chand lahwz...

Yadon ke kuch anchuyen panne chedti hun

Beete palon ki ik potli ko tatolti hun

jane kya baat thi us guzre kal me

jo aane wale kal ke aks bhar se muh ferti hun

Paper Boats

When I was a little kid, we used to live in a place called Hoshiarpur, near the Pubjab-Himachal border. It was a small town which took barely twenty minutes to cross from one end to the other by car.

Like most small towns in India, it had an old area called Krishna Nagar. And among its many snaky little streets was the narrow Street No. 7, where we lived.

There are a lot of things I remember about that street; the dilapidated old school next door, with the crippled brown tree and soft pink roses; Hanuman, the pandit from the temple at the end of the street who always gave me an extra helping of my favourite prasad and waved to me from his rusty old bicycle as I waited for my school bus every morning and the huge, crazy German Shepherd who barked incessantly at everyone and for some reason had been named Pepsi.

But the one thing I remember most clearly was the excitement the rains brought with them. For whenever it rained heavily, the street would turn into a muddy river, like our own pet version of the mighty amazon. And there I would sit on the once-glazed steps of our home; under the blue door with the twin white peacocks, chipped and weary from the years they had been there. I would watch as strange creatures came out of the water, big cola coloured cockroaches that made my mother scream, worms as muddy as the water, driven out of their burrows by the onslaught and an occasional snake scare.

But nothing excited me as much as the sound of my mother's feet behind the door, for I knew they brought with them the reason I loved that muddy stream. For she had just taught me how to make paper boats and promised me if my boats were good enough they would travel far and wide and journey to strange, mythical lands I could only imagine.

And so I would sit there, my tiny fingers working tirelessly creating one little boat after another, praying all the while that they would pass God's test and not drown.

Some would be brave and strong and fight the torrent and make it round the bend of the street accompanied by my whoops of joy. But there were others, which despite my prayers failed to make it and sunk to their moving muddy graves. As I watched their tiny forms topple, my lips would quiver and my eyes well up, but my mother would hug me and urge me to let it go and would egg me on to make the next.

It was a tough lesson to learn... letting go and I had lot of trouble with it.

And today, even though I am a young woman of 24, somewhere that little girl still has her fingers crossed and her eyes closed every time she releases a boat into life's muddy waters, praying for it to get past the bend and every time one doesn't make it, it still breaks her heart...

Letting it go is still a tough lesson to learn...

Crazy One-Legged Captain Crutches

I woke up today in my narrow bed, wondering who am I?

Am I the girl who lost her footing and the love of her life, both in the same week?

The helpless freak grounded in her room staring at her patched roof, silently screaming for life to happen.

Or am I the crazy One-Legged Captain Crutches all set to hop her way to another adventure?

Free, alive and with ideas zooming like lightening bolts in her head?

So I closed my eyes and felt the wind whip my hair, and when I opened them, my crutches were my broomsticks and I was flying, high and higher, up beyond the clutches of the evil patched roof and sodden staircases. Up above the clouds, in a kingdom of colours, and oh! what a sight it was. The Red screamed to me from my left the Green waved with its easy grace, Blue flowed past like a musical fountain and Yellow was all smiles and whoops of joy.

I was alive at last... as this surreal world crashed into me and wiped out everything else, till I turned into a kaleidoscope of feelings, emotions, passions and dreams.

And thus I found myself again, in my narrow bed, not with empty questions and a present that refused to pass, but with a smile, a dream and the broomsticks to live it...

Up In Smoke

Empty words in a world of empty souls

Smoke swirling from wet coals

Unseeing eyes, broken hopes

Dreamy abyss of reality's soaps

Feet on a table of headless freaks

Through this haze what my heart seeks?

Cracked mirror, arch lights

Ripping the sunlight from the dark nights

Empty feelings in a nightmare of empty roads

ghosts shivering from the memory of how life corrodes

Leather seats, a stolen kiss

a life of horror for a moment of empty bliss

Thanks for making me laugh when I thought it was humanly impossible to even smile

...LOL...

ROFL... *TUMMY ACHE*

...LOL...ROFL...LMAO...Haaaaaahhhaaaa....bwwaaahhah....ROFL :) ;) :D :D :D

;) :P :d :) LMAO.....HUUUAAAWAAAH ...LOL...ROFL....BWWAAAHAAAHA...HAHAHA....LMAO

HHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHAAAAAAAA

Three a.m. Blabbers...

I sometimes sit next to my window at night, looking up at the stars and wondering...

what happens to relationships that die, do they go to heaven or hell like people, do they become stars like fairies, or do they remain here... cold chilly spectres of themselves...

ghosts that torment those who killed them?

Why hasn't someone invented the morning after pills for relationship control?

Like sex without the consequence... rather safe than sorry....

got too close to someone, not ready to be haunted...well pop a pill and stop an unwanted relationship from coming into this world

If only someone had come up with this, a lot of people wouldn't be sitting at their windows at 3 a.m. in the morning, shivering from the ghosts that refuse to let go... looking at the spectres of their making through tear glazed eyes...

as I cower in the cold

the misty tendrils surround me

as they refuse to loosen their hold

the past through their eyes I see

I wonder what went wrong

when right it had seemed to be

I wonder why they weren't strong

feelings that felt like the sea

I wonder why I wish for one more chance

when into pieces he broke me

I wonder why I wish for that single glance

why he still holds the key

I wonder if they seize him too

these ghosts of our past love spree

I wonder if he misses me too

through a cold night's howling plea

Innocent Betrayal

She sat there with her eyes closed, listening to the waves echo back the words he had just said...
the gamble he had played with his trusting heart and lost...

It was the stuff dreams were made off...the beach, the song from her favorite singer, the eyes full of the emotion she had always wanted to see...
But she didn't say a word..confused...looking for feelings she knew should be there...
And he stood there misunderstanding her silence for yes
He took her into his arms then...
Something within her panicked and she struck away from his surprised arms...
the arms drooped...the look shattered into a million crystals...struck down by the wall of her betrayal

She opened her eyes to see him chasing crabs...
To anyone watching from a distance, it would have been hilarious...a grown man on his knees crawling after tiny translucent crabs, being a charming little boy
But to her it was the most painful thing she had ever seen...a grown man broken in half...grasping for sanity which chased away from him, slipping into little holes in the wet sand

It broke her to break him, it tore her apart...but she had no choice...her fears, her doubts had taken over and masked the love that was somewhere inside...
And she had turned and run away...

she ran...

she could hear him calling...

but she ran...

she ran till she could no longer hear the accusing waves,
she ran till she could no longer feel the coldness of pain,

she ran for days
she ran for months
she ran for an eternity

and then she stopped

for she could smell the sea again
for she could hear his voice again
and there was the same love in it
she turned to see the look she knew was in his eyes
she turned to tell him she was not scared anymore

and there he was...

and it was stuff dreams were made of..the beach..the song...the eyes filled with the same emotion...

but his arms were closed and his head was bent, and where she should have been, was someone else...
she fell to her knees crawling away from the pain, looking for crabs that refused to come...
a little girl..a broken woman...Innocently betrayed...