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.