Melancholy. Melody. Unshed tears. Both happy and the numb. Music. Shaking my leg. Dull, cloudy, cool.
I remember once reading about flowers wilting and drooping while listening to sad music. May be thats true.
Its one of those days when you feel like a dung beetle and you know that you are an insignificant beetle wading through deep shit.
from my terrace on a saturday night
As the saturday sun sank behind the dark blue line of the horizon, as the stars opened their single eyes to the dull world below, as the grey clouds became greyer still and as the night lamps started burning the remaining oil, I walked up to the skies... alone. A pleasent breeze laden with the smells of a thousand cooking oils kindled the digestive juices inside, which were frozen dry for all day long. I walked the length of the building casually looking at the evenly strewn apartment houses. Five floors in all and a million windows. Dark pigeon holes through which an innumerable variety of things join the evening breeze, some carried further and further. Pollenation, pollution.
Tangled mess of someone's oiled long hair - brown, grey, black, yellow, blue, pink polythene covers. An odd spit or two, a flash of fluorescent light glinting on a dirty mirror, fluttering shirts, pants, towels, innerwear. So varied that you almost get everything on them, the dry clothes. Little mountains, giant flowers, pink tigers, chubby blue bears, dark holes and yellow stains. A light went on on a distant window. A young couple getting ready excitedly. A scooter stuttered down below. A bald head, another full of jasmine flowers. Green movie tickets dancing the hands of a boy standing in the front portion of the scooter.
And I moved further along the building, gazing at the sprawling city of Hyderabad. Tall, thin chimneys and fat, squat pylons trying to stitch the fabric of blue space above to the brown-green skin below. A brilliant vein of the NH9 crept slowly bulging with light from the night traffic like some giant transparent hollow boa that had gulped all the light from the city behind. My cellphone rings. A friend of mine. I din't take it, let the harsh ringtone eat into my palms. And the vibrations stopped as suddenly as they started. Everything seemed more silent. A woman in her brown night overalls peeped out of her balcony. I felt the call was more for her than for me. She popped her head up at me. I stood still. I was watching her. She kept her gaze on me for a while, adjusted her dress near her neck and went inside with a huge arc of her broad hip. My eyes scanned the balcony door for nothing. But they were on it. Yellow haze spewed out the door, sound of a running tap, the pale white flicker from the next window.
I moved away. The mosquitoes following me dutifully. The west bound train track lay over there somewhere, invisible. I started humming an old telugu flick gradually moving into its tamil version at the next stanza. By now, all the colours had merged into one, but a myriad shades of that one colour. Clouds turned a surprising pink. Had been walking all this while, legs started aching, still I sang.
"Are emiti lokam, palugaakula lokam
mamatannadi votti pichchi
masannadi maro pichchi..."
and someone played yonder,
"kaavadi koyyenoi
kundalu mannenoi
kanugontae satyamintaenoyi
e vintaenoyi..."
Okay, here's one helluva poem (o really?) i wrote some time back...
Order is boring.
Order is static.
Sticky
Symmetry sucks
Chaos! Damn it!
Algorithmic!
Algorithmic!
Poor creativity
Second-hander
Third world stupid bloke!
On a rainyday with my muse
splashing the water
with my foot
sweet mistress in her
bright red saree
following my foot
move about the light water
skipping pebbles of water
jumping around
like her laughter
fresh, wet jasmine scent
coating everything it touched
and the untouched
basking in heady urges.
the chair i was sitting on
dirty wooden colour,
old and pressed.
My white dhoti spotted with
sporadic wetness
crumpled like her fragrant
tresses
only not supporting the water
beads that roll along the curves
into my thirsty lips-
like an innocent cup that was waiting
for the elixir ever long
and the moment the drop touched the cup, it burst into innumerable ions
spewing ecstacy all over its body
coating with golden fluid the sky and the core.
Her bangled hand wrapped around
the pillar
stuck to it
her gaze down and lusty
black marbles moving restlessly
as if trying to burst out, break free
and run into unknown corners where
irresistable treasures to behold and hold
lay awaiting
thick framed glasses have become cloudy
drops trailing wet alleys
some standing, patient, tolerant, shivering
and some long gone, forgotten, not a trace
shadows move about
reflections on water
sound of the shadows
are all i can see.
temporary blindness, forced.
touch, smell, sound, taste
mixing into one sense of a dream
an illusion, deliriously real,
dangerously true
hearts thud louder than the patter
silence, the objects mute
blind, deaf...
if only a mirror could show what all it sees.
- theNeverKing, Hyderabad
"Happiness is more about bad memory!"
and I cant remember the last time I was happy!
"waterfall,
hairfall,
water dripping."
wrote that long back... and it still makes me happy reading tht. Dont dreams make me happier than reality? Many-a-times I had felt that.
That day, when I was traveling on a bus sitting next to my, then supposedly girl friend, holding her hand wanting it to be seen by others, but at the same time trying to gain the pleasure of making it a secret gesture... i sure was on the seventh heaven. A perfect idyll, not in the strictest of all senses I would say, but nevertheless a close hit. With a light drizzle outside and still 4 hrs of journey to go I actually thought these exact words
"I am the happiest person in the world. A girlfriend, a student at a very good college, the exams over... what else does a man want?"
But after nearly five years down the line, I knew I had been wrong many times. Utterly wrong. Times when me and a friend of mine would go to the college grounds 11 at night.. and I used to dream then, sitting right under the naked canopy of stars, gazing at them, giggling shamelessly, almost unself-consciously, dreaming... And I knew I was "Happy". I was not wrong.
I met him online a few days back after a real long gap running into months. He then asked me
He: Can I ask you a question?
I: That's a wierd request
He: Wierd in the sense?
I: Ofcourse you can ask...
He: Do you still gaze at the stars like we did?
(a smile crept its way on to my lips) and I replied
"Yes, I do. But only lonelier and longer..."
And that's when I knew someone can make new definitions for what happiness is and what it means to you. A warmth that it creates inside you whispering that you had been right once.
And I still dream. Newer dreams and ofcourse memories.
Well, here I am! An utterly bored individual sitting all alone in his cubicle scratching his head trying to think through the music blaring through his headphones, about when to have his food (atleast an hour away) and whether he should write this blog entry or not.
Gotup pretty late, office at 11, lunch at 1, play till 4, music at 5, the stupid net till 7 and this dumber blog. *humph*
A day at office.. was tht f***y? Pathetic
The first glimpse of the wet sun glinting on the leaf's palm.
An explosion of green, bright and yellow!
A the palm stretching and cupping the liquid light,
Spilling, running down, a drop drips... a wet dumb smile.