In a few hours, the year will draw to a close.
We will jump, a little too happy from all the stuff consumed, and hug and shout and hug some more.

So many things to be grateful for this year. So much growing up in a quiet manner. So many memories. So much maturity and so much more immaturity. So much love for the people who made it worth it.

Tonight at 12, when I'll think of everyone of consequence, I'll miss you. I know you know that, and it's true. I don't know if I'll text you or if we'll make jumpy, spirited calls to you or whether I'll just have to shut my eyes tight and wish you inside of my head.

New year's is just another day. January 1st is just another day too. But if either make you happy, then nothing else matters.

2012 will be remembered for being exactly what it was. Big smiles and sparkling eyes.

Disconnected statements and half baked emotions all line the edges of my bed.

They are living, breathing things that speak with each other. Or so I like to believe. Everything I think and feel comes and stands around me. It's easier to put it together that way, when you think of these things as entities and not just whims of your tired mind.

It's like having a curious slumber party. People sitting at the edge of your bed, telling stories, asking questions. It's like being with a delightful mix of people who may not know each other but know you and, possibly, like you as well.

I shut my eyes at some point, listening to snippets of conversations and voices.

Later, I try writing. It doesn't necessarily come out in a flawless manner, but I have more fun than I   do otherwise.

The road is quiet.

The only sound is of the wheels of our car against the gravel. There's no music. There's no chatter.

The seats squeak now and then when one of us moves, but that's about it.

The sky is perfect, dark and thick like a layer of paint on a friendly canvas. I look up at it and everything feels so much better. 

I don't remember what was the last thing I said, but I remember it being painful. The fights more often than not melt into an unpleasant mess, the words getting lost and the matter at hand getting convoluted and dizzying. Eventually, our voices sound alien and harsh. Like something that would come out of a TV set far away.

We reach home just in time for it to start raining. The raindrops fall on us as we sprint across the parking lot. 

Some parts of the tension gets washed away, forming little puddles on the ground.

My heart is in your blue bag.

It jumps up and down with anxiety. It goes wherever you take it. It peeks at you with big, watery eyes.

The blue bag with the white stripes. The one you take shopping. The one which ripped last night when it couldn't contain everything you pushed into it.

There's rubble and broken pieces of your things. You can try and piece them together but you might cut your hand. 

You know how you find some cheesy post somewhere - maybe on a social networking site or on someone's status on chat and you think wow, what were they thinking?

Then you realize that there is that one fleeting moment later in your own life, perhaps rather brief, wherein you remember that cliche thing and feel that whether you like to admit it or not, you relate to it.

A lot of people find comfort knowing that their friends (or maybe significant others or family members) have their back. There is a narcissistic yet satisfying comfort in knowing that you are someone's top priority. Then you wake up one day and figure that you were wrong because given who we are and where we are today, everyone is too busy fighting their own battles to help you fight yours.

The cheesy post that I saw a long time ago was a picture of a kid wearing a Superman T-shirt. The caption under it read "Sometimes, you have to be your own hero."

It feels like a Monday and it’s not. But instead of being relieved, I am feeling as displeased as I would on a Monday.

The week, which is the unkind variety with a working Saturday, feels endless even though there are 3 days to go. There are so many wicked roads to run and mountain of work to summit before Sunday comes around and the week is behind us.

There is a sense of doom that has enveloped me, and a lot of other people by the look on their faces, but I think that comes from having to work while a lot of other people holiday in exotic places.

Or maybe it’s something else but it’s a whole lot simpler to assume that it is something silly and that it will pass.

Red Star, Green Star

From all the windows lining the running track, the stars peek at me.

It's as cold as Bombay allows and as quiet as Christmas mornings can be. Somewhere in the distance, the church bells ring. The thump of feet of the morning joggers is laced with the occasional sound of laughter from passing cars. Red santa hats and shining faces returning home.

When I walk back home, people are trickling onto the streets in satins and bright shades of Christmas. Children are squealing and holding out gifts and wrapping paper that has been clearly ripped off in a hurry.

The lights on the trees are hidden amidst the light of the day but they are festive all the same.
The smell of cake leaks into everything and the day suddenly appears to have taken on a glowing shade of happiness. 

There’s this compartment in my head. A black wooden box, if you will. That’s where I put all the things that go unsaid. All the things I want to say to people which I don’t.

Sometimes they are sweet things that I know will be misconstrued as cheesy. Sometimes they are mean things that I will later regret saying.

All the words melt into each other inside the box, like little parts of me that found no expression.
Sometimes I force myself to follow the 15 minute rule. 15 minutes is how long it takes for me to get over the momentary rage or hurt of something, atleast calm down long enough to not say vindictive things. That’s the time, the black box begins to burst at the seams with the intensity of all that gets flung into it.

The box sometimes gets a rest and the blog becomes another box; one outside of me where in broken, cryptic words I say the things I didn’t get myself to say out aloud.

There comes a proverbial point in all our lives, when we realize that there are some things that no one else will understand, no matter how close they may be.

At times like these, everyone needs a black box.

The last week of the year is upon us.

This year like most years has passed us by so fast that it felt like only a few months. And now it's Christmas and all red-and-green and festive. Everyone is putting on scarves and pretending it's cold and drinking chocolate milk with cookies shapes like Christmas trees. 

I always spend the last few days of the year generally making mental lists of the good and bad things of the year that went by. It's satisfying because no matter how long the list of the bad things is, you are now past them and the new year with its endless possibilities is afoot.

The weather is a little better than what is usually is and the people on the street look happier than usual too. It's a nice time to, you know, just be. 

Fall asleep and find yourself in a city that isn't quite your own.

With pots with mirrors and drinking water in an urn the colour of earth. 

With women with thin, fluid waists and long shining hair. And men with thick eyebrows and cloth hats.

The sky there is a deep blue, like watching water take you over from above. The stars aren't out yet, but I can only imagine how overwhelming it will be to watch them from where I stand.

 I walk around, taking in the trees, the kids and the noises that fill this mysterious place

I am asleep but I am also awake. 

The air is thin and tense. It's as though you've held your breath and are waiting for something to happen.

You’re far away. In a crowded, expensive city with your shiny hair and your rapid conversations. What I remember most are your bright orange slippers and your silver toes.
You’re dying. You told me so.
There isn’t so much to say. We haven’t spoken in a long time. When I think of you, I don’t feel all that I would have liked to. We aren’t friends exactly but we could have been. We’d have gotten along like a house on fire, I just know it. There just wasn’t enough time. Is there ever?
In the brief time where our lives overlapped, you told me you wanted to be travel. You held out your atlas and crossed out India and laughed. I hope you travelled more after.
Distances feel longer when things aren’t quite the way we’d like them.
I just thought you should know that I wish you didn’t have to die. You said you’re prepared and I hope you’re right. Good luck and I’ll be thinking of you.

In this space, in this moment I am alone. It's not pleasant, but it's not unbearable either.

I used to be excited about birthdays and new years and would need to be hugged before exams and through pain. I needed people. Now, I find myself turning to writing, to the blog, for catharsis and comfort.

I am exhausted from pretending to be at peace with things; from not telling people what I think because I really have no gumption left for honest talk and confrontations.

In this space, I am true to myself. I am aware of the fact that  for the most time, you just have yourself.

There’s water everywhere. The bathroom leaked on me and now I have a swimming pool in the middle of my home.

I stand around with a plunger, my feet pruning rapidly, trying to find the source of this madness. It’s like being in a movie, minus the heart-racing soundtrack and the killer who’ll appear behind me and show his face in the bathroom mirror.

The root of all trouble is a malfunctioning drain which in a strange manner doesn’t seem to be visibly clogged. I pour packets of white powder which is supposed to open up the pipes but all I have is milky water with a foul smell creeping up my leg.

After a solid hour of prancing around with bathroom equipment looking like a mess, the water starts to drain. I am not sure what does it, maybe a culmination of a hundred potential solutions.

The floors of the house feel slippery even after hours of wiping and drying.

I spend the rest of the day sitting with my feet on the window sill. It isn’t quite relevant, but it could be.

I will sleep.

In a room with the windows shut and the fan whirring in silence. The curtains will be drawn and the lights will be turned out. The outside world will not come in and peek, with its honks and shouts.

When I wake, I will check the time and roll over and sleep for another day or so. The dreams will be both eventful and calming. They will be in shades of blue and white.

I will wake up finally and eat some wheat flakes with milk. I will consume a banana, sliced into tiny pieces.

Then I will be able to deal with the world and its people

The stars were knotted in your hair, while you stood against the sky. I couldn’t even see your eyes; just dark pools lighting up now and then.

The clouds were thick and stormy and the trees didn’t quite hold their own. They swayed, as though possessed by a greater force, from end to end. You stood still, though. Untouched and uncaring.

Somewhere through the night, the rain came down in anger. It drenched us to our bone. The stars washed away from your hair. Your eyes leaked sparkling water.

You kept going further and further until you disappeared. I moved towards you, panicking, but you were gone.

Perhaps you hid behind a tree, or maybe you became a glowing blob of molten matter up ahead in the distance. You weren’t there. You were never there.

I ate my way through an apple, a cereal bar and a bowl of sweet-corn soup.

It's that feeling of hunger bordering on boredom when you're home too long and then you start to walk around trying to entertain yourself with food. It was only a good thing that I didn't open my fridge and find a chocolate cake there because I am pretty sure I would have eaten in, in fact with questionable vengeance.

It's evening now and I decided that I will behave like a grown up. So I made myself some ginger tea and had it in a slow, calculated manner with dry biscuits. Then I put on a face-pack and read the newspaper. Now, I'll go and ponder about some serious stuff in silence, like bills and global warming. Or the rising food prices and the traffic.

Wake up and eat a bowl of wheat flakes dry.
Then drink the low-fat milk because you forgot it in your cereal.
Wash the bowl half-heartedly, humming theme songs to TV shows.
Then crawl back into bed and doze off for a bit, while the Sunday sounds creep into your room from outside.
The sounds and smells from the kitchen below and the sounds of brunch goers with clacking heels.
Crack your eyes open and shut them quick before you feel the need to get up.
Have lunch - rice and dal and mango pickle. And cold water with the glass making rings on your table.
Watch the afternoon weave in and out of your lethargy with sunshine and freshly downloaded TV shows.
Breathe in the Sunday and do nothing intellectual because you have the rest of the week to do that. 

Just an altogether strange mood laced with jumping emotions about nearly everything. The fact that the world has a weekend coming up and we don’t, people, things, the end of the year –you know the usual stuff that gets you all weirded out when to be honest none of it is that difficult.

The weather is comfortable but a little bit gloomy and while some think of this as a good time to drink hot chocolate and giggle, it reminds me of the stuff that I don’t like or enjoy and then it gets me down. The people around me are being gleeful for no reason. I don’t blame them, it’s just that today I am batting for the other team.

There is a time when the things you have to do become enjoyable and you don’t mind them so much. I am waiting for that time, because well, it’s just far too tiring to go through the day doing things because that’s the only option.

It isn't really a special day, but it's a tiny bit noteworthy in the back of my brain where the tiny noteworthy things stay.

There were some cobbled streets that led to here and there were some blind turns.

It rained often enough and I did quite enjoy walking around, a lot faster that I usually do. I read a lot more than I would have and it doesn't really matter why. I jogged a lot more too. I grew up a little and stopped crying as much. I started revising my arguments in my head before I said them out aloud. I learnt, but not quite completely, about giving people space. I came to enjoy my own space. I realized that while I like meeting people, I like not having them around all the time. I watched a lot of shows and listened to respectable music. I came to laugh at myself, even if it was begrudgingly. I changed a little, here and there, and it wasn't unpleasant at all.

In this space and time, I found myself being happy, both together and alone.
After you cut the parts that you don't like and keep the parts that you do, if you're still happy, isn't that what really counts? 

Delhi

A whirlwind Delhi tour along the wide, endless roads and amidst the fog.

Most of it was spent inside a warm room with my head tucked behind a laptop, trying to make intelligent conclusions all while wondering if I would be able to look around the city at all. I couldn't.

We had just enough time to have dinner - rolls and fudge, which the lovely Delhi people insisted I had lest I left the city without having tasted any of the brilliant things it has to offer.

Delhi wasn't as cold as I had thought it would be but I did have the chance to wrap a pretty scarf around my neck and get my cheeks all flushed, something I will never be able to do in Bombay.

I wanted to write while I was there, I just know it would have come out so much better. But time worked against us and I looked up and suddenly I was back at the airport making my way back to Bombay.

Hopefully, I'll go back sometime soon and I'll be able to write while I am there and hopefully it will be about walking through all the colourful lanes and quirky joints that I have heard so much about.

All the leaves come crackling down around our cab. It’s like carving out a little dreamy spot for yourself amidst the harsh traffic lights and honking cars.

Somewhere caught between the sidewalk and cyclists in a frenzy, I imagined this to be as magical a moment as it gets in rush hour Bombay. I looked out and far ahead in the distance, I could see the sea. I tried to shut my eyes and smell the salt in the air. I couldn’t but given the general mood it lifted my spirits nevertheless. The road opened up for a bit and our cab shot across the street with new found enthusiasm.

With the wind finding its way in and whipping my hair into the mop, I looked over at you with your head thrown back and your eyes shut.

What a nice little ride it was.

I am lagging behind and trying to keep up, out of breath and wobbly.

Everything whizzes past in a determined fashion.

Time stops and darts as it pleases; sometimes it favours me and other times leaves me behind like a child lost in a zoo.

The tired humans around me don't seem to notice my incompetence. They don't realize I am not coping too well, possibly because they aren't either.

But of course, there is always some conscientious soul who blows the whistle or mocks you in a sing song voice, depending on his temperament.

Thoughts. So many, tiring and loaded thoughts.

The night has passed me by and even despite no sleep, I am wide awake in a dark room trying to make sense of things, trying to piece things together like in a puzzle.

The insides of my mouth are dry. Like opening and shutting an old novel which is falling apart with that rasping papery sound. My eyes feel as if something is gnawing at them from within. The sides are gluey and the lids are as heavy as they can go without shutting.

My thoughts are circling me through all this. Sometimes in the night, you convince yourself that the thoughts are mere nocturnal demons which will vanish the second the sun rises. Then the next morning, they're still there, standing and waiting for you to wake up.

The week has ended. Amidst much excitement, and a rush towards the elevators, people darted home. It was heart-warming, really.

In the lobby, people stood around looking irrationally pleased about the upcoming weekend. Like I have said several times before, two day weekends are a rare occurrence; one that is to be valued with sincerity and honoured with debauchery.

A few of my friends left the city to meet family or generally escape the pollution and other things we complain about. They said that they’d be back on Monday. The mind is a funny thing, on Friday evenings it tricks you into believing that Monday will never come.

But come it does. Then we sit around waiting for the weekend, all while writing increasingly whiny posts about the terrible terrible things Mondays bring along.

All my things are packed. The work day is over. From where I sit, I see people leaving, carrying lunch boxes and tubed newspapers. There's just one more day to go. The weekend, in its bright tempting glory, waits on the other side.

I am waiting for my friends to wrap things up, so we can walk to the train station together. It's a short walk, but it feels trying to walk it alone. Sometimes, we don't even talk to each other, we just trudge along in silence. But it's so much nicer than being silent by yourself.

The street lights will come on and we'll leave the building soon, to eat buttered bread with tea, collectively looking forward to the end of the week.

We have to fill out a questionnaire at work. It is to ascertain our emotional tenacity in an office setting.

Everyone checks the option which is the most ideal. That is because the alternatives are so obviously tending towards assigning a score, that anyone cans see through them.

For a hypothetical situation wherein a superior yells at you and insults you in public, the chances of people marking the alternative “I will burst into tears in front of everyone because I am extremely sensitive” are low even if they are in fact perpetually on the verge of tears. Nobody is that honest. Or that naïve.

So naturally, everyone marks “I will take it in my stride and accept it in a mature fashion.”
A lot of the questions have these unrealistic alternatives that are packed away in water tight compartments. After answering about 4 questions, it becomes clear that if you mark “A” you will get the highest possible emotional tenacity score.

That’s exactly what happens. They hand out chocolates and fruit punch as prizes for being the most “emotionally competent” workplace. Everyone laughs and takes the little score cards handed out. After a day or two, the cards are used to scoop out dirt from the spaces in between the laptop keys.

Emotions get painted on inanimate objects. Books that urge and chairs that weep under the weight of everyone else’s troubles.

How exciting it is to dole out traits to things, to have the last word in how something must behave or react. How thrilling to be able to create a world on your own, to know the nooks and secret trapdoors in a way that no one else can.

Some days writing is all that. Some days it is hard and tiring, like trying to look for something you’ve lost, but in vain.

Some days you write long spaces of crammed words only to trash it in the end with a burning rage of dissatisfaction.

The day, when you write a page, maybe two of something you like, that you’re proud of, that amazes you even if you don’t show it, makes everything up until that point worth it. It doesn’t matter if it takes you two days or twenty, if you create something that makes you happy it’s all that really matters.

The sea was washed away in the darkness. It was the thick, unshakable kind of darkness, where you open your eyes as wide as they’ll go to be able to see something.

The street lamps threw their dim yellow light in tight circles away from the shore. We ran under this light, fixing our gaze on a faraway defunct ship with a red light. That’s where we had to run to.

It was chilly in parts. Through those parts we ran faster, to get rid of the goose bumps. In some parts, we saw slivers of star light through the black blanket. It was amusing, as though the star was peeking out into the forbidden land.

By the time we got to the ship, we were out of breath. The darkness had lifted and we stood staring at the pink-blue sky, clutching our sides and panting.

We walked back in a begrudging manner. The sea had come out of its slumber. Somewhere behind us at the distance, the red blinking light on the ship was nowhere to be seen.

They never saw him again.

He left one night with a few friends on a trek and fell into a ditch so deep that it was perhaps a valley. They never found his body.

His family and fiancee rested their heads on an empty coffin and cried. They ran their hands over the wooden lid with the same intensity with which they'd have touched his face. His mother took off her purple scarf and placed it inside the coffin. She said "It was to keep him warm"

They lowered it and dropped the soil. They shut their eyes and prayed that his body, wherever it was, wasn't subject to anything harsh.
Even weeks later, a doorbell would ring and the mother would hope against hope that her son and returned to announce that he hadn't really died.

The lack of closure is perhaps the hardest thing. 

Lazy Sundays where you never really get off the bed.
The sheets tangle up in small heaps at the corners and you watch show after show on your laptop, your eyes half open and the sun shut away by thick curtains.

The only time you drag yourself out of bed is to make trips to the kitchen and the bathroom. Even those you race through so that you can get back in the warm comfort of the mattress as soon as possible.

The times both flies and crawls. The room becomes warmer and then eventually colder. The light outside drops and the yellow harsh bulbs crop up, like unwanted cops at a party.

It's soon time to sleep and all you have to do is roll over, shut the lid of the laptop and close your eyes.