Life and love

"I want to live",she screamed
He just shrugged his shoulders,untied his laces and lay on the bed. He made sure he faced her while lying on the bed.He did not want her to feel abandoned.Touching her softy ,he stroked her cheek.She curled up to him like a kitten .
This was thier ritual every night .Words left unsaid,sad smile over his face and tears on her.
There wasn't much to be done now.
She used to be beautiful once,beautiful auburn hair that fell to her shoulders,bright intelligent eyes and a childlike face that broke into laughter at the hint of humour. Now the pallor did not leave her.The life was gone from her eyes.Only when she screamed did a gleam of life peep from behind the embers of her eyes.
Her eyes had always been beautiful,no emotion ever remained hidden . She always used to say tha her eyes tell on her .
Frail as she was,she got up and pulled over her nighty with such a force that he was afraid for a moment.Afraid and protetcive .Taking his hands she stroked them over her breasts.Except was  left were scars from the surgery .He took her nipples in his fingers and started stroking them ,hoping they would get erect,hoping that his touch would make her forget.
All she felt was somone nugging at her nipples which hurt.
She looked so frail and vulnerable.So thin and pallid that the light seemed to pass through her.
He took her in his arms and kissed her gently and tenderly,almost like kissing a child. Whispering his love into her ears.His love which would go beyond eternity.
She sensed that he had been having an affair. She knew him too well. She sensed it like a cow senses her dead calf. But she left her anger, hurt and betryal behind.It was almost like cancer had made a sage of her.
Eating simple food,a meal a day ,abnegating from sex,alcohol or meat.And now not being able to get angry at her husband's indiscretions.What else was left now except for attaining nirvana.

Slowly she dozed off to sleep.He went into the living room and lit a cigarette.
He had started seeing this woman from workplace.She had just been a support system to start with .....but gradually he drew to her.When he was with her he forgot all about death ,about suffereing and pain,about watching someone die everyday,watching life leave .For his sanity he decided to have an affair with her. He did not want to go where Suman was headed.He wanted something to hold him back,keep him grounded and rooted.He knew he was taking advantage of her empathy but yet he decided to have an affair with her.
There were more smiles now, fake compliments and laughs.Needless showering of attention and confessions of  love and how she was making him feel human again. She would look at him kindly,falling for him everyday,hanging on to his words. She felt she was fulfilling a divine compassionate purpose in life, giving succour to the needy.
Eversince he started his affair he felt calmer.He did not love her but neither did he feel guilty. Guess he was just tired taking care of Suman and wanted some respite.Just like Suman felt that because she was dying everything should revolve around her,he felt he was allowed one indiscretion.
Just for his sanity.

Keep off the grass

You'll find me sleeping on the grass
When all go back home
And leave the building
I sneak into their garden patch and sleep

While they are there
One has to stay off the grass
The gardner comes and tends to it
Makes sure there is a green patch on the sundry earth
Uses water, adds in good soil and tends to it

I like to walk on their grass in the morning
When noone is there
And gather in all the dew on my feet
Then if someone comes early
He will notice and holler 'Who is there ?You are not supposed to walk here."
Then he will violently shrug his shoulders ,and warn me to keep off the grass and walk away

I have been here for 5 yrs
Selling snacks outside their building
But nobody knows me
Remembers me
Everyday when they leave I sleep on their well tended grass
Smell their roses
And in the morning I wake up and soak in their dew

I know all about them
I see them,hear them
Sometimes in my sleep
I take their name
I know who got a promotion and got left out
Who was kissing whom in the parking lot
But they don't see that I see them

I am like the shrub in their garden
No but the shrub also gets noticed
And removed in no time
I am forever ignored

How I like to walk on their grass
How I like to pluck their roses
How I like to gather their dew in my feet
How I like to enter their space,
Get a peice of them
When they are not watching.

Paper mache dreams

A thought for a story of  a woman dreaming to get married someday .
She gets married to a rich guy.She has to be moulded and torn aprt and .Then put back together through a mixture ,dried and added as embellishment to the armour.
Like the paper mache which is used to decorate the armor.So fine yet depleted of its original texture.
Loses her identity to beautify the aromor- the armor of the house,tradition,expecttaions and role subservience..She is tamed from being wild ,spontaneous self and transformed into a lady who knows her diamonds and chiffons.
Moulded and unoriginal,just a decoration in the house.Expecetd to play all the role of a mother,wife,daughter-in-law to the hilt. Have perectly manicured nails and pedicured feet. She trots around the world with all the manners in place.She is the one who bears the brunt of the beauty the most.As if loss of identuty was'nt enough ,the paper-mache cover gets cut and torn in the war.The solid armour stays intact,proud and impervious.The harm comes to it much later.The price of war is paid by the woman first.

She then thinks of marriage as just a paper -mache dream.
It would make a good story oneday.

My Red Brick House

My red brick house

The vermilion red of my blood

Smears these walls

I have given them my all

I have held the scaffoldings together with my blood

Screaming into the pillow

Spurring the weeping willow

My pain does not find an utterance

And shatter the glass windows

The whittles and blows that injure me

Must never touch the walls of my house

The venom that is spewed

Must never spatter these walls

My home once made of love

Now bears the blood marks in vermilion red

I’ll give my everything

I’ll give my all

To keep these walls standing

I’ll cut out my heart and give it to you

I’ll bleed to death

And paint these walls red

I’ll not let them discolor



Will you tell me that it will do?

That if take my heart out and bleed to death

If I muffle all my cries

It will do

My home will remain intact

That if I take your blows

And  die a little bit everyday

You won’t go away

And the walls of my home won’t loose their color

Broke Back Mountain

The mind is chattering again.
Seems like I am carrying a mountain on my shoulders which is breaking my back.
Advises and opportunities around me are running asunder.

I am thankful for the people around me and for some of the work that I am doing.Otherwise I feel like I am knocking at a door of a room which is empty. All I hear on the other side is the sound of the wind circulating through emptiness yet I can't stop knocking. What do I expect ....that at the other end the universe will let me enter into its embrace. That the door ,at which I am knocking, will open into space,into freedom and courage.
Why am I knocking what is so wrong with this side. Something warm is missing.Its cold out here,like an emotional Siberia where I have been sent as a prisoner of war. A war of my own creation but a war nonetheless.
Things could have been much worse.You could have not had the things you had. You could have been insane. You could have not had the people you have.You could have been dying.

I wonder sometimes if during the days of the revolution the suicide rates go down.People find a mission to direct their energies to...find a way out of obscurity and become a part of something.

How many people do I know who find life quite aimless...not worth living beause they don't have a mission a direction.

Well I for one feel that I don't have a mission but I know for sure that I will find one for sure one day .....one day is another day which shall arrive for sure which much pomp and show!

I was in German Bakery in Dec '09 and last week saw on the news that it had been ripped off by a bomb.Quite sad.
Right now I have made up my mind to do a PHD. I hate the mind numbingly stupid analysis I do here. You need to cook up a plausible story and be able to carry it off. The only things of interest in my lives are the NGO I am working with and the books I am reading.
I realise in slums also people earn around 12-15k . I earn around thrice of that....I don't have a family to take care of ... I only have myself. So it should not be difficult.
Anyways my life's a lot richer than it has ever been. I feel that economic independence has allowed me to live the kind of life I want to.
Thanks god for that.

A distant memory

A distant memory
From a far away land
An hour of reckoning
And a time of reconciliation
With your absence

Try as I might
I can't remeber your eyes
And how they flooded with emotions
Your smile
Whether your eyes crinkled when you did
Your smell and your touch
Was it mushy and warm or what
Your voice
Whether it was mellifluous or thunderous

All I can remember is how I felt when you went away
Left in a lurch
Try as might I can't remember you
All I remember is my feeling of being alone

Today if I want to celebrate you
I can only remember the sound of your laughter
Thats the one distinct memory that I still cherish
The others of your morrow I choose to forget

Hope you found peace that deluded you
Hope you found what your were looking for

Happy Birthday Mom.

Break up and smell the coffee

Yesterday I was in Barista ,sitting and sipping my coffee and reading my book. I happened to evesdrop on a conversation of a couple sitting on the next table.
The guy : "....it will happen sooner or later.It may take 1 yr,2 or 3 yrs but it will happen"
Woman: So will it be sooner or later
Guy:See I am very clear about it
Woman:Iam also clear about it. I have decided to stay happy no matter what. My husband is seeking a relationship outside home and thats not acceptable to me.

Ah...so they were breaking up.Seperating.Divorcing maybe.
There was a clinical precision with which they were talking about breaking up. Maybe this is the dénouement  of happenings over months, fights,conversations they'd had so far.Somehow I sensed that the man was in a more powerful position. The woman was talking of now concentrating on her career and her life. Leaving behind the 'us' that socializes together.Talking of children and how for a daughter her father sets an example and how that affects all her future relationships. I felt the woman wanted to say more....screem at him,say you ruined by life and I hate you,your philandering etc etc....but she stopped herself .Maybe because she was in public but my hunch is because she wanted to put up a brave front and show that she was OK. I wish she could have told the guy that he was an asshole. The guy on the other hand seemed cold and cynical and seemed to be making sage like pronouncements "You have to be positive in life" WOW! what insight.
I sensed that by making her feel small he did not allow her to vent out.
There are two tactics that people apply.Either they make you feel like a goddess that you aren't ....."you are too good...I don't deserve you" OR they make you feel like a witch "Initailly I was bessotted with you .....then I saw that we were't compatible.You were too cynical and clingy"
The breed of men ! Why do they assume they have such power.
Then the man went on to discuss the finances and that she should apply for a debit card and that she would alsways find 75K in the account for spending. These guys were both doctors and well off I guess.
What struck me was the cavalier attitude the guy had. How he was sermonizing . She whould have gotten up ,slapped and told him to shut up .

Once they left another couple took their seat and I assume were living in happy domesticity. They were discussing a broken helmet and how it broke and how it needs to be fixed !Such mundane talk that I went back to my book.

I guess happy couples are those who discuss the mundane stuff with great involvement .Unhappy ones ignore each other or vociferously discuss themselves and life.

I keep thinking I want to be in a long term relationship.That at 27 I am 'not-so-young' anymore.But then I look at this stuff and I feel free. Freedom's  the thing being a relationship,being married and having kids you don't have. Freedom to choose a career, to study, to travel etc. 
Right now I can think of all indulging in a lot of stuff,I don't have these responsibilities .I guess what I miss of a relationship is the intimacy bit.

Well there's a price on everything.

Phoenix

I attended the lit fest in Jaipur and came back all refreshed and raring to go.Lit fest had some of the most titillating views  ....which left you gasping for more. And some of the most beautiful chics around....those with the long,firm limbs.And some cute guys too....well what of meeting an articulate stranger with bedroom eyes at such a festival...what of it .It doesn't happen in real life ,only in movies .Sigh!
Some parts of the fest  was boring and some provoking . It was mileu of good and bad,young and old,regressive and progressive,ecstasy and moroseness,pomp and austerity....there was something for everyone.
As is predictable you find a lot of people with intellectual trappings at such festivals. One misses the earthiness somewhere.
I can tell you that I had a lot of fun.Ever since I broke up this is the most fun I've had.
I broke up some 6 months ago ....thats water under the bridge now.Earlier on thats all I could think about...but now at Lit fest all I thought about was myself and what I wanted to do and how much I loved reading and writing.
It was a weird kind of breakup....but I wasn't shocked.Guess there was no silence before the storm so I wasn't caught unawares.Things had'nt being going well so we decided to call it off before things got too ugly.The relationship ended and I felt a certain numbness for a month which kept moroseness away .I got busy in activities that I'd always wanted to do and never had the time for .....later when the numbness went I had these scafoldings around me which kept me standing and there no real mourning.I don't remember crying too much.

It has been a time of reawakeing for me.I am doing things that I'd never done before...I am truly exploring myself and life.Becoming more independent and secure. Having said that I yearn to be in love again but not at the expense of self interest or growth.Well that too shall happen when time is ripe.I am fairly content as of now.

I can understand freedom now...in its various hues.The parts of it which drive you ecstatic and parts which drive you insane.Something that I've never experienced before.I soak in all that life has to give to me.
I can safely say these are the most sensorial days of my lives

Luv
A

I am feeling oddly happy today....
everyone around me is unhappy and equally confused on what they want to do in life....gives me an odd sense of security and contentment.I would hate to meet people who are doing some sad ass job and happy about it.Instead I love meeting who hate what they are doing and are trying to figure out what they want to really do in life.....its makes me feel that I am not alone .
For their sake and mine I hope we each figure out what we really wish to do and find a sense of closure.
If someone in the world gotta be ecstatic then  please god let it be me !