Bodies

Bodies on bodies.
Shallow joy, prowling eyes.
The heat, the laughter and the sweat
filling in the air like mist;
dimming out the lights.
Me, standing there paralysed.
You, lost in the crowd.
Dancing, bringing the floor down.
Bodies on bodies;
the music turned on loud.
Quarter life crisis I call it.
Me, unable to dance; all dolled up.
You, lost in the crowd.

Sometime later

Sometime later,
when your beauty will fade away

When you’ll realise

That suddenly you can’t run the five kilometres

So easily like you used to.

When combing your last few strands of hair each time

Will be a war

When sipping on your morning coffee

You’ll try to remember the name

Of that girl you left

On the river bank,

Smiling silly because she was stupid enough

To think what you gave her

Was love

That’s when you’ll realise

That all these years of your life

You had everything

But never a single drop of love.

She went on

Searching desperately for something

To fill the spaces that you left her with

And in that

She won the world.

So yes,

Sometime later you’ll know

The only one mediocre

Was you.

HE

He is like

the music

that calms her mad heart.

His presence is an anchor

That tames her wild spirits

But never binds it down.

He is that one last look

In the  mirror,

Before she leaves;

Reassuring, telling her

That its okay

To not be perfect.

She can come sober

She can come drunk;

But with him,

She’s always home.

SHE

 She.

She is stability,

And I am a mess.

She is the anchor

That ties your ship down.

I am the fish

That swims free in the ocean.

I am the wind

That tosses and turns the waves.

Hell, I am the sea,

Untameable.

And you are scared of me.

Scared of the bottomless possibilities,

Of the hurricanes and rainbows I hold.

Scared that I can build you

And destroy you like I please.

So you chose her,

A million times over.

Not because you love her

But because you can’t handle my love. 

H.A.P.P.Y

Can anything beat riding a cranky old cycle through the wet pot-hole covered road of your grandma’s village? And that too riding a cycle after almost seven long years.

I guess not.

The wind teased my now-long hair, beat up against my cheeks and left them cold. Most of all, it left me happy.

Some introspecting moments I forget the rest and get swept off at how life has turned out to be; most of all, how fast life is passing me by. Or maybe I am a slow person.  Err. Am I? Well anyway, all I know now is that life is no ‘how to use your mobile phone’ manual. It’s a mixture, like a mock tail. No wait, mine must be a cocktail. Yes, a cocktail. Sex on the beach, maybe?

And Hozier sings in the background in mine.

‘Would things be easier if there was a right way?

Honey, there is no right way.

So I fall in love just a little, oh little, bit everyday

With someone new’

Hozier and a lot of other artists too; Periphery, Papon, Taylor swift, James Blunt, Tim McGraw. Sometimes even I sing. Yeah that’s right, me too.

 Whatever, the point is just that life is fast. It’s a fucking spaceship. So don’t hold back, don’t fret, don’t regret, and don’t let the past dictate.

Concentrate on the present, live it like it’s the last time you are living, don’t let your happiness depend on others. No!

Oh wait, did I come across as this preachy little asshole trying to shove my opinions down other people’s throats?

If I did, then well, whatever. Just be happy, man.

Peace to the world!

Madness

What to do when you are sad? 

Define sad, she said.

I couldn’t. I knew for sure it was sadness that I was feeling.

Do you feel empty? She asked.

No, not empty, Maa. I feel full. It’s like my thoughts won’t rest even for a minute, they keep coming and coming. My head is filled with all kinds of ideas, wild and tame, with notions, dreams, hopes, and love and heartbreak scenes playing over and over a thousand different times. I’m scared I am going mad, Maa.

But how do you know its madness? She asked.

Because aren’t normal people quiet? Aren’t their minds at peace? My head has an argument with my heart every time it beats. I am not even close to normal. People say I don’t talk much. But that’s only because if I speak my mind out, I’m afraid my words will expose the rattling roar of madness that my mind holds.

I’m not sure where the boundaries of our morals end, where the horizon of our ground meets the sky. I can’t see the walls that limit our lands, the colour of our skins that makes us one different from another; I don’t understand religions and the trouble people go through because of them.  I don’t understand love, let alone war. Am I not mad?

If you were mad, I’d have loved you the same, she said.

But no, she said, no you are not mad. Your mind is a flowing river of thoughts and it’ll be a crime to hold it, to bind it.

Sure you don’t understand religion, you don’t understand war. But it doesn’t mean you’ll have to. We’re all ephemeral; into the dust we will one day mix. The only thing that will matter then is how fiercely you loved and how much more differently you used the same amount of time given to each of us. Because that is the only thing we are given, time. Everything else is temporary; nothing is truly ours but our time. The time we are living now is the greatest thing we could ask for. Maybe that is why it is called the present.

And all things chaotic doesn’t necessarily mean messy. There’s beauty in chaos, a kind of beauty only people with wildfires and obscene boldness inside them would understand. We are all messy, stupid, brave souls holding forest fires, comets and entire galaxies inside of us, but not everybody realises it.

So, if this called madness, then I’d rather that you be it.

YOUNG!

Some evenings are always so cool, so fresh. The earth gives off a damp coolness that just seems to make living worthwhile for me.

I’ve always loved the winds; I’ve always loved the rain. The entire idea of a rainstorm was always so, so beautiful. I remember the days would get hotter until one afternoon the sky would darken up, the winds would blow and there would be a magnificent shower and after that the sky would clear into a bright cheerful blue. The rain would wash the earth clean and there would suddenly be so much more freshness, so much more beauty and that left me wonderstruck as a kid when I was back home.

So anyway, I was going to write something about me being young, etc.

The other day a friend of a friend turned up with his car and we all ended up in Meghalaya with the late February wind in our hairs and not a care in the world. I don’t know why the fuck I even give a damn about the meaning of this life, since most of it passes by while I sit on my ass and day dream. So anyway, the speed-o-meter never read less than a 100, and I couldn’t help but be happy. Yes, we are young. 

We live for the moment.
We float around on adrenaline, we radiate youth. And we don’t give a fuck. I mean, most of the damn time.

There I go, day dreaming on my ass again.

Guwahati was the last place I thought I’d be. But hell, I think I like this place now. Home is where the heart is, they say; or in my case, where the friends are at least.

So! We are young. Yes. Youth flows in our blood.

We can’t help but be reckless, impulsive, intuitive, happy, and free and confused, falling in and out of love. We are all about breaking the stereotypes, of putting the ‘and’ in between what we are- happy ‘and’ reckless, carefree ‘and’ ambitious, polished nails ‘and’ a polished mind, young ‘and’ matured, good-looking ‘and’ intellectual. No ifs and no buts. Only ands.

And we must be this way, because no, youth is not wasted on the young. We feel it in our blood, running through our veins. The urge to live life at a go, to live life in a moment and to let that moment sweep us off our feet. We want to plunge ourselves into the unknown, to jump into a crowd chanting our names out loud, to have people applaud us, to acknowledge us.

But then again I am day dreaming.  

So, this thing with my friend’s friend and his car. He once more turned up with another guy who turned up the bass in the music system of his car to an extent when we thought our hearts would explode; both from the loud stupid music and his excellent driving skills which involved the speed-o-meter reading a 100 and using no safety measures whatsoever. It was like a fucking roller coaster. We were irresponsible, showing a middle finger to all the road safety norms. But hell, it was fun.

Oh, and the guy driving the car was 15.

Told you, this post is all about being young. A writer should take their writings seriously!

Blake

Blake.

The strongest girl I know.

She's the man. She doesn't know grief, she doesn't point fingers, she doesn't play victim. She stands and deals. 

Beneath all the rough, cracked exterior, she has tucked away a really beautiful soul inside. A soul which is so pure, so bright, so loving. But in all the ways I have known her, I just couldn’t manage to understand why she is so broken, so messed up. It’s almost like she’s still searching for a missing piece to complete the puzzle that her heart is and it’s almost like she’s been searching for it for ages now.

But I know one thing for sure, all she ever needed, and will need, is love.

A Love so intense, it will make her forget how sceptical she is of the good things life has to offer.

I remember a time when I was so fucked up, I would have flung myself off our hostel’s terrace. But she had my back.

She liberated me in more ways than I can remember. She taught me to be strong; she taught me that my life is my own. Nobody can break my heart, nobody can hurt me if I don’t want to. She gave me a reality check when I was sobbing about my broken heart.

Together, eight months in Delhi seemed like a paradise. Life was never worse, but never better.

The two of us, roaming about in CP, or bargaining our way through Sarojini, or just walking around in Kotla Mubarakpur make up almost all of my memories of Delhi. Thank God I met her.

We were never roommates, we never had formalities. We were together and room no. 10 was our little paradise. We laughed our asses off at almost every other thing; hated Tuesdays, ate cheese sandwiches and Dominoes till we got bored of it, bought more pairs of socks than we needed, hit on the same hot guy down the block, roamed around South ex part 1 till our legs gave up and talked about every one of our dreams till 3 am in the morning.

We might be different persons to everybody else, we might even be different persons alone, but together we will always be Cindy and Moni, room no 10, Asha hostel 1562, N10, Delhi NCR.

 I know her devils and she knows mine. Together we passed one hell of a year; happy, sad, heartbreaking, exciting, fresh, dull, frustrating, both high and low as fuck.

I hope I was there for her as much as she was there for me.

A suitable boy

It was the age of English Babus and their pretty mem-sahibs. She was the eldest among five children, a bright eyed reserved little girl. When she was young, her father, unlike most other men of that time, chose to send his daughters to school. School meant a six kilometre walk, but hell there was nothing better she could imagine.

Assam was then divided into chunks of land; tea plantations laid over them, with each chunk looked after by a Babu, a British sahib. In the 1800s when tea was first planted in Chabua in upper Assam, the Babus faced an acute shortage of labour. People were brought in from Bihar and its neighbouring states, to work in tea gardens. Rules were laid down, the labourers were oppressed.

Sometimes when she would return home from school with a bunch of other kids, one of the ambassadors would stop and the Gora babu would give them a lift home.  Those were the times of wintry harvest festivals and feasts; warm fuzzy sunsets that made the barren paddy fields give off a golden glow. Those were the days when her mother would put her siblings to sleep by putting off the kerosene lit lantern and narrating a story of how the Demi God Narasimha killed a demon when it was neither day nor night, not outside or inside, not laid on the ground or in the sky.

Lady estrogen worked up her magic pretty soon and she grew up as pretty and as fresh-faced as a daisy. Suitors lined up and soon the match was made, the marriage fixed. Of course she had no say in it, of course it was a good match, and of course the boy was a ‘suitable’ one since the elders had readily bobbed their cocky heads up and down and agreed.  

The household soon became abuzz with activity; everyone floating around with joy buried deep inside their bosoms, through the morning fog that seeped in the house all hushed up and mixed with the smoke from the kitchen fireplace. They sent her away draped in a creamy golden mekhela chador, with tears down her cheeks and hopes filled in her eyes.

A stream of thick red blood slipped down her broken lip the first time he hit her, right across her left cheek. Her head felt light and she could swear her ears were on fire.  Humans have a tendency to remember how the firsts of anything feels like; like the first time a mother sees her baby walk, the first time someone finally learns how to balance and ride a bicycle, the first high, the first low. Even when she was an old woman she could still remember all the raw and jagged emotions that filled her the first time her husband raised his muscular hand on her.

 It was a small thing; there was less salt in that day’s stew.

Days passed and the first turned into second, second into third and soon her body was full of cuts and bruises, her head was full of jagged emotions. Slaps turned to punches, punches turned to kicks. To her bewilderment, her in-laws never questioned her husband; never did anybody try and stop him when he was abusing her. The kindest thing someone did was the maid, who after seeing her broken lip and darkened eye, held her hand and said this will all stop after she gives him a son.  A son, yes, a son! All she could wish for then was that God blessed her with a son and this abuse would stop once and for all. Love and bliss was the last thing on her wish list. All she wanted was the hitting to stop, just stop. Every night she would try to walk around making the least noise, doing the chores,  doing them perfectly, because even the smallest error would mean another round of raw physical pain. Sometimes there would be two or even three rounds of hitting in a single day and by the time the day ended her life would cling to her body by a thin thread, her head feeling light and her bosom heavy with pain and emotions.

‘Stop!’, she screamed one day.
‘Just stop!’

Another slap.  Another punch.

He had come home early that day, reeking of cheap alcohol and lust. She had cooked rice, dal and fried potatoes, just like he preferred.

‘The milkman told me you didn’t take the milk today’, he said while eating his dinner.

‘Why the hell are you home then? To eat off my money and shit it out?’ His tone was getting angrier and she knew what lay next. She kept quiet.
‘Answer me for God’s sake!’, he threw the plate on her and it missed.

 This made him angrier, he stood up and went to the backward and came back with a thick bamboo log. She knew what would happen next, her mind had already shut down and her body would offer no resistance like always.

‘Who do you think you are?!’, he retorted and raised the bamboo. She suddenly pushed him hard and he fell backwards never expecting this to happen.  She snatched the bamboo stick from his hand and jabbed him in his sternum, because she knew it hurt the most there when he used to hit her. She hit him again in his head and he fainted.

‘I’m your wife!’ she screamed.

She packed up her few things and left.

Years later when she ran her NGO for victims of domestic violence, she would often remember the first time he hit her. She would see those faces swollen by punches and their tired lifeless eyes and she could see her reflection, only 30 years younger. Her speeches would inspire hundreds of young, tortured victims to fight this evil and move ahead in life.

‘Like any other bride, all I expected was a happy home and a loving husband. I was at a point in my life when everything was new and I wasn’t prepared for anything. A new home, new places, new faces.  

Domestic violence is an evil lurking around the households, creeping and crawling into our lives and strangling the women with its claws. The worst part is that our very own life partners are the perpetuators. The society looks down upon its better half and worse still, is that victims who chose to break their silence and leave their husbands are left in their ordeals without any support. Why? I dare to ask why? Aren’t they daughters, sisters, and mothers too? Where is it written that men can hit and abuse their wives and get away with it in the name of marriage? And silence isn’t an answer. We have to speak up, we have to fight the stigma because we know we are right.

It happened to me but it stopped because I chose not to keep quiet. Women are equal, at par with their male counterparts. But saying so isn’t enough, we the women have to believe in it, believe in ourselves. We have to erase everything the society has taught us till now; to be meek, to be obedient, and to be silent lambs. We must remember that we have a choice too. We are strong, independent individuals and no one has any right over our bodies and our minds. We are the mothers, sisters, wives and the better half of our society. We are the life givers.

We are women.’