Dear Me

Dear Me,

It has been a while since your handwriting left ink on one part of me and impressions everywhere. It has been a while since I knew your happiest high, your most letting down low. It has been some time since you came to me, rushing through my pages like you couldn't wait to confide in me.

Covered in dust, I still see you. I see you when you smile when you don't want to and when it splits your face in two and your eyes sparkle. I see when your eyebrows tense in confusion because you cannot decipher your own mood. I see that negligible dimple form on your chin when you're so angry that you want to cry but you try not to laugh because you remembered something funny.

I see your hands when they start to approach me and then how your fingers slowly curl into your palm when you stop midway. I know you fear that you won't be able to write beautifully, convincingly, coherently. And I see the myriad of expressions on your face as they dissolve into one another while you muddle over all of this.

Have you forgotten, that I never judged you? Not when you told me that you didn't know where you were going, not when you told me you were afraid of being hurt but you couldn't help it, not when you told me that you felt like your heart kept running in circles. Never. I know how your heart ticks erratically, how your emotions play hide and seek and how your mind runs away your imagination. I know how you tell no one that your dearest dreams are those of love because you want to be seen as strong, fearless, independent.

I remember how you filled my pages without fear of judgment. I know how you childishly, religiously used different colors according to how you felt about what you wrote. You wrote in riddles so no one would know, but me. I remember how you trusted me with your quirks and hints, how for granted you took me and how I still love that.

As I lay a little dusty and unmoving yet constantly hopeful that you will remember how it was to write for yourself. I will wait for the day when you pick me up again and when your pen will not be poised, waiting to "presentable" words to come; like it is so often when you write for everything else. I will wait for the time when you find your way back to me, when you remember again that it is okay to be confused, erratic and flawed... and that it's beautiful.

Till then, I'm always here for you.

Yours,
Diary

And though the sand may be washed by the sea
And the old will be lost in the new
Well four will not wait for three
For three never waited for two
And though you will not wait for me
I'll wait for you
I'll wait for you
And I'll wait for you

- Patient Love, Passenger

Unconditionally

He came and then he left. She found a way to live without him, to smile without him, to move forward without him - she had to and she did. She didn't resent it. She didn't resent him. She didn't resent life. She never resented love. Yet, she thought of him every single day. Not in an incessant, saddening way; but like when you're so engrossed in something that you don't blink, but then you do. Simply because it is intrinsic. Natural.

She smiled to herself when she saw parts of him in others. It became a part of her which she had initially fought, wrestled, tried to uproot from within herself and then when it always came back to her, she made her peace with it. Sometimes, when the longing she kept so strictly leashed crept on her heart, her let her pillow absorb her tears. And then, she went on with her life.

She kept him close, but stayed afar from him. She missed their conversations - honest, silly and beautiful - but she never really talked to him the few times they actually made contact. They remained distant friends so to say, knowing somewhere that they each held a special place in the other's life. She knew that he was much more dear to her even in his absence than she was to him. She never spoke of it and time passed. Life wasn't bad.

Yet, she always thought of her life in two parts - Before Him and After Him. The time In Between was now a montage she had framed in her mind and preserved in her heart - a lifetime in itself. She would look through these frames, hands pressed against the glass, wanting to touch those memories, wondering what could have been; yet scared of disturbing them, lest she forget one tiny detail. Years past, her mind let not a speck of dust settle on them, their beauty intact.

It wasn't like she stayed lonesome or melancholy; she even loved again. But not the same way, never the same way. Her eyes grew blurry but her vision would always revisit those places. She spoke of him and to him, now and then. Conversations that were sometimes frustratingly empty, but she wanted to keep them going while they lasted. She wasn't unfaithful, no. She was just wanted to know anything she could about him.

You see, she had realized that what she kept so pristine in her heart was a mere memory. She loved, even worshiped that memory, but she realized he wasn't real in them anymore. Endlessly she would try to bridge the gap, seeking any tiny part of him that he or someone who knew him would give away in a careless sentence. She would grasp at every word, to discover some part of him that was real and new, and treasure it. She would try to balance it on her recollections of him to make the person in them seem closer to the one in reality, despite knowing he wasn't even close to their memories.

Until one day.

She dreamed of him, just like so many other times. But this time, a tiny little nudge came from within one of those dark recesses of her heart and she told him about her dream. It was nothing special, really. He was just there in it. Looking up his number, she was strangely calm as she typed out the message.

When he responded, they had their first real conversation in years. Maybe it was because he was at vulnerable place in his life, or because she realized at that moment, on that day, that her love for him was unconditional. She did not need to be with him, to kiss him, to touch him. She did not need for him to be in love with her. She realized that the time 'In Between' and even after it - time she had spend needing and wanting him - she was not chained to feeling that way. Her love for him now grew from her flesh and blood self to something unbound by time and spaces, weightless and free of expectation.

In that realization, she wrote, "I missed you." It was not an act of need this time. It was not even a sentence that could encompass everything she had felt for him, all these years she had spent wishing, hoping wondering, nor her parching thirst to hear his name, seeking any quirks of his that would make her thoughts of him closer to his physical, living, breathing, beautiful self. Yet, it was all she felt. After a long time, she acknowledged tides of familiar emotion break against her rapidly beating heart. The pillow lay there barren while her tears found their way to the dainty curve of her smile.

She was unafraid of losing what little she had grasped of him for the first time, maybe because she realized she did not need to want him. What she felt for him was not bound by anything anymore. It was powerful, free and endless.

She put aside her phone. Taking off her glasses, she sighed. As that gush of breath escaped her mouth, she felt herself getting light headed. Giving in, she fell back and her head hit the pillow. As her eyes closed, her smile was slight and serene. The waves of emotion were still crashing against her heart, and she felt the welcome pain in her chest. She had let go and it consumed her. Slowly, like vines around a tree, it closed around her like a beautiful coffin.

As she lay there with a smile on her face and her love set far and free, she was at peace. Unconditionally.

Home, wanted

It was food that touched my tongue and my eyes that responded. 

Daal Baati Choorma for dinner in the mess. As close to home as I could get.

It is amazing how the tiniest thing can inspire the strongest of the emotions; how it can unlock a surge of memories, tastes, smells and touches. And how disconnected and accidental tastes, smell and touches transport you into visions that transcend the boundaries of physical distance. It's funny how superficial physical proximity is that way, and yet it is so essential, so capturing.

We spend our entire lives trying to make homes out of places and then out of people; trying to see where we belong - culturally, intellectually, emotionally, habitually, spiritually. More often than not, these 'homes' don't even overlap. We hold the ends all these threads, trying to keep ourselves from coming apart at the seams. 

These threads - lifelines - they have a mind of their own, don't they? They keep us sane, being there so solidly until one day, suddenly, they are gone. And we are left grasping wisps that they leave behind. Some are lucky enough to find some that hold on to that one thing, that one lifeline that lasts them a lifetime - in physicality or in memory. For some, neither is enough. 

We lose our bearings for some time, but then, we keep some, we lose some, we find some. It goes on. We are always moving anyway aren't we? We don't stop. Moments become crystallized in memory, but we don't stop. Even if we tried to, we could not stop because life goes on. It is merely comfortable to think if such and such thing happens, my life will end. It never does. Cruelly, brutally, beautifully, indifferently, it goes on. We are left to play catch up. And if we don't, time takes its toll. 

Home is where the heart lies, they say. For some of us, the heart lies at the one place we call home. But then, as we go places, meet people, we make little homes in them, as they do in us. Conversations, touches, kisses, laughter, gestures or just a look shared for the briefest second - our hearts become home to so many loves, lives and moments. We paint a picture of 'home' in the very same hearts and keep it there while it yearns for the past, present and future. 

We meander our way through life making homes, breaking homes and missing homes. We are all changing a little bit with everyone who we touch who is trying to do the same. We are all connected that way - so superficially, invisibly and yet, so deeply. In the end, aren't we all trying to stand out and still trying to belong?

Because sometimes, I find myself craving for a cushion that makes me forget, even if it is momentary, how much I have grown up.

In Transit

You took my hand and led me to a place that no one knew but you. You let me make it my own. We saw the sky turn red, then grey and then we saw it get inked with reflections of lights that twinkled in the dark. We saw silhouettes of hills and try to demystify the secrets they held. Amidst blinking city lights, chilling wind and goosebumps, we laughed, we sang and then descended into a comfortable and comforting silence.  

How do you make sense of a state of mind which is in a state of recovery and rediscovery? 

A mind that is constantly in a sense of awe at the plethora of novelty that it is opening to, yet struggling to step out of a mold that it has been used to for an eternity in terms of numbers but only a few pages of life in terms of how it feels now? 

Blacks and whites are two ends of a spectrum but ones that hardly exist in life. Shades of grey are what color most of reality.

Memories find their way back to your vision at the most unexpected of times; but they feel alien - like they happened to someone else. Why? Maybe because she seems like a different person to you in hindsight. To her, you are a different person too. What changed so much and so quickly? Maybe the place, maybe the people, maybe the time. Definitely, you.

"Try and try till you succeed," they said. They never told you where to stop. And then, you tried life and it tried you. Did you lose yourself along the way? Or were you just in the process of finding yourself again?

To put it into words is a struggle in itself because so is making up your mind about it. "IT"? This whole journey from there to here and from here to so many other places and then back - each time adding some and taking some. 

Wearing, tearing, cutting, bending, breaking and molding all of all of your mind. 

Little by little, bits and parts of it everyday, making you question everything.

Covering, uncovering and recovering layers of things unknown, little known and known. 

Are we not always in some transition? Maybe sometimes more than others; like when big changes happen, or when little things change life in big ways. Somehow, we are always searching for something - love, hope, closure, excitement, satisfaction, ecstasy... always wanting, always something. 

And then, why not? Is life not too short to not keep striving for more? Is there not such little time and so much to experience? Are our hearts not too small to love the infinite number of things there are to love? Are our bodies not too superficial to feel the true warmth of a smile, the blissful comfort of a hug, the intense intimacy of touch, the innocent sight of a playful puppy and the tinkling sound of heartfelt laughter? 

But then, how much can you absorb at once, at a given point in time, in a lifetime? Will it not take a toll - this endless struggle for more, to know more, learn more and not go insane? Maybe that is why we shut our hearts and minds to certain pasts and presents and then we have certain futures, some of which we refuse to imagine but which happen anyway. 

Somewhere in all this madness and swirling thoughts in an overactive mind, there are moments of blissful peace, when we fall in love with all the chaos, where we somehow find music in noise, where we learn to see beauty in the jumble of hues that color our visions. 

Maybe that is the beauty of being in transit, because ultimately, is it not just a journey? 

Rajiv Chowk

Three years ago 

Life began to change subtly. I moved to Delhi and did not care to make much of a new city, a new kind of people, a new lifestyle. I thought, okay, I'll just take it in my stride. What could happen, right? I refused to feel homesick, or let myself feel the drastic change that this city, its air, its sun and its dust were. I thought to myself, let's just take it one day at a time; and take it one day at a time I did.

Three years later

I look in the mirror and attempt to find the girl who came to a new city, thinking she was ready for the world - armed with an open mind and an ability to make friends easily. This girl was soft, though she thought she had hardened. She thought she was stronger than she looked, but she did not know how much stronger she would have to be for the things that life threw at her. She trusted easily, laughed loudly and did not feel alone often. I search for that girl and ask myself if she is still there. A voice immediately answers, "yes," but it falters by the time it reaches the second syllable of the three letter word, as if seeking reassurance. I laugh and murmur to myself, aren't all of us looking for reassurance for something or the other? I look in the mirror one last time, looking into the eyes of my brown eyed reflection wondering if eyes are indeed windows to the soul.

****

Three years ago 

There was a new course of things in order. A new distance to cover in more than one way. On one hand, there was the distance that had begun to creep into love itself, established, taken for granted love, one akin to that which is felt for brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers, one that is felt for loves that last lifetimes. On the other hand, there was the physical distance, from everything and everywhere I needed to be. Every place was so far away, I felt so far away from all these spaces and places that were mine to make my own. And yet, everything was fine. One day at a time was doing its job well.

Three years later

Routines are more pregnant with habit and emptiness. There is a strong essence of normalcy in them, like the one you have when you put one foot in front of the other to walk. Without thinking, my hands reach towards the front pocket of my bag to take out my headphones. Plugging them in, I press play and activate shuffle, settling myself to stare at faces and colors and clothes and shoes for the next fifty minutes as my mind sings along, muddles and thinks random thoughts. Traversing this distance every day this is a routine of what life has become, its all its glory, all its welcome comforts, all its daily discomforts and all its habit.

****

Three years ago

Things begin to change. Feelings dormant rise to the surface, bubbling and frothing, demanding to be made sense of. A search for myself in this transition has become the state of my mind. Transition itself has become the state of life. Relationships old and new attempt to redefine themselves and me, through them. Questions and confusion with moments of clarity and happy coincidences are all the highs and lows that matter really. "It is only the moments that are going to matter when I look back," I think to myself and try to navigate through this labyrinth that I've been in but am just beginning to see. 

I listen carefully for an announcement rings overhead signalling that I have covered the distance. It comes and I make my way towards the door.

Three years later

The routine goes on as usual, the only difference being a certain fondness that has come to be associated with it, despite all its drudgery and apparent emptiness. "Is it really empty," I ask myself while looking at the tens of faces in front of me, at all these different lives converging, like mine, for this brief journey. I see routines like mine and feel a certain empathy with these complete strangers, these people I know nothing about except that our paths have crossed for a limited amount of time for no reason other than we are all in transit, albeit to different destinations. In these unfamiliar faces, I see reflections, merely superficial but connected by a very thin piece of thread for the shortest period of time.

There is a pause and my legs automatically move towards the door to mark the halfway milestone of this everyday journey.

****

Three years ago

This is my first journey by myself - a young girl in a big city, refusing to acknowledge it, the special treatment that it demands and the perspective it gives. I make my way atop the little overbridge inside the Rajiv Chowk metro station to go to the other side. Looking for signboards and making my way, I happen to glance down. What I see stops me in my tracks. 

Three years later

I sigh to myself as I reach my usual halfway mark. This is it, I think to myself. Trying to coax my unusually heavy heart, I make my way to the overbridge connecting the two platforms; thinking along the way if it will still have the effect that it did on my first time here. I wondered if the sight would still overwhelm me or would I just have gotten too accustomed to it. My steps hesitate while I consider that possibility. Regaining my pace, I make my way up, and look down.

And there it was, the first sight that made me realize how my life had changed and was going to change. The sight that made me stop and stare, that made me see the monster of a city that I was living in in terms of its sheer expanse - both physical and psychological, and how it threw my mind and my heart wide open to this gigantic maze and myriad of emotions and places and things that I had only imagined so far. 

Here was that sight again. There were throngs of people with a thousand different stories and a hundred different destinations. They were all moving in a maze of directions, jostling, pushing and just walking to get SOMEWHERE. There were not four or eight directions here; they seemed to be infinite. They were all movement and voices and shuffling and HEADS. That is all I could see. They were head moving in every possible directions and moving so close to each other that it seemed like there was no space for anyone else to step in; but then more people came and joined the buzz and the frenzy and yet they were all MOVING. And they kept on moving and I kept on staring at this sea of humans in this seemingly tiny space.

The sight overwhelmed me three years ago and it overwhelmed me yet again. I have survived this madness, I thought to myself, and I have even grown fond it! I had lived in this baffling city and I had been changed and shaped by it, even though I thought I did not let it get to me. But it had. It had seeped in like smoke through a keyhole and is some sneaky way, become a tiny part of me. Its voices, its sounds, its routines and its air had made their way into some reluctant part of my being and now that the time had come to leave, that little reluctant part was making all of my being hurt.

I walked down the bridge and waited for my metro. I mimed along with the announcements. I smiled because it was bittersweet. On my last metro ride in Delhi, I thought of how it was how Rajiv Chowk that shocked me into feeling this maddening place and now it was Rajiv Chowk and its madness that was hard to say goodbye to.

A Way of Life

I started,
Not to familiarize myself with you,
Not to get too close,
Not to make you my habit,
But you became a way of life.

I began,
To grow and learn,
To crash and burn,
To live and laugh,
To struggle and cry,
But I did not think you would be
A way of life.

I did not think
Every pothole down the road
All of the cracks in the dingy walls
The crass cries of unruly people
Would come to me
Clear as reality
When I closed my eyes.

I never anticipated
That those stifling classrooms
The untimely detours
The long hours of eloquent words
And men long gone
Would kindle
Nostalgia
Sadness
Longing

All the bitterness
All the regrets
All the questions
All the doubts
And all the sweetness
All the exceptions
All the trial
Became a part of me

I did not believe
That it would hurt
Like this

I thought I had succeeded
I thought I had not let you..this seep in
That I had kept you out
I thought I could be unattached
Free of your charm
Of your ugly, beautiful, bizarre magic
But you cast a spell
Made me a fly in your silver web

And now it is gone
Flown away
Taken with it
All its monotone
All its chains
All its shabbiness
All its highlights
All its beauty

I snapped my fingers
And I was back,
Back to the start
And I thought
I will do things differently,
This time around
I will be stronger
I will not bow
I will not crash and burn

I was wrong

I did it all my way,
And yet,
Our paths still crossed,
Like two comets on a collision course
That collision
Became my way of life.

Left Behind

It hangs like doom

Just above our heads

Our hearts

Threatening to come down

Crashing

It hangs like a dream

Tantalizing, terrifying

Just out of reach

There for me to grasp

And make my own

It hangs like uncertainty

Unclear and foggy

Threatening to engulf you

In a maddening maze

It spreads like lead

Through our hearts

Making them heavy

And our thread

Thinner, fainter

It spreads like fire

Through my being

Burning with pain

And passion

Both waiting

For direction

It spreads like dread

Through your insides

Making you ache and yearn

Wishing for time

To crystallize

Right here

It feels like
A thousand emotions

And no words

Misty eyes

And one syllable

Because I had wings

To take flight

To reach the stars

To claim the sky

And you

You could chase a tornado

You could claim the earth

You got left behind

"Bright lights, big city

She dreams of love

Bright lights, big city

He lives to run"

- Bright Lights, 30 Seconds to Mars

A Happy Buzz

It is just one of those days when I want to whistle tunes and walk with my hands in my pockets and a spring to my step, head bobbing to a happy tune in a happy buzz. I want to jump in the air and click my toes and then jump in the air as high as I can, hands thrown up, feet bent back. I feel like I could touch the sky on a swing I swing so high that I will leap and land gracefully in the air, pirouette and descend to earth to a thunderous applause of the wind and the stars and everything beautiful!

Oh the ecstasy of the unknown, the excitement of an adventure! 

The trepidation of change, the visions of what it would be! 

What a happy buzz, what a trippy thought!

I am going to spread my wings and take flight!

I going to evolve, I am going to rise!

And I am not going down this time!

I can conquer the world if I want it enough. Oh what a happy buzz.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

- Blackbird, The Beatles

Rainbow

Violet colors my hair

Deep and black in the dark

Rich and free in the wind

'Cause sometimes I choose to

Be unpredictable,

To unbecome

Indigo eyes

With gleam clinging to the lashes

Blinking their length

Absorbing and becoming

The unending Abyss

Of the seen

Blue are my lips

Bright and mischievous,

Light and innocent,

And deep

When words

Are caught in my throat

Green is my chest

With the envy 

Of all things flimsy

Making my mind

Lust

Yearn

Work

Strive

Yellow burns my lungs

Turning to fire

Breathing words of pain

And glows warm

As they breathe 

Warmth of the Kind

Orange glows my heart

Bursting crimson

With passion

and throbbing brown

In anguish

Red,

Red is the color of my soul

Touching

The Violet, The Indigo

The Blue, The Green

The Yellow, The Orange

To shimmer

To enflame

To glitter

To enlighten

My faces
My forms
My frames
My self.