कुछ वक़्त मिलेगा?

आदत थी मुझको, सौ दोस्त अज़ीज़ जो थे मेरे,
कहीं अकेले जाने का तो सवाल ही नहीं था.

आज अकेले , अपने शहर से इतनी दूर,
इस coffee-shop में बैठी हूँ,
फोन की contact list में जाने पहचाने नाम ढूँढ रही हूँ.

बड़ी शर्म आ रही है, कैसे पूछूँ? कैसे वक़्त माँगूँ किसी का?
कोई पूछे तो किसी अजनबी की सोहबत को दोस्ती बताती हूँ.

बातें

आज रुक नहीं रही मन में कुछ बातें हैं जो,
भाग रही हैं, इधर से उधर, मुह तक आती हुई,
कि हर बार उम्मीद करती हैं की किसी तरह
आज निकल ही जायें.

मैं वापस भेज देती हूँ उन्हें,
कि जहाँ से आई हैं वहीं रहें,
पता नहीं बाहर आ जायें तो क्या हो जाए,
न तुम फिर आओ, न तुम्हारी ख़बर ही आए.

No Time for Words

After the 'diary', it's now 'blogging' which will die a slow death. Every one of us has a way of expressing (or not) how we feel about things in our lives. For some it's singing, for some it's dancing and for some it's the love of writing. Writing makes people feel like their opinion matters. It gives them the satisfaction that they are being heard, whether or not it is true.

Posts longer than two paragraphs start to bore us and we avoid reading anything beyond that limit. Owing to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, our mind is now adapted to all sorts of information reception in just one way- 140 characters or less! In a scenario like that, what future does this generation hold for blogging? Another unfortunate thing which Twitter has done, at least to me, is making my thought process intermittent. My thoughts are no longer penned down by me because after a sentence or two, I start to lose interest in the post or the flow is broken by some other thought which also demands to be written down immediately. The patience which writing requires is vanishing, just like it is disappearing from any other aspect of our lives. 

How I Lost Her.

I hesitate to kiss her. I am pretty sure she feels the same way for me but I still hold myself back. Will she like it? Will she make fun of me for having feelings for her? Maybe she will never speak to me again and I might lose my best friend forever, my only friend perhaps. You see, neither do I talk to a lot of people nor am I appropriately expressive. So I approach with caution, breaking down the barriers of morality in my head, surpassing my urge to suppress my passion.

I finally place my lips on hers, not caring if we'll ever be together, in a grossly selfish act, and she, unsuspecting and unprepared for, shouts, “what is wrong with you, woman?”…

Womanhood

That Day:

On one end of our bed, I am sitting and laughing uncontrollably and on the other end is my elder sister, terrified and confused. My sister has been trying to take me away to a separate room since a few hours now. She is determined to make me understand something. She often tells me that I should enjoy these few years before I start bleeding. From the looks of her face it seems she doesn’t expect me to understand. But I understand fully. I have bled before too- when I fell down while playing in the field or when I accidentally cut my hand while attempting to imitate my mother in the kitchen. How can she possibly ignore all those glorious wounds? I have complained to my mother a few times and so today my sister has taken up the task of explaining the whole bleeding process to me. Ignorant naïve fool, hah! Let me hear what she has to say.

Today:

On one end of our bed, I am sitting, terrified and confused and on the other end sits my elder sister, giving me a comforting and reassuring smile. “You are a woman now”, she says, as I begin to recall and realise all her words I earlier used to ignore. So I am a woman now. Hmm.

Impulse.

I would have loved to listen to you for hours, the sound of your perfect laughter, the stories of your past and the women who broke your heart but tonight I have a task to fulfill. I have to mend a broken heart.

Not so long ago I had promised somebody that he could count on me whenever skies seem to close in on him, whenever it rained black or whenever he felt unloved. He had laughed it off, convinced that such a day would never come. Tonight was different as I got a call from him. He spoke in a hasty tone, in dire need of breath and attention. He asked if I could visit him tonight. It was a question but only technically so. Of course I told him I had to see you first as we have been postponing our quality time due to heavy work schedule. He paid scant attention to the details and just asked me to come as soon as possible. So here I am, at the door of our house, asking for your permission if I could go. Again, like his, this is also a question but only technically so. I have only one thing to ask of you, please don’t try to find my whereabouts if I don’t return. You have been a good man and I have been a good wife to you. I know I will not get your forgiveness, irrespective of whether I come back or not. Had you known this man years ago and had you seen me with him, you would have understood. I have to go.

Before I go, I just want to let you know that I would have loved to listen to you for hours, the sound of your perfect laughter, the stories of your past and the women who broke your heart but tonight I have a task to fulfill. I have to mend a broken heart. My own.

Of Dreams and Nightmares.

There lives in each of us a golden dream,

Day in day out we carve it, weave it,

Nurture it; whilst it plots to get further away.

It gets hazy, it gets dark, assuming that it’s you,

I begin to draw us in the air, with my finger.

Dreams are designed that way, like a movie,

We know who is who, watching

From the city of angels, you’ll know.

You were no friend, you’d be no friend,

But you visit me when I’m deep asleep,

Whispering in my nightmare, the deadly secret-

‘Bold treason is greater than wavering loyalty’.

When Life Scribbles Love.

There weren’t too many people on that railway station, given how small it was and how infrequently trains stopped there. She was already dreading the excess baggage which she’d got from home. Eatables, spare grocery, woollens for the far-fetched winters, fragile gift items as gifts to future friends she’d make and the list went on and on. She was already regretting being called the ‘responsible’ and the ‘organised’ one in her family. Twenty-two years old Meera was struggling to keep her stuff from falling when she noticed, form the corner of her eye, a kind face smiling at her. 

“Do you want me to help you?” a young man offered help. The home-inculcated alarm alerted her instantly- “don’t talk to strangers and refuse all offers for ‘help’! You know what they will eventually lead to, Beta!”. “No”, Meera said, “thank you though”. She acted against her wishes, she realised she did want his help, not because she couldn’t manage her stuff but because she impulsively imagined his company to be a relief from the long tiresome journey she’d had. Her thoughts were interrupted by a chuckle. It was the same man again- “Alright then! Tough-independent-woman and all that jazz? Do take care though” and he started to walk away. 

He reminded her of a guy she used to like years ago, probably she still did. He had the same laughter. Would it be too much if she told that stranger just how familiar he seemed? She decided to concentrate on getting to her new institute, the famous Florence Institute of Arts, where she had secured a full scholarship and was going to pursue her Masters in cultural-studies. How proud she was of herself! She never really got the time to congratulate her own self since the university had declared the results. It was her dream institute, situated in a sleepy hill station Maleguri. She started moving towards the exit. Little did she know her whole life was about to change in those two years. Upside down. Irreversibly, unknowingly, unintentionally and irreparably.

Shyam, 35 years old, a newly appointed cultural-studies lecturer at the Florence Institute of Arts was a jovial young man who, after completing his doctoral research at the University of Birkbeck in London, had consciously chosen to spend his next few years in the sleepy town of Maleguri. His interest in the cultural studies was a subject of amusement for men around him in India. Being an Indian man, he was expected to become an engineer, or maybe a lawyer, doctor, chartered accountant or some other ‘masculine’ professional. And what does culture have to do with being ‘manly’?- they used to say. Upon having received world-class education and exposure to philosophy and arts, he knew that if he wanted to settle in India, which he fully intended to, he could not live in a conventional native surrounding. 

He had heard about the Florence Institute of Arts before and it seemed like the perfectly customised choice for him. He had been divorced once from a French wife and today she met this young lady who reminded him exactly of her. She was clumsy too. Fidgety much, but beautiful. He usually would have offered to help her a second time had she not resembled his ex-wife so starkly. Laughing to himself, he walked out of the railway station but his thoughts were still stuck on the young female struggling to safeguard her luggage. He guessed she would have refused the second offer of help too. Little did he know that she wouldn’t have! His life too, just like Meera’s, was about to change soon. Very soon.

Adding my own to dating advice cliches!

Months have passed and I haven’t had a chance to write something which will blow your mind! I still haven’t, but I’m writing any way, without delay. So these days I am absolutely free- I do have some very crucial things to be taken care of, like my career, family issues and breakups, but they can wait. I have decided to deal with everything in a systematic way just like our government- where key priority is the chronological order of the files, not the gravity of the issue. So this overly delayed blog post is here now and my bleeding eye can be nursed later.

Many friends have been asking me when I am going to get married. For some strange reason, they figure that I am the one going to be married soon. Maybe some kind of frustration-induced-frown-line of being single is etched prominently on my face or maybe the bliss and peace of my single-hood and independence is just too much for them to bear! Either way, I am going to address the issue at hand here- dating advice. Dating is a dynamic concept which changes across age levels. For some, dating is a distraction, for some it is about sexual companionship, for some it is about financial stability and so on. Having a companion by your side has never hurt anybody (yeah right! :P). It has only made things worthwhile. It makes your achievements seem bigger and your failures seem smaller. It beautiful while it lasts and for some when it ends! 

Relationships are mistaken to be like a chemical ‘mixture’ where each person brings their own ‘properties’ and together they form something which keeps both their interests, dreams and ‘properties’ intact. If you ask me, it is a mistake to believe. As we grow up, relationships become more like the chemical ‘compounds’ in which both the people come together with their own ‘properties’ but when intertwined, form a strange bond where they lose pretty much everything which they brought along with them and form something completely new. The definitive properties of this ‘new compound’ obviously depend upon their previous traits but don’t relate to them in any way- much like the chemical bonding process. Just to answer the curious ones here, we shall discuss the biological properties and the change in their levels in a separate post because this is a family blog (or so I’d like to project!).

My personal experience although has been pretty varied but the sample in question is kind of flawed and cannot be considered representative. But on the up-side, I have been a keen observer. So as a female, I would advise you to stay away from certain kinds of guys-

1. Guys who think that their girlfriends are trying to break them up with their family- WHAT THE ***! Why would you think that? And if you really DO think that way and if it’s true, why’re you still dating her?

2. Guys who do not place importance on education- Seriously girls, get over rich guys who haven’t earned it on their own merit! Just like the money they have inherited, their self-esteem will be gone in no time and so will your respect for them.

3. Men who never have time- Yes, I know it is clichéd but if they don’t give you a decent amount of time, they are NOT worth it. If he is into you, he WILL make time. This statement is not for psycho-obsessive women folk who want the guy to be there 24x7 by their side but nobody can rule out or underestimate the importance of time and communication.

4. Guys who use words like ‘slut’, ‘bitch’ or ‘hoebags’- Today it might be another girl, a girl that you don’t like, but tomorrow it could be you! JUST STAY AWAY.

5. Guys who are afraid of you- I know, this category is tempting to be with, but NO, stay away! It's not 'cute' or 'sweet'! It's dumb. Such guys cannot be true partners because initially the will support you in everything just because they are afraid of your anger or to avoid arguments but these guys will nurture all this grudge inside, involuntarily, and then leave you suddenly one day for reasons you will never be able to decipher! Find a man who can point out your mistakes, help you rectify them and still loves you the same!

Ok enough for today! There are of course a million DOs and DON’Ts which you already know and which we come across every day, but these are just some specific additions to that Black-list! Will write more soon. Take care.

A poem about a writer.

There he goes,
Look at him,
For he has the most adventurous job ever.
He travels to places,
He has smelled beautiful fragrances,
He is a son, a brother, an animal, a killer,
An insect , a child, a mother, a mirror.
As random as you could possibly
Imagine; Imagine a river,
He could be a pebble, he could be the loam,
Whatever the storyline demands, he shall deliver.

There he goes,
Look at him,
For he has the most romantic job ever.
Every emotion is not felt by him
Even then he imagines,
What would it be like to be in love?
Yet that temptation is resisted by him.
How would it feel to get your heart broken?
What would it be like to deliver a baby?
What would it be like to have your memories stolen?
His mind's eye can take any shape, any form.

Now,
I wouldn’t know if it is by choice
That he dreams,
Of so many colours and so many themes.
Because he is yet to live through them himself?
Or has he actually seen it all? Felt it all?

There he goes,
Look at him,
For he has the loneliest job ever.
Nobody sits beside him
And guides his hand.
Nobody has traveled with him
To his wonderland.
Yet he brings to us
The sweet fruits of that tree
Which he nurtured all by himself,
From a tender acorn to a sturdy oak
 And bearing the fruits of his thought.

There he goes,
Look at him,
For he has the most rewarding job ever.