Paradise Now
Posted by Isha on August 8, 2008 - Filed Under Issues | 7 Comments
The child squealed through the reticence of the four walls of the house. The mother stood vulnerable by the door, unable to placate her agony, forlorn and impotent. The child was famished for three days; the last supplies of the food consumed to its last bit. The elder daughter hunched by the corner light, its umbra only accentuating the child’s horrors and grief. Her father had been missing for a week now; the rumors were he was arrested on the grounds of some theft in the neighborhood.
The Mother walked to the end of the room, taking the child in its arms and rushing to the streetlights in the pouring rain. She had held a bowl in the corner of her torn sari, now falling apart in the shards of abject poverty.
She stood in the rain, holding the child, covering her from the moist of the clouds above. The child never seemed to get tired of its own pain; the hunger was just a crowning glory. The lights turned red and the mother ran car to car begging for some mercy, for some humanity ostensibly dead in the eyes of passers by. She pounded the mirrors of the car, thumped the road- unable to move the passing traffic for it deemed it inappropriate to halt for a non-moving life. She could not stir any sympathy, just some angry glares and abuses. She could not feed her lone child.
One Month Later
The mother had been missing since morning. The elder daughter tried to soothe the little child, singing her songs which she remembered from her childhood.
A rush in the stairs and her mother was back, with supplies of food- Bread, rice, and vegetables of different colors and shapes. She smiled and said “Never would you be sleeping hungry again.”
She fed the daughters and sang them the song of happiness and glee.
“These are truly the last days, May Lord keep us Happy in His Own special ways.”
The kids slept close to her mother. She was wide awake, with a paper in her hand.
At the stroke of the morning hour, the mother crept out of the house. She had kept a letter for her daughter in her frock that asked her to keep good care of her sister and to be a strong person. She advised her not to go out of the house for coming few days. Her daddy would be home soon.
Daddy came home an hour past midnight.
The cities were rocked by twin blasts, each of them a suicide blast, killing over a hundred. The bloods of people painted the street-roads, effacing the alive and the dead apart. The stories were all over the news channels, they ran a full show carving a picture of inhumanity and atrocity, witnessed by the mother in that pouring night.
The daddy got a cheque of 50,000 Rs. in the mail next day.
Popularity: 37% [?]
StoryTeller
Posted by Isha on April 23, 2008 - Filed Under Thoughts | 10 Comments
It’s not the words you write, it’s the story you tell
“Read me a story” I told him prodding his leg with my foot.
It was a summer afternoon. The kind of ones that make you lazy and bored. I laid there on the cushions, watching him so content with his books and ink.
He glanced at me and went back to his book.
“Pleasseeee tell me a story”. I whined and cajoled him like a child. He chuckled and placed my feet in his lap.
His book laid downwards on the table now.
“What sort of story you would wana hear to”?
“Anything, which is yours”
“I don’t tell good stories”
“Yes, you do.”
I whimpered again, made funny sounds. He always gave in to that, smilingly
“OK” he said.
I smiled and adjusted my feet in his lap. His fingers circling my soles, but that never tickled me. This is what amazed him the most and he loved to do that over and over again.
He told me about the girl, who loved to watch movies. Everyday she went to a Video library, to get the latest movie, with her lover. The movies excited both of them, esp. when it was the rarest legends procured sheepishly from an Internet site or traded with a friend. This time, they had got Bowling for Constantine. It was an amazing movie, the lover told her. Her eyes sparkled with the enthusiasm of a child. Even she had read about the movie so many times. The lights were out, the cozy theatre set in the corner of the room. She got the popcorns from the street vendor and made herself comfortable on his shoulder.
And she slept off.
“Oh that’s so sad and funny.” Was the movie that boring? Did the lover not mind her sleeping in the middle of movies.
“Ofcourse he did not.”
Another time, he told me a story about the princess in a kingdom far away. She refused to marry as she loved no one. Her father was anxious for her and held a contest for her: The man who can tell a story to my daughter, that makes her both laugh and cry, think and dream, she will marry her. The princess agreed to the contest. Men from all over the kingdom came to the princess and told her stories. None excited her. None moved her. A year went by. The king had lost all the hopes and then a poor peasant came and told her a story. It was a story so sad and so gentle, so rich and so profound that it made the princess laugh and cry, dream and think. She married the peasant and they lived happily ever after.
Once, he asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told him to fill me up a Bowl, brimming full with his own stories. I knew he would not do that. He shook his head and closed his eyes. I thought I bemused him in funny ways.
I woke up on my birthday and found a large blue bowl resting next to my pillow. A hundred sheets of paper ripped out of a book were kept neatly inside. I picked one and it was a story about a girl who loved stories. I sat there, read all the stories, one by one. They were stories about people who loved to hear stories, stories about the story tellers trying to win over the woman they loved.
I picked up the final story.
It was about the lover who had watched her love sleep on his shoulders as they watched the movies together. The lover filled his eyes with the joy and splendor of his love beside him, resting on the shoulders, all her worries at bay. The lover loved her more than anything else in the world. He loved to play with her soles, but she never did feel ticklish. They had their own lives twisted around each other, perfectly.
I could not read the last lines of the story as they appeared smudged with tears. The whites of the paper blotted with blues of ink. I could feel sudden rising sadness in my stomach. I picked up the phone to call him up, only to receive his message asking me to check my chestnut drawer.
I pulled the drawer open.
There laid the DVD.
“ Bowling for Constatine”.
Popularity: 61% [?]
One-Winged Angel
Posted by Isha on January 11, 2008 - Filed Under Issues, Thoughts | 1 Comment
The Old Man walked slowly on the deserted Road. It was 5’o clock in the morning and his Morning walk marked the dawn of his day, everyday. He felt a little forlorn; he had overheard his son talking to his wife, mentioning plans of an old age house. He felt a pain in his knees, a throbbing of a shifted heart. “Changed Times”! he sighed
His blurred eyes, spotted it. It was lying by the side of the road, squashed. The paper attempted to catch up with the float of the breeze, but the gravity pulled it a little harder then.
Piqued, the old man bent down to pick it up. The paper aeroplane, a child’s flight of fancy, a work of Art of Wright Brothers with a touch of Fall of Icarus. Gingerly, he rind open the craft, careful so as not to slash.
On one side, he found a raw sketch of a woman and a child. Hand in hand, purple hued. A speech bubble above the child said :
“Is this why we can Never Fly like that Birdie! Mom ?”
The pain felt better in the knee. The Old Man, kept the paper inside his pocket and strolled further to the rear end of the road.
7 AM and he was seated contentedly on his arm-chair. His morning cup of tea was missing, a forewarn of the likeness of times ahead. He found Yesterday’s newspapers with highlighted Old Age Homes classifieds.
“Peace for your after-years, Longing for its yesters” said one of them. It was the farthest, an overnight journey would disconnect his bonds with his Home and his family.
His fingers ruffled the pockets and felt the creased aeroplane. He took it out clumsily. The sketched child looked familiar but he knew that familiarity bred contempt.
On the reverse, there was a crafted depiction of a small cottage. It was complete with white besieged fence, colorful marigold, lacy curtains and a Locked door. To one side, was a garden a green bean teepee in the center. Blueberry bushes and Raspberry plants to the left; ivy trailing up along the brick chimney, framing it in green splendor. The Garden Paradise!!
Above the house was a white puffy cloud the kinds that caste no shadow. Upon it sat a man, an ANGEL complete with his wings and halo, smiling to the earthliness below.
The old man stood up. He carefully refolded the paper back into the airplane it was, sharpening the creases and opening it up like new. Then, he launched it into the air toward the sky, watching the wind carry it away higher and higher-once again on the breeze as it should be.
Popularity: 74% [?]
Are you still there God? It’s me, Margaret…
Posted by Isha on December 6, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | 21 Comments
A spasm rose over her spine. She twitched to her side and made a passe’ to the uneasy feeling. Pain and nausea twist around each other and will not be broken apart.But it did not heed to the girl’s voluntary ignorance. She missed her work and her boss was smug about it because he never got cramps, ever. Lest he fed on some street side junk, beaming with flies and foul.
Her life was halted, she cursed the nature’s decree every single time. She walked a little stooped then, a little drift marked her otherwise unsympathetic stroll. And now she was stood tranquil; her body and mind worked on a different prototype.
And she sat still at home. She pined for a nicotine drag, but she felt not too favorable and not too tough. The paroxysm was a little stronger; she felt hapless and tried to seize her existence in the times of hurting and woe. She wanted to call him but was defying her hankering.
She came out to get her supplies of Advil. She could not stop thinking about her boss’s conceit, she could not stop thinking about anything unpleasant. The worst part about her cramps was that she could not lock herself out from unpleasant thoughts, she lacked the power of “wishful thinking”. She tried to think about clouds, and grass, children on the swings, pre-pubertal girls rolling in sand, but she felt more spiteful. All her organs wanted to get out of her body.
Driving over the speed bump in front of her apartment made her want to cry, because of the way the pain slushed inside her belly, and from the small relief of being home where she could curl over and try to breathe. She was hot and cold and hot again.
The smell of her apartment, the smell of her own hands, the smell of the joint she was trying to roll, all were twisted, gone terribly wrong. She emptied the wastebasket just in case. She wanted to cry, or talk to herself, but both are tiring and neither will get her anywhere, ever.
Don’t care what your health textbook told you was the point of this ritual, the bleeding is only a side effect.
Popularity: 82% [?]
Look for me When I am Gone.
Posted by Isha on November 20, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | 5 Comments
Remember me When I am Gone.
Not for the delusion and the tumult I had caused in your life, not for the person who could not be, the way you wanted her to be. But for someone, who truly loved you once and that was for ever.
For someone, who was hayed across when she could not see you around, hear you around. For someone, who had the reason to smile when she had you, for her, around her.
Those were the perfect days, when she could just spend the whole day, by the window.. waiting for you; or when you were unwell, she stayed up all night with her prayers, praying for you.
That was the Perfect Love, a Perfect Life. And now its Over.
Remember me for not what I could be, the bickering aplenty on the sight of your friends, the tantrums that made you loose your temper every time, and for the fights that made you hate me every while.
Remember me for some one who could go to any extreme if she could have you in the end. Who could fight with anyone if you could just chose to be her friend, broken amends.
Look for me when I am gone, for you would miss me, the sound of two syllables, that meant the life to be. And I will wait for you, till you could forgive me for what I could not hold and what I ended up in shreds.
I am sorry.
Popularity: 77% [?]
Keep On Walking
Posted by Isha on November 6, 2007 - Filed Under The Journey | 4 Comments
I inherit
The loss of a family with living deaths every night
I inherit
The loss of faith with fidelity blown off in a spite
I inherit
The cries and shrieks in the walls of a broken clamor
I inherit
holler of missed cries and vices of a malevolent devour…
It happened again..Sometimes she wonder how a person can mar you with the same distress all over again..In it, out of it, a big quagmire which leaves u nothing but some mud in the feet and lotta loam in the face. May be its THE time to introspect and severe some ties forever. Coz the broken ties hurt a lot less than the ones, which are there, dying a Death of its own every day. But forever never comes, she was called egocentric and cold-blooded—may be there were no justifications of her action, no redemption for her sin. The walls were closing in and she was stuck. Her only life support was crashing by, but she did not move to cease the last breath in her lungs. It was escaping; the tears were something she had to make her peace with. Letting go is never easy, but staying together seemed harder. She was torn once again with the choices she had to make, but the choices were so potent, so indispensable….
“I been caught sideways out here on the crossroads
Tryin’ to buy back the pieces I lost of my soul
It’s hard when the devil won’t get off your back
It’s like carryin’ around the past in a hundred pound sack
Today, I’m gonna keep on walkin’
I’m gonna hold my head up high
Gonna leave it all behind
Today, I’m gonna stand out in the rain
Let it wash it all away, yeah wash it all away
I’m gonna let it go, I’ m gonna let it go.”
- Tim McGraw
Popularity: 84% [?]
Pastel Memories
Posted by Isha on November 5, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | Leave a Comment
Faded memories, wait beside me.
The tips of your fingers reach inside and touch my memory. Long after, the fingers are gone, long after the memory is frigid.
The reminiscence that’s are made by us, but not necessarily for us:
The man who could not hear the tweet of birds anymore- The valley filled with the chirps all over, following a gun shot. And his best friend, laid there with the gun in his hand- Bleeding and smiling.
The little girl, who never ran to the honk of a car outside- She always did, in keenness of her grand mother coming home. But the grand mother had abruptly stopped visiting her, she was dead long before. Now the grand mother only visits her in her dreams.
The boy who could not stand the hotdogs anymore, Could not stand the sight of it. His friend and he were sitting in the courtyard, eating the hotdog, when his cat went running after the truck. The truck ran over the cat- Stupid cat.
She could not listen to Duran/Duran anymore. She had made love to him on that song on multiple occasions. Now he was married to someone else, and Duran/Duran seemed as spiteful.
These ashen memories, linger beside—– long after you’re gone.
Popularity: 75% [?]
You make a Beautiful Picture!
Posted by Isha on October 18, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | 3 Comments
SHOT—CLICK—ZOOM
Yes, you broken thing, I can see the sunshine through you, through the cracks of your soul, the light deflecting and refracting, making your pattern- the shatter mold. The music in your mind, the dance steps, the footprints in the sand. Why don’t you dance anymore? The melancholy of the music.. Au Revoir Simone does not appeal to you anymore? That’s Ok. Have a drink and walk this out. Nothing else would remain, not even your footprints in the sand. Turn your face a little. Yes, those smile. The sadness personified. Let me watch you for a while. Don’t tilt your face, it just makes the enormity a little more profound. Close your eyes. You would know where to look, you would know that in this darkness, I would find you.
I see that star off your shoulders, the star that shone though your last liaison…the failed ally! Its dimmed now, no light, no sparkle. Its right up there, behind the ignominy you have lived with, for so long. You don’t even twinkle now; you are just too high for this air around. So high, for the world to set its light on!
Ok, turn a little, just a little to your right. I see the shadow there, of your childhood. Do you remember the times when you were alone? Looking for the wolves behind the bushes, the killers creeping in? The fear in your eyes, yes that’s what make them alive now! You were as lonely as the Moon. The wolves yowled and worshipped you, you were their angel!
Sit still for a moment, just right there. I want to trace every line of the crack. It’s hard for me, if you move. I want to get the whole goddamn thing right. I want to see the blotches you have hidden the deepest. Let Me! I would not press the paper, my pen against your pain. – You are not an obituary, you are not a tombstone. You are more alive than this Dead star! I’m just observing - damn it, is that OK?
Don’t you realize that your desolation comes out in the most perfect light? It shames the heavens! I can’t wait for you to see it! And that silhouette across your face is just the orb of your grief passing before the Sun. Sit close, and in a moment you’ll be warm.
I would like you to just stay with me for a little while - right here.
I know this is uncanny for you and it may seem spiteful, this joy I take in studying every slip-up and every imperfection, every failure, every letdown. You would covet to hide the times when you were lashed out and scorned, the days that you didn’t want to get out of bed, the look on your face when it was all over, when the game was done, when the time was up, when the body was discovered.But I promise you this: I promise. I swear - once I am done taking notes and designs; once I have sketched every fine line of pain; once I am done making your heartaches my passion; when this portrait is complete and I turn this canvas back to you - you’ll see that it is achingly beautiful.
You’ll see that you have to love your scattered wrecks- just like me. You’ll realize that, somehow, it all has worth.
Popularity: 88% [?]
Dream India-Lead India…You Kidding Me..!!
Posted by Isha on October 16, 2007 - Filed Under Issues | 15 Comments
Lost In Dreams - Sara L.
The untold fates of dollies lost in dreams
Fall into swirling nebulae in space,
Past hidden worlds; rough winds silence their screams,
As bedsheets become rising carapace. The bed flies on its journey through the night,
The wardrobe beast is opening the door;
Wild shadows dance behind the bedside light,
Dark disembodied hands traverse the floor. With whirling galaxies behind her eyes,
The dreamer rides internal strataspheres,
Where wisps of gas, like wings of dragonflies
Are formed from broken stars, over light years.Here lie lost good intentions, wasted schemes
And plastic souls of dollies lost in dreams.
How long does it take to transform the world? The country, India?
Suddenly there is a huge uproar about India, the Lead India, the chronicles; the Televisions are suddenly retching about this hullabaloo.
The celebrities, are edged in, of course for a price, running in crores to shake up the public, the ostensible lethargic and the Heavy Eyed.
Its on the hoardings, post the Chak De glory, post the Hero re-incarnated, post the grandeur cashed and encumbered. Suddenly, it was conjured that the likes of King Khan, if blurts out the script well, would suddenly and magically take the country to the upswing of a Country developed and a Pride of the Modern Era.
Lead India Contest, a mockery, a farce where the Dreamers of India (aka the contestants with fiery words and a conviction failing), sponsored by a Big daily, adjudged by the likes of big politicians, pharma Giants, adorned by the classical music; and talking about sleepless and impoverished India and its citizens, would in its magical way transform the country. The judges laud, mark them on the contest, declare one of them as the winner and swiftly the dream is over.
So much so for the India, and the dream..!!
The Bollywood glam girl, on the screen talking about Today, “the day that makes the difference is today”. But difference to whom? To the destitute, sleeping with a nibble, with a shred of cloth to fight the weather gods and the whims of society, piloting the Lead India?
To the victim and his family, torn apart from another Bomb blast in the neighborhood? To the girl child, with a life lost and deprived, just coz she was born as a Girl? To the misused and misplaced idiosyncrasies, blowing the lives with unscrupulous arms and fire?
To the mob, led by the false promises Or to the corrupt with masses of money hoarded, lived and abused?
Its just a travesty, a pitiful travesty where in the Money rules, the big words rule, and beyond that, its just an abyss, where in the common man, like me and you, like each of us is spiraling down in the darkness, that would end with the Dream India…disgruntled.
Popularity: 94% [?]
I found My AnGel
Posted by Isha on October 10, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | 9 Comments
…Puff………….
The Marijuana, dissolving and liberating, cathartic and somber…into the lungs, into the blood streams, straight to the head..
The young boy, though had not eaten a good meal in days, was ecstatic for he could see stars in the mid noon. His head felt heavy, but nevertheless good.
And he levitated.
That’s how he felt, six feet above the ground, rest of the world, petty and inconsequential.
His old mother, sick and brazen, lay in the other room. She was coughing incessantly, but that was melody to his ears. She was sullen and cold and he wanted her Dead.
His little sister had refused him to be his accomplice as a Puff-sucker. A puff, and she too would be an angel. The demons were too many to count, an angel would have been a tremendous reprieve.
..Puff…!
…Obscure…
Suspending him in the air, loose, and soft like a fizz…!
Cough, cough..! a stroke, a heavy breath…! Pant..! Wooosh!! The little girl crying, Momma, you need water momma….cough cough…Momma, Please say something……………..
The Boy did not hear the cries; it was just music, the harmony in the chaos, struck and reverberated.
And then silence.
No coughs, no Sighss…
A cold body, lying on the floor, a little child, hanging her face down…Crying..!
“At last we got the Angel there!” said the Boy looking at the dead body.
Pufff…..
And the world was beautiful again…!!
Popularity: 91% [?]
Stranger In The House
Posted by Manash on October 8, 2007 - Filed Under Issues | 2 Comments
“The Internet is simply the ultimate proof - the ultimate demonstration - of the imaginary content of sexual desire.” Camellie Paglia
The Internet has created another world within our world. This world is not merely a part of our subjective consciousness. It is a real world which is both absent and present at the same time. A world shielded by what exposes it and brings it to life – the computer screen. It exists both nowhere and everywhere. It is a society without territorial borders. It is a concrete yet ephemeral structure within our social space and time. You can switch on and switch off this world at will. It is like a station in space. But one you can visit anytime you wish. It is also a world where people indeed travel and talk with their fingers. It is a world we literally hold on our finger-tips. It is a world where technology and human beings play strange and complicated games with one another.
One of the most significant phenomenon to have developed on the Net is the coming into being of a world of strangers who interact among each other away from the prying eyes of the family. All those who are bored or confused or lonely can take flight by sharing their troubles and desires with strangers they choose. People of all ages can now surreptitiously break away from the strangleholds of family rules and embrace the stranger out there. We can create our own secret world against parents, siblings and spouses. The stranger today, in a sense, has invaded the forbidden contours of the household. In conservative societies like ours, the Internet has come to pose a radical threat to the familial codes of sacrosanct space. The moment you open a “window” on the Internet, you can allow the stranger in. The stranger can now enter and leave your bedroom without footprints. You can exchange with the stranger everything from poetry to pornography without moral diktats from outside, as long as the equation between the two of you is clear. For those who are fascinated by the leap into the unknown, a world of possibilities has opened up right before their eyes. Though the usual fears and suspicions about the stranger looms large over the Internet as well, the game of hide and seek has become very tantalizing and tempting. You are somehow willing to trade your loneliness with the stranger’s persuasions. You are trapped between trust and misgivings.
The stranger lures your solitude and prepares all kinds of believable grounds for reality. The stranger exposes the crisis of desire in your life from a safe distance and makes it easy to unburden your ghosts. But the stranger, paradoxically, is also the ghost par excellence. The Internet is a world of ghosts who thrive on the ghostly meals of their desire. The ‘imaginary content of sexual desire’ which Paglia mentions, lies precisely in this gap between face and mask, light and shadow.
The stranger in the house is the imaginary liberator of the dual life of our sexuality.But the free rein of sexual communication which the Internet has helped produce, most often end up nowhere as people who indulge in their fantasies hardly show up in real life to fulfill them. The fear of the stranger isn’t the only reason. It’s the fear to confront one’s own fabricated sexual image expressed through anonymity - the fear to face one’s own fantasy.
Since the Net is a universally nowhere medium, people so to say, meet “outside” the world, and rarely manage to fit into the grounded version of real, social life. The shadowy world of the Internet casts an overall shadow on real life. The gap between the world of fiction and real life is blurred, and conversely, intensified.
People attribute different reasons for interaction with strangers on the Net. Varna, a twenty six year old woman says, “On the Net I can experiment with my dark side, which won’t be possible with people I know”. The dark, other, invisible side of human sexuality, suppressed by social norms and taboos, is released on the Internet, between shame and fear, truth and lies. Arani, a young editor of a publishing house feels, “People who are scared to face the world are drawn into the Internet”. What are they scared of? “Of being ugly and unlovable. People with low self-esteem”. But what if people are just shy and introvert? “Shyness and low self-esteem are almost inextricable”, she reasons. You wonder aloud, are those who go around wearing confidence and pride on their sleeves, people with a better self-esteem? “A certain kind of deluded thinking makes for great mental health”, she rounds up triumphantly. Most people say they are drawn to making friends on the net as a recreational enterprise. But upon finding people who are worth the attention, fall prey to more serious intentions.
There is also a widespread belief that Net relations which translate into real life never last very long. People who interact through anonymous mediums like the Internet, often fail to get seriously involved in the other person’s life. Unlike people who grow together and share an organic relationship, Net friendships often merely skim the surface and leave behind a shallow aftertaste.
Salman Rushdie has called the Internet, “a brothel of irresponsibility”. Yet often, the case is ironical.
Take Rishab’s hurricane Internet tryst with destiny. Defying parental pressures, Rishab married his long time girl friend from real life. As he shifted from a small town to the city in the Southern part of the country, the Internet boom in India took place simultaneously. Rishab was wonderstruck by how a new planet of people could be transported beyond time and place and brought together. Chat houses became a source of an unbridled foray into his repressed sexual and cultural fantasies. Being the adventurous type since adolescence, he soon enough lost his head to a young French woman’s overtures. To the horror of his wife and parents, Rishab left everybody for his new life in Europe. He married the French lady and settled in Paris. After three years, the woman divorced him. It was Rishab’s turn to face the music. But the Internet came to his rescue. He met this time a young divorcee from Delhi whom he duly married within two months. Rishab is now settled in Delhi with her and their daughter. The bizarre irony cannot be missed of how Rishab was thoroughly irresponsible to the first wife whom he met in real life, but was genuinely involved in both his Net relations. Rushdie might respond by saying, well, the Internet makes you irresponsible one way or the other.
All of this raises important questions. Will this jump into the free world, attained through an obscuring medium, help sexual freedom to thrive? Or will it create new nightmares of inconsequential attainments of self-hood? Will the free new world of strangers be able to form an authentic culture? Will the freedom between faceless, cultural nomads gain the status of a humane and gratificatory experience of sexual sharing?
Only time, as usual, will tell.
Manash
Popularity: 85% [?]
Hang Me Till I Die
Posted by Isha on October 4, 2007 - Filed Under The Journey | 11 Comments
Its so dark in here.
I am in a jail, sentenced to death for brutally killing a family of six, two kids and four adults. I am sentenced for the debauchery, a crime against society and the humanity. I stand guilty, counting the moments, till they decide to pull off my life in the snap of the finger, in the grin of the uniformed men, their whims and their caprice.
Only I do not know, when would I be dead? I do not know when would be my last living day, I just exist in as if everyday was my last. The Jury determined that I should have been dead, but was furtive enough to do without the seal on my Death date.
I wake up every morning, sinking in it as the last sunup I would have woken up to. My last sunshine, my last shower, my last prayer, my last breath, and my last everything.
It was one of those mornings, only a little less still. The restlessness outside made my heart sink a little more. The four walls were closing in; there was a premonition in my head that Today was It. I made a mental note of everything that I wished to do, when this realization would sound a little more impending, a little more unfortunate. I prayed, my fingers rummaged for the last human touch, for the last whiff of “mouthful of air.” And The Last Long Kiss Goodnight…!
My morning cereal was missing; the same insipid nibble that had marked every dawn, for last years, seven in counting. I missed it more today than everyday else. It was raining outside; I could feel it pounding on the lay of roof.
I think about my mother. For her, I was already dead. Seven years is a long time, she would have made her peace with a Dead son. I had never heard from her once, or from anyone else.
I thought of killing myself in my first month here. The feeling was too strong, my hands too weak. It was cowardice, undeserving for the fate I was embarked upon.
I clutch on to my journal, every word scribbled on to the pages for last every year. “The Assassins Handbook”, my only priced possession by the end of it all. It should be 11 in the morning, the thunder was deafening outside and I laid on the floor, gloomy and misty.
The knock on the door; “Its Time” shouts the guard outside. I skip a beat , thinking of the Life that was getting over, that got over seven years back. I step out, the rain on my skin, the life awash in the soil. I walk to the other side, shackled and restraint.
The guard smiles at me, So Long! He whispers something to his fellow man. He looks at me, pity and disgust is a funny combination. I am walking still, my eyes at the sky, closed to the raindrops on my face.
I could hear the chants of the priest, wishing for my better after-life. He asks for my last wish, I had nothing. I just asked my journal to be sent to my wife, the lady who truly loved me, for what I was. He nods at me “May Peace be Upon you, My child”, and I was led to the execution room.
I did not feel a thing when I died. It was quick and painless. Less pain than these seven years, good years with every moment stretched to the eons unfolded.
And I did not float up, as I thought I would. I did not sink in to the Cosmos Infinitum, like I wanted to. I just lay there, as cold as frost, as stiff as a frozen meat. They lift me up on a stretcher, I was headed to the Morgue for “Unwanted Souls Unrest and Discarded.” My journal was swept in the pile of trash.
I pass through the room where I was housed for last seven years. I sit in the corner, looking at my belongings, my rug, a broken cup, a plate never used.
And I cry.
It had stopped raining.
………………………………………………………………
And then there was a knock on the door. My Breakfast was slipped from the doorway, cereal as bland and as inviting. I had been dreaming, my end is not as close as I wanted it to be.
Another day for the waiting to the end of this vile cycle, and it is so dark.
Popularity: 93% [?]
..The Other Voice
Posted by Isha on October 3, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | 2 Comments
It was the hush that silenced the clamor inside,
The voices in the head and the devils of the Psyche,
Another day in counting for the nights to end,
The fire was out, the silence befall, the magic was an incessant lent.
And then she could hear it…it was The Other Voice.
Calling her, beseeching her, relenting her…
For it was what she had heard in the Mirror,
And in the reflection of nightfall on her immaculate disguise.
She hid herself in the canvas of void,
For if the world was a start, she let it slip and be “Thee Devoid”,
In her vacuity she had found her whole,
It’s The Other Voice that had spoken to her Soul.
Popularity: 87% [?]
Take Me Home
Posted by Isha on September 28, 2007 - Filed Under The Journey | 3 Comments
….And the Train pulled from station. She stayed close to the window, for the rustle in the Platform’s disquietude eased her mind. Her hands stayed near to the pane, it had been raining since this morning. Her fingers played with the mist outside, the drops of rain closing on to her skin and dissolving. Her book lay folded, unread and unwanted. She was just living the past, wanting it to be soaked out of her, forever…
The life, falling apart, and the twine of hope effacing its fate. Another waft for the weakness symbolized in the moan and hurt inside that could not find its way out. It’s sickening with the burden on the Self, a lampoon on the life. Just another farewell would slay her, that’s all she needed for the life to have slipped away. Her footsteps were dragged, her baggage too heavy. She was looking for solitude to brave her enemies, but the vacuity of the soul was too profound to fight for. Her mind was struggling out to be frayed away from the cadaver, for the mind ruled a life of its own: Life too significant for all the pain and hurt inside, life shadowing the life. Her coffee was cold, but not as cold as the hoarfrost she feels planted inside, her memories defeating her the smile that she truly pined for. The work was piled, the tasks all undone, the duties unattended, but she seemed not to notice anything but the plenitude of the void afore.
The train had picked up the pace. The world was slipping by, world where she was not wanted, the world she had left. She did not know her purpose; her life was as hauled as the wheels of the train she was on. Her hands were still playing with the raindrops outside, the rain still steeping her touch.
“Excuse me, is the seat taken!!?” She was awaken to the present by an old, frail voice. “I am sorry, but I am too tired and I want to rest. Can I take this seat beside you?” asked the old man. The plea in his voice shook her out of the reverie. She smiled and made some room for him to rest himself. He sat there, relaxed and mumbled something and she continued to gawk on the life slipping by through the window.
“ I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you. I am just exhausted and perplexed. My daughter is really unwell. She is small, so puny and she is just counting her days closer to death everyday. I do not know how to prepare myself for this. I am just too tired.” The old man was crying, he had a piece of paper he was holding on to. His face looked older than his years, his furrows on the forehead were crouched together to make the impression of bereavement, an irreplaceable loss.
She stayed quiet; she did not know what to say. “How old is your daughter? I would pray for her.” The old man gave her an undersized look, held her hands and said “Thank you! Please pray. That’s all she need to make it through.” She smiled at him, and offered him some coffee. The old man hesitantly looked at her and took the shuddering cup. He was still holding to that paper close, folded, writhed and so tight.
It was the photograph of his daughter!
She closed her eyes for a moment and organized her thoughts, and rummaged for something in her bag. She took out her cell-phone, switched it on. “We are waiting for you. Please come back home..Mom”, beeped her phone.
And she stood up. She thanked the old man, blessed his daughter. “I am sorry. I have to be somewhere!”
And she left…
Popularity: 93% [?]
Welcome to the WORLD
Posted by Isha on September 26, 2007 - Filed Under Issues | 1 Comment
Its a Strange World, so as they say, so as you Live!! Working in the quagmire where the insidious rules the mighty hands, its all there staring in your face, and the pity is that nothing can be done because you do not dare enough!! The worst is yet to come but nothing could be taken more into your stride. “Let there be Light” shouts the chronicle, but who would fire the conflagration??
She works in a squad, bright enough with the qualifications that can make the jaws drop– The brightest of the degrees but slogging for some totally confused histories of genre unknown. You can’t outsmart anyone because the rats are of the same progeny in this MAD race.
But then there is one rat that is far ahead for some reasons, shrouded under the dirty rugs. “Successful is the Woman who sleeps with her Boss” and success is a relative term. Would the Woman sleep with a clearer conscience too? And why is the author so bothered when she herself can’t do a thing about it and has to put up with the hypocrisy time over time? The woman had been favored, lauded while others have been inconspicuous despite the hard work that had gotten into making the Global Organization click. They had implicated themselves with a foreboding understanding; and nothing can shake them out of their miserable reverie. The pretense game was on, the sly and the furtive living to the carnal pleasures, the rest of the clad mincing their words with their state of helplessness and abject vulnerability. And she knows that the filth would not leave her, for it is omniscient in every sects of the world she would go to. And it would never change till she raises herself from the mundane of this macrocosm one day!!
Popularity: 92% [?]
Tears of a Feather…Flock Together!!
Posted by Isha on September 24, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | Leave a Comment
The Journey
Touch by touch
I travel back the years with you.
Years you said you waited
For a face to emerge from
The world and disappear
In the furrows of your darkness.
Years you said you touched
Your skin to prevent it
From flowing away like water.
Now touch by touch I travel
Forth the years with you
And wipe the webs of your
Lonely body.
You glow like a leaf after rain
And I travel the streets
Through your eyes and
Dream the sun in your closed mouth.
-Manash
The Water Soaked Her Tears!
It drowns me, the water in the shower…Soaking the drops of tear dry.
The mascara is running, but its just the head held too High..
I would not smear my pillow with the teardrops, it fogs my dream..
I would not wait for the creamy suit and the glares to blind me from the world, and surpass my screams…
The involuntary twist of my mouth gives me away, the innocent touch of the fellow commuter would kill my day…
Turned the water hard and hot..Held on to the wall, to the spout with all the might, killed the sobs out of the bare skin, so cold and bitter. ..
My face is an art of humiliated mess of a run down shadow and emotions in vacuity. The shower washes down my tear down the drain. Stepped out in the towel, bare and unfilled emotions…
The last spasm rises and dies in the swirl of steam condensed into the mirror that shows the face, the Picasso Art in Black!
And I step Out….
Popularity: 93% [?]
Another Day
Posted by Isha on September 24, 2007 - Filed Under Thoughts | 2 Comments
Another day, another time, another hour… Yawning, musing, wishing, wanting, denying accepting, speaking, silence blah blah..tick of the clock, the minute has gone, the life is slipping. The world is still, no movement, just you, your eyes fixed to the screen, reading, thinking, wantin, crypting, worrying of an hour that’s not come, that cannot be yours ever, anxiety in the fist, pulsating, making u weaker, stronger, flicker of the winds carried and hushed in yr hairs, eyes..looking, wanting, searching for the truth in the lies, in her eyes hidden in the veils of a masquerade which is not her, she is an enigma, but the only one u ever loved, desiring, wanting inside, under u..so close yet so far, loved to be estranged, estranged to be loved…distances creeping between, overpowering yet so unreal, illusioned, wakened, disappointed..!! Sleeping with the ugliest fight, rebelling the inevitable and the invincible, love, lies, truth, sex, fights, bickerings, peace, the smile, the eyes, the tears, the celebrations, the laughter, the walls, the darkness, the pact, the curtains, the covered layers, the beseech, the wanting, its all yours, its all mine, given up, agreed unto the life which stands united yet so separated. Sacrifices of today, the retreat of morrow but the sacrifice has enveloped our today, its gone forever, never to be found again..ever again..!!
Another day, another time, another hour…!!
Popularity: 97% [?]
The Misunderstood “Miserable Subserviency”
Posted by Isha on September 18, 2007 - Filed Under General | 4 Comments
“You cant compare a Dog’s Life to a Man’s Life. Dogs have far worse fates than Ours!”
Hmm…But did I just do that? The comparison, the assessment of similarity and passed across a ruling to the lives so different in its own ways?
But here is what I meant to say, May be I should have been a little less terse, a little more lucid!
The Miserable subservience is a story about a Dog, a pet in the comforts of riches and laurels, in the whims of its affluent Master, getting its Tailored food three times a day, may be more. It sleeps well, has a life, which was an envy to a destitute- the beggar on the street at 11 PM on an Indian road. The alms that ruled his life, a penny less is a meal less. We are not condemnatory about who lives better; it’s a discretion to the readers. And when we have endless human souls traversing the night streets, looking for a meal to satiate their guts, and when the well-to-do hypocritical society chooses to darling a dog, overlooking the hungered souls, it’s a misfortune, a pity to the Humanity that is dribbling away from the world.
Yes I should not have compared the Two lives. It was a remark, did not mean to come as strong on this. But then, it does raise a Question somewhere. Doesn’t it? May be we need a little more effacing on our prejudiced perspective. Keep the Man alive, pet the Dog and feed the hunger all around us. How can we make peace with the world that it has evolved unto?
Popularity: 100% [?]
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