The Egg-seller & other stories

When I was a child, and this I write from honest memory, my world was much smaller. Not that now, I live in a larger world. My world remains the same size, or perhaps, it has even shrunk to convenience me. But I know that there is something huger beyond my sight. Something vast and intractable. As a child, I had no idea.

I walked a few hundred meters to my aunt's place where my school bus picked me up. Spent the whole entire day at school, picking which battles to fight, and which to let go. Was dropped off exactly where I had been picked up. I stayed at the aunt's till my mother got back from work. In the evening, I sure ate some noodles and watched some cartoons. Did my homework and went to bed. I remember the orange grey light that filled the rooms. The papaya trees that grew just outside the window, beside the ones laden with drumstick, always tempted me to stretch my hand out and pluck one. We lived on the first floor. There was a thorny tree full of sweet berries just outside my parents' bedroom. I could stand on the bed and clutch a fistful of berries.

But the egg-seller broke the routine. I am not saying, there were no other sellers. There was the little girl, my age then, selling balloons and flutes and loudly playing them in the streets. There were mobile snack sellers in the afternoons, candyfloss, fruit cakes, ice-creams. There was a quiet grocery store man to whom I was sent with money to buy noodles.

On my trips to the grocery store, I noticed the egg seller next door. He sat in a cabin with an asbestos roof, with a face that gave away nothing. He looked neither happy, nor sad, neither content, nor dissatisfied, neither angry nor impatient. He looked like nothing. Just a middle aged man who sat at the edge of his cabin selling eggs in paper pouches to whoever came by. People said he was a wholesaler and had bought much land and property just by selling eggs. Perhaps, they were just stories, we would never know now, would we.

But what attracted me was the pungent smell of boiled eggs, emanating from his shop every evening. He had a helper of his own, who chopped onions and chillies back stage. The egg-seller neatly pealed the boiled eggs and split them into two with a thread strung out. Then he would place the egg on a small piece cut out of newspaper, sprinkle the onions and chillies and most importantly black salt. I think the black salt was the ingredient that made the customers come back.

Whenever I had extra money, I would go there and chomp a couple of eggs. Whenever guests came to our place and asked me to show them around, I took them to the egg seller. I would take my new acquaintances and introduce them to the egg-seller. His cabin became the cynosure of my tiny little word. The center of everything. 

Perambulations

I see a man. In the 11 PM darkness. His restless perambulations on the roof top. I can only make a silhouette out. It's dark but yet not dark enough. In the faint light of distant street lamps, I can draw his rough outlines. Is he walking this way because he has to burn his dinner up before he falls asleep. Or has he a story. Is he smoking a hard day away. While his wife has nodded off on their tiny double bed downstairs. Has he a little son in a Spiderman suit. And a little girl who sleeps holding her stuffed bear. Their room painted in cartoons and their toys astray as his exhausted wife catches her breath in the hall. Our perambulating man has to make it to the end of the month, pay the rent and the fees. And the milkman and the launderer. And for the loans and the groceries. How long will this last. Time will pass. Kids will grow up. It will get easier with time, it should. But is his life a means to an end and all it is, is that.

In a blink, I turn into his wife dozing off downstairs. Or his son in the Spiderman suit. I pass through them like light would pass through a ghost. I am him, I can feel his heart beating within mine. Is he an abberation, an apparition, a figment of my drugged imagination. Then I become the solitary woman staring at it all from the distant balcony. 

Behind me, the lights in my bedroom are dimmed. The air is cooler than evening's. My legs are up on the grille of the balcony. I sit here nearly hidden from the world. Behind my clothes strung out to dry at night. Or so I think. Or so I imagine. But the man can see me clearly. Or my silhouette only. And imagine things about me, as I do. About him. About my many a daily crises, about the chaos in my pretend peace, about my trash of three days that hasn't been taken out. About my inane loneliness. And my simultaneous inability to cohabit my space with another. About my unfinished stories and my lame ambitions. About the bangle stand behind the mirror that my mother gave me years ago that broke many times, and everytime it broke I set it up again with glue. The glue that is holding me together right now. 

This faint light, is faint no more. We can both suddenly see so much about each other. Too much.

Day-to-Day

I still think of life
As a multiple of days

I never think of,
Say, a week, a month,
A year, or a decade
Say

All I think of
Is the fuckin' day

In the morning
I pray that it be a good day
That we be saved from misfortune

At night, I pray
That we get good sleep
That we are alive and safe
When we open our eyes.

Isn't that enough?
Thinking of life
On a day-to-day basis
Sometimes, I count hours too

A day is the smallest unit of life
Also I am afraid to think of it in longer units

I live day-wise
Buy milk every other day
Do the dishes every other day
Do my laundry every third day
Or fourth
Have a drink once in a week, or oftener
I watch two episodes of Seinfeld every night
To lull me to sleep

I can't paint my nails, as often as I would like
But that's okay
Same with writing
But who cares?

All I care is that,
Did my day go okay?

I am not looking for flamboyant success here, or glory

But is life still livable, are we alive,
Did I see things I was shown
And most importantly,
Did I hear what I was told
And did I
Open I mouth even half as much as I would like

Very modest expectations

May be this lack of ambition
Has me impoverished
And I don't remember
When exactly,
I got into this business of
Counting days
And hours till I got to go home
To eat the dinner
Whose recipe I've been Googling
Since 5 pm

But I just am.

And I can't complain,
If I can have it this way
For days to come.

Self Portrait

He is an egotist. He has a suave exterior. Very gentlemanly. He carries the weight of his reputed degrees. Numerous foreign trips. His consultant like mannerisms. His erudite family as well. The elegant wife, with slender arms. Who wears sleeveless blouses. Looks nice without suffocating herself with the effort to do so. And their recent addition, a bubbly little baby girl. He is the center of all that. He seems to be a nice man. His face is somewhat chiseled. He would have felt tremendously geeky, only a couple years ago. Now he is more seasoned. He isn't outweighed by his net-worth. But he silently takes an aggregate amount of pride in himself. Now that is not bad, is it. But it is. The modest exterior, vis-a-vis a crouching ego within is no child's play. You could never guess, when he's playing you and how. He could keep you guessing, even perplexed, may be. He would shower you with attention, one day. Ignore you the next. I know this category of men, only too well. Old acquaintances. He will pamper you and at the same time, make you feel completely abandoned. He takes a long time before making you realize, this, that you cannot trust him. And also that he's not the one. Never the one. 

Cocoon

A cocoon isn't necessarily a bad thing
Where I live, alone
Like the quiet li'l person, I am
It's a dumb, blind and deaf spot
Very inert
My holy chunk of heaven
Within ladles and ladles of silence

You 'member that story
About the old witch
Who slept serenely in her palace
And her life lay within the
Box inside the box inside the box
Seven such boxes
Well guarded
My cocoon is the smallest of all those boxes

It's here
That I've always longed to be
Forever, and ever
Probably, yes, sure, why not

These walls shall never crumble
The air doesn't even move much
Except fragrances that I sometimes wish to capture
And there's no noise at all, at all
It's dimly lit, it's always dusk, in here

People do come in,
They leave only memories behind
Their palm prints
Names scribbled in archaic fonts
But nobody stays long enough
And it's good that way, too

It's incorruptible, this place
Coated in the art I've treasured
And some that I've created
Even as I age, and my wrinkles come
My cocoon stays as it is
Undepreciated,
Like the spring of mindless youth.

A Decade

Now my life comes to surmise this building. Yes, the time has come. There is a drink on the rocks. There is a kitchen in the corner and cups and saucers don't clean themselves. How stunning. There is a sink, that fills itself up. There's a bunch of dried curry leaves in the bottom drawer of the fridge, if anybody cares. Life is dry. Life is good. How can anyone describe life with adjectives. Wouldn't that be judgemental? It is what is is. By itself, in its own absolute singular capacity. I do not choose to describe it with adjectives and demean it. You wouldn't believe, this is the only place wherein I speak up. Because it's a one way road. I am not the one that confronts. I am the one that quietly places an opinion on the table and vanishes. It's my audacity that you don't want to see and I don't want to unleash. 

My neighbors, got a row of potted plants today. What looked like a shrub of green chillies and mustard seedlings in those pots, I hope I am wrong. The building needs more flowers. Women on floors other than mine have acquired entire corridors to plant cacti, crotons and money plant. Money plant is actually Devil's ivy. Now I didn't know that. The woman who planted them so generously told me. They also have bougainvillea by the bunches. Red, pink and white. Some women have entire trees on relatively tiny pots, one of tamarind for instance. A tree literally standing on a tiny little pot.Some women have their own hanging gardens of potted plants. Table roses and the kind. But still, the building needs more flowers. 

So I got three potted plants. Not three, four actually. One, the holy basil. Two, moonbeam. Three, hibiscus. And the fourth one is clitoria. Yes, the one that looks like the female-holiest-of-the-holies. They are pretty low maintenance, they don't flower much, but I check on them twice everyday. Sit with them and think. When I have time. I wish I had more time.

I started blogging exactly a decade ago. Not a day has gone by when I didn't wish I had more time. More time. More time. More time. 

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.   

Bibliography

One autumn, I picked up Jhumpa's 'The Lowland'. A cyclone hit us then. Metaphorically and literally. Then months, probably years later I remember picking up a distant suggestion. 'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak. That book has made me a WW II fanatic for the rest of my life. Probably after this, Murakami happened. I chanced upon 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman'. You must know there is a charm in not completely comprehending what is being read. Murakami enthralled me with that. I had 'Norwegian Wood' then. Soon after, totally by chance, discovered 'The Diary of Anne Frank'. After that, I must have tried 'Kafka on the Shore'. But Murakami's cats and faceless men, kept me awake longer than I could handle. So gave it up. Then Jon Krakauer's 'Into the Wild'. Christopher McCandless stayed for a long time in my mind. He might never leave, to be frank. Also let me confess, I tried reading 'Jane Eyre' and 'Persuasion' somewhere in the middle. But failed. I also tried 'The Great Gatsby'; but Leo's face kept coming to my mind. To Fitzgerald's displeasure, read Hemingway's 'Old Man and the Sea' though. Sometime, somewhere. In between. Couldn't go back to 

'Moby Dick' after a few days. Out of the blue, started '1984'. George Orwell's dystopia soothed my jarred nerves for sometime. And then, J D Salinger's 'Catcher in the Rye'. The last story I finished would be Murakami's again. 'Tony Takitani'. Meanwhile, tried reading Plath's 'The Bell Jar' more than a couple of times but it depressed me so much that the book and I mutually abandoned each other. And out of fear and mouth tottering respect for Woolf, yes, lets call it that, shall we, never finished 'A Room of One's Own' and 'Mrs. Dalloway.' And probably I would never know, what the woman writes about. Rand's 'The Fountainhead' changed me forever. I still am saving 'Atlas Shrugged' for the next decade of my life; which starts in slightly more than a year. Yes. It's lying in my bottom drawer. And Roy's 'God of Small Things' needs to be reread. Something that had so generously enthralled me, is now beginning to fade in my eclectic memory. 

  

Force Majeure

Nobody truly knows Anjum. Nobody cares. Nobody.

Anjum is a stout,  almost cuboidal, a person. Her braid finishes above her waist. Thinning towards the end, like a snake's tail and vanishing. She has a shiny black olive color of skin. Her lips are darker. Even, may be, probably. Nobody ever notices.

Anjum is a nurse. Has been for the last years. And years. Living with her parents in their reasonably respectable house.  A few years ago, word went around that her brother killed himself. There could have been a girl involved. Nobody knows a thing. They guess. Merely. Since then, right from the moment of the blood splattered sheets in the ambulance, from the moment of definite truth and numbing vagary of slit wrists, Anjum has taken the onus. Of seeing things through.

She meets death on a daily basis. Wrinkling by the month. Age seems to defy her. She must be what, forty now? Her parents though, don't seem to age. Thanks to hair color. And other things. Everybody considers Anjum to be a part of the walls or like a door. Like something that's never going to change, depreciate, or grow fuller. Sometimes they do greet her in the corridor. The same exact smile of years. 

I wonder. I vaguely do. Does she have thoughts? Does she wait for something that's going to alter everything about her life? 

Penury

Today is a pi day. Pi. Like the number. Twentysecondofjuly. 22/7. Indivisible. Irrational. Infinite. For some reason, I had been waiting for today. To make something special happen. Something worth a memory. Like a handmade card of sun-dried petals and grass, framed beneath a sheet of cellophane. Glassy, dreamy, yet earthy. That's what life should be, right. An exact mixture of illusion and reality. A subtle compromise amongst who you are and who you choose to be. I am taking baby steps. Yes, baby steps. Toward becoming this exact mixture. Being the right blend of strength and frailty. Striking a negotiable trade-off between idiosyncrasy and love. Between brooding and company. A median of richness and penury. 

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

The Missing T Shirt & Other Stories

One day,  I found my one T shirt to be a tad too lose. And obviously I didn't lose weight (never do). It was a lose one already, like one of those big ones you need to get inside of and spend the whole day in, in the room, not necessarily with any shorts on. Naturally I was very possessive of it. Plus it had one of those anti-global warming slogans with a double meaning. I loved that double meaning, which was obviously the first  (and sometimes the only) meaning people got. It (the T shirt not feeling like mine thingy) didn't matter much though, like a lot of facts & figures, in my life, that might have a chance to worry me, I brushed it under the carpet.

Later, a few weeks later I discovered, some guy in the campus wearing the same T shirt. And then I realized that the laundry people must have swapped mine with his, and look, he didn't even realize. Or did he? This guy and I had graduated from the same school years ago, and then were doing our masters together. The T shirt in context was a college T shirt that everyone had bought way back then. I looked at him for a few moments, wondering of our shared history, and how less often we even spoke.

Today, I look at that T shirt, crumpled in my closet, which I really don't know is his or mine and think. How many many men and women we come across and how little they leave their impressions on us. Chemistries, in particular are that transient. Nobody seems to remember. Sometimes, I shock myself with how indifferent I feel toward someone I loved to my breath's end, to the edges of my heart, to the depth of my intestines, and to the mighty horizons of my mind. And today, I could pass by him and not look back. That's how minuscule of people I carry within me.

Even when I am with someone, I let their aura sink into me only for those brief couple of minutes, and if only I like them that much. Otherwise, nothing, hardly ever stays.

The only thing that stays, is the memory of that companion, being with who, sometimes I tend to forget that I do indeed have, company. 

Already

They had the familiarity of old lovers. Like their shoulders would brush and neither would realize. Like something very normal just happened. The spark had been eroded. But the comfort remained. The warmth of their companionship filled the air when they were both together. Even years after. The wondrous age of passion. Now they touched on the borders of whole decades and counted in their fingers, years past since when they had been behind latched doors. That way. But it was hard to rebuild that magic, even in the imagination in their heads, it was closer to impossible than to possible. They had moved on to newer people, fucked, fallen in love, unfucked. Their last memory of togetherness had been so numerously overlapped that it had almost been buried. Oddly enough though, she would bend over the table to get the pepper shaker, without even being aware that her top slid too low exposing a bit of her cleavage. She knew that he wasn't seeing anything he hadn't seen already. That there was no corner of her body that he had left unexplored. And she knew that he knew that she knew. Everyone knew. Everything already. The best charm of having been lovers in the past is this sense of information symmetry. And therefore the lack of need to tell. Or to communicate with a glance, sometimes even without a glance. They could just sit beside, and not feel this compelling need to say. Almost all definitions of a relationship would have run through their minds. More than once. More than twice. So there was nothing left except for this soul quenching feeling every time they spent a few hours between a lifeless few months.

They had been lovers already. So whatever else was left, was hard to find a name for.  

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

Once.

It was a winter afternoon, to the best of what memory tells me. Could've been winter or monsoon though. Or one of those days when it was just cloudy and the canopy of pine trees didn't let you see the sky. And it didn't matter if it was evening or afternoon still, the sun set at 4 pm.

Had been trying to get a cab on the way back from solitary lunch. You know how hard it is to get cab in that city. Almost impossible to find one that's going where you want to go. Almost as difficult as finding love. And then it began to hail. Yeah, you won't believe. Hail. Sheets of frozen rain hit everything on the road, all shops had their shutters down. There was no place to hide under. It was relentless. How perfectly I had forgotten my umbrella.

I almost pleaded a cabbie to take me back. He charged me thrice. Or so it sounded, I didn't have the time to calculate exactly how many times he was charging me over the usual. I got in and rolled up the glasses. My sweatshirt wouldn't suffice. Like I had gotten into that habit of stretching their sleeves to cover my palms. From the cold. I did just that, breathed in air, breathed out mist. And counted on the silence. That couldn't be broken. That had encapsulated me ever-since, I had begun craving for love. Dogmatically.

I had been hiding in my bag a neatly packed slice of cake. Chocolate fantasy. That I had coaxed myself to believe wouldn't twist and turn and spoil itself as the cab made numerous rides uphill and downhill. When I reached, the hail had stopped. It was cold still, I borrowed the umbrella from the gatekeeper and quietly walked till the stairs. There I must have paused for sometime, let myself be further disillusioned before finally tip toeing up.

I wanted to be quiet, like a sleeping child. Didn't want to be heard, didn't want to be a nuisance, or an intrusion. I knocked their door. I say their- they had begun living together past few months. Though people outside constantly talked of how much more they had been fighting after the moving in thing. Ironically, I believed in both, their firm love and the rumors that made rounds. Probably because it never mattered what I believed or felt or thought.

Put the cake on his table, I owed him one because I had lost some silly bet. Or something. And turned back to make a quick exit.

But turned back again and smiled, grinned. Seeing them together that way, huddled against each other under a blanket staring out the window, at the chaos outside having been settled. I felt peace. Love, once. I don't remember if I felt envy. Somehow, I can't remember walking out that door anymore.

From that moment till now, a lot had happened to me, with me. I haven't done much except write some 700 odd posts on this blog. Oddly enough, now..I don't feel the need to be in love anymore.

Your average woman

Being a stringent believer in intimacy comes with knowing the sole truth that it can never happen. Any two cannot love each other bit by bit. There has to be a distance, without which the temperamental momentary nascent intimacy just cannot be. I am a stringent believer in that distance too. In that kind of superficiality. Once fell for a man for his shoes. Just saying. Once fell for another for how he kissed. So, understandable.

I am your average woman. I could know half a dozen men who would sincerely like to take me out for how I think. The slightly twisted men with the gift of intellect. Unorthodox. Open. Yeah, open. But notwithstanding, what I write, open still scares me. I have the most ungetoverable of crushes on the average man. Man who would run behind the pretty face. I would pursue him, just because he wouldn't me. You get the point. His parochial vision fascinates me. The way he is blinded by his primal limits, the way he hasn't cared to rise above what's much beneath him, attracts me.

So I sit with him, not craving for the intimacy I crave for. And utter my quietest silence in trying to become a good listener. About what pretty face was like what. Exact ornate descriptions of who he fucked, and who he might, just in case. And the like.

Between awkward pauses in these conversations of the skin, I crave for the distance. The antithesis of intimacy. Where in, I wonder among all those descriptions of faces and bodies and vital stats that he has in his mind, where in would I fit in. Just in case. You know. Wild waves of intimacy between dry brushes of impotent distance. Swept in those waves, I so try to be, the average man's woman. Your average woman. 

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?

Men

Just you. Only you.

There is plenty of men in this world. Arrogant blokes. Jealous colleagues. Men on the road who stare at you like you were a porn star. Autowalas cabwalas. Bus conductors that hassle over change. Men who are obnoxiously obsessed with themselves, can speak of nothing else, even if they tried. Really hard. Eve teasers. Potential rapists. Supposedly gay best friends, who aren't exactly gay, and stay with you because they are secretly in love with you. Men who befriend you because they would wanna sleep with your best friend, and your recommendation is their last resort. Seriously. Men who talk to your boobs. Like your face didn't exist. Men who would fuck exclusively the size-zero female only. Men with a fabulous sense of humor. And men whose jokes are funny to no one else. But still, you burst out laughing because you wanna flatter them. Men who are overpoweringly brotherly for no good reason. Men who pursue intellect. And those who pursue flesh. And speak no other language. Men, who have been the indefatigable infatuation of a lifetime. Forgotten lovers. Written about in random pages of diaries. And abandoned right there. Men who have turned on every single nerve end in your body. Men you have wanted to live for. And then die for. The tireless heartbreaker. Middle aged pedophiles for relatives. Men who hover around just because you're a woman and you have a vagina. Men who don't care. Because they are from another planet, supposedly. The guy from the teenage couple walking by, holding hands. That guy in school, first crush and bench mate. The ones in college. Ones that are getting married..Everyone, everyone. There are men all around.

But not you. Only you.

"Love will come through"~Travis'

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.