Silhouette

I've laughed with you over a broken piece
when I had a day so empty
I put that aside to go back to us

It took my hands there
to wish it stronger
longer than we had with us

It smells like you and I can't save it
Difficult, different we had it
truth was incomplete in us

Clones and smiles and laughs
Let me try one more time
No we won't complain about us

Faces I know have theirs
Defeated me everywhere
This will turn around to fade us

I will wait to win
Paint myself to it
only this time against us

Mistake-taken

You listen to yourself and walk out to breathe and spend time with yourself. Well you do that a lot of times but you need this again? So, you did. Your heart was pounding as if you witnessed yourself walking away from a crime you committed. Of course its an exaggeration, but its not understating what you felt. Then you snuck out, a little part inside you convinced "it's all going to be good".

You ran a marathon in your head while collecting all the excuses you could to justify if you were caught. Well you have many of them now. Is your heart still racing? Yes! Now what?

You make the choice mentally crossing your fingers. The phone rings- you've been caught! Now? You act out all the excuses logically and break inside.

Its all bad now. You've been caught and you didn't breathe.

Now what?

You released a dozen of frustrated grunts to the walls. Yes they understand you-the jokes on you. Now you have a night to haunt you while you wait to make sure this didn't ruin your life. Well it did. If life is living your consequences, you called it upon yourself.

Now its time teasing you and you are cold to yourself. You are alone enough to blame yourself. You are far enough to be alone. You are stupid enough to be far and tired enough to be stupid.

This night will pass, hopefully they will forgive you, the time will soften, but the calm in you is compromised. There is a lot of noise in this void.

4 feet Silence

I have always been drawn to the unfamiliar after making sure the familiar was in place for me to fall back upon. Now I can comfortably stand, judge and belong. This complicated process always begins with me growing a deep sense of dislike for no concrete reason.

It was the unreasonable pride and disregard from both ends before I realized it was just me. The arrogance was mutual, loud and clear but the sense and intent were different. It occurred to me for the first time when I heard 'It happens'. This was the time when the lines between the familiar and unfamiliar blurred or I chose unfamiliar for itself. 

While I prayed for it to be different that day, I am now glad it was not. I always thought/think that it takes effort to aid to someone and it's precious and deserves an intent. Well it does NOT. It just takes you. It takes you to put everything aside when the moment demands it. I have never been more happier to be proven wrong. When there is a strength for you to trust your weight with, take it, soak it. It doesn't come along often, atleast not without a cost. But when it does, love it with all your heart, among the seconds that destroyed you, believe that they all led you to this, soak it within.

I am highly unqualified to categorize or summarize meaningfulness into accepted statuses/profiles but I know and feel what it is, even though I can't explain. When you sit 4 feet across for hours in silence, swift along in dense air, see the sky paint itself differently in each mile you cease to investigate. With a million things unsorted, you choose and gift silence.

Time and distance have vested powers in themselves and their play has absolutely no rules, you can never win! Thank god.

250 Mercer Street

I pushed myself out the door of the cab and I heard her say 'sorry, I got to rush'. I am not surprised, in fact, I have come to terms with what's happening to me. I resigned and continued talking to Pierre and amidst all this I found a little tiny window in me to tear down. At this point I am beyond - 'How can this happen to me', well this has been happening to me since a week, if I don't get used to this, it's my fault.

I got down without a clue of where I was, I could sense tension in his voice too. He knew I was lost. He insisted on explaining the route to the driver but she couldn't afford to waste a minute more on this. It was an after-rain weather, the grass was wet and there I was, at 250 Mercer Street. I broke down. I failed at it again, I tried everything possible for this not to happen. EVERYTHING POSSIBLE.

It still did and I am more shocked than angry and for the first time I felt as if this mishap was forced upon me. It left me helpless and abandoned literally.

The fact that an almost stranger and an almost nobody was everything to me at that point of time spoke volumes to me from myself. I called him 4 times within the 5 min span in which he could reach me and the fact that he was worried about me turned out to be the most magical and comforting thing I felt in a long long long long time. While I had/have a million reasons to curse everything around me, I had/have one reason to be thankful about and that's him.

While sometimes I categorize my problems as 'fancy painful' , the way they hurt and break me, I wonder if I even have the balls to face real ones. The fact that my earned moments are nothing like how I thought they would be and that they are growing exponentially worse each day creates a lump in my throat and leaves me broke inside. I don't see things getting better anytime soon and I am not really sure where this is leading to and why.

If I am paying for my Karma I must have done something horribly wrong. What happened today shook the innermost me.

The wrath

The worst wrath of an enemy to me would be hurling me into a situation or more imaginatively a quicksand wherein I have to, just have to 'depend' on someone. Even as I typed that sentence I had a disgusted (of myself) face. The fact that I have to depend on someone for anything makes me sick to my stomach. In my quest for being absofuckinglutely independent for life I end up depending on people in a range of capacity. I do fall in love with few people along the way but I end up hating myself a little more each time.

I am in the verge of being temporarily financially independent in a very reasonable way but these few testing times few weeks before things hopefully materialize have slammed my face into the wall and choked the pipes inside my body making me bruised and bleed emotionally. The chronology of things that surfaced are so bitter that calling them bitter-sweet is no longer justified. It's mere pain in the most honest sense possible. I have a lump in my throat as I write.

I do believe this is so testing that it's keeping me or rather bitterly pushing me away from the appreciation I must hold of what I have or what I have earned. I know if I describe the magnitude of dependency involved in the narration, one would comfortably disregard my concern to be petty, however in my defence if you are me this is the literal equivalent of being punched in the stomach to hurt your innermost self.

The point is I will always be pushed to the wall by circumstances where I have to seek help/ wait for someone/worst yield to someone.I can/will NEVER come to terms with it and I know it and more honestly I owe that dignity to myself.

4:44 AM

As I browse around the space that is just meant to create envy and creep in the void we never knew existed, I saw something desirable and whispered ' I want that!' but in the milliseconds that followed I turned away and stated 'May be not'. In the effort to understanding the power of desiring intangible things, I realized how momentary and confusing they are shaped to be. The fact, that you had the same and let go, is scared to face you to the same extent that you avoid it each time. In this struggle the only reason you muster among the scattered pieces of the puzzle you once had together is that you weren't the one who dropped it. You didn't save it, but you didn't throw it away. And this places you closest to the edges of either Loser or Winner depending on which song is playing on your playlist.

Of course you are sorted, or so you tell yourself. Now at 4:44 AM what's the truth? You got this? Sure?

Akshay Kumar, Magic Mike, tomorrow, today, last night, what's the strongest? Haunting? Go ahead tell me it's all good.

The 4:44 AM syndrome is one that provokes all the thoughts that try to creep in between your carefully scheduled day but suck power to charge at you at night. At this hour what's your defense? It's the truth you've been avoiding, it's the lie which refuses to blur, its the face you thought you buried, it's the you, the one you don't want to handle anymore. Still it's all that will make a difference to you.

Have a coffee, count your blessings at the breakfast table, look good to the world, make yourself proud, solve something unimportant, fuss over something incomplete, envy another body, mind, pretend kind, caring, search eyes, talk, listen and come back. Come back and I will be waiting to haunt you with the right wrongs at 4:44 AM.

The Pedicure

As the nail polish upon my toe nails was drying I took a deep gaze at the dirt my feet shed in the water tub. It was more dirty than Hussain Sagar which took years of dirt into itself. Just when I was disgusted looking at it something far more disgusting teared me up. He walked up to me in bright-tight checked shirt, loose grey jeans, South Indian complexion and almost no expression (the expression one has when it’s nothing but work). He quickly picked up the gold plated water (dirty) tub from beneath my feet and walked away in a jiffy. I noticed he didn’t wear a belt, his pants were held by what I know as Moldaram. He drained the water down the basin and left to clean the empty tub. With three fashion magazines resting on my recliner couch and my cleaner feet I sat their almost numb. As I saw him leave, a myriad emotions stirred up in my belly and head aiding tears down my eyes. I felt a strong rush of guilt and shame and choked my throat.

We are all much more than what we do and I wish I had a way to explain it to myself. Those 2 seconds were beyond confusing to pen down.

I demand the best and worst of people I love and loved. I am the most unkind person I know of, who claims a share of good deeds of Sharath (brother) and Archana (soulmate) and feeds of their blessings and prayers. I am also the most pampered, by people who choose to stick and few who don’t have a choice. In essence I feel completely insignificant to be asking for more.

 I must clarify the perspective and context. It’s from the perspective of an insignificant being and the context of my country.  I must mention a sub-perspective when I mention my country. My country is my home. Home, where I belong. Home, the place I come back to. The place is an integral part of my personality and sadly (to people surviving me abroad) shapes my opinions on the grounds of irrationality (at times). Homes can be dysfunctional but one defends it anyway at their own expense. I find myself doing that many times to the extent of sounding illogical. The dignity of labor at question has a huge role to play in one’s life and no can be devoid of it. Its a social responsibility we must attend to.

In France, a waiter who delivers a bad service isn’t afraid of his client shaming him loudly with assumed authority. He holds a well-deserved confidence and exudes his personality guilt-free. The society not only respects him but is also grateful for the value he adds. No, I am not making this up!

If only this was possible or executed in India we would be one step closer to the utopia. We all are enablers and victims of this epidemic and we don’t realize it. In India one’s work more than defines a person to others. To all the uncles and aunties, we, millennials, who shower namastes and pai lagoos on unimportant occasions, we are nothing more our current status. They remember us as – “oh she? The one who works at Infy? Oh he? He is in US and married? Oh them? Who managed to open their own business? Oh us? Winners?” We all are slaves of our impressions and we fail to realize this.

It’s hard to map the incident to my analysis and it might not be absolute..... but it’s one to force the reboot.