Summer

One summer many summers ago. Was spent walking between rows of gulmohar. And feline infested jungles. Or so we believed. Slept in sweaty dorms. With half a dozen stranger women. Dozed off till midnight by the sea with brackish water and no waves. Licked ice cream on our way back. Our slippers went missing. Walked bare-feet again. Between rows of gulmohar. Kicking amuck heaps of yellow petals. Stacked together by sweepers. Who would surprise us between wee hours and dawn. If we were woken up by a random incessant nightmare. Staring down from the top floor window grille of a near ancient girls' hostel. In whose bathrooms we sat and wept. When we PMS-ed. Or smoked. And the gardens on whose grass we lay. Biting off the ends of grilled cheese sandwiches. Soiled with ketchup. Right in the mid of May. Haggling with public transport, for the last rupee. Which wasn't hard earned then. We knit stories. Sans climaxes. For we couldn't see the end. The end, right then. Assumed that that Summer would go on forever. 

Somehow, the aftertaste of infinite freedom hasn't dwindled off my tongue yet. Even though many more summers have been by.

Separated

And then there is that stage. The optional one. Not everyone sees it through but a few. Punctuation-wise it wouldn't be a comma, it's not a pause. Not a semi-colon, because I don't think so. Not a full stop at all, that would be too rude. And too un-affordable an assumption. It could be a conjunction of spaces. Because minds haunted by the said stage develop voids within.Or not. Sometimes it's not even a stage, it could last a forever. And it seems to last one anyway.

Talking about Separation. Lovers separated. Do you get how polished that sounds. We're not together. Not broken up. We're separated.  For now. For a while now. Could be a while longer. Or forever. But we're no more in love. Or may be we are. And we don't care. Because the by products of this affair are too much to take. And the stakes are high.

Also, there's no uncertainty. Only the nausea of a forced peace.

Punctuation-wise, this stage could be an ellipsis. We don't know what words to fill in anymore, so we hold the pen still and let the ink blotch into three dots. Inside our minds we keep asking, what else is there to say. Bewitched by this wordlesness, no one could say if there will be another shore. A few words after the ellipsis. Or some love that survived this separation...

Ode

All the shitty movies you have walked out of, and all the suffocating dresses I have barely gotten into and barely   gotten out of, in trial rooms, whose mirrors I have suspected to be see through sheets o glass. All the summer days and the unreal mirages and real hallucinations. That we've lived through. In all these decades of our lives. Most of your unfinished paintings and my untold stories. Half dead love stories. Walks around the planet. On windy winter evenings. Each time i wore a skirt and shaved my legs. The fresh nailpaint. Cracks under my toes. The women in your life. The beads in your key ring. The letters I swept under your carpet. Letters you never read. Letters you didn't even know existed. The number of times our clocks ran out of batteries. And made us feel so stuck in time. Cozy and far away. Those cold, really cold showers. And everytime the towel fell down from the hanger and wet itself. The big fat moon. Your pictures from far away lands. Post cards rather. Telling me how you've become who you wanted to become. Your fairy tale climax. Yet the growing dark circles around your eyes. The lines on your forehead. My crazy writing. The humble acceptance of loss. The violent middle of the night screams. Screams inside my mind. My peaceful sleep. The books you read and died for. Others that you thought were a farce. The way our minds never met. Your insomnia. Your state of eternal heartache. And how I never got you. Your anger for life. That breath that you squeezed between your lungs and never let out. And other things. Random things that never made sense. To me or you. Or them.

But will always be an Ode. An ode to us. And that we aren't exactly over until we are exactly that. Over 

There is an alternate world. A parallel universe. Running simultaneously as this one. Wherein we are our immaculate selves. And together. Sans the drama. No drama. Yeah, because I totally hate drama. I hate the costs we pay for wanting what we want and not getting it yet. In that world, we're designed to be absolutely who we wish to be. And we're happy. Definitely more content. And our throats are lump-less. Nights, our nights are gaps between lovey-dovey smoothly planned out days, when we wink at each other and take a nap. There's no hanging like a bat in public transport. No calamity. No nail biting death like slow sequences everyday. Most importantly, no heartache. In that parallel universe, we are the same. And everything else is just more perfect.

It's the drunken dream to see that alternate world that still sometimes makes me want to write. Despite the hazard that I have become.

Some tell me my writing has become illegible. It's not that I don't care. I think I must be somewhere between caring and not caring. Fast approaching towards making no sense. But what can we do. It just lets off steam. And writing comes cheaper, than other pernicious self destructive options.

I wonder if writing could buy me some sleep tonite. Right now, may be I am sleepy enough. To turn sides a couple of times and then snap out. But anyway. I make no sense. Nor do I intend to.

So why am I still writing this. Probably because, you're still reading this!

Look at us, what perverts we've become. Seething through time, hiding our mysteries, stealing glances from the mirror, what have we made of ourselves, baby! Long ago, when the day began and we were innocent children, I believed in fairies and stars. That picture is now lost in oblivion. And now, how with years, we have constantly drained that naivety out of our systems, effortlessly, with the lone whim of surpassing petty desires.

Did you ever imagine this? Nor did I. It's scary, how I've become somebody I would've failed to recognize a few years ago. And I have become this, in your shadow. Chasing you, in and out of the light, I have only bought myself so much shame that I cannot bear to look at you, or look away.

This just cannot be true. This is not me. And you're not you. This must be some devil's dream. Because we couldn't sink so beneath ourselves. Sometimes I convince myself so. But then I wake up the next morning, with my mind stepping back into every moment of the ignominy that last night was. And I can't help but lie down, let my shamelessness seep into me as tears would seep out.

How deep are we now? In this slur, I can't find my feet. All I can feel is the warm gasps of your breath and tickles of lust that suck me in. And precisely that moment, I give in. To the animal inside. And let go of shame and let me be me. For I have become what I have become.

Rift

I am like that creeper that grows on a tree. Tree, being you. I suck my life out of you. Have no roots of my own. And I am this way not because I chose this over the world. But there is no other way I could be. I am a parasite creeper. And my affection for you oscillates between murderous and suicidal.

You know the state of utter shock when you can't find your feet? Detaching from you feels that way. Feetless. It's like destitution. Estrangement is that impoverished nightmarish state, I wouldn't want to dream about even in my dreams. And you want to make it my reality. Hell!

Heartbreak is a disease. Chronic one. Incurable. It eats into strands of muscles, ends of nerves, scrapes off bones, every single moment of the day. They say. But there is nothing we can do about it.

So I appreciate that we're headed nowhere. And unlike all other instances of our lives, I beg you to hold my hands in this one. Give me sometime. A day more, a fortnight, probably a month. Or a li'l more. To let me let you go.

This is no race. I know you're in a hurry, to move on and move beyond. But don't just walk away. Nothing said. Nothing heard. For the sake of whatever was. You could pity me. Or believe I am simply incapable of weaning myself off you.

Let me sleep over this. Hold my hands while I am asleep. Somehow make me realize I can be without you too. Because I know I can't do this on my own. I can't. Or I don't want to. Whatever.

Wait it out till I step across this rift. So that we can walk away from each other. 

Nay

..Because there is this unstoppable echoing machine inside my head that keeps asking, what's there? These are words I can literally hear. They are as clear as whispers poured into my eardrums. What's there? What else is there? Is there anything at all? Anything that's a tiny bit worth of what I have become in the process of wanting to become a god-knows-what.

It's the uneasy ache I get when I try to sum up reasons for being alive. This is a very ungrateful thing to say, given that we are all expected to appreciate the gift that life is. But somehow I cannot drag this lie any further. I just cannot. Call me selfish, I wish not to see the reason in life you see. Because I just cannot. And pardon my inability.

When I look around, and this is not one of my midnight depressed rants, when I look around, I can't make any sense. There is the absolute pain of not being understood. And then there is the self imposed censure against even waiting to be understood in the first place. Besides, the lie of miracles coming true that we carry around all the time, but which isn't ever gonna happen. I think I should shed that. That lie has been the root of most of my disappointments.

The story is so unending. Obviously. And honestly, after all the deep shit we're in, I feel too fatigued to even call myself a full mouthed disappointment.

So call me insane and persecute me, but, Nay I don't see the so called charm of life.

Irony

May be because I am so afraid of drowning and dying, I love to sit by the sea so much. And wait for waves. Because they don't ditch you. And show up, always. Recede, but come back again. It's more therapeutic, than life in general.

What's more healing is this fellow woman who writes. Sometimes I wish so hard to write like her that it makes me want to quit writing altogether. Sans that, almost everyone on this planet is a jerk. Some are outright jerks, some are more tactful. But then that's about it.

This is not quarter life crisis. I know. I have always been like this. Annoyed. Terrified. On the verge of extinction. My only credibility is that I have made it so far. Crawling, panting, running for life. Besides that there is nothing. And I am totally aware that people who fret a lot and smoke a lot don't live long. Somehow, I just can't relax. This is not just quarter life crisis.

And my life is not a sitcom. And nothing will ever end up fine. But a sitcom is another healer. Every sitcom is like a sensitive, humorous, non cheating, non desperate, tall boy friend that I've had. Also, I have this weird craving, to date a surfer. Once. And live with him in a hut, by the sea.

You see I always come back to the sea. Soon, I will become like one. And I will learn to swim then, or may be surf too.

My canvas, is part color, purple, and hues of violet, copper sulfate, streaks of silver.My canvas is half scratches too, of sketches that were abandoned midway.

Meanwhile, I am thinking about my Right brain. Sitting in the right half of my skull. And how capricious that crazy bitch is. She is one that's pushing me now. Will see me through, till the end.

And oh, happy Valentine's!

Stories from Nowhere-I

Some twelve odd years ago, when these coasts were hit by a demonic cyclone and when she was too young to document anything and too naive to proclaim the insanity of young love, goes back this story. Bottoms of the Indian Ocean conspired a mean depression and the mercury dipped, winds blew away asbestos roofs, coconut trees swayed in drunken fervor, birds were left homeless, and fear gripped her tiny heart. Trunks of mighty old trees uprooted, the roads deserted, no light in sight. It tickled her to imagine that they might run out of food. Though there still were some potatoes quietly sitting near the legs of a rickety ancestral bed. After seven long days that smelt of death, in between nightmarish nights, she survived to get back to school on the eight. By then she must have forgotten those pangs of first love. That afternoon from the last day of school a week ago felt slightly outside the purview of recent memory. That cyclone must have taken it away, as its black waters receded into their mysterious origins.. So, this forgetful, pubescent, sixth grader wondered, if she still loved him after the short hiatus.

Ten years from then and two years before now, a dormant volcano erupted somewhere in the middle of Europe they said.  Air traffic wouldn't be that paralyzed ever again. Soot enveloped clear skies..Days were whiled away in sleepy airport lounges. He could have been on the last flight that flew out of that loveless continent. But he wasn't. Stalled, he sat and mused. That volcano, Satan's  shadow had some uncanny sense of timing. Why else would it now! Only now? And no matter how hard he tried he couldn't not think of the shrewd calculations of fate vis-a-vis the naivety of the woman who waited for him by the sea..

Love and related disasters! 

Inching away

A creek in the sea. Distant lighthouse. Dilapidated..on a receding winter afternoon. An aimless walk, sans any thought/emotion. You know the story.

A gentle reminder of the worthlessness. Besides, the siesta breeze. Blue waves, now a few minutes away. Crashing like mad men on unforgiving rocks. You can hear the failed water, give up in a spray and return.

Lovers in distant ships, must look at the lighthouse. Pity its lifeless existence. While they float away for new shores. No one cares about what's leave behind. That's the remnant.

I feel breathless pants of woe, as you inch away. It hurts so much. I want to shrink into a tiny ball, and disappear.

Because things I can't explain are taking such a toll on me. Because no one can make me understand that this is only for the better. And nothing, nothing at all, can fathom my terror of being this absolutely alone. 

Inconspicuous

I

The beggar woman and her beggar children. One clutched against lose folds of bosom. With a bandaged ankle, still bleeding. Bleeding for the past few days now. I wonder if that's just color. The color of blood. Another, loitering around. In a torn shirt, bottonless. Bottomless. Begging, palms outstretched, everytime any traffic halts. Laughing, in the dark. When no one's is around to see. When I hop cabs. Silently pushing them aside, to cross the road. I see her violet skirt, torn and running on the footpath, from one car to another. Trying to steal sympathy from a home-bound exodus. In that impatient pause at a red light. Red light. Today that ankle-bleeding-kid, held a pair of balloons. Bright pink and dust green. And secretly smiled with famished eyes, looking the other way. Must've.

II

A cabin with scores of watches. Just wrist watches, to be repaired, brought back to life. Too many of them, the wooden-cabin-legs could crumble. Tiny hands. Hours and minutes and seconds, lost in the company of scores of such others. Absolute chaos. All time is literally messed up. One tiny bald man, with tiny hands, sits under yellow bulb, among dozen light-lover-bugs. Concentrates, on the arch between his caterpillar eyebrows, and promises to finish the gargantuan task of inserting alive batteries, replacing scratched glass covers, drilling holes into damaged bands. Bringing back the right pace of time. And placing it back on waiting wrists.

III

..A tiny hole in my heart

Kaput

...

The journeys we whiled away. Midnights in the middle of nowhere. Coming home for vacations, in untidy bogies of trains that we had almost missed. Taxis through crowded cities. Soot. Noise. Nausea. The lemon you bought for me. Everything. The pond that housed hyacinth. And how much I wanted one of those. Bulbous purple thingies. Sitting there toe deep in water. Uncaring. Yet in love. Your eyes, intently gazing at the sunlight pouring through the strands of my hair. Or at me. Paper boats, with poems written on them. Floating away. Bringing us closer to the love we always wanted. Bougainvillea, paper thin, red and orange curling around the rusty rungs of the gate that opened to the porch.  A dozen summer dresses. And rings of silver, in ancient chests. Moved back and forth to wherever I moved. But never worn. Some gifts from you. The rest picked when I turned seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty. A ring for a year. From the days when hope was a plausible possibility. From the days when our skins were pink and eyes didn't have dark circles around them. When your hairline started where your forehead finished. Now fossilized, and forgotten, those rings stare at me and ask. Shamelessly, humiliating. What have I done. 

...

Closure

Goodbyes are so hard
I would rather not say a word at all
But I fear, worst of memories are often those,
in which the adieus weren't bid
and what was ought to be said, wasn't.

But
Is there anything to say?
Anything at all, that could
make this any bearable
In a way you seemed to do

So, I have nothing more
but my dearth of words to give you
Take this along, won't you
Remember me
as the one whose longing for you
was Undying

And as the one,
who always begged you to stay,
Stay a little longer
May be till the sun came up

..

Limbo

Last winter, the floor was scattered with bits of my mind. Thrown astray. Passersby from the corridor would peek in and declare my insanity. In affectionate whispers.

But there is this thing about my obsessions. They have a mind of their own. Which wouldn't rest until it pushes me off the edge of the cliff I am always standing on. Gazing into infinite depths. So to stay afloat, someone suggested I stop writing. I did.

My floor was scattered with tubes of gum, paper flowers, books, with real flowers pressed between bookmarked pages, lace, scissors, confetti, pearls. Velvet. Anything that could be written on was hidden. And my inkless existence continued to persist for weeks. As I sat by the dim bed light, in limbo. And created, for the first time something outside the world of the writ and read.

Something that fingers could feel. Something that eyes could understand, appreciate, without having to delve deep into. I stayed afloat. And I got over. Whoever he was that I was trying to forget.

But it's winter again. And this time, there is someone else. It's a vicious cycle, unending chain, cuffing my wrists. How when a man breaks my heart, I cannot just take the pain alone and look for something else to hold on to. Some meaningless excuse. To carry me away. To save me, keep me afloat.

That time it was confetti. Sometimes that meaningless excuse is another man. As distant, as ruthless, as his precursor. Only that he doesn't know. And that, I am yet to know.

But life has this fucking amazing sense of time, I tell you. When A breaks your heart, you move on to B. When B repeats history, A resurfaces, somehow, out of the blue and green. Vicious, I'd told you.

If, A doesn't come back, a certain limbo follows. Just like this one. With bits scattered on the floor. An unending night of thoughts, regret, sorrow. Trying to create something that the fingers can feel. And the heart can use to heal.

Yet, I await that affectionate whisper, telling me that my limbo will end in insanity, by morning. 

This is not love. Can't be so even if the world were to end tomorrow. Or in forever. Because love must be something more definitive. With borderlines sketched by Aphrodite. What lay inside is love, what doesn't, doesn't. Like black vis-a-vis white. As in, if black were love, white couldn't ever be. Or vice versa. Whichever way you choose.

Love isn't comme ci, comme ca. It's got to be perfect.

But somehow, I find certain nuances ungetoverable. Certain random ones, other than the obvious. Like the twitches of the muscles on your face. The ones even you wouldn't know of. Secret smells caged under your neck. The huskiness in your voice. Also sometimes that alarming sharpness. And of course your chin. The texture of touch. The neat nails. Veins under thin skin. Greenish blue, bluish green. 

Those apparently insignificant behavioral penchants of yours, are perfect thieves of my sleep tonite.

But the world isn't ending tomorrow, anyway. And this cannot be love, comewhatmay. 

--x--

Mentionables

I am happy tonite. Relatively. No, more than that. I am nearly completely happy. And there is no reason. There has not to be.

Earlier in the evening, I faintly remember convincing someone, among twirls of smoke, why they do not need a shrink. About why there should be no shrinks on our planet. And how we ourselves are capable of enormous grip over our minds. That temporary high, walked with me, as I got home. And looked at myself in the mirror.

I cannot draw that upper limit over how sad I could be. I am gaining the tires. All the time. Even right now. I am practically broke. Despite working my ass off. And I had my heart broken. Just a while ago. Or am I getting broken further, as I write this. And I am not hopeful of love. I am almost 25 and yet all I think about is me.

Whatever. I am getting all used to it. I love my big square meal I relish every  night before snuggling into bed. I love the red and white stripes on the sandals I wear to work. I love to see the world in action, breathlessly moving on. I love the cheap tricks I use to steal myself away, for a while, every now and then.

I love my embroidered imaginations of the future. And I also love my humble acceptance that non of them are ever going to come true.

I am so getting used to being the person I was scared being of. And I am truly addicted to this new found complacency. At least for the remaining hours of this night.

Or it's just hormones. And concocted untruths. Undecipherable to my pee sized brain. Bleh. Couldn't care less. 

Stage two

What is wrong with mid January rain. When all these past months, all I have craved was rain. Why does it suddenly feel less wanted that it has finally begun falling. In bulbous drops. On leaves coated with dust. And on thirsty highways.Why do I not want rain now that I have it. Here, with me. And how involuntary could wishing be.

It's just the same, probably, with wanting a man and having him, by your side. It's that mundane stage two. When the first impressions have worn off. Not in entirety though, the mild breeze of desire whizzes by, sometimes. After he has gone to sleep and his eyes are so peacefully shut that my dreams could rest on his lashes. But when he is awake, you feel a certain texture of reality, previously un-felt, that is disturbing and consoling almost in the same breath.

You realize, that there is indeed a quintessential guy under this man of dreams. Just the average one. Who has his usual set of jokes. Which he repeats when he's not so sober, and you let him finish uninterrupted nevertheless. Because sometimes you think it's cute. But mostly you just think, this is him. And he's no superman.

Also, on another day of stage two, lackluster loses another shade of love. When you agree he never was as rich as you thought. And you begin drawing the upper limit. Your upper limit and his. Lines you would never go beyond, or rise above.

And on a day not much long after the previous, you understand how he could hurt you. Not by not loving you. But by being very much being in love, and yet pulling the wrong strings. Tighter. And you have that slight whiff of a suspicion, that he just doesn't get you.

Yet, nomatterwhat. On that last day of stage two, you thank your stars for having him for the man he is. And also for all the love. That had never felt as real as this.

Amen!

The Upper Hand

Don't corrupt your mind with too much drama. And you'll see the world in black and white. Because, there is no grey. Grey is an intermediary illusion invented by those who lack the necessary guts. I just don't get it, when the facts are staring at us in the eye, what handicap of intelligence could actually make us buy a rejection for anything but rejection.

Did I get to the point alright?

Always, almost always, there are two parties. And thanks to lots of  blah doing rounds, we may not conclude that one is necessarily better than the other. And that we never compare apples and oranges. And that we're all great being who we are. And other categorical nonsense.

But, who're we kidding. The human eye is designed to judge at first sight. And on an absolute scale of quintessential human parameters, we know which party has the upper hand. The remnant is, but of course, rejected. By the former.

I am talking about the disaster called love. The pretty rejects the ugly. The loser always falls for the one who has traits of a winner before being smashed with a shattering heartbreak. This thing I see is so rampant that it's beginning to get more than ridiculous. Sugarcoated rejections.

I am not the one for you. I am such a pathetic person, baby I don't deserve love, least of all, yours. Which is extra divine. I hope you find someone worth you. And other categorical nonsense. Dear God, give me a break.

But nevertheless, we don't measure a prospective lover on an absolute scale of quintessential human parameters. I think, we should. It's almost high time.

And c'mon. How much balls does one need to just say it.

You're rejected, you fool. I deserve someone better. Can't you see my looming upper hand?

Non sequitur

It's that thing you do. With your eyes. Eyes never lie. Eyes cannot lie. Through them, I can stare at your insides. I get to read your intentions so well. Sometimes I wonder if I get you sooner than you get yourself.

My peripheral view has a wider horizon than you think. I can sense you looking at me no matter what corner of the room you're in. It's like my skin has these hyper sensitive sensors fixed, just for thy eyes. The way you steal furtive glances, imagining that noone's looking. But I am. Each time you shift your eyes from me, probably you don't realize, but there is this brief moment when our eyes meet. And I see deceit in yours. Do you see thirst in mine?

Forget instants. For longer whiles, in dark secluded rooms. When your eyes move on me, on above me, feeding on my every inch, I know which are the stretches your eyes hold on to. For units of time I count in heart-beats. And though I am not looking at you, I know. I know the exact stratum of intoxication you're in.

But of all things. I love most about your eyes is the curiosity in them. The way you look at me every-time like I was anew. Like you've just found me.

That's the thing you do. 

One thousand and one texts

Lovers text. And text all the time. It's pretty much who they are. Gooey and cuddled up against each other via tiny telephonic devices. Their fingertips are like glued to the keypads. Writing love letters in shorthand. Baby this, baby that. And all that. No offense.

But mishaps happen. Disasters arise out of short message service. You wouldn't deny. Just one con of our non neanderthal lives. It's crazy, how inconspicuously some texts are lost. As simple as that. Just lost. Somewhere in the stratosphere/ionosphere, wherever. Never delivered. To the rightful other half of your heart. The godforsaken delivery notification beeps Pending and that's that. That sent text is pronounced dead forever.

It could've been a rosy text, it could've been a dirty text, a moist one sent from the faint lit fantasy of midnight, or anything for that matter. Very very momentary. A message whose message is very much contained in that very moment. And might be lost in the next.

If you're still reading this, allow me to make this banal assumption. What if. What if, one such lost sms, finds its way out to the erstwhile other half of your heart. Erstwhile. Months or years after whatever you'd wanted to say. Some crazy lustful night, depicting the exact technique in which you wanted to kiss him. Now that you're no longer together. I mean could it ever be more uncomfortable!