Tonight we’re familiar

 The fireflies are glowing tonight. Amidst all this clatter of conversations, laughter, mirrors and stolen glances, I can feel your eyes following every movement of my hands. Your gaze is fixed on my eyes. Like a Hunter to the prey. Only, that this, isn’t a hunt. We are familiar. Or atleast the knowledge is sufficient enough in its history to warrant boredom. We are that common term that describes steadfast familiarity. We’re friends. Or that unease of something more or something less.
You’re that stranger I stumbled upon long ago, who stayed, lingered on the edges and slowly got under my skin. I am still familiar with that tilted head and droopy eyes. Reminders of the perfume you used to wear. Didn’t I say that we were familiar?  Then what makes you keep the glass down and stroll towards me? The fireflies, the muted lights, the place where we meet every year or certain memories both of us evade. This wasn’t ever easy. Yet we hangered on. What makes you linger on my words every time? Just my familiarity or the torment of unfinished desire? I would never know, as you choose never to tell. Yet on nights like tonight, you stay. Like you live for the memory of tonight and astonishingly somehow that is also a memory of me. Tonight we go back to our beginning every year and quietly wonder what if we had never met the other. Had we not touched the surface, how dispassionate would reality be? Would tonight ever matter?

Nightmare of your own choosing

I often wondered why I would walk into spaces and find them littered with fragments of memories. Half burnt letters, singed at the edges, sticky with soot. Letters that I had written. And later set on fire. Just like my soul, that seemed on fire. As if my innards were simming in a putrid yellow of disease. And oh it was rotten, smelly and putrid. My mind was like a labyrinth. Where the actual and imagination sometimes switched seats. If you're loose in that maze, could you trace yourself back? Safe from the demons of my created conscious. Only if it were that simple, I would have washed your laughter from my reality long back. The day the twisters caught hold of my thoughts were the worst. I was waking up with a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, not knowing if this pain I was feeling was indeed my own or maybe you, far off, were living a nightmare of your own choosing.

The expanse of the mountains

It was a late late evening, the bus painstakingly dragging itself along the mountainous roads. Nerve racking cold. So cold that I believe even my breadth was frozen. A group of strangers, braving a day long bus ride to this far off village, hidden somewhere along the dotted lines of the Indo-Chinese border. I fell in love with Chitkul. Not just because of the sheer expanse of the frame but because it was so strikingly, intricately brilliant. I had never seen the mountains this close. Every frame was enlarged. As if someone had stretched the margins delicately to include every inch of the white landscape. The largeness of it had caught my breadth then. Even now, one year after, I miss those days. Days when I just sat looking out of the window at the mountains. They answered so many of my questions in a heartbeat. I truly believe in the magic of the mountains. They do heal.

Did it heal me, you ask? Not so much. But the mountains are really not at fault for their incapacity.  Rather I am, for my persistence. There were days when we would just climb down the gorge and sit at the riverbed. Dozing, meditating, inhaling, just plain feeling. I think all of us had a story, a wound perhaps that we kept hidden in our hearts. Those ten days we were letting them loose. Not a lot of us would talk for extended periods of time. We would suddenly find ourselves in pin drop silence that stretched long and wide. Have you sat across a stranger in absolute silence for an hour?  I have. It is amazing how much silence speaks. Mountains teach you one thing for sure. They teach you the insignificance of human issues. When there are such sights at every corner you take, would you really want to go back to something or someone that you're having doubts about? Quite often not. Mountains make you stronger. Stronger to tolerate the irrelevance of the cities.

Do sins accumulate?

The vainglory of a reluctant sunset. Mixing unproductivity of lethargy with incessant clockwork of passing hours has never been ideal. The voices are screaming incoherent curses in my subconscious. Fighting to loosen the chains of frugality. The days are ticking away like the numb less buzz of a lone insect at my window. The question to be asked is, do we, or do we not believe and trust in the rebound of karma? Collected offenses of long dead misdeeds. How do you think sin accumulates? Drop by drop, trickle by trickle till the lid turns up and the accumulated pitch of sins explodes into space. 
But does the idea really function? Is there a law of nature that balances and evens out, the count of goods to the count of bads. Then why does every scripture sing verses on the criticality of a sinfree existence? If sin doesn't bring forth retribution then is there even a fraction of chance for the ideals to survive, into a world where the lines between black and white are starting to blurr. The boundaries of human conscious and guilt free deference are dwindling of late. The monsters roam unchained. Not long before dark singularities consume the virtues of life.

Women lost in translations

I always knew she had the courage it takes to soar. Soar above the ordinary, brave the shadows, the darkness. That's why we were friends. Correction. Are friends. I don't deny she's erratic. That, she probably is more than me. But she has the strength to defy. And that's what I have come to love about her, over the years. Should I say then, that I haven't disputed her choices in life? More than ever. But disputes and debates over the do's/ don'ts have shaped us up. I don't agree with most of what she says. Not because they don't translate into tangible outcomes. But because I know for a fact, somewhere we both are lost in translations. Sounds odd though. Women lost in translation. Yet undefinable meanings are lost in bounds of grammar. Rebellious women, like her, have to be given wings to glide. To tame the wilderness into snuggled dusks. They have to be given the breathless passion to love. Proverbial Icarus of my time.

Paper boats in rains

 The child in me used to love the rain. Drop by drop it accumulated in our garden. Forming puddles where I floated the paper boats. Squatting in the quelchy mud and hearing the crack and scream of thunder. These days the drops have acquired an alien quality in this mammoth of a city. Still I somehow love the wipers moving against the screen. The slippery road, erratic traffic and the smell of wet earth. My mother used to say rain brings life, brings fervour, it initiates, heralds new beginnings. Every time it rains in the city, I miss that nook that I carved for myself . The pretty little garden. The soaked plants that we planted in the long intervals of summer holidays, watered with a regularity of a station clock. I miss the simplicity of the mud castle that we built. It had disproportionately huge rooms with hardly any figurines. Who would have guessed someday the emptiness of the mud hut would echo the emptiness and purposelessness of the city existence. 

Roads that lead nowhere

I am traveling to this ancient land in a couple of days. The land that I viewed with a fragmented telescope the last time I was near. I didn’t quite take up to it back then. Yet I chose to come back to this melancholic squall. Tucked away in a far corner of a state infused with tradition and charm. Lately as life has started taking unexpected and jarring turns along the treacherous roads, the need for solitude has skyrocketed. The need to sit alone in a commoner seat and let the air waft in and out, as pictures unfold. There is a strange calmness in roads. Roads into the unknown. Zapping into the palm lit groves. Simmering in the summer heat. I often think how magnificent and luscious green the trees look. Perhaps one tends to view the world with a newfound awe once the flipside has been viewed. As I refuse to mute the noises in my head these days, the words appear lyrical, the strength of life more vivid. Irrelevance, insignificance shape into regularities. The roads whiten out. 

We did well

My fetishes with your smile never cease to end. Sitting in a roomful of people, I see you look at your hands, then at me. Like those ancient mornings of our frugal past. Light years ago. I have heard that you are happy now. Someone who adores you has found his way into your heart. The heart that I imploaded in a hailstorm of recklessness. The sense of loss will continue to itch the crevices of my soul. If you would only say that you forgave. Would you say that I suffered enough? But what is enough if it doesn’t guarantee dissipation.
You smile at someone and I watch in quiet contemplation. What is it exactly that still hurts? The knowledge that you smile with another, or that you don’t care anymore, or that you forgot me, lost in your air of tranquility? While I despite having it all, gave up the one that balanced my core. We did well. You and I. Till well stopped meaning. Till fissures showed and cracks expanded. We did well for a while.

Wolves are howling tonight

Wolves are howling tonight. There is a storm brewing. Infinite shadows playing in my hands. I need to escape this isolation somehow. Open the knots of this mess, this web. Untangle, unfurl, smoothen, stretch. Infuriating are his words. On days, he appears to see past me. Like piercing my halo of self and focusing on a point beyond me. Anger swells up, at such nonchalance. What if I shattered his curtain of indifference demanding attention? What if I showed that I cared? The wolves don't seem to stop. The howls, screeching me to attention. I said I need him to look into me, at me and not beyond, not further. Why is it so very hard? The wind is uprooting roots somewhere far. And one by one I am letting go of my fingers, clutching this farce of love. So tightly that the depressions are bleeding. Open wounds of rejection, inattention, disinterest and passivity. The ever expanding shadows of his absence from my reality. Shadows of a man I call my own yet who doesn't belong. 

Desire to possess

She was wounded, in pain yet how she glowed! I used to steal glances in those days. I knew something was amiss. Maybe a fragment was out of tune in the near perfect symphony of hers. And somehow, that piece of paper had landed up at my feet. How sneaky and dexterous life is. Or rather God is!
She appeared strangely reticent, withdrawn. She used to loose her voice in the midst of cacophony of formal debate. I could sense she looked like a bird in a cage. Vulnerable and delicate. As if, she would break at any touch. How strange that nobody sensed it but me. I, who is  used to being in the shadows and in control, saw this play of colors on her face, in her eyes. As if, in that moment, she existed, felt, expressed only for me. And I got used to claiming those lost moments as my own. I walked, I picked them up, weaved them together into a blind of promises. And I sneaked them away. Even from her. Such was my desire to possess. 

Frozen in Time

I remembered the vastness of the mountains then. The expanse of the sky, touching the horizon, dipping it's wick in depths of the valley. Like a well oiled lamp. Glowing in the chilly wind. I can hear you whisper in my ear, nibbling my lobes, while the shutters rattle against the hinges. Dark incantations of pleasure. Weaving a spell of transpired longings. Watching the ebb and flow of light against the glistening snow, as dawn fuses into a misty morning. Sunrises have a coat of willfulness in your arms. None seem alike. And yet the crickets are, the grass smells dewy. I lazily open an eye to see the cliffs beyond, turn around to gaze at you beside. Half dreaming, partially gaping. Slightly quirky version of Prometheus. Punished and exiled into the wilderness. Stubborn yet beguiled. Frozen in time.

It burns inside me

I feel it burn inside. Like a raging hurricane with an eye. The hollow of spirits. Whispers. Caresses. Destroying all in it's wake. Laying waste to all that I held dear. A hate so strong and cathartic, that it leaves me numb. Of happiness, of any iota of joy. On days such as these, my mind is a lock down of agony and despair. I shoot, cry and run to the now empty path. Trailing through fallen leaf. Autumn in it's splendor. Digressing spring in it's fervor. For the leafs that have fallen, would bloom again. Yet I, static and stagnant, rotten and diseased, would stay in the void of a constant. Forever burning in embers.

Love sans Lust

So, this is rather indelicate. Clinical is the best way of treating it. Hence, I would try and be clinical if not judgmental. Is Love possible sans Lust? Why is Attraction such a positive, rosy reference and Lust so sinful? When we talk about a spark, a genuine connect between two individuals, how much of it is intellectual curiosity and how much is plain simple Lust? 
Haven't we all at some point or another been insanely attracted to someone who is just not right! Someone who perhaps cannot string two intelligent sentences together, but is undeniably irresistible! Ring any bells? Am sure it does. That skeleton buried inside your closet. I was reading through a very trashy read this weekend. From the time of my infancy, I have been addicted to books. I have more books than clothes in my closet. I am happiest when I am lost among rows and rows of old and new volumes in a library. Yes being a big time nerd, I read all kinds. Trashy romances also! So reading so much all these years has led me to believe that Love without Lust does not really exist. My literary heroines would be outraged by this but I guess it is true. Attraction is only a mild way of putting it.
So what do you do when there is a situation at hand? Pick up your stuff and run the other way or do you face your fears? Face your Lust! I know it's morally appalling but what is life if one doesn't play with fire sometimes! I say Lust is easy, mindless, sans judgement. What's really tricky is making a hollow bond work. Love is complicated, Lust is simple. I would say Lust is clinically positive. Love is emotionally deceptive.
In reality, Darcys do not exist. Love grows stale, fades with the passage of time. If you're lucky to still not be tied down by it, you get up and quietly leave. Closing a chapter of sinful deceptions. If you're unlucky, you get to face the legal claustrophobia called matrimony. Love has repercussions.
I say indulgence in Lust should not be immoral. Pleasure is not sinful. It's only when we throw all good sense out of the window, in search of love, in anticipation, in expectation, it is only then, that the world simply falls apart. 
P.S: I still do hopelessly love Darcy!

All things pleasurable

Moving across the twenties, tiptoe sandal in hand, haven't I been grossly judgmental often! Take literature for instance, I have always made a face at all things Chetan Bhagat. I believe that man is hugely overrated. Nonetheless, credits goes to him of bringing chic-lit into fashion in spite of not being a chic! Without having a first hand knowledge of the world inside a chic's head. I still remember the days in North Campus when I used to go hunting for variety of chic-lit in dingy alleys of Kamla Nagar. Money was short. Passion and penchant for books was strong. It was strangely satisfying to curl up in bed reading a mindless romance when its pouring outside. It still is. I have read all kinds of genres. Fiction, philosophy, history, drama, romance, erotica. But why is it that, people smirk when I mention erotica?
I still have to hide those editions in my bag as soon as I get to work, because probably I am wary of the questions. Isn't reading like pleasure very intimate? Why should I have to justify my choice of read to someone? On the other hand it is such a relief if anyone understands where you are coming from without being overtly judgmental! And on the record, reading is much more pleasurable than viewing! 
I come across severe cases of attention deficit individuals each day, for whom life becomes stale at a drop of a hat. We all have our share of heart-aches, our share of pain. But instead of crying wolf all the time, I believe they should give the vast resources of the internet a shot and everybody a break! Living by yourself is often highly mortifying. The danger of getting bored is always lurking behind the curtains. Everybody is not available all the time. I feel, developing a passion for something is so necessary. Learn an instrument, a language, read, write, cook, paint, photograph! There is so much to do in life and so little time. Why waste it in endless bubbles of self pity. Not that I don't suffer from them too. But I have always been able to shut my worries away with a good book. I curl up with my pillow and live another life, with someone else in some other time. Call it cheating, call it escaping. Whatever it is, its therapeutic! One might say, this is not comparable to the passions ignited by a flesh and blood figure. In all honesty I cannot argue otherwise. But for all seasons and purposes, without requisite fuel, it works pretty damn well.

Expensive Charlatan

So who was he?
Who was who?
You know, the one you never talk about!
Aren't you too curious?
Everybody always has a story! C'mon now!!!
Just this once, alright!
Deal!

I won't say once upon a time. That's so fairy tale like. Neither am I, a demure female, nor was he the charming prince. My dear ones call him an expensive charlatan! Perhaps he was one! Anyways it was too long ago. Seems like another life now. 
I was in college back then and was a bohemian sorts. Acted and dressed the part. I was looking down the floors talking to a friend and there he was. I always remember him like this weird thing, always smiling. What is so good in this world! Why does he always need to be so damn happy! I invariably always had a perpetual frown on my face. I think and I brood.There was this something in him which was so different from what was essentially me. He seemed so content and it was intriguing in a way. I could never figure it out. Even later. It was out of question that we could be friends and that eliminated all pretense. Later when we did, I always used to wonder at how it happened. Yes, I never had to pretend. Never needed to be understanding and matured. I could be crazy, talk on for hours, and he wouldn't stop me. He would laugh at me, and strangely I would feel funny. He would say the wildest things and we would laugh for hours. We were as different as different could be yet I found some semblance of peace. I have been looking for that peace ever since.
Anyways time flew by and we sort of stuck together. Contrary to popular belief, I never saw him as what others did. For me he was the person who always had a smile for even the cafeteria boys. He was someone who never judged.There was this humility that I never had. I admired the person he was. Even when he was not there, his essence stayed.
I am not repentant that he is not there. We drifted apart. After a while life gave up on us. For me he is a precious memory. Something that I can't buy with my obsessive job or appraisals. People at times curse those who leave. But I don't because I can't. I have learned a lot of life in those years. Perhaps in some way he made me realize I can be nice to people too. I can try to empathize. Be patient, not fire up every time things stop going my way. He taught me humility to a great extent. I am of a kind who rarely forgets. But someone said something the other day, it's actually how one remembers. I try to be him on occasions when the going gets tough. That is how I remember.

Disclaimer : Excerpts from a conversation long since forgotten!

Stepping out into the rain

She stood there at the corner of the corridor and looked out over her shoulders. It had been so long since she had heard from someone from that part of life. So much had changed. Yet when the call came and she heard the distant voice on the other end, she couldn't quite place it. She knew who it was. Yet that deliberate cautiousness of hers told her, it cannot be. Then when he asked her how she had been, it all came flashing back. The truth and also the fact that she had been hiding from it all this while. She stood rooted there, phone in her hand, trying to process the voice. It was pouring outside and the water was lashing across the glass panes of the corridor. Was the rain washing away the years she had dreaded this call? On a similar rain drenched sunday morning she had stood in the same lobby messaging, pleading her case. He had never bothered to reply. For a moment she closed her eyes and saw him glancing back at her, asking her to hurry up. She saw him as clear as if it was yesterday. He was talking to her on the phone and she was at a loss of words. It has been so long, life was good, work was fair enough, everyone was happy, it was a torrent of words. She still hadn't said anything after the initial hello.
"Do you like the rain?"
"I don't know. I like the sound of the drops on the leaves, I like to smell the earth, I sometimes, sneak up to the terrace to watch the clouds and hear the thunder. Yes, maybe I like the rain after all!"
"Do you dream a lot?"
"I dream of a day when I would stand with my arms spread out, in the rain and feel the drops on my skin. Not a care in the world. Content and happy."
"Maybe I will come with you."
She could hear him now. She shot out of her parallel world. He was asking her something. "Are you still there?". "Yeah". "What were you thinking about?". "I am stepping out into the rain". And she did.

My Shadow Self

I don't know what it is exactly. The weather, the golden spring leaves at my window or the fact that I wanted to write this for some time now. I saw her again. And by her I still mean her.

Four years would entail a lot of changes. Lives change in course of few months, people change over the virtual reality of text messages. While I was making my way to the crowded corner, I was trying to recall the last time we talked. And strangely I didn't. You know, some relationships are not constricted within definitive. I don't recall the first time we met or the last time we talked. I remember the snipets of conversations. It's like talking to myself. Only someone who is not quite me in the strictest sense. Begrudgingly, someone who perhaps has a better taste in the fabindia kurtas, expertise in ordering food at an eatery, knows her wine, wears the big silver earring for the second piercing, has long black smoky curls and the those beautiful bengali eyes! Aah! that's her. My shadow alternate self. To be found somewhere in the diplomatic quarters of Chanakyapuri, alternate afternoons of the week.

How do I know her? I do. I know her enough to notice the subtle changes that time has forced. I notice the look that sometimes creeps into those big black eyes. Something I never noticed before. She rambles on about this and that. I sit back and listen to her talk. How blue the European panorama looks. How she still haunts Oxford for smell of books. Yet, at times she talks of love, life and hopes. Some of which we both lost over the years. Of passion and obsession. In her words I sense a certain drift of unending romanticism. This is still someone, who loves "love". Still trusts it. Still feels it. I on the other hand, seem to have lost it all.

We talk of the books we love. The words that entice us, makes us want to reach out and touch that little something that only printed words can afford. The sense of security, belonging and trust. She still wants to keep faith. She still wants to experience what life has to offer. Good, Bad. I, on the other hand, would rather move through the shadows. Whispering not a word. Making not a sound. My shadow self! One can hardly call her that. Though she seems like me, a long time back. Me with a world of hopes, me with that carefree boisterous laugh. Me with the careless saunter, me and the shrug of my shoulder. Me with those black black eyes, me and my clear blue skies.

She's calling me back from my reverie. I look across the table and see her mouth the words "awfully quiet". I shrug back, telling her that I am way too tired, and the noise is making me dizzy. She gives me a quizzical look. We still have company. I laugh back, remembering the sense of deja-vu. Life does come back a full circle. In so many strange ways.

What I call anxiety

Anxiety. I am choosing to write about anxiety because I think it is something worth talking about. Not just because it has become fashionable to imagine yourself fighting demons in your head on a daily or hourly basis, but simply because more people should come out and talk about it. Anxiety is probably the synonym for dark. A place where one feels like one has hit rock bottom. Rock bottom in such a pitying way that the culmination of everything till now, appears to be shadow of disbelief. Everything, all the achievements, all friendships, all joys come a screeching halt. And all that is left is void. I am talking about that kind of anxiety.

I am talking of that kind of anxiety where all you feel somedays is just a trance. A trance of irrationality. When standing at the edge of a train track, you suddenly feel, what if? Where days and nights are somehow interwoven like threads in a rustic shawl on a weaver’s loom. You pull one string tighter and something else ruptures, spoiling the pattern at the other end. When you are a tightly wound knot of ecstasy and despair, of nightmares and epiphanies. I am talking of soiled dreams and incoherent realities. I am talking of nights where you run from pillar to post looking for solace in absolute strangers. Looking for an answer to questions they wouldn’t dare ask. Anxiety. I am talking about the static in your head. I am talking about the disease that is constantly eating at your innards and chewing at your heart. I am talking of the torment in your soul. The anger in your eyes. The hate in your voice. How can they say it’s all in your head? When all you have there is noise.

Anxiety and Lucidity. As alternates to an ever spinning coin. I am talking of that kind of anxiety where friends are brief spells of light. And then it’s gone. And then they are gone. I am talking of that kind anxiety where you tightly cling to your friends, trusting their presence as the only proof of reality. I am talking of days of asking them the same questions and they, telling you the same answers. With infinite patience. I am talking of your anxiety and their lucidity. I am talking of your toxic broth of shadows and spells and their balms of laughter and irrelevance. Spinning and spinning. Till you relegate the noise to the back of your mind. The mind spilling with peels of rotten sense of love. Rotten sense of self. The self that once was and now isn’t anywhere.

They say that you have to fight your own demons. It is you who matters. Nothing else and no one else. But here I am talking of that anxiety that wakes up by your side in the morning and goes to sleep with you at night. I am talking of those brief moments of hallucination, when in the midst of a clutter of emails, distraught meetings and multiple tabs on the laptop, your world suddenly stops, pauses, inhales, and then you draw a blank. A blank where you’re choking in broad daylight. When the only thing you can do is not grab the chair and cry out aloud. In the middle of a busy office. You exhale. Tell yourself, you’re fine. You got this. Blink a dozen times. Blink the floodgates, shut it to submission. One feet in front of another. One day at a time.

Anxiety is when you wake up after months of stupor, look yourself in the mirror and see a stranger staring back. With bags under your eyes, matted hair, an electrified brain and still feel a lingering set of eyes looking into yours trying to see if you would flinch. Flinch and break the moment. And you do. You break the spell, feeling the hurt and hating yourself for feeling it with that much passion. Anxiety is when your love, your hate, your lust, your passion, your sanity and your hurt get intermingled, fused into one big mass of indistinguishable ache lodged in your heart, snowballing into the pit that they call rock bottom. Falling, spiraling, drowning, sinking lower and lower, inch by inch, blow by blow. That is what I call anxiety.

I let him go

As the sun burst forth on each of her days, she took to crafting stories to fill in the void he left behind. Stories that were meant to be. Stories that were a part of her foregone future. Snippets that she had carefully etched over time, believing that someday she would read them out to him. And ask him what he thought of them. For they were as much a part of her reality as the endless looping of time. Day in and day out. Sunrise after sunset. And he was always a part of them.
Years later, she would still wake up on days, thinking about him. By then, she was a forgotten mischance to him. And still his being would cause her to pause and think. Why did she let him leave, those years past? She would inhale and repeat, because he wanted to. That was the only truth she wanted to know. Time is sedentary for some. It stills and stops at a curve. One stands looking across while the other effortlessly crosses the bend.

A world for women

I have always wondered what strong women were made of. They say a lot of courage and truck loads of resilience. To be fair, I haven't thought about the strength so much until about sometime back. I have believed myself to be fairly mundane sort of a girl, with pretty basic and bland ideas. Rarely have I inspired anyone. But today, as I sit back to write this, I feel proud of how I have it in me to survive the worst. I am sure every woman I see around has a story to tell. And unfortunately for us, it is rarely all rosy. But what I want to stress upon is, please do look around you. You would most likely see a lot of smiling faces. Nonchalant walks. Shrugged shoulders. However, do take a moment to question, whether it is all calm waters behind those eyes. In all probability, not. 
Most likely, the person sitting across from you at the table, is going through their own personal version of hell. At this very moment. Be a good human first. Try and be compassionate, understanding and supportive. Life can get pretty ugly sometimes. Hold on to those values. Don't hurt people, irrespective of gender. That's what a woman embodies. We love unabashedly, we give expecting nothing in return. Create a world, worth a woman. Value her, cherish her. There is not much else she needs.

Then I was gone

After realization dawned on me one particular chilly morning, I couldn't put her out of my head. I had to see her, see how she fared through the day. If she walked the same pavements we used to walk together. If she still wore that dimple whenever she burst out laughing. I had to see if she, if at all, she remembered me.
So I shadowed her. You see, a lot of time had passed between her and me. I had wandered, flittered, writing new chapters, etching new memories. Listless, aimless, wanting to label the existence I had carved out for myself. Believing that these were independent dimensions. Hers and mine. They could never collide. They ran parallel to each other. Simple physics. I always quantified everything. Yet somehow I couldn't quite fit her in any of my equations. She just existed, like a constant.
And so I went back. Retraced my steps to where I knew I would find her. I stood back and I watched. Watched her, smiling and waving to someone. Nodding in agreement to something being said. And then she looked past me. For a moment, I imagined a glint of recognition. Of pain, of haunting. And then it was gone. And then I was gone. 

Price for love

Did I misunderstand all these years? As winds rustled past, I slowly gave up on our memories, year by year. And yet I couldn't. Perhaps that's what happens to emotions tightly locked up in glimmering glass jars, out in the sun. They become ether. Converge, fold yet keep floating. Do I regret not having expressed before? Perhaps I do. Maybe I should have opened up the wounds. Now that it's all flown past, away, obliterated from your conscience, I often wonder, what if I had? Would you have forgiven? No, you wouldn't. Not me. Not ever.
For I have sinned so very bad, so many times. What do scriptures say about sinners? Do you believe in absolution? Why the sudden barrage of questions tonight? Because tonight I want to ask. After a lifetime of silence and surrender, tonight I want to atone. Before the stars fade away forever, I want to tell you how brightly they shine. 
Prices that we pay for love are often too steep. What did it cost me, would you ask? A decade of silence and a lifetime of regret. If you ever had faith, you would know, the promises one makes to God. Of changes, of corrections, confessions and repentance. But faith often misleads. Blinds and tricks. God often cheats. On stormy nights like these, tell me, would you still hold on to blind optimism of faith? Would you still pay the price for love?

Changes are inevitable

Changes are inevitable. Sometimes, all you want to do is desperately cling on to a sense of security and a gust of air sweeps away the familiarity from beneath your feet. It is strangely a fact that changes are always sudden and drastic. Not gradual and slow. One moment you're a part of one dimensional reality and next you're not. In split of a second it is absolutely gone. Perhaps life is not supposed to move linearly into a structure or a horizontal. People come only to leave. Then why do we feel attachments? Being the rational being, on top of an advanced food chain, shouldn't we adapt and move, ever so quickly? Then why do scars take so much of mending to heal? Or do they ever?
As I stand at the crossroads of life these evenings, I tend to ask everyone these questions. People who I know, have known for years or whom I just met. Answering, admitting, confessing is never easy. Consciousness takes courage sometimes. Conventions are linear. Some of us like linearity. Patterns, objectivity. But humans were not meant to follow patterns. We were supposed to alter, break, reorganize. We are not domesticated herd so to speak. Pivotal perhaps is choice. As humans we choose. Choose to alter or break. Or conversely choose to follow a line. We are perhaps born equal but it is our choices that makes us different. And lastly, in retrospect, is it so very bad to choose to be different?

And time shifts back

She wronged me in ways I couldn't describe. I hated her in unimaginable ways, yet I wouldn't completely wash her scent off my skin. She stayed. Like the whiff of spring breeze. And I stayed too. Unable to let her be. I would come back to her, when the horizon seemed faded. I would come back when the air became difficult to breathe. I would come back when I couldn't think because I viewed simplification through her eyes. And she would show me then. Tell me stories of her world. Which is so far removed from mine that she expresses in words that don't exist in my dictionary. And I would find wings.
Sometimes she would mime to drive the point home. Flay her hands in the middle of the road. Like an angry little bird. I was mostly the curious observer. I would walk alongside her and let her prattle on. Her voice was like gurgle of flowing water. I was content to let her draw out the images in her mind for me. There was a charm of exclusivity to it. As if the bubble existed only for her and me. And I didn't want to touch it.
They say that time flies. That relationships loose their spark. That drudgery and mundane, spread out like vehement roots, straddling you and strangling your love away. We did grow out of our lazy afternoons but curiously enough, I still find her equally enticing. She has evolved in numerous ways. Her eyes have a certain gravity now. Her smile, more constrained. She is someone new, shadowed by unlucky ghosts. Her stories are darker. And yet, when she spots me across the road, her eyes light up and she flays her hands around like that jittery little bird. Runs to me. And time shifts back.

Emptiness that stark

How does emptiness exactly feel? It's kind of undefinable in a way. Empty is a void, quite literally. But do voids make your insides churn and burn? Like your entire being, your inner mind is constantly on fire? Fire and this ache of purposelessness. When in a flip of a second, you loose control of the wheel and hit a wall? Has it hit you, quite starkly enroute? Your naivete and her clarity? Clashing and exploding into a cloud of dust.
I think the question is, what does matter? Perfection of a clearly defined line on a piece of paper or the beauty of a scribble hidden in cover page, tucked away in the old book she was reading? Happiness is sometimes like that elusive scrawl on some obscure margin. You look for it everywhere but maybe glimpse it in the simplest of things or maybe in an unlikely person. 
But think about it just this once. Do you want to fight for it? Your simple joys with an unlikely someone? How willing would you be to stray beyond the margins? Because fight you must. Fight, you have to. To save yourself from burning inside. And then maybe on certain days, when you hear her laughing at something you accidentally said, you feel that impulse to hold her there and let the moment stretch. Because, quite simply, you suddenly realize this is the salvation you wished for. Her laughter, the crinkle in the corner of her eyes as she indulgently smiles at you.

Letters no one would read

I am writing letters to someone who will never read them. As the morning dwindles into this lazy Saturday afternoon, I am sitting at this secluded library in an obscure part of the city, writing letters to someone long lost.
I wanted to show you this, my hidden corners of guilty pleasure. They are a handful, distributed across the place, not in any particular order of preference. These are like little islands of clarity in the stormy, tempestuous waters of my chaotic mind. I wanted to take you through those racks of hastily stacked books, rows and rows of them, where I most feel at home. The shelves of experimental jazz that I listen to when I am sad. Because I like the ebb and flow of old instruments, mainly devoid of words, just a flow of constant music. I wanted to tell you how I would spend so many hours nitpicking through history section, because past is where I thrive. I would have taught you some insignificant endearments in the language I fell in love with. I would have familiarized you with the contours of my french being while you taught me the detours of your valley. What did you call it then? Finer points of life. Doesn't seem so fine now, does it?
Illusions and delusions aside, I discovered words are just that. Plain words. But only issue here is, that, words mean different things to different people at different points in life. For some it is mere irrelevance, momentous, just flesh. For some it is like hope, poetry, magic, idealism and also despair. Despair of recollection in lonely Saturday mornings. Despair of inked words on a makeshift notepad. Despair of a well worn book on an overused library shelf. Despair of me and you, and some unexplored finer points in life.

Loveless on lovers day

Nameless days. The solitude of a lost seagull. These days of love are strangely agonising. Agonising not because love seems to be in the air, just not in the air you breathe, but because with time, a slow cryptic cynicism has crept into your soul. Cynicism and disdain. At how celebrations are meant to feel. Celebration of love and longing. Is love truly so generously sprinkled on the stretches of mankind? And if so, then why does it always seem to elude you? Trick of the trade is, you my dear heart, might have missed that split of a nanosecond when love struck and then it faded. Like those many shooting stars in the night sky. Will you ever hold it again in your hands? Cynicism says, perhaps not, if only the idea of foolish romanticism still invades your mind. But then, love intervenes, and why not, isn't it the only emotion that is glorified and aspired to? Aren't we all looking for it somewhere or the other, in someone or the other? And so today I wonder is it the quest that is love or just plain naivete?

Bridges as certainty

Bridges as evidence of certainty never fail to fascinate. Like the two ends that cannot meet yet they seem to be connected by that thread that sways as the winds rustle past. Those bridges. People are also like bridges sometimes. They connect and hold together, two facets of your personality. Sometimes, something that you were before you happened to chance upon them. And at other times, something that you became after them. They connect two of those sides, ignorantly but decisively together. Cement the rough edges into one. They mould and they shape. They teach, they scold, they hurt, they fold. The days go on like those ever swaying wind blasts. Bridges unfold one after the other. Lessons accumulate like the sheen of sweat on your tired palms. Still you drive on.

Her eyes that speak

Kohl. Kohl in her eyes. I am walking past. Flicker. Half a turn. She gazes at me and then she didn't. There is infinite time and space in that split of a second. I am bewildered. Confounded. Relentless is the splatter of rain, beyond that window. I am somewhere there. Lost among the rushes of droplets. As I watch them scatter and merge into dust. Dust that is settling. Settling as she soars. 
I cup my hands, hold it together. That what she is letting slip. From between her fingers. Do I cross her mind? In days like these, when she sits still by that window watching her world drown, drench, soak in the flood of downpour. I wonder does she remember? Relegated to the confines of a dingy box, do I reappear? Tear across, through the membranes of closely guarded secrets, those heavy sighs, her dewy eyes?
As she uncoils herself from her perch, I touch the mirage. With my edgy fingers. The folds of her interwoven aura slips open. There is something there. Lined in that Kohl. A lost certainty I cannot access. Did I cause that shade of dark in her eyes? Am I there in the deluge of torments. The one that she never said a word to. The one that she looks for. Skeptically among the fallen leaves, trampled and worn. Torn but nestled among the pages of her books. Scribbled tentatively along the margins of obscurity.

I am haunted

I am haunted. Although you are long gone. Haunted by your presence, by your brown eyes, by the intensity of your desire, the magic of your words. Days go by, weeks follow, weeks wind up into months and still you are gone. Like a lurking emptiness in the shadows of my heart. Like a constant drum in the inevitability of my existence. I look for you around every corner I turn, gazing at the expansion of water, in the mountain roads, in the narrow streets of your city. Everywhere I go, every step I take, I take a deep breath and look for you like the constant of a mark on my skin. The static of a blood clot. The bruise mark from a hungry kiss.

The clock turns back. We are at it again, those sunny February days, you and me at the run down joint behind our place. It’s February again, I sit at our spot alone. You are long gone, yet I am haunted. Your pull is so hard, I can’t wrench myself free. Your voice so low, it makes me shiver. My fingers trace the outline of your skin in the familiarity of shadows. The songs you played, take me back to your eyes. Your eyes staring unflinching at me from behind a roomful of people. Unflinching, unblinking, unwavering eyes. Eyes that isolate me, pin me down against the wall. The spell you weave, I cannot look away. I will not look away.

Although you are long gone, I still feel your laughter echoing through my brain. The humdrum of regularity around me, I sit back in our corner, inhale you, your smell from the coffee you liked so much. Words are just that, words, you used to say. There is so much beyond and apart. I knew I would find you in the loneliness of the mountains, the endlessness of the gorges and the ravines that is home to your spirit. I look for you everywhere and yet I can’t. Can’t erode you away, can’t rub away your touch. Can’t look away from those eyes. I still wear your chance on my skin, looking for you at every corner, calling your name in my sleep. I say, it is pretense. The anger in your voice, the hurt in my eyes, if only I could trace them back. Back into your arms again.

History that aches

I heal with the sound of his voice. You know, the flamboyance of his reckless flick of hand. You realize the depth of spell when you can't look back. Did I not look back? I looked when he did, I looked when he wasn't. Fact is, I never did, not look back. 
When the words cluster and form a knot in my throat, he slowly but firmly untangles them. Like he untangles the curls of my kneeded mane. His fingers running through the intricacies and intimacies of my hair. I can never rid him of his indulgences. Indulgences in me among his other vices. I call myself his vice because he never could leave me. With years and a lifetime of love and hate, he lingers like the hint of incense in the musty confines of my car. Like that charm that catches dreams not dreamt yet.
Sometimes he aches in my bones. Aches like history. Something long gone but which still holds strong. Like those vintage songs one can't stop humming. He is that past. Past with a present and an incoherent future. Dreamcatchers they say. Glorified dreams of mine. That line where past and present blur into a heady mix, there we stand. Just the two of us. Fighting it, yet holding on.