Definitions

A word. It excites me. It brings me back to life.
A look. A look of appreciation, of understanding , an encouragement to share more words. A look is what I hark for and after.
A smile. An easy smile which brings a twinkle in my eye and leads to mirthless laughter.
A sense of danger is what I want to surrender to and feed the vulnerability to. The hurt does not matter and neither does the disfiguration. The fear is not the fall from the edge. The fear is the endless wait on the precipice. The fear is not of the disjointed sentences or the groping for words. The fear is of waking up and being unable to speak.

visiting old selves

i wanted to hold it. feel the last whiff of the cold wind on my bare skin. i wanted to remember the bone numbing chillness. the complete defenselessness against the harsh winter. i wanted to get lost in the fog and float in the mist.

i walked with the cold December wind in my hair and with a cigarette in my lips. the fog faded everyone out. i felt the iciness settle on my finger tips as i tried to take another puff. the chill crept into my very being. numbing every thought and every feeling.

i tried to breathe and saw the warm circles of air being eaten up. the burning end of the cigarette was the only beacon of light in the darkness of the night. the hissing sound of the burning cloves absorbed my senses and sweetened my frosty lips.

it was the beginning of my trip back home.

Nike. Just Do It

Its 3 am in the morning. My eyes have never felt heavier. The alcohol drugs my mind and senses. I talk less and laugh more. I make the connection with my eyes and sense a willing smile and an inquisitive glance. Eager to take a ride, I agree to venture out on a drive. In the midst of the drive, under the pretext of being co-travelers, he asks me if age defines certain parameters in life for me.

We reach the destination. He stands in front of me with his face close to mine. I can almost feel him on me. Soon he roves into regions unexplored. My eyes unable to focus any longer shut out on the reality. I am floating in the air with the dizziness caused by the absence of ground beneath my feet. His stubble leaves marks on my face. And his perfume lingers on my body. It passes like a haze.

We leave. And then I hear him sing. His full throated and raw voice reaches out to my numbed senses and I cant stop myself from making a contact with him. I want to touch to remember the embrace. The hands that make music and bring a life into an instrument stroke mine..

It ends in a haze. I have only the memory of voice and touch and remnants of perfume to remember him by. He had asked me earlier in the evening if I believed in the brand Nike. It said just one thing, said he. That was "Just Do It"

First Date

Its so difficult to put yourself out there. Mark yourself as available and then wait for the judgement to be passed. You are to try to smile to hide the anxiety and excitement. You are expected to come up with witty answers to hypothetical questions. There is a lingering gaze that you cannot return hence you look away after every few seconds. You would love the conversation to just flow instead you realize that the speed of your finishing your drink is faster than the speed at which the words come out of your mouth. There are comments on your good looks. You try to reciprocate but find it hard to say the same things to the other person. You talk about the common passions and the possibility of discovering new places together. It thrills you to see the readiness with which you can make a companion of this stranger.

You are told that you are too shy because what you have not been able to do is to meet that unending gaze. It hits you hard when you realize that you have suddenly turned into porcelain. That suddenly you are so fragile. There is that touch of his fingers brushing yours back. You want to soak in that feeling but you are not able to express because that gaze still lingers. You want to retort with the same flirtatious remarks but are not able to understand what holds you back. Its time to pay the bill and head back.

He holds you close to him as he escorts you to his car shielded by an umbrella against the rain. The moment you sit inside the car he cups your hands. You are trying to make sensible conversation but at the same time try to stall the time. So that he can hold your hand longer. You want that fuzzy feeling to go on. You reach the end too fast than you would have liked to. You realize that he wants to go one step further but something holds him back. You can hear him breathing hard. Breathing in your perfume. You try to give the signals too. But they are too weak to reach him. He just hugs you and gives you a peck on your cheek and you are away.

The moment the car vanishes, you crave for the attention and missed opportunities. You blame yourself for being prudent and not making yourself available. It hits you hard when you get a message that says that you were too shy to take the peck on the cheek as a hint for what could have come. Maybe you should have had those extra drinks as suggested by him to lose the inhibitions. You wonder at the missed opportunities and reply back by saying that the chances should have been taken by him when they were to be had. You further send more messages describing what you would have liked to happen. Even more messages are sent by you when you have finally flown back to other side of the country in the hope that something would elicit a response.

Except for silence nothing happens. You sit in your apartment going over the whole sequence again and again, wishing you could change the end as it came. You stalk the social networking sites to see if he is woken up from the slumber. But there are no signs of activity. The phone no longer flashes with his name on it. Utterly loser like and miserable is how you feel. You have a gnawing feeling inside you that probably being alone is how you will end up to be.

Missing them so much

I miss the attention. It feels strange to have finally stepped out of the house. Its been days since i felt the touch of my parents. Its going to be longer still before I will actually get to see them. The familiar sounds of pressure cooker's whistle blowing at all hours of the day, the cacophony created by the radio that was turned on for allmost as long as my mother worked around in the house is missed. The sound of my mother coughing while cleaning, the distinct sound of footsteps of each member of the family.

Each day is started with a renewed resolve to see it through. 26 years of staying and living with someone and then moving on to lead a life of her own in the unknown. I seek solace in my house's bedsheets that i still carry from home because the linen has the same comforting smell and the same comforting feel.

I miss looking at the faces, fighting with them and making up with them. I know now why they say that there is no place like home. Its what all that you have left behind. I seek independence from the supposed ties and yet it is these ties whose knot I am not able to unravel. There is no one to ask you for all the hours in a day if you have eaten and if you would like to eat more. No one to hold your back or to listen to your cribs. Independence comes at a cost.

Too much running

Running. running to catch my dance class. running to get myself enrolled for a MA in English programme. Running to keep fit. Running to stay ahead of the race. Running to get the bus tickets for the last bus to shimla. Running to reach the swimming pool on time and running to leave on time. Running my mind to think of all the adverse situations that i can possibly land up in with no one to save me.

So much running to leave me with no sense and feel of things or events that are occurring in life. Running to forget and running to live. Running to escape too. Escape that is the sweetest form of forgetting, which lets you be.

To escape from this heat, dust, noise and also myself.

So It is

and so it is . i lie cowered in a corner. i have no brains or rather no fundamental values that can guide me through life. i don't understand things and hence i am deserving what i am getting. i need things to be spelt out infront of me. otherwise i don't get them. i am a kid who is yet to mature.
i feel alone but i cannot meet you and talk it out because you can't stand the pretension of being friends. but you can't answer my question either. when i ask you what you want to meet me as, you don't reply to me and draw a blank. but then again since i don't understand things i don't know what i am supposed to construe by your silence.

why does it have to be so difficult? so complicated. why can't things be normal again? if it didn't work out then so be it. why is it necessary that i continue to suffer this silence and the right to reach out to you is denied to me. everytime i ask you to meet me your standard reply is, "why do you want to meet me all of a sudden". you tell me that when you feel alone you don't ask me out for coffee because i won't like it. what i don't like is the fact that with every passing day i lose the connection to you. what i don't like is getting intimate in your car when i am supposed to be moving on. how do you expect me to move on when i sit with you with my face buried in your shoulders and your hands sizing me up.

i won't deny that that feeling of comfort is something that is sought by me every morning when i wake up. but i can't detach myself from you if i continue to be with you like this. the thought that i can't reach out to you kills me from within. why is it that you can't explain things to me if don't understand them? how difficult will that effort be? your replies are strong enough to move me to cries.

why couldnt you meet me? even if it was for the sake of pretension. what will it take to be with you again? i can't even discuss this with anyone. my friends will think i am really stupid to get involved with you. which probably i am. its really difficult to talk these days you know. many times when i am on phone with my friends, i realize that it is me who is pushing the conversation forward. you always said that you feel good when you are with me. you feel like yourself and you want to laugh and be happy. so why is it that now you refuse to see me?

i want this cringing feeling to stop and infact if just writing it down would cut it out then i will sit and type and write till it stops hurting. but no matter how much i write its not going to stop. i am again going to call you tomorrow and ask you - what do you want to meet me as?

Feeling so ignored has never hurt so bad. Even in school when all the girls would boycott me i would walk on my own and alone. i would hide in the girls loo so that no one found me out. now i don't even know where to hide and where to take cover. why is acceptance so hard? what line do i have to walk?