Their bodies and mine

Trapped in a circus, I feel as though I have fallen from a trampoline onto a steely mesh of barbed net. I will lay there till thorny wires cut through my flesh and splatter the pieces as trophies upon spectators. An ode to victory; this barbaric life sings through the metal as it deepens its magnetic teeth into what I once called, my essence. I can smell the copper wires. The naked stench reminds me of the copper vessels in the kitchen on that day, when, under similar circumstances, I had made a sport out of living. Or the other day, when the swizz knife playfully grazed my skin repeatedly, as my brain tried to comprehend.

A barren field all ploughed out is only home to cacti and scorpions.

An infinite number relationships are made in the course of life, some important some casual and some mistakes. The last four years are a heap of dead bodies rotting outside a gas chamber, silently polluting the air I breathe. These dead bodies are my failed relationships. I can’t get near enough to bury or burn them, the stench of decaying trusts is like a barrier, barricading an entire chunk of proof that I ever lived in that time. When I get out and start a new chapter, I want to have no memories of this time…the pain and betrayal. But, as I hit my head against the steel wall of my prison, desperately seeking amnesia, this rotting stink of my past is like a bell, that pulls me back to stand and look upon the dead and mourn my past.

A little or no value remains in my monument of life, as I set out, yet again to make carvings that may finally congeal. Symbols that might mean a language or a religion that may stick. A single belief that might hold to linger …or a life that may, even once, matter.

I have only a little courage left to indulge again. My efforts seem futile…the concept seems futile. I search on for that safe haven, where the heart stops thinking and the mind stops relenting. But, it’s all a distant hope, as I see new blood splatter on old dried stains. The same mistake, the same price and the same lesson, forgotten. If only now, my heart would surrender and call it a life and my abandoned brain would finally make it all worthwhile.

I could never fully grasp it. I don’t think I ever can. Maybe it isn’t real. Or maybe I'm just the fool again.

Bright Star

How often it is, that life passes us by… fading our glow, as it disperses our glimmer into time and space. Where I was once radiating a blazing passion for life, I now return ashen and frail. Once, I thought I would conquer it all and now I beg for the world to release me. I wither, frightened, in the world of blood hounds…where I remain, the dubious mongrel, neither tame nor ferocious. Life has robbed me of my ambition. Or am I to blame for that? If I don’t dive, I won’t get wet. I see lives around me get bigger and stronger…more purposeful…mine though, is driven by fear and self imposed constraints. Constraints…elaborate, external, veiling my inherent tendency to be plain… stagnant…

The future is uncertain. I am almost out of my embryonic bubble without any indication of what species I belong to. Do I eat meat or grass? Do I kill, or am I a docile pet? Am I the advantaged lot, gifted with the ability to introspect or is that just a farce? Do people with consistent lives of stale satisfaction yearn to be me? I walk among equals as an equation unsolved, desperately seeking parity… a value.

The idea itself, of life beyond this moment, escapes me. I see no future for myself. I have burned out, in my tireless endeavors to so desperately seek meaning and adventure. I am now pale and dreary, what excited me then, repulses me now…a complete change of heart and beliefs… like a seasick captain, ready to raise the flag and surrender. Many great men die young; before the death of their zeal and ambition. Before the perplexity of 9 to 5 and taxes and funds captures their minds and retards their senses. I too aspire that end… an end with some consequence…an answer…any answer.

For too long I have lived amidst my dreams, shining exuberance…living the life of other’s envy. Shining brightly to the face of the world, sharing that bursting bright glow… Like a star…a dying star. The apathy now, is anti climatic.

I need glamour…and drama. I feed on it…my dying fire does. I can only hope I die before I find out there is no more light in the world for me to imbibe.

As I mock your bondage..

Here we are, at the edge of time, falling so desperately all over each other in a vain savage attempt to taste that one moment of sanity, of reality; something that sticks. It lingers on as that which surpasses even death, or birth, or life or living. Something true, tangible…attainable. It fumes above our heads, like cloudy symbols, teasing our incapacity, our inferiority; mocking the life out of us, steering us like slaves, into a chamber of ideality, one from where there is no return. And we call out, to one another, in this mad crowd of perfected greed and irony…and we bump into each other, a seemingly random event, but a need fulfilled. A need created by us. We fall at our feet, and beg to one another, a little love to partake, a little lust to fit in. We hurt inside, slithering in superfluous aims that deceive us, pulling the ground from under our feet, making us wonder and back…and the cycle continues as no one breaks free. We deny ourselves, the mockery and its truth, weaving circles in arrays; patterns of incongruous proportions, overlapping one another…random and chaotic.

We pine our lives, seemingly into futility, but that desire, that fire which eventually consumes us, is the ultimate power. It destroys us, when everything else fails. “Don’t ever say yes, even if I crash and burn”, “for if you deny me my infatuation, you murder my inspiration.”… As it boils me, and as I implode, I will look down upon the rest of them and mock their bonds...their bonds and them teething…gnawing away like starving rats in a glass box…verily away from what is true. If love is the leap, you are my inspiration to jump…to make that attempt, to a silver semblance of insanity.

The world is burning with the rest of Rome, an indispensable act for creation, of minds and art… for love and passion…the world is stable in its chaos, it needs to bleed out the clot… and it will incinerate me till my ashen bones are all that lie unconsumed. But, till then all I will do is ‘pour me a drink’, because no matter how deep I am in whiskey stench…or how wasted I am on that steely stair in the middle of the sand…or how the world tells me I have missed out on practically everything worth living for in my tireless obsessions… I will live on…

I will live on in my pain, and in that pain I will die… So profound is my grief that in my death too, it will weep.

Culs-de-sac

Its one of those times, you hear a word, Move Mountains to find its meaning and it is so worth your efforts that you decide to write an entire article on it!


Culs-de-sac (plural of Cul-de-sac), a French word implying ‘dead ends’.


My state of mind right now is an inextricable ordeal. When you have repeated failures you know exactly where your life is heading.
The surety of impending disappointment and destruction of all that creation has in store for you is daunting yet comforting in an odd way.


The tribulation begins when you suddenly have a brief stint with success. You can not gauge your life and your dreams are exaggerated by your delirious disposition.
For a little while you assume the role of a winner. You believe in yourself and optimism, the word.
You then apply your mind to other things that are going wrong in your life in a vain attempt to rub some of the winner luck onto them.


You fail.


You now assume that it was a small failure and blame it on what people call procrastination or lack of hard work on your part. You are still stubborn enough to try victory at other areas of your failed life.


You fail again.


You start to think, even doubt your temperament a little. But you go fishing again!


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And it’s now that you realize that your life repudiates the success you want to define it to be.

You might as well change your definitions.


Now you repent. You even unleash the occasional fury upon whoever let you have that successful stint in the first place.


How predictable life is with failures.
So tranquil that it almost seems successful….

Morphing into machines?

"We’d be so less fragile
If we’re made from metal
And our hearts from iron
And our minds from steel
And if we built an armor
For our tender bodies
Could we love each other
Would we stop to feel…"

Accepting an argument succumbing us to a life as machines would be paying heed to the hypothesis that the human mind could ever create something as complicated as itself. Not only is it a paradox but also an absurd concept.

Let me tell you something about the human mind. We assume that the mind like our body is finite . The day we die, our mind disintegrates. We often define humanity in the physical finite sense which is the greatest contradiction.

The mind is what makes us human. The fact is in due time, the mind will find a way to preserve it self. Refrigeration in super critical conditions is an onset to what miracles are to come. Once the mind does that, it allows for the infinite to finally occur and give definition to itself.

Have you ever wondered why is it, that man is so bent on creating eternity for himself? Visualize this. Our brains are another superior world enslaving our bodies. The only purpose of the body is to assist the brain in creating other physical structures that might be able to out live the body that the brain currently occupies. The day our brains succeed in creating that physical being, there will be an end to the era of the human body! The time is not far away, when there will be a world, not inhabited by any man or machine, but by an array of brains and intelligence.

So I do believe that the human mind can conjure up, in time, a machine that will not only make the use of touch obsolete, but also end the era of instruction dependence on sensory organs of humans. This will be the birth of our minds controlling machines (the penultimate stage to the total brain reign).

So the paradox is, what do you define as human?

Maybe as we near the era of machines we aren’t a step further, but in fact a step closer to defining what humanity really is, devoid of its physical limitations!

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt. It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to experience life in its totality, we must endure that ordeal. Only then do we emerge fully aware of our actions and their motivation.
Misery brings out the honesty in people. Honesty we can only feign, never having experienced our worst.

My agony stems from jealousy, the origin of which is unknown even to me.
I do believe insecurity, about my ‘competence at living’, might be a factor, but I am yet to define’ competence’ and ‘life’, and it might just be “ a tale told by an idiot, full of fury, signifying nothing.”


Giving tribute where it is deserved, envy has been my constant companion in ennui and otherwise.
It might just be a poor whim of my fancy or a powerful tool, an antagonism, emancipating me from bitterness and futility.

Envy had come into her own and, little by little, in her stealthy, seductive way had encroached upon my being with long, tenacious fingers.

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”

One might pronounce this absurdly tragic but being quintessentially promiscuous, ‘happiness’ is not a possession to be prized. It faintly implies tranquility and thereby demands resistance.
We live beneath the mercy of drama. We are yet to exist because of it though.


I don’t seem virtuous, but I do seem parasitic.

“Assume a virtue, if you have it not…

And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ And seem a saint, when most I play the devil”

Insidious as it may sound; my ‘villainy’ inspires my ingenuity. I do not feign indifference, my misery infuriates me, but I relish the pain.
My life, from all that I can decipher, craves drama. It yearns for that one masterpiece my mind might conjecture.


To loathe myself in the frivolity of my thoughts would be to redefine ‘living’. I wouldn’t be the furious ‘idiot’ and I wouldn’t be guilty of spite. But then, I would be insipid and mundane, falling in equality. Living in mediocrity aspiring for only love, my seduction slowly, slipping away.

But to even think of change implies infidelity. So what am I guiltier of? Not staying true to my character or adorning one whose mere existence demands penitence?

My envy is my Hamlet.

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt. It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”.

I honestly dont care about forgiveness, till the time its coming FROM ME.

What the heart wants.

When I was a little girl, my parents put me in a boarding school in the picturesque valley of Dehra Dun. For a twelve year old girl, at such an impressionable age, it’s hard enough dealing with adolescence, let alone having the trauma of staying amidst a group of teenagers, without parents.

I never fit in well. I felt I had a different take on everything and the world around me was moving too fast in the opposite direction, to hear me out. I had questions and answers that I felt were so unique that sharing them with the ‘superficial’ people around me would only condemn my ideas to mediocrity. I needed a friend, who had experienced life in its absolute form to help me figure myself out.


In my school, it was compulsory for us to do some form of social service for three hours every Wednesday. I took on an old age home. On my very first day, as soon as I entered the gates, I noticed this wrinkled man in red and black checked tapering trousers, a crisp white shirt under a sleeveless beige woolen vest, black socks, well polished black formal shoes and, what really held my stare, the unique sailor cap, tilted on his head. It reminded me of a picture of my great grandfather.

While all the other inhabitants of that place gave us a warm welcome and immediately started singing folk songs, this man sat alone in the garden, grumpy as ever. The nurses at the home asked us to leave him alone as he suffered from ‘something’ which she explained, subjugated him to frequent and severe spouts of passionate expression and rage, which meant, he would get over zealous and sometimes violent when discussing his life. Upon hearing this, I instantly wanted to befriend him and be his ‘special one’ who loved him dearly. I wanted to make him forget all the iniquity that the immorality of life at that age and position had subjected him to. I wanted to be the person who made him smile again and seek peace and solace in the time that was left of this wonder we call life. I suffer from a ‘disease’ wherein it is not possible for me to give up on people I have made up my mind to love unconditionally. I get obsessive. A part of me identified with this fanatic.


I take immense pride in a particular quality of mine that has helped me befriend lots of people of all ages. When I want to get someone’s attention, I don’t start the conversation with greetings and introduction. I behave as though I already know the person and start the conversation first by noticing something unique about their appearance or behavior and talking about that and then correlating the conversation to some problem of mine. I pick up any trivial problem I might be going through at that time and ask for their opinion (it appears trivial to the listener but to me every problem little or huge is a crisis). I show genuine interest in their personalities and genuine misery at my problem. This always works, as sometimes people are not too good at the greetings and this sudden attachment of trust works like shock therapy.

I went up to him and sat next to his chair. He looked at me and his expression started to change. I could make out he was going to get angry and shoo me away from his privacy. Just when he was about to say something, I pointed to his cap and straightened it. I don’t think anybody had talked to him in a long time, let alone touch his cap. He stared at me unable to decide what he wanted to say next. He tilted his cap back to its original position and jus kept glaring at me. I then made a semi disgusted face and told him that my great grandfather also wore it tilted and I could never understand why. This was step one. I was waiting for him to say something about sailing or ask me about my family or just reply with anything. But he didn’t. I then went on to step two, my problem question.


Now the question that I asked him and the answer that he gave me was the whole reason I wrote this post. I was shocked at my own question. I wanted to ask him something profound so that he would be interested in talking to me. Never had I imagined such ‘stupidity’ to come out of my mouth (as I thought then, when I was 12).

The answer defines how I have lived every day my life since then to this date.

“Everyone says- Follow your heart and you will always be happy. That is so easy. But, don’t you think people are unhappiest when they don’t know what their heart wants? Now what should they listen to and follow then?”

He just laughed it off and started telling me stories about his sailing days with the navy. We played chess every week followed by a story which I was sure he made up, because no life could be so extraordinary. He told me about the independence struggle and about his wife. Their family was very well educated. His English was impeccable.
For some reason he saw himself in me. Maybe i came across as a person who didnt fear to explore her uniqueness. Or maybe I was just the first one who ever talked to him.

He gave me the answer to my question six months later on the day before he was shifted to a mental facility for throwing a chair at a fellow inmate.
He replied, “You always know what your heart wants; it’s your heart after all. Even when you claim you don’t, you truly know you do, but you are just afraid of the answer and mask it in uncertainty.”


Choose to be what you want to be. No matter who cringes or who applauds. Make every action and every word you utter so original that you remember it for the rest of your life. We often blame others for not living up to our expectations, for not being what we want them to be, but in all honesty we are dissatisfied at our own apathy to our failures and ashamed at being untrue to our individuality.

Once you start living life on your own terms and expressions your decisions will be effortless. You will never know the exact course of your life and that will satisfy you. Once you live life differently, you welcome change because you don’t fear it, on the contrary, you will handle it remarkably in your own peculiar way. You will never be afraid of solitude because your uniqueness will make even solitude a celebration. You will love unconditionally, only because it makes you happy not because you want love back.


All of us pride our selves on being unique. But when our hearts ache and ask us to do something extraordinary, we fear treading that path alone. Its easy to convince ourselves of our exceptionality, but to be it, in our actions and life is the true test. Invent ‘living’; don’t just modify what already exists.

Letting go….

“…at night it’s the worst. I hear ambulances, or noise…I jump up out of the bed with this scared panicky feeling…only, I don’t know what I am scared for, because what I feared the most, already happened…I still feel like he is going to walk through that door any moment now and hug me as if its all a nightmare…”

I can’t really grasp, with full conviction, the enormity of the events around me.
My best friend, my life is no more..

If only I remembered the last moments we shared with certainty and clarity. I keep searching for it incessantly. What my last words to him were, how he just passed along, did he bid farewell?
I am just looking frantically, for some insinuation to explain it all. There is this niggling feeling inside me that assures me, things will be absolutely normal once I am able to explain them, to reason them and reason with them. To try and convince ‘reason' that all this is just a terrible mistake.

The last time we were together, he jovially accused me of hiding the remote. So trivial… he didn’t say he loved me or forgave me or that I would be okay, no kissing, and no farewell. Why didn’t he say anything else? Why didn’t he prepare me? We had plans; we had to live our life. One life, Together. He wasn’t supposed to just run out and die, leaving me with fragments of what was left of our dreams.
I don’t have any dreams without him. I have nowhere to go to, no aspirations, and no ambition.

I know he wants me to move on. He wants me to reminisce, but with amusing delightful anecdotes, shared among all those he held dear. I am impatient and incensed. How does he expect me to be riveted at a conversation about how great he was? He abandoned me. I had no one, but him and he didn’t even say goodbye. With what face does he seek impunity? How do I ever forgive him? How do I absolve him, or exonerate myself for not being strong enough to end my own misery?

This picture of us I hold was a promise and now that promise is broken…
What’s left is a frame and lone pillow, moistened by the abstraction of hope.


“I have two hearts, when you are around, they race like wild animals, and you can hear them thudding, competing to win yours over. Both of them refuse to function when you are not around, and I barely survive on the promise that I will win you over someday.”

He won me over with that ludicrous twaddle.

I still remember teasing him for all those years. What garish poetry, but what a man. He never feared letting people know what he truly felt. He always put himself out there, untainted and sincere. Never delayed, expressing his love. Never the reason for distress, never a bystander either. He would have wanted me to forget him. Let go of my sorrow.

But, my pain does not want to leave. The day my pain vanishes, so does his memory. I want to cherish this grief. I want to remember him eternally. I don’t want to live completely oblivious to the fact, that he treasured me more than he feared death, so much so as to gently pass on, not giving me a moment’s grief more than death bargained for.
So I need to stay in agony, my ‘aide memoire’.

Why do people seek such ‘atrocities’ of me? Why should anyone ever move on? Why is life meant to be lived in bliss, and not in sorrow and despair? If its torture, it’s because something priceless and irreplaceable was lost. It’s not meant to be ‘moved on’ upon. People say live in the present. This is my present. And this will always remain my present, my dreadful loss.

I lost a part of my life today. I am paralyzed. My brain doesn’t think and my heart rarely beats. I merely exist now. Our life, as I nurtured and cherished for years, is over…

I didn’t deserve this retribution. It feels almost vindictive on gods’ part. It’s cruel and merciless, depriving someone of a final goodbye. What pitiable abhorrence. I sympathize with god, for being so human after all. My faith is dead, obsolete.

I sound irrational; am i not allowed to be?
Is there anything that could seem reason enough for me to forgive god for my misfortune?

The truth is, we live under the impression that we get what we deserve. Life seems to be all about ‘Karma’ and ‘circles’. That’s not the way it works. At least mine didn’t. What good did I ever do to deserve him in the first place? That love, honesty and forgiveness? My life completely turned around, in awe and admiration of this ingenious fabrication of fate. I had with me, all those years of chaste blessing in the form of this man who made me complete. This wonderful friend, who taught me how to love unconditionally and express it without hesitation.

Maybe there is no god. There is just destiny, good and bad luck. It doesn’t depend on fortune or deed. There is no algorithm to decipher this clandestine. It’s unstructured and vague. It grants you your choices and actions, also conceding you the occasional indulgences and denials. He was my indulgence, my good luck. I did nothing to deserve him, and I can do nothing to calculate and interpret my loss. That’s just the way life is. That’s the only way I can ‘explain’ it and finally Let Go.

Overrated Maturity...My favourite

It’s odd to find thoughts still stagnant after a substantial passage of time and on the contrary observing how human nature changes in such tiny time frames.I created this blog 3 years ago, without the time to publish a single entry. I find my self mystified at the déjà vu (like situation) I face before me. On one hand, I have changed so much, from the vivacious, candid brat to the melancholic dejected patron of pessimism. But, on the other hand I find maturity has not hit me yet, but a sense of losing my innocence has.

Is maturity another name for pretentious indifference? I find people putting me in the ‘grow up!’ category every time I let my stubbornness get the better of them. Is maturity an alibi for lack of perseverance? I am passionate about little things. People like to read my passion as arrogant bolshie. I go out of my way and force things to happen according to my train of thought, seldom caring for its validity or affect on others. It might sound selfish, leading to the (im) M word, but then, that’s mostly defined by the people losing against me.

This rarely bothers me, but when it does, the magnitude is gigantic. I feel depressed at my lack of steady relationships and helpless to the extent of frustrating suicidal tendencies at imminent (anticipated) failures. There are two major lanes my brain picks from. The first is a blame game, to change and accept life and its disappointments. The other is to stay put, be miserable and cry, but be stubborn and fight till all reserves are negative. I always take the second option. It is mentally taxing, and I end up making more enemies. But, at the end of the day, I am content at the thought of giving it more than my all. I am proud of being Caesar and Alexander. I know in my ‘innocent and simple’ heart that there is nothing more that could be done by anyone, and I am truly a winner.

People create maturity to assure themselves that giving in to troubles and misfortunes is the ‘right thing to do’. Why go through the surgical pain of endurance when u can take the easy way out of the ordeal. Maturity is the name given to actions of ‘gracious’ cowardice.