A Poem for Irrefutable Sadness

Something devastating must've happened.
Else why do I feel the way I feel.

Things must be fine in a parallel world.
Wherein time ticks in a different fashion.

Isn't most things crumbling as I speak.
It's a catastrophe in this world, may be.

Dreams being crushed, ruthlessly.
Too much for a mortal to handle.

So many handicaps to be ashamed of,
And so many smokes needed, there by.

Can't take this no more.
Now that everything has come to nothing. Zilch.

Exhausted to Live

It's a dark deep tunnel. This tunnel is all that is. Look closely enough, and you shall see. Make it out. Its vague outlines, its hot painful breath. With which it shall swallow us all. Each one in its own specific way. But it does. I hope it does. Because I don't want to be the only one dealing with it. Some of us get past it. They see the world beyond, be happy, cheerful. Some others just float in the gravityless air of this tunnel. I am one of those some. I have been floating for quite a while now. Ever since I can remember I see myself floating in this deep dark tunnel. Flapping my hands, searching for the walls. My feet feeling the groundless sway and shivering in that fear. My shrieks, echoing and finding their way all the way back to me. There has been no past, no future. Only this looming present. I look down, I see flashes of light. But then that's it. 

I have come to know that, that light is an illusion. I can't make it through. Through this. I am going to let it swallow me.

Because I can't try anymore. I just can't. Cannot. Part of me, doesn't even want to. I am too tired. Exhausted for life. Exhausted to live. Whatever the consequences, be. Whatever the end, becomes. I just can't do this anymore. 

A Notional Loss

There's the notion of loss. And there is actual loss. For real, irreversible, permanent. Sometimes I stutter between the two. I threw my glass of chocolate milk in the wash basin. It splattered on the walls, the floor. Lost forever, actual loss. Ain't coming back. And then, sometimes I am frantically looking for my keys in the bag and not getting them. They are still in there, but I am not getting them. Same with looking for my glasses all over the place when they are up on my forehead, or still worse, I am wearing them. When we assume that we have lost something or someone even when we have them right there, is a notional loss. We coax the heart not to get jittery at all. Because, nothing has been lost yet. But then it deteriorates. You wake up dreaming in homes you no longer own, waiting in places you no longer go to, for people who no longer are here now. The immediate moments after you wake up, this appalling sorrow envelopes you, like you can't move. And you cry a pillow. Actual, irrecoverable loss, that.

3:00 pm

The crumple of skin behind knuckles, 

A slight itch in the corner of an eye

The corner of the shelf, where

I store our bodily smells, like I hoard them

Protect them against time

Shut out from the volatile rest 

And this untiring motion

Breathless commotion 

As a fragile constant

Tethered to my soul

The woman downstairs

In a purple-blue nighty

A child clinging to her waist

Like a creeper to a tree

Being fed from a bowl of silver

The smile of that silver, in the afternoon sun

The belly of that child

The mashed dal in that bowl

His refusal to swallow

Her persistence to make him

Swallow

Like, we do

That (corner in the) shelf, forgotten

Chasing something we can't even see. 

Can't spare one constant unmoving hour in a day

Going through circles

And arcs, circles that don't even care to finish.

We wait at the ends of those arcs, 

To automatically shred into smithereens. 

Irrevocable

Past few days, I have been struggling to live in the moment. I mean, this is not a note to self about how to make the most of what is now and other related nonsense, but. I have been trying to live, without trying to keep record or maintain any witness. Letting things come and go, trespass my mind as and how, they fancy. I have been trying this along with a freshly composed mythical list of things to do when you begin to believe that you need to rest. But has it been working.
I mean, aren't we designed to fret. When we are sad now, we can't wait for desperately things to get better. And when we are ecstatic, we keep worrying about when things will get as bad as they were in the past. When and not if. Do you see the degree of conviction in what I just wrote, out of writhing spontaneity. Like, I am assured things are irrevocably screwed up.
Anyway, I chose the unaffordable substitute of happy: ecstatic. Didn't you notice? I am ecstatic. And counting my days.

Poise & Untruth

Just asking. Is there anything, material or immaterial, in some corner of the brain, that moderates. Some secret gland, that releases a notorious secretion and makes us more-man-and-less-animal. Is there? Isn't there?

Because if I slammed every door I felt like slamming, there would be lots of fractured doors in my world today. If I told every fucktard, that he was indeed, one of those, I would have lots of enemies. If I had opposed every idea I thought was foolish, I would have become a rebel, Che type. If I had told every pretty lass, that she was one pathetic attention seeker, I would have no pretty friends. And If I would have blamed the ugly ones for being ugly, I wouldn't have the ugly ones either.

If I had revealed the gargantuan truth, that almost all of us are bloody hypocrites, then where would I find that single place to hide my shameless little ass. If I had told those dangerously self obsessed narcissists that that's what they really were, they would set my tail on fire. If I had a tail, i.e.

There are dozens of other things I would have said and done. But I didn't. Couldn't. Because of that secret secretion inside of my head, that fucking moderates me. Calms me down. Relaxes. Sometimes it makes me see that my saying anything at all, wouldn't make any difference to the course of things in the long run. Sometimes it makes me want to save my energy; lie down on the couch and watch all the drama. Sometimes it makes me believe that, it all merely seems to be, but it's not. It does just about anything to keep me from reacting in my natural flair and showing my true color.

And thanks to that secret secretion, I have become the one that I have come to be. Lazying around, writing when she feels like, opinion-less, neutral about even the most vehement of phenomenons, struggling with a rigid inability to believe, to believe in anything, anything at all.

And what did I get? Did the pluses and minuses cancel out to give me something positive that adds to make me look a teeny-weeny better in my own tired eyes? No. Nothing. This poise earned me zilch. Zilch. 

Man & Woman

Obviously we rushed in to see the new bride the moment we were told there was one. I must have been tenoreleven. And I hadn't seen a bride till then. All of those got married at night and left before I woke up the morning next. Even the air wore a deserted look after that departure. Crushed petals of rose strewn on the floor where the feast was last night, but no sign of the bride.

So obviously when told there was a bride, we couldn't hold ourselves still. And waited after one of us, tall enough, to reach for the door bell pressed it. I must have wished I was tall enough for my eyes to reach the door eye to look into the house from outside. To catch a glimpse of that burly mass covered in red and gold, beforehand. But they never made see through door eyes then.

When she opened the door in only a starched cotton sari, prim and pleated like she was some housewife in mid life crisis. Only happier. We were disappointed, to say the least. A brief while after, we were told she was the new bride of a man such and such. Who had a slight of a paunch and was old and was balding. Who had more than a couple children, stacked away in distant cities. And an insane first wife who had been shunned. For that woman was as good as dead. To him. To his children. Everyone.

And this new wife was the spinsterish daughter abandoned in a family of lots of other people who definitely had other things to worry about than getting her married off. So her years of youth had passed and settled down as tiny wrinkles on the corners of her eyes. Which always shrank when she smiled, the way she smiled the first time she opened the door to us.

I can recollect. How much their lives felt entwined into each other those days. How she would roast brinjals pricked with garlic for him. Or he would get strands of lilies for her hair.

Of course, back then I wouldn't have deduced what I now deduce. And I realize, it's ridiculously obvious how much man and woman need each other. Notwithstanding.

Now I think about them. And then I think about us.

Separated

And then there is that stage. The optional one. Not everyone sees it through but a few. Punctuation-wise it wouldn't be a comma, it's not a pause. Not a semi-colon, because I don't think so. Not a full stop at all, that would be too rude. And too un-affordable an assumption. It could be a conjunction of spaces. Because minds haunted by the said stage develop voids within.Or not. Sometimes it's not even a stage, it could last a forever. And it seems to last one anyway.

Talking about Separation. Lovers separated. Do you get how polished that sounds. We're not together. Not broken up. We're separated.  For now. For a while now. Could be a while longer. Or forever. But we're no more in love. Or may be we are. And we don't care. Because the by products of this affair are too much to take. And the stakes are high.

Also, there's no uncertainty. Only the nausea of a forced peace.

Punctuation-wise, this stage could be an ellipsis. We don't know what words to fill in anymore, so we hold the pen still and let the ink blotch into three dots. Inside our minds we keep asking, what else is there to say. Bewitched by this wordlesness, no one could say if there will be another shore. A few words after the ellipsis. Or some love that survived this separation...

Chhaya.

Chhaya. You're not beautiful. You have one of those thousand faces, that one could easily miss. Very predictable. Very rejectable. You ain't fair. And your dusky doesn't sell either. It's a bad dusky. Almost tending to dark. Tanned. Like grilled in the sun. Your lips are too thin. Very unkissable. They're not even rosy, they're a darker shade of brown. Brown lips. Your nose isn't like that of a princess. Not as pointed. And look, you don't have a nose ring either, that could have added some quotient. You don't. The eyes, they don't have lashes long enough. Not dreamy enough, no. Big eyes, don't make up for all your other lacunae. Big eyes are not worth a dime. Your hair doesn't stand up for your face either. It's not straight, like ironed. It's not curly, like curly is supposed to be. It's a mad wavy. Nobody would fuck that. Take my word. The chin, even the very end of your face is a ridiculous bony protrusion. It makes you look older. Way older. Yours is a lost battle. Your cheeks are sunken. And despite your sunken cheeks, you have a double chin. Have you asked yourself why. Because, you're ugly. 

There is no thing called inner beauty. It is one of the most pseudointellectual illusions ever created, to satisfy man, to euphemize your ugliness. Don't listen to them, Chhaya. Listen to me. I am the truth. 

And beauty is an opiate older than life itself. It's a myth because nobody knows what it is, truly is. Beauty is a bias, not even the creator could overcome, Chhaya. So I have created thee. To always remind me that your exact antithesis is what appeases.

Shameless

Before:

I am a woman, my mind flies from the first glance, to infatuation, to love and matrimony in a matter of moments. Shamelessly. It cannot be ceased, my mind. A whiff of assured company, is as tempting as life. I jump into deep holes with people I don't know, knit dreams I do not have the power to make come true. I see hope in what could be disastrous, I move fast, very fast. Restraint isn't aware of my existence. I am capricious, synonymous with the wild buzzing bee. From flower to flower I go, searching for something I do not know. And the instant I see a hint of love, somewhere on the far horizon, forgetting how tiny I am I keep flying and flying, with relentless hope. I cannot translate my restlessness into words. I do not die until my heart is trampled mercilessly. My quest is die hard. It's eager to leap into a flight, any moment, anywhere, imagining a life that is yet to be, imagining a life that is not to be.

After:

I have been a woman. I have been to the deepest pits of shamelessness that could ever be. I have been through what I never imagined I would be through.  Turning into a person I only feared I once could become. Love brought out the best and the worst in me. The catch is that even that best looks worse than the worst in afterthought. Drenched in regret, I am nowhere. The way I revealed those darkest secrets of mine, in one breath, without a pause of hesitation, now makes me wonder, how doped was I? How did I ever let a stranger peal off layers of my skin and look at my naked soul. Lust makes you shameless, it makes you another person. Another person you don't recognize once you wake up in the morning. Now is my morning. A whiff of that shamelessness hangs in the air still. And I have questions that I can only bury.

I am a woman. My life switches between the Before and the After. 

N

I have a middle name. Of the many names I call myself, my middle name is the one I never use. Somehow I am ashamed of it. No, it's sounds beautiful. But I am so unused to it that it rings too many bells and puts me on guard. My middle name scares me. I don't like being called N. But it's so sonorous, and feminine, some strangers don't give me a  chance to choose my name and call me N.

And I don't particularly dislike N, it's the prettiest part  of my name. Just that I like it being used only by the creme de la creme, the very special ones, the ones that I want to keep in my life. You know who. I am very possessive about it i.e. I don't appreciate it being used in public places, for the lack of a better word, yes public places. Lingering intimate conversations are just fine. I even remember the way N sounds in the voices of those creme de la creme.

N, strings together all my secret qualities, only those who have the slightest inkling of who I am could call me that. And no, this is not narcissism. To even have the faintest chance of calling me N, you need to know me in all my shades, the gloomy insides, the maddening passion, the stoic indifference, the end of hope. But if you're just an acquaintance, and not here to stay, you have to choose from the other offerings, D, just the letter D makes me the most comfortable. I love calling people with their initials, nicks are so passe'.

But N is ominous you know. I know if you call me N, you're gonna leave me very soon, desert me. And you're gonna be the reason behind a lot of my tears. So yeah, there are just too many terms and conditions involved. You could just chuck the whole idea and call me nothing. You could alter a few lines of fate and not meet me at all. That way, you would save a lot of my exotic tears, thankyouverymuch.

On a parting note, don't call me N. Please. Now it hurts beyond that point. You know which.

mute

idle afternoon.she sat on the chair made of cane, closing her eyes, breathing in large gulps, trying to take all the smells in. one faintly made its way to her nostrils, that of dried lilies from the garden. she followed it and stared out of the iron grille, her garden looked grey in the shade of the setting sun. all noise had settled down into a quiet siesta. she pushed the gate open, tip-toed over the thirsty land, barefeet.

the creaking sound the gate made when pushed, she was immune to. the distant sounds of a couple birds, lost in the golden sky, she was immune to. about the truck that nearly grazed her compound wall, she would never know, she never heard it.

she watched her sleeping cat, in the corner of the garage, and rolled the garden tap open. scanty drops of water made their way out, she had to roll it further. she dragged the hose to the tap, that could wake the cat she feared, all the noise that must have made..

waiting for the water to emerge from the other end of the hose, she looked at her toe-nails, it sure was time for a fresh coat of paint, probably crimson, probably purple, whichever she liked.

as the water lazily gurgled out of the hosepipe, she filled it into the cracks in the thirsty land, the dust that arose choked her. then she moved to her dried lilies, she sprinkled them one by one, wanting to bring each back to life..

as the smell of the earth rose, all the other smells too came alive. she stood there in the middle of her grey garden, trying to take in as many smells as she could, as many smells as there were. from the world that had so intentionally muted itself to her ears..

J

A few ends are brought about by mutual consensus. They happen because we want them to. But they don't sink in as fast, my system gets these hiccups, it suffocates at times, this abruptness of the end, the aftermath, I don't think I have adapted as well as I should have. Okay, enough!

The question is simple, on my face. Am I jealous? Of every other woman you now share even the tiniest of things with? I might deny it when I am totally in my senses. But right now I am not. Right now, I am just insane with jealousy. I avoid letting these instances from entering the proximity of my conscious. But sometimes it's just so hard. Mostly, it is tempting, you know. I can't help being human. I want to know about you. I want to know how much better you are doing than moi. I wonder if there is a new woman. And via a lot of unfortunate discoveries, with negative affirmations of all kinds, I end of with this bitter jealousy I can't help but write 'bout.

The wound is raw. I have not the slightest idea when it will heal. Or whether it will heal at all. We are all trying to move on. Sometimes moving on is the happily ever after. I have tried remedies and failed. I have tried to fill the void you left me with, with other people. But the feeling is like-dead. I have done nothing short of compelling myself. But the wound is still raw.

And so I write to myself, every night. In the dead of the night, I am ..engaged in an effort, to fill the void with words, and realizing that it doesn't work that way!

Misanthrope looks for Misanthrope.

The dead of the night is the best part of the day.

I am watching a movie. I watch movies on weekend nights because I like nothing else to do. I watch movies on weekend nights because they keep me from feeling terribly lonely. It's called In Search of a Midnight Kiss. The name says quite much. It's a very different movie, you know. It's worth a watch because it's worth a watch. It's about lonely people looking for love, and about life. And the print I am watching is slightly weird, it's black and white. And outside the night is black, but they have the damn lights on. I mean c'mon! Let it be dark, when it should be dark.

I just drew my curtains and closed my eyes. My breath settled on the window pane, and it got hazy. Many tired souls must be sleeping as peacefully as could be.  Tomorrow I am not going to be up till noon. I generally avoid mornings thesedays. And afternoons, when people don't just shut up, and I have to listen. Sometimes I feel like my ears are going to detach themselves from my head and fall off like dead jelly. People! I wish I could tell them, just how much I hate them sometimes. On their face. But I can't.

And I am writing like crazy because, I don't know. I really don't know. It gets so hard sometimes, you wish it wasn't there in the first place. I am sure you don't get my previous sentence. And if you did, you could interpret it in ways more than one. But don't.

It's like 3:03 in the morning, and I think I should rather get back to that movie. In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Darn! I am notgetting sleep. But there is something in this time, I am alone with myself. Together with me.

And if you have read so far..

The dead of the night is the best part of the day.

sloshed.

My Dear Daughter,

I don't know if you will ever read this, but right now I have to make a confession, to you.This moment, 1:06 pm, July 11th, 2010, I hate myself. And I want you never to become the person I am now. Because until yesterday I always thought being like me is the best thing, wild & free. But looks like those things lead to bad things that make you write to your future/non-existent daughters. So I am making a correction.

I have driven my life to a point from where I have nowhere to go. I am not depressed. But honestly, I know no direction in which I can head. I am not confused, I am sure that I have reached rock bottom. And so I am writing this letter to you. Become anyone but me, sweetie.

Following free will is good I thought. I never drew lines because I found drawing lines the hardest thing. I dictated the rules of my life. Or rather I had no rules. But that I realize is not the best idea. I have so many skeletons in the closet that it will burst open any moment now. And no matter how liberal you are, and however determined you are never to regret, never to be guilty of your actions, you wouldn't be able to help yourself.

I don't know if one day you will be for real, because I have begun believing that I don't deserve good things like you in my life. But one day, if I have you, if at all, we are going to have this long conversation, we are probably going to draw some lines for you. Probably.

Love,..
Your future Mom..

rela\pse

It takes getting used to. Words change their meanings. Sometimes you don't know if there is anything left you could still talk about. The set of your topics shrinks so much. The change is unbearably abrupt. Nah! it is quite bearable, but having a relapse is just too tempting. The boundaries of human patience are pushed to degrees where they just might give away. It is ridiculous I know, but loneliness eats into your cerebellum. It gets so fucking pathetic that it could kill your being. Memories make frequent visits, like unwanted guests.

Love has all these tantrums before it empties your heart. Like a tenant that never paid any rent and wouldn't get out either. You chose to end it because it wouldn't go anywhere. You chose to end it because you thought you deserved better than the ache.

You chose to end it and tried so much, so much to make life normal and possible without love. You would get back to smoking if it gave you another mere engagement. You talked to walls. You cried your pillow wet when alone, screamed at friends who had no idea what the hell you were going through. All that, just to move on. But even after all that self imposed penance, a relapse seems so easy. So easy, what soft putty are human hearts made of, tell me somebody!

It takes getting used to. It takes time, and quite a lot of it.

Terminal.

She looked me in the eye. Held me with them for a few seconds before looking away. She must have been thinking about this deeply. About me, deeply. I felt like asking her if I was troubled for real. Then that urge got very urgent. As she was looking away, she looked peaceful. Strands of long shiny hair fell on her face, she didn't care enough to tuck them behind her ears. It was sunny and windy. And when it is both sunny and windy, there is always an impending danger in the air. I came back to my coffee.

This had been happening for the last two months with me. May, June and now consistently running into its third, July. Every morning after opening my eyes, I felt a constant aching pain. Initially it was but obvious, the hurt after the accident. It stayed for the morning, disappeared by lunch. Sometimes when I got busy, I would totally forget about the pain. Later I would have to squeeze myself to find out if it still pained. By the time dusk appeared, it would find its way back to me. Definitely; without fail. Late in the night it would make me weep, curse myself. I would make promises to myself not to drag this any further and visit the doc the first thing in the morning.

Meanwhile, I changed six doctors. They would tell me nothing is the problem with me. They would ask me to engage my mind in other things. In anything I want to. But not think about the pain. Not worry about it the way I did. I failed in explaining to them, how on earth was I supposed to not think of it while it was the only thing irking the insides of my mind. Thinking wasn't as voluntary a process as they thought, I thought. They would tell me that I was just fine, I knew I wasn't. So I changed them. My table was cluttered with empty bottles of tonics, strips of tablets, prescriptions, my test reports. When I looked at them I felt sick. Very sick.

People I knew, started looking at me as someone who had been ill for years. Their concerns felt nosy sometimes, relieving some other times, indifferent the rest of the time. But they always felt obvious, like I was meant to be asked about my illness. Everyone knew. Many asked me what the hell the problem was. And wanted me to get a serious doc. Suggestions too came pouring in. Those helped me switching doctors.

I called my doctors up, they would stop taking my calls. They wouldn't return them even in the rarest of chances. When this happened, I got scared. Scared because, I had a disease, they didn't have a cure for. I would die.I was terminal. And they were avoiding me. So I called on her, and stared at her, at her hair fly in the windy sunny morning. Waiting to ask her if I would live.

vis-a-vis

my love is sacred, it's outrageously passionate. it's irrational and uncompromising.
your love is moody. it switches between maddening heights and unknown depths, it kills me whenn it does that, bothways
my love is pathetically possessive of you, yours is nameless
my love paralyzes me, it is as unconditional as unconditional could get, it doesn't crave for your response, yet it does.
you hold me hostage, you dictate my mind's every move
i don't matter to you, you follow the faceless like a lunatic
your love is divine, mine is human, very human
i need you and youare insatiable
i stay up like an insane insomniac, watching you sleep
you are a rock, while i explode to your every touch

it's badly lopsided..

my loveis love
and yours is not

Oops~!

one girl i almost grew up with, one of my best friends on this planet is getting married. is getting married. oh dear god. i wanna fly to delhi and give her a hug and do all the girly things in this world. none of that is possible i know. but this thing is making me infinitely happy somehow. probably because she is tying the knot with the person she always loved. and can it get bigger than that?

exactly four years ago, i told a guy that i loved him so much. he told me he doesn't love me. it took me like a year and half to get over that and move on. and move on, i did. i got practical about life and stuff. so like a few days ago, i told another guy that i love him so much. he told me he can't love me back. so to fasten that process of getting over (no chocolate is not helping, i tried) i thought i should go get drunk tonite. but fuck i have a cramp and can't walk!

panacea?

everytime i get this close to finding you, you vanish. is this some kind of game? does this have a consequence? and does the consequence by any chance decide my life? why is my patience being put to test again and again? i can't keep doing this, you know. i am tired. very sick. i can't do this anymore. seriously, don't blame me, but i am giving up. you don't know a bloody thing. you don't know what it feels to let your beloved's hand slip out of yours. this thing is emotionally paralyzing. the repetitiveness makes it incurably fatal. yeah. don't blame me. it has never been worth it. why does my quest have to end in disappointment? i don't care if my journey finds its destination or not, i want to end it now and here. this chapter needs to close, forever. because, far more important ones are waiting to begin. they need my mind too. the way i have coddled you, i regret it honey, i really do. i promise to never repeat it, but everytime you spare me a moment, i can't help myself. let me make it a point that this betrayal was the last and final. no more of this, is welcome. i need to find my fuel for life elsewhere. and you better,

fuck off!