Loophole

They lived quietly next door. A family slightly younger than ours. Mamun was their daughter. And she had a baby brother. They would stroll into and out of our place, we would put out tiny chairs for them to sit. One yellow, one copper sulfate. Mamun would often soil our balcony, dig up our potted plants of chrysanthemum, until we took that inevitable decision to hang them from the railing, way out of her reach. She did love our Sunday morning poached eggs, densely peppered. Often, her chiming silver anklets would declare her sudden presence, and make us watch-out. Mamun wore a strange piece of metal, like a pendant around her neck, like it was an animal tooth, or a shell filled with ash. To keep her away from evil.

Quite treacherously, without warning, she died. Was killed. Her family was out on vacation, and we were told, that for one moment they lost sight of her and she was a hit and run. For months, I kept staring at our yellow chair. Her father with his shaven head, would wake up screaming, wailing. But I continued assuming that she was still on vacation and would return. That assumption, I preferred it over the silent acceptance of such loss.

Unable to stand their misery, her family shifted to another place, I believe, somewhere away.

And then the plump woman, with the parrot moved in. All the time, she lived in that apartment, we only heard about her son. Never saw him, he was in another city, studying or working, or something. I imagined he must be a replica of his frail bespectacled father. The plump woman, wore sleeveless blouses, blaming the stifling single bed-roomed existence. And an unforgiving summer.

In the afternoons, she would switch on the TV and chop lady fingers and pumpkin, skin potatoes and slice bitter-gourds on the dining table. Many of those, I spent with her. My siestas were as ever empty of sleep. She introduced me to tea, I owe her that. But it was her parrot that bewitched me. That absolute flirt of a bird, I would try to feed it things, bribing it to shed one of those vibrant, parrot green feathers. I would wait near the cage for hours, I needed one to press between the leaves of my diary. The woman of the house would pacify me saying that she would give away that parrot's chick to me. So I waited for it to lay an egg. Equally impatiently, or more. But, I hadn't known then. That caged birds don't breed. 

chalance nonchalance

Erase all preconceived severely convoluted concern. Like no preconditions existed. As if the space before and after this moment was dead. This minute, this hour, tonite. This shy moonless evening. Kick the long term purpose of life. There is none, anyway. Except for the sum of these tiny ones. Dwell in this new found freedom. Forget. And let exactly your whim drive you. Only that. To whoever it wants you to. Shiver not.

Nice feel, in't it? Ah, very nice oh. 

Saturday

Muse:

The muse. She wore a pink sari, wound around her lean self in a way I couldn't figure. Out how. So I just bathed her with all my attention. Not the baby pink, not the rosy pink. Real pink, how pink should be. With white squares printed over. Her hair was knotted, neatly. Like the knot held her head in position. And those black bead earrings, not tiny, big enough. To be seen from far. Where I was. She, of course stared straight in front, at the road ahead. No after hang of the past. I couldn't figure out that either. Just how?

Movie:

The movie. Sprinkled with instances, some exact replicas of the past, some insinuations of the impending future. Such an amalgamation of rather contradictory contortions of love. One that shows how desperately we seek companionship, irrespective of who we have become or where we are; and another shows no matter what, all affections fade. However, hard you try, or not try, mostly, you end up alone, literally alone within four walls, or virtually alone living among a bunch of strangers you remember you  happened to know. Love stories, like these, are often that beautiful picture painted upon and against the peaceful humdrum of life. 

Summer Love:

They say, summer love. We have passed, one summer by. Half of, or rather, almost one full, eighty percent of, monsoon. Rains have lashed against the new love that in May we had realized, we had may be. Now we are stare at autumn, for the trees to come out naked. Winter then. And finally, even spring, in possibility. You know, how love takes your breath away? Moments that bless you with such a glue that you cease to exist in person, and become one deeply rooted pair of Siamese twins.

Movie in context: The Lunchbox

Twenty-six

Pocket fulls of sand. Wet magical sand. One stringed bracelet. With our names inscribed. And my prescribed notions for a lifetime. Nothing has turned out as it should have. Most things have just flown from one random destination to another like a lazy holidayer. Somehow leaving me wet and unwanted. Just like the sand in my pockets. Yet, you being you, keep me. Love me. Possess me. Not with the jovial possession of new love. But with the charred traits of a seasoned lover. Like quiet sunlight on fair skin, you fill me with warmth. One moment of which is worth caging and saving for looking back and unwinding upon for years later. When feelings of seclusion corner ME, and make me want to run off the next adjacent roof, sometimes not too knowingly I think of you. Your chin. My lip. Our things. Paraphernalia for love. I use them to invent words. To selfishly develop feelings, I not tell you about. Because somethings should be given time to unfold. Somethings should rather be bottled forever. Till we end.

I think of our tiny toes and the hard earned grace to make a living out of life. I wonder what we have. And see it vis-a-vis what we require. For contingencies. For answers. For supplying enough proofs. Like juxtapose. I wonder if our stringed bracelet of love would stand us on our tiny toes. It should. Because love should be the sole deciding factor. Of our endless haywire lives. If not it, then what.

I am not saying just because I am saying. But as I have learnt. I am not that child that sees and doesn't seep into. But I have witnessed a certain emptiness in the plethora of lives around me. In their guarded drops of sweat upon heavily maintained faces. Heavily to the extent of it being an obsession of creating a pretense. A shallow facade. And that bores me to the extent of scaring me.

That's exactly why I want you to look within. Unzip me, unskin ME. Look at my naked raw self. And then love me like nothing else matters. It's the mind that will never leave me. So love me in there. Shamelessly. Unbridled.

Make Belief

You make, I believe. Some other time, I make, for you to believe. Calm your jittery nerves & vice versa. I love, and feel loved myself, consequently. Love begets love. Bricks accumulate mortar, by themselves, for their affinity to cement, to make passion to stay. And build walls, roofs and floors, homes, to stay in, windows to look out from, hide away in. Plans get scribbled, ambitions toned up or down accordingly. Tiny steps taken, in unison, like a baby learning to walk, stumbles and falls. And then talking takes over, endless endless conversations. A word for word. Breath for breath. Sigh for sigh. Blink for blink. Sometimes, you make, I believe. Sometimes, I make, you believe. 

Placebo

Where do we go? With our ills and our pills. Multiple sicknesses of the mind. Cramped muscles twisted nerves and pangs of the emotional kind. Hidden magnanimous egos. To be clashed with hidden maganimous egos. Plugged desires. Reading between the lines, between the words and in between phrases. Understanding commas, colons and semi colons. Fuck. Abandoning the hope, the threadbare hope that an end to these means is even possible, we sit quietly and face toward the wall, waiting for someone to ask us to turn around, one hundred and eighty degrees and talk. Sometimes that is required too, silence doesn't do justice to our immensely complex circular demand cycles. Where in, one need just proliferates mostly the previous need, forming in effect, one dangerous cycle of need. And we don't know if we are getting anywhere, or are merely sitting on a child's rocking chair, suffering the illusion of motion. Our ends, flying out in outer space shall never meet. Love fucks up love. Too much love ie. Too little ie. All we await is a temporary placebo. Until the next pang gets us.

Time Capsule

I would wonder what happened to you. Whatever happened to you. You, in immense probability, would move on. Be ladled upon with layers and layers of time. Meet newer people, more or less like the ones you wanted. More more than less. Fall in love, out of love. Miss me in the intervals in between, if you kept a vivid memory. Have babies, marry, or in the reverse order, preferably. Buy flowers, to let them wilt, flip through more books, age, grow more white hair. Stare from balconies, walk among flower shrubs on both sides of the street. Smile, be ecstatic, regret. More importantly, be the way you wished; to be. Holding on to appropriate substances of value. After a certain time, just sit alone and reminisce, just like I would. And wonder what happened to me, whatever happened to me.

Shortly after, you would unearth from underneath the layers and layers of time; a time capsule. Not the literal time capsule. Just a capsule with me in it. Asleep like a fetus, curled, from the ages ago, exactly the way I was. And as you uncap that capsule, you would unlock so much, so much. My caged smells of sweat and skin. The goosebumps intact. The voices of things said, multiple confessions of dire passion. CDs with our songs, pictures taken and forgotten. Plans made and almost ruthlessly abandoned. Truths kept from the world, just between us two, sacred secrets. And the absolute and exact memory of having been, in love. For what it's worth.

Whatever happened to you. Whatever happened to I. Oh! 

Unison

The nose. You never get to see your own nose. Even though it is right there, because both the eyes which are constantly used to seeing it, negate each other out. And you never get to see your own nose.

Same applies to the Lover. You lose sight of him. Outside of yourself. Because he is constantly there, in your mind, fiddling with your six senses constantly. And whenever, even if he is outside of you, your eyes, two pairs, four of them, looking into each other, cancel each other out. Like the Lover ceases to exist. Despite being right there, saying, listening, seeing, moving. He effectively becomes a part of you. Begins to live in your consciousness as a thought, an idea, and not as sturdily as the matter, that can be touched, smelled and felt. Though he very can be, pinched, kissed, loved, you forget. Lovers become extensions of each other, or even become one person.

Level of comfort, as it is called, shoots up to an extra-terrestrial high. Suddenly one pair of extra hands seems unnecessary. So does the extra pair of legs. Lovers carry each other, over shoulders, on arms. The other mind of the two feels like an extravagance. They could as well make do with one, you know. Their memoirs merge into a symbiotic haze and they look into the time to come, with one pair of collective eyes, irises. 

Entropy

There is a gate which opens on the other side, other than the side I have so chosen. That gate pukes life into the street. Life, mercilessly scatters itself therein. There are these numerous betel shops, that sell mouth freshener and sundries. And their threatened existence. Beggars, one legged and begging. Tinkling ring of coins in their bowls. The rummaging hunger in their under-bellies. Dust. Lethargy of abandoned lives. Eve-teasers, their roving eyes. Looking at you like they had you like a lover, once. Chai-wallas. Teeming stories of dozens of strangers passing by. Inspecting each other thoroughly. Boys and girls. Stuck perennially in late teens, emerging from the afternoon cinema. Tilted buildings into the street, that house brothels. Women with jasmine braided into their hair, navels naked and their betel stained pimps. From around the shops beneath with threatened existence. 

There is so much much entropy, baby. That dies ignored. Ensnaring entropy. 

Our fates, you know, are en-tropic. Spare my poetic licence. Driven by fateful & fate-less accidents. 

Yet how silly of me to doubt that someones who I was afraid were me, almost, that their life might reflect into mine, just because you know, we were similar. Only I realize that it doesn't work that way. Let them have their Entropy. I will walk away with mine. 

PS:

Notice the change in Font. 

en·tro·py: A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.

Lateral Inversion

There's this picture. Not in a wooden frame. Not in a wedding album. Just a picture, a photograph. Saved in a few kilobytes of memory. In a dateless folder, underneath. 

Among a matrix of light and grey, they stand, posing. Adjacent, touching. Her left arm against his chest. Quietly resting on it, like that was where it was meant to be. His right hand stretched along her shoulders, palm clutching her sleeve. He's holding her. Her hands are folded. There's a ring on the middle finger on her right hand, red threads wound about her left wrist. This was clicked from the camera he held in his left. Lucid, at peace. They are both half smiles, semi conscious. Very aware, yet not there. 

But wait, it's not them the picture is of. It's their image, their fleeting floating image on a fleeting floating mirror. So probably, we got it all wrong. Rights and lefts are reversed. Laterally inverted. He held the camera on his right, his fingers are so close to the mirror, you could see his knuckles. It's his left hand which is holding her by the shoulder. And the ring is on the middle finger on the left hand and the red threads on the right. It seems so. They are looking at each others' image in the mirror. How juxtaposed that is.

Their lines of vision must converge and crisscross where their real space met the mirror. Or I could just show you the photo, instead of blatantly trying so much at the description, so much. Si? 

Onward

The bunch of papers in his hands just gave in. He was getting used to the incessant traveling. Though it didn't seem a bit like what he had imagined. Mostly he would discard the fatigue of it by saying it was boredom and not the biting solitude. It wasn't may be. Some people can just flourish on themselves. Each trip he would find something fun to do or just unwind his overworked muscles and sleep. There was never the need to go out or wait or seek. 

The bunch of papers in his hands almost gave in. He walked about with an ease. A confidence known only to his kind. It was 2 in the morning, the cab booked to the airport had come on time. There was no one to see him off. He had insisted they didn't come. His mother was the stronger one and her eyes never moistened when she saw him leave. But he always saw this meekness on the father's face, a kind of forced silence that just wouldn't let him leave in peace. So he insisted on being left alone. For convenience' sake.

Taking the last few steps onward, to the land of unforgiving winter. He made the customary calls. Assuring he would text them his whereabouts each time he changed location and made a note himself that he would.

His face grew pale for a second with a pang of homesickness. He had run out of noticing the weird people at the airport, people in waiting. There was this childish urge to suddenly return home just to spend the night on his familiar bed, without being answerable to anyone.

So he called her. And asked if she was asleep and if he woke her up. Without waiting long enough for her to answer that, he told her that he was looking at a bunch of hot chicks. We don't know if they were fictitious or real. She asked him to talk to them and not her instead.

Minutes later, they were laughing at one of his cranky jokes. Laughing together, in an unexpected convergence. Sitting hundreds of miles away, waiting to be separated by light years. 

For the lackluster repulsion of distance to erode their affection. For a beautiful Chinese woman to be on the seat next to him. On the plane. 

Abruptly pausing her midway he said, ' That's my announcement. Gotta go!' And then he rose closer to the skies never to return again.

Signs

Acts of love leave no signs

Such of acts of beauty
Ensure that their marks are wiped off
No imprints, or unnecessary witnesses

For they are possessed by a vanity of their own
Of not becoming mundane;

So, the voices are absorbed by walls
Foot prints, overwritten
Sweat, overpowered by perfume
Warmth of air exhaled from nostrils, intermingled
Dust swept off
Secrets, protected, or often forgotten

They, these miniature acts of love, leave no signs
Only vaguely live on in mutual memories, their vanity untouched. 

Honeymoon

There was this girl, of those numerous girls I have quoted unawares. She and I met as strangers, introduced each other to each other as we struggled through our sluggish jobs, being the only two females around, kind of made us fall together. We would often lunch sitting by the window looking down at the road below, which I later found out was not a road but the top of a flyover. But that happened much later one day when I gauged the dimensions, standing alone beside our tall, really tall office building.

Once in a while she would made me eat half of her sturdy boiled egg, sliced in the middle and salted, to help me walk through my disgusting lunch. And give me that awkwardly toothy smile, grin. Almost like a loving pet would grin at you, without minding if the smile fit in picturesque or not. I don't take the trouble to describe her face, I am pretty bad at remembering faces and worse at describing them. To save me the trouble of that, I classify faces into two neat categories. Pretty and ugly. She was quite obviously the latter. In fact, to an extent that I had heard people ridiculing and bursting out laughing about how ugly she was. 

One morning, she asked me about the touristy places from around where I was from. As a practice I gurgled out the name of a certain beach town where everyone went. Everyone. Then almost in one breath, she told me. Told me that, she was going to honeymoon there. And she said that with authority, like she had he tickets in her hand. I choked, metaphorically. And I felt the same ridicule that those who laughed did. My first reflex was to ask her, If she was joking.

Because the idea of a honeymoon seemed too far fetched given what she was. Given the world we live in, the ugly are invariably denied the candy floss of romance. But I didn't ask her that. Instead I felt a stab of envy when I hugged her when she told me a few days later that she was engaged to the friend she was in love with for years. 

Months later, she put up pictures of them, playing with the waves in the certain beach town I had mentioned. Her husband was as thin as a sickle. And my friend, she looked spherical, in those pictures, fitting perfectly into the edges of the sickle as they posed with each other before the vast blue sea. She would put up pictures of them cutting cakes and putting off candles celebrating monthly anniversaries of their wedding. Some more of them and oddly baked home made cakes, on their rickety rooftop. 

People still laugh though, laugh their asses off, looking at those pictures and how funny they appear. But not I. I have been shut up for good. Love, when found, can make life so speechlessly beautiful. And when left unfound, can make it fall apart into a thousand pieces each moment.  

Lore

I was told a story to, as a child. They say not just a story, but folk lore. About one pot-bellied beggar. Who begged for alms, fistfuls of rice and few coins if hardly ever fate implied good, across parched summer afternoons in homes inebriated of siesta. He held an umbrella of stitched palm leaves, above his shoulder, a walking stick with his one hand, and held out a bowl on the other, begging and singing, in that softened pitiful voice. His feet would burn in the heat and his pot belly would let go with hunger, because no matter how much he sang and how much he begged, his hunger knew no end. He would weep like a child sitting on the river stairs and pray. For something to happen and alleviate his plight.  Days went by and nothing happened, no one came. His despair grew more immense and more his suffering more acute. He would just drink the water, taking aloud the names of the delicacies he wanted and assuming it was them, and walk back home. One day, however, the river rippled and the Goddess emerged. Dry like paper, out, as the water whirled all around her and then calmed. She smiled and sent an earthen pot floating towards him before disappearing. I remember the delight in his eyes and the delirious joy in my child's mind as I imagined him unwrap the banana leaf from the pot and dig his hands into each of those delicacies whose name he had taken in the days leading to this, cooked in ghee and filling my nostrils as strongly as his. 

Now, those stories had hidden themselves somewhere as life suddenly has become a travesty of priorities. Until recently, I met his niece. In a video from years ago, shot in their courtyard. She had just about almost learnt how to walk. The art of walking, unraveled, she who had her uncle's exact eyelashes and brows, walked about like a queen with a long stick on her shoulder, losing her balance midway due to its weight. Her hair tied in a tight pigtail and her eyes with two mystifying black pools of awe in them. Baby talking, baby screaming, and baby giggling her way around, with the stick intact on her shoulder. Sometimes elves would appear from above the skies and swoop down below with a speed only known to her and I. Now ants would climb shrubs of hibiscus, beginning their life long pilgrimage to the top. And dust would rise up in the coagulated fatigue of my fake adulthood and give way to many storms. I saw them, these phantoms of imagination, in her eyes, black pools of awe. Like, we shared our secret, without quite knowing we did. He, only stared on. 

Woman, Being a

Years ago, more than half a decade ago, we used to frequent this place, this restaurant, not entirely classy, but itsy-bitsy classy in its own way for people who ate out of pocket money. It was at one end of our sooty town, under the expanse of a tree, in the shade of which they set up a barbeque on some evenings. We would go dutch, strictly dutch, no man splurged on us, bunch of single females, religiously dutch at heart. For hours we would sit there, perched like tired birds munching coleslaw, strings of cabbage, nibbling a cutlet at its edge, to just sit there long enough. Look at people, until the icecreams from their cones melted, flooded and overflowed. 

Once we noticed, paticularly stared at this man-woman in a corner. You know such corners, where they could sit dangerously close to each other for distances dictated by propriety. Distances to be illustrated in public, where anything that can catch the eye, does. She was plump, dusky, with her long plait ending way below where her blouse ended, half of her back exposed, towards us. He held her by stretching an arm across her shoulders and whispered into her ears, that sparkled with chandelier earrings, supposed dirty secrets that made her giggle quietly. They chatted and ate oblivious of our lingering awe and gaze. At the gluttonous plates on their table.

The other unsplurged on single females uttered. He's feeding her so well, such that later she would let him do. Whatever had in mind. She was a pros. They said. That's the word we used then, that's the word we use now.

That woman, sold off, for money. I don't look up or down on her. She does what she does. But each time I see a car slowing down beside a waiting girl on a highway, and the man inside raising eyebrows, posing that question; I think. I do. 

Deal-breaker

Wasn't I led to believe, that we have each become a walking talking mystery. Each one is a twisted novella within its own bodily boundaries. Some are even novels. And some have sequels after sequels to themselves. Oddly enough prequels too come to exist, like a sudden revelation into the past. And they come to being long after the novels we are have died their ends.

Didn't I comfortably assume that our skin was the one illusion that hid well all those distortions within? If not for the skin that covered our flesh, our pink flab and all the gluttony in them, our green veins and red arteries and the fucking heart that had learnt to fake love for centuries would be exposed. So thank God for the skin. And the tongue for all the talking and the keeping quiet and victoriously sheathing the ugly underneath.

But now. Haven't the tables turned?

Done with the faux pas, all I have come to understand is this. I am the one semi circle that completes the circle of life. I ain't a mystery, or a novel, or a concoction even. I am an arc. One half of which curls and awaits the other twin, facing in my direction, which is often the opposite to the one I am facing. And together, we complete the circle of life. He & I.

All theory apart. All bias done with. That we befit, into each other, is the sole standing truth. That we stay put, our green veins and red arteries, and our merged heart. We swim inside each other. Be like yin and yang.

That is the big change that a little it of love can get into our life. A little bit of it, makes this world of difference. Love heals. Love clears the air. Makes us see, for once the truth. 

Afresh

We make a big deal about knowing. What we know blinds us more than anything. It makes layers of bias settle on our fatigued heads. And we hang in there, secretly proud that we know so much.

But like once the professor said, unlearning is as important, as is the act of learning itself. One should have that agility to erase & start afresh.

This is not one of those. Motivational writing stuff written exclusively to bore you. Just that, I am here to narrate the following anecdote:

So, exactly when we are in the middle of a conversation which is losing direction, stemming from an ancient misunderstanding or correct understanding, so to say, when we have begun to kick our crystal colored dreams, when there is that stemming anger, mild in between, and ten other things on your mind, and you lose track of the words you say and hear, we realize that we are not getting anywhere and begin to classify the conversation as an argument, the mobile network plays a trick and ditches. So we were left hanging, trying to remember which point we abandoned it at, and if there was any fertile point left in taking it to its hasty closure. And obviously, I call back. Without a pause, I continue from the mid sentence, the approximate phrase which had witnessed the disconnection.

Abruptly, he asks who i was. I swallow. What? He repeats, who this was. And more crucially, he adds, who is it that I wanted. On the phone. In that flattering voice.

I breathed in deep, almost forgot everything else. 

And i responded. it's me. and all i ever wanted was him.

Sabbatical

She took a sabbatical. A two week trip by herself, probably the last attempt to feel rootless freedom. Before sitting back and planning a life out. She traveled to a couple of least known places she had known on the map. As a child poring over geography books.
Now she took that trip, with barely a backpack and slippers. No etiquette. No camera either. 

On the afternoon of the third last day, she landed at his place. Her college boyfriend. His single bedroom cum living room cum kitchen place, remote, away, falling off the edge of her geography map. She wanted to see him with no particular intention, as such. There was an ember of love though, but repeatedly wiped off by the series of other guys that followed. Walked his footsteps. Toward and then away. But she chose him over every other. 

After she had slept a straight eight hours to shed her fatigue of days, they nibbled from take-aways. Quietly, reminiscing. Remembering. Then loudly shivering the walls with laughter, with their stock of forgotten jokes. Legs were pulled and released. They flashed back and forth. Crushed their stoic adult poise with the memories of their once adolescent love. Then crushed the sheets underneath when they mildly made love, and then jumped to intervals of wild fucking. It was difficult to begin with and they missed how they then could never steal a moment to kiss when back in college. She quite felt at rest. 

The day after he took her for a drive in the shamble of a car. She bought trinkets and stoles. A pair of pricey yellow boots which were seen and returned. And dozen other memorabilia. No pictures though, except the one on his cell phone, which he swore he wouldn't put up anywhere. She posed for him before a crumbling temple. The orange hue of the broken bricks went with her sunset dress and the blood-burst in the evening skies.

That night they cooked. Their amateur culinary expertise, with ample doses of faded lust simmered lumps of chicken. Stoned, their brains drenched in vodka, they slightly fell in love again. But markedly only slightly. 

On the third day, she put on shades all day, because she didn't want him to look into her eyes. At all. Until he saw her off. 

On her wedding day, she opened messily one parcel with her henna smeared hands, till elbows, to find those yellow boots and their sunset picture. 

Inkling

There is that specific moment when words deny you the privilege to own them, when they slip out of your fingers and get lost in a forest like naughty little children. And you are left abandoned in turn, gasping like a worried parent. Sweat trickles from your temples and you feel eternally blank. Because it is them that you assumed you possessed in entirety. And suddenly you realise you were indeed powerless all the long way. You are now distraught, even feel conspired against.

Because all these years, when you wove stories about the imaginary, women and men, insane women and thoughtful men, circling about loss and love, you thought you were just about okay. When two or three or four stopped by, paused to read those stories about the imaginary and breathed in lungfuls of cold lonesome air, you thought you were good. When you met people who knew you through those stories only and per se were complete strangers to the real person you were, you felt almost proud. You lived in your unfinished stanzas, on the nib of your pen,in the creases of your diary, over the edges of all the minds you touched. When you went through your writing from the past, and you couldn't relate which collation of sentences was based on which real life episode of loss, you felt like God.

But now look here, what you have done. Where you have gotten yourself to. You have reached a gauntlet, fleeing the wavy ups and downs, where you cannot express, with a bare approximation what is it that you are thinking. Whatever is on your mind, never gets your mouth. Everything's lost midway, or kept back as dirt letting only zilch filter out. You feel tonguetied, fatigued even ashamed. Ashamed. Losing your grip on the one tiny thing.

Then the doubt creeps in. Are you not able to speak up because you cannot translate thought into speech or is it because you have not a hint about whatever it is, that thought. Ideas feel like scattered dots. The brain is but a grey mass. With too many complex equations knit into one. 

And the heart. That is unravelable. 

Words are so superficial, to sum it up. Thoughts are inches more deep. And feelings are the deepest. Sometimes, they leave no trail, not even an inkling. 

Being Monogamous

I see lovers biting into each others' throats, not all, but some of them, standing at the edge of their wits not being able to stand each other, and looking into absolute darkness. Though I am condemned enough to feel that being in love and feeling loved in reciprocation are two things indispensable, I also happen to be one of those scholars who strictly believe in the fading away of love. It's a contradiction. 

When I recite names from the past, some recall emotion, but mostly otherwise. Also, isn't love, like happiness a very very momentary emotion? Even if love were to last more than that moment, and I do believe it does sometimes last months, even years, the realization of it, comes only in those few bright moments of the mind. 

Down that lane, which we have all been through to be however screwed up we are today, is that menagerie of men. Some we undermine as infatuations after we moved on, some we still doubt if we were in love with, some we have begun to hate, some for who we feel nothing more than cold indifference, some who have grown to be strangers, and the rest who have hugely contributed to this blog, unknowingly though. Sometimes I wonder if I should be charged guilty of having been infatuated these many number of times. Should I be accused of naming songs after the ones who sent me those? Of naming folders in my laptop after those who never paused to care? Of writing poems for those who never gave me even a card? Of naming my dresses after the ones I associate them with? The red one with black polka dots after A, the one with the purple print after B, the golden one with embroidery after C? 

Life is not as tragic as it seems, it's rather funny. In few bright moments of the mind, even bordering on ridiculous. And honestly, there haven't been as many as I make them seem to be, just that I exaggerate to escape. Just the few, chosen ones, who were mismatched with me, by accident, inside the dull chambers of my mind. But now that, it matters, now that love has come to count, and is to be valued in return, I wonder if I should exactly consciously feel that I have been roughly polygamous, harboring affection for different men during separate phases of time.