Forward.

I am going to clean my room
full of anger and clothes
of useless things
of a past that cannot anymore be ignored.
Of letters on a secret love
and of photographs of elusive yesterdays
that were painstakingly collected
but now must be thrown away.

I can't live on yesterdays anymore.
So from now on
from now on

Survival.

Scene: One, just one, comfortably ensconced on a couch somewhere in the rigidly arranged apartments of DHA. Every window is blocked by walls of neighboring fancy houses, eliminating any wisps of weighed-down breeze. The air conditioner is switched on, the doors and drapes drawn tightly shut.

Scenario: He switches off the TV, the phone, the radio. Closes his mind, puts on some 50s music.
Maybe puffs a smoke or two and reclines. Smiles a little, even. No guns, no bombs. Nothing is real. That assignment is due tomorrow.

Seen:
An inner voice cackles. Who're you trying to kid?

His heart jumps into his throat; his stomach bolts down. A bead of sweat trickles down his pallid face.

Keep breathing. Tomorrow is important.

Keep breathing.

Brooding.

Pain in my heart
Pain in debris
Pain in my household
Pain in the key
Pain in the answer
Pain in the call
Pain is going
To get to me

Are you breathing
Dear old friend?
Here, let me help you out
Let me sin

Pain in truth
Pain in wrong
Pain in life
And love forlorn
Pain in the scissors
Pain in the wood
Pain is the song
That no one understood

Are you breathing
Brother?
Here, let me help you out
Let me take you
On a heavenly detour
Where fire breathes musk
And everything you fear
Is true
As true can be.

On serene, simple days
I'd lay on a park bench
And swing back and forth until I'd bleed
Floating in crimson clouds and heat
I reminisced
And missed
And kissed
And hissed
In pain.

Rollin'.

I want to change the name of my blog. Serendipity has become too mainstream for my taste.

But to what?

Disillusionment.

Sometimes I feel like playing Madame Defarge, silently knitting away the names of people who don't deserve to live.
I hated her when I read that book. But I could sympathize with her. And that sympathy is growing every day.
But she was wrong. She was the antagonist, the villain. And it just goes to show how deep all this goes, how much more complicated it really is.

These attacks, these protests--is the ignorance of the government going to turn them into a trend? Will somebody actually step up and take freaking action instead of using those infuriating words, "condemn" and "condole" repeatedly? Have we really been reduced to the status of a mere recurring virus in political agenda? An obstacle???

How Are These People Still Here??? Are We Really That Stupid????????

Paranoia.

I don't know whether it's relieving or frightening that I can trace my family's dysfunctionalities back to Partition.

Political bullshit aside, life was messed up back then. For everyone, equally. I wish people would understand that--I wish they'd remember!

December 28th, 2010; 7:30 pm

"What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."

I pause mid-action and take a big sniff.
More than a year now. But the smell remains. Musty and pungent. Whitewashed walls. Servant smells.

What it was like then. What everything is like now.

Where are we?
What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
Sinking feeling...

I peep through the open doorway. Old trunks and paintings, dirty books, seventies London outfits, rags, medicines and keys. The history of a single phase.

Amidst she crouches, wrapped in thin, sickly blue. Her hair is disheveled, her clothes worn. As always.

Change? For her? An anomaly!
Where will she go?

What is this I feel?

Spin me round again
and rub my eyes; this can't be happening
when busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy

The grand curtains are pulled shut. The floor is now bare, the carpet pushed aside. The bookcase still contains his unstolen treasures.
I remember staring at her bare white bed. Screaming.
I recall a frightened kiss on a withered cheek. Days before I stared.

Dust looks beautiful in the sun.

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
All those years
they were here first

I laugh for her sake. Two prominent wrinkles beneath her lips. Her skin hungrily snatches the sunlight.
The paintings are beautiful, destroyed. Time shrugs and grins.
I ask if I can take a memory. The four bedroom portraits are on the floor.

Oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung 
before the takeover,
the sweeping insensitivity
of this still life

Why didn't this happen before?
And I recall the torture, the pain that was not mine.

I encounter Jekylls and Hydes. I push them away, I pull them back.

Golden sun filters on my face. The car is accelerating. My stomach is turning over.

Why do both left and wrong have 'right' as an opposite?

We turn left.
Fear.
Anticipation.

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
(you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears
(hearts)
They were here first

We're going up the bridge. Speed fast, constant.
My stomach is still rumbling, but I love it. It's faded into the background, a constant feeling.
Change. Beginnings.

Mm whatcha say?
Mm that you only meant well?
Well of course you did
Mm whatcha say?
Mm that it's all for the best
Of course it is

They don't let me think. They start to chatter. They play their music. They need my advice.

Mm whatcha say?
Mm that it's just what we need
You decided this
Mm whatcha say?
What did she say?

Pink, cobalt and sienna blends together and fades away. Cold, mysterious night awaits. My prayer vanishes in the air.
Favoritism. Arrogance.
Day will dawn.

ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk; newspaper word cut-outs
speak, no; feeling, no; I don't believe you
you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit

I lose myself in conversation. Arguing, laughing, scowling, sarcasm. Being.

(hide and seek)
oh no, you don't care a bit
(hide and seek)
oh no, you don't care a bit



All will be right with the world.

you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit


song: Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap. I do not own this song or the lyrics.

Things I Learned In The Last Week of 2012 (because resolutions are so mainstream)

• I was an incredible student as a kid. 
• I was subsequently bullied as a kid. 
• I never realized/nobody told me that I was being bullied as a kid, and hence I made it through unscathed.
• ...I think.
• I am growing up. (I came to this conclusion based on the fact that I giggled once while watching a horror movie on New Year's, instead of freaking out like I usually do. Or maybe it was just a bad movie; in which case I am yet no better than I used to be in kindergarten, where I would draw stars on my schoolwork because I thought it was awesome and then tell my mother my teacher drew them.)
• I am a miser who is not above scrounging through her trash to look for an earring, not because it was expensive or real, but because without it the one not lost would be useless.
• Gajar ka halwa, while being the best winter food ever, is best utilized in small amounts.
• My latest journal is a lot less embarrassing than my old ones. (It's also a lot less full.)
• Bubble tea is delicious. It is also reminiscent of body scrub. (The fruit ones even taste the same.)
• Children do awesome things that every adult especially the ones going through midlife crises at 20 should do. Like decorating a jar to fill with notes of good things that will happen to them in the next year, so that they can pull them all out and read them next New Year's Eve. (Except, you know, if an adult did it, One Direction would be in the 'bad things that happened' jar.)
• At 15, you are willing to fall madly in love with just about anything if it pays you the slightest bit of attention. (I say anything because the occasional ignoramus tends to classify plants and trees as inanimate. RIP, my beautiful moghra. You served me well.)
• One must always actively engage in a hopefully-ending-soon struggle to filter useful information out of the baseless crap that media so voraciously feeds us.  ie my cablewala cut off Star World and i have been forced to watch CNN and Animal Planet now