One Life: My Literary Column

Wisp

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:25:48 GMT

I’ve seen you in my dreams

We were chasing a distant blue horizon in the sands of time

And the neon clouds cast their picture on that endless land

That world was ours; that world was mine

Now I see it was a fleeting transience;

A scene in the middle of waking from a dream

Into another

Now, here, my world is running a fever

And around me I see an alien light

Rousing worlds that had gone to sleep since November

I won’t be this me tomorrow, any more

But that numbness pulses underneath my skin

Making me repent for not being someone else

Someone without distant lines to chase

Under neon skies and over the endless sands of time

1Life.

Tags: wisp, poem

Add comment in external guestbook (no need for Windows Live account or sign-in.)

Singularity Finale

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:49:33 GMT

At this moment you see, hear, feel

For there are light, sound and emotion.

A cosmic endless list of Everything.

You nestle deep in the assuring warmth of this complexity;

And need to gaze at an unpolluted night sky for long

To remember you are on a planet.

The Future is a delayed, yet inevitable Present

A curse of the unwanted blessing of equality

It will be raining galaxies on your tiny spherical home

The starry night sky will drop in to visit,

And vision swallowed amid gaping voids

Will carry the only sound of a story finished.

End, will begin.

Blazing cosmic torches will light the darkening sky

As all things seek their way back Home.

Streams will return to oceans that bore them in their womb;

And all roads ever built will turn to Rome

Unbearable warmth will squeeze the soul free to follow the same path,

And storms engage in their last war dance.

Here, there, now, then, will cross over distinguishing lines

And all thoughts merge into one existence.

It comes, of that I’m sure.

A plethora of small lives, pains and colours

Laughter and sunsets, sad songs on the radio, summer night stars,

And the rain

All reduced to thermodynamic equilibrium.

But today you see, hear, know

For there are light, sound, and a finite being.

Counting the days till the inexorable dark end

Sweeps the meaning of Meaning away

To a single burning eye on infinite black vacuum

To look for the last time, then close to all of existence, lost forever

In Singularity.

1Life.

Life

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:25:29 GMT

Don’t you see

Around you and beyond lies the complex twisted matrix of a needless endeavour

A cosmos of private, solitary roads that fork, twist, entwine

That cross, leave, shift and end in deceptive silence

They follow some secret reason — untold, intricate, useless.

They hold and entangle you this moment,

Yet their subtle caress in every breath of your life

Is so light, your senses must be reminded to feel them

— A rigorous ordeal that leads you to the Nowhere

Outside this one.

Thorns

Of many fibers and sharpness wait in all imaginable angles

And some unimaginable ones, for minds that conquer enough to know

Our world is someone’s imagination.

You walk these scattered paths under the drugs of emotion and instinct —

They won’t let you hear the low whispers of the air from Nowhere

From within the concrete columns of your beliefs,

That won’t let you question, won’t let you know

Won’t let you feel the truth till it is time to go

To the Nowhere

Outside this one.

And yes, the paths have not met, it is a neural refuge you construct.

You are alone,

Alone in this maze of the fruitless Everything.

1Life.

Someday

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 06:55:56 GMT

Someday

I’ll be so far away

All this won’t matter

Won’t matter to me

Stretched so wide around me

That glittering sea of light

You see every night

Across the sky

I’ll be that high

I’ll raise my hand

Stir the starry band

And walk down that Milky Way

Someday

And I’ll be

So far away I won’t be

Able to see

My life from up there

And I won’t care

This huge world is so huge, I know

It’s beautiful but I have to go

‘Coz there was never enough space

In this beautiful place

To hold someone who’d fill me with love

To hold someone I could take with me

Above.

So I’m leaving for this trip

On my lonely ship

For the glittering sea

Just the stars and me

So much life, so much time

So many moments will be mine

To talk away

To waste away

To live away

Someday

1Life.

I'm Published!

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 06:17:38 GMT

Yeah, I’m published, for the first time in my life, at last. Pardon the contradiction. The news is, I. Am. On. The. Statesman. Today. With Reboot. On 8^th Day, the Sunday supplement, 20^th page. I’m famous. If you wanna read it, you could buy a Statesman from anywhere around the country and take a look at the Sunday supplement. I called most of my friends and told them. 1 None of them had read it before I called. 2 None of them seemed to be subscribed to The Statesman when I did call. 3 None of them has called back yet. Oh, what the heck. I’m happy that the literary piece that’s sprawling over one and a half pages of a national English Daily today came off the same place that this piece is coming off now: my computer. And trace it back to my mind.

If you thought that’s the only reason I’m happy, well, you’re — what, not right, of course, — wrong. If you are perceptible enough to understand my Two Of Us, you’d know that this ‘she’ that comes up often in my writing, I broke up with her in July for reasons that weren’t lack of love on any part. And since that wasn’t the reason, we had to come back together. So I patched it up. We’re back.

Did you hear that? We’re back. Ha, we’re back! We. Are. Back. I’m gonna go jump off the nonexistent garage roof now on that nonexistent hang-glider.

Oh, I haven’t told her yet about Reboot. I’m waiting for her to find out. She's subscribed to the Statesman. All sensible people are.

1Life.

Reboot

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 07:57:20 GMT

Critical security error. The system will reboot in approximately the following time. Please save all work in progress and log off. For more information, click this message.

Alan Ashbird stared dumbfounded at the computer screen, watching the tiny counter count down slowly and inevitably to 00:00, followed by the shutdown sequence. After thirty seconds, a dark square frame was all he had in front of his eyes, instead of the application he was supposed to be working on. Alan lifted his coffee cup to his lips, remembered that it had been empty for an hour and a quarter, and set it back on his desk. Then he looked down at the floor, at the polished grey tiles that were ubiquitous in this office.

‘I don’t believe it. That’s the first time my machine threw up. I don’t believe it. I…’ He looked up at the screen again, but he knew it had no chance of coming to life again. It was a critical hardware problem, probably something with the RAM, or maybe the data cable was loose. The reboot was merely a false promise. He knew from his expertise that without any probing it had little chance of starting up again. In any case, he didn’t have enough time then to open up the machine and fix it up. He would have to wait till the next morning, and that meant his project would invariably be late. The thought made him feel slightly sick, and he lowered his head again, resting it on the edge of his desk. As he stared at the floor now, wondering if he would go into the hassle of continuing with the work on his home computer and perhaps mail it later to his office, he came to a slow realization that there was a soft red light on the floor tiles, a single long bar that lay over his shining business shoes. It took him a few seconds to figure out where this was coming from, and then he got up and walked over to the huge French windows. Very slowly he pulled apart the blinds and stood back.

A magnificent red sunset lay sprawled across the huge horizon, tipping the buildings and towers of the New York skyline with a shade of jet black and dark maroon as they stood in ghostly silhouette against the burning canvas of the sky. Here and there a few careless tints of purple or orange showed, and a thin layer of cirrus was suspended just above the glowing vermillion sun, its lower surface bright with the halo of the setting ball of fire. The glass panels and turrets of the dark ocean of office buildings caught the dying rays and lit up like little golden flames here and there. Far below at the foot of the building, the street was alive with tiny moving dots of light, and ran through the heart of the city like a thin neon snake all the way up to the horizon where the buildings grew minute and hazy, like little scratches of charcoal against the glowing sky.

Alan Ashbird, application designer at a leading software firm, a literal wizard with programming, a successful negotiator with mammoth business deals, owner of a grey Citroen, a black Jaguar, and a sprawling house at the other end of the city, was watching the first sunset of his life.

Seven years ago when Alan was starting on his present job he was merely one of the countless heads that trickle into the business every day and get fired after a few weeks, for such was the modus operandi of the job market in this city. The only difference he knew he had was inside him — a burning passion for his subject. He understood it like elementary arithmetic, and could go to such ends in his subject with mental manipulation alone as would require an organized team a whole project. With his subject he was the Picasso of art, the O Henry of word, the Kennedy of politics. He knew what he was doing and wanted to do with his subject, and it was this confident thrust in him that finally got him noticed. He got a permanent job at the firm as Junior Test Programmer. He married his childhood friend Alison and settled in the city. Initially family life took away some of his attention to work, but his priorities were soon reshuffled and he began the slow progress up the corporate ladder. He felt immensely happy inside to be doing what he was, and actually looked forward to his office hours. He was like a painter whose profession was never, ever just a job. It was his life. Seven years later, he stood a proud Chief Application Designer, and work encompassed now all his life. He did half the job that his entire team was assigned, he did overtime, and he even came over on Saturdays to keep ahead of the schedule. He returned home each night to find his daughter gone to sleep, and Alison watching TV, a nonchalant expression that had begun to hover over her face a few months back now settled into permanence. Alan would flop clumsily on the sofa, want dinner, have it and then go to sleep. The next day only began for him when he was at his desk.

Five minutes later when the sun had set and dark droplets of navy ink had begun trickling down the dome of the sky towards the horizon, Alan returned to his desk and sat down. He stared at the sleek black surface of the expensive LCD, beginning to feel a silent sprouting of tiny thoughts and conflicts in his head. From where they came he had no idea, only a dim and rather improbable notion kept tugging at his consciousness: that it was the sunset, the photons of the dying light that had travelled one and a half million kilometres from their fiery home to reach his consciousness, to nourish some old and forgotten thought. He could feel that for the first time in a long while his thoughts were not concerned with the subject of his profession or work-life. They crowded around his active mind, growing in number each passing moment, enclosing him slowly in a dense cloud of thought. And they were different, somehow in a different sense of even the word different, somehow higher, somehow more… as if packets of thought from some higher realm were being fed one by one into his mind.

Alan thought of his position now in the work hierarchy. It was a busy life, true, but he was an important person, and his company knew how valuable he was to them. He had to devote almost all his waking hours to the purpose of his organization, and he realized anew how life itself for him was now enclosed in his 32^nd floor office. He thought of his childhood, of the laughter with friends, and sunsets at the beach with his parents, and once a vehement tantrum concerning an ice-cream that had dropped on the sand. He thought of the first time that he had heard the name Alison Adams, the new girl in class. He thought of the unbounded imaginations that swirled through him when he used to look up at the night sky stars. He recalled how he first fell in love with programming. That was a class in elementary BASIC, and he thought he could feel some unknown spasm of excitement every time he sat down from then on to solve a problem with his computer. He had wanted once to be able to have the life of a painter, never having to work a single day to feed himself, only an incessant dwelling in the subject of his dreams, in a world where his destiny was his profession. He had wanted a life of purpose. And all his dreams had come true. He had married Alison and taken up his dream job, and had no material deficiencies whatsoever. Yet, after some pronounced bend in his perfect life, he realized now that there had grown a vacuum where there should be a path. He couldn’t remember when he had last gone home early, when he had last taken his daughter to the park, when he had last visited the Art Museum or watched a movie or the stars of the night sky that used to be his friends long, long ago, as if in some forgotten previous birth. Life for him now was an endless string of projects, a sort of enforced order to hide the underlying void that had grown over time. What was he working for, he thought, what was the point of keeping alive to arrive at work tomorrow, if he didn’t have the time today to look up at the forgotten gifts of life, to pick up the trampled flowers and know that these were the purpose he had dreamt about when he started out, that the reason he came to work each day, the professional problems he battled with each moment in his mind, all comes down to being there to watch the beautiful sunset outside, being there to hear his daughter’s laughter. What could his work provide him with anyway, except fat money and a hollow pride? He now discovered rather suddenly that his over-eagerness for work was no longer the enthusiasm of passion he once had, only a sort of voluntary obsession, an opium to keep himself from discovering that he, Alan Ashbird, had strayed so, so far from his heart that he had lost track. It made sense no longer for him to believe that the beauty of life is all there is to it, that the evening star is the reason man keeps alive, that a loving family waiting at home is what the meaning of a hard day’s work comes down to, that there remains left no meaning whatsoever in trading today for tomorrow and never rise and look what today could have given him. There remains only a long, long series of days, all for the sake of keeping alive on the next day. Like a chain of dominoes lined up, and each one falls on the next and that on the next and so on to keep the equilibrium, until the last domino has not another next to it and drops to the ground, a vacuous, blank end to a life that had lost its purpose, where each day never learnt to stand alone as Today, and only remained an empty tool to provide a tomorrow to itself. Alan realized again, and with a sharp pain, that he was no longer his dream painter who paints because of all the love he has for life and for his canvas; he paints to have it sold so that he can be alive the next day. His dabs of colour have lost their meaning, and are little more than the labours of a worker at a factory, or the begging of a roadside tramp, begging to keep alive, when letting go of life would be so much more sensible, for there is left no meaning, no purpose, no reason to look forward to the next morning. He, Alan Ashbird, had lost himself in the metropolis called life, and he was a long way from home where he stood now.

Alan watched the last of the blue trickle away from the sky outside, and the velvety-black of night take its place in a subtle maneuver that has been repeated every evening since eternity, unnoticed. It was impossible now to connect it with the fiery red sky of sunset that had crawled into his office through the blinds. The sea of buildings outside the window was now putting on its familiar pattern of minute luminous dots as the city began to stir.

Alan reached out and took a piece of paper. On it he slowly scribbled the words Won’t be at work today. Continue with project. He pinned it to a file and put it on his desk where it would be most conspicuous. He picked up his briefcase and walked up to the French windows. He looked down to where the people were like toys and flickering dots of light whizzed by to their various destinations. The street looked beautiful, he concluded. He also wished it would be a slow journey home tonight. He wanted to have all the time to think of a nice restaurant to take his wife and daughter.

It was time to reboot.

On Until Darkness

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:27:44 GMT

The erstwhile incessant stream of life, thoughts, hope

Stripped now to bare existence

Trading today for tomorrow

And on until darkness.

Follow the line through the white of order

Arrive nowhere but at a different point

Pick up the heavy soul and walk again

On until darkness.

No breath of wet earth for you today

No body to embrace now within my own

Only this silent pilgrimage to the valley of vacuum

On until darkness.

The soul of the world falls asleep with my own,

Tired, vanquished by the impersonation

Pretending to be less than me;

And now I shall sleep with my eyes wide open

On, until darkness when they close.

1Life.

Singularity

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:40:52 GMT

Today and now you see, hear, feel

For there are light, sound and emotion.

A cosmic endless list of Everything.

You nestle in the assuring warmth of complexity;

Atoms carry for you unintended messages of good and evil.

But tomorrow is the second inevitable today

A curse of the unwanted blessing of equality

It will be raining galaxies on your tiny spherical home

And vision swallowed amid gaping voids

Will carry the only sound of a story finished.

End, will begin.

Blazing red torches will light the darkening sky

As all things seek their way back Home.

Streams will return to the oceans that bore them in their womb;

Unbearable warmth will squeeze the soul free to follow the same path,

And storms engage in their last war dance.

Here, there, now, then, will cross distinguishing lines

And all thoughts will be one existence.

It comes, of that I’m sure.

A plethora of small lives, pains and colours

Laughter and sunsets, sad songs on the radio, rain, and

The blanket of stars over the night sky

All reduced to thermodynamic equilibrium.

But today you see, hear, know

For there are light, sound, and a temporal being.

Counting the days till inexorable dark end

Sweeps the meaning of Meaning away

To a single burning eye on infinite black vacuum

To look for the last time, then close to all of existence, lost forever

In Singularity.

1Life.

The Stolen Mustang

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:52:49 GMT

You find partiality in odd places. There is a ‘What’s Your Story?’ Space on MSN, supposed to gather good spaces from all around. There is not one Indian space mentioned there. I clicked a link that took me to the space of a woman who’s allegedly a behavioral psychologist, and there was not much concerning her work on her space, only a few pics of flowers and her mom. She is featured on ‘What’s Your Story?’. I am not. I’ll never be.

Let’s not whine, shall we? That’s not what I was taught.

‘Hello. This is XYZ Police. I am Officer Richard Emworth. How can I help you?’

‘I can’t hear anything. Hello?’

‘Hello. This is XYZ Police. How may I help you?’

‘Yes, officer, er… we have er… er… a car stolen.’

‘Okay. Whose vehicle?’

‘It’s one of our neighbours’.’

‘Excuse me, did you say that the vehicle belongs to a neighbour?’

‘Yes. He’s not at home, and he doesn’t even know about it. But I decided to report it.’

‘How can you be sure that the vehicle has been stolen?’

‘I saw it. I saw the whole thing. Three or four people, in a huge truck. Came and pulled up on his drive. They pulled the car up onto it and got out quick. His wife came out and started shouting but they were gone already.’

‘Whose wife?’

‘This neighbour. His wife.’

‘Oh. But, then… then why didn’t she report?’

‘Well, that’s a bit of a story, Officer —’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for that now. What is the name of the owner of this vehicle —’

‘I’ll tell it quick, Officer. You see, the car that was stolen was her husband’s, not hers. Her car was driven to work by her husband today. And to tell the truth, Officer, I think she shouted just ‘cause she was shocked at the moment. What I really think is that she’s damn glad it was her hubby’s car and not hers.’

‘And you must be quite a friend here, eh? Tell me, what makes you report it?’

‘Well, you see, I thought it would be funny if I called the police and he answered. It would be freaking funny to report his car being stolen to none but him. As it is, it’s not him here. He always says his name when he picks up the phone, I know. And I don’t remember hearing that.’

‘Could you explain yourself a bit more clearly, or I’ll have to hang up. This is a public service institution, and I am afraid we are dragging this conversation too long.’

‘You still don’t get it? Oh, yeah, I forgot. My fault. You see, this neighbour of mine, he works in the police.’

‘I see. Vehicle registration number?’

‘How do you expect me to know that?’

‘Pre-owned or first hand?’

‘Er… pre-owned, I should say, although he’s always claiming he bought it first hand. But he says stuff like that. I don’t believe him. You can’t get a Mustang like that in the shops now. Ancient car. It’s really valuable. Beautiful bodywork. To tell the truth, you wouldn’t wanna lose one of those.’

‘Description please.’

‘Red Mustang, with a black stripe along the side.’

‘What.’

‘Red Mustang, black stripe.’

…

‘Hello? Are you there? Hello, Officer?’

‘Whose… whose, er… whose vehicle is this? Who owns this car?’

‘Dick. Sorry, Richard. Richard Emworth. Have you heard the name? Works in the police.’

…

‘Hello? Hello, Officer? Can you hear me?’

1Life.

A Few Feet

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:59:02 GMT

‘It’s so easy to die, isn’t it?’

‘How so?’

‘You just step off this pavement and onto the road now, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.’

‘Hmm.’

‘You’re actually feet away from death now, you know.’

‘Well, if you start thinking that way, then we’re always feet away from death. When you stand beside a railway track, when you lean over a roof, when you cook your food, you’re always feet away from death, you know.’

‘When I cook my food?’

‘Yeah, if you sat on the oven for a minute you might be dead. So when you are feet away from it cooking, you are feet away from death.’

‘That’s a stupid idea.’

‘You introduced it.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I’ll tell you something?’

‘Yeah?’

‘We’re never feet away from death, you know, even when we are standing on a pavement and there’s cars whizzing by at ninety miles an hour. You know you’re dead if you step off that pavement there, because the cars won’t be able to stop. You stand feet away from it, and yet you are more than that distance away from death. You are miles, legions, universes away from your death.’

‘How’s that?’

‘It’s easier to make a trip around the world, you know, than walk those few feet and step off the pavement. You’ll never let yourself do it. It’s impossible. However much possible it may be physically, when it comes to what’s possible in the inner world, it’s only a trip around the world that is. Those few feet are impossible for you to walk. It’s harder, much harder than going for a vacation on Mars. It’s not a few feet, kid, it’s millions of uncharted, unchartable miles before you, those few feet. Your mind won’t walk it, it refuses to have anything to do with it, and it’s just a huge unwalkable gap in the end. It’s not three feet; it’s a whole uncrossable universe. You’re as safe at home as when you’re standing beside a busy street like that. In either case you are the same distance away from death. Now if you’re talking about this guy that comes along and bumps into you and you fall onto the street and an eighteen-wheeler comes along and cooks applesauce with your head, well, that won’t of course happen at home. But you can see, I’m talking about conscious decision over here. It’s as unlikely that you’ll take the car from your home and drive up the mountain road and drive straight through the fence over the cliff as it is that you’ll walk these few feet and step off this pavement here. You see my point now?’

‘Hmm…’

‘Well?’

‘What?’

‘What do you think of it? What do you think of my explanation?’

‘You talk a lot.’

‘Huh?’

‘A real lot. And that too trash. You talk a lot of trash. I need to get home now. Bye.’

‘Hey! Turn around! Don’t walk backwar—’

SLAM.

1Life.

A Second Time

Thu, 18 May 2006 16:11:59 GMT

And it was in a rain-drenched garden-shed

That I woke to find that I had been dead

And the endless string of unfinished things

Of broken wishes and incomplete dreams

Looked me in the face through my own eyes

And I decided that wasted time wasn’t so nice

So I got up, you see, and looked for a thing

That could remind me to fly, return me my wing.

And when I saw that an ocean in your eyes did lie

Mean to be with the skies inside my eye,

I knew I had found the miracle that made this poem rhyme

And it was love that let me be born

A second time.

1Life.

One Day in the Life of a Politician

Thu, 18 May 2006 06:43:37 GMT

He was a tired Indian politician. He had won the elections, and he was coming back home after a press conference with his regular escort of fifteen government cars. As he watched the lights of the city night crawl by outside his window, he focused his mind on his last speech. Nice speech, that one, and original too. Not by his secretary as they usually were. He had even asked her daughter to check it once. She had told him that it was ‘Rocking, Dad!’ and he had smiled when he heard his daughter say that. It’s not often that he writes one of his speeches himself. He forced his attention now to a few well-chosen lines. And no longer shall we lag behind, because we do not deserve it. We shall move forth as all developed countries have, in mind and in work. We shall eliminate the barriers of cast, religion, poverty. We shall strive to build a better and more open-minded country for the future. As we have done before, we shall leave the great burden of orthodoxy behind, for this is the age of change, of rationalism, of accepting whole-heartedly the new generation. We physically live no longer in the past, and neither shall we mentally do so. We shall accept new norms and live for the present and future and secure free will, free decision and free life to all our people. Our children shall be given the rights they deserve, given the freedom of opinion, and the acknowledgement of their importance in building our nation, for their decisions are just as important as ours. And no longer shall our country be crippled by the menace of religious, cast-wise or regional discrimination and bias. We shall step into a new era of broad-minded acceptance.

Even in his mind now the words sounded so sweet.

His car halted a few meters from his apartment gate, and a bodyguard in black opened the door for him. He walked out, through the reception, and then into a waiting lift, accompanied by two armed guards.

At his flat, the guards left him and went back downstairs as he opened the door and entered. The living room was empty. He heard sounds from the bedroom and went in. What met him was a complete mess.

His daughter was sitting on the bed, clasping something to her heart and crying. His wife was standing over her, and pulling out an endless string of rebukes onto the shaking, sobbing creature. The whole room was topsy-turvy. The clothes had been pulled out of the cupboards, a backpack lying on the bed was overflowing with clothes, and an expensive china vase lay on the floor in pieces.

Even before he could ask what had happened, she thundered her statement through the room.

‘A Muslim boy! She is in love with a Muslim boy. Can you believe it? Here, I found a photo of the bastard in her school books.’ — and she yanked a photograph from the girl’s hands and shoved it into his face — ‘And when I asked her dear, please come to your senses. Dear, we love you, she said she is going to leave his place for ever and started packing her clothes, can you imagine! And she accuses us of not understanding her point of view.’ — and she said the last three words mockingly and with utter distaste, and stopped and stood looking at the man with those big round glaring eyes of hers.

‘Let me handle this.’ He said at last, after he had taken his few seconds to take it all in. The girl looked up from her sobbing with fear etched clearly in her eyes.

After the wife had left the room with much unnecessary noise and banging the bedroom door shut behind her (never in all its years of service had this door ever been required to be closed) with a sound that was sure to have been carried to all the flats in the apartment, to the ears of all the voters that had voted for his husband and expected as reward if not education for everyone but still silence and quiet in the residential complex, the man turned to her daughter with the fire in his eyes that she had leaned to fear like the devil through the days she had been brought up.

‘A Muslim boy, eh?’ he shouted as he always did during his speeches, rendering the whole effort of acquiring a loudspeaker pointless. The girl quaked at his sight and withdrew slowly to a corner of the bed.

‘Tell me, a Muslim boy? Being a Hindu, you choose a Muslim boy? Answer me!’

The girl looked at her father through teary eyes, at the man standing at the doorway who was shouting at her now. He was still in the Punjabi that he had left for the conference in, and now it was wet and soggy with sweat, and revealed his underclothing.

‘Why don’t you answer me!’ and he came and grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet.

She uttered some words amidst her sobs that sounded like ‘he loves me’.

And then she looked up to catch another glimpse of the familiar fire in his eyes before being thrown roughly on the floor. Her head hit the wall and it hurt like hell. She felt for the place where the pain was the greatest and could feel something wet. Her ears were buzzing with a constant monotonous sound and her limbs started to grow numb. She watched hazily as her father picked up the photograph from the bed and shred it to pieces. Then he shouted some more and she thought she could hear the words ‘how much we love you’ and ‘no food for you tonight’, but she was too numb by then to consider them. The last thing she heard was the bedroom door being opened and closed again, and with it the unmistakable click of the Yale lock, the special Yale lock that her father had installed specially for her daughter’s bedroom, where the lock was outside, not inside.

And then, in the few moments before going to sleep in the wet pool of blood around her head, like a red halo, she remembered last night, when Dad had come to have her speech reviewed by her daughter and daughter had admired his sentences more than usual for some unknown reason, for some reason that stayed inside her school books and in the precious few minutes that she and the boy could meet in a week, and in her heart. And now, before her senses went to sleep with her, she thought of those sentences.

We shall eliminate the barriers of cast, religion, poverty. As we have done before, we shall leave the great burden of orthodoxy behind, for this is the age of change, of rationalism, of accepting whole-heartedly the new generation.

Our children shall be given the rights they deserve, given the freedom of opinion, and the acknowledgement of their importance in building our nation, for their decisions are just as important as ours. And no longer shall our country be crippled by the menace of religious, cast-wise or regional discrimination and bias. We shall step into a new era of broad-minded acceptance.

And then the words became too heavy and hard for her tiring mind to read, and she gave up and went to sleep.

1Life.

Moment of Truth

Thu, 11 May 2006 12:13:58 GMT

The rain poured incessantly, sweeping away the dirt from the city’s much-used and unmaintained roads. Ever so often, a dagger of white would split the western sky in half, and the loud crack of thunder that followed would rumble and roll through the layers of heavy clouds till it lost itself in the eastern sky.

The drops poured unceasing on his dark and solitary figure, soaking through the thin clothes and drenching his skin. He had no care for it at the moment. He sat and stared at the wet pavement beneath his feet, thinking deeply about nothing.

Life hadn’t been a bed of roses, obeying its rules. But what it had been, would perhaps call for an exceptional stretching of the rules. Life had been vacant and miserable, and life had always been what he had been least prepared for. It was enough to break anybody’s fort of mental strength.

He opened his backpack and fumbled inside for a few moments before he extracted a small knife. Small, but sharp. It could serve its purpose if he wanted it to. The last clause of that last sentence could decide his life. Never, never had he been faced with such a barrier, such a hopeless situation. Life had never seemed less fruitful, and he was feeling now the force of the inevitable choice. If he were left with the knife for five more minutes, he wouldn’t let himself live to see the rain stop. He closed his eyes and listened to the quiet rhythm of the raindrops falling on the pavement, on the streets, on the grass, on him; a moment of quiet before the moment of his decision.

He opened his eyes. The landscape looked hazy. He clasped the knife tightly. This was it.

With one hard swing, he had sent the knife flying through the raindrops, through the dark night. From all his baseball training, he could bet it would meet the ground so far away he wouldn’t be able to hear it.

He turned, picked up his backpack, and walked away slowly from the moment of his decision, a solitary figure in the rain.

1Life.

Goodbye

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 06:18:11 GMT

Three years of my life that will forever light up the rest of it. I was normal once, destined to the path that so many before me had taken, ending up as normal, in normality. I am glad I found you. I am glad you found me. I am glad we were found by each other.

I am not sure how much I have been able to improve you, but as these three years culminate in this evening we have here before us now, I can only be overwhelmed by how much, how tremendously have you been present in me, affecting me, dragging me away from the normality of the normal. Thank you, for being.

I can see the flickering lights of the evening city, past you, vague, out of focus. I turn to another pair of lights, a pair of burning, sparkling, living light-scattering gems that are your eyes. I am going to miss your eyes. They are not exceptionally beautiful, you once told me. I agree. But you need to believe, you see, they contain and reflect three years of my life. I can see myself in those eyes, how I was born again and evolved and we evolved together. They tell a story that has reached its last chapter this evening, my love. It is waiting, counting the last minutes till it slips into the vast and dark realm of Past.

Let me speak my heart out in these ten minutes before I board my taxi for the airport. You have been my life, dear. I am going to miss you like a blinded person misses his eyes. Like a person in the hospital bed after an accident misses his limb. Like a dead person misses his life.

The clock is ticking. Why do you take so long to finish the drink? Can you hear my mind wanting to stop time and rewind to three years ago and hit play again, and do it again when it once again comes to an end, and again, and again, and again...

There is not much time left, and I am starting to have an odd feeling. You know how an athlete feels how he should have practised a bit more a minute after his run, how an actor feels he should revise his lines a minute before going onto stage? I know the next life is minutes away from now, and I feel we have not lived much together. There are so many things that occured in my mind, torn fragments of thought, so many things to tell you, so many little things to gift you, so many things to do with you, so many ways to tell you I love you. I can only hope you somehow understand it all, my love, I hope you know how much I love you, because I cannot say it all over again; there is no more time.

Kiss me now, and more than that, let me drown in your eyes for a few minutes, for the last time in my life. I am going to miss your eyes, your face, your odd ideas, your phone number on my caller ID, your voice, you.

Goodbye. I love you.

< this is based on pure fiction, born from the womb of my imagination with a few undertones of desire. There has been no girl like this, no three years, no airport, and no goodbye.>

1Life.

The Mind

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 06:30:36 GMT

(short story)

I know that most of you love watching Martial Arts movies, and tend to spend some time afterwards practicing the kicks in front of the mirror. Many a time you are not able to replicate the exact move, which causes you to feel frustrated about yourself. I am not an expert in this field, so I will be of little help that way. But I might venture to relate a little incident that took place in my life when I was eleven.

It was at the time when I had joined the local soccer club. The coach was a very old man who had a very athletic body. He was really a wizard in the game, and we liked him a lot.

I, not having much relation with sports before, was not very good at the game. The sight of someone charging from the front was enough to make me leave the ball and run. I was never chosen in the inter-club soccer teams, and I was quite happy with that. But a certain time came when a forward was out with flu, and I was required to join the team. The match was scheduled after week later. I, personally, had never been in a worse state of mind. I went to the coach after practice one Monday evening. He was sitting on the front steps of the club. I told him my problem. I told him I couldn’t play. I felt very bad when I said that. It somehow pointed out to me how weak I was.

The old man patted the ground beside him. I sat down. He smiled.

‘Why can’t you play?’ he asked.

‘I am not good at it. I can’t receive passes, I cannot give any. I cannot head, shoot, or tackle. I … I…’

‘You mean you are physically not up to it.’

I nodded.

Did you ever read ‘The Last Leaf’ by O Henry? He asked. It was a story about a young woman who had a fatal case of pneumonia. It was winter, and she believed she would die when the ivy beside her window shed its last leaf. The last leaf never fell. She recovered. It was later discovered by her that the leaf was actually the handiwork of a painter who lived downstairs. He painted it there the night the last leaf fell.

I had read the story. I told him so.

‘Do you think it would have been possible for her to recover if she had seen the last leaf fall?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I answered.

‘So you see, it is not our bodies that control our mind. It is not the body that sets the limits for the mind. It’s the mind that controls the body. The girl survived because she had mentally written a program for her body which said that death was prohibited until the last leaf fell. The body had no choice but to obey it. It never has.’

I listened, fascinated. ‘So, so you mean that the mind sets its own limits itself? Nothing else has a hand in it?’

‘Right now, boy, all I am saying is that physically you are up to playing soccer; you always are. It’s the mind that’s your weakness. Every sport in this world is a duel of the mind. It’s the mind that you have to train.’

I believed him. It all seemed true. I suddenly felt a new source of power inside me, for I had always felt that I was in full control of my mind.

The next few days I really did try to train my mind. I tackled my shadow, I used the washing machine as the goal, I did everything. It wasn’t easy. It was the first time that I realized that I wasn’t in full control of my mind. I thought, ‘I can do it, I can, I can.’ But it wasn’t easy.

On the scheduled day I played. I didn’t score a single goal. But I wasn’t afraid of their big fat defender at all. I kept telling myself, ‘You are more than you think you are. This is child’s play.’ I gave quite a few good passes. Our team won 2-1. I was very pleased with myself.

I left soccer shortly afterwards. But that Monday evening, that small conversation with the coach on the front steps of the club, it has helped me out on numerous occasions since then.

A few days ago I found out a great way to train one’s mind. I was standing on top of the stairs, and suddenly I thought of jumping over them to the landing below. Mind you, they weren’t those short ones like the ones in school. Big, fat, tall ones. Eight in all. That made the difference between me and the landing considerable. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. I opened them. All I saw now was the mosaic floor of the landing, blue dots on white, and the stairs, with two blue stripes running down them on either side. I thought I could do it. I jumped. In a fraction of a second something went wrong in my mind. Something was telling me I couldn’t do it. It was telling me that if I try, I might hurt myself. This wasn’t my voice. I did not recognize it. This wasn’t me. It was someone else within me. He overpowered me. I dropped clumsily down two or three steps but managed to hold on to the rail. The little toe of my right foot started paining like mad where it had hit one of the cement steps. I limped back to my room, feeling like a total loser.

In the evening, I tried again. There’s something about an evening that encourages me. The light, the dreamy pale blue light that was streaming in through the little square windows of the landing gave me hope. I looked down. I stopped thinking and closed my eyes. Only one thought remained in my mind. Three steps, I told myself. That’s what you’ve got to jump over. Three little steps. I listened. I believed. I opened my eyes and released the air I had been holding. I saw the landing, the mosaic landing, blue on white. I didn’t see the steps. I didn’t want to. I swung my arms back and forth. It helped. And with one hard forward swing, I jumped.

Instantly, three white mosaic steps with two blue stripes running down them on either side appeared before my eyes, hazy and out of focus, like watching out of water. One went past. Time seemed to be a snail. The second one was approaching. I focused on the landing, the pale blue evening light. The second one passed. The third one. The last one.

All of a sudden, that dreaded voice at the back of my head woke up. It cried out, You fool! Eight steps, it’s eight steps! Eight! You’ll fall! It was bringing me sharply back to earth. For a second I thought I would fall. I visualized the bloody mess, a fracture, blood on the landing, running down the stairs with the blue stripes…

But suddenly, like a light switching on, I remembered, remembered after a long time, the face of the coach at the soccer club, sitting and smiling on the front steps of the club on a Monday Evening, the pale blue light of dusk bathing the scene.

I wasn’t afraid any more.

The last step passed. I dropped to the floor silently, bending my knees to reduce the impact.

I was there. This was the landing. I had made it.

Here is something I want to tell you. Now I suddenly know why the coach didn’t answer me straight when I asked him whether the mind sets its own limits. It’s because the answer is a little on the awkward side, but it’s true. The mind doesn’t set the limits, because it hasn’t any.

The choices are yours.

Hidden Alley

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 06:37:56 GMT

(dedicated to a flightless bird that soared the skies so well.

written around midnight.)

Hidden up this secret alley in my mind

There lives a girl I have long left behind.

The winds of change blew away her scent

And left without saying where she went.

I wait for her to come back again

Like a piece of happiness, a quiet rain.

She’ll call me up, and on the end of the line

I shall find the girl I once used to call mine.

A thousand memories will wake my heart

And I’ll ask if she’s ready to start

To find the path we both left behind

And lost, long ago, in my mind.

Connect me

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 07:12:26 GMT

(written approximately at a quarter to midnight)

Connect me

To the distant seas and the salty breeze and the lonely sunlit sails.

Awake me

To the forestries of silent trees and their whispered, quiet tales.

Allow me

To reach the peak and not be weak as I scale the mountain high.

Affect me

When I see the stars like a thousand words etched in the midnight sky

Detach me

From the constant strife, and the pains of life that forever fence my way.

Assist me

To forget the lies, to shed disguise, to throw it all away.

Assure me

That I shall never be just the lonely me, because I need your help.

Connect me

To the distant seas, the forestries, the stars, and to myself.

1Life.