At peace.

She turned to us, her brown hands covered in chalk, and she said "You have to use this class to write about something happy." Then after a short pause she added "Happy. Blissful. Even if it's small and fleeting. Happy."

I put my head down on the wooden desk. We had our classes in the primary section of a school and the we had outgrown the benches more than a decade before. The walls were papered with drawings of lopsided flowers and enthusiastic diagrams of water cycle manufactured rain. One chart said "Star performer" and Mohan had a lot of paper stars shining bright next to him.

I am not good at writing about happy things. I try but I end up sounding plastic. My teacher says my best work is about regret and she hopes that doesn't reflect on my real life. Don't we all import things from our own little worlds to make our stories work?

She may have sensed this, because when she passed by my desk, she whispered, "write about the last time you felt really at peace."

The last time I felt really at peace was a couple of weeks ago. I was at your place, sitting on the floor. We were eating Chinese food. You were on the bed, a little beyond my reach, and you put on something to watch on your laptop. The laptop screen was at an uncomfortable angle and all the characters seemed bathed in odd shades of green and red.I didn't say anything because I was exhausted from a long day and full from all the food. The voices of the characters, crisp repartee by who I am sure are excellent writers, filled the space interspersed with your laughter and the clatter of steel cutlery. At one point when I started to doze off, you patted my arm. I looked up and thought you wanted me to pass something. You didn't want anything passed. It was just a stray pat that meant nothing in particular. Pats do that, they don't have to be loaded with hidden clues to some secret emotion.
At that point, I felt warm and comfortable. And happy, yes. It was nothing. It was a non-event, non-special, non-noteworthy time. A regular sleepover with food from our regular place.

I turned in this paper and left the class earlier than everyone else.

We are far apart. Atleast in my mind, we are.

 If we were kids, I'd picture us standing on terraces miles away from each other, looking up at the sky, and blowing soap bubbles. It is a little hard to imagine you blowing soap bubbles, but it seemed more interesting than saying standing and staring at the sky.

We used write to each other, high pitched bursts of conversation but that has become watered down a little. The animated descriptions have given way to quiet, matter of fact sentences. The hellos no longer have a hint of laughter. We are growing up. And it isn't a bad thing, and it's definitely something that has been written about to the death, but it's true. Sometimes it's upsetting. Sometimes it's not.

If we were kids, we wouldn't read the same books, I'd colour my people in blue and you'd not colour at all. Or maybe you would, but there wouldn't be any way for me to find out.

"I am alone."

"Everyone feels they're alone at some point. And maybe they are. Is that so bad?"

He wipes his sweaty hands on a paper napkin bearing the logo of a Chinese restaurant. I imagine him eating there with someone, maybe even a first date. I imagine his eyes filling up with laughter while some girl with long hair tells him stories over kung pao chicken and cold noodles. 

"Which restaurant is that napkin from?"

"China hut. You've been?"

"No."

I am sitting in his living room, watching him watch TV. It's late Friday morning and the rains have bathed the city clean. But I don't like going out around noon because schools let out and the roads are filled with children and mothers and blue school buses that rush around the city depositing one knock kneed kid after another to his or her home. 

"I think I am not made to be by myself. I think I need to be around people, even if we are just sitting there silently." 

"You are more anxious about the thought than the actual situation. You've lived alone plenty of times and you always tell me how much you enjoy coming home to quiet rooms and roaming around in just your socks."

"Living alone is not the same as being alone."

"In that case, you're really not alone."

We're silent for a bit and then he stands up. He walks over to the other side of the room and starts going through a pile of clothes.

"I should leave, I forgot you have plans." 

"You're welcome to come with. As long as you like sci-fi movies."

"No, no you carry on. Have fun."

He turns and looks at me and I suddenly feel like I'm a bug under a microscope. Where he will dissect and analyze parts of me. Dry hair, funny nose, average chin. Regular eyes with a hint of fear. Subject seems nervous.

"What?" I touch my mouth as though checking for food between my teeth.

"Nothing."

"Why are winding yourself up, this much? Did something happen?"

"No. I told you. I just feel alone."

"How can you feel alone, when I am right here?"

"You aren't right here, you are on your way out."

"Okay. You're being a little dramatic. We spent the entire morning here. In this room. You said you wanted to talk, we talked, we ate muffins and we watched TV. Most people call this a pleasant time with friends."

"Okay. I am sorry I'm being dramatic."

He sighs. Audibly. Like he is looking for a non verbal way to tell me how this is trying.

"Please just go home, and take a nap. In the evening when you wake up, go for a walk or a cup of coffee or to a book store. You'll be fine. To be honest you're fine right now, you just choose to think not."

He leaves me standing in the middle of his room, and I knows he is right. Feeling alone and lonely and similar emotions are luxuries afforded to those of us with time and spare feelings to be allocated to non essential areas like these. 

When I get home, I fall into a long long spell of sleep and when I wake up, it is dark outside and dark inside the room. I hear voices in the distance but their conversations are gibberish. I walk through each room wearing long striped socks but the house is absolutely quiet. The voices in the distance had dissolved into silence. 

I feel like the wind is trapped inside me - she said. She was standing in the middle of my room, wearing an oversized work shirt and socks.

By the time I could focus on what she was saying, dragging my thoughts away from the computer, she was walking towards me. She looked like a pretty scarecrow, her hair stood on her head, like someone intended to hack it all off but got bored mid way through the activity.

Can you hear it? - she asked, and moved her torso to my ear. I put my arm around her waist, it was like holding a child. I pressed my ear against her warm skin, through the thin shirt. She smelled of the big blue bottle of lotion on the table.

"I can't hear anything." I said and smiled.

You aren't trying hard enough. - She said, her voice fraying at the edges.

Then she sat on my bed and looked at me, her face revealing no emotion.

"Want something to eat?" I asked and started to walk out of the room. A time had come where I couldn't stay around her for too long. I think the word that would fit here is unsettling.

I know she mumbled her answer, but her No followed me to the kitchen and watched me make a sandwich.
I wasted time in the kitchen, eating my sandwich and washing plates that were already cleaner than they needed to be.
After an hour or so, I returned to my room. She was standing in front of the mirror, knotting a scarf around her neck. She had on a sweater that used to fit her like they had her in mind when they made it. Now, it hung on her, like loose skin that's going to die.

I am going - she said and I asked her where because I was alarmed. This was how most of our fights in the past had started, where she would threaten to leave in the middle of the night and I would be caught between hoping she left so I could sleep in peace and begging her to wait because she'd get mugged or killed alone at a time like that.

But the fights were all gone. We were left with some kind of an empty sound, which was the sound you hear inside empty cupboards after all its contents have been packed away, and you poke your head inside it to check if anything is left behind.

I just have to not be here - she said, and picked up her bag. "Did I do something to tick you off?" I asked.

No.

"Okay. Is there anything I can do to make you stay?" I asked.

Then she turned and looked straight at me, her chin quivering. I walked towards her, ready to put my around her as she readied to cry.

But then she opened her mouth and it stayed open, a small little O, but no words came out. No dry tears even. She just rattled, like something invisible was shaking her.

I tried to pull her close, but I couldn't touch her without getting jolted. At that point it was more unreal than scary, which is strange because at this point I can't think of anything scarier than watching your girlfriend tremble like a leaf in the rain.

By the time the ambulance arrived, she was lying motionless on the ground, so stiff that I couldn't carry her even though she was as tiny as a bee.

When she opened her eyes, she called me a liar. She looked pale under the hospital lights but there was something fierce lurking behind her eyes. She then asked me to leave. When I told her I'd come back when she was less upset, she said "you heard the wind, but you wanted me to die."

The Christmas that followed, a little more than six months since the hospital room accusation, I got a card from her, clearly drawn with an unsteady hand. She had made snow men and children; all of them wore identical blue mufflers. The snow men looked like their hats were about to fly away. For someone whose drawing was that childlike, the depiction of a strong gale was spot on.

She's lying face down on the bed. I can almost see tremors running up and down her back. Her skin looks washed out. Someone forgot to mix the right colours before painting her. She doesn't know I am here.

I walk over and stand next to her. "I can start if you're ready." I say. She turns her face to me and I see bags under her eyes. They are dark blue, nothing like anything I have seen before. But her eyes are dry and steady, they look at me and through me with the kind of determination that comes with having been down too long.

"Do we speak first? How does this work?" She asks.

"It's really up to you."

"What would you do if you were in my place?"

"I really can't say. It's different for everyone."

"Yes. Which is why I asked about you."

"I wouldn't be able to talk to someone who I have met for all of two minutes" I say and turn to put on latex gloves that smell strange.

She rolls over and lies on her back. She's thin, but has a bloated stomach. It looks diseased, a festering tumor or something as morbid. She looks at me looking at her.

"I have been on medicines for it." She says and runs her fingers over the bump. There's something peculiar about the way she touches it. It isn't how a woman touches her pregnant stomach. It isn't fear or concern. The closest you could come to making a comparison is if you saw a half naked touching a snail in his backyard; repulsed but curious.

"You've mentioned that to our doctor, right?"
 She nods.

"Should I start?" I ask and take a deep breath.

"I guess I won't speak then." She says and rolls onto her front.

When I touch her, there is a small cry. Like a bird. "It hurts." "It's meant to."

Then there is silence. She is asleep for a couple of hours. When she wakes up, I am sitting by the side, reading the newspaper. The gloves are discarded in a bin nearby.

"I feel different." She says and sits up.

"Good, it's working then."

"My friend said that after she was done, meaning done with the whole course, she felt a lot lighter. Like something was lifted off her chest. Will I feel the same way?"

"You may or may not. It's all really how you interpret it. You came to us because you were guilty of something. You strongly felt you deserved punishment. We just do the enabling. When it's done, you might feel better. But you might not."

" You mean I may feel worse?" She sounds mildly alarmed.

"Not worse necessarily, but not better. Some of the people who come here end up feeling really disgruntled. They feel that penance in general doesn't help anything. Didn't your friend tell you this? I was informed that you didn't need any briefing."

"What do you mean penance in general?"

"Say you are a ten year old. And you forgot to water the plants while your parents were on vacation. And the plants died. And to teach you a lesson, your parents burnt all your books. You obviously will remember to water plants the next time because of the scarring punishment, but you develop a feeling of hatred towards your parents because while the punishment fit the crime, it was misguided and the books you loved so much are now gone."

"So, it wasn't my reading that caused my carelessness towards the plants."

"Yes. Hence the anger."

"I might end up feeling like that at the end of this."

"You can stop now. We're only halfway through."

"No. I'll go with it. Some punishment is better than no punishment."

Then she falls asleep again.

I leave the room and lock it behind me. When she wakes up, she'll be alone. By the time, it kicks in, I'll be home watching TV, oblivious to the thought of retching sounds inside the room with white walls. The memory of this woman and her innards coiling and re coiling will be put away as I fall asleep under my pale blue sheets.

My grandfather once told me a story about his friend. His friend worked as a paramedic during the war. He told my grandfather that strength isn't holding a patient's hand as he dies. It isn't saying something comforting to the bereaved while you are in shock yourself. It is when you can order spaghetti at a roadside restaurant and eat the bean sauce without picturing brains that spilled out of the soldier's head earlier that day. And if in that case strength means indifference, then so be it.

At the edge of a field, we are sitting cross legged in the grass. Our backs are hunched and our faces are caked with a day's worth of grime. We are too tired to sleep. We are too wiped out to talk. We have just enough in us to sit by each other under the sky and look at it. We let our thoughts take over and soon enough, eyes wide open, we lie on our backs.

In the morning, we wash our faces with water that smells of metal. Our smiles are sparkling clean. We leave like thieves, quick and light footed. After a bit, our pace drops and we trudge along. Our footprints in the soil are fleeting, they look real for a bit and disappear under a gust of wind. 

By noon, we are barely recognizable. We are two little dots against the bare expanse of a rural town. We have no place to be and no place to stay. Observed from a distance, we have covered some distance but we haven't reached anywhere at all. 

By night, we are gone. We were never there. And that can't be argued because nobody saw us. We were our only alibis and we aren't there to confirm it. 

The moon is beautiful tonight.

It's wrapped up in its enigma, a halo and a yellow-and-white overcoat. When I walk home I look up at it and it holds my attention. It lends itself easily to poetry. Or to something that is special. A thought, a feeling, a memory of a time when you fell asleep in the moonlight, your fingers laced through another set of fingers. 

I wait and look at it for a few minutes. The houses are all quiet. The people are pursuing their night-time activities in silence. 

There's just me and it's an interesting moment, of being alone and insignificant yet one with a sudden surge of hope about everything. 

The long writing hiatus has left me feeling exactly how I felt before it started, so it's safe to say that it wasn't particularly worthwhile, although I would have loved to pretend that it had some profound outcome.

There are books to be read and exams to be given. There are stories to be told, and documented, not because they are special but because they could be a few years from now. There are 5 km jogs to be completed, despite twisted ankles and seemingly major excuses about everything that helps silence my conscience about sleeping through workouts. There is an ambitious year ahead to be taken on with enthusiasm and determination, so as to enable me to be in a position to stand at the end of the road with satisfaction and not guilt.

There is more writing to be done. Everyday. It's important to write, mostly for oneself. I have to sleep knowing I wrote. Some days the writing is private. Some days it's less private. It's hard to believe this when you see people around you biting and snatching things, but the competition is with oneself.

Dreams of the inane variety.

Eventually I stop at a shop on a quiet road.
It isn't anything special, but it's a pretty afternoon and I stop to buy myself an umbrella. They don't have umbrellas they tell me, and give me funny looks. It's clear that it's a grocery store. The man at the counter peers at me, with large pitiful eyes. He asks me if I'd like something to eat.

They think I am homeless, I think and look at myself. My clothes are frayed at the edges. My feet are small and shapeless in the over-sized slippers that I am wearing. "I am not poor, I don't know what's wrong with my clothes!" I say. They point at the door. "Have some bread if you like, but we don't have anything else for you at the moment." I start to walk away and as I do, the man glowers at me and shuts his shop. The clicking of the lock has something final about it, like the end of something that had the potential of being significant.

I walk towards the end of the road, but the end doesn't come for a while. I give up after some time and walk back. There is no shop. It's just a different road now.

I found a paper napkin at the bottom of my book shelf. The writing, in black, quivered over the damasked paper. It threatened to fade, to vanish completely one day. I peered at it, until the words stopped dancing and it said "Cafe Churchill. November 21, 2009." and it had our signatures underneath. 

It was like chancing upon a Polaroid, a mental one in this case. Maybe it's the one where we are all trying to squeeze into the frame, our heads sticking together, our smiles connecting to make one big smile. Maybe it's the one where we're making silly faces, but it won't be, because you don't make silly faces. 

I thought about the day and the years that followed. I thought about letters and silly scraps of messages, movie ticket stubs and bills from dinners that we would never had been able to pay back in college. Birthdays and beer towers and swollen eyes and dramatic stories. 

It's very hard for me to write about happy things. Maybe if one of you had left the city never to return or perhaps broken my heart in a terribly cruel fashion, this piece would have had more artistic merit than it does right now. But we're here and perhaps in the future I'll write something more poignant, but for now I will revel in the comfort of having known you for as long as I do and for everything that it was thus far.

The room smells of chicken soup. My hands smell of soap. The darkness beyond the curtains deters exactly no one. We are all here; tubes, medicines and all. You wanted soup and mangoes and the doctors said no. But I got them anyway. I am a rebel. For all the right reasons.

The room smells of something unpleasant and your face looks vapid. You reach out and hold my hand. "Give me a smoke." You say and I say no but you beg me and I turn away and cry while looking at the sky from the window. Because my rebel streak has ended. Because I want you to live but I also want you to die happy and I can't have both and I can't have either.

The room reeks of anxiety. And then it reeks of grief. There's nothing in between.

There are whiffs of you when I pack your things. Your perfume and the yellowing copy of Great Gatsby you were reading.

Then there's nothing. The room is filled with what is left when everything is gone.

On the wrap-around porch, sits a rocking chair, the darkest brown wood and blue upholstery. It moves softly, in the morning breeze. It looks at me, invites me towards it in silence. "we can write your stories together." It says. "Bring a friend this winter, won't you?"

In the winter, we sit on the chair, the sun dancing at our feet; my orange socks a tad too frivolous against your black ones. We're under a shawl, our hands locked together and hidden from the world, like secrets in the dark. The chair creaks under the weight of the things that go unsaid. The tea cups sit by, squat and eager, admirers in our little court.

The rocking chair lulls me to sleep and when I wake up, we're in a little cocoon of our doing, snug fits in a world of disarray.

They are old. Maybe close to 80. The husband asks me, in halting practised English, if I know the check in procedure. Then he tells his wife, in a quieter voice, not to worry.
I look at his ticket and point him towards the first counter. "just hand it to them, and they'll do the rest." He looks stricken and grateful, all at once.
"Will they allow her to come till there?" He asks, pointing to the demure little woman who he must have been married to for much longer than I have existed.
"is she travelling with you?"
The wife says something, clutching the crook of his arm. She looks older and smaller than she was a few minutes ago. I switch to Marathi, after hearing her speak, and both of them are instantly more at ease, the conversation now in a language they've been born into.
"She isn't coming with me." He tells me and I feel a pang on his behalf. "They won't let you in, beyond that gate, unless you have a ticket."
It's a small thing. It's a few metres of being alone. It's something the rest of take for granted. Something that we secretly enjoy, to have a snatch of privacy from the parents who want to come drop you, or the lover you're escaping from. In that moment, I realize that when you're old enough to be standing at an escalator that only goes upwards, you want to hold onto every crumb of companionship you can manage to.

I help him with his check in, and he thanks me several times. He looks at his wife on the other side of the glass. His heartfelt farewell having found its way into an affectionate pat on her arm a couple of minutes before. Theirs isn't the generation of hugs and rushed kisses.

She waves at him, and he raises his hand. Then he turns and walks towards security, thanking me one last time. The wife waits and watches him walk away, until he is one with the crowd; just another husband in a sea of people.

Bombay airport, May 2013.

The darkness in you.

Then you cracked open in front of me and the lights went out.

In the dark room, I watched your blood seep through the cracks, covering everything. Every part of me was painted, every bit of me had partaken of this charade. Of observing you, like no one had before.

It was as thick as the night. It was as heavy as the feeling at the pit of our stomachs when we see the end of something we loved.

Some days, it's like sitting on opposite trees and trying to reach out to each other, without falling off.

The smell of the trees is all consuming, as you'd only imagine. It's wood and leaves and the summer hiding somewhere in between. It's bright and sunny, it's quiet and chaotic. It's beautiful.

Some days, it's sitting on opposite trees and watching the world beneath. Watching each other. No words, just big eyes and round mouths.

The sky seems within reach. The people down below seem too far away to be of consequence. The clouds come and settle near by, and the setting sun makes it appear like we're looking through a mellow lens. Gorgeous but restrained. Like an intriguing man, with more layers than you know. Reserved but kind.

Some days, it's sitting on opposite trees and reading. Being children again. And secretly aspiring to be adults.
The desire to live the life ahead without having to give up the lazy summer afternoon.

We are one person tonight. You and I.

My thoughts snake out of your mouth like lazy cigar smoke. Your ideas find their way into my writing.

Our dreams and fears paint themselves on the same canvas, in alternating shades of black and blue. You hold my hand to guide the brush in strokes of your choice, but you don't need to. My hands moves, possessed and determined.

We are one person tonight. You are a part of me. I lose myself in you. When we shut our eyes, we are on the same little island. When we open our eyes, there's nothing to see, it's all within us. It's who we are.

Such wistful weather. The evening is washed out by the traces of the night. The city sighs. The collective emotions of a few hundred people, a few hundred tired faces, resonate in the traffic. Heads at windows peek out. Heads waiting for lovers, or kids. Heads that can take the city no more. Sputtering heads with colds.

When I look out and see the city reflected in passing cars,I see one face. We're all the same, right now. Stuck between our worlds.

We'll solve a crossword together. 

You do the words that go down, and I'll do the ones across. When our paths meet, we'll look up and smile a little and exchange letters, swap suggestions. Do you think it's suchandsuch? Probably not, it's far too long.

When we're nearing the end, we'll realize we didn't really get all the words. Then you'll fill in the empty spaces with your emphatic Rs and your pretentious Js. The words that form will make no sense. But there will be no more empty spaces. Just words.

We'll look at the crossword and smile. Laugh, even. We put something together. We did. It wasn't perfect, but does it matter?

Inside my mug is a face that looks back at me. It's blurred around the edges - like rain clouds and the sun.

It's early in the morning and the curtains ripple in the soft, quiet breeze. My feet are up on the table and I am drinking tea by myself. Ugly feet, with worn out heels. No one else is awake. I thought I'd enjoy this time alone. But I don't. I realize that I am constantly looking for things that aren't with me in that moment. I want company when I am here and when I go out and meet people, I want to come and sit by myself for a while.

I stand at my window and watch the buildings and the rubble from the construction sites. I look at myself in the tea in the mug every time I take a sip and I see my sleep laced eyes.

It's a holiday and suddenly I feel like going to work. 

Forward.

That's where you have to move.
Cutting through all the things that get you blue, like flyaway emotions and frizz in your hair. Like the time when you don't think you have it in you to get out of bed. You do have it in you, you just need to tell yourself that.

It's all very self-help book like but it's true. Forward is where you have to be. Right now.

When it gets dark and the stars come out, you must be filled with the immense promise that beyond the night is another day. Another day, to make a mess and brave through it. 

I saw a boy in a wheelbarrow. His father pushed him around, along the rail tracks where the people live. He says something and the rather laughs. Then he moves faster and the child is beside himself with glee.

A few metres ahead, there is a pink goat. You can name her if you wish, it won't matter, because the first thing you notice is, is that she's pink. She's talking to a cat, and the cat looks deeply interested, which reflects well for the goat because our feline friends are not known to be generous with their attention.

Soon enough, the boy, the wheelbarrow and the father trundle towards the animals and the animals scamper to the side, both out of fear and for privacy.

I crane my neck to see what might unfold beyond this, but my train moves along and everyone is just silhouettes now, in the sinking Bombay sun.

Excuses.
All kinds.
Sickness, mental sickness, work, work trips, emotional downturns, people trouble, bursitis, writers' block, I-just-don't-feel-like-it.

The blog writing has been infrequent. All the excuses are genuine of course, as are all excuses. I have been reading a lot though. I have been thinking a lot as well. That has kept me plenty busy. I wake up and I find myself weaving stories that are far too realistic to be made into blog pieces. It's complicated, but not really.

My writing has gotten more personal, while it didn't seem possible that it would. I find myself writing snippets on my phone, on the back of notepads and in promising Word Docs. I then wonder if I can blog about it and I get all diffident.

Then I see some of the brilliant writing that some brilliant people I know have done and I get inspired and disheartened at the same time. Then I write and trash it and write some more. All in private. Isn't that how it works?

The light peeps in through the carving on the top. She looks at it often enough but never really opens it.
The carving is intricate but quiet, it doesn't impose, it doesn't demand attention. Like the silence between the music, where they'd kiss against the night sky, his arms around her waist.
He gave her the box at the beginning of the summer last year. Did he know then that it was his last summer, she wondered. Had he decided at that point, that it was all too much for him?
She returned home, drenched from the rains, and found him hanging from the ceiling fan. His head leaned to one side and his mouth curled. Like he'd purse his lips any moment and say "You're beautiful, baby." And then she'd say, "Even like that? All drenched and mucky?" And he'd nod.
He gave her the box for her bangles, because she had so many and she'd have them lying around everywhere. But that never happened. For months after the unfortunate monsoon, the box just sat on one side of the bed. Her side of the bed. She slept on his side, taking in whatever was left of him. The impression on the pillow, a sliver of his perfume. Her heart would beat faster when that happened, and she would cry until her eyes got swollen and her throat closed.
Then one day, on a solo trip to a hill station, she found something in the middle of a forest. The remnants of something dark and terrible but also intriguing and convoluted. And then she brought it back and her heart thundered inside her until she put it in the box and wrapped it in a shawl and hid the box.
The crying stopped. She picked herself up. She ran a comb through her hair and went for jogs. She had a safety net. She had her box, she felt closer to him than she ever had before. She knew, if she wanted to, she could go to him.
Comfort is a strange thing. When you find it, you stop needing it as much. And it comes from strange things. Some write about it, some find pistols in odd places.
In the end, they all sleep better

The forever that people speak of is a curious little thing.
There is a long winding road lined with people and trees and people. Some wear top hats and some hold up their naked feet to check for bruises.
You and I are on this road. We don't have the same forevers. Mine is blue and scratched up from the constant rumination. Like an old cassette, the dear things that people wore out through trying summers.
Yours, you don't tell me about. I ask you if it's black and smooth, like the rocks from sea beds. Like the rock you got me from your trip to Greece and you held it up against the sun to show me how beautiful it was. I said, "it's a dark blue. Nothing is ever completely black." And then we kissed.
I asked you if it was green and neat but you said no and you'd never tell me because it's private and I said ok.
Our forevers are like children left loose at the beach. They run in crooked lines, drunk on the summer and their youth before it slips away. They fall and rise, they hold hands and then fight the second after, walking away in childish huffs. When the sun sets, they fall asleep next to each other, tired but with secret smiles playing on their lips.
You and I. And our forevers. So complicated. So many shades of the unknown. So much challenge, so much excitement.
You and I. I wouldn't expect any lesser.

Then I was jealous.
Not because of anything but because her beauty is overpowering. It's all consuming. I can't breathe anymore. Well I can, but it's almost like I can't.

In the rains, her hair was filled with the stars. In the winters, her hands were beautiful through all the wool. When she turned around and looked into the camera, her eyes darted about like children chasing butterflies.

In the nights by the fire, the charms hanging off her wrist made sounds that destroyed you because you were worried that you'd get hooked on to them.

It's like when they put her together, they knew they had to get it right.

They did. 

Corn and lemon and some other things all in a paper cup. I was six. Maybe seven. We walked through Pune and I wore my white hat. The white hat is now long gone, torn lost dead. It was my grandfather's, the kind that umpires wear. He wasn't an umpire but he could have been.

I didn't want to eat the corn. It was too sour. But when I said that I was silenced with stories of children dying of hunger. So I ate all of it and my nose leaked and my vision got all blurred. I didn't throw the paper cup away, because I assumed there are children in the world without paper cups.

I came home and planted a plant in the cup. My grandfather let me borrow some of the soil from his garden. "Do you want me to help you?" he asked. I said no and watered the small soil filled cup for a few days until the cup turned to mush and the plant looked dismal.

A few leaves shot out a week later. They smelled of lemons but not of corn. It died eventually and I threw the whole mucky package into the dustbin. I was sadder than I thought I'd be. But not as sad as the children in the world, I was told.

A break. From writing.

I found myself in Gujarat and amidst silence and trees. There's always work but this time around I found some time to think and unwind and find food that didn't go down quite well with my system. Like someone wise said, it's all an experience.

It inspired me to write a little bit. But more importantly, it inspired me to recognize how much work I need to put in my writing to get down something that is both pleasing and substantial.

I stumbled back into Bombay weak from the failing fight my stomach put up with the food and slept for ten hours straight only. The weekend is almost over but a hugely optimistic part of me is okay with it - because here's another week long scope to mess up in a completely unpredictable, new manner. 

In the crevices in the wall, live people that have lives worth mentioning because aren't all lives worth a mention?

There's Govind with his drying moustache that he oils every night. And his wife with the belly as brown as a stone. She smells of food, like dal perhaps or maybe oil. It's hard to tell. 

Aaram sells mirrors, because he thinks it's fascinating. He tells stories about his mirrors, like how film stars buy them off him because his mirrors are clear enough to reflect the future.

Sarika is the brightest student you've seen but all she really wants to do is be a part of a film where she can sit in a plane. Strange enough, just a plane ride won't do. It has to be a part of a film.

Lilavati, who calls herself Lala, does things she doesn't talk about for the fear of judgement but she enjoys them all the same. In the nights, when she comes home, she soaks her feet in lukewarm water and massages her neck which is terribly sore. 

In the cracks in the ground live people whose stories are as fascinating as their narrative, peppered with words that you'd fear to ask the meaning of. 

As the curtains are drawn, and the cracks are filled with plaster, these stories become rubble because the voices that tell them are unceremoniously silenced. 

Writing comes from trying evenings and wistful times spend hiding under a sheet. It comes from bitter arguments and stony silences.
The dark patches in the blanket that you weave and the frayed edges that unravel leave you feeling like a bus ran over you, but you atleast you have something to write about.
I don’t do too well with happy writing. I can’t write about victory or triumph or candy pink love. I can’t get myself to put together a story that ends perfectly where people meet, their careers are on track, they’ve been in long, beautiful relationships that culminate into marriage and babies and houses with lawns.
My writing a while ago came from the fact that you are somewhere, in a labyrinth if you shall, looking for answers and similar things all while maintaining a distance with a beanpole. The space where you have pitched a tent, where you’re hiding is so far that from here it’s a speck. We tried calling out to you from atop a tree but our hoarse voices were just reminders of how far you are and how stranded we felt.
We tried waving flags at you but they were red and torn and probably not befitting your tastes anyway.
Writing comes from the lack of hope. It is often the belief that scribbling about things will do something towards dispelling the helpless feeling at the bottom of your churning stomach.

Silence.
In the small spaces where the texts rang out and the parts of my day where I laughed to myself at something silly or sweet or poignant.

Last night I woke up to my phone buzzing, like the bird at the window that you sometimes imagine.  
There was nothing there, just static. I looked at it, turned it over for a bit in my hand and then fell asleep somewhere along the way.

The morning, my phone was still barren. No ideas crammed in winding messages and no late night missed calls that comfort you - because you know it's nice that someone remembered you once everyone had slept.

You must return. That's how it's supposed to be. 

The rain is falling at the foot of my bed and I am lying on my nervous stomach, mentally separating  the raindrops; the happy from from the sad.

Some come and sit on my palm, some scatter away against my pillow, making patterns that stay even many years later. 

There is a place, not far from here, where the benches are wooden and yellow and the sun sets behind the trees quietly, like most other sunsets. The darkness isn't compelling and nothing about the place is intrusive.

The people there look through you and walk by because they are fighting with their own demons, or the lack of them, and don't really need to worry about why your eyes look swollen or why you have lost questionable amounts of weight in the days gone by. The couples there are fighting but their voices make no sound, it's like bubbles under water or fear that lets you scream in silence. 

Then you walk by and you break into a jog and before you know it you're running full pelt, the wind breaking against your face and your nose running diffidently. Then eventually you come to a point from where you started and you realize that you have gone around the scheme of things once and finally you don't feel better per se, but you definitely feel different and that's hardly a bad thing. 

The girl at the bus stop waited for a while before she pulled out her phone and dialled a number. Then she dialled it again. After the third time, she gave up and sat there with her head hung low.

The sun went down a little and when she looked up her face chalky and pale, and she had aged ten years in sixty minutes. She looked at her phone again while her eyes leaked defeat and her hands trembled a little.

By the time she left, she was a changed person. Something somewhere had snapped. Some cog in the machine had given way. Her gait was a little altered, as though she had forgotten how to walk and it was now a pointed effort.

I saw her world rattle a little, while the rest of the real world walked by like it was just another dandy Sunday evening. 

Somewhere down the road, the trees block the path.

At such a place, people wonder for a bit and then walk away. They make quiet conversations that no one know of. They look confused. Their journeys are cut short.

I climbed that tree with you and we watched the world go by. We couldn't get past, but we created a little trip for ourselves.

I sat there, my arm wrapped around your neck and my eyes sparkling. That minute felt like a long while; one that I wanted to re-live over and over again.

The next time people complained of the road block, I turned away and smiled into the sun. 

He came in on a little boat and sat by the shore. He didn't look tired for someone who'd been rowing. Perhaps he hadn't been too far away. I could see the patterns his back muscles made through his thin shirt. I could see the dark brown of his neck, like clay before you make a pot. He sat with his back to me, knees drawn to his chest, staring into the sea.

The waves came and broke a little away from him and then meekly went away. The setting sun cast a glow on him. I looked at his back for a while, but he didn't move and he didn't turn. After a while, a dog came and sat by his side. He petted it in a distant manner, where the affection and the attention was doled out with care so as to not waste any of it.

In the warmth that the world bathes in after the sun has gone, he turned around and looked at me in the eye. I felt a slight flutter and my face twisted itself into what I think was a smile. He nodded and raised his hand a little bit. He knew I was watching all along, a stalker in beach slippers. 

Then he got onto his boat and moved away, slicing the water, until all he became was a speck in the sea.

The roads all end in the same little clearing at the edge of the apparent world.

We are all there. We are all a part of something seemingly big. We are holding hands and looking doe-eyed at the sky.

There's a stiff wind and the abyss not too far away is cloaked in a fog as thick as you wouldn't even imagine. I half expect people to take pictures. But they don't. We aren't those people anymore. We are older, wiser, calmer.

My palms are sweating a little and there's a strange little flutter somewhere deep within me. I shut my eyes tight and open them again. The ground beneath me slips a little. Then a little more. Then it's like we are on roller skates in a surreal little skating rink.

There's darkness. It's over. It really is. 

The little girl with the cropped hair danced in the middle of the street. Her head was wrapped in a red cloth with butterflies. When she stopped, her face was red and feisty  like a child warrior taking over the world.

Her parents, standing close by, looked on with pride, as their daughter jumped around without a care in the world. They clapped along, uninhibited, because their child looked happy and perhaps that all they wanted. The rest of the people threw her a generous glance, maybe a small smile, and went along their lives.

Once she was done, she walked away, holding her parents' hand, saying something in a manic chatter, where her words tumbled out without pauses. The parents understood her perfectly. They asked her questions and made comments. It was clear that all she needed was the right audience. 

The city was beautiful today.

I whizzed by the sea face in a bright red car, that I pretended was my own while it wasn't, and I took in the magic that the sun creates while it's dipping into the ocean.

The colours were delectable; like honey and hay and diluted ink on handmade paper. The tyres made a crunching sounds on the gravel and the wind danced through my hair. The smell of the sea clung to my clothes and hugged my skin until I got home.

And by the time I reached, the breeze tugged at my scarf, like a little pet does when you get home after a long day.

It was comforting.

The milkman died in a car crash. The car crashed into him. "This morning, around 4" his wife told us while yanking out her green bangles because those signify marriage. "What do I do wearing these now?!" She said in Hindi, in a voice that was mostly drama lined with grief. The person next to her tried to pat her back but it seemed more like tap-tap-tap with some non-gentle sobs.

The people flocked to his home like garrulous women at a convenience store. The sounds of their bereaved voices carried all the way across the street. The sorrow and the ensuing depression manifested itself in loud shouts of protest. They screamed at God that He took away their friend, a man who was not only honest but also a generous soul during cricket matches being telecast on TV. 

His kids, X and Y because I don't know their names, sat in one corner looking stricken and largely uncomfortable by the constant show of affection towards them, a concept otherwise alien.

When they carried his body, a fight broke out about who got to carry him to the crematorium. The man with the loudest voice started chanting something but stopped abruptly because someone else wanted to chant too. In the end, it sounded like a terrible medley leaking out of a radio and the poor milkman looked small and insignificant on the stretcher, amidst the little army of people fighting for importance.

We are falling down a chute. You and I.

Or maybe it's a broken swing, but there is nothing below.

Your face is expressionless, like stone and ice all at once. Your hair is like an enthusiastic wave around you. Your hands are all spread out. You don't look at me. Or you do, but you pretend to not.

We aren't here, but we were a while ago. Our voices linger in the wind. It's like listening to yourself on tape. Strange. Muffled. Real, but only just. I can sense the laughter in your voice. I can feel the affection in your tone. My voice sounds exactly the way it does every time it meets yours. Unbearably happy. 

We are on the ground now, a few feet apart. Facing in different directions. Our minds are miles away from each other. 

We aren't dead because we never lived. We aren't here. We were never here. If you shut your eyes tight and open them, all you will see is barren land. 

It could be a shop floor. Or a factory. An industrial wreck.
But it's not. They have cheery seats and monkey faces. And free drinks. And us.

There is so much warmth at my table. My insides feel fuzzy and my cheeks glow. I can tell. They play music to which I mentally dance. I am wearing a straw hat and my heart on a sleeve. I am dancing around a tree, or a fire in the middle of the forest. The air is crackling with the enthusiasm of so many people.

There is affection and food and sweet concoctions that make their way to my head, slowing it to a point where everything feels huge and everything consumes me. There are random hugs and squeals. There is laughter that feels like being hugged in the cold.
There is us. At my table.

The bathrooms have nuts and bolts. Which is which. Which is either. Or none. We hop down the stairs with playful abandon, because we are chuffed and full and the trying week is now behind us.

We took the curtains down and look at each other with yellowing faces. Hers much older than mine, and clearly wiser too, given that it wasn't painted with the kind of anxiety that seemed to be bursting through my temples.

She looked at me while I folded the pastel green curtains and put them in big shopping bags. Her room now felt larger, brighter and altogether impersonal. The books from her shelves were now in cardboard boxes in my room. The wooden artifacts that dotted her walls were now taken down, put away. The table no longer held grocery lists and phone bills. 

You must no go, I wanted to say. I can't not have you live next door. 

But I didn't say anything. I just stood there, feeling like a child. 

We sat around making half-hearted attempts to empty out her home and life into containers and bags. As the light from outside went down and the room grew darker, the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling made a large ominous circle on her floor. 

I hugged her before I left, but I still couldn't quite find my words. 

I know. She said. And you know that I know. 

I came out and saw him. He was standing at the door, with his back to me.

You aren't supposed to be here. I felt my voice tear.

I am not, he replied.

They carried him away when I was 10. On a long, white sheet. They didn't have time for a stretcher. I called out to him then, but he didn't reply. I called out, again and again till all I heard were the remains of my sound flitting about.

Don't come in. I shouted at him. Don't come in now. It's too late. I have given up on you. You can't just come along and change all of that. 

His white shirt is dirty. 

He never came back. All that I saw was a bag of his clothes. A plastic bag, as if we went shopping for vegetables and didn't know where to put them. 

He went away. 

I told myself I was relieved. I can't deal with all this, I said.

Then I threw up in the bathroom and fell asleep on the floor. 

I am putting out the lights.

The darkness smells of candle wax. In the borrowed light coming in through the window, I am writing my memories of you. Such that no one will ever see them later. Not even me.

I live under my blanket, I cringe under the weight of all those layers. The cold night air weighs down on me like leftover guilt.

I fall asleep at some point. I wake up to the street lamps dozing off against the pink sky.

They carry you far, in a wooden box, all tied up and pretty. You’re like a present. It’s as cold as Christmas.

They lower you into a cavity within the ground. It is slippery and we all wear scarves. Mine is blue. They took yours away. It was orange. I shut my eyes tight.

There’s a harsh wind and the dry crackling of leaves sounds like a cruel laugh. I am irrationally angry.

Your parents look like wizened versions of themselves; like figurines made from porcelain with cracks running through them. It’s a sea of colours in the middle of nowhere.

Your wooden box is now rapidly buried under lumps of semi-frozen soil. I watch, unblinking, until I can see it no more.

It’s real. It’s happened. It’s over. I can’t find my voice. So I turn around and walk away, leaving a pair of uncertain footprints in the snow.

The trees are glowing with the afternoon light. The rustling tales get amplified as we come and stand under them.

We try and hold hands because there isn’t much else to do. You keep playing with your hair. It spills on to your shoulders in a riot. I am tempted to reach out and touch it. I don’t.

You have something to tell me. Under the cackling tree, you say you want your things back. Your clothes, that smell of flowers. Your books, some of which are dog eared from quoting and re-quoting passages in the night. Your slippers, pale and blue and smooth from use. I don’t have the courage to ask Why, but I notice that you have pulled away your hands and stuffed them into the pockets of your sweatshirt.

I nod. A brief, pointed nod. You look at me and the corners of your eyes, where my laughter lived for a bit, start to fill up. “It’s really hard. You know that right?” You ask me. You want me to say that I understand. I look at my feet.

We walk back, an awkward bubble walks between us. When it’s time to take different routes, I say See You Soon and you say Take Care, but neither of us mean it.

I ran around chasing sunlight for a while yesterday. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for, but I think it had something to do with wanting to keep the day for a while.

My feet were the colour of soot; my hands red with the surge of blood and fervour.

I saw birds circling above me, in perfect shapes, making shadows of moving rings on the ground.

The shadows got longer and distorted and I knew I had to stop running at some point.

The evening came by, despite my best efforts to contain all the sunlight in my arms. The day did end.

In the grey evening light, I realized that disappointment usually soaks through the layers and finds you, even though you deny any deeper meaning.

It's not cold enough to wear a sweater but it's definitely cold enough to be hugged tightly.

We don't dance, but if we did now would be the perfect time.

The cane chairs are comfortable. The lights are yellow - my favourite kind. The liquids keep flowing and the food appears and disappears from the table in a flash. I am in an ideal place, a part of the conversation but not in a way great enough to be required to constantly contribute. 

People ask me about you, you know that already. They ask me about where you are and then they smile, drawing on some memory of you with them. A dinner, a meeting, something you said. There is a lot of warmth in this conversation. 

The stories that follow are stories that warrant posts in themselves. 

Far away and all that. Things I am not allowed to say. You know it all. 

I fell asleep in a sea of comfortable blankets, glowing from the night that had gone by. When I woke up, I woke up happy. 

The small things always get me.

You won’t be standing in your balcony anymore. I won’t wave at you from across the road while I wait to cross and you catch my eye. In the wee hours of the morning, I won’t hear your rubber slippers clapping against the concrete downstairs. In the night, there will be no sounds from your house next door – no opening and shutting of cupboards, or thuds on the floor from a book falling.

The newspaper carried your picture today. You were smiling and that’s how everyone remembers you. They said you will be buried today at 4. It sounds alien. It makes me lean out of my window and look towards yours to make sure that this isn’t a mistake. It isn’t. The curtains are drawn.

Everyone around you hoped that there’d be an end to your suffering. They prayed for your pain to cease. And it did. There’s only relief here on.

I am told that there are stories everywhere. I am looking for them, and sometimes I almost see one and then it darts away.

Bits and pieces of potential stories are stashed away somewhere at the back of my mind, like incomplete jigsaw puzzles. The funny thing is the more you try and fill the gaps, the more you realize that the piece that you’re trying to fit isn’t the right one.

I am trying desperately to paint my tales in different shades. I am attempting to not have them covered in the emotions that lurk in all my posts because in that case, sooner or later your stories start to mirror each other. Then it’s like being in one large story – where the same people and same situations appear under different names and places.

I am told that everyone has a story to tell. I agree. It’s just that there has to be a narrative worthy of the plot. That’s the tough part.

The street lights looked brighter and more exciting, for a reason that I couldn't point out, from the 22nd floor. They looked like fireflies.

When you kept your eyes halfway open (or halfway shut if that's what you you prefer) they looked like jagged lines below. Thrilling but also slightly dangerous.

The air was crisp and our cheeks felt raw. There was a vague floral smell, like lilies and drugstore room freshener. We took pictures with the skyline behind us. The pictures were pretend candid- where you pretend to be deep in conversation or you have a faraway thoughtful look on purpose.

By this point, the concert across the street had taken to a display of fireworks. In the noisy evening, a bunch of electric pinks and greens shot into the sky and disappeared, like sparks of brilliance on dull afternoons.

What am I supposed to do with all these thoughts?

They are all over. Some of them are unpleasant to say the least. The others tend towards being questionable and well, just plain unrequired.

I am sure for a change that they have nothing to do with Monday morning blues in anticipation. They also have nothing to do with hunger or exhaustion or lack of sleep.

One could be hopeful that they'll pass by morning, after I have disconnected from them for a few hours. The thing is I am scared that they won't.

They aren't the transient variety and the fact that I can't really do too much about it aggravates both me and them.

The terrace has a clothes line that can’t be seen in the dark. All of us walked through it and winced a little.

Somewhere far in the distance, we see smoke from a refinery or a factory or some such. We stand at the edge and watch it, our hands stuffed in our pockets, hoods covering our ears. It is cold; a lot colder than we are prepared for, but not so much that we can’t stand outside. The night is pretty much starless and what we see in the sky is what we wish to see, patterns from our mind.

He tells us a story from his childhood –pointing out places and locations in adjoining houses to make it real. It works to some extent because when he takes me by my wrist to show me where exactly he saw the disappearing figure in white, I suddenly don’t want to see it.

We listen to music from a phone; favourite songs and songs that mean something within. This always happens. The buzzed feeling always lends itself to feeling more vulnerable than you’d like to feel. We hum along, then sing with no inhibitions until our throats feel ripped.

We stumble down to fall asleep, the dark sky watching our backs, glad and disappointed at the same time.

Cold Saturday mornings aren't all that commonplace in Bombay.

I had to fish out my sweatshirt from my unpacked Calcutta luggage and wear it while drinking tea. The sweatshirt had a vague travel smell; of perfume and dust and moisturizer that we used in copious amounts while we were in Calcutta.

When I left the house, I felt my lips turn dry and my nose sniffle. This is the closest we will come to knowing what winter is. I kept myself wrapped in a scarf until I got to work. For the first time, the it was warmer inside the building than outside.

The one week hiatus

It was a break, from both the writing and the city.

A whirlwind Calcutta visit; the city that potters around in a lackadaisical manner.

Walking around aimlessly on a Tuesday morning, stopping at every curious looking shop, being unnaturally gleeful that everyone else you know back in Bombay is at work.

A marriage with the usual emotions that it stirs up - happiness, a wistful tug somewhere deep within and an overwhelming wave of "someone my age is now married"

A campfire on a terrace, that was only partially successful, but thoroughly enjoyable.

Driving around the city, trying to make sense of bengali billboards and drinking milky chai from clay pots.

Extreme generosity, hospitality and camaraderie.

It was a green lamp-post in the middle of the street. 

The birds sat under it in a zen manner. A dog sniffed at its base, wagging its tale perhaps to the dying smell of food. The beggars showed off their earnings to each other, a cheap cigarette cradled in their chapped lips.

All their silhouettes danced as the night grew darker and the lights came on. It looked like a puppet show, except the puppets were dark outlines of real people with feelings and lives. 

There was nothing noteworthy about the lamp-post or the people it sheltered, even if for a short period of time. But still it caught my attention and held it for a while, until I passed it by and it became just another thing on the street. 

This is the quietest that the floor at work gets.
There is a conspicuous hum of the air conditioning and faraway sounds of rustling papers and someone folding a plastic bag. There’s the occasional cough and sputter and muffled sound of someone on the phone.
It’s eerie yes, but also very calming. You have the printer to yourself. Granted that it may not necessarily work, but I’d rather deal with an angry printer than ten people jostling to use it. The sound of typing echoes a little and well I have always thought that it is a delightful sound, like stories being created or a tapestry being put together with wooden spindles. Very often, I shut my eyes and type, letting the sound fill me up to the brim.
There is no one else on the floor now. The people in the distance have left. When I crane my neck, I see rows and rows of empty desks, where their computers are still warm from being used all day.
The pantry feels squeaky clean, the smell of coffee replaced by the smell of medicinal flowers from the room freshener.
When I leave, the raw sound of my feet against the floor is magnified. It feels like a lot of people are clapping around me, cheering me on at the end of a long day.

I try to be my own person.

But my person is everyone I meet and everything I see. It is a chaotic medley of all the things I hear, the foods I taste, the words that roll off my tongue with practised ease.

My person is calm on some days and frantic on others. It carefully weighs things sometimes, and other times it is an impulsive, headstrong bunch of emotions.

My thoughts are clouded by the thoughts of others. My opinions try and stand their ground but they sit back and take in whatever opinions are flung its way.

I am not independent of everything around me.

I try and be my own person most of the time, but if you look closely you’ll see several shades soaking through. Like painting the sea with multiple shades just to make it appear the way you’d like it to.

She has big eyes, like saucers. It sounds cartoon-like but it’s true. Her feet are stitched together with red felt and the shoes she wears are lumpy.

Her hands are stiff, rigor mortis setting in, and her face is pale spare the two awkward red circles on her cheeks. Her nose is a little red thing. They call her Cherry Nose for a reason.

Her hair is stringy, golden wool that has dirtied with age. In some circles they call it dish water blonde.

Some days she lies still, a corpse preserved in ice. Some days she comes alive and trots around the house, living hypothetical situations created by others.

It’s hard to tell which one is the real her, they both seem believable, even if it might be absurd.

There are few things I can say right now.

Except that the weather has caught me off guard; it's pretty pleasant for a Bombay afternoon.
And that my bed is a sea of disconnected things, like phones and bedsheets and demure books hiding behind pillows.

The Sunday is what it usually is - lazy but restless, comfortable but painfully lethargic.
Nothing I can do will change that.

There are few things to say.
The afternoon is slipping from under me and I know that in a second it'll be dark outside. 

We'll have breakfast in bed.

On a wooden tray with a ribbed bottom, there will be a blue plate and a big ceramic mug. The eggs will be scrambled and delicious, dry enough to stand their ground but with the sunshine leaking from their edges.

The coffee will be strong and hot, with the stream fogging up your spectacles. Hands will be wrapped around the big mug because it's just the right thing to do. The aftertaste will linger, like that of a stolen kiss in the rain.

The toast, in an open cane basket lined with napkins, will smell of the Sunday mornings of my childhood. The buttery residue on fingertips will stay a lot longer than health magazines deem fit.

After breakfast is done, we'll solve crosswords from the newspaper. Then, we'll go back to sleep.

There’s always that new year resolution that make people make –to be a better person.

You run more. You eat less pizza. You study harder. You don’t slack off at work. You don’t bite your nails. You water the plants. You don’t shout at your folks. You get the drift…

A better person doesn’t really mean one thing. It means that you want to change something but you’re scared to admit to yourself what exactly that is because it makes you feel vulnerable. You then make a broad sweep and do many small things, trying to convince yourself that all of that is contributing towards a change.

And then again, maybe you didn’t fix exactly the one thing you should have but atleast you’re thinner and fitter and your nails don’t look like a bleeding mess.

Fixing things isn’t easy. Attempting to do it is commendable, but it takes more effort than others can imagine. I want to change something about myself too, and it’s harder when it has failed you before.

The insecurities wrap themselves around me in the pseudo winters. It makes me feel colder and full of guilt for feeling bad. It’s strange, yes.

More often than not, the insides of my head are writhing in anxiety over situations that I both create and build up in detail, thanks to an over-active imagination. My plots involve grief and deceit and all kinds of drama. It would be amusing if I didn’t end up worrying about them translating into reality.

Insecurities are like the friends you have because you can’t really get rid of them. You’d rather they didn’t hang out with you, but they do. You don’t have the strength to cut them out of your lives and they know that and fester and grow, feeding off your weakness.

I hope you make time to read and more time to revel in the magic of the experience.

I hope you can get away for a day or two to a place far away in the rains. 

I hope your life is more than train rides and work stress and weight worries. I hope it is larger than all that and full of things that make memories.

I hope you get more than you deserve but less than what might make you complacent. 

I hope you write, because to create something by yourself is the best kind of satisfaction.

I hope you spend time with someone who wants to spend time with you. 

I hope you eat food that makes you grateful about being alive.

I hope your socks remain colourful.

I hope 2013 surprises you. But only in the best possible way.