Stereo & Mono

Since its not my first brush with a mono existence, cant really dwell on the pluses of being introduced to a completely new form of living....

but having been here more than once, have to explain what it feels like...

almost like this small protective screen engulfs your ears alone, which in a way protects your sensibilities too, from all the nonsensical crap floating around in the extremely close by universe...and from all that meaningless chatter that makes for tears and scary nightmares in moments when you give in to those idiosyncrasies....

point being this time round...my trembling cough sent out shivers that scared those little fragile pink membranes inside my ear (which i am yet to see) and made them shrivel and shrink into no man's land making me shift from stereo to mono in less than a second...but as I reveled in the newly found freedom of being able to blame everything on my temporary partial deafness, the inner walls decided to rebel against this unnecessary injustice meted out to them and sent out a fresh round of tremors which rocked the inner membranes and all the other inhabitants of those little cramped spaces, making me yelp and want to poke it out...but alas they were hidden away so cleverly all I could do was curse out loud...

anyways then I took it upon myself to go to Sitaram Bhartia hospital, which is so stony cold that it makes you cringe and wonder if anyone who is warm hearted could ever venture into those four walls and feel cared for....to top it all in the form of art they have paintings or whatever of absolutely ghastly creatures who in the dark could give anyone a heart attack (ah now it hits me, a smart business move, give the old man a heart attack, get him admitted to your own clinic and then rob him of all the money he ever earned in his younger days....he will die soon enough)...anyways as i waited there was this old couple waiting for the same doc...the old woman was really and i am being more than honest here, ready to kick the bucket, yet she had a cellphone, had just undergone surgery to fix her rattling knees and so was in a wheelchair and her problem was her ears were acting up and she could not hear clearly when someone called on her mobile!!!! christ some people love live with such tenacity it makes me wonder about my own thoughts of death!!! am i being completely unfair or am i actually being benevolent and making way for such hapless creatures who despite being ready to be packed off refuse to say DIE!!!!

anyways back to my mono state....

i finally met the man...very soft spoken...and then he invited me to sit on a ghastly looking white chair that reeked of dettol and had a huge shelf full of all sorts of hand held tools that made me wonder if i wouldnt but merely die from fright the minute he approached my ear with something that resembled a giant shredder with spikes attached....okie am shivering now....

anyways he didnt ...instead he first gave me an image makeover...i had a pair of nice clean cold tongs inserted into my nose to keep my nostrils wide apart....(ahem), then he inserted an elongated ice cream spoon made of that thin woodish thingie into my throat, and then two small funnels (black ) into my eardrums and then wore another nonsensical thingie and then stared right down my ear with a powerful light....now my poor fiance sat and watched me like this and i am sure for one millionth of a second he did wonder ...frankly she looks just the very same and christ i have to wake up next to this witch every morning, shall i bolt out the door and to freedom????? poor man...he looked sympathetic, but hey i am a mind reader honey!!! i shall pay you back sometime too!!!

okie once again back....

and then he pronounced the verdict...congrats you cannot party one teeny weenie bit...both your eardrums have pulled back and your nose and throat are so fucked it aint funny...and then came the medicines and so forth and anyways now i have to go back for more tests...and am dressed like someone aptly called me eminem's sister with a rapper cap....

point being at random moments i wished back those hours of ignorance...but then again its better this way, though i must admit, the worst part of it all was that i couldnt poke the area where there was pain an counter it with another shot, which according to me works in the same way as an equal and opposite force negates the initial one's effect....

ah having mixed the nuances of physics into my life, i feel very intelligent for now...and having worked a few of my faculties at the same time, i must take a few minutes of rest...

frankly am tired of my ears for now....so lets change topics....

i shall return...and soon enough too...

Pink it is

and while i am still fuming....

why did hutch have to go pink? had read that they spent a fortune on some ad man who "creatively" came up with the need for this change...

point being last night while on the drop back home, some FM station was talking about this and decided that their entire show should be about this colour change and the linkage they drew was even more fascinating...

which is the one sms that made you go pink in the face...

and i assume given a chance the host of the show would have been sporting a pink something too...and not baby pink mind you but fluorescent pink...

ah....

now the hutch pug on a bill board looks sinister in those dark shades, almost hidden with just some glaring teeth visible...

i thought the ad campaign was playing on the cuteness of the pug who followed the kid around and didnt they win an award too???

sometimes certain forms of creativity have absolutely no rationale behind them...

but then is creativity supposed to be rational at all will be the question thrown at me...

hey i dont like a pinky hutch period!

Never Take Your Competition Lightly!!!

what if its not competition at all?

(before I go on maybe I should admit that I am obsessed with OH MY GOD and that too Janice style though till date I have never considered her worthy of even being acknowledged....she is irritating to say the least...but before I get sidetracked)

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!

that man was supposed to be god...the ultimate boss...the one you would give a leg and an arm and some more to work with...

and what has he but done...and that too why did it take so much money to put out something that crappy?

what is that channel? CNN-IBN they call it....their ticker band is nothing but a mish-mash of inane colours....the logo is nothing but CNN (pssst why add those little three letters when frankly nobody will get beyond CNN) and the same signature (if they can actually be called that) tunes and a bad set, bad colours (confused between yellow, orange and red and something else) and a desperate attempt to look different even in the promos which make you want to cry and even rethink your former adulation of his journalistic skills...and silly babes trying to ape Ayesha Faridi's Get a Life!, though I cant stand that woman too..she is Good eye candy and to give her some credit has made that part look nice....this one has silly women who cant spell entertainment straight or even maybe malkovich....to top it all...I think its an attempt to make it personalised and making them reach out and not look so clinical and cut off from real life...blogs by the protagonists on the channel's website....

GOD the expectations alone would have gotten the man the entire market...and this...

but what beats me is this...why does one person expose his weaknesses on air...on a soft launch you never expose the shortcomings of your channel and yet that is what they do...with this chirpy bespectacled man, one mr aiyar who is so happy to be on air in the middle of the night and makes an overt attempt to wake u and make you watch the tv screen touting a dog running on a treadmill as enticement making you search for a smelly shoe to shove up his arse!!!!

OH MY GOD!!!!

okie I am angry, disappointed that he let me down and now I shall refrain from mouthing even more foul stuff....

have to maintain some decorum in public domain....

shouldn't I?

Trembling Delhi

...run there's an earthquake....screamed Golu...or rather get a cameraman to shoot it first he exclaimed...even as i wondered if it werent currents generated by his running across the slim flooring, others stood by watching a camera man zoom into an array of Television sets hoping against hope of catching a shot that could be played out during the next bulletin...another madame was running for her life even as she screamed out into the mobile that she was but trying to save her precious life....(beautiful might have been the exact words she used) and others watched in sheer mirth this replay of events past....

its funny but in the close to 7 years i have been in delhi...none of these earthly activities have managed to ruffle my feathers and i mean that literally too....only reiterating my belief that i was not meant to be on this planet or even lightyears near it...

but having caught your attention....

i watch in muted exasperation as my colleague gears up to make public his innate capabilites for fame...some people indulge in absolutely breathtaking and stupefying journalism.... OH MY GOD...(exactly like Janice of friends fame would have intoned making you want to clutch at your balls...oops whatever substitute a woman can find too....) and what did sir do...he went looking for men who are technically in hiding...and did a piece which smacked of self love more than investigation and then tried out his language skills while his ruffled hair and stupid countenance made you want to break every goddamn tv set in the vicinity....well having watched that i am beginning to look at this profession in a new yellow light...not good considering i was seriously hoping to make my career out of it...but these nuggets which for sure will be thrown back at you by nincompoops who think they have the qualification and mettle to be your boss only make me realise maybe my childish longing to be a valet may have been much more honourable and satisfying....

but then why am i crying in vain when basically what is frankly hurting me is not that he tarnished the name of serious journalism but that my boss has flipped over it ahd now he will get a raise due me....funny ways this universe operates in....

but the only constant seems to be my list of irreversible hatred...and the constant additions to it over the years..have i eliminated any so far???? naay have found even more satisfying ways of getting back...

Am I touchy?

"You look horrible..that jacket looks weird, your hair looks completely tussled....hey..don't scratch your eyes now...go wash them!!!!!"

she had just walked in...

oh my god was i such a disaster to look at? she thought as she tried hard to hold on to the curses and anger boiling within...

what the fuck????

"why the hell are you ordering me around...i know how to take care of myself!"

"fine from now on never ask me what to do and i will never give you my opinion"....the critic and lover responded.

"yeah right, you never listen to me...why the hell should i listen to you...and who the fuck are you anyways to be telling me what to do...bloody shit...you good for nothing idiot...." her tirade seemed endless and he walked out...


whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr to present....

one of those nasty stupid fights....

what is with people? its amazing how one can suddenly adorn the garb of the prey instead of predator after having set in motion those wheels that elicit those nasty, angry responses....

why is it so easy to always shut up and clam up rather than fight your ground, get it off your chest and then move on...having buried it for good....that somehow never happens....not such a very good thing i would say... old timers said that never go to bed angry...fight it out and then sleep in peace...well that seems hardly a possibility in the given situation...is it that both parties are merely way too touchy? or just that one person has no clue how to deal with her anger or that the other shies away from unnecessary arguments or maybe necessary but that again is subjective aint it?

i dont know...somehow i have come to believe that maybe at times, silence is but the best policy....

flashback....

i hit back and he beat the crap out of me....i didn't bat an eyelid nor did i cry and he kept at it...it angered him more to see me hold on instead of giving way...would that have been smarter at that point of time? but i am not a coward and so why should i back down....

whirrrrrrrrrrrr...

maybe its that unnecessary ego at times...or maybe stubbornness...and the stupid echo....i shall not be the loser nor will i let him have the last word...

who is at fault?

i think him, and he vice-versa...

but who is right?

i dont know....

thats the whole point....

so now what???

silence post an argument may be quite unnerving.....

excerpts....Whispers in the Dark!

The Butterfly Effect

Last night I forced myself to watch Ashton Kutcher (who is particularly ugly and should not be an actor even by mistake) merely out of curiosity...evoked by the name of the movie...sounded intelligent and unlike Kutcher and my limited knowledge of chaos theory....

anyways point is....the movie tries to stay focused on its title and makes Kutcher do weird things...over and over again...(painful to even see Kutcher bungling along with different hairstyles and to top it all...minus both hands...and then those plastic handle like replicas using which he drops some eatable and then looks oh so pitiable......corny to say the least...)

the basic idea is brilliant..but that everyone knows...

"a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo could cause tornadoes in California"

point being how did they assume that by merely making letters shiver within a notebook and slick editing and merging shots they could induce the same effect through Kutcher....that man was OTT...and so was the director....and throughout he plays by extremes...making Kayleigh's brother a devout Christian who runs to the chapel when he thinks Evan is out of line when they meet his mother...and suddenly she is suffering from cancer...with blonde hair..why does the mother's hair keep changing colour....and worst of all trying to use a kid to yell at a paedophile...who excels in making child porn and now suddenly the minute a 7 year old gives him a dressing down he corrects himself and reforms his ways....

holy mother of god.....what were they thinking....

too much of anything can be too bad they say...and its almost like the director fell in love with effects..make the page shiver...dissolve into the past and make Kutcher bumble some more....

I could have caught up on some sleep to say the least.....

Of Cyclones and Nomenclature

What is with the public...Katrina, Rita, Pyaar, Baaz, Fanoos....no logic anywhere there and why first women and the illogical words to refer to these scary and natural disasters...is it an attempt to bring some humour in so we don't shiver like we should at the mere mention of these events or is it to trivialise them altogether? whatever the intention, since it's not in the public domain my angst is more than justified...I mean when I hear a headline that say Rita headed to New York...if i was not one of those happening journalists or someone who was in the area or someone who watched news so closely he could tell you the fabric the anchor was wearing... i would simply imagine some famous person was headed to that town...a follower of Bill Gates or maybe the next Mother Teresa in the making....and for that very same reason maybe tragedy should be treated with as much respect as we deem other events....

And it seriously smacks of bad creativity too....

anyways i have a blanket dislike to all such "funny, creative and apt" names....

Closet Creativity

Not really...i am very proud of knowing the language of our rulers absolutely well and being able to play with it like i want to....

anyways this is me...http://poetsindia.com/poet/Dhanya+Krishnakumar/

My man, Heathcliff

"I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It's a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase in pain,"

Chapter 14...Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

One of my favourite quotes...I had this up on my table....People thought I was woozy up there...Honey did you ever bother to read Wuthering Heights....an all time favourite of mine...A brilliant piece of work...I read it in school and fell in love with Heathcliff....his style of loving Catherine Earnshaw....It's love on another plane...where both their definitions differed yet...He can withstand anything against him to be with her...

And for one instant even I was fooled thinking here was this woman who made him enact this entire charade on the pretext of reciprocating that love...but then she confirms to one and all through her medium Nelly..."Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same"....

In that juvenile fervour I wished to be part of something so surreal and all consuming.... something that would even make death bow down its head it shame...where one person wishes in all sincerity that the other does not rest in peace but haunts the surviving partner till they are joined even in the other world...

Heathcliff burnt in a fire that was obsessive passion and lifelong vindictive hatred....and ultimately when he dies you actually heave a sigh of relief for at long last the man is for once in his life at peace...with himself...his love...with Catherine....the only true emotion he ever knew....

And then I chanced upon the cartoon strip Heathcliff...a dumb mutt....oopsie they were slandering the name of the man who according to me is one of the greatest heroes in literary history and I was expected to smile at the dumb mutt's irreverent actions!!!!! Hell no....

Heathcliff, the master of Wuthering Heights, the irate misanthropist...you rule....

You Ignored Me

Sometimes it's the absence of great teachers that shapes your life and being ignored can be just as good for a person as being lauded. ....Julia Roberts

I stumbled upon this...and I remembered I had been ignored many a time...was I now famous and doing wonderfully well for myself? not that I knew of..unless in some corner of Mars there was a temple to celebrate my existence on a faraway planet....the god that could not be seen or heard or touched so easily...not that I minded such adulation...but praise from places I couldn't watch and enjoy from is of no use as far as I understand....neither is posthumous praise any good...then what good is your existence?

it's easy to spit out wonderful sounding insensitive nuggets which don't apply to you in any which way....I would say the same if I were the reincarnation of Oprah winfrey and I was the highest earner and then I could say I don't mind being ignored...frankly I would rather I was ignored....

as of now, I would like all the attention I can gather...I am a vain creature who needs to be told every now and then how wonderfully idiotic and dispensable I am...even that would be a compliment...point being its like how I give all those lesser mortals moments from my precious and short life by even acknowledging them and making them feel that I did even for a split millionth of a second I cared enough to make inane conversation....but there my point proven I shall go silent.....till I state the next part of my case...

Hippocrates Oath

ah...but i am not a shrink and i can ramble on...

i love this...

note: if i were but a shrink would i have ushered in more suicides than more success stories of those who bounced back to mental well-being? i have way too many scary thoughts..maybe that's why i am not a shrink in the first place...

zip back to present....

i am glad i can be brutally honest about all...and my bitchy boss and my stupid depressing surroundings and what not...

the point being atleast i can revel in the knowledge that i am talking about people who may be reading it and there is nothing..absolutely nothing they can do about it...

i love the freedom of speech...

A discovery and how...

Superiors are meant to lead....some evoke a sense of overwhelming disgust in those who work under them and those even at the same level....

they say an old dog cannot be taught new tricks and here was the perfect example...my friends told me this medium reeks of infidelity and i guffawed...

oops way too soon archana said...she was right once again...

he was shameless but he would determine my raise....

so well i wrote....

and then mustered up enough courage to tell him to his face what i felt...

i never got a raise...

instead i got an additional boss....a frigging bitch

Monologue..a discovery

sometimes things around you influence you in some ways you do not want to...but in this case i wrote and wrote and discovered the meaning of a monologue...




Abysmal love


“Love has meaning only insofar as it includes the idea of its continuance. Even what we rather glibly call a love affair, if it comes to an end, may continue as a memory that is pleasing in our lives; we can renew the sense of privilege and reward of having been allowed such intimacy and sharing. But Lust dies at the next dawn, and when it returns in the evening, to search where it may, it is with its own past erased. Love wants to enjoy in other ways the human being whom it has enjoyed in bed; it looks forward to having breakfast. But in the morning Lust is always furtive. It dresses as mechanically as it undressed and heads straight for the door, to return to its own solitude.”
Henry Fairlie


Thick headedness and arrogance clouded my reason as I persisted in loving that man who had vanquished my heart. My overwhelming emotions giving substance to my longing and speech I tried in vain to get him to turn back and come to me. But he had merely chosen to obey societal norms and fate in relinquishing me. My lover was from a land of intelligent women who dazzled their pearls and who indulged in academic debates. Given my origins I had been anything but sufficient to meet his standards. And yet I had left them far behind, these elegant women who sift politics and wheat with as much ease as they sing like nightingales accompanied by a pianist.

At this moment I view my victory as not one that was pathbreaking. It had merely brought on heartache in its wake. I was not enthroned with a prestigious family name, nor was I born with a golden spoon between lips. I had won the worthy soul’s affection by virtue of being unlike the many canaries he knew. But now societal norms bound him to his wedded wife and the family he was called upon to fend for. This moment, one that I had dreaded, was upon me and the seriousness refused to sink in. I was numb to those circumlocutions happening inside me. The tumult of emotions that flitted across his face had me more shaken than the many deaths that I had witnessed and dealt with.

Not once had there been any dishonesty in his propositions. But the deluge had become so forceful, the two actors, us, could not contain the downpour. He had pressed my hand in all honesty and his declaration was in all earnestness. I probed the possibility of us becoming one. If his wife was a virtuous woman she might respect his higher love and not desire him as a husband or lover. She would not keep him bound in a relation that was not founded in love. But life is not that simple. She would prolong the torture for mere pleasure. Neither would she enjoy nor will she allow others to enjoy. Did he have the gall to walk out and defy everyone and every law in the world to build a niche with me? Would I allow something that profound to befall him? Would he regret the hastiness of the emotion?

One part of me cried that if what he felt for me was noble and pure then he would not deceive me or turn away from me so cruelly. Was I searching for an excuse to convert my love into hate? Have I fallen so low that I was searching for an excuse to terminate my natural emotions for the only human being I seemed capable of loving. Here I was willing to adopt perpetual widowhood and celibacy to glorify my love and mourn his loss. The mind, it plays tricks when you least expect it. I was reacting in a womanly fashion to my loss. But I am no mere mortal. I had groomed myself for this defining moment when I was supposed to let go in dignity. To let him be and to lower myself into an abyss from where there was no return.
The many classics I had read and adored came back to me. I wondered about the passion of Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights, as they prayed to be joined below six feet of concrete so as to be reborn as partners next time round. Would I ask him to make me such a promise? Or would I settle for a mere declaration of undying love and loyalty till death does us part? Deluding myself seemed to come easily to me these days. Weren’t we being parted this very moment? Not to set sight on each other for the remaining part of our lives?

That didn’t faze me. It was part of our original commitment. We had understood the limitations of our fancies. But the heart it always looks for greener pastures and remains optimistic even in the midst of adversity of the highest order.

My sensibilities had left me long back. The day I had taken the plunge I had sealed my fate along with his in a Pandora’s box.

Solitude did not scare me. What bothered my soul was the loss of the only one who I could relate to. I would remain a loner for the rest of my life and never utter a meaningful word ever again. That made bearing up very difficult. This time when he kissed me goodnight it would be final. A solemn occasion I had to reckon with. The taste would linger in pain till I was buried with all my earthly possessions, which sadly excluded him. Our frankness had been the biggest asset of our being together. We had explored a profane passion. One that would make our families and predecessors bow their head in shame. Those that were mine so to claim had left me to my resources, as they could not fathom something so profound and surreal. But I had persisted. And now I was at the peak and I didn’t know if I wanted to jump off or stand there for eternity giving away all my past promises of being brave at that last moment. That point in my life when I was required to act with rationality. And I simply could not make that call.

That night when I had first set eyes upon him my heart leaped with joy. There were fireworks inside me. I knew in an instant that this was for keeps. And then the awful exclamation from him that he was married made me lose humility and poise and utter things I never thought I knew. Here was the ideal male, the one I had dreamt of, and finally when I bump into him I find out he is already conquered. The ironies of fate stun me no less. But this was the unkindest cut of all. My wait had served no purpose. I felt faint, ready to crumble before him and wondered if that would melt his obdurate heart and make him voice the truth. But there was no remorse on his part.

He stoically reiterated the previous declaration telling me, “ I wouldn’t want you to be misguided. Whatever you do should be done with complete knowledge of the contradiction in my life. And I wont pretend to have been misled into marrying this woman who is my partner for good or for worse. I took this step in all consciousness, but I was terribly mistaken in assuming that this was ideal for me. It is far from that and now I have no recourse. I will honor this commitment I made till the day I die. But I cannot delude myself into believing there will ever be pure and higher love between us. She will always be my wife and we might even have kids. And I am falling in love with you. I admit that in all honesty. Yet my hands are tied and I cannot let this get any further than we already are. I believe you reciprocate my feelings in a greater measure and I am sorry I am doing this to you. Hope you understand the correctness or wrongness of this sometime when you are no longer a chirpy youngster. Something tells me that you are hard to shake off and that hurts me more than you can imagine.”

His monologue made me furious and I was so overcome by emotion I wanted for us to disappear from the face of the earth together. To a land of no return where his wife couldn’t follow and bring him back. These flights of fancy scared me because that was when I realized the depth of what I felt for him. I wanted to holler and pull out my hair. I wanted to stab him and eliminate him in an attempt to own him. The futility of which dawned on me and suddenly I felt faint and held in his arms I was looking up into those solemn loving eyes, my crying heart telling me softly that these wouldn’t be the ones I would see every morning when I woke up.

I believed in conquering and victory had always been mine till this worthy and equal foe came along. Collecting hearts had been my pastime and willingly I had let myself be bowled over. A perfect strike. Unfortunately he dealt with me like I had those who had crossed my path and for once it struck me, the pain that true love brings in its wake. I too had dreamed of a lover more distinguished and accomplished than any of my adorers, who should love me, and whom I should love and to whose will I should blindly surrender mine. This some one was you. When I saw you for the first time, I knew it. But, as my imagination is so sterile, the picture I had formed of you in my mind was not to be compared, even in the most remote degree, to the reality. I too have read something of romances and poetry. But from all that my memory retained of them, I was unable to form a picture that was not far inferior in merit to what I see and divine in you since I have known you. Thus it is that from the moment I saw you I was vanquished and undone.
Since I had attained womanhood I had scorned all those universal temptations that are described as the supreme delight, and which was the culmination of every earthly desire. I belong to another class. A creed that stood out for its non-archetypal beliefs and actions, and I refused any virginal temptation, which the inexperienced mind longs to explore.

My world was already infected and there was no fixed tonic I could call home. Even the silences are thick with quiet, offering what is somehow a dense vacuum. With a kind of child-like appetite that relentlessly scans the immediate horizon for satisfaction and distraction,
I look for something that will provide immediate relief. Every song I hear is a frenzy of syrupy, sweet joy and yet there is nothing that will shine light in my void. I sing to myself in the register of miraculous repetition, that uncanny place in which the familiar is rendered different and deliciously strange.

Now I am being upbraided and accused of levity and weakness. Of guile and falsehood. For admitting a liking that scorns the laws of my forefathers. They had it all going for them and harems they built to ratify their choices. None exist today to help plead my cause. Would I want to be a concubine or mistress who waits all bedecked for her master to come and give her a sly glance when his mood fancies frolicking with her? Isn’t that the only reprieve I could imagine under these untrue circumstances? Greed is a virtue at times, and my ambitious soul craves for more than a secondary role in his life, which I alone could mend and tend to.

Why is this so hard to grasp? The juvenile society we help form has imposed constraints that defy the role of Venus and Cupid and the wholesome concept of love. Why then do they glorify it and make it the pillar on which the longevity of the social contract rests? The man in the leviathan is cruel, brutish, and selfish and he appeals to me for the innocence and purity of reason. I will if I could become one. But am I then assured of returns that I ask for? Nothing is forever claims my mate. Then what is the key to existence, to hope and dreams? The validity of basic concepts from survival to optimism are laid bare and hollow when we negate the underlying principle that allows continuity.

There may be even something mysterious, something supernatural in what is unfolding, for I loved you from the moment I first saw you—almost before I saw you. Long before I was conscious of loving you, I loved you. It would seem as if there were some fatality in this—that it was decreed, that it was predestination. But you choose to ignore this, which transcends your being too. Then why not submit to this chaotic flow and resist the role of externalities. Surrender to the ethereal love that consumes you and another in their turn for you. For it is true indeed that I can conceive of nothing so original and pure beneath God and your staunchness in sticking to banal restrictions of society and a plight you brought upon yourself defy logic and reason.

When you claim to have obligations, do you consider what it is that you should feel for me? Or is my independence enough to debar me from such considerations. I succeeded in making you feel what you felt was real love. Or is it that a love more loft and powerful than mine is necessary to quell your thirst? I believe in my heart that you say and do this to debase me so that I will harbor negative emotions for you. It’s sad that you haven’t yet realized that value and nature of my feelings. Your imminent pleas for me to move on and give up on a jaded old being wedded already to a loveless union are ones that fall on deaf ears because we both know what importance this relationship, however clandestine, holds in our lives. I might not be the one who inspires you to levels unknown. But I do care and share my destiny with you to know what makes you tick in all situations.

Incase its separation that will make you happy I will happily allow you that. Yet my heart longs for you to say that you love me and need me because you do. And that no matter what our feelings will not die in a flush of momentary allegiance to your wedded vows. I fear of losing you more than I fear death. You refuse to believe the profound love you have inspired in me and a part of me understands that it contends against what you are expected to do. So in a way I am not to expect anything from you ever.

Your defence mechanism leads you to debase and insult me. You hope fervently that I will take it to heart and forget. You expect me to elevate myself to your level and act like ours is a passion not bound by earthly strings. You want our love to be one that is not full of shame and secrecy. One that is without hatred, dishonor and corruption. Well I strive to be what you expect of your partner. I also know that despite these transgressions I will succumb to your request and leave you alone to deal with the adversities you so hate, all by yourself and act deaf like you want me to when you cry out in pain. You should also know that I do not understand these sublime concepts your tongue throws out. I am absolutely human in that I want to caress you, your entire person seduces me and charms me to no end, and I perceive you as a non-solvable mystery. Being so close to having you and losing you to destiny is neither acceptable nor fathomable to me. And I refuse to swallow these refinements of love that are way beyond my league. But I will be the ever-obedient mate you wanted and go through pangs of sorrow and need in alternation. My rebellious will refuses to move on and I am not punishing you by remaining stubborn. I am merely being fair to my soul, which cries for justice and redemption.
I would kill if I could, to make you mine. But then I do not win anything, not even your soul in the bargain. And so I acquiesce and let you go free. You won’t hear me whimper or throw myself into the river. I shall live honorably and remain worthy of your love if ever you should reconsider returning to me. I shall continue loving you with all the intensity of the passion I have now and my solitude will teach you the virtue of dreams and perseverance. There will be a day when you realize you have lost me to fate and silence. Just promise me that if ever I were to proposition you, the answer I hear shall be nothing but positive. That would make me live another quarter century so that when I meet my maker I can ask him for just one wish—to make you mine if ever we are born again!


“Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer love. As if it were merely I that loved you. When love ceases, then it is divulged.”
Henry David Thoreau




DK
30th June 2002

The Sounds of Silence

deafening....oh yeah...awaking to something as deafening as the stillness around you where the small uneven spurts of breath make for internal murmurs. scary! I was deaf! oh my god! henceforth how will I navigate my path through the maze of honking horns and blaring yellow beams that were snaking their way through the capital's roads? could this be a warning? a glimpse of what was to come when I lived off tubes that made me look uglier than the shriveled skin I was trying to cover with the mismatched sheets as my "home nurse" grudgingly made me a cup of tea that would anyways make for a hearty drink only for my old worn out blue night-gown....my husband loved me in this one...thought it made me sexy...not now you ass...now I am dying...waiting to meet my maker or maybe the other god surrounded by goblets of fire....

zzzzzzzzzz.....a cold wind rudely tickled my toes...I was awake...whatever had happened to that little black box that made nights bearable these days? ah even the power had given up on me...pangs of depression.....I need a shrink!

oops....hey I was merely trying to live within the skin of my new upcoming character of the imaginary book I have been paid a huge advance on....and one that has made its way into the booker nominations even before a word was written...merely on the scholastic abilities of the one wielding the pen and preparing to wage a war on those innocent pages....ha arent I great?

back to silence...well the ear drum has been sucked back and something else that was to supply power and oxygen has shifted home...now coaxing and cajoling would have helped if only thy enemy was visible...but within the confines of a dark hole where no one can reach out to is not an interesting position to be in I would assume...yes i'm claustrophobic....okie too many admissions of my failings is not earning me fans but well whoever said honesty is the best policy...man I love thee...

back again to silence...so that's where I am....a funnel inside as those piercing eyes got a wholesome view of all the muck and mystery inside...I was staring at the wall..I think he likes what he sees...says he wants me to come back again in 3 days...in the meantime after he rinses out those poor passageways I am to inhale huge goblets of steam and then calm them down with spurts of some medicinal spray up my little nostrils...macabre...but hell seems to turn atleast this old man on and hey even earn him some moolah while he checks you out in a waxy fashion...innovative wouldn't you say?

the TV had been alien till I met this old man and he played around and tickled my earlobes and then flushed them out like I was some dirty western closet and now I am only on partial mute....but hell much better than watching some dark woman trying to run around trees mouthing obscenities while the hero romances maybe her best friend or so and someone else fires a gun...now I don't know if that was the actual sequence but that was what I deciphered from my deaf state...sad I would say...did they say being blind was bad...deafness sucks...partial truth or whatever is even worse....sometimes ignorance is but bliss....

and I am so happy that I get to chew my favourite chewing gum and look like a lazy cow who couldn't digest her cud earlier and was doing it in shifts....now that really is funny..why would you eat in shifts...do you crap in shifts too then...I mean how lazy is cow lazy? its bad enough you have to clean your hands and what not...but in this case you even need to go out of your way to find a place to crap everytime you chew...That's sad....but they stink...so well lets not talk about those creatures...

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

(Gabriel García Márquez: 100 Years of Solitude)

he said it in spanish...and then i caught my tummy, yelped and fell off the chair...nope not magical realism my style...

the man who cured me of all ailments was talking to me in a language i understood and loved and he was all of four feet tall....and there he was yelling for some assistance to pull up this piece of lard off the floor and get her onto a stretcher....

funny how one meets like-minded souls...and surely not among sterilised white savlon smelling walls....

but there he was and then i didnt mind if i died on the table...this man could not fuck around with me....

his eyebrows perked...he said no smoking....your ulcer is glaring at me and i dont like the way it looks...

anything for you doc i said and almost saluted...

i knew from now on i would not see another medical practitioner as long as this man was alive and within arms reach....

me...a closet writer, poet and novelist....i had heard this line a few years back and memorised it even before i read the book...something in those little lines and the discovery of ice touched me...

me in less dramatic conditions, stood in my snow boots, in shimla staring at small icicles falling down on my face...watching by in the falling dusk as the white carpet around me became real and cold making me shiver and spew smoke from my mouth and a non-smoker then i carved that moment and then called everyone i loved and knew to tell them about ice...not what i had played with in the refrigerator..but the real soft thing i wanted to hold close to my face, yet made me feel this slight heat that was radiant and loving yet would leave an unwanted mark....

did gabo know me....

i read Love in the time of Cholera and knew i wanted a love story like that...and then i read this book...a birthday gift...one of the most cherished...on the train back to trivandrum...finished it on the first day...by dinner...and i stared at the many around me...college mates..playing rummy...(is that how that game is spelt? who cares...but for the lay man a version of cards....takes off on what i dont know) and wondered about a woman in white flying past on a magical carpet and i wanted to be a witch...a writer, a poet, gabo's muse and what not....

yes he tells me a story and i love listening to him...

and now you guys understand him....

Salute to Plath

Mad Girl's Love Song
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Birth

born of a sword...into the unknown...ah the plight of a bastard....i know it now...scary and blinding! till the moment of comprehension...an unbearable wound that cannot be healed...till then little spurts of joy and gurgles...staring at the night sky, the glimmering stars and half baked naughty moon. simple pleasures, adding up memories for a life in the unknown.