the bits of being bounced off
your futile hands
they now lie tumbled and troubled
on the staircase
you built to take you nowhere

A friend of many years left the city today to start his program at IMA. He is probably one of the very few from my batch who went the Army way. Calls for admiration, respect and cheers to the times together.

take that frame
right off the wall
the departing illusions
just asked me to stall

May I never hurt more than I can heal.

this journey
one among many
and many among some more
let's look for a shore
let's look for a shore

i am so vague
that i can hardly take
a collage for a mind
with no more glue to bind
the stray squares of thoughts
like random bits of paper they
fly by
waiting to be held together
firmly onto the grey sheets
to patch the spilling psyche
to cage the captive birds
to string the floating words

i can
face an ocean
but not that door
it opens into life
you know

i can
see that door
bit excess of ajar
little short of inviting
it bangs all night
against the walls of my mind
you know

i can
sense its dusty eyes
its warm musty breath
like a lover starved
awaiting my sorry steps
you know

i can
like a novice dancer
learn the steps to take
or so wonderfully fake
this stupid life-ly dance
you know

stories

pen running on paper
or lip wrestling lip
hands waving in the air
or a long lost grip

Love in the air and everywhere!

A lot of love is in the air suddenly and quite a few friends have recently dived into the committed category. Smiles are floating like CET-coaching flyers outside MCC gates and it's a good thing to sit back and watch. Hair care and words like "understanding" have become neighbours in almost all the messages I get. Nicknames are created, refined and used dearly. Conversations now include detailed descriptions of what was done, said and left unsaid for ocular communication perhaps. Words are dissected finely and garnished with sights glazed with the love drug. The first more-than-friendly hug is shared like a freshly developed picture from nineties and later, framed for the best room in the mind. Priorities have suddenly been rehashed with academics and work plunging like the BSE on a bad business day and phone calls (and this we owe to the telecom boom, Dayanidhi Maran could be the modern day avataar of Cupid) are having to stretch themselves like my Mum's patience. Reality testing especially with regard to time has taken a backseat so far behind that it's out of the car itself and minutes, hours, days and months have merged into one mass with the only point of reference being the someone special.

Jokes apart, and yes those were digs; I say this because you guys are way too much in love to even realize perhaps that the jokes were on you, I wish all the new lovebirds a lot of lovely lovebirding. Keep at it :)

oh forsaken merman
in your mind's cave
i still see remains
your sandy saintly grave

your grey eyes
almost always belied
the desperation
the dementia
and the drowning
of your greyer strands
of your ever shaky hands

dear dadu, the calendar says it's been over three years, but then that's just the calendar...

spread across
the pages cream
scrawny little
letters scream

that one night

there shine
like silvery stars
in the darkest night
of my kohl lined eyes
the joy let loose
by your smiling
distant eyes

silly chirps
a maroon phone
to my ears
you only drone
petty prescriptions
come by easy
oh so free
i begin to wonder
what bird could
at once be
a nightingale
and a nasty crow

hues
strokes
tears
and jokes

Ramya

Because the word conversation gains new meaning when it comes to Ramya

Because Ramya says the cutest “ayyo” after having forgotten behind something that she was sure she had brought along

Because Ramya comes with a force that doesn’t show itself off but doesn’t disguise itself either

Because Ramya walks like Xena, the warrior princess

Because Ramya reminds me of striving and strength that can be created every single day

Because Ramya flips her hair like she’s on camera all the while and I like that even more than her fab hair

Because very rarely is there a day when Ramya cannot leave you feeling better about yourself

Because Ramya carries with her a fund of golden guts, a bagful of quirks and a small wrapped pack of dreams that she will make real

Because talking about Ramya lends a light to the eyes of her Mom that nobody can miss

Because with Ramya can one share, justify, validate everything they ever went through in one Saturday afternoon

Because Ramya always gets my unmentionable jokes

Because it isn’t too often that you comes across a Ramya, and when you do, it changes your life somewhere.

Happy birthday, bum!

Love you :)

Mamma,

I want to tell you that you are wonderful.

I want to tell you that you have been wonderful every single day that I've known you. And you're someone I've known the longest and so, how much having you around means to me is something that only I know. I also believe that we've something amazing going on between the two of us. Everything - the tea times together, the ranting, the reminiscing, the days (and nights) we've been through wondering how we would pull through things to come, the regrets, the little joys, the laughs laced with stress at Min's jokes and Astro's idiosyncrasies and the insatiable need for mishti – all of it makes my life today what it is. When people tell me I look, act, sound like you, I want to tell them that there is no bigger compliment that they could ever give me. And you are like wine, you'll just get better and better with age. So a big cheers to everything you say and do, happy birthday, Ma.

Love you.

just a few
gingerly seconds away
from my fingertips

Tuesdays with Winni

I've been asking people I know well to come up with ten or more adjectives that describe who they feel I am - an offshoot of an activity from my classes on Personality. Responses have mostly been predictable, consistent and a little indulgent perhaps. But that's not what this post is about. I'm looking for my backbone. I'm sure I was born with one but it began crumbling by the time I was 4 and by the look of things now, it will completely cease to exist by the time I get to 24. Of course, I say this in the metaphorical sense. My body is fine but when it comes to my mind, I think I have doubts and very reasonable ones at that.

My counselor often talks to me of scripts - our conceptions and beliefs about our life and life in general that guide how we perceive and respond to all that happens. A script, from my understanding of what he tells me, is rooted almost completely in one's childhood and once developed, this script remains unchanged and holds the key to all kinds of success. Or failure. My own script is something I haven't really been able to apply much thought to. Maybe I don't want to even as I fear my script translates into the life of two decades bygone and the lifetime to come absolutely and starkly empty. Sounds like a dramatic statement to make, I know and I'm guessing that is the issue with soul-searching in prose - what sounds true to the mind always sounds silly in sight and sunlight.

Talking of the adjectives activity, the ten adjectives my Dad listed out were profoundly positive. Things that sound profoundly positive don't really exist. Think of hope (the paradise for fools), eternity (who has ever seen eternity?), meaning, beauty, perfection and on and on. Similarly, my Dad's profoundly positive perception of me doesn't really exist. It may exist in parts, in masks, in habits and simply because in my life so far, I've had no way to walk but for his way. Stepping out of his way incurs immense wrath and I'm not one for facing conflict. I'd rather bend my head than bare my mind. And I like peace, at almost any price. The problems arise because I don't like his way. And I'm beginning to become pretty certain that he wouldn't like me any other way. The daughter he loves doesn't completely exist. I fear the day he faces more than the usual amount of disagreement from me, he'd disown me in his rather verbal and noisy fashion.

My Dad and me. We never went the close-and-later-grew-apart way. Instead it took me 18 years to freely even get down to speaking to him. Today he proudly talks of how we're akin to friends, we eat out together, shop together, rant together. In a way childhood with my Dad's just begun for me. He's never raised his hand against me, never denied me of something he could provide, given me the options that were inconceivable in his life. He trusts me implicitly. All of those count to me beyond measure but things that aren't as simple as agreeing on a shopping list or a place to eat exist. There's talk of curbs when there should be freedom, there will in the future be talk of marriage that him and me won't see eye to eye on surely and there will obviously, be a decline in obedience - the most worthy aspect of me in his eyes. It will hurt him. I don't want to inflict this rude awakening sort of situation upon him and knowing my sub-zero levels of guts, this may never happen but things have been wrong a long way, awareness must come in no matter how late in his life (and mine) and consequences have to be borne.

For now, I'm still doing this stretching between what he wants and what I want. And it's starting to hurt. It's taking a toll on me that might's always right in the place I call home. It's taking a toll on me that the freedom he wants to give me involves letting me drive a car, stand up to the demands that are made of me and always be able to see his perspective but I'm worried that the freedom to seek my life and speak for myself will probably never be mine. That's too big a price to pay for peace and too small a price to reclaim a backbone that will last this time around. This tug and shove situation, the hopes, the disappointments and the absolute disillusionment are getting me down in a big way. Sometimes, everything I've done so far - all the experiences, learning, joy, pain seem null and void because I feel as though I'm nobody, as though I've no say, no way and just no worth.

Feelings like that don't knock before they come. They just come. And I'm yet to regain equilibrium from things that have happened, from days that I have seen and there are things that happen day in and day out that don't really help one move ahead. It isn't as though I'm trying to say others have it easy. I know people dealing with harsher realities and doing it exceedingly well. I'm coming to terms with the fact that maybe I don't hold up as well. I know it takes me time, I know it's never complete, I know that somewhere I'm still not as easy with things as I'd like to be. Obviously, I'm looking for a way out of this, I'm on the way and it's taken me to some breathtaking moments, some wonderful people and little steps of building faith that I need so bad.

At each point of my life when I was drowning, I've been very lucky to have people who've seen the best in me, who've shook me and deafened me till I heard and believed in the things they valued in me. A lot of people have held up the me without the backbone and I really do think it has translated into some of the backbone you see in me today. And in the smile that I sport ever so often. I wish others were as lucky. I wish luck could be shared because acceptance can feel truly wonderful, especially when I know that I come as a complete package of rent-free accommodation to fears, a bland sense of reality that can ruin all fun and shell that I'm trying to whittle away very hard for very long. I can be a difficult person and so for everyone who put up with all that and eventually learnt to love me despite the dark, I owe you a lot more than the biggest thank you.

PS: A lot of really good and really bad things happened in the year that went by. One of the really good things are the sessions with my counselor. Tuesday evenings have been redefined and we start sessions from next tuesday after a month's break. We would've had one today but he isn't keeping well. Get well soon, Winni and a big thank you.

measure after measure
and day after day
losing the only treasure
and emptying it on your way