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.

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.

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.

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.

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.