Exodus

Dalliance

                                            Far away in the mountains,
                                                           Have I, an old love.
                                                                             
                                                                     Old and sweet as the,
                                                                                     Wine in the barrel. 

                                                                                    

Cradled in the vineyard of my soul.

Gratitude Unforgotten.

                                                            Last day, my sight caught the attention of the man who runs a cycle repair shop nearby the bank, where I'm tied to my banking transactions. It's been years, he has been working there in that same old spot with no accompaniments for his help. In our childhood days, my brother and I used to check the air in our bicycles and also visited him when our cycles dumps us all of a sudden on a particular occasion. 

Ever since then, he is all the more same. I was getting on my two-wheeler and just then I saw him busy attending to the bicycles and punctured tyres. Even on a sultry sweating noon, he seems not bothered by the heat sitting under the black asbestos roofed shelter besides the main road.

I stood there, looking at him for some time, reminiscing our old childhood days and his part in our lives to repair the bicycles at lucid intervals. Characteristics of old age has also visited him. His hands and clothes were stained with grease and oil as usual, wrinkles of hard work has invaded his face but his lust to work has not faded.

On a momentary note, he saw me looking at him. He smiled at me and shook his head like he knew me for ages. Maybe, he might have recognized me. 

The shifting of time period made me realize that I'm a 25 year old guy now from the transition of a 7th grader to the present working scenario. Though it was years, he might have understood that my bicycle has at least once, gone through his magical hands.

I too gave a smile back and waved my hand. That was the simple gratitude I could give him rather than sympathy.

Tag...

In response to the #Knowyourself Challenge of Edition 132 of IndiSpire to the question, "Peep into your heart and describe yourself in one sentence."

Barren

Amore...

 We stood this much closer!

My lips close to her ears,

To murmur those words

That might have taken her to ecstasy.

Though the flames engulf everything,

My love for her couldn't burn down outwardly.

It burned inside me,

Leaving my heart ache

Each and every moment,

I saw or stood beside her.

There was a need on my part,

To let her know that,

I fell not in love with her body

But in her soul and the 

Words she spoke.

Though I could never assure

Whether she loved me;

But I knew it from her eyes,

That unspoken love she always bore.

Yet we remained apart ,

In distances immeasurable
And in silent voyages;
Journeying through the limelight of life.
Oblivious as to whether we 
Might open up or if it so happens,
Whether we may be bonded as
One.

Monsoon Diaries-VII# Smell of rain

Petrichor

***

I sat outside in the balcony of my home, to see and feel the rains pass down in a hurry and the wind blowing at it's rage. My dog sits near my leg and enjoys what I have been feeling for the past ten minutes.

It's beautiful...the showers that nature bestows on the bare earth.

I can barely tell you since when I felt the rain or I sensed it's smell.

Maybe the rain is trying to play with me by sprinkling its drops over me. I don't try to block it either instead thrusts my face to feel it. My dog seems to be irritated by the water falling over him. He shakes its off and stands behind my chair, reckoning me to go inside.

I, on the other hand sits on the chair, determined to get soaked in rain. But all of a sudden, I can smell something too. The pleasant smell that it brings forth after a long gap of rainy days. As of now, it still lingers in my nose; not having the faintest idea why it's not leaving me....

Maybe I have craved for it, for a long time. The rain and its smell....

Monsoon Diaries-VI# A lover of rain.

Pluviophile

******

When the rain returns,

I shall forget my love!

Because I'm a Pluviophile

Wedded to the seasonal rain.

I open my windows to feel him,

To be touched and be sprinkled

By his cool drops.

I lay cuddled with my blankets,

                     Facing him fall down in  drops over me.

                         *******************

My mind speaks to me and that's bizarre!

                                                             

                                                          For me mankind is still a mystery. A mystery to which answers are uncertain. I think too much. Too much so that it leads me to deviate from the usual way of the cliche thinking to something tagged as 'bizarre ' by people.

I don't understand why the human race fights for securing ranks and position. Neither do I understand the meaning of being someone who craves for the worldly materialistic and lustful needs. 

Why should a person be educated? To be left in the middle of nowhere with no jobs to suit him/her for being over educated? Or such that one has traded bundles of Gandhi to those degree selling Institutions which stands proudly claiming we are ‘affiliated’. Education has become a market and schools & other educational institutions aim not in providing better quality education rather end up just on reading the textbooks and the customary tradition of 'Exams'. Joke of civilization! 

Why should a human being have disgust for another being? Has the world and its creatures reduced itself to such a thing that it has paved way for degrading its own worth? Just because your neighbor is poor or he is not having an elite job or that he doesn't fall in the creamy layer of the society, should he be shoved aside? Compassion and empathy are mere terms to use now.

Why on earth is the phenomenon of 'Society' hunting down each and every activity that one does or needs nods to approve another person's interest? 'Society, Society, Society'- A slogan that rings in ears for whatever the reason maybe. Since when did the democratic right of a person got tied to a stake and being made to answer the questions to satiate their thirst.

If the human race evolved from the so called apes or monkeys, it is not a novelty that they exhibit the inherent traits of them most of the time. The world wants power, money, positions, wealth, huge bank balances, etc. But as one gets more, the greater is the need to seek and possess more. After all man has to remind himself, at certain points that he is a mortal and that whatever he earns are left on the bare earth; from where he gathered them. What use are all these titles and public shows of display and poshness.

That's why we have a demarcation between people as the 'Rich & Poor.' 

Delirium

'Hey wake up!' 

'Pete...'

'Wake up!'

Pete could hear someone calling out his name and trying to wake him up. But everything happened in his subconsciousness. He couldn't open his eyes and at the same time, he could hardly breathe. But he tried to open his eyes forcibly.

He had a huge bound book opened halfway and his fingers in between them bookmarking the pages he left read or unread; holding it tightly close to his chest. 

'Pete... Wake up! Can you hear me?'

The questioning sound visited him again. He tried to recognize the voice, but couldn't make out who it was. He tried to move his lips and ask the voice, who it was. But he was helpless. Only his imagination was working. and his body under the spell of something.

Was he reading a book of witchcraft or wizardry that he lay stuck by a spell?

'Open your eyes, Pete! Don't you want to see what you were eagerly reading through the void in the book!' , the voice resounded again in his ears. He wanted to say 'yes' but his body and his senses were controlled and summoned by some force of nature that he couldn't move an inch or say a word.

His mind struggled by saying a thousand 'yes', but his body lay untroubled and fast asleep. He couldn't recall what he read last or even the context but he was acquainted with the characters. 

'Open your eyes slowly! See where you are...Feel whatever you can because never leave a question unanswered in your mind', the voice mumbled.

The words rang in his head. It was involuntary. His eyes opened. He felt wet. The wetness of obscurity. He was floating on a water body just like a piece of wood but he had that book held against his chest, though left loose.

Even without eyeing around, he could sense that something was moving around him. He didn't want speculations to run around in his head, so he tilted his head and looked wherever his sight could reach. Papers printed with letters that formed words, torn page by page, floating lifeless over the water just like him with the exception that he was alive.

He felt that he was held by some force, a sort of pressure that thrust his body to float rather than sink. But his question was, 'Why are these pages floating on water?'

The answer came quick from that unknown voice again, 'Your doubts mixed with questions'

'What', he asked.

'The doorways of your sight are left open. See and satiate your soul', the voice whispered.

He looked onto the book in his hand. He found that many pages were torn from the book. He looked around again. 

'The pages', he said.

'Yes, the pages!', the voice said along.

'Why are they torn?', he asked.

"Your doubts and questions.............torn to pieces", the voice said.

'My doubts? But what are you?', he asked in his  frail voice.

                    "I AM THE ANSWER", said the voice; clear and crisp.

Orison

Am I to make a prayer?

Or to seek a word from God,

To ask him to forgive those

Who have stabbed me in the back?

Plotting is what they do,

Talking ill is their signature

Ill-bred, they have been

With degraded identity!

Should I still make a prayer?

For those heinous acts done.

Perfidy and avarice; and

By many more they are guided,

In Immaturity and loquaciousness

They do survive.

Should I forgive them and

  Make amends!

Ah! I need to make a prayer.

A prayer that may burn them alive,

To be left desperate and to be

Damned for no good.

Let their intentions fail and so

Do their lives should rot!

And never bring them in my sight,

As they are worthless, worthless bipeds.

Monsoon Diaries- V # Threads

                                                                              A thousand thoughts kept ringing in my head. But I was unable to fix myself on a certain thought. 

It was raining outside. I sat near the table in my room with a hot cup of tea trying to take a single thread from a series of intricate thoughts which played hide and seek in my mind.

It was getting cold. I felt the strange sort of numbness in my body. The pitter-patter sound of the rain invited me to feel its kiss. 

Have I not had the ailment sucking my life away from me, I would have let myself to be completely get drenched in the rain. Maybe that could have eased my pain out momentarily.

For people who looked from outside, I was one of those wares displayed in a shop for sale, as I sat near a glass window. All I could do was to peep out and feel the rain and its atmosphere non-physically. 

I could see some guys having their time in a harsh monsoon evening; playfully pushing and splashing water against each other. An old lady crossed the road walking slowing under the shade of her parasol, carefully not to be bothered by the rain. Old age must have made her cautious of the nature. 

While a man so sober in his facial expression, who stood under the shelter of Amore D Cafe was enjoying the puff he took from his half-finished cigarette amidst the peltering rain.

I wished with my whole heart to be out there, to wade through the flooded places outside my home, to be like the guys of my age who had their fun time together.  I sat disheartened on the chair, sipping from the cup of tea counting my days of existence till the small pain in my chest could engulf me to be carried away finally on a monsoon day!

Till then I could do was to blink, looking at the rain. 

Touched by Loneliness - Part IV

                                             Though the space was dimly lit, he could make out what the picture was. A cheerful boy in his 20’s with a middle aged man and woman. Happiness was common to all the three with bright smiling faces. His heart sunk for an instant on seeing the picture unexpectedly.

His eyes brimmed with tears. Sob stifling breath then visited him. A feeling of pain and torment or a dragging moment of truth was that he went through. His eyes stuck on to the picture, he cried panting for breath. The torment inside him streamed out of him as tears. He felt loaded with feelings as was his body. He sat on the floor with the photo in his grasp.

He ran one of his fingers over the image of the woman in the picture.

“How are you mum?” he asked with his torn voice.

Now that it was evident that the boy in the picture was him and the man and woman, his parents.  But where are his parents? Are they still alive? Or they left him? He was the only person who could answer our questions.

Nothing came to his mind except the image of his parents. His misery or his loneliness didn’t seem to bother him when he thought about his parents. He didn’t analyze why he was away from them. All that lingered in his mind was his ‘parents’.

He held the photograph close to his chest and started reminiscing the last moments he was with them. It was a Tuesday, he recalls; when he said something and his parents objected to it. It was the end of a series of all his thoughts....

(To be continued)

Reverie.

Dreams in his pockets,

   Carried and nursed with yearning. 

To the places which pleases him,

But with hope rooted deep down in his bosom.

Shut are the doors to his senses,

Rested, is his head upon and

Being shot in the middle of his imagination,

Unknown he lay, with 

a languid body.

A debt kept unpaid!

A conversation: Between him and me.

I didn’t ask him how he is!  Because I knew he would answer, ‘Better’.

I get incessant questions to say about my whereabouts whereas I’m seated with no clear image of the answers to what he seeks.

Concern or Curiosity?  Got the answer in an instant- Curiosity.The hours thereafter fed the curiosity to an extent. I opened my heart as frank as I could.

I didn’t feel like a decade since I last saw him. But he may have felt many places went missing. Why pain & suffering? To his question, I could only say it’s the essence of life.

Where I felt I wasn’t sure when I could meet him next; as was his question. Silence was more than momentary at stock when I was supposed to satiate his senses of hearing. Maybe once I bled myself with words too much too severe, that I turned myself inward.

Opinion on the colors of love were common to both of us. Sob stifling moments came across when certain things were said. Burdened and stabbed by myself! Things which remained incomplete could have been completed. But for what? He expressed his happiness for seeing me after long years whereas I was left with a hole in my heart.

Dubious on how long I journey remained in me, when I parted looking into the eyes of a futuristic oriented person. Such was my life on a borrowed time from the unknown state I’m fettered in. All that my mind murmured was the best for him.

                                                                                                                In the name of myself,

With gratitude… 

Prerogative!

'A display at the 8 point art cafe'

                                               Last Saturday, I happened to visit the 8 point Art Cafe and came across the exhibit of 'Trans', a photo campaign to spread awareness about the transgender community. Among the 8 pictures that displayed there, this one caught my attention the most. 

The image conveys meaningful thoughts to the onlooker, but I don't think all could pass on to the next image without experiencing the moment subtle elements it bears.

I was lost in thought over the picture, as I could see a cage in her hand with origami birds. She wore a flower embroidered off-white linen tunic, with her hair parted on both sides.

Another interesting thing about the image were those paper birds which had a word written on it repeatedly.

"Prerogative"

It was the strange silent meaning the image carried which most people might have missed. Prerogative is a right or a privilege exclusive to a particular individual or a class. Through the image, she too meant the same thing. Her privilege is compared to the birds in the cage, being kept an axe to it. The right which she is meant to enjoy is lopped off. When the society and the human race eyes her as a normal individual, she would be left free from her chains which fetters her identity to enable her to flutter  just like the birds.  

Sitting onto a chair I found there, I started to study the image in all its entirety. She is caged in the body of a man, struggling her way out through the mystery of her anatomy; where she wishes people, to not let her identity be viewed as a mere spectacle. Her attire shows the yearning of femininity, the urge to pave her way out from the riddled self.

I had my train of thoughts running inside my head with words brimming to be poured out onto a piece of paper then. If I could pen down the emotion that she carried in a few words, this is what the image evoked in me.

"In a rented body, conjured upon

By ill fate and tightropping gender;

I stay with my flesh covered, though bare

With a question unanswered -

 What wrong did I do?"

Monsoon Diaries-IV # Elysian Rain

I wish I could get soaked and be poked by the cold sharp needles of the ethereal and seductive rain. I know that it can soothe out my burning pain, since  my mind has slipped away from myself to another state. Before I would be tasted by the lips of Death; before I would be carving out my own ways to meet my end, I wish I could have an Elysian vision drenched in your pleasant self. And when I stand at the gates of my grave, I may feel my end contented with the kissing of the halcyon rain...

Madre...

"If again, heavens bless me with a second life;

Let my birth remain in the same mother that I was taken from;

If death invites me to see its grandeur,

Unite us both in life after death."

In pace with 'Notes from the Underground'

"Recently, I started reading a book, 'Notes from the Underground' by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Though I have started on this novel several times long back, I get hung most of the time at certain intervals. One of the highly existentialist novels, it focuses on the ramblings of a secluded narrator, who was once a Civil Servant who tags himself as 'intoxicated with spite.' The novel runs mainly around the theme of Utopianism, I believe if that is what I have inferred covering a required number of pages. Keeping in pace with each and every word and the intensity of emotions that he has displayed in penning it down; I sort of wonder the words he has used nonchalantly.

I have been stupefied coming across certain thoughts that he has tried to convey through the novel about mankind and society.

“I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something.”

The autopsy of what a man is being brought out in natural words when he mentions that,

“But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.”

In his words I see truth and indisputable facts.  

Monsoon Diaries-III #Short Fiction

"The blades of green grass twinkled with the droplets of water they carry after a good shower from the clouded sky. Maguire stood dazed inside her room, near the window with a hot  cup of coffee in her hand. It was still drizzling outside. She could see the sea from the distance and the dockyard nearby where the workers seemed to be busy engrossed in their work. Neither the wind nor the rain diverted their attention. The sea gulls which used to hover over the small ships returning after their days work seems to find warmth in the protrusions of the dockyards. Maguire noticed the way they flapped their wings to dry them from the wetness of the rain. 

The flag on top of one of the buildings nearby has stopped waving as it stood shrunken in the midst of the downpour. The vehicles passing by and the honking sound it makes,the busy people on road, the newspaper boy with his daily, the milkman; passed through her mind as images, as she stood looking out of the window. 

Maguire loved the monsoon rains when she was a kid. She loved the way things were as opposed to the usual sunny days. She loved the cool breeze which accompanies the rain, just like anyone would. But for Maguire, rain evoked pain more than anything. She craved to doze off in the cradling of the emotions induced by the climate. To fall into a state so that she could forget her thoughts. Every time she expects that for at-least once , Tomlin would come to see his dear wedded wife.

She recalls that it was on a rainy day that he proposed to her, on a rainy romantic night he made love and on a rainy turbulent day he left her presence! Nature too didn't approve to his coffin being cremated, that it was a very virulent day. From that day onward, Tomlin stayed in herself though lost in the presence of a monsoon day.