End of the Night

"This is the end, beautiful friend.
It hurts to set you free,
but you'll never follow me.
The end of laughter and soft lies.
The end of nights we tried to die.
This is the... end."

There's pictures of Morrison all around and I smile at the irony. I declare I don't drink and find myself staring moodily into a glass of rum and coke (rum hardly, coke loads) ten minutes later.
There's a boy there with witty banter and sexual innuendos and he makes me laugh.. but then he can never make me smile and that, I suppose is the true test.

I get a polite query about a refill and realise I'd rather just have coke instead. Lots of coke, lots of ice, and lots of lemon. I brood over my second drink and smile at how there used to be someone who would have known that without having to be told.

The Idiot

I'm a part of this thing and this thing is a part of me. Sometimes I hate it. To the point where self destruction seems to be the only option, and just when I'm about to, the thing begins to purr. Like the selfish cat it is, it entwines itself around my legs and arrests me right there, because it knows that it too is at stake.

When dogs begin to yowl at night, I take solace in the thing and it takes solace in mine for it. Always there are things that I would like to say to it but always I choke.
One day I asked it... "do you think i'm happy?"
It smiled at me and said "atleast you're not unhappy..."

She smiled coyly at him and he grinned back. She grew courageous and began to walk away.

"Hey STUPID!" he hollered.
She turned, and a stone hit her on the right side of her throat.
"She's and IDIOT", someone said.
The others screamed in delight.
"Idiot, IDIOT, Idiot!"
"Let's pelt her with stones!" - the small one said.

I'm such an idiot... she thought.

Night and Day

There were hours of sunshine and minutes of pain.
Seconds of ecstasy existed in both. My knowledge of the dozen rotations upon an axis was limited.
Once night fell, the recollection of golden moments eluded me and one by one the instances of hurt came and fenced my bed. The length of the ordeal could not be measured and the expanse which it covered was shadowed in moon light.

There, perched upon a gleaming bough sang a lark. Further below at a window sill, a sparrow morosely pecked at bread crumbs. The lark had perhaps forgotten the five dozen seconds of ecstasy, the sparrow had perhaps never been in the sun.

If It Should Be So...

An old journery has begun once more,
We're going where we went before.
Peeping from behind a broken door,
Perhaps we'll find what you're looking for.
Deep down somewhere in a fiery core
The love of yore, exists still pure.
Expectant always but never sure...
In this life.. and forever more.

Sleep Visions

She smoothens his hair back from his forehead and leans in to kiss him. A deep slow embrace with hesitant whispers in his ears which leaves me with an emptiness that makes my sleep pretend to slumber and wakefulness a dream..
I hate drunk people.

Sometimes when I lie with my eyes shut and breathing regular, I can feel sleep tossing and turning inside me. Dark men in dark clothing stand and whisper sullenly by my bedside. Once I have even felt a gentle carressing of the neck and frigid kisses from lips belonging to someone with a voice made of velvet.

Often the room is filled with the weeping sounds of a small boy. Afraid of the dark he is. He tells me that people follow him around the dark house and he unwittingly leads them back to my bed and into his sleep visions. I hold him in tight embrace and sing him a lullaby about mine.

When it's finally pink outside, sleep discards us...

My Take

When he walked into that room I changed my mind... as always. I wanted to say something but couldn't because it would be rude. So I let it be. I knew it was going to hurt and it did. A lot. And then not so much. I am no longer scared of physical pain...although my own whimpering has disgusted me quite a bit. Maybe it'll not be so bad the next time. Maybe I'll gag myself.

To her with love

I measure every smile I meet,

the depth of every grieving sorrow

and the insolent gaiety carrying

the fragrance of her dried up tears.

In them I can smell the impatient scent of love

and the stench of fruitless pursuit

and useless perseverance.

I still own her book of love sonnets

with crumbling pages that carry the mark of sullied love.

I read them in my busiest moments,

which smell of burning paper and wet mud.

Worth Preserving

I want that moment to exist behind a closed door somewhere and know that I can walk in anytime I need to and anytime I want. With food in the centre and boys on the phone and little babies who turn over and demand to be burped. Where we tell tales over and over again just to have that one last laugh or simply to forget the story. Where certain others lament the lack of maal or the fact that we can't afford it coz people owe us money...In that room we are the three most beautiful people I have come across. I'm thinking it as I take my monkey arms and start measuring them against the milky softness of the baby's. I'm thinking it when I look at beautiful big eyes that somehow look childish all the time and I'm thinking it when I sit, legs stretched out under the table and declare I'm hot simply to hear no one rebuff it.

The boy does a brilliant imitation and I laugh until I there are tears because that image of me is so atrocious that I actually know what he's talking about. Sigh. In that room is where it all falls away and I come to sickening realisations for which the food is in no way responsible. Then the baby becomes the mother with hand motions that remind one of a lotus blossom and it's all warm and fuzzy and sleepy. It's nice. Worth preserving.

Hullabaloo

Your tears are weird. When I touch them, they feel like paper; like you could tear them. We should do that one day. You and I and the other children. We'll stand on the highest ledge and throw your tears down from the building. I can almost see it in my mind... It will be like when people throw confetti at weddings and it falls in this floating shower of white on everyone.

No? I would...If i had such tears. 

Take Heart

Far beyond the never ending expanse of grey

there is a bit of amethyst

I have been told,

"After the fog and obscurity,

a beautiful yellow

you shall behold".

hIM

It made the mornings worth it. Just to see him saunter in like that. Of course, in the end I wasn't pretty enough to be his anyway.
Over the past few days I have come to the sickening realisation that I look for others to define me. However, despite all of that... I would still give a lot to be acknowledged as good looking by him.

A Hundred Years

I cannot stay.

With you is life and never presume I want that.

I wish. 

Death spurns us because we are not wise.

It swishes past with it's cloak of scorn

and looks down it's nose at our mortality.

I breathe with you and feel judged.  

Somehow the closer you are,

the hollower it is, 

until

the void (not made of hunger) increases and pushes you beyond.

I hope.

Of course I will weep. 

Despair does define us.

Silver Screen

There's no one like you in this whole wide world...

It's true. I kid you not.

I mean I swear.


This is why bollywood is stupid..

Ghosts

They hung upside down from the tree and seemed to be forever crying. It wasn't silent weeping either. It was the kind that wouldn't let you sleep at night. None of us had slept in years.

We had them on our conscience and they had our sleep on theirs. It wasn't that we hadn't tried. To move. Them first and us later. We only got as far as the garden gate. They began howling so we turned back, our gritty resolve ripped through with those pitiful howls. We had no choice. I made them turn back...because where we were going there was no one we would hate as much.

A lamp burns near the window to attract passing travellers. Some of the brave ones stop sometimes for food and a story about the tree in our garden (in my young days I was quite the story teller). My favourite part is where I lean close, let them breathe me in and point myself out to them, my lifeless body hanging upside down from the lowest branch of the old tree.

Poltroon

By the end of it you're a coward. You arm yourself with guns and swords and whatever else may protect you and you stand, feet apart, waiting.

Upon hearing the numerous war cries and horns you charge headlong into confusion. Everyone makes a mess and all the colours get mixed up. You get hit or stabbed or shot and dizzyingly fall to the side like an archer's broken arrow. You see your own blood staining your shirt and decide to give up. You wait patiently for death while lying on the sidelines, when you can perfectly well remain in combat and get finished off sooner without the wait.

At the first sign of pain you forget that that's the one reason you're standing in that damp muddy field with sweat and blood pouring out of you. It wasn't that they didn't warn you. You aren't to be blamed either. Effulgent fantasies cry a gloriously brave, victorious death.

Odi et Amo

I loved and I hate. She flies with her own wings.

I want to colour the dots. Big, gaping holes, in their anonimity they'd be happy. Therefore I take a felt tip pen and make diamonds and flowers with holes as the centre and at the edges and all around. Myopia is a pre-requisite to appreciate my wet ink art. From far away I see a hazy figure- Monet could have painted him... the grey and the black and other black blue dots making sense from a distance in a drizzle of white.

I figured out a pattern yesterday, or the day before or a year ago (I forget when). It went something like Henry VIII's wives : Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

Sometimes, when it's dark, I practice waiting. When it's light it becomes like Penelope's burial shroud for Laertes, a little bit of which is unravelled every day but without suitors to prompt. I have given it the dawn of a certain day and the dusk of others and the sky is black all the time for all those who didn't know.

Sleep Slow

Kiss on the lips and my tears too,
Draw the blinds and lie with me,
Cover me with a blanket of darkness
And tap the wood for good measure.
Green and red,
and lavender,
plunge into the vortex with me.

Laugh a little bit softer and then let me sleep.

For once..

For once I would like to experience basic peace. Not the complicated, obscure shit people keep talking about but the normal kind. The one in my head. I want to see what that is like. I imagine it would be sheer bliss to stop living keeping others in mind..

So

I remember sand. It was all over the car and on my feet and dress. Mommy sitting in the front seat had it all over her saree and my papa had it in his hair which she laughingly dusted off. Bhai had filled his shoes with it to take some home.

It was my first day at school. I was given 6 chocolates. One for every hour till the driver came to pick me up. They had forgotten I don't like chocolate. I gave each one away.

I woke up to smells of toast and egg and coffee and Nivea. Mommy in the kitchen, bustling, humming, cooking. Papa sitting with his newspaper. I went and sat on his lap and read the headlines out loud.

It's the first day of the rest of my life. It hasn't begun well.

They

They weep and laugh at me.

They revel in my downfall.

They need me to live,

these faces of wrath.

I may denounce them whenever...

but they need me..

to love them?

Their satisfactions and desires are moulded

by my discarded bits and ideals.

The masked men of a real life they peep

through

horizontal slits.

They weep and laugh at my losing my mask.

They feel burdened with my loss,

while their sense of bereavement floats

upon

winds of shame.

Masks never did have a soul...

Quietus

In the end it all boiled down to nothing.

As he lay dead they laughed.

Not at him, not at death but at each other.

At something that someone said.

The quiet that followed was a guilty hush.

Definitely not out of respect. 

"Do you think?..." someone said and petered off.

That is when I think his soul had had enough.

Deep Purple

Deep purple puddles of mud,

hop, squelch and melt...

The colour was what attracted me first.  It is my favourite. I think it disguised the bog. Or maybe, the bog was always there and I wanted to jump into it anyway. Stupid stupid stupid.

Silver Rings and Smoke...Small Things and Hope...

It was dark in the room, and cold too. There was the street light pouring in with the cold and fog like last minute additions to an exclusive guest list. I realised then that she was smart. In a very non-apparent way.

It was the quiet expression and the big eyes. Aloof. The smoke coming out of her mouth was like swirls of wisdom. Her words though...I wouldn't exactly call them pearls...

The shadows all seemed intimidated by her and her face in match stick flame light did not glow.

Then it became like my dreams. The ones that sort of turn into nightmares and end with becoming dreams again. Some sort of an abstract script for a neverending saga.

Mutilated thoughts curled up into an aura around her head in a fetal position. Then there was the microscopic perspective to think about. Impressionist dots on a large canvas.

Knees to chest with a chin propped up on one knee. Elbows fit snugly into the palms made only for those joints...

In sleep we're all the same...

Wishing Lemons

With her glasses perched at the tip of her nose she breathed patches of steam on the tram window. She felt very conscious of the fact that this was the night she was running away. She had passed a frozen river on the way. Had contemplated jumping in, but realised just in time that she couldn't swim. Just in times weren't supposed to save her. It always was for others.

She thought about the man with the wishing lemons. Rows and rows of lemon trees in that beautiful orchard. A beautiful sunset in the background and a summer dress blowing around her knees. She had wondered if her legs looked as nice as people said they did and was glad it was warm enough.

All those lemons - all those wishes. Of course there was the possibility that the mass conversion of all those fruits into jams, marmalade, lemonade, pudding, cake, pies etc. would leave a person feeling quite wretched. A wish would cancel out another just as the taste of one lemon dish would cancel out the taste of another. The lemons left on the trees (those that were meant for others) rotted and fell onto the ground and were a pulpy mass squelching under her feet. They were trees of endless possibilities. It was wishes growing in abundance. A lemon in itself was no good. She thought that man was stupid. He was stupid enough to want to look after an orchard like that all by himself. It was stupid how all his wishes failed to take account of others before them. It was stupid how he didn't try making money off of that never ending source of happiness. When she had told him that he had laughed and kissed her for her stupidity. He told her he'd make her a wish dish. Whatever she liked. He couldn't let her do it for herself. There was always the possibility of her stupidity leading to her wishing the orchard away from him. Even in terms of wish dishing, or dish wishing no one knew what they wanted. If they ever did realise it in their dreams (they equated these with wishes sometimes), it was elusive after they woke up.

So, I'm going home. I think I am. She felt very old. Extremely young and very old at the same time. I think it was the coat. The long black coat, boots, the cold outside with the steam patches on the windows and those eyes with the glasses perched on the nose. She adjusted them and everything fell into focus. My wish dishes would be made of rotten lemons.

Winter Favourites!

1. Wet tangled hair at the nape of my neck and a steamy bathroom.

2. Endless cups of foaming coffee.

3. Wearing three layers and still feeling exquisite shivers of cold.

4. Pretty blankets

5. Sunlight

6. Johnson and Johnson's baby cream! Lots of it!

7. All alone on the 7th floor with fog outside which makes it feel like I'm living on a cloud.

8. Mufflers!

9. Cold hands all the time! And a cold pink nose too!

10. My Papa's sweater which smells of smoke and boss...