfilled, and one day it so happens that your wish is fulfilled, you donot feel as elated and hysterical as you think you should have. because the value of things decrease the very moment you begin to posses them. The achievement chains the madness you had within earlier…

just wanted to post this, incase i look back some day...n find this post out, and feel good or bad...i dunno---but let it be there...lemme have a witness to some part of all that i have been thru' :)