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.