To good times :)

guitar on honey drops. raisin and wine on clear skies.

where's all the rum gone??

and would you call out to a drowning sailor?
say, "hey do u know the way to the emerald isles?"

its all one ever comes back to. always.
filigree of light and shadows hiding behind cobwebs under dusty lamps. the light reflects on red curtains and last years posters. just beyond the window there would always be a snatch of sky languishing in evening light. one instinctively reaches out. its always near, always beyond one's reach. but real nonetheless. if only arms were longer. if only arms and nights were longer.

dust settles on SMSs.

its all the same really. it will again be twilight tomorrow.

" and everything depends upon how near you sleep to me... / just take this longing from my tongue/ and all the lonely things these hands have done.."

R.

chapter 10

our protagonist comes to this strange land that is deceptively secluded. like animals living in a conservatory. everywhere there were possibilities: of seclusion, hibernation,sex,love,idealogy,expression. every possibility is a void, a void essential to chance. it is the domain of the could-be, not yet a could-have-been, affording the void to sprout, if it wills. all these possibilities were like threads therefore, strewn around her, each thread a new story, that could begin or was there anyway, but none of them a reality.

all this, could be. all this,may not be.

all she wanted to do was run for miles. the loneliness of the long distance runner.

her face looks like a painted parchment that you took out secretly, and looked at for hours.privately gazed at her, almost made that picture. lived it, lived in it. as intimate as letters, as clandestine.

i cannot look at her as a stranger. i do not know her, she dosent know me, yet everytime i look i see how you must have looked at her. traced the flecks of hair tumbling down her forehead,traced her cheeks, traced the shadow that falls in the corners of her mouth, and traced them with your eyes,gazing, wondering, making a photograph of her, as intimate as her unsaid love and your art,as clandestine as a letter never written, as painful as my watching her like a voyeur and looking around myself to see if I at all exist and not finding myself, never, never, never. i only wish. i only wish.

i feel as non-existent as a spirit. you and her could spread your hands towards each other and they would pass right through me till you touched each other's fingers.


i only wish, i only wish. that painted parchment. yellow. and pain, and pain and intimacy. i wish. me.



"koto ojana narir kachhe rekhe eshechi tomaay."

elsewhere.

living multiple lives.

you sit there, watching those nerves, showing from under the brown skin. a worker's hand and a worker's feet.addictive. draws you in. you want to touch them, you want to touch them then, and you do. touch them with your eyes. you know how they would feel under your fingertips. you know without even moving from your seat. you know without their knowing. at that moment there are two lives being lived. one that just sits there, formally, smiling at intervals, listening and impassive.the other has touched. felt and knows those nerves. they are at it now. they joined fingertips and craved and never found but tried and touched and held and wanteed to hold. its two lives. when you move and when you do not move.


in another life R and R walked right into the sunset. they live together in a cosy apartment in hyderabad now. its too hot so they are saving for an AC. and they bought very good coffee last weekend. R changed her brand but R still smokes the same ones.you can hear them giggling at times, or hitting each other fiercely. and then everything is calm till he starts playing his guitar. she is still not allowed to touch the DSLR. freak. freak. freak. freak. she fights. they make love. they bleed.they take pictures. they buy lamplights. she cooks, and they roll on the floor fighting and hitting each other and they end up making love.they call it a generous portion of paradise.

sleep fairy, sleep.

tonight it rains here, each droplet of rain, defined against the lamplight,each leaf, glistening, listening to the footfall of water.there will be a new rain soon, in a different city, among different people and leaves. each blade of grass will be different ech smell faraway from here.filth and pitfalls are never alien, neither pebbles. it might be another city, faraway, less home,less known,still lesser loved, but it will be a stranger city. familiarity breeds love, breeds pain.the memory lanes will be left back, untouched, untarnished by time and history. insects,filth and footfalls would come and go, unable to touch silences, of you and me, memory of finger seeking finger through fog and rain, smell touching smell,pain upon pain.

sleep fairy, sleep. all the way up there above the marble dome, sleep. listen to the moths singing in the night, lullaby of fires and stars. sleep fairy sleep. may the new rain touch your closed eyes, may the new water every july trickle down your long black lashes, sleep fairy sleep. sleep with all the pain and pleasure of the city of joy, mirth and laughter. sleep in the memory of love, of one heart dying with a laughter.sleep fairy sleep.

paintings look on, as foriegners stroll by the academy galleries. curtains cry as theatres let out stifled groans. silent will be the dove that made the cathedral home. and there will be lights, candles and prayers as they sing hymns to usher in the eve of christmas.a painted white cathedral against a painted grey sky. "oh how beautiful it is!", tourists: take picture. click. startle the dove, startle the pigeon. go back home, go go go back to the nest. the bell chimes.

someday again, a woman would walk, hand in hand with a stranger, down nandan towards park street, sit awhile the rim of water that reflects a white dome and a solitary fairy, blowing her trumpet, silent as always, silent as song, as her horn of pain. the water will reflect a dissolved ball of golden fire, melting silently, with the silent song. the din of distant traffic will be blurred, every blade of grass distinct in the silent, recieving dew. staring at the green benches of love and heart break, of desperation and sweat, of arrival and departures.someday again, another girl would walk all these, perhaps trampel wishes as she goes by, sips on coffee and writes her diary. then, meets a stranger. smiles and walks again. someday another girl will. laugh and cry.
someday she will, watch a city pass by the window of a crowded bus, someday, a boy will find a faraway el dorado in her eyes. someday.

you throb with pain, my city. every drop of sweat and desire has fallen on your streets, trickled down to your heart.live in pain and laughter, longing and forgetting.

farewell.