Ab jab bhi shaam hoti hai,
Tumhare hath ki chai toh nahi milti..
Par tumhari khushboo roz aa kar is kursi par baith jati hai.
Jab main us se baat karne ke liye, usei choone ke liye apna haath agey badhata hoon, toh badmash jhatt se ud jaati hai.

Ab Maine bhi ek shararat seekh li hai....
Jab tumhari khushboo aur main shaam ko baithtey hain naa, toh main usei dekhta he nahi.
Tab naaraz ho kar apney aap he meri saanso se khelne lagti hai..
Bilkul jaise tum khelti thi.. har subah..un bheegey baalon ke saath, jab main soya karta tha.

Tonight...

Tonight lets be lovers again.

Hold hands and walk back to our world,

Where the dimness of the stars has a story to tell,

Where breeze gushes softly and thunders swell,

Where you and me are not just friends, but more.

Where you are my horizon, and yet my shore.



Tonight lets be those figures up on the hill,

Who’d come to sit on that faded rough bench,

Who looked like one whole being…until you looked too deep.

Who had tints of love and shades of warmth in them.





Tonight lets be two tender hearts full of apprehension,

And feel the dryness jetting down our throats as we hold hands.

Let the heart beats rush and breaths skip.

Let sweat beads join to form a band of purity,

The purity of mind, of love, of newness, of togetherness…



Tonight….only for this night.



Coz tomorrow maybe different for you and me.

You may leave for reasons I knew, but didn’t see

We would be nowhere my love,

Our tale would be dead

Broken would be the bench, and cold would lie the bed





I may not be a reason enough to call you back,

But for the warmth left on those beloved bends…

Lets be lovers again.

Memories...they say

Tonight there will be no sleep. Old realizations, apprehensions, flickering hopes, happy memories…a flock of all. This night will go in remembering you...

‘Life is smiling at you’…I was told. Remembering it, I smile back at the glow stars twinkling on my ceiling. Artificiality serves to fulfill what life cannot give you in real. You just have to imagine…and life becomes what you want. It’s all in the mind. ‘All is perfect’...I muse. Perfect…even longing ness is.


‘Imagine..!’


The numerous stars on my ceiling join and break to give forms to my desires. A tree, a face, an animal….a rememberance..! They spread apart and stretch into the path we left untreaded that eveing. They close in again to form the untasted coffee sips that lay wasted when you left in a hurry that night. They tickle around to make words that you'd say and shatter again to show me how unsettled life is.But they are there..like before. And they remind me of you... your words...
"The night must be beautiful with them no..?" ...Only if it had you here [how i wish these words had voice back then]..!
Memories...yes, there are memories keeping me awake.

A turn. My bed creaks. Visions change like life itself. And all that your eyes had been seeing a second before, gets lost. The stars vanish, i see the peepul tree outside my balcony, impatient with the harsh blow of wind. As if it wriths in longing ness for something it is not sure of . Freedom...death...company...belongingness..?? What..? I see its unease every night as it silently howls with the wind. "It's a tree...don't heap your social complications on this senseless thing!!" Complications! We humans often think eveything is as complex and dissatisfied as our desires are.


Every change leaves a certain nothingness, a void.You realise it only when you begin to act again. This is just what happened tonight. I just acted, i just wrote..! I gave words to all that i had been feeling for several nights. I crushed no more sheets, scribbled away no phrases. I simply wrote, wrote all that came into my mind. I came in terms with the void that lay within. I now know what i feel.

It'll strike 5:30 soon. I like the feel of mornings. The chirp, the freshness. Peepul [my lonesome tree] stands composed and motionless, as if it felt nothing last night. Huh! Stoic it is..!

The stars on my ceiling camouflage with the wall. Just how these secret emotions become one with my public self. They do not exist for the day, I'll invite them over for another night of sleeplessness. For now,its day again. Tme for happiness, cheer, satisfaction and thanks giving. And why not it be... Life is smiling at me!!

GRIM ATTRACTIONS

Its time to write again! Or is it rather the time to analyze, think, brood, spit out words and move ahead…
Often in life it happens that despite no reason to worry, some sadness persists. You think, give meanings to all the things that lie meaningless, you mould them, shape them, make them big…so that one day they develop to stand against you. Somewhere in the subconscious mind, the attempt knows its end, but somehow you just wish to be a masochist.

Why is sadness so attractive?

Void...in a state of hopelessness.

Hopeless for a thing unknown. No goal. No want. No need. No desire.
Only one feeling...a strong emotion...of losing something big. Its not you ..its not me...its nobody around. Its just something very integral to me.
I wish not to tell you...for i don't really know
.Its unhappy...its gloomy...its sad...but yes, its not what it was. Its nothing that has ever happened. I have not known this feeling before.

I'm restless...you won't understand, coz you don't know...life has been happy for you, coz i have always been there. You have never felt this helplesness,coz i never made you feel it. I have remained a friend...a real one!! You too have...but a friend of this age..of today..of this hastily changing world...you can't be the way i have always been coz you know how to be selfish...something which i could never learn.You are a better person...god's favourite...destiny's child....i am not...i am only one of the many around.


God is not happy with me...for i am not a loyal one. I forget him when he makes me happy and curse him when i am sad. I don't worship him...so he will let me go. Go away from his clutches...to the dark land of mirth. I will be gone soon...gone to an unknown land. I will be here, right here..in front of your eyes...yet i will be gone and you won't even know.

You dont' know what i wish to say...but i know how strong it is...this desire to be free.. this desire to not be sad...this desire to break away.

All my actions look senseless to me today..i am wishing upon a flying plane...a flying bird. I dont recognise it...yet i am wishing upon it...knowing it well that i will never see it again. Birds have a tendency to move...keep moving...they are not static...they dont' have permanent homes.But they are god's creatures...He sees them..and he sees me too!! We may be one someday...someday...in His eyes.

I may sound senseless...i have no sense...this void, they say , makes everybody numb...but yes, it soothes me.
These figures in black ink...calm my thudding heart. Every figure...sends a vibe...a vibe of calmess. I wish words were always this soothing.

I am sad. I can sense it. But i don't need you...don't need anybody. It is a good state. It makes me turn inwards to explore, to analyze...and then something from within creeps to see the world outside. To see and compare. To compare and be sad again.

I know not what i write...but this senselessness makes sense. These words that don't intend to console...alleviate me form some heaviness. I don't know the reason of my sorrow and these words don't know their intention either.

The Final Question

Ahh!! Its the eve breeze of 7:30 blowing at my garden gate...7:30 my favourite time of the day...my favourite time of the lost life .Its been two years that I left the incomplete stories of my life buried in the silent dust of this land. They were within me all his while...and when I was heading for a new beginning..i preferred to leave them where they’d begun from.



Two years passed by, as quietly as thunder to a deaf man...I remained immune to emotions, to tears...to gashes...to wounds. I remained immune to creating memories. And here I am... back to these woods...this lonesome cottage, which made me understand togetherness...this cliff that made me witness the entire world..., the stars, the sky; and yet concealed me from their clutches.



And yea...its 7:30...and here I am standing amidst these woods...near my cottage...at the cliff...looking at this stagnant view after two long years. All seems unchanged...unruffled...the stars...the town...the street lights that reflected a holy cross on the lake...the dark shadow of the Peepul tree that shifted from being an apparition to the elephant God... and the silhouette that made me feel watched as I stood in the wilderness in the dark of night. I have the same thoughts...the same old breeze brushes my cheek...my heart pounds sensing an unknown fear...all the same...as if the two years never existed...as if I was holding nothing but the strings I’d buried deep down. All seems forgotten...


The clock ticks...its hands making an inverted, lop sided V. Its 7:30 in the evening...and I am waiting. A lamppost in the opposite hill gets switched on...I see the golden twinkle on the opposite hill...the most undimmed... And I yet again tell myself...its yours. I know not where you live...I know not where you are today. I know not who you are. All I know is...that all of these years, 4whenever I was uncertain about the decisions of my life...I came to you for answers,...I waited for the clock to strike the 30th minute of the 19th hour... I oscillated between the two options that concerned me. My answer came from the opposite hill...the lamppost glowed at answers, which always proved right. I know not when was it that I began to depend on you...began to connect with you...began to fall in love with you...!!! YOU...??? ..but who were you...did you even exist?
I loved you, I did not know who you were....but how does it matter...i knew I loved you. Remember...I’d come to take your permission..i’d come to appeal for acceptance...but you responded in the opposite. It was shattering. You became a bitter memory, which I did not want to carry forward. I buried your thought in this wilderness...while they sent me to serve another man. This ‘another’ man...who I was told was my husband... I served him right. But my story...my truth that I loved you...??? My truth wantoned in this wilderness....

And look what has it done today...I am here...with this infant in my arms who the world says, is my baby. I am at the cliff...after two long years...the clock just cuckooed a 7:30. I am looking at the opposite hill...with a question about this wanton tale... “Did you ever know that I loved you...can we ever in this life be close..? The breeze gushes...a rage abounds. The lamppost does not rekindle... My baby shrieks to remind me of his existence. Astounded, I shift my glance towards the life in my arms... only to find the reflection of the lamppost glowing in his eyes. The opposite hill lies silent and dark...and here I have all my answers lying in my lap.

A Confession In Isolation

...It still interests me, to flip through the pages of your diary in your absence. I slyly open it with sheer curiosity,just as i would do when we were togehter (metaphorically togehter)...but this time, to find myself absent from the pages of your life. I am fading out of your world and how strange and ironical it is that you don't even realise this,that your thoughts do not even acknowledge my last days in your life....that my going away makes no impact anywhere deep down in your heart. There is so much more...... I feel the void between us. Things have changed drastically.. Its all about your friends...new...more new....and some nascent ones again. I read quietly...absorbing it. Maybe thats how life is...the more you care about somebody,the closer you are to lose him.

They say that stagnation fills the air of a long lived relationship and staying together ruins it all the more. The face of the other gets on your nerves...you no more try to find goodness in him, all his vices roar the loudest to be hated.you love the other no more..... Maybe a cliched thought, an untrue word, a baseless fact...the world finds it true but i absolutely throw it away...its untrue...FOR ME ITS JUST NOT THAT WAYS!

I am made too se the dismantling of a dream that I cherished. I sit there...watch it breaking...vanishing...dying....i cry over it each day...i plead to the good God...i sit alone...cry out my heart...and then in this silent room console my own self...But the pyre of this relation just keeps burning and simmering ruins burn every bit of my existence.But for once i want that faith of yours which was my pride, i care...i care to the fullest, only if you for once try to deflect from that murky perspective of yours and see what the truth is. We have less time...we were here to strenthen our bond and not ruin it at the hands of this world unknown. The world will not suffer if we diverge... we'll die out...we'll pain ourselves...we'll lose. I wish you could understand.


And as i drown myself in the depth of our long forgotten past, a memento of the bygone days intervenes and i hear a faded euphony which as if tries to kindle hopes within my barren heart...."....tere jaisa yaar kahan...kahaan aisa yaarana...yaad karegi duniya....tera mera afsaanaa............"