History

Erosion of memory is an indispensable part of healing. One forgets, one gets past, one heals. When she was younger, she didn't believe she would one day be able to comfortably forget. In the angst of young and unrequited love, she strongly believed that one actually never forgot anything, only with time learned compulsively to get by. But as she grew older, it got real. It was actually possible to forget. And it wasn't necessarily an active activity. Memories faded quite automatically, passively, quietly. And before she consciously took note, many chapters of  her life had been lost. Suddenly she felt possessive about her past, however lackluster that had been. She felt unfairly dealt with, after all.

It felt so recent anyway. Once she started scraping off the surface, she counted with her fingers the number of years that had past, since. Not many. At least, not that many. But her slight wrinkles told her a different story, that she's older now. With a totally different set of  priorities. But then again, when did this happen? When did she get so old? She felt as if she would undo the Venetian blinds in her cubicle and see him on the other side. Through the glass, he felt immediate. He suddenly erupted from the past and felt so so so damn close in time and in space. Like he had jumped out of that continuum into this.

But the truth was far from this midday hallucination. He was nowhere around. You know how actual physical raw time space work. Once someone has passed, someone had passed. They ain't coming back for good. That said, how can memories be unfair. How can they self destruct? And so easily. Feeble recollections of events haunted her, grazed on her mind and taunted her. And she couldn't remember any further, any deeper. They had been so particularly staunch about keeping no memorabilia, there was nothing to cling to. How sometimes she jumped into the traps she herself had built.

Probably this doesn't make much sense. But she couldn't understand how she could totally completely absolutely forget a man who had loved her and who she had almost loved? Subconsciously she thought of the others like him in her life, and had nightmares about them. But never anything on him. How strange. How quietly he exited, never to reappear again. So much history gradually decayed in her mind and she didn't even realize except for now.

If she undid the blinds, just now, would he still be there though. She pondered.

Amour Fou

Lately, I landed myself with a bunch of letters. Between two people I don't know. I exaggerated, actually. Not letters. They are mails. More like chats. Conversations. It feels illegitimate to read them, like intruding their privacy. I know, it's wrong. But I just can't stop, right now, I am knee deep in their lives.

They worked together and talked incessantly on an intra office chat messenger. Among their numerous typos and monosyllabic questions and answers and even entire statements consisting of punctuation marks only, I have formed two images of them, I can't seem to get past. I've never seen them, never will. It's just a bunch of chats erroneously downloaded.

Their talks are coquettish, least to say. The man seems to ignore the woman at first, but then later he too folds into it. They barely discuss their spouses, but reading on and on, I realize that they are both married. The woman's husband stayed away, probably, the reason she sought out his attentions. And he seems to fall for it, even between his short and precise replies, I understand, he is very much in the conversation.

If you take the two marriages out of the equation, it's even a sweet story after all. And even if you don't, even then it is.

If love doesn't find us, we seek it out. Like a blind child, in a dark room, we are pounding for love. There is no wrong time and age for it. They probably never had an affair, or kissed in the elevator, or booked surreptitious hotel rooms. May be their fling stayed at chatting only. Or may be it didn't.

But now they're apart. And I can't help, but imagine so many things.

About Last Night

How do I live a moment
Knowing precisely
That I am
Never gonna live it again
Just how

It is as if
A memory is being created
A memory is being cemented
Simultaneously, as I live this moment
Tonight, here now

You know,
Moments are like people
One very different from the other
And this one is made of
Profound nostalgia

A moment in which
A dozen more moments are caged
Memory within a memory
Moment inside a moment inside
Another moment, and so on

Probably, with the life I've chosen
There may be similar times
In the future as well
But not this one
In exactitude

I feel
Hopelessly incapable to let go
Of whatever sand
I have gathered in my hands
But I know, I rather would

Yet
I have bought myself
A piece of space and time,
And I would freeze the universe at that.

The Couple by the Lake

It was an intense moment. Like a moment inside a moment.

We sat on a bench by the lake. City lights reflected on the black water. Nearly mesmerizingly. But there was nothing romantic about it. We were both deeply bothered, I guess.

We had a rule. One smoke per night, strictly. One each that is. Sharing a smoke would be too intimate. His black polythene bag was between us on the bench. It had his drink for the night. I would have a swig from it before we walked back to our rooms. Sometimes, two or three. 

There was a girl he loved deeply. She had recently been married off to another man and had been shipped abroad. She still loved him back. That so rebellious love of the early twenties. He had heard her voice after weeks, he was almost too benumbed to speak. He had told me about her earlier though. About how they had met and fallen in love at the place they worked. And how vehemently her parents had opposed the match, and so on. Their love had been obsessive-compulsive. 

Not the milder poetic version, but serious life endangering love that. I wasn't aware of such love myself back then. I only came to know of it later when I fell into it myself. Some mind-fucking, nerve-wrecking shit that. 

But back then, I was in a different kind of a love. With another man, who was as far away as far away could be. Victimized by my repetitive tendency to fall for unavailable men. That was young-vulnerable love. The love of cards and roses. And preferably, low sugar chocolates as well. 

One thing we had in common was that we had both been equally sequestered by the ones we had loved. And that pain was enough to make us sit side by side with the lake and with its shimmering lights on back water. Every night, for as long as it took for us, individually and together, to gather our heartbroken selves and walk back to our rooms. A strange camaraderie that. 

Somethings needn't be explained. This, needn't even be touched. Years have gone by, now all that remains is a faded memory of two jaded beings by the lake. Almost wiped clean, it is sometimes recovered to remember, so many loves since then, so many heartaches since then. But I can still recall the taste of the ice-cream he treated me with afterward, to snap me out of whatever depression that was. Dark chocolaty chocolate with cream, yes. And no, not sugar free. 

..

Saying a word, stopping midway, dissolving into giggles, forgetting what I was saying. Singing some random song, losing track of the lyrics. Checking if what I was saying was grammatically correct. I wouldn't ever compromise with grammar. And laughing aloud for that. For no good reason. Breaking down into tears incessantly. For no good reason. Or for too many reasons that are suppressed inside, from a long long time. Hugging strangers, absolute strangers. Telling them things I never thought I would be able to say. Some surge of positive energy that must have been. Being an absolute pain in the ass for the sober people around. Begging them to listen. They complying, not having the slightest idea of what I was blabbering, but still nodding, patiently. Holding hands. Sharing stories, bubbles of guarded secrets bursting one after the other. Checking also sometimes, if I was saying things I truly truly meant. And I was. Alcohol purifies.

Sometimes, I get drunk to get over things I can't deal with. Nah, I think that's all I do it for. Goodbyes are the hard part. I can't see my hold loosening on the present, walking into an unknown future.

I can't say that all this place has given me is happyness. Rather, it has made me sad oftener than otherwise. But sometimes you get attached to a place because of the pain it has made you go through. Because sadness gets the real you out in the open. There is nothing to cloud your judgement. And the bonding that happens with the glue of sorrow, is deep. It is.

As I walk out of the campus in a few hours, I would miss the places I sat down and cried whenever I was totally depressed. The flagpost from where I stared at the sleeping Shillong on many lonely nights. The one stair on the flight of stairs I sat down on and chatted sometimes with friends, sometimes with myself. I would miss sitting on my bed and not opening the window, because the world outside reminded me of things I despised.

Sad memory outlasts good memory.

I am this mixed bag of emotions now, trying to avoid feeling altogether. But it's true, the people I have met here, I am not going to meet anyplace else. Though I try to avoid using the word, I defy myself for the lack of a better word, it was Awesome! The connections I have made, are not replicable, the way in which I have understood people and the way I have been understood, bit by bit, I am grateful to destiny for having me brought here. For that one decision I took, to join this institute two years ago.

No amount of writing would suffice, so I wouldn't even try. I just know, where my words fail and my heart takes over. There is no suitable parting phrase I could think of. And trust me, I have been trying, trying to sum it up. But have, fortunately failed.

I hate writing about my life for real, I love being lost, as they say, in fiction and illusion and imagination. But lo, I just wrote one..

And I am bad at saying things, but I compensate that enough by writing I guess. And so I write, I am really going to miss you all!

Signing off,
wildflower @ Awesome66! :) 

Sepulchre

Baby it's all coming to an end. All my unfinished dreams. Illusions of what I could become but couldn't. Sometimes chose not to, out of pure lethargy. Sometimes due to ego. My ego killed me. My ego killed you. I finished everything. In this silent corner, as I lie down and breathe in only my solitude and breathe it out with an equal detachment, I make it a point to kill everything I love, just to rise to a level where I would become incapable of feeling, anymore.


Baby it's finished, the reality, the dream, the place midway between the two, where I used to sit and while away time. Now everyone bids farewell, with a smile, I can't bring myself to fake an expression on my cold face. My numb skin doesn't know warmth. I am consciously repulsed by it. I am incapable of feeling already. The air is sepulchral, for all I know. I won, but I know at a much deeper depth, that I failed, that I failed miserably at being human, at being a woman. 


Now, I am set to go, to another place unknown, that feels like an afterlife. Afterlife. Cheerful adieus, mixed smiles, tears of happyness I see everywhere. But why is that when I peek into myself I see regret. Written red and bold. A heavy sigh never leaves my lungs, always waiting escape, still it stays put. My tears never well. Baby I never cry. Never. 


After this page is turned, and a fresh sheet before me is laid, for me to spill ink on it, in huge blots, or thin strikes, but whatever it will be only me, the cold me..and that would be my afterlife. My life, the  one that prolongs till death, meanwhile has paused, it has reached a quintessential comma. The air is sepulchral, for all I know. I would miss that place, that place between reality and dreams, where I sat, time whiling away, telling myself, 'This is the first day of my life'. 

A Decent Burial

Now I am looking at everything through a different eye. A convalescing eye. At the end of the year, I can make out a hazy horizon, the beginning of the end is inching closer. I wish to leave his memories behind,  give them a silent burial. I wish no one remembers a thing beyond this. Like it never happened. But here is something I can't help. I can't help gathering him, in my hands, where like sand he slips out from between fingers, every passing moment. Still I would make a note of what I remember. This would help me forget faster.

He was a converted geek. You know a converted geek, don't you? A used-to-be geek, but the quintessential cool guy today.  Covetously sensitive at times, and at times the overconfident bloke tending towards sexy. Lived life on optimistic assumptions, something he couldn't make me learn, we didn't give it enough time.  Apparently down-to-earth. But housed this huge ego inside, I guess, I could never know for sure, could never ask. Though I loved him, I was a trifle scared too. You know love and fear go hand in hand, you would call me a maniac now and nail it into my head that it was an attraction, but I wouldn't agree. So don't even try. Had very very gentlemanly traits, you could trust he would walk an insanely drunk woman home without taking advantage. Even if that woman was much drooling in love with him. I am just saying, that woman wasn't me. Oh and there was no such woman. I have my own prince charming assumptions of him and this was one of those. He loved obscurity, living behind covers, when every damn person is only trying to be more known. Made him look like an outdated model of prospective mates, but somehow that didn't matter much. Love being blind, we all know makes flaws look so lusciously attractive. Was stubborn. He wouldn't let me sleep without driving home the point, his or mine! This jerked my nerves, but being on my own so long I began to doubt if it was just me who wouldn't budge. 


And I don't know if I am sleepy or what, but trying to remember beyond this I would be straining my memory. Guess I have burnt it all inside. Nothing more to bury then. RIP. Amen!

Absence

Ek so sola chaand ki raatein,

Ek tumhare kandhe ka til..

I will not confess this to myself, but I have missed you. Your absence has taken the shape of a being and stands beside me all the time. I look at me, and I see you missing. I am  a candle, will go off any moment. Any moment now. I wanted to meet you again, tell you things, nothings. Stand beside you and laugh at all the funny stuff you said. Walk with you, on a windy evening on the sea shore, waves longing to touch our feet. And keep walking and walking till we fall off at the end of the world, our feet sinking into the sand, holding hands..hmm..yea..something like that

But in your absence, I quit believing in dreams. I have..

Now I see me going round in circles near a mountain, running my hands through the cold still wind,on an evening, and dancing. Abandoned. Wild and free..with a yearning for you that is dying with every moment. My wish for you will be gone in a day or two..It's just me near the dry and dead mountain I have always so much loved. So much..

I am a candle, will go off any moment now..