Holiday

Im off on a holiday - why do I need a holiday when I am anyways on a holiday ? Well, I need to celebrate and blow up some hard earned money .Im tensed and yet relaxed and I hope to see you all after a while ...until then ..

Locked..

locked in concentric circles
I'm a frozen idea
a magnet without its force
a routeless road that leads nowhere
a corpse forced to breathe

buried by the dust
my mind caves in
layer by layer, my zest erodes-
a speck, a hollow identity
lost to the world.

tossed by the wind
i lie in ur grip
a dusty dot, a dead weight
hanging onto u
seeking the essence of life.

wrapped in this fold
i cling onto ur shoulder
a possessive grip, an unfelt emotion-
a bond that frees me
but holds u captive.

caught in this web
u shrug me off
a chaff, a burden
a thin thread of emotion
that breaks, freeing u
but i lie, a slit kite

Celebrating the ordinary

This is the story of a dull day. A day which is not good or bad, but just dull. A day bereft of emotions . A day which has indifference written all over it .

A day which breaks at 7 am and ends at 11 pm . The maid walks in 8.30 am and leaves at 9.30 am. The husband leaves at 9.40 am and the door closes on me at 10.10 am .

It’s a day where nothing changes. The same roads, the same noise, the same files, the same names . It’s a day where everything is always the same .

It’s a day where work happens without you knowing it, without you doing it. A day dedicated to patterns .

It’s a day where the punctuations are there at the right places and the cycle rotates by itself. It’s a day I don’t see the clock ; for time is neither ahead or behind me. It’s a day with no memories , no thoughts ,no feelings.

To many others, it may well be an ordinary day, but to me, it’s a day that keeps me going. It’s a day that lets me feel that there are good and better days in store. It’s a day that shelters me from bad days.

It’s a regular day that brings in its wake more such dull days , like a loaf of bread with identical slices .

An ode to the simple mechanics of life – to be consistent and uniform, without even trying to be .

And that to me, makes every dull day a special day

Delusion

The coin keeps spinning
It can never lie on its side
Rotating on its rim
It just cannot stop .
You tossed me up too
And I fell into this mire
Deluded, I'm caught
In a maze with no routes
I see a harsh shaft of light
Your shadow falls on me
As unreal as my pursuit
Its chasing me .
Questions punctuate me
Your reply is my escape
The chase is finally over.
I am where I am.
Maybe I was dead within you
But life has caught on with me.

Flashback - 3

IN my life so far,most of the things have happenned by default and not by design- be it in career,relationships, achievements and failures . I have this unshakeable belief in fate and life and thats completely positive . I have made my decisions alright , but even that I believe is not out of design . Very often I say I take the call when to get out of something , but getting something and getting into it -life has always dropped them on my lap - both bouquets and brickbats .More of the former than latter . And in such scenarios,there is no room for decisons . They just happen .

In continuation with my flashback series , here is another excerpt
9/10/95
Life follows a pattern of its own. Sometimes I feel that I am led somewhere by the reins .But all of a sudden, there is a rut. A stop . And then stagnation .Until the moment comes when small surprising incidents land in your lap,totally out of the blue . There are these special sudden surprises that are so insignificant and yet so vital for us to believe in life . I believe that there is a future. Sometimes events just ride past me and I am lost in a maze as life gallops,tossing me in whirlpools . And then I dissolve slowly, agonizingly . Its like applying brakes suddenly on the highway as the signal appears from no where and then you dont know why and for how long you need to stop.

Tomorrow never begins from where todays ends. yesterday was totally different from today.Isnt life an adventure ? You plan,organise, decide and think you are in total control of your life . And yet you do not know who controls you ....

Flashback - 2

Today has been a mixed day for me...and in two days ,my entire life will be changing soon. I have decided to move on from my high profile job for various reasons which even if I want to express, I dont have the bandwidth to do so . This job has hijacked my life over the last few years and I was living, breathing and enjoying it . And yet I made the choice . Very rationally . In a couple of days ,its all over . CTRL. ALT. DEL. I feel numb and tired . Nothing else

I found this excerpt from my diary written a decade ago and somewhere I think this echoes my rationale for this move

April 4,1996
Moods are like winds; they keep changing directions so quickly. Sometimes they are so still like the calm before the storm or they keep blowing all over the place making me feel restless. I begin my day determind to be positive and happily contended .But by the end I feel so low and lonely and strangely fear of something grips me .I cant sleep .I feel restless and tired .I dont know why I am afraid, of what I am afraid . I constantly pull myself up,derive strength from within,but it keeps sinking..

Today the sky painted with a myriad of evening colours emerged with a pattern of its own. Every second the colours and the patterns kept changing and though subtle, I could see myself reflected through the change . Before you know it the crimson and blue becomes grey and black. Gloom envelopes.

But against this natural scene were the tall dark ugly buildings with flashy lights trying to comepte with nature . As buildings keep growing trying to threaten the sky, man seems to tell nature that I am slowly reaching your status . But the more higher he goes, the more lower he feels. The sky goes further and he is finally enveloped by it. Man can never reach that high in life .

I remember words of Dick Francis . When we climb up to reach our heights in our career we think the climb is only a formality . But the goals suddenly keep going further from our clutches and we reach a certain peak in our lives . Happiness then comes not from looking up to see how much we still got to struggle, but looking down to see the beautiful view we have got for ourselves . Ambition is one thing ;contentment is another. Strangely in our abstract way, the latter is more harder to obtain .

And my ambition would be to get that .

Flashback ...

Throwing junk is a metaphoric experience for me ..Its always helped me to clear the junk in my life, to purge my mind and wake up fresh ..

So while I was clearing the junk in my cupboard , I came across two small pocket books.One of them was like a note pad where I used to jot down quotes,poetry ...what ever I liked from many book I read .

The other was my diary where I had penned my thoughts 12 years ago ...I was amazed at the relevance of those thoughts even today and also at my ability to write effortlessly though I wont say its great writing.Those were the days when I dreamt I will be a writer and a journalist and fancied my writing skills . Today I write , but there are just words and not much of feelings encased in them.

Since I am incapable of feeling, expressing and writing my current thoughts , I am going to post some excerpts from my diary

The first one is a poem written in January 7-8 1996, 2 am

Like withering flowers my eyes droop
I trace the caress of a finger.
Waking up in a strange land
A silent tune haunts me
My eyes are still asleep.
The world is painted in black and white
A green patch blinds me.
I roll along the blue waves
My mind flows and ebbs;
I camouflage into many hues
I dont know what I am dreaming.
One disjointed image forms my life
And yet, Life is still a dream

I ask myself a question
Am I dreaming life ?
Thoughts drain my mind
Wordless emotions clog it.
I ask myself a question
Is my life wrapped in blankets ?
My body is in a cradle
My feelings are rocking it ..
I pace across the room and think
Yesterday didnt exist
Tomorrow never comes.
My mind begins to ebb
Life gently sleeps...

I'm just a mindless corpse
Who forgot how to think.
I ask myself a question
Am I asleep or awake ?