Learn to dance in the rain

When it thunders deafeningly outside, you won’t think of her anymore.
Or how she used to love the storms.
You’ll push the rotating glass door of her favourite cafe, her favourite Paisley number will greet you inside.
The aroma of THAT cafe au lait will hit you as you take your seat in THAT corner. The smell of those Mocha Caramel Pecan cookies will waft through the clustered confinement. But the smell won’t choke you.

For you will have already forgotten all that by then.

Details.
Unnecessary details elude our lives.

She will be sitting at Flurys, right across the street, facing your cafe.
Glasses on her nose.
Wearing an intent look.
Flipping through her paperback.

Meaning to keep an eye on you?

Is it?

Suddenly her lemongrass perfume.
You can’t forget that. Nay.
You haven’t.

It’s raining outside.
You notice it.
NOW.
Slowly.

‘A woman not yet seen, but whose perfume accumulates on the horizon like a storm cloud.’
( Fernand Dumont)

Freak Snow

Phenonemal!

Till your shadow sets you free, you keep moving on, nay, you keep on moving.

On nights like this a heady concoction of distilled beer and fags are a welcome.

You think of a place, as you light up your cigarette.
You think of the past.
You weren’t expecting it.

You weren’t expecting the place to outlive your memories.
The place to survive your life and lives before, as you knew it.

You thought it will have been razed down to the ground by now.

For realities are harsh.
Time attains a stasis in perpetual transformation.

But harsher still,
You are surprised to find your past, eagerly awaiting your return.

You discover you’ve outgrown the place, in the end.

It has outlived your past.

Your memories are still aligned by the beaten roadside, glistening asbestos in the sun, reflecting your teary-eyed farewell seven years ago, forever on the lookout for that little girl who trudged the very path, clutching her parent’s arms with tiny fingers, willing them to stop.

So she could catch one last glimpse, absorb in her insides that pristine moment.

I don’t wanna go away.

It hits you. Now. Now that you’ve let it be.

People change.

Sometimes faster than places.

“You’ve got to face facts and the fact is life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke. There’s no point taking it seriously because whatever happens, and I mean whatever the fuck, the punch line is the same: you go out horizontally. You see the point? No fucking point.”
– Narcopolis

The ghosts of lives lived: The trains which forever wait

“The world was hers for the reading.”

― Betty Smith,

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

 

 

 

 

 

I used to read classics – the Bronte sisters, Jack London, Mark Twain, Stevenson and Dickens.

I used to read  Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, Enid Blyton and Lucy Maud Montgomery.

I used to read about cricket and baseball matches from old books, of yellow creased pages and hard-bound covers.

You had to be careful about them- they were fragile, old beings, signs of their well-spent lives evident on their lineaments.

 

The books used to smell of all the old fingers that turned the pages around, all the old minds that owned the book for days, only to return it to where it rightfully belonged

— the childhood library.

 

 

 

 

The library with that musty, welcoming smell – book-lovers are familiar with, some like me ar addicted to.

 

 

There were Classics – old books in older covers- blue bound.

The borders had the title scribbled on a piece of paper, yellowish – pasted – crayons brushed lightly over the name tag to denote the genre they represented.

 

Red for Classics, green for Sports, blue for Science and purple for Biographies.

 

Books on quizzes too – yellow for them.

 

 

 

 

The door to the clustered, damp room that was the library, opened with a rusty, round key from a bunch of old keys.

 

 

 

 

You turn the key, the lock clicks.

And then the smell, that smell hits you,

before light enters into the dark corners of the cluttered room.

 

 

The smell of thousand lives alive and breathing on the bookshelves.

The gente thunping of the heart inside a heaving chest as you strain your arches and tiptoe, inching forward into the semi-darkness.

 

 

 

The curtains heavily breath, in and out, like some wild, unyielding beast, watching.

 

 

You lunge forward, digging your hands into a shelf of old hardcovers, and run your fingers along the half-tattered spine of ancient books.

 

Your nostrils twitch at the odour of wilted paper and words in fountain ink crawling across them.

 

 

Towering almirahs and shelves (cupboards, really) of overwhelming height and stature (overwhelming for a mere 7-years old, wide-eyed, and tiptoeing enthusiast) greet the occasional visit and ebrace her with arms of inadvertently seeping rays of sun.

 

 

 

You stop running your probing fingers and pull out a book, scanning through the hardly legible scrawls in red and blue, bending over the pages, now and then, to smell them absent-mindedly – almost a custom with you.

 

 

You drum your fingers along the spine while you check the faded illustration inside the hard cover.

 

 

You set it down on the round tea-table, across the window, flanked by a lone chiar.

 

 

You turn back to the other shelves.

 

 

Through the cracked glass you try to peep inside and read the titles of books from their dusty yellow tags.

 

 

You pull out  one red, one green.

 

 

 

You walk back to the lone chair, waiting for an occupant since you left, eight years ago.

 

 

 

Sitting down, you open the red tagged book.

— Jane Eyre

 

and then the green

— In Lane Three, Alex Archer

 

 

 

 

Your life recedes from your present, fades out of focus.

Your life reduces to a point on the chair.

You live on, in the robes of Eyre,

and spandex suits of Alex.

 

 

 

You live lifetimes in hours, inhabit a thousand lives at once.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile,

the real world leaves your station, a train merely passing you by, as you sit by the window looking out and waving.

 

 

You smile.

 

 

 

 

You smile.

As you watch out

the window that opens to

the unseen, unknown, unimagined.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You live lifetimes.

Through Eyre and Archer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost through with the last pages,

You hear a knock.

 

 

A woman enters.

Looks curiously at you.

 

“Who are you?” 

 

 

 

 

 

You smile.

 

Hand her the red and the green tagged books.

 

And walk outside.

 

 

 

 

 

You do have a train to catch, right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[This is strictly an account from whatever’s left of this incident in my memory.

I hope I was not a bore.

Or got too overbearing. ]

 

 

She’s alone, always and never.

Prologue:

“Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one”

( John Berger)

 

 

 

 

 

I could start this with a “Once upon a time there lived a twin, a pair of Siamese souls..” but I won’t.

For this story is of then and now.Of the past and present merged imperceptibly.

This ain’t a singular story.

This is the story of a universe, untold, hence forgotten.

 

 

 

 

It rains hard.

The lone, brokn pillar shivers in the estranged silence of an empty churchyard.

Given company by the skeletons of a bygone era.

 

 

A lone figure sits by the epitaph.

Nails trace a name over the freshly dug soil.

 

Centipedes crawl over the cold, wet marble.

 

Dandelions peep from behind shrubs.

Daffodils tiptoe towards the lake, and stare in silent admiration at their own faces.

 

 

 

 

 

Kiki loved Daffodils, thought Coco, as she observed the pattern she traced before her.

 

 

 

 

 

Ants scurry hither and thither, their trail washed down by the shower.

Ants don’t mind the sister and she doesn’t figure in their conversations.

 

An Earthworm nudged her head out of her hole and retreats back.

 

It’s raining very hard indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coco loved the rains.

Kiki made her paper-boats using old scrap-book papers.

Coco labelled them and scribbled tiny messages on the sides.

The boats traversed towards unseen shores.

Leaving behind pairs of intent  eyes, naked anticipation and excitement written all over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Thrush sits on the white, bare scaffolding.

Turning around his neck, he assesses the situation.

Satisfied, he rests, preening his feathers, idly.

 

 

It drizzles silently. Cold wind walks by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kiki loved the cold.

Kiki loved everything cold.

Cold storms. Cold furniture.

Cold sundae on Sundays.

Cold metal bedframe.

Cold frappe in summers.

 

 

On Sundays, they rode to the ice cream parlour across the streets and have their favourite fudges.

Always, a peppermint for Coco and a blackforest for Kiki.

Only after that came the treat of pretzels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pimpernel laugh, with eyes that watch what lay within as what lay ahead.

The heavy branches slowly waver in the low breeze, as life changes pace around the churchyard.

A Sparrow flies in low and pick at pips of pears and cherries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pears~that which Coco so dearly loved.

Sparrows, too.

Reminding of how Kiki used to feed them prunes over their patio, in the afternoon.

Only after their grammar.

 

Coco fell behind as Kiki rushed towards the sparrow, steady on her feet, calling out loudly.

 

 

“Over here, birdie!”

 

Sweat glistening over her brow, she chased all around the patio in an improptu jig, trying to scatter prunes around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The happy face of Dahlia beams at the sight of the lone sister.

The twins have stopped by to say “hello”.

The twins, she loves. The twins care about her.

 

 

The Ivy creeps into the yard through the old, wrought metal gate.

The Ivy asks her of her sister.

 

 

 

“Really, why are you alone, Coco?

Where is your sister?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coco sighs.

The Centipedes and Ants stop their movements.

The Earthworm peeps out of the tunnel.

The Dandelions, the Daffodils and Pimpernel bends towards her, trying to listen.

The Thrush and Sparrow flock together and sit down by her feet.

 

The Dahlia looks down on her, her eyes empathetic, brimming with tears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I didn’t wanna let her go.

But the four winds blew her away.

I didn’t wanna leave her so.

But the four winds stole her away.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Cold Wind rattled the wrought iron gates to the graveyard, his brittle teeth cackling in interrupted sounds of laughter.

 

 

 

 

 

It rains hard over the stones. That lie over bare bones.

 

 

Where the sun smelt too loud.

He chased the sound of wind chimes.

He ran against the wind.

He rode past clouds of fog, ringing the bell on his adult-sized cycle.

He caught butterflies, feeling life go limp between his fingers.

He stood beneath early April showers, arms outstretched, the warm rain scalding his skin, searing his insides.

He collected quaint little wild flowers in red and yellow growing by the shrubbery in school.

He counted stars stars in the night, and when there were none, he always had fireflies.

 

 

 

Rio inhabited a world of his own.

Where the sun smiled upon him, the rain cleansed him.

Where the stars, quivering in the dark, were where fairies resided.

Where light dispersed in red and blue and green on the surface of soap bubbles against the frosted glass

(the warm bubble bath Ma prepares before school).

Where distant bells ringing from up the valley brought the news of advent travellers.

Where flights of birds flying towards north showed him his way homewards, when the sun went down.

 

 

A house built of stone.

Wooden floors, wooden table-tops and fireplace.

An old armchair.

A bare window-sill essentially unadorned.

But for an old flower-vase, a few wild flowers clumsily tossed into it with prying hands.

 

A gigantic tree as ancient as Dadai, lonesome,

Stands in a nook,

It’s bare arms outstretched towards heaven.

 

 

 

 

 

————————————————-

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s this, Rio?” the little girl in red asked, bent over the queer shaped kite.

 

“A dragon, Tatin. That’s a red dragon. A red, angry dragon.” the little man in blue smiled through a gaping hole in front of his mouth.

 

“Can i help you draw the eyes out?” Tatin grins innocently, revealing her missing buck tooth.

 

She sat beside him.

 

“I  want to help you. For i think you are my friend”.

 

“Your friend?”  Rio’s quetion drifted across the clouds which had stayed behind to eavesdrop on  their conversation.

 

“Why, Mum told me anyone who has been visited by the Tooth fairy is my friend!”  her eyes danced in glee.

 

“Come, hold my crayons for me.

Hand me the ones I ask for.”  Rio shifted to make place for her.

 

 

 

 

 

Red stacked against the blue.

The blind spot conquered the red.

Two beady eyes gazed at hands clapsed over laughing mouths.

Prying fingers pull open the red ribbons and laugh out in amazement.

Little fingers flung out the blue cap out of reach, laughing out in glee, starlight in her eyes.

 

Red and blue crayons, sprained and bent, rolled out of their way.

Pink and yellow, lay still, cold, their hues fading fast into a powdery nothingness.

Colours curled around where they sat, losing their colour.

 

 

 

 

 

——————————————————-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweat gathered on his eyebrows.

This was not how it was meant to be.

 

 

 

 

The string, he intertwined around his finger, before drifting of to the land of his Dreams.

The red kite soar high against the blue expanse.

Crayons ringa-ringa-rosed around them, red and blue, staring wide-eyed at their kite.

 

 

 

 

The string felt taut. The white turned red against his fingers.

He frowned.

 

 

 

 

The red against the blue. Free. Light. The negation of gravity.

He moves in his sleep. Turns around.

Little fingers tighten it’s grip around the string.

He evenly breathes against the pillow.

 

 

 

 

Bird fly across the sunlit vista.

It’s almost dusk.

Time for Rio to pack up.

 

Time for Ma to call him in.

But Ma is late today.

 

 

 

 

The dew brushes against the pairs of feet.

The red frock dragged itself along the bushel of edelweiss.

The little toes followed the sky, now adorned in a bit of red.

The pairs of eager eyes looked up at their creation, together, as it floathed by a flock of birds.

The little man in blue sighed in his sleep as little hands clasped each other in elation.

 

 

 

 

No, it just won’t fly. I made it wrong, thought Rio.

 

“Rio, run down, kid!” Ma call out.

 

 

Evening settles down on hills like dust on an old, creaking armchair.

 

Two beady eyes watched through hapless tears.

Eyelashes flickered. Nostril twitched to stop it from running.

 

“Rio, won’t you say your goodbyes?

Where are your manners?”   Ma rebukes.

 

 

 

Feet scurry down the valley, breathless, and stop before the red car.

 

 

Two prying hands pass down the beady eyed dragon to the girl in red in the big, red car.

 

 

Mist invades their space.

Eyes red, watch watching eyes.

Big hands arrest the little man in blue.

 

 

 

Prying fingers wave behind the dust left back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

——————————————————-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At supper, Ma tells Baba, “Tatin was a quite kid. Good company to our Rio, right?

The only one of his age in the neighbouhood.”

 

Baba absent-mindedly replies “Yeah, but you know how it is with the Army. You keep getting transferred all over the country. Quite the rolling stone, you have to become, that way.”

 

 

 

Rio turned quite too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He retreated back to his world.

He resorted to his counting stars.

Teary eyes complained to the starlight people.

 

Little eyes looked down at the prying fingers under the moonlight.

 

 

 

Crushed red powder stared back at drooping eyelids from between broken nails.

 

 

 

 

 

———————————————————–

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epilogue:

In every aircraft

In every camera

There’s a wish that

Wasn’t granted

 

What was that for?

What was that for?

 

[ “Take me somewhere nice” by Mogwai ]

 

 

 

 

What got lost in the observatory

Prologue:

“Hridoy er obirol ondhokarer bhitor surjo ke dubiye fele

abar ghumote cheyechi ami,

Ondhokar er ston er bhitor, jonir bhitor

ononto mrityur moto mishey thakte cheyechi.

Gobhir ondhokarer ghumer ashwad e amar atma lalito;

Amake keno jagate chao?

Hey shomoygronthi, hey shurjo, hey magh nishither kokil, hey smriti, hey him hawa,

Amake jagate chao keno?”

~ Ondhokar,

Jibonananda Das

I’ll die one day. Sooner, than later.

The thought of dying came to her like relief , wearing down her helplessness.

She sits down.

Silence descends on her, penetrating into her reality.

She holds her hands in front of her eyes, spreading each finger before her.

The circle around the finger looks the same, the colour of skin muted.

I built a home.

Until it disappeared from beneath our feet.

Eyes inundate; eyelashes fight back.

The stomach tightens.

She touches the skin around her navel.

The little hairs crawl around her finger.

I will not stop breathing.

Short gulps of breath through the mouth infiltrates her lungs.

The hair falls limp over the pillow as the head hits the bed.

Darkness mounts her like a stallion, enraged.

Four months. 120 days. 2880 hours.

A life within. Something cold waiting to be searched and found.

Little fingers waiting to touch bare skin.

Little toes waiting to feel the earth.

Eyes awaiting vision.

Waiting to see the world and never forget.

“I will wear my love for you as a talisman till my heart grows weary of the familiarity of your unshaven chin nuzzling against my beating heart.”

Some promises made and others broken.

He speaks as if he hasn’t just shattered lives and dreams, for all it was worth.

“I am gonna make it, you know.”

She chokes over her cereal.

But stands up and walks to the door.

9 months. 270 days. 6480 hours.

“When the rain stopped and the light was gay on our casuarina leaves, it was early afternoon.

And then, wailing into light

He came, so fair, a streak of light thrust into the faded light.”  [Kamala Das]

“Oh, look at you!

You smile just like your Daddy!”

Epilogue:

“Only the pheonix rises and doesnot descend.

And everything changes.

And nothing is truly lost.”

~ The Sandman, Vol:10

Neil Gaiman

 

 

Buying a new soul

This is India.

Dreams are recycled here and sold. Nay, resold as ‘dreams’.

 

 

The only problem?

Sometimes those recycled dreams don’t seem like ‘dreams’ anymore.

Only life sentences for the convicted.

Only the shackles that bind him, all his life, to his life..

 

 

This is India.

Recycled dreams are what sells, here.

 

 

 

Epilogue:

 

“I woke up and I had a big idea

To buy a new soul at the start of every year

I paid up and it cost me pretty dear

Here’s a hymn to those that disappear..”

 

Porcupine Tree, Stupid Dream

 

A Lifetime of farce: The men behind their masks

A LIFETIME OF FARCE: THE MEN BEHIND THEIR MASKS

Laughable loves

You whispered in my ears sugar-coated endearments even as you pushed me on my backs, the unsolved puzzle pieces falling out of my grip, startling me with your rough strong hands. You called me “your love, your wife, your equal” as I lay back watching, wide-eyed and gaping as I felt your nimble fingers slowly, almost imperceptibly reaching upwards, leaving a feathery trailthrough my navel to my small, apricot breasts.

I hear nothing; I do not hear what you go on chanting before my deaf ears.

I feel myself (with a good amount of perplexed trepidation), shiver under your able fingers as they now exercise their demonic strength over my poor breasts of caramel.

Your breath of stale beer over my mouth brushes against my skin.

I dare to take a peek at your gleaming white teeth as your face contorts into a wicked, lopsided grin noticing my eyes watching.

My ears finetune to your station now, able to finally concentrate on your words “Baby, you do realize how much I love you? …. Love you like this and this”.

I feel am floating. Am living my worst nightmares.

I feel my own wretched body sigh and shiver as you take me by your hands, turning me on my back.

My thoughts turn to my shallow responses now. I wonder what these shivers mean, that feel like convulsive sobs of protest. I concentrate on each part of my body each time, zooming into each area. I try feeling my limbs, numb as they are, under the crushing weight of your hairy chest, one of my appendages trapped under your smelly armpit.

Bile rises to my mouth; but I swallow them just in time. I feel your fingers slowly reach my skirt as it dislodges it slowly from my hip and then down my long legs (rather too long for my age). I close my eyes; my ears feel hot like a warm liquid just exploded inside them, as I feel it throb against your salivating mouth.

I lay turned on my back, waiting and waiting; my mind likened me to a ragged doll left abandoned by a child who found better play-things but might anytime return to retrieve her old favourite.  I let my mind switch off it’s lights and stop all it’s petty works for the day. My sense organs catch every move your tongue makes behind me with alarming precision. The chocolate ceiling fan revolving above giggles at my plight, as I enter a trance. I become the fan, and look down upon me.

I hear things altogether. Your organ making in and out of my back in an astonishing speed making a slapping sound (no other way to describe it, I guess); the huge grandfather clock over my head ticking. A trail of ants make way to the dark corner at the edge of the window sill ( I look at them so very hard, I realize I can hear them stamping little feet as they trudge along their trail, their Destiny so different from mine, yet so similar. )

A white moth fluttered twice before my very eyes, before flying over my head and out of the ‘open window’.

I hear a low humdrum.

Bees. Going about their work, I suppose.

I also hear a man panting above me: a man? I feel a sudden urge to liken you to a mad dog.

“ had enough of me, yet?” – my mind so long absent and eluding, lashes back at the present, quite suddenly, startling me out of my ‘comfortable’ reverie.

I turn around.. you look at me, your yellow eyes greedy, and suddenly my image of you as a large, panting dog metamorphosises into a fat, greedy cat.

You give me another of your smile, this time, outright ecstatic (at what?) and one that spells exaltation of a nameless conquest.

You, ever so kind, allow me to turn back into the innocent child that I had come as ( or so I would think..); as I turned around, slowly moving my numb appendages, almost sceptic of their further use.  You sat up and I noticed, then, you were stark naked, not a string adorned your lineaments. You had that cruel smile on your lips that reminded me of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, your hideous teeth shining at me. I let the blatant realization hit me hard then, like a slap landing across my face harder than your hardest spanking.

I feel my cheeks flush an angry tinge of red, my eyes threaten to flood into cascades of unshed tears  and I  run to your toilet and try to hastily lock the door from inside with a new found urgency that takes me by surprise.. but (isn’t it obvious?) I fail at that and you bolt inside the toilet, staring me down with eyes full of (hurt?) and questions. I double over and sit on the cold tiled floor, no longer aware of my nakedness as I sense your hard body crouching down to sit beside me. You take my lithe, weak body in our arms (once again I do not fail to notice the surprising strength in your shoulders). You embraced me, a benevolent father figure (akin to how older you are than me), and caressed my hair with your one free hand, whispering me to be quiet.

“I have always loved you, Aleya” his voice echoed inside the small cube.

My restless mind calms a bit, hearing his assurances ( what narcissism!): my mind almost reprimands my heart for believing the worst, even if for a moment, for judging this man so wrong, this man who supposedly ‘loves’ who I am, needs what I have (true, huh!) even for his own good.

My heart disrobed of all it’s innocent delusions grasp hard at the last straw, that attemted (quite feebly) to explain the unanswered queries of my mind.

“ RUN! Stupid, you run! When it’s still in good time.. before he manipulates your heart into believing the impossible fairy tales he contrives” my mind screams within my ears.

“God can he hear that? Oh, shit, shut it, will you? It’s all fine.. It’s just a wee bit dark here, and cold. And.. And I’m not sure, if I know this man ( against my beating heart) anymore..” my heart catiously whispers back.

“But you were afraid of the dark, weren’t you?”  my mind retorts back.

“oh yes!

And spiders and snakes. And cold slimy creatures of the dark.”

And rough hands up my throat that seek to strangle me, gag my shrieks, murder my voice; skeleton-thin fingers invading terrains I call my own; and all pervasive breath that smells like Death to me, falling on me and vanishing with the rise and ebb of your body; and of voices that assure you and lure your young impressionable into impossible fantasies; and perhaps this tugging at my over-exerted heartstrings as I hear my Reason win over my heart trapped in the web you spun.

I decided to “run”, leave behind your perverted world as I walk through this door (trap-door?)

I stir.

I sit up.

I move your arms out of my way with a firm hand that displays more confidence than it feels.

I stand up and walk in small, steady steps. Through those very doors.

“Steady feet, don’t fail me now

Gonna run till you can’t walk

Something pulls my focus out

And I’m standing down..

Stop and stare

I think I’m moving but I go nowhere

Yeah I know that everyone gets scared

But I’ve become what I can’t be,

Stop and stare

You start to wonder why you’re here not there

And you’d give anything to get what’s fair

But fair ain’t what you really need..”

(Stop and stare~ One Republic)

.