little girls in pretty boxes

their skirts in the air

their hearts on the floor .

90 earrings

white blouse

pretty her mouth

'care for some love, sir?'

asked the hookah woman

her fingers drawing
his loyalty off his

neck . .

humid day i leave
my hair open
to hide you

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones . .

i, for some vague reason like this.

Serendipity .

Old .

I hope I never grow old .

I hope I never have to stare blankly at floor thinking of my better, younger, healthier years.
I hope I will never have to depend on children who will be scornful of my worries, who will even deny my existence at times.
I hope I dont have survive on an endless supply of medicines and worry about my expenses.
I hope I never have to suffer aches and pains in the most embarrassing places and then have to tell the world about it.
I hope I dont turn blind and deaf as the days crawl by and I hope I dont have to confine myself to a single room because i cant move about otherwise.
I hope I will never ask people to hold my hand when I walk because if I dont, I'd fall and I hope I dont have to sit in a corner n cry silent tears because that's all I can do now.
I hope I will never have to sit by and wait for death to come and get me.
I hope I dont have to live alone, thinking of all those places I have been to and then look around and realize, that the four walls of this room, is my world now.
I hope I die when I can still walk about on my own. I hope I die when I can still see, hear and think sanely.

I hope I never grow old.

And I can see the world hanging upside down
Tied to the Earth in the Sky with
A brown strand of my hair
When this city rains . .

:)

3 A.M.

You have been up
half the night already
listening to a man
fighting demons that
he created and fed olives
to, in his own mind.

It is a drunk night
that smells of cheap vodka
and broken dreams. blue
skies with stars that you look
up to, from your gutters.
stars, unreachable.

A night of Cohen, Tagore
Haikus, O' Hara and
tunes unsung, songs
unwritten. captured in
a bottled tucked away
deep in your mind.

A little man weeping
tears of glass from
his eyes that sting of ash,
falling on your hands
that hold his. unwanted,
your heat is, but still.

Your hands start to
scathe and scald
and words form out
of your burnt skin
making their way of
the window.

Out of the window
towards the moon
in dancing shadows
shadows of you
and him, loving.

You drain yourself
of all the words
that were remaining
to be spoken
by that filthy mouth
of yours.

Words he didn't like
words he never liked
words that mocked you
and words that tore
you from your being.

What does it matter.
you never were of much
importance, to begin
with. an unimportant,
lifeless, dreamless,
little woman.

I have never been a great lover of Nirvana.. hell ! I've hardly heard Nirvana or Kurt Cobain himself. And yet, this note .. speaks to me, in a way i can hardly begin to explain. Perhaps it is the fact that he could not appreciate all that life gave him, or the fact that he loved a few people very dearly but could hardly tell them so.. I really do not know.
But Cobain speaks to me.. like he were sitting right beside me and reading this letter to me.

"It is better to burn out, than fade away.."

Epitaph..ish

She was a girl. An ordinary girl. There is nothing much that one can say about her and there isnt much that one can write about her. She was not exceptional at anything particularly and she was nothing extraordinary. She was just another mortal and she never learned to appreciate the gift of life. Although she tried, and once, she even thought that she had learnt to appreciate the gift of life, but that was just an illusion .. like the million other illusions her world was made up of.

She was not perfect, far from it actually and she never could really decipher what perfection meant. She was never a good student and there isnt much to speak of her achievements. She didnt have too many friends and she couldnt keep any if she made any. She liked to be with people elder to her and she found the conversation of her fellow people mundane. Her parents disapproved of her and her Ma never had the chance to call up relatives and tell them about how she had scored so well in her exams. Her teachers thought she was stubborn, arrogant and rude and her school mates whispered amongst themselves about what a witch she was.She was not someone who was very strong-willed and she was not ambitious.

She was not always honest and she didnt always have a clear conscience. She did things she was ashamed of and she said things that rued later on. She hated studying and whiled her time away. She ran away from home a few times, and she spoke words so hurtful at times, that they would slash through your skins like swords. She was disrespectful to her Ma and Da and sometimes in a rage, she would tell them that she didnt love them and so could they please disappear.

But she loved her Ma and Da. She loved her friends and she would give her life to a girl named guddu. She loved reading and she loved books. She had always thought that she should have been a character in a book or a pebble on the road, but not human. She loved Eliot, Frost, Auden, and Wilde and she thought that Godfather was the only kind of reality she could ever understand. She loved music. She loved the way music flowed through her veins and she would get high listening to Pink Floyd. The only time she was true and honest was when she was singing. She believed that the only thing that would truly remain hers even when she died was her music. She was passionate and her soul burned with an unknown fire at all times. She loved Ireland, colors, literature, blues, writing, smoking, pencil sketches, art, films, jazz, rain, Cal, wind chimes, snow, Calvin n Hobbes and the dark among many, many other ordinary, uninteresting things. She was a dreamer and she dreamed her life away. She lived in world of imperfection and vagueness and dreams and illusions. She liked to make people happy and she liked to help people. She never learnt to forgive but she never bore a grudge against anyone. She loved to eat and she loved chicken and palak paneer.

She was an agnostic but it wasnt because she didnt believe in God. It was because she could not bring herself to believe in God, no matter how much she tried. She loved kajal and disliked make-up. She was melodramatic and she used to say that what's life without a li'l exaggeration and spice. She liked babies and she liked the way men's cologne smells. She fell in love and she wanted to fall in love again, because she knew that it was one of the best feelings in the world, but it was alright if she didnt- she had fallen in love once and she was surprised at the amount of love she was capable of. And there were million other things for her to love.

She would always smile a happy smile and if she was unhappy, she could not disguise it. In a very strange way, she was honest. She had tried never to lie to herself. She wanted to become a writer and she found solace in writing. She wanted to go to England but at times she thought that it would be betraying her country. Dont ask me why, she was absurd. She wanted to do something in life so as to contribute towards something noble, even if in a very minuscule way. She was always scared that she would not be remembered with fondness when she died, but she always hoped she would be. She was always one to hope a lot. She had always hoped to achieve happiness, to make her parents proud, to be successful in her own small way. She had hoped that she would one day become a writer, sing for a good band, teach children English Literature, live in Ireland and die a painless death.

She wasnt much, but she was all that she could be. Perhaps you wont remember her, but if you are one who at some point of time, had made any difference to her life then think of her with tenderness because at the end of the day, she was not so bad and she loved you. Even if for a very short while, she loved you. And if she didnt love you, then she must have felt something else for you. But she did, for certain, feel something for you. And she always thought of the people that made her feel something because it reminded her that she was human.

The Poetess and the Madman Who Loved Her.

So is it important to judge ?

Is it important to bring down a conscience and destroy a being ?

Are second chances never meant to be given ?

Forsaking everything you had, is it fine to pine and perish in the eternal hells of love ?

Once you could drink the stars holding his hand and walk on the seas.

Once you wrote songs together, creating and destroying worlds with your words together.

Once you saw all your life in that moment when you looked into his eyes.

Once reasons ceased to matter and life felt endless in every second.

Once you held hands and walked by the Ghats of a city that you both loved and named your children.

Once you argued Dali, Wilde, Ray, Tagore and returned to one another's arm as the night slept.

Once you dreamed dreams of a life where just the two of you existed.

Once you fell in love.

But now all that has changed.

and now, "love is so short. Forgetting is so long."

You bear a grudge against him, and he

On his part, doesn't care.

You dare not probe beneath the surface

For you wouldn't want to rekindle a dying flame.

Love is a strange word now.

Perhaps you don't remember what it means. How it feels.

And so,

It is important to judge.

It is important to bring down a conscience and destroy a being.

Is it ?

This thing called Love.

Reasons are few. Unreasonable, mostly.

Expensive even, Oh! Very- Telephone bills.

Arguments of Logic cease to exist,

Becomes rather Roman-ish, you see.

Sense & Sensibility? Not so, I should think.

Scenes of dragons and knights in armor

In the backdrop of a sky,

Roaring and thundering.

Classical. Quite so: this thing called Love.

Smell apples and vodka on his breath.

It's like a match. Strike it against

Another life,

And illuminate that desolate corner.

A house. White one with picketed fence.

In the midst of paddy fields. A horse

Is a must. And a Jack.

10 o' clock. Dim lights and

The sound of feet.. pit-pat pit-pat p.......

Pasta, wooden tales, old fashioned latches.

I soar, and soar high up, beyond the skies

Carrying with me, some

Diamonds and some Rust.

I grope, I can't.. I fall.

It ends. Bittersweet, perhaps,

But love. Love all the same.

(photo courtesy: reetika ghosh)

Adi .

I am not of any consequence, and shall never be.

I am not the hills or the seas,

I am not your happiness or your imagination coming alive.

I am not your madness on the blue canvas, and

I am nothing that you wished for.

I have not known you, and you remain unknown

To my eyes, soul, fingers, skin.

The shades of the gulmohar tree know me alone,

They have not known your breath.

And yet, for you my love

I bring dawn to dusk.

I turn seas into sand

And snow into fire.

For you, my unknown

I covet the dark corners of my heart

Where your thoughts lie.

For you my love, I breathe

Every burning breath.

For you my unknown

I sketch the impossibilities of a dream.

Soul-les.

I was on my way to give you the soul I found

By the river under the shining moonlight.

But it got lost, somehow.

And now I stand before you empty-handed

Praying for you.

Because I have no soul left for you

And you shall remain soulless for as long as you breathe.

Turf View.

"Write a 300-word write-up on Turf View", Da said to me. I was making my traveling plans to Ireland at the time- my traveling plans to Ireland without a clue as to how i was going to get there without any money, and even if I did get, somehow get there, how would I keep my body and soul together once I am there. So when he says to me, "write a 300-word write up on Turf View", I think -- oh ! another almost impossible task -- because I have never really had much to say about Turf. It's not one of my great loves to ponder upon for hours.

Until now.

Until I sat by the window in my room, that looks out onto a playground, where every morning I see boys getting together for a game of cricket or football, beginning with affectionate obscenities and some backslapping, And thought to myself this was a place of a lot many firsts.

A first home, a first love, a first passion, a first blog, a first dreamer, a first musician friend.

6/69 was my first home. Not that I had to take to the streets before that ! but wherever I lived, I lived there for such a short span of time that I didn't really get an opportunity to make it home to me. But then, 6/69 happened -- and oh ! what a wonderful thing to happen. From the balcony that looked out at the shimmering skyline of the greatest city in the world, to the drainage outlet that clogged every two days -- every single aspect of that place was beautiful. The drawing-dining room, the kitchen, the room with the idiot box, which had to be hit upon on the head to make it work, Ma and Da's room, and my room. My room.

It was like a whole new world to me. A world which was mine, only mine. A world where nobody could break into unless I let them. It had pictures, a lot of pictures. And secrets, here and there, that only the walls knew about. And thoughts, and promises, broken and kept, and illusions and dreams, some of which shattered without a sound. And four glorious years of my like. A love, a lot of love. Some indifference, and some dislike as well. Every emotion that I ever felt was a part of that room.

And there was, of course, the improvised ashtray, some letters and gifts not meant to be shown to anyone else, and a few other forbidden things -- but it was all, all a part of what made that place home to me. And this home was a part of Turf View.

During winters, I would walk down to the park, where there were these tyres hanging and one could swing on them. I loved doing that. It was the time of a great many contemplations, introspections, decision-makings, crying, laughing, singing, talking, and looking at faces at window seats in the buses that rolled past. It was also the place of two very mundane activities of making and destroying worlds, and committing the seven sins, inside my mind. And then of course there was the shopping complex, where one could buy almost everything from graph-sheets to hot dogs. And a very bad restaurant called 'Hot-Spot' which was stupidly expensive, but then it was better than nothing. There were walks with walks with Shikhar and Malvika, and spending time with Didi under that tree outside the shopping complex. There was sitting with Guddu on the ledge on the terrace of the 6th Block and talking about the silliest things, like which color of an umbrella is nicer (blue or yellow), to the most intellectual things (which I don't remember !). There was standing under the 12th block and listen to Dhruv playing the hell out of his drums.There was lecturing Abhisek on how to lead his life in a 'righteous' manner ! There was sighing-gazing-sighing-gazing at Dhruv, Malvika, Shikhar, Somesh, Zicco, and the whole lot of them and, wishing that I was a part of them.

And then, there was the terrace of the 19th Block and 18th Block, where I would meet ... someone. In secret. We would be scared of getting caught. All the time. But oh ! it was worth every moment of it. It was the place where for the first time I looked into someone's eyes and I knew that if he was there by my side, I wouldn't need anybody else in the world. It was where I fell in love, over and over again. It was the place where reason paved way for desire, and it was the place where I wanted to make every moment last an eternity.

We eventually shifted to 15/175 because Da got posted out, and saying goodbye to 6/69 was very difficult. But then I realized I didn't have to, because 6/69 was imbibed in me. It's a part of who I am. It's there in my first poem, my first song, my first love, my first heartbreak. It is there in those four roller coaster years of my life. And so is Turf.

It is not one of the places I love or am passionate about. But then you don't need to be in love with something for it to be important to you. Very important at that.

Turf View is like an unwritten poem waiting to be put down on paper by Frost.

Turf is that place which has a little bit of my heart in some desolate corner of it.

photograph courtesy, Romit Sen.

Mundane.

"What can you hear when the shouting is over."

And you think of the dancer.

And when all the screaming and shouting is over

And after you have seen silence

Prancing about on all fours

Sitting here, leaping there,

At 5 a.m.

You head to the loo for a smoke

you stole from your father

"Oh! they shouldn't smell it."

Standing in the back alley,

that stinks of piss and moss and garbage,

You look at the sky turning

Red from black to yellow.

You spend your days doing nothing

And your nights,

Flicking shadows off your fingertips

At the people that pass you by.

You shout behind your back

To your mother who toils away

In the hot, suffocating kitchen,

"I am going down for a stroll."

But not by the beach, no.

A cemented side-walk is all

You have, to stroll on,

(Is it 'on', or is it 'by' .. grammar, oh !)

Where the little plants that grew there

And that one big tree, before the side-wall

was built, have been choked to death.

You wish you could write

With your eyes closed,

In your own darkness,

Your own damp, dilapidated world.

Because when you open you eyes,

You see all those times

That have gone by.

All those opportunities that you missed,

Wagging their tongues at you,

Looking at you with that teasing eye.

You think,

"Oh ! What a loser am I !"

You walk ahead in faked ignorance

Leaving a trail of fragments,of

Your imagination

To follow you behind.

There is an emptiness inside you

An ache in your heart.

But its not more than the one

In your neck and shoulder.

The entire night, the pain

kept you awake

Making you think of other

Painful things, "Why is he

Behaving like this?"

Pain. What a bitch.

You never liked rituals.

You were too lazy to follow them.

And so you started claiming

You are an agnostic.

It has nothing to do with God

It never did.

You wonder

What the point is.

"From dust thou art,

To dust returnest."

And you think, that

The beauty of it

Perhaps lies in doing it

All without a reason.

And as this thought fleets

Through your mind,

You realize that

It has come to a full circle.

"All the world astounds me

And I think I understand."

Here and There.

So suddenly i wanted to wish people hippy nu ear ! but couldnt think of anyone who would like to be wished by me.

then got down to business and started thinking about people i would be sad to leave if i died. or came down with flu.

whichever.

so here's a list. of people. here and there. that i love, with all my heart. and think about at least once a week. or maybe twice. and would even give 10 bucks to if they didnt have money for a bus ride. and would lend my pulse concert dvds. and my kajal. willingly. and let them call me names. and make fun of me. call me when i am sleeping. or stand in front of me when i am crying.

ma: reality check-life saver-ass kicker

dad: oh well.

guddu: my better half. she thinks i am her daughter. she is also going to tutor my children in math and science til class X.

she is also one of the most beautiful people (and i dont only mean that in a soul-full way. i mean it superficialy too. like, when you look at her), i have known.

neel: a storm of emotions.

a man who changed me.

shikhar: a friend. and that really, really means a lot.

malvika: one of the most amazing and most talented people i have ever had the fortune of knowing. very beautiful, i think.a wonderful musician. someday, i wish to be a like her (not much tho, just a little!).

abhisek: he's a bastard. but he's one of my best friends. i would never trust him with a good looking girl, but i would, trust him with my life.

rohit: though i dont talk to him much. and some of the things he says really makes me mad. but he would come all the way from hiland park to la martiniere to give a USB net drive in pouring rain and then text me- by the way, forgot to tell you. you looked very pretty.

mad man, i tell you.

abhro: "But baby, you're the right kind of wrong!"

an obsession. but love, nonetheless.

bushra: i would probably not remain in touch with this girl a few more months down the line. but over the last year or so, i have become very fond of her. and had it not been for her, i would have spent many a day in depression and isolation at school.

chit: one of those very few people who stuck by me. thank you.

suchismita: a certain lady who leaves gaping in wonder every time i see her.

a phenomenal woman.

i wish there was more that i could say. but there isnt.

except for what has already been said. that is, i love you. with all my heart.

A Place Called School

and had i ever thought in my wildest dreams that i would write about my school.

my school. feels strange to talk about that place. and feels even stranger because its the last place on earth i want to be in, for a long, long time. not even a single day went by when i looked forward to going to school. but then, i went. i went to school and i saw faces, met people. i made friends, i lost friends. i was surrounded by a string of people whose thoughts were different from mine at most times. and at times it was really difficult to make them see what i saw.

most of the times, they did not see what i saw.

i fought with people and they fought with me. i argued with them, and they with me. i was accused,abused, labeled, looked down upon, misunderstood,pulled down, torn apart. i cried, i defied, i stood up against, i gave up, i gave in, i broke down.

i did all the things i could to make my school love me and love it in return. and after a point of time, i did all that i could to simply survive there. for every day seemed difficult to take on. and i could just take on one day at a time.

and i kept on building all that bitterness inside me. the bitterness that engulfed me after a while and i wast too blind to see anything else but the end and the thought of reaching it.

leaving school for the last time on a working day, i did not for once cry, unlike most people.

and that made me a little sad. not because they were crying, but because i wasnt. i felt empty. i felt grief. because i thought that even after spending four years in a school, which is a really long time for me, having never spent more than two years at one place, it was a little absurd that is should be walking out of the school with absolutely no sorrow in my heart.

it broke my heart to have not felt any of that sorrow that my other batch-mates were because i had always hoped that to leave school with tears in my eyes.

but i didnt, not exactly my idea of a perfect school leaving scenario.

and yet, here i am, talking about a place that i have not liked quite that much.

why, though ? if i had to ask myself the question, i probably would not like the answer quite that much.

i am talking about this place because somewhere, some part of it, i grew to like.

a part which made me happy. a part , which today, when walking down the aisle at st. paul's cathedral, made me smile in a proud manner. i part which where i saw people who believed me, and believed in me.

and i realize that for every person who disliked me, i had a person who loved me. for every person who looked away from me, i had a person who wanted to spend her lunch break with me. for every bad thing, there was a good one.

i had people who looked up to me and i had people for whom i was inspirational.

i had a madhurima in my life and i had a bushra and a priyadarshini in my life. people without whom i would have had to spend many a day in isolation.

i met people i was in awe of. i met people who made me look at life form a different view. and oh ! what a beautiful view that was.

it was a place where i was considered mean and rude and arrogant. but it was also a place where people i was wonderful, different from the others and a story all in myself. it was a place where i once i was denied participation in an event because someone did not like me quite that much, but it was also a place that gave a chance to compose my first song and play to an audience i n a public arena.

and i realized that the good things in life mean a lot more than the bad ones. that it is important to go on, no matter what.

and for all its worth, i dont think i would be the person i am today had all of that not happened to me. good and bad.

i am not sad that i am leaving school. but i am happy that i am able to leave this place without any hatred or bitterness for it.

because otherwise, what's the point of anything ?

For the sake of it ..

so i have been wanting to write for a while. but then i didnt know what to. because the words didnt come. but tonight i shall. i shall write whether or not it has a meaning. whether or not anybody understands it. whether or not it is mediocre. i dont know what i shall write, nevertheless, i shall.

i think i am going to do miserably in my ISC exams. i keep pretending like im not at all worried and anxious and i couldnt care less , but there it is .. i am scared and i am very scared. much as i think the whole system of imparting education is overrated, i'm in it and something tells me its not going to treat me very well.

I'm unhappy and im binging. My confidence is down in my ankles and i hate looking at mirror. I cant seem to get over things and im hanging on to every bit of my past. the past which is gone and will never come back, no matter how much i yearn for it. i hurt ma and i wish i could keep her happy but i think im too selfish for it. she probably is right : i love her, but the compassion is not there.

i dont want to study, i hate studying. i hate pouring into my books and i probably sound like a 6 year old throwing tantrums but well .. i hate studying. i dont like going to school. i hate people at my school .. barring a few perhaps. i think Ms. Raha is an amazing person, unlike popular belief. I love the passion she has for her subject. And i shall hate anybody who reads this and goes and repeats it to her.

I cant write. Im not a poet. Im not a lover. Im not talented. I cannot sing. I'm mediocre, average, ordinary and everything else that i had always hoped i never would be. My vocabulary is pathetic. I cant put my erratic thoughts into words. Im a dreamer and all i do is, dream. i dream and walk down the streets of Dublin. i dream and a sing with alanis morisette and joan baez. i dream and i hold hands with gerard butler and listen to beatles playing 'Hey Jude' at hard rock cafe. i dream and i write of souls stretching across the sky that fade behind a city block. i dream and i rhyme. i dream and i fly. i dream and read five books at a time. i dream and make music with malvika strumming her guitar sitting on the steps of nandan. i dream and i can capture ecstatic moments with a camera. i dream and my baba n ma are happy and proud of me.

i dream and i am happy.

But i cant capture ecstatic moments on a film .. all i can do is capture them in my mind and store them away at a corner of my mind. i cant sing like an angel and i cant write to take your breath away. i cant make my parents proud and happy. i cant love : im too selfish for that. i cant play a guitar and i cant even hold a paint brush. i cant breath life into words and turn them into a song. i am not great. im not brilliant.

I miss him. There are times when i lapse into daydreams of being with him, being married to him and fighting with him about the color of the drapes for the living room. and choosing latches and other such mundane, nonsensical things. i still smile about things that he had said to me, the times he made me laugh .. the times when the word happiness could not have been more apt. and then there are times when i would give absolutely anything to get him back. sometimes i hate him, and abuse him and say things to him that shock the very daylight out of him. but even then, i want him to understand that i never quite mean them, i look for the slightest pretext to talk about him, to say something about him, to speak to him.

I think Guddu has changed. maybe she has not, but i feel different. i miss her a lot. not that she is far away. but i miss her all the same. i wish she were my sister then i would have had her under my nose all the time. and sometimes im even jealous. and disappointed. and hurt. but i love her. and i love everything about her. and i wish things werent so complicated.

I miss Malavika. i miss her like crazy. and i wish she were back in Cal. but that girl is going places- with leaps and bounds. she is one of the most amazing musicians iv known my entire life. and she is this beautiful .. beautiful person. there have been times when she has helped put things into perspective and she's been there. i only wish that i were a little more like her. instead of the empty goddamed vessel that i am.

I'm grateful to sumi, dona, chit, bushra and pinchu for having been there, when the others who were "apparently" my friends, turned their wide backs on me. i grateful to Ms. Raha for getting my back when i've been ion trouble and i''m grateful to Ms.Qureshi for having taken so much of interest in my well being and cared for me. and i'm realy, realy sorry to have thought negatively about her so many time : she must have had her reasons. and much as i dislike my school, i shall forever be indebted to it for giving me the first and the only opportunity to go up on that stage and sing my own composition.

there might not be any meaning of all this. and this is definitely not the conventional idea of a 'writing' but well .. i have been disappointing people a lot these days and not living upto expectations .. so what difference would another such act make.

and oh ! i also like mushy pretty woman kind of movies.i listen to taylor swift at times .. in secret. justin beiber is the most stupppppiiiiiiidddddddd guy ive even happen to come across ; he insults the very word "musician". if i ever meet Lady Gaga, i shall puke on her. i do not understand why people think Da Vinci's 'monalisa' is so great .. that woman is ugly. i dont like people calling me a tomboy. i like keeping my things disorganized. i love wearing sarees. im not arrogant and sarcastic and rude. at least i dont mean to be, most of the times. i dont know why people have such huge problem with me being fat .. i dont have a problem with them not being fat, do i ?!

And after a very long time, i have been this honest. nakedly honest.