Birth and rebirth

It's been nine comfortable months since i played nautanki and when i go through my old posts i am shocked... because i no longer know what i was talking about in them. Who i was talking about in them. Nine months where i never once felt emotionally unhinged, never once felt the need to run. It makes me happy and sad, the lack of struggle, the absolute inability to write. It's almost as though i cant anymore. I want to start a new blog which inspires happiness and makes me giggle, so am going through the motions in my head. Be back in a new avtaar. Soon

alphabet soup

When you write for a living you sometimes forget how to write. This is a dusty url, one that belonged to yesterday and yet when i chance on it i am reluctant to go by without peering in. Existential questions have long since ceased to bother me, making me cold, almost heartless. There is nothing i feel like writing about so i spare myself the exertion but i know a part of me misses being in touch with me. As the year gets ready to close its account i realise how i have stayed away all year and it is my new year resolve to begin with i again. To start stringing the alphabet again

the week that was

Posham pa.. ring a ring a roses.. here we go round the mulberry bush. A stitch in time saves nine...snippets of nursery rhymes play dodge ball in my head, wilting, ranting, raving hurting. For the first time in a year i feel wretched enough today so say i hurt. I thought i had played snapples i really had.. but i still feel maimed. I try and remind myself of all the sickness, the lies, the infidelity, the horror and my head understands why i am so much better off today but my heart is a treacherous piece of work, sans resistance... used to being whipped around in empty space. I turn up like a jill in the box without much effort and he bounces me around like a rubber ball, edges and all. I am there for him on his terms, listening to tales that wound me because they remind me why i was shunned. Its a failure i can never get used to. Its a weekend of misery, of broken glass and reflections that dont pass muster. You can go through life hurling ha ha hee hee's all over the place but when its time for total recall everything in my head packs up and i just feel so lame and worn. I am learning to write off the past and close doors instead of always keeping my foot in one. Sometimes you think people are part of the woodwork but someone else decides its time for a change of upholstery and you balk.

So i feel hurt, tired and used. And i have nowhere to go. Sad, solemn and sick.. i just hold on.

twinkle twinkle little star

Four month of turning my face away.. of averting my gaze one would say. Of going from happiness to anonymity. And yet when i begin to feel sawed in my life i return to nautanki. Hankering for some drama and wondering why i left in the first place. I feel sick enough to fill a few bowls with vomit and i KNOW how sick that sounds but thats how i feel. Walking through a bookstore i chanced upon a book, infidel.. and i felt something akin to a charas rush... the corners of my mouth stained with the bitter after taste of un-niceness.

There are moments of deep misfortune when you almost begin to slide back, nice and easy... and its through those moments that you think of subcutaneous existences.

I have skipped this year of my life. So far so good. And now i want to make up for lost time by advertising for overtime.

Its all gosamer and thread in my nut.

Its a week that makes me feel oh so vulnerable. The shehnai playing in the foreground and someone in the background reciting twinkle twinkle little star, ad nauseam.

structure

All of February i cut corners and stayed away from nautanki. I am ashamed to say, i even forgot about it. Yes, forgot. With a shock i think back to my luckless love affair with this blog and i wonder if that was me. So two months of thingumees--this and that, that and this. I no longer have long evenings that i would spend hunched up in front of the laptop. I also dont really lounge about on my bed watching Seinfeld of Amazing Race. Or sleep in the afternoon and shield my eyes from the shards that prick through the almost summer days. Thats because my shifts have altered. I go into work at a normal hour, like most normal people and i meet others i would otherwise run away from. The pace, the very structure of my life changed dramatically when i was looking the other way.

Its that time of the year again when i run a distance to stave off thinking. I have been too static and my running shoes are spanking new. White and unworn. I will head out of the city, then the country over the next week and i can only think of sand. And bright lights that descend thick and fast, like sheets of hard rain.

There is plenty that is amiss but i am like a plough. Steadfast and straight. I am alarmed. I no longer have the patience or energy to write. Not even in short hand.

sluiced

It all belongs to another world so forgive me for not being a bright bulb about this. Despair gets out of the way quick enough and is replaced by hurt. The hurt too wanes and then its only anger. A little anger at the futility of incomprehensible and uncontrollable destinies. Cynicism waves a white flag in my face and i can only throw my hands up in the air, first with despair and finally with utter fearlessness.

I was in a time warp as i planned a life. A life that after long pulsated with excitement because i was not filling in the gaps, they had filled in on their own. It was an unreal emotion to experience when you have got used to quietness of the soul but i did a big wheeeee and would have stood on my head if my body had allowed my mind to stop thinking. The emotion stayed with me, it grew, it made me giddy and even after the roller coaster ride ended i stayed on high beam. So it was only natural that eventually the tungsten be replaced by white light, the blinding hysteria by calm thought. It was the ever so fucked up rationality and realism package that strung me along like a lame duck in the end.

So i am no longer nothing. Not angry, not tired, not nothing, just detached. Detached enough to clinically own and disown parts of my conscience, parts of the experience that i want to stay with. I am also not pessimistic or fatalistic but i remember the movement as i ditch glares in the bright city lights.

It was a moment in time. We all moved towards the sluice gates and then when we had congregated there we were told in a no-nonsense tone that the gates were closed for maintenance and it would be a while. High maintenance.

So we thought about whether we should turn around and come back in the future or give it a skip altogether, since the journey itself had been pretty spectacular and it was unhealthy to be greedy for more. But i had been through to the other side and knew i had to wait because it was stunning and real and unreal and fresh and magnetic. So i dawdled a bit and found a rough spot in the clearing that looked like it had been made for me, to sit it out. To wait and watch. So i shrugged off my baggage and parked myself there, some distance away but close enough to sense the waning or veering of the waters. High dam, high maintenance.

Its not been too long and whenever i tire i stretch my legs and cool my head in the shade. Flood gates can be fun you know. Its all about finding the right parking spot and allowing yourself to wait and watch. So i do, as i hover near the sluice.

switch

There is a tiny window in the corner of a room and a strobe light knocks on it gently every now and then. A figure is crouched next to it and one can only see the shadow of his fingers teasing one another, making cat ears one minute and chasing a fox the next. The room itself is bare and has a projection wheel like pat in the centre. One wall is coal black, the kind darkness would think twice about entering. The other a startling white as it awaits projection. Its almost as though someone entered the room with a bottle of sun seeds and sprinkled most of them towards the latter side. Using up all the flakes before turning to night.

The figure that is crouched in the corner flexes muscles. Its a he i can tell because the nape of his neck suggests a strength that can only belong to a man. He also had a flat chest, the nipples taut through the thin tee he has slipped over his torso. Almost hung it there for decoration. He is talking to someone, throwing back his head and laughing and i warm up to him. He says something i hear that pulls me forward and i listen more closely. Not touching him yet my ear close to his lean chest. Listening sometimes, hearing at others. I feel a warmth that spreads like cream over milk, smooth and thick. I lean in some more, ready to park myself there till sunshine speaks the next day or next month or next year or maybe even next lifetime.

In a matter of moments the conversation has chapped lips. I sense a shift as he turns his back to me, his body turgid. Minutes before i can sense the warmth seeping out, i feel him leaving him, leaving me. There's a small switch that is flicked and i see him hurtling down a slim alley looking hunted. The burst of light hurts his eyes and i see him wince, i see him twisting his head to slip out of the window. But the window as i first said, is tiny and keeps him in. Its the familiar lurch, the heightened sense of smell and sight. He is breathing quicker and i see his hand reaching into his head to turn off the switch but he's fumbling and he knows they are getting closer. He breaks into a cold sweat. He knows i am there but he edges away, trying to create as much distance between me and them. At first i almost turn on my heel, disinterested in being a spectator, uneasy about the halfway home meeting and scared of the brilliance of thought and action that may scar. As i am turning he is pushing me away, fast and furious.

And then i decide to stay. I can see the switch and the fingers wading through night attempting to get to it. I reach out and without distrubing the brilliance flick the switch off and suddenly i can see, hear and feel machinery around me shutting shop. Its all in slow motion and he lives his head whirring down to size. The noisy gates toning down.

He turns around after a few minutes. There is grainy silence and atomised wholes whitewash the air between us. We have been breathing together. Rhythmic. After what seems like an eternity he turns to me and holds out his hand. I lick the sweat off the fingers, kiss his palm and entwine my fingers in his. We get up and walk towards a door that had lazily stacked itself against the white wall.

As we slip out, i open my fist and look at the plain switch to psychedelica. I hobble back and aim straight, flinging it out of the window, before jamming the door shut.

We move away and go home. Hand in hand.