The Alternate Love Story Of An Old Man. (Part II)

His life, it seemed like a motion reel of fuzzy pictures. No father, a cantankerous aged mother. The one who wailed continuously, pitifully thin body, pitifully thin voice-crackly, screechy. She trilled on and on, all the time. In the first slice of dawn when she would wake u muttering, in the maenadic afternoon glares, the pashmina of twilight and the liquid blackness of night. She puttered, stewed and spouted brittle strings of words and laments.While sweeping the floor of their tiny house- soiled mekhela hunched up to her knees, hair scrunched into a greasy bun, while scrubbing the clothes-soap suds warily and gingerly touching her face, while chewing on her daily paan that left an almost permanent red spittle on the side. He did not pay much attention to her- he was a shy boy, a bovine demeanor. Harassed by his mother's sadistic pricks and pokes and sneers and thankless tongue- he lived, he played, he grew up.
His mother kept shrieking and growing thin- her body started hunching with age, her eyes cranky with cataract and yet her voice getting sharper with ever passing year. Soon she was bedridden but her voice never stopped its relentless parade of litanies. It got thinner and thinner, shriller and shriller and one day, in a savage rhapsody of a cruel life, she drooled and slobbered and choked on her own spit to an ugly, repelling death.
Hariprasad was 20 that time and he was relieved. His mother was the only woman he knew, and they had no relatives. Freed from the obligation of looking after a parent, and freed from the continuous high pitch drone that swirled in frenzy around his ears, Hariprasad started living his life.A life where no one was peeking over his shoulder as to what he was doing. Where he could sleep, arms spread out like an eagle and mouth sloppily open and not to be woken up to the distinct biting shrill of his mum. Where he could stare into the azure blue sky and smile at the clouds prancing like polished stallions and not be rapped on his head. Where he could go seek work, where he liked and not where his mother wanted to be- his mother's feverish mewl about what a man should be had burned an ugly feeling into his skin. And all in these 20 odd years of his existence, there was on quivering, persistence thought in his head, that stayed. Never ever to get married. 

She sipped her tea in a leisurely way- her eyes tiptoeing and taking into the street side scenery. He watched her while he drank his own- scrunching his nose as the steam waves tickled his it, every time he would lift the cup for a sip. His wife. He loved the way she looked in the morning. Frail, delicate. Cute sacks of mongoloid skin-Folds and furrows of skin. Fleshy long earlobes.That little mole on her left cheek which he found so becoming. Sunlight reflecting off her glasses.He did not know the color of her iris, but he hoped they were a brew of brown- he loved brown. Crispy autumn foliage. There was a sudden gust of air, and the curtains rippled with nervous laughter. She hurried to hush them.She tamed them to a more subdued state, running her hand along the curtain length, a little pucker playing on her forehead. He loved this little habits of hers. His wife's. It was always her left hand,  and how she would curl the fabric along her arm and pinch it in place with her fingers. How she would first tuck in the corners and then smooth the rivers of creases on her bed, wiping a palm across the bed-sheet. He could see her bed from his window. A single poster bed, with one fluffy pillow. How she washed the pillow case every week- wrapping the pillow in a gamocha till the case dried. Hair-washing days were Wednesdays and Sundays. Tea-dates those days, were with her wispy head of grey hair slowly frizzing and drying in the playful, boisterous sunlight. He knew she listened to Rabindra Sangeet, her crackly radio eagerly warbling the mellow lyrics. And that she liked birds.How she left her plate of rice on the mossy terrace after she was done eating, for the birds to feed on the leftovers. There was always a bird, who would hop cautiously to the daal stained plate left on the terrace. A darting glance here and there, ready to take flight if threatened and it would start pecking, little by little, inch by inch.That stray rice, the broken green chili, that pudgy piece of potato. 


Hariprasad Sharma was in love with his wife whose name he did not know and whom he never married. 

The Alternate Love Story Of An Old Man. (Part I)

The biggest and only regret in Hariprasad's life was that he did not marry when he was a portly fellow laboriously climbing the ladder of the thirties. But, in his late seventies now, he took care of it.

Cobwebs clung like shriveled skin to the sides of the wall . Like the sudden twiggy cracks that appear on an ice cube when dowsed with water, the walls were an expanse of spidery strands that yawned here and there.The ceiling was slapped with a hurried paste of congealed blue to cover up the soft bruises of dampness.  The walls were haggard and wrinkled ,painted with the crude washy blue of oil pastels. The wall was corrugated, so it seemed that the harassed pastel was crushed with an ugly fat palm, all over the place, leaving clumps, creases and the putty colored bricks jutting here and there. Feather weight, uncolored dust pirouetted in the apartment to settle down to greasy thick clods on the corners, sticking to chair legs and cloaking that one,solitary, forgotten showpiece on the desk. Weeds of soot dangled and fluttered from the ancient fan, as it creaked  and groaned and squealed, trying to blow a tiny tempest of air to the man on the chair beneath it. Hariprasad Sharma.

The chair overlooked the window. A threadbare holey shawl was slung over it, in the faintest and failing mimicry of decoration. There was nothing spectacular about the view.Clusters of tired buildings, hunched and huddled with age. The rain had washed over the original paint, the sun hammered an unrelenting soprano on them, leaving them looking bedraggled and pale. You could see staircases with rusty banisters and stairs speckled with red spit and desolate toffee wrappers.Clothes hung on wash lines, multicolored pegs keeping them in place, as the wind ran long, seductive fingers through the damp,limp fabrics. Delicate's peeked over the grills. Tiny alleys and roads, where rickshaws wheeled by carrying the tittering teenagers and the sedate mothers. Coils of rubber wires lay on the roofs, dish tv setups looked like alien wings fanning from the terraces. Plant pots stood bored on the porches- terracotta tubs filled to the brim with the sluggish brown rain water and  singular stalks of neem growing from the bog. Thin, yellow children in thin cotton clothes, pudgy harried mothers in worn-out saris, men with bristly mustaches and cellphones in pouches stuck to their belts, Maruti 800's and scooters in garages. Fuzzy shrubs here and there. Little nests of hibiscus on straggly hedges.  Overflowing garbage of gaudy plastics and pungent wastes. Rag-pickers. Mongrels with skinny, droopy tails.A common man's street-view from a common man's room. 

He sat on the chair, a little slouched, his feet outstretched and the wet towel still slung on his neck. The 7o clock river of sunlight made gentle forays into his room, the creamy yellow tumbled from the soulful blue sky and splashed softly on the streets, and on the tree next to her apartment. An old old tree with a gorgeous plumage of green, whose leaves shone like it was pickled in mustard oil and sprinkles of fat fresh white flowers sitting jauntily in it, resembling succulent juicy spices. He sat with his morning paper, the one he picked up everyday at 6, left hand pressed against his arthritis-riddled back as he stooped to fish it out from the doormat. A quick warm bath later, he would sit down with it, in his chair placed right in front of the window, his bifocal-ed eyes slowly reading through the tiny prints. He was a neat man, his clothes were old but clean, the shirt pressed to a sharp crease near his shoulder blades,his somber brown pants flapping and flopping at the straight lines that the iron had stressed along its length. His hair was sparse, grey strands slick with jaborand oil and separated from each other, the same distance as the teeth of the green comb he used to run through it. Every now and then, he would pick up the paper to swat at a fly that would buzz noisily around him-he hated flies and that monotonous  irritating way they tattooed an itchy hum right next to his ears.

He knew she woke up at 8. He could see the curtains being parted, the puritan blinds in white. The quick glimpse of her face, washed with sleep, eyes caked with grease- sagging cheeks making pouches. That old nightie with a bib of pink. He got up from his chair slowly, knowing that she would go for her ablutions now- across the terrace lay her bath. A tiny room she lived in, right opposite his window- a rectangle, with tinier rectangles slashed for windows and a huge terrace.The terrace was not stone colored, but shod in what seemed like molded furry velvet with slimy spawns of moss swimming haphazardly. In the corner, there stood a marble slab where she had kept a tulsi plant and a pair of conch shells. A broken chair stood woebegone on the sides.

He lifted himself up, placing the newspaper on the table next to the chair and tried straightening his wizened frame. To the tiny kitchen across the room, he shuffled- slow steps; the slippers  smacking weakly on the stone floor. He knew it took her twenty minutes to take her bath and make her tea,and he knew it took him twenty minutes to make his. An elaborate affair, he had made it. Bring down the kettle with its rings of pale steel on the inside. Boil the water, drop the tea leaves and watch it stain the liquid with its iron tint. Look at his watch and wait for its pointed hands to circle for exactly 10 mins. One spoon of sugar-wait another five. Agitated bubbles simmering to the surface-angry transparent blisters sprouting, while the tea leaves swam serenely in circles at the bottom. Pull out his cup from the hook;he loved the cup-a black porcelain coffee bug inscribed with his name-a gift from his office mates when he retired.  Marie biscuits piled on plate( just two), he would pour the black tea into his mug and carry it back to his chair. And wait. 

And sure enough, she would sit by her own window,- her face fresh, her hair freshly braided to a tiny rat's tail end, her eyes staring vacantly out of the window, the cup of tea perched on the windowsill. 

And then she would take a sip, old woman's finger's clasping the enamel handle of her cup and bringing it to her lips. Her hair frizzing at the sides, her eyes magnified by her glasses, a flat chain of gold on her neck. A red loose cotton blouse. And lips closed over a toothless mouth, shriveled skin that gathered around it. And she took a sip. So did he.

It had been 2 years, and Hariprasad never missed one tea-date with his wife whose name he did not know and whom he never married.

He is my kind of rain. My confetti falling from heaven.

Listless mornings melding into  the afternoon torpor, and you will find me sitting in front of my laptop in my tiny room here with its tortoise printed curtains of a ticklish blue. The blackberry plugged into the speakers, music wafting through the them- some lyrics sustained,a few sublime notes, pure like untouched nectar, sometimes a feet bewitching number. I do not usually keep my tube light on, preferring to pamper my laziness with the slumberous glow of halogen lamps. Somewhere in the backdrop hums, the distant crescendo of buses, cars, two wheeler, voices. Calcutta  being a concrete jungle does not offer much of a piquant view, but, when I stare out of my window, growing the whimsical wings of a daydreamer,  I notice the purple-orange blush of the night sky. It seems like stammering lights from the buildings below had stumbled upon together and suffused the polluted and corrosive black to a somewhat clumsy gentleness.
Somewhere in that room, in the Niagara of chords and the lullaby of the amber light, I lose myself into the world of dreams. 


My thoughts, they surround me like an impassioned maelstrom. Random, raw, abstract. Nimble footed like the virginal antelope, they tease me, taunt me,beckon tantalizingly. I cannot focus on one, I cannot lift up one tendril of thought from the pool of many.Today,however was different. 


My brother came back home after walking my dog, in a turbulent mood. He is a big fellow, of 17, tall and sinew. He tried to talk,but he flustered, so agitated he was. 17 does not call for much poise and maturity in a boy, and being a protective sister, I tend to be biased about my brother. So, when I say he pummeled his fist into the wall, hurling the golf sticks and kicking the ones that had clattered to the floor, his face a volcanic red, his eyes starting to water, I would say it was justified and that it pained me. Not only me, but my parents. We were all rattled. 


He is a simple soul, my brother. He likes to plug in his earphones, or strum a few chords on the guitar, or merrily make fun of me and my utterly vague nature. Food is what makes him happy, and once again I am not exaggerating when I say he has an expandable stomach and he actually looks crestfallen( so cute! ), when Mom ladles out plain yellow daal for dinner. His life is all about tearing into a crispy chicken leg, persistently ignore my Dad's efforts to wake him up in the morning and he considers it achievement when he can kick me awake just before going off to school. You see, apparently it pains him to see, that while he slogs at school and memorizes his abominable Economics, I am cocooned in the softest arms of sleep, beautiful sleep.
So when a sweetheart like my brother ( once again, a very biased sister), comes back home and kicks at the furniture, cringing with pain, trying to stop tears for he is a boy, and sputters and stutters, overwhelmed by anger, punches into the iron walls, bangs the doors till they sound like a minor blast, obviously we were all scared, pained and surprised.


The story was simple. Buddy being the 3rd child of the family, though noticeably different, for he is a golden Labrador, needs to go for his daily nature calls at 5pm. The society in which we live in, is full of stuck up pricks(pardom my language) and they made this raucous affair of a dog peeing and excreting in the compound. Even though, there were mangy mongrels doing the exact same. Of course, we are not insensitive, so Buddy is trained to do his needful only on grass. But to avoid further confrontation with these annoying pricks(pardon, pardon), Daddy gets the car to drive Buddy to the nearby park at 5 everyday, so that my youngest brother can gallivant around while he does his dump.
Dad was busy today and Buddy treats me like a rag doll, dragging me along the floor. So, I am never sent with Buddy on his nature walks. Brother being "the man", was chosen to take the huffing- puffing, tongue- wagging and tail dancing cartoon of mine. 
Now apparently Buddy peed near a car. Not on the car, but near it. 4 guys, pot bellied and stinking (Brother's description) and somewhere in their 30's ganged up on him, ruffed him by the color, spatting  uncouth words on his face , the words being " How dare your dog pee near our car?".  While one guy acted as a leader, the other three surrounded my brother, ruffian hands ready to take action. My brother justified saying, with all the muck and mud on your car tire's, why are you even bothered about my dog peeing on the road. Not even on your car! But they just told him that dare you come here next time and even if you do, make sure your dog does not come near the cars.


Bastards. Bloody jerks. I hope they rot int hell. How can you do this to a kid taking his dog for a walk? How can you corner him for your own time pass? How can you provoke him, and prick him, abuse him in that one lonely deserted stretch of a road? The wanted to goad him into fighting, and then they would have beaten him down to a bloody pulp. BASTARDS.Why would you even chose to fight for a cause that is so utterly pointless? Just because he is not from your land? Just because you want to? He is just a kid! When you can watch a cricket match together and root for the country, religion caste, goddammit, Why the sudden need to have this obnoxious pride of your community? And cultivate the pride, go on, but honestly.. this way? 


When will we start living for the greater good? When?


By the way, "She is my kind of rain" is a song, I liked. 

In a different sense, my brother is "My kind of rain". Sweet drops of happiness he rains on me, when Life scorches my guts out. 
I could not see him, the way he was today. It hurt. 

The Inelegant Bride. (Part II)

They pitied her, they pitied her. And yet on the streets, they would shy away from calling her. Her obscenely fleshy frame which she covered in soul-less colors, the knife clutched firmly in her hand, the hair which she had never cut, a mass of black broomsticks, and those hollow eyes of a volcano black, put people off her. On social gatherings, when the ladies would sit together, at the dirty pinches of the frayed multicolored tent, the topic would inadvertently and surely touch the life of "Poor Swati". There would be audible sighs and sympathetic clucks. Someone would try to mutter, but instead in needle-like voice say a small verse, with the theatric closing of eyes, and clasping of fingers. The new brides would shake their majestic heads of hair in pity, the meek one would look pointedly down. Pregnancies, babies, philandering husbands, failed businesses, family feuds, cat fights and a visit by the local film star later, the murder of the Mathur's and the fate of their only, spoiled child, still was titillating sensation, the sobered embers of which were fueled to a tickling life, every now and then. 


15 years was a long time. But it stood frozen for Swati, the winsome 25 year old, who walked into the dead bodies of her beloved parents. A balmy afternoon, with the heat fluttering in a listless haze, while fondling happily the complying bodies of her dead parents. Her Mom's wheat colored face coated with sluggish blood, her Dad's eye unseeing and lolling in their sockets. They laid side by side, like two dummies, in clothes tinctured with drying blood, cold bodies in the copper heat. 
The people came to take her away wanting to wipe her tears. There were none. Soft voices, softer touches, the softest words. A kind lady  gently opened the fancy necklaces that looped on her neck, someone else greedily took off the gold bands on her fingers. There were five of them. Somewhere, someone, in a plaintive voice warbled about God's grace. The smell of the rose incense wafted around the house, gently  like the footsteps of a fleecy lamb.They fed, she did not protest. They nudged the spoon of daal into her tiny mouth, they dabbed her chin with the towel when water would dribble down it. They talked, she did not hear. She stood, frozen in time.


And then she made love to madness. The neighborhood would be woken up by her acidulous cries of unbearable pain. The night would be punctuated with her spams of wails, the venomous sobs and withering laments. The dawn would have her convulsing with heart pain, the day would hear her tempest of prayers, frenzy and feverish. The God's were ripped from the walls and hurled into garden with its long, octopus like grass tentacles. She laughed, her delirious laugh, seeing the wooden frames and their slaughtered inhabitants rotting in the rains, fading in the sun,even the stray spring flower not wanting to touch them.Her hair grew long and in copious amounts- her body clung to the comfort of fat, her eyes became more vacant. She muttered, she stalked. Her rants were soft like a pianissimo, and sometimes vicious like the wolves. She paced, she paced.  She was shackled to life but not to its obligations. She cared not to care for herself, for the society. And she went on, making love to her insanity, besotted to her madness. 




How could she get be married ? Who would marry her?

The pandit drawled again. 

"Bring the bride"
The pandit-he was an oily man.His verses were oiled and so was his hair and just like his face. He righteously chanted the hymns and the verses, while feeding the hungry pyre of orange, its milk of ghee. Every now and then, he would tinkle the bell, and toss the lilies floating in the bowl next to him unceremoniously in the humid air. There was a place, empty next to him. And he beckoned on to her.


She stood up. Everyone eyed her like a jackal, hungry for their morsel of gossip to whet their craving appetites. They watched her, place one unsteady foot shod in golden plastics after another. Her frame wobbled, she grunted. Like as if a spotlight was on her, everyone just stared as she took her steps on the dirty velvet of the carpet, slowly making way to the bamboo mat next to the pandit. She sat down on it, inelegant bride that she was, farting, as she let herself spread on the carpeted macadam. Her eyes black, yet shampooed to a hard glint by her frenzied excitement, her lips pursed, her body heaving, sweating, trembling. Swati- The mad bride. 


Everyone held their breath. For now they had to call the groom. There was a rustling of tacky silks, and the graze of nylon trousers, as people turned their head around, peeking squinting waiting for the HER groom to arrive.


"Bring the groom", he intoned,in his not so melodious voice. A frisson of excitement in the crowd. The excitement was palpable, like a trembling wave threatening to break open and drench the people any moment. The mother put a hurried palm over her crying toddler, the men chewed their paan tensely. The teenage rebel quietly slung her arm through her mother's. The short ones unabashedly stood on their toes. The old matrons controlled their lashong tongues, the sole waiter serving the guests, paused with his tray of oil lathered goodies. Everyone waited with bathed breath. 
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Years later, Swati's marriage still remained, tucked into manifolds of every conversation. Everyone recounted the disbelief that coursed through them as the inelegant bride, pulled out the picture of a random man, cut out from the newspaper and placed it on the seat next to her. How she walked around the pyre holding the picture in his hand, head held erect. One time, two times, Seven times. Someone said, that was the picture of her mother's favorite singer. Nobody could see properly. The ink of the newspaper had started fading with age, the picture was spotted with unbecoming circles of purple. She placed her fat, fleshy thumb stained with the red and drew a long tikka on the paper. She took that paper and rubbed it on her forehead, and ran it along her hair. She stabbed the paper with a single flower, and herself slung a magnificent garland of orange blossoms. She placed the picture on the ground and then bowed down in front of. Kissed the ground. A play so elegant, a play so dark, its actress so wild, the audience so stunned. They recalled, how when the rituals were over, Swati never looked at any one of them, and walked, the picture clutched to her bosom, to her house, shut the door, to never look back. The mural of the gory murder was complete with the one last piece of the insane daughter. No one knew, no one knew. Why Swati got married, to whom Swati got married.




No one knew, about the times, she spent looking at that one picture of her mother that was stuck on the wall. Her mother in the wedding dress. No one knew, Swati's hours of staring at the picture, wanting to bring her mother back. That smiling face, those chubby arms washed with that sweet smelling cream. Her mother. No one knew, how she would sit on the ground, her hair falling around her, the rat slyly running past her, and look and stare at that picture pasted on the crumbly blue wall. They called her mad, she was not. She lived in another world, where she was not yet born, and her mother was still alive and blushing like a bride. She just wanted her mother back. She just wanted to walk every evening straight into her mother's embrace. Her frozen brain fathomed that a marriage could bring her back. Maybe those rituals had some magic? Maybe the windchime in her parent's bathroom would tinkle once again, as her mom would flippantly strike it, after her bath. Maybe her Mom would be found cooking a delightful mixture of spicy curry for her in the kitchen. Maybe, Maybe. But it did not, it did not.


No one saw Swati after that day. 

The Inelegant Bride. (Part I)

It came in a crude, coarse envelope, sealed..not with glue, but with the hurried lick of a tongue. The saliva had dried to leave pale streams of a salty black along the border. It was a red card. Red and tiny. With a funny loop of silver threads pinned on the corner. Somewhere from the middle, laughed letters written in epileptic strokes, using a cheap sparkle ink. Laughed and ridiculed in their shiny disco clothes of purple ink.

"I invite you to my marriage. Swati."

Everyone who lived on the street recieved it. From the Brahmins to the Baniyas. From the fair faced, to the dark skinned. From the man with his three huge dogs, to the widow opposite his house with her penchant for melancholy music. Tucked in their door knobs, thrashed in their mail boxes, slid under their doors. She never invited them, face to face. Did not drag along her mother like other brides, demurely draped in a dull salwar, politely refusing the sweets placed, gladly sipping the glass of cold drink, blushingly acknowleging the tease about the groom, staunchly ignoring the talks about the past. No. In the dying hums of the balmy night, she would sling across her disfigured frame, her postman satchel of handmade wedding cards, and walk house after house, lane after lane, stopping briefly before each humble abode, to fish out the pen from behind her wild bun and with laborious strokes write the house number on top of the envelope. 

Everyone went to her wedding.

They rescheduled doctor's appointment, the trip to the tailor. They canceled on dinner invitations, some politely refused offers to watch the latest movie.The mother's made sure that their children had finished their homework before 7 and were bathed and dressed by 8. The husbands gave up on their after office banter at the street chai- walla's while devoring gulab jamuns, pulpy with hot sticky syrup. The grandmother's talked in loud, uncouth tones, the teenagers licked up a lascivious portrait of rumors. Women met up on the streets huddled and whispering and stoking a warm, exciting fire of gossip, that fed their bored spirits. 

She sat there on her bridal throne.

Dressed in a red sari. Red, the color of fresh blood. It was not new, it was not old. It was cheap and the sequins winked in a leery way as the lights fell on them. The fake diamonds and the fake emeralds and the hilariously fake rubies that studded the entire length of the six yards giggled like teenagers giggling in their shrill voices. The plastic gold that clung to her stout neck and her long fleshy earlobes shone like flashlights on a cart. Sweat and powder mixed together to form rivulets of grey all along her neck and dripping down it in a sickening way. Her blouse stuck to her swollen breasts hardly containing them, while clumps of flesh fell loose from the sides. Her bra peeked brazenly from the bottom of the blouse,the colors of last holi still staining the cotton white. She had tried to hide her stomach with her sari, but the bloated mound with its ugly navel was still discernible. Her arms were flabby, and every time she would raise her hand to fob the flies that had come to feast on her salty sweat, the flesh would dance and wiggle in a vulgar way while the harlequin bangles on either wrist shrieked. 

Her makeup- she referred and read laboriously, the makeup tips in the Sunday newspaper. The eyes were almost colored black, and the heat had made the kohl runny and now, pools of black lay underneath her eyes. She had painted an eyelids, the scintillating shade of a peacock blue. The lips were daubed with a violent pink, the cracks on the flesh oozing a little bit of dried blood. The dark facial hair on her upper lips which she had tried to conceal with some extra powder still showed-thin manly strands. Her cheeks which looked like she had stuffed her mouth with an obscene amount of food, were carefully painted in circles of rouge. Her hair was parted in the middle, straggly strands that she had plastered and then puffed into a bun like the latest bridal magazine said. But the makeup was cheap, it cracked all over the face, the sweat turning everything violet. She looked like the Made-In-China toy that the hawkers sold on the street.

She sat on her bridal throne, amidst the unwilling  red roses and wilting white lilies. Feverish and aware. From the entrance to her platform, she had ordered a red carpet to be laid, which was now littered with crushed napkins, sauf, and torn petals.  Her seat was cushioned and she sat erect, while her puffed up bun kept touching the vines of lily falling from the artificial bower. Aside her, were the few gaudy presents and in her golden handbag were the envelopes of money which her guests had given. Her bulbous eyes, the whites the color of wine, were alert and greedy, as she continuously looked at the entrance and at the size of the presents that her guests had bought. 

"Call the bride, it is time for her marriage", the pandit droned.

The guests who had been fed, and the kids who had licked their ice cream cones suddenly set alert. "Finally, we get to see the groom! ", For who would have thought Swati could get married?! She was the mad single lady of 39, whose parents murder had addled her brains at 25. She spent her time reciting macabre poetry in a loud, carrying voice, enacting every though written. She was seldom seen on the streets, except the few times when she had  to go to the market, and even then, she would carry a small knife in her hand while the wind blew her wild mane of hair in a frenzy. She fed the dark nights with her blood curling wails and feverish laments. Her howls were piercing, cold and slimy. Her garden with its growth of luscious vines and tall grass like the nails of a witch, was strewn with pictures of different God's wit their faces ripped open viciously. The Shiva had a bleeding eye, The Ganesh was torn along his forehead, Jesus lay mutilated. All on the street knew that that every Sunday at 4pm, she would stand on the same place, with the same numb look, and stare at that carpet of grass that had once since the stabbed bodies of her Mom and Dad, years back, the green caressed with the warm blood, the face turning blue, the eyes vacant in their sockets, the skin cold. She talked to none, she did not know how to smile. Once lissome, she had turned into a grossly fat woman around whom madness swirled like a malaise. 

So how, how could Swati get a groom and get married?! 

The house.

The house was broken. In spirit, in structure. No one lived there.It stood, tall and decomposed and dead, on the side of the flashy new urban residence painted in the brightest of pastels.


The terrace was of a dying black, with a stain of parasitic moss that had spread like a pool of water. The vines hung like poisonous snakes. Untamed bushes grew from the broken corners, the leaves looked treacherous. The plaster had peeled off- crusty flakes creaked open from the walls-like a man whose face dripped with pustules of ugly, squeamish pus. A brick blushed red and healthy somewhere, it seemed like a valiant attempt to be a part of the present time. The window had no curtains, except the straggly strands of decayed ivy. Dying and an infected yellowish green. The grills were probably painted white, but over the years, the dust licked the white to a salty grey. The house had the halo of the haunted, as if a peek into windows would reveal the palette's of the yesteryear's. Maybe an old man, with his crop of hoary hair, and a face flushed with flesh, tucked into the corner. A shiny box of steel with the assortment of paan and other breath mint by the side of his mat. Or maybe a young bride, smothered with gold and wrapped in a fiery red, the bangles chiming the sweetest tinkle as she fluffs the bed for her old husband. Maybe girls with long pleated cotton frocks and neatly braided hair. Maybe a boy with socks pulled up to his knees, his hair oiled with jasmine and parted strictly to the sides. An earthen pot, a steel tumbler. Maybe, Maybe.


I can only wonder. I will never know the story of the house on the street.

Can we be together for the weekend? I hate waking up alone on a Sunday morning.

Can we be together, for the weekend ?

I hate waking up alone on a Sunday morning.






Its a vacation, that day. I want to do it my way.

I want to wake up, in your strong arms. I want to watch you sleep and sigh, turn around, while I sneak out.

I know I will drown myself in the sweetness of a long bath, I tip-toe out of the room, I leave wet,sloppy trails.

I tinker in the kitchen, a gentle din of metal and steel.

I make you your break-fast of the strongest tea, and the healthiest egg.

I make you the fluffy, honey pancakes with blueberry jam smeared lustily on them.


I wake your Sunday face of restful smiles, with the most wettest kis


We wear white, I tie a little pink bow.

We cushion up on that clumsy,cozy sofa. Trough out the day. Hearts beating one way.

From the strong yellow brew of the morning, to the crepuscular rays of twilight.

Till it eclipses to the mellowness of the night. Black as ebony, warm as honey.

Teasing, exploring, loving.

Loving.





So can, we be together, for just this weekend?

I hate having to sleep drunk on a Saturday night.

I hate having to wake up, a solitary figure, still flushed from her scary dreams.

I hate having to tread around, for the gentle slap of my slippers on the floor, makes such a thundering sound!

Like as if, loneliness has an indelicate sound to it. Almost a noise.

Like reminding me, that you are so far away.

I wont have your fingers gently entwined with me, for a long long time, till that one fateful day.




No, this is not a sad song.

No, this is not, a weeping myna warble.

Its just my want, and my wish.

Of Childhood and being Daddy's little girl.

Pleasant happy sight of a family of four frolicking in the park, outside my hostel. A little twinge of sadness for having grown-up, and a sweet happiness at the innocence of children.

I missed Daddy like crazy, when I saw the father, lift his tiny daughter up in his arms, and smothering her with kisses. And when he swung her round and around her,and I could see her face breaking into breath-taking delight. The older daughter was pulling at her Mum's white suit, gesticulating towards a stray, beggarly puppy. All of them, were barefoot on the green grass, I could see their flashy footwear flung carelessly along the stone border of the lawn.


Sometimes, I wish I was a little girl all over again, in a cute, flouncy pinafore and a hankie pinned in a triangle to my front. Scooby Doo school bag, and a red water bottle slung across my neck. My coveted possession was my Donald Duck finger ring and the scariest thing that could happen was getting lost in the super market. And the MOSTEST important thing was to brush your teeth twice daily, and never have too many chocolates, for the gummy yummy brown might make our teeth go bad. " I will tell to Miss",chant by that kid with huge, black eyes, used to give you frightful jitters.

Oh how I wish, I could right now cuddle to my Dad, enormous blankets, covering us in a snowy mass, and s the blue-blue patched mosquito net above us. 

Of my own little concrete cocoon of bliss ( My room).

I love my room. 

Its my alcove, its me.


I love the paper butterflies,that I have stuck to the wall, their wings folded,as if ready to fly. The walls are blue,matte finish. The tube light, hurling shards of its glittery,plastic light at it, makes them glisten- an uneven wave of spongy,shiny softness on the brick creation. 

Once,these packets,dangling from an old,dying wire in a shop caught my attention. A merry hotchpotch of colors, swathed in translucent plastic.On closer inspection, they were stickers of butterflies and honeybees- oh so quaint! The colors were so jolly!Like,fat lil droplets falling back noisily, after splashing on the black,graphic border.  I bought them by a dozen, and spent one,extremely ecstatic afternoon sticking them all over the walls. The same shop once had these packets of neon colored hearts-colors so jubilantly bright, that I was once again found, happily sticking them over my bed, one glorious afternoon. I tell you, it was so ticklish- that feeling, when I pulled each one out of their plastic houses; that sticky-wicky gummy "sssssshrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" of adhesive, and with princess-like flourish, stuck them in random, mad fashion all over.

So now I have a blue wall with red-pink-yellow syrupy dots blinking winking at me, every day every night. I love it!

I have this one happy corner in my room. On my suitcase, draped in a bed-sheet, the color of a squishy,healthy tomato, sits the cutest stool on earth. Pink felt cover, with hearts yawning and oozing all over it. My princess hairband and my bangle of silver,tinkling coins stands on it . Princess hairband of fading silver encircles a smiling teddy hugging a cup made of velvet fur. I heart chocolates is needled across its mossy face.  Next to him, in a basket woven of amber straw with a handle draped in brilliant blue ribbon, sits a tiny dog, wearing cocky sunglasses in red. Satin strands of green and blue are weeping all over it. 


On the wall above, I stuck this Nun bag, so cheery pink in color. And other tid-bits of paper, for their canary colors. And those smart stirrers from HRC. A yellow chimney of scrap paper, squirrels it way up, right to the top. Thats my technicolor wall. A happy confusing riot of paint.

The favoritest thing in my room is my kitschy paper chandelier. I hung it, from ribbon on my window-a funny, pumpkiny color. Oh-oh-oh, its so pretty! A lantern made of blue.The palest,prettiest, demure blue. Ribbed all over. I stuck green butterflies all over its paper body. And dangling from its heart, are a series of butterflies, sown together, with little bells in between them, which make the most divine sound, when the wind playfully nudges the lantern. Oh Twisha! Thank you so much for making it for me! My winsome winsome chandelier.


4 years inside these walls, I loathe to leave!

Of Music. And what it does to you.

Music, is like silk.There is a pounding in my head. Sometimes tortuously slow and sometimes painfully fast. My blood is quivering and so is my soul. Quivering like a globule of water, glimpsed in slow motion- transparent and tremulous.Lyrics, so stunning.Where every sentence breaks, every word truncates, every syllable is torn asunder, and every vowel finally trickles like a serpent all around you. Till you feel pregnant, with the tiny fetus of a sound, somewhere embedded into you. Which feeds on the satin charm of the night, the roar of your emotions, and grows. Grows, burgeons, magnifies, throbs, swells, quavers. And then, it explodes, a fury of passion, a downpour of sentiments.. Almost, an orgasm. Like a coil  of rope, woven of buried feelings, and whispering thoughts, let unloose on you, and it falls down, in one fluid motion, the ends,dangling and gently tickling your feet. Ah, Music.


On my playlist now:
1. Sun and Moon- Above and Beyond.
2. Rain- Markus Schulz.

3. Nothing but You- Paul Van Dyk.


Good Morning and Good Night :)

Of Time. Of Life.

No more, do I seek to give advise to people tormented. Souls lacerated by dying love, minds poisoned by hate, bodies convulsing in harrowing inner pain.  For, no matter how eloquent my discourse, how tender my touch, and how rational my thoughts.. this heart, oh this heart!

Its time, its the fat lady Time who trundles along life, hand in hand with you. Its only, she who can make you okay. With every day, the hurt will fade, albeit just a tiny, minisicule bit. With every day, the storm of questions, will find one lonely answer, who will walk out forlornly, hesitant, out of its closet and face you. With every steady tick of the clock, things will get better. For the mind will start taking control, and not the heart.

I can tell you, it will one day, be okay. You can read an ornamental adage about how its better to laugh now, since you will laugh about it later, anyways. One day, over a cup of coffee in a quaint little cafe,  a curtain of old memories will drop, silkily in front of you. And looking at the slightly faded, fluid memories, all you will do is smile a bit, laugh a bit. But not now, never now.

Its how we are, how we are built. I can scream at you, I can force you, I can point out harsh truths to you. But until, you really wish to see it, you will not.You will still mourn a happiness that has now left you, not willing to believe that there exists something better.

Your body will live. Like a trained acrobat, it will do its daily routine, for every action has been tattooed in it. But your heart will remain drooping and wilted, till you seek to water it once again, till you have the courage to let go, and look ahead, be kind enough to let your heart l live, to breathe.

Its time, its all about time.

Time makes it easier for us to look back, then to look ahead. Looking back now, at the way, I had once crucified myself with unhappiness, I cannot recall the actual pangs and actual sudden coiling of the intestines, or how my heart fluttered like a bird about to be slaughtered.  The way my body spasmed. I cannot recall those feelings, for they existed for those moments of time. I am better now, healing, living, happy. But, that time, I did not believe that I could ever be whole again. That life could ever be sorted. That things will always be a tiring mess. But here I am, cartwheeling in time, a little better every day.

So, all I can say is, if nothing else, have faith in Time. For better or worse, these things, shall pass.  The pain wont be felt, it will be vaguely remembered. The heart wont be just living, but will actually be alive.

I also believe, that we are special, not because of our talents, its because of our experiences that we gather.

For a beautiful baby.

Her eyes, oh her eyes! Diaphanous pools of white with pupils melted grey, kisses of emerald gurgling around them. Her skin looks like pink butter. Like as if,a tiny-toed elf had chomped in a luscious strawberry and the decided to blow minty streams of raspberry under her skin. Tiny twirls,that floated above to fuse together to form a glorious flush of pink. Oh and please look at her lips! A rosebud, tiny. A rosebud of shy crimson, supple and arched in a faint happy smile.The same elf must have flitted across glimmering fields of emerald grass and stumbling upon a shy, red bloom in the forest of green, must have picked it up and fashioned it for her lips. Her nose was like a button. I so want to touch her, feel the powdery softness of her skin. Sigh. And look at the darling's hair! Clipped and tied up in a cute ribbon of yellow, tiny black strands fashioned into bonsai palm tree. That picture of her, frozen in time, alive and shimmering in innocence. If only, if only, she was mine! 

Of a dream recalled yet unwritten.

She woke up, with a start. Her skin was cool, like the grey rocks,that sit on the wet ochre sands and let the frivolous waters wash over them. But the dreams had stired her placid blood into a furious, savage rage, that gushed wildly throughout her twenties body, screaming to come out, infuriated that it couldnt and gnawing like a piranha at the yellow epidermal that contained it. Her heart was pulsing wildy, needling a painful tatoo on her chest."STOP. STOP HEART, STOP!". Stupid heart, meek lamb by day, a tigress at night. What was the dream all about, that her heart was so being so primitive and carnal? Puzzled, annoyed and a little frantic, she tried to recollect and piece together her dream before her body tuned to total consciousness and shredded the last lingering effects of it.

The night before. 

Yes, the night. She remembered the crafty night of the yesterday, it had seemed like a butter-fingered artist's painting. Corpulent drops of black all over the canvas-Plop,Plop,Plop. Some hastily painted thumbprints of yellow and white added as an after-thought. She remembered coming into her room tired with the daily diatribe of emotions. She rememberd changing into her blue-pink boxers, she rememberd switching on the laptop. She remembered selecting Cold-Play, she remembered  pulling out the black plastic packet from her pink  bag. She remembered switching of her lights to soak her room, only with the purple that was streaming through her open window. She remembered sitting down on her bed, cross legged, pouring a little bit of that vitrolic liquid in her steel glass. Green Apple Vodka, the bottle read. For safety's sake, she let a little bit of Sprite splink in too. 

The first taste, she remembered. Like licking metal.Or corroded iron. Nauseatingly sweet. The scrunching up of her little r eyes, the puckering of her little nose.  ColdPlay picked up on the frenzy, as if on cue. Their beats were pure, and it prickled your nose,  a portrait of planes out of symmetry, a disturbingly pretty picture.She remembered starting to hum those haunting lyrics that had started  rushing around in little black strings of air around her head, meshing and fusing. She remembered wanting to fly, even though there was a minisicule rivulet down one cheek. After that things got vague, the reminiscing became difficult. Falling on the floor, throwing the phone, wanting to bang her head to smithereens, amplified hate, amplified heartache. Clothes sliding off, sleep, waking up,sleep. But, the dream, she could not bring back her dream! 

"Forget,Bloody dream, bloody heart". She looked around, meekly, surreiptiously, eyes seeking the vestiges of the night.  She looked like a drunk lady who spends an amorous night at an exotic stranger's bed and wakes up to a terrifying conscience, puzzling memories and an ordinary, not so glamorous self.The sulphurous smell of alcohol still hung around her room, like a bored bumblee bee. The  glass lay like a martyr on her tiled floor, the sunlight spilled like butter through her sturdy bottle of Vodka.One of her paper butterflies lay balefully on the ground, did she rip that poor thing from the wall ? Eeukh,and her tongue felt like sandpaper- a fertile pink land for sowing maybe those abrasive pine cones? Another passionate night of alcohol. Another lousy day of yet another hangover. She thrashed around for her bottle of mineral water, her body thirsty. Gulp. Gulp. GULP. Her feet dug in lazily into her blankets, legs stretched, toes outstretched, till the she could feel the curious tingling on her left toe. She tossed her pillow on the side, 

She rubbed her eyes, her fingers, gently removing her the caked up discharge at the corners. Her eyes sweeped arcs across her blue painted room,resting finally at the table on the corner. And then she remembered, her dream. It wasnt a dream at all, it was a living, hammering nightmare.