Say tich!

Whatever you do, I'll do it too
Show me everything and tell me how
It all means something
And yet nothing to me

A hundred minutes at twenty-four frames per second. Hundred minutes of sheer wonder. A wonder, which takes birth in a desert of deathly white. Upside down, awkward and blissfully happy.

Hands slide onto hands. Fingers yield and fingers hold. Soft, childlike fingers. Pudgy, warm fingers. Slip on layers cold sweat and fall down. Onto and into.

Every gesture, every move that she makes
Makes me feel like never before
Why do I have
This growing need to be beside her

A gift of rhythm. A heart of gold. Love. Oooh! That thing you do, baby... Primal needs nurtured by songs of instinct. Moving illusions. Magic in motion. Draws me on. Draws me in. Renewed faith in a dream.

A gift of touch. woolly arms quiver. Tingles born on fingertips run amok. Ecstasy arrives in a nascent land. Snuggled charms. Smuggled moments. Draws me on. Draws me in. Renewed faith in reality.

Ooo, these emotions I never knew
Of some other world far beyond this place
Beyond the trees, above the clouds
I see before me a new horizon

The heart reveals its own secrets when it feels like it. Accidentally cool. Chicas looking for boom. Fitting friends. Misfit family. I am going to find out. Follow your heart. The world follows. Lost?

Imperfect and useless. Strands of satin softness rest on shoulders. Comfortable in their lazy touch. Is this happening to me? It's all my fault! Follow my heart. Lost?

Come with me now to see my world
Where there's beauty beyond your dreams
Can you feel the things I feel
Right now, with you
Take my hand
There's a world I need to know....

Lyrics from Strangers Like Me by Phil Collins, original soundtrack Tarzan (Walt Disney Pictures). (C) Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and Walt Disney Music Company.

Bon Voyage

Distances seemed so innocuous before. In the past two months, distances have embedded their own reality in my being. Distances, which separate me. Into parts inside and across miles outside.

Journeys made across borders. On land. Inside minds. It is true that I have travelled. I would like to follow that up by saying, "I've arrived" and maybe it will sound regal and pompous. But it would also be hideously untrue. Truth is very important here, and almost as overrated as love. And without either I am equally lost.

What has my world come to and what is it now. Let me try to put it in words. It all began with a search for dreams. Dreams which define a life. My life. The building blocks of this search involved a lot of wandering, and I being the starry eyed wanderer I am, embarked on the voyage with a missionary zeal.

Soon the coast faded away, and the light from the lighthouse dwindled in the distance. Almost as soon, a new coast appeared to take its place. A place of magic, of painterly picturesque allure and of quiet. A quiet so enveloping that it drowned me within. Almost. A boat navigating the rapids gets dealt its share of blows. It is lucky though, to be afloat. Somewhere, Someone smiles.

New authority, and a new time. My world got remodeled without my consent. I was not only helpless to say no, I was also supposed to like the new decor. I did. I learned to bend. Over, under and inside out. The mind flitted back to familiar coasts, oscillating between the chosen dream and the forsaken reality.

Want. Unceasing bouts of emotion. My perceptions changed faster than the world around me. There were no ground truths, no basis for measurements, no frames of reference. Only the quiet inside, and outside. Decisions made in split seconds of reason pockmarked the face of my teen aged existential angst. The contrast was burning, like a Van Gogh canvas. It scorched its mark deep.

Voices sailed across. From afar. Simple voices. Those that I was born to. Voices that sang my life to tunes that I have composed, but those that I cannot sing. The quiet receded like a wave shying away from the shore. With an unspoken promise of returning soon.

What one journey takes away, can another return? Are all journeys across distances, or are some simply across time? Take the two together, and its like asking can one travel back into the past? Can I meet myself, and if I do, can I break out of this recursion?

Faces loved since the birth of time light up with unbridled joy. A journey purpose served. The quiet stands, hidden in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. As voices from afar seep through its cold walls and gush out nearby. The flow whets the parched clay. Forms take shape in memory's misty lanes. The form of chosen dreams.

Dreams, which call anew across distances. Is it wise to embark again? Uncertain love and undefined truth. Still I dare. Why? Because, without either I'll forever be lost. Stranded across distances I cannot fathom.

So I step. Step out, and step in. One step a lifetime.

After all, I can die only once.

It falls...

A drop of water
Just one truant drop
flows down
down her neck

A crowd of hundreds
Babel!
Eyes look in question
in approving disapproval

Flows, hesitant
Drunk with her smell
Skidding over soft satin
Tickling, tripping over

Untouched air, naked trees
Festive cheer rising
calm inside
outsides draining of colour

Rolls over the raised
tumbling into the deep
valley meandering over
shy suppleness, Ecstasy!

Lost smiles evaporate
in novel cold, longing
fill empty nooks
of a creaking old heart

Silent distilled moans
beckon to continue
curves quiver to life,
the wet touch plays on

Dry lips, parched love
dark clouds shower
stinging rain flows
over ruins and facades

It falls. A shallow
button tingles and
overflows over
It falls.

Tired footfalls trip
on jutting stones
Peeled knees bleed
It falls.

Shame

Like a spray of water,
Spewing.

from a broken air-conditioner.
In an uncontrolled burst of...
Gay abandon.

It came.

Silently enveloped my twisted being,
Shame.

Oh so penetrating it was, so
Pervasive.

Intrusive, not adhering to the bounds
of my privacy.

Passive in a cold calm
Laden with transparent guilt,

It stayed the same.

causing me to squirm and shift
Within walls of crumbling repute.
Shame.

Born of unbridled affection
Wild horses run.
Amok

Shot down!
Crippled and beaten.
Abandoned by gaiety, and rescued
by Mistrust.

Lame.

It hinders my judgment,
freezes my Innocence over,
inwardly Incandescent...
Shame