Paper life

I see her looking down at me. Hoping to see the words take form on me and appear as though by magic. And then it happens, her pen dances across me, her words etched into my very fiber. She sets her pen down. Satisfied? I can’t tell.  And then I’m folded up and put in an envelope sealed with the greatest trepidation.  And then I travel miles and miles for days or perhaps even weeks. I can’t tell time in this envelope. I don’t know if the light I see through the envelope is sunlight or a spotlight. And finally I hear a sharp rip of the envelope. Light and air pour in and we embrace each other like friends reunited after a long time. I’m put on a table and flattened. It isn’t her I see now, the one whose words I was entrusted with, it isn’t her. He reads while his fingers run across the ink idly. And then in one swift move, he crushes me into a ball and tosses me away. I feel pain and I already know that my pain would travel across miles and eventually reach her too but in the form of absence - absence of a response. I hear a crinkle as I to stretch myself little but all in vain. Hours go by as I am reminded by the omniscient ticking of a clock. I also hear water dripping from a faucet somewhere. The silence is suddenly broken by footfall and the unmistakable flicking of a light switch followed by the buzz of a tube light flickering and then flooding the room with light. I’m picked up and then flattened against a table top. It’s him again but something has changed. He reads me over and over again and finally pulls out a sheet of paper. I watch as his pen dances across the paper just like hers did. He flattens me against the table top again and then folds me and puts me into a box. And then I meet a hundred other letters she wrote him and we share our stories. I also meet a few he wrote her but never sent. He opens the lid of the box. Letter in hand deciding where it should go. The box suddenly plunges into darkness but just before it went dark I caught a glimpse of him scrawling something atop an envelope. And that ink pattern I suppose is where she is.

Contemplate

(This is my try at perspective writing. I have written this narrative not in my own words but in that of an old man who finds himself contemplating over the journey of life)

I see a page torn from a newspaper I owned some decades ago. It’s preserved between the pages of a hard bound book. The page has turned yellow with age. I run my trembling fingers along my face and feel my own skin marred by the same agent of time. This is the way things go I suppose. I remember being a young boy full of energy. I recount scabbed knees and other bruises I earned on the playground that I wore with the same pride as if they were medals of honour. Those cold winter nights that I watched melt into summer days were a true act of magic. Back then I possessed a vivid imagination and it would breathe life into the most dullest and mundane occurrences in life.

Then came the next phase – youth. Things seem to complicate themselves unnecessarily and whirlpool of emotions didn’t make it any easier. I remember having to make several supposedly life changing decisions and only carrying on ahead in life to realise that those weren’t the decisions I had to be careful about. It was the others that had to be made on a whim, the decisions that didn’t come with paperwork and formalities. Those are the ones that still haunt me today. The decision to down another peg in spite of knowing I was already too drunk was one amongst my regrets. I burnt several bridges at the time and built many afresh.

My choices right or wrong led me to the self-same path of adulthood. I came face to face with the real world only to realise just how naïve I had been up till then. And then it happened, I started to relive the phases I had already passed, through my son. But it seemed to go by a lot quicker and eventually an air of melancholy set in when time dragged along distance into our relationship. His hand that was once small enough to fit in mine completely was now just as large as mine and that same hand that would reach out to me so often now pushes buttons on a phone to contact me in an attempt to bridge the distance of 1000 miles that lie between us.

The years roll on and things change some more. My limbs become stiffer, fatigue is a frequent visitor and my hair is coloured a distasteful white. But it feels as though my hair isn’t the only thing that has lost colour in my life. These days the news mourns the death of personalities I knew well as a child. And I sit here contemplating the life I made, words left said or unsaid, opportunities utilized or wasted and I ask myself what it’s all worth. Lying six feet under the dirt would render my social status irrelevant, my shoes would lose their shine and my crisp black suit would become a befitting shroud. All I hope to have earned in this lifetime was some love and respect. Maybe then I’ll be granted immortality in someone’s memory. Just like the page of the newspaper that turned yellow with age. Perhaps it’ll be discarded someday but I’ll still remember what the headline read.

Miscellaneous lessons

When your life is plagued by stagnancy know that change is always expected to arrive shortly

because even the dark sky transforms into a canvas at the crack of dawn

painted with crimson and a band of gold at the horizon.

And when the first attempt fails know that perseverance will succeed 

because even the roughest boulders were smoothened over time by relentless waves.

Let your fading scars remind you of how every wound heals.

Let this thought be your anaesthetic to pain.

When society tries to conform your life within the margins and categorise you 

remember that masterpieces weren't made by colouring within the lines.

The cynical will mistake a brilliant blaze from a bonfire to be solemn crackling sparks from a funeral pyre burning away at deceased dreams.

Fear not where the wayward currents of life carry you for serendipity pays a visit when least expected.

Pied Piper Perhaps

Perhaps you could call me pied piper.

I'll draw you in at every intricate indentation.

What I live and breathe for is weaving words with seams of sentiment.

Gambles I make aren't with grand gestures.

Worlds I make are with words not wands.

No tricks up my sleeve.Never.

Well just some well-orchestrated wordplay.

Lifeless limitations like full stops don't bother me.

To my ears the sound of words creates a pleasant mental melody

equivalent to the ringing of fingers running across the rims of a thousand half filled wine glasses.

Every clever concoction of words I brew has a different aroma

that drifts and startles the senses of the unsuspecting.

Perhaps you could call me pied piper.

I'll draw you in at every intricate indentation.

What I live and breathe for is weaving words with seams of sentiment.

Words are my only weapons.

These stanzas are my only shield.

Expression through words is my personal elixir of life.

I wander forever in a tantalised trance of unwritten words in the labyrinths of my mind. 

Perhaps you could call me pied piper.

I'll draw you in at every intricate indentation.

What I live and breathe for is weaving words with seams of sentiment.

Behind the glasses

Let's talk about my vision. If you've met me in person you've probably never seen me without my glasses and with good reason, my prescription is a jaw dropping -6.00(L) / -5.75(R). So without my glasses the well defined contours of objects melt away into a blend of colours and very vague silhouettes even if these objects are very close to me.  Close is a relative word isn't it? Okay how about I explain it like this, through my eyes large and bold writing dissolves into its own background. Now that brings into question how big the font is and the relative distance between me and this aforementioned clear piece of writing. Okay then this might be the best way for me to put it, it's much like the blurry vision a person who is about to lose their consciousness experiences. That sounds about right.

I got my first pair of glasses when I was 8 years old. At the time my prescription was a modest -0.75. And from then on it proceeded to shoot up at regular intervals. As you can imagine visits to the optometrist were also just as regular for me. Once a year or so. And I absolutely detested those visits much like how children(and adults too I guess) detest visits to the dentist. Well there is nothing physically painful about these visits but my hatred was primarily because it usually ended with the realization that my vision had worsened. For some reason I blamed myself for it. But I was constantly reassured by optometrists that this was largely(I sense the possibility of a pun here) due to the fact that my eyes were still growing. And yes let me dismiss the wildly popular myth that your eyes don't grow after birth. The axial length increases up until you reach the age 18, a fact which when coupled with my pre-existing nearsightedness resulted in me going through several pairs of glasses in a relatively short amount of time. And just two weeks ago I visited the optometrist for my annual eye exam and for the first time I was told that my prescription hadn't changed since my last visit. Well I guess it's about time since I'm 19 now.

 All though most people are baffled at how bad my vision is, I've always held the opinion that I have a very unique view of the world quite literally. Each and every pair of glasses I have gone through over the last 11 years was a talisman of a period. Each with a different story to tell from its point of view. And when pieced together in chronological order, you have the last 11 years of my life.

Familiar fragrances

Some memories are stowed away in photo albums.
Some play in songs heard one too many times.
And some others waft in air through familiar fragrances.

The smell of wet earth after a rain is an aroma infused
with a thousand tales from monsoons of the past.
The smell of fresh jasmine and incense, sounds the bells of the temple
A rush of nostalgia sets in with one whiff of these familiar fragrances.

Take a breath. Make a memory.
And just like that you've thrown a message in a bottle into the water.
Years fly by and you find yourself walking new shores
 only to stumble upon that bottle and you uncork it to momentarily relive an era that passed.
All through a familiar fragrance.

And as I open my mother's perfume cabinet I find myself walking out onto a private beach.
There lie a hundred bottles peeking from the sand.
The messages encased in these bottles are memories from different periods in my life.
I shake the last vestiges of perfume in the older bottles.
Memories come to life in these familiar fragrances.

Musings on a homecoming

Tonight at 20,000 feet above ground the world looks a tad different to say the least. As we fly above the tapestry of clouds I peak through gaping holes where the seams have run loose like a child peaking from behind a curtain and the sight is spectacular. The city I call home sprawls before me as a sea of lights, white and yellow. Some jagged lines of yellow curve through and join others like tributaries of a river. The white lights set to the background of this dark night makes me reminiscent of starry nights drowned in city lights. We cruise above places familiar to me, above roads I have often taken. And down below, my loved ones carry on with their day momentarily interrupted by the rumble of a Boeing 777 gradually descending onto the airstrip. It's funny how every time I return home I expect it to feel different, to feel new again like I have never been here before. But it doesn't feel different, I just seem to pick up from where I left off.