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.

The Dissappearing Act

Your classic disappearing act. Post facto, I now know that it was an orchestrated act. But in that moment, in those moments, in those bygone years, they felt like accidents. Probably, you were just busy. Too much work. Too many presentations. Too pushy a boss, may be. Or could be that you went out for a beer after work with your buddies and forgot to call. That night. The night after that. And dozens of such nights afterward. Or were you just tired, didn't want me to see your fallible self? No, that couldn't be. I was a delicately forgiving girl. The answer was simple, you just forgot. About me. 

As I turned myself inside out. You know, and such.

How could you? 

It was my fault. I never asked. I let you off easy. 

But can I now, travel back in time and sue you? For negligence. For apathy. For pulling off your treacherous disappearing act. And not once or twice. Several times, if I may. 

You held out a mirage of niceness when you appeared back again. It made me forget. But that shouldn't have been that way. 

I should've held some ground. I didn't. 

But now, when I don't even bother to think about you, I learned somewhere that disappearing on your near ones is typical drug addict behavior. You pulled it off with such panache, were you one of those?

And your drug of choice, was by no chance me, was I.

Still can't believe, you outsmarted me, so well. Man.

So much poetry for zilch.

A Peaceable Sunday

Moments ago I had sautéed unevenly chopped onions, tomatoes and capsicum to pour over my Sunday morning poached eggs. Sunny side up. Peeling and cutting up the garlic stubs was the troublesome rung in the rather modest recipe. I like most of my food with a hint of garlic, sometimes raw, sometimes slightly fried. And I wonder, very much why they haven’t invented a garlic peeler yet. Amongst the constellation of other kitchen appliances like hand blenders, air fryers, dough kneaders, why not a tiny garlic peeler at the corner of the kitchen counter. For people who love garlic in everything.

The eggs were to be ladled with above sautéed mixture and sprinkled sparingly with a pinch of oregano. And oh, I forgot, the whole ensemble was to be topped on top of two lightly toasted breads, such that the essence from the eggs, the oil, the salt and the spices, the soul of it, gradually trickled down into the bread, just enough to make it soft and yet somewhat crunchy at the same time. The semi raw yolk of the eggs would dangle from atop the breads and leak downward, if it felt like. It was to be eaten, with the one dainty fork from the kitchen cabinet. Generous lumps of it carved out and placed in the mouth, wide open. And chomped off in between sporadic sips of black coffee.

Eggs, had such, won’t make you hungry until late past the designated lunch time. Designated lunch time was thirty minutes past one o’clock. I wasn’t hoping to feel the need to eat before three o’clock in the afternoon. Egg yolks had plenty of cholesterol to keep the walls of my stomach from releasing their angry acids. Now that I would be at peace for a long time, I opened my laptop to write, something, just about anything.

John Lennon’s Stand by Me was playing full blast in my bedroom. The air of March was hotter than February’s. The whole entire world was gearing up for the summer, when the sun would beat down at not less than fifty degrees centigrade. I will have to line my windows with bamboo blinds  to keep the sun out. Nevertheless, this transition between seasons was pleasant. The heat gave sweat patches under arms, but was not as bad as midsummer blisters from touching the window grille. Or watching your plants die if you skipped on watering them less than thrice a day. How I had lost all my zinnia to the epidemic of drought the previous year.

The previous year had been the exact opposite of the current year though. Yes, very much the antithesis. Now I am plump from being amongst no one whereas, last year I was shrunk tiny from the ignominy of being amongst the severely unwanted. Now I while away hours, days and weeks in cherubic inaction. Last year I was running errands like an insane woman. Jumping into auto rickshaws, buses and cabs, meeting strange vendors of all kinds, ticking off things off my to do list. Now I am pampering my tongue with of all kinds of delicacies, whereas, last year I was famished in the midst of plenitude. This year, I am writing prose after poetry after prose. Last year, this time, I was drained. My depression was just about too deep to fuel my writing. This year things have taken a lethargic turn towards normalcy, and I am learning to appreciate it.

My job was mundane as ever, but I have given up on tasking myself with it. I work my nine hour shift at the office. And after that and before that, I shut myself from it. Don’t answer calls or make any. I am very prudent about not spending a minute more at work than I had to. Yes, that is another secret of my newfound mental balance. I work without the hunger for any appreciation in return, in kind or in cash. Merely go about my job, write mails, read mails, forward memos, recommend approvals, rationalize rejections and quote the right clauses from the manuals when need be. Nobody guesses there is anything wrong with me and marks anything uncommon about me. They treat me like an average colleague.

I eat lunch alone at my desk, that being an excuse not to engage over obligatory formal conversation over a meal. Fill my bottle of water from the water cooler whenever I run out of it. Stand there for however long it takes for a one liter and half bottle to fill to the brim and look down so that I don’t have to exchange awkward glances and nods. Pee when I have to, four or five times a day, sit on the toilet browsing various updates on social media. I go about my day in a very documented manner. And this has resulted in a peaceable life, give or take, a couple of outbursts per week. Or month. Outbursts in which to calm down I told myself that unhappiness was not a disease. It’s not a disease. It was being specifically caused by a lot of external factors that are catalyzing my small joys into auto destruction. I should just keep distance from such factors. And not fall easy prey. That was all.

Tried to keep a diary for the first few weeks, but I minimized writing my daily entry in it day after day and ultimately stopped. After the first month I had to throw it away along with the rest of the trash because it reminded me of failure. I just had to do that. The peaceable life also ensued that there be negativity around. All paraphernalia of failure be thrown out immediately. So the diary had been thrown out along with clothes that didn’t fit anymore.

Along with the diary and the clothes, several other items are rolled in old newspaper and thrown out from time to time. Whenever waste disposal was needed, it was called upon, deliberately. Though this was a new apartment I had moved into, I had moved into it with a lot of old stuff that were not needed anymore. Because in moments of emotional vulnerability, we retain somethings hoping that we are preserving them only as a relic. However, those memorabilia, come back to life soon in our closets and help implode whatever good is left of life.

After the bountiful breakfast of eggs and bread, I checked my closet to find out if anything in there was redundant as yet. Upon a closer look, I surmised, nothing was. So I wrapped a scarf around my neck and went down to get two packets of milk. To meet my random cravings for coffee all day. Even minutes after I locked the door shut and put the key in the pockets of my trousers, John Lennon was still audible inside the elevator. Could that be grounds for eviction, I rumbled under my breath and walked into the street. The cement and dust from the construction sites nearby created a chimera of bright light and endless grey. Green and other colors were only scattered scantily on that canvas. I walked into my regular store and showed the store keeper a V shaped two finger insignia. He must by now understand I meant two milk packets. I screamed it aloud nevertheless.  

After paying and collecting the change in my pockets I turned around to a slightly familiar figure. He was at a distance. Casually leaning with his back on the compound wall of the store, one leg folded and foot rested on the wall. Freely releasing clouds of smoke from his mouth. He wore an expression of relief, his eyes must have reflected freedom bordering on dementia, if I could get a closer look. Upon seeing, he recognized me but the surprise didn’t show up aptly on his face. He has always been the understated man, always will be.

Torn apart between living my peaceable life of not meeting strangers from the past life when I ran into them and being roughly courteous, I held two packets of milk, one  in each of my hands and froze with confusion, our eyes still meeting. He gave up soon after, stamped out the stub of his cigarette after two last longish drags and after what looked like he was getting away, he was walking straight toward me. In that neat camouflage of grey cement and dust, the noise of construction machines and the hails and shouts of the dark and skinny workers, his blue shirt stood out, neatly. I transferred the packet in my right hand to my left to free it to shake his hand. He half smiled. I too half smiled, possibly. What else could I do. 

Homecoming

Stories that we keep telling ourselves. Every day. Day after day. We have become these incessant story tellers, hon, ain't nobody stopping us no more. That going through the motions is doing us good. It isn't. Every day is a disguised failure. Trembling with masked anger. Unspoken, unspoken wrath. Sugarcoated love, that only isn't. In all this rush, when am I myself? Never. I am scared that I am underacting my way through life, not pretending enough. So I overact. I laugh really loudly when I am sad. I joke around when I am angry. I make small talk when I am lost. I overwork to get rid of the omnipresent feeling of disappointment that life has become. Somewhere, a while ago, everything has shed its meaning. I keep masking one thing with another and then that with another. There are so many masks, hon, I forget where I hid the real thing. Life has become folklore's quintessential demoness's soul, stored in a chamber inside seven other chambers. 

Sometimes I recall the hallways in which I became a person. An adult from a child. Tunnel like long endless hallways with rooms on both sides. My memories are trapped in dungeons of the past. And it takes so much effort to uncover them because they have been positively hidden for my benefit. Yet I scratch that wound sometimes, hoping that probably, I would find something I left behind. And that something would help me hold on to the real and slowly unmask myself. But there too, I seem to find only pain. Only sorrow. I have nothing concrete to hold on to in the past. Because I mostly lived in imagination, partly in denial. May be I am still living in denial. Wobbling in knee high denial, you never know. Some truths are so tough to accept and internalize, I would rather choose denial. I am living in denial despite being fully aware of the scores and scores of flaws in my mind and body. Goodness, what else, is even there.

And more often than I would like, I think about the years to come. Will I continue to be this dull. This selfish, even. I ain't crafted for too many challenges, hon. In the face of adversity, I lack the fortitude. I collapse and become a shamble of bones. I wonder if I will even begin to deal with my issues, or will I have the glorious courage to accept oneself as one is. Probably, I will float in the mundane middle, forever and ever. And whatever the potential I deem to have, I shall never achieve. Will I always measure myself and never fucking free myself from the fucking scale. 

Living entangled this way, I have made chaos my home and look forward to going home. Deeper and sooner. 

Now Playing: Nina Simone's You don't know what love is. 

Yeah, hon. I don't. And I never would. Hon. 

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.

Perhaps

Again the question

How do birds sleep

Do their bulbous voluptuous bodies 

Balance on their thin tiny legs

Because a huge peepul tree

Faces my portico 

And even at 23:50

Two birds, I don't know which kind

Are fooling around on it, 

It's their time of the night, perhaps

As it is mine.

My time.

Once a friend of mine

A very dear one at that

Told me, exasperated 

With hands in the air

That I have everything

I smirked at the fulfillment 

Of possessing everything.

Now, I feel, that

My friend has it all.

Again the question

Why are we so incurably unhappy then. Why

This poem, is an ode to the truth that I have been writing something almost each night now. Writing every night is either a sign of distress. Or contentment, perhaps

Inertia of Rest

Lately I've picked up a rather weird habit. Before falling asleep, I listen to some guitar instrumentals, read my own poems and cry. Yes. And my nostrils block. But the nasal drop is in the top flap of my backpack on  the living room sofa. And nobody is gonna get that for me. So I turn sides half the night with a blocked nose and develop a slow yet stringent insomnia.

I've been living alone for the last six months or more. And it's one of the best things that has ever happened to me. There are fewer issues to be dealt with. Lesser questions to be answered to. Lesser conversations to be faked and alibis to be phrased. It's better. Definitely much.

But there's nobody to get you the nasal drop from the living room, in the middle of the night. Everything has its pros and cons. I learnt this phrase at the tender age of sixteen or a bit later. May be twenty-one. When I had begun having opinions about things. And I repeat it to myself very often.

I've never had strong opinions about many things, nor is my voice that loud. I am not that type of person. I am a classically mild person. A classically mild person who keeps a journal. In a layman's language, I am your typical run-of-the-mill loser. I am not trying to get anywhere. Except putting in all my might to avoid paranoia.

As I wrote, I read my own poems and cry. When there are at least three half-written-probably-abandoned stories waiting in my laptop for my collection of short stories. But the words wouldn't just come to me. Right now. 

Someone, probably a well wisher had anonymously commented long ago and had asked me to get myself checked if I had one of those syndromes. Asperger's syndrome. Because I am so completely shut off. You know. I felt offended immediately. But not anymore. Also another old friend/companion-of-sorts had written that life comes a full circle. That there is as much joy, as there is sorrow.

I am realizing that he is right. And waiting for my nose to unblock by itself.   

Z

Inspite of the more than a couple of times for which you have broken my heart, and for the one gigantic time, I broke yours in the end. I don't know what I would do if you suddenly walked in through that door. On the edge opposite, I sit talking to a stranger. Would I turn to face you? I would dammit. But would I freeze? Like a mummified doll. In awe of the man I had learnt to love. One can never predict, can she. Would you still have that humor, and make me ripple, the way you did, then, when we had a horizon. A time, a corner, one wish. Unlike the futility of the present. What would I do if you walked in. With your gaunt cheek bone, the ash grey sweatshirt. What would I do? Will my legs obey and stand up. Or should my eyes ignore and look away. My heart with all her fossilized pain, what would keep her put in the thoracic cavity. Would I drop her on the floor, accidentally and scream. Will I rush to the toilet and cry. Would I say hi. Or faint, yeah that would be good. I have always imagined fainting. Should you walk in through that door. 

Being Unremarkable

Looking back, I cannot remember when exactly I lost my ambition. And why. I can zero in on the why, but not on the when. I used to be one striving kid, before this happened. I used to have dreams. Hallucinations. Of living in big cities, in sea facing houses, doing some key job. Money was never exactly in the picture, but then everything does come down to money, in the end. Though, like someone said, most of who we know, only eat, work and continue to survive. Our naked eyes cannot visualize any more. Mine, can't. A few years ago, I used to believe my life hadn't even begun. Suddenly, now I feel like it's over. I am twenty six. And I have accomplished nothing major, except for getting by. By and by. Sometimes, I imagine what life would have been on the other side. Had my winning streak continued. Had I become the decisive ambitious person I was being nurtured to become. I would have been happier, definitely. 

But I am happy now. Aren't I? I have the smaller things. Most of which I am trying really hard to value. I am trying. Sure, am. Making checklists, constantly evaluating and reevaluating. Training myself to be self contained. Consciously building a routine and then actively falling prey to it. Such that my wilder shades can be contained. Trying to move towards what I find joy in doing, or atleast hoping that I would. Staying away from the things and people that nauseate me. Most things in my life are far, really fa' from working out. But I have convinced myself, everything is a gradual process.

This is mostly how I have become a decently moderate and laid back woman from a breathless go getter. I have my regrets alright. But I relish being in the shadows. I find peace in being unremarkable. 

Breaking Out

Stout diabetic man. Staring at a lunch of boiled vegetables. In the corner. The smile in his voice. His nonchalance. His apparent lack of fear, wants me to break out. The strings of gerberas hanging from the walls. In bunches, between leaves they don't belong to. In dim lit wedding days of previous besties. The angst in their voice when we understand. How bad time is tricking us. Into believing that it's running slow. When it's not. When we are losing so much and so fast of our quintessential past that seemed like nothing more than average. Until now, when suddenly we are beginning to feel that we are growing up faster than we can handle. So we pause. 

For a while, hold our wrists between our thumb and the index finger. Merely to feel the pulse. To realise the restlessness of all that blood, flowing for no purpose. Chasing something that may in the end not be. Like running toward a mirage. Wasting our destiny, erasing scratched fate lines on our palms only by worrying. Worrying that we are getting nowhere. 

When that pause ends, we decide to make our deal more peaceful. Our thoughts more legible. With more foresight. Such that we chase things that only matter. Matter more. Such that the blood through our wrists slows down. Our temples don't sweat. We sit under trees of silent thought, holding love close to our chest. Like real tight. With a respect for our own self, that we don't shy away from the mirror every time we try to look at it. 

Because, in the end, we all become the stout diabetic man staring at a pale lunch alone in the corner. And then, all that would matter is did we have courage in our soul, that absolute lack of fear. Did we stand up when we should have. 

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

unbeknownst

She would often talk about the people she met on the way. Sat on water tanks while they took baths in the river below. Lived in tents with. Painted walls with. Some of them even had the weirdest of names. Like very un-Indian names. Yet, those would flow out her mouth like water, and I wondered if she never realized how un-used to I was to those names. She would refer to them often, very often, except when we were not focusing on us, just the two of us. Lovers, they could be, current and ex-es. Both, with equal impartial fervor. Like they never went out of her head. Women, their sense of couture. Their choice of earnings. Their taste in movies, governing philosophies of life, their dark dark secrets of the under-belly. As I sat opposite her, transfixed, protecting the secrets of absolute strangers, inside of my head, creating chambers to hide them in, trying hard and patiently, with intermittent loss of attention, to remember their names, and what people they were. Those people she met, are characters in my life too. Those, who I would never see or meet. Those, unbeknownst.

And

He, had two issues with everything. One, he didn't harbor the art of listening that well. Two, he couldn't stop talking. While doing so, these numerous, numerous people would flow into and out of our conversations. Like both of us knew them equally well. He would refer to them with their surnames first. I guess. In a matter of days, we would move on to funny versatile nicknames. Easier to catch hold of. Remember. Less tiresome. I would often convince myself that I am making a conscious effort for keeping a track of everything. While mindlessly stealing glances at my laptop, squeezing in a bit of work here and there, while he went on, or switching channels on the TV, mentally dictating what's going on in what channel. These people, the ones that are so a part of his life, outside of me, have gradually begun to seep into mine. Like they are someone very close. I see them, and I really do, through him. It's funny, because they have no idea who I am. Whether I am.

They all say, and say with such balls, that the world is a small place, and shrinking by the moment. But here I am, far and away, living with so many inside my head who are unbeknownst to me, strangers except for fragile threads of unconscious acquaintance through the She & He, that I love.

unbeknown (also unbeknownst)
· adj. (unbeknown to) without the knowledge of.

Dead-end/Stale-mate

The  stillness of this room is stirring. Stirring deep insides. So, now is not the time for silence.

I do quite a few things right lately. For instance, I apply conditioner except on the roots of my hair. I do not day dream when I drive. I clean my phone-book on a monthly basis. I pray. Plead, beg, complain, rebel, abandon. I appreciate only the things that matter. Try to. Use the eff word more inside my head than out loud. I write often. Talk to friends. Reply to mails. Texts. Use smileys. I also persevere to be happy for others. Keep peer pressure out of the way. Smoke less often. Be more patient.

But, even though it's not falling apart yet, the person I dreamed of constructing from myself, is no where in sight. She isn't expected either. There was never a plan. Only a rough outline. That outline is now blotched. Like ink on soaked paper.

There is this trance I get lost in. When I try to weigh reality against illusion. Either everything is real. Or everything is an illusion.

Lately, like since last night, I have begun to believe that I've been cursed by the spite of innocent love. For I must have broken someone irreversibly. Do you believe me when I say that?

There is this sense of despair. Perennial loss. Though nothing much is lost. Then is my corrupt perspective. A constant air of gloom. Also this inability to even want to alter myself. Like some drugged complacency.

Also, there is a lack of focus in writing. You should know, if you've come this far.

October

October is a tricky month. Because it has that feeble hint that winter has arrived. But only in the evenings. When it gets dark earlier than before. And the streets light up surprising you every other day. Because you tend to forget that time has moved on, from the other end of the year, from the neater months of March and May to this month that seems to play all the tricks.

There is a faintly irritating fragrance in the air, that gave a migraine to some woman in a book you read long ago. That irritating fragrance is of a certain bloom in a certain tree that we never could trace. But every October, there is this smell. Hovering over the nostrils. You sometimes wonder if you should go looking for the tree. But nay. It just makes you remember, how in that book, they had cut down the tree so that woman saved herself a dozen more migraines, or two.

And marigold is yet to flower. In a month and a half. The mild wintry feeling, this delay that keeps the mercury from dropping, makes you warm. Warm and regretful. About why you don't use those blazers anymore. And rainbow scarves. Suddenly you miss zero degree Celsius. And icy feet. The warmth does feel worthless.

On this side of the Ghats, there is a wildflower that grows to welcome the feet of Durga. This time of the year. And if I were a wildflower, I could only be it. I don't think it has a name. And I wouldn't want you to see it because I don't want to be seen either.

October is a tricky month, because it separates the month of my birth from the month of your birth. This month stretches between the month in which I wished you were with me to the month in which I wish I were with you. And in this crazy sinusoidal fluctuation of longing, each day is an episode that underlines another waiting winter. 

Chronic mental congestion

A shaky fingertip on the button of the remote. Impatient, ready to flick any moment. And skip this one to see what's on the next channel. Then wait for a few seconds, and repeat. Merging such seconds into minutes, minutes collapsing into hours. Spent with nothing done. Nothing gained or lost. Time consumed as if it hadn't even been there. Just the mind, more unsettled.

Looking. For something unknown. Probably. Aimlessly, loitering in shady corridors of an abandoned apartment. Weekdays gone by, weekends apart. Two days of pain. And Television is no consolation. Neither is the paper. Sheet after sheet of gibberish. Unread. Stacked under the bed. Crosswords, lost at. Peace, flung into pieces. Just so you know, time doesn't pass on its own anymore.

One has to make it glide by. Slowly and slowly. But without break. One has to try to ensure that time hasn't gotten stuck. Somewhere it was. Hours ago. And that it has moved on, relentlessly. You've grown older. Just the way you deserved. And you do it whatever way you want. No body cares. Stare mind-fucked at the TV. Stash away unread newspaper, assuming you read them. Paint your nails. Un-paint them. And then paint them again. Turn sides on the couch. Look out of the window. Write. Delete. Try to forget. And then try to remember. Or cry. No body cares what you do. As long as you try to keep your mind busy when time takes its own sweet time and moves on in the background.

These subtle distractions are indeed the drug. Because save them, there is nothing. There is nothing that can numb you. And make bearable the merging of seconds into minutes, and that of minutes collapsing into hours. When nothing meaningful is gained or lost. When time hasn't passed for a cause.

Blocks of the day, filled in with utter useless acts as such. Voids, sewed up. So that they don't stare open mouthed and breathe in anymore air. Wounds, unexposed. You abandon the remote, and hold the nib of a pen in one hand and dictionary in another. Braving to begin solving the next crossword of the day.

;

Girl in the wind. Strands of hair wipe her face. Like there was no tomorrow. Girl in the wind. Stopping. Believing, in make belief. Living a night or two. In closed rooms. Away, in closed rooms. No dreams. A regretful past. Fleeting present. Like worthless. No tomorrow. Just tonite. Just she. Only I.

Stranger man. Forgotten romance. A drowned city. Knee deep in sorrow. And a love that wouldn't be. Broken promises, heart torn apart. Holding hands. No glances shared or love exchanged. A night like it never lived. A night like it was the only one. Ever. Soaked in tears and rain. In redemption, and with the hopes of many many regrets to come. With the girl in the wind.

No pictures. None. Bonds neither. Quest for freedom. Quest for love. Search for the unknown. Probably. The power of not knowing. An intoxication of uncertainty. The gutlessness of flowing. As is expected. Bowing down. Numbness. Dearth. Dearth of life in life.

Hollow shells. Hanging in mid air. Creaking noises. Discarded fates, alongside hollow shells. Swallowing darkness. Swaying by thin strands of thread. Hollow shells. And discarded fates. Like dead lovers. Like wishes that were.

Like him & I. Like only I. And the him I assumed existed. Never did. Never did.

A Time Traveller's Whim

Hundreds of years ago, a land where reality was nothing short of magic, was struck by the insomnia plague. Contagious that it was, soon an entire village was gobbled up. In the beginning, the people couldn't have been more thankful to God because they had twice the time they used to have. But gradually, the peril unveiled itself, insomnia was obviously accompanied by amnesia. People began to forget. Everything about everything. Soon they had post-its on their cows saying that this was a cow. And later, lest they forgot, what to do with the cow, a note was added that it was to be milked every morning, milk which was to be boiled, added to coffee and sugar and drunk.

In a matter of months, entire houses had chits pasted on every inch of the wall. But one thing was inevitable, the past began to erase itself. Quietly, people began to lose track of who they were, who they had been. Like their life had been reduced to a single point; now. There used to be a palmist cum card reader who used to foretell the future before the plague had struck. Now she was asked by many, to read the past. And this old woman, studied lines on palms from their very origin, to reconstruct what had been, before hungry eyes who had lost all sense of their being.

This story appealed to me, got me thinking. The past is all I have. Despite being strewn with my anger and disappointments, strangely enough I owe it my entire life. And besides, before I deny it, I have wanted to go back in moments, sometimes to etched dates on the calender, sometimes to random stretches of time. To one of those grueling days at college, when I would open my eyes after a night's journey to the familiarity of home. To one of those long pre-dawn walks, intended to go nowhere, not even to see sunrise, but just to keep walking till the calves gave up. To not staring at the crackers bursting in the night sky, but at their reflection in his glasses, and being asked, what kind of a guy I thought he was. Some changed answers could have changed a lifetime of other things, filled solitude with compassion or even love.

But that's not why I want to go back, I wouldn't ever want to change what has happened. Like I said, I owe myself to the past, as it is. But the sheer wish to go back in time, the helplessness of not being able to do so, makes me realize that I am still, no matter how frailly, connected to myself. That fleeting whim of time travel, also makes me believe that what has been has almost been a trifle worth it.

A night of memories and of sighs

A night of memories and of sighs. Awaits me. On the other side of this orangish evening. Leaning off a precarious terrace. Into dust filled air. Mild summer breeze. Sweaty summer skin. Glowing in remnant sunlight.

Feeling like the connector of fates. When she asks me a question. Should she stay with him. Or move away. He, who betrays, loses his way, comes back to beg forgiveness. She, a mixture of fiction and many realities.

I, the confidant.

Can see the unwithstandable pain, obvious in her eyes. Even when, we, women try to engage in friendly banter. Try to shift topics. To forget her heartbreak. And just be girls.

And just be girls.With hair blowing carelessly in the wind. Messing up. Skirts gloating up like umbrellas. But despair takes over. Cars on the highway. Hundreds of them. Forming human chains, homebound.

I tell her, I may listen, but cannot answer. For I don't know, a bit, about him, about her. About love.

Of accurate misunderstandings, and clashing egos, of straying fantasies, and fluctuating loyalties, of the weaning of attachment, and voids between hearts, of being pragmatic over romantic and vice versa, of expecting things, and learning to be unconditional, I do not understand love. For me, it's a thing too far away. How could I be even expected to answer her.

I laugh, and it gets to her by contagion. I don't have any answers. Nobody has them rather. The night takes over the orangish evening. Smothered by memories and by sighs. And we part.

A Room of One's Own

Her room is the best melange of any creator's inspirations. Because in her room you see her at her worst, in her element. I have lived my life shifts, changing my room every year. And I ensure I never grow any affection for any room. However I can't help a couple of memories in the cracks of my brain, left behind, by mistake.

There was once a room I lived in. Some four years ago. It was the one in which I fell badly sick for the first time and met a ghost. Probably a ghost, can't be sure. The room was stashed away in a corner of the top floor of a rickety old building. Overlooking the basketball court, overlooking a jungle. A jungle I wanted to walk in someday, but couldn't even once in those long years. And, it was in that room that I came into being, I believe. We all have some stages in our lives when we come into being. Post that I have been pretty much the same.

That room, you wouldn't like the vision that I would now give you. Summer must have been approaching quite like the devil. And it must have been a Saturday, a stolen Saturday of no work. Washed wet clothes hung from a plastic string running from corner to corner, incessantly dripping, filling the depressions in the uneven floor. Salwar kameezes and duppattas, of tens of hues, all washed, dipped in detergent and shown under a running tap, merely to ensure the smell of sweat went away, no qualms for the dirt. Wrung for the sake of it, and hung to dry across the room, squeezing into each others' space, sometimes overlapping, sometimes sliding off the string itself. In such a room, I whiled away the last chapters of adolescence, with my generous share of heartbreak. Waiting for the clothes to dry, so that they could be folded and stacked in a shelf in the wall.

But they never were. The life of my clothes ended on that very string. They were worn right from there and thrown back after use, probably awaiting another wash. Who knew! That string must have become the delicate balance of my life. Because one day the loose nails hammered into the walls that held it, gave in after some mild encouragement from a visitor, some random intruder. And down came the string, along with my world, thrown astray on the floor. I stood there, for a moment, celebrating the sheer shock of it.

Trading Dreams

They sat beside each other, in a room dumped with books. Books here and there and everywhere. Piles of them. Some torn, some yellowed. Their covers falling off, she was tired of stacking them one above the other. A slight imbalance would make the whole stack come down like a humpty dumpty and she would gasp and begin all over again. There was a kind of warmth in the room. A warmth that had nothing to do with the late summer afternoon outside.

It was because of the  presence in the room, because of his arm touching hers. No hair stood up, no one got goosebumps. That proximity, that lack of distance, brought about a peace that was rare. All noise as if had gone off to snooze. It was a summer afternoon with books and scarce conversations.

He was typing away, something. She felt no quest to see what that was about. He would tell her most of his stories, the rest she knew. He assumed. They had known each other a few months. But it felt like much less than that, there was always that freshness, that expectation of unlocking a few more secrets about the other.

Sometimes it felt longer. Mostly she had to strain her memory to recollect how she had already lived a third of her life, alone. That would be the most unusual thing however. Company makes you forget what you are for real, under your skin. Only austere loneliness makes known the inner person.

Togetherness, on the other hand conspires sharing. Even of those fleeting dreams we secretly nurture. Away from destiny's prying eyes.

'I want to be in a city that is all of water.'

'Shouldn't you learn to swim?' he laughed.

She continued as if he hadn't said a thing.

'No streets, and you move from one house to another and even shop using a boat.'

'Isn't your wish to perennially float in thought converting into this one?'  

'You know I have a complicated right brain, very very mysterious.'

A prolonged silence followed. She leaned on his shoulder, breathed in sighs at times. Toyed with his nails, put her fingers between his. They clasped.

'I only want to write.'

There was a pause, like he would continue to explain his dream. But that pause stretched into a lull. Her expectation of a continuance died after a while. 

They didn't turn and look into each other. They be that way, she leaning on his shoulder. Nothingness prevailed. A moment froze.

Years later, years that seemed like longer than they were, she was glancing through his pictures of Venice. His broad glad smile, and water. Everywhere. No land, no ground realities to struggle against. Afloat forever.

And she was hung in the middle of writing her maiden story. Looking for words, sketching a character.

Love makes us like each other. Conspires sharing like said. And sometimes it makes us part to live each others' dreams.