To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

There, in the distance, the skies were clouding over. The stillness before a roll of thunder, as the world holds her breath, waiting, watching.

I walked into the sunlight, unwilling to acknowledge the darkness I could foresee.

The sky turned to soup, a thick murky swirl of grey and black. The storm doesn't like to be ignored. It boiled, slowly chasing away the sun.

I turned my back on the gathering storm, I threw down my coat and I whistled as I walked across the grass that died at my feet.

He screamed. The skies opened. The cold rain poured over me and burned through my skin, the ground shook and the earth wailed. The storm was here.

And I kept walking. I turned my eyes away from the carnage, the violence and laughed as blood seeped out through my charred skin, leaving a trail of red behind me.

The storm would kill me. The storm has killed me. I didn't even know.

It was you. With your lips. Your fingers. The things that you whispered to me. I heard them all as the rain dissolved me into nothing. Into a patch of bloodstained dead grass.

It was you, the storm said.

It was you.

The Hamlet of the East

I choose.

To Dive

In the running water,
Flecked by the sun
I saw you wash away
Disappear into the depth of the river

In the sudden silence
It became clear
I have no choices to make

Untitled

I was born, I am told, with my heart on my sleeve. A fistful of sinew that would bind me to love, all consuming, obsessive, unreasonable, a result of simple theft, of a willingness to trust the light fingers that brush my arm.

With my heart on my sleeve, I wandered into you. And you took my heart and you left, without knowing you would leave me bereft.

Without even the ability to awake my limbs and feed my starving mind, until I wander into you again, and remember to reclaim what I have lost to you.

If I ever see you again, I must remember to swallow my traitorous heart, that would follow you everywhere, but home.

Dreaming Tree

Talk to me. Want to talk to me. Think about me, remember me, send me messages for no reason, to let me know I didn't make a mistake with you. Worship me, just a little.

I can't do it any other way, I'm a coward and a romantic.

Or perhaps I like you in many more ways than I can say, at least out loud. Never to you.

Live with me.
I will keep you warm.

The Fate of the Fly

I am trapped in you
Like the foolish fly
and the golden amber
I know I'm a dead thing
But I can't fly away
In a million years perhaps
I will be a beauty too

The Great White Fear

I knew you all my life. Even though I didn't see you all that often, I always knew you would be coming home sometime in the future. To stay with us and bring us funny presents, to make jokes and tease me about my latest boyfriend, to take me out for lunch and teach me about being quick witted.

At your memorial I couldn't get up and say anything, because I just couldn't stop crying. I wanted to let everyone know that even though I wasn't your friend, or your student or your colleague or one of your supposedly numerous girlfriends, I treasured your visits and remembered you with nothing but laughter and good memories. As I will try to remember you from now on.

I regret so deeply that I couldn't know you as a full fledged adult. That our conversations were always you teasing and me giggling helplessly. Except for the last time that you were here, when I would crack a joke and you would look surprised and delighted before you started to laugh. I couldn't wait for your next visit, so I could make you laugh, and test my wits against yours.

Thank you for letting me have the brochures of Miss Saigon. I know you wanted to keep them, but to twelve year old me they meant a lot, and the pictures from it helped me get really good marks in my seventh grade project on the Vietnam War.

So many of my happiest childhood memories revolve around you and that beautiful house in Dehradun, and those fabulous visits to Delhi. Like the time when I was six, and I opened the door and you said "Driver!". I still remember that and smile, even though it makes no sense whatsoever. And thank you for eating that terrible food I cooked for you. Thank you for the yellow towels.

I will never be able to shake the feeling that you will definitely come to visit again.

Farewell Great White Fear.

Come The Spring

The transition from winter to summer is a traumatic time for many. Here in Delhi, where winter is an infinitely preferable state to summer, everyone watches the rising thermostat with unease and more than a little apprehension. Those with delicate constitutions, or in many cases just unlucky, crumble under the merciless onslaught of coughs, colds, bronchial pneumonia and other gifts from the change of season. It really is a miserable time, and all you have to look forward to is the blazing heat of summer.

Of course, my trauma at the hands of what cannot even jokingly be called spring, is more severe and desperately cruel. You see I have two dogs, and while for most of the year, they are sweet, lovable, and mildly inconvenient, come 'spring' and they are transformed from cuddly canines to gigantic balls of walking fur, the only purpose of which is to shed on everything. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. My lungs I am convinced sport internal fur carpeting that would make PETA turn Iran and issue a fatwa for my immediate death. Every piece of clothing I own, almost all of which is black, is now brown. And not a very nice brown either.

Curses to you Mother Nature.

The Coreworld Begins

There was a Tower that still stood, on the very edge of a cliff. There were no roads that led to it, no trails, no way to climb the forbidding rock wall it was perched on, but it was not empty.

On warm days, when the air was so still and languid it could be spooned into bowls, they could hear the voices of a castle drift down into the valley. The clink of glasses and clatter of hooves on flagstones, the high pitched laughter of the young, and the clack of wooden practise swords wielded by the enthusiastic, if unskilled.

Life was strange in the valley in the shadow of the Tower that still stood. It was about to become stranger still.

The Dragon came. She was gold and green, with enormous black wings that cast a shadow on the valley as she flew over it. Bound for the Tower that still stood, for the castle that once was. As she approached it she slowed, as if the still air had indeed turned to soup and fought the beating of her wings. It was a battle hard fought, but at last she alighted on the roof of the Tower that still stood. She spread her wings and roared silently, calling on powers ancient, wise and in many cases rather grumpy. They were reluctant to help, but the Dragon would have none of it. Slowly, as if it were rising from the depths of the squishiest bog, a castle arose around the Tower that still stood. The cliff became less fierce and more a hill. A road appeared grudgingly, unwilling to serve again after such a long holiday. And a wind began to blow. To all in the valley, it said, unmistakably and with great feeling, "Bugger off".

Has she really lost her mind... I said, I couldn't tell you, I've lost mine

There are heavy chains around my wrists, and they drag me down as we trudge across the endless landscape. The ground is dark, lit inadequately by a sinister grey sky, but it doesn’t really matter. There is nothing here to see.

I stop, for a moment and stare behind me. In the distance I can see light, bright, happy, twinkling light. The kind shed by a family eating Christmas dinner. My guide, for he is not my captor, the chains are of my own making, clears his throat, and I resume my reluctant trek across the barren ground below me.

We reach our destination soon enough. There is a slope, and it leads down into a deep bowl in the earth. There are people there. Well, they were people once. They look as I suspect I will as soon as I take the first step towards them. Bereft of a reason for light, they exist, fueling a promise once made, an exchange that once seemed essential. They were the halves left over. The bits that they always thought would die from the pain, the loss, the sheer cruelty of letting them live. They wait for me.

I hesitate. My guide waits with me, staring silently down at my fate, sharing none of my uncertainty. We both know I have no choice anymore. The bargain had been sealed, but he was kind in indulging my sudden fear.

The silence lengthened, and I found my lips were moving unbidden, I stared into the depths of the hell that I had chosen and asked him softly,

“Why?”

My guide, he had heard this question asked before. He took my chains in his hands and told me,

“You pay for what you get.”

The BIG question

I was not one of those popular kids at school. I was friends with the popular kids, for awhile anyway, but I was never one of those girls. You know who I'm talking about. As a child, one often attributes this decided lack of coolness, to one factor, that through its existence has ruined yours. For me, it was my glasses.

I acquired my first pair at the tender age of seven. I have notoriously bad eyes, and I often got attention at parties by convincing people to put on my glasses for a lark. My reasoning was quite clear, if a little pathetic. The boy wearing my glasses would exclaim with amazement at how warped his vision had become and call other boys to exclaim over it, and I could stand there in the midst of the excited chatter, without glasses and therefore obviously looking stunning. Of course, boys at any age are assholes, so I would invariably never get my glasses back, or at least not in one piece, and though I would be delighted at having to exist bare faced for at least a few hours, I soon realised that knocking into furniture and tripping over things are not exactly the most effective way to attract the opposite sex.

Time went on and the mild dislike I felt for my glasses turned into out and out hatred. Till this day I will do anything to avoid wearing them at all. Don't get me wrong, this is not a tale of heartless bullying. In all my years at school no one actually even mentioned my glasses, but as I turned thirteen my lack of a love life was clearly a result of the glasses perched on the bridge of my nose.

For years, I had begged my parents for contact lenses. I was always denied of course. Too young, too poor, too terrible at the studies to deserve them, but finally, at the advanced age of fourteen, they gave in, and I was able to assume my destiny as the pretty girl at long last.

Well not quite. I still wasn’t terribly popular, and I found myself, with the advent of my contact lense wearing phase, subject to a new and considerably more worrying problem. At fourteen, the only kind of sex I was familiar with was the Mills & Boon kind. Coitus was described in the most romantic terms, with euphemisms that included heat like the heart of the sun and the rhythmic pounding of the waves. And at the end of the umm, session, when the Earth had stopped moving and the afterglow was in full swing, the lovers invariably fell into deep, happily exhausted sleep, their naked bodies still entwined. This was how it always happened, and as far as I knew, it was the only way. There is no arguing with this rule.

Thus I was faced with a most unique problem. As any Contact Lense Wearer (CLW) will tell you, you are not allowed to sleep with your contact lenses on. If you do, or so you are told, your eyes will start to rot and the Devil's own eagle will pluck them out of your skull and you will be blind forever. There is no arguing with this rule. To my fourteen year old mind, it presented an insurmountable obstacle. Say, just say, that one day someone would want to have sex with me. Should I take my lenses off before hand and risk stepping on something important? How much before hand? How would I judge that we were in fact going to have sex? What if I was wrong and had to pretend I wasn’t blind for the rest of the day? Or should I just pretend to go to sleep and slink out of bed to the bathroom after a sufficient amount of time had passed and I could be sure he was asleep? Or just stay awake all night and take them off in the morning when he wasn’t looking, and then put them back on again?

This question consumed me. What do I do with the Lenses? I would lay awake at night and plan, trying to come up with the most feasible plan possible. I researched expensive imported ‘gas permeable’ lenses that allowed the CLW a few hours of sleep while in use, and begged my parents to buy me those instead, though I was much to embarrassed to tell them why. They said no obviously…

It is now becoming slightly clearer, why I wasn’t all that popular in high school.

On a Church Floor

Um... Hello!

Ah its you. I havent heard from you in awhile.

Yes well, I was... busy.

And you're not now?

No. Well. Actually, I had some questions.

Dont you always? What is it this time?

I still feel, somewhere, inside, where it counts I think, that it will all work out and things will go back to 'normal'.

And...

And well. I've never really felt that way before, and I wanted to know, what does it mean?

Why should it mean anything?

Well because! Its so profound, and unshakeable and.. and inherent. It must mean something!

Oh you mean that these feelings indicate that he is the one for you, and that the love you shared was special and would conquer all and eventually it has to work out because you were meant to be together?

Yes!! Is it true? Is that what they mean?

No.

Oh. Then...

Nothing. They mean nothing.

Nothing at all? Not even-

NOTHING.

{silence}

You love him. And you haven't quite stopped yet. Now, go get drunk and find a nice boy and a quiet corner. That should help.

Oh I... Umm, thank you.

Anytime.

In Stone

In a beautiful house by a river in a land where the sun was always shining, a little girl lived all by herself. She had always lived there, at the edge of a beautiful forest with the happy little river, she could not remember a time before, and though she was alone she was not sad. She would often sit on the river bank and watch the water gurgle over the rocks and sand at the bottom and wonder idly what was on the other side. She had never left her side of the river, and knew nothing about what lay on the opposite bank. She would spend her day in a curious state of peace. Mostly staring at the sky and thinking of nothing. She would meander through the woods and the house, tracing the route she had taked the day before.

But when evening came, she would leave her house and walk a little way into the forest behind it. In the soft light of dusk she would stand before a marble tomb encrusted with moss and crumbling with age. As she stood there, not really knowing why she had come, the nothingness of the day would desert her, and she would suddenly be over come with emotion. She wondered why her heart felt so heavy and brimmed with so much pain. She tried to remember but the silent cruelty of the tomb banished her thoughts. Every night she decided never to visit the tomb again, but every evening, as the sun began to disappear into the trees she found herself walking into the woods. Something called to her, something that begged to be found, to be returned. To be forgiven.

But in her sleep she walked her life before. She walked along a wooded path dressed in black. She walked behind a train of silent people. She walked behind a beautiful stone sarcophagus. She walked across the river that would be her prison, she walked past the house that would be hers alone, she walked to the marble tomb, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight and watched as they placed the Sarcophagus inside. She stood beside it before they settled the heavy stone lid. She stared down into the cold eyes, watching as a slow smile twisted the cold lips. Her heart screamed in pain and without a thought she ripped it from her chest and threw it into the stone coffin. Her pain dulled and after a year of fighting for peace and freedom, her mind slept. She stepped away from the sarcophagus and walked to her house, wondering at the cold laughter that followed her, unmoved at last by what lay inside the tomb.

And so she lived alone in her peaceful, beautiful house by the river. She never remembered her dreams and never thought of her future. She knew nothing about her past. She never felt sad, and she never felt alone. She never felt anything.

Except for a few moments every day, in the cool grey light at dusk, when she stood before the marble tomb and tried to ignore the agony that she had paid so much never to feel.

Three Steps to the Right

I made a choice recently, to leave someone I love a great deal. Not because there is something better out there, but because, though I loved him, he made me more unhappy than I have ever been. He acquired a job that he loved, that meant he would be out of town for long periods of time. It meant that I would have to live alone in our house, in what was effectively a different city from where my friends and family lived, for weeks at a time if not more. This is not a relationship worth keeping. I have wondered if I made a mistake, if I should have just sucked it up and dealt with the misery.

I started reading a blog, written by, well not a friend, but someone I know, and she writes of her life, and her husband who travels constantly. She writes of how difficut it is to trust him, how alone and miserable she feels, how she has had to harden her heart and sterngthen her independance to keep misery at bay. I read what she is saying and I can see what my life would have been like if I had stayed. I never want to be as alone as she sounds.

Mrs. Asshole or Ms. Nobody?

I recently read an interview with actor turned politician Sanjay Dutt, in the Delhi Times. Being a tabloid-ish newspaper, the Delhi Times did not ask him about the elections he was hoping to win, or even about his acting career, they asked him about the supposed feud between his sisters and his wife. The alleged feud apparently did not exist, but Mr. Dutt felt the need to stress his version of family values.

He felt that women have one basic function. They get married, move to their new family, adopt their name and take on the responsibilities that running the family entail. He went on to say that he disapproved the new ‘fashion’ of women keeping their ‘parents’ last names after marriage, it was insulting to the man they had married and at odds with their place as the beast of domestic burden in their new ‘family’.

Alright I added the beast of burden bit, but the rest was pretty much a direct quote. It left me speechless. I was so upset on so many different levels I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate my anger. In order to make sense, I am applying GRE essay techniques to his interview.

The first issue of course is his view of the woman leaving her family behind and joining her new, true family, her in laws. Is that how defines women? A being to incorporate into a family to assume its responsibilities? Not even a General Manager, because they have some status, but a Housekeeper with benefits? As this is her only function, she obviously needs no identity separate from that of her husbands, which brings us to issue number 2, the change of the last name.

It clearly escaped the magnanimous Mr. Dutt’s notice, but his wife’s parent’s last name was also her last name. In allowing her to use his name he seems to forget that beyond being his wife or their daughter, she is herself. A person with, hopefully, a personality that has nothing to do with either of her two families. Why is it that women must sacrifice everything, down to their own identity, to be successful wives? They leave their families, they assume new duties, they have to bear and raise the children, they have to make sure that their husband’s lives are free from any trivial, irritating domestic problems. I have often heard these nameless women described as the power behind the throne, but honestly that is just such rubbish. Why must they be behind the throne? Why can’t they rule and let their husbands bring them chai and do the laundry?

A boyfriend once told people that my role in his stressful, challenging career was making sure that he got up in the morning and made it to his meetings on time. Apart from being completely untrue (for the most part I would lie in bed and watch him stagger around in the early morning light, if I bothered to wake up at all), his proudly claiming that I was a domestic Super Queen completely poleaxed me. For starters, I wasn't. And I wasn't even in training or anything, I mean I had no intention of ever being a domestic anything. I had no idea that he felt this should be his girlfriends function in his career. Worse, all the times I had utilized my intelligence to actually help him were not only forgotten, but completely irrelevant. Why is it that a woman’s worth is defined by how much easier she makes her husbands life? How well she runs her house, and how happy her husband is because of it?

Mr. Dutt’s views were traumatic. It made me realize how deeply ingrained they are in todays Indian society. And whats worse is that he will probably win the fucking election.

With this body I thee worship...

Ever since the demise of my almost marriage, I have found myself deeply fascinated by married couples my age. Luckily for me, it seems as if all my classmates are determined to be married this year, and I am blessed with a huge abundance of people to wonder at. I have spent hours on Facebook, studying photographs and conversations, trying to discern... Well, I'm not exactky sure what it is about these people that interests me so fiercely. I suppose I feel that I can find the answers to my problems in their relationships.

What was it that made them sure that they were ready for marriage? That this person was the right one? How did they know? Every boyfriend I have ever had, (except one) has asked me to marry him, and with most I haven't even considered the option. Even now, though I had said yes, I wasn't a hundred percent sure. I had my doubts, and I knew that many things would have to change before I would wholeheartedly open my mind to marriage. It seems to me, in light of the nuptials taking place in everyone elses lives, that I am the only one who isn't satisfied with what I have.

I am holding out for the impossible? Am I the fool, to want so much from a relationship before i accept that it is ready for marriage? Or are they the fools, for settling for a relationship that may not be perfect? Or are they all universally blessed with the perfect lover and I still haven't found mine?