Mitigator

You lied,
To delight me,
To entertain me,
To liquefy my trepidation,
To settle my doubts,
That stemmed from my inadvertent knowledge,
Of those antecedent lies,
Or so I believed.

You could have lied,
Through your teeth,
Unrepentantly,
Because lying is your forte,
Because lying treats your senses,
Because lying has become your wont.

 Lies never dampened,
Anything they ought to have,
Your lies showed more of you,
Whom I couldn't help relishing more.

I lied,
Not out of mockery,
Not out of spite.
But to lighten yours,
To mitigate those pangs yours deliver.

Words

We subsisted on them,
Feeding our minds with them,
Molding our emotions with them,
Discovering each other in them,
Indulging in an orgy of them,
One of 'words'.

What are you but words,
What am I but words,
What are memories but words.

When emotions dissociate from words,
What are words but graves.
Graves of the moments,
Moments that we devoured together.

Diffusion

    When you were really young there was always somebody to look after you; somebody to watch you cry, watch you fall as you tried to walk, watch you poop and to watch you cry after you pooped. That could probably be why I cried less much when compared to the other kids. I was content with being watched.

   And soon you had playmates. The world seemed to be composed of umpteen little games, when life seemed to be all about winning or losing them and there was no middle-ground, no delay and no unforeseen complications. Though it's not 'life' which you were worried about back then you had begun to think about that word. Whether you played 'The police and the thief' or seven-stones or Scotland Yard or an indianised version of some game originally designed for the western kids(You've been misinformed about the way things work in India through these indianised versions), they were playmates around you.

   Then there were books into which you buried your head. You were gladly allowed to do that, without questions, without restraints because people considered it healthy and commendable to do so and weren't aware of its pathological limits. Never-mind, there were books for company.

  There were friends who introspected with you, who rejoiced with you, who mourned with you, who appeased your senses with sense, who found sense in your rant; some stayed, some walked in, some walked out -often unannounced, complying with the vagaries of distance, vocation and 'life'.

    They were boyfriends/girlfriends - whom you never tried to reason with, never tried to unravel.

       

   To me the entire 'life'(I wish there was an alternative word for that), seems like a battle against loneliness. Whether I am at the winning or losing end, I've never been able to say.

          

Metamorphosis

I was this person sculpted,
Not by your words,
Not by your deeds,
None of these was I sure of.
I was sculpted,
By your expectations,
Never pronounced,
Always perceived;
By your love,
Never perceived,
Always imagined.

I was this person,
Whom you wanted me to be;
The rest of me,
Decimated in your presence.

As you were unveiled,
I was recast.
The person I knew as you,
Was on the verge,
Of being replaced,
Of being buried,
By the person you are.
The unrest,
The doubts,
The worries,
The qualms,
Dissolved as I heard your voice,
The voice of the renewed 'you',
The voice that shall renew me.

One answer

That tiny figure,
With her tiny fingers,
Resting on her milk teeth,
Those teeth separated by intruding brown lines,
Another hand clutching her clothes,
Her clothes which told me tales,
Tales of her play,
Tales of her scuffles with her playmates,
That shrivelled hair,
That never had the lustre mine has,
Yesterday's milk that dried on her chin,
Leaving the shape of a yet undiscovered country,
That layer of fine dust,
That was her makeshift talcum,
The insecurity that she seemed to exude,
As she stared at me through those large inquisitive eyes,
Unmindful of her sister, her miniature,
Whose hands were evidently awaiting a coin from me.
Do I call it luck,
Do I call it destiny,
Do I call it facticity,
That she happened to be the one she is,
And I the one I am?
There's just one answer,
An undeniable one.
The greed of the avaricious few.

When it died

There was a fear,
Fear that never showed,
Fear that manipulated my actions,
Fear that animated my emotions,
Fear that comforted me,
Fear that flourished on hope,
Hope that my fears wouldn't come true,
A cruel cycle that wouldn't spare me.

There was a fear,
Fear that blurred boundaries,
Boundaries between pleasure and pain,
Between the right and the wrong,
Fear that withdrew me,
Into a world of its own.
Fear that concealed the truth,
The lies, the doubts, the joy,
Fear that impersonated,
That spineless creature called me.

The fear of your walking away,
Your footsteps resounding brutally,
Killing the fear -my sole clandestine ally.

The fear died,
When you walked away.
What died in me,
I will never know.
There is a fear,
Of your breathing life into what just died. 

You could have been

You could have been,
The cliche that I blab,
The mirror that stalks me,
The idiocy I'd have gladly suffered,
The brilliance I'd have eternally admired,
The still small voice that peals in my mind,
The smile permanently planted on my face,
The clarity that is conspicuous by its absence now.

You could have been,
The trimness that I so delight in,
The chaos that amenably intrudes,
The serenity in a distant gaze,
Those dreams I rummage through,
The riddle I'd have let you be,
The concealed joy in my bouncy gait,
The interludes of gloom that are indispensable.

You could have been,
A hundred things,
Named and unnamed,
A hundred things,
I'd have wanted you to be,
A hundred things,
You could have chose to be.
The only thing you chose to be,
Is the pain you are.
The only thing I let you be,
Is the pain you are.
And pray don't ask me,
WHY.

SUNdays

This Sunday,
My fingers are immobile,
My limbs are heavy,
My torso is pulled down by my limbs,
My neck is infirm,
And in the head that overlies this neck,
Dumbness prevails.

Lumbering with dumbness,
Dumb with redundancy,
Redundant with emotions,
Emotional without reason,
And there the stream ends,
The stream of my scourge,
The scourge yet unnamed.

Sundays are endless,
So are memories-
That capsize my actions today,
Memories of Sundays,
Of endless laughter,
Of inexhaustible cuddles,
Of the comfort of idleness,
Of protracted play,
Of industrious revisions,
For senseless tests.

Memories of Sundays,
Of long walks,
Of enchanting dinners,
Of interminable phone calls,
And of people,
Who enlivened my Sundays

Today is one,
A Sunday of memories,
Of those on the brink of forgetting those Sundays,
And memories of those ,
Who by virtue of magnanimity or regard,
Or memories,
Created another memory today.

That air

I live,
Breathing this air,
The air that my skin approves of,
The air that my senses collude with,
The air that tranquilises my mind,
The air that your voice enlivens,
The air that is charged by your mere presence,
The air that carries your characteristic odour,
The air that diffuses your image,
The air that ferries our thoughts,
The air that our cords mould into cryptic words,
The air that welds us together,
The air that our lungs share,
The air we are unaware of,
The air called intimacy.

Acceptance

Those were just random noises,
Unorchestrated beats,
Unintelligible chords,
Misplaced emotions,
That strained my brain,
It was nothing I would call music.
My ears were permissive,
My brain tolerant,
For a while,
For as long as it took,
For the noises to become sounds,
For the beats to become rhythm,
For the chords to  melodise,
For the music to take shape,
The shape called 'you'.


Did the music grow on me,
Or was it mere habituation,
That I heard what I heard,
And visualised what I did visualise?
Reasons don't matter,
As long as the music's being played.

Questions and curves

I have been too happy to notice what I've been thinking, in case I have been thinking. Happiness can be benumbing if it lasts longer. What length of happiness will define 'longer' I cannot say. A part of the happiness comes from the realisation of a step toward my dreams. But the major part of it comes from the perception of growth, the growth at mind, if I can call it that. I should say that there's no telling how wonderful it feels, at the risk of sounding narcissistic. When was the last time you perceived your growth? This leads me to my favourite set of questions.When does one's learning curve peak? Does it plateau after it peaks? What is the shape and behaviour of this curve? Can somebody manipulate his own learning curve when he is aware of the concept of the 'learning curve'? If one can, for how long can it be manipulated?

Will the converse be true? Will it be harrowing to know that one is walking the downslope of the learning curve? Will one be able to accept the fact that the optimum state of functioning of his brain is past? Will the acceptance go unnoticed or would that be a significant event in one's life?

I can keep wondering. But I won't wonder now and make this more tedious.

 Life's good? The curves should be able to tell. The curve being plotted against time, time can tell?
               

Away toward

She watched him,
He grew red as she turned away.
She turned away,
Aware of what was receding,
Aware of the darkness that shall engulf her.
She turned blithely and  gently,
Without the slightest reluctance,
The reluctance she wasn't be able to summon.

Her face reverberated his redness,
Growing just as resplendent as his,
Multiplying the beauty by the second.

She knew her life faded everyday,
Only to be enlivened the next.
She had no qualms,
About this separation,
Or the queasiness of the reunion,
When he would be just as red as he is.

She was turning toward him,
As she was turning away,
In this cycle of their elegant affair,
The affair that defines day and night,
The affair behind the redness,
Of an everyday sunset,
The affair between the Sun and the Earth.

Ears plugged

She : It's the silence you love, isn't it? Though my silence might be indicatory of the peabrain that emanates it, though my silence makes you wonder if I am worth being spoken to, though it sends a thousand thoughts flashing accross that lawn of those incredible neurons called your brain

She : Your love for my silence is tainted by doubts, doubts that stemmed from your perception of those tinges of my cruelty, my crudity, my vanity and contempt that briefly intrude on my silence when I talk. They were just tinges. What would become of your love for my silence if you saw the hues?

She: It's not surprising at all, your silence at the moment. You should be perplexed as to why and how I broke that long spell of my silence and why I incurred that spell.

She : I shall not ask you to speak your mind. I know what my silence conceals. It conceals what I know about you, what you'd never tell me, precisely which I wouldn't want you to utter. That being said, I wouldn't trivialise your silence now.

She : Your silence is deafening! I've wondered which you preferred. Did you prefer my silence to my infantile sentences woven with elementary emotions inadvertently blemished by those tinges I just mentioned? The dilemma potentiates my already unbearable silence. It's unbearable, even to me at times.

She : I wonder what's on your mind. In case you chose to remain silent forever I wouldn't question you. But why am I blathering now? I am blathering inside my head and it's baffling that you chose to remain silent inside my head today.


If you actually happened to read this, would you still be silent? Though it's strange, it's comforting to imagine you would.

Some picture

I pick shards,
Those elements of art,
Each bearing a part,
Of thy beautiful picture.
My allusion,
To this yet nondescript picture,
As cliched as it could be,
Will serve its cause,
Someday in the future,
Or die as an ineffective attempt,
At conveying what I never intend to.
Reeking of inept rhyme,
And the absence of reason,
I am straying from the point,
Where I intended to start.

The pieces that I gathered,
Aligning them was no herculean job,
Despite those missing shards.
My eyes saw exquisite images,
In all combinations and permutations.
Bewitched as they were,
Pitiable eyes those.
The spell decayed,
The picture didn't.

The picture,
Still deficient,
And exquisite.
My eyes,
Mine now,
Yet possessed,
Not by your spell,
But the picture they created.

Oh Dear!
My eyes once conjured up,
The entire picture,
The missing pieces!
Diabolic eyes,
A diabolic image.

Put the spell back,
And lose those pieces,
That you withheld.
My eyes shall wallow,
In blissful gaiety.

Dreams

How often is that one gets to realise his dreams? I have always realised mine.It could be so that my dreams are very tangible that I realised them until now. I am gifted with the unique ability of not being able to tell my dreams from reality. I live my reality in dreams and the dreams in reality. Not that my present dreams are farfetched. But, for the first time I am facing a situation where my dreams are sneaking out. I am not able to put into words what has blown up in my face. My face is pretty contorted, so is my mind. More to come, needless to say.

Recovery from delirium

I am glad I did make an account of the ruckus the other day. The uncertainties unnerved me. I did look for the roots of the same, rather tardily. And surprisingly found them. Yes, I am growing old. But I have learned to live with uncertainties and to resolve them gently without drama. I am growing old and I am still learning.

Life's good? Very much folks!

Delirium

I was set to think after a really long time which isn't surprising because it's a rarity to have a mind of my own these days. Whose mind I dwell on otherwise, I do not know.
That's been something I keep repeating often lately 'I don't know'. It's probably because I am too lazy to think or I don't care to to think about anything vague. But sanely, vaguer ideas are just those which need to be worked on. Which brings us to the conclusion that I wasn't sane
I am thinking and I am delirious. When did so many uncertainties intrude on my mind? Well, uncertainties are supposed to intrude on everybody. But why and how have I learned to be so comfortable with them? They should have unsettled me long ago but they failed to and still haven't. I may be delirious but I am still in complete and remorseless possession of these uncertainties.
Does this disquieting comfort accompany the phenomenon growing old or does it stem from tolerance to uncertainties and manifold itself? I am agitated indeed, but I am doubtful if this sequestered tumult is enough to dispense with this comfort. I fervently hope to answer all the questions that I have come up with. And again, it's uncertain.

Life's good?? I don't know.