the parting

this is a story, that i thought dint fit in well with my prized ten. found it in the drafts folder of my mail. thought of sharing it. so here goes...

It was early august…
She looked into his eyes. It exuded affection and kindness. Behind a looking glass of tears. He held her close to him. And looked into her eyes. Searching for what it seemed to be saying. He told her it couldn’t last. That it was a dream. That it was all so unreal. Though she believed that this was the first time something like this was happening. Love. That idea that brought them to this state. Inseparable.skin against skin. breath against breath. Which meant that the reason why their worlds moved was because they were with each other.
“this cant happen” he told her.
She just turned away eyes brimming with tears.
“why’re you saying this?” she asked him. Choking with tears.
“I told you.. I don’t believe in it. Every one is meant to be alone. Every person is supposed to move through life with his own craft. Whatever the craft is..” he said.
She buried her face in her hands. He kept his hand over her. She sniffed and kept her face hidden.
He spoke to her about the need for relationships. He said that the reason why couples were there was because of mutual insecurity. Because of the fact that the community expected them to be with each other. That their forefathers had always propounded the theory that once a relationship started, it was meant to stay in that manner for the rest of his or her life.
Arun disagreed. Inside him was a spirit that could be likened to an electron. Vibrating vigorously to be in the state of rest. And prone to bursts of energy which could direct him either way..
How would that reassure Dipti? She looked straight at the tree in the garden they were sitting in. Delicate eyes under a wisp of eyebrows. Gentle eyelashes painted on a soft expanse of charmelle skin. lips as pink as a baby’s hair drawn behind ears lying on her shoulder. An expression of faith. Of innocence. Of honesty.
“so you don’t want this? You don’t want us to be together?” she asked.
“no” he said. Fighting tears.
“is us being together a burden to you?” she asked.
“I guess it is.” He said.
the sky was gray. Which slowly turned blue. As a yellow sun emerged from beneath the clouds. In the city of Grover, the sun wasn’t invited. It put away the gentle cool breeze that freshened the township.
“so I guess I’ll leave.” He said.
She looked down. A lump in her throat. He looked at her. hands around her knees, squatting. He leant across to her and kissed her gently at her lips. Those delicate structures that connected them emotionally and physically. She didn’t respond.
“good bye” he said. And walked away. And outside the garden.






The garden suddenly looked very quiet. Except for a soft sobbing. In the distance a vehicle screeched. A motorist shouted at someone. Smoke bellowed from a lorry carrying goods of a greater capacity than required. An oven burnt its share of butter cookies.
And Dipti wiped her tears.
She couldn’t believe what was happening. But if she had to be a mature woman by now, she’d have to accept what occurred. She should’ve expected that such a thing would occur. That a man, would leave her alone at some point of time. When she gave herself to it. Whole heartedly. When she vowed within herself that she’d commit to the relationship heart, mind and soul. That she’d no more cry herself to sleep alone at night. That she’d be incomplete and unhappy. That the fact that she cared for him, love him and be with him every instantof the journey called life wouldn’t be of much significance to him. That love was just a phase for him. It wasn’t life. Her belief’s were put to the test now. All that she stood for and had faith in. God. And love. And family. She smiled, as she had a fading glimpse of she and Arun with children. Babies. Oh how she loved to bear them. And watch them grow up. And guide them. And love them.
But it was all gone now. Dreams lost to the dark.
She sobbed a little more.
A cat walked past her. oblivious to the sad scenery. But walking silently nevertheless.. soft steps. One behind the other.
Dipti suddenly realized she shouldn’t be alone in the park for too long. She picked herself up and started walking.
* * * * *
Arun got off the bus as it neared his house. He walked towards the house. A whiff of triumph. That he’d made it through a relationship. That he hadn’t be held down by constraints of a feeble mind. That he’d tackled the ending with élan. That he’d steered a relationship to its rightful end. That he’d start life anew. In the manner in which it always had to.
He walked past a friendly uncle’s house. And a house with two playful boys. His eyes looking at some distance mute spectacle. Not noticing those people staring at him. A friendly “hi” absent in his manner. Which persisted during his good times and bad.
However in his manner of seeming confidence, a little black dot imprinted itself in his heart. It began to burrow gradually. And spread. And while it did so, it began to hurt him. Like the hose of a vacuum cleaner tugging on a clean blanket. (but ‘clean’ is relative isn’t it?) like a bright harsh white lamp in the middle of the calm blackness of the night. Like an unhealthy depression on the ground in a narrow street.
And hit hurt him. It bore into him like a dagger stabbing him from within. It seemed to be like a black hole that began to suck all life into it.









He didn’t want to face this, did he? He didn’t want to face his fears that he kept buried underneath his cloak of normalcy. He didn’t want to accept that he was a cold lonely man who lived in a two roomed shack in the corner of a dead end street. He didn’t want to accept the fact that he buried himself into work in order to escape his dreadful listless life. Memories he willed to stay away from his mind, found its way like a thundering train in a tunnel. The moment they held hands. The moment they kissed. Lip to lip. Each lost in the other’s embrace.
He shut his eyes. Trying not to think of anything. Couldn’t say he succeeded.
He opened it to look at a dog sleeping across a street. He sat on telephone box on the sidewalk. He turned his eyes to the staircase that led to his little house on the second floor. Rented. He noticed brown shades on the walls of his house. And there was the same old aroma of food that’d summon him to landlady’s house for lunch.
Same old.
For heavens sake it was her heart he was offering her! she loved him! What did that mean? That he’d have to be alone no more! That he needn’t have to carry the burden of holding his back through every stupid situation. That he wouldn’t have to hold back and carry himself like he was in control of himself. He wouldn’t have to fake happiness!
His head was awhirl with thoughts now. Of memories that struck him like lightning. He was rushing things. He was running away in his mind for so long. He got up from the seat and rushed to a bus gathering speed as it left the bus stop. He hopped onto it… barely missing a step. Offices, colleges and restaurants buzzed past his eyes. The conductor tapped on his shoulder and he ruffled his pockets to find a rumpled five rupee note.
But that would do!
He got off the bus after a few stops, and ran towards the park; as fast as his legs took him.
Passers-by looked at him strangely. Who’d run in formal clothes at 12 o’ clock on a Monday morning?
He arrived at the park. A woman stood facing away from him. Trying to hail auto rickshaws that were full. The street suddenly became quiet.
Footsteps sounded gently on the cemented pavement, scattered with leaves.
“Dipti”, he said, almost whispering.
She turned around. A confused expression on her face. Eyes already welling with tears.
“I cant do it. I cant go on alone…” he said.
Her lips broke into a smile. His fingers reached out for her hand. And drew her close to him. And she pushed her lips to reach his. And they kissed passionately under a rain-tree.
It was just the beginning of August…

Hate

Lady, walking thru the woods, and talking to the trees, to wake them from slumber. To knock on closed doors of wood, and pursuade them, to, shed their garment of fear. To enter into their hidden rooms of embittered care. Ignorant uncaring woman. Ignorant , hurt, lost, woman. Honest, painful, wild, woman. 

messages

the following are by far the most important messages saved in my phone. i want to delete them. and hence am transferring it all to this virtual plane of thoughts:


me: why are we complicated with emotion?
ivan melroi: because complication is the only known antidote for time. gravity makes us go round, keeps us from losing sight of the sun, but its the complications, the goddamn complications like love, envy and murderous passion the makes the circling worth our while. emotionis an ancient television screen stuck beneath the surface of every dream, a starting gun for the unborn son, the little red riding hood of our lustful nights by the bonfire of desire. huddle around. huddle around. dig graves by the fire, get your rocks off till you drop the bottom, kiss the earth. lick her till she screams her name and tugs at her navel, rest in pieces, tiptoe across MCQ minefields. you're a veteran by 70 for surviving a horde of senseless dreams.


me: what do you attribute your frustration to?
sic blackgoat: i attribute it primarily to NRI's who have too much money in their pocket and got too much attention as kids. i attribute it to those people who would believe a book over what is real and tangible. i attribute it to lack of humanity by those who got too much of it undeservingly.i attribute it to those selfish people who are wehere they are because some one else was selfless. i attribute to those who think they're genetically superior. i attribute it to those who are religiously biased. and i'm an athiest!

me: you are a part of society, that doesnt mean, you cant do without it.
sic blackgoat: mine heresy be a farce if i be shackled to peppered dreams of my ancestors. but i am and hence ne'er whole, a fraction in the melee of shadows and ghosts that mine society traps me in.

my sands...

you.

walk by with your plaints

and your woes.

and your numerous stories.

of the sun the moon,

and your fire and your ice.

and the pain and the deepest,

darkest.

fears.

and i.

listen.

because I have to row the boat.

and gently pass it by through the lake that stretches.

from this shore to that.

from this ear to that.

from this lip to that.

from this moment to that.

love.

be.

love.

be.

one sunday morning...

Blinding white, cloth upon your being,
Blinding white, the garment that you're wearing,
Inside, my eyes that unclothe your innermost feeling,
And watch your twisted being,
Snow upon the driveway,
And blood staining the path,
That leads you to this place,
Bottled up darling,
Listened to by yon wasted scoundrel,
Beer's unblemished honest counsel,
Listen to each convoluted thought,
drive through all the battle's that you've fought,
you're tired lovely innocent being,
You.

HUMAN

It was late evening. And I watched the sullen grass tainted with the demise of the setting sun. an unfathomable fog stood in the path that obscured vision from the wall. And with the little light that pursuaded the dark to stay awhile and hold its sway over the transient interjection of dusk, I felt the unearthly breath of the night, willing its decision upon those who inhabited the structure. If the structure seemed any more like a fold that would enclose its keepers in safe custody, save this forlorn being warming the place by an illumination of a portrait and a table overlaid with books and a contraption of ink.
I sat. In the interlude of the busy day, engrossed in witnessing the fading light, a catharsis that eased the burden of being bound to the hapless activity that chained me to my desk. And what remained towards the close of day was the image of a white wall(if any part of it conformed to the colour) and ivy upon its body, serpentining its way upon the edge of concrete earth while letting its arms enshroud the lower sloping stretches of white Calcium. But now there was the blacknesss. Realization shot through my senses with the opposing realities in my brain and I got up from my chair and walked towards the table that stood in the far corner of the room, facing a door.
Supper was laid on it; soup and pieces of buttered bread with a loaf of meat. Sullen, as the day had been, sullen was the mien that my mind wore and so, sullen was my appetite.
If the soup had been less insipid, the bread would have been washed down with vigour. But my gastronomic reaction to food reflected its absolute disappointment of the weather, within and without.
If I, by means of being absorbed in the deed that documents every instance of action or inaction (pardon my use of the contradiction) have failed to impress upon lyou the situation of my mind, the following lines of ink will guide you.
Having been warned of my inattention to my work(which involved resecting and anastomosing pieces of living flesh in an incised man), I was ordered rest following a visit by a doctor of the mind.
His tales of whether voices resounded every time I walked or talked or footsteps followed my own while I went about my agenda or hushed whispers threatened my safety and my life while I stood about at street corners or the theater, resembled what I’d be haunted by and document them likewise, he advised the resolution of this disordered state. This ‘disoriented state’ seemed to be the complaint of only the doctor and not of those who accompanied me. In the purest deduction of any calulation that my senses would offer through exertion, they’d reject any notion that would breach my steadfast state of health.
Anne, certainly would not indent my apparent sense of well being by incising it with an accusation. She’d play with her ball in the innermost recesses of the morgue while I worked in the years before I arrived here. Nor would her mother who watched me while I bathed within the closed doors in the one-roomed apartment that once housed me.
Justin would cycle his way through the pathways of the garden within the hospital. Though he wasn’t a doctor like any of us. He wouldn’t find fault; nor would robert, who stood by the clock at one and tell me what the schedule tomorrow would be. I’d find it admissable to consider an ineffectual diagnosis of the doctor, since a statistical proof would discount the validity of every diagnosis seem plausible and absolute.
I sat, staring at the glass with which water held its ground, static, with walls that permitted an equal gaze from within it. The day seemed tiring to my reposing bones, which seemed to be the result of gross inactivity.
It was then that a momentary lapse of my attention brought into my field of sensory consideration that another human inhabited this very same room.
I heard the rustling of corduroy, and a gentle whistle that seemed to emenate from one of the appendages of this very same apartment. My weary legs became taut with excitement at this preturbed turn of events.
On entering the bedroom, I enquired ; using the notation normally used to greet another person through the gramaphone. I was met was met with silence; and the rustle of corduroy.
And the gentle whistle.
“where are you?”
Silence.
“here” came the reply and I, jumped at the proximity to which I was met by the monosyllable. I swung around to see this man, sitting atop a cupboard, nay, slouching atop it, a coat of dirty brown and a tie beneath a visage that spoke of scrawniness and anointed with dishevelled hair. He looked at me through those leafy brown eyes and emoted factors of seeming intelligence as well as a fayn image of downtroddeness.
“unreasoning” he said, “are you of having been confined to this empty fold where the only friends of yours, speak to you alone”.
I made my way to the head of my bed and rested my aching back on the sliced oak to be at ease with the stranger who had stealthily made his way into my home.
“you do realize that robert bears free will to direct5 any part of your life that seems appropriate to him” he said” and all those other friends of yours bear more contempt of you than good willing”
“the other friends of mine?,” I replied , “are whom?”
“justin, anne and her mother”
Taken aback at his presumable knowledge of my state of affairs, I withheld speaking another word. Unitlli brought myself to consider that there were people that got wind of my state of being.
This stranger being one of them.
“and what may be your name?” I asked him.
“william” he replied.
“how well do you identify the objectives of my acquaintences, if they tend to reveal their form to me, and me alone? How well do you claim to know their names, when I’ve only revealed them to the Doctor who visits me every fortnight?”
“I’ve been through the barrage of unknown faces and infinite questions” william told me, “of winding passageways though arriving at one concluding decision”. I know the woman who watches you batheing, the man who inappropriately moves through corridors of your hospital when he is unqualified to attempt your profession and robert who questions every one of your actions, during the day, the day before, and every week beyond that”
“I know you”.
I looked away. Alarmed and mildly pleased that a stranger knew me so well and knocked at the doors of my supposed tainted perception of reality.
“what do I do?” I let myself say, surrendering to the advice of this man.
“the neuroleptic” he said.
“what?”
“the pills,” he said, gesturing to the bottle at the side of the bed atop a desk, “you’ve been prescribed, are to be consumed every moment you find that he voices from those people drive you further into malady”
“what will become of me,” I said, inquisitive about how notions of insecurity would breach periodic moments of calculated action.
“that,” william replied, as he got off the cupboard, thrusting his torso, and landed on his feet on the ground beneath, “is a question, I should ask myself”
He then wandered out of the bedroom and into a recess that occupied the far end of the room.
My eyes squinted at the bottle of pills that lay behind the lantern by the side of the bed. Fueled by the advice of this unknown man, and resolute to end my seeming indecisiveness, I stretched out, opened the bottle and devoured 3 of those blue pills. I then lay in bed untill the darkness of my eyelids brought me relief.
And sleep.
And in the sleep that wrought its way into my blighted consciousness, I saw the forms that gave me company during the times I stayed awake. Each walked across, mumbling how they’d been shunned by me, or my mannerism, that had changed along the course of this dream. Anne held her little teddy close to her bosom and stuck close to her mother, her eyes misty with tears. Justin slammed the door fo the room I was residing in, and walked outside. Roberst sat in the chair in front of me, and slowly faded as my eyelids blanched with daylight.
With daylight.
And with daylight, I awoke and opened the door to the corridor that led me to the apartment’s lobby.
The woman with the mopstick, looked at me wide eyed and tarried the course of her housework. The chimney sweeper almost stumbled on his broom as he witnessed a change in my demanour.
“sir, you look better,” he told me.
I merely smiled at him and regarded his observation with gratitude and asked him if he saw a person called william, who walked into my apartment last evening.
“no sir” he said.
I described the stranger to him, dishevelled hair, dirty brown coat, black boots…
“no sir, “ he said.
I noted his response with an queer understanding nod and opened the gate to wake into daylight.
My daylight.