The Cost of a Smile

Talking about attitude, everyone should have her own share. I am not talking about the mere cognition of being you. The context is something way more aggressive. It's about the lack of any motivation to alter oneself. To believe in and worship inertia of the self.

I walk around with a poker face. You actually have to sit across a table with me, crack a ridiculous joke or two to see me smile. If you march further on polishing your sense of humor you would see me laugh. Or sometimes roar and fall of the chair. But then you wouldn't do any of that. You have no vested interests, do you. So I am never seen laughing and perceived as depressed. Or someone who walks around with a lot of attitude. I walk around with a poker face.

The slight idea of me having an attitude of any sort will make my friends laugh their bellies out. The perception of me so diamatrically opposite in my inner cirlce of friends and amongst the distant others. I am taken as some sort of a silly lost and easy going female amongst the former. I am anything but these amongst the latter I am afraid.

This realisation has been haunting me to the extent of troubling me sometimes. It's not just about me being denied a friend circle with a larger radius. It's also about the tens of people who never got the idea of what I really am. It's like denying each other a certain privilege you know. It sounds like unhealthy boasting, but grant me the liberty here. The poker face hides a lot within. When I finally talked to someone who I could have talked to long ago, I was told it's a shame we didn't converse before. But then what can we do. What can we do. With the poker face.

I do not know how to smile without a reason. Just keep that pasted on your face all the time and keep shining it at every Tom-Dick that passes by. As simple as it sounds, I just cannot do it. I mean it's a problem to an extent of being clinical. Sometimes I don't understand why I price a mere smile so much. May be I am afraid of smiling. I am afraid that it might stretch to something beyond a smile, may be a conversation between the eyes. And things would be told and taken. I do not want that to happen. I do not want to add uneccesary acquaintances. Sometimes not even the necessary ones. If that has to happen at the cost of a smile, I wouldn't even move a leg.

People ask me to change. I am told, regularly, sometimes even warned to alter my demeanour. I get to hear stories of how peoples' lives changed after they learned the art of smiling. How they get more loved, how they become more popular. More successful. Happyer. And more than anything, how they get smiled back at.

Sometimes the proposition sounds too tempting to deny oneself of. But mostly I gruntle, what the heck! It's not worth it if it comes at the cost of a smile I say.

The only time when I am reminded I can still feel, anticipate, crave is when I walk across the road and expect to meet you coming from the other end. Lanky and grinning.

Else I am sternly indifferent, numb, uncaring, emotionally paralyzed.

I do not hate or love this state I am in. Though it's both better and worse than what I have been in. Because I have leaped over the zeniths of ecstasy when in love with you. I have also decayed in the filth of being lovelorn when you broke my heart. And I believe this state of being nowhere, being in between the two is much better than being tortured by such extremes. But sometimes it seems worse, because what is living worth if it is not for reaching these extremes and crossing them blindly for the beyond.

Also there is this constant awareness of a mammoth of suppressed sorrow within myself. The fear is that it still lives by the possibility of an eruption, a sudden one, anywhere, anytime. Things go out of my hands then. Now probably is one such time.

Switching between numbness and breakdowns, sometimes I experience this anticipation, this craving. This intermediate phase is independent of the past and the present. It's unaware of what has happened between us. It doesn't know a thing. And it waits, like crazy, to meet you walking down from the other end of the road. Lanky and grinning.

This sometimes happens in a horrible 10 o'clock traffic jam too. I roll down the glass and wish you were just there. There in the next cab. Or when I am picking up groceries from the supermarket, to meet you in the next aisle, doing the same. The will is so strong, so strong that sometimes I almost see you there. There, right in front of me.

Expecting coincidences, I move in and out of consciousness so fast, that I forget I am crossing a busy highway, I could just get hit by a car and die. But my numbness doesn't let me feel any difference between being alive and being dead. It doesn't.

It's very scary you know, that moment of not being able to realize the difference between life and death. And that's when I fall back and into an abyss. Exactly. 

I stare as she walks on the cobbled street. Deeper into the old city. There are crumbling houses to her both sides. And ancient trees, the ones whose ever widening trunks must have witnessed with unmoved patience, centuries pass by. I wonder have they any memory.

She walks clutching a bag under her arm, tightly lest it slip. It must have some money. Her month's salary. Some stray rubber bands. In case the one in her hair broke. In case she tried knotting the broken band and that didn't work out. It may have torn pieces of paper, with some random phone numbers written on them. Some with names, some without. Because in a hurry, while jotting them down she may have assumed she would remember who they belonged to. Does it have a comb? I wonder not. She doesn't seem to be like one who carries her makeup along.

The sun was going down the sky line. The horizon in the old city is made of what? Broken buildings, a canopy of trees, numerous temples. Temples, with stones smeared with vermilion, and flowers of hibiscus and moonbeam knotted about a thread and tied about the deities. And tiny lamps glistening away against the growing darkness. Sometimes fighting to delay the arrival of night, sometimes kneeling before the subtle breeze, easily giving in.

She walks through streets such. Takes random turns, I couldn't predict. The path getting narrower with every turn. Old women with decayed teeth, sitting on verandas on both sides, chatting and screaming for grandchildren to come home. Sit by the kerosene lamps and open their books before sleep came and took them away.

She walks by ponds, with orange rays of the sun reflecting on the water. Men taking an evening dip, before they called it a day or went to a temple to murmur a hymn or two. She walks by as women wrapped in crisp saris, did rounds about the tulsi shrub in their courtyards, the younger ones covered shyly from neck to toe, the older ones more uncaring, revealing half their bellies and sides of their bosom.

I stare and wait, until she walks into a house that's hers. Turns on the bulb in the entrance room, filling it with dull light. Asks an ailing mother how she has been all day. In her shrill voice that makes it through the earthen walls. Washes herself near the well in her courtyard, the steel bucket making sonorous noises as it makes its way up from the bottom of still secret waters. Changes into a washed sari to light a lamp before her tulsi shrub. Late, but nevertheless.

In Search of Absolut.

I create reality.

I am always running away. I use various vehicles for my mind to be carried away. Into the unknown. Where in existence is a lesser challenge. Where life is less daunting a task. I run away from the loss that I have incurred in the so called process of living.

I am sometimes chased away from reality by a certain fear. A fear that warns to cease my existence lest I ran. It's an anxiety that gives me wild thoughts, fleeting thoughts that are too nascent to be captured. So with a heavy heart, in which I do not know what I carry, I run. Away.

The vehicles I was talking about. Sometimes I drug myself. A very tangible drug. That runs through my body and mind and incapacitates them from touching reality. However with time I feel the need to switch to a more legal form of intoxication. I try reading. I tell myself fiction could heal. I lose myself in the nuances of the characters. Sometimes that too runs out on me. I try being alone. Solitude, ironically could work for the strong willed. Because staying by yourself could help you accept what is, the reality. And acceptance heals.

Beyond all this self inflicted narcissism and random people telling me that they love reading me, I use writing as a therapy above all. Unfortunately, there are times when writing doesn't unload the mind either.  I have been encircling the same idea for half a decade now that everything that I want to write down, feels passe. Passe to me. In that helplessness, I have not another way but to look at reality. The one I am trying to elude.

And try to doubt its existence. I try to doubt reality's existence. Ain't I creating this reality. That I live inside my mind.

I create reality. I have created my past, as it appears to me now, and as it has suited me to. I have bundled up unbearable memories in black boxes and thrown them into a hungry ocean. Sometimes like a message in the bottle when I am sent inklings of a hidden history, I am scared beyond repair. I have forgotten many many happy times, I have erased the significant as well as the insignificant.

I realize how my mind plays these games. I realize I create this present too.

What is reality. What is illusion. Was there a line between them ever. What is absolute and what is not.

And am I writing this. For real?

Bitch

You know not all stories of your life. You're lied to more often than you know. What happens to you is governed mostly by strangers. Some of these strangers are absolute strangers. Their whims that precipitate consequences in your life can still be justified because, at least they were impersonal.

But there is another kind of stranger. The one you knew all the way. The one you thought you knew all the way. Only you didn't.

The stranger who stood a skin's breadth from your heart and cheated on you.

The stranger who didn't deserve to be a part of your life. Only he was. He wrote your destiny, cutting across the lines on your palm. Rewriting your life, turning it tipsy. Breaking your heart irreversibly.

And be ashamed, you let him. Given another chance, you will let him do it again. Bitch.

Trading Dreams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I only want to write.'

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

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

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

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

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

An Unsaid Promise.

The problem is, words cannot capture the beauty of an unsaid promise, in its entirety. They say, we love someone because we see in them a promise of perennial happyness. And all prowess fails to encapsulate the beauty of that promise.

A 'happily ever after' might not exist for real, but it's the hope of that which drives the most of us.

Sometimes terse conveys better than verbose. And sometimes silence conveys it best.

But just in case silence rips my heart open, let me try to capture a few of those emotions before they run for cover.

The problem is when an unsaid promise is broken, there's no one you can sue.  You have no proof, sometimes you doubt your own intelligence for having been exploited by wishful illusion a bit too much. Were those promises ever even hinted? Or did you assume them, at your own risk?

You know there's absolutely no point, looking back and sobbing, but there's nothing else easier to indulge in than that. Or more emotionally affordable.

And sometimes even the promise itself isn't clear enough. You cannot draw a line between what was intended and what was not. So when it's broken, you have no idea what exactly was taken away from you. What a torture. Almost all escapes go hazy.

An unsaid promise when broken, breaks your heart. May god in the heavens, bless those broken and hasten their recovery if possible, lest numb them etc.

Terse as I said, Period.

Updates

I dreamt I got those khaki dungaree skirts. I mean I haven't ever seen them in real life. But as a kid, I loved dungaree shorts, and recently I saw someone in a pretty khaki skirt. So may be they are all mixed up inside my head and I dreamt of what I dreamt of. I took the thing off a mannequin, I have gotta thing for mannequins I guess. I am a trifle envious of them. They're all so perfect, sans love handles and faceless. And faceless, that's the best part. So the mannequin wore a wheatish top along with that skirt. I can't recall why I dint get that top too along with the skirt. Must have been outta my budget. Lo, I am scared of being penniless even in my dreams. Or worse, I can't recall what could have happened inside the trial room. That top must have been tough to get into and tougher to get out of. My dream ended when I was trying my red T on that skirt, I wasn't looking as good as the mannequin. I never do.

Also, I saw this movie in which a dying mother tells her son that they would meet in their dreams even long after she's gone. And that kid believes it too. That moment I felt some kind of a pity and wondered if I we actually dream of things we want to happen in real life. The following night I dreamt of meeting him. I seriously did. He was sleeping on my bed. Imagine, my bed! Somebody got him home. I can't recall who could that be. Must have been the ghost of cupid. And I just woke him up, in my dream and talked. And we talked the whole matter away. Our egos looked very small wrt how happy I was. It looked so easy in the dream, everything fell into place. And then I woke up, devastated. Very very sad to touch reality again. And my ego started looming, larger than life like usual.

Life, meanwhile has moved on. I realized I hadn't written from quite sometime. And as you know I am pretty compulsive when it comes to writing. I have to jerk it off my head, else it wouldn't let me sleep at night. There were quite a few things I wished to mention, but then they don't make good material anymore, or my mind has just track of things.. it's pretty good at that, as you know.. haha

..

Saying a word, stopping midway, dissolving into giggles, forgetting what I was saying. Singing some random song, losing track of the lyrics. Checking if what I was saying was grammatically correct. I wouldn't ever compromise with grammar. And laughing aloud for that. For no good reason. Breaking down into tears incessantly. For no good reason. Or for too many reasons that are suppressed inside, from a long long time. Hugging strangers, absolute strangers. Telling them things I never thought I would be able to say. Some surge of positive energy that must have been. Being an absolute pain in the ass for the sober people around. Begging them to listen. They complying, not having the slightest idea of what I was blabbering, but still nodding, patiently. Holding hands. Sharing stories, bubbles of guarded secrets bursting one after the other. Checking also sometimes, if I was saying things I truly truly meant. And I was. Alcohol purifies.

Sometimes, I get drunk to get over things I can't deal with. Nah, I think that's all I do it for. Goodbyes are the hard part. I can't see my hold loosening on the present, walking into an unknown future.

I can't say that all this place has given me is happyness. Rather, it has made me sad oftener than otherwise. But sometimes you get attached to a place because of the pain it has made you go through. Because sadness gets the real you out in the open. There is nothing to cloud your judgement. And the bonding that happens with the glue of sorrow, is deep. It is.

As I walk out of the campus in a few hours, I would miss the places I sat down and cried whenever I was totally depressed. The flagpost from where I stared at the sleeping Shillong on many lonely nights. The one stair on the flight of stairs I sat down on and chatted sometimes with friends, sometimes with myself. I would miss sitting on my bed and not opening the window, because the world outside reminded me of things I despised.

Sad memory outlasts good memory.

I am this mixed bag of emotions now, trying to avoid feeling altogether. But it's true, the people I have met here, I am not going to meet anyplace else. Though I try to avoid using the word, I defy myself for the lack of a better word, it was Awesome! The connections I have made, are not replicable, the way in which I have understood people and the way I have been understood, bit by bit, I am grateful to destiny for having me brought here. For that one decision I took, to join this institute two years ago.

No amount of writing would suffice, so I wouldn't even try. I just know, where my words fail and my heart takes over. There is no suitable parting phrase I could think of. And trust me, I have been trying, trying to sum it up. But have, fortunately failed.

I hate writing about my life for real, I love being lost, as they say, in fiction and illusion and imagination. But lo, I just wrote one..

And I am bad at saying things, but I compensate that enough by writing I guess. And so I write, I am really going to miss you all!

Signing off,
wildflower @ Awesome66! :) 

Esc

Sometimes the whole world is not enough. Sometimes all I want is you. Everything else stops pretending to be a substitute. The struggle pauses, takes a breath. Reality bites. Nothing consoles. Tears ooze. Sometimes.

Fucking sometimes. All I hear are my screams. Deathlike and hollow. Deafening and desperate. This present looms large, the future blinds. Blinds with fear. All roads shut. No escape. No escape. No escape.

Sometimes I look out of sheets of glass and forget the about everything inside. Sometimes I dissolve, literally dissolve into a being of unconsciousness. Not asking questions or seeking answers. Just moving in and out of tunnels of randomness, deeply involved.

Sometimes I ask myself why I can't feel. I try to sheer off my layers of immunity. Inculcate envy, from the ones who live. But I cannot. Numbness is the preferred alternative, no matter what.

Lately, I think my writing has lost its honesty, a lot. Feels so. There are numerous numerous incomplete drafts. Sometimes I open them and read through. Each one is a stuck story. Inside my mind, they had no where to proceed. No future. All roads shut. No escape. My stories are becoming more like me.

Anxiety is killing me. I have begun to believe that both happyness and sorrow are mere chemicals in my brain. If my moods were graphs, I can see them dip and plummet, and fall into abysses. Bottomless ones. I can see kinks too, you know kinks. Short-lived, artificial kinks. Meaningless.

It's all vague. That's how it should be. Distinct lines should fade out into vague hazes. Chaos should outlast order. Inertness should out-throw senses.

Dearth hasn't killed me. Intoxication hasn't numbed me. Love hasn't broken me. Sometimes I feel they did. But apparently they didn't. Because I am still here. Writing this. For who knows who.

The Better Picture

You can hold her narrow waist in your hands, almost. Her hair is bunched together and rests on one shoulder. The phone is on the other ear. She stands still, holding the curtains in her elbow, standing at the edge of the window, looking away.

It's a summer afternoon. Typically hot, but there's mild wind too. Oozing in from between the railings of the window, blowing through strands of her hair, disturbing it a trifle. She's unperturbed, still. Talking to someone, either very softly in whispers or listening to his silence.

There's a ceramic vase in the room, with purple paper flowers in it, kept on the other edge of the window. The flowers exude a smile, a faint smile like a human would sometimes do, when mildly satisfied or just shy. There are streaks of random colors painted on the vase, you can't make out from this distance.

Her skirt ends below her knees, her top has short sleeves. Outside, the sky is gradually turning into many hues of orange. You can see the city skyline, birds flying home. You can hear honks of cars pass by, pause to give out gusts of black soot.

There's a wind-chime hanging from the pelmet of the window. Everytime she digs her face into the curtains blushing or laughing, the wind-chime rings, mellow random rings, sonorous, pleasant. Only to remind you that things in the world can still move, time hasn't frozen as yet.

Can you draw me a picture of this? Can you include the sounds I mentioned, the honks, the rings, in your colors on a canvas. Will you paint me the sky outside that is the melange of an extended infinity. Can you also show the strands of her hair falling off her shoulder. Won't you include her blush, even if we can't see her face? The subtle quiet smile that has settled on her face, that's paint-able too, isn't it? And don't leave the flowers alone..the purple paper flowers that smile so human..

Shameless

Before:

I am a woman, my mind flies from the first glance, to infatuation, to love and matrimony in a matter of moments. Shamelessly. It cannot be ceased, my mind. A whiff of assured company, is as tempting as life. I jump into deep holes with people I don't know, knit dreams I do not have the power to make come true. I see hope in what could be disastrous, I move fast, very fast. Restraint isn't aware of my existence. I am capricious, synonymous with the wild buzzing bee. From flower to flower I go, searching for something I do not know. And the instant I see a hint of love, somewhere on the far horizon, forgetting how tiny I am I keep flying and flying, with relentless hope. I cannot translate my restlessness into words. I do not die until my heart is trampled mercilessly. My quest is die hard. It's eager to leap into a flight, any moment, anywhere, imagining a life that is yet to be, imagining a life that is not to be.

After:

I have been a woman. I have been to the deepest pits of shamelessness that could ever be. I have been through what I never imagined I would be through.  Turning into a person I only feared I once could become. Love brought out the best and the worst in me. The catch is that even that best looks worse than the worst in afterthought. Drenched in regret, I am nowhere. The way I revealed those darkest secrets of mine, in one breath, without a pause of hesitation, now makes me wonder, how doped was I? How did I ever let a stranger peal off layers of my skin and look at my naked soul. Lust makes you shameless, it makes you another person. Another person you don't recognize once you wake up in the morning. Now is my morning. A whiff of that shamelessness hangs in the air still. And I have questions that I can only bury.

I am a woman. My life switches between the Before and the After. 

Conjunction

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

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

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

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

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

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

Six-feet-under

Besides a couple of men, if there is anything that has swept me off my feet, it's change. I have seen the inevitability of it. I have succumbed with helplessness to its overpowering rigidity. Change is one thing we cannot tamper with. Move on, we have to. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes unacceptable, but mostly nostalgic.

It is considered a ritual to stand back and look at the time bygone everytime a change makes an appearance in the horizon, to collect memories and to keep them for life. But I speak from experience, those memories you think you are gathering for life do not last your expectations. Things fade. And they fade out fast. You don't even realize the swiftness and agility with which your system adapts to the new environment. I feel silly when I cannot recall what sandals I wore before I got my new floaters. You could blame it on my memory but that I do not keep things I have no use for, I must have felt a bit for those sandals while disposing them off. And now look, I don't have the slightest memory of what they looked like. That's how easily we choose change over constancy. The present over the past. And I am not getting more impersonal than I should be.

So when I see people celebrating in grand farewells and taking pictures, the nerve-ends in my mind give me a jitters. Most of this wouldn't come of any use anyway. We forget. If the thing hasn't influenced us beyond recovery, we forget. I take an active interest to ensure that the change that is coming upon doesn't change me internally, but just touches the outlines of my personality. Battle after battle, I try to remain the same, but when you look at me, you say, look, she has changed, and sometimes beyond recognition, because apparently I have. This is my weapon of personal defense.

I don't think you have reached this far in the post, but if you have, you would think I have become one of those bloggers who make no sense of the 2 sided thing called communication and just go on yap yapping and yap yapping. Okay, then so be it. I have a quite a few farewells to go to, and as I gape at them wide-eyed, I wouldn't open my mouth I am sure. Allow me to do the talking here.

I despise being swept off my feet, be it by men or by change. Because sooner or later, chances are that you land up terribly grounded, or six-feet-under. So personal defense, you see!

Sometimes, there's no one.

Sometimes, there's no one. The tunnel ends in darkness. Sometimes there is no soothing whisper. And the abyss is endless. But we were shamelessly brought up on the idea of a happy ending and a happier beginning after that. No wonder I have been perpetually obsessed with this course of things. Irrespective of how much cynicism we fake, we cannot accept with humility that life could very much end in an apocalypse. Such is the power of prejudice. It will break our bones to bend over a little and accept that the destination could be as disappointing as the journey has been. At the end we believe there shall be sunshine, and that our qualities will be recognized for what they're worth.

No, there's nothing wrong with tonite that is making me write such pessimistic stuff. It's just about fine. But I am tired of my inability to accept the mere possibility of a massive failure of the entity I have been calling hope all my life. Vague optimism has been wired such into my system. It's pathetic, our obstinacy with the illusion that our world is ideal. We wake up every morning to realise that it's not, but somehow sing ourselves to sleep with the same lullaby every night that it's all going to end up just fine. That it will work out okay.

It doesn't. Sometimes, there's no one. Some lives are an endless abyss, no matter how much you fall, you can never hit absolute rock bottom. I must learn to live by it, this is my real world. Amen!  

Sequel to She.

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

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

Find the prequel here. 

Sepulchre

Baby it's all coming to an end. All my unfinished dreams. Illusions of what I could become but couldn't. Sometimes chose not to, out of pure lethargy. Sometimes due to ego. My ego killed me. My ego killed you. I finished everything. In this silent corner, as I lie down and breathe in only my solitude and breathe it out with an equal detachment, I make it a point to kill everything I love, just to rise to a level where I would become incapable of feeling, anymore.


Baby it's finished, the reality, the dream, the place midway between the two, where I used to sit and while away time. Now everyone bids farewell, with a smile, I can't bring myself to fake an expression on my cold face. My numb skin doesn't know warmth. I am consciously repulsed by it. I am incapable of feeling already. The air is sepulchral, for all I know. I won, but I know at a much deeper depth, that I failed, that I failed miserably at being human, at being a woman. 


Now, I am set to go, to another place unknown, that feels like an afterlife. Afterlife. Cheerful adieus, mixed smiles, tears of happyness I see everywhere. But why is that when I peek into myself I see regret. Written red and bold. A heavy sigh never leaves my lungs, always waiting escape, still it stays put. My tears never well. Baby I never cry. Never. 


After this page is turned, and a fresh sheet before me is laid, for me to spill ink on it, in huge blots, or thin strikes, but whatever it will be only me, the cold me..and that would be my afterlife. My life, the  one that prolongs till death, meanwhile has paused, it has reached a quintessential comma. The air is sepulchral, for all I know. I would miss that place, that place between reality and dreams, where I sat, time whiling away, telling myself, 'This is the first day of my life'. 

Unwritten

Now, I want to go back in time. To become those eyes dripping with hope, seen from a car whizzing past  one sultry afternoon some four years ago. No I wasn't crying, but I had never felt that alive ever in my entire life. My senses hadn't sensed exaltation of that degree, they were unused to it, couldn't gather themselves and at least fake a reaction. So I stood there, looking at him leave, with the most heartened smile stuck on my face, waving bye-byes. Impatiently wondering when would I get his next call, in the evening, or later at night. In my mind, I was writing already, every word that we had said, every pause that had made it slightly awkward, every gesture, every joke, everything. Excitement of that kind must be typical of that age, I must now say.

Those few hours were so hellishly jammed with memorable events, it was difficult to write about them all. That night I wrote them all down, like I would read them out aloud to my children one day. But that piece was a travesty of all literary prowess. My words were out of my hands, they were moving about on the sheet of paper, settling wherever they liked, not heeding to a word of what I said. I was breathless, panting to remember and write, remember and write. And in between lapsing into lulls of wishful thinking, a state that felt like a cross between reality and a dream. Many times I shut the diary, capped the pen, went off to close my eyes for a while. After turning sides a few times, I would shamelessly return to writing. Too much adrenaline.

There were these little things I couldn't encapsulate. Like I was a bunch of mixed emotions when he threw a pack of chocolates at me in the car. Without saying a word, with classic masculine nonchalance. I don't remember now if I thanked him then, but considering that I haven't been gifted chocolates in the last four years, I should have. But I was floating in the clouds, all etiquette and pleasantries were a waste of time. And as I scribbled in my diary that night I couldn't make a list of all the adjectives that could describe that chocolate flinging incident. Also there was his car. Rickety would be a severe understatement for its plight. It was almost falling off. I thanked God there was a windshield. Every time I would begin describing the car, I would fall off the bed laughing, and gave up in the end. Also, there was this moment, when he was pouring ketchup over my pizza in all possible design, looking at his piece of work, content, innocent, giving me the liberty to stare at him with all the freedom I had. I couldn't describe his face, it was a picture in my head and I couldn't translate it into words. So I let it be.

I wonder what would it be like to have moments in my life that my writing would fail to describe. I haven't had any such in as long as an era. The balanced adult, withheld woman that I am trying to become, I have disheartened those eyes dripping with hope, who waited there, four years ago one sultry afternoon. May be that is why, now I want to go back in time, feel something that can just be felt and not written about.

And if you still have such somethings in your life, then consider yourself very lucky. Happy Valentine's Day!

Undone.

One time, he talked about how he saw himself as a father in the future. When a man is up to such talk, you know he's up to something, he couldn't be serious. But you couldn't say he was lying or anything. You just couldn't. I looked away, embarrassed.

Another time, he told me he liked simple women. Like the Gayatri Joshi in Swades. Mentally I dug out all those buried salwar kameezes in my wardrobe. Even fancied long tresses that reach the waist, wondering if they would sync with the attire.

Sometimes, he told me, 'See you're a nice girl.'

Again, he told me of the places he was yet to take me to. I had them all pictured, neat and clean in my mind. I would close my eyes and see us, in the future. Happy and full of promise.

I saw our feet kiss silken sands, hair blow against sea winds. I saw us take long strolls by the waves. I heard us talk, the way we talked then. Like p&q, always looking into each other, and conversing. Lost, yet there.

So much for meaningless talk, so much for broken promises! Into long nights. So much for the hint of a dream of a life, I wished to see together with him.

Now, days whiz past, shortening life by the moment, chances of meeting him again heartbreakingly plummeting as I write. No body cares. He doesn't recognize me. And I cannot recognize him. A part of life stands, undone.

Fabricated Ends

Writing needn't necessarily have an explicit meaning. It is subject to interpretation. The liberty of interpretation granted so generously to the reader simultaneously takes the buck off the shoulders of the writer and adds dollops of extra charm to the art itself. I absolutely love that. I thank God for two things. One is writing, the other being amnesia. The latter is mostly an aftermath of the former, augmenting my respect for the more indispensable of the two manifold. Don't I treat writing as a vent anyway!

I will tell you a truth here. Of all the sins, vanity is the most dehumanizing I believe. All the time, around myself I see attention-seekers. And they make it so awkwardly clear that attention is all they want and they want it all the fucking time that I hide my face in shame. Now, ain't I human too! Shouldn't I want to be noticed in the crowd? It is frankly considered abnormal if I did not. But didn't I just say, I treated writing as a vent? An outlet for everything, an unrestrained outburst, that I can indulge in anywhere anytime. Probably that's why I write so often and so much. World's fucking too much to take. Consequently, I am not so sad about my inconsequence, I do not feel the slightest need to seek attention, or be the cynosure like you, or you, or you. I am cool. I have said all I wanted to say on this blog, bury your concern six feet under the earth, I do not want it. I don't care if you've read what I have written, humans are cheaply centered around their ownselves anyway! Truth time over, congratulations if you stood it.

It doesn't show, the frustration i.e. on my face. I come along as a pretty neutral, unaffected, indifferent, uncaring person in day to day life. Too many synonymous adjectives, you would say, but you have to realize the gravity of the problem I see is so rampant. I have cared too much and now I cannot care an inch more, people make me sick. People of all kinds. But it doesn't show on my face, because I have come to terms with it. Acceptance heals. Writing repeatedly about it has probably, or surely helped me a lot in this regard. Hence I am grateful, from the bottom of my heart, even from the bottom of my stomach! 

Save Me

Hours merge into days, days vanish into weeks. I while away a lifetime in mundane indulgence. There is no picture on my wall. Mornings never happen. Afternoons and evenings are spent walking crazy roads, doing nothing. But the mornings never happen. There is hardly anything lacking for a decently comfortable life. Decently comfortable. I am expected to think that way. I expect myself to think that way. But there is not a picture on my wall. This is what solitude does to you. There is a mild fear that these walls might just collapse unto me, taking me along with them. The fear suddenly, on some nights becomes mildly schizophrenic. It is then when I scream for a smoke, nobody understands. When denied I draw random sketches, which I do not understand, and I hide from everybody else lest anyone understood.

Tumbles of my hair, quietly settle on the sides of my face, they have nothing to wait for. They have been trained to be that way. Threatened with dire consequences rather. This is what too much of threatening does, curbing of freewill, you know! My writing doesn't talk to me much, but it passes subtle hints that it isn't here for long. Writing being my alter-ego now, I cannot even begin to fathom the void which its absence will leave behind in my already hollow life. Because this mundane indulgence wouldn't last long I know, you know.

There is not a picture on the wall. Nobody has noticed, I have turned awry from inside, maybe. And I am not screaming for help either. I have trained myself enough for that. These walls, I have created around me are too sturdy, they would collapse on me convincing me of my schizophrenic fear, rather than giving in to anything external. Anything at all. It's been a long time. Scary long. But there's even longer to go. Scarier, huh! 

Will I find a reason to my life, other than me? The lights in this room are all turned off. The song that's playing is ironically called 'Save Me'

yasp x

Noone's cumin' to get you babe
There's no destiny. no fate
You are what you make of yourself
There ae no judging heavenly forces
That's celestial crap
Bad things can happen
To you, all the time
There's no savior babe
No soulmate
That's fairytale crap
So be by yourself
Never leave your side, 
And fall for nascent whiffs
They're not even real
Just an easy illusion
Real is what you are going to make
There's no destiny. no fate
Noone's cumin to get you babe.

Checklist

There was a checklist, a funny checklist. With all the qualities typed out, one below the other with a tiny box beside, which was to be ticked, in due course of time. In due course of time or never, or crossed out or scratched out. There was once a decently long checklist, not insanely long or anything. And it was as strong as prejudice in my mind. I didn't need to even blink to recall it.

I ain't a very strict person, but I followed the checklist religiously. I was stupid. I don't understand why I am using the past tense here. Though the word belief has been kicked out of my dictionary, I stick to the checklist even today. I am stupid. Very very. And I do not see enlightenment anywhere on the horizon for me. I am beginning to live with it as if it weren't a part of me you know, that indifferent. And you don't think I am quite making the point here, but I am. The beauty of a human is the sum of her faults.

The checklist makes me laugh, with self hatred. I would scream out my lungs on another person who obeys a similar checklist, but I wouldn't correct myself you know, that indulgent a hypocrisy. I mean it's ridiculous, to a point where I do not understand myself anymore. I know after having lived the times I have, I ain't dumb enough to fall for what I fall for. But then may be they were right when they said it was blind. Now you don't think I am quite making any point here, but I am.

There is a stupid, a very inane checklist inside my heart, worse than that, inside my mind. It is a kind of hypnotism that holds my mind hostage, where all my intelligence gives up hope of keeping me sane. And I fall for the apple, you know, the apple. Instead of a whole lot of better stuff that I could have done. Apologies if you didn't quite get it, but I quite made my point here.

A Table for One

Intriguing young woman. Contently staring at the book, charmed by the written word, cast a spell upon may be. Thoughts fixed, or moving you couldn't say. You couldn't say a thing about her for sure, hence the intrigue. Hair clutched into a loose bunch at the back, strands of it falling apart, being repeatedly tucked behind her ears like being disciplined. Is that some kind of a style? You couldn't say. Cheek bones meet to form a rather pointed chin, like a perfect triangular vertex, a face not too small not too large, somewhere in between. And I haven't seen her eyes yet, I have to keep looking some place else, staring at her with that devoted a constancy would arouse suspicion, wouldn't it. Now she is looking up from the book, and I have to pick something else to look at, momentarily though, oh, and is that a smile I gather from my peripheral view. Is she going to smile at me and say hi? Rather not, she is smiling at the waiter and asking for another cup of chai. And, by the way, eyes, pretty mundane though, I imagine would be as much drunken and intoxicating over an intimate conversation about life et cetera.  Ain't I thinking too much. Being carried away by the intrigue.

This is a book store, overlooking the highway, with walls of glass. And this is being written as it is happening, like being broadcasted live. The more enticing combo is that of literature and some thought inducing beverage. You know how it works. Half the time you scan the book shelves standing in narrow aisles not knowing what is it that you're looking for, but basically shortlisting the books you could glance through later when you're sipping the not so sugary chai. But the problem with the inbuilt tea shop was that there weren't enough tables. And there was this table for two with this personification of intrigue seated, busily purring over a book whose name I couldn't read out from that distance. So I took that excuse to tread closer and immediately took the vacant chair. It must have given her quite a jig, the ones that strangers give. But she hadn't cared to look up. Now I make out the book is called May you be the mother of a hundred sons. Non fiction, oh!

This is the weirdest thing you would expect, wouldn't you. Sitting with a stranger in a cafe more familiar, whiling away an afternoon, staring at the cars zooming past on the highway, uncaring, unstopping. The stranger, who has now run me out on intrigue, curiosity, sex appeal, and even on blah, has switched books, has picked up one of those written by an enlightened newbie, an aspirant is she. I cannot ask her what she is reading. On another thought, shouldn't I stop jumping to conclusions about her and wonder why these cafes do not have A Table for One. 

Chaos

You me, January rain, lost roads, cold winds, missing tunes, whispers in the air, solitude, love, the dearth of it, the end of us, the beginning of me, forced belief, a quest for survival, craving for death, winters stood, winters awaited, hallucinations of warmth, drugged consciousness, stares into the dark, colored beads, dazzled eyes, dried of tears, a way to go, nowhere to go, memories of yesterday, a clueless tomorrow, timelessness, success, recognition, failure, estrangement, being ugly, becoming uglier, glimpses of beauty, of forgotten lust, trapped remnants of it, listlessness, being tongue-tied, writer's block, a surplus of un-cagable thoughts, meaningless syllables uttered, toes, red nail-paint, deep, very deep eyes, lined with kohl, in them a distant stare, You me, me me


Hah! 

Nicotine

There was a woman who smoked. Smoke was an escape, an interval of time carved out from its magnanimous continuity, for her and her alone. Often drowned in wisps of the white cloud, she would pick up pieces of reality between her fingers, neatly and throw them, as far as she could. If they found their way back to her again, it was time to light another one. Long bouts of such vague hours, spent in between consciousness and unconsciousness filled up phases of her nights. The woman who smoked.

As the nicotine filled her nostrils and lungs, flowed through her blood for a while, the nerves in her head went off to snooze. An artificial high of sorts dictated her thoughts. Though sometimes she cried too, she laughed hysterically, inhaled and exhaled. Looked back at the past, looked down at the past, mocked at it thick-skinned, unaffected, immune.

When overwhelmed, like said, she cried. Drops of tears, scanty though, wet her lashes and slipped out when she closed her eyelids. With every such drop removed from her conscious were stashes of regret, failure, wrongdoing, like undone. And the woman sighed in relief, short-lived though.

This was her one chance to take control of the things that had for long been evading. One chance to renounce all imposed myths of inferiority. Emerging from behind the shadows, and flying away like an angel. She laughed, like mad this time, lighting the next from the present, trying to stretch her escape into deeper hours of the night. Not letting any truth loiter around her being for a radius mile-wide.

Pause

Our afternoons
the smell of tea
colors of maroon & brown
noises of children playing outside

Our nights
dimmed lights
whispers traded, shared
sighs, breaths & darkness

Mornings
dew drops on petals
new hopes
a harmless hurry, impatience

Our evenings
a nearing shroud of night
I, waiting at the window
craving to be together with you, again

Us

and our times..

Pic Courtesy: S

Too Late

Behind my sarcasm
and my hate
my unanswered silence
I hide a dime of
gratitude, for you

For without you
I would have never known
love, and its nuances
darlin' darlin'

A long time has passed
since then and now
and I have known
nothing but betrayal
felt worthless, lifeless

Filled with anger
sometimes vengeance too
suppressed screams
I have only regretted
knowing you, my heart

But now
as I realize that
my wait for you is
never-ending,
Oh, it's not a wait at all, it's nothing

You're not coming back to me
we can't go back in time
I can't go back in time
I have to shed my spite
one at a time

I wish to preserve
the price-lessness of it,
all that it was,
let me, won't you? 
And want to

Thank you,
for each smile you brought on my lips
So tell me,
Too Late,
is it?

Prequel: Too Soon

Heathcliff

You know Heathcliff? Catherine's jilted lover. Wuthering Heights. He left an impression, rather a scar on me. Every woman has a Heathcliff. Her Heathcliff.

A man who loves her, and loves her like no other man ever could. No I am not talking mundane love here, the one that comes and goes, shows a symptom or two of attraction and then leaves the victim distraught, but only for a while. Just a while, and before time could even blink we move on. It's true, even those of us who have witnessed the most maddening bouts of compelling passion would agree, life is above it all. But not for Heathcliff.

He destroyed himself, and everyone around him, in the process of wanting Catherine. Ironically, he was responsible for Catherine's end too. What kind of love was that which destroyed the object of affection itself? Wasn't the motive lost in madness. In specimens like Heathcliff, love tends to insanity.

And every woman has her Heathcliff. A man that needs to be done away with. Seriously. Every moment you let him be, he would take a step further towards self destruction. Every moment you let him be, he would become the Heathcliff I fear he would become one day. So dear woman, make yourself as worthy of his hatred as you can, kick him in his heart. And be not guilty of it, you're only saving him.

Be guilty only if he becomes a Heathcliff. But die of shame if he becomes an artist in your love.

JFK & Jacqueline 

Last Man Standing

Will you be my Last Man Standing? My last first love. Will you? Please. Because the day I fell for you, I had made to myself a quiet promise that you would be the one. The One for me. And after you, no man would lure me ever, an inch away from where I am. And I was right in your arms. Thinking of you all the time. Kissing castles in the air, making dreams with you. Honey! I had asked all those forces of destiny, if they exist, to give you to me. I wanted you, and wanted me to belong to you even more. I envy that surety, I doubt I could have it again in life. The dire intensity of the craving, makes me gasp for breath even now. I had never wanted anything like that. Hadn't the courage to. Don't know what was with you though. 


But now things have changed, and as they say 'There is no point in it'. Hanging on to illusions, supposing them to be truths, wanting them to be truths. There is no point in it. So in this pointless existence of mine, I have one thing to ask of you. 


Will you be my Last Man Standing? The last one I ever loved. Will you leave memories and pain so strong that I would never incline towards the candy-floss fantasies of love. Will you? Please! Let this be my parting gift. Last so long in my heart as is needed to make love an impossibility. Help me hold that quiet promise I made to myself when you happened. This would mean the most to me. 


Be my Last Man Standing. You will, wouldn't you!

Traded-off!

I have never felt passion. The deepest passion, the one that swells from my heart and takes charge. Never have I walked by my beloved to see him off, hoping a cab never stops by. Never have I had the chance to count my breaths, rising and falling in waves. Or taken in gulps of cold air believing it would freeze the surges of warmth inside of me. I have never truly felt passion.

My locus of control unquestioningly lies in my head. And in those moments when I could have been taken away by a gust of wind, I have held my hands in my hands, and stayed. In the moments when my senses couldn't have been but more alive, I have been dead. A stimulation was amiss. Hence I have been numb.

Midway, I realize I have lived half my life like that, like dead. What is life without passion, if not the antithesis of it anyway. Though it doesn't completely feel like a waste, I wish I could have indulged, and regretted more. Walked by my lover to see him off, hoping a cab never stopped by.

And oh I have heard, money seduces. We shall see how and how much. Given a chance I wish I could replace everything I love with something more materialistic, that is more lifeless, yet more undying. But I can't.

But now, we shall see! 

incognito

There is a certain beauty
about sanity
hard-earned sanity
I hope, you know


Thus
She was beautiful
staring into the mirror
An intent glare


Deep, very deep
like drilling into her soul
Unblinking
Calm, like dead


Though never as alive
One protruding chin, thoughtful tresses
thin brows, large deep set eyes
and that killing glare, oh


After a lifetime of being cursed as ugly
A moment of sanity told her
that she was indeed
Beautiful, insane no more.


But not the kind that
titillates the flesh
But the kind that
frees the soul from it, the flesh


Beautiful, sigh

Criminal Isolation.

I have been isolated for the last two years. Or I have been in a place where complete isolation is more possible. There is very few people I know. And I take every care to keep them respectably distant. It's a small hilly town, everything about it is petite, and if you're an optimist, then adorable. I haven't seen a big city in quite a while, tempting sky scrapers and liberating highways. So much so that I might find them intimidating when I am there, the next time.

What I should be scared about though is that, that next time isn't very far away. I just have a couple of months left to live in this hilly town, post which I would have to pack my bags and go. Just go. Where? I don't know! But go I have to, there is no escaping that. Nothing is forever. I have to go and find my place amongst a bunch of strangers. What I am scared of is that I am doubtful if these sturdy walls of my isolation would still hold then. Probably and honestly, I think they wouldn't. It so sucks to say this, but they wouldn't. Only I would break them down, the fruits of my own sweat and blood, to let in a few straying temptations, surrender before them, and suffer their brutal consequences until they leave me, injured and abandoned. All over again. Temptations, I tell you.

And post that, it would take again, a lot of my time and labor, persuasion and tears, to built those walls again from their ruins, around myself, to protect me, to isolate me, to convince me never to break them down again. These walls. Why does one have to go about life, being aware of every potential trap that awaits her. Doesn't it feel like building your own tombstone already. Oh!

Beauty

Here, I am just trying to capture what I see. And I like it when my words obey me. This is a struggle in search of beauty. The abundance of it scares me, but I am still searching. I don't know if I am a non-conformist or what. I ain't a conformist for sure. Ain't I something in between. Aren't we all something in between, afraid only that we're totally reaching either shore. Isn't there beauty on either shore anyway. I will tell you. Tonite I will write about beauty, the one thing that has scared my wits. I want to write something that defies your interpretation, reach that zenith of exactitude.

There is beauty on either shore. If you're a conformist, you live like one. You go breathless for what you are supposed to have, have it, live with it, sometimes look through the glass at the illusion on the other side, the greener grass. But you live on, without raising a voice, revelling in mundanity and the security of it. Your clichéd life. And one day you die, and be buried. I am not being sarcastic, trust me, but there is beauty in that.

If you're a non-conformist, all you do is ask questions. Question the time trusted realities of life, so much that you threaten to extinction their very existence. You break rules like they never were. You pursue the un-pursued, look at the one who is not like you like she were a retard. You live like you have nothing to lose. What is to lose anyway. But sometimes, you look into the houses of people who chose to settle down and call it all off, and take my word, you feel for the possibilities you killed on the way. And there is beauty in that too.

But you're neither. You're in between, afraid only that you're totally reaching either shore. I am neither. But I am pretty confident I am on my way from one to another, from the former to the latter.

Totally Sane

She was reading a book about lovers finding each other in their past lives, the time transcending tale of love. Sarcasm was filling every cell in her body as she moved ahead with each word. All this, ha! One life is all you have and there is nothing pretty much beyond this. And love of course is a costly hypothesis created in the minds of lonely women.

A guy she now has known for six years, pictures of him came trickling into her mind. The Metallica T shirt wearing hooligan he used to be in school, down the lane, chasing bootylicious nymphs, wasting his precious time! Way back then she used to be quite the antithesis of the bootylicious nymph and so she laughed, how life comes around. This guy and she were never meant to be friends, there wasn't a motive behind them even coming across each other. Honestly, they weren't even friends in the truest sense of the word. They were acquaintances, who stayed in touch. Why did they stay in touch? Because there wasn't a motive behind them turning away from each other. The thing is like that. You can't help the presence of some people in your life, you're mostly indifferent, so much else is happening all the time and you're already so bummed. At the end of the hoopla, you find that person still there, like always. And this way, they moved on, together, alone.

He had a violent break-up, ended up so miserable that she poured in all the sympathy she could. In such a situation, their getting cozy was but inevitable, I mean how could you not. But they respected some ground realities, both of them. No matter how intimate they were, they couldn't be together, she didn't have to remind him of that ever. She had a couple of heartbreaks too, sometimes he was a bit of a help. Six years went by.

She was reading this book about the time transcending tale of love. He popped the question. Will you be my girl friend. He couldn't make out what she was thinking, there was a short lull. And then she shot back. How bored are you, with your life!

Went back to the book, totally sane. So sure that their friendship wasn't effectively ruined, or anything.

Sometimes you feel like thanking people for just being there in your life, though they had no other way but be.

Li'l Miss

Li'l Miss sat on a dining chair, her tiny pink socked feet floating in the air. She made squeaky noises with the fork on her plate. Her plate of course, was made specially for her, the Li'l Miss. Had all the colors her eyes could imagine and smileys too. She was the Apple of Daddy's eye. Mommy's last first love. She had a funny looking ponytail tied in a band of beads, very pretty. Her feet though kept floating in the air, not looking for any ground at all, it wasn't time yet.

Li'l Miss had been trying Daddy's slippers and dragging them around the whole house, until mommy barged out of the kitchen and put her on top of this chair she couldn't get down from, the height was a little scary. So she now made those squeaky noises and screamed aloud that she wanted her egg poached, sunny-side-up. And that she wouldn't eat it otherwise. Li'l Miss, very little, very pretty sat on the dining chair and made squeaky noises with her fork every morning.

But the sad part was, she was a part of a dream that never happened. Never. She couldn't be born, tired of waiting she must have given up, waiting even to be conceived in the land where souls meet. She couldn't be. With her, a lot of other things too went down the drain. Promises made behind cold walls on deep winter nights, of being together forever. Secrets shared under tall trees, in the corners of lonely streets on roaring monsoon afternoons. All lost. Somebody forgot to turn the hour glass up again. Possibilities died. And the Li'l Miss never could happen. Never.

A silenced whimper

Do you know what a disability is? I hope you don't, that would be too unfortunate. We crib a lot over things that could otherwise seem petty. But we have no idea how it feels to have one unrecoverable lacuna. A void that no force in the world can refill, so much so that it forces you to a live a life with so many shortcomings. You cannot even ask what you did wrong to deserve this. The situation would drive you insane, wouldn't it? People call the disabled, differently gifted and special and blah blah, but the truth is so harsh, it's even difficult to look at it in the eye.

Once when I was a little girl, someone asked me what class I studied in. He didn't ask, he wrote the question down on the last page of my notebook. He couldn't speak. I was a little stunned but I said aloud, '5'. He pointed to his ears and shook his hand. He couldn't hear either, he was deaf. I wrote a '5' neatly beside his question. He smiled. I looked down and cried. I was very young to realize what this could mean, as in really  really mean, but I was so shocked, I wondered how could life have been so unfair, I cried. That was my first brush with a disability. Since then I have encountered it many times, but haven't reacted as much. We get used to such things, human beings that we are, we could adapt ourselves to almost anything.

But lately something has happened, something, and I can't be indifferent again. My heart feels so burdened that I don't know who to ask what question. I don't know how long to wait for an answer. The truth has never been so imposing, unchallengeable and ugly. A disability ruins a life, a bit after a bit, patient enough to cause the maximum possible amount of pain, leaving you with a faint ability of mere survival. It's very difficult.

But then John Nash was schizophrenic. I am awed how such geniuses make it through. Probably because they are geniuses. For the rest, the hoi polloi, surviving through every day, not breaking down every moment is the challenge at hand. God Bless!

Not for the Fainthearted.

She sat on the platform, clutching her bag, dozing off now and then. Teeth nearly tottering in the late December cold, waiting. She was supposed to switch trains at this obscure station, she was going somewhere. Eyes were nervous, heart coaxed her to return with the silliest of excuses. But some wish kept her from falling apart.

Trains went by, she awaited hers. Provoking stares, some lingering ones. Counting minutes, giving up in between, making tiny wishes. She was en route to meet the man her heart longed so much to meet. Wouldn't you call that silly? Why couldn't he come for her? Isn't she being a little desperate? God, isn't she scared? Travelling alone all the way? What if he's just playing her? What if her heart breaks at the end of it all? Would it be worth it? How much would she cry? Would she ever be able to trust a man again? How harsh could be the cost of following your heart? Oh dear!

But she spared not a thought. Was engaged deeply, in making wishes, as I said. Shivering and waiting. Breathing out mist, smiling, yawning, pushing away every force that wanted her to return. Chasing what she wanted. 

Unlike the rest, who move from one obsession to another trying to forget the previous, losing themselves in the process. Unlike the rest, who are afraid of a heart break. The ones who give up. Unlike the faint hearted, she waited, she moved closer..towards him. 

A Decent Burial

Now I am looking at everything through a different eye. A convalescing eye. At the end of the year, I can make out a hazy horizon, the beginning of the end is inching closer. I wish to leave his memories behind,  give them a silent burial. I wish no one remembers a thing beyond this. Like it never happened. But here is something I can't help. I can't help gathering him, in my hands, where like sand he slips out from between fingers, every passing moment. Still I would make a note of what I remember. This would help me forget faster.

He was a converted geek. You know a converted geek, don't you? A used-to-be geek, but the quintessential cool guy today.  Covetously sensitive at times, and at times the overconfident bloke tending towards sexy. Lived life on optimistic assumptions, something he couldn't make me learn, we didn't give it enough time.  Apparently down-to-earth. But housed this huge ego inside, I guess, I could never know for sure, could never ask. Though I loved him, I was a trifle scared too. You know love and fear go hand in hand, you would call me a maniac now and nail it into my head that it was an attraction, but I wouldn't agree. So don't even try. Had very very gentlemanly traits, you could trust he would walk an insanely drunk woman home without taking advantage. Even if that woman was much drooling in love with him. I am just saying, that woman wasn't me. Oh and there was no such woman. I have my own prince charming assumptions of him and this was one of those. He loved obscurity, living behind covers, when every damn person is only trying to be more known. Made him look like an outdated model of prospective mates, but somehow that didn't matter much. Love being blind, we all know makes flaws look so lusciously attractive. Was stubborn. He wouldn't let me sleep without driving home the point, his or mine! This jerked my nerves, but being on my own so long I began to doubt if it was just me who wouldn't budge. 


And I don't know if I am sleepy or what, but trying to remember beyond this I would be straining my memory. Guess I have burnt it all inside. Nothing more to bury then. RIP. Amen!

past that wasn't

If you could allow déjà vu for once, to happen to you, when would you want it to happen? When would you want a bit of your past to retreat, for a brief interval and leave you estranged, yearning for a bit more? Yearning for a thing that never happened. Do you realize that it is just not the past that is a part our past. A lot that didn’t happen is still entrenched in your mind, not letting go of its tiny existence in your conscious. Fading and gaining focus again. Things that didn’t happen because they couldn’t. But what could you do?


But what could you do? Your wanting couldn’t have been any more inconsequential. You lost what you could have had, from your fingertips. The words stopped right at your lips, you couldn’t say them. You realize that helplessness, don’t you? You have been there.

You have been to places that never were. You have met people who you never met. You were never as happy as you seem to remember you once were. It’s all a figment of your constructed past. Lies that you have put together to console yourself, for the unfulfilled life you have had in the past. You get where I am taking this?

And now when all that is bygone, illegibly past, your senses do not let you distinguish between the real and unreal past. The one that happened and the one that never did. I understand that is an act of self defense, and what could you do?

Something of this sort, happened with you today, remember? There was this temporary transportation you had back into time. This is where my first question came from. Don’t think this is crazy writing. I am sober and this is absolutely making sense. A part of the past that never happened came to you in the guise of a memory, a real memory. In the hurry of the moment you too couldn’t make out. It felt like a real happy memory. Love was with you. You smiled.

But the next, you cried. You found out it was a lie you had told yourself so desperately that even you mistook it to be a truth. That thing never happened for real. You could have made it happen though, but you didn’t. That made you sadder and you cried a little more. But what could you do?

Don’t think this is crazy writing. I am sober and this is absolutely making sense. And now you are wondering would you have chosen some other time for that piece of time to come walking back to you. You don’t understand this but this makes so much sense.

Travel-ouge

I had been on the move for the last twenty odd hours, practically for the last few years, but contextually. The road drive hadn't given me this bad a nausea ever, and the lack of sleep co-conspired. I would get out and take in gulps of air, roll my windows down, breathe in, try to sleep, fail in the process, regret my life, feel restless again. I had flown the first part of the journey and then took a train. The intention was to save some money. I had eaten out and shopped like a maniac this term. Besides getting tired of comparing the uniforms of air hostesses, I also have this thing for overnight train journeys, alone.

Sometimes I remember Geet saying Ladki aur AC ka kya connection? But whatever. So I was waiting at this station, having dinner by myself, sipping coke, people comfortably staring at me, lone woman, with lots of luggage, look who deserted her. I have reached that stage in life when I am comfortable with most of such stuff. Also I was reading this travelogue. By an author who accidentally happens to be an acquaintance of mine. I don't know which way to put it, an acquaintance who happens to be the author of that book?

So I was reading this book, yearning for a world that was all around me. Keeping sleep away, my shoulders we stooping, my back had almost passed away thanks to the bags. After I got in the train, I called people to tell them I was alive and safe. I was slouching on the side lower berth, if you know what I mean. But the man sitting opposite me was exposing half his underwear and more. I didn't know which way to look, climbed up to my berth and slept off.

At 3 in the morning, I was sitting on my suitcase near the door of the train waiting for my station, yet reading that book! That s-o-b railway guy comes to tell me that the towel from my bedroll is missing. Did I steal it? fuck! We go and search again. And I was so angry when I didn't find it. He asked me to show my bag, imagine! s-o-b. Just then all the old men were walking to the washroom in their crumpled pajamas. I cursed myself for waking up so early and it was scary cold. There was another guy with me, waiting. Smiled and asked me where I was coming from. Calcutta. End of conversation. I don't think it's a problem, but I just don't talk, not with people I know, not with strangers.

Then I remembered having broken up earlier this term. I had this sudden craving to have him beside me, cracking those nutty jokes and laughing with him. But dumping, when you sense being dumped is just around the corner, is the absolute zenith of human intelligence, the victory of the ugly human ego. Plus the ecstasy of being by myself is orgasmic sometimes.

Travel-ouge. So tell me, will I become a published author before thirty!

5 am thoughts!

I met an acquaintance of yours. Common friends are a great discomfort you know. He asked me how I know you. I wanted to correct him by saying that I knew you. But he didn't deserve to know that. I asked him how he knows you and he came up with a convincing answer. I had none. My heart shrank for a moment and then I nervously told him that you were just an acquaintance. World is a small place. It's hard not to know people. Just an acquaintance. Did I say friend? I don't even remember, I was a little too shocked. It was like our tiny secret could be out in the open anytime, my little secret. I told him that we knew each other for sometime, sometime before we lost touch.

I didn't tell him a lot of things. A hoard of things.The way I lost my sleep when you wanted me to be awake. The way you never got me down from cloud 9. The way you made me laugh, breathlessly sometimes. How at the end of those laughs I would have forgotten why I had begun laughing in the first place. Yeah, that crazy! I didn't tell him all this. I trust you, you haven't told him either, have you. I hid from him memories of our endless conversations, late into the nights. I didn't tell him about your caresses to my early morning sleepy mumbles. He doesn't deserve to know, does he. Some stories should die untold.Unheard. Some secrets are created to be frozen.  I didn't tell him how much you had entered into my conscious, how you were almost on my speed-dial those days. How you lived in the back of my mind, all day all night. I didn't tell him about my endless waits, I didn't tell him about my bouts of madness, utter madness, that unruly longing to belong to you. Nah, nothing.

I din't tell him that I was practically in love with you. I din't tell him why we couldn't be together. Nothing at all. I hope he doesn't have the slightest idea and isn't mocking at me inside. I would hate that. Shit, I hate common friends. I just hate-hate them.

Prequel to this: here 

Ugly

This one is going to be blatant. Blatant.

How does it feel to be reminded of your roots? To be shown in glimpses, visions of the place to which you belong to for real? Visions of the place where you would want to belong to? Ironically you have made all the sacrifice in life to move away from that one place thus, craving for it more. Your life has been a happy bundle of contradiction and you're looking at it through a glass now. You can't go back and change, but you can look, mercilessly, remorselessly through. You're too tired to regret. That's what long road trips do to you. Staring out of windows, winds setting your face ablaze and hair a-mess, they make you oscillate, back and forth in time, forfeiting now. That's what hundreds of miles on dusty highways do to you, to me. That's what absolute darkness reminds you of.

I had this lasting dream to witness the Brahmaputra. The only masculine river. When I crossed it, the crazy reflections of the crescent moon danced on it crazily, my eyes witnessed what they call a paralyzed fixation. Soul-overwhelmed wouldn't be the word if I would put it that way. So I would let be, that expression, or the lack of it. I also looked for dimming lights on distant mountains, endless roads, nameless milestones.

The lack of surety, adds to life a tinge of beauty it doesn't otherwise deserve. It takes the responsibility off your shoulders because you can't predict. You just sit there, and watch, your own life turn out into a hazy mixture of what you wanted it to become and of what you never wanted it to become. Long, really long drives make you mull of how inconsequential your own wanting has become. And yet they've stayed, the desires, and their untiring ambition.

Also, you get realizations. Here is the blatant part. When I see the world, when my eyes see the world, they put it in two neat categories, non overlapping categories, the pretty and the ugly. Note, beautiful is not a synonym for pretty here. This inevitable segregation happens in the first few seconds of perception, like the impatient human mind cannot rest. The pretty are given a hug and set aside. The ugly are abandoned. Like me. In this abandonment, the ugly sit alone in cold dark rooms and think and feel things the pretty never would. Solitude, forced or claimed is sometimes the most affordable glimpse into paradise.The ugly gets insights, and depths, long enriching journeys into her own self and outside. These journeys help them find each other. I realized just why I connect so much with the ugly. And this is it. Let's call it off now.

Meaningless Kiss

I am high

And you're clearly not low

It's a meaningless kiss

Though twasnt supposed to be like this

We're not in love

And this room's dark

Full of strangers

We're strangers too

Tomorrow's a Sunday

Remember this, we won't anyway

I sent the ones who loved me away

Now am alone forever

Though I din't sink in thy eyes

I can tell you're the same too

So just a meaningless kiss

And  let it be

Oh 

Let it be

Flawed Life

I promised I would be a nice girl. That wasn't enough, I wailed to be taken to the sea. Beating my feet on the floor, curled my lip and made my eyebrows meet in the middle and said 'Please'. I was tried to be appeased with chocolates and trinkets. But I wouldn't settle for anything less than the sea. My heart began fluttering the moment it was told that we were under a two hour ride from the beach. I could taste the salt in the air.

The road was dark, shaded by trees on either side, the sun, hotter than usual and the afternoon quieter. Lakes locked in the mainland, brackish and blackish, were a prelude to the emerald waters I longed for. The first sight of the sea is retained in my eyes even now, like some eternal snapshot. Sands looked endless, the sun danced as many mirages. It was as deserted as could be, waves were mild though, looking at the water receding from between my toes, a healing amnesia came over me.

Then we went to this delta sort of a thing, the river, Mahanadi fell into the sea, that place was rocky, waves were taller, more virile, they lashed onshore, disappearing into foam, drops of which landed on me, I was elated beyond words, gurgling away in laughter. Then an unexpected silence visited me, that happens often, people who've been with me would know. The waves began looking angrier, like their lives were locked by the confines of the sea and they wanted to be freed, but all they could touch was the rocks. All their pent up emotion erupted in that one moment when they dashed those rigid boulders. Catharsis, was it? But unable to move an inch beyond, they died and retreated into the sea.

The river on the other hand, was unaware of its life ahead, uncomplainingly it emptied herself into the sea. I pitied the poor thing, it had come a long way, hadn't it? Begun as a playful waterfall, meandered through miles of sands, merged and unmerged, broken and gathered. All the time, all of its lifetime it had wanted to meet the sea, waited, craved, yearned to be caged. I pitied the poor thing.

I sighed, then pitied me a little. Drawing parallels. Flawed life.

short breaths, spaced out, numbness, silence, 

nonchalance, darkness, now, here, me, alone, sighs, 

tears, ache, heart beat, heart beat, heart beat

it is said everything has a reason behind it. still i don't know why i let you go. and i'm yet to know why you never turned back to me again. i don't think i ever would. i don't know how much of us i have outgrown either. i am not sure if i am still waiting for you. but i don't ask questions anymore. 

no more. 

the lack of you, would've turned me into a rock, but it didn't. i break down oftener, inconsolably, sometimes, when i am cold and alone in dark rooms, when i don't have to pretend that i am fine, i cry

deep breaths, spaced out, solitude, smoke, cold,
 the last tremolo of pain,

 silenced cries, forced peace, relief, the lack of you, 

the lack of you, the lack of you

Why's everyone getting married?

It shouldn't be a big deal but I seriously thought I was younger than this, I am just twenty three and many many of my friends are getting settled for life, I haven't even zeroed in on the guy, I don't even have the slightest idea if such a person exists, life is moving too fast, two years ago we were all jostling in crumbling hostel rooms, chatting up, settling scores, thinking about careers, working hard, pretending to work hard and now everyone is getting married, all of a sudden, out of the blue, statuses are getting updated from engaged to married between days, whatever happened to the knitting of dreams alone, figuring out life before you called it a day and surrendered and shareed your life with a whole another person, may be I right now am too selfish to even think of such a thing, even if I had loved someone I would prioritize myself above the knot, or rather the life I have been through has ensured my belief in being alone and happy is so important that everything else looks like too risky or emotionally foolish a venture, but it's weird to see my langotia yaars getting married, as it is thanks to those formalities I wasn't very comfortable asking, 'How's your boyfriend?' and now asking 'And how's the husband/wife?' makes me swallow two or three lumps together, nothing is wrong with me, it will take some getting used to, some more time; but the best part about being as austerely single as I is that you think you see the world in a light all those blinded by love men and women fail to see it in, if love blinds, doesn't marriage kill, and with this the longest sentence written on this blog comes to an end, I am sure you've not reached here, if you've then Congratulations, on your wedding if you too are getting married!

PS: I have nothing against people who are getting hitched, and I swear I really mean those congratulatory messages. Astla Vista!