Okay this one's the last, I promise

Misery and love. It all starts there. The two far-famed muse that turn boys and girls into writers, poets and dreamers. There will be a gaping hole in all our heads and hearts if neither did not exist. There is a lot of poetry I have stowed away, and I admit they stemmed for either one or both of the above. But must I subject my readers to such outcomes alone? I think not.

People not blogging regularly only bothers you when you start to blog way more than regularly. When I have nothing else to do, I do the only thing that I know how to. Keep writing. But could there be such a thing as too much blogging? It doesn't matter. Because once I find something to do that is a little more productive than playing with velcrow for two hours, I will disappear once again. I'll get lost in my world of new things, like a child returning from summer break. I'll have all my new stationary and people and responsibilities to play with.
*

I packed light, checked out of his life. No goodbye said. It's not an easy thing to say, when your heart is splashing about somewhere in your stomach. I walked away without a second look; turning back would be impossible.

I was six days and many imaginary miles away from him. A stir in the hard, closed fist behind my ribcage. It pounded like a voodoo drum under my shirt. I sat in silence, as still as I could. Images bounced around in my head, perfumed and prettily framed. He smiled, carving funny faces with his calloused fingertips into my beatific hands. An ominous thud within my insides. I woke up in a ransacked bed, my hair knotted with nostalgia. Running through my mind: an endless silent movie of his hands, his hands, his hands.

Ants don't get me

Today, I bit into an ant. It bit my tongue first because I bit into a toffee that I had left lying on my table some 574849 days ago and it, the ant, was on it. When you find candy/toffee you left lying somewhere 574835 days ago (I swear I tried to randomly type the same number again), check for ants? So anyway, I bit into an ant. And it was crisp.
And then after I was done biting into some yummythings so the yucky feeling on my tongue would go away, I saw one ant. On my pillow! Then I dusted like a maniac for twenty minutes at least, so the one ant or its other crawly companions will not form a rather disciplined line and march into my ear and eat off my brain or something.

Anyway, I've been writing and writing some more and then dying to write when I'm not writing, in the past few days. Love has been ebbing and flowing and overflowing in every direction, so I OD-ied happily, wrote a lot and spread a lot of yellow cheer. Now, the seas are calm once again and I'm back to my happy little hole.
I was DYING to write something this afternoon, but powercuttedoff! And I, shamefully, cannot write too well on pen and paper anymore. Backspace is vital. So then the inspiration evaporated along with my sweat and I sat down with my giant book and coffee to get me through the rest of the day. Butbut my walls are all empty and sad, except for this beautiful thing. Love!

So, will you paint me a funkyfunky poster, pliss?  =)

I'm actually enjoying unemployment this time.
*Blink blink* 
Must get restless soon, before I get too comfortable 
*Blink blink*

Another one

The stereo is vomiting our every song one by one.
But there is a silence, thick as custard
that tells a story of
two lovers and twenty thousand loves.
You are here with me, listening too.
Climbing on to my collar bone,
licking my earlobe and teasing my every sense,
before you settle, lodged between my ribs.

I think always, of how it would be
if we stayed close enough to touch
but not kiss,
to discover what we loved
and hated before we separated.
I wished that in the whiteness of your room,
I found a space next to you,
just by your side -
to see the world
the way you saw it.
Staring at the ceiling didn't
feel the same without you.

Still, I have no regrets.
I am more fragrant now that
I recognise myself as an entity separate from you.
I reek of my own mistakes,
and bloom alone on dewkissed magenta mornings.
But one day, we will bloom together once again,
shaming sunflowers and shutting up glottis.

You are yours and I am mine.

One day, very soon,
I will have words to put out here,
words of promises and pencil tips
and rubber soles and leaky houses.
Words of love -
to say to nobody in particular,
but say nevertheless.
And I hope you will be there,
and you will listen.
You will tell me the things I want to hear
and draw a smile on my teary face
with your finger tips dipped in love.
Just like you always did.

Reboot love! X)

Written on: June 5th, 2010.

On 19th June 2009

I had loved you,
when I saw you smiling into the rear-view mirror
While you saw patterns in strewn match sticks,
I saw a photograph in your face.

I had loved you,
when we sat on the side of the road talking,
taking in the city sunset behind crowded flyovers.
I watched you get excited about a pile of stones, smiled.


I had loved you,
when we sat together in mundane coffee shops
waiting for the waiter to turn away, so we can slip in a kiss.
We smiled as we left and held hands till the parking lot.


I had loved you,
when your nails were dirty
and your knuckles a little sore,
I still have that sketch - cigarette ash on paper.

I had loved you,
when we lay on the floor and spoke about my insecurities.
You told me I was a writer.
I believed you.


I had loved you,
when you told me you loved me
amidst tears and smoke and an old geyser.
They probably heard us, but we didn’t care.


I had loved you,
when I stood out my door and hugged you everyday,
like it was our last.
I watched you ride away and resisted calling you back.


I had loved you,
when you tried to jive
and looked like a fool, a fool that made me smile.
That white shirt always made me smile.


I had loved you,
when we sat listening to music
and sipping Earl Grey, smoke leaking
from our kissed-red lips.


I had loved you,
when you held the guitar like a woman
and gave her all your love.
I wanted to be her, to own and be owned.


I had loved you,
when you painted and sketched
and wrote something new.
I told you I loved it, even if it missed an apostrophe.


I had loved you,
when we leaped into the sea
with the smell of waves and the sound of pot.
Laughing like children, dirtied with sand and salty water.

I had loved you,
when you laughed like a child,
loved like a man and
smiled like a saint.

I had loved us, darling.
We were the loneliness in a crowded bar,
that buzz between drink and drunk. 

Written on: 19th June 2009 ofcourse

Older

My grandfather prayed twice everyday, for forty two years. At some point, he was an atheist - a young rebel and all that. No one seems to know what changed that about him.

He was a brilliant man, who studied law but refused to practice it. He settled for a mediocre life - worked in a bank all his life, got married at an early age and had four children. He retired early and saved nothing. He smoked a lot and chewed a lot of beetle leaves. Highly passionate and quite exaggerated at times, he was always a bit of an eccentric. He studied English and French voraciously all his life. After he retired, he became a French tutor. Literature and cricket were his greatest passions and Kamal Hassan, his greatest hatred. “The man sounds like he's vomiting every time he utters a word”, he would say.

From the time I remember, he read with a magnifying glass. He was going almost blind from the age of forty, but so what! He was too passionate to give up on his books for such a silly reason. He also carried a black umbrella everywhere he went and made note of his every expense in a little notebook. He insisted on tallying the account to the paise, every day. If he couldn’t remember something and the account did not tally, he’d make up an expense and tally it anyway.

On January 20th 2009, he died. When he died, he was not reading, teaching, writing accounts or praying anymore. Sometime in 2000, he had a stroke that paralysed the left side of his body. Within a few years, he was completely bed-ridden. You’d never think so if you met him, but he relied heavily on my grandmother for everything. When he was bed-ridden, shriveled up to no more than 4 feet in all, he still demanded for masala dosa every Sunday and made funny noises and a disgusted face when something was not done satisfactorily for him. When someone visited, he'd complain endlessly about my grandmother in the only word that came out of his mouth: “Peru”.

In those nine years of life in a corpse, he re-discovered his childhood. From being carried to the bathroom and given sponge baths, to fussing about watching television late at night, he seemed to have become a child all over again. But he was a man driven by his pride, his good looks and intelligence all his life. And he did not let that fade. You see him lying there, all shriveled up, in an almost fetal position, growing skinnier, his skin rotting before your eyes, and you could feel nothing but admiration. He was almost a vegetable, but a proud one nonetheless. It must be that resolve and strength of character that made him live in that condition for so long. Every time we visited we’d suppose it to be our last, but the next time he’d be smiling his toothless smile, having that proud look on his face after every shave.

His death was peaceful and quiet. It was nothing extravagant, no fuss or drama - very unlike him. The last thing he did was hold my grandmother’s hand, making sure that the coffee she was pouring from the tumbler did not enter the wrong hole.

I should've learnt French. You are an inspiration. At least, not many men are as handsome these days – already balding at 30, but still strikingly handsome.