This, here, is fine too.

There’s another world out there somewhere. With acceptable opinions and meaningful words. A world where everything fits in. Everything. Even the songs one listens to on lazy Thursday afternoons, and the tardy poems one writes in bedecked journals.* A world existing with the consent of all the sane people. Yes, there is another world out there somewhere.

Another World. An Other World. A(h) (K)No(w) The(i)r World.

A bloodyimportantterriblyrightextraordinary world. A world where people with a penchant for Solitude, nail files and five o’ clock wisecracks are not allowed. And that’s why I’ve never been there.

But this world, with its pleasing pseudoreality, is fine too. It only has room for one person, though.

* Do you still do that too, Prachi? Or am I the only one left?

Colours

Yellow-brown words. Yellow voices and brown voices. A yellow and brown song.

A song and a remembered, fleeting moment. A memory remembered on a bright yellow morning with the smell of golden-yellow sunshine in the air. A remembered moment that rose up from a pile of discarded, brown, dim recollections like a fragile bubble — pretty yellow thing — cheerful, and riding on the wings of a yellow-brown song. The song played itself over and over again, until the whole world seemed to be a curious painting of extravagant yellows and muted browns. Yellow rivers and brown rivers merged with each other in various permutations to form familiar voices — voices that repeated half-remembered conversations in my mind. It surprised me that all those things could still come back to me, — some after numerous years, a handful after a few months, and others from a couple of days ago — a mixture of different times and different flavours, all coloured in various hues of yellow-brown.

It came back to me, all of it, on the wings of a yellow-brown song, clothed in the yellow-brown words from a favourite book.

Brown coffee. A yellow summer dress that was one of my favourite outfits as a kid. A warm, brown hand of an old man. The myriad yellows and browns of my friends’ beloved voices. The deep brown voice of my first love. The countless smiling brown eyes that I see each day. A yellowed newspaper cut-out. Dried yellow leaves making crunching noises beneath hasty feet. And the soft brown sound lurking in the background of warm, nutty evenings and rainy afternoons. Rich, rich brown dancing in the yellow morning air. Brown breeze playing with my hair on hot summer nights. The peculiar brown taste in the mouth on cold December days. The yellow perfume lingering in the air, merging with unending phone conversations. The cheerful, yellow memories of a city by the sea. The dim, brown memories of an ancient land—birthplace, but not home—around me, but not quite inside me. Not yet.

Yellows and browns danced in front of my eyes.

Yellows and browns of the people I hear colour their images in my head, so that the face of everyone I know is a blob of brown and yellow (and, in a few cases, some other delightful colour thrown in). No wonder, then, that I spend entire mornings listening to the numerous purples and greens of a dead man’s masterpiece — rising, falling, fading in and out of view, disappearing to some hidden place sometimes, and blinding me at other times — dancing around my head.

I drowned the yellows and browns that lay inside me, in majestic waves of purples and greens.

I was listening to something, and then I had this sudden urge to write. So I wrote this random, seemingly nonsensical piece. (The result of an overdose of yellow and brown, perhaps.) I just might give everything to simply listen sometimes, like a blind person, and enjoy colourless sounds. Bleh.

You wouldn’t have understood

Your words were so… familiar. I stared at the page. The number ‘4’ printed confidently, at the bottom of the page, stared back at me. And then, I read the author’s description of you. I shuddered.

Another page. I saw you there, and called out loud. You didn’t look at me. I shouted anyway: Who are you? You didn’t reply. You didn’t even notice me. You said something, to someone else—you merged with the plot, with the words in the book. Perhaps you were instructed to stay in your own world. Is that why you didn’t reply? You, who could have been so much more than a mere character, chose to remain inside that book. But, what else could you have done? Of course, you wouldn’t have understood. You don’t exist in the real world, after all. Yet, I devoured every sentence, and I drank every little drop of the book you were in. I got drunk on it.

I still think about you a lot. But, I guess you never noticed me.

I came across a particular fictional character sometime back. She was me, with a different name, living in a different world. I was, of course, surprised—how did the writer think of such a character? This piece is an excerpt from a letter that I wrote to her. Surprisingly, I didn’t enjoy reading that book.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? Have you ever found yourself in the pages of a book?

All the people I’ve been

One of the many impenetrable aspects of a lazy day is this: bits of it remain, like annoying shadows, on the colourful canvas of the next morning.

When I woke up today, I was blind to the world. And I could only see myself. I saw all the people I’ve been, and all the people I chose not to be. I saw them all. I studied them. I saw what they were becoming, and why. I wrote their names in the fresh morning air—the sounds of their names will be there in the breeze, for a few days, until I wake up from this oracular dream into another unreal prophecy. For now, I’ll just chant their names in my head—all the people I’ve been, all the people who bear my name and my face, all the people who’ve been me.

I miss you, my love

Your kiss, years later, lingers still
On my trembling lips;
Doomed am I
To a lifetime of love.
Concrete, neon, plastic,
Tetrapods in the sea,
Dreams and disasters—
Memories of these, and
My love for you, haunt me.

A thousand miles away,
In a dry land,

I am damp inside.

This one’s on Mumbai. I wrote it a few days ago, when it was raining in Delhi.

Delhi was drenched

I woke up at six yesterday. It was raining outside. Delhi was drenched. A familiar smell stared at me—the smell of Mumbai, of childhood, of a different life.

I stood on the balcony looking out at the cloud-covered sky—familiar, yet strange. And then, I heard the song that the rain sang. The song of the sea. The song of a happy land. The song of nostalgia and heartbreaking joy.

I stood there for a long time. The rain left. Delhi dried itself in the scorching sun. The fleeting vision of Mumbai evaporated in front of my eyes. I was left alone, in a dry land, wondering how many times will I have to leave Mumbai.

Chipped nails

For ‘Strawberry’, who, like me, still doesn’t know what the hell happened.

your plastic smile gives off
a bitter odour in the untimely summer
rain. i
shrug; not for me
things of stolen beauty.

i dip my fingers in a bowlful of words—they
keep me sane. you
bite the notes of rapture that rise in my head.
(and, suddenly, every
place inside me
is anti-utopia.)
splinters of my dappled heart are strewn all over
our little confetti-laden
coffee table.

your terriblebrown voice cuts
through the trace of a twirl.
(it was lingering over
my fretful toes, and now it’s gone.)

i slip into another world, away
from this tirelonesome
reality, and i
start worrying about my
chipped nails.

Something reminded me of my school days yesterday; so, I ploughed through my journal and stumbled across a particularly interesting piece of prose (dated August 2006). I just made a poem out of it, and this is what I ended up with. The expression “chipped nails” didn’t appear in the original piece—I borrowed it from my recent conversation with ‘Bindi’.

Many thanks to ‘Bindi’ for tossing the words “chipped nails” at me, and for dancing with me even after the music stopped. And to ‘Information Sponge’ who, unknowingly, for a second time, made me come across a forgotten piece of work.

It was a beautiful place

To a crowded street
My love led me.
And there he stood
As if
Enchanted.

He said it was
A beautiful place.

I laughed at him.
He looked at me,
And smiled.
I met his ardent gaze
And, suddenly,
The busy street became
Beautiful.

I’ve been in love with crowded streets since that day.
I wrote this poem in June 2005. It’s one of my favourites.

December 2, 2007

I hate being an introvert because people misinterpret my silences. I can write down my thoughts, but they rarely escape my lips. The world of spoken words was never mine. I somehow expect people to simply know what’s going on in my mind. I can read their thoughts in their eyes; why can’t they read things in mine? I told P about this. She says that it happens to her often, too. Maybe it happens to us because we never had to explain things as kids. When you’re the only child of your parents, you don’t need to say anything- the people around you simply know. Maybe P and I expect the same from everyone. Is it our fault? We don’t know. But I do know why I feel so strange- because I miss the sea. It seems absurd. I wonder if this happens to other people, too. Do they miss the sea?

(An old, withered hand in mine)

An old, withered hand in mine
Is my last memory of him.
He rode away on the wind.
I was ten. Confused.
I shut the door to my room.
The silence within the walls
Dried my tired eyes.
It sang to me songs of solitude.
My ears got drunk.
My tongue forgot
The colour of its own voice.
I was a captive in my room.
Visions of years. They danced by.
September knocked upon my door.
I realised that
I wasn’t afraid of September anymore.
I looked back. I looked at myself.
Thought set me free.
I opened the door to my room.
The sea that lay within
Came out, a drop at a time,
Over breakfast.