Duality - II

As from the dusty, punishing ground you arise

There’s a glimmer in your eyes

The sinner in me dances with the saint in you

I whirl around as you do too

And twirling and swirling we’re lost in a mist

That is pure unadulterated bliss

And in that moment we realize and are stunned…

The sinner and saint aren’t two – but one.

Me and I

Sometimes furious, at others calm
Ice-queen at moments, at others warm
Rebellious now, then by rules I abide
Wailing within, yet chirpy outside
Happily involved with life, yet battling ennui
Aah! this beautiful duality that's me...
Preview

Rain...

Rolling thunder, clapping lightning and plopping rain,
Fresh earthy fragrance and lush greens again...
Goosebumps on skin, a delighted smile on my face,
In this moment - right now - i'm in a happy place.

With You...Paradise

Across the playground I spy you,
There's a tug at my heartstrings,
As your eyes lock with mine,
A slow smile growing on your dew-fresh face.
I'm overwhelmed,
My heart begins to race,
As you cross that gulf and step into my arms.
The playground is now star-studded skies, lush open fields, gentle waves on the ocean...
The playground, ANYWHERE with you is Paradise.

Empty Spaces Between my Fingers

The door stays open, awaiting your silhouette;
The chair rocks gently in the breeze, empty, waiting for you;
The dent in the bed where you lay has still not filled up;
Your coffee cup stands in its place, untouched, unturned;
The newspaper stays-unfolded;
And since you've gone away, the spaces between my fingers
- that God made for u to fill with yours - stay empty, lonely;
Sighing, I stare at those spaces and then look at the open door...
When will you come?

A Love Affair Called Cricket

And we say cricket is a gentleman's game. Where they hurtle a ball at the speed of (well almost) a misslie at each other - and sometimes even at people watching them :D. Where they spit and blow their nose on the same pitch they slide on. Where they say "FUCK YOU" to (almost) every one who goes out of the field.

But that's not what I'm musing about. I'm pondering at this love affair that each Indian has with this game - down from a 3 year old to a 93 year old. And every cricket-junkie is like a possessive, doubting, yet worshipping partner. There's SO much investment in the game - emotional, financial, physical (what do you mean you've never heard of people beating each other up coz their personal god was insulted by another?!?). As in a relationship, there's one partner so giving (that's the team for you!) and the other partner (the country) so demanding. A small slip and there's Cain to be raised! Let one date (read match) be that isn't all fireworks and adrenalin and the doubting game begins. Along with, of course, the gossiping, the bitching, the making up....

This country is MAD about this game. EVERYthing else pales in comparison - my dad's just come back home today after a heart attack and a stent insertion in one of his arteries and he's sitting up and watching the match. My nephew's 8 years old and he's stuck to one spot coz "koi out ho jayega agar mei hila, bua". I'm sitting there and clapping till my hands are sore - sometimes both hands together, sometimes one hand on my mouth! I'm at a bank in the afternoon and everyone's working furiously, so work can be done and everyone can go home by 2 to watch the match. I step out at 4, the streets are empty. I'm out to purchase something and the store owner says, "come tomorrow, if we've won, I'll give you a 50% discount!" Diwali has competition - there's so many people bursting crackers, I'm wondering if this is March or October!

Well, this is one affair that doesn't show any signs of waning. There may be small flings on the side (football, etc) but the real love goes on...Read my FB wall and you'll know what I mean. The entire country, Blue Boyz included, is in orgasmic ecstacy at the moment.

Sly...On the Fly

It NEVER fails to amaze me, every time I come face to face with it - this slyness that is a multitude of people. Quietly, stealthily, they act, treading on toes so soft, you hear them only long after they've walked. And it's times like these I wonder - WHY am I such a loudmouth? Why have I not learnt the art of closing on deals/finding of love/meeting my aspirations/you name it, quietly? Why MUST I share of everything so openly? So openly that another grabs of the idea and then the opportunity and doesn't breathe a word of it...

And when i'm mulling, does it strike home...this is what makes me me. This is what makes me walk tall. This - the openness of intentions, the uncrookedness of heart.

And I go back to being me. Not sly on the fly, not crooked on the human beat. Me, with my glass of wine in my hand and light in my heart. Smiling, Me.

Resignation: From Job of Life

Dear God,

I would hereby like to tender my resignation from my role of being Shaluu Bhucchar in your company called The Earth.

The last 34 years have been tumultous. I guess I took on the role eagerly enough - it's been so long, I may not quite remember those earliest moments clearly. But there are definitely enough that stand out in memory fairly vividly. Like my father kissing my mother a good day before leaving off to work everyday. I learnt the importance of love and connecting with people you love there.

Or the time I didn't know which schoolbus to take for back home on my first day of school. That was a fairly horrifying moment but one I remembere well. The conductor - a boy with a face pitted with craters (that's what they seemed then), an arm clutching the side of the window next to the door, his head and one shoulder bursting out of the door, leaning over the steps and attached to that dangling arm - shaking his head side to side when he read my address card attached to my uniform...And he closed the doors on me. I learnt the need to know your stuff well from there, I guess.

Or the time I was gathered into the arms of a neighbour reeking of something bad, taken into his house and thrown upon the bed as his alcohol-ridden body came closer and closer and closer...till I passed out. That's when I learned to grin and bear it - and worse, make exuses for someone else's wrong. Over and over and over again.

Like when I got elbowed in the stomach because my sibling wouldn't study. Or when my sibling and I got wrongly accused of stealing our granny's money while God knows who'd who'd done it. I guess this is when I learned to be a kleptomaniac. Might as well do it if you're getting blamed for it!

And oh, the time when I grew taller than anyone else in the class and wore a "new" haircut AND got braces on my teeth to boot. Everyone made fun of me then. Some called me Madhuri-Dixit look-alike - obviously being thin added to the trauma, some jeeringly called me a "pole, wearing clothes". That's when I developed bravado and near-perfect English. I had to look down upon them with something, after all!

Or that time when I thought someone "loved" me. And yet was ashamed to "present" me to his parents because they "weren't understanding and accepting of anyone but their own choice". That's when I first learned I wasn't good enough. There started my journey of doing things the way I wanted to do them, dressing the way I wanted to dress....THAT led to the (awful) perm which made my hair form a (what-I-thought) halo around my face!

Of course there were consequences of this transition - being labelled a rebel. Being admonished. Being the cause of my parent's misery. Transitioning from a happy, laughter-filled child to an angry, free-willed pain. Deepening the chasm between myself and the peopleI used to know as my parents. Still trying to fill THAT chasm. It's only ever deepening...

So I moved into spirituality and started searching - one guru after the other, one source of succor after the other...Some helped, some didn't. Disillusioned with the world of Godmen, I discovered God and God's peace that I was looking for. In myself. So-aham - I am that. Shivoham - I am Siva, I am that.

And the day when I overcame my kleptomania because I decided the thumping heart, the sweaty palms and the guilt afterwards were not worth it. I guess it had been my way of proving to myself that I was good. Oh yes, the fear of the karmic cycle added as a huge impetus :)

Oh, moving out of home. That brought a little relief. I could do as I pleased and somewhere, I could begin to make my mark. I did and moved back in, yet stayed in my own little world of excelling. That's what I have done for the last 15!

And now I'm tired.

Tired of the hypocriscy. Tired of the one-upmanship game. Tired of being blamed. Tired of blaming. Tired of being angry. Tired of being told I'm not good enough. Tired of trying to prove I am. Tired of covering up. Tired of a thumping heart when something doesn't go the way it "should".

I'm tired of this job. And so I'd like to resign from this life.

So I can create another.

Please accept my resignation at the earliest effect.

Pleadingly yours...

Tucked Away in my Heart - That Day...

I sat there frozen as I read the words over and over again - "i'm in love". You'd posted this in cyberia. I don't know today what was worse - reading it or having to read it. All I remember is sitting there, wave after cold wave racing up my spine to crash somewhere deep within. And yet, the person that I am sat there, my back rigid, my face impassive - despite that I was alone, in a hotel room, far, far away from anyone I know who shouldn't see me as anything but in control. The screen sat in front of me, hurling the words at me, over and over again.

I don't know for how long I sat there, just staring right back at the screen, images of you and me flashing, movie-like, at my favorite restaurant, eating my favorite dish - which you came to love too, then sitting outside by the pool of the hotel - my feet on your chair, not wanting to go back home wishing the moment froze in time...the long drive back home when I asked you to take a detour because I REALLy did not want the evening to end.....or the time we were just walking out after lunch and I missed a step - so drunk was I on "our" love :) - and how you reached out, your hand on my back - to steady me...us at the airport - you there for your flight, me for mine. Remember how giddily excited I was? It was such a whole new experience for me - like a secret, divinely arranged rendezvous - with the man I loved at the airport at the same time...

And then the hour alarm on my phone went off. I glanced at it reproachfully for having snatched away my moments with you and realized it was past 2 in the morning. With a sigh I got up, no energy to change, but dragged myself to. Careful, precise movements. Nothing should hurt, nothing should crack - not even when alone. I got myself into the bed and thanked myself for the quilt.

In my exhaustion, alone in what was till now a beautiful room - with a beautifully landscaped patio I could walk out to and lounge in - it was the quilt that gave me succor.

You, in love, were far, far, really far away that day.

Tucked Away in my Heart - The Pain

Nonu, the pain is as raw today as it was then.

Today I was going through all my old mails in a bid to clean out my maibox - received and sent. I went through the journey you and I took before we went our ways - you to your destination and me, looking for mine. So many of those mails brought a smile - like the one we exchanged when I had a bad cold and had been sneezing all over and you'd replied with a "God Bless you, all over" :) Or even the one where you said "missy, thanks for the smart ass comments" and I'd replied 'you DID mean sexy ass comments, didn't you :D".

But then, the ones toward the end...especally the one after you'd disconnected a call saying "you've got to be kidding me". No I wasn't. It had taken a lot of internal turmoil for me to make that call to you, but you were wrapped up in the coziness of a new marriage, to make out the catch and the tremble in my voice...you who could over a long distance call make out the faintest lilt in my voice could now not hear the screaming tremble in my whisper while in the same town. The mail I wrote to you then still scalded the wound I thought had healed.

I know what you're thinking (whichever way - rolled eyes or with a wistful sigh) Bachcha,move on. I thought I had too, but today makes me question that. The pangs are just as strong. Strong enough to bring tears to my eyes.I thought these were all done and dealt with.

What do I do now? I was safe in my coccoon,wrapped in the gossamer of self-belief and quietly buried love. Today I find the shell breached and that a tiny grain of sand is whipping up a teary storm inside.

Will the pain form a pearl? I don't know.

What I do know is I bleed and the pain - it stays - tucked away in a small part of my heart.

Esurience

The esurience of man
We want all we see
Our eyes tell it all
Our actions, plain as can be
Water, sky and earth
We plunder for what they're worth
Nary a thought
for replacing what we take -
Voracious, rapacious, edacious are we.
Beware, my fellow man
Of the day
when all this is done
What then, of us will become
This is the thought
That, to my core, frightens me.

A Smile Within

staring at the falling rain
sitting by the window sill,
A cup of steaming tea,
and a sandwich of rye n dill
A happy, peppy tune
playing through in my head
Fingers drumming the cup,
feet tapping on the bed...
Cool breeze brushing past hot skin
Sending a shiver without
and bringing a happy smile within.

Drenched

'twas a cool breeze that tugged at me
pulling me out of my confines
to under a dark, naked sky
Here were the clouds pouring forth
There I was, heart filled with mirth
They swirled, I twirled,
They raged, I engaged
They pranced, I danced
Until we were both completely spent
They were wrung dry
and I, I was, to the very core of my being,
Drenched - with God's love and nature's endless joy - drenched!

I leave...

As without a backward glance,
I tiptoe out toward the sea,
I leave behind the daughter,
The sibling, the woman,
The essence that was me.

Rain...

stretched out on tiptoe in my balcony,
the rain kissing my eyes.
goosebumps gifted by the breeze,
aah, an invitation to a million sighs