Winter. Calcutta.

The poor people in the mean streets and the footpaths would vehemently hold on to anything that's warm,yes, that was the sign of a true winter in my hometown, not the plethora of ebullient youths braving sweat shirts and skull caps, not the retired schoolmaster and his out of fashion monkey cap, not the Gregorian calendar pointing out the month of December- if you wanted to know whether it was winter in Calcutta, you should look at the poor people.
They won't lie.

How a story should begin?

I moved from left to right, I tilted my head from this side to that side but still the words didn’t come like they often used to. I wanted to write something true, you know, like Hemingway said, one true sentence, but I couldn’t get anything.
So I decided upon talking to a stranger, pouring my heart out, telling the stranger about my hollowness, oh yes not the stranger you meet in the road, but the stranger you lost in time, the stranger whom you once knew like the palm of your left hand.
Suddenly it struck to me, something true perhaps, about the stranger, that strangeness, and that little latent familiarity-

It is kind a sad what we forget, even sadder what we remember.

Perhaps that’s how a story should begin, you know, with a sentence like that.

The voice of the morning.

And he would speak, sometimes at night, sometimes at noon, sometimes when the birds were returning home, sometimes when he should have said nothing, always with a sense of urgency radiating every sphere of his life, traversing the circumference of the clocks existence, like a garrulous being. 

She would patiently listen.

But it was the morning, and only the morning when she would softly speak, in her slumber, in that beautiful transient state and slur, slur, slur, like a new born learning to speak, and as she would drag each and every word like a viscous fluid invigorating his auditory atmosphere, like a sick bee humming for love, he would actually discover how life should be lead - slowness was perhaps the key to happiness.

Facebook Love

She changes her profile picture.

My heart skips a beat. Every time.

It certainly belongs to the category of one of those weird events, where technology synchronizes physiology without the help of a Doctor, or so I think.
Thus I philosophize this cyclic occurrence, suspecting mortal desires- or love they say. In a way I intellectualize the situation, forgetting to ‘like’ the picture, thus undoing a little stroke of her happiness.

I slowly stray away from her virtual world, waiting to be forgotten.

She changes her profile picture again.
I deactivate my account.

My Dark Friend.

The harbinger of the morning

 Dwell in the darkness

 Afraid to be noticed

 Afraid like you; 

And that’s why I hate the morning

The insolent light

That makes me forget about you.

Sadness and Her.

“Be happy now.”  She said,” Tomorrow I will start teaching you to be sad.”

And that’s how it started, once upon a time, not long ago, melancholia, growing onto me, like a malignant disease, infecting every sect of my soul.  

But she was the stray of our generation, philosopher of the lost cause, deluded by fiction and emptied by hope, bickering and absolving to forget the plentiful past filled with a plethora of people, people who were like dreams, the beautiful people from a beautiful time, the happy people.

She was sad, she wanted to be, because that’s where the meaning lies she said, in sadness, and I loved her like I loved every sad thing.

I loved her like every sad poem I ever read and every sad song I ever heard.

“You are my sad bet,

And I am your favorite pet.

 Forever.” 

 I said.

The Will to Live.

As he was watching the sunset a sudden thought invaded his brain, and in a fit of scientific ‘de ja vu’ he remembered that the earth had gone around the sun almost 4.5 billion times, a fact he learned in his science book in the summer of his youth.
And now he was there approaching only his 25th trip around the Sun. He knew he would make a few more trips while the earth will keep on going for a few billion years more, without him, to witness the sunset. He found it so unfair. 
And in the helm of all the scientific thoughts he realized the meager unimportance of his existence, something he could not comprehend in the small cabin of his apartment.
Mortality never stood a chance he thought, he wanted to witness the sunset again and again for a billion years more. And that’s when he decided to be immortal.
 He decided to paint. He painted the sunset in the shades of all the colors his modest palette could create, of all the colors his canvas could hold, because some wise man once said,

“the idea is not to live forever but to create something that will.”

And that’s when he knew that his existence is not limited by the shackles of mortality, its beyond that, he will exist in his creation, in his art, for a billion years more, until everything becomes stardust and creation begins again.

The Stethoscope.

The stethoscope fascinated him. And for the next few days all he would do was to hear the sound of his heart.   He would do that with such scientific curiosity which was even lacking in the great doctors of his generation.
  But it was only a matter of days before he would get bored and blatantly pass it off as monotonous.

That’s the tragedy of being young and immature. You tend to give so much importance to changes and ‘the new’, that you often fail to understand the variety and beauty of monotony. You fail to realize that’s what you cherish most, the constancy of your own existence and the familiar things surrounding you- the familiar sound, the familiar smell and the familiar sight.

And many years later one fine day he would be able to know the voices of his heart, he would hear the sound of every beat, how distinct, how enticing-beautiful he would think.

But it would be too late, for she would be gone, because in his youth he was deaf to the sound of the heart.

Tell me Now.

Sometimes we talk like strangers
Other times we just don’t talk
We don’t ask too many questions
But sometimes when we are lonely
We talk like best friends
We talk like two young lovers
Too shy to confess our love
Like it exists.
And that’s when we quote poetry
About love and life.
The seasons change
And we go on
In our charades
Afraid to love
Afraid to fall.
Again.

I Wish.

I wish you a happy day
The beauty of rain, sun and misty hay.
I wish you a blue sky
And puddles of cranberry pie.
I wish you the white doves
And a pair of vermilion gloves.
I wish you the wishing star fairy
So you may be a little less weary.

But every night in the silent rhyme
Like a playful poet of mime,
I wish you all my forgotten love
And every little thing I have.

A Pencil Sketch.

His  first pencil sketch resembled the perfect disorder of various shades of black and white, intended to portray a scenic imagery the ones you find in Ruskin Bond books, having the entire package of a hut in the backdrop of chevron hills, flaunting a sunset, the familiar picture, the first any kid learns, before the dark reality and polluted gutters of the neon lit urban jungle infiltrates the white pages of the memory, leaving behind a notion of being cheated in the sweet delicacies of  youth, for to paint a grey world in shades of black and white has always challenged great artists, let alone that little boy with a puritan spirit.

When Seasons Change.

The cautious soul hibernated in the very depths of winter
It was the bitter coldness that prevailed within
Solitude and solitude alone brought sanity.

But it was Springtime again
And the winds whispered her memory
In the trees, in the empty corridors and streets.

For when seasons change,
So does the heart.

The Cold and Them.

A tooth fairy pickled the coldness outside
A grasshopper died in the greens
A little bird once stopped flying to the north
A red nose humbled the creed.

The girls were all dancing
Dancing to be warm
The girls were all dancing to be free.

Little did they know that the
Winter was within
The winter outside was glee.