random rambling - thinking out loud

I had some bad news last night. First a mini-personal tragedy - a broken tooth - which seems silly in hindsight. And then at four in the morning a message from my mother, about my father's health. I remembered a early morning conversation with him on a couch behind my house. He was in one of his early morning good moods - chatty and funny. We talked about the existence of God - he said that there can be no God. I asked him why then did he ask random people to pray for things he wanted. And he said, there is "Something"... and we laughed. I love it when he laughs. I love how we get each others jokes. Over the years, we spent a lot times like that - main hued like a glossy bubble; as random and fragile. I cant wait to see him again.

But he is so far away now ...

When something goes wrong, I sometimes look for a reason. I feel like I am being punished - and I think but why - I was so good! I eat clean, I wake up early and run and then I do my work - till I am tired and I pass out. I help people as much as I can. don't drink. I don't kill insects. I barely lie or cheat. Was it that one phone call, or chocolate, or half-lie ... But it doesn't work like that. There children dying everywhere for no fault of their own. There are accidents where someone just died for no good reason. I cant go looking for a reason for things and I cant expect everything - or anything to go my own way. I can only do my bit - because I want to do it, not as insurance, protection tax, bribe, or sentence. And I can try to ignore how I feel and focus on how others feel and what I can do to help. I can just try to be the best person I know how to be.

But sometimes it gets so quiet ...

And yet despite all of this night comes. And the whole world becomes peaceful and still. If you look out of the window, the moon is indecently bright; the orange tree and the jasmine bushes gossip together and the spider spins a large gossamer yarn, as the ants sleep dreamless in a corner, too exhausted to ask pointless questions, and too full of plans for tomorrow to care.

memories

I feel like I have three lives.


Every now and then, in my present life, a memory from the past floats up to the surface of my consciousness - unbidden, and unformed. I don't know how to describe what I mean by "unformed". I spent a lot of time there trying to think of the right word, or metaphor - but nothing just right came to my mind. Perhaps what I meant is that it is not a whole memory - it is a snatch or an essence - like a half remembered smell or a song - that teases me from the edge of my awareness.

The first life is almost wholly buried. I see pictures or hear stories from friends, but they don't seem like my stories. They second life I remember somewhat, but even that is now fading.

Is this partial amnesia? Or am I just growing older. But it feels like  lobotomy of the spheres of my existence - would it, could it, be so sharp if it was just the gradual aging of brain cells? Stroke victims I heard - and I heard it in my second life - can lose one language and retain the other completely. Anyway, these are the ways I usually remember my second life. In stories. And characters and ghosts. They were stories that were told to me. And they woke into my own memory so casually till I am often unsure which one's are my own memories and which ones are someone else's.

Some of the memories are like that - like faded like sepia photographs of an immigrant to a new continent - he hordes them obsessively as the last link to someone he used to be - someone he used to know how to be, and yet he never dare look at them for fear of drowning in the storm of emotions they arouse. They are like a scene abruptly cut from a movie - no beginning no end. A loose page from a book that doesn't fit anywhere on the new bookshelf. Like my mother asking me if I really want to go away for seven years - and matter of factly noting she would not live that long. Or the strange shape of the lock in a small swiss hotel. The madness and immaturity laced into the first poem or letter of admission I dared to write and send out to the world outside - but then my chest feels funny and compressed and I cant breathe so I tuck away the photo in the back of the suitcase and move on again.

Other memories are innocuous. The peculiar taste and feel of Kwalities Strawberry Stick ice-creams - I have never found that texture anywhere again. Or the burst of colors from the first time I printed out a slide film - on my first independent camera.

All the harmless things are the ones I liked, but did not love too much

Aritra Part 3

there is faith and their is disappointment. and there is a vast chasm between. As he sat on the rock, Aritra thought about his constant crisis of faith. What did it say about him, he thought, how frequently he vacillated between the lust for good and the familiarity of evil. He was happy when he was in the sunshine, when he was working hard

Perhaps in a dream, Or in another Universe

perhaps in a dream
or in another universe
we will, once again seamlessly take up
the life we once shared
like a book, picked up at bent page
will will fly back to norway - where I had never been
where our story was so rudely interrupted
nothing was ever quite the same again after that time, was it?
and then, on rambling and aimless road trips
bickering about music and politics that belong to neither
we will pick up the music from the pause
we will watch the moonrise
and count the stars
and fight about an election somewhere
and then I will tell you about the book I am reading
and cry because I got carried away by how rousing it was
and you will be torn between loving me more
and telling me romanticizing the emergency is such a dangerous affair
sooner or later we will dance to our favorite songs
fathers and fear of death
and laughing or crying, as the mood takes us,
we fall asleep

then the sun will rise
and wake me up
and i will wake up,
wash my eyes
say my prayers
and walk away from
dreams of dancing
with the devil in the dark
and go back
to the Temple of Vesta

Scotty, beam us up, fast!

Its been a while since I wrote something publicly

I feel like someone who sits on a bicycle after a long time wobbly and unsure confused about what to do next, and confused about why I am doing this scared of falling and scared of looking foolish and

And yet something about the memory of sailing through a wind feeling the breeze in your hair or being set free from something, and connected to something else

Perhaps that was the greatest lure of the blog-revolution - atleast for me
It was a device that allowed All the Lonely People, or all those discontents who,
for Some reason sought Something, outside of the Ordinary Everyday World, a way to escape into a shared Galaxy far away.
An illusion of a chance of finding friends who are a bit more like us

But we never knew quite what we meant by any of those Words - or atleast I did not

And we never thought that maybe like in the Lord of the Flies
we might find exactly the same things there that we ran away from,
because we carry the seeds within us

fading life

Is it possible to feel alone as urgently as an excruciating stomach ache; as imperative and all consuming

Is it possible to feel alone constantly and insatiably.

Is it possible to feel alone
In myriad shimmering shades

Is it possible to feel alone,
Terribly alone, when one is not

when i was a child it seemed strange that
one day you are so alive, and then suddenly you die
but as i grow older i realise,
you die one day at a time

like a lonely kingdom
time and again the heart falls
conquered by emperors
or eroded by termites
or laid waste by time

Love Is

Love is a sudden pause In life’s voracious ambition for itself Love is an awkward pause Pregnant with mysterious illegitimacies First a comma, then question mark and then maybe a semi-colon Jan 20 2015

Sulking Words

Now that I have the time. And I head is full of things I could write about, I can’t find the words. My heart is bursting with so many things, none of which you can tell a soul. Is that when you feel you have drifted far away from all your friendships? I used to have people I could tell things to, and eel resonance. Because that’s what we crave isn’t it? Resonance? What does that even mean. And caring. No one really cares about any thing anymore. We are all so caught up in here and now. Pointless trivialities and meaningless banalities Actually those are not perhaps the right words to express what I feel. I suspect I know who is this monster stirring again in my soul like a long assumed dead volcano. But I dare not say the words for fear of raising him: not even in My head. I don’t dare open that box. I don’t even dare take it out if the suitcase. But he just grins at me from inside. With beady X-ray eyes I am scared. I am bored. I am sad. I am excited. I am amused by myself. I am growing. I bump into my childhood self in the mirror. I am realising things I had buried out of my consciousness for years. I am hiding new monsters and bones away. I am dreaming of sin. I am praying for salvation. And dreading the boredom. I have danced with the devil in a dark blue room. I have chased the shadows of the sun, heedless of the world of men. I have drunk secret wine hidden in closets with brooms and dusty suitcases. I have been ridiculous. I have been drunk. I have been exhilarated. Now I’m bored. And I’m petrified FEBRUARY 5, 2015

Of Wolves and Dogs

i dont know what hunger or tiredness feels like to you i can go for days with little food or sleep you dont know what boredom feels like to me it makes me desperate – like a corkscrew turning in my soul and this emptiness and this city of normal people peacefully slumbering trapped in the middle of all this normalcy. desperate howling half crazed there is a rabid wolf hidden inside my soul and he is seething in hate at your comfortable cage February 5th, 2015

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

somewhere between my last desperate attempt to reach you and your last shrugging off an opportunity to reach out i let you go. i set you free and now, every now and then when you wander back i don’t know what to do with you it’s strange i have let go i never thought i could or would but the fever has left me atleast, in as much measure as it could the passion is now a remembered master and a phantom addiction i have a vaguely sad memory of remembrance like a echo of a shadow but the memories even have faded this is the other side of your who killed whom story i have truly moved on i am sorry and i console myself only with the knowing that you couldn’t really care given the last two years or so there were so many opportunities you didn’t take many and i missed more but whats done is done you cannot newly break a thread that time has gnawed so bare so even goodbye seems like empty words but farewell But with the fever, the poetry left. And the words dried up too. Apparenttly, Lisa was right – if not being, it bore a gift. But what is an annoying wicked mother in law who brings a box of home made fruit cake – however divine, right? better off without. Besides I like saving the calories. And think about diabetes But I miss reading fiction, or poetry, or music. Or anything that makes me feel. Or old friends. Or personal conversations. Or gestures of random affection. I miss feelings – sometimes. Like a amputated limb, my limbic centres sometimes remind me that I dont feel, really anymore Though that is a lie. I feel. Thirst. Exhaustion. Boredom. Unbearableness. Hunger. Laughter – pointless jokes – Outrage, sorrow at macro levels. Sometimes affection at the young and old and dogs. I laugh and play. And the other sorrows of Faiz I dont even remember your face. Or how your skin felt. Or where exactly which mole was, how you hair … or the colour of your eyes. As I go about your day things you would have said or done had you been there play in the back of my head, or an occassional innocuous memory – but that is just the habit of almost a decade – and besides I am like that with all my memories – of every beloved friend and other family. But sometimes I have a dream. dont remember you at all. Not the constant moving. Not the passionate debate. Not childlike laughter. The boyish crying or even the constant twin-like resonance. Or the lies, the betrayals, the injuries Most of the times, I feel fine: comfortably numb. And unconcerned. “Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;” September 4th 2015

why are we so turned on by birthdays. and by new year days. and mondays ... is beginning again so seductive? or are we so repulsed by our mistakes, our dark side