Rebirth

No one's got it all,
The energy to enthrall
The will to forestall,
More than you can fall.

Now I like you,
I do.
Honest.

But the vines,
They clench my mind
In the forest.


Still isn't a question,
Its quicksand.
Its supposed to let things grow I heard,
Water and land.

Well it sucks at me,
A whirlpool of thoughts.
And I'm still waiting to connect the dots.

Tracing slowly, the lines on my hand
A gently glinting knife.
No matter then,
What use is it.
I'll comfort myself in my next life.

(I begin and end with Regina. My tribute, in my small way.)

eee

Bits of my chin are now visible. I think.

Pome

I can’t see the moon tonight,
you say it looks beautiful.
From where you’re standing,
I wish I could too.

I can’t hear what you’re trying to say,
you say I’m beautiful.
From where you’re looking,
I wish I could too.

Death by words,
slowly, but sure.
You’re saying enough
I want more.

It all falls here,
just right here.
Next to where it beats,
a line of little cheats.

C’mon little forward,
I want to see your eyes.
Do they hold the world for me,
or can they just be?

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog’s content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

Kya baat hai.

Some rules of the Game:

a) Show off your honesty (and modesty) by thanking the person who gave you the award and link to their post. (Antara, my wife, who showed me how awesome blogging can be. *sob* Thank you for this award, it means more to me than the look on peoples faces when you tell them Edward sparkles.)

b) List 10 honest things about yourself. Cheating makes you lame, so just play along, all you taggees.

c) Select 7 other bloggers you think deserve this award and pass it on to them.

d) Notify said bloggers about the award and invite them to be the honest ones next.

Here goes...

1) I have a thing for Colin Mochrie, and Ryan Stiles too. Despite the fact that they made the letter 'h'.

2) Beyond 12 midnight, I go flooooopy. Before it too. 


3) I like saying 'Bebe'. A little too much for my own good. 


4) Raw mangoes will get a reaction out of me that you will never expect.


5) I secretly liked reading Twilight. It's just the movies that get to me, and the inordinate amount of sparkling. Also, the 'I wanna eat you, but no, I'm just gonna snog you because I can't tell what you're thinking.' 


6) I love easily, I don't hate easily, or at all. 


7) Sarcasm is an art form lost on me.


8) I really do think the world is conspiring against the lefties.


9) I'm plenty paranoid as a rule.


10) I think 'EEEEEEEEEEEE!' is an appropriate response to everything.


As for nominating more people, meh. Too much work. 
Take is forward yourselves, and consider yourself nominated, since not more than 7 people will read this anyway. 

Spirit

If anyone has seen the move Yeh Mera India, I they’ll know what I mean. It’s the most depressing movie I’ve seen in some time. And the saddest bit is that all of it is true. This movie compiled a lot of the most recent events, like Saif being refused that apartment because he was Muslim.

But like with all movies, this movie comes together in the end, and everybody goes home happy, or dies a death for a very noble cause. The movie did a very good play on the ‘all terrorists are Muslims’, belief, and somewhere it shows that humanity figures above all religions, castes and genders.

The evil molesting call centre boss, the cheap guy with the extremely shiny shirts, ends up saving the girl he had forcibly kissed after a bunch of realizations and a suicide attempt. The Bihari who shows up in Mumbai just like that, ends up saving the Bihari hating Police officer.

The thing that bothers me most is what the people call the ‘spirit’. After the 26/11 shootout at Taj, there were reports about how Mumbai got up the next day and went to work, which showed resilient nature they said. It shows pig-headedness I said. Is it like the entire world will stop working if 100 people are killed? No, their bosses are going to cut their wages and they’re going to go hungry if they don’t go to work.

The problem is that, in real life, it never comes together like that, a new morning and it becomes awesome. What spirit are we showing when we forget whatever happened and ‘move on’? the biggest news after the Mumbai attacks was that a heritage hotel was destroyed, that Ritesh Deshmukh decided to visit the Taj and that how Mumbai is resilient and how it’ll rise from the ashes.

First of all, the Taj isn’t the favourite hangout joint for all the middleclass families. Because it’s a favourite celeb joint, it was given excessive coverage, day and night. The  next thing you know, there’s a double page feature in HT Brunch about how Vir Sanghvi will miss the Taj and its splendor, Shekhar Gupta is walking in the newly renovated hotel with Bikki Oberoi and the shiny floors are the only remembrance that something happened.

The dead are long forgotten, the disaster is pushed aside and ‘spirit’ comes into the picture, where we choose to ignore whatever happened.

Some spirit this is, when we decide to turn are heads to what is happening and decide to be ostriches and live in our own bubbles. The only ones being active in the struggle seem to be one the ones that have been directly affected by it. Does it take someone near and dear being blown up for us to care?

No, I think we should leave this spirit aside, and choose to be really really depressed about how our lives work out. Let’s show patriotism to ourselves before we decide to so towards the country. Let’s start at the most basic unit, being human. Let’s show patriotism for being humans.  After that we can graduate towards religion, caste, and all kinds of other segregators. 

--

Unclenching her palm

there sat

a tiny speck of light

it rose to hover

above her head

found a spot

above her bed

diaphanous

multifarious

ethereal

she rose

and it struck

her so hard

it made a hole

through her heart

the vacuum

surrounded her

enveloped her

dragged her

outside herself

outside the world

there she stood

and quietly swirled

surrounded by tiny lights

leaving behind one of her own

away from all fights

she was just breathing bones

Meadows

"She lacked direction," they said.

In the rolling meadows, a fluttering petal was carried by the wind. Lifted and buffeted along the way. It came to rest on a marker, a tombstone, nameless and unadorned.

The petal looked shrivelled as it talked about its past beauty.

If you looked in her eyes, you could see the careful blankness she had cultivated.

If you looked at her face, you could see the animation she played with.

It was his heart that beat for it.

The grass around the tombstone rustled as he sighed. The vast rolling emptiness in his heart would always be centred around the tombstone.

He could remember the night vividly.

Her eyes spoke as she drove into the wall.

She clearly had direction.

Now he didn’t have any left.

White

Do they remain? Memories? When the heart stops, does it stop your life?

Sitting atop a hillock, staring at the clouds, she tried to find the faces of those she had lost. Smita let the wind play with her hair, it flew all around her face, momentarily obscuring her vision and halting her quest.

The clouds swirled around her, barraging her with a multitude of visuals. It assaulted her senses. She could smell the clouds; they reminded her of old souls.

In all her 23 years, Smita had already felt the pain of being, her bones felt weary, weighing her steps like the moisture laden pregnant clouds.

If she tried, if she tried really hard, she could imagine herself standing in a land of white, surrounded by towering voluminous columns of cirrus clouds; and the people she wanted to see.

She saw unicorns and mammoths and chimaeras but she couldn’t find her mother’s face, she couldn’t feel her consciousness amongst the ones that tingled her skin.

“Umm, Excuse me?”

Smita turned around to face the person who had interrupted her mental soliloquy. She tucked her flyway hair behind her ears and looked questioningly at the intruder.

The first thing she noticed were the eyes, they had the same melancholy blankness that hers had seemed to acquire. Even though the laugh lines around her eyes seemed ironical, they somehow complemented each other. The art of having learnt to laugh in ones misery is hard learnt.

“I hate to bother you, but you’re standing in my spot.” She stated.

“Your spot?” Smita asked, a little bewildered, the concept belonging to classrooms in her mind. Since when did clouds figure in real estate?

“Yeah, it’s just that this is where I stand every time I come here.” She said, somberly, even thought the corners of her eyes had started crinkling in amusement.

“Yeah, ok, whatever. I’ll leave.” Smita gathered the corners of her mind and began to walk away when she felt a hand slide into hers. It betrayed hard work.

“You could stand with me if you want.”

Smita looked at her.

“Who are you mourning?” she asked.

“My mother, amongst others,” Smita said, “Who are you mourning?”

“Myself,” she stated matter of factly.

Both stood there together, letting their thoughts get lost in the faceless faces that shifted around them.

Somewhere in between her entangled thoughts, Smita realized that her hand was still clasped within the peaceable stranger’s comfortable grip.

“I’m Sunaina,”

The name suited her perfectly; the hollowness in Smita’s eyes began to acquire life. Sunaina’s hand never left hers since.

Wait

I read a book once; it was called ‘Waiting’, by Ha Jin (I think). It involved a man, unhappily married, who waits so that he can marry his true love, and then decides that marriage is pretty crappy either way. I am sure, that wasn’t the point of the book, but that is what I remember.
Anyway, today is my day of waiting. Not for my ‘true love’ or anything (which I am pretty sure doesn’t exist anyway), but for something to happen. The last few days have been such a great rush, that now I am sitting here, with n-o-t-h-i-n-g to do, and I feel this emptiness.
Perhaps that is what a pre historic Neanderthal felt. I mean, what did those guys do? I mean, granted you had some giants that had it in for you, healthcare was not cake, and yeah, cake did not exist (the horror!); but even then, you had to sit around and wait for the sun to move his ass, so that you could have your next meal. And, thus started human development, out of boredom.
It is my theory that due to lack of things to do, a dude was probably rubbing sticks and stones together, and discovered fire. Why else, of all things, would someone sit down and rub stuff together?
The same with a wheel, some dude (or dudette to be fair) was most likely, playing with sharp things and wood, she decided it was an interesting shape, and voila! We have the wheel. Next boredom/evolution thought process went like this, let’s put a metal chassis on the wheels and blow up the world! Whee!
My point is this, waiting is never fun, and we spend more than half of our life, waiting. I mean, my birthday is tomorrow, and I’ve been waiting for it all year, and more so this last week, because you have amazing expectations. Then the day rolls around, and you realise, you have nothing to wait for. Because, it’s really just another day, more fun maybe, but a day.
We’re always waiting, some expectations are always cued, and then what, you realise it was all the same.

|The following has been stolen from my beloved Anta, whom i'm married to.................

#Lesson for the day: Waiting is not fun, what you are waiting for just might be.

i'll try

I have decided to be more regular with the blog thing, i'll try and make it more 'bloggy'

dont expect anything, i'm just saying

Elemental Fury

The soft orange intensifies
And rises up to roar
It meets the sky
Burning with rage
Breathing with the air
Consuming it, spitting

It swirls in response
Gusting and blowing, chagrined
Ruffling the leaves and riffling the sand
Bending the reeds and breaking the land
Maintaining it countenance

But the ground groans
And sighs and shudders
And cracks and moans
Like a lover
It quakes with passion
And shakes with ire
Marks indelible on honest land

Unlike the silvery liquid
That washes ashore
It seems insipid
Uninspired by lore
Altogether astounding then
Is its wrath
That breaks upon the shore
And breaks upon the rocks

Unforgiving it is
Anger

Ha! You are out there!

Curiously shallow eyes
a lucid yet startling green
devoid of lies
glazed over, a blank sheen

there rises waves of tresses
an unruly mass
a pallid forehead it addresses
irregularly hacked by an uncaring hand, the color of brass

her soft pale body
vacant arms
her full lips
muttering in alarm

she stares up at you 
twitching her nose
in return to your quest
her name is Rose

so it says on the inside of her arm
slashed in jagged font
a tattoo of a black rose
snakes up her wrist, to flaunt

she puts her hand 
on the soft white walls
she switches on the radio
hears the economy fall

she has everything she loves
listening to people killing each other and how
she grins to herself
who’s loony now?

If I Were Blue

I would embrace the world, envelop it.

The waters below reflect my being,
I am of hints in a peacock’s tail,
In gay abandon its spreads its feathers to dance to a tune unheard.

I am the color of happiness, in a bride's something blue.

The color of sorrow reflected in a mother’s blue baby
The color of gloom in the days after,
The color of the bluebells she so loves,
The color of walls she decorated thus.

The color of sapphire glinting at her neck,
Reflected in the eyes of the beholder,
A blue so deep, it peeps into his soul.

It is a thing so cold, unbelievable heat,
Blue stars in space depicting such.

A flash, a streak of brilliant blue
Nestling somewhere in a rebel’s pure mane,
The color of her ripped jeans.

A moon so rare, the sky so dark,
The color of heaven
Not the devils share.

Roses blue so cold in the winter,
The veins fragile networking across
A beating, thumping body.

Deep in the recesses of a dark blue sea
Lives a magnificent tiny fish painted a startling blue
By god’s loving hand,
Placed as a microscopic dot alongside a blue whale.

If I were blue……………………….I would encompass the world.

Why!

Walking down the street
Soaked in the rain
I looked up at the scowling sky
And I asked why.

Why did it have to be this way
I searched for a golden ray
He left, he did not stay
I asked why

I gave him glimpses of my soul
Where exists now a deep chasm
I knew not to draw the line
And now I am doing the time

He left me for someone better
He’d said so in the letter
Who is she
Who stole the keeper of my heart

And I looked up at the rain
Held out my carelessly returned heart
To cleanse the tears, the rents and the pain
I asked why

And I was answered
Was it the downpour
That roused me from my stupor
Or was it my mind
That broke the shackles his being did bind

He deserted me
Now I can clearly see
There are no tears to blur my sight
I now knew why

He did doubt
That’s why he walked out
I cannot trust someone
Who turns his back and runs.

I held up the meaningless piece of paper
Held it up for the rain
Till it liberated me of each and every grain
Of useless words and meaningless pain

I knew why
He didn’t know what he lost
And I won’t spend no time nor thought
On the insignificant piece of paper/rot
Because I knew why

For even though the rain
Had drenched and chilled me from the outside
I was warm and content inside
I was worthy of much better
He can go party with his stupid letter