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............"

A COLLEGE OUTCASTE

“No ... absolutely not what I had expected! Mom...I somehow hate college...!”. I wrote in the first mail to mom after 8 long months of coming to Delhi. No! I never posted her mails. My phone calls always said that the college was good. It was Miranda after all, something which was too big for a small Towner like me. I never considered myself able enough to afford the hype Miranda, the name itself had.
To all my acquaintances around I was a lucky intelligent girl, born out of an intelligent parentage. My parents back in the home town were the proud parents of an able girl, basking under the attention of the inquisitive neighbours, who were all praise for me. Petty things like how I helped them manage the community’s kids at their baby’s birthday party to how my yearly school notes were helpful for their daughter; all would be counted...as if such incidents formed the stepping stone to where I was today. For my kith and kin, the achievement was great and I was still a favourite despite turning my back to the clichéd professional options of medicine or engineering. All was great....so where did the problem lie????
The problem lay in me....and it still does. College still seems to be an illusion, a black dark veil which would soon be lifted and I’d be in a better world which has place for me. The ‘better world’ is unknown to me. It’s not my school, not my home, not a place I have ever visited. I don’t miss school. I don’t crave to contact my long lost friends. I don’t long to visit the school corridor and church. I don’t desire to have another forty minutes of lecturing on “modest girls” from my favourite teacher. But again....I want the old me back.
College...I struggle here to be noticed. The girls around are con artists who claim to be the closest friends ever on face and at the same time hide the notes under their t-shirts so that one may not catch a glimpse of that extra luck that has been bestowed by the seniors upon them. I talk about men and listen to the gibberish about their weekly crushes, even though that’s the thing I greatly loathe(those puky boyfreind experiences they tell me)..!! Going to the library each time would be stupid. I don’t want to be tagged ‘a nerd’ when I am not one. So I have to survive here in this loathly environment where nothing interests me. One and all around are the same....men, food and cell phones make their world. Maybe, I have something different that composes my being...something else that defines me......and I am still searching.
“.....I know mom, you’ll call up tomorrow and tell me that I must concentrate on my studies, pay no heed to the friends who affect me adversely, find ways to keep me busy.......and I will tell you that I am fine...my college is great. This mail was nothing but a mood swing. I have great friends, nice teachers, good studies........ And so much more...”
But Mom...only if you knew what that ‘so much more’ was..............

A GLASS FULL OF NOSTALGIA....

It’s the most unbiased, I think when I stand five feet some inches tall in front of my mirror. A bushy black mane, a few inches of forehead, two chequered holes on either side of a flat-compressed nose, lips somewhat in shape and a protruded chin- I scan myself. It is this sheet of truth that introduces me to myself.
How would i know myself, identify what I looked like had I not met myself through this silver screen. Observing myself in the age old mirror in my room, I fall back to the days of yore. Those dust coated lipstick marks on the wooden frame of the mirror take me back to the age of three when I had inscribed my first ABC’s with mom’s lipstick on the mirror and its frame. It still wears the ripped stickers of my then cartoon friends, all yellowed with time. It still captures my anger in the form of scribble marks after i had the first quarrel with my parents as a teenager, it knows about those fits of self admiration when I would pose as a model...Mom’s high heels complimenting my feet...they would raise me up to a woman’s stature. It holds fast to the panic of the first pimple on my forehead and it also nets the moment of that juvenile maturity when I saw myself draped in a sari for the first time on the day of my farewell, the day I adored myself as a woman for the first time. I kept moving on with the wheel of time, but my mirror stood still all through the years, telling me the truth each time I approached it.
Personalities change, people come, perform their respective roles in the play of life and fade away...but the mirror remains unchanged, unbiased...telling them all the true tales of their lives. My mirror is that unidentified friend in front of whom I stand still, gazing at it for hours when in distress, and it understands my entire tale without me letting out a word to it. It captures every moment of mine when I had questions with my identity. Ask my mirror...it knows much about me than my memory holds. My tongue might slip a truth...but my mirror will always speak what I really am.
At times, I sit and wonder if humans ever tried to adapt the attributes of a mirror.....then either the world would have become Utopia or a gruesome murdering ground where the play of truth decided the fate of life.