Wail of the Dying Jay

Azure as sea and white as pearl,

He lay dying on the grass.

Hurt, hunted and near death.

He cried and wailed,

For it was pain,

That shooting pain,

That caged him in his mortal cage.

It trapped his holy soul,

Pierced his heart,

And stole his grace.

He had flown high,

In his time,

Above the wales,

And above the streams.

He had tasted the skies,

And kissed the waters.

He had loved and lain,

With a cerulean maid, vain.

Now lay he, a crumpled mess.

With a broken wing,

And a broken will,

Proud and helpless.

He knew it was time.

Time to give up, and to perish.

One last time he wailed.

It resounded of frayed hope,

And battered senses.

Hurt, hunted and near death,

He lay dying on the grass.

Azure as sea and white as pearl.

Anna's Lullaby

There once was a man who lived in the shadows. He wore darkness like a blanket and found solace in being aloof.He had calloused feet and a calloused heart. He then met a little girl by the name of Anna. She was like balm to his pain.

He taught her how to dance, for in his prime, he was a dancer himself. They would dance for hours till the man could no more bear to stand. He then would watch Anna dance. After they called it a day, the girl would sing him to sleep everyday till she could see his eyes flutter in sleep reacting to his colourful dreams.

Days passed, months flew by as they danced together. One day after singing him to sleep, she slept and never woke up. The man's heart broke as his cries would keep the dogs awake at night. He was old, infirm and weak. He counted days on his fingers praying for his suffering to stop along with his broken heart. 

One day when he sat burning his last lamp of oil, he found, in the folds of his sheet, the shoes that anna wore while they danced.For a moment as he held the shoes, he felt like he could feel Anna herself. 

He felt a sense of peace settle over him as he stopped longing for death.He knew it was his time now, he knew who would be there to greet him as he neared The Light. With this realisation, he pressed her shoes to his heart and sang Anna's lullby. That was the last night that he slept in pain. With the song, he plunged into a deep, peaceful slumber never to wake again.

Pieces of Burnt Paper

I write me, my time

On a flimsy sheet with faded ink,

In a dark room by a flicker of the flame.

In hopes of manifesting,

Realizing myself.

In me I see a girl.

A little girl with long hair,

Dancing about like a painter’s stroke,

On a yellowed canvas.

In a blue frock and plaited hair

And a basket of roses

She runs across the field,

Chases a sparkle, a dream.

Winds come and strike her down,

Rain becomes her glory.

Her flowers wither and fall,

And with time, so does she.

This I write, I write in regret.

It weighs me down like a thousand chains.

I committed a crime that cost my life, 

I let the girl go.

In her place I find now,

A hardened speck in a paper town,

A flat town in a disc world.

With linear souls and pointless emotion

And a fire that doesn’t burn.

With contagious insanity and desire.

This world deceives her,

Blinds and pushes her.

A fire starts on one end,

reaches the other.

In its wake, leaves ashes that are her.

Ashes blow around This World,

defeated but free, unwavering.

This world, but, crumbles around her,

Like pieces of burnt paper.

Guess who's back.

Sleepless. Eyes wide open. Nose equally blocked. No luggage. Bah.

Well this was a bummer.

To tell you the truth i had expected a bit more. From myself really. But then hey, im sick. Coming here this time doesn't seem like the woohoo scenario I imagined. Infact its quite the opposite. You're sitting in class going .. nuclear. Fuel. Combustion. Hmm combustion. Human bodies do that. Necrosis fascitis. Ugly pictures. To BAM energy and why? Because everything is clawing at you and constantly whispering in your ear, 'have to have to do good'. It was pretty annoying really. I had expected some sort of raw hungry-for-knowledge enthusiasm which turned out to be more like eh-nose-icantbreathe-mylungsareabouttoexplode-blekhiasm. The only thing that has found perfect space is that absolutely heavenly bookshelf which solves my bedside table problem. Really, my bedside earlier was actually the marble floor.

Whats more, after two years of experience I forget to carry that infernal umbrella around and ended up drenched and cold with some really smart people playing volleyball on the basketball court with a football rather expertly. I realise suddenly that I dont really have a place to eat apart from the greasy and spicy restaurants which, may I point out, I'd usually love. Ah, what's better than a piping hot, overspiced, bread pakoda in the chilling rain. And then there's the ginormous realisation of tomorrow's queue hassle for the satanic ritual of paying the fee.

This day couldn't be better. Ah sweet Manipal.

On a rather forcibly optimistic note, tomorrow is a new day. Full of getting things done and setting agendas.

Oh who am I kidding. Im too bleh to think that way. Things are going to be same. Mundane and dry. Hell I might snatch a couple of fun moments what with the weekend and all. Even if that is a lord of the rings marathon. But there are no sisters here. No gossiping with mom or dad. No watching cwg with family. Cheering the Indians on and secretly checking out hot diver bodies. No wayward imagination of worlds on specks. No hot soup of ugly veggies.

I miss you hot soup of ugly veggies.

Zara hatke, zara bachke

The wet road glistens like diamond and gold pellets as the streetlamps and advertisment boards lighten the way ahead. What is it about this city that sends me plunging into my own mind looking for just the right adjectives. Nothing else would do, it has to be just fitting. As i stepped out of the station, into the open, I smell the salt in air, the humidity rubbing against my skin. Bombay has a dull, pulsating charm about it which induces dreams of being a part of one of the NCPA productions, a commercial sailor or some corporate bigshot with a private cabin in BKC. While people usually define cities, its style, standard of living. Bombay defines its people. It drives them to work day and night and still finds them chilling on marine drive after hours. 

The very sight of the sea inspires some hidden side in me and I want to write and fly with the eagles over band stand. Bombay is so mysterious.. so enigmatic. Like a woman's moods does its weather change. Like the curves of her body, the waves rise and fall. Like the folds in her saree, the city holds strong, scented secrets. Whispers of bedside lovers, of manslaughter, of a child studying by the candle light fills its nights. It is a city of eyes. Listless eyes of the homeless man, his curly, matted hair, his little sack that holds the sum of his belongings. Stoic eyes  of the working woman in a suit who breaks for a quiet lunch at Mondegar , scan the newspaper. The only hint of emotion is given by her pursed, red lips which quiver with excitement as stocks rise. The lonely writer and his bloodshot eyes linger over a burnt cigarette butt, drawing inspiration from the oddities in life.

 Bombay is like a living organism, slowly inching its way to nirvana. It contains all of its history, all the families that have been here since it was given as dowry. With traffic doubling as blood, its slowly moving lifeforce and sea as its external shine. I have said this before and I won't hesitate in saying it again. Bombay is a city of contradictions. It hides dirt under all the glamour. And under the dirt is where you find more glamour. This is a city where if you shun something because of the looks of it, you're doomed to experience only a fraction of the city. Forever. It is the city of rich imagination where if you merely think it, it comes true. And whatever is the truth you would probably never think of it.

Im in love with this city. And I always will be.

Ek cutting chai.

Co-incidence, fate, whatever. But whenever there's a point of complete and utter despair, a train journey is staring me right in the face. I think every year I can attribute a week's worth of time ONLY to train journeys. It might not sound like much. Ive had major paranoia issues since as long as I can remember and these journeys somehow help me unwind. When I travel back home from college the compartments are mostly filled with students. I have been ragged in a train. Lightly though, was fairly fun. Sometimes some 6-8 guys are found with their heads dug in their pcs working their way through dota or cod. Sometimes a group of students just sit and smoke and exchange anecdotes of how that teacher was such a douche. I usually end up reading or watching something or just sitting down at the door with a friend.
This time was different.  After days of despair and ambiguity before and after results for god knows how many things,  I found myself at the end of my rope. I couldn't think straight and make a sane statement. 'Spiralling out of sanity' as I'd call it. 15 hours later, now im sitting across from my dad just staring into the horizon. I'm at peace. I dont even understand how that works just that it does. And beautifully so. I saw a string of  families living in a slum. Kids with dreadlocked hair from neglect, men with bare backs and women bent low in daily chores. And not a SINGLE one of them with a frown on their faces. One family had made pets out of this family of white strays, their pups playing with the tots. Kids were playing hop scotch and a girl was batting for a team of boys (which was like necter for my feminist soul). ROWS upon rows of identical bunglows in the exact same colours amusing the LIFE out of me and my dad. Open and vast ravines and a lone soul sitting somewhere in what seemed to be silent contemplation. I spent the last half an hour with this little girl, who barely reaches my knee, jumping around me playing let's-jump-around. Since I'm bad at babytalking I kept our conversation limited to 'tractor' and 'cow'. But then it WOULD be a little freaky if  I managed a conversation with a 2 year old. Anyway jokes apart, Travelling is one of the most beautiful aspects of any human. And in modern times its one of those simple pleasures of life which people have forgotten owing to their self important state of being perpetually busy. I'm going to a place where im going to be living alone. And working with people twice my age and I'm TERRIFIED. I have no idea as to what am I gonna make of it. I have no idea how I will deal with shifting and everything else. But after about 51 towns, 15 hours, 3 fields of marigold, some assortment of white and purple flowers, gazillions of salt panes later, I know I'll be fine. And everything else will be fine too.

Darkness and its Sanctity

A room, dark as night

Dark doors, slammed shut.

Dark windows cracked and shattered,

Dark sheets that smell of yew.

A dark lady, her companions dark thoughts.

Of wilted flowers and shriveled fruits, she wrote,

Of crushed hope and of broken souls.

Beside a lamp, she wrote.

Her tresses, wild and unruly.

Twisted freedom plagued her mind

Twisted bonds and twisted ropes,

That bled her writhing arms.

Thorns that dug into her neck,

And that pierced her soul.

In pain she found solace, it became her nectar.

Wrenched away from home and from any humanity

She sat by the light,

Writing, her mane flowing like a waterfall.

In Those moments, filled with darkness

She found her darkened heart.

It bled by the second,

For an estranged love,

For a smashed pride.

It bled onto the tattered gown,

Onto the silk, that once was pristine.

It bled for the pain she saw,

For things that might have been.

For smashed dreams.

Bound in chains,

Bound in shackles she wrote

Her skin raw and fingers bleeding.

She found solace.

In broken dreams and crushed hopes

She found her peace.