random smiles =)

well, i did try captioning them. 

but i guess. i said almost all i had to when i set  the title.

.......................................................

and btw is it vanity if i spend a lot of time reading my own posts over and over?

blowing away wish fairies...

kali sihai se likhi raat me ek chaand ka chandrabindu.
ek chauthai zindagi me likha ek sadi ka alpviram.

ek simti chadar me ek lipti main, unglion me gin rahi bhuli parchahiyan.
jaise saagar kinare thehri zameen dekhe doobta aasman.

humming birds.

There was this someone not too long ago. 

There was not a day when we wouldn’t talk.

There was this someone not too long ago who would fight me and tell me that I was better than what I thought, There was this someone, who though didn’t know me in the literal sense of the term, knew me well.

There was this someone not too long ago with who i spoke in poetry.

There was this someone not too long ago who was enticed.

Now the mystery wanes, but, there was this someone not too long ago who had not yet solved the mystery.

...i don't even have a picture of him...he exists now, only, in my memories.

"Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too."

“Come here”, he said and pulled her close. 

Theirs had been a roller coaster ride. A ride which has had more than its fair share of downs; one whose designer has been too gracious and humble to defy gravity.  They had not spoken, written for ages. Like a wildfire something had erupted between them a long time ago.

She looked at him, looking for something, what? She wasn’t too sure. She had practiced things to say, things to do. She had planned to hit him,accuse him, chide him…

Nothing existed now. Like the remains of that burnt forest, some things reminded them of a seemingly happier wistfulness. There was nothing, not even nostalgia. 

She looked for lust, there was none… He seemed too pure, too fragile almost.

She looked for love, there was none… Hadn’t she lost that bet before, lost many a times over?

There had been fights over the acceptance. There had been fights over non-acceptance. There had been fights over reluctance and fights over the ensuing indifference. They fought in silence. Yes, there never was too much noise. 

She was weary of looking.

He gave her another tug and she held him.

She held him tight. 
She held him like there was no tomorrow and wept. 

“Come here”, he had said when he pulled her close. 

 ....................................................................

...Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky...

-Pablo Neruda. 

 ....................................................................

all has been said and done - 2

"I love her," Rice said. "I love her so much. And I love her so much that I love that she hasn't spoken to me -- because even in that I have learned so much over the last two years."

a choice.

Suddenly he reached out and pulled a half-burnt stick from the fire. He thrust it at me so that I flinched back.

“What are you doing?” I cried startled and angry. 

“Trying to show you something. The stick, it scared you. it may have even hurt you, if you hadn’t been so quick. But look-in trying to burn you, it’s consuming itself. That is what happens to a heart-“

-Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS

random(err)

your  hold on your grammar is the measure of your hold on your morals;your hold on you.


i have now stopped editing my blog posts before posting them. they are irreparable. 

(not a general statement. not one bit)

oh btw, India won the world cup. =D cheers!

wishlist-3

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me.  ~Charles Lamb

I want a huge room overcrowded with books. I want to live in the library. I have a bookshelf at home that is in one word minimal. I want to live amongst the books, smell them, and look at yellow pages. I want to open up plastic covers from new books off the press, but more than that I want tiny notes made on a book, smart lines underlined by people who have read them. I have not read enough. Not because I never had the time; But more so because there are too many books, yet never enough. I want a piece of each book. I want to read a line from each book that I have. The story is not as engrossing as the words. The small words that make amazingly crafted phrases. 5 worded wonders that make or break a story; just like that last line in Black Swan that justified the entire movie.  I am bad with grammar, I am bad with spellings, but I know a line and its entailments when I read one. I can’t get enough of the writ. I can’t get enough of writing. I can’t get enough of reading.

I’ll change jobs. I’ll work at a bookstore. I’ll be a bookshop owner or a librarian in a few years. 

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.  ~Kenko Yoshida

.......................................................

...

Of the many ways of beating perfection, one is to stoop low. 
So low, so that you know, that you are not good enough for perfection any more.

Aïcha.

I wish I could draw.

I would have drawn for you her exact picture.

It was late in the night and she was sitting all by herself on the three-seat bench on the train. Draped in a laced orange burqa, this former beauty wore horn-rimmed glasses which went well with her wrinkles. Her skin shone, almost competing with her Swarovski bracelet that she wore with élan. I almost smiled at the vanity, one that I assumed.  But this was not why she caught my eye.

She was engrossed. Her crystal studded bracelet laden hand was holding this copy of the holy Quran, her lips mouthing her lord’s diktat. No this was not why she caught my eye.

Her other hand was slowly patting her bosom, right over her heart. Have you seen a mother patting a child’s forehead as she lulls him to sleep. Yes, just like that. She was slowly rhythmically thumping her heart.

She looked at me, saw me awed and as if she read my mind, she smiled at me in acknowledgement.

I wish I could draw. 

.......................................................

where do you go?

She stood in front of him, naked, stark naked.

Without clothes, without masks, without hallucinations, without a single thought running in her mind.

She stood naked in front of him, stark naked.

She had always been too much to take, too pretty to look at. Too large to grasp onto, too plain to be gorgeous, too complicated to understand.

She had always been like this, always naïve, clinging on to him with all her force, yet, somehow she was far, far away from him.

There she was, naked, in her true form, in front of him.

She had always been like that; she came too strong on him. She told him how obsessed she was with him. How fascinated she was with his lips, she was jealous of the cutlery he used, she had once told him.  She was vulnerable as a child; she got hurt, made a face and walked away, not once, many times over. She had done that. Yet, she always managed to find her way back. Unlike other 3 month wonders she had lasted. He was not sure how, he never asked her to leave neither forced her to stay.

There was no way back, she knew. He had made it clear to her, he knew that she knew. 

He called her stupid. Yet, deep down he was scared, scared of the strength she had. 

She could destroy him.

Somehow he knew she wouldn't, it was not his destruction instead her annihilation that he was afraid of.  

She stood there naked;

She had given him more than he had ever asked for. More than he wanted, more than he could take. He was guilty. 
Guilty for his un-acceptance of her; guilty for the atrocities she meted out on her identities.
He kept standing, sitting, resting, covering up yet never moving.

She asked a lot of questions. Everything about her asked him questions.

He didn’t know answers to them himself; some he just didn’t want to answer.

She was persistent.

He wasn’t helping.

He wished she would just stay, not ask questions, just let time flow, and not rush.

He wished she would let him be. 
Let him understand himself first; let him know where he stands before he could tell her where she stood in his life.

Let him make up his mind,gather enough strength to let her go; enough strength to let him cut loose off her.

She stood there naked in front of him, she scared him.

He finally held her, for he was afraid she would collapse.

She slept in his arms. He was awake. He kept wide awake. 


He keeps wide awake.

 .......................................................

she packs  nonchalance and charts her path to disgrace with every turn of the page.

annihilation.

what should I look for when I look at you?

what face should I wear when I see yours?

am I more than a number?

I am not sure if I am even a name. 

trailing headlights

creased memories. 

biased hindsight

myopic prospicience.

...still rains...you still don't know.

random gets random-er!

[after 15 days of silence]

X: so NOW you call.

Y: yeah. thought of you.

X: kaise?

Y: was watching ALIENS vs PREDATORS.

X: =|

Y: good night! =)

X: =|

.......................................................

i won.

I won’t apologize tonight.

Do I come across as the slut the whore?

Yes I do, I make you walk on that road,

Walk on THAT road, the cemetery of the sins; of guilt.

What hides in there do you notice? What hides in there, do you care?

In there is buried my pride, doused in fire, my identity.

Or is the soil fed the ashes of your ethics?

Do I sound obscene to you tonight?

I do sound distasteful, almost like bad porn.

Do I?

I do, don’t I?

I am no lady with pearls, I am no lady dressed in silk.

I am no lady clad in grace;

Fuck, I am no lady and YOU are no man.

What have you on tonight? What colour are your hands?

Are they crimson again?

Will you colour the sky red again?
Colour it red for it is my colour;

It is my colour yes, colour it red, for it is my blood that drips from your hands.

Wash me with it, for it will wash you off me.

Let me fall silent. For silence is all I have. Silence is where I can hide.

.

There will be the day when I will make peace with peace,
One day there will be no more words, someday I will stash away the swords.

There will be a day when I will stop hoping, stop hoping against hope.

One day this nagging thumping in the chest will cease,

One day I will not miss me, one day I will be complete in my incompleteness.

 Sandpaper my loneliness away.

One day I won’t look for a you in a me.

One day I will stop looking for me.

One day with silence I will elope.

One day, I won’t wake up with a nagging headache.

One day I will sleep.

ZERO

Nothing.

Nothing worse than my powerlessness at loss of words. 

Nothing is worse than impotence when I can’t weave those broken sentences into a melody. 

Nothing is worse than tearing off pages writ with broken images of absurd situations.

Nothing is worse than my incapacity to indite the sun in my wan sky.

Nothing.

Nothing is worse than poetry’s persisting abstinence from my indulgence.

I just can't get it back.

he whispers secrets.

HIT, HIT HARD.

"don't make me feel worse"

"I am not trying to bash you up or make you feel worse. I though you were better than this. I would rather you mess with some one as a rebound or a fling than than go back to some-one with dignity between your legs. 
No, I don't hate you, you lost respect, don't know if it matters to you though."

green.

[out of the blue]


him: tu nahin hoti to main kya karta.

[taken aback]

her: main nahin hoti to koi aur hota.


[slowly but surely]


him:aisa nahin hai.

Wrath kept hissing in my ears as I absolved lust …No, you are not on the spot, it is my vanity that is ridiculed, for the jest has always been me. 

my lullaby singer walked out on me.
now i sleep at nights.

whtever.

i thought it was fashionable to hate your boss, now i know it is an integral part of the scope of work. 

the LIST

Vanity:
taking a great picture and photo-shopping it, trying to make me look prettier.

Self-deprecation:
waking up unkempt, going through the day unkempt, sleeping unkempt.

Sorrow:
no one to show the picture to.

Hypocrisy:
reading the SECRET and trying to make-believe that i can make-believe

Bliss:
papa reading snippets from the gujurati newspaper when i leave for work, mummy gushing about my long working hours when i am back.


to be continued...

bliss!

20 minutes of unadulterated, unmatched bliss!

lyrics: HERE

gay and happy, happy and gay!

if you are "quite the catch" yet single. people think you are "gay".

umm! well, i AM gay, VERY much like the old times. go figure!

...

realization 1: loves "LOVE AAJ KAL".

OK, go on with the swear words now.

whatever.

have you heard crash and burn by savage garden?

no, nothing too special about the song, nothing remarkable. 

but when you hear it after you have spent the worst week of your life, when the ikka-dukka people who were there at your lowest (who are immune to all your tantrums,cusses and love) also manage to not turn up, it reads itself as God's-book-of-unattainable. 

still waters run deep.

There are a lot of ripples here. There is a lot of noise, CHAOS.

She must be shallow.

yeah, so you think!


I am struck by my ability to be so many different things in a single day.

the joker, the joke, the optimist, the cynic, the snob, the failure, the intellectual, the whore, the Goddess.

I am everything you see, yet I am nOt anyone you know.

I hate it.

i write sad stuff, that does not mean that i am sad.

please make these aunties disappear or better still make me disappear.
and please make songs of dabangg and once upon a time in mumbai disappear as well.

status quo

And I wonder if I
Ever cross your mind
For me it happens all the time

It's a quarter after one
I'm a little drunk
And I need you now
Said I wouldn't call
But I've lost all control
And I need you now

make me an acoustic cover for the track. the noise in the background is irritating.

=)

a smile sure straightens many things.

my valentine's gift was a rs.5 discount by the gali ka sandwich wala on a rs. 30 ka sandwich.

only because i looked very flushed and yet smiled at him.

realization: try to smile. things will fall into place. even for a while.

=)

by the sea

a little after afternoon it was. 

a little before the crimson evening. 

a little over-whelming it was. 

a little foreboding. 

A thousand syllables make my day, the night falls amid silence.

.......................................................

all in a day's work.

Y: I still love you, i can't just forget what i felt and move on. 


X: I think i should stop talking to you.  


[10mins later]

X: You are with someone else. Stay there.


[15mins later]


Y: Miss Rude.


X: Mr. Hypocrite. 


[5 mins later]


Y: I am your friend, will be there for you. Always.


[10 mins later]


Y: that freaking apple smirnoff makes me wanna puke.


X: try orange twist. much better.


.

whatever.

We oft repeat mistakes. The fickleness of the human mind and the ability of repair over time make an ass out of us, repeating the same things over and over again, thinking things will magically work themselves out this time around.

But given the starfish’s memory that most of us have, one also forgets that when a sequence is repeated the end will be the same as it was the first time over.

But no, we still go out in the rain, wet our jeans, splurge in the mud and then swear to god I am not, never, EVER, going out in the rains again. But then, when it rains again, the sweet smell of the earth hypnotises you to go back in there.

ACT 1:

 ACT 2:

loop...

We are silly.

I am silly.

Period.

rant-2

there is nothing much to say. nothing much to do. work is rehab i guess.

mind becomes numb till the day draws to a close.

having said that, de-addiction should have been easier. 

i tell myself that the worst is over, but i turn around to find that the rot is still left.

I am still left. still bereft. 

rant-1

I looked yonder, I looked away.

Far into the darkness I looked far, further away.

No…why am I even trying the words will not rhyme. Wasn’t I told before that there is no music left?

There is so much that I have to tell. It is not about a broken heart, it has been broken for eons now. It is like that unknown, unwanted part of me that invariably sticks to me all the time. I cannot put my finger on to it as of now. I can’t at all. But there is something that has been harrowing onto me.

I don’t have sleepless nights anymore I keep busy all the time. I want to shy away, get away run away. It is not about things that bother me. it is me.

There is this part of me that hates me. I hate the eyes, the skin the smile. I hate it more because it is pretty. I don’t like pretty anymore.

I see no purpose of pretty. There is putrid black in it.  Like a mask that I invariably, inexplicably keep wearing.
 My only hint of salvaging me from the darkness from total, ineffable stupor, is something that I have let go off.
 *I took the cure for happiness* where do I go from here?

Mornings turn into nights and make complete days that turn into weeks and months. There is total mayhem, total anarchy during the days. I am a completely different person; probably that is why I should steer clear of the nights. It is the darkness and the distant noise that reminisces of the chaos of the day, in which I come face to face with something that looks foreign to me, something that was a part of me for longer than I can imagine. I have in front of me, a mirage of me from a not too distant past, looking out of the window with mist laden eyes but a smile on her face. Where to? Why to? When and how? I have a thousand questions but I cannot frame them. I cannot live with someone else’s diktat governing it.  

A thousand syllables make my entire day, the night falls amid silence. A thread that entwined the melody of a hopeful future now lies knotted inside a case.

There are a thousand rants and a thousand odes to that likeness of mine. I am so busy feeling sorry and sighing that I have lost track of the hurt. I have built it up so much in the system that I wake up every morning with that exact same thought.

No I don’t need help I can help myself. I am not asking for anything.
I am asking for a hug, I am asking for human emotion, I am asking for a human touch.

I am asking for reality, someplace where I don’t have to fake, where there is no room for lies.

I have no reason to be sorry, and that makes me feel all the more sorry for me. I am not sad, neither depressed. Anyone who knows me in real life cannot make heads and toes of the whole rant and I hate that. I hate that I can fake and convincingly so. I hate that you cannot look into my eyes and say what I am feeling. I wish I wore my emotions on my sleeve so that I did not have to hide behind the wall.

…..

All dressed up for Prague

why should i tell you how i feel?
why should i count you my sighs?
why shouldn't i shrug off and walk away?
why should i sing to you my fears?

but i cannot not do it.
i cannot do it.

for I Prepare myself for a war

And I don't know what i'm doing this for

Trying to let it all go

But how can I when you still don't know?

I could wait for you

Like that hole in your boot

Waiting to be fixed

I could wait for you

What good would that do

But to leave me pricked?

free-fallin

no. nothing at all.
despondent i am not; am sure not obsolete.
am a little wasted, today am farther away from the complete.

i make these words rhyme,
i make it to places on time.
i make myself a little bouquet of plastic flowers;
i tell myself they smell just fine.

Who's gonna drive you home tonight?

Who do you call when you have no one else to go to?

When you are looking, feeling like shit and need to cry your lungs out?

Who do you call when you want to get real?

You just know don’t you?

And yes he is there. Right there standing to hold you tight, so tight that it hurts when he holds, so that the hurt goes away.

 He is not someone you love; he is the person who is the witness.

The witness to your pitfalls, the witness to how you threw up when you got drunk, and the person who knows just how your nose gets all choked when you cry and who just knows how easy it is to make you smile when you your eyes burn with all the crying.

He is not someone you love.

He is someone who has been there always. Someone who has known you for real

He is with someone else. He is happy with her. You are not jealous.

 You tell him about all other men, he does not get jealous.

You don’t love him. But, he is the only place you go to when you have nowhere else to go to.

You don’t love him, but he is the only place you think of when you awake through the night and you can’t sleep and you want to.

He is not someone you love. But he is the only place you go to, the only place you remember to find when you are lost.

............................................

tiny little things

Tiny little candles on that tiny little cake;

A Tiny little boat on that tiny lake..

Tiny little lips kiss as promises they make,

But these tiny brown eyes refuse to fake.

Tiny little fingers trace names on the sands of time;

Tiny –tiny names one yours one mine.

Tiny little feet measure the distance to the shrine,

A tiny little world I know, and a tiny little moon with tiny stars that shine.

Tiny little memories unfurl their tiny wings;

“Fly out of that tiny cage” , that tiny violin sings.

Over the hedge in that tiny little house a death knell rings.

Now stands there a tiny barren tree with two lonely swings.

......................................................

Baby I have been here before

I know this room, I've walked this floor

I used to live alone before I knew you.

I've seen your flag on the marble arch

Love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

silence.

intriguing,gorgeous,incorrigible,nasty,hasty,unnerving,unsettling,disruptive,impatient,avoidable.


silence.

infinite silence.

I am puzzled as the newborn child; i am troubled at the tide.

It is dusk already; I don’t even have your shadow to grasp onto.

Your footprints on sand blown away by the arid wind…yes, it is the parched desert now.

Not the garden where we once ran; ran wild and free with the horses.

No, nowhere in sight is that bounty, nowhere at all. 

There are no horses, no pigeons.

There are scavengers now, all around me, eagles no butterflies anymore.

Yes, there are carcasses…those of love, of the mere hints of it, of unsaid, un-kept promises.

There is another one, on that distant corner, yes, right there, that corpse is of an unkempt me.

"Did I dream you dreamed about me? 
Were you hare when I was fox? 
Now my foolish boat is leaning 
Broken lovelorn on your rocks, 
For you sing, 'touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow: 
O my heart, o my heart shies from the sorrow' " 
-song to the siren, Tim Buckley.

i write sonnets on the papyrus and make tiny paper-gliders out of them.
they are carried into the unknown, inside that dark alley beyond which grows hope's tree.
your tree.

i hum the soft melody.

your tune races,runs behind the flying wishes,blowing them onwards.

these wishes,my flying wishes.

my voice, i feel, is heard; 
my writ,i know, read.

"loss"

"I stood; bereft."

I am still wondering if the emphasis is more on the letdown or the nostalgia.

I am still wondering if the ego was hurt or the spirit wrecked.

I am at loss.

Don’t just stand there silent.

 Ask me to leave.

Let my leaving be worthy of your pursuit.

Don’t just call me names.

Scar me for life.

I want marks as a testimony.

If I can’t get love-bites; give me the bruises of a brawl.

Don’t just ask me to leave.

Push me away.

It is bad if you someone is ignoring you on purpose; worse if that someone is ignorant of the ignorance.

...................................................

she keeps running, running, running.

Wading through burnt-cracked-empty earthen ware, past the stained-crumpled bedspread, across the wilted urns, she enshrouded the names etched on the hand painted wall.

She walks, now, with a porcelain guitar.

and you ask her where the music is?