How did I chance upon this treasure?

This is probably the most beautiful short story I have ever read. I will be truly blessed if one day, I could write anything as remotely beautiful as what Chekhov has achieved here. Hopefully one day I will.

About Love, by Anton Chekhov

.....

I also remembered. Another most beautiful short story if Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited. Another one to aspire to...

Thoughts from Tyexas.

Was in San Antonio, Texas for the March Meeting this year. Good things about the trip: physics, lots of walking, interesting Texan people, didn't feel tempted to suck on the old 84mms even when drunk and amongst smoker friends. Bad things: only one, food. Tex Mex is only OK up to a point and you even start to hate cheese beyond a point. Also, the steak here is massively overrated, at least going by the one time I tried.

A collection of random thoughts about Texas from the trip :

1] The Mexican influence is strong. After all, Texas was a part of Mexico, and Mexico tried very hard to populate Texas with Americans by offering them great land deals in the early 1800s. Eventually of course, the Americans outnumbered the Spanish speakers 10-1 and got their own Tyexas. Still, Texas = lots of Mexican arts and crafts and food.

2] Airbnb is cool if the original residents of the place are art majors. Some very poetic advice and beautiful artwork made my stay so awesome. Need to read stuff from this person called Ellen Gilchrist. 

3] Texas people are big. You can't see them biggies on downtown streets, but as soon as you hit the burbs, they come flooding in. Especially if you end up at a steak house. The steak unfortunately wasn't what it was billed up to be.

The people are big but they are also extremely nice and polite. I illustrate my point using a picture of Starbucks coffee at the airport. The two milk options for your coffee here are...

4] Texan truck-drivers love the rodeo. We honestly felt pretty out of place there amongst a sea of very big and very red-colored people, but like I said before, the people are really nice and chatty so it was fine. I finally got to hear the beautiful Texan accent which I was yearning to hear but could not in the city (sadly).

Also, I absolutely love the fact that these people love their animals so much. Yes, sometimes the competitions seemed a tad cruel, but overall, the people were pretty respectful to the animals and were generally just trying to have a good time. Not only did I see rodeos on bulls (which was absolutely frightening to watch because it seemed like someone getting badly hurt was a forgone eventuality), I also saw tiny 5 year old kids rodeoing on sheep by grabbing their ears! And these kids are absolutely insane. At one point, they let these tiny kids (about 30) out into the pen with 10 cows (young uns, but still twice bigger than the kids) and these kids ran around trying to grab the cows with absolutely no fear even when the cows were heading straight for them. Fucking loved the insanity. 

5] The trip back to Boston was just long enough (about 6 hours total) for me to complete my first cryptic crossword!!! My English has now reached a new high! :O Well, I also did need a few more minutes at home and Saloni's help to complete it... She filled up the remaining 5-10 entries pretty quick which makes me question my awesomeness a little bit, but damn was it fun. I will blame the tiredness :)))

N with a dash of R

N was a quiet, shy girl who was always sat next to R at school. R was the pretty one; tall, with a pale face, beautiful eyes, and a smile that turned to one side in just the right measure, and so that it just revealed a singular very pointy tooth. I had never quite understood what fascination I held for vampirish canines, but it was an instant cue that set my budding carnal desires raging and every time she smiled, the world seemed a tad more exciting. Everyone thought R was pretty, including me of course, for she was the measure of beauty in a land where paleness was everything that beauty in a woman meant. N, on the other hand, was dark and timid and was fancied by no one, including me, of course, for she was measured by that same yardstick of paleness and on that account she certainly did not deliver.

And so N remained quiet and silently let R continue stealing hearts. I fancied R, but I was too young to be sure of what I wanted to do with that fascination, until that one fateful day that changed how I perceived her forever, or almost forever anyway. "Haaaa.... It's so big!", she had said with her pretty smile and wide eyes, looking directly at my semi-erect junk with a hand on her mouth as I stood up gingerly to answer a question in class. My hormones had just begun raging and I could not help but occasionally glance at the young teachers' breasts and think of how they'd appear underneath the clothing - to be fair, I instantly begged for forgiveness for such `sins' and occasionally, I was punished with an embarrassing erection. On that fateful day, such was the case.

It was a `dick' move on my part, as I have now come to think of that incident. R was great but R and I were a little too embarrassed to talk for a while after and that incident had colored my thoughts of her in such a negative way that by the time I grew out of those, life had moved on. Later one uneventful day, out of the blue, R had contacted me and told me all about her new boyfriend and how handsome he was, and had asked me if I was jealous and I had said no. And that was that. She was pretty and argumentative and loved to reason - in short, everything that I had wanted, but that was that. Which is why N is the one this story is dedicated to. For while R got married off young and was in labor with her first child, N was sitting opposite to me in a sandwich shop, and suddenly, in this strange land far away from home, I was forced to look at her and think that she was goddamn pretty.

Because, as it had recently dawned on me, beauty is simply a matter of what the society decides is beautiful. And in this new land, the rules of beauty were different - none the more ethical, none the less perverse, but simply different. And N knew it and loved her newfound acceptance. She had contacted me to let me know she was arriving in town to see a friend of hers and wanted to see me. I had immediately responded in the affirmative, curious to know how life had turned out for her, and for our old school friends.

N was now a fitness freak. She ate very little, all of a bowl of leaves was enough to fill her completely, but it all seemed worth it. Her tall figure really showed now, and the fat on her cheeks had melted away to give room to a very cute, no, very sexy smile. The darkness of her face did not matter anymore, and she was brimming with a confidence I had never seen in her. A little too much confidence, as I think of it now. She had started with, "You could have picked a better place, you know..." and then when I replied in an unsure way, she had continued with, "You used to be so over-confident and talkative in school, and now you seem like you've become one of the shy professor types. What have they done to you?" I was a bit surprised by that assertion because if I knew anything about my self, it was that I should learn to talk less. I let her know that I was glad that she had shed her quietness since she had left home. But as the night progressed, it seemed to me that she had also shed her home, for not a single mention of it came without a resounding voice of disapproval. She loved it in this strange land and I could not disagree with her, for I loved it just as much. And moreover, it seemed right for her to disregard the land that had disregarded her.

N was also sweet, I could tell. I figured it was natural - it was the sweetness of a person who was once unfairly rejected by society, had developed the strength to overcome it but still remembered how much it had hurt. I knew this because she had said, with a mischievous smile, that my hair looked really messy, and then, after a few minutes of afterthought, had suddenly interrupted our conversation with something that betrayed her sweetness. She said, "You know, I said it's messy but it's still kinda nice, in a geeky way though. You could model that look you know, you just need a red tie on that brown sweater and that would be pretty chic then."  It had only then begun to dawn on me, that I was possibly on a date with an old school friend. Actually, no, if it had dawned on me then, I would have instantly made it clear that I wasn't available; of course, after I had said something about her prettiness, which was heartfelt, and so that she wasn't hurt.

From the high of that warm awkwardness, sadly only mundanity ensued, and for a while, until, in another keen display of her newfound growth, N mentioned how she had developed a passion for economics. Intrigued, I asked for her thoughts on the appointment of the new state bank governor at home. She replied, a little sheepishly I could tell, that she did not know who this chap was, and then, as if in defiance, muttered that she didn't keep up to date with news from home. And so I asked her about what she thought of O's Keynesian policies and she pretended to have bit her tongue and changed the conversation. You see, N was the same old, but wrapped up in new packaging. In that moment I saw in her the same quiet N who knew not what had to be said generally. R knew little of economics and many other things but she was inquisitive and knew her boundaries; and where she felt comfortable she could argue her way through anything. That was hot. As I snapped out of my reverie, I asked her about how R was doing. She spoke about R for a bit, almost grudgingly, as if, she had read all that had just crossed my mind. Then when her petulance subsided, she fell quiet, and the evening continued quietly from there on. I thought to myself, beauty was still skin-deep.

After we had paid our bills separately, she gave me her generous gift that she had dragged all the way from wherever she was at, which I forgot to ask. It was a framed art piece and I thought it was very sweet of her even though I did not particularly like the artwork itself. I felt I needed to make it up to her and I offered to pay for desserts. But N was a fitness freak and only frozen yoghurt was acceptable. I obliged, just that, N then had the great realization that frozen yoghurt was also not healthy enough and got such a little amount that the cost seemed more suitable for a delivery tip. There was also the little matter of not sharing one cup, but I could not be blamed for that. As I was finally coming to terms with the fact that she wanted something more from this day, I began to feel weary and wanted desperately to leave. When I bade farewell, I half-heartedly mentioned that we should keep in touch, and in return, I felt in her response, a silent whimper that hid behind somewhere a small heartbreak. When I got on the bus I thought of her and her gift and felt a bit shit so I thought it would be nice to let her know once more that I appreciated it. She instantly replied with,"I'm glad! But it's not something special, just so you know."

I got off the bus, took a sweet drag of my cigarette and laughed a bit. 

P

P was always feisty. Her feistiness showed through in everything she did - in the way she loved and in the way she fought. She yearned for attention, but did not trust any man who gave it to her. She had a pretty plum face and chose to keep her eyes at an optimal level of sootiness. I figured it was a defense mechanism of sorts. You see, P grew up in a broken family, around broken, drunk men, and she was always ready to hide her tears, especially when it came to men.

I gave in to P's feistiness first because she was pretty and she was flirtatious, and then, as I grew to know her more, I felt a strong sense of sadness in my heart for all that she had been through. And in her feisty ways, she taught me that I was occasionally a male chauvinistic pig, and I learned to see things differently. But the feistiness started to drain me over time. Her sobs became meaningless. Her emotional barrages lost weight, and I could not reason with myself, as I had, many times before, "Let it be, she's been through much more". I knew I had to leave her, but I wanted to leave her whole, capable of loving a man without fear.

But P was incorrigible. Many years passed and I forgot her, eventually. I cannot recall what had tipped it over, but it was never going to be pleasant. And then, one day, I remembered a long lost friend, and we met up for a chat. R was a pleasant chap, a writer, and P knew him too. After some reminiscing about our days together, and common friends, he mentioned P. It was inevitable. He told me that P was doing well, but she had suffered too. Typical P, I thought, until he told me that her mother had committed suicide. It's been quite a while now, he said. It's been quite a while, I thought, how long ago? My heart sank in to a corner so deep I thought I would not be able to find it again. And in the next moment I was overcome with rage and felt an urge to see my coffee cup smash into the wall but I held myself. How could that sweet girl be made to suffer so much, how much? ... 

In that moment, I saw P again, as I had first seen her; faultless, blameless in a cruel, unforgiving world, but also remembered her courage, and ... desperation, for change. I felt guilty, somehow. I wished to be there, to comfort her, although, I knew I couldn't, and I probably shouldn't. But I was overcome with emotion and I erred immediately - no one who knows me would have expected otherwise. The new year was fast approaching, and it was an opportune time, it felt, to mend old bonds and I thought it would cheer her up a little to see that someone she knew well had remembered her after so long, and with affection. I wrote hastily, "Hi P, I was talking to R when I was reminded of you. I hope you're doing great. I'm sorry we parted ways on such acrimonious terms. We should catch up again. Take care and Happy New Year!" 

Her reply came late, and when it did, it did not befit the time it had taken. It was a terse "HNY". Some people are just not capable of love or affection or anything more sublime, I thought. I had only wanted to see her happy. But she had only given me pain, when I was with her, and when I was without, and without remorse, I thought. And yet, in the next moment, I remembered her tears, her frail self, and wondered; was she still hurting? Was it me who just could not understand and was it me who was all to blame? But for what? And then I thought, it cannot be, it made no sense, how foolish of me, how self-righteous, and assuming, because after all, too many years had passed since - surely emotions had dwindled and passions waned and maybe even the memories were now lost. In the end, I decided that she had simply forgotten who I was and that was perhaps for the best. Then I let it be. 

The Critique of Pure Aestheticism - Part 1

And my mind is drifting slowly into the pleasures of a recess. The green grass, the crumpled tufts, the yellow pollen, drifting along sunlit paths, powdered, and somber. The pollen gets its radiance from the sun. I can feel it glowing brighter now. And warmer. Yellow swarms my vision. And then a touch of red, flooding in from the periphery like ink, and my eyes start to feel weary under the burgeoning canopy of all the light, and warmth of the universe. My hand responded and a shade of grey smothered the sunlight. The wind then beckoned, the ruffling leaves obliged, a few branches quivered and a shower of dendritic produce. Yellow, orange, white and green. I get up, as my body begins to feel the heat again. A bicycle is approaching. Riding it is no one. I have waited long enough for the moment and the moment is here. I reach for my camera.

.. .. ..

The editor is not amused. Disappointment is an entrenched crevice on his forehead. Shattered is not my heart, and not his either, but shattered is my perception of reality. Bland is his reception, his eyes say it all. I explain to him. John, the cycle is on a journey. Its rider is a young woman possibly in her early twenties. She is not riding the cycle, but the cycle is driving her along. She has no direction. She is like a pollen amidst other pollen, but radiant, like a resplendent chandalier. I see her worries, they seem to melt into her surroundings. She belongs to the air, to the sunlight, to the warm universe, like a child to her mother; why cannot you see, her smile, the beatitude, the sense of harmony, exuding from each and every little freckle on her cheek, the impersonation of the timeless aura of the wind that plays with the pleatings of her frock, her vibrant sexuality, riding on the air of a scandalous love affair, her little nail that got unceremoniously clipped in a little accident only yesterday night, with her frisky lover. Can you not see?

.. .. ..

The ocean shore is never a quiet place to be. But I like to sit here for sometime,whenever I can, on these rocky shores, experiencing an inebriating sense of diminution. And then I loose myself, in those waves, in the imaginations of the tide, chasing the surfer, and his surf-board, pattering like rainfall on his auburn hair, undressing his body by the sheer force of will. I feel like the ocean, like a certain noise, churning, gurgling in the background, and like the daughter of a mother, all tucked in under the breast, the heart of the ocean. I get up, and I begin to walk over the rocky shores. Maybe the salty breeze, maybe the ruined sand castles, maybe the mellow sun, maybe a blood red bucket over the yellow expanse, like a desert war zone with all the bloodshed, maybe ideas drift past me and hopefully I may never sneeze. The sun is soon to set. But the moment is now. I reach for my camera and click with a sigh of relief.

.. .. .. 

"Siddharth, would you answer a question for me? How do you know that you're alive?"

I smiled, silently contemplating on the frenzied activity behind her serene grey-green eyes. It wasn't a smile of derision. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was more due to the banality of the proposition. But Anita was an intelligent woman. And I always took her seriously.

"I don't know, why'd you ask babe?". 

"..."

"No seriously, what'd you..."

"Come on now, you know what I mean." 

"Ah no!" At this point the pedant in me, and a student of Heidegger's philosophical musings on the meaning of existence, replied, "Well, when we generally ask a question, with regards to a certain entity, the entity itself is well specified in its being. Only then, can we frame the question, and address the means of finding a solution to our query. This is a question that has troubled..."

"No, I want it vague!", she quipped, interrupting my dull monologue. "So I I'll know how you think about it."

Anita, as gorgeous as she was, and she always had a way with words. She had a way with everything, so sweet and beautiful she was. And I found meaningfulness in her simple ways. That spark of imagination that she was, she made life exciting. 

"It's a tough one, I guess. I guess there are those times. Those moments, when you think you've completed yourself in some way, some purpose, through an extension of your work,..., that moment. And of course, I feel I'm most alive when I'm with you", I added with a smile.

Her cheeks dance to a silhouette in the yellow light from the fire. Her lips tremble with the burden of modesty, but she doesn't have to. No, she shouldn't.

Meanwhile, I wondered why I felt so naked tidied up in a turtle neck.


To be continued...

The Beginning of Something Beautiful

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Time was weeping for me. I felt blissfully calm though, as if floating in space, looking nowhere, seeing nowhere, dreaming nothing. There were people around me, but I could not bring to focus any one of their bodies, or comprehend what they wanted to say, or how they felt and where they touched. But their touch, it felt warm, and a little sweaty, too sweaty, as if they were deluging out of their palms, or maybe it was me. For a moment, I wished they would move away, and let me be. But then, in a moment of clarity, my dreamy existence transformed into transfigured reality. Blood was evacuating my body in a desperate and almost thankless lunge into the world, leaving me behind, dying. And my breathing suddenly became distinctly erratic, and my heart was pounding into my chest, while my lungs seemed to be caving in on themselves, still gasping for every last breath of air they could endear. Noise from all corners met my ears, but the heart thumping in my veins soon drowned every other sound. And then, it suddenly all went quiet again. I must have been sedated. I felt nothing.

But my eyes still gnawed at every little bit of the world that they could. I must be dying. I felt relaxed though, maybe, for once in my life. The power of nothingness seemed overwhelming seductive. I seemed to be spiraling into non-existence and it made sense. A slightly tragic end, for a man like me, one would say though, to die in a motor accident. Rather boring. No melodrama, no surrendered devotion from loved ones, no time really to do things or make a bucket list. Cancer, would have been better. And this was a tragic end for a man who was nice, for I didn't really feel like I deserved to die, no, not so soon, not now atleast. I had loved the only one woman of my life, loved everyone around me, friends, and family. Honest man, honest worker, honest person. Its funny when a doctor is dying. Not really, no, nothing special. I was just being poetic in the last few moments of my life. Maybe the sedatives were working. Damn, I was just electrocuted. Fuck you, you bastards, let me die!

And I felt myself lifting. Damn, again. Once again, I relapsed into consciousness. People grappled with their hair for a moment in utter delight or disbelief it was hard to discern and an almost sadistic urge of letting them down one last time got hold of me. I was trying to die. But, I wondered if it was really in my control. Of course it was! It was my brain, my heart, my life. But their lives were somehow integrated into mine. And my life was integrated into theirs. Like a tumor perhaps, or maybe a fungi on to a lichen, a sort of symbiotic relationship. I felt sad. I didn't wish to die now. I had to live. And while my heart asked for another pounding of high voltage electrification, I felt my brain giving up. Fuzziness predominated. Figures distorted. Thoughts distorted. A diaspora of emotions hit me simultaneously. I died. I lifted. I was very conscious of my death. I saw the people I loved. They were crying, agonizing, mourning, I could still feel their pain. I felt remorseful, and weakened by my own selfishness of wishing to die, and I felt remorseful, for I was still connected to their lives. Maybe I still hadn't died. I lifted further, I was in the air. Vacuum was now engulfing entirety. Every sight and sound was being siphoned out from the pulp of my existence.

The blur of cosmic colors like a constipating television set, a random number generator churning out coloration that made no sense now swarmed my vision. I had vision. It was a new beginning. A new world. Perhaps life, if this was life, would be calm now, like the prophets said while I lumbered through my life on earth. I felt hopeful. Yes, I seemed to be drifting. Unaware, of all bodily existence. My thoughts still wandered and drifted about this maze aimlessly. My vision seemed to have now acclimatized to this new way of life. I saw black. Seemed comforting. Better than a random number generator minimally. And I seemed to be growing again. I felt growth. I felt my body. I could feel numbness, in what surrounded me, but I could feel. Was this rebirth? I let that question pass for the time being.

I was in a room now. My vision had fully restored. This room was like a cave. The walls seemed irregular, porous, and lifeforms seemed to have carved a niche for themselves in the porous lime formation whose porosity seemed to have formed very much like the porosity in cakes I had had in my lifetime on earth. Almost funnily, the room seemed to be shrinking in volume while maintaining a sense of symmetry. Even the gods seemed to love symmetry. But it wasn't really funny anymore. I wished I was shrinking too. I had to, but no physiological or physical response however, seemed willing to ensure my existence. While my body was now concretising into a solid formulation, panic seemed to be engulfing a dawning sense of reality proposed by the walls closing in on me. I then noticed, it was an ellipsoid. The cave was an ellipsoid. An egg? Was this some sort of intermediate process that led to my re-birth? Meaningfulness that transcended my existence on earth, that was universal, an egg symbolizing re-birth? No, the question seemed to answer itself allegorically when the wall underneath started to give way to sharp blades, blades of reality, really sharp blades actually, like that of a chopper. I leaned on the walls of this ellipsoidal cavity I was in, grabbing at them, trying to hurl myself to the highest, safest, vantage point, but I was cycling back to the where I was. And underneath me, spun the blades of reality like portals to another world. I was being tortured.

The blades were now spinning faster than ever. But, I was safe for now. I seemed to have evaded them, evaded them for eternity. I had grabbed hold of something on the wall, and I was hanging in the balance, in a bit of discomfort, but well away from the blades. The walls seemed to have stopped closing in. My mind seemed to settle into a rhythm, and then into a sense of stationariness like that of a triggered waveform. I laughed, albeit sheepishly. A little fear encroached upon my musings time and again. There was alot to think about. I had still not quite obliviated the thoughts of my family. I wondered for a while. There was so much to think about. I felt excited, and I looked down to check once more at how the blades revolved aimlessly, awaiting my return to the fray like hungry beasts salivating at their prey. But when I looked down I was staring into a hole, a large hole, a void, an abyss, so deep that nothingness seemed on the end of it, and the blades started to revolve even faster. I hanged in the balance. The little protuberance that manifested itself on the wall and on which I hung myself now seemed to have taken an avid interest in my condition and seemed to be growing out to make life a bit more comfortable for me, or so it seemed. It grew like a finger aimed straight at my navel or genetalia, I couldn't be sure. But there was no time for speculation. And I wrenched and squirmed into a petrified-hedgehog-like pose to avoid the impending sectomy of whatever body I had grown again. And in exhaustion, I let go of the little protuberance from where I had initially grabbed it, and I and squatted my legs around the little cup-holder that had been formed by the protuberance fingering into the wall once more, right between my legs. And I felt my body spin around by my own inertia around the lower arm of the cup-holder, between my legs, and I hanged once again, but this time, by my legs. And my hair danced out to meet the abyss. And some got chopped like coriander in a electronic grater by the blades of reality while I serendipitously found a moment of calm to admire this Klein bottle of a cave.

Blood was now gushing into my head, and my pulse was throbbing. Was I being born? Was I being exterminated from a mother, my mother, her womb? This puzzle too, seemed to unravel itself rather immediately as if some higher force was being kind by answering all my queries. I saw people. No, not people. Just faces. No, not just faces, faces of people who had died before me in my lifetime. They were laughing at me, mocking me? No, there was a sense of sincerity in their laughter. They were being tortured too. Convulsions were beating through my head like a locust storm searching for cornfields in New Mexico. They were still laughing. I was being tortured. I tried laughing too. I laughed. And I saw the hole closing up again. And the walls started to again close in. The blades started to rise. I felt pain. Pain got redefined. I laughed, and I cried a bit. So did the other folks.

.

What can a man stand for?

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Wafts of dreamy, foggy air inundated the room with nostalgic cues to a derelict past and for a while the stillness of the moment seemed everlastingly comforting. An occasional glance at the bottle of wine, encouraged me. The red tranquility that passionately flowed, pursing my mouth, like a lover's devouring kiss, all inked on the paper that I let my pen gently traverse on. Hate I realised, was the perpetual state of my existence. In words not simpler did men often do justice to their cowardice. Men, of stature, these ignoble men, of many words, and profundity unparalleled, with lofty notions of right and wrong, and decisive. Decisiveness, its their decisiveness that I most despise. How foolish can man become. What do these men stand for? What can a man stand for?

I wish sometimes, I had not a mind, and a spirit I would be. I would wander aimlessly, wading through the long grasses in the Savannas or crossing rivers that poured into the Baltic Sea, and playing with the little black and sometimes white pebbles along the way. Then I would wander around robbing men and women of the pleasure of surreptitiously eying strange women and men by appearing before them like an eclipsing mass of nothingness or sit aimlessly in a corner of a street soaking the sun and looking at the old abandoned lump on the pavement and other indigent folk enjoying the sun with the same ardour, and endearing attachment as myself, and... just looking at people. Yes, I love people. I love their faces, their features, the lively suppleness with which they transform into symbols of love, hate, and fear, and calmness. And the puzzles people set out to solve each day, and how they are fooled into believing they have a reason to stand for something, stand for life maybe? And how they would rather put up with this torment for every ten more minutes of life, anything for life, and still keep wanting more of life ?

Nothing. There is nothing worthwhile standing for. There is no love worth endearing to, for not because it all must end in misery, but because its just not worth it. And I hate these men, who are urged to fight for a cause by some little impulsive tumor in their cerebral cortex, for their is no cause worthwhile standing for. Oh, the meaningless of it all! And yet, I despise myself and I truly, fervently, worship these men, and their ignorance. I wish one moment would pass that my mind didn't seek to reason with itself. No, a moment is transitory, and I cannot, cannot control my mind forever. I will shriek at you, for its a change over the monotony that ensues when I just let you be. I would rather just vomit and wrench my entrails till they bleed, than just sit by indolently smoking away this little cigarette into the nothingness where it belongs. No, I am a coward, and I would just smoke myself into nothingness thinking otherwise but not gathering the courage to do anything about it. I will laugh hysterically into the night in the loneliness of the moment that belongs to me alone, and if it is interrupted by the wind or by some unassuming bird, I will laugh a little more at the brittleness of even silence that I thought I could endear.

Out in the streets one day, I will explode into a fit of womanly anguish and simultaneously squirm like a little mouse in fear , sans reason, sans thoughtfulness, almost unexpectedly you would say. I don't want to attract attention! I just want to see the faces. The faces of all the people, some loathing me for taking up this little quadrangle of tarred road or a little space of their lives, that they wish to drive their cars over, only wishing if it were legal, so that they could drive it over me, and some people running off with a motley of supercilious smirks mixed with calculated reservation on their faces. Who knows who is better off at life, but they, these ignorant men and women, would unquestioningly believe that they are the ones unquestioningly happier and saner and richer and at peace. It is mystifying though, how an unexpected response by the universe puts people into such a paroxysm, and a quiet but repressed sense of unbounded satisfaction at the disruption of harmony ensues. But people, illogical, and ignorant as they are, repress desires. I won't, or maybe I will, for I am a coward. Oh, but the pleasure of the moment being one's own!

My room is unkempt, and so is my hair, so is my life. There is a portrait on the wall, and a fireplace where charred remains lie only to confirm their existence with me. And they think I will not lie? Could I be trusted? How unassuming, how naive, and innocently unfortunate, almost pitiable. Can anyone be trusted? The truth is not out there, its hidden and maybe its all meaningless. But this whole world still chooses to set out to live another day, to prove its existence to one another once again, that's all they do, and then get lost in the riffraff of it all and the tide of time, and in the anonymity of all existence. Scum, chemical scum spewed across the heavens. That is all we are. What can we stand for? There is nothing worth standing for, expect, maybe this one moment, and its guilty pleasures, for these pleasures are themselves meaningless.

And the smoke left my mouth in one final leap out to reach the stars and I let my pen slip, like my mind into slumber.
.

The Prisoner of Life

I wonder if he is a prisoner of life. He wakes up, with the mosquitoes all chewing him up, and chewing where they have already bit before. Before he knows it, he wanders off to the nearby market where the rediwaala sells his fresh cucumber and kakris all lined up and decorated. Just as the rediwaala looks away, he steals a few of his produce and stuffs them in his mouth, as he runs off to somewhere near. The sight of streetlights means he is nearing home.

He toils for a few paises and a cup of chai a day, sometimes selling balloons and toys, and sometimes wiping off all the window stains of the rich people in their cars. Sometimes he just begs for alms. He sees the day lift its curtains for night light to pour in, with a sweep of cool airy bliss. But sometimes, its just too cold, and so he runs, runs away from the cold, and to warm his body. But then, he runs out of air, and his lungs start to give in. So he settles down on a pavement on the land of mother earth. Sometimes, the police chase him off, but a very lucky few times, they mercifully let him be. As the frost starts to dig his grave, the sun, one lucky winter night, intervenes and acts like the mother who has only eyes for her child. But the sun has eyes for us all.

Mother earth and the fatherly sun are the only of his kin. One day, another fatherly figure in the form of an old man in his dying days wrapped around in a dilapidated, somewhere torn, and throurghly worn-out rug offers him his lifeline of so many years. The shivering lad, denies, in all self-restraint he can conjure up, by all self-respect he can search for somewhere lost. The father, however, loses his restraint, he doesn't survive the night. He remorsefully removes the rug from his naked body. He is thankful, but shivers in self-loathing, and runs away crying. He prays to some God he fears, and he is thankful, for the greatest gift he has ever received, even if remorsefully. But , maybe, he already has the greatest gift of them all. Maybe he has shame, something we never had when we let our country rot to what it is now.