Saturday, 9 June 2018

Fact and fiction

Fact is stranger than fiction. What was a figment of imagination, is now a part of life.

Did I dream it into happening? Did I foresee it?

Why doesn't it feel the way it should though?

Saturday, 19 May 2018

Undeserved

Me 6 months ago, looks at current me and is disgusted.

I have let me down.

I'm sorry doesn't come close.

I need some sympathy and pity, for I don't deserve anything else.

Me 6 months ago asks of me now... How is it that I touch my child with these hands? How do I kiss her with that mouth?

I drown in guilt. Wish I was drowning in real.

Always hated death by drowning... Always been afraid of it... Now hoping to drown in acid and die.

Conundrums

I'm so much in a dilemma right now. I don't know what I am doing. Whom am I hurting? Why am I doing what I am?

It easy to give things a label, but the fact is, what I'm doing doesn't even deserve a label. Even the most clichéd label doesn't come close to what this is.

I felt so guilty and dirty after doing what I did. Am I so weak, that I have ignored all the warning bells in my head? Of course I'm that weak. I wouldn't have let things go that far otherwise.

Even single value is getting broken, my pride is in smithereens... Loyalty, integrity, responsibility, commitment, trust truth, morality... Nothing has been left untainted. Even things that shouldn't matter - habits, behavior, caste... Everything has been murdered. Everything is either dead or dying.

All this, even when you said that what you feel has shaken, that we have different value systems.

It makes me sick to my stomach about what I did, despite which, I know I will continue to do it.

I can't think, but I can't not think. What have I gotten into!!

Saturday, 10 March 2018

When you are around

The mundane-ness of life is reduced when you are around, there is a certain color in the air, when you are around.
Is it beauty, is it love, or is it just companionship, I know not, but the my whole world is exhilarated when you are around.

The ennui of life, comes down, even if it is, for a little, the gray turns into reds and pinks, the drab into the interesting, and the uninspiring grow up to be muses for poetry.

The greens are more vibrant, the blues a little more blue and the rainbow has more than just the 7 colors, when you are around.


Sunday, 31 December 2017

New year it seems

Fuckall, is what it is, I tell you. People drinking and dancing and acting foolish is what it is. It is times. Like this that I truly regret not being deaf blind and mute. Ugh.

Shut up and go I say.

Saturday, 11 March 2017

Stranger 7

She woke up before the house did, before the sun rose. She brought in the packets of milk that the sleepy milkman had delivered, heated it up, and left it out to cool. Polished the child's shoes, and those of her husbands. Laid out their clothes, filled up the water bottles; Worked on the mise en place for the day's meals; it was chilly outside, full of smog, but beads of sweat were beginning to form on her forehead as she bent on the stoves stirring the gravy. One glance at the clock told her she had barely enough time to run the water and wake up her child; and disregarding the stabbing pain of her plantar fasicitis, she ran upstairs; bathed and clothed the child and in the midst of helping the cook prepare breakfast and packing the lunches. Finally, with both out of the door, she sat down with her cup of tea - the first thing she would have, in the 2.5 hours that she had been awake for, and opened her laptop to check her schedule.

With a sigh she noted that her calls began in the next 15 mins, and would barely give her enough time to bathe before she left for work. She would have to skip breakfast again.

She reached work, with a growling stomach to which she could not pay attention; for it needed to be diverted to the interviews that the HR team had lined up for her. Fire drills, close calls, meetings, improvement programs and deadlines - all in a days job. It was 8 PM, and she was yet to have her breakfast. The cup of tea had curdled in her stomach long ago and was making her nauseous and light headed. The last meal she'd had was her brunch the previous day.

Calls from the nanny informing that the child was being difficult, told her it was time to head home and get the child to study and eat dinner. It was already 11 by the time she could wade through the traffic and reach home, 2 pairs of accusing eyes looked back at her to say that she was late again, and wasnt a good enough mother. She had resigned to being inadequate now. It was as though nothing she did was ever good enough or satisfactory even.
Asking the child about its day, she cleaned up the slew of toys and food spread out in the room. Put all the books back into the school bag; sharpened all the pencils searched every nook and cranny for the eraser. Put the basket out for the milk man, cleaned the kitchen, realised that there wasnt anything to eat, to popped a hershey's kiss into her mouth just to allow her stomach the illusion of food; ironed the clothes needed for the next day, put in the laundry; got back the clothes hung out to dry, folded them up; and finally crawled into bed, having no more energy to even remove her makeup or change her clothes.

"how lazy can you be, how can you sleep in the clothes that you wore to work" grumbled the husband, but she was too far gone to even hear it.

One would think, she had her hands and her mind full. That she had no more space for anything or anyone else. She, though was hollow inside; she had left a piece of herself half way across the world.

She missed what she once thought never existed. She was now made aware of something she had striven so hard to suppress, that she had begun believing that it never existed - and that something was her. The fact that she existed independent of relationships, of responsibilities, of expectations, of "should be"s and "ought to"s was a fact that was long forgotten, that she was now aware of; and hence the hollowness; rather, the the awareness that she was hollow inside.

And, there, in the middle of the night, among all the other work emails that kept flooding her phone, was a tiny 2 word message that filled that hollow.

- - - - - - - - 

Thursday, 9 March 2017

Stranger 6

She stood there, undecided, confused, fingering the mangal-sutra that hung around her neck; clutching the phone in the other - debating the morals and rights and wrongs of what was going on in her head; when suddenly the doors of the elevator opened up; scaring her, freezing her, instilling a sense of terror and euphoria in her.

Her entire life up until that point in time was planned, was meticulous. Everything that had been done, was after careful consideration for the people around her, and for the people around her.

The moment the doors opened, was the moment that life as she knew it, had ended.  All her decisions, her contemplation thrown to wind as he stepped out to gather her in his arms. In one fluid moment, she was in his arms and he was kissing her.
A part of her brain telling her that this was wrong, that she was a married woman, that no matter what the culture, it was always frowned upon. That he was a married man, and she would be the despised "other woman" if she allowed this to continue. That he was from half way around the world, and that she was a traditional orthodox south indian brahmin who was married happily (?) and was responsible for people back home.

That part of the brain was annihilated when he held her closer and his tongue began its onslaught in her mouth. His kisses were raw, full of need and want, demanding and dominating, bruising even. It was as if he was holding on to his dear life as he kissed her.

In the middle of a hotel lobby, in full view of people around them, in a foreign country - that is when it began. The story that was destined to stop as abruptly as it had begun. A story that had no beginning or end. All that there was, was this. This moment. this kiss and this passion. No one had any more control on anyone else, except to hold on to each other and let the passion wash over them.