Pen pals and postcards.

For the first time in the last seven years did I skip an end-of-the-year post. Perhaps it's one of the first changes that 2015 decided to bring along, but hey, for those who are still listening- the happiest new year, my wonderful humans.
My old readers wouldn't be surprised to hear about my perpetual incapability of recalling the year that went by, but like each year- it left behind a feeling. 2014 was a year where I really brought my game on as far as competing with myself is concerned, it burned me out emotionally and physically but I feel like it straightened me out in ways that wouldn't have been possible in any other way. I had never realized the kind of distress love could bring, so there, that's one more thing I've seen- the realization that love has a side that could be immensely futile was perhaps the scariest realization of mine in the last 20 years, but I think I'm alright knowing that now.

2015 is going to be a year of aggressive amounts of getting work done. Yes, it's the year to be ridiculously productive. It's the year where I'm going to push myself to start laughing my ass off on nonsense again, of going on multiple breakfasts to my favorite cafe and read or doodle for hours. I think I sort of lost that 'spunk' somewhere. I think I lost it in trying to find it in other people, or even some times believing that others will induce that magic in me at some point. Mistakes. A whole lot of Berlin-Artparasites and long nights of Bukowski did me well, for they reminded me of the importance of being ridiculous. So basically this winter has too many solo escapades around the city as soon as my Uni applications are done (if I survive them, that is).

From the 2015 Letter Project :)

I've started this new project of sort for 2015. I've been typing letters on my typewriter and sending them out to people, just because. I feel like the lost art of letter writing is a horrible loss, and if sending out a letter to someone nudges them to start writing them once again- it's definitely worth the shot. So I have a long list of recipients and I'm terribly excited about this! If everything works out alright, I may even extend this project to you fantastic readers. I thrive for wonderful things like pen pals and postcards, so this year is about reviving those old habits.

How have you all been? Tell me about your year and plans that drive you. I wish you all the most wonderful year, go badshit crazy and make this the most memorable 12 months that change you, that make you grow and make you thrive. It's a wonderful life, and that's a cliche for a reason.

To those of you who emailed me wondering if I'm still alive- you guys are the best. I'll get back to you all real soon. Go make wonderful things happen for yourself, keep the happy vibes alright? :)

All my love,
Nil.

(P.s- fiction coming up, realy sooooooon.)

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.

_________________________________________________________

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

Dear Blogger,

I think Blogger is the easiest way to really see what and who you've turned into from what you were. It's the easiest way of forgetting people you met here and meeting people you never knew.
I have been blogging for the last seven years. That's a big number for me because youth often underestimates the potentiality of big numbers. The concept of 'long run' is often not so long and sometimes arrogantly short sighted.

In the last seven years of blogging, I remember deleting just one post in 2009. Apart from that, whatever I wrote was as good as set on stone because irrespective of the horrible grammar and the strange SMS language that was a fad once, I had no regrets about the person I used to be. In fact, it used to be amusing and at some level comforting. I was a good kid, and I think I managed to grow into a decent-ish human being. But a few days back I did delete a whole lot of posts from the oldest of chests on this blog (2008). I reverted them back to drafts; not because I was embarrassed by what a ridiculously hyper, unabashedly emotional teenager I was. I deleted those posts because I couldn't relate to them anymore. Perhaps sudden minutes of retrospect dab figments of epiphanies in you. Perhaps it was like that one fine day you wake up and decide to quit your job because you forgot why you started working in the first place.
It just had to be done.

You see, back when I wrote them, Blogger was an entirely different world. My list of Followers and Followings were this intimate circle where we trusted absolute strangers with our potent feelings about everything. Back then it was 'milestones' like the first day of my higher secondary schooling, or the longest spell of crush on a boy. For others it was family, work, and much bigger milestones. Some of these people became the kinds of friends who till date keep in touch and genuinely matter. I remember being the baby of the blogger circle.
It was absolutely beautiful how a bunch of URLs could mean so much to people who perhaps lived in different cities/ countries and yet knew overwhelmingly enough about each other.

But eventually over the years, everyone got busy. People moved. People moved on, too. A lot of the blogs I used to religiously follow are now not accessible anymore because they've either turned private or the last time they were updated was two or three years back.
I sure do miss those guys. They were good people and I hope they're all in good health.

I've had years like 2011 when I'd write so often that drafts over drafts piled on my dashboard, waiting to be published. I've had years like 2013 where I had so much to write that words failed me, and all I could manage was crawl up to 13 posts in a year. I've zoned out and zoned in, I've had painful spells of writers block and even worse spells of sheer laziness. But I kept coming back here. Because somehow I knew that somebody would be listening. And if it was a lucky day, somebody would be waiting.

 I have to admit, Blogger still surprises me. In waves of blue moons, once in a while I see old blogger friends leave a comment on a post when I least expect it. Even today, I bump into wonderful blogs of people I want to know better because their words make a lot of sense, they hit home. I'm thankful for such people sustaining the art and the need of writing. Some times I come so close to deleting this blog, but I think I've seen myself and others grow too much in this space to give it all away. Like I said, seven years is a big number for me.

So to all of you who are still writing, to all of you who stopped writing, and most importantly to all of you who never stopped reading- this is a sincere white flag for all of you, to let you know that our boat is still sailing and the ocean still looks just as beautiful. The air is thick with salt, but the words don't fail to come out in sneezes. :)

Cheers, Blogger. You've been a good listener.

All my loving,
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. 

_____________________________________________________________________

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.

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.

__________________________________________________________________________

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.
______________________________________________________________________

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. 

Eve of 19.

My 18th year was going to end with the end of this blog, because I firmly believed that all good things came to an end. And it was best that way, for it left you with the prime of every feeling, and not the remnants of those feelings fading away.
But a rather wise friend convinced me otherwise. And perhaps, she's right. Because I was holding on to this blog for the same reason, all this while; it's the one constant proof of my life to have never waited for all the happiness and chaos. It just went on, and you all saw, along with me. And perhaps, that's what gives us all hope to realize everything passes; every day, no matter how downtrodden or euphoric it may be... passes. And you live through it, don't you? In fact, you cherish most of it. You not only cherish, but you goddamn love most of it. And the bits that you'd rather not say... pass. And you grow, because each and every emotion, each and every thought, each and every blink, and each and every broken smile pealed another layer off you. It revealed some more of you, to the world, but most importantly; you saw yourself even clearer, you were just that much stronger, standing tall.

You ought to unfurl. You ought to wither away. Because only then, would you have gasped for some air, and only then.. would you have breathed.

Here end the first 18 years of my life, and I'm breathing because I'm on my own, and I'm good.
Year 18, you were the longest and the most entwined road I could ever choose. But I'm glad you happened, because you spelled one thing out for me, for sure; that one phase of my life is over, and the one that's about to come will be that much crooked. And I better twist and turn along, to make myself exactly what I want to be made of. I'm glad you happened, because you spelled out disappointments in a way that no other year has ever, for which I'm ready to appreciate every bit of happiness that decides to show up.

It's important to be happy, it's important to be happier, and it's important to be happiest; but what is absolutely crucial, is to be happy. :)

Happy birthday, to me.
I hope I get a New York cheesecake.

-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. 
________________________________________________________________________

First proper piece of the summer, written in a strange strange mood. There y'go. Awaiting your feedback :)
Much loving,
Nil. 

Paperplanes of May.

Every year has a particular month that changes how your life has been for a period of time; let's just say that has been the reason for my absence. I don't know how often will I be around now, this summer is going to be a little more of my-space-bubble oriented, but I'll try to keep you guys posted on the happenings of ole Nil's life.

My love for pictures and summer tones be back. The camera is travelling all around in my big white bag, despite the rude heat making life difficult. My fancy phone is away at the repair shop. Thanks to my perfectly normal clumsy self, the screen of that perfectly maintained phone is now shattered. I'm using a phone as good as rock, and as last season as calling glares; "goggles".
But that's fine. There are no facilities except calling and texting, so I'm good. It's done a brilliant job at keeping me away from the human population as such, and helped secrete some serious thought process and ideas from my lazy brain that was sleeping thinking it was still winter. So it's going to be a summer of 8tracks.com, pulling every mote of thought out of my head and working on a fiction project I've decided on, and a whole lot of ice tea and mojitos. Sounds like a plan my alter ego had been craving for. Little boxes of a lot of space is going to be the mood, for this summer. And a whole lot of summer-y pictures. So until the fiction project takes a stand on paper, I'll post them pictures here and keep you entertained.
No promises, though.

Thank you SO much for all the support in the last post. This safe haven of mine breathes because of you guys, who save it from soiling away. So stay tuned. Nil can never really shut up, can she?
And a humongous Thank You to the lovely bloggers who thought of my blog being worthy of awards. I've added them to my hall of cyber fame- y'all are so kind. (:

Until I catch them paper planes of May, open them up, write on the papers and send them back to you, enjoy the obnoxiously immodest heat. Summer is bringing it on.

Muchos of love and all that jazz,
-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.

On the 366th day.

To the 366th day of 2012,

you're the only gap, the only thin line between what happened in the last 8760 hours, and what will happen in the next 8760 hours. You're the only manifestation of cognizance and expectation, now. You're the only source of remembering myself from yesterday and waiting for myself, tomorrow. You overwhelm me, a little. You overwhelm me because you're the only day of the year that makes me feel forgetful, inevitably; every year. I struggle to remember the little details that never seemed little enough at the time of being, and yet they flutter away to a very forgotten space of my consciousness today. The only difference is perhaps... that usually, I come around to remembering. Except, this year; I don't.

Apart from the obvious, this year feels like the kind I'd want to forget with coercion, and yet remember with all my heart and soul. This year started with a note of the perfect new year, however the 'perfect' did hit its ocean bed, not just once, but many a times. But then again, this year reached it's peaks too. This year pushed me just a little more to realize myself a little more, this year made me lose out on people and eventually find them by the end of it. They weren't lost, after all. Close enough, but not enough.
This year bought in people; oh yes, there were new faces. Blessed be the coincidence (or not),  but those faces were needed terribly in my hour count. Thank you, for walking in.

I wouldn't want to be unfair. Every year has its best hair days too, so did this one. This year's been one of the biggest milestones to achieving what I'd set out for; this year was me at my headstrong best. This year had me wandering, and yet not being lost. This year had me lost, and yet willing to wander some more. I don't want to mention each and every memory this time, like I usually do every year; simply because a certain primary element of those memories was missing most of the year. But then again, maybe next year's new year entourage post will have me quoting more memories than ever. But what matters is the feeling I have within me, right now. This year has tested me. It's seen me at my fragile best, it's seen me at my strongest. Things fell apart this year; I walked on to newer things, this year.

So there, 2012. On the 366th day of you, this is me still smiling for you. You had to happen. You needed to happen. You needed to happen just so I realized a few; very few but indispensable epiphanies that were knocking on my door, for a year now. You had to happen. You just had to.

Happy new year, World.


-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. 

Slow down you crazy child.

And I'm finally home, ultimately crawled back to my favorite safe haven to tell you stories about the happenings around the life of yours truly.
HELLO, World! It's been a while we spoke, have I missed out on much? I've been getting all the lovely post updates from y'all, no worries, I shall bombard all of you over the week =)

Alright, so the past month has been QUICK alright. I can't even figure when it came and where is went, but it sure as hell was god darn exhausting and pretty much on the awesome side of the scale. We first had inhuman hours of theater practice for this huge ass competition, add in college freshers which was Pickles and my FIRST performance in college, and might I add, it was legendary; to say the least =D
And there were multiple chill scenes, one of the best being a random chill at Majnu Ka Tilla with the crazy buggers (if you haven't been, GO. Now. Shoooooo.) Oh, in the span of which Vanta, our beloved Saucy Jane managed to cook some dengue love within her. ^.^

Other than that, I had Durga Puja happiness all of last week. It's always the one time of the year when I feel like I'm on a sugar OD, it was awesome, a few people were missing, but hey, you can't have the cake and eat it too.
 (Or can you?... TA DA DA DAAAAAA!) OK, sorry. Nobody except my Nerd Boy gets the joke :*
 But yep. Pujo was super chilled out as always, and the crown was the Ashtami Aarti, Dhunochi naach (Go GOOGLE, people with a frown.) Yep, that's me being badass with the dhuno ------->
That was the highest point of Pujo, the crazy beats of the dhaki and us lost, completely in some other zone, dancing away to glory.
MAN. What a feeling.

And for all of you who haven't been lucky this year to see how gorgeous the idols looked, here's one picture for y'all. Mind you, this one's from Pishki's album, so ladies and gentlemen, Piyush Mukherjee Photography!

Beautiful, innit? =)

And now, all that another year's Pujo has come to an end and all the craziness is over, I have to face the music. Internals coming up this week and I do not know the first word of my readings.
So hey, good times ahead :|
Anyhoo, that's all for now readers. I shall now go, grumble for a bit and finally pull my imaginary socks up and get crackiiiin' with some Sociology of India.
Until then, enjoy the quiet winter chills that have began, finally. Cooooold evenings with coffee, sweaters and mufflers, coming right up :D

Good night, World.
Much lovin'
-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. 

________________________________________________________________

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.)