It is not about the mirror

I have a picture of you looking into a one of those funny mirrors. This pic is a reflection of you in the mirror. You have one big grin on your face and this is the most beautiful pics that I have of you. I have visited that place many times later. I have stood before that mirror and made faces. I have even asked those who have accompanied me to stand before the mirror and smile.

That mirror has never again reflected a smile a beautiful as yours.

Quarantined!

I am aware that you hide my thoughts in far away places. Wardrobes that hold your old clothes and forgotten perfumes keep me company. I am in that stack of old letters and Google chats that you have archived. I am also the faint whiff of lavender that remains in those weeds you have hanged by your window.

On a lonely Saturday midnight, when you feel like a holler, I am in the Teddy that you go to sleep with. I meander into your dreams, forgotten moments in time, etched into hard drives like a virus that you cannot clean, like a file you cannot find. I am the keyword you do not remember.


 I am the red in your Gypsy blood. I will always re-grow.

That Fluttering of Broken Wings

If you were to cross the road and hurt your toe, I know that I will never know. As we go on to take different roads and move on across different shores, there is something that happens to our relationships. Something that estranges, disconnects, disintegrates.

I know that you still think of me. I know this because I find myself thinking about you. And thoughts rarely get seeded on their own. It comes from you to I and from I to you until one of us is alive.

Old relationships rarely die. Like broken winged moths, they hang around dark alleys of forgotten memory lanes. Ever so often, I can hear one of them flutter its wings. Not too close but never too far.

Cold Winter Chill

 

How cold can this winter be?

You would know that wont you my love?

The blood in my marrows have frozen still

And you are yet to blink!

How well do I know you?

From the time we were together to this day when you live in me through my words, I have often asked myself how well I knew you. I have heard this spoken about myself, as to how hard it is to understand me, as if I were a mystery, a Dan Brown novel. I have known you just as well as I have known myself through you. In the fleeting moments of togetherness, I have heard my heart sync with yours and sing the same songs, dance to the same beats. I have felt two souls resonating, as if we were strung to two separate guitars but  strummed by the same cosmic guitarist. I have inhaled your shampooed hair and fell in love with the way you smell. You have breathed me in as I held you close, and from the way I could hear your heart beat, like that of a little humming bird, I knew how much you loved it with me around.

I have heard your Hindi poems late into night and I so believe that your lines are far closer to perfection than my meandering thoughts. I have crossed busy Hyderabad streets with you, helped you buy your lehanga and taught you better bad words to describe your boss. I have sat behind your Scooty and held on to you (and my dear life), and fought with cops and parking attendants. I have even suffered your seat dance through a Salman Khan movie.

Life is a roller coaster ride. The waves that peak and trough snare and separate. It is said that the sea keeps no secrets. Someday, she will return you to me.

Long Flights

Long flights remind me of you. All this cacophony of every day living and suddenly there is so much time. What do I do with all this time?

Long flights remind me of you.

I have left the city lights and even the clouds behind. Up here there is white sunshine. I can see right up to the rim and beyond.

The constant growl of engines is the only give away, nothing  moves, for hours, everything outside remains same. And then you start taking over my mind. Like the sky that turns crimson before night, I can feel your thoughts invade, pervade, persuade.

Color me crimson when there is still time. Color me crimson before it is night. Long flights... Ah long flights!

Moved On

I chanced upon your linked in update,
It says you have moved on.
I know that you have left my town
A town for which you had mixed memories
Of love longing and pain.

You could have dropped a line
I know it is difficult for you
It would have been easier on me.

Yesterday on my way back home
I saw someone like you on the road
The winter fog seems to be playing games
For in the heart of winter chill
I felt the warmth of summer breeze.

You are my sunshine
You keep shining still :-)

Forgotten Memories

Some day I will sink into your past
Like a forgotten memory misplaced
And when there are ripples in your lake
You will remember of me
In its little dancing waves.

On cold winter nights
When you light a cigarette
The smoke that gets into your eyes
Will make you cry
And leave you wondering if it were the smoke
Or some memory that got dredged up in time

This will happen.
And now that I need to exit your tomorrows
I will continue forever in your yesterdays.
Live long...for with you I live along.

This Deepawali

May The sunlight in your eyes
Sparkle and lend light
To Anaars Phuljhadi's and Thousand lights.
May the anklets you wear
jingle and spread baby smiles.

May your loved ones be with you
As you celebrate
This festival of a billion lights.

Forever Times

Will you come with me
To those far off places in my mind
Where beautiful memories of long journeys
Of trains, steamers, boats and the countryside lurks.

When I see you I remember
My life from some other lifetime
The time when the sky was golden
And there was sunshine.
When my grandma waited at home
For I and my little sister
To return from the lake
With our puny catch of fishes for the day.

I was a good man then
And it was a good life once
You remind me
Of my forever times.

Sitting by the Lakeside

The next time we meet, I shall ask you to walk with me. Walk through the paved lanes around Hussain Sagar and sit on the mildly moist grass with me again. I am beginning to forget the last time we did it. There is some distant memory of warmth and cuddle, of some relationship that used to make me laugh in my sleep.

Let's explore if those people live within us still. Let's sit by the lake side and watch the kids. Hand in hand, let's sit still.

Lend Me Your Dreams

The roads are long and winding, the rails and girders keep going on. The milestones that keep me company seem to go on forever. When I started off years ago, I thought I will conquer the world, I thought I will run these roads down and from where they end, I will build new roads to places unknown.

I wont say that I was wrong, maybe just young and a little foolish. The road seem to be winning and I losing. Maybe if I had you with me, I would have tried a wee bit harder, and lot longer. Lend me your dreams will you? It will help me fuel my run to places I have never been.

Share your dreams with me for then they will become my own. I will have dreams to ride home.

Walk with me

The roads on my part of the world are long and winding. They pass through mountains and valleys, through straits and passes. Sometime it snows, but mostly it drizzles round the year.

But when you come visiting, I feel like the autumn in my life would give way to spring. Sullen clouds scurry for cover and then there is sunshine.

The drizzles bursts forth rainbows and the earth under my feet is once again solid and safe to tread. I can walk again! I love my life, and when you are with me, I fall in love with it all over again.

Faintly falls your whispers

That sun silk hair of yours always had this amazing property, it made it seem as if you were gliding through everyday life. And when you spoke from behind those coal-black eyes, a hush would surround me, and even the flames on candles would stop their flutter and pay attention to what you would say. 

Most times, it would be nothing, and I love nothings. At other times it will be about your villain boss and Scooty escapades! I loved them as well. 

And now that you don't speak with me no more, faintly falls your whispers on cold cold snow. It is getting to be cold, and I never loved the snow.

Fine Dust

I keep my belongings very clean. My house, my car, my laptop... all of them are generally clean. Each day I wake up to my regimented living and go about cooking, washing and doing the dishes as if these were the only things I care for. Maybe they are, I am not sure of what the answers are. And then one day you asked me why I have this OCD to cleanliness, and I told you... I am afraid of fine dust. 

Each day that I wake up, I dust every corner of my living, every piece of instrument I handle, and every space I populate. And I will do it every day of my life. I am afraid of fine dust. I will not allow it to invade any corner of my being. Whatever I do, wherever I am, I need you to live in me everyday, just like the way you lived in me the day before. No haze shall take you away from me. No dust will ever settle on any memory of you in me.

That Smile of Yours

I remember throwing a 5 rupee coin into the Godavari. It was a long journey and it was a long bridge. Everyone around me threw coins, and I did too. The moment the coin left my fingers and hurtled into the big river, I missed it. It was almost as if something very dear was suddenly torn away.

Do you know what I had wished for? Remember the time we were out for an evening at the handicrafts park, the one that had a huge swing? You are crazy about swings, and you are crazy about sands. This place had both, and you loved swinging in the twilight, hair let lose, your dupatta catching the wind.

I wished for one more evening at the Park with you.

Lest You Forget

There was a time when time stood still
When time slowed down to a trickle
And floated around you and me like pollen grains
Each full of promises of destinies untold
Full of stories yet to unfold

Then you spread wings
And flew into the summer winds
Time moved on
Faster than ever before
As if it were trying
To make up for lost time.

Seasons have come and gone
And you and I have caught ourselves different boats
But far ahead I see the sea
And there again some day
We shall together be.

For New Beginnings

Yes I know. I have heard this said before.
Everything that has a beginning has an end.
Beginnings and ends are two sides of the same coin. They go together.

But hey, so what if that which there once was
Is now no longer there
My lines are not for things dead and past
It is for things yet to start.
This is for New beginnings
Whatever be the end.

You walk with me

Dear friend, 

I know you have been busy living your life. I know that in your busy living, you find little time to think about all those people who might think fondly of you. Ever so often, when the clutter of living reaches a crescendo, I take a hike into myself. I close my shop and go into my gullies and basements, I move into my dimly lit attics to collect the best of my memories… and gather strength from them. Wherever I go within myself, I find you there. I hear your voice, sometimes a crib, sometimes laughter and at times your favorite holler that used to bring down the house. I see your face, smiling at me through photographs and mirrors. I see you smiling at yourself, and I see you everywhere.

The roads of our lives are winding. It is difficult to figure out all those alternate destinies that each of our turns have in store for us. Remember, of the millions who tread their lonely lives home all over the world, there is one who never treads alone. It is I. I tread my life with you. You walk with me in my silences; you help me fight the noise of everyday living.

Thank You.

Never Alone

The arrow of time hurtles forth forcing
All in its wake to stumble along
Running chasing hurrying
Trying to keep pace
With all that is ever changing
Mindlessly evasive
There is no escaping.

I too run along desperate
Holding on to my memories of you ever closer
Holding on to fleeting fragrances
To thunderclap reflections frozen dew.

I close my eyes but sleep won't come
For what if there is a turn ahead
And with me, you don't run!