when I sat to brood.

Your pronounced absence seeps into every task at hand sucking out the chirpiness out of it and instead leaves behind a thud of resentment and irritation.

Whereforth did it gain such strength to impose itself even on those things from which she never imagined she could be distracted?

Answer: from within her own self.

How can one yearn for space and the very next moment not only demand possessiveness but raise tempests upon its denial?

Chaos and confusion within and around.The environment/surroundings without faltering or betraying even once truthfully reflect our mood.

Add to all this the intrusion of Ms.Deshpande's Binding Vine.I should congratulate myself on the opportune moment I chose to read it.The timing couldn't have been more apt...

...If I was in a lesser state of agitation, she made sure to let resurface all those matters which I cautiously keep shut down.If anything I was forced into brooding and not on any simple thing, but the psyche and that too the utterly complex female psyche.

Why don't you spare me all these???

Ya, ya I know ....idle musings.

Third person limited narrative mode

Chapter 1

"Who all are there in your family?"

I answer absent-mindedly, channeling back my thoughts to the present uphill task at hand i.e. filling her slam book, which she has imposed on me.

"Who do you love the most?", comes the next question.

Dividing a split second into four parts, I weigh each one of them, and then come to rest at ma.I just stop short of delivering my verdict and then with a false conviction I answer, "I love everybody." I don't remember whether I stressed on 'love' or 'everybody'.

She wasn't satisfied; I knew and I didn't allow her to pursue that.So I asked her, who all were there in hers.She counted each one of them for me and then said, "soon, mama'll be there too.This time when I'll go to see her, I'll request her to come back with me." After that she again burst into a tirade of accounting each of her family member's traits, quirks, pitching in-her nine yr old's- opinion here and then.All these time I hadn't lifted my head or eyes, though concentration had long since parted my company.

I attended to the 'Favorites' column, with a shrugged indifference, to all those questions regarding favorite actor, food, movies, music etc.It was getting late and I was tired so I told her that I'll do the rest the next day.And with constant reminders and dire threats of what lay in store for her if she wouldn't complete her lesson by the next day, I took my leave of her.I know she won't learn and she's well aware that I know.

She uses words like 'request' and she didn't say it sadly or in reflection.nah.She told it as a matter of fact, so sure of herself."All that remains now is for her to make her request and bring her back." sigh.She has played this conversation many times in her head...

Chapter 2

And now for the upteenth time she was discussing it with her friend.She was bosom friends with Hope, right from kindergarten.They started by sharing that table for two on their first day, then tiffins, crayons and then it blossomed from exchanging gossips to sharing minutest details.Two minds and two hearts, at four corners of square, diagonals drawn, each vertex connected to every other.Between them they had hatched this plot, some two weeks ago.Hope helped her, encouraged her friend.Together they had changed many a word, polishing them, finding loopholes and correcting them, manipulating their gestures, adding a facial hue here, changing an intonation there, perfecting every move of their 'request'.And now as she was hearing her out today, Hope wondered if she'd let her friend into the latest news delivered to her this morning.But she stopped.She knew there would be a scene if she came to know.And anyways her friend had too many things on her mind now.Hope stayed mum.

Lying in bed that night, Hope was sad.She knew she won't be there next term.She was changing schools.She just couldn't get herself to say it that morning.She had all her appeasements prepared like they'll still be in the same city,their long hours of talking over phone won't change, their vows of remaining 'best friends for life' won't change.They were and will always be that.No, nothing will change.She'll always be there for her....But she couldn't muster up the courage and say all these.

There was this new girl Verity.Hope wondered if she'll take over her place.She felt jealous.But they'd both liked Verity at the first instant, even though she was a helluva lot different from them.Maybe she can introduce Verity to their group.Now that she was leaving school.She was worried 'bout her friend.She made a point of talking to Verity tomorrow and then she'll ask her to take care of her friend.

to be contd...

Witching Hours...

Of nights

moving ever so slowly

with the temerity - unyielding,

relentless - of a persecutor.

clemency overruled;

futility stamped hard;

yet vain expectation, never fails

making a virtue of necessity

endurance at the end of tethers.

Patience yielding,

paving way.

solicitude steps in...

spare me the agony

never,never shall I stray again.

P.S. - courtesy Roget's Thesaurus

letting it go...

What were you worth?

Ah! nothing.

Just a few wet pillows,and wiles

some inconscious, other indulgent smiles.

All those fleeting hours, and late(s)

and some more of excruciating waits.

A festive season's - lone winter interlude'

and some years of endless solitude.

Some have to/wouldbetelling yous

and day's idle thoughts, facial hues.

'My' stray words without a rhyme

a passing wind's unforgettable chime.

Done.

Then she opened her fist.It wasn't tightly clutched but ever so lightly, just covered...she was wary of wrinkling the thing.She looked at it and smiled; wouldn't let wind do it(unh huh!).She took it among her fingers and blew the feather away.

"Is it easy to give away dreams?"

"Yes" said Comfort.

"Yes" said Deligence.

"Yes" said Action.

"Yes" said Convention.

A small almost inaudible "no".

Who did he listen to?

I know not.

He just hoped, hoped against all odds.

Hope being the only thing allowed to him.

“Look not thou on beauty’s charming,
Sit thou still when kings are arming,
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,
Speak not when the people listens,
Stop thine ear against the singer,
From the red gold keep thy finger,
Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,
Easy live and quiet die.”

- Lucy Ashton’s song, in the “Bride of Lammermoor”, by Sir Walter Scott

There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction:
One which simply disturbs, unsettles, and makes you uneasy,
And another that poises, retains, and fixes and holds you.
I have no doubt, for myself, in giving my voice for the latter.
I do not wish to be moved, but growing where I was growing,
There more truly to grow, to live where as yet I had languished.
I do not like being moved: for the will is excited; and action
Is a most dangerous thing; I tremble for something factitious,
Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process;
We are so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty.

- Amours de Voyage, by Arthur Hugh Clough

Joy and sorrow - both multiply on sharing.

October smells...

Returning late that night, when the chilly wind swept past me, sending along a sudden gush of shivers and goosebumps - something seemed vaguely familiar - I instinctively hugged myself... and my mind registered the chill and the arrival of October at the same moment.

October smells of fog-its sudden onslaught-like draping a cloud of white pollen... engulfing everything coming along its way.Purifying Earth.

October smells of dew drenched grasses-short and tall-raining on ur feet and splashing minuscule droplets on your bare arms as you cross the fields.

October smells of the heavenly gangasiuli(Nyctanthes). Moon's answer to sun's parade of lovers.The flower blossoms at night and drops when the first rays of dawn touch it.Ephemeral.

And its smell-well,nature offers a treat to our olfactory senses!You take on long breaths, as if you want to take it with you.You stay there till you start feeling dizzy...till it fills ur every cell and then when you walk along, there's a sense of contentment.

October smells of lit earthen diyas mingled with magnesium phosphorous smoke.

October smells of kasatandi flower.Long stemmed with thick white inflorescence-playing along,swaying along with wind as if imploring it to take them along with.

And reigns over all,is the october moon.With Kumar Purnima round the corner,when it shines with full vigour and youth.Grandma says its the biggest moon of the year-its aura stretching and spreading itself to limits.Its beautiful.

Maybe it owes its beauty to its background to some extent.October gives us a clear sky.A painter's sky.It is sheer joy watching sunlight playing with water droplets-creating, inventing new colours.A clear nursery blue.A calm orange hue.Cloudless,unperturbed sky...

October-serene, tranquil, placid...

"The world may be full of misery and delusion, it may not give a tithe of what we ask, it may offer hatred instead of love-dissapointment, wretchedness, triviality, and heaven knows what; but there is one thing which compensates for all the rest,that takes away the merry-go-round from a sordid show, and gives it a meaning, a solemnity, and a magnificence, which makes it worthwhile to live.And for that one thing all we suffer is richly overpaid.

'And what the dickens is that?' asked Frank, smiling.

Miss Ley looked at him with laughing eyes,holding out the roses, her cheeks flushed.

'Why, beauty, you dolt!'she cried gaily. 'Beauty' "

-The merry-go-round by W.S.Maugham

lazy guilty days.
lonely guiltier nights.
need to face,need to evade.
chaos within me,created by me.
hope ebbing, and ebbing.
can't start/create from pieces-it wouldn't be perfect.
utter futility of all.
loosing integrity(or perhaps never had)
procrastination's ever-strengthening hold.
giving in to whims.
depraved.

Who's the most depraved of all?
"The man who knows everything but stops just short of acting."
Period.

of Past...

"The people who have adored me--there have not been very many, but there have been some--have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them, they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar."


"The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it."

-The Picture of Dorian Gray

Why is it that we cling to the past,though its long gone.
Why is it that the dreams of future are nothing but a vague hope of reliving the past?
Maybe 'cos at least it was real...no,just a part of it was real,some characters were real.With passing time we added words,colours,emotions to it making out of it a Memory-to be relived again and again.Ah,such fools!
Maybe it makes present a bit more easier.
Maybe it's a consolation to ourselves that we were not devoid of a good time.

The past...I've added so many whatiwanted that I'm unable to distinguish now between real and imagination.what exactly had happened.How much of it was true.
At times I want to free myself of their clutches.
Yet at other,it's as if they are the only thing I have and I hold on to it possessively.

Like English ma'm always asks me,"You remember,Preema?"
And I instinctively repeat the line - the one she reminds me time and again:

"We look before and after and pine for what is not..."

-Shelley