Imaratein

The last time I wrote something in Hindi, I was in class 11.

So when this came to me out of the blue, I couldn’t stop myself from posting it here…

jane kis ghari me chupi h zindagi

kabhi dabi si, kabhi manchali h zindagi

kisi ped ki aad me luka chuppi khelti

kabhi kisi palle se aansoon odhti h zindagi

jane kis sadak ke bich ruk gayi h zindagi

jane kis bhid me bhagti h zindagi

kisi ke aks me ise dhundti hun

to kabhi kisi shishe me kaid milti h zindagi

kuch patjhadon ki sarsarahat h isme

kuch foolon ki masli khushboo h

kuch yadon ki imaratein hn

kuch aane wale khandarh

jane kis gali kis nukkar pe aaj bikti h zindagi

jane kis aasman ki tasveer pe mit-ti h zindagi

kisi khule pinjare ke kone me haari si padi h

jane kis agyat kavi ke akshar bani h zindagi

Pretensions...

I was watching T.V. and for a change there was this program different from your usual "saas bahu" pollutants.

It was something called "Mahi Way", about this fat girl and her ups and downs in life...

At first it made me laugh, but then she said something about how we pretend to be someone we are not because who we are is too scary to be...and I realized how true that is...

I realized that sometimes we pretend so hard not to pretend that we almost make ourselves believe that we are not in faact pretending...

So I am going to take a leaf out of her book and let it all out of my tummy up into the air:

1) I am not as sad as I make myself believe I am or should be and I am not as happy as my laugh is loud.

2) I make fun of me being fat not because I am cool with it or because I don't care, but I think doing it before anyone else does, makes it less humiliating (it actually doesn't, I just like to tell myself it does).

3) I pretend that I know I am ugly and that I have accepted it.

I actually think my cheeks are the prettiest shade of pink and my slightly upturned nose is like a cute cherry, that I have the sexiest of lips and the sweetest of smiles, that the fat gives me curves and that my hair (though i like to call them unmanageable) form the most gorgeous of curles the night after i wash them... I truly believe I am bautiful, I am just waiting for everyone else to wake up and see that...

4) I pretend that I love serious books and that MBs are just for brainless chicks... nothing beats a night spent reading one of those old timer MBs, full of subtle romance and grand gestures...

5) I have always said I like rock music, because I thought that is what cool people do... it gives me a headache

6) I pretend about the number of guys who asked me out...

7) I love walking around my house in my bathrobe, not because its comfortable, like I like to say, but even though it makes me sweat like a pig in the summers, it makes me feel like one of those heroines from old English movies, sensual and graceful.

8) I pretend that I am all grown up and mature and am sooooo over mush...

the truth is sexually explicit flirting turns me off... I would rather be called a doll and pampered than be called a bitch and fucked

9) I don't give myself roses because I love them and like giving them to me... its just a way to tell others to give them to me and make me feel special

10) I tell myself over and over again that I hate Hyderabad and want to move closer home, the truth is I love the freedom it has given me

11) I pretend to be sooooo happy when my friends are happy and fall in love...the truth is I feel jealous that its not I who am in their shoes...

12) I pretend to be a cynic who doesn't believe in love anymore, the truth is I am still waiting for my prince to climb the tower and carry me off to his palace in the skies, to love me and cherish me above all else...the truth is watching pretty woman still makes me laugh and cry at the same time...

13) I pretend i never dream, the truth is every night before I sleep, I like to think one fantasy love story... I actually have an imaginary guy, who loves me and hugs me to sleep, everytime the real ones break my heart...

14) I pretend to be a miss-know-it-all, but the truth is, most times, I am like a rabbit frozen in front of a pair of headlights on a dark summer night...

15) I pretend to have more friends than I can count, the truth is I am just that little girl, whose Birthday party noone wants to come to...

The teddy...

“It’s been a long time since I wrote something…”

This has been the starting line of most of the little I have written in the last 2 years.
There was a time when I would churn out two, three, sometimes four posts a night.
I could wake up at 3:27am on a black summer morning and find inspiration in the blank, except for the rotting bloody bodies of dead mosquitoes, walls of my minuscule hostel room.
Today, I lie in my plump bed, fatter in both body and experience, no not wallet, do you know the ratio of the salary of an ASE to her cost of living?? Its 1:38 (No I was just trying to be witty, no I did NOT calculate it, but you get the point right??)Ah! Well! I digress, so where was I? Yes I was in my plump bed with a fat body of experience, a fatter body per se, a blank page and a printed keyboard, in short all the tools required to cook a delicious literary broth.
Yet, the page remains bland and the words in my mind half-baked, because my kitchen is out of stock of the one key ingredient, “Inspiration”.
What is inspiration anyway?
Is it a strange face in the crowd that is gone forever in a span of a heartbeat, or a familiar stranger we sit next to every day on our way to work? Is it a little voice we hear inside our head, or is it the God whose existence we all try to believe in? Is it the smell of rain in the air or the colour of the sky on a sunny day?
Is it a broken heart or the edge of a tapestry you see through the half open window of the apartment in the building opposite to yours?
Is it hope or is it life itself?
I do not know…
All I know is that there times when everything feels empty and meaningless and life feels like a dream trapped in an eternal repetitive cycle. You crave for a way out, to write something anything yet everything eludes you, it’s like you are empty of ideas, empty of ability, empty of life itself.
You remember, how when you were little
life meant a cute cuddly teddy bear with a pink satin ribbon we loved to run through our fingers, ‘coz it felt so soft and shiny. Today, it is a monstrosity of unspent tears and dusty emotions, of broken hearts and discoloured dreams…

And then comes a day when you are sitting at your window, listening to the thunder of a rainless sky, as the sun takes a deep plunge down the horizon, feeling the wind whip your hair around your face. Your legs are cramped, your laptop at the verge of becoming extinct, your view is the same empty plot/garbage dump, you try not to look at every day, yet for no reason you feel this faint stirring of something, like hope, like just a faint hint that something other than emptiness still resides in some hidden corner of your being…

And in moments like this, you almost believe, that under all that grime, under those broken pots and disfigured pans this monster still has that little cuddly teddy curled up somewhere, a little too dusty, a little too frayed, quite a bit thinner and very wobbly… but with that faded pink ribbon stills blowing around its crumbing ears, just as soft if not as shiny as it was…in moments like this you almost believe in belief

In the Dark...

He took her arm and tucked it safely in the crook of his elbow.

He heard her heart beat under the russle of her deep gown.

He bent towards her and whispered... "worry not my princess, I am there to hold you every time you falter"

She heard the gentle strains of music intermingling with the chatter of people waiting for her.

She saw the delicate patterns on the ancient glass panes of the door, enlightened by the subtle rays from the room beyond.

She felt his hand press hers reassuring...

She finally reached out and pushed across to the other side...

And then all was gone...

The light, the music, the people... his fingers slipped from hers... she twirled where she stood, lost in that dark hole of forever...

And there she twirls still, in that russling gown of misery... living the unreality of betrayal... stilled in a frozen block of eternity...

reaching out towards a hand of promise whose fingertips forever remain just out of reach...

The day of love

Its the designated day of love, yet all I feel today is an emptiness where that love should have been. I try to substitute the void with rose coloured excused dipped in chocolate sauce.
I keep enumerating the things that are missing, because when I sit down to list the things that are not, I end up with a blank sheet.
And I hate blank sheets... I hate barrenness.
Some people say that emptiness is a place from where you can start again, its the point where you have so much more space to fill up.
But what do I fill it with? The past that no longer looks back? or the future that is nothing but an empty picture in a frame of the present?
I did not lose anything, except an illusion, the illusion I created to appease a hungry dream, an illusion that lulled the dream into a poisonous sleep.
And now I sit here at my dusty doorstep,
watching as the illusion walks away down the road to sea with its boxes of magic and colourful scarves, with its eternal promises and packs of cards...
I wonder if the dream that I so treacherously put to sleep, would ever wake up to sing me its sweet lullaby again?

Broken Butterfly

I would have fought till my last breath
against the very Goddess of death
I would have stood in the way of every rolling hill
and slain every monster with my sword, until
you were safe and sound
in dreams profound
in your bed tucked, away
from every drowning bay
yet, as I lay here crumpled, in a pain so fine
you sit on a high seat, laugh and dine
with the fiends who pierced me, with their fiery spear
I scream and cry, but you find nothing to hear
And as I wonder with my dying sigh
if you were my friend or was it just a lie
you flare at me, raise a hue and cry
how could I doubt you, how could I deny
that you had a life and a right to choose
whom you wished to laugh with, whom you wish to bruise
And as you laugh there merrily, on your table so high
A broken butterfly, I quietly die...

I lost my best friend today-- To betrayal, to love and to pre-set notions.

The people who know you are the hardest to convince that you are trying to change.
The people who tell you what's wrong with you and what you need to improve are the first ones to think you are mocking them or being sarcastic,when you actually take their advice and try to be a "better" person.
The people who tell you to give them space are the ones who tell you to FO!!! for being a snob, when you do exactly that.

Why is it that the relationships we cherish the most are the ones that we invariably end up losing?
Why is it that "baseless insecurity" is what often leads to broken ties?
Why is it that the one person we trust with every hidden corner of our heart, betrays us the deepest?

A personal surprise

On an impulse, yesterday, I bought myself the most beautiful long stemmed red roses.
It felt so good. I used to do this in college. A lot of people found it weird, you know, giving roses to yourself. But then, I love roses and so why wait for someone else to realize it and give them to you to make you smile? Why not just have a little romance with yourself?
But somehow over the last year amidst the clutter of my useless existence, like most other things that were me (the long walks exploring, the lying in the dark listening to music through the night, the hanging out with friends and laughing my head off etc.) this too got lost in some forgotten recess of my memories of me...
Well, yesterday walking alone in the night, flagged by lighted shops and wizzing traffic, a backpack on my bag and no idea of where I was going, just following my heart, I felt more alive and more "me" than I had felt in a long time. And the roses were really the cherry on the cake.
I was on my way back when I passed this flower shop, I had actually gone by without stopping, but then something made me smile and turn around without another thought, and a moment later I was there, looking through his bundle for the best roses of them all...

This just proves, that even after living with "me" for the last 22 and a half years, I still have the ability to surprise her :)
I wish I have more days like this.

PS: Finally after almost a month after my poor lappy went into a comma, its working again, and after ages I had an urge to write and so I did.
By the way had the greatest day today. Will write about it in the next post. TC all :)