Sedentary

Our tremendously sedentary lives
Filled with hundreds of pauses a day
Feels like, sometimes that the
Whole thing is a pause
Between the past life & the future one
This one is quiet and
Full of waiting.

Our nervous pretenses
Cracking finger knuckles
Neck aches
Day in and out
Stolen yawns, in our corners
Migraines, to top it up

Makes me want to ask
How is it that
That we do nothing,
Absolutely nothing worthwhile
And yet, we have no time
I mean no fucking time
To indulge in what we really deeply want inside.

Such stark irony.

Feels wasted,
To be anywhere other than where I would be
If I were to give myself one chance.
Also, not knowing what stops me from doing so
Is yet another

..

Walks To Remember

The ash from his cigarette hadn't died, when he flicked it off, it burnt a hole in my shawl. Of the exact girth of my index finger. And I kept fingering it for the length of the conversation.

There was a chill in the air, unusual for mid November. And a translucent fog hung from the trees. May be it was just us. Having missed the last few winters here, made everything look unusually new with a raw touch of nostalgia.

Like we were here sometime, when things were so different. And now, we are in the precise place, the very two same people, only older by a few years. And yet, the situation is the exact antithesis of what it was. The irony of life is never understated.

I had begun my writing here, there was something in the absolute quiet that had driven me to it. He had begun reading me here, admiring from a distance to begin with, then inched closer with well guarded steps.  Our individual spaces remained, however, we almost fused into one being. He would reiterate, how he was reborn in his mind, during that phase. We thought in parallels. In the exact same lines, it was unnerving. In what I wrote, I felt his invisible hand behind my mind.

Do you realize the kind of sync. Too good to be real, ain't it.

But no infatuation is timeless. Everything wears off, if you give it a few days. This shrewdness of life can never be understated. Either.

Everything comes a circle. We did too. By going back to the place to break it up, where we first met, we did too.

A lot has been said, already. So this is the last of the Walks To Remember, to the best of my belief.

Year

How long could be a year?

As long as the pain in the breath lasts. 

As long as memory doesn't fade away. 

As long as the scathe of the ridiculous mistake of love,

lasts. 

A year feels like one complete cycle of life. 

One run of each season.

Summer, winter.

Monsoon, mother of them all. 

A year loops across all the days that we remember 

To celebrate.

Festivals.

One birthday.

New year. 

Days of love.

Fake anniversaries of confessions of affection.

Approximate memories of first kisses. 

A year also marks those numerous insignificant days.

Hundreds of them.

Sundays you sat on the balcony, 

and watched time pass under your nose.

Weeks of meaningless slogging. 

Nights of realizing how real this deadlock was. 

Accidental discoveries of favorite songs.

Pictures taken and forgotten about.

Mugs and mugs of coffee.

Stolen glasses of wine. 

And other cheap intoxication.

Whining of being unread,

Being unheard of.

Moving toward death,

undiscovered. 

Unknown. 

Such other nuances of life.

One whole year. 

Do you care?

How long a year could be. 

It could pass in a jiffy.

But this one, just doesn't go. 

Bitcch 

Pictures often limit imagination. So, don't let this one tie you down for one. 

Now Playing: Chhodo More Baiyyan-~Zubeidaa

Debaucherie

I am gonna have to quit my job.

'Silence.' He's surprised that I don't feature my quintessential longish awe.

I am gonna figure things out.

'Figure what out?'

Like, what is it that I want. For now, I am gonna travel. Hands me over a map.

'This is like zigzag across the country!'

Yeah, at least this trip is something I've figured out. Laughs. Pauses. Looks at me. The traffic from down here felt coy. There was a mild breeze. I looked at him back.

'Are we taking the Revolutionary Road?'

May be, only if it doesn't end that sad. 

'Okay' Not once did I utter my favorite and oft-repeated-over-used-to-death punchline-Are you kidding me? That I have picked up from my compulsive binging of American sitcoms over the years. Nobody in my land used it yet, that much. The land that he was so set to criss-cross.

I looked up at what was in front of me. It wasn't the horizon. Just some half-built-left-alone-concrete-skeletons, that someone thought would be buildings someday. But got stuck in litigation, I guess.

Come along, be my side-kick.

At that point, I laughed uncontrollably. For no such reason. And got up to leave.

Mirror

The feverish half sleep shrunk into which I lay on the couch and watch a film that must someday be a sleeper hit. Flapping my fevered eye lids, to keep eyes from burning more. And brooding over the hint of common cold in nostrils, oiled knotted hair wrapped in a shawl fished out of a bucket of done away woolens of last year.

Between the couch and the bed, as I loiter back and forth. Way past midnight. I halt in-front of the mirror. To look at me. And recapitulate my lack of belief in make-up. Making faces. Pretty faces and ugly faces. Disentangling knots of hair. Curling up and straightening down. Feeling the cracks on lips with fingertips. Languishing in the first few days of an early winter.

The sudden change in weather.

Hence the cold. And the fever.

Also, the hallucinations of feverish half sleep. Parts of the supposed sleeper hit film mingling with my reality and smoothening out the way into a state wherein truths don't play that much of a role. And one can survive with the sole support of imagination.

That imagination makes me suppose, that this mirror is a one way see through sheet of glass. From the other side. From inside the wall on which it is hung. And you are staring at me from in there. You, my love trapped in the mirror. Looking at me and my various faces. Blushes. The fire in the eyes. Their swollen lids. Hopes & dreams. Understanding how skin deep beauty could be. Only as deep as the eyes could fathom.

But you would be looking at my soul. And I wouldn't know. Falling for me, bit by bit. The way I did for you. And would want to keep me, as I would tip-toe the rest of my way to the bed. 

Pang

Strips of sand slipping from between my toes;
Wet sand.
Waves in my hair
Entangled
Glistening silver on fingers
That contain the shroud of a black sky
My sandals float away.
I laugh, let go
He laughs too
Urchins fish em back
He fiddles for change in his pocket
Doesn't any
Quitens them with ten buck notes
We're alone again
Stalled in time and space
I look to my side
He'sn't here anymore.
Anymore.
There's not a thing that catches up with the stab of lost love.
Nothing has, nor will

Design

If we obeyed design, the body would have three centers. Collinear. Running across, its central axis. Making us fall apart into symmetrical halves.

The first center would be where our eyebrows meet. Like lovers tilting toward each other, gradually inclining and then secretly meeting behind the camouflage of scarce shoots of hair. But meeting nevertheless. And giving birth to the sanest of thoughts and ideas. Intellect. This must be the brightest spot in the body.

The second  would be where the clavicles meet the sternum. The exact center of the chest. From which emotions arise. Into which I collapse when the world doesn't stop chasing me. This point is the mother of all longing.

The third  would be the navel. Which is the center of being. Which sometimes makes us see in black and white. And sometimes in such myriad shades, that we go insane. It reverses all the science that is. And makes us sway to the whims of a quest that could never be quenched.

But we do not obey design. Any design. There are no symmetrical halves, we are falling apart into. We are mashed up, very twisted. Every vibe that arises, we don't know where it comes from. From the center of intellect, longing or being?

Every atypical mood swing, each pang to binge on food, every sudden depression and random elation, the mellow shades of romance and the utter stabs of heartbreak. Like literal stabs in the chest. And the warmth of tears on cheeks. We don't know what's leading us where. What's leading me where, and why.

Dead-end/Stale-mate

The  stillness of this room is stirring. Stirring deep insides. So, now is not the time for silence.

I do quite a few things right lately. For instance, I apply conditioner except on the roots of my hair. I do not day dream when I drive. I clean my phone-book on a monthly basis. I pray. Plead, beg, complain, rebel, abandon. I appreciate only the things that matter. Try to. Use the eff word more inside my head than out loud. I write often. Talk to friends. Reply to mails. Texts. Use smileys. I also persevere to be happy for others. Keep peer pressure out of the way. Smoke less often. Be more patient.

But, even though it's not falling apart yet, the person I dreamed of constructing from myself, is no where in sight. She isn't expected either. There was never a plan. Only a rough outline. That outline is now blotched. Like ink on soaked paper.

There is this trance I get lost in. When I try to weigh reality against illusion. Either everything is real. Or everything is an illusion.

Lately, like since last night, I have begun to believe that I've been cursed by the spite of innocent love. For I must have broken someone irreversibly. Do you believe me when I say that?

There is this sense of despair. Perennial loss. Though nothing much is lost. Then is my corrupt perspective. A constant air of gloom. Also this inability to even want to alter myself. Like some drugged complacency.

Also, there is a lack of focus in writing. You should know, if you've come this far.