Love

I like sleeping next to her. My mother, I mean. She’s a very quiet woman. We’ve not been in the habit of speaking too much but we find comfort in each other’s company. In fact, it’s only been a couple of years that I would say she’s opened up to me. But should I call it that? See, that’s the strange thing. She doesn’t seem to be the kind of woman who would necessarily want someone to ‘open up’ to. She’s seems very…appeased. To the extent that some would think of her as dispassionate.


I like sleeping next to my mother. Did I tell you that she’s a very quiet woman? Also very gentle. She pays attention to the littlest details. The other afternoon I saw her lying on her side of bed, in her blanket, trying to catch a wink. She likes to nap, you know? The fuzzy blanket coupled with the untroubled look on her face was too inviting for me to pass, so I kicked off my shoes and got in.


Did I tell you that I like sleeping next to her? She would take my hand and then obsess over it like she never saw it before. She says it’s too small, like a child’s hand. But it is very soft and warm. ‘’Your husband will be happy’’, she says. I’d laugh a little with amusement. Then she would rub her hand on mine gently till she'd recede to a soft slumber. I would too. Later, I’d wake up again to see her, awake, facing the other way and looking out the open door of our balcony. Her eyes always seem very distant, you know? She has green eyes. I don’t know what dreams they hold. But then she seems so calm that I wouldn’t go and ask.


She’s a very quiet woman, my mother. But when I sleep next to her, I unwind. She makes me appreciate little things and be grateful for them. Did I tell you that I love her?

O Fortune,like the moon

you are changeable,

ever waxing and waning;

hateful life

first oppresses and then soothes

as fancy takes it;

poverty and power

it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous and empty,

you whirling wheel,

you are malevolent,

well-being is vain

and always fades to nothing,

shadowed and veiled

you plague me too;

now through the game

I bring my bare back to your villainy.

Fate is against me

in health and virtue,

driven on and weighted down,

always enslaved.

So at this hour without delay

pluck the vibrating strings;

since Fate

strikes down the strong man,

everyone weep with me.

"The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one's feeling for a man...and besides, it had a quality which could only exist between women, between women just grown up. It was protective from her side; sprang from a sense of being in league together."


Of love notes, among many other 'firsts'. :)

Mumbling #11

I realised I get up to write either early in the morning or late at night, never during the course of the day. I think my writing has a lot to do with my sleep. When I’m not getting any and I need to get something out or when I’ve magically figured something out in the slumber and want to put it on paper. Having said that, I feel very labyrinthine now. Good shit.

But of late, I’ve been utterly incoherent in my thoughts. Maybe because so much has happened all of a sudden or I’ve tried to make so much happen all too soon, my days are flying past me in a whirlwind. And by the time I get back home, I barely have time to breathe. And think.

The DU fest season is a little too disturbing, especially when you’re sitting very close to the stupid sound system while watching the performances, where everyone is intending to blind you with their shininess. The energy levels are intimidating. After all there’s a year worth of hard work and a lot (a hell lot) of sweat going into it. Pancaked and dressed in the frilly clothes, they step on the stage, risking the fact that they will probably only be laughed at.

Throughout these performances, I'd only been looking around, trying to figure out things for myself. There's so much hope riding on the action of the artist and the reaction of the audience, you could almost bite into the tension in the air. And only when you look at the face of one of the judges, bored and distant, probably thinking about his kid back home, do you understand that most of these emotions on and off stage are exaggerated and unreal. And this pattern of excessive emotionality only leaves us exhausted and empty at the end of the day.

I'm probably just typing shit now. But you just can't stop typing shit precisely because it is. You can't just stop playing because some of them in the audience are deaf. Or blind. Or stupid. You got to do what you got to do. And somewhere on your way you will find what you'd been looking for. One way or another.