Their lives and mine!

2010-11-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

Of a certain voyage

You walk away. I stand there, devastated by the sudden realm of desolate silence around me. The book in my hand screams “Drunk on the wine of hazard, you are thirsty like a buzzard”.

As you bid goodbye, I see my mute thirst for love become a miserable wreck. Shame-faced and unabashed, I let tears drench my mighty indifference. Tongue-tied and embarrassed by the thought of an ask for tomorrow, I let you go. Unaware, I have yielded myself to the abysmal measure of this torment of love.

Like an anxious rabbit, my mind meanders between different spaces of time. Searching for grit from the different journeys I took. For anger to fight the easy cowardice of love. I shuffle through the myriad voices and images of my life, hoping to find another anchor. I fail. I now wish I didn’t have to look to see.

I have been peaceful a nomad, relishing the silences of solitude at airports. But today, I want to be elsewhere. Someplace where there is neither journey nor quest. Neither search nor find.

A place where we can shed every mask of reason and reassurance, every pretense of strength and determination, every desire of conquer and victory. A place where we can be united in our brazen fear for life and death, in our anxious dialogue with God and devil, in the proud embracing of our supremacy and insignificance.

A traveler moves on, they say. How does one move on from journeys that kinder such spirit? I will this time again terribly fail my nomadic twins. How will I now face the self that had begun to show signs of poise and peace? How do I now placate this yearning for the comfort of a fellow traveler? The book in my hand screams “Burn the soul, if your soul mate is not found”. I take refuge in it.

Over these years I have grown to glorify the contentment in self-possession. I wonder today why not the vulnerability of seeking an intimate confidante? Why wander? Why not linger? Why this love for being a drift wood? Why not sail ashore?

My mind loiters into those many days spent at airports; keenly peeping into others lives; screaming infants, mushy newlyweds, backpack foreigners, exuberant teens, insomniac corporate slaves, and loud families on package tours. Today I cut off from all that noise and dwell in another world, swaying between beatific anticipation of passion and wrathful plague of memories.

Memories. Your twilight smile, sheepish grin and rustic restlessness. Our juvenile jeer, back handed quips and shared pathos. Your chutzpah and mine. My compassion and yours.

Love arrives most days, and poignantly wrenches my heart in every journey I pursue. A toothless mad man I walked the howrah bridge with, a paan spitting Varanasi hawker that shed a tear when I gifted a photograph, a Srinagar sweetheart that gave me a flying kiss from afar, a Narsapur paati that cried uncontrollably on my shoulder,a naked child that hugged me to sleep on a train to raipur,a kutch villager that dressed me in her wedding gagra, a cheerapunji shopkeeper that cooked me supper in exchange of a hug, a Bhutanese family that was kind enough to let me use their home toilet on a freezing cold night on the highway.

I have been merrily consumed and consciously obsessed with moments of such deep caring and quiet. But such humane care for wayfarers doesn’t engulf one’s soul like romantic love.It does not becomes an everlasting woe that empties one of mature rationale.

I had curtained insanity of such depths eons ego, but my soul crawls out of its hiding place, unlocks all rusted windows and finds unreasonable reasons to seek this unquenchable attachment. Love has now made all familiar unfamiliar, compelling yen of a new kind to stay for infinitude. Oh this wretched cant of love.

The book now screams, ‘Your flight is now ready to take off’.

2010-10-01T02:19:00.000-07:00

Finally;

In the last 2years, when I was traveling non stop, I spent a considerable amount of time reading features/blogs written by foreigners about traveling in India. Inspite of being an Indian that has spent close to 29yrs living here, I would say exactly what all the Americans, British or French say. Nothing can prepare you for backpacking in India. And one can never finish traveling the country.
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One has heard enough about travel transforming world view, shaping perspectives, and making one a better person. Agreed, all that hopefully happened to me. But more pertinently what it really does is leave behind a craving for more travel. Over the last few years I saw it metamorphosing from being an interest to now being a nearly psychotic obsession.

Ironically I walked out of my travel job a few months back, audaciously. I was weary of continuous living out of a suitcase/backpack and needed some idle time. Or so I believed. It took me two days of a cube job to realize that I’m done with cubicles for good and travel chaos is where I will find my peace. I had to quit a dream job to find out that travel is what settles and gives food to my restless energy.
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I have also learnt that the essential element is not where you travel to, but simply that you do. Some of the most overwhelming travel experiences I have had in India, have not been in exotic locations where I went to river raft, trek or bodysurf. It happened in bland interior rural parts of the country, where I was either working towards an education initiative or indulging in photography.

Stuck at crossroads, I now have two options.

Stick it out in my claustrophobic cubicle, stare into excel sheets all day long, practice plastic smiles, and start my days with “I wish I could...” Live for the weekends, and cry over ennui of weekday weariness. Ofcourse I would then be rewarded with a fat pay end of the month.

Call it quits and move back to my travel job, get my dose of adrenalin rush every second day at an airport or railway station, fall in love with a new person from a different part of world every third day, and get lost in a different town every fourth. Ofcourse in that case, I would not have all the money in the world.

I have made my decision.
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2010-03-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

Adventure is no fun

I mean it. The adrenalin rush is over rated. I abhor the void that asks me mockingly “So what?", every time I get return from an adventure trip.

Sitting quiet by the window side, watching the monsoon rains romance the world around you. Now, that qualifies for fun. Meeting an old friend for coffee, having random insane conversations about all and sundry. That surely is fun. Walking by the the sea side, watching the waves cling to the mud a minute and let go another, now that is fun. Riding on a horse back for 3hrs on a treacherous snow-filled path in -5, when your nose is bleeding, feet is frozen, and back is broken; that is no fun.

I had this noted down this quote from somewhere in one of my dairies long back, “If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?” . Today I find it hard to find dignity in risking one's life.

I was in Kashmir recently. Obviously a trip I had planned and looked forward to for long.The beautiful photographs and memories make up for the pain i went through, or so I want to believe. But when I look back at about 10 near death experiences I have had in the last 1.5yrs and more than 20 all my life, I want to ask if all this is really worth it.

Iam now down with flu, possibly the swine flu and I feel worse than I ever have. This is not the first time though in respect to sickness. The time and effort that it takes to recuperate from each of my maddening trips is immensely huge. I have a good immune system and all times survive eating from any shitty dabba on the road, and drinking water from any tap on the highway. Or so I thought.

I’m digressing. Coming back to adventure. I have flat feet and a medical condition of unstable foot that makes me completely accident prone. I also happened to suffer from aquaphobia, since the time I almost drowned to death in kaveri at a young age. I also have acrophobia, which I seem to have mostly overcome but I still do have mountains sickness. Ofcourse I also have a case of migraine. And add to all of this I’m clumsy, disorganized, have a high restless quotient and horrible memory.

Therefore for someone like me, Adventure becomes the way of life during ‘living out of the suitcase’ days. Most times it is not self chosen. At times its ignorance of what I’m getting into, while at others it is audacity. One of my friends asked me, how I manage to engage and disengage from different places I visit and different people I meet. I think I don’t. That inability to detach emotionally is another some sort of adventure iam beginning to dislike.

I was having a look at these pictures here:
http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/reader-photo-contest-photography
I can now after these experiences kind of fathom the amount of determination, hard work agony one has to go through to get pictures of this kind.

Travel adventure is one. Adventure of other kinds too have become extremely enervating now.
Adventure for me, is throwing oneself out of the comfort zone. For me, the ‘leap’ from the comforts have been quite strange, difficult and challenging. I have my first ever photo shoot in a studio this weekend and my heart has skipped many beats already. I'am consumed by enoromous self-doubt and disillusionment all over again.

As I sit to discuss the shoot with my models, fashion designer and makeup man, I ask myself ‘why am I doing this?’ Unfortunately I don’t have answers. Do I enjoy it? Yes, I do. But hobbies when taken up seriously, become strenuous; physically and otherwise. It is not easy to juggle between two equally demanding career interests or find purpose in everyday mundane tiny progress in each fields of work or for that matter believe that all of this will take you someplace better.

So yes, life isn’t easy right now. Adventure is no fun. Why do I then persist?

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p.s : needless to say, this is flu induced.

2010-02-14T09:41:00.000-08:00

I’m a struggling model

She calls me late into the night.

She asks ‘Hey, I’m a struggling model. Are you free for a shoot this Sunday?” I reply, “Yes lady sure, you got the number right. I’m the struggling photographer’.
This is how many of my conversations go these days. I figure out the fashion world parlance with a cynical exuberance.

---

As I sit adjusting the aperture, I glance at her feet and mine, and hers again. My skin is parched, cut and cracked; not to mention plagued by the rigid dirt and grime of Bhutan. The half cut toe nail (thanks to the Vizag trip) only adds to the disgust quotient. Hers is what poets would call 'thamarai edhazh'(lotus petal) feet. I cover up my feet immediately. Though the models of course are too self-obsessed (and rightly so) to give a damn about how dirty, clumsy or ill-dressed I’m. And I'm surely not complaining.

I'm sitting with my model; chatting up about cowl neck, corset and studio lights. I tell her that I have no full length mirror, and my model squeaks “sacrilege” when I tell her I have not had one in the last 1year.

My mind drifts off to 2009. Last year I was working with GOI on a rural initiative, and spent many days in the interiors of the country studying the education system, rural life, social injustice etc. The topics of discussion included mid day meal schemes, jawahar rojgar yogna, microfinance, nasscom surveys and so on. Today I sit down to discuss about fashion, which is quite an alien world. I don’t understand or appreciate it, I try hard to fathom how one can actually have a conversation about acne for 30mins at a go.

I never imagined being a part of the fashion world; I’m still grappling with that idea. Every time I see a man indulging in a 60k watch or a woman spending lakhs on a gown, I cringe at the thought of how I don’t belong here. Sure I’m only the photographer and would like to believe that it won’t be impossible to engage and disengage from the world of glamour.

Photographer! I never imagined being one when I was growing up. Photography has come to me, unlike other pursuits in my life, because of travel. When I was travelling all over the country and alone, I needed something to keep me engaged and I started clicking. I just 'clicked' all the time. In that process, in a year, I discovered my love and aptitude for people photography. And then fashion photography happened.

Over the years I pursued many interests. In the written word I found a sense of solace and freedom that I didn’t in anything else. While in theater, I found a means of self expression and creative indulgence that helped break all my inhibitions. Veena helped me focus and meditate on life when I was going crazy over a breakup. Travel transformed me completely (that would be another post). My work with the social sector brought in level headedness, compassion and the much needed patience. (I know, I’m sounding like a 80yr old writing her autobiography, going on a narcissistic trip).

Coming back to photography, the camera is my valentine-my team mates joke. I’m dreaming about photo shoots night after night,scribbing notes from my bible on photography as I wait for my early 6am flights. I wink sometimes, almost imagining looking through the viewfinder. I wake up at all odd times at night to refer to a site to get clarity on some idea that pops up.

Everyday is a new day now. Some days I wakeup early to do a photo shoot with models getting home at 6am , and then get to work to train on critical thinking and emotional intelligence , ending the day with a call on competency mapping. I then get home to processing pictures, knowledge sharing with my flickr community etc and sleep late into the night planning the next shoot.

Every once a week, I wake up at 3.30am to catch an early flight (whoever makes these early flights least expensive?),spend most of the day at airports, chatting up with strangers from different parts of the world. Women bartenders to old social activists. I spend the rest of the day with Atwood, Lessing, Cotzee or our good old Murakami and kundera.

Then ofcourse there are socializing/ travelling for fun and photo days. I take off almost every weekend I get after my workshops in other locations for what some people would like to call ‘sight seeing’. I indulge in landscapes,nature,architecture and people photography .I make so many friends on the way, serendipity and adventure becomes a way of life those days.

There are those break days, when I spend all day at work, not working. I laugh endlessly with Tutu and Ali,my office spouses. They fill my day with so much excitement and humor, I return home on such days with a laughter induced stomach ache.

I love it this way. Each day is unpredictable; each day filled with a learning that is taking me someplace, each day a new dream and goal. When I was kid, I would pack up bags every time dad would mention someplace and pester him to take me a holiday right away. Nothing much has changed now, every month there is an exciting new destination I travel to.

Another thing that hasn’t really changed much from childhood is the friendships. I remember getting a new person home every other day (my school in tanjore was bangopposite to my home), and introducing the person to my mom as my best friend for life. Ofcourse I don’t make best friends by the minute now, but still every other week I make friends with a new artist.

It is fascinating to be befriending photographers, models, painters and filmmakers on an everyday basis. What I love about them is that they all are extremely upbeat about life.Not to forget iconoclastic, ambitious, nonconformists, and stereotype challengers.

There is so much creative energy filling up every moment of my life now, and the spirit of waking up to ideas for a shoot is unimaginably rejuvenating. So yes, its all so exciting. Not to mention mindboggling, considering how this field of work is diametrically opposite to what I have been doing all these years. It is scary because everyday I drown in the sea of self doubt, I have no inkling of an idea if I will go anywhere with this.

But I guess I’m going to jump into it. Well,I already have. Even if I fail, I think it is perfectly okie. I’m totally enjoying the journey and clichéd as it might sound, it’s not the destination that matters.

As I write this, I schedule a bikini shoot with my super hot model who is now giving me lessons night after night about life in the fashion world. I eat a humble pie and take notes diligently. She tells me I’m the best aspiring photographer she has met, and I dance on cloud nine.

2010-02-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

I shuttle between the world of villages and poverty to that of models and lenses. From crying over death to crying over wardrobe malfunction. From being fascinated with the wrinkled-old narrating stories of abuses to the manicured-siliconed cribbing about commitment phobic boyfriends. From business class flying to travel by general compartment squatting next to toilets.

Life moves in a chaotic pace, nights replacing days, sunsets disappearing into sunrises. I yearn to write about all of it. But time beats me, enslaves me, and i set out everyday to conquer the world. I run. To get all of it. Right now.

But I know I must sit down to write this and give into the restless energy of words in me.

Love did not appear,
In a flash.
It did not possess me,
In the scorching summers.
Or in those rains, that has washed away our buoyant youth.
Not when we filled every second with words.
It is not even the silences.

It must be that road I took last night,
It must the shadow of your silhouette;
the twinge of agony in your voice;
or the poetry in your eye-lash.

It must be the fiery resentment,
of this faceless storm in me.
It must be the angry adoration
For the mirror I see in you.

Love did not appear,
In a flash.
But it catches me unawares today,
Throwing at me, wings;
that had fallen off the cracks.

2009-12-15T09:31:00.000-08:00

Travel Tales

270days of travel. 19states. 5UTs. More than 80days in trains, buses, flights, rikshaws, tongas, barefoot limping.

Hotels.Guesthouses.Huts.College hostels.Teacher’s accommodation. Waiting rooms.Taxis. Oh yeah, Airport toilets

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Getting robbed and beatenup in Gujrat. Losing luggage in Rajasthan. Losing direction,being deserted on a no man’s land between UP and MP. Losing mind,in Daman.Jumping off a train someplace in chattisgarh. Dancing with collegekids during the floods in Belgaum. Wailing with a dying paati in Tamilnadu. Escaping 3landslides in Himachal/Uttrachal by minutes. Meeting some people that have changed my life for good,forever.

Disoriented, while on travel. Disoriented, without travel. Loved it. Hated it.
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The war has ended. My restless desire to etch in words what I have been seeing has won over my gnawing fear of failing to do justice to my experiences when I attempt to write about them. When I initially part chose this work I now do, I less than partly could imagine what it had in store for me. It has now been a year since I started on this journey, and I still have not fully fathomed what I have been doing (and learning).

I have visited about 19 states in the last 1 year, visiting about 150 institutions including schools, colleges, NGOs and other Governmental organizations I have attempted to understand how education interventions at different levels work across the country(and do my minutest bit to make some differences), how and why various Governmental interventions are faced with innumerable challenges and how fascinatingly different every state in India is and yet very similar.

I don’t want to write about my work as I have come to believe that little knowledge is no knowledge and the wise are the ones that know how unwise they are. However, I have decided, as the year begins to end, to write about my travel experiences. I didn’t want to write travelogs, I still don’t. There is no point in writing what time I got the bus to vizag, and where I ate my breakfast – Such information about touristy places is there all over.

But I surely want to record certain unique and interesting experiences I have had, mostly because I realize that slowly my memory of travels are fading as life seems to be speeding at a very chaotic pace and I don’t want to with time to forget all about what has happened this year.
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I plan to start with my trip to MP. Khajurao, in particular.
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P.S: Yeah,I tried. Real hard. I can't. I'm giving up on this. Now who really can write about Chattisgarh,khajurao,Himachal and Andhdrapradesh while dreaming of Bali,Malaysia,Bhutan,Srilanka etc.Iam not going to record these travels, not keep an account of 2009.Let the memories fade,let new ones fill me.

2009-10-25T23:49:00.000-07:00

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.

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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.

2009-10-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-09-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-21T07:56:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-07-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

August in July

Mindless drizzles at dawn,
And a ruthless storm to kiss us crass.
An ivy green fate at mid-morning,
And luscious grass that smells of kinky weed.

Stealthy fog, like a cat arrives;
To blind us of the annoyance of daily rants.
Ecstatic cloud like a ghostly beast,
Descends like torrent, on the somber midday lake.
The lake then rushes to lust that rain,
Akin to a lovely new bird on flight.

The rain at dusk tastes like the forbidden fruit,
Only it brings no woe or foe.
We live on the edge of every new leaf by the road,
and breathe through our right eye and then the left.
The pungent wet crimson ruins, they;
Break our agonies like a dainty piece of glass.

The morose men carry umbrellas,
The frigid women take the sidewalk;
While we jump gay into the muddy puddle,
And drink of the water dripping from ruins.

Pains from past then become lonely swans,
The pleasure of now, a virgin volcano;
As we dissolve in the rainstorm,
Life takes the shape of wind;
that murmurs delirious secrets,
Gifting us peace of an infant’s slumber.

Night too comes, and the rain still lives.
Now sounding like soft old age love.
The wind then drifts away, weary of its own pace;
Caressing gently, leaving behind a rainbow sky.

Our youth too like monsoon,
Beholds promises such as these.
A promise of impassioned company,
And a glimpse of the Eden of love.

2009-06-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

ho hums

Yes, you were right. The 20s are quite a difficult time for people like us; I only hope we don’t say the same about our 30s too. Today is another one of those days; the listlessness reigns proudly again.

I should shamelessly confess that I have no idea yet on what to live for, who to live for, why and how. Not yet. 20s are very difficult for people like us.

---

My angst like a dickhead’s libido,
Rushes through the veins;
Ridiculing all thresholds.

I feed it to fire; it becomes the sparks.
I feed it to the ocean; it swims onto become waves.
I lock it up on the dark attic; it lives like a stinking bat.
I feed it to hatred; it comes back as unrequited love.

I tell you,
I wish for my life to wed the monsoon rainbow.
You laugh at me; you say,
Unfair hope often meets with blinding lightning.

I tell you,
I feel like a lame stray dog that whines and pines for a secure home.
You laugh at me; you say,
Let me state a cliché, ‘you are what you feel’.

I ask you;
Why can’t you comfort me with false truths but call them real?
You laugh at me; you say,
A warless battleground can only be an illusion.

I tell you;
I lose direction every time I presume to have found new paths.
You laugh at me; you say,
I’m no light house; just like how none of us are, in our absurd world.

I tell you;
My spectacles are broken, and earlobes bruised.
You laugh at me; you say,
Wait till you turn blind and deafness too embraces you.

I tell you;
Let’s row that same sinking boat, we might just survive.
You laugh at me; you say,
The land that you are headed to, is not where i want to rest.

I tell you;
With age, I will unknot this complex web.
You laugh at me; you say,
When tigers fly, you will have those answers.

My dear ‘brutal truth’ friend,
Thanks to you;
The angst is still like that man’s libido,
Still rushing in the veins,
Turning this bleeding blood impure.
Making my pain intolerably painful.

--------

2009-06-24T02:25:00.000-07:00

When I’m gone

The cynic loves to peep in,
Shrieking; What if July also comes,
And fails to bring us rains?

I wrote this a few days back; when the clouds turned dark, the thunder struck hard and yet it didn’t rain. We sat there last sunday, by the balcony, talking about the little joys that move us. We spoke about the rains, just the way we have been, every single day, in the last two months.

I will be gone in a few days. To tour the country. Then, when I’m not at home, when I’m not there where it is raining you will send me a message that will read, “It is pouring down here”.

I will pine for the rains. I would wish to be here rather than there; I will long to run up the staircase with you, lie on the terrace and let the rain water drench us to death. Exactly the way we have been planning to, since the last two months.

You will lust the rains when I’m not there, and I wouldn’t like it one bit. You will need my gregarious company to laugh into the pouring water, but I will not be there. You will yen to sip hot filter coffee, but the kitchen will be dead. I will long to listen to your childhood stories, but my walls will remain silent.

On such a day, or such a night, this poetry will give you company.
----

Rain is here,
and all else is still.
My dear young man,
run now to quench your summer thirst.

Rain is here,
and all else is still.
My dear young man,
Discover that hidden chickweed,
the yellow daisies and the rich moist ewers;
the nestling cuckoos and the mad moist mud.

Watch the lucid clouds burst,
the kaleidoscopic paintbrushes on the sky strife,
the raindrops that fall to wrinkle the lake;
and the huge neem trees that bend in humility.
For in them your life lies,
In them your love rests.

Rain is here,
and all else is still.
My dear young man,
Walk slowly by that timid muddy road,
singing along with the sparrow’s joyous twitter;
smelling the fragrant twigs that rustle, long after they die.

Listen to the serenading crickets;
the insomniac lizards and the splutter on rooftops,
breaking the symphony of silent midnights.
For in them your life lies,
In them your love rests.

Rain is here,
and all else is still.
My dear young man,
Forget the yesteryears,
spent in sweltering heat,
Forgive the iron rods of restraint,
when you were your prison.

For now, all else is still,
But for your stirring heart beat,
your nervous shiver, and your rattling tooth.
Let the plectrums lust your guitar strings,
and a new orchestral song be born.
Let all else be still,
But for this new rain kissed life in you.

2009-05-30T05:09:00.000-07:00

Friends

Freedom for breakfast,
Boisterous laughter for lunch,
And a breezy banterous midnight,
My sorrow now must drop its head in shame,
And ennui might as well pack its bags.

Comely has come to me in gay abandon,
Gone are the times when nearness was too far.
For Friendship is now life’s new name.
Their naughty taunts are all, but feathers in my hands.
Their tender hugs are all, but butterflies on my eyelids.
The voice of their smiles deeper than joys of the rain.

Our Internet whining, a celebration of youth’s desire.
Our parallel pasts, a creation of monumental moments.
Our nasty arguments, an asynchronous melody.

I revel every night, in our silence;
In the calm that has followed our early twenties rebellion.
I smoke away puffs of intoxicating cigars;
To empathize with the narcissistic joys of your intense highs.

I travel the roads of your experiences,
Embracing the tender stories of unsaid loves.
I fathom the meanings of your whims,
Jumping along with puppets of our vanilla dreams.

I learn music that transcends thresholds,
Singing along, with your iconoclastic imagination.
I learn sports that inspires spirited quests,
Appreciating ideologies that lie on other continents.

Past ofcourse peeps in at times.
So every morning now,
Before I latch the house;
I rush back to bid goodbye, and
Smell that old bed sheet,
and the pillow of teens,
Where my head lay,
And my heart lived.

But I know now;
That the dead cannot do what life can do.
For the dead cannot do what dreams can.
For the dead cannot do what friends can.

2009-05-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

There are only so many tomorrows. But then there are eternal goals. Eternal, stupendous and mind boggling.

--
I started my day at the village listening to an “oppari” that cut across the drowsy silence of a very scorching hot morning in Andhra Pradesh. The agony in the woman’s coarse loud voice and the anguish of her chest beating howls oozed out the emotional strength I had started off my journey with, wrenching my heart like nothing else had, in a longtime.

Having grown up in villages more than 10years of my life, having spoken of villages exotically like many other urbanites and having done some research on building model villages, rural sustainable development etc I believed that there isn’t any challenge in the work I’m there to do that I can’t foresee. I was ofcourse in for a surprise. The crashing down of the illusions of a simple village free of the stressful pace of urban settlements is surely not pleasant surprise at that.

Considering the fact that there are about 4000NGOs that work in AP, we presumed that the development interventions must be of good number and quality. However even if there were 40,000 people working with the villages, it still is miniscule for the more than 25,000 villages each with an average population of 1000. The amount of work the Government and the social activists are trying to do is not any meager, yet how do you ensure the effectiveness of implementation of the projects and create transformation in the mindset of the millions in a country that houses more than 6lakh villages?

My varied experiences started with the display of how extortion is the way of life and easy money order of the day in that village (and many others).This very shabby looking man followed me around the village asking for alms. When I finally gave in and offered 2Rs he flung it back at me; he then took out a piece of lemon and ash, chanted some abracadabra, and threw them in my direction, cursing me for life because the amount is too meager. I later find out that he is houseless and penniless, just like the 1,943,766 people in the country who are homeless (and that is only as per 2001 census).

The experiences of extortion continued, with monkeys trained by the villagers snatching things from our hands to get groundnuts in exchange. Our cars were stopped many a times, by villagers who would not let us drive ahead unless we gave them money. Money. Ofcourse, it is very pertinent to make their money. Else how could they afford their 180Ml Alcohol? Food three times or not, basic sanitation or not, electricity or not, alcohol and beedi prevails. So yes, every household spends Rs.75 everyday on Alcohol though more than 60% of them live below the poverty line.

The Doctor that works there tells me, the first thing India needs is cleaning up. Surely, with such pathetic sanitation I wonder how we can imagine doing anything else at all. The drainage stinks of human and cow shit, urine, waste from fields, and dirty water from various other sources. None of these drainages are closed and they overflow just outside their huts. Children sit next to these, eating, playing, jumping in and practically spending their entire day there. We offering to clean up for a day would have done nothing at all from a long term perspective.

We all concurred that education and awareness the only we can address any of these problems. But where do we make a beginning and how? The village has a school that has upto 10th class, but no teacher that has studied beyond 10th. There is the mid day meaning scheme but the rice is cooked in unimaginably unhealthy conditions. So there is hardly any motivation to send children to schools and if they sent their girl children all hell will break loose.

How do you find an educated groom for the girl? And for obvious reasons the more educated she is, more the dowry. The female infanticide continues inspite of all interventions by the many non governmental organizations. Family planning has worked, only because these men want to save up money for the alcohol.

The old age home and hospital is overflowing with diseased people, many with chronic ones. There is a wail from every ward in there, still born children, death at a premature age, female infanticide et al. I broke down when this mostly naked old lady, fell on my legs crying and later hugged me tight for 10mins telling me her story.

I spend the rest of my day discussing the deep rooted caste issues, farmer suicides, lack of hygiene, alcohol abuse etc with the many social activities. The stories were unending, their pain and passion to reform abysmal. However, the amount of support they need to create this is huge.

So, just like the many others I was there to study their problems, hoping I could inspire these 19year old students with me to do their bit to the dreamy transformation plans. Just so that they don’t follow the herd, just so that they can gather courage to do the unconventional. So that they don’t spend their weekends in flashy malls, smelling cookies, ogling at people of the opposite sex, chatting up about global warming and Karan Johar’s sexual preferences like they were not two very different issues.
--
Often when I realize the intensity of problems Iam out to make a difference to, given the many constraints I work with, I’m tempted very much to quit; contrary to what I tell my friends about challenges inspiring me. The same sinking feeling of desperation to return to the comfortable life of mediocrity and indifference often returns on nights when muscles ache, legs refuse to take me any farther, and eyelids burn begging for sleep.

As I sat there by the ‘thinnai’ later at midnight by the muddy roads of the village, prasad came running to me, sat beside me and asked, “Are you going to live with us here? Teach us to dance, sing and speak English?”. I evaded the question. Later I sat there alone, looking the moon that glittered in silence. Prasad seemed to be still talking to me.

“Look, the wails had subsided, so will your agony when you get back to your cushy home. In the daily grinds of finding your own need for love, your compassion for these strangers would vanish into thin air. The warm breeze blowing silently now burn your spirit and you will return home hurt. What of us, then?”

What of us, they ask me, as the flickering street light finally dies out. The only light guiding me back home.

2009-05-22T05:58:00.001-07:00

Hope is not cruel

My voodoo charm loses to the Sun.
I breathe, craving for the smell of mud moist.
I search in vain, all day long;
For signs of rain on our parched dirty gr
ound.

My new house smiles,
Trying to make me its own.
But this Sun my foe, abhors my hopes.
It sneers and roars, robust in its arrogance;
Refusing to empathize with my angry yen.

My new found friends,
Gift warm love that offers some solace.
But this Sun my foe, abhors my mirth.
It blinds my eye and burns bleeding nostrils.
My long lost cousins, thunder and lightning of the night;
Vanish fearing the apparitions of sunny smoke.

My new neighbor wins all ‘games’,
In an attempt to teach me some humility.
But this Sun my foe, abhors my wisdom.
It taunts and jeers, seething in mighty rage,
Terrorizing me and the frail black clouds.

My best friend nostalgia,
Blows like cold breeze that offers to sung.
But this Sun my foe, abhors my glee.
August and contemptuous, it lets its hair down.
Humiliating my dainty countenance.

Yet, I refuse to surrender;
To this fireball that dances in vanity,
Drunk in its heady idea of invincibility.

I beseech for an impulsive wind,
For damp rain kissed darkness;
So as to inhale the monsoon’s vertigo.
So as to taste dirty droplets of water,
From the rooftop on my tingling tongue. So as to prance and scurry,
Way past the traffic singing my sexy tune.

So as to walk silently on a dazed night,
Alongside the contours of my terrace;
Long after a thunderous evening shower.
So as to listen to the chaotic peace of dawns;
Relishing the light drizzles,
the remains of heavy showers.

So as to jump up and pull down the bent branches,
Heavy with pellets of water;
So that the small rains fall into me.
Love too, then will pour on me,
Like a centipede, slow;
And majestic on its hundred feet.
Pristine and heart-wrenching.
Just the way it did four monsoons back.
Hope is not cruel.

2009-05-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Apology

I entertain in the silence of nights,
The demons from yesteryears.
I chat up my with dishonor,
Listening to its rotten ridicule;

Time has passed by,
So has our timeless naivety.
Our spirits have bloomed,
In tune with these varying seasons.

I wish I were a wise octopus,
That could flee from unforgiving fret.
That would change colors to pale,
And run away from foes like this ‘baggage’.

I fail now looking for the right words,
That could knit back the torn.
That could kill the nameless pain,
Of lifeless times.
That could warm your heart,
And bring cheer, my childlike man.

I hope to find a way to plea,
Some way to unsay the spoken.
Erase that moment from past,
And protect your naked hurt.

My glass threads words,
And the world knows its long detours.
Unforgivable my morbid err;
Unconvincing my imperfection’s excuse;
Invincible my remorse for my shallow.

My murkiest guilt,
And this blatant egotism,
Fought many wars.
Your manly realism
And this shy vulnerability,
Fought many wars.

I asked no apology,
You granted none.

But let us change this fate.
My fondness like light,
Lights up bright this day;
Hoping to burn my sin,
In wild forest fire.

Will your grace like the Sun,
That offers light every night,
To the dainty proud moon,
Forgive and forget?

2009-04-22T02:36:00.000-07:00

Bangalore

I want to creep behind the bushes today,
Keep masked the uneasy jitters.
Camouflage my cowardice.

I want to tear my skin off, of;
Pins and needles,
The anguish of the wayward,
These blues of my lone drift.

I want to creep behind the bushes today,
Seek refuge in soft sobs.
Hide away from the disquiet,
Of bidding adieu to this land.

Pune

I ask now, if life before;
Was only a prologue?
To a beautiful new promise of this land.

I ask now,if love before;
Was only a virgin coyness?
And if it will now taste like an aged wine.

I chase now, dreams;
That shouts like the sun, rising atop tall mountains of the east.
That drizzles like the spring, leaping from within the summers.
That laughs like youth, which is anxious to touch.
That stabs like first snow, and speaks like a pride new mother.

I thirst now,for beauty;
That is not just cheer, but ecstasy.
That is not akin a serene lake, but the tempest sea.
That is unveiled and uncharted.
That is unseen and unfathomed.
That is ceaseless and immortal.

2009-04-15T21:34:00.001-07:00

Wanton

“I leave today, but will stay with you in spirit”, she promised.

---
Ram spent his naïveté childhood in kanyakumari; every street in the town had a story from his life to narrate, every corner a romantic memory he cherished. After years of living a nomadic life, he moved back there.

Every time she telephoned him, he would urge her to visit him. His charming tales about the small touristy town caught her fancy. He would say “There is something fascinating about the beaches in Tamilnadu, some kind of surreal beauty peculiar to our land. They have character, they are more real. Just like how the Gods carved out of stones down south invoke more devotion than the ones sculpted of marbles in other parts of the country.”

She wondered if idols of any sort had the power to turn her to a theist but surely, beaches with character sounded mysterious. She started on her trip to explore TamilNadu with a sense of romance that fed her wanton spirit. The language of Tamils, Bharatnatyam, ancient temples, poetry, literature; all of this had piqued her curiosity since the time they were introduced to her in teens.

There are times you cut off from the roots and find your soul elsewhere; she did so on the beaches of kumari. Tamil isn’t her native tongue nor the locals of kumari her kith and kin. Yet she recognized a strange bond with the place that melted her heart. Similar to how you meet someone for the first time, and feel an instantaneous soul connection with him or her. Her love for the land was unfathomable, and abysmal.

It is a different matter that she met him there. No, she didn’t fall in love with him. Not at all. She didn’t want to burden herself with love that competed with the peace for her solitude any longer.

---
There was something else about Ram. Some sense of warmth that shone in his eyes that reached her heart, beyond the realms of her intellectual understanding of love. May be it was just sympathy. Yes, that what it must be then. Though she had come to believe that no one deserved sympathy, she couldn’t help herself but feel pity for that childlike man.

He was hurt beyond any sort of imagination possible by mortals. Inspite of what he might on hindsight conclude, he did break down. He is only human.

It wasn’t when the police had dragged him out of his house or stripped him off those expensive clothes, that he broke down. Not when the lathi hit every bone in his body, the ones he didn’t know existed. Not when hot blood oozed out from his private parts and spread all across his genitals and inner thighs causing a sense of burning irritation that took months to heal. Not even when they spit on the food that was served to him. What really killed his spirit is the knowledge that his beloved wife had got him behind the bars.

When he first heard about it, he dismissed it off his very characteristic cynical smile. Saritha? Now, how is that possible? How could this woman who had loved him dearly possibly lodge a false complaint against him? But well, she had.

She had filed an FIR; accusing him of domestic violence and sexual harassment. It was a Friday when she did that, and he spent the weekend in the lockup as an accused. The two days that he spent in the lockup was nightmarish, but what followed was worse. Million visits to the lawyer’s house, weekly summon at the court, the customary salutes to the constables every Saturday, the gossips at workplace, the backbiting relatives. All of that and more.

--
As she sat by the window awed by the beauty of the crimson sun set into the ocean, he wailed.While he lay there on her lap crying,she couldn’t help but feel a overpowering sense of anger against the wife and a strong sense of pity for this old man breaking down like a child. She had lost all sense of rationality and let him believe she was there for him unconditionally.

She had led him on to believe she was in love with him. And that being there for him meant she would give herself wholly to him. She failed to make him see that all she wanted was to mother him; to pacify, console and put to sleep a wounded child. To nourish and nurture hope for a better day,to nurse the bruise, to heel the dead is what she wished for.

But more often that not, the physical needs of a man comes in the way of any possibility of platonic relationships. He wanted to feel in his weary bones the pleasure of his body over the woman, a way of experiencing a sense of power he had to relinquish to another woman. And she was there, foolishly trying to fight him, realizing only too late that she had led him to it. He was lying on her, forcing himself against her tiny frame. It was rape, only she had made him believe otherwise.

When she finally gathered all her strength and kicked his balls with her knee, he lost his balance, literally and otherwise. He couldn’t fathom the reasoning behind her refusal to indulge him after promising unflinching support through his painful times. He had easily believed she was there for him, in all forms and at all times.

---
She did eventually forgive him; Weak, crass men don’t deserve anger.She had to leave kanyakumari behind. Goodbyes are never easy, not when it comes to people and places. Leaving Kanyakumari meant leaving behind a phenomenon, an experience that altered her perspective on love in more ways than one. She had to move on, like always.

---

“I need you. I wish you would stay on”. Ram said as he was bidding Goodbye. His need to be protected by a woman irked her, though the childlike plea filled her with an insurmountable amount of compassion.

“I leave today, but will stay with you in spirit”, she promised.

2009-04-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

She asks, “What do you when your spirit withers?”
“I feed it music”, I tell her.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done

----
I often wonder what I would do if I didn’t have music to wash the agony of all the dust and woe, off my soul. If I couldn’t hide myself in spaces between the ragas, how would I ever cope with the pathos of all the bathos? If I couldn’t dance atop the notes entwined with each other, how would I ever etch vividly in my heart, the sounds of laughter that life brings me?

Wander is where life is, I had written so sometime back. If wander is where life is, music is where wander is. Music takes me places; opening a vista to the world around and beyond me. Music gifts a panorama of possibilities that cement the hopes and plans I pack along for the trips every morning, strengthening the desire for dreams and nostalgia I visit at nights.

Music gives meaning to my memories, setting a tone for life, befitting every reason I give to substantiate it.Sufi music on a melancholic evening by the sea side or a philosophic Gulzar while I watch the sunrise. A fantasy like illayaraja as I watch sunset on the sand dunes or a soothing Ghazal to heel my wounds on a rubbish bus travel in hot deserts. Gambeera Natiyam on an inspired day at work or an aesthetically loud ARR classic to celebrate an ecstatic late night drive. Music colors life.

The beauty of music is,it is my own creation even when I’m only listening to it and the process of such a creation exhilarating. The first time I wrote a song for a composition, I fascinated beyond imagination. To see your words fly in the air, become music and create a life of its own is a profound experiance.It seemed as if something had changed since then, some door was opened, some inhibition broken.

Music is what makes the otherwise long tiring smelly journeys (literal and otherwise) blissful.
It drowns out the noise around and fills one’s being with soulful sounds.It enhances the present, making the world much more interesting.

Places apart, music takes me to people too. I have these songs and playlists reserved for many people in my life, almost as if each song ties me with different people from different times. I safeguard that song and nurture it; just the way I do the relationship. I don’t let any other person or memory accumulate over that song, lest it loses its individuality.

I like what Shelly says;

Are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?

I wonder how blind I would have been to hypocrisy and illogic of inequalities had I not fallen in love with the music of love. I wish I had let music elevate me much earlier in life. I wish music had inspired the human in me much earlier than today.

Music now, is where I find my universe in. It is only with music that I now have an all encompassing relationship with .Emotionally, intellectually and spiritually stimulating and fulfilling.

It is in the emotional reverberations the sound of music brings, I escape, I revel, I heal, and evolve. True to what Nietzsche says “Without music, life would be a mistake”. But what would be a bigger mistake is to, listen to music yet not listen. That sentence has too many layers to it, the word “music” many connotations.

Music is a revelation. If you revel in it.Music is wisdom. If you search for it.
Music is a charm. With immense strength to create miracles.
Music is love. With magical powers to get one drugged.
Music is life. Infinite and incorrigible.

2009-04-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Longing for lust,
Or is she lusting to long?
Memory of the moans,
Or is it moaning for memories?
Possessed by the play,
Or is she playing like the possessed?
Heat of the warmth,
Or is she seeking the warmth of the heat?

Desire rebels again today for no cause;
Screaming, most times begging.
Lips these tremble,
seeking another life;
As erotic lashings prepare for more strife.

Indulgent sips, these sinful hips,
Veins these, threaten to burst open;
Veins these, yen to race in rapture.
So as to die a moment,
When all that spirit is spent.

2009-03-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

Cruising through life

I’m very fidgety today, my heart has skipped too many beats. I’m uncharacteristically fumbling for the right words as I address my audience in the training room.

Ofcourse I know the reasons. The routine daily grind is getting me edgy; I can’t wait to begin to travel. The blood in my vein flows hither thither, my breath annoyed as it abhors settling in some place and breathing rhythmically. My feet itches, as they are dying to be thrown off balance. It is a different matter that it’s hardly a week since I got back to Bangalore.

“I travel a lot. I hate having my life disrupted by routine”. Well, that quite is the state of my mind. At any point of time now, I’m either planning a new trip, on a trip or delighting in the memories of one that went by. So why this lust for the ‘wander’?

Every time I begin a journey leaving behind comfortable havens of my cozy home in search of the unknown and unexplored, the expanse of my existence and experience magnifies tremendously. I love the adventure in the utter newness of kissing alien winds against my face, on unaccustomed roads.

Travel is like a capture. One hears of a place, knows it, imagines it, and then gets there to experience it. Then there is a totally difference experience of the same place, in hindsight.

My soul leaps in joy every time an idea to explore a new place comes alive. I revel in the idea of what meanings the journey might bring, and let the yearning curiosity to build within. I lose myself in all the research and planning till that idea gets a definite form, a vivid vision, and becomes a compelling interest.

So yes, there are plans. Backup plans. Contingent plans. Disaster recovery plans. Inspite of all the plans, the journey gifts too many surprises. Ofcourse one doesn’t plan to learn from the travel but that surely is a consequence.

Travel places life in distinct boxes of varied experiences drawing meaningful contours, though by nature being chaotic and unstructured. Apart from many other things, wander is most significantly very humbling.

Travel brings me face to face with realities I have heard of but never experienced, the nomadic existence keeps me grounded by constantly reinforcing the vastness of the world and my own shallow knowledge of such vastness. As I experience the voracious variety of people and their idiosyncrasies, slowly but surely I learn to let go of prejudices, stereotypes and hypocrisy. The more I know, the more I know of how much I don’t know.

Ironically, wander establishes and constantly reestablishes that harmony with the world outside and peace within. I believe that as we travel to relate to the world around us, we travel that much or more distance within. I’m reminded of a friend who often quotes James Baldwin; he seemed to have said, “I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.” Truly it is in the adventure, romanticism, exploration and chaos we often find ourselves.

Travel teaches you to love. It tells you how differences are fascinating and how one has to give to live. I see myself becoming more liberal, accepting, silent, wholesome and compassionate with the day; surely that couldn’t have happened if I had chosen to veggetate in one small part of the world. The wander pushes me to tear my soul and peep within, only so that I can stitch it back differently.

No doubt there are times when the long roads annoy me, the trains and stink wear me off, a boredom of the newness sets in, a longing to smell the bed sheets back home troubles me and life seems a detour. But then again, that restlessness too is a part of the package, and makes the wander more interesting.

Travelling alone has its own charm. I often converse with locals or other tourists when I’m on my own. Each conversation has a life of its own and creates a bond on its own standing.

Wander has so many parallels to the experiences we have of the way life treats us and vice-versa. It reinforces the necessity to “move on”, and redefines the joyousness and pathos of leaving past behind and looking forward constantly. It tells you how a moment gone can never be recovered, for instance how the innocence of childhood can never be returned to and therefore gives you the strength to seek newness.

Travel also gives a sense of restlessness which is both unsettling and annoying but only till you discover adventure in the unknown. To wake up not knowing where you, why you are and how, and then taking that time to find your place in the world in one of those beautiful sensations that parallels none other.

When you are in a alien place you take nothing for granted and no relationship to be so familiar that you slip from your best behavior. You make friends with dirt and grime, you lust the dust of the long roads, you walk around in wet innerwear after a jump into the waterfall, you chat up the ailing old woman, you kiss the crying little kid, you live in that moment. Most importantly, you live.

So yes, wander is where life is.

2009-02-26T10:19:00.000-08:00

Sanjoli
(For you Panda)

Dance all night, my dearest love;
Dance upto the breaking of dawn.
Dance so that the world can see,
how worthy the pursuit of eternal joy.

Dance till those exquisite eyes tire,
Dance till your fiery feet like breeze,
Can kiss without touching.
Dance till the song in music lasts;
Dance, in directions you discover,
Creating new ragas your spirits spell.
.
Dance till you tame the wild,
till the wild tames the timid.
Dance to a burning veena,
In the memory and quest of rapturous passion.
Dance like your soul wants to wails,
dance as the wanton worries have dwarfed.

Dance to slay those masquerading mirages,
Dance as the imprisoned cries to be free.
Dance as one syncopated dream ends
And begins with another.
Dance so that you can nurture lives,
that breathe.

2009-02-16T02:50:00.000-08:00

Gujarat, it is. Vadodra. “Rajendra Power works” is the first shop at sight. I ponder on the word 'Power'.
----

“How much power do you have?” he asks. “Tell me Madam, how much’, he repeats. He takes a pencil to his head, scratches his oily hair, then lowers it down to the sides of his huge ears, and then the corner of his lips and finally puts it into his mouth. I want to run away from the room and puke. But I stay put.

“Tell me Madam, what do you even know about how education works in villages? What do you know about hunger and hygiene? What do you know about community development?” he asks.

“You must be going to shopping malls on Saturdays. Buying designer clothes. Eating in 5star hotels. Smoking. Drinking. Boyfriends.” I’m furious. For one, he has made up his mind on what kind of the life I lead. Worse he believes that people, who smoke, drink or have ‘Boy friends’ don’t talk sense.

“Am I right Madam, silence means acceptance. Tell me madam, how many boyfriends do you have?” I can’t believe that he is continuing this line of conversation and I’m letting him do so. The irony of him calling me Madam irritates me. I surely don’t understand what he means by ‘boyfriends’. I surely don’t see why he would presume that single women in cities sleep around and even if they did how that has any relevance to what I’m here to do.

“Sir, I have no power. Nothing in front of you.” Yes, that is what I say. My English is surely going to the dogs. “You have been in this sector for 25years, fighting to keep things going in the right direction. I’m no one, with no power. I’m just here to see if I can become something, do something meaningful. So that one day I become like you.” I can’t believe I just said that. I can’t believe I’m doing this manipulative ego massage thing. I have finally learnt the lessons on silent aggression.

(Do everything you can, I tell myself. Everything in your ‘power’ to help Radha Shinde make enough money so that she can run away from her abusive father. Everything to make sure Prashant Kale lands a job, and gets out of the shit hole he lives in. Everything to help Rakhi Sarkar find the courage to walk away from her so called life partner who forces himself on her everyday)

He smiles now, lets me go ahead with my presentation. Ready to consider my proposal, because he is the powerful one now. I give the power to him. Easy to give power, I had imagined.

-----

Till I met Reema (name changed). How superficial a quest this monstrous ‘power’. Reema didn’t cry when she told me about her life, opening up to a stranger didn’t seem to be a big thing. Not when you are used to being forcefully ripped apart to nakedness for the benefit of all the “men” in the house everyday.

I listened with moist eyes, as she spoke about ‘rape’ that has become a way of life for her. Her husband, husband’s two brothers, husband’s father. Taking turns, entering her like they would a toilet, urinate and get out. Killing her every night, entering her like a knife on soft spongy cakes.
One ofcourse hears about it all the time! Man controlling the woman’s life, treating her likes a piece of shit and hurting her with impunity. But what really irritates me is the way some women resign to their ‘fate’ and accept the violence doled out to them quietly.

However, I realize the whole talk about equality and woman coming of age is too much of an ‘urban’ phenomenon. And as easy as it may seem to suggest that a woman should rebel and fight her dominating husband, I now ‘see’ why it is quite a task.

----

One has read about it, seen it in movies, and surely experienced sexual harassment in some form at some point in time. Yet when you sit next to a victim, and sense the pain it is totally different story altogether. Rape, how barbaric.

Rape I believe is a horrendous act of power play by frigid men who have never known how tender like breeze it is to be empowered by a woman’s unconditional giving passionate love.

Or may be by men who have not experienced the sense of power from accomplishments that are intellectually or emotionally challenging. Insecure and helpless that they are, they must enjoy the idea of women crushed under their huge bodies, unable to move, giving up and into their whims. Relishing the experience of enslaving a beautiful being by their strength.

Boredom too must be a reason. I guess the act becomes more exciting when the woman pleads to be let go. Hating her, slapping her, hearing her shriek in pain, seeing her covered in blood. Fulfilling it must be, to be aware of the damage done, to have conquered. Like slaying an enemy on the war ground, winning the battle, sneering at her insolent pleas to let go, proud of the aftermaths of the war.

Ironical, how powerless men seek power in a so called meek woman. Or Women.

Women like Reema though are changing the way women in rural India are fighting this. She tells me how constitutional rights on ‘right to life and liberty’ are meant for both men and women alike. She has joined a college, when the men of her house are out she manages to attend the college with her mother in law’s help. She hopes to find a job which pays her enough to make a living on her own, so that she can run away.

Sure, Education can be transformational.

2009-02-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

My way and the highway

I’m on the way to our noisy tinsel town today. I’m leaving behind the quaint Pune, the dusty villages, road side special chais, murky ponds, dirty toilets, and the surreal calm of watching sun set over the lush green fields.

The Pune –Bombay highway is surely ‘something’. It has an extra-ordinary capacity to make tiring journeys meaningful; I begin to believe that the long seemingly unending roads have some cosmic power to indulge one in nostalgia. My past like a puppet dances in front of my eyes. Memories, so much like those voyeuristic waves of the ocean that pay frequent visits to watch the many couples sitting hand in hand by Bandstand, visit me.

Romance. Tease. Mush. Couples. Couples that seem a little wary of the onlookers , but very comfortable in their world of innocent loves. Like two birds perched on a treetop nestling upto each other, as if they live in a fantasy land where only they and their love for each other exists. How beautiful to be lost in the idea of forever loves.

I too spent few such years here; growing up in a city that presented to me a world of possibilities. The world of glitter that awes small town girls didn’t spare me, it implored me to break free from the claustrophobic small town ideals. Life surely comes a full circle. To be here again today after all these years, but craving to go back to the small world I have created for myself, quite funny.

Cities take on human forms, it seems. Strangely enough,evoking different sentiments at different times. A city that meant ‘returning to teens’ for many years, means only one thing to me now. The city that ‘he’ lives in. The city that he breathes in. The city he is fighting to survive in. The city that must surely be teaching him many interesting lessons, different from my own lessons yet similar.

I begin to wonder if he has walked by this road I now travel by, and if I’m stepping on the pavements that he has left his marks on. I wonder if he has stood by the road, hands in the pocket, wandering aimlessly, pondering over a million things, like I do now. He must have.

Did he leen against this wall and sip a ‘maaza’ to quench his thirst on a humid afternoon? Did he look up angrily at the sun and wipe the sweet off his forehead with his long fingers, standing right here. Or may be he was here on a sleepless night and stared into the oblivion.

Did he think about me, while walking past this bakery that reads my name? And if and when he did, what was I doing there in Bangalore? Did we think of each other fondly at exactly the same point in time and if we did, were we connected in some form?

Did he walk by my college and stare at the t-shirt clad girls who study there now? Did he wonder how I looked like back then? Did you even realize it is this college that I went to.

Did he decide to taste the first rains during last season and walk out to get drenched, just like I did at 18? Did the rain drops kiss his lips the way I had, did he go on to fantasize kissing me on the road the way we had in other cities? Did I exist in some form in his mind, in the empty places around him? Did we ever belong together in his mind, or in any space in this city, the way ‘we’ do in mine?

He calls me on the mobile when I’m lost in such thoughts, he speaks to me for a minute and he talks business. He speaks to me like we are strangers. As if there was never an intimate relationship between us ever. Like he doesn't know how I look first thing in the morning, like I don’t know how he moans when I bite his ears. Like we never dreamt of this world in which he, me and our children live a fairy tale life.

He talks like I’m ‘me’. He is "he". And ‘we’ don’t exist. And we never existed.May it doesn’t. Infact, I’m sure it does not. Not for him.

I wonder if “we” can exist only in my mind, in my space, in my world. May be it can. Maybe I’m happy with this. May be it hurts. I reach my guest house.

I move on. From the Pune-Mumbai highway.

2009-02-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

Newer shades of life

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, “Mother, what was war?”.

I have a feeling Eve Merriam would have known that such a dream is mere utopian, and may be she also knew that the man who authored Utopia was beheaded.

----
If I have to stop myself from being verbose, and state the one significant learning that I have had from my very tiring and challenging exploration of the little known towns and villages in Maharashtra, it has to be this.

Creating any form of social change is an extremely slow and deliberate process; only the very objective, grounded and realistic should venture on that path. As a friend rightly pointed out, it is not an easy task for a romantic like me, an emotional fool who has hardly ever been objective in life to fight a comfortably complacent system like this.

Every morning now I wake up to watch the sun rise; I look into the sunrays so that the bright light can pierce through me, filling me with the grit and courage to work with the very bureaucratic/hypocritical system with enormous amount of patience, tolerance and energy.

My very enriching journey begun when I learnt that the taxi driver who picked me up from this village railway station, is a Mechanical Engineer. He tells me how many of his many batch mates from the college are selling vegetables, running travel agencies, teaching in Government schools, working on real estates etc. And not out of choice, he affirms.

I realize that exotic dreams are only the luxury of a gifted few of us in the cities.
“Wouldn’t any of you like a holiday in Hawaii Islands?” I had asked a group of students in this small town Engineering College, which is located on the banks of a river.

(I must mention that this river is where the villagers get their drinking water from, wash their clothes in, urinate in, clean the buffaloes and themselves)

A very dirty looking boy stood up to tell me in his broken English, “Madam, I don’t know where Hawaii is. But I want to take my parents on a train to holiday in Mumbai. But before that I would like to make sure they get food three times a day, they have compromised on that to make sure I become an Engineer”. I was ofcourse humbled, and more importantly guilty of the grand life I have taken for granted.

The many Engineering colleges that have mushroomed across the country(especially in South and Maharashtra) mostly to indulge the not so “good” money of politicians has ensured that Engineering education is available to many in the rural parts of the country. This should have been very fine, considering the IT industry needs all of these Engineers, and more.However lack of teachers that are qualified, absence of a curriculum that is relevant to the world we live in, non compliance with many AICTE regulations and most importantly absence of many passionate educationalists has ensured that the employability of students in these rural colleges is at its lowest.

I agree this is only one side of the story. Ofcourse there are great institutions that produce great Engineers that work with great organizations. But let us forget about the cream, let us forgot about the average too, for they form a small percentage. Andhra Pradesh alone has 537 Engineering Colleges, the maximum no. of colleges in any city, which means they have about approximately 2lakh students passing out every year, out of which not even 25% are employable. What happens to the rest of the students that have spent a few lakhs to get educated, hoping they land a plum job? How do they pay off the education loans, and how do they sustain their livelihood?

My first interaction with this faculty from a very reputed college in Pune was very indicative of the experiences that awaited me. He walked me upto a seminar hall and spent 9 out 10minutes that we interacted, spitting the paan in his mouth indecently (not that one can spit in a decent fashion, yet). I very politely suggested, “Sir, your students are constantly watching you, and will be tempted to ape you. May be you shouldn’t do this”. He replies “I don’t drink whisky or see those kinds of magazines. But the students do it anyway. If I didn’t spit also, they will eventually learn to”.

In most of the tier 3 colleges, the 2007 pass outs teach the 2008students, and it is those students who don’t get placed that decide to teach. Well, it is quite obvious why faculties with doctorates and many years of experience will not leave the cities and teach in god forsaken towns/villages. (But I must confess there are some who do, like this IIT doctorate guy who has quit his very posh life to do this as his believes in the transformational value of education, such people are a handful though).

Not enough doctorate engineers who take to teaching, many such doctorates running off to the US, colleges not having autonomous power to take decisions, lack of funding for infrastructure etc are a few obvious issues that plague this sector. But beyond all these very specific huge obvious issues, which seem to have specific solutions that many research findings suggest, there are certain small issues. Small issues which have huge impact, and have limited solutions.

One such issue is that of the narrow minded, lethargic, old school mindset of a significant few educationalists. After all most of them belong to the generation of our parents who teach their children superficial values, criticize and abuse so as to discipline , and sit up there on a pedestal instructing youngsters what is right and wrong.

I didn’t meet a single faculty who advised the students to vote, but many who instructed the girls and boys to not interact with each other. Most of them expect students to keep the campus clean, but would spit on the roads or throw plastic mugs out of the window when they travel by train.

I wondered if I’m being too judgmental and extrapolating very stupidly my few experiences to form opinions about the entire community. But unfortunately my many ‘Engineer’ friends, the 3000 students that I worked with , the 250 faculties I have interacted with, the board of studies, the few ambitious educationalists, and the many research findings reaffirm my opinions.

My heart goes out to these parents who send their children to become Engineers hoping for a ‘bright’ future, to these naïveté students who hope to live a “respectable’ life, and the few spirited educationalists who are struggling for changes that are being met with too many challenges.

One of my friends mentioned that I will never understand what it is to be studying in an Engineering College in a rural area. True. Iam no Engineer. I would never really understand what it means to be one. Or to be studying to become one. But having spent more than 15yrs of my life studying in smaller towns living a middle class life, studying in closed non progressive schools and colleges gives me some idea.

What can I do? What can the program I work on do? How much change can we create, how many lives can I (we) touch? Isn’t the dream to transform an entire system utopian? Is it possible in a life time? Will my resolve to create change last forever? What can a romantic who has lived a luxurious life, having worked out of cushy cabins, and is used to seeking shallow materialistic dreams like owning a 1000Sqft. apartment do?

I don’t have all the answers. But I know, Change is slow. Deliberate. And possible.

As I sit and type this story on my laptop, I hear Sharukh Khan say ,in the Lead India Video, “Are we going to keep thinking about what we should be doing, or do something about what we are thinking. Thinking can happen from an armchair, while doing is the only way to get something done.”

I stop writing, and get started on my trip to Kolhapur.

2009-01-31T18:28:00.000-08:00

So Long!

The newspapers on my desk have gathered more dust,

The poetry scribbled at dawn, more verse;

My coffee mug infected with nameless insects,

Groans, begging to be cleaned.

The blahs peep into my empty hotel room,

As noises of unbearable solitude begin to gnaw once again.

I wail out aloud, to make sure there is life in me;

That I exist, and there is a spirit inside.

My heart pines, wanting to belong to this solitude,

To soak in it, to embrace it with love.

I walk around naked, to make sure there is life in me;

That I exist, and there is flesh inside.

My fingers tremble, as they try to hold on to solitude,

To drown in it, to find a savior in it.

My bed now is littered with many books,

Each claiming to guide me to light.

One recommends hope, the other claims all is absurd.

My cry for answers go unheard and unseen.

Refusing to tell me where I lie.

The papers on my desk have gathered more dust.

The poetry scribbled at dawn, more verse.

One again, you knock at my door.

Once again, I let you in.

2009-01-26T08:16:00.000-08:00

Look up!
(For you -My bestest Birdie )

Look, my dear friend;
Give it up.
You can’t dance with that fractured ankle,
You can’t put together a cracked mirror.
You can’t toilet train a grownup man.

Look, my dear friend;
Give it up.
Love isn’t a business deal,
Hope isn’t the biggest virtue,
Romance isn’t the only end.

Quickly pick up those pieces of yourself,
Dust those aching bones,
Wipe away those meek tears,
Find the strength to defy convention,
For life can’t persist in such shattered dignity.

You are no modern painting on the wall,
You are no scented candle of the night.
Wake up to clear blue sky,
Find the way back to your own home;
Before ‘tomorrows’ become extinct.

Listen, my dear friend,
Give it up.
Pull the trigger on it,
Before it kills you.

2009-01-25T05:10:00.000-08:00

Unsaid

There are somethings I wish I had never mentioned,
And others I now can’t tell you.
Like how I love the way your eyes smile,
And how I never noticed it in all these years.
Like how I seem to love the way you walk,
With a very enviable sense of pride;
And how I try to match steps with you,
When you walk by my side.

Like how I seem to see you in the crowd,
and at times see only you.
Like how I catch myself thinking of you,
When iam thinking of someone else.
Like how i feel immensely peaceful,
When I hear you laugh endlessly over a silly joke.
Like how at times my hand reaches out to yours,
When we talk together, mostly unconsciously.

Like how I yen to place my palm over yours,
When I sense sorrow in your voice.
Like how iam amazed by the way you complete my sentences,
And I, yours.
Like how I sense a tinge of jealousy,
When you describe some random women you met.
Like how I feel childlike when we smile at each other,
Over a joke only we seem to understand.

Like how, to begin with,
I want to figure out if this is love.
Like how I wish to talk to you at length;
About this impossible love,
And the possible happiness,
Your friendship brings me.

2009-01-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Shall we dance?

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey’d cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness--to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

In my 26th year I have lived the “Winter” Keats talks about, the year that has changed the person that I’m and the life I will lead, forever.

I changed my line of work, and have, for the want of a better word, found my calling. I have gone through a complete ‘paradigm shift’ in the way I relate to, love and care for, people. My relationship with my family changed entirely, for the better.

At 25, I had a million questions that tortured me; I started experiencing the very famous quarter life crisis. 2years hence there is a peaceful cognizance and may be some sort of a pride in having found some answers.

These answers have come to me, unfortunately, through a series of experiences that shattered my self belief, challenged the optimist in me and put me through perennial agony. I spent the whole year, one after the other, realizing the grave mistakes I have committed in life. The most significant of them being losing the love of my life to greed and double-standards. A mistake, that goes beyond the threshold of forgiveness.

I hurt a few of those people; that matter the most to me, consciously and otherwise. I spoke about change in the society and working towards it, I started doing it for a living. But changing my own hypocritical and indisciplined self continued to be the biggest challenge.

I played games. Even after realizing and experiencing, how much damage the so-called “constructive manipulation” has done to relationships I held/hold close. I neither displayed strength of mind nor commitment to change, during the tough times. I gave up time and again, entertained suicidal urges every other night, for close to a year.

However, like always, this year too I have been most giving, to my friends. I lived upto Auden’s words, “Love each other or perish”. These friends were the pillar of strength during those tough times. 2 of my best friends got married to each other, I had a lovely re-union with my ‘bestest’ friend after 4years, and have made new friends, for life. These special friends inspire undying hope and poetry in me. These friends now, are family.

I thank my stars for this year, for without all these experiences I would never have learnt the lessons I did. The single most significant lesson has to be learning to own up. I now take onus for the devil that I have nurtured in me, and for the lies I have lived. Accepting responsibility for being me has been liberating, almost.

The biggest vice of mankind, has to be, wallowing in self-pity and letting life pass by you. I now never allow myself the luxury of sympathy from myself or others. I now know how to give love and let it come in. Thankfully, Inspite of the painful experiences, I continue to believe in “Love is the only rational act”.

It pains me to realize that there are times when one person is a relationship outgrows another, finds newer paradigms, reasons, relationships and dreams that they choose to chase. The only
thing then, which the other can do, is to let go.

It takes a lot of courage to let go, to become “empty” and let nature fill that void. I have struggled constantly to let go of self-obsession, stereotypes, irrational fears and insecurities, cultural , societal bondages etc so as to open oneself myself to the ‘here and now’.

That also brings me to the questions on choosing to lead a principled life. One can’t be partially honest or mostly ethical, often unassuming or mostly genuine. It is here or there. One gets exactly the kind of life, one choose to live. You either brave to take on a challenging tough life, or an easy callous one.

I don’t agree with, all relationships coming with an expiry date. What does, is the way one relates to the other person. With age and time, the equations change, mostly for the better. Love takes different forms, ways, priorities and possibilities. Love, a friend often says flows from various directions all the time, we just need to open our eyes and hearts to it.

I also decided that there is no point debating about existence of God, in a human form. Every belief, every practice, has evolved over a period of time in the society only to make life more fulfilling and meaningful. So if “God” gives peace, comfort and strength to one, one must follow that path. This applies to any form of faith and passion, each to his own.

I kept oscillating between selfish Vs selfless as a virtue in my teens. During the early 20s i swore by selfless love (maybe because it is politically right to), though I knew very well that I only did lip service to it. I think now, the whole debate is futile, the question here is only whether it is “self-less” or “self-more” in any given context, situation and the relationship.

So if one is so "full" of oneself, then one is more often than not blind to the other’s needs, deaf to the other’s words and silences, and should undoubtedly start preparations to write the epitaph for that relationship. Building trust is a slow process; same goes with any kind of change within oneself or otherwise. Patience therefore becomes the most worthwhile virtue to revere.

The process of being able to transcend one’s huge ego, be more accepting of people and their idiosyncrasies, to welcome all the surprises that life throws at you is not easy. But when you start doing it, it becomes an ecstatic experience.

To be able to seek and spread joy everywhere you go, every day , is best way to be. This ofcourse doesn’t mean one rejects pain, disgust, anger, fear etc. You have to revel in and experience all of these emotions in entirety, and be able to attach and detach, so as to find new you everyday. Life then will be fascinating.

2008-12-23T09:57:00.000-08:00

Trying
I cut all corners,
I count all blessings,
I hunt down the old cassettes,
I empty the secret pouches of the suitcase.
The walls, they all disappear;
Memories of love, they love me so.

I go up north,
And then travel all the way south.
I wail, sitting on the benches of chennai station,
I shed a tear by the Juhu beach.
\
I eat up the stock of your written words,
I re-play every single conversation.
I sit with you, saying things in silence;
Miles away, yet into your ears.

I cram up the sports page now,
I make much better coffee and tea;
At times I break open some closed doors,
And at others I let them be.

I learnt to walk fast enough now,
To match every step with you.
The walls, they all disappear;
Memories of love, they love me so.

I dream a dream now,
For dreams of black and white,
To take some shape, and some color too.
My walls, they have disappeared,
Memories of love, they love me so.

The walls around you have grown so tall.
The walls around you,
I hope, will break down too.
Until then, I will keep trying.

2008-12-10T06:51:00.000-08:00

Second chances
(For you Darling Bud)

Unequal life, irrational love;
Yet hope.
A vague vision is all you may have today;
Yet hope.
Till those second chances rain on you,
Dance upon your dreams.
Till that splendor dresses your nakedness,
Smoke out your remorse in the German pipe.
Till a tender endearment seeks your company,
Fancy your magnificent solitude.

Unequal life, irrational love;
Yet hope.
A vague vision is all you may have today;
Yet hope.
Till the time they buy your radical view,
Create hundreds of little successes.
Till those vain victories come out from the hiding,
Indulge on those fantasies.
Till the time you kill the nagging guilt,
Flirt with intriguing revelations.

Forget the frozen winters and flaming summers,
Oh, the rustic paths and solitary wars;
Tempest this, tempest that;
Oh, listless days and bitter nights;
Yet hope.
Don’t give even a crumb of you to defeat.
For, every day I will bring you the ale of faith.
For, I will sit by you in silence on noisy nights.

2008-12-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

Catch 21!
(For you darling bud)

Last night we dissected the past; our memories,
of a foregone epoch, of broken hearts;
of long unending roads, the closed doors.

You spoke of your empty castle,
the missing portraits and your dormant desires,
the broken mirrors and your confused identity,
the skeletons in the cupboard, the angels of your dreams.

Last night you left with me a lump in the throat,
Last night I heard your stifled voice and secret sorrows.
Later at night I burnt the material gifts I planned for you;
for they now seem so inane and lame.

This morning I sent across a box of colors,
that will travel across the seven seas for you.
The box, I promise, will bring you dawns of bright newness,
Evenings of gay abandon and nights of warm love.

This magic box will sing the poetry of hope for you.
I desire with such earnest faith today;
For your bitter itch to fade,
For love to illuminate the dark contours of your castle.

For that attic to remind you only of a cozy past of golden times,
For soulful music to hold you in warm embrace.
For sounds of childlike laughter,
to fill the corridors of your castle.

For courage, to be your constant companion.
For inspiration, to follow you like shadow.
I want you to remember to forget;
the unkempt promises that tire your spirit.

I want your long abandoned dreams to resurface,
And that naïveté romantic grin to return.
I’m sure then that the years lost in pain will vanish into mists of antiquity.

The box I hope will bring a promising reason;
For you to move on today,
From angst, cynicism and ennui;
To new meanings,reasons and seasons.

Last night you left me with a lump in the throat,
Last night you also left with me a tear.
A tear to savor the beauty of our bond.

2008-10-08T09:54:00.001-07:00

Knock, Knock!
(For you Chickoo)

Your memories,
lie unattended.
Mine, now pregnant;
With demanding triplets.

Your anger,
Calls itself indifference.
Mine, now zealous,
Grows, in cancerous rage.

Your love now,
Has an adorable new face.
Mine, now ashamed,
Hiding behind immature age-old platitudes.

Your words now,
Consistently fail me.
Mine, now clichéd,
Having lost the inspiration of our togetherness.

2008-08-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

To define is to Die.

I always insisted on definitions and frame of references. However I now see that such boundaries and structures might help only in group discussions and case study solutions, not otherwise.

Everyday when I define what I’m capable of being, what I’m capable of becoming and draft the plans accordingly I only limit myself. Unlike the dreams I see at night, where I let myself go unconsciously, the ones I visualize during the day are limited by these definitions that draw contours, which restrict me.

My conservative self concept, I believe has been more destructive than the limitations that social, cultural and parental prejudices imposed on me over these years. By drawing circles around myself, that I hoped would be bulwarks for my life, I denied myself of the grail iam here to seek.

Denial of possibilities to explore beyond an imaginable and tangible destination is a sin. It is almost masochistic. I used to like the idea of this cliché, “Aim for the sun and you will reach the starts”; I now think it’s stupid. If you are aiming for the sun and working towards it, why wouldn’t you reach the sun? Why even think of settling for something less even before you start? And why is the sun the limit, why can’t you go beyond it?

I want to ask Stephen covey, ‘why begin with an end in mind’? Why not discover new ends with every passing day. Why not stretch as much as possible? Infact why define what is possible?

Though I understand that specific goals and milestones give shape to one’s life and facilitate one to focus, they also blind you from other possible goals that lie on the way. I begin to think that goals make one’s life comfortable, therefore we seek them. Most often than not it is in the uncomfortable zones that real progress might lie. The mission statements mirror my today, but what about my tomorrows?

This leads me to think that we also curb one’s ability to do something, by evaluating one’s potential at very stages of life.

My friends appreciate my work when they feel its “effortless”. They appreciate any form of art, when it seems effortless, as if to put in efforts to get something is a mistake. A friend says, “Ah, what an effortless acting”. They justify it by saying “When it is effortless, it is natural”.

I wonder why “Natural” is a virtue. Shouldn’t we put our heart and soul into something, if we want it real bad and work towards it? In which case the effort one has put in will be very obvious. For all you know, over a period of time such efforts will be rewarded and the work will become ‘natural’, the way many seem to like it.

What we are and what we will become is only an illusion that deludes us from aspiring to be other things which we consider are alien to us. There might be a new dream awaiting us around the corner, but we ignore them. So ideally, I should ask myself, ‘What am I here for question’ every single day, at every single step. Answers would differ with different contexts, settings, relationships and experiences, and one would evolve only with such openness to newness.

Denial of one’s ability to achieve something also robs one of the pleasures craving for a new dream; milestone or discovery of a new talent can give.

I also wonder, why should goals always be “SMART”? Irrespective of whether a dream is realizable or not, is pragmatic or not each of us should seek the freedom to unveil and explore abysmal possibility of possibilities that lie in chaotic challenging settings.

One should be willingly expose oneself to pains of disappointment; discontent and angst at failure rather than pre decide that something is not within reach. Progress manifests itself in experiences of emotional upheavals that results from success and failure, of win and lose. Fear of failure could be used to constructively push us in directions we never believed existed.

So this is what I have to tell my dear friends who had a good laugh, when I called myself ambitious. Yes, I don’t have them all written down in a piece of paper. I don’t have a goal matrix, with cost implications, feasibility study results, time plans and schedules.

I don’t relish the idea of being caught in the web of ignorance of what lies afar; I don’t even want to see afar.

I want to at times be contended with daily dreams, the morning and evening adrenalin rush and immediate wins. At others I will survive on the comfort of an impending romance with a utopian dream for tomorrow, and the bliss of a disciplined search for my ever changing and transient self concept.

Since I can’t empower myself with an awareness of what lies in store for me tomorrow, I want to make it all possible today. With a stringent defition of success is and what ambitions are, I will only sit by the side walk and watch the world go past me.

I want to create my own game, every morning. And win it. Or may be lose it

2008-08-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Reminiscence

I pick up the soiled coffee mugs and throw them into the sink. I then stack the set of old newspapers in the rack, clear up the knick knacks in the handbag, broom the dust off the window panes and fill the bottles with drinking water. I then hide the vodka bottles in the attic, almost forgetting that I live alone and that I have to hide them from none.

I then see that I have bedspreads and sheets all over the house; the ones my friends wrapped around themselves last night. The old brown from the college hostel days, the ugly green one from the schooldays and the beautiful crimson red purchased with my first salary.

As I pick up each of them , fold them neat and put them back into the closet I bring them a tad closer to my nose; each of them smell just the way they ought to, just the way I remember their smells. I wonder if smells lend character to inanimate bed sheets. Or create some meaning for their existence.

It seems then that my bedroom is filled with my nostalgic flavor of smells. My mind space is occupied solely by the aroma of people, perfumes and places these sheets borrow their smell from.

I imagine I have goose bumps. Or may be they are for real. The pungent humidity of southern summers and a dreamy childhood spent throwing tantrums and seeking parental approval, the scent of rusted rims in the Mumbai monsoons and a rebellious teenage where rebellion had no cause and ambitions were triggered by peer pressure, the musky Bangalore chills and a melancholy filled romantic quarter life; all of that comes rushing to me.

It seems that my sense of sight or touch doesn’t even exist, that I recognize and experience life and its various forms through these fragrances that stir such poignant sentiments in my being. The feeling is akin to that of being transported to another world, from the past; a word so vivid, eloquent and fulfilling. I let myself sink into the overwhelming bolt of nostalgia that grips me.

I then cry, may be because such emotional opulence is unbearable. I then smirk, at the irony of how the memory of a beautiful past can bring a tear to the eye and that of a joyless time can bring a smile to the lips.

That was when I had this flash. It was then that this new memory revealed itself to me, a memory I have been searching for all these years. A memory that was not overt in my conscious but camouflaged deep inside, the scent of my grandpa.

My Grandfather! He is one of those people I have loved, revered, and trusted in an intense entirety. The loss from his death is a pain I will carry with me to the grave. Of the many regrets that one associates with people that are gone from their lives is the inability to recollect some special moment or unique experience shared with that person.

I have carried the weight of such regret all these years, of not my being able to recollect his smell. When I tried to figure out the reason behind my ill memory I realize very strangely there is some amount of shame associated with the idea of love for bodily odors that society imposes on you.
But for in an intense love relationship, I have never openly unabashedly admitted why and how I love the way someone smells. This is probably why I didn’t remember how grandpa smelled. It is a memory my conditioning pushed to the background, a memory I yearned for so long.

However this discovery and recollection of the smell does not seem to appease me or cure me of the regret; instead it aggravates the agony of my loss.

The taste of his smell brings visual images of those lovely summers spent with him; the naïveté conversations about my dreams, my unending questions about monkeys in the monkey park we often went for a stroll in and his passionate narration of the love story from his life in the army.

I also now smell the aroma of those biscuits he dipped in the filter coffee and relished every evening; he would tell me that nirvana lies in experiencing such little joys of life. I would then pester him with questions about nirvana; I enjoyed the idea of listening to philosophical explanations of nirvana I never made sense of.

I would nod my head in understanding, raise my eyebrows to project an image of active listening and enjoy his animated explanations with rapt attention. I would tell him I perfectly understand where he comes from; he would commend my maturity and insist I’m one of those bright kids. Both of us would then rejoice and revel in such false pride and joy.

Few years went by.

The last time I met him at the hospital I apologized, “I’m sorry, I never understood a thing about Nirvana”. His eyes were filled with tears; he had no strength to speak. For many years to come, I believed that he cried because I didn’t understand Nirvana. I still think so.

I had then asked him, “Are you dying?” He nodded in denial and replied “I’m going to be around.” He very much is. And will be till the overwhelming edifice of smells and memories live in me.

2008-08-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

What we tell each other, when we don’t want to listen to each other.

I tell you;
This shame has ripped me off my clothes,
So as to bring disgrace to my ugly nakedness.
I blame my lewd neighborhood.

You tell me;
Blame the estranged lover.

I tell you;
This shame has befriended my hindsight now,
So that together they can wound my heels;
I blame this alien island.

You tell me;
Blame the estranged lover.

I tell you;
Shame flirts with the noises in my head,
So that boisterous sirens can immobilize my judicious rationale.
I blame my shallow resolute.

You tell me;
Blame the estranged lover.

I tell you;
Shame now lusts the humiliation in my heart,
So that together they can imprison my carefree mirth.
I blame my slanderous reminiscence.

You tell me;
Blame the estranged lover.

I tell you;
Shame now marries my wretched woes,
So that they can impregnate seeds of dishonor.
I blame my untamed needs.

You tell me;
Blame the estranged lover.

**

I tell you;
You are an idiot.

I tell you;
Blame the shame,
That allures such thoughtless rage;
Blame the rage,
That impels such smoldering angst.
Blame my ludicrous angst,
That searches for life in the dead corpses.
Blame my wobbly grit,
That hallucinates phantasm.

I beg you;
Spare my estranged lover.

Let me tell you;
I blame myself.

Listen to me, when I tell to you,
You are an idiot.
You are only the defensive devil in me.

2008-08-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

Our desire ebbs,
Reluctantly, in such bashful glee.
Our glances quiver,
Like the school of fish that create hullaballoo;

Mesmerized, we travel;
In directions unexplored.
Intoxicated, we discover;
Exotic nuances in the rituals of love.

****

Words are tricky things. Words are irritating things. Words are such powerful things. Words are mostly the only things.

These words from her diary brought back memories of such desire, that she had indulged in; when love’s agonizing prance had begun to take form in her heart.

The love now is afar. May be the love is almost a mirage.

But it didn’t matter to her anymore; whether he would infact truly return home. May be in reality, there is a point where fantasy and reality does merge. In which case he is home, infact. Sometimes one reaches a point of no return, she was in one such.

Her life now revolves around the word, patience. She has now spent a decade waiting. She often watches these spiders in her store that relentlessly try to spin complicated webs on the wall hoping to make a beautiful home for themselves, never giving up. She too is waiting, cleaning up the dirty attics, decorating the voluptuous beds, and concocting images of his home coming.

She scripts, directs and rehearses for hours, the moment of their unison; she has planned minutely how she would greet him when he finally got home someday.

If it is on a sultry sunset that he comes knocking, she would overwhelm him in a passionate embrace, massage his fatigued nerves, tickle his taut nipples and arouse in him sensations of ecstasy he had not known before.

If it is a dull humid dawn, she would bury her face against his chest and sob in a hushed tone. She would complain about the neighbors that mocked her, crib about the leaking tap, whine about the stinking garbage, chide him for his reckless vanishing act and narrate stories of lonesome mornings.

If it is a tiring lazy late afternoon, she would cast an enervated glance at him and fall to his legs hugging them tight, as if surrendering all of her to him. She would bawl, moan, blabber and recite meaningless poetry of love and lament.

If it is a silent night of chilly sufferings that he calls home, she would wail out aloud, venting out angst and anger, as if it were truly possible for her to be vengeful and vindictive.

Peace would then return, life would then have some meaning. She would hold his hands in hers and walk him to the store room. She would point out to those cobwebs on the wall, and pride herself by talking about the spider’s achievements; almost as if they were her children.

He would then be avid for her innumerable stories, the funny ones, the trivial meaningless ones, the one with eccentric protagonists . She would then bake him some cake, and feed him full. They would then dance to such music that bought them together, she will notice how he is as anxious as he used to be, trying to move his legs rhythmically and match steps with her dramatic steps. She would tease him, and he would return the favor. They would chuckle over silly jokes, try to win each other in ridiculous games and snuggle upto each other neck.

She brewed such dreams of eloquent euphoria every living second, of this moment when their lives would seamlessly melt into one another, when the flames of her ambition will taste bright illumination.

At the end of her tether, he would forget all about his being man and unabashedly tell her stories of his defeat and regrets. Of failures tasted, of hopes relinquished, of impossible loves, of conquers that slipped his hand.

The knowledge of his agony would then torment her like the pain of a child kicking at the womb. He would weep into her lap exasperated, and confess how he had longed too, to be away from the maddening battle of the idiosyncratic world. He would then ask her to hold him in her arms, pamper him like a newborn, and take him back in time to the innocence of his childhood or travel far ahead into life towards the peace of a graveyard.

Such ideas of their reunion filled her days and nights. It was on one such dreamy twilight, did the news reach her. ‘We won the battle’, her neighbors rejoiced. ‘The soldiers are on their way back home’, they told her. At the threshold she stood, exhausted, spent and drained of the dreamy opera she had lived through all these years.

And right at the moment of his arrival, famished by such immense joy that was almost alien to her, unable to bear the weight of such euphoric sensation, she collapsed into his arms. Her lips muttered something to him, but there was no sound. No words. Only those ebbs of desire.

Words are tricky things. Words are irritating things. Words are such powerless things. Words are sometimes nothings.

It didn’t matter to her anymore; whether he would infact truly return home.

2008-08-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Guests

I did not invite them home, but here they are. An incessant calling bell and a disgusting smirk later, they silently walked into my little house. Being unwelcome at my place made no difference whatsoever, to these fools.

They sat there, next to the now working lamp shade - Chuckling, sneering, clapping their hands, raising eyebrows and making a mockery of my regret filled past. For a few hours. Then they calmed down a bit. I presume, they have had enough fun now. But in just about 5minutes the calm becomes alien to the room once again.

They get up from the cane chairs, walk upto the fridge in the bedroom and have a glass of water. When they realize that their back is facing the full length mirror, they turn to face it. They take a hard long look at themselves for a few minutes, and burst out laughing again all over again, as if they remembered something irresistibly funny.

This time with so much more ferocity and disdain. They were so full of jeer, that they started rolling on the dirty floor roaring with laughter, their hands placed tight on their pot belly.

“Yes, I’m the one. So What? ”. I yell at them.

They go quiet for a moment, and lend their reddish ears to me.

“Yes, I wrote those mails. I uttered those words. I’m the Cowardice, that hid behind the wall when the war broke out. I’m the zeal that had an illicit affair with sloth. I’m the daft, that was ignorant of my ignorance. I’m the greed, that lusted the material. I’m the vain, that prided the empty spirit. I’m the wrath, that nourished spiteful words. I’m the lust, that fed perversion. I’m the denial, that wrecked relationships. I’m the conviction, that turned polygamous”

“Yes, I’m the one. So what?” I ask again.

“So what?” they ask me back, their eyes softer now, their smile warm.

They now look at me with a sympathy I strongly resent. They shrug their huge shoulders,walk towards me, take my palm in theirs and kiss it comfortingly. Then they pull me closer to them and tell me a secret. "Throw the remains in the dustbin out of the house immedaitely, they stink" they whisper.

I now fall into their lap and break into tears ,they caress my back. They see I’m inconsolable. ‘We didn’t mean to hurt you’, they assure. I sniff and smile, take a deep breath, still hating them for what they put me through.

“Help me please ,give me then answers” I ask them.

They stand up now, clean their body of the dust from the floor and walk upto the wash basin. They see only the faces now, the wrinkled eyes, the unruly hair and the chubby cheeks.

“You are a narcissist”, I tell them. They turn to look at me. They smile again, this time with a not so insulting pity. A genuine warmth spreads across their face.

“Give me the answers now”, I now beg, encouraged by their friendly demeanor.

They look at the clock on the wall, and then at me. They look at each other, murmur something and run towards the door. I get up to follow them, so that I can ask them to stay back. I want to coax them, and cajole them to live with me. 'I live alone', I begin to say.

I thought I went unheard. But just before they head out, their steps slow down. They come close to me and stand at an intimate distance.

“You are better off alone. We are sorry; we don’t have the answers with us. But we leave you with the questions.” they say.

I manage a week smile. I manage a teary goodbye.

I didn’t welcome them home, but they were here. Hindsight and Memory.

2008-08-03T09:57:00.001-07:00

Be my Guest

I had my lamp shade mended. Finally. I now sit comfortably on the couch in the drawing room. No more blinding tube light. No more of the lonely darkness either.

I then cry silently. Not the tears of agony. Not the shocking numbness either.

I search for angst and wrath inside, but I find none of it. I look for guilt and regret, I find traces of it but none significant. I look for agony and anguish, they have vanished as well.

Two of my friends then visited home. I described my 'state of mind' to them. One said it is a vice. The other, virtue. But I’m only very gay to welcome home Indifference. Be my guest, I say.

2008-07-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

My mistake, My eternity.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
- - - - W. H. Auden

***

I guess I was about 8. It was a particularly bad summer, even for Tamilnadu. I would dress in my favorite skirt and sit squatting on the steps of the terrace with a comic in hand, every evening. Not facing the road, but the mangrove behind our house. Sometimes reading, and at others dreaming.

Though never in that one year I got to see the grove, I trusted that there were yellow ripen yummy mangoes in there. I believed those mangoes would stay there for a long time. I believed I will relish the smell of the alphonso, and dance with my umbrella skirt during those occasional summer drizzles, all life. That such promise of tasty mangoes is eternal.

This is my first memory of embracing the illusion of eternity. The idea of eternity is reflex, it is a part of the “script” we prepare during our childhood. And since I use Transaction analysis here, it would imply that we seek to then grow out of “childhood scripts” and become “adults” that each of have the capacity to become.

However in real, such an illusion only gets intensified with age and time.

So, what is wrong with believing in eternity?, you might ask. After all Satre has to say “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal”.

Here is the problem. When one presumes time is eternal is, one gets uncannily snug and takes life for granted. If that continues for a prolonged period of time, one runs the risk of stopping to stretch and search or regards hard work.

Unpleasant changes in life impels one to seek refuge in the comforting concept of eternity, as we often fail to fathom if changes occurred with passage of time or if time infact brought such changes. Eternity then becomes escapism. The idea of eternity I believe, encourages sloth and indiscipline of the first order. Or that what it did to me.

Such an illusion of eternity is also false skin, and only a transient feel good factor. Only is not is not clouded by the assumption of eternal, one can achieve the objectivity necessary to observe, experience, ideate, reason , learn and thus evolve.

You would then view life with fear or faith, you will stop believing everything you have today will stay forever (though your subconscious very well knows otherwise) .So, what about fear and faith?

Faith is beautiful. I don’t know about the faith in time heeling (or leap of faith, for that matter), but time surely has the immense potential of possibilities that can transform life to an extent that past can become extinct. And immaterial.

Fear is also beautiful. Constructive action resulting from the fear of the freedom in hand to choose from limitless choices (In reference to ‘Man is condemned to be free’) can also transform life to an extent that one’s baggage from the past be removed and insecurity of the invisible future also erased.

However, what is more important and necessary to be analyzed is how can one accept and acknowledge that eternity is only an illusion. How can one unlearn and disentangle from childhood scripts?

By realizing that when realities overwhelm us, the only way to face them is; to face them. To accept defeat to the unknown and the impossible. To completely and genuinely acknowledge change.

The faith that change is possible is an extremely positive belief that can guide one through life ( it ofcourse sounds clichéd, but its worth pondering over and over again); However no such change can last forever is also the bitter truth one has to learn. It is extremely easy to delude oneself with hopes of ever lasting happiness. After all we grow up on stories of “living happily ever after”. Another line that got added to our scripts.

A truth I long failed to internalize is that change doesn’t only mean newness, it also means perishing of an “old”. Of a truth, from the past, that is dead. That as we move towards our “ideal” self, there will a part of the present self that dies. That as future unveils itself, it pushes us to destroy the past, even abandon the convictions held closely in a time that is now gone.

The reason why we easily slip into the idea of eternity is also because we are constantly deluded by movement from past to present to future.

A past that exists within us, but doesn’t in present and future ; not physically.

A present which is every minute slipping into the past and influencing the future.

A future which is not there yet, and when reached becomes the present that will eventually slip into the past.

It is in the movement between these states that trigger the variety of intense emotions within us; from ecstasy to melancholy. And it is in being able to erase the illusion of eternity, could one stop moving between the past, present and future like a pendulum. Thus attaining a more stable and level headed state of mind.

May be i would have liked to write:

He is my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I don’t know about forever!
But my love will last.

2008-07-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

The one

Is 'worship' a Virtue? Worship, of the divine and another fellow human being. Worship in different forms; love, prayer, religion, lust or an obsession with the ideal. I looked into each of these forms seeking answers, which continue to be elusive.

Though I have always feared blind faith, fear for a superior being, obsessive awe or hope for miracles I have also been guilty of experiencing and practicing each of these at some point in time.

Some would say, to be able to revere another is in more ways than one a sure way to degrade yourself, to crush your ego. Whether the beauty of progress lies in death of one’s ego is quite debatable, just as difficult as it is to be able to define the ‘right’ levels of ego.

To worship is at some level fearing someone or something. Though it makes sense to seek freedom by attaining a level of fearlessness; one deciphers fear most times acts as a stimulant to achieving something far better than what fearlessness might. So fear might infact be healthy.

What about blind faith? Sometimes we don’t even have an option. When one is thrown into situations one dreads to confront and where the solutions lie out of the ‘circle of influence’, blind faith is the only thing that comes to rescue. In the spirit of worship one finds solace and a sense of comfort that disbelief may not give.

Disbelief or Reluctance to understand worship because belief can’t be proved is almost juvenile. However, exploring the need for worship and finding answers may take a lifetime. The lifetime that you spent vacillating between belief and disbelief and therefore forgoing beauty of either.

The biggest pitfall with worship is this. One who worships a fellow human being, also longs to be worshipped. For self to be elevated once in a while, as the want for seeking devotion gets stronger than wanting to be devoted to another.

With God, its another game. To kneel down in front of the other, especially the unknown whose existence is question calls for a great deal of courage, A strong sense of maturity to accept the superior or a stupid naïveté superstition emerging from helplessness.

What about power? Power and authority are unacceptable to many, who refuse to be let another trample their individuality and ego. But power that is voluntarily given to another calls for an immense trust in the other, which is not easy to come by.

Worship at some level can impede thinking, reasoning and logic. This then essentially means, it impedes progress of mankind. A faith in one, also nullifies faith in everything else opposed to that faith. An obsession for one human in that case, is a bondage that refuses to let one see the beauty in other people around.

As much as I then want to comfortably conclude that worship is dangerous, obsession a tyrant and that it doesn’t free me from illusionary hopes and distances me from clarity of thought I wonder if I will ever achieve those in the truest sense of the word if I disbelieve.

Most times inspite of clear rationale, I see many paths I take are illusionary. Many goals set and plans made are transient, and infact not the right goals to be desired at some other point in life. Many dreams and achievements become absurd with time and age.

I had written last time around about followers. Worship too is an ideology that gets passed on to people by others who tend to think they know what’s best for others. Thus betraying one’s need for space, and denouncing one’s ability to understand life.

Each of us should think, feel, observe, experience, judge, ideate and then decide. But accepting what the other says, accepting a faith or belief or be awed by someone or something without reason equals slavery.

I would choose slavery only if I was a masochist. Unless ofcourse what or who is fixated with gives pleasure. But as mentioned earlier, one who worships might at some point want to be worshipped. When that doesn’t happens, the castles of awe crash. Such slavery to illogic jails the intellect and one would be writing an epitaph to one’s sense of pride.

But the challenge with being on one’s own and trying to explore worship is a possibility of failure. Every time you think you moved forward in understanding any form of it, you also move a step backward as certain reasons fall flat. You spend years trying to find your way out of a dark jungle hoping to see light, sometimes not knowing if it exists.

I ask time and again if one god can exist, if one person can be the pivot of your life and guide you in everything.Is it even possible for one light to infinitely be there as the only permanent fixture of your transient life. Is it even sane and intelligent to be intensely emotionally devoted to one? Is it self deprecating to do that?

Does such faith create miracles and give the utopian permanent happiness. And if it infact does, will it be at the cost of surrendering freedom. Worship is a religion in itself. Whilst any religion proposes to give strength it might do exactly the opposite. It makes one week and dependent on a superior illusionary force. Even incase of worship for another human, there is an element of the worshipped being superiority over the other.

As much as I would love to buy the argument that free thinkers would never let their mind be chained by love for anything or anyone, I refuse to see how love also can’t set one free. Love feeds the soul, builds pillars of strength and teaches you lessons of selflessness.

So yes, after a voracious debate I can only conclude with the same questions I began with. Am I better off not let my intellect be ruled by blind faith. Or would I rather pay homage to the illusionary beauty of selfless worship.

2008-07-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Liberty

It is not the world at all, not 'them' or 'they'. It is I who prisoned my sense of freedom, strangled the Eden of desire and comfortably went hiding behind the fears of failure and sloth like mediocrity.

Insecurity and fear met me at the cradle, in a dim lit hospital and I let them settle inside me, refusing strongly to shake myself off them for a long time.

It is ignorance that I first met on my road, to discovering truths, that long awaited my curiosity. I went the beaten track; the road the herd took, relishing the stagnant beauty of the usual and normal. Indulging in my vices, celebrating my mistakes, finding excuses for my lack of integrity and taking refuge in self pity for failures that could easily not have occurred in the first place. Assuming inspiration would come knocking my doors, to lay roads for aspirations to take flight.

I then met ridicule and suppression. I peeped into the forbidden roads of pleasure, pinning to get there but refusing to grab the courage to do so. The hands of life's clock went past me with a fierce pace, while I sat dreaming of lush green gardens to invite me home. I sat idle, hoping for miracles to happen. For a savoir to protect me from such mockery and gift me hope.

I never ran into a savior, though I did meet people who I presumed are saviors. I never looked within, as much as I knew I had to. Countless helping hands emerged, thankfully, only to go back; tempting me to discover my individuality.Temping me to fight the furious fires of reluctance and indiscipline.

Arousing in me a sense of wisdom, knowledge of that self betraying path I had easily subconsciously chosen for my life. I say ‘Chosen’, because choice always exists. It lives very close by. The option of sleeping in a nestling foam bed and ending your life right there is on one hand.On the other, you could open your eyes, try to stand up on your own, run a few miles, tire yourself, fall and then get up, rub the dust off your body and run again. At times towards a known destination. At others, to find one.

But mediocre that I was, I chose to sleep on the foam bed. Ofcourse, life is so comforting there. Only that, after sometime your limbs get numb, your eyes go blind, your sense of self gets crippled and you stop listening to the sound of your heartbeat, though you might be very well alive.

It is when I was trying to make sense of these choices that I met with some lessons from the past.
“Respect” they said is sacrosanct, and i internalized . I learnt it by heart and never questioned it. Respect this, that and that too; they had ‘advised’. The old, the usual, the timetables, the goals, the rule books. Because they are meant to be respected, obeyed and believed in. Universal beliefs are easily adopted by a child, and teenage rebellion is still not good enough to break the shackles of such deeply etched lessons.

It is then that I met with the realization that “followers” stagnate. That it is on the path of non conformity lies progress. Norms are words that are meant to be only in the dictionary, that’s where their true place is. Not in the midst of us,definitely not to be worshipped every morning.

Then ofcourse I decided to befriend chaos as I rested after a long walk, it made good company. In such a conversation with Chaos, I promised to explore theism. Liberty to choose to want to understand god, I realized, was refreshing.

As I made little progress, I managed to reach a river of grandeur. It danced right in front my eyes, giving glimpses of how ecstatic the beauty of breaking barriers is. I believe that some day moon would get irritated with sun’s sympathy and decide to either be dull or just struggle enough to gets its own glow. The proud sun can then take a walk.

I then bumped into fame. A man I was infatuated with since time immemorial. He had become shorter. Lost lot of weight. Not to forget completely not lost that sheen, that awe he held for me back then. Falling out of love is not a bad thing, after all.

Oh yes, just when I had proclaimed logic and reason god, I met with another love. In the path to understanding love, my idea of self was challenged a million times over. I met with questions on morality, rationality and selflessness that I had no answers for. The more I sought after the answer, the more I met with disappointment.

On such a disillusioned path I met a tyrant. A Fool. A Voyeur. A Hedonist. A Masochist. An animal. Instinctively, I protected myself from the negative connotations of my dark side and learnt to sculpt them into idols of stone that I admired from afar, but never would touch. I also met kindness. Compassion. Sensitivity. Empathy. Poetry. Instinctively I protected myself from letting my heart bloat in the pride of beauty in me.

I then walked back. To the point where I had started my run. The path was cleaner than ever before. Those enemies from the past I met on the way, the kins from childhood, the scars of failures; are still around. Some where close, but I refuse to open my eyes to them.

Tomorrow i will travel another road. Seek another destination. Dream Some. Get some, lose some.

2008-06-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

One more such.

She had always had a thing for the parting words, for a very long time now. These days, it is the parting kisses. As she spends her free time visting the locked doors of her past life, she constantly wonders about those parting kisses. She had always loved to kiss.

There was something magical, she believed, about being that close to a person. To touch and caress the cheeks, to smile into the eyes and express such intimacy; of varying kinds.
She was amazed by some people and their reservations about kissing or being kissed, why would one cloud one’s mind with questions and doubts about the relationship status and morality? How can expressing your love for someone with a tender kiss be immoral and who writes these rule books?

In different phases of her life, she had spent a lot of time indulging in the nostalgic reminiscence of such special moments. I guess, it started from the time she was introduced to the idea of “aha” moments. Ideally of course, life should be a fairy tale; an ‘aha’ moment everyday. She always quoted from Zarasusthra,

But all joy wants eternity—Wants deep, wants deep eternity.

But eternity is only a dream. An illusion, a desire. Therefore one can only live on the memories of joys experienced in the past or hope of joy in the future whenever the present becomes bitter.

The whole “Here and now”, she believed, is a philosophy of the utterly foolish impractical idealists. No one truly, completely escapes the webs of guilt and the agony of the missed opportunities and lost relationships; or the pleasures and peace of naïveté loves and vengeful triumphs. We carry the past inside us, all the time. And the image of a future too. A perfect one.

Coming back to the parting kisses. She often tries to recollect how ‘that’ last kiss had been like. The last kiss from that particularly painful parting. The reason her mind fails to trace memories of that kiss is quite logical, she didn’t know it was the destined to be the last. She had hoped that the relationship is for eternity. That the kisses will continue through her lifetime. But Alas!

She wishes to trace the visual image of the last kiss, exactly the way she remembers their first kiss. But try however hard, she fails to remember anything.

She yens to recollect when, where and how they had kissed. She doesn’t seem to know if the kiss was an affectionate one,an intensely passionate one that got her tipsy. She wouldn’t know who initiated it, who had dominated the other, and how it had ended. Did she smile as she kissed, or laugh messily into his mouth?

Did they look into each other’s eyes before and after they done or was it a quick and urgent goodbye kiss. Was it a make up kiss, had they had a bitter fight? Did she repent having said all the wrong things all through the day? Or had they had a pleasant day, when they had cozily ended up with pillow fights and adult jokes?

Did she stand on her toes, to reach his chin and did he bend down to reach hers? Did she sit by the window and look at the road he took till he disappeared into some lane and much longer even after she lost sight of him, still licking the ends of her lips dreamily. Did he have an inkling of idea, as to how this could be the last expression of the intimacy they had shared all these years. Does he also try to recollect the last kiss, with the same yearning and grief.

She tried to search in the depths of her mind, the feel of that last touch; the last significant word shared. The last time they proclaimed their love grand and loud, the last time they made love. But it is only the first kiss that she remains etched in her heart now. They had kissed just about 30minutes after they had for the first time in life, they couldn’t waited any longer to touch. She clearly recollects how she had read out an article about different kinds of kisses, and smiled flirtatious, glancing at him as he sipped the coffee.

Every little detail, that were to be remembered, she did.
She had once mentioned how excited she is, to be first woman in his life. But now she knows how insignificant it is to have been the first. She wishes she were the last, the eternal. The memory of the first kiss too, isn’t special enough. It is that parting kiss that matters. More than anything else.

2008-04-27T09:22:00.001-07:00

Little things.

Yes, it is the little things that I miss now. The event in totality is pushed under the carpet. Consciously of course. It is your tiny gestures that come to my mind in a flash now and fill my mind with a longing to tell you how much cherish you and those little things.

For instance, that orderliness about your way of life. The way you would meticulously chop onions into small pieces to make sure each piece is cut exactly the way the other is. The way you make a checklist of things you carry in your suitcase and tick the checkboxes as you pack those back into your bags when you get ready to leave. The manner in which you pick that little comb from out of your pocket and comb your hair to put them in place, to make sure not a single strand of hair is where it shouldn’t be.

The patience you have to keep the things in the place they were, where they are meant to be. The style with which you plan the small things in life systemically and execute them to perfection I could never have done these myself. And I didn’t think too much of your ability to do so, not till you walked out of life.

Another is about those snug romantic moments. I think of times when you would be engrossed in reading the newspaper or a magazine, and in an unexpected second put it aside to glance at me adoringly. And then the times we cross the road, your hand would reach out for mine and hold on till we reach the other side with a strong concerned grip. I chide myself now for stopping you every time you try tickle me to death, I had not an iota of idea how much they mean to me. I yen to have back those dawns when you would lie next to me by the side, nuzzling and hugging me light to see that smile that spreads across my face as I feel the warmth of your hands around me.

I truly miss those heated arguments that have no beginning or end , it would then take a call from either of us to the other before we burst out laughing over the stupidity of the whole affair. I often think of the way you push my head to rest it on your chest and kiss my forehead as you goodbye, it is then I that I muster the courage to part. I long for those late night menial conversations that see me through the day, the simple transactional enquiries. The cozy good mornings that kick start my day and the dreamy goodnights that put me to sleep. I treasure those carefully chosen words on sms you painstakingly type down to pep me up every time I lost my zest for life.

The one time of the day I miss you the most is when I send you a mail and don’t see a reply in Arial 10, saying “Always Yours”. Yes,it is the little things. That little thing.

2008-04-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Hold my Hand.

Don’t fear the ripples,
My darling love;
I will stand by you,
And fight the fiery sharks.

Why fear the flame,
My spirit and soul;
I will embrace you
And not let the fire touch you.

Don’t fear the thunder,
My little boy;
let the hail storm come;
And throw us down,
There is pleasure in pain,
My doodle Dum.

Why fear the hide tides here?
And the full moon there.
I’m that piece of wood,
And the bright light house;
I will take you shore,
My coochicoo .

I ask of now,
To live with me;
To love such love.
There will be agony some.
And heart-wrenching ache.
But when enemies come
With anger loud and fierce;
I will kill them down;
Or take those bullets,
With passion and pride.
I ask of you,
To Live with me;
To love such love.

2008-04-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

North Eastern and South Western
(For you - Partners)

Day after day,
He plans reconciliation,;
While she learns to spell the word.

Just when it dawns,
He cringes to sleep longer.
Just when she sweeps it all clean,
He wants to paint the floor red and yellow.
Just when he is enervated,
She throws back critical remarks.
Just when he narrates a morose incident,
She bursts into laughter like it were a joke.

Just when she nestles on the comfortable love,
He suggests a ritualistic wedding.
Just when he manages to gift her wings,
She resolves to walk on her feet.
Just when his voice fades away in the background,
She longs to lend him her strength.
Just when he brings spring to her life,
She prefers to draw sunlight into her soul.

Just when they have parted,
She cries over kisses not shared.
Just when he etches her name in his heart,
She lets the waves wash away his footprints.
Just when she wants to give it direction,
He prefers to have loved and lost.

Day after day,
He thinks about reconciliation;
Just as she learns to spell the word.
Just when she smiles,
He smiles back at her.
Just when he hopes,
she hopes.
North Western and South Eastern!

2008-04-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

I go there, only to come back.

I think may be I’m just a missed call.
Or your tint of your nostalgia,
On a bad hair day.
But for me, you are the world.

And in this world;
With a rusted telescope, I see;
The unseen joys of yesterdays.
In the pile of cherished gifts, I see;
My grave misgivings.
In the smell of shared pajamas, I sense;
The guilt of my fuzzy whims.
In the wilted roses you had left behind, I see,
The thorns of my juvenile tantrums.

May be I’m just the clock by the bedside.
Or the story from growing up years,
You narrate to your children.
But for me, you are quite the world.

And in this world;
With a dimmed lamp shade, I see;
The idiocy of my utopian dreams.
In those lusty fantasies, I sense;
My failure to sculpt realistic goals.
On my ticklish nipple, I sense;
The pain of pleasures I denied
In my incessant questioning, I see;
The pettiness of my voyeuristic mind.

Maybe iam just a signboard on the highway.
Or may be a muddy pathway,
You took on a muddled day.
But for me, you are the world.

And in this world;
With an old abacus to my help, I see;
The words and promises I minced.
In the charming bed time stories we own, I sense
The characters craving for happy endings.
In our extravagant declarations of love, I see
A lack of integrity to carve our future.
In your perturbed silences, I sense
My inability to know the real you.
In your naïveté smile and simplistic gestures, I sense
My failure to give love the way you wanted me to.

May be iam just an old mushy email,
Or a short lived muse for your words.
But for me, you are the inspiration for life.
For eternal hope.
For me, you are quite the world.

2008-02-27T03:37:00.000-08:00

Tear...

Knotted,
I wait at the threshold;
Yearning for a peek,
One last time,
Just before I say goodbye!

2008-02-25T00:50:00.000-08:00

Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye?

Grief comes naturally to me.

Like my love for him. Effortless. Intense. And with such rare ferocity. If there is any other feeling so overwhelming, exquisite and abysmal like love; it has to be grief. I know.

Not so long ago; Love, like a cyclonic wind engulfed us in an unfathomable sensation. There was no pretense in our words, not an iota of reticence in our manner. Everything fell in place, its place. With a childlike zeal we revelled in our togetherness to discovered the magic of a fervid unison. ‘Utopia’ wasn’t just a word that I had come across someplace anymore.

I knew then, I would never ever experience such a zealous frenzy with anyone else. We knew that this bond is unique and special for just the two of us, and not a soul in the other world would have a hint of our magnificent unison. Not now, not ever. I knew.

The first time I bid goodbye, albeit a temporary one I had experienced a shrill sense of grief. I stood at the bus stop and saw him wave out to me, a loud void ensued that night. Very similar to the profound numbness that grips me today. I have come to believe there is nothing as painful as the quiet grief that empties your soul. For grief doesn’t let you wail aloud and vent it all out. It spreads the body like cancer, killing passion with a lustful vengeance.

I try relentlessly every waking moment to stand up against my faceless enemy, but I win no battle. I return to bed, tired and angry only hoping the next morning would have something better to offer. Let the seasons change, I pray. But spring never comes; instead, melancholy with its ill tempered fury sets an ugly fire in my being. I fear that my distorted, disfigured dream will never take shape again. I fear.

Like a puppet, I move forward and backward waiting hopelessly for the play to end. For the ludicrous, sadistic audience to get back home. For the theater to shut stop and call it a day. It has been a long, arduous one! I’m tired of shedding tears when no one can see. I’m sick of such indifferent people waiting to make a mockery of my immobility. I stealthily fantasize of ‘becoming’ human again. To be flesh and soul. To be alive and dance. But I fear that I’m holding on to a withered rose, and hoping to see it bloom again. I must be daft, I think.

I also know there is hope. There has to be. It is the desire to re-unite that will be see me through this. My lost part of me is safe with you, I tell myself. On a moonlit night a huge hungry tide will bring back the pearl to my shore, I know. I will then celebrate in joy and do my samba routine. But for tonight there is no respite. I’m forced to share my room with grief, this hostile stranger that appears blood thirsty. As to when I wake up, what part of me would be lost forever remains to be seen. A bowl of blood, a huge chunk of sanity and heaps of optimism; I think.

I walk around tipsy, gazing into the darkness around blind folded; searching for that small flame that had lit up my world. What do you seek? Asks this stranger! To discover that flame and set my soul ablaze; I assert. Amazed by my grit, grief gives a friendly hand shake. I’m with you my friend, it promises. I smile a wry smile.

2007-09-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

Time betrayed them

In a different world, at a different time they would have been together. For life! Fought the demons of the demanding society. And the demons inside them.

In a different season, with a different direction they would have got together. For life! Danced through the rains. And fought the travails of bad storm.

In a different religion, with a different bible they would have been united. For life! Followed their faith blindly. And with open eyes.

On a different evening, with a different imagination they would have been together. And loved the sight of slight drizzles; while the sun shines.

On a different mood, with a different set of ideals they would have been united. And not cared enough to weigh principles against promises.

On a different flavour, with a different desire they would have been together. And tasted the joys and sorrows of an atypical married life.

On a different page, in a different story they would have been united. And their life would have been a rhythmic poetry. One that melts the heart.

On a different tune, with a different instrument they would have been together. For life. And composed mellifluous music.

On a different day, with a different resolve and different priorities they would have been differently together. For life. But Alas!

2007-08-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

Can I murmur a quick prayer tonight,
So that I can ask for a little more courage;
Just so that I can live my life without you!

Can I murmur a quick prayer tonight,
So that I can smile with my innocent friends;
Just so that they don’t sense my agony!

Can I murmur a quick prayer tonight,
So that I can still think about of our past as perfect;
Just so that i carry only the blissful memories!

Can I murmur a quick prayer tonight,
So that I can ask for a little more courage;
Just so that I can end my life that once when I break into pieces!

2007-07-23T22:17:00.000-07:00

I will turn it around, I have promised;
For I believe now;
Discipline sparks inspiration,
Inspiration enlivens discipline.
Resolve inculcates faith,
Faith reinstates the resolve.
Courage builds strength
Strength sculpts courage.
I will turn it around, I have promised;
So that I can hold my head high,
And look at triumph in the eye.

***

2007-06-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

My Twilight zone

A new moist breeze and this sunny rainbow,
My lovely plants that are now trees;
This blush of dawn and the playful monsoons,
My aloof students that are now friends;

Clean closets and appreciation mails,
My anxious insecurities that are now pages from the past;
Rain dance on the terrace and these flying umbrellas,
My kohl lined eyes that speak a million languages;

Tears at the temple and fun-filled classrooms,
My ugly caricature that has flown with the wind;
A sparkling song on the lips and oomph to my walk;
My soulful life that now chants the hymn of love.

**

You stood there, holding on to my pants and staring at the pastry in my hand longingly. You extended your palms, making an irresistible plea.

I started digging my clumsy handbag for that penny. I started taking everything out of my bag; the large umbrella, adidas shoes, personal diary and that short story book. Everything except that penny was out. I could sense the anxiety in your eyes, what if I don’t find that penny before the signal turns green.

I did find that penny, I did. But alas, you weren’t there. I put my head outside and looked around hoping to find you; to call out to you. You weren’t there. It had started raining by then. You must have gone to seek shelter; I presumed. I went past the signal and got down from the auto. I ran towards the banyan tree and stood beneath it.

That’s when I saw you. You were dancing in the rain, jumping up and down; and letting the pool of dirty water splash all around, entirely ignoring the world around. You were ecstatic! You saw me noticing you, and waved out to me; flashing a huge carefree smile. You seemed to have forgotten all about the money.
Girl, right then I fell in love with you.

Ah, how beautiful love is!

****

You had stood there behind the door. I finished my hurried cooking and came in to join you. You jumped at me, as I entered the room and shrieked into my ears. I was scared to death,you tell me.I must have been very angry; I had decided to take revenge.

Later in the evening when you went out to get vegetables for the night, I sat there thinking. I had it all planned out. You would come in, keep the vegetables in the kitchen and enter the bedroom looking for me. I would then catch you unaware and scream the life out of you.

Evening came.Oh yes, you did place the vegetables in the kitchen and start looking for me. But alas, you caught my trick. You did, so well! You came in running, grabbed me tight and suffocated me with your kisses.

You recounted this event last night, almost after a year. I hadn’t remembered anything about it. I didn’t even recollect it; I didn’t have a mind image of it. It didn’t seem to have happened in the first place. But as you narrated it, with such tender fondness I was moved to tears. Man, right then I fell in love with you.

Ah, how beautiful love is!

****

My parents have divorced me, I said. And you remarked “Good riddance”. I was not surprised you said this, but I wondered why you are being so rude. Why such anger? Why this indifference towards the world? I wondered, why then do I still adore you so? Why such indifference and ego doesn’t put me off, I asked myself.

We then got out of our dinner place and started walking towards coffee day. Our favorite one. I was talking animatedly about something that escapes my memory. I narrated some incident from the past, and remarked about nostalgia. Or Dejavu. You seemed to be listening to me, you said something about my funny haircut and I chided like a mother.

And then it happened. You stopped in the middle of the road, searched your pocket for something. I presumed you had forgotten your mobile back in the restaurant. You then found that thing. You smiled.

You walked up to that lady who sat with her child on the pavement,i hadn't noticed her all this while. The child’s head was bandaged clumsily; from the look of it she was badly hurt. You went there, offered that penny to her and came back to me. I heard you mutter something about how you painful it is. It must have been a simple act for you,iam sure. But I stood there awed. Man, right then I fell in love with you.

Ah, how beautiful love is!

2007-06-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

It’s all over!
(For you- Life)

I started off with vigor; climbed tall mountains – won many wars, conquered many kingdoms, married many wins.

But now it all seems so futile. I have just gone round and round, winning and failing. Getting and losing. I have none with me. None that makes it all worth it.

I owe an apology,

To my life, for I now quit to fight;
To death, for I have no courage to embrace you.

To those dreams that I now forfeit;
To the million plans that will never materialize.

To those people, that I now have to let go.
To those relationships that have become meaningless.

To my undying spirit, that will not know dawn again.
To my romance, that has succumbed to my wretched failure.

To life, for I have no energy to fight.
To death, I have no reason to fight.

To hope, for I have no one to hope for.

******

And what’s the point of a blog when all is over.
The end!

2007-06-12T03:04:00.000-07:00

Hearty

“Did you know iam such a steal?!” I asked.

“So am I!” he declared.

“My pleasure!” I said.

“Our pleasure, you must say!”

So he said. And we had a hearty laugh. That lovely charm and wicked smile, I had almost forgotten all about him and those salty banters. Till I heard that song,our song. The one that bought us togther, the one that melts your heart. And mine too.

We had sat there by the sea shore, mesmerized by the beauty of dusk. We together wrote a poem about the divinity of the sun that disappears into the ocean; leaving behind vague traces of its brightness. You had then turned to look at me, held my palm in yours and kissed me soft. My heart then had skipped a beat. Or so I think.

****

“3 long years! Isn’t that a long time, so much has changed!?” he asked.

“Surely. Apart from all other things that have changed you also a paunch” i said.

“Marriage does that to people!” he exclaimed.

“Oh my, what a waste. Did you know I had a thing for you back in college?” i asked.

“Oh my, you did? I wish you had said this earlier, before I got hooked up!”

So he said. And we had a hearty laugh. We spoke about life at spirited Mumbai and serene Bangalore. We agreed that we miss the Mumbai local trains and sensuous beaches. He cribbed about mid-life crisis and unending marital responsibilities. I complained about parental pressures and the irritating rat race. He then got a drink and offered it to me.

“A toast to our past and this tiny sorry that will last!” he said. My heart then had skipped a beat. Or so I think.

****

“He sounds quite exciting, why don’t you introduce me to him?” i asked.

“Tough luck, Madam!” he declared.

“I’m very sorry for you; I don’t consider those who don’t introduce me to interesting men for matrimonial purposes”

“Tough luck, once again!”

So he said. And we had a hearty laugh. He offered to drop me home, and I readily agreed. We walked up to the bike, talking about this and that. I laughed over his silly jokes, and he my wit. We decided to meet again the next Sunday. I said something about the comfort level we share, the ease with which we while away time conversing about nothin specific.He agreed to that and kick started the bike. I sat behind him and rested my chin on his shoulder. He then turned to look at me, from between the helmet, for no reason in particular. My heart then had skipped a beat. Or so I think.

*****

“Would you come with me to Dubai?” he asked.

“And do what?” I asked him back.

“You could look for a job, have a better lifestyle. May be we could even share an apartment and the expenses” he finished.

“That’s all?” I murmured.

“That’s all!”

So he said. And we went silent for moments. Just like the uncomfortable silences we had shared when we renewed our friendship after a long hiatus. We wanted to say many things,but didnt know where to start. It was embarrassing, atleast for me. I had expected something and he knew about it. I had prepared myself to hear something, which he had planned to say. But he had held it back. I wished him goodnight and switched off the phone. “Would you come with me to Dubai”, I heard him say. My heart then had skipped a beat. Or so I think.

********

2007-06-05T02:48:00.000-07:00

A Mute Orchestra
(For you - Oshi)

Oshi, you live in a beautiful world. Of such marvelous music and silence. Now I know why you do what you do. And why don’t what you don’t.

Now I know why you resent the rat race, and why you can't stand the aggressive people. Now i see the entire point.

Oshi, this morning I realized what a relief you are among this mob of conventional, pseudo, ingenuine women out here at work. Don’t tell a soul; at times I wonder if I end up being one of them, as much as I hate to be.

I don’t think I have interacted with such people before. Not in the intimate way I did last evening. Dont get me wrong,i call them “such people” since they deserve to be slotted separately. Be placed on a higher pedestal among such boring,empty,inarticulate people. Oh,such warm hearted men and women; i wish i were one of them.

And thanks to you for not giving me time, I was forced to entertain myself with them. Such engaging conversations, inhibited fun and noisy repartees.

It is quiet strange the way it is, considering that I so love word play, and that I generally relate to people that are wordy.

I realized that some most intimate relationships needn’t be the ones in which we communicate verbally. Ofcourse I had known it before, in respect to some men who don’t talk much. However in such cases I do the talking. Or some others in which the person is not physically close to me, so the relationship is predominantly maintained through mails. But yet, we have conversed a lot at some point in time. There have been times I become so judgmental and reject candidates who can’t communicate well verbally. And times i write off men and women who can’t match word to word with me.

And this day, I suddenly I realize how foolish I have been. The image of their eloquent eyes and poignant lip moments remain chiseled in my heart. I look inside and see how I have failed to hear and say things I have wanted to. They call me normal.

Thanks Oshi, for taking me to that world. This is all I have to say;

Oh thy hungry eyes,
And muted lips;
Yes, they tell me all,
by saying least.

Such bashful smile,
And reticent hugs;
Yes, you hold me captive,
by such tacit jabber.

Oh thy generous love,
And radical spirit;
Yes, you inspire warmth,
by just being you!

*******

2007-06-01T04:22:00.001-07:00

Coffee & A Moist Morning.
(For you Mom)

I licked at the tiny droplet of rain that had found its way to my lips from outside the damp window. It was tasteless. It was Saturday.

I was alone. But for the terra-cotta earrings, crumpled beigish bed spread, khaki pyjamas, left over burnt noodles, a single magenta petal by the window pane. Not to forget the soggy foot mat and wet umbrella left over from my late night date.

I woke up disoriented. And terribly annoyed with the world, a deep sense of restlessness brewed within.

I came out to the balcony, to smell the scent of the morning. My plants were doing good, relishing the sumptuous monsoon. Some of them bent down to touch the ground, unable to bear the shower of affection.

The sky seemed deceptively close. Very close, I thought if i tried hard i might just about touch the clouds.

There was no noise but for that of the rain drops slapping hard on the roof top, washing away the carpet of yellow flowers off the balcony. No noise but for the kettle on my stove, my mid morning coffee heating up in angst.

A strange feeling of loneness griped me, and I wanted to shout at the top of my voice. But quit the idea as i would go unheard in the midst of such loud omnipresent rains.

The first sip of piping hot expresso, mixed with the dirty rain drop dripping into the cup in spite of the cover, is magical. It mellows the effect of ‘lump in the throat’ feeling; it creates an illusionary elixir that you are best. And life is beautiful. That you are capable of transforming this life; of being able to wipe out all the problems in a split second.

That you are free. Absolutely free! A high, capable of making every other issue non-issue. Of filing the heart with coziness that’s so mushy and naiveté.

However, the feeling vanishes when you are done with the drink.

Cleaning is therapeutic, they say. I’m not sure of that, there are some things you have to do anyway. So you might as well call them stuff that makes them sound exotic.

It was then that I hit upon this treasure. An old photograph.

You, me and that yellow sari.you remember that one,don't you? You look like a goddess in that, so divine; so giving.

You are holding me tight on your waist, your head tilted to the right to touch mine. Your fingers are holding mine, with such tenderness; I can sense the caution with which you are carrying me.

You look extremely happy. Just like a new mother, proud and ecstatic; you are smiling a blissful smile I haven’t seen for years now.

You are wearing this chiffon yellow sari, the one with white flower prints. It is when I look at that photo I realize how old you have become now.

Your face is glowing with the youthful vigor; your big black eyes look fiery and elated. Your nose looks rightly chiseled, your lips the passionate burgundy. There is a touch of delicateness in the way you look at me and pose for the photo, both at the same time.
I look confused. I’m holding on to the “pallu” of your sari, slightly pulling your ‘thali’.

As I look into the pic, I recollect the way you sound when you sing that lord Krishna lullaby. I can feel the smell of that sari and all the other saris I have tried as a teen. I can sense the touch of your fingers, your kiss on my forehead.

Your voice though is vague now. I try hard, but can’t really place it. I wish i could speak to you right now.And...

I wish to go on a long walk by the road, and have you advice me; tell me what is right and what is not. I want to sit by the balcony and crack innocuous ludicurous jokes; about family and friends. I want to stand by the sink, wash vessels. I want to cook upma with you, watch a candy floss Hindi movie and cry over the tragic end.

I want to sit by the tailoring machine and see you stitching clothes. I want to sit on the table and watch you explore the internet with a childlike curiosity. I want to stand next to you, while you chant slogams and think of your dad. I want to massage your leg, straighten those varicose nerves. I want to walk into your room stealthily in the morning and throw ice cubes into your blouse. I want to sit in the garden, and have you teach me solve mathematics problems. I want to laugh insanely at mo’s childish pranks, and dads failed attempts at learning hindi.

I want to call you right now, and cry. Tell you how much I love you. And how lonely iam without you.

You presume I’m happy alone. May be iam. May be I’m not. I don’t know.

But there are times I know I would be better off with you. That I was better off in your arms, as a child. When I knew nothing about self and identity. When I was most content eating a “panju mittai”;and sleeping on the floor next to you.

When I didn’t have a mind of my own, when I still clung to your sari for support. When I slept peacefully in the warmth of your body. Your selfless and trusting love.

I want to say so much more. But my voice would go unheard anyway. It is raining. Fiercely. Here. And there. So I would let it be.

I would just shed a tear. And sip my coffee. And look out of the window.

And relish this aloneness before I lose this too.

Uncle Mr.Charles Bukowski wrote something like this,

Oh Yes
There are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

***

2007-05-28T02:15:00.001-07:00

Farewell Waltz.

“It takes two to tango, they say. I want to tango before I die. Preferably, with a charming young lady”.

Having said this, he laughed aloud at the supposed joke. A boisterous laughter that irked me. Captain Rajsekhar!

****

I remember writing a tamil poetry few years back when I relocated to Bangalore. Something about the train moving forward whilst my heart refusing to do so.

This happens quite often these days as i travel frequently. I have a love hate relationship with train journeys; especially the ones in which I travel on my own.

I hate the stench of the hawkers and find the impatient mob wanting to push everyone around to find their comfortable seat very irritating. I abhor the way men and women spit on the track and poke their nose into everyone’s life. I hate their curiousity; they want to know all about your life. Where you are headed to and for what.

Come to think of it, it’s nice in a way. If you really take a liking to the person who is curious about you that is. Which is very rare.

However,I quite relish the pleasant feeling of being one with myself inspite of the crowd and madness. I love standing near the door and contemplating suicide for the craze of it. I love the feel of the chilly wind on my face, it inspires philosophy in me.

I write poetry and sing aloud.I think it is quite romantic. And kinky.

****

I was getting back home after my final trip to Hubli.
“I would miss the place”, I thought to myself. I guessed this is what they popularly call “Dil me kasak!”

I would miss my carefree banter with that young and naivete lot. I would miss the dingy canteen and the flirtatious young men who find me charming. Not to forget the pimpled cute girls who have a wicked streak in them. (Oh yes, especially the purda clad Muslim woman who is planning to elope with her hindu Bf)

I wish I could do the loud antakshris and the Group discussions again;yet another weekend.I fancy the cacophony they create. I will often think of the hilarious interview answers and laugh to myself. I would think of the guy who refused to sit through the interview because i spoke in favour of live-in relationships in one of those GDs; he had called me immoral.

I will blush at the thought of this young lad who wanted to have coffee with me.I had refused,didn't have an option really.

****

“You like Milan kundera?” he asked.

I was quite surprised that he managed to find out what I was reading.I sat twisted on the lower berth,quite conscious of how i was sitting; wondering if and whether my clothes were decent enough. The book was my lap,hidden behind the longish scarf i had worn to cover myself.

Anyway I simply nodded my head in agreement, not wanting to take the conversation any further than that.

“You like satire?” he asked.

“I do”, I replied.

He then said something about wit, humor and satire. He added that all women want to marry men who have a great sense of humour.

“What kind of man do you want to marry?” he asked, with that irritating smirk that made me want to kill him.

I’m married, I wanted to say. But changed my mind on that.

“I have not thought about it. But I guess a man who has no sense of humor. Someone who is serious all the time” I muttered,knowing fully i was losing it.

He laughed again. "Good joke that! By the way let me formally introduce myself to you. My name is Captain Rajshekar”.

“Captain?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t serve in the army. My friends back in college call me Captain, because I had this huge repository of adult jokes." He laughed for a few minutes,till he realized that i was absolutely stern.

"I was the college Casanova, did u know that?” he declared, very proud of the so-called achievement.

I thought that was too gross. And let it pass.

In the next one hour that ensued he offered Marie biscuits, some “foreign” chocolates that his son had gifted him and a paratha his bahu had packed for dinner. All of which I refused. I was so sure they had something that would get me groggy.

He then asked how 'young' I was. “35” I replied.

With a very unsually serious look on his face he suggested that I should work on my sense of humor. Else my boy friend would call for a break up very soon.

I pretended to not hear that. He added that his wife had the world's best comic timing. He took out his wallet and showed the picture of this pretty young women. The photograph looked antique; it was torn from the sides. She looked exquisite in that crimson sari,like a princess. Her smile,very adorable.

When i returned the picture, he took it carefully; folded it gently and kissed the wallet before putting it inside the bag. I suddenly felt a rush of affection for him;

We then spoke about this and that;unrelated topics. Life after death,Times of India and spelling mistakes, Aishwarya rai(who is apprently his god), Mandira Bedi and cricket, old age homes in Bangalore,stray dogs so on and so forth.

I changed my mind,he didn't seem to be the desperate seedy hag i had thought him to be.My heart warmed up to him. I asked,if he lived with his wife in Bangalore.

“I wish we did. But no”. I might have imagined tears in his eyes;or may be not. I didn’t react.

After about 5minutes,he told me with such cheerful jest “She was a dancer, a very sensuous one at that!”

I smiled a cozy smile, “Is that why she has such deep lovely eyes?”.

He smiled back and for once didn’t say a thing.

"I miss dancing with her. Do u know salsa?"he asked,with a childlike enthusiasm.

“Naaaaaa”,I replied.

“What about tango or waltz?”

“Naaaaaa”.

“It takes two to tango, they say. I want to tango before I die. Preferably, with a charming young lady”. Like you , he declared.

"When I learn to tango, I would surely let you know” I said.

Suddenly memories of my grand dad that had vanished long since came back to me.I thought of day we had danced,the way he held my hand and taught me to twist. It was me,him and mo. Mo was still learning to talk.And i dance. He told us war time stories;his dance with the Italian women.

“I can teach you right away, you want to?” he asked.

“No,not tonight.Iam too sleepy.” I replied,and decided to be alone rest of the night.

****

“He was brought dead” they told us.

Sorry Captain Rajsekhar! I owe you that farewell waltz!

2007-05-07T22:17:00.000-07:00

Not a story,for once!

The best thing to happen to me in a long time.Iam in love.With myself.

Suddenly,the term 'narcissist' has become most exotic.

The most liberating feeling i have experienced in a long time.To not love anyone else;more than myself.

Suddenly,I'm feeling young. Very young. And extremely kicked about life and living.

******

2007-04-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

A sultry saturday!

These reticent drizzles,tangy lilac flowers and rusted rims get me nostalgic.

My wayward mind visits that lazy Saturday afternoon.
It was the time when Bangalore was getting hotter and I worldly. I was reading between the lines, overhearing adult conversations. Sensing pain. Fearing future. And trying to make sense of my haphazard past. I was growing up.

I have a striking memory of that day. It was the usual cacophony at our “mane”; we have always been so animated. We were told that there was a theater group setting up stage for a performance that evening. And I recollect the exuberance that filled the air. Running to the top floor, banging at the doors and running down back to our play home; we did this all through the afternoon.

They all visited us once in a while. Some with clothes, some with food. Others to take pictures they could flaunt. Most were sympathetic, few genuinely concerned.

It didn’t matter to us what they wanted to take away, being with new people got us ecstatic. We would run to them, introduce ourselves, sing and dance. And when darkness engulfed us, dream about being on the other side. Wake up groggy for yet another day.

Yes, we all had painful pasts; most of us were rescued from the torturous world of child abuse. Ironically, we were always full of life. We discussed about our wretched past, like the agony didn’t matter anymore. And never did. Like we were reading out pages from an encyclopedia, like it was just a fact file. Like it was/is trivial. It is that naivety that I treasure.

We shared everything. Food, clothes, pencils and dreams. Most of us were very talented; it was just about nurturing and channelising it in the right direction. Which essentially was what our home tried to do. But for me and for a lot of us, it was not about talents or leading meaningful lives. It was about having food to eat thrice a day, about having clothes to wrap around and a place to call our own. And ofcourse not be beaten up.

Coming back to that sultry Saturday. For a long time, I believed they were an international play troupe or something of that sort. Recently my interest in theater led me to read a lot about the styles of theater and I learnt about “play-backs” and related it to their performances.

They asked us to narrate stories from our lives. Incidents that they enact out impromptu. It was all so new and funny.Im sure none of us could fathom what was happening but the entire hullabaloo was giving us the kicks.

Sudipto was hyper; desperate to narrate his story. He came up to the stage and told them how he made his living picking empty bottles at the railway station. He told us about the church that rescued him, about the drugs and drudgery. And these actors enacted out the story immediately. What fun that was, we were hooting and laughing.

I wonder how it would be if an adult had to narrate that story; or someone more dramatic! I guess it would have sounded heart bleeding. He just stated the events, as if he was tearing off pages one after the other from his life’s calendar.

When the actors enacted the story, at some point I turned to look at him. He looked dazed. Like in a trance. I smiled at him, but I don’t think he noticed. When I looked at him again at the end of the performance he was smiling.

I wonder if he felt like taking off a burdening pile of luggage on his back and flinging it far. It must have felt light.

Then ofcourse my turn came. Rather I volunteered to tell my story. Not sure why. I didn’t know what I was going to say when I raised my hand. I don’t know if it was just for the high attention gives or if I really wanted my life enacted out.

I started off with “I got home that day from school and realized mom wasn’t there.She had left us”. I was surely not articulate then, and I didn’t know where to start and where to end. Story telling wasn’t my forte. However as I spoke, the conductor encouraged me to tell them how I got to APSA as. And I did. Almost.

I try hard but fail to recollect what and how I described my journey to APSA. I spoke about the physical pain. I spoke about being beaten up.And ofcourse about “Ajji”. As I watched the group perform my story, I was awed. Or something like that, something I can’t really describe but still sense.

It was peculiar to see myself on stage. My life in words. There was someone from the troupe sitting next to me, holding my hand. And I guess my eyes were filled with tears. No, I don’t think I cried.

If they ask me today about what I had gone through I might not say any of that.
I would tell them how I yearned for my mother’s warmth, how I sneaked into guddi’s study and browsed through her rhymes when I was supposed to be cleaning up the vessels, about dancing in rain when my granny went shopping. About crying in pain through the nights, as I rubbed the dish wash powder against the wounds hoping they would heal and alleviate the pain.

I would tell them how I longed for a family. For I wish I was one of them;normal and happy. However, I would also tell them that things have changed.

I didn’t cry then, for I didn’t understand mental agony. And I didn’t realize how it was to be orphaned. Not completely.

I don’t cry now, for I understand mental agony. And I know that the worst is over.I full understand what it is to be orphaned.

I will tell them that the past doesn’t cripple me anymore. That I have million reasons to smile.

And million others to celebrate my life.I wish they would enact my story now.

2007-04-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

However!
(For you- my dream child)

Privacy was my first love.

Not anymore. By choice.

I choose to share that little bed with you,see you lie on my bosom and sleep peacefully. I wonder if you will have such peace all life.If I can protect you from the big bad world,like I do now.I wonder if you will grow up to be a nice young gentleman. Smart and Sauve. I wonder.

i love everything about you. Someway or the other.
I adore the way you kick. The way you throw tantrums if I don’t get you what you want. I wonder if you will become one of those rough and tough men I don’t particularly like.

I love the way you want to hold the mobile near your ears and chat away as if there was someone on the other side and you have something so important to say.

I love it when you are so are fascinated with my hair.You pull them close to your face, as if you would like to have them. I wonder if you will be romantic. Write poetry for your woman.

You hurt me with the toy cars that you are crazy about. I wonder if you,like your dad will work with cars. Your toys cruise on my thighs,my eyes,my arms. I chide when you run it over my nose to pain me.

I watch in awe as you place your palm slowly against the walls and try to get up. Falter. And get up again.

I cry when I see your laughter fill our home with life. When cacophony becomes music to us. I’m irritated when you prefer to be with dad than i. I hate it when I don’t hear your blabber all day.

I sit back and see you. See you smile. Cry. Play. Kiss. I Long for me when im away and you make those nonsical sounds over the phone. And love it when you slap me hard on days that i don’t get back home on time.

I wonder if you remember me watching you grow up? With such admiration. With such hope.You snatch the pen as i write this.I wonder if you will cherish this beautiful moment.

Someday I will tell you how I hate the fact that you are big and grown up. And show this piece of writing to you. You might laugh and call it sentimental crap.

I wonder what you will grow up to be? And how?

However,iam very sure that you will give me the privacy I had earlier on. However,it wont be my choice,then.

Just the way I have to your granny.

2007-04-11T22:55:00.001-07:00

The roads it took

When I awoke this morning, he wasn’t there. Not on the bed. Not in the kitchen, sipping his coffee. Not in the balcony with the papers.

Somehow it didn’t shock me. I had seen this coming. I cried, for formality. Hit my wrist against the bathroom walls, let out a melodramatic howl. Like I always do.

And went on with business. Something stuck me and i rushed to the basement. The car was missing. Our car. Our second home during all these years.

Last night it had rained. The first showers of this season. No, it wasn’t the ‘cats and dogs’ type; the one I would have loved to dance and drench in. Slight drizzles. A tangy muddy smell. A silent song in the background. I was flirting with the window pane. Turning to his side once in a while, starring at his profile. And trying to guess if he had cried. He had. It must have been difficult for him too.

Melancholy is very difficult to deal with, unlike anger or pain. Just like love without that ‘spark’.

Oh yes, the car. It has been a witness to our zany love story. The bizarre emotions. During our courtship days, we went on very long drives. I adored them; there is a strange peace in driving to no destination in particular. You are on the road to nowhere but you still go somewhere and then get back. I would hold his hand and squeeze them hard; he would know what I want to say. I would look at him and wink playfully; he would know what I had to say. We stopped in the middle of a deserted road and danced to a melody. He smoked and I danced.

Once we were married, we traveled on weekends to exotic places. I had learnt to drive by then. We made passionate love in the backseat, just for the kick of it. Years went past us. Zara was born in the car, on the way to the hospital. She fancied going to school in the car. Last night infact we picked her up from school and drove back home.

It rained. The first showers of this season. No, it wasn’t the ‘cats and dogs’ type; the one I would have loved to dance and drench in. Slight drizzles. A tangy muddy smell. A silent song in the background. I was flirting with the window pane. Turning to his side once in a while, starring at his profile. And trying to guess if he had cried. He had. It must have been difficult for him too.

I had shouted and screamed. Called him names. For the heck of it, I wasn’t capable of genuine anger ever. Yesterday I discovered how fake these emotions were, I never really manage to dislike someone that I have loved with all my heart. But I threw sarcastic remarks his way, for formality.

He uttered no word. Like always. And that irritated me. Like my howls made no difference to his existence. Like he wasn’t human. I cried and cried. And locked myself in the bathroom for quite sometime,hoping he would come and apologize. He didn’t.

I went to Zara’s bedroom, she was fast asleep. I climbed on to the bed hugged her tight and tried sleep.

When I awoke this morning, he wasn’t there. Not on the bed. Not in the kitchen, sipping his coffee. Not in the balcony with the papers.

It rained again. Very heavy. ‘When would dad come back?’ she asked. Never, I said. And pulled down the window curtains.

2007-04-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

A figment of my fantasy.

Oh, so this is what they call 'Serendipity'! I know, finally.

However, I have a few regrets today. For instance, I don’t particularly love your age.

I wish I had met you earlier, in my growing up years. Rather, yours.

When you were crass. When you were as restless as i. When you had many ill defined goals yourself. When you were inarticulate. When you had the audacity to climb up to the top of the car in the middle of the night.

When you were thinner. When you wore better clothes to try and grab attention. When you wanted to be hip. When u were passionate about rebellion.

When you were still learning to drive the car.When you would have been advantorous enough to take risks with the twists and turns on the road. When you smoked your first. When you still ate only Indian cuisines and enjoyed eating with your hands in an uncouth fashion.

When you were angry and irritable. When you were impatient.

When you hurt yourself playing cricket every second day. When you were caught shop lifting. When you kissed the first time. When you watched those movies, and read those magazines.

When you fancied shocking people with weird stories about your escapades. When you wrote the ridiculous rhyming poetry. When you weren’t a good listener.

When you lost you first love, when you first cut your fingers cooking.

You would have laughed at my jokes then.Uncontrollably.And found my word play exciting. And fallen head over heals for me.

And I would have put some sense into your head.

And had the last laugh. But Alas!!

2007-02-19T22:35:00.000-08:00

A new found love.

It could be very harmful
to make profession of disguise
And see and act through other's eyes;

If this is very often done,
A man becomes the other one.

-Anonymous

I read this and wondered, why not? Who wouldn’t want to become the ‘other one’ once in a while; Why not exchange places with other “men”?!

At some point or the other we all have loved to sneak peak into others lives, experience their love and passion, and have prayed earnestly for their dreams to come true.

Have we not traveled with the celebrated heroes of our times, shouting in joy when he hunted down the criminals; whistling when he matched word to word with his lady love and pushed that slight drop of tear away when we saw him get beaten up. We surely have loved to be on that special vantage point, and look into someone else's life, and live every moment with them.

Having done that all life myself, I wanted to get onto the other side. Be an actor and take people along that surreal experience. To rejoice in their momentary joy, that miniscule pain, the highs and lows of anxiety and hope. And what started as a hobby for me, is now an intense passion.

Theater I discovered is the most picturesque celebration of life itself. An art form so sensuous in its form and experience.

I always believed that iam ‘decently’ creative. A friend of mine likes to say “There is nothing called creativity, you just manipulate the truth. There is nothing to be created”. Though I strongly disagree with him on this, am groping in the dark myself to figure out what creativity really is.

And Theater helps me explore what creatively means to be and what I can do with it. Play-back, to be specific. My learning from the theater workshops have been varied, distinct and manifold.

A pertinent one being the ability to understand that subtle difference between real and seemingly real and explore that chasm. That essentially set me free, and helped me let go of the inhibiting self-consciousness.

It is that realization that my own self-image is not tied to the characterization is what has helped me get ‘free’ from my timidity. I could squat and spit, be a lusty prostitute, a diseased beggar, and it would do nothing to me. It is that acceptance that really facilitated imagination to blossom.The beauty of play-back is it helps one to imagine the impossible, to think beyond the normal and usual.

There is a fascinating similarity between a process lab and play-back theater. The beauty of ‘Living in the here and now’. A practice I have often wanted to master, but miserably failed to in the past. Theater now seems to be coming to my rescue.

Play-back helps me suspend a moment and play with it, to create every possible design that will make the act resonate with the real.

And yet, theater is not about the obvious; it is about taking a moment, decorating it and presenting it to someone else in such a way that they want to notice it. And relish it too.

A friend of mine often complaints that I exaggerate. I always wonder where is the demarcations really? He holds that since iam an actor iam always doing something “make-believe”. What he can’t see is acting (like life) is both make-believe and reality. It exists and still doesn’t. In a play, every moment of mine, every nuance, every “ah” has a meaning, an emotion. Just like life itself. But Yes, richer and extravagant.

Theater is an art that can touch people at different levels and perspectives. It is an art that when performed masterfully and intelligently is what I strongly believe the pure spirit of magic to be.

I have been very trusting of what I see, the world as it stands in front of me. Wanting to be absolutely aware of every subtle change around. Especially that of people and their behavior.

To notice the color of the walls as I walk past them, the wrinkles on the bespectacled old lady’s face, the dark circles of the aged widow, the smell of the newly painted house, the feel of the breeze by the window side. To experience every moment completely-to observe, question, understand and appreciate;that is exactly what theater teaches you to do.

Acting is about doing, and being. It is being someone else, yet drawing from within. To draw that parallel, to empathize, and be most sensitive to what one observes.

I particularly don’t relish a lazy Sunday evening with nothing to do; bliss lies in a life that’s vibrant and alive; one that’s filled with adventure and curiosity. And Playback is all about that exuberant spontaneity, of hilarious contradictions, of abundant creativity, and joy. And at times, wonder! Wonder at what can be done with words, silence and body.

While I’m on stage and performing, the feeling is that of standing on the top of a mounting and breathing fresh air. Of being alive. Of feeling lighter and intense at the same moment.

Play-back is also a beautiful way of exploring and practicing detachment. While at work, my manager always recommended me to stay detached so that I don’t feel hurt when things don’t work.

And I often confused detachment with dispassionate. Play-back has taught me to do exactly that, to do my piece such that it fits into the whole and give space to others to complete the picture. To do what I can to the best and trust my team too will. To breathe life into my character and facilitate others to do so. A perfect way of being a wonderful individual performer without compromising on the team goal.

Play back is one form of art that completely gives all the respect “impulse” and “gut” deserves.To just be what you can be best at, without fears, insecurities, pre-conceived notions and stereotypes.

And to respect and deeply appreciate individuality. To trust that every member out there is special and has a unique thought and personality and he/she would contribute if given the space. That makes one truly humble.

And what fascinates me most about theater is the power of impact that it can have. I recently read somewhere a member of the audience saying “I could feel on my skin every stroke, on my lips every kiss."

Wow, if I could have my audience says that I would have made a big difference. To myself, to the world .Surely Theater is teaching me a lot of lessons,
About the real and unreal;
About life and living!

***********

2007-02-02T02:58:00.000-08:00

A lyrical Moment.
(For you Lulu)

We sat there,
Savoring the soul of dusk,
Watching the clouds parade;

Tasting,
The flavor of twilight;

Soulful Nostalgia
And a memorable past.

Hopeful beginning,
And a transient present.

Restless Angst,
And an erratic future.

Watching,
The rainbow;
And the medley of emotions.
The cold breeze;
And our heavy hearts.
The slight drizzles;
And tears that peek-a-boo;

I asked,
Oh my dear friend,
What is tomorrow meant to be?
Pandora’s Box,
Or a mocking Mirage?

***

Later at night;
We sat there in a row, the 3 of us. In the midst of mahogany walls, air-conditioned space, dingy interiors and a heterogeneous mob of movie-goers.

Oh yes, I must mention that we were there to celebrate.

Meandering moods, droopy shoulders, teary eyes, insipid jokes and a frivolous laughter. This is all they could manage. My dear friends, please do give it to me. Iam quite ‘perceptive’ that way, I can sense that fake smile. And fake one myself too.

We were watching a movie. Supposedly. Infact initially we did manage to concentrate on the story those artists were trying to weave. However, the mélange of colors on the screen went on to blur after sometime for all of us, the character sketches we were drawing on our mind canvas was taking shapes like amoeba. Haphazard and perplexing! Oh, just like the many relationships in our lives.

We sat there in a row, the 3 of us .In the midst of a zillion memories- cold goodbyes, empty nights, bland coffees, banal banters ,furious arguments ,clichéd platitudes, disastrous nightmares. We sat apart; yet united in our being-our many sentiments and hopes.

The intermission arrived; the noisy crowd walked out of the hall to pick up a few of those bland popcorns. We continued to sit still on our chairs and gaze at the blank screen. Coping with the sudden brightness in the dark room, shying away from the many prying eyes and putting on that cheerful mask wasn’t an easy task. We went on to avoid looking at each other.

To my right, sat him. My good friend for 3yrs.Ofcourse, I knew all about his life. Yet, there was so much that I didn’t.

I knew very well the intensity of his emotional torment; that abysmal agony. His love story has been filled with huge melodrama, not to mention the unfavorable twists and turns. So he did have reasons to break down and confess that pain, but for some unfathomable reason he held that pubescent tear captive.

I knew very well that I had to give him the space and time to handle it, let him live through the moment and emerge of it. Hopefully, unscathed. However I wasn’t at peace, the feeling of helplessness and guilty associated with not being able to offer a quick fix solution was tremendous.

A feeling of motherly fondness took over and I wanted to reach out to him, tell him
‘All will be fine, my dear child’. Instead I chose to say “You will have to move on’. Huge platitude that. Don’t I know how impossible it is to move on, don’t I know what it is to love and lose.

I knew this too shall pass; that my soothing words might help him see through the moment but the battle was still within. He had to conquer it himself.

I was desperate to help. Yet didn’t want to sympathize. To love. Yet knowing it will not alleviate the pain. To hold his hand. Yet not hurt the male ego.

Friendship is very different from a love relationship. One doesn’t profess love for the other person every single second, one doesn’t necessarily fill the person with all details about the trivial incidents in one’s life, and one many't be able to kiss and tell. More so if the friendship is between a man and woman, you can’t get mushy really. The bond is just sensed, not expressed.

So may be, may be he did sense that I was there for him that moment. Smiling, not knowing if it was the right thing to do. May be, may be he knew that I was ready to change the world for him, to turn back the hands of time so that he can get back to the golden years of his life.

I guess he did coz he smiled back at me. And I sung this song of joy, just like the way his pet parrot used to,

Tell me,
Oh dear one;
When your world falls into pieces.

Tell me,
Oh dear one;
When that ugly tear falls down,
Just so that I could,
Catch it,
Feel it;
Share it;
Embrace it;
Just so that,
The burn doesn’t kill your soul.

Oh dear one;
If you would ask,
I will gift you my voice,
An create music in your heart;
I will gift you my passion,
And re-create that magic in your spirit.
Just that you could tame your anger!

I will gift you undying hope,
And create a world like phantasm,
Just so that your love doesn’t sour!
Just so that I can make that little difference.
Just so that I can see that supple smile back again.

----

(Dedicated to my dear friend,lulu.Have a great year ahead,birthday boy :))

2007-01-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

25! Already?

Here’s a toast,
To the grand hopes, and the grander failures;
To the deluxe laughter, and premium breakdowns.
One after the other, I have dealt with the rollercoaster;
Quarter century now, year after year!

An august pleasure this, a poetic high.
Of having played this stately game so long!
Oh, how grand this;
The exquisite choices, and the difficult decisions;
And the cognizance of insecure self in deep darkness.

This extravagant lust for life,
Truly sets me free;
Yet leaves me bound.
Truly keeps me alive;
Yet cripples me at times.
There is fear;
Yet, there is a resolve.
Things will change; I will have to change them so!
For today again, I have to start afresh.
And love myself in the mirror yet another day.

Here’s a toast,
To this unpredictable monster-life.

I would be lying if I said ‘the’ unpredictability doesn’t freak me out! The anxiety associated with sudden change is undoubtedly much more overwhelming than the excited anticipation of the newer directions this 25th year will take.

So what’s the big deal about the 25th year, I asked; as I started out writing this piece.And went on to re-run in my mind the chain of events, the whimsical turns I ended up taking in the last couple of months.

The mad rush (the way a dear friend likes to put it) has taught me pertinent lessons about the power of objectivity and patience .Of how talent is nothing, and discipline is everything. Of how instant gratification is nothing, and ironically living in the moment is everything. And iam happy to have had these zany experiences, the emotionally draining introspections, and of course the ‘aha’ moments.

Though I didn’t plan to and didn’t want to stand on 24th of Jan 2007 and say “Hey, quarter life crisis is here” it has truly come knocking on my door. The choices that stand in front of me are very tricky,i tell u.

To choose an idealistic life or a practical one, to compromise for the sake of love or fight for my principles, to settle for the decently challenging yet easy mediocre pursuits or follow the ‘simple living-high thinking’ path I had wanted to embrace all these years.

Too many questions really and iam tense as I fear taking the now seemingly right path and repent later. These never ending questions taunt me and answers elude me. Mom during my rebellious teens would say “Oh yeah, you can afford to dream high now, you are naïve and idealistic. I bet you won’t at 25”. I wonder if I will end up proving her right?!

On the outside I seem to have done fairly well for myself.
If I had to dissect my life, I would be pretty satisfied with the way I shaped my early adulthood, with the risks I took, the decisions i made when at crossroads. The finer moments bring to mind images of peaceful smiles, relaxed coffees on the terrace, the tender beauty of contended tears, uncontrollable laughter with dear ones, adventurous travel stories ,groggy late night conversations, silly arguments that ended with the ‘make up’ hugs and yes, the moments of fame and recognition.

However, there is some amount of unpleasantness in the way I have changed.
I often wonder if I was better off being the audacious, rebellious, ambitious and brash teen I was than the cautious, practical, accommodating (trust me, iam) adult I have become.

Theoretically speaking, the 4P’s of my youth- promise, perseverance, passion and potential seem to have waned to some extent over a period of time (Its another story that people still ask me where do I get all the energy from :)). I guess I have succumbed to the brutalities of the narrow-minded society and lost that ‘spark’ somewhere along the way, especially in the last 2yrs since I got done with formal education. However one thing is for sure, the 25th year is meant for rekindling the aging spirit and get going.

The itch really is, the number “25”.The realization that 25 has come in so early, the fact that time flies is a hard one to digest. What if 30 also lands in jiffy and life just passes me by. What is the standard, how much is one expected to accomplish in the first quarter of one’s life? Is accomplishment really IT?!

Oh yes, Life has been unfair more than once. Whenever I say this, a dear friend points out “life is ofcourse unfair! What did you think?”. The real issue then is that I have been unfair to myself; to the ‘grand’ dreams I have written about in that poetry by writing them off as impossible!

But having said that, i surely have ‘evolved’ in some sense.(Phew,have been using this high powered word since the process labs.Wonder what that really means!). There is something remarkable that I have achieved, a valuable gift I have given myself.

The ability to separate myself from the situations iam in, and analyze my behavior and attitude objectively and make that paradigm shift whenever necessary.(Yes, iam a big fan of Stephen Covey).I finally have the maturity to give up the frivolities of young adulthood and become more self aware, productive and focused on the purpose of everything I pursue. However along with this new found maturity, I have retained the innocent childlikeness, the naïve curiosity, and whacky playfulness.

When I was 20 and insecure, a facilitator in the process lab called me a child woman and I couldn’t really appreciate the beauty of that term till about a year back. And now that I do, that’s exactly what I want to continue to be.And most importantly,hit the bed every night with a sense of satisfaction at having moved an inch closer towards ‘that’ goal and wake up every morning with the same zeal with which I started off.

One thing is for sure, turning 25 is just the beginning of "bigger" things slated to come my way.

Of grand anticipations and the grander changes. And the next 25yrs is going to be yet another whirlwind.

Here’s a toast,To my eccentric 25 years!

2006-11-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

Svaha

**
O u "R"

The death ceremony was a grand opera, the rituals a big sham. Nevertheless, I lived through of all that. The mob has left now, after the due sympathetic condolences.

Left to myself in the seemingly big apartment, I finally heave a sigh of relief. I decide to savor the quiescent dusk, listen to the somber breeze; live in ‘here and now’. But melancholy returns, as my mind cruises into the past. I try to pull it back into the ‘now’, I clench my teeth and dig into the pillow covers. But in vain. I crave for some semblance, only a noisy void lasts.

Just a few days back, I lay here on the bed stark naked entwined with him adorned by a virgin blush.We had together cherished the incredible beauty of our togetherness, as the shadows of the evening deepened.

The garden is now deserted; the saplings starved, trees barren.. Yesterday’s blooming bud is now a withered rose.

It’s a different story outside my house. The dust storms of the day have left behind a palatial azure sky decorated with a tinge of lavish pink and sophisticated orange at a distant horizon. There is a delicious fragrance in the air, a mellifluous rhythm to the chirping and a kaleidoscope over the clouds.

As my eye-lids widen at awe, twilight noiselessly seeps into the world and my being like the spark of the moon that spreads across the oceanic waters, I feel light and calm.

Or so I want to believe!

Such awe is short-lived, as the cognizance of my loss chokes the feeling of beauty and laughter within. Work is therapeutic; I think and start cleaning up the house after what seems like eons.

I start with his wardrobe; pile up all his trousers, shirts, shorts, jogging pants and throw them on to the floor. Before I fritter away his favorite Hilfiger jeans and crimson red sweater i savor their smell for one last time. I clear out the jockeys from the draw. He seems to have saved up many of the laundry bills; old letters and photographs, ties, CDs and other junk; stack them all up and hurl them all onto the corner of the room inside the vacation bag.

The bathroom, that’s another place I had to cleanse; the stories they tell and re-tell are too much to handle. His toothbrush, after-shave, razor, greenish hand towel (yes, greenish it is!), the fragrant liquid soap all of them went into the large sized black polythene.

His shoes; all of them. These little things that I never gave any importance to, nudge my memory now; Like these dangling wind chimes, the way they jive to the wind irritates me to no end. I scream "What the hell are you celebrating for now?". And then the jacket that he wore on misty mornings and rainy evenings. I hated it, it took ages before I could take them off and rest onto his chest.

There wasn’t much of "his" stuff in the drawing room, but for the remote control which was for all practical purposes his. I switched on the idiot box and squatting on the multi-colored cushions watched the football match for half-an hour before I got up again to ‘clear up’.

The library, supposedly common. Sports, world politics, welfare-economics.; these will have to go. Poetry, fiction, philosophy; they could stay. His "100 years of solitude" taunted the tear glands all over again. I hated the sight of those wafer thin sheets. They invaded our privacy; allured him with their voluptuous glitz. He was wrong; relationships were not pivotal in my life. He was! He is!

And I vehemently resent being enslaved by the harrowing pain these memories bring, so all that which belonged to him will feed the hungry flames of the bonfire tonight. "That" book too will go; I never read it only because I abhorred its title. It will go, it has to; aflame!

Kitchen wouldn’t have a thing, I presumed. Nevertheless, decided to tidy up. There was a time when I practically lived on coffee, he detested it. The habit and my coffee. A piping hot drink would do wonders to my health now; I decided.

And it is beneath the sugar box he bought home last week I found that slip. It was a grocery bill, behind the slip he had written in a hurried manner,

Here you go: Sugar,

For the sugar and spice of my life. ;)

Love,
R

I stood there benumbed.

**
Finally, managed to pull myself unto the garden. It took about quite sometime and energy to get all the things out of the house and stack them on. Infact quite a lot of time, as I looked at, felt and touched each of ‘his’ belongings once before they would be gone forever. From my life, far away from the insides of my mind and heart.

I tore the ‘note’ too into pieces and finally put a match to it all. There were a few sparks, a loud wail, a contended frown, wildfire, and a bright glow.

A maddening blaze of fume arose and waltzed across the corners of the garden. The withered rose was burnt. And I was laughing, with such malicious frenzy. I have killed it.

Few seconds later just with one last whimper, it was all over and darkness returned.

So did his memory.

********

(PS: Svaha literally means "wife of fire god",but I'm sure the readers will "see" more meanings to it.

My best friend listened patiently to this piece and suggested the English title and I couldn’t resist but give 2 titles to this one )

2006-08-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

Iha

A chaotic smile choked me last night; the newness of the blissful grief had disrupted my placid world.

Grief I discovered last night, is of 2 kinds. One that is categorical and distinct. In the sense that,one could trace its origin, analyze the sequence of events that led to cause it, list the consequences and read self-help books to fight it.

The other kind is nameless. And adverse; it leaves you with a lump in the throat, a sob in the soul and a void in the heart. Such is the pain that had plagued me yesterday.

His serene countenance appeared within my closed eye-lids time and again and awakened me from the disarrayed thoughts. “Love?” I asked myself, repeatedly. And I guess sleep took over, towards the end of night and flight of light.

This morning too, is filled with disrupted memories.

The first time that I saw him, he was fighting death. I was there; doing everything I could to see him alive.And when he did come out of coma i was ecstatic. I’d experienced a unique fondness for him right then;a connection deeper than ones i'd any other patient.

And I was pleased. To be able to get over the numbness within, to be able to free my crippled self from self-imposed boundaries. And most importantly, to be able to relate to a fellow human being with sensitivity and passionate care. A quality that is so pertinent in my profession; a principle I have valued. A motto that had guided my decisions whenever I was caught in crossroads.

Things changed with time. His smile brought back vigor and fervor in life, I started afresh. I lent a hearing ear to my patients and discovered delight in simple acts of nursing that had long ago become meaningless.

He had a unique sense of humor, one that forced me to laugh aloud; one that triggered and relieved my body and soul of all the baggage. There was light in my iris, cheer in my spirit and laughter in the corridors of the ward.

We talked about everything under the sun. Initially we spent hours together discussing art, movie and literature-we had such similar taste.

I got him books to read during my off weekends and spent the following week dissecting the story line, the beauty (or otherwise) of wordplay, the vivid characterization and the climax. And we often disagreed on one point. I adore happy endings; tragedy is more captivating, he opined.

A feeling much more intense than fondness was growing between us.I had been checking on him first thing in the morning everyday. But today was different and difficult. The ward was heaving with patients and I was busy emptying bed-pans, changing dressings, assisting with the emergency cases.

Finally, much later in the afternoon I managed to get sometime to grab a cup of coffee. I rushed straight to his room.

And then:

"I have only a little time today," I said, walking inside, checking my watch.

His left eyelid flickered, perhaps. There wasn’t any other response.

He was in deep slumber, I guessed. I sat there for a few more minutes, caressing his hair.

The silence was broken by Leela’s heavy footsteps. Seeing me there, she managed a feeble
smile.I wondered if she knew about our relationship,I greeted back with an abashed look.

She came closer to me and took my hands in hers.

“I’m sorry”, she said, pressing her palm against mine.

“For what?” I questioned.

“He has slipped into Coma again. And this time…”

----

I pushed back the wave of tears that threatened to flood my eyes.

It was a long day after that.Artificial smiles,ugly injuries and bandages, nauseating drugs, maddening rush in the wards, shrieking pregnant women.

I got back home much later in the night. I had an urgent shower, a desperate attempt to compose the overwhelming grief.

I sat there in the bathroom just below the shower, letting the water wash over.

And a rotten chaotic smile choked me; the newness of this grief disrupts my placid world.

------------

Back again:

"I have only a little time today," I said, walking inside, checking my watch.

I took me a few minutes to realize he wasn’t in there, I decided to wait.

I sat beside his bed; chewing on the jumbled thoughts and mélange of emotions. My arms reached out to the book I’d lent him last Sunday. Love Story!

I turned the pages one by one tenderly, as if I were caressing his hair. And a light colored leaflet from between the pages fell to the ground. As I bent down, I could clearly read what it read.

“Iha, Will you marry me?”

----

I pushed back the wave of tears that threatened to flood my eyes.

It was a long day after that. Artificial smiles,ugly injuries and bandages, nauseating drugs, maddening rush in the wards, shrieking pregnant women.

I got back home much later in the night. I had an urgent shower, a desperate attempt to compose the overwhelming excitement.

I sat there in the bathroom just below the shower, letting the water wash over.

An euphoric smile choked me; and the newness of this joyous grief disrupts my placid world.
------------

I adore happy endings; tragedy is more captivating, he opined.

(Iha – Secret Desire)

2006-08-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

Untitled

All the word-craft here have been work of fiction till date. But well, this one is going to be different.
However let me warn you, I exaggerate. Everything!

Thanks to Captain Jacked (what a name is that?),iam writing this today:

I’m thinking about –

If I would ever learn to handle the bitterness of failure as elegantly as I do the buoyancy of success.
Is melo-drama the other name for passion? Can one fabricate passion?

On a less serious note:

When would have enough money to get a nose job done?
Why is the coffee-day vendor at the counter so irritated?

I said –

All of them are strangers after all, each living their own whims and fancies.
The mirror too,shows faces I fail to identify with.

I want to –

Do ‘Theater’. Act in negative roles, cry on the stage.
Learn Bharathnatyam.
Write ,heart wrenching stories.
Swim (but I’m water phobic).

I wish –

I were less verbose.
I could atleast learn to spell ‘ rationel’ and ‘logical’, right!
My “restlessness quotient” wasn’t this high.

I miss -

The Chilling winters of north. The sleepy charm of south Indian villages and temples.
Going to school in the bullock cart.
Chatting with mom in the kitchen.
Teaching my sister to learn to walk.
Writing fake love letters to my girlfriends.
The butterflies of teenage crush.
Wearing short skirts.
The rush of mumbai trains.
Talking with god.
The elation of standing 1st in class.

I hear –

Laughters from the past,that I’ve lost.

I wonder –

Would I quit?
When would I have a child?

I need –

On first priority, level-headedness.
Would be good if I’d my own house.

I regret –

My never ending tears.

I dance –

Every night. With window shuts, lights put off.
In the rain, on my terrace.
In parties.
Whenever I cry profusely.

I cry -

Mostly every night.
In pleasure and pain.

When I wakeup from nightmares.
In the toilet when at work.

I am not always -

Insane and contradictory.

I make with my hands –

Stories on the keyboard.
Food.
Touches that could be therapeutic.

I write -

When iam too stressed.

I confuse -

Sympathy and empathy.
Push and pull on the doors (same pinch, sir)
Needs and wants.
Materialism and greed.

I should try -

Patience.
Writing everyday.
Compassion and selflessness.
Traveling alone.
Act more,dream less.

I should finish

Life of Pi.

I know -
?

I am -

A romantic.
Passionate. Animated. Ludicrous.

And finally –
Those I would like to tag don’t blog.
--------

2006-06-15T22:50:00.000-07:00

Swaroski

It has been a year. One long year of exploring & knowing, revealing & reveling.

Of loving and loathing! Of laughter and laze!

It had begun well, extremely well. And ahh,been one hell of journey I must say.All shades of blacks and reds painted on life’s canvas, all genres of music relished.Embroidered threads of true passion on plains of my heart, woven beads of supremacy and sacrifice on the silks of my tender past, soaked in the warm waters of romantic ecstasy.

And the tide has subsided. Emotions Slaughtered. The Lessons learnt, soul enriched.

Where had it all begun? In the midst of multitude of mails, in between the chaos of daily grinds.
On a full moon night, that fateful one.

I’d stood gazing at the engulfing darkness, naïve and unarmored. Smiling and smitten. I’d felt like the wind. I’d felt like the rain. It had happened. And I knew it was for real, exactly like he had said. I had then, bashfully let love take over.

***

I had blushed at the thought of his words, chiding myself for the craze of long distance love. An intense desire had possessed me that night, a desire to bestow upon him all the fervor and fire that was burning within. I just want to hold you in my arms all night long, he had said.

To give selflessly, to embrace change-to acknowledge love made me feel vulnerable. But there was a strange strength in the submission, arrogance in our intimacy. I’d plunged into an ocean

of passion and pleasure; I’d reached the destination-found my purpose.

Lot has changed since that night.
***

Time flies, they say. It has. And yes, leaving behind blemishes that beautify the faces of nostalgia.

I don’t want to relive the love now. But I want to, like it is all anew.

I don’t want to hope to reunite. But I want him today, like I had never before.

I wish I’d never met him ever, but how I wish to re-wind the hands of the clock again and still that night.

These days,

His poetry like the wind snuggles up to my neck-every night his memory returns.

The picture of his smile like a feather caresses my cheeks- every day his memory returns.

I wish I could erase every memory of our bliss. But I want to remember nothing else.

The other day,

He had walked away, while I shrieked in pain. He said goodbye, with pain that was so well camouflaged in that nonchalance, I’d almost missed it. I had wondered if I can ever solve the puzzle that he is.

He was,

He was the life giving ray, the man that shaped the woman in me.

He was the music that danced into the rhythm of my existence.
He was the artist that sculpted the knowledge of sensuality in my being.

Those days,

I’d wondered if he is the future I’ve been yearning for, all life long.
I’d wondered if ecstasy could be heart-wrenching; an acknowledgement so powerful.

I had seen him in every joy around me, I felt him in the deepest of my yen.

I was awakened, I was alive.

***

Memories engraved.
And the memory like a honey smeared sword pierces through my lonely nights.

It has been a year. One long year of exploring & knowing, revealing & reveling.

Of loving and loathing! Of laughter and laze!

********************

( Satvi-existence)

2006-05-19T04:50:00.000-07:00

Mirnmayee

“What would you do, then?” I had asked ludicrously, caressing the fresh stubble that had mushroomed on his face.

“I would disown you, try other options. There are too many women out there, you see.” He had teased, gently kissing a silent tear drop that had escaped my iris; A tear of ecstasy, that.
-----------------

Premonition, I must say!

It’s been 4months since this conversation occurred, but the memory of the mushy banter lingers on; bringing in a nostalgia that smells like mud after the first rain.

Sitting by the window, I muse; a feeling of dejavu takes over and I revisit those fragrant memories all over again. Searching for a string of memory, trying to visualize that exact expression, that voracious wordplay, that intimate touch.

I experience a mixed bag of mental chaos and excitement whenever I do this; and if I do hit the thought a serene contentment persists! Like the thrill that i experience on finding a favourite trinket that I had assumed to have lost. An inexplicable calm erupts within; a calm that smells like the fresh paint on a grill gate.

However when i fail to land that memory,sand below the feet pulls me into an ocean of distasteful yen. Exactly the way I feel now; the mind’s eye fails to recollect images from my last meet with Sid.

I can’t place that face, can’t picture that adorable smile that reaches his eyes, can’t recollect the words that we had sculpted into those moments. As I see bits and parts of my past and try to fix the puzzle together, beauty and bitterness interchange places in the mind reflecting the faces of a disloyal memory.

An old past that was very pleasant, a recent past that was an obnoxious stench, and a present that is…

If there is anything about myself that I had wanted to change, that was the perfect-ness with which destiny had shaped my life, I had it all. And then i thought I lost it all in a nano-second!

Everything had changed,

My dreams became voluminous abstractions.
My love, a faceless intimacy.
My gaiety, a tailored hope.
My lust turned, to a lifeless yore.
Thought of his kisses, created incomplete mirth.
Smells of the dawn left me with dull reveries!

The exquisiteness of my perceived completeness died in that moment, when I finally realized and accepted that I can never see the world the way I did earlier. For a person who thrived on the beauty of external landscapes, who derived strength from watching, observing and painting the world she saw it was a disaster..

The first few days were terrible.

But slowly, I started focusing my attention on the power of inner vision, the brilliant images that were studded into the necklaces of sight within.

From being a fulltime artist, a painter to being a student at the Brail center; the journey was surely the most challenging one. The sense my own incompetence and incompleteness disabled me. Made me “different”!

“Pursuit for Intellect and love, the only reasons for living” I believed. And to pursue these, you don’t need sight, I started convinced myself.

To re-create the essence of nature’s beauty with my hands and to revel in solitude while painting, the 2 most humbling experiences that had kept me alive vanished. What I saw around me, and the feeling that sights stimulated had dictated the way I painted the world. And it was all over.

The rest of me fell apart along with the sight. The passion to live, to emote, to feel, to observe and to even think.The struggle within to reorient myself to a world felt not seen, to come to terms with the loss of old relationships, the colors of my paint and yes, the sense of self-insufficiency was inexplicable.

When I met my coach, the first thing that struck me was that I might never get to see him. He took me by my hand and I felt the warmth of the support running through my fingers. He held out the cane to me and walked with me. It was the beginning of a strange journey,of learning and evolving.

Of experiencing aesthetics pleasure of a totally different stroke. Learning to hear sounds of people, pain and nature. Of relating changing directions of wind to seasons, to feelings.

Of understanding people sans their gestures. Of listening to vehicles approaching before crossing the streets.

Of re-living my self discovery process in entirety, all over again; of learning to walk straight ,of feeling the sunrays on the closed eyelids, of recognizing where my mouth is and feeding myself food from the plate without spilling it all over.

It was a chaotic and emotional time, and I was relishing the new found way of life.It was liberating and binding both at the same time. Liberating to seek that freedom I’d lost.
And it is during this period, that I started writing; About my inner visions, about imagery from the past, exploring meanings that emerge from other senses.

Of losing sight and discovering vision. Of putting in words, the pictures I’d wanted to paint-of invisible terrains that illuminate my artistic crave.

And after 2yrs of such eye-opening ordeal, I’m now waiting in the operation theater for the Cornea transplant .I’m not feeling nervous really, but I would be dishonest if I say iam not thrilled. Sid is here today, I guess trying to bring a smile on his face-I sense a guilt that smells like washed clothes bundled inside a cupboard.

Iam unsure now, of going through this. .Of getting back to the normal world, of sight; of letting go a cozy, self-sufficient world I’ve created within.

“Are u ready?”, the nurse asks.

I stare back at the direction of her voice, eyes shut.

*******************

2006-04-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

Fulki

And then-slowly,modestly,sheepishly the day dawned on me.In me.So did the reality,braided in between the rusted rims of my uncurtained windows.

Reaching out to my eyelids,disrupting the pseudo serenity slumberland gifted me with; poking my sight,bruising the unexposed ego that lie within;awakeing me with pain.

And then- slowly,vehemently,fiercely an agony arose.A crucifying torture that I’d postponed from last night when sleep had taken over.Fragmented memories of vague conversations and broken tears swept past my half closed eyes,choking my lungs;arousing an array of ugly emotions.

Ugly emotions-Creeping into the bedsheet,spreading to occupy the suffocating vaccum outside and inside me,leaving a trail of bitterness that weekened my late night resolve to put it all behind and move forward.

Sometimes i just about know that it is impossible,that the wound is here to stay.For keeps.From then on my energies are focussed on veiling the hurt.From others.From self.

So there I go,with my loud demeanor and whimsical eccentricities;camouflaging sorrows behind huge laughters,sophisticated smiles,annoying “PJs” and the playful banters.Memories of the drunken night and a hidden tear flashed through and a strange sober smile kissed the corner of my lips.

And then-slowly,aggresively,annoyingly an anger erupted inside me.For having let my senses get out of control,for having let my world slip through my fingers;for allowing one dissapointment break my soul.

With that fierce abhorance,I threw away the bedspread to the floor and sat up.Picked up a paper and started scribbling.I’ve done this upteem number of times in the last few months.And time and again realized…

“What the mind fabricates,the pen can’t etch!”

I’ve failed.As a writer.No more one,for that matter.And it had taken me so many months of persistence and tortorous zeal to learn this.The truth crept and resided deep inside,last night.

Every day a zillion thoughts rush through my mind in every living nanosecond,a trillion stories do a tantalizing mockery dance.But how could i possibly sit down,collect this weird randomness(or random weirdness?)and adorn them on paper?

I’ve done this before.But I cant seem to anymore!

And the failing is killing.My friend likes to quote Shoba De ‘Writing is a drug.If you have tasted it once…well”.

And who better than I to vouch this? No other happiness,no other appreciation,reward or excellence is as fulfilling as seeing one’s thoughts being sculpted into a story.The sense of a calm contentment burgeons within,every time I write.

Discussed with a thousands of fellow aspiring writers and reached a conclusion that a writer’s block is mostly psychological and that if one puts his/her mind to it,one can work wonders with words.However it is tough to believe so.It is when one experiences it,does one understand.The situation is undoubtedly pathetic.

Still I persisted.Decided to fight and write,to put my mind to it!!

Followed the free advice a dear friend gave me over a cup of coffee, “Adopt a method to the madness” He had said “Observe people around you” “All the time”.

So I started,continuosly observing people around me,conciously and subconciously;noting down in my memory notepad the language they speak,the dreams they spin,the games they play,their tiny stories!

I saw them acting,joking,laughing,singing,running.Life became beautiful.There I saw,a treasure of fascinating stories.But again,I failed to write about this enlightening experience of constantly watching,understanding,loving;people and their idiosyncracies.

The finger on the keyboard is still,like stagnant waters of a pool.
Therefore I wait;endlessly,listlessly,ridiculously-hoping things will change,I will write again. That a spark will strike me and from then now,there will be no looking back.
A decent piece of work,is all I ask.

Eh wait,How is this one? Ah!

---------

(Fulki-Spark)

2006-02-07T04:14:00.000-08:00

Apekshaa

"How is he doing?” I ask.

I often am amazed by the capacity i possess to burden my tone with such nonchalance and indifference, while experiencing a burgeoning array of emotions deep inside. Amazed by the way I utter such dispassionate words, that are not even remotely close to what I intend to say. How do I manage this serenity?

**

“Have to leave in an hours time”, She replies.

“How is Sid?” I ask again.

I insist you answer me, I intend to say.

“How is life at college?” I ask.

I’m dying to know if you are comfortable there! Curious to hear from you stories about interesting people you have befriended and tales of those exciting ragging sessions. Yen to chide you as you narrate the experiences on your first date. Tell me all about it darling, I intend to say.

“You wont speak, will you?” I ask.

She pouts. The most adorable of her gestures.His,rather.

She crosses her left leg over the right, adjusts her skirt in a oh-so-elegant fashion and tucks in the permed hair behind her ears. And for the first time in the last 15minutes lifts her eye from the menu she was posing to be looking at, to look at me.

She smiles the familiar plastic smile, ignores my question and retorts "I will not have the soup".

**

She loves soups, especially the tomato one they serve here. So does he. Sid has never had a dinner here without starting off without a fresh veg soup.

I’ve looked at awe, the way she closes her eyelids to smell the aroma of fresh tomato mixed in the cold breeze, relishing it as if it were a divine feeling.

But she refuses to try it today.Why would she, I have suggested it!

We never look eye-to-eye on anything.Also because she is much taller than I, she took after her dad. In almost everything, probably the biggest reason why I love her so.

**

Like a circle, it revolves. My life with no traces of where it began, where it stands now and where it is heading to end.

Birthdates are pseudo in nature, mom told me I was born on this date and I have been celebrating my trivial birth over an over again, year after year hoping that this “one” would be the best ever. So do I, this time too.

New resolutions, new wishes and a new beginning-all over again. Trusting that the experiences of past have enriched my soul, making me wiser, tougher and womanly. And more deserving, to mother.

This time i await her “yes”. This time I expect forgiveness. This time again, filled with the ecstatic delight of meeting my daughter after a year ,pregnant with the hope of regaining her love.Hoping,he will send her to me. He will be back. We will be family, again.

**

“Did you color your hair?” I try to initiate a conversation, like always.

“Are you still drinking, your eyes are swollen?”

“Its just the old age, I guess” I say and laugh out aloud, as if it were a great joke. She stares at me, with disbelief.

She is mum again, goes back to reading the menu religiously. And I go back to starring a the ‘blue’ painting on the wall. I bet no mother goes through such an uneasy nervousness on dining with her kid.

**

Sometimes (or most times)I see myself reliving the past, recollecting every single second of love and pain experienced, smiling and breaking down simultaneously.

Hours later, you will find me lying on the bed, cuddled to “Paradise Lost”-his all time favourite,close to my heart.

The thought that I’m left with nothing but this darkroom i shut myself every night in, the tinkle of the wind chimes and the dark shadow of impending pain lurking ahead in my life scares me to death.

Some loses can never be compensated for, like the ones I’ve had.

**

“By the way, Happy Birthday!” She says.

The blithe unconcern and apathy in her voice tires me, my tear glands for the want of some rest decide not to respond.

“Thanks” I smile.

“What have you got for me?” I ask, like a little child enthused by the thought of a gift, longing to tear open the gift wrapper.

“Some good news!” She retorts and begins to pick at her food.

**

I stare at her, trying to guess if she has taken a decision. Is she coming back,afterall? Is she going to be mine, forever?

I wait for her to speak, tell me what I’ve been longing to hear for the last 13yrs.This torturous separation from her would have killed me, but for the tenacious hope I’ve nurtured.

“You want to know what I’ve decided, don’t you?

I nodded by head, affirming that I did. Don’t make me wait; just say it, I intended to order.
My heart began beating fast. Faster than his, I must add. The memories of those sleepless night lying on his chest and listening to the song of his heart rushed past my eyes.

**

“Would you like to have some desert?” the waiter interrupted. Our thought process.

“No, not really. Get us the bill.” I tried being polite.

“Pls wait, I would like to have something”. she went back to menu again.

**

Her voice trailed off. I was lost, in the midst of my muddled mind. Just like the other day. The court had given its verdict. An irresponsible woman can’t be trusted with a small child. The child would live with her dad till she is an adult, after which she……

The wind was blowing fast, hitting hard our faces. I sat there letting the wind take on, relishing the cold as its passion lingered on. Why is the wind so enchanting? Why do all the seemingly invisible things around us bless us with pleasurable passion and torture alike?

For instance, the love for my daughter.

We are such emotional beings, or are we physical beings? Or is there a difference ? Did I feel any pain at all when she was cut off my womb? I did, I seemed to have known this is the first of the worst separations to come.

When the court adjudged me as incapable of bringing up my own child, I couldn’t sense any hurt. It was simple bitterness! All these years of penance, was I alive really?

**

“I’m moving in with you, this Sunday”. She smirked.

Her words felt like the first snowfall that cut your shoulders with a cruel cold. Rhapsodic pain, Sid calls it.

I couldn’t feel the pleasure I’d hoped to experience, probably because I’d imagined she wouldn’t come back until Sid disappears from her life. Her decision shocks me. And I wonder if she was pushed to take the decision, the cold look on her face confuses me.

I can’t trust that she is coming back. Is this for real? Or is it one of those dreadful nights when my ever active mind concocts my desires to cook up a fancy story?

I can’t smile. I can’t cry. I can’t even sense the numbness I feel every night after a tiring “cry” session.

I stare at the evening sky, let the setting sun’s rays poke into my iris and see the sun melting into a dull gray dusk. I look back at her, and let the image of her poignant look seep into my body and soul.

Drunken by an eccentric bliss, I smiled through the hot tears.

**

“Can I pick you up from home? I ask, hoping to catch a glimpse of his face.

“Of course, you are invited for the ceremony”, She replies.

“Ceremony?”

“It is the 13th day!” She replied.

**
Like a circle, it revolves. My life with no traces of where it began, where it stands now and where it is heading to end.

Birthdates are pseudo in nature, mom told me I was born on this date and since then I’ve celebrated my trivial birth over an over again, year after year hoping that this “one” would be the best ever. So do I, and this time too.

Hoping, I can convince her against going abroad for her education. Hoping, she will be continue to live with me.

------------------------
Apekshaa – Anticipation

2005-09-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

Adhi.

Trying to steer clear of this sudden eccentric chaos;
Hoping this monstrous transition will
become an angelic blessing!

Assuming these cluttered words in my mind web,
Will evolve into meaningful abstractness!
Soon;

Hoping future will,
better the past;
And the past,
will teach me lessons!

Hoping the insanity i sense in the empty words now;
Is the dark before a new lustrous dawn!

Hoping letters to grow wings,
For stories to become flight.

Pushing myself out of the window,
Looking far into the future;
For a new beginning!

Yet another;

---------------------------------

(Adhi - A Beginning)

2005-09-04T22:45:00.000-07:00

Antara.

Chaos is more comforting than calm;
Especially when the chaos outside you surpasses the one inside.

The noisy nurses clad in their white uniforms walked to and fro, shouting at each other at the top of their voices; instructing the visitors to maintain silence. The pungent smell of dettol and medicines nauseated my senses and i feared that the stench from the wash basin nearby would kill me before the burgeoning pain inside does.

I stared at the titan clung to my weary wrist, the hour hand lay exactly on the top of the minute one; and I realized with shock that it has been only 2hrs since the birth died.

I looked at the watch again to recheck, the tattered black strap and the dark grey dial seemed to be aching with the weight of my sorrow. I had assumed it would be much longer than just 2hrs considering how every nanosecond I’ve spent here i lived a million deaths. Waiting...

Waiting for a father who is fated to see his dead son lying in the cradle peacefully. And I, as the wife of the father have the privilege to crucify him with this news.

And what a shameful situation this!

As I’m cringing with pain at the thought of a mother losing her child at birth, the mother who delivered the child opened her eyes after the operation to ask if her ‘payment’ has been credited .I could do nothing but feel wretched being there, and not having him by my side.

Aren’t all women made of the same material? Doesn’t ‘motherly’ live in her as much as it does in me? Why didn’t his death torment her , like it has me? And why did the thought of extra payment at attempting to produce another child enter her mind 5mins after she learnt that the child is dead?

Can poverty kill love? Can poverty kill the human in you? The mother in a woman? It seems to have!

And how can I comfort Sid? How do I tell him; that all his compromises have gone futile, that he should pack his dreams in a sack and burry them along with the child in the cemetery?

That I’ve lost a part of me with this child ,a part of my aliveness, a part of an identity as a woman, a part of my love for myself; forever?!

Violent shrieks of the women from the labour ward made me giddy; bringing back memories of my craving to shriek like this. And i felt dizzy again. With fear, anger, anxiety, pity and disappointment.

It seemed like i was holding on to my tender life just so that I can give him the news and kiss his goodbye. And I was...

Totally exasperated by the sickening drowsiness, suffocation and nausea. Not so long ago I would rejoice in sickness, my maternal instincts would look up at the joyful anticipation of “carrying a child”. But when the doc gave his verdict “Nothing but a miracle can create a child in your barren womb” my world shattered.

‘A barren womb’ he had said. How could he? No woman can be barren in my opinion, not with the mammoth love and affectation we hold in it. Not with the stupendous dreams we weave for our unborn children.

When I first mentioned the idea of ‘employing’ her, he refused outright. He had to! His love for me, his own desire to father a child and his understanding of my need to have a family won him over and he gave in.He had to.

Ofcourse; he could never get around to accepting that I wouldn’t bear the child.In fact he didn’t want to stay put in the hospital when she delivered the baby, he had craved to lift the child from my arms and kiss the first kiss. So he found an excuse, went off to the town to collect my test results. This dizziness that has been visiting me often these days, I wish it would be a life taking disease.

I knew that my world would change in that 2hrs and it did. But differently.

I sat there in the reception hall rehearsing the words I would say, not knowing if I have the courage to do so in years to come. And then I saw him, walking in. Elegantly. Smiling to himself and walking with fast steps.

He pushed open the door and i noticed that blissful glow on his face. I’d seen such joy decades back when we were still courting each other. And now, this extreme elation at the anticipation of becoming a father. But alas!

He spotted my in the corner and waved out to me enthusiastically. He ran up to the reception, stood beside me for a minute and gasped for breath.

He then bent down, caught me by my legs, lifted me up in the air and shouted in an ecstatic fervour.I like a puppet in his arms moved in the direction that he threw me in. Hot tears welled up my eyes, i had forgotten the words I’d thought of speaking.

As he put me down ,my nervous toes slowly touched the ground;I stood still trying hard to muster the strength to tell him. But before I could speak, he did.

“You are going to be a mother” he said softly, and a tranquil smile spread across his face.

I stood there, confused.

“Darling, you are pregnant” he said, emphasizing the last word.

The stone in my heart melt, a lightning flashed, a thunder broke and i closed my eyes; letting the words sink in.

I cried amidst my misty eyelids; I took a long breath as if beaming at my womb, I smiled, I laughed, I fell on the ground and wailed.

A miracle has occurred. A child has died.
Another to be born.

A mother has died.
Anther born.

A miracle to fill our barren lives.

--------------------------
(Antara - A rhythmic end,the last stanza)

2005-08-23T06:11:00.000-07:00

Zahra (Part II)

That is when I noticed her;
My husband’s wife!

A vampire bottled in a black rose, a devil’s inside with a rainbow outside, an ugly camouflaged beneath the white skin, a barbaric beast locked within a damsel.

And yes;a lunatic posing to be a part of the intelligentsia, a female version of the deadly venomous snake, a swine plastered with an enticing sensuality, a predatory passion behind the sugar coated love.

This of course i realized only after losing my man to her. Her magnetic eyelashes, silken hair, oceanic lips and gluttonous waist will speak volumes of her capacity to allure the naiveté and the sensible men alike and punish plainjanes like mewith shame and self pity. That’s what she did to me! Initially that is.

That evening after conversing with her for a few minutes (when I continued to stare at her bare cleavage without blinking my eyes) during the exquisite dinner party i accompanied him to, i rushed into the washroom.To look into the mirror,as if for the first time ever.

And i wondered why i wasn't named 'ugly' - i personified that.

I wanted to tear away my grotesque exterior that fails to speak my aesthetics to the world- a countenance that refuses to paint my glowing inside with sparks outside;

And I touched my palms-my touch like an ugly leech on a tender skin let the feel of myself rot;

My walk like a dirty pariah limping-distorts the level headedness within, creating an abstruse self-image;

My voice like a bad chalk screaming on the blackboard-makes foul all my sounds.

And i wondered why i wasn't named 'ugly' - i personified that.

But then, I can write. I can joyously suffocate my man in the literary pleasures that entice the mankind .Or so i thought. Until the next time; the next dinner party when i sat enchanted watching her dance.

Me and ‘our’ husband sat there mesmerized, tired exercising our iris, trying to capture all of her amazing charms into us.

Awed by;
The pace tied to her toes, that which transported us to a different world-we gorged on her celestial delight.

The lissome leaps, every single tap on the floor that created a magical mania in the room-we admired every inch of her mystical movements.

The graceful agility in the way she moved her bosom and torso creating soft flowing movements- we stood there engulfed in the lyrical prance of her silhouette.

And he fell in love. With her; aroused by her fanatical dance; intrigued by her lunatic fervor.

Exactly around that time,i fell in love too. With the written word; my pen performing the ‘Rudra tandava’ on the paper.

But her leaps won over my words; he preferred her sweet talk over my unpretentious conversations. Her arty killed my bland. And he deserted me;

For an insatiable woman who played the shady flirtation game with every man that gave food to her blown up ego.

For a materialistic devil that calculatedly drugged my lover and got him from wealth to rags.

And I survived alone. Cringing with the pain of betrayal. For the last 15yrs! Running away from his city and the old memories, hiding from her beauty and my inferiority, shunning his promiscuity, rebelling against the society for no reason and hating everything and everyone around me.

Till of course the ecstatic pleasure of writing freed me from the maddening webs i had created around myself.

And today as i gape at her impeccable face i smile to myself; I don’t feel hurt at all. Her facial skin is wrinkled and the sensuous smile faded; i feel a strange affection towards her. She looks fragile and weary,may be she has played enough games and now wants to live in peace-with herself and the world.

I decided to go up to her and talk. Ask her if she is doing fine, if she still dances the frenzied dance and if she is the mother of an obsessive teenaged daughter.

As i got up from the cozy seat and moved towards her, she called out for someone.An attendant, i presume. A nurse like lady walked upto the 'wife', carefully lifted her from the chair and seated her on a comfortable wheel chair.

And she moved on. Out of the cafe,to an unforgiving world.

So did i; tattered between the ugly remnants of a wife’s fury and a strong womanly pity that has crept in.

-----------------------

(Zahra - Beauty)

2005-08-22T05:11:00.000-07:00

Zahra (Part I)

Submerged in the grandiloquence;
I strayed into those deluxe shops, catching a glimpse of the grand juxtaposition of the luxury goods. The foreign ones, that people use to decorate their affluent Indian drawing rooms.

I’ve been here before, many a weekend; in fact just the last week.

But yet every time i get here the fragrant richness of the milieu, the extravagant embellishments, the noisy families, the eccentric metrosexuals, the maddening rush in the food courts, the window shopping chweet teenaged girls; amaze me to no end. And taunt me. To get here again and again; week after week .To enjoy my calm in the chaos, to smirk at the ludicrous arguments of the couples, to picture myself clad in the gagras of the mannequins.

And to write; as i marvel the noise, gape at the anomalies of the often stereotyped groups and seek inspiration from the intelligentsia & the morons-alike.

After an enervated walk through the poetically jarring crowds, the best place to rest is the mellow coffee shop at the corner. Smelling the aroma of the Italiano.Sipping into the piping hot coffee, elegantly with pride. Alone; as it gives a high! That of my life being flavored with a nestling fondness, of having a sumptuous living.

Of sculpting the little calligraphic letters into words, relishing the adorable cacophony-inside and outside.

Of an enlarged bliss at the anticipation of creating my own word child, being born from my ever etching pen;

Of embroidering the plainess of my paper with streaks of creative black ink;

Of braiding the plaits of imaginary characters chosen from the real world;

Of fabricating haphazard words suspended in the air into picture stories;

Of garnishing mundane conversations with enticing emotions;

Of adorning the bland lives of millions styling them in an exotic fashion;

And enriching the life of the simple people around me by giving them a place–in my paper, in my story, in my creations.

Ah awww, what bliss can the written word grant! A hypnotic trance like one. An amplified feeling of stupor, at my own perceived talents. And this invariably results in a nostalgia; the recurring painful memories begin to haunt me, if only for a few minutes.

Exactly when such thoughts spread through my senses, I noticed her;
My Husband's Wife!
-----------------

( Zahra - Beauty)

The word bud will bloom..

2005-08-17T03:16:00.000-07:00

Maitreyi.

I had another hour to kill.

I gazed at the pregnant clouds and awaited the intoxicant drizzles; my mind played a restless prance, unsettling my soul with an elegant enigma.

Enigma, it is. I have not an iota of idea, not an inkling of how this meet would turn out to be.
20years!

20years of living in dark about that life that endowed me with a life, about the identity of a womb that nurtured me with care; of my first experience of real love in this surreal world.

But, did she love me ever? At least for that one fraction of second, that first glance? Or did she just simply discard me as an unwanted piece of ugly underwear?

Did she think of me when some statistician wanted the count of her ‘family’ members? Did she gape at the ogling crescent to see my newborn face on the sky? Or did she over the years remember nothing about me but the horrendous labour pain she put up with?

Had she marveled at the idea of beaming at my achievements? Did she see dreams of pride she would experience on knowing that I won the booker prize? Or did she think of me as spoilt food that has stained her party wear; curse me-for iam a product of lust and dirt?

I do not care. I do not care to deliberate on the sanctity of her motherhood. It doesn’t matter if she loved me ever; my love is supreme. It is my ache that aches. It is my longing, which longs. Her absence has made void all the bliss i was blessed with. Every happy moment was marked with a sense of vacuum, a craving to see a glimpse of my joy glow on her face.

Every peaceful moment I experienced, every answer that solved my puzzles still left me incomplete; as I continued to harp on the riddles of my origin. Every sense of cozy affection that ornamented my heart was not fulfilling, I was always left feeling empty.

And I searched all my life.
Like a dog smelling every waste in the dustbin, looking out for that one delicious dish that can satisfy its hunger. Like a nomadic saint looking for enlightenment everywhere in the outside world. Like a writer yearning to write that one awe inspiring masterpiece but failing miserably to do so. Like a man in the whorehouse that has taken everything he can but returns feeling nothing.

I’ve looked for that snug intimacy in every relationship i’ve lived, in the protective warmth i experienced when with my godmother; in the chirpy friendship with my best friend; in the selfless love i felt for him. But alas, none! None of those could define how it feels to have a mother by my side.

An unnamed chasm remained. The gulf widened. With every birthday, with every month, every day, every nanosecond. And i lived the melancholic desire. Yearning. Imagining. Dreaming. Creating. Loving.

Loving. Her. For all that she has given me. A reason to live. A reason to pray. A reason to long. A reason to aspire. A reason for tears. A hope to cherish. A day to wait for.

And the day has bosomed, the day i’d dreamt of all my life. The moment when I would rest my head on her chest, feel the warmth of her closeness, smell that unfamiliar mother’s fragrance and cleave to her cuddling voice. Savoring the first few moments of my life with her, living under her sheltering skin.

Once I manage to breathe peacefully and let the feeling of completeness sink in, I would kiss her on the forehead. Nervously. Smile, blissfully. I then would go on to paint the canvas of my life for her; with the blacks and oranges, animatedly narrate every single event of my life and chide for not having been there. Laugh till iam out of breathe, sing till I my voice turns coarse, cry till the tear glands beg for rest.

And I suddenly felt an inexplicable excitement, a thrill I’ve never known before. If a vague imagination of the meet could make me dizzy with happiness, the real one would kill me!

It started raining outside. And I danced my mood to the flute on the music system, like always. But my toes refused to co-ordinate the steps poetically as they failed to sense the day's flavor. My heart failed to give this mellifluous spirit a name. It is vague; it is intangible; faint and bewildering.

My milieu has always had its part in molding my joy, shaping my minute’s world. But today it seemed to be working otherwise. The clouds sensing the restlessness in me showered the roaring rains with immense rage. Speaking fury, singing screams. Asking pace, asking for the moments to pace. Speaking an euphoric thunder, an anxious lightning. Yes, they are matching moods with me.

Yes…yes………Nature is matching moods with me.
Yes……yes……….I’m God today!
Yes…yes…………..I’m meeting her today!

********************

“Darling, are you in?” She asked.

“Yeah……….Please open the door.” I yelled.

And then she walked in. My godmother, with that familiar stranger tagging along.

I looked at her, her plain pale face. Her sharp nose and oval face. Her long hair and puny fingers. Her diamond earring and sparkling pendant. Her quaint demeanor and the calculated steps. Her long forehead and the voluptuous waist. Her weary eyes and curvy lips.

I looked at her, stood as if hypnotized. I saw her face and wondered if it is this I will look like when old. I desperately wanted to hug her, because I’d planned to. There is a terrible ache that I sense in the breast, one that makes me want to cry. To love and to hate.

I wanted to know her, like never before. She hugged me. My body felt tense, numb, wanting. The world seemed perfect and then it turned imperfect. Our anxiety didn’t unite us; the tears didn’t wrap us together.

We moved away from each other.

And then, she asked silently “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine” I shrugged my shoulders.

I have an entire life to kill.

---------------------------------

(Maitreyi – Motherly)

2005-08-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

Sana.

‘Statue!' She yelled.

And my body froze. Immobilized; with fear, shock, resentment and a whole lot of other emotions that i can and will never attempt to word.

I stood still;
Right there in the middle of our drawing room feeling like a buffoon on the stage. A ludicrous joker that has to wear a comedy mask when he is living an inexplicable pain. Playing Statue with her has always entertained me, but today it seemed torturous.

My hands were outstretched;
As if trying to hold the vacant air for support. The toes were raised much above the ground, a step taken but not completed. A teardrop dried to die somewhere in between my cheeks and the lips, the morbid eyelashes were in the middle of a tired blink. The pale mouth was half open; having stopped from uttering a sound. And a thick strand of air was fluttering on my sharp nose in response to the cold breeze that trespassed through the windows.

My eyes rolled;
A half finished painting was leaning on the wall, intercepted. A magazine open in the middle page, a blue paint brush threatening to fall off, a sipped coffee mug, a crumpled wipe cloth, a repaired alarm clock, an old greeting card, a withered sunflower petal and a pen stand filled with cap less pens were strewn on her writing table. And of course the folder too.

She took few rapid steps, slowly walking towards the table. She stood there frozen like i was, for a split second before touching the file. A stripe of sunlight from the window fell on her, brightening the wheatish skin on palms. She lifted the fated file to her chin and held it tight near her bosom and closed her eyes, as if praying to lord; who of course cannot change what is written inside.

She then opened the folder slowly, then agitatedly. With fear, with anxiety, filled with apprehension .And on opening it she let her tense fingers search for that page, the eyeballs glancing through the words. A mad dread shone in her eyes, they moved in an orderly pattern from left to right, right to a line below in the left. And from one corner of the left eye, she was policing me, making sure iam still ‘Statue’.

My outstretched arms implored to strangle the doctor who handed over the report, to a cruel death. The pen in my cupboard etched to strike off the “positive” on that sheet. My mind wriggled inside the head craving to kill the cancerous anger and the burgeoning ache.

She had read it. She closed the file in a brisk second and came walking towards me. As she stood an inch away from my own body, i smelled her affectionate fragrance and heard her heart beat fast. Sensed that her shoulders were weak, her eyes widowed, her lips wanted to explode, her hair ruffled, her nose breathing and the forehead lined with fear.

She then smiled. Extended her hand , got them closer to my cheeks and wiped away that single tear that had left a wet mark and said “Release”. I was still ‘still’. Numb with sorrow. Numb with numbness.

Both looked into each others eyes, hers piercing into mine. Sorrow was exploding from within; anger was killing every happiness i’ve ever known in my life. And my lips stammered in a shameful fashion.

Mumbling, saying something, but not anything. How can I say anything? I was tattered. I wanted to say a lot of things, but how can i manage to give her platitudes? How can i give her courage when I’ve none left? How can a beggar give alms? I wanted to cry, shriek, shout, or jump like an insane beggar. Do anything to get rid of the fury against anyone i can be furious with. But I continued to stand still. ‘I won’t cry’, I promised myself.

Her index finger touched my palms and my heart skipped a beat. She is alive and she is mine, I thought. I squeezed her palm, light and then tight. The grim silence spoke with the zephyr, asking when this moment will end.

She knelt down wearily, continuing to hold my fingers. Then squatted on the mosaic floor and looked down as if trying to catch a reflection of her face and the emotions scribbled on it on the floor. Then she looked up, her eyes watery.

She asked “when do the chemotherapy sessions start”?

I remained silent. I continued to play “Statue”.

*****************************************************************

I put my head round the door of the ward, and peeped in.

She lay there on the bed, staring out across the lawn through the window pane. She was there, but not there. Somehow stilled.I waited outside for sometime, asking myself if I was ready to join her yet.

I rehearsed the sentences i would speak and recollected the collected demeanor i would display. Decided on the detached manner in which i would kiss her cheek as if saying “Nothing has happened really; I’m strong, and you too should be”.

I would take control; I reminded myself one last time and looked onto the aching blue sky of the dreadful evening. I walked inside, in a casual way. Stood there, x meters away from her cot and smiled a tender smile. It took all in me to stay clam and ask her "What does it feel like?"

She looked at me, with a sly smile and answered “Incomplete”.

Her answer killed me. I could no longer stand there, could not craft composure. I ran as fast as i can to her. Grabbed her by the tender shoulders, pulled her close to me, hugged her tight and kissed her. Softly and fiercely.

And cried. A loud wail that shook me, that calmed her.A scream that suffocated my inhibited sorrow. I clasped my hands with hers, caressed her disheveled hair & embraced her-her pain. Sensing that void in her chest, i took her long face in between my palms kissed her eyes and smiled between my tears.

“I feel complete now” She said.

Our stale life seems alive now, hope on the very rim of existence.

***************************

(Sana - A Prayer )

2005-08-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

Kanitha.

This dawn,

When i awoke i craved to sleep again. Sleep kills my cognizance; it’s a quiescent hibernation from this zany world.

I felt lost. Did not realize who i’m, whom the mist belonged to and who owned the skies. Didn’t want to deliberate on the purpose of my birth like i usually do in solitude. Didn’t want to clog my mind meditating on the pertinence of things i’ve to do through the day. Tried searching for some warm nostalgia. The memory of our love flashed through to gift a purplish coy smile but the thought of transient nature of togetherness erased the smile.

Can you?

Promise me a nomadic permanence. Promise me a beauty that beautifies scars. Create an insightful creativity in my soul. Simplify these complexities, give me muddled solutions. Resolve the unresolved, there are leading questions. Vow me recognition for my individual. Show me a world where “You” is supreme and “Your” banal.

Love my love, will you?

Word, my words. Brighten, my light. Paint, my colors. See, my vision. Voice, my speech. Understand my empathy. Ignore my ignorance. Dream my fantasy. Walk my path. Rage with my anger. Scream my shrieks.

Because I’m alone. I’m zilch. I own nothing. I’m incapable, crippled, and dead. Of anything, of everything. Enliven me .Enthuse me. Make me material. Tell them I’m consequential.

Make me woman. Make me man. Make bold my conviction. Mould me. Redo the mundane. Reshape me. Rearrange my life events. Be born with me. Make me wife. Make me right. Discover the artist in me. Invent a mother. Nourish a father. Child me. I’m dust. God me.

You can’t see me? I’m that dewdrop suspended on the yellow leaf stealing a quick glace onto your charming smile. Begging strength, seeking love. Disappearing in the mud.

Smelt that dewdrop, ever? There isn’t a fragrance; really. It is like a dead poetic verse making no sense, not even to the poet himself. It is a beauty that dies before its birth. It is an attempt that wants to be seen, but often goes unnoticed. A delicate touch that sends a shiver through my spine and vanishes like vapor.

That is what i’m. Feeble, famished and failed. Ignored, illegitimate and impotent. This dark dawn and the faint sunshine brings no vigor, gives no hope.

When i awoke i craved to sleep again. Sleep kills my cognizance; it’s a quiescent hibernation from this zany world.

*******************************************************************

This dawn,

When i awoke, i craved to touch life anew. Sleep had stolen away few hours of sensual voluptuousness; wanted to indulge in beauty again.

I felt awe. Touched the mist cuddling the window rim and experienced the luxurious newness of life. I felt like i was born again, straight out of the suffocating womb to a whole new world filled with wondrous beauty- wanting to explore, bursting with curiosity. Sensed a cozy fondness in nature’s innocence. An abstract reflection of a life filled with our love flashed through my mind and this mere thought awakened a zillion ecstatic pleasures.

I will,

Gift you an engulfing ‘forever’ feeling. Bestow upon you bliss that surpasses all ‘Aha’s you have lived. Grant you intelligence; a thinking that doesn’t conflict with your emotional susceptibilities. Bless you with a third eye that can see beyond the obvious & decipher the abstract. Confer on you, an immortal patience that can disentangle the knots of a mortal life. Give you strength to re-create a universe where ‘You’ is everything and ‘Your’ trite.

Hear my voice in this stupefying morning silence, will you?

Melt into me, my child; my bosom is pregnant with the nectar -Let me feed you with all the unconditional love that i’m capable of, grant me the gift to teach you the lessons of naiveté understanding and supreme compassion.

Dissolve into my soul, my love; my heart is heavy with sensual desire-metamorphose into a cupid and steal the obsessive lust that will take you beyond the oblivion.

Give in to me, the father of my infact; ask from me the courage to struggle against illogic and gory pain. Burn those masks, shed that fake rusty manliness and cry on me tears of your failure & recalcitrance.

Because you are not alone. Come to me, I’m the Goddess of wealth .The mother of lives. The woman, of the man. The man that nurtures. A strength that weakens. I’m the mountain peak, I’m the ocean.

You can’t see me? I’m that mélange of colors ramp walking on the sky giving a glance of grandiloquence-forming drizzle, showering rain. Giving life. Evoking ecstasy.

Noticed the rainbow with keenness, ever? It is the feet of a dancer taking different shapes and forms; tapping fervently to that loud beat, forming a rhythm. A colorful beauty that you can sense in the darkness. It is an attempt that threatens to fail, but succeeds. And a mother-shining with fear, as she touches the finger tips of her new born child to see if the life is real.

That is what I’m. Impassioned, intense, innocent. Achieved, adored and admired. The disappearing moon and the new born sunshine kiss my iris, giving me life.

When i awoke, i craved to touch life anew. Sleep had stolen away few hours of sensual voluptuousness; wanted to indulge in beauty again.

-----------------

(Kanitha - Iris of the eye,Perspective)

2005-08-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

Vyanjana.

Saturday, 7PM!

My name is Sadie.
Sounds weird? Make it just S, in that case.
Or P or M. Call me anything, anything that suits your fancy. It doesn’t matter –not for this story, i'm only the narrator. A simple one at that. And yes, the killer.

On second thoughts I believe you should call me sin, because I’m a manifestation of that. Better still; call me a “sinner”. The bible says all sin is pardonable, if you own it up and make necessary amends that is. For instance, murder is. So, I will be forgiven when lord takes me up there.

But I’m not god and I don’t forgive.

Not Maria. Not one who gives up on the virtues one owes to breathe. Not one who willingly relinquishes promises made to God and self! Imagine giving up on the oath for altruism and renunciation; for greed, materialism and lust.

Never; don’t know about Christ, I won’t pardon that. Cant!

So I’ve decided to kill her. Can’t believe iam saying this, rather even thinking of these lines. But it is the truth-I the compassionate, forgiving, ever smiling ‘sister’, of the Novino church will grant no mercy to her best friend and nun who has shamed the shame. How can i?

I’ve known her for decades now, from the time of her birth to be precise. She was blessed with a torturous childhood that enlightened her, one that taught her how trite seeking wealth and craving for power is-how all relationships and show of affection is just a big farce. And by the time she was a 15 she knew what she wanted, to seek god-to lead an ascetic life. To bring smile & sense to those who suffer from penury; of money and thoughts. But now she has broken her vows of chastity, of discipline and stooped to ugly-that which can’t be pardoned at any cost.

But murder isn’t an easy game. It asks for a lot of thought, a lot of courage and of course forgoing compassion and love for a woman I love the most. I’ve been there with her throughout, listening, suggesting, arguing and deciding on the most important matters of her life.

The first day she met him, I warned her. Warned her of the attraction that shone bright in her right eye, the demure smile that spread across her face all day long, the lustrous manner in which she immersed her toes and feet in the hot water bucket. I sensed it right then, she wouldn’t accept.

Laughed it off, reminding me how she has lived a life of renunciation all these years and that she isn’t a teenaged school girl to let him sweet talk her to his heart. “I’m a nun, for god’s sake” she yelled. “He is a victim of heartbreak, his wife deserted him”, she explained. It did not seem right to me, for her to give solace to an appallingly handsome young man.

They met, day after day. First in the church courtyard sitting under the banyan tree-smiling, seeing, speaking. Then they met in the convent canteen-sitting in chairs close to each other, laughing, talking, admiring. Then of course they graduated to the city park-silent, gazing, loving.

I advised her, patiently; reminding her of those vows-her virtues-her path. Then resorted to ridiculing her absurd shameful behavior and explained what a disgrace she would bring to the church. I yelled, shrieked, shouted. She wouldn’t budge; she was lost in trance-forgetting her self, her values, and her purpose of life.

I continued to cherish the hope of her revival; believed Christ would hammer some sense into her. But no, she had resolved. To elope. And then I resolved, to kill. She doesn’t deserve the gift of life. No human that gives up on their principles do, surely not a chaste nun.

It was Saturday evening, the last evening before she elopes. One last time she had to go there. To the top floor, kneel down to Christ and ask for forgivness.And that is where I was, agile and waiting.

She stood there on the terrace; starring at the sky, wondering if the dark clouds would rain or just pass. Wondering if she would ever return here. Thinking about her past-guily, blissful, scared, confused and sure. Sure she wanted a man more than an austere saintly living. And she opened her palm, extended her puny fingers and touched the drizzles. Last time ever. I pushed her.

*************************************************************

Sunday 7AM!

A - Atrocious, yet another suicide. Isn’t she from the church too, don’t you know her?

B - Yep I do, it is the sister Maria. She jumped off from the 10th floor last night.

A - That is shocking! A nun committing suicide?!!

B -Don’t know what to think about this. I must tell you that she was acting very weird, lately.

A-Like?

B- We all knew something had gone wrong with her, we doubted if she was going insane. She started calling herself by a different name-Sadie or something. She said she is not living a righteous life. Hallucinations, we thought.

A-You mean insane to the extent that she forgot her own name?

B- Something of that sort. The other day she sat alone under the banyan tree behind the church all night and had loud conversations with someone. But there wasn’t anyone there, really.

A-Didn’t you ask her whom she was talking to?

B-We did and she blabbered. She claimed that she was talking to Maria, a friend who is now very upset with her and that it was her duty to convince her on her motives.

A-Oh god,this seems crazy.Motives, did you say?what motives?

B-Oh yeah, there was a man.

A-Get the picture. Actually, I don’t. Did you just say that Maria was seeing a man? A nun?

D-I’m not sure if she was seeing him, don’t want to comment on it.

I-None of this makes any sense to me.

D- Not to me, either!

***********************************************************************************

Vyanjana ( A rhetorical suggestion)

2005-08-01T04:41:00.000-07:00

Achala.

Thought, i should let you know.

A lot has changed.

Between us and you .Between our lives and yours. Between our secrets and yours. Between now and then. Between time and experiences. Between expectations and the unconditional.

We have grown out of meaningless giggles; and those jealous mockeries. We have grown out of the glamorous world we constructed; and those utopian ambitions. We have grown out of faking sensibility, cherish the naivety now.

We have conquered pain that results from knowledge of how distant fantasy is from reality and how this understanding still doesn’t stop us from fantasizing. We have conquered the ideals of an ideal world. We have fought the rebellious demons that we nurtured in the late teens. We have killed the materialistic devils in us, but with grace continue to be awed by grandiloquence.

Ofcourse,

We continue to feel restless with the status quo and crave to zoom; however pursue only the attainable goals. We have not stopped exaggerating the exciting moments of our life but we understand each of us are doing so and don’t feel embarrassed about it. We have not stopped calling people lesser mortals but accept secretly that every mortal is high by his/her own standards. We are not intimidated by the arrogant achievers, haven’t we seen (& been) the pseudo intellectuals?

We don’t follow every minutest detail of each others lives, but know that those still matter as much and on those occasional mails we do check on each other’s weight. We don’t wear similar clothes and walk around with best friend ear rings, but still talk about each other to every new person that start to matter in our lives.

We don’t have pseudo combined study sessions, but still marvel the idea of going back to school sometime together. We don’t have to contemplate on how funny our life partners might turn out to be- ‘Mine is pretty tolerable’, you says and i expects that i might get lucky too. We don’t discuss protocols of idealistic parenting techniques, we both know such rules don’t exist.

We can’t seek constant affirmations from eachother, but know if we need a stroke on a weary day there exists a soul that cares to give one. We can’t gleam at each others talents all the time now; we understand how valuable critical appraisals are for our growth. We can’t run away from our homes when everything about home gets detestable, have seen how the world outside can get worse; most times.

I am not worried where life would take me; for sure it can’t take us apart.

Iam not tired of failures, pride lives in aspirations& the intangible support you extend.

Iam not fatigued by lone some days, the warmth of your affection i can vividly feel.

I don’t trust ingenuine praise will sail me through, your brickbats i will always treasure.

I wouldn’t relinquish my dreams ever, the enormous strength that your belief has blessed me with.

The borders have not distanced us.
My angel there, your good luck charm still lives here!

The sunrays here, they touch you too;
The same old breeze kissed me now; they love you too;
The moonlit night, the promise of dawn; exists there too;
The snow that caresses your skin; peeks through my windows too.
The drizzles of spring fill us both with the same nostalgia!

Sitting near the fireplace,you too must be meditating on these; I know;
How can we ever grow out of friendship?
How can we lose touch with our own soul?
How can i ever share this cozy intimacy with anyone else?
How can this empathy ever cease to grow?
How…?

Nothing has changed.

Thought, i should let you know.

Achala (constant)

2005-07-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

Chavi.

Seen her-learnt her; Awed her-mocked her;
Followed her-Cursed her; Borne her-killed her;
Shouldered her-Damned her; Made her-broke her;
Revered her-Mothered her; Loved her-abhorred her.
Seen her-Been her;
She is nature, no more-no less;

Agni - her identity!

Seen,
Fury- her trusted weapon wringing the neck of those selfish serpents that attempt to poison her fervent dreams.

Anger- the volcano setting ablaze her grit to fight the illogical protocols of the society that scribble filth on the colorful sketches of her aspirations.

Angst- an unrest infuriating the inner calm to sail her through the crippled situations that she seeks to rebel against, but gives up on, during moments of weariness.

Arrogance-the mask she has meticulously fabricated to scare away the ugly that take advantage of humility that defines her.

A Silent wail, a single teardrop that floods her noisy heart filling the pores that smile seldom fails to fill.

Recalcitrant, she is not. You made her thus.

Salil-her identity.

Like,
A rippling stream- a silent knowledge of her banal self and a realization of the heights she seeks to conquer.

The roaring flood- a rebellion born somewhere, a point from where she sees no return, vehemence that frenzies her mind to transcend all standards.

A nostalgic drizzle- the coquettish warmth that effeminates her soul and enfold tranquility every single moment;in her life and others.

The passionate rain- a gift of sensuality and wild that maddens her man on those together nights.

A singular stream- an arduous path that the search of knowledge drives her to traverse; giving life and energy to those fellow travelers.

An ocean of emotions-that exhilarate the feeling of being; and daze her, as she sees everything in the nothingness of self & others.

Pawan-her identity.

Forming,
A musical zephyr- flirting with their ruffled hair, humming a favorite melody ,giving divine solace when her kin is in obnoxious pain.

A violent sandstorm-blinding the eyes, numbing their conviction, betraying her own goodness when in war with the foe, the contorted.

A magical breeze- married to moist in the air, a tender petal with a silken touch calming the muffled tears of her loved one.

Aakash –her identity.

In the,
Vastness- accommodating the sunshine & dusk; the blues, white& oranges; the crescent and the growing.

Adorable Grace- an amazing poise and level headedness that she exhibits when confronted with the muddling puzzles of life.

In her grandeur-the mesmerizing splendor and pride she displays as she nurtures a life; fostering her own unquenchable thirst for learning and living in her child.

Ela-her identity.

Displaying,
Forbearance illimitable- loving the deformed &offensive, the insulting &cynical, the hideous and unsightly;

Patience galore - at times a resignation when it is impossible, and others perseverance to break all barriers & may be a wait for eternity; to have her way.

A shocking tolerance –for heart wrenching sorrow, of devastating failures, of broken relationships, of betrayal and ‘games’ played.

A reverence- a silent respect and recognition of talent & turmoil, for humble & the egotist, of affection & compromises, for the old-fashioned & rebel.
Of their goals and hers,
Of their existence and hers.

Seen her-Been her!!
She is nature,No less-all the more.

**********************

(Chavi- Faces, of womanhood!! Agni - Fire, Salil - Water, Pawan- air, Aakash - Sky, Ela- Earth)

This piece is dedicated to those 3 women, who have shaped my life :)

2005-07-19T05:07:00.000-07:00

Ednit.

Mesmerized, I stood; reflecting on those paintings displayed on the wall.

Those enamoring colors on the canvas bewitched me, they always have. The minutest of meanings they essay mattered, they always have.

Their semblance i interpret differently today and i sense an abyss in the way I look at them now and I had before.

Why colors? Ah, why not?

They speak the most intricate of moods, they talk meanings to every mortal’s soul, express the lustrous life camouflaged in every inanimate existence, and of course emote- cry, laugh, dance, and say. To humans and others.

And mostly different languages; to different people. They manifest in situations; in form of poetry, sentiments, fondness, music and silences. Omnipotent, is that what they say?

And yes, the beauty lies in how distinctly they are perceived by each of us. Mostly attributable to the assorted constructs that we have formed based on our varied colorful experiences.

Experiences that we have lived, from naiveté childhood through the angry youth to an ‘aspiring’ adulthood.

Take my case for instance, though a lot of you would have gone through what I’ve (of course in different shapes and sizes), I proudly refer to my own life & those blessed experiences as being a ‘class apart’. Cheap thrill,this.

The way i’ve associated my feelings, my ‘people’, and my situations to colors have changed and transcended the obvious, with the passage of time.

I spent most of my childhood and early adulthood in anger, rebellion ,sorrow and unnamed fury; that which pushed me to run away from the orphanage, the college and all other places where ‘they’ attempted to discipline me and quiet-en my angst against the supposed tortures doled out to me. And I rebelled.

Then,it was the bright, dark and the angry colors that fascinated me (dark includes white too, strange?!) They still do.

Mostly ‘Nisha’ –the black, it re-iterated the existence of nothingness in the world around, that which I felt in my own life; But with heightened artistic sensibility; in black i started sensing sensuality and passion, anger and hostility, curiosity and knowledge, art and music.

All encompassing!
****

Also brown; it reminded me of the banal routines in the church, the lengthy queue for food every morning and the ‘insult’ sessions scheduled by the senior bullies after the lunch breaks.However,with time my appreciation for learning from every trivial incident widened; and in brown i started seeing freshness and the new, dignity and humanity, natural and naked.

Somber!
****

Not to forget “Neel’ – the blue(s), the color that i often associated with lackluster and sorrows in my life, the sluggish and the morose moments of loneliness that strangled my desire to give and take love. But as optimism tore apart the pessimist in me, in blue i started seeing free spiritedness and the resonant, depth and the intriguing, affection and generosity.

Evocative!
****

Of course I can’t forget the green; the colors I despised with all fervour.It meant an ugly brightness, monster like selfishness and the up-man ship games we played in the ward. However, as my mind sought the tranquil, as life started having more dimensions than emotional agitations; in green i started seeing the serene, the introspective moments, and the poignant depth of my relationships.

Profound!
****

And ‘Svitra’, the white; reflecting the plainness, tasteless experiences, and the chilly detachment in the relationship i shared with the teachers, the church& God. And it was the gift of unconditional love that enabled me to see in white - aesthetic charisma, the spiritual and selfless, peace and calm.

Tranquil flame!
****
Not so strange, the butterflies are not the only creature that fascinate me now.

Not when I can see colors in vacuum.

Not prejudiced anymore; Less disillusioned.

Paradigms of life evolved. More colorful now, should I say?

Ednit (evolved)

2005-07-14T02:46:00.000-07:00

Ura !!

Breathing his breath.

Glistened by his passion, poisoned by the touch, maddened by his love; she was born.

Wailing in pleasure, giving in ecstasy, immortalized by his love; she lives him.

Stupefied by his selflessness, scintillated by the heavenly, glorified by his love; she was born.

Drugged in lust, mystified by disbelief, frenzied by his love; she lives him.

Dwarfed by his gift, mothered by his warmth, beautified by his love; she was born.

Dazed by his eccentricity, serene-d by his calm, overthrown by his love; she lives him.

Awakened by his faint tenderness, amazed at his ardor, enlightened by his love she was born-again!

Didn’t she live a zillion lives that day? That night? That date on the colorful calendar on her wall when time blessed her with those most intense moments of her life, when the world stopped spinning about for everyone but her, when she submerged herself in an ocean of blissful trance, when she lost herself in his revered soul.

Obscure is her previous existence, obscure is her hideous past that left behind traces of ‘ugly’; that have now transformed into a comely present.

Tattered is her arrogance, tattered is that secure ego; the shreds of which have melted by the warmth of his closeness.

Surpassed is her superiority, surpassed are those convictions that rigidly tied her down; to transcend the banal,safe in his possession.

Ebbed is her bland existence; ebbed are those chained illusions of love; that have re-defined themselves between them.

Naked now, exposed of those weaknesses that strengthens her self, of that trifling stories that have reached his ears beyond her knowledge, of her proud dreams she has given up when tired with failures, of insults that have tortured her mind on those sleepless nights, of love lost and never found, of the treasured memories from their own ‘beginnings’ which is the only wealth she can boost of now.

And she cried. Shrieked. Wailed like never before. In pleasure, in astonishment;

In ecstasy, at the indescribable desire that she sensed in her womb,

In the eerie pain that clung to her bosom,

In her heart, the existence of which got re-enforced the nth time this morning,

In that silence when the music of his breathe was the only reality that she was aware of,

In the artistic abstractions that scribbled the walls of her room and outside the window,

In the raindrop that drenched their love and the pillows,

In the noise of the rustling leaves that the flirtatious afternoon wind played with,

In his delicate caress, awakened by her rude moaning wail.

Where did that morning begin? Where did the darkness end?
Where did those introductions begin? Where did the naked end?
Where did that laughter begin? Where did the arguments end?
Where did understanding begin? Where did insecurity end?
Where did her strength being? Where did his weakness end?
Where did their innocence being? Where did her maturity end?
Where did the subtle begin? Where did the blatant end?
Where did the physical begin? And where do the surreal end?
Where does the need being? Where do the sated end?
Where did the search begin? Where does the hunt end?
Where did the divine begin? Where does the god end?
Where does her life begin? Where do theirs end?
Where does she begin? Where does he end?

In him .With him! Breathing his breath.

(Ura –heart )