A Decent Burial

Now I am looking at everything through a different eye. A convalescing eye. At the end of the year, I can make out a hazy horizon, the beginning of the end is inching closer. I wish to leave his memories behind,  give them a silent burial. I wish no one remembers a thing beyond this. Like it never happened. But here is something I can't help. I can't help gathering him, in my hands, where like sand he slips out from between fingers, every passing moment. Still I would make a note of what I remember. This would help me forget faster.

He was a converted geek. You know a converted geek, don't you? A used-to-be geek, but the quintessential cool guy today.  Covetously sensitive at times, and at times the overconfident bloke tending towards sexy. Lived life on optimistic assumptions, something he couldn't make me learn, we didn't give it enough time.  Apparently down-to-earth. But housed this huge ego inside, I guess, I could never know for sure, could never ask. Though I loved him, I was a trifle scared too. You know love and fear go hand in hand, you would call me a maniac now and nail it into my head that it was an attraction, but I wouldn't agree. So don't even try. Had very very gentlemanly traits, you could trust he would walk an insanely drunk woman home without taking advantage. Even if that woman was much drooling in love with him. I am just saying, that woman wasn't me. Oh and there was no such woman. I have my own prince charming assumptions of him and this was one of those. He loved obscurity, living behind covers, when every damn person is only trying to be more known. Made him look like an outdated model of prospective mates, but somehow that didn't matter much. Love being blind, we all know makes flaws look so lusciously attractive. Was stubborn. He wouldn't let me sleep without driving home the point, his or mine! This jerked my nerves, but being on my own so long I began to doubt if it was just me who wouldn't budge. 


And I don't know if I am sleepy or what, but trying to remember beyond this I would be straining my memory. Guess I have burnt it all inside. Nothing more to bury then. RIP. Amen!

past that wasn't

If you could allow déjà vu for once, to happen to you, when would you want it to happen? When would you want a bit of your past to retreat, for a brief interval and leave you estranged, yearning for a bit more? Yearning for a thing that never happened. Do you realize that it is just not the past that is a part our past. A lot that didn’t happen is still entrenched in your mind, not letting go of its tiny existence in your conscious. Fading and gaining focus again. Things that didn’t happen because they couldn’t. But what could you do?


But what could you do? Your wanting couldn’t have been any more inconsequential. You lost what you could have had, from your fingertips. The words stopped right at your lips, you couldn’t say them. You realize that helplessness, don’t you? You have been there.

You have been to places that never were. You have met people who you never met. You were never as happy as you seem to remember you once were. It’s all a figment of your constructed past. Lies that you have put together to console yourself, for the unfulfilled life you have had in the past. You get where I am taking this?

And now when all that is bygone, illegibly past, your senses do not let you distinguish between the real and unreal past. The one that happened and the one that never did. I understand that is an act of self defense, and what could you do?

Something of this sort, happened with you today, remember? There was this temporary transportation you had back into time. This is where my first question came from. Don’t think this is crazy writing. I am sober and this is absolutely making sense. A part of the past that never happened came to you in the guise of a memory, a real memory. In the hurry of the moment you too couldn’t make out. It felt like a real happy memory. Love was with you. You smiled.

But the next, you cried. You found out it was a lie you had told yourself so desperately that even you mistook it to be a truth. That thing never happened for real. You could have made it happen though, but you didn’t. That made you sadder and you cried a little more. But what could you do?

Don’t think this is crazy writing. I am sober and this is absolutely making sense. And now you are wondering would you have chosen some other time for that piece of time to come walking back to you. You don’t understand this but this makes so much sense.

Travel-ouge

I had been on the move for the last twenty odd hours, practically for the last few years, but contextually. The road drive hadn't given me this bad a nausea ever, and the lack of sleep co-conspired. I would get out and take in gulps of air, roll my windows down, breathe in, try to sleep, fail in the process, regret my life, feel restless again. I had flown the first part of the journey and then took a train. The intention was to save some money. I had eaten out and shopped like a maniac this term. Besides getting tired of comparing the uniforms of air hostesses, I also have this thing for overnight train journeys, alone.

Sometimes I remember Geet saying Ladki aur AC ka kya connection? But whatever. So I was waiting at this station, having dinner by myself, sipping coke, people comfortably staring at me, lone woman, with lots of luggage, look who deserted her. I have reached that stage in life when I am comfortable with most of such stuff. Also I was reading this travelogue. By an author who accidentally happens to be an acquaintance of mine. I don't know which way to put it, an acquaintance who happens to be the author of that book?

So I was reading this book, yearning for a world that was all around me. Keeping sleep away, my shoulders we stooping, my back had almost passed away thanks to the bags. After I got in the train, I called people to tell them I was alive and safe. I was slouching on the side lower berth, if you know what I mean. But the man sitting opposite me was exposing half his underwear and more. I didn't know which way to look, climbed up to my berth and slept off.

At 3 in the morning, I was sitting on my suitcase near the door of the train waiting for my station, yet reading that book! That s-o-b railway guy comes to tell me that the towel from my bedroll is missing. Did I steal it? fuck! We go and search again. And I was so angry when I didn't find it. He asked me to show my bag, imagine! s-o-b. Just then all the old men were walking to the washroom in their crumpled pajamas. I cursed myself for waking up so early and it was scary cold. There was another guy with me, waiting. Smiled and asked me where I was coming from. Calcutta. End of conversation. I don't think it's a problem, but I just don't talk, not with people I know, not with strangers.

Then I remembered having broken up earlier this term. I had this sudden craving to have him beside me, cracking those nutty jokes and laughing with him. But dumping, when you sense being dumped is just around the corner, is the absolute zenith of human intelligence, the victory of the ugly human ego. Plus the ecstasy of being by myself is orgasmic sometimes.

Travel-ouge. So tell me, will I become a published author before thirty!

5 am thoughts!

I met an acquaintance of yours. Common friends are a great discomfort you know. He asked me how I know you. I wanted to correct him by saying that I knew you. But he didn't deserve to know that. I asked him how he knows you and he came up with a convincing answer. I had none. My heart shrank for a moment and then I nervously told him that you were just an acquaintance. World is a small place. It's hard not to know people. Just an acquaintance. Did I say friend? I don't even remember, I was a little too shocked. It was like our tiny secret could be out in the open anytime, my little secret. I told him that we knew each other for sometime, sometime before we lost touch.

I didn't tell him a lot of things. A hoard of things.The way I lost my sleep when you wanted me to be awake. The way you never got me down from cloud 9. The way you made me laugh, breathlessly sometimes. How at the end of those laughs I would have forgotten why I had begun laughing in the first place. Yeah, that crazy! I didn't tell him all this. I trust you, you haven't told him either, have you. I hid from him memories of our endless conversations, late into the nights. I didn't tell him about your caresses to my early morning sleepy mumbles. He doesn't deserve to know, does he. Some stories should die untold.Unheard. Some secrets are created to be frozen.  I didn't tell him how much you had entered into my conscious, how you were almost on my speed-dial those days. How you lived in the back of my mind, all day all night. I didn't tell him about my endless waits, I didn't tell him about my bouts of madness, utter madness, that unruly longing to belong to you. Nah, nothing.

I din't tell him that I was practically in love with you. I din't tell him why we couldn't be together. Nothing at all. I hope he doesn't have the slightest idea and isn't mocking at me inside. I would hate that. Shit, I hate common friends. I just hate-hate them.

Prequel to this: here 

Ugly

This one is going to be blatant. Blatant.

How does it feel to be reminded of your roots? To be shown in glimpses, visions of the place to which you belong to for real? Visions of the place where you would want to belong to? Ironically you have made all the sacrifice in life to move away from that one place thus, craving for it more. Your life has been a happy bundle of contradiction and you're looking at it through a glass now. You can't go back and change, but you can look, mercilessly, remorselessly through. You're too tired to regret. That's what long road trips do to you. Staring out of windows, winds setting your face ablaze and hair a-mess, they make you oscillate, back and forth in time, forfeiting now. That's what hundreds of miles on dusty highways do to you, to me. That's what absolute darkness reminds you of.

I had this lasting dream to witness the Brahmaputra. The only masculine river. When I crossed it, the crazy reflections of the crescent moon danced on it crazily, my eyes witnessed what they call a paralyzed fixation. Soul-overwhelmed wouldn't be the word if I would put it that way. So I would let be, that expression, or the lack of it. I also looked for dimming lights on distant mountains, endless roads, nameless milestones.

The lack of surety, adds to life a tinge of beauty it doesn't otherwise deserve. It takes the responsibility off your shoulders because you can't predict. You just sit there, and watch, your own life turn out into a hazy mixture of what you wanted it to become and of what you never wanted it to become. Long, really long drives make you mull of how inconsequential your own wanting has become. And yet they've stayed, the desires, and their untiring ambition.

Also, you get realizations. Here is the blatant part. When I see the world, when my eyes see the world, they put it in two neat categories, non overlapping categories, the pretty and the ugly. Note, beautiful is not a synonym for pretty here. This inevitable segregation happens in the first few seconds of perception, like the impatient human mind cannot rest. The pretty are given a hug and set aside. The ugly are abandoned. Like me. In this abandonment, the ugly sit alone in cold dark rooms and think and feel things the pretty never would. Solitude, forced or claimed is sometimes the most affordable glimpse into paradise.The ugly gets insights, and depths, long enriching journeys into her own self and outside. These journeys help them find each other. I realized just why I connect so much with the ugly. And this is it. Let's call it off now.

Meaningless Kiss

I am high

And you're clearly not low

It's a meaningless kiss

Though twasnt supposed to be like this

We're not in love

And this room's dark

Full of strangers

We're strangers too

Tomorrow's a Sunday

Remember this, we won't anyway

I sent the ones who loved me away

Now am alone forever

Though I din't sink in thy eyes

I can tell you're the same too

So just a meaningless kiss

And  let it be

Oh 

Let it be

Flawed Life

I promised I would be a nice girl. That wasn't enough, I wailed to be taken to the sea. Beating my feet on the floor, curled my lip and made my eyebrows meet in the middle and said 'Please'. I was tried to be appeased with chocolates and trinkets. But I wouldn't settle for anything less than the sea. My heart began fluttering the moment it was told that we were under a two hour ride from the beach. I could taste the salt in the air.

The road was dark, shaded by trees on either side, the sun, hotter than usual and the afternoon quieter. Lakes locked in the mainland, brackish and blackish, were a prelude to the emerald waters I longed for. The first sight of the sea is retained in my eyes even now, like some eternal snapshot. Sands looked endless, the sun danced as many mirages. It was as deserted as could be, waves were mild though, looking at the water receding from between my toes, a healing amnesia came over me.

Then we went to this delta sort of a thing, the river, Mahanadi fell into the sea, that place was rocky, waves were taller, more virile, they lashed onshore, disappearing into foam, drops of which landed on me, I was elated beyond words, gurgling away in laughter. Then an unexpected silence visited me, that happens often, people who've been with me would know. The waves began looking angrier, like their lives were locked by the confines of the sea and they wanted to be freed, but all they could touch was the rocks. All their pent up emotion erupted in that one moment when they dashed those rigid boulders. Catharsis, was it? But unable to move an inch beyond, they died and retreated into the sea.

The river on the other hand, was unaware of its life ahead, uncomplainingly it emptied herself into the sea. I pitied the poor thing, it had come a long way, hadn't it? Begun as a playful waterfall, meandered through miles of sands, merged and unmerged, broken and gathered. All the time, all of its lifetime it had wanted to meet the sea, waited, craved, yearned to be caged. I pitied the poor thing.

I sighed, then pitied me a little. Drawing parallels. Flawed life.

short breaths, spaced out, numbness, silence, 

nonchalance, darkness, now, here, me, alone, sighs, 

tears, ache, heart beat, heart beat, heart beat

it is said everything has a reason behind it. still i don't know why i let you go. and i'm yet to know why you never turned back to me again. i don't think i ever would. i don't know how much of us i have outgrown either. i am not sure if i am still waiting for you. but i don't ask questions anymore. 

no more. 

the lack of you, would've turned me into a rock, but it didn't. i break down oftener, inconsolably, sometimes, when i am cold and alone in dark rooms, when i don't have to pretend that i am fine, i cry

deep breaths, spaced out, solitude, smoke, cold,
 the last tremolo of pain,

 silenced cries, forced peace, relief, the lack of you, 

the lack of you, the lack of you

Why's everyone getting married?

It shouldn't be a big deal but I seriously thought I was younger than this, I am just twenty three and many many of my friends are getting settled for life, I haven't even zeroed in on the guy, I don't even have the slightest idea if such a person exists, life is moving too fast, two years ago we were all jostling in crumbling hostel rooms, chatting up, settling scores, thinking about careers, working hard, pretending to work hard and now everyone is getting married, all of a sudden, out of the blue, statuses are getting updated from engaged to married between days, whatever happened to the knitting of dreams alone, figuring out life before you called it a day and surrendered and shareed your life with a whole another person, may be I right now am too selfish to even think of such a thing, even if I had loved someone I would prioritize myself above the knot, or rather the life I have been through has ensured my belief in being alone and happy is so important that everything else looks like too risky or emotionally foolish a venture, but it's weird to see my langotia yaars getting married, as it is thanks to those formalities I wasn't very comfortable asking, 'How's your boyfriend?' and now asking 'And how's the husband/wife?' makes me swallow two or three lumps together, nothing is wrong with me, it will take some getting used to, some more time; but the best part about being as austerely single as I is that you think you see the world in a light all those blinded by love men and women fail to see it in, if love blinds, doesn't marriage kill, and with this the longest sentence written on this blog comes to an end, I am sure you've not reached here, if you've then Congratulations, on your wedding if you too are getting married!

PS: I have nothing against people who are getting hitched, and I swear I really mean those congratulatory messages. Astla Vista!