gosmoking

2008-01-11T08:40:00.000+05:30

i have wanted you for ever. you have meant more to me than a lot of stuff. and i still want you. across times of celebration, alone-ness, anxiety, defiance, strength, stress, being cool, i find me seeking you. the pain and the dependence is par for the course: never have i thought less of you for it.

but in all my trade offs i hadn’t bargained being ostracized because of us. my need to belong was what drew me to you in the first place. with that gone, there is no point.

bye, bye love.

2007-04-08T17:55:00.000+05:30

We walked into each others lives at a time of dire need, saved each other from pain and loneliness, flowered together, blossomed and outshone all other relationships. And then the situation changed, the reasons we had met over, moved on... we found ourselves stranded: actors in the wrong play, mouthing the wrong lines, bumping into props which weren’t supposed to be there. Till you figured out your way into the new play, leaving me adrift, unable to let go, afraid I might need your help in another time and space, when yet again you might be the only one who would understand. The memories have dried up, the hope has shriveled; I still wait, covered in dead skin, clinging on to our expired friendship…

2006-12-28T11:47:00.000+05:30

I take the little known routes, I duck, I feint, I hide, I peep, I try to think of the myriad ways I can shake you off. I cant see you but I keep feeling your presence. Once in a while a dart comes and land itself just left of my head: it was meant to miss, meant to remind me that u are still around and quite good at what you do. Hope they say keeps even the weakest alive and I am only unfit. So I keep running. The sneakers give way, the socks tear, the skin blisters but I block out the pain: the effort will be worth it, if only I can outrun you.

I don't want what you offer: your lies, your ego plays, your manipulations, your smokescreens, I abhor them. The illusions you paint make me want to puke. But as fast as I might be, as hard as I might run, about the time I reach the end of my tether, the end of my physical and mental capacity, I feel your warm breathing on my nape, my nose recognizes your putrid odor.

I turn to see and before I can get an eyeful, I feel the thwack! of your hand on my face, a jolt of electricity goes through my scalp and a nanosecond later I hear the sound of my body tumbling onto the floor. The rest of my brain has gone into shock, not wanting to face up to the inevitable, my eyes want to remain unfocussed trying it best to not make sense. And then u kick and this time I hear the crunch before I feel the blood spurt somewhere inside me. I stop.

I give up. I try and hide my head in denial, you wont let me, you make me look into your eyes and accept you. You make me take you in. You make me re-adjust my head so that you aren't uncomfortable. This time it looks you are staying forever.

you n i

2006-12-04T21:01:00.000+05:30

running through a green field, the image flickers, an illusion, a lie, the balloon bursts

i reach to touch you, you turn away, watching the passing sea, we chat of innocuous nothings

potential partner in disguise, wearing a past, too hard to let go off, i seek me in your eyes, and meet an empty eyebrow

we struggle to jive, through mismatched moves, bad choreography, little brings us together, more keeps us apart

the dream soured, someone took away the missing pieces, either you or i, gave up, went under

yet we keep looking, for the lost love, seeing only the differences, i remain unreal, you stay stuck in your mind

part of a wistful future, remembering broken wishes, and the never-ever, you and i

2006-11-21T22:06:00.000+05:30

I looked on as I dropped her lifeless body into the water, the buoyancy stopped it from going under for a bit, and then the water soaked in, inch by inch into the placid empty vessel: a useless medium, an empty rest.

While my eyes captured the present sinking, my mind wandered around the past: of the times spent together, the many lives we had crunched into one, the pain we had inflicted on each other, the lies and the truths about each other we had accepted.

Ours wasn’t an ideal and romanticized relationship; it was quite full of conditionality, negotiation and barter, as love and life had to be.

And before the body (and it was A BODY, it was NOT her) submerged into the water, my mind had already started thinking of coping mechanisms for myself. She was gone; now I had to figure out my life, what I wanted to do with her parting gift: my freedom.

Yes, a part of it I wanted to abuse by living in the past and wallowing in ‘what if’ scenarios. The rest? I guess would be the opportunities that un-encumbrance brings with it. I had places to go, experiences to enjoy, lessons to learn, my life to live.

She was done with me and vice versa, all we had left was a new beginning.

Thank you mother.

close yet far

2006-09-12T18:33:00.000+05:30

the more you do try the less shall be done. so what do i do? stop trying? not do? wait for the bolt of lightening, the manna from heaven, the gold platter to descend and bless me? it hasn't happened in the past, why should it happen now? when i wanted the job, house, friends, woman, i went and gave first, i took the initiative, i led from the front and then through good and evil, things moved, sometimes for the worse, sometimes otherwise, but things did move.

this time i hear voices, which mean well, asking, advising, extolling, requesting, ordering me to wait and watch. to see the roll of the dice, the flow of the river, to not go too fast, to not jump in.

why should i listen to them? coz i find my own voice not powerful enough? coz i am tired of being spontaneous and then being cut down? coz i am vary of walking down the garden path and turning around to find no one with me?

but then there is no one who can say for sure: me or the voices. this story has never been lived ever before. how will anyone know its outcome? this time has not happened, these people have never met, these emotions have never been felt.

the unfortunate part lies not in the being belted down, it lies in the subconscious fear of over stepping, of showing or saying or doing something that will be misconstrued as something else. the sadness is about meaning more and saying less. not interacting the way you would like to, but the way you should. true we all wear masks, so what is the great crime to humanity if i wear yet another. but then what if i don't want to wear a mask? what if i want to let go? what if i just want to lie back, stare at the ceiling and let my mind and my words come out without thinking them through? what if i challenge the fact that we are in the business of creating perceptions? what if i want to let go of the veils and be recognized for myself? what if i refute the fact that a projection would be closer to sanity than reality itself? what then?

2006-09-08T18:44:00.000+05:30

The first time he saw the image was in an airplane. He had got up to stretch while the plane refueled at an unscheduled stop and it popped up in his head. He had never thought of something like that ever. It was too layered, too complicated too dimensional for a thinker of his caliber, yet he fell into an effortless ease with it. It was actually like he had known the image before but never thought of it. It was different from any image he had conjured up: there was no pretense, no hang-ups, no ego clashes in it: fluid, smooth, pure silk. He didn’t think twice, there was no sense of distance or hesitancy he just embraced the image with his life. Conversation, the confidences, the dreams, hopes and fears flowed uninterrupted. Time and more time spent in its thought resulted in his life getting intertwined with it. Like creepers his thoughts and decisions were seen through the filter of the image. Starting from which movie to watch over the weekend to which project interview was worth preparing for to which friend was morally correct but still didn’t have any brains, everything was a subject of how the picture would interpret it. Life couldn’t be better. All he had been asking for in a companion was answered.

And then one fine morning, he walked into a meeting and saw this other image. He’s brows furrowed, there was something in the picture he liked and some stuff he couldn’t relate very well to. Perfectly proportioned in spirit and form with money and convenience built in. It represented the lift up the material hill he was struggling to climb, the padded shoes which would save him from the everyday thorns. The new image would give him trophy value; it would give him credibility, value in the eyes of the establishment, recognition. Not just another plane, we are discussing an escalator to another world. The emotional satisfaction of this image was low. That is what bothered him. Simply put, the image was built more in synch with what the world wanted to see vs what he wanted to see.

He didn’t know what to do. The choice was killing him: day in and day out he lived, totally numbed out, going through the motions, living life in second person, disembodied, like he was on cctv, himself watching himself. Not believing that he could be apart from the first image, not wanting to believe that he would miss it. Knowing but not acknowledging that life would go on. It was true that the lure of the second image was overpowering, but what of him and the first image? What of their perfect-ness? Will the new image’s flamboyance ever compensate? If he did let go of the first image, would he ever be able to return to it? Would image two and him ever meet in the same way? U cant hold onto images, sab anitya hai he would keep telling himself.

What would you do?

meandering in a jet plane

2006-09-01T17:27:00.000+05:30

life is too cluttered. i hate remembering you. i miss focus. simplicity scares me. forgetting is a curse. i wish our eyes could meet. i wish i were somewhere else. i feel fat in the mind and in the body. i hate dependence and yet seek it. i don’t have anything to wake up to. replying is a pain. helping you doesn’t help me. i say yes and mean no. i talk too much. i see you in other people. i just want a conversation. i want to stop thinking. i hurt myself to feel pain. the price of companionship is too high. do you still think of me? i want isolation. i can’t shake off my own sadness. real looks ugly. i refuse to accept my hunger. i want to drop my defenses. i want you to see me with my eyes. i want to laugh. the best choice to go with is the luck of the draw. i think i never wanted you. i feel envious of people with superior intellect. my eyes give me away. i fear that there is no piece of sky left for me. is trying over- hyped?

2006-08-16T09:48:00.000+05:30

Idling on neutral, over dinner, they spoke about how surprisingly green the city was, burning a pirated version of the omkara soundtrack, HR rules in software behemoths, café coffee day vs barista, the sex and the city storyline, when the rain had started, whether it had really flooded or not, the meaning of the word ‘eschatological‘… while their hope of salvation, their dream, their glue, their potential future, their reason why: their 3-month-old baby, lay on the table in between them: motionless, asphyxiated, dead: reduced to meat.

cochin 07aug06

2006-08-11T10:02:00.000+05:30

Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two months together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost Divine in its infinity. :: Bayard Ruskin, The True and Beautiful--The Sky

2006-08-10T13:05:00.000+05:30

Irrelevant. Default option. Spare. Won't be missed. Taken for granted. The one not in the plan. A silent part of the pack. The non-consequential card. The wall flower. Immaterial.

The first kick of the day

2006-08-10T12:53:00.000+05:30

I exhale, the tobacco courses thru the blood: a surge of adrenalin: the head swims, steps stagger, eyelids close, trying to regain control. Then the need to be on top ceases: I give in to the reeling : enjoy the rush : the world dissolves. I smile and want more.

from 'if you meet the buddha on the road, kill him' : sheldon b. kopp

2006-08-05T15:33:00.000+05:30

love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. it is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain.

2006-08-04T01:43:00.000+05:30

2006-07-29T14:40:00.000+05:30

i find myself waiting for you

2006-07-26T02:13:00.000+05:30

life, pain, dreams, disappointments, needs, plans, body, desires, mind, mother, evening, morning and afternoon, confusion, neighbors, terrace, ex-dog, future-husband, babies, sister, dad, job, studies, blocked nose, breathing, sleep, friends, joy, motivations: 51mins 21 seconds of you and yours.

2006-07-26T01:45:00.000+05:30

We were discussing feelings: me myself and I. Not the usual why we feel so and so about so and so: that cliché was already beaten to death. This one was about the absence of feelings; about what it takes to be consumed by ego, pride, self-love/preservation/pity and not care about others. Where I me and myself are the only people who matter.

Not about the turning away from the poor/the invalid/those in need. Not about how we put our desire to drink dark rum over our desire to help them? Pretty early on in the evening, that was judged the easy-to-deal-with issue: ‘I don’t know them and therefore I don’t owe them’, being the guiding principle.

This conversation was about the ones we do know: the ones we claim to care for, the ones we like and love, the ones who give us gifts, who read our writing, who we trade pirated music with... about how we cheat on them, about how we heap our inadequacies on them, how we pretend not to see their cries for help or hear the need in their faces? How is it that we conveniently bypass blame for all this? Is this ability to forget our sins and our mistakes a way of preserving our sanity? Is it by choice that we don’t remember? Is this inhuman-ness part of our humanity? Is this detachment a necessary anchor to live by? Will the burden of our guilt, otherwise prove fatal?

It is at this point that we ran out of ideas to move up the thought chain. What was the point anyways? The resolution, conclusion, stand had been taken by umpteen before me. Knowing fully well that when the situation and the circumstance change, the belief will shift too. Knowing fully well that we will continue to unblinkingly sacrifice conscience at the altar of convenience and carry on with the business of living…

2006-07-12T02:28:00.000+05:30

Nobody cares. Whatever you do. However good you are. It doesn’t really matter. We are all playing out our own karma game. Others come and go. The game remains ours. Nobody else’s. We deceive ourselves, pretend that they care. They pretend it matters. But that is all that there is to it. Unless you make a difference to who they are, what they want, who they want to be, they don’t really care. It all boils down to morphing yourself into something that will take them closer to their own nirvana, when Shaw of the George Bernad types said something about the toughest surviving, he knew what he was talking about. It is all about who will make my survival easier: who will take me closer to my dream, make my dream come true. Ask yourself, you will come back with the same answer. The rest is an illusion we will sell to another, make it part of their dream but never ever ours: coz we are selfish, are self-centered, we will continue to see the world thru our own lens and no one else’s. That is the way of the world, which is the way we are DNAed. Try and do what u will, how much ever conditioning, how much ever this and how much ever that. We will remain the self obsessed. The question about who will you give the last life jacket to is still answered by the one who will remember you the most. Not about anything else, never about anything else.

No.

2006-07-11T19:02:00.000+05:30

I refuse to accept that I am responsible for all this. That one gets from the environment as one gives. That there is no one else to blame.

I cant help the way things are or have been, its your life, you went thru what you did and suffered cause of it, I have nothing to do with it. I just happen to be at this place now.

I am tired of these excruciating assaults on my feelings. Till now I kept using mind manipulation to figure a way out: how to not expect, how to let be, how to not retaliate, how to try and heal by myself. Don’t want to anymore. Refuse to look at my positive convictions, let alone stare them in the eye. Don’t want to be true to what i want to be but am not. Don’t want to be deceptive or be in denial. I refuse to succumb to my need to belong or my fear of rejection. Don’t want to rationalize anymore.

Want to give in to the need to strike back, to take an eye for an eye, to regress to a primal level and scream back, to hurt and maim and to be your reflection. And this time nothing is going to hold me back: Not my fear of confrontation, not my need for companionship or my innate civility. I am now ready to stoop as low as you have, maybe lower. ..

No, i am not saying i am evil or lex luthor or even bad-cool. i am just airing an intent i have, of what i want to do: just another guy who is refusing to become the official shovel-er for another’s shit.

2006-07-10T17:55:00.000+05:30

high on promise

they walk in

music, beer, smiles

and conversation

they have never been this close

everything accentuates

the possibilities

waving at them like a red flag

the music trips on the alcohol

the future blinds

demands attention

eliminates options

love takes control

this is the beginning

eyes lock unto each other

nobody else is here

bloated by disappointment

they walk in

hoping for music, beer, smiles

and the conversation

they have never been this far

everything accentuates

the impossibilities

waving at them like a red flag

the music trips on the alcohol

the past blinds

demands attention

eliminates options

hate takes control

this is the end

eyes look away

was there ever anybody here?

you

2006-06-21T14:54:00.000+05:30

eyes magnetically stare, a bed of soft leaves, hands reach out, languid pools of desire, arms envelope, a ghalib ghazal, head on my shoulders, I belong here, breath on my face, cool wind, staring at the fan, series of firsts, broken laughter, pure, rush, joy, hope, belief, love...

not the first, not the last

2006-06-19T14:47:00.000+05:30

plums: not one, many. maroon, not red: small, shiny, smooth… tempted by face value, I bite, tongue meets flesh, luscious stains teeth…

seeds constrict breathing, juice erupts snakes: blood vomits out, gushing guts, the return of breathing, increases pain

immobility reigns, seared mind escapes, leaves deflated, hollow body. eyes feel presence; seek you seeing me, paying the price, of the unforbidden

leaves turn plastic, air recycled, pools muddy, sunshine black: I give up on me, in your eden, of lies

dance with me

2006-06-19T10:29:00.000+05:30

multiplying heart beats, frenetic barters, flickering light, deafening screams, masking sneers, eyeballs dripping, innocence blurred vision, blood in dried veins, gripping vice like, canine teeth, refusing to let go, lucifer’s cross, bone weary, pulls down, slows up, sinking soul, sucked out, exhausted end…

research

2006-06-01T13:58:00.000+05:30

today i am going to be your new friend

using techniques, learnt, over time, experience and more like you

name, career, family, life, heart, mind

probe & find, uncover, open closets

a little at first, more later, ultimately all

i smile, you feel relieved to have got the grade

after a long time, made it through, qualified

You close your eyes, in relief, missing the steel in mine

Little realizing, your purpose is over, you were just a means

Having met the objective, I am moving on, to the end

You look askance, reality crashes in, our meeting’s over

I walkout, without a second glance, at respondent no.7

transference

2006-05-23T20:00:00.000+05:30

the devil in my head

as infectious as gremlins

a bat of an eyelid

and its jumping in yours

i say i am angry with me

u hear i am angry with you

you ask again

the distance widens

you cant see a thing

eyelashes try to brush away

the darkness

till you realize

that its caused by your own hands

i leave you

and your hope

to fight the devil

who has now become yours

sun day

2006-05-21T13:18:00.000+05:30

my eyes open to see stuff i thought would always be, fidgeting to go away. the mind kick-starts on emergency mode: tries to figure out this anomaly: look for other people, see outside… i look out of the bars, the rest of the world’s the same: nobody cared before, nobody cares now…

i fall back, into my armchair, the vines leaves the upholstery. creepers squish the contours of my body and weave into my skin. but poison ivy can’t enter my head: her pain can’t reach me.

i déjà vu on novocaine: “prior to the discovery of novocaine, cocaine was the most commonly used local anesthetic. novocaine (like cocaine) has the advantage of constricting blood vessels; without the euphoric and addictive qualities of cocaine.”

disengage! disengage socially! the slow, slurred voice screams, the world outside goes dark and light… the phone glows… i listen: worlds far away, people i will never see: i speak: on the right cues, in the right tone, staying at the right distance…

the interval ends and i fall back.

i know and yet i don’t feel the fear as i sink down the abyss. thick darkness takes hope and squelches her eyes with his fat, hairy thumbs… tracy chapman kicks in with ‘the thrill is gone’…

the minds eye takes over. it goes back to what i have already seen, cause there is nothing ahead: fleeting pieces of heaven, fallen dreams, empty stars and absent faces…

bad idea to have woken up…

never again

2006-05-19T20:37:00.000+05:30

Peaceful. An ideal introspection generator. A place where every one is literally and figuratively left alone. I know I will end up there at some point. What I am dieing for every day will only stay for so long. Including all the memories of me in the 17 friends I have. A place where you get shook up enough to stop and reexamine your status as rat and feel the desire to be human instead. Where all the superficial stuff is claimed by the waves of the essential...

A freshly dug grave waiting for its occupant. A motley crew of 15 people stood around singing hymns, before throwing some mud on the coffin and symbolically start the process of forgetting the person: the process of healing.

A few meters away on the perimeter of the grounds are dumps of burnt bones and skulls. The remains of the people who had been evicted after exhausting their 18month grave lease. Space is always at a premium in Mumbai. In the memory of the people who had run out of grave time, rectangular slabs had been put up on the perimeter wall. Like stacked up coffins. Rectangles through which the ones who still remembered could reach out. With pictures of the deceased on tiles, which in turn were attached to the scripted plaques. The dead watching over their own.

Some of the graves were well tended, you could recognize the fresh ones by the flowers on them, some just overgrown patches of shrubbery. Two twins in 2 foot long spaces, next to each other, under a cross calling them ‘our angels’. Next to a 2 feet space whose occupant died the day he/she was born…

A strange odour hit my nose: was it the stench of the nullah right next door… of was it the smell of the burnt bones? The place was started getting to me. The brain couldn’t handle the jolt. This was a place of death. You go there when people die, it is NOT a park. I don’t want my ego to be shattered. To be told that I am not in control.

No amount of rationality could prevent me from spending 20mins in the shower, trying to scrub off the graveyard from my skin. My mind, I think, will stink for sometime to come…

judgment day

2006-05-19T20:07:00.000+05:30

So we waited. baba, ma, space cadet younger bro and i. And her dad. For S, the potential bahu to join us. Truth is, she wasn’t just joining us casually, she was being presented. Finery, best behavior, spruced up living room: every word and action big on symbolism: a semiotic-ian’s dream. Baba and mr.m had morphed into news channel anchors: the recent elections, misappropriation of funds, the stock market movements. Ma and the bro were muttering amongst themselves about some Darjeeling holiday he wanted to go on.

While I waited to be judged: got microscope, got bug. crew to take off stations please.

As if on cue the mind plummeted into self doubt: Will I cut the grade? Am I worth experimenting? Do I have the potential to provide: materially, emotionally, in fun, in troughs? Could I become the person, she looks forward to? The reason which inspires belief in matrimony. And vice versa.

How long before we get our answers to the above? How long does it takes to decide? Is ‘blink’ true? What if the room doesn’t start burning the minute I see her? What happens now? Who can really see the future?

And then she walks in, with her mom, sits next to me, our eyes meet and lightening doesn’t strike. No dramatic rise in awareness caused by beating hearts. No widening of the pupils in attraction. Zip. Blank. Nothing. The pilot didn’t even need to retract the wheels, flight over. We did speak, something inane, about the weather and for some strange reason hazaar khwaishen aise… and then we stopped. Very nice samsoas, from some place in Park Circus. Awesome abar khabos. Dead air.

I smile at S, she smiled back and both of us realized that we wouldn’t be meeting each other ever again. The proposition had too many wholes. The presentation bombed.

Next…

Sin city

2006-05-14T14:19:00.000+05:30

I hear a soft, woozy voice, almost like a lullaby, loaded with a kindness, which makes you want to let go of worry, allows trust.

A ricocheting sound pierces through my brain: a screeching hi pitch tone in a hollow space accompanied by a feeling of being drilled into… the mirror shows me shot-gun splattered with reckless desire.

We head down a stairwell, away from the elevator, an adventure minus the rest of the world. Just us…

The mind wanders: what if spontaneity flunks the audition? What if I can’t capture ‘natural’? What if the ego gets shredded further? There are trips and there are trips…

I light up against doctor’s orders, stare at the darkness and welcome you to me.

retired

2006-05-02T17:59:00.000+05:30

last evening whilst loitering around bandstand i noticed this old-ish structure, one of the few on the street, with all the doors and windows open (nothing to hide or secure), with frail figures ambling around… the bandra bandstand old age home…

a few of the residents were sitting on the promenade, huddled together, i tried to make eye contact with them, only to find a vacuum in their eyes: staring blankly at the sea, as if waiting for the ship of deliverance to come in.

starting from my grandmom in cal to other old people in the family, the aged have constantly been a source of curiosity to me: not so much the solitude but the fact of having been in the thick of the action, how the same heroes and heroines got relegated to extras. without the pressure to do things to fill time, the pressure to do something constructive, the pressure to have a purpose in life, and so on, their very existence is almost… spaced out… the race over, sitting in the sidelines, seeing the next crop do their thing, commit mistakes and celebrate victories, some giving all they have for that bit role, some waiting in quite resignation for the next life stage, most just waiting…

we see the party we want to see

2006-04-27T10:38:00.000+05:30

come one come all: let us get together and lubricate ourselves with alcohol. drink and dance with strangers. extend the professional equation, to… strangers who drink together: so was the holler: i tried for a bit in my mind, to find a good reason as to why i would want to be there? yeah, there were some people who i would like to have a drink, chat, stare out into nothing with, but not with 168 other people around me. so i smoke my mind out and entered the sea of animality: pressing of bodies, radaring, blanking out reason, testosterone, wall to wall. wherever the eye went, bacchus was present in full form… i cover myself with ego, bubble out my mind and wade into the charade…

2006-04-06T16:05:00.000+05:30

Waves upon waves

Hit me

From behind

Dislodging me from my anchor

Setting me adrift

No lighthouse, no lifeboat

Time and again

The without

Lets me down

And yet I don’t learn

Yet I keep seeking

Expecting to be rescued

Maybe it is time to stop

To say enough

To stop trying

To let go

To accept

Alone