A quiet day

Melancholy is like the slow, damp wind that blows from the sea on a warm, humid day. It cools you, and then, it makes it difficult to breathe. The bland white sky outside betrays no sign of the afternoon sun being high up in the sky. The trees look grey and demure, standing quietly, waiting for summer to come. I wonder what relation does "quiet" have with "wait". One impregnates the other, and yet, they are often born together from the melancholy strains of loneliness. Incestuous.

Wisdom beyond one's years makes one feel old. Age that is marked by perfunctory actions that this world overflows with. It is very difficult to be kind with age earned like this. The wisdom earned at the same time, by being a private recluse, cannot really be appreciated by anyone else. It is too personal. It is also coloured by the same shades of melancholy that refuses to part ways with oneself till the clock stops ticking.

Perhaps melancholy is more steadfast than love. He simmers, shimmers and stammers. But he never really rises into a crescendo or sputters out. He stays on, like the dampness that seeps in deeper through cracks in the walls of a house in disrepair. He is one of the better friends of old age. Readily available, always a good listener and does not require too much ado to start a conversation with.

Why only yesterday, I had an interesting one with him.

I: What am I going to do now?
Me: The same thing that you have always done.

I: Who asked your opinion. I was talking to myself.
Me: Come, come now. No need to put on airs in front of me. I know you. I have known you for ever.

I: You know too much for your own good.
Me: At least I know what to do now.

I: It is not exactly for me to do. This is one of those times when one does not, or rather cannot really do anything.
Me: You mean you are waiting. Again? For what?

I: I don't quite know. It has become too strong a habit to give up now. Besides, one never waits FOR anything. One just waits...
Me: ...because one has nothing else to do?

I: ...because there is nothing else one CAN do. You should know. Isn't he your friend?
Me: Ah! He? But it is not in the department of Destiny yet. Besides, he is unusually busy in spring. Many lives have to be put precisely out of control before summer arrives; or else they will not freeze over correctly in winter. And nobody likes badly frozen ice-cream, if you know what I mean.

I: Why are you here? You don't have any work to do?
Me: I do but ... then I see you struggling with her. Why do you keep her around? She won't let you sleep with Quiet.

I: Hope? I don't know. She seems to be awfully hard to get rid of. I do so want Quiet though. I have had it with the noise of heartbeats. The regular thumping is almost too much bear. Besides I've heard that Quiet is really good in bed.
Me: You've heard right, my old friend. She is exquisite. So serene in appearance, so sensuous to touch. She will have you wrapped up in a nice little bundle before you know it. Your nights will never be the same again. Just get rid of Hope.

I: How? Murder her? Strangle her? Sue her, maybe? They say she springs eternal.
Me: Poison her. That's the only way. A special poison made from the blood of Doubt and Fear. Put it on you lips, and kiss her to sleep. It will not hurt you, the poison, but its lethal for her. It is slow acting too. Why, you can see her fade away, little by little, in front of your eyes.

I: You seem to relish the idea of murder.
Me: It's a jungle out there, my friend. And only the fittest may survive.

Today, when in the blink of an eye, I can feel the weight my soul has borne for eons. When I can no longer feel the steady march of time that tramples me to dust. When lightness is only a quality I can attribute to an empty heart. Today, seems so alive with melancholy, that life seems unquestioningly, deathly silent in its dissent of how I am living it. And I can barely tell him apart from myself.

Let us say...

Let us say this is poetry,
In verse, how worse can it get,
Uncharted structured regret,
and its out of meter too.

Let us say this is prose. Drab lines of meaningless words mingled with a stale breath smelling of cheese and rotten eggs. If I read these anymore I may completely eliminate any further doubts about my sanity.

Then if we square one,
and root the other twice,
Does the mess seem free of vice?
Or does it still submerge in a quantum singularity.

Streaming consciousness on present day fiber optic network backbones would probably jam the internet into submission. Submission to the chaos of human will, reaching the ends of the known space-time continuum to communicate with itself.

Exaggerate, anticipate, follow-through,
Stage in silouhette,
Make sure the one you tell, is the one they get,
in technicolor cinemascope.

There is a brutal expression of kindness hidden in the simple derision of capabilities. War that will ravage the insides of the bones that make your stand up. A war with the inevitable. The inevitable defeat, and yet, you will lie wasted in surrender.

Glory to this world and that was,
Mysteries of the stars wrought in your heart,
A complete hole in every part,
The result every time, a perfect, beautiful cipher.

Entombed

The world creaks at the touch of another dawn. Creaks like an old wooden door letting out a whiff of tired time. So tired, so unsure, so...

He saw the silver strands of the cobwebs shine in the sunlight. Light was such a rarity these days. His gnarled fingers wanted to reach and revel in the light. The dust floating in the beam of light danced, daring his fingers to follow suit. But he knew outside, the air was still fresh with the echoing screams. He could never go out.

When the chameli had blossomed in the moonlit night and the earth had smelt of rain. When the sounds of crickets resonated in the lush breeze and the blades of grass conspired under the starry sky. Then he had seen her for the first time, bathing in the Jamuna. The currents of running water caressed the folds of her wet sari and his heart filled with jealousy for every drop. The glistening curls of her black tresses bewitched him with their black magic. He had stood there, hidden behind the old neem, enchanted by this mirage of pure beauty.

The relentless creepers had finally broken through the cold stone. He picked some pieces of crumbling stone in his hands. The earth was fresh with the morning dew. He stirred in the dark prison of his memories. His muscles ached, tired and sore with the unending wait of being alive.

Twilight had painted the sky a vehement orange. He waited by the banks of the river to catch a glimpse of her. She used to come out into the balcony everyday. Her ivory silk scarf fell on the red sandstone and made it shiver with life. He watched in awe as the setting sun made her face glow like an angel. The cliff dropped, straight and majestic, a sheer fifty feet below the balcony, as if the earth itself had been hewed into the shape of a strong wall for the fort. It was a fitting place for a princess. Just below, the river bank was of solid rock, where he washed clothes.

That evening she had run out, breathless. Her hair was not done and was blowing like the mane of a wild stallion in the wind. She seemed to rise above the balcony railing and float in the air. The sun had suddenly turned crimson, filling the skies with the blood splattered on the earth. The last thing he remembered hearing was a scream drowning the river waters in its misery.

Time had passed outside. But inside this house of stone, where his memory had taken root like an ancient sacred fig, time lay still. His love had always been a memory. She had not even known that he existed. Yet, the walls of her tomb were the only place where he could escape the sound of that scream.

...so old. The world moves on. Beyond time and memories. A tomb stays, unmoving, unchanging, unyielding. Holding love prisoner, forever, in its inescapable bosom.

She found me waiting

Sprightly and nubile
She batted her eyelashes in tandem
Brimming with simple charm
She winked me to come by

A man of straight thought, am I
See me whenever, eye to eye
Trust you are good until
You help by pushing me off the hill

She sweetens the air with wine
Promises of hidden wisdom in her folds
Sparks genius in musical sleep
While enraptured danger oozes free

I believe a promise in one
Pretenses, the sooner I shun
Twitch at her beck and call
Rise higher after every fall

Oh what grace, what elegance shone
She floated in on wings of light
Courted me like a lover lorn
Bereft of any rituals of propriety

Drunk on beauty beyond this realm
Crash my ship from the helm
To sink and drown in your arms again
Like soaring in winds of falling rain

She laughs. Oh what fun, success.
Another drawn in, twisted mad
She slowly turns the knobs
Winding my springs to a violent recoil

Snap me out and pour me a cup
Of this blinding light, or shut up!
Addicted now I am, unaware
Wound around her without a care.

Written by him

The silver nib of the fountain pen slid ahead of sinuous curves of black ink. He paused and looked at the unfinished page of text. The page seemed to give off an eerie, dull glow in the flicker of the candle. The hands of the grandfather clock had stealthily ticked over the hour and his page was still only half full. His temple glistened with sweat. Every nerve was taut as if they held back the wheels of time from running free.

The page did not look right. Not just yet. It looked too light, as if the white space overruled the encroaching strokes of black. The painting looked lopsided. He lacked the ability to look at his writings for the words that made them up. For him, they were always paintings. Today he did not have the time to ponder about his choice of colours. His memories got mangled under the furious passion of his strokes.

You cannot write. The darn things are words! Not lines or curves or brush strokes on a canvas. They are suppose to join and make sense. He only saw how the light danced in the air as her tresses filtered the amber beams. Where is the context of this? What is this idea doing in the middle of nowhere? Writing has form and structure. Narration should flow in and around some context. No one will read what you are writing. Her skin seemed translucent and weightless. Like she was a mirage, an apparition of his imagination.

The damp, hot air from outside waited at the window sill, refusing to blow in. It gave the room a feeling of resigned stuffiness. He returned to his painting with a renewed vengeance. It had to make sense now. He looked to the ream of paper that lay beside, filled with the same sprawling curves of black. Page after page, he had drawn her. Her every manner, every smell, every sparkle in her eyes, every note of her laughter, every drop of her tears. Just a few more pages and his portrait would be complete. He would have her, right there, forever.

The shadows flickered on the wall and the table top. They were laughing at him again. You silly, silly man. My first novel took years to publish. No one has the time to extract sense from this chaos you spread in ink. Your characters have no substance. They do not seem real. Just then, she had doubled up with that awful wheezing cough that seemed to drain more of her life out with every burst. The leaves in the trees had come and gone, the season of disease had not budged. Time had never paid heed to his pleadings, but this time was different. This time was his alone.

Promise me you will take care of yourself. You are too special to be wasted on this world that refuses to understand. Promise me you will make them understand. He could see her lips move like a symphony lilting in the breeze. He could feel the longing in her touch. He could do nothing, except what he was doing now.

It had been five months since he had found a surprise admirer of his work. Someone who had agreed to publish what he wrote. It was as if destiny had decided to guide his hand herself. He still painted the pages, but now with the paint, flowed life. A life that should have lived outside the folds of a few sheets of papyrus. A life that flowed out of him.

Promise me you will write so that thousands can see the beauty I saw. Promise me... His hand wavered as he felt a cold shiver run through his veins. A sudden gust of truant wind clattered the window panes. His breathing was now heavy with anticipation. His masterpiece was almost complete. It pulsated with the beauty that had seeped into it. A drop of sweat fell on the sheet as he put the last dot, smudging it, making the ink spread. He could see her reflection in the sea of words, shimmering and sparkling with joy of being understood.

Finally, he could let go of himself. He slumped on his chair and lay his head to rest on the table. The first ray of sunlight found him like that. Calm, resplendent and one with his reflection.

Cries

The gauntlet of pain overflows. The pain drips slowly, honey-like, draining into the shimmering desert of isolation. Fighting its way through this desert is my shouting, screaming, crowded self. So much commotion.

A red dustbin of thoughts floats near the horizon. A ball of dreams rises and slam-dunks into it. The lid falls shut with a metallic clatter that echoes through the curtains of twilight that hang listlessly over the walls. Stifled air builds walls of steel. Steel that is cold. Cold perfection set in the molds of eternity.

The symmetry of misery beckons. So subtle, so sublime the call that the very threads of sanity reverberate with it's touch. History stands witness as the spirit is executed. The executioner smiles with glee as time mangles herself in the claws of destiny. The guillotine drops. The steel blade glints with the malice of love.

Love born out of solitary confinement. The confinement of freedom running wild. Running far. The farther he runs, the closer is the oozing numbness of distance. Distance bridged by crooked, awry, helpless words. Imperfect words. Crafted in haste, the bridges creak under the weight of aging trust.

Water-tight bonds are drenched in the cold sweat of reason. The silence leaks drop by drop. Into the gauntlet of pain.

The taste on her lips

Posky had decided to walk home. The tram was no fun in the snow. The black branches of the naked trees waved to her as she trudged on. Chimney smoke swirled up from the many roofs lining the sapphire blue sky. Like ideas lost in math class.

She was half lost between Nabokov and Sailor Moon when the tram overtook her. The earth shook like the huge centipede was burping in the underworld. She shook her head, as if shaking off stubborn bubbles of mint flavoured shampoo from her amber curls.

The snow was already melting. It made even the cleanest of sidewalks look murky with all the slush lying around. Her boots made a sucking squelching sound as she walked. Didn't the kiss sound like that? Eeeew!

His hands had felt nice though. Like someone had handed the first prize to her in the dream-like butt contest. She stopped and reached up in the sky, and caught for herself a fistful of chilled air. It was fog-breath season! She blew out her breath there. There, there and there. The window of the sandwich shop turned smoky white, as did her glasses.

Twilight was upon the world. Leaves of pine tree round the corner seemed to swish in the wind. Her hands in his hair, his tic-tac breath and his clumsy toes stepping over her's. All in all, it had gone better than she had expected. Even though his bean bag was leaking plastic foam at the seams and the air had smelt of sweaty socks and wet underwear.

The sweatshirt had stayed in place. Firmly. Hands had scurried and fumbled. She was sure he would have beaten the insane level in the Ultimate Ninja Heroes game in her PSP, if he could keep up at that pace for another hour.

The way back home was ridiculously short. How was anybody supposed to do any serious thinking in a fifteen minute walk? She climbed the few steps that led to the front door of her house. The chocolate brown door held another world within. Loud, cozy and intimate. She turned around and looked at her footsteps in the slushy snow. They would be gone by morning. But the taste on Posceska's lips would stay on.

Beginnings

Pulverize fear with words
Try. Try.
More to try. More to fear.
Dog-eared corners from memory,
Hard to return to,
Harder still to misplace.
Froth. Disappearing surfaces of water,
Bridged with air, refracted clarity.
Fluidly trespassed lines of incongruence
Intersect
Ushering in tomorrow before today
Disconnected realities forge illusions
Eroded faith, rounded at the edges
To fit windows of limited understanding
Curled back into the womb
That bore the pain that
we return to
now.

On another sanguine eve

Petty second-hand needs
Insignificant

Heartbeats pulsing through veins
One, two, three, one too many
constricted flows
of thought, bulge and explode

Symmetric distances curve in space
Footsteps wait
Eavesdropping on passers-by
My mind to your mind

Meld
Need to be spoken to
To see sounds take form
in thin air and in dreams

Thrashed understanding
of the insufficiently artsy
Simply normal
in form and action

Threads of need stitch
with pricking needles of singularity
Random patterns
in a quilt of mouldy hearts

Run, run and overtake
my shadow
Before the night, the day
for I hate needles

howsoever insignificant they still
prick and bleed

This not a poem
It is not in a language
you can read and I can speak in
presumptuous prose faking
the remnants of a random taste
I can still taste
on my lips.

The Wait

Darkness melts....
Light blinds...
Time freezes..
Air drips.
I wait

When. When. When.

In charcoal and pencil, on paper. Photographed from sketchbook.

Komal Gandhar

The rain outside is confused. It has strayed out of character and turned into molten snow. The sky seems resigned to its fate, disillusioned without the sun. February has started.

I am splitting. My identity has suffered it's share of crises. As the seam starts to burst open again, none of the questions seem to have been answered.

My modest efforts at writing have sought to structure these questions in words. Time and again, I have tried. Fumbling with words, littering them around on the screen of a computer, hoping that they form a pattern out of the chaos that gave them birth. They resonate with my confusion, shiver and shake off any semblance of reality that gets attached to them by mistake.


Kaan pete chi, chokh mele chi,
Dhorar booke praan dhelechi,
Janaar majhe, Ojanaar i korechi shondhaan,
Bishmoye taayi jaage, jaage amaar gaan.


I do not have the capacity for images or words that can express this. I cannot speak and make someone understand. I cannot write what my calm does not betray. Why! Why! Why should I be any different? From the million others who flow around in this world unperturbed by any knowledge. How can I not get impatient with myself, trying restlessly to cut through this clarity that hides my conflict.

The world reflects in my shards. Unfortunately, the reflection is broken. Not complete in every shard. The world reverberates with energy, calls, beckons. Can you not hear? Love flows and drips though lands parched by years of turmoil. Can you not feel? Hearts wrenched from living beings beat to the rhythm of dreams. Can you not see?

Celebrate the crumbs of cosmic consciousness that your dreams have eaten. Look around you and rebel. Pulverize every ounce of artifice in your thought. Let every drop of your sweat electrify a thousand light bulbs and disperse the illusion of helpless misery. Embrace your memory of self and fuse it with your soul. Be one. Be pure. How can I? Be all this that I see, and be all that I am?


The lines are from a Tagore poem/song, sung beautifully by Debabrata Biswas in the Ritwik Ghatak film Komal Gandhar. They roughly and very literally translate to:

I have lain eternally in wait, to listen, to see,
I have poured my life into the heart of this earth,
I have searched for the unknown in the midst of the known,
That is why, in wonder, that is what has awakened my song.

Tagore juxtaposes the eternal bond between man and his self with the bond between man and nature. The harmony and the wonder that spring from and define this bond gives rise to these words from the poet.

Quasimodo's utopia

Zihaal-e-miskeen mukon ba-ranjish,
Bahaal-e-hijra bechara dil hai,

Sunaai deti hai jiski dhadakan
Tumhara dil ya hamara dil hai.

As I watch Disney's Quasimodo sing from the bell tower of Notre Dame, wanting and wishing for that one day to live "out there," I can't help but think about how it must be to live trapped in a single, lonely, tower all one's life.

But then I do not really have to guess, for loneliness does not really have many flavours, no matter where you pluck it from. As the cold settles outside, and creeps through the walls into my quilt, I find myself thinking about love. Again.

In that tangential, normalish way everything seems to reek of love. That is just me, I know. But how does one not fall in love with Esmeralda. That wild free spirit that one wishes would see the human behind the hunchback. But animated adaptations rarely follow the story of yesteryear's on which they are based. The years that stand on the wisdom of appearances being the sentence one is dealt with sometimes, from birth.

Life smirks, and takes a bow. And as I learn to spread myself so thin that I can be beaten into any shape possible, I smirk right back. Spirited? Foolish? But what is the shape of foolishness and what is the taste of spirit? Oh, I digress. The topic was love.

Do you hear laughter in the ranks? In the air? Love. Poor love. What am I pitying love for? Well, tell me someone else who takes more beating for all the stupidity that takes place in this world. For all the perfection in the world, perfect men and perfect women. For all the riches in the world. For all that burns and twists the insides of hearts. For all that and more, there is some fool, some where, pining.

For what, you may ask. A lover's utopia? And what might that be? To be loved back, of course. With equal fervour, with every iota of passion that flows in one's veins, with a touch of dreams and a dash of colour. But perhaps we shouldn't foster such impossible utopias.

I see Quasimodo cringe as Esmeralda kisses Phoebus and I wonder. I wonder at the only flaw in the utopia. For you can love whoever you want. You have been blessed with that gift. What you cannot do, is make "whoever" love you back.

What rubbish! We always knew that, you'll say. Well, try and remember it then, when you are being driven mad with the flames from hell that devour your heart. Remember and find peace. Remember and let go.

And to all the Quasimodos of this world. Stay in love. Your utopia will complete itself one day.

The lines in urdu/persian/hindi at the top are from a song from the film Ghulami, written by Gulzar and sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Shabbir Kumar.

Usi ki talash kyun?

Tez bhagti zindagi ke peeche
Hanfta hua mai,
Saanse jo is zindagi ko chalaye
Woh kahan hai lekin.

Phir ek din dil ki khidki par giri
Kuch madmati baarish ki boonden,
Jaise pukaar kar keh gayi
Main hoon, tumhari zindagi.

Par yeh kya! Woh aayi par
Bijli nahi kadki,
Hawaon me ek bheeni mehak jaagi,
Dhadkane chal padhi, lekin daudi nahi.

Kuch jadoo ki tarah asar to hua
par nazar nahi aaya,
Zamane ke shor me jaise ghula ek dhua
Sannate ka ek kona dhoond raha ho.

Tabhi, hoton ke kisi kone se nikalkar,
Ek hansi god me aa giri,
Aur usne kaha, jis zindagi ko ji rahe ho
Usi ki talash kyun?

A year of strangeness over...

I planned on doing a post before the 1st - a sort of round up of the year that went by - well its still officially New Year season so I guess it's not too late. Besides my MTNL dial-up seems to be behaving somewhat so I'll probably take the chance and try to pen (What's the electronic equivalent of a pen? A keyboard? Can I use that as a verb?) this while being on line.

Last year, or rather just before the beginning of last year I uprooted my life from the city I have called home for the past three decades (well, nearly three anyway) and moved to another city, country and continent, all in one day. If I ever had cribbed about lack of strangeness in my life - here was God - being most generous - for I landed in a land of strange people, filled with strange languages and strange food, and something that would take any Dilli-waala by complete surprise, clean air!

Since then nothing has seemed to be unachievable - not a climb up the Alps (on a cable car though), not cooking daily and not killing anybody in the process, not sharing a house with two cats, a charming old lady who doesn't speak a word of any language I know, a hot Austrian babe, a gentle Korean dude and a very eccentric Dutch guy. This in addition to a very happening professional life but then that is off limits for the blog.

A very good thing about staying alone, far away from anything you have known all your life, is that it clears up your head about a lot of things. Who one cares about, who one can't live without and who one can, what kind of work does one want to do, what does one want to work for, what is one afraid of, how much stress can one handle alone and how well can one cook (this one is actually a sensational discovery).

One is happy to be financially self-sufficient enough to be able to deport one self home, once annually, and to have been able to satisfy one's desire of having a sterling silver Mac as a first laptop and a Canon DSLR as a first camera. Now I am not boasting here, for one also went bankrupt for a day - a pure zilch in the bank account - before one started getting the salary. As a result of that of course, now one is better planned.

There is much more happening in life about which I can only write in cryptic verse.

Familiar smells in a movie hall,
Being at someones beck and call,
Beds, such welcoming, generous hosts,
Empty houses filled with ghosts,
Of rare visitors and waiting that,
Never ends, dollops of uncouth fat,
Dressed to kill with two left feet,
Mystery work causing the colour of beet,
Confusion reigning unchecked, supreme,
There are many uses of whipped cream.


To put it in one word, one has survived. About nine more months of survival training left. After that we deliver the baby (I am telling you clean air causes such genetic mutations).

So, Happy New Year everyone. Keep visiting, because the year promises to be choc-a-bloc full of more strangeness.

Cheers.

PS: The arcane reference to MTNL in the beginning was to indicate that I am visiting home for sometime, before I become Alice again.

When patience runs red

When patience runs red,
Like poison that bled,
Times of darkened cold,
Worthless warmth be sold,
Hearts burn to nought,
So fervently sought,
Forever out of reach,
What must this teach,
Nascent flesh is shred,
When patience runs red.


One returns home...

Nylon stockings

Bloomingdale was a teddy bear with a lot of gumption. He would take the most arduous punches from Miss Kitts and not utter a squeak. Oh yes! He was very well respected for it too. Everyone from the pink teaspoons of the Tinklen tea-set to the Sergeant Shackleboot from Miss Kitts' brother's army men admired and respected him. It was all hunky-dory, till he burst a few stitches at the seam. Life was almost as smooth as the honey in his friend Pooh's honey jar.

Then 'it' happened all quite suddenly, really. Miss Kitts was having one of her sleeping over friends, over. And decided to celebrate the night with a bang - a pillow-y bang, or rather a banging of pillows, or to put it more plainly, a pillow fight. Bloomingdale was, as usual, at hand. So he got flung with force that was actually meant for a much fluffier pillow. The cast iron grill on the east window was a tad rusty and it scratched open the seam on one of his paws. Oh bother! What was he going to do now?

It would soon be the time for the evening of the first snowflake. He had been all ready to be wrapped up in his red and orange striped scarf and get singed when thrown too close to the fireplace. Oh, how he loved the flickering warmth - it hurt a little - the singeing, but mostly the warmth was nice as was the Miss. He was just a little scared of the fire but he was covered with special non-inflammable fur, so he was safe. But now, he had icky white fluffy thing peeking out of his paw. Eeew! How hideous! How could he show his paw in high society in such a condition.

Everybody was concerned about Bloomingdale's paw. Mrs. Tinklenot suggested that he should use a Play-doh plaster to patch the paw. But Play-doh does not stick very well on the fur. He guessed tea kettles did not get very bright ideas. Sergeant Shackleboot suggested that he use the bayonet of one of his men to pin the ripped seam together. But the bayonets were not detachable from the rifles, which were in turn not detachable from his men. It was a tad embarrassing to walk with soldiers dangling around one's paw and very impolite to say the least. No. Bloomingdale wanted a more genteel solution to his problem. A more elegant solution. Something that oozed finesse.

He was pondering on this rather distressing situation with his muzzle buried in his forepaws when he heard old man Santa grumbling something about out-of-reach-stockings being hung by petty parents of callous children. Stockings! Why of course! Stockings! All he had to do was to put on a pair of stockings and that would hide the burst seam. And it was just by pure chance, that the Miss had forgotten her pair of bear-brown stockings from last year at the back of the toy closet. Bloomingdale was ecstatic.

He could not wait for the warm, cozy evening of the first snowflake. Even the dancing fire did not scare him now. After all he even had his nice orange-red striped scarf and exquisite contrast matched bear-brown stockings to show off now. Such lovely, shiny, nylon stockings.

The Pale Blue Dot

For everybody who had trouble understanding my previous post.

For more information please visit Pale Blue Dot (Wikipedia). And for a better resolution version, visit here.

Before some one argues that this is making the Earth seem inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things - think before you put your foot in your mouth. Think what that image shows. Think how special, how fortunate we are. Also, think how fragile and how delicate. I do not want to take sides here and put down seekers of extraterrestrial life or believers of God or anybody else. I just want to say, what I have been saying since the previous post. We have only one chance, one life to live in this place we share with millions of our kind. Whatever be your nation, religion, language or shoe-size, we are all humans. Whether we believe the Earth and humankind to be of miracle of divine creation or of evolutionary biodiversity, it does not matter. We do not have a second place, to call home.


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Freedom Writers

Sometimes we do not see the world around us as it is. Sometimes we see only what we want to see. Sometimes we see what we have been taught to see. For generations.

I have laughed on people who have never read Tintin. I have ridiculed people who have never heard of Industrial Light and Magic. I cheated and read the last page of Diary of Anne Frank before I actually finished the novel. I cheated some more and never actually finished it.

I am watching a movie called Freedom Writers. Now almost as unspoken policy, on this blog, I never write about anything remotely social, political or something that stands up for anything. I have never championed a cause here. Why? Well, one primary reason is that I am too lazy.

But every now and then... every now and then... even the most laziest part of me will be moved to action (ummm... don't start wondering which part that is). This is one such time.

Someday, I am sure each and every one of you will face a dilemma. A situation that will ask you to overcome everything you've ever known and learn to love another human being for just being that, for just being another human being.

Yes, I am preaching. I may appear pompous and condescending, and say things I know nothing about. So if you have a problem with that, then there is something very simple you can do. No, not break your monitor. No, not kill me either. Simply stop reading this blog post. See, it's easy. Like I said.

But I am so fed up of seeing such petty idiotic discrimination happen everyday around me in the world, I can't take it any more! (The `not taking' it is going to last only for the duration of this post and after that laziness wins again!)

Black against white against yellow against brown. Fat against fit against thin. Women against men against children. Lesbians against gays against heterosexuals. Muslims against Jews against Hindus against Christians against Atheists. Creationists against scientists against artists. Teachers against students against administrators. Lawyers against politicians against valentines. Oui against yes against Da against Si. And so ad infinitum.

I am making no claims to be better than the next guy or girl. I have my own prejudices to take care of. But I am going to offer you my hand. No! Not in marriage! Heavens! What are you thinking!

I offer it to you as a sign of mutual respect and as a promise. A simple promise of tolerance.

Doors

How long does one have to bang on a door before one realizes that the door will never open again? I used to like open doors. I used to like the open. I always thought the feeling was mutual.

Grey walls choke a 7 feet by 10 feet space. Glossy plaster peeling off like scabs, covers the walls from corner to corner. The gloss reflects the lost rays of the setting sun, streaming into the room through the ventilator high-up on the west wall. The sound of the ceiling fan slashing the stale air in the room is the only thing competing with the sound of my erratic breathing.

She met me because she thought I was this melancholic, sombre guy. She had this fascination for sad souls. When I turned out to be a happy clown instead, she went into shock. A shock that lasted ten years. A shock that curiously, nurtured nothing but hope. How could I be sad around her?

The ceiling fan drawls slowly, like I do now. At the end of every sentence, every word. It's the drug they inject into me every week. It is to keep me calm, they say. I do not understand. It has been four days since the last shot. I am calm. Very calm.

When a shock wears off, the effect I guess, is unpredictable. Celine was singing," If that's what it takes" into my ears as I walked in. I was a little late than usual. The budget meeting had taken too long. The neighbour's chihuahua, Biscuit, was yelping in their yard. I remember reminding myself to trim the grass over the weekend. The brass doorknob felt strangely cold, even though the setting sun gave it plenty of attention. Twilight was especially beautiful from our porch. I stood there, with one of my feet inside the half-opened door.

The bed feels strange and hard to touch. The white bed sheet is crumpled. Why is it crumpled? The bed is not placed right. I hate the screeching noise, when I drag the bed. The floor is... slanting. I hate slanting floors. I always fall off, out of the door if I do not hold onto the leg of the bed. I don't want to fall anymore. The door. If I can only get it to open. I can escape this. Somebody! Open the door. Open the door! Somebody stop her.

Incongruent

"Lots of confusion sometimes brings lots of clarity in its wake. Much like a storm brings peaceful seas. That is the one motivation for weathering the storm in fact," Michail said.

Elena just looked at him and smiled. Her crooked, half twitched lips made for the most alluring smile. At least that's what Michail had told her. She saw the navy blue checked cotton shirt he was wearing with a navy blue tie - from Ralph Lauren obviously. She nodded her head as if to shake the thought away. "Why is he not wearing a belt?"

"That is why when the boss said that I have to do the Lansdown account also, I thought to myself, maybe a promotion is somewhere on the cards. Of course, that was after I wanted to beat him up first thing in the morning, but one can't really do that to bosses. It's like the bad boss you get on the final level of Wolfestien - you know - you can empty all your bullets and you still wouldn't be able to kill the guy. You know why? The damn game is built like that. One just can't win."

She looked at the brunette who walked by. "Nice. Must be a size more than me. I wonder how the satin sheets would feel on her?" Her auburn hair caught the sun like a fly in a spider's web. The heels were not making the type of click she liked hearing on the road. "Hmmm.... maybe the Christian Louboutin's she saw last week would sound better. No, they would sound perfect in fact but they will tear up the satin bed sheet. Oh well, one can't have everything."

"That's why Elena, that's why am I so crazy about you... you don't care if I win or lose." He wrapped his arms around her waist a little tighter than usual as if to make sure that she was really there with him. "I am so excited Elena. Sis has been wanting to meet ever since I told her about you. I hope she likes you."

"Oh yes, my darling! I hope she likes me. I so hope she likes me."

Just once

The world looks beautiful in hallucinations.

The wall comes alive with molten monsters from my technicolor nightmares. The generally don't do much. Because they don't get the chance. Before they can budge, the world explodes in a cacophony of sounds that peel off layers of my flesh in slow, sustained torture.

I was 23 last year. As lost as my mustard corduroys and black checked cotton shirt. All I wanted to do was live the fast life. She hated my dressing sense and loved my money. She also loved all my friends, but that is not relevant here.

Sounds like a B-grade movie doesn't it? Believe me it sank faster than any movie at the box office. If my doing an item number would have saved the movie, I'd have gladly done it. But life does not allow re-runs.

I sniffed my first Cocaine in the green room of a theatre studio. I was nervous as hell, going out on the stage for the first time. Innocuous white powder. Don't get me wrong. I knew perfectly that drug abuse could kill me. I had no intention of becoming an addict. I was merely nervous. Somebody suggested the euphoria will wipe out all signs of nervousness. Besides, I had always been curious.

I was so scared of needles that I never injected anything into me. Not LSD. Not Ecstasy. Tablets or vials were too easily available. I lost her among all this. Not that I felt the loss. All I could feel was the peace that enveloped my world. No sounds. No smells. No lights.

Yesterday, I turned 24. They found me lying in a storm water drain. Now, I am lying in a sterile, white, hospital bed staring at the intravenous drip feeding my body. My body. I do not have any right to this body anymore. So it refuses to listen to me and erupts with pain of its own whim and fancy. I cannot bear to see the looks of dejection and hopelessness on the face of my parents. I cannot stand the sunlight streaming through the windows.

True. The world looks more beautiful in hallucinations.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to anyone, any place or anything is purely coincidental and not intended.

Ambiguous clarity

White spaces stare at me
Dare me to write
Write some semblance
Of sanity

When words cease
To ease
The crease
in the fabric of silence

Sleep comes in hiccups
Shamefully sucking up
To the big bully time
That stagnant, stinking time

Anger? Disgust? Loneliness?
Echoes bouncing in emptiness
Without stop, without fail
Empty, prosaic wail

Don't analyze, don't try
to understand
Just be me, mute
banned

Singing...
Sohorer ushnotomo dine
peech gola roddure
bristhir bishash
Tomay dilaam
In a loop of iTunes

Looped in my life
into every knot
Butter fighting a knife
melting taut

Stop. Now..
I will this non
Sense drawn upon
Me? Wow!

Sunsets

Bronze David Replica in Piazzale de Michelangelo, Florence, Italy, 13 October, 2007.

Charcoal dreams

So I splurged! So sue me!

I splurged on -

1. A 30 sheet A4 size sketchbook of 180 g/m^2 paper.
   
2. A packet of willow charcoal - medium 5-6 mm.
   
3. A 48 shade pack of oil pastels.
   
4. A Moleskine plain notebook.

This resulted in some well-deserved euphoria and combined with the resurgent artistic personality of my schizophrenic self to produce the following:

Pssst! I cheated a lil bit ... it's not completely charcoal. I drew it in pencil first. Since I don't have a scanner handy at home, I took a picture of it. The chic amber lighting is not Photoshop - it's my table lamp!

Okay.. so now... who wants to model for my next one?

The Taunt -1

Why must you taunt me so?
Standing there, shrouded in
moonlit silence that streams
through the window.

Cool winds carry a sweaty smell
delicately twirling like cream in
morning coffee; a taste
I know so well.

I can see the hems of nubile skin
lining the robe of floating lace
alive as her master alike,
ah! my beloved's djinn.

I can feel the fingers, lying
wanton on the window sill; Oh what a waste!
Caresses that could awaken the dead
quiver in doubt, shying.

That smouldering gaze of gentle eyes
bathe me in desire so cool,
The fiery beast freezes in hell
tormented by stifled sighs.

Soon

Soon it will be that time again. When the leaves of my life turn a bright flaming yellow and wither away. They will litter the road like the unwanted urchins from the nearby slum. Have you seen them smile? I wish I could smile like them.

Soon it will be that day again. When a new color flowed into my painting. A transparent color. A salty color. A heavy color of freedom and lightness. It washed my life in hues unknown before. Have you seen this color? I wish I could make it flow back to where it came from.

Soon it will be that moment again. A moment frozen eternally in time, with clarity par excellence. A moment that vanquished the rebellion in my heart. A moment of eternal peace. Have you felt such peace? I wish I could say no to that.

Soon it will be those sounds again. Sounds of hushed whispers and strangled cries. Sounds of silence mercilessly cutting down the sound of the mob. Sounds whose tone I cannot remember. Have you ever tried to remember a forgotten voice? I wish I could remember it once more.

Soon it will be that reason again. A reason to live life beyond any other reason. A reason that makes me breathe, without question, every second of the day. A reason that I surrender to, unconditionally. Have you ever encountered such a reason? I wish I could be unreasonable with this reason.

Soon it will be that place again. That room, those walls, that floor, that tubelight, that refrigerator, that doorbell. A place, I love, for every grain of weak cement that plasters those walls. A place with the happiness that makes courage change into dreams. Have you ever been in such a place? I wish I could return to that place.

Soon. Too soon. It is always too soon. I wish it would cease to be so, some day.

Mind Blowing Mahiya

One thirty-eight ante meridian. I just finished eating a bowl of cornflakes in chilled milk. Now, I am ready for this.

Any one who has been reading this blog long enough has probably read my ode to why I am not getting any. Well that summed up my life then. Things have changed. A bit.

I say just a bit, because when I try to write erotic poetry I am asked, "Have you been watching porn? Again!" So I have obviously not transmogrified into a suave Casanova overnight.

Apparently, my vocabulary on the subject of the lustful art practiced between satin sheet is not delicate enough. Even though it may run with the efficiency of a well oiled pump, well oiled pumps can be big turn-offs for the genteel sex, who are apparently looking for some finesse in the matter. For so much that is apparent, you may think I am blind to not see the obvious. In my defense I'd like to say that it is very hard to keep one's eyes focused on such things when other more engrossing sights are in view.

Speaking of viewing, ever since "Desperate Housewives" had it's TRPs eaten away by "The L Word" I knew my time had come. After all, one can only be so "Lost" at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. But as I careened around delicate curves (yea I've been taking ski and roller skate lessons), avoiding accidental slips on wet surfaces due to rash driving, it seems like nature handed me a raw deal.

Square pegs do not fit into circular holes (no.. no puns are intended with pegs and holes). It seems the feminine primal urge has some sort of genetic selection algorithm that is biased toward the tall-thin variety of my species. Obviously, my marked deviation from this model serves some higher purpose, but it spells "bad luck" for many of my lower purposes.

So even though I may debate how nonsensical the idea of one-night stands seem to me or why I am very liable to be dumped after the first time I break the bed, I have only progressed a little bit in my quest for Nirvana (suggestion to all spirited teens: If you have to have better luck than mine, do be safe).

Before I leave you, in case you have still have not figured out what the title has to do this with post, your Mahiya¹ has obviously not paid enough attention to blowing your mind to smithereens. If that is true, then accept my congratulations and condolences; if not, then you know exactly what I am talking about.



1. Mahiya is a term used to refer to the 'dear one' in Hindi/Punjabi. It derives from the word mahin, meaning cattle. Figuratively, it means the lover, deriving from the popular romance of Sohni and Mahiwal in which the hero, Mahiwal, was a cowherd. The name of the post is taken from a song by the same name from the Hindi movie, Cash.

Vous avez?

Have you ever doubted yourself so much that the doubt becomes one with your self? Of course you have.

Have you ever given up all your rational thinking for something, and then seen that something atomized by nothing but concentrated thought? Maybe you have.

Have you ever wanted to talk so much that the words are glued to you tongue and all you can do is scream? Maybe that too.

Have been ever been accused of being good? Just plain, simple, good?

***

Have you ever felt condemned to see what no one else can? Have you felt wronged, cheated, betrayed? At the end of it have you felt foolish and laughed at yourself? Of course you have.

Have you seen the past fast-forward and the future rewind and the present pause? Just because you held the keys of time in your palm? Maybe you have.

Have you ever wanted to read all the books of the world and then be able to say something nobody has ever said before? Maybe that too.

Have you ever survived a dream that was not your own?

***

Have you ever felt afraid of dying? Of living? Of breathing in your next breath? Or uttering the next syllable from your lips? Of course you have.

Have you ever known like you were meant to be known, seen like you were meant to be seen, heard like you were meant to be heard. Understood like you were meant to understand? Maybe you have.

Have you ever felt tiny and yet awed by your place in the scheme of things? Have you ever felt supreme and yet humbled by the most fleeting emotion? Maybe that too.

Have you ever seen your reflection in another person's eyes?

***

Have you ever hated what other's love about you? Have you ever feared what other's hate about you?

Have you bathed in a moment of clarity amidst a whirlpool of confusion?

Have you held your own when everything in you is hell bent on destroying it?

Have you ever firmly, squarely, quite gracefully and absolutely suddenly landed hard, flat on your arse?

***

It hurts.

Senses alight

He settled down in his usual place. The comfortable sofa in a distant corner of the cafe where the bright afternoon sun invariably got lost. His Moleskine notebook lay poised beside his big mug of hot chocolate. The black Mont Blanc Miesterstuck had been a family heirloom. He sifted through the pages of his notebook. It was the perfect page - blank and inviting. Ready to soak in the colour of indigo blue.

But what should he write? What was there in the world today that demanded to be imprisoned in his words. Pigeons hid under a table laid outside on the pavement. `A simple way to escape the sun,' he thought. `Should I write about them? The secret life of city pigeons..' Just as he seemed to be drawn into this idea, he glanced to his left.

A sun burnt, loose fitting orange top and trousers the colour of dark chocolate. She ambled into the cafe with the grace of an elephant high on mahua. The sombre note of an oboe broke into his thoughts and he smiled. He knew the slow, infectious, beckoning tune.

Pores, on a delicate touch,
well up and overflow with sweat;
Filling up the air with the poison smell,
dripping languour so carefully slow, so tauntingly wet.

***

A tinkling clarinet sneaked over the oboe as a smooth violin wrapped itself around the sharp shadows of the noon sun. Pista green bag and a desperate knot on the nape of a shapely neck, holding up a turquoise halter, flowed past on a floating skirt of ivory crepe. Elegantly light, the tune turned ethereal.

The fresh lemon of tangled wet hair,
filters a whiff of you from deep inside;
Suspended by strings of a submerged quiet,
my heartbeats toast the rising, tempestuous tide.


***

The violin was wrecking havoc with a wild run of notes. An unruly pair of drums seemed to have joined in to strengthen the rising crescendo of octaves. A mischievous tuba picked up high, every low the violin dropped. He just sat there unable to write, transfixed by the music, bound by his thoughts. It was nearing closing time and he had no idea how to end it. His indecisive reverie was chopped in two by the decisive click of shining black stilettoes on the linoleum floor. Shimmering legs of silken bronze cut through his thoughts like a knife slicing cheesecake. Oh, and what a slice they cut.

A taste of breath, stale and toxic
Running faster than blood pumped anew,
Exhaustion driving the final stake;
Shattering this olfactory myth 'tween me and you.

Sunflowers

How much more starving will it take to kill it. Does it even need food? It must. It has to. Has to? There is no `has to.' Maybe I can choke it to death... What am I talking about! Is it so easy to fall apart? Like a proverbial pack of cards. Go up in flames and burn everything inside. I can see my self scattered all around ... in tiny shreds. Legs that don't want to walk. Eyes that don't want to see. There is no escape from this. I must drown in my own silence till every bit of life has oozed out and become one with it. Then at least I won't cry that the tears do not flow anymore. Then what will I do? Exist. That is doing enough for now.

From beyond

Raise me from
the dead of sleep,
From the silent mort
over which you weep.

Command me, to breathe in
hungry gasps of noisome you;
Tie me up in servitude, alive,
willing ally in the perverse coup.

Omit mercy. Wipe it out.
Whip me up in writhing pain;
In infernal desire, make me live,
just make me love again.

Today, forever...

The dry yellow grass swayed gently to the moist winds passing by. Golden ripples spread beneath a naked azure sky. So starkly naked that the proud sequoias had to look down out of modesty. Walking through the field he felt like a stone flung in the middle of a river. Skipping and skidding on a sheet of solid water, till reality engulfed it into her liquid arms.

He tried to refrain from the `Why me's' The question mocked him, and his promise of not crying anymore.

`How can I be confined amidst such beauty. How can I be so poor in my dreams.' He said these out loud to the winding dirt road. Perhaps down the way it may meet the answers. Yet, they were not questions. The questions, he could not ask.

`Where is she now?' Now this; was worth a thought. Some kind of thought, at least. He knew where she was.

***

The world makes sense today. Almost. More so than yesterday. Perhaps it is because I am wearing orange. I will tell him when I meet him. Today is a better today than the last today.

***

The white building seemed antiseptic, sitting in solitary pride, surrounded by the vast meadow of green. Three hours away from civilization. `Why do I have to walk here every time? If only I had listened to her and earned enough for a car.'

He stopped at the huge black iron gate. The speakerphone on the wall buzzed and the iron behemoth slid open.

`Listen to her? I am going to try harder today.'

***

`You know, you know, today was better yesterday. Because I was wearing orange. I am wearing orange today too. We always wear orange here. Is it the fifteenth? I am getting married on the fifteenth! I have to wear white then. Do whites make better todays than oranges?'

He turned his face away and uttered an unsure, `yes.'

***

He took the usual diversion on his way back. On the sun kissed eastern slope, where the heavenly lake met the earth down below, stood the stoically mute cathedral. It had no reason to be otherwise. The massive grey stones hewn to make an ornament for prayer may have afforded others a more vocal welcome. But to him it was a bloody battleground of memories. Battlegrounds never welcome warriors. They weep for them.

If only such gallantry begot death, he would have stayed. `But I cannot stay. I have to go and prepare for today to come again. Tomorrow.'

Life: A bedside view

"Is there any limit to the amount of creepiness you allow yourself?"

"No.. of course not. Otherwise how do you think I can get under your skin with such precision."

"Eeew... that is not flattering at all, you know!"

"My dear ... if you were bothered about my not being flattering, do you think my finger would be trying to undo these hooks right now."

----

Life melts away like a dollop of ice-cream and we lick it as fast as we can. It is messy. It drips. Runs down the side of our cheeks. It, inevitably, falls and stains our shirt. Okay! Okay! My shirt. But seriously, do you want to tell me there is a better way to eat ice-cream?

----

"Don't you go there! Not yet... why can't a man ever take it slow!"

"Can you blame a man for wanting to live for a few seconds?"

"Can you be any less cheesy."

"Will that make this feel any different... this..."

----

Life crumbles in our mouths like a bite of dark chocolate. Teasing reactions from our senses with every slowly peeled off layer of bitterness. Building to a reverberating crescendo of overpoweringly smooth desire. And then the chocolate disappears on our tongue. Life? What about it? Go have some chocolate!

----

"Where did you learn language like that! Do you realize I am a lady?"

"Right now... you are my gateway to heaven!"

"You are shameless!"

"You took so long to arrive to that conclusion."

----

Life is like delicate, lace lingerie. Sensuous caresses of intimate care reminding one that life requires one to go slow at times. To take the time to uncover hidden mysteries that life has to offer. To be gentle when handling beauty. And let life decide when it wants to move on and where it wants to go.

----

"There! Thirty thirty-second philosophies of life in ten nights! Was that hard or was that hard."

"That hard, was it?"

"Shouldn't you be knowing? Book editors are supposed to know their authors inside out."

"There is still a lot of work required on the outside before the book launch next month. And it's about time that I get around to doing that. Bientôt.. au revoir!"

Enchanted Strands

Quivering fingers touch
an apparition;
Of pure enchantment
and blinding black.

Rustling wind murmurs,
encouragement to
delve, into waves
of tingling delight.

Transient sheet parts
into strands;
at the hesitant behest
of restless waiting.

Chaotic velvet engulfs,
ensemble all,
in an envelope
of teasing compassion.

Intoxicated mass crumbles;
saturated with
spells, molded in caresses
of braided allure.

Exhausted heart yearns
in quiescence,
drowned in the silken quilt,
for an eternal now.

Waiting between words

Another ten minutes before check-in starts. Whoa! Look at those platform heels! How does a girl walk in those? Hmmm... she is not as tall as the other one. Her sister maybe. The heels... an effort to catch up? Thank goodness, she does not want things like that.

And she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind...

7 hrs wait at the airport. I hate travelling alone. Will you make it?"

Why doesn't this line move! Thank goodness, I brought the discman.

"Can I have your passport please? Are you travelling together?"

Duh! Lady - Indian passport - US Passport - to Europe - to the States - travelling together? Have a heart! Where ARE you.

"Obrigado, Senhora."

A call!! Why is she calling? Cut the call, cut the call! Again!

On international roaming. Phone balance low. Can't talk.

She sang as if she knew me,
in all my dark despair,
And then she looked right through me
as if I wasn't there...

Passport check. A smiling immigration officer for a change!

"Do I have to take off the belt too?" "No, sir. You may go."

No reply, still! Was it something urgent? No way to call her from here.

"Mama!"

Ooooh, sho cute baby! Mama ... your boy is running away into duty free shopping. Dufry. What are they selling? The Dream Angel's collection from Victoria's Secret. Wonder how that smells! Are they holding hands? When was the last time we held hands? That long ago... I didn't get to see anything of this city. Should I buy some souvenirs?

"Last call for JJ3429 to Santiago."

"Do you want a phone card?"

Cute girl... nice tan. Nice smile too. Smile back.

"Não, obrigado."

Look at that! She just popped the pacifier in the mouth of her wailing baby and went into the smoking chamber to smoke. Figure that! The boy's stopped wailing! Obviously, I am still a far cut away from being a parent. Another hour to boarding.

Try as I may I can never explain,
what I feel when you don't say a thing...

Must not fall asleep. Will she be there, when I get back? Just one more chance... just one more. Where is the drinking water! So thirsty... When is that story due? Monday? Ummmm... yes. Let's set the ringer to full volume. Maybe before boarding... The story... hmmm... let's see that now.

Another ten minutes before check-in starts...

All my fault

Her mood rumbled, in resonance to the dark clouds outside. It had been a long night. She had just returned home, to him and to the brewing storm. The sky was an uncanny gray. The cool breeze of the previous night had slithered to a stop. The enveloping dampness was threatening to break into a million shards of rain any instant.

He lay on her lap, with his face buried in the soft, crumpled folds of her nightgown. Slowly he turned his face to look at her blank eyes. "Don't worry. Why are you so worried? It is my fault. I'll take care of it." He could see she was angry. No. More exasperated than angry perhaps. He always knew when she had... He had stopped keeping count. Counting was a very cumbersome way to love.

Why didn't he arouse her! Give her goosebumps or make her heart skip a beat? Why was the only thing he ever made her feel was an overwhelming sense of calm.

"I am..." He turned and kissed her thighs. Her voice trailed off among whispering leaves of the mango tree near the window. She hated this guilt crawling beneath her skin. She hated it.

Why didn't he ever do anything? He didn't even try! Not even once in all these years! What is he waiting for? An order? A request? Why!

"You are the laziest..."

"... of the lot. I know. The oldest, slowest, laziest... I told you it is all my fault."

Her fingers caressed his wild curls, tracing the boundary of his receding hairline. Rain broke free of misty prison of the clouds with a frenzy. Truant drops dashed on the window sill with a vengeance and orphaned droplets found their way to his cheek.

He had shown the promise of turning out like every other possessive and demanding man. But somewhere along the way, he had lost the will to possess. Maybe he felt left too far behind... at the back of the line.

Her fingers rested on his soft stomach, bubbling on the ripples of his gentle laugh. Rogue streaks of lightning lit the transparent darkness in the room. He lay there, lifeless, hugging her waist with his face hidden from the world outside. She sat there, quiet and quivering with the storm, secure in his unquestioning calm and the knowledge that it was all his fault.

What remains

Once it was so,
Like the silver moonlight
over the supple night earth
Bright yet gentle,
With the calm assurance
of lapping waves on the sand
Eroded yet reborn,
In twirling grains
of wizened woods green with age
Proud yet humble.

Now it is so,
Like frosty moonlight
over the wet night earth
Enchanting yet ephemeral,
Inside the succulent flesh
a core of bitter memories
Distant yet distinct,
A magical quilt of light
shimmering in frigid polar skies
Alien yet natural.

Suspended within then and now,
My love weeps beside my grave.

Off-shoulder

One day... not so far away in the future, when this life will seem to have passed in the bat of an eyelash. When all this time spent waiting will seem so small in comparison to what lay ahead. When the wisdom of bygone years will seem but a frivolous gift. When the small wedge on my fractured nose will cease to stand out. When my fingers will become tender and soft, not out of care but out of habit. When the winds will stop and the music still sail through the sky. When the colour of the balance at the end of the ledger will not matter any more. When quiet nights and empty days will not taunt me with sounds and sights of togetherness. When the weight of tender flesh will fail to outweigh the weight of silent laughter. When impatience will have run its course. When I will not have any complaints left to voice. When I won't even have the voice left to complain. When all that is alive will be a painting, my painting. When all the fervour to posses would have ebbed away. When letting go will not figure in the list of options. When it will not be required. When understanding will not demand any effort. When time will become timeless. When I will find you in my dream forever.

Infallible follies

Isn't it cool? It is cool. So cool. Since yesterday the mind has been ricocheting around wildly like a crazy-ball.

It happens on such days filled with quiet solitude, when the brain conjures up haloed thoughts from every flimsy whim the world cares to fling my way.

Making presentations is very boring. In a way, it's like my singing. Flat. In another way too, it's like my singing. It has to be done. Obviously when one is doing things that have-to-be-done one thinks about completely unrelated stuff.

The potpourri of thoughts can be very comforting. Like this photograph of these singularly beautiful flowers among the random, overpoweringly common blades of grass. Taken while lying on a top of a mountain around 1100m in height. The blur in the distance so comforting, the focus of interest so crisp. None of the clouds in the sky seemed interesting. So I ended up clicking this majestic bird instead. Like pictures from a book, no? A book? Which book?

The one I cannot write. My concentration .. no wait ... my train of thoughts is too fickle to last for a book. Much like Zorba's mood. I take ages to finish reading a book sometimes. For the record, I am still reading Lolita. To make matters more interesting, friends push more delectable fare onto my platter. And pretty above average stuff at that.

Of course, before I have finished reading all books, the world as we know it is going to end because 2^1039 - 1 has been factorized. But that's no excuse for not having seen Ray and Miyazaki! And for losing Friday night football 8-7. I am as bad at film or book appreciation as I am at playing center forward for 90 minutes.

But I know what I like. Which is more than I can say for you if you are still reading this! Did you know that I have a moustache? How can you still be here! What gall! Go take a ride on Economikrisis' galley to Gaul. It will serve you better.

Better than the bar of Snickers I am going to buy after lunch. Do you know french? Porque if you don't, you can't ask pourquoi. You can only get swept away.

Jab mori chaadar ban ghar aayi, rangrej ko dinhi
Aisa rang ranga rangre ne, ke lalo-lal kar dinhi¹

Completely. Totally. In all earnest. After all, "every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all ... is not to have one."

Make a wish

Bananas from Ecuador. Ginger from Thailand. Gits Sambhar Mix from India. Half way across the world. Classy sounds of whining.

It's rarely that one finds one's writing critiqued. Mostly people are satisfied by saying something politely pleasant. So it pleases me to no end when someone can find the time to say something about the way I write. Let's just state the two recent ones I got.

The lighting is ummm... perfect. The staging needs a bit of work. The silhouettes are not clean enough. See through the camera. Through it. As the camera sees through you.

One was that this and this are pathetic attempts at sensuousness. They are shoddy attempts without much finesse and sound crass .. and and border on pornographic (distastefully). The other was that this and this are just my classy way of whining. It was said that when I am sad, I just .... whine. It's kinda well dressed but it is still whining.

I would love to hear more such critiques. Both of you have my heart felt thanks. Having said that... that's it (story arch commencing). One's life is neatly compartmentalized between a crappy (fictional, but crappy) sex life and suave whining. Men, it seems are not supposed to whine. Especially men who are not built like Adonis and who don't have a suave dress sense. So much for my image!

The character is built quite nicely. A bit shaky, but that is part of the effect I suppose. The secondary storyline is getting a bit overshadowed. He is the author surrogate after all. And the framing device at the beginning is not well structured.

Grey skied, black Manhattan covered in white snow. Simple stories about passion for all that is unworthy for others. Pink coloured guava juice, made in Holland. Chicken biryani. Incessant talking. Beautifully empty waiting rooms of the SBB. Asterix and Obelix.

Duniya kare sawal to hum, kya jawab den. Spirited Away. A bumpy introduction into a new world. Shei tumio aamake bhool bujhle! What is this story about? Does everything have to have some existential justification? Isn't recursion its own cause? Show me the money, honey. But how much (story arch ends)?

An epistolary, eh? Won't work in this day and age. Why, you are ancient! Why don't you put in a few dragons and lost swords? You are a master of syntax, but your rhetoric is misplaced.

That I can't write, can't sing, can't dance, can't draw, can't read, can't dress ... I can dream, can't I? Nightmares? Look at me! See? I am alive.

See? My novel. Mine. Maybe it will never be published. Ta jonne dukhkho neyi. What will I achieve? A life on my own terms.

Look up there! A shooting star. Make a wish quick...

Seduced by silence

On an ordinary, weary day
Coloured a dull tungsten ochre
Waiting patiently to give away
Delicate secrets

'Twas then she sailed in
Unnoticed, and impregnated the air
Spread everywhere buttery thin
Seductive silence

Mesmerising, cajoling, cooing
Sprinkling tingling touches so light
Innocent charms hell-bent on wooing
Temerarious life

Seeping through porous skin
Inside, she let loose the dark
Blood ran black, oozing fluid yin
Echoing surrender

Sinewy fingers choking reason
While the neck nods a rabid assent
Invited, debauched, infatuating treason
Plundered sleep

Vacuum brimming with murderous thought
Helpless again as ever, me
Future bleached as past distraught
Ebbing dreams

Sleepless too

Tonight, when it is already tomorrow
All I can do is write
Mere words of no consequence
Colouring the fringes of this sleepless stupor

Needless to say it makes sense
To stay awake now that you are
Gone from where you were
Here, beside me, in my wish

I believe in fairies, but unfortunately
Every saved fairy is asleep now
So I turned to the cold, which creeps
On me now, in glee.

She has already claimed my toes.

The onion in my breath would have
Made the perfect kiss, with its acrid taste
Smeared over my lips which do not
part now for fear of smiling out of habit

Low pillows and clocks ticking in emptiness
Inside the Mad Hatter's tea kettle
Half eaten, mottled cup-cakes
Never promise for more tomorrow

The knife looked so threatening to
The five day old soup in the cup, and
the empty wastebasket. Oh!
Are you twins?.

Tweedledee, Tweedledum.

Sleepless

Wrapped in my personal
quilt of satin, velvet dark
I listen to the growl of wheels
on the road outside

Time doesn't want to pass
One minute and then ten, eleven
Stretching like chewing gum
Over my booted life

The hard floor serves to calm
Twisted muscles, but the nerves raw
Refuse to temper down the listless
Nightmares swirl around

The bell tolls a dozen clangs
Only twelve. Half divided
And scattered by the trade winds
Over miles and miles of barren land

Once the breeze hath blown past
The many halves rot and root
Warm neon glows in the dark
Wait! Why is despair so fluid?

Walked past and left behind
Shrivelled, like used tissues
Useless except for landfills
To be rolled over and founded on

Two eyes, a while ago refused
To close now. We can see in the dark.
Ha! Such illusions. Lie awake
and wait and wait and wait.

Watercolours

I wrote a poem yesterday and then shut the computer down without saving it. Justice by sleepy hands shall we call it? It was about loss and it was lost. This world is a weird place. Very weird. People come and go like the connection on my bluetooth headset.

But isn't that people are for - to come and to go? Stupid question. I have grown old. I have ... weary of this haunting quiet around me. A quiet in which I paint. Pictures have always attracted me ... drawn me in. I see colours in lives of other people - of those around me. Each one has a special menagerie, a distinct palette. I yearn for the paintings to be completed, to get their last finishing brush strokes, to be displayed for every eye to devour. But then it rains...

Everybody doesn't know the rains like I do. She is supposed to wash the dirt away and leave the colours fresh with life ... instead she washes away the colours themselves if one is not careful with her. Intimate, the rain is, without asking anything from me, other than letting her wet me. Not only on the outside, but through and through.

I saw a painting washed away recently. What a waste of perfectly good colours! And I hear the rain, in my quiet, dissolving me slowly. Me, because she cannot dissolve my colours. They are too fast. Will she wash me away then, before my painting is complete...

Laugh on me

Heated days, heated words
Relentless authority beating down
Hapless nerds
Laugh on my position in the food chain
I do
Though nothing quite beats my hairdo
Receding hairlines in quirky rhyme
Styled with gooey paste, impassioned
Dirty slime
Laugh again at my exquisite tact
And the very fact
That you called out his name
When literally, I was game
Waiting to shoot and got shot instead
Thank goodness, I was in my bed
Laugh on dreamy, idealistic, incessant
Leeching wants
Surviving like diligent bacteria
In the heat of well aimed taunts
Symbiotic with the blessed rain
Laugh, ensemble, at my false penchant for
Wanting pain
Thriving in crevices and cracks
Arcane, engineered hacks
In c'est folie, encouraging the 'it'
In memories writ
Laugh in the calm inside-out
Labelling me profoundly sane
Beyond doubt
Allowing me to live and beyond
With an unlikely prospect
That someone be overtly fond
Of seeing me smile
At the mere possibility of me
Without guile
I laugh, on myself.

Shohojatri (The co-passenger)

Aaj, aekhon, theek ei mohoorte nijer upore khoob hansi pachche. Kano? Ta theek bole bojhate parbo na. Hoyeto kende-kende ei baar hansar pala. Ke jaane. Amake khoma korte parbe? Khoma chaichi bole kichu mone koro na jano. Tomar kache khoma na pele je aar kichoo kora cholbena.

Ki je boli aar ki je na boli ta jodi boohjte partam, tahale aajge eta likhte hoto na. Eta maane ei chithi ta. Tomake shei je prothom tram theke nabte dekhe chilam Lawrence Road'er stop ta te, she din theke je jibone shob chola chol bondho hoi gache. Kada bhora rasta paar kore tumi footpath ta te uthe podle. Ek baar amar dike takiyo dekhle na. Kintu aami dekhlam. Tomar chotir strap ta aar kichu diner mehman. Maane ei galo bole. Somoye thakte palte nebe.

Bodhai thakte dilei bhalo hoe, tobe thakte dile je aar bancha cholbena. Taar maane ta boojhle. Taar maane banchte na holei bhalo hobe hoyeto. Aami kintu amon chilam na. Maane tomar lal chata ta je shob brishti aatke debe, sheta theek bhabte parini. Dekhte besh chotto-khatto chilo je.

Kalboishakhir jonno she din theke shudhu jokhon tokhon load-shedding hochche. Bodhai shob power line gulo jole dube gache. Aar dube gache shob aalo.

Khoma che niyechi ageyi, nahole ei chiti lekhar shahosh jogate partam na. Er theke bhalo bhabe kichoo bojhabar khomota je aamar nei ta na bolleyi noe. Jodi paro to tram e jawar shomoye ta paltiyo na.

iti,
tomar ek shohojatri

-----

Translation in English

Today, now, in this instant I feel like laughing out loud on myself. Why? That is something I will not be able to explain in words. Perhaps after crying again and again, now it's my turn to laugh. Who knows. Can you forgive me? Please do not mind that I ask for forgiveness. But sans this forgiveness I cannot proceed with anything else.

If I could ever understand what to say and what not to say, then I would not have had to write this today. By this, I mean this letter. The first time I had seen you getting down from that tram at the Lawrence Road stop; since that day all the gears in my life have stopped turning. You had deftly crossed over the mud crusted road onto the footpath. You did not even notice me. But I noticed. The strap of your slipper does not have very many days left to live. I mean that it's about to go. Get it changed in time.

Perhaps it would be better if I let it go, but if I let it go then I cannot survive. Do you understand what that means? That perhaps it would be better if I do not survive. I was not always like this. I mean that I had not quite expected your red umbrella to totally blanket out all the rain. It seemed quite ordinary when I saw it.

Since that day there has been rampant load-shedding because of the Kalboshakhi rains. Perhaps all the power lines in the city have been submerged. As has been all light.

I have already asked your forgiveness, otherwise I would not have been able to muster up the courage to write this letter. Let me not make this any worse by admitting that I cannot express myself any better than this, If possible then do not change the time at which you take the tram.

I'll end here for now,
your co-passenger

Orange frescos

Armani. Louis Vuitton. Valentino. Gucci. Getting this apartment on Via dei Condotti had not been easy. It had taken her two years. Two years of no questions. No work timings. No disagreements. No life.

I must not forget the pills.She glanced at the Spanish Stairs. It was as crowded as ever. The Trinità dei Monti towered over the inconsequential mob teeming underneath. She turned right. Oh no! The Blahnik Mary Janes! Must not forget to get the Blahniks tomorrow.

Her flower sequined boat neck dress bloomed in the Roman spring sun. Aphrodite had been kind to her, for she had the goddess' gift for turning heads wherever she went. Born the seventh of eight children had made her grow up being very aware of the economics of being able to control testosterone. The first movie offer came when she was nineteen.

By now, she was a master of the mechanics of moaning, on cue. He should be home by now. She had quickly grown weary of the Adonis like bodies. Even the novelty of her own sex had worn off soon. Of course, many had wanted to continue after the arc-lights went off.

Wonder what he painted today? I must get that set of conté he has been eyeing. If only he would let me.. She had wanted it too, many times. The moans had never come on cue then. Till one day she had turned the corner on Via del Corso and crashed in on him, sketching on the bare, asphalt lined sidewalk.

It was the half bent-down, half sitting down, half amazed group of onlookers who first caught her attention. She had stepped on his ragged Borsalino and the coins had spilled out. He had looked up suddenly and those green eyes had drowned her in their melancholy.

She had found his unkempt stubble adorable. His nose had the indelible marks of a dozen street fights. He refused to wear the Valentino shirts she had bought for him preferring his tattered Greenpeace t-shirt. With no formal training in art, all he painted was born of his obstinate will to make pictures talk. He was always home before her.

A quick shower and then the glass of cool orange juice. He had spread into her life as Carbonara spreads over a plate full of fresh Rigatoni. He had shared her cigarette smoke and wet towels, her lace nightgown and Tuscan wines, her chesterfield leather sofa and her Carrara marble kitchen countertop.

He had not wanted to posses her. He had not given up the Borsalino and the sidewalk. He always knows when I am about to get home. How does he do it? The orange juice is never too warm or cold. He had been the one constant in her celluloid life, for the past five and a half months.

I must spend more time with him. He never complains... but his eyes. That night...The door was ajar. She closed it gently as she walked inside. The dying sunlight streaking in though baroque grill of the west window caught her eye. An undisturbed, thin layer of dust shimmered on the glazed teak wood table top. The glass of orange juice was not there.

Good business

He stood languidly against the lamp post, facing the Colosseo Metropolitana Stazione. Looking at the early morning crowd of tourists that poured out of the station every few minutes. Today will be a good day for business. Dressed in his red Totti jersey and splayed denim slacks, he was just another dweller of the Eternal City.

He was not interested in the motley crowd, which poured out by the hundreds. The smartly dressed Armani suit, the braided hair, the ambling feet, the leftovers from last night, were all mediocre business. C'mon, c'mon. His nimble fingers were anxiously playing on each other. Worn heels of black leather shoes gently tapping the sidewalk to the beat of some lost melody playing in his head. The shoes need mending. Walking this beat daily is taxing. Oh, for a day off!

He was gazing at the drab grey pavement, when the glint of the sun caught his eyes. Ferrari red stilettos. The distinct click of the heels on stone. The skin of her legs was the colour of cappuccino creme. He looked up. A flowing, black, halter dress. It stopped just below her knees, lightly stirring in the wind. A red leather Gucci purse hung lightly on her arm. Did she smile? At me? Definitely good business. He admonished himself soon after for being decidedly naive. Of course, it was the Colosseum behind him. That look of wonder had always tormented him.

What is so wonderful about this ancient ruin of stone blocks? The lush rice fields of his village had looked so much more prettier. Nice hair. It bled the colour of red wine in the morning sun. She was fleshy. He said the word out loud just to taste it on his tongue. Fleshy. She stood about two hands taller than him. Ten years more, at least. She had walked past him, towards the Forum Magnum.

He instinctively followed her, inconspicuously but accurately. He should have been observing the flow of people around her, looking for that perfect moment to strike. Instead he found his gaze caught by the hypnotic pendulum of her hips. She looks like the one from "Midnight Heat." Perhaps better. He shook his head vigourously, as if to shake the thought out into oblivion. Concentrate! She suddenly turned and looked at him. He knew when a woman looked at him. It was always the same look of disgust he got from them.

He turned his gaze away, because he did not want to read that expression again. Not from someone so angelic.

Excuse me? Do you have a light?"

The Temple of Vesta loomed large behind her. Her expression was... neutral. He fumbled in his pockets and held his old Zippo lighter to her Marlboro Silver. A puff of smoke enveloped her lightly said, "grazie." All this while, the crowd had flowed past them like the never ending streaks of light in a long exposure photographs.

He turned around and smiled to himself. A Louis Vuitton Pochette. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Los Besos (The Kisses)

A simple thing of beauty,
gentle lips. So gentle.
Supple and pink, waiting
in parted, charming innocence.

Parting more and calling
in silent want, beckoning in
another dawn for the luscious
night to begin. Anew. Afresh.

Salt to taste, tongues dripping
in salivary haste, teasing
and twisting, in celebration
of the exotic recipe to come.

The sound. Oh! The sound.
Of that breath drawn in.
So near and so far amiss.
Continuous, invited, demanded.

Restless hands writhe
on familiar ground, reactions
uncanny, lost and alone.
Murmurs of incoherent bliss.

Imagination grinds to a halt
by force of senses overwhelmed
to think anymore. Rising breath
surrendering to burning whims.

Exhaustion far, but distance
wins. Inanimate responses tire
magical zest, rising desires burn
silently awaiting, in blessed turn.

Barely so

Liberated
of inhibiting doubts.
Ravenous spirits gush out.

Wildly spurting
from constricted eternity.
Shamelessly abandoning abandon.

Drops of delicious you
scorching my skin.
Pin-pricks of ecstasy.

Pools of sticky lust
tingling with sensuous ripples.
Parting of thirsty lips.

Drunk in a verbal frenzy
of amateurish vulgar charm.
Honey wrapped fingers.

Delightfully sucked beyond
redemption past rapture.
Agonizing wait spills over.

Crashing past raunchy
protests of innocence.
Fervent pleas please.

Oh please do
not.
Stop teasing my hunger.

Mouthful of risqué bitten
off in greedy chunks.
Sweat laden gasps devoured.

Tired of time
and again of moaning whispers.
More, more and endless more.

Familiar sounds

"You coward!" She spit out the words at him with as much vengeance as she could muster. "You joke of a man. And a second rate one at that. All you can do is run away." She looked at him with glazed, red eyes. He did not answer back.

"Speak, damn it! Say something. How can you just keep quiet, you spineless.." She choked and her voice faltered. She clutched onto his arms like one possessed. Her nails had broken his skin and a trickle of crimson blood oozed out.

"I hate you! Do you hear - I hate you! I hate you for having loved me so selfishly. For making me forget the misery that is loneliness. And for reminding me again, so brutally. I hate you"

Her voice had trailed into a whisper now. The antiseptic whiteness of the room sickened her. The only sound other than her enraged, helpless voice were the periodic beeps emanating from the machine. The cruel measurement of the remnants of a beautiful life.

She was so afraid of the quiet that would follow. That threatened to greedily engulf her complete life, without any remorse.

She was feeling raw, like a forsaken piece of meat left out on the butcher's table, waiting to be chopped and diced. Her strength to wage this battle was at its nadir. She rested her head on his shoulder. Her eyes closed.

She stood on an endless plain. Flat, desolate and enveloped by a deafening silence. She screamed but her voice did not come out. She gasped for air, but the air refused to flow into her starving lungs. Then his voice rang out from somewhere, jarring her to the bone. She frantically looked around to locate the source. She had heard him say that before. Many times. Only now it seemed unreal - recorded. Someone clicked the stop button and the voice stopped. She felt nauseated by her relief at the stopping of his voice and defeated by her familiarity with the silence. Her legs, suddenly gave up on trying to hold her upright. She collapsed. The ground was as hard and cold, as a polished sheet of naked steel, and stung her brazen skin like a scorpion.

She lifted her head with a start. The periodic beep was still the only sound around. Suddenly, it did not seem so cruel anymore.

Sleeping with a man

It had to come to this one day. The way this... I mean, my life... is going, it had to come to this. After all the situation gets more and more desperate every day.

Wait, wait!

Did you think men had such low standards! When a woman falls down from the bed at the mere thought of sleeping with me, how did you imagine a man could do that? Huh? Come on... give a man some credit!

Yes, in a beautiful village nestled in the lap of the snow covered mountains, I shared my bed with a kind and honest man for a week. And this says a lot about that man, who is from another world, which is practically alien to me. Who gets as much beating at work as I do, probably more. Who is perhaps simpler in thought than I am and that in a way is saying something. If you have ever tried being honest with yourself for longer than a few weeks, months or years, you will realize how incredibly hard it is to find it in another. And you thought I was going to talk about.... Cheeez!

When one goes through a time of confused crisis in one's head for twenty-four hours a day, an offer to stay one's reckless fall when one is speeding downhill at a reckless pace, is nothing short of an act of incredible courage. Foolish maybe, because I am almost double his weight, but courageous nonetheless. Another addition to the beauty, which surrounds me? I see too much, as someone once said to me.

Intimacy is as much in a wetness of a passionate kiss, as in a gentle smile of understanding. Have you ever stood in front of a mirror and hated your body? I have. Even for a split second, it is not a pleasant way to feel. Yet, somehow I recovered from it, stronger in ways, I don't fully realize. Because I still find myself standing. Because I understand. Do I? And what has this got to do with the subject of this post?


White mountains,
White skin,
Soft snow,
Frozen inside akin,
Grey crowds,
Grey days,
Meandering roads,
Solitary silent ways,
Red seduction,
Red pain,
Bread and cheese,
Self pity in vain,
Black night,
Black fear,
Will to dream,
To hold you near.

The best lie

The cigarette smoke circled up from her lips in perfect rings. She lay looking blankly at the damp ceiling. She was strangely relaxed. Tired, but relaxed. He lay beside her, forbiddingly close, still covered in drying beads of sweat. He was still nauseated by the smell of smoke. He could still feel her all over.

It was good wasn't it?

Yes. It was.

It was the best ever, wasn't it?

She suddenly frowned. As if something had suddenly corrupted the perfect trance of her private blankness. The calm... Why does the calm go away as soon as he speaks.

Why must you do that every time?

Why indeed, he thought. He loved every inch of her five-foot-four frame. He knew it like he had seldom known anything else. He had seldom known anything else. Why should that matter? He knew what he had done.

What did I do! I just said that you were awesome.

She moved her legs over his. The skin on his thighs got goose-bumps. He was waiting. He had been waiting for so long that now he waited out of habit and not out of necessity. Not that it made the waiting any easier or difficult. Finally, as always, he could not wait any more.

Well?

No, it was not. It was not the best I've ever had. I've had better.

She still said it plainly enough. Without any emotion in her voice. Yet he saw the longing in her eyes. Eyes, which hidden behind a veil of smoke, belied her visible calm.

I love you.

I know.

He started humming a song.

What are you doing! Why must you sing when you can't? I can't even understand the song. Whose song is this?

Mine.

Yours!!

She laughed out loud. He smiled. A smile of complete surrender. This is how it must stay. This was the truth. He loved her too much to let this matter. All his pretensions of calm did not matter. His slighted pride did not matter. His attempts at being a man did not matter.

Are you happy with me?

She looked at him. A look of immense kindness. Her lips quivered, but the words did not fall out. She reached out and pressed his hand.

Tell me the truth. Please.

She lifted his hand to her lips. She could smell his sweat. She could smell his fear. She wanted to comfort him. Yet. His love for her was as truthful as he claimed it to be. She knew. She was happy for him. He had found her. His truth.

The truth? The truth is that I am happy. The truth is that you are a good man. The truth is that you are my best lie. My very best.