'You said you wouldn't come back; that you have burned all the bridges!'
'I have, but then I came swimming the bleak river anyway. I have kind of missed you.'
'Kind of? What kind of?'
'The kind you would never understand.'
'Extra-terristrial?'
'No. I am very terristrial! You are the one who belongs in hell.'
God sent you.
Just when I got too full of myself.
The smart fellow He is, He keeps you around all the time as a constant reminder of my failures.
And as if He is not just done mocking me yet, He locks me down in a cage and hands me the keys,
'Take these. You'd know how helpless it feels to have the power to control.'
I could have everything, I could do everything and still it wouldn't be enough.
This is His Design.
You are its living proof.
And that is exactly why I hate you.
Branches shake a little so that raindrops caught in cobwebs sparkle in the light.
My shoes squeak on wet grass until I decide to walk barefoot.
I jump in tea-colored puddles and let my ankles smear in mud.
I always ignore roses and watch humble white lilies bowing their heads to the rain.
Like a formerly royal lady who has lost her gold but not her grace, Bahaava stands smiling with a little yellow left among its leaves.
Ah, the pleasure of loving the unlovable.
You would never know until you keep loving the petrichor.
Love him from distance.
Like earth loves rain.
Forget the clichés of petrichor, greenery, waterfalls and what-not!
They are all baits, false appearances.
See the petals of Gulmohor scattered on ground like rivers of flesh and blood of fallen warriors in battlefield.
Swift arrows made of water that pierce brutally and weaken men to knees.
Swords of the lightening being brandished in the arena of the sky.
Like dazed warriors with bloodshot eyes bulging in fury and windswept hair flying like thousand tongues of fire, demons dance on the earth.
Tales of the war are beautiful, they say.
Don't fall for that beauty.
Stay away from him.
Love him from distance.
I have got a spacious apartment.
And everyone is welcome.
We have a get-together every night.
Lights are always on.
Guests keep ringing doorbell until early morning.
Mr Could-Have-Been and Mrs Should-Have-Been arrive hand in hand and greet with forced smiles on their heavily lined faces.
Mr How-Could-You-Do-That refuses to shake hands with me. He shakes his head in disappointment every time our eyes meet.
Miss I-Told-You-So struts ostentatiously. With an air of superiority she peers at my dark circles through her thick spectacles and clicks her tongue sympathetically.
Mr and Mrs Remember-When bring their children. The kids jump up and down and wreck havoc, knocking over glasses of liquid grief, staining the carpet in my spacious apartment.
Mr Chuck-This-Let-Me-Chill dances as if there is no tomorrow, alcohol dripping all over his front and ends up throwing up on sofa to Mr How-Could-You-Do-That's utter horror.
It takes me entire night to lock them all up in a room.
Finally when I try sleeping for the wee hours of the morning, they bang on my bedroom door.
'GO AWAY!' I shout.
I think I am not a good host.
The stubborn guests all of them are, they ring my doorbell again in the following night.
I let them in.
Because I have got a spacious apartment.
And everyone is welcome.
I never saw you making it.
I don't know your recipe.
Of sunshine yellow potion that you brought to my bed every morning.
Did you let hope seep into it? For how long?
Is it how it turned golden?
You spiked it with the taste of your lips, didn't you?
I always knew from its aftertaste.
It bubbled with your liveliness, leaping in my cup happily.
I could always imagine you.
Your hands fumbling around in kitchen while I lay half-asleep in bed...
I could always imagine you,
smiling... Hey! A bit of your smile used to fall in your concoction accidentally or you used to add it as an afterthought?
Ever since you left the last cup of your potion beside our bed, I am fumbling in the kitchen every morning.
Will you send your recipe?
And while you are at it, suggest alternate ingredients too, will you?
I walked on the black sky last night.
Tiny stars crushed under my feet.
People say it was just asphalt that glittered on the rain-bathed pavement.
I wasn't dreaming. It was real.
I am sure.
I can tell.
I guess.
I saw purple fairies dancing with their silver crowns.
In broad daylight.
And everyone seemed to ignore.
People tell me it was ordinary flowers on ash-colored plant in the garden.
I wasn't dreaming. It was real.
I am sure.
I can tell.
I guess.
I saw your eyes shine at my sight.
You winked and said that you 'really' love me.
People tell me it was a bait and I was foolish.
I wasn't dreaming. It was real.
I am sure.
I can tell.
I guess...
I could have had anything.
Anything I wanted.
Stacks of coins and bundles of notes.
I smiled at them and moved ahead.
I don't need any of it.
Because I am rich already. Filthy rich.
Beautiful eyes.
Eyes that could see everything anyone else can't.
I don't need them.
Because I know the horrors of closing my eyes and still being able to see the world, already.
And then you.
I could have had you, too.
The thin glass between us could shatter.
If I wanted to.
But tiny sherds of indecision would have remained, anyway.
When My Wish Granting Fairy appeared at my doorsteps yesterday,
I could have had anything.
Anything I wanted.
Ah, the tragedy of being able to have anything one wants...
I miss the comfort of not having to steer my boat and letting the winds do it.
A kiss on her irresistible lips,
as I trace the birthmark on her neck.
Her mouth whispers my name breathlessly, soft as rustling leaves.
The Lusty Beast inside me opens its lecherous eyes.
Bullet rattles in my pocket.
I remember I have to kill her.
Corners of her eyes are moist with sentiments I never want to fathom.
Dramatic as always.
When she looks away, I yawn and my eyes water.
She mistakes water as tears and kisses it away.
So foolish.
Bullet rattles in my pocket.
I remember I have to kill her.
When I lie that I love her, her eyes light up in hope.
I think I would spare her.
The Lusty Beast inside me raises an eyebrow at me suspiciously.
Bullet rattles in my pocket.
I remember I have to kill her.
We lay down.
Under our sky murky with clouds of indecision.
Her fingers entwined in mine.
Her lips smile in her sleep.
As innocent as a lamb.
My pocket feels lighter.
The Lusty Beast in me cries in disappointment.
Feathers tickle my pocket.
I cannot kill her.
Hidden in the sound of her calm breathing as she falls asleep, I hear soft ticking around her.
Time Bomb in her pocket.
I never knew.
Old Stinging Words.
Their graves are never deep enough.
Their spidery claws would dig their way out.
Pushing away soil of fake indifference.
Old Stinging Words.
They are never drowned.
Their slimy white bodies would resurface.
Through muddy waters of wizen memories.
Old Stinging Words.
Hidden in the closets.
Like a sinful secret.
They'd knock from inside when everything is quiet.
Hold your tongue.
If you ever wish to sting.
For Old Stinging Words form the cruelest of ghosts, sitting up on your neck, whispering count of your sins in your ears.
We should have met.
For the Last Time.
I mean, not the Last Time that we didn't know would be the Last Time, but the real Last Time.
We could have met with grief weighing our eyelids,
bittersweet taste of happier times on our tongues,
broken promises folded in our sleeves.
We could have met at our favourite food joint around the corner of lanes we walked hand in hand.
Rickety wooden table where I engraved your initials with my nail.
Clumsily arranged red plastic chairs.
A makeshift washbasin in a dark corner where we stole a quick kiss once.
Too good of a memory to ruin with Last Time's tear stains, right?
Same goes with every other memory.
Well...
On second thought, good that we did not meet for the Last Time.
Wait!
On third thought, if we had met for the Last Time, that wouldn't have been the Last Time.
I will make sense someday.
If not today, some other day.
With quirky pattern of my sleep, I shall have a hour or two to talk to you when you would turn and toss in your bed restlessly.
Someday your blindfolds will fall off and I shall show you the mosaic of my colorful musings. Trust me, you will appreciate my art.
When you are done with the lies you hear every now and then, you will come to me and I would have an honest word or two to whisper to you.
Till then,
You laugh at me and I pray I never make sense to you.
Because nothing else will make sense to you afterwards.
Plus, I prefer staying alone in my world of nonsense.
There is a thin layer of dust on my guitar and I think she is looking at me longingly.
I cast an assuring look at her.
I remember the brush of your soft lips on my nape as I played her the last we met, REALLY played her.
Another item in to-do list: learn a new melody.
Ah, my aftershave is about to finish.
I feel your cheeks rubbing against mine and hear you complain about my harsh stubble.
Another item in to-do list: buy a new bottle.
That off-white shirt with blue stripes lies unwashed in a chair.
I remember you saying how much you disliked it and me wearing it just to piss you off.
Another item in to-do list: throw it away.
I tick off the items on my to-do list so quickly.
So meticulous.
Thanks to the timely reminders I set up.
A complacent me lies on the bed.
1 AM reminder alarm.
I check my to-do list for a missed item:
"Remember to forget you"
I switch the alarm off quickly.
My smug smirk falters and I fall asleep with a pile of failures under my pillow.
I still get nightmares.
Nightmares that sound funny in morning,
but not so funny at 3 am.
When I am shaken awake by one of these, sweaty and breathless with fear, my hands grope for you.
I am sure you would tell me that it's just a nightmare and that in reality:
1) I am not in the exam hall, unprepared or late.
2) People I love aren't leaving me broken- unapologetic, screaming at me.
3) I am not being ridiculed as mental.
4) I am not losing my teeth.
And so on as it goes with nightmares.
So I still get nightmares and when I do, I do exactly what you used to say.
I sit up in the bed, have a glass of water and remember my uneventful day.
You said recalling the quotidian reality makes nightmares less scary.
And it does.
You see, another right thing you always said.
It's only when you maroon me for about 1000th time in my nightmare,
my nightmares and reality converge.
And let me tell you,
No matter how many glasses of water I have, it doesn't make it any less scary than it is.
Yessss!
I did not write today.
Actually, I just could not write today.
And I tell you, it felt so... what you all call it?
'Normal'!
Coffee tasted like coffee today; it wasn't laced with the usual trivial failures in my dull day.
Silence at my Secret Spotless Place was punctuated by traffic noise and not by the Small Voice Inside My Head.
A spider that crawled on a bench made me flinch in disgust rather than remind me of spidery claws of savage reality.
I complained about humid weather all day with everyone else and did not notice how periwinkle-blue sky was concealed by silver-grey clouds.
Now I know how you all make peace with everything!
I had always wondered.
You just have to stay monochrome!
I don't remember how long we stayed there.
Nibbling on the French fries.
Listening to 'How's Going To Be' playing in the background.
In an almost empty restaurant, while waiters relaxed like they do late in the afternoons.
No cliché exists between us, ever.
No hand-holding, no stupid falling-in-love.
Thank God.
Remember how I spotted a bracelet on your wrist and you told me it was from your Brazilian girl-friend?
For a second I imagined her and she was pretty in my imagination.
For a second, I felt a pang of dislike for her.
Remember how you told me the date of your departure when we finished eating?
There were tears in your eyes.
For a second, I wanted to run away.
Because I am not good at comforting.
Because I had nothing to offer.
Because it was scary not to feel like crying.
A lifetime of hating clichés.
And one day you really wish at least one comes true for you.
Regrets grow like weed in the fields, outrageously, shamelessly rapid.
Could-have-beens and should-have-beens break through the barriers of restrain and flood everything in my brain.
Everything.
Even the small place that decides right and wrong.
I look for the grief I deserve.
The tears which are rightfully mine.
I smile at a short-lived sense of freedom, of choosing my own flavour of torment.
Slender roles of cigarettes, the smoke going in careless circles, blackening lungs bit by bit...
Black poison swirling in the glass, promising me an oblivion for a night...
Shallow distractions that strangers bring...
A pile of excruciatingly prosaic work, to expel my surreal demons raising their heads like a hooded cobra...
So many options to choose from.
I choose a pen.
-- Based on the tweet I happened to read: 'You are free if you have the choice to choose your torment'.
Teach me an art of graceful exits.
Your art of evanescing.
Like paint on a wall.
Fresh and shiny in the beginning and then leaving its glory, peeling off with cracks, fading away.
Like seasonal flowers- Sonmohor receding at the end of the summer, stealthily.
You realise their absence only after they are gone.
Teach me that and I will teach you a bit about dramatic exits.
Like a popular character dying on-stage, violin weeping in the background, audience sniffing and wiping their eyes.
Like a raging storm, leaving mess behind, stomping away with wrath.
Let's promise we would never use our arts against one another.
Promise me we won't exit, okay?
Applause.
Cheers.
Smiles and thumbs up for the progress I have made.
You say I have got better.
You say I am becoming stronger.
Don't say that.
I knocked the same door again.
Yes, yet again.
You aren't proud of me now, eh?
Here I lay on the floor.
Headache creeping in like it does.
Outbox full.
Last night's story painted on pillow in the black of mascara.
Doorbell rings.
I stumble my way through sherds of glass and strewn memories and open the door.
Self-pity says hi.
Pride at her heels, clutching at a fresh wound on its forehead.
'You hit it last night.' Self-pity says disdainfully.
I find no words for an apology.
That annoyed look on her face, I tell you.
Her monologue continues, with countless instructions.
Do's and Don'ts.
Warnings.
Threats.
'How many times should I remind you?'
'This is for your OWN good!'
'Don't chew your pen.'
'Don't tap your fingers.'
'Why are you so messy!'
This and that.
I never listen.
And don't you blame me!
You don't know the adorable way her lips curl when I don't listen to her.
You haven't seen how her earrings oscillate when she shakes her head in exasperation or how her nostrils flare like an angry Dragon or how she tosses her mane back with a contemptuous shake of her neck.
Her eyes? Don't get me started on them.
Basilisk glare!
Her instructions always end with a shrug and a very pathetic imitation of indifference.
'Do whatever you want to do! I don't care. It's your life.'
She says staring at wall, eyes set determinedly a foot above my head.
I burst into a laughter.
More often than not, mad people find me.
They single me out from crowd and approach me.
I cringe, hold tight onto my belongings, fluttering my gaze at the crowd awkwardly and beseechingly.
A teenaged boy with crazed look in his eyes stands beside and murmurs indistinctly.
About his mother, about how hungry he is.
A batshit crazy woman who hurls stones at people sits beside me and rants about her daughter-in-law and how she misses having morning tea.
I look around embarrassingly until someone in the sane crowd snaps and shoos them away.
They retreat with a look on their face.
As if I have betrayed them.
As if I have refused to recognise them.
As if, in this unfathomable universe, in some time frame in past when God distributed madness, my soul waited in a queue with theirs.
