One of those mornings...

“Coffee ready! Come over now.”

The day had begun with the right smell from the big black cup. The ruffling newspaper, the humming noise of the fan and ringing puja bells in some neighbour’s house permeated the room. Weekends have a different tinge altogether, the room seems cozier and the sofa softer and time seems to move lazily in the morning.

Aise jaagi re mai raat, koi neend ko tarse neend nahi…

“What’s the POA?” “Nothing…you tell me.”

“Movies?” “Naa…nothing interesting…”

“Hmmm…you wanna meet xyz?” “Nope…”

“You wanna shop? Go some place?” “Don’t feel like it.”

“Then say something that you want.” “I know what I don’t want as of now!”

And that’s how most decisions of life have been taken by me. It’s not based on what I want but by removing the things that I don’t want and staying with the remaining. Life proposes, and I dispose it off.

I don’t want to be an engineer. I don’t want to stay in a small city. I don’t want high heeled shoes. I don’t want over protective people around me. I don’t this, I don’t that…

I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known…

“Where you lost? The coffee’s really nice.” “Yes…it is beaten to perfection…”

The funny thing in these phrases is that they reflect a lot of things. Beaten to perfection…but who decides what perfection is. So many of us are beaten into becoming what we never thought we would be finally. We continue to question our actions even after the rest of the world is no longer concerned. Socialised, internalized, and trained. Spontaneity is also something we have learnt, and nothing comes naturally. I wonder what I would be like if I had not been told to do the things that I was told. What would I be like; if I had not met the people I met. They touch your lives, and their marks stay even after they are no longer there around you.

Like this cup of beaten coffee, which I had learnt from her, long back, somewhere in that historical part of me…

Now I am living in your afterglow…

“Feel like just catching up with myself. Guess will pick up some book and stay home.”

“Hmmm...ok...then I am off to my movies.”

Thhodi ankahee sunni sunani hai…

Conversation

It was a time warp: the same silent pauses and trickling thoughts and images. You could hear the laugh resounding through the hall with unfinished desks and chairs. And also feel the swaying dance on the collection of English songs. The whispers and the rush of blood to those cheekbones, ending in long conversations on the phone.

And us. At the very beginning.

“Sing a song.” “Now? You want to wake up the world to throw me out?”

“It was there…wasn’t it?” “Yeah…it was…”

The comfort of being silent and yet saying it all out, of reading the mind and the heart too, is difficult in today’s world of constant communication. You know, not the awkward silence, when there is nothing to say and you keep thinking what to say next, or hoping that the other person would pick some topic, or just leave. But the silence which you enjoy, where you are yourself without having to explain who you are and you wish that the words were lost forever and no one speaks again. That delectable silence was with us, around us, enveloping the real world.

“I still have that…” “What?”

“The last one you wrote…” “That was poison…throw that away…it can only hurt.”

“Yeah…it hurts the most…but I can’t let go of it…”

You would think why keep the last one, the one with the worst thoughts, the hatred, the anger, the hurt…when I threw the sweet ones away, the ones that would give the smiles, and lessen the agonising pain, the ones that would make me believe again…where it still was a fairy land.

But I can’t…it’s like the marks on the moon, or the thorns of the roses, which keeps reminding how it was not perfect, nevertheless beautiful in its way…it played its part in making me the way I am…and I surely don’t regret that.

“Wouldn’t you have written the same things?” “No. Never.”

“You can’t feel what I did.” “I can.”

Are we fighting? No we are not. There is no point in fighting now. There is no weight left. Time a healer? May be, maybe not. May be forgiving is the best way to alleviate the pain. When you can’t answer the recurring questions, and the questions hurt more than accepting things to be the way they are, like suspension of disbelief…I m going to literature again, using it to serve my purpose…

Or I am just being an escapist.

“It’s late…” “Hmmm…”

“Good night then…” “Ya...’gnite”

Trrrrrup Trrrrrup Trrrrrup <engage tone>