New Blog!

Just for them stewpid stories. HERE!

New Blog!

Just for them stewpid stories. HERE!

That day.

After a long time of ten years, I revisited the place where I grew up. Remnants of a misplaces childhood. Scattered. In narrow gullies occurring at unexpected turns on the road. In the soot laden buildings that look haunted. In the once flowery garden that hasn't been tended to in a decade.

People still live there. There's the old Shiva temple that still has its red-yellow lights glowing in the evenings. There's the Mosque which comes alive with a long drawn breath of freshness only during Ramzan. There are ghosts of people, walking absentmindedly with expressionless faces.

I met my neighbours. Aunty, Uncle and 3 people who I called 'friends' before I called anyone else that. These are friends who have seen me walk around in my diapers. Friends I celebrated everything and nothing with. Christmas, Diwali, Ramzan, New Years... everything existed for us kids, just so we could celebrate it. Every firecracker in the sky was for us to see. Every blade of grass, just for us to walk on. The world and everything in it was our plaything. An excuse for rejoicing.

When I went back to their place, nothing in that house had changed. It still felt warm, it still smelt of fresh herbs and there was the familiar aroma of jasmine incense. Somewhere in the kitchen, a broth was boiling. "For you, beta", aunty said. I said I was famished. I wasn't, I had just eaten a stomachful outside but I wouldn't miss eating that food for the world.

There were no hugs, there was no "So great to meet you after such a long time!". We just sat down and talked. I looked at my friends with a gleam in my eyes, which was reciprocated. A common friend was married with a baby. My granny passed away. Their cousin's husband too. I graduated. The eldest of my friends has a job. Her sister is the same height as me. She always had the same height as me. Their brother was tall as an old bamboo plant.

It felt like I had just seen them yesterday. Roads, faces and skies, never forgotten. Always cherished.

As I left, they saw me out to the door. Nobody said goodbye.

Understanding. Or not.

There comes a time when all you can speak of, you can say only paradoxically.

Glasses shatter into several fragments. Each, having its own reality. What it held, spreads across the floor in no particular direction. But there is a pattern. When you walk, the tiniest pieces inch into your skin and in some corner of your mind, you feel the pain but for the most part of it, you just don't care. You're numb, but you're not.

Your head feels dizzy, you still keep walking in endless circles of resignation, desperation. You go where your feet take you. You can't feel the ground. But you're aware. Yes. You're aware of every step that you take. Your tactile sense have never been so sharp before.

When you close your eyes you can see the abyss of darkness that you've just fallen into. You can get out just by opening your eyes. But does that make it any different? Does it straighten the knots of the fix that you're in?

Eventually you see lines, colours, shapes. They grow over each other, fumbling in the dark, fighting for a purpose. Maybe they're trying to get out. Maybe they're not. maybe there is no purpose. Open your eyes, they're saying. I can hear them. Open your eyes. Their voices are getting louder. But I don't want to. I want to stay locked. Maybe there is freedom inside. The further I stay from them, the better.

If you shut your eyes fiercely you can see how your mind looks. It is no organ, it has no flesh, no blood, no tissues. You can't understand the form but it's your mind. It somehow feels all too familiar. You stare into it. Trying to understand the disputes, the disturbances, the shambles of all order.

Shambles. Chaos. Realization. Now you smile. Hah.

In a movie called Pi (I saw it a long time ago) a mathematician said: It's not the number. It's the meaning. It's the syntax. It's what's between the numbers.

The Creator's Toys.

In an old book, in which the pages are all yellow, the words are all crisp yet distant, I created a snow bowl. Small, white snow flakes keep falling upon a bright little house. If you look closely, you can see a little girl peering out of the window, up at the sky. She wants to know where all the snow is coming from.

I then saw that it was getting too cold inside the world I made, so I put the book away. You see, it only exists when the book is open.

Was interesting to my eyes while it lasted.

Afterlife

Last night I dreamed of death.

I was shot. I didn't feel pain... only moments fleeting. I didn't feel my last breath. Only the sudden awareness of something lifting off of my body. Maybe this is what they call the soul. I couldn't tell where I was going but it didn't look like heaven or hell. It was just a vast expanse of nothing. It wasn't dark... it was blue. It wasn't the sky, there were no stars. I could feel my true form... crooked lips and bulkier eyes. I was bouncing in the air... I could see but I couldn't speak.

They say your entire life flashes before your eyes when you die. I didn't see anything. My death was seamless. It didn't feel any different to me except that I couldn't touch anyone. I was just there... an entity that could still go anywhere, do whatever. The clock hadn't moved any faster.

I didn't feel hunger, I didn't feel thirst, I didn't feel the want for human touch. I didn't desire the pleasures of the flesh. I was feeling just as I would feel on a normal Monday morning when nobody would be around me.

It didn't feel like it was the end. Death just felt like... life. My life.

Inside

How does it feel to live someone else's memory? To see what they saw? To feel what they felt? How does it feel when all their emotions seep into you? The agony, the exhaustion, the frustration, the pure unadulterated joy?

I didn't know I could feel this close to someone. I didn't know you could actually see things through someone else's eyes. Turns out you can.

When go walk long enough, you reach a place beyond which words have little or no meaning. In this place you can only talk with your eyes. Often, you're alone in this place. But if you're lucky enough... someone who can hear you will be walking with you.

I don't know if there's anyone out there walking with me. But I know I have heard one voice. I have felt unsaid feelings.

I'm certain it won't happen but I know that I'll keep walking until that someone decides to turn around and see me.

And that's all

There are no lines that I can write
When there's nothing left to say
When clouds are hanging in the night
And they disappear by the day

There is no song that I can sing
When the words have all gone dry
And all the notes have lost their ring
Like a wolf's anguished cry

There is no pain that I can feel
When my heart is good as dead
And I can't feign smiles like they're real
I'd rather cry instead

But there are these eyes that will betray
All the memories that I hid away

Cluttered mind in a cluttered body

You probably shouldn't read this post if you already think I am nuts. If you don't you shouldn't read it anyway because you will soon think that I'm nuts.

OK you've decided to read this then... don't hate me and don't say I didn't warn you :-|

Sometimes when I look at the sea of faces that I am surrounded with, I feel like I don't belong. Everything is superficial. When I see a thousand people walk, I see thousand stories. They walk like puppets. I feel like a puppet too sometimes. I feel like there are invisible strings attached to our bodies... someone is tugging at them, controlling what I should do, what I should think and feel. I fight this "puppeteer" all the time. But I don't think a lot of people do. Everybody just wants to tolerate everything. Be a witness but never testify to anything. KNOW that something isn't right but push that feeling so far back into their heads that it doesn't resurface at all... So they can live without guilt, without remorse, without tension.

Why do people discuss other people? Isn't there enough for a person to ponder about one's own self? About the vastness of the labrynth that this universe is... about how you *know* that you're part of that labrynth but you can't place yourself save your life? Why are thoughts limited to things that are direct, empirical? Isn't there anything left to feel beyond our senses of touch, sight, taste, smell and sound? Why can't everyone just be content with their own conscience? Why weigh and measure that of the others?

I just must be going insane but I don't care because I'd rather be insane than a puppet with a head made of wood.

The Ocean

I wonder if the ebb and flow
Of the Ocean's tides
Is how she sighs and lets go
Of grave secrets she hides

She knows of ancient lores of kings
She knows of broken hearts
And everyday her waters sing
Tales men cannot tell apart

And when I cried to her one day
I knew with me she'd cried
Her solemn wave rose to the bay
And fell gently by my side

Now when I pick up seashells
I often hear strange wails
Like forgotten, arcane spells
That unfold the Ocean's tales

Silent Night

Another night falls
And as my last cigarette is put out
Another lone star shines in the sky
And a single tear escapes my eye
Another time I sleep alone
On my empty bed, cold as stone.

A song from the grave

I am but a drifting cloud in the sky
I am but a blade of grasss
I am but a teardrop in a blind man’s eye
I am but a broken piece of glass

I am but a grain of desert sand
I am but a whisper of the wind
I am but a forgotten gypsy band
I am but a loveless soul that never twinned

I am but a lonely house in the bare tree
I am but a ring in a church bell
I am but a low tide in the deep sea
I am but a leaf that withered and fell

I am but a sad song they sing along with
I am but a ghost you can’t see
I am but a lost, forlorn myth
I am but a memory.

Sunshine's song.

PS: This is for my friend's pet who I loved dearly. Sunshine. She had the loveliest voice ever. I tried to make this good but I couldn't. But I do want this to be my 50th post on here.
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Oh little yellow Canary
Perched on top of a mighty tree
You sing songs of melancholy
As we stop to listen.
Everyday your feathers fall
A reminder of your final call
Your sadness makes us all look small
And teardrops in our eyes glisten.


There's a distant look in your eyes
The color of the deepest skies
The window reflecting your helpless cries
But no one seems to see
For a bird's song is always careless
Free of impending worries or stress
So people laugh and say god bless!
Our chirpy little Canary.

Then one morning you were gone
And it was before long
No more was heard of the song
That still lingers in the air
But oh what I wouldn't give
To see you come back and live
And once again hold me captive
In your voice's golden lair.

When I was six

Paper planes and puddles
Tiny tents and huddles
Colorful butterflies
Syrup on cold ice.

Toy cars and dolls,
Marshmallow stalls,
A blooming bud
A splash in the mud.

Candy and cake,
A quiet lake,
Rainbow in the sky
Heaven in my eye.

Stars in the night,
Silvery light,
A bed-time tale
And dreams that entail.

When I was six,
I lived
And now I exist
I only exist.
When I was six
I believed
In beauty and bliss
When I was six...

Sing.

Every night I sleep
With pain anchored inside me
And the roots of it are deep
But sealed away so no one can see

Everyday I smile
Knowing my heart wants to cry
But I don't want to seem so fragile
To every onlooker's eye

So I swallow it all and when I feel too bad
When the tears won't stop when I'm just so sad,
When I can't bear it all, can't do anything,
I open my heart and sing
I open my heart and sing.

So I don't tell a soul about my grief
Because I know all the care is fake and brief
When life becomes a curse, when it gets maddening
I open my heart and sing
I sing.

Everywhere I go
I look at people around me, they seem happy
I wonder if it's really so
Or if they're just better at pretending

Every time I lie
On my bed, looking at the only star
I wipe a tear and heave a sigh
Wishing I could go somewhere that far

But I swallow it all and if I feel too bad
If the tears won't stop, if I'm just too sad
If I can't bear it all, can't do anything
I open my heart and sing
I open my heart and sing

Then I feel relief sweeping through me
Because a song can heal the worst misery
And then I smile, and this time genuinely
And things aren't so bad

Maybe tomorrow a good day will come
Maybe of all the sunshine, I'll get some
Maybe I'll know what it is to be glad
And things won't be so bad

And if it doesn't well

I'll swallow it all and if I feel too bad
If the tears won't stop, if I'll feel too sad
If I can't bear it all, can't do anything
I'll open my heart and sing
I'll open my heart and sing

And I won't tell a soul about my grief
Because I know all the care is fake and brief
When life becomes a curse, when it gets maddening
I'll open my heart and sing
I'll sing.

Things left unsaid.

She had once told him while they were on the phone, "I don't care if you go on and sleep with random women. Have mindless sex with them. I just don't care because I know how it gets... I am so far away and there is nothing I can do about it. But I cannot stand it if another woman occupies your heart, if your love for her is stronger than what you have for me, I will lose all purpose of life. I won't know where I'd go, what I'd so, what I'd be."

He listened, reassuring her that she was the love of his love. He told her how he could never stop thinking about her eyes that had the depth of a thousand seas. He told her how he loved her hair, especially when she let it flow freely. He told her how he wanted to marry her and none but her because she was everything in his otherwise troublesome life. He told her that he knows that she doesn't much care for children but that he'd want her to be the mother of his child if he ever did have one. He told her about how his love for her was unrequited and how he lived every second to just make the one moment of their rendezvous everything that she had hoped for. He told her that he lives to see her one day, to be able to place his hands on her shoulders, gaze into her eyes and tell her how much he loved her.

She listened, feeling reassured. Hoping that he loved her as much as he said he did because she knew that even when he said all this, she was not the person in his head. He was speaking to a lover. But he wasn't speaking to her. He was saying all the right things but they weren't directed at her.

Then one day she asked him, "You still love her don't you?"

He did her the favour of being honest. He said that he did and that she knew he did. He had told her before that he'd never be able to forget her.

"Yes, I know", she pressed, "But you would you go back to her if she called you back? Would you give me up?"

He sighed and told her that he couldn't lie. He told her how they were together for five years. How they sat next to each other at work and looked at each other all the time. He told her how they were inseparable. He told her how she had been a huge part of his life and how she took a portion of his heart all for herself. He told her she was his companion and he was hers.

She understood completely, swallowed the pain that filled her up. Her senses, her body, her mind, her brain, her soul. She was a bundle of pain. Suffering. She was loveless. She was a lot of things but she wasn't non-understanding. So she told him she understood. She told him that she thought it was wonderful that he could love someone like that. She told him that it only made him more admirable in her eyes. She wasn't lying. She meant every word she said. But she left some things unsaid.

She didn't tell him that the rest of her life she could only pretend to be happy. She didn't tell him that she craved for someone's love. She didn't tell him that she wanted someone to love her as he loved his ex. She didn't tell him that she was devastated. She didn't tell him that she wanted to cry. Because for the first time, she felt bad for herself.

Then one day, she left. She didn't say where, she didn't leave a note, she didn't give him a reason. She just disappeared like she was never there. She left no traces of her presence. Nothing for him to remember her by. Nothing to remind him of her.

Ten days later, her brother called him to tell him that he could come to the funeral if he'd like. She suffered from a vague illness for which the doctors couldn't determine the cause. That was just another thing she didn't tell him.

Are they worth it?

This is a true story. Friend of mine from LA told me it happened in her sister's high school
********************************************************************************
"Oi, Sarah! Guess what?!! I finally asked Raul to to go the dance with me and he said yes!!! Isn't that great?"

"He said yes?"

"Hah! Yes he did! I know... I know... I can't believe it myself!"

*********************************************************************************

"It wasn't like that Sarah, I was meaning to ask you first but she has been asking for like a month now and I just couldn't say no."

"You should have told me a week earlier. Not the day right before the dance. Bye Raul"

**********************************************************************************

"Hey Seth, would you go to the dance with me?"

"Sarah! Umm... I... would love to... but..."

"No it's alright I'll ask someone else! Thanks anyway!"

**********************************************************************************

"Raul... hey, RAUL!"

"Seth? What's up?"

"Did you see the evening papers yesterday?"

"Papers? Haha! No man why what's on?"



I wonder what made that young woman think that death was the answer to high school boy problems. I wonder what makes anyone think that death is the answer to any of life's problems. RIP

Knowing her... knowing me.

"I need to get my life together", sighed Andrea, her head rested on my shoulders. She was my age, shared the same dreams as me and liked the same things I did but unlike myself, Andy had a face as perfect as a painting, never sang in cacophonies and actually had a heart which I suspected was made of gold.

I patted her shoulder and tried to think of something comforting to say. "Andy I've known you for donkey's years and I know you will find a way out of this mess.", I said reassuringly. Andy shook her head and smiled. "You say that only to make me feel better"

"No I mean it."

"I don't think so. I'm nothing but a little dot on the vast planet trying to make my mark in this world even though there are people way better than I am, doing greater things than I do with a greater degree of perfection. I suck. End of story."

"Well...", I began and she cut me short immediately. "Don't!! Please don't say anything. I know what I am. I am a small fish in a big sea. If I dare venture outside of my little shell, I know I'm going to be eaten."

I sighed. "You're right Andy. There's nothing you can do about it. I guess you're just going to have to accept that you're good but not good enough. Not everybody makes it to the top of the ladder."

She looked askance at me, rubbing her thumbs together. She always did that.

"What do you mean *not good enough*?", she asked, careful to stress every word in its utterance.

"Just that... not good enough."

She stood up, arms akimbo and stared right into my eyes. "Look, I don't know about your standards but let me tell you... I've been published in more than one renowned journals, I have had three exhibitions of my artworks... two more on their way, and I have been invited to be the lead for the nationwide dance extravaganza. So if you wish to tell me that my accomplishments are *not good enough* I will need you to place on record your own. And after that you can badger me with your aspersions but until THAT happens I will *NOT* be abased, you hear?"

I allowed myself to smile a little and then stood up myself. "Now that we have this sorted out, you want to go to Ranger's and get pizza?", I asked averting a direct gaze at her searching eyes, fumbling with my purse. Andy stayed quite for a minute and then we both looked at each other and laughed our lungs out.

"You are such a piece of work, you know that?", she asked squeezing me into one of those girly hugs that I have never grown quite comfortable with even after ten years.

"Thanks Andy, I can say the same for ya."

She nodded and we walked hand in hand to the pizza restaurant down Baxter's Road, talking about horrible Mr. McMath at school and how difficult it was to find good looking boys to go to the dance with... and suddenly we were ten years old again.

Pieces of a puzzle

It is amazing how sometimes your life seems to be so perfect - like someone took the missing pieces of a fabric and sewed it all together. You have a dream, you have love, you have a great family and the most entertaining and compassionate people as friends.

They say life is what you miss when you spend years thinking about what it is. So often, we forget to notice how meaningful everyday occurrences are. A mother's smile when you tell her what a wonderful cook she is. A brother's childish-yet-I'm-so-grown-up look when you speak to him about how precarious the road ahead can be if you have no plans. The look of gratitude in a friend's eyes when you tell them you'll be there... even though they probably wouldn't need you. It is in those little things that you find the true meaning of life. At the end of the day, satisfaction is what matters more than happiness. And what can be more satisfying than hearing from the ones you love the most about how much you mean to them?

So many of us seek adventure in life... Traveling the world, climbing an insurmountable hill, falling free from hundreds of feet above the ground, diving under the oceans to look at all the beauty that is concealed within... No doubt, a person learns a lot about her/himself during these overwhelming journeys. Surely, it helps them discover a part of them that they were either unaware of, or were uncertain of. However, what can be learnt from the details, can be learnt only from the details. There is a broader perspective to almost everything... more than what meets the eye. It is when we notice those that we truly begin to understand our purpose of existence.

When I sat, hands rested on my cheeks, looking out of the window - my mother sat beside me.

"So what is it?", she asked seeming to be very certain that something was amiss.

"Nothing maa. Just... looking at the birds.", I said convincingly. But she was my mother and she didn't buy that.

"Ah. Yeah lovely birds... black bodies and grey necks... how wonderfully they sing... caw, caw, cawcaw..."

I laughed and put an arm around the woman who is my best friend, my angel, my savior and my teacher. She can sweeten the sourness in my mood anytime.

"Very funny maa. You got me though, It's him. AND I know what you're going to say... I've been with guys before, I've thought I was in love and then turned out I wasn't ya da ya da ya da."

"Yes, that is what I would have said usually. But not this time. This time it's different I can tell."

I blinked. Say what? This was my mum right? 5'3, fair and nice black hair? Yep. Seemed so. She was smiling at me sensing the mild shock I was in and then she said - "Swati, when you're in love and when you're so far away from each other, things can be a little crooked. But if you can feel him when he says I love you and if his words make you happy and one look at him makes your heart sing, you should let go of the hard feelings you have. The essence of anything is in its details."

What can I say? I love my mother, I love the man I love and I love my life. Of course, very shortly you will read a blog post about how things can never go right for me and about how much life sucks, but hey... we're looking at the broader picture here... wait I mean the finer details... Agh! You get the point!

When life gives you lemons, collect them and then hurl them as forcefully at you can at all your problems and say "Problem ke bache tera mu kaala!"

Change. (Might not make sense to you! :D)

Change is the only certain thing in life they say. That and death. But I am not going to talk about death here because I don't know anything about it! I know a few things about change though. Like how it can in it's arcane ways make you feel ecstatic one instant and the next instant you want to hide in a corner from the whole world wishing nobody ever heard of you. One instant you're on top of everybody's charts and then you're the last person anyone wants to bump into.

Of course without change life would suck terribly. Nobody would have any imagination. You'd still be stuck at the same place doing the same thing after ten years. Twenty years. A whole eternity. Progress would stop and this world would see day after day after day pass by with no spectacular occurrences.

And yet people are afraid of change. Nothing might be so mind-boggling without change but then things aren't unsettling either. Some people live in apprehension and fear all their lives... pondering about what might become of them... what they will or will not make of their "insignificant lives"... does anything last forever? Hope? Love? Friendship? What if something happens that will change everything? Change. Something that invokes fear and anticipation. Change. Something that you know will change your life but you have no clue if it will be for the better or for the worse. Now some may argue that everything happens for the best but honestly... how often do we KNOW what good has come out of certain things... How do we know what disaster someone has averted by losing a limb? Is it for the better? Maybe. How so? No one knows.

So what is it about change that makes it so hard to live with it or live without it? Do all of us need this uncertainty to go on? I am thinking we do. What's a race when you know for sure who's going to win it and how? Maybe change is what makes life. Or maybe change is life. So when people say only death and change is ever certain... they're really talking about life and death. Or are they? Maybe :)