Half Baked

Whenever I sit down to write I wish to write beautiful words, essential words..not just about everything that's going on in  my head. Because the written word is something one can always come back to, and the bitter word always stays with you, especially when it is your own. But life does not work that way.

"There are so many things I want to write down but I cannot seem to, because the reader won't appreciate the little details that are very important to me. What do I do?", one young woman in the audience asked at the Jaipur Literature Festival, to which Howard Jacobson replied, "Edit Edit Edit! If there is doubt, it shouldn't be there in the first place." I don't like to edit, personally. I don't like to go back and re-read and find a new fault each time. But life does not work that way. Mistakes must be mended.

If I said that all the events that I attended at the literature festival were enlightening, that would be a lie. Maybe I am a bit dull, because most discussions couldn't keep my attention right till the end and we were attending sessions one after the other and most authors spoke in such convoluted language and if you really listened to them, they were  talking about very simple things and there are too many ands in this sentence.

I've been sitting here in my favorite spot for sometime now. A single branch with deep red bougainvilleas has made its way out of my neighbor's balcony to brave the Delhi winter. Birdy is crooning about  her Terrible Love and her quiet company. But no beautiful poem is coming to settle in the palm of my hand tonight. Life does not work that way. Not for half baked snobs like me anyway.

Old Soul

Her young eyes are mirror to her old soul. His dry mouth is quiet company. Now hers. I can feel what she feels but I might have been nodding too vigorously because I seemed to have dropped my glasses in the process and it's all very hazy now. In my head I mean.

Falling Slowly

If you whisper it in my ear, I'll believe anything you tell me.

Even if we could turn back, we’d probably never end up where we started.

I understand that I need to believe in heaven. I need to believe in a heaven for those who have suffered and died, like the young girl in my city, like the old man I had known. I need to believe in a God who smiles and treats all his children alike. Who tells me that it's alright to not understand the world and its ways, to not know what to do with my hands on some days, to not know what I'm talking about. She says quietly as she hugs me that I must put up a brave face nevertheless. I must believe and move on. It isn't easy but it is the only way. And everyone's doing it. The bug of melancholia has bitten some and some are crying louder than the others. But everyone's doing it. Everyone's carrying on. 

“And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.”

 She is Cristina, she is Meredith, she is Clarissa, she is Peter, she is Florence, she is everyone; in that moment she’s everyone. 
I don’t even remember the season. I just remember walking between them and feeling for the first time that I belonged   somewhere.
 It’s a state of mind, this thing called time. There’s no today no tomorrow, no past no future. Only now and where you want to be, here. She’s here, I’m here. We’re over thinking things, maybe. But we don’t care.
 In that moment we’re not just two lonely girls, we’re them and they’re us.

Expect nothing. That way, each time you're loved the feeling will be new and it will hold its own.

"Though these mornings I wish books loved back."

The Man With the Horns

I was Florence last night. I remember it very well from my dream because I had her hair, and the same luminous face-Snow White. Meryl Streep was to play the Evil Queen. Instead she was acting frisky with some dark man with horns on his head in a changing room near the beach somewhere. I had a feeling the man was Prince Charming, faceless as usual.
One of my friend's ex-boyfriend was also loitering about in the dream but I have no idea what he was doing there.
I was living in a tree house in one of the two rooms that were connected to each other by a rickety bridge. The wood in my room would creak even when I lightly paced in my violet nightgown. Outside my room there was a mirror and a black sink. I came out to oil my red hair.
Then I spotted the man who played the oompa loompas in Tim Burton's version of the book. I suppose he was to play one of the seven dwarfs, or all of them, or whatever. He looked up, I smiled at him. He nodded his head, looked away and then looked back at me like he recognized me. I knew I was in trouble then. In a couple of minutes he brought the man with the horns with him who tore down my tree house and took me away with him and that was the end of it.