Vacuous Vagary

This piece of writing comes from an absolute boredom, lonesomeness and loneliness and sometimes a mixture of all of these. Times when I did not like taking calls, replying to messages and going out with people , yes people are scary sometimes .They are bags of purging emotions , moods and something to do with hormones and they look like burden to you , yes me myself included in this slimy portrayal .And yes times when I waited for someone’s call , looked for my phone a thousand times for just a small tiny message  and waited for someone to hang out with but they could not turn up because there were reasons , they were too tired , I lived too far or lets drop euphemism , it was utter lack of interest. We do it all the time and it happens all the time – two people wanting the same thing at the same time happens rarely .Do we all live by convenience? And if not, are we counting our sacrifices so that we burst out one day, to make the other one feel guilty?

Don’t think too much about the last line, we are altruist and philanthropists too. We are the yin-yang of our destiny. Exploring our vices and virtues each day , and that is burgeoning towards self growth , maturity I don’t know , I really do not understand the word , it complicates my head.

What did I do on these days? Whatever I would share may sound non sequitur. But we all go through this; even Da Vinci was not painting Mona Lisa every day. I recollect myself listening to some old sad songs and making a Diet plan for the month which I never followed. I visited Facebook again and again and keeping the chat off, as if I wanted a view of a show without being noticed. I went running for two hours and then just slept off. I thought of making a new recipe and sadly could not find half of the ingredients in the kitchen and ended up eating Maggie .I sat for mediation and thought of all the flirty things I wanted to do .I wore my old dresses to check did I still fit in them .I over indulged in high calorie foods to satisfy something which I could not understand. I went through old mails and chats to remember how it used to be like when thing had not changed. I over analyzed everything  , and laughed too much on something really ridiculous and that was me at some point of time and also shed off a lot of tears  just feeling miserable without any objectivity and neither was subjectivity in place that time.

Honestly I did not do anything productive. But I also wrote this blog on one of those days and I also remembered meeting a harridan in her sweetness telling me that in life whatever you do be convinced by yourself first, trust it completely and then go ahead just like either you eat a salad or a Biryani because half cooked meal neither gives taste to you nor any praise to the cook .

My Languid Lover

O’ my languid lover

I wait for you somewhere

You dream of me on the shore

But never set a sail to explore

You search my face in the clouds

But never drench in the rains with me

O sweet, sweet lover of mine

Notice, I am just behind

The red, red wine takes the color of time

And you gaze at me as a mortal so divine

 The nectar of my longing is flowing

O’ paramour and you dwell in the vicarious life  

 The muse and the music you wish to know is here

Put me on your canvas; paint me with your touch

O’ my languid lover

I wait for you somewhere

  

Naina's - being Wifey

Naina was in her room, a little exhausted from today’s shopping, some boxes of jewelry lying on the bed, a pile of beautifully handpicked sarees. So much had been done and so much was still left .Yes it was her wedding time and not just a shopping spree. She looked at the clock and it was three forty five in the night and she had trouble sleeping. What thoughts were going in her head? Was she ready for this? What is arranged or love?

The Truth is we are never really ready for anything till it happens; we can do some preparations, get cognizant about it or even make a to-do list reading various articles but how it will really happen we can never control or know for sure so readiness is a journey in which we go slowly over time .Marriage is like our other relations which asks for acceptance of the other person in their most crude forms. For Naina it was a marriage which she had arranged partly and she was in the neighborhood of love. What kept her awake but?

She was imagining herself not as a bride but as a wife. What would it be like to be a spouse? How do married people live? All these feelings were new to her and yet to be explored .I could see a faint smile coming up on her face as she closed her eyes slowly. With the temptation to know what was going on I became part of her imagination.

Her mind was full of flashes of a life which was waiting for her : She had a comfortable couch in her house where she was watching a romcom with a man holding her around the waist …They were glued to their laptops for the next day’s meeting at their offices… and exchanged smiles whenever possible…She massaged his back when he would come back home late … he comforted her in those days of the month ….some days they cooked together and other  days they sat and did their finances ….Somedays went in silence and somedays in complete naughtiness …somedays were of narrating  childhoods and some days of house maintenance…those were the toes which met between the sheets even after disappointments of the day …a passionate night with “ Hazaron khwaishein aisi ki har khwaish  pe dam nikle….bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikle” playing softly and filling the room with deeper urgency to make love …. And waking up with the same man…who got a cold last night because you got too adventurous …. He won’t be   your ‘ A little French Affair’  which got over with a wild night neither is he your teenage crush which got over because now he does not fit in your dreamy world ...he would be your husband ..the man whom you would stand by even if he is sneeze, nauseated or just grumpy because he is the one whom you will grow old with …he will lose hair, your bosom will sag but the smile will remain the same… and he is the one who will look at you in complete admiration when you would be hormonally racked out and would remind you how you looked on the night you first copulated .The days of reading together …celebrating together …days of nervous conceiving …days of blooming into a garden from just a seed of start….days of pulling each other’s leg and then caressing like the first rain on a thirty land….the days of falling in love again and the days of remembering the initial hesitations … the days romance which would transform into deeper understanding …may be he won’t impress you each day but would always be concerned about you…may be he would be your soul mate ..maybe he would not.. because it would be beautiful enough to have a companion to walk along…the flashes were so many and it was morning already ….she looked at her solitaire ring …refulgent and well cut  … Naina went to take a shower with a towel in her hand and ebullience on her face.

Ways & Wait

The way I look at you
The wait to be looked at

The way I say nothing
The wait to be heard without speaking

The way I look at flowers
The wait to smell them again

The way I look at my heels
The wait to dance again

The way I look at stars
The wait to sparkle again

The way I look at my pillow
The wait to sleep again

Tender may be the night
The wait for the tenderness in life

The meeting of eyes , the touching of lives
The wait for a little romance tonight

Hope & Reasons

One night I cried and I cried some more , sometimes looking at the light coming from the doorway inside my room , sometimes looking at the busy road outside and at other times thinking why did I become a sad soul each passing day. I even remember a day when I did not fear death not because I did not want to live but the zest disappeared and I did not find any reason. We humans, we always want to cling to a reason. We always want something to hold on to. But this is what confuses me all the time –should I be the stubborn child asking the universe what I want or let it go ,all of it like the autumn leaves without any expectations of the spring.

Next day I met a close friend of mine and spilled the beans and poured my heart out in her warmth and yes the coffee did come later. I told her about my qualms and soaked my handkerchief again .I told her I see a bridge with a rainbow in the background but I don’t see where the bridge leads to , from where I stand my vision is clouded about what happens  when I across it and this uncertainty takes my toll each day. If I could only understand zero and one I would not step on it but we do feel and our deep intelligence tells us that even mathematics have exceptions but to know the probability of being that exception takes our peace away.

She smiled at me and took my hand in hers. She told me about a couple who wanted a child but the pregnancy was complicated, the doctors were not sure if they would be able to save the child and even if the child is born for how long it would survive , they had no answer to that , only time had. It was a tense moment; they had the happiness to bear a child but that that moment they did not know what the future holds. What they had was faith, a hope to see that smile of a new born, and the most painful period of nine months of complete dubiety. The child was born and the girl who lived was sitting with me, a little moist in the eyes herself. Maybe understanding Hope is not easy; it does not need a particular certainty or promise to hold on to, it does not come with a glossy picture of the future. It is independent, it is pure, and it is your earnest prayer.

Be the stubborn child, tell the universe what you want and then let go, because you have been heard .Alchemy is no gold, it is a belief and without belief nothing changes. We walked out of the café and my life did not change but I wanted to see things in a different way.

Of Poppies and Fireflies

Inside my dark, dark forest

A little black, grey and green

I dream a dream so deep

A dream of colors and light

Somewhere in an open field

Of poppies and fireflies

Sanguine are the hopes

Like stars on a quite road

Of snowflakes on the top of a tree

I kept the window open

And here came the breeze

But also some rain, so is life

She Settled

Disha had overheard a conversation, and suddenly she felt as if her stomach was sinking. Her father’s words, “yes we would like to meet your son”, kept on giving her the sweat under the fan in her room. It was one of those October evenings in a middle class nuclear family where everything goes according to a plan, you have to be clear - what career choices to make, what will be made for dinner, you make ‘prasads’ on those assigned days according to the Hindu calendar and some roses bloom in the small garden in front of the house and people retire from their jobs and read a newspaper every morning after that in the same garden.

She had entered the peril zone this birthday, and suddenly everything had changed, she was supposed to think about settling with someone and that someone was supposed to be well settled (he could not be a bohemian, and not with too much of out of the box ideas about life).She was supposed to think about a changed life out of her will, she had to think more about sarees than books, more about culinary skills than adventure trips.

Disha was not against marriage but she felt suffocated when things came prematurely than her heart accepted them. Today if someone wishes to fill the house with roses but what you have are rose buds, would you cut them and force open the petals? No you won’t do that .They will be allowed to bloom in their course of time. So why do we hurry with ourselves?

She always had this question what if she never felt like having a man in her life or may be just travel with a partner , what if she never got the idea of what getting settled really meant , because may be you settle to be happy and if your happiness lies in something else then that is your settled life. May be she would fall in love with a man in her sixties and make love to him each day like a curious teenager .But why today and why now because she blew twenty fours candles .Let her know what she feels about being a woman, let her fail with many men, let her leave a trail but let her be.

Ten years later, I saw Disha in a café reading ‘The Story of Philosophy’ by Wil Durant and Lonely Planet in her satchel was popping out. She was wearing a khaki trouser and a white top which hung on her carelessly. Her laptop was open and maybe she was making some reservations. There was a shopping bag which had some coloring books, a soft toy and some groceries. Who knows what she became professionally ,  who knows did she even marry because I forgot to look at her fingers and those coloring books , children is the next question , maybe for her little girl or for the neighbor’s kid or maybe just for herself. How did she go back home? Did a car pick her up or she took a cab or maybe walked her way home humming ‘Wo sham kutch ajeeb thi …ye sham bhi ajeeb hai’ .I don’t really know but in my candor she looked Settled that day in her most inconspicuous ways.