That which is lost - Empathy

Empathy. Pride yourself on the fact that you are tolerant, observant, opinionated. But somedays, maybe on just a handful of them, you are not really empathetic. In between brief interludes of conversations, you come out as someone overtly set in your ways. Too strong. Too condescending. Too patronizing. The world is not a collection of curios to choose from. How would you know the other is not in similar two minds about you? Do you hide behind the familiar warmth of unconscious? Where you bluntly state, you're not sure what you're looking for? The more success we have, the more others conform to us, the more adamant we become in interactions. Is the zeal to push our selves to the forefront and advocate supremacy so great that we forget to put ourselves in another's shoes and think for a second whether we are being needlessly harsh? Maybe something to think about on a spent up morning? There is just not your view point that is valid in the world.

Stranger in my Head

The elevator door was slamming shut as I desperately lunged and jammed my feet in it. A cocky smile, indolent eyes. Every morning, the same time, the same instant as I walk in, he strolls in too. Fate? Mischance? Nonetheless, there he is. A stranger yet I feel his eyes linger. There is a strange feeling of unsettled wounds in his eyes. As if he is lost in a crowd. Standing stiff lipped, mute, when the world around him is rushing past. Ans when he turns his steadfast gaze upon me, I squirm needlessly. What is it with this person that screams damage and yet I want to unravel his mystery. As if his eyes bore into my soul and slowly undress me as I move around fully clothed. His lips scream sin that I want to partake. His presence arouses nerve endings in me that I thought were lost beneath a sheath of exterior. Delectable, forbidden. But that which I want to devour. This stranger that I see everyday. Somehow I seem to know him. As if my heart is putting a tag on him, saying pay heed, this is the one who will be the ruin of you. Yet I can't seem to stop. Turning back is next to impossible, even if I fall off a cliff, I have to discover. This stranger in my head.

Early Oblivion

As dusk sets in I look into your eyes sometimes. I have grown used to sitting with you during these melancholic sunsets and watching the lights fade away into the distance. We don't talk on those occasions. Just sit. Assimilate. Feel. Drown. There are days I don't know what you're thinking. Lost. Withdrawn. Guarded.You know, I want to know. I want to get to discover. Probably, it's just a figment of my imagination but sometimes, I feel you're somewhere else, someplace else. As if you're looking for something, breathing for someone else. It is as if, you're not the person I know you to be, but someone else with a different soul altogether. I know I sound like a raving lunatic but there is a part within you that I cannot touch. And that is what terrifies me. I see that distance in your eyes and I stop dead in my tracks. It would not matter had I been a trifle unimaginative myself. But I am not that. I think and I feel. I sense each time you hide behind those walls and bolt the door. I am not allowed in. This is a strange relationship. If one can even call it that. There are so many trapdoors, vaults and secret chambers. Everyday is like an exercise of hunting for an exit. I know there is nothing overtly wrong with us but why do I feel that you're like a caged bird? As if you're swallowing a bitter pill every breathing second. As if you're suffocating yourself to an early oblivion. As if, for you, I am an early oblivion.

A Duel of wits

On those cold nights, he would often tell her stories. Stories of how he imagines it ends for  him. She used to protest in outrage at the morbidity of his imaginations. And yet he would insist on her listening to the descriptions of a long torturous fall of a face of a cliff. They would go on arguing till the wee hours of the night. One advocating how death has to be assimilated, the other fighting for the myriad reasons to live. It was a duel of wits which held them in conversation for ever. For nobody had challenged the other in a war of words quite so much like. Each of them loved debate furiously and they looked for a worthy opponent in every plain of existence. Someone who could rise up to the occasion and defend the case well. And unfortunately in this instance, the words had locked and matched. Neither had learned to concede well but the banter had won. What if arguments, opinions had ceased existing in modern world? How would you learn to love without the incessant sparring of razor sharp wit? So as the days went on, so did the blurriness of the lines between morbidity and zest for life. I suppose death did assimilate in a fiercely indomitable spirit. That's what debate does. It teaches, elevates but leaves traces of still, immovable ideas on paper.

It's complicated

Complicated is the state of affairs. When life begins to loose the edges, things or rather relationships wane and wilter, you call that complicated. But ever wonder why do things or emotions get so terribly mired into a haze or blurr. Maybe somewhere, someplace, you never gave words to the emotions that you felt. Once long back or still feel every once in a while. I believe expression is critical in every relationship. Even in friendships. If someone at some point in life meant the world, how many times do we gather enough thought to come out and say that, yes you did matter. Life changes. People leave and disappear. Often we are left with that nagging feeling of what if I had just said so. Asked them to wait. Just a bit till I could catch up. It really doesn't take much. Growing up and making peace with that which couldn't be, requires significant amount of effort and control. But every now and then, what if it could still be, if only you could acknowledge and express. Life is long and regret is the biggest tragedy. So please don't. One never knows if there is sunshine on the flip side. You just need to toss.

Airports on a Diameter

Airports make me sad. Invariably, every time. As I sit waiting in the passenger lounge, I wonder what airports stand for. Beginning and endings. Going back to someone who would urge to text the moment you land. Airports make me melancholy. The texts get lost with winds somehow. Or the sender does. As if the mists engulf him, he vanishes from reality, erasing every trace of his ever being present. Airports remind me of how people get lost in the whirlpool, get swallowed up and never surface again. Perhaps sometimes it heralds adventures, discovery, memories, present and past. Airports do stand for memories too. Not just broken ones. I sit here in a semi empty lounge, waiting for the gates to open. To swallow people in. Where would a lone traveler like me go? Are there messages waiting at the other end? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Who could tell what a journey would yield. Beginning and endings run in loops sometimes. As people say, life comes full circles. Airport stand somewhere on that diameter. An empty gate and an equally empty outlet into the end.  

Your City

No, I don't want to come back. Not yet. To your city, once again. It was my city till you painted it a different shade. And now this kaleidoscope of colors hurt my sight, blind my eyes. Everything I touch  reminds me of your presence, every turn I take brings me closer to your voice. I am content here, in a distant land, far away from you at last. The idea of that flight I have to take scares me dead. I am not ready yet. Not now, not ever.
Do you know how sand sifts through fingers? My existence, my life, my gaiety has begun to fall away like the sand billowing in the screeching winds. There is off course the familiarity of known faces. People I call my home. My shelter in torrential rain. Yet all these assurances never could assuage my soul. That is your city now. The leaves shedding from the trees are tainted by your hands. I have lost the city, I called my home. While wandering aimlessly through the distant lands, I have pieced some of the shards together. Gluing them into a splintered frame. There was a picture in it too. I tore that apart in a moment of rage. I see it now. Your city from the window, as I descend. Beastly, unforgiving, inhuman. Lighted by thousand lights, yet dark like the pits of hell.

Rain brings her back

It's raining again today. Drops as if all hell has broken loose. Or maybe someone has left the faucet open somewhere. I always disliked rains. Always, till I met her. Water is inconvenient, temperamental, whimsical, tempestuous. It flows in a barrage of emotions. Just like her. The one instant that I saw her, on a windswept morning, when the temporary halt of a city was drenching in an ungodly downpour. I happened to look out of my window at a non moving signal, and there she was, right beside me, staring out of hers. All she had eyes for were the descending droplets while the world outside was in throes of utter chaos. An unruly head of dark curls and a set of dreamy, unfocused eyes. Whenever it rains now, I remember her telling me how much she loves the soaked greens on the drive here. Yes, she was like water. Almost like a constant that moves and cleanses along it's path. She cleansed and revived so much of my light. On rainy, dripping mornings, I stare out of my window at her droplets. Or sometimes roll it down, to feel them against my skin. Rain has her spirit intact. If I close my eyes, I can feel her laughter, the twinkle in her eyes, glimpse that head full of curls, even if for a moment. Rain brings her back. Back to me like nothing does.

Play of lights

Lights have always held a strange hypnotic allure. Photographing lights in a dark backdrop, still holds a charm of it's own. So it was one such evening in a breezy, balmy shore city, that answering that sudden urge, leaving behind some friends, I walked out to capture the play of lights in the french quarters. The length and breadth of the old town is littered with frames. The open restaurants, the slow music drifting out. Sometimes, I would stop, stand at the doors, and take a picture just to freeze the essence in that moment. In places such as these, you sometime want to show the canvas to someone. Tell them how childishly church arches fascinate you. The gilded doors, the high ceilings, the perfectly lined pews. And above all the multi colored glasses on the windows. The fading glow of lights playing hide and seek through them. Then suddenly the cell phone vibrates. Picking it out of a cluttered pocket, I open the window to read his words. So how do the churches look tonight? And there you stand rooted to the spot, wondering at the absurdity of it all. Absurdity that he would somehow know that I would invariably find my way into an isolated church by the sea, miles away from him. I pause, look around, inhale and respond, they look just fine. And then I showed him. 

A long lost dream

I woke up today with a long lost dream. To an obscure part of memory that I had relegated to my subconscious. I woke up with that feeling of having a set of eyes staring. The tent flaps fluttering in the wind. The sun fighting its way inside through the gaps. I turned and there you were, with a faint hint of a smile. Sometimes, you were a puzzle to me in those days. I couldn't read you. And that's what made me curious. I wanted to unravel the layers and find out the triggers. So I wordlessly asked what was it. All you did was nod. Silent, just a moment that remains suspended in the air, even today. Years later, when supposedly we have come to understand each other better, you still turn and nod. And it takes me back to those days when I first met you. When, despite our stark differences, we were growing up together. Shaping each other's thoughts and ideas. No, I didn't crack the code. Eerily my pieces still fit into yours. Only the glue is a bit lax. Yet, on mornings like these, I wake up in that tent by the river, and find you awake with a faint question in your eyes. Motionless. Conjuring answers out of my silence. 

A little bit of hope

And suddenly it rained. I had been sitting, staring at the unending water infront of me, wondering how infinite yet full of possibilities it seemed when I hear splatter on the surface. I would have missed it, had I been lost like I usually am. Those summer showers that fades as quickly as it comes. But it came nonetheless. I have been wishing for rain ever since I stepped into this secluded place. Nature rarely disappoints. May it be an untimely splurt of showers, or that clear sunset that you've been dying to see. In those moments, the alignment of these uncontrollable forces give you hope. Hope that perhaps something good is waiting for you somewhere. Hope that the days that stopped meaning, might just start making sense somehow. That is why maybe everyone should venture out alone once in a while. To find some meaning, some peace, to recover that respect that you had for your individuality, your choices, your decisions. To fall a little bit in love with yourself. A sudden downpour, an unsolicited smile, a sense of belonging among strangers. Darkness can wait for a bit. Not tonight. Tonight I found a little bit of hope. 

These nights every year

It is a graceful night. Tempered and quiet as the gulls glide down on the lake. The boats are floating past, like long silent dark shadows. As if the full moon has stories to tell. I am adrift in this drowsy seclusion, part of this play. Yet the water seems to send me back, back to that distant shore where you are speeding through the cluttered streets, making your way back home. A stranger in a street full of familiar faces. The mountains you are a part of, end and fuse into the murky green water lapping into my palms. Nature has a way of joining threads, weaving patterns, stitching back open pores. Familiarity has faded into a truce between the two of us. An unspoken agreement of burying that which ought not to be uprooted. Elements still compliment and complete the other, fill in the gaps and make the picture whole. The mountains offer the majesty of height and pride of expanse while the river marks motion and dignifies continuity. It is like one of those nights every year, when we meet to test the thread that vaguely binds our realities together.