And you thought you knew it

-
There is a fire crackling in the grate. It cannot be said to be crackling merrily, because merry it is not. There is too much anger in those flames, too much hate. They flicker back and forth, moving forward as if to grasp something other than the air, then leaping back, its prize tight in its hold, which it transfers to the center of its being where it is silently devoured by others waiting. It has no visible eye, yet it is watching, always watching. It shifts itself to see things more clearly. Even then, there seems to be a certain vengeance in its eyes; it cannot be seen, only felt. At times, it will seem to pause, and the ends of its flames appear to hover in mid-air for a split-second; it is at such moments that a distinct form becomes visible in this fire, its features too hideous to want to remember. Before one can blink or turn away, it is gone, and the flames fall with a certain shiver, subtle yet noticeable, indicating the yearning it had when it was stretched out to its limit of movement, and the self-control it seems to display as if doing one of us a favor. It is not hot, nor does it radiate heat, no, it is ice-cold, giving an outward appearance of warmth, and yet chilling one right to the bones, cold that soaks through until it scarcely touches the boundary of the soul, and yet that is enough for one to despair. Its thirst for revenge is insatiable. It longs to be one with all things, to bind itself to them, when in actuality, it is consuming them of its own free will. It can sometimes pretend to be tame, but that is just a form of pretense it puts on for the gullible and the naive. It gives a quality of light to itself, beguiling the observer that it is providing light when it is actually feeding on it. The longer the fire burns, the darker its surroundings become. It sets up a pattern in its dancing flames, a dance-routine that has an enchanting quality to it, a lulling touch that will first cause one's attention to be caught by it, and then to hold that gaze until it becomes an unblinking stare. The person having any minor thoughts of withdrawing his gaze will find such thoughts suddenly and strangely subdued; the fire cannot afford to let those eyes, now caught, wander. This transfixed gaze allows the person's mind to become entranced, and the flames cause him to become dazed, as he will exist, for many long moments, only as himself and then as the flames, shifting from one state to another, sometimes flame, sometimes human. It is one of the attempts of the fire to have someone become one with it, to exist as a single being instead of two pulsating beings of life. It rests on its bed of ashes is if it were a throne, a seat of honor entrusted only to itself, though it is willing to share it with any followers. It knows no reluctance, it knows no hesitation, it is fiery, impulsive, demanding. And yet, it is not perfect. It dreads many things, things that threaten its existence and nothing more. Even such a fearful entity is capable of experiencing fear itself, such is how Nature goes.
-

-

I am at peace. I feel better. Happy almost. Yes, I'm still lazy...but well, that comes with the package.
I need change though..constant change. I can't stand stagnation. I like it when my life is in flickering motion and everything around me is a blur, and then I can pinpoint that one non-moving object and make a decision.

Of a day long past...but yet to come

-

They stood together, breathing in the cool, still air, as of yet untainted by the promised warmth.
He turned to see her facing the eastern hills, and squinted in that general direction. The sky that had been a soft shade of indigo, as fading slowly to a pale violet, giving shape to the clouds that permeated the emptiness till the edge of the horizon.

She smiled at the spectacle, and then glanced at him. He was gazing at the imminent event with skepticism in his eyes. He had never seen a sunrise before. He was not impressed.

Slight tinges of pink shot through the blue, replacing it with the first touches of color.

He looked on.

Golden warmth diffused throughout the sky, outlining the cotton-candy clouds as if they were gilded.

He watched, as the first sunbeams penetrated through the mist, spreading over the land, giving the air a feeling of new hope, oozing with the mystery and freshness of the break of a new day.
His nose felt cold. He tweaked it irritably, though not taking his eyes off Nature's splendorous display.

Her eyes shone with moist brightness. Her lips were parted in an everlasting sigh; the balls of her cheeks were pink with pleasure, and wonder. She yearned to hug herself at the beauty of it all. How could someone not marvel at such a sight!

His gaze roamed across the sky, taking in the transition from pink and gold to azure. He could not see why people, especially her, made such a fuss over something so not-quite-so-extraordinary. What was in a sunrise? How different was it from a sunset? He ruffled his hair and stood grumpily with his hands in his pockets. He glanced furtively at her. He didn't want to hurt her feelings, but somewhere inside he suspected that he could not let the guard off of his ego. He would not admit to her what he really felt.

The crisp air was set into motion, and a soft breeze began to play across their faces. She loved to come here every once in a while and witness the glory of Nature, the pride of its handiwork. It always put a smile to her face, and glowed in her like a happy memory for the rest of the day. Sunsets, however, were a different matter. She did not like them as much, because they symbolized the end of a day, a transition from light to darkness, and a fading out of hope, like the evening faded into twilight. Or was it the other way around?

There was a sharp call, and an eagle glided across their line of vision, dipping gracefully as if bowing to the wind, and then just as gracefully turning in a slow, wide arc, its wings completely motionless. They watched the flight of the eagle for some time, until it drifted out of sight.

He sighed and turned to walk back. His mind was already on the work he had to do that day, the meetings to attend, the deadlines to meet.

She walked back with one last long look, and traipsed with a spring in her step, the color in her cheeks not yet diminished, her spirits still soaring with that solitary eagle. She was arrogant enough to pity him, and others, for the joy they were unable to experience out of pure obstinacy.

-

Come ruin..

-

I was sad. There was a thin mist swirling around me, not against my very person, for it left a space around me; I was not in direct contact with it, however I moved. Below me flowed a smooth stream, that went ahead and was smoothly changed into a low waterfall, with sparkling water and dark green vegetation that reminded me of spinach. I was facing the waterfall; though I call it one, it was but a miniature image of it, nevertheless, a waterfall it was and will be named.
I gazed sadly into the clear waters, hoping to see more than the shallow bottom. Was there hope anywhere? I could not see it. But I could suddenly feel it. I turned.

There he was - alive, whole, complete.

I looked up at him unsurprised,
"I thought you would never return".

He smiled a slow, sad smile, "Has it really been that bad?"

"Worse than you can imagine. Her kingdom is headed for ruin, the walls that once stood only by the strength of hope are now crumbling to pieces, each heart holds nothing but despair, and fear. The Wise, it seems, almost all of them, appear to have left the City. There are rumors abound, but no clear trace. The light is slowly leaving the towers, there is an absence of morals, and reason. Her throne will not be emptied, but the entire kingdom is threatening to become abandoned, yet the people will be there, yet it will become empty. A dead place it will become, with everything free, and yet caged. Too many have given up hope. Too many times have they been suppressed so as not to let the taint of fear spread to others, but it is becoming difficult to contain. And they are all afraid of an external interference, the greatest fear of all."

He cocked his head to one side; there was a question in his eyes, twinkling the way a bird's might when it is watching you, and he said,
"And yet...you are her?"

"Yes. And so are you."

--

Harder to breathe

-

I can feel it...at all times. This dead weight pressing down on me...suffocating me...holding me down. Grasping me by the arms and pulling me along with it down this long dark tunnel where no light can penetrate and the air is hot and unbearably still...making it harder to breathe.
My breathing is dry and shallow, and I try to draw quick breaths to feel the pain as little as possible, to ignore the air rubbing against my raw lungs at every movement, in and out.
I sit on the prayer mat, hugging my knees drawn up to my chest, trying to hold together myself before I fall apart into pieces...to ignore the gaping hole inside me, clutching at the seams before I lose control; my hands gripping my hair in two tight fists; my eyes closed and my face screwed up, withholding the emotion, and frustration, that is building up.
There really is no excuse. No statements that I can make; no words of comfort or solace that I can speak, or hear. There is raw feeling...nothing more, nothing less. There is emptiness; there is that constant tumor, eating away inside me...there is pain...a consistent dull aching pain, that won't go away, no matter how much I wish it to.
There is a loss of peace of mind..of laughter...of life.
I'm hanging by a slight thread...just the slightest bit of hope keeping me alive.

Oh...and I'm jealous. Hopelessly, infinitely so. Sue me.

Recycled stuff...

-

It was a black cotton cloth. Light shining on it from one side leaked through, magnifying its infinite pores. It was strangely nauseating.
On every side there were panes of glass. Mirrors. But they were not just reflections of the person standing in between them. No, they were more than that. They were reflections of him, yes, but of aspects of him, of parts and angles that he was not at all pleased to see before him. Some mirrors were crowded with hideous black shapes and shadows, dripping hate from numerous fangs and claws. Others were images of rooms, empty soulless rooms, painted different shades of gray and decorated with poison ivy.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled and he whirled around. He moved closer to this mirror. He could see a white room, bare, unfurnished. There was a figure standing there, appearing so close as if it were just standing right behind a sheet of glass. The figure had no face; it was white, blank, featureless. He noticed that its breath misted the glass. How could it breathe if it had no visible nose or mouth?

A gap on its face opened suddenly, revealing a black interior that seemed to stretch on forever. He felt himself falling into it, feet first, and streaming down a dark chute, wind buffeting against him.

On the floor was an empty packet of popcorn.

-

distress signals...

-
I'm sending out distress signals. Smoke signals. Calls for help.
I ask for help...and then I shun what I get. But I think that's only because I never get the sort of help I crave. Never that right kind of reassurance and comfort. No.

At the moment I'd like nothing more than for someone to release the grip my hands have on my head, and to cradle it in their lap instead...and to whisper words of comfort and assurance that may mean nothing...but feel good anyway.

I'm waiting.

-

random

-
sometimes...just sometimes...your mind is swirling with thoughts so that its hard to hold on to one single thought for long...and your mind is struggling to grasp some tangible solid fact...and then you happen to look out the window of the speeding bus and you notice two men sitting on the side of the road...old men with dark wrinkled skin and abundant white hair..and you think that perhaps its the sun and life that has prematurely aged them...and you watch them twirl their cigarettes between their fingers and talk with small gestures, oblivious to the haze and the noise that vehicles are leaving in their wake..and you might think of the world that these two men occupy on their faded charpai...and maybe...just maybe...you will see the entire universe in that scene...you will see the aura around them... and you will understand the universe that every man is.
-

to breathe..

-
--
---
Elation.
To believe.
To gather strength.
So may it be.
So may I live.
---
--
-

I feel rejuvenated. Alive. After a long time, I feel alive. =)
I feel lucky and grateful...because I have much to be grateful for! I want to hug somebody or something as tight as I can for as long as I can...and then some more!

*gasp* ... *choke*

-


Oxygen-deprived, and selfishly coveting that life-giving source.

I think I'm ok now.


-

it could have been worse

I am miserable...and yet I am not. I shouldn’t be…it’s not like I’m lacking much in life.
I’m sad and I worry too much about someone…as I should.

I feel like I’m caught in a whirlpool; I’m going around in endless spirals and sinking deeper, fast. And that is something entirely different from the panicky feeling that rises up inside me sometimes, threatening to engulf me, suffocate me – and my head spins while my fingers scrabble at my throat uselessly, trying to save me from the cord that is choking me.

I’ve spent all morning and all afternoon shivering. The cold has been affecting me worse today. I had actually been keeping it at bay in recent days. It is seeping into me and clutches hold of my backbone, and then it spreads up from that low point in one sudden smooth, fluid motion up my spine, and the jolt pulls me up straight and sets my muscles all a-quiver.

It is not pleasant.

It has been long since I felt the need to unwind – and I mean that in both ways – my muscles have been taut with tension for too long; I needed to let my mind unfold from its twisted position, needed it to relax out of its tight fist.
I needed to be able to feel again.
I know I can get away with much because it’s so simple to become numb. It’s become as easy as breathing now – it goes on just fine until you notice that you are breathing and then it becomes more difficult to do. It’s like second nature.
But I want to do away with this shield. I want to tear off this covering as violently as possible and expose the raw me underneath. I want the cold and the heat to sink in fully and to set me ablaze with cold fire. I want to burn.
It isn’t fair that they may feel so passionately and I cannot. I want to feel as they do. I want to be embraced by that turmoil of passion that will tangle itself in my hair and hold me tight against the storm. I want that storm. I want it as my own. I want to possess it, and it to possess me, embrace me and clutch me with its cold stone fingers. I want it to scourge the numbness away. I want to feel.

the end that was too soon

Today was our last unofficial Classics of World Literature class. We’re going to be off from college from Wednesday.
Our idc teacher didn’t teach us anything today, in the literal sense of the word. If someone from the admin was sitting in our class, he would have thought so at least. But the lecture he gave us was one of the most moving I’ve ever heard. He called it a confession, but I’m not quite sure what it was. It made me feel both special and insignificant at the same time. He told us about a major portion of his life, and tried to show to us what mistakes he had made and the good he had done, and the danger of exposing a child to something that he is not old enough to understand without any sort of guidance. Perhaps, because it was in urdu I didn’t understand all of it, or maybe he was just being vague about things; I can’t say. At times, I felt that it wasn’t the words themselves, but the aura around him and the rise and fall of his voice that was speaking out to me, and that made things clear. He has a very slow, steady way of speaking; never in a hurry and never having to pause between his words. This year had brought a lot of change in his life, he said. And this year he had spent teaching us. Somehow, there seemed to be a mild connection between the two. What was it though, exactly, that had brought him back to life? What had convinced him to end his seclusion of sorts?
He has a very subtle way of speaking – of glossing over things, hinting at points that perhaps he expects you to figure out for yourself. I felt at times that his conversation was too intelligent for me. It wasn’t in my league somehow. But I can say this that when he spouts poetry after every other line, it sounds good even to my unrefined ears. I know nothing about urdu shairi, and understand only the simplest of verses, but whenever he recited a shair, I could still enjoy some fraction of it just the same. He changed my outlook on shairi, that’s for sure. I can listen to it now instead of cringing from it like before. I still blank out my mind when somebody reads out a shair, but now there is an inner voice that’s listening all the same.
When before I talked about hinting at things, I was particularly thinking about when he said that he had often told us many stories and accounts, and that at times a person is telling something from his own experience but he puts someone else’s name to it. I instantly tried to recall anything which could have belonged to his life that we had never realized before. But as my friend said to me later, he was telling his own life story, but the way he said it, you could hardly tell he was talking about himself. So true!
I still can’t put a name to the feeling his lecture aroused in me. I only know that it put my mind in a frenzy and made me restless. I wouldn’t be able to breathe freely until I had put all my feelings down somewhere. But this isn’t half of it. I experienced much more at the moment, much more that has now escaped from me and buried itself in my sub-conscious. Perhaps it’ll come forward again some time in my life and I’ll remember something he said, or relive the emotions that flowed within.
How easily he said that in the past year or before that, mujhe kuch smjh nhi aya, kisi cheez ki bhi! What was that supposed to mean? He talked to us as if he was one of us, not someone who was above us on so many levels. But the best part is how he does not take us for an immature bunch of kids like other teachers normally do; it's as if he actually respects us for who we are as individuals and encourages our opinions and ideas - he never tried to impose his reasoning on us and made us think for ourselves.
I could go on talking about him, and the times we’ve spent with him in class. But the central idea is, I don’t know him at all! I know absolutely nothing about him; he is one of the most enigmatic figures I have ever come across in my life. He said that he was weak and he had made countless mistakes and bad decisions in his life. But all I know and believe about him is that he has a beautiful personality. It is the only statement about him that I can make with certainty. I am full of questions about him; I want to know about things he has seen and felt and gone through. But I am afraid that any question I put to him will be crude and uncouth. His style is not direct, you see. Perhaps my questions will make him uncomfortable. Or, more likely, his answers will be too complicated for me to understand. How can you break through to a person who is so well-guarded, who has built fortresses around himself that seem impossible to penetrate? And he is a teacher after all! Much older than I. I cannot think of him on the same plane as myself. How can I learn from him? It seems to me that he has stores of information about everything in life. How could one try to extract anything from it? I don’t know how to ask. I don’t even know if I have the right to ask. Maybe the whole point of things will be lost if I ever do.

He pointed out his flaws and his mistakes and the wrongs he had done. And yet, I idolize him. I idolize him for those mistakes and those wrongs. I idolize the man who recognized his own self and had the pluck to accept it. He’s the best teacher I’ve ever had, and I don’t think I’ll meet someone quite like him again.