a

In a, the man hid within the child and the child took refuge in the man. Things came to an abrupt end six years ago for them because she couldn't take the ignorant child that showed up when he was trying hard to be her man. Back then, a had been striving for real, he did all the right things. But she couldn't do justice to his efforts because she was young. Twenty-five can be a flimsy age. And she was not as mature as she thought she was, thinking back from the current day that is. Time is a simple scale, keeping a decent record of the events in her life, but at the same time, it is immensely illusory. Time gives her ideas, and can concoct chimeras. Though she could have been a truer version of her self at that age, but she hadn't fructified that much back then. a imagined her to be as innocent as she seemed, but in her mind, she was much smarter. Sometimes when a put her in her place, she was mortified. But a leaned on her, despite all his gathered cynicism and practicality of a thirty (something) year old man. He resigned to loving her because he couldn't believe even after having lived through broken relationships for so many years, he could land someone so naive and juvenile and beautiful. a immediately grabbed her with both hands (metaphorically) and asked her to be his, in the not so subtle language of flirtation cum mild anger cum frustration cum i-am-smarter-than-thou innuendo. At twenty-five however, she thought that she was like forty-five and had no time for a. Because after shitty over geek-ed teenage years and dull college life and terrible work life, she was so done with all this. Blinded by her magnified self image, she couldn't completely understand and appreciate when a told her that she was so young, almost like a sapling and all this would fall in its place when she was a's age. Really, it would. He even held her hand and consoled her. That now what looks unbearable would feel like child's play later down the line. And that there were newer chapters of life, they could explore together, if she gave him a little space in her heart. A tiny space, is what a had asked for her. Ironical, as it may sound, her heart was empty then, except for the erogenous ideas that filled it thanks to her heavy social conditioning. And yet she wouldn't give him that tiny space. And repeatedly put him in his place. And that's when the man in a would take backstage and the child would show up. Irritated for he found no reciprocation for his feelings from her, flabbergasted at how she could let such an opportunity of love just pass her by, a thought was she that dumb after-all, contrary to his ideas of her. And she would assume that a was just flirting because he wanted to get laid. It all melted down to sex, after-all, didn't it.

But, if you can fall in love with someone post-facto, that is, a very long and abstracted post-facto, with six years between that and now, today, when she ran her fingers down those old conversations of theirs, refreshing them in her exhausted memory, she understood a from the perspective of a thirty (something) year old woman that she now is. And a makes tremendous sense. Bless him. She fell for him, post-facto. And if apologies work this late, she's sorry too. 

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. 

Saturday

She's dressed in three-fourths and a T. Her hair is braided thick and knotted up into a clutch. She's twenty three. This September. Sitting before the television, she's completely focused on her plate. Like, she hasn't looked up at the screen even once. Today's Saturday, it's the weekly off from her dieting schedule. Earlier, she used to take breaks on Sundays. But with Sundays being the days of special lunches and special  dinners, she began eating more in one day than she had forgone all week. So she included Sunday into her dieting schedule and took  an off on Saturday. On Saturdays, she ate whatever she wanted. All the junk. Rest of the week, she lived mostly on salad and low fat milk. 

All she had on her plate was a bed of white rice and atop that, three curried eggs. One is good. Two is too many. Three is beyond glutton. Three egg whites, three solid yellow yolks. To be nibbled slowly, broken down with fingers and mashed into the curry of numerous flavors. And to be licked off each finger with infinite delight. That delight, should fairly encapsulate the renunciation of the upcoming week, the agony that her taste buds would go through with meal after meal of cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. 

All this for what! Slimmer thighs. Such that those old jeans didn't embarrass her as much. For that romantic interest of hers to spare a second glance. Too many reasons. No more brooding, she told herself. 

Outside, it began to rain, an unexpected afternoon shower in May. With the thunderstorms, et al. That familiar smell arose from the soil. She rushed to the terrace. Lines and lines of her clothes, leggings and scarves hung to dry in the free summer sun were half drenched already. She had done laundry all morning. Not for this. She gathered as many as she could and piled them on the floor downstairs. And then it began raining too hard and the breeze was unreliable too. She gave up on the rest of them. Still handing abandoned.

Her next door neighbor, her aunt, screamed from her side of the balcony after the power went off. It was pitch dark. She switched off everything. Lightening was known to damage electronic devices. And obviously, her mother wouldn't be able to buy them a second television or a second air conditioner. She unplugged them all and sat on the bed, quietly continuing the remnant of her meal in the dark. 

Baker's Delight

Do you remember the year of depression? Because I do. A terrible year that. 2015. I don't know, why exactly I realize this just now. Now, that another year has also almost followed 2015 into the bygone and the forgotten. Yet, I cannot cease myself from writing about it. 

The weekdays used to be delusional. You understand the kind of delusion, when you cannot recall how did things get so worse. You cannot recall the steps, the small pouches of misery coming in before the surfeit of it choked your throat. And you ask yourself, rhetorically though. Only one mere word. Why.

That kind of delusion. That could nudge mental heath enthusiasts off their comfy couches. It was concerning. But what was more demanding of empathy was Sundays.

I recall, it started with a rant of not-feeling-well to I-feel-like-cake. I poured an instant cake mix into the pressure cooker as directed on the cover. And, voila. An amorphous antidote for depression. I knifed it out, spooned it out, in crumbs and that was the first of numerous.

I took to the heavily underused microwave then. And blatantly decided to mix my own batter for the better. Better batter. And boy, did I bake some mediocre unpalatable stuff. I am told baking is so simple and often asked, how can I be bad at baking. But I just was. Probably it as my mood. My mental heath, as enthusiasts would say. 

I was battling my own wars. Arguing, screaming. And almost simultaneously baking. I whisked flour, eggs, milk, sugar. Sometimes bananas. The baking soda was either too scant or too much, it always failed me. I was in tears. Chocolate powder or vanilla essence, nothing sufficed to fill the holes in my soul. The knife I stabbed into the cake to check if it was done, I weighed against it the option of stabbing it into myself. I couldn't handle anymore questions. I had no answers. 

It was such a ruthless time. And I was so callously lost. 

I Google-d newer recipes to keep my mind engaged. I once baked an apple pie with a bunch of overripe apples. I distinctly remember baking my personal favorite, the caramel custard. Cup cakes were done too, Jars and jars of Nutella, and Hershey's chocolate sauce. Powdered sugar as icing with cherry toppings. 

But nothing helped me as much as I would have wanted to be helped back then. I would cut myself two generous slices on a plate and go to bed, every Sunday afternoon. The rest of the cake would lay on the dining table next to the microwave, untouched. Sometimes, I ate the rest of it, on week nights. It didn't matter. 

And then suddenly, things changed. Both for the better and the worse. It's hard to imagine it bothways, but it's true. And I stopped baking altogether. Probably because I don't own a microwave anymore. Amen to that. 

One by two

Do you remember that chicken soup corner at the end of the street. Where there was a huge banyan tree, and the road forked. You found it the year before I was to graduate. And boy, did we make the most of that. The first time you bought soup for me, I had been down with the flu. Influenza, as you would call it, it was a thorough windy afternoon of winter. And the warden's assistant called. I had a visitor. You were waiting downstairs with a tall plastic cup in hand, your face seemed smaller, your glasses covered most of it. You looked a different boy from afar, very apart from the backbencher-latecomer in class. The soup was only lukewarm. My shawl din't stand the breeze. Your t-shirt had swollen up, the wind got in and bloated it up. Like a balloon.

Three days later, when you had gotten my cold, we had walked down to that soup corner. Together, for the first of many times. It was only a shack, back then. Boys and girls, sat in pairs, stood in pairs, about the cemented base of the banyan tree, cycles parked in tandem. You shook one and the entire pack would collapse, one upon its adjacent. I actually wanted to do that once, shake on cycle and run for my life. Or pretend that nothing happened. Like a poker face, you know. You always asked me to confine that idea to my mind, for the better part of the year. And just drink the soup. Chicken noodle soup. Fiery and hot. One by two. 

Everytime, later in life, I split soup with anyone, I would think about you. Everytime, I see anyone read Chicken soup for the Soul, I would miss you. Hoping you were around, then and there. Sometimes, when I see a banyan tree, centuries old, and pause to see it some more, it is as if you are there. Like literally. And then I see the fork in the road, I realize again. Hands are held, till the road forks. 

May

The stink of henna on her hands kept her awake. She was in one of those, umbrella cutout kurtis, that bloat up in air, from right below your chest. The kohl that day, was thicker somehow. More blatant than usual. It was, the kohl, made of the same black ash her heart was composed of. You know, how that is. It was a day in May. In the month of. See, how that untidy little month is named after a tricky adjective of uncertainty. Like the lover she may or may not meet. Like the clouds that may or may not give in. That afternoon. Of a late day in May. With waiting rain, and blistering summer. Her dusky had gotten closer to a color of charred chocolate. She constantly felt the prick around her newly pierced nose ring. Almost like the constant persistence of a heartache. During all this, the storm hit. Not the cherry blossom precursor to the Monsoon, but the kalbaisakh. Violent winds swept rooftops, rain filled into roads like a river. The lightening cast a chill down the spine. But nothing could stop her. She has this thing. Of being possessed, and chasing without any thought, mirages that tempted her. She wanted to be with the lover when the first rain struck. And though she was already delayed, like the rain, still she had to make it. To him. So she closed her eyes. And leaped. You know, how that is. To make the love, that may or may not be. May or May not. 

Make Belief

You make, I believe. Some other time, I make, for you to believe. Calm your jittery nerves & vice versa. I love, and feel loved myself, consequently. Love begets love. Bricks accumulate mortar, by themselves, for their affinity to cement, to make passion to stay. And build walls, roofs and floors, homes, to stay in, windows to look out from, hide away in. Plans get scribbled, ambitions toned up or down accordingly. Tiny steps taken, in unison, like a baby learning to walk, stumbles and falls. And then talking takes over, endless endless conversations. A word for word. Breath for breath. Sigh for sigh. Blink for blink. Sometimes, you make, I believe. Sometimes, I make, you believe. 

Kink.

Many a time, it feels like, we are watching a movie that we faintly now remember that we have watched before. As each scene unfolds, we recollect it from our shallow memory, though to begin with, we felt like we hadn't ever seen it. Hasn't it ever happened to you? There is this duality of experience, of the beating curiosity of what is going to happen next, and the moment it happens, a boredom settles in, because we knew that was how it was going to turn out. A suppressed sense of repetitiveness drops by home, life becomes an odd summation of our failed projects. How we never got that job, never got to meet X, never traveled to the city afloat on canals. Though the surreal motivation stays that we aren't dead yet, and we do have the time to do whatever we want. Yet, we never break the rule, erase the line and run off, like a wild child chasing our dreams into the wilderness. We do not outgrow the safety of status quo. And this way we witness a lot of tomorrows become yesterdays. 

Only sometimes, the purpose of bad fate is defeated, and we drip with ecstasy. Quite like the substance itself. The vigorous powers of pure love and undiluted freedom, however momentary can make many a banal life worth its salt, sweat, blood and tears. In those certain moments when we get tired of breathing in gasps and fretting and cursing, life chooses to make a complete fool of us by showing us one momentary glimpse of what having everything we ever wanted contained in a moment could mean. Saying just that it sweeps us off our feet would be an understatement. Saying that our heart, our tortured fossilized unloved heart, leaps out of our thoracic cavity would be an understatement. So I wouldn't say much, would I?

In one go, it heals the estrangement for forgotten friends, our regret for lost career goals, our failed nomadic ventures to be a traveler of the world, the sense of awkwardness that we never per se fit in. Fuck, it almost begins to heal our heart, our tortured fossilized unloved heart. 

And sometimes, it feels so surreal that I hope it's not just the goddamn sun in my eyes.  

Acquaintance.

You are like your own reflection in water. Disappearing into waves every second. Unsteadily swaying in and out of my shattered heart. You. Are just like your reflection in water. Now you're here by me, the moment next, you aren't. I can't say. You won't say. A word about what would happen hereafter. We won't take that chance. Too much is at stake. When you are here, though you are vivid, assertive of your presence. Loud and clear. When you aren't, you are only an imagination in my mind.

And I am a woman of minimal means. I am never beautiful enough. Only men who have spend sufficiently long enough time with me, alone, fall for my internal complications and hidden falacies. It's almost obvious that I am not obviously beautiful. And I believe you know this for a fact. Yet you hang around. And then run away. As you fancy. I do not understand.

Cue.

Anklet on her left foot. Silver, like a snake. Curled, cold. His lips froze when he kissed it. Luscious curves of her feet. He ran his fingers across. Warm fingers on cold feet. Shy feet. The right one, anklet-less. Ignored to begin with, lay quietly, fuming. Then later toyed with, blushed pink. The anklet on the left made stray noises. Clinking noises. That pierced the silence of hours past midnight.

Toe rings with black dots. Dot like stones, studded in the center. Shone in the dark of the room. The trapezoid nail on the big toe. The longer middle toe. Swayed in drunken haze. Like crazy in love. The other three. Stood fixed like three tiny spheres of lust. The night skipped a phase when he took the ring off and looked up.

At her face. A melange of emotion. Stricken in lovelessness, the past had left lines below her eyes. In the protrusion of her chin. There was a question in the arch of her eyebrows. Which asked, now what? To him. Who couldn't hold his heart from thumping out loud, still awed at her feet.Her eyes were sinking in ecstasy, though. Ecstasy. Taking a cue from them, he moved up. Up. 

Design

If we obeyed design, the body would have three centers. Collinear. Running across, its central axis. Making us fall apart into symmetrical halves.

The first center would be where our eyebrows meet. Like lovers tilting toward each other, gradually inclining and then secretly meeting behind the camouflage of scarce shoots of hair. But meeting nevertheless. And giving birth to the sanest of thoughts and ideas. Intellect. This must be the brightest spot in the body.

The second  would be where the clavicles meet the sternum. The exact center of the chest. From which emotions arise. Into which I collapse when the world doesn't stop chasing me. This point is the mother of all longing.

The third  would be the navel. Which is the center of being. Which sometimes makes us see in black and white. And sometimes in such myriad shades, that we go insane. It reverses all the science that is. And makes us sway to the whims of a quest that could never be quenched.

But we do not obey design. Any design. There are no symmetrical halves, we are falling apart into. We are mashed up, very twisted. Every vibe that arises, we don't know where it comes from. From the center of intellect, longing or being?

Every atypical mood swing, each pang to binge on food, every sudden depression and random elation, the mellow shades of romance and the utter stabs of heartbreak. Like literal stabs in the chest. And the warmth of tears on cheeks. We don't know what's leading us where. What's leading me where, and why.

Home

The odor of Quicklime. Dampness of naivety. Empty walls; not a nail dug in. Sandpaper polished floors of mosaic. Ladders leaning on walls, stood on to paint the upper reaches. Stools toppled. The fresh varnish on window grille.


I saw a home today, since then I have been pining to write this. The window ledge is wide enough for me to sit on and write. Unrestrained. There would be just about enough space for your books & beanbag, after we have spread out the couch. I am not imagining all this, as I stand in that empty living room, I can see it like it were real. That close.

The smell of shampoo in the shower, my lotions, creams crammed on the bathroom shelves jostling against your shaving kit. Clothes dumped on our floor. I can even hear your voice, shrill and loving, calling out my name. My faint response, a headnod, not realising that you're not in the same room and cant't see me nod. All that.

All this, standing here now, staring at the pond that begins where out portico ends. Lilly buds in its dark water. The mild forest air. Dozens of eucalyptuses. Our windows, facing east, south east. The coarse touch of the curtains. My fingers can almost feel.

The bedroom, keeper our secrets, witness of intimacies traded in faint lit long nights. Closets, worn clothes stuffed in the bottom shelf. Our smells caged inside. Breaths counted, kisses stolen. And sighs. And sighs interrupted by broken laughter.

I saw our new home today. And I needn't write anymore.

Man Woman & Child

Summer afternoon. There is a drizzle waiting in the air. A patch of golden sky, is visible above the shoulder of the woman. It's reflecting on the window pane, and she's leaning out. Her thighs are oozing out of her shorts. And there's gooey face-pack over her face. She's waiting for it dry. It has dried up in parts, developed cracks and can be scraped off already. The breeze has just gotten cooler.

Unopened boxes lay on the floor. Like someone has just moved in. Or is about to move out. There is dust on the floor. There's some stuff outside too. Some things. Like a rocking chair. Left alone in the corner, all by itself. And there's a scarf tied around one of its arms. A few books. Hardbound, with the author's name fading into an insignificant golden yellow.

Just like the sun that reflects on the window pane. The wind has become virile now. And the window pane bangs harder. It might shatter into shards of glass, tonite.

The woman has moved away, into some deep insides of the house. And there's of course the child, rolling on the floor.

The man however is, invisible. 

Antidote

I don't keep a picture of you. I would lose my mind if I did.

So I look at mine.

Strangely enough I am the only thing that reminds me of you. My love for you shows shamelessly in my picture. Between those eyes of mine, I see you. In the curl of lips, the mild pout, I see you. Definite memories of you.

It's a helpless situation. Because, now I can never get to you. Nor will you to me. I have desperately ensured that we lose each other and that every strand of contact be broken. And now that there is nothing between, you and I, I feel love. Nothing but love. Pure, stagnant, glistening, love. For the first time in forever. I feel assured that I love you. There is no glitch or doubt.

And yet I don't feel helpless  at all. Could be because I have learned not to hope. I have drawn a line & abandoned the world on the other side.

Nevertheless on some nights, I cry. And cry relentless. My mind missing out on that line between truth & untruth, I sway into thinking, wondering how would I have been if I had you.

I would have been like me, in that picture.

Continuance

Decades ago, there was a bride. A sari crudely wrapped around her frail figure, whatever skin showed, was filled in with gold. There was a groom, and that old grunting ambassador adorned in threads of jasmine. A dozen drunken men, dancing in mad moves; a perfumed night. Dimming yellow bulbs, shamianas hung out, colors of which aren’t readable in the black and white pictures now stuck on forgotten albums.

There was a bride, not too young, not too old. The groom may or may not have had a moustache. Nobody had seen nobody. Love hadn’t been discovered in those ages. Decades ago. Hymns were read out, women with saris drawn to their noses, sat beside the summer night fire, and dozed. Funnily enough, there is no proof to that demi-heavenly drama. Almost everyone must have been half asleep. But there is the continuance.

Continuance. Scores of fights behind bedroom doors, disagreements, many scars. Children born and fed because they had to be born and fed. Who grew by inches in months, and fell apart. Strings of the womb couldn’t hold anyone together. Each had a mind of his own, too many minds inside one rather.

They fought over who should have the TV remote, they sat on terraces, hidden, stealing a smoke every now and then. Each tenaciously clutched her own secrets, under one roof. Nothing shared, not even glances. Slept turning sides, secretly hating each other. And still posed for photographs together, some of them framed and kept in the living room. Space became a problem, the big problem.

And so the menagerie was complete. Too much for continuance!

Portrait of a Woman

There is a love that unsettles you. One that makes an unbelievable, wildly passionate, insane maniac out of you. Also, there is another, which makes you know peace, makes you grow roots. But who could choose..

She would write in wild bursts of energy. Words that, least to say never flowed rationally, from what was written before. Every new scribble felt like a non-sequitur. There could have been a flow though, not an obvious one but. A connection too vague, in your plane. Too obvious in hers. No body read her mind, she wouldn't stay as long to let them.

In unwashed jeans and with the collar of her jacket raised up, she would roam around. In this obscure, neglected hilly town. Wherein she arrived because she wanted to be treated like the town itself, thrown away, forgotten. Dwell in absolute solitude. Once a month, she would while into the grocery store, hurl in jars of coffee and packs of cigarettes into her bag. Like she was greedy, and she wouldn't survive till her next visit there.

She would walk back, glide rather, on the uphill roads breathing in the sooty exhaust of standstill cars in unending traffic jams. Panting, underneath her layers of wool and the jacket with the collar raised up. With an umbrella in one hand, that she would throw away the moment it rained, and get drenched. Would stop at the most unpredictable of places, never take pictures, or notes. Visit the wildest of dreams, clandestine brothels, deserted monasteries, abattoirs. Stare, with still eyes, a mocking cold glare in them, and move on.

She had abandoned, nobody knew how many accomplished years behind. Middle-aged she was. With no past. No future, only a fleeting present. With a quest, a faint one though, to empty herself into words. And to live by those.

Alone, you soak pillows, yearning for love. In the company of a man, who doesn't get you, you're lonely. On a lunch table with family, you feel even lonelier. More the listless souls, the more left out you are. In a crowd, you feel the loneliest. The only company that survives, is the one which is drawn to you by the measureless understanding of solitude..

Living, Without

She opened her medicine box twice the same morning, she had been becoming forgetful. She smiled and shut it the second time. As a kid, she had always confused senility to be a synonym of insanity. And now, she laughed at that silly childish misunderstanding. She never lost track, as such.

But despite all the forgetting, she sometimes remembered too much. Most of which had never happened. They say, you live your thoughts. The subconscious must be a tricky thing you know, to make you live in a world of make-belief. Rather, live on a past of make-belief.

For instance, the gulmohar that dusted off on both sides of the road they walked by. Some red flamboyance, covered the dull asphalt, wind carried the rest away. Some came back and stuck to her hair. He carefully plucked those and placed in her hands. She smiled. Like she smiled now. That road didn't exist, neither did the gulmohar, nor they.

For another instance, those conversations didn't exist. Things she thought he had said to her. She must have imagined them all. There weren't many witnesses sans he. And he wasn't anymore, with her. She deleted the rest (of the witnesses), in a drive of an impassioned massacre, hurrying lest she gained consciousness. Because she wanted to live in belief, rather than without.

Her ridiculous excuses should make you laugh, but the wrinkles on her decaying face would deserve your pity better. You would let her die uncontradicted. Live some more, uncontradicted.

She remembered, she met his mother once, at his ancestral place, and blushed back at him, her firm cheeks then, in faint baby pink. She had imagined the curtains at his place and the other details etcetera.  Everything, as it should have happened. As she yearned for it to happen.

But it didn't. So she lived, without. Only imagining that she lived, with.

Our feet
On wet sand, digging puddles
Chasing crabs into their holes

I stepping into your footprints
Guilelessly, in abandon.
Foam of waves, receding from our toes

We stand still
Our fingers melted into one
My toe ring of silver, glistens like a star in the sea

Sky split into a brilliant dusk
Not even birds, it's just us
You & I

I write our names on the sand
You wait for them to be washed away
And then you laugh

That intoxicating, open mouthed laughter
Waits for me to join in mid-way
I feign anger and walk away

And you console me
The sea won't stand our names
Because we're not forever.

Nothing is forever.
That we're here only for now
After a day has ended, & another hasn't begun

And I am deep in a dream.

Conjunction

Once two souls met high up in the hills. They sat in smoky cafe's through cold afternoons, and walked damp monsoons through obscure streets. They lived in the woods, amongst tall pines, glistening away in their leafless autumn glory. Season after season, their life never ceased, the hills too knew them by heart.

They would follow the noises in the woods and the hills, go wherever they were taken, without thinking a bit or taking a step back. They were immersed in a sense of adventure, the one that is associated with new found love. And that love never weaned. It only grew. It didn't grow either, all of it was there, an entire world of love was created the first moment their eyes met. And they kept discovering newer chunks of it everyday. Everyday. Endless excursions into the unknown. Fearless, alone, together.

Many monsoons came and went by, and they lost a thousand umbrellas. Forgetting them at the most quintessential of places, never turning back to get them again. Those orphaned umbrellas were the symbols of their hallowed affair, like remnants left in the places they frequented, like the whiff of a kiss that lasts long after its gone. They did that consciously sometimes, forgetting had become a habit, an open excuse to get drenched under the skin as the clouds came pouring and pouring down, relentlessly, night after day after night.

The most alarming charm in the bond between them was that it didn't exist. They were so deeply and undetachably connected that the bond had diminished into non existence, they were sooner and sooner becoming one soul from two, merged, siamese. Siamese souls. Like the thread tying two objects together, shortens as they get closer and vanishes one day as they add up to become one. Shamelessly, defying the rules of nature.

This story isn't real, of course, nor are they. But I see them around all the time, I see them in me all the time. And this is crazy writing.

Lest I forget, now that I quietly leave this place in a week or so, I wish to etch the two souls somewhere deep in the heart of these hills. Bury them here, to rest in peace, as I move on. Fearless, alone, together. Conjuncted. 

Sequel to She.

Just woken up from a long afternoon slumber, so long that she couldn't recall when it had actually begun, she loitered around the house in tiny steps, tip toes rather. Pretending to be careful enough not to disturb anyone else, but there wasn't anyone anyway. Her hair, her hair was a mess, it finished just above her shoulders, like ending abruptly and the circles around her eyes were smudged with faint dashes of kohl. She must have cried in her sleep or something. Wondering if she looked like a runaway drug addict, she looked into herself in the mirror. But began looking for wrinkles thereafter, had a few new ones appeared recently? She couldn't remember. And resumed walking around, shutting the windows as it was evening already. And as it was summer, as is usual with summer evenings there was a huge dust storm gathering itself just outside her window. Attracted to storms as her usual person, she couldn't get away from the window for sometime, staring at flights and flights of dry dead leaves being carried away by the wind, lost in whirls of dust. That wind, looked like some kind of emancipator. She stood by the window letting cold gusts of it touch her face, the day as is usual with midsummer days had been very breathlessly humid, and she had literally tricked herself to fall sleep earlier after turning sides an uncountable number of times.

After standing there till her heart's fill, she moved away from the window. Looked at her reflection in the floor, the tiles were shiny and refused to give her a distinct picture of what she looked like in that long black T shirt that reached somewhere the middle of her thighs, leaving the rest of her legs uncovered, naked. Again, she lounged on the couch and threw those legs on the table adjacent, like they weren't even hers. Like they weren't even hers. And began ransacking the place for the remote, there must be something going on on TV! Could you tell she was twenty-four? Or thirty-six? Or Forty-two?

Find the prequel here.