Homecoming (IX)

"It is not something that will go unnoticed. Were I to try and ascribe an adjective to what I make of this lifetime, it would not be much different than dull. Why then, you would question, is this likely to get instantiated at all? Because this is how we live - vicariously through someone, someone who we think is far removed from what we are, a life that we secretly wish was a part of our definition of self, only a little covert. For certain things are pleasurable and hurtful alike to all of us; for certain things wouldn't necessarily be wrong - just that a surrogate experience would make us that much more complete. Who I am or what reasons had I to eschew a life more meaningful, in certain respects, should be peripheral to you. That I am giving you something which shall go a long way in defining you in your moments of indiscretion should alone be reason enough for you to savor this."

This had, over time, stopped being funny to him. What had germinated as an idea of excusing himself from the real world into Elysian Fields had now started blurring in vision. The glass underneath had started cracking and the soot from a charring life had started darkening the air. There was no quick fix. Rather the only one he could think of was the absence of smoke. Unsurprisingly, he would himself have to come down. All this while had been spent procrastinating. On a second thought, not really. All this while, a larger question of making a choice had been impaling his mind. A now-imperfect world lay on both sides with a fractured glass film somehow holding them apart. Which of the two he wanted to see through to fruition was the question that had made him dispassionate about either.

“I am not going to lay blame at anyone’s feet, and there is no reason for that either. I was born, and with me were born certain identities that I carry with myself – that I lend meaning to. The metamorphosis into what you read now is perhaps a little simpler than what it would seem. I seem to realize now that we are all bodies floating somewhere, with or without its cognizance. A nihilist in me would go to the extent of calling us all the constituents of the Styx. But I pull back. Some of us do – we fight against a force which does not exist, towards a cause that now seems an empty ecosphere. What are we to make of our lives? The dichotomy here is if chance is all that separates us, and to what extent. From where I see, it’s an external agency that causes ripples in an otherwise perfectly harmonized flow.”

He got up to get a glass of water. Some people have the knack of finding humor in craziest of instances, he thought and laughed aloud. Glass and Water. A quick gulp and he felt the smoke getting doused. Life has its quirks. He was distracted by this little stream of consciousness. On the way back to his table he dropped a gaze onto a sleeping wife and envied the peaceful state she must have been in. He saw his kids lying on the mat in the other room, and cursed his inability to prepare a more comfortable bed for them. As a consolation, they would have never known what difference that would make. All they knew, he sighed, was a particularly capricious princess who would not sleep on twenty stacked mattresses. He could not decide if this was a welcome break.

It was getting late in the night, one of many when he had tried to write something. Anything. He absolved himself of any shortcoming, though and declared to himself just what he had written – his life had largely been dull. What he wanted to get across through this effort was that there is a spectacle in everything. He thought he could do justice – and had been struggling to find this in every one of those notes he had been writing since. A couple of those nights, he thought, were more about indulgence than urgency. This was slowly turning out to be one of those.

“I will begin by stating that I failed in almost every major decision I took towards forging an identity for myself. I will start by calling out every decision I took as being thoroughly moulded by stories I had heard all my life; a desire to live long after; a wish to hear people talk about me in the same vein as those stories and a hope that I would be alive to see all of this unfold. My name is Mantu.”

There is no point in conjuring up an alter ego, a thing of myths he thought. 

Sonnet XXV: Elegy written on the death of poetry

Before I lay this flowery wreath on you
A carcass now, and painstakingly still,
Before a drape this mourning black anew
O Poem! Wouldn't you rise again and fill 

For one last time my heart with ecstasy,
With rising suns and promised lands afar,
With pain of loss, despair, melancholy,
With hope that rises, healing every scar.

I find no rhyme, no rhythm drums its way,
Into my soul, ravaged by words that snore,
And unto me no artistry convey,
So one last time o! Heart let me implore,

From ashes rise and rid us of this curse
This blasphemy, the blemish of free verse.

Wartime Stories

As an aside
Let it be known to you
That I don't like you
Or I don't know you
Perhaps I've never met you
But I see you drifting
Drifting anachronously in rain, in shine

As an aside
Let it be thrust upon you
That your will was sabotaged
Or you never realized your self
Perhaps you never had one
But I see you pushing
Pushing your way through with unfounded determination

As an aside
Let your eyes rest upon the scape
Which is not quite deafening
Though a thousand throbbing hearts burst out quietly
After a last shelling or the ensuing palpitations
Laying bare your identities
Identities that were born with you

As an aside 
Let it crush you, the leaden air
Laden with blood. With tears.
But certainly heavy with inertia
As faces fade and rise with the day
And trespass into pandemonium -
Pandemonium that their parallel universe is

And when you chew this
Let me get myself across to you
And let you know that I am dead
And not because you killed me
But because you don't see my person
Because without your self, you push through -
Through bodies floating in the river

And now, to the point.
You are no different
In that you are like the rest of us.
Floating. And conflicted.
In that some day you too will wake up
Hanged. Drawn. And quartered.

Sonnet XIV: Love begets...

While there's still a few drops left, of darkness,
And the moon rubs off its face the sunshine,
While sleepy stars with brooding trees entwine,
To paint what's left of your unfurling tress,

Let me sit back and take a calming breath.

I see in your eyes a dwindling fire,
A sense of oneness with the dimming grey.
Morning falls, I see yourself retire,
Into my arms, submission you essay.

I whisper in your ears few notes of love,

And call your name with passion running deep.
A mumble and a snore is all I get.
To turn you over and find you asleep,
All I can do is simply fume and fret.

Sonnet XXIII: The Bird in the nest has found its sky

It's often in the chiming wind that I
End up not finding blissful solitude
And straining, striving midst a multitude
Of humming birds and starlets to defy
The concoction my love that you've become
I find myself ensnared.

For songbirds cannot bring to me the joy
Nor starry nights enlighten sullen keep
They are but torpid instruments that weep
Dissonantly, in absence of your touch.

So tell me how I bring my pen to write
And summon notes of passion all alone
When every word is now a hapless plight
And all my notes your absence do bemoan.

Sonnet XXII: Till Death Do Us Part

He turns his head to acknowledge the thud
But finds no soul nor shadow lurking there
It's all so silent. But the wailing moon
Which keeps on screaming, blazing in despair,

Embraces him. He flinches nervously
And wipes off gleaming drops that scour his face
He chose this moonlit cavern purposely
But knows when he's done he should leave no trace

With trembling hands he pulls her carcass down
And smiles at himself, kissing her blue lips
His fingers get entangled in her brown
But silky hair. He chops her head and quips

"Your dying shall not ever do us part,
Your head, my love, is, simply put, the start"

Sonnet XXI - Gore

He ran his fingers on her supple breasts

And singing softly, gently stroked her hair

While submissive she lay, curled in her dress

Which splattered red and melted with her flair

He slowly unbuttoned her, took her cloak

And turned around to light the dying flame

But ere he could, he felt a strangling choke

Dismembered, saw her naked gleeful frame.

A stream of blood ran down his broken nose

And bloodshot eyes burst out of gaping holes

His punctured lungs spewed moistened reddish prose

As he begged mercy, holding quivering bowles

She nailed it on the cross, his lifeless form,

And walked out smiling midst the raging storm

Sonnet XX: Redemption

Sometimes I wander into emptiness
Inside my head, tiptoeing timidly,
And sneaking over edges, acquiesce,
In thoughts of life and death, and vividly
Sculpture the cliff with epitaphs. Sometimes.

And at others, I track back, hearkening
To what sails in the wind, flutters and chimes,
To whatever's left amid darkening
Dusk, the orange, eviscerated sun.

The lure of the fall's never been stronger,
Never sweeter the desire to shun.
I smile at that precipice. Death monger -
Hoping to trip but failing in gumption
Absolve me, pull me to my redemption.

Sonnet XIX: Turn the page!

A panoply of words and chest of love,

A tumbling gratitude for bygone days,

To expiate those thousand years thereof, 

And restitute the awful, wretched ways

That bore the brunt of dwindling passion's rage,

And distorted what comfort meant to me.

I stand at crossroads, still to turn the page,

Musing what is and what was meant to be!
Come, save me, lest I wither in remorse
And hear me out for all I have to say
And though your love might just have run it course
Your tenderness for me cannot betray

That while it was, it was a fiery spark

And when not, it would strive to quell the dark

Puppeteers

Only that what I am meant to play with are real people.

I don't like being called a puppeteer, I don't like to consider myself one; but there are few choices in life that I have been afforded. Deciding what I can do and what I can't is not one of them. It is ironic in its own quaint way; on the one hand I claim that I don't like it when people call me a puppeteer, and on the other hand, I should admit that there is little control over the choices that I make. It is not a sudden realization that has dawned on me as I complete a quarter of my life. It was always so, and, as a matter of fact, I had enjoyed it. Everyone would enjoy feeling that bit of superiority over things that have little say in their actions; what people do not enjoy is taking responsibility about the same. That I no longer desire it is what is sudden. It is strange how bubbles burst - quite the same magical way that we conjure up alternate realities, transitioning from being to nothingness in the snap of a second. But we are used to it; we are used to getting over such things. What proves a little more difficult is reason, for it takes time to create one, and even longer to come to terms with one. As a puppeteer, I would not really mind fiddling around with the strings, when I am afforded the conscience to overlook the fate of one of the shows, should the strings break. Much to my chagrin, I am not. 

I never thought I had a world revolving around me, that the gravity of my existence had, until now, kept many other lives in a constant, almost dispassionate, orbit, without even bothering to let me know. Existence is not merely being, but a cognizance of what it brings along with itself. That I exist is a testimony to the fact that there are many things, many lives, adding meaning to my existence, some to the extent of, perhaps, being the driving force behind it. However, I must also acknowledge, the sooner the better for me, that there is a certain other being that draws the same vitality from my existence. Whether it would be in the form of drawing life from me, or sustaining my life, becomes of little importance then. When I start lending meaning to more lives than mine, I want to take a back seat and introspect. 

If, for some selfish reason of my own, I disregard what everything else is, I choose be an outlaw, which is fine if there are mechanisms to ensure that everything falls in place. But in a real world, we trade order for chaos. Everyone has a different meaning of order, which, again, is fine, so long as it does not absolve itself of an awareness of the ecosystem. The fixation with a certain constant, and the submission to / dependence on its causal forces creates an impasse, which, from its very core, opposes an evolution. I do not intend to generalize, but I wish we let things take their natural course more often. At least we would have been able to see what a dystopian world would be like. But somewhere in the quest of enforcing reason into what would otherwise seem perfectly reasonable, we get stranded between what could have been and what should be, motionless.  

Who the puppet is, or should be, and who the puppeteer is, or should be, is then a question of megalithic proportions. What I know is that being either of them is a sorry plight.

Homecoming (VIII)

He wanted to get on with “tomorrow” as normally as he could. And almost succeeded.

The children had left before he woke up, and wife was getting ready for the rest of the day. She came down to wake him up, while he played possum. He never really had any breakfast, so that bit never crossed his mind. A quick summary of how a day at office is, and what he could expect out of it today, and he was already buttoned up. And there it was. Today. Was it supposed to be anything but normal? A careless face contorted into a carefully manipulated smile, and then into an anxiously embarrassed one. He stopped over at the kitchen.

“I am leaving. Will try to come back early.” He broke the routine with that.

“It is time you left. Half the lunch is ready”, she said, smiling, and distracted. At this hour of the day, kitchen was of greater importance to her than a husband

“I said I am leaving. Will try to come back early.” He was already growing impatient.

“Do you not leave every day, at around this time? I think you are late.” She carelessly mumbled, sifting through the basket for yet another thing worth more than a husband. “Are you already hungry? Regardless, the food is not yet prepared”, a tantalizing, extremely mild taunt was the retort.

He tried not to behave differently. While he inadvertently expressed his fidgety self when leaving the house, he made it a point not to mess up with his God-counting exercise, being particularly careful while monitoring its accuracy with reference to stations. On other days, the director’s office would not have held any greater significance to him than a toilet he had to clean, but today it was distracting him. Nobody asked him about what had transpired the other day, but all greeted him expectantly. He was not lost, though, and patiently saw off the silent questions, reciprocating with a smile that was laden with awareness of what he could afford to surmise. The day wore on without being eventful.

He came back early as he had promised. No one seemed to notice this aberration, though, suggesting to him that Saturday was long gone. For someone of their ilk, such days are meant to be celebrated and cherished, but not expected to turn real, he thought. For his family, it might have been just another, novel way of making up for that night on his part. From where he could see, life was falling to back to cleaning toilets, or at best, mopping the stage; where he wanted it to go was questionable. They had their dinner.

“I did not hear anything from the team today. I hovered around his office, nodded to him as an acknowledgement of his presence – and he nodded back as well. But no word.” One could have confused his muttering to a somniloquy, had it not been for the wife’s reply.

“Did you not like the food? The children really wanted some fish, so I got it from the market. Personally, I think rice and curd and potatoes and pulses and chapattis was getting really boring,” she said. “Besides, I will need some money to get the ration. There is no sugar for your morning tea. We are also running short of kerosene, in case the gas supply gets delayed. The children were asking for new lunch boxes as well. I have somehow dissuaded them on that, but it would be good if you could get some new utensils. I am tired of scraping those old grimy ones.”

These words were said in utmost disregard to the gravity of his statements. She was, on her part, being a dutiful housewife. He looked back at her in disbelief. What stoked his ire was not only the way she discounted his concern, but the reply in itself. But he was a patient man.

“Remember what I told you the other day. Ok, I did not exactly tell it, but the director spoke to me regarding an opportunity on stage – a big one. Saturday was about that. I was waiting for a call before I got home, which of course was the reason why I was late. I thought that when I spoke about the theater, everyone was as excited as I was. Turns out that you think of the ever thinning ration supply to be more important that your husband settling down, which, by the way, is absolutely fine with me. But can I not expect my wife to at least listen out what her exhausted husband has to talk about, at the end of the day? At least pay some regard to the struggles or the anxiety that he is going through? I do not expect a solution from you, no, but at least a nod in approval?” There was a definite element of tiredness in the way he spoke, and at some points, a resigned feeling to the larger scheme of things. Was he beginning to open up?

“I am sorry, I should have listened to you, but I am just not used to goodbye mornings and candid evenings. Having known you as little as I do, I thought you would not be flustered by once in a while events, those routine blips in an otherwise steady pulse that your life has become. I know that you are passionate about certain things, but in your own way.” She was gentle in her reply, apologetic to the extent of actually sympathizing with him.

“Perhaps you are right.”

She quickly fell asleep; he was a little restless.

It was that constant blip that had kept him going for so long. The mere existence of such anomaly was like a reassuring joy bursting out of an unadventurous life, something that lent credence to the experience that his life was. This was not the first time that he was feeling so – this was a cyclical thing for him, something that took him back to re-prioritizing the order of things in his life. Appearing like a mirage, a hallucination, that beckons hope in a dreary plight, they kept him wandering, searching for himself. And when he finally reached out to grasp them, they burst, without any warning. Picking up stardust was so much more difficult than concocting the galaxies.

He sat down with a piece of paper in a bid to justify himself.

Sonnet XVIII: Song of the Foolish

Sundown, midst a montage of anxiety,

Echoes a litany of love, so trite

Brushing, some gray, some black, with propriety;

Solemn in spirit, in letter polite

Hurtling towards you without much ado,

With scraping dolour, and dashing your faith.

So, tears and tales and longings imbue,

Quietly beckoning a sardonic wraith

As it draws closer, it sieves through your mind

Laden with reason, which crumples a heap

Failing to reckon, to sorrow resigned,

Not all things profound are infact so deep.

So keep reading between those lines if you would

And pardon me, methinks I was misunderstood.

Sonnet XVII: Swan Song

There’s still room for me inside that closet

To sequester myself alongside you.

Those grey sills just need a bit of mopping

Then all shall be a vast expanse. White again.

I know I’d come back to an empty place,

For you never liked the cold, or that quiet,

But a fuzzier, effervescent dusk,

With a rainbow of my breath on your neck.

But I came back one last time to find you.

To tell you that though it’s tempting in here,

I, just like you, no more desire this realm.

It’s ironic that you should be waiting.

That you were once real is not lost on me,

But there’s still a real world, living, calling.

Sonnet XVI: Afterlife

I thought I saw my afterlife withdrawn
From orchards fruiting many forlorn faces
And none too far, though, messengers of dawn
Holding firm, some souls with fading traces

I thought I saw my wife bid me goodbyes
And children wailing, calling out my name
But I had motionless, impassive eyes,
Which could not but portray a dying flame.

I thought I wanted peace from all that din
And age off, resting in a soundless place 
But never thought that it would be so rife
With affluence of grief, naked, wherein,
For all its bounty, I can't find solace.
It's absent love; to me is afterlife.

100!

For some reasons, 100 has has become synonymous with achievement, or, may be, satisfaction, or celebration, for that matter. 100 marks in the exam, 100 years of living, 100 runs in a cricket match, 100mph cricket ball, 100 team points in a football league, 100 likes may be, for the more socially active people, 100 children (Indian history / mythology is replete with examples), and many more such joyful examples. Marriage was a little tough to slot it, you see, partly because of the joyful bit and the rest because, well, 100 years is simply too much. Anyway, I wanted to experience the feeling as soon as I could. I wanted to add 100 blog posts to my list, as I could never score a perfect 100 in exam or hardly made any cricket runs. This was the easiest. Admitted that 100 blog posts is nowhere comparable to aforementioned feats, 100's of people have written posts far exceeding 100 in number, but it is no mean feat either. Not for me, or for those 100's of writers who start a blog and then, renege on their promise.

I must admit that blogging, or writing, in general, was never quite in my scheme of things. I started writing only to contest that my cousin is the one bestowed with the best of literary nous-es in our family, and the most gifted. He still is, but one thing where I surpass him is that I am the most prolific. This is satisfying in its own right. You can beat Waugh in the number of runs, but never in class or elegance. To his Mark, I played the Steve. I have been writing since the first year in college, started trashy, still am scratchy, at best, but I persisted. The result is immensely satisfying 100 posts. I only noticed this a couple of months back when I was at 98. The 99th took a long time, partly because of the tough task I was up to (writing a series) and partly because of the nervous 90's. Having scored most of my posts through gentle daps to the slip cordon or through misfields or aerial shots landing in no man's land, I thought if that is the way it has to be, then so be it. What you don't want at 99 is to get out. So, I flashed, and flashed hard, and it went like a tracer bullet. This was just what the doctor ordered. And here I am, arms raised in acknowledgement, soaking in the "electric atmosphere".

I think many times during these 6 years, I thought enough was enough, and I should call it quits. To be honest, I never had enough readers on my blog. Some said it was too boring, some said it was too pretentious, and some did not understand. But I knew that I had to work hard on my blogging, and I did. I kept making comebacks, with the occasional post garnering enough attention and guaranteeing me enough pride to keep writing the next 10. I started with few essays and then "started dealing in sonnets". After a while, all three kinds of posts were possible. Blogger was being taken to the cleaners, and before anyone could realize, I was already into my 90's. It was the toughest part of my blogging life. It took me "64" days to move from 98 to 99. But I am a cool customer, with loads of experience. I sensed at 99 that the atmosphere was electric and the appreciation I got for my post was deafening. So I just cleared my head, settled down, and tried to concentrate on the next post. And here I am, regarded by some as the best exponent of dogged writing, having made Blogger my bunny, with my 100th post.

Come what may, there have been reasons enough for me to write. I think every blog post has been an advertisement for writing. With the advent of Twitter, some thought, blogging would become endangered. I can, after 100 posts, proudly say that writing long posts, or blogging, if you will, is still regarded as an art and the purest form of testing the technical soundness of any writer. But there is always room for all forms of writing, it is only the small matter of striking the right balance. In the end, I think, writing, or more precisely, blogging is the winner.

Homecoming (VII)

It was a peaceful night for the family.

The children had already slept, and the wife was, though content with how the day ended eventually, a little too tired to try and keep up a conversation with a little too forthcoming husband. She tried to sing her husband to sleep, and when convinced of her success, paused for a bit and went out to get herself some water. She was not thirsty. She just did not want to sleep at that very moment. A glass of cold water, she thought, would keep her alive for a few minutes. While there was no particular reason for her not to have slept – she had a taxing day at office – she tried hard to find one to stay awake and let the night sink in. It was one of those feelings when one tries hard to think, but the questions do not arouse enough curiosity or simply keep evading; like a playwright who just bought a fiddle and cannot put it away, because he has an insatiable desire to play it, but does not know a thing about it.

She seated herself on a stool in her kitchen, a luxury not infrequent for her, but rather tasteless. Having gulped half the glass, she put it in the wash basin, and looked with contentment, how clean the place looked. There was not much in that kitchen and she preferred everything orderly, which is every woman’s wont, I would think. And she was just another woman, just not besotted with excesses. She had a small frame, not frail but bulky enough to suggest that she was already a mother of two, and a kind face, within which dwelt a spirit so at tranquil with self that it was hard to imagine, from her ever placid demeanor, that anything could ever disquiet her. While women of her ilk are oft found complaining about so many things, which, in the writer’s opinion, renders the whole exercise futile, she had lived her part as a graceful housewife with as much poise.

Much of her wanted to know about her husband, but the rest quelled that inquisitiveness with a strong protest – that was not her business, so long as he came back every day, satisfied. She could not worship him, and neither did she admire him a lot. It took a long time for her accept a marriage to someone she did not know, but that was something she had to make do with. Raised in modest household with precious little choices in life, and so deeply entrenched in societal values, marriage was one choice she could not have made. So it was another one of those accidents in her life, and naturally, she took her time to realize that. After six years, all she, or they, could manage to come up with was respect for each other, or concern, at best. All she knew about him was through his stories, which she never disputed or questioned because, perhaps, she thought, it might rankle him. That she could not have been married to him on his past laurels had, by now, become more or less apparent to her. What she did not want, though, was it to underline their future. We don’t love people for what they aren’t, or what we want them to become, but instead who they are. She knew that she was married to a peon, who was now a sweeper, and she had to be at peace with it.

She walked into their room. He was still sleeping. After a brief moment of indecision, she decided not snoop around his belongings – he would not have anything of interest. Instead, she went up to their bed, stroked his forehead gently, and lied down, with myriad thoughts struggling for space within her. She could not think of another transient phase in their lives where they would have to scrape for livelihood, and yet, did not want him to abandon his never-quite-settled-down quintessential self. She did not want the children to make a hero out of their father based only on his stories, and yet, could possibly not think of an alternative. Perhaps what he said today might, but she could not have been sure.

I must admit, as would she, that nothing changed with the hours of the clock, of what they had made of their marriage – it still made as little a sense to her as his fables. She had never quite made much out of a relationship – brought up in an environment where discipline superseded love (emotion) – and here, there was little effort on his part to have been able to change that. On their part, they did all they thought they knew about making something work – respecting, maintaining restraint, raising kids. Her children were her life, though, just as she was an indivisible part of their everyday. From waking them up in the morning to dropping them to school and then getting them back home, she was the only family they had seen most of their lives. What more could they have done, wondered she, as the night wore on.

The fleeting excitement, by then had already crumpled, strangulated by thoughts of a deeper dwelling. Satisfaction started giving way to uneasiness. Were they always what they were today, so oblivious to the little joys of life that just another story from the raconteur would cause a flutter in in her heart, seem a matter of immense, or provide a sense of fulfillment that was missing hitherto? She had to find that out for herself.

Six years after marriage, after all, is not the best time try and put some sense into a relationship, which thus far, had been much abused in the garb of normalcy. 

Sonnet XV - Clandestine, Love

No, I don't love you anymore, my love,

'Coz I'm already burnt, and lost for words

In this world, so undone by falsity

And emotional travesty, that borders absurd.

Should you, too, give in to the ways of this world,

And hearken to the treacherous travail

That love is becoming, you too would lose

What's always been yours, my love to avail.

So, unless you think that I never loved you,

Think of this rhyme as a clandestine will,

Of yearning, of passion, that saunters along

Beguiling apathy, and lacking in thrill

Our parting – it’d be just like droplets from sea

They never complain, they know what would be

"Free" Verse

I am just a body that wanders,

Listlessly with the throng

That eats away, with every passing moment,

A piece of me, but I hold on

To a larger belief

That someday, perhaps before I crumble

A drip of joy would thread my eyelashes

When finally they realize it

That they can’t feed themselves on me

And I am already water.

But cruel as a savage hound

They rob me off my tether

For good or for bad, they say

I know not

But what I knew was, is no more

For I am not just shape and form

But flesh and blood, of HIS own kind

That hurts when hurt and bleeds when cut.

A drip of pain does thread my eyelashes.

Does it hurt, the expression of hurt?

I pick myself up from the floor

The pieces that are left of me, carefully

Time and again, till I lose count

Of the number of times I am broken

Or the number of pieces I am supposed to pick

To reconstruct myself

It is difficult conjuring a vase

From the shards that ravage the roses

Neither it be shapely, nor warm.

All it does is bury the buds

So what is it that matters more?

The loss of blood or loss of form

And ‘midst all this I cannot help

But think of what my loss brings them.

If flesh is why I have to plead

And flesh is what they seem to heed

Then let them take me

For flesh is no elusive thing

And flesh is not esoteric

And before long, would end their quest

How wrong I was, I realized

When I felt hungry.

For hunger is insatiable with one meal

When you live to live a lifetime

So when they’re done with bits off me

They conveniently chose to forget

That they just had their fill,

An pick some other “me”

Should this be endless?

How many “me’s” would satiate?

So rise, I beseech myself, and shout out

I am here amongst them to live

And I will not go without a life;

That I will be steadfast each time they shove me

And promptly get up each time I fall

For they can only make me trip

But cannot stop me from walking.

For I am time

That that takes all in its stride

The fall, the pain, the watch and the protest

For pain reduces only with protest

And not with surrender to its infliction.

The longer I keep myself bound in its chains

The longer I’ll lose tiny bits of my life

So I let go of it

The fear of being violated or being shunned after it

Which feeds into their hideous machinations

And stare back at it, and them,

For I am water no more

But a tornado.

So let them take me this one time

And try to take my flesh and blood

For they can only do as much.

My form does make me who I am.

I was a just a body that used to wander

Listlessly with the throng

No longer now.

For I am now a star

That, though, burns alone in that dark

Signals hope to many a benighted existence.

Does it stop shining, the sun, when it sets

Or does it not rise again, every day, tirelessly?

So shall I rise to quell this murk

That mothers / fathers the plague of this grotesque device

And when I set, I shall set ablaze

The moon, the night and hope that was dying.

Forever.

For I am azure,

The endless expanse that shelters this world

And burns in itself, the fire of life.

Homecoming (VI)

That evening, the children were more excited than they ever were.

"Why did you not miss other dinners, we would have had lots of good news then, you would already have been the next Amitabh, Daddy", exclaimed the younger daughter. The family just smiled at her. He wore a bemused look. A minute ago, there was that secret pact of not buying into their father's excuses, and a minute later, they wished their father never made it on Saturdays. As they dug into their rice heaps and gulped the tomato soup, they kept on asking questions about the theater, its grandiose, the actors, Shah Rukh, camera and lots of other things, which even he had never seen. He went on painting pictures like only he could. The theater would be modified, embellished with grand chandeliers brought from Jaipur, there would be lots of bandwallhs welcoming the guests, there would be velvet seats, lots of paani-puri and chaat stalls, and that his family would be sitting at the front to see him perform. As for Shah Rukh, we will let him go find his Kkkiran first, he said. The children gleamed in pride, feeling vindicated.

That dinner, he thought, was more precious to him. While there was a lot of chatter on how the father would prepare for his act, and how the children would prepare for theirs, the background, as it always does, kept thickening with emotions. While he was talking, he could not help but imagine a lot of things. The children kept making stories on their father’s stage debut, real, for once, and he kept correcting them, helping them on their visualizations and dialogues. In hindsight, he remembered what happiness meant to him, he remembered what success meant to him, he remembered what responsibility meant to him, he imagined was success would mean for him and he imagined what happiness would mean to him. Responsibility, he never cared much about. What would it mean, he thought, doing what he always wanted to do? He was confused in his thoughts. He wanted to step out for a while, out of the flow that his life had been, and look back, so that he could be the outsider, and retrospect on the volume of events that slipped by. He had always been content on doing what he did. Would he feel a sense of underachievement or would he try and justify that time spent in the emotional wilderness? Would he try and correct what he, as an outsider, would think needed correction? Was this as big as his children thought? How would the contours of the call shape out? He was as eager to know as his children were.  

The children insisted on stories, as the mother mopped the place. This was not a story, they said. This was what was waiting to happen all the while. A story happens when there is something untrue. While this was said in all earnestness by the children, fresh from their dose of excitement, he felt a pang. Had his life been untrue or did he try too hard to be a hero he never could be, until today? His wife was looking at him, trying to advocate the children's childlike intentions. He was not flustered, and nodded at her in acknowledgement, while the children fiddled with the doll's hair. What if it actually turns out to be a story? He recollected the events of the day, which were themselves no less than dramatic, peppering the occasional bit with his flavors. By the time he finished, the children were drowsy. She put them to sleep while he kept looking at her, in anticipation. Today, he felt like talking to someone so that he could rid himself of the mountain of expectations and rationalize, even to himself, what he should expect from his life.

They sat together, after a long time, the husband and the wife.

“I am not sure if I am going to get this one”, he said. She was still thinking about the story he had for her, perhaps. He repeated, and she quietly nodded.

“Why do you tell such stories to our children? You realize that they don’t take them seriously, don’t you. Yeah, some of them are fascinating, but someday they will grow up to realize that stories are meant to be fascinating. We don’t have the luxury of living fairy tale lives, when we struggle to meet our finances. You know that once they grow up, they will ask you questions. Would you have those same stories then?”

“You think they took this one far too seriously?”

“Perhaps. I think they forgot about the fact that you do this every time. I think they thought this was real, the way they became excited…”

“Don’t you think it is for real?”, he asked, cutting her short, with a little skepticism. She always gave the impression that she was indifferent to his stories. Today, it seemed, she was not.

“You always have stories. I don’t mind you stories or what you tell them, but what’s the one you had for me?”, she said, casually dusting the bed, with an eagerness in her smile. Although she wanted to, she could not look into his eyes with this question of hers.

“This, my dear, is for real. I am late because I was expecting a call. You don’t know what happened today, you would not believe. I am late because I did not want to miss that one opportunity of making it big in my life. You know what I have been doing these six years, right? Of course there is some element of truth in my stories, but that is as much as it is. I don’t want our children to…”

“What? You mean you don’t want our children to think that you have struggled most of your life? Don’t you think they have started realizing that their father is not a hero; that their father does not want to spend too much time with the family? Of course, I don’t blame you for whatever it is, but they are children. Did you not see how disappointed they were, until you began that story of yours?” she muttered impatiently. By the time she was finished speaking, the air was already reeking of uneasiness.

“Why are you being so caustic today? You never had issues with my stories. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I have been going through. ” he scowled.

There was a moment of quietude. He was a patient man, she was a patient woman. Neither wanted the small matter of his stories to blow up. They lied down, avoiding each other’s gaze. She never spoke to him on what he wanted from his life, what he thought of their family, precisely because she had too many questions. She had led his life with him. She knew that he was a man who took immense pride in his past. Discomfort was never what she wanted in the few moments they spent as a family. He never spoke of what transpired outside of his family because he was never quite the family man. One might be forgiven on thinking that he did not want his family to accept that he was just another someone, who had to slug it out.

“Do you not think it would be better for us if you settled down? You know there are much better avenues for you, and still, you want to do it your way. Times have changed. You have a family now,” she mumbled, and turned towards him. He was still gazing into the emptiness, eyes wide shut.

“I know,” he said, half mocking at himself. “I never could do it.” He turned towards her, his face pasted with serenity. “I think, after these six years, this is one story I always wanted you to know.”

The sounds of the night had become too loud. It was not windy, as if everything had paused, wanting to hear what story he had for her.

“I think it has been a long day. You seem very tired. Why don’t we do this – let us go out the next Saturday, and you can tell us your story. Don’t be late then.” She chided him gently, and brushed his forehead.

The moon retreated, and the leaves rustled in agreement.

Sonnet XIV

"What bothers you my love, distraught, you speak

No song this day, but dreary tales and more,

Of winters, gloomy, heart so drowning deep,

But groping, seeking, tumbling to the shore.

So tell me, shall I bring for you the moon,
Or pluck'em, shooting stars, or fetch you light
Of fireflies dazzling, clouding them, or strewn
With scent of love, the gale that raids this night."

"I feel no warmth, nor love does flow through rhymes

You speak, of promise, hope and dreams surreal,

When truth is all I ask of you, sometimes,

And not those starry nights, but that what's real.

A reassuring smile, a gentle kiss,
Sometimes is all I yearn, sometimes is bliss."