Rant # 1, The Short Life

Isnt it a fallacy that life is short? Since ages we are told that life is short, live it to the fullest and yet there sits a "society" on a round conference table that pens the rules for a "better life", grow old, get a job, buy a house, buy a car, get insurance and then, one fine day, die at your own sweet convenience. But is that entirely wrong? I guess not!
You know what's wrong? The notion that life is too short! Hell no it ain't! Its some 60-70 long years, 365 days each, 24 hours each, 3600 seconds each of sheer struggle! That's long, way long. Life's not given to you to enjoy or travel or write poetry sitting on your porch on a rainy evening, sipping coffee. Its given to you to struggle through it, to follow the protocol, earn and to provide for yourself and maybe others. Have patience, call me not a pessimist, not yet. Lets face it, we, humans have evolved to the extent that our brain requires constant engagements, material, physical or whatsoever. We invented an economy for our needs and then spent all lives running after it! We evolved to the extent, where our needs outgrew those of our fellow planetmates, which further necessitated higher endeavours. And to think of life as short, so as to focus on things that make you happy is simply wrong. Life is long enough for you to earn really well so as to merely survive. Welcome to the reality. There is a reason the "protocol" exists and a reason its supposed to be followed. We humans are not the only species to pay for what they eat, the lion has to hunt down the lamb, the squirrel has to look for nuts, the sparrow travels far and wide for food, but we humans, we certainly do pay a lot more. We pay in terms of our lives. Such is the cost of evolution.

जंगल

एक घने जंगल के बीच बसा यह शहर
एक तरफ यह काला अंधेर जंगल
एक तरफ ये चमचमाती इमारतों में जगमाती रौशनी
रात के सन्नाटे में गूँजती जुगनुओं की आवाज़
और उन इमारतों में भटकती तन्हा रूहों की खामोश चीख
एक ओर थमे हुये से वक़्त के ये कुछ पल
एक ओर हवा सी उड़ती ज़िन्दगी की जद्दो जेहद
मुठ्ठी में से रेत की तरह छूटती चंद पुरानी यादें
और दिन-ब-दिन सामने आती दुनिया की कड़वी हक़ीक़तें

और इन दोनों सिरों के बीच खड़ा एक मैं
कभी फुर्सत की तलाश में, कभी तन्हाई की..

Eloped

Eloped

As she stood there looking out the window that evening, her mind zoned out. Every minute that passed turned the dusk sky a deeper hue of blue gradually reaching the black of her eyes. Her face displayed the paleness of a corpse, her eyes spake of dried tears. The azaan from the mosque in the vicinity, was the only comforting element in the moment. A reminder that God did exist. Like a bandage over wounded beliefs. Voices shreiked inside her head, people continued to yell at each other, tears were being wept, yet she heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. 72 hours, 72 hours was all it had taken to raze Sneha's apparantly perfect life to the ground. The life she had put together bit by bit over forty long years.
They said the best bond in the world was that between a parent and a child. Today Sneha had seen her most precious relationship fail ever so miserably. Twenty years of parenting, washed down the drain in a single instant and not a word about it. And a Magistrate had got to decide, if she could get those last five minutes with her daughter who she pampered with the wealth of the world for twenty years. Those last five minutes had never ceased playing themselves on loop in her head ever since they had first occured.
"Aren't you happy with my marriage? Why cant you be content in my happiness?" Never before had Rahika stood up for something so firmly. And 24 hours ago, the pampered damsel was standing up for her right to choose a life partner, in front of a high court magistrate at an age of 20, with her 25 year old Knight in Shining Armour by her side, while her mother had had to plead a magistrate to allow her five last minutes with her daughter. And at the end of it all she could do was watch her daughter, walking away from her. Anger, despair, disgust, horror clouded her mind while her face had simply gone pale, lifeless. As lifeless as was that evening.

Sneha wasn't your regular, helpless housewife in the family. Until right now, she had the complete control over the family. Standing tall over her decisions, her husband, her kids had never dared to go against her. Only until three days ago. There are bad things you prepare for, there are bad things you hope never befall your family and there are things, you just never could have seen coming. Things that make more sense in a flimsy movie script, while in reality, they spell nothing but ugly.

The evening had by now culminated into the starless night. The city's skyscrapers lit up with tiny lights from their windows as visible from Sneha's balcony. The pollution in the city had never allowed for the twinkling stars to show through the smoggy skies. Sneha however, hadn't moved.
The view from her 10th floor apartment in Gurgaon which had hitherto always worked to soothe her nerves, slapped her hard with a realisation tonight. The realisation, that she was nothing but alone in this concrete jungle of a city. Dheeraj, her husband had come over a couple of times to get her to have dinner. She had nodded in affirmitive but stayed put while he gave up after a few attempts. He stood next to her, no words said, none required.

"Cigarette hai?" She broke the silence.
They both knew, she had quit quite sometime back. But Dheeraj did not object. Not tonight. Handing over a Marlboro, he lit it for her and continued to gaze in the same direction as her, while they stood together at the balcony. Sneha
took an unusually long drag and immediately coughed it out.
"Hey easy" he tried patting her back. She got back up and tried taking another drag, only this time.it came out smoother.

"So this is what it boils down to, A failure. I failed you didn't I? I've failed you as the mother of our daughters"
"Not at all Sneha, There's nothing you could possibly have done about it" the tone was sombre as it could be
"Come out of Denial Dheeraj, the entire city is going to be talking about it over morning tea tomorrow, we've practically been disrobed in front of the entire city" Her face still as pale.
"If we really have been, we might as well face it strong, i dont see an escape, or maybeit doesnt even matter"
"I just wish she's okay, that dumb ass of a woman, There were reasons, we hated him right" Her voice broke through both anger and tears
"Sneha," He placed both his hands on her shoulders, and continued, "we might have gone wrong in places, but if Rahika's to learn from her own mistakes, there's just nothing we can possibly do about it."

She burried her head in his chest, and let her tears flow. He held her close, letting her cry her heart out. Far up in the sky a few stars twinkled along their path.

Dwarka Dusk

And then the noise died away, fading out into nothingness. As the late-october chill dissolved into the sound of the azaan from the neighborhood mosque, the sweet tinkling of the wind chimes at her 10^th floor apartment notified her of the impending dusk. As she walked up across the hall to latch the door to the balcony, a gush of wind brushed past her face, giving her the chills marking the onset of winters. She looked down, as the amber streetlights started lighting up the busy road. But up here, it looked all different, calm, beautiful. Not a busy, traffic-laden, chaotic city road but, a bigger picture, At a distance, the suave, brightly lit metro train ferried passengers running about the course of their daily lives, a landscape of vast greens dotted by amber streetlights like tiny stars below the skies. set amidst which stood the whote marble mosque, silent, serene, like God’s own exiistence amidst the chaotic suburb. A beautiful picture of nature’s harmony. As the dusk beset deeper, the sky dissolved into her favorite hues of blue, while three tiny pigeons set on their flight back home.

Home. That was the word. Someone else too was expected home. The wait intensifying as she looked out at the street. There was still a while to go.

Having latched the door, she came back to the hall to prepare for his welcome, as she relived their last goodbye five months back. Riots had broken out in a far-off lawless land, over which god was the holiest. Forces of young, vibrant, dynamic soldiers were stationed in the casualty zones by the people condemning the riots from their AC offices. He promised to be back as his lips sucked off those nervous drops of sweat on hers. A lone drop of water had escaped her kohl-smudged eyes then.

Another such drop escaped her eyes now, now that she prepared to welcome him back. He had sounded vibrant on the phone as he expected the riots to subside and be able to return home in a week.

She had dressed in her finest punjabi suit. A black deep neck salvar kameez with a golden border, her eyes lined perfectly in kohl and her waist long her left open to one side of her face. Just the way he liked it. She wanted to leave no stone unturned, to charm him off his wits when he returned from duty. As the dusk grew into a dark starless night and the clock closed to 7, her doorbell rang. This was it, her moment of ecstacy. With a million thoughts, memories, emotions scurrying around in her head, she opened the door with the lustful smile of a newly-wed.

There he was, in a box, wrapped in tricolor.

One Last Drink

He brought the glass to his lips

Sipping the scotch, of pain once again

The familiarity was warm and welcoming

The bitter taste of memories

Albeit long forgotten

Had managed to tickle the taste buds of his heart right away

Holding his drink in his mouth

He relished the bitterness

Remeniscing slowly, pains he had long got over

Memories and pain, like scotch

Only get richer, bitter with time, he discovered

As the night went by

The moon tracing an arc along the sky

His drinks refused to cease

Years of abstinence had made him thirsty for his own pain

The stupor of forgotten love

Fuzzing the horizon of consciousness

As those eyes looked out at him from the laptop screen

Silent, sober, happy

No more words, no more answers sought

And over the night

The frozen lava of worthless tears

Melted for the one last time

And made its way back

To where it belonged!

Tonight was the last night of pain

The last night 

Possibly

The Seeker

As he walked under the sky

Lit by a million stars twinkling in the tranquility of the night,

Like a million dots, when connected

Could give him the answers he sought

The moon smiled upon him 

basking a pitch dark forest, milky white

The garden crickets filling for the intoxicating silence

As he gazed at the outline of the hills ahead and the skies above

This was his moment

A line he oft repeated to himself

Almost always in vain

And tonight was turning out no different

For what he sought, had eluded him yet again

Hours of efforts, plannings and pre thoughts

And this half alive moment

What he wanted to acheive looked him

In the eye

What he sought, was no where to be seen

Or was it?

Was it right there and he simply faced elsewhere

Maybe the answers were right there

Maybe, just maybe, he wasnt ready for them yet

Maybe there were a few lessons yet to be learnt again

Some mistakes yet to be corrected

For a mind cluttered with questions

The traffic of his thoughts had managed to catch up with him a hundred miles away

The claws of relations he had attempted to escape

Had managed to pin him down yet again

And he who ran away to solitude

Wept a tear of loneliness yet again

For he who had forgotten to love himself

Sought love, where there was none

Not for him

The Revenant: Saudade of Delhi

Like a long-lost beloved

She calls me back

And I

I love her too 

Her troughs and crests still haunt my lonely nights

Only this time

Something makes me wary

If the past holds anything to teach

Between two nights of passion, lies a day

The seldom intriguing,

Often mundane, day

When life takes over

When moods govern bonds

When insecurities greet you every morning

When ego shows up accross the bed of roses

And love becomes a load you want to shirk

But, she doesn't give me a choice

Or maybe i do not give myself one

Desires of the body have a court of their own

The heart, the infamous convict

I miss admiring her silhouettes, the dusky skin, the dark eyes against the sinking sun

Not all liquor needs the mouth

Doesn't look too bad a bargain to me. 

And here i lay

On my way back to passionate nights

And meloncholy days

Those i turned my back on

She'll hold on, i know 

I too, shall try

And now that I'm into it

Why the heck not?