Flashback Forests

What Is Essential?

2012-01-02T10:58:00.001+05:30

Sometimes, when I am travelling back home from work, I shut my eyes. In the bus, in the car, in the train. Sometimes, life around me is a bit too overwhelming, even for me.

I work in an industry where advertising and selling form the core of my job. Everyday. Everyday, we come up with ideas on how and where to show ads to people.

To target people who are already looking for your product, to target them when they are reading about your product, when they are talking about your product, target them if they see your ad but don't click on it, who see your ad, click on it, reach your website but buy nothing, to target them if they are reading about or looking for a product that is in some way connected to what you offer.

Not to forget, we also tie in what is offline with what we do online. So there's billboards and announcements, public transport vehicles that are drenched in posters, instillation art ads and print and tv and radio. There are ads on the handles I hold on to for support in a train, behind every seat in a bus, on the entrance gate to my apartment, and stuck into my door's security controls too.

You see, sometimes, it is a bit overwhelming, for me too. No matter how much I love this industry, how much I love my job, how much I want to do it eveyrday, it fills me up and empties me all at the same time. In some odd, unsatisfatory way. So I shut my eyes, block it all out and look at the darkness behind my lids. I feel my breath on my upper lip, and sometimes, if I have stilled down enough, I can even sense the thump-thump of my own heart.

Sounds that tell me I am alive.

Sounds that tell me that I do not need another connecting device, another new shampoo, I do not need that bottle of sauce, I do not need to have a new year's party plan, and I do not have to feel out of place about feeling any of this. Because I am alive. And I can shut out this noise when I want to. Everything I do in this tangible world, I do for these few minutes of quiet.

And that alone is essential.

The Field Where I Meet You

2011-11-15T10:19:00.001+05:30

I have not written a movie review in a long time. I watch selective movies. I do my research on the story, on the conclusion and then decide to expose my senses to this massively powerful medium of absorption.

There is enough conditioning in the human mind without my deliberately exposing it to the unnecessary, uncalled for. Which also means, I don't go by regular reviews. I do not buy what is noise to the soul, to the mind. I buy what can enrich, what can cultivate, what can clarify, what can add more perspective. At least, according to me.

I went with a similar mindset to watch Rockstar. And I have seen reviews flying, opinions flying, like they always do. And I have gotten increasingly aware of the fact that today, the number of armchair philosophers has gone up from few to several.

There are reviews that say Nargis Fakhri is a bad actress. Her pout is artificial.

That a Gibson guitar costs 50k so how did a simple boy from a lower middle class joint family in Pitampura afford one?

Why does Ranbir's guitar not show any signs of being attached to amps and is still heard over a massive stadium?

Why does Ranbir stay in the durgah for two whole months before he realises he can go to the canteen owner's home for refuge?

Why is pain important to create a musical genius, it denies that happy creative people exist, and all those massive hits he delivers as a rockstar, he had already written before he got his heart mauled.

How does he perform in Prague again after he is deported from there on charges of breaking and entering?

I don't know. And I am wondering if I even want to know. But just for argument's sake, let's tell you of some comebacks I thought of over the past two days (two days since I saw Rockstar).

When I turned 13, my dad bought me a guitar. It was a Hobner, 3.8k in those days, 1997. Bloody expensive. There was also a Givson - a cheaper desi version of the Gibson. The Gibson was 5k. My dad could have bought it. He asked me if I wanted it but I was already in love with the snazzier-looking Hobner. Let's assume I bought it for 5k. In 1997. And then, after many years, sold the guitar to a boy from Pitampura, second hand by now. For 2.5k. Are you telling me that is not possible?

I am thrown out of my home. I am so upset and so naive about life that I end up in a durgah, where my mind and soul find some rest, some answers, and I stay on until I feel I am ready to go out and face the world.

Pain is important. I would not have learnt half the things I did had I not lost my father. Had I not seen my grandmother waste away with multiple cancers. Something about the fact that you are your only lasting company, adds significant nautical miles of depth to your life, and if required, to your singing, to your music.

Are there no happy creative people? Sure there are. But growth spurts happen when you are forced into becoming stronger - not in a play pen, but when life plays with you.

I don't know if I should continue with this tirade. But I want to tell you one thing before I close this post - there is love, which transcends every bit of logic and reason, which leads to miracle cures, which makes the same songs sound so much more meaningful, which lifts you up in its wild currents to an extent that you do not notice that a guitar is not connected to the amps. Which tells you, in the language of music and a movie, that your lover may drift away, but your love, your heart will hold you through. Broken, perforated, porous and shattered but still beating, thumping, breathing.

If a movie does that for me, there is very little that it cannot do for me.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language. Even the phrase 'each other'
doesn’t make any sense.

Rumi

The Only Problem With Death

2011-10-07T13:49:00.001+05:30

The thing about death is, you cannot call.

You cannot call them again. Ever.

I think that is what tears you apart, what tears you up.

Lived In Symmetries

2011-09-20T09:11:00.002+05:30

It used to irritate her. He would leave the chairs pushed too far back in, making the whole dining table symmetry skewed. He would leave the patio chairs pulled too far out. He would leave wet towels on wooden chairs.

And he would also close taps too tightly.

Often she would correct these things quietly. Sometimes she would remind him to keep things where they belonged. And there were those days when she would be too exhausted to explain and just leave things messy, the way he left them.

And then she would also lose her calm and yell.

None of this fixed what he used to do. Leaving things lived in, behind him. He just forgot, it was as simple as that.

And then one day, when she was impatiently explaining to him why the curtains needed to pulled back evenly on both windows, she stopped. And caught herself.

Everything froze around her and she saw an alternative reality dawning at the window. The window where the curtain was pulled too far back. A day when she was alone in this house they had built. A time when she could no longer see him in the same house. She called his name but there was no answer. He was not there anymore.

She didn't know where he was. Had he left her? Had he left the house? Had he left everything? It did not matter. The truth was, he wasn't there anymore. And she wanted to die where she was standing. She wanted to leave the chairs pushed too far back in, like he used to leave them. She would not allow that to be fixed. The curtains had to remain the way he left them, the patio chairs asymmetrically arranged, the towel dangling from the antique chair. Everything had to freeze.

None of her symmetries mattered without his presence. She had to know that everything had been lived in. By him, the way he always did it.

When she snapped back, he was fixing the curtain. A tear fell on the rug she was standing on then.

Air Tight Containers

2011-09-10T18:24:00.001+05:30

I was packing a lunch box. A day back. And the vegetable that I had cooked and was stuffing into the air-tight tiffin box was spinach.

Now we all know how volatile the nutrients in a leafy vegetable are. So I felt a bit off about cooking it and then packing it. It would travel across the city and go to an air-conditioned office where it would be opened 5-6 hours later and consumed.

Wouldn't all the nutrients evaporate by then? Get rendered useless?

But then, the box is air tight! Where would the nutrients go? Where could they possibly go from a space where escape of any kind was not possible?

I thought about that for a while.

And perhaps what I thought next is not an exact or perfect analogy, maybe it is not scientific and verifiable but well, when did I ever say this blog was about logic and set formulae?

If the soul of a man can escape from the body and this life despite your keeping him locked up in a vacuum from where no escape is possible...why can the soul of my spinach veggie not escape from the air-tight container too?

Now. Here.

2011-08-16T20:56:00.002+05:30

It is very easy to get swept up in a current. It's wild, it's random and you exert hardly any effort at all, getting tossed in the waters.

Absolutely free.

Really?

Or is every limb constricted, balled up, drawn in, in fear of being smashed against rocks and getting thrown into whirlpools or rapids? I think yes.

What you want to really do, is find yourself a raft. Or climb on to the bank and sit, quietly, peacefully and allow your feet to dangle, to rest, to breathe in the smells of fresh water and grass and logs of wood while the current tosses, smashes, whirls and sweeps.

Most of us are being swept up in the current.

Some of us know this.

A few of us are going to think its going to be one hell of an effort to stop and climb on to the bank and wonder about actually doing it.

One of us is going to do it in one huge motion, lift himself up and sit back. There is no need to toss about. There is nowhere to go. Because when you are nowhere, you are Now Here. And that is the only way to be. With anybody. Including yourself.

A Clean Slate

2011-07-22T13:07:00.001+05:30

Love is never a constant. Especially human love. There is nothing you can count on. There is nobody that will stay. The lips that pursed up with anger and impatience, bordering on hatred and malice yesterday may as well kiss you today. What must you feel? Yesterday's agony or today's joy?

Do not wallow, though. Those lips could have been yours too, couldn't they?

You have nothing but this road ahead of you. You have nothing but this stillness that you are breathing. In and out. In and out. You have nothing but a part of you that feels you have lived forever. You have nothing but today to live in, to breathe in. And you have nobody to do it with. You have nothing but empty words that won't touch your lips anymore because your lips are parched and you have never felt more trapped.

Trapped in your own body. Trapped in your own mind. Trapped in your own world. Indifference, real or feigned, is enough and it is true, stone walls do not a prison make. That indifference can trap you right inside the life you have chosen. And you cannot get out. You are going to be here until you forget. But you will not. Try as you may, you will not forget.

Now you know why we do not remember our past lives. It is the creator's greatest kindness to the human heart, this ability to forget. The ability to breathe once more. The ability to feel the meaning of freedom because you have forgotten, you do not remember. Your name, your relationships, your possessions, all lost in a sliver of time. And you don't miss a thing. it is your chance at living in the now. In this minute. This second. Just now.

And that is why man chooses to die. So he can forget. So he can be free. Even if temporarily. After all, we all need a clean slate.

Blue Nail Colour

2011-07-15T21:23:00.000+05:30

Oncein every while, you should remember the things you did and likedlong, long ago. When you were younger than you are now.

Iremember how my first nail colour was a shade of lavender withglitter. And then a shade of blue with little sparkly stars inside.Ten years hence, when I see the same colour in fancy little bottlesin stores, I remember that evening, under cheap incandescent bulbs,when I was peering into a box full of nail colours that looked a lotmore glamorous under the light than they did under the tubelight ofmy home.

Soa few days back, when I walked into a store and saw a bottle ofelectric blue nail enamel (yes, I used to buy absolutelyunpredicatable colours), I picked it up on a whim. It sat in my bagfor a while. I kept glancing at it every time I would open my purse,to give money, to find my comb or to stuff my scarf in. Today, Ifinally mustered up the courage to get it out and painted my toenails blue. Oddly enough, painting my toe nails blue made me feellike everything was possible. Once again.

Apart of me that I had forgotten and buried away someplace deep insideof me woke up. And I remembered several things. How I used to loveflip-flops and floaters. Citrusy deos. I remembered I used to tie ahandkerchief to my wrist because I used to lose them very easily.

Iremembered how I used to entirely adore the font Tempus Sans ITC, somuch so that I put up a massive fight when I was on the collegemagazine board and made them agree to using it as the cover pagefont. I haven't seen that font in forever. It fell out of use as MSWord grew to include other, more 'legible' fonts. By the time Irealised I could download it and have it on my system, I had 'movedon' from the type of vehemence it used to inspire in me.

Iam still not tolerant with Times New Roman, if that gives you someheart.

Iremembered how I used to love black trousers. Not denims. Trousers.Part of me still loves them, they were made of synthetic silk andthey used to dry out exceptionally fast in the rains. They don't sellthose anymore.

Iremember how blue was my favouritest colour in the world until oneday, when I had dumped my first boyfriend for various reasons thatseemed highly depressing at that time, suddenly, red seemed to bescreaming out at me wherever I went. Red umbrellas, red lip gloss,red belts, red wellington boots. Red filers. Red became my anti-love.Half my wardrobe turned red in a matter of two months. My wardrobenow has all colours. Even pink, if you please, a colour I used toavoid like the plague those many long years back.

Irealise now that its possible to be many different people in onelifetime. You don't need multiple lifetimes for that. Every few days,we are a new person. Every seven years, we have completely turnedaround and changed.

Perhaps,many years ago, this bit of information would have gotten me worried.But now, its relieving. Who wants to be stuck being who they areforever? We are vessels and we hold different insides every time. Wehold changing outsides too. And in that movement, lies our peace.

Don'tbe afraid to change. Don't be afraid to move. Surprise yourselfwhenever you can. And once in every while, don;t forget to revisitwho you were. Perhaps you will find, you are able to rekindle a longlost romance. With yourself.

Holy & Beautiful

2011-07-07T16:43:00.001+05:30

You could have been king. Won gold, won land, battalions of soldiers and several new queens and a harem full of women.

You could have been the chief queen and ended a war.

You could have been the president of a nation and led your country to glorious heights.

You could have been an artist and been the joy of several admirers in their houses and museums and galleries.

You could have been an actress and led a life of glamour and so many people would either love you or envy you or do both.

You could have been famous.

You could have been very rich.

You could have been a teacher and changed several lives for the better, sharing what you know to so many young minds.

You could have been an industrialist and spoken on talk shows and discussed your opinions in public.

You could have been the most important thing on this planet right now and you could have made your way into history and Wikipedia.

But you are sitting inside these four walls and not chasing these several possibilities and there are perhaps only one or two people who you can really be everything to. You can sit there in peace, breathe and know that the air smells of fresh rain and the slight woody mustiness of wet earth and feel waves of happiness overwhelm you because in all likelihood, you are the only one who captured this moment of rainy abandon in a moment that will never come back again. And that alone holds the power to make your purpose on this planet holy and beautiful.

Walking Through The Rain

2011-05-25T09:58:00.002+05:30

A-walking, a-humming,
The road stretches on,
Your twenty-dollar bill,
Crumbling in your fingers,
Whistling a concerto,
You heard long ago,
Playing in a dream,
Or playing in your head,
How does it matter
When you won't ever be dead?

Down to your last penny,
And you throw it away
On a man who says
He will bless every act
But do you care?
Its raining and yet,
Its a grand new day.
You are happy,
Life is good,
And you know somebody once said,
To save for a rainy day.
Yeah, right,
But you know,
How rain rhymes with pain
And give rhymes
With live?

Little puddles at your feet
And little leaves
Blowing through,
You have no raincoat
And your fingers turn blue.
But why do you care
Your every day is true.
You are loved and you are
Wanted,
And life walks with you.

The Perfect Love

2011-05-05T19:06:00.000+05:30

That love you are

Looking for,

Perfect and glorious,

A man, a woman

To justify your existence,

Isn't coming, and if they do,

There is no guarantee

That they will remain

Who they are now,

Perfect and glorious

After they meet you.

It's not saying anything

At all

About who you are.

But love is cataclysmic

And some changes are permanent,

While others gradual

And on the surface.

The moon is perfect and glowing,

Seen from the earth, while

Pock-marked and dark

When you are standing on it.

But you must know,

How long-winding and boring forever gets,

For even if you don't,

The real you remembers,

The tiresome fact that love can turn to,

When one are two,

And trying hard to merge.

Distances are necessary

To realise the pull, the draw,

The call

Of life,

And if there's one person,

You will not tire looking at,

It's the face in the mirror,

And the soul restfully staring back.

You, the biggest lover you have got,

Until everything merges

Into the here and now

And beats, pulses, breathes as one,

No lover, no friend

No parent, no child,

Nothing at all, nobody,

Can give you lasting joy.

It's not poetry,

No,

It's epiphany.

Boundaries Are Meant To Be Broken

2011-04-30T20:09:00.000+05:30

And therefore, here's a new list of things for you to do. I ask you to do them because I have the authority to, having done them myself. Break your boundaries. Real freedom lies one to-do list away.

- Talk to a tree, not in your mind. Stand up tall, face it, declare your name, and tell it who are, what you think, loud and clear. For ten minutes. And then, with your whole body turned into one big ear, listen to the tree. Look it in the 'eye'. It may reveal secrets that it has carried for centuries.

- If you realise that you are being stared at, stare back. Without blinking, confidently. Do not glare, just gaze. Smile if you feel like it. If there is one thing more intimate than the touch of a lover, it is the power of your soul gazing steadily out of their windows.

- Compliment openly. If you think the girl in the local train sitting next to you has a nice smile, tell her so. If you think that the waiter served you well, thank him, and yes, ask him his name so you can include it in your gratitude.

- Dare to wear a colour that otherwise intimidates you. A blood red, a violent pink, an eye-watering yellow, a deep jade green. it will do wonders for you day and your perspective.

- Take a new route to wherever you are going. Make an effort to get lost. Figure your way out. you will have a new route, hopefully a shortcut and you will never again panic after losing your way. Ever again.

- Practise a new religion. For a week. Only a week. Go to the church, learn the Namaaz, read parts of the Gita, read up about Scientology, go to a Gurudwara - anything. One week.

- Buy a vegetable you have never, ever eaten before. Find a recipe. Make it. Eat it. It's wont poison you so you have nothing to lose. And perhaps, you will gain the acquaintance of a new veggie and include it in your diet.

- Write a letter. To a friend, to family perhaps. Pour your heart out. Post the letter.

It is odd but there are so many things we do and DO NOT do because that's what the whole world's doing. Stop. Wait. Ask yourself why. Watch your perspective change.

Now

2011-04-16T17:36:00.001+05:30

Your tears have dried up
Against your cheeks,
Leaving crusted-over, salty pathways,
Like oceans gone dry
And you have cried well into the night
For a now that no longer exists Now.
The lines fall out of your palms,
Now,
As you fly into this perfect moment,
Did you know,
Everything is possible
And in this Now,
You have wings, you can walk
On water too,
Fly back and lift the earth
On your Atlasesque shoulders,
Shrug and move on
And still own the planet.
In this Now, you are god
And goddess,
And those things that broke your heart
And spirit
They are not in the Now,
They are gone.
You are here,
You are Now,
You are safe
And you are possible.

The Season Has Changed

2011-04-15T22:58:00.001+05:30

Dear Readers,

I know how all of you were deeply in love with the previous template. But I was growing too attached to it, which I realised when I balked at the idea of changing it.

So I did. It's an old habit of mine to break my boundaries, whenever I realise I am inside one.

This template, although new, still makes me feel like I belong here :) I hope you find your small corner of a home too, in these pages. And may you journey with me into the realms of living and living. Forevermore.

The Real Skin

2011-03-28T20:54:00.001+05:30

I have been seeing true-blue feminists worldwide go out in the open against Delhi, which is soon transforming into the rape capital of India. Or it already is, as you read this, may be a woman is at the moment being molested or gang raped.

And I have been hearing women protest, scream, report and take action against this behaviour. I have been hearing that it is not right that women ask for it. It is not true that we want the lecherous male attention undressing us mentally everywhere we go, regardless of what we wear.

I have been thinking just one thing all this while - the lessons I have learnt as I grew up about what's under the visible feminine skin that may point to why these things are happening to you, women. And yes, you are right when you say you do not ask for it. It is true that Delhi needs a shift in attitude, the male mind needs to be educated to respect the new freedoms we women enjoy. All of it is true.

But enforcing this empowerment by wearing anything you want to, isn't exactly the solution or even an outcry. No, this is not a social message. This is not a psychological unravelling of our sexual needs and loves and hates. This is about dressing up your mind, woman, over and above dressing up your body.

Remind yourself, repeatedly, how precious you are. How important you are. How you are the focal point, the pivot on which this universe turns. Have no fear, because fear draws events to you like gravity draws objects downwards. If you are going to fear it, it's going to come spinning at you.

So look men and women in the eye, be bold, be loud, never have an inkling of a doubt that you are safe, you are being watched over, you are powerful, you are woman, you have every right and privilege to live the life you want to and be who you want to, and may you dress in what you like, be it a salwar-kameez or an A-line skirt, be it sheer or opaque cotton or whatever.

But do not become who you are not in the process. Flaunt who you truly are to yourself, not to the world, for your beauty is for privileged eyes and for yourself. Put it not to test for people who do not deserve to set eyes on you. Be real, do the things you want to do, but do not become what you are not so you can prove some point.

I have a friend who proudly flaunts her Burqha - I am special, she says, I feel protected and privileged that nobody can see me unless I want them to. The real me.

I have a friend that flaunts her backless numbers and Gothic dressing sense. I am armed, she says, with sprays and the right phone numbers and a Swiss knife that is very handy in kitchens and on roads. I know self-defense and I would like to see a man make a pass at me.

These women have never been molested or raped. They may have been teased or commented upon but their reactions are the same. Ignoring. Because they are not worthy of attention. Each is true to who she is, each wears their natural, comfortable second-skin. Because under these skins, each is so rooted in her real skin.

So, above everything, remember, if you know that you can walk through a lonely alleyway in the middle of the night and stay safe, you will stay safe. This way or that. For doubt is lethal and plants the seed of fear into your heart, where it may grow big and strong enough to strangle you. Like attracts like - it's not chemistry; it's reality. Protect yourself. Always.

New Leaves

2011-03-25T09:50:00.002+05:30

The leaves have fallen and will be replaced soon by greener ones. Newer ones. Fresher ones. If it's the end of autumn for you too, doing these things will add to how much you believe in getting a new bark :)

- Get a new hair cut. A style you have never done before. It will make you bounce on your feet.

- Rearrange the furniture in your house. It can really add perspective.

- Clean out your shoe cabinet.

- Stack clothes in your wardrobe in order of apparel type: skirts, denims, tees, Indian and so on.

- Give yourself a pedicure. Yes men, y'all too.

- Send a pizza to your friend in another city. It's possible yes, they now do online orders for India.

- Gift a vada pav to a child that's begging. Or a Dabeli. Or a burger. Whatever you can afford. Watch that little face light up with the innocence it really is supposed to live.

- If you don't follow / watch cricket, do. Try just one match. And something seriously wild, like India-Pak or India-Aus.

- Smell a flower.

- Hug a tree, tell it you care. Mean it.

- Tickle a baby.

- Go for a heritage walk.

- Read old chats - it gives you seriously new perspective on how much you have changed and how far you have come.

- Sit alone in a restaurant, order your favourite ice-cream and lick the bowl clean - you would be surprised if I told you how many of us, with company, crave doing that but cannot.

- Go for a movie alone. You will learn a lot more than if you went with a friend.

- Order something you have never eaten or tried before in a restaurant.

- Leave a large tip.

- Bake a cake.

- Plant a plant. Name it.

- Write a poem. Even if you have never written one before.

- Stay happy - when all the things you are not die away, then you realise that there is no death.

The Now

2011-03-10T17:09:00.000+05:30

I was once walking by a promenade. Which was, as happens in every fairytale, flanked by green trees swaying madly and raining leaves on me.

It was perfect you know. The breeze, the sounds of the birds, the whooshing of the wind in my ears, the way a dog scampered away across the walk, the cycle that went by, the playground, then empty and brown with matches long played and lost and won.

There was no thought of what had gone by. There was no anxiety at what would be coming. There was this one thought-less, stretched out minute of bizarre happiness.

It felt beautiful. I wanted to record the time. i wanted to etch it in my mind. I had to remember this long minute when I had been in perfect harmony with the world and myself. I asked the banyan tree I was passing, "What time is it?"

It looked amused. "Time?! Why, its Now! It's always the Now!"

And so it always is.And its still happening.

Earning Your Titles

2011-02-25T15:53:00.000+05:30

You have a fancy job. You have cool friends. You have a family that visits occasionally and you therefore feel you are in touch with them.

You also have a vehicle to get around the city, you have a pay cheque that pays for unnecessary expenses like ready-made ginger-garlic paste, an extra skillet, more than two sets of a tea set and an extra pink kurta although you already have one but of course, this new one's silk, the old one's crepe.

You have a weekend that is hard-earned, so you feel you deserve it, you have a spouse who you see properly only over these well-earned weekends so they seem extra beautiful and you want to be considerate to them because you hardly get the time to see them otherwise.

You have never faced endless stretches of empty time, except the last time you were still a student in college and received month long vacations. Now, the only time you face endless stretches of time (and I do not mean one long hour, I mean weeks, maybe months) is when you go on a real sick leave, or perhaps a maternity leave if you are a woman.

You feel your busy lifestyle and extremely cool social life makes your life interesting.

You are wrong. You are somebody that has forced yourself into a situation where there is limited time left to you where you are not supposed to be doing something to justify yourself. So you find it easy.

You go out to eat, you meet some friends, you catch a few movies, you plan trips, you social network. Five hours of free time left in a week - spent sleeping or blankly flicking through channels, and perhaps, just perhaps, on a Sunday evening, you are faced with that inexplicable feeling of emptiness when you are secretly dying for Monday to arrive so you can surround yourself with unreality again, the buzz if office colleagues, the bitching about a new HR policy, the discussion about a stock price rise.

What would you do but, if that inexplicable feeling of a Sunday afternoon hit you hard in the face on a weekday and the next day and the next day and the next day? Eventually, you will hit a spot where you cannot sleep anymore or sit in front of the TV anymore, because the TV is not designed for people who sit in front of it all day - there are too many repeat telecasts.

Eventually, you would get up and cast around, breathlessly, for that which brings more purpose and activity to your life. Eventually, you would come face to face with your dreams. Good for you.

Eventually, you would achieve your dreams.

Eventually, you would be back to that Sunday afternoon, and finally, finally, that inexplicable feeling of doom that a Sunday afternoon brings with it, will stop plaguing you - you know why?

Because you will no longer be casting around for a purpose. You will do what you have to but you will finally have earned the title your species is labelled.

A human "being".

What's Your Song?

2011-02-17T16:53:00.000+05:30

And no, I most definitely am not asking you to think of your favourite 'song' literally. I am asking you for a sound that is a song to your soul. The one that you prefer most, second only to deep, still silence. The kind that you can hear all day long, the sound that speaks to your insides, calming, soothing, lulling you into a reverie of wakefulness.

It's the sound of falling rain for some, a thunderstorm for others, the sound of the sea.

Mine? :)

Mine is playing out to me as I write this - a chime that I hunted for from the age of fourteen, a chime that I longed to hear, to want, to own, to treasure and to touch - I found it finally, little tinkling bells in a quite little corner of an otherwise mundane mall. Waiting to be chosen and picked - or rather, waiting to choose and pick. Here's a small clip of it. Downloadable in case you feel like listening to it again.

http://www.badongo.com/audio/25102787

Close Your Eyes

2011-01-28T17:27:00.000+05:30

One of the most important lessons I learnt in life happened when I was least expecting it to spring itself on me.

I sat as part of a large audience, listening to the speaker, who was a charming young man, and speaking a lot of sense. He spoke about drugs, he spoke about sex, he spoke about academics, he spoke about peers and the resultant pressure - all those things that are so important to teenagers, all those things they give so much importance to, but speeches nevertheless, and we forget them faster than we can step out of the hall.

"Don't give gyaan," we are saying inside our heads, no matter how much sense it makes. I was gradually switching off because there is only so much that you can and want to absorb and after a point, I decided it was irrelevant to me. I had hardly ever given in to peer pressure, I had my own mind and opinions, I would never touch alcohol and drugs and cigarettes with a ten foot barge pole and I had particularly strong personal views about pre-marital sex at that point in time. I didn't need this talk. I was doing fine.

My parents had done a fabulous ethic-and-morals job on me, I would say.

Then the speaker's voice broke through my reverie. Get up, find a person you have never met or seen or spoken to before. Form pairs - one of you will be blindfolded, the other will take the blindfolded person for a walk around the children's park next door.

I gulped. Nothing in my wildest dreams would have prepared me for this. Especially not this.

We got up awkwardly, that hall full of about 100 people, and I was found by a large, bored looking girl. She said an awkward hello and smiled at me and we introduced ourselves. All I knew was I was going to be led around a park, replete with children and adults, who would see the lot of us blindfolded - and my guide's name was Priya.

I was blindfolded - Priya held my hand and took me for a walk. I felt a bit like a blind dog. It was consoling that there were about fifty pairs of us. I was not the only one looking like a fool.

Lesson no.1. None of us wants to look like a fool if we are going to do it alone, no matter what the activity, of learning, of fun, or both.

I groped, stepped very gingerly, afraid of tripping or walking into people and things. After a while, I realised...I did not need to do it. I did not need to try. I needed just to listen to Priya. She kept telling me where there was a stone, some cow dung, a dog running straight at us, she steered me off paths where I would trip or fall, she counted out stairs for me so I could climb without worrying. After a while, I stopped worrying and smiled and let go of that worry - I allowed Priya to lead me, and meanwhile, I decided to do other things.

I heard a child laughing while being given a push on a swing. I smelt the gentle waft of jasmines in the park. I felt a dog run past me, his soft fur touching my feet for a split second. I laughed and giggled at how this whole activity was funny.

You know the best part - in less than ten minutes, I had a friend I completely trusted and all I knew about her was her name. The sound of her voice. How her hand felt in mine. Safe and responsible. How many times have I made a friend who I trusted so completely in a span of ten minutes?

Lesson no.2. Life can be trusted to take you safely through every path, if you only let it steer the wheel - it can be trusted you know. There is no need to worry. At all.

Some of us call it God.

Finding Love

2011-01-17T10:27:00.000+05:30

Until we cross over to the other side, we all belong to that lost group of people that are looking for real love. The heart-wrenching, gut-moving, mind-numbing sense of true belonging, perhaps not unconditional, like the Creator has for the Created, but close nevertheless.

The kind that wants to live forever because you found the person you love and won't settle for anything less than forever.

Until you get there, life is one big question, as if you are incomplete, because you are missing part of the whole, your soul-mate of sorts. Nothing looks as colourful, things seem pretty purposeless, and there is a wide gaping hole inside of you in evenings when its perfectly quiet in your room and suddenly, a 10X10 room looks over-large.

You are not alone - you are lonely.

But when you cross over to the other side and feel qualified enough to talk about finding life-lasting true love, you know just one extra thing.

That when you start doing all the things you love, you find true love waiting for you round the corner, and then...then, you are in no hurry. You stroll lazily across to them, you know they won't turn around and disappear, you know they are going to be hanging around right there and your eyes are on them. You take your time then, read that book you love to read, eat the things you love to eat, spend a day doing things you have always wanted to do, like walking through new roads and finding a shortcut, going to catch a movie all alone and thoroughly enjoying it.

You build a house of cards, you make a new friend, you decide to learn how to cook your favourite thing, you pleasantly surprise your parent, you mail order a pizza to your best friend in another city...you fall in love, over and over, with your life and with yourself. You know, finally, how to be happy and alone, not sad and lonely.

Then you find love. Only then.

Coming Back

2011-01-09T20:38:00.001+05:30

Surprisingly, a lot of writing comes happens when the senses skid into a realisation that sinks into the innermost layers of the self. And a bit of writing also happens when the self stretches itself and brushes accidentally or intentionally, into a truth it always knew but seemed to have forgotten.

You, who told me suddenly, a few moments back, to never stop writing, to not let anything stop me, just reached out to both writings, and both selves, the Whole and the Partial. I am back because each is answerable to the other. Neither can stop the other from realisations, however minor, because we promised each other, we would stumble along and learn and although alone, we would never be lonely.

Twilight

2010-10-30T18:09:00.000+05:30

Somewhere in my neighbourhood, a house owns a grandfather chiming clock. I imagine it must also have a pendulum, because in the quietness of fourteen hundred hours every day, I can bet I hear a swish-swish in the air, like metal ripping gently through the wind, the pendulum swinging back and forth, marking time, time that only you and I can define. Every hour, the grandfather clock chimes, a majestic ding-dong-dong-dong, in a high baritone, making me jump.

It makes me slip off the time track, that ancient sound, as if resonating from a magnificent palace, perhaps a very large bungalow even, its hallways large and forty-feet high, light flooding through its laced windows, bouncing off its porcelain floors. A palace bungalow where the royalty has disappeared from, where only birds and winds and sunlight find time to dance, where dust gather like moss, where human beings do not remain to age anymore.

When the clock chimes, everything freezes for a split second. Everything goes back to its source. I feel the blankness envelop my head for those few moments and in those moments, nothing exists - even I don't. More so at twilight - when the world comes to a standstill, regardless of ancient grandfather chiming pendulum clocks.

The clock belongs to twilight. I wonder what came first - the sound that makes you silent in quiet remembrance of the place you come from, or twilight itself, freezing the world for a few seconds, turning it into the reality we evade all day.

The Problem With Mortality

2010-10-24T22:56:00.001+05:30

Artificial smiles. And fake concern. She knew how to make people's lives miserable. She would say one thing to a person, a different thing to another. She loved creating misunderstandings. She was one of those girls that ragged her juniors because her seniors had ragged her. She was one of those people who would stamp her bad temper on to somebody that did not deserve it.

Then one day, through her permanent frown, she glanced at her organiser. She was fifty, her face was starting to hold wrinkles and her skin was sagging already. Her lips seemed to be distorted with what looked like a permanent grimace.

And the average human life span bordered somewhere close to sixty.

Assuming she had only ten more years to continue frowning and glowering at people, she hardly had any time left.

And then it hit her.

If mortality is your default setting, you cannot afford the nonsense you think you are eligible to indulge in.

The Train

2010-10-14T09:52:00.001+05:30

You are in a local train, which is speeding past the trees and sewers and huts and bare behinds of people early morning, taking a crap. Behinds are safer to bare than faces, aren't they? I always thought of it that way.

You are a piece of the mangled mass of humanity, bruised blue by everyday contact that you do not desire, from strange faces and bodies that travel with you to unknown destinations. Every face your eyes fall upon has the rawness of happiness laced with pain writ large on their faces, every face has a father, a mother, a sibling, a lover, a husband, a wife, a neighbour, a teacher, a boss and occasions to celebrate every few days. Every face has the reflected glory of the past, bottled up concern for the future.

In this mass of humanity fused in together in one bogey, how is your face? Empty? Curious? Does your face show wonder at the train that ties you all like a common thread that holds flowers together on a garland? Flowers from different cities, with different fragrances and colours, but flowers nevertheless? Are there faces you see everyday, that you forget once you step out, never think of again? Do you know them, the lines and wrinkles on their faces, the gentle limp in their gait perhaps, the slightly broken symmetry of their person?

Do you think that if you ran into them in a different city or country several years from now, they would know you and recall and smile, perhaps, laugh maybe? maybe even come and talk to you? Are they strangers, really? In an alien city with no known faces, wouldn't they know you more than anybody else in the city? And the only thing that connects you with them is a train, and silence spent inside it for hours, glancing occasionally, intentionally or otherwise?

Perhaps, next time, you will do more than glance, then? Perhaps this time, you will smile, offer a seat or even ask them their name. And you will then have another point of family in a world where its so easy to get hopelessly lost. Perhaps.

Star Dust

2010-09-23T17:14:00.000+05:30

Your dreams tumble,

Caught by delicate

Silver cobwebs.

Time slips by, and you think

You have only so much time,

Desperate, seeking,

Running out of the time

That you have allowed yourself,

To find your dreams, shaped into real things,

Things you can hold.

But dreams are star dust

And they sprinkle

Over your universe

Of limitations,

Soft and brittle,

Luster dust from long ago.

And before you know,

It's time to go,

And your dreams are scoffing

At you, tired and miserable

You lie under that gravestone,

Counting numbers

That never end,

That expand and stretch,

Like desires,

Scathing you out of your reveries,

Another chance,

Another life,

Star dust over your eyes,

Chains on your legs,

Self imprisoned victims of time,

How many deaths will you die?

What Are We..?

2010-08-12T16:45:00.001+05:30

Just what are we...energy trapped inside of solid-liquid-gaseous bodies or an ocean of energy inside of which these bodies are floating?

What Is Your Excuse?

2010-07-26T14:20:00.000+05:30

I am too old.

I am too tired.

It's too late.

I've a loan to pay off.

My parents will kill me if I do this.

My family depends on me for their bread and butter.

I don't have the finances.

I have no time.

I don't think I am good enough to do it.

I am sure it will flop and backfire.

I think there's too much competition.

I cannot afford it.

I am not sure if I want to do this or if I want to do that.

I think this stuff belongs to the books.

I feel it's easy for you to say it because you are not in my situation.

I am too lazy.

What's your excuse for not chasing your dream until its completely yours?

The Birth Of A River

2010-06-23T16:02:00.005+05:30

She peers hard into the massive wall of water that is twenty feet away from her. The wall that has drenched her entirely from so far away, she is too scared to go anywhere close to it. She is no longer sure if the water is tumbling down in giant gushes to the ground at her feet or if the river is travelling backwards to the top of the cliff. She knows that should she hold out a hand under that liquid force, her bones will be powdered beyond restoration.

How she is going to walk through that water into the cave that's hidden behind this apparently wall of solid water , is possibly the toughest question she has faced in a long, long time.

When she last left him here, there was no massive waterfall, just a small wisp of a stream makings its way down calmly on the vertical rocky expanse. When she last left him here, the cave was well lit from the light that shimmered from the river it was placed over. The river she now stood in, the waters gushing around her shoulders as she waded sideways, wondering if there was some way to find the cave again - the cave he had disappeared into, his lips sealed shut, his eyes hiding the vision that would change their life forever, his back turned to her as he disappeared, forbidding her with one small gesture to follow him.

She did not. She returned quietly to a life that would be screaming its vacuum back to her, the vacuum he had left behind. If it were death, she would probably heal over time. But this? No reason, no explanation, no warning and just like that, one evening, he was running, running and she followed him all the way to the cave's entrance.

She returned everyday but dared not enter. She knew he hadn't left it. She had stayed for several days, nights, expecting he would emerge but he did not. She was forced to go back, hungry and hopeless. Everyday, she stayed and waited, afraid to call, afraid to enter and everyday, the waterfall grew and grew until she knew it had finally barricaded her successfully, entirely, from all possibilities of reaching him.

Five hundred years later, she is wading through these new waters, determined to enter the cave. Splinters of ice cascade down, hitting the water with immense force, melting immediately, and she edges in closer every second, the spray turning into slaps on her face. Until she is standing inside the spray. She feels the force of water, lethal and firm like her inability to enter the cave for centuries.

She can wait no more. She steps in, slipping and falling, while the water smashes on her like boulders, her flesh peeling under its power, her eyes blinded to everything from the stinging foam.

She is in the cave. An empty cave with a blind chimney hole that winds its way into the heart of the cliff. She climbs, her limbs numb from the cold, her eyes burning furiously, her ears still echoing the gushing water that rages and denies entry to the world she has left outside, finally. Hours seem to slip by and she still isn't sure if it has only been minutes. It does not matter, these minutes in the face of five hundred years of waiting to see a stream turn into a menacing waterfall.

The hole ends abruptly. She climbs out into a wide, white space, her fingers cracking from the ice she has been clutching. The snow blinds her and she blinks. Twice. Thrice. But the vision does not go. He stands there, frozen, a figurine of white, his surface sparkling in the light that does not come from any sun. An endless white sky and an endless white landscape of snow and a block of ice that resembles a human being. He doesn't move, his glassy eyes looking into worlds she may not see. Not yet. His lips are lifeless.

But only so. Trickling from his head is a tiny drop of water, that winds its way down his icy white cheeks, his chin, the sculpted chest and belly and hip, his left leg and finally making its way toward her. Gradually turning from a drop to a spillage of water from a cup perhaps, passing by her all the way, transforming into a very tiny channel of water. She turns back, following its path.

A sharp fall. A cliff that ends into an ocean of water several thousand feet below, before winding into distances her eyes cannot gauge. Not yet.

The mighty Ganga, curving her path toward the land of disillusioned mortals, from the forehead of her son, who once ran away, for reasons we will never know.

Stop dying.

2010-06-13T11:52:00.000+05:30

You. You, who worries about turning twenty-five, or thirty. You, who blames your dis-ease on the pollution and traffic and worrisome children and home loans that stretch out to twenty-five years and you are not even sure you will live until sixty. You, who dyes hair and uses anti-ageing creams. You, who has a sprain in your neck and you who say - I am getting old.

You, who plan your retirement, who worry about health insurance, you. Yes, you. You, who thinks it is normal that your grandparents have painful knees and shoulders that slump and hair that is snow white. You, who wonder if you will need to ever live in an old-age home.

Yes, I am talking to you.

Who taught you in school that you must age? Who taught you at home that you must die one day? What book told you that dis-ease is not invited? Who preached to you that you must retire and that 60 is over the hill?

It's your fault that you picked up these things from adults that are as misguided as you are. It is your fault that you allow your body and mind to succumb to the unnatural and die. Everything you see around you is ageing and dying. Who told you that what's happening around you is natural? Who told you that if it happens to plants and animals, it should happen to us too?

You are human, you have one foot stuck in heaven and one planted on earth and you are on top of the food chain, so don't you think you should be the one that the world around you should imitate? If you decide to age and die, then animals should follow suit too, and so should plants?

This post will have few responses, because nobody seems to make sense of what I am saying. Of course this is fiction, because it is stranger than reality. As much fiction as the airplane was before the Wright brothers came along. But this is important for you to know. Please stop ageing. Please stop dying. There is no need to go full that feat and depress so many people in the process, leave unfinished business behind.

Stop dying. Please. And maybe then, things and people around you will follow suit.

Will You Rain Again?

2010-05-18T14:06:00.000+05:30

Will you steal across my skies and sing like you did last time? Will you rumble, roar, pour and thunder, just like you did last time? Will you turn dark and angry, grey and blue, and will the sun look crimson wrapped in your fury?

Will the tree sway and tell me then, you are on your way? Will leaves flutter and fall and sail across the river, little boats for ants that have finally decided they have collected more food than they really need? Will these blooms plant little seeds at your feet? Will you make winds hurl dust across these miles so this city converts into that? Will you knead everything into the same flesh, the same blood, the same heartbeat?

Will you bring distant cries from far lands, gentle whispers that were cast into various spaces, whispers that will reach us here to be cast into print in a virtual world? Will somebody read those words and get reminded of long forgotten words, long forgotten people?

Will you make this soil wet and fertile, will fruits roll of the surface, tumbling towards you in their urgency to sprout? Will this air smell of mud and soil and grass and leaves that are trod-upon?

Will you, will you, will you rain, will you shoot streaks of light onto this earth, cracking its surface, releasing its pent up anger, will you crash and bang down with sounds that will keep us all up at night, will you exasperate people, will you flood, will you leak, will you deliver this decomposing, decaying planet with redemption?

Will you? Soon?

Spaces

2010-04-20T19:29:00.001+05:30

Have you pondered a sudden unexpected end? Nothing is unchanged. The clothes lie in the same wardrobe, those socks are in the dryer, the book they were reading is still lying with the bookmark on page 259. That shirt on the door smells of their perfume.

But no person to turn the page, wear the shirt, dry out the socks. No movement, just the breeze blowing through the house, carrying their scent away, further and further.

And a few people who realise that they are very uncomfortable dealing with the empty space on earth that they left behind. What should you fill these empty spaces with? Of course they still hear the voice they won't hear anymore. Of course they wake up past midnight to find slippers by the bed that will not be worn again.

What do you do with the remnants?

Pick up the pieces and ask yourself to move on? Leave that empty space behind? Or keep attempting to carry the space with you, hoping against hope that one day, perhaps, you will wake up to see it filled again, the scent strong again, the clothes worn on the body they belong to?

But spaces do not move. Spaces stay and dissolve one day, along with you, along with all those people who carry remnants of memory in their hearts.

In this world of dissolving spaces, what really belongs to you?

Two Years

2010-04-07T11:52:00.000+05:30

Three years ago, you did not know you would be here writing these words. Three years ago, you did not know the name that would make things go round in your life. Three years, all the wrong things mattered. Not the life-sustaining, soul-stirring truth of today.

Today's smells of cinnamon and spice, today's sunsets and late mornings. Today's aroma of cocoa butter over your skin, today's maddeningly hot temperature, today's swirls of dust motes descending on your palm. Today's power cut and today's flowery rangoli design outside the door.

Three years ago, the streets were humid and dusty and you wanted to sit down on the pavement. Three years ago, you wee running late to work because you missed a local train that was so full, you would have to travel on the roof and risk getting electrocuted. Three years ago, you valued yourself and missed the train. Three years ago, your boss made you realise you were in the wrong job. Three years ago, you were telling yourself that loving a job is about sticking to it.

Three years ago, you put your papers down. You went to work nevertheless to serve your notice period. Three years ago, you were eating ready-to-eat Upma from a packet, unsure if it tasted raw or over-cooked.

Three years ago, you made the sore mistake of not listening to the small voice in your head that wanted you to run away. You were too fast. You were too furious. But not enough to run away on time. You made mistakes and it took you three months to correct yourself.

Three months that were longer than these three years and defined everything else that followed. But you did get up again, dusted yourself and marched ahead, wary, tired and defeated.

Two years ago, life swept you up, blew you away and you were scared to move for fear of falling. You protested, cried, questioned but you would not help drowning because it felt so good to let go.

Two years ago, you officially decided to move into the calming waters that would soothe your soul and stir your spirits. Two years ago, you did not know two years could fly by so fast.

They did, didn't they?

Songs Of The Sparrow

2010-03-30T12:45:00.001+05:30

Old songs make me nostalgic. They make everybody nostalgic, do they not?

With me, it is different. Time stops. No, there are no memories or flashes from the past. There is just Now, still, quiet, afraid to move because it knows that it has frozen, very precariously and anything frozen is very brittle.

Who wants to break, even if it were a moment in time?

The song plays in tandem, drawing notes that make the moment's frozen heart flutter...everything turns a shade of black and white, the sky turns overcast, the sun decides to hide behind a cloud for a while - what sun would want to cast light on the frozen shadows of yesterday?

Winds calm down and there is just that very gentle breeze flowing in rhythm, lest it ruffle a feather...what wind would want to ruffle feathers that are cast in stone?

There is only bird sound, the gentle chirping, mostly sparrows. No koyels, no crows, no hens. Just sparrows, for their sounds blend in with the past, like sugar in water. Neither happy nor sad, their songs walk in tandem with bygones.

The clock stops. The second hand, especially, must stop. The Now will pass if it doesn't. The Now will pass giving way to another Now...and nostalgia is about one frozen Now.

Ghosts lurking in the dark shadows of your home become real, and if you looked closely enough without moving one bit, maybe you would see them too. They are real in that one moment because they can live only in that one frozen Now. Not outside of it, and so they show. For you to see.

But suddenly, the song ends, the sun pops back into place, the air gushes into your home, your ghost-vision fades into nothingness, the heat filters back into the air, sounds become audible again, that faraway radio, that honking on the main street, that wailing child, that television, those footsteps above your home.

Of course, you have the bird songs still...but are they strong enough to pull you back into their timelessness? Perhaps not. Perhaps other sounds are too loud. So they try...they do try, early in the morning, just before the sun rises and soon after it sets, they assault you with their songs.

Now you know why everything freezes at twilight. Now you know why sparrow songs can be heard only at that time.

Now you know.

Nobody Knows

2010-03-11T16:46:00.008+05:30

Cry a little, let those tears flow,

Laugh out loud and candles blow,

Maybe tomorrow the sun will shine,

Sit up in your cloud with the silver line.

Maybe tomorrow the doors will close,

Maybe tomorrow coz nobody knows...

Coz you know its going to end one day,

It matters today but just for a day,

God knows its an impasse and so do you,

Its unreal though it feels its true.

Maybe tomorrow the doors will close,

Maybe tomorrow coz nobody knows...

Entrapment

2010-03-03T19:02:00.003+05:30

He keeps himself busy. So he doesn't have the time to keep checking the calendar. He has refused himself the pleasure of counting the hours since she left but he cannot seem to ignore days. He knows it's a Monday on a work heavy day, a Friday when work closes sooner than usual and so he unconsciously knows that it has been a while.

He can count it. Quantified, it seems like a short time. But he knows how the days have dragged and stretched out cruelly in front of him and nothing he does makes them rush by.

He is happiest at night when several hours pass by without his noticing - he sleeps and before he knows it, seven hours have rushed by.

He looks forward to nights greedily for not just this reason but also because he counts days only before he sleeps.

1, 2, 3, 4 , 5...

He wonders how people live from day to day knowing that they may never stop counting.

He knows he is not one of those people. He knows she will be back. He is grateful.

He wonders how life would have spread itself out thin had he not known her. How the length of time would eventually wrap and mummify him entirely and he would drown, smother, choke and die.

This time, it feels like a brief reminder of those days that are not his in reality. Just a glimpse, he reminds himself, so I can know and acknowledge what I have.

He wonders if that is precisely how her days pass too, and he knows.

They don't.

He wonders what her realisations are and immediately draws back that thought - no, he does not wish to know. Now he has one more thought to not dwell on, one more alley that he must avoid, to not think of what her learnings are lest he attract those learnings into his life.

He finds it odd, how he is trapped inside his own head while the winds blow free and wild through his house, carrying her scent but unable to penetrate his mind. He senses something familiar but is too far away inside his own world to notice.

She wonders what his learnings are, and if he caught her wafting through the breeze.

The Absoluteness Of Truth

2010-02-16T17:18:00.004+05:30

There is an extensive blue sky stretching out above you. You have been taught to believe it is the atmosphere that wraps the earth protectively, cradling it in its arms. You look at the sky and see clouds drifting by, a few birds flit across. You see dust motes floating in the air before they drop away from that one beam of sunlight that has filtered through to the land beneath your feet.

You peel away that layer of blue from above and stare into the black hole that is the universe. An endless, large black. You will yourself to travel into that abyss and get sucked into the unknown. You spend the next eighty years of your lfie in that blackness, while it rushes past you, only to give way to more blackness.

On the last day of your life, you realize that you have not even made it past your own solar system, the one you labelled in your geography notebooks.

What are you trapped inside? And what does the cloud cradle the earth against? What is it that we are not meant to know. And why?

There have been people who have wondered if the universe has an edge, perhaps a glass wall that defines that the end is 'here' and you can go no further. Nobody lived long enough to find out. Nobody had the means to make that journey happen.

And so you are sucked back into your cocoon and you are once again lying under that great big blue, staring up at the sky. You wonder where to go next.

You decide to try the vortex. You go within.

You single down on your heart, for it is the only organ you can sense all day long as it beats, like a drum that is chasing the end of a song. A countdown. You single down on it, and you feel the blood pulsing in and out of your arteries. You know blood colours your insides and you zero down on the walls of your heart, the expanding, the contracting. You travel further to see that it is made of tissues, membranes. You then see that each tissue is made up of tiny little molecules. But that is not the end. Not yet.

You see a very tiny atom, made up of atomic particles that zing around a radius. Which is made up of sub atomic particles.

You realise now that all things have these atoms, which are just little bits of matter revolving around a centre. And these bits of matter are themselves, tinier bits that are eventually, not even solid. Not liquid, not gaseous. Are they even matter? We are not sure. We do not yet have the equipment to identify the basic unit of life.

Everything around you and inside you is just that...bits of nothingness revolving around nothingness.

Even the people you love. And the people you hate.

If you had that detail in your vision, you probably would just see empty spaces, not people. People who are born and who die, who have souls, trapped balls of energy. As if they are not solid at all. Like memories. Bits floating in and out, living and dying, bits of nothing. What happens to those trapped balls of energy? Energy is always constant, is it not? No creation, no destruction, just reuse, recycle, replace.

Now that you know it is all nothingness with misplaced-trapped balls of energy, where did the big point to your life disappear? Where is mine? What about all the hatred, all the failures? All the successes even? If you could disintegrate failures and success to the level of atoms then...would you be able to make out the difference?

Would it really matter who you loved and who you hated, where you lived and what you ate? Maybe not.

Then again, maybe it would. We have yet not agreed on the absoluteness of reality. So we all have the benefit of doubt.

However...what about the absoluteness of truth?

Stories

2010-02-09T15:48:00.003+05:30

The winds carry you. To places far and not known yet. Where you will breathe the air I have not yet touched. Or have I?

Where you will see sights I have not yet seen. Sounds I have not heard yet, and smells I have not breathed in. You will be away and you will eat, drink, sleep, work, smile, laugh, learn. By the time you come back, you will be altered. Will you be a new person then?

Will I know you all over again when you are back, from scratch? Will I fall in love with you all over again, will you set my heart racing when you touch me unintentionally? Will it all happen again?

Will I be altered forever in the time I live away from you? Will I be new? Will you know me, the me you are going to leave behind? And will you know me, the me I will have become when you come back?

Will the loneliness matter on that day? Will the tides turn? Will the day seem as windy, as end-of-winter as it does today? Will the landscape change? Will the soil shift, will the skies transform, will the stars realign?

By then, dear story-teller, won't you know me enough?

Love Stories

2010-01-19T15:29:00.006+05:30

Images fly by on bikes. Trees and dogs, cows in alleyways, people. They catch glimpses of their faces, the way they smile. They know those familiar expressions...disgust at highly priced onions on one, the sly smile of a pickpocket, the anger in a girl's eyes at the man who just leered at her, anxiety in the man's as he waits for the daughter to cross the road and reach him.

They catch sight of a young face at the the traffic signal. The bike halts and they see.

The girl of the dark complexion, pouted lips. Soft brown eyes that are shadowed by heavy lashes. The girl's smile is fervent and her pupils dart. Looking for familiar faces. Faces with mouths that would go to her parents and tell them that they saw their daughter on the road. Mouths that the girl hopes would remain closed, minds that should forget the sights they see.

The girl is meeting a boy. Her fingers are entwined into his. He plays with the rings on her fingers as he helps her climb onto a divider. She follows, in his shadows, content in its shade, protected from the sunlight and stares that follow. He turns to look at her, his eyes meet hers, they smile. She blushes and he looks away, still smiling.

The girl and the boy enter a shop. The girl is buying something she needs from the store. The boy stealthily hops into the nearby flower shop and gets her a rose. She is thrilled to have it. She smiles, says thanks, and while nobody notices, gives his hand a squeeze.

The signal turns green and they zoom away on the bike. Nostalgic. They remember the days things were similar for them. The uncertainty, the stealth, the hours compressing themselves into mere minutes. They remember the days they fought to be able to be together with the sanction of their families and society. They remember the ecstasy of their approval. They remember the day they married.

They hope it works out well for the boy and the girl. They hope that they, too, grow, and remember, what it took to turn that love into accepted reality. And even if accepted reality seems less adventurous than love, they hope that the boy and the girl remember that they would, one day, trade their life, for a minute of that same accepted reality.

Sometimes, realities are stranger than dreams. And more valuable too.

Great Expectations

2010-01-08T10:14:00.009+05:30

It is frail. It falters and stumbles and we still spend our lives chasing it and feeling the compulsive need to acquire it. To have it in our lives. To want it, to live it. Many crimes are committed in its name, many lives lost, many sacrifices made, many sorrows lived.

And yet, when we have it, it isn't what we envisioned. It isn't always the joy-imparting goodness that we thought it would be. It fails us and we fail it. We look for new-ness in our lives so we do not have the time to look at the cracks that have appeared in it while the sands of time slipped between our fingers.

We travel, we have hobbies, we invest, we save, we spend, we have children, we work long hours, we write, we read, we socialise, we eat more than we should, we drink, we make love, we talk more than we need to, just so we can avoid looking at what we have in our hands, just so time passes quickly and we can say, in one great rush, that life was beautiful.

But time and again, it surfaces and resurfaces, and we realise in our hearts that the perfection we seek eludes us, the imperfect ones, in our need to understand the unknown, in our need to acquire that which cannot be possessed. Time and again, in our heart of hearts, we know we will never have it for it will not come from the sources we are looking at. Like expecting nectar from the serpent't mouth that can only spew venom, like expecting honey from the ocean, like expecting immortality from the human body.

The illusion shatters, every instance, for neither can we live up to it, nor can it live up to us. And so we go on, century after century, looking for unconditional love from humans. For we know this chase will never cease, the end will never come.

In that unceasing search, we find our immortality. In that immortality, we find the un-end we are looking for, every minute of the day. For unconditional love is an ideal. Not the reality we truly desire.

Sisters

2010-01-03T11:44:00.001+05:30

She hated the girl. And she did not want to spend a single minute with her in the same room. Roomie for a year??! Unthinkable! But the girl came and settled down on the top bunk.

She kept finding a million reasons to dislike her...the girl was messy, disorganized, had a set of ideals that she defended with her life. But most importantly, she found it irritating that all her attempts to isolate the girl did not work. The girl had her own set of friends outside of the course they studied in. And the girl got along fine for the few hours she spent in the same hostel room with her.

Until one day, they announced groups for a project. Everybody was grouping up with people they liked. Friends and peers. She did not. She hung around, waiting for all her friends to get taken. She did not want to work with friends. She decided to work with people she didn't know, people she would not choose...for the real world would offer her just that - people she didn't know, choose, or like.

She found out she had been put in the same group with the girl. No! This was not what she had wanted! But she decided she would do it still. The girl was, after all, somebody she did NOT like.

They set out working on the project. It took a month to finish. They worked together, travelled together, planned together. They ate together, fell asleep on the same bed discussing ideas, they would come back late from work to find all the hostel food was over...so they cooked for each other and they dreamt together, about a project they both were proud of.

Along the way, she found out they worked with the same ideals. They had similar beliefs. They both had similar ideas of having fun. They were both stubborn. And they both found that they were perfect together. Like best friends. No, wait. Like sisters.

They grew together, they grew apart and they still stayed together. They married, they travelled, the worked, they gathered experiences. Sisters that led parallel lives. Sisters that learnt the same lessons. Sisters that grew differently but grew into similar things.

Long ago, she remembered, they had had 'the talk' about how the girl should stay in the room if there was to be peace. Cleanliness, organisation, timeliness. The girl agreed. With hurt. Hurt that she lived with people who did not know her and perhaps, did not want to know her.

Three years later, as she took her marital vows, they both knew how important they were to each other. To know, cherish and value. Like best friends. No wait...like sisters.

Broken Sisterhoods

2009-12-10T15:19:00.002+05:30

They sat, eyes fixed on the images that flickered in front of their eyes, friends trapped in a radio station so they can tell the world what dirty politics is all about. They sat, listening to what the friends had to say as they held hands in their very last minutes, tears streaming down their faces.

When the screen went lifeless after three long hours, they waited for the lights to come on, for the credits to roll, for the people to file out of the hall, for the stillness of an empty theatre. They waited, until the stall boy came to usher them out, saying it was time for the next show and they had to clear the place.

They filtered out of the hall then, footsteps in slo-mo, and made their way to the cafe that had seen them spend five years of studying, competitions, lectures, bunking class, love, hatred, envy and conversations. An hour to the farewell in college, two weeks before the final exams that would then determine their worth. Two weeks before they would take those first tentative steps into worlds that would be waiting for them, worlds that they may not go to, together.

"Let's do this...let's promise to be together across geographies, lets know what is happening in each other's lives."

"Yeah, totally. And let's make this a pact, right? We will approve each other's men and if we don't, then we will just have to look for the man that everybody approves of."

"Dude, that IS silly now."

"No, I don't think so, c'mon, that way we will all be involved and stay in touch."

"I still think it's a bit much..."

"Deal or not...?"

"Uhh...okay. Deal."

And so it was. The farewell happened. Post graduations happened. And so did jobs.

They moved cities, they moved countries, they moved continents. Marriages happened, houses were bought.

Fashions changed and so did career interests. And all this, on the foundation of broken sisterhoods. Long forgotten, long lost. To the extent that death may come...but time still happens. Life still goes on.

Forty Years

2009-11-10T21:14:00.002+05:30

Nothing he did made her happy. There always was something that could be corrected, improved, tweaked, changed, worked upon.

Nothing was perfect...of course, perfect was not a possibility and everybody had a different definition of perfection. But he tried. Every time. Every day.

Forty years hence, she knew he would never come close to what she wanted him to do. Forty years hence, he knew she would never really say - This is exactly how I wanted it.

Forty years hence, they would sometimes ask themselves if it was all in vain, the effort, the trials. They would have varying answers depending on their moods.

Forty years hence, they would wonder what would life be like had they made other choices. Forty years...

Forty-one years later, they would know this...if not this, they would have another life, another future, but not this.

This, that they have now. This, that keeps them going. This, that they have found with each other.

Forty-one years later, they would trade those forty years for one more year with each other. Minus all the hunting for perfection, the expectations, the assumptions. One more year.

Raiments And Ruminations

2009-10-26T16:15:00.003+05:30

Sometimes, several years down the line when you look at all those clothes in your wardrobe, you will run over all the clothes you already had. Interesting little bits of cloth, bought at reasonable and unreasonable prices. Clothes that are now, perhaps, in the cupboards of once flood victims, earthquake victims, in the house of the utensil seller who gave you a saucepan in exchange for the pair of denims that did not fit you any longer.

Clothes tucked away in unfamiliar cupboards, in unknown crevices of people's lives, clothes that were once yours and are now fragments in an unknown world. Clothes that you once flaunted, that are now recycled and make the packaging for the latest brand of eco-friendly LEDs.

Clothes that kept you warm, that you held close to your body and heart oftentimes. Clothes that have melted colours and texture to become less and more than what they once were, fresh from the factory, smelling of dyes and chemical wash.

Clothes like people, that came and went, left an impression and then were too old to continue with you on your journeys. Clothes like people, that you donated, discarded, grew out of, loved, hated, felt awkward with, loved all the time, any time of the day and night, clothes like people that made you feel comfortable before a scary stage show, an important interview, that perfect proposal where you hoped the answer would be in the affirmative.

Clothes like people, new and old, in style and out of style, sometimes utilitarian, sometimes fancy, sometimes just accessories, sometimes too expensive and sometimes on heavy discounts.

And your wardrobe, like life. Changing, changing, changing.

Only For A Day

2009-09-29T14:55:00.004+05:30

It flies over several horizons, sometimes chasing the sun, sometimes the moon, sometimes a constellation, in circles, in straight cut lines. But fly it does, across time and distance, over forests that have frozen over time into canyons and steep cliffs, over rivers that have turned to glacial masses, over seas that have crusted over and turned into saline lands, over fiery volcanoes that have turned to islands.

Fly it does, over the wilderness, where beasts know nature and stand in silent worship, over generations that see drops of water frozen into glistening flint. Fly it does, on a wing, fighting snow storms, fighting blizzards, sandstorms and gales. Fly it does, for a minute in your embrace. For a single glimpse of you, who mirrors its own, for one look of recognition when you look into those eyes and see yourself looking back at you.

Fly it does, for its love is selfish and it comes just to know that such love exists for it, beyond lifetimes and learnings. Fly it does, for its love is selfless, who else should undertake a journey so impossible for a singular glimpse of this love?

You call it a soul mate, a lover, a spouse, a parent, a friend...it is neither of those names and still all those names, but how will you trap that which has no bounds into words? For fly it will, tomorrow, when you awaken, it will be gone, it will leave no trace. It was here, but only for a day.

For selfish it is, it came for a glimpse of that love that it knew waited endlessly for it, across trees blackened with age, across caves clogged with ice. For fly it must, selfless that it is, lest you trap it and yourself into the illusion that there is 'two'.

Two is too painful for one to exist. And so, fly it must. And fly it will.

The Choice

2009-09-16T14:03:00.004+05:30

He had little fingers. Small, pink and they curled around her index finger, making her realize how big her hands were compared to his tiny ones. His eyes were sealed shut and his pink eyelids were almost translucent, under which swam dreams, colors and angels, while he readied to see sights that were only sounds and feeling for nine long months.

All of a sudden, he heard her voice. The same voice that he would hear, words that made no sense, but filled him with an uncomfortable feeling nevertheless. He didn't like it and he cringed, his skin bristling even as it formed in her body.

She was leaving. She was not waiting for him to open his eyes and look at the body that fed his, the voice that spoke to him, the mouth that sometimes sang to him, sometimes yelled, sometimes wept.

He felt an urgent need to block all feeling out suddenly, to go back to where he came from, to stop breathing, it hurt so much anyway, his little lungs bursting with the effort. He did not want to open those eyelids that were pressed shut, and he did not want to lose sight of the angels that were preparing him for this new world - he beckoned to them and asked them to take him away, this was the world he did not want to see anymore, behold anymore.

The angels agreed.

His fingers went limp around her finger. She didn't want him. And he didn't want this world, without her. She was all he knew. He knew he was granted an exception before he left with the angels.

And that every child like him did not have that same choice.

Till Death Do Us Part

2009-08-27T12:16:00.005+05:30

When they fought, he would make up. And eventually, in a few minutes, she would relent, and the world would be perfect again.

So when he left home to buy a strip of medicines that she needed, locking her inside the house like he did when she was cooking and not free to come close the door behind him, she did not sense anything amiss. She let him go. She decided to make up once he came back. She would be calmer, he would be calmer and the world would be perfect again.

Ten minutes, Fifteen. Twenty. She started panicking. She reached for her cell phone, dialling his speed dial and heard the familiar ring-ring. Only, this time, it rang not only in her ears, but also in her bedroom. He had forgotten his cell phone home. Paranoia set in as she leapt out of the bed and ran to the door, pounding it, pulling until the handle wobbled. But it didn't budge. She ran to the balcony, wondering if she could leap out and reach the terrace, find her way down and go look for him.

She grabbed a rosary, chanting his name, back and forth between the door and the balcony, looking out for him, his retracing footsteps, the sound of his vehicle. When she saw the familiar, relief would break in, before realising that the footsteps were a stranger's, approaching other doors, other lives. Fresh waves of hysteria would break in and threaten to break her will.

Anything if you let him come home, she gasped, her eyes on the altar, the god she worshipped smiling down at her.

Her eyes darted around the house they had built, the things they had filled it with, each meaningless if he did not come home. She thought about the assigments pending at her work place, all valueless if he did not come home. She saw the discarded bit of toffee wrapper he had left on the floor, suddenly so precious, the last thng he touched before leaving home.

She thought of his mother, his family, the baby they had still not had, the plans that had still not materialized, the house they had still not built, the plans they had made together, suspended in time, caught in an unbreakable time warp. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, huddled and curled up on the bed he had slept on once, when she poured a bottle of water over his head and he had chased her round the house.

And under that hysteria, the paranoia, was a voice telling her she knew this, she knew death, he was a familiar friend, this was not the unknown she was facing, this was not the fear she had not been warned of. This...this was an old friend come to revisit...perhaps, perhaps, maybe in passing, maybe to stay.

A calm gradually settled in, silence took over, a silence so thick, she could cut it with a knife. A silence so thick, she thought she would drown in it, as the sobs subsided and she thought of ways to get out, find him, and bring him back...or find him, and then find ways to end her own life.

The silence frightened her more than anything else, the realisation that she could think of death in a neat flow chart-like way was alarming. It brought on a fresh wave of sobbing that threatened to tear her down and rip her apart. She wound the rosary tightly around her wrist, hoping it would sear and burn through her pulse and end her life when she heard a familiar ring again. Her phone. She shot out of her curled up position and headed for the bedroom and her phone, jabbing the 'answer' keypad and whispering a raspy 'hello'.

'I can't find it anywhere. Should I go a little ahead and see if its available?"

She broke down in wails, her voice breaking and tearing, while he grew increasingly alarmed on the other end.

"Baby, what happened?"

"Come home. Now!" she rasped, hanging up after he said a hurried 'yes'.

She wept into the phone and promised to never, ever fight with him. She had come dangerously close to losing him and her sanity and nothing demanded that she go through the same again. She cried for five more minutes before getting up to fry his eggs.

When they sat down for dinner, it was an unusually quiet affair, his stealing concerned glances at her, her lowered eyes trying to force the tears back into her eyes. One big tear rolled, 'plop', into her plate.

He smiled. "That is going to be one salty affair."

She looked at him and forced a smile. "Whatever," she said.

Whatever it takes to make you come back.

Home

2009-08-18T17:10:00.002+05:30

The kitchen. Pretty much where she spent a greater part of her time. Randomly throwing spices, cleaning up and spraying repellent on little red ants that crawled their way up to some new tidbit they had stumbled upon.

The bedroom. Clothes flying, arranging shelves, holding up curtains, wiping windown clean, making the bed, lounging and feeling the ache in various parts of her body and mind. Sweeping, mopping, swatting flies and reading. Working. Trying hopelessly to declare it a no-laptops zone.

The living room. The little seating lounge she has fashioned out of nothing. The lights, the lamps, lighting little fire lamps and letting the breeze flood into her home, warm her hearth and lighten her heart.

The dining room, where she saw him eat, work and talk, where she heard the breeze flow helter skelter, drying her clothes and carrying aromas from other kitchens into her home, some palatable, some disgusting.

The bathroom, where she let the water run on her skin, feel the cold trickles seep into te warm skin, blood gushing in her veins, scrubbing her face and hair, brushing her teeth, drying the floor and collecting stray bits of hair.

The balcony, clothes drying up and windswept hair on her face. Neighbours peering in, some smiling, some looking through.

Her feet on the floor, her eyes on the sights. How do they make a house a home? By making it lived in.

The Wisdom Of Dusk

2009-08-11T10:33:00.004+05:30

Sorrow can be solid; you can feel it thumping, knocking the air out of your lungs, rendering you incapable of drawing breath, air inches away but so still, you cannot suck it in.

A thousand thoughts rush through your brain and rush into your veins, pushing your blood harder and harder until you feel that your nerves are too narrow to carry them. You can feel the edge of an ancient rock being scraped, an impression digging deeper and deeper, making its mark, a mark no sculptor will find it easy to erase and camouflage.

The sculpture is marred, and marred for life. Time brushes against its wounds, sometimes carressing, sometimes tearing, bloodless blood leaking out invisible to known eyes. There are no tears anymore, for rocks do not shed them, but the anguish lives on.

Until of course, the rock remembers what it is. A rock. That time will smoothen out its jagged edges, that the winds will even out its crevices, the water wash out the filth it has gathered, the soil root it firmly to the earth and leave it capable of standing: alone, not lonely. Wounded but healed.

Until it remembers that rocks do not feel. And returns, true to its nature, to that space where all emotion, good and bad, happy and sad, washes over it like the gentle waves of the sea, salt crusting over its features, but unable to sear its scars. Not any more.

And so, they must forget not, what they are and what they are becoming, for they shall stand past eternity, for they are human, and made of soil. Just like sculptures.

Revisiting Playtime

2009-07-27T21:31:00.004+05:30

He rode quietly, feeling the wind on his face, feeling her snuggling up to him behind, pillion rider wife. The song he had caught off the radio at a snacks store still auto-played in his head.

Eleven children, all in their khaki shorts, scratches healing on their rugged knees, scuttling between lanes with bats on their shoulders, balls bouncing ahead, chasing, chasing until they fell in line behind each other, all the way to the play ground. Their own stadium. The best cricket team, born to defeat. Playing on the world's best pitch. Sydney. Sydney, tucked in quietly, amidst wavy grass and dusty lanes, in a small town to the east of Tamil Nadu.

India.

He shifted into fourth gear, avoiding overtaking a rash biker straight ahead. Safety was imperative, remembering the figure that was huddled in shape with his body, gently humming a song that only she knew - her own piece of nostalgia, perhaps.

Five-over cricket, rushed in between study times and mothers shouting, the time for lighting the evening lamp overhead already. Hungry growls escaping from stomachs, while all eleven made their way to his house and they sat perched on the verandah, slapping in jest, giggling, elbowing, singing songs from different movies. The idea? No more than one song from one movie.

He would hum an unfamiliar song then - tricking his opponents into believing that the movie was not taken - and when they sang a song from the movie, he would squeal - Taken! The others would complain and he would guffaw along with a few others who were in on the secret.

He turned at the bend, heading home, asking her if she needed to buy something for the house. She thought for a minute before saying no. He went straight into the parking lot and pulled over. She jumped off the bike in one smooth motion, heading for the elevator. He parked.

The song played all over again in his head. Only he knew, a well-kept secret. A not very popular song from a popular film that he sings. Time flies. Nobody notices the sands sift. Except a few who are in on the secret.

Lifetime Journeys

2009-06-24T12:31:00.001+05:30

She has been sitting on that parapet wall for an hour now. She gazes out at a landscape that isn’t exactly a great view but it is a view to her nevertheless. There is a wide open ground. At the very far end of that ground, she sees a few shanties where labourers live and work on a new building that is far enough to not block the breeze that gushes into her home and ears every night but close enough to still be a near eyesore.

A few children to her right have built a cricket pitch and are playing. On her left, stands another building, dwarfed by the one she stays in. She can see its terrace and she can see a couple strolling there, hand in hand. Far away, she sees part of a road, vehicles zipping by on it. A large banyan tree shadows the road.

He likes the tree. He likes how it spreads out its hands, how it offers a moment’s respite to the people who walk under it. He feels it is old. She finds it young. She can see from this distance, the smoothness of its bark, the freshness on its leaves, the natural spring in its swaying. It has to be young, she tells herself.

She knows he has never visited the tree. Never went and hugged it. Never whispered into its ears, hope it hears and hope it tries to respond. In some way. Maybe an extra breeze from its branches, maybe a few falling leaves, maybe an extra bit of swaying…anything. From so far away, does it know it is being watched? Does it know it is liked? By two people who stay far far away in a house on top of a building that stands on top of a mound?

This is her domain, she feels, and she looks down on it, wondering how long before this too becomes a fragment of her memory. A day when she will pack up one more time and go away, forgetting the tree, the road, the ground, the building that does not even exist yet. After the last goodbye. No more coming and going, no more rainy terraces, no more breezy well lit homes, no more smells of cooking wafting on this sphere where they live now?

He comes out then and catches her looking at nothing. Stop thinking, he nudges. She smiles. She isn’t thinking. She is drifting. Those are different, aren’t they? Will she remember him in an afterlife? Will he? If she does, will he know from afar that he is loved?

Of Stainless Steel Spice Holders

2009-06-13T16:24:00.002+05:30

There is nothing overtly special about this day. It is just another Saturday, the day of the week that goes fastest, and she is back to her domain, the kitchen, aromas sashaying their way out of the open windows, mustard and asafetida, curry leaves and green chillies chopped fine, like little green nose rings.

She fastens the lid on the pressure cooker, split beans soaked with tomatoes, garlic and onions simmering. She remembers the turmeric, forgotten in its container, straining to remind her that it belongs inside the cooked too.

It catches her attention then. Sitting camouflaged amidst other vessels with lids. Stainless steel, glistening through the smudges that her fingers have left on it. Lid shut tight in place. She falters for a second and then reaches out for the turmeric. It goes right into the vessel and she turns again to the vessel that caught her attention. Five spices. They used it with careless abandon in her part of the world.

She hasn't used it even once here, not knowing how the unfamiliar tastes will be welcomed in this house, her house now...it was a foreign taste here. Not on her tongue though. On her tongue, it tastes like home. Mud and rain and sandal paste and jasmines. Her home. She reaches out to the vessel. It almost seems to leap into her hand, overjoyed after this long spell of inattention.

She cradles it in her hands, kissing it gently and opening the lid. The fragrance wafts into her nostrils and she takes it all in, the heady feeling of nostalgia hitting her hard. She flinches at the tears that seep onto her lips. She takes a pinch of the five spice and tosses it into the vessel. The split bean sizzles and crackles with new life. She shuts the lid.

An hour later when they sit at the table and she ladles out spoonfuls of the lentil soup to his plate, and he digs in, she looks for a reaction. There is none. He is perfectly at home with the taste. She settles into her chair and puts a ball of rice mixed with the lentils into her mouth. It is the first time she has appetite for something her hands have made.

Lost Love

2009-05-08T13:07:00.002+05:30

This is what she had wanted. With a maddening urgency and desperation, like thirst for water after a long spell of draught. So what if the rains came four months ago, so what if it had rained often in these last four months of water and wetness, moisture soaking into clothes, bones, walls, books, rooves.

So what…she still wanted it to rain and rain and drench every tile on her floor, seep into every crevice and drench her inside out. She still wanted it to wash over her, leave her feeling heady and wanted. Because she had known draught for twenty long years and four months of water was no justice to her wanting.

She did not want dry floors and she did not want dry clothes. She loved the coldness that seeped into her skin when she wore half dry clothes. She loved it when water splashed on her on roads, when a vehicle passing by sped by. The mud, the muck, the storms, the thunder, the lightning. All of that.

Especially on this night when it had not rained. Especially when it was damp and sweaty and the air around her swelled with the heat that it could no longer absorb. She twisted and turned in her bed, rumpled up the sheets, reached for the window, hoping she could grab a passing cloud and beg it to soak her to the skin. But she could not. And it ended there.

She checked the weather reports, hoping they would hint at oncoming rains again. But they did not – it’s not time yet – there was some reason or the other. So she savoured the memory of the rains gone by, her desire looming out of her control. Until she stopped waiting.

She walked to the terrace, looked quietly up at the clouds that were unaware of her, of how long she had waited. She spoke a language they did not understand. She had eyes that they could not decipher. And quietly, she let go of the madness that was assaulting her every nerve, every night and every day.

It has been a while now that the clouds have not taken notice. It has been a while now since she stopped waiting. It did rain again. She walked out of the door and let it soak her. She stayed for a few minutes, sneezed and went back in, grabbing a towel to dry her hair. Something she would never have done before. It does not matter anymore. The clouds will never know, too caught up in their heights to notice.

Will they ever know that they lost a lover?

Living With You - by Blue Feather

2009-04-27T23:21:00.001+05:30

Moon light rays scattering

Over the grey deserted night roads

All the way to your home and on you

Where you lie unconscious

Of me.

Sweet misery, looking at you from afar

Turn in your sleep, turn in me

Breath mingling

The mellowness of your night of wine

Deep in my blood

And me

All the way to your glory, stark

And unfettered

Peace melting into liquids

On this floor

You walk on

Leave your footprints and I will gather

Them, before the water rushes in again

Filling the vacuums that you create

For me.

The Chase

2009-03-30T10:54:00.001+05:30

You walk ahead of me. And I keep pace with you when I can. Often, I lose sight of you. Suddenly…when I look down at a pebble I trip on, if I look at one of the sights that lie around me, if I stop for a moment to catch my breath. And you are gone, in one jiffy.

It has now so become that I keep my eyes on you and walk. Ignoring the stumbles and falls, the sights and sounds. You race ahead, sometimes look back, taking in all that is offered by this world, absorbing and singing, dancing and whistling a tune, a smile on your lips. The lips that I have been chasing for centuries now.

Why do you follow me? You ask that once in a while and I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know if there really is anything else I can do. So I follow you because that is all I know to do.

But one day, I stop chasing and following. And I collapse and fall and lie down on the sand, face down, the sun beating down on me because my feet are too tired of following you. They will carry me no more and I must stop, body stretched beyond the forces of the will. I breathe, finally at rest, but panic building that I have lost sight of you again.

I look up once and see a mirage, an oasis and I am too tired to get up and reach the cool palms and the blue little pond. And I sleep.

I wake up after what feels like ages. I don’t know how long I have slept but it feels like it’s been a long long time. I am parched and I need water. I look up and the oasis is still there. I struggle to my feet and slip, get up again and the sight in front of me shimmers unrealistically. But I walk on, and I reach the oasis. It is not a mirage and I feel a stab of guilt at not having walked to it earlier.

I drink deeply from the waters and I see you, sitting a little way further, drinking from the waters too. You look up and smile at me and I want to ask you why you are not running away from me now. It is exactly what I wanted, for you to not run, and now that you are doing what I want you to, I want to know why you are doing it…so I shut up and just look at you and manage to smile back.

You finish drinking and dust your clothes, wash your face and find a fruit to chew on. You take your own time again and finally, you notice me again and walk up to me. It is so odd to see you walking to me that I stay very still, afraid that everything will disappear if I move. You come and stand in front of me and offer a hand.

“Do you like this place?”

“Is that the question I want after centuries of chasing you?”

“May be not but do you like it?”

“Yes. Better than the arid lands.”

“I am glad you like it.”

“Why did you make me chase you?”

“I didn’t ask you to. You followed me.”

“You could have walked with me.”

“We would never have made it on time then.”

“I didn’t want to keep losing sight of you.”

“You had to. You were too busy chasing me to notice the sights on the way. So I had to disappear so you would look around a bit before resuming.”

“But you didn’t leave me much time to look around either.”

“Because you had to remember that the final destination is here.”

“What if I had not chased you?”

“You would have still made it here. All your roads lead to the same place.”

“But why did you ask me, now and then, the reason behind my chasing you?”

“To make you ask yourself that you do not chase me. You chase this and I am only leading you here.”

I stay quiet. You leave my hand. You ask your last question.

“Why didn’t you run? I would have followed. We would have reached the same place.”

On Cold Winter Nights

2009-03-23T16:05:00.001+05:30

Its 2 am. And its sub zero outside. When she exhales through her mouth, there is a tiny little fog that she creates. She does this on glass panes and traces odd shapes on it until they slowly disappear. There are people sitting around the room, laughing, talking, asking questions and giving answers, while she nods in agreement and pretends to be interested.

She is a little sleepy and happy drawing patterns on the glass and answering an occasional question, making an occasional non-controversial comment, making sure she does not get drawn into any conversation that would pull her out of her little corner and make her leave the comfort of not actively thinking.

She holds a little white porcelain teacup in her hands, cupping it with her palms, letting the heat of the drink sink into her skin like liquid fire. The soup is hot and just out of the pot. Red and oranges swirl in her cup, flecks of carrot and pureed tomato. A swig of mint and a small shredded basil leaf. Tiny oregano dots swim around with bits of black pepper, the aroma of tamarind curling up into her nostrils.

She can smell the tang of ginger and the raw sensuousness of onions and garlics floating in the cup she holds. She closes her eyes, breathes in deeply once and identifies every spice that must have boiled its way to heaven after leaving a bit of its identity in this soup. She peers into the cup again, looking at the swirls of creamy white that have been casually drawn on the surface of the soup, like a little whirlpool.

The mint leaf sits right in the middle of the eye of this whirlpool. Delicious.

It is nice to drink tomato soup in a teacup. Not much, not little and just enough to keep her warm. The cold is severe and everybody is wrapped in woolens, thermals and small talk. She hears something about beer and chaai and she looks up. She sees him animatedly starting another pointless debate, like most other debates.

“So what wins? Beer on a hot night or chaai on a cold night?”

There are catcalls and hoots and yeses and noes. The argument lasts for about 5 minutes. Nobody reaches any consensus, the Indianness in chaai and the coolness in beer at war. 2.30 am. She smiles before draining her cup.

Tomato soup.

Fiction Garden

2009-03-17T12:23:00.005+05:30

Here's another new start.

This blog has no theme except for the fact that all work is purely fictional and any coincidence to any incident, place or character living or dead, may or may not be purely purely coincidental.

Of course it is not Relevant ravings reincarnated. If you find similarities, its because the hand that yields the forces is still the same.