Sunday, October 24, 2010

Today.

One class every Tuesday.

Teach kids all the systems. No matter if its less. Or more.

Teach them, so they don't grow up to make

the same mistakes we do.

Or if they ask me questions I don't know the answer to.

Not to flinch.

Write.

I am happy today.

The within type.

And I can now fly without feeling the need to look down on the ground below.

The Fly Away type.

I have shed that skin, that shed sad-sodden slime drops.

Fewer stuff remaining. In the To-Do list.

Open the windows in someones closed room.

Make someone realize a word 'want' is not a thing beyond her reach.

And tell another, 'I cannot' are words just not meant to fit his shoes.

Spread two corners of everyones mouth.

Meet two people. For the last time maybe.

And no cringes of selfishness when I realize I am praying,

but not for myself, for the truest-firstest time.

I have nothing left to ask for.

What thirst I parched for from the falling raindrops of a cloud.

A big river came and started to flow outside my home.

I got everything I needed; from him from Her.

I am free.

Free to fly.

The Fly Away type.

And I am happy today.

The within type.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Nothing...

Yesterday I promised someone I would write instead of crying. And I was with the hope that i would yet again produce voluminous amounts of text. Today I dont feel like crying at all. I just realized this. That I still don't have enough love in my veins. Not as much as I would like to. And I lay down my weapons against that thing called life. Right now, I would like to,

Go and fall over a cliff. And trust me I would be smiling till I smashed into the rocks.
Something I have never been able to do...
Run till my lungs burst and all the blood came out of it.
Hit my head and forget everything about me. And then go to a village and live a life doing chores from house to house like an ordinary peasant woman.
Leave this place. Just leave this place and start walking. And walk till my life bleeds out of my legs.
Actually fall into that water I have seen myself fall into countless times in my dreams.

The best, be that Mermaid I grew up with, even before I learnt to read the story.

Life can be that strange, that fucked up for some people.
Or people fuck their lives up. Maybe that is the truth.

And tears, No tears today. And I doubt if there will be any ever again after this.
I don't know if I am better today knowing it or worse.
I am numb. Because still, I have nothing to gain.
And I have nothing left to lose.
Just a vague emptiness, that I have no words to describe.
Like someone punched me in the face, and forced me to see my face in the mirror.
Like the moths I used to smash as a child because I was scared of them.
Ugly isn't it?
I have nothing left to say.

And when I dissolve into foam, one single drop would fall from my eyes. I wish I could dive in and go away from here.

I wish this is all a dream and I could be, I could be 24 again.

And if that is not possible, then what I learnt today, should change me to the extent that I don't have to do that "Exhale Sucharita. Fill yourself with happiness, you are going to save people's lives. Its a much bigger privilege than anybody gets to get in his/her life. Don't ruin this with your unhappiness within. Don't let that shadow fall on them", each time I walked to the Hospital.

To be honest, About right now, I want to go to Daycare center where I used to be on night duty for a bunch of Terminal patients on ventilator. At about 2 or 3 in the morning, in the biting cold, I used to be the only one person awake there. And I used to pace all night. Looking at each of those bloated faces till it was 6 in the morning. People I mostly never saw making it to life till the time I left.

I want to do that now. I wish they did not lock our hostels from outside. They possibly sense our feelings. Thats why they lock us in. People like me can be dangerous tonight.

Friday, October 22, 2010

On being read...

I have no idea why I am being told I write well. Few days back a junior around here i don't even know the name of approached me, checked if I was the name I know to be mine, and said I write a good blog. That means a lot many read my blog who do not choose to say anything. I dont know what to say. I am not sure if I want to be read. I don't think I would like people to come asking me...oh who is that person u referred to in that entry who loved to beat his students in their knuckles...or who is the she with a white saree and a vermillion mark. I dont want to answer these questions. It doesnt make a difference if people know or dont know. I never wanted that for me. I write when my heart wrenches. Which is quite often. Because I choose to come back to my life silently. And stubbornly stick to my privacy after my exhaustion with people in a hospital. I wonder if my extremely nice friends can actually hear that grumble when they knock on my door and I reluctantly allow them to come in. No I have never wanted to write well. I have always written because I have always been afraid to speak. (Disclaimer: Nothing about this blog is professional; because if I use the same statement in that regard, at least two people will lose consciousness. I won't name them of course. They try to put some sense into my head about controlling my outspokenness and blatant temper ) And when I do feel like this, if I am not in tears (which is most often; I am a very emotional, depression prone neurotic individual), then my hands move automatically and I start hitting the keypad.

Gaining 6 people on my followership column is a little daunting. Like I have to produce something good for the ones who read me. Yet I have no such ideas in my head to write. I write about my life, and the life I see around me. None about the feel good factor. None about the poke your head and come up with something that is like a cliffhanger; a instant hook-up. I write things that might just look interesting to someone else because its another persons private tragedy or comedy. Humans have that innate voyeuristic tendency. They always want to know what is going on in another persons life.

Like someone who asked me something recently to which I fell into that numb stasis. And produced this piece. 1> Do u believe in Love? 2> Do you believe in Destiny and 3> Do u believe that whatever happens, happens for the good?

I have written for years now. How and in which circumstances, doesn't matter. And to whom, and when, not much of a bother. I have written to people who have mattered the most to me to kids who never thought grown up people would appreciate their drawing. Recently I went through a chapter in Psychiatry about the defense mechanisms people use. And after going through it again and again, I knew I use two of them. Suppression, and humor. My aim is to go to the Sublimation. Its the noblest of all defense mechanisms (as has been pointedly given in the book...lie its forcing people to see inside them and reevaluate...). I cannot paint, for then I would have painted of sunshine streaking through clouds. I cannot travel, because I seldom get out of my campus more than once a week. I used to sing. But I used the money saved in buying a guitar for something else. A few months later, wretched with emotion, I stopped singing, and I have not sung ever since. I have slowly given up, over the time, my appetite for consuming large number of books. I remember I finished nearly 300 novels ( not M & B mind it...I would consider that subscribership to be below my dignity..). But Revolutionary Road hangs there. Somewhere in the 20 or 30 odd pages I read...for over a year now. And I have let up on that. I cannot live that life anymore. Its too painful as it is. I want to go numb after my exhaustion. Because reliving upto a passion that once got me into the best and worst moments of my life is an adventure I choose not to undertake anymore.

But I cannot leave this. I cannot leave writing. No matter how much I try to. And I have tried to quit; to stop writing letters, to stop writing about my personal life on a public forum. But I cannot do it. Not that I am advertising. No matter what I write, I know the one person perhaps I would want to read it is no more there. And it doesn't matter if a hundred other people read my blog ( I am not being disrespectful. I sincerely take on the blessings of all those people who have bolstered my faith in this. Especially my Professor, the most unimaginable person to read my column...hick hick...makes me blush each time I think about what he must be thinking to read young rantings like mine ) Without your faith and trust, I would be nowhere. But its difficult to describe. Like the Pin Wheel Jasmine. A flower without a scent . And the same way I cannot forget. The same way I cannot stop worshipping. The same way I choose to stay silent about that one question that snuffs the laughter out of my eyes and kills it everytime I see the same childs face in every child I see smiling. And I cannot move on. In fact I choose not to. In reality I manage to get my hands on every child within passing distance of me. And trust me, children are the only people who will look straight into your eyes without flinching. Most of the time, I break the gaze.

Believing that whatever happened happened for the good will prove that ascribing ones faith in another person or thing is not a permanent thought. Just because it got broken, or was not fulfilled. Or the idea that it can be done over and over again and it can be killed over and over again. Like 'gathering and dusting off lovers' that someone had written. I cannot believe in this. Even though I have lost enough times trying to prove it to myself to the extent I have quit playing games with my heart or faith. Yet I cannot do it. Not to someone else. I cannot do it to myself. Because that would mean whatever I say, or do, are statements that bear strength only in transience. My feelings and my life is not a short episode of a Sitcom. I move from day to day through the things that have happened to me all these 28 years. And I am a sum total of all of them. Even if some of them have been painful ones, they have defined me. Even if I know I can never have that faith anymore, I choose to believe Faith exists.

For some it does. You have to trust me.

People who know me for what I am, have seen the aggression with which I work, my friends who have seen the depression that I once fell into (God knows I think I can never shake out that old hag tugging at my happiness each time I try it ) will tell you, I go by with a few things pending. ( Not including the paper my Professor wants me to complete..I think I should be doing it in another one and a half years..). I shall write about things that I feel like. And I know not all of it will sound good. In fact I know most of it will speak of the filth and the anger and the hurt that sometimes weaves up dark wet nets on my attempts to look at the sunshine. But I shall choose to write about them. Each time it comes to me, rather than fall back on my pillow and drench it ( You devise a method to date tear stains...and mine will be the longest surviving pillow....the prize shall be a detergent that would promise to wash the stink but keep the stain)

But I wont write with a promise to put more people in pain through the pain that I or some other people I know have undergone. People generally tch tch at things like this. Believe me nothing is more stupid than this. Or more classless. I don't want to make you more miserable than you already are. I wont have that much time to explain, and I rarely edit my posts so most of the time things will be dropped here and there. I know I shall never have much time to explain or beauitfy. But if you can, try to look for the hope I dont speak of when I write about despair. Just look inside the pools of tears and you shall find a girls innocence, a mothers dream, a sons fears, a daughters laughter...all undiminished, shining against the grey truths we give names like life, situations, and destiny. And you shall find love. Lots and lots of love. Of the capacity of people for love. Do not read me if you want to see life as a punishment. Dont read me if you think you need a vent for your anger and see that happening here. Which of course is true to the point that I write about things or people who were possibly wronged or misunderstood at some point in their lives. But beyond that, its also about truth. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth. Because I dont know about love but I can say that truth stands the test of time.

Because no matter what I tell, no matter what I or anyone else mentioned here goes through, lives, or passes on, truth shall remain.

And also that I will...

Always believe in love.

Always fight Destiny.

And always make things happen to me rather than decide that whatever happens might have happened for the good.

(Dear friend, did you get your answer? I promised you I would reply to you in my blog. And I did it. I am very serious about my promises...I keep every single one of them...)

KISSES OVER THE PHONE

It had started from there;
begged, in the presence of a friend
and you blushed and denied until;
you slammed the phone down.
And when you confessed to your friend
the situation,
She chose not to believe !!!

It went to a place when you were scared
and wanted to lock yourselves
in a room until you shook him
and you could say; bring it out on me.
take it out; don't let it consume you
the way it does.
But for him there was a better option.

Few days back again,
I got that telephonic kiss
again from someone who stays
up in the mountains, comes down to touch me
when my eyes open and
against all darkness of a house
devoid of light, I see
the moon by the window, full faced at me.
And from her I got it and got it again,
until stiff lipped, pool eyed,
I asked her to turn her head
and check her ears,

And planted a solid one against the dial.
What she did not realize,
was that her giggles caused
ripples on my pool of dreams
that I once saw with my eyes
that still choose to be blind
to the truth that ultimately awaits us.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

In Comparison

How strange is this land, in comparison, where no more than twenty people can rise together for an occasion. Today is Dussehra, the festival of triumph of good over evil, of truth over falsehood, and it is a dead city. Cuttack, in comparison, would be held in chaos now. Pandals, murtis, Melodies, would be littered all over the city. From the Muslim dominated Buxi Bazar, through the beautiful Manglabag and the Silver Chandni Chowk effigy, into the Taladanda Canal Puja committes slum dwellers Durga effigy, its hard not to spot a place which has been left of some attempt at happiness.

I miss you Cuttack. The lack of religion here is as pathetic as the excess of it there. Given a choice, I would prefer the latter. It was always easier to unload ones sadness there. That is not possible here. You have to consume it within you.