The Funny Feeling

She looked up at the stars splayed across her ceiling
and wondered what was this funny feeling
that had left a snake slithering down her cheek
and an odd sniff, anything but meek

she looked out of her window at the children kneeling
and wondered what was this funny feeling
that made her feel so empty inspite of everything around
and wrapped her in blankets that blacken out every sound

she looked at the kiss the sun from the ocean was stealing
and wondered what was this funny feeling
that sent a tingle of memories chasing through her heart
and bred emotional hiccups that gave her a start

she looked at an old picture whose edges were peeling
and wondered what was this funny feeling
that made her laugh and cry at the faces in it
and wish they could have trapped time forever in a pit


PS: Listening to "kyu...phoolen ke khile khile se rang udd gaye" from kambakht ishq on repeat... wondering why my cheeks are so wet?

My Old Friend

My collar is wet and my eyes are swelled up, but I haven't felt this good in a long time

No i didn't get a new job (one I can at least tolerate, if not love)
No I didn't find the love of my life
No I didn't read the best book I have ever read
No I didn't get a bouquet of 20 roses
No I didn't have anyone tell me I am the most beautiful girl in the world or the sweetest creature of God
My life hasn't changed all that much

except...

except that I just found an old friend...
She was lurking right round the corner, and I never noticed. And then tonight, out of the blue WHAM!! there she was before me, laughing her head off, being her silly goofy self.

We had lost touch for a while, you know, in the motions of life, learning things, unlearning things, making THE BIG decisions, while ignoring the little ones that really mattered...
in short---in growing up!!

Tonight, like most nights, I revved up my faithful lappy, checked for mails that never come, half-heartedly replied to the comments on the depressing post I had put up on my blog, logged into gtalk and logged out before anyone got a chance to ping me, put up another one of those historical dramas for download and played the same stage of mario i have been playing for the last 2 months again (again failing to pass it through).
I was about to sign off and call it a night when i remembered this dog movie I had downloaded on a wild hunch a couple of days back and forgotten about. Well the sleep angels weren't exactly purring yet, so I decided to dig it out and sample it...

It was there that I met her again...my long lost friend...me...
prancing around incessantly, disobeying every command ever thrown her way, chewing on anything she could get her teeth into, loving the people who mattered with every last golden hair on her 100 pound body... all in the skin of " THE WORST DOG IN THE WORLD "--- Marley.
Yes, I am talking about the movie "Marley and me".

Sometimes when we are lost and desolate, it is the strangest of things that can get us reaquainted with that friend who is hidden somewhere under all that artily smudged kohl and piles of tic-tacs, under the very visible frown lines and the invisible laugh lines, under the crisp shirt and the choiciest chooridars...the girl who doesn't care if her eyes are puffy because she cried over the death of her favourite book character all night or that her laugh woke up the neighbors down the street at two in the morning, who doesn't care if her t-shirt is on inside out or if her favourite comfy old shorts are coming off at the seams, literally!!
Yes, the same one who would end up playing with every little kid she came across...who spent every second of an auto ride looking with wonder at the things passing by...
Its strange really when you think that there is no good in the world and that nothing matters anymore, that everyone is selfish (including you) and nothing can touch your heart anymore, a simple story of the journey of a dog and that of the people around him can move you like this, can make you feel again, can make u see yourself again... not only as who you were but who you want to be... who you can be!!!

Yes, you can be that girl in a pair of travelling shoes, clicking away pictures with her phone from the window of a moving bus, yes the one who is not afraid of laughing louder than thunder and makes friends with every dog she lays eyes on...
the one who is hoping for a sunnier day... but if it still pours..., well, what the hell!!!
there is nothing like a dance in the rain to raise those spirits is there??? :) :)

Tc people!! Sherry is back!!

aimless scribble

After ages I actually logged into gtalk and talked to old friends... and then at 1:30 in the morning had a sudden urge to scribble something here.
life has been a little topsy turvy recently...made a really hard, life changing decision
lost something very important to me with my usual talent for screwing up everything that matters to me
made a few new friends in hyd..don't know how long it will last
watched angels and demons today...if u separate it from the book it was actually ok but for someone who has read the book and loved it, it was murder, "literally"
i am still on bench...nine hours of doing nothing continue, though i have taken to looking up obscure things, case histories, movies etc on Wikipedia as my new hobby and it helps pass the time pretty well...
I don't know why i am scribbling all this... may be its been so long since i wrote something, the craving is overwhelming
I want to learn to play the guitar
i want friends
i want to have a good time
i want to slim down
i want to talk to someone who would make me laugh till my tummy ached
i want to travel
i want someone to give me company exploring Hyderabad
i want to start clicking pictures
i want to get soaked to my skin in the rain without being watched
i want to feel his breath on my shoulder
i want to cook something exotic
i want a big close long hug
i want to sleep
i want to be happy

a clean slate ..

I am sitting at my desk with nothing to do except write crap, I don’t even know whether I would publish it or not. What a day it has been.

I came to office to a merciless dressing down from my ex-manager because I failed to hear what he said over the deafening traffic and because I “dared” to ask him for a charge code for the work I was supposed to be doing for him. Add to that wadas so soggy, they almost made me choke and the unbearable stench of stale coffee all over me because I managed to spill it down the front of my pale yellow shirt, which is now irreversibly ruined.

‘A’ thinks I am bored of talking to him, ‘coz I managed to fall asleep for three consecutive days on the phone.
None of my friends are online.
I feel like breaking something.
I feel like tearing off this foul smelling shirt and jumping on my maddeningly white desk; naked.
I feel like pulling out and shredding every piece of poetry, every picture, every thought I have put up on my cramped cubicle wall.
I feel like crouching under my desk, running away from this unforgiving world like a kid.
I feel like ending my career before it has even begun.
I want a chance to wipe the slate clean once again and begin anew ..

Enough Reason?

I am not usually the silent times.
I am known to have had the loudest voice and the most thunderous laugh any room.
I used to spend hours lost in songs and their meanings.
I used to love to chat and gossip like an old maid and yet they all loved me.
I used to have the best friends in the world, my little circle of love and trust.
I used to have the most photogenic smile in my group.
Whether it was placing an order for food or talking up a complete stranger it was I my friends used to catch ‘coz I could hold a confident conversation with just about anyone.
I used to be the life of any room with my craziness.
I used to have 10 simultaneous windows open in gtalk with something to write in each of them.
I used to spend many a day dancing on top of my bed to some wild tune.
I was a moderate success in just about any work I took up.
I used to spend sleepless nights rolling in bed musing over that greatest mystery…love.

The only time I talk now is on the phone. I am so silent elsewhere, I fear that my voice would disappear.
I can’t remember the last time my laugh sounded like my own.
I listen to songs endlessly on my phone but would be at a loss to answer which song was playing on it.
I don’t gossip, I don’t bitch, I don’t tease and yet everyone seems to hate me.
I have no friends to speak of, no one to trust and can’t remember what a loving hug felt like.
I don’t get my pictures clicked, the smile is too painful to look at.
If someone talks to me I stutter and can’t think of anything to say to a simple question like “what do u dream of?”
I glide in and out of rooms like a ghost and no one even looks up.
I sign into gtalk and can’t chose one window to open from my 200+ contacts.
I don’t dance , ever.
I got my first feedback with “FAILURE” written all over it.
I have lived through the painful reality of love and don’t even have its soothing illusion to hug close to my heart in a lonely night.

Is it enough reason to be a depressed blogger Mr P? or do I need more?

and days go by ..

It’s been quite a while since I wrote here, and no the culprit has not been my high flying career with one of the leading software firms in the industry. I have none. I have an obscure corner in an obscurer bay of my company building…the ITP bay commonly known as THE BENCH. Which means while people in projects slog under deadlines, do overtime, miss their own weddings…we put up our feet (literally), lower the (imaginary) brim of our hats and doze off with earplugs streaming the songs we have been listening to for the last 8 months into our ears.
When sleep eludes us we turn to some unread book or unopened ebook.

We sign into chat but are soon found making excuses ranging from an urgent meeting with an absent supervisor to a desperate call of nature in order to go offline, simply because we don’t want to answer the proverbial question—“Whatsup??”

Some of us might be found engrossed in their own world of equations and synonyms, trying to plough their way into a B-school.

And when nothing is left we search obscure topics on wikipedia, like, psychoanalysis, pagan rituals, or in an act of utter desperation, the six wives of Henry VIII.

We recently joined our out of practice hands and rusted heads in a “SAY NO TO PLASTIC” campaign which had us painting posters, even a first grader would be ashamed to call his own and writing slogans that wouldn’t inspire a duckling…
It also had me laughing like I haven’t in a long long time, and had me making friends and chatting up with people like I no longer deemed possible in office.

The campaign got over yesterday, the plastic bags are back and the posters have been lost somewhere in the labyrinths of the office…
but here I am sitting on a desk, sharing a bag of peanuts and a diet coke with my new found friends along with childhood stories and poems… painting ridiculous paintings and trying to make sense out of dumplings of paint… holding discussions on who is the worst painter in the bay and on our views on paganism and Christianity and on long lost tales…

I am sitting here, with a smile on my lips, the proud owner of a shirt marred by dashes of paint and a heart of many shades (which I painted) taped to the wall of my cubicle alongside a brand new poem which came out of nowhere just like my new-found joy.


I want to live in a house by the sea
With whose white spray my spirit could flee

Or may be I would prefer a house on a giant tree
With whose red blossoms my heart could grow free

A castle in the wilderness it might as well be
In whose hidden passages my lost spirit I could see

Or may be my destiny is a quite plantation of tea
In whose green bosom could be the answer to my unheard plea…

Inside the bubble

I am sitting at my desk, feet on the upturned dustbin, no work to talk of, grey raxine-like walls converging into a cone behind the black dell monitor, a white board blank except for a blue date of three days back marking one top corner. The outside world is blocked out by curvatious black headphones singing “o saathi re” into numbed ears. An e-book version of salman rushdie’s “satanic verses” has been fished out of the long-forgotten archives of my C-drive and is being devoured with a demonic hunger. g-talk is logged out, both cell phones lie lost and ignored in a heap in my little black bag of endless mysteries and intrigue…

After a long time, I am not bored, not sad, not lonely…I am the girl with pigtails sprawled across a rope-bed on a brick terrace in an obscure town of Punjab, drowsily reading one loved book after another, dreamily jumping from one fantasy frame into the next, while the winter sun teased the hair on her pink payjama clad legs…untouched from the world outside, her innocence virginal in its ignorance of the intricacies of lies, betrayals and untouched by lives which are nothing but farces…
I want to live this fantasy forever…never want to take off these headphones…never want to ever worry about what who thinks about me…never want to hear another lie…never want to laugh at a joke I don’t find funny…never want to share confidences with a false friend…never want to pretend to feel things I don’t…
I want to be the epileptic prophetess Ayesha one second and her ignorant sinful archangel the next. I want to swish my angry tail in desperation like the not-so-evil devil and the throw my head back as the rebellious Mishal and kick out.

I want to be a drop of time, with the universe rolled into one…
I want to be the daughter of a king and the man who killed her for a son…
I want to be a bubble in full flight, out of reach of every bursting pin…
I want to be the taint in everything pure and the virtue in the heart of every sin…
I want to be the beauties and their loving beast
And the girl who had butterflies for a feast…

Today,

I don’t want to love
I don’t want to be loved
I don’t want a kiss or a cuddle
I don’t want sweet nothings whispered into my sleepy ears
I want to be left alone in my bubble of self
I want to be free of everything…every chain, every pain, every relationship, every obligation, every desire, every smoldering fire…