"The only truth I know is you..."
Simon and Garfunkel, Kathy's Song

Getting lost is easy I've been told
One only needs to walk into somewhere faraway.
I walked into walls this morning
Spotless, and naked in their bareness;
And reels of negatives flashed in my head
Waiting to be born into frames nailed to this emptiness.
Too many walls in too many places
Wait for too many of these frames,
I tried getting lost into the lanes with no names.
Every road is really a blanket-
Straining to contain every memory waiting to be born,
They tear at their seams while the tongues grow louder
All telling tales you and I have forever known.
I lose nothing in getting lost, all I am is with you
Where do I get lost into
When you are everywhere I go to.
Getting lost is easy they say
Now I believe them too.

I have dealt with people changing, so that really isn't one of my problems. The problem really is dealing with a changed self and when I say this, I am not talking of a change that age puts you through; not the change from frocks to kurtas or bob cuts to joodas. what has really frightened me and perplexed me is the change in me as a being- the changes that have made silent alterations to the cognitive whole that I was.
It sounds dramatic but it seems like I am living in pieces- it's like a disintegration which is absurd. I have stopped being a whole and have swapped my self for a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces I remember seeing but have now lost. And honestly, I don't have the energy to look.

I was a different person- I used to take photographs and not lock my camera up in my cupboard. I used to run and not sleep because I had more running to do. Now I don't sleep because I don't get sleep or sometimes I sleep through the day. I used to laugh so hard that I used to roll off the bed , now I don't laugh because I think I have ugly teeth.
I am not quite sure what I miss or what I long for. I am not quite sure if I believe that I can do anything to bring myself some clarity.
Yet I like this life- this head full of memories of the sun seeping through my window and the slight taste of your cigarette in my tongue and that sharp twang of your perfume in my nostrils.
I will live. I think.

One

Childhood rote learning has taught me ponds dissolve into streams, streams into rivers, rivers into seas and seas into oceans...ocean waters become clouds and fill in the streams and it is one unending cycle of losing one's self and being born again.
I'd like my body to dissolve into yours, my being becoming one with your being-these limbs would melt into water and stream into the water that your limbs become. Seamlessly. Without making too much sound barring the faint gurgling only attentive ears can detect. The water will seep through the pores on your fingers, elbows and ankles and flow through the cacophony of your veins.
 It'll be me in your head, in your feet and inside your throbbing fingertips.
The water will drip from the tips of my hair and dip into my back running in thin rivulets before they finally disappear.
 It'll be you in my head, in my feet and inside my throbbing fingertips.
My tongue shall envelop the few stray drops and it'll be you once again-within the darkness of my voice and the redness of my throat.
In me you shall be lost, in me you'll be found again. As a wordless song my lips will utter one rainy morning in bed.
In you I shall be lost, in you I'll be found again. As a string of words your fingers will breathe out one still humid night when not a leaf will move.

Years later, I'll probably look back at these days and amaze myself with what I've been capable of. It's nothing special- people are doing it all the time, but somewhere in this whole hurried process, there has been quite a bit of growing up done and that will always amaze me.
This city I have lived in for a little over five years- laughed in, cried in, looked around with wide eyes, shouted at its heartlessness-suddenly became a stranger city. I realised that it's not so much the places as it is about the people.
The city has been about the people I've been with- the ones I talked to under skies torn apart by the roar of airplanes, the ones who never refused the chance to have a 2 am feast of poached eggs and lemon tea and the ones who almost never paid for their tea. With them gone, it's like a part of me disappeared.
And these days have been a long drawn, incessant process of trying to deal with the missing bits and yet trying and emerging with enough strength to cook, clean and sweep.
This place will probably become home again- quietly when I cook the next morning's breakfast, when I walk around these strange new shops with unfamiliar names or maybe when I push my way into a bus which runs on a route I have never walked.
And then, maybe, I will start taking pictures again.

Photo: Ria and I, on her last morning in JNU. Taken by Atrayee.

On Leaving Home.

If you listen carefully enough, you'll hear nothing.
Because growing up doesn't make too much of a noise. It just happens in its own sweet time- perhaps when two girls spend an entire afternoon listening to old hindi film songs or maybe when they sleep hugging their four pillows on a bed made of the creakiest of all wood, on cheap pink mattresses printed with yellow flowers.
even the smallest of rooms have stories to tell; ours probably has epics to narrate. or maybe not.
maybe it chooses to keep to itself the beauty of seeing those fairy lights light up and the fragility of that moment when we could see both our heads crowned with the lights reflected on the glass of the poster. the walls will still probably breathe out the words our fingers scribbled on them with blunt pencils and pens with lost caps, and whisper how loudly we laughed.
we have kept bits of us in the mess of newspapers that we left back and took back bits off the wall stuck to the duct tape behind the posters.
and our lives will continue to be this way-- a bit of us in that dust and a bit of 231 that we brought back.

this one's for ria, for 231...without whom not a day in the last two years would've made sense.

p.s: i wish this was better written but right now, words fail me and this is all i can manage.

Nausea

I hate it when people say that life comes a full circle, I hate it when I say it too.
Well, not when I say it but later on.
I mean, I'd rather not run around in circles. Sometimes I just want to run to the circumference and give it a sharp jolt and get out of this thing that pushes me into myself. Even if it throws me out into an eternity of darkness, even if it pains, even if it means that I am ejected with a force that makes my head hit against something hard; leaving me to splatter all over. I'd rather splatter than remain.
I do not want the familiar, the habitual or the regular. Give me a new.
A new something, a new anything. For everyday. For any day.
These circles make me giddy and I vomit.
Right here- in the same place I vomited yesterday, right where I'll come to vomit tomorrow.

I'll write to you of my days here-

How I ration out a little of myself to the dust everyday,

And how I master the art of staring at these red walls.

I'll write to you about the rains-

How they break and make

And how they break again.

I'll write to you of these songs-

How they stay stuck to my head

And how they all have no words.

I'll write to you of the poetry these men write-

How they sometimes lack in metre,

And how they sometimes make sense.

I'll write you of the women here-

How safe they feel behind their layers of Khadi

And with their heads of unkempt hair.

I'll also write to you of the voices in my head-

How they tell tales in unknown tongues

And sing long forgotten songs.

I'll write to you...

One of these days.

the smiling woman on the hoarding today reminded me i should love you.and buy the stack of cards peeping through her carefully curled locks.

also that i should have bought you a rose yesterday.

sigh.

god alone knows why you love me.