Alive!

i'l take ma mind on a long ride
chew the stick of that lollipop till it makes me nauseatic
lie down on ma bed, look at the burst of colors in the sky

look at the boughs of the old coconut give up to the wind

watch ma skin go up in blisters as the sun pours down

one vehicle after another, spitting smoke on ma face

tho' i haven' reached a stalemate
life is just a lil sluggish

i'm running slow

breathing slow
...& i'm alive...

'coz that's all one can ever be!

PS: If at all I made you think, that this was just another shitty piece of poetry, you're mistaken

what you read was ma 200th post...!

Not Yet...

Am I calling it quits, finally?
Has rhythm abandoned me?
Am I not hungry for peace anymore?

When did I leave that desire to tip-toe thru’ the hours of dawn, on wet sunbathed sand and again turn back to count the toe prints?

But what irks me is why I did so, so passively, so sub-consciously?

Am I giving mundanity an upper hand in my life?Am I letting life carry me away on the same beaten path?

Whatever happened to the erstwhile me…whatever happened to Wildflower…!

For the girl who chased shadows...

Hey, look at our shadows
Do they look happy?
No, they don't, right?
Or may be they do...

But my shadow looks thinner, hai na?
And an inch or two taller, than I am.
O My hair! It looks like a tree...I hate that.
And you look like a tower.

And this is mischievous yaa'!
You look closer to me there, than you are.
It looks like we are holding hands or something like that.
But we aren't, right?

As we walk into the light
Our shadows dissolve in it
I turn to find you by my side
And see you're not here...
PS: I was sitting alone on that table for two…that sultry afternoon, after a tired day. Sitting alone, not staring at people for a change. I was looking out of the window. At the setting sun from among the leaf-less branches of a tree. I must have had a distant look in my eyes. I wasn’t where I was. So people smiled at me, did I look insane for average human standards?

I had a cup of tea. That couldn’t quench my quest for warmth. I got another. When I left the table, I neatly arranged the two empty cups, and it looked like two people had been sitting there, and talking about life.

~###~

Meek?
How meek?
How dumb?
What handicap can drive you to such horrendous depths of ignominy?
Why are you so shut up?

Have you lost everything you had?
Don' you have the will to survive further?
Tell me, what is it that is so killing you?
O’er the days, but it is…

C’mon!
Make an effort, darlin’
I’ll see you thru’
Try and make it happen

It's time

My life is a hell lot complicated. No, it can be pretty simple. But it’s me who makes it so complicated. I am amidst horrible people. I am kinda trapped here. And every passing moment I realize their worsening standards. I meet liars, cheats. And I have begun to absolutely despise questions. So I don’t like people asking me who are above mentioned exponents I meet. Things I see, I can’t explain. Things I explain, I don’t see. This is because I have, gradually learnt what it is like to pretend. I so have to pretend, it has become a compulsion.

Am I frustrated ? Yes. Am I am lonely? Yes. Am I looking? No! Not at all… (People please take note.)

Hopelessly romantic? Almost. But excuse me, my notions about love and romance would differ from many of you. So keep all prejudice away. It’s a flame I don’t want to put off. A passion I can’t afford to lose. And no person, alive or fictitious, can ever measure up to my parameters in love. That’s the way it is and so it shall be.

Bold? Yes that I am. The way I think is definitely outlandish according to average standards. I am wild, so an outcaste.

I can talk at a stretch. But I believe that spasms of the facial muscles say more than words.

And there are times, I am so dumbfounded that I might not speak at all. I love to dig into deeper depths of solitude and silence. And this might not be apparent. But true, it is.

I know my lacunae, more than I know my strengths. I know what fails me. And I am so aware of my future, so sans glamour. How dark could it be? Would I be able to figure my own self out in that darkness?

I like to have friends that understand me. And, in fact only a few can do that. But then I cut myself off from them also. And shut myself in my room all over again.

And also, I am the centre of the universe. My universe. And I can't care any less about the rest of it. And that's the way it is...

.......... :)

'Your face is as thought-inducing as a brewing cup of coffee on a foggy winter night'

'Excuse me?'

'Yes, it is'

'Excuse me?'

'Ok, it isn't'

'Why, what happened to that yes?'

'Confess it! You like it when I admire you.'

'Huh!'

'You do, don you?'

'How should it matter when you have already done that do thousands of other women?'

'Really? Who told you that?'

'Why will anybody have to tell me an obvious truth? I know, I just know...Do I look that foolish or something?'

'No, you look beguiling, with all that saintly calm coated all over you and a demure demeanor to floor any man that talks to you'

Nobody talks for a minute

Then he continues...

'Err...allow me to say, I also like the way you raise that right eyebrow, the left one intact. It tells me that you can pounce on me any moment'

'PREPOSTEROUS!'

'Wo'? You're gonna call me names for that?'

'Worse, I'm gonna send you to jail, sue you!'

'That's all?'

'If that doesn shut u up, I'm gonna scratch every part of you with these long nails I've got. Long enough, aren't they?'

'Aw! I can't wait to be...scratched'

'You surprise me with your patience. Hadn't I asked you not to try all your dirty trick on me? Why don you get it? It jus doesn work out'

'You leaving?'

'Or should I stay back for more?'

'But who'l pay the bill?'

and they went on and on...!

Memoirs of DnD!

I didn’t even blink before I deleted the last message I had sent long ago. I was trying to get over memories, get over a hang-over…get over all my sleepless nights, all my failures. I wished I could start afresh, start anew, start a-numb. I keep my cell phone clean. There is not a single name in my call-list, not a single message in my inbox. I never cease to delete those names because, when I look at those names, I get a feel that there are other people in my life besides myself. And all I want to believe right now is that there is not a soul around me, and I want to really relish being so alone, so-so alone in this world. This, in fact is, the truth.
To want to be taken on a flight, short leaps and jumps in lustful air…falls beyond my reach, for now and forever.
My body wants to hide beneath layers of flesh and blood, the thousand wishes that have perturbed my thoughts for years now. As she has never been as wild as my mind is. Nor will ever be.
My mind needs to be engulfed in a musical silence, and she wants to be carried away, away and away, into unknown terrains of unchartered glee. Everlasting latitude.
But more than that, my mind wants to be left alone for now and forever. I really really want to relish being so alone, so-so alone in this even lonelier world.
I want to be seated on shiny staircases, throughout breezy midnights, and feel my hair brush my back. I want fingers to twirl around fingers, and love to rise back to life, like a phoenix.
Is this lust? If it is, then I lust for more…!

In Pursuit of Happyness

'How art thou?'

'Trying to be happy!'

'What?'

'I said trying to be happy...'

'What's that? You're either happy, or you aren't. How can you try to be...happy?'

Hadn't cared much about this statement then. That was way back.

But now,

Yes, one can try to be happy. I am trying to be happy. Precisely because there is no
reason to be...not happy, unhappy, sad.

I have been swaying over whether to write this or not. But let me reveal this once..at least some of it.

Have you heard of withdrawal symptoms? -awkay...U have-

There was a time, when there were many things i wanted to have, at one go. And I
had none of them. I just had hints that i would get them some day.

-is this going very abstract?- -do u get me?-

i chased things...i shed my old aspirations for new ones. i was lost in a hazy maze...

People got to know that i am not as dumb as i look. People got to know that i write.

So many asked me to show my skills by writing them gtalk..messenger status
messages...

Some stooped even lower..asked me write for them..love letters...-okay..this one
was absolutely preposterous-

Many asked me just blurt into a mike...i would stutter and smile but oblige...

Some supposed i am insane- am i not?-

I am loner...so very away from the world i am in...i don't know what's happening right under my nose...

And some days ago, the stress just got too much, i crumbled under the pressure...i
had a complete system breakdown. i would call up my only acquaintance, and cry.

Life started gettin bad to worse. I felt I had nothing. And would have nothing for the rest of my life.

I started having those withdrawal systems.

I-have-had-enough-now
I-shall- sit-back-and-watch

Things went on for some more time. And then one day, i cried just too much. I
caught up with the courage not to care, not to think so much. And surprisingly i liked being that way. And there was this mysterious consolation that
things-will-work-out!

And i decided that i would try to be happy. Little by little, I piled up my efforts. I smiled at people...earlier I din't even look at. I tried to befriend them. I tried to break away from the cocoon I had caged myself in.

I looked down the rusty memory lane. I felt happy. I felt sad. I felt happy-sad. Felt satiated with my hyphenated existence. There are no discrete answers to the
questions of life. Things are a lil fuzzy out here...

There is nothing like...if you're not happy, all you can be is sad...

You can always be trying to be happy...trying to chase the illusion, that happyness
is...

-does this post lack focus?-

-yea-absolutely!-

Palash

One moment I felt so very lonely in this big world.But the void in my life began to fill up as thoughts of Palash trickled into my mind. Palash is everything you would relate everything negative to. He is such a cynic, a misanthrope, a sadist…even then he is as beautiful as fresh gulmohar strewn on green grass. One can’t find a reason to hate him.
When did I meet him? I saw him wave at me, when I had no one of my own to see me off when I was leaving for a place far away. And after that I found Palash on the empty seat beside me.
I like his shirts tucked in. He likes them hanging lose. Every time after class I would find him standing outside, waiting, I would raise my nose at the shirt so mercilessly abandoned, and he would tuck it half in and half out!
Would mutter…’this is the way you strike that perfect neutral’

When he would loiter throwing groundnut shells everywhere, I would stamp his feet hard reminding him the one thousand three hundred and thirty seventh time not to do so, he would quip ‘Lady, that’s just organic waste’
‘Yeah Organic waste, all that your skull has got in it’

Shrewd looks, naughty winks, irrepressible laughter and sticking your tongue out at those tiny nothings are gestures that Palash and I share.

SMS’ with just a smiley in them, calls at 6 30 in the morning asking ‘Let’s talk?’ are the pleasantries we exchange. We leave the constraints of civilization way behind, when we are together. Palash is the only one who can afford to see me at my wildest best!

I like to twist his ears till they literally detach themselves…I like to be a kindergarten-goer with him, yet he brings out the lady in me…so well.
When I just don’t get his certain words, I would be consoled ‘Accent problem, Madame!’

‘But yours is an attitude problem’

People say he indeed has one attitude problem. People say both of us are loners. But we are always together, aren’t we? And people say so many things…

But Palash continues to remain all that he is, as beautiful as fresh gulmohar strewn on green grass. One can’t find a reason to hate him.

Looking for an Alternative-Some pure heart emptying stufF

CAUTION:LONG POST AHEAD! :D
I had a brain storming session and everything in life that is like my staple food immediately shifted to a hazy back ground. Love, the lack of it, solitude, sorrow...frustration everything lost its significance for that sometime. The only thing that blinded me was some kind of a professional slit throat competition. I
lost my capacity to think. I almost lost myself. It was not the usual hopelessness that took over. But there was this blockade that occurred in my brain that prevented me from thinking fast or from thinking at all for that matter. For that sometime the silent musical life I lead looked so distant. The new skin I was supposed to wear looked yet so alien. I din't exactly feeling valueless because I was so trying to
improve myself by analysing my lacunae. But then there were so many things I needed to do...my entire thought process in my mind was like paralysed. I was somewhere where my ingenuine spontaneity ditched me, and ditched me bad. Haven't I had enough of being myself? Just myself. Is the time ripe for introducing things that could make me the person that the profession I have chosen should make me? And by the way, what profession have I chosen for myself? Engineering? Why did I do engineering? Because that was what was the normal course of things after twelfth. And after scoring real bad in it, learning practically nothing out of it, I am wiating for someone to
drop down from the holy heavens and give me a job. And what am I upto now? I am giving entry into a B school, a try. A casual try. I try not to ask myself questions. Things go haywire. Because I never know the answer to these questions. I can't prove myself brave enough to fish in unchartered waters. So I never take that unnecessary risk. Because taking a risk so naturally leads to worrying. And I never wanted to add to my pile of worries, as I happen to be a person with an affinity for the darker things in life. And so strong is my this affinity that I almost like being sad and alone. And for the above mentioned reasons I have never taken risks. Also honestly, before my engineering,I had been subject to some kind of a stress to perform,
and perform somewhat, should I say, par excellence. So performing well takes a non-thinking-and-not-giving-a-damn-fellow via a well beaten path. So I never involved myself in stuff that people generally din't do. So this is where I have landed. A place that looks so much like a dumping ground, where the world dumps unwanted hav-nots. I would be a coolie that could do things that almost 80% of the working
class does. I lack class, I lack vision. I am a rote learner. I never had the guts to take out of my way risks. Most importantly, I am hellishly lazy. I am just one smug person who loves herself very dearly.What are the good things about me? I am spontaneous, and sometimes, out of the box innovative. But my creativity doesn stand
me in good stead when I need it the most. It just pokes its head when I am in the middle of a boring lecture I should be paying attention to. And let me not forget. I am honest too. Honest about my weaknesses. I am honest in criticizing myself. But oh I am so running out of my criticism. I need a capsule or two lateral thinking. How could anybody be so screwed up with the Tom-Dick-Harry whatever way of thinking?
This is not an identity crisis. Because an identity crisis is at times at some abstract level. But I am facing bare truths about myself after a long long time.
Should I have taken the other road? Could I have survived had I picked up humanities...literature? May be not...I have never wanted to do things that have been forced down on me. Anyway, everything would have invariably lead to a failure.
It's not an emotional mess I am in. I am not troubled or anything. But I know I am in a mess. I am conscious of this well thought of disaster that awaits me a few months from now.
May I Rest In Peace

Ash Tray

It must have been hours now that I have sunk into this arm chair. I raise my eyes to figure out the time on the clock. 3 30?
There is smoke everywhere.
It must have been weeks now that I have ever been out of my apartment. What have I been living on?
Left out cereal, smoke and you! Remnants of you rather…
Is a new day about to dawn? I don’t open my windows anymore.
I raise my eyes again. What is it standing near the door? Is it a woman? Is it you?
Just an apparition I know. The woman I see there is a figment of my subconscious. A bit of my subconscious, thrown outside my mind which so much wants to see you again. For one last time.
Should I run to you again and try to hold you, and then find my hands running through nothing but air?
Should I try to make myself believe that it was actually the handle of the door that shone like something else, the shadow of the curtain looked like something else. And all of them, taken together, looked like all I wanted to see. And all I wanted to see was you. For one last time.
Should I squat on that floor and moan again?
I sit here and pick up my umpteenth cigarette tonight, as your shadow near the door continues to be there. I stretch myself. I close my eyes and let the smoke out my nostrils. This smoke would burn all my organs a day, you would’ve said. So, I have no one to nag me after you’re gone!
The ash tray is under a heap of ash now. Should everything catch fire and end up adding to this heap of ash? Should it?

forays into the forbidden...

We just drift apart...
Away and away
And one day, we continue as perfect strangers...
Is that it? This is what a break up is?
From today on, we cease to love each other...Full stop?
We separate because, we fail to understand each other, unlike yesterday...
Or was it a mistake that we ever came together...? Was love a mistake?
We call it off...the buzz stays for a day or two, and then fades into distant memory...
The storm ends, the dust settles down.
How feasible is it for us to wipe it all out, and look for new love?
I know a guy who when they split, wished that she find better love...!
He wrote her a beautiful poem , asking her to remember him, whenever she is awake late in the night, whenever she walked alone in the snow...whenever the raw feel of fresh feelings moistened her heart, if ever again..!

And for those who didn’t feel like commenting on my last post here is something...
.
.
.
.
.

Though the love has left… a remnant remains
It continues to live as a part of me
The story that failed to complete, irks the heart in lonely evenings…
And whenever I feel the petals of a rose pressed neatly somewhere in my diary
And whenever I look at the road that looks so empty
And whenever I feel my pulse, trying to find out if I am alive
But now that it’s high time, people say
I should’ve become indifferent and numb
Even then, the numbness remains…
Love doesn die…

Is it Valentine's Day today?

Guy: Two decades antique.
Newborn poet.
Thinks the ones of his kind are rare,
avoids talking
about his idiosyncratic passions.
Crazy in love.
Pities himself, failure in love's
made him a lot
more cynical

Girl: A year elder than the guy.
Almost Beautiful.
Somewhat visible anorexic dark circles around the small eyes.
Sunsilk hair, looks like it's been thoroughly ironed.
Walks with a gait that particularly makes her waist swing
Doesn't understand the existence of lunatic lovers, pro'ly
And allow me to say kinda sexy? Or well the sub-species of
human females, that men like to be around/

Story: The Guy falls in love( you never rise in love, only 'fall') with the girl at first sight.Doesn't even try to find out about what she exactly is like.
Reasons? No reasons...when when your hormones are running hot, there is no place for reasons.She is a Goddess. The stuff his dreams are made off The next thing he does is write elaborate love letters... send roses her way...
The girl keeps mum, keeps him waiting and guessing.
And this continues, till she finds another stud of a man...

Story Further: Guy has stopped roses and letters, it hurts him to see his lady love go around with the other guy
Time hurts, Love hurts, Life hurts
And he loves that hurt
Because, the thing that you still get hurt, proves that you are still in love

Now: This Valentine's Day, he sends her a card that reads something like 'If you turn back, you will find me waiting where you had left me, alone and gazing at the stars...and definitely writing a poem on you'. It doesn't have his name...just says..Silent Admirer. Does the girl spare that a second thought? We don't know...!

Moral of the Story:
Does this sound like a story to you? It's life. Did the guy waste his precious love on a chic like that? And more importantly, the way he thought her to be one piece of art, did she deserve it? The way he spent sleepless nights, writing her poems...love notes...was all that worth it? And all the hurt he got in return...?

Underachievers' Anonymous

Welcome to the world's underachievers refuge!
We are underachievers, We are losers...
We have failed all our lives...
And now we are heavily drunk
Sitting in sleepy solitary corners
Of obsolete noisy pubs
We incessantly clink our glasses
And talk to ourselves
About what could have been
but never happened
We talk about remorse,
about reasons that tied our feet up
We curse spells of bad luck
We envy the winners of the game
We criticize the rules of the world
We are unhappy, and we clink our glasses
We are chattering, and we drink more
And screw ourselves up
We want the dawn to never come
Too shy to face the day light
We are one amongst those people
Swarms of whom throng these places
Craving for hard work, sweat and blood...
Had we sulked and been lazy?
All our lives we have faked happiness
Tonight let's undo everything

Let's wash the shame
Let's be what we are
Let's make ourselves heard
Let our hearts boast about losing
Let our hearts boast about the trials we made
Despite which we lost...
And pep up the mind which still thinks it deserves more & better

underneath your skin

The million dollar question is how frank are we?
How much of ourselves do we show to the world and
how much do we hide? Despite claiming that we are
born free we are actually tied up in chains,
chains that we ourselves have tied up ourselves
with. Is not secrecy about one’s own self a kind of a
limitation that comes in the way of a free spirit?

How frankly do we expose the hatred that we have
in ourselves for people who induce nothing but
disgust in our minds..?

How delicately are we subject to our instantaneous
bursts of whims? How often have you let the bird of
desire fly out of its cage, out in the open? Should
we let that capricious soul within us die an
uncalled for death?

If we love someone, can we uncork the heart
and talk about it? Despite the not so desirable
consequences...?

If we truly deeply madly admire something/someone what
stops us from confessing?

We were supposed to be free, right?
Afraid of shame, are we?
Do we tremble if anyone points a finger at us in the crowd?
What is wrong about standing apart from the herd of normal
humans, even be it for the conventionally wrong reasons...
After all those reasons are ours. We should stand up for our
reasons. If we don't, who will?
Can't we just stop caring about everything else?
It's all about the Freedom Of Expression, Dammit!

Part II

I lay restlessly on the bed. Changing sides for almost half of the night, I had had enough.
There was hardly anybody I wanted to talk to.
Should I rather talk to myself? I ventured into the corridor. I had left my slippers behind and I could feel the cold floor underneath. I was a little lost as always and had no idea where my feet were taking me.
I was tip-toeing quite confidently into the heart of the night until I don’t know what stopped me.
Holy Shit!
I catch him painting…!
And when I look at his canvas…my eyelids refuse to flap.
The victim of his passion leaves me awestruck, gaping for breath.
I never cared to know, but am I like this ethereal?
Is it bits of me that he has scattered with the paint on his canvas, or something in me that is known only to him?
Hell! She exudes energy…


PS: Aman, this one's for you! LoL

hold me a little longer love/let my sorrow sink into you/and my tears mingle with your lips/let me love you more/hold me a little longer love

when i say i have had enough/tell me i need to live/take my hand/lead me into the wilderness/listen to my silence

build me a house/ stay with me forever/never leave me alone love/never!

look into my eyes/say you will be there/nomatterwhat/and say that again/and again...

let me never feel insecure/abandoned, alone/the only feel that may reside in my heart/should be that of love/your love

assure me that/i would never have to be out there/dying in thirst/in the heat and the sun

promise me that i will /always have your arms/to snuggle upto

nomatterwhat/never let go love/never let go

hold me a little longer love/hold me forever

I-am an everlasting dream

I rolled my eyes down my phone book. I saw my call list, all the numbers I had dialed, all the numbers i had got a call from, all the numbers that I had missed. Now I have not a single person I could call. Just call...

Not a single person, I could meaningfully message. loneliness is so out of fashion man. I am either supposed to be shopping crazy,walking into and into the numerous alleys of some eighteenth century market or laughing up and down the escalators of some splendid mall. Or eating out, somewhere...counting my calories and my cash.

I always have loved being alone though, writing things on my computer, listening to my kind of music, staring at the walls, without quite knowing that I am doing so. Sinking into depths of mushy thought; mulling over things. Or flat imagining, of how things could have been, had life been otherwise. But at times, being lonely is so out of fashion it seems, when you see chicks chatting away on that phone thing, getting away for those infinite walks...to the road near the mountain.

When I stare out of my window, the green highs of the mountain are still a hazy, thought inducing extremity; the cloud hidden peaks are a faint hint of romance for my heart, long solitary walks are for inspiring my indolent self, and keeping a track of myself.

For me life is a distant proposition and love, an impossibility.

Part I

‘So how about getting the lady a lovely new dress?’
I would have sprung off my feet at those words.
And normally say something like ‘Fantastic! Let’s go, get it! What are we waiting for?’
But I had to show that I have my own reservations. Particularly with new comers into my life.
So I remember smiling and saying something like, ‘Mmmm…no. I already have so many’
And then his face evolved an impish smile, ‘A girl can never have so-many dresses, I had heard!’
We laughed that away.
I don’t know what for was he so exceptionally amicable to me. He could have simply treated me like a far off relative, here to see his city. He could have put me up at some hotel, called me home for an occasional dinner, and get done with it. But he would rather see me in a room in his house.
Men at an age like his are conventionally supposed to part from youngsters for their highly screwed up generation Y antics. But he would rather spend his time trying to know what exactly was happening within me.
Was all this because he had been alone all his long life? Or was it because he was an artist?
We were having lunch at one of his favorite restaurants. It’s a mildly sunny afternoon. He eats a little and talks a lot.
Does he at all push his glasses up his nose and behave like that I-am-a-friend-of-your-dad and all? No, he so completely stands apart from that category.
We converse like two age-less people. He is pretty deep as a person. When I am not attentive, I get lost in the contours of his face. His eyes sparkle when he speaks, and he folds his hands on the table when he talks to me.
Is this that young girl fantasizing should I say a ‘middle-aged’ man syndrome? Probably no.
He is just another object of observation. And it is now that I can see beyond his wrinkles…

from a nun's bedroom

Is life a journey to finding love?

I believe in the energy of the universe, and the coating of love over the world when I read Paulo Coelho, who many call a fairy tale writer for

adults

He makes me feel weirdly energetic when I roll my eyes down his words

I wonder where all this energy was before?

And where this shall vanish to after I shut the book?

How can someone write things that are miles away from the mundane addictions of man yet be so widely understood?

It makes my mind leap to unknown heights, delve into depths I have never been to

Otherwise I survive on the remnants of my thirst for absolute freedom

Is life a journey in search of the place where Ican be happy forever?

May be...for me it is

Cleansing myself of fears is another thing

The fear of failure, haunts me, makes my life unlivable

I shall find a place where my soul shall dwell in peace, without the shame that many would call me a lunatic after reading this...

That's all!