When Darkness Blinks

Distance: An Introduction

2008-07-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

He found her in one of his own dreams, dreaming about him finding her, in that solitary, circular dream of hers.

Bias: An Introduction

2008-07-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

A repetition of dreams. Uncircled thoughts. Unselected. Roamed about on her stage. The drama followed her instincts. A bunch of drowsy audiences. Invited by their fears of unrestrained light. An infection to their eye. Their only eye. Left. The other been washed away in their points of view. Bias.

The play continued, long after their only eye went to rest. The part they didn't see was compensated for, in their dreams. Dreams that were repetition of each other. And therefore, alike.

Her acting was instincts. Missing. Next morning, from their interpretations. And interpretations said her play had a plot and a logical conclusion.

They never knew that the play went on forever. An infection that spread over to their lives.

Instinct had become their only eye.

The Implausible Stones

2008-07-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

Each of his stones was impossibility. None of them had the property of visibility. They reflected no colors. Absorbing all. But you always knew that they were there. Some, because you could touch them. Some exuded the strange fragrance of a stone. While others created the dense, infinite silence that stones have always created – to make you listen.

She brought him a stone, one day, from the land of the free. It was sculptured on nothingness. Had various interpretations. Its only property was mood.

And then, she was gone.

After he had been sitting beside the pebble of moods for a long while, a realization slowly dawned upon him. The pebble of moods is the synthesis of every other stone in his room. A space where other stones are recreated. Because we cannot feel without our minds. Because sensations are also a form of interpretation.

Because impossibility is just another mood.

Writer's Block: An Introduction

2008-05-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

"A wonderful way to start would be a dream"

"How 'bout the feeling of being trapped?"

"In a dream?"

"Maybe"

"Sounds more like a writer's block"

"That's it, then. We'll start with a dream in which the protagonist is trapped in a block meant for writers"

"And then, what happens?"

"The tale ends."

A Clown’s Introduction to Alchemy

2008-05-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

The dream stretched out of his forehead and wandered through the labyrinthine corridors of a day in his life. He became a reverie in there.

When he woke up, the next day, he was no more.

The Plague

2008-05-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

She had purple eyes. There were certain colors that she couldn't see and the world was a less congested place for her. She also had the powers of turning an object invisible for her eyes and thereby, eliminating the object. She had eliminated, for instance, pumpkins, crows, three whole men and a caterpillar.

One day, she met a sage who told her - "Growing up is adapting to the things we'd like to eliminate."

She felt bad and decided she wouldn't be eliminating things from then on. But suppressing your greatest powers is equivalent to holding within yourself a darkly cursed premonition. Soon she was on the verge of insanity.

At last, one day she murmured - "My powers don't suit me. I could neither use them nor put them to rest. I'll never be a simple girl. This world doesn't suit me."

After the world was eliminated, she started adjusting to the ensuing grey darkness.

Voyage: An Introduction

2008-05-04T18:38:00.000-07:00

He had made a small hut beside the sea. On days of the tide, the sea would stretch to the place his home was. He had made two doors on the opposite sides of the wall - one from which the sea came in; the other, it went out. On these days he had plenty of sea creatures passing through his home. Some of these he really loved to watch whilst he sat on his bed - like the gray crabs, jellyfishes, fishermen and a few ships from the distant land. He had learnt quite a few languages from the foreigners on the different ships; found a few friends in the sailors who would pass in through his hut every now and then with their ships.

One day it started to rain and it didn't stop. After a few days or perhaps, months, he found a huge ship coming in through his door.

"Which land are you coming from?" he asked them in different languages.

"Land?" they replied, surprised, "There's no land. The rain's taken it all. We live in different ships. Each a country."

So, the world started coming in through one of his door and going out of the other.

After he died, people claimed he was the greatest voyager of all times.

Victory, Reclaimed

2008-05-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

Whether they spoke the truth no one could tell. Blindness covered their tongues. They were neither be found on this side of the red. Some claimed they had left. Others claimed they were still hiding in their basements. Still others claimed they had seen those melt like ice.

Their disappearance, the only certainty, revolved about their head. Drew crisscross lines on their feet. That’s where their skin started to crack. The crack took turns - up their stomach, in through their chests and reached their forehead. All at once, you could see the glowing lava called blood, under their skins. The infinite tears of the body. The final vacuum.

The deconstruction of their last hopes. Identities were nor to be found on this side of their skins.

The Fading Dancer

2008-05-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Crippling on the recurring times, he left. Not aware of the song that she was playing. These days he had come to believe that there was nothing wrong with his leg. Must have been a growing tumor in his fading head that caused him to cripple.

“Crippling is nothing but a writer’s block meant to be faced by the dancers”, he told her.

She shan’t dance until his head burst.

'Memory' by Borges

2008-03-02T18:22:00.000-08:00

The windows were mirrors. When he stared out through them, he found his own room stretched at different angles outside. Unlike a mirror, however, he could step inside (which was also outside) through a window.

When he stepped out to one of these imaginary rooms stretched at different angles through the window (which was also a door, a mirror, a reflected door and a reflected mirror), he found that this room too had windows. As he stared outside (which was also inside), he found his own room stretched at different angles outside.

That's when he realized that there was exactly one room. One circular room (which was also spherical, cubical and triangular) constructed such, that all windows would lead to itself.

He closed the windows; thereby eliminating the room forever.

The Break

2008-01-28T09:54:00.001-08:00

Today as he took a wrong turn, he found himself walking right into his yesterday. Reliving a day you had just spent can be quite boring. Grudging, he decided that tomorrow he'd be taking the right turn. But when he woke up the next morning, it was still the continuation of yesterday. So he was unable to take the right turn because he was living in the past and the past is unchangeable.

Then, one day he heard an alarm clock somewhere and came up with a plan. He decided to set an alarm clock exactly one minute before the 24th hour from now, so that the next day the alarm clock would go off at the same hour, breaking the recurrence.

The next morning, just one minute to the 24th hour, he heard the alarm clock. He was jubilated. He suddenly came up with a plan. He decided to set an alarm clock exactly one minute before the 24th hour from now, so that the next day the alarm clock would go off at the same hour, breaking the recurrence.

Identity: An Introduction

2008-01-26T01:03:00.000-08:00

She was playing with the mist. She made balls of smoke and rolled them into the denser mist. Then, she would go in looking for the ball. Each time when she came out with the ball she realized that it was not the ball she had rolled inside. And so, she understood that someone else was playing the same game from some other corner of the mist.

She decided to go looking for her playmates. She walked deeper into the mist and came out of some other corner. There was no one present but a few more balls of smoke waited for her. She kept down the ball she had in her hand and picked up another ball. Then, she looked around. Still there was no one to be found.

So, she turned around and started returning to the corner from where she had started. But when she had crossed the mist she found that she had come out of some other corner. And there were more balls over here.

She couldn't decide which one to pick up.

Love: An Introduction

2008-01-24T09:40:00.000-08:00

Her skin was aglow when she was excited. One evening, in her excitement she slit her skin somehow. Light particles poured all over the street. They gushed towards a direction the slope went.

People who slept in their bedrooms became conscious of this light. It was as if a million light bulbs rolled through the streets. They stepped out of their houses and danced in that light. Bathed in it. And they all gushed along with the light.

There was a blind man in the town, however, who unperturbed by the light went in the opposite direction, against the slope. He discovered the girl.

And as he waltzed with her in silence, he exclaimed - "I've seen many darknesses, none as colorful as yours."

The Coming of Uncertainty

2008-01-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

Uncertainty had never been talked about. And therefore, in time, it became a certainty that uncertainty would arrive, like the great depression, upon their town.

Still not talking about the uncertainty, the townsfolk decided to mend their own houses; to take safety measures; the apt precautions to eliminate uncertainty completely. When this completion was complete, each breathed a sigh of relief in their private bedrooms realizing that 'their' home, at least, was safe.

Slowly, as the news of the safety measures spread, each became further ascertained that uncertainty was imminent and that the neighbors knew. And as long as they're all ascertained of this and do not discuss of uncertainty, they can keep uncertainty away.

Hence, they only thought of certainty. Since that was the only thing on their mind and talking about certainty, in some ways, was also talking about uncertainty, they were no longer certain on what topic they could talk with their neighbors.

Uncertainty remained never talked about in the town.

Schizophrenia: An Introduction

2008-01-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

""I was writing here" he said, pointing towards the torn journal "when I left."

"And you were writing there" she said, pointing towards the torn journal "when you left.""

"And therefore, he actually went away from two places when he was writing in the torn journal?" the children asked their storyteller.

"They asked me the very question I had no answers to", the storyteller wrote in his torn journal right at that instance.

Love Tales

2007-12-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

He was watching her breathe, when she stopped suddenly and turned towards him. “In this breath, I hold a thought” she said, “I’ll set it free once you can guess it.”

And still when he sits before the sea, watching lovers cuddling, he thinks of that breath of hers.

As she has been going down the stairs she finds that feeling returning – of becoming lighter than the air above her. And then, the fear of rising up in through the block of air and reaching the floor she had started from; of finding the door, she had closed before she left, ajar; of finding him sleeping in the green light of the night bulb. That color hurt her eyes.

He dreamt of waking up.

When did you fall asleep on the sand? Did the last sun hurt your eyes? Like it had burned me? And the pages on which I wrote these love tales? Will the sea water heal your hurt or my love tales? Must I hold my breath in anticipation too? Hope? Do you know to dream? Am I the one who’s asleep in it?

Her blood went nowhere. It lingered a few feet away from the steps. Steps on which no one shall step in a few more hours to come. And no one shall see her blood catch the strangest of hue. Perhaps, it was the green light in her last thought. A green thought in the last light filled up her eyes. Filled up her heart. Filled up her belly. Filled up her breasts. Her fingernails.

It’s hard to tell whether she had felt dizzy or drowsy when she decided to take the easy way down the stairs.

In the crowd that had gathered on the shore to watch her beautiful corpse, there were children. They understood this to be a forbidden pleasure. They all stood in the warmth of her death. But for her, it was disturbing. The shame of being watched dead. The shame of it. She wanted to crumble into herself. But death, among other things, robs you of movement.

And if he were there, he surely would have covered her naked demise with himself.

When was the last time you died? Was it down the stairs? Was it on the shore? Was it elsewhere? Can you tell me the events in the order of their occurrence? How many times did you die in there? In my love tales? Does it hurt anymore? Didn’t I restore your lost immunity? Didn’t I trap all your deaths in these folded pages that the sun burnt? And yet, now, without your deaths do I have you at all? Wasn’t your life the longest dying? Broken down to smaller grains of death that flew hither and thither in the wind that blew?

When was the last time you died? When was the last time the last time?

He dreamt of waking up in a dream. There was dew all over. The dew that went nowhere but was everywhere. And in every dewdrop he found her trapped. He tried to catch a dewdrop to set her free. But the dewdrop gently slipped down his palm. And as it did, it slowly transformed to a waterfall of dewdrops, turning to a green stream gushing in full force. And in that stream he found her being carried away, drowning. Desperately trying to save her he jumped into the stream and found the water to be salty.

Once in the stream, he found that there was not one but a multitude of her. And that she wasn’t drowning in the stream at all, but into herself, over and over again.

And then there a was mirror in her room. One of her images was struck in it. When he stepped in her room, in the soft haze of the blue streetlight pouring in, he saw that it sat in a corner of the reflected room. One of its feet stretched towards the light. Trying to hide from the light.

When he pointed his torch towards it, it tried to crumble into itself. It was always difficult for the poor thing trying to look at the man behind the source of light. She wanted to run away from this playful rape by an unknown light. But a reflected world stretches only as far as the mirror-eyes wandered.

Slowly, the torchlight mixed with the blue light, creating the green hue. And an old, rusty feeling of discomfort returned. Somehow, she preferred this feeling of discomfort. Perhaps, it was acquaintance. Maybe, death again.

10.

When she stepped out on the road, in ignorance of a death she had descended from, she walked gracefully.

He’d be waiting at the place where the road bends.

11.

Am I just playing with you as if you stood in my palms? Is your imaginative future a piece of marble for me? Shall I carve it the way I wish? And again? And again? Don’t I know you’d never be breathing life into none of my sculptures? But? At the same time, don’t I sprinkle you in the eyes of an onlooker? Will you not live in there? Make a home? Another room? With a mirror?

Will I close my palm when I find the answers?

12.

There was also a mother, lost in one of these tales. She had abandoned the mirror. And therefore, I guess, the author abandoned her too. But there she is, clinging onto the space above her head. Frightened it’d disappear soon, one of these days. As would her memories. And her hands.

“She danced so well”, she tells the boy “she danced.”

13.

He dreamt of waking up in a dream. They sat on a shore when she pointed with her fingers towards something that moved in the grass. It was a beautiful insect. She took it on her palm. It was then that he realized that there were more of the insects all over the place. And they crawled all over her body.

She whispered in his ear – “They’re eating through me.”

That’s when he noticed, lots of her was missing. And bleeding. Like the second last finger of her left hand. The part of her forehead where the sweet wrinkle appeared when she was in doubt. Her right foot. Bits and parts of her lips. The left corner of her last thoughts.

And yet she went on playing with the insects. She went on.

14.

The white cloth.

15.

She never understood what darkness meant. A creature of light, she loved wearing white. He called her Sanctity. When he held her hand, his hands would invariably seem dirty.

Once upon a time, there was to be a year that’d teach her the inviolability of darkness. That’d be the year of him. And violins. She’d learn a movement guided by instincts. The completed chapter of dance. Of waltzing with the winds. Of the less enchanted children.

There was to be a year.

17.

Dear girl,

I lost a very important chapter of our tale. It was almost like losing the sweetest year of all lives. And long after I’ve closed this tale with this letter, a reader will stumble onto a chapter lying somewhere on the sands. The staircase. The place where the road bends. In a dream. Trapped in a palm.

Maybe, the mirror was just another river in which you drowned amidst yourselves. Maybe, your mother caught a glimpse of you drowning in the mirror. Maybe, she’ll keep herself in the space above her head. Maybe, I’ll keep the sea. Maybe, you’ll know your last thought. Maybe, we’ll all become insects and eat through each other.

Dear girl, will a publisher buy you?

Kisses.
Him.

Death: An Introduction

2007-11-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

He dismissed her memories as dark thoughts because she disappeared with the night.

He dismissed himself too, as dark thoughts because he disappeared within her.

Listen - 3

2007-10-05T23:10:00.000-07:00

Dear girl,

When I opened the window yesterday, I found a breeze blowing out of my room. She said she was trapped there forever. Did you ever notice her?

I can, somehow, remember a day when I had been writing something on one of my dusty pages, when all of a sudden it began to flutter wildly. And I had thought it wanted to fly down to the bed where you slept.

Yesterday, when the breeze went out, the night came in through the same window. This time when I'd write, I'll create invisibility.

You'd have more room to hide.

Kisses
Him.

Future: An Introduction

2007-09-28T22:20:00.001-07:00

"I can listen to the echoes from the past" she said.

"I'm thinking about you now" he confessed.

And went away.

Forever, Again

2007-09-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

So that she never meets him again, he was absconding from her sight when she became blind and started seeing him everywhere.

The Best Healer

2007-09-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

Walking untimely, he entered the bazaar of dilemma. It had all the most wonderful of goods, all of it free. Yet no one bought any of it - none of them sure what to buy.

Smiling at the indecisive commuters, he walked through them to a stall where they sold dreams and asked - "Which one's the best healer of all dilemmas? I want to take all their indecision away."

The shopkeeper, true to his characteristics, started unfolding in front of him one dream after another. He was about to object that surely all of them couldn't have been the best, when he realized that each of them in the bazaar were looking for the same thing and for the same reasons.

Walking untimely, he found a new commuter had entered the bazaar of dilemma.

Choices

2007-09-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

When she slept on the grass, it seemed she were a plant. And if you'd pluck one of her leaves she'd no longer be able to express her pain.

When she slept on the winds, it seemed she were a cloud. And if there's a storm she'd breakdown in happiness.

When she slept on a palm, it seemed she were a child. And if her mother returned she'd smile in her sleep.

When she slept in my eyes, it seemed she were aglow. And if the angels came, they'd burn in her flame.

When she slept inside me, it seemed she were awake. And if ever she were to wake up from the others, she promised she'd sleep inside me.

Amnesia: An Introduction

2007-07-23T23:38:00.000-07:00

She used to sign her name on the water. Rowing in the lake.

He tried to reach there with his hands, trying to touch her poetic alphabets. Her name rippled away.

Welcome to Le Bédouins

Light: An Introduction

2007-07-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

He cracked one of his eyes in the most recent of the accidents. Some light escaped right inside his head through the chasms. It illumined some of his darker thoughts.

He learnt to smile.

People learnt to find assurance in his most casual of smiles.

... Until he blinked his eyes.

Insomnia

2007-06-29T18:33:00.001-07:00

The first raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The second raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The third raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The fourth raindrop fell...

And later, when it was quite late, the fountains rolled down his cheek. His tears lingered in the rain; his corpse about to catch cold.

The Poetess & A Fool

2007-06-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

She said she loved him because he was symbolical to a line that stretched to infinity from both sides of her life.

"A line does always start from a point", she said. "... And then, it rolls on to places unknown on the opposite directions - to an ultimate unending. You're just like that."

"Well, that's fine", he replied "but I still don't get why you love me. I mean, shouldn't you rather fall in love with a line?"

"Actually, I had. There was a time when I loved the line passionately. But then, I came to realize that what I was really looking for in the line was some property in a man I could possibly fall in love with. And I kept searching until I found you."

"So, you wouldn't have loved me if I wasn't ... ummm... like a line?"

"O, what a foolish question. You couldn't have been anything but a replica of the line. It's your essence. I'd always love you."

And for the first time, he felt sad that she loved him.

Food: An Introductory Tongue-twister

2007-06-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

The docter who has to be treet himm was not good to Inglish. They want to made himm non-sense for the operation. He need to ordered "Chloroform" but he written insted "Chrorophyll". When he injections himm he becomed green.

On sunny day, his kichen door locks.

A Journal on Time & Space

2007-06-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, for the first time the night was dark. You were right! It really is beautiful. And very well designed too.

I remember the times you wanted to teach me the handicraft. Said I could too weave a blanket out of darkness. And I had kept stumbling in the blinding whiteness.

But it shan't be wrong ever again. Yesterday I fixed your left eye to synchronize with the right. At last I can breathe in your darkness.

Yesterday, for the first time again the night is dark.

I'll Sing Them for You

2007-06-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

One day while walking he had stepped on the breeze and it had cracked. The breeze was a long entangled chain. The crack spread to spaces unknown.

And then people said no one spoke to them.

Borges

2007-05-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

One evening, when he sat by the porch thinking about her, he woke up.

He couldn't recall when he had fell asleep. But now his eyes seemed torn apart by life. he could suddenly see to all the different direction in one indivisible fragment of moment. And from two of those uncertain directions he saw her twin selves walking towards him. He had to quickly decide which of her he had been betraying. It was difficult. And as his heartbeat paced and the two of her walked closer, he woke up once again.

Since then, whenever he had tried to hold her close to himself he just woke up over and over again from one of his preceding awakening.

Vegetable

2007-05-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

One fine morning, I was dropped out of a tomato. It was nothing new. I had been dropped several times before, from various vegetables. For some strange, unknown reason people always believed that I belonged to none of those.

For those of you who have never been inside a vegetable, it’s hard to tell. You must be feeling whatever I had written till now, is plain nonsense. Nonsense. Now, that could be a very misleading term. Nonsense is a genre in itself. A man called Lewis Carroll had played with it in “Alice in Wonderland”. From this I’d like to draw the following conclusions:

1. Fools can’t write nonsense.

2. Not all nonsense is true

3. Not all things true is good

4. Not everything that’s good qualify as creative.

5. Therefore, fools may or may not be creative.

6. Fools may be creative

7. Fools can write nonsense.

Now I’d prove the virtue of nonsense by your reactions. You may have five reactions to this.

1. You are awestruck by the argument: Because the argument is nonsense itself, you’re helping me carry it over that extra mile.

2. You want to refute the argument itself. It’s not valid: It’s nonsense. Therefore, it’s not valid. Thanks for accepting that.

3. It all went over your head: Things fly over our head when they make no sense. And therefore, you know….

4. You were and are indifferent to the entire article: It doesn’t stir your emotion… doesn’t stimulate your senses. It’s nonsense

5. You think there can be more reactions and options and whatever I tried to prove over here is total crap. Well, need I say more.

In the same way I can prove every writing in this world to be nothing more than nonsense and that we have actually been writing nothing but nonsense all this while.

So, where was I? Oh yes. I was dropped out of a tomato. And the reasons they gave me for such. You won’t believe this when I tell you. I had given them this very argument, as I had done in every other vegetable before. And they still thought that it was all nonsense.

Aphorism: An Introduction

2007-05-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

He could decode the ambiguous. The first time he met her was because someone told him that she was complicated. Beyond understanding. Perhaps, because he could understand him or maybe because she didn't. He found that people no longer called her complicated.

Slowly, he came to realize that she had been a problem child. She suffered from obscurity too. Because in all these time he had become a part of her, he faded in her presence.

One day, when he disappeared completely, people started calling her complicated again.

Songs of Exhaustion

2007-05-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

She transposed herself into darkness, every night.

Hid behind it, somewhere.

Behind the shadow of something.

The trees, the houses, the earths.

I went out with a torch.

Illumined every part of those.

Hunting the haunted.

I came back, exhausted.

Every night.

Within the night.

Without her.

With a realization.

She had deep, dark eyes.

Breaking the Spell

2007-05-16T23:27:00.002-07:00

Although she tried, the water slipped down her palms and she could never wake him up from his sub-conscious state. Inside, deep down, in the core of his sub-conscious, she lived. She tried. The water kept slipping. Everytime.

She would never leave him alone.

The Roof

2007-05-16T23:27:00.001-07:00

He seconds none in counting the minutes. Like glory passed away in some undiluted rhythm. He tells there's a season of pearls... when the sea won't leave you bereft.

His second wound was minute. Inside, he had found his cozy abode. Outside, where the burn remained, he applied ointment. He tells there's a reason for girls... when they find him to be too stubborn.

After his wounds healed, he kept living under the extension of skin. His cozy abode.

Immortality: An Introduction

2007-05-16T23:25:00.001-07:00

For the difference of one, he could never sleep the number of times he woke up.

Deconstruction: An Introduction

2007-05-16T00:23:00.000-07:00

One morning they woke up and realized that they could no longer draw a straight line.

"Earth ain't spherical, no more," the sheriff told them "You've to learn to hold the pencil in a newer angle."

The Annual Report

2007-05-16T00:22:00.001-07:00

In the rain, his memories were drenched. And in the thrill of wetness, he imagined her walking back into his future. Dry, as always. Slowly, as she had been approaching him, a few ashes scattered from her eyes.

The old man had predicted acid rain, a year ago.

Reincarnation

2007-05-16T00:21:00.000-07:00

A few broken breezes were scattered all over his kitchen floor. He tried to sweep those away but a fresh gust of wind came and pushed the pieces in. And the breezes, like feathers, landed all over his food. He had to try, once more, carefully filtering the meal of the breezes. But it was all so futile with the storm playing outside his apartment.

Unable to accept his defeat to the forces of nature, he started breathing, once again.

Formula

2007-05-14T02:50:00.000-07:00

She wanted him to be precise. But for the moments that went unnoticed, he often rounded-off her memories.

Listen - 2

2007-05-14T02:49:00.002-07:00

Dear girl,

Sounds still creep on the grass where we used to sit. The analogy of dawn seems just as unmindful. I've lost a few eyes in these years. The dewdrops seem hazy. But I do listen to the tinkling sound they create as they fall on the grass blades.

You'd be glad to know I've found an abode amidst the grass, in an abandoned ant-hill that the ants had evacuated sensing the rains. And guess what, I've found all my eyes in there.

Kisses.
Him

Soul

2007-05-14T02:49:00.001-07:00

Depression came like the first signs of guilt in their eyes. Underestimated. The fog took over the city. Depression became a promise. People stopped looking into each other's eyes. They passed by looking down all the while.

They all knew each other by their shoes. After someone had passed, a few of them cried following the trail of footprints left behind by the heavy, heavy sole of a boot.

The Other Side of The River

2007-05-08T22:11:00.001-07:00

One day, since he had been wandering too long, too deep into his dreams, he found the gate to outside was closed. He tried to climb the walls, but found his grip losing, over and over again.

He was sad. He would never be meeting his sweet nightmare.

Possibilities

2007-05-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Clever", she'd say after he completed each of his sentences.

It took him an eternity to realize each time that he had been saying the same sentence all over again.

Pyre

2007-05-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

He wandered right into the light that had burned his eyes. He'd never know the embers if he don't touch 'em.

Tragedy: An Introduction

2007-05-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

They had invented a game in which each asked questions to the other and no one answered. They only giggled with the questions. And rolled in the mist of questions they had created. The game became synonymous to their existence. And they thought of it to be eternal.

Then, one day he asked her - "Who's going to ask the next question?"

Another Short Essay on Perception

2007-05-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

It was an old sad hue of the distant songs that colored his head. Slowly as the color deepened, he wrote and played blues.

He had a canvas in front of him when he played his violin.

[You may also read A Short Essay on Perception ]

Divorce

2007-02-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

Within the sameness of her two palms rested his lonesome head. Perfectly balanced. And still there was no blood. Was he this anemic? The gunmen had promised there'd be blood. She couldn't move until there was some.

She had checked this morning with her favorite machine - she had shed a few pounds.

Sins: The Kiss

2007-02-01T06:38:00.000-08:00

Her words were always crisp in the last lights of the dusk. A few of us broke them and kept under our tongues. They melted late into the night as we lingered in the tastes of first adolescence.

After her father died, she became unusually silent. We concluded, therefore, nothing she said were her own words.

We wanted to rinse our mouths.

Temperature

2007-01-31T07:01:00.000-08:00

When she came out of my tears she had been shivering. "Your tears' too cold", she'd said. And I'd taken one on my fingers and found that they were actually burning.

I never needed a thermometer to tell she had a fever.

Albatross

2007-01-24T18:28:00.000-08:00

When the sail had fluttered for the first time, they had thought the winds of melancholia had returned. Chastity had frozen on her dead wings. If there ever was life before this, people sure would've been waiting for the sounds of their heartbeat. But the silence was denser than the sound.

In the eagles that came trailing the smell of mutilating flesh, they found the first signs of life.

Evaluating The Headphones

2007-01-17T05:35:00.000-08:00

He pressed his fingers into her thoughts. He infused different hues of sadism into her memories. If she'd scream he still remembers her.

She had crashed into silence the last time he remembered her voice.

Anomaly is a Decision!

2007-01-16T17:54:00.000-08:00

He had loved her as the last manifestations of innocence in a world of depreciating preservatives. The smell of a few rotten nostalgias. Mutilating. Bacteria. She blinked her eyes like a child when she didn't understand a thing. And oh! For the beauty of it he'd wish she'd understand nothing he ever told or did.

When the wars called him again, all he wished to take from the town was one blink of her eyes. Carefully concealed. But this time she understood. She won't blink again like darkness would for him, evermore.

Animals - 4: Bear

2007-01-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

Tender inside her wound she slipped. Still broken from the last night's fallen dreams. A few bone-dusts churned into the broth of flesh. A teaspoon of blood. A pinch of his fading memories. In this abandoned house, smelling of bearskins, alone and lost, delicacies' been waiting for her.

Tonight, Goldilock will not find the porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold.

Unforgetting

Animals - 1: Rabbit
Animals - 2: Rat
Animals - 3: Protozoan

...And They Lived Happily Ever After

2007-01-11T07:43:00.000-08:00

When she walked out of his heart, she forgot to tell him where she kept the key to their cupboard. They had designed their cupboard to be airtight. To keep their memories safe from the fungus and bacteria. It was an alternative to their own hearts.

She had taken his alternative away, forever - he thought.

This morning, she had stepped down his heart and walked into the alternative. Their cupboard.

I'll Limp A World For You

2007-01-09T04:59:00.000-08:00

He still fumbles with his hallucinations. Even when she walks down to him, he couldn't ask her to the dance.

One Who Never Knew

2007-01-03T18:41:00.000-08:00

Inquisition was a clock that tick-tocked inside his head. One night, when he dreamt of insomnia he woke up to find himself afraid of the clock. Unable to decide on how he should interpret it, he oscillated between the choice of knowledge and ignorance.

It took him a few years to realize that his inability to decide was ignorance, personified. Since then, it took him an eternity of insomnias, trying to find his way out. Never did it occur to him that the realization was his ability to know.

Cell

2007-01-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

I dispatched your agony on a wintry morning. Patient rust on the letter-box. Yours. People tell stories these days. That you had trapped yourself in your letter-box. Thought you deserved a prison. A cell to yourself.

"Life began from a cell," I'd told you, one day.

Memory Game

2007-01-03T18:39:00.001-08:00

When they were shifting places, she had been carrying some of his words. Accidentally, that day, some of those slipped and shattered on the floor.

They couldn't talk of their past ever again.

The Seed in Her Womb

2007-01-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

When the ship took him away her heart was broken. In a year, he promised to return.

"You could long for him," her friends said "Pain seldom is this sweet."

She didn't understand but right when the words were being spoken she found herself craving for chocolate-coated tears.

Destiny's Thread

2006-12-31T21:32:00.001-08:00

I used to live by the darkened road that led to the enchanted destinies of a fellow who was lost like a long awaited letter from my lover melting into the storm cutting its way into an alien land where the people who used to stay feeling afraid of the gathering storm and reading the first signs of their doom had decided to flee on the first car they could remember seeing which was actually a mailman's van from which they emptied all their letters to find enough leg-space for making their longest journey comfortable never thinking for once how lost the mailman would feel when he wouldn't be able to deliver their loved ones' words to the people who waited like the man who stayed on the darkened road whose curse it was addressed to those who were responsible for his lover's letter not reaching him that would ensure that their doom become inescapable on the very day they were fleeing from the storm.....

Are You Afraid of Me, Child?

2006-12-29T18:23:00.000-08:00

[A Prayer for those we forgot to invite to the Christmas Celebrations, yet again.]

Someone had whispered a scream in my ears. Its fragrance lingered like a sunflower in a wintry dusk. Like a fallacy. When music came we transformed it to a sonata and planted it in a flower pot.

Our life was a radio station that played Gothic music, forever, after we lived.

Light

2006-12-23T18:42:00.000-08:00

A few colorful lights were stuck in his eyes. He splashes a few wet tears in there. Lights linger. Their color disseminate from the edges. A transmutation of the glowing haze. But the sun never set on the electric light.

He walks in through the snowballs, the sledges and the dances. Walks on to the corner where she sat. Blind as ever, beautiful evermore. She smiles. She knows his presence. And as they waltz through a frenzied crowd she whispers in his ears -

"You know, last night, in one of my dreams, the darkness blinked."

She was expecting.

Grace

2006-12-21T17:46:00.000-08:00

The broken days come in a particular weather every year. Some skins crack. A few people try to rescue their reflection from the mirrors. Trapped in the eternities of a breath.

A broken pipeline on my basement. A river in my bedroom. I watch my sinking alarm clock. Screaming. I listen to some of your sinking letters. I watch the tumbling ink pot mixing saddened hue to the water.

You had told me to rinse your memories well on a special day, once every year, after you. Tears ain't easy for a clown.

Blank

2006-12-20T17:57:00.000-08:00

I was painted on a piece of paper. It was an exaggeration. My smile was never so full of myself. There was a face on my smile. A transparent me.

Never before had I lingered in the brushes of a colorblind painter.

Blanket

2006-12-17T17:33:00.001-08:00

In a cold, cold night, he covered himself with some of his useless paintings. It warmed his outer skin. Sweats appeared. His sweats, as always, was drenched in blood. Whilst he slept.

Next morning, early morning, as early as it gets, she came to wake him up and she picked up his painted blankets. "These are your masterpieces", she exclaimed, kissing him on his closed eyelids, softly.

The Dual

2006-12-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

A drop of sun fell on her lap. She was metamorphosed to ashes. Even the last of her tears were burned. She stood as a perfect figurine of ash. She told she would be waiting for us, until I could come to a decision with the breeze on who loves her best.

It was one minute and a half to twelve.

Nails

2006-12-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

The accumulation of iron inside his body was tremendous. When poverty came knocking on his door, he would melt the iron and make nails out of them. He used to sell the nails to the coffin makers. Since he was a lonely man it bought him enough money for a week.

After many weeks, the coffin makers sold him a coffin and said - "This one's for your last nail."

The Curse

2006-12-11T09:37:00.001-08:00

Designed inside his head was a small statue of oblivion. The birds came and sat on it. They chirped incessantly. Slowly, as the evenings melt their voices disappeared in the milieu of the gathering silence.

He had to undergo a brain surgery to remove the statue. And ever since he couldn't forget the lovely birds that migrated to far-off lands in search of a brand new oblivion.

Love Letters

2006-12-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

He had filled a balloon with the summer breeze. Once, when he went rowing in the river he dropped it there, accidentally. He wasn't brave enough to jump into the water to retrieve it. So, with saddened eyes he watched it flow farther and farther away from him.

She had been sitting on the river bank one evening when a strange balloon came flowing down to her. It came and touched her feet which she sat dipping in the water.

Accidentally, once again, the balloon burst and thus, with the first drops of sweat that appeared on her forehead, she felt warm and cozy in her first love.

Salt

2006-12-07T17:17:00.000-08:00

His eyes had been burning since last night. He had caught one of her tears in his eyes. When he opened his eyes the world seemed infinitely more hazy than it did when he cried all by himself.

The sensation was strange. Lately, he had come to realize that there was a taste-bud on his retina. Her tear lingered like the salty sea in his eyes. She had always been this salty..... he knew, when he looked at her.

She used to cook him meals and they would never have to buy salt. Before she applied the last of her in last night's menu, for the last time their eyes kissed.

A Worm's Pilgrimage

2006-12-06T19:20:00.001-08:00

[This piece is not to be read by the weak-hearted]

One fine morning, living inside his worsening illness, he had been unmindful, the viruses of nostalgia, finding his body perfectly weak, captured him. And he went thinking how she used to bring the aroma of magic to heal his diseases. And he wished, like any lover does in his ailment, that she would again transmogrify his pains away and that she would come back to him from so far away like lightening does.

She didn't, but the doctor did. The doctor told, after his check-up, that there was a worm inside him and prescribed a few medicine.

One fine morning, waking on her warm, cosy bed she found that her ailment had vanished. And she found a worm had climbed outside her mouth and was now slowly vanishing outside her window.

Betrayal

2006-12-05T18:06:00.000-08:00

I came back to the abandoned place the pick up the last of her pieces. I was always against her metamorphosing into glass.

"You can't hold yourself together for too long that way", I had warned her. But my words fell on her glass ear. Cracking them. The beginning of the discovery.

Her skin had the properties of the mirror. People took some of the broken pieces for their homes. She depreciated.

I came back to the abandoned place, today. My twenty-three old mirror was broken by one careless movement of hands last night, as I made love blindfolded to my live-in partner, Medusa.

Voice: First Person

2006-12-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

And still drops of his dreams fall on her lap where he used to sleep. A realm of jumbled alphabets.... and some of them were sharp. They wounded her. Her lap bled.

'I' was an alphabet that pierced right into her veins, over and over again.

The Theory of Magnetism

2006-12-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

Dusts fell on my tears. Accumulated. Till your window was darkened by wetness. And suddenly, you remembered the light-bulb I had gifted you long, long back, wrapped in a rose-bud.

"Chase your inner darkness away", I had said.

Now you knew what I meant. There were rooms in either side of your skin, where you lived, twice. Duplicated in every unfragmented moment. The shadows overlapped.

You decided to swallow the light-bulb after you had carefully peeled off each of the rose petals.

The Ritual Cleansing

2006-12-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

He let his voice fly with the winds. She waited at the other end of the breeze to catch his words. Once again, to cover her nudity with his scattered words. It kept her warm.

Lately, the industries been breathing its fumes in the same air.

Lately, she has been taking his words to the laundry before she would put them on.

Suicide

2006-11-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, she was a fairy tale. Magic played on her skin. Children ran through her heart. Many a demons and witches perished on her breath. One day, a prince landed right into her eyes. She closed her eyes. And they lived happily ever after.

But oh! for the boredom of continual bliss. She contemplated suicide.

So, in one fragmented dusk she caught him making love to the fairies. Children learnt new words and went out, playing.

The Week Spent Inside A Palm

2006-11-29T09:16:00.000-08:00

"I'm back", he said. And yet, none answered.

The darkness knocked on her cheekbones. But the door was locked. She slept stagnant on her mute heart. She recognized none anymore.

He pressed his ears on her heart for the last time and whispered, "I'm back".

Twenty-Nine

2006-11-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Between the evening and the night, one day, there was no dusk. And from light to darkness, the transformation had been so rapid that it hurt their eyes. They promised they would be blind by the next day after the first drops of blood from their eyes.

A rich man hired them by the news. His palace had twenty-nine windows and they made a great exhibition. Each of his windows had automatic blinds.

Give Me a Hand

2006-11-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

A heart glowed on the road down his window. Its light hurt his eyes. Won't let him sleep. Never let him sleep in the nights. Closing his eyes won't help. The light made everything that came in its way transparent. He had to get up and go to the window. He found a boy coming down the street, his eyes lowered. He hung his head out and cried -

"Hey there, kid. Would you mind turning the heart off on your way?"

Forehead

2006-11-14T16:50:00.000-08:00

He wore his fears on his forehead. Engraved inside his skull. The solitary existence of an introvert leader and a fool. On a sun-filled day she accepted a flower from his hands.

Ever since, he wore his fears on her forehead.

The First Gun

2006-11-13T17:08:00.000-08:00

And still they lingered on her lips. The children. The tale of those who were lost with their fading childhood. Reproduction was an exact name. A re-creation of their childhood. A restoration of selves. A wooden plank on the river bed. Flowing. Empty.

After their mother had kissed them, they had ran outside with with the wooden plank.

Frankenstein

2006-11-12T17:15:00.000-08:00

He had stretched his hands towards eternity. But since the road to eternity is through time, his hand aged. Ever since he was known as a man with senile hands.

One of her tears was lost in those hands. And yet, the smell remained. The sober smell of the garden of grapes. That drop of tear turned old in his hand.

Women afraid of age died in his hands but never left a tear in his hands, ever again.

Animals - 3: Protozoan

2006-11-10T17:23:00.000-08:00

He had learnt it from the spiders. A web drawn out of feathers. There's no windows in the feather apartments. A dream trapped on its edge. Melting. Falling on some rainbow feather. Accumulating. A heavy heart.

Her steps were measured on the feather-web. Each one a thousand escapes. Escapades. From all edges of her body she walked inside herself. Concentrated into a point. In the end, she found holes large enough to be called doors on the moist walls of the feathers.

She would have been miles away from him had it not been for his pet Protozoan who gobbled her.

Unforgetting

Animals - 1: Rabbit
Animals - 2: Rat

Jack

2006-11-09T16:24:00.000-08:00

I stepped into a brown metaphor. A drill past my future. Steep as the stairs to the mountain top. The fall was uneasy too. Never as comfortable as it would be in our childhoods. We fell voluntarily in those days. Crashing down the mountains. Creating melody.

But in growing up speed had been infused in our lives in unequal proportions. Slowness fell in her half. In the end, I'd have to wait for hours until the evening at the foot of the mountain with a bucket and a crown. It was invariably someone else that Jill would come tumbling after.

A Makeshift Moment

2006-11-09T07:17:00.000-08:00

He dreamt of a reincarnation on the exact day that he was to die. And it was exactly after he woke up from the dream, restless, that he realized that he was about to die. The only thing he couldn't decide was whether the reincarnation belonged to his past or his future. It disturbed him. For the first time in his life he experienced a headache originating from his heart. It angered him so that he decided he needed no reincarnations.

He got up and smashed all the clocks.

Hiccup

2006-11-08T05:22:00.000-08:00

His birth coincided with one of his father's hiccups. The man had been drunk as usual. But for that fragment of the second, he had to lose all his senses. He didn't see the baby been reaped out, even though he was standing right in front. So, he never believed that the child was born at all. He accepted his son as a hallucination.

"You're my hangover", he'd say "But I love my imaginary characters."

"But I'm real", his son would revolt

"Oh! Don'cha worry about that. I'm imaginary myself. My birth coincided with one of my father's hiccup. You'd learn one day, that the hiccup negates reality. And with every hiccup we become more and more imaginary."

Saying this his father disappeared into the thin air.

A Tragic Novel

2006-11-04T18:18:00.000-08:00

There were no papers in his house. He wrote words on his guitar string. It took him a few years to complete his first novel.

One day, she took his guitar to render his favorite melody. Words from his novel shed like autumn leaves.

Indecision

2006-11-03T06:23:00.000-08:00

She stood for hours inside her own heart. She said she had swallowed herself. She had never known that her heart was this cosy and warm. She played with her enzymes for a while, then realized there was a pain in the left side of her tummy..... which reminded her -

"Shouldn't I have been in the stomach if I have swallowed myself?" she asked the enzymes.

"You are." They replied.

"But the heart...."

"You swallowed it too."

The pain in her tummy increased.

"Indigestion", she thought.

Life, Thereafter

2006-11-02T05:44:00.000-08:00

He went from, town to town selling the breeze of foreign lands. He said he had cure to every disease trapped in his transparent jars. Even death. He had brought many a corpses back to life. One day a child came up to him and said -

"I won't have a baby brother anymore. My mother had to abort. Father told he doesn't need another zombie in this house."

Logic: An Introduction

2006-11-01T23:18:00.000-08:00

Nobody believed the little boy when he said that he knew magic. So, one day he invited everyone and from the roof of a five-storied building he jumped. Before his body would crash on the ground, he disappeared mid-air. People were awestruck. But to make sure this wasn't some kind of trick, they pushed a man from the roof. He fell down and died. Someone said, "He was a man. Physics would work differently on him." So, they pushed a child from the roof. He died, too. Someone said, "He was just a child. Metaphysics won't work on him." So, they pushed a famous magician. He died.

And so they concluded that you shouldn't jump from the roof of a five-storied building or else, you'd die.

May I Borrow Your Lighter Please?

2006-11-01T06:40:00.000-08:00

I carved shadows on the midnight rains. A whole lot of despondent footprints on the water. Somewhere, underneath the third layer of the waters, I left you back with oblivion. But your shadows were lighter than the water. They came up on the surface of the water and floated with the kerosene.

"I love the smell of kerosene", you used to say.

Matchsticks. Drenched shadows in memories. Darkness. A drop of water from the tap, repetetive. Music on your bathroom floor. The intoxicating fragrance of kerosene. I saw you dancing with the flames inside your eyes. That night, you didn't let me in.

Tonight, I walk through the infinite corridors of the burnt-out rain.

Peace

2006-10-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

Slowly, his life became denser than the graveyards. Not 'til the recent times did the townsfolk notice that the gravestones growing out of the grasses were more in number than the flowers in the grave. They had went to the mayor asking for a brand new grave, but he declined saying - "few people die in the town, nowadays. The young people, who are most frequently dead, are buried in the largest grave of them all: Agony."

People stopped complaining after that. Not because of what the mayor had told but because they found one fine day, that the lovely undertaker whom all of them admired was living a life much, much denser than the death of their children.

The Wholesome Hole

2006-10-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

When children would dig holes into the sand on the shore, he had started digging a hole into the sky. It ran piercing the air above his head. As his head grew higher, so did the hole. On the end of the hole, he planted a thousand lightbulbs and started living.

One day, when he had become a man, he invited a few guests into his hole. They told him it was a lighthouse.

The Balloon that Rose up from Sleep

2006-10-28T08:14:00.001-07:00

One morning, as I woke up, I found my palms were empty. The lines had detached themselves from my palms. They were floating around in the different corners of the mid-air in my bedroom. Like strings lighter than the air. Like destiny trapped in a hydrogen filled balloon, covering the distance between the heaven and the hand.

That evening I told my father -

"Dad, you know what happened when I woke up this morning?"

My father smiled.

"Son, you're insomniac. You haven't woken up for centuries."

A Short Essay on Perception

2006-10-27T19:42:00.000-07:00

All his echoes were endless and moist. The morning dew accumulated on his echoes. And when the lights filled up the dew, his voice would shine throughout the realm. Bright. Much too bright. The Ultra-Violet rays of repetetive sounds.

People wore sunglasses to save their ears.

Reverse

2006-10-26T18:34:00.000-07:00

She always reminded him of dust. Her memories left drying in the sunrays. Like a host of butterfly wings. A reverse metamorphosis. The second cocoon. Caterpillars crawling on the edge of his dreams. Roaches in the corners. Accumulating dust. The leaves springing back to the tree. The ghosts retaining form. She lingering in her life.

It didn't matter. Whichever way the time flowed, in the end she'd disappear from his life.

The Business Man

2006-10-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

Lately, the sea in my head had become noisy. The waves broke breaking a few of my nerves. Anaesthesia flowed all through my body. Yet the doctors said that the sound was sound. It was a natural sound, they said. Meanwhile, the sea seeped into my blood. And a few fishes too, broke in. On silent nights I'd be woken up by the sound of their lovemaking.

I donated my blood a few days back and a fisherman's life was saved.

Lately, he's making lots of money.

Alter

2006-10-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

Right from his early childhood, he has been appreciated for his capabalities to lie. All his lies were so intense that even when you'd know he's lying, you'd persuade yourself that the entire world has been a lie. Nobody really cared for the truth anymore. "Truth is relative," they'd say "but the liar is universal."

He became a professional liar when he grew up. He lied with such mastery of the art that all his lies seemed interconnected. Juxtaposed. Existing as a parallel realm with the reality. Elusive than the real. The liberation.

The heavens found real competition in him: 'The Great Lie' wasn't meant to have an alternative.

The Accordion People

2006-10-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

When he played the accordion, people could fly. Everyone loved him and the women cooked for him. After he'd fininshed his food, he would start tapping his left foot and picking his accordion would start rolling his fingers. The women would fly back to their home.

When he died, everyone in the town was infuriated. How could he do this to them? Just because he had special powers didn't mean that he had the liberty to succumb the pleasures and pressures of dying whenever he felt like doing so.

So, they hired a man to play the accordian. But they couldn't fly. So, they hired wings for themselves. And they hired everything else. They worked hard and made all the arrangements. At last when they could fly they were too tired to do so.

That night, they set the accordion on fire and each jumped into it. The accordian played by itself. Never was a better composition heard by the fellow passangers of the plane I was flying on