Connecting the dots

Today in a roomful of strangers, with lights dimmed out, I connected the dots. The missing link of a question that has been gnawing at me ever since. The proposition that not everyone you meet in life is going to be the one relevant. It is perhaps simplistic, to say that there would be some who would rather spend their lives with irrelevance. What if today I question as to how many would really know me? If I had to write a phrase for my eulogy, what would it say? Would my tombstone just rather read, "In search of the elusive concept of happiness" or would it be in celebration of an existence well lived, paths well trodden, touches well felt. How many would know of your, "one that got away". Impact and stories are often intertwined like tireless attempts at shaping an outcome. For a lover of wordplay and allegory, meaning often bursts forth in the most unexpected corners. In the midst of a work session, in the arms of an abject stranger or intoxicated among the group of lost friends who swore by each other, once upon a time. And if you're fortunate meaning dwells in dropped phrases, stories reside in echo chambers.

Broken jar of salt peppers

A broken jar of salt peppers. An oversized suitcase of baggage. Melancholic and morbid. When I open my eyes, I would often want to shut them off. I transit from places or people, leaving behind shards. Incapable of drawing a straight line. I would blabber, incoherently or talk in circles when nervous. Those are my walls of glass that I build about my psyche of an adolescent mind. On occasions I would not make sense and on moments of clarity, everything would spring to a stark pattern of objectivity. Time often stops when one stands at a juncture of indecision. Seconds would morph into hours, and I would slow down into an unintelligible silence or would patter on to appear sound. As derelict as transit sounds, what does it entail really? Transit would be the idea of holding back and letting go. Of losing oneself in another. Of patterns and crayons. Transit would be perception and doubts. When I fade from one picture and fuse into another, my losing would be transit for another.

Simple joys in life

Today I thought I would think about the simple joys in life. Those once upon a time I had it in the palm of my hand moments. The simple pleasures of making paper boats and watching them float away in glory. Or the saturated afternoons, locked in a room reading the newly minted books, my father would buy for me. The oversized raincoats and strappy boots I would don to hopscotch around in muddy puddles. Or the tadpoles I would chase with the blunt end of a twig. I would think of how my humpty dumpty, happy child of a cousin, would blow the whistle every time I dozed off with my homework untouched, in a garden chair. Of how I loved wearing mismatched long socks in winters, put my feet up and cozy into the crumpled pages of my latest story. Sometimes I would read, sometimes I would write, sometimes I would sketch. The sky was still infinite, the horizons unscathed. I would listen to recitals of the impending storm or play dumb charades with my mother. Today I thought I would deviate from the mathematics of it all. Today I felt, I wouldn't calculate in anticipation.

Happy ecstasy

As the days go by, I tend to think about indecision and pause more and more. Not that I hadn't the day I met him. But even now as I contemplate to give him a fixture in my pages, I wait and trotter around the edges. Not that he warrants oblivion or deserves obscurity. He is too bold an image for my mind to erase. Yet still his mystery intrigues me. Unknown entities are not a part of my world, yet on odd days  of tempestuous vigor, I am known to take matter into my hands and plunge into the icy cold waters. Today as I pause to scrawl my scattered ramblings on the pages of my journal, I am uncertain, if I will ever see him again. And oddly enough I want to. I want to touch that skin again, run my fingers through his hair. Whisper my dormant desires into his ears and feel him move unconsciously in his  sleep. I want to see his droopy eyelids close in forgetfulness and then open in lazy ignorance to break into a relaxed yawn. He is wickedly conscious of the effect he has on me and the desires he arouses. If only wanting could end in happy ecstasy, each time my mind wanders, I would be in heaven by now.

All these years...

If I confess today that all these years and there is a tiny part of me that still misses him, I wouldn't be lying. I do. I don't know where he is, he is somewhere around but even after all this time, his yearning knocks against my chest. Like the first day I saw him, a zillion years ago. Like water flowing under the bridge, time has happened to flow away. So much of it, in such a broad gauge. But every time someone turns around and asks me, if he still exists. I say he does. In a heartbeat, in a blink of an eye. At that moment, in that space, he does. In my reality he always does. Life is moving at an unsteady trotter. Each time I see him now, he seems a little more faded. As if quantum of time is eating away at his particles. As if a bell is tolling at an impending ending. Maybe it is time to drift apart. Further still, more distant, into the emptiness of carefully crafted oblivion. I sometimes wonder, how would it be living in a cocoon of unknown. Living like polite acquaintances amidst cases of feather light voluminous history. To get up one day and remember him as an ache that fails to subside. To admit to him to be a bygone.

Frames to walk into

It is one of those evenings of unanticipated happychance. Those rare flashes of light in a thunderstorm. Of having stumbled upon a tiny sparkle of imagined light. Picture a rescue boat in lost whirlpools of torrid sea. I am rambling, am I not? Words don't come that easy. Sometimes thoughts would get interwined in the broad separations of my mind. And then I would often need someone to peel the layers off. One by one. Reason, question, argue and assimilate. Someone to anticipate the unfrequented possibilities. Those are rare occasions of discovering stillness in between a raging storm. It is not often easy to temper yourself to want to slow down. There are those who come to a screeching halt. And then there are those who chance upon a mirage once in a blue moon. What did he think he found, when he came upon her wandering about? Fated mischance or a curious anomaly of sorts? They say that sometimes you walk out of a frame only to walk into another. I often wonder, what if you cease to direct the direction that those walks would take. Maybe in rare cases, one could let the frames decide where not to draw the lines.

Elusive concept that is Love

Somedays I stare at a blank sheet, thinking about what I would like to put into words. There are so many things to talk about. So many stories that I have been a part of. Stories that I had started. Stories that I saw zipping past me. Now when I look at the vapours rising out if my coffee at an obsolete corner of the mountains, I wonder at the elusive concept of love. What is it exactly? Is it the anguish in an unfinished letter jotted stealthily, while waiting at a roadside cafe. Or is it the restlessness on a moonlit evening? Crammed in an overstuffed balcony. What if, it is like searching for a familiar face in a crowded hall. Is it that vague reminder of a forgotten song. The shuffle of stolen feet on a street littered with dried leaves. The whiff of air on a balmy beach. Is it knowing that there is another remembering your scent while flipping through the pages of a new edition. You know, there are forms of loving and leaving. And yet there is just one to stay. Stay put in a mind while the world labors in motions of entries and exits. Loving and leaving are like those solitary walks on an obscure sundowner. Saturated with questions but fulfilled in pauses.

Stuck in Grey

I had not been a believer in anything much. You could say my beliefs were that of an ordinary city bred individual. Until about that exceptionally bright day, when I turned around and sheepishly asked for a bottle of water. A quizzical expression and a disdainful snort. That was my first face off with what was to become imperative to me. To my experiences. My meanings. What would you call her? For me she has been a lot of things over the years. Her role has evolved, metamorphosed, been defined and re-defined. My friend. My confidante. The keeper of my darkest secrets. Basest instincts. You always need someone to make you see who you really are. She was that to me. For the longest time. It is true I have hated her on occasions with a passion I generally cannot evoke. And off course hated anyone who grew close to her, with a white hot rage. There are times when the lines fade between love and hate, and you're perpetually stuck in grey. I have been perpetually locked in grey. I realize that the years are ticking by. But I wonder if she is still there. Locked in my dystopian grey. Unable to move. Caught in the web.

Your window is gone

I was standing at the airport bookstore, in between layovers, trying to choose an interesting cover from the shelves, when I saw it lying there. The book she had said was worth reading a million times over. I didn't pick it up. No. The things she touched, sear through the membranes of my conscience. Like a brand that is only hers. She had come into my life like a raging hurricane. And disappeared like a meteor shower in the sky, with no traces left. I have nothing of hers with me. Yet I have everything of hers in floating whispers. The stories she read, and re-read to me. The chocolate she nibbled on when reading. All of it. And no, I do not touch them on neutral shelves in transit lounges. Lest they conjure her up at that very instant. Sometimes, I do not know whether I am more scared of my own reality or her window of perspectives. For once in my meticulously planned existence, something had felt real. So real that I wish I could frame pieces like postcards in neat little black frames. To be displayed, sprawled across my walls. Your window is gone you know, she used to say. I, like certain windows that stay irretrievably shuttered, jammed on rusted hinges. 

Droplets on my windshield

There were particles in the wind today. Droplets on my windshield. These long drives have curiously become a healing mechanism. And then there is him. I was thinking how lifeless, limbless loss feels. It's like that rotten tree leaf submerged under a puddle full of washed rain, the morning after. One who's shape and color is still vaguely discernible but it is gone nonetheless. As I turn on the wiper to clear my vision ahead, the flip flop with the clutter of fall tells me that in another chance, in another world probably he is doing that too. Or maybe he is, in this world itself. Particles in air that accumulate on my screen like the accumulation of silt on a riverbed. One can trace the path on their backs. Just like fate can be traced by feather light fingers on an open palm. Long drawn out summers, the humdrum of a faded life, distant echo of realities that would have been. Ought to have been. Like sitting cross legged and crystal ball gazing, under the voluminous clouds. Tell me your sorrows, and let me me give you light. I would. If only you could show me some light.