Flying Lessons

The other day, I walked around in the flea market, a lot. Several kilometers. My feet began to ache above the soles of my flat shoes. The road got to them. I was trying to shed some loneliness that day, wanted to get home late at night and then sleep.

On a long stretch of such walking, I entered a by-lane and crossed several soothsayers. None of them oozed clairvoyance. In fact, they looked like business women, down to business. Sitting on their haunches, with a photo of a beautiful goddess adorned in roses and a cloth spread out and some loose change sprung on it. A couple of young girls were having their palms read. I had some curiosities too, thought I should ask. Unforsaken wishes. A plump and pink baby, a spunky little breezy apartment, flight to a distant land, a bit of success, and so on. So I paused, but the soothsayer spoke an alien language and there would be the dearth of a translator, among the dearth of other things. So I didn't pause any longer.

Came back home to find that a pigeon won't budge from the pot that housed my hibiscus house plant. Turns out that was a hot breeding spot for pigeons. She had built quite a nest with twigs and leaves. If you've noticed, I've written quite a bit about these pigeons, how much I have tried to help them nest. And just when I thought they were an infertile clan, she laid a pair of eggs under my favorite plant.

I thought I would keep the eggs outside the pot, on the floor, the moment the bird left, and she would come back and carry them away, to wherever. But she didn't budge. For days, never left sight of the eggs. Warmed them endlessly. I waited for her to give up. I knew she would. Those eggs never hatched, I've seen before.

Whenever I watered my plant, the mamma pigeon would scowl at me, flutter her wings and scare me away. Suddenly on a Saturday, I sensed movement under the mamma. The eggs had hatched and the baby birds with their eyes shut were there, like dollops of flesh with tiny hair and eyes shut. I was overawed and quite happy to their family. The father visited diligently.

Over the next week, I saw the parents, alter and sit on the baby birds to keep them warm and feed them mouth to mouth. I sprinkled left over rice and water. The baby birds grew quickly, swelled up. Their hair slowly grew thicker, their tough black beaks became prominent. I was afraid they would poke me in the eye.

I kept giving them rice and they kept growing. Their parents visited less often. The two babies took up most of the pot, there was not much space for the mamma anymore. Given, it is the monsoon, it rained on several nights, throughout. One night I woke up at 4 am to the sound of thunder and went to the balcony to see if the birds were doing okay. I pulled the pot further inside, where the rain couldn't reach and covered it with an umbrella. The mamma who was there, thought I had caged them all and fluttered like a mad woman. And escaped, leaving her children in my peril.

But they returned in a few. To reach the baby birds how to fly. The babies thought I was hostile, probably. Because I would sit by the pot and talk incessantly and softly to them. Clap my hands and make them stand up and sit down to my claps. Whenever I watered my plant, they would flutter their new wings and try to scare me away. Nevertheless I sat with them, waiting for their parents to return, with food of their kind, and more stories of the world, dreams, perhaps, a few.

The babies had grown very big and they had covered my pot with shit. I googled the lifespan of pigeons to find out when they were flying and vacating my space. I am to leave for a break in a week or two and if they birds didn't fly away by then, it would be a problem, because I am planning to give the plants to a neighbor who would water them when I am gone and I clearly can't give it to them with the birds in it.

The papa bird gave them flying lessons, sitting on the ledge of my balcony. Soon enough, one of the baby birds, flew away, to the glee of her parents and of me, and of her brother. I waited for her to return at night, I was worried she was so new, she might fall off the branch of a tree or something. I have seen pigeons sleep on telephone wires, and let me tell you, precarious! But she didn't return. I am hoping she's alive and well. But her brother, the other baby bird, who is the bigger one, fatter one, hasn't been able to fly.

And I cannot fathom why. Perhaps, he had heard a scary story or two. Because I've checked, his legs and feathers look normal to me. He's just afraid I am hoping. The parents come sometimes now, counsel the bird, who is almost a fully grown pigeon now. But to no avail. All he does is stand up and sit down. And flutter his wings when I water the plant or throw some food on him to make him try to fly away. But nothing works.

I think this one is a homing pigeon and has found its way home. 

Equilibrium

I spent the weekend by myself. All by myself. I came home on Saturday morning, in the wee hours. I had been drinking till midnight, wherever I had been. After having passed out, suddenly my eyes split open in the sunrise. I made my way home. People were hardly up, though. Except for dogs in the street, some flower sellers, perhaps, with an early mound of chrysanthemums.

I got in and shut the door. I spent the entire day trying to get past my hangover. For some reason(s), I hadn't been sleeping well the past week. Like four to five hours a night. Usually, I would like to get at least six. Even having a glass of wine wasn't helping. The alcohol, coupled with insomnia, made me worse. Towards the afternoon, I got some broken sleep. I slept more in the evening and woke up at night. Ate something and slept again. Overate actually. Needed my body to cool down.

After so much sleep, my mind felt at rest. I didn't wake up until eight thirty on Sunday. When I woke up, I thought it was like five. And that I should go back to sleep some more. But then it was eight thirty already. My head wasn't hung over anymore. It felt light like a bird.

I changed into nicer clothes. I had been wearing my six year old torn frock since Saturday morning. I ate some poached eggs and ran out to get some plants. I surprised myself with how much I chatted with the man in the nursery. I asked about weird plants and ended up poking my fingertip in a dangerously disguised thorny flower. The nursery was by the lake. So I intermittently gazed at its black waters. A part of me wanted to take leap and never resurface. Then I distracted myself with the plants.

I bought a shrub of cream hydrangea. I had read a story with hydrangeas in it, when I was a child. Those hydrangeas were red. Mine were just cream. Such a mysterious little plant, I thought. The nursery man warned me that too much sun would kill it, it grew well in the shade. Also I got the pink small button rose. Back home, I rearranged my plants in the balcony, as per shape and proclivity for the sun. The soil got under my fingernails. I tied my creepers to sticks with threads. I also tried to contain my wildly outstretched bougainvillea tree with a string. I thought, this would give it some shape.

I ate lunch. Quietly, alone. Sometimes, I imagined I had a baby in my arms. But mostly, it was me alone. There was no space for hallucination. No time for spirits. Just us, mundane, loner human bodies. Loitering around on Sunday afternoons, binge-watching TV.

By nightfall, I knew I would tear apart. So I baked a cake. To gradually steam off my inner volcano. The cake was substandard. But the sugar did me good. At night, I reheated some of the leftover curd chicken. I didn't let anything clutch me. I stayed free.

Unencumbered, hence I slept at eleven.

Monday morning, I went to work. It stormed like crazy in the evening, because this day couldn't contain the summer anymore. I came home to see, my bougainvillea was broken in the wind. Perhaps because, I had tied it. Had it been free, it would have swayed and saved itself.

Ridden with shallow guilt, I untied it immediately. My heart bubbled  inside though, I had always loved its scarce white flowers. So I sat on the floor and waited. 

Sunglasses

Can't remember where I kept my sunglasses
Last I recall seeing them in the sun in the sand
Sun and sand, glorious, golden
After that, I don't know where they went
Think I borrowed my brother's
Maroon brown tinted aviators
For us, big and wide faced progeny
And the sand had scratched the glass minutely
Through which I saw lines in the sky
But after that, not a clue
Also I had my own very own, bluish one, perhaps
Bought with first salaries
Alibis for virile getaways with girlfriends
To cloudy resorts, filled with wild Jacaranda

Now I think,
At my semi ripe age of thirty and one
That I should wear my sunglasses, only all the time
While chasing cabs
On walks replacing siesta
In evenings, while walking out a store
They won't complement me, for I am ordinary
Dangerously ordinary and pale
Further, I wear flats and loose clothes to hide flab
But still, if I wear them sunglasses, all the time,
Would appear that at least,
I tried to be a cross between myself
And something posh
For now, for me, this is enough, just about 

Matter

You know how Amazon does what Amazon feels like. So they delivered a little foldable table to me in a cardboard box more than twice its size. Initially I thought that I would throw the box away. Then a couple days after I thought why not make a shoe stand out of it, like one of my little anti depressant craft projects. I even bought tape. The storekeeper smiled at me. Not your usual storekeeper kind of smile, I wouldn't bother. But his over warmth made me suspicious and shaky. Like literally I kept the cash on the counter and ran. Should have also ordered the tape from Amazon. But anyway, that shoe stand thing never happened. So I thought I would help my sterile pegions. There is a couple of pegions that has been trying to have chicks for like a year now. They gather hay and leaves in my balcony, build a nest, lay eggs and care for them everyday. But those eggs never hatch. Like I watch those eggs, check on them every other week. But they don't show any signs of life. I even googled pegion gestation. But still no. And one day my maid would lose her mind and sweep the whole balcony away. Now I am thinking if I just kept that box in the balcony instead of making a shoe stand out of it, may be the sterile, infertile, subfertile couple of pegions would find a more hospitable nest. And I would ask my maid to just not interfere. In their business. Everybody needs warmth, it's November. Today I gave away two of my old sweaters to her. One pink, which I had bought about ten years ago as a Valentine's Day gift to self. Now it's too small for me. Also another fairy white one. That one would fit me even now. But somehow I don't like it, never wore it. A friend of mine, a rich one, had bought it for herself and hadn't liked it either and she had given it away to me. I didn't like it much. But given my rudimentary sense of fashion, I thought I would keep it. That sweater moved with me wherever I moved, and that's like half a dozen places, I never touched it once. And today I gave it away. Got rid of it. My maid didn't like it either. I had to tempt her with the pink one and said she would have to keep them both. May be she won't keep it either. Nobody would ever love that sweater. It's going to be discarded unused after an extremely stretched shelf life, I wonder what that sweater thinks. 

But, who'll take care of the Baby

Your shirt always creased 

In that mild way

That only with someone

With eyes for you

Could only see

I remember, those road side stalls

Where we stood and slurped

Cold-drink-ice-cream-float

With greasy egg chicken noodles

You, applauded me

We walked into the 5 am forest

A flower stuck in my hair

Your sweet-man-gait

Broad chinned smile

When my ovaries leaped

Today, I compare

Myself with a dozen others

And look for scraps of 

Happiness

You're a rich badass, though

I don't wait for you to salvage me

Man, you stuck in my memories

In numerous parallel pasts

That didn't even happen, ouch

I write

I write to create that past

Alternate threadbare truths, 

You know.

Even-though no one reads

Relentless, I never cease

At constructing what could've been 

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.

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. 

A Happy Man

A happy man is hard to find. Specially to my eyes, that I constantly squeeze out only the morose. But this one, is a happy man. He oozes with calm and content. It's almost like a spectacle. Like a natural wonder, to me. A man, so in his skin. I wish he could scatter the dust of his joy on the jinxed like us.

It comes with a lot of seasoning, this happiness.He wasn't born with this. Nobody is. He must have consciously, laboriously developed into his present person. He wears it like his attire, the Ganesa like laughter, the suitable little paunch, his gestures, everything about him is so slow and beautiful. I wonder what thoughtcrime have I ever committed to feel the way I do. Forever trapped in my imagined list of things to do, I am so restless. Whereas, the happy man's eyes are like a calm ocean. Glistening and deep. Like he's trying to tell me, life is not about today or tomorrow. It's going to stretch decades and I could be myself. That this day to day struggle is going to kill me and that I shouldn't. Allow it to do so. That in the really long run, tiny compromises are the harbinger of so much joy.

Happy man, relishes his lunch of four side dishes. He takes two full helpings of the rice that his wife cooks and packs. His daughter's name is stickered onto the rear windshield of his car. He doesn't care about the font, it's his daughter's name. He talks good of his wife and how she chops up the vegetables the night before and keeps them in the fridge. About how she takes care of the tiniest of things, to make him happy. He talks good of even his house maid. He talks good of everyone. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have an opinion, he does. Just that he does not make a business out of being an asshole.

Some people when they exhibit their happiness, they helplessly make it appear so fake. And I have an allergy for such people. But not this man. His happiness, is probably infectious. Need I say more.  

This

We are here now, because we couldn't be anywhere else. Life has taken the exact number of turns and twists that it has, taken. Shorter and longer paths. Through whirlwinds and thunderstorms. Night walks and dawn breaks. Deafening silences and paralytic dumbness, later, we are here. Because we couldn't be anywhere else. But now, here. This.

We have stared at graveyards, through nights. And written poems on heartache. Breathed in smoke. Breathed out fumes. Made strangers our own. Discarded the ones that loved us, and those we loved, also. Walked by hills, gotten scared. Felt infinite. Crumbled under the sad misery of our very very tiny and hapless existences. Tasted momentary exhilaration. Felt bound, completely incarcerated, sometimes. For others, for our own selves. We've blamed others for our endless suffering and passed the blame. With ease. And sat back, and turned away. 

We have walked towards and walked away from. We have tried to write. To read. See through others' eyes. We've won, sometimes just the illusion of victory, vis-a-vis sometimes having actually won. But mostly we have failed. We have mulled over ending our lives. Yes, we have. Shamelessly. And thought that there be no shame in that, either. 

But more than anything else, more than everything else, we've run for time, and against it. To get things done. Some many of them. Groceries, salon appointments, laundry, work-stuff, shopping dates, temples, cleaning and wiping and dusting, errands, payments, receipts, crap, crap, crap. More than anything else, we haven't learnt to pause. We haven't waited to absorb, whatever is happening to us. We haven't rested to appreciate, the simple, the tiny and the beautiful. 

We've fucked up big time. By running around and not pausing. To be here. Exactly here, now. This. Yes. You heard me. 

3:00 pm

The crumple of skin behind knuckles, 

A slight itch in the corner of an eye

The corner of the shelf, where

I store our bodily smells, like I hoard them

Protect them against time

Shut out from the volatile rest 

And this untiring motion

Breathless commotion 

As a fragile constant

Tethered to my soul

The woman downstairs

In a purple-blue nighty

A child clinging to her waist

Like a creeper to a tree

Being fed from a bowl of silver

The smile of that silver, in the afternoon sun

The belly of that child

The mashed dal in that bowl

His refusal to swallow

Her persistence to make him

Swallow

Like, we do

That (corner in the) shelf, forgotten

Chasing something we can't even see. 

Can't spare one constant unmoving hour in a day

Going through circles

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

We wait at the ends of those arcs, 

To automatically shred into smithereens. 

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. 

Between Lovers

They kicked it off on a good note. On a note of mutual ecstasy. Literally speaking, if the note were a note, you could see that chit of white paper with utter profanities scribbled on it lying between the distant silhouette of their legs as they walked away, holding hands and letting go, holding hands and letting go. They believed they owed too much to the coincidence that made them together. And that was the only one trait of gratefulness they had toward anything on the whole. For the rest, sometimes their misanthropy would tie them together, sometimes the endless talk of truths and illusions. Sometimes, the art they were about to unravel would make their hair stand up, sometimes it would be the intoxication or the libido. In that phase, when long time passed in slow undulating curves when they were away and in one sudden shot of alacrity when they sat talking, and undoing each others' minds, things were mostly this way. They relished their secret life under covers. They sewed together promises, of travelling to unknown countries and abandoned islands. Of cutting themselves out. Of knowing peace. The one within themselves. He and she, they would do their own curious experiments with life and then possibly for suitable stretches of time, merge into one person. Can you even imagine, what that would be like? Can you?

Later, much later, however, a certain immunity to whatever was unreal guarded their minds. The thick curtain of reality that hid their magnificent persons hung lose right before their eyes. Shrouding everything. Everything. They couldn't even see each other. Their sewn promises were left knotted, somewhere in the corners of the room in which they began. The love didn't wear out as much as how much the pinches and pinches of salt you are expected to take life with, coated it. Lathed it with true sounding lies. Reducing them to some two people, who instead of merging, began suspiciously looking deep into their systems. So as to fathom, how, just how, they were humanly capable of kicking it off as neatly as that.

Between Lovers. Between Lovers. 

Etc.

When we have lost our initial brush of awkwardness. And have outgrown that shy silence of first love. When we are talking until we are constantly running out of things to talk about. And travelling into and out of each other's minds. There would come a time, and phase when we wouldn't know how to toy around with so much love.
We would play around with forks at the end of dinner dates and wonder if it's over already or should we order dessert. Strike a rhythm with our nails on coffee cups, or break into a tune not understanding what to do with the next five minutes of time. We might face a silence between ourselves which may not necessarily be awkward. That silence will make us feel that may be. May be we are not ready to take the leap.
May be we need some more time. A few days, weeks or years. Or may be we are not right for each other. Was it some ex we left behind. Or someone else who we were about to meet in the future. But never did, because we met you. And other such imaginary doubts.
But honey. You know this. And I know this. No matter how far we run away to, how many others we try to create this love with. None will be as raw as the love we have. Here now. Wondering what to do with this silence that has creeped in without a warning, between us.
No matter what we think say or do, we are going to find our way back to each other. Tomorrow or the day after.
..

City

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

Meanwhile

Wondering what has changed
nothing much actually
there haven't been many new movies that I have watched
meanwhile
nor licked icecreams when it's freezing outside

o yeah i have shopped a lot
lots of new dresses and shoes
closets full of colors, i have even experimented
found that mauve and purple are different
convinced myself they are
and shoes
many gave up in this rain
the way it has poured this year
you have no idea
of course you don't

nail paint in the shades of blood and black
kohl
everything. all that
i also counted my age
in decades, i look so believable
in days so impossible

never stood on rooftops to feel the wind
always ran for shelter in the rain
never ever sat down and talked
to myself or anyone
meanwhile
talking has come to scare me crazy

i bought a bracelet of gold, coiled
like a cozy snake on my wrist
has a mystic red flower on it,
somewhere in the middle
also i should get a ring
must be time
i don't know


still the same people around
who never understood my insanity
just like you didn't
but then insanity is not to be understood
it can't ever be

insanity is to be celebrated, the way i did
and stared at, the way you did


besides
nothing much has changed
not much water under the bridge
just been a few months
life has turned topsy turvy and back to fine
many times over

Just Friends -3

I took those glances for a tantrum. Her explicit efforts to avoid me, at times behave like nothing had changed. Thought it would pass. And we would come around, to where we were before, before one accidental night happened. I tried not to be alone with her, was afraid she would ask me something I wouldn't have the answer to. I never had the answers to anything those days. Wasn't a seeker of sorts, I lived like a life had been thrown upon me from the clouds, and I could do nothing else with it but live it through. She too pretended to be like me, and may be that's why we hung out together. But she wasn't, she was only trying too hard. She had to get a thick skin of indifference to defend the dangerously sensitive person she was. I knew that, but didn't make a fuss over it because I just wanted to keep her with me. I was teaching her stoicism, but an accidental night came our way.

I hadn't returned the shoes she had forgotten at my place the morning after. She had walked out in haste with a pair of my slippers instead, and it was only after I found them missing, I traced her shoes flung under my bed. Did she want them back? Because those slippers were the only pair I had. I couldn't ask, she couldn't tell. A week ago, we were friends, who could talk about any damn thing. And we literally sunk our minds into each other, we were like this one siamese soul, trading notions till we reached a mental orgasm. That some things would alter so irreversibly, I hadn't quite calculated.

She would often repeat her ideas to me, many times over. I mistook those to be the principles of her life. I had no idea that she told them to me again and again, because she herself wanted to believe in them. Funny, isn't it. And from those mindless babblings of hers, I had made a strict mental note. That she felt no relationship could go from physical to emotional, only vice versa. Had I doubted her, I could have asked her if she wanted her shoes back! And some other things too. I didn't. Couldn't.

Just Friends-2
Just Friends-1

So much for a book!

Someone once asked me to write a book. I tried hard to listen to his sarcastic laughter. I couldn't. Loss of hearing I guess.

On second thoughts, I have tried to stitch together some nights, and write a story. A story. It doesn't begin, it doesn't end. It doesn't even go on. It's short, shorter than expected. It's just a flap of time. Stolen, by a self obsessed writer, who sees herself in every character.

She can't otherwise. It's difficult for my story to have more than one character, I cannot be that generous. A severe limitation of my imagination, it's pretty constricted, can't stretch a bit. I find it challenging. To create a person, out of nothing, inside my mind, whose every cell I am supposed to know, to knit together his attributes, to bring into existence his subconscious, and then hide it, to ensure he justifies his presence in the plot's every move, it's hard. It's hard to create a character you don't know.

So I create me, the only one I know. Again and again. And sometimes I crib in the guilt of selfishness.

There have been books, of course in which all the characters are reflections of real people in the author's life. With names changed, so that they can't file that hefty lawsuit. Writing that way must be easier. But I wonder if it's worth it. May be it is. How does it even matter!

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.

Man-Woman-&-MBA

It's a much denied fact, but we all look for support. And when all else fails, we look for an ideology we could stick to. So as to say, if at the end of the day, everything else is taken away from you, you could still say, you stood by what you believed in. Or pretended to believe in.

I am going fishing. For one such comforting ideology to stick to. You see I do not have many other sources of solace or engagement. So I would rather hunt down my beliefs, and try to knit them into what they call a belief system. And call it a day. And go off to sleep again, as my mom says.

It's a funny post, me writing about all this. You see I never had the time or more importantly the stretchable attention span to look for an ideology, I was running the rat race like all of you. I don't intend to call you a rat anyway, if you quit, I do bow before thee. Why I was engaged breathlessly doing what everyone else was doing was because the risks of being unique and hence ostracize-able weren't involved at all. So there was a comfort, a safety rather. It's my typical middle class, I-don't-want-to-be-left-homeless fear. It has nothing to do with anything. I have been brought up on fear. Not that I aspire for the filthy rich worthless millionaires, or sympathize any less for the decaying chunk of the population in slums.

Just that I have been so busy with me, that there has hardly been anytime to be actually concerned per se. But now, I have been lounging lazy for two months, and I need something desperately to comfort myself. So I am here to knit my belief system. So that I can call something my own.

I was never slightly inclined towards the left, but as a kid I have seen appalling poverty around. I mean really! So I began thinking that something should be done about all the poor people. I read a few books, I wouldn't name them and bore you to death, but the filth in their lives was so accurately described, I was drawn closer and closer to wanting to find a solution.

Then I saw the helplessness of it. Conversations with people, with myself, the absolute inability of the system to change, the lackadaisical attitude towards it all, frustrated me. And since I had so many other frustrations in my life, I quit on this one and became indifferent.

Later, I read some more books and gave my heart to individualism. And thanks to my stint with a master's degree, I supported the staunch capitalist, and became a vague rightist. You get these bi-directional sways of my heart, don't you?

There were too many questions, a quagmire of them actually. A mess inside my mind, justifications I sake, guilt I felt. The lingering silence became very disturbing, but that disturbance is anyway a respite from my perennial issue of heartache.

However, now I have stopped looking for the absolut. My solution, if I may call it one, is that I have begun seeing things on scale, that extends indefinitely in opposite directions. And everything can be explained in a relative context to something else. But that something else is never the absolute, can be explained again with respect to something else. And so we move on the scale, in either direction, and sometimes multi-dimensionally.

And if the luster of the title attracted you, but the post bored you to death, but still you read on till the end, then you may in fact ask for an apology!