The First Born

To Pat and the other first born

The tug came first and then the kick

Melting everything into that one long morning retch;

You saw first with your new eyes and even newer lashes

Her insides red and dark like waves, rising and falling within its raw stretch.

She held in her a sea that moved

Taking you in its quiet, measured tides;

All her world that came rushing to you which you ate up in your gulps-

Dancing among the crests and troughs, moving as she moved sides.

There is dance that began in her and ended in you;

Breathed in bits of sky that came out in quaint little tunes

A long hurried wave of frenzies and tunes washed down by her waves-

She sang out low and sang out loud as your reds danced into her blue.

One day her song was too loud and the dance too wild

You shivered and opened out your digits she planned to touch and count.

Your mouth opened wide and spat out her blue-

Ears locked, eyes shut, feet refusing to dance around to that sound. 

The sound blue makes when it misses its red,

The sound red makes when its blue parts ways

The sound of retches, the sound of cries;

Sounds clocking the end of nights, sounds timing the start of days.

You tumbled through the dark no one had seen;

Glimmering in your all your reds- fresh and bright,

While bits of blue floated around lost

And leaked into feeding her nights.

Tears live on saltwater, on every bit she drinks;

Tears are meant to be held in seas and never seen.

And tides are meant to keep moving forever slinking in their own shade of blue-

Always managing a little dance danced to the reds that have been, reds bathed in her own hue.

All characters insufferably imaginary.

She didnt have her camera that afternoon so she decided to memorise all of it.So she did.

The wall was the brightest shade of yellow and the curtains a dark green-failing miserably to keep the Delhi afternoon sun out. There were little beads of sweat lining his new haircut- his otherwise black eyes shone a translucent brown in the sun. There were old beer bottles kept on the windowpane- the green glass glowing in the sun and bursting out into the tendrils of moneyplants. "Epipremnum aureum", she remembered reading off the blackboard sitting sweating in a classroom a few thousand moons back- under a whirring ceiling fan, amidst the bustle of Tollygunge. The leaves-more green than yellow- tried climbing up the wall standing at a sharp contrast to the yellow. She missed her camera.

He read the menu with his eyebrows bunched together-like he'd be tested on his knowledge of it.She stared straight at his face noticing the dark circles.

"Vodka Lemonade," she thought.

"Vodka Lemonade. And you?", he asked.

"Pineapple Juice with White Rum."

The ugly bit was done away with while they waited for their drinks. Not very surprisingly, she didn't cry.She never did once the worst was over. He knew it was only when she feared the worst that the tears came and the fights got bad. Past that, there was only the tapping of finger nails on the touchscreen and the occasional cough punctuating the radio silence she was capable of gutting people's beings out with.On bad days, he'd do just about anything to dig a word out of her mouth. He remembered her telling him of the times her grandmother would tell her that she'd be a pauper if the government ever levied taxes on words. He wanted to ask her if the bulb in her staircase got replaced.

She had only begun to fidget when he asked her if she'd mind a smoke, he had forgotten his cigarettes in the car. They walked to the little balcony that overlooked the market- she lit one in silence, looking down at the cars that came in and went out in queues managed by the whistling of the attendants in orange caps. He noticed her chipped finger nails when she passed on the cigarette and she noticed how their skins touched for the last time. "A Parenthesis in Eternity,"she had called it when she described their first meeting. On someone's balcony, sharing a light one sweaty summer night because he couldn't find his lighter.

She took in the smell while they drank. That weird concoction of aftershave, iron, tea leaves,cologne and sweat laced with the tang of cigarettes. She will remember this more than anything else, she thought. Well, apart from the time he held the blower to the back of her head because her sprained shoulder wouldn't allow her arms to reach there, and maybe the time when he tried massaging the back of her neck and she exclaimed how bad he was. He remembered the way she'd move her lips in sleep- like she couldn't shut up even in her dreams. And he remembered the way she twisted her hair into a bun and threatened to cut it all off if it got any hotter.He never believed that she would. But that she didnt need to know.

She left very suddenly, almost as if she had forgotten something very important back at home. She said no to the constant offers of being dropped and drove back with a slight headache from all the drinking, and rushed to her cupboard the moment she reached. Running her urgent fingers through the pile of clothes, she found the CDs and the plates.

The only proof of the life that had burnt inside her in silence three months back-buried under layers of skin and blood, sometimes shrieking out in bursts of pain. She put them all in a big manila envelope.

This he didn't need to know.

"What will you get me?", he had asked months back over one of those called-in meals of thick curried chicken and fat rotis.
She snapped back saying something he couldn't decipher with her mouth full, while licking her fingertips."Shit", he probably assumed.

Over the months, the meals grew lesser and snapping increased-only this time, it didn't end in bad druken jokes and his silly inebriated giggle but with either one slamming the phone on the other's face or with one spending nights staring at the ceiling waiting for the phone to buzz. The silence eventually got filled in with time and its usual melodrama- there were tears of course, and a lot of shouting till it was realised that there was nothing left to fight for, fight about or fight against. Everything was lost by then, everything was decided upon- that was your fault, this was mine; this is your shirt and that book is mine; this was much how much I owed you and you should pay me back for that. Life was being written off under columns again, distributed in sturdy boxes neatly labelled with a clear hand.
Traffic sounds, wedding party laughs, drunken crying, washing machine whirring, egg beating- they all took turns in filling up the radio silence that followed. Each doing its best to assure the person that there was really no silence left.
Her plane departed on time. The tears were really unnecessary, she thought. She landed in the new city and roamed around for days-stopping at a coffee shop here and eating a plate of Fish and Chips there. Then there was that bookshop which was nothing like what she had seen before- nothing like the sanitised ones with vacuum cleaned carpets and freshener scented air she was used to. This was a conglomerate of only shelves-with books living on them. Not books scrubbed clean to live their lives in alphabetical order, but books that breathed, lived and had time leaving behind its dust on them. They didn't smell of dead canned flowers this time but that musty smell that rides up your nose and and becomes one with every inch of your being- that one that tiptoes into your brain and reminds you of log cabins, rainy afternoons and cups of tea. She drew a line in the dust with the tip of her index finger and felt her blood rush to her brain. Her face was flushed and the hair on her arms stood on their ends as she felt a tingle ride down the nape of her neck.

And then she smiled. "This", she whispered.

I don't remember being this scared in my life. Of Everything and of nothing at the same time.
It is becoming progressively difficult for me to walk down a road- I am scared a truck will run me down, or I will receive another of those texts or maybe a phone call from someone who will say something I am scared of hearing.
Hurt is essential but I have realised that a lot of hurt is actually fear. Hurt is actually nothing but being scared with something you didn't expect. If I have cried the past week over one conversation, it is essentially because I was scared to face the consequences of it.
One believes because one is scared to be left alone, one talks because one is scared to be called socially awkward, one keeps shut because one is scared one will never be understood.
When exactly does all of life become a part of that scare?
When exactly did I stop running for something rather than from it? And when exactly did I let this sense of constant fear take over all of me.
When did all tears become about what I will lose and not about what I stand to gain.

This corner suited her fine.

Especially now that the rum was beginning to run its course not just through her veins but through the feet of the people whose heads moved together in a feverish unison to that song that would remain stuck inside her head for the rest of the night, or whatever little that was left of it.

Socially awkward would be a wrong term to use. She just did not enjoy being drunk with everyone, or so she liked to believe. She remembered a few nights with a secret smile- nights that danced into mornings without the hostel warden coming to know, nights lit with fairy lights shining yellow over their flushed cheeks.

Someone had finally changed the song- the feet had decided to go easy for a while, while two people tried their efforts at really close slow dancing and at blocking out the inherent cacophony of life around.

Thanks to the alcohol, she hadn't even realised when she had started singing along-more to herself than anyone else, the times when it feels like you're quizzing yourself on the lyrics of a song.

"Simon and Garfunkel fan?", he asked suddenly with an awkward tilt of head as he was walking past.

"Is that a rhetorical question?", she asked with a smile.

And right then, thanks to some wicked twist of fate ordained by some God with a pathetic sense of humour, some idiot changed the song.

They laughed. 

In a way only two people with too much rum in them, and each looking for their own corners can.

"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.