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. 

In my dreams, I run down a hill and fall in a heap.

I land in the middle of a dancing circle of people I have never met. I don’t dance with them, I can’t. I try and run away, embarrassed to be seen in my ratty night-suit. They follow me, their voices rising with every drum beat. I jog for a long time and realize that I am not tired. Thoughts of better stamina and marathon timing cross my mind even within my dream space.

When I get home, I curl up into a ball on my floor and eat watermelon pieces from a glass bowl. I watch something on television until I feel the floor crack beneath me and I start to fall.

I fall into the dancing circle again and we are back at the start.

The fan whirs in my black room. It sounds like tyres squeaking on slick ground.

It doesn’t quite distract me from my irrational fears. The ones that live under my bed and come out to play at night, like the shoemaker’s elves. Except that they aren’t as cute and instead of pretty footwear, I wake up the next morning with a headache.

In the harsh morning light, which usually comes from the yellow street lamps, the fears scuttle back to hibernate. I potter around, drinking black coffee and making annoyed faces at the world.

The rest of the day is a blur.

And repeat.

The plants died.

Their yellowing heads hung at awkward angles and their white tears stained the thin stems. The owners of the home, unaware of the death of their balcony companions, continued to paraglide and swim and shop for antiques at exotic foreign locations.

The maid came in to an empty home, still battling the remnants of the viral fever that pinned her to the bed for the past week. She looked horrified and then blamed herself for not having foreseen this. She went and touched the leaves, which crackled a little under her grip. She put a mug full of water in the pots, in a desperate attempt to resuscitate them.

The plants remained dead. The maid left feeling bad but forgot about it when she found out that her son had failed the third grade for the second time.

The owners came back a few days later, were upset,yelled at the maid and then got over it the minute the dried leaves were swept away.

They, then, sat on their sofa and looked at vacation pictures.

The Monday caught me off guard.

It happens every week. I walk into office with my head hanging with dread. Then I check the work situation and I always come out feeling even more worried, despite my pessimism.

Everyone is sneezing or coughing or trying to control runny eyes. I think we got it from each other.

We also tried to blame it on someone, just to find some entertainment and vent some morning stress. Turns out people are very defensive and competitive on Monday mornings and someone managed to get their feathers ruffled. So we dropped that and went on to pursue our private stress busters –blogs, newspapers, matrimonial sites, you know the usual.

The dreaded Monday is gearing up to tear us down. It might seem exaggerated, but trust me it isn’t.

The rain in my head.

I am listening to the sound of rain.

I also shut my eyes and imagined sitting under the awning of a defunct store, somewhere off the mud road in rural India. Sitting there with my legs drawn close to my stomach. Up ahead in the distance, there is someone walking with a steel bucket. It's only a figure from where I sit, because the white rain blurs everything. 

The sound is beautiful; the muted plop of the rain on the red soil and the faraway thunder.

 

In my head, I am sitting there alone. Writing probably, on damp paper with pencil. I don't know what I'd write. I am taking slow, calculated breaths. I am taking in the smell of the rain, in its purest form, free of smoke and garbage and other urban worries. 

When I open my eyes, the rain has stopped. I am back where I started, but I am a happier person. 

All the roads came to an end, somewhere in a clearing near a pond. From the car, we saw the stars in the pond quiver with the promise of the night. We rolled down the windows and looked out for a while. We didn't say anything.

At some point, we turned the music on and for many hours that followed we listened to the lyrics from a stranger and related to them.
I think at some point I dozed off and had a dream. A dream that we are standing at the edge of the pond, daring each other to jump in. I remember you were scared, but you said you weren't.

I woke up and the music was still on and you were asleep. I held your hand and it was warm.

In the morning, the water in the pond swallowed the stars. The sky was a golden blue. We drove away. I am not sure if we had come to the edge of the world to seek something, but either way it felt like we found what we wanted. 

There's that moment where you need someone to hold your hand. Not because you're scared or upset. Not even because you're in pain. But because sometimes you like holding hands, and don't think it's necessary that it be backed with a reason.

On Saturday mornings when you wake up and lie around in bed, you wonder what it'd be like to have someone lie with you there. You aren't lonely. You haven't had bad dreams. It's just that you want someone to lie next to you, behind you, and make small talk or share your morning silence.

You like it when people tell you that you were missed. It doesn't necessarily make you feel important. It doesn't always cheer you up magically. But on days when you are lying in bed, battling pain and larger things, you can look back on these times and find something to hold on to. 

All the confusion inside my heads spills out in ways that keep getting increasingly convoluted.

I see my energy wash away pretending to be that person –the one that laughs in the right places and says the right things.

My space keeps getting darker until my room is black again. I draw the curtains and the street lights peep in with just enough orange spots to make my head hurt.

In the room at night I find myself making endless lists of pros and cons. I find myself admitting things that I would never admit in the light and promise of a new day.

There’s this feeling wherein you know at the pit of your stomach that everything that you consider happy right now might unravel sooner than later. I try and hide from it, but in the darkness it finds me.

There’s the unfortunate time where your throat feels like sandpaper and your eyes begin to leak.

Then slowly, everything around you feels fuzzy and seems to move slower than it probably is. The voices of the people alternate between faint and loud and they seem to be all garbled.

Eventually, your head is too heavy to hold up and it begins to swivel around on your shoulders like a broken toy. That’s when you pack your things, trudge home and fall asleep right after having some chicken soup.

Or you can sit at your desk and labour away, trying to make intelligent sounding reports or discerning conclusions. Then you can watch yourself fail at it all, misspelling every other word because your eyes are too watery to look at the screen.

In the morning, much too early to have been woken up, the man unloaded coconuts under my window. He stood in the truck, amidst the brown spheres that could have passed off as smooth rocks, and dropped them in the hands of his colleague. The colleague was a thin man with arms like sugarcane sticks. He put the coconuts in cartons.

There was a constant plop sound; the sound that woke me up. It went from being annoying to pleasant, like a rhythm you discover around you. The trees around them rippled and there were faraway vehicle sounds. It was all comforting in a vague, distant manner.

After they unloaded what they had to, the man packed the cartons and jumped into the truck with his friend. The two just lay there on the coconut bed sharing a beedi, that seemed to be fizzling away, and making small talk. I wish I could hear what they were saying, I am sure there’d be a story in there.

The dead bird

They brought down the broken bird from the shelf.

The wings were chipped in a few places. They blew at the wounds and chalky blood remains fell before them, in a fine layer. The eye of the bird was expressionless. Its head, the colour of cherries, glinted in the white lights of the room. It a had a gaping hole below the neck. You could look in it, into the dark space within.

“Who broke it?” The man asked. His face was sweaty and tired. No one answered. The children stood behind their mother. They looked at their feet and their sickly legs trembled.

The silence was broken by the uncracked voice of the little boy. “It died.” He said and thick tears formed at the sides of his eyes. His mother patted his head but that made him sob.

“Yes, yes it did. It’s never coming back now.” The father said, the anger in his voice was unmasked. He kept the bird on the table and walked away.

The kids buried their heads in their hands and cried, the guilt and bereavement wringing their insides with a tight grip.

The Sunday has passed me by.

It's over and it didn't feel like a holiday. It felt trying. Now, the sun has set and the street lights have come on, with all the moths hovering around them. The deserted roads have a few people but they scurry around.

Tomorrow, the week will be upon us. The Monday will be as trying as today, only in a different manner. 

Everything is shuttered down.
The roads are empty. The people are inside their homes, sleeping or cursing the lack of food or entertainment.

The men on the street stand around in vigil. They throw cold glances at those driving around, wait for them to do something even remotely incriminating so that they can be yelled at. I am standing at my window watching all this and wondering if they will hold it against me that I am looking around aimlessly.

The TV channels are blacked out. When you turn them on, there is a screen full of black and white angry grains. The only thing you can watch is the news where there's only so much to watch.

The forced day of nothingness is the worst; it takes the fun out of it. 

Death is being protested.

Not untimely or cruel death. Not death that was unfair or unjustified.
But natural death after a full life.

In the darkness of mourning, there are floodlights outside to keep the bereaved company. In the unspeakable grief, there are monologues of self-glory. In the harmless life of the commoner, there is unrest and uncertainty.

These are the days when everyone walks with their heads down, questioning the city and their presence in it. 

It's too hot to be outside. It's too stuffy at home.

In the kitchen, the little patch in front of the refrigerator is cold. Someone left the fridge open. All this carelessness and I do a little dance on the cold tiles. My feet are smiling.

I hold an ice cube do an awkward juggle between one hand and another until it melts and my fingertips feel numb. Ice scraped off the roof of the freezer was better equipped for playing on hot afternoons, but they don't make fridges like that anymore.

I sit on my bed. It is lying on warm rocks but without the sense of adventure. I watch the fan churn hot air around my room. They say it's November, but I have my doubts. 

The part, right before you wake up, where your sleep coated brain tells you confusing stories.

The tree weighs down with the weight of a swing and the child sitting doesn't remain a child for too long. He becomes an old man with a rough beard and yellowing eyes. The sky comes down in a sweeping layer of mud and rain. The birds resting on the tree fly away in a frenzy. The face of the man, all papery and peeling, leaks tar coloured blood.

When it stops raining, the tree disappears. The man folds himself into a grave. Atop the grave is a plant that appears to be waking up.

Then the rains come again. 

I heard your bangles clinking behind me, although I know you aren't there. The distant sound of glass on glass was so real, that I turned around to reach out for it. I almost believed for all of a second that you were standing behind me.

It wasn't unsettling but I did come and sit on my bed thinking about it longer than I thought I would. I wasn't spooked. I just wondered if at all you were there, somewhere. I remembered how you looked out of the window, with your elbows propped on the sill, at the lights and the crackers, this time of the year.

I thought of you yesterday when I was amidst all those people. I just wanted you to know that even though I stood expressionless when you left, I miss you more often that I let on. 

Running in meandering lines along the street, next to lit up buildings and stray firecrackers.

Laughing, sometimes genuinely and other times in a fake hollow manner, amidst family and food. Hugging and grinning and being happy. In the end, the happy times drowned out the hollow voices.

Lying on the bed and watching the lights and lamps on nearby buildings flickering, casting long and mildly pretty shadows on us.

Coming home to a building with big blue lanterns and orange lights; a staircase with oil lamps and candles at every doorstep.

Then eventually giving in to sleep, with inexplicable dreams of bats, food and second degree burns, to the background of crackers and cheer. 

Pushed along on a wooden cart are rows and rows of shimmering lanterns.

They’re made with the paper that loud gifts get wrapped in. The morning sun lights them up and they trot along, like spoilt little brats at a party. The festivities are everywhere. There are heaps of flowers lining alleys and streets and women walking by with marigold garlands wrapped in newspaper. In their homes, they tuck it away in the fridge to keep them fresh. The next day, they will hang it on their doors and cars, standing on quivering stools on their toes. A couple of days later, a few flowers will leap only to be crushed under the foot of a sprightly child returning from cricket or a disgruntled maid who has to clean up the post festival mess.

There are fairy lights covering trees. Houses have lights in their windows, blinking in their epilepsy inducing glory. They form shapes and figures and cling onto newly cleaned grills to call out to passers-by. It’s a call for joy and attention.

In the midst of plates of sweets and dry fruits, are children stuffing their faces. Their mothers pat their backs encouraging them to eat more until they can’t move for a while. Ten years later, they waddle around, still unable to move.

His hands smelled of coins.

He used bus tickets as book marks. His books were always covered with newspaper - the glossy classifieds section. His fingers were wrinkled and thin and when I held them my hands would get some of the coins smell.

In the night, he snuck into the kitchen and ate icecream; his favourite flavour was coconut. He stuffed peanuts into his pockets, and ate them with extreme relish while looking out of the window. He once told me he liked omlettes more than he liked chocolates and that was saying something.

He would take apart alarm clocks and hair dryers and irons only to put them together eventually. He should have been an engineer. He loved gadgets. His electric shaver is still sitting somewhere in my cupboard, unaware that no-one will care for it with the same intensity again.

If he was here, I'd have shown him my writing. Of all the people I know, he'd be the only one who'd have understood it just the way I'd have wanted him to. 

The backlog is weighing down on me.

The writing isn't tough, it just takes more to say things because you fear they'll come out sounding flimsy and fake. A lot of the things that swirl around in my head have started to remain there. The talking has become lesser and quieter. The thinking has becoming more complicated. In the addled state of affairs whilst sitting with friends so close that they are an extension of your being the thoughts come out in slow, calculated steps. I won't say if it's pleasant or not; mainly because I don't know.

The words feel more raw and inhibited when the spout out now. The longer you protect them, the happier you'll be. 

There’s the underwater feeling.

Where I say things but it comes out all garbled. Where my head is swimming through all the conversations and the unanswered emails. My mind is asleep, all curled up under a thick blanket.

The floor at work is all dressed up and there are paper lanterns with shimmering tails. The tails tickle the heads of the tall variety of people. Everyone is chattering, in loud dramatic voices. I can hear them but I can’t comprehend too much. It’s like looking at the fogged mirror after a bath.

Atleast the week has ended. Small, but significant, mercies.

We jumped on the suitcase to shut it and then we feel apart.

The clothes leaped out, and the shirts and the scarves hugged on a checkered mattress on my queen sized bed. We sat on either side looking around, all glum. The shoes tapped around on the floor below and tried to inch back into their shelves, but we brought them back in one swift movement. When I tried to close in the toothpaste and soap, the suitcase shut its mouth to drive me away.

The room smelled of raspberries from the perfume that we dropped and spilled, while our hands trembled in the slightest.

In the night, we sat on the suitcase one last time, subdued and quiet. The suitcase let out a whimper of resignation.

The room would miss a small suitcase and a much larger part of me.

The wind died outside the building.

The people looked at it sternly and then carried in an urn to bury because it kept rattling in a coffin and that spooked them out. They weren’t in grief because they didn’t know it too well, but they looked solemn because death is usually not a pleasant event.

The women were quiet and kept looking at their shiny feet. The men flocked around the urn bearer. They marched on with purpose.

In the graveyard, they stood next to an open grave. The urn bearer held his breath and opened the lid of the urn. There were no sounds except for a cough or sneeze from the people around. The trees stood in silence, containing their misery in silence. The people started covering the grave with damp mud at the end. The sun glared at them but it was difficult to ascertain the extent of its wrath.

Summer had arrived.

The destination is always changing.

First it’s a lamppost, then it’s a tree, then it’s the milkman who stands by his cycle. There are no sounds at that time of the day. Not even birds, or crickets or whatever else people assume can be heard in the wee morning hours. There’s only the sound of my wheezing breath; like that of a dying person. When I hold my breath, I can hear my feet hitting the ground in a clumsy fashion.

Pat and Pat and Pat.

I count backwards from hundred, then from two hundred and then from five hundred. I try singing songs in my head, like a mental radio. I sound horrible even in the privacy of my mind where there is no audience. I try shutting my eyes because perhaps the dark endless road will create some kind of an illusion and motivate me into moving further down.

In the end, we make it. The wheezing doesn’t go away for a while. It walks back with me, like a critical friend, make silent remarks on my lack of fitness.

I am making my way through the Monday, in an auto that tilts to the right on a road that looks like a smoke bomb exploded there.

The smoke I am told is to ward off mosquitoes. The auto tumbles along, and all the pests within in possibly die. On the cement divider between the street, the surviving pests of the human variety, create a racket with fireworks. The anticipated festival is more than a week away but that doesn't really hold anyone back.

The reds and greens of the signal lights blink at us, and watch us not follow a single traffic rule.

There's a tangle of blue bodies. 

The colour chips off, papery and dry at first. It then flows, all smooth and graceful, into a pool at the bottom of the bed. There are thin sounds that echo through the room and then there is the sound of rain. Rain as blue as my body; rain as fierce as the guttural voices that escape.

In the end, it all dissolves and seeps. We are reduced to thick, lucid liquid that darts off the bed into the cracks in the wall. We are now one with everyone else, we are just like everyone else.

The gurgling of the affection now recedes. The space is now back to how it was, no knotted ink coloured arms and no runaway emotions. 

There was resignation in her step and in the quiet between her words. She hadn't given up, but she was on her way there.

Her enthusiasm died a quick death somewhere between two train stations. It just went away, like the small candle flame in homes with power. They took it apart to diagnose the cause and they came back holding the remains of her work in office. They, the mind doctors, held it out like it was a dead animal. Their faces were stony and the jaw of one of the doctors quivered with holding back all the words that he wanted to say. She looked at her feet. It was her fault, they said.

They told her the treatment was expensive and tough. She thought it over while jogging along the sea. Her will to give up was the strongest when it tried to combat wet sand. In her torn thoughts of what she wanted to do with her situation, she forgot that she was tired. When she looked back, she had come a long way. That, right there, in a spark of victory she realized that while it wasn't ideal, she knew she'd fix it.

In the sand caked walk back to the start, she built back, step by step, the energy that they claimed had passed away. 

The week isn’t quite over.

The dread of a working Saturday starts to fill you up mid-week. It settles in the pit of your stomach like a bad meal and stays there until Saturday afternoon. Throw in a deadline and an early morning jog, and you’ll find yourself keeling over in bed on Friday night, and not from a hangover like the other normal people with Saturdays off.

On every Friday which precedes a working Saturday, the same thoughts cross my mind. I ask myself the same questions, run the same excuses through my head to try and get out of all the stuff I am supposed to do. It’s almost like it’s a biweekly event, where everyone here stands around with dull faces, whining like as if it’s never happened before, about this unfortunate event coming their way. It’s like a sore mass of despair lined with envy, a few hundred people’s envy all balled up in one dark cloud.

The Saturday comes and passes us by like any other day. It isn’t half bad given that people are busy making Sunday plans. The Working Saturday, like all impending doom, is never as worrying as the build-up to it.

Her eyes look pretty. The dark brown rimmed with black stands out amidst the pleasurable chaos of the grey powder on her lids. It is supposed to look like smoke, I am told. Like your eyes are emitting smoke all while holding a firm gaze. The eyelashes open and shut with a lazy air. When she smiles, the sides of her eyes crinkle. It’s quite the sight, I am telling you.

You look really nice today; people tell her when she gets to work. They ask her if it’s an occasion because on other days her eyes are caged in rimless spectacles. She says it’s nothing, but everyone continues to wonder.

Beneath the creams and the eye gloop, there’s the face that would rather just stay home. It’s pain of some kind, physically or the more difficult variety. She wakes up to puffy eyes with bags underneath. Her face feels like someone came by and filled it with air, like you do to a punctured cycle tyre. She cakes on the fake beauty because she’d rather not discuss why she looks like a bus ran over her.

The irony is, that the days she looks the prettiest are the ones when she’s been feeling completely down and out.

Bombay’s sorry excuse for an attempt at winter can be tasted in the early morning air.

It gets the back of your throat, a little at first and then all of a sudden when you aren’t expecting it. If you’re jogging, it cuts at your eyes. Your palms continue to sweat but it’s a cold sweat this time, like there’s something really bothering you. The trees drop leaves on you, shedding their old skins in the novelty of a breeze. The cars that pass you by have their windows rolled down and you hear dawn music instead of the noiseless rattle of air-conditioning. The old homeless section of people stand around wrapped in tearing sheets, rubbing their hands together. Most people are still asleep, oblivious to what the weather is like at ungodly hours like this one.

After you’ve jogged for a while, you realize that the brief period of the absence of humidity has passed. Your face feels like it’s burning and the day is beginning to break. The streaming yellow sunlight begins to peep and the breeze leaves in silence, like a shamed lover. The morning spell, like a lot of things that feel too good to be true, remains a secret of sorts.

The children look tiny, like ants in a sugar heap, from where I am standing. They appear to be faltering from what I imagine is the weight of their school bags. The children begin to walk away, behind trees and buildings.

The sky is darkening above them, and me. It might rain; a humid October shower that displeases more than it relieves.

I am still at work, inside a cold building where the coffee is foul. My fingers are icy and numb. It’s like being in a different country. My fingers are punching away at the keyboard, hoping to find some strange comfort from the warmth. The work keeps getting complicated and long winded.

It’s difficult to tell after a point what exactly it is that I am feeling. I have ruled out the obvious –hunger and sleep. The subtle ones aren’t quite sticking either, no stress or depression or disease.

It’s a negative feeling. Like how you feel when you look out of the window and the children have disappeared and the animals have slept and all you see is darkness; bottomless and thick.

The Monday has taken me apart.

It has thrown at me tasks that I was meant to do many days ago, but got buried under other tasks. Like the monster that it’s meant to me, it has blindsided me in meetings with questions that I didn’t expect. In the quiet lunch hour, I stayed back to finish work that suddenly is far more frightful than it seemed last week while I procrastinated. The table is cowering under a laptop that feels like it’s burning up and tottering piles of documents that appear to be conspiring to kill me or atleast pounce on me the next chance they get.

It isn’t ending, this Monday. It’s just stretching into the evening, oblivious to tired minds and pleading faces. The five days ahead, and I have no idea where they’ll take me, seem like a time so long that it’s hard to imagine the other side.

After you discount the drama, what remains is still pretty scary.

Pune made me happy. The roads were green and lined with quaint houses. The food was great and it was a nice warm feeling driving across dark streets while peering out of the car into the passing trees.

More than that, it makes me want to come back, flop on a bean bag and read for many hours while having apple juice.

Few feelings are as delicious as the one that comes with relaxed Sunday mornings.

There is gloom painted on the walls, but only because that’s how everyone likes it.

When the sun goes down, behind a faraway building, we don’t bother to turn the lights on. In the blue, harsh TV screen, our faces artificially light up. Our emotions are suddenly in the limelight.

The joke’s on everyone else, as they stare back at our deadpan faces.

In the night, we lie on the floor, not next to each other, but close enough. There is no order or disorder. There needn’t be. Some things come with their own, unspecified rules.

The walls smile a little in the morning despite themselves. The gloom takes a short nap in the daytime.

Friday dreams.

The man in my dream has an acquired egg. He smirks when we correct his English. “I meant an acquired egg, like acquired taste. Not that I have acquired an egg.” He tells us in a tone you use to talk to a stubborn five year old. We ask him what that means, because it sounds like a lot of fluff.

He ignores our question. He holds the egg up in the air. It is pale blue, like the clear sky. I reach out to touch it, but he doesn’t let me.

“He took a fairy tale and ran with it.” Someone tells me. He hears that and begins to run.

Run with it. Run with it. Run with it.

We run after him because if at all acquired eggs are a potential sensation, I’d like to be a part of this experience. He doesn’t stop until we reach a playground with doctors. It’s some kind of a medical camp with Ferris wheels.

My sister is there. She is wearing a coat and a straw hat. She looks at the acquired egg and says, “Please don’t touch that. There is Tuberculosis Bacillus everywhere.”

Then there is darkness.

The people here are looking like Christmas trees. There are post-festival celebrations and everyone possibly got hit by a glitter gun on their way here. Our desks are lined with marigold flowers which are crumbling and making an orange-yellow mess on my clothes.

One such Christmas tree wrapped in gold brocade came by to invite me for some “fun time” in the cafeteria. I wasn’t fooled by the loose use of the word fun. I said I’d be there just to get out of any conversation but the tree kept looking at me with big, unblinking eyes. I started to smile but then it dawned on me that there were some monetary requests coming my way. “Have you made your contribution for the fun event?” The tree asked me; her tone lacked cheer all of a sudden. “No, I didn’t know it was happening today.” She said “200 rupees” as a passing remark and walked away.

I got called in for a meeting and was mercifully spared of what I hear was “lots and lots of enjoyable items” Then I spent the rest of the day telling people the specifics of the meeting, hoping to convince them that there really was one. Turns out the tree had told everyone that it was because I didn’t want to spend money. While it wasn’t completely untrue, I didn’t want to deal with any more sparkling people who are known to pursue a topic till tears run down your guilt ridden cheeks.

Her eyes are lined in silver and when she shuts them, as though contemplating something with her entire being, sparkling dust falls on to her cheeks.

She's beautiful; the colour of coffee. Her whole face smiles. Her hair falls to her waist, in a long tumbling mess. She sits cross legged and completely at ease, like this is exactly where she'd like to be.

The dark porch behind the house lights up when she tells her stories. Her hands bundled in red gloves come together and move away in animation, like a choreography that you worry will be over too quickly.

There is so much about her that remains unsaid. She holds your attention in the palm of her hand, like she's holding something precious but extremely fragile. She doesn't let it go, and probably never will.

Her presence remains even after she's left. Her smell, that of honey, lingers on the porch until daybreak.
She's beautiful, she is.

There’s wisdom at the bottom of a ceramic mug full of green tea.

Green tea, like a lot of other healthy things, isn’t particularly enjoyable. But it provides room to think about life, while you concentrate on ignoring the hot, bitter liquid.

There was some strange variant of envy surging along earlier. It was viscous and leaf coloured and unpleasant overall. I watched it come along and consume me, even though it was pretty far away. I watched it occupy the insides of my head. I grimaced and tried to shake it away but it stayed on. I tried writing about it and breaking it down into small, palatable bits. But it followed to logic and refused to abide by any rules. It just continued to gush around, getting angrier and thicker.

It was time more than a healthy beverage, but that’s too hackneyed for us to allow into our acceptance. At the end of the day, while emptying the contents of the mug into my gut, I realized that my head felt lighter and the swishing sound was gone. I had grown out of it and that too without too much specific effort.

There’s this feeling of letting things go. It’s really hard to do but the after effects are delectable.

The sliver of the sky that I can see from my bed is now full of birds.
Not just the everyday variety but some pretty colourful ones. If I was driven enough, I'd get out the set of binoculars that my parents bought a while ago but I am not.

I have been lying here long enough to have seen the lemon yellow sky turn pink. I have lost count of the number of trashy videos I have watched to milk the free Sunday download scheme. My back has fallen asleep from having slept so long.

My Sunday thoughts are disconnected.
I'll probably lie here until I doze of again, but not before I have whined about the onset of the Monday blues.

My dreams are often bathed in blue.

They involve drug lords getting attacked my paper birds. The paper birds unfold a message which very often includes death in a gruesome fashion. Sometimes, they are a whirlwind train journey through many snapshots. The faces that flash are attached to bodies that aren't their own. They tell tales with not too much sound; tales that are far more interesting than their non-dream existence. 

They ripple along with the slightest sound and melt into completely different worlds. It's like seeing something through a coloured lens. It's like watching something thrilling, something that you want to be a part of so much, that it's frightening. 

The blue light fades away in the mornings taking with it the stories and the parallel lives. The things and the people pack up in loud silence, like the actors after a heart stopping play. 

The chic beggar has dark streaks in her hair. The exact shade is hard to ascertain but I would go with a mix between mocha and mud red. The hair is held back with a fraying red ribbon; a more laid-back version of the kind that is wrapped around cheery gifts. Her face is expressionless, but her eyes leak condescension – it runs down her face is a gummy mess.

Her skirt has little bells at the hem, but they don’t make any sounds. Her shirt is tied in a loose knot at her midriff, it’s all very casual. Silver bangles snake around her dry arms. When she raises her hand to beg, the bangles all fall to her elbow in a cowering heap. She says something under her breath but I don’t hear it. Finally, she points to her feet. Her left foot is covered in a yellowing bandage.

I don’t see the wound though and either way I am sure it’s fake. What I do see is the tattoo above the bandage. It’s a fish jumping towards her knee. It’s jumping towards another fish which is half hidden under the edge of her skirt. I look back at her and she smirks.

I remove a five rupee coin to hand to her but she walks away, brushing me off like I am a pesky kid. I sit back, still holding the damp coin, unsure what I feel about the whole thing.

My sun was purple today.

It threw some of its grape toned light on my arm making it fascinating and disturbing at once. I threw my head back and shut my eyes. I kept them shut throughout the ride, watching the things you see only when you aren’t looking.

There were concentric circles in orange with dark streaks, perhaps the berserk sun, and green spots. There were miniature versions of us, blowing soap bubbles at home and playing catch with balding tennis balls. There was a 5 year old me holding up a box of leaking paints.

When I opened my eyes, the green spots stood by me for a bit and then went away. The sun danced around the trees in a morning rush. By the time I got to work, it had snuck behind a cloud.

When I looked down at my arms, they were normal coloured again. For the smallest fraction of a second, I missed the purple.

There is static on the telephone. All the words that we didn’t say are crackling while we breathe on either side. Our stories, both from our days and from elsewhere, unfold while we stand far away from each other tapping our feet against the damp floor.

There is an urgency to narrate the small details – the curly tail of a stray and the sinking feeling at the end of a long meeting. My thoughts tumble out, rushing through a small chute like rainwater. You are making hums of acknowledgment on the other side. You tell me a few tales; ones that I lap up hungrily, so as to miss anything.

Eventually, it’s all been said. There’s the silence that creeps into most things. The silence that is both comforting and terrifying at the same time.

The phone makes a few more sounds; faraway traffic and bubbling pops. The connections threatens to die on us and we hang up. My face stretches into a small smile; even though the conversation has been commonplace.

I dropped my inspiration while walking down a warm street, getting jostled by people who seemed to do it on purpose. It just fell from between my hands and rolled around on the ground, like a bad penny. It finally went through a crack in the street, falling down into a dark endless space.

As the sun rose and hung up right above me, I stood there for a while questioning myself. People walked by, looking like nothing had changed. And it hadn’t for them. But in my head things were different. Suddenly, I felt like someone had carved out a part of my insides and what remained was a bleeding, pulsating void.

My inspiration left me, in an unceremonious fashion and left me to figure out the rest. Had I crawled around on all fours and shouted into the bottomless pit, I knew it wouldn’t come back. I knew it was gone.

I turned my back on a closed chapter and walked away. I think I must have looked normal but I felt a knot forming in my chest. It’s still there. It will continue to exist, becoming tighter and more complicated, until I find what I lost.

It's like sitting inside a tin can. Everyone around me in this bus is making exasperated sounds.

There's a backpack on my lap and a paper bag propped between my feet. The people standing in the aisle are peeping into it.

Someone spilled coffee here. It's the slushy kind that could be mistaken for something you might find in a loo. A child is poking at the mess with the tip of his yellow shoe. Everyone first laughs then groans.

We waddle along, it's like being in a rocking chair, only not as comforting.

There's a curiously deep cut on my finger from chopping a stubborn potato. When I hold it under the tap, the water turns red in silent empathy. I hold it tightly and shut my eyes, because it hurts but worse things happen to people and it seems wrong to wuss out over a cut.

I hold it with all my force, hoping to stop the trickling drops of blood. My finger turns a bright red and then a little blue. I leave it, startled. It drips onto the cutting board and the counter. Soon I go from being in pain to being fascinated by the blood in a confusing way.

My mother puts turmeric on it, because that's the age old technique to stem the blood. I look at it, slightly mangled and a mess of red and yellow. That makes me the most squeamish.

In the night, there's strange pulsation under the band-aid. It's like a living thing with a beating heart, waiting to break out. When I rip the band-aid, it dies down. Then it just lies still, looking like just another commonplace finger, throwing cold blood at my new found fascination. 

Turns out there is also an inauspicious time to die. Should you die in such a time, you cast a mean little cloud of potential death on your surviving family. Nobody wants that. The surviving family then gives in to a few holy (which is just Godspeak for fraudulent) men to help them with this trying time. For a few thousand rupees and an hour an half of chaotic prayers, this cloud is warded off.

Four such brilliant men descended on my home and filled up my living room with the smell of incense sticks and the sound of chants in a language that none of us understood. We wouldn't know what they were saying to begin with, and even if we did I have my doubts about the very point of doing all this. The chants got louder and more fierce and in the end, he walked around my house with a smoking pot shooing away the bad vibes with the same gumption that you would get rid of a rat that's got into your kitchen.
In the end, he asked that we give him extra-sweet tea and food, as a token of our gratitude. You'd think the money was enough.

When I told my friend all this, he said that when his grandfather died, the priest told them that the soul for some godforsaken reason would never find peace in his after-life. But for a small sum of five thousand bucks, not only would the priest buy him peace but also given a written guarantee that he wouldn't be reborn as an insect or a toad or whatever.

There's misguided faith and then  people buying into such phony offers. A bereaved man's expense is the "God"man's income.

We hunt for runaway pieces from the jigsaw puzzle. We look under the table and in the deceptive gaps in the sofa. We looked in our pockets, even.

The dinosaur family was missing half a member. What I would like to imagine was the mother was also missing a tail. They didn't look pleased. I suggested that they would look that way even without the missing half of their offspring. But the other members of the jigsaw solving team were get antsy. We walked around the house looking for the missing cogs in the big machine, but they were remained in hiding.

In the end, we put together another puzzle, Spiderman, this time and everyone had their share of having accomplished something on a very non-productive Saturday. At the bottom of the last chip of the sky behind Spiderman, we found the murky green tail and the grotesque dinosaur feet hiding.
People cheered and sighed with relief. It was all very high strung.

We then drank some warm apple juice. Then we slept, because we had nothing else to do. 

The people from the huts came out after the loud sound. All kinds of heads appeared from behind the blue tarpaulin sheets and the yellowing canvas walls. In the distance, the rail line exploded people. Like worms from under a rock, the tiny specks moved at a dizzying speed.

One of the men from the neighbourhood, who had been squatting near the tracks, looked at where his arm used to be. His blackened face gave away no emotion. He had no emotions. Instead inside him there was just a hollow; a hollow in which he occasionally poured dry rice and country liquor.

Around him, the city bled in the darkness. The cumulative cacophony of everyone’s pain surrounded him. He tried to stand up, but his feet wouldn’t co-operate. A man who had survived the blast, and apparently his cell-phone had too, tried to call for help. He gave up when he realized the lines had jammed, and began using his cell-phone as a torch. The torch bearer walked around trying to do whatever he could, but he kept halting to take deep breaths.

Our man turned to one side and threw up his lunch. The smell of burning flesh and gunpowder was twisting his stomach into a tight, angry knot. When the torch bearer approached him, he called out for help. The torch bearer came and tried to help him stand, but in the push-and-pull of the situation, he fell down into a heap next to the man. He sat there for a bit, with his head tucked between his legs, and sobbed like a child. The man tried to pat his back, but then he realized that he had lost a limb, and hence was now physically incapable of sympathy on his left side.

The police came in, hitting their sticks on the slick ground, because they somehow believed that would help the situation. The ambulances carted people in like packing fruits in a tearing paper bag. The night stood still against the backdrop of grief and anger.

The two men sat next to each other, watching and wondering. The cell phone light died on them soon enough. By the time the police and paramedics found them, they had fallen asleep on each other, like blood brothers.

Write. Delete. Write write. Delete.

Change location. Try the inside of a car as opposed to the windy balcony.

Try looking Inspiration in the eye. Will you write about the boy with the prayer beads? Will you write a moving paragraph about the beggar with leprosy?

Delete delete.

I'll stand in the rain and shut my eyes. Then I'll talk about the surreal feeling. Or maybe the strange feeling. Or maybe some pseudo angst.

The fallen leaves and the sea breeze are both more poetic in my head. On paper, they fall flat and lifeless, like a bad hair day.

Scrap everything and wait for a brilliant idea to hit you.

If it hasn't come to you even an hour later, lather rinse repeat as needed.

Death came in the night, but stood by the door.

He watched her with heavy lidded eyes. I am sure there was a bit of callousness in the stare, but I can only imagine. She didn’t see him, while her gaze remained fixed at a point mid air. A silvery sheath had spread across her eyes over the past few months. Somewhere beneath the sheets, amidst all the layers, her tiny body was disintegrating and crumbling; all in preparation of the journey ahead with the intimidating stranger at the door.

In the early hours of the morning, he walked towards her and sat at her feet. He tapped on them, on her bony ankles, like a harried mother would wake a child. She didn’t respond. He then started to yank at her arms, slowly at first and then with an increasing sense of impatience. She began to gasp, while her children gathered around her. They cried helpless tears, while their mother who was a part of their being, start to flit away.

He took her by the elbow and they walked away. She turned around to look at her people. She saw her wizened self amidst the faces of her children, all distorted with grief.

After having walked a distance with him, she realized that she was young again. Her hair was soft and brown, and her arms felt strong and taut. She also realized, that above all else, she wasn’t scared anymore. The worst was over.

There are rumbling sounds at a distance.

The section of the building that faces the dump yard cracks and crumbles to the street. People crash with it, crying and shouting. Many others peep out and look with a curious glint in their eyes, like they are observing a rare insect or animal. That is the look we imagine, because from where we stand they are just black specks dotting the skyline.

The dying people falling in to the dump-yard, and to their deaths, with distant plops. A few survive and wail through bloody mouths and cracked bones. In a second or more, the building gets ripped in half and our lives ahead follow suit. The world is divided into the dead and the alive, the lucky and the horribly unlucky.

In the evening, we stand with roasted corn watching the debris and the disconnected limbs. We watch them powder the bricks, red grit in the face of a crisis, to reach the trapped members.

The air is sombre, but also apathetic. We walk away once the food has been consumed, tossing the gnawed remnants of the corn core on the dead stone pieces.

It's hard to create something you're completely proud of. It's hard to make something, shape it and love it, without doubting yourself every five minutes.

Everyday, I write sentences, at times long winded and some times stubby. Then, I look back and wonder if they have any substance or are just pieces of fluff. It becomes hard to tell after a point, the lines blur and my judgement fails me.

I write, reluctantly on some days even, hoping to reach a place where I can nod with some amount of satisfaction at my work, atleast more often than not.

The hiding man.

The hiding man is now behind my curtains. He is  crouching behind the rippling fabric. If he catches me watching in, he slithers away into a corner. He isn't shy per se, but he would rather I don't spy on him.

My black room has been his home for a while, but he will always remain a visitor. He doesn't walk around the room the way I do, he doesn't touch or own any of the things. Sometimes, he walks over and hides behind my books. I see him reading the titles, cocked head and grumpy face.

We never speak. I accepted his presence with more curiosity than suspicion. I nodded at him only once, the first time he ever came by. And when I went for a vacation, I saw him there too, hiding behind an unfamiliar house plant.

I did realize then, the first time since he came, that the hiding man isn't hiding from me. He is hiding with me.

Run; fast and far.

They escaped in the dark of the night. They fled, leaving behind a dysfunctional marriage and unpaid bills.

She took a cab and eventually found herself walking through scores of people. Everyone looked at her, everyone smiled. They said, “You have such lovely hair.” Or “Oh I love your dimples” One of the men in a grey blazer took her by the crook of her arm and led her to a table facing the sea. He asked her if she liked wine and when she said yes, he stood up and poured her a glass; looking her in the eye the entire time. The rest of the night was a blur; she vaguely remembered bubbling with stories. He sat opposite, his chin propped on his palm, drinking in every word that left her mouth. He told her she was beautiful and she believed him.

He walked away into a quiet space under a tree and sat next to a couple of guys who were smoking. They offered him a cigarette and he accepted it, making rings of gratitude in the air. When he put it out, he felt strange. He felt drowsy and surreal. The guys around him were talking about a TV show and he found himself chipping in with his light-hearted opinions. They spoke for a long time, hours perhaps, without stopping to exchange names even. He remembered being rather thankful for the non-intrusive conversation. He enjoyed the span of time where he chose to speak and wasn’t forced into it.

The next day, they turned over on their sides and looked at each other through gummy morning eyes. He told her she was beautiful, but mentally shut his eyes tight as though in pain. She smiled and patted his cheek, but deep inside she knew he didn’t mean it.

Nothing.

The sky is the colour of cardboard. The trees are all still, and I may peer at them as much as I like, they aren’t going to speak. The square shaped shops that line the street are closed; their shutters drawn and their lights turned off. The road is long and empty.


The bird that passed me by stopped long enough to throw a long look of condescension. I waved my arms around my head, worried that it may either attack or poop on me. It did neither; it just flew past, looking smug.

At the station, the train chugs in and out in silence. The people who enter bury their heads into books, or their modern-day equivalents, and escape into a world outside of their own. The train crawls into the last station, and we file out with blank eyes.

At night, the only sound in my room is that of the air-conditioning. I lift the curtain to peep outside and there is soft rain dampening the streets. The bulb in the lamppost flickers and dies, right outside my window.

I fall asleep soon enough without any noteworthy thoughts crossing my mind.

After Dark.

The clouds are chattering above the building. Through the glass panes, we hear them, like garrulous women at a market. Like the past few days, the evening hides behind the thick layer of darkness and while it tries and peeks, the clouds part through the centre.

The clothes on faraway clotheslines, faceless people hanging upside down, expand and deflate with the wind. The children at the windows hold out their hands in anticipation of the October rain.

Behind us, behind our important backs, the rain does come, haltingly at first, then confidently like it’s being doing this for years. When we step out, the world is dark and inky, painted in several shades of doom.

She could smell death, she told us.

She sat on the sofa, looking old and wise. She told us she has watched many people die. She could smell it on them. It was a fruity smell and when she got a whiff, she knew it was time to bid farewell. In the warm living room, this story took on a spooky note, although I doubt that was her intention.

Her eyes appeared bigger from behind the thick spectacles. Her palms were peeling in some parts, like old walls in damp homes. When she spoke her voice had a crackling edge to it. Someone asked her to stop. They were tired and didn't need to hear all that, they said.

“I am telling you facts; not some quack tales.” She said, confused by the request for to shut up. One man with a thick beard and gold rimmed glasses said it was, at best, a co-incidence. “My mother died smelling like talcum powder and my father- he reeked of cigarette smoke. There is no rule” He said. She shook her head. “It’s true. I studied medicine for long enough to know that it’s true.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I used to be. Now I write books.”

“Ah, that explains it. All you writers weaving your surreal tales. It’s fiction, Ma’am. It’s all in your head.”

She smiled. “I must leave. It’s getting late.”

She then leaned over to the bearded man and patted his cheek. “You know I am right.” She whispered and we all watched his eyes widen. “You… well, are you? OH..” He said, and his voice fizzled off.

She died the next day. The bearded man ate his words but never ate a fruit again. He just couldn’t bring himself to.

Oh October.

The October heat, which lasted for just under a day, dissolved into a downpour.

I took an auto home and the tyres made squeaking sounds against the slick streets. The plump, glistening raindrops splashed onto cars and tired heads. I stood under a tree, waiting to cross the street, bathing in the water that rolled off the sleeping leaves. The people around me jumped across the wet mud, hoping to not get it as little as possible on their leather shoes. Others who had perhaps decided to wear the same trousers the next day muttered angrily at the unexpected change in their plans. The sky looked confused, the blue and the black fighting it out amidst all the jagged lightning.

The monsoons which Bombay assumed were gone returned briefly to a strange combination of relief and irk.

In Memoriam.

The small things remain behind.

The thin glass bangles that went up and down wrinkled arms.

The cotton saris that had softened over time; that had been speckled with stray marks of our childhood.

The books, dog eared with age, sitting next to a pair of runaway spectacles.

The familiarity will be missed; of having her in the house and of her quiet enthusiastic presence. The room will be empty for a while and the bed sheets will smell of her. In the night, I will find myself searching for the soft thump of her footsteps.

Earlier today, the thick metal shutter of the incinerator came down, swallowing her whole into its fierce stomach. I stood outside and watched her life become dust in a glass jar. 

It was a full life; one that not many people witness. 

The ashes will find themselves in some holy water body somewhere. In the meantime, she is far away - much happier and in no pain.

The roads were empty. The sidewalks were cluttered with plastic bottles, paper cups, plates and other remains of last night's festivities. The swaying people had liquor on their breaths. They sang disconnected tunes, like broken music systems in old homes.

The immersion parties in trucks drove back into the warm morning light, chattering in delirium about the brilliant lights and the jarring music.

The elephant god, a city favourite, walked into the sea and swam back out with the tide.

He lay in the sand, now just another piece of garbage. The hype like all other things was washed away into the salty water. 

The room feels is full of water; gurgling blue and hissing in parts.

The two of us lie on opposite sides of the room and give out a tight group of bubbles. The window is sealed but the sun rays come in through the cracks and makes bejewelled patterns on the water. The patterns, sea horses and cacti shaped plants, move around without a care.

Our jokes come out less funny and our stories don’t sound as sincere. When we talk, there are no words; just harsh sounds like the bottom a drainpipe. One of us swims across the room and we float next to each other, but in reality we can be only so close in this room.

The next day, the water drains out. I don’t know how, but it’s gone. Our hair is matted and the dancing patterns are now silent. I open my mouth to say something but swallow the sound. You nod; you’ve understood.

Then there are all those things that you really want to tell someone. You wish that you could narrate them all to that one person, all while sitting on the floor of a dark room, who will understand exactly the way you want them to.

Every day, you find yourself bubbling with things to say. Not necessarily happy things or sad things, just all kinds of thoughts that need telling.

But you can’t – because either you will end up sounding childish or inane. You stay mum for the fear of accidentally hurting someone or ticking someone off. You decide that it’s best not to speak, that way no trust is breached and people don’t flare up.

All those things will eat me one day. If you cut my head open, all these things will gush out. It’ll be like standing under a waterfall – interesting at first, but rapidly trying once it picks up force.

The night is full of stars; bright eyed like a child at a fair. We sleep on the ground on thin bed sheets. I can feel the pebbles jabbing into my back. I can smell the vague fruity smell that sometimes comes travelling by with the breeze. I shut my eyes and I feel as if a bright light is closing in on my face, but when I open my eyes there’s nothing.

In the early morning hours, we wake up to start trekking. The stars are now moving away; they fall behind like the backward-travelling trees alongside the train tracks. The sky is pink. I pack up things into canvas backpacks. I drink water from a flask, trying to concentrate on every small action so that I can remember it later.

We start walking, heavy footed and uncertain at first. I turn behind, checking to see if I have forgotten to soak something up. I see the depression in the soft ground where we slept, roughly our size and shape. I look at it and walk away and soon enough the wind blows away whatever little of us was left there.

No tears, his wife said. No tears until they find him.

He went to work, turned on his computer and disappeared. They thought he went out for a smoke. Then when he didn’t come back until lunch, they thought he went to the bank or for some meeting he forgot to mention. By evening, they ran out of excuses.

They called the wife, speaking in a cautious tone, to see if he had gone home. She said he hadn’t and they could hear panic clouding her voice.

They sent out people to search hospitals, parks and movie halls. His wife suggested they send someone to the bars even though he had never touched alcohol. They came back without him. The police took a picture of him, a rather cheerful one on vacation, and promised to do what they could. A neighbour who dabbled in astrology said that he was in danger. He just assumed that his optimistic brethren would have eliminated this possibility.

His wife woke up two days and reminded herself she wasn’t allowed to cry. She touched the empty side of the bed and took deep breaths. She had barely slept at all and felt worse than she did the day before. Her throat closed in on her and her head hurt.

That afternoon they found him on the border of the city. He had been mugged and then beaten after. He was alive but shaken. They called the wife but she didn’t answer. They went home and found her lifeless on the bed. Her body was still warm and her eyes were still dry.

It was like a joke where no-one has the strength to laugh. Real stories do that; they rarely follow the rules of humour and writing.

They sit against the spit streaked wall; scrawny and bug eyed. When people pass, they raise their hands, asking for money. They shake their steel containers, up and down, making a racket with loose change.

The shoe-shine boy sits cross legged next to them. He plays a little tune with his instruments. The dull thud of the wooden brush hitting the rusted can of polish plays out a popular film song. The men stop by and raise one leg on to his pedestal. His cloth runs across their pseudo expensive shoes, back and forth. In the end, they watch their grim faces in their gleaming shoes and hand him five rupees. He touches the money to his forehead and drops it a nook in the pedestal.

The barber tops the pecking order. He sits on a chair waiting for an unshaven man. He taps his feet against the warm ground. He observes his fingers, trimming the nails idly with the scissor in his hands. The old man who comes for a shave also gets an enthusiastic neck massage. The barber pummels and pats the man’s neck with a clapping noise. The old man falls asleep somewhere along the way.

At night, they wrap up their things and thoughts in boxes and containers. The sounds of their trade seep through their things, running along the cracks of the sidewalk; they lie still only to pick up their song-and-dance the next day.

We drove over a wide bridge. The wind filled up the car with a fierce sound. Everyone laughed, because there wasn’t too much else to do. There weren’t too many other cars.

At the end of the bridge, hovering above the water was a ball of silver. It writhed and struggled like a creature in agony. When we drove closer to it, it rose higher and towards us. It wasn’t really silver. Everything glitters from a distance, and all that. It was powdery grey smoke coming out of a plastic tub from the water below. It was dense and foul smelling.

We tried to lean over and see what was being burnt. It was a toy – like a doll or a stuffed bear. There were probably more ingredients in this smoke show because it seemed unlikely that a soft toy would put that up, just by itself.

All the made-for-TV horror shows would suggest that this was a concrete case of black magic. We wondered, as we drove away coughing, if there was a child somewhere far away bleeding from its ears or shrinking into a lump of flesh. Or if the only thing coming out of this was an asthma attack.

The breaks, both from reality and the writing, come with consequences. Two little blog-posts for the next two days, then.

There’s Chinese food bubbling inside me. It’s like I ate embers from a dying fire. The heat rises and falls periodically. Earlier today, when I woke up – I wish I didn’t have to. Everything seemed bleaker. Everything felt like it was covered with a dark, thick blanket. I don’t really recollect what I told myself to encourage myself to get out of bed, but I did.

Now, even though I am sitting at my work desk, looking atleast mildly intelligent, my brain is still swimming through dregs of grease from last night. Two long weeks are ahead of us and unfortunately there isn’t too much to look forward to.

Yes, it’s Monday morning. I don’t think I should be expected to be cheerful atop everything else.

Silently, we are moving to our zen spaces. We are moving backwards, in slow motion, wrapping up our things. We are taking nothing with us. Not our worries and insecurities. Not even memories because we don’t know what they might spark off.

When we reach there, we sit cross legged and quiet. We breathe in thin, cold air. We try and think about nothing. It’s possibly the most difficult thing we've ever had to do. In the quiet room, bursting at its seams with thoughts that people are trying to avoid but are pondering on in the process, we shut our eyes and hold our breaths. We tried concentrating on something neutral like water, but it didn’t work.

By the end of it, there is no peace but a headache from all the effort of emptying out thoughts. We crawled back, filled with shame, to our worries and fears and memories. We sat amidst them and indulged, because it was the easier option.

There’s a puddle of ice and lemons. We jump through it, rubber slippers and such, making a rather pleasant smelling mess. Nobody seems to mind it, which is rare for a room full of serious looking, no-nonsense people. By the time we are done, lemon seeds are stuck between my toes and the exposed part of my foot feels numb.

We eat cake directly from the box. It’s funnily liberating and full of guilt. We are adults, we say over and over again, but we behave like children left loose. In the end, someone pours a bottle of dark liquid into the cake box and it’s a heavenly mix of all the good things.

I fall asleep on my front, hands tucked under the stomach, with my mouth a little open. In the morning, it feels unreal. My head doesn’t hurt and the floor is clean. That is slightly odd, yes