The Crossing

There is an extremely busy crossing I walk across everyday on the way back. It took me, probably weeks to learn to safely maneuver across it. Because you can never be safe enough. A car or a bus could hit you from any given direction. There are like a hundred vehicles waiting to cross it and another hundred crossing it simultaneously. It's complete chaos. And amidst all that, tiny humans like me are trying to keep aside their regrets for the day and go home in the evening. Their heads calculating so many things at one time. What groceries are to be picked up from the store, did they run out of milk already? Or are they getting enough exercise. Is their marriage alright? Is there spouse talking to them enough? Are they feeling heard alright? And why is it that they haven't had the time to retouch their nail paint for the past week.  What would be the kids doing? Could they have gotten by at work any better today? Have their friends of  yesteryears left them behind in life for good? So many thoughts. And such a busy intersection to get through.

With the fear for dear life in me intact, I run on the zebra crossing on to the side walk and then again on to the zebra crossing and then again on to the side walk and so on. Waiting adequate stretches of time on every perpendicular road divider. Feet precariously balanced. With countless thoughts in my head too. How old is that tree? Which stands bang in the middle of the intersection. It has a trunk wide enough to be from the sixties. Or fifties. Does it flower even today? Trees never lose their virility, do they? They are forever fertile. Unlike us women. Our biological clocks ticking fast. The tree for instance, must have seen scores of single women cross it every day after work for the several decades of its existence. With their lunch boxes and vanity bags hung on their shoulders. With an umbrella in the rain,  or a cardigan in winter. The tree has witnessed so many women like me. And it will, so many many more in the decades to come. When we cease to be, the tree won't. I have a feeling it reads our minds. This tree, is a long standing witness to it all. A quiet repository of the evening emotions of hundreds of women whose footprints form in the dust and are blown away by the subtle, enchanting Bangalore breeze. 

Matinee

She was completely soaked in the plan. She went through it again and again. The show was at quarter to three. She had to leave at half past one. The cinema hall was more than ten kilometers away. And he was to meet her at their designated pick up place. She couldn't be late. They wouldn't miss the ice-cream before the show started. He had booked three seats for the two of them in the corner of the last row. So that he could wrap his hand around her shoulder and no one would be bothered. She had made a suitable alibi at home, she was away for back-to-back tuitions and soon after she would go to the beauty parlor. She prayed hard that nobody should find out. What else could she do but pray. What could anyone do but pray. She was a few minutes late and he had been waiting. She tied a scarf so as to hide her face and climbed on to his bike, and sat clutching his chest from behind. Like they do. In a minute, they were on the main road. The wind was unstoppable that afternoon. It shouldn't rain, how would she explain at home if she got drenched. Her head had transformed into this constant alibi manufacturing machine. It didn't. They licked their ice cream cones standing in the alley behind the hall. Her face was uncovered now, and people stared on, uninhibited. In her eyes he saw how nervous she was. In the darkness, when the film played, they held hands and even plucked kisses off each other. But her heart lay in her phone, which might ring anytime. What if they found out. Nobody called, though. In the interval, he bought more soft drinks and wafers. The cold breeze from the air conditioner, gave her the chills and she snuggled as close to him as she could. He whispered things into her ears, making her promise for a few more matinee shows like that. She whispered back, asking what if people back home found out. He whispered back saying that he had his way of taking care of things, if they did. She felt both empowered and bothered, by what he had said. Later, when the show ended, the skies opened up. The wind had stopped and the rain began to look scary. They couldn't ride back in that weather. They waited and waited for what seem like an hour and she couldn't make anymore alibis on the phone. She was at her wits end and her forehead heated up.They were both soaked under their skins. She was in tears, well almost. And he consoled her with all he had. That they were going to be just fine. 

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. 

A Story

Sometimes, the stories you write, don't let you sleep. At night. 

Your eyes burn all day through. Shamelessly, unbridled, your two eyes look red. 

Like you made love all night, through dawn and didn't, hence get a wink of time, to sleep. 

But that there was no real person. 

All night, you stayed up, making love to your story. 

And not getting enough of it. That's the libido of an idea. 

A plot, that is driving you insane, almost as if it's new love and raw lust.  

Each time you touch it up, undo and redo twists and turns, create pages, paragraphs and moments, it is the equivalent of touching the lover's body. 

Feeling for curves, squeezing soft flesh. 

Every pause in writing and the distant stare are like assuming and finding his arms in the pitch dark. 

Waiting for fiction to come to you is like waiting for his next surprise move on you. 

Like the act of love, writing a story is a two way thing. Being the subject and object in the same sentence. Being made love to and making all the good endless love, to him.   

The men and women you are constantly creating and disintegrating, the narrations of their face come alive so strong and so real that their faces stare back at you from the screen and you can't sleep no more.

It's like Frankenstein. But a good one. This story of mine. 

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

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. 

Breaking the Mould

Learning to disappoint is vital. I barely do it. I fit into the mould with absolute precision, the mould that is crafted by expectations of everyone around me. I don't think I have genuinely disappointed anyone in the world with the honest exception of my boss.

I do exactly what is wanted of me, supposed anybody with my age and roots would do. I wrote all the exams I was supposed to, went to colleges that were understood to be good, slogged in a regular job because money and recognition are considered necessities, cultivated behaviors that were mostly socially acceptable and harbored guilt whenever I deviated. 

But I should unlearn the above, because I indeed should peel away the sense of shame. I haven't done it yet because I am worried of causing a lot of disappointment, of falling beneath. Now, better than never, I am wanting to break that mould. I want to be unafraid of letting down my, friends, family, admirers, even my indifferent gazers on the street. 

I got an extremely crazy haircut done today. I look like a patient of dementia, or an insane cow girl now. I can't tie it up, or let it down. It looks like a mad crow has munched away my mane. The hair, doesn't go with who I have been, nor does it go with who I so desperately want to be.

Before it grows back to its past original shape and size, I just hope that this, makes me learn to stand the ridicule. Makes me brave enough to cause disappointment and move on for the greater reason. I hope that and more love to come by me, inspite of who I be.

Anyway, if you love me, you would love me anyway. Won't ya? 

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.

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

Thirty

I saw two eagles chase each other. Underneath the 8 am sky, above the February fog. This winter has gone senile, I thought. And then remembered her. Her dead disposition. How she never combed her hair. She obviously did, but how it never stayed combed. Untamed, falling off her face. And not in that suave sexy way. Rather, in a rustic callous one, one would say. In a way that didn't give a damn to being pretty. In a way that was tired of trying hard to be pretty to begin with. Exhausted. Drained. Sometimes, that dryness shone on her face, when she smiled, over-coated with glee. Clothes never matched. Tops went unmatched with bottoms. Like they were on a weird blind date. And they just turned out to be what they were. She seemed to be at peace with it. Or probably, she regretted whatever she wore everyday. I don't think so though. Ate with her hands. Licked her fingers, not a care. As locks of that hair fell off from being loosely clutched, and tucked behind both ears. Pored on the computer, working. Walked, meandered, holding a bag, that looked like something a much older woman would keep. Beside sleepy auto rickshaws, looking for one that would take her home, every night. Safe from the prospective eve-teaser. Such was life. Age wasn't on her side anymore. It never is. Nor were other things. People said things. About what she should do next in life. I wonder, if she thought, that people never had anything worthwhile to do. Or did she practice indifference. It must be hard, to practice anything other than that, being her. Being anyone. Being me. Thirty. Thirty. Thirty.

Prequel

Mirror

The feverish half sleep shrunk into which I lay on the couch and watch a film that must someday be a sleeper hit. Flapping my fevered eye lids, to keep eyes from burning more. And brooding over the hint of common cold in nostrils, oiled knotted hair wrapped in a shawl fished out of a bucket of done away woolens of last year.

Between the couch and the bed, as I loiter back and forth. Way past midnight. I halt in-front of the mirror. To look at me. And recapitulate my lack of belief in make-up. Making faces. Pretty faces and ugly faces. Disentangling knots of hair. Curling up and straightening down. Feeling the cracks on lips with fingertips. Languishing in the first few days of an early winter.

The sudden change in weather.

Hence the cold. And the fever.

Also, the hallucinations of feverish half sleep. Parts of the supposed sleeper hit film mingling with my reality and smoothening out the way into a state wherein truths don't play that much of a role. And one can survive with the sole support of imagination.

That imagination makes me suppose, that this mirror is a one way see through sheet of glass. From the other side. From inside the wall on which it is hung. And you are staring at me from in there. You, my love trapped in the mirror. Looking at me and my various faces. Blushes. The fire in the eyes. Their swollen lids. Hopes & dreams. Understanding how skin deep beauty could be. Only as deep as the eyes could fathom.

But you would be looking at my soul. And I wouldn't know. Falling for me, bit by bit. The way I did for you. And would want to keep me, as I would tip-toe the rest of my way to the bed. 

Pang

Strips of sand slipping from between my toes;
Wet sand.
Waves in my hair
Entangled
Glistening silver on fingers
That contain the shroud of a black sky
My sandals float away.
I laugh, let go
He laughs too
Urchins fish em back
He fiddles for change in his pocket
Doesn't any
Quitens them with ten buck notes
We're alone again
Stalled in time and space
I look to my side
He'sn't here anymore.
Anymore.
There's not a thing that catches up with the stab of lost love.
Nothing has, nor will

Null Hypothesis

I am force-writing this. You know how it's a custom to blog on my birthday. So here goes.

I am a cynic. I may not be good at anything I do. But I make a good cynic. I do not believe in anything. Or at least I try to believe that I do not believe in anything. And that somehow doesn't nullify my null hypothesis. But you didn't get the joke. So anyway.

Either, I,  from within am an innocent believer. But try to pretend that am a cynic. Because being a cynic comes cheaper. Nothing is at stake when you don't believe. Because you're not putting yourself out there and blah.

Or, I really am the hard core non believer that I should be. And I just pretend to look like someone who holds on to the nascent possibility that good things happen, and happen indeed. Because that way I am convincing myself that there still is at least one good reason to live.

And turn a year older on similar nights like tonite. Ta da..25!

Mundane

We are mundane. Infact, very very. Our mouths smell of the gums we chewed last, no respite from that. Our nails are undone, broken edges, scraped paint. Hair is an obnoxious bunch of callous curls. Fashion, we don't know thee. No offence, we are just too busy. Busy losing our minds and how?

We are busy losing our minds, by falling for the undeserving. We are losing our minds, choosing birthday gifts for besties and swallowing the courier charges. We are busy making note, keeping track. Of people, things etcetera. Of checking our phones oftener than we should, trying to respond to the faintest of beeps, and sometimes even imagining them. We are actually pretty occupied going all cheek bones about unreal TV characters, and watching our favorite movies again and again until we remember every single word uttered. We are content in hugging a book to sleep every night, and revelling in our incapacity to wind up the last couple of pages. We are busy feeling the smooth finish of celebrity magazines, on lush waiting room couches. And in sitting there and trying to gauge, why we are however we are.

Off late, StumbleUpon seems to have discovered my secret love for dressing up and keeps making me visit pages full of shoes, skirts, and whatnot. Good to look at, but we are not made for that. I mean, really no! We are happy with kohl that lasts years because we just don't stay focused enough to wear it everyday, or a lipbalm that always feels too deep a shade. You know the story, lets skip it, shall we.

So there we go, no time for fashion. No time to be a doll. We are just so earthy, so real. More real than real. And reality doesn't get any better than mundane. Or does it?

Earthy. She has characteristics of the earth. Don't imagine there is an adjective more exact than this. She is more real than real, if anything. Her skin is the same tone as soil. Moist clay; porous and breathing. Her hair is the roots of those numerous trees of thought that grow out of her head. She flourishes like redundant flora; into a woman whose presence was never desired. Like weed. Boundless creeper, spreading arms and legs; on walls and trees; for support; like on numerous men. And then moves on, outgrows, abandons this support, the men, those walls that only constrained. Like a snake sheds skin, she sheds memories, and leaves a serpentine trail of history; unwritten, and somehow never capricious enough. Sometimes she sits though, still like a mountain. Stares at the night sky, and reflects. Cries, sometimes a river emulates the tears emerging from the corner of her eye. A mighty masculine river that floods and washes away everything. Sometimes even herself. After the storm, she is the layer dust that settles on leaves. Also, she is the withered leaf that falls off, to decay and become the earth again.

City

This city. Of whose mediocrity I am so ashamed. Has paused and gone off to sleep; though I have stayed up to write. About; about my obligatory affections that it has come to deserve-with time-by destiny.

Its dim street lamps, merge with the cloudy evening sky. Somehow I had never noticed that mundane symphony. I had never taken a walk alone and stopped for thirty seconds before crossing the road; to stare at the damn street lamps. And their rust-ridden lamp shades. Corroded by years of rain.

Capricious thunderstorms. In misty afternoons. Pools of slush. Choked drains. Flooded by-lanes. I never cared enough to cluck my tongue and say Ah- how this thing goes on- how resilient.

How the homeless lived under flyovers. And their dark stunted children; made a life out of rolling cycle tires with a stick. How the gods in old forgotten temples, slept beneath layers of moss. And hyacinth grew aplenty in the backyard temple ponds.

School kids waited at bus stops; for their particularly nauseating bus rides; hoping against hope that it be declared a rainy day and they would run back home, tight ties loosened, shirts tucked out, tunics out of place.

I do not how or why, but I consider it my misfortune that I still live in the city; where my conscious was born; when almost everyone else has flown away. I am ashamed because, it makes me feel stuck in time; it makes me realise how sluggish my life has become. Despite my efforts to break this leash; I somehow can't.

I am embarrassed because probably; I have always been trying to run away; escape; forget; deny the existence of my roots. Because roots keep me so grounded; and I wish to fly; wild & free. This city knows the child I was. It's like a mate; which saw me puke for the only two times in my life, for instance.

First, as that nauseated school kid in a sweaty breathless school bus. And then, years and years later, as some wretch; overdosed with nicotine.

With-in

There is this room, where souls bond. Floors of mosaic, tip toed upon, lazy feet pushed, fingers slid between fingers and seduced. There is this room, with no windows. No skylights. Just four walls. Four walls that cage as much as they free. That let ignominy swallow you as much as they enlighten. This is where contradictions coexist.

From the outside, it is hard even merely to imagine that such a place could come to be.

It's like some encapsulated reality, in a capsule, which exists from the inside and other crazy things like that. Threads of connections between beings, are formed, nurtured, and shattered. Irrational, unexplainable bonds rooted in raw needs. The honesty in those bonds is almost sacred. There is no pretension in those chords that tie. And untie. Almost as immediately as that thirst is quenched, the knots are opened up. Disentangled. Free to go.

But for as long as there is that inseparability, there is no questions asked. No answers sought.

Again, did somebody ever say, there was more honesty in lust than in love itself. Or did I just imagine. Being told so.

High

High. I am so high I can't kiss you back enough.
And no matter what I do, my feet wouldn't touch the ground.
The way we are perched on the parapet. Honey. Toes dangling in mid air. Seven floors above ground.
Or is it eight.
I want to jump off, as much as I want to stay put.
And I don't want to have to explain a thing. Any-thing. I choose to be ignorant. And wallow in this bliss, longer.
Till this high sustains me. Till I survive this high, just about right, to kiss you back enough. And return the favor. So that nothing is left un-bought. Such that I should feel I deserved it enough.
And such that I can get off from here, and walk back into my room. Feet waivering though, but still touching ground. Into my bed. And back to sleep.

Summer

One summer many summers ago. Was spent walking between rows of gulmohar. And feline infested jungles. Or so we believed. Slept in sweaty dorms. With half a dozen stranger women. Dozed off till midnight by the sea with brackish water and no waves. Licked ice cream on our way back. Our slippers went missing. Walked bare-feet again. Between rows of gulmohar. Kicking amuck heaps of yellow petals. Stacked together by sweepers. Who would surprise us between wee hours and dawn. If we were woken up by a random incessant nightmare. Staring down from the top floor window grille of a near ancient girls' hostel. In whose bathrooms we sat and wept. When we PMS-ed. Or smoked. And the gardens on whose grass we lay. Biting off the ends of grilled cheese sandwiches. Soiled with ketchup. Right in the mid of May. Haggling with public transport, for the last rupee. Which wasn't hard earned then. We knit stories. Sans climaxes. For we couldn't see the end. The end, right then. Assumed that that Summer would go on forever. 

Somehow, the aftertaste of infinite freedom hasn't dwindled off my tongue yet. Even though many more summers have been by.

Ode

All the shitty movies you have walked out of, and all the suffocating dresses I have barely gotten into and barely   gotten out of, in trial rooms, whose mirrors I have suspected to be see through sheets o glass. All the summer days and the unreal mirages and real hallucinations. That we've lived through. In all these decades of our lives. Most of your unfinished paintings and my untold stories. Half dead love stories. Walks around the planet. On windy winter evenings. Each time i wore a skirt and shaved my legs. The fresh nailpaint. Cracks under my toes. The women in your life. The beads in your key ring. The letters I swept under your carpet. Letters you never read. Letters you didn't even know existed. The number of times our clocks ran out of batteries. And made us feel so stuck in time. Cozy and far away. Those cold, really cold showers. And everytime the towel fell down from the hanger and wet itself. The big fat moon. Your pictures from far away lands. Post cards rather. Telling me how you've become who you wanted to become. Your fairy tale climax. Yet the growing dark circles around your eyes. The lines on your forehead. My crazy writing. The humble acceptance of loss. The violent middle of the night screams. Screams inside my mind. My peaceful sleep. The books you read and died for. Others that you thought were a farce. The way our minds never met. Your insomnia. Your state of eternal heartache. And how I never got you. Your anger for life. That breath that you squeezed between your lungs and never let out. And other things. Random things that never made sense. To me or you. Or them.

But will always be an Ode. An ode to us. And that we aren't exactly over until we are exactly that. Over