We underestimate how places feel about people.

We underestimate how places feel about people. We forget the angles we left our chairs turned to, when we left the office- those chairs carried on our conversations about the files due Monday and Mrs. Preisley's date with Jerry last Friday. Apparently she found a ring in her glass of wine and spilled the drink on poor Jerry's face, only to realize the waiter delivered it to the wrong table. The ring in the glass had developed a severe crush on the wine's taste and didn't quite appreciate the perpetual smell of cabbage on the fingers of where it finally sat encircled.

We really do underestimate how places feel about people. This world has an arrogant charm of its own; it makes us feel very...small. Showing us surreal escapades of people around us and foxily hiding away the transience of it all. The world feeds on one momentary pleasure a time with each trampled heart that seeks validation of atleast ten people around him. He doesn't even realize how many times those ten people use the word 'I' in a day and doesn't consider the quiet corners of his humble bedroom sheltering his crunched up balls of paper which reek of a forgotten dream saying "I will".
He forgets the first time he learned to eat noodles with chopsticks without spilling some on the white rug, he forgets when his mom walked into him masturbating in bed when he was 14- he forgets his room saw him in a black suit for his first funeral, he forgets his room saw him stark naked with a bowl of grapes right below his stomach watching television. He forgets how many times the reflection of his lean body flashed by or stayed on the mirror, catching his eyes look unamused, his hair disheveled or his lips chapped.
He remembers to hide in his room but he forgets he doesn't hide from it.

It's really not just him, we do underestimate how places feel about people.

He spends atleast 6 hours every night pushed against his white pillows, so intimate as if trying to hear truths about his souls and demons through its soft bumps and depressions. He abandons it each morning and doesn't consider the angst of the cushion when he climbs out of bed, not so much as gives a second glance back. The pillow lies dejected  and used like a stagnant walk of shame after an intoxicated Saint Peter's night.

He doesn't hear the girl next to him hum to the song blasting from the bus radio because he spends the entire journey trying to move both his ears without changing his facial expression. He found the song foolish and mainstream Bollywood and decided the chronicles of his ear and their movement was an idea worthy of exploration. Once he left his seat at his stop, his seat lay unmoved and cold devoid the warmth of a human rear; "Cold soul"; the seat remarked, the universe agreed. The girl next to it kept humming.

We underestimate how places feel about people. Swearing and elbowing through our days, cutting lines, falling asleep in metros, getting over hangovers by staying drunk; objects and spaces remain lifeless to us, coping with our incorrigible  narcissism of only taking humans seriously. The universe cracks up at that every time.

Shy sunbathed corridors, tucked away backyard gardens with pumpkins growing in them, the rays of light through glass windows in empty college lecture halls, confetti and shiny wrapping paper balled into garbage cans after a birthday party; we arrogantly forget to notice the details of our everydays because we can only hear ourselves breathe and rely on empty critiques of people we want to believe know us too well.

Imagining what spaces we exist in every single day of our lives would say about us? "Now there's a ridiculous thought", said every human ever.

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How've you pumpkins been? :)
Love,
Nil. 

Elijah.

Like a sudden raspy slap of the coldest swirl of air- her face haunted me, displacing each an every element of stability within me. My flesh grew pale, though the blood within never felt warmer. It was like a sudden rude grip by unnaturally long fingers around my neck, I do not understand how a face can be so hauntingly beautiful. It ruined me for life.
Her brows stayed home, though the lingering questions escaped the chilly calm on her face with just a tinge of a smile. I refuse to understand how her body, so white like a possessed corpse could seem so alive with the unabashed inactivity in her character- by just standing there with those piercing eyes, she was ruling my existence. If moments could bleed, this would be it. 

Her lank poker straight hair plastered the contours of her oval face like a wedding ring too tight for a finger. The streetlamp on top of her head made a halo of her frail figure that stood too strong, too tall to go unnoticed in the nocturnal camouflage of the snoring night. She was the literary equivalent of star dust, she said.  
Somewhere in the throbbing veins of her hand, I heard a universe call and somehow I believed it really did exist.

Ghosts, spirits, demons and angels seemed like myths of the past that crawled away, intimidated by this Mother of Zeus- if we were all to be thin air, she would be chariot swirling the sky.
So harshly real, emitting a flow-charted insanity of sort- I was left crippled, impotent- a wounded soldier whose words were slashed by hers even before I could conjure a thought. 

Nationalities, religions, myths and epics failed to define her aura that was like a walking aurora in the middle of a battlefield with bleeding men and parts of scattered limbs around dynamites. Her presence was so raw, that you lament over the inexplicable reality of her tenderness.

She churned my insides in a way that would set the democracy of my ideas on fire and would establish the anarchy of my emotions.   

And yet what I felt was the casually tossed idea of wanting to die because you were just that happy. And perhaps, right then I realized the original difference between happiness and elation.
I felt the pores of my flesh, the pores of my soul, the pores of my eyes widen up like open gashes of wounds and found healing in the nakedness of my armors- armors of my flesh, armors of my soul and the armors of my eyes.

I stood right there, once the moment had ended, and the sprinkles of its blood shone in the creases of my fingers. The bones of her haunt made a moment bleed, which is now. 

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Something I wrote for the Poetry Slams I've been doing the past few months. You guys are beautiful, to have stuck around :)
I'll be back soon, I just can't tell when.

-After a long time,
Nil.

Her Maddening Delight.

Anne said, the easiest way to fall back in love was the same reason she usually fell out of it. Her eroticism for a breath away, alone, aloof. Her territory, her sacred perch of yellow afternoons, the sound of her ankle rubbing the brown leather couch, or the rings left on the coffee table from the abruptly abandoned cuppas or glasses of whiskey and water.

Her mind was frustratingly similar to that of every book she read, of every spider she chased, of every thread she pulled off the seams of her white sweater. Her mind was everything around her, and so it shifted, as she kept arranging her living room over and over again. Put the lid on the pot back, shut the drapes and opened them again, pulled in the rug, re arranged the wine glasses, shut the drapes, and.. pulled out the rug, again. 
Her mind shifted. She was like the tip that dances round and around on a poly disk. Except her song had all kinds of lyrics, and was her own.

Her last lover; James, was a simple man. Above average intelligence, didn't look to sour and fell short of the need for affection. So he was your average Joe, every third man you walk by in the city. Anne and James took long walks by 5th avenue, they made love almost every night before the night was midnight old, and they went for brunch every Friday to Rose Cafe. It was quite a pleasant companionship if you must only read my narration, but James felt lesser and lesser the man of Anne's heart and more and more the man of her habit. 
The long walks along 5th avenue felt like aimless wandering; amusement lying in the sky, the trees, the birds, the buildings; save among each other, save the pointless fingers entangled almost as if to let their fingers practice bending, curving.. The love they made was a tiring physical act, and yet the steam blew away oh so long long back, perhaps last new year's eve. And brunches at Rose Cafe being the corner of the cafe, table for two, where the menus weren't consulted and salad on number 4 and the steak on number 9 were ordered, or actually nodded to the waiter. 

One fine February afternoon whilst walking barefoot at the park, James told Anne,  "..but my dear Annabelle, do my words even reach you? You seem to enjoy silence much more, than my wonder about your day", to which Anne frowned, after a deep thought that lasted as long as dry sugar on top of hot coffee she said; "Your words are going over my head.. And I'm not even going to look up, to catch those thoughts, my love."

And with that, she turned around and walked along. Leaving James and his words hanging in air, and her brown oxfords on the grass. 


That wasn't only poor James's story, but also of Keith, Gilderoy, Kevin and Simon. All these eligible bachelors wore their hearts on their sleeves and stuck a rose in between their teeth, all for beautiful Anne. But she wasn't too swept by those careless and careful charms. Her feet only pushed the ground beneath harder as she walked around the city, buying cups of fresh strawberries and cones of vanilla, and spending lovely solitary evenings at the city library all by her pleased self, every Sunday.  It was like she was her own maid of honor. 

And during one of those days in the week itself, could be a Monday or a Thursday; Anne would find a Harry, or a Billand and would high tea over Schubert and Bach. They would muse over Donatello's shadow relief sculpture and and Titian's vivid landscape. There would be easy indulgence, which would almost feel too convenient to be romantic.. but they'd meet over brunch or tea another Tuesday, anyway.  Two out of three times, the Tuesday would go lovely. Maybe even proceed to one of their living rooms. But one out of three times, the Tuesday would proceed to one of their bedrooms, and that right there, would be the glitch in the day, following weeks, and ending within a few months. 

Fleeting. She was a fleeting, hungry soul who looked ravishing in her eventual indifference to most people and her sudden (almost abrupt) endearment to objects and people. Ideally, such a girl must be one with a cat, but her petite sniffs and sneezes would drive away any fur around the cornucopia of her mind and home. 

But finally, there came Ruth. Anne met her at the porch of the house opposite hers. Picking up the delicious looking clear bottles of milk, while Anne couldn't decide which one of the two had a better figure.
Did her heart just skip a beat? Uh Oh.

Oh, their days together were ravenous. Walking with a skip in their beat and dancing skirts hovering high around their skirts, the two women slid their arms around the curves of each other's waists, thoroughly enjoying the boldness of each curve and drinking in kisses in the middle of daylight. Devastatingly in love, they celebrated the terrains of the other's body like it was an unfamiliar site and touch; outlining the pouts of their crimson lips, and tangled curls receding into hurried buns. 
It was delightful, absurd and absolutely horrifying. And for the first time in her life, Anne did not want to rid herself of another depression on the pillow by her side, every morning. 

In such perfection, there was no sense of humbleness. Anne and Ruth were atrocious and misbehaved women madly in love, and they vowed to never stop. No longer did Anne worry about the mundane; for her, every day was a red card of unruly behavior on apparent moral grounds of most people, which kept her entertained and affirmed and reaffirmed that she was alive, and very much.. at home. 

And with that feeling so omnipresent in her heart, Ruth left. 
Just like that. As abruptly as her heart skipped a beat one day; just as abruptly as the first hint of pressured transparent cursive on a paper that follow the blue, that disappeared with the ink getting over. 

Anne didn't try to look for her. Because she found a note on her side of the bed which read; 


"..we were all once young and wild in love, taking leaps of faith which eventually turned out to be a reckless desperation to feel real, and finally ended with revenge in the name of separation."

Ruth was James's sister. 

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(because I was pissed off with section 377. Come at me, bruh.)
There you go, fiction roll, unrolled. (:
Much love,
Nil. 

I have a lot to say.

Greetings, World.
This is one of the I Have A Lot To Say  Series. I wouldn't call this post completely fictitious,  this is basically a slightly off beat style of writing that I tried my hands on; to free my head of certain epiphanies and visions that were rather vociferous. This post was inspired by the photo you see. Just like the other post of this series, the following is somewhat a cornucopia of strings of thoughts, that came in one after the other while I was in the strangest mood, and I never stopped. It does not follow any order, nor do the tenses. It may not make sense, due to the drastic transitions of odd imagery. But it's raw and unedited.
That should be intriguing enough.

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There are too many people in this world, there are too many people talking and there are too many people doing. There are a scandalous number of pairs of eyes moving their eyeballs symmetrically as the world slowly revolves and some thing or someone in space watches the pitch dark expansion of nothingness beyond the Earth's atmosphere travel round and round and round on those irises.
What's absolutely shameful is that perhaps save the delicate, almost unbelievable surface of the World, I highly doubt anything or any one out there in space would ever want to indulge in us, too much. Every eighth second, there must be a man thinking of molestation, and every ninth, there might be a woman beating her son.

In Geneva, a boy of 11 just found a cat's whisker floating on his tall glass of milk. He's too sure of it being a cat's whisker because that was maybe the only part of dead Lou he could keep to himself. Dead Lou was buried last evening, and was perhaps purring dug deep in his backyard. He carefully spoons the whisker and puts it in a jar with that spoonful of milk; "There, Lou. You can have it. You know I hate milk."

Somewhere in India, a eunuch embraced a new born boy and danced around the hall, with him next to her chest. All the others clapped around her in circles and blessed the boy to grow up and be a man. They meant that blessing in very different ways, than we might understand. While the mother sat in the corner of the room, sweaty and worried, anxious to hold her baby boy again. "These people are too.. different, for my comfort" she told her midwife.

Irritating habits of the master were whispered back to the dog whisperer by Jimmy the bull dog, while lying lazy under the Tuscan sun. One would be tempted to imagine such a scene playing in the theater, somewhere in some city. Sappy stories of animals and their distressed masters seem to always enthuse people and give them a 'reason' to try and understand living things better, a reason to love better.

While cellphones rang over brunch, people carried on three separate conversations with three other people while at the table with one person. That one person didn't quite struggle for attention either, her cellphone maintained the needy behavior of most of technology today, so that was fine, really. The brunch went fine.

And in some corner of that very country, a girl wished to turn deaf, dumb, and blind, because there are too many people in this world, there are too many people talking and there are too many people doing. There are just too many of... too many. And maybe the last time the world was silent was when the Earth's atmosphere wasn't so friendly.
"Those were the good times.." , she said.
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I wouldn't say the long impasse has passed, but it's on the verge to leave. Here's a start, and hopefully from now on, the silence won't be too long from my end. Thank you, for sticking around. :)

-Love,
Nil. 

Flame fleeced.

History.
The one word that brings back ruthless, bold, unabashed flashbacks of you. And him. Or her. Or whoever. You must have loved, or you must have thought you loved. All of us do, all of us love the idea of falling in love. So getting back to the point; History.
We're often so sure about the concept of it being the past, that we often forget; once we see it staring at us in the present. You see that one face, and there, you find yourself thinking of what was. How you were, how this person staring back at you used to be, with you. You give yourself the liberty to feel appalled at how that face is the same, and yet nothing about it reminds you of the person it belongs to. Perhaps a crease or two more, on the forehead. Maybe some more impatience in them pair of eyes, than you remember. The lips could possibly be more dry, and the ears could seem naked because there isn't any hair sitting on them, hiding away their shapelessness.
And yet, you push your grounds by still considering that your faith on that face may be stronger than its appearance.

But as you blink a few more times and don't let the light leaks of your ridiculous faith blind you, you slowly realize that the face that once moved you so much is gone. The flame that burnt high and low, quivered on top but kept still to the wax...is gone. There's nothing that overwhelms you about that face anymore, there is nothing that makes you want to cry. The expression in your heart is smug. It wants to walk away, and carry on with the life you finally moved on with, in the absence of that face.
You feel like you're sitting on the other side of the window, and the only way you look at the other side is through an old, lace curtain. It flies around with the wind, letting you peek at the real thing once in a while, but it's hidden again, and it stays that way. And you realize, it's not hidden anymore, it's gone.

Flame fleeced. The remains of that blaze are nowhere to be seen around you, for they withered away with that side of you which became history, along with that person's departure in your life, once.

You realize, you slowly fell out of love. Because beyond a point, that face didn't love you back, and you couldn't love thin air, could you now? 

-Nil.

Because you were sure.

Writing, sometimes, can be the most stifling feeling in the world. It robs you of all your privacy, and ruthlessly strips naked every bleak corner of your mind; your imagination, your hopes, your desires, your everything; printed in ink on an otherwise flimsy blank paper.
The stain of ink in coherent intelligible figures can humiliate you, and make reality ten times withal real. It can be the tightest slap you remember all your life, while the slaps in your childhood seem like sweet gestures of warnings by Mother to mend your twisted ways that ultimately lead to your fall; on such a blank paper.

I don't understand why we're so stubborn. Why we're constantly rushing to plunge into every possible scope of entanglement and openly wish, hope and pray we never find our way out and breathe again. We like gasping. I think we like this mess. I think we're so used to it, that fresh air feels wrong, now.
The mind enjoys being in a perpetual state of frustration, and our language seems to be that of constant sarcasm and cocky-ness that only earns some more of the two from the other end of every communication we indulge in.

And what's terrible, is that this is mistake we're ready to make one more time, and then another time, and the time after that. Because we're just so god damn scared of being free. Of having our own space. Because we think that would be the world's way of abandoning us.
It's ridiculous, loathsome, and repulsive; this constant urge to keep doing something. And when we try to clean some wax off our minds, and sit down to write about the happier things in life, all we pour out are our dark little revelations and regrets. Because you just goddamn can't lie to a goddamn paper. It's powerless; your mind thinks. Who will he tell? It'll just stay. It'll yellow around it's corners and age away, perhaps with ink blots and cigarette burns.

But that's the point; it stays.

And you can't do anything about it, because? You never used a pencil. 
You were just so sure about everything, remember?

-Nil. 

Beauty bereft.

(Photo by Vanta.)

They had been abandoned by the ankles of the woman who became the prayers of every beat resonating around the universe. The woman said they scraped her ankles and made them bleed of bruises. They were accused to have lost a bell here, or two there. Apparently, they didn’t sound as sweet as her dance looked. Just how was she to dance with them on?

And thus, abandoned, they were. Carelessly put away into the unabashedly ignored attic of the gigantic house; the one that they had won her, from His Majesty.

 Every evening, they’d be bitter kissed by another layer of dust... Flies and sly ants would walk past the intricate blue thread work and the gold of each bell which weren't as golden anymore. The edges of the table on which they sat withered with time, and the room would birth nascent cobwebs and the dirge of grey into which every element of the room camouflaged
.

Every element, but them. They sat on that very table like a bold mother, pregnant with a secret. The sheet of dust would only gather in the broken ends of each bell and accentuate the rest of the body which spoke of age and art. Of flawlessness, of music, of dance… of a kind of beauty that ceased to exist once they were taken off her ankle.

They sat on that very table, listening to the woman dance somewhere far away in the court of his majesty. They’d see her taking her first bow and her last; they knew every breath she’d inhale after every fourth beat. They knew every flaw in the continuation of her hurried steps, and yet those steps were birthed in the womb of those; the ones that sat cold in that old, trivial attic.

What a pity; thought an anonymous wise man. A wise man who existed in the motes of dust around the old room, who existed in the aroma of rose water at the majestic palace.

Her feet tremble now with the new pair of golden bells on her mended ankle. They tinkle after her feet hit the ground, not with them. They’re a proud pair of 500 bells, and yet they sound faint, shy, or rather… coward like. And the irony is, the woman knew.

Bereft from what completed her next step from the first, she tussled with her tenacity to dance like that celebrated figurant she’d become in that kingdom of his Majesty; the kingdom where people kissed their fingertips to her rhythm, to her graceful glide that progressed unobstructed on the marble floors of the court, like the breeze of the season of art.

And yet, the beauty of that figurant faded as she tried harder and harder… for the essence of her dance lay sitting on an old table; bold, aged, and yet gorgeous; in those blue and golden pair of ghungroos. Quiet, incomplete, and bitterly proud; bereft of those bruised ankles. 
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First proper piece of the summer, written in a strange strange mood. There y'go. Awaiting your feedback :)
Much loving,
Nil. 

Nothing less, if not more.

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 38; the thirty-eighth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The theme for the month is "The Woman on Platform Number 10"

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Nothing less, if not more.

On such yellow afternoons at the café, she mostly sat on the corner most table with the three legged chair opposite to her, hunching, as always; humming to the poly disks  she made Ted; the waiter play for the entertainment of all; and for pampering her own nostalgia. This particular Sunday she was carrying an old poly disk which surprised her on being found that morning. Mostly her afternoon routine would have her walk into the café, pin point and call Ted to come along her table and take the poly disk of the day to the gramophone, however this particular Sunday… walk into the café, she did. Sat on the corner most table, she did. However the poly disk was not parted with, it sat perfectly round and old in its case, in front of her, while she read  what was written on the centre of the disk with an old marker;

“And I, all I really want is you
You to stick around
I’ll see you everyday
But you’ll have to follow through...” 

It wasn't the first time in the day that she read those few lines. Though every time she did, it felt like the first time and it felt like thirty years back, all over again. His handwriting was as fresh as the 20 year old boy staring at her from her memory, his ‘Y’s were always longish, she smiled. Another similar yellow afternoon stared at her in her mind; an endless road on which they walked while he hid a square case behind his back and walked with her;

“…and why are you hiding that big poly disk which every tree on the road can see?”

“…I was hoping you weren't a tree, but happy birthday, Jolene.”

“What did you record?”

“A song that might remind you of today, of now… of maybe me. And what we are at this moment. And what we could be in the next. Nothing less, if not more.”

“…what’s more?”

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“No music for the café today, Miss Jolene?”, Ted stood next to her looking down at the poly disk. She looked up at Ted, an embarrassed slow red blush creeping into her dusky skin. But she recovered quickly.  Abandoning emotions at the time of need was an old habit of her head strong existence.

“why of course, Teddy. This one just has one song though.”

“Oh, looks like an old gift, is it?”

“Yes. A very… old gift, indeed.”, she smiled in an absent minded way.

“From a friend, was it?”

“He was…more”

“What’s more?”

___________________________________________________________________

As the needle of the grand instrument touched the top of the revolving disk, a much too familiar tune took her back to that old sunny afternoon. The long road ended at the threshold of the old station. Clasping the poly disk case to under her arm, she briskly walked with him to platform number 10.

“So… what’s more?”, she asked impatiently, catching a glimpse of the mouth of the train pulling into the platform.

“What’s more… is perhaps the day you remember today, of now, and of me; of what we are at this moment, and what we could be in the next… and you sing along to the song waiting for you in this disk, on another day, in another moment, for me.”

“What makes you think I’ll sing for you?”

“Oh Jolene, my beautiful. One day a stranger will ask you about us, and you wouldn't know what to say--”

“Because there is nothing to say, there never was, and there will be.”

“ You've always had something to sing, when you've had nothing to say.”, he smiled that crooked smile that peered through her eyes, and leaving just that of him, he went away.

Jolene stood quietly, waiting for the smoke of the train to burn her eyes, just so she could be angry at the engine for making her eyes moist. Strong girl, Jolene. Strong girl. He must go away, you must be free.

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“I asked what’s more, Miss Jolene?”, Ted playfully yelled from the other corner of the café while he turned the music a notch or two higher. The song rang in her ears;

“And I, all I really want is you
You to stick around
I’ll see you everyday
But you’ll have to follow through...”

…and Jolene tried saying something but she was chocked, and so she sang along the chorus;

“You will have to follow through
These reeling emotions they keep me alive
They keep me in tune
Oh look what I’m holding here in my fire,
This is for you….”

Jolene had nothing to say. And so, she sang. She sang for that day, for that moment, for him. She sang for what they were at that moment, and what they could have been in the next.
 She sang while she stared at the empty case of the poly disk that said;

“For the Woman on Platform Number 10,
 It was never less, it was always more, wasn't it?
-Love,
More.”
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The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. Introduced By: Random blog surfing, Participation Count: 02

 Awaiting your feed backs!

-Nil. 

The embers of a racing mind.

I can almost feel the curvature of my first thought burning away as quickly as the wing of a happy butterfly would ash away to; when inched  to an ignited matchstick. The head of the second thought was the origin of such friction and so has been the cycle of my thoughts, lately. Burnt out; even before one could live. 
A pandemonium of events uncannily containing similar emotions, all of which turn into a chaos inside a breathing room divided into two; my mind needs space. 
Examples of how fragile the think tank of our anatomy is have been in abundance, recently. And some times, I wonder; aren't we all a little tilted in the dark side, at some point?

"A calm man always has a war within him.. which is why, he is calm." ; I heard an acquaintance say, with a smirk today. And the glint in his eyes at the moment convinced me of the autobiographical statement, casually passed to push the puberty of understanding him. 
Since then, a very different spotlight surrounds his figure even in day light, when I look at him. And then I wonder, don't we just look at people? Isn't that all the shallow effort we put in to understanding the immediate wall of concrete we live in, after all? And then we wonder why pity surrounds our existence?

"Atleast this patch of Earth I'm standing on, is my ashtray." ; That was the parent of arrogance, her tongue talking. To our questioning looks, she didn't defend; she stated; that the patch of land she stood on was loyal to her weight, it was loyal to the foreskin of her body and mind. The patch of land was hers to spoil with all her ridiculous and whimsical ideas, to all the forms of salt that secrete out of her brown skin, to the lose strands of hair that fall out of her scalp to rid themselves of the overwhelming amount of turbulence beyond their roots. The patch of Earth was her. It was made out of her, and thus will wait for her slowly ashing body to come back home. The breed of such women was lost, we thought?

" The relevance of the human will and word is tragic, to say the least." ; I thought, after that one friend closed the door behind him. That one friend who was an undertone to the first quarter of my life, who was the proof of my childhood and who was the ear to every voice that made it out of my throat; and the ones that didn't. Years and years of mindless banters and baseless words exchanged in between found their way to my ear drums and I realized how relative human words are; for once the intention changes and the will demolishes, those words don't even exist enough to be called empty, anymore. There is no vessel to them, only tainted air of something that used to be. 
And one day, all those inconsequential conversations will skin the time you lost out on, alive. 


-Nil.

Sunday enthusiasts.

Sitting in straight lines of disorderly sequence,
they fit next to one another,
a feather long gamut between each.
A different flock, each day
and Sunday seemed their favorite of the lot.

One would fly away,
only to circle around and settle next to another.
Another would clumsily flap in protest,
though the order of the makeshift lines were taken much solemnly.

One or three would ash away,
the criminal phenomena of electricity was common a knowledge,
they'd complain of its ruthless deeds,
and yet settle on those black wires, indubitably.

Perhaps it was how the rest of us looked from above,
tiny, black and feeble stick figures;
running around doing things that were humorous to them,
they all fancy a good laugh,
our kind was a curious one to theirs.

They weren't wanton sadists,
neither were they reckless optimists.
They were fond of the sky that was intimate,
and Sundays, that favored clear skies.

So sit, they did,
and watched over us.
Flew away once in a while,
however absconded, rarely.

And so finally, the poetry block is over :) Hoorah.
-Nil.

A tall glass of water.

She spoke much fondly of bees, she often cackled to the buzz and drew yellow and black ones on her palms. Uninterrupted would be the curled strand of lock that played high and low tides on the left side of her face, while her long legs escorted wild thoughts with the pace she sauntered at, in and around the world.
Her bifocals were just as much a part of her face as her arched eyebrows; as sure as the tip of her illustrated nose; which always reached a destination a second before the rest of her chassis.
She often let daylight lick her like a cone of strawberry and vanilla. One would oft see her sitting unusually away from most people; soaking the dissonant sun with her long legs stretched and her face separated from the sun by the blinds of her eyes. She peeked with an eye open, once in a while.

To every one who raised an eyebrow at her vicissitude way of life, she'd say "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side." in Lou Reed's deep voice, and leave just the way she entered; like a whirlwind.
Apart from the 3 fingers on each hand with questionable rings, the other two would mostly be drawn on by neon highlighters. Her obsession with patterns left an impression not only on her apparels but on the bellies she wore which some times had little metallic balls  filed lines or curly circles doodled on them. Every mote of her existence had an ethereal and evanescent element on its toes, and yet she was as real as her loud Aztec leggings or the little ball of silver on the right side of her nose.

She was a strange girl in a stranger world. Everything bizarre was another route to happiness, every print on a cloth was something she'd have to doodle on her wrist that very afternoon and every page of a book was a paper plane with a lot of words on it. Interesting, she thought.
Interesting, she thought. She stopped the world in her head, stretched her long legs on the floor and spoke to the sun.

- Nil. 

Thank you for not making sense.

A pandemonium inside your bony skull and within your heart that's the size of your mere fist can some times, absolutely paralyze you and hold you still in the middle of a hot, working and busy day. The kind of day when even your subconscious mind should ideally turn dumb, deaf and blind; to ensure no manifestation of mindful disasters. Mindful, mind you; not mindless. 

Such a pandemonium usually means a lot of noise which only gets louder once you plug in your earphones, and every song almost sounds satiric, mocking to your misunderstood misery. 

But say thank you, for not making sense. After every file of obviousness that's been neatly stacked into your mind, and every little box tightly packed away into quiet corners of that coffer throbbing inside your chest.. after such achieved order, we often trash away the not so obvious which wasn't highlighted with a neon marker in the rationality of your mind or consideration of your heart. But often, those little eightysixed details end up actually being the full stops to years worth of bemusement. 

What happens when all those file are scattered on the floors of your mind which is used to being in an apple -pie order? What happens when all those little boxes are blown off their lids and all the four walls fall apart with everything inside meanders out?

Beautiful happens. 

Because all of a sudden, every orderly detail stands next to the ones that are not. And like trifling chipped ends of blue tiles, you connect the dots you thought that were already connected, only to form a completely new pattern, and you witness the same story you thought was over; from the same pair of eyes, except this time, with a sensible mind. 

Yes, I said sensible mind. For in all the chaos of nonsensical shenanigans in your head, all they did was form a nebula of affairs; from your mind, and from your heart. 

It gave you a chance to make sense, once again. 

- A much tranced out,
Nil. 

Untitled, for once.

Have you ever had that one stretch of uncounted hours when your mind shuts off to all the sense in the world, and you find yourself in a boat; a boat, in the middle of your mind. You can see the walls of your mind but all they ring of being cold air. The seams of the white in your eye have a tinge of red, your throat is chocked but you're biting your lip as hard as you can to not cry. You're a strong girl, strong girls don't cry. That's not what the world said, no. That's what you told yourself.
The little lamp of white light next to you gives you no comfort. If at all, it reminds you every minute that there is not a single door present in the valves of your mind, there are only walls; which do not even listen. No matter how much you speak aloud, you'll just bite your lips harder when your words ring back to you.

You don't understand this. You don't understand this confinement, you don't understand your mind. And you know; this too, shall pass; though this one sure is doing everything it can to make you ridicule a hopeful belief, such.

You're a strong girl, though. You're not going to cry.
Tell yourself that, just one more time. 


-Nil

Still alive who you love.

Origin of this post: 

It began with a quiet hum, almost like a silent conversation in the back of my mind. The hum was low and melodious, though abrupt and began out of nowhere, not a single origin was in sight. As the hum grew vociferous, a beat caught up, and some sense began to unwind from its slumber. As soon as I began understanding today, tomorrow ran in; as I tried to understand tomorrow, day after tapped its foot impatiently. So I decided to unlearn what I realized, and I decided to listen hard to the music which made no sense to me, at all. Though that music felt like a part of my world, and even though the melody grew into something stronger, that faint hum of abruptness didn't leave me. For that hum, was my discovery. 

The hum became an epiphany, it became a dream that should have been seen before, it became a possession  it became a performance... it became a masterpiece.
The song was never staged, though. It resonated much too often along the veins of my body which helped more revelations travel, than fluids. A feeling was the perpetual invader of my existence, irrespective of which one, but there always lived a feeling.

And perhaps, that is why a faint hum eventually turned into a marched progression of a sense of strangeness, though a strangeness with a twisted smile, the one that looks beautiful on a face.
And while I live on along with this strangeness and a constant hum that feels abrupt in all its glorious continuum,  my existence will resonate nothing but blessedness, for the beauty of discovery is such that the unfamiliar becomes and acquaintance, crony, and some strange day I shall realize; it's become a part of me, and its existence is seen, felt, and heard every time I sit alone on a quiet afternoon, feelin' blue..

For that hum was my discovery,
and for me, that hum was you. 


-A happy feelin'
Nil. 

I have a lot to say.

Greetings, World. 
This is one of the I Have A Lot To Say series. I wouldn't call this post completely fictitious, it's a...different style of writing that I attempted, to free my head of certain epiphanies and visions that were rather vociferous. This post was inspired by a random photo of a lazy cat that came and cuddled next to my foot and I clicked a picture of. Just like the other post of this series, the following is somewhat a cornucopia of strings of thoughts, that came in one after the other while I was in the strangest mood, and I never stopped. It does not follow any order, nor do the tenses. It may not make sense, due to the drastic transitions of odd imagery. But it's raw and unedited.
That should be intriguing enough.

______________________________________________________________________

The lazy cat looked like she knew what she was doing. There was not a hint of abashment or fear as she kept slumping her hilt on a new spot every time the bedeviled waiter shooed her away, making strange noises. At another corner of the world, a boy sat down ridiculing how people phrase regions of the world as 'corners' when none actually exist, when there isn't a literal end to the world, and how in reality, we're all naive early men within who comfort themselves with ancient, impractical thesis. At that very moment, a stand up comedian in your home town makes a cat's purr the butt of his pun and a blink later, the lazy cat stirs next to your foot. While you distract yourself from the utterly boring conversation the lady ahead has to offer, you look down and the cat looks up. And right at that very second, the stand up comedian forgets his punch line.

A gypsy woman recites her burglary around the world to a six year old boy, while her scarf hides the source of her dreamy voice. A caravan stops eight stops early to pick her up and away it went, puffing smoke from its choking rear. 

Mars decided to shine a brighter blood red, and that simple celestial decision made an old man very happy. He smiled a weak smile that peeped brighter from behind his half moon spectacles.. He particularly missed his dead wife, tonight. 

While such preoccupations worried the world, the cat purred next to my foot. And when the waiter came to shoo it off yet again, it picked it's hind up and settled on the foot of another distracted conversationalist. The lazy cat looked like she knew just what she was doing. Unlike me. 

-Nil.

 

Dark Room.

Dark Room.

Let's play Dark Room,

where I try to find you,

with devoid cheating with the shadows,

or the Christmas lights that blink too often.

Let's play Dark Room,

let me find you. 

In this dark room of mine,

I find myself in the middle of a sunny day,

when the back of our shirts were wet,

and our throats parched,

from all the laughter that rang louder than the heat,

I find that day in my dark room, tonight. 

The corner of the bed,

oh, how innocent tonight? 

Useless air occupying space,

there aren't any green bottles standing drunk,

though I find your hiccups hanging in the air,

I find our drunk tales,

in my dark room, tonight. 

A poor blue shirt hangs on my chair,

since tonight you aren't complaining,

no complaints about its creaky legs to give away,

no complaints about a fall,

none tonight.

Though, I find the day you did,

I find that afternoon in my dark room. 

If walls could talk,

they'd be silent tonight, they'd weep instead.

They'd want to find every season,

every evening, and every dusk,

when you created a moment here,

in this room that's dark tonight,

Let's play Dark Room,

let me please find you. 

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Horrible after midnight mood swing. Kindly excuse the abruptness of such strange poetry but at ungodly hours  as such, the mind is usually not at command. Some times, all you need is just one moment. 

-Nil.

Fragile.

"Fragile." 
Your suitcase is going to have that sticker when you're at the airport, right? I want to be that sticker. I want to be a part of that suitcase that you packed from home, that has that book you kept asking me for but ended up buying instead, that has the orange shirt that has the cologne on from last night's farewell, that has the black bow tie I always wanted to see you in, and the little black diary of yours that's tucked away into a chain.

I want to be a part of that box of home that you're carrying to a new land. I want to sit next to you when you tap your foot impatiently, waiting for your flight to take off. You've been waiting too long to escape this place, haven't you? The ticket in your breast pocket was the one shot you needed, it turned out to be the one shot you finally got.
I want to be standing right there when you step out of the aircraft and see the new city for the first time, when your mind has no curfews and you're all set to run... I want to start running with you.
I want to be sitting across the table, when you have your first breakfast away from the round table with a red and white checkered table cloth back home.
I want to see you quietly put a letter you received a day back at the bed side drawer, I want to see you read it, again. I want to be the last full stop, on that letter.

I want to be each and every stamp on your passport. I want to be every single crinkled bus ticket that stays in the pockets of your jean. I want to count your change while you tip off the waiter at the cult cafes around the world, I want to share the binoculars you see through to see the horizon complementing your new terrace. I want to be the coin you toss in your first wishing well in Europe and I want to be the chop sticks you use so proficiently for Sushi.

I want to feel your pulse as each and every second becomes an experience.

However, I see the ends of your trousers flapping through the gust of air that comes in while you board the plane, and your suitcase goes away with you, while the Fragile sticker stays on with me.

-Nil.

(P.s- I promise and update post, next. I'll spare you the perpetual after-midnight- Fiction OD.)

Where do you go when you're lonely?

Do you walk on that one street with restaurants on the right, glowing a gorgeous warm yellow and buzzing with the clutter clatter of cutlery? 
Do you feel a little comforted when you see people from those big glass windows dining and toasting to company? 
Do you quickly hold on to the cap on your head, feeling the warmth of the wool and wait for it to breathe out cold air, just like you? Or do you blow out that very cold air into the chilly evening and pretend for it to be smoke, just so you're not alone, just so your mouth is in touch with something, if not words. 

Or do you switch on that old sitcom while it starts snowing outside and you're too scared to look at the white outside, to remember last winter..  
I've noticed how you never put out the Christmas cards on she shelf anymore. Don't they make you feel more at home? Don't they remind you of home? 

Where do you go when you're lonely? 
I've seen you get nervous even when your shadow follows.  
Do you go to the town's carnival, buy yourself cotton candy and eat it while your eyes descend to London's big eye and the time you took a tourist friend on it? Or the one time you had your first kiss in one of the cabins in it? 
Do you remember your old high school corridor? You never felt lonely when you walked on it, did you. 
More so, because you were too busy driving away her blues every morning. 
You often wonder about her.. She still wishes you went to college together, in the same city. Even though it's been so many years to those times.. But  yes, you both still do think of each other. You hope so.. 

I've seen you walk into one of the big games with a single ticket too, at times. I've seen you keep quiet while the whole stadium went wild. 
I've seen you sitting in movie theaters, half listening to the dialogues and half smiling over youthful shenanigans in the theaters back home, with her. 

Doesn't everything about this new city remind you of those times? 
Every street is different from the ones back home, and yet you can see the same things happen at every corner, at every cafe, every colorful door on the white walls. 
She loved colors, didn't she? She also loved long walks... long walks, with you.  

So where do you go when you're lonely?
Somewhere.. where you hope she follows you?
Haven't you both... just been following each other all this while, sweetheart?  
______________________________________________________________________________

The inspiration to this post :

So yeah, I promised some fiction... Sorry about the abstractness of this piece but aah well, Rem sent me this version of When Stars Go Blue, and I just wrote ahead with a smile. It's alright if you felt a little lost... This post was a little cuckoo in the head, and even more in the heart :) Much loving, Nil. 

If irony were a hint, I'd be in trouble.

It's been a strange night, not a quiet one in particular, not a silent night. A usual night, with every prerequisite element of normalcy. Except an epiphany; 


If irony were a hint, I'd be in trouble. 


What do you do when a realization of sort awaits you, like a person walking quietly to your door and is about to knock; what do you do when that realization is something you'd want to be hit with later, in future, in good time and when you're a few more days older?
That realization's waiting outside, it's presence has been realized by you, for you can see the hovering shadow of its dense existence outside the door of your acceptance. 
You've had thousands of people nudge you, to think, to consider; some even spelled it out for you-- but you let it go. Why? Because the subject of that realization had dismissed its rationality. It's proof. It's...being.
And you let it go, you asked a valid fact to scoot away, so life would be easy and pleasant for the two of you, without troublesome shenanigans and you'd still be at that safe harbor, with nothing to risk, and everything gained. Almost, every thing gained.


Now, what do you do.....when the very subject of that realization nudges you to rewind and realize in the past, but doesn't ask you to alter the present and yet promises a future?


What do you do, when the only answer whispered through that door is simple; What is meant to be, will be...
While somebody, is waiting, beyond that door?

-Nil. 

The right glass.

This post has been published by me as a part of IBL; the Battle of Blogs, sponsored by WriteupCafe.com. Join us at our official website and facebook page.www.indianbloggersleague.com
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The right glass.

Since the past eighteen hours, all I can see in front of my eyes is a man turning away from the jail bars in front of me and walking away, and he’s been walking away the whole night, and I’ve been watching him leave.

*************************************************************************************************

Frenchmen are often celebrated for their impeccable taste in wine, and their sensitivity towards every shape and size of glasses that is made for every taste and brand of liquor. 
Well, Cyril Galtia was a sorry exception, however a perfectly happy one. He had the eyes, nose and nails of a Frenchman. But his body had a tan of the tropics and his soul thrived in a prideful summer house tucked away in Pali Hill, Mumbai; where the man fled to after a mid-life crisis that didn’t promise revelations of any worth.

Cyril Galtia was my husband.

Like most romances, ours was ordinary. And like most couples, we thought it was extraordinary. We lived in that very house in Pali Hill, a house that was a little too immodestly huge for the two of us, the limp gardener, and the cook with a fat bronze wedding ring.

For four people, we were a loud bunch. My husband and I were a little embarrassingly clamorous about our conversations and lord save the neighbours on the occasion of an argument. Our gardener was a pessimist who limped around the house more than the garden, muttering grunts about his Polio stricken childhood and his evil step mother. And our cook, well he was a potbellied jolly man who obsessed over the precision of the things around the house more than the spices in the cooker.

Often our friends would come over for drinks, and jokes about our marriage would fly around the lounge. About how in the world did a mid-life crisis stricken Frenchman fall in love with an Indian woman half his age, about how all an old lad like him needed was a coquette like me, and how I’d run away with all his money someday once his arms aren’t strong enough and his wrinkles older than the day before. It was controversy among his friends initially; eventually it was all in good humour. His parents were long dead, and he had a sister who was leading a blissful life of a hippie in New Delhi.

Cyril was a loud Indian man stuck in the body and with the surname of a Frenchman. He ate more spices than my stomach could ever hold and he licked every end of his fingers only after which would his meal be complete and would he be content. 

I remember this one particular night during one of our weekend get together, I saw Cyril sip on beer from a wine glass. I jibed at him in a friendly way about how the first and the last thing that was expected out of a man from Paris, such as himself, was to at least ensure the appropriate glass for his liquor, and his response came after a hiccup or two; “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The response was apparently a revolutionary one for it was the butt of every punch line for the next few parties and it had everybody rolling in fits of laughter, except our poor cook perhaps who broke accidentally broke a china dish in anger and almost barked at Cyril about the specificity of everything in life, and how it was just as much of a sin to have liquor from the wrong glass as it was to encourage blasphemy. All our senses were a few drinks behind, so the cook was shouted at rudely and he scoot away into the kitchen, left alone to entertain his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder baggage! 

Perhaps it is because we had such an ordinary life that everything seems like a blur, and just one night comes to my mind when I think about Cyril. April 15^th, was it. It was another of those weekend parties at our house, and it was a particularly drunk night. Cyril was annoyed at the gardener all day for he had ruined the rug from Kashmir in the corner most room by leaving mud stains on it. Work wasn’t all that great either; he had lost a client to another agent.

It was about 8 in the evening when he asked me to get him a drink, to perk up his mood since the guests started coming in. I was a little agitated due to a heated argument we had earlier during the day (and so were the neighbours), so when the cook handed me Cyril’s glass of red wine, it almost slipped. Another stain would have made its way on another Kashmiri rug had I not grabbed the lower end of the glass firmly, I had thought; relieved.
I took Cyril’s drink to him and eventually, he slipped his fingers into mine. We walked around the lounge joining our friends in-between conversations and puns when I noticed a rather unusual guest; It was Mr.Bomfry from two blocks away who was a regular recipient of our chain email invites for the get-togethers, however he chose to never come and wasn’t quite a man in our grid. Cyril and I walked upto him and told him how kind it was for him to join us that evening and all he did was nod at us and the man went back to his sushi.


Other than that, the evening proceeded perfectly with Cyril sipping on beer from a wine glass for cheap thrills and I kept teasing him loudly yet again about how an inappropriate Frenchman like him shouldn’t be given any alcohol. So I didn’t find it too odd when Cyril vanished into our bedroom for over twenty minutes, however I did find it odd when I got a text from Cyril saying; "Bedrum, pliss”. He never misspelled words and most definitely hadn’t called me to the bedroom while the house was full of guests… nevertheless, I did find it rather romantic and I opened the bedroom door with a playful coquettish smile…

And that smile stayed, frozen.

Cyril lay staggered next to the bed, the right side of his head blood read and his left wrist slit with strange words scratched with glass on his still arm which held the broken end of a wine glass. 

Cyril was dead.

Eventually a friend walked in and found me sitting next to the dead body with cold eyes and the broken glass in my hand. Eventually, everybody found us.
The police was called, and suddenly from humorous jokes, I actually became the coquettish woman half his age who wanted to kill him and run away with his money. The broken end of the glass that was the source of the strange scribbles on his arm had strong finger prints of mine, only nobody knew that was because the glass had almost slipped from my hand earlier in the evening. And the scribbles only accentuated the allegations of my so-called deranged doing;

“YOO MUST DRINK FROM D RITE GLASS. BEER NOT FROM THIN GLASS CYRIL”

I had nothing to say. I was accused of being the obsessive wife who nagged about his habits, I was called a cheap money hungry woman who ran behind a man double her age for ulterior motives, apparently I had a lover tucked away somewhere, I was supposedly mentally sick with OCD… and all such allegations were crafted by our “friends” who got drunk every weekend at our house.

The police found my gold chain broken and lying a few meters away from Cyril’s body with hints of blood, they found a single earring and a fat ring which were found in the periphery of the body. 

The fingerprints were mine, the scratches on his arms were my words, only misspelled. And my shocked silence that went on for days didn’t help. I was deaf and dumb throughout my trial, I hadn’t spoken a word. I was sentenced to be locked away in jail for 13 years and I hadn’t spoken a word.

I hadn’t spoken a word until yesterday when my cook came to drop my tiffin and I noticed his ring finger holding the jail bars… it had a fair band of bare skin around a tanned hand, and I realized his fat bronze ring was gone. Only then did I remember the police finding a fat bronze ring from the room, that lay very close to Cyril’s dead body. When he saw me staring at his finger in shock while realization finally hit me, he said; 

“Cyril should have used the right glass, madam.”

And he turned around and walked away.

________________________________________________________________________

-Nil.