The Golden Notebook.

moving on.

2009-09-08T02:52:00.006+05:30

happiness is not one place. happiness is not the swallows of a deadcity. happiness is not insomnia. happiness is not the distance in affection.

happiness is travel. happiness is a new road. happiness was never safety. safety and settlement are way too overrated. happiness is knowing that you can change. happiness is knowing that you can even do without change. happiness is hypocrisy. happiness is saying one thing and doing another. happiness is a labyrinthine; you'll never get out alive.

running around in circles. happiness is godot. happiness is out of reach.

for me happiness is traveling. vagabond-ish.

happiness isn't this blog, anymore. happiness is finding another new road.

http://leftoverseptembersky.blogspot.com/

happiness might just be a leftover canopy of clouds. =)

2009-08-27T04:50:00.004+05:30

As I suspected, I grow more and more inward than I am expected to. Home is living out of a suitcase, and life is only just reading and music. And I have a plan. Also, there is work. Tucked away is a sheaf of paper persons not even worthy of mention. And, some thrown away also. Fake and talkative. And yes, did I mention work? There is so much to do. So much to look forward to, and yet, so much to leave behind. So many to leave behind, in fact.

There was never an easier way to let go. Closure and work. The Formula, yes.

2009-08-24T20:57:00.000+05:30

only if you could be me, now. there is nothing that i do not have. nothing. i have everything. everything that you, if you were not me, would be jealous of. everything that you, if you were not me, would have regrets about. everything that i hid from the world. everything. i have music in the folds of my skin, a plethora of words under my tongue and the rainbow in my eyes. noone, not even you, can take this away from me. yet, if you were never me, you would be a bead wrapped in envy and regret.

yes, only if you could be me, now. i have everything and nothing.

2009-08-12T03:48:00.005+05:30

i promise i will look for your face in every photograph. i promise. you are not the boy i love. you cannot be the boy who wants to become another peter pan. you are not him, you never can be. however, i will always search for you in crowds when i am alone. i will sing songs of you to the skies and they will draw patterns of you in blue and white and orange. i will conjure up words and poems to think of you. i will run away from people and places and blame you. and at night i will empty the sepia of my eyes to my pillow. yet, i will search for you. and find you, perhaps?

in some photograph. an old class photograph. not visible at first. but then, perfectly discernible. i will chart the laughlines on your face with my eyes, and some archaic voice of you will laugh in my head. it will be almost maddening how parts of you will have survived still, and how they will continue to haunt me sometimes, despite being safely buried in the sepulchre of my heart.

you are fear. yet, i will search for your face. in photographs, in crowds, in farawaylands. in unwelcome dreams. in songs. in poetry. and somehow you will live right inside me. parts of you i couldn't let time gnaw away at. and someday i will stare at one of the photographs long and hard, and try and scan through them to see you grinning. and wonder if the smile you are wearing is the one i left you.

i promise i will look for you in unknown, tucked-away photographs and new ones, too. and wait for that grin, the one i left you, to disappear. and for a new one to appear. that is the day my world wouldn't come off in pieces.

Because I don't write regularly.

2009-08-07T18:30:00.004+05:30

I have no clue when I began to keep my private life away from my life in public. I began thinking about this a couple of days back, when I read Mandy's recent post where she mentioned in a supranote that hers isn't a feelings blog. Somehow I feel even I have divided my life into a thoughts blog and a feelings blog. The feelings blog, however, is locked and available only to very very few people. Anyone who reads my private blog would know the kind of emotional spill I go through on a regular basis. People who aren't invited to it and read only this would readily conclude that I hardly think, and that this blog is dying.

Maybe it is. And there is nothing much I can do about it. I refuse to be angsty and wear my heart on my sleeve in public. Plus, I like being discreet, now. Also, I hardly get creative urges now-a-days. Hopefully it is just a phase.

Well, it is the Freshers' Week in college, and I cannot make myself any clearer - I don't feel like attending the crap - silly 'breaking the ice' competitions et al. Instead, I like curling up on my bed in the afternoons, and reading/watching House till I fall asleep, totally disoriented. I've missed being with myself for a longtime, and since I get the afternoons free (with afternoon classes canceled, and N staying in college because she is one of the biggies for the Freshers' events) I take full advantage of it. Yes, you could say I am unsocial. Well, I don't care.

Also, now-a-days I end of spending a lot of time with A. Studying, talking, eating, going to Oxford, reading, discussing things I cannot with anyone else. Being as politically incorrect as I can be. I think we make a great team. We have two papers to complete (one of them has been long overdue), and I am anticipating attending at least two other conferences this year. I like the adrenaline rush of talking about my work on stage, though I'm terribly afraid of it at the same time. A, on the other hand, prefers mooting to speaking in conferences. I wouldn't mind moots but I like researching better, and our college won't have a researcher test for moots. So, I doubt if I'll ever have any national/international level mooting experience because I wouldn't ever go as a speaker.

I also gave up writing a paper I really wanted to write. But I could not get myself to understand the legal propositions of the topic, and lost my sanity over it. I feel terrible giving it up, and I know it'll be difficult not regretting about it.

I shall not comment about my friends and acquaintances, here in this blog. I am really close to only a handful of people in college and they know who they are. About the rest, I am trying not to care. Among other things, facebook has become a recent addiction. Also, House. I absolutely LOVE House. And I am really really glad that A gave me the episodes. One of my closest schoolfriends has shifted to a college faraway and I won't be seeing her much of her for the next five years, I guess. Another lives just forty minutes from my college, yet we cannot meet for our erractic college hours. Another gets lonelier in our city.

And, everyday I tell myself to write to them. I want to. But I'm too lazy. Often believing that it wouldn't matter if I didn't write; we'd still stick together (which we will, I am sure). I have the most believable excuse, of course. The course in college. It is vast, though I don't take much of the academic attyachaar. But I am liking the course this semester, at least most of it. Constitutional Law I and Criminal Law are, in fact, very interesting. If only I studied regularly.

Imagine (I did this tag.)

2009-07-31T20:16:00.004+05:30

Well, I am jobless. hahaha Read on if you are jobless, too. :P

If someone says ‘Is this Okay’? You say?
You're Beautiful - James Blunt.

(Who you? Eh?)

What would best describe your personality?
Shiver - Coldplay

(Don’t you shiver… I’ll be waiting for you! – I am reliable, I suppose.)

What do you like in a guy/ girl?

Not Romeo Not Juliet - Bryan Adams

( True true.. How very true!)

How do you feel today?
Bridge Over Troubled Waters - Simon and Garfunkel

(Did I play the bridge somewhere today?)

What is your life’s purpose?
If I let you go – Westlife

(I don’t think I shall let you go.)

What’s your motto?
O Re Pia - Rahet Fateh Ali Khan (OST Aaja Nachhle)

(Hmm. * wonders *)

What do your friends think of you?
Junoon - Abhijeet Sawant
(Yes, I guess they think I ‘junoon’ personified)

What do you think of your parents?
Everything Fades Away - Poets of the Fall.

(Everything fades away…you both don’t J)

What do you think about very often?
Paint My Love - Michael Learns to Rock.

(Hmm. Do I? A, you hear me?)

What is 2+2?
Late Goodbye (Max Payne Theme) - Poets of the Fall.

(Yes sometimes 2 and 2 make miserable goodbyes.)

What do you think of your best friend?
Falling Down - Avril Lavigne.
(Yes hold me as I fall down.)

What do you think of the person you like?
Parachutes – Coldplay

(Yes yes… Be my parachute *smiles*)

What is your life story?
Forever - Jesse and the Rippers.
(My life story is immortalized..YEAH!!)

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Pichle Saat Dinon Mein - Rock On!!

(Errr.. As usual I am confused.)

What do your parents think of you?
Live Forever - Oasis.

(Na na… I don’t wanna live forever.)

What will you dance to at your wedding?
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - The Beatles.

(Whoaa!)

What will they play at your funeral?
Rise - Eddie Vedder (OST Into The Wild.)

(Yes my soul will rise people.)

What is your hobby?
Naked - Avril Lavigne

(WHAT?! No I don’t like roaming around naked)

What is your biggest secret?
I'll Be There For You - The Rembrandts.

(Is that even a secret??)

What do you think of your friends?
Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Pink Floyd.

(Don’t worry… you all will keep shining and glowing in my company..)

What should you post this as?
Imagine - John Lennon.

(Imagine how much time I spent on this instead of doing something constructive… hahaha!)

2009-07-28T01:40:00.001+05:30

i let you touch my body one last time,
last monsoon.
But your manhood had not seeped
down to my soul.

this year i am only rainkissed,
and peeled naked by the sky.

If I were...

2009-07-26T23:53:00.001+05:30

Anjali and Natasha tagged me. So here goes.

If I were a beginning, I would be: the beginning of a circle.
If I were a month, I would be: september.
If I were a day of the week, I would be: thursday.
If I were a time of day, I would be: dusk.
If I were a planet, I would be: venus.
If I were a season, I would be: the interim between monsoons and retreating monsoons.
If I were a sea animal, I would be: sea horse.
If I were a direction, I would be: east.
If I were a piece of furniture, I would be: a cupboard.
If I were a sin, I would be: lust.
If I were a liquid, I would be: raindrops.
If I were a fraud/scare, I would be: the exorcist.
If I were a gem, I would be: amethyst.
If I were a tree, I would be: a cactus.
If I were a tool, I would be: a hammer.
If I were a flower/plant, I would be: a rose.
If I were a kind of weather, I would be: cloudy.
If I were a musical instrument, I would be: strummed too often.
If I were an animal, I would be: a killer whale.
If I were an emotion, I would be: envy.
If I were a vegetable, I would be: carrots.
If I were a sound, I would be: the sound of raindrops at the windowpane.
If I were an element, I would be: earth.
If I were a car, I would be: a rolls royce.
If I were a song, I would be: be played on rainy evenings.
If I were a food, I would be: chicken tandoori.
If I were a place, I would be: paris.
If I were a material, I would be: lycra.
If I were a taste, I would be: salty.
If I were a scent, I would be: elizabeth taylor white diamonds.
If I were a religion, I would be: peace.
If I were a sentence, I would be: "don't leave home."
If I were a body part, I would be: the neck.
If I were a facial expression, I would be: a smirk.
If I were a subject in college, I would be: literature.
If I were a shape, I would be: a circle.
If I were a quantity, I would be: a little toomuch.
If I were a color, I would be: purple.
If I were a thing, I would be: a novella.
If I were a landmass, I would be: europe.
If I were a book, I would be: a cross between the alchemy of desire and the kite runner.
If I were a monument, I would be: the leaning tower of pisa.
If I were an artist, I would be: the one with a million colours.
If I were a collection of poems, I would be: twenty love poems and a song of despair.
If I were a watch, I would be: the one that turns back time.
If I were God, I would be: perfect.
If I were a vowel, I would be: A
If I were a consonant, I would be: D
If I were a formula, I would be: the formula for success.
If I were a Science, I would be: psychology.
If I were a theory, I would be: the theory of evolution.
If I were a famous person, I would be: too busy to do this tag.
If I were an electronic equipment, I would be: an ipod.
If I were sport, I would be: brainstorming.
If I were a movie, I would be: into the wild.
If I were a cartoon, I would be: captain planet.
If I were an explorer, I would be: in faraway lands.
If I were a scientist, I would be: a disaster.
If I were a relation, I would be: the one without a name.
If I were a river, I would be: a seasonal one.
If I were intoxication, I would be: vodka on the rocks.
If I were alone, i would be: traveling.
If I were a question, then I would be: "do i know me? "
If I were a hobby, I would be: writing.
If I were a habit, I would be: difficult to let go off.
If I were in an atom, I would be: neutron. completely neutral.
If I were an end, I would be: the end of love.
If I were you, I would be: taller.

the purge.

2009-07-13T02:58:00.006+05:30

we have this quadrangle in the hostel. the place we dry our clothes. if seen from the sky, the quadrangle would seem like the rectangular figures in the math textbooks of class ten where we had to find the perimeter and area of the given figure. add x metres to the length, subtract y metres to the breadth - add, subtract, multiply, divide! calculate and purge the mind.

somehow, the quadrangle too seems to be something that helps in calculations. emotional calculations. we go round and round to add, subtract, multiply and divide emotions. alone, in dyads, in groups - it doesn't matter who goes, or what she thinks about, the person always ends up calculating. emotional calculations. talk-think, talk-think. walk-talk-think...

i have walked around the quadrangle many-a-times. sometimes alone. and often with people i only claim to know. and we purge our minds.

today i walked again. with someone else this time. love. friendship. self-pity. battles with the self. organ transplants. death. rain. the city. people. love.

the best thing about the quadrangle is that it is not judgmental. we talk to forget. we listen only to purge. it is a cycle. talk-think, talk-think, walk-talk-think-listen-purge. purge-listen-think-talk-walk.

today we walked and breathed in something more than just moonsmoke as the desire to play with the raindrops washed our faces. later i sat up in bed with a bowl of soupy noodles, millions of thoughtpuddles and an unfinished book.

there shall be no sleep tonight. only just rain.

2009-07-13T01:23:00.002+05:30

We became different people in different settings.

Aristocrats in the bathroom.
Plebeians in the kitchen.
Students on the veranda.
Adulterers in the living room.
Lovers on the dining table.
And in the bedroom partners and soulmates.

And in doing so we discovered that the greatest lovers are not those who are blessed with constancy and sameness, but those who never stop changing. Those with the gift of being different people at different times.

- Tarun J Tejpal, The Alchemy of Desire.

And if I may add, the book is overwhelming.

Cities Are Like Tattoos.

2009-06-16T21:38:00.006+05:30

Another serenading suicide. Another trip to insanity. I hate this part of the city. The part that surrounds home. There are stories written in the wind. Memories are scattered here.

I walk on with a lonesome song blaring in my ears. I want to walk to those parts of home that trouble me, that madden me. Autos, blue buses rush past. I walk past the 'favourite chicken roll' shop, and then, pass that old I-pill medical store. Noone knows what I'm thinking. Not even close people can guess that I'm constantly comparing myself to that girl in the picture postcard, whom I wasn't even supposed to find. I get flashes of the photographs I saw last evening. I create stories about that girl in my head. And wonder how this idiot wind with infinite memories could never ruffle her thoughts.

I walk ahead. I curse S on the phone who has kept me waiting knowing how this place torments me.

I want to purge myself off this city. Of certain people. Even if it leaves bruises, even if it leaves me empty with an unendurable void. I want to close the doors to this part of this city. I want to return to that night in Delhi when I drank so much that I forgot everything and went to sleep with temporary memory loss. I want that retrograde amnesia to continue. I want this city to be devoured by that Korsakoff's syndrome. I want to search for an Axis Bank ATM, pick up whatever money I have and run away where this city won't find me.

S still isn't here. I cannot take it anymore. I want to rush back home. I want to be left all to myself. I want to go back to university. It's safer there. Even Delhi was safer, for that matter. At least, I'm not scared of those cities, like I'm scared of this one.

I look ahead into the darkness, with the same song now playing in my head. This place has long spells of loadshedding.
I wonder what the girl in the picture postcard must be doing with her newfound lover right now, and cry.
I am selfish, I think.

Update.

2009-06-12T23:33:00.004+05:30

I haven't been blogging much. The problem is I cannot get myself to conjure up nice poetic things in my head anymore. No, it's not a block or a hiatus. It's more than that. I do write in my private blog once-in-a-while, though. In fact, I had actually thought of deleting this blog a few days back.

Anyway, I haven't done much since I came back from Delhi. Only read a lot, watched old episodes of Friends, Boston Legal and Full House, ate and slept. I also went to the court a couple of times and ran around in search of a second internship. Hmm, I haven't done much. Only thought too much about life and got depressed. In fact, I can't wait to get back to college (Yes, if Ma reads this, she IS going to kill me) to start the next semester and work my ass off, again.

I have been procrastinating. There is a paper to be written, and I haven't even read enough for it. I'm sure A and S (joint-authors, and very very close friends) haven't read too. I'm wondering what we are going to do at the conference if we don't have a clue about anything.

Hmm, in other news, I have become a quieter, more eccentric woman. People don't like me, and I don't like people much. I think I'm getting crazier, and my blog, it's dying.

2009-04-29T21:12:00.003+05:30

I stare at you in silence holding a storm of words inside my stomach. The moment is perfect, the silence pristine, the nothingness surrounding us like a bubble. It is not evening, and the afternoon sun has not faded yet. We are frozen in time. Plain frozen in timeboxes that are more than just trices.

Come close to me. Keep your face close to mine.

The twinkle in your eyes is like silver stardust. And, the fragrance of your unkempt hair makes me want to feel the faded light that falls on your face. We are a single silhouette.

Let me hold you in my arms.

I want you to keep looking into my eyes, and pull me by my Om pendent and ruffle my hair a little. I want us to lie in silence, my head near your heart.

I love you.

But I don't say it. You don't hear it. Today there are no words. Only a single strand of colourful silence that binds our souls together.

2009-03-10T00:57:00.007+05:30

in between the crumpled fragrance of candlelight and the half-awake, half-sleepy candlelit loadshdding evenings, you bartered my stories for all those little mellow smiles that i so proudly flaunt. we were a rubble that evening, all we had was a handful of giggles shared on a rickshaw in a paradise town and a few random photographs. then, during the long walk back to the haunted mansion we saw millions of stars, constellations up in the sky. i think i wrapped the sky around myself, shrouding myself completely, blinding myself, totally oblivious to people and places. all i want is you.

the candlelight brought us closer, i think. and somehow, i want to bottle up the moonbeams that touched your face so gently. your fragrance also. and store them up in the old cupboard like memories in photographs. your eyes reek of a love i've never felt before and your whispers carry the scent of a dream that we are both knitting with much fervour. there is a quietude outside this very room. a kind of pindrop silence that almost gives me a fright. in between these moments, you hold me close - our eyes capturing every one of those nude trices that come alive only in fairytale lovestories, something you'd never be able to understand; something i'd never be able to explain to you.

you peel off my pretences slowly, carelessly. and all i can do is nurse a delicious little agony inside. i stare into those huge hazel eyes, and wonder if you are just a couldhavebeen, just an ephemeral happiness. but your love hushes my anxieties. you bring a kind of neverland to me, and yet, you give me little boxes of reality, of logic when you paint us for me. in this candlelight, we are a space between a you and a me - a time wonderfully suspended between the months of september and october, a music in the bewildered mirrors of december.

the candlelight writes a never-to-be-read lovestory on its flames tonight. we are a memory. to be cherished forever, and somehow, it makes me wonder why everytime i try to run away from you a little, you know me a little more. it is a kind of newfound freedom that takes away all the pain from bonding. somehow, when you bind me, i fly a little higher.

2009-03-03T12:02:00.006+05:30

We are running around in circles in pursuit of the maddening season of songs and love. Just like ripples. We are in a crowd, dying to find each other. We are in each other's shoes, living each other's stories, yet we don't know us. We are dying, I think. Dying out of sight. Living on morbid whispers. Just whispers that once had the fragrance of a sunshine we basked in. You sit beside my tainted reflection and wonder why your dusks are not like your dawns, and why we use this season of careless whispers to dream and talk to our own shadows. I ask the mouth of sky inside me why it is falling and how the stars just died out. And, we let us fade away; we are being gnawed away silently by the ebony darkness we ourselves created for our comfort. We are the debris of our own hopes and dreams, deadened even more by our wishful thinking.

I think we are running around in circles in pursuit of the maddening songs and love. We are waiting for spring. We'll sail through this. We'll shine on.

2009-02-24T00:20:00.009+05:30

I am being rowed through Paradise on a river of Hell:
Exquisite ghost, it is night.
The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves ...

I'm everything you lost. You won't forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive. You won't forgive me.
I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.
There is everything to forgive. You won't forgive me.
If only somehow you could have been mine,
what would not been possible in the world?

- AGHA SHAHID ALI
The Country Without a Post Office.

What came off as my mask was handpainted on sheets of paper, and hardbound into a thick brown diary only to be slipped away to a corner of your cupboard, and you still haven't mustered up enough courage to read scraps of my self-pity, have you?

I think we pretended to live in a dead city, like the one I'm living in right now, where the postal service didn't exist or letters sent were never received. Dead letters. Dissolved letters. Words spread out in black and blue ink. I remember singing mundane songs and speaking those words out loud to you; yet, you never cared to sift through the pages of the brown diary. You were a coward, still are perhaps, to some extent. You had no courage to see what you did to my songs and my words. Never have I sung or read poetry aloud to anyone since then. You live inside me like a void, a scar memory. And though I've gifted a part of me to you in pages, in whispers, in words and silence, I feel that part in me living and, dying sometimes.

I drifted away from that world. Thankfully so. The shift of worlds was planned and prepared. My last plan that worked. We don't share an umbilical chord-ish relationship anymore. Your world is but a chimera. Only a bubble illusion. Believe you me, I never want to run back to your world that waned at the weight of our dreams. You appear way better as fiction, as a part of the torn pages of a happilyeverafter fairytale. You look better as the crumbled tin soldier wrapped in a blanket of lies, someone who never made it to my world.

What matters in the end is that I have forgiven you and me for all the mistakes we made. I have edited my story and moved forward.

Note: I read the aforementioned quotation ages later and it triggered this train of thought.

2009-02-09T20:06:00.002+05:30

you speak not in words,

you use the language of the blind;

you paint, you touch

you whisper with your fingertips.

and sometimes, you walk

in and out of our deadened moments,

half-awake, and half in a dreamystupour.

drenched in moribund dreams

that shatter and break on paper.

and burn in the fragrance of candlelight.

you live and die

a million times in my poetry,

like a mythical warrior.

and i tell stories of you

that might just be lies.

you speak not in words,

you use the language of the blind,

and i have saved your poemscars

on my body.

The JUGGAD Act

2009-02-05T17:10:00.004+05:30

For a long time now, I've been hearing about how in my future field of work "sources" matter more than knowledge itself. You become a part of a brand name. You become a product. And probably, it's not only law that I'm talking about. Almost everything is, in fact, based more on marketing and propaganda. Everything today depends on how market yourself. It depends not on your achievements anymore; what matters how many layers of well-fabricated lies you have on you, or how you can brag about your supposed accomplishments or how you can pretend to be something that you're not. And no, it's not unethical; in fact, if you look closely, you'll see that the ones who haven't been able to sell themselves this way, haven't reached anywhere. It's cut-throat competition out there, and noone, believe you me, noone cares about how morally bankrupt you become in the process of becoming successful.

I am sorry, I digress when I'm too excited or emotionally unsound.

What I was talking about is "sources" matter more than knowledge or character. If you don't have a source or a "Juggad" in the field, you are incapable of finding yourself at the pinnacle of success. You might just be reduced to a lesser mortal if you don't have a godfather in your field of work. Though I revel in the fact that my Father is in the Merchant Navy, I sometimes wish he was a lawyer or was somehow legally inclined. Life would have been a tad easier had he been a lawyer.

Anyway, I was reading Paulo Coelho's The Zahir the other day and it is funny how I found an entire chapter related to what I'm thinking now. What follows now is an excerpt from The Zahir - Coelho explains quite subtly the importance of "juggad" or what he calls rather politely "Favour Bank" :
( I wish I could footnote. Sadly, blogger does not provide for footnotes.)

'What is this Favour Bank?'

'You know. Everyone knows.'

Possibly, but I still haven't quite grasped what you're saying.'

'It was an American writer who first mentioned it. It's the most powerful bank in the worl, and you'll find it in every sphere of life.'

'Yes, but I come from a country without a literary tradition. What favours could I do for anyone?'

'That doesn't matter in the least. Let me give you an example: I know you're an up-and-coming writer and that, one day, you'll be very influential. I know this because, like you, I too was once ambitous, independent, honest. I no longer have the energy I once had, but I want to help you because I acn't or don't want to grind to halt just yet. I'm not dreaming about retirement, I'm still dreaming about the fascinating struggle that is life, power and glory.
' I start making deposits in your account - not cash deposits, you understand, but contacts. I introduce you to such and a person, I arrange certain deals, as long as they're legal. You know that you owe me something, but I never ask you for anything.'

'And then one day...'

'Exactly. One day, I'll ask you for a favour and you could of course, say "No", but you're conscious of being in my debt. You do what I ask, I continue to help you, and other people see that you're decent, loyal sort of person and so they too make deposits in your account - always in the form of contacts, because this worls is made up of contacts and nothing else. They too will one day ask you for a favour, and you will respect and help the people who have helped you, and in time, you'll have spread your net worldwide, you'll know everyone you need to know and your influence will keep on growing.'

'I could refuse to do what you ask me to do.'

'You could. The Favour Bank is a risky investment, just like any other bank. You refuse to grant me the favour I asked you, in the belief that I helped you because you deserved to be helped, because you're the best and everyone should automatically recognise your talent. Fine, I say thank you very much and ask someone else into whose account I've also made various deposits; but from then on, everyone knows, without me having to say a word, that you are not to be trusted.
'You'll grow only half as much as you could have grown, and certainly not as much as you would have liked to. At a certain point, your life will begin to decline, you got halfway, but not all the way, you're half-happy and half-sad, neither frustrated nor fulfilled. You're neither cold nor hot, you're lukewarm, and as an evangelist in some holy book says: "Lukewarm things are not pleasing to the palate."'

Got Tagged After Ages!

2009-02-01T14:06:00.006+05:30

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.
(Actually this is a Facebook tag by Beadysea but I cannot access Facebook because of the Wi-fi here, so completing this on the blog.)

01. I love chocolates, and somehow I cannot imagine doing without them. :)
02. I cannot get through the day without writing. It could be either on the blogs or in the diary but I've got to write. Writing and expressing in words keeps me sane. I feel rather disoriented if I don't.
03. Music keeps me going. Ask anyone and they'd say that I cannot do without my headphones. I'm always listening to music. I probably get my headphones off only when I'm bathing or when I'm attending lectures. Headphonic idiot ta toh emni emni bolena lokera. :P
04. I love walking. Long long walks. Maybe with a chocolate in hand. Walking alone helps me calm the chaos inside. However, if I had to walk with someone, it would always be either A or my best buddies, Sudu or Sweety. :)
05. I do a hell lot of random photography. On the streets, at home, in the hostel, in college - almost everywhere. And I tend to add words to the photographs to create poesy. Sometimes these very photographs become my muse.
06. I read a lot. If I cannot find anything relevant to read, I read up the Dictionary.
07. I have a fetish for weirdness. I'm pretty weird and prefer to be friends with weird people.
08. It takes me quite a long time to open up to people. I come across as an extrovert but I can be myself to very very few people. And when I'm close to people, I bare my heart to them so they kind of have all the opportunity to hurt me if they'd like. However, I'm not a weak person so I don't wear my heart on my sleeve.
09. I'm quite a foodie. LOVE and LIVE to eat.
10. I'm quite a romantic person, I've been told.
11. Ridiculous as it may sound, I love getting lost. I think the vagabond in me revels everytime I get lost on the roads or something. Sometimes, I just keep walking onto unknown, unseen roads in the hope of finding myself lost.
12. I'm a staunch radical feminist. :D
13. I hate people encroaching my private space. There are very few people who can toe the line and tread into "my world".
14. I can't stand insecure and weak men. I'm talking about those "mamma's boys" who cannot do a thing themselves and depend on their mums/girlfriends/sisters/wives for everything. It's weird how their macho-image comes to pieces when they have a crisis they can't handle, and it's weirder how they run to mums/girlfriends/sisters/wives then. Yes, mard ko bhi dard hota hai but please, don't make your dard so immensely melodramatic.
15. I'm a sentimental person, yes.
16. I can be aggressive and shrewd and hypocritical when needed. And yes, it is indeed needed at times, to survive in this BIG bad world.
18. I like to keep things to myself most of the times. Even if I get angry/hurt by someone's (even close people) behaviour I tend to keep it within. I don't call for emotional help until I explode.
19. I love the rains. Maybe it is something to do with being born in September, but I just love love love the rains. The rains do something to me, I suppose. I get into too much emo poesy during the rains. I think I get a creative high during the monsoons.
20. I either talk too much or too little.
21. I get myself into a whole lot of trouble. :P
22. I have a weird imagination. If there is missing information about something, I tend to make up stories in my mind about it.
23. I tend to be rather detached at times which is why sometimes I'm thought to be insensitive.
24. I value my freedom. I hate explaining myself unnecessarily to unnecessary people, and I hate being dictated. You get the best of me when you let me be.
25. I'm almost twenty years old and still haven't understood what "love" means. The term is a little overrated yes, and we tend to use to for almost everything. Yet, we never really comprehend what love is. Funny, eh?

Phew! It's done. :D

2009-01-30T18:22:00.003+05:30

"Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind... in the air... in the light. It's all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do... is listen. "

There is chaotic tranquility in me, around me. All I have to do is follow the music. The music inside me, the inexplicable void that speaks not in words, but in a tune only known to me. Despite, all the noise, all the contention inside, all the commotion, the music hasn't stopped. It is a faint, dissolved tune now. But if I let it play inside me a little longer, I known I can add words and lyrics and turn it into a pretty little song called Life. Follow the music. Believe in it. Let it touch you. Let the light of music reign supreme.

"Sometimes the world tries to knock it out of you. But I believe in music the way some people believe in fairy tales."

Photo courtesy: August Rush

drain.

2009-01-26T19:00:00.000+05:30

all the myths churned,
stories died inside an unbuttoned shirt,
your barechest didn't have a skyful of stars today.
only a tiny hole in your heart.
somewhere i would never fit.
so, i passed through a hole in the backyard.
and left, left through a drain.

left. left. left.
left with a mouthful of silence,
with a head resounding of mocking laughter,
wondering why i didn't check
the warning sign near the flowers.
wondering why the only escape was through a drain.
why did i become that escape?
why?

Child Inside.

2009-01-25T20:12:00.004+05:30

I feel old. Quite quite old. Too old to be feverishly in love. Too old to drop coins into wishing lakes and pray for a story or two to come true. Knowing well that fairytales remain lifeless pages in Grimm and Anderson's. Knowing well that more often than not, we do not live happily ever after and there are no charming princes, no mirror mirror on the wall, no Cinderella and definitely no magical romances. We make do with what we have. It's not like I've stopped having my illusions. I still dream. Perfect, flawless and impractical dreams. And build up stupid dreamy stories in my head. But these dreams, these stories, this part of me is tucked in old yellowed pages, pressed between old diaries like red roses. It's not like I'm not happy. But there's a part of me, broken and lost and that part noone shall ever see. It's a part made up of wishing lakes and fairytales and Cinderella and lived happily ever afters.

I think I've grown up. Sometimes I stare into the mirror and wonder if it's really me. Do we all outgrow ourselves? Do we all keep losing bits and pieces of ourselves like this? Maybe it's a part of becoming rational and prudent, and yes, practical. Maybe after a time in our lives, we are ashamed to tell others that we dream, that we are still children inside. So, we repress a part of us and let it grow in ourselves, deep in our hearts. This child, this love for fairytales keeps growing inside until one day, we explode. Explode like fireworks in the moonless sky. Beautiful colourful explosion.

I feel old. Almost like a veteran. A loser, sometimes. I show off my scars with pride and proudly proclaim what I could have but never did. I tell people I've grown up, I take unbearable responsibility to prove it. I don't believe in fairytales, or so I say. Deep inside, secretly I still wish for a story for me; I still wish for a star when we kiss. I still nurse the child inside in words and silence and photographs. Yet, in front of you, you or you, I'd be the girl almost two decades old and ready to take on the big, bad world without any trace of silly dreams or stories in her palms. Sometimes, only sometimes, I wonder if happiness could be slipped into Christmas stalkings.

Someday I'd want to a child again. I shall throw caution to the winds then. Till then, you, you and you could drop coins into the wishing lake and live my erstwhile stories for a while. The stories that lie dissolved somewhere inside the lake and behind the trees and smokecircles where fairytales are said to grow.

2009-01-25T18:49:00.004+05:30

I want to be one of the masks that you wear. I want to be a part of the masquerade too, you know. I want to be the song that creeps silently onto your lips when you're leaving for another of your wanderlust-satiating trips. I want to be the nothingness that you bury yourself in, sometimes. That darkness that cripples others, gives you security - I want to be that darkness and wrap you in my arms when in the dead of the ebony night, you are staring at the fan on the ceiling and wondering about your sepia-tinted evenings. I want to be the tear you never cried. I want to be that scar on your knee, the bruises on your elbows and the birthmark on the back of your left palm. I want to be the dim sunlight that falls on your face in the morning. Your train of thoughts. Your silence during our long long walks. I want to be the dischordant voice that lives inside you. And grows louder everytime you grow. I want to be your wanderlust, like I'm my own wanderlust. Those inklines around your lips, those old town blues that leave you a little like the storyteller you're in love with. I want to be the melancholy in your heart. Your jagged, broken smile when your world is upside-down. I want to be the laughter that follows you, everywhere, all the time. I want to be the one stolen kiss in the mundane crowds in this old dead town.

Yes, I want to be love. I want to be the voids that you leave in your sentences, that make you muse enough to be the poesy I try to pen down.

"How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here. "

The World In A Room.

2009-01-14T01:29:00.006+05:30

They are dressing these moments up in red. A kind of tranquil, sublime red. Something like the scarlet sky blushing like a bride. Or maybe it was a nuder shade of vermilion. Like the ladies on doshomi, smearing red onto each other's faces - shindoor khela, they call it. Aaschhe bochhor aabaar hobe. And it is stark and almost ironic how they stain each other.
In the next room, they are playing a shindoor khela of sorts. Smearing each other with words. Playing with words. Stealing every word and stabbing it a million times. And I hear sobs. The words are unnecessary. The tears are unnecessary. Them playing such a pitiable game is absurd. I feel like stopping them, telling them what they are doing is wrong. They aren't only playing with words; they are playing with lives, with friendships that could have lasted forever; they are playing with the happiness that is a part of them. They are playing with love. They are smearing parts of themselves on pieces of broken glass and watching themselves drip like the shindoor-aalta words. Like blood. Knowing little that the wounds will show, the stains will remain.

There are pregnant pauses in between. And everytime the hiatus is broken, it is as if one of them has deliberately picked up the words said before hurled against the other. Each battle of words, each new round of shindoor khela creating a stronger barrier between them. It's disturbing. Even for someone from a completely different world. Someone who hardly cares to look into their world, their little biosphere which they are now tainting with a maddening shade of red. Someone who'd smear a nuder shade of scarlet in her eyes in the middle of the night sometimes, making sure noone is watching. I'm the detached one and yet, this game is too much for my detached sense of fun. I see others gathering outside the wooden door of their world, some giggling, others mocking at what words can do to even the "bestest of friends" or how they knew "he only used her". It's crazy how in the middle of the night a world is exploding at the force of words and people are actually picking up the pieces of each monologue trying to make sense of the weird but true jigsaw puzzle. They find it fun? Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.

What about her sitting and staring silently at the others, wondering, probably,whether she'd use still more fierce words or silence to calm this coup of words? All she can probably think of now is her world falling apart. Bit by bit. Her beloved world. Falling apart; being blown down. Only the debris at her feet. Only a silent murmur of the million words she's heard tonight in her head. A deep shade of scarlet-vermilion red in her eyes.

It's perturbing for me. The words throb at our walls. We have no world of our own. Yet, it penetrates into our make-believe walls too. And I can hear a feeble scream or two, sobs and a deafening silence instead of a glowing laughter that normally echoes in their world. It's more than shocking for a vagabond like me. I'm afraid of worlds. I fear being the part of a world for too long. So I transcend from one world to another. And I like this painful but painless process.

I look into the sky from the window at this hour. The darkened clouds give way to a reddish hue almost like the words they were painting each other with.

Marble Moments.

2009-01-03T23:50:00.006+05:30

In between whispering to the winds lines that are meant only for you, I think I spend most of my afternoons daydreaming on the kitchen floor. Imagining the fragile moments of you holding me so close that I can almost feel the fragrance of your unkempt hair seep into me. Imagining counting stars on your bare chest. I think most of the times I'm too tipsy during the afternoons, or too sleepy. Or, maybe I just get a high just thinking about you. And on cold winter mornings like these, my reveries keep me warm and I think about playing with your scent and kissing your brow while you're asleep.

I've tried shaking these thoughts away but they get to me, you know. You set me free, somehow. I see my unchained skies in your eyes. When you smile. When you take off your glasses from all that silly laughter we've had, you enchant me, your eyes - they leave me a little breathless. And to be with you, around you is like walking under the rainclouds. You are love. Love is you. I don't know what love is. I'm curious to know who you really are. You, like love, are nothing and everything. To me. You are silence, like love is silence. We walk together in this silence, sometimes. We know when to fill those voids with words and songs. We smile, and don't let us know. I think we're in love and yet, we do nothing about it. Sometimes we do almost everything about it. We don't know we're in love; we don't know we're silent. And, you don't even understand how at times I steal our metaphors to capture into poetry in vain.

You intrigue me. You and your words, and your ability to keep things inside and yet, smile. I wonder how you glow like a tiny firefly in complete darkness. No, you aren't really a firefly. Fireflies die everynight and fireflies come back as marbles; they bring back memories. Fireflies become tiny rounded colourful marbles that stare right into your face reminding you of trices that you couldn't hold in your palms. Nay! you are not a firefly or a marble. You're you. You're silence. The partial absence of words. Love. An ennui. Shards of daydreams cascading through the blinds like sunshine on lazy afternoons.

You're the road I take with you. You're the long long walks around the old storyteller town under the moonlight. You are the crevices in the hills where we find wild purple flowers and capture them on polaroid. You are the poem you don't understand. You're nothing and everything to me. You're love.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T14:07:00.004+05:30

Merry Christmas! Ho Ho Ho!

Sepia.

2008-12-20T20:09:00.000+05:30

You have fragments of sepia,
in your check-shirt pocket -
that green shirt that smells of candle-light.
You have music on your lips,
sepia-washed words,
with a sepia melody, cascading in between.
A sepia dream in your burnt-brown eyes,
and a sepia moment that shrouds
my running around in circles,
not kissing bubbles to make them stay,
waiting for them to take shape.
You wait for me, pensively,
near lakes, where lovers meet, clandestinely.
You take sepia pictures of the water,
of sepia-reflections,
of skyscrapers gnawing away into the
sepia-sky.
On sepia mornings like these,
you see the old peoples' laughing clubs,
and remember all the times you've laughed
without reason.
Silly meaningless laughter.
You stare at the sun,
the lousy sunshine breathing down your face,
it paints sepia-pictures on your dusky skin.
Your shadow follows you into the sepia darkness.
The sepia plays amicus curie today, it always did,
on odd spring mornings like these.
Sepia entwines us together,
just you and me,
in smoky circles,
in puffs of cigarette smoke,
round and round,
in circles, in beautiful sepia circles.

Diamonds And Rust.

2008-12-10T04:48:00.015+05:30

I can hear my mind humming Diamonds and Rust as we walk. It's a strange thing how my mind is singing songs to me even while we are together. It is as if I have a distraction, something I don't want happening. It is almost seven in the evening and the purple of the sky has been washed by the grey-blue clouds. We are walking, searching for somewhere to sit, with a vengeance. While in one corner of my mind there's Baez playing, another part of my head screams out loud. This place sucks. This shitty place sucks. There's just too much noise in my head. Too much to capture in words, or chart down in diaries. I wish you'd turn around just once and try and see what is wrong with me. Why Diamonds and Rust? Why not something else? Why Baez? Baez kills me slowly with her music and lyrics. And you cannot let this happen to me. My head is spinning. Baez's arsenic treatment has already begun, I guess.

Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

You look back more than once to check on me. You're wearing black and white. You're walking faster than me. Ahead of me. Just like Baba. Something that makes you even more desirable to me. Did you know girls love men who are like their fathers? Yet, you don't notice the crinkled expression on my face. It's the ebony darkness, I think, that plays with your eyes or is it my fake smile that has snared you. I see pictures. Several pictures in front of my eyes. Like family polaroid collages on softboards. They are scary pictures. Pictures of the past. I think, they call them memories. Memories I thought I'd buried in some corner of my old book cupboard. The memories flash past, as I smile foolishly. I don't want anyone, not even you, to know that these pictures are running through my mind. And these pictures are scary, they have no nexus at all; they just go on one after the other. It's like a deja vu. I've been here before. I've walked this way before. I've been with you before. Who are you? You are him? This is scary. I want to close my eyes and pass out.

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust

We are still searching for a place to sit and I hear you mutter an expletive under your breath. You smile at me. Your eyes have so much affection in them that it leaves me a little dazed. You are not him. You cannot be him. I'm in a different world away from the shreds of old, abandoned rust. In a happier place with you. We reach the place near the building with mirrors, where we had first sat down after we discovered we like each other. There are far too many people here than there were a week ago. We decide to turn back.

Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed

We are walking back. I can see you walking ahead again. You stop at intervals so that I can catch up with you. I decide I'm better off observing you from the back; it gives me time to deal with Baez and the pensives she rekindles. You really want a place to ourselves so you keep searching. I have given up long back. This has happened before, and has left me disappointed before. Expecting leaves me in disappointment all the time. So, I had stopped my expectations until I met you. You are him. He is you. And I'm sure I'm going to turn to stone again if you leave. Your images will be all I'll have left of you. And the images of the shadows of the trees on the road, that I can see now. I've bared too much of me to you. You know me quite a lot. There are only a few shades of me that you haven't managed to explore. The more you discover me, the more liberty you get to leave a scar-story on the wrist of my left-hand. The more you know of me, the more opportunity I give you to call me up one July afternoon to say goodbye. This is crazy. Baez stop playing. Stop it, this instant!

Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

You're still looking around totally oblivious of the demons in my head. And thankfully so. I tend to mess up things, you know. I destroy moments. My fear does mean things to happiness. Someday my fear, my thoughts - I - will gnaw away at your happiness. Stay away from me, dear. You know, I could do with some crying on your shoulder now. I want to hold you tight now, and tell you about my fear. I don't care about this conservative city or the orthodox people here. I'm not scared of loneliness. All I fear are these pictures in my mind. And this song. It's haunted. It makes me feel dissolved. You are him? Ends are often beginnings. Where is this place? We reach where we started from. I want to run away from all the chaotic thought. I'm really hungry but I don't want to eat anything. The song is maddening.

Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid.

We go sit inside. The song still plays incessantly in my head but I'm too dizzy to acknowledge it. You smile at me; you know something is wrong. I'm plagued by uncertainty. I really want to run away to somewhere more secure, somewhere more safe. I'm tired of my mind, I'm tired of this fear. I want to write down about all the pictures I saw, about all the thoughts I had but I know time will eat away at my ink. I just want to put my head near your heart and hear your heartbeat. This is strange - the farther I want to run away from you, the closer you become to me. History repeats itself.

A few moments later, we are sitting beside each other. The song has almost faded. You have your arms around me. I don't want to think about those pictures or that uncertainty. At least not now.

The Storyteller.

2008-11-28T23:57:00.012+05:30

You sit at the newly rusted window every morning, watching the sun lick up the night in flames and write stories for noone to read. You hardly go home these days; the mirth and the familiarity scares you. You like your city in your stories where you can dress it up in your favourite colours. Your hair smells like the tar of this city and your stories carry the fragrance of the hills that you've visited around a million times in your dreams. Wish you were here plays in the background while you scribble your heart out in the folds of the night. The city takes you in. It is almost chaotic how you toss and turn at night. Sleepless nights. Maddening poetic nights. You see faces float in front of your eyes - some known, others never seen and some like clumsy collages. There are brittle words in your mind, words that break and shatter on paper giving your stories jagged endings. And, all you do is wish you wouldn't kill your stories that way.

On some days, you leave your windowside to venture out into the moonlight. All you carry are tunes in your head, a tiny red notebook to record the tunes and your dusty ol' camera to capture those tunes in frames. She does look the type who likes being alone. She is her own friend. Nah! She isn't lonely, just a soul who enjoys her solitude. Noone understands that alone and lonely are two different words. Noone knows that you force the loneliness down your throat. The city wraps you up in its anonymity, and you probably enjoy that. You like sitting under the clutter of the stars and chant words in your mind.. and write more stories. More often than not, the city's lifelessness kills the storyteller inside you until you find another fragile muse. Sometimes you take yourself back to your city, travelling through memories in metro rides and homemade brew. But you don't miss home. Your mouth already tastes like this city. Time to leave this city, you ask yourself. You are finding home here. There are people reading your stories, understanding every word, every expression even though you're trying hard to hide them under your eyelids. You're changing, dear. Becoming like the city itself and it isn't fair. I should run away, you tell yourself.

I see you from a distance now. You are penning today's stories down onto the red notebook, filling in details about your latest muse, your beau, whose fragrance is still fresh in your memory from last night's fervent lovemaking. Even the whirls of cigarette smoke and the cup of evening brew speaks of the words that you silently bleed in. I know you will stare into the mirror soon after and wonder what happened to all those days that you've left behind. Buried under those parchments of stories?

I'm amused at your change. Almost a little shocked at how the purple of your eyes have turned a greyish hue. You're becoming the city. The city has swallowed you, storyteller. I still cannot believe you are me. You are me in another city.

Vagabond Has A Family.

2008-11-22T23:41:00.010+05:30

When I first came here, I had a preconceived notion that there are no friends like school friends. After all, noone can ever substitute the fourteen long years of running through the colonial corridors and ending up with bruised knees, scrambling through the serenity of the green fields, and those numerous little fights.. those tears and the wildwild laughter that is still a part of our alma mater. No wonder I kept to myself during the initial days when I came here. The headphonic idiotic, you guys call me. :P I would have probably been this detached had I not met you people. Now I can proudly say that I have a set of friends here who are not just friends - they are my family.

I'm really touched at whatever you people have done yet. (yes yes, I'm sentimental :) ) You people piss me off sometimes, yes and I feel like killing you, not talking to you and hiding away into my shell again. But I know you five will be there whenever I need you ( even when I don't need you, for that matter :P ). Right from running to get coffee when I was choking on my breath to getting food for me when I'm all hungry and can't move because I've an injured knee or a temperature.. to sending a teener tiffin box full of muree when I have pet'e baetha.. even tolerating my mood swings and the bangalar paanch'r moton mukh that I make sometimes. :P I was awestruck at how you all were so concerned when I injured myself the other day. * clumsy me *. I had never expected that you mind wasting the entire morning and half of yesterday afternoon just to take me to a doctor and get the wound dressed. :) I'm so touched that I can't even express in words.

Thank you for this family that I have found in the lifeless godforsaken city...

Meanderings.

2008-11-14T03:52:00.002+05:30

I visited the purple hills today. Well, almost. With my roommate for a morning walk. We didn't go far because there were plenty of frustrated faces in the wee hours of morning, and we certainly didn't want to get into trouble. The hills weren't as purple as I had thought them to be. And, they had no stories scribbled on them as I had imagined. Just a mesh of green, rocks and boulders. Just an endless, infinite road with no destination. A turn here and a meandering there. And a few love notes in chalk made on the road by couples eloping, perhaps. Deepak loves Priya. Or were there other names too? They are making a school near the hills too. A kind of shabby looking building it seems to me. It looks to me like a school out of Enid Blyton books. All it needs is red paint, a very strict principal and a couple of teenagers hungry for adventure.

They say there isn't much to do in this city. It's dead. Has no life of its own. Yet, as I walked on today, I found life in the purple hills. A life still undiscovered. Waiting to be found out by wanderlust. Waiting to be devoured by an odd traveller. The roads are stories. The Pied Piper that leads the way, and promises never to come back again. The hills are full of a music, a fragrance of wanderlust, of meanderings of the mind. And it scars the skin.. burns into the soul, the music, the fragrance and it explodes in your mind like a tinybluestar in the sky.

And, I tried to bury a part of me in those hills knowing well that I'll go there again and again and there will be feeble screams of me from there too. From the part left there.

The hills are alive with the sound of music, and with a story newly etched with my footprints and a childish laughter among the trees.

burn.

2008-11-08T04:06:00.004+05:30

you live in this half-dead city
like a vagabond.
burn, burn, burning
like cigarette smoke in the casing air.
in the dead goodbyes of the night.
stopping at the chaiwallah's,
and breathing the serenity of the
purple hills at two am,
burying another day's story
in the papercup brew.

you burn, burn, burn
in the sepia stardust
of this old, merciless town.
thinking about the old bookshop
off our old city, a few photographs
with your newly-found friends,
and an unfamiliar scent that this city
has gifted you.

while parts of you are being
gnawed away by the night,
nibbled by the glistening stars
that eat away into the clouds,
i write dead letters to you.
knowing well that the words
are not meant to be.
crumpled sheets of words
kissed by the moonlight,
while you burn away.
in the city's glowing passion
and your throat still deliriously dry.

you live in this city
like a vagabond.
it nauseates you to be here long.
yet you burn away.
you let yourself be trapped
by the music that plays
in your head.

and someday i'm sure you'll run away.
run away to another part
of your mind
and burn away the memories
of this place.
you'll dissolve into the crowds
of the new town,
refusing to learn their mothertongue.
it gives you a high when
you cannot decipher words.
a kind of freedom, you cannot explain.

you'll leave someday, i know
with your black backpack.
burning away. like you did today.

teenage angst.

2008-10-31T19:30:00.007+05:30

i think i'm far from teenage angst.
yet when we have our backs to each other,
i dream about the patch of dreamy rainbowsky
that surrounds you..

their voices seem to rise above the din in my head.
and even if i walked away today, trying hard
to hold my thoughts running amok, i
felt your scent pressed in between our stories.
the pages i write about you, about those eyes
that have haunted me eversince
i ran through the rain, alone.
and, whenever those buckets of moonlight
rain on me in the dead of the night
i remember your face,
staring at me during the gaps
between our mindless laughter,
half-embarrassed, half-delighted
at the jokes we crack.

maybe we are the couldhavebeen
that could have been real.
yet we might remain
just a tethered memory
in the folds of this godforsaken town.
away from the ever-bustling crowd,
we might just an die a death everyday,
our music sinking into the purple hills,
like a lullaby to the rainclouds in mid-october.

i think i'm far from teenage angst.
yet i want this uneasy silence to last.
i want our eyes to meet all of a sudden,
your eyes staring into mine for a second and a half,
and you smiling childishly, then.

i like the way your blurred photograph
weaves a distant dream unto my skin,
and even among a horde of people
you often turn back to see if i'm there.
and even if i run far far away,
your words play like tunes in my mind.
our stories running through my veins,
and that look in your eyes i cannot seem to forget.

but we are only a figment of my mind, aren't we?
you don't pine for me in the folds of the night,
and you don't think i could be the light
you need.
you might just tuck me away in your hidden past,
like a secret no one ought to know,
just a smile that bled from destiny..
for you,i will be that tethered memory,
a scar-story on your wrists,
a make-believe reality at your fingertips.

and for all you know,
you might just be the teenage angst
that i fondly built up
as i walked away today.
the teenage angst that
could not be gathered in poesy.
only a tethered memory.
only just a tethered memory.

A Happy Diwali Post.

2008-10-27T21:29:00.008+05:30

Diwali Last Year.

Diwali This Year.

I might be away from Home but the festival of lights remains the same. I don't burst crackers as a rule but every year lighting candles with Maa is one of my favourite home-rituals - Choddo Prodeep. This year I lit candles outside our room. Sadly, I couldn't light fourteen candles. The matron said people had to pass so not many candles. Plus, not many candles have been bought. Shall light some tomorrow as well. We have a Diwali Party by juniors tomorrow, I think, in protest of the party by the seniors today because we hadn't been invited. Not that I care much; I hate crowds and the food will most probably be vegetarian. :(

Anyway, Happy Diwali to all of you. :) May the festival of Lights bring fireworks of joy and prosperity to your lives. Have a safe Diwali while I sulk about missing home. :( :(

Chasing The Sky.

2008-10-23T19:04:00.008+05:30

It didn't take me much time to realize that I was almost chasing the sky today when you guys egged me on to photograph the sky. The evening sky here has a charm of its own. One of the few things that keeps me grounded here. Today the orangish churning sky captivated this random photographer and I persisted to run after it. I would've lost all sense of time had you people not joked around about my weird positions trying to take the pictures.

I ran from near the auditorium where the sky looked fiery - almost as if it were on fire, to the lawn hoping to get a better view and then, to the end of the iron-concrete wall that separates the temporary campus from the other wings of the university. Everytime I moved in closer, I moved farther away from my sky. Everytime I expected to get a better picture, I lost a part of my sky. Each time I thought I had the sky in my palms I lost the fiery gleams of orange light peeping through the clouds. A little closer and I would have probably lost my marmalade sky forever.

My dreamy sky is my muse. It engulfs me. No point chasing it. No point capturing it in my starshine eyes.

2008-10-15T23:34:00.007+05:30

the purple sun cannot stop the train of thoughts.

and, i write in crumpled letters about all the
shattered reveries you bring me
suddenly in between lectures.
in word doodles i create a you i want.
in word doodles i create a world i need.
perfection, my love, perfection!

but you're just a little boy. only a little boy feverishly in love.
you'll lose yourself in textbooks. in a computer game.
in a moonlit night. in monsoon.
in a chocolate fantasy-conversation we couldn't initiate.
you'll lose yourself in the words i gift you.
in lovesongs. in the sepia of the lake.
oh little boy! you cannot be a man so soon.
and your mother thinks you're too young to have a lover.
she's ignorant that way.

oh silly little boy! i've been bruised before.
and it hurts nomore.
i've cried before. now i just have tired eyes.
and celebrate my inability to dream.

but you're just a little boy. with a childish half-smile.
and a naive twinkle in your eyes.
you won't understand.

you won't understand the tears that don't show.
the words that i don't utter. the silence that speaks far too much.
you won't understand how i need to run away sometimes.

but you lose yourself. you're too young to be a man.
and in your tiny blue satchel you carry your world,
too small for me to fit in?
your music keeps me sane yes.
strumming life back into me. life tiptoeing back.
silence isn't deafening. the tunes in my head make sense.

you have a magic, little boy! and i like
how your blue sky wraps me up.. how the dreams
turn a little sepia and dissolve.
but you're only just a little boy and you won't understand.
you won't understand.

Back To The Grind!

2008-10-12T20:17:00.007+05:30

The holidays slipped past by like the blink of an eye. It feels as if it was just yesterday that we boarded the train and spent an entire journey talking aaboltaabol, and waiting for us to arrive at Kolkata. Thirteen days just past without us even understanding. The Pujos were fun. I've never had so much fun during the Pujos holidays even in school. Met up with friends. Ate, slept, ate, slept. Visited relatives. Ate, slept, ate, slept. Metro rides. Running around like mad. Walking around aimlessly. Chance encounters. Oh what fun! ;) And I grew up a little as well!

The journey back today was rather fun. Chicken sandwiches, naps and a little kid who kept us entertained. Neal, his name is! The generationext Govinda of Bollywood. :P With a fetish for Cadburys' Bytes and an overprotective mother.
The car ride back to the hostel was comfortable but the shitty music kept pissing us off. Well, came back and am back to the grind. Unpacked. Clean up the room and washed clothes. :( My roommates are still not back. The block is still half-empty. There's a kind of weird loneliness, and those who are back are sleeping. SLEEPYHEADS!!

I spoke to the Little 'Un on Skype (a completely new experience for him!) and to the Special One on sms. Ma's a little down.. Ghor khaali khaali laagchhe she says. :( Baba's a little worried too.

Well, university starts tomorrow though I have no clue how 'cause only thirteen girls and ten boys have returned today. Nevertheless, we're back to the grind!

P.S. : I still don't know whether to make this blog private or not. Please help?

Blog Going Private.

2008-10-06T20:24:00.004+05:30

This is it! My Blog is going private. Yes PRIVATE! Anyone who wishes to read and NOT copy to their blogs what I write in mine are welcome to send me a mail for an invite.

send mail if you want an invitation to read this blog.

rebel.deya@gmail.com

This blog is becoming private on the 15th of October.

2008-10-06T00:30:00.008+05:30

The red painting somehow reminded me of the BIG red suitcase I carried back home. Keeping an eye on it all of the nine and half hours during the journey back home, while the rest of them slept. Two of us played NFS and listened to music on the Ipod. Watched the starry midnight sky as the train lurched forward. But not moving an inch from near the suitcase. My BIG red suitcase! I wonder was it only clothes and books I was carrying in it. Or, did I bring a part of that life, that city here as well? I wonder why it took three guys to put it in the train when I boarded. Burden, they said! Burden! I think I DID bring that life here with me. That solitude, that quietude. The blaring music and the earphones. The silent observation. That silence. The darkness. Staying up till 4 am. Did I bring all of that home?

People live parallel lives, don't they? A family, a profession, school friends, university, clubs.. but how often do they get entangled in these lives? How often does one life dissolve into another? Isn't it difficult juggling lives? I'm a new player. Just a new player. A new clown in this circus called The Big Bad World. Called Life. I don't know the rules. And so I got disoriented. Lost my composure when I lost one life in the crowd all of a sudden. All these years, I've just watched the crowds from a distance. This time, I lost my way bigtime. Let one life dissolve into another, and let it run through my fingers like grains of sand.

The painting shook me back to consciousness. The red suitcase shouldn't be burden. The memories I carry shouldn't be burden. And it'll take some time to merge those worlds. It'll take some time for me to get used to my parallel lives. All I have to remember for now is whenever I travel from one world to the other I have to slip off from the Deya I am in one world and change into the Deya of the other realm. Strange, I know. But magical it sounds to me. :)

... And there, we were thinking why this painting costs a whooping 35K. Methinks the painting is priceless. :P

Leaving.

2008-09-28T13:32:00.002+05:30

Ruhi left for home yesterday, and I leave in eight hours. Chummy has to stay alone in the block for three more days after which she takes a flight to her manarbaari in Pune. Poorva left in the morning for Delhi. Anjali and Neha have left too, and Anjali isn't coming back. There's a void in the block. Somehow leaving hostel and going home seems weird. It's like leaving another home. :(

I think I'm really going to miss you guys for the next twenty days.

Birthday. Twenty First September.

2008-09-24T20:37:00.007+05:30

This should have come on my birthday itself, but the obstinate internet refused to work and we were too busy with presentations.

Turning nineteen away from home. Several phone calls. One phone call rejected. Two birthday cakes. Cake on my face. On my hands. On my hair. Cake on my phone. Conference with the two favouritestest people in my life. One BIG handmade poster. Sweet smses. Powder holi, and Powder aa main tere maang mein powder bhaar doon. And who can forget the jhhaaroo dance that wouldn't get videotaped? :P
Washing the cake off with a smile on my face and washing fourteen clothes. And then sleeping for ten whole hours. Whoa! Kya birthday thha!

Thank you, Roomies. I couldn't guess when you guys planned it all. Thank you Natty, Aditi, Prag and Jeet, alongwith Anjali and Peyali Di. Thank you Bhai for being the first one to call up. Thank you Ma for missing me ( I know you did!). Thanks Sweety, Sudoku, Dishita, Nidhi, Bugsie, Jasprit, Dabba and Mona. Thank you Gyaani (Mwuah :P)... Thank you everyone who made the birthday a birthday worth remembering. :) Now I can take another beautiful memory home for my holidays.

a very chocolatey declaration.

2008-09-12T03:18:00.004+05:30

now here's presenting a new space for ranting. yes this blog's here to stay as well. but chocolate is more me. somewhere i can be the sillylittlegirl that i am.

so go get yourself a Chocolate.

monsoon.

2008-09-08T00:46:00.007+05:30

ei dekh brishti aashbe. tor brishti te megh daaka khuub bhalo laagena?

... and somehow monsoon played upon my lips all day. i think i played monsoon about twentytimes on my cellphone anyway. yes twentytimes. reminded me of an unforgotten fragrance. bheja maati'r shugondho. somehow i love the rain. the staccato of the raindrops on the red windowpane seemed like solace that day.. the workers ran away, it was a holiday. berlin wall - the BIG wall in front of the window was all mine. i could stare at it for as long as i wanted. the canvas for my reveries. thankfully my bed is beside the window. i get to experience the rainsparks and the thunderclaps first. and my sky turns a greyish hue only for me.. somehow i love the rain. i think it rained even on the day i was born.

raindrops are happiness. the song is joy.

brishti shuru hoyegechhe? dekh bheejte gechhe aabaar!

the rain seems to have blurred it all. aah! rain music! rain music flowing from the strings of your guitar.. as you slowly strum your way into my reveries.

puro bheeje gechhe dekh!

the berlin wall was once a dead-end. it is under-construction now. and i like it when the raindrops melt onto my face as i stare at the berlin wall.

oof! ei meyetaake niye ekdom paaraa jaayena!

sometimes i keep forgetting that there is home in sight. just around the corner.

running through the monsoon
beyond the world,
till the end of time
where the rain won't hurt...
fighting the storm into the blues..
when i lose myself, i think of you..

p.s.: this picture is by me from the window of the university bus.

2008-09-05T23:47:00.005+05:30

The laptop arrived today. And it is a delight - an absolute delight to come back to my world again. To forge my nexus with the virtual world again. Ah! The joys of technology! :)

Now I can blog regularly, and read and comment on other blogs too. And not forgetting, finishing my projects too. :)

smiles

2008-08-30T19:31:00.003+05:30

It's difficult here and we know it. Tiring classes, hectic schedules, washing clothes, running to uni., eating the rotten food here, whining sometimes, missing home. And in between all that, your words seem like a breath of fresh air. :) Believe me, all this would have really difficult had you not been here. Thank you.

Your eyes, your words and your faith and hope. Thanks for all of it. :)

Thank you for You!

*hug hug*

Home? No Way.

2008-08-25T16:33:00.004+05:30

I tried searching for Home here but little did I realize that Home is where you express, where you can be yourself. Home is where the sparks of rain don't hurt and where sunshine doesn't burn.. where your thoughts and your words are not confined to the yellowed pages of a diary..

At times like these I miss Home like hell. And somehow my ability to express now-a-days has been confined to writing in my diary or smsing a very dear friend(who's going through the same plight.).. It seems as if I've lost my ability to show people what I feel. What others mistake as patience, is inability. All I do now-a-days is keep things inside, let everything settle inside.

I think I'm growing up. Seeing people change at the drop of a hat is shocking but somehow I'm taking it. People get bored of others here. You aren't COOL if you don't indulge in gossip. Somehow I'm a little taken aback, yes. And I can feel the delusion setting in.

I really think I'm growing up.. This isn't Home. Home is where you don't have to hide under the pillow or the Teddy to cry yourself to sleep. This place isn't Home. No, it isn't.

Where Is The Moonstrummer?

2008-08-19T02:59:00.001+05:30

Before starting to write about what has been going on in the past month in my life, I'd like to tell everyone that I'm still technologically handicapped at the moment. The university authorities here tell us that we're gonna get our laptops pretty soon.. but then, I really have no clue when I'm going to be connected to the virtual world again.

Frankly speaking, I didn't want to come here. Who wants to leave home and stay in an alien city with people who stare at you for the weirdest of reasons and speak in a language that is remotely not similar to yours? I was comfortable in the colonial corridors of school with a bunch of supermadhatters for friends. I was comfortable dozing off in history class and writing poetry in sociology class. I was overwhelmed everytime I caught a glance of the red and yellow building.. I loved the ol' wishing pond and secretly wished for it's serenity. Things were different in school. You could cry 'cause you knew you had arms to run into.. There was always someone who'd support you when you stumbled.

University is WAY more different. A slightly more ruthless realm. People smile at you but pass comments behind your back. Competition and only competition rules. Plus, you have to do everything yourself. From studying thick law journals to washing and ironing clothes - Life has certainly turned topsy-turvy. Then, we practically starve during meal times. Hostel food sucks. We sometimes live on hide-and-seek biscuits,haldiram bhujia and aachaar. We aren't allowed of our hostel for the first three months. Plus, we have no source of entertainment except each other. We dance sometimes. Laugh our wild scary laughter and curse the warden and our Fate.

What is even more heart-rending is that I haven't seen my family for more than a month now! I hear my brother's voice on the phone every night but I know I cannot cuddle him tight. I miss my Ma's constant bickering about my dirty, filthy room. In fact, now, astonishingly I keep Room Number 15 as clean as I can. I miss Dad's snoring.. I miss Bhai and my best friends. I miss Calcutta. I miss GOOD FOOD! In fact, I think I miss Food in any case. I miss known faces. I know I was looking for anonymity but now that I have found it, I think Home was much better.

Nevertheless, Room Number 15 is Home for now. I share the Room with Sayontika and Ruhi. Both occupy 70% of theRoom space and I'm amazed at how they are gaining weight instead of shedding some. Natty, one of my bestest friends here, stays in Room Number 17 with Pragya and Aditi. The others - Purva,Swati,Priyanka,Sonali and Anjali are also really co-operative. Paro and I have grown really close. :) So, I'm really lucky to be in a Block in the hostel where there is no hostile politics. I don't talk to the guys here much. And my dreams of flirting with several guys(despite my shyness) are all shattered since NOT ONE guy is dateable, unfortunately. *ahem ahem* * winks*

Our campus is beautiful. Almost like a city inside another city. It reminds me of school somehow. The sky covers up the serene campus in the most beautiful, dreamy way. The sepia in the evenings often leaves an indelible mark on poetry people like me(And I haven't written something concrete in ages.). I'll put up the photographs once I get my laptop.

Okay, I have get off the laptop 'cause it's my roomie's turn to fiddle with technology a bit. Yes, I miss home like crazy. I miss my brothers. I couldn't even tie raakhis this time. I miss Ma. I miss Baba. I miss Dida. I miss home cooked food. I miss FOOD! I miss the touch of home on cold rainy days(It rains every day here). I miss the wildwild laughter in the colonial corridors. I miss a few faces. I miss writing and chatting on social networking sites. But then, I've reasons to stay on. Reasons to wait. There's sunshine after the rains, and my sunshine stories will come alive too.

* smiles *

Your Eyes.

2008-08-15T00:10:00.006+05:30

Your moonshine glow is trapped in pieces of words pressed in the pages of my mind. It's something that you do with your kaleidoscope eyes. You have my sky in your eyes.. puddles of unspoken, unwritten words that create in rhyme our gossamer fairytale. You have my world in those beautiful, expressive eyes - broken, shattered shards of my existence that look close to perfect in your eyes.. that look complete in your eyes.. I want to capture the twinkle of your eyes in my poesy.. I want to gather words just to make those eyes a part of my half-dreamed, half-lived life.. You smile through those eyes... and the purple of your eyes shines through..

Your eyes bring a silly, absent-minded little girlish half-smile onto my face.. It's what you do to me.. *smiles*

P.S.: My laptop still hasn't arrived. But I couldn't keep my hands off this laptop that Piggy brought to hostel. To other bloggers, will be back soon. Promise. :)

2008-07-23T15:37:00.002+05:30

Deya is currently unable to update her blog. Though a lot has been happening in her life, the lack of technology is preventing her from publishing them. She has promised to get back to blogging once she can access the Internet again.

2008-07-10T14:03:00.002+05:30

i can sit here and pretend that i don't care. i can stuff my ears with music. find my solace in chocolates. blinking at the create post window and wonder why my stories, my poems have no endings at all. can i write? may i live my life? or should i pretend to you the way i pretend to the rest of the world? you were special. you still are. but something always comes in the way of our sunshine stories. and that something is you. i can forgive but i cannot forget. your self-pity cannot be an excuse for your insensitivity. you need a life and so do i.

let me not hurt myself.

because i have a bloggers' block.

2008-07-06T17:00:00.002+05:30

You Are 38% Misanthropic

You're a little misanthropic - but who isn't? Your reactions to other people are pretty normal.

You enjoy being friendly with people you encounter, but if you're having a rough day, watch out!

How Misanthropic Are You?

Your Mind is Purple

Of all the mind types, yours is the most idealistic.

You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense.

Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries.

You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

What Color Is Your Mind?

home.

2008-06-30T23:04:00.000+05:30

thank you for today. the rain melted the rose-tinted glass, and somehow even with all the imperfections, the moments felt more beautiful. we somehow keep crumpling moments in our palms, laughing the pain away. treating them as if they were just trifles. today was different. the moments, you and the little red staircase are turning into home. home i cannot let go of. home, i'll keep returning to.

home. how can i forget home? home. how can i let go?

i'll take you with me. someday.

because you are HOME.

in search of blogsubjects.

2008-06-30T00:04:00.005+05:30

i have been searching for blogsubjects to write on recently. yes, really. i mean there is a perpetual dearth of blogsubjects, don't you think? like there's a perpetual dearth of goodlooking, intellectual, sensible and chivalrous men. i've planned to start dating men with the aforementioned qualities but, sadly, they are hard to find. either they're taken or they don't exist. not that i've looked everyplace. i want to begin with fiji, botswana and places suchlike. in all probability, i WON'T find any goodlooking, intellectual, sensible and chivalrous men. i think they're more blogsubjects than are nicemen. but oh, bother!

anyway, where were we? blogsubjects, yes. the photo blog is easier to update, y'know. just upload a randomlyclickedpicture, put a catchy tagline and add a footnote. people are impressed at your photography skills and relatives are curious as to why you've suddenly taken to try your hand at random photography. or photography of any kind, for that matter. they treat photography as if it were rocket science, and you being a poor, little humanities student wouldn't be able to manage it. ha! so, the photoblog always has an easy update. i do have a poetry blog.. but i'm abstaining from poesy for a while. i haven't been philosophical/romantic/dark in quite sometime now. i have been making a fool of myself, though. i could write about all that in this blog, of course. or, how i get shouted at after i wake just before noon. actually, it's frustrating for my parents to have an incorrigible kid like me in the house. so, they're sending me off. to college. they could have got me married too, right? but then, no nicemen, remember? they are all extinct.

i prettymuch think i'm worse to my blog than to my parents. at least when they call me/shout at me, i tend to reply in monosyllables. i don't care to give my poor lil bloggie-doggie an update mostofthetimes. i wouldn't mind filling it up with blogthings but then.. it'll be too harsh of me, that way. so, like i said, i could fill this blogpost up with the details of a recent faux pas. in anycase, i have filled up most of it with trash. plus, ma's calling me to go off to bed. ha! there'll be nightshift kotha-barta now. about which she doesn't know. i have ranted enough.

* grins and goes offline *
* picks up phone and gives a happywappy look *

2008-06-27T05:12:00.003+05:30

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven.

You aren't concerned much with theories or dreams... only what's true or untrue.

You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched.

You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren't subject to whim or emotions.

Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice.

(But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!)

You excel in: Leadership positions

You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

You're Confident...Sometimes

You can seem confident when the occasion calls for it

But inside you may be experiencing a bit of self doubt

A little more inner confidence could take you far...

And convince others that you're as confident as you try to seem

Are You a Confident Woman?

You Sometimes Hold a Grudge

You aren't exactly vengeful, but you're not going to forget when someone wrongs you.

And while you'll forgive the small things, you don't hand out too many second chances to people who really screw up.

Do You Hold a Grudge?

rant.

2008-06-27T03:46:00.003+05:30

this is going to be a weird post. like all of them. i pretty much won't make any sense here. plus, it is four in the morning, and i am not supposed to make any sense whatsoever at this time of the night. i used to go to sleep around this time during the boards, and even before them because.. well, i had to try and study. the routine stuck on. until, i think, last month when Baba decided to force me to bed by twelve. it didn't work, folks. i was awake every night talking to a few friends about practically nothing. and nothing includes settling scores(yes!), fighting about old fights, getting depressed about college admissions, talking about long lost loves(ahem!), and yes, hear A and S romance on the phone(other people coo-chi-cooing is bad when you don't have anyone to coo-chi-coo..).

i was awake tonight as well talking to BB who is an absolute moron and when he suddenly hung up made me pensive. very very pensive. when i've listened to Ticket To Ride(the Carpenters' version) and Coldplay's Trouble about four times each, you must know that i'm thoughtful. i have never ever been so hesitant in my entire life. yes, i have had those weird conflicts in my mind, but then i've sorted them out as well. but this time, it's different. it makes me shudder thinking how life will turn out if i don't take the right decision. yes, i think toomuch about the future. way too much, in fact. so much so that it has started to eat me up from the inside. i feel emotionless and indifferent sometimes.

and i don't think i have told this to many people, but i don't like the way i have become. i was a much satisfied person over a year ago. i absolutely DON'T like the changes in me. i think i pretend. pretend to be smiling when i am NOT happy at all. i lie to myself that way. i love some people so much that i have forgotten to love myself. silence is deafening, the earphones with blaring music are a solace. pretentious yes.

so, i don't like myself. not one bit. i could have been a better person. when i look into the mirror, all i see is a someone who died trying to win the war of words. and it went nowhere. noone really won. words only manipulate the truth. they distort everything. people. relationships. lives. memories. and all these years, when i thought i was good with words i was manipulating things.. distorting them to make them the way i want. i suddenly realize i am not the person i wanted to be. i have waded in too far and now, i seemed to have lost my way.

pretentious. indecisive.

and there's more to follow. i hide. not escape. i just hide. in my shell. it's a weirdly nice feeling to hide. from people. from situations. i have not been able to hide from feelings, though i have been trying. yes, maybe that is escaping. i want to be a vagabond. i think that's the reason, i hide. a vagabond doesn't have as much baggage as a traveler. while a traveler finds freedom in bonding, a vagabond finds freedom in the skies.. a vagabond flies. a vagabond loses his way. a traveler uses his map. vagabonds just go where the roads take them.

i think i want to lose myself. the present self that i am. i don't like it much. though that doesn't change the fact that i either have to take certain decisions that change my life or leave them the way they are and come back to them around six-seven years later. either ways there is a possibility i might lose something.

confusion. panic.

i think i really need the anonymity i will get in a few days.

something i found.

2008-06-20T17:11:00.000+05:30

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us;
It's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

- Marianne Williamson

2008-06-18T23:35:00.002+05:30

i cannot stop laughing at myself right now. i see the screen flicker and shake. nimno chaap or tears? ha! this has happened before and will happen again and again. and again. you cannot blame tomorrow for it. and just stop laughing and crying ek shaathe. you like a BIG ##@@@%^^&&*!!!!

bachem

2008-06-11T22:23:00.004+05:30

for a moment today, i thought that the scarlet sky, blushing like a bride, was in your eyes. your dreamy-eyes eyes were like the sky on obscure, rainy evenings. crumpled tissue paper clouds on the canvas of sepia. and then tears. rain.

i wanted to kiss the rain away. fill your eyes with the sunshine they deserve. is it loneliness that fills your eyes with rain? is it the feeling of living alone, nowhere to cry? whom will you run to in the end? will you be the vagabond, you aren't supposed to be? who will play hide-and-seek with you? who will call you names and run back to you at the end of the day? who will stare at those eyes?

today as we stood in the darkened shadows of the abandoned wall, i could see your eyes. scarlet eyes. tears. today we didn't chase cars. instead we sat in the corner, on the stairs of the old building and saw life scurrying by. somehow the tunes in my head made sense. and i was wishing it would last. last forever?

things change. hope melts into despair. but somehow in your eyes my faith in myself, in life and the world remains intact. hope lingers. your eyes. never let them fill with tears. the glitterglitter is what makes them unique. what makes you unique.

i don't want to go away but i am. i hope i don't lose those eyes, bachem.

wonderwall-ing.

2008-06-10T00:24:00.000+05:30

i had never thought that i'd ever see him get so weak. he's always been like a wonderwall to me. turning up the sun for me and telling me to keeping dreaming. never let go of your dreams, he said all of last year when i seemed to have lost all my strength. when i was almost turning into a bulimic he screamed on the phone and forced me to finish my meals on time. when i wasn't studying, he'd tell me how much faith ma-baba had in me and how proud he'd be to see me doing well. during fever, i was forced to gargle and have suprimox every night...

today it was different. one of those midsummer afternoons when the sun cloaks itself and refuses to shine. he refused to shine today. wonderwall tumbling down. are you feeling down today? keno? i knew why, yet i asked. then, we spoke. we've spoken like that before and we'll do it again and again. he needed some wonderwall-ing from me today. and i'd be there i told him. forever. even if we stay in different cities later because in the end we're just siblings born apart. and he's the bestest bhai in the universe.

and bestest bhai isn't weak. he's just tumbled down a bit. we'll get him back to form again,won't we? i need a bulldozer to dent me, he says. love and godbless.

you're just sounding like a concerned sister. that really made my day. love you. hugs.

again.

2008-06-08T18:07:00.000+05:30

i've started blogging again. today. though i really don't know how long i will, or how long i can continue. things have started getting all messedup again. and all i can do is stand in one corner and stare. no, not that i cannot do anything about them or anything. it's just that i'm tired. tired of everything around me. no, i haven't lost my patience. in fact, in the last year i have known how patient i can be with people, with situations, with silence, with life. i know i can still fight. fight even more than before. but the will to do so is gone. i'm starting to let go. beginning to run away. from people. from myself.

i used to have certain rituals before. you know, like the obsessive-compulsive ones. i've begun to lose them. something tells me i'm becoming rather numb. not insensitive. just numb. i feel, yes. but i don't act. yes, i'm losing my rituals. i'm losing the me.

confused. i am NOT running around in circles anymore. this time i'm running away. so says my orkut profile. believe me, i don't know what i mean. i am not even sure whether i make sense to myself, let alone others.

i went for a trip last week to another city. i might be in that city for the next few years. i don't and i repeat, i DON'T like the place. the trip was bad. it got me thinking about random silly stuff. got me very morbid. got me ill. i have fever now. a veryvery sore throat. i have lost the zest to write after the trip. i witnessed something really traumatizing on the train. it's gonna leave an indelible mark, yes. i thought a lot on the train. and slept even more. and i really don't care if i'm not making any sense. i want to make sense but it's not working out.

so i guess i'll write later. a little later. when i make more sense and don't have such puffy eyes and stop sneezing so much.