I have met you Before

Long long ago. Before we met. Before I fell in love. We had met before, before we met to fall in love. Too many befores. Now the story. 

It was a late summer morning. I was was wondering if I should be off to a gathering of some knowns and some unknowns. I was somewhat younger and going alone to one such place, was a perceived as a risk. A risk because, what if only the unknowns turned up and the knowns didn't. What if I was trapped in a lonely chamber with people I cudn't talk to? 

But nevertheless, like always in life, I took the risk. I wanted to remember some forgotten faces. 

We sat there, under the shade of old neem trees. The hot air, waited. Dry leaves, hung in the air. Time was moving slow. The knowns and the unknowns hung around. Talked stuff. 

And amongst those scores of unknowns, one was Him. I didn't notice him. He hadn't noticed me either. We belonged to some 'unnoticeable'-subspecies of humans. But as I faintly remember, there he was. Somewhere amidst that crowd. A voice lost in the noise. We stood beside each other for sometime. We talked to the same person, without talking to each other. I faintly remember. 

We parted that late summer morning, without knowing that we had met. To meet again. To fall for what seemed inevitable then. And to benumb each other with the opulence of it. But then to break apart, forever. Like.... oh I can't find an example.

And irony is, all the time we were together, I never found the time to tell Him, that -I have met you Before-

the lights are off, there is music, soft& smooth. and there persists the smell of a dry rose in the air. 

Made for Each-Other

After work I was rushing through the busy bylanes of the home-bound city. I had to meet someone. This someone and I had been meeting for a couple months then, and I was in a hurry because I didn't want him to leave and hence stand me up.

If a man and woman meeting this way is called a date, then so be it, call this a date. A Dutch date, if you know what that means.

We had consciously changed the venue from Cafe Coffee Day to this one. To something more open air. Because we wanted it to be more akin to the worlds we lived in, more noisy, more unkempt, more real.

This one was inside some sort of a park. Near the parking lot of the park. We took the table at the corner. That felt like the end of the world because beyond that the bush began that separated the coffee shop from the park. Evenings were a busy time for this place but, you know big cities, no one is concerened what you are upto is such a relief.

Bill boards flashed on my face. Traffic got more messy. But hail the metro! I reached before it got to totally dark. In the dim-lit darkness, I figured out his outline fiddling with his phone. A smile took over all the previous expressions on my face.

Had I been in his place, waiting, I would have stared out into the open. I don't know what this difference between us meant. Nevertheless I came to meet him as it was routine on friday evenings.

I reached the table and dragged my chair out. He kept looking into the phone except for a momentary glance at me. I leaned back on my chair and tossed my hair back. Breathed in deep, relaxed.

I wanted to sit like that for sometime and then get up and leave. My mouth was too tired to talk, eyes too tired to see.

Waiter came in, I ordered my coffee. And sat there trying to get over the day. He kept doing things that would be classified as the antithesis of paying attention. Weren't we just table-mates?

I felt an urge to go home, for my couch. I grabbed my purse, paid and stood up. Almost simultaneously he stood up and said " I will walk you home"
"Walk me home?"
"Hmm yah?"
"You mean till the cab? "
"Why is that a problem?"
"Not at all"

I give up when we start conversing in questions. I almost immediately agree.

~made for each other~

mygodofsmallthings ;)

coming back home every summer had become a default part of the yearly cycle. though she always wanted it to be everything else but it, nevertheless it was. 

with the onset of scorching heat, she would find herself dragging the wheels of her suitcase on the dusty lane that lead home. some trees would have gained delicate new coppery leaves, and some would still be losing them; distant birds would be chattering sweet-shrill calls and she would inevitably find herself sitting on the veranda of the house whose walls had stood mute for a hundred odd years. just sitting there and waiting for it to get evening. and when it gets evening, she would wait for it to get morning. life in summer particularly felt like long waiting sequences interspersed with spells of sullen indifference. 

and so like every year, she was clinking her cup on the saucer and telling herself, this is it. the sugar left an uneasy aftertaste. the one you try to scrape off your tongue by running your teeth on it. 

for a certain while she wondered why nothing grew on the hill facing the house, and then took to her feet. 

the earth had craked up like drought. the surviving creepers waited for the gardener's afternoon water-dash. the mild breeze filling her nostrils was dry enough to suck all the water off her lungs. 

she walked barefeet, all around, in the channels that were dug out to water the plants, in the steps that housed marigold in winter, on the concrete around the banyan trunk, on the sand that has been brought to get the first storey done but had been forgotten eversince.

she walked until the dust getting into the cracks in her feet hurt and until she wet them in the water of the gardener's green hosepipe. she made mud out of it and soaked her feet in it and waited for it to dry. 

later when the power went off, a darkness consumed the house. she sat by the window and stared out. and silence and darkness became the best of friends. 

wildflower ;)

Realization

Last night when I was chewing a chiken leg that tasted like chocolate, I saw a man sitting on the table to my left. I could see his right eye, half of his nose, a little bit of a stubble. The sleeve of his shirt, he's folded a little, left unfolded a little. Frankly, honestly, truly, I found him appealing to the hormones. Any woman would. 

His baritone voice caught me when I caught him almost scolding the waiter. Not that I encourage such rashness. But when it's somewhat crude, the attitude, one gets inclined, doesn't she? When one is bored of the sugar-sweet variety i.e..

So all this kept happening and I was chewing the legs of chocolate. Red brown, tomato brown, chocolate brown. Dreams of capturing and imprisioning Adonis and taking him home to show your friends, the catch!

On his table, whisky on the rocks. The faint golden intoxicating color of alcohol. Things he says once, he's done with. Twenty six-seven? Couldn't be less than that.

He talks business, he talks money. I talk, I giggle with my friend. Once I laugh loud enough to make him turn and look at us. Then I see his left eye and his full face. In my mind, I say, not bad. Good infact!

Then we pay up, get up & leave. I think for the man for five minutes and then my mind moves back to three days ago. To one realization, one truth, that must stand by me, for a lifetime. 

What lay under a face is something I care to know nothing about. I do this being very aware that what lies under the face matters the most. Face is a facade. And I made a casual promise to me, not to get carried away by it. 

What appeals to my mind, will always overrule all that appeals to the eye, to the hormones, i.e. And so be it! 
   

askmewhyidontblogthesedays

& those were the days

-:lonely shadows-:

waynad princess...'

when god made her he added the chin as an ~afterthought~

...love & etc

smile
blush
romance

smile 
blush
and yet again..

wisp of scent
soft music 

and all senses awake

oh! i am so in love with the idea of it

I often wonder which would one be given a chance, the 
art or the artist? But since I have hardly had the 
'chance' , this question is out of question. 

Nevertheless, the artist reflects in the art. The 
protagonist of the story has shades of the author. 

I am told, that no matter how hard we try, what we 
ultimately make is us. 

When I write I get emotional with my characters. The 
central character is almost always me. This I perceive 
as unhealthy. It's one lacuna. 

I wonder how people get dispassionate when they 
write. They write like they are one neutral third 
person watching things happen, from a safe distance. 
They don't involve themselves in the story much. And 
this I find a very likable trait. 

So when I get dispassionate enough, I am gonna write,
again.

Meanwhile I am taking pictures/..

Meanwhile...

WARNING-LONG POST AHEAD! 

I am up after an eight hour sleep. It's a sunny sunday 
morning. Sleep refuses to leave me alone. But anyway
I am perched on my bed and wrting this. 

The day before yesterday, late in the evening, I was 
supposed to walk back alone to my room. If 9 :30 is 
late in the evening, that is. When out the road I saw a 
mini storm. If this is the end of autumn, all the dead 
leaves from all the trees were out on a 
merry-go-round. I didn't know what to do. And then 
the lights went off and my heart stopped beating...but this, I guess is another story!  

Off late I haven't been writing much. And that is not 
that good a sign as writing is a natural vent for my 
emotions. And yeah, I am not writing because I don't 
have anything to write about. There is a dearth of 
matter in my head. It's on mode_snooze! 

But again, I have been reading. I am reading now to 
catch up on the reading I missed because I started 
writing. 

And I am going out on walks, real long walks. Twice 
round, thrice round the campus...all my evenings are 
spent walking. Also on a fruit diet, to de-tox the mind!
Meanwhile I have been listening to one song a million
times over/

And I have been breaking-off with friends. But have I 
been making friends also? I wonder if I believe in the 
concept of friendship. Love, on the other hand, is 
totally out of question. Long time since I last fell in and 
out of it. 

I have become a cynic. I was cynic-in-the-making for quite 
some time. But it is now that I am at peace with it. 

And my blog has frozen into somthing! But I am not 
dead yet. I am just taking my time. My sweet-bitter 
time. There is hardly anything that dictates me, these 
days... 

Excerpt

I turned and now looked at him in the eye. Since we 
had been lying there, doing nothing that foggy 
afternoon, such thoughts had been doing rounds in my 
mind. And I didn't quite know if I did it with any prior 
thinking, but I said, I love you. And again for a 
moment we were staring at each other before he 
planted a kiss and left for the terrace. 

I followed him after sometime. And as I sat there 
beside him, I did know that he didn't love me. And 
how I wished I had not known so distinctly, so truly 
that he never loved me. 

Looking down from the thirteenth floor, we saw the 
whole world was getting back home. Don't know about 
him but at least I did. I didn't know what he was 
thinking. If he was thinking about me, it hardly did 
matter, because my feelings about things and people 
happen to be fixed, numbly. 

It was getting dark and in a few minutes, you won't 
see faces on the streets at all. The mist hid everything. 
So I thought I would rather be leaving. Didn't wait for 
his goodbye. Just gathered myself and left. 

~the happily ever after thingy is the most cliche'd ever~

After-thought

-When I turn twenty-six I will invest in books. I am sure by then my fingers will have become tired changing hundred and fifty five TV channels that show nothing. My mind would have got tired of having written the same thing over and over again, about sorrow & pain. My eyes would have got tired of looking for companionship. So I would invest the rest of my life in books. -

moonrise...

thru'...windows

the 3rd color of life

holding on to strings

ah yet again, the gr8 indian wedding

of designs that standstill

half-love

sigh time passes so fast
i wish i met you before
wish i could've loved you more
one more winter of hands held

you owe me umpteen dances in the rain
and i owe you a thousand splendid smiles

but tis now we depart
half said words
having half loved each other
tis a lon' life you know
and life will outlive our memories

memories of the dew-kissed yellow chrysanthemum
memories of lon' summer afternoons
of cracks in the walls
memories of a dead youth
& even so much more
won't last me a year long
life, tis too long

memories will give way to pain
to a subtle ache that'l persist
in shy corners of my heart
once we depart, my sweetheart!

~now u, forgive my crazy poetry~

aaAArrGGhhhh..!!!

XYZ:So tell us one weakness that you've known?
Ms D.:
Weakness?? Arrgghh!! I've so many...too many...i am a bundle of weaknesses/
*I've no sense of logic about anything..
*I'm umpty-dumpty emotional-To the xtent of being weak, vulnerable, i can break down just any moment~~
*I PANIC--i go nutzzz weneva nythin serious pops up
*I'm laZY(How lazy???)Aww..u've no idea..poor yuuu
*My energy levels r pathetically low! i get tired after moving, say, a matchstick!
*I've AN EXTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL/..Do yu knw itz a crimEE to hv 1?
*I'm simply frustrated-no explanations..i jus AM
*I m nt a good talker...i mumble such things tht screw everythin up :(
*I aint diplomatic/shrewd
*I've an inferiority complex, & think it's justified I have one
*I'm an INSTICT driven individual. So most of the times don't know where I am headed. I don't plan my future, simply bcoz planning is ouch-so-tiring
*I'm not a good leader, I'm not a good follower either. damn! what-am-i?
*I brood all the time-yeah-like for the past 2 decades i've been doin jus dat
*I can't hide, if yu understand wht i mean
* & finally, the icing on the cake
I AM THE ETERNAL PESSIMIST!!!

$@l$@-I

The lazy afternoon was surprised by a thunderstorm.
The one you are never ready for. And you are stuck in
the most mundane of places without an umbrella or
anything. I was getting back home, ealier than usual.
And the rain on my windshield felt nice.

The highway was almost deserted. But I saw someone
and screeched back. And I lowered the glass to see
her. She was drenched under her skin. A strand of wet
hair fell on her face as she bent down to say hi.

'Stranded?'
'Hmm...Yea', she smiled.
'Need a ride?' I asked and waited for her to say 'No, I'l
get a cab'.

-To be continued..?

Another Untitled!

Guy1:
Pros : You are the first guy who became a friend,
crossing the 'just-an-acquaintance' barrier. I got to
know what it is to be emotionally attached to someone
like you. First person I call when I am messed
up!

Cons : You confuse me with thy emotions. Being
hyper-emotional is pathetic you know .

Guy2:
Pros: Cholcolates-walks-chocolates! Cool guy you are.
You are the one I talked to all night to see day-break
and then sleep through sleepy Saturdays.

Cons: I genuinely missed you when you were away.
And I hate becoming a parasite. You should've done
something about it.

Guy3:
Pros: You are the most vivacious person I ever came
across. Was smitten by some shades of the person you
are. Relishing my evenings away with you, I forgot
what I was doing to myself.

Cons: You catered to a larger audience. And I didn't
want to get lost in that absolute chaos.

Guy4:
Pros:You are one of those few guys who I respect for
who they are and not for what they are, if you get the
difference. I respect you, out & out! You have a heart
of gold.

Cons: You have a heart of gold. But so does a hard
boiled egg! You make nothing out of it. You're too
distant, too vague!

Guy5:
Pros: You-you-you! I thank God a zillion times to have
met you. You made me know myself. You taught me
love. And I learnt that my former ideas were all
hypotheses. No hard feelings now! May the force be with yu!

Cons: No cons!

Yogi

I was led into a room with a balcony overlooking a jungle. 'This is Yogi's room', said she, my host. I said hello to my home for the night.

When I got up to the sun's orange rays raining through the white curtains and I opened old drawers, I found Yogi's diary.

My host, Yogi's mother, called me down for tea. We talked as she watered her plants.

I asked her about Yogi. Yogi left home six years ago, when he was nineteen. Way back then it was hard on her. But he had his reasons. Confines of home stifled him, she said. And Yogi wasn't made for college. But his father had other plans for his only child. And the child had no plans as such.

So one summer morning, he simply left, with just the clothes on his back. He called seven days later, from somewhere high up in the Himalayas. And then again a month later from somewhere else. He still does call his mother. But she doesn't try to get him back.

Back in the room I pushed the door open and I saw something I had failed to notice ealier. Yogi painted. On the canvas that hung right before me, were footprints on sand. He called it 'Guitar and barefeet'

Those words brought the man of flesh of blood infront of my eyes when I closed them. The whole night I thought of Yogi. I liked his name so much, and wasn't he a Yogi? I thought of gay abandon and kept staring at 'Guitar and barefeet'.

Those footprints must have been Yogi's, I thought. I pondered over what he looked like and whether he remembered to shave. I mulled over the broken strings of his guitar and what music he liked. There are only a few people who followed the heart.

By dawn, I was completely in love with the 'idea' of Yogi. I placed a picture of mine right beside the painting. That picture, embodied the two passions of my being- 'Seashells and poetry'. I looked at the two of them for sometime. They looked like soul-mates.And I simply left.

I am tired.
No I am not sick.
Just tired.
Tired of letting go.

Autumn Rain

Everything else in life can be forgotten. But autumn afternoons.

I was walking my own way and I saw the sides of the road strewn with dry leaves. Big and small. I looked up at the huge trees. They were all naked.

I stepped to the side. Crushed the dead leaves. The cracking sound. Felt good.

A whirlwind. A mild one. Carrying the yellow leaves from the trees, after a merry-go-round, adding to the heap below.

The breeze touched my face. I looked away. The sun was a distant ball of fluorescent yellow. Hiding behind stunted boughs of lonely trees.

I took a turn. I saw the moutain. Not green anymore, it was all grey. I wanted to walk to where the road ended and the moutain began. To a place from where there was nowhere left to go.

But then the wind grew cooler. And faster. Dry leaves flew past more often. I felt a drop plop on me. Rain. Autum rain.

Caution: The pic & the post are not together!

tonite before i disappear in the dark
my heart will miss a beat for sure
and it will say -'ah'

i'll light a candle
and get a cake of chocolate
the one that looks like a heart
mine & yours alike

music will flow in at midnight
i'll fill my room with confetti
and dance to sleep, in your arms

run my hands through your hair
and say those 'nothings' in your ears

later
i'll sit with myself
and remember
your words...your smells
the touch, the taste

& I've got to see you again~!

On the verge of love

I'm feeling ugly tonight
Won't you stop by?

Say a word or two
And make me dance on the clouds again?

Won't you?

I know
I ain't as beautiful
I ain't fair
I don't have those blue eyes either
Nor the captivating dimples

But..nevetheless../

About why I hate to...

One February afternoon sipping a hot beverage, my mind goes back half a dozen years to when I was 15. I stood in an empty field, dusk in the offing, between a guy and a girl. Both were equally good friends of mine. And so I was trying to bring in peace between them. Peace and Love. Yes, sadly one of them had fallen in love with the other and the the even sadder part was that I was the third person involved. Way back then, I didn't even know what stuff I was into.

So the one in love brings out a card, a hand made one. A big Sorry written on it. And what for is the person sorry? Because she had dared to make her infatuation public. And the guy was throwing those airs, pretending he was embarrased and not interested at all.

Now that was the first time ever that I played cupid. Thinking about it now, I understand the futility of my involvement. Later in life I met many people. And played cupid many times over. And one thing kept happening over and over again. I always failed. The guy, the girl and me...all of us in deep waters. Feet slur, desperately crying to get out and promising never ever to commit the sin again.

But Baang! Every time I see a broken heart, a heart longing for love, my heart melts. Enter I, centrestage. Trying to solve the whole thing. Throw away 'mis'-understandings that never were so. And at the end of it mess the whole thing up irreversibly. I don't even remember how many lovers have suffered for me.

So with V day round the corner, it's kind of a caveat to the people around. Don't ask me to deliver the cards to madamosile. Don't ask me for her number, id..whatever. Because I would be more than willing to help. But now you know that what utter failures we are gonna end up as...!!

-'precisely female feelings'-

-i am alone-i see people-i see hands and legs-and faces-unknown faces-faces i would never see again-i see an unwanted pace-i see blinding lights-i see murder-i see white sheets-i see windows to nothing-i see black-i see you-i see me-

-i am home-the smell of incense-i see my face in my favorite mirror-i see my old diaries-i see the boughs of the coconut- i see that time hasn't moved-the sound of silence-the crack on the wall-the wind on my face-the moon-me-you-

i believe whatever i write reads the same, thesedays. because whatever i think feels the same. because every guy i liked begins to feel the same. because i can't rid myself of this monotony. because i can't rid myself of me. because life has come a full circle, it just keeps repeating now.

i live my past, though i have very few livable memories. and i also live my future. my present is lost sometime in between. sometime when i stand at the end of the road and gaze at the blurred outline that mountain makes with the sky on a moonless night.

i listen to music. music that goes on in my mind always.

'You don't even know the meaning of the words I'm sorry
You said you would love me until you die
And as far as I know you're still alive
Baby

You don't even know the meaning of the words I'm sorry
I'm starting to believe
it should be illegal to deceive a woman's heart'

@gypsy-this is the song :)

PS: I don't want to get rid of the monotony either. that's what i live on...

Snippets..

It's the last night of winter. Days will only get longer.
Dreams will only get shorter. And I will lose my refuge
in the dark...

My interpretation of things is weird. When I like
something, I don't know why I like it. When I hate
something I don't know the reason either. So more
often than not I go by my instincts and it turns out
that I can't explain my thoughts. Again it's no reasons,
no excuses,just me...you know, I just am...

I am a passive person. Thoughts come to me. I don't
go to them. My stories come to me. I don't move an
inch. So I am a pathetic 'active thinker' and worse, my
lateral thinking skills are an absolute zero.

I hate headaches. They blurr my vision. They make
me go mad. They make me nauseatic. And more than
anything, they make me sad.

I love being alone. But sometimes solitude haunts me.
Before a minute, I wanted to be left to myself. And
now again I want to lose myself in a crowd. So I am
never sure what I want from my life. My priorities are
in doldrums.

I wonder if anybody would want to swap lives with
me. I have a cup of black coffee at 10 in the evening.
And that keeps me awake till 4 in the morning. And I
lose my nights somewhere in between.

My frustration gets dumped in a corner of my mind. It
keeps on piling like a pile of clothes waiting for the
laundry. And one night I plan to take a walk in the
cold, alone to throw it all out. Or otherwise I blog it
out.

There is this man you just want to stand beside. He
doesn't have any of the qualities of the ideal man, but
you like him for what he is. He is genuine. And he is
nice. So, standing beside him, and counting moments, I
begin to blush irresistively and in my mind, I am
writing a song.

Of all that I wrote here is the an excerpt...

'But with every passing moment we travelled deeper
into each other. Restraint became an impossibility and
conscience, a liability. '

And I would avoid publishing the rest.

It said 10: 25. She counted her blessings, that she
hadn't missed her train. But somehwere down her
heart, she had really wanted to miss it. That would
have been an easy excuse to stay back. But a hero that
he was, he never failed in anything. He made sure that
she was home bound that night.

She knew her train would leave any moment. By then
he had got out of the train and she was standing near
the doorway. There were hundreds waving goodbye.
And so was she.

But little did she know that she would actually do it. I
mean many a times it happens that you imagine a lot
of things and want them to happen desperately. But
then they hardly do, and at a certain point of time, you
get over those imaginations and move on with life. But
little did she know that she would actually do it.

Just when her train jerked into motion, she got down.
He was taken aback. She lay her hands on his
shoulders, raised her feet for her mouth to reach his
ears and said something softly. He stood there like a
piece of rock. And like a fearful shy child, she got back
into the train. And just when he wanted to see more of
her, she disappeared behind that thick translucent
glass. That's the problem with these AC
compartments.

Once out of his sight, she felt safe from that
embarrasment. She remembered a thing that had
happend an aeon ago. On being asked whether a
woman could ever confess her love for a man, she had
said that she never should. That would give the man
an upper hand for the rest of their lives. But on further
thought, she added, if the man is worthy enough,
better give it a try than sit back and regret later!

So she quietly climbed to the upper birth, switched her
cell phone off and turned sides all night. Sleep wouldn't
come. Just his face would flash by. And then the
darkness of the compartment. She wanted to reach
home and forget about it all. She wanted to forget
about having met this man. She wanted to forget ever
having confessed her love for him.

Switching sides and thoughts the night didn't seem to
pass. And finally when sleep came, she didn't want it.

Then came the morning and she saw home. But the
thought came back to her. She felt a hole inside her.
May be she was just hungry. All is going to be fine, she
assured herself. He wont ever call back and they are
going to lose touch a week or so. And it'l be alright.

She dragged her bags out of the train. Eyes swollen and
hair out of place.

How she wished if someone could pick her up from the
station and give her a free ride home. She desperately
wanted to spot a familiar face in the crowd. But she
cudn't.

Or did she? Did she see someone she knew? Yes, of
course she did.

She recognised the man, smiling and walking towards
her. And as he picked up her bags, he said ,"Switched
the phone thing off, huh!All night!"

He had flown a four hundred miles just to say 'I love
you too."

@ ranDom

#I'm having splitends, it occurs to me that I need a hair cut.
#Initially I'm too lazy about it. Then make up my mind to get it done, once & for three months.
#So one late-morning, I'm looking at myself in mirror, in a room that has too many mirrors and you know being able to see myself from all angles possible makes me conscious & sad
#And there is this person who's doing something with my hair, you know, spraying water all over my head and tucking my hair up. She is dumping precious information, which shampoo-which conditioner-ayurvedic-herbal-chemical-blahh-blah
#And there is this another woman I have been constantly listening to. She is fair and fat and has golden hair. And she wants her hair to be completely in sync with the white dress she was to be wearning that night. You know, she has got pins with pearls on them, and then she wants them do be done wonderfully-so on & so forth. I wonder!
#I'm done. My bill is exorbitant. But everything is okay when it's once in three months. Besides I love being paid attention to. Even if it's about being told which shampoo causes dandruff & which doesn't.
#Outside I see a group of black, skinny women, probably labourers in the construction nearby, cooking lunch and their stunted urchins doing rounds. Here no one is worried about her hair. There are things that mattered far more. I hear their laughter and again I wonder!
#This is India. & India continues to remain a first love.

-I often have a problem explaining people that I'm basically a random person. But how do I tell you, I just aM-

EPISODE I:
The best thing about me missing three days of serious studies and and going out was meeting a sweet guy. After many days I found someone really likable in the truest sense of the word. Sweet, accomodating and lovable. And also, should I say, that he has a catchy smile. The type I like to see on the faces of guys. The one that shows up in the lips and then gradually in a matter of seconds spreads to every inch of the face, the cheeks in the far end, the glint of mischief in the two eyes. Sometimes the fingers trespass the hair once or twice to add to the charm. Ah! Intoxicting. I indeed look for excuses to stare for a moment more...

I find hair on the hands a nice thing. And besides that, he is one of those people who are are into this habit of speaking too softly for a mind as deaf as mine. So I am left with no option but to move closer to his mouth. The whisper and the mild gushes of air along with the words then literally blow a few strands of my hair. And I like that.

I also like the gentle nod and the acknowledgement of my presence when both of us are lost in some crowd.

Besides that, there are these blank moments among those long hours when from my ever worthy peripheral view I can make out two eyes looking on for a blank moment and then immediately looking away. May be the eyes expect me to turn and say yes, I was also waiting to steal this moment and catch a glimpse of you. But am I not simply better off without it?

I like him. So what if he has a girlfriend!

EPISODE II:
I had decided never to wear this dress never again after that happened. But today, again I have wrapped this sheet of melancholy around myself, because I obtain sadistic satiety from inflicting pain on myself, I want to relive that sultry day, that windy afternoon, I want to live that pain all over again… that separation, that sense of being duped. I want to hear the last words you uttered, one more time. I want to hear those unspoken promises you made before me, even though they were not real. I want that same music, to fill the solitary air around us …

I want to regain that exhilaration of being beside you. That of talking to you, endlessly. Taking care to see that our eyes don’t meet for time longer than a second, all the way I blushed about not letting you peep into me through that curtain of shyness…

Even though a spasm of pain clinches my face every time the memories of that day come back to me, I have had the courage wear the same hue and color… that same pair of metal earrings. The same place, the same solitude…the same me; just that you are not here anymore.

Even after you are gone, again I am here for you. And this time I will let the pain shroud me mercilessly…

I want to outgrow that day, by living it again.

NB: EPISODE I & EPISODE II are just not connected in any way physical or metaphysical!

A latent Dream

I have always wanted to become a news-reader. It could have been just another stunt of a whim to become better known, but whatever the reason, I always wanted to see myself reading the news from God-knows-where. I wondered from where they were reading it all. It was much later I found out how the thing works... I also wracked my brains wondering what it would look like if I had a pang of nervousness showing myself to a billion people in the middle of it all, 
Iwould just get up and run away... 

I have always wanted to be in Venice. It makes me want it more with time. It arouses in me feelings of passion & gay abandon..somehow it does.

I have wanted to become an experimental chef and have wanted to have my retinue of victims to test/taste them on..

I have always wanted to have a night for myself.I would spend it walking the shores and collecting sea shells and chasing crabs into their holes, from dusk to dawn..

I have wanted to run away from home, just for the heck of it/for a short duration of time...i wonder how short../

I have always wanted to have fair hands, nevermind the face, justthe hands/& this is has nothing racist about it /

I, as a child, had always asked dad to drive me to the horizon. I knew it all comes a full 'sphere', even then I wanted to fall off the edge of the earth.

I have always wanted to have the 'exact' pictures to match my thoughts when I write something.

And, of course, I have always wanted to find YOU.

to throw up:-

These days nothing makes sense to me. I feel like an ascetic, away from the worldly because i wonder if i seriously want something right now. When my heart tilts towards a thing, I warn myself. For a second I wonder if I actually need it. The next second I convince myself that I would be absolutely fine without the 'thing'.So the whim is gone in just two seconds. And after this, my mind ends up feeling sterile. 

It's not just with 'things'. I have begun behaving this way with 'real-people'. The moment I like someone, I begin to distance myself from him. I fear becoming an emotional-parasite. I fear losing my independence. Sometimes I ask myself if I want to live by myself all my life? I have so many insecurities about my life that I feel tiny and endangered. I feel everything is but a facade. Nothing is real. and that one shouldn't be carried away. One daren't budge. And I tie the chastity-belt about my neck.

Moral of the story, I feel my life has no meaning. living like vegetable, is not worth it at all. Nothing arouses in me any emotion of any sort. Sometimes, sudden pangs of anxiety have me completely.. they leave me wornout and worse.These days I dwell in my own pathos...

~All women keep score.
Only the great ones put it in writing.~

....

Anecdote-Antidote

Someday I met him at the juice centre. It was one of those days when I didn't know his name. As in I was always confused about his name. As in I messed it up with another guy's.
YEah, so at the juice centre, he smiles at me; I smile back at him as it was the first day of college after summer and we were supposedly wishing each other a warm welcome-back. And then he makes me feel like he would say a word or two. And I am trying my guts out to remember his name. Does it start with an 'A' , a 'T'..what!! He asks me about the registration for the new semester and we talk about how the management has screwed up things big time. We laugh. He leaves. And I still can't remember his name.

The mad-man

Yesterday walking back home, my mind was straying elsewhere. I was feeling low because I had failed to achieve something I should have achieved. Whenever I lose in life, all I want to do is hide my face in my hands and cry till my fill. And being in the middle of the road, that was exactly what I couldn’t do. Just then I noticed the mad-man.

That reminded me of my childhood. Every morning, when I waited for my school bus to pick me up, this mad-man would be around. He would be smiling to himself. There was a huge mess on his head; he had hair like many holy-men do. And had hardly any clothes.

My naughty kid brother would whisper into my ears, “I think he is a private detective, or he could also be from the CBI or something, on some mission, you know. And recently they recovered great wealth from the man’s house who sells eggs at the chakk.”

There used to be a makeshift shop of samosas near my bus stop. The mad-man would stand there, talking to himself, for sometime. On his good days, he would have two samosas thrown at him in a polythene bag, the curry leaking out of it. I used to watch him savor it. Soon my school bus would arrive, and I would get busy with other things in my mind. The mad-man would be out of my mind, until I noticed him the next time.

And so things went on. I was done with school. I did two years of college in my city. And I saw less of the mad-man with time. I went away to do my graduation. Things kept going on. I kept chasing the things I wanted to achieve. Exams-exams; Colleges…Certificates, Jobs, besides the other pleasantries of life.

And in this rat-race, when I failed to achieve something I should have achieved I was sad. And on the road, I met the mad-man again. His hair was the same, like jute in a quagmire. He was smiling to himself, chattering away, making gestures. And walking up and down the same road for the past so-many-years. Many-many years. I always fail to find myself in my past. But coming across him, I felt a pinch inside my heart. What has he achieved in the past many-many years? Where has life taken him? Probably he has walked up and down the same road hundreds of times. And look at his face, he is happy, isn’t he?

So why wasn’t I born a mad-man.

wickedflower

There are certain truths about myself that I might never want to convey. Even though my blog is another me and here I put I put up almost anything, I have certain uncertainties inside myself I would never like to talk about.

Here I have a lot of candyfloss stuff put up. I write about being estranged and lovelorn. I honestly write down my emotions, my passions. Some stories are completely fictitious. Some are nothing else but the truth. And some are in between. The ones that occured to me when reality extended to a somewhere and imagination took over from there on.

But THIS is not I am all about. THIS could be a facet ; or rather a facade!

I have a certain substance in me. And I want to talk about it. Some ambition to win, some to absolutely outstrip the peers. A part of me wants to be barbaric, at times, running like a cheetah and grabbing by the neck anything it wants to possess. At times looking at blood ooze makes me such a voyeur. And then I forget to cry and begin to laugh like an insane. Sometimes I love fire and smoke and darkness. Sometimes I just want to break-free. An sometimes I just go DIZZY!

'hello?
hey..hii
how have you been..all these days..lon time yaa
what? no way..are you kiddin me?
if you re serious..thats great news
who is it? some ol friend? do i know her?
Colleague!hmm..
guess all this happend very fast, none of us even got the slightest hint..
o ya? true love and all..haha!
oh of course.how can i not come to your wedding?
yea..for sure ..'

after the call, i felt like holding my heart, in case it falls off my chest. began crying.

wanted to call back and say

'i m sure ur joking..right..tell me you are
getting married is a serious thing... m sure ur aware
and what makes u think this isn't just a fling/
u knw it could be..give it some more time
give me somemore time
how can you marry someone else but...'

to get over it i took a bath that felt like sauna. and then a cold shower/ and warm again... and it kept goin on that way for around an hour.

Couldn't swallow any breakfast. Walked the roads like a zombie. thnkin of old days.. a terrible pang of lonliness took over every part of me. i wanted so badly to talk.

waited for it to be lunch time. as me and my frappe' sat alone-together on a table, my mind kept ditching me every now and then. my insides were feeling terrible. i was making sure if all that had actually happened in the morning, i might have dreamt of it..or something. i felt lost, orphaned and totally abandoned.

later in the evening i went to the coffee shop. Took one of those chairs they have for singletons, fixed near the glass walls. I stared out and saw the world being quietly engulfed by the dusk. The cofe noir, between my palms, made me feel warm. I looked at the people hurrryin by. and looked into myself. Finished my coffee and ran to the gift shop next door to get him the wedding gift he deserved...

Things I did:

• *There was a certain point on the road where many roads met. I looked around. There was this Raymond board claiming a fabric for every occasion and another a Riya an Abhay smiling on two edges of a bill board,and many others. Also there were many vehicles running past. So what did I do? Idid nothing.I just stood there.
  

• *From nowhere a good looking guy appeared. What made my eyes stick to him for few more seconds was that he bore a stark resemblance to a friend of mine. And there was also this nice girl walkin beside him. Probably they were hurrying their way home. Meanwhile her shawl was slipping down. He help her put it back in place, you know, hide her thin hands from the cold and all. And they continued hurryin their way home. A minute later, I still stood in a corner and kept looking at them till they became silhouette. And till they were completely out of view. Sort of a passive fixation, you know.
  

• *The other day we met some people. A man, his wife and their kid. The man, used to be woman. S/he married her friend. I was wondering if the kid knows about it. Oh of course it doesn't. Only we do. Because some remnant feminine features on his face die hard!
  

• *Alright! I should call it a day. I have been watchin three movies per day for the past three days. And that is somewhat a too much for my below average human mind. And as a repercussion, inside my mind I have these strange voices (belonging to the movie characters) commenting on everything I see, hear, smell or feel. Feels very weird. Feels like I am going mad, gradually, because Ican't think about anything,because before I begin thinking,thesevoices begin to chatter inside my head. The chambers of my mind get so boisterous that today I tripped and fell down in the middle of the road.
  

• *Sometimes my mind wonders to my favorite short story which is "The Babus of Nayanjore" by Tagore in which the protagonist says Kusum is a 'useless commodity in the marriage market' because she is dusky. And later he falls in love with her deep black beautiful eyes, when he sees her crying. Tagore andI connect alot. Smetime back I even had the illusion thatwe shared the same birthday.
  

• *And Iam going nuts about Mark Rufallo. Whoever the guy is, he isso genuinely handsome, man! He has such nice understanding features. An he shows it all right onhis face. He is so completely messed up like me, so completely lostand in search of help.
  

• *I met a cousin lately. I was about to ask her about her kid. I had completely forgotten that they hadlost it a year ago. Strange are the way things are. We humans, come to terms with everything. Well almost everything!
  

• *Am I insane? Well not totally! I will find myself./

A thought of winter

After a string of failures, throughout the whole year, I have come home. The tree trunks haven’t
grown any wider. A soft music fills the air underneath the green canopy in the backyard though. And of course there is the onset of winter.

Early morning the fog tears apart to show long lanes of coconut trunks. Drops of dew hanging from the bark and nascent sunlight.

An hour later the soil is dried up. The trees are out of their sleep and brown dead grass shows itself at a distance.

I sit down and begin to write on a yellowed page of my diary

“I want to die with this thought
clutched close to my heart
that once, through these years
your heart tilted towards …”

I am too unsure of the word after towards. I don’t write it.

This is a letter again, I am writing, from one fictitious person to another. From one girl in the hills to her dying elder cousin, from a mother to her crazy baby daughter, from a wild heart to her lover. I have loved the cover of anonymity. Nobody can blame you for whatever you’ve written because you were but another person when you wrote it all. Sometimes I also felt like a hypocrite, shouldn’t one stand by what someone writes?

But I’ve always hated questions because I’ve been unable to answer them. My palms go sweaty, feet tremble. I felt it all so much all over again that I felt I would fall off my chair.

I opened the diary again. I wanted to write something in it. I wanted to write a book. A book that’ll undo all my failures, this winter.

~Sunrise

"Which mad man opened the windows at this deathly hour...Grr!!!" I screamed hiding beneath a couple of blankets ,"Pleasee... shut them...I'm gonna die of this cold"
"It's six thirty...come on now!"
" I need to sleep for like seven more hours...And what's six thirty? I have never
seen a six thirty!"
"Alright! I will show you what it's like."
"No pleaseeee"

A moment later I saw light all around. The cold numbed my flesh. He'd pulled me out of the blanket.
"My toes will freeze..And what are we dying to see at this hour?"
"You don't need to put your feet on the floor, love."

I blushed but feigned a reluctance.
He carried me to the terrace that way and I was sinking my face into his chest for dear life.

"Now open thy eyes. See how the sun smiles at us"

Orangish red/Reddish Orange? "The light hurts, It's too bright and I'm too sleepy"
"It wont anymore...look at me?"
And then I looked into his eyes...

~Sunrise, Sunrise, Looks like morning in your eyes~
~May we be this way, for now & forever~

~ObituarY~

There was this lazy afternoon lecture going on, the professor gurgled away insignificant notes. And she sat right there, thinking of the futility of it all, learning things that never mattered to her. She wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere far. Was she an escapist? Never mind.

There was this involuntary process of writing down everything the prof, wrote on the board. She was going a little restless. Looking up the time every five minutes. When was this going to end? Random thoughts trickled into her mind. And she was wondering how many things in her life were out of order. How many did she want to fix? What all she’d missed out, what all fate had denied her, what could be the worst consequences of this clinical lethargy, procrastination…and then she was asking herself whether she wanted to change for the better? And then the answer was a No!

In the midst of all this, there was this thud inside her and also outside. It was somewhat sudden. She felt things stopped working inside her. And then she ceased to feel anymore. She held on to a hand for help. But she came crashing down. A deep twitch of pain had her then…She lay on the floor with eyes open for a second or two. And then died.

~On the 24th of November '08...~2:30 in the afternoon~

Because!

Because you hate life and I don't
Because both of us are in search for ourselves
Because neither has even the time to grab a breakfast
We run and rush

Because, right now I am concentrating on ma career..haha!
Because I need another five years to settle down in my life
And you will need ten more...

Because we need to find ourselves first, each other next, love then...and peace last!

And I would like to unwind in the weekend, lying down beside a series of ghastly movies, go out, splurge on my own money...and dream to make it bigger...but focussing all my energies on just one single person? Sorry, but I am far too selfish for that...

Guess a lot of other things could deserve that hell lot of attention!

And well! This is mere attraction, isn't it? Everything that is, is nothing but a fad, an infatuation.

Nothing is love.
Love is nothing.

And someday in time, we'l outgrow, whatever it was...love/infatuation/crap...whatever! We'l move on...

HAHAHA!

1. favor8 color: Black
2. favor8 vegetable: Tomato
3. woman of substance: Shakira~~~
4. A regret: NA
5. A good thing: Guy I loved, din’t love me back. Would have been disastrous otherwise.
6. Best things ever: Anything that’s soporific and Intoxicating. Coffee being neither is like ma eternal love, nevertheless!
7. What’s on the cards: writing a book is on the cards. *sarcastic laughter*
8. Perfect day out: getting lost in a jungle and rain dancing my way to salvation
9. Thing I learnt: Not all tall guys are good and not all short guys are bad
10. Worst thing about a woman: having to pluck your brows every two weeks.
11. Senility has arrived when: you move on from Garnier yellow to Garnier Red (Only the conscious females would know )
12. Worst thing about me: I chew ma nails!!
13. Favor8 words: “Pathetic!” & “O My GawD-Kill me Now!”
14. Most Unforgettable compliment I e’er got: Can’t write it down here ;). Someone might just know that I considered it o-so-unforgettable!
15. People I HATE the most: Hypocrites! I hate myself when I become one.

Silvy

These days Silvy goes out a lot. Out as in, not outside, but out of her mind for sure.

Silvy...dense woods, dark woods, cool and at peace!
Silvy... rickety buildings and dusty roads, bustling streets and yet lonely streets...

Tossing her hair back, she glanced at her watch.
She was in no hurry.But doing that was to show that she was in one.
Catching up with time every three minutes when she walking alone,was another
way of making herself and people believe that she was indeed occupied and not thinking about the mundane plight her life is subject to, when she actually was thiking about it, and thinking pretty hard at that.

Beside the watch, something that quietly tied the wrist was a thick black thread.
That reminds her of the soothsayer she'd been to, some Sunday.In her mind, she laughed out loud. Very loud.

Sometimes we could be so foolish, so-so foolish to have believed that a thread could indeed change our lives. Our murky lives. And there were also stones and other junk.
Silvy had a box of them by now. She kept them quietly in her closet. Besides the other mysteries. And there were other mysteries for sure.Some between the yellowed pages of an old diary and some between one layer of the heart and another.

Sometimes she took them all out though. To have a good laugh. She would toss the stones onto her bed and laugh again. She wanted those vibrations in her facial muscles to last a moment longer.

And the she would go quiet as she read the pages of the diary. And amongst those dateless entries and faint memories, Silvy would try to remember. Which year was that? What month? Was it by any chance a winter? And what had made those words leave her heart?

And then she would lie on her back and hold them close to her chest. Stare at the ceiling. For sometime, before pretending to be in a hurry again!

~ My life has taken a strange turn. Well it always keeps on taking turns, sometimes fortunate, but more often than not, otherwise. Just that this one does arouse a different feeling altogther. Different because I'm not feeling like a failure altogether. May be I'm feeling more than just that. Or may be I'm least concerned.

Just indifferent to what is happening to me, deaf to my own voice.

It's been a long time that this has been irking me, shaking me out of my otherwise peaceful 5 hour sleep.

And I tend to get worried and the lost sleep doesn't come back to me. I have used this feeling of impending failure to threaten my resources to work the best out in them. And sometimes I have tried to just walk it out. And dispose it off to the misty, dark, frozen, 3 am air!

And the latter is being repeated beyond what you would say is healthy. Because I've reached the borders of my mind. And beyond this is nothinG! ~

$@!) gUr|_ , am I?

I don't know what the problem is, but nothing else does it the way you did. Or more precisely speaking, no one else in the world makes me become what I am, the way you did. It's not in the touch, it's not in the way you say a word or anything else. It's in the look of your eyes. Sharp and piercing, it makes every lost dream of the past look so much more precious than the life I live at present.

It's been years we last met. And there is this surety that we are never gonna meet ever again. But once I close my eyes, your picture appears out of the dark. And no matter what, I just don't want to open my eyes. I'm so immune to the forces that want me to come out of that wicked illusion.

No matter what, I just want to keep staring, on and on at your picture. It's a strange fixation. There is no desire, no nothing. But there is a numbness in the mind. No feelings, nor is the heart crying. Just a weird fixation takes over all my senses. And I want to be carried back to the past, to carry a part of it back to the present.

No! It's not you I want to retrieve from my past. It's those tiny bits and pieces of me that I left behind with you. The part of me I lost while loving you so much. Loving you the way I can never ever love anyone else in my life. And this I say with utmost conviction.

~This one is to all the "You's" ever written in all our Blogs!~
~Zindegee main hai tum bin...Ye Viraaniya~

Mayank

When I met Mayank, every soul told me to keep away and keep safe. He was a flirt. But it couldn't have mattered much to me because we became sort booze buddies. Mayank and I would do things that he did with his friends. We would discuss his girls. And how they didn't get a hint of how many other women shared his heart. I would laugh my heart out. Days were fun with him around.

So when they told me to stay away from him, it never mattered a bit.

We would talk about his every date amongst our varied topics of conversation and about how he tore open his heart to every woman of his dreams. And things would often drag themselves into late night.

And one such night, when Mayank buried deep in smoke, chose to walk me home, I said no. But he insisted. And I joked that I would have to drop him back after that.

Down the road, at the last turn before my place, when I was walking away, Mayank held my hand.

And said, "I have something to tell you."

I laughed. "Not now Mayank. I am rather drunk..."

Last night before I wrapped my blanket and slept, there was a story I wanted to share. When I folded my hands for the goodnight prayer, my heart felt like it was sinking. My lungs were like full of hot air, I wanted to throw out in one gush. So after I murmered the prayer and opened my eyes, I felt two drops of tear sticking to the corners of my eyes. Things that were pent up inside me sought an urgent release. In the dead of the night, at half past three.

So there was the story I wanted to get out of my mouth and so out of my mind disturbed me to hell of an extent. And I almost felt the dire urge to knock my neighbour's door. But I didn't because I couldn't. Instead I just changed sides on my bed.

And after I switched the lights off,I sensed the dark corridors outside my window. I so much wanted to feel the presence of a someone that I tried hard to hear footsteps outside...I strained my ears to hear voices talking. But I couldn't. There wasn't a soul I could tell my story to.

And my sleep was eluding me bad...

Excerpt

Memories of shiny roads wet afresh from mid-monsoon showers are yet to die in my mind.
My eyes, still contained sleep, and I peeped out into the world, drops of rain slipping down the windshield, and found you right beside me, driving into a wild infinity. That was all I could ask from my life. I slid down the windows. Cold wind brushed past my hair. Ah! Must be morning! What time is it? When are we pulling up for breakfast?

~Oh! There is so much love, what do we do with it!~

@ ccd

Sitting snug and smug in rooms with walls of glass and trying to guess if it was actually drizzling outside, or just the day-long dust that caused the haze appeared to be the most practical time-killer for me.

By now I had by-hearted the faces of the people sitting in the table next to mine. The chick had been nibbling something for the past one hour. She was so thin. (So- so thin!)Her hair straight-n-shiny hair fell on her shoulder in an oh-so-enviable way. The guy with her bent over the table to get an inch closer.

Also I had stared at the every possible corner at a stretch of at least five minutes.

I was running out of faces to study, and imagine things about.

‘Oh! This Damned thing!’

‘Nothing gets over in one go!’

‘Why? Is it just me!’

‘Will I get swallowed in a matter of minutes?’

‘Swallowed by forces I never would know?’

It was then that I raised my eyes to look at the person with me. Yeah, did I not tell you, that this rainy useless Sunday afternoon; I was actually not alone, sipping coffee. There was someone sitting right next to me. ‘X’ is preposterous. Let ‘A’ be the name.

Like half an hour ago, A was still busy with the frappe’. Man, how slow can one go about things? C’mon, your life couldn’t have been more messed up than mine.

Since to spark a conversation with A was a far cry, I would turn back to guessing if it was actually drizzling or it was the day long dust that caused the haze.

Time and again, I would turn to my own cup. Somehow I can never manage to hate coffee the way I hate other things. I tried to see ma face in the dark brown liguid.

But I couldn’t concentrate on that either. As in I couldn’t get away and plunge into an irrelevant chain of thoughts again. Because I kept on waiting for the frappe’ to finish. So that we could get done, and get gone.

I would look at the cars on the road for a moment. Dozens of funky people packed, awaiting the last blast of their happening weekends so that Monday morning, they could get back to their lives afresh. Lots of people. All unknown to me, and still I thought about them. People who’d never belong to this city, people, each one of whom had a past. And thanks to the adaptive human brain, each one was at peace, or was at least in the process of finding glee. Everyone in some screwed up race, with no finishing line. Why? I almost said that aloud, “Why?”

/*Three things that I need in life*/
/*I, coffee & you!*/

Hanging out alone on long lonely roads a lot after sun-set; brooding behind shut doors with the lights off is so much me. It’s not that I don’t have friends, but basically I’m a loner. I live a life inside myself. Bending down and looking into the dark deep tunnel that I am, I’m not sure if I would end up with anything sensible after any span of time. But then the end has hardly ever mattered.
/*Thoughts doing rounds*/
/*The thinking-man’s-fantasy is just a hypothesis because the thinking-man is just an oxymoron*/

Love & Peace!

Don’t be so good to me; I just in case could fall in love with you. And then I would have a new horde of problems to tackle. Don’t smile at me, when I expect you to. Don’t hold out your hand for me, every now and then. Don’t pull out a chair for me, before you sit. Don’t hold the door open for me. Don’t make me feel that you’re trying to understand me…always.

Don’t be so good to me; I just in case could fall in love with you. And then I would have a new horde of problems to tackle. Though you’re not that bad, I would have to coax myself day in and day out to believe that you’re not that good either. And that you’re just not the right guy, though you’re good at who you are.

Don’t be so good to me; I just in case could fall in love with you. I would have to stop my head from swinging in music whenever you are around. And keep it away from sinking into layers of mushy thought, with me and you in them. So, don’t try to touch my heart. Don’t dare to disturb my life at present, I’m so much at peace.

Today, I saw three butterflies circle a hedge. They were yellow- green in color. And the hedge was two shades darker. And it was quite a scene for me. Three of them, in a wild frenzy, dancing around each other, in some rhythm I could only faintly sense.

And just a bush away, there was a yellow butterfly, a solitary one doing rounds, looking for a flower.

I couldn’t find a single one that came with those printed wings. The prints that we never understand. Dots of maroon amongst lines of red, a splash of fuchsia here and green there. Green is to camouflage. To disappear into another green.

Then I noticed a flower that had grown out of a creeper, among short grass. The flower looked at me. Mundane flower. Dumb flower?

There are these few things, as beautiful as the dust rising as new rain falls on it, or the smell of the unruly monsoon grass being massacred.

And then I saw a shrub they call table rose. I say, why get it on your table? It looks better out there, in the wild.

And when I was a step away from home, I saw one with the colored wings brush past. It was too fast for me to notice the colors it wore. But nevertheless.

Now that I’ll cease to exist, the question is
if you’ll remember me after I’m gone

Will you remember me?
When failure kills me or a catastrophe swallows me

Now that you hold me in your heart
and call me your goddess

What next, when tomorrow I die
or fade into oblivion

Or dissolve into the horizon
from where I’d emerged

Will you wait for me
to appear as a string in the rainbow?

Will you walk endless evenings
for me to come back as a gust of cold wind?

Will you remember me?



/*I keep the template not anything but black because no other color rescues my thoughts better*/

/*Musical Mood : Ye Tumahri Meri Baatein*/

I slid the key into the hole. Pushed the door open, like everyday, got in and shut myself from everything else.

Should I leave the lights switched on everyday when I leave at 10 am? Because when I come back home, it's somewhat late in the evening and the place is dark. And darkness, if it is the first thing I see, makes me go dizzy.

I run to the other side of the room to switch the lights on. Throw my bag on the floor. And then my shoes. I feel my toes, run my fingers in between them. Open my hair. And simply fall on the couch. I let myself sink into it. I love the depths the cushion lets me into. And then the lights go off and I'm out. Completely.

I wake up. 12:45 and still ticking!

The ache in my legs, fatigued has thinned down into something less magnanimous. I look at myself in the mirror. Black smudge around my eyes. I run my hands through my hair. Not silky anymore. That reminds me of the weekend.

After a shower, let some coffee go down the throat. Stale sandwiches of the morning would have to be my dinner.

Some music eh? I have worn all my playlists out. So switch back to good old Shakira!

Wasn't I working on a story? Stories? Yeah, scores of them in obscure folders. Waiting to be wound up from an eternity.

One look out of the window, I see the endless row of lights on the road, tiny lights, distant lights. I stretch my hands and lean on the window sill. I could just fall off.

There is this yearning to fly, batting my hands through the air. Cold and lonely air. I lean further out, even more precariously, more dangerously. Till more than half of me is in the air.

I have never been afraid of danger. I have never been afraid of heights. Of death. But now...

I Ain't Amused At All

I have seen far too many
So you're nothing new

Think you're too good huh?
Keep your goodness to yourself

Too much of an attitude ain't good for the soul
Get down from the heavens, dumb fool!

You foul-mouthed idiot
Mark my words, you snob

Or they will come to you
Sooner or Later

No matter who you are
And what you do

In the end,
It doesn't even matter

When the sun sets
The bird flies back to the roost, unless you're an owl

Stay away!

Keep your attitude to yourself
I have enough of my own

Look Famous...!

It’s been months when I had last confessed a well kept secret. So, let’s undo that trend now.


I have had an off-beat childhood. I am not to blame anyone for it. But, I have just had one. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t know. Now, talking about the off-beat childhood, it was obviously enclosed. I never happened to see things for what they were. All I did was, get up the school bus from right in-front of my apartment, go to school, study hard, come back home, study harder, wait for the tuition teacher, and maintain that rank in class…

I never dared to venture out of this badly crammed up routine thing. Anything different from this would appear abnormal. And I never let anything abnormal happen.

My life was constrained, restricted in every sense of the word.

So I never got to know the world. And the world never got to know me. My mind developed strange patterns and I developed a phobia of quite a large number of things.

And all this happened before the day I stepped into college. College just freaked me out.
I got a glimpse of the things actually. And since I came to know more of the world around me, I wanted the world to know me too.

Yeah, it’s a queer thing to confess, but I genuinely wanted people to know me. For whatever the reasons be. They should just know me by face. I should be famous among whatever people I am.

And I took this becoming famous job, more seriously than I should have. It screwed up my priorities in life. Messed things up, because I thought more about what people thought about me than what I thought about myself.

So, one day, I told myself that I had had enough. I called it quits. Enough of trying to become famous and all. I am what I am.

But then life gives these tiny li’l surprises. I, actually, was famous…well..sort of…!

Intact

All of it still lives
the innocence in my eyes
the undying patience to see you home

i still cage vivid memories of your face
the promises that you silently made

the assurance in your voice, when we met last

the way my heart paced
when your fingers slipped out of mine
the one final time....

nothing's changed, take my word

rub a li'l below my scars
and you'l get wounds as fresh
as you left them

No time can heal them
It's all safe & intact
In the chambers of my heart

 

Victory

One moment I’m basking in glory
And this moment is to last forever…

The Problem of Choice

Whenever life has bestowed upon me the luxury of choice, I
have invariably longed for the one that's not so good.
Way back in school, from I had chosen Oriya instead of
Sanskrit. My excuse was that I actually loved the former.
My love fetched me a mere 83 in boards. Sankrit guys
crushed me with their thunderous 99s.

In college I chose Biology to Statistics for reasons known
only to the holy heavens. I loved Biology? no-no! I took it
because it was tougher. Yah! I'm attracted to tough things
(no pun intended...) But one thing I would remember for the
rest of my life was cramming the morphology of the human
brain on my scooty, on my way to the exam hall.

Later in engineering, I 'preferred' Electrical to Computer
Science. For some godforsaken senior quitely whispered into
my ears that the Compsci Dept wasn't up-to-d-mark! But I
never cared to find out what the Electrical Dept was like

Now, I have slogged for four long years. No, I actually
macerated! Plus, ended up with nothing in my hands...!

So all the conscious choices I made, ditched me. They
ditched me hard & bad. But I was not convinced by history
repeating itself over and over again.

I did it again. I made the absurd choice of love. But the love
dumped me too.

But the most pathetic thing of all things is that I don't have
any regrets. yup! Absolutely none...I have absolutely loved
learning things the hard waY!

Suicide note

By the time you read this, I would be long gone. For long I
wanted to know what exactly happened after death. And
finally I would know...

I have no qualms, I hold no one responsible for my death.
It's all me, me and me. I am my nemesis.

Though I would mention one thing, the world and its people
weren't good enough for me. I was always treated like an
outsider. My expectations were crushed. I was crushed.

So finally I have decided to call it a day. It's been a long long
time, and I have had enough. So we shall finish it once and
for all.

I am not a coward or an escapist. I'm choosing a dignified way
of ending a vestigial life.

So, I'm being rather brave, I don't want to live like a piece of
flesh. My life should have been the way I wanted it to. Or it
would not be at all...

Goodbye all

Love

wildflower

Their eyes met and parted, almost instantaneously
Eyes that know each other, do not look away that fast.
But with strangers it's a different thing you know...

There were human voices, so many that they condensed into a noise that submerged into the back of their brains.

And in a mad crowd like that it's natural for two strangers to fade into oblivion. To never look at each other again.

But eyes met again. And before they were to part, she felt his eyes hold on to her for a moment more. Did he know her?

'No!', she told herself...Nobody here is supposed to know me. I am not supposed to be visible. She laughed to herself.

She was sitting on the stairs...she saw herself in the shiny black marble that the floor was tiled with. Looked up at people walking on that distant road. From where she was, everything looked so distant, so alien to the world she lived in...

She tossed her hair back, the way it brushed her back always felt good, she continued doing that and staring into the semi-lit darkness.

Unconscious of her own existence, her mind stretched into the thoughts of an infinite nothing.

She tried to lengthen her mind's stay in the real world, but she kept falling into depths of an hypothetical abyss. The more she would fall into it, the more lost and free she would feel.

She crossed her legs on those shiny black marble stairs...tossed her hair backwards and it again kept falling on her shoulders.

And the stranger couldn't look away anymore. What was he looking at?

At her soul underneath layers of skin and flesh...?

Her mind juggling between possibilities and impossibilities and his kept sinking into her...

~~##~~

Our feet sink deeper into the sand as we take every new step. You begin to lean on my shoulders. And I feel like I’m dragging you along with me. You’re talking like insane. But I want you to sink into deeper levels of irreversible insanity. I look at the distant waves, layers of white foam emerging out of the sea pitch dark, and then vanishing into the same. And yet again, I look at you. You’ve almost lost it. What could have made you so drunk? Is it the alcohol, or is it something else? Is it me? Can you even walk like a man? Can you even find home?
pic courtesy: internet!

the Jamun tree

I can remember the sickle-shaped jamun tree. Rain fresh. And lush green. I remember staring at it from the opposite bank of the river. Fearing the brown flood waters of the river that kept me away from the jamun tree, I wondered if there was actually a crocodile that lived underneath. And the clever monkey on the jamun tree. And whether the clever monkey had ever asked the crocodile to ferry him across to the other side. And whether the crocodile had asked for the monkey’s heart in return for the ride.

I had been told that the heart of the clever monkey who devoured bunch after bunch of purple ripe jamun was supposed to have a heart with all the coagulated sweetness in it. Or so the crocodile thought. And was hence greedy to eat the monkey’s heart once and for all.

And in the middle of the swirling waters when the crocodile paused for a moment, looked at the monkey on his back and asked for his heart. The monkey stayed mum. The crocodile threatened him.

Then monkey, clever that he was, said that he had left his heart back on the jamun tree. He would hand it over as soon as they reach the bank.

The crocodile readily agreed.

Upon reaching the other bank, the clever monkey shot up the branches and khee-khee-d from up there at the crocodile.

‘How can anyone live without his heart? You foolish crocodile.’