I did not know you that well, you were just one of my many students... we smiled at each other when we met... we were friends on facebook. But I never knew you. Those evenings we sat and talked for hours in a group, I was there because I liked being part of that group, I liked that. I didn't understand half of what you people talked about... So, yes, I never knew you...and today when your picture showed up on my newsfeed, I was surprised at the tears that welled up inside me. I was not prepared for them. It's been a fortnight you died. I don't even know if it was a suicide or an accident, but your picture made me stop... I didn't know you and now you are dead..and I see your friends going on about their lives... nothing stopped, nobody cares that much..or possibly they can't afford to stop. So, as much as I had wanted to die all my life, I just pause at your picture and think... do I really want to die and be forgotten forever? No. I want to die as a revenge. I want people to feel guilty and suffer because they deprived me in some or other ways. I probably, do not want to die. I am not suicidal, never was. I just want people to take notice of me and I just realised that dying is definitely NOT a way.
Maybe this is not going to help anything, but I think I should share this thought with the hope that someone somewhere might just chance upon this before they pop the pill or pull the trigger and stop and think why they want to die. Do you really want that? Do you?

I am writing here after a long time. Somehow, after almost three years of an almost stable job, a dozen loving colleagues and friends, I still feel the same pain... I woke up in the morning after a very disturbed two hour sleep and remembered... I am alone. Still. Like always.

It is like my life has completed yet another cycle of mockery and I am once again facing the mirror of truth. And I get to see the mess I am in... the perpetual mess of jumbled up misplaced emotions, unattainable dreams and impossible relationships. 

Maybe most of us are built this way, to live on hope even when we hate the word hope. To climb up the stairs and look down even when we are sure of the vertigo. To suddenly sit up in our beds in the middle of night and start shaking with tears that rattle inside and refuse to come out.

What makes us continue then? Why not find a high place and jump? Do we really care about our parents, friends, family? Isn't that the most pathetic excuse ever? 

I just stand and look hard in the mirror... I like what I see. If not anything else, I have taught myself to love that image. I like to look at myself because I believe if I do not like what I see there, I can't hope to expect someone else like what they see in me either. I know I am beautiful. Terrible but beautiful... almost destructive in its full power... and yet I fail. I fail to impress the one man I want to. I do everything in my power to be the most alluring woman but I fail and I know there's no way out. I will probably die trying and injure a few others. But I can't stop trying. My days are filled with the trials and nights with the feverish anticipation of the coming days. And why I fail? Because I can't tell him. I try that too... and fail... and hope he would understand ... but of course, I fail again.

If someone is reading this... and is a kind soul... just pause one moment and think of that one person who might make you feel like this. Just think and feel... and I would know I am not the only one.

You know it's true when they say love kills. It really does. Slowly, irreversibly, painfully.

Pink Herons, Blue parakeets

I couldn't sleep last night. Or for that matter the night before. This is strange considering how sleepy I was in the evening. I almost fell asleep and missed my favorite soap. But then, after I had conveniently called early and said goodnight to my parents and him, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, applied lotion to my hands and feet, night cream to my delicate face, turned off the light and hopped in bed--- I was wide awake. I thought I would fall asleep gradually and normally it takes me less than 8 min to do so, but this is different. I just had no sleep near at least a km of myself. I could've got up, read some book, watched some more tv but somehow I was still lying there, wide awake, stubbornly refusing to give up. Then I thought of music. So I got my mobile and 40 secs to the first song I was crying! I doubled up with unspoken grief and squirmed and whimpered. Tears streamed down in gushes. And I was surprised inside. Why was I crying? Why am I so sad without me knowing it! What's wrong and where? I could not stop. I cried like a baby. And then I started to feel cold, with a blanket over me in 18 degree Celsius, I was shivering. Then I understood. I know this. I have been through this before, for months. How could I forget it? How could I pretend everything is OK! But thank God, now I know. I know what I have to do now to survive, I am a pro. So I forced myself to get up, dragged my sorry crying figure, still mopping tears off my face, to the kitchen. I filled the hot water bottle, drank a cup of warm milk and came back to my bed. I crouched to my left side in the foetal position cradling the hot bottle to my heart and slowly softly started carressing and patting my head. The tears subsided slowly, the shivering stopped, the whimper went away and although I was still not sleepy, I was feeling better clarity. I have to accept the reality, I thought, I need to know I am not OK and that it is OK not to be alright all the time. I started to feel pity for myself, which is never good, it can cause immediate relapse of the previous fit, and it did. But this time, as I know I would, as I always do, I cried myself to sleep, dreaming of missed trains, lost lands, barren fields, shocking pink herons and blue parakeets.

I woke up sore and tired. And I stayed in bed till 9, watching the regular sparrows and bulbuls knocking at my window, they eat inscts perhaps but from my side of the glass it appears like a dance or sometimes like they are in the powder room, dressing up. It amazes me. So life is thriving all and about and I finally left my den, got dressed and came to office. Not much work today and so I thought of writing this. If anyone is reading this, don't think I am a coward. I can face myself. Just afraid that I might not be able to get back. I have no reason to. Not anymore.

At World's End

Only a week left to the supposed 'end-of-the-world'! I think this should have had the capacity to be scary in order to make me happy, but now it sounds like a weak pj. Personally, I just love the concept of destruction, when it comes as 'complete' destruction. What can be better than just vanishing one fine morning with everything you know! No backlogs, no afterthoughts, no trailing around left-behind loved ones(in case you believe in the ghost theory), no fear of karma(if the world is destroyed I can't possibly be sent back) and most of all no fear of losing your dear ones (who possibly can die in this one week, and even then who cares). Death is a sure certainty with just one small disclaimer. You never get to know the certainty in its entirety unless the very last moment has come to claim you. That makes death horrible, hated, unbearable. That also makes life interesting. But somehow, I don't think much of this surprise factor of death.I would rather know when,where,how. Hence, the theory of the world ending makes me happy in a peaceful sort of way. Weird it is, I know, but at the same time, it is so attractive!
So, with no promising end, I am left to search for the survival means, money, I mean. I have just received my first pay cheque and it made me sad. Plain simple sad. I thought I would be happy. My perpetual life of debt and gloom will come to an end. I will buy whatever I feel like and finally,finally pay my rent on time. But now with the actual thing on hand, the reality looms large over my psyche. 20,000 sounds good, looks good on paper, doesn't really translate that good in the market. I know, with my qualifications, this is the best job I could have bagged and I thank every living and non-living being in the universe for this, but 20,000! Maybe, I need more time to settle into a life I think good. Maybe after 5 years I will be able to afford a jacuzzi and a red, convertible sports car and then gift a world tour voucher to my parents. These are not merely my dreams. These are like the pins in my bed which doesn't let me be comfortable.
People say, aim high. Is what I am aiming for high? I don't feel so. I feel it is only so much one can have in exchange of the other dream, the low cost one that was more fulfilling psychologically, which was unceremoniously snatched away from just under my nose. I feel what I am aiming for is lower than what my heart would have originally be happy having.
Remember here, this is my second life, second chance at life, second dream of a perfect life. I died once.

I hate you BF

So, what do you do when you start disliking your best-friend.

 I know this is one of the most boring topics in this world. But  I am facing this when I least expected it!! I am grown up, I have a job, I live alone.... This is the time to enjoy with friends, to have them over without worrying about your mom or boyfriend(in case you are living-in). Now is the time to explore all those plans that you somehow stashed out of sight because of exams or blind dates! And here am I, suddenly starting to feel averted by the thought of going to a movie with my bestie! c'mon! what's wrong with me! 
Let me introduce her. She is gonna be with us every now and then, surpassing the boundaries of time and place...
Jiya is the most outraging personality you will ever come across. Simplicity, be it of any kind, shuns her like plague. She is a manually twisted and depressed soul, too loud for the average human, almost too schizophrenic to cure medically, mysterious like some lost civilization and yet has the precision of a computer and 100% dedication  when it comes to anything she likes: sex, food, numbers, her grand ma/family/me and any one man at any given point of time. I hope I need not explain more to establish how irresistibly attractive she is and I have no shame in saying, I was completely smitten by her-- first time we met in grad school. Time passed, and we stuck like iron-magnet(can't say which is which coz she too, is in love with me). We went through all possible life events, never caring or pausing for past, present or future and found that  everything fits perfectly to reveal the ugly zigsaw picture life has provided us with. Here I use ugly because both of us have a different picture of our ideal lives, of which I will talk about later, and apparently the present one doesn't stand a chance in comparision.
But, now, I wish she vanishes. I wish she takes with her, as she vanishes, all the memories-relations-and my guilt. I feel threatened by her jealousy, my jealousy at her ability to envy me, my powerless attempts to control her unattainable dreams...

 I am so sorry Jiya...so so sorry that I can't say this to you in person... this is like that moment you see...that time you were in love with your shrink and he was clueless of your troubles coz you couldn't tell him your feelings for him... I know you will never read this, you are totally clueless when it comes to computers, but I still wish you read this, sometime, coz at the end of the day, you are the only person who will understand this.

The dead butterfly

It was lying brown

Face down

As I walked to my work today.

It was cold

(and stiff) to hold---

Stretched wings, lying face down

All brown 

And covered in dust...

Might be grey, not brown

How does it matter, said I.

It's dead

Body,wing and head

Never more to fly...

A prickly caterpillar it was

Some months back

Borrowed colors from the rainbow

Returned them, must be

Just as it was time  to go...

From the dust to the dust

Grey and brown to brown and grey

It was stiff to hold

Lying cold

As I walked up the stairs

In the morning today.

 

Too much work today. And Boss moved the FAX machine to my cubicle :( ... meaning I can't write as often as I would like, people are always infiltrating my private space in the name of photo-copying. But somehow I am still feeling cheerful enough to start writing and that is because the sun is shining through my office window... a slice of warm orange sun...right here on my left arm, illuminating my boring desk and setting my glass on fire! Oh how I was dying for this... no wonder the scriptures say that sun is life.It is.

 And if you know anything about typefaces, I am composing today in Trebucht font, the one I 'discovered' today while searching for some good non-serif fonts and this one seems quite good for headings and stuff, I am actually using for my next set of documents.

Oh I had an awesome lunch! Ate a full meal after...um... maybe a week. Actually my bro came down from his work to meet me. It is nice to see someone you know... I didn't even realise how much I was feeling lonely until I said good-bye to him just now. Did I mention he is not my real brother, he is a cousin. But he is the closest to what I know of a brother. I am an only child...and so my share of exclusive goodies comes with this pack of loneliness. I am mostly ok with it until someone starts those mind boggling stories of sibling rivalry, or you read about the Weasleys. Well, then I start to feel a bit queasy in my stomach... a mix of jealousy and care which mostly urges me to punch that person in the face and start a pseudo-sibling fight then and there. This bro of mine rescues me in such occasions. I swallow my initial response and start enthusiastically about 'us' sometimes conveniently forgetting to mention he is a cousin!

I would be going shopping today after office--- candles, diyas, sweets, decorations, fire-crackers etc etc. This is my first Diwali after I got the job and I don't want anything to fall short in the festivities. I really would like to light candles all all all over our three storeyed home, and also on the fences, on the doorsteps, even all down the 46 winding steps of the staircase, and not for once worry about the number of candles, not do quick mental math to adjust 40 candles in 8 rooms. I have a job and I can do my will. That's nice. That's a nice feeling which I was negating for a long time. Anyway, this is now taking the form of a rant. So I better stop.
Happy Shopping everybody and advance "Happy Dhanteras"... the worship of wealth and happiness, the festival of shopping!! Stay happy and rich you all. :)