Lac

In my dream, I was a lac insect. Like my hundred sisters, I attached myself to a new twig and drank its sap. I had no eyes so I focused my entire impassioned energy on drinking. I drank and grew and secreted raisin red as mud until I was covered with it, until we all were covered. Within my shell I held and still grew, with my hundred sisters, and within me grew the eggs. The moon waxed full; once, twice, three times.The resin pooled and spread across the branches, turning them red until the tree seemed to be a dancing flam. The waiting villagers nodded. Yes, soon. The eggs hatched, a hundred new insects attached themselves to the other trees, the villagers broke off the branches and scraped the resin clean and sent it to Varnavat where Duryodhan had ordered a palace to be built for his five cousins.
(And I? I died. No need to mourn me. My work was done)

-Panchali's Mahabharat

Mumbling #9

Maybe we're looking for too much? Maybe we're trying too hard or probing too deep? Or maybe we're deciding to sleep on it, like my mother. No more questions asked, no more answers provided. Maybe we're afraid that the only thing we'll eventually find is our reflection in the naked light. We're not going to ask any questions, not going to find any solutions. Maybe this time we'll realise that only here, can we be found. Maybe I am contradicting myself. Maybe you're losing track of what I'm saying. I am. Maybe. I cannot tell you for certain because that's not my trait. I cannot gift-wrap it for you and provide you with an answer to take back home. I can only mumble. I'm incompetent like that.

Till the Cows Come Home

You are that small, brief smile that most people tend to miss.
You are the cloud that barely grazes over the lake,
never meeting with it completely.
Neither of us will dare to swim to the other side.
This desire is ephemeral.
It will die a quick death.
But You.
You will continue to remain, in here, as my unfinished novel.
Till the cows come home.

Mumbling #8

She had always enjoyed listening to stories. Anything that was removed from her reality was her fodder to chomp on. Her life, she thought, tasted like the paper of the books she read: vapid. Until one day, she tasted something more than that. It was sweet in her mouth. And soft. And full. Shockingly so. For had she savored some of that real world without being intoxicated and roused, she wouldn’t have been able to completely understand, later, that she was capable of creating her own paradise.

Would you rather live as a monster or die as an innocent man? – Shutter Island

You knew no one would doubt you, being who you are; the perfect son, the loyal husband, always the apple of everyone's eyes. There would be no repercussions on your family and friends since no one would source the murder to you, yet, as you walked on you were filled with an explainable urge to run away and hide. But you knew that if you faltered, they would track you and kill you, you and your family. you had to go on, even if it meant tarnishing your soul and living with the overpowering guilt of killing hundreds of innocent human beings. You can see them now, disguised to make see that you complete what they started. But as you walked towards the bridge, you thought of the only possibility which could save all those people, jumping from the bridge with the bomb, killing yourself immediately. Not that they won't blackmail others into becoming suicide bombers, there would soon be more. You're standing at the bridge with half a minute before detonation deciding what is more important to you, your life and the life of your loved ones or those of a hundred innocents. Would you rather run, leaving the bomb at the bridge or would you jump?


S writes. Better than most people I know. But I hate her. Because she scares me by showing time and again, how she has the power to affect my life in more ways than one.

Mumbling #7

Travelling at the speed of light, it's faster than anything you've ever seen. Like they show in the movies. Don't you remember seeing that arial shot, taken from a very fast flying machine, super cool background music to go with, where they show a ball of energy coming towards you from a great distance? The other end, the recieving end, is you. Your right eye to be specific. The fire of approaching energy can be seen being reflected in your eye. It hits you now. It is the epic moment. The moment of apotheosis. You are blown out of your wits. Look around you. No one is going to believe this.

"It is the rest of the story. Who you choose to be."

- Soothsayer, Kung Fu Panda 2

"Right at the moment when the scheme makes sense, the grand plan interrupts like a wash of bright sunlight erasing the night. There is a freedom in submission, in the insistent wandering and discovering that actually, we know absolutely nothing at all.''

-Changing World, The Dewarists

When Raymond becomes King

When Raymond becomes King,

He moves with such style

He knows he's the man.

You can spot him from a mile.

He puts on his impeccable silk necktie,

Complete with Cravat pin.

Then smiles into the mirror like he's guilty of no sin.

They made fun of the paint peeling off the walls and the bricks that were getting loose. The chairs were too hard for them to sit into and the bed not warm enough. They stared at the blackened walls as if they made ugly faces at them. My father’s old rickshaw was to them a funny sight. Their frosty gaze pierced through the cloth that covered our windows instead of glass.

They had a quick lunch sitting in my dingy kitchen as mother made them hot rotis. They left after a curt handshake, smirking to each other. I saw them till they bent the corner and vanished.

I had tears in my eyes as I turned to go back inside. My gaze fell on the rickshaw standing alone on patches of green. It wasn’t the rickshaw I could see then.

My father had come home after the day. He smiled as he saw us. We rushed into his tired arms and he kissed his exhaustion away. His mouth smelled of hunger yet his eyes gleamed as he took us for a ride around the house before retiring for the day. We huddled around the kitchen fire as we had our dinner. Mother sat in the rickety chair beside our cold beds as she transported us into our world of fantasy, lulling us into the arms of sleep. It wasn’t the blankets but her presence that kept us warm through the night.

Mother was calling me inside. It was time for father’s medicine. I glanced one last time at the dilapidated walls of the house that my friends had seen today. If only they could have come home instead.

My friend wrote this. Her name is Namra Sultan. She is as beautiful as she writes.

Mumbling #6

I remember waking up slightly breathless from a dream a few months back. I would have fancied it happening in the over-dramatic Bollywood style, complete with a scream and an appealing heaving chest, then frailly scampering for a glass of water. It was anything but that. The next few moments were spent in figuring out what the hell the dream was about which came to me in bits and pieces.

I was back in school, standing in this stadium sized chemistry lab and my Chemistry teacher, her head three times larger than the rest of her body, was bending over and furiously asking me questions in a language I didn’t understand. Meanwhile, rest of the kids kept sniggering at me. Flicking back her Snape-like hair, she smirked and said something rude and I threw the shit in the test tube in her face and ran. I ran for my life.

So this morning I had a revelation of sorts. I think I have realised what I have feared the most. It is the fear of not knowing and then being put to test. Like how S says she sometimes feels when she’s in her Political Science class and everyone else except her has read the fucking paper. It’s that feeling when we don’t know the answer to a question and we avoid making any eye contact with the teacher hoping that she would just look through us and ask that twit sitting in the front row. Almost all of us have felt the same one time or another, mostly in school. I’d like to think I have grown out of it but on some days it haunts me still. The feeling of being constantly accountable.

Mumbling #5

What brings comfort, freedom and happiness all together?

A pair of freshly washed, tumble-dried, snug underpants! :)

MUTILATE

Scratch it.

Cut it.

Bleed.

Sew it up.

Repeat.

For now, she is your fetish.

She is your very own rag doll.

“I see with sympathy

The swollen veins on his brow,

How exhausting it is to be evil’’

-The Mask of Evil, as translated in Brecht on Brecht

Mumbling #4

Back in the day, when we were in kindergarten, things were simple and only a few emotions were known to us, I believed that I would grow up to marry that boy. We used to travel in the same van and he drank water from my bottle on the way back home more than a few times. It is funny, how I have remembered so little of this, never realising that he was the first boy I thought I loved. Memories are strange. You have to keep scratching on a few to find them. And when you finally do, they surprise you with their starkness. Now, I can recall his name too.

Mumbling #3

I never believed in Santa Claus, even when I was a kid. Santa was supposed to leave us gifts under the pillow every year. Not on that one rare Christmas Eve when my father was in a relatively good mood.

BLIND

I'm a light bug. The faintest light I see, and I run towards it, losing control of all my senses. Not a moment must be wasted, not a glance back to see what I'm leaving behind. I don't even see what I'm heading for. I'm intoxicated.
I'm a light bug.

I don't remember the last time I felt truly happy. I don't remember the last time I felt gratitude. I've always been brushing past them, sometimes stepping on their foot. I stare at their shoes and smirk. I have nothing to say.

That little baby girl trodding in her pink frock is a walking flower. She looks up at me and grins a toothless grin, as if, in me, she can see all the goodness in the world.

STRIKE 3...2...1

Do you see the rage in his eyes?

I see it too.

He burns because he is disconcerted. It makes him sick, when he watches them doing it all wrong. They had taken their oaths hadn’t they? They had promised to serve her, the soil on which they grew, hadn’t they? Others are befooled. He isn’t. He knows. No one would believe him.

This must be stopped...must be stopped...MUST BE STOPPED!

He will put an end to this.

It feels unnaturally heavy in his hand. It’s loaded. He had remembered to do that, he did. He can do this, of course. It is the virtuous thing to do. Can he? CAN YOU DO IT? DO IT? DO IT NOW!

His trigger finger jerks and BANG!

Break into a run.

What do you see now?

I see only pain.

Mumbling #2

Music is the ultimate high, don't you think? Better than any drug there is. Inside you, it has the power to build up a storm. Lose yourself in it and you can find yourself. Leaves me baffled, craving for more.

THE BREAK

When I didn't just open my eyes to look,

I saw.

I saw a pale light.

Hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Everything around me looked dangerously real.

The paper on which I write smells nice, feels coarse in my hand

It’s the most beautiful creation by man, this paper.

As I take off the make-up,

I see.

As I stand alone,

I see better than ever now.

Mumbling #1

It’s so easy to tell a kid not to cry over the ice-cream that just fell out of his hand, because it’s stupid. You’re consoling him with ‘Hey! You’re crying over this? What’ll you do when you’ll face greater losses in life later? This is silly. Be a sport.’ How insightful! That ice-cream meant the world to the kid.

MAGNIFICENCE

Walking on the marble floor

Cracked old paper

My grandmother’s hands

Desert cooler

That crooked smile

Lavender scented body wash

The smell of gunpowder

Woolen tights

Blinds on windows

Wilted leaves

Bournvita

I find it here. Where do you? :)

CONFLUENCE

The eyes that met, the gaze that pierced

The tingling of the skin; she neared

I clung to her and drank her love

She shivered for the fear of Him above

But together, here, it felt so right

In joyous ecstasy moaned the night

Her sparkling skin made my vision blur

She was me and I was her.

As I put my hand on her breast

Her heart thumped with unrest

She cried because it was so beautiful

I cried because it was impossible

How they did not listen to our plight

We were one before we saw our first light.

The one who dances is considered crazy by the one who cannot hear the music.

He’s running the race

And though the pace

has begun to tire him out,

he runs still

Saddled, bridled and directed

All fingers pointing North,

he runs South

Labyrinths ahead

Monster under the bed

Groans and crawls out.

He runs amok.

The fires burn

The waters churn

Rhythm engulfs him

He cries out loud

The soul screams for more

Amidst the furor,

Ecstasy throttles him

He hits the ground

No labyrinth ahead,

Exultant, he treads

Whittling a path of his own

He no longer runs.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house, I saw a blackened ruin.

“A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses, fancying she has stirred. He withdraws; not for worlds would he be seen. All is still. He again advances; he bends over her, a light veil rests on her features; he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty –warm and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance. But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! He calls aloud a name and drops his burden and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter-any movement he can make, he thought his love slept sweetly, he finds she is stone dead.”

People talk of the power of love like there is nothing in the world that could be greater than that. Love is what gives meaning to your life. Loves is what makes the stars shine brighter. Love is what makes the world go round.

I’ve never been in love. I don’t think I have what it takes to be in love. The whole process of the hurt and pain makes me shrivel up and I shut myself completely. I’ve never been in love and yet I cry like a small child when I hear the pain in Adele’s voice as she mourns for her lover. Her words echo in my head, her pain seeps into my heart and I burst out in a fresh round of tears. I lament for a feeling I never felt. And I am the girl who didn’t cry when she got needles put in her eye during her operation.

I like my life to be simple. I try to find ways to make myself more perceptible to the things I see around me. Love, however, just doesn’t seem to find a place in my otherwise undemanding existence, because of the simple reason that it asks for a lot. It takes too much from you and doesn’t promise anything in return. The fear of being bereft of it later makes me wary in the first place. So i busy myself with more important things in life.

Deluminating One, Illuminating Another

Most of us need to seek refuge. A hideaway. It may be a book, a movie, music, a friend or a lover, or all of them. Under their wing you can look away from the reality that presses itself on your face.

A good book or a movie is a great way to drown yourself in another character’s life (and for most of us, it’s a relief that it is fictional). A character you could possibly relate to, whilst, paradoxically enough, constantly distance yourself from that figment. So you’re there, yet not there. Another advantage that both of them provide is that they are conclusive in nature. You know that by the time you finish your film, you will get your popcorn’s due. Because everything will be fine and no one will die (or maybe all of them will if you’re watching the wrong kind of movie). The point being, that it is conclusive, so you seal most of them with a kiss, a laugh or a tear. Don’t you think it would’ve been better if we knew what genre of movie our life was so that, in the least, we could maybe set the mood accordingly? That would have helped clean up so much of muck.

Just about now, writing down all that comes to my mind is my way of escape. It’s comforting since I have the assurance that no one else can read this unless I let them. However, no matter how rejuvenating that might be, I can’t help wonder how beneficial this dwelling upon ‘the unreal’ is. One ends up neglecting what is there and even if one does take notice, there is disappointment of not living a life that could be retold with zest.

So what is one to do? How do you find a perfect balance? Isn’t it more understandable to make most use of what you have with the ‘If life farts in your face, go help light up someone’s stove’ kind of enthusiasm, instead of holing up somewhere with your book? Not really. I’m a comfort seeker just like the next person. So if you’d tell me to pick between ice-cream and salad I would make the obvious choice. Sure, make a big deal out of one life that you live but seek repose in the fact that you can inhabit many at a time.