Querencia

(taken from http://wordstuck.co.vu/)

I often get the distinct feeling that time is catching up on me. Or rather that I am not catching up with time, a billion black oceans between us if I choose to paint a picture. I'm always two steps behind, but not in the way that offers solace. Contrast waking up rested and with the sun, to the feeling of having hit the snooze button one too many times.
It is slowly dawning upon me that now is the time when I really have to decide what type of adult I'm going to be. Am I going to be someone who writes letters and postcards to distant relatives and friends, going out of my way to buy stamps at the post office or do I let it go because I can say as much in a whatsapp message. Am I going to be the kind of person who still makes birthday cards for the people I care about or do I drop it because it is acceptable to be busy and because a phone call would suffice. It hits me suddenly on my way back home, on the bus, that my mother isn't going to handle relationships on my behalf anymore; I have to define my own manners, my own standards of what a human interaction must be like. Should I give up on getting something back from my trip overseas for my father because he's always projected that he doesn't need anything, laugh it off with a shrug because my spiritually inclined brother is so difficult to shop for or do I decorate his walls, his cupboards, his fridge, my parents' home ... my home with memories that I made alone but which have the whiff of me wishing they were there, that I always remember them. Will I get a cook and order take away when he takes a leave or will I let my house fill up with the aroma of my mother's recipe, let my friends and family savour the taste of her indulgent care, labor of love. Will I be able to protect and preserve the rituals that I grew up with, will I be able to create habits that could be of sacramental value, create a life peppered with beautiful metaphors.
Everyday, there is a future to be zealously vaguer about, that could just turn out to be like the salt accident in my coffee this morning if Im not careful; I hang in a precarious balance, leaning against a flimsy wall. The fact that I continue to densely treasure my loneliness, peek from under the luxury of my pessimism, and justify myself because I've just begun reading Nietzshe doesn't help. 

Then

When we were very very young, so young that life just meant today and it was like a pop song turned on in my head. We were bewildered and chaotic and clumsy and had muck everywhere and food spilled on our shirts and only knew how to join sentences with 'and'. 
With rain in our hair, the sun beckoned, and we turned, smiling. I was warm and you felt like kin. We surrendered to the outside, with a mouthful of joy that we sucked out of a straw. It was a day for lingering and lounging in the sand. You called me a wackadoo and we giggled until we were warm.

What I did today

What did you do today, darling?

Well, let me see. I woke up to the sound of hammering in my head and pulled the curtains close to stop the bright light that was hurting my eyes. After an hour of convincing myself to get up from the bed, I dragged myself over to the refrigerator, craving for some cold milk, which was surprising because I don't crave anything these days. When it's horrendously dark, I don't crave the light. When it's painstakingly quite, I don't crave the sound of music, or people talking or the sound of my thoughts. But today I craved cold milk. In my world, this marked a turning point. I decided this was some sort of sign the universe was sending my way, so I pulled on my robe and walked out of my little apartment. You'll be glad to know I didn't lock the door.

What did you do today, darling ?

Well hold on. So I walked out into the bright light and somehow managed to reach the little shop on the corner of the street. He was out of milk. I realized something about the world today, mid day is a bad time to crave milk. Apparently, most of the world has already been to the moon and back, circled the Earth three times, enjoyed their breakfast and made love by the time you've woken up, groggy from sleep. They are ahead of you. After this, I felt abandoned on those busy streets, and I shut my eyes and walked back as fast as I could. The one idea I'd had in the day and it was a bad one. The world had indeed become heavier, don't you think? Dull as concrete.

What did you do today, darling ?

Well, if you must know, I think I died ninety seven times. You haven't been listening.

Personal Histories

Time passes by in lurches, not like water out of a leaky tap that keeps dripping at a constant rate but like the winds of this city, unbearably static at times and violently strong at others. It depends on the mood of the weather and things remembered. There are those that find themselves too busy to be courteous. How could they possibly find the meaning of love ? Left only with a trace of a memory that cant be remembered, left staring at a rocking chair still moving to the heartbeat of someone who left, never to return. I always thought those brain molds were not to be trusted. Every time I step out, the first hot gush of air seems familiar, like someone's breath on a summer night - puff, puff. I try to imagine my days without this familiar, barely discernible presence, without that depth of feeling. How could I though, when it is the only thing that gets me through the day.

Dis-illusioned

Was it really so hard for you to be real? I spent my time counting stars, writing letters that I never posted, sipping coffee that was already too cold. Just not the right temperature. Just never the right temperament. I spent my time walking on tiles, careful to place my awkward feet right in between, careful not to touch the boundaries. Always too careful not to touch the boundaries. I wish you had been more prudent about my obsessiveness. But you went right ahead and spilled water over the lines I had drawn. Now I don't know where my heart lies, nor my mind. I don't pay heed to your words, or mine. There's no way to make out one thing from the other; the sweet words from the poisonous; the real from illusion; the hot from the cold. I burnt my hand. But the coffee had already grown cold. The cigarette you carried around was finally put off and now the butt lies like a big black spot on my little blank life. I had begged for years, it makes me happy that you finally put it off. I envy you your shallowness dear. I have come to realize it is a terrible thing to dig deeper meaning into things that mean so little and are tossed aside by the rest.

The room is full of the cries of a baby, loud enough to match the splattering of the rain on the window panes outside. A little angel brought down into a world already hurling towards emotional destruction. Outside, there lie stacks of stones – towers assembled carefully in prayer. The hint of a disturbance is all it would take to dismantle them. To tear apart the families of the hands' that placed them atop each other.

Now, she wears clammy clothing that stays damp for days. A shy tuck of hair behind the ear; a lunar voice throwing venomous insults, filling the empty sky's ears; a permanent sort of shadow casts her face - dusty with a caked layer of fear and anguish. No secrets to reveal and tears that have almost lost their fluidity. She tries to struggle inside the house on the off chance of dreamy nights - her nook for days when the rain is just not stopping; the most real thing she possesses. But there is a long, long queue outside that little hut. There are a million in line, ahead of her. God’s mighty army; those grown up angels. Or a forgotten debris of the crushed hope of countless? They light up what is left of their lives, and hold it up. Will the flame quicken? Or spiral towards its end, blown out by the stirring wind.
The tiny one inside cries out, and it seems like for now, the world is still intact.

Listen

The Chinese (Red) String Theory is based on this simple proverb: 

‘An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle but will never break.’

I loved ‘The Lunchbox’ for multiple reasons. To state one – the anticipation of a letter, of what the returned lunchbox container would contain, a woman’s joy at seeing it empty, her courage in thanking the receiver of her sincere cooking for having liked her food, unconventional friendships, the slow discovery of another’s secrets – these things to me are what, for an eloquent word, magic is. In a world where most of us continuously look for glamour, are attracted by glitz and out of the world things, extreme highs or lows, where we despise ordinary things – it is a movie which wonderfully makes you long to be simple, to regain the ability to be made happy by small things, to believe in kinship and the power of honest thoughts. It makes one nostalgic for written notes, labours of love; for pieces of paper to hang on to as keepsakes.
Most of all, it lets you believe that there is someone among the 7 billion people in the world, despite the messy maps created by those unskilled at drawing borders,  who longs to hear what you have to say; it lets you believe in the Red String Theory.

"Listen. Some things Nino, some things are like this. Pay attention to them. What the whiff of dried bouquet in the air tells you, what soothes you amidst the blinding lights on the road. Pay attention to the things you miss in half beats.
Imagine. You are the empress of a wild kingdom. Let the castle of your heart be unguarded because what would life be without crenellations, without a risky angle?"

Of power-cuts and things

The lights go out; fans slowly churn to a halt while you sit and try to breathe in this insufferable heat. There is a tear shaped drop trickling down the sides of your face, beside your rouged cheeks, it is close to the hollow of your ear. You smell like salt. There is a scream forming in your gut, knotting itself up into a tight cluster and rising like smoke, almost reaching your throat now. But you gulp and push it back down with your tongue with the patience born out of the indifference you have so diligently cultivated. You close your eyes, turning your sight inwards but all you can comprehend is the sun’s blinding light that strikes your face like a sharp, focused slap. There is a pile of unwashed clothes lying on the bed next to you, and a pot of red Poinsettia. You scoot to sit down on the floor and press your palm against the tiles, trying to absorb some of its coolness and letting it travel up. You think of fire, you feel exhausted. You’re walking at the extreme side of the road, the edge. That’s the way you like walking, always a brave heart. In your head, you break into a sprint, so fast that you leave behind everything you have ever detested. This feud isn’t even original; you are the retold story of a thousand men, once more. You have been trying to suspend judgement but this doesn’t feel like summer, it can’t be.
You take the plant out to water it. It is strange how your our mind ascribes metaphors to memories and events. The smell of wet mud, and you think of mangoes, summer school holidays at your grandma’s house.   

Of strange tales

You vagabond, gypsy, wanderer
you nomad, you homeless man
with a pocket full of change that has wavering value
I remember you carried around your neck : a key
and smelled of bubble-gum
the scent of which  found home in my nose
when you buried your face in my hair and inhaled sharply
the spasmodic sigh of a man who I had thought could never be shocked
It is said your life span is proportional to the number of breaths you take
You believed left over tea leaves predict the future
and studied my palm for hours to find a way home
Across three generations, I was famed as the lady with poise
only you knew I could not drink and walk without spilling and stumbling
On nights like these, I need to be writing stories like yours
striking off and scrawling again those little details
about how you only slept in houses with red bricks
and Erhu- the Chinese violin that was  the secret of your music
With the fatal morning, comes the memory of your voice
and the light of sense goes out
I turn towards the well-placed envelopes; good intentions
and think about how despite ourselves
we manage to knot up the things we love most
As I sift through each day, so desperate and hungry
I remember  you told me that a tortoise breathes 4 times a minute
and lives to be one fifty
I breathe slowly
sometimes it is bound to be a long wait
Is it any wonder then, that the scorching sand
reminds me of you?

                                  (just because this song is playing on in my head over and over)

A sliced apple lay on the kitchen counter, already brown from prolonged contact with oxygen. And next to it sat an upright canvas; paint spilled across it in joyful aggression, and a torn corner. As if somebody had left in a hurry, maybe after having received a phone call. Out of uncontrollable eagerness or some unfortunate tragedy, one could not tell. Outside, a lanky boy, ran as fast as his knobby knees would carry him, flowers in hand and a shiny wrapper in tow, the smell of daisies trailing. There had been better days to be wrong, But never a wrong day to try to be right. His crooked teeth had been chewing on time for too long. Today, it was time to run.

She walked briskly; sharp sounds on the paved floor. Turned left on to a narrow, dingy alley, and was startled a little to find a reflection in the glass windows of the corner shop staring back at her. Wind kissed hair, chapped face, eyes wet with unshed tears and unbuttoned coat. But she had flowers in her hat.
Yellow daisies.

She paused for a bit, and thought about the art of forgetting; About rusted monkey bars; covered with moss because of lack of use, left to dry in the winter sun. It was part of the gruelling and obsessive scrutiny of everything that came under her nose that she had recently taken up; inspecting life with a microscope in hand. She started to climb up the steps, and then suddenly exhausted, knelt down, feet covered with shadows.
In her sober sadness, she thought yet again of all the promises she had made over the years. Mostly, life was these untraceable patterns of simplicity but it was clear that everyone knew that promises came from fear.  Fear of those crests of marvellous elation and the troughs of colossal disappointment.  And this bumpy ride of uneven highs and lows left her slightly bruised.
As she unlocked the door and stepped inside, her gaze was drawn to the dress lying on the rug, half spilling out of the gift wrapped packet she had received it in. It almost brought a smile to her face. Unwrapping that gift, she had in a flash of thought, felt like she was unwrapping darkness. And the seven lined poem on the clumsily torn yellow paper, eloquent in its desire to wrench her away from the wedge of unmoving, unflinching stone that she was driving herself into.   

Maybe there was no ending to be had. She was only half an inch away from sleep now. In a hide and seek world, if the answers hid, what was so wrong in seeking unrealities? Lying beside the box, dress in hand, she drifted off into slumber; asleep in the criss-crossing of swaying, flickering thoughts – the frivolous and the grave and finally dreams – the great leveller. 

Winter Ghosts

He looked around at the small 6 by 6 room; cosy enough even with the high ceiling and all, courtesy of all the piles of clothes covering the cobble stoned floor. Inhabited by one of those people who tend to leave both their clothes and their emotions lying scattered around. He thought how there are things one gets to know by simply noticing apparently inconsequential details about somebody you have known long enough. There were striking differences between himself and this particular friend for example. He was the kind of person who always waited; for the sun to reach its full height, then for it to go down, for acquaintances to turn up for important meetings or otherwise; for sleep to come and take over. As an obvious result, he left everything unfinished; his life a pile of incomplete thoughts, and in his room a collection of half written journals. Despite the directionless-ness of his thoughts, his heart did not have the capacity for change, even as December and with it, winter approached.
As for his simple friend, winter was all but a dead body; Maybe a hopeful haunting at best. The hardest season, where everything lost warmth and color and the only thing left to do was breathe and survive. He tried to tell her that when it’s zero degrees outside, even cats and dogs snuggle. He tried to reinforce his belief that there were hearts that could not be conquered by the cold. Smiling, despite the frozen lips.  She continued to leave the clothes around, spilled her soul out and then worried about the mess she made. And he continued to spill out words of condolence that had made houses in his throat, living there contentedly.