Lost & Found

The weekly horoscope, comes Sunday morning with the faint fragrance of newsprint. Layered between matrimonial classifieds and steals of second rate paparazzi. One quiet paragraph, beside the logo of a lone girl with wings. I try to focus; on every written word, and on each unwritten parallel, that could possibly be drawn between some silly astrologer's drunken babble and my life.

As predicted, I ensure that I cut short on all long term financial investments, which by the way are fictitious, and steer clear of backstabbers at work, and wear green on most days, and gather confidence for that turning point of my career that has kept me waiting long. I also wonder which of those past flames is going to make a peaceful retreat into my life. Before realizing the joke is on me, I actually, look up from the paper, ponder for a moment, which one could it be. Which one may have that slight possibility of pausing long enough to even consider. I shove the paper under the bed, where its ancestors have been, accumulating the hopelessness of a future that wouldn't be.

Then I take to a strange fancy. I should find something to contradict my turquoise nail paint. And go around looking. To come across this ancient-smelling market, which I could never imagine would be, stuck in a lost little place down-town. With dusty clay pots. Shiny silver toe rings. And anklets. Numerous other trinkets to appease the tumultuous effeminate swings of my mood. Pastel work on wrap-around skirts, and embroidered ponchos.

That neatly cultivated old world charm sunk into me, as we sat by a pond, pool of black scattering faint moonlight. Later I noticed a ring on my finger. The string of diamonds that never shone in the day and sat pale as a stone from every possible angle; now glittered. Glittered like a diamond should.

Later, I murmured, my ring shines in the dark. Just like me. 

Bloke!

My love for arrogant blokes just doesn't subside.  I love the one who seems to have ways of his own. Not the subtle man of heartwarming banality. Not the man who chats with me over coffee. And asks me how I was. But he, who is beyond capture. He, who is, both incapable and undeserving of love. And is doubtlessly proud of it.

His eyes that have sure shades of grey and shine in tinted sunshine. His hair curls over his crazy head, with his own idiosyncratic callousness. His palms are cold with the lack of emotion. And I adore, just helplessly adore his inability to empathize.

It could be my complex that's fuelling my utter craving. That I believe that I am so lowly, my only salvation lies in being crushed beneath him. And I see my meagre existence being wiped off by his inability to see me. That particularly makes me happy, and become an irrevocable victim of his. Or may be I just want to be punished, the way they do in S&M.

Whatever it be. I have begun to believe that I have just had my umpteenth impossible infatuation. And with just a few days left before I turn 25, I can't fathom the silliness of this.

The Fear of Writing.

Besides my loathing for pulp fiction, there is one other reason why I haven't dared ever to write a story. And though there is no way I could filter one particular reason from a body of unwillingness and outright lethargy and exhaustion, here's how I would like to try.

Every man and woman has a center of their being. It sounds rather idealistic, but there is one idea, one solo thing, that makes you who are, binds bone to bone in your body and makes you walk around on your two legs, be the phenomenon that you should be. And that idea, is beyond everything, almost everything, indomitable, uncrushable. It only has to rise, like a snake from your navel to your head.

Every damn story that has been written, that I have found and read, has reflected with honesty, its writer's intricate bonding with her this idea. The process of writing a story is like an endothermic reaction in which the writer comes to be, this person that she should ideally be, doing justice to the words she is scribbling across pages, leaving her footprint in every single stanza, every comma pushed between words, every semi colon inserted to space out one thought from another.

And I have no such idea, haven't discovered mine yet. Or may be I never would. Because I am constantly looking. I begin a paragraph by writing about a couple that lives in the middle of the forest, an unknown bird that sits by their window every night, a girl that's waiting for her roommate, how the wind blows today, how the clouds are strewn across the sky and likewise. And then, after a few hundred words, I am drained. Exhausted. I run out. Of thoughts. Of all conceivable fiction. Of all routes, that could lead me to become the person I should ideally be. The person my story wants me to be.

I am cowed down by embarrassment, humiliation of not being worthy of my own reading. And I tear apart the papers, roll them into a ball and dump them in trash.

I have seen the noble ideas that make people write, drive them to finish pages after pages. But in my case, there is no such.There is no spiritual snake rising from my navel to my head. I am blank, except for the empty center of my being. Which is soaked, soaked with lovelessness. And a terrifying solitude, which began as a disappointment, soon became a sorrow and has now turned into a writhing anger.

If I ever write a story, only this lovelessness will be scattered across my pages. And therefore, I shall not. 

Poise & Untruth

Just asking. Is there anything, material or immaterial, in some corner of the brain, that moderates. Some secret gland, that releases a notorious secretion and makes us more-man-and-less-animal. Is there? Isn't there?

Because if I slammed every door I felt like slamming, there would be lots of fractured doors in my world today. If I told every fucktard, that he was indeed, one of those, I would have lots of enemies. If I had opposed every idea I thought was foolish, I would have become a rebel, Che type. If I had told every pretty lass, that she was one pathetic attention seeker, I would have no pretty friends. And If I would have blamed the ugly ones for being ugly, I wouldn't have the ugly ones either.

If I had revealed the gargantuan truth, that almost all of us are bloody hypocrites, then where would I find that single place to hide my shameless little ass. If I had told those dangerously self obsessed narcissists that that's what they really were, they would set my tail on fire. If I had a tail, i.e.

There are dozens of other things I would have said and done. But I didn't. Couldn't. Because of that secret secretion inside of my head, that fucking moderates me. Calms me down. Relaxes. Sometimes it makes me see that my saying anything at all, wouldn't make any difference to the course of things in the long run. Sometimes it makes me want to save my energy; lie down on the couch and watch all the drama. Sometimes it makes me believe that, it all merely seems to be, but it's not. It does just about anything to keep me from reacting in my natural flair and showing my true color.

And thanks to that secret secretion, I have become the one that I have come to be. Lazying around, writing when she feels like, opinion-less, neutral about even the most vehement of phenomenons, struggling with a rigid inability to believe, to believe in anything, anything at all.

And what did I get? Did the pluses and minuses cancel out to give me something positive that adds to make me look a teeny-weeny better in my own tired eyes? No. Nothing. This poise earned me zilch. Zilch. 

City

This city. Of whose mediocrity I am so ashamed. Has paused and gone off to sleep; though I have stayed up to write. About; about my obligatory affections that it has come to deserve-with time-by destiny.

Its dim street lamps, merge with the cloudy evening sky. Somehow I had never noticed that mundane symphony. I had never taken a walk alone and stopped for thirty seconds before crossing the road; to stare at the damn street lamps. And their rust-ridden lamp shades. Corroded by years of rain.

Capricious thunderstorms. In misty afternoons. Pools of slush. Choked drains. Flooded by-lanes. I never cared enough to cluck my tongue and say Ah- how this thing goes on- how resilient.

How the homeless lived under flyovers. And their dark stunted children; made a life out of rolling cycle tires with a stick. How the gods in old forgotten temples, slept beneath layers of moss. And hyacinth grew aplenty in the backyard temple ponds.

School kids waited at bus stops; for their particularly nauseating bus rides; hoping against hope that it be declared a rainy day and they would run back home, tight ties loosened, shirts tucked out, tunics out of place.

I do not how or why, but I consider it my misfortune that I still live in the city; where my conscious was born; when almost everyone else has flown away. I am ashamed because, it makes me feel stuck in time; it makes me realise how sluggish my life has become. Despite my efforts to break this leash; I somehow can't.

I am embarrassed because probably; I have always been trying to run away; escape; forget; deny the existence of my roots. Because roots keep me so grounded; and I wish to fly; wild & free. This city knows the child I was. It's like a mate; which saw me puke for the only two times in my life, for instance.

First, as that nauseated school kid in a sweaty breathless school bus. And then, years and years later, as some wretch; overdosed with nicotine.

Shame

There was once a woman. In a book. Not a real one. Or she may have been. No one knows. If she lived between the flaps of its pages, or was for real. But there was a woman. 

Mundane-faced. Except somedays; invisible; until much later. Until she became a part of the book. The book talks about her past; in recollection. She was brought up within four walls of inhibition. Behind thick rimmed glasses. Upright pony tails. Hair oil. Long skirts. Half shoes. Velvety half shoes. Bitten nails. Novels hidden between school books. Every year in school remembered by the boy she was infatuated with in that year. Sometimes, a boy lasted years. Sometimes years wore out, but the boy stood steady. Love poems in secret personal diaries. Leaves pressed and preserved between its pages. Leaving grey-green impressions of their veins and vein-lets. 

College. Hours in libraries. Watching couples cuddle. Laboratories. Among chemicals and on aching toes. Long walks. Belly fat. Face packs. Straightening of wavy hair. And failing at it. Getting drenched. Watching rain. Not knowing a thing about where she was headed. Wondering if she would ever look back. Love songs blowing out of speakers, day long. Night long. First stories given a try. Ended unfinished. Due to the dearth of another character, besides the one who was invariably her. End of imagination. Fear of future. Yet a yelling freedom cry within. Wanting to break free; Come out; shy no more; Unleashed; become un-held. But couldn't. She waited for the right moment. Which hardly ever came. 

Later, she moved out. Into a far away city. In another continent. Became what is commonly understood to be a slut. Drank alone in bars. And slept with strange men. Another man; every night. Became what she truly was. Truly was. Or so she understood. Uninhibited. Letting out stifled feelings, of loveless years. She reveled in her anonymity. Celebrated the lack of shame.

Tired of seeking the answer; she fell in love with the question itself. 

And then she came back. Entered; center-stage. As a character in this book. As the lover of the protagonist.

Exiting my bookish fantasies; however; sometimes, she appears in front of me; like she were real. And talks to me. Just like now. Just like now.     

Looking

I am my opiate, in the making.

I am a chemical. I am a ticking bomb.

A half said sentence; I am the dust on shoes. Like a settled thought. Also, I could be a fleeting moment. Transitory. Between existence and non-existence. I am a lot of could be's. But most of all, I am a chemical. Constituted in weird mind boggling concoctions. Or whatever.   

I must be opium. Because I am driven to insanity by default. By birth. This defect is congenital. Being possessed by the want of what not. Of being ignorant of what is it, what is it, that could, begin to, quieten this deafening noise inside me. 

I am ignorant of all causes and consequences of my being. And I am swaying, between drunken footsteps. Walking this way, that way, and then walking away. Away. 

But, nevertheless, I am looking. Unaware of what it is. The elixir that could cure, quieten, put to sleep. This chaos. Decompose the concocted elements that make me. The chemical I am. I am still looking. 

Someday, hope bless me, that the end point of this quest be me itself. And I end up where I had begun. My journey comes a full circle. Keeping in line with my love for circles. 

And I ultimately accept that I was the opiate. Am the opiate. I am the one person I was looking for. And not anyone else. No one else. Just I.

Maya

I am told this world is a dream. Brahma's illusion. It's funny to even imagine, why the fuck am I being screwed so bad in someone else's illusion.

I used to dwell on the truth that everything I see is the sum of everything I imagine I see. I was shut off. There was a distinction between what was me, and what wasn't me. My four walls defined me. Protected me from diluting in my obsession, my cure-less narcissism. 

And I sometimes, in wildest dreams, I tried even to distillate whatever truth there was, however minuscule that may be, from enormous proportions of what everything just seemed to be.  

But now, with time, I have begun to live outside myself. That's the cost we pay. I'll tell you how. 

I am a lose summation what everyone imagines that I am. That I should be. Losing out on breath, I am aimlessly trying to become that one person that I ought to be. To get a better life. 

That notional ideal, is not the one thing I wished to be. Be-come. In fact, I didn't wish to become anyone. Anyone other than what I absofuckinglutely was. Not one trait more or less. No metaphor. No nothing. 

But look, now I live via others. Evaluate every moment of existence by how much I tended to become some tired-of-life-end-of-the-world-frustrated-tireless-moron. And I can't help myself. 

'What is truth? What is sanity? Did Jesus rise up from the grave? Do Hindus not accept that the world is a kind of dream; that Brahma dreamed, is dreaming the universe, that we only see dimly through that dream-web, which is Maya. Maya, may be defined as all that is illusory; as trickery, artifice and deceit. Apparitions, phantasms, mirages, sleight-of-hand, the seeming form of things: all these are parts of Maya. If I say that certain things took place which you, lost in Brahma's dream, find hard to believe, then which of us is right?'

-Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)