The Fear of Writing.

Besides my loathing for pulp fiction, there is one other reason why I haven't dared ever to write a story. And though there is no way I could filter one particular reason from a body of unwillingness and outright lethargy and exhaustion, here's how I would like to try.

Every man and woman has a center of their being. It sounds rather idealistic, but there is one idea, one solo thing, that makes you who are, binds bone to bone in your body and makes you walk around on your two legs, be the phenomenon that you should be. And that idea, is beyond everything, almost everything, indomitable, uncrushable. It only has to rise, like a snake from your navel to your head.

Every damn story that has been written, that I have found and read, has reflected with honesty, its writer's intricate bonding with her this idea. The process of writing a story is like an endothermic reaction in which the writer comes to be, this person that she should ideally be, doing justice to the words she is scribbling across pages, leaving her footprint in every single stanza, every comma pushed between words, every semi colon inserted to space out one thought from another.

And I have no such idea, haven't discovered mine yet. Or may be I never would. Because I am constantly looking. I begin a paragraph by writing about a couple that lives in the middle of the forest, an unknown bird that sits by their window every night, a girl that's waiting for her roommate, how the wind blows today, how the clouds are strewn across the sky and likewise. And then, after a few hundred words, I am drained. Exhausted. I run out. Of thoughts. Of all conceivable fiction. Of all routes, that could lead me to become the person I should ideally be. The person my story wants me to be.

I am cowed down by embarrassment, humiliation of not being worthy of my own reading. And I tear apart the papers, roll them into a ball and dump them in trash.

I have seen the noble ideas that make people write, drive them to finish pages after pages. But in my case, there is no such.There is no spiritual snake rising from my navel to my head. I am blank, except for the empty center of my being. Which is soaked, soaked with lovelessness. And a terrifying solitude, which began as a disappointment, soon became a sorrow and has now turned into a writhing anger.

If I ever write a story, only this lovelessness will be scattered across my pages. And therefore, I shall not. 

Poise & Untruth

Just asking. Is there anything, material or immaterial, in some corner of the brain, that moderates. Some secret gland, that releases a notorious secretion and makes us more-man-and-less-animal. Is there? Isn't there?

Because if I slammed every door I felt like slamming, there would be lots of fractured doors in my world today. If I told every fucktard, that he was indeed, one of those, I would have lots of enemies. If I had opposed every idea I thought was foolish, I would have become a rebel, Che type. If I had told every pretty lass, that she was one pathetic attention seeker, I would have no pretty friends. And If I would have blamed the ugly ones for being ugly, I wouldn't have the ugly ones either.

If I had revealed the gargantuan truth, that almost all of us are bloody hypocrites, then where would I find that single place to hide my shameless little ass. If I had told those dangerously self obsessed narcissists that that's what they really were, they would set my tail on fire. If I had a tail, i.e.

There are dozens of other things I would have said and done. But I didn't. Couldn't. Because of that secret secretion inside of my head, that fucking moderates me. Calms me down. Relaxes. Sometimes it makes me see that my saying anything at all, wouldn't make any difference to the course of things in the long run. Sometimes it makes me want to save my energy; lie down on the couch and watch all the drama. Sometimes it makes me believe that, it all merely seems to be, but it's not. It does just about anything to keep me from reacting in my natural flair and showing my true color.

And thanks to that secret secretion, I have become the one that I have come to be. Lazying around, writing when she feels like, opinion-less, neutral about even the most vehement of phenomenons, struggling with a rigid inability to believe, to believe in anything, anything at all.

And what did I get? Did the pluses and minuses cancel out to give me something positive that adds to make me look a teeny-weeny better in my own tired eyes? No. Nothing. This poise earned me zilch. Zilch. 

City

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shame

There was once a woman. In a book. Not a real one. Or she may have been. No one knows. If she lived between the flaps of its pages, or was for real. But there was a woman. 

Mundane-faced. Except somedays; invisible; until much later. Until she became a part of the book. The book talks about her past; in recollection. She was brought up within four walls of inhibition. Behind thick rimmed glasses. Upright pony tails. Hair oil. Long skirts. Half shoes. Velvety half shoes. Bitten nails. Novels hidden between school books. Every year in school remembered by the boy she was infatuated with in that year. Sometimes, a boy lasted years. Sometimes years wore out, but the boy stood steady. Love poems in secret personal diaries. Leaves pressed and preserved between its pages. Leaving grey-green impressions of their veins and vein-lets. 

College. Hours in libraries. Watching couples cuddle. Laboratories. Among chemicals and on aching toes. Long walks. Belly fat. Face packs. Straightening of wavy hair. And failing at it. Getting drenched. Watching rain. Not knowing a thing about where she was headed. Wondering if she would ever look back. Love songs blowing out of speakers, day long. Night long. First stories given a try. Ended unfinished. Due to the dearth of another character, besides the one who was invariably her. End of imagination. Fear of future. Yet a yelling freedom cry within. Wanting to break free; Come out; shy no more; Unleashed; become un-held. But couldn't. She waited for the right moment. Which hardly ever came. 

Later, she moved out. Into a far away city. In another continent. Became what is commonly understood to be a slut. Drank alone in bars. And slept with strange men. Another man; every night. Became what she truly was. Truly was. Or so she understood. Uninhibited. Letting out stifled feelings, of loveless years. She reveled in her anonymity. Celebrated the lack of shame.

Tired of seeking the answer; she fell in love with the question itself. 

And then she came back. Entered; center-stage. As a character in this book. As the lover of the protagonist.

Exiting my bookish fantasies; however; sometimes, she appears in front of me; like she were real. And talks to me. Just like now. Just like now.     

Looking

I am my opiate, in the making.

I am a chemical. I am a ticking bomb.

A half said sentence; I am the dust on shoes. Like a settled thought. Also, I could be a fleeting moment. Transitory. Between existence and non-existence. I am a lot of could be's. But most of all, I am a chemical. Constituted in weird mind boggling concoctions. Or whatever.   

I must be opium. Because I am driven to insanity by default. By birth. This defect is congenital. Being possessed by the want of what not. Of being ignorant of what is it, what is it, that could, begin to, quieten this deafening noise inside me. 

I am ignorant of all causes and consequences of my being. And I am swaying, between drunken footsteps. Walking this way, that way, and then walking away. Away. 

But, nevertheless, I am looking. Unaware of what it is. The elixir that could cure, quieten, put to sleep. This chaos. Decompose the concocted elements that make me. The chemical I am. I am still looking. 

Someday, hope bless me, that the end point of this quest be me itself. And I end up where I had begun. My journey comes a full circle. Keeping in line with my love for circles. 

And I ultimately accept that I was the opiate. Am the opiate. I am the one person I was looking for. And not anyone else. No one else. Just I.

Maya

I am told this world is a dream. Brahma's illusion. It's funny to even imagine, why the fuck am I being screwed so bad in someone else's illusion.

I used to dwell on the truth that everything I see is the sum of everything I imagine I see. I was shut off. There was a distinction between what was me, and what wasn't me. My four walls defined me. Protected me from diluting in my obsession, my cure-less narcissism. 

And I sometimes, in wildest dreams, I tried even to distillate whatever truth there was, however minuscule that may be, from enormous proportions of what everything just seemed to be.  

But now, with time, I have begun to live outside myself. That's the cost we pay. I'll tell you how. 

I am a lose summation what everyone imagines that I am. That I should be. Losing out on breath, I am aimlessly trying to become that one person that I ought to be. To get a better life. 

That notional ideal, is not the one thing I wished to be. Be-come. In fact, I didn't wish to become anyone. Anyone other than what I absofuckinglutely was. Not one trait more or less. No metaphor. No nothing. 

But look, now I live via others. Evaluate every moment of existence by how much I tended to become some tired-of-life-end-of-the-world-frustrated-tireless-moron. And I can't help myself. 

'What is truth? What is sanity? Did Jesus rise up from the grave? Do Hindus not accept that the world is a kind of dream; that Brahma dreamed, is dreaming the universe, that we only see dimly through that dream-web, which is Maya. Maya, may be defined as all that is illusory; as trickery, artifice and deceit. Apparitions, phantasms, mirages, sleight-of-hand, the seeming form of things: all these are parts of Maya. If I say that certain things took place which you, lost in Brahma's dream, find hard to believe, then which of us is right?'

-Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)

With-in

There is this room, where souls bond. Floors of mosaic, tip toed upon, lazy feet pushed, fingers slid between fingers and seduced. There is this room, with no windows. No skylights. Just four walls. Four walls that cage as much as they free. That let ignominy swallow you as much as they enlighten. This is where contradictions coexist.

From the outside, it is hard even merely to imagine that such a place could come to be.

It's like some encapsulated reality, in a capsule, which exists from the inside and other crazy things like that. Threads of connections between beings, are formed, nurtured, and shattered. Irrational, unexplainable bonds rooted in raw needs. The honesty in those bonds is almost sacred. There is no pretension in those chords that tie. And untie. Almost as immediately as that thirst is quenched, the knots are opened up. Disentangled. Free to go.

But for as long as there is that inseparability, there is no questions asked. No answers sought.

Again, did somebody ever say, there was more honesty in lust than in love itself. Or did I just imagine. Being told so.

Men in my life-X!

It took me longer than usual to understand his curious glances. That would sometime stretch into stares. Until I happened to look back at him and disturb his concentration. Then obviously I would notice a subtle expression on his face that you can suppose to be a smile. Or the making known of a mild amount of interest. An inclination to understand about what kept me so so perturbed that I was going nuts every alternate moment of the day. Gasping for breath. And not even having the common courtesy to spare a moment to acknowledge and appreciate his stare.
And when I had that one moment to spare, he must have been a flight to what could be a zillion miles away.

With age, love gets deeper. I mean, but of course. Whatother way could it be. I may be talking about the sentiment towards one man in particular. Or towards many, in a destined chronological order. One man after another. But the love gets deeper. I suppose.
I hope I am making myself clear. Or, let me come again. You love the man you loved at twenty-six more over the man you desired at twenty-two. Is this true? Does love have something to do with age? Or is it just my self pity and consistent estrangement making it appear so. I could harbor a self- bias, but still I think. I believe, it gets harder to deal with heart-break with age. What's appaling is that, the contrary seems to be true.
Because you are expected to become more mature, thick-skinned, self-obsessed, pragmatic, faithless and blah with age. It's only natural. And hence, the loss of love, isn't techincally expected to affect you as much as it did when you were young. But no..
Somewhere inside, the hurt is getting deeper. The cut is reaching for your insides, as you speak. The ghosts of those x-s and y-s and z-s live inside your head now. Because, probably because, he was the one, who you had caught up with so late in life, who you were desperately clinging to for your happyness, and then shockingly it all broke down. Suddenly, there seem to be less fish in the sea. And desperate clinging feels criminal.
Also sometimes, you feel the man you are going love when you get twenty-six is the same as the man you were crazy about at twenty-two. This is exactly when you realise that that SOB has made a home inside of your skull. And that you're doomed. Amen!

How slim are the odds?

The odds are very slim. The odds of something that you want to happen, for it to actually happen, in flesh and blood, the odds are very very slim. Almost non existent. Almost ridiculous. Believing in those odds, makes me feel like some practical joke inside of a pessimist's mind. And I realize this, time and again, whenever I close my eyes and make a wish. Because, everywhere deep down I know. I know, my guts know, that it's not going to happen. The thin threads of my prayer, are entangled, amidst the concocted realities of life. So the wish is killed.

But there is another way. It's an escapists', pardon me. But nevertheless. When you wish for something, anything, close your eyes, such that, no light of truth dares to enter inside. And imagine. Imagine like you're living it. Live it, like you are not imagining it anymore. Like one life inside another, contradictory though, but fantastically co-existent. Whatever it is that you wanted to happen. Give in to it. Believe what you see is real, for whatever minutes you're cut off. Don't let guilt or cowardice scare you away.

I did. And then I saw him everywhere. At bus stops. In airports. In shopping malls. Book stores. Yeah, most particularly book stores. In the rain, sun, biting cold, whatever. Whereever. I saw him, with shut eyes. Heard him when he was nowhere around. He wasn't. He couldn't be. But I did.

..And suddenly, the odds weren't slim anymore.

High

High. I am so high I can't kiss you back enough.
And no matter what I do, my feet wouldn't touch the ground.
The way we are perched on the parapet. Honey. Toes dangling in mid air. Seven floors above ground.
Or is it eight.
I want to jump off, as much as I want to stay put.
And I don't want to have to explain a thing. Any-thing. I choose to be ignorant. And wallow in this bliss, longer.
Till this high sustains me. Till I survive this high, just about right, to kiss you back enough. And return the favor. So that nothing is left un-bought. Such that I should feel I deserved it enough.
And such that I can get off from here, and walk back into my room. Feet waivering though, but still touching ground. Into my bed. And back to sleep.

Day

There is. A crumpled shirt at the bottom of the wardrobe that nobody's gonna wear again. Shoes that gave unbearable shoe bites the first time and won't be touched again. Nail paint that weren't worth what they cost. Amongst other things bought and sold. There also is a guy. Man. Person. And one or two more inside the phone. Who don't just suffice. None of them make it to the mark. There's a few unread and worthy books. There's food. Frozen in the oven. And dark chocolate wrapped in scrap shiny paper. Purchased with money. For relief from some biting heartache. Just like lingerie. There is a lot of stories inside of my head. That should be read out aloud. Some day. Also a wild rage, a madness, insanity like nothing before strangled within. There is also the innocence. An innocence of not knowing the reason behind having everything. And yet having nothing at all.

There is everything. Yet nothing makes me want to be alive more than be dead. U understand.

I can feel a point where my clavicles meet the sternum. That's where this emptiness hurts the most. And when I close my eyes I can. I can feel my flesh collapsing into that solo point. And then the whole entire world following past.

Things we wouldn't do.

We wouldn't have to chase time all the time, squeeze our schedules to meet each other; we wouldn't have to wait for texts saying the other got home fine; we wouldn't have to pretend that we can bear shopping or that we believe in retail therapy just because the other thought we should; we wouldn't have to wear thin engagement rings on little fingers instead of the ring fingers and hide that we are engaged; or take bumpy cab rides together; or make un realistic plans to watch our favorite tv shows together; or make friends with each other's friends because now we would become part of a bigger circle apparently; nor would we have to tell our parents about us; and reveal the story from the beginning; or scream that we are going on some packaged honeymoon with nauseous bus rides that has a cash back offer on some hotel room; we don't have to keep the cards, or imagine what we could gift on the dates we would never remember
Those are things that lovers do. And we just have to do them anymore.
We wouldn't have to do so much now. That is a lot of burden off our chests. A long list off our to-do lists.

Underachievers' Anonymous-2

Life isn't perfect. Anything but that. Sometimes, all the imperfections, team up, look me in the eye, and ask. What have I done. Rebuke and ridicule. My minuscule existence. What have I done. I am certain years of age. And what have I accomplished in these certain years. Nothing much. Zilch.

I have gained on only one scale, I suppose, that of shamelessness. The shamelessness that makes me just about enough able to look at myself in the mirror. Day after day, everyday. All these years. And there's nothing else. All other scales I have lost on, I have been on this never ending nose-dive ever since. Ever since I can remember, since the beginning of memory, I have been a loser. No offence. I just have been.

The definition of an underachiever is like carved out for me. Like destiny has crafted me, to be some lab sample of an underachiever to be shown off. Such that others could know, find out about themselves too.

I am the last in line. The last one. The one too lazy to move on. Too tired to go get it. Incapable of practically everything. Fucking unbelievable, huh?

Except this unending wrath for myself and self destructive self hatred & disgust, what have I got. I'll tell you. Two useless degrees. Love handles. Scars on my face. Scars on my soul. Perfect understanding of all the sitcom characters that I adore. Wisdom of the wisdom-less books I have read. And forgotten. Bitten nails. A wardrobe of unloved dresses. An unloved heart. My share of sickness. A decent share, I swear. The work I do. The work that gets me nowhere. Hidden packs of cigarettes in the last shelves of drawers. Bitches, I am jealous of. And a few friends. Very few friends. And their undying & blemish-less love. And anger, my dormant anger. Plain undiluted unquenchable wrath. On life. Destiny, if that is. For giving me nothing I wanted. I also have my fears.

Sometimes I wish, if I despise life so much, then I must have nothing to lose. So let me, in the very least, be fearless. But no. Like icing on the freakin' cake, on top of all this, I am a coward.

And, now I am done.

Years ago, here. 

Pulse

A pulse. Like a heart beat. A beep that ensures a life. Just one pulse, between myraid stretches of time. My thought behaves like a pulse. It's ridiculous, or may be it's even a disorder. Sentiment visits me for one instant of time. Or rather, sometimes a fraction of that instant. It's so gone in the next instant, its hard to believe it was even here. Right inside my heart. Making me break down and shatter into shards. 


It's like an unbearable moment of pain & recollection. Between droughts of any feeling at all, complete sanity.  I don't know what's tricking me, or I am tricking what. But I don't know how to deal with this anymore. How can I, tell me, how can I understand why. In the middle of a perfectly monotonously healthy day, for one fucking crazy moment, for no reason in particular, I would miss him. And want him so bad, that it would make me cry. But the next moment, I would fail to understand why. And move on even before my heart skipped one complete beat. I fail to understand this phenomenon of a pulse.


One moment I am working, typing away, switching windows, engrossed, sane, checking time, looking at my watch. And stuck in that moment, I remember a peck. Not the dozens of kisses, or the things said & unsaid, or the lines on his face. But just that peck. Out of the blue, in the middle of nowhere, the warmth of that moment shoots back to me. That sorrow, paralyzes me. For once. It's hard not to want to cry. Then I begin to remember the periphery of that moment in the past. But something happens. Something distracting happens, and I don't recognize the lapse I just had. 


Anymore.


The pulse is gone. And has ensured that I am so alive, all over again. 

Getting Past

Let me be. Stuck in this limbo, that I am. Unmoving. Let me just oscillate about my center of gravity. Just don't let that center be you. Leave me. Divorce me. Tear me away. Discard. Throw away. Abandon. Forget me.  Me. Believe that I never was. Believe, in your heart, that I am not, not even now. I don't exist. Our pasts don't exist. And my present is in its entirety a separate entity from yours. We are not connected. We aren't. What-so-ever. We aren't the same. Not anymore. Not ever. You are, merely, someone I happened to know. Some man I met in a bar one night, drunk and hallucinating. The breeze that unsettled my hair, and put it in such disarray, that it won't just settle again. But I have recovered. I ran my fingers through my strands of hair, and combed them fine, just now. Just about now.

So don't come back. Don't even think about it. Don't you dare!

Superwoman

There was this perverted whim I once had. To understand, appreciate and be able to utter, all the slang that language has had to liberty to concoct. But my mouth won't open, whenever, I said the word inside my mind and had the honest intention of making it heard out loud, my goddamn mouth just won't open. Like my lips were pursed with some archaic glue of femininity. A glue that eluded all the obscenity that existed in mankind, and walked away straight faced.

But as life often solves many of its problems like a well-oiled self-sufficient machine, it solved this one of mine. I found a teacher. He would sit with me, devoting hours of sleep deprived nights, until, I said it, until I said that mutherfucking word. Looking right into his eyes, out loud, with the right amount of venom, that deserved to be thrown out of my system. He would even incentivize the whole thing for me. By tempting me with a pout, a peck, even sometimes a kiss, if I was par excellence.One new slang every night. Such that, in a few months, I would write my own dictionary of them. And become Superwoman. Of sorts.

tonite i wonder if it was all my fault. if i should have held on tighter. waited for you longer. compromised a little more. understood and sacrificed like everyone else. fought harder with destiny, to keep you for mine. and not let you go this easy. ya, now it feels easy, in retrospect. then the world was upside down. i was crazier than ever. but i should have been saner. how much could that have cost?

now it has cost me love. 

Men

Just you. Only you.

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

But not you. Only you.

"Love will come through"~Travis'

Years later, she would pause and think backwards. Till this moment when he had looked right into her. For the first time. His glare was piercing. And very honest. It almost spoke for itself.

Years later, when there would be a creeper of money plant growing from a clay pot on their kitchen wall. Against the morning pale filtered sunlight. She would remember this moment.

Of course the journey would have been decades long by then. A couple such more, short of the end. And she would relentlessly stare at the thoughtless creeper, to listen to their story. Understand, respond. Compassionately sympathize. Dispassionately comment.

There would be boxes of glass bangles. Concealed in corners of her shelves, containing alongwith, the void left behind after all the gold that was given away to prodigal inheritors.

In the many rooms of their ancestral house, would hover the mild soapy fragrance of his crisp shirts..and his disintegrating voice. As if, it sent across ripples in the air before finally finding her. Deep inside the house. Bottling pickles. Year after year. Standing in the sun. Growing batches of flowers in their garden. Not a single winter went blossom-less, in those many decades. Pampering pets, street dogs, homely cats and talking parrots.

Albums of black and white pictures. Of pubescent daughters posing by flowers, and sons with toy guns. And weddings, and numerous birthdays. Anniversaries, gone by. And annual days at schools. Year after year. Every year. Keeping moments. Until now. Until now.

Until that very moment, when she would stare at their kitchen wall. And try to remember, hard, almost like an amnesiac.

Matrimony, they say..