Raison d’etre

On certain random afternoons, upon feeling like a late lunch, they cooked.

She marveled over how she remembered the names of few new exotic vegetables that she had picked up. From some TV show. He unearthed his mother's recipes. She complained that the knife was getting rather blunt. He said that she always chopped more than they needed, and that she was the holy goddess of plentitude. He looked at her top, dusted in flour and smiled. She appeared cuter than her usual stern self, he told her that. Hence, she took it off, that top. He pinched her to make her giggle softer. But she couldn't help, looking at the little shriveled lady finger in his fridge. Or the slimy bunch of spinach. How can you not have food, she animatedly slammed the pack of frozen peas to his bum. 

They fought over doing the dishes. They had very few anyway. Saucepans and bowls, knives, spoons and graters. All went back to their rightful places. They ate, sitting on the floor. Guarding their food against the other. Sometimes, they lay on the kitchen floor, turning off the stove midway, staying still for hours. The music from the bedroom, could still be heard, faint. But loud enough. 

Tea. Every evening there was tea. Around seven, His was green, or lemon. Hers was thick boiled and milky. On special days, there was coffee. He made that of course. They sipped it from the glasses they drank vodka from. Later that night. Deeper that night. Continuing the same conversation, or sometimes, inquistively switching,  

Lunch, by herself

Norah Jones was playing, in the back of her head. Compulsively. As she was eating lunch by herself. By the glass wall. Staring at the pigeons outside, scores of them sitting on the asbestos roof opposite. She had told herself to look at the way the leaves quivered though. Like they were cold. It brought her peace, how the wind that couldn't be seen effected motion. How the cause was invisible and the effect, she could see, feel. Those leaves and the trees they belonged to, she loved. The way their boughs touched the glass wall. Flowerless and lush green in rain. They aroused her, like hardly anything did.

From when she was a little girl, she was prone to illness. Of the mild kind, of the virile kind. Hypermetropia. Otosclerosis. Rheumatism. Complex words, lent by other languages to English, scribbled in illegible handwriting by bespectacled doctors. It took her months to get the spelling right. And today, she was aging. Sooner than she would, had she been elsewhere. Anywhere else. 

She felt the blood rushing to her head. Felt her temples warmed up. Sounds in her ears, both of them got loud until she could hear no more. As if, she was inside a factory. And then, like she was inside a machine. Her eyes, began burning. To begin with, they felt sore. But in the minute that followed, they burnt. She wanted to run to the mirror to check if they were red too. But her legs wouldn't move. A convulsion passed right through her body.

How that felt, to have her body invaded by so many external forces. All invisible. And yet, she felt every limb shaking, dysfunctional. She tried so much to focus on the leaves and their quivering, the breeze, the glass. Or the pigeons. There was, what looked like a crow circling the asbestos roof. It seemed to fly higher and higher, into the afternoon sun. Or was she merely sinking from her chair, and then into collapsing into the ground. 

Pigeons

Pigeons sit on the parapets in my building. On the edges, almost falling off, they don't look down, they don't gauge the fall, they are fearless. Some of them sit in rows on the cables that run across walls. Swinging. At peace. Their faces quite numb, their wings pretty limp. And no matter how much you shake that cable, they wouldn't budge. Like they owned it. 

Sometimes, I feel, they are in waiting. They build their nests in my room. On the roof of my closet. Relentlessly bringing in twigs, leaves. There is always only two of them making that nest. But at night, when I shut the window, and they can't come in anymore, they just wait outside until morning, for me to let them in. Meanwhile, they must also call their friends, because there always are six to seven to nine of them. Waiting. 

They sleep that way. On their feet. On the swing. Or on the edge of the parapet. It amazes me. This routine, in a bunch of birds. I go out and stare at them, and get some air also. That strange grey color, you barely find much else. Except in the mind.

They come back every night.  In unbearably hot summer nights, they expand in the heat, and I feel their elliptical shapes might burst and plop open. They sit there on endless monsoon nights. And in the afternoons and mornings when it rains. Sometimes if I miss out on opening the window, they peck on it making that faint noise, like something very close to knocking. Like they were real people.

The Tireless Heartbreaker

Supertramp is a tireless heartbreaker. He leaves everyone behind. In the sense, even his name. Some people wish to be so boundless, that there is nothing that could contain them. You can try. To hold them back. Keep them. Keep him. But he wouldn't. He would break away, and break your heart. And never tire of it. 

His idea of the self, his boundaries are holy. He wouldn't let anyone overstep that. And he is not an escapist.

He left his car. His guitar. He burnt his credit cards. Destroyed any ID. Layer after layer, each skin that garbed him, he peeled away. Like an onion. Anything at all, that could let him grow roots had to be let go of. It's liberating and debilitating in the same breath. Liberating for Supertramp. Liberating for I. And debilitating for the man, woman and child he left behind. For the future he abandoned. For the past he denied. 

However scanty could you be? Define minimalistic. Living out of a knapsack. Hitchhiking your way through life, living on the road. Living like an ape. Under a tree. And being the anti-materialistic, homeless, philosophical genius who understands how your entire fucking life, all you have been striving for breathlessly is laying out one beautiful deceitful trap for your own self. What fools. 

Supertramp was truly on his own. No bondage. I cannot grasp, him. Neither can I help you grasp. Because the former. 

Flop Show

There was a guy once. And trust me on this, there have been many such. Guys with incomplete stories, devastating heartbreaks. Guys with tunnel and more tunnel. Only no light.

But more about this one. 

Guy in context and I went to high school together. I hadn't known he existed back then, I was quite the class valedictorian. After high school, I left town for college. And then moved to some other place for my masters. And one blue day, he messaged me on facebook. Hi, this is so & so. We studied together in such & such. Can you place me right? It would have been quite embarrassing to tell him that I didn't know who the hell he was. Instead we got to mailing. No exchange of numbers, like hearing each others' voice would ruin it. We mailed and mailed. 

I wouldn't go far to call it a fling. But there was definitely something. A tiny little crush at the back of my mind. Not heart. Turned out we were going to be interning in the same city, starting next month. Woah! How was that going to work out without meeting. I began growing expectations. How would the first meet go. How we would roam around on weekends, in the afternoons. Go out, dance, sing, have fun. Do stuff that twenty two year olds were into. I mean, I really did have plans. I was so fucking naive back then. 

Ultimately, heavens came down when he told me that he had a change of plans in the eleventh hour. Like, suddenly I felt alone, with nothing to do. I didn't take it well. Like I said, I was young. Innocent. Trusting. 

I would cut the story at that. But to this date, I quote this incident to remind myself and my friends, how you should never meticulously plan and expect. Turns out your pillars weren't strong and now you are suffocating in the rubble because the fucking roof crumbled on your head. 

But, shit happens. Oops, I did it again! 

Cold Feet

That day, while driving down to see him, you hit all the green lights. Straight, no pauses. It felt like a breeze. So much so that you wanted to stop and check if this was indeed happening. It felt right. And it felt scary. Paradoxical, yeah. But scary right. You wonder if this was the right thing to do afterall. If you haven't left behind something more opportune. More significant. You begin to doubt. All kinds of thoughts trickle into your head and yet you never hit a red light. Like the whole goddamn road was made for you. You remember how you inched through the same road, like a tortoise, on other evenings and afternoons trapped in nerve wrecking traffic. But not today. You are happy. Delighted. Relieved, that the distance between you and him is getting shorter. You are only minutes away from seeing him. Your mind strays to what he must be doing. Wouldn't he be surprised. It's morning after all. But there's something choking your ecstasy. It's making you want to not let it in, keep it outside for a while may be. You're getting jitters. Not knowing, one bit. What the fuck is going on. 

You take that blinding U-turn and go back home. Tail between your legs. 

Or drive right past, and slather yourself in unforgiving love. Debilitate yourself, go pale. Go limp. Let go. Let in. 

Fluorescence

Now, the old lady lives in the forgotten mansion by herself. Parts of it they had rented out to teachers who came to teach in the little school they had started. Just for company's sake. Now that the old man is dead and gone, it's just her with her tenants. There's no jungle bounty to take care of. Guard against the wild. Years ago, when the old lady was only middle aged, she would shoo away herds of monkeys from her mango orchard with an air gun the old man no more used for hunting. The horns of the deer killed decades ago still adorns their doorway. But the orchards have vanished. Everything is a shadow of what it was. The clusters of bananas that she used to hide in sacks to keep safe until they ripened, to be sent off to daughters married off in distant cities, no more. The story seeping granddaughters never looked back. The sole singular lone son. Drunkard of a man, womaniser, once discarded by the old man for being a disgrace, must have decayed in some brothel. Or a cheap smokey bar. When the old man sat on the rickety chair, staring at the front door, there was not much conversation. But just one question, who was dying on whom. Which one of the two would last longer, asphyxiate in the dust that the termites ate off the doors. It is usually the diabetes that gets to you, or a cardiac arrest. Sometimes, they imagined passing away in sleep, but mostly it is plain loneliness. Now the old lady, in that ghost of a house cannot move around much. And cooks one meal a day, of rice and vegetables boiled in one black pot and sips as much as she can. Fighting the need to be against the whim to vanish, sitting guard on the decadence. 

A Notional Loss

There's the notion of loss. And there is actual loss. For real, irreversible, permanent. Sometimes I stutter between the two. I threw my glass of chocolate milk in the wash basin. It splattered on the walls, the floor. Lost forever, actual loss. Ain't coming back. And then, sometimes I am frantically looking for my keys in the bag and not getting them. They are still in there, but I am not getting them. Same with looking for my glasses all over the place when they are up on my forehead, or still worse, I am wearing them. When we assume that we have lost something or someone even when we have them right there, is a notional loss. We coax the heart not to get jittery at all. Because, nothing has been lost yet. But then it deteriorates. You wake up dreaming in homes you no longer own, waiting in places you no longer go to, for people who no longer are here now. The immediate moments after you wake up, this appalling sorrow envelopes you, like you can't move. And you cry a pillow. Actual, irrecoverable loss, that.

Requiem

He has his eyes downcast. Staring at his lunch plate. Those are the most beautiful eyes in the world. One of the most beautiful. A beautiful pair of eyes, those. He is sitting amongst a large bunch of loud women. His blush is lost amongst their chatter. But, he doesn't look lost. Not yet. But out of place. Definitely out of place, Yes. He's eating with his hands, elbows quiet on the edge of the table. The set up looks like an experiment. Except his eyes. They look like dollops of love. And a shiver on his face. That hides his age. He has a son back at home, put away in some school. Standing by the road with a huge bag slung from his little shoulders, waiting for the school bus to pick him up. And the wife, who bought the lady fingers on his lunch plate. Who washes, cooks and waits. And loves, probably possibly, with a decent vigor. Like a woman should a man. And here, he is. Sitting alone among known strangers.

He must feel stifled. Does he? I would, if I were him. But I am merely sitting here, reading his story from the lines on his face, from the glint in his eyes, the shiver on his face. Drawing illegal solace from a perfect stranger. Sitting apart. Sitting opposite. Creating a requiem, for each moment that passes. Like, life had no ennui at all.

Penury

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

Homeless

It is an assurance, I carry with myself. That you are home. That no matter what, when, who. If I would, I could leave everything be and run. With my eyes closed, like a child. Run into our enclosure of love. And you would be there, sitting with your legs stretched out of the window, or merely standing by it, looking at the rain. Doing laundry, or cooking, or quietly sitting, or taking a shower, leaving the door unlocked for me. From my footsteps you would know, it was me. Yes, lovers do that. And later act aloof and ask when did I get in. So many little games. Voices and visions. Fights and patches on scratches, balms on wounds. 

Now, I feel as if I haven't kept any memory. It's an honest confession, I don't remember the specifics, the details, the blur as you would say. I carry that time and that love absorbed in myself. Very involuntarily. Because I don't feel the need to create memories. Because, I know you are home. I can run to you any time of the day, and we could recreate our moments, the exact same way. Or give them a random swivel and yet they would be this maddeningly, intoxicatingly, mind-numbingly, fucking beautiful.  

But you know this juncture, honey. That home, we have to let go of. The walls, the roof, the strings, the mosaic. The smells, the sounds and a whole bunch of uncreated memories. Remembered only very faintly, for the decades to come. I wouldn't have that privilege to be with you in a moment, for a moment. You would no longer be in there. The cradle has vanished. I feel deranged, homeless again. And my heart, is skipping so many beats. Oh! Pandora. 

Prose

The sinking of afternoon into the air. Mild mellow yellow sunshine. That reflects from the little bumps on your skin. The giggle in our voices. Juices of watermelon and pineapple. Their seeds seived. In tall translucent glasses. Red, the color of love. Yellow, the color of friendship. Mingling into the smells of siesta. Into the humm of honeybees. Static beads of sweat on your temples. The simmering smile on my face. The afternoon becomes you. Then She becomes me. Therefore the faint intoxication in the air. And a distant calling, to just be.

Do we have to grow into anything else? Can't we stay lovers forever.

Cannabis

Plum like fruit bunches hung from the tree. Orange dots against boughs of green. Big old tree this. With its poison fruit. Passion fruit. Which could kill, hides venom in its pulp. Squirrels know that, wouldn't even smell it. They would stay clear of fruit laden arms. Migrating birds that would perch and catch breath, if ensnared by the poison fruit, would drop dead in a moment. Dead birds. Dead meat. No perspiring traveler would rest in its shade. Only scavengers built their nests on it. Only they found worth in coming back to it after picking from bones. The poison tree, apart from this, was a beauty. It bred orange flowers, of the size of grapes, with tiny petals spread all around. And filaments from the central pod, sprouting, ending with drop full of pollens, the seed that would regenerate. They said, the flower was not poisonous, flowers never are. Petals shrank in the sun and the flowers died, falling down slow dancing in the air, forgetting about gravity. They formed a bed beneath the tree, a bed of flowers, this one. A man and woman, lay there, making love.

Dominatrix

She wore her kohl lining the upper flap of the eye, the lower flap nude. Always on top, she was a dominatrix. She had a small face, fluid with vital emotions, her chin being their epicenter. You couldn't say, if she was thirty-seven or forty-five or older. She had stopped aging, because she had never married, never given birth. That way, you don't grow. You stay static in the minds of some strangers as a cynical spinster, and in the minds of the rest as an accessible mistress. 

So, she had stopped aging. As if, she was standing still in time and you were younger than her, then you would get to her age and then after gradually age and go senile. Though she would stay the same, preserved like a specimen, with a mere few creases of skin under the eyes, hair carnally dishevelled, that true smile pasted on her brown lips, and the smooth flow of words from between them. Peace had become her.

But it got lonely though. Sometimes. For her. When she fixed dinner for her old father every afternoon, all by herself in the kitchen. Did the ghosts of her married sisters come by, or the laughter of her nephews. For company? No. So, she looked for it everywhere, for people, to know, hear, listen to, spend time with. All that. She had thousands of people in her phonebook, you could never fall out of touch with her, she would call you. Text you, mail you. Over just about anything. Late in sleepless nights, she went to those dangerous websites where she met psychotic men, who would utter the weirdest of things, things that were disgusting and pleasing in the same breath. 

The tone of her skin got darker with each summer, her mind seasoned like wine, retaining bits of bygone youth. Retaining the hush in her voice, the polish on her nails, the crystal between her legs. Holding on, as the rest of us, abandoned. 

8

A few weeks ago, I completed eight years of blogging. And I hadn't paused to notice it. I had forgotten. Neat excuse. But I had. Very few occasions in life call for a celebration. We are all sinking into veritable depths of monotony. And discarding the right to be special. Every day.

Once I had thought, my writing would take me places. Now I think what places, and laugh. Is it even possible to take anyone anyplace, ever. Aren't we all static, merely enjoying the illusion of motion. So much oxygen is getting us high. My writing may not move me a millimeter. My mind is fixed, frozen, glued to its labyrinthine biases, against the act of motion itself.

So yeah, amongst the shiny success of others, I may finish up a reluctant loser, a hopeless mediocre, a screaming for sympathy, self published author. Hah, yes. My glorious future, ladies, the one I had been told and coaxed to believe existed has now perished into oblivion. I am clutching thin air, in my fist.

I am not talking apocalypse. Or glass half empty. All I am saying is that life doesn't always pay off. Mostly never. And we continue to survive, as beings of angst.

Switching between phones, booking tickets, losing breath, consoling, cooking, being consoled, murmuring, driving, buying, stealing, loving, unloving, sleeping, waiting, waking up, catching breath, sighing. Writing, counting years, writing, counting years. 

Flame

I haven't stalked him for such lonng. I feel weird. When I now do, look at the old pictures. Seems like an era ago. Like a very long period of time, has elapsed, and  I was in a coma. Life doesn't add up. Love doesn't beget love. Never, infact I am personal opposer of that. Fact. Word. So, we aren't where I had propositioned we would be. But mere, old flames. We are the two comical characters in any middle aged woman's memoirs of love. Affairs that failed to work. Calls that weren't answered. Answers that didn't have questions. Dates remind me of him. Not the exact ones, my crammed memory doesn't allow me that liberty. Nada. I remember him in rough approximations of those. The second week of June, the first of November. On the thirtyfirst of December. You know. All that. Like the lost stanzas of a love song. The miffed strums of guitar. Like unrequited love. When I loved him, and then when he loved me back. But not just in the adequate amount. He was inadequate, grossly in that regard. A man's ability to give love, is a wee bit more important than his amorous prowess. We both failed actually. Hah. That is why, sometimes I feel a hole in my soul. And a lot of couldbe's surround me. Like float around my head, revolving in circumferences of ellipses. This and that. It's not regret. Nada. Something much inferior in degrees of human emotion. In severity. There is no heartache. It's a mere wave of mild hopelessness. It will pass.  

*Nada: Spanish for nothing. Nothing for Spanish.

The Flyover

Is it true that everything comes a full circle? That one is indeed adequately punished for each of their misdeeds as is rewarded for the good ones. It did feel so, some years ago. Not anymore. It doesn't feel like. Bad karma bites you in the ass, alrite. But the good one, never begets glory. May be I am greedy. Or, could also be that people paint rather a hunky dory picture of their lives, more than it is. And I am only a shabby mirror of the truth, not its empowered alterer.

I was thinking on such lines, and walking on the flyover. This one was old one, much older than those which have now been built. Its footpath is made of adjoining slabs of concrete. On which an insane beggar sits on all day. He has a mess of hair and is constantly drooling. Though you would never stop by while driving on the flyover and drop a coin in his bowl. There was nothing for him there, not even shade, yet he wouln't budge. And at nights, you would never see him. Probably he went down to the railway platform to sleep on.

I wanted to see the sunset from above there, since forever. An orange ball falling into a crucked skyline of broken buildings. All I wanted was to take a walk on it in the evening and let my mad thoughts consume me, that's the best way to go. But in the many years that I have lived, and the many more years that I have been alive, I have never had the time. Yeah.

About two years ago, I stopped writing that string of stories on lovers walking and talking. If you know what I mean. A few months after that, I found love. Thank Gods for that. And after that charm passed, I forgot to write. Me and the written word. Ladies and gentlemen, forgot each other. If you know what I mean. Now suddenly, instead of thought, it's a sea of incoherence that's consuming me. And I am thinking about that beggar again.

The Pursuit of Depression

I

I owe my existence partly to Chuck Lorre. I wanted to write this sentence for a long time on this blog. One, because I quite like the way his name sounds, like his surname itself was a story. And two, because I do. From the bottom of my stomach, I am thankful to you, Chuck Lorre. For being there, throughout. Whenever I have needed to unscrew my life, watching an episode or two of his or his kind, has seen me through. Even when there was nothing else to hold on to, he was.

So, recently I read this somewhere that dear Chuck has this tendency to fish out the singular point of contention even from a paradise. As in, he looks out for things that worry him even in the most hunky dory of situations. Far more than being a tendency, it becomes a habit, then an obsession, when you just can't stop worrying. You be constantly perturbed by phantoms you can't see and then, life screws itself irreversibly up. 

I suffer from that, yes. That's the one governing pivot about which I revolve and lose my way numerous times every day. We, Chuck and I pursue Depression. You know unlike Will Smith, who pursues quite the opposite. He is the antithesis of us.

II

On the other hand, there is the nitty gritties of love. Time bound phases in an hour when you need nothing else. When he pins your head down onto is lap, but only mildly. By shutting close the lids of your eyes with his two fingers. So that, you being the little girl you sometimes are, aren't overcome by the whim to open your eyes wide and just see. Him, his face right above yours. Holding you down that way, he drifts closer to you. You can feel the warmth of his breath growing lukewarm. The whiff of air leaving his nostrils, you can now feel on your upper lip and then he plays a bit of it upon your other lip, chin. You can feel him, milimeters away, teasing the air between your faces, but he isn't there yet. He's playing it slow, real slow. Testing your patience. Which apparently is the key to a lot of things. And you can't see a damn thing, his fingertips keep you in perfect pitch black darkness. You go crazy and part your lips to sigh. Then, exactly then. He. Seizes. You. 

The wait before that, feeling his hot exhaled air, was the Pursuit of Happyness. Yes. 

Ladies Tailor

Many rains come and go, the anguish of existence drags on. Unlike the unforeseen shower of today though. It's such a relief when you forget for a while, everything. The infinite pleasures of amnesia.

Years ago, when I was younger, there was this woman at the bent of the street. She ran a Ladies Tailor. By the name such places go. It was hell of a similar rain. The one that was never to be. The smell of dry earth rose and I waited on one of those benches they put out for girls. To sit and wait on, go through repulsive design booklets. For neck designs, for sleeve sutures on dresses you wanted manicured to fit you. Because you were only seventeen and there was an entire life ahead of you. Your skin dimpled and glowed in the summery sun. Those days, I sat on one of those benches waiting for my turn, for the queue ahead of me to dwindle and finish. It thundered and splashed outside and there was no electricity, and yet I waited for her to measure me up.

Some bitches even elbowed you to get in front of you in the line, such species that. Their menagerie continues to exist. And for their long lives, it felt like decades before the Ladies Tailor even looked at you. She was such a poker face. God knows, she had that Robert de Niro face of pitiful disgust. She would ask you to step out of your shoes and then treat you like a lifeless doll as she turned you around and strung her tape all over you. Like some wild animal she would grunt if you didn't keep your hand straight or bent your neck even a little bit. 

Inside, it felt like she ran her own slave army of tailors. Young girls and middle aged unemployed men sewing and sewing till blindness, both physical and metaphysical. Like bonded labor under her iron hand. She wore her sari like a man would, the pleats would run right in the middle across her chest. Exposing whatever was to the sides. Yet you never dared to point that out to a friend. Her deliveries were always way beyond the promised date on the receipt. And the work only about average. Nevertheless I never stopped going to her, those days. 

The delay never messed up with my life as I pondered it would. Nothing ever does, until of course it does. 

Paro

They lived in one of those dungeon like apartments. Hidden in a corner was the mattress which she unfolded in the night and slept upon. Along with her other flatmates, several women living alone together, sharing home cooked dinners of foreign vegetables. Low on fat. Paro was used to staying home all day, all afternoon as the others left for work. She had been laid off, it was 2009. Some said she had been fired, there had been a drunken affair at work. But people say such things, the whispers of the wind shan't be trusted. She was on a semi solid diet those days, to shed some belly fat. Some slurpy wheatish soup she drank two times a day and that was that. In the evenings, she left for the market an hour away, wearing the slippers and capris she had gotten from the weekend flea market and came back with bag full of beans and climbers and creepers of all kind. To be chopped and boiled and eaten with pickle as she sat beside with her bowl of soup. Her boyfriend lived in another town, they had met online. He was younger, still studying. Paro would say, since she wasn't making rent for the last few months, she would move in with her boyfriend as soon as he graduated, with a job and everything. Paro was the eldest of three daughters. Not necessarily pretty, this one. Her face was large with features defined good enough. Sleepy eyes and a nice pair of black lips. Her hair, fell till her waist. Curled in their own insane uneven manner. She would often knot them to have them in place as her heart fluttered each time she imagined the future looking at the night sky through the iron grille ringing their dungeon like balcony, and smoking. 

Apostrophe

Human beings, sometimes have this thing. They know for certain that is. Instead of swimming in the black pool of chaos. When introduced for the first time, to each other, they knew they were going straight to bed. There was no doubt about that, no negotiation. It was something that was being forced upon either, neither had any upper or lower hand. They were sitting on the exact same plane, knowing the one truth that there was. A compulsive force drawing them to each other. An understanding had notoriously crept up, where there was none. This was years ago.

It's rare, this kind of love. Without its baggage. The usual baggage you know. The whim for a marriage or the craving for a baby. All of this was absent. I praise it so, because, it was love in the most well-contained sense. Love exactly within the definition of love. No extrapolations. Or deductions and suppositions.

It's made to believe, that it was amicable. The separation. Not as messy, neither was torn apart, so it seems from the surface. No howling or smashing of phones. They both, were old enough to break free. Young enough to start afresh again. To a bystander though, it caught him by surprise. The bystander gazed on, unable to understand the chemistry, the union and the decomposition. An involved bystander, that is.

Today, they live in the city by the sea. He probably is seein' another woman. They are still friends. They must go out for coffee for the lack of better company, on some days. They must relive and feel the friction between their hearts. But there would be absolutely no will to turn back. Are they afraid, that it might be messy this time around? Or have they really fallen apart this well.

Z

Inspite of the more than a couple of times for which you have broken my heart, and for the one gigantic time, I broke yours in the end. I don't know what I would do if you suddenly walked in through that door. On the edge opposite, I sit talking to a stranger. Would I turn to face you? I would dammit. But would I freeze? Like a mummified doll. In awe of the man I had learnt to love. One can never predict, can she. Would you still have that humor, and make me ripple, the way you did, then, when we had a horizon. A time, a corner, one wish. Unlike the futility of the present. What would I do if you walked in. With your gaunt cheek bone, the ash grey sweatshirt. What would I do? Will my legs obey and stand up. Or should my eyes ignore and look away. My heart with all her fossilized pain, what would keep her put in the thoracic cavity. Would I drop her on the floor, accidentally and scream. Will I rush to the toilet and cry. Would I say hi. Or faint, yeah that would be good. I have always imagined fainting. Should you walk in through that door. 

Scattered Soul

I left my soul at the mouth of the river. In my old room, standing aloft on the third floor beside pines. I left a chunk of it on the balcony of his new home. Also a bit of it in the wilderness I never could go to. A piece of it, on the scattered skies above the earth I slept on, gazing up. I left my soul inside the God of Small Things. In the diary made of pure bamboo pulp and on it as a spot of blotched ink. I left my soul in the wind at Lovers' Point. I abandoned a slice of it, back in the darkness which I smoked. Bit by bit in the curls of fume that escaped my mouth. In the sweat and breath of strangers. In the eyes of the men who stared. At breasts, at legs. I lost a bit of her in the minds of men who read my poems. And a few compassionate women, it would be unfair not to say. On the edges of my broken nails, and upon the roofs I wanted to leap down from. Last, on the chair I drank coffee on alone, and thought of writing this poem. Each of these places, keep a piece of my soul, frozen, un-agile. In comatose. In original specimen, undiluted, unashamed, described by other similar adjectives. But most of all, I left my soul, the last time I saw her, on his bed. On his bed. Yeah.

#NowPlaying - Shakira, after a long long time. 

Dragonberry

Nobody knew, where she was. At work, they assumed she was home. At home they thought she was at work. Some friend thought she was with the other. The other thought, that she was with another. Some didn't even think anything. Their heads empty, thoughtless in her regard. While she spent a thankless afternoon in deep sleep on a mat on the floor. Under the influence of dragonberry. Sleeping off the insomnia of a lifetime. All bridges snapped. Phones thrown away. All constraint abandoned, with her elbow like a pillow, beneath the chin. The dragonberry was a hallucinogen. Bringing about an acceptance of loss to when it doesn't feel like a loss no more. Alcohol traded for sorrow. Tears dripped from the corner of her one eye and dried up. The coagulated salt in that and the pinch in her heart. Both stayed though, but gradually got inconsequential. The stitched straw of the mat printed an impression on her cheeks. When she woke up suddenly, fear clutched her heart. Had she overestimated her freedom. Nothing could steal her away from the truth afterall. 

He, crouching in the opposite corner of the room, looked at the print on her cheeks and laughed. Aloud. It wasn't funny. And she didn't even fathom why. She was with him. And nobody knew that. Just about nobody. Nobody knowing where you are is as good as death. Or as bad as. They were as good as a couple of dead lovers in a thankless afternoon. It was then, precisely then, that she realized that everything was imaginary. The salt in her tears, the phones she had thrown away, the constraint that held her, the people she put off by knitting one complicated mesh of lies. All of it was afterall, imaginary. Only s/he was the real one. And probably, the dragonberry. 

Litmus

1

They stood like the stagnant rain of late August. Against the moist afternoon breeze rushing through their hair, giving them an occasional totter. Away from town, its buses and the smoke. They would quite religiously meet in the valley. Well not exactly, if you could call it that. It was a huge ditch washed clean by the monsoon. Sometimes flooded, it looked like a lake. Filled with brown water, of the color of tea. Only the beverage in the cup they shared standing on top of the ridge looked less watery. The color of that was for the thick boiled buffalo milk. Not a day went without he making a comment on the goodness of that milk, and she not laughing to it. At it. Forgetting the day, at ease, an hour at a time. As the orange sun set and the porous skies gave in, again. To another lash of night long rain. 

2

Each morning, her huge dog, that monstrous canine, demanded comforting by the pedestrians crossing the street by barking out loud from the first floor balcony and craning its neck out like it would take a leap now. It never did, but the children stopped taking that street. The ones who would earlier sneak into her garden to steal shrubs of pink table rose and pineapple from the bushes. Or a raw jackfruit or two. The canine put an end to that for good. But after that, there was no one. The barking would stop once her hoarse scream scared the animal off to a mid morning snooze. And then she would emanate from the rickety house in her off white maxi dress for summers. With a cup of tea in her hands, chewing one of her own sun dried coconut cookies. To tend to her rose bushes and to cut off the weed. Weed, you know.

-x-

Last Name

Now I'm sitting in a corner, hidden
And sulking
Again, I am laughing at the memory of that moment
Suddenly, it is years ago

Here is a sunrise by a pond
Then the bare branches of autumn
Colors of April
Waves of the sea, and my toes

Do you realise,
How swiftly,
Our existence merges and emerges from Illusion
And vice versa

A bunch of memories
Will soon become a collectable
The dearth of words for a poem
A distant feeling to recall.

Amongst the scores and scores of days
We live through and worry endlessly about
Only few will make it to the album of life,
When we die and move on

Something which was so heartbreaking then
Doesn't mean a dime anymore.
Come to think of it,
What was his last name again?

Wasn't Frost right,
When he said that.
'It goes on'
Wasn't he now

So, live in love
Die with your eyes closed
And heart open.
Also, write a dozen insane poetry.

Condiment

Don't blame me, honey
If I don't keep no memory
Because there's dark concentric circles
'Round my eyes, of worry
The one time I am glee
Is when you with me;

Swivelling about our plum backs
To your music & mine
Tip-toeing on zig zag marble floors
Tugging to strums of guitar

Talking of places, far off
And their peoples
Colors, black blue red & grey

Talking still, entwined on the kitchen slab
Windows shut,
Breathing in unlocked airs of 
Summer winter and rain

Exchanging stories of our mothers
Names of our fading past lovers
Chopping tomatoes & potatoes
Spices & flavors

You're the condiment, baby
The one that adds flavor over me.

So, don't blame me 
If I complain amnesia
'Coz I am so busy living, suddenly. 
I ain't keeping no memory. 

The Other Day.

The other day, I ran into her parents. Them, who I had barely met when we were us, seemed to have aged twice as fast than they would have, had time been more merciful. After a moment's raw hesitation and an unsuccessful attempt to flee the spot, I stood with the poise of a man and approached them. Her mother blinked at me, with faint recognition. With a bravado I was unaware I had, I introduced myself as a friend of their daughter's. A friend they had never known of. She welcomed me with a confused but affectionate smile. I hadn't expected much anyway. She had shrunk from the photographs of the steadfast woman I had seen in the pictures I had been shown, a couple years ago. I greeted the father similarly, the lines on his face had become more precise. Those dictions of his which she would tell me over and over again, repeatedly, and never tire of, hardly ever left my mind those days. Like her father was permanent company, always watching over her. In a moment's notice I was carried away, wondering what kind of an alternate reality would it have been to actually have been a part of their lives. It's funny in a way, whatever the wish that did not fulfill. Whatever the love that vanished, passed away peacefully like death from senility. I always told her that she looked like her mother. She could never catch the parallels though. And would argue that even though they might look alike, as a person she was quite the antithesis of her mother. Like she was selfish and aloud, inconsiderate and obstinate. Quite the contrary to her mother, quite the contrary to any decent human being, quite the contrary to the beautiful person I sometimes saw in her.

I ran into her parents, the other day. But not a word was spoken of her.

.. 

See

It's a ridiculous wish I had. To see Khushwant Singh in person. He's the one who taught me how to live without shame. Now he is dead and gone. That's one item struck off like that. Sooner more than later, I am sure I will forget who I am. It's like losing sight of oneself. And it's a horrible thing to say. To become someone with no identity, wishes and aspirations. My autobiography could be named the autobiography of a corpse. Because my life is pretty much a list of things to be done, things to constantly worry about, work wise, life wise. I feel I have made too many unwise decisions and now there is no getting away from those. Like a vicious circle, the aftermath leads to the cause itself. And can't look out, look within. I am entangled such, I can't see. My biases are such, I don't think I even understand my environment very well. It's like being really stupid, immune to the obviousness of the world. I am so serious when I say I can't see, I can't see a damn thing. 

I need a filter, something that tells me what I should see, what I should ignore. Because there is so much fucked up stuff happening around, they all merge into a haze, I can't differenciate one from another. There is nothing definitive, it's all infinite and irrational. I feel small, incapable. And stupid. Like a failure.

A friend recently halted at a guest house by a lagoon on a rainy night because their car broke down on the way. In the morning when she woke up, the lagoon and the sea it merged into and the sky, everything looked like one grey screen of nothing. She stood on her feet and stared, unable to figure where the sea ended, where the sky began, they were all so homogenous. No sight of the horizon, of the distances we could go, of the persons we could become. Nada, nothing. Then, minutes later an orange sun punctured that grey screen. It rose slowly up the sky, shooting out rays, drawing out a horizon in front of her eyes. Separating the sea and the sky. Differentiating the closer from the distant. Showing her what exactly to see.

I want to see. Just like that. 

The Girl

The girl glided into the compound of the building. She had gotten down from the bus a moment ago. City buses, town buses that ran between home and school. That carried her to and fro. Except for today, when she got down in between. In a place that was neither school nor home. Nobody was startled, nobody cared. Or gave a damn. She stood right beside the building and craned her neck to see the top, she couldn't. Approaching the flight of stairs she stood by the board which read which offices were on which floor. On the second or the third, there was a bank. Which sold out forms for an exam she was to apply to and write to find a place to be in, after she finished school. Upstairs there would be a security guard standing near the grille entry to the bank who wouldn't even spare a glance as the girl would walk in and join the que of dozens. And spend the next hour staring at the red spit on the walls and its corners. The disgruntled breath that held the air together in that place.

Downstairs, there was a middle aged man with an eye on her. Staring at her every move, trying to draw out her intentions. What was a girl like her doing alone in a building like this. And at this time? In the afternoon, when nobody is home. She, he had been made to believe was going to one of the top floors and engage in something illicit. Anything at all, outside of rules she was expected to abide by. Anything that should bring shame. 

Torn between the man and the Girl, we would hardly know where was it that she headed for real. Knowing is as good as not knowing anyway. Who can tell. May be we are only fooling ourselves. Who can tell. 

The Virtue of Indifference

I lost my innocence very early in life. Not owing to any incident in particular, but I just grew up faster I believe. Things that people realized ten years hence, I was done and dusted with in my adolescence. I don't blame anybody specifically, I was just the way I was. Sometimes this extra dollop of maturity acted to my advantage, i.e. I could get over stuff faster. 

I have hardly ever truly believed in the goodness of the people. World is a comedy of errors and I have gradually taught myself to laugh and then appreciate those errors. I sometimes even gorge on the beauty evident in some of these blatant flaws. Like nothing, absolutely nothing is up to our expectations, so you have got to dissolve your daily dissatisfaction with nicotine, caffeine, whatever it is. Or just woman up and stick with it. Like given a chance, life would fuck itself up. It's like Murphy is the father of the world. Bad things constantly happen, it's like the law of inertia. People, men and woman, are tightly wound nut jobs. They are narcissistic fools, arrogant buffoons, with mommy issues and daddy issues et cetera. The only way to get past their shit and focus on yours is just to give them a hearing. Only a hearing, mind you. Never listen to people, if you prefer sanity. Hardly anyone would actually be right beside you when you need anything, so never let them in. 

Mostly as you could already guess, I did not believe that goodness could actually exist in our species. And so I was never actually good, per se. I would just make do. Just be nice. And indifferent. Sometimes, even this would take a toll on me as it is. But it is a load less than being truly deeply madly good. 

That I have been the above for so many years now, reverting back to innocence is such a tough choice. It's so damn hard to actually mean it when I say, I am a good woman.

3:00 pm

The crumple of skin behind knuckles, 

A slight itch in the corner of an eye

The corner of the shelf, where

I store our bodily smells, like I hoard them

Protect them against time

Shut out from the volatile rest 

And this untiring motion

Breathless commotion 

As a fragile constant

Tethered to my soul

The woman downstairs

In a purple-blue nighty

A child clinging to her waist

Like a creeper to a tree

Being fed from a bowl of silver

The smile of that silver, in the afternoon sun

The belly of that child

The mashed dal in that bowl

His refusal to swallow

Her persistence to make him

Swallow

Like, we do

That (corner in the) shelf, forgotten

Chasing something we can't even see. 

Can't spare one constant unmoving hour in a day

Going through circles

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

We wait at the ends of those arcs, 

To automatically shred into smithereens. 

May

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

The Road

It was one long road. With trees on both sides, of mixed variety, unknown species. Big old trees facing each other on parallel borders of the road, full of leaves meeting right over its midline. Like forming a content canopy of thought.

He and I, we walked down that road. Only seven years ago on a faintly similar afternoon of February. Talking of things that seem the most inane now. Like what we would do with our lives, in our futures. Non collapsible ever expandable futures. What higher schools would we want to get into. What jobs would we walk into, what kind of money that would give us, what kind of lives.

And the suddenly it rained. Like in buckets. I am not joking, it did. Nor am I saying this just to make it sound romantic or anything, it did. And we had to run towards a tree. Beneath that we stood for what seemed like eras. Breathing out cold vapor with whatever little we spoke. Whispered. The noise from the rain dropping down the leaves was so gigantically deafening. And children on cycles were chasing each other down faster than the rain. Autorickshaws impatiently zoomed in and out of our canvas. The world seemed to move pretty much in fast forward as we stood there, temporarily frozen in our own thought, glued together to the trunk of our tree.

Today, I went back there again. Not in time travel, but in reality. Walking alone down the same road. And picked up my drenched self. A raw girl. With her mind full of things that were yet to happen. Living in the future. Which actually is, now. And it's barely what she thought it would be like. Barely. Sigh. What a wreck!

A Single Man

One single man and his scattered life. An empty fridge, not a stacked one like in real homes. His bottle of sugar, infested with ants. The top of his TV, filled with old unused keys, with no locks to them anywhere, random receipts to stuff he had bought months ago and everything layered with dust. There's cobwebs in the corners. And a bed that hasn't been done for weeks. There's power cords everywhere on the floor. Almost like the quagmire of life. Plugged into extension cords and then into points in the wall you can't trace. Newspapers. Oh newspapers. They would make new walls in this house if piled, newspapers and books gotten and forgotten in furore. Decade old sheets of the Economic Times flung about. He has been living this way for long. One static unchanging undemanding stretch of time that seems to stretch forever. No one has been here, or in his heart. Except that almost over tube of facial scrub abandoned in the bathroom, left behind by a certain someone. An old girlfriend, a fuckbuddy, the ex wife or a one night stander. Whoever that was, her toothbrush stood in a corner, right beside his, watching over the rest of the house like a hawk. 

Being Unremarkable

Looking back, I cannot remember when exactly I lost my ambition. And why. I can zero in on the why, but not on the when. I used to be one striving kid, before this happened. I used to have dreams. Hallucinations. Of living in big cities, in sea facing houses, doing some key job. Money was never exactly in the picture, but then everything does come down to money, in the end. Though, like someone said, most of who we know, only eat, work and continue to survive. Our naked eyes cannot visualize any more. Mine, can't. A few years ago, I used to believe my life hadn't even begun. Suddenly, now I feel like it's over. I am twenty six. And I have accomplished nothing major, except for getting by. By and by. Sometimes, I imagine what life would have been on the other side. Had my winning streak continued. Had I become the decisive ambitious person I was being nurtured to become. I would have been happier, definitely. 

But I am happy now. Aren't I? I have the smaller things. Most of which I am trying really hard to value. I am trying. Sure, am. Making checklists, constantly evaluating and reevaluating. Training myself to be self contained. Consciously building a routine and then actively falling prey to it. Such that my wilder shades can be contained. Trying to move towards what I find joy in doing, or atleast hoping that I would. Staying away from the things and people that nauseate me. Most things in my life are far, really fa' from working out. But I have convinced myself, everything is a gradual process.

This is mostly how I have become a decently moderate and laid back woman from a breathless go getter. I have my regrets alright. But I relish being in the shadows. I find peace in being unremarkable. 

I Hope You Love Me

Because love is as fickle an emotion as it is mighty. I can only hope, you love me. Love me back that is, as I have let my guard down. Also, because I have had enough of love, of the unrequited kind. That's good for only a fucking love poem. And not to keep alive. So, I can only hope that you love me. The real lasting bearable kind. Because love is like smoke in hot air, now it's here and now not anymore. Despite who I am, and despite who you be, the love in between has to simmer like a third person. Like a child. And it should be, no matter what you and I evolve to be. It may not be everlasting alrite, but it should last the decent span to sew together my broken heart and keep it that way or whatever. This may read like sleep talk, or gibberish. But aren't the stakes high enough. And this assurance I shall beg, no matter what. No matter who. I can only hope you love me. The real lasting bearable kind.

Residual Love

This time, as I haven't written the usual sadlove Valentine post, allow me to put in whatever remains, the residue of love. Plain and quiet, the following is some rant about a couple of couples I know. 

There's this two people. They met through an arranged marriage set up. You know how that works. I've got nothing for the uninitiated. They must have however immediately fallen in love with each other. Because down the line when one of the parent parties tried to pull out even after they had been duly betrothed, they stayed put. And said they would marry each other and each other only. Such balls. Where do you get those. 

Then there's this other couple. Technically never a couple, because they were never together. So they are more like a couple of people, a man and a woman, outside your orthodox understanding of the term. They came across when she was on the fading end of an on and off fling with another man who shall perennially shadow her life forever with his betrayal. And he was a lot more like just a shoulder to lean upon rather than a whole man. No, she didn't use him. Nobody uses anybody. We are at the even ends of the deals we crack for ourselves, we are all equally awake. But they didn't last, her crying session was over before he could knock her down with his love. She found someone else. And that was that. But till today, he bugs her in the oddest of ways. Like sending reminders of what they lost out on. After random intervals of time. Sometimes all these acts of nostalgia don't even involve him, it's like she has imagined a decent half of them.

Also, there's this third couple. Last couple for the day, I swear. They are supposedly in love, the real one. The passion is mostly past. They are with each other only when they are with each other. Like physically, right beside, behind locked doors. Otherwise they are not. They are singular beings of what each is worth. In their own, non-overlapping worlds. Of different people and different passions. Pretty much like strangers outside of the sphere of their knowing. And, they are learning to be at peace with this existence, as I write. As I think, as you read. Together, yet apart. 

But then again, what kind of love is that. Huh. 

Middle Berth

On the journey onward, they weren't with each other. He looked older, wore a stud in his left ear lobe. She tied her ironed hair into a messy knot, her face glowed in the sun. He hung out of the door of the railway bogie when they were moving past the valleys and each time he did that, she took a picture of him with the big camera that slung from her shoulder. They must have kissed when the tunnels came. No one could tell.

On the way back, they had only one ticket. His ticket. She travelled like an extension of his, like a limb- a hand or a leg. Always conjoint to him. He coaxed her extra luggage in, let her sit on his seat and stood by her and chatted on about whatever. Later slid beside her onto the middle berth. Together, they looked like one common mass of black. Except for his man-scarf of purple striped in white. They lay anti parallelly, and hugged each others' feet like pillows and slept. 

When the night got deeper, she took a U turn though. Now they lay against each other, she tousled his hair and talked into his ear, the one with the stud in it. Night long, most night long. Sometime after that, he must have left. Somewhere close to dawn. Gotten down at some odd station, less known. 

She covered her face with that scarf and slept the rest of the journey alone, like a log. 

Threshold of a Dream

Shame, precisely was the lost element. There was barely any fear of consequence. So they would hide behind giant tree trunks on sultry afternoons. The birds would chirp away in drunken siesta as they were, underneath, below. Or if the birds made more noise alarmed, they would shift into the tree's holy womb, its crevice. Sharing the warmth of the rugged walls of wood, and the cold of the air trapped inside for months, with their bodies.

Or be on the river bed. Upon yellow sand, reflecting mirages into the sky. Stretched out asleep, their lithe limbs parallel. On the threshold of a dream. Once up, they would walk toward the tiny island in the middle that cut the river into two, for a while and let them merge again, out of relentless love. Down the line. They dug their ankles into, to check if there was any quicksand. 

They breathed the clouds, breathed the smoke. Of dead leaves burning in summer. In wild forest fires, ravenous and all-consuming. Giving up, giving in. Laughing. Inhaling carbon monoxide and losing senses. Clasping palms and being children. Hiding and seeking.

In December, sinking in snow.

Why tell me, again, can't we be like them. You & me. Tell me again. 

Odour

I must smell of him
Molecules of his, stuck in between mine
In empty spaces
Trapped odour, irreversible love
He's my envelope,
Like my stratosphere
All around me,
Sometimes you couldn't tell us apart
Entwined lovers

When my nostrils graze from
Chin downwards
Via the throat, his neck
They collect souvenirs.
Memories to be saved forever
No matter how we end up.

Enroute they collect bubbles of his odour.
Aftershave, sweat, flesh, skin, soap
Love, estrangement,
Fear and frustration
My nostrils cage a bit of his spirit
And save it in my lungs

When it gets dark,
That smell seeps into my blood
And oozes out of my skin

I must smell of him. 

Faded Flamboyance.

It's unfair to say, but I couldn't recognize him. From behind, I felt a pang of uncertainty, who could this man be. And then he turned around and I saw his face. The same face except he looked older by a decade than I had seen him last. I must have grown too, but it's difficult to notice age on oneself. He had lost all his color. He had no hair at all, whatever little he did was grey. He had trimmed it today, that was his excuse. Though I wanted to ask what was so desperately wrong with him, I couldn't. There is nothing that is ever cardinally wrong. Life ruins us all in general, in bits, in its own slow paced process. The loss of friendship, fading of love, tarnishing of belief, being few of the numerous causes. Therefore I didn't ask. No questions were exchanged. 

He said he'd come by, our place. He should better, I stressed. His wife was fine and the two sunshine daughters were growing up alrite, he said. I asked if the older one was resembling their mother more by the year, he stayed shut.  I didn't ask about the younger one then. It had been long I had forgotten their names, but their childlike faces stayed framed in my eyes. The younger one, who looked like her father was more my favorite, though I never had the chance to say it. Whenever he took me to see a doctor when I fell sick, or picked me up from the train station, saw me off for holidays. Or the once or twice he took me out for dinner with his resentful wife. 

A few years from now, he would be more open about the falling apart of his marriage. The people in his life who may have demanded an explanation would be long gone. We may meet after another lost decade of his life, on his face.

Then decades afterward, real decades i.e. he would come visit his daughter for winter in the hills, the younger one. Flip through old albums, pictures of his children in their school uniforms, purple water-bottles hanging from their necks. Pictures from the few vacations they had cared to take. Right then, he would close his eyes and regain his lost flamboyance. 

Breaking Out

Stout diabetic man. Staring at a lunch of boiled vegetables. In the corner. The smile in his voice. His nonchalance. His apparent lack of fear, wants me to break out. The strings of gerberas hanging from the walls. In bunches, between leaves they don't belong to. In dim lit wedding days of previous besties. The angst in their voice when we understand. How bad time is tricking us. Into believing that it's running slow. When it's not. When we are losing so much and so fast of our quintessential past that seemed like nothing more than average. Until now, when suddenly we are beginning to feel that we are growing up faster than we can handle. So we pause. 

For a while, hold our wrists between our thumb and the index finger. Merely to feel the pulse. To realise the restlessness of all that blood, flowing for no purpose. Chasing something that may in the end not be. Like running toward a mirage. Wasting our destiny, erasing scratched fate lines on our palms only by worrying. Worrying that we are getting nowhere. 

When that pause ends, we decide to make our deal more peaceful. Our thoughts more legible. With more foresight. Such that we chase things that only matter. Matter more. Such that the blood through our wrists slows down. Our temples don't sweat. We sit under trees of silent thought, holding love close to our chest. Like real tight. With a respect for our own self, that we don't shy away from the mirror every time we try to look at it. 

Because, in the end, we all become the stout diabetic man staring at a pale lunch alone in the corner. And then, all that would matter is did we have courage in our soul, that absolute lack of fear. Did we stand up when we should have. 

Love in the Afternoon

He recognized her from the other side of the table. They were aware, that they were both there. But then there always is that head nod. With the warm familiarity of an old lover. Yes, warm. There was a hint of a smile in her eyes. It has been years.

Hasn't it been? Years. Just three. Two years and ten months. Nobody kept a count from the precise day they had quietly to decided to call it off. No fanfare. As quietly as they had begun. Between the occasional clinking of glasses and passing of salads on that lunch table, they had met again after a couple winters had come and gone. Their host that afternoon, was a common friend who had thought them to be a couple until he announced that he was to marry another woman. Someone else. 

Someone else, another person, who didn't have her finicky fingers or her roving mind. A third person, out of the sphere of her imagination was going to be with the man she had loved the longest. Loved the deepest. Everything after l'affaire felt only lesser. The news of his wedding had crippled her, that they were expecting a baby, not as much. By then, the hot air had passed. Her blood rippled less often. 

And now she was just a distant person, sitting on the far end of the table with a lot of strangers but one. That lunch stretched long, he walked with her to the parking. Their baby was due in July. The child that could have been hers. Only it was not. Only they had drifted far apart even when they were with each other. Still in love. 

On a similar afternoon, long time ago, he had been plucking out stray strands of white hair from her head. Fishing them out from amongst bunches of black as she lay on his chest. In another world, yet on his chest. Feeling his heart beat. But that was a thousand afternoons ago.

The Seamstress

Once a young girl started sewing a dress for her best friend's wedding. She bought the piece of cloth with assumed measurements. But ran short of time, largely. The stitching couldn't finish before the night of the wedding. So she left it unfinished. Then about a year later, she decided she would wear it at another best friend's wedding, and picked up the work where she had left it. But that friend's wedding also came and went by, largely due to how slow and amateur her stitching was. Now that dress felt like more than a dress.

She began embroidering upon it, threads of various colors, chain stitched with curled bunches of roses in between. She stitched a little for each man that broke her heart, a little for those who she loved nevertheless. A little for those who she had left estranged unapologized. A bit for the mundane hassles of life. More across each of the nights she felt ugly and worthless and abandoned. Even more when she felt she was turning into a good for nothing though she had so much talent. So on and so forth, she embroidered for growing old. A circle of threads for each wrinkle that appeared on her face. For each child she bore. Child of hopes, child of new beginnings, child of last chances. Sewed in sleeves when her one and final love discarded her for another woman, walking away.

She stitched until blindness. And then died. They dressed her in that, in her coffin. It then looked complete. Just about adequate. Dressed in the stupid coagulated pain of a lifetime.

Closure

Closure is very necessary. Haven't we talked about this in the past? Oh yeah, hell lots of times. We only talk, never make it work. Women of words not actions, we seem to be. Because we have no clue how to close an episode and move ahead. Forget it, or atleast learn to live with it. We don't know peace, any peace, as a result. We bury the same thing numerous times, but then the grave opens up and zombies start walking all over us. God, why is this so hard. Letting go. Moving on. It's probably because our minds are like semi-solid right now. Very unsettled. Don't we truly believe in what we are holding on to for dear life. We do, but we want everything. Insatiable ghosts we are. Hence the bygone keeps popping up. Decent burials don't work anymore. Do they. God, I don't believe in resolutions. But please would you help me walk through this one. And get a closure and shut the chapter for now and forever. You see, I am a decent human being. A closure is the least I deserve. So let me just walk away. Because I am not getting away with anything else. Enough already. It's been fuckin years. I don't wanna add another one to it.

Scum of the Earth

Dear Hemingway,

Midway reading The Old Man and the Sea, I paused for a while to look you up. Pardon my negligence about before, but I found out that you had killed yourself in the end. That book, is now lying somewhere, unfinished. I am deciding, whether to pick it up again or not. Because, through out that book you write about how we fight till the very end, struggle against our environment. Stand up to anything that confronts us. Like the old man does. But what does it all end up to if you push aside all the optimism and shoot yourself in the head?

Hey, I ain't judging. Half the time my own ass is on fire. I am brooding so much that I might just evaporate. Hit something and go up in flames. I respect the dignity in death, the liberation it begets you. I admire the courage to die. Nevertheless. It just doesn't fall into place.

Plath killed herself when she was a few years older than I am now. Like Chekhov said - Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out. I find this chase of day in and day out, what seems like a pointless struggle against invisible forces, obnoxiously nauseating. Virginia Woolf just walked into the water and vanished. It does feel like it is too much to take.

But you Hemingway, you? Of everyone else alive. And dead.

You should have read this poem by Bukowski:

The Secret

don't worry, nobody has the

beautiful lady, not really, and

nobody has the strange and

hidden power, nobody is

exceptional or wonderful or

magic, they only seem to be

it's all a trick, an in, a con,

don't buy it, don't believe it.

the world is packed with

billions of people whose lives

and deaths are useless and

when one of these jumps up

and the light of history shines

upon them, forget it, it's not

what it seems, it's just

another act to fool the fools

again.

there are no strong men, there

are no beautiful women.

at least, you can die knowing

this 

and you will have

the only possible

victory.

Because, darling, we are, darlings. The Scum of the Earth. There is not much need to get ourselves killed. 

Doppelgänger

When they were young, they had fallen for the same man. Those were not mere infatuations; but full blown affairs. It is believed that these affairs happened not simultaneously. But who can say? The foggy boundaries between being in love, the ache of a broken heart, the patch up et al are not for anybody to govern. So sometimes, those three, the two women and their man in between formed three vertices of a triangle. Isosceles triangle. 

They must have been similar, somehow-somewhere. Given a man, mostly may choose an approximate prototype of the opposite gender each time he gets to choose. With certain common traits. But these women were far from same. A had a docile exterior and a blatant inside. B, on the other 'and, was uptight on the outside and all gooey within. A was the submissive in her relationship. B, was obviously the insatiable dominant in hers. A was shy, fearful, a poetess. B was very vocal of her needs, her frustrations, even her dreams. But once unclothed, each woman turned inside out, i.e. behaved like the other woman was on the outside. The man switched his roles between the two. Such chameleons they are. 

Sometimes the median vertex of that triangle vanished though. The man, I mean. It was like he wasn't there. The triangle became a well meant straight line. A and B lusted for each other through the man who was like a membrane of mist. And like someone poked a finger into it, he disappeared. Sometimes they felt like prototypes of the same woman. Sometimes they felt like alter-egos, despite their cardinal differences. Sometimes like lesbian lovers. But mostly like doppelgangers.

You, Me & Vacuum

# This blog is full of someones. Each post is obviously about someone or the other. But some have an alarming majority, like I am screaming their bloody names out. I am not aware of what they did to deserve this honor, but anyway they don't know a bit, so it's no honor anyway. But however still.

# Life is so not well rounded sometimes. It takes you all the wrong ways and then makes you choose. What you feel you are meant for. This too, is one rare case. So, you're lucky if it happens with you. This is exactly where that bitch called life, squares it off. Pros and cons.

# As such, there's a mess. Irreversibly fucked up imbroglio. There's choking traffic. Mails to be sent, asses to be kissed. There's internet that has issues of its own. Very frustrating. Handicaps of our own. Secret debilitating humiliating handicaps of our own, that we don't have the balls to deal with.

# Also, a past of broken hopes, meandering routes to happiness that never practically ended, there's dresses that don't fit, nails that are bitten, beauty that is unattainable. Fear, trepidation. Shame, some more fear.

# There is no time. No space. No continuum.

# Sometimes, Virginia Woolf may not have been that wrong after all. Walking into a river with pocket full of stones. What was she thinking. She knew whatever she was thinking.

# But for you. You are at the other end of this line. Did you realize that what I just wrote could have been one of my those endless monologues about how everything is doomed? You would say, 'Stop, Stop!'

# I see myself through this tortuous day, because it ends with you. A means to an end. Sometimes you make me feel. Like I am floating in a gravity less vacuum. And one happy vacuum that is. 

Negociación

It's french for negotiation. Err.. Spanish actually.

I watched Before Midnight. I mean, I did finally. For the uninitiated, I claim that Before Sunset has left some pretty strong imprints on my mind. I have been quoting Celine and Jesse (well, mostly Celine) for years here. And after such a tireless wait, Linklater gives me this. I mean this. It's almost like a lover's betrayal. 

Wait.. I am kidding. It's not betrayal exactly. But then, somehow the sequel to your favorite movie can never be good enough. Mostly, I had been delaying watching Before Midnight for so many months probably because, I did not want it to touch my perception of Sunset so much. 

Call me a fanatic, but there was a time I used to watch it every Friday night. It has made me stand through the most disastrous of heart breaks. And helped seep truth back in. I used to say their lines along with them. Their accents intact. Yes, I was crazy. Still am. Whenever things go dull, I watch it again.

Before Sunset did whatever it did to me because a) it stood by the fact that love mostly is a transient feeling and b) once in a while, one deep conversation with its share of non sequiturs, does help. Our rusted soul, our breathless mind. 

I am not averse to everlasting love, but the truth is there might not ever be such a thing. We are on the same point here. Know, things fade. Passions overflow for a while and then. We get really cranky. Irritable, messy beings, who forget what it was like to be young and deep in wet love. 

Also, there is this association of romance with angst. I mean, it stays raw in your head if it falls apart. If you keep it from falling apart every single time it has almost gone off the edge, by your enormous patience and fear of dying alone, you leave it to die a slow death. 

In Before Midnight, Linklater makes you see Jesse and Celine in such crisis. Like they are barely afloat. There's a tonne of issues. There's kids. Oh my god. Responsibilities, money. And suspicions of infidelity. A lot of screaming. I mean a lot of it. Tempers catching fire. What beasts life has made of them. It's fearful watching them as it is. 

The love is now faint. Tied by a multitude of constraints. They euphemize constant fighting by calling it negotiating. Negociación, as Celine said. Accent intact.

Endorphins

We are little children, writing names on dusty windshields of cars

Our fingers reaching up, running through layers of grey powdered powder

Parting clean lines, forming letters for the first time.

The sun smiling on our faces in return,

Our bare muscles just don't know how to rest

Because there is nothing that is forbidden.

Our memory, ethereal

Merging reflections of now and then

We ain't bound to remember or abide by

There's stars above, glittering..millions of those

Scores of unnamed galaxies

And the mystery inside us, you and me, Un-unravelable. 

A sea sits calm beneath our settled feet

And the stars see themselves in it and smile,

Creating a new sky underneath.

We, utterly sandwiched between two skies

Move so on and so forth, 

Gathering love, momentum, rhyme 

Our hearts leap, 

Glee, in the corner of my lip;

The endorphins in my head. 

Loving like a Woman

She did not run away with all your money. Any of your money. Neither did she cheat on you, nor break any promise. There were no promises anyway. She did not say hurtful things. Things people say, when the love turns bitter. Never wanted any bit of your skin to change, or your eyes, or fingers. Or toes. Or your heart. Because, once she had fallen, with you, in love, you were her boundaries of beauty, noone outside of you, could be merely close to being beautiful. Love wasn't any poetic supposition, it was a real thing. Thing.

It is once and for all said, very difficult to love like a woman. And even more convoluted an impossibility, to marginally understand that love. 

She had gathered you in the pores of her skin. Saved you like rose petals like in a school girl's diary. Loved you like not like a mother, but close.

Very close.

What did you know?

Now don't feel bad already. She took hardly anything away. Except for herself. As one last resort.

Let her go, now that she needs to. For good. Her skin, eyes, fingers, her toes. Her belittled castigated soul. She wronged nowhere else, except but for now. When she, in a trifle probability, broke your heart. A man's mighty heart. 

Remember now, you did that too. Didn't you/.

Hotel Room

Not those dingy ones you take up once you have suddenly eloped because there was no other way for love, but that. But those ones to which you have to come back to, once every night. When you're travelling alone, and for work. Alien city. That same elevator to the thirteenth floor. Clean white sheets, the faceless housekeeper. Who turns your pillow cases inside out once in a while, places neat sachets of shampoo in the bathroom, packets of sugar on the coffee table. You wonder if she's a woman or a man. Because she is the only human contact you have had in days. Is he a pedophile, does he touch your underwear that you might have left out to dry. Each night, after you get back within an exhausted body but your mind is sleepless, you wonder if the view of a sleepy city going to stand you any company at all.

Whenever I told Him that I was a loner by default, how I felt lonely no matter where I was, whatever I was upto, there was always this shallow meaningless void in my head that no one could fill. He would quietly absorb my metaphysical unstoppable three minute of a lecture and then retort, softy with a remark. That in that hotel room is the loneliest you could be. And that I wouldn't be able to realize how completely abandoned he had felt each of those nights across those months and months he had hopped among a multitude of such rooms. 

I was not a fool. I knew. Sometimes I was relieved that the man wouldn't in the very least, take my being with him for granted that he knew how absolutely painful loneliness could get. But did that work for me? Not, I guess.

I would often imagine him. Loitering around on those tiled floors. Taking short quick steps to the closet, or leaving his shirt and tie on the bed before he went in to take a shower. Adjusting the temperature of the water according to the place he was in. Too hot, hot, lukewarm. Hot showers did well for mild insomnia, he would say. Or just picking up the work on your laptop where you had left it at in office, helped too. Sometimes logging on to Skype, seeing his mother would work. Or calling me.