The Dung Beetle

Once when I was four or five or six. Years of age. I was a stout little girl roaming around in umbrella cut frocks. You know frocks that swelled up like an umbrella. A dung beetle stung me a bit. On my left hand or right. I don't remember which. Memory doesn't work that way. And you know that. Just that it was either hand. Probably, my right. And it swelled up like a dung beetle itself. Blew up like a balloon, my little hand. It began to smell weird. Nasty. I didn't think I would ever get my original hand back. In my little head, I was so worried. 

But, it did get better. The swelling went down. The pain went away. I must have been happy. And as usual, relief must have overshadowed my happiness. That's the way it works for me. Mostly I am so worried and then, so equally relieved that I strangely, accidently forget to be happy.

There's this kid that lives upstairs. I meet him in the elevator sometimes. When our times match. He has got plump rosy cheeks. We don't have nothing in common. But sometimes, I go up to his floor, bid him goodnight and then come down to my floor. Translucent human attachment, this. Even if I have had a bad day or good. Even if he has had a bad day or good. He stands there, with his backpack on and a smile on his face and waves me goodbye until I vanish downwards. 

His mother left them. Both him and his father. His father, whenever I see him has wry heart ache written all over his face. As if he has lost himself. Forever and ever. And nothing would cure him. His eyes are as sunken, as his son's are bright. His son, is a miracle. 

I see him chasing butterflies in the garden downstairs. To capture them for a moment between his cupped hands and then instantly release them. Colorful butterflies, dozens, flock the magnolia trees. I hope he recognises the colors. I pray that his vision opens up. And so does his mind. Everyone tells me, he is slow. What a horrible thing to say of a child. 

I am afraid, that a dung beetle might sting his tiny little hand as well. It's three decades after. Dung beetles might as well be, extinct. For all we know. It's not even the same garden or the same flowers. But I wonder. 

8

A few weeks ago, I completed eight years of blogging. And I hadn't paused to notice it. I had forgotten. Neat excuse. But I had. Very few occasions in life call for a celebration. We are all sinking into veritable depths of monotony. And discarding the right to be special. Every day.

Once I had thought, my writing would take me places. Now I think what places, and laugh. Is it even possible to take anyone anyplace, ever. Aren't we all static, merely enjoying the illusion of motion. So much oxygen is getting us high. My writing may not move me a millimeter. My mind is fixed, frozen, glued to its labyrinthine biases, against the act of motion itself.

So yeah, amongst the shiny success of others, I may finish up a reluctant loser, a hopeless mediocre, a screaming for sympathy, self published author. Hah, yes. My glorious future, ladies, the one I had been told and coaxed to believe existed has now perished into oblivion. I am clutching thin air, in my fist.

I am not talking apocalypse. Or glass half empty. All I am saying is that life doesn't always pay off. Mostly never. And we continue to survive, as beings of angst.

Switching between phones, booking tickets, losing breath, consoling, cooking, being consoled, murmuring, driving, buying, stealing, loving, unloving, sleeping, waiting, waking up, catching breath, sighing. Writing, counting years, writing, counting years. 

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

Already

They had the familiarity of old lovers. Like their shoulders would brush and neither would realize. Like something very normal just happened. The spark had been eroded. But the comfort remained. The warmth of their companionship filled the air when they were both together. Even years after. The wondrous age of passion. Now they touched on the borders of whole decades and counted in their fingers, years past since when they had been behind latched doors. That way. But it was hard to rebuild that magic, even in the imagination in their heads, it was closer to impossible than to possible. They had moved on to newer people, fucked, fallen in love, unfucked. Their last memory of togetherness had been so numerously overlapped that it had almost been buried. Oddly enough though, she would bend over the table to get the pepper shaker, without even being aware that her top slid too low exposing a bit of her cleavage. She knew that he wasn't seeing anything he hadn't seen already. That there was no corner of her body that he had left unexplored. And she knew that he knew that she knew. Everyone knew. Everything already. The best charm of having been lovers in the past is this sense of information symmetry. And therefore the lack of need to tell. Or to communicate with a glance, sometimes even without a glance. They could just sit beside, and not feel this compelling need to say. Almost all definitions of a relationship would have run through their minds. More than once. More than twice. So there was nothing left except for this soul quenching feeling every time they spent a few hours between a lifeless few months.

They had been lovers already. So whatever else was left, was hard to find a name for.  

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.