The Bed

Yesterday was just another day... yet it was raining cats and dogs throughout... and the chill in the air was piercing… I had gone out to run some errands and was speaking to baba when he told that my grandma’s bed was sold off that day. Baba was very upset, as it was this bed that he had gifted to his mother with his first month’s salary. Mamma (as we used to call my grandmother) left us all 5 months ago... And with her all of our lives and routines changed... yesterday her bed was sold off and which carried so many memories of the past years. She is not with us... and even her most precious memory was lost too… But the grief was profound… Not for this loss of furniture... rather the loss of so many dreams and happy moments overpowered this grief.

My early memories of childhood was I and mamma on that bed… sleeping, eating, playing… everything… I still remember I used to bring chalks from school so that I could write on the bedpost... pretending I was the teacher… God knows till what age I played like this. The entire shine of the bedpost was damaged till baba repolished it. I remember the blue colored mosquito net which used to be hung over the bed at night. Ma and Baba would always say that they would never sell it off as it was of really good wood. Mamma, probably till the last time she was in Rihand slept on that… She would hide food items underneath her mattress…
So many tits and bits of memories… Some of us (like me) are sentimental fools... we gather the small precious moments and store it in lifeless things... and for the rest of our lives keep associating memories with them…

I never really visualized this day would come, the day when baba retires. I had been hearing about it for the past 2-3 years… This had been the deadline for a special event in my life… but life hardly runs the way you plan. To sell off the furniture was never dreamt of... or maybe there never were any plans... Maybe we always postponed all the planning.

Now there is no mamma to shout at… and her bed is gone for us too… people and things which had been part of your life for past 26 years suddenly disappear and you are supposed to live with that --- that hurts! I never really let her absence sink in my life but yesterday when baba told about that bed...I could not control myself...
Rains and tears were dripping down my face... I kept walking in the freezing rain but the pain would just not subside … I could visualize my Rihand and my childhood… the 5 of us – me, dada, ma, baba and mamma… the happy family… all gone… the very essence is long gone… all that’s left is smiling faces with hidden tears, hollow empty lives…the laughter, the fun all missing somewhere..
Yet we smile... I smile… Sometimes evade company... Sometimes pretend to be merry and life goes on like this for us now.

In the early morning hours when I push myself to sleep… I wonder…. Will this dark night ever pass? Will we ever see the dawn…?

Shhh…

Last night I cried out loud
For the sake of hearing a sound
But all I could tender
Was silence and solitude!

Into Oblivion...

How would it feel to watch your own self fade away?? While you happily watch the world who were once with you, by your side, in the same race, move ahead… all one by one, embracing lives, they just pass by you by while you stay where you had been for years… a dark hell of your own which you call “paradise”… and simply fade away from this universe silently, passively as if you never existed. The world forgets or probably is forced to overlook your existence.

Sometimes it is better that way – to forget, not to remember what it was like to have known you… to have spent those 2 minutes with you…

Sometimes it is better to cross by you with out recognizing the face and the brilliance that once could have set the world ablaze.

You simply rust, burn up and keep sinking deeper into this dim haven as if you were from another planet, you make your own fake world – one that’s full of lies, self disgust, depression, torture, anguish and only dark clouds…

And yet all that you had was all that one could ever dream of…
And yet all that you let fade…

Like a fictional being standing at the centre of a busy highway of life with none of the passers able to touch you …

I realized at some point in my life that it is difficult to control an extremely sharp and intelligent mind. And that’s precisely the current situation…
To have known such a mind was luck… to have seen it fading away is pain… and to have tried to control it was foolishness and love… Love with all its stupidities ever dares to do the impossible tasks even knowing its miserable fate.

And maybe some day all that will be left will be your absence, and this ever going race… the world full of people who had once known you… some very precious moments … silent tears and smiles and my helplessness and despair.

Till then,
Enlighten me with your pain…
I have sailed the crimson river time and again!!!

The Dusk

I watch you with the kids… a rare moment… the peace and serenity on your face – worthy of a lifetime… coz kids don’t bother... they don’t question you about your past and future … they just play around you… lift you up… you don’t have to pretend with them about your sanctity …

I watch you with the electronic games… the alertness and sense of achievement with your wins, so unlike the real world, make you believe you are the master coz they don’t react…

As I try to hold on to you, you gasp free of my clutch as if choked by the nearness…
The more I try to get you involved the more you evade... And I understand that…

I and the rest are aliens... to this lure of ecstasy… the pleasure of one moment vis-à-vis a lifetime of pain…

And for me... I watch you vulnerably smoldering yourself in that hole… your flames reach out to us too… engulfing us in its blazing arms…

Strangled with the numbness
Am dead to all the pain…
Venom I could not spit
Is turning blue in my vein…

This despair is mine…
And I will fight till the sun shines.

Only Sometimes

Sometimes the incessant raindrops cant wet you...
Some times the heart beats are simply too loud...
Sometimes the silence around you is so stifling…
Sometimes the darkness is just too bright..
Sometimes the threatening tears just don’t fall…
And sometimes... Oh so many times... I am just not me…