Me

I always wanted to travel the world. Not to famous places or anything of the sort. Just places. New places every now and then. Wake up in different beds…look out of different windows…look out to see different scenes and different people. I yearn to sit at back of the bus and gaze aimlessly out the window…a little squint in my eye…the sun smothering my face…and my 2 day stubble. I want to drive on an empty road. I don’t want to drive fast…just coast along…the morning breeze streaming through my hair. I want to listen to a hundred voices around me…speaking in a language of which I cannot make out a thing…I want to look for words they keep saying…and then cook up a meaning for each of them. I want to capture images of faces I don’t know…faces I shall never see again…capture them in my camera…gaze at them for emotions…try to figure them out. Sit myself at a roadside shop…where they serve steaming cups of tea…very sweet ones…like hot sherbet. And I want to drive in the countryside…where the sun never comes out from behind the clouds…and lush green meadows are dotted with little farmhouses with queer brown fences around them on which jackdaws stare at me as I sail by. And I want to stare at little kids on mountain tops in grey shorts and red sweaters, unwillingly dragging their satchels along, some wild mountain fruit clasped in their hands…their tiny little eyes gaping at me in curiousity. I want to run along the beach at the break of the dawn…to see where it ends…where all the big hotels give way to the tiny homes of the fishermen and then the lighthouse and then suddenly all the sand goes away and its only lashing waves and brave black rocks thrusting their chests out to take the beating. In the middle of the night I want to be sitting on the verandah of a tiny forest bungalow, with the lights gone out…only a candle in the dining room where the cook prepares country chicken in a fiery gravy on a winter night…and as I wait for him to serve the steaming rice, I want to hear the cricket’s trance and the occasional trumpet of the elephant and the otherwise silence of the mysterious jungle…I love what this world has to offer…all its nature…all its creatures…its human civilizations…I respect all of them…and I love to know all about them…

Listen to me!

And we are fighting to be heard, to be listened to. Its all that we want. To have our own way. I am King and thus you must obey! That’s all we would love to shout out. Introvert? What introvert? There are no introverts. They have just given up. Nobody listens to them. So they stay shut. We are all the same…dying to be heard. Fighting to be heard! Stop you! I must speak now. I have said the same thing…last Friday when you were saying the same thing. I stopped you then as well! Why am I stopping you now then? Because you should hear me! No, its not an emergency or anything. No, I am not under any stress. But you must hear me out…listen to MY point. Your point? Yes of course its there…but I am right. You MUST listen to me. If you listen to me your thoughts will change…and you will think like me. Speak like me. But even then you must stop and let me speak. Please listen to me. No No NO! Even that’s not enough! You must agree with me. If you don’t like what I say then argue with me. You MUST argue! Its your right to argue. But then I am eventually right. Accept it. You MUST accept it! How can you not accept it? I am right. You have some logic to what you say but at the end of it, I am right. Yes you have to accept it. Please listen to me and just accept it. That ALL I want.

Clicks!!!

Scribblings from my heart

I want a home beside a railway track in the midst of a decidous forest. In the dizzy heat of the afternoon I want to hear the rattling from miles away. I want to see the birds scurrying away in the distance behind my greentop hillock. In the dark of the night I want to hear the moan of the siren piercing the cricket’ trance. I want to wait for the glaring light to pass over my drowsy face for a moment while the siren blasts away. It would be swell..

Tick tock tick tock

There’s a voice in my head that tells me to stop but there is this lady in red drives me on. She’s not some pretty lady, she is just a hallucination. She is no good for me, but she makes me feel good…and she keeps pulling me away from myself…from my innocent self…she draws me to her lair…her soft woollen carpets of acceptance and her fluffy pillows of denial. Monotony is such a bitch…flaunting her starched shirts and perfect creaseless cotton pants. Its getting to me really…blood pumping in my veins, thumping my head…walls…dead ends…I am a servant of fate am I? And staying shut is so much fun…let the lady guide you…she knows best….makes you feel good…not about yourself…just good. Good in a bad way…like said before…”I love you…like I hate you”! Everyday that 9 30 am run, those drowsy afternoons at the machine…and the stupid noddings. Why am I like this? That’s because I am scared…scared of losing this. I don’t want this…but they tell me there is nothing else to have! Claustrophobic little room with senseless minds and mosquitoes that squeeze the life out of my body…what is it that I was supposed to find here? It’s a road I have left behind in 3 months time. It’s a dusty road…and it doesn’t have any ladies in red…but something tells me, its where I should be.

On the go...

I am on a train right now, heading back from Dehradun Station to New Delhi after a weekend outing with my family to the “Queen of Hills” Mussourie. To my great surprise when I boarded the train, I found my compartment teeming with noisy school children. They are all about 10 or 12 years old at most. There are 25 of them and they are being accompanied by 5 teachers. 4 of them are garrulous ladies who have set up their own “kitty party”. One is a slightly aged man who is sitting beside me. He has the window seat and is enjoying the view outside. He seems a queer man. Dressed in a simple and somehow fading shirt, uncool jeans and mountain shoes, he was making quite a fuss about the railway authorities not providing the dairy creamer inside the sachet containing the sugar and tea bag. He uses a NOKIA E71 and is spending most of the time Googling stuff. Sometimes he is logging on to Facebook as well. The train is steaming through the green valleys of Dehradun. Suddenly he asks the three little girls in the seat just in front of him…” Can you tell me the name of the river we just passed?” He didn’t get any replies…the three little girls who were giggling all this while just looked at him with blank stares. In the seats just in front of them, the garrulous Lady Teachers were enquiring of the students whether any of them had a pain relief spray with them! “Didn’t I tell you about the river that we cross after Haridwar and before we reach Dehradun?”, Sir asked in a questioning manner. “ We have forgotten Sir”, the girls replied as sweetly as they could! “No matter, ask your teachers then…”

“What Sir? Why are you making them take our exams Sir?”, one of the fat ladies said combing her hair, evidently quite irritated with Sir’s suggestion. “ Son river, Sir”, another of the ladies said…” We also know our bit, Sir”, she said in a “Take that old man” tone! “Right! Very good Madam! That’s one ice cream for you when we get off!”, said our Sir.

“How do you know so much, Sir?” asked one of the little girls, “Well I like to read many books and travel my angel”, replied the old man with an air of knowledge. “Then you must have got lots of marks in your exams, Sir?” his little angel continued. “Huh! Marks? Who said anything about marks?”, exclaimed Sir. “ I just like to find out stuff…problem is that I never found them out at the right time…it was always after the exams and out of my own interest that I came to know all of this!” The little girl didn’t seem to understand and went back to playing with her hair.

A loud voice boomed the air right now! “STUDENTS!!! WHY ARE YOU MAKING SO MUCH NOISE. IT IS 6 PM. YOU WILL ALL HAVE TO GO TO SLEEP NOW!”. It’s the Headmistress. There is a hush in the air now. Haridwar is approaching. I am logging off for the while. We will all HAVE to go to sleep now!

Spankings!

You used to be so beautiful. So bold and so clean. So clear and unabated. And now its only fear that directs you. It’s all a maze for you now. Running hither thither only to be halted by shut doors with fear carved on them with a bleeding knife. And you have lost all of that sanctity. You are just another brick in the wall…guffawing and mesmerized by a trance that you despised in your past. Was it always meant to be like this? To be sucked unknowingly into this foolhardiness…to turn just like any other cog in the machine? And to top it off now you look down upon the people you admired before..you make up lies that you can tell your filthy self about those who float on red balloons and play with the cotton clouds. You say they are in a delusion! You say there is a time for everything… this isn’t the time for this! And you know its all lies… baseless lies fed to a disillusioned self! Its an addiction for you now…to pretend to be who you are not! What did you call them then? Phonies was it? Well look at the mirror…and welcome yourself to their world.