Thoughts to pen, dedicated to another...

The power of isolation compels,
Complete dissociation from another,
An existence of separate individuality,
Cut off and removed from ties,
No hand rises to hurt,
No finger points out to blame,
The power of the soul dwells only within…
You bolt up and guard the insides,
You hold yourself close,
Scared to reveal to the world,
The amazing turmoil of your mind,
The world within watches,
A mere spectator of reality,
Laughing mockingly,
At what seems to be the truth,
A passionate flame burns,
Incessantly within you,
You let it elevate you,
Away from the others…
Not by fear but by choice.
Playing games in your own mind,
In a world that only you desire,
In a world that only you deserve…

Transitory Reflections

You know, in this world, time flits past so soon that you rarely get the time to pause and breathe. You get stuck in the race and you forget all the milestones you passed and the things you left behind. You run looking hard ahead, you focus only on the destination, but the journey is forgotten, the roads are left behind, mere images to serve as fragments of memories from the past.

Then one day, suddenly you end up reminiscing, because of someone or something around you that made a memory distinctly livid, that made the past come alive and dance in front of you. That has happened more often than once. When all you can think of is how it used to be.

Childhood is an interesting thing. It is that time of life when you are unguarded, when you can be yourself and say everything you want to without being afraid of judgmental people hovering around you who are waiting to character assassinate you and your existence.

Childhood images of you stand alive in the hearts of those that are dear. My uncle still remembers the first sight he had of me as i came rocketing down a slope on my friend's cycle headed straight to is car and braked just in time. The excitement, the mad rush of adrenaline, the laughs. I still remember it too. I also remember the shocking pink frilly frock i had on. I was a terror even then, no wonder my uncle remembers it so clearly. A shocking pink thunderbolt of lightning on a cycle headed straight at your car, when you are actually planning to propose a marriage to someone you love and this thunderbolt actually happens to be a relative that too a closely related one. Someone in all probability who is going to be a part of the new life you are beginning. Love you Roy Mama ;)

So coming back to childhood and cycles and bike rides... When you relive these things all of a sudden out of the blue, you realize how old you have grown. I just did all the mad child like antics on Saturday and i feel sooo good.

Went to a birthday party at ma's friends place. Her girls are 13 and 9 and they are a riot, a little crazy but a riot. I started with sliding down the banisters and the jumping 7 stairs at a go from landing to landing. Then went on to play aeroplane hopscotch on the road with the vehicles dodging us. Then it was around ten when we took the cycle out. Her Miss India Lavender Cycle. There were two other kids as well. So i took the cycle and i took off. The moon was at its gibbous best. There was a halo of clouds around it, a thin wisp but a pretty one, the stars peeking out, blinking and twinkling... Like holding a conversation, as if they have some secrets to whisper into your ears. The cycle ride was the best of the lot, in the moonlight, taking the kids on doubles. Sweeping down a slope, walking it up again. It was ten thirty when ma finally managed to tear me away from the cycle.

Everyone there thought i was in school and i am not wondering why. I was told i will never be forgotten. I had a ball. Went home, sat on the tank on the terrace, it was freezing cold and i was in my shorts and tee. The moon overhead, the stars laughing, the lights of the city blinking in the darkness, the wind rustling in the trees, ticking, teasing. I sat wrapped in the moment, of sheer joy, of childhood thoughts, of the beauty of the night, of the soothing sounds of the wind, of another world so far, yet so near...

Fuzzy

Sometimes in the evening,
A dewy mist settles,
On the rooftops,
Below the clouds,
Along the skyline…
A wispy wind blows and tugs,
The mist and the fog,
Fuzzes the light,
From the dull shiny lamp posts,
A hand clutches at the coat collar,
Drawing the warmth close,
The heels click on the sidewalk,
The shadow follows,
Fast paced footsteps,
Fight the cold, Goosebumps…
Eyes dart and thoughts flow,
A gloomy sigh escapes,
Strength is drawn from within,
A smile is forced onto the lips,
A sudden warmth spreads through,
A lift of the head and a toss,
The moon smiles down,
The lights wink in hide and seek,
As she walks the lonely city street,
In the light of the nights darkness,
Lonely, but not alone…

Mixed

A mixed bag of madness,
Everyone and everything obscure…
A dull feeling of existence,
An angst of sorts…

A mystical feeling of elation,
Rising above the rest,
An incomplete damp,
Eating into the euphoria…

Sly, scheming demons,
Pure, beautiful angels,
Lurk and co exist,
In a land of my own doom…

I pick and choose;
Conjure up moods,
To last a fleeting moment,
And a sliver of thoughts…

Insanity contorted,
Delight misjudged,
Life sailing on,
Amidst Laughter and Tears…

Shape Shifters

Shape shifters, sift swiftly past,
Small and humble,
Fluffy and inviting,
Painting vivid pictures,
On an ever changing easel,
Castles in the air,
Built from nonexistent bricks,
A hide and seek of sorts,
Smiling, laughing, moonlit,
A radiance so divine,
Untouched, peerless, calm…
A sea of clouds…
Dewy, white, clean,
Like life at its best,
Uncertain, yet beautiful.

Ruffles

The wind ruffles, and an ivy curtain moves,
Water gushes down in musical notes,
Anklets tinkle as pretty feet dance on the rocks,
The green folds caress curves,
The trails follow every tiny twist,
Every single turn,
Coy and Quiet, dark and blue,
Sad and wistful, restless and laughing,
Colour of moods painting pretty pictures…
The sky gazes down longingly,
Pregnant with desire,
As the earth dances,
To the sheer joy of celebration…

Superwoman ME!

There are times in your life when everything around you seems to be falling apart. Well with me it’s just that this happens a lot more frequently, like on an everyday basis. Take yesterday for instance, it promised to be a chaotic mad rush day and was all that and more. The fun part was that I had to work late and then go meet a couple of friends who live far far away. Since I live in the back of beyond and there is some sort of distance that needs to be traversed between areas and of course taking into consideration Bangalore Rains and Traffic, I had quite a joy ride. Halfway home, on the main Basvangudi road, just after the World Culture turning, my car chooses to stop, bang on the middle of the road. It had run out of Fuel and I knew this could happen, in a year and a half of driving around in my red Ferrari, this had never happened. This time it did and the car spurred and sputtered as I tried to give it some life.

I am on the middle of a busy road, stuck in my car and it refused to start. So, I very promptly got off and managed to push it to the side of the road. My muscle power amazed me. I managed to push a car sideways for about 400 mts. With no help. WOW. I pushed it alright and locked it also. Now, I forgot that my money was in the car and there was absolutely no currency in my wallet. My phone on the other hand was deactivated, because I was switching from a pre paid to a post paid, which entitled airtel to deactivate my old sim and not activate the new one. SO here I was stuck with a car stranded in the middle of a road which had no parking and it happened to be bang in front of the bloody Basvangudi Police Station, just a few yards away from the bus stop.

I gathered enough courage to leave my poor red gaddi ji stranded with no company on a no parking zone and I started walking. The best part was it was raining and I was in cream trousers and so I nicely got my ironed and laundered cream trousers dirty and still didn’t manage to get a bloody phone booth. I walked and walked and walked till my granny’s friend’s place which was in the radius of a kilometer or so and called for help!!! Then had a nice dinner there and was petted by aunty, finished that and ran back to check on how my gaddi was doing and if it was there at all in the first place. Enough exercise I say!

All I will say is that petrol came to me in a bottle, my gaddi was fed, ma was pacified without too much drama and I got home without any bruises or scratches and without having to run around policemen and stations!!! Sigh what a day!!!

I walked on and on…
Into the open arms of the ocean,
Unaware of my destination,
Blinded by a sickening grief…
She welcomed me into her,
Her violent waves,
Tearing me away from the shore.

I drifted away…
Lost in a churning blackness,
Unable to come to terms with reality,
Aghast at the heights of horror…
Sinking into a swirling vortex,
Of unending calm,
Her arms, my only comfort.

Home at last,
I sank into her abysmal depths…
At peace now I slept,
For all eternity.
Away from harsh reality…
Serene in the abyss,
Of her nurturing womb.

Pain Killers

Does Love understand?
Or does it condemn?
Does faith prevail?
Or does it die out?
Does familiarity breed contempt?
Does anger solve troubles?
Do eyes smile with laughter?
Do words find meaning only in colour?
Does darkness not wipe out the light?
Does depression always end in pain?
Or shall I get some pain killers?

Illusions

As the seconds tick by,
A weary heart smiles,
Knowing the end,
Is now not so distant.
The joy of knowledge,
Death brings, in his stride…
The comfort of non existence,
Beckons…
To slowly drift,
Into the arms of death…
To be delivered to an end,
Not just from here,
But all the worlds…
Heaven, Hell, Earth,
Or otherwise,
What is the difference?
Where is it?
What is the horizon?
Does it exist?
An illusion is all it is…
Life and death,
Tears and Laughter,
Joy and sorrow,
Knowledge and Ignorance,
Darkness and Light,
All but illusions,
Of the unreal mind…

Love and Gossamer

I stood on the edge of a stream,
Gazing into her serene depths…
Enticed and in a spell I walked,
Along her shores I found,
Many a pebble bright,
Lost in worlds unknown…
Wandering through valleys
She led me on…
To a land of the most beautiful kind
Indescribable in its ardor it stood…
Peaceful, calm and serene…
As I walked nearer, everything smiled…
The tinkling of happiness
Filled the air...
So many sights to behold,
So much to hear and breathe
So much to soak in…
As I stood there bathed in his love,
flying with my gossamer wings,
He softly tiptoed up
To hold me in an embrace,
That would last me an eternity…

Empty Echoes

An echoing emptiness,
Loneliness in waves tiring the soul,
Losing ground,
Sinking into unknown depths
A head spinning wildly
In the chaos of the outer world
Seeking comfort, refuge…
Finding anger, disgust…
Craving for a breath,
Being ignored, pathetically….
Darkening worlds,
Stuck in a lonely world..
Helpless and aching…
Slowly slipping
Into an endless void of insanity…..

Little drops of blood

A drop of my blood,
Falls into the ocean,
A million hungry sharks hover…
To bite into the meat.
But where are the ones
That bit into the meat of my soul?
Slowly I am on the road to perdition…
I smile as I walk the last mile,
A green ogre waits for the kill,
For the sharks to tear me apart,
It amuses me, this need for power,
This hungry, menacing desire,
The desire of a man to destroy,
The need to break even…
For what? Why? How?

My PVR Jinx

The need or desperation to write is such that i have to sit at a go and pour my heart out. Even if it means that it is at midnight and sitting in a room that seems to be infested with red ants that crawl from outside the balcony, through the gap under my door, slowly the line building and climbing up my computer table and then the wall and finally the window that i sleep next to, creeping behind the curtains. But i have to write even if it means from a table with ants crawling around the keyboard and on it and with no idea where i will sleep because this room is now scary to even rest in. A pain gnaws into me and that is probably whats egging me to write.

Oh i also saw The dark night twice a couple of weeks ago at PVR. I was comfortably late so i managed to miss ten minutes of the movie. Hence as i had to atone for this incongruous sin I had to go back and watch it the next day. Then began the beginning of this crazy mad myre...

When this week started, i thought it will be my normal not so eventful week, just the monotonous, mechanized office, yoga, work or the office, tuition and work. It was far from that.

I strayed away completely from what i was planning to talk about, yes my PVR jinx. On Tuesday, the boys called me out for lunch to forum. By boys i mean Prashanth and Abu. They asked me to meet them at 11 but i landed there at 12 30 and they had to go watch a movie at 12 45 so they were slightly cheesed off coz i had stuck to my standard turning up late thanks to the work that keeps me on my toes constantly. So i end up there and they drag me into a movie. I am carrying my bag and in it lies my camera and in the case lie batteries. This movie thing happened very unexpectedly. I got an exchange of the two tickets these goons had bought with three and i stepped in. Then the whole being frisked business happened and i had to give in my batteries to the girl there. I went in and watched mumbai meri jaan and came out feeling really good coz it was a very well made film. I stepped out smartly and rushed back to work just being slightly strayed by my wandering brother's appearance at Forum. Then we managed to get out of there and i managed to get back to work. I reached office and realised that i had left the batteries at the theater and i had way too much to be done to get back the same day. So, on Thursday i set out again to get the batteries. I spent a good hour waiting and checking as they traced it for me. Abu was my constant source of support through the ordeal and my tolerance levels were maintained thanks to him. From there i got back fortunately a little less careless hopefully.
And i thought i was done with the madness of roaming the PVR cinemas. No not happening! It was destined that i end up again at PVR on Friday to buy tickets for Rock on, after the whole darn process of finding parking and all that stuff, i went to the freakin PVR Cinemas again and did not get tickets for the ten o clock show as it was sold out! Thankfully the PVR jinx was broken. i didn't have to come back for the movie at ten.
But it didn't end there with the jinx, i went to i-nox for the tickets and there was only the 7 o clock show so i guessed all these seven and half Saturn things are just bull oz once you are jinxed you are jinxed in more ways than one.

The Ring of Joy, or should i say stud!

A change was desired… It was a very adamant desire that refused to listen to logic or reason. The change was wanted and I had to get it. ‘Act on Impulse’ was the message transmitted across various neurons in my brain and that was exactly what I did, I acted on the impulse.

A trip to the beautician for a gunshot! A gunshot that would probably disfigure my nose forever. But who cared! I wanted to pierce my nose and I wanted to do it because of the very reason that I am needle phobic. Extremely. To acknowledge my new job, I got my ears pierced with a two week gap between each ear because I didn’t have the strength to go through with both ears at once. So one ear happened before I joined work and the other two weeks later. This is probably why I have chosen to wear a ring in one year and a stud in the other. Oh by the way I already had earrings but I wanted the next level also to be pierced.

Coming to my nose stud! I went to Aunty with Pallavi and I sat all prim and pert in the chair as stiff as the stiffest I could ever be. Ready for the needle to pierce through layers of my skin. It was a moment stuck in space and the thunderclap of the gun at work was resounding. The pain was very endurable. I walked out confidently with aunty telling me I’m a strong girl for not having felt queasy or weak.

As I walked I didn’t realize that the big blue stud not only looked funny but also was sticking out and the back stopper thingy had fallen off. I got back to the office and got a few extremely smart ass comments about my nose. Pavi lost her mind and yelled at me for having ruined my cute little nose and went ballistic about it. She just refused to believe that it could be remotely nice.

I could not stop laughing and I realized that there was something wrong. The stud was not entirely in place, the back stopper thing had fallen off and it had not even pierced through all the layers of skin so it was a disaster. I took off the stud and went to her again and she said a jeweler would do a better job coz all he had to do was just pierce it through entirely.

I was waiting for the one jeweler in the whole locality who would do the job and do it well, but his store was locked up and I was getting late for a movie so I left. Since it is not in my nature to give up easily, I turned up again after the film and he was open.

I left Pallavi in the car and walked in and sat down to the ordeal I had chosen to put myself through. He lifted this large fat iron needle with a hook and asked me not to look. I wanted it on my right as against the left convention so he marked another spot coz the previous one was not placed properly and I picked out a diamond stud for the cause. I shuddered at the thought of that big a needle being forced into my nose, and by the time I could say a word, it was in through the layers and I felt like these people with rods through the skin, the ones that have prayed for something and do this for God. It really was a fat rod. He screwed in the stud in place and I was done! I was in super pain. It hurt like crazy and my whole right side was numb with pain. I went back and Pallavi really liked it.

Later, some people didn’t even notice it and it took a while for my mom to see it. The final verdict from Ma was that I look like an adiwasi and I look five years older than I actually am. Granny was aghast. And I like it!
The pain was well worth it and its paining still, but I love it and now I know I can muster enough courage to actually sit thru it and now I don’t fear fat needles at least when they are puncturing my skin. So now, I ended up with a swollen nose and pain on my right side and a hurting right hand thanks to the rude doctor who said that my constant chatter irritated him and poked me hard with the Tetanus shot, I still think it was well worth all the trouble, even ma and granny yelling at me was worth it! So thanks to it all, I am a better human being, my endurance levels are higher and I am prettier! Lol! So check me out with my nose pin!

I guess that is what matters ultimately, that I like it! And now I am not alone anymore, my diamond laughs and flashes at me from my nose and I feel the flashes smile with me! So until next time, I’ll flash a laugh! ;)

Life as I see it and as it sees me…

The permanent temptation in life is to confuse dreams with reality; the permanent defeat in life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality…

What defines a human, the person he or she is? Is it their past, is it their work, their family, their relationships, their present or their future? Maybe it is an encapsulation of it all. But I am defined by my dreams, more than anything else. I believe that I live in a utopian world that is peerless and pure… So what if that is the biggest lie I live in? It gives me the strength to live and I guess bottom-line that is what you need in this world… Strength and Courage…

This for not being yourself but for being fake and changing avatars every day with everyone, because the real world does not really appreciate simple, straightforward, sincere - honesty of speech, thought and action. This is a lesson I have learnt and multiple times at that, so here is when my alternate reality comes into the picture, the world of the mind, body and soul, all in conjunction, building together multiple worlds of reality so pure, it can only exist out of bounds of everything else and everyone else.

If sorrow is something you have to deal with, or if it is a mental agony, switch off from the unreality of the real world and bind yourself to the reality of the worlds that you have created.

Philosophy apart and the Freudian theories of Eid, Ego and Super ego apart, although I do think at this phase of life that I lead I am more of the Eid and the child than anything else… I am a human, a part of this world of its good and it’s bad… Like black on one hand and white in the other but grey otherwise… The blend of darkness and light of blackness and white.

5 minutes, is what I get to recount a lifetime of me… And I know I won’t even be done with five seconds of it here, but all I can promise is an insight into the mind of a fellow human being, however weird.

The naughty mischievous quicksilver that I was, floating away from one thing to another, from one world to another, a zillion hobbies and interests everything that has captured my fleeting attention has gotten a fair amount of my time and energies vested in it. Falling in love with a new interest every week, from jigsaws to clay modeling to singing, tried it all. The only ones that have remained endearing and faithful and have grown as my strengths are my writing, yoga and dancing. All else has taken a backseat, but nothing is permanent but for change so I guess a second revisit to all my lost loves will happen cyclically, as to my fancy.

Education was something I took to very earnestly and easily like everything else and I am surprised it kept my attention for all of the 22 years I went through it. Surprisingly enough boredom did not set in as easily and I actually managed to be the geeky fairly well performing student in spite of the various trials and tribulations I put my mother through. Even to this day I am told I managed to do well because I picked out the ones I was good at and left the others for the rest. According to me that was the smartest move I ever made.

Three degrees and a hosh posh of all small courses and other classes, mirroring my confusion and the desire to try everything I had an interest for… Work wise again, the desire for multitudes persevered and so I have to work even now on my voice over’s, my anchoring, my writing, my dance, my theater and my events and of course my communication. The deal is, if you are good at something why not work on it? I will not talk about future dreams and hopes because that will be putting a boundary to life and what it shapes up to be, but I will say watch out for a voice that speaks to you from far away in the future, that might faintly resemble mine and recapture moments spent and memories cherished of a life that was shared even but if briefly.

I live in a world of mixed colours and emotions and I love every second of it, the good or the bad, is enriching and ethereal, like Gaea the soul of the earth multiple worlds packaged into just one small package – Me. I have so much more to say as usual, and I know I am the most vocal of them all and this is not by far the last you will hear from me, but it was a fair chance to be able to share snippets of a life beyond the walls of life and existence.

If you ever see a book by Shreya Krishnan on the stands, pick it up and read it, coz one thing it will be is a mixed bag of everything just like the person that wrote it