Time & Distances.

The big cloud stands like a mountain at the end of the sky. No matter how much further I get, I look back to find it standing just there. As if, it secretly chased me. Walking right behind me. Or probably, the distances I cover, get past are too miniscule. I often have thoughts of the illusion of motion. Wherein, we are under the impression that we are moving. But we aren't. We fake the whole thing. Birth, growth, marriages, love, children, middle age, senility, death. To be true to ourselves, we are standing still, with the big cloud behind us. And the pointlessness of it all.

But this again, disproves itself. Time is the most powerful. Change is all that is. May be, motion defines life. And that big cloud is an illusion. I am imagining it. And I am actually traversing these lengths. Stretching my legs. Sinking into depths. Experiencing these new feelings. Progressing or digressing, but under no circumstances, am I standing still. 

But am I? Why does every new experience feel like something I have already been though. As if I am hung over on a perennial deja vu. Does my life circle, only too fast. Did I grow up too soon. Did I shed my naivete too soon. 

Such thoughts swallow me, and I run away from that big cloud. Splitting the wind, wide with my hands. Lunging forward. Or backward. I don't know. Smothered in stillness, which feels like breakless motion. 

Nostalgia

There used to be a well between our homes. Somewhere midway on the path that connected our two backyards. Scattered with guava trees and lemon saplings. The well was surrounded with potted marigold. And in the distant pond, we could hear sounds of fish plopping in the water, all afternoon long. In my little girl's mind, I saw the neat trajectories in air that those fish must take, succumbing to their wild death-wish to be without water for a few moments, the flight of freedom, indulging in something, you're warned not to.  

The sugandhraj tree that had overgrown and shrouded the air with its intoxicating fragrance, stood right beside the well. I would go there to pick up wilted flowers that had fallen off the tree and hold them making a pouch in my skirt. It was usually then that he would push their door open and ask me to come in. He was a few years older than I was. Then. Even now, I guess. Ages progress arithmetically. Anyway.

He made those noodles, that came in packets. You know, hardly anyone knew about them back then. He made them all by himself while his mother took her afternoon nap. Long yellow noodles that softened in the pan within minutes and he slashed open the packet of spices into them. We sat facing each other with bowls in front of us. There were no forks back then, we ate with regular spoons. With all the gravy spilling and blistering our thighs, he would try to dissuade me by telling me that those were earthworms. Ugh! Disgusting. 

In summer, we made a doll house with bamboo stems, very neat carpentry from his side, I must say. I carried all my dolls into it, along with all my plaything utensils, pots and pans into that doll house. We had to evacuate suddenly one day when the rains came. That season, we kept a puppy and called her Beauty. We had tied her to the leg of one of the chairs on our veranda. Slowly, it grew big and had enough of the food we were feeding her. So one day, he let her go, without telling me. I cried my eyes out. I looked for that dog everywhere. 

In winter, he made me a Christmas tree by cutting off a deodar, or something. He hung cotton balls from it, I assumed it was snow. I hung flowers from it. I was happy, really, overjoyed.

Today, our ages have progressed. We don't know where we are. I heard, he has become a raging alcoholic. His brain his shrinking at the same speed at which the universe is expanding. And I am. I am deplorably oscillating between finding a reason to live, and losing it. And wondering if life spares anyone at all. Anyone at all.  

Comatose

Johny boy is asleep,
Johny boy is in a coma.
All those dreams now rest in his head
And for good.
That swollen exaggerated head of his.
Full of anecdotes,
Those of money, women, love, betrayal
Johny boy is now a stranger among the known
He senses stuff, they say
He sees you with eyes closed
Who knows, and who can tell?
The unbeknownst sciences of this dreamless sleep
And the art of being perennially undying
Johny boy is in excruciating pain!
Only he can't tell, they say.
His blood and soul is sedated..
Thank good God for morphine
Johny boy Johny boy!

Mirth

A vision. Not fleeting. A constant vision. Like a motion picture. Of sheets of rain lashing on me. And I feel closer to the open skies than I am. Arms stretched out, fearless, laughing in endless mirth. The cold numbs our fingertips. Ten of mine and the ten of his. Sometimes held, sometimes free. There's no urge to go back in and be shielded. From this, one brave night of latitude. Is this June? Or July? I forget. What did I want from life, I forget. All I have is this. There's a line of emptied glasses on the ledge. Ella Fitzgerald sings in the background. Just an iron railing keeps us from death like depths. Yet we don't jump, not yet. Now we swing from the skies. I see his eyes twinkle in the light of the splitting lightening and shut our ears as the deafening thunder might come anytime now.

Gibberish

I remember, not so long ago, we had been to this wedding reception and they had scotch eggs. The buffet counter had a long line, kids, women, shoving their emptied plates in the face of the serving guy. Scotch eggs make me go weak. I mean it. Being the person I am, I relate to food at a very emotional level. I don't like cooking, per se. I like whipping up quick stuff I can settle down with to engage in something else while. Eating. It's a comfort thing. You know. I have certain categories of comfort food. Things that make me feel safe, relieved. Comforted. Right now, all I want is scotch eggs. 

A certain cousin of mine, considered wayward, ran away from everything. He was depressed or something. Heartbroken, or close. Some girl must have been involved. I don't have any dearth of deranged cousins. Alcoholics, borderline sociopaths, girls who eloped to marry, and those who almost eloped to marry, cousins who died early, some who have a mind of their own, some who don't at all and are borderline maniacs. My genepool isn't decent as I am. Or I pretend to be. I force myself to pretend to be, And yet I feel like an outsider because I didn't break free like they did. And forced myself to conform. It's asphyxiating, as it is. Being two people. One on the outside and another for real. 

This gibberish, goes on in my mind all the time. I have this involuntary compulsion to end everything. Abandon everything. Start afresh. Or rather not at all. I find soothing in comforting words of those like me that have lived, written and died before me. Long ago. I find soothing in any distraction, if it lasts a decent amount of time. Mostly it doesn't. I just while away days and months. Losing year after year, In cold inaction. In desperate brooding. 

In this country, there are no disorders. We are all like this, and this is normal. So I seek no refuge. Is this cowardice? I wonder. Feels like it at times. The shame and the lethargy of an underachieving existence catches on and grounds whatever leap I could take. Ultimatley, I feel it is me that doesn't want to get out. That I live in this cave out of choice. I don't want out. So I don't get to get out. 

Yeah, that's it. 

Whole Again

While smudging kohl in my eye, I noticed a hole. A tiny hole to the corner on the lower flap, on the inside, towards the nose. I thought to myself, this must be the tear gland. Not the gland, but the orifice for the gland beneath. It's amazing, how I hadn't known where tears came from. After crying my eyes out. And today, it shows itself. It's like finding a blackspot under your chin. You had it ever since, without knowing. Without caring to know.

My mood lately is a cosine curve. I sink into troughs, for a set of predefined reasons. Loss, failure, disappointment, a deep, really deep sense of feeling misplaced. Mostly, I sink because I think I am stupid. Just foolish. And that's not a good thing, feeling foolish. Because it is accompanied with inexplicable anger. I choke myself screaming, howling, literally. I tear down wall hangings, punch pillows. It's like a mad woman has gotten into me. And I actually do relate to her in the span of my fit. And cry, cry a lot. I sink into the trough of the cosine. 

A while after, I consolidate. Very mechanically. Like an auto restoring system. I cool down. I feel up again. I try hard, really hard to convince myself that being a good person compensates for being stupid. I know, it doesn't. But I try. What can we do? I try to tell myself stories. That things will turn around. Even if they don't, I am strong enough to just take the shit. I fail, I shatter. I cry. Again.

And such, it goes on and on. I don't know if there's an escape, but an escape. I so want to feel whole again. 

Myopia.

I tend to be extremely myopic in terms of life. That I can't see beyond a certain point, I acknowledge. So I be within constraints. I don't see myself anywhere in the next 5 years, like they ask in job interviews. I don't see myself anywhere. I used to keep a vague imagery of myself at 40. But that's slowly fading. Pictures, we can't afford. Sometimes, just merely being, maintaining a decent status quo, is such a struggle. Breath sucking, blood curdling struggle. I had foreseen myself at this age that I am now, but when it's for real, it's nothing like that, actually. It keeps getting more and more disappointing. Because of the cages I built inside my head. And prefer to stay, incarcerated. 

There is an old man. He must be in his seventies. He wears a washed out dhoti and carries a huge sack of mudhi (puffed rice, for the uninitiated) on his head and climbs up four flight of stairs. He calls out in that shrill voice, he addresses the women in the houses as mothers, they may be less than half his age. And asks who wants mudhi. He also sells those balls of mudhi rolled in sweet jaggery. Golden looking delicious balls. He would arrive sharp at 9:30 almost on all week days. And that is the most chaotic time of the day for me, I would be swallowing an unchewed breakfast, in the self immolating shame of being late for work. The old man would ring the bell, I would open and shut the door within the span of a few seconds, refusing, caring not if we had enough mudhi or not. 

In afterthought. I would wonder. If I should have given him some money, just for taking all those stairs. I never did that though. 

Last Monday, I was taking a break, for several reasons. Life can get too much you know. I realized I was getting nowhere despite all the running and all the 9 o'clock chaos undertook daily. So I felt like showering in the evening for a few days, instead in the morning. I felt like being myopic all over again and took those days off. 

So, last Monday, I was there when the old man rang the bell. I was. I bought those delicious balls of mudhi rolled in jaggery.   

Red Light

Today she spread on her pink bedsheet. And stared back at the room once before heading out. The TV was adjacent to the bed, you needed no remote. The window was shut. The light was about dim. And blue. The bejewelled actress in the poster she had hung up, blushed, like everyday.

Out on the street a dozen other girls like her waited. They chuckled. Made expressions with their hands. Some lifted their skirts as they teased the men that walked by, rejecting them for fleshier and prettier looking girls down the street. If that didn't work, they lifted the veils off their breasts, before ultimately slashing their prices by a hundred or two, as a last resort.

But tonite she had decided, she wouldn't let anyone bargain with her. She needed the money. She would coil her hands around any man's neck, with all the love and all the desertion. And have what she is worth. No negotiation. She prayed that there be no raid that night. And went in one final time to check whether the mosquito coil had worked or what.

Paradox

You lose hope, not overnight. Not over the night. That's too sudden. In the period of a night, you cry out. And wake up swollen. Eyes burning like fire. Skin glistening sorrow. But you don't lose hope. Hope sheds itself over days. Months. At times, years. You slowly let go. Consciously, breathing, let go, like noone's watching. But you are. You believe, that way it will affect you less. Pity you and forgive. Well, does it?

Similar to the process of unloving. Unloving, keep note, is not the same as falling out of love. It's an active verb. Falling out of love is more passive an event. more real, commonplace, easier. Unloving too, doesn't happen overnight. Slow squeezing of the heart, is supposed to take time. There is no anesthesia for this one. Quite the anti-process of amnesia happens here. Instead of forgetting, one remembers. Tiny details. So much that entire events feel little before the little nothings. Unloving takes its own sour time, and mostly with no certainty of results. 

What tempts me the most is that, is there freedom beyond these? Untethered freedom, as you would put it. I don't know. And ironically, I wouldn't want to. Either. 

Losing all hope was freedom.

- Narrator. Fight Club

Force Majeure

Nobody truly knows Anjum. Nobody cares. Nobody.

Anjum is a stout,  almost cuboidal, a person. Her braid finishes above her waist. Thinning towards the end, like a snake's tail and vanishing. She has a shiny black olive color of skin. Her lips are darker. Even, may be, probably. Nobody ever notices.

Anjum is a nurse. Has been for the last years. And years. Living with her parents in their reasonably respectable house.  A few years ago, word went around that her brother killed himself. There could have been a girl involved. Nobody knows a thing. They guess. Merely. Since then, right from the moment of the blood splattered sheets in the ambulance, from the moment of definite truth and numbing vagary of slit wrists, Anjum has taken the onus. Of seeing things through.

She meets death on a daily basis. Wrinkling by the month. Age seems to defy her. She must be what, forty now? Her parents though, don't seem to age. Thanks to hair color. And other things. Everybody considers Anjum to be a part of the walls or like a door. Like something that's never going to change, depreciate, or grow fuller. Sometimes they do greet her in the corridor. The same exact smile of years. 

I wonder. I vaguely do. Does she have thoughts? Does she wait for something that's going to alter everything about her life? 

Woolf

Tuesday

Dearest,

I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

Zig-Zaw

Suddenly, I am seventeen again. There is a flickering candle by my window. The thin breeze shakes the flame a bit. Its dancing in the unforeseen darkness. I have a scrap of paper in my hands, crushed, in my fist. Minutes ago, I was writing a name on it. Some guy I was infatuated to at school. I unfold the crush and bare an edge of the sheet to the flame. I watch it catch fire slowly, I see the name burn.

Then I am thirteen, in between. My regular history teacher is on maternity leave. Her replacement's eyes shine when he teaches. He doesn't use the black board much. Just speaks, endlessly. I remember feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed. Pretty squirelly. History could be fun. I wanted the regular teacher to quit, I wish this one continued. 

I am twenty-two. Living in a big city. He brings me a coffee. I smile. We are so young. There are no promises. I tousle his hair. He likes it. These tricks seem to work. Everything feels like a fun experiment. My fingertips are new to touch. I feel the wind in my hair. And outstretch. On the way back that day, I trip and sprain my ankle.

In the end, I am twenty seven again. The time for promises has come and gone. My heart has been erased. Know what I mean. I am driven around. A lot. I run a lot, panting to find peace. I find it momentarily. Then let go, for chaos. I wonder if  anything has any meaning at all. I sob at weddings. Dabbing my fork into cheesecake after another. He asks me look up straight. Ahead. 

Celine: I was having this awful nightmare that I was 32. And then I woke up and I was 23. So relieved. And then I woke up for real, and I was 32.

Memento

Memory can free you sometimes. It's a tricky monster.

Here you are trying rigorously to walk out of a long gone love. Yearning for mighty consolation, anything. Anything at all. That could explain. In a quiet couple words, the rationale within the heart ache. Because you remember all the good stuff that love had gotten you.

Sometimes bad memory outlives good memory. But this time, good memory had erroneously outlived the bad one. As luck would have it. The heart cribs. And shrinks. Puts up ugly questions.

Then, one night, you are falling asleep. Exactly half way between being awake beginning to dream, your mind twitches, it unearths a painfull memory. Something you had subconsciously hidden, erased. And it's like God is peeking at you. Reason finds its rightful place. You feel lucky. Safe. Even, probably happy. Memory is one tricky monster.

True Calling

[22:17, 05/02/2015] dnm~: You don't answer, or judge me. Just listen. I look back at myself from the future and I am afraid I will fill with regret. For the person I am becoming. So devoid of ambitions. Or any will power. I am postponing things at some pretext or the other. I will get to that later I tell myself. It's a better job or a better city.. I just keep saying tomorrow. I am afraid I will never start. I saw a kid drive in a Mercedes today. Six years ago that wud have given me a rush. Today I looked at him and felt pale. I am some mundane autorickshaw hopper standing at cross roads waiting. Some people, by standers.. Tell me that I have so much potential. Whatever the fuck I am doing here. And I say tomorrow. Writing, which I thought was my sole calling; I don't find the time and space to write. Nor do I get the right frame of mind. You read all this and you come up with a dozen ways to make things better. But come down and lets be losers tonite. If that's okay and gimme a hug. Tighty tight.

The Poetry of Migraine

It begins as a small twitch at the temples. You don't even feel it until it gets bigger. And stronger. It, like a shrewd monster spreads to the rest of your head. It attaches to the back of your neck, refusing to budge. You pull your hair, like some insane woman. It doesn't go. Instead, it couples with all the lost shine in your life, absolutely anything and everything that isn't working out, which includes almost entirely everything, and blows into your face. That it's gonna sit on your head for hours and days, and that you may do whatever you want about it. You rustle through your bag to check for that lost bottle of balm. It's gone. Then you go looking for the pills. But the damn store was closed. Prolonged lunch break. It's only you who can't eat. You sit holding your head in your hands. You put your head down on the table, nothing subsides. You wonder if the power of your glasses has changed, whether it's that time in a decade when you should see the optometrist? Remember last summer when you stepped on your spectacles in his car and they got twisted. He took you to the shop where you had bought the spectacles, but the guy could un-twist only this much. So probably these repetitive migraines are because you are looking at the world through twisted glasses. Or it could be because you had a late lunch a few days ago? You would never know. You would never no. You can't watch TV. You start crying. You throw things in the air. Suffocate yourself with a pillow and fall asleep. Somehow. And the first thing you feel in the morning; is that migraine.

F

If I don't talk, I lose.
You and more.
I could as well, lose myself.
Might aswell.

Like a bee out of a bear's mouth.
In a snapshot, of continuum.
Like a particle of vacuum.
I paint a sorrow picture of loss.
Of departure, of delirium
If I don't talk.

As a child,
I assumed, I was a poem.
Comprehended to the one,
Who was adept enough to read.
Someone, who atleast knew the words

But it ain't that.
No man's too pedestrian
You've gotta sell, everything.
Nothing stands unquoted. Goddamn.
So talk, I must. F!

Don't curl 'round 'n 'round of me
Like an earthworm, or a newborn baby
I see the wrinkle in your neck
A mole on your shoulder, to the left

Don't do that, 'cause it deters my detachment
You know, that. Honeypot.
It makes me wanna shrink into your crevices too
And disappear, but that would be so inappropriate

Don't bite me, I don't wanna feel
The cringing of your jaws on my flesh
It makes me want to ooze the grief of my heart
Through the sighs of my breath
And that's not justice enough.

I wanna keep my grief. Stored underneath seven locked chambers
Like in fairytales, they do.
Lest I can't have you, let me suffer long and cause my soul to get away.
One day, 'cause that's the only way.

Pariahs

They made an odd couple. Like other real odd couples. Very distinct from the rest of everything. It was not just because she had grown a gothic look, or because he grew a beard when no one did. Nor was it because she swayed when she walked, like her waist was afloat over her legs, or because he was a drunk. They were odd, because you could sense it around them. When you saw them move past, or when you encountered them, uncomfortably in the corridor, or just stared at them stealthily while they were sitting at the most land-locked table in the cafeteria. It was almost impossible to get to them. And they let nothing out, either. No piece of information released about how they were doing, or what was going on in-between. Leave alone how much they loved each other and related crap. Sometimes it was difficult to assume if they had sex even, there was no PDA, none at all. Like a cold ice wall stood between them, not even holding of hands. Except that you spotted them together, and knew that they were. Together. They never let anyone take any guesses. So only naturally, they became pariahs. Both of them were iconoclasts. Like they sought each other out. They had no friends outside of each other. 

Then one day. Suddenly. Out of the blue. He died. It was a freak bike accident, On a Sunday winter morning. The fog was so thick that you couldn't see a foot ahead. Walking felt like walking in heaven. He must have been high. Like really high to be run over that bad. Everyone took the liberty to assume. That weekend was difficult. A peek into what a hell hole we were living in, and how horrible things did happen in life. They had broken up a week ago. Something must have caused that. Nobody knew what. She had gone home to deal with all that. When she came back Monday morning, the fog was still intact. The gloom had settled down on window panes and condensed into droplets of irreconcilable grief.  Nobody knew what to tell her. Or how to even begin. 

Grey

Leaves smell grey. It's the dust. There's so much dust. Apocalyptic dust. Only the world is never going to end. I know now. Late realization. Like into an obese overgrown child, truth takes its own sweet bitter time to seep into me. It's never going to end. Pain is omnipresent. Grief is eternal. Nothing is going to die, once and for all.

Children are going to sink. Boats are going to catch fire. Flying demons will swoop down on us. There will be blood everywhere. We will have nightmares all day and roll sleepless all night.

Joy will constantly feel like a fast disappearing memory in the mind of an amnesiac. Love will feel like too costly a trade-off. Our race will perish of heart-break.

The Butcher's Daughter

If nothing else, there is the butcher's daughter. She changes into her work clothes in the bushes. In the bushes by the hyacinth ridden drain canal with floating purple flowers. Work clothes are a must in her profession. Or else where else would the blood spill. Blood of the goat that's throttled. By her father. I suppose he is the father, but he doesn't look the other way when she is changing. Behind the bushes. In the early morning sun. Just before they set up shop. Beneath the tarpaulin strung between mildly inclined poles of bamboo. The butcher girl has sharp piercing eyes. As if she can see everything you are trying to hide. Her hair is dirty. About those eyes, I can't be right. It's a deception. Nobody can see what is going on inside us. We camouflage too easy. Our lives come too cheap.

The butcher girl makes a diligent assistant. She packs meat in plump black polythene bags, wards off  stray dogs and returns the exact change, without an expression on her face. Behind their shop an unseen bird hides beneath the bulbous leaves of the exuberant hyacinth. It walks on water. Impossible, but yes it does. As if it was weightless. No agony of past, no fear of future. One weightess bird. At first sight, the bird looks like a myna. But then, the prints on it are not the same. God must have painted that one, when mildly high. Oh sure. There must have been a love poem at the back of his mind. And he must have been living through the shit of heartbreak when he imagined those eyes on the butcher girl.