of Hello, Good Bye and Everything in between

Dear Sister Ar,

This is how the first sentence of a long delayed letter sounds like. You get it? No. Good, Cos I don’t get it either. Let me see now from where I can give it a start.

26 days away from being 23, the only thing that I am sure of about myself is that nothing heals me more than writing a letter. The text word has its own sense of medication. I now know how it feels to allow introspection to happen in narratives. I now know why people say that writing a diary is important when you are dysfunctional in some ways. They are never writing a diary, they are merely talking about the process of writing letters, letters to self. I am yet to find salvation in the process as alienated as that. I am weak, I like being heard and I choose you as a medium to have that release. I hope you don’t find that barbarically boring. I can’t stop now even if you do, sorry for that.

Let us start by pleasantries. How are you? Do you realize that it has been like a month since we last had a more than 2 minute long conversation? Odd it sounds but time do fly. I am fine. I am in the process of redefining the word “home” again.  I am living alone, it’s a small room but it is fun and it is peaceful. I can hear my thoughts more clearly here. I feel something within me moving towards peace. I might not be sure if it is saturation, process of giving up/growing up (yes they mean the same thing) or just another bookmark in the journey filled with confusions as the only constant but what I do know is, it is relaxing. 4 am on a foggy morning, 24^th December 2012, when a world is burning in turbulence out there, I am closer to peace. I feel nice speaking that out. how are you? I miss you. I know you miss me too. Thanks for that smile that now has come on your face.

I will talk about people and places and I would leave most of the nomenclature on your guesses.

A, is a small room, it has beautiful curtains, the sound of a child in the background coming from a neighborhood that I am suppose to not necessarily care about. It is liberating, it has freedom, it has a confession arena where when you close the lights you can face your demons. It has no one that would judge your bare body or your feeble tears, it has no one that would make fun of you when you would dance to katy perry songs, it has no one that would give you a weird look when you get teary hearing Axl Rose sing or Manchester united score. A, is awesome. It involves money bleeding but it gives you a calm sleep.

B, is still missed. She is missed in every breath I take. I feel the need for her like somebody working in the field for a quarter of year in burning sun would feel the need to see the vegetables grow post rains. She is in me, around me. I love her, I understand love because of the virtue of the past that I have with her. The more I miss her, the more I am sure that I am never ever ever going back to her. B, is like the feeling of first smoke of the day, or the Ambi pure room fresher release that follows it which brings white lily smell everywhere. B is in every moment. Omnipresent, but at peace in a page already turned in the beautiful book called life. B is love. B would remain the love till there is soul enough in me to feel the warmth of life.

C was fun. I had a great time there. I miss that place. The place I am sure misses me too. I know that is metaphorical but what is life all about, if we stop the process imagination. I never wanted to leave it in the way I did, but I wanted to leave it since forever as u already know. I now understand why. I smile at the time spent there. I feel nice that I don’t feel the need to ever go back again.

D is hot. She takes care of me even when I never allow her to do that. It is funny how in some other age, in some other time, my perception of the perfect city life would involve the need of someone exactly like D but now when I have it, I feel it can never have me.  You know how I always used to talk about the objective idea of having a separate body and a separate soul. It unintentionally or intentionally is getting executed in me. I use words like “like” where I would have used “love” in my past self, and keep repeating “relationships are not beautiful, love is”. What I really want to say in the paradoxical thesis of choices to her, is that I miss B and I miss her in the way that every small touch, every small whisper made to me somehow makes sense only when it comes from B. I am programmed to see her as an image of god for the rest of my life and I am helpless, helpless like a junkie chasing his drug of the idea of eternity with B and no one else. I contradict myself here because I am making no efforts to go back to B but I understand this equation in a way very clearly, it is like those beautiful things that you know but cannot explain and find peace in letting them be.

E is beautiful. She deserves blessings and nothing less. I cannot see her in pain, somebody as pure as that person deserves a universe of love and complete devotion. I make her smile. I am afraid while doing so; I never want her to get dependent on me for the smiles. I don’t know how to stop that from happening. She is perfect.  She is like my last link to delight of being with the purest form of human heart. I pray for her every day. May she gains strength, good health, balanced mind, and an independent set of things that can make her happy without ever getting the same exclusively from a single source like one hobby or human being. That has too much of risk involved. You know why.

F is boring, I hate the place but since I am only going in the nights I have developed a certain kind of liking to it too. It is not rewarding but it consumes time and energy and sometimes at some age in some phase of life, that consumption plays a critical role. It wears your body out and save yourself from wearing your own soul out instead. I am not satisfied there but rather than pre concluding my affair with the place at peace, I would choose the term truce. I smile there sometimes. I make people around me smile too. That is a reason in itself to exist and go. Rest, let’s see.

Write back. I miss reading you. Ask questions about F and I would answer them.

Tell me a novel or a movie that you have just seen, let us get to talking. Talking of the sort that involves things, places and not people, talking of the best type that there is.

Love and Blessings,

Your nocturnal brother,

P

'Lovers parade' : My entry for the Get Published contest

(pic source)

It was strange what happened between us. We are not lovers, we are not friends, and we hardly know each other. I don’t know how it works on your side of the world, but on mine, random kisses are still not so common. I thought the term sexual energy and moment of awkwardness leading two people to grab each other in an embrace was something too bookish and surreal, something which happens only in Woody Allen movies but apparently that assumption was wrong. It happened with us. I think of that moment which we had and I cannot cipher what I feel about it still. It’s been seven days and six nights but I can see it in my mind over and over again. Is that normal? Is that a fascination, like something which means I want to have it again? Or rather my greed, something like me wanting more than what took place? I have no clue. 

I have kissed in the past but those kisses were out of love, out of anger, out of repulsion or out of lust. This was what? Out of meaninglessness? I still remember the sequence of things that led us to it. You were sitting across the table. We were in the office, late at night and due to boredom – I started chatting with you. While you were telling me about how your boy friend is becoming over possessive every passing day and how you hate that part about him, I was busy typing a prose to tell you how your feet looks edible under the table from where I can see them while you hang your footwear on toe top and swing it in a play. Somewhere in between I remember you walking or me following, or was it the vice versa? How does it matter now, or may be to people who shall judge us – that question will be the only one that would matter. Outside - The moon was half. Stars were shining in a teasing manner. I could hear breeze whispering into my ears, asking me what I want. I had no answer to that then. I don’t have an answer to that even now.  You were sad and your eyes spoke the same. Flirting is my way of making girls smile when they are sad. I don’t know the moral aspect of it, but it works and I stay loyal to that tested formula. That night was no different.  He called you up, you disconnected, and I gave you an angry look asking you to talk to him and make a call back. You said, you have smiled after many weeks and would rather want to stay in the moment forgetting all troubles of the world you and him belong to.  I thought this was a fair point. 

We took the stairs to make a way back to our cubicles and talked of places where there would be no cameras in the office building. From where did that discussion started? You were looking beautiful while asking that in your innocent fake voice. I take the word beauty back, let’s call it interesting or may be attractive. I could smell your hairs. I noticed you from the corner of my eye – you looked hot (read attractive again). Who spoke kiss first? Me or you? Or maybe it was time; Time that make people think what they think and people do what they do. It speaks; Speaks in a language that only two people frozen in the moment can understand or recall.

“I don’t think there is a camera in here”, I said, pointing to a lonely corner on the second floor back stair exit.

You were quiet and waiting and said nothing in return. I believe in consent and I thought I saw it in your eyes. I held your hand and told you something I cannot say here. I grabbed you and our bodies dragged each other to the darker end of the space. You giggled. We were close, my hand touching your waist entering under the T while your breaths were fast pacing. Our noses were touching and I could feel your air on my lips. I could smell your lip balm. I could see it shine. I wanted to taste it. I told you that I regret smoking a few minutes ago from now. You said – you are used to the taste of it. While I was trying to understand what it meant, we started kissing. In between I opened my eyes and found yours closed. You were busy eating my lower lip when suddenly I could hear you whisper “It’s ok”. I paused and found my whole body shivering. I pushed you away but you continued to hold my hand and you were gently caressing my fingers with yours.

“I had kissed people in the past”, I said.

“I know that”, you replied smiling.

“I want to do it again, I don’t know what went wrong” – I said, ashamed of the fact that I had shivered like a child. You pulled me closer to you, we started kissing again; Deeper this time. Your tongue tried to make mine calm but the shiver had started again. I tried hard to make a move, one that would make me appear strong and memorable among your list of kisses if you had one, but I could envision tears rolling down from the eyes of the boy who had been begging to get your attention hundreds of miles away, I could also see me laughing on myself while making him suffer and kissing his girl. Was it guilt? I know it was not that but something else. Something was wrong. Something was not working. The kiss was over. I walked away first and sat on the stairs.

You said – “you don’t need to feel guilty about it.”

 “I was not feeling guilty” I replied… “I am just feeling something that I don’t know.”

“That happens with you always, that is the thing I like about you” you said.

Cigarette was back on my lips. I was glad to be smoking again. My lips were rejoicing the familiarity while I was busy understanding my ever growing fascination for things that are bound not to last. Things like a smoke pile coming from a bud, that would rest in peace in the air it flies upon, or a flying bubble born from the bottom surface of a bucket which disappears as and when it comes to the surface of water top, or maybe, we – “us”, fall in the same list. 

I told you that I am not emotionally available, I had been in love and I don’t think I can be in love again. You said you don’t want love from me, you said I am like a star which is untouchable but you find it fascinating and can’t stop yourself from being awake whole night to see it. I liked the correlation. 

“Why were you shivering”, I heard you ask.

I spoke nothing. I thought of the girl I loved. I think after kissing you – I realize for the first time, how special she was. I never told you why I shivered but may be you like the mystery about me and I would like this to be kept as one.

“Thanks for kissing me on the forehead, I felt safe” you spoke before making your way back inside, towards the desk. 

I smiled and said nothing in return. I saw smoke dissolve in air. It smelled nice. It smelled like you, you in the moment when we were kissing. I came back inside and found you sitting on the seat, calm and at peace. What were we suppose to do now? Pretend that nothing happened? I was waiting for you to give me a clue when I saw your feet, bare – playing on in the same way again with the footwear and then an IM popped up on my screen from you which said “Thank you”.

I typed “why”.

“For watching my feet whole night”, you replied with an expressionless gaze on the monitor.

I could see a story starting in that very moment; Stories of the kind that has no beginnings, no endings, and no meaning.

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This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs fromYashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.

Love Drug

It is when the night don’t pass

That I think of you

All these memories which are beautiful

And little fights which were few

A destiny which played

Like a sad song with immortal lyrics

A rose flower which smells so nice

And offer blood and pricks

Meaningless conversations

Sealed in time

Passages left incomplete

The kisses so divine

Shadows

All dancing together

Knowing their fate

And tears that would stay forever

Pillow hugs offering a comfort

Deep breaths and long pauses

A bond broken by light

The one that searched for dark clauses

And last line of poetry

Reserved for the best

Untold to our gods but

Confessed to the rest

************************

Usmein kuch apna na raha

Jis lamhe ko tujh pe chod diya

Aakri patta jo patjhad mein bach gaya

Par ek khilone ne jisse tod diya

Ehsaas kuch aisa

Ki jiski baatein bas hoti rahi

Masoom pari jo mehlon ki thi

Par teelon k liye roti hai

Wo lekhak jiska sapna bas maut thi

Un raaton mein jalta raha

Apne hi jhooth k saayon mein

Nam suraj sa dhalta raha

Maikhaane ki aakhri pyali ka sahara ban gaya

Tumse juda hokar bhi tumhara ban gaya

Pyaar k andheron mein neechey jata raha

Har aansun mein apne khoye huye pal ko pata raha

(pic source)

I belong to nowhere

It makes me sad when people ask me “where are you from?” It’s a simple question, which more often than not occurs on first conversations almost every time I have one. By the normal tone it carries, it appears to be straight-forward, a two plus two four, with a singular statement known to someone by-heart. The problem is – it is anything, but that. I take it sportingly, though the whole messy situation where I have to admit that I don’t know where I belong to is sad. There is no city that is mine, no town that I own or is from. No Street that I can associate family legacy with or no set of surroundings from where I can link a cross web of my roots to. It can now be officially said – I belong to the place called “nowhere”.

The nowhere is not like a complete blank page. It is a result of chaos that comes when scribbles with no pointers clutter a book and one find difficulty to read lines out of it. It is a result of a line written somewhere but now lost between pages of a thick journal. This “nowhere” is probably a clement-town of memories. It has a picture in my mind. A picture with no name… something that I understand but can’t give a social nomenclature to; It is difficult to point it out singularly on a map of some over populated politically messed up state, but on a globe of emotional turbulence it finds a path, completely unique and melancholically traceable.

It has a set of neighbors, a group of friends and enemies ranged across time and phases of life, miraculously living in the same society all-together. It has a school where I go, having the best and worst teachers that I have met all these years in different schools that I had to go to every New Year. It has a park – the one that I played football in during high school. It has a Paan shop whose owner greets me and smiles to me, every time I do an evening stroll to grab an unapologetic cigarette after bunking college. It has the house of the girl who has beautiful long hairs and walks on her terrace reading the poetry book, after taking a bath, smelling all fruity and allowing her hairs to be left loose so that they can dry in playful sunshine and flirt with nature. It has a window of her room where I can see her dance in the evening while I try to scribble about the way she looks on a 2006 diary back cover.  College buses run everywhere in it, songs are played on loud mobile handsets in them. There is a square where lovers meet. They fear their parents and meet secretly for short duration which includes mostly seeing into each other’s eyes practicing songs of love recited as incommunicado. It is a place where children chase each other on bicycles. They race around otherwise but also have mannerism to greet old-age people taking doctor recommended walks in the same park. It is a town where breakfast outlets are hangout joints. People eat the most unhygienic good with utter delight and never fall ill. It’s a town that stands for the world I saw, as a child.

I find myself scratching my head with utter confusion when it comes to filling of tabs in online forms that says “permanent address” or “temporary address”. It is even more confusing, when a side check box asks me “if these both are same for me or not”. Down the pedagogy on the same page – things like pin codes, landline numbers and others of same category makes me go blank. I have no idea to any of this. Twenty two years down the line, a million forms filled, I still make calls to ask my father asking “what is to be filled”, depending on time in which this form shall hold relevance and where everything shall be during that whole span. I hate and love the fact that my father had a transferrable job. We moved places, we moved on and on – till a time came when addresses were changed so often that they lost meanings or permanence associated with them. We moved on and on – till a time came when parental homes and villages were visited so often that they gradually lost identity and feeling of warmth under a pile of time sand. We moved on – and on – till a time came, when as a teen, I forgot who I was. In midst of an age where identity crisis are suffered by everyone, I probably had the worst of that because destiny as they call it – gave me enough opportunities to meet new people and lie about me, till a time came when I forgot who I actually was or who I actually am.

This is meaningless. It is also sad. I don’t know how to explain the mixed set of wasted effort that follows every time I think about it. It is not an adventure to not belong to any place. It’s kind of “is being an orphan feeling”, only difference being that Orphans has an excuse of not belonging to any place. They have fate to blame; I wonder how blasphemous it would be to say the same for me.  I need to apply for passport tonight. I have been planning to do that for over a year now. I get lazy in between, lazy to make a call to someone – to ask what to fill – in the question that asks – where is my permanent home, where is the city that I belong to?

image source*

Of Dogs,Cars and Cigrettes

Irrespective of how many motivational books I end up reading, and irrespective of how many “never give up” posters I tag on my wall – the negativity of the people around me continues to seep in every now n then. There is rain outside the window. There used to be an era when it had a knack to leave a curve over my lips with every falling drop. An era when roses looked red and skies looked blue, at the moment it’s all grey; Grey of the sort which is closer to black - Dark black.

It is 12.10, I am negativity to the brim. I want to slap a few people. I want to throw water on face of some of them. I want to take a shower. I want to wait in the shower till there is nothing but silence around. Shit. Cigarettes are over. Hallucination will have to take its place and melancholic madness can be expected to follow. I sometimes stand on the balcony and observe everything in silence. There are cars running around everywhere even at this hour. People are chasing things, chasing things in blinded pursuit, chasing things that are as temporary as their own existence with them shall be, still they are chasing them and irrespective of what you shall tell them about fatal ends to meaningless lives – they would continue to live one. A dog chases one of those taxis – he ends up half way barking as it speeds past along it. This is also the life of a dog sitting in it. Someday he would realize that irrespective of how fast he runs behind it barking, life is destined to pass by him. What loop is this. What life is this? Why are things the way they are? Patters my foot – it is senseless to the core. Has it always been like this?

I had to stop cribbing now. There is this girl I met. She had beautiful eyes – they lied. That made them even more beautiful. We met on a train. We talked of life.  She faked it through in the whole conversation but now I don’t mind – everyone does. She spoke about her family and how she hates her parents. She was ungratefulness in motion – but nevertheless she was beautiful, or maybe I was horny or may be both.  She got down on the same station. We took the same subway. She was to go to a party that night. Her boy friend was supposed to pick her up but for some reason he was late. I tried to stretch the conversation and ended up making it boring, more boring than what it already was. She wanted to smoke and I decided to share the last bud with me. She said she wanted it all for herself. I judge people who share cigs anyways so she had a plus one on my list. I told her it was about to rain. She said – she likes her hairs wet - Plus two immediately. Her boyfriend came just then. He was tall, had copper eyes and long hairs. He had a SUV, nothing that I should mention along with physical features but I want to anyways.  He gave me a grotesque look as he kissed her on the cheek. There was one more girl in the car. She was on the back seat. She looked the back seat material. I don’t know what that means but some of my friends use that phrase so I suppose it might apply on her. The lady with the smoke sat in the car. It rushed past me – a few dogs chased it at the end of street when it took a turn. I could hear them bark. 

It had stopped raining. The smell is beautiful. I am still on the balcony. Meaningless dogs continues to chase cars, cars with weird people. Cars that are like cigarettes given to strangers that don't really matter.

Meaningless Scribbles

- Wednesday, 11 July -2012 -

12.08 am

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(Image Source)

In mornings like these...

when it rains

I think of you

and of all the tears that I had given you

and of all the promises I did but failed to make them come true

and of all the pictures of yours that I borrowed from you and told u I shall keep them with me forever which now lies somewhere deleted in the trash folder of my laptop

and of that black dress which I had planned to gift you

and of the mango shake which we shared, the last time we had met

and of the way I keep hearing stories about you being in pain because I walked out of your life

and of the self justification I keep giving myself for that action knowing that its all a lie

and of how my messaging this other girl makes me feel like a sinner from inside

and of how with you, my ability to love someone purely has also ended

and of how you might be somewhere crying

and of how deep within me-- knowing that --- somewhere I am dying.

In mornings like these...

when it rains

I feel like sharing it when water would drop on your skin

I feel like touching it when water would soak from your hair

I feel like smelling it from the softness of your lips

I feel like playing with it by playing with you

I feel like crying realizing that I can't do any of this now

In mornings like these...

I find myself closer to life

I find myself cribbing more

I find myself playing a bluff to my own heart

I find myself not being able to focus on anything much

I find myself thinking about a time that never really existed

I find myself drenching

I find myself as a joke - smiling on the unexplained depression that I live with

I find myself trying to light up a cigratte

I find myself not admitting that I miss you

I find myself confused again , just as I had always been

I find myself hating you and myself.