...some random crap

I feel numb. Numb…now when I speak this word, I realize that it refers to something completely different from what I always thought it did. Things always made me believe that it means blankness, a state of void where nothing exists. Perhaps what one experiences with a few kilos of weed running in his blood. Or something when one succeeds (or fails?) in detaching himself from any pain…the state primarily caused by a state of extreme happiness or the lack of it. Today when I say this word…I realize how wrong I was…no, correction, I don’t realize…I just think I realize. If what I thought sums up the meaning of numbness actually sums it up…then it can mean anything but numbness. If I can define it, if I can feel it…then perhaps I am anything but numb. Numbness is when I stop feeling…even stop feeling numb. When you walk out of the funeral of a loved one and don’t even feel or realize that during the entire cremation ceremony, not for a moment you realized what the death of that loved one means. Its when all that you can think of is that you wont get to talk to that person ever again. That’s it. No pain. Just a weird silence of senselessness that one not very often finds oneself in.

In the midst of the wormhole of emotions, one suddenly realizes that he doesn’t know what these emotions are.

I dont care if it doesn't rain

A drop of sweat trickles down my forehead to my brow bordering the whiskers of my eyes, like a thirsty rattle-snake treading through the sands of the Thar. The weather forecasts last night were not encouraging. I think its touching 47 degrees outside. Am lying flat on my bed waiting for a whiff of air to brush my sweating forearms and face. I have been waiting for quite some time now. This silence…this blanket of stillness…there is a strange numbness that seems to have fallen upon everything around…not like the dewdrops of a white winter morning that fall on the sleeping surface of sleeping leaves rustling softly in the chill of the fog, but like a thick soot that falls from the chimney of the square-rectangle-edged factory, on the faces of the silent laborers, who, darkened with the tar, stare aimlessly into the grey oblivion of the stationary chasms of time. In the metal of the stationary fan above me, I see the reflection of the Da Vinci’s man, limbs all stretched, pinned to the bed like a ravished butterfly, staring drowsily at its reflection in the metal of the fan above it. Quiet. My room smells of rotten time. My armpits smell of rotten onions. I am sweating. Had it been some other day, I would have been restlessly trying to ease myself, but strangely enough…I am still. I can feel my eyelashes soaking in sweat, but I do not move to clean them dry. There is something inside my head that stops me. The thought of you. I hear a hazy whistling sound in the background which doesn’t seem to die. But I am not feeling uncomfortable…because, perhaps, today I am learning one of the most important lessons of my life. Just a few days before my life is to enter a new phase, I am learning to do something that I have never been able to do my entire life.

I am learning to let things go.

Nothing seems to pain me any longer.

PS: I don’t care if it doesn’t rain even today.

A Tribute to Him

Its raining outside. I know, not just because of the sound sight smell of it…I know it because I have just come in. Some 15 minutes back when it started to rain, I said adieu to my books, got out of the bed, wore my slippers, removed them (???)…and went out! For the first time in the last 10 hours, I could appreciate the weather…and not curse the electricity board (for the abundant power supply to the city already enjoying the hearty shower of the blessings by our very own sun god (pun intended (for the lame ones who dint get the joke))), lousy fan companies (for making fans lousy enough to silently retire during a 41 degree C afternoon, leaving some miserly souls to thunder-wonder at their sudden un-heroic departure), mosquitoes for biting in all the wrong places (you know what I mean) and myself for missing the aims while trying to squash them with a slap (and hitting myself in those very wrong places). Keeping my hands on the rail, I stretched my neck out and let the drops fall on my face (and then I also remembered to remove my glasses). I felt a different sensation run through me. I smelled a different fragrance fill my nose. And when I opened my eyes, I saw different colours! “But rains supposed to be just colourless water, isn’t it?” I thought. To see if it was really colours pouring down in that midnight shower, I asked my right hand to go under the shower, and I asked my eyes to follow carefully to detect the first tint of colour to fall on my hand…it did (the hand)…and they did (the eyes). It was actually colours pouring from the heavens!

I stood there in sheer amazement for about 5 minutes…looking at my hands get motleyed and rainbowed in the most beautiful and the transparent of the colours, and then decided to get back. While returning, I noticed the weird yet-unwitnessed freshness that that plant had taken up…or did the rain do it? (I suddenly also noticed that I had been smiling this while). Returned to me bed, got up, walked up to the mirror…bitch that I am, I still wanted to check if colours really poured. And what I saw was more astonishing that the rain itself. One look at the person in the mirror told me that the plant alone hadn’t taken up that weird freshness…the rain had done something to me as well. I saw a radiance in the being in front of me…I had never been so happy to see myself ever; weird, isn’t it?

And now, sitting straight in my bed, I think of equally weird things. First, my feet would not leave the ground; remember, I removed my slippers before going out?; even now that I am in my bed, my feet are firmly stationed on the wet marbles, spreading the colours of the magic rain in all sorts of places in the room. Why???

I don’t know!

Secondly, why do I feel these colours have been following me since evening? Not that I am sad about or anything…but just that, you know, its kind of unusual if everything around becomes so colourful and charismatic! Does “he” have anything to do with it?

I don’t know!

Maybe he does. I think it all happened after I met him this evening. Ok, let me not indulge any more in these cheap thrills of suspense and tell you that this “he” is my 30 months old cousin. As I entered his house today (cribbing and cursing the electricity board, lousy fans, mosquitoes, myself), I realized that my cousin was fast asleep (for a change)…but not for long. “He doesn’t sleep” aunt said. I knew. But today it stuck me. There was this 30 months old boy who doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink, doesn’t sit, definitely doesn’t walk, maybe sees, maybe hears, seems to understand when his mother scolds him (seems to)…just lies there aimlessly all day staring at something in the empty space. “The doctor suggests that we should relieve the child of this life”, aunt said and started weeping. “What life would he have even if he survives…”; “guruji said he would live for 55 years…but doing what? Lying there all these 55 years, possibly not even aware of the fact that what he is experiencing is a magic called life!” I closed my eyes…and felt a strange numbness drown me. And next when I opened my eyes, I saw these colours! I think he did something…

Yes, he did. In an instant he told me how blessed I am. I realized what I have…I have a life. I realized that when I say that life has been harsh with me…I am so wrong; because, apart from life, there is something that I have…a penchant for life…a passion that helps me survive whatever shit comes my way…the bug of optimism that helps me see good in everything and helps me glide through highs and lows of whatever life makes me see. I have something that not many people have…and surely my cousin doesn’t. I opened my eyes and saw colours!

And now…sitting straight in my bed with my feet still smuggling colours in the corners of my room, staring at my incensed radiated coloured palms, I want to believe that there is somewhere a god out there. I want to believe in His presence…But faith is not something that one can close his nose and gulp down like a foul-tasting medicine. But I want to believe...because I know, if there is anything like a god somewhere, he loves me. He does...more than he has ever loved anyone else...

I know the taste of water...

Sometimes I wonder if I am really mad. Mad to see the world the way I do…mad to do the stuff that I do…mad to think so much, to peep into the sparrows nest on my rooftop, and then smile to myself on seeing the feather family celebrating the new rays of sunlight of the new day…mad to stand like an idiot in the middle of a rain showered road, to let my nostrils fill with the aroma of the thirst of the dry heat suddenly satiated by the innocent droplets of water…mad to be what I am…

My common sense tells me that I might just actually be one…because you always say so. But I wonder if it would be so different being “you” and not “me”. Do you also feel your thoughts wandering into the tranquil zones of desire when you see birds flock near that temple, and fly in symmetry upon the slightest of the whispers to disturb the silence of their silent world…do you also feel your hands tremble with excitement on witnessing a lost ant meander here and there, and finally reunite with her kingdom, just to be lost in the crowd the very next moment…do you find yourself smiling when that pigeon shits on your vehicle every morning…do you feel all this? Or am I really mad?

You told me today that you don’t dream like me…but I don’t dream either!!! Trust me…I don’t. I don’t think of the mountains when I see the sun rising from beyond the horizon…I don’t dream of the hills when I see it go down. I don’t dream of heavens when I feel the raindrops on my eye lids…trust me, I don’t. All I do is feel…taste…see…sense…be. But is it really so different being “you” and not “me”? I want to know…to know how it feels to be you. What do you feel when the hushed evenings greet you with a bitter cup of coffee and suddenly you realize that there is more to life than just office and work…what do you feel when you take the first sip of that coffee, close you eyes, and drown into that couch like a kitten does in the comforting haven of its mother. How does wind feel like in your nostrils? How does that music feel like in your ears? How do the cold window panes feel like on your fingertips? How does it feel to be you…?

I know the taste of water…but I don’t know what it tastes like to you…

The day gone by...

Mirror Mirror…show me the day again…the day the world on this side of your surface showed me today. That walk down the river with the first of the birds picking on the first of the fishes…with the crystal droplets of water made priceless by the first of the sunrays falling on their innocent faces…with the early morning breeze, just awakened by the “new day” call, filling in my nostrils…with the holy chants from the temple down the holy stream. Mirror Mirror, show me the day and let me live it again

Show me the innocent untamed road through the woods again…show me the rusty metal of that unknown bridge again…those leafless trees, those treeless leaves…those voiceless lives, those lifeless voices…show me the day and let me live it again.

I can still hear the voices of the dry leaves rustling under my steps…of the wind whispering near my ears…of the crammed greetings of the jungle birds, which made me feel a part of it all…show it me to again…and let me live.

Have I been sleeping all this while…and am still sleeping too, dreaming all the cherished memories that I have from the day just passed by? Or was it all one of the sleepless dreams that are seen not from the mind, but from something about 12 inches below it? Was it the immortal manifestation of my desires that pulled me, though ephemerally, out of the angular world…or was it really a day, like any other? Whatever it was…show me, and let me live it again.

Yes, I see it now…this wooden door behind me that I see in you is the one that opened it all to me today…the pebbles outside, kicking a few of which I took my first step towards the “worldless world”, like the first steps that a child takes…and starts walking…walking into the horizons of the unknown, the beautiful, the mysterious. The smoke rising from the distant village, escaping the fingers of the vociferous branches, and getting lost in the silent skies.

But I know these are mere images that you show me. What is real to me is just an illusion to you…what is real to you is just an illusion to me.