Loophole

They lived quietly next door. A family slightly younger than ours. Mamun was their daughter. And she had a baby brother. They would stroll into and out of our place, we would put out tiny chairs for them to sit. One yellow, one copper sulfate. Mamun would often soil our balcony, dig up our potted plants of chrysanthemum, until we took that inevitable decision to hang them from the railing, way out of her reach. She did love our Sunday morning poached eggs, densely peppered. Often, her chiming silver anklets would declare her sudden presence, and make us watch-out. Mamun wore a strange piece of metal, like a pendant around her neck, like it was an animal tooth, or a shell filled with ash. To keep her away from evil.

Quite treacherously, without warning, she died. Was killed. Her family was out on vacation, and we were told, that for one moment they lost sight of her and she was a hit and run. For months, I kept staring at our yellow chair. Her father with his shaven head, would wake up screaming, wailing. But I continued assuming that she was still on vacation and would return. That assumption, I preferred it over the silent acceptance of such loss.

Unable to stand their misery, her family shifted to another place, I believe, somewhere away.

And then the plump woman, with the parrot moved in. All the time, she lived in that apartment, we only heard about her son. Never saw him, he was in another city, studying or working, or something. I imagined he must be a replica of his frail bespectacled father. The plump woman, wore sleeveless blouses, blaming the stifling single bed-roomed existence. And an unforgiving summer.

In the afternoons, she would switch on the TV and chop lady fingers and pumpkin, skin potatoes and slice bitter-gourds on the dining table. Many of those, I spent with her. My siestas were as ever empty of sleep. She introduced me to tea, I owe her that. But it was her parrot that bewitched me. That absolute flirt of a bird, I would try to feed it things, bribing it to shed one of those vibrant, parrot green feathers. I would wait near the cage for hours, I needed one to press between the leaves of my diary. The woman of the house would pacify me saying that she would give away that parrot's chick to me. So I waited for it to lay an egg. Equally impatiently, or more. But, I hadn't known then. That caged birds don't breed. 

chalance nonchalance

Erase all preconceived severely convoluted concern. Like no preconditions existed. As if the space before and after this moment was dead. This minute, this hour, tonite. This shy moonless evening. Kick the long term purpose of life. There is none, anyway. Except for the sum of these tiny ones. Dwell in this new found freedom. Forget. And let exactly your whim drive you. Only that. To whoever it wants you to. Shiver not.

Nice feel, in't it? Ah, very nice oh. 

Saturday

Muse:

The muse. She wore a pink sari, wound around her lean self in a way I couldn't figure. Out how. So I just bathed her with all my attention. Not the baby pink, not the rosy pink. Real pink, how pink should be. With white squares printed over. Her hair was knotted, neatly. Like the knot held her head in position. And those black bead earrings, not tiny, big enough. To be seen from far. Where I was. She, of course stared straight in front, at the road ahead. No after hang of the past. I couldn't figure out that either. Just how?

Movie:

The movie. Sprinkled with instances, some exact replicas of the past, some insinuations of the impending future. Such an amalgamation of rather contradictory contortions of love. One that shows how desperately we seek companionship, irrespective of who we have become or where we are; and another shows no matter what, all affections fade. However, hard you try, or not try, mostly, you end up alone, literally alone within four walls, or virtually alone living among a bunch of strangers you remember you  happened to know. Love stories, like these, are often that beautiful picture painted upon and against the peaceful humdrum of life. 

Summer Love:

They say, summer love. We have passed, one summer by. Half of, or rather, almost one full, eighty percent of, monsoon. Rains have lashed against the new love that in May we had realized, we had may be. Now we are stare at autumn, for the trees to come out naked. Winter then. And finally, even spring, in possibility. You know, how love takes your breath away? Moments that bless you with such a glue that you cease to exist in person, and become one deeply rooted pair of Siamese twins.

Movie in context: The Lunchbox

Twenty-six

Pocket fulls of sand. Wet magical sand. One stringed bracelet. With our names inscribed. And my prescribed notions for a lifetime. Nothing has turned out as it should have. Most things have just flown from one random destination to another like a lazy holidayer. Somehow leaving me wet and unwanted. Just like the sand in my pockets. Yet, you being you, keep me. Love me. Possess me. Not with the jovial possession of new love. But with the charred traits of a seasoned lover. Like quiet sunlight on fair skin, you fill me with warmth. One moment of which is worth caging and saving for looking back and unwinding upon for years later. When feelings of seclusion corner ME, and make me want to run off the next adjacent roof, sometimes not too knowingly I think of you. Your chin. My lip. Our things. Paraphernalia for love. I use them to invent words. To selfishly develop feelings, I not tell you about. Because somethings should be given time to unfold. Somethings should rather be bottled forever. Till we end.

I think of our tiny toes and the hard earned grace to make a living out of life. I wonder what we have. And see it vis-a-vis what we require. For contingencies. For answers. For supplying enough proofs. Like juxtapose. I wonder if our stringed bracelet of love would stand us on our tiny toes. It should. Because love should be the sole deciding factor. Of our endless haywire lives. If not it, then what.

I am not saying just because I am saying. But as I have learnt. I am not that child that sees and doesn't seep into. But I have witnessed a certain emptiness in the plethora of lives around me. In their guarded drops of sweat upon heavily maintained faces. Heavily to the extent of it being an obsession of creating a pretense. A shallow facade. And that bores me to the extent of scaring me.

That's exactly why I want you to look within. Unzip me, unskin ME. Look at my naked raw self. And then love me like nothing else matters. It's the mind that will never leave me. So love me in there. Shamelessly. Unbridled.

Make Belief

You make, I believe. Some other time, I make, for you to believe. Calm your jittery nerves & vice versa. I love, and feel loved myself, consequently. Love begets love. Bricks accumulate mortar, by themselves, for their affinity to cement, to make passion to stay. And build walls, roofs and floors, homes, to stay in, windows to look out from, hide away in. Plans get scribbled, ambitions toned up or down accordingly. Tiny steps taken, in unison, like a baby learning to walk, stumbles and falls. And then talking takes over, endless endless conversations. A word for word. Breath for breath. Sigh for sigh. Blink for blink. Sometimes, you make, I believe. Sometimes, I make, you believe. 

Placebo

Where do we go? With our ills and our pills. Multiple sicknesses of the mind. Cramped muscles twisted nerves and pangs of the emotional kind. Hidden magnanimous egos. To be clashed with hidden maganimous egos. Plugged desires. Reading between the lines, between the words and in between phrases. Understanding commas, colons and semi colons. Fuck. Abandoning the hope, the threadbare hope that an end to these means is even possible, we sit quietly and face toward the wall, waiting for someone to ask us to turn around, one hundred and eighty degrees and talk. Sometimes that is required too, silence doesn't do justice to our immensely complex circular demand cycles. Where in, one need just proliferates mostly the previous need, forming in effect, one dangerous cycle of need. And we don't know if we are getting anywhere, or are merely sitting on a child's rocking chair, suffering the illusion of motion. Our ends, flying out in outer space shall never meet. Love fucks up love. Too much love ie. Too little ie. All we await is a temporary placebo. Until the next pang gets us.

Time Capsule

I would wonder what happened to you. Whatever happened to you. You, in immense probability, would move on. Be ladled upon with layers and layers of time. Meet newer people, more or less like the ones you wanted. More more than less. Fall in love, out of love. Miss me in the intervals in between, if you kept a vivid memory. Have babies, marry, or in the reverse order, preferably. Buy flowers, to let them wilt, flip through more books, age, grow more white hair. Stare from balconies, walk among flower shrubs on both sides of the street. Smile, be ecstatic, regret. More importantly, be the way you wished; to be. Holding on to appropriate substances of value. After a certain time, just sit alone and reminisce, just like I would. And wonder what happened to me, whatever happened to me.

Shortly after, you would unearth from underneath the layers and layers of time; a time capsule. Not the literal time capsule. Just a capsule with me in it. Asleep like a fetus, curled, from the ages ago, exactly the way I was. And as you uncap that capsule, you would unlock so much, so much. My caged smells of sweat and skin. The goosebumps intact. The voices of things said, multiple confessions of dire passion. CDs with our songs, pictures taken and forgotten. Plans made and almost ruthlessly abandoned. Truths kept from the world, just between us two, sacred secrets. And the absolute and exact memory of having been, in love. For what it's worth.

Whatever happened to you. Whatever happened to I. Oh! 

Unison

The nose. You never get to see your own nose. Even though it is right there, because both the eyes which are constantly used to seeing it, negate each other out. And you never get to see your own nose.

Same applies to the Lover. You lose sight of him. Outside of yourself. Because he is constantly there, in your mind, fiddling with your six senses constantly. And whenever, even if he is outside of you, your eyes, two pairs, four of them, looking into each other, cancel each other out. Like the Lover ceases to exist. Despite being right there, saying, listening, seeing, moving. He effectively becomes a part of you. Begins to live in your consciousness as a thought, an idea, and not as sturdily as the matter, that can be touched, smelled and felt. Though he very can be, pinched, kissed, loved, you forget. Lovers become extensions of each other, or even become one person.

Level of comfort, as it is called, shoots up to an extra-terrestrial high. Suddenly one pair of extra hands seems unnecessary. So does the extra pair of legs. Lovers carry each other, over shoulders, on arms. The other mind of the two feels like an extravagance. They could as well make do with one, you know. Their memoirs merge into a symbiotic haze and they look into the time to come, with one pair of collective eyes, irises.