I’m really uncoordinated today. Worried about the tan shoes, pink tank, brown sweater, black coat, giant black bag. It doesn’t go. This irritates me. 

I’ve run out of food in my room, and the wind is somehow cutting through my multicoloured scarf. I’m catching a cold. Hot boy walking next to me is talking, but since he doesn’t have more than two brain cells in his head, it’s easy to tune him out and just look at him. A dimple flashes, and I nod at him. Satified, he natters on. No doubt about the last time he got drunk, or this weekend’s game. Seriously, does no one have stories outside those two?

My career is heading downhill, I can’t seem to hold on. I know nothing, less than nothing, and what I know is probably wrong. Mendel’s laws are overthrown, stupidity is upheld as a virtue, epigenetics and cancer. My horizons are broadening, the land shifts beneath my feet and I am barely keeping my head over the water. Nothing fits right. I’ve hit the dreaded 60kgs. 

The world is changing. I want coffee. No one makes chai here, and I just want to return to the womb. But here I am, sharing personal space with a random guy who has nothing but a few genes and a whole lot of harmones going for him, politely pretend-listening, but really cataloguing everything that isn’t the way it ought to be.

Patch of ice. My head was turned towards the hot guy. On the sidewalk, looking up at a flustered, concerned him, ice below.

I don’t think I have the energy to pick me up again. 

—

Not quite fiction, but it isn’t all fact either. The boundaries blur.

Every time I dream of him, he gets more and more real. This is the fourth time that I remember that I knew it was him, and now I don’t even know that he’s any different from all the others that populate my imagination.

He’s ruining me for real life, for the run of the mill nice guys, for the assholes. 

I’ve always been terrified of seeing his face, because once I did, it would be IT. Ka-splash. Camphor falls. End of story.  So why do I feel bad that he doesn’t exist?

My life is quite the most interesting imaginary toy I possess, and I’m taking it out for an experimental joy ride. My inner observer is back. I was watching today as we nagivated the complicated and infinitely interesting minefield of akwardness. A bit of hesitant maybe-maybe not. A smile, but not a frown, because that would make it even more messed up. Keep it nice, yes, friendly, yes.

There’s nothing quite like what might have been to make one doubt the intentions of another; nothing that can erase the slightly bitter tang of regret that comes of doing nothing.

And yet not having the courage to do something. 

You’d imagine that wearing red would make you feel confident. Bold. Vibrant.

It just feels like a giant bullseye painted on you, and like you’re screaming – victim here, please attack!

Did you know that the night sky isn’t black, it’s a rich deep velvet in blue? And the stars that sparkle in its midst are hard – blue diamonds too. I love the vivid orange, the burnt tangy feel of it. And the warmth and happiness that a lemony yellow gives. Calm me if you can, whisper the many shades of green: the carpet of the golfing sport is a hushed melody. I’d tell you how every colour feels, for they  are tiny keys. Unlocking the way I look at life, and offering a sneak peek: see, every soul is a collage of many swirling eddies (of current or color, it’s same thing). But I have not the time to tell another, I have yet to learn – so many things, so many shades (no, it’s not an acid dream!)

Oh!
Tell me why you think it strange that I touch and taste and feel colors? 

Well, she’d love colors too if she could see them, but she sees only in black and white. And as for colors – well, they are but shades of light.

What happens when you are perfectly at home when you return to four narrow walls that were never yours (nor could be) ? It’s the ohshitohshitohshit, not again! feeling.

And it leads to more paper cuts of pain.

Mindless work is a soothing, temporary reprieve.

—
Some of us never learn, I think.
And this was written months ago..

A little less time, or a little more and I could have stayed. Who can dig thier toes into the sand at the fringe of land, with bubbles and foam around your ankles and stay unmoved?

It was the moon.

It shone, and washed away the bright painful colours of the day, lending a soft glow and patient hope to temptation. It made morality, education and society’s rules which were dinned into your mind since childhood seem as slender as the webs of a spider – to be swept away.

It made you forget that the spider’s silk is stronger than steel. There on that beach with crabs that broke out of thier coccoons and turtules going extinct, things were possible. Impossible vistas would open, and it would take just one more step, just one more.

To follow that wave that returned into the heart of the ocean, cold foam, warm water. The shelf is short along the coast of the Deccan. Adam’s/Ram’s bridge lies about the depth of the Bay of Bengal. It is hungry, and people no longer notice when it finds another sacrifice – one willing to simply step forward and give in to the tide.

I am the moon’s daughter. What else could I do? I was swept away.

Curved plastic shielding six – or when the sky is clear, twenty – odd people chattering away about three doors down, pandit ravi shankar, or the wavelength of x-ray for diffraction of the micro-crystal, or particle physics with equal ease. All of them clustered around the black cement table that couldn’t hold twenty cups without seeming crowded, out for a break during lab time, for a birthday, for a tea, for a breather and a freshener before diving right back into whatever they came from.

Sharing tea, swapping stories about work (or life, which might almost be the same thing for this lot), and friendly and malicious gossip about friends, acquaintances, absolute strangers, and mrs. sharma’s daughters. Absolute strangers, of course, who didn’t stay strangers for long in a closed campus with limited privacy, since five years – at the least – in one place made sure you got to know people whom you may otherwise never – or only – have talked about.

Most tables occupied by a person sitting alone and contemplating who-knows what, or two people engaged in quiet, if sometimes vigorous conversation. And more rarely, when three or four gather, managing to pull off a controlled, if not dignified appearance despite loud disputes that can be heard clear across the place.

The chipped cups, the black tea “lemon beda”, and soothing yellow lighting where atlas could shrug. And someone else would pick up the burden, just for the curiosity of it.

are an endless quest to find beauty
and once you have it, to keep it,

not realizing
that sometimes

heart breaking poignant beauty is in impermanence

They seemed to circle each other in the lamplight under the trees, close enough that a swaying arm may have circled the waist and the watchers at the coffee booth would wonder. Just as they would wonder if the trainers were too short on the tall young man with a crewcut, or if it just the sneakers showing. Their shuffling gait – almost a dance – down the road led them towards the crowd of three sitting on the grass on the edge of the road, munching and discussing lasers. They’d pause here and there, she’d clasp her small hands behind her back and look up, up and up at him. And they’d talk. Later, only images would remain: perhaps the swing of her hair from her pony tail, or the vivid sharpness of his features in the shadows, maybe the moment of laughter in circular spotlight created by one streetlight. They’d step along in the night air, before the violins started singing for either of them and never forget. This magical night with the rain hanging heavy in the air and clouds covering the dark moon, they would not run out of road. And they wouldn’t have to part ways.

Tiredofrunningaround,ofendlessrounds,tobewhereyouwant,whenyouwant,fatigue.

fatigued,withthe rightkneeachinglikeanarthriticwomanofgreatage’s,eyesaboutto giveoutsoon, backalltwisted,hunched,hurting, painohpain.

a tooth that has misaligned, a catalogue of things to do left behind,atasktocomplete,and twomorespingup,

please,

where does it stop?