119 bpm.

A permanent heartbreak.

Coffee- no baby!

I don't forget how old I am- if you have a doubt- perhaps you should ask me- instead of telling me that I am not old enough in various combinations of words, and expressions

After a night of almost no sleep- to survive a longer day of mindlessness- I thought I needed coffee. My colleague and I, headed down to Barista- since the office coffee tasted deplorable for some reason today. I went in and asked for a black coffee in something they call ‘Grande’. The guy in orange tells me- like a passing warning-

“It’s black coffee…”
“Oh is it??? I thought it was milk and chocolate…” I wanted to say.

I smiled back and said- “I know…I still want it…”

He shrugged…SHRUGGED. Like parents do when kids make unfair demands. He didn’t take my order. Another very smiley waiter in orange at the counter did- actually two of them. I repeated my order and then one speaks up, smiling insanely-
“Ma’m, it’s BLACK coffee…and it is VERY STRONG!”

I felt like a 12 year old in a bar…asking for whiskey.

A deep breath later I told him- “I KNOW! And I STILL want it- can I have it on the GO?!!”

For the love of God I am not sitting there drinking my coffee and have them look at me, waiting for my adolescent hormones to jump up and do something insane because of the STRONG, BLACK coffee. Break the sofa maybe- or throw a stone at the glass window.

They finally gave it to me – smiling all the way. They found it hilarious. They even opened the sugar, stirred it in, out on the cover for a ‘take-away’ and handed me the paper cup with a tissue. They could have just tied it around my neck like a bib! They even charged me two bucks less for my coffee!!!

WHAT were they expecting?

I am old enough to know what coffee I want, please!!! Next time around I will just order a milk shake to save me the trouble.

Years.

Think of this- I told you, of the twisting ashes of years on our skins
That will be the trailing equation.
I have stopped saying my words out loud- the meaning changes when I do. And dear friend, you and I have nothing in common.
I have told you of my epic in an imagined conversation and while your thoughts held me to sleep – what could have been and what is pitched the battle tents on the creases of a smile.
The conversations dwindle, the gap just closes in and face to face- I have nothing more to say, except, did you know that you weren’t the only liar?
There the mirror image and the path of no return, a place of no exit and burning passions sour and stale – my thoughts are rarely erotic, perhaps I am freezing inside.
Perhaps.
I can’t love like a teenager - I wish I could. Older second by second – delving in the truth I dish out to you – I am older than the smiles you have managed.
I am older. Shattering and wiser as the cracks grow. This too will pass one day and I will regret.
I wish I had abandoned you sooner.

Sex and the City?

I think I have had ENOUGH of Sex and the City. I have the next two seasons saved in the hard drive and I know I will eventually watch them all...and well...laugh about it with my friends- but I cannot do anything more.
I am much tempted to write though. Re-arranging the cupboard in our tiny flat, now sitting on my red suitcase, I suppose my life is not very different from a Carrie Bradshaw's. It's just that this in NOT New York and random sex is just not the thing...yet...
Would it be easier if it was?
Probably. But then in some strange retarded 'Indian' way - we like our relationships. Stupid sadistic, masochistic, self-derogatory relationships- more often than not- are our security blankets.
I can comment about men and how it is supposed to be. Just the way the sitcom does...but I am on my last nerve on it. I want to scream at Carrie and take away some of her shoes...some.
We...the women of tomorrow. Have sex, break up, get together, cheat...but we just don't talk about it to everyone. I can't have a baby even if I want to- since I am not married...this is not New York yet.

Why not though?

I will.

In an attempt to find a million things I will do- I know of the million I won't.
I know I have strange ideas and I like hurtling things at my mind at super sonic pace till everyone and everything is just a blur of colours to me.
Even when I know that if I drink anymore I will want to hurl all day next- I still don't stop.
Even when I know that it will scratch the baby pink skin on my conscience's hand, I still go ahead and tell you things that won't allow you to forget me- at least for today.
I am like that. Heartless and selfish to the end of my being.
I know you won't understand it at all- for it is all about me. Everything. At the end of every day. Is all about me.
If I don't exist- how will you?

So here I tell you- I will not love you any more than what I have.

I don't know what I will do however...

Soul-less

A days work met with a practiced smile,
A night's study lost in the thoughts a-while.
The long long path winds away from home, further and further away.

The hills have cried themselves hoarse for years, the trails shiver for a touch of feet.
The air for your breath, the sky for a stolen kiss.
The practiced smile washes the sea waves saltless.

Maybe one day you will leave.
And the pages won’t seem to matter. The words dwindle away to the comfortable silence.
The green will burn in little vestiges, while you gather them in your fist and throw it at the winds.


And from the crackling shell of a hypocrite, the soul-less and the dead. Only a traveller will live.

At the days end- the all deluding sleep.

Today.

Pathetic poetry patters.
Raindrops types, slithering down clouded windows on grey pigeons.
She texts me- There is a rainbow.
Where?
Not in my eyes. From here, 12 floors down I just see monkeys straddling the iron rods that are scaling the building face.
Baby monkeys. Mothers. Fathers perhaps.
I see you come in. This thought that had been hovering around gingerly for a while, shoves plans aside and makes a lot of empty space for itself. But it doesn't sit down.
Gets up. Wanders away.The gaping space staring at your face.
Punched clean away. Tears are burning my eyes.
I am screaming out inside.
And I am counting seconds to breathe this anger away. Scathing, bitter, fiery, hot anger- rushing up the nerves in my temples.
I stare down at the floor, nails cutting into my palms.
Peace.
Pathetic.
You. Me. Her.
Well. Even when I tear every action apart, fragment and deconstruct into the most honest acts- the scales are tilted.
The eternal battle for earth and sky. The darkening shadows in my eyes.
The bludgeoned to death lullaby.
Even the mice patter on wooden floors.

Missing

There I was. In a flimsy white slip, hand stitched lace at the hem, kiddy pink panties. Didn’t have a swim suit. Ma did not think I needed one for one trip to the beach. Sitting on my haunches next to the pool. Baba was in the pool- asking Ma to give me to him. I could not swim. Baba’s out stretched hands took me into the blue water. Then I was running on the wet sands to the sea.

There again. Amidst the rolling valley. The bluest sky and the darkest green. I threw a stone at a lamb. It butted me down. I rolled down the tiny hill, sat there and wailed till my parents finished laughing and came and told me- nothing happened. The sky was still blue, the grass still memory green.

Look at me. In the white snow- a blotch of red. Ma never let go of my tiny fist wrapped around her finger. I took a handful of snow and ate it. I wish I knew then what a snowman was- orange candies were more important to me. I knew a poppy though. Innumerable stars, being fed sitting on the log cabin stairs, blue woollen dungarees, I looked like a boy. The yellow tent blazing in my mind’s eye.

Why do I remember so little?

Where did Ma and Baba leave me and go?

The Imaginarium

Everyone thinks that their problems are bigger than anybody else’s problems. Everyone wants everyone to understand. To love them. To like them. To hold them when they sleep at night. How am I any different?
Do I not miss the feel of someone next to me when the person gets up and leaves?
I.
Someone who could not share a bed. I now share my life with people who may not exist tomorrow.

I write with the fear of losing all that I have ever written. Retarded Rhymes from the time I was 12. In minuscule, neat alphabets, with pencil on paper yellowed with age. an old note pad that belonged to my grandfather.


Words rhymed, the poems were small, painfully simple lines. Innocence perhaps, more complex feelings had not yet assaulted my words then. Love still rhymed with dove, blue with you, sky with why.

I wrote of love- without ever being in it. Wrote about imagined pains. Drama as always. No colours, no visions, no time lapses and no morbidity. How difficult can black graphite on paper get?

There is no going back to that oblivious innocence. I have lost those poems. Words, oft used, ever abused- rhymes, without knowing about passions, about desires, about sins.

My mother wanted to keep those poems- but I lost them. Maybe because I was growing up. This grownup life had no space for such simplicities. If I knew that growing up was such a scary process- I would have kept those poems forever.