On a high

She was beautiful- stunning, as he would tell her all the time. She was as stunning as ever but all that he could see was flickers of light with a faded image of hers in the frame. He tried to recreate her face in the haze but could not. The more he tried to open his eyes, the less he actually could.

She said a few words that he could not comprehend. He was not sure if he was trying to listen to her or was ignoring her altogether. His tryst with reading her lips proved futile. Since there was utter silence around, her words seemed to bang against his ears so loudly that they were deafening him.

Just when he thought the world around him was about to go blank, he thought he saw droplets of light fall from her eyes. On any other day, he would have jumped to wipe the tears off but today he could not move a muscle. He watched her cry and did nothing.

Then he saw her moving away. It was an illusion, he thought intially. But, it was not. She never came back. He waited for a few moments to catch her view again but then he could not defeat the weight of his eyelids. When he managed to open his eyes, he saw a ring lying on the table- the same ring that he had given her asking for her love, long time back.

The most important chapter of his life had closed right in front of him, while he was still on a high.

 

At this point...

Here I stand. In front of me is the never ending ceiling of the blue sky meeting the blue water of the sea, somewhere beyond the boundary of my vision. As I look back, I see my footprints on the sand tracing my journey back to eternity. Maybe something is missing. While I had always dreamt of reaching here, I don't feel that sense of completion. Neither do I see any road ahead that I can continue to tread on. So, this is it. Maybe my calculations were wrong. Reaching nothingness is actually the end of this journey.

I cannot go back. Neither do I have the energy nor do I remember the labyrinth of roads I had to unriddle to reach here. I am certainly standing at the point of no return. Since I have realized how this story is going to end, I wouldn't contest fate and make the last chapter of my story unnecessarily ugly. I would rather stand here and close my eyes, making the beauty of the blue my last recorded memory.

Premika

Dear, please don't get upset for I have made you the antagonist in the cycle of events. A married woman must be harsh on her past sometimes. Unless she denies her past, her present may become poisonous. My husband wishes to be the protagonist of my story. It is his inspiration that has made me take an attempt to write this epic. Even before I have written a word, he has set the stage for the best possible critique. Any inclination towards the truth will only bring havoc to my life. Therefore, please forgive me. I am his now. I cannot deny him his wish of becoming the hero of my story. You are nobody in my life today.What you think about me does't matter to me anymore.

But, I don't understand how would I even start writing. I feel my thoughts and feelings are entangled, like a messy spider's web. Which colour to apply on which portion of which picture to give him a hero's appearance and deface you, is what I am unable to decide. Even when I think of disfiguring you on the canvas, the splatter of the paint blackens my face too.

This is every artist's dilemma, maybe. If truth is what they not create, it would be a creation without a soul. If the artist doesn't look at the truth inside him but at the face of his inspiration, every picture would appear to be flawed, and every creation, fake.

(Original- Premika by Bibhuti Patnaik, Page 82-83. Premika is a critically acclaimed Oriya novel that tells a story about love, loss and repentance.)

The Black Rose

Fucking weeds. Just when the flowers were to bloom, they showed up in the garden-right under the plants he had been watering all along. He had spent days together plucking them out but the weeds knew some sort of trick, he thought. Every time he would finish cleaning them up, they would reappear at the same place. There was this one time when  he was cleaning the weeds, a pruning saw ran through his fingernails, accidentally. As blood was dripping onto the plant, he just wished it made the roses turn a shade redder. Silly him.


One fine morning he got this brilliant idea. He should probably burn the weeds to death-once for all. Trying to protect the roses, he decided to take care of a small section at a time. He lit the fire and zap came a gust of wind, like it was hiding somewhere waiting to come out at that moment. The plant was on fire. Moments later he saw the roses shrinking with the fire creeping slowly onto the petals. The roses were changing colour. They were not red anymore. In the fire and smoke, he saw something he had never seen before- a bunch of black roses.

The room of lost love.

The balcony door still doesn’t close. When the evening breeze slips through it, the curtains acknowledge it with a flutter. They create a tide of sorts, imitating the sea. As dawn creeps in, everything becomes still- except the dust specks seen in the sunlight coming through the door.

The sound of the sea. the sound of birds flying near the beach. The sound of the tides hitting the shore. The sound that once reverberated in the house. Today, the closed windows separate the sound from the silence in the room.

The candle on the corner the house- witness to smiles, tears, laughter, passion, jealousy, abuses and wounds. Once the lights would deliberately be switched off to make way for the candle light to mellow the air. Trying to figure out the words each other’s eyes spoke when they could hardly see each other is what filled the air with love.

The uncorked bottle of wine on the table, and the two glasses. The glasses were used for sure. Haven’t been washed, maybe. There is still some wine left in one of them. Maybe he hasn’t noticed it yet. Or, maybe, he has just deliberately left it untouched.

Sometime back love bloomed here, everyday. But then, hearts broke. And, like a souvenir, the broken glass on the window pane still stands there. Broken pieces still not picked up from the floor.

It's time to pack up, again.

I tried my best, but, evidently, it was not meant to happen. I could have asked for her love promising the best of the world’s comfort but then I knew I would be fooling myself if I did so. She, from what I know, is not the kinds who would look for comforts at the price of a compromise. I, on the other hand, have nothing more to offer other than my best efforts to keep her happy. And I know, my best may not be good enough.

We have spent considerable amount of time together-at least enough to judge whether we can trust each other or not. I thought I was trusted. But the other day when she was listing down the people she trusted, I did not figure in the list. Not that it didn’t pinch me. It did. But it also made it clear that I probably can never be the one. An SMS few moments later confirmed it. It wouldn’t make any difference if I was in her life or not. I spent the next week drinking. I thought when I would get out of the fuddle, I would be out of her. I drank, puked, drank, puked again- countless number of times. End of it, I was still in love with her.

Ever since, I have been trying to let her know what I feel about her. I can’t ask her that one question because I know the answer. A proposition now would also put all the time we spent together, under scrutiny. My intentions might be questioned. I don’t want to complicate things for us. Even if she doesn’t love me, I am still happy that she is in my life in some way or the other. I don’t want to take an “all or nothing” chance.

I don’t blame her either. If I were in her shoes, I would probably have done the same. Past cycles of events have projected a different picture of mine to the world and I know it wouldn’t be easy for her to convince herself about me going by what has run by her eyes and ears. Anyone in her senses would not accept me as I am. On the contrary, she always extended her hands when I needed support-despite her reservations about me, maybe. She, in her own small ways, always tried to cheer me up whenever I was upset and has given me a million moments to smile.

But then, everyday looking at someone I love so badly, knowing very well that she cannot be mine, is not easy. Since nothing else worked, I have decided to move out of the city. Sometimes you need to leave the hand to touch the heart, you need to move away only to get closer, you need to stop speaking and let silnce take over. I hope it works. Life would be meaningless otherwise. Two more weeks here and then I will be out of the city. I hope a miracle happens and I come back for her, or come back to take her with me. Till then, I will wait.

Running to nowhere

And there I was-running. Sometimes running away from you, sometimes towards you, but most of the times running with you. Like pairs of railway tracks who run next to each other but never meet. Meaningless spells of running.

I knew the odds were against me. I knew I would get exhausted on the way. I knew I would never be able to reach you. But, I had to take my chances. This was one thing I could not convince myself to let go of. And see where I am today- the same place where I had started from. Either I never moved or things just took a full circle. So will I stop? Not that I don't want to, but I cannot. I will keep running. That's all that I can do now.