26th November; the year 2008

“We are resilient by force… not by choice.”

So stop pushing it. Stop hitting the panic button every few months just to see how long it takes for us to come back and pretend like nothing is wrong. What is this going to get you? Peace? Freedom? World domination?

Unlike the rest of the furious people I know, I do not blame the whole race for what these few imbeciles are doing. But there was something in me that was just boiling up. How many people got out of work late and went to the pub for a drink and to relax, just to find that there were mad-hatters just firing for fuck-sake at anything that moved? How many got out of home and didn’t return. I wont repeat these questions for the fear of sounding like im whining about the same thing as everyone.
It is like a never-ending nightmare. I haven’t understood yet why some people are even allowed to be called journalists while their minds are just so… what’s the word… empty! A phone conversation between the terrorist and a dumb reporter was aired on this one channel. Now let me explain why dumb. A normal human being knows that when someone is committing a horrendous act like this, he is surely at the end of his nerves already. This reporter, finds the time to have casual chat with the terrorist, asking him his educational background and which company he last worked for. Then he goes on to ask how many terrorists are there all around the city, and after the terrorist already warns him about asking stupid questions and requests him politely not to underestimate his intelligence, the reporter ignores the statement and asks him the same question again. Then on changing the channel, I find that the next channel found some time to put all the clips of dead people lying around the Victoria Terminus platform floor, clips of people crying and fire catching the Taj hotel dome, and along with these clips is some beautiful background music. I mean, the music helped me REALLY FEEEL the enormity of the situation. I was ignorant before that amazing music, ignorant about how well News channels manipulate blood-shed to raise TRP. There were warnings sent out to all the news persons standing-by the Trident. Instructions were clear; no information was to be given over the news about what the officials were doing. Yet Barkha Datt was telling us, “I’m not allowed to tell you what exactly is going on because there are television sets in the hotels, but I can tell you that the navy force and the army are now entering the building.” Enough information given already!

I prayed last night for all this to stop. I know that isn’t going to help to put the fires out. But I wont lie. I found myself crying for all these people. I sit here at work, unable to move out because my mom is too scared about how ill get home. Unable to vent because everyone is in this same boat as me. But this boat wont sink soon. Its had holes hammered through it so many times already. Someone fixes the leak and stops it. But its scarier this time. Earlier, I spoke about the call between the terrorist and the reporter,and I must say, it freaked me out. He made me angry and scared. Angry because he said he was doing all this in the name of god, that god said in the scriptures that if you kill people in the name of your religion, to acquire peace, you will attain glory in heaven. But he is doing this to get what he wants, and peace is not on the top of his ferist. I may not be adequately aware of what the book says but certainly, GOD didn’t say kill innocent people! Don’t make us the victims of your lack wisdom in interpreting the scriptures. You shot the GM’s wife and 3 children! What purpose did that serve? Didn’t you have the least bit of conscience pricking you while you did that? And I felt scared for the one line he used. And as clichéd as his statement may be, it made my body cold for just a second when he said, “this is just the beginning, you just wait and watch the show.”

Can it be true that we are facing the worst attack at our country’s Economic capital has ever seen? This too just when the market was beginning to improve.

But as I said in the first line of my grumble, we will bounce back soon.

And I pray I'm right...

+

Words spoken out of lust

Lies told to gain her trust

Tears he shed to betray.

A hug has lost its meaning

A kiss has lost its feeling

Love has killed hope

Around her neck, like a tight rope…

All the times she fell

All the times she believed

All the times they made love

Such regret like no one else

Can feel for the past

How much does one need to wish

To be able to wipe the slate clean…

Close to Perfect

I noticed you watch me sleep,
All cuddled up last night...
I heard you whisper in my ear,
But you didnt see me smile
cos i was turned the other way..
and then felt you hold me tight...
You pulled me near...
Cos you knew i was cold
I loved the way you slipped your hand around
and fitted it perfectly with mine...
You tousled my hair...
I found the opportunity I was looking for...
I shifted in my sleep and turned to face you
You were lying down right beside me...
it was perfect...
just the right distance...
T'was None
Even though your lips didnt touch mine
and my eyes were closed...
i could feel them...
And like the story my mom once read me,
You kissed your princess
and woke her from her deep slumber...
And as our eyes met,
We both knew...
No moment could get an more perfect
Than this...


Those next few minutes,
till we finally held each other and slept,
those minutes will last a lifetime...

Coffee does this to me?

Its truly undeniable when inspiration hits you that you need to put it down so that months later you look at it and say to yourself, "wow, I'm really deep!" Let me not mislead you into thinking that this piece will be one of great inspiration or will make basic sense to the common man who is unaware of the miracle that is ME. This being the time where I would ideally need to sit with my eyes stuck onto nothing else but my books, I find it necessary to do everything that I generally would find too much effort to do at normal times. But truly, after 20 cups of real strong amazing Black freshly brewed coffee (All Hail Maxwell House!), I wouldn't dare say I am myself. Or rather I would say I have just multiplied what I orignally am - the natural born disaster - into a 100.

Staying awake through most of the time that mere mortals call "night", my biological clock has gone bonkers. I wake to find that I indeed have no idea what day it really is! I have had a divine intervention which told me a few hours back that it is Saturday morning and I have an examination in the next 48 hours. Guessing you will take it for granted that I am still unsure of what examination I am to give on that fateful day.

Hours earlier I was suddenly aware that I had been asleep over my "educational notes" and they were suddenly damaged with my drool. Ten minutes of sleep and I already had enough drool to fill my coffee mug! Let me add that on normal instances I do NOT drool and that this poor child should not be judged especially when she is truly making an effort to look like she is studying. Come on, give the girl a break! I woke with a fright that filled my senses and told me that I am destined to fail these examinations. This fear that could eventually scare me into taking up my books again, turned out to be very short lived. But I pulled myself up and ran into the kitchen, put on the coffee maker and brewed enough coffee to serve the army and keep them up for days! I downed the coffee, filling my mug thrice and not stopping for a minute to allow the digestion process to take place. I may add that my feeling of nostalgia while drinking from a mug which bore my college emblem, gifted to me for god-in-heaven-knows why, eventually mixed up with the feeling of uneasiness from indigestion and soon I could not tell one from the other.

So after sitting myself down for a while in order to feel better, I realize that the coffee is taking effect and I want to do more things than my body will allow me to. That can explain the speed at which I am now typing.

I would at this point love to go into the intricacies of my love life or rather the deterioration of it. But I will save that for another piece which I have typed out as a draft and will choose to publish when I myself have understood the true complexities of the matter. As for now its just a mere mixture of questions.

Getting back to my present scenario, I finally take up my notes, sit them down on the table and start reading. This man, Mr. Hemant Kombrabail, amazes me. The name is not even half of what the man is in real terms. He is lunacy personified. Pants pulled high above the lungs, belt reaching all the way to the back with a fake Armani logo on the buckle, constant unchanging smile that gives you an eerie feeling and send chills down your spine. I have to confess that while I was his subject representative the previous semester, I did suck up to him by calling him and sweet talking him into changing the submission dates, but at no point did I mean it when I told him in the mornings that he was looking really fit. THAT, was to get the attendance I so clearly did deserve. So what if i was an hour late, I did turn up right? Lets get our priorities straight here! But this man, he surely has spent so much time into putting so much un-needed bulls**t into these notes, which will explain why he nearly pounced on one of the nerds in my class because he thought the little boy was stealing his work! Direct Marketing is such a simple concept. Yet, our university has found it necessary to create a whole subject on the matter. And since the concept is naturally simple, the problem that arises is that matter for the subject would be far too less. Hence, we have concepts like Customer Relations Management expanded into a whole chapter with 10 pages! This man, is the only one who has notes on this subject and hence has created a certain monopoly, which in-turn makes me want to hate him more. His words are way to vague on each matter. And being used to having a minimum of 5 different sets of matter on each subject other than this, I find myself lost in the 150 pages of bulls**t he has written.

Now, I could blame our great college for having hired professors who generally disappear between the most crucial year (note: The main reason we have to bear with Kombi for another semester) because they want to climb coconut trees down in the south of our country. I would rather blame the college for something more important like treating our department as alien, making us pay fines for hugging in the corridors (We do not support lesbianism!), or stopping us from visiting the Jhunka Bhakar across the street from college (Clear of the 50metre rule) to have our morning cuppa chai and regular 5 ciggrates along with it. The walking candle-stick (a.k.a Mascy) has this concept, you are damaging your system, polluting the minds of on-lookers along with the air around the college. Our concept, you move the chai-walla, the ciggie guy moves with him, and we follow them! Simple! Seriously, years has it been since this has been happening and suddenly this crazy implementation of calling parents if the child is found smoking OUTSIDE college premises? You have no say in the matter once we have stepped out of your damned gates! There is a line you just cant cross! And lets get real, you dont really give a damn about our health, its the "reputation" you are trying to hold up. You forget that we have a reputation of doing what we want to do no matter what.

Leaving that aside for now, lets look at the track record of this professor who occasionally disappears at her own free will. Being one of the permanent faculty, I find it unnerving whern she isnt around to teach us in what we call our "crucial" year. But the fault is our own, we got fooled by her cover up of being nice to us. This way she ensured that if we got her kicked out, we would be on a guilt trip 'cos she is the only part of the faculty who helped us when we were in deep s**t. Yeah, the only prof who took it well from Leroy when he said that she was often not really there. Also when he would confirm at the end of the class if she was going to turn up the next morning or not, requesting her to tell him now saving him the trouble of waking too early and venturing on the jouney from his home (the college hostel) till the class! Sport is the word. And the best thing is that she had the most amazing comebacks. The one line that always took the prize - "40 marks lie in my hands". I do miss the time she would talk to us with her eyes shut, trying to rememeber what she was supposed to say to us. Also the days when she would walk in, tell us that she wasn't in the mood, take attendance, and walk out. Remember so clearly the many times she would get confused as to which subject she was teaching!

Seriously, all the b***hy-ness is coming out as a cover up for the sense of loss that I feel ever since Tuesday when I walked out of college realizing that after 5 long years of torturous travelling and incipid canteen food along with unequivocally detestable treatment from teachers, I truly am going to miss the times spent within those walls. The crushes, boyfriends, flings, girl-fights, tears, laughs, naps in the large library and make-out sessions in the staircases near the priest-quarters...

Even while the phrase is degenerating to cliché in ordinary public use after being widely introcuded by Bryan Adams years back... I have to say this, These are the best days of my life!

Lost Again

I fall a thousand times
before i wake again.
Before i realise
that i should be the one
to stop the spinning,
im dizzy and nauseaous
and falling again.

"Has to stop..has to..."

i keep telling myself...
I feel my deepest fear overcome me again.
Brings back the child that i resemble.
A small scratch, and im shattered.
The dark is where i choose to dwell.
I do not fear what i cannot see,
Its what stands in front of me...
that im am afraid of.
My reality.

Hey little girl....

a cold heart
trying desperately to love
turns to a rose and it withers
looks to the blue sky and it rains.
Wat does one need to do in order to be loved
Change everything that was once beautiful in her
What must she do to keep the one she loves
Become his image of perfection?
Is love really what they say it is?
Birds and the bees, flowers and the trees…
Don’t look at me like that!
How could I know of love when ive never “loved”

You don’t want to love darling
Its nothing but pain
Its heart break at every corner
Disappointment at every turn
Once youre stuck
You cant get out of it
Cos you “love” them and you cant hurt them
But they can hurt you
Take your heart and ego and crush it under their feet
Tell you its for your own good
“im making you strong” is the excuse…
Take your beauty and win hearts with it
Don’t ever stumble though
Cos he will lie
He will cheat
He will shatter dreams
He will kill your esteem

Oh but love is beauty
It is the one thing people search for years and don’t find
And the one that keeps people together for years…

And you will never find out
Why those people are still in that “love”
Maybe it is because its too late
So my pretty, don’t make that mistake
The thorn on the rose will prick you
And the clouds will give you false hopes
Just like he will….

Reach for me

You feel all alone reach for me
You should know as you're waiting helplessly
Somebody's here to hold you while you dream
You feel all alone reach for me

You wake up to another day of being by yourself
Sitting and wondering why you're here without someone else
You've cried and cried so many times there's no more tears
You've tried and tried to talk it out but no one hears

You'll make it through another night of lying there alone
Eyes wide open thinking that all of your love is gone
Repeating every single word she said was true
Remembering a time when all of it was new

Deep down, you heal
This time, is so real

Still have the pictures that remind you of the happiness
They try to fill the part of you that's left with emptiness
I know what hopelessness and pain inside can do
I try imagining that it was me and you

You should know as you're waiting helplessly
Somebody's here to hold you while you dream

-Lyrics to a song by Katie Marie

Fall in Love too Fast

I fall in love too fast, and like a moth drawn to the flame
No light that burns so bright can last, it always ends the same
I told myself this time, this time I'll take it slow
Though I still believe, ooh that my heart should know

If anyone pays the price, I do
If anyone made it worth the cost I paid this time, it's you
Oh but this loneliness is proof
Though I keep trying to deny the truth

I know you're not the one I should be waiting for
It's hard to realize, it's time to close the door
It's taken me a while to see what any fool would know
I fall in love too fast, but let go too slow

I'm standing in the rain, I see my reflection in the glass
I see the one to blame, ooh never learning from the past

I know you're not the one I should be waiting for
But it's too hard to realize, it's time to close the door


-Lyrics to a song by Katie Marie

Hurt

Hate the pressure,
Hate the pain,
Hate the way you say
You want me back again...
Your words, your deeds,
Cause me to want to not
ever believe you were once one I loved...!
Said I was a child,
Well im done with my game,
time to stack you up in the closet
and forget I ever played...
Said I was a loser,
Well look who lost!
Im sitting here laughing
while you shed a river...

Here With me

You turned around to me,
The silence in the stairway allowed us
the sound of a tear dropping to the floor...
One among the million more to come.
You took me into your arms calmly,
I wondered why you were quiet instead of me,
I broke your heart in the end,
even though you became all I ever wanted you to be.
My tears soak into the new red shirt you bought months back,
you wanted to look special for today,
our anniversary,
you remembered me saying i loved you in red.
You were so composed while i sobbed,
Neither of us knew what was to happen
once you sat in your car and drove away for the last time.
The way you held my waist and pushed back
the hair from my face and said,
"Things are going to be okay for me, so just take care of yourself, Superstar."
You always called me that
and it made me smile a thousand times before.
But this time it made me cry more.
Why dont I love you anymore?
Why am i so selfish for wanting you to stick around,
be the shoulder when i cried?
You kissed my cheek and told me not to cry,
while a tear ran down your own cheek...
"I'll be fine!" you said, my line...
The one i used, when i wasnt sure if i was going to be ok or not.
You said you are going to take you away from me,
I know I'll miss you, but dont know what I can do about it,
I know I'll be alone when you shut your doors,
No one will get close to me like you did.
The last image I have of you, getting into your car and saying,
"I'll always look at this seat beside me,
and pretend you are here again,
telling me a million times that you love me,
and this time I swear i wont tell youto shut it.
I'll always love you my baby,
But as much as you look,
you will never find me,
Princess Anastasia..."

- May 8th 2007 -

Love?

I stare at their faces,
Across the dining table...
I wonder if they know how I feel
If they understand how much it means
For me to know that they love me.
I pick up a tissue, reach out for her face
Need to wipe the little mustard off her chin
And she smacks my hand…
“What the hell are you doing?
Mind your own business!”
Oh, she doesn’t like that…
“I’m sorry darling”
I smile at her sister,
She rolls her eyes at me…

I’m scanning pictures
Of when they were asleep in my arms
Cuddling beside me to stay warm
I wonder where that love is gone…
Wonder if I lost it through my own actions
I sneak into their room…
Get under her blanket
And play with her hair
I kiss her forehead and hold her tight…
She stirs a bit and hugs me back
I whisper “I love you baby”
And I kiss her again
I climb up to the higher bunker
And look at the other one
Touch her cheeks and kiss them…
Why cant I do this when they are in front of me
Why do they hate me so much
Why do they not see how much I love them
Why do they dislike my touch

I wish I could yell at them and tell them I love them
I wish I could win their respect
I wish they could love me
I wish they could love me
I wish they could love me
My little twin beauties

- December 2007 -

Late

I always keep spilling,
Overflowing onto the floor.
The endless pitter patter of my tears
Cause the people I love to sigh
"Not again! All she does is whine"

Why doesn't she love me? I wonder,
Why doesn't he understand?
Why do they flinch when I just wanna hold them, love them?
Why didn't he just cut the lies when he could?
Is it really so difficult to just be normal,
When I am truly as crystal as it gets?
Is it really that tough to give someone everything
And not expect them to take advantage?
All they keep telling me is that there is
Something the matter with me…
You are a child…
You are irresponsible…

You are a failure!







I scream and run
Run out into the open
Across the busy road
A car hits me
I crash onto the floor
Lifeless…
And it was done, in a matter of seconds
Im lost…








And all you had was those last words
To say to me
"You will never learn. You drive us up the wall,
You were the biggest mistake of our lives"
Would you then stare at my calm lifeless body,
Touch my face that would never glow again
Hold my hand not wanting to let go
Wishing you had one last moment
To savor the times I told you I loved you?
To tell me you loved me too,
Not through gifts and clothes,
Not by taking me to dinner
But by holding me in your arms
And saying three simple words,
And ending it with a warm kiss on my forehead

An "I love you" makes the difference…
But now, the lid is shut forever,
Lost are all the times you didn't realize

And as you wish I was by your side to wipe your tears,
And hug you as I always did…
They put me into the ground
Baby you have lost me forever…
My sweet little babies, I will always love you…
Mommy… miss me please...
I am gone…

- December 2007 -

After a While

After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean possession
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your roads today
because tomorrows ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn...

Its truly sad how time teaches what you really need to know... too late though. To look into the eyes of someone you once loved and adored and see that he is finally ready to put everything else aside him and accept every bit of you, every flaw, every tantrum. To then realise that he isnt the one you want to be with, that you no longer feel that same way about him. But why are we still unable to let go? Insecurity? Fear of loneliness?
Holding his hand, wrapping it slowly around your shoulders just to feel a little more protected, looking into his eyes and telling him what you are feeling and how troubled you are... just because he will listen.
No longer a belief in love... a cringe in my stomach when i hear the word, a need to stay away from the opposite sex. Not knowing where you belong, whether getting home will make things better... not knowing where home is to begin with. Here? Or there? Or somewhere i haven't explored yet?
A longing for food, yet unable to eat... A craving for love, yet a fear of the word. Who really means it? Who says it to make you smile? Who says it because it makes them feel better?

Who says it to keep you with them?

- June 7th, 2007 -