Untitled.

me

The past few days have been weird. I am doing quite alright at work, they seem to like me and my ideas so far. At home it has been peaceful too. Nothing specifically disturbing so far. Somehow the other night while I was trying to sleep, I looked at the ceiling and felt like crying, for no reason. I had a sea of tears welling in my eyes, ready to pour out. I have no clue why did I have tears in my eyes, but I just wanted so badly to cry and take it out of me. And then, just as they had come, they disappeared.

Mother's Pride

It's 1:16pm and am sitting and typing this on the day after Mother's Day. I hadn't spoken with my mum for a while till she called me yesterday. It was a usual phone call, full of the nagging - why havn't you called, did you eat properly, are behaving at work and all that. That just made me think of so many things together. Someday I will not have her to nag me or call me to say any of these things. She will too cease to exist as so many other people. I will miss her, terribly. She's been the cloest to me all this time. But the thing is I haven't been close or honest to her. She hardly knows me at all. She doesn't know any of my secrets or my trials and tribulations or why I left cities or why I left jobs or why I spent weeks in a monastry once. These are questions which neither she asked or I told her about. She has an image of me which is nice, sometimes very irritating but overall a very nice guy, it's just that I am far off from that. I have a secret which could possibly shatter her world, without which I may not be who I am. I know I can tell her anything, but this one thing is something she may not have full understanding of. What do I do?
She is my most favorite person on this planet & I can't tell her the truth. how sad is that?

New Office

I dont want to write anything about the new place am working at, it seems that each time I end up jinxing it. Superstitious? You bet.

At the moment am enjoying my honeymoon here, everyone is nice and sweet and things are okay, am waiting for the big moment, when I get jolted out of it and wonder when life isnt so neat and quiet anymore. It will happen I know, they always do without fail. I used to make my people perceptions very soon, decide who I am going to like and who am not, in the blink of my eye. Here, am trying a new approach of chances. Of giving everyone enough time before deciding if it is love or war.

It is an interesting place, most people have their own perceptions about me already. I am the outsider into their cozy little world, so it is going to be a slight uphill task of breaking their mould. I normally make easy friends with women, here am still to find a someone who I can think of being friends with at the moment. I sit isolated in a corner room with the airconditioner constantly working to make sure I am an icicle at the end of the day.

I don't know what to make of this unccany manner of things. Everything is so reminiscent of my past. The way I got this job or the position am supposedly hired for, the way am travelling to work everyday, the distance from work to my present home, the attitude of my workmates..just about everything I can think of. Even the ex boyfriend factor. He was there then too, calling me at weird hours of the night to ask for directions of some place or just to know the meaning of something, or to just ask if he was sounding drunk. I took those calls, gave answers and disconnected. I am still doing the same things all over again. I ran away from all of this a few years ago, for reasons best left unsaid. I wanted to escape it all and not have to fight. And now its here, with me and I am living it.

Reading Mr. Coleho, I understand that life gives you a second chance to things the right way, to make some sense out of everything. Perhaps this is it, this is the unfinished business I was told I need to finish. The battle that began back in time needs to end, I need to do my part and not look back at this. I know I want to do bigger and better things, maybe this needs to finish first.

I just need the strenght and the brain to do it right this time.

Beauty in the Breakdown

"Love was enough."

I can't imagine her pain or her ecstasy as she said those words to me. Sitting in a B grade bar, on a rusty stool with no piano in sight, this acclaimed singer/musician was batting her now almost gone eyelids at me.

Having seen the small shrine she built to her immortal love, just a little while ago, I didn't know what to say to her, a few paintings he had made for her, an autographed book, a few now yellowed pictures and her wedding ring.

Their was a story which was worth talking about, a 50 something man in love with a not yet 20 something girl. If age wasn't what worked against them, there was also the media pressure and the public images they both carried. One who was a famous writer and the other who was just about beginning to know what being famous felt like. It was all very new to her, to him she was his third wife. The fact that he had children from previous marriages didn't bother her, it was love.

Today after 10 years of loving him and some 15 after losing him to life, she sits and looks at me, as if it was all still happening, she was still with him, there in that rundown bar.

She doesn't have the money, anything from the inheritance of the books, the estates, its all with the children or the other wives.

" I didn't want to loose everything I have, the memories of him over some cheap squabble about who will have the money. Love was enough."

I wonder, about her, the love and the beauty of her breakdown, taking a sip of the cheap beer in front of me, I call for another round.

For me. For her.

Dream of someone else

"What about you, is there someone else? "
..
....

"No."

" No, but, but there's the dream of someone else."

RoadBlock

There is something to be said about roadblocks and my life. The minute I hope and think that I will manage a way to careen off the pothole and just in nick of time, I find myself deep in muck. You climb out of a ditch hoping that it will be okay the next time, that maybe this will be the last and the next pothole will come a lot further down the road. But no sir that is now how it is supposed to happen I guess, its like a series of potholes, sewn together at seams. Like those on a perforated strip.

Most of my posts seem to be in a similar vein, I wish I could write lighter, happier posts. At the moment tho, I cant seem to bring myself to do that, or do anything for that matter. It doesn't do well to dwell on the past and forget everything else I know, but when your past seems to haunt your present? When recurrent memories seem to repeat themselves in present for some reason, aren't you supposed to talk about it? Think about it?

Right now I imagine myself in a small little drive in restaurant, serving people the day's best - apple pie in some long forgotten town. One of those small places you see in many of these hollywood movies. I would be very content with that kind of a lifestyle, going back home with a porch and a forest at the back, sitting with a mug of coffee and hearing the crickets, as the moon glides across the sky. A small isolated almost content life. Would it really be too much to ask for?

Sideways.

The sky looks pretty
Normal and so do the trees
I woke up pretty
Early and I could see
That I've been walking
I've been thinking
I've been looking at you
Sideways.
I've been moving
I've been dreaming
I've been looking at you
Sideways.
I have no problems
Dipping in my feet
But the trouble comes when
I have to jump.
And all the reasons not to
Seem pretty good
At the time
Cause I've been walking
I've been thinking
I've been looking at you
Sideways.
Yeah I've been moving
I've been dreaming
I've been looking at you
Sideways.

The Swan

By my side,
You'll never be.
By my side,
You'll never be.
Cos I'm fake at the seams,
I'm lost in my dreams.
I want you to know,
That I can't let you go.
And you're never coming home again,
By my side,
You'll never be.
By my side,
You'll never be.
I wanted to tell you I'd changed.
I wanted to tell you that things would be different this time.
But I see you, you see me,
Differently.
I see you, you see me,
Differently.
You tell me that you love me but you never want to see me again

Scars

People have scars in all sorts of unexpected places. Like secret road-maps of their personal histories, diagrams of all their old wounds. Most of our old wounds heal leaving nothing behind but a scar, but some of them don't. Some wounds we carry with us everywhere and though the cuts long gone the pain still lingers.

What's worse, new wounds which are so horribly painful, or old wounds that should have healed years ago and never did?

Maybe our old wounds teach us something, they remind us of where we've been and what we've overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. That's what we like to think. But that's not the way it is, is it? Something's we just have to learn over and over and over again.

Grace

I dont think I would have left my old life that easily, I could have still gone on with all that pain and misery for maybe a couple of more years, had it not been for the accident which finally didnt let me have that choice.

I was living my life on scraps, thin strips of scraps is more like it. Hanging on to them with all my might and making myself believe that this was it, this was the last time it will happen, there could be happiness and maybe things will be back to the way they were. In my profession at that time, it was a gift > Imagination. You were lucky if you had that, had a real shot at being a successful copywriter or maybe a good graphic designer. Only, that I didnt realise how to channel it in the right way, today when I look back at the people who were with me at that time, all of them, they're all so far away from me. Leading lives some of which are now famous, successful, accomplished. These were the people who actually made it somewhere, can think of a lot of things for themselves now, a family perhaps, their own house maybe. And there is me, still standing in the queue to take a bus. Trying to begin my life over again, did I go horribly wrong somewhere? I suppose I did. I didnt stick on long enough, I didnt do so many things the right way, the way they were supposed to be done.

I actually thought I could make a difference, tried my luck at being someone and I wanted to keep trying that. Forever maybe.

Just that forever was too long.

Now its the same me, hanging on to a scrap again, in a different time, but in the same place.
All over again.

My Visual DNA

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

AncientPromises

I could go hiding. Far away from people, world and everyone. To a place of my own creation. I have been blessed with that little thing called imagination or survival instincts if you may, and that will let me create this make believe world around me, a small little haven where I could stay locked up in a tower for a while and not think about anything else. Its easy to do that, so just sit back and think that you cannot do anything now, now it has all been done. It has been said and it as been foretold.

I have decided.

I am going back to my old life. The life I ran away from. The life which remains unfinished, untold and unsaid. Maybe this is the sign that I need to finish that, what I had begun so many years ago. That escapism isnt the answer. That running away is temporary and that you need to do your karma till it finishes its cycle.

While I sit back and think over the years gone by and what was and what is now, I am scared, I dont know if I am up for it all over again, if I will be able to survive, if I have it in me, to muster the courage to fight and then to remain. I dont know any of that. I may not last long in this. I dont even know if this is what I wanted from my life, hell I never knew what I wanted anyway. But this is it then.

Life try me.
Its not like I have a choice.

The Prophet

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,

the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine

the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit,

the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find

it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,

and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Together they come,

and when one sits alone with you at your board,

remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

- Khalil Gibran

Careful! Speed Breaker Ahead!

5 days in the aftermath of my birthday and I didn't even realize that it was my birthday. My new life was supposed to have begun. I was supposed to have relocated and re started my being into a new me. The new job was supposed to be interesting and the new city exciting. I was at my destination and at the doorstep of this life. And then what happened? Destiny. Mix-ups and mis-understanding and then some humiliation and some sadness. Oh and lets not forget the 1500 Kms of bus travel in about 24 hours. A screwed back and a sore ass, that is what you get for wanting more, for thinking that you could maybe, possibly maybe turn your life around. I know, I know what everyone will say, its all in a learning experience, maybe its for the better, there must be something good in all this. I have heard all that. Ever since 2004.

It isn't and so I carry on, drag my feet along the sand and get some more blisters on my feet. Gather some more dust and have my shoulders a little more stooped. I'm a survivor am told, but what else can you do when there is no other choice? Once upon a time I had dreams. I wanted to be someone, today my best ally is pretense. I can pretend. Maybe that's all that remains when there is nothing else, the ability of make believe. Like Satine said in Moulin Rouge "I make men believe what they want to believe.." me too. I make everyone believe what they want to believe. Someone may call me just a big drama, maybe I am, there is nothing else to me anymore.

Maybe its hope. That's the thing. I hope. Things will be better, they'll solve themselves out. But they don't. Not for me.


I'm tired.
I wish dying was an option.

Birthday

It's 12.00am. As I sit here waiting for phone calls, or just a phone call, I wonder about the year gone by. One more added onto my age and one more gone by. The new year ahead at the moment promises to be interesting and full to the brim of hope. But wait that sounds familiar.. isn't that what happens every year? The year ahead looks pretty. Anyhow, This year I intend to make a few changes and alter the kind of person I am. Mellow a little maybe, if that's the word. Try and see if I change around then would my life change ?
12.04am am am still waiting for the phone call. I have never made big deals out of birthdays, but I think like everyone I too count the number of people who wish me, doesn't everyone?! Birthday presents.. I get one every year, the one I actually wait for.
The night is breezy and pleasant and there is a full moon against a inky blue sky. I can inhale the cool air and feel it filling my lungs, someone has Queen of the Night blooming in their garden, there is a sweet, musky fragrance in the air, its delicate perfume caressing the insides, almost as if I touch the isolated strand it would shatter into million little pieces.
12.10am.. phones ringing.
someone remembers.

Lonely

Forty years ago, The Beatles asked the world a simple question. They wanted to know where all the lonely people came from. My latest theory is that a great many of the lonely people come from a stationary shop. More precisely from the ink these stores sell, which glides on paper as a writer writes a story. As writers we ignore our own needs so we can meet our characters' needs. We ignore our friends and families so we can create other people's friends and families. Which means that at the end of the day all we really have is ourselves. And nothing in this world can make you feel more alone than that. 400 years ago another well known English guy had an opinion about being alone. John Donne. He thought we were never alone. Of course it was fancier when he said it. No man is an island entire unto himself. Boil down that island talk and he just meant that all anyone needs is someone to step in. And let us know we're not alone.

Inadequacy

It's 2:36 am.
I miss you.
I remember you.
I remember I loved you.
I wish you were near.

Do you know what we'd do if you were here right now?
We'd bundle up really warm and go outside and sit beside the lake and
watch the blood red moon sink into the inky lake. I'd hold you close
like I never have before and always wanted to. I know the terrain of
your mind and find it rejuvenating. You know the contours of mine and
find them comfortable. We'd be old lovers looking at an old moon, drop
against the backdrop of this beautiful Dalhousie. And I'd hold you
close, and we'd talk softly as if we didn't want to shatter the
crystal perfection, ice-cold around us. We would talk about nothing
and everything and it would be the most important conversation in the
world because it was ours.

Then, when you began to feel cold through your coverings I'd get up
and dust off and give you a hand up and then we'd go into the house to
the kitchen and make coffee. There'd be no one around us.We'd go right
into the center of life and warmth, and I'd make a Double Espresso and
you'd have a Hot Chocolate, and I'd tell you how good mine was and
you'd say how good yours was, and we'd taste each other's and maybe
even prefer it to our own, but not say anything, because we'd settle
for less for ourselves, but not for the other. And then you'd start to
tell me about the little things in your life, the gossip and the petty
defeats and victories. You'd tell it to me in that way you tell me
things that makes me want to preserve you, right there and then in
that moment for all time, so you'd never lose your innocence and your
kindness and your glow. You'd be talking and sipping and waving your
hands around, and then I'd slide my hand onto yours when it paused for
a second, and you'd pretend not to notice and you'd keep talking and
then take your hand back to emphasize a point. I'd smile to myself
because I know you so well, and because you've got spirit and you
don't come easy. But I'd be persistent and grab hold of your hand and
pin it down, and we'd smile at each other as we recognized our ancient
game.

Then, when the coffee and the hot chocolate were finished, we'd go out
on a walk. We'd walk in silence; the world would be such a comfortable
place at that moment that we'd both let our thoughts drift to
unimportant things. We'd get back to the house and it would feel like
home even to you, and we'd go up to my room and gently open the door
so as not to wake anyone. As we entered through the darkness you'd
trip over my bag left on the floor and you'd grab hold of my arm for
support and instinctively, I'd flex my muscle. Your giggle would burst
through the darkness, and you'd start me chuckling and that would go
on until we'd have to run into the lounge next to my room and collapse
on the couch laughing hysterically.

Then we'd be spent and we'd remember that there would be few days like
that, because now we are adults and our first allegiance is to the
pursuit of money and success, and not to unconditional love. So I'd
tell you some things - beautifully worded and eloquently spoken. And
you'd tell me some things - clumsily and awkwardly. But you'd believe
me less than I believed you, because you know me well.
Before I would go to sleep, I'd look at you for sometime, as if you
were a picture. And I'd remember all the times I'd looked at your
photograph and wished you were in front of me. I'd pull you to me, and
bring my mouth close to plant a soft, innocent kiss on yours, to
express to you, in a fleeting brush of lips, what I loved you for. And
maybe you'd let your lips touch mine, just for a second, but for a
second longer than ever before. And then we'd sleep - me, with my head
on my pillow and in your lap; you, with a smile on your lips and in my
heart.

I wish you were here.
I wish you were near.

Human

I don't see right, I don't see wrong
In anything I've done, In where I've gone.
And I'm only human and yes I've made mistakes
I wish that I could foresee what I'm doing wrong, get some breaks.

Through a doorway I'm calling, down a long road I'm walking
Like an eagle I'm soaring up so high.

You can see it in my hands
You can see it in my face
I'm chasing passion down a one way street.
But I'm in command of lost control
And I'll tell you one thing's certain, that I'll never fake it for anyone.

Run to a place you'll never hide, to a place you hold so tight and
you'll try....

And I'm only human and yes I've made mistakes

Sleeping With The Enemy

You don't get to call me a whore. When I met you, I thought I had found the person that I was going to spend the rest of my life with! I was done. So all the boys and all the bars and all the obvious daddy issues, who cared? Because I was done. You left me. You chose someonelse. I'm all glued back together now. I make no apologies for how I chose to repair what you broke. You don't get to call me a whore.