Monday, June 30, 2008

Just. So.

Sister’s hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer in the ileum. She’ll be released shortly and then possibly admitted for a surgery, soon.
Round the week, I’ve gone to see her twice, and sent her SMSes now and then, because SMSes are free and I didn’t know what to tell her. So she’d been feeling, as I could make out, that I didn’t love her much.
I haven’t argued, for it felt irrelevant.

Dad retired today. Yesterday was his birthday, and I haven’t given him anything. I would have forgotten completely, had I not overheard someone wishing him over the telephone, early in the morning, half-asleep on bed. But I pretended to remember it, and gave him a big hug, and he was happy. Lunch was hardly any good food. We had meat and a vegetable.

He wore a red and white striped shirt and brownish black trousers to the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India, Head Quarters, Sudder Street, today. It was office for him since nineteen seventy nine till the evening. Now it’s been reduced to a sad blue building of treasures.
Possibly.
I don’t know.
But let’s say, I know, for, he’s my dad.

He looked brave today. Braver than I thought he actually were.
With the red and white striped shirt and the bouquet of red roses and the Farewell cakes and with the cobbler down the footpath saying goodbye and with memories spilling from the fourth floor room, the revolving chair, the staplers and piles of documents in bookshelves and cabinets and computers and a few sad, smiling human beings.
But I caught him bleary eyed in the living room couch. So I said: age is not the number of times the earth goes round the sun.
So he smiled sadly.
And I smiled sadly.

Abhra has called today. He has got through IIT Kharagpur with Physics, the subject of his dreams, in the institute of his dreams. His rank was marginal for Physics Hons., and he had almost packed his bags for IISER. So, the first thing possibly he did today was call me up at about eight, when my cell was out of charge. Well, I do not actually know whether I was the first or one of the first of those, for that matter, to receive his suppressed excitement, but it nevertheless felt nice.
To be a friend, for a change.
To be as happy as I was with my getting through Xaviers a year back.

So, today, I was reminded of old conversations and Physics lessons and old days, when I used to call him, really uncertain and lost about everything, as he listened patiently. Sir and I met just the other day. He gave me Collected Short Stories by Roald Dahl and R.K Narayan’s Malgudi Days.
He somehow looked very away the day we met. Perhaps it was all in my mind or possibly, we have drifted quietly, with time and distance. But then I guess it is okay. And I guess, that’s how it is and that’s how things are.

I went to Prithvi’s place. My guitar was with him.
He’s been upset for some reasons, of late, and he’s going off to the U.S.A for a month. So I thought he’d feel nice if I stop by.
And anyways, I had nothing to do back home, for, home is depressing, nowadays. Mother has grown unnerved after sister’s case, about my physical, mental and emotional health.
The plum cats have disappeared, and with the weedy overgrowths. And beneath the snazzy lifestyles of today and tomorrow, the yesterdays have died.

So in the kitchen, there are two stoves and two racks in the cabinet downstairs, in the refrigerator upstairs, and in their hearts, and two floors in a three-storied building, so electricity bills come in two.
The little rags of home left here and there are in the terrace and the attic where the bulb is busted, so today, what I do, is:
Play the flute in some stranger’s home.
So the son and the mother stare. And then she sings as two friends stare.
Bliss, if there is something called one, suddenly finds a vent for a while.
And I no longer feel helpless about Life or Prithvi, suddenly. And, I feel happy after a long time.
(Though, of course, it’s hard to discern how the latter always ends up as this:
Stupidity? Providence? Coincidence?)

Today felt nice. My ‘student’ is well prepared for her first terms, as I could understand, today.
Only that Sushmita Aunty’s son has died. And life is a little uncertain from today. And Didi or Abhra doesn’t know how they are the closest people I have. And Prithvi’s so sadly braving it with a smile, that it feels bad.
Then, I am quite worried about Mother and Pa, for their hairs have grayed under a week, and I have a feeling they are thinking too much.


Few things I’ll never know how to say.
Like I love mamma and papa. And am grateful to a few of them, who have saved me reasons to smile for nothing.
And possibly kakima will never know that I am grateful for a few songs she sang today.

Or that, the carelessly done chirebhaja over tea at the spur of the moment I was to leave, felt more tempting than the forbidden fruit.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

THE MATRIX



Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage... born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.
The Matrix


(I have a confession.)

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Rain.


Friday, June 20, 2008

Life becomes a little boring if you donot give in to a few temptations and sometimes do what you possibly shouldn't be doing.

Mousetrap

The thoughts?
I have left here and there and I do not remember where.
Perhaps on some subway station chairs, and in conversations,
And in a few of their hearts
Perhaps over the Sintex tank, the walls, the ceiling
About the tubs in the terrace, the albums, the cupboards of store-rooms
Possibly some in the underground room
Or, in diaries, emails, letters, words
And in musty, dusty, rusty shelves
Where industrious spiders have spun home

And also, of course, the attic,
Where the rickety skeleton of my Neverland rattles
With the sound of hidden treasures of life
And bits and pieces of yesterday’s whispers,
Bubble with untold secrets to speak.
And where time sits,
Stifled by rusted batteries,
Possibly dead as a corpse
And with it: an eternity
Stays like magic.

*****
The shadows and ghosts from yesterday’s coffins
And also from the withering, yellowing, graying stories
Are suddenly starved for oxygen
And for words, so they pant hysterically
And tonight it may rain and as it rains,

The shadows and ghosts may break free
From the subway station chairs, from over the Sintex tanks, the walls, the ceiling,
And from about the tubs in the terrace, the albums
The cupboards of store-rooms and from the underground room,
The diaries, the emails, the letters, the shelves, the unfinished stories
The finished stories, the dangling stories
And possibly from a few of their hearts

And the thoughts?
Will resound in endless void
And their laughter will ring like a bell in my ears

In the attic,
The skeletons shall dig into the
Cardboard boxes,
Whispering old stories
And in the monotony,
Reminding morals here and there,
As always,

While,
Time may sit
Stifled by personal stupidity,
Helpless in the deafening laughter
As with it, an eternity
Stays like a curse.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I have had a very good friend once and I have been noticing him change, over the year. Well, I do not mean what I am sure you thought I meant. As in, he has not ceased to being my friend or for that matter, ‘good’, and he and I are still friends. What I meant is that he has just changed as a person.
No, change is definitely not what I feel has happened, now that I think of it.
And I am really sorry if this is getting really messy. It’s just that I do not know how to put this.

Let's put it this way: at one point of time, he preferred to be a certain him, and now he prefers to be the other him. As in, those two hims always existed in him, but he chose to be a particular him over the other him, more, during those days when we were friends.

Well, it is not that he and I are no longer friends, again. I have this morbid idea that you are getting me wrong. He and I are still friends and still talk, and have a very nice time, and he is still the beautiful human being that he was, and has never had any issues with me since the time we became friends. But then since he no longer, let's call it, wears the previous him, and we became friends when he wore the previous him, and sorry, I must stop here and rephrase this sentence because it sounds like he's a hypocrite which he is not. In fact, he is the most honest person I've ever known in my life.
Let's say, 'since he no longer prefers the previous him'. That sounds alright.

So, what I want to tell you is that, the word friend, in his case, reminds me of the old him and the old us.
No, it does not remind me, for God’s sake, of the old him and the old us. It just makes me automatically, or rather, by default, assume the old him and the old us. And old conversations based on whatever he was, and believed in, then. Like, when I think of us as 'the friends', I am automatically thinking of the Us who used to make random calls, to discuss extremely irrelevant things and also extremely relevant things (like ‘her’ and ‘him’).
Oh! And sometimes, there were discussed: Physics and Coelho, and the Universe.
But, it was so that one thing was happening quietly under the rug.
It’s called: growing up.
The symptom is: preferring to be the you, that prefers keeping its own beliefs to itself.
(It generally prefers to be less affected, bothered, ‘involved’ or hurt and is more flexible and happy. It prefers to share jokes and laughs and have a cheerful time)
So you see, we kind of grew up.
And like all grown-ups, I tend to find myself saying, ‘I have had very good friends when I was a child’.
And I definitely did not mean what I am sure your thought I meant. And he and I are still good friends and he is still a beautiful human being and I still like him a lot and likewise.
This is not all why I am writing this post.
No, hey, this is all why I am writing this post.
-Cinderella

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

'How many words shall we speak before it becomes too many?'

The answer, my friend, is
blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind...

Monday, June 02, 2008

Pa says, I'm really romantic.
But I do not quite believe him for he's normally lost when he says so.
I do not know what makes him feel so.
Perhaps he's been reading my posts while I was away, besides, I have seen him spy on my diaries time to time.
Perhaps I remind him of himself sometimes, or of someone else, probably mother, as she once had been.
But all I know is: Pa is really romantic.

And I do not really know what I would have done without love and rain and evening skies.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Sometimes when you have strayed too far, drunk gulps of unrealized warmth, blown like a hurricane, inhaled and exhaled and lost and found and lost and left many in old telephone directories, in subway trains, in yellowing diaries, in deleted mails, in forgotten conversations, and are suddenly caught for breath, you halt a tad little while on way.
And then is when a few things make frightening sense.
Then is when some of the best things in life are realized, as you look back at them.

And so it happened one day, in a certain city of Eastern India, that a fat-nosed, Tall Dark Dorian Gray told a Young Little Girl with Pony Tails that there were words in her eyes; and too many of them, living in her lonely sockets, like clustered islands, like scattered rags, like broken thoughts, like strewn music, like unfinished poetry, each with an eternity of its own, each with an epic to spin.

Perhaps it was just the play of lights. (so her pony-tailed head reasoned, and her pony-tailed heart assumed) And the clouds and the winds and the lake or perhaps it was just that he loved her a little, sometimes.

But whatever be it, the pair of them lived happily, believing they could live in a house where gravity acted at an angle to the vertical, and they died in each other’s eyes, and they died in each other’s words, and they died in each other’s souls, till one day, Suffocation happened.

The External always quietly believed I had a big ego somewhere, but he never said so, for he never cared. He said there were many grays to me that he never had, that he wasn’t sure of. He said I was weird, and a little mad.

It’s difficult being a woman of many shades, the Internal tells me. But if I say our young little girl with Ponytails didn’t love him, it can be wrong. If I say she did, it can’t be right.

If she says I did, it can be wrong, if she says I did not, it can’t be right.

But for once, as the Second Person flatly lied, on numerous occasions, for baseless reasons, and feigned he knew nothing, on numerous occasions, for meaningful reasons, let’s just say, our heart pounded not for Bioelectricity. And then, for once, dalmoot served in dirty orange plates, on rickety tables and in swirling rooms, seemed more tempting than stolen pickles. And there were shades discovered in the middle of drunken words. And there were colors discovered in the middle of a graying soul. And there were hopes discovered in the middle of withering dreams.

Like old dreams, they sprouted, from nowhere.
Like old shadows, they whispered like secrets, they walked in the nights, they whistled while the world was sleeping.

Have you seen someone as mad? Have you been someone as mad? Have you ever pulled up walls just to see who all cared to break through?

There’s something strangely wonderful about Melancholy.
Like the whispers of dusk before evenings, like the sound of dewdrops falling.
Like old faces.
Like school days.
Like fiery sunsets.
Like a power-cut in a rainy evening plowing up old treasures, quietly, from where they were buried by Excuses because of Reasons.

Or, so I think, though, I’m a little mad, and you do not buy my words.

I do not know why I waste my time, writing useless music.

Perhaps, it’s just that when you have sailed too far, drunk gulps of unrealized warmth, blown like a hurricane, inhaled and exhaled and lost and left too many of them in subway trains, in forgotten words, in deleted mails, in withered diaries, in crossroads, and strayed too far from your heart, that you are suddenly all lost and scared and aching.

Perhaps you need to go back then, to home, and to all the things that mean home.