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.