I tell myself every day in moments when I am alone,when distractions slowly die down,when the thought ends up lingering longer than it should,that I could write if I wanted to and that I should,really... And I know it comes from ignoring that part of me,for all these months,not giving it a voice,a life...There have been times when the words have come too fast for the moment,for me to stash them away into the recesses of my mind,to deconstruct them later and they have gone then,lost forever,like a forgotten dream,which is horrifying in its vividness in those dark hours and yet evaporates into nothing at the crack of dawn and wakefulness...
And now when I look back,I know I should have written,in all these months..It may have made them a trifle easier to endure,it may have served to have it all out there,to validate it,to record it,to have it right there for posterity,so that it would not lose any of its potency,any of its power that it has yielded so devastatingly,to an amnesic aging mind.And yet the indifference,the numbness that grows within me like a cancer,each passing day and each crawling night gnaws away at this faculty with the written word,with the smell of ink and old dusty paper that has all the aura to it now,that only memory can lend...
Monday, March 16, 2009
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Ramblings !
The clock ticks into an hour past midnight on this exceptionally hot late summer night.I sit restless,a restlessness that stems from a deep sense of foreboding,the waves of depression crashing and receding on the shores of my otherwise exasperatingly nonchalant temperament.Just what is it,I have no clue.There is no one thing to point a grubby finger at,to single out as the root of it all,so that once that is known,one can work towards it or against it,whichever being suitable.But the cause is lost to me,or maybe I just don't want to see it,why?I have no patience or inkling to find out.How much longer can one go back in time ? How far back can a mistake be traced ?Isn't everything successive ? Aren't we the sum of what we have done and what we have been ? What does that make me ? Will I ever be able to do better or more in the years to come for all these false starts to no longer hold significance ?
I finally write on this night which I hope will be among the last with the temperatures soaring,before fall sets in,and the leaves come trembling down,only to be swept into heaps at corners and then scooped into trash, allowing the cycle of life to renew itself.Does it have a choice,a tree? Can it choose not to have another start year after year in spring? Where does the life go in those white months when the leaves are gone ? And how does it find its way back ? What if we could do the same,start all over ? What would we do differently, in the spring of each year?What would be the point though,with fall looming only a few months away separated by the dry summer months ?And yet isn't it in the experience that we become who we are?
I ramble,I know I do,what can it be blamed on?A tired body,with day after day of senseless work,a dried up carcass of a soul or the heat ? I gulp down some water,I know it cant just be the heat, if only the cause was as simple as that.I try to ask myself,what is it that I am writing about ? I know I would want to write about so much, I have known and realized so much more in this hiatus that I have taken from my world of ink(which is a lie,because it hasn't been self imposed), which I so cherished and so long for,even now... Its as if the part in me has died or is buried deep like the embers of a burnt out fire,glowing faintly,with the last signs of strength,waiting for that elusive gust of air to flare them back into a fire...
Back in the day,when I wrote it was as if I were exorcising my demons,letting myself free,giving the real excuse of a person inside me,a voice,a life as well,or something that resembled it,I remember my friend tell me that it was among the very few times when she saw me happy,when I wrote something or had something worth writing on my mind.With all that gone now,atleast in part,what does that make me?These questions exasperate me,even as I write them out,because they are just turns in the labyrinth.I dont know why I write tonight,to appease the impatience inside me,to fool myself that I can still write whenever I want to,or because I dont want to tuck into bed just yet,although I know I should,else the start tomorrow will be like today,swollen faced and sullen,ofcourse that was quite another matter and not what this is all about...
Life this summer has been definitive in the sense,that if I go ahead and run into the head on collision that I dread I am on the path to and often discuss with a friend,who very rightly jokes or rather suggests that the light at the end of our tunnel is that of a train rushing at us,unavoidably and not a sign of the end of misery,if that is what the years to come,hold,then the summer of this year I think will be of importance,for being the time when I came face to face with the bleak future I had waiting for me.After making a complete mess of the already wrong choices made.They say if you make a wrong decision which is irreversible,you then work and make it worth yout while,you give it your all,so that at the end of it,one can look back at whatever happened as being the result of what one did against it rather than what was wrongly chosen,and that is precisely the part which seals my fate,because repeating the mistake over,at a more gargantuan scale,after coming to terms with the first instance of it,is a blunder,is the sign of doom,and after doing the same twice over,to languish indifferently in the same and not try and work things in one's favour is the kind of destroyed fate I now possess....the question being,do we ever learn from our mistakes ?
Reading over,what I have written in the lines above,I know I have in there,thoughts,most of them not as obvious to the reader,which I hope in the days to come I will and shall be able to deconstruct and put down as better,more coherent works and not as audacious ramblings as this one has come out to be.Maybe this reads as a kind of a preface to the chapters,if I can get myself to write them down,that will follow this.I know its not going to come easy,but who's to say,after all?If only I could get myself to write...Enough said,for now!
I finally write on this night which I hope will be among the last with the temperatures soaring,before fall sets in,and the leaves come trembling down,only to be swept into heaps at corners and then scooped into trash, allowing the cycle of life to renew itself.Does it have a choice,a tree? Can it choose not to have another start year after year in spring? Where does the life go in those white months when the leaves are gone ? And how does it find its way back ? What if we could do the same,start all over ? What would we do differently, in the spring of each year?What would be the point though,with fall looming only a few months away separated by the dry summer months ?And yet isn't it in the experience that we become who we are?
I ramble,I know I do,what can it be blamed on?A tired body,with day after day of senseless work,a dried up carcass of a soul or the heat ? I gulp down some water,I know it cant just be the heat, if only the cause was as simple as that.I try to ask myself,what is it that I am writing about ? I know I would want to write about so much, I have known and realized so much more in this hiatus that I have taken from my world of ink(which is a lie,because it hasn't been self imposed), which I so cherished and so long for,even now... Its as if the part in me has died or is buried deep like the embers of a burnt out fire,glowing faintly,with the last signs of strength,waiting for that elusive gust of air to flare them back into a fire...
Back in the day,when I wrote it was as if I were exorcising my demons,letting myself free,giving the real excuse of a person inside me,a voice,a life as well,or something that resembled it,I remember my friend tell me that it was among the very few times when she saw me happy,when I wrote something or had something worth writing on my mind.With all that gone now,atleast in part,what does that make me?These questions exasperate me,even as I write them out,because they are just turns in the labyrinth.I dont know why I write tonight,to appease the impatience inside me,to fool myself that I can still write whenever I want to,or because I dont want to tuck into bed just yet,although I know I should,else the start tomorrow will be like today,swollen faced and sullen,ofcourse that was quite another matter and not what this is all about...
Life this summer has been definitive in the sense,that if I go ahead and run into the head on collision that I dread I am on the path to and often discuss with a friend,who very rightly jokes or rather suggests that the light at the end of our tunnel is that of a train rushing at us,unavoidably and not a sign of the end of misery,if that is what the years to come,hold,then the summer of this year I think will be of importance,for being the time when I came face to face with the bleak future I had waiting for me.After making a complete mess of the already wrong choices made.They say if you make a wrong decision which is irreversible,you then work and make it worth yout while,you give it your all,so that at the end of it,one can look back at whatever happened as being the result of what one did against it rather than what was wrongly chosen,and that is precisely the part which seals my fate,because repeating the mistake over,at a more gargantuan scale,after coming to terms with the first instance of it,is a blunder,is the sign of doom,and after doing the same twice over,to languish indifferently in the same and not try and work things in one's favour is the kind of destroyed fate I now possess....the question being,do we ever learn from our mistakes ?
Reading over,what I have written in the lines above,I know I have in there,thoughts,most of them not as obvious to the reader,which I hope in the days to come I will and shall be able to deconstruct and put down as better,more coherent works and not as audacious ramblings as this one has come out to be.Maybe this reads as a kind of a preface to the chapters,if I can get myself to write them down,that will follow this.I know its not going to come easy,but who's to say,after all?If only I could get myself to write...Enough said,for now!
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Night
The moon shines down
On him..
As he lies in the soft bed...
The Orion slowly makes its way
Across the sky..
The night breeze
Blows his hair
The moors smell
Of fresh blades of green
Budding through the dead yellow..
He lies there...
And the sounds
Of the night,come to him
From the distance...
The crickets creak..
The horses neigh..
He smiles
For he loves nights
Like these....
Ah!The beauty...
He remembers others
Such as this one...
He remembers
The first...
The night he stayed up,
Wakeful,as a kid,
Sneaking to the window
Of the farm
Looking out for hours..
Only to be found
With his head lolled
On the sill
In the morning...
Many years later
Sprawled in the grass
With his mates
After hours of walking
To see the distant
Forest fires,
Everyone was talking about...
And yet another
In her arms..
After she had fallen asleep
He lay awake
Looking at the dark sky
The smoke from his mouth and nose
Hovering over his face
Before losing itself
Into nothing...
And many others,
But a few months
And also days ago
Of walking in silence
In deep thought ...
But never lost to their beauty
The beauty of those nights
Few and far between...
And now he lies
As one more such
Inches into the harsh daylight
Of tomorrow..
He lies in silence
The despair slowly slipping away
The memories of other nights,
Giving him hope...
And slowly his hands find their way...
Find his heart..
He feels its thump..
That sound of life..
He moves his fingers to the side
And finds the ugly
Misshapen shrapnel..
Sticking out from the side
He tries to move it
But it is stuck too deep
He looks around for help
A few vacant eyes
Look up at him..
He looks up at the black pall
That is the night sky
And the light from the moon
Glints in his eyes and the shrapnel
He smiles,overcome again..
He tugs at it
With all his might
It comes through...
Tearing through the sutures
From his second attempt
At life
But a few days ago...
And he bleeds away...
Drenching the earth,
Into the night....
Ah!The beauty of a night
Like this one...
On him..
As he lies in the soft bed...
The Orion slowly makes its way
Across the sky..
The night breeze
Blows his hair
The moors smell
Of fresh blades of green
Budding through the dead yellow..
He lies there...
And the sounds
Of the night,come to him
From the distance...
The crickets creak..
The horses neigh..
He smiles
For he loves nights
Like these....
Ah!The beauty...
He remembers others
Such as this one...
He remembers
The first...
The night he stayed up,
Wakeful,as a kid,
Sneaking to the window
Of the farm
Looking out for hours..
Only to be found
With his head lolled
On the sill
In the morning...
Many years later
Sprawled in the grass
With his mates
After hours of walking
To see the distant
Forest fires,
Everyone was talking about...
And yet another
In her arms..
After she had fallen asleep
He lay awake
Looking at the dark sky
The smoke from his mouth and nose
Hovering over his face
Before losing itself
Into nothing...
And many others,
But a few months
And also days ago
Of walking in silence
In deep thought ...
But never lost to their beauty
The beauty of those nights
Few and far between...
And now he lies
As one more such
Inches into the harsh daylight
Of tomorrow..
He lies in silence
The despair slowly slipping away
The memories of other nights,
Giving him hope...
And slowly his hands find their way...
Find his heart..
He feels its thump..
That sound of life..
He moves his fingers to the side
And finds the ugly
Misshapen shrapnel..
Sticking out from the side
He tries to move it
But it is stuck too deep
He looks around for help
A few vacant eyes
Look up at him..
He looks up at the black pall
That is the night sky
And the light from the moon
Glints in his eyes and the shrapnel
He smiles,overcome again..
He tugs at it
With all his might
It comes through...
Tearing through the sutures
From his second attempt
At life
But a few days ago...
And he bleeds away...
Drenching the earth,
Into the night....
Ah!The beauty of a night
Like this one...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Winter...!
In all these months that I have been away from this space,from these pages...there has been this thought,nebulous though but clearing up as time has gone by,the edges sharpening to prick the self,that probably I might never get back to it again,that I might have lost that ability that had led me to it little by little in those slow years..They are gone now ofcourse,those years which had led me to this,just as the boy has...In passing conversation the other day,as I met up with a friend I had not seen for a while,he mentioned how our undergraduation and now the follow up to it had eaten close to six years of our lives....Has it been as long as that?I wondered then was it as far removed as that,that I was to the boy who had passed out of the twelveth grade..Did he rest inside of me...or was that part gone forever,never to be seen again?
But the thought that has haunted me in those moments of contemplation,when I have in the company of friends too,slipped into the old realm,has been of why I havent written in so long a time,why have there been so many failed attempts?And this final desperate move is an attempt to appease the demons that lie waiting in those dark recesses of the mind and sneak out to haunt me at the helm of a quiet pensive moment.I write now in an attempt to exorcise them,if not all,atleast the one that torments me about this...It isnt that I havent had anything to write about,on the contrary there has been so much to chronicle,so much to put down...and yet...
In all this while, I have travelled all the way,across the oceans,through the loss of a loved one,across continents,through the hollowness of seeing people one loves change and move on with time while one has been away and I have been broken,but more than that,what I have been left with is the familiar cold draft that has left me frozen and inside...so that I know nothing,feel nothing...I dont talk what or how I used to,I dont do as I used to,I dont feel as I used to,I am not as I used to...I remember those moments as I sat in the dark flight,the knot in the pit of my stomach tightening with each passing hour,knowing what I did,the emotion turned topsy turvy before take off....I remember the passage into the new year that I brought in in silence....I remember the moments when I sat in the coffee house surrounded by the people I loved and felt as if I didnt belong....I remember the horror of the days before I left....And I remember more...
And with all these memories,the draft blows stronger ravaging the one who lies huddled in a narrow alley,his teeth chattering,his fingers and toes peeling away in frostbite,his mind numbed,his soul frozen,the attempt at warmth turned to ashes long ago lying in front of him...the one that lies in the alley somewhere deep in my being....
But the thought that has haunted me in those moments of contemplation,when I have in the company of friends too,slipped into the old realm,has been of why I havent written in so long a time,why have there been so many failed attempts?And this final desperate move is an attempt to appease the demons that lie waiting in those dark recesses of the mind and sneak out to haunt me at the helm of a quiet pensive moment.I write now in an attempt to exorcise them,if not all,atleast the one that torments me about this...It isnt that I havent had anything to write about,on the contrary there has been so much to chronicle,so much to put down...and yet...
In all this while, I have travelled all the way,across the oceans,through the loss of a loved one,across continents,through the hollowness of seeing people one loves change and move on with time while one has been away and I have been broken,but more than that,what I have been left with is the familiar cold draft that has left me frozen and inside...so that I know nothing,feel nothing...I dont talk what or how I used to,I dont do as I used to,I dont feel as I used to,I am not as I used to...I remember those moments as I sat in the dark flight,the knot in the pit of my stomach tightening with each passing hour,knowing what I did,the emotion turned topsy turvy before take off....I remember the passage into the new year that I brought in in silence....I remember the moments when I sat in the coffee house surrounded by the people I loved and felt as if I didnt belong....I remember the horror of the days before I left....And I remember more...
And with all these memories,the draft blows stronger ravaging the one who lies huddled in a narrow alley,his teeth chattering,his fingers and toes peeling away in frostbite,his mind numbed,his soul frozen,the attempt at warmth turned to ashes long ago lying in front of him...the one that lies in the alley somewhere deep in my being....
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Withered Flowers
The marble halls creaked...
Broke apart...one day
Long after the last waltz ended...
That day the rain fell
And wiped away the canvases..
Blurring the paint...
Breaking the brushes like twigs
And the tide flowed...
Scarlet....bleeding to death...
Whirling round her heels...
As she walked out....
The nib broke..
And ink spilled out in blobs..
Drenching the burning manuscript...
The glass eyes cracked
And fell,leaving vacant holes...
As fumbling fingers
Crashed the keys of the piano
Trying relentlessly in vain...
And the years to come...
Witnessed another life
For that day...
When the flowers withered...
The muse had died....
Broke apart...one day
Long after the last waltz ended...
That day the rain fell
And wiped away the canvases..
Blurring the paint...
Breaking the brushes like twigs
And the tide flowed...
Scarlet....bleeding to death...
Whirling round her heels...
As she walked out....
The nib broke..
And ink spilled out in blobs..
Drenching the burning manuscript...
The glass eyes cracked
And fell,leaving vacant holes...
As fumbling fingers
Crashed the keys of the piano
Trying relentlessly in vain...
And the years to come...
Witnessed another life
For that day...
When the flowers withered...
The muse had died....
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Exile..
The dark clouds gather...
People sift past each other gravely...
On the sombre narrow streets...
With their frost wiped windows..
Of shops selling wreaths and coffins...
Women and men sitting inside them..
In silence and perpetual black...
Waiting for the news of death to come..
To put them to work...
Somewhere close a funeral procession walks in silence..
And as I look at that speck of stardust
who had laughed and cried,loved
and cared for in its stint on earth,shunned in life..
ordained in death...
Standing in my corner of the last few months...
Under the lamp post with its lamp dead
I try to end my exile..but in vain...
Death has brushed past me...
And I am alive...by contrast...
But it isnt for long...
For I shall go back to being the corpse I was...again..
People sift past each other gravely...
On the sombre narrow streets...
With their frost wiped windows..
Of shops selling wreaths and coffins...
Women and men sitting inside them..
In silence and perpetual black...
Waiting for the news of death to come..
To put them to work...
Somewhere close a funeral procession walks in silence..
And as I look at that speck of stardust
who had laughed and cried,loved
and cared for in its stint on earth,shunned in life..
ordained in death...
Standing in my corner of the last few months...
Under the lamp post with its lamp dead
I try to end my exile..but in vain...
Death has brushed past me...
And I am alive...by contrast...
But it isnt for long...
For I shall go back to being the corpse I was...again..
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Silence....
In all these days,its been but the silence of despair...of the knowledge that comes in the most inopportune moments that I continue to walk alone...no matter what..the silence of the melancholy of return...of the bleak landscape that I find,much to my dissapointment when I look over my shoulder...of those moments,those few moments each day when I remember,when I know...and my numbed mind doesnt react as it used to,but does only in silence and in the small hours, its those moments that come back to me in the few minutes before I lose myself to the darkness of sleep,brought forth sooner,aggravated by the fatigue I drive myself to,during the day...Its the silence,at the end of it all,that screams louder than the wails of an agonized soul...Its the silence...
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