Baby Steps to Sanity

There are these following stages to sanity. Sometimes not in that exact chronological order. But whatever:

1. Singularity: And all the other fancy-pants terms used for being by oneself. With a sparkling clean head. Making through the day, calling for cabs alone, standing by the ATM machine, waiting for cash alone. Etc. Not being stuck in some wait. Content, by measurable parameters of human reason.

2. Infatuation: Being one of the most dangerous sorts of fixation. One-sided. Unspoken of. Driving oneself to the ends of insanity. And making her fall off the edge, with the elan of an enchanted lover. Living, vicariously, lopsided towards imagination. Hunted by cravings of the anti-pragmatic kind. Counting the inconsolable, unsettled gasps of a perennial adolescent.

3. Non-committal Non-serious: The conscious choice of being in this kind of an arrangement finds its root in the dearth of conversions of series of infatuations into regular affairs. Parties engaged are mostly busy convincing themselves that this is indeed the non-committal non serious thingy. And there are no stakes. Either party exclusively look out for their reasons.

4. Non-committal Serious: This usually kicks off at a book shop, or a meeting at a common friend's. One doesn't understand why one likes the other, given that the track record of past flames doesn't match with. But there is a certain level of comfort. Understanding of mutual flaws. Something that comes with seasoned loveless-ness. Parties are semi-involved. But neither has the bloody guts to commit.

5. Committed-Serious: Finally, when the most necessary issues of arrangement are worked out by the art of persuasion and the fear of dying alone, parties enter into what is commonly called as a relationship in romantic parlance. Movies, dinners, stay-ins, taking the sex for granted. Etc

6. Marriage: One day you are made to believe that you were created to only pro-create. That is the beginning of marriage and the end of what is called life in common parlance.

7. EM: Stands for Extra-marital. After the boredom of feeding on the same face for years kicks in, one finds an artist on the street, with long hair, or an unkempt beard, living on alcohol, the perpetual hedonist, or any one specimen stretching from 1-5 above, she secretly elopes with whatever she previously cursed as unconventional.

And then someday, if the stars are pleased, gets to Sanity.

Unrelated prequel: here

Unloved

For the first time in many years, my head feels clean. No emotion clouds my judgement and I can see. Clearly, for once finally. But there is nothing to see at all. I don't know what I am meant for yet, but there is peace I have suddenly come to know with my sense of being. With both who and what I have been made to become. Being okay is very important. The situation of constant internal struggle, endless longing has left me without a notice. And I am okay with the way I am. The folds in my belly, the way my kohl smudges, the way my hair coils. Every flaw, I am okay with. I am being real here, I am being dealt with as I am real. Befittingly.

I have left my desires far behind. I don't need them anymore. There is no unrelenting urge to be somewhere with someone for some reason. There is no reason. For anything. The way my flesh sits on earth, the way I displace the exact volume of air as my body, never stood as unchained from every other reason of existence as I yearned for as now.

I have broken the vicious circle of sorrow. I overshot it, by some large unintelligent margin and now I am floating in space. Yeah  

I just might have become un-fuckin-touchable, as someone had said. I am for keeps.

Now playing: Beethoven - Fur Elise.

Settling Down

The mind wants something tangible now. Tan-gi-ble. To smell touch and feel. To lather up in foam, watch. Some definite matter the way physics defined it. Long long time back in school books, when the heart hadn't learnt to yearn, yet. Pleasures were unknown. And we waited to age. Our lives to ripen. Now that our minds aren't pink no more, and we have chased half our lives away chasing, the vague, the non-existing, the intangible, it dawns upon our silly dwarfed psyches that, everything was a lie, all that was a waste of time, hope and even imagination. So now not that we regret that we half lived our youths by whiling it away in bitter-sweet waiting, we just sulk. And break down within sulks and sigh wanting to have a relapse to the childish excuse of pursuing our unreal dreams rather than settling for what's real.

You were an unreal dream, honey. I am completely over you now. I wish I was. But I believe I am already. Or may be not. What choice do I have, what choice have you left me with. Nothing. Zilch.

This is not poetic heart wrenching writing, but now I would rather have a different life. Of settling for what's real. And touchable. And not so vague. Real with faults. Not completely adorable, yet lovable. Not you, never you, but. It's all I have and I am happy. Or I should be. Or may be not. Who knows, who can tell. What choice do I have, what choice have I left myself with.

Blah blah blah. 

Facade

Well, as I am too disentangled to write a story, lets make tonite the night of one liners, shall we.

• I have got very bad intentions for you. In my mind. Destructive. Very dirty, filthy intentions
• Nothing sets you as free as the absolute lack of commitment. Peals off two layers of  your skin to reveal your true colors
• You may do whatever you wanted to do with me. The question is, and the very big gigantic question is, baby, would you want keep me after that. May be not. So choose, which window are you gonna throw me out from. Huh
• I like the surreptitious noises. If sometimes, I get to hear them, I cherish and cage them in my middle ear.
• Love rain. I love rain. Not the first showers of monsoon. But the ones that never stop, once they've begun. Incessant. With continuous warnings of flood and dams crashing down. Those rains. Cannot wait for them anymore. 
•  Fuck the following things in the following order:
• Facebook
• Peer pressure
• The Tropic of Cancer
• Need for attention
• Awful beer
• Blah
• Food, is the biggest distraction. Thank God for Food. Is it illegal to marry food. Like I came back home, pretty drunk and artsy. And I had plans to scribble the hell out on this blog. But, now that I've eaten, I can hardly remember. Like I have complete amnesia of the turmoil in my head of an hour ago.
• Life has frozen, shopping is a panacea no more. Consumerism nauseates me. It makes me want to puke my lungs out. Malls suffocate me. I hate the mirrors that make you appear prettier than you could ever be. 
• I despise how the ATM machine never fails to reject my card the first time. How is that anomaly maintained every time I am in severe need for cash, I would never know.
• Back off, whenever someone sits that close to me and talks, my eyes zoom in and zoom out on them. And you keep getting larger and smaller in my eyes. That sickens me. I like to see you for how you are, for real, without your pretension. So back off, may be a little. 
• And give me my sanity back. Or never ask me why I am insane so much. 

The Incurable Romantic

Thoughts and intentions cannot be truths. As much as actions can be. That doesn't make my love for you any less true just because it is caged inside of my mind as a mild intention. However, I would never know what the truth was from your side. Because your intentions never transpired into an action. And both you and I, and the fleeting, highly improbable emotion between us, disintegrates, unquestioned, unanswered.

Now, why I take an exception (that only actions can be classified as the truths, whereas my and only my love stands true even when it is a mere intention), is because of this. 

I have come across numerous other men, off late. Numerous. An adjective that comes for more than one. More than many. Some of whom are rebellious and wildly attractive. Non-conformists. Artists. Men rich in emotion. Rich in time. With the promise of an enticing adventure. Hinting of worlds I have never explored. Touching bits of mind that I didn't know even existed. I have come to know quite a few such, in the recent past. 

Yet, last night. When I was stoned and asleep on the street, under the stars with my hands under my head, staring up, I was trying to figure you out. In a semi-awake semi-hallucinated state of existence, I wondered. When clouds look like people and things, what intentions do they have. What conspiracies. Because, the sky was overcast, I couldn't trace the stars. I saw two clouds, dark water-bearing monsters, lying side by side. I saw hands and legs, and hair. And bellies, and heads. Every time I shut my eyes for a brief few seconds, the two clouds would fall apart into each other, merge.

I wished, we were the two clouds. I missed our mundane moments from the past. Wanted to steal them away to the present. Or hide them away for the future, may be.

I don't remember, how long I was there that way. Must have been for a greater part of the night. I felt this deep, unhindered connection with you. I realized, you are the one I will be in love with forever. 

Courtesy: Krish

ap·pa·ri·tion

Years later, we would meet again.

Clasped in a different situation, than now.

Haunted by fresh ghosts

In love with separate people

With families in far off cities, waiting.

Eye to eye, nose to nose

Our thoughts accurate, coincident.

Seasoned with years of similar predicament


And ask this question

Quietly, under our mouths.

So as to dissolve the sound in our breaths

Ashamed, yet not shy


That,

Why didn't we kiss tonight.

When we could've

When we so could've.

Im·bro·glio

It's gonna get obviously haywire, when a woman as passionate as I, falls for a man, as detached as you. There's flames going up in the air. That's bits and pieces of me, burning. I stay awake nights, procrastinating telling you. Wallowing in my shame. And tongue-tied-ness.

It's been this way for years. Yes, years in our such short lives. And I worthlessly realize that your love has rendered me incapable of nursing that emotion for another man. Even in forever.

I set imaginary deadlines, for culminating this thing that is. This thing that we have. And in my sleep, keep pushing that lazy frontier of time. Telling myself that this wait is worth every nanosecond in it, even if I don't get to have you at the end of it. Because, you are the only one. My solo.

It's you or no-one. So, I don't do anything about me. And I don't sit still either. I fret, cry, pray, in whatever intervals I get in between phases of loving you.

I look at distant blue windows and dream. And tell you, fall for me already. Fall, already.

You shrug, every time. And walk past.

im·bro·glio  
/imˈbrōlyō/

Noun
An extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation:

Synonyms
entanglement - complication

Wild

There was nothing that kept her. Could keep her. If let free, if left alone, she could go reckless. There was no restraining force in her system, once you got her unhooked once. Just once. Just one push and you would give her an excuse to go insane. She would know no shame. And fail miserably to understand any logic behind cultivated inhibition, of any sort. The woman was not the show a lot of cleavage kinda wild. Her mind was unchained. You get the difference? She did not pause and look at anyone's face for acceptance. She didn't have to learn to be non-nonchalant. She just was. She had no fears. Her head was clean. Absolutely see through.

Her face was gaunt, but with weird slant cuts. She would make her lips pout at the mirror. And throw her hair open. Turn off the lights and up the music. And dance. Wild. Like nothing else was.

And when she did that, she was such a spectacle. Such a spectacle. Her face shone with her aura. With everlasting latitude.

As the night progressed, she blossomed into an amusing temptress. Scattered with magic. Gurgling with laughter, that sound cutting across her dark room. Her memories fading into the distance. Legs and hands not  stopping. Waist swaying like in love. Hair, oh the hair!

Reason

But I don't know how I got here. Can't remember a thing. Feels like waking up in a strange bed. All hung over and head-ached. Only not that much head-ached. I am fine. Sad, but manageable. Not devastated. Disgruntled, or hopeless. Or, may be I am even hopeless. But that's okay. What can we do. I am okay you know, something I never imagined I would be, without you. Don't know how or why. Memories do come back to me, but they make me happy than sad. Like I see the lanes you walked, the places you waited at, the faces you told me about. But none of that affects me with a violent gash. I just smile. Merely, smile. Sometimes my eyes fill up. Moisten. But I look down and pretend to wipe my glasses. I miss you already, and I know this won't work. Something that didn't work the first time, will never work out. It's true because there is a reason for the not working out part. In afterthought I even see and realize and understand and accept what our reason was. Is. But then in the flush of lucky second and third chances that fate threw upon us, I forgot that very reason. For one crazy moment I felt, coincidences are an act of God. Fuck the reason. But no, the bloody reason has outlived even my affection today. Now. When I look down from a midnight window and assume what you must be up to. Sigh. Feels like a violent gash though, but only sometimes.

You are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. However cliched and overused that may sound. I don't care. I literally have never been happier. But now look. The reason. Keeps coming back and makes us look less worthy than another try. I just can't. 

Either Way

In the middle of some intimate act, she would often suddenly leave him panting for breath. Gasping too much to even ask that question. Why would she choose not to love him when she very well could. Loving wasn't that hard, in the first place. And loving him, the one guy who had stretched out his entire life before her, wasn't to be hard anyway. But she was too distracted, sometimes. Like in another world. Like this was not meant to be. Like she regretted the series of decisions she had taken that had brought her to him. He would often try, merely try to gather the courage to ask her, what was not right. But he was worried that question would make her introspect deeper and she would walk out, for all time. At whatever the cost be, he chose status quo, over everything else. Every other possibility of heart break.

She would often pause under the shower, while rubbing soap on her arms and stare at the mirror. Touch her wet hair and be drenched in regret. Why hadn't she done everything when she had the time and the chance to. Everything that had the possibility of companionship. And even love. The little expressions of affection, that she had forfeited, because she hadn't the intentions of making it known out of cowardice or outright laziness. Sometimes she wanted to know what courses their lives might have taken. Similarly, she wanted to loiter back to every such might've and could've and explore the mood swings of an unknown future. Instead of just sitting there and waiting, when she could have hugged a quaint promise.

The aforesaid stanzas of prose could be read in either order. May be she regretted in the shower first and then went to him, made him miserable and came back to regret in the shower again. May be she married the man, only to run away from him and regret it in the shower and then go back to him. It is like a vicious circle. The same act precedes and supersedes its counteract. What should I do with my life. Do I go either way.  

Once.

It was a winter afternoon, to the best of what memory tells me. Could've been winter or monsoon though. Or one of those days when it was just cloudy and the canopy of pine trees didn't let you see the sky. And it didn't matter if it was evening or afternoon still, the sun set at 4 pm.

Had been trying to get a cab on the way back from solitary lunch. You know how hard it is to get cab in that city. Almost impossible to find one that's going where you want to go. Almost as difficult as finding love. And then it began to hail. Yeah, you won't believe. Hail. Sheets of frozen rain hit everything on the road, all shops had their shutters down. There was no place to hide under. It was relentless. How perfectly I had forgotten my umbrella.

I almost pleaded a cabbie to take me back. He charged me thrice. Or so it sounded, I didn't have the time to calculate exactly how many times he was charging me over the usual. I got in and rolled up the glasses. My sweatshirt wouldn't suffice. Like I had gotten into that habit of stretching their sleeves to cover my palms. From the cold. I did just that, breathed in air, breathed out mist. And counted on the silence. That couldn't be broken. That had encapsulated me ever-since, I had begun craving for love. Dogmatically.

I had been hiding in my bag a neatly packed slice of cake. Chocolate fantasy. That I had coaxed myself to believe wouldn't twist and turn and spoil itself as the cab made numerous rides uphill and downhill. When I reached, the hail had stopped. It was cold still, I borrowed the umbrella from the gatekeeper and quietly walked till the stairs. There I must have paused for sometime, let myself be further disillusioned before finally tip toeing up.

I wanted to be quiet, like a sleeping child. Didn't want to be heard, didn't want to be a nuisance, or an intrusion. I knocked their door. I say their- they had begun living together past few months. Though people outside constantly talked of how much more they had been fighting after the moving in thing. Ironically, I believed in both, their firm love and the rumors that made rounds. Probably because it never mattered what I believed or felt or thought.

Put the cake on his table, I owed him one because I had lost some silly bet. Or something. And turned back to make a quick exit.

But turned back again and smiled, grinned. Seeing them together that way, huddled against each other under a blanket staring out the window, at the chaos outside having been settled. I felt peace. Love, once. I don't remember if I felt envy. Somehow, I can't remember walking out that door anymore.

From that moment till now, a lot had happened to me, with me. I haven't done much except write some 700 odd posts on this blog. Oddly enough, now..I don't feel the need to be in love anymore.