Shadows of After hours

When you ruminate over grief that tortures you, the grief only grows stronger. Grief is grey, a shade of agony that like a leech sucks the last breath out of your lurching heart, leaving you stranded in an island of murky nightmares.

--
I reached the hotel room at around 10pm. What reigned supreme was not the fear of being alone in a godforsaken stinking hotel room or the physical pain akin to labor pain that was killing me but the disgust of being held hostage in a room that looked like a brothel of sorts.

My body squirmed at the thought of lying on the bed wrapped in a dirty razai, that smelled of an obnoxious mix of body fluids of many that seem to have spent pleasure nights in there .Guilt at the thought of peeping into the privacy of intimate lives of strangers, who presume that their carnal secrets are safe, troubled me endlessly. An irritating disgust, like that of watching someone puke choked my throat and the only desire that tugged at my heart was to run far away from the whore house.

It is that precise moment of imagination, grief, like sticky slippery fungi spread across a rocky river, kept at pushing me off my sanity. Strangely, and out of nowhere, I recollect my grandpa’s death. I did not cry when I got the news, I didn’t for many days to follow. And then a few months later, on a sunny madras evening when the warm salty sea water pulled my feet deep into the wet sand, the resolve to brave, collapsed. An angry dysphoria ensued and stayed on for long, as I had come to realize that the mellow bond I shared with this peculiar man has been irretrievably lost to the brutality of death.

Grief has been like that. Visiting uninvited. Unwarranted. Striking at unexpected moments, and flooding my heart with a wild vengeance. A vengeance that compels me to forsake all wisdom of life gained over the years, forcing me out of a rational acceptance of pain as a part of the whole. I break down like an old man that cries at his wife’s grave, regretting intensely the untimely realization of how much she meant to him.

Odd that grief is both idle and active, paradoxically, at the same time. Every moment of night spent in that room, time hung heavy on me. A lazy lull and nothingness crowded my being, suffocating me like a pillow thrust on the nose. Grief mourned with a majestic vanity, proud of devouring all my joyousness I have ever known. Triumphant at causing a pain so sharp, it sand an elegy to the possibility of peaceful sleep.

I mourn over many things. Some silly, some pertinent. Some silly yet pertinent. I mourn over losing that ear ring a lover had gifted me, for not apologizing to a friend I insulted, for not burying my cat after its death, for not learning to swim, for raising my hand to slap my mom, for not attempting to learn mathematics, for forgetting how to use macros. I mourn for myself, for people that matter and people that don’t. I mourn over dawns when I find life purposeless and dusks when I wish I weren’t alive. I mourn over my ageing life and its impending death. I search for reasons to mourn more and deep.

True, Grief is not like anger; it lacks its flamboyant grandeur. It is sober in its expression but furious in its intensity and capacity to agonize.

It is like asthma, I explain to a friend later. An uneasy choke, a moment close to breathlessness, a feeling of being throttled. It takes your hand and leads you through endless corridors of rotten memories; of friendships forgotten, loves forsaken, innocence pawned, ridicule endured, thresholds crossed and not crossed, dreams rubbished, relationships unsaved. Of missed buses. Missed kisses. Of sudden deaths. Of new lives, unasked for.

Grief was all around me, like bloodstains on the road after a gruesome accident, reminding me of life’s possible rude suddenness and soliciting from me courage insurmountable to see death in its face. Grief was all around me, like people mourning in a funeral, each describing a figment of memory that person has left behind, passionately. Almost as if that could save them from the pain of loss. “I met him just the day before, he wanted to go to the church this Sunday with me, he loved Darjeeling tea, he had 100cds of illayaraja song collection, he always walked on the left side of the road and brushed immediately after waking up. He was a great man; we all love him very much. Amen.”

I picked up the phone to dissect this thought of what grief was doing to me, with a friend who would understand. But I quit. I knew that no one could carry the weight of my burden, am all alone in the struggle and its only fair it is so. Understanding grief in words is possibly the start I had made towards experiencing it completely, and experiencing it fully is possibly the first step toward dealing with all incorrigible challenges of life and living.

But this entire story about seeing despair in its eye is only on hindsight, it is only what I write. The night that it was, it saw no sleep. It saw no respite. It ended before it could begin. It had begun without an end. It was just there. For no rhyme or reason. Like just about many other such nights.

Silhouette of an evening

The august evening and its consummate beauty sweeps over her, like a woolen blanket wrapped around on a december night in Delhi does. She snatches greedily, parts of it, for keeps; the way a writer attempts to snatch words from interesting conversations with a hurried frenzy, trying to retain all of it in his head.

She sits legs stretched out, her feet buried deep inside the moist sand at Dadar sea face. ofcourse, this place wouldn’t find a mention in any tourist places of interest or for that matter the locals. But for her it is the haven she is married to. The sea has been intently witnessing her life, like a lover who curiously consumes and relishes the idiosyncratic trivialities of the partner’s life, night after night.

It is in the sea’s soul she repeatedly finds a calming air of permanence. She is here today, to bid adieu. She has imagined this moment many times, creating a visual image of the elaborate farewell she would bid to Mumbai, visiting every place that is close to her heart.Kolkatta isn't really a city she looked forward to making home, but with age she seems to embrace change the way the sky does to different formless patterns every evening.

She is here to share this evening with S. She has known him for a month now. Not long enough to remark, ‘Isn’t this evening similar to that one we shared 4years back at marine drive, weren’t we so juvenile then? Ah, how much life changes.” Suckers for nostalgia, aren’t we. But then again, as the cliché goes, it seems like she has known him for a lifetime. When she first met him in a noisy coffee place, she didn’t particularly realize that someday she would drown herself in the sparkling smile and charming dimple that that adorns his sharp long jaw line. She didn’t imagine that she would slowly, with time, lend all of her possible love and yen to him.

Now as he walks towards her, with a smile so familiarly endearing she could do nothing but notice how heart breaking her love for him was. She gets up involuntarily and hugs him tight, ignoring the detestable glare of the world around that indulges their voyeuristic curiosity. Later they sit next to each other, treating themselves to a silent and glorious sunset. He takes her palm in his, and strokes the palm lines, as if he wants to change some lines of fate with each stroke.

She volunteers to speak, breaking the mellow silence that lies between them. She remarks that he looks like a 70’s rock star. He smirks joyously, hoping she likes that look. Curly unruly hair, funny spectacles over the chiseled nose, bright red shirt, and the lean body structure; how would it feel to embrace these, she wonders. How would it be to touch, taste, smell and experience a togetherness that will give their relationship a place it deserves?

He has not spoken of love yet. He didn’t have to. He didn’t want to.

She does. Love has its ways, she tells him. Unique ones. Love takes different forms and shapes. It comes from places you don’t expect it to, and refuses to be what you want it to be. It is as permanent as the promise of a passing cloud. And as transient as the howl of an infant. It flees from the definitions you want to box it in. It becomes a violent hurricane and then a tranquil desert night. It grows beyond illiberal ideas of age and time, parochial definitions of morality, hackneyed and categorical descriptions of companionship that society attempts to impose on us.

He seems to understand. He seems to want to appreciate. Yet he argues. He refuses to appreciate love of a sort that transcends convention. She hopes that he would offer an amicable nod. A willingness to ponder over these. A desire to travel the distance from his ideas to hers. She likes to believe that he has an appetite to evolve and understand how she sees love, in its purest simplest form. But for now, he refuses to give in.

They getup, dust their clothes off the sand and walk along the borders the waves have left behind. They laugh heartily and animatedly, at jokes they wouldn’t remember when they try to reminiscence at a later time. They make silly conversations that intelligently masquerades the intensity of what they feel for each other. Expressions of love in words seem too futile for both of them.

It is then that he turns to her side, and she knows it is time. Time to give a new color to their intimacy. With a natural and obvious knowing smile she moves closer to him, pulls him closer by clinging on to the red shirt, and caresses the border of his jaw line drawing lines that extend from the corner of his eyes to that of his lips. And once close enough to be able to hear his heart beat, she moves forward in a clumsy hurry and kisses. He kisses back with a cautious ferocity. Their lips, soft, hungry and anxious glide over each other. Their tongues indulge each other, the palms clasp together and their bodies reach close enough for them to feel what their closeness does to each other.

They say things about how time stands still. In this case it didn’t. It was running like a borivilli fast. All evening they kept stealing time from time, to kiss, to touch and to taste. Like teenagers that have stumbled upon the joys of the racing pulse for the first time, they gush, blush and revel. They get home, to the comfortable privacy of a bed and delight in the abundance of bodies that deeply desire each other.

She would look back at this evening and see how at one time they were little children, pulling each other’s hair, playing ‘shop shop’. At another, they were messy insecure teenagers catching a glance when the other wasn’t looking, stealthily fantasizing the first kiss. At a later time, they became these young adults staring deep into the others eye with a romantic confidence, gaping at the beauty of the lover’s body, admiring the other’s ideal self.

And then they transformed into enthusiastic middle aged couple. Comfortable in the cozy routine of daily life, looking out for the other’s horoscope predictions , planning holidays together, forgiving the shallow and inspiring aspiration. And then, ofcourse at odd times they became an old couple that is together in dying and denial of an approaching death.

But such afterthought is for afterwards. For now, she consciously loses her sense of existence to him, only a heightened awareness of their together lives. The bedroom smells of them. It looks like them, heady and frenzied. She liked this lascivious form of their romance, this wanton sense of living in the ‘now’ and ineluctably berserk expression of love. She luxuriates in the agony of lust that is tearing them apart, rejoicing the inebriated shameless nakedness.

After hours of unchaste piety, the farewell beckons. The ritual of, ’I had a great time’, is done with. The cliché, ‘where do we go from here’, is done with. The declaration of undying love looks superfluous and irrelevant. They know that lame words spoken would blemish what the majestic silence of past few hours has created.

They stand at the threshold, looking at each other, trying to take in all of what their sight had to offer. They kiss, time and again, inspite of being satiated for now. Just so that some reserves from now can be of help on needy nights. Letting go of the other now, seemed as impossible as the desire to go back to childhood. But letting go Mumbai, she did. The city had given her enough and more.
You surely move on from places. But people. Well, no.

People make places

It was when we managed to get to NAL stop after about an hour of walking; I turned to A and remarked “We are going to get home soon.” He smirked excitedly, nodding his head, letting his very shiny long hair fall smooth on his shoulders.

So that is how this has happened. Slowly and unsteadily this city is becoming home for us. Hesitant, we are extending our hands to make friends.We are letting go yesterdays, albeit unwillingly.

I now know that I have to take a right after 'PapaJones' to get to 'Sagar Arcade' and that I would find ‘Vaishali’ after I cross the ‘chocolate toast’ shop. I now take pride in knowing where I can get the best ‘dabeli’ on the way back home and where I can shop for those inexpensive footwear.

Places make people

It seems to me that I’m not directionless anymore, not surely alien to the hoardings at the signals, for I know how to walk back home from FC road. I sit alone at Barista and see how different FC road is from Commercial street, Linking Road, Ranganathan theru, Charminar, Sarojini Market and yet so similar.

Strangely now, I seem to be saying “ho” in place of “haan” and relishing poha more than upma. I seem to be making random inane conversations with new friends, without feeling distraught and alone. I now know how genda smells differently from mallige and how october showers are almost as good as ‘margazhi’. It now seems to be that the landmark sale at 'SGS' is better than the one at 'Forum', and marathi women are as friendly as the kannada ones albeit their fully covered faces.

Every time I’m out travelling, I crave to get back to pune; sit by the balcony, sip the filter coffee, and watch rains adorn the dusks.Slowly I’m slipping into spaces, where all cities merge as one; only it seems that there are different seasons that visit different cities alternatively, at different times. Strangely enough, I like this season in here.

So that is how this has happened. Slowly and unsteadily this city is becoming home for us. Hesitant, we are extending our hands to make friends. We are letting go yesterdays, albeit unwillingly.

Mumbai

This sight of falling leaves,
and odor of humid Mumbai afternoons;
Like the angst of unrequited love,
is undeserved devastation.

I court its sore truths,
marry the blue devils.
Anguish as capacious as the twilight sky,
takes away the I from me,
killing all hopes of thee.

This sight of slow passing clouds,
and sky that is devoid of colorful glory;
Like the yen of a parentless child,
is unreasonable devastation.

I give into its irritable reality,
succumb to the blindness of dark tunnels.
Self pity as abysmal as a Himalayan valley,
empties all the dreams of monsoon
closing the lid on Pandora’s Box.

--

Pune

I walk back to my home,
That houses temples and graves,
Back to meet the spirits of poets and sages.

I walk back home,
to my reserves of filter coffee,
to the pack of playing cards and poker chips,
to the set of old black & white photographs,
to the scribbled walls of poetry,
to dusty dairies that record my life scripts,
to souvenirs that safe keep nostalgia,
to a broken mirror that I believe will bring me luck,
to endearing gifts from my friends and lovers,
to a world of soothing philosophers ad story tellers,
and a silent neighbor that helps swallow gloomy noons;
drawing clear boundary lines between dreams and reality.

I walk back to my home,
That houses temples and graves.
That turns a weekend asylum for my hopeful friends.

I walk back to my home,
Where every brick nurtures a grand dream,
Dreams that help me breathe on dismal nights.

Common Man

Uncouth saturday stubble,
stinking rotten cigars of ash trays,
empty bottles of time kissed red wine,
and remains from the indulgent nights on bed.
That is all what their life offers.
There isn’t a respite,
For these old cowardly men;
that rest in silent mediocrity.

Their coarse voice never rebels,
enraged by midnight disoriented spirits.
They don’t call the ‘ugly’, names.
They don’t scream for revolution.

Their agony never becomes an archipelago.
From where life can look for boats. Or try to float.
All their knighthood and daylight pride,
Pleads for a comforting gage, late at dusk.

Their swords and aegis never rise from safe keeps,
Trying to coax, mediate, arbitrate, or threaten;
Their guilt never becomes a gluttonous demon.
From where life can look for food to feed its hunger.

Unrequited love hasn’t corroded their souls,
For their loves are driven by empty lech;
For carnal is God, sloth their religion.
Deals of togetherness, only;
Bulwark against shallow fears.

Grew shadows of apathy,
Walk past them.
Monotony doesn’t wreck their necks;
Ennui is a foreign word, so is stalemate.

There isn’t a respite,
For these poor cowardly men;
As they rest in silent mediocrity.
For they need no respite,
as they aspire to fade away one day;
Unnoticed!
Unlike us.