Monday, March 17, 2008

Let it go

Don't walk that road
may lead you to love
never stays with you
no matter who you are
oh baby, listen to your heart
it's been wounded before
it knows that love's a spade
you're the king to go

Love Baby, Love Baby
Let it go
Let it find its way
to you on its own

Walk down a street
and meet your own
hope in the eyes
but smiles all torn
oh baby, listen to your heart
it's been wounded before
it knows that love's a spade
you're the king to go

Love Baby, Love Baby
Let it go
Let it find its way
to you on its own

Juliets were born
for the Romeos to die
so happily in love
is just another lie
oh baby, listen to your heart
it's been wounded before
it knows that love's a spade
you're the king to go

Love Baby, Love Baby
Let it go
Let it find its way
to you on its own

Some wrote it with blood
others strung the guitar
some waited all life
like lovefool that you are
oh baby, listen to your heart
it's been wounded before
it knows that love's a spade
you're the king to go

Love Baby, Love Baby
Let it go
Let it find its way
to you on its own

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Haunting Hills

It’s 3.00 pm and I am stuck in the concrete jungle of ever failing dreams. But the sun is soft. Slowly breaking onto my shoulder and illuminating just my physical presence. Only I don’t recognize it. It does not burn my skin with the familiarity that I feel with the sun back home. And if I was to open the window, I know the wind would sing with my hair and caress my cheeks, warmly. But not with the fierce tenderness of the breeze back home.

The realization hits me at 3.15 pm, almost two nights and two days since my reluctant journey back from the hills. That for the last ten years that I have been adjusting with this fast life as my second abode, I’ve failed miserably. Because, no matter how soon the hills evaporate from my memory once I am back in the technological habitation, their drizzle keeps visiting me sporadically.

Think I still love the enormous climb of the slopes to the ease of the escalator. Think I still love the wilderness of the wind to the chill of the air conditioner. Think I still love the laziness of the small towns to the panic pace of every second in the city. Think I love the forgetfulness of the goat’s trails that help you find yourself to the sharp directions of the city boards, which lead you to loose yourself in the hired crowd. Think I love the tranquil flight of the birds in the valley to the mastered navigating skills of the creatures in the narrow skylines of the city.

3.30pm and I am still sulking. Around me I see happy faces, growing faces, greedy faces, hopeful faces. Not another has the shadow of loneliness painted on it. And then I smile on the loss. Their’s. Because I suddenly take pleasure in what they have probably missed. They are probably some empty vessels that have none so beautiful memories to cry on. They do not feel the grief of loss because they never felt the happiness of owning something so enthralling; the restlessness of butterflies, the carelessness of streams, the freshness of wind, the coldness of snow.

And so my heart retraces its steps and decides to settle down on the warm bed of compromises. Happy, it had something than nothing at all.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Chup chup si

chup
Chup chup si
Yeh dhadkan
Kya jaane kya bole
Kiske afsanon se
Kiss deewane se
Karti hai batein yeh sun

Oh chup chup si
Oh chup chup si


Kabhi itrati hai
Ruk ruk si jaati hai
Anjani ek haseen
Labon ko de jaati hai

Hatheli per aksar
Gane woh likhti hai
Kanoin mein kehti hai
Nazroin se jo chupati hai

Chup chup si
Ohhhhhhhhh
Chup chup si


Chup chup si
Yeh dhadkan
Kya jaane kya bole
Kiske afsanon se
Kiss deewane se
Karti hai batein yeh sun

Oh chup chup si
Oh chup chup si

Beyond

Beyond the sky
sits the sun,
and smile heavens
Beyond, sings the wind
and dances sand
Beyond, fly dreams
and spread moonlight on land
Beyond, our friend
life’s calling you
Beyond, our friend
is a new horizon for you

Friday, February 8, 2008

Mind beyond 10x10

8 dead chairs, meaningless walls and a so collapsible roof. Yet it’s the most romantic time of my being. ‘Love is in the air’ chugs pass my eagerly absorbing ears. And my mind bounces between office, friends, yesterday, today and tomorrow. The unsure grey clouds lazily drift overhead. And a warm sultry touch on my lips throws me out of the reality. The cold box of sand and iron suddenly seems cozy. Private. Smells of someone. Something. Far in the distance.

The nude windows suddenly pull themselves together under the heavy curtains of my imagination. The chairs turn into an inviting irresistible couch and I see a lamp somewhere. Standing proud. Actually like a blackmailer threatening to spill my feelings. And then I hear him, a bed away. Unsure but eager. Sane but drifting. In love but removed.

Suddenly the sound of tinkling glasses syncs in with the change of the song on my i-pod and brings me back to the noise and commotion of a half-alive office. I resist. But the steaming coffee however is too alluring.

Coco smell mixed with ‘singing my pain with his fingers’ dawns upon me the realization of being in two places, simultaneously.

So picking up that coffee mug I assume it is a wine glass. Sorry, Wine bottle, cause that is how I like it.

I close my eyes and take a sip, cold breeze dances by and I feel him breathing down my neck. I open my eyes half expecting to be looking back at his. I giggle aloud. It’s my little secret that none knows in the crowded room around.

Another sip, he’s holding my wrists in his hands. A smile escapes my lips (wonder what the 60 years old gentleman to my left is thinking about my absurd behavior). I feel weak in my knees. Thousand butterflies flutter their wings inside my stomach. His hand slips through my hair, lightly resting on the back of the neck.

The song changes to ‘she’s always a woman’; the sound of a typewriter’s key assures me that reality is an arm away. Another sip and his arm slips around my waist. I pause. This does not seem right. But hey imagination has no strings attached. He pulls me closer to him. I can hardly breathe in his soft embrace. His finger brushes my hair off my cheek. My heart is leaping. Fearless but fearful. Free yet bounded. Excited but withdrawn. Leaping yet frozen. Leading on but withdrawing. To be or not to be.

My being floating in his arms. I feel the shadow of his face burning mine. We’re loosing the distance. His grip tightens around me. His fingers pull my face closer to his.

‘Yahan sign kijiye’, ‘wise men say only fools rush in’, ‘Hello madam’, ‘can’t help falling in love’. A rude jolt on my shoulder and I lose him. Forever? At least for now. Am back in the noisy office signing a much ignored paper.

Friday, January 18, 2008

When success followed my dream,
more dreams followed

Say no to love

And all this while he was my friend. Eight years of mutual nakedness. Ninety six months of confessions, secrets, fights, patch-ups, phone-calls, heart-breaks, birthdays. And two thousand nine hundred and forty days of companionship made it special. Pity it took just one hour of midnight to ruin it all.

May be it was just a compromise glorified, till its inevitable death knocked on our lives. I’ll like to believe that a few drops of dancing desires bottled in finest glass cage drowned it all. Or may be it was the conspiracy of an envious moment that looses its existence the very next moment. May be it was born to give us death. May be it fought, bribed, rushed through every minute to bring night onto us. After all it was a moment that build our story years back.

It all started with a prankster habit of mine. It was a close friend’s party packed with strangers, waiting to be my friends. On her special day a rare gift was being packed for me. After all didn’t he spend four hours to dissuade my make-shift cousin from pursuing engineering? His eyes left his socket when he realized it was just an active brain-wave of mine that gave everyone a reason to laugh. One party, one prank and two days later a chocolate from him was sitting pretty on my hostel desk. It looked like an invitation for a sweet, creamy friendship garnished with fruits and nuts. Only I didn’t realize it came with an expiry date.

Our relationship flourished by the day. From dentist’s appointment to study hours to friends to fights, to wins and to losses, we were together in everything. That he was an year newer to this world was not of concern to us because we were just friends, until 16th February, 2001.

My bus pulled in at 8.00 pm at Chandigarh bustand. At 8.10pm we were driving around mindlessly in his car. His favorite 7-round joke at his chosen roundabout just got over. In the silence of the night, I heard the tinkering of the music system, a familiar voice rolled out and my heart stopped beating. It was him confessing his love through a recorded message. The moment I had dreaded had arrived. Didn’t I make it clear we were friends? Just friends.


Then why this urge for possession, for belongingness, for commitment? Why does every bird cover miles in search of a nest? Do streams flow into an ocean to be with each other? Do trees have branches to touch each other? Do leaves fall on the ground to die in their beloved’s arms? Questions, questions and more questions were racing through my mind.

Then came the diary. Words beautifully threaded together to lay down a bed of love. Every sentence dancing with joy. Every page a memoir of desires. My pulse was racing now. Butterflies water-rafting in my stomach. This was not to be. He was a friend. Forever.

It was love trying to replace friendship. I felt his eyes searching for an answer on my face.
Desperately hoping for a curve of my smile, shine in my eyes, sprint in my walk. I didn’t want to break his heart, but keeping it together was far beyond me. For hours silence reigned. Loving hism in exchange of being loved by him was not mandatory, he smiled bravely. Even if just to make him feel better, I could not smile. I could not agree. The hope had to die. Today. Now.

The spark of the battle that played a day before was born that day.

late in love

It’s just one of those things we think will never cross our roads. It’s like the jackpot that never knocks your home, the bright kid that your neighbor shows-off, and the huge villa that does not belong to you- Extra marital affair. Extra-marital affairs are what you hear about, you add chapters to but you never, and I repeat; never indulge in this house-breaking temptation.

But, it happened to me. One sultry night of January it tip-toed into my much married existence. Ever since I am sharing my bed with one and sleeping with another. Living with one and being with another, a partner to one and soul mate to another.


How does it feel? It feels like a roller-coaster ride that’s bound to end. It’s the sweet poison that softens your dream before pushing you into a nightmare.

incomplete- calling out

There were these voices, always.
Whispering, conspiring, nudging her to kill the normal.

Normal? What’s normal for a 19 year old mentally retarded girl?

Soiling the bed in the night? Being chained to a lifeless witness of her sorrow? Or talking to herself, 24 hours?

Or is it the old Gulmohar tree in the backyard of her four walls? The tree. It talks to her. When it’s sad, it cries its leaves out. When it’s happy, it breaks into small red flowers. Last night it was angry. Swaying vehemently as if trying to uproot itself and touch her. She was in pain and it could feel it.

Even last month when “he” was here from the town, she was in pain. It always hurt to see him. She wanted to reach out and feel him. She wanted to smell him, she wanted to kiss him, caress him, fold his arms around her. What was he? Some dream she had lived, or more convincingly she had dreamt. Dreamt a dream? Was it normal to dream a dream?

What was normal about Raj Lakshmi anyway?

When she was a kid she did normal things. Freed butterflies from the sweat of her hands. Reveled the orchestra that the nightingale, woodpeckers, crickets, seemed to play with the rustling of the winds and the whistling of the water. She loved the stories that the sun and the sky read out to her. Often, when she would follow a pebble down stream, she would make a new friend. A wild flower, a rabbit, RAIN!

Rain, was sometimes Raj Lakshmi’s best friend. It mostly came unannounced. Sometimes it caught her out in the open, drenching her, embracing her and flowing down her hair like tiny transparent marbles. On other occasions it hid her embarrassment, totally drowning her tears. For hours she would sit by the window and watch the drops romance the air. Fall on the ground and break into thousand tiny droplets and then she would laugh, loud, unashamed of being heard.

It would raise a familiar fear in her dadi.

Chapter 2
Dadi and sisters


The month of july ushered in two seasons in the haveli of Thakur Rudra Pratap Singh, the sweet zest of mangoes and the tinkling of the two sisters’ payjeb. Raj Lakshmi and Swaran Lata, strangers sharing the same family!

In their Dadi’s words Raj Lakshmi at 14 was a princess. “A delicate stem of Lotus, prettier than the pink of monsoon skies, soft like rose petals and unassuming, very unassuming.” Of course she never forgot to add doomed with Raj Lakshmi! That’s what her cousins called Raj Lakshmi, Doomed Princess!

Swaran Lata was pretty, like..like….well she was pretty. She had big black magical eyes. They cast a spell on you everytime they would look into your direction. She could lock your attention for days after you would have looked into them, searching for that mysterious shine. Her long lashes were equally skillful. They would shut on you when you would be too close to something she kept guarded inside that sea of seduction. All of 16 years, the girl could boast of a voluptuously crafted frame that could lure many a thousand ships into a storm. And she was sharp!

She could cut through you and read every sentence you were about to utter. Read every word that crossed your mind. It was dangerous to desire her in her presence and impossible to not do so. Often, she played with people, she read, had fallen for her. She was good with words and words she wrote.

“ I burn, I melt
in the arms of wind
come embrace my being”

Come who would not for her, when the darkness was young and the sky all drunk on the beauty of moon. They all came. With expensive gifts and gifts of hearts! She kept them waiting for hours, for days. She never met them, not one of them. She liked words not men!

There was another thing she did not like, Raj Lakshmi!

It pained their dadi to see the distance between the two increasing by the day. Raj Laksmi reminded many of her mother. The same innocence, same beauty and same aloofness.
The quality of being with everyone yet being alone. The art of being everyone’s friend, yet belonging to none. Everything that Swaran Lata wanted to erase from her memory, she lived in Raj Laksmi..


Sometimes Dadi saw an unknown fear in Swaran Lata’s eyes, almost as if she had seen a ghost. Was Swaran Lata scared? What could possibly scare Swaran Lata? Her Dadi had seen her stand unperturbed on rather moving occasions. Occasions, when tears flooded the eyes of those, known to have lived their lives without a heart. They had failed to move the girl, of infusing any feeling of loss or fear in her.

What was it about Raj Lakshmi that invoked a fear in the heart of her elder sister?

What was she scared of?

Of Raj Lakshmi finding companionship where no one ever ventured, dark forests, khandars and the lone black room in the basement of the haveli.

Chapter 3

THE SUMMER TROUBLE

They indeed had remarkably dangerous similarities. Raj Lakshmi and her mother.

And this haveli would never let the family forget the same. Nor would that summer.

The holidays started on a rather lazy note, marking the absence of many relatives and friends. Kusum Tayee, from Calcutta, Banwari Chacha, Palo Chachi and their three kids suman, chandru and manohar would not be coming. But Everyone’s favourite “mene kya kaha tha?” P.K. kaka had just arrived. Lachchi chachi, the widower with a sword-sharp tongue had arrived a week earlier- in order to ensure the best room- facing the orchard and miles away from Raj Lakshmi’s den. Govardhan mama and his two twins love and kush were expected to be home by evening. A certain Shreyas, the twins’ friend from nagpur was going to share the room at the out house.

love to hate you

Just like some autumn feeling
Waiting to be shed
Your love in my heart
Is burning through my head

You taste like poison
Your smell stings
You feel like cactus
You split my skin

Yes I’m scared, I am bleeding
I’m scarred, I am peeling
I’m broken hearted

I feel you slithering inside
Waiting to be fed
Your touch on my skin
Makes me want to be dead

You move like a scorpion
Your kiss stings
You spread like acid
You burn my being

Yes I’m scared, I am bleeding
I’m scarred, I am peeling
I’m broken hearted