We are story tellers, all of us!

We are weavers of fables that we tell ourselves. We have our monsters slayed, beasts tricked and the wise crows humbling the beautiful swans. We are great story tellers, for without a coherent tale what would our streams of desires and experience amount to. A cacophony of beastly calls without a tale leading to a moral? We are all Aesops! Wise beastly men of tall tales.

Our journeys are imagined strings that pierce the hearts of experiences and seek to attribute plots, sub-plots, characterization. A conversation between a Hindustani and an old Turkish butcher gets M.K.Gandi and M.K.Ataturk woven into a common fabric of freedom! Both M.Ks! One could never have thought of ends justifying the means and the other dreamed of freedom with the courage of a indefatigable warrior. Yet, the conversation was a concerto of mutual admiration of two great dissimilar leaders conducted on the same staff line by a Turk butcher and a Kashmiri Pandit.

Our friendships, love affairs are attempts to make sense of the sweaty palms, pounding chests and the burn of dry lips. Everything happens seemingly in the accidents of providence, yet we seek to thread them into our pet narratives. He is my true love! She, whose waxed arm I held at the small of the elbow, is my best friend for ever. The one! who wore those over sized ear rings and the oxblood lipstick, is my bridge across arrhythmic beats. We tell these stories to ourselves. We craft meaning across events that happened, we write, direct and produce our own flash-back movies!

We are inventors of new labels too, it would be impossible to express that one special pounding of the heart, that irresistible desire to wear that white dress, that urge to make a deliberate mistake while playing ones part in a Duet. How does one explain that interlocking of hands and holding them tight in the belief that the intents and feelings would jump across the embracing lines of palms. The finger tips tracing the prints of each other as if to take a tactile print that will never fade. What would one call it? Friendship, love? We invent words, we are good at word-smithy, forever dissatisfied with the limited nuances of our language. It feels like a compromise to say that she is my love or he is my friend! It feels like a betrayal.

We are artists to the core, story tellers, sculptors, painters and poets too, but most importantly, we are story tellers. We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the string of experiences that otherwise are pointless acts of destiny, chaos or just pure chance. We become our own gods, our own creators of meaning. We all are word smiths, bead-thread weavers and bards!

A Goodbye to you? Never!

Rahul P ne likha tha!

The city lights are smeared across my windows. Not a single straight line leads anywhere. I feel trapped, a monster wind picks up a refrain, my home creaks and groans. It is the shapeless grip of the cold wind and a bobbing narcissus. I think of the past weeks, my return to life and all the mechanizations of the routine. Some lessons were learnt hard, especially those, that were inked in red thin lines by plastic tubes tethered to a cold steel stand.

Besides lessons in scarlet, I took lessons in waging war. I felt a hand clasped in mine, our finger webbings slashing each other, the tip of our fingers clawing at each other’s roots, drawing and testing each other at the same time. Seemed like a battle was imminent or perhaps we will never let go of each other’s hands. Battle!

There are a million reasons to justify death, yet there is only one way to justify life: hope! It was lost that day as you let go off my hand, you turned away, first arching your shoulder to the center of my being and then turning the gaze to the far away lights. It tugged me into a tangled skein, the monsters are howling and baying for my soul. I must be careful today.

It is an adventure to be uprooted and get transplanted to an alien soil. I carried your fragrance on cold hands that once played duets and left a part of my roots back with you. Like a bulb of a rare flower, it shall spring once again when the warmth of your smile awakens it from its dreary slumber. Friends, lovers, partners, acquaintances, such labels are the steps in the ladder laid across the chasm of our beings. We will step on each one but delve on none. For each step will keep us away from each other.

What are we to each other, the term hasn’t been invented yet, we’ll invent it! The rain has stopped and there are a few well-lit streets leading from the floor of my room towards the ceiling.

There! 

When I woke up, there was only one word I uttered, and it was your name. The male nurse asked me in a hoarse voice the meaning of the word! I could smile feebly as amusing as it was. I asked him to text you to not worry. I could feel the pounding in my skull as if there was a feeling that had grown wings and sought to fly away. It was a similar night as today.

The day they let me go home, which was a hotel room, I was reluctant. The hospital was new home, a refuge from all the misery of steps that I had tripped on. From ladders to snakes and all the way back. Hospital, even with its smell of death, was home. A refuge from the world without you. Into formaldehyde.

Work colleagues came and asked about my welfare. It is amusing when your tribe looks at a hurt member. It mirrors the fears of their own vulnerabilities. I was all smiley and good cheer. There is a cold iron in my soul.

I had battled everything from a lost home to the loss of dear friends, family members. I have my share of scars from starvation to unfinished poetry. Your turning away was not something that could touch me, so I thought. The howling wind can do nothing to my home of tampered glass and metal. It rages on like a faraway song that I can hear but can’t make out the words of.

Week later I was told I will lose my walk first, then balance and then one by one my body will twist into a confounded asymmetry. I could believe them, eventually we all resemble our thoughts and I have always lacked the balance. A certain madness has always been there in my being, now I will take it in my stride too!

Few months back I told you, this flight is going to go through a lot of turbulence, stay tight with me. Very first shake loosened our foundations and you left me in a heap. I guess I will pick some pieces and eye them longingly. Attaching a certain nostalgia with each amulet and every scar. I guess I shall live. For there is only one way to live: seeking Hope amidst smeared lights on my window.